The train gains momentum as it moves down the tracks. I am not so fond of trains as when I was a boy. Then they seemed like an adventure; now only a necessity.
I hear voices behind me. American voices. A girl says, “Mommy! Mommy! It’s just magical.”
A chatterbox.
“Hello, Monsieur.” A little girl with blonde ringlets and wide blue eyes appears before me. She gives me a wide smile. “What’s that?”
I smile. I have not smiled in a long time, and my muscles ache with the effort. “It is my treasure.”
Her mouth opens in an “O” before her mother leads her away with a quick apology.
I think of another child with dark hair and eyes. My joy. Gone for over seventy years now, she lives only in my heart. Taken from me by another train. Now I carry her mother, my last treasure, to meet her in the air at Treblinka.
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