Alice was fifteen years old when Jonathon Moser was offered a chair in British history at an American university. He and Hannah together with Alice packed up their lives and moved from Oxford to California. Alice had finished high school in America, she had attended college in America and she had married an American. It was not surprising then that throughout her adult life Alice had always felt more American than English, and more English than German. So much so that when one of Raphe’s friends in grade school had commented on her accent, not an English accent but ‘something foreign’, Alice had been quite annoyed. But when another child made the same observation, Alice had hired an elocutionist to shape her speech into pure west coast American. She wanted no German. And no, she could not explain it, except there was a sense that if you kill off the language of the past, you also kill the past.
At high school she had read Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, had enjoyed it, although no more than many other narrative poems she had read at the time. But as she walked the half dozen blocks to her voice coach each week, a line from the poem marked her progress:‘… each man kills the thing he loves’.And no matter how much she would vary her pace, no matter how hard she would try to pour other words into her brain, ‘each man kills the thing he loves’ refused to be silenced. Her parents had been German, they spoke to her in German, they loved her in German; she wondered whether killing off the language was to condemn her mother and father to a second death. And while she knew the notion was ridiculous, such thoughts, or rather moral conflicts, were not uncommon when practically every aspect of one’s childhood had been uncommon. Nonetheless she persisted with her elocutionist until the deed was done, a heavyweight tolerance for guilt providing the necessary stamina to continue. Although at night in her sleep her guilt was appeased in German-language dreams – not frequently, but often enough to remind her who she once had been.
‘I am not German,’ she would insist to herself or anyone who might raise the issue. Yet the effort it took to deny her Germanness also kept it at the forefront of consciousness. In short, she was plagued by it. She lived much more easily with her Jewishness, despite having married a non-Jew, and despite having lost family, country and childhood because of it. She had lost so much she ought to hate it, but to hate her Jewishness was as absurd as hating her blood or bones.
It had been Phil who had quelled her factions. Phil, being so typically American, took it for granted that America was the centre of the world, history was American history and the future was an American future. The only relevant aspect of Alice’s being a German Jew was that, indirectly at least, it had brought her to America. When you want no memory, America is the place to be.
But America without Phil was quite another matter; it was treading thin ice just waiting for it to crack, and nothing to protect her, not even a son, and neither would it be fair to ask. With Phil gone, America was on shaky foundations and suddenly everything was up for grabs. Which helped explain why she was here in this English building waiting for the archivist to hand over information which would either allow her memories to rest and her dreams to die, or create an almighty ruckus which at her time of life she could do without.
At sixty-two, Alice Carter was a small, trim woman, hair still brown with a smudge of grey at the temples. She dressed in a neat, ageless style with an irreverent wink at fashion’s self-importance. Today was typical: black suit with a jacket nipped in at the waist, silver brooch which resembled a Miro squiggle, the skin of her neck bare and smooth, her hair cropped (‘waif-like’ her hairdresser called it, which struck this well-heeled sixty year old as rather quaint), dark stockings, black shoes and a fake ocelot bag.
She worked as a conservator of paintings, specialising in the modern period. Like the mother she had hardly known, Alice, too, had wanted to be a painter, but as talented as she was, could identify those who were more so. She was aware even as a twenty year old that every art form can accommodate only one or two virtuosos at any particular time, and just like Renate a quarter of a century earlier, acknowledged that being a good amateur or midrange professional would not suit her.
It was a hard decision, but her disappointment was fortunately short-lived. From the very beginning of her career as a conservator, she had delighted in her work. She loved the detail and the focus on perfection, and the irony, how she loved the irony. Many modern masterpieces were fast deteriorating having been made with materials and techniques far less durable than those used by the old masters. Given that one of the more crucial qualities for a masterpiece was longevity, a use-by date for a multimillion-dollar work of art was more than a passing problem. Like most of her American colleagues, Alice believed the twentieth century to be the American century in art as in most things. How apt, she had often thought, that the throwaway society, the convenience society, the nation which had created Hollywood in order to reinvent history as something shorter and more entertaining than it actually was, also invented the short-term masterpiece. Although it was not without its benefits; she’d always had plenty of work and there was no sign of it letting up.
If only she were poring over a painting now, she was thinking, as she rearranged herself on the tatty vinyl chair in the tatty vinyl hall, indeed, was anywhere but here. If not for Raphe expecting a blow-by-blow account of the visit, she would slip out quietly, down the stairs, out into the anonymity of the Bloomsbury streets and gardens, stroll about at her leisure, then down to the National Portrait Gallery for an hour with the moderns, and finally meet her son as planned on the steps of St Martin in the Fields for an early evening of Mozart.
She shuffled on her chair, swallowed, and then again, as if that would remove the anxiety, and checked her watch. Only ten minutes had passed. She’d give the archivist another ten and then, Raphe notwithstanding, she would leave.
• • •
While her temperament was like her mother’s, physically Alice resembled her father. She was small like Martin, with a serious, intense face, and no matter how long she lived outside Europe, she would always look European. When Jonathon and Hannah Moser had first set eyes on her in that huge dingy hall at Liverpool Station, a six-year-old girl who had travelled alone from Germany to England, Jonathon had remarked how foreign she looked, particularly when compared with Willi, a gangly adolescent who could have come from anywhere. Alice spoke no English, just stood close to her cousin, clutching her knapsack and her legends of Greece and Rome while Willi answered questions about their trip. She did not want to be there, but with the strangeness all about them and the impossible English words, she could no longer pretend.
While she had been on the train she had played a private game that as long as they were on the move she would be all right. She would travel across Europe to Asia, travel all the way around the world until eventually the train returned to Germany, Hitler would be gone and she would be reunited with her parents never again to be separated. The game made her feel less alone, less scared. She stretched it across the kilometres, through the darkness, over the landscape she mostly could not see but would not recognise anyway.
She had started the game even while she sat on the stationary train at Anhalter Station in Berlin. She knew it was a matter of survival that she and Willi were being sent away.What she did not know and could not ask was whose lives were being threatened: hers and Willi’s, or their parents’? Willi would know, but he was in a different carriage; in fact, for all she knew, he might not even be on the same train. And even if he were, there were no guarantees he wouldn’t be put off somewhere, leaving her to arrive in England alone. She shuffled in her seat, straightened the identity card around her neck, a standard size and far too big, checked the pouch inside her coat containing her entry certificate into Britain, and stared through the grubby windowpane. The train was still stationary and yet there were no children left to board, just guards patrolling the platform, and beyond the barriers and out of sight, her parents. She was so hot despite the freezing night with her four layers of underwear
and two jumpers, and if not for her father she would have had two skirts and two coats as well. But what else could they do, her mother said, when the suitcase permitted by the authorities was so small?
The suitcase was now tucked away on the rack over her head. Alice kept glancing up to make sure it was still there. It contained the rest of her clothes, a slender wad of photographs, including one of her parents on their wedding day, and an assortment of embroidered handkerchiefs her grandmother had collected as she travelled the world playing the piano. The handkerchiefs were all Alice owned of her grandmother’s and, against all manner of persuasion, she had insisted they be packed. She had also insisted on her legends of Greece and Rome, and when there was no room either in the suitcase or knapsack, had decided to carry it. The book now lay in her lap.
She could smell the food her mother had packed for the journey. She wasn’t hungry, couldn’t imagine ever being hungry again, had already decided that if England were really awful she would simply stop eating until she shrivelled up and disappeared. She reached into the knapsack and shoved the food beneath her scarf and cardigan; she didn’t want anyone else to smell it.
She was the youngest in the carriage by several years. Some of the other girls were talking quietly, but most sat in silence looking as sad and lonely as she felt. One of the escorts, a Quaker called Fraülein Rosa, was travelling in their carriage, and because Alice was the youngest had taken the seat next to her. This was the last thing Alice wanted. Her parents had told her the Quakers were working hard to save Jewish children, so she knew they were good people, but she also knew she was less likely to cry if she didn’t have to talk. Now as the train grumbled and jerked into motion and a number of the girls began to sniff, Fraülein Rosa reached across and took her hand. Alice looked up at her,‘I’m not going to cry,’ she said, and pulled her hand free.
And neither she did. Not when the carriage was in darkness and hurtling through a greater darkness, not when she was desperate to go to the toilet but didn’t know where it was or trust herself to ask, not when the train stopped to pick up more children and Alice in her crowded carriage worried they would toss some of the Berlin children off, toss Willi off to make room for the new arrivals. Nor did she cry when in the early morning the train stopped again, this time just before the Dutch border, and German officers boarded. She’d seen her father’s face smashed in, she told herself, when the officers smashed a girl’s violin looking for hidden jewels. She’d seen her family’s house torn apart, she told herself, when, having discovered money in the food parcel of one of the children, the officers scattered the rest of her possessions throughout the carriage. She’d seen her grandmother fall dead to the floor, she told herself, when one of the officers searched a girl for gold and then dropped her head-first to the floor. She’d seen her father and uncle return half-starved from concentration camps, she told herself, when they took a knapsack full of food and tossed it from the train. Oh yes, she’d seen far worse, she told herself, when they ripped the cover off her book expecting to find money or jewels. And when one of the guards clenched her in his hands and shook so hard her head hurt, and would not listen when she said she had no valuables apart from the five Reichsmark they had already taken, she told herself that as bad as the fear was, she had known worse.
At last the officers were called off the train. The carriage was littered with personal belongings and distressed children. While Fraülein Rosa attended to the girls, placating, soothing, assuring everyone the worst was over, Alice searched the floor for the pieces of her book. She thought she found most of them, wrapped them safely in her scarf and placed them deep in her knapsack. The remainder of the book she kept with her, stroking it in the same way her mother would stroke her sore brow whenever she had a headache.
On the Dutch side of the border things were very different. The first people to board the train were not officials but smiling women with warm drinks and baskets of sandwiches and chocolate. And such a fuss made of Alice, she being so young, that now she was fighting to hold back the tears. She kept telling herself she would manage, must manage, although how much easier if Willi were with her. And again the terrible thought that she might never find him, that she’d arrive in England alone and be forced to struggle on by herself, a prospect so awful she pushed it aside, pretending instead she was a grown-up without a fear in the world.
The journey from the Dutch–German border to the Hook of Holland was mostly a blank, although she remembered the delight of windmills and Dutch flags instead of swastikas, and the flat wintry fields through which the train trundled as it made its way to the coast. And waiting, so much waiting that by the time they reached their destination night had again fallen. Then at last finding Willi, and he so pleased he didn’t care what the other boys thought as he lifted her high in the air and whirled her round and hugged her so tight she felt all squashed like a cushion. Then followed more food and more waiting and more kindly Dutch folk, and Alice wanting to discard the food she’d brought from Germany but not daring to in case it was the wrong thing to do.And refusing to let go of Willi even for a second, until they were shepherded onto the boat and forced apart again, Willi with the boys and Alice with the girls.
And now she remembers every detail. It is night and they are on the water, a sea of water and much rougher than the river at home. She is lying on a bench rocking in the blackness, sick with leaving, sick with separation, sick with loneliness. The cabin is shrinking and Alice unable to breathe. She’s scared she’ll suffocate if she doesn’t find air, swings her legs to the floor, can’t find her balance, holds on to a pole, feels her way along the wall, loses the doorway. Think, she tells herself, think. And knowing a blind person would manage, she shuts her eyes and pretends she’s blind. Stumbling, groping and slithering with the ship’s swing she finds the door and lets herself out into a dimly lit passage. She sees stairs at one end, climbs them like a ladder, short legs, short arms and far too many layers of clothing, and finally to the deck and fresh air, but small relief because she’s left all her belongings below and what will happen if she can’t find her way back? She grabs the icy rail, her fingers stick. She pulls her cuffs over her hands, grasps the rail again and doesn’t let go.
She is appalled at the vastness of the ocean, the endless dark with knives of brightness, and an incessant slush slush slush that seems to grow louder and louder. She tightens her grip and rocks with the boat, rises with its rise, sinks with its fall. She could die out here and nobody but Willi would know, and she’d never see her parents again, just an endless black nothingness like the dreadful black sea in front of her. She’s terrified, but has to manage. So don’t look, she tells herself, and seals her eyelids tight.
It seems like forever before she opens her eyes again. Her head is tilted back, and above her is a veritable fairyland unlike anything she’s ever seen either in Krefeld or Düsseldorf or even in Berlin where, according to her mother, absolutely everything happens. Clouds of stars like fairy dust scatter the dome. She finds red Mars and brilliant Venus, and high in the sky a golden sliver of moon. And Alice wishes herself up there, just like in the storybook pictures, to sit on the golden arc with her feet dangling, a smile on her face, and safe. She unpeels her hands from the freezing rail and steps back from the boat’s edge into a protected corner of the deck. The last thing she remembers before falling asleep under a length of canvas is putting her parents up among the stars well away from danger.
When she awakens the lights of England are a foggy blur on the horizon. Alice leaves the deck and goes below. The escorts are already rousing the children. Lamps have been lit and Alice slips quietly into place. She feels as if she’s been on an adventure, like Jason and the Argonauts or Diana out hunting, and has returned alone but stronger. She’s not dead like her grandmother and she hasn’t been bashed like her father and soon she’ll be seven which is a lot bigger than six and her parents will come and everything will be all right. She recites it like a mantra:my parents will come an
d everything will be all right / my parents will come and everything will be all right. She collects her blanket, her tattered book, her knapsack and suitcase and waits with the other girls while the boat docks at Harwich.
It is still dark when they disembark, but Alice doesn’t care. She pushes out of line and goes in search of Willi. So many children and she can’t find him anywhere. In the end she resorts to Fraülein Rosa who promises she’ll be united with Willi once they arrive in London. Shortly afterwards they are herded onto another train, an English train this time with English posters high on the carriage walls. It is still dark, but as they travel down to London the sun rises. Alice tucks her legs beneath her, better to see this new country. It could be Mars, it could be Hades, it is certainly not home. She inserts a barrier in her brain; on one side is Krefeld, Düsseldorf, Berlin, the Friedmans, Mutti and Vati, and on the other this alien land called England.
Liverpool Station is feverish with people and noise. There are trolleys piled high with luggage and fresh farm produce, and everywhere ghastly animal carcasses and shrieking birds in cages. Alice tries not to look, has eyes only for Willi, but he is nowhere to be seen. Fraülein Rosa holds her firmly by the hand and now Alice is grateful to have her close. Through the noise and the crowds, through the bewildering bustle of a world so much bigger than a soon-to-be seven girl, they arrive at a huge cavernous room. And suddenly Willi is beside her. Alice’s relief is so great, the tears won’t hold back any longer.
She’s still clinging to Willi when, a few minutes later, Fraülein Rosa taps her on the shoulder to say goodbye. Alice gives her a long, warm hug, then watches her leave with the other escorts, all of whom will return to Germany and another transport.
The Prosperous Thief Page 12