by Annika Thor
“Nice of you to come by,” she says. “Sven used to talk about you a lot.”
Used to. Apparently he’s forgotten her now.
Irja drinks from her cup. Something gleams on her left-hand ring ringer.
An engagement ring.
They’re engaged. Irja and Sven.
“Congratulations,” Stephie says, a huge lump in her throat.
“Thanks,” says Irja.
“When are you getting married?”
“I don’t know,” says Irja. “With the war on, it’s not the best time to get married and start a family. I guess we’ll wait a while.” She takes another sip from her cup. “Actually, we haven’t been a couple very long. We need time to get to know each other.”
What does she mean by that? Sven and Irja have known each other for at least two and a half years.
“Oh?” says Stephie.
Irja can clearly hear her confusion, and laughs. “It’s not Sven, if that’s what you thought. We split up ages ago.”
Stephie can’t believe her ears. She remembers Sven saying, “I love Irja. We love each other.”
How can that kind of love—when two people love each other—be over?
“It could never have worked out between the two of us,” Irja goes on. “You know, he didn’t even dare tell his parents about me.”
“He would have,” says Stephie. “He was planning to tell them. I know he was.”
Irja smiles. “There’s no need to stand up for him,” she says. “It’s all over now. We were too different.” Her blue eyes are clear and musing. “I’m surprised you didn’t know. Don’t you two write to each other?”
“No,” Stephie mumbles. “No, we’ve lost touch.”
“My fiancé’s name is Jon,” Irja tells her. “He’s a refugee from Norway.”
They talk about the war for a few minutes.
“They know what side their bread is buttered on, the Swedish government. As long as it looked as if the Germans were going to win, the whole government bowed down to the Germans. But now that everybody knows the Allies are going to come out on top, they’re singing a different tune. They’ll manage to stay on the right side.”
After some time, Irja looks at the clock and tells Stephie that Jon will be coming any minute. Stephie realizes she ought to leave. Thanking Irja for the coffee, she gets up to go. Irja walks her to the door and extends a hand. They shake solemnly, like two grown-ups.
“Good-bye,” says Irja.
“Good-bye.”
15
Wednesday morning, Miss Björk finds Stephie in the hall. She doesn’t have to say a word. Her smiling face tells Stephie everything she needs to know.
“They said yes,” Miss Björk says anyway, giving Stephie a hug. “They said yes! I just wanted to tell you right away. We’ll talk more later.”
In spite of her joy, Stephie can feel some of the other girls in the class giving her unkind looks. She knows some of them think she and Miss Björk are too close. That Stephie’s a teacher’s pet. That Stephie gets better grades than she deserves in Miss Björk’s classes.
Miss Björk asks Stephie to drop by the staff room at lunchtime. She tells her the relief committee has agreed to pay her expenses for two more years, though a lower sum per year.
“It will cover your room and board,” she says, “but you’ll have to earn your own pocket money, I’m afraid. If you like, I can try to find you someone to tutor next fall. I’m sure you could give some junior secondary girls private lessons in math—and why not German as well?” She gives Stephie a proud smile. “I’m so happy for you,” she says. “And I’m glad we’ll be spending the summer together, too.”
“Aren’t you meeting Vera tonight?” May asks her after they’ve had dinner, done the dishes, and finished their homework. “It’s Wednesday.”
“No” is all Stephie says.
May looks as if she expects an explanation, but when none is forthcoming, she changes the subject.
After May leaves for her youth group meeting, Stephie collects what’s left of her outfit from the previous Saturday. Vera’s dress and bra, the torn silk stockings, and the pumps that have lost a heel. She finds some brown paper and makes a parcel.
Tomorrow, when Vera has her afternoon off, she plans to take the things with her to school. After school, she’ll ring the doorbell of Vera’s employers and say she has a package for Vera. If there’s no one home, she’ll just hang the package on the door handle.
The problem is getting her own things back. She needs them, especially the shoes. She’s been walking around in boots for four days now. They’re hot and heavy, and she notices people staring.
She doesn’t know how she’s ever going to get them.
Stephie doesn’t have to ring Vera’s doorbell after all. As she’s leaving school the next day, she notices Vera’s head of red hair outside the gate. She’s standing there with a brown paper parcel almost identical to the one Stephie is carrying.
“Stephie!” she calls, waving.
Stephie walks over to her, feeling stiff and awkward.
“You never came to the café last night,” Vera says reproachfully. “I waited for hours.”
Stephie’s anger boils up inside. “Did you really expect me to come?” she hisses. “After what happened on Saturday? Here, take your things. The stockings are ruined. The shoes, too.”
She presses her package into Vera’s arms, grabbing her own belongings.
Vera looks embarrassed. “I’m really sorry,” she says. “I hope you know I didn’t plan for that to happen. Come on, won’t you just listen to me a little? Please?”
“No,” Stephie says.
“Please,” Vera repeats. “Stephie? Don’t do this to me. You’re … you’re my only real friend.”
Stephie looks at Vera. Her green eyes are brimming with tears.
“All right, then. But I only have a little while.”
They walk to the lily pond. Stephie thinks they must look quite strange. Two girls, each with a brown paper parcel in her arms.
“I never thought … that Bengt … Well, he’s always been so polite and well behaved. I thought the two of you would sit out on the porch and flirt, maybe share a kiss or two. Or take a walk in the moonlight. I really never imagined he’d go after you like that.”
“He told me girls who go off with boys late at night only have themselves to blame,” Stephie says, her voice raspy, as if she can hardly get the words out.
Vera sighs. “He must be more of an idiot than I realized.”
“And what about you?”
Vera stands stock-still. “What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you think we could hear what you and Rikard were doing inside?”
“Stephie,” says Vera, “I …”
“Is that what you always do? Jump right into bed with whatever boy you meet out dancing?”
“What kind of girl do you think I am?” Vera asks indignantly. “Of course not. That was the first time.”
Stephie is confused. There’s something she doesn’t understand. Something’s not right.
“Are you in love with Rikard?”
“Of course I am,” Vera replies.
She looks at Stephie. Her green eyes are pleading. “Don’t you believe me? Stephie?”
It’s impossible to be mad at Vera. As with so many times before, Stephie’s anger vanishes like smoke. Putting her parcel under her right arm, she takes Vera’s left arm in hers.
“Sorry about your stockings,” she says.
“That’s all right,” says Vera. “Rota’s going to be closing for the season soon, and there won’t be any more dancing for a while.”
“Well, you can count on one thing,” Stephie adds. “I’m never going there with you again.”
On the doormat at May’s, Stephie finds a card waiting for her.
Theresienstadt, 10 April 1943
Stephie!
Tonight Mamma was supposed to sing Queen of the Night. But yesterday they
banned all culture.
We’re well and thinking, as always, of you and Nellie.
Papa
A few words in the middle of the card have been crossed out in heavy black ink—not the blue ink of Papa’s pen. Someone else must have crossed them out. Why? Stephie wonders. What did he write that Stephie isn’t supposed to read? Only thirty words and somebody’s stolen three of them. Those words were hers and Papa’s.
Because she’s so angry about the stolen words, it takes her a while to absorb the rest of the text. When she does, she feels even angrier, and sad, too. Poor Mamma. She’d been so looking forward to singing Queen of the Night. How disappointed she must have been.
Someone Stephie has never met and whose face she has never seen wields power over Mamma and Papa. He can keep Mamma from singing and Papa from writing whatever he wants to. He wields power over Stephie, too, since her life is connected to theirs.
She hates that nameless, faceless man she’ll never meet.
If only the war would end!
16
On Saturday evening, Stephie and May take a blanket, a thermos of coffee, and a few sweet rolls outside. Britten watches them longingly, but they don’t invite her to come along. They want to be alone to talk.
They go up to the top of the hill, where Sandarna is situated and find a crevice in the cliffside to keep them out of the wind. They spread out the blanket. Behind them are the frames of what will be more new apartment buildings. The streets up there are all named after the islands in the archipelago. There’s one with the name of Stephie’s island.
The river gleams in the evening sun. Below the steep slope, they can see the sheds and warehouses in the harbor. On the other side of the river are cranes and docks at the shipyard where May’s father works. Seagulls and terns circle overhead. Near where they are sitting, a sloe bush is in bloom, a sea of creamy white blossoms.
May removes the cork from the thermos and pours two mugs of coffee.
“It’s a beautiful evening,” she says.
“Mmm,” Stephie agrees.
“Want a roll?”
“Yes, please.”
“Stephie?”
“What?”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if there’s something on your mind … you know I’d never say a peep to anybody.”
May’s eyes look serious and steady. Yes, Stephie knows she can trust May.
“Last Saturday wasn’t much fun,” she begins. “At first, hardly anyone asked me to dance. Then Vera brought over two boys she knew. One of them was called Bengt.”
Telling the story makes her feel so foolish. Falling for a pair of gray eyes and a strong arm. But May doesn’t laugh; she just listens quietly.
Now Stephie’s telling about the porch. The settee. Bengt’s hands on her.
“But where was Vera?” asks May. “And that other boy?”
The creaking from inside the cabin. She can’t tell May about that.
“They’d gone for a walk,” Stephie fibs. “In the moonlight.”
“So what did you do?”
“I ran away.”
She doesn’t tell May about what Bengt shouted after her, either. It hurts too much to say aloud.
“You did the right thing,” May tells her, her eyes welling up with tears behind her glasses. Stephie wonders whether anyone has ever tried to kiss May.
A couple of days later, the next card arrives. This one is from Mamma.
Theresienstadt, 14 April 1943
Dearest!
Your long letter made me very happy. But why doesn’t Nellie write? She’s not sick, is she? We haven’t heard from her for several months.
Thousands of kisses from
Your Mamma
I write once a week.
That was what Nellie said. But she was lying.
Doesn’t she realize how worried Mamma and Papa must be when they don’t hear from her? Doesn’t she understand how important the girls’ letters are to them?
She’s got to talk to Nellie. She needs to do it right away. This can’t wait until the semester is over, though Stephie hadn’t planned to go back to the island until then. She’ll go on Sunday.
Stephie takes an early-morning boat on Sunday. It’s only eight o’clock, but she can feel in the air that it’s going to be a hot day. The boat is full of noisy young people and families with picnic baskets, on their way to a day’s outing on one of the islands.
Today there is no bicycle leaning against the boathouse. Stephie makes the long walk across the island, with only the ringing church bells to keep her company.
At the house, she finds Aunt Märta in her Sunday dress, sitting in the rocker and reading the Bible.
“Stephie? Today? What a surprise!”
Stephie doesn’t explain why she’s there. That’s between her and Nellie.
She rides her bike over to Auntie Alma’s that afternoon. Nellie, Elsa, and John have just returned from Sunday school. They’re sitting in the garden with Auntie Alma, drinking berry juice.
“Nellie,” says Stephie. “I need to talk to you.”
“What is it now?” Nellie asks grumpily.
“Come on,” say Stephie. “Let’s take a walk.”
“I don’t feel like it,” says Nellie. “We just got home.”
Stephie doesn’t know what to say. She wants to talk to Nellie alone. But if she starts out upset, she’ll never get her to listen.
“Nellie,” says Auntie Alma in a gentle tone of voice. “You go with Stephie now. She may have something important to tell you.”
Nellie gets up reluctantly. They walk in the direction of the little beach.
“You know Mamma and Papa are in a camp, right?” Stephie begins. “We don’t know very much about what life is like there, but I’m sure it’s very difficult.”
“I know that,” Nellie says impatiently. “You’ve told me a hundred times.”
“I imagine Mamma and Papa worry a lot,” Stephie goes on. “Papa worries about Mamma, I know that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t you think the least the two of us can do is not to worry them even more?”
“What do you mean by that?”
Stephie takes out Mamma’s card from her dress pocket and shows it to Nellie. Nellie reads it and hands it back. She stares stubbornly at the ground.
“Well?”
“I do write,” says Nellie. “Sometimes.”
“Nellie,” says Stephie, “don’t you see?”
Nellie looks up at her, her eyes flaming. “They sent us away!” she shouts. “They didn’t want us. Why should I care about them?”
Nellie’s words threaten to drown Stephie. If feels like when she’s at the beach and a big wave throws her off balance in the water. She can’t see; she can’t hear; all she can taste is salt. Stephie struggles for a foothold.
She can’t get an answer out. Can’t explain what they both know. Mamma and Papa sent them away to keep them safe. All she wants to do is cry, cry as she did so long ago, their first evening on the island. Mamma, come and get me. Come and get me or I’ll die.
But at the very moment the wave of grief threatens to overwhelm her, it turns into coal-hot anger. She slaps Nellie—slaps her so hard, her sister shouts out in pain.
By the time Stephie has pulled herself together, Nellie is gone. She’s running up the path to the village, her long black braids flapping behind her back.
“Nellie!” Stephie calls out.
But Nellie doesn’t turn around.
The palm of Stephie’s hand is burning. Her cheeks are burning, too, as if she were the one who was slapped. She has only been slapped once in her life, and that was by Aunt Märta, the time she came home with a rip in her dress.
Mamma and Papa never hit them.
How could that have happened? How could she have slapped Nellie?
17
Stephie writes another long letter to Mamma. She says Nellie has actually written several times, but the
letters must have gotten lost in the mail. Maybe she wrote the address wrong, she lies. Or forgot the stamp. If the letters are returned, we’ll send them again.
She hates lying to Mamma. But she can’t tell the truth. It’s too awful. Just like that very first letter she wrote to Mamma and Papa back in Vienna, when she and Nellie had just arrived on the island, the letter she never sent. The truth is that she has been lying to them ever since she got to Sweden. Perhaps not as blatantly as now; now she has invented pure falsehoods to cover up Nellie’s refusal to write. But she has been altering the truth, exaggerating the good things and keeping silent about the difficulties and sorrows.
She begins to wonder what Mamma and Papa think of her. Do they imagine that she is as happy as she sounds, or can they see through her words? They certainly ought to know her better. But it’s been nearly four years. When she left, she was a twelve-year-old child. Now she’s nearly sixteen.
Another thought comes to mind: What if Mamma and Papa are doing the same thing? What if they’re not telling her the whole truth? What if they don’t want to upset her? What if that nameless German doesn’t let them tell the truth? What if everything is much worse than she thinks?
By the time Stephie seals the letter, she has a painful lump in her throat. She mails the envelope on her way to school.
Two weeks later the letter comes back.
“What was stamped on it?” Judith asks. “Did it say Adressat abgereist?”
“No,” says Stephie. “Just Return to Sender.”
“That’s all right, then,” says Judith. “Your mother may have moved to a different barracks. Or there may have been some mistake with the mail. I can’t say for certain. But I’m sure your next letter will reach her.”
Abgereist? Stephie wonders. Departed? What did Judith mean? Where would Mamma have gone?
Judith presses her lips together and refuses to say any more about it.
The two girls are taking a walk; it’s a lovely early summer evening. The lindens in the lane are in pale green bloom, and the flowers on the chestnut trees shine like white candles. They walk down to the moat that circles the old town. They sit on the edge, dangling their feet.