The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “Good evening, ma’am,” he said with a polite smile, removing his hat promptly. “Is your husband at home? If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to speak with him for a few moments.”

  The woman regarded him cautiously through the cracked door, but his tone was courteous, almost apologetic, so she stepped aside and let him in. “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “May I let him know your name, sir?”

  “Good evening,” the officer offered once more in place of his name, and it took her a moment to realize that her husband had appeared behind her. He had taken off his tie, and his hands were still wet from washing up after supper. Ambling toward them, he unrolled his shirtsleeves.

  “Your wife was kind enough to invite me in. I hope it’s all right, given the hour.”

  At the table, they settled like old friends sharing a glass of brandy after a hard day’s work. The clock ticked behind them, in tune with the sound of their voices, even, uneventful. An hour had passed, maybe two, and neither had shifted an inch. Yet there was a fatigue that had overtaken her husband; he kept rubbing his eyes, and beads of perspiration had appeared on his forehead, on his upper lip. As they talked, she had finished cleaning the kitchen and had put their young daughter to bed. Now, in the other room, she was pacing the floor as quietly as she could, pretending that she, too, was asleep. There had been questions, endless questions, about her father-in-law, his former post in the Royal Parliament, how much her husband knew about the king’s present arrangements. And that, she realized, could mean only one thing for them.

  Mere months earlier, King Carol II’s abdication from the throne had astonished all of Europe. He had run in a hail of bullets, chased out of the country like a hunted animal. Not that he had ever been popular with his people. But in the short time before his abdication, the people’s distaste for Carol had intensified, fueled by his handing over of Romanian territories to Hungary and Russia without contest, without a single gun being fired. The thing that made the pot boil, however, causing riots to erupt on the streets, was his unwillingness to give up Magda Lupescu, his mistress of twenty years, for whom he would forgo his country and honor and rightful queen, the mother of his only child. People hurled obscenities and insults at them, and children threw stones at the royal convoy as their cars sped hastily through the streets of Bucharest, Magda and Carol hidden from view in the rear seat of their Rolls-Royce. Death to the Jewish whore! they shouted angrily as the two ran up the steps of the palace, where Magda had been living for years, a reigning queen in all but name.

  When shots were fired at the palace windows, it had all become too much. Packing just bare necessities, Carol and Magda fled in the night on a train to Spain with just a few trunks and a handful of loyal friends. Romania was then run by Hitler’s right-hand man, General Antonescu, with young Prince Michael a mere puppet king and Antonescu’s Legionnaires, in their mad quest for blood, murdering sixty of Carol’s former aides and turning the city into a battleground.

  “I have already answered all of your questions, officer,” she heard her husband say. “My father has never discussed professional matters with anyone, especially not with me.”

  “What about the excursions you took to the country when you were a boy? It is a known fact, sir, that your father was a childhood friend of Magda Lupescu. Was she there, on these long vacations?”

  “Who are you speaking of?”

  “The king’s mistress, sir. The woman who helped your father obtain a position in the cabinet, who brought other Jews like herself under his wing, who cost him the throne! Do you mean to tell me that you do not know who she is?”

  The officer’s voice was no longer restrained. It was just short of a yell. Even so, the young man regarded him quietly. “I do not remember any such excursions,” he said. “I am sorry.”

  Leaning back in his chair, the officer loosened the top button on his collar and took a gulp of his tea. In the downturned corners of his forced smile, the young man saw it all: the disdain for his family, the hatred, the frustration with this interrogation that was going nowhere.

  “You will need to come with me to the precinct. Just protocol, you understand. But we have a few more questions. Should take no more than an hour.”

  Nodding faintly, the young man looked down at his hands. There was no point in arguing, it would only make matters worse, so he stood without any resistance and began making his way to the door. But then the words he prayed would not be uttered were there, out in the open, hitting him squarely in the back.

  “Your wife and daughter, they need to come, too.”

  “Why?” he asked, not turning, not daring to. “They have done nothing. Our daughter is only three . . .”

  They were beyond conversation now; it was done with, and he heard it in the silence that followed, in the sharpness of the officer’s steps as he approached the window and motioned to the patrol car below.

  “By all means, we will come with you,” he said now. His head was spinning, and the panic that had risen inside him caused him to speak too fast. It took an effort to slow down, breathe normally. “If I could have just a few minutes to explain the situation to my wife. . . . She gets extremely agitated, you see. I think my talking to her first might make our visit to the precinct a little easier.” He clasped his hands in a pleading gesture that implied, We are both men, we understand how delicate women can be.

  The officer retreated from the window, looked at his watch. He did not like being in these situations. He much preferred marching ordinary Jews out of their homes. But this particular family had to be handled with care; those were his orders. Besides, the last thing he wanted to witness was the hysterics of this man’s wife. Nothing displeased him more than a scene.

  “You have ten minutes. Starting now,” he spat, calculating that an hour from now, if she agreed to come along peacefully, he could be sipping his drink at the corner bar. “I’ll be right outside.” Then, placing his hat on his head, he marched out of the flat, slamming the door behind him.

  There was disarray in his desk drawer—too many things, envelopes and bills that were still to be paid, a letter opener that sliced along his finger, making him wince. Lei. He felt them, a large stack of them, right where he’d placed them in a hidden compartment, there for an emergency or a last-minute trip, never something like this. He shoved them hastily into his shirt pockets, his pant pockets, too, inside his socks.

  There was a look when he burst through the bedroom door. A brief, knowing look, no words, as he lifted the little girl out of her bed. From the corner of his eye, he saw his wife grab a shawl, a bonnet for the girl, her blanket. He saw her look around the room for her shoes, settling on the slippers. And then they were running. With his daughter in his arms, they were running toward the kitchen and out the back door leading to the service stairs, and his heart was pounding, pounding like it never had before in all his twenty-seven years.

  It was warm in the boiler room. Warm and damp, and the water heater was churning along, which was a good thing, for it offered some insulation, cocooned them in a strange way. They had been lucky, given the circumstances, downright blessed that the guards at the front gate had their backs turned and were laughing, smoking a cigarette, as the three slithered right past them into the bowels of the building. But now that they were here, the momentary feeling of safety was quickly dissipating. They were not safe, not by a long shot, with the guards back on the lookout and the little girl whimpering in her mother’s arms.

  “It’s all right,” she crooned, rocking her, smoothing her face. “It’s all right.” And the way she smiled seem to indicate this was only a game, make-believe that they would laugh about later by the fireplace. But when her fingers touched her lips and went flat, there was something that appeared in those tiny, wise eyes, and the girl knew that she had to keep quiet.

  From a dusty corner, he dragged a few wooden crates and stacked them high against the wall. It seemed desperate, unlikely to work, yet there seemed to be no other choice,
no other way out. Thus, he was almost surprised when he climbed on the very last one, stretching his arms as if he meant to reach for the sky, that he could touch the edge of the basement window. Wiping away dusty cobwebs, he cranked it open, careful not to make any noise. The opening was barely wide enough for a child to slip through, yet he tried not to linger on this fact as he wedged his way out one centimeter at a time, grabbing the iron bars on the other side of the window. As he collapsed on the sidewalk above, he had to remind himself that this was no great victory. He had to act quickly.

  “Give her to me,” he whispered down to his wife. “Give her to me now.”

  Through the cavity, he groped for his daughter, her tiny arms and soft little body, the hair so long and lush for her young age. When he pulled at her, a little too roughly, he heard her cry out, and his heart nearly shattered, but he did not relent. The blood was pounding in his temples, and he thought, We will be caught now, we will be shot, she will not see her fourth year. He feared this with every fiber in his body as he yanked her through with one final tug. Then his wife was out, too, and they were together again, huddled against one another, breaths and arms intertwined, trembling in the darkness.

  Crouching in shadows, they fled, crawling along alleyways, interminable walls. The police were still everywhere, blowing on whistles, shouting orders, urging others to get moving, to move faster. The screech of tires and car doors slamming shut echoed from invisible cul-de-sacs like the peaks of a mountain, and from behind drawn curtains, a few faces peered through, trying to make out the commotion below. Someone opened a window to get a better look, and he had no choice but to pull his wife and his daughter into the nearest entryway.

  An apartment building drew them into its shelter, one that he’d known from his childhood days, with a rusty old elevator that had not worked in decades. Even then, seeking refuge from his friends in a game of hide-and-seek, he recalled it was hardly dependable; often the residents groaned and cursed and yelled for the superintendent to come rescue them from the death trap of a cage as he hid in the alcove beneath the shaft. No one, he recalled, could ever find him there. No one even knew the alcove existed. Yet it was not as warm as the boiler room, this secret hideaway of his youth, nor was it as comforting. The only source of warmth here was an old woolen blanket that he found in a broom closet, smelling of gasoline and full of moth holes.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said after the frenzy outside seemed to die down a bit. “We have to move on. They will be back, they may already be on their way now, and they will comb every square inch, every entranceway, every home. They will interrogate every neighbor they might suspect of harboring us. We have to get across town. Tonight.”

  To his surprise, his wife did not seem to hear him. She was crouched into a ball on the floor, rubbing her feet, her arms, hidden underneath a tumble of hair.

  “Darling,” he said, “darling,” but she did not move, and he stepped back from her in utter exasperation. When he lifted her upward, she slid from his grasp like a fish, making a tiny sound. He grabbed her shoulders then and shook her forcefully, so much more than he intended or thought he was capable of. “Please,” he implored. “Please move. Get on your feet.”

  He did not wish to frighten her. This was his love, his girl, the woman he’d started a family with. Yet he was no longer a husband himself, no longer a man. He was a cornered dog, wounded, gasping for his own last breath.

  “Get up. Now! Do you understand that if we don’t move, we will not live to see the light of tomorrow?”

  “All right,” she said at last, and there was nothing but hollowness in her voice. “All right, we will do as you want, as you always want.” Then she stood, smoothing out her torn dress, and reeled away from him, walking into the darkness.

  Back on the street, the little girl began to whimper again, which only made him pick up his pace. Normally, he would have stopped to wait for his woman, but if he walked ahead, he knew she would follow, and it was the only way to keep them going. Another siren came dangerously close, and they ducked into yet another lobby, this one an expansive, elegant one with a spiral staircase and a beveled-glass entrance. They had to put more distance behind them, but she wouldn’t stop crying, his little girl, her tiny chest rising and falling, her tears wetting his neck. His wife, too, could not go much farther, that much was clear. On the stairs now, she lay bent at the waist, her arms splayed out to the sides in a stance of crucifixion.

  “I cannot go on,” she sobbed. “I want to die here.”

  He inched toward her, wanting to comfort her, inundated all of a sudden with remorse for being so rough with her, so unrelenting. But his will was leaving him, too, his legs felt like lead, his arms were numb from the cold and from the weight of the child he’d carried for so many hours. He could not remember how long he had been thirsty and cold. And this was only a glimpse of what was to come. He envisioned himself on the streets of Bucharest with his wife weak and broken at his side, his little girl starving, freezing to death. Where would they get food, shelter? Who would take them in? They were vagabonds, runaways. Soon their stride would slow, their resolve would burn down like a candle, their bodies would stop moving. And one morning, maybe tomorrow or the day after, someone would stumble upon three mounds in the middle of the stark and frozen city, three heaps of lifeless flesh lining the streets like so many others.

  “My love.” He looked away. How could he look at her, knowing what he was about to say? He balled his fists and took in a breath, choked back his own tears. “We have to try to give her a chance. A small chance but something.” He crouched down next to his wife, forced her hands away from her tearstained face. “If we could leave her here, in this lobby, there is a good chance that someone will find her. Then we can keep moving, going much farther on our own. We will come back for her in a couple of days when things are . . . safer.”

  Only confusion rose in her eyes. Her mouth twisted, wordlessly, and she laughed, or at least he thought she did. “What did you say?”

  Despite the iciness of her palms, he brought them to his own face, sank his cheeks into them. The bile had risen in him so abruptly he thought he would retch.

  “Please, please, just listen. No one knows who she is, who we are. If we leave her here in this lobby, she can stay warm for a while longer, until someone, maybe one of the residents, finds her. No one will turn away a little girl. No one could turn their back on her, and she’ll have shelter and food and a bed to sleep in for the night, maybe a few nights. Just until we can figure out a plan.”

  His wife’s eyes were no longer uncomprehending; they were dark, filled with rage. For a moment, he thought she would strike him.

  “If the police or the Guard get us tonight, there’s no chance,” he went on, undeterred. “No chance for her. You know how it ends for people like us, don’t you?” His voice was splintering, breaking apart. “I know a place we might go. There is someone I trust, a good man, a friend of my father’s. He lives on Boulevard Bratiani, not far from here. He may agree to take us in for a few days. But he will not take us in with a child. If she made a sound, if she even so much as whimpered, it would mean the end for them and for us, too. We will come back for her in a few days.”

  Then there were no more words, for he was weeping alongside his wife as the girl watched, wide-eyed and silent, her small fist wrapped around the hem of her mother’s muddied skirt. In his wife’s eyes, the man saw things that he had never seen before. It was the look of the dying, of someone still here but with the lifeblood draining out of her veins. And yet there was something else, too. For an instant, he recognized it, that same shred of hope that had risen above all else in his own wretched heart, a trace of resignation in the path that left no other options open.

  7

  June 1941

  ANTON SAT BY THE FIRE in the late evening, with the day’s newspaper in his lap, his nightcap all but untouched. Romania, he’d just read in the headlines, had joined Nazi Germany in the invasion of th
e Soviet Union, delivering equipment and oil and more troops to the Eastern Front than all of Germany’s other allies combined. There was no turning back now that Romanian forces were fully immersed in the fighting in Ukraine and Bessarabia and, closer to the heart of the bear, in Stalingrad.

  On the glass coffee table, the reflected flames shimmered, warming the maroon walls to a soft red, drenching the room in a welcoming amber light. Yet despite the quietness of the hour, which he’d always cherished, an intense restlessness had settled in the depths of his being. This is the last oasis, he thought, imagining what was to come now that Romania was no longer neutral in this godforsaken war. Since the country had taken the side of Germany, it would only be a matter of time before the Allies would retaliate and bombs would fall on Bucharest—of that he was certain.

  This country of ours, he thought, has always been in the crossfire between two worlds, a threshold between Russia and the rest of the world. This time, however, it would be for Germany and Hitler’s vision that innocent people in his country would die. And without a rightful king, who would protect it in the days ahead?

  The Legionnaires, despite being forced to disband in the aftermath of the Bucharest massacre, were back on the streets, inciting a new rampage in the city of Iasi, this time with the full support of the army. No one knew when it would end, how much worse it would get. The stories of last January alone made Anton recoil in disgust and feel ashamed to call himself a Romanian, a God-fearing human being.

  Lately, he couldn’t sleep thinking about the things he had heard; he could not expunge those images from his mind: homes stormed in the Jewish quarters, women raped in front of their husbands and children, men forced to write suicide notes before being shot in the street like stray dogs. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, were killed in Baneasa Forest in northern Bucharest, and the next morning, gypsies pounced on their naked bodies to extract gold from their teeth.