Your Karin
32
SOMETHING BAD
The moment Marc came into the room, I knew he’d been with Barbara. It was something about the way he walked, strutted almost. “You were with her, weren’t you?” I said. “Barbara.”
“So?”
“So … nothing.” Now that I’d said it, what else was there to say? I bent my head and opened my book. I was reading Daddy-Long-Legs for the third time. This time I could read most of it.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Oh, we walked around and talked.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.” Marc hung his jacket on a peg.
“Just talked? I don’t believe you.”
“Karin. Believe me. We talked. We talk a lot. She’s a serious girl. She likes to talk to me.”
“And kiss?” I said.
“All right, that’s too much,” he said. “Now stop.”
“Why her?” I said. “If you want a girlfriend, choose Eva. She’s beautiful, smart, and she’s like us. She came with us on the ship. How can you forget that? Barbara’s not even Jewish.”
“Eva’s not Jewish, either. I never thought I’d hear you saying something like that. What difference does it make, Jewish or not? Barbara’s a person.”
“Maybe she’s not Jewish, but you know what I mean. I’m sorry, that she lost her mother, but it’s not … not the same.” My eyes were sticky and hot. I thought of Maman, of Mr. Stein and Mrs. Stein, of Jo and Eva. And I seemed to see them all pointing at me. Shame on you … shame on you …
After we shut off the lights, I couldn’t sleep. I turned from one side to the other. I heard the clock ticking, the snow dripping as it melted, and the wind blowing around the building.
“Marc,” I said into the darkness.
“What?”
“Are you sleeping?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. What is it, Karin?”
“I’m sorry I’m so mean about your girlfriend.” I wrapped my blanket around me. There was a little light coming in from outside. I went over to his cot and sat down on the edge. “I’ll try to be a better sister.”
“You’re a good sister.”
“Do you mean it? You don’t hate me?”
“No, I don’t hate you.” He sat up. “Why would you say that? Do you think I hate you, Karin? That is so crazy. You’re my sister.”
“I want to be better, but I miss Maman so much … I don’t want to be mean. I know sometimes you wish you had another sister. You do, don’t you? You can say it.”
“Never, I never wished that. I never wanted any sister but you.”
“Marc.” I wiped my eyes on my pajamas sleeve. “I just don’t want you to leave me. If you left me, I don’t know … I don’t think I could—”
“Leave you? Where did you get that idea? Who said anything about leaving you?”
“You know that Maman said we should stay together.”
“And we will,” he said. “We’ll stay together. We have to. It’s just us now.”
“What do you mean?” I pulled the blanket tighter around me. “Don’t say that!”
“I’m tired, Karin. Let’s both go back to sleep.”
“Wait, wait. No, it’s not just us! Why did you say that, ‘just us’? Just us? What about Maman?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone.” He rubbed his eyes. “We’ll talk about Maman in the morning.”
I went to the window and looked out, but I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t see anything. Something is happening. Something is happening here, right now, in this room. Something bad.
“Marc.” I said his name again. “Marc.” Everything was wavering, blurry, as if I were underwater. “Marc. Tell me.”
There was silence, then he said, “Maman—”
“What? What about Maman?”
“She …”
“She’s dead?” I said. I sat down on the floor. “Maman’s dead?”
He nodded.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Calm covered me like a blanket. Through it, I heard myself saying words—“For how long? You’ve known for how long?”—but they weren’t my words, they were like objects that seemed to hang in the air. I said the words, I heard the words, but nothing touched me, nothing reached me. I was only conscious of how steady my voice was … and the words, the ordinary words.
33
THE DARKNESS OF SLEEP
I lay in bed with my eyes open. It hurt to breathe. I lay there listening to night sounds. The creaking of the wooden floors. The wind against the windows. Marc’s breathing.
What if he was wrong? Maybe he was miserable and wanted someone else to be miserable, too. For a moment, I believed it.
Maman … Maman, Maman, Maman …
The darkness of sleep came toward me, big and soft.
In the morning, when Marc got out of bed, he looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He opened the window and leaned into the air. Wind blew into the room. Not a big cold March wind, not a soft April wind. It was a May wind, sweet, like leaves. Maman loved that smell.
Marc came and sat on the edge of my cot. “Hello,” he said. Then for a while he didn’t say anything.
“It’s true?” I said.
He nodded.
“You knew on the boat, didn’t you?” I said.
“Yes.”
“That man from Valence?”
“Yes. You asked me if he knew anything about Monsieur Taubert, and I said he didn’t.” He paused. “He had heard about Monsieur, the people he took in. Saved. He knew about the children who had left, too, and the … the mother who died.” He looked tired. “I wanted to tell you, Karin, but I couldn’t. I tried. I lost my nerve every time.”
“I don’t want it to be true.”
“I know,” he said.
“Marc, I don’t want it to be true!” I butted my head against his shoulder, and he held me, and I cried.
Dearest Maman,
This letter will go with the others I’ve written you. Now I know that you’ll never see these letters. There’s no point in going on with writing you, is there, but who else can I write to? Who else can I tell everything? Who else—
34
A CHANT, A PRAYER
There were things I had to think about, things I needed to understand. Like about the letters I’d written to Maman: I wrote them so she could read them. That’s why anyone writes a letter. So someone else will read it. I still had the letters, but no one to read them.
And I had to try to understand why Papa and Maman were gone. Why other people had parents and I didn’t. Of course, I understood. The war … the war was the cause. But then why had there been a war? Oh yes. Hitler. The Germans. How they wanted other people’s land. How they hated the Jews. I understood.
Yet, I didn’t. I didn’t understand anything. Only that I didn’t have Papa or Maman anymore.
I stayed out of school for four days, then Marc said I should go back. He said Maman would want me to. So I did.
People spoke to me and maybe I answered. I really had no idea if I did or if I didn’t. Somehow, the hours passed. The hours in school. The hours at the fort. A day began and a day ended, and with the end of the day, I could go to sleep.
I slept and slept, and every hour I slept felt like betrayal. All those hours when I wasn’t thinking about Maman.
Marc talked to me. He was kind—kinder than he’d ever been. He kept trying to explain why he hadn’t told me sooner. “Partly, I was protecting you. Partly, maybe, I was protecting myself. Because I knew the truth, but I never really knew it—didn’t let myself know it until I told you.”
He sat at night and read to me and talked to me. He said, and sometimes it sounded like a chant or a prayer, “We have each other. Karin, that hasn’t changed. We have each other. That will never change.”
&nbs
p; 35
BLUE SKIES
The war in Europe ended early in May, when the Germans surrendered to the Allies. It was a day of blue skies. Everyone was out of the barracks, celebrating. A strange woman embraced me. “Remember this day. There’ll never be another like it in our lives.”
I moved from group to group, person to person. This was the day we had been waiting for. The war was over. We were free now. Where are you, Maman?
Later, I went into the woods. There was still snow here and there, in crevices and shadowed places. I made a little shrine with a handful of rounded, pink-streaked lake stones. I knelt and prayed for Maman, Papa, and Grand-mère. And for us, too, for Marc and me.
Maman was gone. And Papa was gone. They would never come back. And nothing could change that. “Patience,” Papa used to say. “In time grass turns to milk.” I was such a little girl then. I thought it was a miracle. Like a headline God made: GRASS TURNS TO MILK! But even if I could make miracles—drink the water in the ocean, count every grain of sand in the desert, pull the clouds from the sky—still Maman and Papa wouldn’t come back.
I held one of the pink stones in the palm of my hand. It was smooth and round, and fit perfectly. I thought about all the places Marc and I had been, and all the things that had happened to us. I thought about everything I had learned. I had learned about hunger and pain. I had learned about people—some bad, some good. And I had learned that you can’t look back for too long. You just have to keep going.
Dearest Maman,
My head and my heart are full of things to tell you. This will be the last letter I write you from Fort Ontario. First, I want to report that I did well on my exams and am now in eighth grade. Marc, of course, did wonderfully on his exams, all ninety-nines and one hundreds, and now he’s in tenth grade. But, Maman, from now on, the year of 1946, we won’t be going to school in Oswego.
All of us fort people can stay in America after all. The president and Congress have decided that if we want to, we can! Marc and I are going to live with Aunt Hannah in Del Rey, California. She’s already sent us the train tickets.
Maman, you know she’s not young, and my friend Jo says this can’t be easy for her; but Aunt Hannah wants us and she is full of love for us. I know how lucky we are. So many people have been good to us. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, about how much we owe to people along the way.
I could start way back with Alena, remember her? She worked with Papa, and she was the one who found and brought us to Madame Zetain’s. And Madame Zetain, of course, and the farmer and his wife who gave us food and let us sleep in the barn. Darling Monsieur Taubert. Maria Theresa. And then the American soldiers on the boat, and Mr. and Mrs. Stein, and Jo, and all my friends—Marika, Eva, Trudi, and Peggy. And Peggy’s family, too! And so many other people.
Some people believe in Lady Luck (that’s what the Americans call it) and some people believe in God. I believe in both, and also in the people who helped us along the way.
One more thing before I close this letter, Maman. Last night, I was half awake, or maybe half asleep, and I had a wonderful dream about our family. It was so familiar to me, Maman, so true, and yet I knew it was in my mind. Still, it seemed to me as if I were inside this dream—or story—whatever it was—as if it were really happening.
I’m going to write it down, so I never forget it. From now on, I intend to write down all my dreams. Maybe, someday, my daughter will read my dream book … yes, and my letters to you.
Maman, wherever you are, I believe that you know about the letters. And wherever you are, I believe you are here, with me. I know this as I know I will always love you.
Good night, Maman. Good night.…
My Dream
I was walking down a long sandy road. There were tall trees on both sides, the sky was big and blue like the sea, and Maman was close behind me. I turned to see her. I looked at her for a long time. I was so happy that she was here, so happy. I was dancing on the road, and she smiled and called out, “Yes, darling. Yes!” Then Papa was there, too, and Marc and Grand-mère. We were together again. They were all here, all my beloveds, watching as I danced down the road under the blue, blue sky.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Karin Levi is a fictional character, yet her experiences in this novel are true to those of some Jews during World War II. The bitter truth is that six million people were murdered. Those who survived did so through a rare combination of chance and luck.
The anti-Jewish terror in Paris began on June 14, 1940, when the German army arrived and Julien Weill, the Grand Rabbi of Paris, was imprisoned. Between 1940 and 1944, Jewish-owned businesses were seized and given to non-Jews. Music by Jewish composers was prohibited. In the Louvre, the national gallery of art in Paris, all paintings with Jewish subjects were burned. The Café Dupont in Paris and other places of business posted notices: CLOSED TO DOGS AND JEWS. Telephones in Jewish homes were disconnected. Jews were permitted to shop only during limited afternoon hours, and were forbidden entrance to parks, theaters, pools, restaurants, cinemas, markets, fairs, museums, libraries, historical monuments, sporting events, and campgrounds. Jews were banned from all except the last car on public trains and buses. Synagogues, ancient houses of worship, were bombed.
In July of 1942, 12,884 Jews in Paris were arrested. More than 7,000 people, including some 4,000 children, were packed into Vélodrome d’Hiver, the indoor stadium in Paris, where there was no water, no food, and only ten toilets. They were later deported to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. Of the 7,000 arrested, thirty people survived. By 1944, large rewards were offered for Jews in hiding, and many more Jews were seized. In one notorious incident, French police raided the Colonie des Enfants, a children’s home, and deported forty-one children to Auschwitz. During the war years, more than 84,000 people in France were sent to death camps.
On June 12, 1944, the American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told the United States Congress of his goal to bring a group of refugees from Europe to the United States. On August 3, 1944, the Henry Gibbins arrived in New York Harbor.
The Europeans on board ranged in age from a newborn infant to an eighty-year-old man. They spoke eighteen languages and came from fifteen countries. Most were Jewish, though some were Protestant, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. Among them were actors, singers, writers, shoemakers, doctors, bookbinders, and musicians. They had lost everything; some came without even a pair of shoes. They had been robbed of the dearest things in life—not only homes, property, and jobs but also parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sons, and daughters.
The 22,000 people living in Oswego, New York, a town on the shore of Lake Ontario, found themselves hosting this group of displaced, dispossessed, and disoriented strangers. In 1944, Oswego was a town of small industries surrounded by farms and was then, as it is now, one of the snowiest places in the United States. Fort Ontario, eighty acres of buildings and fields, had been an army base, bordered by Lake Ontario on one side and fenced in by barbed wire on the others. The military use of the fort had recently been discontinued, and although not everyone in Oswego welcomed these strangers, most hoped that the influx would add to the prosperity of their town.
In receiving the refugees, the town became unique in the United States. Although more than a hundred thousand German prisoners of war spent time safely and without incident in the United States between 1941 and 1945, the 982 people who came to Fort Ontario were the only group of refugees brought to America by the government during World War II. Of the millions whose lives were ravaged by the murder and destruction of the war, they represented a minute fraction.
On May 7, 1945, the German forces surrendered to the Allies unconditionally. In late December, Harry S. Truman, who had become president after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, recommended that the Fort Ontario “guests” be allowed to remain in the United States, in accordance with existing immigration laws.
Early one morning, busloads of the Fort Ontario refugees left the Unite
d States and crossed the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. In Canada, they were welcomed by the American consul and each was handed an American visa, which granted legal entry to the United States. In the days and weeks that followed, the Fort Ontario residents scattered across America, some to join relatives—each to create a new life.
Acknowledgments
My grateful thanks to Harry Mazer for assisting me with interviews; to Linda Fox for sharing her knowledge of Italy; to Scott Scanlon for sharing his knowledge of the Fort Ontario refugees; and to Rena Block, Dr. Fred Flatau, Charlotte Gal, Elfi Hendell, Ivo Lederer, Dorrit Ostberg, and Steffi Winters for their generosity in sharing their memories.
About the Author
Norma Fox Mazer (1931–2009) was an acclaimed author best known for her children’s and young adult literature. She earned numerous awards, including the Newbery Honor for After the Rain, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for Dear Bill, Remember Me?, and the Edgar Award for Taking Terri Mueller. Mazer was also honored with a National Book Award nomination for A Figure of Speech and inclusion in the notable-book lists of the American Library Association and the New York Times, among others.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Norma Fox Mazer
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1128-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Good Night, Maman Page 10