by Jean Little
And overnight, Anna’s sometimes happy, often unhappy, but always familiar world turned upside down.
3
Awkward Anna
THAT MORNING on her way to breakfast, Anna met Papa in the hall.
“What is wrong, little one?” Papa asked, seeing her scowl.
Nothing new or different was wrong. It was just that Anna was feeling ugly. She always felt ugly by the time Mama had finished straining and twisting her hair back into the two tight, skimpy braids. She had to sit to have this done, right in front of her mother’s mirror, and she could not miss seeing herself.
The rest of the family were so beautiful. Gretchen and Rudi were tall and fair like Papa. Their hair did not just shine; it was also well behaved. Their eyes were bright blue. Their cheeks were pink. Not too pink, but not just plain no-colour like Anna’s own. Fritz and Frieda were Mama over again with their black curls, their sparkling brown eyes and their lively impish faces.
Then there was Anna, her forehead knobbly, her hair wispy and dull, her eyes blue but greyish and small. Her ears and her nose were fine but there was nothing special about them. And her mouth looked …
“Stubborn,” Mama would have said, or “sulky.”
“Unhappy,” Papa would have said.
Ugly, thought Anna crossly and, her braids done, she thumped down off the chair, stalked out into the hall and ran into Papa.
Anna did not tell him what was wrong because already it was no longer true; nobody could feel ugly with Papa. He reached out, pulled a flower from a vase on the hall stand and stuck it behind his daughter’s ear. It dripped water from its stem down her back but she laughed. Papa was so silly sometimes. Hastily, even while she grinned at him, she replaced the flower, hoping Mama would not notice.
“Well, how are you and Frau Schmidt getting along?” Papa asked.
Anna’s smile vanished.
“All right,” she muttered.
Anna knew he was not fooled by this. He had spoken with Frau Schmidt on Visitors’ Day. But soon it would be vacation time.
“Anna, my Anna, would you do a special favour for me?” her father asked suddenly.
Anna looked at him.
“Does it have anything to do with Frau Schmidt?”
He shook his head but his eyes twinkled. Anna did not quite believe him. Even the nicest adults could play tricks sometimes.
“Not one thing to do with Frau Schmidt, I swear!” Papa put his hand over his heart and looked solemnly up to heaven.
“What is it then?” probed Anna, stalling.
“Promise me first and then I’ll tell,” he wheedled. “Oh Anna, don’t you trust your own Papa?”
Anna did not but she did love him more than anyone else in the entire world. She could not resist him.
“I promise then,” she growled, in spite of herself. “Now tell me what it is?”
“I want you to try to speak English,” Papa said.
Anna stiffened. She felt betrayed. But he was smiling at her again as though his words were not so dreadful.
“I do not think it will be quite so hard as you imagine,” he told her gently. “Remember. You are the girl who learned all of ‘Die Gedanken sind frei’ in only one afternoon.”
“But that was German!” protested Anna, knowing she had already promised but still hoping he had left her a loophole to wiggle through.
“But you were just five years old. Now you are much, much older and much, much smarter … and I suspect, though I might be wrong, that you already know much more English than you are letting on.”
How had he guessed? Anna felt the telltale flush colour her cheeks. She ducked her head so she would not have to meet his amused eyes. It was perfectly true. She had long since started storing away in her mind some of the strange words, although she had never yet dared speak them aloud. By now she could astonish him, if she chose. Would she?
“Ernst! Anna! You are going to be late for school,” Mama called. “And there is a letter here for you from Canada, Ernst, which looks important.”
They went. The letter lay at Papa’s place. He opened it and read it. Then his hands clenched, half crumpling the page.
“What is it?” Mama cried, hurrying to him.
Papa had to wait a moment. Anna saw him swallow.
“My brother Karl is dead,” he said then. “He had a heart attack. He has left me everything he owned.”
There was a babble of voices.
“Oh, Papa, how awful!” said Gretchen, who remembered Uncle Karl from when she was a small girl and he had visited Germany and stayed with them.
“Papa, are we going to be rich then?” That was Rudi.
“Rich,” Fritz echoed longingly but he stopped there. Something in Papa’s face silenced him.
“Poor Papa,” Frieda chimed in, kicking Fritz.
It was then that Papa said the unbelievable thing. He did not ask anyone. He just made a statement, a flat hard statement of fact.
“No, Rudi, we will not be rich. Karl was only a grocer with a small store, and Germany is not the only country which has been suffering from a depression. But this is our chance. We will go to Canada.”
“Canada!”
In every voice there was the same feeling Anna had heard in Mama’s months before. Canada was not a place to go to; Canada was a Geography lesson.
“Mr. Menzies suggests we come in September.” Papa went on as though he heard no outcry.
“Who is Mr. Menzies? What does he know about what we do?” Mama’s words cut through the air as shrilly as a whistle.
“He’s Karl’s lawyer. I’d written to Karl before, asking what our chances would be in Canada. He offered to take us in but I wanted my own business. He said there was no place for a German English teacher. But now I shall be a grocer. I did not want Karl’s charity but it seems he has given it to me after all.”
Papa got up, letter in hand, and strode out of the room. There were tears on his cheeks. Anna saw them. She could not move. She could not think. Mama, though, started after him. Then, at the last minute, she saw the clock, gasped and stopped to hustle them off to school, refusing to answer any of the questions.
“Go! GO!” she almost screamed at them. “As though things aren’t bad enough with this in your father’s head!”
Suddenly, she caught sight of Anna, who still had not stirred from her chair. She looked at her hard — and it was not the warm look which claimed Anna as her “one German child.” Anna shrank back, not understanding, not till her mother stormed, “Why is Germany not good enough for you? A land where thoughts are free! Bah! Oh, it is too much to bear. He cannot mean it.”
She whirled away then and left them without her “Goodbye.” As Anna went out, closing the door behind herself, she could hear Mama right through the walls.
“Ernst, Ernst, I will not go. I tell you I will not go!”
And then, pausing, she heard Papa, not so loudly, but in a voice like iron.
“We are all going, Klara. Whether you understand or not, whether you come willingly or not, we are going. You must start to get ready.”
At school that day, Anna did not notice Frau Schmidt’s jibes. She did not care what they sang in Assembly. She walked right past Herr Keppler in the hall, almost touching him, and she did not even notice.
They, her family, were going to Canada to live. And she had promised to try to speak English. Did everyone in Canada speak English?
Questions without answers hammered inside her skull till she felt dizzy and sick. At last it was time to go home.
But home was not a good place to be either. There was no escape at home.
When Papa said they were going, he meant it. Rudi tried arguing, man to man. Papa listened.
“So you see, Papa, we can’t go,” Rudi finished.
“We are going, Rudi,” his father said and went on making the arrangements.
Gretchen cried because she would have to leave her friend Maria.
“I’ve never had a friend l
ike Maria, Papa,” she sobbed. Gretchen, who was always so grown-up and calm.
Papa held her on his knee though she was much too big. She rested her head on his shoulder. Her tears wet his shirt collar and wilted it.
“You’ll find another friend, my Gretel,” Papa said.
Gretchen sprang away from him and went to howl on her bed.
Papa bought their tickets. They were going by steamship. It should have been exciting. To Fritz and Frieda it was. They began to brag.
But Papa even put a stop to that, the moment he found out about it.
“I don’t want you talking about the fact that we are going,” he told the whole family.
“If you’d only explain, Papa,” Rudi answered, “then we’d know what to say. People ask us questions, you know. Herr Keppler himself was asking me this morning, but then he hadn’t time to stay and listen. He will ask again.”
“Oh, poor Rudi,” Frieda breathed.
Rudi tossed his head.
“He doesn’t scare me,” he maintained.
“He should,” Papa said in a low voice. But before they could ask what he meant this time, he gave his instructions in so decided a way that the discussion ended.
“You may tell people your uncle has died and we have been left a business in Canada. Say that I have to go and look after it. Say we have all decided to go. You don’t need to say more than that. I do not want you to talk about it any more than you have to. If Herr Keppler does ask again, be careful and remember — what I am telling you is important. It is not safe to say too much.”
Papa sounded so serious. The children knew there was much he was not telling them. Mama thought he was wrong, but even Rudi believed Papa. He was too unhappy himself to be doing it for some foolish reason. He even tried to get his sister Tania and her husband to come too. They agreed the Soldens should go, but did not want to go themselves.
“We have no children to think of, Ernst,” Uncle Tobias said gravely. “Germany is our country, mine as much as yours. I would not desert it now.”
“You may soon be left with no choice, Tobias,” Papa said, deeply troubled.
“We know that,” Aunt Tania said quietly. “But if all people of reason flee, who will speak the truth?”
Papa was silenced by that. That was when Anna knew he did not want to go either, that he was going because of his promise to her and because of his love for all of them — Rudi, Gretchen, the twins, even Mama who was still fighting against him.
Poor Papa!
English! She could talk English for him. That might cheer him. She had been meaning to try for days but she was afraid. They would laugh. Still, she could try. This very night, she would.
Supper was nearly ready. Rudi was sitting at the big round table, his fair head bent over the German–English dictionary. He was teaching them new words while they worked. The others stepped around him patiently. They were used to him finding an excuse to sit down when it was time to work. Mama was tight-lipped and silent as he read, but the rest knew by now that they were really going to need this new language so they were all listening.
“Awful” had been the last word. Anna repeated it silently, trying to keep hold of it.
Rudi read on down the page.
“‘Awkward.’ What a queer word,” he commented. “It means ‘clumsy.’”
Somehow — Anna never knew how — the plate of sausages she was putting on the table chose that moment to slip through her fingers and shatter on the floor right by Rudi’s feet.
He yelped as though she had fired off a cannon at him. Then he saw it was only Anna and he felt foolish. Covering up quickly, he turned on her.
“Awkward,” he said loudly. “That’ll be easy to remember. We’ll only need to think of you. Awkward Anna!”
Anna, on her knees picking up the mess, did not look up. If nobody answered him back, he might leave it at that. But Frieda, not being the one in danger, was not so careful.
“You broke a cup yourself just last week, Rudi,” she cried. “How can you be so mean! Don’t you dare call her that.”
Rudi dared anything. He disliked being reminded of his own mistakes. And no eleven-year-old girl was going to order him around and get away with it.
“But think how it will help us with our English, dear Frieda,” he said, his voice smooth as cream.
Anna felt cold.
He said no more then. Instead, he buried his nose in the dictionary again. By the time the meal was ready, he had found names for the other three as well.
Fearful Frieda came first. Frieda tossed her head in scorn at that. Then Fierce Fritz. Fritz grinned after he had checked to see what it meant. Glorious Gretchen was third. (Rudi had had to grab that one at the last minute because Mama said it was time to wash his hands and eat.) Gretchen just laughed.
Later, however, she did some looking on her own and at breakfast she came back at him with, “Would you like some more chocolate, Rude Rudi?”
Even Rudi grinned and the nicknames were dropped — except for Anna’s. She knew herself why it stuck. Fritz put it into words when she fell headlong over a footstool a couple of days later.
“There goes Awkward Anna,” he commented. Then he looked ashamed. “It’s just that it fits her so,” he excused himself to Papa.
Soon it was accepted by them all. They said it with a shake of their heads. They even said it fondly. But they said it. Rudi said it most often; he guessed how much it hurt. Only Papa never used it; he guessed too.
Anna could not win with Rudi. She had learned that when she was still little more than a baby.
Now she no longer wanted to amaze Papa with her knowledge of English. English was tied to that awful word which followed her everywhere:
Awkward. Awkward.
How she hated it! How she believed it was true!
In spite of herself, she went on learning new words as the weeks passed. Mama, suddenly and to everyone’s astonishment, gave in and began to speak the new language along with the rest. No longer was Anna special in her silence. Now it angered her mother.
“It is time to stop this stubbornness, Anna,” she said. “I am old but I am learning. We must do what we must do.” Tears came to her eyes as she spoke.
Anna turned away. Mama would never understand. And Anna need not feel guilty about making her mother cry. Mama cried every day now. She cried as she packed.
“You cannot take everything with you, Klara,” Papa told her, and he made her give Aunt Tania the soup tureen.
Anna thought that was silly. Crying over a soup tureen. It was uglier than she was, even, with its silly little cupids holding up the handle and its curly feet and its big awkwardness.
That word again!
“I’ve had it since I was a bride,” Mama wept, and Aunt Tania wept with her.
After that, Papa had to give in about the mantel clock which chimed every quarter hour. It had belonged to Mama’s mother. Papa knew when he was beaten. Anna was glad this time. She loved the clock’s musical chime. Lying in bed listening to it was one of the first things she remembered.
The last day of school came.
“Well, Anna, so you are leaving us,” Frau Schmidt said. She did not sound sorry. “I hope you will work hard for your new teacher.”
Her voice said she doubted it. Anna said only, “Yes, Frau Schmidt.”
But as she was going down the hall carrying her things, another voice stopped her.
“Anna,” said Fräulein Braun, catching up to her, “I hope you weren’t going without saying goodbye.”
Anna looked at her blankly. Fräulein Braun taught music, and Anna liked music. But she had not imagined the music teacher had noticed her.
“I’ll miss you,” Fräulein Braun said gently. “You have a very nice voice, Anna, and you sing as though you meant the words.”
“I … Thank you,” Anna stammered. “Goodbye, Fräulein.”
For one instant, she was sorry to be leaving school behind.
Then finally it was
time. They were going tomorrow, away from their home, to a land where people spoke English.
Anna had made a vow never, ever to speak it, no matter what she had promised Papa. But how was she going to be able to keep that vow in Canada?
Everything was packed. They sat on boxes to eat their last meal in Frankfurt.
“It feels lonely here,” Frieda whispered, her eyes huge.
Papa laughed all at once. It was as though he had been afraid to laugh for a long time, but now, suddenly, his fear was vanishing. He could see where he was taking them and it was a fine, safe place.
“Let’s not be lonely,” he rallied them. “Why, we all have each other. We can make a fresh start together, we Soldens. We just need some courage. What’s the bravest song you know?”
It was Gretchen who said it, not Anna.
“‘Die Gedanken sind frei,’ Papa,” she cried.
Anna felt much braver as their voices chased back the shadows and filled the emptiness with joyous sound.
Die Gedanken sind frei,
My thoughts freely flower.
Die Gedanken sind frei,
My thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them.
No hunter can trap them …
Suddenly, her voice faltered and broke off. Nobody else had seen, but Mama was crying again. Her cheeks were wet with tears. As the others swept on into the wonderful second verse and the triumphant finish, Anna once more felt alone and afraid. Then she saw her father smile at her mother and she looked at Mama again.
The tears were still there but Mama was singing as bravely as anyone.
4
“Papa is wrong!”
THE FIRST DAY OUT AT SEA, everyone but Anna was sick. Papa, looking pale and refusing to eat, did manage to stay on his feet and go with his youngest child to dinner in the grand dining salon. But the rest, even Rudi, lay groaning in their bunks.
Anna could not understand it. She herself felt fine. Better than fine. Wonderful! She loved keeping her balance while the floor rocked beneath her feet. On land she was always tripping and stumbling, but here, when the ship rolled, she let her body sway with it, shifting her weight to match its rhythm. She never had to catch hold of something to steady herself. On her own two feet she was steadier than anyone, even Papa. If only the others were not too sick to notice!