The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “What has God given you to make you believe in him so?” he’d asked her once when he was fourteen.

  She had turned around and slapped him. “Do not challenge Almighty God,” she had shouted, shaking her finger at him. “You should be grateful for your daily bread, for all that he makes possible for us.”

  What daily bread? he had wanted to say, but he knew it was pointless. That was when he decided that he’d had enough of her piety and saintly humbleness. Not long before, he’d met a young man, a schoolmate who brought him to a party one night, where he had his first drink of whiskey. There were other young students there, and they were talking about things that he’d never heard of before, things that made his spirit soar with excitement and indignation. They talked about liberty and equality, about the industrial revolution just across the border in Soviet Russia and how it was surpassing the advances of any other country five-fold. They drank late into the night, and by the time dawn rose, Victor felt free. The sudden optimism that had sprung in his young heart seared itself into his flesh like a permanent insignia, and he did not care if his aunt was worried about him, if she had to cut and sew her dresses all by herself. For the first time in his young life, he had hope, and on hope alone he could subsist for days, weeks, without food, without shelter.

  The following month, he had moved into a converted attic above a store in Piazza Romana and begun attending weekly meetings, where his new friends treated him with respect and asked his opinions and listened to what he had to say. In their eyes, he saw the future—unfathomable possibilities for people like him who had only known a life in which they were insignificant, poor, broken, exploited. He routinely participated in demonstrations and was even arrested several times for disturbing the peace, but he kept going back out into the streets, always the first in a swell of workers and peasants. Often, he was held for a few days, but no charges were ever pressed against him, and eventually he would be let go. Soon bigger events had overtaken the city, and the police no longer bothered to break up the rallies. No one noticed them any longer as entire city sectors went up in flames.

  Natalia recalled a time, not long after that, when Victor said that Anton had been as close to a parent as anyone he’d ever known. Victor had looked him straight in the eye when he said it at the supper table, his fork suspended in midair, his eyes blazing with gratitude and conviction. Her father had given him one of his hearty laughs and patted his back, but there had been so much more in his expression than flattery. It was as if a beacon of light had ignited between them, fleeting yet undisputable, connecting two kindred spirits in a bond that was theirs alone.

  Where was that young man who once held such a special place in her father’s heart? There was little left of him that she could see now. There was no semblance of him in the person who sat across from her mother, listening intently as she recounted the events that had led to her husband’s arrest.

  If Victor was in any way surprised or alarmed, there was nothing on his face to betray it. Not a muscle moved, not an eyebrow went up, not a tremor showed on his lips. He was as still as a marble statue. How does he do that? Natalia wondered as she observed him, mesmerized, from behind the glass door. How is he able to feel nothing? She retreated behind one of the semisheer curtains, afraid that he would see her, but she could not step away, not entirely. Her feet were held in place by an invisible magnet.

  At one point, he stood and lit a cigarette, then, sweeping a hand through his hair, he went to the window and gazed at something outside. A few moments later, he walked back to the coffee table and put out his cigarette in the bronze ashtray. Out of his breast pocket, he removed a small notepad and a pencil and scribbled something on it. An exchange of words followed, something Natalia could not hear, as he tore off the page and handed it to her mother.

  In the brief moment that passed between her mother dropping her face into her hands and Victor touching her arm as if to comfort her, Natalia saw her do something she had never done before. Taking Victor’s hand in hers, she raised it to her lips and kissed it.

  29

  THE SUN HAD NOT YET risen by the time Despina left the next morning. Natalia heard her gathering her things in the foyer, the clinking of keys, the front door slamming shut, then steps on the sidewalk fading away, short and precise. She leaped out of bed and peered through the half-drawn curtains, observing her mother’s silhouette glide briskly toward the end of the block.

  If she had passed her in a crowd, Natalia might not have recognized her in that oversize coat—her father’s, no doubt—and a faded, floral headscarf tied under her chin. At least she’d given up her high-heeled pumps and fur coats. The month before, on the tram, someone cut a hole the size of a soccer ball in the back of her mink. She did not feel a thing, standing there holding on to the overhead strap. Only the chill on her back when she came off the trolley tipped her off that a large swath of her coat was missing. As her fingers felt around the crude dissection, a woman in a drab factory uniform and rain galoshes stopped to regard the spectacle. “It serves you right!” she cackled with a hand on her hip. “The time for your fancy coats is over!”

  After that, Despina’s furs were wrapped and placed in the back of her wardrobe, where at least they would remain intact and not be sold piece by piece on the black market. But in the weeks after her father’s arrest, her mother stopped caring completely about what clothes she was wearing. It seemed that the mere act of getting dressed in the morning had become an impossible chore.

  Natalia felt recently more like the parent than the child, reminding her mother daily that she needed to eat for she was getting too thin, rubbing her shoulders, bringing her tea in the morning as she lingered in bed, retreating into a place where no one could reach her. Natalia was the one to stand in line at the grocer’s, to sort the mail, to answer the interminable phone calls from her aunts and explain that her mother was tired, she could not speak this evening, she could not move or breathe, she was simply missing. Until her father was released, Natalia realized, their days would unfold precisely like this, bleeding somberly into one another, suspended somewhere between despair and hope and marked only by a long list of chores.

  But at night, when the house was quiet and Natalia went back to her room, her moments were entirely hers, and she could allow her mind to drift off. And it seemed that her mind was constantly fleeing her ever since Victor’s visit. It was a mere distraction at first, something besides her piano to take away the longing she felt for her father, the fear. Yet lately, it was happening all the time. Lying back in her bed, waiting for daylight to come, she thought of him now—the glossy dark hair, the commanding stature, the intensity of his gaze, which had always been there and yet had transformed from something raw or desperate into a steely calmness. She thought of the way he’d smiled at her in the doorway as if he’d never really seen her before, and something drew up inside her tightly like a ball of yarn.

  It was wrong, she knew it. This was the same Victor she’d known since she was a little girl—a little bit older, a little bit better dressed, but still, the same one. Everything in her recent life had weighted her with such heaviness that she couldn’t resist this tiny seed of exhilaration, which bloomed in her heart like a scarlet rose in a dreary field. Besides, everyone was allowed a secret. This was hers, she said to herself, a small secret causing no harm at all, and she closed her eyes and caressed her own lips unknowingly for what she thought was only a moment.

  The grandfather clock downstairs jolted her back to consciousness. She’d been lost in a dream, though she’d slept hard and couldn’t recall it. Her room was flooded with a light so bright it hurt her eyes, and she sat upright, counted the strikes. She’d slept straight through the morning, it seemed, and her mother had been gone for nearly six hours. Six hours, and she had no idea where she was. Scrambling to her feet, trying to get her bearings, she threw on her robe and hurried downstairs, hoping that maybe she’d left a note. Halfway down the steps, the sound of the phone in the fo
yer caused her to leap over the rest of the steps, and she lunged for it urgently.

  “Hello?” she answered, slightly out of breath, expecting to hear her mother’s voice.

  There was a bit of a crackle, as if the person on the other end had placed down the receiver and was again picking it up. “Talia? Good afternoon. It’s Stefan calling.”

  “Oh, hello, Uncle,” she answered, the temporary relief of moments ago instantly evaporating. “My mother isn’t here right now. Should I take a message?”

  “Actually, no, Talia . . . it’s you I was hoping to speak with. I need your help, you see. I’m afraid it is not something that can wait.”

  “All right,” she murmured a little unsurely. “What can I do?”

  “Talia, do you know how to get into your father’s safe?”

  The question stunned her. It was the last thing she expected. It took her a moment to think of how to reply, what to say. Yes, she knew how to get into the safe. She had seen her father do it plenty of times at the store, putting away petty cash at the end of the day. She’d even opened it for him once or twice. The combination was easy to remember. It was her birthday.

  “Why, Uncle?” she hesitated. “Umm, my mother should be back soon.”

  “Talia, this is urgent. Please forgive me for having to be so direct, but . . . well, I don’t know how else to say this, but time is running out. For both of them.”

  She felt an opening in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “I cannot explain right now, my dear. All I can say is that you’ll have to trust me. You have to get your father’s stamp collection out of the safe for me. Right now.”

  There was a silence while she tried to collect herself. “Uncle Stefan, I think my mother—”

  “Your mother will not come home today unless we act quickly,” he interrupted, and the tone in his voice flooded her with the realization that what he was saying was true. But he was talking too fast, and she couldn’t keep up with all the details, couldn’t quite grasp the whole thing.

  “Look, a warrant for your mother’s arrest was issued this afternoon,” he pronounced now more crisply, slowing down a bit. “She is there, Talia; she is visiting your father right now, so chances are that they will detain her as well. I know this from Victor, who called me just minutes ago.”

  “Victor?” she repeated, and her grasp tightened around the telephone cord. “What’s he got to do with all this?”

  “Victor is doing all he can to get the charges dropped. Unfortunately, there will be a price for that, a substantial sum. I don’t have that kind of cash on hand.”

  There was another pause. The silence was excruciating.

  “It has to be done now. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Yes, she understood. She understood so well that she had to lean up against the wall. The image of her mother pulling the trigger flashed in her mind, and she knew now it was the reason they had come for her father. It was an excuse to punish him, to make him cower in fear. And now they would do the same with her mother. Only with her, they would not stop at that.

  It paralyzed her senses, her ability to breathe. She could not lose her parents, her father and mother both. They were all she had in the world. Whatever it took to stop that from happening, whatever the consequences, she would deal with them later. Right now, there was no time to waste. Their future rested in her hands.

  “What do you need me to do, Uncle? Just tell me, and I’ll do it,” she uttered shakily into the receiver.

  “Can you get the stamps out of the safe? Can you, Talia? I can be there in less than an hour.”

  “Yes,” she replied simply. Then, as if to reinforce this very fact to herself: “You can count on me.”

  30

  A SINGLE SHARD OF LIGHT TRICKLED in through the narrow arched window, just below the pitched ceiling. So much time had passed since she had been up here that she had nearly forgotten what the attic looked like—the vast, dusty space filled with old furniture, her bed from when she was little in the corner, the mattress discolored and full of moth holes, her mother’s salvaged stove from the lake house underneath a pile of old clothes. Things that had once been the minutiae of their everyday lives. Discarded, useless things now, things that had nothing to do with the present.

  All of it she tried to block out, focusing on the task at hand. Forward three, back twenty-three, forward thirty-seven, the digits of her birthday conjured with the round dial, underneath her trembling fingertips. As she slowed to the last number, she wondered if her father had changed the combination and had to steady her wrist with her other hand to complete the turn. When the internal lock released with a resounding click, she nearly collapsed with relief.

  For a moment, she rested her forehead against the cool surface of the metal door, waiting for her pulse to slow down. Then she pressed down on the handle.

  With surprising ease, the door swung open, and a synthetic smell, something like burnt rubber, drifted toward her. Reaching inside the cavity, pushing aside the rectangular blocks wrapped in cloth that seemed to fill it entirely, she searched for the leather-bound case. It did not take long to find it, lodged between the back wall and one of the blocks. Gently, she eased it out, and just then, something else caught on its edges and tumbled out with it, landing on her lap. It was a cardboard file, tied around the middle with red yarn. She picked it up and was about to thrust it back inside when something unusual caught her eye. The tab in the corner, handwritten in black ink. Natalia, it said simply.

  For a moment, she held the file, unsure of what to do. She fumbled with it, turning it over, then back again, staring at her name. Put it back. Put it back now, her own voice rang in her head, but her hands would not obey; they seemed to have a mind of their own. Already they were unraveling the yarn, once, twice, until it fell away and the file gaped open before her.

  The first thing she extracted was a black-and-white photograph of her and her parents; it must have been taken just days after her adoption. Tilting it against the light, she gazed at a much younger image of herself—the enormous white ribbon on top of her head, the lace socks that were a little too long and bunched under her knees—and her parents, breathtaking in formal attire, standing on either side of her. Setting it down, she rummaged through the folder, hoping to find more photographs, but there were no others, just a bunch of envelopes of varying sizes.

  The largest one contained some kind of a legal document. There, in the corner, was the state insignia and at the bottom her parents’ signatures along with Stefan’s, above the line that read Attorney and Witness. The decree of her adoption, she realized, setting this down as well.

  The second envelope she plucked from the folder was much smaller, the kind that was used for everyday correspondence. Someone had scribbled a date across it: February 20, 1944. There was no return address, only a strange, faded stamp which she strained to make out—Geneva, Switzerland. Whom did her parents know in Switzerland? Curiously, she reached inside and extracted a single sheet of paper. It was flimsy, almost transparent, and a little yellowed around the corners. Unfolding it, she held it up against the slant of light and began reading:

  Dear Mrs. Tudor,

  I am writing to you in regard to a young girl who was brought to your orphanage in January of 1941. At the time, she was not yet four years old. It is with overwhelming relief as well as undeniable heartache that I recently learned of her whereabouts. I understand she was adopted by a family shortly after she was brought to your institution and that she is much loved and cared for.

  My intent is not to disturb the life to which she has undoubtedly become accustomed or to cause anguish to the family that has embraced her as their own. My only wish is to make it known to her, should she ever inquire of you, Mrs. Tudor, that leaving her that night was my only choice and her only salvation. It was with a heavy heart that I had to set her free so that she might live, so that she might have a chance at life, even as it meant the end of mine. I do
not dare to hope that she and I will meet one day. I do not wish to foster such false hope in my heart. My only desire is that she know that I loved her with every breath and that I have spent my last moments on earth begging God for her happiness.

  The note fluttered out of her hand. She placed her palm at the hollow of her throat, where a thick lump was obstructing her air passage. The piece of paper had landed right where she knelt, but she couldn’t pick it up; she just kept staring at the date. And staring. Everything else seemed to have gone black.

  Six years had passed since it had been written. Six years since it had been placed inside this safe, sealed in obscurity. Were her parents ever planning to show it to her? Were they waiting for the right moment? Could it be that they had simply forgotten? Certainly, much had happened since then, events that far eclipsed this, set it into the background. A war had been raging, with loss and illness, and their life resembled nothing of what it had once been. Yet another possibility crept into her mind. Maybe they had deliberately kept it from her. Maybe that was why she was coming upon it now, like a thief stealing in the night.

  She took in a long breath, forced it into her lungs. Guilt seared through her, guilt for trespassing, but also a sharp, indisputable awareness that this was the truth. Her mother in particular would have done anything to guard what was hers, the family that she’d so badly wanted. This was why she’d always been so protective of her, why she had kept her so close all those years. Why she’d been so deeply affected—terrified even—when that man had stopped on the street after school. Natalia shuddered now at the memory. It had taken place about the same time as when this letter was written. Had he really intended to kidnap her? Was that why the gates of the Swiss embassy were open so late in the evening?

  All the pieces of her life were reassembling themselves in a new light, like a movie she had already seen but whose meaning she had failed to grasp the first time. Even the abrupt cooling between her mother and Maria suddenly made sense. Maria worked at the orphanage; she had been there when Natalia was brought in. Maria knew too much, and so it made her mother uncomfortable having her nearby, feeling like she was being judged every minute of every day. And something else, something Natalia had long put out of her mind, a conversation she’d overheard just days before she and her mother left for the country. “Tell her, Desi,” she’d heard Maria say that afternoon as Natalia walked by her parents’ room, where the two women had retreated from the heat after shopping. “She has a right to know.” No doubt, they were speaking of this letter. That had to be the reason why at the sound of her footsteps, her mother had appeared in the half-open doorway, and when she caught sight of her standing there, all the blood had drained from her face.