I kept walking through the house and out into the little garden over and over. Everything was a mess. Where was my family? When would I see them?
In the weeks that followed, people would leave things at my door that they had taken from our house. They thought we would never return. Most things were lost forever. My mother’s best Gentile friend, Mrs. Sandor, brought me the Persian rug my father had given me for my room on my seventh birthday. Before the ghetto, when things were getting bad, my mother had given her the carpet and a box of linens to keep for us. You know they have been my most prized possessions, and I hope will be yours.
Slowly we began to hear the horror of what had happened after I went to the convent. I don’t know if anyone has ever found the words that express the moment when one’s spirit is completely crushed, as mine was then. There is a numbness. Somehow your body still functions but thoughts cannot connect. Disbelief. A suspension of all that was real or true before that moment.
What I learned was this. In May, right after I went to the convent, everyone in the ghetto was moved to the brickyard and every day trains came and took them away. No one knew to where. The soldiers told the Jews they were just being relocated. We learned even Eichmann was there directing things. All the Jewish people had been sent to Auschwitz.
The will to live is a force of immense strength. Even when your heart is broken into a million pieces and feeling beyond repair, there is something in the human spirit that keeps going. From this time, I understood whenever I read about someone else expressing this. Whether I wanted to or not, I was going to keep living. As Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” I learned this philosophy many years later but I know this was the force that drove me. I realized that I was alone. I knew that in my aloneness I had to learn to be strong, to live for the others who did not survive. And I began from that moment.
No one had been safe from the Nazi terror. Jozsef’s and Andrew’s father had been hanged in the square with seven other men after they were accused of helping Jews. The Nazis made everyone come to the square to watch and no one was allowed to remove the bodies. His business was given away. Their mother became very ill after that and passed away. They were orphans, as I seemed to be too.
Why had we been spared? Why had the others been taken? Were our people so terrible they needed to be exterminated? How could this have happened? While the world watched?
The Russian Communists were now in control and life was not good. They were not like the Nazis, but still they made life difficult for everyone.
Jozsef, Andrew, and I quietly worked in the basement at night by candlelight and dug up the plumbing pieces. We had to sell them a few at a time and hoped we would not be reported. When we saved enough money, we started a bakery in my house. We sold bread, biscuits, and palachinta, because I could make so many paper-thin crepes. I also took in sewing. That’s how we survived.
Jozsef and Andrew helped in every way and went to Budapest to buy flour and sugar on the black market. They also worked in the lumberyard.
Every day I hoped someone in our family would appear. I never gave up hope. Hope survives, my mother had said.
None returned. A few members of the Jewish community did make their way back. They had either been hidden like me or survived the horror of Auschwitz and were like ghosts. One woman had been in the same cattle car as my mother and grandparents.
I cannot begin to describe how I felt. The loss, the anger, the sorrow . . .
Jozsef and I fell in love. Now it didn’t matter if a Jew married a Gentile. We both felt we had no religion anyway. God had forsaken all of us. After two years we decided to leave. Over many months we had slowly exchanged our money for diamonds in Budapest. Jozsef and Andrew would always go together, each time to a different trader, and it was a very risky undertaking.
We also took the small gems from the jewelry we had buried before the war. I sewed tiny secret compartments into your father’s underwear to hide them. This was our little nest egg to try and begin our lives again. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. I took the carpet and the box of linens to Mrs. Sandor, as my mother had done.
We had one mission before we left. I feel no shame in telling you this, but know you will be shocked. People in the village had talked about the collaborators and traitors, and your father discovered who had betrayed his father. He and his brother vowed revenge. We had to move quickly when we were suddenly told we would make our escape to Austria the next night.
I baked my palachinta with an extra ingredient in the apricot preserves filling and had them ready for the vulgar, loud carpenter who came by every day, always demanding a discount. His name was Miklos Nemecht. We never knew if the rat poison did its job, but we had to try. It was a small act of revenge for a horrific betrayal, and we felt no regret.
We snuck out secretly the next night, hiding in the back of a truck under a pile of debris. It was dusty and uncomfortable and fear was our companion once again. This time I had my Jozsef to comfort and calm me, but the memories of the past years stayed very close to the surface. It was a terrible night. Near the Austrian border we were taken down an abandoned logging road and dropped off. We had to walk for several hours following faint yellow marks on trees, which were difficult to see in the dim light of near dawn.
We came upon a roughly built cabin, where we had been told to wait. Inside there was bread and water in the cupboard and soon a couple arrived in a very old car. They took us to a safe house in Vienna. After a few days we were given new identity papers but with our proper names. We would work in a factory there until the plans were set for us to leave for Canada.
A woman there contacted Mrs. Sandor for us, and she delivered the carpet and linens to me after a month or so. She came on the train to Vienna and I met her at the station. She said she would never forgive herself for not doing something, anything, to save Mother and her parents. She said many, many people were struggling with this. I told her I knew there was nothing anyone could do against that evil. She was a true friend, and we cried as we parted.
When we came to Canada, the carpet and linens were all I had to remind me of the life I left behind. The life that was so horrendously stolen from me, and so many millions of others. We vowed not to speak of it and we didn’t. In Canada we had love on which to build our new life and that’s what we did.
After a while we felt safe. Canada was a good place to begin again. Soon Andrew came too and we were the only family we had. And we had hope. And then we had you—the joy of our life.
Katica, do not ever fear being alone but rather find your strength within. You will build a new life and you will love life again too. You will figure out what matters most. I know you will. Always feel our love filling your heart wherever you are. Always feel my arms around you, my darling daughter.
Anyu xoxoxo
Katherine closed her eyes. Leaning her head back against the cushions, she waited for the tears to end without attempting to stop them. Let them come, she thought, tears for so many innocent people . . . for man’s inhumanity to man . . . for my beautiful parents . . .
Filled with despair and completely drained, she sat with the book closed on her lap.
Visions of her parents filled the spaces of her mind. She had so much to be thankful for. Gratitude, appreciation, and optimism had driven them. She wondered how they ever managed to rise above the horror they had survived to become the people they were. They were her heroes, like thousands of other survivors were to others all over the world. She wanted to hold her mother and father and Uncle Andrew. She wanted to cry with them and tell them how sorry she was. She knew they had not wanted that.
Getting up after a long while, Katherine walked over to the carpet hanging on the wall of the small room where her mother last slept. She put her cheek up against the silky threads in rich but worn shades of gold, brown, green, and red, and closed her eyes. Running her fingers over the softness, she envisioned her mother sitting playing on it as a child, jo
yfully pointing out the colorful animals so skillfully woven into the pattern. She felt a chill at the sadness and fear that would have filled the house as the carpet was rolled up and secreted to Mrs. Sandor to escape being stolen or worse.
What happiness and sorrow this carpet had known. Her mother’s history lived on in its threads. It would always be there to remind her of this—and to remind her that her problems were not as big as they seemed.
8
It had already been a month since her mother’s quiet family funeral. Elisabeth’s belongings had been shared among Katherine and Andrea’s family, with the remainder going to charity. Katherine converted the small sewing room that had, in the final months, been her mother’s bedroom back into an office. Otherwise the house was left much as it had been.
“There’s no reason to rush around making changes,” Katherine said to Andrea when she spent a day with her a few weekends later. “Besides, I like the feeling that this is how Mom and Dad wanted it. I’m not ready to let go of that.”
Andrea nodded. Katherine went on.
“Through my counseling I read some helpful books about the process of loss. It never really occurred to me that what I was feeling after James left was initially grief as well—not necessarily for the loss of James, but for everything else that went with our life together.”
“Do you think that’s helping now with losing your mom?”
“Definitely. But there’s something else that is dragging me down, and I’ve got to share it with you. It’s part of your history too—and I’ve been putting it off.”
Katherine walked to the dining room table, where she still had a few items of her mother’s that required attention. Andrea wore a puzzled expression as she was handed the linen-wrapped binder.
On a Saturday morning later in March, Katherine turned off the main highway just past Kitchener and Waterloo. She never tired of the familiar maze of country roads that wound through abundant farmland leading to Andrea and Terrence’s home.
Dried brown stubble poked through spots of lingering snow and the feathery plumes on strawlike stems of last year’s pampas grass waved gently in the spring breeze. Driving slowly, she passed several Mennonites in their horse-drawn carriages. A sure sign of spring, she noted, passing many open buggies along with the enclosed models.
Driving up the narrow laneway to the century farmhouse, Katherine spotted other signals that might not be noticed in the city. The distinctive leaves of skunk cabbage were beginning to unfurl in patches here and there. Clumps of pussy willow planted years before by Andrea and her daughter, Kate, glistened silver when caught by the sun. Snow was melting in patches throughout the forested areas, while the soil in the fields gave the appearance of being almost ready to plow. The heavy snowfalls of the winter had provided for deep watering as they melted, and the furrows of autumn beckoned to be turned as they dried in the sun.
After a stroll through the property, Andrea and Katherine sat in the warm sun on the front-porch stairs.
“Okay, Kat,” said Andrea, her voice full of energy and affection, “it’s time to give some serious thought to the future.”
Rolling her eyes, Kat squinted at her cousin. “I knew this was coming sooner or later.”
Andrea nodded. “It’s later and it’s time!”
They sat quietly for a few seconds.
“The last six months of your life have been . . . um . . . rather dramatic.”
“To say the least,” Katherine replied, shaking her head.
“You keep saying you are doing okay, but somehow I sense you aren’t. Talk to me, Kat. Tell me how you’re really feeling. Please!”
After a lengthy hesitation, Andrea slipped her arm around her cousin’s shoulders as Katherine softly spoke. “I’m really down. With Mom gone now, I have truly been feeling alone. I’m trying to convince myself I’m okay alone, that I can do this for the rest of my life. I’m just not feeling good about it.”
“I know you haven’t been to the counselor recently. Do you think you should go back to her?”
Nodding, Kat continued, “I might have to. I can’t go on like this.”
“So, Terrence and I have been talking about it, and we think you should take a vacation. Just get out of town. Go somewhere and have a complete change of scene! What do you think?”
Katherine stared intently at her cousin for quite a while and slowly nodded, eyebrows raised.
“I think that might be an idea. Hadn’t really considered it, but y’know, the counselor did tell me I should consider doing something outside my comfort zone. That would qualify.” She paused for a few seconds and added, “Do you know, crazy as this sounds, except for the odd conference in Montreal or Vancouver, I have never gone away without James . . . in twenty-two years . . .”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we were talking about. You need your own life,” Andrea exclaimed. “Trust us, Kat, you are w-a-a-a-y overdue!”
They sat in the kitchen at the long handcrafted pine table that wore its hundred and fifty years proudly, while Andrea made a mocha and a latte with her new coffee machine and tossed ideas around.
A beach vacation on a Caribbean island?
A hiking holiday?
Andrea gingerly broached the subject of cycling.
“Don’t even go there,” said Katherine.
Suddenly Andrea leaped up to grab her laptop from her desk.
Returning to the table, she opened her computer and pulled up her bookmarks.
“I’ve just had a brainwave, Kat! Do a home exchange! Here’s the website we use. It’s the perfect idea for you!”
Laughing at her cousin’s enthusiasm, Katherine looked at her in disbelief. “Don’t be crazy!”
Shaking her finger, Andrea replied, “Absolutely not. People often think it’s a big deal until they try it. Trust me, it’s the best way to travel!”
Katherine pulled her chair alongside her cousin.
“Here’s how it works. It’s so simple, it’s unbelievable, and we are going to register you right now! That way you can take your time and look at the properties at your leisure and think about where you might want to go.”
“And I can see you aren’t taking no for an answer,” Kat said, laughing.
Andrea was unstoppable. “Your parents’ house—I mean, your house, because that’s what it is now—is the perfect exchange property. It’s got enough space for a family, and the location couldn’t be better, with shops and a subway stop just a few blocks away. Trust me! This is going to be good! Let’s take a virtual trip right now! If you could choose one part of the world, any place you want, where would it be?”
Katherine closed her eyes and nodded her head as a smile slowly spread. “The South of France, no question . . . the South of France . . .”
“Of course! That’s where you took the language course a zillion years ago! I remember that! Brilliant . . . here we go!”
Andrea clicked on the map. First Europe, then France, next the Côte d’Azur, and then a long list appeared on the screen.
“All of those properties are available for exchange?” Katherine asked in amazement.
“Oui!” Andrea shouted. “See what I said? There are so many possibilities! Of course, you need to take a look at each listing to see what appeals to you and also to be certain your listing is what that person wants. Let’s narrow it down to a specific town.”
“I stayed in Villefranche-sur-Mer. That’s where the language school was, and I know it’s still there, because I’ve looked it up online a few times just to give myself a thrill,” Katherine said with a wry grin.
“Too bad you never got back there when you enjoyed it so much.”
“You know, since James left, I’ve thought over and over again how I allowed myself to be controlled by him. I’m not blaming him—it was always ultimately my choice—but for me not to go back to Europe for twenty-two years because he didn’t want to fly is so lame, I can’t believe it.”
Andrea nodded. “
We often make choices in life that amaze us when we consider them later. As they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, huh?”
“Twenty-twenty indeed! You can’t imagine how much my vision has improved in the last few months! Thank you for doing this. I know how I’ll spend my spare time for the next while.”
Grinning at each other, they looked up as Andrea’s husband, Terrence, came into the kitchen from the garden, where he had been taking stock of the winter’s effect. As he washed his hands in the mudroom adjoining the kitchen, Andrea told him what they had been doing.
Terrence chuckled. “Andrea should be receiving a commission from that website. I can’t tell you how many of our friends she’s signed up.”
Andrea laughed along with him, her head bobbing with excitement. “As if Kat doesn’t know that. She’s been listening to me go on about our great home exchanges for years.”
“Yup,” agreed Katherine. “James always thought you were crazy for allowing strangers to stay in your place. He wouldn’t have considered it in a thousand years.”
“Isn’t it nice you can make up your own mind about these things without having his overbearing influence?” Terrence asked. “Sorry, Kat, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, but honestly, the more I hear how he controlled your lives, the happier I am you are out of that marriage. You have a lot of living to do!”
Katherine stood and hugged him.
“I’m not sure about the ‘lot of living’ part, but I have to admit I’m not having a hard time accepting that I’m the one who makes all the decisions about my life now. There’s no question I really miss my mom, but I do not miss my former husband. Period. Full stop!”
It had taken Katherine almost six months to say that out loud, and as soon as she did, it felt right. Not that it removed the hurt, but she felt a certain degree of success at being able to banish good memories of him from her thoughts.
The Promise of Provence (Love in Provence Book 1) Page 8