by Lesley Lokko
She bent down and splashed cold water onto her face to cool down her still-burning cheeks. She eyed her reflection anxiously, tucking a few stray strands of hair behind her ears. Her eyes, normally a clear dark-brown colour that often verged on black, were unnaturally bright. She traced the line of her eyebrow tenderly with a finger, slicking it into shape. Her skin was pale, lightly dusted with freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her long, poker-straight hair fell on either side of her face from a centre parting, which she hated but everyone said suited her. She longed for Annick’s wild masses of dark-brown corkscrew-tight curls that drew gasps of admiration from everyone – even total strangers – when she let them spring free. ‘Why can’t I have hair like yours?’ she moaned to Annick, endlessly.
‘Because.’
Not a lot you could say to that. She checked her reflection for the last time, turned off the taps and opened the door. Her heart missed a beat. Adam was there, right in front of her, crossing the hallway towards the front door.
‘Hey,’ he said lightly. ‘I was just nipping out for a fag. Want one?’
Rebecca gaped at him. She didn’t smoke. No matter. She did now.
‘Yeah,’ she said, as nonchalantly as she could manage. ‘Love to.’ She trotted obediently after him. He held the front door open for her and they both stood in the portico, sheltering from the rain. He fished a packet of Marlboro Lights from the pocket of his jeans and handed one over. A bolt of lightning shot through her as their hands touched. A second bolt hit as he cupped her hand to help her light it. Annick and Tash smoked; she didn’t. She tried desperately to recall how they did it. Bring cigarette to mouth. Open mouth. Inhale. Slowly. Exhale. Quickly. The fit of coughing that overtook her brought tears to her eyes.
‘Easy,’ Adam said, smiling down at her.
Her heart did a slow somersault. ‘S . . . sorry, just . . . it’s that bloody scone again.’
‘Sure it is.’ His voice was full of teasing laughter.
She took another, less enthusiastic draw, and cautiously looked up at him from underneath her lashes. He was just so goddamn beautiful – blue eyes, the colour of the sky on a hot summer’s day; blonde hair that reminded her of sunlight; skin that glowed with rude health. ‘Adam, can I ask you something?’ she said suddenly, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
‘What?’
‘Ha . . . have you ever killed anyone?’
It was the dumbest thing she’d ever said. The way he looked at her just confirmed it.
‘He just looked at me,’ she wailed half an hour later on the phone to Annick. ‘I mean, what kind of an idiot asks a question like that?’
‘So what did he say?’ Annick asked breathlessly.
Rebecca paused to blow her nose. ‘Nothing. He just looked at me. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and said, “Funny, every girl I meet asks me that.” So not only am I dumb, I’m just like all the others.’
‘Well, there are worse things to be,’ Annick said cheerfully.
‘Like what?’
‘I . . . well, I can’t think of them right now,’ Annick said carefully. ‘But I’m sure there are. So where is he now?’
‘He’s going back to Belgium for a couple of weeks. It’s funny, he’s completely English when he speaks to me – to us – and then he speaks to his mother in French and he sounds so different. He’s just like you.’
‘I’m hardly six foot three, darling, and I certainly haven’t come back from some army camp.’
‘You know what I mean. Sometimes when I’m with you and I hear you on the phone to your mum, or your friends from home, or whatever . . . you look like you, but I don’t recognise your voice. It’s weird. He spoke Hebrew to Orit and she nearly dropped dead.’
‘He sounds lovely,’ Annick said loyally. ‘But he’s your cousin. You can’t.’
‘Can’t what?’
‘Marry him, silly.’
‘Who says I want to marry him?’ Rebecca asked indignantly. ‘And anyway in our family it’s allowed. It’s practically enforced.’
‘Well, there you go. It’s settled then. You’ll marry the gorgeous Adam, you’ll move to Israel and live on a – what d’you call it again? A kibi? You’ll have fifteen kids and live happily ever after.’
‘It’s a kibbutz, you idiot, and in any case, with my luck, they’ll find me some distant cousin from Poland who’s thirty years older than me with no chin and no hair and I’ll have to move to Lódz,’ she said glumly.
‘Oh, you’re so melodramatic, Rebecca. You ought to move to Hollywood.’
‘Maybe I will. Anyway, I didn’t call just to talk about Adam. Have you made your choices yet?’ Rebecca asked, reminding them both of something of far greater importance. University. Rebecca knew Annick was worried about getting in. Their exams were four months away and at the rate Annick was going, she would never get the grades she needed. She ought to at least pass French – it was her mother tongue, after all – but you still had to read the set novels and have more than a passing acquaintance with the characters. Annick just didn’t seem to care. Her concern about university wasn’t the university itself or the course of study she’d chosen, or even whether or not she’d find it difficult. Annick’s real concern, Rebecca knew, was not to be left behind.
‘No,’ Annick said glumly. ‘I keep putting it off. Have you?’
‘History of Art.’
‘You guys are so lucky,’ Annick said enviously. ‘At least you’re good at something. I haven’t got a clue what to do.’
‘I thought you were going to do languages?’ Rebecca asked carefully.
‘Well, that’s only because it’ll be easy.’
‘So choose something harder.’
‘Me? Since when do I ever do anything hard? I just hope I get in, that’s all. I couldn’t bear it if you two got in and I didn’t. Knowing me, I’m the one who’s going to wind up in . . . where was it? Lobs?’
‘Lódz,’ Rebecca giggled. ‘Now look who’s being melodramatic. Anyhow, I’d better go. I’m blessing the candles tonight and I’d better not screw that up. Mum’ll kill me. Aunt Rosa’s always complaining that they don’t teach me how to do things properly. I wish you could meet Adam. Actually, no, I don’t. One look at you and it’ll be all over for me. He won’t be able to take his eyes off you.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not,’ Rebecca said glumly. ‘That’s just it. I’m not. Tash is so fucking clever, you’re beautiful . . . me, I’m just average. Tash is going to wind up some hotshot lawyer or something, you’re going to marry someone rich and famous and I’ll be the one who gets left behind. Just you wait and see.’
PART TWO
ESCAPE
‘To slip away from pursuit or peril; avoid capture, punishment, or any threatened evil.’
The Oxford English Dictionary
5
1935
LIONEL HARBURG
Hamburg, Germany
He turned away from the table, impatient with the talk. His uncle Abraham, eyebrows working magnificently like two thick, hairy Raupen – caterpillars – was holding court. To Uncle Abe’s left sat his mother, Sara, the matriarch of the clan. Sitting bolt upright, those dark, attentive eyes missing nothing, she listened without speaking. His older brothers were ranged around the table in order of age and importance: Felix, Otto, and George. And then him, of course. At eighteen, he was the youngest. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have been here at this time. He would have been in uniform, doing his military service, like millions of other young Germans. But six months earlier that particular tradition had ended abruptly. Jews were now banned from serving in the army.
A tram rumbled past; on the polished sideboard the wine glasses rattled gently. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette, avoiding his mother’s disapproving frown. Couldn’t they all see what was happening? A month earlier, at a rally in Nuremberg, Hitler had announced a new law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,
making marriage between Germans and Jews illegal. Barely a week later, another one had been passed. This time it was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. It meant Jews could no longer work in government. The picture was sharpening with each passing month. Slowly but surely, they were being shepherded back into the very same ghettos from which their forefathers had escaped. For the Harburgs, and families like theirs whose very fortunes depended on trade and the freedom to move around Europe, it was a death knell. He could see what was happening. It was crystal clear. He drew angrily on his cigarette. It was absurd. Whilst Hitler and his cronies plotted their strangulation, Uncle Abe sat and talked and his own father locked himself up in his first-floor study and listened to Brahms. They were slowly being strangled, ‘strangled to death!’ Lionel had burst out the week before. Uncle Abe laughed gently. ‘Ach, such fantasies! We’re German,’ he insisted. ‘Always. First and foremost. You think they’ll get rid of us? Rothschild? Warburg? Harburg? It’s inconceivable. Inconceivable. They need us! This nonsense will pass, you’ll see. It’s not the first time, you know.’
The sound of girlish laughter from the adjoining room floated through the partially open door. His sisters – Lotte, Barbara, Rebecca and the youngest of them all, six-year-old Bettina – were playing cards. They rarely joined in these family discussions. Only his mother sat amongst the men, as she’d always done. She was more of a man than anyone he knew, he thought to himself suddenly, admiringly, watching her. For a second their eyes caught and held. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
He turned away and looked back down at the street. Snowflakes swirled in ever more intricate flurries, drifting eventually towards the ground. On the spires and steeply sloped roofs around them, huge piles of white, fluffy Stoff had gathered, softening the city’s edges. It was December and Hamburg was in the grip of winter. He smoked quietly, his mind running ahead of itself, weighing up the options, thinking about potential destinations, contacts, people on whom he could call. They were running out of time. He’d lunched that afternoon with Uncle Sigmund and that dreadful friend of his, Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann was en route to New York, trying to persuade rich American Jews to support his vision of a Jewish state. Otto seemed charmed by him but Lionel was ambivalent. Emigrate? To where? Palestine? It meant little to him. For nearly three centuries the Harburgs had operated successfully in that lucrative, fluid area between the Jewish and Gentile worlds. They were on excellent, first-name terms with statesmen, politicians and business leaders across Europe. Of the great Jewish banking dynasties – the Rothschilds, Warburgs and Harburgs – the Harburgs were the smallest but they were by no means the weakest. Three centuries of slow but steady advancement – he saw no reason to give it up and flee halfway across the world to some barren, dusty patch of land and grow what . . . oranges? They were bankers, not farmers.
He ground out his cigarette and pulled out his watch chain. It was nearly eight in the evening. From his parents’ elegant villa on Rothebaumchaussee it was a short walk to his own small apartment on Feldbrunnenstraße. The opulent home where he’d spent his childhood was a far cry from the cramped little apartment that was now his. Sara, though restrained enough in her outward emotions, was a woman of surprisingly rich, decorative tastes. She favoured the neo-Classical style of the German haute-bourgeoisie – dense, colourful patterns, heavy wooden panelling, ornate picture frames, potted plants, mirrors and pictures on every conceivable surface. Although he would never say it out loud, Lionel sometimes felt stifled by the surfeit of colours and patterns and textures that he’d grown up with. When his father and Uncle Abe (or the other way round, to be more precise) had made a gift of the bachelor apartment five minutes’ walk from the family home, he was relieved. He was drawn to the clean lines of the Modern movement, to the spare, elegant architecture of Gropius and the young Mies van der Rohe who’d taken over the running of the Bauhaus. But the Bauhaus too had fallen foul of the new regime. Lionel had heard, amongst other, more disturbing things, that the school was to be closed down the following month. None of it augured well.
‘Lionel,’ Sara called out, drawing him back to the dining table. ‘Uncle Abe is leaving.’
Uncle Abe levered himself up from his chair, gripping each of his nephews by the shoulder in a gesture that was meant to bolster them after a Friday-night dinner shadowed by fear.
Lionel walked over to him. ‘Uncle,’ he murmured, feeling the older man’s heavy grip on his own shoulder.
‘Chin up,’ Uncle Abe said in what he thought was a reassuring voice. ‘This will pass. You’ll see.’ Lionel was on the verge of telling him what he really thought but Sara’s eyes flashed a quick warning. Uncle Abe pulled on his coat and lumbered into the drawing room where the girls sat listening to Bettina play the piano. There was an outburst of laughter and squeals as he flirted with them, cracking jokes and playing the role of favourite uncle.
‘Don’t,’ Sara murmured in an aside to him, as Lionel’s fists clenched involuntarily. ‘Don’t say anything, mein Liebling.’
‘Mama, this is absurd!’ Lionel hissed. ‘Chin up? He’s insane!’
‘Shh. Your brothers’ll hear. I’ll see Uncle Abe off, and then let’s you and I have a glass of port together in the study. Calm down, Lionel. It’s not good for your blood pressure.’
He said nothing but watched her move regally through to the drawing room. His brothers were still arguing mildly over the merits of some play or another. He turned away in disgust. What was the phrase? All of Rome is burning and the band plays on. He lit another cigarette and moved again to the window. Outside, seemingly oblivious to the impending doom, snowflakes continued to fall.
SARA HARBURG
It was nearly midnight by the time Lionel stopped talking. ‘England?’ Sara put up a hand to nervously touch the locket she wore around her neck. It was a small, uncharacteristic display of weakness. But in her next breath she rallied, caught hold of herself. She was aware of how much he depended on her. ‘England,’ she repeated slowly, but it wasn’t a question this time. ‘Have you spoken to Uncle Paul?’
He nodded, drawing on his cigarette, taking care not to blow the smoke anywhere near her face. ‘He’s confident he can get us in. But only if we leave soon. We can’t wait any longer, Mama. We’ve got to go. Now.’
Sara nodded slowly. She looked at the room, at the wood-panelled walls laden with bookshelves, pictures, the plump, comfortable furniture; the beautifully aged leather chairs with the red, ruched-silk cushions she’d had specially sewn. Over in the corner, there was the standard lamp with its fringed shade and the gilt and rather gaudy Blackamoor that Uncle Paul had bought at Sotheby’s and brought over to Germany as a gift . . . it was their home. Her home. This was their life. Generation after generation had worked hard, saved and sacrificed personal gain. For those that come after, the mantra by which every man in the Harburg family lived. That they’d come from such humble beginnings had never been forgotten, not like some she knew. You worked hard in this life to provide for those whose turn it was next. And by God, they’d worked hard. What was more, the accumulation of their wealth had nothing to do with the display of it. The Harburgs had never flaunted their success, never taken it for granted. That old, ancestral fear of displacement had never quite left them, though in Sara’s generation the fear had been buried, sublimated under the libraries and art collections and the patronage for which she, Sara Harburg, was so renowned.
But what use was all of that now? What use was a Harburg box at the Staatsoper when they were banned from stepping inside? Lionel was right. Slowly but surely the Nazis were stripping them of everything that made them human, made life worth living. Scores of families they knew had left Germany, many of them to Palestine. But, just like Lionel, Sara was alarmed by the thought of leaving the world that she knew – music, good food and wine, conversation, the ballet – for an unknown culture in a corner of the world she knew little about. She had no desire to go to Palestine but she wasn’t delusional,
either, like Abe. If others like Max Warburg was talking openly of rescue, Lionel was right. They had to leave. And quickly. And yet . . . every one of her eight children had been born in that house. Leaving this would mean leaving some essential part of herself behind.
As if sensing her thoughts, Lionel suddenly put out a hand and touched her arm. ‘It’s a hard choice, Mama. God knows. But it’s no choice at all. It’s this . . . or nothing.’
She looked down at his hand, and then covered it with her own. She nodded slowly. ‘Do what you can, Lionel. Make the preparations. Your brothers won’t come, you know that?’
‘I know. But you will. And Lotte and Bettina, of course. But Rebecca . . . I don’t know about Rebecca. There’s the thing with the Rosenberg boy—’
‘You’re a good son, Lionel,’ Sara interrupted him slowly. ‘A good son. Strong. I couldn’t have asked for better, you know that. You’ve made me so proud of you. Your father—’ She hesitated, and then stopped. They both knew what it was she couldn’t say. She got to her feet heavily, brushing his arm aside and walked to the door. ‘Do what you have to. Get us out of here. Those that will come.’ She closed the door firmly behind her and made her way upstairs.
He would remain there, smoking quietly, thinking things through, she knew. The comment about his father, though she’d stopped herself just in time, would have hit the mark. Although still so young, Lionel would be the one to save them, not her husband. She’d married a weak, vain man: loving and kind, yes, but weak. It pained her to say it but it was the truth. She shook her head at how things had turned out. The daughter of a prominent Altona banker, she was seventeen when she married, not yet a woman. At first she was delighted with the charming young man, whose arrival in their solemn house brought warmth that was previously lacking. But she misunderstood the charm, believing it to be his real nature. It was not. He was weak, feeble. In another life, he might have been an academic or a poet, a man of letters and words, not actions. In another life, she’d have been a man. She was married before she could have any real idea of what the world might offer her. She saw at once that a dreadful mistake had been made but she was a practical girl. She produced her children, one after the other . . . ten in all. Eight of them survived.