The Girl From the Train

by Irma Joubert

  “The Jews will always be foreigners trying to take advantage of the Boers,” her father answered. “Grandpa John has many good Jewish friends, and I have known old Cohen Crown for years. But they’ll always be neither fish nor fowl.”

  The lump so familiar to Grietjie during her childhood was back in her stomach. Yet she soldiered on. “And the Jews who were persecuted under Hitler, Daddy?”

  “Grietjie, there are various theories about that. I agree with the people who believe that the so-called Holocaust never took place, that it was just a ploy by the Communists to vilify the Germans.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He must have noted the surprise in her face.

  “Think about it for a moment—who reached the so-called concentration camps first? Russian soldiers. They said the Germans had burned most of the camps to destroy the evidence, but I believe it was just a story to cover up their own lack of evidence that the camps ever existed. And today Westerners are refused entry into Communist countries. In that way the lie is being perpetuated and the world continues to speak ill of Germany.”

  Surely her father, her wise daddy, couldn’t really believe what he had just said? “Don’t you believe that they sent the Jews to ghettos and later transported them to the camps in open cattle cars?” she asked, just to be sure.

  “No, Grietjie, I don’t believe it for a moment. You have German roots, you know the Germans. Do you believe that such a highly civilized, proud nation could descend to such depths?”

  That night her safe bed in her safe room became a fire that almost consumed her. Fortunately her parents didn’t wake up.

  But three nights later her mother did wake up. She wiped Grietjie’s drenched face with a damp facecloth. She soothed her and comforted her and spent the rest of the night in the big bed with her. The next day she took Grietjie to their family doctor, and they returned with a handful of pills.

  “The doctor says she's completely overwrought,” Grietjie overheard her mother tell her worried father and Grandpa John in the dining room. “She must get enough sleep and rest. She’s in bed now.”

  “Maybe we should take her to Dr. Gertjies in Pretoria,” she heard her father say. “I’ve heard his powders can do wonders.”

  Later her father sat down at her bedside and took her hand. She opened her eyes. “Grietjie . . . Daddy’s little girl,” he said tenderly and put his big hand on her forehead. “Daddy wishes he knew what to do.”

  She pressed her father’s hard hand to her cheek. “I’m sorry I’m such a worry to you,” she said. “I promise I’ll be back to my old self soon, I just have to catch up on a little sleep.”

  But she stayed awake for as long as possible, because she was afraid to close her eyes.

  During the day she made a point of getting as much exercise as possible. At night she was exhausted and fell into a deep sleep. The family processed meat and made beef biltong, and she and her mother talked nonstop. She drove to town with her father to try on the ball gown Aunt Bettie was making for her from the fabric she’d purchased in Pretoria. They talked all the way to town and back. She and Kobus went horse riding. She walked through the old homestead with Salomé, listening to all her plans. She sat talking to Grandpa John in the warm winter sun. These were her people, whom she loved.

  In the last week of the vacation she was feeling almost well again. For an entire week she hadn’t had a single dream.

  By the time Kobus drove her back to university at the end of the vacation, she had spoken to her family about every topic under the sun. Every topic but Poland, and the convent school, and her Jewish blood. And Jakób.

  On Wednesday and Thursday she phoned his work but he wasn’t there. By the weekend she still had not heard from him.

  Saturday dawned bitterly cold. The sky was full of dark clouds that hid the sun completely. Karin had a bad bout of flu and had gone home on Thursday. Grietjie missed the people and the places she loved.

  Enough was enough. At nine she put on her warmest clothes and went down the stairs. She was going to walk until the dark cloud inside her had lifted.

  There was a fine drizzle outside. You’re not getting me down, clouds, she decided and went back inside to put on her raincoat.

  She walked and walked, down Park Street, past Girls’ High, past the big stone gates of the Eastern sports grounds, past the Arcadia Nursing Home. The rain was a gray blanket around her. The fine spray stung her face. The jacaranda trees were bare skeletons. She sidestepped the puddles on the sidewalk. She walked briskly, she breathed deeply, and slowly her mind cleared.

  I’m almost in Sunnyside, she realized. I might as well see if Jakób is home.

  She had to knock a few times before he opened. He was still in his pajamas, his hair tousled, day-old stubble dark on his chin.

  “Don’t kiss me, you’ll be prickly!” she warned him.

  “Good morning, Grietjie. What are you doing here?” he asked, surprised.

  “You don’t answer your phone, so I’ve come to see if you’re still alive. May I come in and pour coffee?”

  He stepped aside and closed the door behind her. “How did you get here?”

  “I walked. Why isn’t there any milk in your fridge?”

  “In the rain?”

  “Yes. Milk?”

  “We’ll have to drink it black. You’ll get sick out in the cold like that.”

  “I’m wearing a raincoat, Jakób. You’re not listening to what I’m asking!”

  “I was away all week,” he answered, pushing his fingers through his thick black hair. “You shouldn’t—”

  “Where were you?” she asked, carrying the black coffee to the living room.

  “Thabazimbi, for my job.”

  “Thabazimbi?” she said, surprised. “It’s in the bushveld, like our farm. But Thabazimbi isn’t close to the farm. Did you cross the Springbok Flats and turn west at Warmbaths?”

  “That’s right. Where’s the sugar?”

  “I’ve already put some in and stirred. When we go to the farm, we head north past Warmbaths and Nylstroom and all those towns. Jakób, you were in my part of the country and you didn’t even know it.”

  “I like your part of the country,” he said. “But if it’s that hot in winter, I don’t know what the summers must be like!”

  “There’s a man who helps my dad on the farm,” she said. “Oom Doorsie. He always says there’s just a chicken-wire fence between the bushveld and hell, and that fence is broken in places.”

  Jakób laughed. “I think Oom Doorsie is right,” he said. “Did you have a good time at home?”

  She told him about Kobus’s pigs and Salomé’s mannerisms and her dad’s plan to grow vines.

  At last he asked, “Did you speak to them, Grietjie?”

  She told Jakób what her father had said about the Holocaust. He shook his head. “I can’t believe it!” he said, astounded.

  “And my father isn’t stupid!” Grietjie hastened to assure him. “It’s just the way people think around here.”

  When they were on their third cup of black coffee, she told him about the dreams and all the pills she had to take. “But I’m better now,” she assured him.

  “You’re better for now, Grietjie,” he said. “We must find a solution.”

  She looked at him earnestly, at his familiar face, his big hands, his dark eyes. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one who can help me,” she said.

  But no matter how they talked and deliberated, they couldn’t come up with any ideas.

  In mid-August she received a phone call. “Miss Neethling?” a female
voice asked on the other end of the line.

  “That’s me,” she answered uncertainly. She hoped it wasn’t bad news.

  “Can you come in to the head office of Voortrekker Press? We would like to finalize your appointment at Die Transvaler.”

  Grietjie’s heart began to race. “Did I get the post?” she asked.

  “That’s right. When can you come in?”

  Her mouth was dry, her heart beat in her throat, she could hardly speak. Professional Magrieta Katharina Neethling, she told herself. “Saturday morning? Would Saturday morning be good?”

  “Around ten?” asked the thoroughly professional voice on the other end.

  After she had replaced the receiver, Grietjie quite unprofessionally charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Karin was not in their room. Grietjie grabbed her purse and rushed back downstairs.

  Jakób took so long to come to the phone that she had to put in another coin. “Kowalski,” said his familiar deep voice.

  “Jakób, guess what? I got the job at Die Transvaler in Johannesburg, and you took an awfully long time to come to the phone, and I had to put in another tickey.”

  “Hello, Grietjie.”

  “Hello, Jakób. Can you believe I got the job? I, Grietjie Neethling, got the job. I’m a journalist now. Nearly.”

  “Yes, I can believe it. You said you were almost a hundred percent certain you’d get the job.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand—I’ve got it now!”

  “It’s wonderful, Grietjie. I’m very happy for you. Shall we celebrate tonight?”

  “No, from now until tomorrow morning I have to study nonstop because I have two tests tomorrow. And then I’m going to Grandpa John’s for the weekend to finalize my appointment. I’ll probably have to sign a lot of papers, and I think I should take Grandpa John along to make sure they don’t cheat me, because I don’t know anything about that kind of thing. Jakób, I’m so excited I feel I could fall over backward.”

  “You’re going to fall over backward if you don’t stop to take a breath every now and again.” He laughed.

  “Three minutes!” the operator said.

  “ ‘Bye, Jakób! Enjoy the weekend!” Grietjie shouted before the connection was cut.

  No one in the whole world has a more wonderful grandpa than I do, Grietjie thought on Friday afternoon as she sat in the luxurious backseat of his car. Her friends liked to take a peek when the chauffeur in his white gloves opened the back door of the big black Bentley for her and closed it softly behind her with a slight bow. When they pulled away, she always waved like the queen of England, who had come to South Africa in 1947, or Princess Elizabeth, who had become queen a few years afterward.

  After dinner she and Grandpa John sat in his study. He had a new record of Tito Schipa he wanted her to listen to.

  “Please smoke your cigar if you like,” she said. “Can I get one ready for you?”

  “A gentleman doesn’t smoke a cigar in the company of a lady,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  “And if the lady insists?” she played along. “If the lady says she thinks it’s the loveliest smell in the world?”

  “Then the gentleman would have to agree,” said Grandpa John. “Your wish is my command.”

  She sat beside him on the soft leather couch. They talked about various things: her appointment at the paper, her meeting the next day with the human relations officer, her studies, the bus boycott by the workers in Alexandra.

  “How does the boycott affect Rand Consolidated, Grandpa?” Grietjie asked.

  “We’re always adversely affected by miners who stay away from work,” Grandpa John replied. “But usually it’s not a long-term problem. At this point a shortage of technological expertise is a more serious problem.”

  “What kind of expertise?”

  “We need professional people, specifically engineers. Keep your eyes peeled at university for a clever young engineer, one who is worth his salt.”

  “I know an engineer,” she said without thinking. “A metallurgical engineer, named Jakób . . .” She swallowed his last name. Just in time.

  Grandpa John didn’t seem to have heard the name. “Yes, I suppose a metallurgical engineer could work, though I think Uncle Peter is actually looking for a mining engineer. I’ll ask him.”

  “Actually, he has a very good job at Iscor,” she said. “I don’t know whether he’d be interested in moving.”

  When the music faded, Grandpa John did not change the record.

  “What’s your opinion of Jews, Grandpa?” Grietjie asked on the spur of the moment.

  For a moment he looked at her keenly. Or maybe she’d imagined it, because he answered in his normal voice, “Some of my best friends are Jews, Grietjie. They’re like any other nation. There are exceptional people among them, and there are those you would rather not associate with.”

  She nodded slowly. She didn’t know why she had asked.

  He looked at her earnestly. “My mother was Jewish, you know, Grietjie.”

  Her jaw dropped. Could it be true?

  He smiled slowly and nodded. “She was the most wonderful mother I could ever have wished for.”

  Surely it couldn’t be!

  “And your father, Grandpa?”

  “He was a cranky old Englishman,” Grandpa John remembered.

  “What faith did you grow up in?” she asked. “I mean, were you Christian or Jewish?”

  “My parents set little store by religion,” said Grandpa John. “It was only after I got to know Susan, bless her beautiful soul, that religion became important to me.”

  The knowledge sank in slowly. Grandpa John had Jewish blood. Even more than she.

  “Then Mommy has Jewish blood too?” she said as the realization grew.

  “Yes. Your mother’s grandmother was one hundred percent Jewish,” said Grandpa John. He puffed at his cigar.

  Just like her own Oma.

  She moved in under his arm. “Does Daddy know?” she asked.

  “Yes, your father knows. He’s known since the beginning.” The fire burned slowly, languidly. Actually, the evening was too warm for a fire, but Grandpa John was always cold these days. “If people love each other, there’s no need for secrets.”

  That was all he said. He would never pry. But she knew he saw and understood much more than he ever let on.

  All weekend she brooded. Her darling mother, Kate, was just as Jewish as she was! And her Afrikaner daddy worshiped the earth beneath her half-Jewish mommy’s feet. And they didn’t have secrets from each other, because their love could bear all things.

  She was the only one with secrets. An entire drawer full of skeletons.

  She didn’t want secrets anymore.

  But when the chauffeur took her back to Pretoria on Sunday afternoon, she still had not said, “My grandmother was Jewish too.”

  She had wanted to, but she couldn’t.

  Jakób had a telephone in his apartment now, so she could phone him anytime outside office hours.

  “But you should phone me,” she told him, “because it’s at least one tickey every time I call.”

  “And I call for free?” he asked.

  “No, but you earn a big salary every month. There’s something I must tell you, Jakób!”

  “I already know you got the job.”

  “No, something even better. But I want to tell you in person, not on the phone. Can I come over on Saturday? Then I can see your phone as well.”

  “Oh, Grietj
ie,” he sighed.

  “Don’t you want me there?” It was fun to tease him. He was always so serious.

  “Shouldn’t you be studying?”

  “On a Saturday morning? Jakób, you’re really terribly old, you know! Should I take the bus or will you fetch me?”

  He knew he shouldn’t fetch her. But if he didn’t, she would simply get on the bus and come by herself. Or she would walk.

  He loved having her at his apartment. Today she was wearing a yellow frock—his personal ray of sunshine. Her hair had been cut in a shorter style and the unruly curls framed her face.

  In the car on their way over she told him, “Grandpa John’s mother was Jewish, so my mother is just as Jewish as I am! And my dad knows this about her, and he worships the earth under her feet.”

  “Did you tell your grandpa you’re also Jewish?” he asked.

  “I’m not Jewish,” she answered. “I’m a Christian-Afrikaner. And no, I didn’t tell him, and don’t be angry. I couldn’t, that’s why I didn’t.”

  “You passed up a golden opportunity.”

  “I know. Next time I will.”

  Now she was walking through his flat, inspecting everything.

  “Wow, you even have a radio and a gramophone now! Next time I’ll bring a few of my records so that you can catch up with what the students are listening to.”

  He shouldn’t have brought her. It was lovely that she was here, but unsettling. He sat down on the sofa.

  “Do you like dancing, Jakób?”

  Did he like dancing? He thought of Mischka in her elegant black frock in his arms on the dance floor.

  “I don’t think my kind of dancing and the way today’s students jump about are remotely the same,” he answered.

  “I’ll teach you,” she said. “Not only students dance, you know. The Afrikaners also love dancing, especially in the barns on the farms at New Year or at weddings and special occasions. Do you want some cake?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You’ll soon learn, you’ll see.”