Read Online The Houseguest by Kim Brooks - Free Book Online

appear conscious of the fact that it was now five past six and Irene would have dinner on the table soon. The vibrations grew to a rumbling. He found himself standing up straight, wondering what to do with his hands, where exactly he should direct his eyes. The train groaned to a halt, sweating and steaming in the drizzle, while beyond it, the Adirondack Mountains hovered overthe city. Passengers disembarked then hurried along the platform in a swarm of gray. They rushed toward shelter as Abe moved away from it. How would he find her? Should he have made a sign? What would he have written on it, besides? Jewish refugee, this way?
    The last of the train’s passengers pushed out. He was trying to see around them, and that was when he noticed the woman who wasn’t moving at all, a straggler in the thinning crowd, a fixed stone in the current. She was tall and thin, her face obscured by a mass of black hair, her dark eyes framed by sharply drawn brows. He approached her. She didn’t smile or nod. She placed her suitcase down then looked at him directly, without shyness, without fear. Not young. Not old. A face equal parts weariness and hope.
    â€œ Gutn ovnt ,” he said. “Are you Ana Beidler? Max Hoffman from the synagogue sent me.”
    She didn’t move at first, didn’t look away. A tack-sized dimple appeared in her cheek—the sort of dimple that precedes a smile. “He sent you, did he?”
    Abe held out his hand, and she placed hers on top in what seemed a continental gesture. Did she expect him to press his lips against it? To bow? Something in her gaze made him stammer. Was she beautiful? Not exactly. There was nothing remarkable about her face except her eyes, from which he found it impossible to look away. They were not brown, not green, neither gray nor hazel, but some combination of each. They were large but not round, narrow eyes beneath narrow brows; they emanated expectation.
    â€œI’m glad to meet you,” he told her, shouting slightly to be heard over the din of travelers. “My name’s Abe Auer. You’ll be staying with us.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “How was your trip?”
    â€œMy trip,” she said. “It was miserable, of course. But I wasn’t expecting more.”
    There was a slight slant to her mouth when she smiled. She had straight teeth, a large nose, a pinprick mole between her cheek andupper lip, a way of looking up at him from downcast lids. By now, they were the only two people on the track. The fog began to lift and the sun burned a gash in the clouds. A few fat raindrops fell then ceased, as though sodden rags were being wrung dry above them. Abe realized that they’d been standing still on the platform, that he’d been waiting, hovering, when the normal thing to do would have been to start walking, showing her the way.
    â€œCan I take your bag?” he asked.
    She didn’t answer right away. Had she not understood, or was this air of hesitation a tic in her manner? A beat was lost between question and answer, but what she was doing with it, where her mind went in that moment, he didn’t know. “A gentleman,” she said as he reached for the suitcase, and then added, “I do appreciate it. I haven’t much, but even a few possessions grow heavy when dragged across the sea.”
    â€œYou speak such good English. I wasn’t expecting that. Where are you coming from exactly?”
    She told him that she’d lived in London for a time. Germany, also, many years ago. Rumania as well. But now, now she was coming from Warsaw. Her ship had arrived two weeks before, and she’d spent the time sleeping in a cot in a hallway of the Joint Distribution Committee. She told him all this as they began to walk. The crowd had fled. Only the vendor remained. He tipped his hat to them as they passed. What did he think? Abe wondered, watching them leave together, his own prosaic