SARAH
The front door shutting makes Sarah jump. David must be back from work. She leaves the living room just as he’s removing his coat and hat. Taking the hat from him, she dusts it off with the back of her hand, placing it on top of the hat stand. When she turns back to face him, she’s shocked by the paleness of him.
“I’ll go and say hello to Samuel.”
“Of course. Would you like me to get you a drink?”
“Yes, a pastis, please. I’m feeling a little sick.” He always drinks pastis when he’s feeling ill. He says it kills off bacteria more quickly than any medicine.
She watches as he turns his back on her, walking down the hallway to Sam’s room.
“He’s not in there,” she calls after him. “He’s in the living room.”
She’s only just finished pouring his drink when he comes into the kitchen.
“Samuel’s asleep.” He scratches his beard. “He’s asleep on the couch. Sometimes I think it’s his way of escaping.”
“Do you ever wonder what he dreams about?” She hands him the glass.
“Well, we don’t choose what we dream about, but if he could, I expect he’d be dreaming about America. His heart is still there.”
Sarah nods, leaning back against the sink. “I wish… I wish he could think of his home as here, but it’s too late, isn’t it? Home is set in your mind from a young age, and then it’s fixed.”
“I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t know anything anymore.” David pulls a chair out from under the table, slumping into it. “I’m just so tired. I don’t feel well.”
She sits down next to him. “So am I. I feel like I’ve been beaten from the inside. The fight is going out of me.”
He turns to look at her. “Do you remember, Sarah? Do you remember how hard it was to keep believing, to keep fighting? Sometimes I just wanted to close my eyes and wait for the sweet release of death to take me.”
“I know.” She strokes his arm gently, understanding his need to go back over it. She feels the same need to relive it sometimes. Maybe it’s her mind trying to make sense of it all. But there was no sense. Maybe it’s because each time she plays it back, she hopes the sharpness will be slightly less killing. That a memory replayed a thousand times will lose some of its potency.
“I think I would have died if I hadn’t known Samuel was alive somewhere,” David says. “I clung on because I wanted to find him again.”
“So you knew too? You knew he was alive?”
“I didn’t know, but I held on to that thread of hope. I made myself strong for him; I wanted him to be proud of his father wherever he was.”
“He gave me strength too.” She pauses. “It was our love for Samuel that kept us going, wasn’t it?”
She sees a solitary tear slide down David’s cheek, losing itself in his beard. She knows how hard it is for him to talk like this. It upsets him too much. He needs to stay in control, and these overpowering emotions make him feel like he’s losing his grip. She knows this, though he has never explained it to her. Now that he’s started talking, she wants to keep the conversation going. It will help them both.
“I remember one day when I was digging that trench outside the camp,” she continues, still stroking his arm. “It was so hot, and we had no water. I remember wiping the sweat from my brow, then licking it from my hand. Then I noticed a guard standing next to me, watching me. I flinched, expecting a beating. But instead he asked if I was thirsty.” She pauses. “I didn’t dare reply. Then he pulled out his canteen and offered it to me. I didn’t want to take it. My fear was worse than my thirst. But he pushed it into my hand. I took one gulp and tried to give it back. I thought it might be a trap—that I’d be shot for drinking from a guard’s canteen. But he told me to finish it. So I drank it all.” She stops stroking David’s arm. “I didn’t even say thank you.”
David sits up straight. “It wasn’t the water that saved you that day, was it? It was seeing an act of kindness in hell itself. It gave you hope.”
“Yes, and it made me believe someone would be taking care of Samuel. And then when I saw you through the snow in that broken building, I knew we would all be together again.”
He takes her hand. “I don’t know how you recognized me. We all looked the same; like skeletons. I was ready to give up even though I knew the war was over. I just wanted to lie down and die. Then I heard you call my name, like a dream, and suddenly you were there, holding me, saying my name over and over.”
She squeezes his hand. “I was looking for you. I knew you’d be there.”
“And I knew it couldn’t be a dream because I was so damned cold. Then I heard God telling me to keep my faith and stay strong, that soon our ordeal would be over.”
“But it wasn’t, was it?”
He takes a gulp of pastis and shakes his head.
They sit in silence, each lost in their memories. Sarah remembers the stories David told her afterward. They’re his memories, but she likes to visit them, imagining the ingenious ways he managed to get messages to her, helping her keep her faith. With his research skills, he was taken on in the medical laboratory under the supervision of the notorious Dr. Mengele. He spent his days in the relative warmth of the lab, staring at cells under the microscope. Often he was left on his own, and he managed to get ahold of medical supplies for other prisoners. He was taking an enormous risk, but he was clever and hid them in unlikely places. He put small antibiotic tablets into his ears and penicillin under the soles of his feet. These were highly valued items and could be easily traded for a message carrier. They knew about the experiments now, but David knew back then. He told Sarah that knowing what they were doing had made him feel complicit in some way. It was impossible to remain unscathed. And he still carried the guilt.
“How does everyone else who survived manage?” Sarah wonders how others have coped. Maybe the only solution is to block it out. “Sometimes I wonder if it really even happened.”
“It’s hard for everyone, but no one really wants to hear about it. They don’t want to have to imagine what we went through. But nothing’s ever the same once you’ve seen hell, is it?”
She leans into him. “No, nothing’s the same.” She pauses. “Sometimes I feel so alone.”
“I’m here, Sarah.” He takes her hand. “I know I’m no good at saying things, saying how I feel. But I’m here for you.” Unshed tears shine in his eyes.
“I know you are.” She squeezes his hand. “David, what we lived through—it’s not of this world, is it? Not this world now. It can’t be.”
“It’s not.” He wipes away the silent tears running down her face. “We came back from hell. Somehow we have to learn to forget what we saw there.”
“Learn to forget. Yes. If only we could.”
“Maybe we can’t forget, but we can forgive.”
His words take her by surprise. She realizes it’s not something she’s ever considered, and she’d always assumed he hadn’t either. Forgiveness.
“I don’t think I can. I don’t even think I want to.”
He looks down at the table. “I want to. I won’t make excuses for them, but… but I think I would… I would be able to forgive if I were a better man.”
“No! You are a good man. It’s too much to ask. You always ask too much!”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t mean to say it, but now the words are out. “You expect so much from everyone: Samuel, me, yourself. But we’re only human. Sometimes it’s just too hard.” Her tears start afresh, and she pulls a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her nose.
He takes his hand away, scratching his beard. “I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you both. I didn’t mean to be.”
She looks sideways at him, watching his Adam’s apple going up and down as though it were a heavy weight. She can feel his pain, can almost hear the words blocked in his throat. She wishes she could ease it. “David, we should be grateful for what we have. It’s a miracle Samuel survived. And he saved us too.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ve been asking for too much. Isn’t it enough that we are all alive?”
He grips his beard as if gripping on to life. “What are you saying?”
She closes her eyes, praying for courage. “David, you know what I’m saying.”
“No! No, I don’t.”
Scraping her chair back, she gets up and goes to the sink, where she starts to scrub down the already clean surfaces, swallowing her tears.
Then she feels her husband next to her. “Sarah, maybe you should go and meet Beauchamp. It might help you.”
“Will you come?” She turns to him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“No. I couldn’t bear to see him.”