one spoke.
Joachim pretended to be asleep. He sat with his chin against his chest, swaying with the movement of the train, listening to the wind whine, and watching shadows cast inside the car by passing trees.
“You know it’s about more than simple survival,” Herman finally whispered at Joachim. “You were in Berlin with us. You remember good food and love and music and dance.”
Joachim gripped his bony knees, knuckles whitening. “I wasn’t there.”
Herman studied Joachim. “Do you want to know what became of the rest of the group? Francis? Ernst? Kurt?”
Joachim inhaled. One, two, three times. “I don’t know any Francis or Ernst or Kurt.”
Herman stared at his own soft hands. “Not even Kurt? Everyone knows Kurt, even the Gestapo. They got my name from his address book. I’m surprised yours wasn’t in there, too.”
A hot pain stabbed Joachim’s neck.
“I saw you together.” Herman pointed a pudgy finger at him. “Everyone was together with Kurt.”
He concentrated on relaxing his muscles, despite the cold and Herman’s voice.
“Remember how graceful Kurt was?” Herman’s hands sketched arcs in the air. “He should have been a dancer, not a soldier. He flowed when he moved, like a cat.”
Joachim clenched his right fist, the one that Herman could not see. “I don’t know any Kurt,” he answered in a level voice.
“That wasn’t you holding his hand at El Dorado that February? Or was it Silhouette? One of those clubs. Weren’t they wonderful? And the pianos. I love piano music, although I never learned to play myself.”
Joachim said nothing. His mother had forced him to practice two hours a day.
“It’s a wonderful thing to make beautiful sounds with your fingers.”
Joachim shifted his gaze to the floor; the slats were coated with about a centimeter of freezing mud and crisscrossed with ridges created by his shoes. “It would do you no good now.”
“Just knowing would be enough.” Herman scratched his back against the door. “I could play the songs in my head and beat time on the ground.”
Joachim wanted to warn him. “Will that help when you’re hungry? Or tired? Or cold?”
Herman nodded. “If I can feel the music, I won’t think about my stomach, or my body.”
Joachim pulled his arms tighter around himself. His elbows cut into his hands, almost numbing them. “You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You’ve never been there.” Joachim crossed his legs, savoring the thin ribbon of warmth where his right leg lay on top of his left. “You can’t know.”
“I don’t need to know what it’s like there to know myself.”
“You won’t last long. Your kind never does.”
“Is that why you’re afraid that the people here will recognize you? Are you afraid they’ll realize your triangle should be as pink as mine?”
Joachim prayed that the man on his right slept. That everyone in his end of the car slept. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m Jewish, but I’m no fag.” He stressed “fag,” trying to make it sound hard and ugly.
“Wasn’t Kurt the most exquisite fag?” Herman’s voice caressed the word. “But not after the Gestapo was through with him.”
Joachim’s stomach cramped.
“They ruined those delicate cheekbones. He could barely walk when they were done.” Herman watched Joachim, a gleam in his eye. “I think he escaped to Switzerland.”
Joachim’s stomach relaxed. The car rattled along.
“Where are they sending us?” Herman asked again.
“Dachau, I think,” Joachim said, angry at himself for not lying this time. He’d also heard they might be going to Auschwitz, but he didn’t tell Herman that.
“Dachau is only a few hours by train from Constance, from Switzerland.”
“You wouldn’t be allowed on a train.”
“So I’d walk.” Herman rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head.
“A few hundred kilometers in the snow? Anyone who sees you will turn you in. Or shoot you. You are the enemy now.”
“I’d reach the border.”
“The Swiss won’t let you in.”
“I won’t go through the checkpoint.” Herman smiled. “I’d lift a boat and row across Lake Constance.”
“Nazis guard the boats. You’d never make it.”
“What a way to die.” Herman sighed. “Free and on the water.”
Joachim stirred on the bench. He had loved to swim as a boy and had been the best swimmer in his school. “You shouldn’t think of dying,” he said to the door. “It’s not… careful. You have to be careful.”
“Have you ever had Swiss chocolate?” Herman asked.
Joachim clasped his hands in his lap.
“I can almost smell it,” Herman continued. “Thick dark chocolate with bitter marzipan.”
“Or with-” Joachim did not finish his sentence, surprised that he had even begun it.
“Peppermint,” Herman finished. “Crisp peppermint.”
Joachim pushed his chin against his chest. His shoulders were taut and raised, and he forced them down. He would not think about chocolate.
Herman swallowed. “I wanted to go to school in Zurich. A friend of mine went. Came back in thirty-three as a Nazi. I was stunned.”
Joachim raised his head. “It’s hard to lose a friend that way.”
Herman searched Joachim’s face. “It’s hard to lose a friend
Joachim tried to imagine the friendship he could have had with Herman in Berlin. Then someone farther down the car coughed, and he forced his mind to go blank.
Herman rubbed his hands together. “When do we arrive in Dachau?”
“I don’t know. Try to sleep.”
Herman almost fell when the train abruptly slowed to climb a steep grade. “I could run faster than this train.”
Joachim laughed, quietly and cynically. “What good is that? Do you want to run to the next car? Get there earlier?”
Herman’s words tumbled out. “We can get out of that door. It’s not wired on very well. We could jump off the train and no one would notice.”
Joachim’s stomach clenched again. His hands trembled. He could not remember when he had been so terrified. Even when the Nazis came for him, he was not so afraid. “The Nazis notice everything.”
“Not everything,” Herman said, staring at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “Not everything.”
“If they catch you, they will kill you. Slowly.”
Herman smiled. Suddenly he looked very old, and Joachim flinched away from him. “Aren’t we dying slowly now?”
Joachim thought of the cold outside, the Nazis who were sure to be around with rifles, the incredible distance to the Swiss border. They would never make it. Never.
He spoke to his worn wooden shoes. “Eventually the war will end, and Germany will lose. They will set us free then.”
“Maybe,” Herman said. “Eventually.”
Joachim stared at a brown stain on top of one shoe.
“Are you daring to dream?” Herman mocked him as he turned to the door. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not
Joachim’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”
“By this time next week we could be in Switzerland, with Kurt.”
“Or we could be dead.”
