The Girl From the Train

by Irma Joubert

  Jakób, get as far away from these people as possible. Go to a place where you won’t find any of them, and start a new life. Forget about someone called Mischka—consider our friendship an interlude to show us both that life can be worthwhile.

  Don’t contact your family, you’ll be putting their lives in danger. The same goes for me.

  I’m sorry, Jakób, I know you loved me. It has been a privilege for me to know you.

  Your friend,

  Mischka

  That was all.

  Jakób walked. He walked in bright daylight, he walked in dim moonlight, he walked in rain, over cliffs, through valleys. His steel-hard body carried him in a westerly direction. Always west, toward the mountains between Poland and Czechoslovakia a hundred miles away.

  He ate when he was hungry, he drank when he was thirsty, he seldom rested. He avoided all signs of people. He wasn’t aware of when he left Poland and entered Czechoslovakia. He left everything behind. Everything but his credentials . . . including the yellowed newspaper cutting of a small girl with a broad smile and a ribbon in her hair. It was somewhere in one of his books.

  Not even during the 1944 uprising in Warsaw had he felt so dead.

  11

  SOUTH AFRICA, 1956

  “Where are you off to now?” Karin asked from under the covers. “It’s cold, you’ll freeze!”

  Grietjie laughed and put on her coat. “A person doesn’t freeze that easily, roomie. My Polish lesson has been moved to today. Mrs. Bronski is going away for the weekend, so she won’t be here Friday afternoon.”

  “I don’t know why you insist on learning those pagan languages,” Karin mumbled and snuggled deeper under the blankets. “Russian, Polish. The next thing you know, uniformed police will turn up to arrest you for being a Commie or something.”

  Grietjie stuffed her books into her shoulder bag and looked around the room. “Have you seen my gloves?”

  “On the chair.”

  “One day I’m going to make lots of money as a translator. I’m off. See that there’s coffee when I get back,” Grietjie said over her shoulder.

  “Oh, remind me to ask you something later. Francois wants me to ask,” Karin called after her.

  Grietjie hurried through the cold streets of Pretoria to the nearest bus stop. It was only six street blocks to the Bronskis’ home. She usually walked, but today was exceptionally cold.

  She was looking forward to her lesson. Mrs. Bronski was a lovely lady. She always spoiled her only student with some kind of Polish delicacy. She was very proud of Grietjie’s rapid progress. “You wouldn’t believe she’s been taking lessons for only eighteen months,” she liked to tell her Polish friends or her husband. “She speaks like a native.”

  “Don’t forget, I used to speak Polish before I left Germany,” Grietjie hastened to say.

  “And, would you believe it, the child is learning Russian too, with Mr. Ulyanov.” But Mrs. Bronski was careful who she told, because most of her friends didn’t want to hear the word Russian mentioned. After all, the Russians were the ones who had driven them from their native country.

  When Grietjie returned toward evening, Karin was still in bed, reading. “It’s just about time for the supper gong. Are you coming?” asked Grietjie.

  Karin groaned. “What do you think is worse, freezing or starving to death?”

  “Don’t talk like that!” Grietjie scolded. “There’s the gong. Are you coming?”

  On their way to the dining room, Grietjie asked, “What did Francois want you to ask me?”

  “Oh yes. He’s doing an honors degree in psychology this year, and they have to do a case study.”

  “So?”

  “He wants to know if you’ll be his case study.”

  Grietjie stopped in her tracks. “Me? A case study? Do I look like a nutcase?” she asked.

  “Wait, roomie,” Karin protested. “It’s just . . . you’ve known hard times, during the war and so on, and your mother and your family died and all that. And you handled it so well. It’s not a study of someone who has a screw loose—you came through it in one piece.”

  Grietjie lifted her chin. “I don’t want to talk about things I’ve put behind me, Karin,” she said firmly.

  “He just needs you to talk—not about what happened, more about how—”

  “No, definitely not. Tell your brother that’s my final answer.”

  Behind them, the Dragon spoke. “When you two ladies have sorted out your personal affairs, would you allow me to pass, please?”

  The Dragon was their residence head. Her name said it all.

  On Friday evening a first-year knocked on their door. “A visitor for Miss Grietjie,” she said.

  “Where are your manners?” Karin asked crossly. They were second-years now and commanded respect.

  “Good evening, Miss Karin, Miss Grietjie,” said the girl before making herself scarce.

  “The first-years are cheeky!” Karin grumbled. “Who’s your date?”

  “Gerrit. And he’s not my date, we’re just going for coffee. He has a test tomorrow.”

  “Poor science students. A test on a Saturday, I ask you!” Karin sighed and switched on the immersion element to boil water in the enamel jug. “Why didn’t he bring Kobus along? We could all have gone out for coffee.”

  Poor Karin, Grietjie thought as she went downstairs to the foyer. She was in love with Kobus, but Grietjie knew her brother wasn’t the least bit interested.

  But it was Francois, not Gerrit, who was waiting in the foyer. “I’ve told Karin I won’t talk to you,” she said.

  “Hello, Grietjie.”

  “Yes, hello to you too. I’m still not going to talk to you.”

  Francois nodded slowly. He seemed amused. “Okay, I get the message. But seeing that I’m here now, could we go out for coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Oh?”

  Grietjie shrugged. “I’m waiting for Gerrit. He’ll be here any moment.”

  Francois nodded again. “I see.”

  “I’m not going out for coffee with you on any other day either, Francois. I won’t be your guinea pig!”

  On Sunday after church Grandpa John’s big black car picked her and Kobus up and took them to lunch at his beautiful home. They knew they could expect a first-class Sunday lunch with the best wine and a selection of desserts—enough to take some back for their friends at their respective residences. In winter there was a fire in the fireplace, beautiful music, and lively conversation. Sometimes the conversations were deep, because Grandpa John was an excellent listener, and sometimes it was just idle chatter, because Grandpa John loved to laugh. Or they would ask his advice, because he knew everything.

  “I hear you’ve broken up with Sandra,” Grietjie ventured on their way to Grandpa John’s house.

  “Mm.” Kobus’s head almost touched the roof of the big car. He was as tall as their father.

  “I thought the two of you were so close.”

  “She required too much E.M.”

  “E.M.?”

  “Emotional maintenance.”

  “You men are all the same!” Grietjie said crossly.

  “Mm.”

  It was no good being annoyed with him, she thought as the bare highveld landscape between Johannesburg and Pretoria flashed past the car window. She turned to him. “Do you have your eye on anyone else?”

  “Mm. Quite a few.”

  Beast! She waited a few moments. “Why don’t you ask Karin out? She’s really very n
ice.”

  He looked at her with that expression a brother reserves for his dim-witted little sister. “Grietjie, your idea of very nice and my idea of super fine are poles apart.”

  “But if you—”

  “Not my type, thank you very much.”

  Grietjie made no attempt to hide her irritation. “Men are animals! Morons!”

  “Mm.”

  She didn’t speak to him again until they stopped at Grandpa John’s big gate. Kobus got out to open it.

  Grandpa John stood waiting for them on the veranda. He stood up straight and walked briskly despite his eighty-six winters. His thick silver hair gleamed in the weak winter sun.

  “Come inside where it’s nice and warm. Grietjie, you’re more striking every time I see you.”

  She laughed and put her arms around her grandpa. “And you’re the most charming gentleman on the planet!” she said sincerely. “They don’t make them like you anymore.” She said it for Kobus to hear.

  Grandpa John drew Grietjie closer while he held out his hand to Kobus. “Hello, my boy. How’s the rugby coming along?”

  Maybe Grandpa John was a little like other men after all, Grietjie thought as they went through to his study. Men talked about rugby first, then about their studies or work, then about girls.

  At dinner Grandpa John was the perfect host. Grietjie sat to his left in what used to be Ouma Susan’s place. She played hostess and rang the small silver bell for the plates to be cleared. She also served the dessert. Some Sundays they were joined by Uncle Peter and his English wife, Diana. And sometimes by their English cousins, Britney and Sarah, and their English husbands.

  But today it was just the three of them and that was the best. They talked about the rugby season and the ensemble group Grietjie sang in and their studies and the approaching winter vacation. Grandpa John was preparing to visit the farm, where it was warmer. He had delayed his trip in order to have lunch with his two favorite youngsters today.

  “This is a thousand times better than the food we get at res,” Kobus said appreciatively, helping himself to a third serving of meat and baked potatoes.

  “Our food isn’t too bad, but the Dragon is unspeakable. Shall I tell you of her latest mission?”

  “What’s that?” her grandfather asked.

  “She’s forbidden us to wear sandals that expose our little toes. She says we’re out to seduce men.”

  Grandpa John laughed.

  “Kobus, do you find a girl’s pinky toe seductive?” she asked.

  He looked up. “What are you on about?”

  “The Dragon. And our pinky toes. You haven’t been listening. Do you go weak in the knees at the sight of a girl’s pinky toe?”

  He looked at her as if she had lost her marbles. “I can think of many other parts of the female anatomy a lot more seductive than pinky toes!”

  “Kobus! Grandpa, tell Kobus a gentleman doesn’t talk like that in the company of a lady!”

  But Grandpa John was laughing too much. “You opened that door yourself, my dear.”

  Men, she decided—deep down they’re all the same.

  After lunch Kobus fell asleep on the sofa. “He was probably out until all hours last night,” she told Grandpa John as they strolled through his beautiful garden, which he maintained exactly as Ouma Susan had laid it out more than forty years earlier.

  He nodded, pretending to be serious. “He’s a blot on the family name! You, on the other hand, stayed in to study, like the model student you are?”

  She began to laugh. “Not quite, Grandpa John!”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “But exams start next week. I’ll have to work really hard. It’s going to be disgustible.”

  “Disgustible, yes.” They sat on a bench in the sun. “But after that you’ll be on vacation?”

  “Yes, and that’s going to be wonderful.” She remembered something. “Grandpa John, we have a history assignment to complete during the vacation, and we have to use primary sources. That’s when someone actually lived through something and can tell you about it firsthand. Or we can use original, official documents of the time. Will you tell me about the Anglo-Boer War?”

  He nodded slowly. “Or the miners’ strike in 1922?” he suggested.

  “Ye-es, but you were one of the mine bosses, and that probably wouldn’t look so good.”

  He laughed. “I suppose not, especially to the University of Pretoria. But remember, in the Anglo-Boer War I fought on the wrong side.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “But you ended up marrying a Boer girl.”

  “Is this the historian speaking, or the novelist?”

  “The historian for the time being, unfortunately. But one day I’ll write a book, one day soon, you’ll see.”

  “I know you will,” he said. “I’ll tell you about the war, but it’s not a pleasant subject. There’s never a winner, only losers.”

  She thought about his words. “That’s true, Grandpa John. Maybe it should be the motto of my assignment.”

  “Your motto as a historian?”

  She sighed. “You’re right again. I must remain neutral and objective.” On the spur of the moment she said, “Someone asked me to talk with him about my childhood, probably my experiences during the war as well. He wants to use me as a case study for a research paper in psychology.”

  Grandpa John looked thoughtful. “What did you say?”

  “I refused. I don’t want to talk about it, Grandpa.”

  “Why not, Grietjie?”

  “There are some things only I know about.”

  He nodded. After a while he said, “You still have dreams. Nightmares.”

  It was a statement, not a question. She hadn’t even realized he knew.

  “Yes, Grandpa.” Softly, because she was reluctant to admit to a weakness.

  Karin also knew. It couldn’t be helped. That had to be why Francois wanted to study her.

  They sat in silence for a while. Then Grandpa John said, “In time buried hurt becomes an abscess. It must rupture and form a scab before it can heal. Or be carefully lanced by someone who knows what he’s doing.”

  “But it always leaves a scab,” she said. “And when the scab comes off, the scar remains.”

  “Not if it’s treated right.” He thought for a while. “Besides, sometimes a scar gives character.”

  She thought about his words. “The scar is already there, isn’t it, Grandpa?”

  He nodded slowly, earnestly. “And the strength of character.” His voice was strong, certain.

  She snuggled up to him and he put his arm around her. He was still big Grandpa John, even though he was so very old. “I don’t want to be just another case study,” she said later. “It sounds so . . . weak.”

  Grandpa John laughed softly. “Our beautiful little German,” he said and held her closer.

  That same evening she phoned Francois. “Come and talk if you want to,” she said. “But not now, after the vacation. This week I have to cram.”

  He groaned. “I’d hoped we could start this term.”

  “Definitely not,” she said firmly. “I’m going on vacation first.”

  And I need to plan, she thought as she went back to her room. Because she certainly couldn’t tell him everything.

  The vacation was a string of lukewarm, bushveld winter days in the big sandstone house with her mother and Grandpa John, or out in the open with her father and Kobus. It was a string of cool winter nights around the table w
ith everyone she loved, playing games in front of the fireplace, listening to stories told by her father or Grandpa John, or anecdotes of student life told by Kobus and herself—the edited versions, of course.

  Three weeks flew by like a dream. Grandpa John would be spending the rest of the winter on the farm, so Grietjie and Kobus caught the cold, bumpy milk train back to an icy Pretoria. Their parents took them to the station, where they said good-bye.

  She hated the station, the good-byes. She hated the train. It was a dragon with foul breath that swallowed her and spat her out in a distant place.

  “A train is a disgustible thing,” she told Kobus, who was lounging on the opposite seat. “And you’ll have a crick in your neck by the time we get there.”

  “Mm. You’re in a foul mood, aren’t you? Let’s see what’s in the basket.”

  “Can’t you think of anything but your stomach?”

  He sat up, put the basket in his lap, and opened the lid. “Mm!” he said.

  “If you eat all the food now, you won’t survive until we get to Pretoria. And remember, some of it is for supper, because the residence won’t be serving meals yet.”

  “Mm.” He took out a chicken drumstick, a sandwich, and a hard-boiled egg and tucked in with relish.

  “And some of it is mine! For tonight as well!” she protested.

  Men, she decided, were a strange, thick-skulled, ball-kicking species no one on earth could have a sensible conversation with. She was very, very glad her brother had no interest in dating her dear roommate. She must remember to tell Karin that.

  On the first Saturday night after the vacation, Francois and Grietjie sat in the corner of a small café, eating toasted sandwiches. They would order coffee later. It promised to be a long evening. “I can’t feed you every time, d’you hear?” he warned her. “Tomorrow it’s French fries in the park.”

  “French fries are fine. On with the interrogation.” The sooner they got it over with, the better. She should never have agreed to talk to him, but it was too late to back off now.