The next day, she and Lena moved back to her parents' home.
***
Charlotte and her mother were wiping out cupboards. Standing at the sink, rinsing out her rag, her mother narrowed her eyes, and gestured toward the bedroom where Lena slept.
"You've got to hide her."
Charlotte shook her head. "I'm going to make her a dress. Do you have any yellow and blue scraps?"
Her mother glared at her, but Charlotte didn't drop her gaze. Finally her mother brought a chair to the hall closet and began to search. Lena came out of the bedroom carrying a book about tigers.
"Read it," the child pleaded.
It had been hours since Charlotte had held Lena. She reached for her and hugged her until the child struggled for release. Then she read the book three times. Her mother was unfolding cloth on the dining room table, comparing blues. She eyed Charlotte curiously when she started to read for the fourth time.
Once upon a time there was a bear who wanted to be a human.
This time Lena shook her head, and Charlotte let her go. Her mother was placing the long strips of yellow cotton next to swatches of blue. "I know a nun," she said. Charlotte moved away, but her mother went on. "She's an old classmate—runs a convent school." She waved a hand to indicate somewhere outside of Berlin. "Boards non-Catholic children," she whispered.
Charlotte frowned. "She's only five years old."
"Who's only five years old?" a child's voice said. Lena picked up several strips of cloth and skipped around the room.
"Stop it. The neighbors."
Lena dropped the fabric and ran to her grandmother. Charlotte took the sewing box from under the bed. Long after her mother and Lena had gone to bed, she was still sewing. The next morning she woke up late. The sun's rays slanted across the bed, catching the half-stitched yellow and blue dress that lay at the foot of the bed. A stray sense of happiness came over Charlotte followed by guilt. She hadn't thought of Max since sometime yesterday.
"Grandma needs bread," a small voice said. Lena stood in the door holding a shopping net. On the way back from the bakery, Lena swung the loaf of bread in the shopping net and sang to herself. All my little ducklings swim on the lake.
As they approached their building, Charlotte glanced at the window of the first floor apartment. A little girl with a thin face peered at them. Charlotte had seen the girl's mother earlier that day, walking with hunched shoulders. Some people did that to hide the yellow star.
Now Lena saw the girl and waved. Between he lace curtains a hand moved back and forth. Lena ran toward the building, but another face appeared in the window, and the girl withdrew into darkness. Lena stopped and stared at the window.
A few days later, Charlotte watched as Lena rolled a hoop in the courtyard below. The sound of argument came from the first floor apartment. Two women emerged. One held a clock above her head. "Mine," said the other. The first woman raised her arms higher and ran across the courtyard. Lena disappeared into the apartment. "No," Charlotte called to herself and ran downstairs. Two men were carrying out a sofa. Charlotte found Lena inside the apartment, staring at the empty walls.
"Where's the girl?" she asked.
"Must've moved," Charlotte said, taking Lena's hand.
"I wanted to play with her," the child pouted.
Max had sat in the back of the truck, looking down at his boots. Too many people went East. The women in the bakery whispered about how people who went East never wrote letters. Later that day, Charlotte left Lena with her grandmother baking pancakes with dark flour and watereddown milk. At the Alexanderplatz station she asked about Max. An officer with full lips and glassy eyes shrugged in her direction. At the collection point, she presented another question. How do I write to somebody who's gone East? The uniformed men didn't answer.
That evening, her mother was frying onions.
"You heard about the family downstairs?" Charlotte asked, studying a spot on the wall, the one her mother scrubbed every week. It always came back.
Her mother nodded, adding potatoes and meat shavings.
Lena sat on the sofa drawing with a red pencil on a stenographer's pad. Under the lamp, her hair glowed softly. "Half Jews will go next," her mother whispered. "The nun will give her a new identity." Like a game, Charlotte thought. Loss surrounded her memories of Max. Fear clouded her love for Lena. Perhaps a temporary loss of the child could cancel the fear.
She turned to her mother. "Give me the name of the nun and the convent." Charlotte hated her mother for smiling.
The Smell of the Hawthorn Bush
The women in the factory wore men's jackets over their dresses, kept the collars turned up, tied scarves around their necks. Some had married Jews, known as "privileged Jews," who lived a tenuous existence.
Magda's nose dripped constantly with a head cold. She complained about her husband's meager ration card.
"My husband's gone," Charlotte said.
"But he was a political," Magda reminded her. "They went early," as if Max had been more efficient than the other Jews.
She'd have to hide Lena's fate. You'll have to kill her and mourn her. Those were her mother's words. So when the time came for Lena to disappear, Charlotte told Magda about the child's high fever, how no doctor would see a Mischling, how Lena had finally died in the night.
The day after Lena "died," Magda slipped an envelope of coffee into Charlotte's pocket, enough for a full cup, along with a piece of hard red candy from before the war.
At the convent, the nun reached for Lena's hand, but the child withheld it and clung to her mother. A little girl appeared in the doorway behind the nun.
"Look," Charlotte said, waving at the girl.
When the child waved back and smiled, Lena released Charlotte's hand and went with the nun. In the doorway, Lena turned around and smiled. Charlotte realized she hadn't kissed Lena goodbye. She stepped forward. But the door closed. She turned and picked her way down the pebbled walk.
The Sunday after she'd taken Lena to the nuns, Charlotte brewed Magda's coffee and shared it with her mother. Then she wrapped a cloth around the candy and crushed it with a hammer. She and her mother sucked silently on the splinters of berry-flavored sugar.
"How do you know we'll get her back?" Charlotte asked.
Her mother tossed back the coffee. Her eyes brimmed over with the pleasure of the caffeine. "We will. I know it." But the thickness in her mother's voice put Charlotte on edge.
***
In February 1943, the Nazis arrested Magda's husband in a "factory action." Magda went with a number of other women to the Rosenstraße prison, stood in the street silently begging for the release of their Jewish husbands. On the last day, Charlotte joined them. When the Gestapo and the SS suddenly released the men, the rejoicing deepened her longing for Lena.
The next day after work Charlotte joined her mother at the sink peeling potatoes.
"I want to see her."
Her mother's face softened for a moment. Then she tightened her jaw and threw the peels into the trash. Charlotte turned away from her mother, but she heard her words. "Lena's been there two years. She has a new name. By now she thinks she's somebody else."
She thinks she's somebody else. Charlotte fried the potatoes, flipping them with a spatula, sending some to the floor. Her mother picked up the potatoes with a spoon. Charlotte couldn't eat. She'd married a Jew and given birth to a doomed child. Worst of all, it was her fault they hadn't escaped to England. Now she just wanted to place her own cheek against the peach skin of the child she wished she'd never had. To smell her hair. To hear her high-pitched singing.
All my little ducklings swim on the lake.
***
The next morning, Charlotte tiptoed past her mother's bedroom, buttoned her sweater as she ran down the steps. The only other passenger in the train compartment was a slender young woman with a protruding belly. People would open doors for her. Charlotte remembered how considerate some people had been before Lena was bo
rn. A member of Martin Luther's devil race had resided under her belt. But they hadn't known that.
The girl would visit a farm, thrust ration cards into the farmer's hand, replace the pillow under her dress with a haunch of beef. Charlotte took a window seat across the aisle from her.
At the village, they both got out. Charlotte sat down on the bench facing the tracks and opened her purse. Watching the girl from the corner of her eye, she took out the note she'd written for Lena on an old bill from the electric company.
Lena, I love you always. Mamma.
Red ink hearts surrounded the words.
The air smelled of primrose and sweet pea. But as she walked through the freshly cut grass, the rotten smell of the hawthorn blossom crept into her nostrils. She mustn't let Lena see her. From behind the hedge, she'd watch the children play. After they'd gone inside, she'd creep up to the door and slip her note into the mailbox.
Her blood thrummed as she approached the door. She was surprised to find it open. On the steps lay composition books, a doll without a leg, pencils, and slates. She opened her mouth. Hallo. But an echo mocked her voice. Her knees crumpled, and the earth reached for her.
Her body hurt around the bones. A rough fabric brushed her cheek and a metal cup touched her mouth. The rim was cold on her lips. A man who smelled of animals stood next to her. A screwdriver and pencil poked up from his pocket.
"Looking for somebody?"
Her neck hurt when she nodded.
"I just live over there." He gestured to a small farmhouse, smoke curling thinly from its chimney.
She moved her hand in a way that took in the entire garden. "How did this happen?"
"Stormtroopers pulled up in a truck. Jumped out. Two ran around the back. One banged on the door with his gun."
She held up her hand. Enough. But he seemed to overflow with the need to tell.
"I grabbed my fork, went out, like I was pitching peat. One of the nuns opened the door. Stupid kids stuck their heads out the window."
She winced.
He spoke more gently. "I mean—should've gone under the beds."
Had Lena seen them banging on the door? How many horrors had she known? Now the farmer spoke louder.
"Pushed their way in. Nuns screamed—"
With difficulty she got to her feet and walked slowly toward the end of the garden. The farmer followed.
"Kids're screaming. Gestapo comes out with 'em in a headlock, two at a time. Throws 'em into the truck. Jewish kids. They do 'em that way when they're Jewish."
Another sound. Charlotte turned her head. A small, roundshouldered woman had entered the garden. Her habit was gray in the white places. She gestured toward the stone bench. Next to it stood a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, feeding pigeons, his other hand resting on the head of a wolf—peaceful as if the Nazis had never stolen her child. Charlotte sank onto the cold stone next to the woman. She realized she couldn't remember the name of her mother's classmate.
The nun licked her lips. "I was praying in the chapel, heard them banging on the door. 'Quiet. You'll wake the children,' I said. They laughed. 'Bring us the Jewish brats,' they said. 'I have no Jews here. These are Catholic children whose fathers are fighting the Red Army.'
"One of them was polite, almost as if he'd grown up in the church. 'They've misled you, Sister,' he said. 'We've got a quota to fill.'"
Why was this woman still here?
"By the time I got to the kids' beds, most of them were awake."
Charlotte's voice came out in a squeak. "When my daughter came here, her name was Lena."
The nun appeared puzzled. Then her face brightened.
"I remember her." Charlotte sensed less happiness than the affirmation that her memory still worked.
"I saw her—your Lena—in the back of the truck holding Sister Marie Luise's hand."
At least the child had been with somebody. With her eyes, Charlotte tried to convey her need to the nun, her need to conjure up a happy image. For a moment they sat in silence. At last the nun spoke. "Sister Marie Luise told the children it was a field trip," she said.
Charlotte felt relief at the delusion. Games. A picnic among woodland violets and lush ferns.
"You escaped, Sister?"
"Didn't have room. They pushed me off the truck."
Charlotte almost clucked with sympathy. Then she felt contempt for this useless survivor, less valuable than her charges. Nevertheless she rose to her feet and shook the nun's hand. At the gate of the convent, Charlotte knelt among the discarded toys and picked up a small suitcase. Inside was a doll wrapped in a dishrag. Like the round-shouldered nun, the doll had been bumped from the field trip.
The train's wheels on the track shook the bones in Charlotte's back. Sister Marie Luise had lied to the children, and Lena had believed her. She'd sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, and looked out the window at the rolling countryside, smiling in anticipation.
The Tundra Painter
On the photo tacked to the wall at the Red Cross, Lena at age five had a round, baby-like face. The photo of another person lost in the war partially hid the Bernstein name. Charlotte adjusted the information sheet beneath it, stepped back and eyed it with satisfaction. At least people could read it now—just in case somebody knew about her. But Lena's photo bothered her. How did the child look at age eleven? A tall and lean adolescent? It chilled her to think that she might not recognize her own child.
On the way home, she eyed the single remaining wall of a bombed-out baroque church, complete with stained glass windows. She tried to remember how it had looked before the war. But she couldn't get the statues right. Nothing was the same anymore. Certainly not her child.
Just beyond the pockmarked copper dome, her mother's building came into view, and Charlotte slowed her pace, preparing the ritualistic answer she'd give for the last time.
Her mother stood in the gloomy stairwell. She'd been waiting for her. Her appearance was entirely gray, as if her hair color had seeped into her cheeks.
"Any news?"
Charlotte shook her head. Her mother leaned forward with the look that always added another layer to Charlotte's sadness. We've lost everything but one another.
If her mother were a different person, Charlotte would tell her how Max's ghost visited the factory today. She'd been gluing labels on bottles. The women talked of shops that sold flour and peas. And of the men they'd lost. His hand had brushed her breasts, and she'd turned to him. But he was gone again. The moistness between her legs had born testimony to his visit.
Upstairs, seated across from her mother, Charlotte broke the news. "There's nothing for me in Berlin." She handed her mother the newspaper, pointing to the advertisement about farm jobs in Iceland. She'd disembark in another world. The ocean would block out her mother and nullify her sweet sad sense of Lena.
"What do they eat up there? Grass? Fish?"
Charlotte admired her mother's ability to obscure all dramatic moments with practical concerns. But she also read the message in the older woman's eyes. Don't leave me alone to deal with Lena.
The message had become a needle stuck in the groove of a record. Not that she didn't love Lena anymore. But her memory was a weight heavier than she could bear.
"There's still a chance for Lena," her mother said.
"You read the convent report—no survivors."
They'd hidden Lena, rubbed out every connection to her Jewish father. Afterwards, they'd worn one another out with blame. And now Lena was as lost as if they'd sent her to England.
"We should have kept her at home," her mother said in a tired voice.
Charlotte twisted the knife.
"'Nuns'll save her.' That's what you said."
Her mother rose suddenly to her feet. She stood and gazed at the wall as if she'd lost her way in her own kitchen. Then she grasped a chair back, the kitchen counter, and moved along the wall toward her bedroom. Charlotte heard the door click behind her. Then she placed her hands over her ears to
shut out the muffled crying that would come next.
She took out paper and pen and began a letter to Frau Bernstein.
We have posted Lena's picture and information with the Red Cross. We have heard nothing. This week I sail for Iceland.
She addressed it to the house in Covent Garden, the address her mother-in-law had given her when she stepped into the taxi so many years ago.
The next day, Charlotte booked passage from Hamburg to Reykjavík. Holding her ticket in both hands, she distanced herself from her surroundings, as if she were stepping out of a group portrait, and the other figures shifted to fill the gap. She visited the art gallery one last time to study portraits, memorize noses, measure the distance between eyes, note how the light raised a cheekbone, hoarding details like a farmer preparing for a famine.
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