Laughter. “What about you?” one of them calls out, making it clear that there’s no need for him to come any closer.

“We worked for Germany. We kept the faith.” Schmuederrich seems full of expectation.

“You didn’t exactly do much over there, did you? What’s your name, anyway?”

When Schmuederrich doesn’t answer, one of the gentlemen says in a conciliatory tone, “Oh, that’s just old Hans Schmuederrich. He’s the one who sells us the care packages.”

Laughter.

Schmuederrich wishes them a pleasant evening and walks off into the garden. They’re still talking. Scornful laughter. “You have to be charitable. After all, they never really knew the Third Reich.” “They weren’t even allowed to carry a weapon over there.” “Supposedly there were traitors among them.”

Angels made of silver paper are hanging from the trees; a striped cat sets them to dancing. The river is lost in the darkness.

Josef takes his shoes off, walks barefoot over the lawn. He sees Schmuederrich by the pool; he sits slumped on a deck chair, bending over and reaching for a cigarette that’s rolling away from him.

I should have turned you in, thinks Josef. You, myself, everyone.

35

Ellis Island, May 1946

EVERY MORNING WHEN HE WOKE UP HE SAW THE STATUE OF Liberty in the right half of the window frame. She was trapped, just like him. Every morning like that moment in the past. When he sailed toward Manhattan on the steamer. The moment lingered for the rest of the day, then night erased everything completely. At night, when he turned onto his side in his bed in the dormitory, it felt like he was falling. As if the rumble of the fishing boats, the lapping of the waves, were pushing him over a cliff, pushing him away, into another world almost.

In the morning it all started over again. To the right the Statue of Liberty, in the distance the city, rising up out of the water, its slender, smooth towers pressed together like people holding their breath in a crowded elevator, keeping their outward calm and dignity at any price.

When he was transferred, surprisingly, to Ellis Island in the fall of 1945, what it meant more than anything else was that he would see Lauren again. At Sandstone, high up in the north, she hadn’t been able to visit him. He had understood that; he had even thought it was for the best. This way she wouldn’t have to see him in a striped prison uniform—crossed out, from head to foot, the bars still on his body.

Every year they had written each other less, but from the start it was without any romance. The letters were screened. He wondered, however, if that was the only reason she left out anything of interest, any warmth.