"I'm scared, Liesel."
He stares at his reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror, the comb in his right hand, poised to brush through his sleep-tousled locks. The ship has just pulled from Perth, and beneath their feet they can feel the rocking as the boat cuts through the Indian Ocean waters. She watches him, leaning against the far wall, her ankles crossed. She had smiled as she watched him, but as his sentence finishes, she straightens and frowns.
"What are you afraid of?"
As the comb continues to hang in the air, she smiles and pushes herself from the wall; in a few paces she is beside him, and takes the plastic from his grip, and gently tugs the teeth through his hair. He grins at her insistence.
"I can't..." He shrugs as he slowly moves from the bathroom, squeezing past his wife to sit upon the bed in order to be closer to her height. "I can't remember why I wanted to do this."
"You wanted to do this," she murmurs, leaning down to place a small kiss on his crown, "to honor your mother." The plastic scratches against his scalp pleasantly. "To honor Isaac, Sarah, Rachel." She finishes, sets the comb down beside him on the linen, place both hands gently on either side of his face. His eyes regard her carefully as he hangs on every comfort she gives. "To reassure yourself that their deaths were not meaningless." He struggles against the tears that cloud his vision; he's forced to blink and as he does, she kisses his forehead, a whisper of lips against his skin. She brushes away the tears before they can stain his cheeks. "You wanted to do this because you have so much love in your heart, and you need to know that the world is good, so that you can continue loving." Her own voice hitches at the end, but she forces herself to swallow and clear away her own grief. Max shudders once, sniffs severely, and smiles so brightly up at her. His hands come up between her arms, push a few locks of hair behind her ears, thumbs caressing her cheekbones.
"And you need to do this because it will honor them. Because your testimony will tell the world that they—that you, that everyone—did not suffer in vain. You will pass on your own story so that this can never happen again."
The Ulpan in Sydney had only just begun when they had made the decision to head to Jerusalem; they were lucky to have learned the few practical verbs and grammar rules they were able to pick up in the few months under such disorganization. But learn they had, and Liesel's Hebrew, still too weak to gain any respect from native speakers, is considerably better than Max's stuttering insecurities. But here he swallows, and opens his mouth with confidence.
"I love Liesel Meminger." They had not learned the way to phrase a proper "I love you;" this was as close as they could come to saying the words in a third language.
Weeks ago, it had been the first thing he had ever said to her in the reborn language of the Jewish state.
She smiles softly, too happy for words, and meets his lips with hers.
"I love Max Vandenburg."