Authors: Belva Plain
The letter was signed “Jacob Sandler,” and there was a postscript: “We are religious people.”
“In the best sense,” said Father, who was plainly much moved. “Imagine, inviting us, willing to share with strangers. I told you that somewhere, somebody would.”
They had sent a snapshot labeled “Jacob and Annie.” There was nothing to distinguish them from millions of men and women who were neither old nor young, thin nor fat, handsome nor ugly, merely ordinary.
“You wonder,” Father said, “what makes them different enough to do what they’re doing.”
In the dusk, sunk in a corner chair, Caroline observed the scene. Her father, true to his nature, was shaking his head over the miracle. Her mother was looking around the room at the Dresden figurines of shepherds and shepherdesses, caressing with her eyes the photographs, the books, and the piano—always the piano—as if she were already seeing them for the last time.
And then she remarked, “I suppose they will be surprised to meet you, Arthur. And you, Lore, with your mother’s gold cross around your neck.”
“Nonsense, Eva,” Father said. “More than a few Christians are also departing from this insane asylum, or trying to.”
His father, Caroline thought. His father, with the swastika in his lapel. We should have talked about it. We should have met the truth head-on.
Her own father seemed abruptly transformed, taking swift charge, as in the old days that she remembered: the cheerful doctor, hurrying off in the morning, sure of himself and sure of his answers.
“God bless these people, whoever they are. I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “We won’t cost them any more than a few days’ lodging, if that. I’ll find a job in a hospital. I’ll clean the floors and do anything until I can get a license to be a doctor again. Eva will give piano lessons. Caroline, you can tutor in French or teach English to other refugees.”
“Yes, and she’d better help me with English,” Lore said, “so I can get back into nursing.”
“Only one thing remains.” Father was listing everything on his fingers. “Our American visas. I’m going to ask again on Monday, the first thing in the morning. They must be sick of seeing me. And Eva, you’ll take your jewelry and get what you can for it. Don’t take the first offer. Try as many places as possible, although I don’t imagine there’ll be too much difference among them. They all know Jews are desperate.”
Timidly, Mama asked, “You mentioned something, didn’t you, about some doctor who wanted the piano?”
“Yes. Braun. He’s a decent sort, nothing Nazi about him. He told me he’ll pay the true price, doesn’t want to take advantage.”
“Maybe there are some more like him.”
“I will try, Eva. And when we have raised enough money, we’ll buy jewelry.”
“Then what’s the sense in selling mine now?”
“My darling wife, I’m sorry to say that nothing you’ve ever owned is valuable enough for our purposes. We need to have a few small, superb gems, rings that can easily be concealed.”
Lore spoke. “Let me be the first to leave. I can quickly get things into Switzerland. They won’t bother me, a working girl carrying my shabby suitcase.”
Mama burst out crying. “Who could have
thought? Who could have dreamed? Lore, you, too, to be driven out of your country.”
“I’m not being driven out, I’m departing of my own free will.” Lore laughed. “I don’t feel like starving my way through one more war.”
Her laughter lifted the mood. Mama wiped her eyes. Father was busy with his list. And nobody, immersed as they all were in this sudden activity, had looked toward—perhaps had not even thought of—Caroline.
I
N
the rear garden, the first snowdrops had poked through the hard earth, and it was warm enough, when wrapped in heavy clothes, to sit in the sun. The Sunday morning quiet was so profound that they spoke almost in whispers.
“Did you really think that when the time came, I would let you go without me?” asked Walter.
“I didn’t want to think about it. I only remembered that once you had said, ‘I shall miss you.’ ”
“That was a thousand years ago. No, I shall never miss you because I shall be with you.”
“What about your family? Are you going to slip away one day without saying anything, or what?”
“Slip away, and the sooner the better, because a real crisis is coming. I shall be finished with my examinations by May, and then there’ll be not only a showdown about entering the firm, but worse yet, about taking some sort of position in the Party. My
mother’s in a women’s group, my brother has an army career, my sisters are in Hitler Youth, and I am the only one who’s kept apart from all that. I guess you can have some idea,” he said grimly, “about the pressure that’s put on me. I hate being home even for an hour at dinner. My life is lived at the university.”
He got up, walked to the wall, and looked out over the avenue into the park. When he came back and stood before Caroline, she saw that he was extremely agitated.
“The strange thing is that in spite of all I’ve told you about him, I still cannot really hate my father. In all decency, how can a person forget the years of nurture, the labor that made life comfortable for me? When I was ill, when I wanted or needed something, he was there for me. No, I can’t hate him, but only what he stands for and what he is trying to make me stand for, too. Oh, Caroline, when can we get away?”
“Father and I are promised our visas for America by May. Mama’s number will not be reached for months. She wants us to leave without her. She says it’s wrong for us to be delayed because of her. They almost had an argument about it last night.” And feeling her lips quiver, she stopped for a moment before resuming. “One of the doctors who used to be a friend of Father’s, and certainly isn’t one now, has divorced his Jewish wife. Can you imagine, Walter?”
“Swine.”
“Father says if it comes to that, he’ll die with
Mother. But he doesn’t believe it will come to that. Or at least, he says he doesn’t believe it.”
“Of course, then, you didn’t have a chance to talk to them about us,” Walter said gently. “Not that they don’t already know.”
“It wasn’t the proper time. And you’re right, of course they know. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
“They haven’t wanted to hear it. But now they have to. May we go inside so we can tell them officially?”
The parents were still at the breakfast table, where they had been sitting since earliest morning, thrashing through their predicament. Caroline’s father looked up in surprise when Walter appeared with her.
“I wouldn’t disturb you at this hour,” Walter said, “if we didn’t have something important to tell you. Or, I should say, to ask you. Caroline, shall I do it, or will you?”
They looked so tired, she thought. This isn’t the way it should be. There should be laughter, congratulations and a bottle of champagne, as it’s described in all the books. Walter’s family would come for a gala dinner to get acquainted.…
“I think we can guess,” her father said.
“I hope you have no objection to me,” replied Walter.
“To you? No. In these last few months you’ve become a friend. It’s all the unknowns in this situation that trouble me and my wife.”
“Then the thing to do is to clear up the unknowns.”
“Sit down, please, and begin, if you can.”
And so Walter, deliberate and decisive, laid out the facts as carefully as though he were writing a chart for a study. Caroline, holding Peter close on her lap, watched their faces; Walter’s with the earnest lines on his forehead, Mama’s dismayed, as without words she observed her husband’s reaction, and Father’s, whose lack of any expression at all actually showed how stunned he was.
“That’s how it is,” Walter concluded. “The whole story.”
There was a moment during which no one said anything. Then Father asked slowly, “And what place does our daughter have in such a family? Surely you see that—”
“No place. She will have no place in it, nor will I. I will be a part of your family instead, if you will have me. I want to go with you to America and wait to marry Caroline there, so as not to complicate the visa that is being prepared for her.”
The two men regarded each other, measuring each other more astutely than either probably had until this moment.
“It is predictable, Walter, that you will be called to the army soon.”
“Quite right. My father is a decorated veteran of the last war, and with his connections has already made plans to place me in an officers’ corps.”
“In that case, how do you expect to get out of the country?”
“I’m told by people who ought to know that we have some months’ leeway. I’ll find an errand in Switzerland and go there very soon. I have money inherited from my grandfather, and I plan to bank it there temporarily.”
“You can’t get currency out now.”
“Y
ou
can’t, that’s true. But I can. There are ways.”
“So you have it all thought out. What do you think, Eva?”
“Well, you know what I have been thinking, that Caroline is too young. Yet now all of a sudden I’m remembering how, when we wanted to marry, people found all those obstacles that really weren’t there.”
“There was no war coming, Eva. We had just gotten over one.”
“All the more reason to act quickly now,” Walter said. “And if there should be no war, and possibly better minds will prevent it, who knows, why then—”
“Then we shall be in America, anyway,” Caroline shouted. Jumping up, she kissed her parents, and there, right before them, kissed Walter, too, and laughed and cried.
By late afternoon, everything had been talked over and decided. Caroline was to leave for Switzerland as soon as her visa was received. There she would wait
for her parents at the home of a Swiss doctor, a friend from Father’s days in medical school. Lore, as a “normal” citizen, would make one or two trips back and forth with jewelry, as already planned. And Walter, another “normal” citizen, would take a few weeks’ vacation in Switzerland.
“My friends have a house on the edge of a lake, not far from Geneva,” Father said in conclusion. “It’s a beautiful part of the world, a fine start for a long, happy life.”
I
t was dark, after a long day’s travel, when Caroline and Lore arrived at the Schmidts’ house and Caroline laid her head down in the strange bed. For a long time, she was aware of a hurried heartbeat. The future, in spite of all that had been said and all the measured, careful plans that had been made, was only an enormous, shapeless vacancy, a stepping off from a precipice into empty air.
Minutes passed. Then, gradually, the thought that Lore was in the next bedroom began to have a quieting effect. In a way, Caroline had resented her parents’ insistence, and also Walter’s, that Lore and she leave together. To have need of Lore had seemed to be a reflection upon her own abilities. Yet, remembering now the emotional scene at the railway station in Berlin, she saw how much more emotional it would have been if she had ridden away alone, if
alone she had strained for the last look at Father and Walter waving their hats and Mama waving a yellow handkerchief.
Walter, who had analyzed Lore surprisingly well, had named her “the stabilizer,” which indeed she had been. She had quieted Mama’s fearful premonition that this parting might be a permanent one, and so had turned the packing of trunks from tragedy into adventure.
The white spring night outside shone now on the enormous bulk of the new trunk. They had bought probably the largest one that was manufactured and had crammed it full.
“Take everything you own that’s wearable and useful,” Father said. “Don’t waste space on party clothes. Maybe a few nice summer dresses for your stay at the Schmidts’ and for Walter’s Switzerland visit,” he had added with his most knowing smile.
Clothing and a few photographs were to be the only remnants of the old home and the old life.
“Books you can buy, if all goes well,” said Mama, and most astonishingly for her of all people, had added, “Books are not a necessity. Clothes are.”
So her precious books, from childhood fairy tales to the histories and the classics, were left behind. More painful by far was the parting from Peter. Lore had found a home for him.
“One of my patients has a poodle she adores, but he’s quite old. Peter will be a new companion for him and for the family.”
Tonight was the first night in three years that he had not slept next to Caroline’s feet, and she wondered now how he was sleeping. Walter had understood.
“As soon as we set up our house, we will buy a poodle and call him Peter,” he said.
He understood everything. He was rare. She knew that to many older people her admiration of him would be dismissed affectionately as “infatuation.” But practical as she was—although her family didn’t see her that way—she had recently made a list of the qualities she needed in a husband. Measuring Walter against the list, she had quite honestly discerned only one slight flaw. Perhaps he did not have any sense of humor? But then, she was herself neither amusing nor witty. And then again, was there any reason for anyone to find humor in the world right now?
Yes, they were perfect for each other. They were very young, and life was long. And he would be with her in a few weeks.… Thinking so, she fell asleep.
T
HE
clang of ancient church bells woke her, so that for an instant there woke, too, a memory of the holidays they used to spend in mountain villages long ago when it was still possible to have such holidays. From the hall came voices, Lore’s and Mrs. Schmidt’s; they were saying something about the weather, which was apparently marvelous, and something about Caroline, who had slept late. Lore’s
brisk, familiar tone was encouraging, and determined to be equally spirited, she got up to dress, fastened her hair back with a bow, and went downstairs.
Dr. Schmidt was at the table having, as he explained, his second breakfast, a Sunday luxury before church. He must be about Father’s age, she thought. Although with his ruddy face and mustache he did not resemble Father, there was an undeniable “doctor” quality about him. Asked to explain what that meant, she would have been unable to describe the quality; it was simply there.