I open the door, coming face to face with Felix.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, the lines in his forehead angled into the shape of a v.
“Nothing. I was washing up,” I reply.
Compared to him, his grease riddled white shirt and sweat-drenched red face and wet hair, I don’t have much reason for the use of soap. He’s just arrived back home after a long shift at the automobile factory. I would be working alongside him if Iweren’t essentially hiding. The fewer people I face, the safer I’ll be. Felix thinks my passport shows no sign of forgery.
He checks his watch as if there should be a certain time of day I choose to wash up. “You look nervous.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, a habit I’ve gotten into every time someone asks me if I’m okay. Ironically, I’m not checking to see if my nose looks like one that belongs to a Jewish man—though it is long and accentuated with the dented scar I earned years ago—instead, I worry that it might be growing like the wooden puppet, Pinocchio’s, whose nose grew every time he lied. Mama used to read the story to me as a child in hopes that I would learn the importance of being honest. She wouldn’t approve of my actions now.
Felix tilts his head in disagreement and chuckles. “Your nose isn’t growing, mate. How many times do I need to tell you?”
I drop my hand, defeated that I’ve been called out by him once again. When a person has been friends with another for seventeen years, since the age of five, there aren’t many ways to keep secrets. “I feel uneasy today. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but my mind has been spinning in circles since I woke up this morning.”
The sluggish sway of his shoulders tells me he wonders what I could be so worried about. Felix is aware of all that goes through my mind but feels confident I’m safe here, living under a false identity in their apartment. I don’t think his parents feel the same as he does.I’m taking food from their mouths and unable to financially contribute. I try to take the bare minimum, but his mother isn’t the type to allow a man in her house to be hungry, despite the rations we’re subject to.
“Ed is having people over tonight,” he says with a sigh.
Ed’s become his closest friend in the time I was gone and Felix is trying to split his time between ensuring I’m not goingstir-crazy here and hanging out with his friends like most twenty-two-year-old men want to do.
“Don’t worry. I told him I couldn’t make it. I don’t want to leave you here after sitting in my room all day.”
“You should go,” I tell him.
Felix mentions this friend daily. They work at the factory together. He doesn’t want to sit around here. I can’t ask him to do that.
“No, no, we can play cards here or something, you and me,” he says, patting me on the shoulder.
“I’m not up to playing cards. Go and have fun. Don’t worry about me, okay?”
Felix tosses his head back, torn between his decision to be loyal to me or to live the life he deserves—and is free—to live. “You need to promise you aren’t going to sit on the mattress popping open your father’s pocket watch repeatedly as a form of entertainment. Or worse, stare at the radio like it’s going to tell you what you want to hear?”
I’m certain the radio won’t tell me where my father is being held prisoner, or if he’s even still alive. I’m also sure I won’t get much of an update about my mother or brother in Poland either. I’m not deluded enough to think it will tell me what I actually want to hear. My only hope is that the German radio station will be intercepted and the public informed that someone is making headway in stopping this war.
“Boys, dinner is almost ready,” Frau Weber calls down the hallway to us.
I move away from the washroom so Felix can step inside to clean up before dinner. “You’re going,” I say, pushing him into the washroom and closing him inside.
The letter from my father is still hanging from my pinched fingers behind my back, so I fold it up and place it in my pocket and head down to the dinner table to help Frau Weber.
“Danner, you’ve been so quiet this afternoon. Is everything okay?”
Walking up behind Felix’s mother reminds me of when I would walk up behind my own, offering to help set the table or offer a hand with whatever she needed. She would wear her hair the same way, in a low knot, pinned to the base of her neck. Mama’s hair is deep brown and Frau Weber’s hair is a light honey shade of blonde. That’s the only obvious difference, telling me I’m in someone else’s home, approaching a woman who isn’t my mother. Poland might as well be on the other side of the world considering how far I feel from Mama and David. This house is similar to how my home used to feel and I’m so grateful they took me in, but at the same time, the nostalgia constantly highlights what I’ve lost and am missing dearly.
“Of course, Frau Weber. I was just reading.”
Well, I was trying to read, but my thoughts wouldn’t allow me to absorb more than a sentence.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I was reading Felix’s copy ofCold Comfort Farmagain.”
“I have other books you might enjoy. I’m happy to dig them out of my trunk if you’d like.”
“Maybe some time,” I say, taking the first two dinner plates out to the table.
“Did you hear about the questioning next door?” Herr Weber asks while turning the corner toward the dinner table. “Oh! Danner. I—I thought you were my wife.”
