Besides this constellation of the defeated, there were the three little girls my husband and I had seen. They were D.P.s—Displaced Persons—assigned by the Military Government to work in the house. Their names were Tilli, Hanni, and Sophie. They cleaned the whole house from top to bottom every day, in the old-fashioned manner—on their knees, with big brushes in their small, rough hands. They were from Poland, and only Hanni spoke German. Sophie, the little blonde we had seen downstairs, did not speak even ordinary Polish but a dialect known only to Tilli. They lived over our garage, in what had been a storeroom. The Germans went home every night, because they were not allowed to sleep in the area.
For the next few days, my husband and I were very busy at our respective jobs in the headquarters and were seldom at home. But we did catch occasional glimpses of the small D.P.s, trooping through the dark passageways with great stacks of bedding, swabbing down the stone steps, rolling up the vast carpets to make an island of furniture in the middle of a room while they cleaned the floors, or continuing the interminable polishing of the brassware—always humming a little Polish song. I asked Captain Providence to find out more about them. How old were they? Why were they in Germany? He gave me that I-hope-you’re-not-going-to-cause-trouble look which women in the Army get to know well, but a few evenings later he came upstairs with a full account.
The oldest, Tilli, was twenty-two, the youngest nineteen. That was Sophie, who spoke only the dialect. The Germans had taken them away from their homes shortly after the fall of Poland. Tilli came from Lwow, Hanni from some town whose name I couldn’t catch, and Sophie from the country south of Warsaw. Sophie had seen her mother and father killed in their garden when she was taken. Tilli’s mother was Jewish; both her parents had been taken away and she had not heard of them since. Hanni’s mother was a widow, and very old; she had not been molested when the Germans came, but Hanni had not heard from her for four years. The three had met for the first time when the M.G. assigned them to our house.
Where had the Germans taken them first?
Captain Providence looked uneasy, and I realized it was better not to press for an answer. In the case of Tilli and Hanni, it was fairly clear. They both looked very wise and experienced. But Sophie was something different. Looking at her face, one saw a peasant’s child, out of the feudal darkness of the sixteenth century. She was no more equipped to meet life than an American child of six. I reflected that five years ago, when she had been taken, she had been fourteen. She must have been a pretty little thing.
Whatever had happened at first, the three had ended as unpaid laborers—as slaves; to be accurate. They had been sent to farms. I remembered seeing the German edict to the owners of foreign labor. It stated in its opening paragraph, “The Polish peasant is an animal.” The instructions covered food, shelter, efficient utilization, and death, in the order named.
It was evident that all of our three had been fed less than the great German horses or the fat swine. I suppose they spent the winters in some cold loft or hay barn. That was the instruction—like animals.
Were they getting enough to eat now, I asked. Captain Providence intimated that there had been a little trouble but that it had been vigorously put to rights. Was it necessary that they work so hard? There was, it seemed, no way of stopping them; the work was easy, they insisted, compared to what they had become used to, and they were happy in the warm house. I started looking for spare skirts and sweaters.
The next weeks passed quickly. The colonel and I were always about to leave and always busier than ever. Our replacements did not arrive. The winter closed down with forty-five consecutive days of solid fog that dripped ice. Coal was short, and the M.G. turned the electricity off all day except at mealtimes. We worked by candlelight. Outside the headquarters, the Germans dug sporadically in the rubble for firewood.
At five o’clock on a pouring black afternoon, there came a scratching on my bedroom door. I called to whoever it was to come in. It was Sophie—but scarcely recognizable. Her face was gray, her eyes and nose swollen, her pale, silky hair hanging in strings. She was wearing a skirt which I had given her a few weeks before. It had been a pretty good fit then, but now it was so tight in the waist that she couldn’t fasten it.
“Madame!” she whispered. “Madame!” It was a wail, a tiny, hopeless wail. Suddenly, she seized my hand, pressed it to her lips, and went down in a heap on her knees: I got her into a chair and gave her a handkerchief. She was shaking all over, her eyes streaming tears, the soot from her nose running in the tears down her face. I put an arm around her pinched shoulders.
“Madame—Hilf! Hilf, Madame!”
I understood the “Help!”—she must have asked Tilli for the word—but all I could do was hold her and stroke her hair.
Suddenly, she sat up straight, and I saw her lips silently moving, as though she were practicing a speech. Then she spoke again. “Madame, make baby kaput. I die.” Suddenly, she realized that she was sitting in a master’s chair and went down on her knees again. But she had spoken. The murmured “kaput” from the child’s face had been quite awful.
I held her and said over and over, “Hilf, ja, Sophie, ja,” and when she was shaking only a little, I called Tilli and the two of us got her to bed over the garage.
When Captain Providence came in, we held a trilingual conference around Sophie’s bed. The facts were simple. Sophie was five months pregnant by an American soldier. It didn’t seem possible we hadn’t noticed, but her thin little body was always bent and all three girls were fat in the middle from sudden food. The soldier had gone away almost at once, saying he would come back for her. His name, he had told her, was Smith. Sophie had been sick for several days before coming to see me, and the day before had gone to see the German doctor whom the M.G. had assigned to care for sick D.P.s. This doctor had asked her if the father of the child was a German, and when she had said it was an American, he had sent her out of the office, telling her he could not treat Americans. She had become sicker. She had not eaten for three days.
We did what we could for her that night, and next morning the Sunday churchgoers stared glumly at Captain Providence as he tore around town in a jeep inquiring where a D.P. could have a baby. (He became a celebrity when the joke of “his” D.P. baby went the rounds.) The Army infirmary sent him to the M.G. headquarters, and they sent him to the German town major, who gave him the addresses of the local doctors, and he flew from one to the next, looking for a kind gynecologist. By ten o’clock, he had found one, and also a German civilian hospital that satisfied him.
Captain Providence drove Sophie and me to the hospital, with her dingy little possessions tied up in a towel. She drew herself straight and became very still when we came to the big, red, high-school-Gothic building. The lower windows were boarded up, because the glass had been shattered by a bomb. It was very gloomy inside. I felt dubious at first, when I saw the doctor’s pince-nez and striped trousers, but when he looked at Sophie, his lower lip went out and his mouth drew down into a tired professional compassion which reassured me. (It should be noted that this man afterward refused any payment.)
After the doctor examined Sophie, he told Captain Providence that the baby was dead. There was no heartbeat. He would try to get Sophie’s fever down and then see if he could force labor, to avoid operating. He would keep us informed. We left Sophie tucked into a large bed in a turret room. She had a nurse—a nun with quiet brown eyes, who by a miracle spoke some Polish words that Sophie seemed to know.
For the next three weeks, I kept track of Sophie through Captain Providence’s reports. First, she was in labor—that went on for fifty hours. Then the baby was born, and it was dead. Sophie was very sick. Then Sophie was improving. Tilli and Hanni, and even Leni, the pantry siren, went to see her at the hospital every afternoon.
Sophie returned home the day of the first snowfall. There was snow on her hair when she came into my room, quivering like a little dog. She knelt and kissed my hands, pouring out unintellig
ible words. She was radiant.
Christmas was coming. The Germans of the household became very full of the spirit of the season and put up paper streamers in the kitchen. The three D.P.s rose to the occasion in their quiet way. They twined lamps and vases and various ornaments throughout the house with evergreen and little red berries, knotted with tinsel. Every day a new object had its green wreath.
The Colonel and I were determined to get together some sort of presents for the three. By squeezing our clothing ration cards and combing our wardrobes, we collected shoes, galoshes, wool and rayon stockings, a sweater, coats, battle jackets, and a Wac dress. There wasn’t enough of anything to go around evenly, so the colonel devised a lottery. All the things were to be laid out, and the girls were to write down choices and draw lots. I heard of it with misgivings, but it was a lovely system.
Christmas afternoon, we spread everything out on the floor and Captain Providence summoned the D.P.s. They came in looking expectant but frightened to death. They huddled by the door, in front of the articles on the floor, and when it was explained that these were presents for them, Hanni started to cry, Tilli turned fiery red and seemed to get brighter every second, and Sophie just stood like a little Polish madonna, breathing through her mouth in holy misery. It was obvious that there would be no writing down of choices.
So we simply distributed the stuff to them in rotation, and it went all wrong. Tilli got the only two raincoats and Hanni all the stockings, but they immediately began, with whisperings and pettings, to redistribute the things among them. When the last piece was allotted we were suddenly in a shower of hand kissing and curtsies, and Hanni kissed Captain Providence on the cheek. Then they bolted.
Life went back to normal. The evergreen wreaths shed their needles and vanished, and the brass polishing was resumed. Our work was drawing to a close, and replacements started to arrive. Two of our original colonel residents had been replaced, and Captain Providence was packing. It continued to be a miserable winter, cold and raw. And in the coldest week there arose the question of the Polish girls’ quitting our household and going to a camp.
It seemed that, technically, all D.P.s were supposed to live in the D.P. camp, and a roundup was in progress. The colonels were grave. Too much responsibility had already been assumed by Captain Providence, it was generally felt, although my husband had spread a majestic wing over the Sophie affair. D.P.s were generally recognized as a questionable quantity, and a rumor had arisen that men were visiting our garage. Get rid of the D.P.s was the prevailing mood.
Captain Providence and I tried to tell the girls, but at the first mention of the camp they turned white. I had never realized what the word “camp” could mean. We tried to reason with them. We explained that we were leaving, and that after we left, they would surely have to go there, and that if they went now, while we were able to stand behind them, as it were, it would be better than going when we had gone—but it was no use. They got whiter and stiller, and then Sophie started to choke with smothered, terrific sobs. We gave up, but authority let the girls slip through its clutches for the time being. They stayed in their heatless nook over our garage.
Shortly before we finally left, Sophie came to me.
“Madame,” she said, smiling beatifically, “Hanni haff baby!”
It wasn’t so bad this time. Hanni was going to have a baby, all right, and it was an American baby, but the American came through. He was at a nearby station, and he declared that he loved Hanni and wanted to marry her. I saw a letter he sent her, addressed simply “For Hanni,” and brought by a friend. It enclosed forms for her to sign. The colonel and I and Captain Providence breathed again.
My husband and I left suddenly and completely, in the Army manner. There remained no connection between us and the three D.P.s. We realized that we didn’t even know their last names. We felt that with luck Hanni had been taken care of but that probably Tilli and Sophie had in the end gone to the camp, although we had done what we could to commend them to the incoming officers. Or that, possibly, being so small, they had been overlooked and left to continue their scrubbing and polishing. We never knew.
But this much is certain, that last winter those three had shelter and food and, after a fashion, clothes. Someone knew them. They were not led to die—not then, at any rate. Perhaps they are still alive and have a raincoat or a sweater to wear. Perhaps they are being fed, or are able to exchange a coat for food.
Those simple things were not true of all D.P.s in Germany in 1945, despite all efforts official and unofficial. They may be even less true this winter. These were the lucky ones.
—1946
Something Breaking Down
The last travel piece I published was “How to Have an Absolutely Hilarious Heart Attack.” The next winter the Mexican letter was not about Mexico, it was the major portion of “Everything but the Signature Is Me.” That appeared in Khatru 7, and while I hadn’t intended it, that was my final fanzine. Alii sent me two pieces from the next trip, in hopes that I might publish another issue. The first one (untitled by her) was one of the letters-to-Jeff-and-everyone-else, the second a combination of a playlet (“Dzo’oc U Ma’an U Kinil,” which went through multiple drafts) and an informal letter (in first draft with handwritten revisions). While we continued writing, none of the rest of her letters to me was intended for publication. I am, however, including excerpts from two personal letters (“Not a New Zealand Letter”), the second of which comments on “Dzo’oc U Ma’an U Kinil.”
Should have writ you long since, but I literally could not; this is the first moment I have had a table, chair and light, and the minimal clean space necessary for minimal thought. You see, with our old Tony gone to Cozumel to be mayor, his young brother Xavier is ostensibly running the place. Our house was not ready for our arrival, and the little casa had apparently been lent to a herd of buffalo. Xavier, who probably has been told that he resembles Warren Beatty—whom he resembles in the same sense that I resemble Helen of Troy—is a gangling-thin, large-mouthed, erratically active youth chiefly notable for getting the wrong people pregnant. He stays in the kitchen with his mother, or in his office; he has taken a course in business administration, which results in “administering” by sitting behind the desk and issuing orders to poor Esteban Ek. (When there was a problem, Tony used to lead a charge of his retainers, and if the problem were, say, a blocked septic tank, it was Tony who struck the first—and last—blow, and then appeared immaculate and jovial among his guests, as if he’d never changed a broken cotter pin under water in all his life. In other words, things got done.)
Anyway, Xavier’s answer to the problem of our “unexpected” arrival consisted of ordering Ruffino Tzul (L’mus’s young brother) to paint the house inside and out. This achieved the final destruction of every vestige of order; our things and the furniture were piled helter-skelter in the middle of all rooms, enhanced mysteriously by the addition of a random set of incredibly heavy great dark Spanish colonial office furniture downside up atop the heaps. And since Ting had had to pack the place up alone in our second emergency departure last year, and not realized the importance of antiroach-spraying every container, the first tug at the piles produced an audible skittering, as cucarachas as big as rats burrowed deeper with their young. Of course they were everywhere, and had befouled more than they had eaten—every towel, paper, teaspoon, nail, everything was vile. (As a final touch, one had set up housekeeping under the can of antiroach spray, cucarachacida.)
Anyway, I just sent Ting out fishing while I attacked the unspeakable—leaving our fourteen bags (we had brought our usual amount, including lots of books and food) plastic-sealed and sprayed in an unused corner. The one unused corner. Truly the Voice from the Baggie.
Anyway, what with the additional absence of known reliable mail carriers, perhaps you can see why I didn’t write. Tonight there is an amiable, drunken, name-dropping old architect down at the Catanas, the bore of the world and a butcher with fish—he makes his guide cut u
p a bonefish to use as bait, perhaps the lowest act known to water—who persists in regarding himself as a dear friend of ours. He has carried mail before, and mailed it. I am going down to endure him expressly to mail this to you, under the whistling, thrashing palms and the waxing moon.
I’ll end with a note that may amuse you. You recall L’mus, the Maya pura, last seen serpentlike and eating himself stuffed at a special table in the superb care of Gregoria? Well, he has a new incarnation. He and Gregoria are still solid, in every sense of the word—and the medico made her lose twenty pounds (or maybe kilos), so she is even more ruffled and glittering and flashing than ever. And L’mus is now chief mechanician-engineer for the settlement. (Actually holds it together, the sound of Yucatan is the sound of Something Breaking Down.) So the first day the electricity was loco along with everything, and we howled for L’mus. Later, to my surprise, a globular bright yellow object was seen bobbing at waist height along the windows, accompanied by a solid stomping sound. It materialized into L’mus, perceptibly older, squarer, and be-mustached, and wearing a Yankee hard hat.
It was something to behold… He has also a large pea-green auto, so reassembled that one cannot define the original brand. I thought you would like to know that the hard hats have come to Mayaland. It suits him, too.
—December 7, 1978
Dzo’oc U Ma’an U Kinil—Incident on the Cancun Road, Yucatan
The road is two hot ruts of coral sand; on the left is scrub jungle, on the right are coco palms above the blindingly blue Caribbean. Lurching along the road is a taxi, a rusty, rump-sprung 1968 Buick, held together with wire and the driver’s Maya muscle. The back is mounted with expensively unostentatious luggage and fishing gear. Wedged in among these are a gray-haired gringo tourist couple.
Meet Me at Infinity Page 35