Out of the Cold

When I was nine years old, I once asked my brother if he would rather burn to death or freeze to death. Jeffery, who at the age of eleven was much older and much wiser than I, chose freezing. Although I often relied on Jeffery’s scientific acumen on this and other worldly topics, he was unable to clearly articulate why freezing was the better choice. His unsatisfactory explanation led me to do my own research, in Scientific American, on the topic  of burning and freezing. As a grown woman and school teacher, I sometimes thought about those scientific discussions of our childhood, and, for some inexplicable reason, I once posed the same question about burning or freezing to an elderly lady seated next to me on the outside deck of a cruise ship we had recently boarded for Alaska.

“Without question,” she answered, in what appeared to me to be an Austrian or German accent, “I would much rather burn to death!” She said this with such conviction, as we watched large pieces of ice jutting up out of the ocean, that I was taken aback.

“Really?” I said with surprise. “I would think that most people would prefer freezing to death. Freezing, after all, would preserve the body.”

“I will tell you something about my life which will help you fully understand my choice,” she said. “I imagine that you have the time to listen. We are both headed in the same direction.”

I nodded, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She grabbed at a cigarette with a thinly gloved hand and then introduced herself.

“My name is Rita Stolzman. Originally I am from East Berlin, about one hundred miles from what used to be called the Soviet Occupied Zone after the war. I was raised, as a very young girl, by a family that my parents had arranged to take care of me on the night they were...