Deep Sea

by Annika Thor

  And what if the relief committee refuses to continue paying her way for another three years? Then she’ll have to get a job, too.

  Stephie’s head is full of worries today. She wishes she could just empty it.

  “You think too much,” Vera often tells her. “Life is to be lived, especially when you’re young. Not to sit around agonizing over everything.”

  Oh, Vera. It’s five-fifteen. Vera ought to have had her picture taken and left the photographer’s studio by now. If May’s family had a phone, Stephie would be able to call her. But they don’t, and she can’t leave the little ones alone to go down to the Co-Op on the corner and make a call.

  When May’s mother comes home at five-thirty, the table is set and dinner is ready. Stephie is exhausted. Before Auntie Tyra even gets to take off her coat, she has to comfort Ninni and bark at Erik for having ruined Gunnel’s paper dolls. Kurre and Olle vanished with their marbles as soon as they heard her footsteps coming up the stairs.

  The sausages are a little crisp and the horseradish sauce lumpy. But the potatoes are boiled just right.

  “What’s up?” Auntie Tyra asks. “You look so worried. Not had bad news from your parents, I hope?”

  “No,” says Stephie. “No, in fact they got that box I sent.”

  Stephie wishes she could confide in Auntie Tyra. She’s the kind of person who always seems to know what to do, and even starts doing it before anyone else has time to think. In spite of her heavy body and her frequent complaints that her back and knees hurt, she’s almost never sitting down, and she’s almost always cheerful. Even when she loses her temper, she sounds as if she’s just pretending to be angry. And no matter how busy she is, she always has a clear, calm look in her eyes.

  Those eyes are now focused on Stephie.

  “I certainly hope no one’s been treating you badly. If they are, they’ll have me to contend with, I can tell you that!” Stephie can’t help laughing. Auntie Tyra makes it sound as though Stephie’s just a kid, like Erik and Gunnel.

  “No, no,” she says. “I’m just tired. We’ve got so much homework.”

  The moment passes. What could she have said to Auntie Tyra about Vera, anyway? It’s too late now. She didn’t go along to the photographer’s with Vera, and she didn’t stop her from going, either.

  “Kurre and Olle!” Auntie Tyra calls. “You two are in charge of the dishes. Stephanie has homework to do.”

  The younger boys grumble, but do as they are told.

  How could Stephie have stopped her? Vera wanted to go, and maybe this is her chance for a better life.

  “But if I were you, Vera,” Stephie mutters to herself, “I wouldn’t have gone.”

  6

  Just before six o’clock, Stephie runs down to the Co-Op to phone Vera. But the line is busy, and the shop is about to close. Stephie tries three times as the girl behind the counter becomes increasingly impatient. When the line stays busy, Stephie has to give up.

  The next day, she goes to the tobacconist’s near school on her lunch break to try again. This time the phone rings, but there’s no answer. And the minute school ends, she has to take the tram down to the Wood Pier to catch the boat out to the island. They have Saturday off this week, so Stephie will be spending an unusually long weekend with Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert.

  Stephie stands out on deck, watching the islands and skerries pass. The sun shines on the granite cliffs, making them gleam in hundreds of shades of gray, brown, and pink, bright against the blue sea. The bushes and stunted trees growing up out of the cracks between the stones are surrounded by a maze of light green vegetation. Here and there, purple bunches of wild pansies glitter.

  She remembers her first boat trip to the island, when everything just looked gray. Now her eyes can distinguish the colors of the archipelago.

  There’s no one in the harbor to meet her, but her red bicycle is leaning up against Uncle Evert’s boathouse. Someone has thoughtfully saved her the trouble of carrying her heavy schoolbag and her bag of dirty laundry all the way across the island.

  The thoughtfulness warms Stephie’s heart. She feels even happier when she sees the Diana tied up along the jetty. That means Uncle Evert is at home. The last time she visited the island, she didn’t even see him. Leading the life of a fisherman often means being at sea for a week or more. One’s return depends on the weather, the winds, and now, what with the war, the presence or absence of foreign warships.

  Stephie straps her book bag to the clamp and hangs her laundry bag from the handlebars. Throwing a leg over the frame, she bikes off through the village and past the yellow house where Nellie lives. She’ll visit with Nellie and Auntie Alma tomorrow, if not this very evening.

  The wind is mild on her face, and the bicycle rolls easily. Now that Stephie has learned to ride a bike, she can hardly remember how difficult it was at first. But every time she passes a certain turn in the road, she recalls one time, long ago, when Vera rescued her from the ditch.

  Stephie and May have been talking about starting to ride their bikes to school to save on tram fares. Stephie could take her bicycle to Göteborg, and May could get a used one. But Stephie doesn’t really like the idea of biking in city traffic, so she is secretly pleased that May can’t seem to save up for a bicycle.

  Coasting down the last slope, Stephie comes to a halt at the gate. Aunt Märta is outside, hanging laundry. Most of the clothes are Uncle Evert’s fishing things, heavy blue overalls and plaid shirts.

  “Here I come, bringing more laundry!” Stephie calls out, waving her bag.

  Aunt Märta turns around and gives a wave, a clothespin in her hand. Stephie parks her bike and joins her at the washing line. Lifting a shirt from the basket, she hangs it next to the one Aunt Märta is hanging, taking clothespins from the little cloth bag around Aunt Märta’s waist.

  Their shoulders rub. That’s about as close as anyone ever gets to Aunt Märta. “Thank you so much for bringing the bike,” says Stephie.

  “Nellie did it,” Aunt Märta tells her. “She and Alma were here yesterday, and I asked her to ride it down to the boathouse and leave it there for you. Her bike is still here. You can ride it back to Alma’s tomorrow, and then walk home afterward.”

  Stephie turns around and sees Nellie’s blue bike by the outbuilding. She can hardly believe her little sister rides such a big bike now.

  “You will be going to see them tomorrow, won’t you?” Aunt Märta goes on.

  She makes it sound urgent, as if there were something hidden in those words.

  “Sure,” says Stephie. “I was planning on it. Maybe even this evening.”

  “No,” Aunt Märta tells her. “Wait until tomorrow. Uncle Evert and I want you all to ourselves tonight.”

  Stephie feels her heart rise. It amazes her that Aunt Märta, the same stern, strict Aunt Märta she was so intimidated by when she first came to the island, talks to her like this! She’d like to give her a hug, but she knows Aunt Märta would only shrug her off with some line about being too emotional.

  When Stephie lifts a second shirt from the laundry basket, Aunt Märta scolds her. “There’s no need for you to be hanging up laundry before you’ve even changed out of your city clothes,” she says. “You go on in and see your uncle Evert.”

  Uncle Evert is at the kitchen table, sitting with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. He stands up when she comes in.

  “Stephie,” he says. “It’s been much too long!”

  He pats her cheek. Uncle Evert isn’t given to hugging, either.

  Stephie takes out a cup and sits across from him. She pours herself some of the brown liquid from the coffeepot. She’s learned to drink coffee here in Sweden, though of course it isn’t real coffee. Real coffee is rationed, and saved for special occasions. Their everyday “coffee” is a bitter chicory surrogate.

  Uncle Evert watches her movements between the sugar bowl and her cup.

  “Lucky Märta didn’t see you do that,” he says. “She’s being extra
careful with sugar—well, with everything that’s being rationed. No more than one cube per cup, that’s the rule.”

  “Well, if I only have every other cup,” says Stephie, “then I can put two cubes in mine!”

  Uncle Evert laughs. “Every other cup! Aren’t you the clever one?”

  “How’s the fishing going?”

  “Same as always,” Uncle Evert tells her. “We fetch a good price for whatever we manage to catch. But we often come home with lots of space in the hold. The German ships hound us out of our fishing grounds. Not to mention worrying about hitting a mine …”

  He goes silent. But Stephie knows. Mines have blown up twelve Swedish fishing vessels since the start of the war. Nearly fifty crew members have been killed.

  “We have no choice,” Uncle Evert adds. “We’ve got to fish, don’t we? What would we live off otherwise?”

  Uncle Evert’s large hands are resting on the tabletop. The long scar along the bottom of his left thumb stands out white against his suntan. Stephie wishes she could reach out and touch him, but she knows he wouldn’t like it.

  “We’re heading out on the Diana again tomorrow,” he tells her.

  “Tomorrow? But I’ve just come home!”

  “I know,” he says. “But the navy’s asked us for help. Every available fishing boat is turning out. One of the Swedish submarines—the Wolf—has been missing since last Thursday. It disappeared during a maneuver. We’re going to throw our nets and see if we can locate it on the seabed.”

  “What about the crew?” Stephie asks breathlessly.

  “They may still be alive,” Uncle Evert tells her. “There’s still a chance. While there’s life, there’s hope.”

  Aunt Märta comes in with the empty laundry basket. She sits down at the table and pours herself a cup of coffee, too. Then she lifts a sugar cube from the bowl, breaking it in two and returning half to the bowl. Stephie’s and Uncle Evert’s eyes meet. They smile.

  “Have you heard anything from your parents?” Aunt Märta asks.

  “Yes, there was a card from Mamma this week. She sent her best regards and asked me to thank you for the package.”

  “Any news?” Uncle Evert asks.

  “She’s going to sing in an opera. The Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute!”

  “An opera?” Aunt Märta says, sounding incredulous. “There? At the camp?”

  Stephie nods. “That’s what she wrote.”

  Uncle Evert looks pensive. “Maybe so,” he says. “Maybe that’s exactly the kind of thing they have to do at the camps. To be able to go on being human.”

  Stephie looks right into Uncle Evert’s eyes—eyes as blue and as deep as the sea.

  “Yes,” she says. “I think so, too.”

  7

  On Saturday morning when Stephie wakes up, a ray of sun is peeking in through her little gable window. Her room is nestled just under the eaves. She stretches, looking around her. On the dresser is the photo of her whole family on an outing in the Wienerwald. She brought the portraits of her parents to May’s, where they hang over her bed. She wants them near her. But nowadays, since she shares a room with May and her sisters, she no longer talks to Mamma and Papa in their frames, as she used to.

  Stephie gazes at the photograph. Mamma, Papa, Nellie, and herself. She remembers how her father asked a nice older man to take the picture for him, so they could all be in it. How hard it was to get Nellie to stop playing and stand still for a minute. How Mamma made a joke about Papa, that he ought to have been wearing his hiking boots and have a feather in his hat.

  “You look like you got lost on your way to the office, even though we’re on a walk in the woods,” Mamma had said, laughing.

  They made another outing to the Wienerwald, just a year later. Only, when they got off the tram at the last stop, Neuwaldegg, men in brown uniforms were standing there. One of them stopped Papa.

  “Go back into town,” the man in brown ordered him roughly. “We don’t want any Jews poisoning the fresh air out here. The Wienerwald is for Austrians.”

  Papa faltered, lurching back as if he had been slapped across the face.

  At that very moment, Mamma burst into an Austrian folk song. People stopped to listen. Many smiled. Two young girls joined in.

  Mamma sang the whole song, all the way to the very end. Then, taking Stephie and Nellie by the hand, she turned around and went back to their seats on the tram. Papa followed them.

  That was their last outing to the Wienerwald.

  “Only the nobility have breakfast this late in the day,” Aunt Märta says ironically when Stephie, finally dressed and ready, appears at the kitchen door. But it doesn’t bother her. She hears the smile behind the words.

  Once she’s had her breakfast, Stephie calls Vera’s number again. This time, Vera picks up, but her voice sounds peculiar, and she says she can’t talk now. Stephie assumes there are other people around. They agree to meet as usual on Wednesday evening, and hang up.

  “Is there something wrong with Vera?” Aunt Märta asks.

  “Not really,” says Stephie. “She was busy, that’s all.”

  “That child could use some looking after,” Aunt Märta says. “She shouldn’t be blowing around the city, from pillar to post.”

  “Well, she does have a job.”

  “I believe you know what I mean,” says Aunt Märta.

  Uncle Evert has gone down to the harbor to check on the Diana and hear if there’s any news. The harbor’s where you go if you want to know the latest, both about the island and about the world at large—or you go to see Miss Holm at the post office.

  Aunt Märta is putting cans and boxes on the kitchen table. She’s already got a brown cardboard box ready, too.

  “Let’s organize the package,” she says. “Then you can send it when you go into the village.”

  They work together, packing oatmeal and flour, canned meats and dried prunes, tins of peas, and a bottle of cod liver oil.

  “Ugh,” says Stephie.

  “It’s good for you, though,” says Aunt Märta. “I’m sure they need the vitamins.”

  The last thing Aunt Märta does is to take a small glass jar and fill it with sugar. Stephie looks at her in surprise. Their precious, rationed sugar?

  “Right, that ought to do it,” Aunt Märta says, hiding the jar of sugar deep down below the other goods. “That’s everything, I think.”

  She closes the box, tying it up sturdily with string. Stephie writes the address label. Frau Elisabeth Steiner, Block C III, Theresienstadt. Papa and Mamma have separate addresses at the camp. Apparently not even married couples are allowed to live together. Stephie wishes she knew more about what Mamma and Papa’s life in the camp is like. How often they see each other, how they spend their days, whether Mamma makes meals for Papa out of the things Stephie sends.

  Stephie ties the box to the back of Nellie’s bike with a leather strap. It’s so heavy she can’t manage to ride up the hill and has to get off and push the bike.

  When Stephie arrives at the post office, Miss Holm is talkative as usual.

  “Stephie!” she says, clapping her hands. “It’s been ages! Just think, I remember as if it were yesterday the first time you came in here with Mrs. Jansson. I think you wanted a stamp, didn’t you? And here you are, all grown up. Grammar school girl, at that.”

  Stephie gives her the box, and Miss Holm weighs it. The postage costs nearly as much as the things inside it. The only way to send anything to Theresienstadt is by registered mail.

  “So what about Vera Hedberg?” Miss Holm asks. “She lives in the city now, too. Are you still such good friends?”

  “Yes,” says Stephie.

  The best way to deal with Miss Holm is to say as little as possible. She repeats everything she hears, usually with more than a little exaggeration.

  It’s not far from the post office to Auntie Alma and Uncle Sigurd’s house. Elsa and John, Nellie’s foster sister and brother, are playing in the yard, but th
ere is no sign of Nellie. Stephie parks Nellie’s bike and knocks. Auntie Alma opens the door.

  “Stephie!” she exclaims. “I’m so glad to see you. Come on in. Nellie’s upstairs. You go on up if you like. Bring Nellie down. I’ve got sweet rolls and juice for you.”

  Stephie goes up the stairs. Auntie Alma and Uncle Sigurd’s house has three upstairs bedrooms, a big one for the grown-ups and two smaller ones. Nellie used to have one of them to herself, with Elsa and John in the other. Now Elsa and Nellie share.

  The door to the girls’ room is shut. Stephie knocks, then opens it. The minute she steps inside, she can feel that something has changed, and not only because Elsa’s bed is here now, on the wall opposite Nellie’s.

  Nellie is sitting on the edge of her bed. She looks sullen. Stephie sits down next to her and takes her hand. Nellie goes stiff. Stephie wonders what’s wrong, but she knows Nellie well enough not to ask outright.

  “I like your dress,” she says instead. “Is it new? Did Auntie Alma make it?”

  “ ‘I like your dress,’ ” Nellie mimics her nastily. “Do you think I’m still seven or something?”

  “I was only saying you look pretty in it,” Stephie replies.

  Nellie is really very pretty, with her long black braids, rosy cheeks, and big, dark eyes.

  “Pretty!” says Nellie. “With this hair?”

  “What’s wrong with your hair?”

  “Well, maybe it’s all right to go around looking like a gypsy in the city, but not here! I wish I looked like everybody else. Fair hair and blue eyes. I wish I were Swedish!”

  “Are you being teased?”

  Stephie remembers being bullied by Sylvia the first year she lived on the island. But Nellie’s always been very popular at school.

  “No,” says Nellie. “But I can see with my own eyes. I look like a changeling. Can’t you tell?”

  Nellie points to a photo on the dresser. It’s from a photographer’s studio, and very recent. Auntie Alma and Uncle Sigurd are sitting next to each other. John is on Auntie Alma’s lap. Elsa is standing next to her, leaning against her. They all have open, round faces with light-colored eyes and blond hair. Nellie is standing behind them. In their company, she looks like an exotic plant, a princess out of the Arabian Nights.