“I don’t think,” she protested, “it makes any difference—”
“That’s no good,” Carl said harshly. His hands started trembling again, but he gripped the sides of his chair seat, and they stopped. His dark eyes fastened on me. “I met Tina,” he said in a low level voice, trying to keep feeling out of it, “three years ago in a concentration camp in Russia. If you want me to I will tell you why it was that they would never have let us get out of there alive, not in one hundred years, but I would rather not talk so much about it. It makes me start to tremble, and I am trying to learn to act and talk of a manner so I can quit trembling.”
I concurred. “Save it for some day after you stop trembling. But you did get out alive?”
“Plainly. We are here.” There was an edge of triumph to the level voice. “I will not tell you about that either. But they think we are dead. Of course Vardas was not our name then, neither of us. We took that name later, when we got married in Istanbul. Then we so managed—”
“You shouldn’t tell any places,” Tina scolded him. “No places at all and no people at all.”
“You are most right,” Carl admitted. He informed me, “It was not Istanbul.”
I nodded. “Istanbul is out. You would have had to swim. You got married, that’s the point.”
“Yes. Then, later, we nearly got caught again. We did get caught, but—”
“No!” Tina said positively.
“Very well, Tina. You are most right. We went many other places, and at a certain time in a certain way we crossed the ocean. We had tried very hard to come to this country according to your rules, but it was in no way possible. When we did get into New York it was more by an accident — no, I did not say that. I will not say that much. Only I will say we got into New York. For a while it was so difficult, but it has been nearly a year now, since we got the jobs at the barber shop, that life has been so fine and sweet that we are almost healthy again. What we eat! We have even got some money saved! We have got—”