The ghosts are in the women's faces. Many of them look like her, with high cheekbones and dominant eyes. Rachel, a Jew, and Michael, an Italian-Catholic are travelling through Eastern Europe. Yesterday was Warsaw, Poland. Today is Budapest, Hungary. Rachel’s grandma Bella’s parents and siblings did not get out of Poland before the Nazi’s invaded, trapped the Jews in Ghettos, and sent them East to concentration camps. She carries this coal-black history.
That afternoon, they visited an area that had been a Jewish ghetto. The tour guide stopped at a wall scarred with the bullet holes. The Nazis lined up Jews in front of that wall and shot them one by one.
Rachel stood in front of the pock-marked wall and pain froze inside her. She forced herself to stay lighthearted-she did not want to ruin Michael’s first trip to Europe.
It was not until nighttime when they snuggled in the feathered duvets in with the dim blue view of Budapest, when she crumbles.
It starts with a whimper- there is no collapse--that would signify that the pain could end, and it cannot. She feels the cold pensione sheets on her cheek and forehead. What is she crying for?
He knows why she is crying. He read in preparation for the trip.
She did not know these people, but there is a mark on her soul. The years of the temple, Jewish camps, everything, the accents of the grandparents branded it under her skin. Tears gurgle up from her stomach in convulsing waves. She can’t stop crying, grabbing his forearms for balance.
He lets her cry until she is spent. She nudges towards him, and his bicep lifts to wrap around her. She buries her face below his shoulder. Everything is solid and puffed up under his shirt; He lies still with his arm around her. She can't see anything except the dark behind her eyes; he wraps his other Odyssean arm around her. There is nothing to say. They have been talking all day.
He does not naturally understand the reservoir of pain—his family never showed this much emotion.
She feels responsible, a pang of twisted guilt for events out of her control… for bearing witness and making sure this pain does not die. He kisses her on the head, and lets exhaustion work its magic. She needs his protection, size, strength.
As he watches her cry, he gets a history lesson. The Nuns at his Catholic High School never talked about the Holocaust, they just skipped it, and got away with it. For the first time, red-hot hatred scalded his life, too.
Soon they are asleep, wet with tears.