courtyard where I was playing: If you don’t come to dinner right away, if I have to call you one more time, you can just stay where you are. But I didn’t always come right away, and once, when I finally went upstairs, she said:
Why don’t you just pack your satchel and go out into the world and do whatever you want. She pulled me into my room, grabbed my woolen cap and my jacket, and stuffed them inside my little backpack. I said, But I’m your child, where am I supposed to go.
A lot of people think packing a suitcase is something you learn through practice, like singing or praying. We had no practice and no suitcase. When my father was sent to join the Romanian soldiers on the front, there was nothing to pack. Soldiers are given everything they need, it’s all part of the uniform. But we had no idea what we were packing for, except a long journey and a cold place. If you don’t have the right things, you improvise. The wrong things become necessary. Then the necessary things turn out to be the only right things, simply because they’re what you have.
My mother brought the gramophone from the living room and set it on the kitchen table. Using a screwdriver, I made it into a suitcase. First I took out the spindle and turntable. Then I corked up the hole for the crank. The fox-red velvet lining stayed. I also kept the triangular emblem with HIS MASTER’S VOICE and the dog facing the horn. I put four books on the bottom: a cloth-bound edition of Faust, the slim volume of Weinheber, Zarathustra, and my anthology of poems from eight centuries. No novels, since you just read them once and never again. After the books came my toilet kit, containing: 1 bottle eau de toilette, 1 bottle Tarr aftershave, 1 shaving soap, 1 razor, 1 shaving brush, 1 alum stone, 1 hand soap, 1 nail scissors. Next to the toilet kit I put: 1 pair wool socks (brown, darned), 1 pair knee-high socks, 1 red-and-white-checked flannel shirt, 2 short plain underpants. My new burgundy-colored silk scarf went on the very top so it wouldn’t get crushed. It had a pattern of shiny checks alternating with matte. With that the case was full.
Then came my bundle: 1 day blanket off the sofa (wool, bright blue and beige plaid, a huge thing but not very warm). And rolled into that: 1 lightweight overcoat (salt-and-pepper, very worn) and 1 pair leather gaiters (ancient, from the First World War, melon-yellow, with laces).
Then came the haversack with: 1 tin of Scandia brand ham, 4 sandwiches, a few leftover Christmas cookies, 1 canteen of water with a cup.
Then my grandmother set the gramophone box, the bundle, and the haversack beside the door. The two policemen had said they’d come for me at midnight. My bags stood ready to go.
Then I got dressed: 1 pair long underwear, 1 flannel shirt (beige and green plaid), 1 pair knickers (gray, from Uncle Edwin, as I said), 1 cloth vest with knitted sleeves, 1 pair wool socks, and 1 pair lace-up boots. Aunt Fini’s green gloves lay within easy reach on the table. As I laced up my boots I thought about a summer vacation years earlier in the Wench highlands. My mother was wearing a sailor suit that she had made. On one of our walks she let herself sink into the tall grass and pretended to be dead. I was eight years old. The horror: the sky fell into the grass. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see it swallowing me. My mother jumped up, shook me, and said: So, do you love me. See, I’m still alive.
My boots were laced up. I sat at the table waiting for midnight. And midnight came, but the patrol was late. Three more hours had to pass—that’s almost too much for anyone. And then they were there. My mother held up the coat with the black velvet collar, and I slipped inside. She cried. I pulled on the green gloves. On the wooden walkway, just next to the gas meter, my grandmother said: I KNOW YOU’LL COME BACK.
I didn’t set out to remember her sentence. I carried it to the camp without thinking. I had no idea it was going with me. But a sentence like that has a will of its own. It worked inside me, more than all the books I had packed.