Legacy of Silence (6 page)

“Now what can that possibly mean, Lore?” And again came that hammering in the chest. “What kind of a letter is this?”

“Something to do with getting money out, I should guess. What else can it be?”

“If only we could telephone! Oh, between my parents and Walter, it’s unbearable. If I could only do something instead of waiting and waiting. It’s doing nothing that’s the worst.”

One night at dinner she burst forth, “I can’t stand it here any longer without knowing what’s happening at home. I’m taking the train to Berlin tomorrow to see for myself.”

The other three at the table stared at her.

“You what?” cried Lore. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Lore, it’s the first of August tomorrow. What are we doing here? We can’t just stay forever.”

Dr. Schmidt seemed about to say something, stopped, and finally said it. “Caroline, you’re right, unfortunately, right about staying here. You can’t. Your visas will expire, and—as a Swiss citizen I’m ashamed to tell you that you won’t be allowed to stay in this country. They are sending people, political refugees, back across the border if they don’t move on. That starts this month.”

From across the table, Caroline met the doctor’s compassionate eyes. No one spoke.

Lore stood up. “I’m going upstairs to throw some clothes in a suitcase. I’m not a refugee. I can come and go as I please, and I intend to find out what’s going on. No, sit where you are, Caroline, I only need a few things. It’ll be a turnaround trip. One day, or maybe two, and I’ll be back.”

“I think,” said Caroline, “I’d better start putting my things in my trunk so I’ll be ready in case …”

There being no need to say more, she went to her room. The plain little room, really not much more than a clean white cubicle, with a linden tree close to the window, had become a refuge and was now no more. Where would the next room be? The next bed? All was uncertain again. A delay, Walter had said …

She was folding dresses when Lore came in. “Here are the other two rings. Put them with the first ones. They’re our savings. What are these stains on your pink linen?”

“Oh, that. Those are grass stains. I wasn’t able to wash them out. Not very expert at laundry, I’m afraid.”

“My goodness, whatever were you doing?”

Sometimes, not often, Lore made her feel as if she were ten years old, being scolded by M’amselle.

“Obviously, I was on the grass, Lore! We went up the hill one day to the pastry shop in the village, and coming back down, I fell on the wet grass.”

Was she imagining that Lore’s look was queer? Well, no matter. There was too much else to worry about besides whatever Lore might be thinking.

I
T
was very late on the fourth evening when Lore and Dr. Schmidt, who had gone to call for her at the train, returned. Caroline, coming down from her room, was stopped on the stairs by their voices.

“A great deal can happen in a couple of months.” That was Dr. Schmidt.

“No doubt his father got hold of him. And there’s such great, patriotic fervor now, spreading like a forest fire or a disease. ‘Germans are being mistreated in Poland and we have to stop it’—oh, you’ve read it all. You know.” That was Lore.

“His peers must have gotten hold of him, too,” said Dr. Schmidt. “At that age, just out of the university … The schools are hotbeds for this stuff.… Some of the best minds can be turned. Have been turned.”

Caroline, grasping the banister, descended fearfully.

“She was too young, anyway, to get herself involved. I said so from the start. Now I hardly know how to tell her.”

“Oh, the poor girl,” cried Amalia.

Caroline rushed into the room. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“No one’s dead, no one’s hurt. Come here. Please, Caroline.”

“What is it? For God’s sake, tell me. Has anything happened to Walter?”

“No, he’s not hurt or anything. He—Oh, Caroline, I don’t know how to tell you, but he’s not coming back here. It’s impossible to believe, but it’s true. He’s gone over to the other side. I checked, and it’s true.”

“Other side? What are you talking about?”

In sorrow and concern, they had all drawn their chairs close, as if to protect her.

“What a pity,” Amalia murmured. “What a pity.”

Lore drew a long breath. “It’s his father. It must be. I went to the house. There was no other way to find him. At the university, there were some fellows. They didn’t want to talk, but I said I was his cousin, and they said he’d gone away to the country. That’s all they would, or could, tell me. So then I knew there was more to it, and I went to the house. There were only servants home. No family. I said my sister was his girlfriend and hadn’t heard from him. The chauffeur was there, washing the car. He said Walter was away someplace, and when I asked where, he said, well, Walter was a member of the S.S., and you didn’t question where they went. He was a Party man now. My sister should stay away. I said innocently, “A Party man? That’s wonderful.” I said I hadn’t known Walter was so active in the Party. One of the maids said yes, it was quite a change for him,
very recent. He had been seeing a Jewish girl and the family found out. But the boss, his father, had finally opened his son’s eyes. They all seemed very pleased, very proud.”

Caroline stared at the three faces, at her own numb hands, and at the slowly spinning walls.

“He has gone insane,” she said, very low. “Either that, or I have.” Then she jumped, seizing Lore’s shoulders. “Tell me this crazy story again. Do you know what you’re saying? Do you?” It was as if the full force of the news had suddenly, really, struck her. And she screamed again, “It’s not possible! No, no, you don’t understand what you’re saying!”

Softly, Lore reminded her that she herself had told them about Walter’s family, and he had told her, too.

“More than once, Caroline, heaven help him.”

“No, Lore. You can’t have understood. This is Walter you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re saying,” she sobbed.

“What can I do? What else can I say?” And Lore threw up her hands.

Dr. Schmidt, in his quiet way, reasoned, “Caroline, my dear, it makes no sense that anyone would have invented such a tale. Everything tallies, what is known about the father’s family ties, and, above all, more than anything, the fact that Walter has not returned.”

“He seemed such a fine young man,” lamented Amalia. “An intellectual, still so full of youthful spirits.
An idealist, too, I thought. How can he have become a Nazi? It seems such a contradiction.”

“Contradictions and deceptions are common to humanity,” Dr. Schmidt replied. “You have only to look around you. It’s perhaps best that Caroline has to find out now, so she won’t be hurt even more cruelly later in life.”

Words went buzzing past her head. She had risen to stand in the center of the room, looking around for the door, the hall, the outer door, and the night outside. To flee, to run! To find an explanation, to find Walter, to cry to him:
Why? Why? You love me. You can’t do this. You don’t mean what you’re doing
.

Her stomach heaved, and she ran upstairs to vomit in the bathroom. Afterward, she sank down on the cold floor.

“So he’s left me,” she said aloud. “Everything that happened means nothing. Nothing.” And she lay there.

“Open the door,” Lore called. “You’ve been in there too long. Caroline, let us help you. Please open the door. Must we break it down?”

Amalia had brought hot herb tea. “It will soothe your stomach.”

Dr. Schmidt came into the bedroom to offer a sedative. “If you think it will help you, I have a pill here. My best advice, though, is to fight things through with all your faculties intact.” He held her hand. “You’re a strong young woman, Caroline. I can tell.”

But she did not feel strong, merely strong enough and prideful enough to hold back her tears until the door had closed and she could be alone in darkness. There she wept, her body shaking with long sobs, muffled lest Lore hear and come back again.

She raked over the past, the months, weeks, days, and hours, from that first meeting in the park. Had she missed a clue, some remark or gesture that should have warned her? No, she had simply trusted her own belief in love. But perhaps, as Father often said, nothing is really “simple,” not even love.…

There came now a jumbled recollection, fragments of random speech:
peace, sometimes at any price … my gentle mother … I dread going home … the pressure … the survival of the family … people don’t argue with my father …

They must have been tearing him to pieces, those people. Pity moved in her throat, and she longed for him, to hold him, to speak to him.

But he wears their insignia! He has renounced me and what I am! Then bitter rage fought the pity, and she thought of her parents and of their suffering because of those madmen, so that a dreadful panic overran both pity and rage.

The sailing date from France was only twelve days away. How could they leave without knowing about Mama and Father? She beat the pillow and implored the air. There was no answer. There was no answer to anything.

O
N
the ninth day, a note arrived in the mail. Unsigned, it was in her father’s hand: Will see you shortly. The Schmidts and Lore puzzled over it. Obviously it meant that they were on their way to Switzerland.

“Without a visa? I don’t understand,” Caroline said.

Dr. Schmidt stared down at his breakfast plate. When he looked up, he spoke somberly. “I don’t want to tell you this, but I must. There’s a new order this month, August: Refugees without a transit visa will not be admitted. They will be turned back at the border no matter what their circumstances.”

Horrified, Caroline repeated, “Turned back? What will happen to them?”

She need not have asked the question. No one spoke. She was sick. She had been stabbed. Against all reason she had thought, and hoped, that the note might be from Walter. Now this note, mysterious and alarming, had come instead. And she read the future exactly as the others at the silent table were reading it. No, not exactly as they were reading it, for those two fugitives—the bright, brisk, hopeful man and the soft, skeptical, dreamy woman—were
her father and mother
.

She saw them standing before some uniformed official, he indifferent and hasty, they desperate and supplicating, perhaps dusty and worn out.… She
was sick again. And excusing herself, she ran toward the stairs.

From behind came Dr. Schmidt’s voice. “It’s a horror. Those poor people. That poor girl.”

“She’s been sick for the last two weeks, ever since the Walter affair,” Lore said. “And now this. She vomits every morning.”

“Her nerves,” said Amalia. “I’m glad you’re with her, Lore, glad she doesn’t have to go the rest of the way alone, with all that’s happening to her.”

T
HE
little house, during the days remaining, took on an atmosphere of gentle concern as houses do in which someone is ill or has died. On the last day the husband and wife took Lore and Caroline to the train.

“I will keep in touch with people I know,” the doctor promised, “and if there is any news of your parents, Caroline, you will get it at once. Meanwhile, look forward, and God bless you both.”

She would remember the Schmidts to her own last day.

T
HE
ship was crammed. Not only was it almost the end of the tourist season, but there was also the looming war; permanent residents were racing back to safety, and refugees were racing out of danger. This was farewell to Europe, the end of the past.

Although it made no sense to do so, Caroline immediately read the passenger list. By some miracle, could her parents have managed to board? Or could Walter? And, as the shores of France slipped away and the ship moved through the Channel, she strained for the last look, as if somehow she might glimpse them standing on the shore. Then she braced herself, left the railing, and went below.

At home they had had their separate rooms, so being cooped up here with Lore was a new experience. It was uncomfortable for her to be sick in the cramped bathroom within hearing distance of another person. The North Atlantic was rough; nevertheless, she spent hours on deck. Tossed against the ship’s rail, she groped her way to a chair, there to lie wrapped in blankets and gaze at the cold, tumultuous clouds, the heave and swell of the dull-green ocean.

“You look miserable,” Lore said. “Wouldn’t you be better off in the room?”

“Father told me once that fresh air is good for seasickness. Also, that one should look steadily at the horizon.”

“Yes, and eat a chicken sandwich. I’ve heard that, too. But I still think you should see the ship’s doctor.”

“Do you have to wonder what’s wrong with me besides being seasick, Lore? Maybe I have a few things on my mind, on my heart?”

“I’m only trying to help you, Caroline.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to be impatient.”

Lore sighed. “I understand.”

They kept to themselves. On this crossing there was none of the gaiety that they had always read about. Faces were thoughtful, and conversation in the lounges and the dining room was subdued. People crowded around the ship’s officers, asking for news.