Two Princes and a Queen

by Shmuel David

  Inge wiped away her tears as she came downstairs. She fell into my arms barely able to control her sobs.

  “Let’s go to the infirmary,” she said in a strained voice. “I want us to talk quietly.” And then she hissed through tight lips, “I don’t want to go back to my bed and meet that Esther again. I can’t deal with her, and I can’t bear her.”

  Later, in the infirmary, sitting in the doctor’s quiet room, she told me everything. How her dreams were dashed when she didn’t find her name on the Youth Aliyah list. How she’d returned to the room in tears and found Esther and Raisel cheerfully packing and singing.

  “You have no idea how angry I was with myself at that moment,” she said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “I should have been more alert, and made sure no one took my place at the last moment.”

  “But what could you have done?” I said. “Break into the infirmary to forge your name on an immigration permit?” I was trying to make her aware of how impossible it was.

  “No. You have no idea, Hanne. I should have been on guard. Even here, at the entrance to the transport director’s office, to make sure no one went in at night,” she said angrily. “And you know what? That Esther, with her seemingly innocent smile and malicious eyes…” Inge was whispering now as if someone was listening. “I give so much of myself and my time to people here. Does anyone appreciate it? What do I get in return? Nothing. And then someone comes along, Esther perhaps, maybe someone else, and interferes with the papers.”

  She began to cry again in justified self-pity.

  “And you know me,” she said. “I don’t do it for a prize. It’s true that Dr. Bezalel respects me and pays me a few dinars each week, but that’s not why I work here. You know me.”

  “Of course I do”, I assured her. “You give of yourself to everyone here, far more than any regular infirmary nurse.”

  “So, am I asking too much? Do you think I care whether people respect what I do or not?” She was angry again. “But I resent being imposed on, exploited for my naïveté, resent people thinking ‘She’s naive. Let’s give her immigration permit to someone else. She probably won’t even feel it.’ What do you think I was doing in the office of the Zagreb envoy? I was trying to convince him that someone did something unethical and that this should be rectified,” she said. “And do you think it made any difference? He sat there like some big-shot director. What does he care? And there I was with tears boiling in my eyes, trying to persuade him. Showing him my age on the list, ‘look, can you see I’m under eighteen?’”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Nothing. Sat there in his wide chair and looked at me with big calf eyes. Until I picked up the list and shoved it into his face. You arrived after it was all over. When I realized the time had come to beg and plead, what do you think he said?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He said, ‘Do you want me to go to someone else and take them off the list? What do you want? Should I go to Esther or Raisel and tell them there’s been a mistake and you aren’t on the list after all. Is that what you want?’” She looked at me helplessly. “What could I do? Tell me.”

  I was silent, because there was nothing to say.

  After a long pause, she added, “But maybe it isn’t such a terrible tragedy. I’ll be joining you in a few weeks anyway, won’t I?”

  “You’re right, that’s absolutely true. I just so wanted us to get there and start our life there together.”

  “And I wanted that even more than you. It’s the reason I did that whole performance for him, because I so badly wanted us to be together. And I was very angry at the foile-shtick that’s happened here.”

  “But Inge, between you and me, you also tried to stretch things a bit. You changed your real age, didn’t you?”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, Hanne. I’ve never been sure of my real age. At some point in school, I wanted to be with the older children, and I told everyone I was born in 1923. And that’s how it stayed on my documents. Who knows?”

  Although I really wanted to leave together, the story about her wishing to be with the older girls didn’t sound plausible to me, but I didn’t want to argue with her, particularly not in her present mood.

  “But you will come to the station on the morning we leave, won’t you?” I asked. “They say almost the entire group will come to say goodbye.”

  “Depends on my mood. Anyway, they say there’s a delay because of the transit visas for the Bulgaria crossing.”

  “As you wish,” I answered morosely.

  “Hanne, come. Don’t be angry. I was just teasing you. What do you think? That I wouldn’t come to say goodbye to you?” She held out her arms, “Come on. Come to me, my love. Let me kiss your lips.” I couldn’t resist and went to her. All the distance between us dissolved in a second and she drew me to her, holding me close as she put her head on my shoulder.

  “Hanne, promise me. Really truly promise me.”

  “Promise you what? I can promise you in advance that…”

  “Wait! You haven’t heard what I mean,” she continued to murmur into my shoulder.

  “So what did you mean?” I asked sullenly.

  “Be faithful to me. Always. Be mine alone. Just as I will be faithful only to you here. Although you gave me a ring three months ago, we aren’t really engaged.” We both burst out laughing, and she pressed her soft, warm lips to mine. I felt the sweetness of her lips pierce my body, setting it aflame.

  But predictably, the following day, the third of March, we did not set off. “The transit visas for Bulgaria have not yet arrived,” the experts explained.

  ***

  It was only the following day, after another battle of nerves, which brought the routine of the entire group to a standstill, that we received the happy news: In two days’ time, on the sixteenth of March, the first of three groups will leave. Everyone must report to the station at seven o’clock in the morning.

  After several days of constant rain, which kept everyone indoors, that morning was washed and fresh, as if a new day had dawned. The clouds drifted away from each other, revealing a light blue sky in the east. The roofs of the town shone clean and bright in the first rays of the sun, and puddles on the railway station paving stones sparkled like precious stones. The station yard was crowded with people, even some who had no son, daughter, or close relative getting on the train but who just wanted to be part of the great experience. At long last, the dream they’d held onto for a year and a half was about to be fulfilled, even if only partially.

  On the way to the station, I was filled with anxiety that Inge might not come to say goodbye. Pauli, who was in a good mood, needled me, saying that today should be a happy day for me, and there I am, walking very dejectedly, with my head down. He couldn’t possibly have understood what was going on inside me at that moment. Sometimes, I think I’d have preferred to be like Pauli, someone for whom life passes without really penetrating or changing him. He always behaved as if life was wonderful if you only knew how to enjoy it. He always succeeded at everything he did. He’d also inherited Father’s good hands. All I got was Mother’s heart—so they always said about me. A sensitive, transparent heart, just like Mother.

  We walked in the direction of the station, each of us holding the same small suitcase we had with us that morning at Vukovar, while waiting for the Tzar Nikolai.

  Mother and Father walked beside us, but I could only think of Inge, fearing she wouldn’t come. We had said our farewells the evening before, for the fourth time, perhaps, but my lips still stung with longing and the taste of her kisses.

  We parted, feeling sure we’d be reunited soon, but something in her face reflected an acceptance of fate that seemed to drive a wedge between us.

  When we got there, the long train was already waiting silently at the platform. I gazed at the windows: all the shutters wer
e closed. How would I see the landscape? I asked myself. Terrible to travel for so many days behind closed shutters.

  We waited there with the rest of the crowd. I stood on the tips of my toes, turning my head in all directions. Maybe Inge would still appear, for the last time, just before we boarded the train. Every moment brought new announcements about boarding time or the reason for the delay.

  Mother hugged us every few minutes.

  “Write and tell us how you’re settling in,” she said, hugging us again. “And dress warmly. It’s cold now in Palestine.”

  Father stood upright as usual; he was clearly emotional. With his height and dignity, his long elegant coat very shabby and stained now, he stood out in the human landscape there. He took me and Pauli aside and warned us again about bad people we might encounter in every place.

  “You may think that all people are good, but Hanne, don’t be so naive,” he said clapping me on the shoulder with his heavy hand. “You have no idea yet of the kind of people there are in this world.”

  “But Father,” I tried to argue. “We’ve been living here among all kinds of people for a long time. Isn’t that enough?”

  He looked at me reproachfully. “No, Hanne, it certainly isn’t enough. These are all our people here. Most of them have more or less the same goal and come from a similar background. That’s not the issue.”

  “Parents and relatives, please stand back. In a few minutes, the immigration permits will be examined for the last time,” announced Yokel in a loud voice. “We want to see only the youth group now.”

  Mother kissed me and Pauli with mixed joy and sadness.

  “I miss you already,” she said.

  Father bent to hug us, and then they stepped back and we remained with the youth group and counselors.

  All of a sudden, out of the crowd came Inge, running frantically toward me in her white nurse’s uniform, heavy winter coat, and a scarf on her head. As she came closer, I saw the tension in her face. With shaking shoulders, she fell into my arms.

  “I couldn’t bear it anymore,” she sobbed. “I knew you were here, and I suddenly thought I might not see you again, that maybe this would be the last time.”

  Putting my suitcase down on the paving stones, I clasped her firmly to me. For a moment, we ignored all the eyes probably staring at us, and I felt the taste of her lips on mine. And this might be the last time, I thought.

  After a long moment, she pulled away from me and was immediately swallowed up in the crowd.

  * * *

  22From the Yiddish word tinef, meaning “soil” or “blemish,” and written back to front as the name of the theater.

  ─ Part II ─

  Amsterdam Nursing Home, New York

  Seven in the evening. Alan exited the underground at Broadway, at the corner of Ninety-Sixth. Luckily, the express goes all the way from my downtown office to upper Broadway in twenty minutes, he thought to himself as he shut his umbrella and tightened his woolen scarf. The wet street shone with pink and yellow reflections from the store lights.

  He knew that Erica was waiting for him. This was his second visit to her at the nursing home since his daughter had told him about her. Nina spent two afternoons a week there as part of a good citizenship program.

  His first meeting with Erica had been short. He told her how he’d gotten to her through Nina, and Erica told him how she’d been a battalion nurse and lost her right eye fighting with Čiča‘s Partisans in the winter of 1944.

  His daughter Nina didn’t immediately understand his enormous excitement when he learned that the blind old woman she took care of twice a week as part of a good citizenship program, wasn’t “just” a Partisan hero who fought with Čiča’s battalion, but was apparently the sole living survivor of the large group of Ma’apilim who’d remained in Sabac and not boarded the train to freedom.

  Alan suddenly realized that while he’d been busy at work and seen Nina as a little girl who needed protection from the cruel, outside world, his daughter had grown, and he could now tell her things that in the past he’d tried to spare her. So he sat down with her in her room and told her grandfather’s story, until Rachel called them to dinner.

  He told her about the innocent, happy childhood in that luxurious home in Belgrade during the 1920s and 1930s, about the desperate attempt to reach Eretz Israel, illegally, sailing on three riverboats down the Danube River. He told her how a voyage meant to last a week or two turned into a traumatic journey, filled alternately with hope and frustration, and that ultimately took a year and a half. He promised to show her his father Hanne’s diary of the journey. At dinner, Nina said she wanted to meet Erica again.

  “Now that I understand she’s almost family…” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “And why are we living here?” Nina suddenly asked. “After all, Grandfather went through all that suffering just to get to Eretz Israel, not America!”

  “Look, Nina, maybe you’re too young to understand, but…” he stammered awkwardly, remembering that he had no appropriate response to her question because he himself had been accompanied by that very conflict for years.

  “Why do you think I’m too young, Dad? I’m fourteen now, and I’ve already written one good citizenship report and gotten a grade of excellence.”

  “Well, Israel is a very difficult country to live in; not everything is good there.”

  “But it’s our country,” she insisted. “We studied Herzl and Zionism just a few months ago. It did seem a little far away from me, but now that I’ve heard Grandfather’s story, I feel connected.”

  “There are always wars going on over there,” Rachel attempted to dampen Nina’s enthusiasm.

  “Dad, I want you to take me there, to see Grandfather’s home. Please, Dad!”

  “We’ll think about it,” responded Alan. “Not this year, but maybe next year.”

  ***

  Now, sitting beside Erica, Alan wondered about her family situation. Did she have any family in America? Maybe she was alone and had come to die here in this nursing home, without anyone to visit her. As if she could hear his thoughts, she began to speak.

  “I also had a family,” she said with a heavy sigh. “My husband died fourteen years ago, and my daughter lives in Michigan, but she comes to visit occasionally. How is that sweet Nina of yours doing? She’s such a devoted little girl.”

  “She’s great. Taking everything very seriously, as always.”

  “Her devotion touched my heart. I thought that generation was spoiled. They didn’t go through what we did.”

  Alan pushed her wheelchair along the corridor to the large veranda overlooking the myriad lights dotting the steel cables stretched between the tall, illuminated columns of the bridge. This was the George Washington Bridge, a two-story engineering wonder suspended above the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York. He took care not to knock into corners as the corridor curved, and recalled pushing another wheelchair at Fliman Hospital in Haifa, and his father’s unrelenting distress.

  “No need to run, Alan,” he’d bark. “No need to hurry anywhere anymore.”

  “Tell me again what you see, Alan,” Erica asked. “You do it so well. Have you ever thought of being a writer?”

  “Several times,” he said. “But my job is very demanding, then marriage, and one baby, then another. You know how it goes. So, opposite us are the illuminated arches of the bridge, and they look close enough to touch with our fingers. To the west, beyond the highway along the Hudson, you can see the distant lights of New Jersey. Between them and the highway is the river. It’s dark now, apart from a large cargo ship with a chimney decorated with lights. On the highway, you can see the red lights of cars speeding south, in the direction of the city center, to a theater or dinner at a fancy restaurant. The road is still wet; you can see reflections of colorful, dappled light in the puddle next to the pavement.”


  “It makes me think of the Kraljica Marija at night. It was always decorated as if for a party on the Danube. Rows and rows of lights hanging on deck and strung around the chimney. Every evening, we’d see that festive picture, the very opposite of our oppressive thoughts: For how long would we be stuck here? When would the signal be given for us to set out toward freedom?”

  “I’m curious to hear about the railway platform in Sabac on the morning of departure.”

  “It was a rainy morning in the middle of March. Those about to board the train couldn’t believe it was finally happening. Everyone was thinking about a brief parting, a month or two at the most, after which we’d all be reunited. Who knew what would happen just two weeks later? We had no idea that, in fact, we were parting forever,” she said, tightening the woolen blanket around her body.

  “You were very young, weren’t you?”

  “I was already nineteen, and anyway, fighting for one’s life makes you older. I remember standing opposite the carriage of children who were twelve to thirteen, and the sight of those small hands waving from the windows is ingrained in my memory as if it were today. Afterward, they closed the shutters so no one would know it was a children’s transport. When I think of that time in Sabac, and before that in Kladovo, I’m filled with nostalgia. We had many good experiences too, a busy social life, many cultural activities. The horror only began when the Germans arrived, and this happened not long after the parting at the train station.”

  “How well did you know Inge?”

  Retaliation, March 1941

  “Inge and I were good friends. we planned to escape together. I didn’t know your father well, of course. But I remember a tall, good-looking fellow who’d sometimes come looking for her at the infirmary or the ‘magazine,’ as they called the long storage building near the mill. He was a little shy, withdrawn. He had a brother, didn’t he?”