“Hello,” they respond in unison.
“Children,” says Willem, “it is respectful to stand for visitors.”
They jump up quickly, Matilda a little slower than Jacek.
“This is my wife, Elsi.”
“It is wonderful to meet you,” I say. “Commander Gerhardt has told me much about you. What is the game you are playing?”
“It is a word game,” says Jacek, and he proceeds to explain the rules. “Matilda made it up.”
“It sounds very good,” I say.
“Matilda, would you come to my office?” says Willem. He has no time to waste on idle talk.
She does not hesitate to comply with his request, suddenly appearing at his side. He has won her heart, also, and as I follow them both down the narrow stairs I see the similarities between them. They have both been conditioned to give nothing away.
Willem has told me that Matilda does not like to talk about her parents when asked. He believes she is attempting to block out the memory of their violent deaths as a way of coping with it.
Once in the office, Willem turns to Matilda.
“You understand, Matilda, that the children from this center will all be adopted one day.”
She nods.
“I have some good news. I have found a new home for you.”
She pinches the tip of one thumb between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand.
“How do you feel about that?”
“I would prefer to stay here, Herr Commander.”
“A few weeks ago you wanted to leave,” he says. Willem does not wait for her response. “I know it is better here now, yes? The children are happier in the house?”
She nods.
“But unfortunately this house is not a permanent place for children. It is a temporary place to care for children who have nowhere else to go. Jacek will be gone soon, too, and the others. You will lead the charge. You will be the first from this group to find a family who is eager to take care of you.”
There is no doubt she understands her role, and from Willem’s description of her, I know she is capable of reasoning. Yet the line between her brow and the clenching of her jaw show that she is not happy about the news and would fight this if she could.
“Now, I have some even better news. My wife, Elsi, and I will be adopting you.”
Matilda turns toward me, her eyes penetrating the surface of me, looking for my thoughts, searching for my secrets and weaknesses.
“Where are you from?” she says, her gaze lining me up as if I am at the other end of a pointed gun.
“Berlin.”
“No, you are from elsewhere. Your accent is very strange.”
I am surprised she has picked this up, being a foreigner herself, and I tell her the fabricated story of my parents living in Poland for much of my life.
“Do you have any other questions for us?” I say to take the focus away from me.
“Will I see Jacek again?”
“Perhaps,” says Willem. I recognize the tone. It is falsely conciliatory.
“And I will call you Mutti?” she says to me.
Did I hear scorn? With this question she has revealed that she sees the idea as farcical, and that she is somehow ahead of me. She seems remote, devoid of the elements that might connect us: trust, background, history. I wonder if in time it is possible to fuse our differences.
“There is plenty of time to get used to names and terms,” says Willem. “But first things first. You will move to your new home today.”
This is news to me. I want to protest, but Willem is the commander and he will get his way. I am just his wife.
“Can I go and see Jacek?” She has not shown a shred of emotion, and this bothers me more than anything.
“Of course. We will come to collect you shortly.”
“Willem,” I say, once she is gone, “this soon? We have not prepared a bed for her yet. I am not even used to this new freedom, this town. I need more time . . .”
“You underestimate yourself,” he says. “You are capable of so much more than you think. It is better to make a quick separation from the Center now that she knows. Her opinion on the change might unsettle the others. She has lost her whole family, and now we are giving her a second chance, perhaps a better one.”
I am suddenly thinking of my own mother, who could never be replaced. Each day I light a candle for her when Willem leaves, and I say a prayer for her. I do not light candles for Leah or Papa. I refuse to believe they are dead. Willem has said that after the war he will help search for my father. But right now it is too dangerous. If he asks questions, it will only draw attention to him and to me. He does not mention Leah. He still does not hold hope that she is alive.
He reaches out to take my hand. His hands are warm as they wrap around my cold ones. The touch of him always lessens my concerns.
“It will be fine. I promise. There will be an adjustment, but I would not have done this if I didn’t think it was good for you. Good for all of us. You deserve a good life.”
But a life that I choose.
Willem asks me to go to Matilda’s room to collect her, but when I arrive, neither she nor Jacek is there. Their game lies abandoned between the beds.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MATILDA
“Shh!” I whisper to Jacek. “She will hear us.”
“Who?”
I have dragged Jacek underneath the bed. Elsi has just opened the door to our room, then left again to search for me. I hear her entering the other rooms, asking the other children if they have seen me. She has gone to the end of the hall to the bathroom, then stops again at our doorway as she walks past.
“The woman with Commander . . . the wife and Commander,” I say. “They are taking me away from here.”
“What for?”
“To adopt me,” I say.
“The commander?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t want you to go.”
“I know. That is why I am hiding.”
Jacek is looking at me as if I am not telling the truth.
“But . . . ,” he says.
“But what?”
He can’t think of anything to say. I like Jacek a lot, but he thinks too hard about things before he speaks. I have to wait so long sometimes.
“It’s true, Jacek. They want to take me home to their house today. We might never see each other again.”
Jacek’s thinking has turned to something sadder. I see in the darkness underneath the bed that he is blinking back tears, his mouth writhing like a worm.
“I do not want to leave you either,” I say.
He has put his face in his hands so that I don’t see him crying. I have told him what Catarina said of people who cry.
“That is why we must stay under the bed,” I say.
Jacek wipes at his wet face and sniffs back the tears in his nose. I want him to stop because it could be heard if someone comes into the room, if it is the woman again with the strange accent.
“It is the first place they will look,” says Jacek.
“No. They will not think us so stupid.”
Elsi’s feet are in the doorway once more, and I press a finger to my lips to warn him to stay quiet.
She wears shoes that are slightly too big for her. She has very thin ankles on long legs. She is taller than Mama, yet she looks almost as young as the older girls who were here. She does not walk proudly like a German woman.
The commander’s wife walks around the bed, and Jacek’s head turns to follow her steps. She walks to the window, stands a moment, then walks fast from the room. If she knew anything about children, she would look under the bed.
When she is gone down the stairs, I walk to the door and shut it quietly.
“Now what?” says Jacek.
“We have to leave together.”
I can see that Jacek doesn’t like the idea. He is not moving like me to grab some clothes. He is caught in the middle of the room like a rabb
it in a trap.
“There is no way to get out. There are guards out there.”
“I know this, but we have no choice. We will hide under the old building, then burrow under the fence in the night when the guards aren’t looking.”
Since we have come into the house, we have not discussed our future escape, though the thought is still there. Commander once asked me about my parents and to describe where I lived. The officer who stole me did not write down where I came from in the brown file that has my name on the front. I did not tell Commander anything in case one day I do escape, and the child thief, Herr Lehmann, has hopefully forgotten where he stole me from.
It seems that Frau has no control over us now, and Nurse has not said a bad word to us. Cook talks to us, even sings sometimes, and gives us large plates of food.
One day Commander took us for athletic training in the field. He made us race across the paddock toward the woods where there was no fence, then back again. There were no guards anywhere. We could have escaped into the woods, but he didn’t seem to care. Commander and Nurse were both impressed by our fitness. Commander gave all the winners some chocolate.
We have been planting flowers and trees along the front fence. Sometimes the guard at the front waves at us, and we wave back. It is a different house since Commander came.
Though, still, when the trucks and other cars drive near the house, we wonder if they will stop, whether all the nice things are a trick to stop us from running away. Commander has told me that no truck will take us to the camp, but he did not tell me that I was to leave. We had almost forgotten about the adoptions.
Now the news that I am to go away. I do not want to be apart from Jacek.
“What was she like?” he asks.
She was nice, but I don’t want to say that, so I shrug.
“She seemed very kind,” says Jacek.
I am pulling the sheets from the bed to tie together. We will lower ourselves from the window, but Jacek isn’t helping. He is still, transfixed on his feet as if he has never seen them before.
“Jacek . . .”
He looks at me, and some of the tears are still there.
“Maybe you should go and live with them. It could be worse. It could be like Juliane and the others who did not know the people who took them.”
Juliane was taken by new parents while I was locked in the small house.
“I do not think escape is a good idea,” says Jacek. “It will take too long to burrow. The guards will find us. We can never escape from here.”
I am shocked. Perhaps he never liked me. Perhaps he wants me to go so he can have the room to himself.
I sit on the bed and cross my arms. Jacek has given up on me. He is no longer my friend.
He moves closer to me.
I cannot look at him.
“Please don’t be angry,” he says. “This was going to happen. It is better than the other worse places we have heard about. You are very lucky. I like the commander. He is always fair. If you live with him, life will always be fair. That doesn’t mean I want you to go. It is just that it will be fine for you if you do.”
He is right, but I still cannot look at him.
“It is very likely,” says Jacek, “because the commander is so kind, he might let you go back to your real home when Germany has taken everyone’s countries.”
I hadn’t thought of this. He is right about this, too. I want to shout at him that he is right about most things, but the door to the room opens and Commander and his wife are there. “Matilda,” says Commander, “there you are!”
“They weren’t there before,” says Elsi. She looks around the room. She has realized that she is the one who is stupid for not looking under the bed.
“You were hiding under the bed, weren’t you?” he says, but he is not angry. There is laughter between the words. I know at least that Jacek will not be punished, that I will not be either. If it had been Frau, we would be beaten or, worse, sent to the small house.
“Come on, now. Pack your bag and say your good-byes.”
Jacek blinks several times fast. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and I see that Elsi is watching this. She is looking slightly distraught, though she is attempting to cover it with a false smile. I have seen adults do this before.
I pack while Elsi talks to Jacek. She says that it is a comfortable room and that Commander will make sure he always has a comfortable room wherever he goes. When I sneak a look at him, I see that he believes this. I don’t like the way he smiles a little when she talks to him.
I stand ready with my case, and when Jacek turns to me I still won’t look at him.
“Very good,” says Willem.
I have only one dress, a cardigan, underwear, a nightgown, and some sheets of paper where I have written my stories. I also have a picture that Jacek has painted of the two of us. I leave the word game in the middle of the floor. I have nothing else.
“Good-bye, Matilda,” says Jacek formally.
I am led from the room, but my feet are so heavy I can barely lift them; my legs are stiff, and they can hardly bend. Once I am through the doorway, I may never see Jacek again.
I turn and rush back into the room. I throw my case on the floor, open it, and take out the sheets with my stories.
“Here, have all of them! I have plenty more inside my head,” I say. Then I throw my arms around him. He is shocked by this, then puts his arms around me. I squeeze my eyes shut so that the sadness does not escape, though I hear Jacek whine. I know that his sadness is leaping from his face.
Then I turn quickly so I do not see him anymore. Elsi looks at me, and I am shocked that her eyes are watery, too.
“Everything will be fine, Matilda,” she says. “You are going to a lovely house. Just wait and see.”
Cook hugs me good-bye, crushing me with her large bosom; then Nurse shakes my hand and wishes me well. Frau does not come out of her office, and Commander does not knock on her door.
I follow Commander to his car. It is the same kind as the one that first stole me. I am being stolen again. Perhaps someone else will steal me again after this. Elsi follows me. She is frowning.
Then we drive along the roads. I look at the white houses with their pretty red roofs. Some children play on the side of the road with sticks. They wave as we drive by. They do not have a tall fence around their house. Then we drive toward the mountain, and I think that perhaps we will drive to the top, but we stop and turn down another road. The house we stop at is bigger than the others. It has a box at the front for mail, and there is a pathway to the door. There is no fence around this house either.
Inside the house it smells like flowers. Flowers are in a glass vase on the table. There is shiny wooden furniture.
I am taken to a room that has only a bed, nothing else.
“We will get you a desk and a mirror and a wardrobe, Matilda. Perhaps you would like to choose those yourself from the store.”
I look around the room. It has wallpaper with stripes and carpet on the floor. There is a window at the back. Behind that I can see a very big garden.
I sit on the bed and look at my case.
Commander has left the room, and I am alone with the wife again.
“I know this is hard for you,” she says. “I know what it’s like to move to a new place.”
I don’t look at her. I see that there is mud around the edges of my shoes, and I have walked a trail into the house.
“Tomorrow,” she says, “we will visit a store and buy you some new clothes. Would you like to do that?”
I don’t answer her. I wonder if Jacek will be able to sleep tonight, if he will be frightened of the dark. He is always frightened of the dark, and I do not like to sleep alone. We should be together.
“I will prepare our dinner now and maybe even make some pastries. Would you like that?”
I miss Cook. She felt so soft when she hugged me good-bye. I have never felt her before. It reminded me of Mama.
; The commander’s wife leaves the room.
I stay sitting on the bed. I tell stories in my head. I imagine telling the children the story about the tree monster that stole children during the night. They love and hate that one. They cry and cover their faces, and then the next day they want to hear it again.
Commander comes into the room and switches on the light.
“What are you still doing sitting here in the dark? Dinner will soon be ready. Come with me.”
He takes me to the bathroom, where a warm bath is ready. The soap smells like lavender, and I think of my real home. When I have taken too long, Commander knocks on the door. He says that dinner will get cold.
We sit around a table in the kitchen. There are four chairs and one is empty. I imagine Dragos sitting there. He is smiling and pointing at the woman. He thinks it is funny that I am in such a nice house, that Mama would be jealous because she hates her little house. She wants Tata to build them a big house like this one.
“Did your parents not teach you to smile?” asks the commander, teasing me, and Dragos is suddenly gone.
I want to tell them that I was taught to hate Germany, but I dare not say it because the commander is German.
The woman stretches out her hand to touch my shoulder, and I slide it slowly away so she can no longer reach me. Her smile shrinks a little.
The food is salty, with lots of meat and potatoes swimming in a thick, murky pond. Then there are pastries filled with peaches. I eat until I am full, and I see that Elsi likes this. She likes to watch me eat.
“Will I be going back to my real home after this adoption?”
“Real home?”
“When the war is over and Germany owns the world.”
Elsi looks at Commander, and there is a look that people make when they can’t think of words.
“Does she not know?” says the wife.
“Did they not tell you?” says Commander.
I don’t know why the questions.
The woman turns my chair toward hers and bends down in front of me. She picks up my hand, which is all limp and heavy in hers. I do not want to hold her hand.
“I’m sorry, Matilda. Your home was bombed. Your family was killed. Were you not there when it happened? Were you somewhere else?”
Broken Angels Page 30