Free Other People’s Houses by Lore Segal Page A

had a cold in the head and kept blowing his nose and clapping the camp leader on the shoulder every time the camp leader clapped him on the shoulder. Or maybe it was the other man, holding a microphoneand trailing a long wire. The camp leader was talking into the microphone, and then the man with the cold talked in English. I could not concentrate on what he was saying. There was a long queue of children filing past. I wondered what they were doing; they couldn’t be the English-speaking children being introduced to the Mayor, because if they were I would be among them. I could not understandwhat was happening, and I lost interest. Afterward, they were gone and I was sitting down again on the bench by the wall, and I was never sure that there was such a person as a Mayor.
    There seems to be only a certain amount of room in my memory. I cannot keep the subsequent days separate in my mind or remember how many there were. There was some attempt to keep us occupied. I remember Englishlessons going on in various corners of the hall. I remember a drawing competition that I either won or thought I ought to have won—I don’t recall which. The hora tune had become a hit. We hummed it while we dressed in the morning and the children walking by outside would be whistling it, too. There was always some group dancing, keeping warm in the hall. I think I might have been a week in thatcamp, perhaps a little more.
    One evening the youngest of my roommates and I were sent to go to bed and found four large boys in our cottage. They were heaving our belongings over the veranda railing into the snow. The little girl and I watched, holding the spokes, our eyes on a level with the big boys’ feet. They wore long wool socks and short pants, and, in between, their knees were knobbly.I thought they were lovely. I admired the energetic, devil-may-care way they told us the cottage was theirs and we should go and find out where we belonged. Then they went in and shut the door. “That’s those Germans,” said the little girl and began to cry, but I felt suddenly extraordinarily happy to think of the boys inside the familiar walls of our cottage; I had a sense of the camp and the cottagesfull of boys and girls—Austrians, Germans, and even Poles—and I hated the little girl beside me who had sat down on her suitcase and was howling dismally. She was intefering with my loving everybody.
    I don’t know how long we sat outside the cottage. Eventually, some person came walking by and found us sitting on our suitcases in the snow. The little girl was still wailing in a bored sort of way.This person asked us what had happened and was quite upset and took us along to the office, and the muddle was discovered. It seemed that we were part of the original Austrian transport slated to be moved to another camp, but not until the next day. And so it turned out that the Germans really had ruined everything. The little girl and I were put into a narrow room with bunk beds for the night.We cursed the Germans with heated indignation and excited ourselves. We talked far into the night. We told each other things and we became quite intimate.
    About the second camp I remember only that it was not a proper camp like our first camp. The assembly hall was made of brick; the cottages, instead of being wooden, were made of stucco. It was all wrong and strange, and before the newness ofit could pass away I moved again.
    One evening I was sitting by one of the stoves, writing a letter to my parents, when two English ladies came up to me. One of them carried a pad of paper, and she said, “How about this one?,” and the other lady said, “All right.” They smiled at me. They asked my name and age and I told them. They said I spoke English very nicely. I beamed. They asked me if Iwas Orthodox. I said yes. They were pleased. They said then would I like to come and live with a lovely Orthodox family in Liverpool. I said yes enthusiastically, and we all three beamed at one