crowds rush to scoop a little pail of it, he spies me sitting alone,
guarding my family’s coats. He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my lips.
I touch the suede belt of my silk dress, praising it for its good luck.
We manage to meet every day aer that. Sometimes we speculate
about what will befall us. Rumors spread that we will be sent to a place
called Kenyérmező, an internment camp, where we will work and live
out the war with our families. We don’t know that the rumor was
started by the Hungarian police and nyilas dishing out false hope.
Aer the war, piles of letters from concerned relatives in faraway cities
will sit in stacks in post offices, unopened; the address lines read:
Kenyérmező. No such place exists.
e places that do exist, that await our coming trains, are beyond
imagining. Aer the war. at is the time Eric and I allow ourselves to
think about. We will go to the university. We will move to Palestine.
We will continue the salons and book club we began at school. We will
finish reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.
From inside the brick factory we can hear the streetcars trundle
past. ey are within reach. How easy it could be to jump aboard. But
anyone who comes close to the outer fence is shot without warning. A
girl only a little older than me tries to run. ey hang her body in the
middle of the camp as an example. My parents don’t say a word to me
or Magda about her death. “Try to get a little block of sugar,” my
father tells us. “Get a block of sugar and hold on to it. Always keep a
little something sweet in your pocket.” One day we hear that my
grandparents have been sent away in one of the ĕrst transports to
leave the factory. We’ll see them in Kenyérmező, we think. I kiss Eric
good night and trust that his lips are the sweetness I can count on.
* * *One early morning, aer we have been in the factory for about a
month, our section of the camp is evacuated. I scramble to ĕnd