Through the window, she sees Wolfie leaning over the counter flirting with the middle-aged server, who nods and giggles while placing pastries in a large box.
All at once, loud voices rise behind Frieda. In the storefront window looms the reflection of two men in Nazi uniforms. They open the door of the bakery and swagger inside. She curses Wolfie for his careless bravado. He won’t impress anyone at the police station. She grows hot with fear — she must not run, she must watch and try to help him.
The woman behind the counter stops smiling when the men approach. Frieda cannot see their expressions, but the Nazis stand behind Wolfie, one with his hand on his uniformed hip, waiting. Wolfie gives a polite nod, picks up his box of pastries, then smiles at the men. He’s engaging them in conversation! Damn him! He’s going too far. He points to the confections behind the counter and their eyes follow. What if they ask him for his papers? The jig will be up.
She glances over to the corner where Leopold and Hanni are waiting. Hanni stands rigid, her hand over her mouth. Though Leopold has his arm around her shoulders, he looks tentative, as if he is ready to run at a moment’s notice. They search Frieda’s face for clues. When she turns back to the store, Wolfie is stepping out the door.
Taking his arm firmly, she yanks him away. “Don’t ever do that again,” she mutters under her breath.
“I was just telling them the chocolate ones were best.”
“You shouldn’t press your luck,” Frieda says. “One day it will run out.”
“Everyone’s luck runs out sooner or later.”
Hanni beams him a dazzling smile.
Frieda looks over her shoulder at the bakery. “Let’s go.” She takes Leopold’s arm and begins to walk away briskly.
As soon as she walks into the Sussmans’ apartment, Frieda can see how much has changed for them. The apartment is half-empty; the large glass-fronted buffet that she saw in the dining room at Passover is gone. One of the long sofas is missing, and there is only one upholstered chair left in the living room. They’ve been selling their furniture, she concludes. The table in the dining room — not the huge mahogany one that was there before — is covered with a flowered cloth on top of which lie papers and books. A typewriter sits on one corner.
“You must excuse the table,” Frau Sussman says to her guests. “We use it as a desk where we fill out papers for emigration.”
The books were on travel to the United States and South America. One was a text on learning English.
Frau Sussman disappears into the kitchen with the box of pastries.
“You look surprised, Fräulein Eisenbaum,” says Herr Sussman. “The factory will not be ours for much longer.”
Frieda shoots a look at Leopold, who turns away. “One of our suppliers is eyeing it for a takeover. Did I tell you, Leo, he came in on Friday and said, ‘How many orders did you take in today?’ He already thinks of it as his. A greedy man can go far when he joins the party.”
“Will you get compensation?” she asks.
“If we’re lucky we’ll get ten percent. I have a cousin in a small town north of here. He got himself beaten up by the SS who was taking over his store when he suggested that there should be compensation. No, we will be lucky to get anything.” Glancing at his son, he says, “Leo must’ve told you we’re trying to get out of the country.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmurs.
“The papers must have the names of all the people who are applying. Four names for our family. I won’t leave without my children, so all the papers have to be in four names. And then, of course, all of us have to go. Or none of us can go. There’s only one problem.” Herr Sussman puts his hand on the back of one of the chairs as if he needs steadying. “Leo won’t go. He won’t go because he’s waiting for you. And what are you waiting for?”
Leo glares at him.
Frieda lowers her eyes from Herr Sussman’s scowling face. “I have to stay with my family. My father ... my father is not prepared to leave.”
“Doesn’t he see what’s going on around him? What do you think, Herr Eisenbaum? You’re a sensible young man.” He addresses himself to Wolfie who is next to Hanni on the sofa. “Can your father be persuaded to leave?”
“Vati is a decorated war hero,” Wolfie says. “We Germans love our war heroes. He rescued his officer from certain death in the middle of a fierce battle. Does that sound like the kind of man who can be persuaded about anything? We’ll be all right as long as the government remembers he’s a war hero. You, on the other hand,” Wolfie adds, “should run like crazy.”
Everyone stops in stunned silence.
“I’m joking,” he says finally.
They all let out a collective breath.
“Besides,” he says, “Hanni has to stay for the Olympics. She’s the best jumper in Germany.” He looks down at her and grins.
She smiles shyly, her eyes turned to him sideways.
chapter thirteen
On Wednesday Rebecca threw herself into her work at the office. An upswing of flu and strep throat was making the autumn rounds. Children, their mothers, and elderly women colonized her waiting room. By noon, Iris, usually fresh-faced and perky, was flushed from the endless caravan of cranky patients.
Iris usually took an hour for lunch at one of the local restaurants, but today she and Rebecca had brought sandwiches and ate in Rebecca’s private office.
They left the door of the office suite unlocked so people could walk in and sit down, though no one was there to greet them. Iris never scheduled appointments between twelve and one, insisting they needed a break.
At 12:40, Iris sauntered to the washroom down the hall. A few minutes later she slunk back.
“You won’t believe this. The waiting room’s full. They must’ve come early for their appointments.”
Rebecca finished her coffee and stood up. “It’s a dangerous precedent, but let’s start early.”
Iris shook her blonde head in disapproval, but stood to follow Rebecca. “They’ll think they can come in whenever they want.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Rebecca swabbed a lot of throats for culture and prescribed antibiotics for people with obvious infections.
When the last patient had left, she realized she hadn’t called Susan all day, or spoken to Ben. She rummaged in her purse for her wallet and pulled out the slip of paper on which she’d scribbled Jeff Herman’s number. What was the point of calling her? Rebecca doubted anything had changed since yesterday. Susan would still refuse to speak to Ben. Who would still not understand her anger or how to deal with it. Part of Rebecca thought her sister was ungrateful for what she had. Had she herself ever been that angry with David? They hadn’t been married long enough. Theirs would always be a storybook marriage because her prince had died young. What would she give up to have David back again? Her career? Her self-esteem? Her right arm?
The anniversary of his death had passed in October, shortly before the Jewish New Year. She had lit the twenty-four-hour Yahrzeit candle in its glass base and placed it on the stovetop. For a few moments she’d stood clutching the edge of the counter, watching the flame flicker in the darkening kitchen. This was all that was left of him, then. Shadows on the enamel. Pain like a sword through the heart. And images that came unsummoned. David setting up his easel in the backyard and painting a tangle in the garden. A moody piece she had always loved. Down in the basement now along with all the other paintings she couldn’t bear to look at.
She sat down near Iris at the adjoining desk behind the front counter. A mound of paperwork awaited them.
“How’s the baby?” Iris asked while they both worked filling out forms.
“Holding her own. She’s a fighter.”
Iris smiled sideways at her and nodded, her blonde hair held up in stiff waves with what must have been impenetrable hair spray. Rebecca hoped she wouldn’t ask any more questions and Iris complied, searching through patient files for what she needed.
Rebecca had
n’t informed her about Susan going AWOL. She told herself it was private, but really she was embarrassed. She preferred to keep it to herself, a family failing that might seem inexcusable to an outsider. Not that she excused. But she knew what it was like to lose all hope, so how could she condemn Susan? All she could do was watch her sister’s drama unfold. Listen as Ben let himself in the front door at eleven-thirty after spending the evening at the hospital. He was leaving Friday to drive back to Montreal and the three little boys who waited for him. How was he going to leave Miriam?
The paperwork wasn’t finished, but by 6:45 her head felt heavy. She would come early tomorrow and finish it.
She threw on her coat and waved goodbye to Iris. “I’m going to visit Miriam.”
Iris managed a tired smile over the paperwork, her hair holding up better than the rest of her. “Give her a kiss for me.”
Rebecca opened the front door of the medical building and plunged into the cold evening air. One thing she hated about the slide toward winter was the encroaching darkness. In the middle of November it was dark at six o’clock. By the winter solstice, in another five weeks, night would fall before five. Her mother had taught her that every season had its own beauty. But her mother loved life and had managed to pass on that optimism temporarily to both her daughters when they were young. It was the tragic arc of Rebecca’s life that had annihilated joy. Not the slow passage of time with its disappointments, but a spectacular shooting out of the sky of the magic optimism with which her life had begun. Everything had changed when David died. She could divide her life into B.D. and A.D. Before David and After David.
Even in this post-David era, she had to adjust to the weather. Her feet were cold. Time to give up shoes and haul out the leather boots.
She crossed Beverley Street to D’Arcy and approached the backyard encircled by the hedge. She had been too busy and distracted the last few days to stop by and check on the homeless woman. Not that it made a bit of difference. Another disaster for which she had no solution. The woman wouldn’t even take the food she offered. Rebecca would just pop her head in and say hello.
The house was dark when she stepped around the hedge into the backyard.
“Excuse me,” she said, not to alarm the woman by her sudden entrance.
The convoluted hedge obscured much of the street lamp’s illumination. She headed for the glowing red element of the space heater near the shed.
“Hello?” she said. “Where are you?”
All at once a form separated from the shadows and jumped toward her. She caught her breath and dodged to the right, adrenaline pounding. But the form didn’t stop. It kept running with an odd waddle out the opening of the hedge. A gust of sour perspiration floated past her. She leaped out of the yard and searched the street — the ugly homeless man from a few days ago was shuffling across Beverley Street toward Spadina as fast as his game legs could carry him.
She turned back toward the yard, her heart still racing. “Hello?”
Intently, she searched the shadows on the ground from where the man had vaulted. Why didn’t the woman answer? A metal leg glinted: the kitchen chair lay turned over on its side. When she bent over to pick it up, her hand brushed against something firm in the shadowy mound next to it.
Her throat went dry. She put her hand out and felt a leg. Her fingers fumbled sorting out the person from the fabric. A skirt? A coat? Another coat? Her hands shaking, she found the woman’s head. Her heart fell. The hair was matted with something sticky. Rebecca didn’t need to see it to know it was blood. She bent her cheek close to the woman’s mouth, feeling for breath. A tiny flutter. She found a limp hand. Was there a pulse? Very weak. The skin was cold, but that didn’t mean much out here in the dropping temperature.
“Birdie!” she called out. “Birdie, can you hear me?”
Suddenly a light went on in the house and streamed into the yard. Rebecca looked down at the woman: her head was covered with blood.
“Help!” she cried toward the house. “Please help!”
A curtain moved aside in a back window.
“Call an ambulance!” Rebecca shouted.
Finally the back door opened and out stepped a middle-aged woman with short greying curly hair. “What’s going on?”
“This woman’s been hurt. Call an ambulance. I’m a doctor.”
The woman ran over to stare at the figure sprawled on the ground. “My God!” she muttered.
“After you call for help, please get a blanket. And a flashlight.”
The woman hurried back inside the house, leaving the door open. Rebecca could hear her on the phone.
She returned with a blanket, arranging it over the prone figure. “Is she still alive?”
“Barely.”
“I told her not to stay out here,” the woman whispered.
“You know her?”
“She’s been here a while.”
“You let her stay in the yard?”
Rebecca took the flashlight from her and lifted Birdie’s eyelids. Her pupils were unresponsive. Bad sign.
“A sick old woman. Should’ve been in a special hospital, you know.” She touched her head with her finger. “But she was very stubborn. I told her it was dangerous to stay out here at night. At least we got her the little heater. She wandered around. Who knows the kind of people she met? Crazy as her. But I didn’t expect this.”
The woman had a bit of an accent. Was it German?
“I saw someone running away,” Rebecca said. “A homeless man. He was here before. Maroon ski jacket.”
The woman nodded. “I’ve seen him. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think he’d do this.”
They both stared at a rock that lay nearby, outlined in the light escaping the house.
“She had nothing. What was the point of attacking her? Who but a crazy person?”
“What’s her name?”
The woman looked at Rebecca as if she had asked an unreasonable question. “They called her Birdie.”
A siren approached in the night, its forlorn wail winding toward them.
The woman looked down again. “How will I tell him?”
“Who?”
“My husband.”
“He’ll be upset?”
She shrugged as if she had said too much. “He’s sensitive.”
The young paramedics beamed a light at the yard. “Who called for an ambulance?”
“I’m a doctor,” Rebecca said. “Over here.”
They moved toward her with their equipment.
Rebecca reported: “Elderly woman, around seventy, with evidence of head trauma. Breathing and pulse weak. Pupils fixed and dilated.”
One of the men bent over Birdie with a stethoscope, shone a light in her eyes. “Let’s get her out of here pronto!”
They fixed a brace around her neck, then lifted her carefully onto a board. The board went onto a gurney, which they placed in the back of the van. The woman climbed in and sat beside her but looked away from the mangled head. The paramedics were taking her to Toronto General.
“I’ll walk up and meet you there,” Rebecca said to the woman. “What’s your name, so I’ll know who to ask for?”
The woman looked dazed, kept her eyes off the body beside her. “Sentry,” she said. “Johanna Sentry.”
The ambulance pulled away, its siren startling in the night.
Rebecca sailed through the evening air along D’Arcy past McCaul Street, along Elm, to the wide boulevards of University Avenue. She hovered at the edge of the sidewalk waiting for the light to change, Mount Sinai behind her. The ancient monolith of Toronto General stretched along the other side of University, south from College Street. Downtown trauma cases were brought here.
The emergency waiting room was filled with downcast people waiting to be seen. Johanna Sentry sat in a corner, arms across her chest. They had taken the old woman into a trauma room right away. Mrs. Sentry looked up as Rebecca approached. Her grey-brown hair lay in short curls around a face severe
with no makeup.
“You didn’t have to come,” she said curtly.
Neither did you, Rebecca wanted to say as she sat down in the seat beside her. “I wish I’d done more for her. I could’ve called social services.”
“You were there in the yard before? You spoke to her?” Her dark eyes filled with recrimination, as if Rebecca had invaded her privacy. Which she had.
“I went in a few times. She said alarming things out loud. Violent things. I thought she needed help.”
“Very public-spirited, I’m sure. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. We tried to help her. She didn’t listen. I’m not going to blame myself.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Rebecca said.
“We both work. How much can we do?”
“What do you do?” Rebecca asked, trying to steer her away from guilt.
“I’m a teacher. People think teachers work till three-thirty. But I coach five days a week and don’t get home till seven. My husband coaches in the evenings at the university. We’re hard-working people. How much are we expected to do?”
Yes, it was a German accent. Rebecca always felt uneasy when she heard one. This woman was old enough to have seen the war.
“Nobody’s blaming you. In fact, most people wouldn’t have let her stay in their yard. You were very generous.”
The woman’s heavy eyebrows knit together in thought.
Every now and then a name was called out. After half an hour, a handsome man in his thirties walked into the waiting room. Mrs. Sentry raised her arm energetically as if she were in class.
“There’s my son. I shouldn’t have called him.”
He stepped toward her, a dark wave of hair falling over one eye. He wore a navy wool pea jacket and leather boots. The seats were all taken so he stood in front of his mother.
“What happened?”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Of course I came. How is she?”
“Someone hit her over the head. It’s very bad.”
When he glanced at Rebecca, Mrs. Sentry said, “This is the lady who found her. Dr. —”
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