The unpleasant smell of her wet wool coat filled the room as it dried. Miriam didn’t know quite what to do with herself while she waited for the mailman. It hadn’t taken long to put away the new clothes Mrs. Huizenga had given her. She’d practiced her violin all morning and was bored with that. Abba would be teaching at the university all day. With nothing else to do, she decided to write another letter to Avi rather than wait for one from him. She was worried he would need warm winter clothing in the refugee camp, and asked if he wanted her to send some.

At last Miriam saw the mailman coming up the street and hurried downstairs to the mailbox to give him her letter. “Sorry, nothing for you today,” he said when he saw her waiting. Abba would be disappointed too. There had been no mail at all from Germany since the war began two months ago. But there was a letter for her widowed landlady, Mrs. Spielman, who lived in the apartment below theirs and wasn’t able to get out much because of her rheumatism. Miriam knocked on her door.

“Mrs. Spielman? It’s Miriam, from upstairs. You got a letter. I thought I’d save you the trouble of going outside in the cold.” A moment later, the door opened.

“Come in, come in! Quickly!” She beckoned for Miriam to hurry inside while she held on to her squirming cat, Oliver. The fat gray- and black-striped tiger seemed to take great delight in trying to escape every time the door opened. “Would you like a cup of tea? I saw you walking home in the rain a while ago.”

“That would be lovely, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Not at all. I could use the company.” She limped into her kitchen —a larger version of the one upstairs —and put the kettle on the burner. Mrs. Spielman, also Jewish, was a pleasant, gray-haired woman in her seventies who was as round and plump as the potato dumplings Mother’s cook used to make. She set out a teapot and cups, her crippled fingers knotted and bent.

“I hope my Dutch is not too bad. I am still learning.”

“I can understand you just fine.”

“Something smells good,” Miriam said, inhaling the aroma of cooking food.

“Ach . . . it’s just some soup I’m throwing together. It’s not so much fun to cook for only myself. Do you enjoy cooking, dear?”

“I . . . um . . . I do not know how. In Germany, our family hired a cook. Abba and I have been eating what is already made.”

“I can teach you if you’d like.”

“Yes? You would not mind?”

“Not at all. Although you probably eat different things in Germany than we do here.”

“It does not matter. We must eat something.”