Someone touched Josef’s shoulder and he flinched and turned around, flattening his back against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” said the young girl who stood in front of him now, holding out her hand. “I’m Anna.” The girl had a warm, welcoming smile that seemed at odds with their ugly, cold surroundings. She gestured to the man who stood just behind her like a shadow. The man stepped forward and nodded at Josef.

“This is Leo. If you’re in 7B then you two are neighbors.” Anna still held her hand out for Josef to shake but he didn’t reciprocate. He didn’t want to touch her, or anyone else.

Josef took a deep breath. It caught in his chest. He said, “Josef Neumann.” Hoped it would be the end of it.

“Nice to meet you, Josef. Do you need help with your things, what with your arm, and all?” she reached out and her hand brushed Josef’s plaster-wrapped arm.

“Please don’t touch me,” Josef said.

The girl pulled her hands back. “Sorry,” she said.

The man, Josef’s neighbor Leo, stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Was he slow? Josef couldn’t tell.

Josef picked up his sack and shouldered the door to the barracks open. The room was a sea of beds and military-style lockers, with other pieces of cast off furniture scattered here and there. A painted grid on the floor told Josef which row was his, row 7, and he found his cot in the back of the room. It wasn’t as terrible as he’d imagined, probably because there were only a few people in the room, sitting or lying on their beds, some sleeping, some reading or writing. Josef unloaded his sack, shoving his few pieces of clothes into the locker with a big 7B stenciled onto it. He threw the pillow and sheets onto the bed and wondered how he would be able to make up the bed with just one arm. It didn’t matter. He stretched out on the unmade bed, wadding the sandpaper-rough pillow under his head, his injured arm carefully resting on his chest. He fell asleep, or, at least, he thought he was asleep – until he heard footsteps nearby and felt a shadow fall across his face. He didn’t wait for the shadow and the footsteps to pass. He was upright in seconds, blinking in the low evening light. There was a man standing beside the next cot over, a big man – he was taller than the lockers, and big all over – Josef wondered if the man’s cot could take his weight.

“What do you want?” Josef asked. His good hand curled into a fist. If he wanted to, the big man could break his other arm effortlessly.

“Just getting ready for supper,” the big man replied. “You new here?” the big man traded his sweaty work shirt for a clean one from his locker. He buttoned it on.

Josef nodded. “Just got here this afternoon,” Josef said.

The big man finished getting dressed. “Well, I’m Sam Gold,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Josef,” Sam didn’t offer his hand, and Josef was grateful.

Sam cracked his knuckles, rolled his neck until it popped. “If you’re hungry, I can show you where the dining hall is.”

Josef wasn’t hungry but he’d have to find the dining hall eventually. He stood up and said, “Yes, why not.” He paused. “Thank you.”

He followed Sam out of the room and down the corridor. Sam stopped in front of the dining hall door. “It’s loud and very crowded in here,” Sam warned Josef. “I don’t know where you came from before, but just so you know… it can be a little much at first.”

“Thanks.” As Sam had warned him, the dining hall was loud, the collective voices of the internees drowning out any individual conversations in the food line. Sam picked up a tray and said, “Listen, can you even carry anything with your hand like that? If you want, we can share mine.”

Josef nodded. He followed Sam as the big man filled their tray with plates of hot food, glasses of tea, flatware, and a couple of rock-hard dinner rolls. The room was striped with long tables and matching benches. Someone brushed past Joseph on the left, another person on the right. It was overwhelming, as Sam had predicted. Josef fixed his eyes on the big man’s shoulders, which were visible above the heads of most of the other diners.

They stopped at a table near the washing station. Josef sat down and Sam handed him his food, and that was when Josef noticed who they were sitting across from. It was the perky girl and the slow man. Josef felt the girl’s eyes on him.

“Anna, Leo, this is Josef,” Sam said.

“We’ve already met,” Josef said.

The girl smiled at him again. “Are you settled in all right?” she asked.

Josef shrugged. He drank some tea. It was weak and a little bitter. “I suppose,” he said.

“It can take a while to get used to the way things work around here,” Anna said. “But you’ll like it. I’ve been here for almost eight months already.” Josef detected a sense of pride in her voice. It was odd, childish, maybe even a bit delusional.

Josef stared down at his plate. Maybe the girl was slow, too – he’d like it here? He’d get used to it? Could she hear how silly she sounded? He didn’t want to get used to being in the DP camp. The food on his plate – grey, unidentifiable cutlet of meat, lump of potatoes, some sort of thin gravy – looked unappetizing and he pushed the plate away from him. The noise in the dining hall grew louder. The room was four times as big as the mess hall in the refugee center and the people here were so much more animated than the confused and frightened refugee center residents. Here at the DP camp, people chattered and laughed, a few children ran around the room, weaving between the tables. A table full of scraggly-bearded men burst into song, or maybe it was prayer, Josef didn’t know. It was too much.

Josef stood up and said, “I can’t be here right now,” and he bolted from the room.

It was dark outside, with just a few feeble overhead lights at the entrances of each building, but also clear enough that Josef could see a constellation of stars in the sky off in the distance. He lingered on the porch of the men’s barracks and looked up into the night. It was quiet and still enough that for a moment Josef felt a sense of calm. The tightness in his chest relaxed a little and he sat down with his back against the wall, his knees pulled up against his chest. He was so tired. Josef yawned and closed his eyes, savored the silence.

His brief moment of peace was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching across the yard. A shuffling figure came into view and climbed the three porch steps slowly, lifting both feet onto each step before mounting the next one. Leo saw Josef sitting on the floor and he stopped in front of him and frowned, offered Josef his hand.

“I’m all right,” Josef said, waving away Leo’s offer of help. “Is it always so clear here at night?”

Leo squinted at Josef and then shook his head. He sat down next to Josef and crossed his legs Indian style, a move that seemed incongruous for someone who walked so stiffly and moved so deliberately. Leo smiled and then pointed up at the stars but he still didn’t say anything. Josef would’ve have preferred to be alone but Leo seemed harmless. Soon the rest of the men would filter back to the barracks from the dining hall and it wouldn’t be quiet anymore. But for now, it was all right.

Josef stayed outside on the porch as long as he could. Leo stayed, too. The other men arriving back at the barracks didn’t pay them much attention. A couple of the older men nodded at Leo but that was all. When Sam strode in to view he was walking next to Anna. They stopped midway between the men and women’s barracks and the big man embraced the girl and then watched her until she disappeared into her dormitory. What a funny couple they made, Josef thought. Even if petite little Anna stood on a chair she still might never be eye to eye with Sam.

Sam crossed the yard and came up onto the porch. “Coming in?” He looked at Leo while he spoke but Josef sensed the question was directed toward him.

“Soon,” Josef said. His mouth was dry again, his chest tight. He pictured the large open room, men he didn’t know occupying each cot, the air stuffy with sweat and sleep. Just thinking about it he felt exposed. Sam’s hulking body to one side of him, strange and slow Leo on the other. If his cot were in a corner, it would be better.

Leo stood up and mimed an exaggerated yawn, his mouth opening wide while he stretched his arms over his head. He clapped Sam on the shoulder and went inside. Sam lingered in the doorway a moment. He rapped his knuckles against the doorjamb and reminded Josef that curfew was in a few minutes.

“Thanks,” Josef said, but made no move to get up. He didn’t know how things worked here. Were there guards or night watchmen patrolling the grounds? Would the barracks door be locked precisely at nine? He didn’t think he would mind if he was locked out and had to spend the night out here on the porch. It wasn’t that cold out and besides, Josef had suffered much colder nights back in the labor camp. The porch steps creaked and he would be prepared if anyone snuck up on him.

Just then, the barracks door opened and a middle-aged man with a thick beard leaned out and gestured to Josef. “It’s time to come in, young man,” he said.

Josef took a deep breath and stood up, and followed the man inside. The dim overhead lights were still on and men milled around, going about their evening ablutions. Josef wove his way through the grid of cots until he found his, the bedclothes still heaped on top of the mattress as he’d left them before supper. He tried making up the bed, stretching the sheet first in one direction and then in another. The fingers on his plaster-encased arm weren’t good for much.

“Here,” Sam said, returning from the washroom with his towel hung over his shoulder. He grabbed one side of the sheet and Josef took up the other, and then while Josef shook out the pillow in an attempt to plump it, Sam tucked the sheet and blanket under the thin mattress.

Josef tossed the pillow onto the cot and said, “Thanks.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Sam said.

Josef untied the fraying laces on his cracked leather boots and lined the boots up in front of his locker. He would wait until everyone was in bed before he went to wash up. Meanwhile, he was at a loss as to what he should do. Sam undressed, hanging his pants and his shirt in his locker, peeling off socks that were more holes than fabric. Josef averted his eyes.

In the refugee center he’d been accused several times of staring indecently at the other residents. He hadn’t done anything of the sort, wanted to tell them not to flatter themselves. Instead, he learned to spend as little time as possible in the refugee center dormitory and he kept his eyes cast downward the rest of the time.

The frame of Sam’s cot groaned as he climbed under his blanket. Josef glanced over and saw that his prediction from earlier that evening was correct; the frame sagged low in the middle and hovered just above the floor.

One by one the other men returned from the washroom or the common room. They set out fresh clothes for the morning if they had them, left shirts and coats airing on the backs of the few chairs that dotted the room.

Josef took his towel and his soap from his locker and went to the washroom. He took care not to get his cast wet. The soap smelled strange, a mix of something rank, animal-like and slightly floral. He stroked his cheek. His beard was growing unevenly and could use a trim. He hadn’t been able to shave properly since breaking his hand. Back in the dormitory the cots were all full now, the lumpy shadows looking like hay bales in a field.

He got into bed, still dressed, and rolled onto his side so that he wasn’t lying on top of his cast. The lights blinked off a moment later, plunging the room into blackness. In the refugee center there had always been a light left on at night. So many of the people he’d known there were afraid of the dark and though it had been difficult at first to sleep with the light on, he’d gotten used to it. If someone wanted to attack him, it would be so easy in the dark.

Josef closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep. He was unused to the nighttime noises in this place – the squeak of the cots, the assortment of coughs and snores. Someone nearby – was it Leo? snored like a train rumbling over rocky terrain. Such a loud noise coming from someone so quiet. Josef pulled the thin blanket closer and pressed his face into the musty pillow.

He couldn’t block out Leo’s snoring. Instead, he tried to find a rhythm in it that he could use to lull himself asleep. He imagined he was in a first-class train car headed to Amsterdam, the last place he and Albert had visited together before the war.

He pictured Albert dozing in the window seat, a china teacup and saucer rattling on the fold-down table in front of them. They’d long since finished their tea and a few buttery biscuits. Albert’s sweater, pulled tightly over his big belly, was dotted with crumbs.

Josef saw himself balancing a sheaf of term papers on his knee. He should grade them for his graduate students but there would be time for that later. He watched Albert as he slept. Albert’s wire-rimmed eyeglasses sat crookedly on his nose. Josef resisted the urge to straighten them or take them off and carefully fold them and place them on the table.

The scenery out the window was a blur of verdant expanses giving way to anonymous fields surrounding the few remote train stations they passed along the way. Josef felt his body relax for the first time all day. He concentrated on the image of Albert’s hand lying open on the table, the slightly red raised scar on his palm that he’d had since childhood.

And then the train was hurtling out of control, brakes screeching ineffectually, the other passengers screaming. Josef woke up, his body seized with panic. He shot to his feet, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, as though the thin layer of wool could actually offer him some protection.

The dormitory was still mostly dark but someone nearby lit a small lamp. A trio of men hurried toward him. Josef felt his breath quicken again and the few bites of his supper that he’d managed to choke down began to rise in this throat. His chest rose and fell, as though it was a separate entity from the rest of his body, and he felt lightheaded. The men paid him no mind, though, passed him by and then Josef saw Leo sitting upright on his cot, keening back and forth, crying and making the most alien, strangled sobs he had ever heard. Sam’s cot creaked as he jumped up and brushed past Josef to help Leo. The other men who had gathered around Leo patted his shoulders, and one of them slapped Leo’s face but it didn’t do anything to calm him down. Sam shooed the others away and sat down beside his friend. He grabbed Leo’s shoulders and turned him so they were facing each other. Leo kept crying, his eyes pressed shut, shaking his head back and forth, silently mouthing the words no, no, no.

Sam squeezed Leo’s arms tightly and after a second Leo stopped shaking his head but he still sobbed like an animal caught in a trap. By now, many more of the dormitory’s inhabitants were awake and watching what was going on, talking amongst themselves.

He should be in the invalid’s ward, someone said. How someone like that managed to stay alive in the camps is beyond me, said someone else. He sure is loud for a deaf mute, said the bearded man who had fetched Josef in from the porch.

Deaf, that explained so much. Josef dropped his blanket from his shoulders and sat down on the edge of his cot. He watched Sam try to soothe Leo. He had the feeling that Leo’s nightmares were a regular occurrence.

“Come on, Leo, open your eyes,” Sam muttered. Nothing. Sam began tracing shapes on Leo’s hand. He caught Josef looking at him and said, “I’m writing ‘wake up,’ sometimes it works.”

Josef nodded. “This happens a lot, then?”

Sam sighed. “Yes. Once a week or so. We’ve tried to get him to talk to the head-doctor when he visits the infirmary but it’s hard, because of the deafness.”

“I had no idea,” Josef confessed.

“Yes, my sister and I thought he was mentally deficient at first. But once you get to know him, he’s really quite normal.” Sam shrugged almost apologetically. “Except for these episodes.”

Another mystery solved, Anna was Sam’s sister. Josef grinned. “You know,” he said, “I thought she was your girl.”

Sam seemed as though he was about to reply, but just then Leo’s eyes blinked open and he looked around, unsure of where he was. “You’re all right,” Sam soothed, trying to catch Leo’s eyes, which darted back and forth.

Slowly, slowly Leo stopped shaking and he was able to lock eyes with Sam.

“You had the nightmare again,” Sam said, enunciating each word slowly. “But you’re all right now.”

Leo breathed deeply. He nodded. He looked across at Josef and blushed with embarrassment. Josef gave him an encouraging smile and shrugged his shoulders. Don’t worry, Josef tried to telegraph over to him.

It took another ten minutes for Leo to be calm enough to attempt another go at sleep. The men drifted back to their cots. Sam sat on the floor beside Leo’s bed until Leo began snoring again.

“You’ll get used to it,” Sam told Josef, quietly returning to his own cot.

“I don’t know about that,” Josef replied. He went back to bed and cloaked himself in the blanket again. He still wasn’t sure he’d be able to fall asleep but if Leo could do it, he would at least try. Despite everything that kept him up at night, the paralyzing fear and distrust, he’d never had a night terror like that before. Josef burrowed in against the less-than-fresh pillow and closed his eyes. Soon he was on the Amsterdam-bound train again, Albert still dozing beside him. Josef leaned against Albert and rested his head on his shoulder. The stack of term papers slid off his lap and drifted to the floor.