Page 91 of Long Way Home

* * *

I slept so lightly that I heard Jim moaning in his sleep and was able to awaken him from his nightmare before he cried out. He sat up in bed and leaned against the headboard, his eyes wide-open as he stared into the night. It would be a while before dawn. “Sorry I woke you,” he said.

“I was already half-awake. I don’t sleep very soundly.” I understood his reluctance to go back to sleep and return to the world of troubling dreams.

Jim’s bed was too narrow to hold two people, so we had carried in the extra mattress from Peggy’s room to make a bed on the floor. Jim and I had disagreed over which one of us would sleep in the bed, so Peggy had settled it by flipping a coin. “You can swap places on laundry day,” she’d said. I was glad that I’d won the floor. I rose now and rolled up the shades on both bedroom windows so we could watch for the dawn. Then I sat cross-legged on my mattress looking up at Jim.

“What do you see in your nightmares?” I asked. He shook his head, reluctant to reply. “Jim, I saw the same things you did during the war. I helped care for bombing victims in Mortsel. And I wasn’t just a nurse in Buchenwald; I lived there. I understand why you can’t talk about these things with your parents, but you can talk about them with me.”

“Then you’ll relive them, too.”

“I already do. Every day and every night. I wonder, sometimes, if they will ever go away. But when we sat on your porch yesterday, and I told my story to your mother... I can’t explain why, but it did seem to help. I think if we keep holding all the poison inside us, it will kill us. An infected wound has to be lanced and cleansed or it will never heal. That’s a very painful process, but you know how necessary it is.”

He was silent for so long I didn’t think he was going to talk to me. But finally he sighed and said, “I dream I’m in the camp. Or sometimes on a battlefield. People are screaming and suffering. Begging me to help them. I try, but it’s like they’re underwater or something, and I can’t get to them. I’m helpless. I try so hard but...”

I knelt and took his hand. He squeezed mine in return before releasing it. “I have nightmares, too,” I said when I’d settled on my mattress again. “Most often, I dream that I’m back on the ship, and there are Nazis everywhere I turn. I’m running through all of the corridors and decks and looking inside staterooms, searching and searching for Sam so he can help me find the way out, but I can’t find him.” A breeze from the open window made the curtains rise and fall as if they were breathing. “Nightmares lose some of their power when you tell them out loud. Ruthie taught me that in the DP camp when I had bad dreams. We have to start talking about the things that haunt us, Jim. I believe you can be honest with your family about losing your faith. They already know you’ve been through hell, and they want to help you so badly. Peggy showed me the scrapbook she made with photos and stories from all of your friends.”

“Peggety is a sweet girl.”

“She is. When we were traveling up here on the train, she told me how hard she has been fighting for you.”

He didn’t reply. There was a question I needed to ask but I was afraid to hear his answer. It took a few moments for me to summon my courage. “Why did you try to kill yourself, Jim? Tell me the truth. Is it my fault in any way? Because if it is, I don’t know how I can ever tell you how sorry I am—”

“It’s not your fault.” He sighed, and I sensed that he was searching for words. It was as if he hadn’t spoken for so long that he’d forgotten how. I reached for his hand and waited. “Do you remember what all those towns and cities looked like after they were bombed?” he asked. “How the people wept and mourned with blank eyes and silent screams? The war left me as ruined as those villages and those people. Yet I had to keep going because I was needed. Injured people needed my help. You needed my help. When I came home and was no longer needed, I couldn’t keep the darkness away anymore.”

He looked at me in the dim light as if asking if I understood. I did, and yet I didn’t. I squeezed his hand, shaking my head.

“On Decoration Day,” he continued, “there was a ceremony at the church down the road. I heard the bells tolling for all the fallen soldiers. The rifles firing. I should have died with them. I already felt dead inside. I had no reason to keep on living. And it was the only way to stop the memories and the nightmares.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. I waited again, then asked, “So do you still want to end your life, or do you want to live?”

He seemed to take his time, pondering my question. “I’m having a hard time seeing the point of life,” he finally replied.

“I understand. In these last few years, life has seemed very short and difficult and pointless to me, too. We both watched a lot of people die. Most of them didn’t have a choice. But if they had, I think most of them would have chosen to live. I know you had friends who died.”

“My best friend. Mitch.”

“Ruthie and I lost our parents.” I swallowed the knot that always rose in my throat when I thought of them. “And one of the things that kept me going in the camp—and even today—is thinking about what they would say if they were able to speak to me from the grave. That’s why I accepted your offer to get married and come to America, because I knew that Vati and Mutti would be shouting at me to stop grieving and get out of that DP camp and live! After the pogrom in Antwerp, they wouldn’t let me cower in fear in our apartment and stop living. They insisted that I continue my nursing studies. So... what would your friend Mitch tell you?”

“I get it,” he said a little angrily. “You’re right. Mitch would punch me and tell me to get on with it. But where do I start?”

“What I learned is that you simply get out of bed in the morning. You get dressed. You eat. Then you do the work in front of you that day. That’s what I did in Buchenwald and in the DP camp and in my uncle’s apartment in New York. You just keep living until you feel alive again.”

“Do you feel alive, Gisela?”

“Not yet. But I’m closer than I was when you carried me to the hospital in Buchenwald. I’ll get there someday. And so will you.”

---