The German Girl

by Armando Lucas Correa

  From that day on, Julian came to the pharmacy every night, just before we closed. We would stay in the park chatting for a while, and then he would see me home. Sometimes he came at midday, and we would walk along Calle 23 to have lunch at the charming El Carmelo café.

  Julian wanted to know more about me, but there was little to tell: Papa had died in the war while we were waiting for him in Havana to go to New York, and what was supposed to be a stay of a few months in Havana seemed to be permanent.

  We held each other’s hands, and he sometimes put his arm around my shoulder, and even occasionally took me by the waist to hurry me across the street. We spent hours together like that. The most daring thing I did was rest my head on his shoulder one evening while we were waiting for a traffic light to change.

  Esperanza called Julian my boyfriend, and I didn’t correct her. I was weary of trying to explain: that my name wasn’t Ana, that I wasn’t a Polack, and now, that Julian was nothing more than a good friend whose company I enjoyed.

  He never asked to go into our dark mansion. Nor did I ever invite him. As the days passed, we enjoyed silence more than conversation. We could spend hours with each other without speaking, sometimes simply enjoying the cheerful hubbub of the students coming out of the college that looked onto the park.

  I realized that sometimes Julian seemed distant, that his mind was elsewhere, that he was very worried about something but didn’t have the heart to tell me what it was.

  One evening he called me at the pharmacy. Esperanza told me he was on the line, and in that instant I had a strange premonition. His parents had gotten an exit permit to go to the United States. He had just bid them farewell at the airport. He had no idea when he would see them again.

  This man full of energy and optimism who made me feel secure, who resolved every problem with a smile, who was as big and tall as a tree in the Tiergarten, had been knocked flat. He asked me to go to his apartment.

  I picked up my bag and left the pharmacy without a word to Esperanza. I walked to the corner of Línea and L, where Julian lived, by coincidence above a pharmacy.

  It was a white building with wide balconies. I took the elevator up to the eighth floor, and when I knocked on the door, I realized it was open.

  “Julian?” I called out softly, but there was no reply. I went down a short hallway that led to a room without furniture, and with light patches on the walls where there had once been framed pictures. Julian was out on the balcony, staring northward toward the sea.

  Approaching him slowly, I suddenly found I was looking at the sea from on high, as I had done so many years earlier. I took a deep breath, and my lungs filled with the breeze from the Malecón.

  “Julian?”

  Silence. I took another step forward and could feel the warmth of his body. I was so close I could touch him. My heart began to beat wildly; I closed my eyes and put my arms around his back. He turned, hugged me tight, and started to cry.

  “What’s wrong, Julian?”

  He was disconsolate. His parents had been forced to flee: there was no room for their businesses under the new government. Before they left, they had managed to sell the furniture and some valuables. They smuggled their family heirlooms out through an embassy. With the currency changes the new government had brought in, the money they had in the bank had lost its value.

  “I’ve stayed to wrap things up here,” he said, his voice quavering.

  “Are you leaving as well?”

  I knew he would not answer. I stared at him for a few seconds, and then closed my eyes and kissed him. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to regret it. When I opened my eyes, I could see the waves beating against the Malecón. I could taste my mouth filling with salt spray and tears. I found it hard to grasp what was going on. I was feeling emotions previously alien to me.

  Julian took me by the hand. I followed him as if I had lost all willpower. He led me to his room. In the center stood a bed with white sheets. I closed my eyes, and his face became blurred with mine.

  “Ana, my Ana-with-a-J,” he kept whispering in my ear. His fingers traced my features with a delicacy I would not have expected from his big, heavy hands. My eyebrows, my eyes, nose, lips . . .

  I have no idea when I left the apartment that evening, how I found my way back to the pharmacy, or how I slept that night.

  From that day on, at lunchtime I went to smell the sea from the eighth floor and to lose myself in his arms.

  Havana began to take on a different aspect. Together with Julian, I looked more closely at the foliage of the enormous trees in Vedado, for example. We used to walk down Paseo and sit on any bench we came to. Alongside him, the days, weeks, and even months seemed like only a few hours.

  Sometimes we would walk from Paseo to Calle Línea, and from there to his apartment building. We didn’t care if the weather was hot, or if it was raining, or if there was a demonstration in favor of or against causes that meant nothing to us.

  Then one Monday he called me at the pharmacy to say we wouldn’t be able to meet that week: he needed time to do a few things. This didn’t worry me. But when the following week he didn’t even call, I began to grow alarmed, even though deep down I had always known Julian was bound to disappear.

  On the day the soldiers came to seize the pharmacy in the name of the revolutionary government, I arrived at work early. When I opened the door, I found a letter pushed underneath. It was from Julian.

  Dearest Ana-with-a-J,

  I didn’t know how to say good-bye: I’m no good at farewells. I’m going back to New York with my family. We’ve lost everything. There’s no place for me here.

  I know you can’t abandon your mother, that you owe a debt to your family. It’s the same for me with mine. I’m all they have left.

  I want to have you beside me, for just you and me to exist. And I know that someday we’ll meet again. We’ve already been apart once, and yet I found you again.

  I’m going to miss our evenings in the park, your voice, that white skin you have, your hair. But above all I will remember the bluest eyes I have ever seen.

  You will always be my Ana-with-a-J.

  Julian

  Another one who was leaving me.

  I didn’t cry, but I couldn’t work, either. I read the letter so often I knew it by heart. I read it silently and then out loud, went back over every sentence. My encounters with him in his eighth-floor apartment with a view to the sea were engraved in my heart, in my head, on my skin.

  And the rain as well. From that moment on, whenever it rains, I see Julian lending me his arm, lifting me, embracing me. I had a lot to thank him for.

  I promised myself that, from then on, I would let nobody else into my life. That kind of hope was not made for me. With each passing minute, Julian’s face began fading from my memory. What I could still hear clearly was his voice: “Ana-with-a-J.”

  And then the soldiers arrived.

  I saw them clamber out of their vehicle and come toward the front door of the pharmacy. I kept repeating the words of Julian’s farewell letter to myself, as if it were a spell that could protect me. Fortunately, Esperanza remained very calm and managed to transmit her serenity to me. I waited for them behind the counter, without a word. They had come to rob me of what was mine—everything I had built with my hard work. There was nothing more for me to lose.

  Staring them straight in the eye, I tore the letter into a thousand pieces. My great secret ended up at my feet, in a small wastebasket.

  I didn’t allow them to speak. Taken aback, the soldiers simply stared at me. Still without saying anything, I gave Esperanza and Rafael a hug and left the pharmacy without a backward glance. Let them have it all. I no longer felt any fear.

  On my way home, I quickened my pace and kept telling myself: this is a city of transit; we didn’t come here to put down roots like these ancient trees.

  When I reached the house, Gustavo and Viera were in the living room with the baby, who had just turned three
. Gustavo had been determined to keep Louis as far away as possible from us: I didn’t know if this was to punish us or to prevent us from instilling in his son our bitterness toward a country he himself was willing to die for. I thought he had probably shown up after such a long time simply to find out how we had reacted to the seizure of the pharmacy.

  What had been ours was now in the hands of a new order that my brother was part of.

  Nights became increasingly difficult for me. If I managed to sleep, my memories were a senseless jumble. I confused Julian with Leo. Sometimes I woke up with a start because I had seen Julian on the deck of the St. Louis holding my hand, climbing up and down the ship’s ladders, and Leo as a grown man sitting beside me under the flame trees in the park.

  I returned to our domestic routine and began to give English lessons to children who couldn’t give a damn about learning it. I became the German teacher who taught English in a neighborhood where I was known as the Polack. The children and adolescents who came to our front porch for me to teach them that “Tom is a boy, and Mary is a girl” were on a waiting list to leave the country with their parents. One of them, a youth who was due to perform his military service when he finished school, was desperate to leave the island but was told that his being of “military age” made that impossible. I had become a teacher, and my porch a confessional.

  Esperanza and Rafael hadn’t lost their jobs following the takeover of the pharmacy. They came to visit occasionally and told me how things were under the new owner: the State. Another new development was that Esperanza’s husband had ended up in jail for practicing a religion that was not recognized by the makeshift government. They regarded it as a sect that undermined the patriotism they were trying to instill into a fervent mass of people anxious for change. Esperanza and her fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to salute the flag or sing the national anthem and were opposed to war. That made them unacceptable in a society that had to be constantly on the alert for a battle that was never declared.

  One evening as they were saying good-bye, I could see that Esperanza was worried. Without my really understanding what she meant, she whispered that the new government “had turned into a melon: green on the outside, red on the inside.”

  Viera began to work day and night alongside Gustavo, with the result that they started leaving the boy with us. We spoke to Louis in English, and within a few months he could understand us. After a year, his English was better than his Spanish. When they found out, neither Viera nor Gustavo protested. They were caught up in a chaotic social process to which they devoted all their time. In those tumultuous days, family was not the most important thing.

  Louis ended up sleeping in the house almost every weeknight. Mother decided he needed a room of his own, and so we prepared the one next to hers. We had a hope. Of what, exactly, I had no idea, but those were joyful days. I was happy above all at seeing a child grow up who was free of the guilt of the Rosenthals.

  We were slightly surprised that Hortensia kept her distance from Louis, in a way she hadn’t when Gustavo arrived from New York as an infant. I think that back then she thought we needed help, but with this child, it was different: we devoted our time to him and showed him affection. Or perhaps she did not want to get emotionally involved, only to find herself back in the role Gustavo had relegated her to in the end: that of a mere employee, not someone who had cared for him, fed him, given him her love in the years when he most needed it. One summer—the warmest of all those we had suffered until then—I got an envelope from Julian in New York. Inside was a photo of him in a park similar to the one where we used to meet.

  There was no letter, only the photograph, the date, and a dedication. Julian never said much. I took the few words he had written on the back as his farewell message: “For my Ana with her J. I shall never forget you.”

  Anna

  2014

  Day dawns here in a rush. One minute it’s night, the next it’s day. There’s no in-between. I’m woken by sunlight piercing my eyelids and can feel Mom behind me. She is studying me with a smile and untangles my hair. Today she, too, has woken up with a scent of violets.

  I turn to the photo of Dad I brought with me. I prop it up beside the lamp. We look at each other, and I can see he is happy. This trip has changed us all.

  “I haven’t been paying much attention to you,” I tell him, “but now you’re in your home!”

  Mom smiles when she sees me talking to the photograph. Ever since we arrived, Mom and Aunt Hannah have become inseparable. They spend hours talking together, and I wonder what Dad makes of that.

  The pair of them have scoured every nook and cranny, every wardrobe. Mom knows that each folded blouse, or brooch, or old coin holds a story she wants to rescue.

  “You shouldn’t get rid of this,” she tells Aunt Hannah, pointing to some yellowing sheets of paper tied with a red ribbon. “Keep them; you never know.”

  They are the title deeds to the apartment building in Berlin, which for her now are sacred.

  “Even if they’re no longer valid, they are family heirlooms,” she insists, stroking my aunt’s hand.

  Dad is closer to her each day. He is no longer simply the man she met at a concert in St. Paul’s Chapel. Now he has a past, his family has a face, he had a childhood. Aunt Hannah has opened Dad’s book, told us his story. Mom’s reasons for complaining are gradually disappearing. It’s true she lost her husband, and I lost my father, but Aunt Hannah has lost her entire life.

  I think that seeing the headstone in the cemetery with Dad’s name on it and having contact with the Rosenthals’ past has helped put Mom’s grief into perspective. I hug her, and just in case she’s worried, I tell her everything will be fine—that I feel like I’ve known Dad; that now we have someone we have to look after.

  As the days go by, Aunt Hannah seems increasingly frail. Sometimes she even seems lost, not knowing what to do or where to go. The first time I saw her standing in the doorway, she was almost as tall as the doorframe. Now she seems more bent and walks with the slow, heavy step of an old woman.

  Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten taller here. That’s what Mom told me.

  She also says that she would like to get back to New York.

  I don’t understand why. Maybe she wants to return to her Spanish literature classes at the university, to renew the life she abandoned years ago. If it were up to me, we’d stay here, live in Aunt Hannah’s house, and look for a school I could go to.

  Aunt Hannah’s silences when she tells her stories are growing longer and more frequent. They are from a faraway past, but she often tells them in a present tense that confuses us.

  I sit with her for hours, listening closely to this kind of monologue that leaves no room for anyone to interrupt. Sometimes while she’s telling her endless stories, I take photos of her, but this doesn’t seem to upset her. When she falls silent, Mom and I can see how vulnerable she is. When she is talking, though, a little color returns to her pallid cheeks.

  By the end of our trip, there won’t be anything more for Mom to learn about Dad. But we’ll probably leave here without finding out what really happened to my grandfather Gustavo. Aunt Hannah always concentrates on Louis.

  Diego is impatient. I can see him from the front door. He doesn’t know what to do and starts throwing stones at the tree. He digs up a piece of the sidewalk that makes us trip, and then wipes his hands on his trousers. He tries to call me without attracting attention. He’s afraid that the old German woman, who to him is still a Nazi, will complain to his mother about him.

  When I do at last manage to get away, he gives me a warm hug. I look back to see if anyone has spotted us. I still can’t believe a boy is hugging me in broad daylight, in a city I don’t know. It’s my secret, and I’ll keep it that way.

  Diego and I walk beneath a sun that scorches the asphalt. We reach a park, where he shows me a pharmacy on the corner.

  “Look, my granny says that used to be your aunt’s pharmacy.”
>
  There are still traces of yellow paint on the damp-covered walls. Above the cement doorway is faded lettering that shows my name: Farmacia Rosen.

  We run down Avenida Calzada until we come to a narrow passageway between two big houses. I don’t want to ask Diego where we’re going or if he has permission to enter. It’s too late anyway, because we’re already on someone else’s property. We reach the patio and climb a spiral metal staircase that sways as if it is about to come loose. As we climb, we hear someone playing the piano and a woman’s voice giving instructions in French as she counts out a strange beat.

  Jumping over a low wall, we’re on a flat roof. Through a window, I see a ballet class taking place below. The girls are lined up perfectly; their arms stretch up toward the ceiling as if they are reaching for the infinite. They probably want to seem light as air, but from above, they look heavy—weighed down by gravity. Diego sits with his back to the window. He’s concentrating on the music.

  “Sometimes they have an orchestra, or two violins accompanying the piano,” he says dreamily.

  Diego is always surprising me with things I am least expecting. Normally he can never stay still in one place, but here he’s sitting hidden on a private terrace and listening to monotonous musical exercises.

  I want to leave. I feel uncomfortable in a place where we haven’t been invited. But Diego wants to continue with his music therapy.

  “Be careful, you might be stepping on my ants.”

  Up here on the roof, Diego has an ants’ nest. He brings them sugar or bread crumbs, and studies them. They’re his pets. He takes a carefully folded piece of paper containing his magic powder out of his pocket. When he pours the sugar crystals into a corner, they appear at once. Some are red, others black. They form a long line from one end of the wall to the other. Diego pauses to watch them carrying the tiny white grains back to their nest. Then he picks up one and looks at it closely.