He nodded. ‘Very sensible. There was a round-up earlier. I only avoided it by telling them I worked in administration.’
He squeezed his eyes shut.
‘How many?’ she asked.
‘Two shot and a dozen taken, from what I could tell.’
They lapsed into silence.
‘Tell me about your sister,’ Dorotha prompted him.
Without opening his eyes, a faraway smile flitted over his face.
‘She was the other half of me. The better half. She was responsible for stopping me from taking myself too seriously.’
‘Did she always want to be a teacher?’
‘The way I suspect you always wanted to be a librarian,’ he said, finally opening his eyes. ‘It was more than a job. She thrived around children. I confess, I was almost a little jealous of her ability, her naturalness.’
‘How so?’
He picked a blade of grass and stroked his lip with it.
‘Teaching always struck me as a chaotic career. Children are unpredictable and I suspect at times hard to control, but she revelled in it. She harnessed that energy and turned it into creativity. She saw the best in each and every single child she taught, even the unruliest.’
He tore the blade of grass. ‘She would have gone on to achieve greatness.’
On impulse, she took his hand in hers.
‘You remind me of her,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s walk.’
The pair walked through the fields, ignoring the barbed-wire perimeter fence and the high wooden look-out towers looming over them like storks, making sure to keep a safe distance. They walked, imagining they were like any two normal young people out for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon, not two prisoners.
They talked of the library and her plans, his previous job as an accountant and, despite themselves, predictably meandered back to food and the best meals they had ever eaten.
For Dorotha, her mama’s cholent, full of barley, peas, potato and meat. For Oscar, chicken schnitzel, followed by rich chocolate Sacher torte and an espresso. They lapsed into silence.
‘I don’t care if I never see another bowl of soup in my life,’ he said eventually.
‘No liquid food ever again,’ she agreed.
He reached up to a nearby tree and pulled a slender branch of early blossom off a branch and tucked it behind her ear.
‘You are the light in this godforsaken place. You offer hope. You are...’ He broke off, searching for the words, ‘a very impressive woman, Dorotha Berkowicz.’
In the distance, a siren sounded. ‘Let us hope it is the Allies. Let me walk you back before curfew.’
He held out his arm, an oddly quaint gesture.
Dorotha found herself leaning in to the serious, intelligent man.
Oscar made sure to tip his hat to ladies as they walked past, as if he were strolling the boulevards of a cosmopolitan city, not a squalid ghetto street. He could only have been a few years older than her, but he had the dignity and chivalry of a gentleman far older than his years. His pride seemed to lift her that bit higher too and, for the first time since her parents had been taken, Dorotha threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.
‘This is me,’ she said when they reached the door of her building.
He looked down at her and sighed. So much was said and unsaid in that exhale of air. ‘In another world,’ he said eventually.
