Package 4: wheat flour, coffee, condensed milk, honey, pancake mix, soap, tobacco, chocolate, cigarettes, vegetable oil.

Package 5: coffee, sugar, condensed milk, lard, cocoa, chocolate, razor blades, shoelaces, vanilla extract, yarn, needles.

Et cetera.

The money that was meant for his lawyer, six hundred dollars, went into these packages. His case was hopeless anyway. Thirty packages from 1946 to 1949; he’d heard about an agency that would put them together and ship them.

Carl sits down in a wing chair and starts rubbing a spot on the arm where the fabric is already worn. He’s grown pensive.

“We’re through the worst of it. But ’47 was a hard winter. Soup kitchens, warming centers, the neighbors chopped their piano up to feed their stove. Then the summer after that it was flooding and hailstorms, the harvest completely ruined. Times like this, you have to grit your teeth, do without, make sacrifices, stretch every penny. Don’t you agree?”

He looks at Josef, and in the look is a question. The silence swings back and forth between them. Now Josef is meant to fill it with his explanation for why he’s come back from wealthy America with nothing to show for it. A poor lout. He didn’t break even; he’s in the red. Again he feels a slight pain in his chest.

They’re released by the creak of floorboards. Both look toward the door. A woman is standing there. “Well,” says Carl, “we’ve got time. We can talk about everything soon. No need to rush! Here, first things first. Come meet Edith.”

She is thin. Thin is the first impression, then beautiful. A slightly Madonna-like, ascetic beauty. If she were a bit better nourished she could work as a fashion model. But he cannot tell her this. She holds her hand out to shake, very proper, stiff. He squeezes her hand and doesn’t let go, cradles it a bit in his; let her think this is how they do it in America. He gives it another squeeze and then he does something that surprises even him: he takes her hand and lifts it to his lips to kiss it.

“Oh-ho, the boy’s brought manners back with him,” Carl cries.

Edith blushes, and Josef too feels his face turn red.

“Are you two hungry?” she asks. “I’ve baked cherry pie. Or would you care for something else, Josef?” He can sense that she’s having to force herself to speak. Already she’s heading toward the door to hide her face.

“Pie sounds wonderful,” he says to her slender back.

“He’s got an accent. Do you hear it, Edith? You sound like an American,” laughs Carl.

“Coffee will be ready in ten minutes!” Edith calls from the kitchen.