Finding Home

Mateusz sat down heavily in the gray and slosh of late winter under an oak tree. The marrow of his bones curdled; he was tired with a tired that could no longer tell time or season. He was tired of fighting and noise and death. He had stopped counting long ago the number of friends he had lost. 

He sat next to Josef, a jeweler’s son from Spandau, and Bruno, who had a fat face and wore a bandolier. Bruno’s hands weren’t greasy, but they looked like they should’ve been. Josef had only joined Die Piraten last year and met his first American three months ago. He thought they were loud and arrogant, but he knew they’d win the war.

The three of them sat quietly on a hilltop in the Ruhr, and watched streams of olive drab mechanical ants move slowly through a broad, muddy valley. The Americans had broken the back of the Wehrmacht at Bastogne several months prior and were advancing into Germany further and further. Mateusz, Josef, and Bruno had made life difficult for the Germans during the Allied advance. 

Mateusz had joined Die Piraten, a resistance group made up of German and Austrian boys, after Kristallnacht. He had left to join at the insistence of his friend Fritz. Fritz’s father, a rabbi, had been killed in a fire. “There won’t be anything left for us, Mateusz,” Fritz had said. “And I’d rather fight than flee.” Mateusz knew what his parents would think. His father’s face would tense up and his lips would tighten and he’d answer Mateusz in the same way he’d answered him when he asked if he could go to university in Paris when he was older. “Out of the question!” would finally explode from his clenched mouth, followed by his mother’s filling the gaps of his father’s argument. “Who are those boys you’d be running with? We don’t need to aggravate anyone else right now,” she’d probably say. 

His father had moved the family from Warsaw to Berlin in 1931. It was a bad time to move, but it wasn’t the worst. Mateusz and his younger brother went to Catholic school to blend in, to get along with society. This didn’t change after Jews were required to wear Stars of David. “We come from a great tradition of getting along in pagan society,” his father said. “Abram, Moses. Daniel amongst the Persians; the Romans. Jews are good at two things: making money and surviving.” His father was only good at one of those things. 

On an algid January morning in 1939, he left a note on his pillow for his parents and left. 

And in 1945, after what felt like an eternity of years, most of them godless meanderings, and with most of the European diaspora in ashen snowy layers across the German-Polish frontier, Mateusz still wore a Star of David. He did so mostly because of Fritz, who was killed during an air raid. 

On the nights he could dream, he dreamt of Berlin before the Nazis, of      Warsaw before moving, and the synagogue with the sharp, piney smell of frankincense. He had verdant, lush dreams of his grandparents’’s farm outside of Poznan. He had dreams of Catholic school, of long-departed Fritz and Eugen and stern nuns that looked like grim reapers, of Christ-hung crucifixes and sore hands. The dreams were still images from a time that seemed like someone else’s life. 

“The Americans keep asking me for chocolate. ‘You have any German chocolate for me yet?’” Bruno said suddenly, breaking what had been a pensive calm. “No! If I had any, I’d eat it!”

Mateusz smirked and said, “I just say that Hitler has taken all the cocoa and butter for the armaments industry. I offer them cigarettes, but they curse at me.”

“I don’t blame them. I’d rather eat sand,” Josef said. An American, a red, bright-eyed, cocky Arizonan had tossed a pack of Lucky Strikes to Josef once. He swore off German cigarettes on the spot. 

“You think they’ll beat the Russians to Berlin?” Bruno asked. Inspired by the scene before him, Josef said, “Hhow could anyone beat this?” It seemed like the men and machines kept coming. “The silver bombers come by the thousands in the day, and they can’t be stopped!”

“I’m not living in a Russian Berlin, I’ll tell you that,” Mateusz said. “Or a German one or an American one.”

“I think I’d move to England or America. Yes, I would like America! American girls are so much prettier, aren’t they?” Said Josef. “There are no German girls left. Maybe I’ll move to California and drive a fast car. Doesn’t that sound exhilarating? I’ve never seen the ocean before,” Josef said with increasing excitement. 

“Where would you go?” he said toward Bruno, though Bruno wasn’t looking at him. 

Mateusz said, “I’ll be a Buddhist monk in Nepal, or sell spices in Calcutta, or be a fisherman in Greenland. I’ll move somewhere without war.”

“Will you return to see what’s left?” asked Josef somberly.  

“I’ve seen enough,” muttered Mateusz. “There’s nothing left of Berlin. The American papers are more honest than ours. And those silver bombers of yours have done that,” he said sardonically to Josef. 

“We did it to ourselves,” Bruno said. The silence that followed agreed. 

“I’ve an idea,” said Josef. “A pact: if we survive the war, we’ll move somewhere together. We’ll each return to our homes, to see who and what is left, to say goodbye, and to leave together for another place.” 

“I’m not returning home,” said Mateusz gruffly. “There is no home anymore.” He played with the lower point of the Star that was pinned to his jacket. “I’ll go anywhere, but I won’t return to my home.”

*****

         In early May, when plants in peaceful places on earth bud and play winter’s underground songs, the Russians had taken Berlin. On the first war-less morning, Mateusz was awoken by the sound of robins. On the eve of peace, he and Josef had slept in the basement of a bombed-out building on the outskirts of Berlin the night before. He was prepared to fight young boys and old men, the residue of the German military, but they never came. Young boys have no business being in war. 

He hadn’t slept; the guns were silent all night, and his mind had raced to fill the quiet. In a half-dream, Mateusz heard Josef, on the top of a gray, icy hill asking Will you return to what’s left?  The question gnawed at his stomach. 

         For the first few hours of daylight, he stayed in the basement. His mind was numb. He paced around. Josef had left the basement, with several other boys, in search of beer and schnapps. A fool’s errand, Mateusz thought, but what was there left to do?

         He milled around the ruins, seeing what treasures he might find, never venturing far from the basement. After an unsuccessful search, he lay in the bunker through the morning. He tried to sleep. 

         Will you return to what’s left? He was half-sleeping again. His stomach knotted at the thought of seeing his parents, which made his stomach knot up more because he was no longer a child, and his stomach shouldn’t be knotting up as a man. They probably weren’t alive anyway, a thought which made him sick. 

         He began concocting a plan to move to England with Josef and Bruno. They would flee to the Western side of Germany, take an airplane to London, and find work and women and settle into proper English living. No! He would move to Spain with Josef and Bruno, and they would open a bodega and drink wine and marry Spanish women and not talk about the war. Wait! Maybe they’d move to America and be cowboys and marry cowgirls and live in the red dust of Oklahoma and stave off Indians. But he didn’t want any more fighting, so maybe we’d move to Vermont instead. Mateusz’s brain whirred.  

         His stomach throbbed. He set off for home. 

*****

         Mateusz journeyed down abandoned side-streets, and up silent thoroughfares clogged with abandoned cars and bomb craters. He passed families digging in rubble and refugees heading west. 

As he approached the street of his youth, he reached for the Star that still clung limply to his chest. The cloth of it was grimy and tattered and familiar. His breathing had quickened, his knees numbed, and his hands went cold. He had played this moment silently in his head so many times in the past month but could only see the gilded years he’d left, his parents full of life and bricks secured one on top of another and cars with people in them. There was a warm silence to the memories. 

He stood at the intersection to his street, frozen, one hand on the charred brick of a house. He took a deep breath and turned the corner. 

Five houses down. He floated down the street in near euphoria, two parallel planes of time crashing one into another. He had passed the first four houses when present time shattered planes and buckled his knees and crushed him to the pavement. He exhaled loudly and the tears dammed by seven years of fighting broke free. The house still stood. 

After several minutes, he gathered himself. He walked up the two stairs to the door, which was closed but unlocked. He turned the knob and walked in, his heart palpitating. The main entryway smelled musty and neglected. He walked slowly into the dining area, looked around. The cabinets that once had crystal glasses were empty. The chandelier still hung from the ceiling, and a stack of books lay on the table. 

He turned to a flight of stairs and went to his old room. Everything was the same as when he’d left: the bed was made, and the letter that he’d writtenwrote to his parents was still on the pillow. 

He went back into the hallway and walked toward his parents’’s room. The door was slightly open. He opened it as though trying not to wake someone, and two pieces of yellow fabric caught his eye. He knew instantly what they were. He rushed to the bed, feel to his knees, and embraced the two Stars of David left on the bed. They were yellow and clean and unfamiliar. On top of one of the Stars was a folded note addressed To Mateusz, or to Wwhom Iit Mmay Cconcern. He quickly opened it, his eyes clouding with tears. It was written by his father. “April 1939. Belshazzar is feasting; the writing is on the wall. We’re moving to New York.”

Mateusz crumpled to the floor, sobbing, relieved. He was moving to New York.