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So kind, decent.
    He said nothing.
    She waited, then said it directly. You too, perhaps, are looking?
    No, said Pavel. Not—there was—but I already know what happened. I look only for my brothers and sisters.
    He did not look at her face, busying himself instead with his bread. They finished their meal in silence and mounted their bicycles again, Fela in front so he could watch as she rode. Why should anything change? She would look, perhaps she would find. He still could protect her while things remained this way.
    He pushed his legs forward on the pedals and watched her hips on the frame ahead of him. He still could protect her. Already he had found a use for another gold chain. A little woman in the British camp knew how to counterfeit American identity cards. He could expand his business, give Fela what she needed to make a nice home, and then they would see what they would see. Already the zones were tightening, the paperwork to cross each border and enter each new town growing thicker and more complicated. Today he would pick up the American papers to add on to the British ones. He could go back and forth, do business in all zones, American, British, even Russian. He was making new connections. Only last week he had brought a truckful of provisions into the camp and left half with the refugee camp hospital, then sold what remained to the Germans for clothes, hats, jackets, and a wallet. A citizen of the world! He laughed to himself, but Fela did not turn around. Liberated, but not free. That was what they said in the camp, the slogan the refugees used to build organization, to argue for visas, for Palestine, for graves. A young woman, but she too was not yet free.
    A few meters ahead of him, Fela’s light hair blew slightly, restrained by the scarf she had tied around her head. Yes, she was a lady.

The Bremen Zone
    September–October 1945
    P AVEL WANTED TO THROW himself into something that would make him full. The trading was not enough. He tried to busy himself by attending the committee meetings of the Jews in the camp. The men had noticed that the younger refugees, the boys of fifteen or sixteen, were terribly ignorant. Could not they begin classes of some kind, something to make up for the time these children had lost? Were there no teachers among the survivors? Someone had volunteered to make a search some days before, and Pavel had not paid so much attention. But as he cycled with Fela home from the camp, he had an image of himself sitting with Chaim in their garden, teaching him all that he knew. Three days later, Pavel presented the boy with a stack of papers fastened with a clip.
    Chaim, he said, blowing on a cigarette after his coffee. How old are you?
    Ah, said Chaim. Fourteen or fifteen, I believe.
    You believe? said Pavel. You look younger. Don’t you remember when you were born? Let us see—in 1939, were you—
    Pan Pavel, said Chaim, no. You are right. I am fourteen, and my birthday will be next May.
    And what of your father? He put you in kheyder , of course? How long was it before you were—
    No, said Chaim, suddenly flustered. We—I went for some time, but—we—my father—he believed in the Bund—
    But Pavel had already made his decision. Whether Chaim was a good student or no before, now things would be different!
    Chaim was stammering. It’s that our family was not so—
    All right, Pavel interrupted—everyone had secrets to keep, and who was Pavel to interfere with a child’s desire to hold his past to himself? All right. Well, in any case, it is the time, a little late, of course, but around the time, that you begin to prepare to become a bar mitzvah. It’s time to learn. I suppose you learned something in your family of Hebrew, even without—
    Something, said Chaim, softly. A little, I could recognize, of course, but not—
    Not enough, no. Never enough. I’ll teach you, my friend. Nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, Pavel lied, I was very slow with Hebrew myself.
     
    C HAIM SAT