“I’d like one of those myself. That’s a real good one.”

“You’re welcome to borrow mine,” says Carl.

“I’ll take you up on that. Thanks.”

“But what are you going to take pictures of around here? Rubble?”

He just nods.

“Something to remember us by? Before you move on, if you’re moving on?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know yet.”

Is he staying or is he going—they’re waiting for his answer. He has the answer—of course he’ll be going, and of course they know that—but the limbo in which they all find themselves together gives him something to hold on to, and as soon as he voices his plan aloud he’ll find himself in free fall.

He isn’t quite there yet.

Back home Edith serves lunch. There are pork chops—three pieces of meat with appetizing crusts of glistening fat. He and Carl each get a whole piece, Edith shares the third with the children. He eats hungrily. As he does he steals looks at Edith. She eats quickly and matter-of-factly. She passes dishes around and always serves herself last.

“Josef liked to run away as a kid. You don’t mind my telling them, do you?”

He smiles. He wouldn’t call it running away. He doesn’t have a word for it and is interested to hear what his brother has to say.

“He just kept on walking, through the different towns, through the forest. How old were you? Six, seven? I was just a little squirt myself, maybe four. I remember all the excitement at home very well.”

“And then?” asked Edith.

Josef takes over now. “A farmer found me and brought me back.” He doesn’t tell them the most important part. That he was happy. He had snuck into a barn and buried himself in the hay. No one knew where he was, only him. He was safe.

“Don’t you two get any ideas!” says Carl and raises his finger at the children in warning.

It’s the first time that Carl has said anything about their childhood. Up till now he has seemed to focus solely on the present, solely on the things around them that they can see, hear, and touch, as if the rest were a theatrical mire, as if it were something you could drown in—and it’s entirely possible that he’s right.

He himself is not especially eager to dwell on it. But he’d had time. In Sandstone he walked three kilometers a day in his cell. He paced back and forth and counted how many times he’d paced the three-meter length of the cell. One thousand times.

Edith and Täubchen clear the table, producing a light, airy background music of scraping and clinking.

“Want to join me again tomorrow? I could use some help.”