by Sara Young
In a way, I feel better because of this, knowing that if you are hiding and sacrificing to be safe, then so am I. I have been living so comfortably these past years that I have begun to feel guilty.
Please write and tell me how you are—I haven't heard from you for so long, and it is difficult to not know. You can still reach me through the same address—Tante Mies will know how to get your letter to me. Everyone here is well and sends you their love. Kisses to my brothers, who must be fine big boys by now—Levi will be almost nine; how I wish I could see him. And I cannot even imagine that little Benjamin is seven. The war is almost over, and when it is I will be with you.
All my love, your daughter,
Cyrla
I put the pen down and my hands found my belly, flat and empty, and yet perhaps so full. I was no longer the last link in my family's chain, but rather I might be carrying it already, curled inside me. Safe. I tore up the letter.
That afternoon I slept and paced and read and ate the food Isaak had left for me. I ached for Anneke, as though I had just awakened to the understanding that she was gone. I cried until I couldn't possibly cry any more, and then I cried more. If only I hadn't left her. I'd taken her for granted, had left her alone, and she'd fallen away.
I walked around the room, suddenly anxious to mark it as mine somehow. Could I move the goosenecked lamp? Rearrange Isaak's books? Finally I took down the da Vinci prints and hung them back up in a different order. I thought about where I would be when he noticed and grew ill with fear.
When Isaak returned I told him I wasn't going. "I'll stay here until you arrange my passage. Or until you get me a set of false papers so I can live somewhere nearby."
Isaak sat at his desk. He riffled through a pile of papers, pulled a pair of glasses from his pocket, put them on, and then took them off again and rubbed his eyes. He glanced up at the da Vinci prints and his mouth narrowed for a second, but he didn't say anything. He looked terribly tired.
"Isaak?"
"In the first place, you can't stay here. It is too obviously where you might be."
"But no one knows I'm missing. I died, remember?"
"Your uncle. A man doesn't walk away from his home. I have someone watching the shop and the house. The Germans are watching the shop, too. He hasn't returned, but he will. And he'll look for you here."
I climbed onto Isaak's bed and wedged myself into the corner, my back against the walls. Where I couldn't be bent. "He won't look for me. He'll be glad I've gone. Isaak, this is my life. My choice."
Isaak looked down at his hands on his knees, and spread his fingers. "We've been over this. You don't have a choice. If Anneke doesn't show up, there'll be too much interest."
I didn't like the tone in his voice. As if I were a willful child. "Isaak, it won't work. They'll see right away I'm not Anneke ... my eyes! Tante Mies always said they were the blue of winter seas, while Anneke's were light, like summer seas! You said they measured her eye color.... "
Isaak bent over the wastebasket, pulled out my torn letters. His face fell when he saw my father's name. "You didn't."
"No. I saw it wasn't safe. Besides, I don't know where to post them anymore."
"You refuse to see—"
"Don't!"
"I have to! You think you can simply not show up there? That it will be fine if the Nazis find out Anneke's dead but her cousin's using her papers and by the way, she's Jewish? There were roundups in Twenthe and Enschede last week! Did you know that?"
"Isaak, stop."
"They took them to the labor camp at Westerbork. But they won't stay there long—they'll ship them to Auschwitz. And do you know what happens then? We've just gotten a report—they're gassing people."
"That's not true. That can't be true."
"It's not confirmed. But you can't be blind anymore ... we know they're killing people at the camps! Do you want to take that chance? Are you going to take that chance with your baby? With my baby?"
I glared at him.
Isaak retreated and sat still for a moment. "You're right, that was unfair. But you've got to understand that the risk is too big if you don't go. And there are other people involved."
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back into the corner. "It's just all out of my control."
We sat with this quietly for a moment, then Isaak pulled the packet my aunt had given him from beneath a stack of books and brought it over to the bed and sat beside me. "Let's look at this. It's time we talked about it." His voice was conciliatory and I softened. This was the way Isaak showed his love—by worrying about the worst that could happen and by taking care of things.
He unwrapped the documents, chose an envelope from the packet, and put the other things aside. Anneke's Lebensborn agreement. He held it for me to read, as if he knew I wouldn't be able to touch it.
"You see," he said, "there's nothing here about your eye color, or your description. Those things are filed. The names at the bottom here are important for you to learn. There is a woman's name here; I expect she did the paperwork to admit Anneke. Avoid her if you can. And see this name? Inge Viermetz? She's the head of all the Lebensborns outside Germany. But see? It's just a stamp. I don't think she'll be there."
"How do you know all this?"
"I asked a contact in Germany for information on how things are done at Lebensborn homes. The information I got yesterday came from the home in Klosterheide, near Berlin, but I'd be surprised if it didn't apply to all of them. The Nazis are like that, very standardized. Anyway, it's the best we have. Now, listen. I have a lot to tell you.
"When a girl applies to enter, they put her through a lot of tests. Anneke had them all—we know that. There's the doctor's name—you'll have to stay away from him, too. But listen—at least in the Klosterheide home, the girls aren't examined again until the sixth month. You're not going to be there then."
"But what if someone sees that I'm not the person they met last week?"
"People see what they expect to see. The staff will expect to see Anneke on Friday, and all you have to do is allow them to see her."
"My accent, Isaak—"
"I know. I've thought of that. But the staff is all German, and you'll be speaking German in the home. You learned it here, didn't you? It should be all right."
"How are you going to get me out?"
"I'll send a letter. It will be from Anneke's mother saying that the apple tree blew down. Whatever day and time it blew down—Monday at noon, say—that's when you'll leave. Whatever direction the wind was from, that's the direction you'll head in. You'll take a walk off the grounds and someone will meet you. Do you understand?"
I took the papers and lay them down. "I know what happens if you leave people."
"If you were my own sister, I would ask you to do this. And I swear I will come for you in a matter of weeks ... a month, I can almost promise it will be no more than a month. But just in case, did we ... do you think you're pregnant?"
I was angry with him for being able to compare me to a sister.
"It's too early to know. But Isaak—" I tried to hold his eyes as I slipped my hand down, but he closed them.
"Wait," he said, "there's more to talk about. I want to finish this."
"Isaak, I am not your sister."
TWENTY-THREE
The week passed. In the middle of it, Isaak left for two days of meetings in Amsterdam. I thought I would go mad from loneliness, and I couldn't wait for him to return. But when he did, it was as if only part of him had come back. He answered when I asked him questions, but he never spoke to me otherwise. Each night, we came together in the cot and that was silent, too. I bit my lip against the urge to cry.
And then somehow it was Wednesday, the day before our last. I awoke frantic with a longing for him that was a hunger. Suddenly I understood: I was pregnant. I had to be: I'd felt a shift in my core, as if I'd grown a second heart, deeper. Once more Isaak had meetings to attend. In forty-eight hours I would be on a train to Nijmege
n and I wouldn't see him for weeks. The idea made me ravenous. I dropped to his mattress and lifted his blanket, and found him with my mouth.
Isaak woke and pushed me off him. He rolled away and looked at me as if he didn't know me. Well, how could he ... I didn't recognize myself. Or, no; it was the person I had been before this week who was a stranger. A person who knew nothing at all. Who wasn't carrying a child. I lay down on his chest and pulled the blanket around us, still overwhelmed with my need for him. "Isaak." There was no other word to say. Surely he must say my name now. He didn't, but I felt his body stiffen.
"It's all right." I lifted my head to smile at him. "I'm pregnant."
Isaak studied me for a moment. "How do you know?"
"I just do. I know."
"Well ... good. I'm glad." But he didn't return my smile. He slipped out from under me and rose to sit on his bed. He held his forehead in his palms, his elbows on his knees—his position of worry. "What do you want?" he asked. "What do you want?"
I stood up and started to sit beside him, but I suddenly saw that I was always moving toward him and he was always moving away. I wrapped myself in his blanket and crossed to the window instead. "You."
I prayed for him to stand up and walk over to me. When he turned away, a tight, cold bud of fear unfurled in my chest.
"That's not what this has been for."
My face burned. I flew across the room and knelt in front of him. "Isaak, I love you. What's so difficult? You love me, too."
I took his face in my hands; still I could see it falling away from me in regret.
"No." He took my hands away and sighed. "For God's sake, Cyrla, don't make this—if I could love anyone, it would be you. It should be you. But I can't. Not now."
The fear now swelled to fill my chest, a pressure against my ribs so it was difficult to take a breath. Years ago, I had gone out with a friend on her father's fishing boat. A gale had blown up, and she and I had spent the afternoon seasick and terrified belowdecks, pitched about in the dark hold. I felt this way again now, battered by blows I couldn't see coming and unable to find a lifeline.
But then Isaak himself threw one.
"The war," he said. "It's too dangerous to have any ties. Any complications."
"Complications? Oh, Isaak. It's too dangerous not to love anyone now." I took his hand and sat beside him. "Loving someone gives you a reason. And what else is it for, all the work you do? Why are you helping people escape, if not so they can live their lives? That means loving people."
"I did this so you could take Anneke's place. That's all." Isaak turned away from my eyes and what they were accusing him of. "All right. Yes. I wanted a child. In case—"
"But who will raise this child, Isaak? When the war is over, you'll come for me in England, won't you?" The fear was now huge and tight in my throat, but I had to ask these things. "We'll come back here to live as a family. Isn't that what you're planning?"
"Why do you never see how things are now? Why can't you open your eyes and see it?" Isaak said, rising, suddenly harsh. "Planning anything these days is dangerous. Hope for a future is a liability; it makes you vulnerable. I plan nothing."
"You have it all backward! Hope makes you strong. When the war is over—"
Isaak was pulling his clothes on in a hurry. "When the war is over, you'll be safe. And the child will be safe, too. That's what I'm doing. If I'm still here, I'll do whatever you and our child need. But you don't really think I'll still be here, do you? I'm a Jew and I'm visible. I'll be the first to go."
"You're on the Council."
He shook his head. "In Dubossary, two weeks ago, men who refused to serve on the Council were hanged in public. But a few days later, in Piortków, eleven members of the Council were executed for cooperating with the Underground. It doesn't matter—either way, we're simply more visible."
"Then stop what you're doing. You can't help people if you're dead, Isaak. Come with me to England, now. Arrange it—I need you!"
"You don't need me as much as the others need me. This is my place."
"This is your place, too." I stood and let the blanket drop, and placed Isaak's hand on my belly. He tried to pull it away, but I held it firm. "No. Look at us. We need you. Our whole government is in England—you could work from there."
"This is my place," he repeated. "These are my people. I won't abandon them."
But you'll abandon me? And our baby? I didn't say the words, but I knew Isaak heard them. "You said if you could love anyone, it would be me. Anneke said you have to be brave to love someone. I think you're being heroic to avoid being brave. Isaak, be brave now."
In that moment, with Isaak's hand pressed to my belly, I felt our family being born. Then he pulled his hand away and turned to put on his shoes.
"You're right," he said without meeting my eyes. "I'm not brave. But you are. And that's exactly why it will never be right for us, even if the war were over tomorrow. Don't you see this?"
The room spun, my life collapsing into it. "See what, Isaak? See what?"
He walked to the door and turned. "See this: I draw birds. You fly."
Isaak was gone from me all that day and night, even when he was in the room. It was as if someone else was living behind his eyes. He didn't touch me and he hardly spoke. He watched me return the prints to their proper places in silence.
When he left at two for a meeting, he warned me as usual not to leave the room, but the words seemed cool and hard, tossed at me like stones. I didn't answer.
When he returned, he brought a jar of soup and a loaf of dark, sour bread. We ate in silence. Once, our fingers met as we reached at the same time to tear a piece of bread, and we both jumped back as if burned. Anneke had said that when we made love it would be as if our bodies were saying, "I know you; I know you." She had been wrong.
After we ate, Isaak told me some news from his afternoon, the kind of things he might have told a stranger. Only unimportant words. But then finally, just before we got ready to sleep, he suddenly said, "Anneke."
I smiled at him, glad he wanted to talk and that he was thinking about my cousin. "Yes," I said, "I've been thinking about her so much. I miss her so much."
"Anneke!" he called again.
When I realized what he was doing, I slapped his face. I slapped Isaak's face, which I loved more than any. "Don't call me that!"
"You'll have to get used to it. You can't make a mistake."
"I'll be fine. I'll answer to it. But don't you ever call me that again, Isaak."
I felt free then, as if I no longer cared what happened. Not as if I had risen above caring, but that I had fallen below. Having lost Isaak, and all the others I had left, I had nothing else of value to lose.
TWENTY-FOUR
Thursday, my last day. Isaak left me alone—he would be gone until late—and I was glad. I sat at his desk, his bible open in front of me, trying to read the Hebrew. But I had been gone from it too long. I paced. I stared out the window. I tried to pray, but couldn't remember any words that would fit. God hadn't foreseen this.
When night fell, I dressed in Isaak's big overcoat, found the lawyer's bicycle, and rode into the moonless streets. In the past year, since food had been rationed, some people had released their dogs to fend for themselves. These hungry-eyed animals foraged the streets, their flanks hollowing in like spoons. Three of them followed me, darting and retreating. I wondered if they recognized the look of abandonment in me.
The darkness around my home was solid and still, as if it had been knitting itself into a shroud over the past week. I let myself into the kitchen and lit a candle. The darkness seemed to press around the flame as I made my way up the stairs to my room. An-neke's room.
The house was cold, but in this room the cold was deeper. This room would never be warm again. I stood in the doorway for a long time, drawing the cold air into my lungs. It was like breathing knives. The scent of blood was still in this room, and once again I was filled with a sudden rage against Karl—fo
r what he had stolen from all of us, for what he had set into motion.
Then, without allowing the halo of candlelight to fall upon Anneke's bed bare of its mattress, I crossed the room. On my shelf, my few books. I chose my worn copy of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and pushed it down into my pocket. I opened the drawers of my dresser before I remembered: My aunt had already removed the proof of my life here. No, not all of it. I lifted my mattress and pulled out the flat cigar box I'd kept hidden there. From it, I took the photograph of my family and the tiny box that held my mother's wedding ring, her ruby earrings, and ivory barrette, and slipped them into the deep pocket of Isaak's coat. The silver Sabbath candlesticks my father had sent so long ago; I pressed them to my chest for a moment, wishing I could bring them with me. I set them on the shelf behind me instead and took the last thing from the box: a packet of all the letters my father had sent since I'd come to Holland.
Eleven in all. Only eleven. On top was the last he had written, when the ghetto was being sealed. I knew it by heart, but sometimes only holding it in my hand and reading my father's script brought me peace: We are safe, all of us. It brings me great comfort to know that you are safe, too. The letters were too dangerous to bring, so I left them with the candlesticks; my aunt would know how to dispose of them.
Then I turned to Anneke's dresser and opened the inlaid wooden box that held her jewelry. I fingered the gold and silver pieces that had ceased to gleam without the light of her skin and chose a pair of tiny moonstone teardrop earrings, the ones I had seen her wear most recently. "I'm sorry," I whispered as I closed the jewelry box. Then I took a handkerchief and her bottle of scarlet nail polish. These things would have to sustain me.
At the door, I turned for my last look at this room, empty of me except for a couple of books, the candlesticks and ... I ran back and pulled the top letter from the pile and stuffed it into my pocket, then left quickly in the dark, like a thief.