Chapter 2
He isn’t stressing out, he isn’t and if anyone says he is then they are lying.
Or maybe he’s the liar. He’d make a good Haman then.
But right now there’s a little girl dressed as a princess staring up at him with a wide smile and bright eyes, her father standing behind her in a clown costume.
”Ah?” Erik prompts.
The father smiles. “We saw you move your furniture into the apartment a week ago and we thought, why not introduce ourselves on Purim?”
Erik hesitates. “How did you know I was Jewish?”
He blushes and covers his daughter’s ears for a moment. “You let out a string of curses in Yiddish”
”I know curses!” The girl proudly cheers. “Not in Yiddish though”
A pained look crosses over her father’s face. “Well, you uh- might not be religious but what’s a religious yid to a non-religious yid? Just the absence of a kippah and permanent anxiety”
”I think the anxiety stayed with me” Erik comments idly amused. “Or that might’ve been the war”
Music creeps its way through the open door, a parade of dancing men suddenly pushing into Erik’s apartment and dancing with vigour as Erik can only watch in a dazed horror.
The father finds his way to Erik’s side again. “The war, you said? Were you in the camps?”
Erik fumbles for a moment, not used to the blunt way of Americans. “I—“
”A survivor?” One of the dancing men stops and waves Erik over with enthusiasm before grabbing onto him and pulling him into the dancing circle. “Then let us dance my brother! Let us dance! For we are alive and Hitler Yemach Shemo is six feet under!”
A bubbly feeling enters Erik’s stomach as the dancing seems to speed up, they’re dancing the hora, when’s the last time he danced the hora?
They jump and dance in a circle, the little girl dressed as a princess watches in awe as the Tallit and peyas fly around the fervent dancers, graggers raised and the tongue of their ancestors being sung.
Is he mutant or Jew? Jewish or a mutant ancestor? Erik’s head hurts.
”We survive! Our Purim day here!”