by Rebekah Pace
The knock sounded normal, like a neighbor calling. My father and I didn’t even look up from our chess game when my mother went to the door. When she called my father’s name, he rose immediately at the note of panic in her voice, and I followed him into the foyer.
He put a hand on her shoulder as they faced the uniformed officer at the door. His voice was calm. “It’s all right, Elke.” Then he glanced back and saw me standing behind them. “Why don’t you take Peter into the sitting room?”
With a dancer’s poise, my mother held her head high as she led me away. She kept her arm around me while we waited on the sofa, but her trembling only increased my anxiety.
After a quiet conversation with the Gestapo officer, my father closed the door and, face ashen, joined us in the sitting room. He had to take a moment to compose himself before he spoke. When he did, he managed a watery smile. “We are not being deported.”
My mother’s grip on my shoulders relaxed, and the panic that had squeezed my heart began to ebb away. Then he spoke again.
“But we will no longer live here. Our home has been reassigned to a German family.”
“What? How can they do that? This house belongs to us!” My mother clenched her fists in her lap.
“That doesn’t matter. There is no way to fight this. We have three days to vacate.”
I found my voice. “But Vati, where will we live?”
“We are moving to a neighborhood for Jewish families. We will have a furnished apartment.”
“Furnished?” My mother looked around. “We already have furniture.”
My father shook his head and put a comforting hand over hers. “We are allowed to bring what clothing and personal items we can carry.”
I thought of my books and toys upstairs. I didn’t want to leave any of them behind for some other boy to use.
My mother blinked back tears. “The dining room table—the dishes. They were my grandmother’s.”
“It will be all right. Possessions don’t really matter, do they? It’s more important that we will be together.”
His voice should have reassured me, but the look on his face said he did not believe it would be all right. We sat on our sofa for a long time. Then my mother went upstairs to decide what we should pack. My father stood and ran his hand over the varnished wood on the radio cabinet.
“Will you be able to carry the radio?”
He shook his head. “We are not allowed to bring it.”
Three days later we left, and my father signed over our house. From then on, the Reichsvereinigung, the national association of Jews, was the property manager. His fountain pen scratched on the form, and as he completed his signature, he wrote with such violence that he punctured the paper.
“We’ll be back soon, right?” I took my father’s hand and looked up at him for reassurance.
“As soon as we can.” He did not smile down at me as he usually did.
When we reached the corner, I looked back and saw some of the neighbors come out of our house, their arms full of items we’d had to leave behind.
“Vati! Are they stealing our things?”
He put a hand on my head to turn my gaze away. “Come, Peter. It does no good to look back.”
***
In the Judenhaus, two, sometimes three families were crowded into each apartment—but my father’s position on the Judenrat allowed him some say over our circumstances. We were assigned to share space with just the Schlosses. I considered this a stroke of luck—at first.
Our new neighborhood was near the city center, far away from our old one and nowhere near as nice. After we left our house, I wondered if there was an Aryan boy or girl now living there, sleeping in my bed, playing with the toys I’d had to leave behind. Did they have a friend who lived next door? Had they discovered the fairy post office in the apple tree? I didn’t want any other children to have the home I’d been denied.
***
The grownups were reeling from the rapid changes too. Though my mother and Mrs. Schloss had been friends for many years, their differences in temperament became apparent once we were all living under the same roof. In their worry over our safety and our futures, their differences came to define them, like they had been assigned roles to act out in a drama.
My mother had always been house-proud and placed a high value on the arts and beautiful things, but as our situation worsened, her practical side won out. She never once complained about our shabby flat or mourned for the heirlooms she’d left behind. Instead, she approached the privations with good humor and a sense of adventure that made it seem like we were camping out.
While my mother focused on the bright side of things, Mrs. Schloss tended to see our collective glass as half empty. Had we not been forced into such close quarters I might never have known that my mother took a more liberal view of sex and relationships than Mira’s.
The day we moved in my mother opened the door off the sitting room. “One bedroom and two twin beds for the six of us? They said we’d have two bedrooms.” She looked around, puzzled. “Where’s the other?”
Mrs. Schloss set her suitcase on one of the beds and opened a door on the far side of the room. “Here—I found it. Oy veysmere. We might as well be in one room.” Whoever occupied the small second bedroom would have to pass through the other family’s sleeping space.
My mother looked over Mrs. Schloss’s shoulder and shook her head. “And twin beds. In both rooms.” Though many married couples slept in separate beds at that time, I could tell my mother was thinking about the wide bed she and my father had shared at our house.
“What does it matter?” Mrs. Schloss took a drag on her cigarette. “Which room do you want?”
My mother’s determined cheerfulness dimmed. “I suppose we should take the back room. Do you think Avram will need to stay up later than we do? If so, he can come to bed when he has finished his work for the night, without worrying about disturbing us.”
“Yes, that’s probably best. For now, anyway.”
The day after we moved in, our fathers had orders to report for work at Hugo-Schneider-Aktiengesellschaft Metallwarenfabrik, or HASAG, which was originally a manufacturer of lamps and metal goods that began producing armaments in 1933. Our fathers worked on the assembly line, creating the Panzerfaust, a hand-held anti-tank weapon.
I read later that at the Leipzig HASAG headquarters alone, more than ten thousand civilian forced laborers, prisoners of war, and internees of concentration camps from all over Europe worked to produce ammunition and anti-tank warheads. Even at the time, the irony of the situation was not lost on any of us: Vati and Mr. Schloss were being forced to make weapons that would hobble attacks by Great Britain and France—the nations that were now at war with Germany—and delay our liberation.
Many of the laborers were housed in large camps near the factory grounds. Because our house was close enough that our fathers were able to walk to and from work, they were permitted to return to us each night. Sometimes they smuggled home extra food or clothing. Though we had ration cards for food, there never seemed to be enough to feed the six of us, and Jews were not allotted a clothing ration.
Perhaps my father hoped serving on the Judenrat and acting as though he was cooperating with the Germans would afford us a measure of safety. But instead, he had made a deal with the devil. Guilt tormented him when the local officials forced him to make lists of the people who lived in the Judenhauser and their property and recommended who should be deported. Though he had no choice but to obey the government’s orders, resentment grew against him and all the members of the Judenrat. They were perceived as collaborators and traitors against their fellow Jews. My mild-mannered father, who would never have willingly hurt anyone, seemed to age overnight. He lost his hair, and the worry lines that furrowed his brow deepened. People shunned him on the street, and muttered shpyon and vizele under their
breath.
***
Mr. Schloss, on the other hand, was considered a mensch, and was in demand for his skill as a tailor. In the evenings, as soon as the dinner dishes were cleared away, he would spread fabric on the kitchen table and set his sewing kit on a chair, and work to make over clothes for people whose old ones had worn out. He was clever about using scraps to add panels and sections to my clothes and Mira’s as we grew.
One evening, he was working on a pair of my father’s trousers. I put aside my homework and watched as he sewed a little pocket into the inside of each trouser leg.
“How do you reach whatever’s in that pocket?”
“It’s not meant to be that kind of pocket, Peter. This pocket is to conceal things you don’t want anyone to find.”
I nodded. “Could you make me one, too?”
“I suppose. What do you have to hide, my boy?”
“Nothing yet. But I might, someday.”
“Indeed.”
True to his word, he made me a pocket for my knee breeches and told me to button it closed before I put my pants on. Then he showed me how to clip the stitches that held it in place so I could transfer it to another garment myself.
It’s funny how something so simple can become so significant.
7
Mira felt warm and soft and real in my arms. As we embraced through the open upper half of her back door, I could hear the soft whoosh of her breath near my ear, feel her chest rise and fall against mine. She smelled faintly of Evening in Paris perfume.
Somewhere nearby, a car horn honked, and I opened my eyes with a start. Sunlight streamed into my bedroom in Weequahic. Across the hall, I heard the water running in Vashon’s shower.
All day long, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I messed up the crossword, and the single solder I made on the music box was going to have to be redone. My hand strayed to Mira’s locket around my neck so many times that I took it off so I could see it without having to look in the mirror. I polished it on my shirttail, even though I knew the nicks and scratches on the golden heart wouldn’t rub off. The red silk cord was frayed and close to breaking in a couple of spots. On the kitchen table, I made loops and coils with the cord and framed the locket inside a larger heart. Such a silly, sentimental gesture.
Twice I started out the door to visit Benny, but I was afraid he’d think I was crazy to make such a big deal over a dream. That evening, I went through the motions of dinner, dishes, and settling down to listen to the ballgame in bed, but after sitting around the apartment in a stupor all day, I worried I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.
***
Before I opened my eyes, I could feel the rough bark of the apple tree’s trunk against my back. My legs dangled into space, and the scent of fruit and flowers hung in the air.
Mira sat on the branch a few feet away, legs crossed at the ankles, the sunlight that shone through the leaves dappling her skin and hair. Her lips moved, but her voice sounded faint, like I was underwater. I had the sense that she was much farther away than she appeared.
“Peter? Did you hear me?” This time her voice came through loud and clear, as if someone had turned up the volume. Startled, I almost lost my balance on the branch, and she reached for my arm to steady me. “If you don’t pay attention, you could fall.” She laid a cool hand on my cheek. “Are you all right?”
I took her hand and as I pressed her palm to my lips, I again caught the scent of Evening in Paris. “Yes. I’m all right. How are you?”
“We’re here, and we’re together. There’s nothing to worry about—and a lot that doesn’t matter anymore.”
I nodded, and said, more to myself than to her, “It doesn’t matter what is true.”
“The strangest things are true, and the truest things are strange.” She said it in a singsong voice. “Look around. Everything’s perfect. We’re in a fairy tale.”
“Or perhaps we’re like Adam and Eve, in our garden. We even have our apple tree.”
She nodded. “Maybe the Adam and Eve reference makes more sense, since there’s no one here but us.”
“No snakes in our garden, either?”
“Not a one.”
No matter what I said, she was agreeable. “Good.” I swung one leg over the branch and sprang to the ground. “Come on. Let’s go explore. Maybe today someone else will join us.” I put my hands at her waist and helped her down.
Hand in hand, we covered every street in our district. Everything was just as it had been on my first visit, but this time when we got to the square, the door to Bressler’s Café stood ajar.
Mira dropped my hand as she ran across the street to the café, calling, “Frau Bressler? Hello, is anyone here?” I followed her inside, and she looked back at me and shrugged, and then went behind the counter and ducked through the curtained doorway to the kitchen.
A table in the center of the café was laid out for afternoon tea, with little sandwiches, a plate of springerle cookies embossed with flowers and wreaths, and a china teapot. I laid my hand against it, only half surprised to find it hot.
In a moment, Mira returned. “There’s no one else here.”
“But someone thought we might be hungry.”
“Oh, I am! Aren’t you? Remember how our mothers used to bring us here?”
As I pulled out Mira’s chair, unexpected tears welled up in my eyes. What had become of the café’s owner during the war? “Frau Bressler was always jolly, wasn’t she? And she had a ginger cat.”
Mira smiled. “Yes. Her lemon springerle are my absolute favorite cookies in all the world. And everything’s laid out, like she was expecting us.”
I sat across from her. “But what if Frau Bressler comes back and finds out we’ve eaten food meant for someone else?”
Mira poured the tea. “Let’s not think too hard about it. Just enjoy it.”
This was my first taste of food in the dream world, and the flavors and textures were even better than I remembered. We both ate with the appetites of young people.
Afterward, we strolled through town, hand in hand, like any couple who had eyes only for each other. A light shone out from the synagogue on the far side of the square. Mira paused and asked, “Should we go inside? Adam and Eve were on speaking terms with their Maker.” She glanced at me from under her eyelashes. “Until they fell out of favor, that is.”
“No.” I had no relationship with God and didn’t care if I was in his favor or not.
“Then let’s go home.”
As we walked, she snuggled closer. It occurred to me that she had subtly offered herself to me. Suddenly I was nervous at the thought of doing more than kissing her. I hadn’t kissed anyone since I was sixteen.
In an attempt to stop my racing thoughts and remind myself that none of this was real, I changed the subject. “It was wonderful to hear your violin again. When we were children, you played very well for your age. But now you play like an angel.”
“It’s always been easy for me.”
“Remember how my mother would hound me to practice the piano—but I never improved, no matter how much I tried?”
At that, she dimpled. “You were hopeless. And I don’t think you tried all that hard.”
“You’re right about that. But I recently learned how to play. I’m not as good a musician as you, but I’m all right.”
“Really? We should try a tune together when we get home.”
It seemed as though I was going to be out of my comfort zone no matter what. “I don’t know if I’m ready for a duet.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” She pulled at my hand, turning me homeward.
***
To my relief, we played together as though I’d been accompanying her for years. She only had to name a tune and the notes were in my head before I ever touched the keys. I expected to stumble, but I played w
ith nuance and feeling—and no mistakes. At the end of our duet of “Waldeslust,” Mira drew the bow slowly over the strings to prolong the final note. As the sound faded away, tears welled up in my eyes at our synchronicity.
As I tried to wipe my eyes without being obvious, she nodded to show she understood. “That song always makes me sad.”
“Love of the Woods?”
“Yes—not the first verse, but the part about the lonely girl who doesn’t want to live anymore. I always want to comfort her.”
“Sing it for me.” I turned back to the piano and played the introduction.
“My father does not know me; my mother does not love me, and I do not like to die I’m still so young. Waldeslust, waldeslust, oh how lonely beats my heart—”
She was singing about herself, and my heart ached for her. “Mira,” I stood and wiped away the tears that coursed down her cheek, “Would it be all right if I kissed you? I mean, really kissed you?”
“Of course it’s all right. We’ve kissed before.”
“Yes, but when we were kids. That doesn’t count, does it?”
“It does. First kisses are important. Our story should pick up again where it started, don’t you agree?” She led the way outside with a teasing smile and climbed up into the tree as easily as she had when we were children.
As I landed beside her, my shyness returned. I wasn’t sure how to start, or how to hold her, or anything. She giggled at my hesitation and laid gentle hands on either side of my face. Teasingly, she kissed me first in greeting, one cheek, then the other, before she pressed her lips to mine. My arms encircled her, and as I held her close, my body awoke. The kiss went from being the kind you’d give to a friend to something more, and the need to possess her thrilled and frightened me in equal measure. We kissed in the tree until I nearly lost my balance and toppled us both off the branch.
We climbed down and resumed kissing lying on the grass beneath the spread branches. When I rolled on top of her and felt her beneath me for the first time, she sighed with pleasure and ran her hand down my back and over my hip. Her perfume mingled with the outdoorsy scents of lilacs and fresh-cut grass, and when she guided my hand to her breast, my body was screaming all systems go and I could barely breathe for the anticipation. But I pulled away.