The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  Setting foot in the Munich airport was like sliding into another world, a strange, magnificent world that stunned her with its brilliance. A sea of ruby-red carpet opened before her as she emerged from the airless tunnel, clutching her valise as tightly as she might a battle shield. Above her, rows of lights punctuated the cathedral-like dome, casting a soft glow on the floor-to-ceiling windows in which she glimpsed her own sphinx-like image amid the beehive of activity. It took her a moment to realize that she wasn’t, in fact, standing still, she was moving forward ever so slightly, pushed forward by the crowd.

  A kaleidoscope of colors and forms exploded before her as she made her way down the vast corridor that connected one terminal to the next, more conscious than ever of her aloneness amid the swarm of people. At kiosks between the hushed waiting areas, Swiss chocolates in gold wrappers gleamed at her invitingly, and bottles of Coca-Cola stacked three high behind a refrigerator’s glass reminded her of an advertisement she had once seen in a foreign magazine. On adjacent shelves were rows of tins—identical save for the labels—of Brazilian Coffee or Espresso, Premium Cocoa or English Black Tea, welcoming her like eager children standing in line at a matinee movie. Dried fruit sparkled in ribbon-tied cellophane, and snail-shaped pastries arranged in boxes with transparent lids beckoned with glazed sugar and the promise of something forbidden.

  At the end of the walkway, she turned the corner as if in a trance and encountered a further assault on her senses. There, spread out across a large circular area, were several duty-free shops, so brightly lit they would have been adequate for a surgeon’s work, flaunting boxes of French soaps and perfumes and foreign liquor. Beyond the immaculate shop windows, women in high-heeled shoes tilted their heads this way and that over display cases, men leaned impatiently against white marble walls, checking their watches. Female clerks in black smocks smiled invitingly among shimmering multicolored silk ties and cashmere shawls that were displayed artfully behind the cash registers. For a moment, Natalia considered walking into one of the shops, simply to take a closer look, perhaps to steal a touch, but then changed her mind. Instead, she looked away from it all, a little embarrassed, aware that she had been gaping wide-mouthed like the foreigner she was, a girl from behind the Iron Curtain who had never seen such things.

  Someone bumped into her from behind, making her jump. A man in a sports coat the color of dishwater mumbled what must have been an apology in German, his gaze shooting in her overall direction but flying past her, perhaps to the plane he was about to miss or the business appointment he was late for. She smiled to indicate that it was all right, but he had already moved on. Clutching her valise, she resumed walking a little bit faster. She passed a couple who were kissing passionately against a wall, no doubt saying good-bye, but the girl wasn’t crying at all, she was laughing, her head thrown back gleefully, her arms draped around the boy’s neck, and Natalia realized it wasn’t a good-bye at all, it was a homecoming. A woman trotted by quickly with her head held high, her chestnut hair loose and fluttering behind her like a curtain. She was trailed by a young boy, no older than ten, who was gesticulating and whining in a language Natalia did not understand, perhaps complaining about a toy his mother would not buy for him.

  They were all going somewhere, these people. Somewhere beyond this merry-go-round of shiny distractions, families were waiting, and lovers, and life. But not for her. There would be no arms to embrace her at the end of her journey, no warm meal to comfort her, no words of love whispered in her ear. Yet something strange had happened in the time since she had entered this new world, this opulent, nearly frantic world that left her breathless. She did not know what it was, but a new sensation had sprouted in her heart, something that fluttered at her rib cage like the wings of a hummingbird. It wasn’t anything that might obliterate her grief entirely, but it was enough to carry her across the airport, to the Pan American terminal, where the plane that was to take her over the ocean was taxiing to the gate.

  Another flight, another row of seats, these light blue with white covers draped over the headrests. Seat belts, lights, another runway, the roar of engines, and the speed that halted her breath, then open sky, immense and interminable.

  This flight turned out to be not as calm as the first. The pilot’s voice came on several times to announce that they would be through the worst of it soon, that there was nothing to worry about, they were just experiencing turbulence from a storm down below. But Natalia was no longer frightened. She was no longer daunted by the sudden rising and dropping, the floor quaking, the luggage bins rattling overhead. She was beyond fear. All she was acutely aware of now was distance, distance that she could feel in her bones, in the air she inhaled. It was pulling her forward and stretching behind her in equal measure, like a long prison wall that she might surmount irrevocably, only once.

  All around her, people shifted in their seats, conversing with one another, exchanging stories of their travels, reading newspapers, writing postcards, drinking champagne from plastic flutes. Champagne on a plane. Who would have imagined such a thing? She would never know what it was like to live with such carefree nonchalance. Her America would never be as easy as this. America. Her new home. What did it look like? She closed her eyes, trying to imagine it, its lakes and rows of mountains, its cities and bridges and steel-and-glass skyscrapers glinting in the sun, but nothing came to mind. Only a void was there and a sweet, sweet pull, a release of thoughts and limbs and mind that she vaguely recognized as sleep.

  Sometime later, a drop in altitude caused her eyes to snap open. Bewildered, she sat up in her seat, squinting against the stark daylight, which, despite the passing of hours, had refused to dull. There was a quietness now in the cabin as many of the passengers had slipped into their own slumber behind elliptical masks, and she felt herself loosen a little, grateful to be shielded from the scrutiny of their glances.

  Gingerly, she reached inside her skirt pocket and felt around for the smaller envelope that Victor had handed her when they parted what felt like a lifetime ago. It was still there, alongside her passport and ticket, its sharp corners grazing her fingertips like the blade of a dull knife. More than a dozen times, she had intended to take it out and read it but lacked the courage. Now the moment had come, for it wouldn’t be long before they landed. It’s time, she told herself, and her fingers gripped the envelope more firmly, pulling it out in one swift move.

  Several sheets of paper fluttered out when she tore it open. More than she realized at first, typed in her native tongue—translated, perhaps, by someone British or American, someone whose name she had never heard before. There was something else in that envelope, too, something dark green, which tumbled onto her lap. Holding it up to the light, she studied it for a few moments, its markings, its seals and serial numbers. One hundred American dollars. She was holding more money than she had ever seen in her life. Careful not to bend it, she placed it back in the envelope and slipped it inside her pocket.

  Then she picked up the pages and began to read.

  May 20, 1960

  Dear Natalia,

  My name is John Fowley. I am an attorney living in New York City, where I have been practicing law for more than fifteen years. Although you do not know me and have probably never heard of me before this day, you may find it hard to believe that in a sense I know you.

  In my profession, I have written many letters, informing people about divorces and deaths and wills, but none of those letters was as complex as this one is. And so please forgive the length, since I start at the beginning.

  In 1945, at the beginning of my career, I was working at a small family law firm here in Manhattan. One February morning, a young couple—no older than thirty, I guessed—walked into my office. In deeply accented English, the young man told me that they didn’t have much money but that he had been told I was a fair attorney, one who could be retained for a reasonable fee. I already had numerous cases on my desk and could have easily sent them on their way. But something in
their demeanor was so grave that I could not help but offer them a seat.

  Proudly, yet with visible emotion, the young man went on to tell me that he and his wife—the frail young woman sitting next to him—had escaped the Romanian Pogrom, the rounding up and killing of Jews in Romania, four years prior.

  I had, of course, heard about what had taken place in Europe during the war, about the atrocities in Poland and Hungary, about Jews being sent to so-called work camps. Worse rumors than that circulated, rumors that no one believing in God and human decency could fathom to be true. Yet here was this couple telling me that they had fled exactly that. He told me that it wasn’t until six months later—after hiding in a friend’s attic—that a train took them out of the country with just the clothes on their backs. “Fascinating story,” I told him. “But how is it that I can help you?” Nothing could have prepared me for what I heard next.

  He told me that when they fled, they were forced to leave their daughter behind. He said that she was in Bucharest and was now seven years old. They were separated from her when she was not yet four. At first, she was at an orphanage, but now she was with a new family. She had been adopted.

  It was for the first time in my professional life that I found myself at a complete loss for words. What could one say about such things? I tried to focus on the facts. They had fled an unspeakable situation, that much was clear. How they ended up in the United States, in New York City, was not of much importance to me. What was of the essence was that they had a daughter caught behind the Soviet line. No money or influence in the world would break through that barrier.

  As if reading my thoughts, the young man told me that he had been working on the docks six days a week and had done some other jobs as well, driving delivery trucks, busing tables. He said he had saved a little money and would get more. The family that adopted her was well-off and owned a chain of stores around Bucharest. He wanted to know what he would need to offer people like that to get his daughter back.

  He was asking me how to get his daughter out of the occupied Eastern Bloc. From a family who had adopted her legally.

  I told him it was impossible, that it couldn’t be done. He looked at me then with eyes so anguished that I told him that I’d look into it but that it might be a long while before I could find out anything. In the meantime, I informed him that he should save all he could.

  I handed him a set of papers to fill out in order to start a trust. I explained that the funds placed in it would be held in your name, that I could help him invest it so that it would multiply over time, that when you were of legal age, we would try somehow to get that money to you so that you could use it to get to the West. It was a long shot, but that was the best advice I could give him.

  He nodded and took the papers. We shook hands, and I told him to come and see me in a month’s time. Three weeks later, he was back. Then three weeks after that. Months turned into a year, then two, and he kept coming to see me regularly. His trust kept growing, little by little, as did our camaraderie, blooming eventually into a full friendship.

  On one occasion, we shared a beer at the bar across from my office. He told me then of the pain he had suffered, of his wife who still cried herself to sleep every night, of the heaviness that hung between them. He told me how much he missed her, how much he missed them, the couple they once were when they were a young family in love. They’d come to America, he explained, because there was nothing left for them back in Europe, not even each other, and I told him that I understood, offered him whatever words of comfort I could summon. As the evening wore on, I shared a bit of my own struggles. It helped him, I think, on some level to know that he wasn’t alone, and we parted outside with an embrace.

  After our beers that night, some time passed before I saw him again. In fact, it was nearly two years before, unexpectedly, he came back. There was a joyful energy about him that I had not seen before. We didn’t bother with pleasantries.

  “I have figured out how to get her out!” he told me excitedly. He said it wasn’t their daughter that the money should go to but the state of Romania. He had been talking to a few people in the Jewish community. Apparently, Romania had a secret arrangement with the state of Israel to export Romanian Jews out of the country. “Can you believe this?” he said. “They trade people for money, like they do cattle or oil. So I thought, why not her? Why not our daughter? If the Romanian government will accept money for her freedom, then we can surely get her out.”

  He had already received many donations from people of means who were willing to contribute. He wanted me to look into the matter, do some research, and said he’d pay me for my time.

  I told him that we were friends, that I would not charge him a dime and would do all that was in my power to help him. I wanted to warn him not to get his hopes up. It was a long shot, and even if it was true, who in that country could help us arrange such a transaction? Who would even dare to speak to us of such things? Yet at the moment, I didn’t have the heart to point out the obvious. This was by far the happiest I’d seen him. He tipped his hat to me as he left my office that day, and his smile said more than words ever could.

  Many years passed after my friend’s jubilant visit, years of trial and failure, of multiple attempts to reach the right people, to get our offer into the right hands, with no progress at all. All the letters I’d sent to the Romanian government went unanswered, and I’d long given up trying to get an audience at the Romanian embassy. With my friends, I spoke very little of these fruitless efforts, and we were seeing less of each other now. Though I still managed the couple’s trust, I could tell from the slight disinterest with which they asked me about it that they, too, were losing hope, that the money meant little to them now. “Do with it as you wish,” my friend told me on more than one occasion. “I cannot bear to speak of it any longer.”

  Then, one day something remarkable happened. One of my letters came back, “Return to Sender” written on the envelope in English. Had it not been for this simple marking, I probably would have tossed it into the wastebasket, but as I turned it over, I saw that the envelope had been opened and reglued with a visible strip of tape before being mailed back overseas. For once, someone had not only read my letter but wanted me to know that they’d taken notice.

  I opened it fervently, and there it was, my original letter addressed to the Ministry of Affairs, all three pages of it detailing in simple, straightforward terms why I was contacting them, what I wanted to achieve, the sum of money I was willing to pay. I looked inside the envelope. There was nothing else. And then I saw it, a small notation at the bottom of the last page, a scribbling in red ink.

  Numbers. A series of them, separated by dashes and colons in groups of four or five. It took me a while to realize they were the routing number and account number of a bank in Switzerland.

  I know that much of this may not make a great deal of sense to you, Natalia. It hardly makes sense to me, though I’ve lived long enough to know that once in a while, destiny has plans for us that we might never have imagined. Sometimes stars do align, and in the most mysterious ways.

  Of what had been set in motion that night I vowed that I would not speak to anyone. I simply did what needed to be done. Why I chose to do it in secret I cannot quite say. Perhaps it was fear that the whole thing was only a sham, that the money would be lost or squandered. Fear for that couple’s heartbreak. Above all else, that was something I could not risk laying on the doorstep of people who’d already suffered so much. Fortunately, however, our efforts were finally successful.

  When you arrive in New York City, please contact me immediately at either of the numbers provided on my business card, which I have enclosed. We will then go together to the bank on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, where I have opened a safe-deposit box in your name. You will not find a fortune in it, but it will be enough to get you on your feet, give you a start. The rest of what was in the trust was transferred into that undisclosed Swiss account on my instructions. Tho
se were the funds that secured your freedom.

  Inside the box, you will find an address in Brooklyn. Make sure to go there soon; do not wait. I hope that you now look forward to a future that will fulfill your dreams.

  Most sincerely yours,

  John Fowley, Esq.

  She hadn’t realized she was weeping until she looked down and saw that her tears had moistened the pages in her lap, blurring the words in several places. It seemed as if she was watching herself from somewhere above, through someone else’s eyes, this once stoic girl shedding so many tears.

  Maybe she felt ashamed that in all these years, she hadn’t given these people—these people who had given her life—more than a thought. When she’d found that letter years ago in her father’s attic, she’d been so eager to put it out of her mind, to dismiss it as if it meant nothing, as if those words were nothing to her. 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. She’d exiled them out of her heart, closed the door, bolted it shut.

  It was cool inside the cabin, yet a warmth was spreading through her, like a shot of sherry on a cold winter night. It wasn’t out of neglect that they’d left her that night; it was out of love. Fate had rolled over them like the tide, a deluge they hadn’t been able to stop. So they’d done the only thing they could do, raising her above the turbulent waters before the sea could pull them all down into its depths.