I hold up the knife.
Etan, can you get me some tea?
I go and fill the small kettle
in the back, get the mug ready.
You remember what I told you
about Prague,
about leaving to come here?
I do, I remember.
Well, he continues.
Prague was our home.
Our family had lived there
for a very long time,
fighting for our country,
but this time, when the Nazis came …
He pauses and takes deep breaths.
I pour water and drop in
a bag of black tea
along with two sugar cubes.
I know this part of the story,
about my great-grandfather,
the great rabbi, and how he had to escape.
I bring my grandpa the tea.
When they came,
we didn’t have much time.
Friends helped us.
People looked out for us,
and when it was time
for us to escape,
your great-grandfather stayed behind
so that your grandmother and I
could make our way to Greece
and find the Calypso.
I hold the knife up,
pull it out from its sheath.
Ah, he says, I almost forgot.
The knife. My father gave it to me
in case anything happened on the way.
He stays silent, looks at the knife,
then back at me. Then he reaches over
and puts it back into its sheath.
This was everything we had, he says.
We lost two other boxes,
but this one was the most important.
He pats the top of the box
and looks at the spread of objects.
Then he points to one
of two jars in the center of the table.
This one has clay from the Holy Land
and the Vltava River inside it!
He pulls out an old dusty book,
big like the giant Tanakh at our synagogue
or the old Webster’s dictionary at school.
On the cover are words in Hebrew
and some other language I’ve never seen.
There’s a picture etched into the leather cover
of a mountain or a hill with eyes and arms
holding the sun in its stumpy hands.