by Helen Bryan
“It is best not to call attention to oneself by dress,” her mother whispered apologetically, putting on her oldest hat and taking up the shopping basket. A morning trip to the market was the beginning of Frau Joseph’s new daily regime. She and her housekeeper, Frau Anna, who had nursed Frau Joseph as a baby, then Tanni and her sisters, now shared all the work of the housekeeping, cooking, and laundry. Frau Anna was elderly and growing stiff in her joints, so Frau Joseph tried to spare her the hardest tasks.
With her mother so busy, it fell to Tanni to care for her little sisters. Her father called her their “little mother.” Sometimes when he did so he even smiled as he used to. Her father, Tanni realized one day, had a great deal of gray in his hair now.
Klara, the clever twin, opened her eyes. “What does Kindertransport mean, Tanni? Mutti and Papa whisper it to each other all the time so it must be important, but when I ask, Papa tells me to run along.”
“Kindertransport,” echoed Lili, waking too and sleepily looking up at Tanni. Lili echoed everything Klara said. She adored her twin almost as much as she adored Tanni. Lili had been born second, Dr. Joseph had explained to Tanni, and that meant they had to take special care of her because she was not as quick or as clever as Klara. And indeed, where Klara’s eyes were bright and lively, Lili’s were placid and guileless.
Tanni was wondering how to answer Klara and wishing she could curl up and have a good long sleep herself, then wake to find everything normal once more, when all three girls heard a commotion downstairs in the hall and an alarming wail from their mother. “No! Dearest Frau Anna, don’t leave us! What shall we do without you?”
The girls scrambled off the window seat and flew to the landing where they peered over the banisters at the crisis below, unable to believe their ears. Despite their parents’ protests, Frau Anna was insisting she must leave. Frau Anna, who had been with the family since her own husband was invalided while fighting in 1917, who looked after them, made wonderful dumplings, and baked tortes on their birthdays, and who, observing the rabbi’s handsome son Anton slip Tanni a small, beautifully bound volume of poetry, had winked as Tanni blushed.
Frau Anna leaving them?
“My husband says an Austrian mustn’t work for a Jewish family,” she sobbed.
“At least you must take a half year’s wages. It’s all we have at the moment, and I’m sorry it’s not more,” Tanni’s father urged. “Money is worth less and less every day; buy what you can quickly.” Tanni knew Frau Anna and her husband had become very poor. There were so many poor people.
Wiping her eyes, Frau Anna finally took the money, kissed them all, and left.
“It will pass,” Tanni’s father said to her mother, patting her shoulder as she too wept disconsolately. “It is only temporary, darling. We are all Austrians and our town is too far out of the way for the troublemakers to take much notice of it. Only a few rabble-rousers have disturbed us. Things are worse elsewhere. What, after all, are a few baubles and a housekeeper? We will sit tight, and in the end Chancellor Hitler will call them to order. Then, you’ll see, we shall go on as happily as before.”
That did not calm Frau Joseph. She and her husband began one of their urgent whispered discussions, their not-quite arguments. Tanni listened intently and heard “Kindertransport! You must! At once!”
Frau Anna’s departure was the worst of all the horrible things that had befallen them. Tanni left the little girls and fled to her refuge, climbing up in the fig tree to cry alone.
A few minutes later she heard them calling. “Tanni? Tanni, where did you go?”
Perched high in the fig tree, long legs drawn up till her knees were folded under her chin, Tanni hugged herself tight, brooding, biting her nails, and trying not to cry again. Just now she didn’t want to be found. Through the last of the leaves she watched Lili and Klara bobbing here and there as they ran about looking for her. Lili’s little plaits that Tanni had done that morning were coming undone as she trailed through the overgrown shrubs behind her sister.
“Tanni, stop hiding, play with us. Push us in the swing. Please, Tanni,” called Klara.
“Swing,” echoed Lili. “Want to swing.”
But Tanni was too bewildered and out of sorts to play or be anyone’s “little mother” at the moment. She needed someone to talk to, a friend. Her mother had her father and the twins had each other. She had no one. She gave in to a few bitter tears of self-pity, then told herself not to be silly and dried her eyes.
From her treetop hiding place she could see over the high garden wall, with its stout locked door, to the river rushing below and the old stone walls of the town on the opposite bank, its church towers and domes shining golden in the late-autumn sunshine. From here the world looked as it always had. She felt calmer. She was a princess, like the one in the fairytales, surveying her kingdom from the castle tower. Waiting for her prince? Anton? She smiled.
Below her a window opened in the house. “Tanni, please come to the sewing room for a moment,” her mother called in the direction of the fig tree.
Tanni wanted to stay where she was and feel peaceful a little longer, but she climbed down the tree and went, dragging her feet along the way.
Frau Joseph and Frau Zayman, the dressmaker, had been closeted in the sewing room for days, working furiously. From time to time the three girls had been summoned and measurements taken, garments basted or tucked. Tanni squirmed as she stood in her shabby old petticoat, which was far too small for her now and increasingly tight across the bosom. Something about the atmosphere in the sewing room stopped her asking for a new one.
“Only sixteen and so tall already,” sighed Frau Zayman, increasing the measurement for Tanni’s hemline. “It seems like yesterday I made your first school pinafores.”
“But I am old enough for the gymnasium, Frau Zayman. It’s Klara and Lili who need school pinafores, except they don’t go to school any more than I do. I am nearly grown up. Can’t you make the hem a bit longer? At my age dresses ought to be longer than a schoolgirl’s.” To her surprise Frau Zayman nodded and stretched the tape farther. Tanni noticed Frau Zayman’s eyes were red-rimmed as if she too had been crying over Frau Anna’s departure. Tanni twisted around to see if the tape measure was far enough down her calf.
“Hold still, Tanni,” snapped her mother, running a pin into her hand.
School was a sore subject. Jewish children were not allowed in Austrian schools any longer, so their worried parents kept most at home. With no one but Lili and Klara to play with, Tanni moped forlornly around the house, missing her friends, her music lessons, and even geography, which she used to hate. Her schoolbooks and tennis racket lay on her desk and her satchel gathered dust in the corner. Her father had told her sternly to study by herself but was too distracted to notice that she did not. Instead, when she wasn’t playing with Lili and Klara, Tanni would lose herself in the book of poems Anton had brought her and dream of love…and Anton’s handsome face.
Now, while Frau Zayman fussed with the tape measure, Tanni’s spirits fell further. What was the point of having a new dress? They never went anywhere, and Anton, now excluded from the university, rarely left his house. He would never see her in it. Worst of all, Tanni was not allowed to attend the annual Kinderball, which was held in mid-December. Her mother sighed. The Kinderball had been a sore subject in the Josephs’ home. The young people’s dancing classes were one of the few activities not specifically closed to Jewish children, probably because the mayor’s sister made her living by teaching ballroom dancing and deportment. She knew Tanni longed to go, but she had stopped Tanni attending the dancing classes months ago when she decided there had been too many ugly incidents for her daughter to go out.
Frau Zayman continued measuring. “Such a little waist the girl has. You should eat more, Tanni.”
Tanni’s mother muttered something about how difficult it was to buy food, and Frau Zayman flushed. For the first time Tanni noticed how thin Frau Zayman looked. She had once
been so plump and sturdy, like her son, Bruno. “You’ve made new winter clothes for Lili and Klara. Such pretty little coats with brass buttons! But what are you making for me with all this measuring?” Tanni tried to take an interest, forcing back the tears that never seemed far away. “And why are those carpetbags on the floor? I thought they were kept in the attic.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said her mother.
“Then what color? Can’t I at least see the material for my own dress, Mutti? Please don’t make it pink like the last one. Pink with ribbons is for babies, for Klara and Lili. They’re only four, and they look adorable in pink, like little bonbons. What I would like is…”
“What?” said Frau Zayman, holding the tape around her bust.
Tanni thought about the sort of clothes a girl might wear to be fallen in love with, by an older boy like Anton who had been at university in Vienna. He must have seen many elegant ladies there. Before the cinema had closed to Jews, Tanni had seen a film where a glamorous American actress danced and danced into happily-ever-after with a dapper hero in evening dress and a white scarf. She knew exactly what she wanted!
Eagerly she told Frau Zayman, “Something gorgeous and grown up and long, in dark blue velvet and silver, perhaps with feathers at the neck, and a little train. High-heeled slippers. A little silk bag for my lipstick and cigarettes. Naturally I would have a jeweled cigarette holder, that I would hold just so.” She tossed her head and her mane of naturally curly hair bounced, then struck a pose copied from the film; her eyes rose soulfully, she held aloft an imaginary cigarette holder and sashayed across the sewing room, puffing her imaginary cigarette and blowing imaginary smoke into the air. “The mysterious but charming Miss Joseph, the toast of Vienna, all the young men are dying of love and fighting duels over her.” Tanni kicked her imaginary train the way the American actress had, looked back over her shoulder, and fluttered her eyelashes. Her mother laughed and nearly swallowed a pin.
Tanni stopped prancing. She pined for the dancing classes she could no longer attend and especially for their annual cotillion called the Kinderball. She adored dancing, and Anton had almost always chosen her as a partner because they were both tall for their ages. He danced wonderfully well. He said all the men in his family did, but that those who were very Orthodox danced only with other men at weddings and on religious holidays—they thought it was sinful to dance with a woman. His father’s side of the family had abandoned such old-fashioned notions. They, like the Josephs, were modern Austrians.
Tanni had imagined herself at this year’s Kinderball—hair up and flowers on her wrist, looking her best—waltzing round and round in her first proper ball dress in Anton’s arms. He had promised to attend even though he was really too old. In her dream they whirled, never missing a step, until everyone else at the ball stood back to applaud them. Then Anton spun her outside under the stars and asked her to marry him.
She hadn’t seen him in ages, because except for her father, the family never left the house or its high-walled garden at the back except on High Holy Days when they hurried to services at the synagogue down the street. Even then they went quickly. Their neighbors would mutter “Juden” and spit at them as they passed.
The atmosphere in the sewing room, which had lightened briefly, settled heavily again. It was impossible to know what to say to the grown-ups. Everyone was so moody and on edge. “Have you had a letter from Bruno lately?” Tanni asked Frau Zayman. “What interesting things has he done in London? Has he seen the king and queen and the princesses driving about? Or the museum of wax people? Do tell us.”
It was a conversational gambit that usually worked. Frau Zayman could talk for hours about her adored Bruno and the news in his latest letter from England. Bruno was a plump, solemn boy ten years older than Tanni and much shorter. He was terribly clever, and Frau Zayman, widowed when Bruno was small, had scrimped and saved to send him to England to study. Tanni knew that her mother ordered new dresses they didn’t really need to help Frau Zayman with Bruno’s expenses and her father purposely ripped linings in his coats or tore his pockets so she could mend them.
Frau Zayman said proudly that the latest news was that Bruno had been offered a teaching post at Oxford, a prestigious award to an outstanding foreign scholar. Then uncharacteristically she fell silent. Tanni intercepted a meaningful look between her mother and the seamstress. Now what had she said that was wrong?
Tanni tried again. “Someday I want to go to London like Bruno,” she announced brightly. “I shall see the zoo and the crown jewels and the soldiers riding their horses outside Buckingham Palace. Bruno says there are splendid museums full of beautiful and interesting things, and that afterward, one can take tea at Fortnum & Mason—” Why was her mother’s best lace tablecloth cut in pieces on the sewing table? “Can I help with the sewing, Mutti? Frau Zayman showed me how to make the tiniest stitches you ever saw, and I would be so careful you’d be amazed…”
“I think,” interrupted her mother, stitching part of the tablecloth onto a length of white material in her lap, “we may see Bruno today. Be waiting ready to open the garden door to him quickly when he comes, Tanni.” Usually the girls were forbidden to let anyone in. From the garden door, steps led down to the river and a small landing for fishermen’s boats. Once they had brought fish to sell to the cook, but now no one called to sell fish to the Jews. Was Bruno coming by boat? Why not by train as he normally did?
Her father rapped at the door. “The rabbi is here with the contract,” he said as he opened the door. “Really, my dear, that is nonsense!” he exclaimed, exasperated, seeing what his wife was doing.
“One moment, Herr Doktor!” Hastily Frau Zayman pulled Tanni’s old dress back over her head and fastened the buttons at the back quickly.
“Leave us for a moment, Tanni,” said her father.
Her mother shook out the voluminous white thing she was sewing, then continued to stitch faster than ever. “It’s important; men don’t understand,” she insisted.
Tanni intervened: this was no time for her parents to quarrel. “I know, I’m to open the garden door for Bruno, but why is he coming, Papa, when he has a new teaching post in England? When everything here is so—”
“He has come back to tell us about it. And now I must speak to your mother and Frau Zayman, Tanni. Run along and—”
“But you already know about it! Why should he come back and tell you?”
“Go,” ordered her mother sharply, head bent, sewing furiously. “Your sisters are calling you.”
“But I want to stay and help sew whatever is so important—”
“Go!” said the Josephs simultaneously.
Tanni stamped her foot and flounced out. Before the twins saw her she retreated to the fig tree. Nothing made sense. Tears rolled down her cheeks again. After a while she realized she was hungry. She picked one of the figs that still clung to the tree and ate it, although it was a bit withered. She found a better one for Bruno, who liked figs. Below, wasps buzzed over the fruit that was split and rotting on the ground because no one had made jam this year.
The sun was setting, and the high branches where Tanni perched caught the last of its warmth. A breeze rattled the dry leaves. Tanni could smell wood smoke on the chilly air. The late-afternoon shadows lengthened. Once the maids would have lit all the fires at twilight, as delicious smells of supper filled the house. Her mother would have bathed, put on a velvet tea gown, and waited in front of the fire for Dr. Joseph to come in from his surgery. When he had kissed them both he would join her mother in an aperitif before Frau Anna served the soup and cutlets. After supper Tanni and her father had played chess while her mother practiced a new piece on the piano or read a novel ordered from Vienna.
There was a sharp knock, then a loud pounding that shook the garden door and interrupted her reverie. Tanni started, then began to climb down to open it. The door was overgrown with morning glory and brambles and it took a moment to push them aside. By now the banging
was louder and more frantic.
She tugged. “Just a minute, Bruno! Don’t be so impatient. The door is stuck. There!”
Expecting Bruno, she was startled to find an elderly man with stubble, one of her father’s patients, who gasped for breath and spat as he talked. “Hurry,” he wheezed, spittle flying. “Soldiers are coming! They say they’re setting fire to synagogues and the Jewish shops, looting and breaking windows—shooting even! You must get your father! They talk of driving the Jewish devils out…they are beating some to death.”
A breathless Bruno appeared just behind the old man, his spectacles crooked.
“Tanni, it was not supposed to happen till next week, but we must hurry. You know we are going to be—”
But a shocked Tanni had no time for Bruno now. Who was calling them “devils”? Had the old man gone mad? Had the whole world gone mad as well as the Joseph household? Tanni stood staring and motionless, holding Bruno’s fig.
“Go,” shouted the man and gave her a hard shove. “Run! Run! Tell your father!” His face twisted with fear. Across the river came the unmistakable sound of gunfire. “They are coming! Soldiers!” he howled.
Terrified, Tanni dropped the fig and ran.
She burst into the sewing room where the rabbi was rolling something up as her parents and Frau Zayman watched. She had no idea why the rabbi should be in the sewing room. “Papa, there is a crazy old patient of yours who arrived with Bruno, he’s raving about Jewish devils,” she panted. “You’d better come. And Bruno is here, but even he isn’t making sense.”
Dr. Joseph and the rabbi hurried out. Tanni’s mother and Frau Zayman undid the buttons at the back of her dress again, pulled it off, and slipped another over her head. Tanni’s head whirled. Did they think of nothing but fittings? Her mother and Frau Zayman tugged and fastened, ignoring Tanni’s protests. Exasperated, confused, and frightened, she stamped her foot again and hit at the folds of fabric crying, “Why are you bothering with dresses at a time like this? What is happening?”