by Annika Thor
Back in Vienna, the Steiners would have company for dinner on New Year’s Eve, another family with two children Stephie and Nellie’s ages. They’d set the table for a party, with a white cloth and folded napkins, gold-edged china and silver cutlery. Candles made the wine in the grown-ups’ glasses gleam like enchanted gems. The housemaid, in her black dress and white apron, carried in the platters and served each person, while the cook perspired over the pots and pans in the kitchen.
After the meal all four children were sent to rest in the nursery. They would lie there whispering and giggling, much too excited to sleep. Mother came and got them at a quarter to twelve, and they would all go out onto the balcony and listen to the many church bells in Vienna ringing in the new year.
“May I stay up until midnight?” Stephie asks.
“Absolutely not,” Aunt Märta replies.
“Oh, why not?” says Uncle Evert. “It’s New Year’s Eve only once a year. And a new decade, like tonight, only once every ten years.”
Aunt Märta changes her mind. “Well, all right, then,” she says. “Put on your nightgown and be all ready for bed. It’s just this once, though.”
At a few minutes to twelve Aunt Märta turns on the radio. A deep male voice recites a poem:
“Ring out, wild bells …”
Uncle Evert opens the window. The ringing of the bells on the radio mixes with the ringing of the island’s church bells and with the delicate chiming of Aunt Märta’s wall clock.
The year 1939 is over. The new year of 1940 has begun.
“Let this be a better year,” Stephie whispers to herself. “Please, please, let it be a better one. I’ll try my very best to be good, I promise.”
“Well, I was certainly taken by surprise,” the woman behind the counter at the post office complains. “I never expected such a terrible winter!”
Stephie is waiting her turn. She always tries to pass by the post office on her way home from school to see if there’s any mail, hoping for letters from Mamma and Papa.
“That’s right,” says the woman in the line, taking a bill out of her handbag. “Not even my elderly mother, who’s over eighty, remembers a winter as cold as this.”
“And with the ocean frozen so far out.”
“I’ve heard you can walk on the ice all the way to Hjuvik now.”
Stephie listens alertly. Hjuvik’s on the mainland, north of Göteborg. Imagine being able to walk all the way there!
Down at the little harbor, all the boats are frozen in port. The fishermen have to chop runnels in the ice covering the bay and pull the boats through the ice out into the open water. When Uncle Evert comes back from a fishing trip, his overalls are frozen stiff, like armor.
“Do you think it has something to do with the war, Mrs. Pettersson?” the post office cashier asks.
“Goodness only knows,” the lady answers, shaking her head. “These are evil times.”
“Evil indeed,” the cashier agrees, counting the lady’s change onto the counter.
Mrs. Pettersson takes her package, says goodbye, and leaves. At last it’s Stephie’s turn.
“Hello. Is there any mail for the Janssons?”
“Hello, young lady,” the cashier says. “Let me have a look.” She sorts through the drawers, then shakes her head.
“Not today.”
Stephie bites her lip in disappointment. No letters from home since before Christmas. None to her and none to Nellie.
“Wait a moment,” the cashier says. “I’ll just check to make sure there’s been no mistake.” She looks again, but to no avail. “I’m sure you’ll hear soon,” she says comfortingly. “Come back tomorrow, maybe there’ll be a letter then.”
“Thank you,” says Stephie.
The snow scrunches under her boot soles on the steps outside. Last year’s winter boots pinch her toes, but she doesn’t dare tell Aunt Märta she needs new ones.
Sylvia and Barbro come toward her, walking in the direction of the shop. Sylvia is wearing a furry white rabbit hat. Barbro has a similar one, but gray. Those hats are in style this winter. Stephie just has her knitted cap with a tassel.
“What are you staring at?” Sylvia asks.
“Nothing.”
“No-thing” Sylvia imitates. “Can’t you say ‘nothing’? You’d better learn Swedish if you’re going to live here.”
Stephie doesn’t answer. She takes a few steps to go by them, but the two girls block her way.
“Let me pass,” Stephie says.
“What are you in such a hurry about?” Sylvia asks. “We thought we’d give you a Swedish lesson. Say ‘nothing.’”
“Nothing.” Stephie does her very best.
“What do you think?” Sylvia asks Barbro. “Does that sound like Swedish to you?”
“Nope,” says Barbro.
“You’ll have to be punished,” Sylvia tells her, gathering up a wad of snow. Stephie backs away, but Barbro’s already behind her. Sylvia pushes the snow right into Stephie’s face, as if she were washing it.
“Look!” She grins. “What a crybaby!”
Stephie starts wiping the snow from her face. While her hands are over her eyes Barbro drops a handful of snow between her coat collar and her neck. Sylvia is gathering more snow to wash Stephie’s face again.
The girls are both bigger and stronger than Stephie. There’s no use trying to run away.
At that very moment a snowball comes flying through the air and hits Sylvia smack in the middle of her forehead. Sylvia totters and steps back. Barbro lets go of Stephie from behind, turning around to see who threw it.
Svante is on the road, making another snowball.
“Two against one, that’s cowardly!” he shouts.
Sylvia shakes the snow off her coat.
“Oh, well, we were done anyway,” she says to Barbro. “Let’s go.”
Stephie brushes snow off her hair and coat. She pokes little bits out from under her collar, and wipes her face with her handkerchief. She turns to Svante.
“Thank you for helping me.”
“So you’re not mad at me anymore, then?” he asks.
“No,” Stephie assures him. “I’m not angry.”
She can’t help giggling. Svante to the rescue!
“Thank you again,” she says. “I’d better be getting home.”
The next day there is no mail for her, nor the day after, either. On the third day the woman behind the counter at the post office is waving an envelope when she sees Stephie come in through the door.
“Your letter’s arrived!” she shouts proudly, as if it were all thanks to her.
Letter in hand, Stephie dashes home and runs up the steps to her room. She tears the envelope open. As usual, there are two letters inside.
My dearest Stephie, her mother writes. I’ve finally received the photographs sent by Mrs. Lindberg. You both look so healthy and fit, and what a cute foster sister and brother Nellie has! Mrs. Lindberg looks like a kind woman, too. I’m so sorry there’s no picture of your foster mother. I’d really like to know what she looks like.
I see you’ve cut your hair. It makes you look older, unless something else is different, too. I begin to see what you’ll look like when you’re grown up.
“I see you’ve cut your hair.” As if it didn’t matter at all. As if Mamma hardly cared.
Ever since the last letter from her mother, Stephie’s been worried about the pictures, afraid her mother would be angry with her for cutting her hair. Now it almost feels worse that Mamma isn’t angry at all. Has she stopped caring about Stephie altogether?
“Stephie,” Aunt Märta calls from the kitchen, “come help with the ironing!”
Aunt Märta has spread a blanket over the kitchen table, and an old, threadbare sheet on top of it. One of Stephie’s jobs is to see to it that there’s always a hot iron ready. When the one Aunt Märta is using gets cold, Stephie is supposed to hand her a hot one from the stove top and put the cold one back on the wood-burning stove to he
at up. She’s also supposed to dampen the laundry by shaking a bottle of water with a sprinkle top, and help fold the ironed clothes.
It takes them all the way to dinner to get through the pile of wrinkly shirts, blouses, dresses, and aprons. Stephie doesn’t have a chance to read Papa’s letter until after the meal.
Stephie, my big girl! Our hopes of making our way to America are dwindling. I know we are asking a great deal of you, and that you are still a child, but I would be very grateful if you could try to help your mother and me.
Papa is asking her for help! Almost as if she were an adult. Stephie reads on eagerly.
Perhaps Sweden, which is not involved in the war, would take us in. Please ask your foster parents to help you contact the authorities. Tell them that we are being persecuted here, and that we need to get out. For the moment the Germans are not stopping us from leaving, as long as there is a country that will take us in. Do your best, my dear one, and write and tell us how it is going.
She will show them she can do it. The relief committee will surely arrange for Mamma and Papa to come. She’ll talk to Auntie Alma after school and ask her to phone immediately.
The next day she goes right to Auntie Alma’s after school. She pretends she’s come to play with Nellie, but it turns out Nellie is leaving.
“I’m on the way to Sonja’s,” Nellie says. “We’re going to build a snowman in her yard.”
“Oh, well,” Auntie Alma says. “You come in anyway, Stephie. I’m sure you’re ready for a snack, now that you’ve come all this way.”
She puts milk and sweet rolls on the table.
“We don’t see much of you nowadays,” she says. “But I suppose you’re very busy with school and your friends.”
Stephie waits until Nellie has left before she speaks up. Taking a sip of milk, she gathers her courage.
“Auntie Alma,” she beings hesitantly, “my father’s asked me to try to arrange for him and my mother to get permission to come here. Things are very difficult for them at home now.”
Auntie Alma looks distressed. “Oh dear,” she says. “I would help you if I could. But politics … I can’t get involved. Sigurd wouldn’t like it.”
“Politics?” Stephie doesn’t see what Auntie Alma means.
“Well, what do we really know about what’s going on down there? After all, they wouldn’t put innocent people in prison, would they?”
Stephie stares at Auntie Alma’s round face and her hair, curling at the temples. She has always thought Auntie Alma seemed kind, but at this very moment she’s afraid the kindness is a kind of barrier, one that Stephie can’t penetrate.
“Thank you for the snack,” she says. “I have to go now.”
Uncle Evert is out on a long fishing trip and isn’t expected back for another week. Aunt Märta is her only alternative.
“I heard from my father,” Stephie begins.
Aunt Märta nods without looking up from her darning. “Ah.”
“They haven’t been granted entry visas to America. Papa doesn’t think they will be, either.”
“Our destinies are in the hands of the Lord,” Aunt Märta replies.
Stephie feels like grabbing her and shaking her up.
“They can’t stay in Austria,” she says. “They just can’t! Don’t you see, Aunt Märta?”
“Don’t you use that tone of voice with me, young lady,” Aunt Märta retorts.
How could she ever have imagined Aunt Märta would help her? No one can. She’ll never see her mother and father again.
Her tears overwhelm her so fast she can’t get out of the room first. Stephie is sobbing, loud and hard.
“I want to go home!” she wails. “I want to go home!”
“Settle down now,” Aunt Märta says. “I’ll phone the relief committee tomorrow. Not that I think it will do any good. But it’s the duty of a good Christian to help those in need.”
Stephie stares at Aunt Märta through her tears. Aunt Märta’s face is solemn and determined. She looks like someone who has made up her mind.
“Go wash your face,” she tells Stephie. “And I want no more tantrums, do you hear?”
While Stephie rinses her burning-hot cheeks with cold water, she thinks that maybe there is a glimmer of hope. If anyone can make people do what she wants, it’s Aunt Märta.
“What did they say?”
Stephie’s in the kitchen doorway, out of breath and red-faced. She’s run the whole way home from school.
Aunt Märta, standing at the stove, turns toward her.
“What on earth is this? Coming in here with your snowy boots on? Go right out in the vestibule and take them off!”
Stephie obeys. By this time she knows Aunt Märta well enough to be sure she will never get an answer to her question until she does.
“Wipe up that mess,” Aunt Märta instructs her when she comes back in.
Stephie takes the floor rag and wipes up the few little wet spots she can barely see on the floor. She rinses the rag, wrings it out, and hangs it up to dry.
“Aunt Märta, did you phone the relief committee?”
“I s’pose you think I haven’t got anything better to do than spend the whole day on the telephone,” Aunt Märta says.
“Not at all,” Stephie placates. “I was just wondering …”
“It took me over an hour,” Aunt Märta tells her.
“I’ll peel the potatoes,” Stephie offers. She has to improve Aunt Märta’s mood to find out what’s happening.
“Yes, please,” Aunt Märta, says, softening up a little. “Use the enamel basin.”
Stephie pours water into the pale yellow basin with its green edge. She goes to the root cellar and gets some potatoes, then takes out the paring knife.
Aunt Märta’s cleaning a cod, pulling out musty-smelling purplish innards from the slit belly. Stephie holds her nose and her breath to escape the smell.
“So, Aunt Märta, did you reach someone at the committee office?” she asks tentatively again.
“Finally, yes.”
“What did they tell you?”
“The woman said there was nothing they could do.”
The knife slips in Stephie’s hand, gliding right off the potato she is peeling. Her left index finger stings and there is a drop of blood.
“Aren’t you the clumsy one, though?” Aunt Märta asks. “Let me see that finger.”
She holds Stephie’s finger under the running water, rinsing off the blood. It’s only a tiny cut, but the finger throbs and aches.
“Why not?” Stephie asks.
“Why not what? Let me clean this cut.”
“No, no—why can’t they do anything?”
“Because the relief committee is only allowed to help children. Government policy. No adult refugees are admitted, unless there are special circumstances.”
“And aren’t there special circumstances for us?” Stephie asks. “Nellie and I are already here.”
“You and five hundred other children,” Aunt Märta says. “What if every single one of you wanted your parents to be let in?”
“But my father’s a doctor. He would be of use. He could work on the island, and the other nearby islands, if someone could just take him around by boat.”
Aunt Märta bandages Stephie’s finger. “Well, that’s what the lady told me. Sorry to say, nothing to do about it. You finish those potatoes, now.”
Stephie peels all the potatoes and rinses them in clean water. If only she could make one single person understand!
There’s only one way out. She will have to talk with the ladies on the relief committee herself. If she could tell them everything, show them her father’s letter and really explain the whole situation, surely they’d understand they had to help Mamma and Papa.
She’ll have to go to Göteborg. But how?
“You can walk on the ice all the way to Hjuvik.” Wasn’t that what the woman in the post office said? Hjuvik’s on the mainland. There would be a bus from there to Gö
teborg.
On Saturday, Stephie says to herself. When we get out of school early. I’ll have to save my lunch sandwiches, or try to make a couple of extra ones without being seen. I’ll dress warmly, and take the little compass Uncle Evert taught me to use.
On Saturday Stephie puts on double stockings and her thickest sweater. She sneaks the compass into her knapsack and tells Aunt Märta she’s planning to go sledding after school, so she’ll be staying out.
“Be home for dinner,” Aunt Märta tells her.
“May I pack an extra sandwich?” Stephie asks. “To have at the sledding hill if I get hungry?”
Aunt Märta says yes. Stephie folds her father’s letter into her coat pocket along with the holiday letter with all the good advice from the relief committee. There’s an address on the back of the envelope. When she gets to Göteborg she’ll find her way there.
In the warm classroom her stockings begin to itch. Stephie squiggles like a worm in her seat, trying to scratch her thigh without anyone noticing.
“What’s going on? Have you got fleas?” Britta asks. Since Christmas vacation she has forgiven Stephie enough to at least be on speaking terms again.
“It’s these stockings,” Stephie replies. “They’re new.”
Britta nods in complicity. She knows very well how itchy new woolen stockings can be.
After school Stephie pulls her sled down to the harbor, but she doesn’t want to go out onto the ice in plain view. Someone might see her and wonder where she’s headed. So she turns left and walks a little distance along the shore, until she is out of sight, behind a pointed headland.
Not until Stephie has stuck the sled under a bush does she realize that she will somehow have to get back to the island, too. Until that moment her plans have been focused entirely on walking to the mainland across the ice and taking the bus to Göteborg. She hopes the coin she has in her pocket will be enough for the bus fare. Once she arrives in Göteborg, she will ask how to get to the address on the envelope.
But what will happen after that? Will she have to walk all the way back out to the island? Or will the relief committee give her the money for a boat ticket? The best thing would be if she could just wait in Göteborg for Mamma and Papa to arrive.