My mind drifted, and I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Grand-mère. Four years ago, that night … And Papa, before they took him away to Drancy, where they had kept all the men before they put them on the trains. It was getting harder to recall the color of Papa’s eyes, and to see the tiny C-shaped scar above his eyebrow that I had always liked to touch.
“Marc, what if I forget what Maman looks like? I couldn’t bear it.”
“Stop. You go from one thing to another. First, Maman won’t recognize us. Then, you won’t remember her. You just make yourself unhappy.”
“But, Marc—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s not good for us.”
I leaned against him, my back against his back. The wind had died down. Little waves rippled the surface of the water. Maybe he was right. Better not to think about Maman. Better to think about other things. About where we were going. The huge, huge country of America. The soldiers had tacked up pictures in the cafeteria. Movie stars and city streets. Esther Williams in a white bathing suit. The lighted city of New York. The Statue of Liberty.
I felt proud of us, of all we’d been through and how we stayed together and helped each other. I tried to think of other good things, of what lay ahead. Safety, no more war, food all the time.
But all I could really think was that I wanted to be home again. In France. On rue Erlanger, in our own apartment. I wanted Maman. I wanted Papa. And Grand-mère. I wanted everyone. Everything. I wanted my life as it used to be.
And I couldn’t have it. It was gone.
15
AN AMERICAN MOON
The train rocked through the night. Next to me, Marc dozed on the green plush seat, an American newspaper in his lap. The car was jammed with people sleeping, arms flung out, legs in the aisle.
I couldn’t get comfortable. My mind kept traveling from Maman in Valence, to the truck that had taken us over the mountains, to the old wreck of a bicycle crashing on the hill, and then suddenly I’d see myself crouching near the cave and hear Maria Theresa saying, Go to Naples!
And we had, and they had taken us on the ship, and we had come, at last, seventeen days later, safely into New York Harbor. I saw the Statue of Liberty in the moonlight. A full moon, and Lady Liberty holding up her torch. She was French like us, made in France more than fifty years ago. Maman had told us all about it.
But the moon was American, I thought. It looked different from our French moon, fatter and more golden.
We had stayed on the ship overnight. When we left, they gave us tags to pin on our clothes. U.S. ARMY CASUAL BAGGAGE.
“As if we’re packages,” I said, when Marc translated.
“It’s because we’re not official. I guess they don’t know what to call us.”
“How about visitors? Aren’t we guests of President Roosevelt? We’re not here to stay.”
They had put us on a ferry to New Jersey, then taken us to the train station in a city called Hoboken. The station boomed and echoed with the noise of hundreds of people. All of us, plus soldiers, reporters, and Americans who had come to the station looking for their relatives. I watched enviously as they found aunts, uncles, cousins. They were hugging and crying, saying hello and good-bye at the same time. Was it better to have no one, I wondered, or better to find a relative, someone you loved, and then have to separate? No one could leave our group, not even those with relatives right here to take them in. We weren’t prisoners, not like those German POWs, but we weren’t free, either.
On the train, I wanted to sleep, but I was too restless. Too scared, too excited. We were on our way to Fort Ontario, in the city of Oswego, state of New York. Ahhs-wee-go. Funny word. How about Rose-a-velt? Another funny word. Some people said, “Rooos-a-velt.” Which was correct?
In the middle of this thought, I did fall asleep, and I entered a dream so real I could see every leaf on the trees. I was walking with Maman in a park. It was a spring night. The moon was almost too bright. Maman’s hair smelled of roses. “Rose-a-velt, Maman,” I said, and she laughed, happy at my joke.
Then I was awake again, as fast as I’d fallen asleep. The train rounded a curve, and through the window I saw the shadowy front of the train, like a long metal snake. We sped past dark little houses and dark stretches of empty land. So much land, so much space. And no damage. I’d noticed that right away. Everything here was perfect—and large: buildings, trains, people. Even the smiles were bigger. All the Americans smiled as if they had extra teeth.
“Marc,” I said, “are you awake?”
“No.”
“I want to ask you something. Are you happy?”
“No.”
“Unhappy?”
“No.”
“What are you?”
“Sleeping. Trying to.”
“I am,” I said.
“What, happy? That’s good.”
“No. The other.”
His eyes flickered open. “Sorry,” he said, and he covered my hand with his.
As the darkness peeled away, I saw big flat fields, clumps of houses, trees. The sun came up. The train hooted, three long hoots. All at once, a murmur went through the car. “Oswego … Oswego …” Marc and I put our faces to the dusty window. The train rolled past houses, a road, a field, and then water spreading to the horizon. Lake Ontario—it was like an ocean. Even the lakes here were bigger than our lakes in France.
Then we saw fences, high metal fences topped with barbed wire. Everyone fell silent, until someone cursed. It sounded almost like crying. A curse, and then, “Barbed wire …”
The wheels thumped. The train slowed to a stop. We were here.
16
THE EIGHTH LIFE
We sat on the train and waited. We talked to the people sitting behind us, two older girls named Reva and Dani, and Dani’s father. The girls were cousins and had escaped from Hungary by passing themselves off as Christians. By a miracle, Dani said, she had found her father in Italy.
It was stuffy in the train, even with the windows open. A hot breeze blew in. We were given cookies and milk, handed in through the open windows. There were soldiers everywhere, waiting as we got off the train, and reporters and photographers.
We were crushed together, milling around on a grassy field, surging one way, then another. It was all noise and heat and questions and confusion. I stayed close to Marc. We lined up in front of a long row of tables. Soldiers sat behind the tables, wearing armbands with big white letters: MP.
The air shimmered with heat. Outside the barbed-wire fence, people from the town were lined up, staring at us. Hands gripped the fence, eyes watched us.
“Hey! Hi!” A man in a rumpled gray suit spoke in English to Marc. “How are you two kids doing?” He stood very close, talking too fast. Marc had to translate for me. “He’s a reporter, and he wants to know how it feels to be free. What do you want to tell him?” Marc said in French.
“Good, of course. Does he think it feels bad?”
Marc spoke in English. “Very good. Thank you. We both say the same. My sister and I, pleased to be in this country.”
“Great, son! Thanks!” The reporter scribbled on a pad, then moved to another person.
A moment later, a woman wearing a flowery summer dress and carrying an armful of toys handed me a rubber doll. The doll wore a red rubber dress, little blue rubber shoes, and a red rubber ribbon in her rubber hair.
I looked at Marc, and he said, “She says it’s a welcome-to-America gift for you.”
“I’m too old for dolls,” I said.
“Karin, don’t be rude. Thank her.”
“Swell,” I said in English. “Thanks, GI Joe!”
The woman smiled, then looked at my bare feet and patted my cheek.
The soldier sitting behind the table said, “Wazyrname?”
“Pardon?” Marc said.
“Wazyrname, buddy? Name. Name,” he said loudly.
Marc started speaking in French. “Je m’appelle Marc
Levi—” I poked him, and he began again. “I am Marc Levi and this is my—”
“Lasname first, buddy.”
What was he saying now? I got the buddy part. That was like kid. Another friendly American word.
“Levi Marc,” Marc said. He looked at me and grinned a little. “Levi Karin.”
“Levi, Marc. Levi, Karin,” the soldier said.
They were saying our names backward. Was this an American custom I was going to have to learn? “Levi Karin,” I whispered to myself, trying to get used to it.
The soldier winked at me. “Okay, kids, we’re in good shape.” He held out a slip of paper with a number on it. “Here’s your room assignment, but you better get some food first.” He pointed. “The mess hall is that way.”
Our room was in an army barracks, a long two-story wooden building. We walked down a dimly lit hallway, carrying the towels and soap we’d been issued, and found our door halfway to the end. Our names were on the door, as if we belonged here!
The room had two cots, a table, two chairs, and some shelves. Sheets and a blanket were folded at the bottom of each cot. I put the doll on the table, then went to the window and looked out. I sat in one chair, then got up and sat in the other.
“Are they comfortable?” Marc asked. He was laughing at me.
“Fine.”
“Not ‘fine.’ Wonderful! Look at this room, Karin. Don’t you like it?”
I looked all around again, up at the ceiling and down at the floor. I went around and touched the walls. “Yes. I like it.”
I told myself, of course I liked it; this was our new home. We were going to live here. Live in this room.
Marc bounced on one cot, then the other. “Both the same. Both comfortable. Which side of the room do you want?”
“You choose.”
Marc pointed. “Your side. And over here, mine. We’ll put the table in the middle.” He pushed his cot to one side.
I flapped out a sheet and spread it over my cot. If Maman were here, she’d say, Make it smooth, darling. I pulled the sheet tight at the corners. I kept repeating to myself, This room is my new home. This is where I live now. This is my new life. But which life was it? I was like a cat with nine lives. The first life—my real life, the happy one—had been in Paris, on rue Erlanger.
Then came the second life—still in Paris, but without Grand-mère or Papa—when the world looked the same but had changed in every way.
My third life was in the attic room in Madame Zetain’s house, and the fourth was the weeks after we left there. What did I remember of that life? Not much, except sleeping in fields, where stones poked into my back.
The fifth life was with Monsieur Taubert and Uncle Leo, Bernard, and Simone. If Maman hadn’t been so sick, if the Germans hadn’t come, it would almost have been a good life. Darling Monsieur Taubert. I missed him, too. The sixth life was in Italy with Marc, a life that took me away, and away, and away from Maman. And the seventh life was on the Henry Gibbins, which took me even farther away.
Now I was beginning another life, the eighth one. But not the last. That could only be when we were with Maman again.
17
THE FENCE
Something strange happened those first weeks in Fort Ontario. Marc became Maman. And I became something else, but I didn’t know what, exactly. I was Karin Levi or Levi Karin, but that was only my name, and the rest of me—I couldn’t tell. It was as if I’d gotten lost somewhere.
But about Marc: He had traded the shirt the soldier gave him on the boat for an alarm clock. And now we lived by that clock. He kept it on the floor next to his cot. Ticktock… ticktock… ticktock. It rang every morning to wake us up. It told us to get dressed. It told us when to take a walk and when to go to the mess hall to eat.
“We have to keep a routine,” Marc said. He made us do exercises, the same bending and touching our toes we used to do in the attic room. We had to study at a certain time. And read. And practice our English.
That’s what I mean about Marc’s being Maman.
It wasn’t that I minded doing those things. It was his attitude. He wanted to be in control of everything. In control of me. In control of time. In control of his clock. I couldn’t even touch it. He was afraid I’d drop it. He was even more afraid that I’d overwind it.
He had also acquired an American dictionary, and he was devoted to it. It was a soft-covered military edition. He let me use it, but he watched me every moment. “Don’t ever lick your thumb and turn the page,” he said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Just don’t.”
“But why would I even want to? Did you see me lick my thumb?”
“Don’t argue with me,” he said.
But I wanted to argue with him. More and more, about everything. There was something about the way he said things, so sure of himself, so right all the time. We argued about food and “free time”—which was time when we weren’t together—and we argued about the quarantine. Marc hated it.
For the first month, everyone in the fort except the Americans was in quarantine. We couldn’t leave the fort. Soldiers were posted at the entrances to keep us in and to keep everyone else out. They said it was for health and administrative reasons.
“Whatever that means,” Marc said. “They stuff us in here like sardines, or pigs in a pen. What happened to free America? Why did we come here, if we’re put behind barbed wire?”
“We’re not in jail,” I argued. “We can go wherever we want, we can do what we want. Nobody stops us.”
“Go where we want? I want to go to Aunt Hannah in California. Can I do that? No. Is that being free? Is it being free to live with barbed wire? With soldiers everywhere?”
“The wire’s just there,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Don’t talk without thinking, Karin,” Marc said. “Of course it means something. Everything means something. Nothing is accidental. And tell me, how do you think someone like Mrs. Stein feels seeing that barbed wire?”
I felt ashamed. I wasn’t going to be that stupid and say barbed wire wouldn’t bother Mrs. Stein, who had been in a concentration camp.
“Marc,” I said, “remember Papa’s gold tooth?”
“Papa didn’t have a gold tooth.”
“He did so, right here.” I pointed to my mouth.
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Well, I don’t care. Just stop talking about it.”
“But I want to talk about it. Once I asked him who kept that tooth so shiny, and he said it was the little gold workers. He told me a whole story about it, and I was so young I believed every word.”
Marc got up abruptly.
“I wanted to see those little gold polishers. Whenever he took a nap, I’d watch him, hoping his mouth would open, and I’d catch one of them doing his job.”
“Why are you always thinking about things that are done with, Karin? It only makes you feel weak and unhappy.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said.
“Does it make you feel strong and happy?”
I looked down. Why wouldn’t he let me talk about Papa’s gold tooth? Was it a crime to think about home and things I knew? Was it a crime to want to talk in a normal way?
The truth was, I didn’t feel normal. We were kept in, fenced in, barbed-wired in. Us, only us—so what did that make us? If the normal world was right there, right before our eyes, on the other side of the fence—houses, trees, kids, cars, bikes—then what were we on our side? Abnormal? Freaks?
I didn’t have anything—not clothes, not money, not a home, not a family. One day, a man in a suit had stopped at the fence. His shoes were so polished I saw the reflection of trees in them. He had his son with him, a boy about my age. The boy didn’t say a word. I stared at him, and he stared back. He couldn’t tell from looking at me that once I’d been like him. Once I’d had my own bedroom in my own home, and my parents worked and had respect, and I had food and love.
> Sometimes I wanted to shout at people like that, people from town who came to the fence and stared, as if we were strange animals. But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I only tried not to feel that way. But that was why, for a while, I hated going near the fence.
Dearest Maman,
Marc has gone out for a walk. I try not to write to you when he’s around, because he gets upset. He doesn’t like me to notice this, but I do. I think he misses you so much, Maman, that it’s hard for him to even talk about you. I understand, but I can’t be like that. Writing you is like talking to you, and if I didn’t do it, I don’t know what I would do.
I want to tell you about some new friends we’ve made. Their names are Elisabeth and George Stein. They are both sort of short, tubby people. I hope you don’t think that’s rude of me, to talk about them that way!
Marc and I met them one morning on one of our walks around the camp. Mr. Stein was picking up trash with a pointed stick and putting it into a paper bag that Mrs. Stein was carrying. A lot of the men here do maintenance work. This was the first time I saw a woman doing it, too. I said, in English, “Hello. Good morning. Is that much fun?”
Mr. Stein answered in German. “It’s quite pleasant, my child.”
Mrs. Stein translated into French. She made a telescope with her hands, looked up into the sky, and said, “This is even more fun. Do you enjoy stargazing?” And her face got all pink because, it seems, she is very shy. I never thought a grown-up could be so shy!
“A telescope?” I said. “I always wanted to look at the stars and the planets and the sky and everything through a telescope.” I spoke in French because she understands it perfectly.
Then Mr. Stein lifted his stick like a bow and pretended to play a violin. “Also, also fun,” he said in English, and we all laughed. I thought it was a joke—you know, trash picking, stargazing, violin playing—as if they could do anything, and did.
But it turned out to be no joke. We visited them later in their room. Marc says they’re the most interesting people he’s ever met. Mrs. Stein was a piano teacher in Vienna, and Mr. Stein was a violinist with the symphony orchestra. And in Europe she did have a telescope. Stargazing was her hobby.
Good Night, Maman Page 5