On one of Mother’s Sunday visits to the Werfels, she brought me another letter from Rosemarie. This time the postmark was English. I tore open the letter. It was dated two weeks past, just before that terrible time in Berlin. They were safe, then! They had left in time!
I read the words hastily, then again, and wordlessly I handed the letter to Mother, looking over her shoulder to see the words once more, for Rosemarie and her sister were in England, all alone.
We have been here nearly a week, both my sister and I. Father could not bring himself to leave, with so many people needing him. My parents decided, at last, to send us to England, and we are at a kind of boarding school here. It’s very crowded, but the ladies in charge are nice to us, although only one of them speaks German, and when she is not here I feel lost. So I will have to learn to speak English, just like you, Lisa, when you get to America.
“She doesn’t say anything about her parents!” I cried out to Mother.
“She says that they will send for her when it’s safe,” Mother replied quietly.
“But what if it isn’t safe? What if there is a war?”
“Then they will go to her in England,” Mother said.
“But, Mother, it’s awful for Rosemarie—she’s so alone!”
“She has her sister,” Mother said, “and thank God she’s out of danger. Her parents did what they had to do. It isn’t easy for a mother to send her child away.” Her voice broke, and then she said, “We’ve been very lucky, Lisa. We’ve been able to stay together, at least in the same city.”
I answered Rosemarie that night, sitting over my letter for over an hour. I told her about Erica and the farm and the school, avoiding any mention of Tante Helga or what had happened in Berlin.
Just a few days later came the message we had been waiting for. “There’s a telegram from Papa!” Mother told me joyously over the telephone. “He has sent the last form. We can buy our boat tickets!”
Mother had an appointment to see the American consul the following day, and I begged her to let me go with her. She came for me that afternoon.
“Lisa’s my adventurer,” she told Frau Werfel, smiling broadly. “She wants to know everything that’s going on.”
“I just want to see for myself,” I said. “I want to be sure it’s really true.”
“When do you think you will leave?” Frau Werfel asked Mother.
“It could be just a couple of weeks,” Mother answered. Her whole face was radiant. “My husband has sent this form—they call it number 575—to Zurich. Now all we have to do is get our passports and ship reservations.”
“What a grand day for you!” Frau Werfel exclaimed. “Tonight we’ll have chocolate cake to celebrate,” she said to me.
In the office of the American consul we waited. I was used to waiting, and it was easy now, for I felt that here in this office we were already halfway to America.
“Margo Platt!” a clerk called out suddenly, and we jumped up. A young secretary led the way. “You have only ten minutes,” she said, then opened the door to a warm, comfortable room with deep leather chairs and a highly polished desk. Behind it sat the consul, a broad-shouldered, full-faced man with crisp dark hair.
He looked up, then rose to shake Mother’s hand. “Sit down, please,” he said, smiling at me.
In one corner of the room stood the American flag and above it hung a picture of the President. All the while Mother and the consul were talking, I looked at that flag and the picture.
“You like that flag, don’t you?” the consul said suddenly, and I blushed.
“Yes,” I said softly. “And the man in the picture, the President. Do you know him? He looks so—so kind.”
The man chuckled, and in place of the weariness, there was a sparkle in his eyes. “I can’t say that I know him personally, but I know enough about him to tell you honestly, yes, he is kind.”
“When can we go to America?” I asked, and Mother motioned to me and said “Shh.”
The man folded his hands together and faced Mother. “We have a problem,” he said.
“A problem?” Mother echoed.
“Form 575,” he stated. “Maybe you weren’t informed, but unless we have it we can’t give you a passport, Frau Platt. Now, you must write to your husband and tell him to send …”
“But he has sent it!” Mother exclaimed. “He sent me a telegram telling me that he sent the form two weeks ago, and that everything is ready now.”
“My secretary has checked the files,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “and we have no such form for you.”
I felt that I had been running hard and couldn’t quite catch my breath. I wanted to tell him that of course Papa had sent it if he said he did! Papa would never make a mistake like that.
“All I can suggest,” said the consul, “is that you have your husband send another form.”
“But that might take weeks,” Mother objected, “and I know he sent it. It must be here. We’ve been apart for ten months already, nearly a year, and all this time he’s worked and saved and we have waited …”
“Please, calm yourself, Frau Platt,” he said, half-rising from his chair. “We are trying to do all we can. Please understand. Hundreds of people come through this office every day, hundreds of papers are sent. We don’t have enough help, and everybody wants to leave immediately. I’m helpless without that form. I have to follow regulations. If it were up to me …”
“I’m sorry,” Mother said more calmly, “but I know that somewhere in this building there is a form for us. Please, please look again.”
“Very well,” the man sighed. “I suppose we could check. I’ll call you.”
“No,” Mother said, her eyes blazing with determination. “We’ll wait in the other room.”
“But it could take hours, or even days.”
“We’ll wait.”
We waited. “What if they close?” I asked Mother.
“We’ll wait.”
I knew better than to argue when I saw the determined look in her eyes.
It was nearly five o’clock when once more the secretary called us and we were shown into the consul’s office.
“You were right,” he declared, beaming. “Your form was in another part of the office. What can you expect, with all this confusion? Well, now all you have to do is get some photographs of your children and yourself, and then you shall have your passports.”
“Oh, good heavens, I forgot all about that,” Mother groaned.
“One more day won’t really matter,” the consul said, smiling. “You can have it done first thing in the morning, and by noon you’ll have your passports in your hands.”
The next morning we were waiting outside the door when the photographer opened his shop. We waited impatiently as purposefully, slowly, he drew up the shades, turned on the lights and unlocked the door. He was a small man, hardly taller than I, with thin stooped shoulders and a stiff moustache.
“We must have passport photographs immediately,” Mother told him, when we were shown inside.
He took off his glasses and began to wipe them slowly with a tiny piece of cloth, over and over again. “No, you cannot. You cannot have them until—well, perhaps near the end of the week,” he said, lingering over each word.
“Come now,” Mother said pleasantly, “it must be a fairly simple process. Don’t you develop the pictures right here?”
“Oh, yes, that we do,” the man replied. “I have all the newest equipment—yes, I have a darkroom, just newly outfitted. Would you like to see?”
Mother sighed and gave a helpless look at the ceiling.
“We must have the pictures today,” she repeated. She reached inside her purse, took out a bill and pressed it into the man’s hand. “Perhaps you can make an exception and have the pictures ready today. You see, these children have not seen their father for a very long time.”
“Ah, well, so,” the man mused, “I suppose it could be done. I do suppose I could—try. But at least tw
o hours. Absolutely, I cannot do it any faster.”
“Fine,” Mother said, smiling.
Each of us in turn sat on the high stool that stood in front of a large white screen, waiting while the photographer fussed over his lights and his camera until finally he was satisfied.
With Annie he spent so much time trying to get her to smile, wriggling his fingers and clicking his tongue, that I blurted out, “Honestly, Annie, if you don’t smile I’m going to shake you!”
Annie gave me the funniest silliest grin I have ever seen, but the photographer thought it was perfect, and he let the lens click.
While we waited, we walked until we were shivering with cold. It had snowed in the night, not heavily, but enough to leave mounds of snow against the buildings.
“Let’s make a snowman,” Mother said suddenly, and I stopped to stare at her. “Right here?” I asked. “On the street?”
“Why not?” she said, laughing. “Come on. Don’t be so stuffy, Lisa!”
Annie and Ruth had already begun, and although we had no mittens, we rushed to form the snow into a huge ball, patting it down, adding more, until our man was as tall as Mother.
“We need eyes,” Mother directed. “Annie, find some little pebbles. Look, we’ll use this twig. It’s his cigar!” She took off her brown felt hat and put it on the snowman’s head and stood back, laughing.
Since we had left Germany, I had not seen Mother so gay.
People stopped to smile as they went by, and several nodded, “Grüss Gott!”
It ended, of course, with Ruth and Annie and I throwing snowballs at each other, and even Mother tossed a few, one landing right on my head. I laughed until my eyes were blurred. It was so funny to see Mother standing there, wearing her prim traveling suit, but her hair flying in all directions, and her hat crumpled under her arm, sending snowballs flying with perfect aim.
I wondered what the photographer must have thought of us when we returned to the shop, our clothes damp and rumpled, all of us still laughing.
Our photographs were ready. Outside Mother opened the small envelope to see our pictures. “They do resemble us,” Mother said, laughing again, “but what expressions!” Then, neatly folded among the photographs, Mother found the bill she had given the photographer to encourage him to hurry.
“How very nice of him,” she exclaimed.
“Shouldn’t we go back and thank him?” I suggested.
Mother paused, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think he would like that. He wanted me to find the money later.”
“Everybody is nice to us,” Annie said, beaming.
“You be nice in the consul’s office,” Mother told her, “and don’t chatter.”
But the moment we entered the office, Annie ran around the desk, and the consul held out his arms and took her onto his lap.
“Can I go to America now?” Annie asked. “Can I see my Papa?”
“And who are you, Miss?” the consul asked with mock surprise.
“Annie Platt. My Papa’s waiting for me in America. But,” she added soberly, “I don’t think I remember his face.”
“I’m sure he remembers yours,” the consul said.
He took up four slim green books and handed them to Mother. “Your passports, Frau Platt,” he said, smiling. “You’re on your way.”
Mother held the passports tightly in her hand and looked at them for a long moment before she put them in her purse.
“Do you know,” she said softly, “how it feels to have these in my hands?”
He nodded. “I know.”
We had all supposed that we would leave on the very next ship, but it was already filled, and the next one too. We were to wait five more weeks, until the middle of January.
“That means you’ll be here for Christmas!” Erica said happily, and for days before the holiday Frau Werfel baked and cleaned and hustled off to town, returning with gaily wrapped packages. With Herr Werfel, Erica and I went to the edge of a pine grove to cut down the Christmas tree. On Christmas Eve Mother and Ruth and Annie and I helped the Werfels trim the tree. It was a new experience for me, since we do not celebrate Christmas. But we all knew the Christmas carols and sang them together, watching the candles shine on the beautiful tree.
“It’s good to have you with us,” I heard Frau Werfel say to Mother, and Mother nodded.
“We are lucky,” she said. “So many people have helped us.”
There were gifts for everyone, cologne for Mother, and for me and Ruth, matching sweaters of light blue with a white snowflake design. For Annie there was a doll with real hair.
“What are you going to name her?” we all asked, laughing.
“This one,” she said promptly, “will be Erica.”
At school I had made felt bookmarks for everyone, cut into animal shapes with beads for eyes. Frau Werfel’s was in the shape of a poodle, with tufts of black wooly curls.
“I’ll always treasure this, Lisa,” she said softly. “Someday you’ll come back to Switzerland, I hope. Maybe you’ll be grown-up then. What a wonderful reunion we’ll have, eh? And you’ll see, I’ll still have your lovely gift.”
The next day we went to visit Erica’s aunt, and she had a present for me too, a little pocket diary bound in red leather. “This new year will be one adventure after the other for you,” she said. “You’ll have much to tell in your diary.”
All the months away from Papa I had thought only of seeing him again, but as the day of leaving drew closer, I realized how hard it would be say good-bye once more. In America I would be truly a foreigner. How would I speak to the people there? In Switzerland we were at least familiar in language, and we were near enough to Germany to telephone.
Mother did telephone Berlin the day before we were to leave. She called from the Werfels’ house, telling me in a casual tone, “I just want to talk to my mother again before we sail.” From the other room I heard her speaking, and she said again and again, “Yes, truly I will send for you, Mother. Yes, of course you’ll be able to leave. It won’t be difficult, since I’ll be in America already. Now don’t you worry, Mother. I’ll send for you. Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye.”
For a long time afterward Mother walked by herself in the garden. I wanted to go to her, but Frau Werfel stopped me gently with a hand on my shoulder. “I think your mother would like to be alone with her thoughts for a while, Lisa.”
I knew what she must be thinking. Every minute on that ocean liner would take us further away from the danger that awaited Europe, taking us to safety, with no help to give those who stayed behind.
Are You My Papa?
DURING THE LAST WEEK before we left Frau Werfel sat for hours at her sewing machine, and when it was time to pack, my suitcase was filled with new clothes. Everything I had brought from Germany was threadbare, except for my coat. On the last day Herr Werfel took me to Zurich to buy new shoes, sturdy brown oxfords and also a pair of white party slippers.
“But do you think I’ll need party shoes?” I asked hesitantly.
“A young lady like you?” he said. “Of course!” Annie, too, was newly outfitted, and when we all met at the station, I saw to my surprise that Ruth was wearing silk stockings and shoes with a slight heel. She wore a new traveling suit, and her hair had been cut and curled. My sister, incredibly, my sister had grown up, and I hadn’t even noticed! It seemed so strange to see her like this, more absorbed than ever with her own thoughts; and when she said good-bye to the Kunst family, I saw the boy lean toward her briefly for a kiss.
The railroad station was filled with the commotion of arrivals and partings. Great engines steamed, and their shrill whistles pierced the air, while the loudspeaker rumbled continually, “Last call … train for Paris leaving on track 17 … all aboard, please. All aboard.”
“Grüss Gott! Grüss Gott!” Our Swiss friends kissed us good-bye, and just before I mounted the high iron steps of the train, Frau Werfel pressed a large box of chocolates into my hands.
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nbsp; I saw Erica waving as the train moved down the track, and I waved back until she was out of sight. Annie chattered to herself as she looked through her new picture book, but for Mother and Ruth and me there was nothing we could say. I took out my little diary and wrote, “At last we are on our way to America.” I looked at the words, repeated them to myself, but I felt no excitement and no joy—only a great lump in my throat.
I slept and awakened to the confusion of another arrival.
“We’re in Paris!” Ruth cried, shaking me. “Oh, I can’t wait to see it. Will we see the Eiffel tower?” she asked Mother. “Oh, I want to see everything. I’ve heard it’s so beautiful.”
To me it was just the same as any railroad station—dirty and old and busy, and the many porters sped right past us, although Mother signaled and tried to speak in her halting French. At last Mother caught the arm of one of the porters and showed him an address that someone from the ticket office had scribbled on a piece of paper. The man glanced at the note, nodded briskly and scooped up our bags. We ran behind him and soon found ourselves in a bus filled with travelers.
The sun was just setting, and Ruth and I strained to see the sights, crowding together at the window. “Can’t we get off, Mother?” she begged. “Can’t we see Paris? What good is it looking from a window?”
“We’re not in Paris for sight-seeing, Ruth,” Mother said. “We’re to go to a special place overnight, and tomorrow morning we’ll take the train to LeHavre. Oh, Ruth, don’t be disappointed. Just think, we’re sailing tomorrow!”
But Ruth was scowling, and suddenly she gave me a sharp pinch and grumbled, “Quit pushing, Lisa. Honestly, you’re a pest.”
Mother gave me a warning look. Don’t fight, it said, not now. I moved away from the window.
The bus stopped beside a row of flat wooden buildings, like army barracks, set in a grim, dusty enclosure of wire fencing.
“It looks like a prison!” Ruth gasped as we followed the others through the narrow corridors of the building.
Journey to America Page 10