The cameraman whom Settledecker was pointing to uncoupled his face from his viewfinder. “The Bronx,” he shouted up to the stage.
“The Bronx!” Settledecker repeated. The prisoners filed behind him, professional grief in their faces, their bodies tired and slumped. They didn’t know what was being said. Someone had told them that doing this might get them money. In their heads, calculations were being made about what those euros could buy. A new car for the son-in-law. And a limousine medallion. Enough to help the children get a down payment together, because everyone else’s children already owned a home. They would crawl across the dais if that’s what it took.
“The Bronx is an internment camp, my friend,” Settledecker went on. “Your family — you got a family, sir?”
“Two kids,” the cameraman shouted. There was a bored practice to his tone.
“Two kids,” Settledecker said. “And a wife who brought them into the world, I presume?” He paused again for mild laughter. “Well, they are in Camp Bronx. But — last question, sir, I promise — your name?”
“Joseph Rumana,” the cameraman said. “Junior. You want to know what we’re having for dinner?”
The other cameramen laughed. Settledecker smiled tolerantly into the microphone. “Thank you, sir.”
The cameraman cocked a finger at Settledecker and pulled the trigger. He was a plant.
“The Rumanas are rounded up. But Mr. Rumana — loving husband and father — finds a way for his family to slip out, leaving him alone in the camp. His wife and children spend the next four years wandering the country, living off scraps, fending off attack, suffering the worst kind of humiliation — because by now there are people in Utah and Texas who say, ‘Let them have New York. Then they’ll leave us alone.’ The war is so long, Mr. Rumana’s boys become old enough to join the U.S. Army. In trenches they fight. Mrs. Rumana works twenty-hour shifts in a factory, making munitions.
“It’s like this for years, ladies and gentlemen,” Settledecker went on. “Years. When it’s over, there used to be eight million in New York. Now there are two. Imagine this city with two million people. I know, I know — room to walk. But I’m serious. Miraculously, Mr. Rumana has survived. He weighs a third of what he used to, he’s sick with things medicine has yet to describe, he’s seen things that none of us can imagine. But he’s alive. For decades, Mr. Rumana must agitate against the German government to have a value put on his suffering. Can it be measured in numbers? That’s not for us to answer.” Settledecker pointed an index finger at the sky. He was warmed up now, swaying.
“But something that we do have to ponder: German restitution covers only Mr. Rumana. That’s right — everything that his wife and his boys went through, all because New York was invaded by Germans, and they won’t see a cent. Sixty years later! Mrs. Rumana is eighty-seven years old! These are her last days on earth. She has gout, arthritis, glaucoma. From day after day working in the dark, casting artillery shells. But no! The generous German government doesn’t cover anyone who wasn’t — I quote to you from the official documents—‘incarcerated in concentration camps, ghettos, or forced labor battalions.’ Shame, ladies and gentlemen!” Settledecker was thundering, his cheeks quivering. “Shame!” he bellowed, and for a moment it was easy to imagine that there was no act in his speech. He blinked several times, his words echoing. The survivors had finished filing past him. They milled on the other side of the dais, unsure what to do.
“But why resort to fiction?” Settledecker said quietly, now in the transport of tormented appeal. “Why don’t we hear the facts from the survivors themselves? And then you decide for yourselves. You won’t hear from me again. Decide for yourselves. Decide if you want to petition your congressman, your senator. The choice is in your hands. No one else can help these people, only your word. But who will speak up when they come for me? Yes, please.”
Settledecker, eyes afire, turned to the pack of seniors and gestured to the woman who had been in the first seat in the corner row. The woman was a cake, concentric tiers of flab from her face to her waistline. But her nails were tidy semicircles, and thick amber earrings hung from her ears. She lolled her head weakly.
“Yes, yes,” Settledecker confirmed, dribbling his head. “Now, please.” He lowered the microphone. The cake shrugged and separated herself from the crowd. Panting, she climbed the stairs, Settledecker lifting her by the elbow. The wind had stolen several strands from the golden fog of her hair. They fluttered around her face like streamers, so light in the sun that it was easy to imagine what she looked like as a young woman. In 1941, to this woman, as to Grandmother, the world must have felt like the final version of itself. Nothing could make the lives they were living seem obsolete. After the war, Grandmother would pretend to agree with the neighborhood: Grandfather was unsuitable, a hooligan. But she no longer had parents or grandparents, and in her mind, Grandfather was like a rock against whom even the worst things might break.
Had Grandfather told Slava this, or had Slava made it up?
Slava’s father, when he came to court his mother, was also unsuitable, only for the opposite reason. He was shy and hid behind his wife. Mother pretended to agree with her parents that he was unsuitable, but in her mind, he was a rest from rock-Grandfather’s dictations.
What was Slava’s place in this sequence? Would the woman he wanted to marry have to lie to her parents about the kind of person he was? In the historical pattern, he was supposed to repeat Grandfather, a rock.
On the dais, the woman, unlike Settledecker a genuine technological novice, leaned in so closely that her lips touched the microphone. “I’m sori, pliz,” she said. “I no spik English.” She looked over at Settledecker. His face was a rictus of exasperation and rage. He wheeled around and blinked at the crowd. Finally, he found whom he needed. He began to snap his fingers.
The young woman who had saved Devicki with Turtle-Face began pardoning her way through the crowd. Slava could see her in profile, her makeup glittering in the sun. From the side she looked like a painted doll, the pear of her ass swaying in a tight skirt. She mounted the stairs and turned to face the crowd. Now Slava could see her face in full.
“Hello, everyone,” she said. “My name is Vera. I will translate.” Then she turned to the older woman and whispered in Russian: “Speak.”
The seniors piled their mesh satchels with diagonally sliced halves of southwestern turkey wraps. They worked with a martial exactness, words rarely passing between them. Sima, syuda. Dai sumku. Net, te bez myasa. (Sima, over here. Give me the bag. No, don’t bother, those don’t have meat.) The husband removed the stones keeping the napkins in place, the wife plucked open two napkins, the husband nested the sandwich between them. Those without spouses worked with friends, neighbors, new partners.
“So this is the Russian-to-American account,” Slava said when Vera had finished a row of interviews at Settledecker’s side.
“The one,” she said, nodding. “I thought maybe you’d come to this.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Slava said.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “It’s not like what you’re doing.”
He spun around and counted the television crews. She shrugged.