by Annika Thor
Their first class on Monday mornings is German. By now Stephie, like all the others, knows very well what the accusative and the dative are. They’ve learned rhymes by heart to remind them which prepositions govern each and both.
“An, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, und zwischen,” they repeat in unison, Miss Krantz keeping time with her pointer against the edge of the desk.
What not a single one of them has done since the first day of school, however, is say a full sentence in German. They work on their grammar and read out loud from a boring textbook, translating the long sentences slowly and choppily into Swedish.
Stephie does her best to pronounce the words the way Miss Krantz does, but much too often she forgets and says them as she’s accustomed to doing.
“Standard German!” Miss Krantz orders then, banging down the pointer. “In this class we speak standard German!”
After school, Stephie goes to the lily pond to be by herself and do some thinking. The weeping willows reflected in the water have begun to shed their leaves, and the ivy on the brick mansions is bright red. The water lilies are no longer in bloom, but the little islets of leaves still ornament the surface, and Mr. and Mrs. Swan are still floating there.
The bench feels cold against her thighs in the gap between where her underpants end and her stockings begin. She pulls her coat way down so she can sit on it.
All day Harriet and Lilian have been giving her conspiratorial looks, winking and smiling. They won’t forget what she’s said. It reminds her of when Putte gets a bone; they’ll never let it go, not until they’ve squeezed every juicy tidbit out of her. She’s going to have to tell them the things they want to hear.
Well, that won’t be difficult. She’s already pictured it all in her head, images of romantic scenes that will make Lilian sigh and Harriet long to hear more. Scenes she remembers from the magazines she and Evi used to read in secret at home, or from the movie posters pasted up outside the cinemas. Marvelous scenes starring her and Sven.
The hard thing will be not getting caught. She’ll have to be extremely careful and keep herself on Harriet’s and Lilian’s good sides so they don’t stop liking her and use her story as gossip for their mill. And most important of all, she must be sure May never catches on.
The worst part is that she feels like she’s betraying Sven by telling lies about him. If he ever finds out, she’ll lose all her chances.
She’s entangled in a net of her own making, as helpless as if she were caught in the clutching stalks of the lily pads and being pulled down toward the muddy bottom.
My beloved Stephie,
I was thrilled to hear that you are happy in your new school. Your homeroom teacher really sounds like a wonderful person. It’s important for a girl of your age to have an adult role model. I mean, a woman who is not her mother. You’re growing up so fast, and even if we had not had to be separated, you would soon not be my little girl any longer. Of course, you will always be my little girl in one way. When things are hardest, I pull out the photos of you and Nellie when you were babies, and remember our wonderful days together.
Oh, I’m sounding morose, as if there were no future. But we must believe in the future. One day this nightmare will be over and we will be together again, all four of us.
The only thing that worries me is that since you are living in Göteborg now, you and Nellie will grow apart. You do visit her regularly, don’t you? Nellie needs you. She’s still such a little girl.
I’ll have to stop now. We have no electric lighting and we have to be economical with the carbide for our lamp. Write soon and tell me everything that’s going on! Please send my best greetings to all the kind people who are helping you, and remind Nellie to write to us.
Kisses from your mamma
Stephie sits on her bed, her mamma’s letter in her hand. There is something peculiar about this letter, something ominous between the lines.
Although the words in the letter are loving and reassuring, Stephie is worried.
Her mother’s handwriting has changed, too. It sprawls, as if her hand is no longer able to move the pen along the paper as gently and elegantly as it used to.
When Mamma and Papa told the girls they were sending them to Sweden, it upset Stephie, but she never doubted that it was the best thing to do. Back then they all believed that they would have to be apart for only a short time, that in a few months the whole family would have entry visas to the United States. “Six months at the very most,” she remembers her father saying in a reassuring tone when she asked him how long it was going to be.
Now that Stephie knows they will probably not see each other again until the war is over, she sometimes wonders if it might not have been better for her and Nellie to stay in Vienna. She knows that her parents are now living in a crowded dwelling, and that there is not enough to eat. She knows that Papa is hardly paid anything for the work he does at the Jewish hospital, and that Mamma is away from home from early morning until late in the evenings. She knows that they, like all the other Jews in Vienna, are living in constant fear of what the Germans will do next.
And yet she sometimes wishes she were there. She misses the scent of her mother and her soft cheeks, her father’s warm hands and kind voice.
Even worse than missing them is feeling guilty. What right does she have to be sitting here well fed and content in a large brightly lit room on one of the finest streets in Göteborg when not only Mamma and Papa, but also Evi and other friends of hers, are freezing and starving? She ought to be in Vienna with them. She would be able to help Mamma clean houses. She would be able to make the long walk to the other side of the city to shop for food instead of Mamma, and to light the fire so it was warm when her parents came home in the evenings.
She would also, she knows, be another mouth to feed, and her parents would be sick with worry about her and Nellie if they were there. It’s better for all of them that the girls are in Sweden, where the only signs of the war are that more and more products are being rationed and that cars run on smelly wood gas instead of gasoline. She knows this is true, yet it still seems unfair that she is here and they are there.
There’s a knock on the door, to the rhythm of one of Sven’s swing melodies.
“Come in.”
Sven stands in the doorway, looking at her. “Am I disturbing you?”
“No.”
He looks down at the letter in her hand. “From your parents?”
“Mamma.”
“Any news?”
Stephie shakes her head. She can’t explain the sense of dread that has come over her, not even to Sven.
“I really hope the Americans join the war,” says Sven. “Then the Germans won’t have a chance.”
“Please, could you talk about something else?” Stephie asks hotly. “I’m tired of talking about the war.”
Sven looks at her thoughtfully. Then he glances at his watch.
“Come on,” he says. “You need cheering up.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
As they put their coats on in the hall, Putte comes running, barking eagerly.
“Sorry, Putte pal,” says Sven. “You’ve had your walk. This time you have to stay inside.”
Stephie and Sven head toward Götaplatsen. Sven stops outside the concert hall.
“Here we are,” he tells Stephie. “There’s a concert starting in ten minutes.”
Stephie feels pleasure warm her. It’s been years since she listened to live music. Once the Nazis took over in Austria, Jews were prohibited from going to the cinema, the theater, and concerts. And on the island she isn’t allowed even to listen to music on the radio. According to Aunt Märta’s rules, and those of the Pentecostal church, music is sinful.
She feels a prick of guilt when she thinks of what Aunt Märta would say, but decides to ignore the feeling. Music has been part of her life since she was a little girl: her mother’s piano playing and singing, her own piano le
ssons, the concerts and opera performances her parents used to take her to, especially the outdoor concerts in the Prater Park on summer evenings. There can’t be anything wrong with that.
“What are you so deep in thought about?” Sven asks her.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, then.”
They find their seats at the back of the hall and settle in. The conductor raises his baton. The beautiful tones wash over her.
It’s Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor. She remembers having heard it with Mamma and Papa ages back. That’s the last thought she has before being completely swallowed up by the music.
The final notes echo and fade. Slowly Stephie comes back to the concert hall, to the applause from the audience, to Sven at her side. But she still feels completely at peace, and she has no desire to disrupt those feelings by talking.
“You’re so quiet,” Sven finally says when they’re out on the square again. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes, of course,” Stephie replies. “Thank you for taking me.”
“Good,” says Sven. “Now to the pastry shop.”
They walk along the avenue and into one of the pastry shops, a lovely place with red plush seats and gold-framed mirrors.
“Have whatever you want,” Sven tells her. “My treat.”
Stephie picks a mille-feuille with shiny pink icing. Sven chooses the same and orders cocoa with whipped cream for her and coffee for himself.
They sit at a little round table. Stephie hasn’t tasted anything this good in a very long time. She sips her cocoa slowly, trying to make the whipped cream last as long as possible.
“Sven,” she says, “do you think it’s wrong of me to enjoy myself like this when my parents don’t even have enough to eat?”
“No,” Sven replies. “You mustn’t think like that. You’re here because they want you to be well. They’d be pleased to know you were sitting here having a pastry. You mustn’t let things that aren’t your fault give you a guilty conscience. Do you understand?”
Stephie nods. When Sven says it, it seems perfectly clear that he is right.
went to a concert on Saturday,” Stephie tells Harriet and Lilian. “Afterward he took me to a pastry shop.”
Although her words are true, she feels as if she’s lying. Her big lie about Sven rubs off on everything she says about him. She feels uncomfortable about it. At the same time, it gives her a tingle of excitement.
Sometimes it almost feels as if the things she’s telling them are true.
How they walk hand in hand when they’re out with Putte. What he whispers in her ear when they’re alone. How careful they have to be about keeping it all secret.
“His parents mustn’t suspect anything,” Stephie says. “And certainly not my foster parents. You know, my foster mother’s Pentecostal. And terribly strict.”
Harriet sighs. “You poor thing.”
“You lucky thing,” Lilian counters. “A secret love. It’s so romantic.”
“Has he kissed you?” Harriet asks. “For real, I mean, on the lips?”
Her question makes a warm wave wash over Stephie. She’s been taken off guard.
“Not yet,” she replies.
“Promise you’ll tell when he does?” Lilian insists.
The whole next class, which is biology, Stephie imagines Sven kissing her. She shuts her eyes and fantasizes about his face coming closer and closer to hers until their lips touch. And then? She doesn’t know. Her cheeks are hot and she feels almost sick to her stomach.
“Stephanie?” she hears Hedvig Björk say. “What’s wrong? Are you unwell?”
Stephie opens her eyes at once.
“Yes … well, no.” She hesitates.
“Do you need to go out for a breath of air?” Hedvig Björk asks solicitously.
“Thank you,” says Stephie. “I’m all right, though, really.”
She takes a deep breath and tries to concentrate on the large poster hanging in front of the blackboard. It illustrates different species of trees and their leaves; the girls are supposed to be copying the leaves into their notebooks.
May takes her aside between classes. “What’s up with you today?” she asks in a much less concerned tone than Hedvig Björk’s. “You’re acting so weird. What kind of secrets are you sharing with Harriet and Lilian?”
“None at all,” Stephie says.
“Don’t you think I have eyes?” May asks her coldly. “Or do you think I’m some kind of idiot? I see very well that you’re always whispering together, and how you stop the minute I come along. I thought you and I were friends. Aren’t we?”
Stephie is ashamed. May is like an open book. She never hides anything.
“Of course we’re friends,” Stephie assures her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Stephie’s doing well at school. She still makes spelling mistakes sometimes and puts words in the wrong order. But she reads in Swedish just fine now, and she has a very good memory.
Math is her best subject. Alice is the only girl in the class who can give her a run for her money there. When she or Alice goes up to the blackboard to solve an equation, Hedvig Björk always smiles.
“Look, girls, that’s how it ought to be done,” she says. “It’s not really all that difficult.”
When it’s May’s turn at the blackboard, Hedvig Björk always nods encouragingly to start with, but the more May mixes up her x’s and y’s, erases, and starts over, the more impatient Miss Björk grows.
“Oh, May,” she finally says. “Can’t you see what you’re doing wrong? I can’t understand how an intelligent girl like you can have so much trouble with algebra.”
Stephie can’t understand it, either. What makes this so difficult for May? As long as they’re working just with numbers, she’s fine. Square roots, compound interest, and other hard concepts aren’t beyond her. But the minute there are both numbers and letters in the problems, May loses her grip.
Stephie offers to give May some extra help with her algebra. She thought they could sit in the school library, but May has a different idea.
“Let’s go to my place,” she says. “It’s about time you came over.”
Stephie remembers May telling her that her family lives in crowded conditions and that she has a whole brood of noisy little sisters and brothers. But she doesn’t want to be rude and risk hurting May’s feelings again. She’s afraid May might think Stephie thinks her place isn’t good enough.
“Sure,” Stephie says. “It’ll be fun to see where you live.”
After school they take the green tram. It rattles slowly along, crossing the whole city center and then running beside a tree-lined canal. Stephie has never been in this part of town.
“There’s the fish market,” May says, pointing it out. “And the square with the workers’ community center. See those buildings up on the hillside? That’s Masthugget. We’re getting close now.”
The tram makes its way heavily up a long, steep hill, then down a gentler slope. May pulls the cord, and the tram comes to a stop.
Stephie looks around. There are no tall stone apartment buildings here, like in the neighborhood where she lives. All the buildings are three stories—the bottom one of stone, the next two of wood. The paint is flaking on the facades. The entryways open onto courtyards paved with cobblestones.
They turn into a cross street. The sign says CAPTAINS’ ROAD, KAPTENSGATAN. After half a block, May turns in at an entryway, crossing the courtyard, where at least thirty children of different ages are playing. May points out her younger brothers and sisters.
“There’s Britten. She’s closest to me in age,” she tells Stephie. “Kurre and Olle, the twins.”
Kurre and Olle are two runny-nosed kids of about nine, as alike as two peas in a pod.
May lifts a chubby toddler and gives her a hug. “This is Ninni, our youngest. Got a kiss for May? Mmmm, what a nice kiss!”
May holds her little sister up proudly for Stephie to inspect. Stephie isn’t
eager to kiss Ninni. She’s cute, but she also has a runny nose, and her face is dirty. Luckily Ninni decides to be shy, turning her head away.
“Britten,” May calls. “She’s soaked through! Aren’t you supposed to be looking after her? And where are the others?”
Britten, a long-legged eleven-year-old in an outgrown dress, comes up to them.
“Gosh,” she says. “I hadn’t noticed. Can’t you deal with her, since you’re going upstairs anyway? It’s almost my turn.” She points to a group of girls jumping rope. “Erik and Gunnel went along with Mamma to work. Ninni’s the only one at home. Please, can’t you take her up with you?”
“I’ll change her,” May says. “But when that’s done, I’ll call you to come up and get her. Stephanie and I are going to do our math homework.”
Britten looks at Stephie in admiration.
“Do you go to grammar school, too?”
“Yes.”
“I hope I can go,” Britten tells her.
“Britten,” the girls with the jump rope shout. “Your turn!”
“She’ll never get into grammar school,” May tells Stephie once Britten is out of earshot. “She doesn’t have good enough grades. She won’t get a scholarship.”
May carts Ninni up the stairs to the top floor. The door isn’t locked, and it opens right into the kitchen, where there are a large table, four rib-backed chairs, a kitchen settle, a sink, and a shiny gas stove.
“Nice, isn’t it?” May asks, striking the pale yellow enamel. “It’s brand new. Until recently, all we had was a wood-burning stove.”
With a deft movement she lays Ninni on the kitchen table. Holding her kicking little sister with one hand, she dampens a rag with the other. When she pulls Ninni’s underpants down, the strong odor of urine fills the kitchen, and Stephie scrunches her nose.
“Why don’t you go into the other room till I’m done?” May tells her.
Stephie goes into the only other room there is. It contains a sofa bed and two trundle beds, a little table, and a couple of chairs. She wonders how there is room for all of them to sleep there.