This is a work of fiction.
He had looked forward to this day all week, but a minute or so after he arrived it was already evident that something had gone wrong. He was to have greeted members of the diplomatic corps and escorted them to their seats—a plum assignment. Now he looked on helplessly as one limousine after another pulled up and discharged its passengers at the opposite end of the field from where he stood waiting.
The peak of the morning rush was over, but the streetlights were still lit, casting an eerie glow on the wet sidewalks. The field, already filling up with spectators, was mottled with puddles left by an all-night downpour. Fog shrouded the upper half of the Washington Monument, and the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin were barely visible. It would be a late spring, he decided, buttoning his Burberry all the way up to the collar and pulling the belt tight. It was a shabby affair, barely water-repellent, but it had been his father’s coat and he’d never had the heart to give it away.
There was now nothing for him to do except try to find a seat with a good view. Survivors already occupied most of the section in front of the dais. Huddled under blankets and umbrellas, some looked as if they’d been waiting all night. One of the survivors spotted him and pointed to a nearby seat, but just then a Park Police bus entered the gate and coasted to a stop. An officer jumped out and quickly disappeared in the crowd. A few minutes passed; then one, then two, and then more people with ID tags identical to his clambered aboard, presumably to warm themselves. Why not, he thought, and followed, taking a seat near the front next to a young woman with a shock of frizzy, honey-blonde hair. She looked up smiling. “The driver says we need to get off when the lieutenant returns.”
“I just want to thaw out,” he said.
“Me too,” she said and showed him her hands. She was delicately beautiful, with large, porcelain blue eyes and a radiant smile. “I was giving out programs until my fingers got so numb I couldn’t move them.”
His hands also had turned blue, and when he held them out to her their fingertips came within a millimeter of touching. “I’m Meredith McNeal,” she said as they laughed at each other, “but everyone calls me Merry.”
“And are you?”
“Most of the time,” she said, nodding. “Are you a volunteer?”
“I guess the gray hair gives me away,” he said and introduced himself.
“Benno,” she repeated. “Are you a survivor?”
“No, not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so. You don’t look old enough.”
“You mean not that old. But thank you. I think of myself as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Luckily, I wasn’t in a camp.” She turned in her seat to face him more directly and her green and black plaid skirt slid several inches above her knees. “That’s why I hesitate to call myself a survivor.”
“Is your wife also German?” “No. Rachel was from Boston.”
“Was?” “
Yes,” he said and hesitated. “She died of MS. It’s nearly four years now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said and seemed lost in thought. “Do you have any children?”
“Two boys. Both in college.”
She started to say something but was interrupted by a voice from the back of the bus announcing the lieutenant’s return. Benno suggested that they look for seats together. “That would be nice,” she said, accepting his hand as she alighted from the bus. By the time they found two adjoining seats the Army Band had already begun the opening medley. “Chivalry is alive and well,” Merry said as he spread the coat across the two chairs, “but I’m afraid of what this will do to your coat.”
“It’s seen better days,” he said with a shrug and then went on to tell her about the night his father came home carrying the coat in a Macy’s box. “He was so proud. It was his first big purchase in America.”
“How lovely that you’ve kept it all this time.”
A fleeting memory: A spring night outside a restaurant on the rue Balzac, his arm draped around Rachel’s shoulders, waiting for the fire department to arrive. He had surprised her with a pair of airline tickets to Paris for their anniversary. They had barely finished their soup when the chef ran from the kitchen yelling “Fuite de gaz!” Rachel, who had majored in French, grabbed his arm and pulled him into the street. There was no explosion, but the police did not let him back inside. In the morning he took a taxi to the restaurant and found the coat where he had left it.
The next thing he knew Merry’s cool hand was resting on the back of his. “Are you all right?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought. By the way, I haven’t asked you yet what brings you here.”
“My reason is a lot more mundane than yours,” she said and told him that after getting a master’s in art history she had come to Washington to look for a job. When nothing turned up, she applied to the Holocaust Museum, then in the final stages of construction, in the hope that it might be a steppingstone. But by the time she had completed the training program she was so fascinated with the Holocaust that she put her former plans on hold.
“So this may not be a temporary job.”
“It’s too early to tell, but I believe very strongly in the museum’s mission.”
“In other words, you don’t have to be Jewish to feel a commitment.”
“In the little town of Mississippi where I grew up there were no Jews,” she said. “I don’t remember hearing anything about the Holocaust. I’ve acquired a whole new perspective.”
“How so?”
“What happened then affected all of us—and it does to this day.” Somewhere behind them a group of protesters had begun to chant, “We don’t buy the Holocaust lie.”
He looked at her—professor to student—then said, “The most that can be said is that they’re exercising their First Amendment rights.”
At various times during the ceremony she asked him about his immigrant experience, but when Elie Wiesel rose to speak they fell silent. The instant Wiesel approached the lectern, the sun, as though on cue, broke through the overcast sky and bathed the dais in an ethereal light. “How is it that man’s silence was matched by God’s?” Wiesel asked at one point. The moment he sat down the clouds closed in again, almost as if someone had pulled a curtain across the sky.
“He has such a haunted expression,” Merry whispered.
Finding himself near tears, he merely nodded. Then it was President Clinton’s turn to speak. His hair flattened by the wet wind, the President noted that the dedication coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. He prophesied that the new museum would bind one of the darkest lessons in history to the hopeful soul of America.
“This day is a dream come true,” Benno said when Jessye Norman brought the ceremony to a close singing “America the Beautiful.” He turned to see Merry’s reaction; she too had been crying. How would his mother react when he told her about this young colleague? What! A shiksa working in the Holocaust Museum? How can she understand? How can she feel anything of what we went through? He pushed the image away; the time to change his mother’s narrow horizon was long past.
A light drizzle had set in, but there was no rush for the exits. As though reluctant to go their different ways, most of the survivors stayed on and gathered in small groups. “Let’s hope for better weather on opening day,” Merry said as they left through one of the gates in the temporary chain-link fence. He thought of going for coffee, but something held him back from suggesting it. He said instead that he hoped their schedules would occasionally coincide and that they would run into each other.
She nodded cheerfully, said the chances were good, and apologized for rushing off to a staff meeting. “Very nice to meet you, Benny. I enjoyed talking to you.” Funny. He had not been called Benny since high school. Was it his imagination, or had she held his hand a fraction of a second longer than necessary?
He waited until he could no longer see her and headed for the Metro. It wasn’t until he stepped off the escalator at the Smithsonian station that he remembered the coat. As sometimes happened to him in dreams, his legs refused to budge. A minute passed, then another. There was no use in going back, he thought, oblivious of the people hurrying past, certain that by now someone had walked off with his old coat. At that moment a train roared into the station. With an almost imperceptible rise of the shoulder, he sprinted down the platform and just managed to thrust himself into the last car before the doors slid shut behind him.
©2004, Pete Phillips. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this website are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.