One day a package arrives from Aunt Matilda. Valentine Avenue, the
Bronx, the return address reads. She sends tea, Crisco. We have never
seen Crisco before and so have no idea that it’s a butter substitute to
be used for cooking and baking. We eat it plain, we spread it on bread.
We reuse the tea bags again and again. How many cups can we brew
with the same leaves?
* * *Occasionally, our doorbell rings, and I jolt up in bed. ese are the
best moments. Someone is waiting outside the door, and in the
seconds before we open it, that person could be anyone. Sometimes I
imagine it is our father. He survived the ĕrst selection aer all. He
found a way to work, to appear young throughout the rest of the war,
and here he is, smoking a cigarette, holding a piece of chalk, a long
measuring tape slung around his neck like a scarf. Sometimes it is Eric
I imagine on the stoop. He holds a bouquet of roses.
My father never comes. at is how we know for sure that he is
dead.
One day Lester Korda, one of the two brothers who rode with us
on the train from Wels to Vienna, rings the bell. He has come to see
how we are making out. “Call me Csicsi,” he says. He is like fresh air
rushing into our stale rooms. We are in an ongoing limbo, my sisters
and I, between looking back and moving on. So much of our energy is
used just to restore things—our health, our belongings, what we can of
life before loss and imprisonment. Csicsi’s warmth and interest in our
welfare remind me that there is more to live for than that.
Klara is in the other room, practicing violin. Csicsi’s eyes light up
when he hears the music. “May I meet the musician?” he asks, and
Klara obliges. She plays a Hungarian czardas. Csicsi dances. Maybe it is
time to build our lives—not back to what they were, but anew.
roughout the summer of 1945, Csicsi becomes a regular visitor.