“I’ll go look for your father. I’ll be back. Remember, we’re in C-228, you’re in LL-101.”
“I know where we are — ” Sebastian’s quarters were a bunk in an inside cabin. “Tell Papa hello!”
Annabelle frowned on his insolence. Then smiled and, mock solemnly, “I know Papa will be glad to hear from you.”
That was her last lighthearted moment of the night. When she opened the cabin and read the letter she cried out loud. Don’t under any circumstances attempt to protest the ship’s sailing — that would place me in very great danger . Those were the lines, written on top of the page, and then underlined.
“Darling, believe me, there was no other way to do it. I am not permitted to leave. I am not detained or restrained. I will write in care of Henrietta. Remember how much I love you and just tell Sebastian I am delayed — and that I love him, too. Axel.” Why, why hadn’t he explained? Why hadn’t he said that there had been a snarl and he would be there on the next passage? All he had given her were those spindly but alarming lines, committed already to memory, lines she would repeat to herself for weeks and months.
Her impulse was to call.
Call whom?
Was Axel truly unrestrained ? Might she...ring their own apartment number at Hempelstrasse?
The wild thought crossed her mind and she grabbed up the telephone, clicking desperately to get the ship’s operator. “ Koennen Sie mich mit Hamburg verbinden ?”
Yes, the operator said, she could place a call through to Hamburg, but the caller would have to wait a few minutes.
Annabelle froze. Then, “ Lassen Sie das bitte .” Cancel the call . She would put it in...tomorrow.
What the letter hadn’t said was there for her to read: I am helpless so don’t try anything . That would include an attempted telephone call.
Her priority now was to avoid immediate contact with Sebastian. She could not trust her emotions. She reached for a sheet of paper and scrawled on it: “Kitten, Papa had to suddenly stay home on business for a week or two. I am going to sleep. I will bang on your door for breakfast.”
*
Her bang on Sebastian’s door that Friday morning in September, on the scale of bangs heard round the world, was all but inaudible, drowned out by the roar from the Nazi artillery shells raining down on Poland, and triggering a great world war.
Chapter Eight
Phoenix, Fall 1939
The plans to spend time in New York and to make an excursion to Cambridge were set aside. Henrietta Chapin, reached by telephone in Phoenix, was not told anything more than that Axel had had to “postpone” his trip. Annabelle would not risk saying into a telephone from midocean words that might routinely be sent to German security. She told her mother, simply, that she and Sebastian would be going directly to Phoenix. She would telephone on landing and get details on Pullman reservations — for two, not three Reinhards.
They were still on board when the news came that Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany, demanding a withdrawal of Nazi armed forces from Poland. Annabelle found herself staring at her passport with the listing of her son Sebastian and the citation of his birthplace in Hamburg, Germany. Naziland. She told him at lunch not to discuss the war. “We’ll leave all that until we reach Oma’s” Oma was German for grandmother, the only word that Sebastian would ever use for Henrietta Steiner Chapin, who greeted them at the station in Phoenix, on one of those bright Arizona days, and packaged them into her Ford, driving to her desert house, La Quintana.
Ten days went by before a letter from Axel was delivered. Annabelle tore it open, read it, then, her voice strained, handed it over to her mother, saying: “It’s written in English. Axel does not like to write in English. This letter is written for the Gestapo. Not for us.” Sebastian waited his turn. His face was solemn as he read his father’s words.
What did he say?...He hoped the trip was smooth...He hoped the “events” in Europe had not caused any disturbance on the boat...He hoped the trip to Arizona had been pleasant...He hoped that his “beloved mother-in-law” was well. Henrietta had commented on that line. “Axel hasn’t laid eyes on me since your wedding. He’s trying to suggest a family intimacy to the Nazi who is reading his mail. Make it sound more natural that he should be sending Sebastian here to school.”
“And more probable that I’d be planning to return.” Annabelle read out loud the succeeding paragraph in Axel’s letter, “I think, dear, it makes sense under the circumstances to postpone for a period your scheduled return to Hamburg.’ There, that tells it all, since we never intended to return to Hamburg.” She continued with the text. “‘Of course,’” she read out loud from the letter, “‘with the declarations of war, British and German passenger liners wall have stopped operating, but the Dutch and American liners continue, so there will be plenty of opportunity as soon as things straighten out a little here.’”
She folded the letter and put it in her purse. “We will have to hope that his next letter tells us more.”
*
A second letter came three months later, when Sebastian’s Christmas vacation time had begun. It described informally various projects at the Heidl company and a symphony concert he had attended. That letter and others that came after, at intervals of several months, told nothing more, though they were scanned intently for hidden meaning.
“I wish he was here.” Sebastian said, looking over at his Oma after one letter had been read out loud. He addressed his mother. “You know, Mama, I pray for him every night. And for Sunday school I wrote a special prayer. Pastor Neuhaus liked it a lot.” Henrietta reached over and put her hands on either side of her grandson’s face, so sad at just that moment, in that pose.
“I know you do. And those prayers can’t be lost.”
Moments later Annabelle had come back into the living room, briefcase in hand. Sebastian had slipped out of the room. “Sebastian? Sebastian! ”
Answering the summons he walked back in.
“Thank goodness you continue to call him by his proper name,” Henrietta said. “This ‘Sebby’ business I hear him referred to — ”
Sebastian interposed himself resentfully. “So what am I supposed to do, Oma? Tell the guys they can’t call me what they call me by?” He turned to his mother. “When you decided to name me Sebastian, what nickname did you and Papa think people would use? Shall I tell them to call me Kitten ?”
“There’s nothing wrong with just plain Sebastian .” Henrietta Leddihn Steiner Chapin was sticking to her guns.
“Did everybody in Munich call you Henrietta? I bet some people called you — Hetta? Henri?”
Grandmother and mother laughed. Henrietta thought back on her brother Walther, to whom she was always “Henri.”
What did it matter? So the boys and — they were discovering — some of the teachers called him Sebby . So mother and grandmother would live with it, though, at La Quintana, they would stick to the full Christian name, most of the time.
“Hurry, Sebastian. That’s why I called you. The bus will be here in” — she looked at her watch — “eight minutes. Don’t make it wait for you. And I can’t be late for my work, either.”
Chapter Nine
Phoenix , May 1942
Henrietta Chapin had lived in America for some forty-two years, mostly in Rochester and New York. It was there that her only child, Annabelle, had been born — “just a year, Sebastian, after Queen Victoria died. I assume you did not know about that. I have no reason to believe that Central High School pays any attention to European history.”
Sebastian didn’t raise his head from his model airplane but in a voice only recently changed said, “I think I knew about her. But I’m not sure. And anyway, we haven’t celebrated Mama’s birthday since — Hamburg.” He was bent over the work desk in the corner of the living room, only the back of his head visible, the brown hair inching down under his collar. He had given the whole of what was left of his Saturday afternoon, after release from homework and so
ccer practice, to the job of gluing together his model of the new B-17 bomber.
“She will not celebrate her birthday until she is reunited with your father.”
Sebastian began to comment on the long period, now almost two years, since hearing from his father. He bit his lips to keep silent. What had begun as sadness and anxiety for the thirteen-year-old had passed through despondency to a resigned fatalism in the sixteen-year-old. Pearl Harbor was five months ago, the German invasion of Russia almost a year ago. Japan was laying waste to British and U.S. assets in the Pacific. Hitler had sent Rommel to North Africa where, Cairo-bound, he was steamrolling east. That morning’s paper had spoken of a thousand RAF bombers attacking Cologne. His head still bent over his work, he asked, “Have you ever been to Cologne, Oma?”
“Yes. Your great-grandfathers orchestra did a concert at the great cathedral there, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. My mama took my brother Walther and me along.”
“I’ve been there, too! That was when Papa met with Albert Speer. Herr Speer is maybe the closest person to Hitler — did you know that? — ever since Herr Hess dropped down by parachute in England, isn’t that right, Oma?”
“They are said to be very close, Herr Speer and Herr Hitler.”
*
Henrietta Chapin liked to chat, especially in German. In English, she was always consciously working in a foreign language. She had been exposed to English as a schoolgirl but her study had been merely dutiful. When she married, the custom was: only-in-English. Alois Steiner wasn’t much of a talker, and she hardly had time, in the short time they had together, to egg him on to an alien social mode. When Alois Steiner felt expressive, he would pick up his violin and play for her. Sometimes she would accompany him on the piano. In those moments, she wrote lyrically to her mother in Munich, they were speaking to each other in a universal tongue.
But the pneumonia killed him after only eighteen months of marriage, five months before Annabelle was born. She was comforted by Roderick Chapin, a colleague of Alois and a trustee of the symphony. A bachelor in his thirties, a Harvard graduate, and churchgoing Episcopalian, Chapin induced her to abandon any thought of traveling, pregnant, back to Germany to live. He pressed his case ardently, wooed and won her. They were married two months after her daughter was born.
Roderick Chapin liked people and loved parties. After the First World War, Henrietta and Annabelle moved into the new house on Fifth Avenue in New York City where Roderick entertained prodigiously. Henrietta more than carried her weight, however crabbed she judged her thoughts to be when transcribed into English.
Roderick’s health declined, soon after the inauguration of the new Democratic President, Mr. Roosevelt, and he lived, progressively, an invalid’s life. The Depression had meant an end to the domestic servants they had been accustomed to for almost three decades, and there hadn’t been much conversation in the sickroom where Henrietta spent so many hours.
Henrietta’s main pleasure in these years had come from her closeness to her beloved Annabelle. It had been bad enough when her daughter went off to college in Cambridge, but then came the decisive interruption: Annabelle met, loved, and married the engaging young German engineer, Axel Reinhard.
Henrietta was poorly placed to object to the union, having herself, at the turn of the century, left Germany to live in America. So she would call overseas to Hamburg once every month and talk joyfully to her daughter in the allotted ten minutes on the telephone — talk to her in the German language she had used when they were at home alone.
After Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, Henrietta Chapin began to urge Annabelle to return with her son to the safety of America. She was horrified — and affronted — by reports of the Austrians’ public acquiescence in the loss of national sovereignty in 1938. She shuddered, in private, at the very thought that residents of her native city in the Tyrol should be sympathizers of Hitler. She did not touch on the subject in the letters, now infrequent, to her aged parents, writing only that, Hitler having annexed Austria, she was sure he would go no farther. “Among other things, Mama, there are other countries out there. I mean, Great Britain and France, which will surely step in and say, No farther , Herr Hitler !”
But six months later Hitler had given his ultimatum to Czechoslovakia and proceeded with the absorption of the Sudetenland. Henrietta wrote again to urge Annabelle to come home. Shrewdly, she put her emphasis on the need to protect her son — “Hitler has had his universal military draft since March of 1935 and it will be only a few years — time moves quickly! — before Sebastian is old enough to be drafted. The clouds of war are over Europe and Sebastian will soon enter his teens” When six months later, on March 15, 1939, after pledging to the British and the French that he would move no farther in Czechoslovakia, Hitler entered Prague, another, more urgent, letter from Henrietta went out.
But this time the letter went to Axel.
This time Annabelle listened. Quietly, she resolved to comply.
Her objective became to persuade Axel to uproot the Rein-hard household: to leave his job, leave Germany, resettle in America, find a new job. She broached the idea. He resisted it, as expected.
Then came the cry of alarm from London, on March 31, 1939. Hitler’s menacing gestures against Poland triggered the electric British announcement: Great Britain would resist any aggression against Poland . Axel listened on his shortwave radio to the solemn voices of the BBC.
The next day, dispirited, he came around: Yes, he would leave Germany. But his departure had to be planned with great care. He must not let on that he would be leaving permanently. That would arouse disappointment, distrust, and perhaps even reprisals of some form or another.
*
In Phoenix, Henrietta clenched her teeth as she thought back, yet again, on the terror her daughter must have felt that night of the departure of the Europa . She could visualize the scene: Annabelle looking about the festive ship with increasing concern. Then the desperation on reading Axels letter.
Had she slept at all ? Henrietta wondered. She had never probed the day-to-day details of her daughters six days at sea. On arrival in Phoenix, Annabelle, pale and exhausted, had merely remarked on how stunned the whole ship had been on hearing the shipboard radio’s toneless announcements, first that the Nazi army had invaded Poland and then, two days later, that Britain and France had declared war against Germany.
The next two years, at the remove of Phoenix, Arizona, were tranquil, but Henrietta and Annabelle could not blot away the terrible sorrow abroad, let alone the benumbing question of Axel: Where was he? Living at La Quintana, Henrietta acknowledged that she had personal reasons to be grateful. She was reunited with her daughter, had been introduced to her German-speaking grandson — who in a matter of days, had captivated her — and, for the first time in many years, was living where her beloved German was the household language.
*
Henrietta had bought La Quintana, the house in the desert country outside Phoenix, with the proceeds of the sale of the Fifth Avenue house. She had been lured to Arizona by its relative remoteness. She didn’t want to linger in New York after her dear Roderick’s death. She had thought before to take her ailing husband to Arizona. For a dozen years, its benefits had been expounded in a string of letters from Alois’s asthmatic sister, who lived in Phoenix and wrote of the benefits of the dry climate, the low cost of living, and the fine public schools. La Quintana, constructed only three years earlier, was up for sale after the death of its owner. She viewed the photographs and closed the deal by telephone.
The elongated, one-floor, western-style stucco house was large enough for grandmother, daughter, and grandson, permitting privacy to all three generations, as desired, or required. Henrietta, sixty-two years old and spry, took the west wing. Annabelle and Sebastian each had a bedroom in the east wing, sharing a bathroom. The central section had the kitchen, living room/dining room, and a sequestered little study, bit by bit requisitioned by Sebastian as he pursued his stu
dies and his hobbies, but regularly used also by Annabelle. It was there that she prepared to teach the daily classes in German and graded the papers of the U.S. military — lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals — she coached in German at the army intelligence unit.
*
Sebastian rose from the table, exhibited the model to his grandmother, and said, “Oma, at church on Sunday, do you pray for the victory of the Allies?”
There was a slight hesitation. “Well, yes.”
Sebastian held aloft his model airplane. “The RAF had a massive bombing of Lubeck last week, did you read? This” — he dangled his creation before her — “is a B-17. It is the new, great airplane of the United States Army. It will be sent on bombing missions very soon. Is it right to pray that the bombing missions will be successful?”
“Yes. But those bombing missions will be directed only against — you know. Munitions factories, that kind of thing.”
“The bombs would not fall on civilians?”
“Inevitably, Sebastian, bombs directed at military targets go astray and kill some civilians.”
“But they also kill civilians who are working in military factories.”
“Yes. The modern bomb doesn’t, well, make many distinctions.”
“But bombing missions aren’t always restricted to things like munitions factories, are they? The bombing by General Doolittle of Tokyo in April, those bombs fell over civilians.”
“Not intentionally. They were — victims of general warfare.”
“Would it be wrong to drop bombs intending to kill — just people? Civilians?”
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