It Was That Night

by Rikke Barfod

  “Are you not well, mein Knabe?”

  I mutter, “I’m fine.”

  “But you hardly eat. What’s wrong?” He puts his arm around me.

  The net breaks. I burst out crying. My father holds me. “What is it?”

  “It’s Ursula.”

  “What about Ursula? Do you miss her?”

  I squirm. “It is not that.”

  “Isaac, do you know something about Ursula, you haven’t told?”

  I shatter into a thousand pieces.

  “It is just … maybe she did not leave the school. I saw her hide in a cupboard.” There – it’s out.

  “Are you saying you just left her there without saying anything?” My father takes his arms away and looks at me like he’s never seen me before.

  “But …” A thousand snakes writhe in my stomach.

  My father turns away. “I have to get hold of Leah. She’s probably still with that fisherman, since we haven’t heard from her.”

  A couple of weeks go by; then comes the terrible news: Leah has died. My mother sits rocking on the floor. “But the child? The child!”

  “Nobody has found her.”

  “No, the baby. Is the baby alive?”

  My father looks confused: “Nobody said anything about a baby. I will ask again.”

  I should have looked in the cupboard. I should not have let people push me forward. I should have told my father and mother. However many times I torture myself with these thoughts, it does not bring Ursula back. I remember how frightened I’d been. Scared in every cell of my body. And arriving at the boats there was no time to think. You just got on board the rowing-boat, and then onto the trawler.

  My father tries again via all possible channels to get more information. But nobody says anything about a baby. The fisherman, Gustav, in whose house Leah had died, is asked; he says that the baby died.

  I can never forget. The guilt is always there, like leprosy, eating me from inside. I learn to live with it; learn to speak Swedish, to go to school, have school friends. All of which helps to distract me from thinking the thoughts that I have to learn not to think.

  My father sends me to a psychologist, Dr. Eriksson. Dr. Eriksson spends a lot of time and effort in making me realize that the guilt is not mine alone. It must be shared with my father and mother. They should have been aware of Ursula not coming with them from the school. After all they were the adults. It does help. But not enough.

  The war is finally turning. My father is working in a hospital in Lund. He is a highly regarded surgeon and his connections help him. The hospital finds us a nice flat near my school. My Mother has a good time with the doctors’ wives and other refugee women. I attend high school and make really good friends. The newspapers are eagerly read, especially the news from Denmark. More and more refugees come across from Denmark. We even meet old friends. One afternoon after school, Morten, who used to teach Ursula and who drove us to the coast That Night, calls to me across the street. “It got too hot to stay in Denmark,” he shouts. “And how are things with you all?”

  I fall back into my hole and run away.

  When my father comes home from work, he takes one look at me and drives me straight to Dr. Eriksson.

  “You have to learn to talk about it,” Dr. Eriksson says. “Don’t hide it. Say it as it is.”

  Easy for him to say. It turns out to be true. When I come home, Morten is there. He gives me a big hug. “I am so sad to hear about Ursula. It must be so awful for you,” he says. “I understand why you ran from me in the street.” He sighs. “She was such a fun girl and so eager to learn. We will all miss her.” He hugs me again. I feel relieved. It is out in the open. One can speak about it.

  The war ends one fine day in May. As everybody else we Jews in exile in Sweden are ecstatic with joy. The dark cloud has disappeared. My mother gets my father to contact the Red Cross in order to find out about Jacov. Did he survive?

  “And maybe we can connect with the fisher family who helped Leah.”

  There is a lot of talk about creating a new Jewish state. My father and mother want to go there when it is established. I have one year left of high school and then I want to go to university. I do not want to leave and once more go to a new country and once more learn a new language. Enough is enough. And … a face with golden curls keeps interrupting my thoughts. I will stay.

  “If you want to go so much, why don’t you?”

  “And let you stay here on your own?” my mother cries wringing her hands helplessly.

  “Honestly, I’ll be eighteen next year.”

  My mother sits down heavily. “And if something happens to you, who will look after you?”

  “I’ll be fine. I can stay with Petter. It’s already arranged.”

  Petter had become my best friend. He is very much into skiing. In the summer it’s sailing. I often go with him in his father’s boat. Sailing makes me forget. He knows I suffer from nightmares. You camp very close in a small boat. But we never talk about it.

  The months drag on. Finally, after waiting more than a year we receive the message: Jacov has been in Theresienstadt – but has vanished after the war.

  “Let’s do what we have wanted to do for so long. Let us go to Denmark to see Leah’s grave and thank that fishing family for helping her. Maybe they’ll have some news.”

  The thought is unbearable. For days I disappear to the forest. I only return when hunger drives me. My father tells my mother to leave me in peace.

  We go. The nightmare escalates. The baby has survived. She looks exactly like Ursula. My mother wants to take the child, Inga, with her, but finally agrees to let her stay with the fishing family. It is obvious that for Inga they are her parents. And they love her. I suspect my mother to be secretly glad that we didn’t take Inga with us.

  My mother and father are to sail for Palestine in May 1948, three years after the end of the war. Before sailing they travel to West Germany to try and find Jacov. Without success.

  The flat is sublet. My mother doesn’t like it much in Israel. She comes back to Sweden after a short while. My father throws himself into work on a kibbutz. The surgeon working with oranges!

  My mother visits him often, but she has made friends in Sweden and is content. She works for some years as a cashier in a grocery shop. Her first job ever. My father does not come back. They were never really very Jewish and I often wonder why my father wants to stay in Israel. He is not even working as a surgeon.

  One of the few times we meet, he tries to explain:

  “It seems like payback for being allowed to be alive.”

  “But why not work as a surgeon?” I ask in amazement.

  He frowns and answers: “The oranges seem to need me more.”

  I shake my head in bewilderment. I just don’t get it.

  Chapter 21

  Isaac

  Fiskersund

  13. May 1957

  After getting my master’s degree in psychology and after having emptied my head of all the useless information, a need I didn’t know I had, forces its way to my attention. I feel very strongly now that it is vital to see Sarah. I have begun to dream about Ursula – and the feeling of guilt, which is never far away, emerges again. I re-read the halting letters my mother has received from the fishing family.

  “Why did you never visit?” I ask my mother?

  “It was too hard. I couldn’t bear it. It would be too heartbreaking to see the child and not take her with me.”

  “Well, I’m going,” I say, holding on to my decision. I know I have to go. The dreams are pulling very hard at me.

  I wonder how Sarah is doing. She must now be the same age Ursula was when she disappeared – died?

  A nice sunny day in May, I make up my mind after having dithered for almost a month. I cross over by ferry from Helsingborg to Elsinore and take the quaint local train to the village, Fiskersund. My mother did not come with me. I have been to Denmark, mostly to Copenhagen, several times before with frie
nds, but never gone to that particular village. It has grown, but the yellow fishing cottage by the beach is easy to find.

  When I get there, panic makes my body tremble. I can’t get myself to knock at the door. I need time. A walk on the deserted beach might calm me. It does. The waves lap lazily, the sand is warm and a few clouds wisp slowly around. Perfume from rosehips permeates the air. The view across to Sweden makes my heart happy. Such blue water against the ragged Swedish coastline. As I turn to go back to the house a girl careers into me.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  I look closer at her. The air around me reels; I sit down with a bump.

  “Are you Okay?” The girl asks, concerned.

  I look at her again. There is no doubt. She’s the spitting image of Ursula. Pretty with her long black plaits, blue dress and a wide grin. Tall for her age. Same face, same build. I draw big gulps of air and a voice I don’t recognize croaks:

  “You must be Sarah.” She freezes.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “You look so much like Ursula. I am your cousin, Isaac.”

  It’s her turn to sit down with a bump.

  For a long time, neither of us speak.

  “I …” we both start.

  “You go on,” I say.

  Even her voice sounds like Ursula, when she says, “Last month I discovered I was adopted – and also that my name was Sarah.”

  I am bewildered. “But didn’t they tell you? They promised they would.”

  “Hah, promises. They …” she pauses. “I am still so mad at them. They should have told me.” She tells me how she found out. “I’ve been angry ever since. It is all so confusing. They told me nothing. Not about you, not about your parents.”

  She reaches down for a stone and throws it far into the sea. Her face puckers. “I don’t know anything. It’s like ... I don’t know who I am or ... And I don’t really like being angry at them, but what else can I do? They don’t say anything.”

  We get up and walk along the beach. She tells me a little about her life, how she loves music and is learning to play the piano.

  “I would prefer the violin. It sounds so beautifully sad, but they got all funny when I asked. The piano is Okay, though. Do you play anything?”

  “No, I always get the blues when I hear music. It reminds me of Ursula. She too played the piano and she loved floating away to music.”

  “Who is Ursula? You know, since I was little, I’ve dreamed about a lady asking me to find Ursula.”

  My legs buckle. My body seizes up, tears begin to fall. I wipe them angrily away and sit down. My reaction shocks her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “What …?”

  After a while my body relaxes a bit, “No, I’m sorry. I can never forget. But it’s got nothing to do with you. I’d better tell you the whole story. Ursula disappeared during our escape to Sweden.”

  Telling her about Ursula and the cupboard brings the whole thing back. I’m trembling when I finish.

  “You poor thing,” she says. “It must be horrible carrying that around. But who is she?”

  “Haven’t you understood? She is your big sister.”

  She jumps up and skips around:

  “What! I have a sister! But that’s fantastic. What I have always dreamt about.”

  A seagull screeches. The waves lap happily while I tell her that nobody knows if Ursula is still alive. “Nobody knows if she ever got out of that cupboard.”

  For a while neither of us say anything, then she asks, “Can’t we find out if she is still there?”

  “She isn’t. She would have been found. She probably got killed during the escape.”

  “Oh. It was such a happy thought, having a sister. So what about my … your mother and father? And do I have any other relatives?”

  I tell her about my mother and father who have moved to Israel. “At least my father lives there full time now. My mother misses her Swedish friends and is often back for months at a time. I don’t know about any other relatives. Your father …”

  “I have a father?” Once more she jumps up and pirouettes on the beach. “I have a Father!” She sings.

  “He has not been found. But my father has met someone who was in Theresienstadt with him.”

  “Theresienstadt?”

  “The concentration camp where they sent the Danish Jews. It was not an extermination camp.”

  Her face puckers “Oh. I know nothing about anything.”

  There is hope in her eyes when she asks: “Is my father still alive?”

  “He might be. The Red Cross has not been able to find him.”

  She’s very still for a long time, closes her eyes, folds her jacket together and sits down.

  “I want to see him. I wish … Tell me about him.”

  I tell her about uncle Jacov who used to be such fun – and how much he adored Ursula.

  “He played the violin, and Ursula would dance around.”

  Her whole face lights up. “Really?”

  “If he’s found, my mother and father will be told, and I’ll let you know immediately,” I say.

  Sarah gets up. We walk on until she sits down on a bench and looks out to sea for a long time. After a while she says: “When they told me, they didn’t really say anything about the Jewish business. The only thing I know is, not to eat pork. What does it actually mean, being Jewish?”

  “A lot of heartache as far as I can see,” I answer.

  “No, but really? It might explain a lot of things.”

  “What, for instance?”

  Her voice is eager: “Seeing and hearing things other people can’t for one. Having strange dreams.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with being Jewish. That’s just an extra sense you have.”

  “But what is it, being Jewish?” She is persistent just like Ursula used to be.

  “It’s really nothing. Some people holding on to old stories. Like for instance if all the Danes started behaving like the Vikings used to do.”

  She laughs. “Yeah, that would be fun. No, but …” She bites her lip.

  “There is no difference between Jews and other people. Only some Jews think there is.” I am emphatic.

  “Umm. So, tell me about you.”

  I tell her I just graduated as a psychologist.

  “Psychologist, why?”

  I laugh. “I thought it might help me to live with my guilt, and maybe help other people in similar situations.”

  She knits her brow. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  We walk for a long time and talk. She is easy to talk to, maybe because I unconsciously think I am talking to Ursula. She finds it funny when I use Swedish words interspersed with Danish ones.

  On our way back to the house, she stops, “..don’t come in. I need to think about this.”

  “Would you like me to write to you?” I ask.

  “That would be very nice,” she answers. “Especially, if you hear about my father. I want so much to see him. After finding out I’m adopted, I don’t really know who I am anymore.”

  I promise to write and give her my address in Sweden.

  “You’d better write to my friend’s address,” she says and writes it down. “In case my parents get upset.”

  She hugs me. I feel so much lighter than when I arrived and hug her back.

  “I’m so happy I came,” I say.

  “Me too,” she says and disappears into the house.

  So, Sarah and I keep in touch. I simply cannot think of her as Inga. A couple of years ago my father wrote to tell me that Jacov had been found. He lives in a small village outside Heidelberg. My father and mother went to see him in the beginning of 1963.

  “Isaac, he is very bitter, and when he found out that Leah and Ursula had died, he threw us out of the house,” my father wrote.

  Of course I wrote to Sarah and told her. She phoned me, as soon as she got the letter.

  “Isaac, is this really true? I want to see him.”

 
“Sarah, he threw my parents out of the house. They didn’t have a chance to tell him about you.”

  “So you think I shouldn’t go.”

  “I can’t advise you. You might be very disappointed. I’ll ask my parents.”

  Sarah didn’t go. She got ill, and later she moved to Bornholm where she met Mogens. They had Claire. But I have often thought that I probably shouldn’t have discouraged her to go and see Jacov. We meet sometimes, when her husband is away. Unfortunately, Mogens seems to have taken a real dislike to me.

  

  Chapter 22

  Isaac

  Lund, Sweden

  5th April 1983

  The phone rings. The sound is amplified in my quiet flat. I turn off the gas and answer it. It’s Sarah. She sounds breathless.

  “Isaac, I have news.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Claire can see things.”

  “So?”

  “Well, she has seen Ursula. So have I, for that matter.”

  I grab the table for support.

  “Is Ursula alive?” A rainbow of hope spreads over my world.

  “No, her ghost, I guess you’d call it.”

  “Oh.” The rainbow disappears, covered by black confusion.

  “Claire’s school has been renovated, and a skeleton has been found in a cupboard.”

  My body folds. It’s lucky there’s a chair right behind me. It cannot be true. How many times have I told myself that Ursula did escape; that she lives with other people.

  “Why wasn’t she found before this?” I ask, when I’m able to trust my voice to pronounce understandable words.

  “The Germans had built a sound-proof concrete wall. Apparently, they were in a hurry and did not bother opening the cupboard. I think they used the attic for ‘interrogation’. But that’s not my point. Like I said, I have seen her.”

  “Seen who?”

  “Ursula, of course.”

  “What do you mean you have seen her? Her skeleton you mean? And how can anybody be sure that it is Ursula?” I can hear the tiny hope that slips into my voice.