Like in Kangaroo

On a cool July morning eighteen-year-old Matt Shapiro exited the Trier city bus and started down the street, his heart beating rapidly and palms sweaty. Now he was just five minutes from meeting the Brauns. A Rottweiler charged barking to a wrought iron garden gate, silvery ribbons of viscous drool trailing from its jowls. When it reached the gate, the brute hurled its muscular body against the gate, withdrew, and hurled again and again.

He arrived at the one-story house and stood in front of the windowless black door for a moment before ringing the bell. Helmut Braun answered, Matt recognizing him from a photograph the agency had sent after his acceptance into a program giving American high school graduates an opportunity to spend time in Germany and improve their language skills. In his seventies, Mr. Braun had sharp-boned cheeks, and a thin white scar curving from his wattled chin to just below his left eye.

“Ah, the American boy at last,” he said, switching a walking cane to his left hand. “Come inside.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Call me Helmut.” He chuckled. “My wife sleeps yet. I speak only simple English, ja?”

He showed Matt around with a crisp efficiency that had made him a successful operations manager for the German railways until his retirement. The home was open plan with Scandinavian furnishings and a hash of family photographs hanging on the walls, some from the 1940s and 50s reminding Matt of photographs at his maternal grandparents’ home in Pennsylvania. This unexpected familiarity comforted him. Access to the bedrooms and guest bathroom was down a gloomy hallway. During the tour, Helmut smiled, looked directly in Matt’s eyes, and Matt felt foolish that he’d been nervous to meet him.

He left Matt to unpack in a bedroom furnished with a bed replete with European-style pillows and a desk positioned by a window overlooking a long sloping lawn. Divided precisely in half by a low retaining stonewall, the lawn ran to a barbed wire fence beyond which was a meadow sprayed with Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups. Small orbs of golden fruit gleamed on a dogwood-sized tree in the lawn’s lower section.

Following a refreshing sleep, Matt decided to shower, passing a wall clock so elaborately carved it was ugly. A woman sobbing inside the Brauns’ bedroom made him stop and regard the shut bedroom door. The crying ended. Bed springs creaked. He darted fast as a deer into the bathroom.

When he entered the living room later, the Trier city evening news was on TV. The Brauns were seated on the sofa, Helmut’s arm draped across his wife’s shoulders and her head resting on his chest. Ingrid saw Matt and grimaced as she rose. In her mid-sixties and tanned, her oval face housed a wide mouth and green eyes exuding the same friendliness as Matt’s stepmother’s. She wore her hennaed hair in a precise bob. Not a strand was out of place. A former English teacher, she spoke German until the conversation expanded beyond Matt’s capabilities—his knowledge was rudimentary, and he planned to minor in it when he started college in the fall—whereupon she switched to English. Asking her husband to fetch wine, she went into the kitchen, opened the oven door and peered inside.

“I fall and hurt my ass a week ago,” Helmut said, still speaking in English.

“Hip, Helmut,” Ingrid said, shutting the oven. She smiled at Matt. “He’s hurting due to the recent fall.” Ingrid approached the table. “Young people can drink wine legally in our country from sixteen years old, so you are German in our house if you’d care to join us.”

“I’m definitely German,” he said.

Helmut chuckled as he filled three Roemer glasses. “We’re having pizza for dinner,” Ingrid said. “As it’s your first time in Germany, Helmut thought American food would help you feel at home.”

Their thoughtfulness relaxed Matt even more. After dinner, they went out to the lower lawn and sat at a table near, what Ingrid explained, was a Mirabelle plum tree. A fruit bowl was heaped with golden plums the size of fat cherries. Matt selected one, but Helmut urged him to take three and eat them all at once as this was the best way to savor their sweet juice. He popped three into his mouth to demonstrate, Ingrid warning him that he’d choke.

“We like President Clinton,” Helmut said after a while. “He visited Berlin and was happy the wall came down.”

“Is unification working out well so far?” Matt asked.

“We have to pay a tax to finance it.” Ingrid shrugged. “It will work better when the East Germans no longer drive their dangerous Trabant cars on our roads.”

Helmut leaned toward Ingrid and spoke in his thick German dialect that Matt couldn’t understand.

“Helmut says I must tell you that German people don’t mind paying this solidarity tax,” Ingrid said, her lips flickering. “He feels Germany must become more powerful in Europe again.”

Matt thought about asking why he felt this way, then decided to let it go as he didn’t want to come across as judgy or disapproving. “Many Americans here complain about having to pay this tax,” he said, then chuckled. “They don’t care about our roads and bridges falling apart—” 

“If America was cut into two pieces, I believe they would happily pay to be united again,” Helmut said, his gaze drilling into Matt.

“I want more wine,” Ingrid said, sliding her half-filled glass toward Helmut. She looked at Matt. “The information from the agency said you’d like to work while you’re here.”

Matt nodded.

“Why do you come to study in Germany?” Helmut asked.

Matt regarded a ribbon of the Moselle River glittering like tinsel in the mid-distance. While he intended to work in Germany for a time after college, he was also curious to know if the German people had changed since the war. Many older Americans didn’t think so, believing Germans were permanently flawed now. An exchange student at his old high school had said younger Germans felt guilty about their role in the Second World War, but their parents and grandparents never talked about it. She’d said it was as if they thought nothing terrible had ever happened in her homeland.

His paternal grandparents had been upset when Matt told them he was going to Germany. They warned him the Germans would repeat their crimes if given the opportunity, not against Jews this time, and not because antisemitism was dead, but because there weren’t enough Jews living there anymore, and next time they’d round up the Turks and Eastern European minorities who toiled as guest workers and send them to concentration camps. Matt regarded their bias as that of old people who didn’t understand the ways of modern Europe, how the German economy was too intertwined with the other EU economies for Germans to commit barbarity again. He’d also thought them hypocritical: they were non-observant Jews, and his grandfather had changed the pronunciation of Shapiro to Shaparoo (like in kangaroo) as a young man when he and his grandmother moved to a WASPy Connecticut town after purchasing a business there, the spelling of their surname remaining unchanged.

Rapid tapping interrupted Matt’s thoughts, and he looked over to see Helmut drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop like it was a piano. “Why you come?”

“I plan to live in Germany for a couple of years,” he said.

“Maybe you will meet a pretty German girl, marry, and live here forever,” Helmut said, and winked. “I help you find work in Germany.”

The Brauns took him to a restaurant where they knew the owner. After Matt lied and said he’d once done cellar work, the proprietor agreed to hire him. Required by law to register, the Brauns drove him to a police station where a policewoman in an olive-green uniform listened as Ingrid explained the reason for their visit. A fluorescent light above her head intermittently flickered. She asked Matt for his passport, Ingrid excusing herself to go sit with Helmut on a nearby bench.  

“Herr Shapiro from America,” the officer said, inspecting the laminated page containing his photo and personal details.

“It’s Shaparoo like in kangaroo, Ma’am.”    

 Her eyebrows scrunched into a blonde unibrow. “It is written Shapiro.”

“Yes, but—”

“I have seen this name before. The people came from Russia and said ‘Shapiro’.”

Matt’s mouth opened and closed.

“Do you have Russian ancestors?”

Ingrid and Helmut had gone silent. Matt felt their lasered stares striking the back of his head. “My dad’s family came from Austria,” he said, shifting his weight onto his left leg. “Mom’s were American.”

“You have relatives in Austria?” 

“Not anymore.”

The officer leafed vigorously through his passport as if searching for the answer, then asked, “When did they leave?”

His heart leapt. Why was she asking crazy questions? He wasn’t applying to live in Germany permanently. Matt’s neck mottled. For no logical reason, he felt guilty, like he’d said something wrong, the same kind of illogical guilt he experienced when customs agents pulled him out of the line on returning from abroad and asked if he had anything in his suitcase to declare, and he didn’t as he was under the permitted dollar amount for foreign purchases. “I think 1941 or ’42,” he said, the hairs on his neck crawling like a centipede’s legs.

“Ah, in the war,” she said. “I understand.” He felt judged now, as well, like she’d drawn negative conclusions about him. The officer stapled a small paper to one of the passport pages and stamped it. She returned his passport. “Enjoy your stay, Herr Shaparoo.”

Helmut asked to see the permit while they were having coffee and cake on the terrace of a café commanding a sweeping view of the river. After Matt gave him his passport, he went directly to the page bearing his personal details. “Ingrid said your family name was Italian,” he said.

“Many Italian names end in o,” Ingrid said. “What does it matter if I was wrong?”

Helmut speared a piece of cake with his fork. A passing Labrador puppy that was all legs and tail strained at its leash to chase nearby pigeons, their emerald and lilac breasts shimmering in the sun like oil slicks.

“The river’s so pretty,” Matt said.

“I love the Moselle,” Ingrid said. “We’ll walk to it later when we are home.”

Helmut slid the passport across the table. “When you register with the police in America, do you get a document like this?” he asked, retrieving a worn booklet with the German imperial eagle printed on its front cover. He held it up but didn’t offer it for Matt to inspect. “It’s a national identity card.”  

“We don’t register with the police,” Matt said, grateful Helmut had moved on from his surname. “And we haven’t got national identity cards in the U.S.”

Helmut and Ingrid exchanged glances. “What about foreigners?” he asked. “Must they not register with your police?”

“They get issued visas but aren’t required to carry identity documents in public. No one does. It would violate our rights under the Constitution.”

Helmut spoke rapidly to Ingrid and, as had happened on the previous occasion, Matt didn’t understand most of what he said. After their conversation ended, Ingrid said to Matt, “Helmut wants to know how your government punishes foreigners breaking the law if the police don’t know where to find them?” 

Matt ran the spoon inside his cup to catch the dregs of foam while considering Helmut’s emphasis on foreigners. He mulled over if the old man was being racist, decided he wasn’t, that his concern was age-related and as wrong as his conservative paternal grandfather who also blamed minorities for perpetrating most wrongdoing in American cities. “The police can always locate people suspected of crime and it doesn’t matter whether they’re citizens or foreigners,” he said, setting down the spoon. “They go to court for a warrant. I guess it might take them a longer time to locate suspects than the German police, but the right to privacy in our Constitution is higher than the government’s right to know everything about us.”

As Ingrid translated, a vein on Helmut’s right temple pulsed. “I thought America’s laws were better than ours.” He checked his watch and rose. “We must leave.”

Matt assumed they were heading home and was surprised when Helmut turned into the parking lot of a hospital, its tiers of windows blazing coppery in the fierce sun.

“Please wait in the car,” Ingrid said. “We won’t be long.”

Though no explanation was given, he figured the appointment was connected to Helmut’s dicey hip. When driving stick shift, Matt noticed how he winced when working the pedals. After an hour, he got bored and took a stroll around the parking lot. When the Brauns returned, Helmut had his arm around Ingrid’s waist and she was resting her head against his shoulder like they were new lovers. Matt found it touching. Neither sets of his grandparents showed affection in public, unless bickering qualified as affection.  

Back home, while Ingrid and Helmut napped, Matt lay out on the warm grass to soak up the sun blitzing through a line of trees bordering one side of the lawn. When the Brauns came out later, Matt joined them at the table, and they chatted as they ate plums from the bowl.  

“Did I mention our son and his two children live in Berlin?” Helmut asked during a lull in the conversation. “You should visit them.”

“I’d like to see Berlin.”

“You are also two children in your family?” asked Helmut.

“My half-sister Emily’s nine.”

The response ignited Ingrid’s curiosity, which led to Matt explaining his mother had died suddenly when he was six and his father later married a woman who’d raised Matt like he was her own son and with whom his father had had another child. When Ingrid asked if both sets of his grandparents were alive, he affirmed, but didn’t reveal that the maternal set, who although Reform Jews and progressive, had found it difficult to accept that his father had replaced their daughter with an Irish-American woman. Or that, over time, they came to love Maggie because she kept her promises to never let Matt forget his mother and that they’d remain a key part of their grandson’s life. In fact, they’d been so key that they’d organized Matt’s bar mitzvah at their synagogue when he turned twelve, his grandfather teaching him enough Hebrew to recite the brachot. He’d also helped him with his Mitzvah project.  

“Do the grandparents live in Pennsylvania?” Helmut asked.

Given the old man was also a grandparent, Matt understood his inquisitiveness. “Just Mom’s. . . my deceased mom’s, I mean.”

A car horn blared out on the street and was swiftly followed by a woman hollering and a large dog barking.

“Where do your father’s parents live?” Helmut asked, as he took three plums from the bowl.

“New Jersey.”

“I think the police officer is correct and your ancestors came from Russia,” he said. “Your surname is not Austrian.”

Matt shifted in the chair. He wished now he’d declined Ingrid’s offer to accompany him to the police station. Screeching broke out in the upper branches of a sycamore tree and then a magpie flew out, pursued silently by two sparrows, the pair alternately swooping and pecking at the larger bird’s head.

“Is it true all the Americans want to know where their ancestors came from in Europe?” Helmut asked, and then popped the plums into his mouth. Muscles in his jaw roiled as he chewed.

“Only those with ancestors from Europe, I’d imagine,” Matt replied.

“Let’s go to the river,” Ingrid said, rising from her chair. “The water will be warm.” 

“I’m also warm,” said Matt in German.

Helmut guffawed, his peals of laughter turning rapidly to barks of coughing.

“Mir ist warm is the proper way to say you’re feeling hot in German,” Ingrid said. “What you said is, ‘I am gay.’”     

Thick cords in Helmut’s neck writhed like snakes as the coughing continued. His face was scarlet. Ingrid thumped her husband between the shoulder blades repeatedly. He hacked and spat out a pit, followed by a spurt of masticated plum flesh. The dangerous color faded, and he sat back on the chair and inhaled slow drafts of air.

“You are stupid,” Ingrid said, after he’d recovered. “A stupid old man. I warned you not to eat so many all at once.”

Helmut rose like a wasp had stung him and stomped off without taking his cane. Telling Matt to remain, Ingrid grabbed it from where it lay inclined against the table and scuttled after her husband. She returned twenty minutes later. “He’s resting now.” She gazed toward the meadow. “Let’s go to the river.”

They climbed the barbed wire fence, Ingrid lifting the bottom of her dress to avoid it snagging. Her thighs were thin and pale. Webs of deep creases in her knees were caulked black from the dark sun oil she used. As they walked, Matt plucked a head of Queen Anne’s lace, its sharp tang instantly cutting the soft air. He could see people in rowboats out on the river, their beer cans flashing like camera bulbs in the sun. Beyond the far bank, undulating vineyards neat as cornrows ran up to the tree-covered hill. When they reached the water, a family of mallards glided quietly by, the ducklings as large as their parents.

“Ducks are the same in America and Germany despite the distance between our countries,” Ingrid said as she watched them float off. “They swim and quack the same.”

Matt thought it a weird observation as he watched her wade into the river, the mustard-colored sundress turning dark and pressing against her thin legs as she went deeper. Scooping up water, Ingrid pressed it against her face. Water trickled down her cheeks as if she was weeping. “Matt, come in with me.”

He took off his sandals and waded into the river, the icy shock causing his skin to break out in goosebumps. The silt was a velvet carpet under his feet, and the latent current pressed against his calves.  

“I am Pisces and love water,” Ingrid said. “It makes me feel strong and healthy.” She smiled. “What’s your zodiac sign?”

“I’m a Gemini.”

“The twins. . . you are air.” When he drew up to her, Ingrid laid a wet hand on his wrist and said, “I know you are a Jew.” His heart slammed against his ribcage. He’d expected a conversation about birth signs, things he didn’t believe in but was interested to get her take on as a logically-minded German. She squeezed firmly. “I was curious and looked up your name before you came.”

“How did you feel after. . . did you see me differently?”

“The German and American ducks are the same.” Ingrid shut her eyes and eased her head back. She stumbled, opened her eyes and moved quickly to rectify her balance. Silt bloomed at her feet. “I was just eight at the end of the war, but I carry the guilt of what was done.” She peered at him. “I will until I die.”

“What about Helmut?”

“He won’t talk about the war.” Her bright eyes dulled. “Neither would my father.”

A bunch of children on a passing ferry waved at them.

“Have you told him about me?” Matt asked, after the drone of the ferry’s engine faded.

She shook her head. “Helmut’s sad and suffers now.” Ingrid cupped her hands around Matt’s face. “This is why I was glad when the agency called to ask if we would host a young American in our home. You are the first we’ve taken in after ten years.” She took her hands away. “Thank you for coming in the river. I wanted you here with me, so you’ll always remember our time together in my lovely Moselle.”

Matt thought the sentiment beautiful, but strange too.

As soon as Matt joined Helmut on the lawn the following evening, the old man set his newspaper down on his lap and said, “Ingrid told me what you are, and it is no big problem to me.” His choice of words suggested some kind of problem existed but, recalling his error after remarking the previous afternoon that he felt hot, Matt figured it could be Helmut’s dialect or that he’d translated wrong. “You are here as our guest,” Helmut continued, “but we speak no more about it again.” To reinforce the point, he snapped open the newspaper and commenced reading again.

When Ingrid came out, she asked Matt about a trip he’d taken after work that afternoon to the Roman amphitheater ruins, questions he answered while Helmut’s remark circled in his brain. The prohibition unsettled him. After a while, Matt excused himself, saying he was tired from lugging a wine delivery that morning into the cellar and was turning in early.

Helmut peered up from the newspaper. “Germany is Europe’s engine. We work hard to keep it like this.”    

Matt regarded him, taking in the scar running up his cheek, and then walked away.

Matt’s language skills improved as the weeks passed. The Brauns took to speaking only in German to Matt, albeit interactions with Helmut became less frequent. The old man spent more time in the garden weeding and pruning after Matt arrived home from work, took long walks after dinner despite his injured hip, and napped in his bedroom when Ingrid wasn’t at home. Matt offered to help him with the chores, but Helmut always declined and would not be dissuaded. When they did chat, he no longer looked Matt directly in the eyes, his gaze refracting to one side or the other of Matt’s face like a stick immersed in deep water. The odd behavior upset Matt, but he said nothing to Ingrid in case she thought him oversensitive or paranoid.

After he’d saved some money, he invited the Brauns out to dinner to show them his appreciation for having him stay. When the agreed upon Saturday came around, Ingrid left for a beauty appointment in the afternoon, leaving Matt and Helmut watching a documentary on TV. Within a minute, Helmut left the room and didn’t return. During an intermission, Matt went to the bathroom, passing the Braun’s bedroom on his way. The door was ajar, and Helmut was sitting on one side of the bed staring at a photograph. Other photos were heaped on his knees. He looked up and saw Matt watching him, Helmut’s features slackening for a moment before tightening into a frown. The photos slid in an arc to the floor like an accordion’s bellows opening. Helmut strode toward Matt without his walking cane and shut the door, leaving Matt open-mouthed and unable to move for a time.

Later, as they were about to leave for the restaurant, Helmut complained his hip was feeling too painful to walk. He insisted Ingrid go on without him. A hot breeze brushed against Matt’s face as they strolled through the streets. When they arrived at the restaurant, they ordered schnitzels, red cabbage, and handmade noodles, which he’d come to love. After they’d eaten, Ingrid spotted a couple at the bar she knew and they went over to them. The man, sporting an alpine hat trimmed with ribbon in the colors of the German flag, on hearing Matt was American, challenged him good-naturedly to drink from a crystal boot without spilling any beer. There was a trick to it, which Matt couldn’t solve, resulting in beer suds splashing over his face. Ingrid laughed heartily as she wiped Matt dry with a napkin. He’d never heard her laugh so hard and was delighted he’d been the cause.

Feeling buzzed when they got home and wishing the night wouldn’t end, they sat drinking Jägermeister by the plum tree. Its leaves whispered overhead, their fluttery shadows in the moonlight creating an illusion of water flowing over the tabletop. “Helmut’s acting weird around me,” Matt said, as she poured them another shot. “It’s because I’m a Jew, isn’t it?”

Ingrid dropped the bottle, its contents spreading like blood over the table. A sharp aroma wafted up.

“You even had to tell him my last name was Italian,” he continued.

She righted the bottle as a sweeping funnel of light advanced down the lawn. Helmut drew up. He trained his flashlight on the puddle of liquor and then on his wife’s face. “You’re drunk,” he said. “You are forbidden too much alcohol.”

“Matt thinks,” she said, and hiccoughed. “Matt—”

“You called me stupid? It’s you who is stupid, Ingrid. Come to bed.” The light beam struck the trunk of the tree, highlighting gouges in its smooth bark as Helmut turned and walked away. Two fuzzy yellow circles and a center of piercing white light etched on the wall of the house as he strode up the lawn. “Come to bed now,” he hollered. The back door slammed shut.

“I’d better go in.” Ingrid hiccoughed again as she rose unsteadily. “You’re wrong about him, Matt. We’ll talk tomorrow.”       

He watched her weave along the lawn until the darkness swallowed her, and then he walked to the barbed wire fence and rested his chin on top of a post. The river whispered in the blackness. When he went inside later, the dusky living room and photographs on the wall looked alien, looked like he no longer belonged here. He crept along the hallway. Helmut was talking. Matt couldn’t hear what he said. He lingered at their door. Ingrid started crying, the sobs gentle before turning into a terrifying moan. Matt fled to his room. He lay on his bed rigid, his heart thundering in his ears. Presently, the Braun’s bedroom door creaked. Footsteps approached. Someone tapped on his door. Ingrid came inside. Without makeup, her face was wrinkled as an old apple. Her eyes were raw and swollen. Something was wrong with her hair. The perfect bob was bizarrely lopsided. A bolt of clarity whipped through Matt. It was a wig.

“Helmut has been avoiding you,” she said. “You were right. He wants to speak to you now in the living room. But I have something to confess first.” She lowered herself onto the bed, took a slow, jagged breath. “I will die soon.”

His ears rang like he had acute tinnitus.

“I have cancer.”

Matt’s mind’s eye whisked to the hospital parking lot. Three times, they’d picked him up after work and driven to the hospital where he’d waited in the car. Nothing had ever been explained. It was a part of their lives they hadn’t shared. “I. . . I thought it was Helmut who was sick.”

“I planned it this way.” A smile flickered on her cracked lips but didn’t catch. “Helmut didn’t want you here. He agreed only after I convinced him it would help us. Distraction is useful in pain.”

It felt like he was participating in a surreal movie. “I’m sorry.”  

“I’ve already grieved.” She smiled. “Not knowing allowed you to be yourself. Allowed you to bring happiness to us.” The bedsprings squeaked as she rose. She went over to the door. “Please go to him soon.”  

When he went out, Helmut was on the couch, Ingrid beside him. Helmut didn’t speak until Matt sat in the armchair. “I served in an infantry unit in Italy.” His voice was cracked. “It was my duty to protect Germany. I did not know then that Hitler was evil or that I was wrong.” He regarded his hands. “It was a shock you are a Jew living in my house.”

Matt gripped the armrests so hard his fingers throbbed.

“You were here to make Ingrid happy. Not to bring my past back to life.” Helmut licked his upper lip like a dog after his meal. “It became too much.” He paused, his Adam’s apple sharpening as he swallowed. “When I was sixteen, I was a Hitler Youth. One night we went into the city center where the Jews lived. We had axes, tire irons, knives. We broke into their houses and businesses. We destroyed.”

Matt’s hair crawled. He felt hot.

“At the home of a young couple, the husband pulled out a knife and slashed my face.” Helmut touched his scar. “We. . . I reported him to the Gestapo.”

A silence arose.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Matt asked, noticing Ingrid staring intently at him.

“Both were transported and—”

“Both,” Matt said.

Helmut sucked his lips inside his mouth twice. “I didn’t know they murdered Jews in the camps.” Another silence ensued, punctured only by the hollow ticking of the clock. Helmut tipped back his head. “The guilt eats me,” he continued. “Sometimes soft, sometimes hard, but always it eats.” He cleared his throat and added, “I know you will not believe me, but I am sorry.” He buried his face in his hands.

Matt rose and went over to the window. The streetlight cast jagged shadows of the roofs of the houses into the street. He pressed his palms into the window jambs. What was he supposed to feel right now? Anger? Sympathy for the murdered couple? Sympathy for Helmut? For Ingrid? He shut his eyes tightly. An image of the female police officer scrutinizing his passport loomed. “Why is this?” she’d asked. “It is written here Shapiro.” His brain whisked next to the look he’d gotten from a new homeroom teacher in the fourth grade, after he’d given him his name and then been asked to repeat its pronunciation. “Shaparoo, like in kangaroo,” Matt had said to the astonished teacher. He recalled a conversation with his stepmother around this time, of her telling him that her second-generation ancestors had dropped the O in their O’Connell surname after rising from first-generation shanty to lace curtain Irish, and how later they’d tried to pin the blame for the missing O on the incompetence of U.S. border officials.

Why had he continued saying “Shaparoo” after he understood? Matt wondered. He understood his grandfather had had a legitimate reason to pronounce the name differently when he’d moved to New England in a time of overt antisemitism. America had not welcomed Jewish refugees from the war. But he had no such excuse. Americans now lived in a country and time that aspired to fairness. He wasn’t naive of course and understood there would always be some people who despised him for being a Jew. But they were a tiny minority and were regarded as fanatics who dressed up in military gear and waged pretend battles in the backwoods. They would never become a threat.

The words “Like in kangaroo” ricocheted inside his head. Prickles of shame burst on his body. Sweat trickled from his armpits. When he reopened his eyes, he saw a woman and a German Shepherd on a leash walk by on the other side of the street. She stopped at the corner to let a car exit from a side street. After the vehicle turned, the dog started barking. An old man on the opposite corner raised his right hand, warning the woman that she needed to control her animal. When he crossed and drew up to them, the man stooped and patted the dog whose tail twitched frenziedly now. Matt stared out until the three parted ways, the woman and the German Shepherd disappearing around the street corner.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Helmut had his face still buried in his hands. Ingrid stopped patting her husband’s shoulder and fixed her eyes on Matt as he walked over.

“Look at me, Helmut,” he said. The old German’s hands trembled after he took them away from his face and raised his head slowly. Matt nodded at Ingrid. “I don’t want any mistakes so please translate what I’m going to say to him.” He peered at Helmut. “I believe you’re sorry.” Matt paused. “But believing isn’t forgiving in case you want forgiveness. I can’t do that.” He paused. “Only the family of the couple who were sent to the concentration camp can give that to you.”

As Ingrid translated, Helmut’s face started glowing. He reached hungrily for Matt’s hand after she ended. “You believe. That is enough. You’ve made me happy. And you made my darling happy, too.” He squeezed Matt’s hand, and he squeezed back. Helmut looked back at Ingrid. “You were right.”