“Good evening, Madame Duval,” the officer greeted her in French.
His green eyes were studying her closely. He was smiling in a friendly way that made her shudder.
Lina squeezed her hand.
“Maman,” she said.
The officer bent down to the girl’s face.
“You’re as beautiful as your mother, aren’t you?” He straightened up and spoke again to Claire. “Frau Sternberg and her daughter are to come with us.”
Amanda came into the living room carrying her suitcase. Danielle was behind her.
“Where are you taking them at this time of night?”
“Don’t worry, Madame Duval,” said the French gendarme, stepping aside for Amanda. “They’re going where they belong.”
“Follow me,” the German officer ordered Amanda in German.
Amanda hugged Danielle, who burst into tears and refused to let her go.
“Lina!” shouted Danielle. The officer looked down at her in surprise.
“We can’t waste any more time. Both of you, into the truck,” he added in German.
Amanda took Claire’s hands and smiled. Danielle stood paralyzed, staring at Lina.
“I’ve been ready for some time,” Amanda said. “Don’t cry,” she told Claire, moving closer to her and whispering something in her ear so that the others wouldn’t hear. The officer grew even more impatient. Amanda took Lina by the hand and the two of them went out through the doorway. Confused, the soldier realized he had made a mistake. He looked scornfully at Danielle, as if she was to blame for it.
Lina accompanied her mother without asking any questions, without saying goodbye, or looking back. Her heart began to thump uncontrollably, making it almost impossible for her to breathe. She had no time to count her heartbeats, she might get them mixed up. Besides, she had to concentrate to understand how they were going to escape, what the plan was that her mother had formed.
Maybe Claire would run over and prevent them from taking her. She was listening for a cry from Danielle for the two of them to run and hide in their perfect hiding place, where no one, not the German officer, nor the French gendarmes, nor the mailman, nor anyone else would be able to find them.
God is a shadow. God is asleep. God can’t see us. God has abandoned us. God doesn’t love us, she repeated to herself in a senseless litany.
Silence. The roar of the truck engine shattered the calm. She was blinded by the headlights. Still holding on to her mother’s hand, not knowing where she was putting her feet or where she was going, she stumbled along blindly, her throat parched, along a path she knew stone by stone but that now was alien to her.
Oh, Remi, why didn’t I go with you, why didn’t you take me to cross the Pyrenees together? Oh, Mama, everything would be different if I had boarded that ship with Viera. Oh, Mama, why didn’t we go to Paris with Hilde . . .
She began to shiver with fear. It felt as if her heart was pumping too much blood for her tiny body to bear. She wasn’t cold now, just the opposite, enveloped in a hot cushion of air. Papa? She shouted noiselessly.
What if she prayed? Maybe the other God, the one who promised salvation, would hear her. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . You see? Nobody hears us. God doesn’t exist. He never did. At least not for us. Where is Father Marcel? At the abbey! Let’s run to the abbey!
The sky was so low it seemed ready to crush them at any moment. The leaves by the roadside were swept up in a sudden gust, and then Lina heard the wind begin to howl.
It’s a sign, we have to escape. Nobody will find us. Let’s go, Mama. This storm is our sign!
“Frau Sternberg, may I see your documents and your daughter’s?”
You see, Mama? He’s going to let us stay. It wasn’t us they were after. It was a mistake. What have we done wrong? Why do we have to flee from everywhere?
The officer was still unsure about the girl’s identity. How could he have made such a mistake? He leafed through the documents mistrustfully. Lina lowered her head: she didn’t want him to see her crying. She felt she was floating in the air, leaving them all far below. Shutting her eyes as tightly as she could, she saw beside her both her parents, Hilde, and Viera, even Remi with his pet ball.
“I’m not going to hurt you, let me help you,” the officer said, but the little girl still seemed in her own world.
Papa, we’ll soon be with you. Don’t go, wait for us. Mama needs you, and so do I. Now we really are alone.
The wind blew a cloud of dust against the truck’s headlights. The driver pressed down on the accelerator to keep the engine going. The officer walked alongside the girl in the hope of hearing her say something that would confirm she was a German Jew. But Lina still did not react, wandering along aimlessly until she stumbled against a stone and fell. She curled up like a newborn baby in the wet grass, waiting for someone strong and brave to come to protect her.
In the darkness, amid the mist and swirling dust, Lina could feel how a giant with warm, muscular arms lifted her so high she touched the clouds with her face. I’m safe. She hugged the giant, nestling against his chest as she felt with one hand for his heartbeats. She recognized her father’s cologne and smiled contentedly. My Lina, she heard, and regained hope.
“I knew you wouldn’t abandon me,” she said, under her breath, in German, and slumped against him.
The officer smiled with satisfaction: he had got what he wanted. He passed her up into the truck.
“Mama!” she shouted, as a baby began to cry. She had no idea where the noise was coming from. She couldn’t tell how many other people were in the back of the truck.
Amanda lifted the suitcase and dropped it inside. The officer helped her clamber into the truck, then used his flashlight to help them find a place to sit.
“Up at the front, you can sit next to the old woman,” he said, dropping the canvas flap.
Amanda and Lina found a spot and the truck set off. Suddenly, they heard a shout:
“Elise!” it was the voice of Danielle in the distance.
21
They slowly became accustomed to the gloom, and faces began to stand out. Lina smelled something akin to the stench of the dying dog; it occurred to her that all those in the truck were also waiting for someone to save them from being devoured by the Nazis. Better to die alone than be eaten by the fish.
Amanda began to weep. The woman next to her took her by the hand to comfort her, and whispered in her ear:
“You saved your daughter.”
Amanda rolled up her eyes at this bitter irony: How can she tell me I saved her, when I’ve condemned her to death?
“Your daughter was one of those who could disembark,” the woman went on. She stank of dried urine.
As Amanda shifted her foot in the darkness, she felt a pool of urine on the floor of the truck. The old woman had been sitting there for hours. Amanda still didn’t understand what she was talking about. Closing her eyes, she listened as the woman continued to speak above the sound of the crying baby.
“Your daughter disembarked in Havana. You saved her.”
After a long silence, Amanda reacted. Was this the voice of an angel? Was she dreaming?
“Frau Meyer?”
The other woman nodded, ashamed of the desperate state she was in.
“When we reached the port they wouldn’t allow us off the boat. We tried for a week. We were all deceived. When we sailed from Hamburg they already knew our visas weren’t valid for entry into Cuba. Just when Amanda was starting to forget her Viera’s face, a German officer had to come and take her away in order for her to hear news of her daughter. Three years and three letters into the void had been her sentence. But now she realized that writing on the sheets from the mutilated book had been necessary for the meeting with Frau Meyer to happen. If the mailman hadn’t taken and returned the letters bearing her real name, and hadn’t given her away to the Germans, they would never have met again. Knowing that she had confirmed the safe passage of h
er forgotten daughter—that Viera was safe on an island lost in the ocean, far from the savage hordes, hatred, the stench of death—she felt more strongly than ever her single remaining aim: to save Lina as well. Only then, knowing her two girls were safe, could she die in peace.
“Forgive me for having judged you,” said Frau Meyer.
Amanda embraced her joyfully. For a fleeting moment she relived that May night in Hamburg, at the foot of the ship’s gangway. In her mind she saw the huge ocean liner and her daughter disappearing hand in hand with a stranger into a crowd of people who were escaping to the promised land.
“I’ve lived three years with the guilt of having abandoned my daughter, and now here you are to calm my fears. Thank you for looking after her.”
“Viera is a very strong girl.”
Hearing her daughter being talked of in the present tense, Amanda smiled with a serenity she was no longer accustomed to. And seeing her mother smile, Lina’s confidence was restored. They were going to be all right.
“Her uncle was allowed to come on deck, then they took a small boat to the port,” Frau Meyer continued. “We weren’t allowed anywhere near the coast.”
“Luckily you didn’t have to go back to Germany.”
“My husband and I were sent here to France, but when war broke out and the Nazis invaded, it was too much for him. He couldn’t take any more. Where could we flee to, if nobody wanted us? So here I am, all on my own. I wonder why we didn’t choose Great Britain when we were brought back to Europe. It’s far harder for the Nazis to reach there, but who knows . . . ?”
Feeling that her fate was already preordained, that she was being guided by a higher force, an angel watching over her, Amanda studied the faces of the condemned in the truck. For the first time since she had left Berlin, she felt fortunate. Even Frau Meyer’s calamities made her feel grateful, for an inexplicable chain of events had combined for her to have news of Viera. Her daughter had been chosen to disembark.
Lina was bemused by her mother’s attitude. She did not remember Frau Meyer, and even thought she might be an impostor.
An old man collapsed and fell to the truck’s uneven floor, banging his head on an enormous iron bolt. No one reacted; no one tried to help him. The thud woke the baby, who started to howl once more.
“He’s dead, like the dog,” Lina said.
The blood pouring from the man’s forehead mixed with the pool of urine at Frau Meyer’s feet. Lina lifted her feet to keep them dry. She stared in terror at the old man, and saw the vein pulsing on his wrinkled, grimy neck.
Amanda was sleeping peacefully. She had found Viera.
Winter of 1940
My little Viera:
Darkness has come over us.
Can you see how right I was to let you go, even though my heart suffers for it every hour of every day? Only God is witness to the strength I had to summon to abandon you. Only he could give me the determination to take your sister by the hand and walk away from you.
I would give everything to be able to hear you, to read your words. I know these letters that go back and forth across the Atlantic will reach you someday. Who knows when, who knows whether I’ll be there that day, but I’m convinced they will end up in your hands, because they will be the only thing I can bequeath you, because I have written every word to the rhythm of our heartbeats. Yours, mine, Lina’s, and your father’s, the man who left angels for us. Whenever you receive them, you’ll know I never abandoned you, that we never forgot you, my sweet Viera.
The world grows darker with each passing day, but I know that where you’re living the sun will always shine for you, and your life will be an endless summer.
Now I have to protect Lina from the night.
Even though by now your Spanish must be perfect, I’ll go on writing to you in German, because that way you’ll remember my voice and my lullabies.
I read these few pages from the botanical album over and over, because I know that before you fall asleep you will read them too. In them you’ll see the flowers and plants of the tropics surrounding you. Take deep breaths, grow, become strong, and think of us. We’ll always be here, however far away, to protect you.
Even if you forget us, that doesn’t matter, I’ll understand. All I ask is that you don’t forget your name. You are a Sternberg. Viera Sternberg. That’s the only way, for as long as the darkness allows, that I’ll be able to sleep in peace.
All my love,
Mama
The Return
Haute-Vienne, August 1942
22
A shriek woke Amanda: the dream was over.
The bloody body of the old man rolled violently out of the back of the truck. As it fell, it hit the rocky ground covered in withered leaves with a loud thud.
“He’s alive,” Lina said to her mother, still bewildered.
It was not yet day: it seemed as though it was still the middle of a spring night, although for Amanda the seasons had lost all meaning. She was immune to cold and heat, day or night. She thought she should have stayed awake, to try to work out which direction they were being taken in, if they were headed north or south, if they had crossed a border or were still in occupied France. She also needed to know which day of the week it was: time had acquired a new dimension in which every second counted.
Clinging to her suitcase as if it was an extension of her body, she jumped down from the truck and turned to help Lina and Frau Meyer.
Haggard-looking, with cracked lips and swollen legs, Frau Meyer twisted her ankle as she clambered down, trying to hide the stains of urine on her coat. Amanda breathed in gulps of the fresh air, attempting to rid herself of the rotten stench that seemed to have stuck to her skin and her impeccably clean and ironed dress. She looked around to get her bearings, to make out the boundaries of this bare field they were to be confined in.
The men were pushed toward one end of the fenced area. The women and children were herded into a hut with a half-open door, near the entrance to the camp. Beyond the barbed-wire fences Amanda could make out a gray forest, and in the distance several tiled roofs, with scattered chimneys and a church spire. Yes, she was sure they were still in Haute-Vienne, and felt protected knowing that Claire remained close by.
Apparently, there was only one hut for the women and children. The rest of the internment camp, flanked by four watchtowers, was filled with men. She heard some of them speaking Spanish, arguing. They were barking like dogs, trying to mark their territory with an illusion of freedom. They were dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to have a supply of cigarettes, and defiantly passed from hand to hand tattered pages from newspapers, their only source of information from the outside. The French guards ignored them and tried to stay as far away as possible, or at least at a safe distance.
Amanda calculated there were only about ten guards patrolling the camp. The ones who had accompanied them in the truck were there, and she could remember the face of the gendarme who had held out his hand to help her. In the darkness, his face had seemed stern, and she had thought he must be at most twenty years old. When the sun came out, she realized he was a regular soldier and was maybe the same age as her. He had thick eyebrows, a dark complexion, and an unruly mane of hair kept in place with brilliantine. Tall and slim, with dark lines under his eyes, he walked stiffly, as though short of breath. When she heard him talk to the other gendarmes, she guessed he must be the same officer who had told Claire where they were being taken.
Lina discovered she was not the only child in the camp. She saw a group next to the hut and went up to them. They surrounded her at once and began to question her with great curiosity: was she on her own or with her parents, was she from the north or the south, had she been tortured, had she ever seen a dead body, had she ever shot a German soldier? Lina responded to all these questions with a loud laugh, the best way to deny them.
“Where did you come from?” asked the tallest boy, who appeared to be the leader.
“I fell from heaven,” Lina
said without thinking. Her wide-open eyes and smile won them all over.
For Amanda, the plan to save Lina required precision and speed. Every second counted; her daughter’s life depended on it. A single mistake could ruin the only chance of escape she had come up with. They would only have to survive the next few days: they could make do without access to drinking water, hot food, or a blanket to sleep under. Lina would be kept amused with her new friends, who it seemed were free to roam around the camp.
Fortunately, Amanda realized, the women’s hut was only half full, which meant more would probably be arriving. She looked for a corner on her own away from the windows, because the nights would turn colder.
“If I were you, I’d come down this end, where we all are. If you stay over there where you are, God knows who they might put next to you. The last we heard was that they’re going to fill the camp with Jews and Gypsies, and you know what they’re like.”
Amanda listened to the woman while she was laying the stained mattress on a fragile frame. She smiled timidly at her, and saw her neck was red and raw. As she struggled to turn the mattress over, the woman gave her a hand.
“We all have to help each other in here. That’s all we can do.” Amanda nodded her gratitude, and the woman continued: “So, is your husband a communist too? I thought only I was unlucky enough to marry a rebel. Now we’re all paying for it. We’ve ended up with husbands who are useless: having a husband who’s a prisoner is like being a widow, isn’t it?”
Amanda stayed politely silent. She was determined nothing and no none would divert her from her plan. She wasn’t interested in becoming friendly with the other women in the hut, and yet she didn’t want to create suspicions that could cause problems for her.
The woman turned on her heel and walked down to her end of the hut.
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