Displaced Persons by Ghita Schwarz Page B

from his cot. He really was too old to be with this group, but the counselors had taken him on the youth trip, thinking he could help keep watch.
    Yosl, he said. Yossele.
    The boy turned away from him, coughing through his tears.
    Yosl, come with me outside. You will feel better.
    Yosl continued his weeping, trying to muffle the sound with a blanket.
    Go! Go! shouted another child. Just go out and let us be! Give us peace for a moment! Another boy laughed.
    At last Yosl got up and followed Chaim out. The night was not too cool. Chaim stood straight, took in a breath, and exhaled.
    This is mountain air, he said. I never had it before. Did you?
    Yosl said nothing, then wiped his nose with his hands. The crying had stopped.
    Do you need to take a piss? Chaim said. Go. I’ll make sure no one comes along.
    Yosl trotted a few steps, then turned around and looked back, tears welling up again.
    I’m right here, said Chaim. I won’t let anything happen. Then he hated himself for saying it. But they were safe here, the two married counselors asleep with the three girls in a cabin a few feet away, the American soldiers’ base a few kilometers distant in the Bremen zone. They would hike back in the morning after eating bread and cheese, return to Belsen by early evening, in time for a meal.
    I’m right here, repeated Chaim. If I hear something I’ll come to you right away. If you hear something, just cough, don’t shout. I’ll come.
    Yosl returned calmer.
    See? said Chaim. Sometimes that’s all you need.
    The child was quiet after they returned to their cots. But now Chaim could not sleep. His belly had stiffened in the moments outside, and he felt a needle at his abdomen, poking and sewing, bunching his insides together. On his back, he took in a deep breath, then let it out. A little better. But still the sewing continued. He was no longer hungry at every moment, but the sight of food, sometimes even the memory of it, aroused in him something painful, a stabbing he felt in his abdomen when he passed by a line of refugees waiting for soup, or at night when he awoke from a dream of bread. He renewed his food coupons every week and watched the soldiers mark off his name on lists for sugar, flour, salt. Watching them made him feel relieved. If he had not yet eaten his share, the marks let him know that he would receive. It was after eating, just before sleeping, that the fear, worse than hunger, began to thrash at him, a small animal scratching at his insides, struggling to get out.
    He moved his knees to his belly, stretched his legs again. A little better. He thought of the face of the woman counselor, her skin brown and healthy from her life in Palestine, her walk confident and poised. Her legs, bare underneath a narrow skirt or lightly covered in blue trousers, were slim, not skinny, but athletic and lean. The couple had come from their kibbutz to volunteer among the refugees—the displaced persons, as the soldiers now called them—to prepare the lot of them for a life in the promised land, their true home, the place to transform themselves from diaspora victims, shamed and hungry, into masters of their own destiny. It was the woman counselor who said those words. Her husband spoke Yiddish only haltingly and no Polish at all. He had some fluency in Hungarian but addressed the children in Hebrew and depended on his wife and Chaim to translate the pains and fears of the little ones into simple language he could understand.
     
    W HEN C HAIM RETURNED FROM the trip the counselors recommended him to work as an aide in the school the camp was building. Not like the others, the woman counselor said. A boy who looked to the future. The Polish boys did not like the sound of children crying, they could not tolerate it—but Chaim was very calm. Perhaps in two weeks he could begin, when they were ready for him. He could take his classes in the evening, play with the children in the morning.
    Like a night watch, but in the day, Chaim