The Ring

by Steel, Danielle

  And in her room, with the view of the pretty cobbled courtyard, Ariana was already fast asleep. She had been put to bed by a kindly middle-aged woman in full skirts and an apron, who had turned back the covers, exposing thick blankets, a comforter, and clean sheets. It seemed a hundred years since Ariana had seen anything so lovely, and without another thought of Jean-Pierre or her brother or even Manfred, she climbed into the bed and slid into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 27

  The next morning Ariana joined Jean-Pierre after breakfast. It was clear in the light of day that she was ill. She sat in his study, her face tinged a sickly green.

  Were you sick before you left Berlin?

  No, I wasn't.

  You may just be worn out from the trip and your loss. He had seen the reaction to grief too many times before. Sweating, vomiting, dizziness. He had seen grown men faint from the sheer relief of at last reaching the safety of his home. But he was less concerned with her physical state than her emotional state right now. Later I'll have a doctor come to see you. But first, I want to find out everything I can about your brother. His description, height, size, weight. Then where was he going, what was he wearing, what were his exact plans. Who did he know? He faced her squarely and one by one she answered all his questions, explaining in detail the plan that her father intended to follow, walking from the train station at L+|rrach across the Swiss border to Basel, where they would take another train to Zurich, and then her father would come back for her. And in Zurich, what?

  Nothing. He was simply to wait.

  And after that what were the three of you going to do?

  Go on to Lausanne, to friends of my father.

  Did the friends know you were coming?

  I'm not sure. Papa may not have wanted to call them from his house or the office. He may have just planned to call them when he got to Zurich.

  Would he have left your brother with their number?

  I'm sure he would.

  And you never heard from any of them, not the friends, your brother, your father?

  She shook her head slowly, No one. And then Manfred said that he was certain that my father was dead.

  He could hear in her voice that she had already made peace with that. Now it was the losing of Manfred that she couldn't bear.

  But my brother ' Her eyes looked up pleadingly and he shook his head.

  Well see. I'll make some calls. Why don't you go back to bed. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything at all.

  You'll come and wake me?

  It's a promise. But in the end he didn't bother. He found everything there was to learn within the hour, and it wasn't enough to bother waking Ariana up for. As it turned out, she slept through till nightfall, and when Lisette told him she was finally sitting up in bed and looking better, he wheeled himself into her room. Hello, Ariana, how do you feel?

  Better. But she didn't look it. She looked worse. Paler, green, and it was obvious that she had to fight each moment not to be ill No news?

  He paused only for an instant, but right away she knew. She looked at him more intently and he held up a hand. Ariana, don't. There is really no news at all. I will tell you what I found out, but it is less than nothing. The boy is gone.

  Dead? Her voice trembled. She had always hoped that he might still be alive. Despite what Manfred thought.

  Maybe. I don't know. This is what I learned. I called the man whose name you gave me. He and his wife were killed in an automobile accident exactly two days before your father and the boy left Berlin. The couple had no children, the house was sold, and neither the new owners of the house nor the man's associates in the bank ever heard from your brother. I talked to an officer of the bank who knew your father of course, but he never heard from him. It's possible that he left the boy and came for you, and that your father got killed somewhere on the way bade. In which case, eventually the boy would have called the name your father gave him and discovered that they were both dead, husband and wife. Then I assume he would have either contacted the bank where the man worked or figured he was on his own, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work somewhere, simply to survive. But there is no trace of him, Ariana, not in Zurich, not with the central police, not with the bankers in Lausanne. There is not even a trace of Max Thomas. She had given him that name, too. He looked at her unhappily. He had tried desperately all day. But there was nothing. No trace at all. I tried all the usual routes as well as some of my better contacts. No one ever came across the boy. That may be a good sign or a very bad one.

  What do you think, Jean-Pierre?

  That he and your father died together, between L+|rrach and Basel. He knew by her silence that she was paralyzed with grief. He kept talking to keep contact with her. To pull her through. Ariana, we must go on.

  But to where? ' To what? ' And why? She sobbed angrily at him. I don't want to go on. Not now. There's no one left. No but me.

  That's enough. That's all I have now.

  You, too? She stared at him and blew her nose as he nodded quietly.

  My wife was Jewish, When the Germans occupied Paris, they took her and his voice caught strangely and he turned the wheelchair away from Ariana "our little girl. Ariana closed her eyes tightly for a moment. She suddenly felt desperately ill. She couldn't bear it anymore. The endless losses, the immeasurable pain. This man, and Manfred, and Max, she herself, all of them losing people they loved, children and wives and brothers and fathers. She felt the room spinning, herself spinning; she lay down in a feeble attempt to anchor herself. He wheeled her side quietly and gently stroked her hair. I know, ma petite, I know. He didn't even tell her about the one lead he had had. It would only have made the bitter truth harder to bear. There had been a clerk in a hotel in Zurich who thought he remembered a boy like the one Jean-Pierre described. He had struck up a conversation with the boy and remembered he had said was waiting for his relatives. He had been at the hotel alone for two weeks, waiting. But then the clerk remembered that he had met up with the relatives and left. It couldn't have been Gerhard. He had no relatives left, Ariana's father would have told her if this had been part of his plan. It was clear he was a very thorough man. The clerk remembered the boy going off with a couple and their daughter. So it wasn't Gerhard after all. And that had been all. There were no other leads, no other hopeful signs. The boy was gone, and like thousands of others in Europe, Ariana had no one left.

  After a long time Jean-Pierre spoke to her again. I have an idea for you. If you're brave enough. It's up to you. But if I were young enough, I'd do it. To get away from all of these countries that have been destroyed, twisted, broken, bombed. I'd go away and start all over again, and that's what I think you should do.

  She lifted her head and wiped her eyes. But where? It sounded terrifying. She didn't want to go anywhere. She wanted to stay anchored, hiding in the past forever.

  To the States. He said it very quietly. There is a refugee ship leaving tomorrow. It's been arranged by an organization out of New York. Their people will meet the ship when it docks and help you to relocate. What about my father's house in Grunewald? Don't you think I could get that back?

  Do you really want it? Could you live there? If you could ever get it back, which I doubt. The truth of his words struck her with force. And then suddenly as he spoke to her, he understood what had been Manfred's message. This was why Ariana had been sent to her husband's boyhood friend. He had known that Jean-Pierre would come up with a solution. And now he knew that this was the right one.

  The only question he had was if she was well enough to travel. But he knew from long experience with the people he had helped in the last six years, it would be months before she was herself again. She had simply lost too much, and the nine days of mad running across Germany, after the shock of seeing Manfred dead, had been the final straw. That was all that ailed her really, fatigue, exhaustion, hunger, too much walking, too much sorrow, too much loss. There was also a problem in that there might not be another ship for a long tim
e. Will you do it? Jean-Pierre's eyes never left hers. It could be a whole new life.

  But what about Gerhard? You don't think that maybe he went to Lausanne after all? Or stayed somewhere in Zurich, that if I got there, maybe I'd find him? But the hope was gone now from her eyes, too.

  I'm as good as certain, Ariana, There is absolutely no trace of him, and if he were alive, there Would be. I think it happened as I told you. He and your father must both have been killed. She shook her head slowly, letting the finality of it sink in. She had lost them all. She could let herself lie down and die, too or keep going.

  Fighting back the waves of dizziness and nausea, she looked at Jean-Pierre sitting in his wheelchair beside her bed and nodded. Some instinct deep inside her made her say it, and to her ears the voice didn't sound like her own. All right I'll go.

  Chapter 28

  Jean-Pierre's large black Rolls pulled sedately into Le Havre harbor. Ariana sat wanly in the back of the car. They barely spoke all the way from Paris. The roads were cluttered with trucks and jeeps and small convoys conveying equipment between Paris and the port. But the situation around Paris had settled down nicely, and apart from the drab color of the army vehicles, the roads looked almost normal as they drove along.

  Jean-Pierre had watched her quietly during most of the journey, and for the first time in his years of assisting the homeless refugees, broken and frightened, he felt at a loss for words that would offer comfort. The look in her eyes said so clearly that nothing anyone could say would ease her terrible burden.

  As they drove along, the reality of her situation was hitting her. There was no one left in the world she cherished, no one to turn to; no one could ever share a memory of what had been her past, no one would ever understand without translation, have memories of her brother, her father, the house in Grunewald ' her mother ' Fr+nulein Hedwig ' the summers at the lake ' or the laughter behind Berthold's back at the table' . No one who would have smelled Gerhard's chemistry set as it burst into flame. Nor would there be anyone who had known Manfred not in this new world she was going to. There would be no one who understood what it would be like to be caged in that cell. Attacked by Hildebrand ' and then saved by Manfred, spirited away to Wannsee. With whom could she possible share the memory of the stew she had made from liver sausage, the color of the bedspread in that first room or the look in his eyes when he had first made love to her or the touch of his face when she had found him at last outside the Reichstag in Berlin. They would never know anything of the past year of her life, or the past twenty, and as she rolled along beside Saint Marne on the way to the ship that would take her away forever, she couldn't believe she would ever share herself with anyone again.

  Ariana? He called her with his deep voice and French accent. He had barely dared speak to her that morning until they left for Le Havre. She'd been too ill to get up. On the day before, she had fainted twice. Jean-Pierre noticed that now she seemed a little stronger, and he prayed silently that she was well enough to survive the trip to New York. As long as she made it, they'd let her into the States. The United States had opened her arms to the refugees of war. Ariana? He spoke to her again gently, and slowly she returned from her distant thoughts.

  Yes?

  Were you and Manfred together for very long?

  Almost a year.

  He nodded slowly. I suppose right now that a year must seem to you like a lifetime. But a small smile attempted to offer her hope "at twenty, a year seems enormous. Twenty years from now, it won't seem very long.

  Her voice was frigid when she answered. Are you suggesting I'll forget him? She was outraged that Saint Marne would say it, but sadly he shook his head.

  No, my dear, you won't forget him. For an instant he thought of his wife and daughter, lost only three years before, and the pain of it seared his heart. No, you won't forget. But I think in time the pain will be duller. It won't be as unbearable as it is for you now. He put art arm around her shoulders. Be grateful, Ariana, you're still young. For you, nothing is over. He tried to warm her, but there was nothing hopeful he could read in her great big blue eyes.

  When at last they reached Le Havre, he didn't leave the car to accompany her to the boat. It was too complicated to get his wheelchair out of the trunk and have the chauffeur help him get into it. There was nothing more he could do for her now. He had arranged passage to New York, where he knew she would be cared for by the New York Women's Relief Organization.

  He reached out a hand to her through the open window, as she stood there with the small cardboard suitcase his housekeeper had brought up from the basement and packed with some of his wife's clothes, probably none of which fit. She was so tiny and childlike as she stood there, her eyes so huge in the unbelievably finely carved face, that suddenly he wondered if he had done the wrong thing in arranging her passage. Perhaps she was really too frail to make the trip. But she had managed the six hundred miles from Berlin, on foot and by car and by horse and cart and jeep, over nine treacherous days surely she could manage yet another week to cross the ocean. It would be worth it, just to put that much distance between herself and the nightmare, just to find a new life in a new land. You'll let me know how you are, won't you? He felt like a father banishing a treasured child to a school in a foreign land.

  Slowly a wintry smile came to her mouth and then to the blue eyes. Yes, I'll let you know. And Jean Pierre ' thank you ' for all that you've done.

  He nodded. I only wish that things could have been different. He wished that Manfred had been standing there at the side of his bride.

  But she had understood his meaning, and she nodded. So do I.

  And then in a gentle voice he whispered, Au revoir, Ariana. Travel safely.

  Her eyes thanked him one last time, and she turned toward the gangway to the ship she'd be taking. She turned back one last time, waved solemnly, and whispered, Adieu with tears streaming from her eyes.

  Book Three

  ARIANANEW YORK

  Chapter 29

  The SS Pilgrim's Pride was appropriately named. She looked as though she had been used by them long before they had switched their business to the Mayflower. She was small, narrow, dark, and smelled of mold. But she was seaworthy. And she was filled to the gills. The Pilgrim's Pride had been bought jointly by several American rescue organizations and was run primarily by the New York Women's Relief Organization, which thus far had overseen four trips of this nature, bringing more than a thousand refugees from war-torn Europe to New York. They had provided sponsors for everyone through their assorted sister organizations across the United States, and they had hired a decent crew to make the journey, bringing men, women, children, and the aged from the wasteland of Europe to their new lives in the States.

  The people traveling on the ship were all in fairly poor condition and had reached Paris from other countries as well as other regions of France itself. Some had traveled on foot for weeks and months; others, like some of the children, had been roaming, homeless, for years. None of them had seen real food in longer than they could remember, and many of them had never even seen the sea before, let alone sailed it in a ship.

  The Relief Organization had not been able to find a doctor to sign on with their ship to make those crossings, but they had hired a remarkably competent young nurse. On each crossing so far, her services had been vital. She had already delivered nine babies, assisted at several grim miscarriages, four heart attacks, and six deaths. So Nancy Townsend, as ship's nurse, had to contend with homesickness, fatigue, hunger, deprivation, and the desperate needs of people who had suffered the price of war for much too long. On the last voyage there had been four women who had been held in jail outside Paris for almost two years before the Americans arrived to set them free. But only two of the women had lived through the sea voyage to New York. Each time, as Nancy Townsend watched the passengers boarding, she knew that not all of them would reach New York. Often it was easy to spot which were the strongest and which were those who never should h
ave undertaken the trip. But often, too, there were those who seemed sturdy and then suddenly gave way on this last leg of their escape. It would seem that the tiny blond woman on the lower deck, in a room with nine other women, was one of those.

  A young girl from the Pyrenees had come running to find Nancy, screaming that someone was dying right below her bunk. When Nancy saw the girl, she knew she was dying of seasickness, hunger, dehydration, pain, delirium it was impossible to tell what had pushed her over the edge, but her eyes were rolled back in her head, and when Townsend touched her, the girl's forehead was hot and parched with a raging fever.

  Taking her pulse, the nurse knelt quietly beside her and motioned to the others to stand back. They had been staring at Ariana in discomfort, wondering if she was going to die in their room that night. It had already happened to them two days earlier, on their fourth day out from Le Havre. A small rail-thin Jewish girl who had traveled from Bergen-Belsen to Paris had not survived the last leg of her trip.

  Twenty minutes after she had first seen her in the overcrowded cabin, Nurse Townsend had Ariana moved to one of the two isolation rooms. It was there that the fever raged higher and that she developed fierce cramps in her arms and legs. Nancy thought she might go into convulsions, but she never did, and on the last day of their voyage, the fever finally broke. Ariana was vomiting constantly, and each time she had attempted to sit up in bed, her blood pressure dropped so low that she fainted. She was able to remember almost none of her English, and she spoke to the nurse constantly in desperate, frightened German, none of which Nancy understood except the names that had recurred over and over ' Manfred ' Papa ' Gerhard ' Hedwig ' again and again she had shrieked, Nein, Hedwig! when she had unseeingly looked into the eyes of the American nurse. And when she sobbed late into the night, it was impossible to console her. At times Nancy Townsend wondered if this girl was so sick because she no longer wanted to be alive. She wouldn't have been the first.