Deep Sea

by Annika Thor

  She serves the tea and sips hers thoughtfully. Stephie is all pins and needles.

  “I’m assuming you really want to continue on to high school,” Miss Björk finally says.

  “Very much.”

  “And that you’re prepared to make some sacrifices to do so?”

  Sacrifices? Stephie doesn’t really understand, but she answers, “Yes.”

  “In that case, I have a proposal,” says Miss Björk. “I’ve had a word with the headmaster, and he believes, as I do, that your grades and sharp mind are strong enough for you to skip the first year altogether. That would mean you’d only have two years to go, just one more than for the junior secondary diploma. We might be able to get the relief committee to accept that as a compromise. Of course, you’ll have to do the first-year courses on your own over the summer and take an entrance exam to the second year before the fall term begins. It won’t be easy, but I have an idea how to solve that, too. I’ll tell you in a few minutes. What do you think?”

  “Miss Björk, are you sure I can manage it?”

  “If I weren’t, I wouldn’t suggest it. There’s one further condition, though.”

  “What is it?”

  “That you call the relief committee yourself and put the proposal to them. It’s your future that’s on the line. You’re old enough to take on the responsibility.”

  Stephie nods.

  “And now for my second idea,” Miss Björk continues. “Since you’d be studying a whole year’s worth of coursework over the summer, I think you’d need help. Do you know whether your foster parents have already rented their rooms to summer guests?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “In that case, would you ask them if a woman friend of mine and I could be your summer tenants this year?” Miss Björk asks. “I’ll work on the math and science courses with you for a couple of hours every day. My friend’s from England, so she’ll give you English lessons. She’s the woman in that photo, by the way. Her name is Janice. You’re going to like her. You already speak German, so that’s not a problem, and I’ll get you a reading list.”

  “But don’t you want the summer off if you’re going to spend it on the island?”

  Miss Björk smiles. “Summer days are long,” she says. “And you’re the one who’ll have to do most of the work. You won’t have much of a vacation, of course. Any second thoughts?”

  “None.”

  “Well, then why don’t you call the relief committee right now? I’ll go out to the kitchen so you can have some privacy.”

  Stephie sits down at the desk, and Miss Björk leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. Stephie has to start by calling Aunt Märta to ask for the number of her official guardian on the relief committee.

  “You’re not going to call and nag, are you? I don’t think it’s any use,” Aunt Märta says.

  “Miss Björk has an idea,” Stephie tells her. “If it works out, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  She takes the opportunity to ask Aunt Märta if she already has tenants lined up for the summer. She doesn’t.

  “Miss Björk and a woman friend of hers would like to rent,” says Stephie. “For the whole summer.”

  “I’ll give her a good price in that case,” says Aunt Märta. “Ask her to phone me, and I’m sure we can work it out. Incidentally, did you hear they found the Wolf?”

  No, Stephie hadn’t heard.

  “On Tuesday,” Aunt Märta tells her. “A fishing boat from the island of Hälso thought their nets were stuck on the seabed, but it was the Wolf. The navy brought in divers. They said a mine had done it in. Everyone on board was dead. It was awful. Young fellows, most of them.”

  After their conversation, Stephie sits there for a few minutes, receiver in hand. Her mouth is dry. She gets her cup and takes a swallow of cold tea. Then she calls the number she’d jotted down.

  She knows the lady on the other end is the one who accompanied her and Nellie from the railroad station to the boat when they first came to Sweden. But she hasn’t seen her since. She can’t remember what she looks like, only that she was wearing a yellow suit.

  “Hello,” Stephie says. “Stephanie Steiner speaking.”

  “Stephanie,” the lady says. “How are you?”

  “I’m sorry to trouble you,” Stephie says, “on a Sunday and all.…”

  “Yes?”

  She has to pull herself together. Tell the woman why she’s calling. Like a grown-up.

  “It’s about my education,” she goes on. “High school. I want to continue very badly.”

  “I see,” the lady says. “But as I’ve already told Mrs. Jansson, we cannot afford to put every child through upper secondary school. You must realize you’re not the only one who wants further schooling.”

  “But you said yes to one year?”

  “As I told Mrs. Jansson.”

  “What about two?”

  “Two?”

  “My homeroom teacher has offered to help me through the first year over the summer,” Stephie explains. “So I can finish high school in two years.”

  There is silence at the other end of the line.

  “An interesting proposal. Let me think about it,” the lady says. “I cannot make such a decision on my own. What’s your homeroom teacher’s name?”

  “Hedvig Björk.”

  The lady asks for Miss Björk’s telephone number, and Stephie gives it to her. She promises to have an answer for Stephie within a week. They agree that she will inform Miss Björk of the committee’s decision since there is no telephone where Stephie lives. Stephie says thank you and hangs up.

  “I did it,” she rejoices to herself. “I did it!”

  Hedvig Björk and Stephie take a walk along the streets in the neighborhood, which are empty on a Sunday afternoon. Then Miss Björk accompanies Stephie through the park with the lily pond and down the steps to the tram stop at the crossroads. She waits with Stephie until her tram comes.

  “It’s all going to work out. I’m confident,” she says, giving Stephie a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving.

  The tram is almost full, but Stephie spots a seat behind two girls, one her own age, the other a couple of years younger. There’s something familiar about the older girl’s face, but Stephie can’t place her. She doesn’t know her from grammar school, anyway. Her hair is curly and strawberry blond, her eyes are blue, and her skin pale and freckled. In spite of being fair-haired and blue-eyed, though, she doesn’t look Swedish.

  As soon as Stephie sits down, the girl with the curly hair turns around.

  “Stephanie Steiner?” she asks in German. “Aren’t you Stephanie Steiner from Vienna?”

  13

  The memory flashes through Stephie’s mind like a bolt of lightning. Of course she knows the girl! They were in the same class at the Jewish school in Vienna for several months. The crowded classroom with far too many pupils. The hunger. The fear.

  “Yes, indeed,” Stephie says. “I’m Stephie Steiner. And you’re Judith Liebermann.”

  Judith nods. “I didn’t know you were in Göteborg, too,” she says. “How long have you been in Sweden?”

  “Since August 1939. What about you?” Stephie asks.

  “April.”

  Right. Stephie remembers Judith leaving the class sometime that spring. Nobody paid much attention. Children came and went at the Jewish school. People suddenly got emigration permits. But Judith’s family was one of the ones with the least chance of getting out to the West. Polish Jews, lots of children, no money.

  “Where are you living?” asks Judith.

  Stephie tells her. “And you?”

  “I’m at the Jewish Children’s Home,” Judith says. “This is Susie. She lives there, too.”

  Stephie didn’t even know there was a Jewish Children’s Home in Göteborg. Judith tells her about it. It is girls only, mostly teenagers, a few younger.

  “I started out with a Jewish family,” says Judith. “Since my parents are orthod
ox, Papa absolutely insisted I live with other Jews. It hardly mattered, though, as the family wasn’t at all religious. They never went to synagogue. They found me difficult, and after six months, they didn’t want me anymore. I was sent to a farm in Dalsland, where they made me eat pork and tend to the pigs in the barn. In the end, I cried day and night, so they didn’t want me, either. Then I was with a Swedish family in Borås, where I was more or less their housemaid. Still, they were the best family because they let me be. But last fall, they moved to Stockholm, and I ended up at the Children’s Home.”

  “What a lot of bad luck you’ve had,” Stephie says sympathetically.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that! Susie here was at five different places before she ended up at the Children’s Home last winter,” Judith tells her.

  Stephie looks at Susie, a girl with a sturdy build, frowning face, and sad eyes.

  “This is our stop,” says Judith. She gets up and touches Stephie’s arm. “Come with us for a while. Unless you’re in a hurry?”

  Stephie thinks for a second. It will soon be dinnertime at May’s, but she’s still full from Miss Björk’s English sandwiches. Besides, with ten people at the Karlssons’ table, one more body or less doesn’t really make any difference.

  “No,” she says. “I’m not in a hurry.”

  They get off the tram.

  “Are they stingy?” Susie asks. “The family you live with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Susie points to Stephie’s feet. “You’ve got your boots on still, and it’s May.”

  Though she doesn’t want to explain what happened to her shoes, Stephie doesn’t want Susie and Judith to get the wrong idea about Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert.

  “My spring shoes are at the shoemaker’s, being resoled,” she fibs.

  They walk up a little hill with ornamented wooden houses on both sides of the street. One of them is the Children’s Home.

  Judith shows her around the home and introduces her to the girls who are there. Several of them are from Vienna, and Stephie recognizes a few. One girl even arrived in Göteborg on the same train as Stephie and Nellie.

  “I had no idea there were so many of us,” she says to Judith.

  “I think there are about five hundred,” Judith tells her, “all over Sweden.”

  “Five hundred!”

  Judith looks at her coolly. “That’s not so many,” she says. “Just remember how many got left behind! And Sweden’s happy to receive Finnish children as refugees. Tens of thousands of them. They’re blond and blue-eyed and fit right in with the Swedes.”

  “You’re blond and blue-eyed yourself,” Stephie reminds her.

  “Yes, but I’m Jewish. You know what I mean.”

  They’re sitting in the girls’ dayroom. The house is full of noisy voices, footsteps on the stairs, kitchen clatter.

  “How about your family?” Judith asks. “Do you know where they are?”

  “My parents are in Theresienstadt. My little sister’s here.”

  Judith doesn’t say anything for a while.

  “You’re lucky to have someone in your family here,” she finally goes on. “And there are worse places than Theresienstadt.”

  “Where’s your family?”

  “Two of my brothers are in Palestine,” Judith tells her. “They left before me, in 1938. My sister wanted to go along, but Papa thought she was too young. By the time I got sent here, she was too old to come with me.”

  “Too old?”

  “You have to be under sixteen to be considered a child refugee,” Judith explains. “Edith had turned seventeen. You don’t seem to know much about all this.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “My oldest brother was shot,” says Judith. “Three years ago. Mamma, Papa, and Edith were deported to Poland in 1941. At first I got a few letters, but I haven’t heard from them for a year and a half now.”

  “Do you think they’re …” Stephie hesitates.

  “I don’t know. You hear terrible things about Poland. Death camps … and gas.”

  “Gas?”

  “Theresienstadt’s better,” says Judith. “You should be glad your parents are there.”

  They sit quietly. The house is full of sounds that seem both close and yet far away. Outside an open window, the fresh spring leaves of a large chestnut tree rustle in the wind.

  “Susie has two younger brothers,” Judith says suddenly. “She was nine when she came from Berlin. Her brothers were two and five, and Susie’s mother thought they were too small to make the trip.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Susie doesn’t know. She stopped getting letters six months ago.”

  “How awful!”

  Stephie feels ashamed. Because she knows so much less than Judith, because she gets cards from her parents, and because she isn’t actually all alone.

  “When the war’s over, I’ll go to Palestine and join my brothers,” Judith tells her. “I want to take part in building up a country of our own. A country for all the Jews, where no one can persecute us.”

  Stephie doesn’t know much about Palestine. She has a vague picture of a desert, the ocean, and burning sunshine. Somewhere far away.

  “Yes,” she says slowly. “That sounds good.”

  “I’m saving up for the journey,” Judith tells her. “I save every bit of money that’s left after my expenses here. That’s why I stay on at the Children’s Home. It’s cheaper than renting a room.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the chocolate factory. I never thought I could hate the smell of chocolate.”

  Stephie bites her lip. She feels spoiled asking for even more money for her studies, while Judith slaves away at a factory.

  “Come see us again,” Judith says when Stephie leaves. “You must be lonely, surrounded by nothing but Swedes. Though you do have your sister. But we’re your own people. We’re of a kind. Come whenever you like.”

  Of a kind. Those words echo in Stephie’s head along with the rhythm of the tram on the tracks taking her home to Sandarna.

  Of a kind.

  14

  Stephie feels a strange discomfort in her body, a throbbing heat she doesn’t recognize. She doesn’t want to think about Bengt and that porch, but she can’t get it out of her mind. What happened between the two of them was wrong and she wished she could undo it. But what if it had been a different boy? What if it had been Sven?

  Sven. She doesn’t think about him very often anymore. But now and then, the memory of him gives her a twinge, like an old wound that has healed but left a scar that pulls.

  They saw each other a few times the spring after Stephie moved out of his parents’ apartment. They would go to a café and talk about school, about books and music. But they didn’t talk about what had happened between them. Sven avoided mentioning Irja, but Stephie knew they were still seeing each other.

  She didn’t attend the party his family held to celebrate his graduation, in spite of his invitation, and in spite of the fact that she knew Irja wasn’t coming. When autumn came, Sven went off to the university in Lund to study literature. Now he is doing his military service somewhere near the Norwegian border. She hasn’t heard from him since last winter when he sent her a New Year’s card. She doesn’t have his address.

  Stephie doesn’t decide to get off the tram at Kaptensgatan. She just does. She doesn’t know why she’s there, but her feet know where they’re going as they lead her out the tram door.

  She stops in front of the tavern where Irja works, and where Sven used to pay her sneak visits.

  Through the window, she sees the drab brown interior and the old men sitting there with their beers. Girls like her don’t go to such places. What if the old men are rude to her?

  A girl comes out from the kitchen, carrying a tray of bottles and glasses. She’s not Irja.

  Stephie is about to leave. But then she realizes that even if Irja doesn’t work there anymore, the new girl may know
where she’s gone.

  Gathering her courage, she opens the door. Everyone seems to be staring at her.

  “Hello, sweetie,” says one of the old men. “Can I buy you a beer? Or are you lost?”

  Stephie looks at him in horror. But the eyes in his unshaven face are kind and heavy. He’s only teasing.

  “Excuse me,” she says to the waitress. “I’m looking for Irja. Does she still work here?”

  “Sure she does,” the waitress answers.

  She turns toward the curtain separating the tavern from the kitchen.

  “Irja, you’ve got a visitor!” she shouts.

  Stephie wants to turn and run. Take off out the door, rush back down Kaptensgatan to the tram stop. What did she come in here for, anyway? What is she going to say to Irja?

  But her feet stay rooted to the ground.

  The curtain is swept aside.

  Irja is standing there. She looks bewildered.

  “Who …?”

  Stephie’s throat constricts and she can’t get out a single word.

  Irja inspects her closely. “Oh, aren’t you …?” she says slowly. “Aren’t you Stephanie?”

  “That’s right,” Stephie whispers.

  Irja’s face lights up. “Well, then come on home with me. I’ve just finished for today!”

  Irja lives on a street that crosses Kaptensgatan, just two blocks away. The stairwell smells of cabbage and fried herring. It’s dinnertime. Two flights up, they stop in front of a door bearing a handwritten sign: Irja Andersson.

  Stephie steps into Irja’s kitchen. There’s a laundry line running straight across the whole room, full of underwear. Flesh-colored underpants, a bra, and a slip.

  “Sorry.” Irja gestures at her laundry. “Yesterday was my day off, so I did laundry. Have a seat.”

  Stephie sits at the kitchen table. Irja takes the coffeepot and makes and pours two cups.

  “I don’t have any sugar,” Irja says. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” says Stephie. “That’s all right. Thanks.”

  Stephie takes a swallow of the bitter coffee. She’s got to say something. Irja must wonder why she came.

  But before Stephie can figure out how to start, Irja smiles kindly at her.