The Choice

cuts. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Is it that his girlfriend is
alive while my boyfriend is dead? Or is it that I am already so
diminished that without another person’s attention or approval I feel I
am in danger of disappearing entirely?
He buys me a sandwich on the train and a newspaper for himself.
We don’t talk, other than to exchange names and formalities. Béla is
his name. To me he is just a rude person on a train, a person I must
grudgingly ask for help, a person who only grudgingly gives it.
When we arrive at the station, we learn we have to walk to the TB
hospital, and now there is no newspaper to distract him.
“What did you do before the war?” he asks. I notice what I didn’t
hear before—he speaks with a stutter. When I tell him that I was a
gymnast and I danced ballet, he says, “That reminds me of a joke.”
I look at him expectantly, ready for a dose of Hungarian humor,
ready for the relief I felt at Auschwitz when Magda and I hosted the
boob contest with our bunkmates, the lift of laughter in terrible times.
“ere was a bird,” he says, “and the bird was about to die. A cow
came and warmed him up a little—from his rear end, if you know
what I mean—and the bird started to perk up. en a truck came and
ĕnished off the bird. A wise old horse came by and saw the dead bird
on the road. e horse said, ‘Didn’t I tell you if you have shit on your
head, don’t dance?’ ” Béla laughs at his own joke.
But I feel insulted. He means to be funny, but I think he is trying to
tell me, you have shit on your head. I think he means, you’re a real
mess. I think he’s saying, you shouldn’t call yourself a dancer if you
look like this. For a moment, before his insult, it had been such a relief
to have his attention, such a relief to be asked who I was before the
war. Such a relief to acknowledge the me who existed—who thrived—
before the war. His joke reinforces how irreparably the war has
changed and damaged me. It hurts for a stranger to cut me down. It
hurts because he’s right. I am a mess. Still, I won’t let an insensitive