Page 49 of The Lost Husband

One of the women takes the paper from my hand and flips through the ledger and runs her fingertip down the length of the page. She stares at my piece of paper then back to the list, twice. “There’s no record of them, dear, but that doesn’t mean one won’t come in soon.”

“What does a record mean? That they’re dead or alive?” I ask, my voice monotone, lifeless.

“Both,” she says flatly.

* * *

The woman with the pinned smile who greeted us at the front door is escorting us down another corridor now. “We’ve just opened another room with cots. We have separate spaces for both male and female?—”

“Could we stay together?” Avi asks, knowing Elias wouldn’t want to be separated from us.

“We aren’t supposed to—” She looks between the three of us, stopping herself from finishing what she was going to say. “But if you’re most comfortable together that’s fine. Other mixed families will arrive too, and we’ll add them to your room. For now, you’ll be the first three.” She sweeps her arm toward door number twenty-four. “Nurses will come by to check on you regularly. Food is available in the large hall to the left of where you entered the building.”

We walk into the small room; writing desks pushed to the walls with cots filling the remaining space. Room for about twenty people. Each cot has a wool blanket, and a wrapped linen bundle tied with twine at the foot. The windows are sealed by blankets but parted just enough to allow in some sunlight.

“Toilets and a washroom are two doors down on your right.”

“We aren’t staying long,” Avi says, not so much to the woman kind enough to show us to a place to sleep, but to herself. A mumble—a self-made promise to keep herself calm.

The Red Cross woman steps between the three of us. “I understand you don’t want to be held anywhere else, but it’s in your best interest to allow our nurses to evaluate you. You’ve been traveling without identification or papers, and while we all would like to say Poland is secure and safe, the war has yet to end. You are safe here for the time being.”

Safe. I’m sure that means something different for everyone who passes through this schoolhouse.

For me, it means waiting. I can’t keep moving forward, knowing Noah is alive and at that train depot, being kept there for the week until they’re moved to a train transport. The train could go anywhere, and it could leave without me ever finding out.

I won’t just be waiting. I’ll be thinking—wondering how it’s possible that Noah is alive, and not just alive, but being held captive as a German soldier in a German uniform. All this time, he’s been alive…

How could I not know?

What has he been doing?

Elias chooses the last cot in the first row closest to the windows, wasting no time in untying the twine around the linen bundle.

“If there’s anything I can help you with, I’ll be by the front door to help others as they arrive,” the woman says before leaving.

Avi takes the cot two down from Elias and places the linen bundle beneath. “I’m not changing my clothes.” Her huff of exasperation says enough. I think we’ve all learned not to argue with Avi.

Elias has already torn his shirt off and switched to the large pea-green linen shirt as he continues rifling through the rest of the pile.

I take the cot between the two of them and untie my bundle, eager to shed the wet smock I’ve been wearing for so long I wonder how the fabric hasn’t evaporated.

Elias wraps himself in his blanket and lowers himself to the cot, his back to Avi and me. I change into the dry shirt, large enough to wear as a smock, then find a pair of men’s underwear and thick wool socks. After discarding my wet clothes into a pileon the ground, I want nothing more than to lie down on the cot beneath the blanket and rest with my thoughts, questions, confusion, and…relief. Whatever he’s done, he’s alive. Noah is alive.

Avi remains standing, unsettled, her thoughts weighing heavily on top of my own. She doesn’t even know I’ve seen Noah. That I’ve confirmed he hasn’t been some feverish illusion.

Was he sent to Auschwitz after I thought he was the one shot in the street? I was sure that was him. Maybe it was, and he somehow survived it… That image haunts me every time I’m in the dark. And I have done nothing more than grieve since that day three years ago.

Maybe he didn’t arrive at Auschwitz as a Jewish man. Maybe the Nazis believed his papers and conscripted him to join them.

Noah wouldn’t do that… But Noah also wouldn’t choose death, not if he thought he could somehow get back to me and his unborn child. Maybe he had no choice? Has he had years living in that uniform?

Before long, her cot creaks beneath her body, a sigh to follow. “Why would you want to go back to that train depot? I thought you said you wanted to survive this…” Avi mutters.

“I—I just—I feel like we’re being spun in circles and I don’t know…”

A knock on the door throttles my heart into my throat, and also saves me from explaining my reckless reason for wanting to go back to the train depot. “Hello, I’m one of the Red Cross nurses, Natalia. I’m here to examine you.” Her accent is a familiar inflection of Polish, like Avi’s.

She pushes in a small cart of medical supplies and leaves it at the foot of my cot, centered between the three of us.