And so Willem watches. It is almost like a silent film. His father writes intently, squinting his eyes and furrowing his brows, pausing frequently, as if after every word. Willem is puzzled. On most days when he notices his father working at his desk—before ducking into his room again, before his father notices him noticing—he is amazed at how quickly his father writes. But now his father is sitting like a schoolboy, struggling to move his pen, his teeth clenching his lower lip, frightened. Like Willem.

The silent film continues as Willem’s father puts down the pen to read through the page he has just written, slowly, moving his lips. After what feels like years, he lifts the page off the table, folds it carefully, and slides it into an envelope. And then the silent movie ends: Willem’s father stands up and walks away. A moment later, he lets Willem in.

They do not speak to each other. Once they are both inside the apartment, Willem’s father turns his back to Willem and returns to his desk. But Willem has noticed something new in the house. Sitting on the table are five envelopes, each addressed, in his father’s handwriting, to America.

Willem has noticed stacks of letters like these in the house two or three times before, but his father has always snatched them away before Willem could get a good look at them. But this time, glancing again at his father’s back, Willem reaches for them as silently as possible and flips through the little pile. Five letters, yes, all going to America. Three to New York, and two to somewhere he has never heard of: New Jersey. But the names on the letters intrigue him even more. They are strange names, weird names, names like the ones he remembers hearing at his grandmother’s house, long ago. Moyshe. Shmuel. Freydl. And all five of them seem to have the same last name, even though the addresses are all different. But they are also all American. Willem’s father has written it in giant letters on each of them: “U.S.A.” Who are these people? How does his father know them? Willem knows better than to ask questions. Instead he places the letters back on the table exactly as they were and slinks into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

He had been hungry before, and tired, and cold. But now, lying on his mattress on the floor, he can think of nothing but those letters. In Willem’s dreams, the names on the envelopes come to life, five people dancing in a circle in some giant American house, and Willem dances in the center. Between their shouts of laughter, Willem hears the sounds of someone pounding on the door. It is his father, but they refuse to let him in.