Love and Treasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

called out in Hungarian from the back of the truck where he was loading a cargo of furs and carpets. As his captives were uninterested in learning any English beyond the words “Lucky Strike,” and as they resisted even the German their superiors spoke fluently, he’d had no choice but to acquire a few words of their language.
    One of the Hungarian soldiers popped his head into the back of the truck. Jack indicated to him that he should grab an end of a rolled carpet. It still surprised the POWs to see Jack pitching in with the heavy work, humping out the crates and boxes one at a time, heaving them into the bed of the deuce-and-a-half, then running them over to the old Wehrmacht warehouse where the army had decided to store the contentsof the train. It wasn’t that he was looking for extra work or trying to set an example or, God knew, looking to give the POWs a break. On the contrary. He would have been happy to see every last enemy soldier put to hard labor cleaning up the streets and countryside instead of lying around the POW camps while the civilians did all the work. He was just looking to get the damn job over with as quickly as he could.
    The carpet securely lodged, Jack headed deep into the truck to see how much more could fit into the load. He winced at the musty odor of the furs and remembered how every spring his mother would pack up her mink stole and sheared-beaver coat, even the rabbit muff she’d had since she was a girl, and deposit them at the French dry cleaner to be put in cold storage for the summer. Fur wasn’t meant to be kept baled up in a metal boxcar parked on a sunny railroad siding. He worried that the warehouse wasn’t much cooler. Who knew what state the furs would be in when they were finally sent back to where they belonged? Half drunk on the musk rising out of an armload of moth-eaten minks, he heard a commotion, a woman’s voice, a bark of laughter, shouting. He lifted the canvas flap and peered out.
    One of the POWs had a young woman by the arm. He was trying to drag her away from the train. She shouted at him, scrabbling at his hand. The POW was laughing at her. The woman’s face was alight with fury.
    “Hey!” Jack yelled.
    The Hungarian POW looked up, surprised. He dropped the woman’s arm. She slapped him across the face, the slap sounding flat and feeble in the hot afternoon. Now the other POWs started to laugh. The GIs just stood there, looking mildly interested in the proceedings, for a change. A corporal named Sully called out, “I think they know each other, Lieutenant.”
    “I do not know this man,” the woman said, in English.
    She rubbed at the arm the Hungarian had been gripping. Her cotton blouse had been worn so long and washed so many times that what had once been a floral print, perhaps, was now no more than a faded smear of pink on a ground of grayish white. The woman checked to make sure that its tired seams had not given way beneath the Hungarian’s thick fingers.
    She had the unmistakable look of a survivor of the camps. Even months after their release, they were thinner than the other DPs, let alone the Austrians, who were only now beginning to experience the kind offood shortages the rest of occupied Europe had suffered throughout the war. The woman’s face was gaunt and shadowed, her frown severe, but her hair was growing back in a riot of cheerful red curls.
    “Can I help you, ma’am?” Jack said, jumping lightly down from the truck. “ Gyerünk vissza dolgozni! ” he said to the POWs. Of all the Hungarian phrases he’d learned, “Back to work!” was particularly useful, since the Hungarians’ interest in finishing the task of unloading the train was severely hampered by their desire to continue to receive U.S. military rations. They knew that once this work was done, they’d be sent to a POW camp.
    “This train,” the woman said, “it is from Hungary?” Her voice was low, husky. Her accent had a British inflection. She pointed to the