The Girl From the Train

by Irma Joubert

  “Take me to Onkel Hans, Jakób Kowalski.”

  He was flooded with relief. “Eureka!” he said thankfully. “Where does Onkel Hans live?”

  “Switzerland.”

  “Switzerland?” The relief subsided.

  “Yes, Switzerland.” She sounded certain.

  “All right. Where in Switzerland?”

  “Just Switzerland.”

  Any remaining relief vanished completely. “Gretl, Switzerland is a very big country. We’ll have to find out where in Switzerland Onkel Hans lives.”

  She looked at him with those big, blue eyes.

  “Who is Onkel Hans?” He tried a different angle.

  “Oma’s brother, don’t you know?”

  “Fine. What is Onkel Hans’s last name?”

  She shrugged.

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Schmidt.”

  “Right, Gretl Schmidt. This Oma of yours, was she your father’s mother or your mother’s?”

  “Mutti’s mother. I think.”

  The Onkel Hans option seemed even more remote. “Let’s go,” he said and got up.

  By ten o’clock he knew they would never reach Częstochowa by nightfall. He had carried her for long distances at a time. He couldn’t believe how thin she was, almost like the ducklings his family caught on cold evenings so they could sleep in a box in the kitchen. And as light as a feather. But they hadn’t made good progress.

  Jakób heard a wagon approach. When he saw that it was a farmer on his way to market, he stepped out from behind some trees and held up his hand.

  “Czy moge pomóc?” asked the man. Can I help you?

  “My little sister and I are on our way to Częstochowa,” Jakób explained. “How far are you going?”

  “Koziegłowy,” said the man. “Częstochowa is on the way, so get on the back if you wish.”

  Jakób lifted Gretl onto the wagon and got up himself. She sat with her thin legs dangling over the back, still clinging to her little bag.

  As they set off, she said. “You lied, Jakób Kowalski. I’m not your sister.”

  “Just Jakób will do.”

  “Okay.”

  “You understand Polish?”

  “I am Polish.” Her lips were drawn into a stubborn line, making her look very German.

  He considered his next words carefully. She might look small and vulnerable, he thought, but inside was a core of steel. “Sometimes one has to lie,” he explained. “Like you—telling me you’re Polish. I understand why you’re saying it, but I know you’re German.”

  She sat very still and looked straight ahead.

  “But you and I can’t lie to each other.”

  His words seemed to make no impression.

  He tried again. “I’m going to be honest with you: I can’t take you to Switzerland now.” The lips made a straight line again. “Not before I know exactly where in Switzerland Onkel Hans lives.”

  She turned to face him. She understood, he realized. “How will you find out?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s why you must be honest with me.”

  The blue eyes took on the fearless expression again. “Okay,” she said.

  He’d have to watch his step. “Gretl, how did you get to Rigena’s house?”

  She thought about her answer. “I walked. With Mejcio.”

  He had no idea who Mejcio was, but it was probably not important right now. “You and your sister?”

  She was closing up again. He took her hand. “Gretl, what was your sister’s name?”

  She stuck out her chin. “Elza,” she said.

  “Good. Where did Mejcio find you and Elza?”

  “I don’t know.” She withdrew her hand.

  “Was it close to Rigena’s house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me,” he said, slightly annoyed.

  “In the road, near her house.”

  “Good. How did you get to the road?”

  “Walked. Through the forest.”

  “Where from?” His patience was wearing thin.

  “From the . . .” She shut her mouth.

  Impatience would get him nowhere. “Don’t be afraid to tell me.”

  The blue eyes looked straight into his. “I’m not afraid.”

  “You can trust me, Gretl. Where did you walk from?”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly, and he saw her come to a decision. “From the railroad. Oma told us to jump out when it was dark and the train was going up the hill.”

  A cold hand closed around his heart. He had suspected it. The puzzle pieces fitted together. “You’re Jewish,” he said.

  “No!” she said firmly.

  “Gretl!”

  “I’m not Jewish!”

  “Your mother?”

  “No.” She hesitated a moment. “Oma.”

  “Good. And your father?”

  “No. He was a German soldier.”

  It was not what he had wanted to hear. “Where is he now?”

  “Shot dead,” she said, loudly and clearly. The picture became darker. He sighed. He would have to take her home with him for a day or two, at least until he could find a place for her.

  He thought for a long time before he spoke. “Gretl, listen carefully. We’ll have to say you’re Polish, from the north, on the German border.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “And you’ll have to speak as little as possible. And when you do speak, you must speak only Polish.”

  Her blue eyes regarded him earnestly. “That’s what I’ve been doing,” she said.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said. She had indeed been doing exactly that, and it hadn’t worked. “How old are you?”

  “Almost seven.”

  One of the neighbors’ sons was seven. “Aren’t you small for seven?”

  “No,” she said firmly, “I’m just thin. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one,” he answered, surprised. “Why?”

  “You’re old!” she said. “What’s in that bag?”

  He concealed the bag under his shirt. “Oh, just papers. What’s in your bag?”

  “Just papers.”

  Just before they arrived at Częstochowa, Gretl spoke: “Jakób Kowalski, are you a pirate?”

  “A what?”

  “A pirate. You look like one. Only, you don’t have that patch thing”—she gestured with her hand—“over your eye.”

  He ran his hand over his black stubble and laughed, amused. “No,” he said, “I’m not a pirate.”

  “Oh.”

  They climbed down from the wagon.

  It was warm when he carried her. It felt nice; she was tired and cold and her entire body was aching. It felt strange as well, because he was big and his body was hard. Oma’s and Mutti’s bodies were soft, even after they’d got so thin in the ghetto.

  Don’t think about the ghetto, she told herself.

  He was solid, like a horse, and he was going to take her to a castle where maidservants were going to wash her with hot water and sweet-smelling soap. Then she was going to sleep in a big, soft bed.

  It was morning when she woke up. She looked around her. She was lying in a bed, but not in a castle. She was in a room with wooden walls. There
was no window or door, just a curtain. The bed next to hers had been slept in.

  She had no idea where Jakób Kowalski was.

  She pushed the blanket off her. She had slept with her shoes on. The bedding was probably muddy. Oma never would have allowed it.

  Gretl brushed off the bed as best she could and shook out the blanket. It wasn’t easy. She fared better with the pillows. She straightened the crumpled bedding. Then she tugged at her dress and opened the curtain.

  She stood on a porch with an uneven stone floor. On one side was a door flanked by low windows. On the other side were fields, and a city in the distance. Goats just like Peter’s were grazing in the fields.

  She heard voices inside. There was a rumbling voice—she thought it might be Jakób’s. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. The woman sounded angry.

  “Where do you want her to stay?”

  Gretl couldn’t hear Jakób’s reply.

  “Where will she sleep?”

  They were talking about her.

  “Take her to the convent. The nuns can look after her.”

  The woman didn’t want her here, just like Alm U didn’t want Heidi. But she had to stay with Jakób Kowalski, because he was going to take her to Onkel Hans. It was the only way she would ever find Mutti and Oma again.

  She thought hard. She would be good and help in the house, just like Heidi. Then the woman would keep her until Jakób could take her to Switzerland.

  The woman looked up and saw her on the porch. “She’s terribly skinny.”

  Jakób turned and looked at her. “Come inside, Gretz,” he said in Polish. “Have some porridge.”

  She stepped carefully into the Polish home. She had to remember: Gretz.

  Later the woman said, “We must wash you. And your clothes.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Jakób gave her one of his shirts. “Put it on until your clothes are dry,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said as Jakób left.

  The woman poured warm water into a tin basin. “Take off your clothes and give them to me,” she said.

  The water was nice. The woman washed her with soap that didn’t smell very good and didn’t foam at all. She washed Gretl’s hair three times.

  Gretl thought carefully before she spoke. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Aunt Anastarja,” said the woman.

  “Anastarja,” Gretl repeated uncertainly. She said it four more times in her head: Anastarja, Anastarja . . . It was a difficult name.

  Aunt Anastarja had pushed up her sleeves. She had strong hands and thick arms. She wore a black dress and a black scarf covered her hair.

  A young woman carrying a bucket entered through the back door. She put the bucket on the table with a thump. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing at Gretl.

  “Jakób brought her. He’s going to take her to the convent.”

  “Oh,” said the young woman as she poured the milk into a pot. “I’m going to the factory.”

  Gretl put on Jakób’s shirt. It nearly reached the floor. Aunt Anastarja washed her clothes and hung them in the sun to dry. After a while Gretl put them back on.

  She sat on the grass alone. She tried not to think, because if she did, a lump pushed up through her chest, past her throat. And crying wouldn’t help, Oma had taught her. It just made your head ache. Elza and Mutti were weepers, not Oma and her.

  Don’t think about Elza, she told herself.

  She wondered where Mutti and Oma were.

  Elza said they couldn’t have jumped out of the train. But they must have gotten off somewhere. They would be heading for Switzerland, and she had to get there as well.

  She got up and walked to the goats. They were fat, friendly goats with gentle eyes. She stroked their heads. Only the one with the little beard looked cross.

  Aunt Anastarja and a big man were hoeing the garden, like the people around Oma’s forest home. The man beckoned for her to come over. “Take this to the kitchen and wash it,” he said. He had a deep, tired voice.

  The basket was heavy and filled with potatoes, beets, and carrots smelling of soil. Gretl left the basket outside, entered through the back door, and fetched water from the pitcher. First she washed the carrots, then the potatoes and the beets. When the man returned, he looked at the vegetables. “Give the leaves to the pigs,” he said.

  It was almost dark by the time Jakób came home. “You look different,” he said.

  “I had a bath,” she said in Polish.

  “Good,” he said. She didn’t know whether he meant it was good that she had taken a bath or that her Polish was good.

  “We must find a place for you to sleep,” he said. “Stan is no longer on night shift, so he’ll be sleeping in his bed tonight.”

  Gretl didn’t know who Stan was. “I’ll sleep on a bed of hay, like Heidi,” she suggested.

  “Who’s Heidi?”

  She looked at him, amazed. “She lives in Switzerland. With Alm U.”

  He shrugged and shook his head. She followed him to the stables where he stood regarding the haystack.

  “We can put some in the box where you keep the firewood and stack the wood on the floor,” she proposed in German. “Or there’ll be hay all over the kitchen.”

  He looked at her for a long time. His eyes were black. “You’re very clever for a little girl, you know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But you’ll have to remember to speak Polish.”

  “Yes. I forgot. Who’s the other woman?”

  “Monicka. She’s my brother Turek’s wife.”

  “Oh. And the old man?”

  “My father. You can call him Uncle Janusz.”

  “Okay. Who’s Stan?”

  “He’s my other brother.”

  She understood then that they had no room for her. “You’ll have to take me to Switzerland.”

  “Yes,” said Jakób. “Just as soon as we know where Onkel Hans lives.”

  In time the days fell into their own pattern. The convent couldn’t take her just yet. They were bursting at the seams with war orphans. Gretl was glad.

  At first she didn’t sleep well in the box. It was too short and it smelled of grass. But she soon learned to pull up her knees to fit inside. The hay was soft under the knit blanket.

  Jakób and Stan left early in the mornings. Sometimes Jakób came back earlier, then he sat at the kitchen table doing sums. Or he would write. Monicka milked the goats because Aunt Anastarja’s knees were stiff. Then she went to work at the factory. It was a clothing factory, but they made uniforms for the Nazis, not dresses.

  Aunt Anastarja and Uncle Janusz worked on the farm. Sometimes the Gestapo came to see that they were doing their work properly and took food away with them: vegetables and pigs and sometimes ducks. Also goats’ milk and cheese and ham that Aunt Anastarja had made. Twice a week Uncle Janusz loaded the wooden cart and pushed it to the city, where he sold his produce. On his way back in the afternoon he had to push the cart uphill. He was old, so he mostly waited until Stan or Jakób or sometimes Monicka could help him.

  Gretl didn’t know what Turek did. He left early and came back late. He was angry about the work he had to do. She heard him in the evenings where she lay in her box with her eyes closed. “I’m a farmer,” he said, “not a farrier for the military!”

  When Aunt Anastarja went to mass in the afternoons, Uncle Janusz had to work alone. On Sundays everyone went to church, except Gretl, who stayed behind because she didn’t have the
right clothes. In the mornings Aunt Anastarja baked bread, and when she came home in the afternoons, she sometimes made onion or potato soup, or mostly borsch, which was beet soup. Sometimes she made dumplings, but they didn’t taste like Mutti’s spaetzle. At times like those she missed Mutti very much. And Oma and Elza.

  She tried to help around the house. She swept and washed dishes and laid the table. Twice she picked wildflowers, but Monicka said the table was too crowded and threw them away.

  Gretl didn’t like Monicka. She always seemed cross. Monicka made her a dress, but only because Aunt Anastarja had told her to. Monicka unpicked an old black dress that was too tight for Aunt Anastarja and used the fabric. She made the dress big so that Gretl could wear it for a long time.

  When the Gestapo came, Gretl hid under the hay in the stable. The hay was nice and warm but itchy, like her bed. The Gestapo could smell Jewish blood, Oma had said. Almost like the giant who could smell Jack on the beanstalk.

  Once she crawled under the hay and knocked her head against something hard. When the Gestapo left, she saw it was a kind of machine with a handle you could turn, like the handle some cars had at the front. She thought someone must have hidden it there, so she carefully covered it with hay again.

  Most evenings when Jakób went out, he told her to go to bed. But one evening all the others were gone as well. “You’ll have to come with me,” Jakób said. “But you must promise to be quiet as a mouse while we’re busy.”

  They walked to the city through the moonlit landscape. “The moon is pretty,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Jakób, the Gestapo caught all the Jews, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they want to catch the Poles as well?”

  “You might say so, yes.”

  She walked on for a while, thinking. “Jakób, are the Gestapo and the Nazis the same?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father was a Nazi,” she said.

  “I’m sure he was a good Nazi who was just a soldier and didn’t catch people,” he said. “From now on you must be very quiet and walk in my shadow. Or wait, let me carry you instead.”

  It felt good. They walked through narrow alleys, keeping close to the buildings in the dark. She snuggled against his strong body. Finally they reached a house on the outskirts of the city. A woman opened the door. “This is Gretz,” was all Jakób said. He put her down, and she followed him up a steep, narrow staircase.