When Klara has to travel to Prague for another concert, Csicsi offers to
go with her.
“Shall I bake a wedding cake now?” Magda asks.
“Stop it,” Klara says. “He has a girlfriend. He’s just being polite.”
“Are you sure you’re not falling in love?” I ask.
“He remembers our parents,” she says, “and I remember his.”
* * *When I have been home a few weeks, although I am barely strong
enough, I make the journey on foot to Eric’s old apartment. No one
from his family has returned. e apartment is empty. I vow to go
back as oen as I can. e pain of staying away is greater than the
disappointment of vigilance. To mourn him is to mourn more than a
person. In the camps I could long for his physical presence and hold
on to the promise of our future. If I survive today, tomorrow I will be
free. e irony of freedom is that it is harder to ĕnd hope and purpose.
Now I must come to terms with the fact that anyone I marry won’t
know my parents. If I ever have children, they won’t know their
grandparents. It isn’t just my own loss that hurts. It’s the way it ripples
out into the future. e way it perpetuates. My mother used to tell me
to look for a man with a wide forehead because that means he’s
intelligent. “Watch how he uses his handkerchief,” she would say.
“Make sure he always carries a clean one. Make sure his shoes are
polished.” She won’t be at my wedding. She won’t ever know who I
become, whom I choose.
Klara is my mother now. She does it out of love and a natural
competence. She also does it out of guilt. She wasn’t there to protect us
at Auschwitz. She will protect us now. She does all the cooking. She
feeds me with a spoon, like I’m a baby. I love her, I love her attention,
I love being held and made to feel safe. But it is suffocating too. Her
kindness leaves me no breathing room. And she seems to need