Empty ever after

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We walked through the cemetery, Mr. Roth’s arm looped through mine. The cane in his left hand tapped out a mournful meter on the ice-slicked gravel paths that wound their way through endless rows of gravestones. The crunch and scrape of our footfalls were swallowed up and forgotten as easily as the heartbeats and breaths of all the dead, ever. The swirling wind demanded we move along, biting hard at our skin, blowing yesterday’s fallen snow in our faces.

“Bernstein!” Mr. Roth defied the wind, pointing with his cane at a nearby hunk of polished granite. “You know what it means in English, Bernstein?”

“No. I know stein means stone.”

“Amber.”

“Amber, like the resin with the insects in it?”

“Amber, yes. Bernstein, like burned stone. German, such an ugly language,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But at least the words sound like what they mean.”

We walked on.

“A lotta dead Jews in this place, Mr. Moe.”

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