A Feather on the Water(100)

Martha stared at the address Kitty had written at the bottom of the page. Arnie was living in the Bowery. No wonder he hadn’t replied to any of the letters she’d sent to Williamsburg. She grabbed the pad of airmail paper from the desk drawer and started writing.



“Did you tell him that you’d met someone else?” Delphine asked when Martha told her all about it over their evening meal.

“No. I thought that if he knew that, he might refuse—out of spite.”

“What will you do if he agrees to a divorce? Could you do it from here?”

“I don’t know,” Martha replied. “Kitty might be able to help. Now that she’s working in an attorney’s office, she could probably find out. I might be able to hire someone to act for me, without me actually being there.”

Delphine nodded. “What did you say in the letter? Did you give some other reason why you wanted to break up?”

“I just said that I’d be returning to the US before the end of the year, and I wanted to be able to lead an independent life.” She glanced at her plate, digging her fork into what remained of the cabbage. “When I met Arnie, I thought that following him to New York would give me the confidence to make a new start. I guess I learned the hard way that marriage isn’t really the way to achieve independence.” She pushed the morsel of cabbage around her plate, her mind thousands of miles away, imagining Arnie in the kitchen of the apartment in Williamsburg, opening the letter, screwing it into a ball, throwing it across the room, then reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Of course, he was no longer in that apartment. But it made no difference. Unless he had changed his whole way of life as well as his address, he was unlikely to react favorably to her letter. She was clinging to the hope that he had met someone else and wanted a divorce as much as she did.

“Do you think he’ll agree?” Delphine put down her knife and fork and pushed her plate aside.

“I don’t know,” Martha murmured. “I hope so. I don’t know what I’ll do if he refuses.”



The following month brought the first real ray of hope for the DPs: Belgium put in an official offer to take twenty thousand coal miners. When the news came through, she and Stefan danced around the office. He went to pass it on to the blockhouse leaders, while she ran to the hospital to tell Delphine.

Delphine clapped her hands together when she heard. “Twenty thousand! That’s a big number!”

“They’re only taking men under the age of forty,” Martha explained. “But there are hundreds here who could qualify.”

“What about wives and children? Are they allowed to go?”

“They have to leave their families behind for three months until they’ve proved themselves in the mines.”

“And what about the money? Do they say how much they’ll be paid?”

“It’s between five and seven dollars a day. If they can stick with it for the two years of the contract, they’re allowed to look for other jobs. After five years they’re eligible for Belgian citizenship.”

Delphine’s eyes widened. “There’ll be a stampede.”

“I know. Stefan’s already gone to tell them.”



There was a constant stream of applicants throughout the day. Martha had to tell them that it wasn’t going to be her decision who would be chosen. The Belgian government was sending officials to each camp to screen potential recruits. Medical examinations would be required, as well as all the paperwork.

Among the applicants was Marek, the father of Martha’s godson. She could hardly speak when he sat down in front of her to answer the questions required on the form. She had always known that a time would come when little Rodek would disappear from her life. But the reality of it was like a fist squeezing her heart.

If that wasn’t upsetting enough, Delphine came to the office halfway through the afternoon, grim-faced. She said she’d found Dr. Jankaukas weeping in the side room at the hospital.

“What’s happened?” Martha jumped up from the chair. “It’s not Anka? Or Mikolaj?”

Delphine shook her head. “They’re both fine. It’s this.” She tilted her head toward the pile of forms lying on the desk. “He wanted to apply.”

“To be a miner?” Martha gasped.

“He said he’d do anything to get a proper home for Anka and Mikolaj. But he knows he wouldn’t even get an interview—because of his missing fingers.”

There was no time for Martha to dwell on the wretchedness of what Delphine had described. Part of her was glad that the doctor was debarred from applying. It would be such a terrible waste for a man of his talent to spend his days hewing coal. But there were other men waiting in line who were vastly overqualified for such a job: men who had been architects, bank managers, teachers in their former lives.

It wasn’t until the office closed its doors for the day that she had a chance to talk to Stefan. It had occurred to her that he might want to apply himself. Would the prospect of an assured job in Belgium be more tempting than an uncertain future with her?

He shook his head when she asked him. “If it was a coal mine in America, I would say yes.”

Martha’s eyes went to the floor. Was it selfish of her to hold out this hope that he would be able to go with her to the US when the camp was closed? Could she sit back and watch him miss chances like this, with no real certainty of being able to take him there as her husband? With no response yet from Arnie, she could only hope and pray that America would soon follow Belgium in opening its doors to DPs.