Homemade Kings and Queens

Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old fashioned way, Paulie liked to say. Queuing in a never-ending line for food at Dachau.

That was Paulie's little joke. Mirry hated it. The other story that made Paulie laugh was the day his nephew Sol thought the holocaust was a Jewish Bank Holiday.

Paulie was always laughing about it. 'If you can't laugh', he'd say in his thick Jewish German twang, 'what can you do?' If you caught him off guard when his sleeve rode up you'd see the scars on his arm where he'd tried to scratch out his numbers with a kitchen knife back in the early fifties. If he saw you looking he'd tease you about it. 'I'm going to get my name and address tattooed there soon. At my age there's a good chance of forgetting yourself!' It didn't make much sense but you laughed anyway because it's what he wanted you to do.

Mirry was the quiet one. You imagined she had enormous inner strength – that she didn't need to hide her pain behind a smile and a one-liner. The truth was she didn't talk much because she'd still not learned more than twenty words of English. But you should hear her belting out incomprehensible songs from her youth after a couple of shots of schnapps at a bah mitzvah.

Paulie was a social butterfly – had been since they arrived. Back then it was parties and boxing. Nowadays it was chess. He'd wake up before the rooster every day, dress up in his Sunday best and take a folding chess board and a bag of homemade kings, queens and bishops down to Central Park and sit at his favourite table under the English oak until Walter turned up, late as usual, and they'd play until it got dark. Some people have said Paulie was out too much, that he should stay and keep Mirrie company. But who am I to have an opinion about that?

They didn't have any children. We don't ask why. Instead Mirrie had seventeen German shepherds that she'd named after the guards from the camp. She fed them well, but Michael Winterman told me she kicked them with hard, sharp jabs if they got in her way. He worked in the vets, so it could be true. But Michael Winterman is known for jumping to far-fetchedness, so I secretly doubt it.

They both died separately and apart on the same day. Paulie collapsed in the park, ruining the conclusion of a hotly played Rook's Manoeuvre. Nobody told Mirry, but at the same time, give or take a white bishop to e7, she opened the door to their house, chased the German Shepherds out into the street and then dressed herself up in her nicest skirt and blouse and shot herself.

I like to think that they were happy, despite everything. They laughed a lot, after all.