Winter Kept Us Warm. Anne Raeff
his arms and legs spread out. He seemed thinner lying in the snow like that, a stick man in a child’s painting, and Leo grabbed her hand and twirled her round and round, first in one direction, then the other so that she would not get dizzy and fall. Isaac began clapping faster and faster, so they spun faster and faster. Then they fell to the ground next to Isaac, and the three of them lay there looking up at the sky. “It’s always warmer when it’s snowing,” Isaac said.
“If you fall asleep, you’ll still freeze to death,” Leo said.
“Like in the siege of Stalingrad,” Isaac said. “That’s what happened. After a while people couldn’t stay awake. As long as you stay awake, you’re okay.”
Leo got up. “Well. I’m not taking any chances,” he said. “Come.” He held a hand out to each of them, and he pulled them up out of the snow. They ran then, holding each other up, ran as if something dangerous were following them, or as if they had someplace to go.
Ulli took them to her apartment. Until that night, she had never had a guest. For the first time, she used the living room. Their clothes were wet, and they were cold, so they made a fire and drank. The blue and green velvet sofas and armchairs and the heavy drapes and the dark wood molding that traced the ceiling frightened her, but with Isaac and Leo there, the room seemed almost cozy.
“Nice place,” Leo said.
Ulli told them how she had found the apartment and how she waited for the rightful occupants to return, hoping selfishly that they would not.
“You hoped for their deaths, then,” Isaac said softly, gently even, as if he were explaining something to a small child. There was nothing judgmental about his tone. He had simply established a fact.
“Yes,” she said, for it was true.
“Must you always be so serious, Isaac?” Leo asked, refilling their glasses.
“Not always,” Isaac said.
Leo lifted his glass. “To not being so serious, for God’s sake,” he said, and Isaac and Ulli lifted their glasses and drank, too.
They continued to drink. Leo demonstrated his photographic memory. He left the room with the prewar phone book and committed the first ten pages to memory. While Leo was in the kitchen memorizing the phone book, Isaac and Ulli waited in the living room. Isaac wanted to know where she had learned to speak English so well, and she told him about her mother and then about her father’s business and how she had come to despise the relentless staccato clicking of typewriters.
“Actually, I love the sound of typewriters,” Isaac said. “When I was stationed in Arizona, I sometimes stayed up all night typing. I would copy the newspaper from cover to cover just so I could hear the sound of the typewriter.”
Leo burst in, telephone book in hand. He rattled off the names, insisting that they check every one, though after the first few pages they did not pay very close attention. When he was finished, Ulli and Isaac applauded and they all drank to Leo’s photographic memory. Leo wanted to dance, so she turned on the radio and the two of them danced while Isaac watched. Then Isaac took over and Leo watched, but after one song, Leo took over again and the dancing turned intimate, and Isaac sat on the couch watching. Leo pulled her in closer, his arms thick around her, and he moved her toward the door. If Isaac had said something—“good night” or “where are you going?”—she would not have let herself be led to the bedroom, to the bed that was not her bed, but he was just watching, and she did not want someone who watched. She wanted someone who moved, and that was Leo.
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