Good luck homing pigeon

Chapter thirty-better for some (1st February 1945)

Three days of bed-rest, and I was already restless. As soon as the nurse had come back to check on me, I asked for a pencil and some lined paper. I thought she'd assume I wanted to write a letter, or that I was just plain weird. But she just smiled and went away for a few minutes. Coming back with an ink pen and a block of writing paper. From what I'd learnt of the nurse whilst knowing her, I'd found that her name was Ada, she was a red-cross nurse from Austria, and she was engaged to one of the British soldiers. She was also one of the most patient nurses I'd ever came to know. She never spoke harshly, she was ever so gentle with the other prisoners, and whenever her eyes caught one of the bare corpses, or how emaciated the younger children were, she had a genuine sadness for each and every one. Without really knowing, Ada seemed to understand. And that's all I needed from a good nurse.

I'd been writing since the first evening of our liberation. I'd been writing while I ate, writing since the crack of dawn, even writing until Ada had told me I needed to go to sleep. There was just so much bottled up, so much that needed to be set free. It was a way of coping, I think. Everyone else barely remembered who they even were-much less knew how to process this. Birkenau surrendered nothing. It just kept on taking and taking everything these people were, until their freedom came, and they hadn't a clue what to do about it. But no matter how much I wanted to give up sometimes, I held on to who I was. I remembered the life I once had, and could have again. And soon, I think it was up to me to help them remember. I'd helped work to keep them alive, and I had to live up to that promise.

So today, I began. This morning, I turned over to my left, to face the girl who'd been lying, curled in a phoetal ball. She'd said nothing since I came here, but stared down at her knuckles. She barely ate, almost never drank, and often pushed away the blanket they'd given there to lie in just her nightgown. I didn't know her name, for she never gave it away, not even to the nurses. I don't think she'd give it to me, but I could at least try.

"Hello," I started softly, "French?"

"Polish," she muttered.

"My Polish not good," I sounded out shakily, "But know some."

"You French?" She was the tiniest bit curious-not much at all, but it was something.

"I come here in forty two," I said slowly, "You know any French?"

"It was the only other language at my school," Oh, thank goodness. "My papa taught me a little English, but my accent is poor."

She didn't smile when she spoke, nor was there any hint of enthusiasm in her voice whatsoever. But she was talking at least.

"You write a lot," She spoke again, "You do it whenever you're not eating or sleeping. Why?"

"Because I haven't picked up a pen in over two years." I replied, "I'm overdue for it."

"Who are you writing to?"

"Nobody, really. Just stories."

She looked as if she couldn't possibly understand what I was talking about. And supposed she didn't have to. After all, writing could never bring anybody else solace as it did for me.

"When I meet people like you, I think you must be spoilt or stupid." She said blankly, "What could you possible dream up here?"

"My dreams don't belong to here." I explained, "They belong at home."

"Home? You've got no home." She said simply, "We've lost our countries, we've lost this place, where are we allowed to go?"

Exactly what I was wondering three days ago. I very much doubted that they would've save our houses for us-nobody expected any of the Jews to survive, after all. And how many landlords would've taken on tenants who were Jews, liberation or not? I didn't realise that it was going to take so long for people to recover from such a war. What else could I expect? For Europe to just stop hating Jews, as they had done since biblical times? I knew that girl was right. But still, there was always a place for us somewhere. We had France for so long, didn't we?