My Family for the War (29 page)

“Ask your mum for some old clothes of your dad’s,” one woman told me, “and best bring them right away.”

“I will,” I replied, and hurried out, energized by the desire to make a useful contribution too. I was so intent on my errand that I didn’t look left or right and didn’t know at first from which direction someone suddenly called my name.

“Frances? Frances! Frances!”

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around breathlessly. Uncle Matthew… ? But I couldn’t spot him anywhere, only the bearded man from the synagogue gave his stack of paper and pens to his colleague and rushed toward me with long strides.

And I, now that I had finally recognized him, was so shocked that I turned right around and ran away! “Amanda!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Ziska and Frances, masters of the inappropriate response, champions of flight.

But my response didn’t matter anymore. Amanda saw
me coming, Uncle Matthew right behind me, and I saw right away that the fight they had had before his departure was a thing of the past. They threw themselves into each other’s arms, disbelieving, joyous, shaken, and then tried to do everything all at once: laugh, cry, kiss, whisper. I stood next to them, torn between fascination and deep embarrassment—the moment when a film would have cut to the next scene was long past!

“I’ll head home, then, and put on the tea,” I finally said. But it didn’t seem to interest anyone in the least that I was still there.

So I started off, thinking about how unsettling and difficult it was to be at the mercy of love, and thoroughly convinced that it would be better to do without it during wartime.

Uncle Matthew and the man who sold stationery in Finchley, whose idea it had been, made sure that the soldiers’ letters were sent off quickly. Then he came home, slept almost twenty-four hours straight, shaved off the beard that had made him seem so unfamiliar, and was finally “back” for me too.

“Say, what would you think of a little walk, Frances?” he suggested the next morning.

“Alone?” I asked, astonished and a little unnerved, because I had assumed he and Amanda wouldn’t want to be apart for even a minute! But Uncle Matthew said, “You and I haven’t seen each other for so long—I think there are a few things we should talk about.”

It took an unexpectedly long time to make our way down the street. Every few yards someone came out of
their house to greet Uncle Matthew and ask him the same questions: Had he really been there at the beach and in the boats, was it true that the British had been forced to leave all their military equipment in France, and why had the Germans been able to beat us in the first place? Uncle Matthew patiently explained to each of them that he had stood belly deep in the English Channel while bullets splashed into the water all around him, that they had been shot at from planes for sixteen hours a day prior to that without any British fighters appearing in the sky, and that in his opinion, England had entered this war woefully inadequately prepared.

The more often I heard it, the more horrified I was, because only then did I understand what a miracle it was that Uncle Matthew had come home unharmed! I was glad when we finally reached the next street, where no one knew us and no one asked questions.

“Frances, I want to tell you how deeply sorry I am that you’ve lost your father,” Uncle Matthew began, and he looked at me with such sadness that much to my chagrin, tears welled up in my eyes. To not be able to cry for Papa and then to tear up because someone expressed sympathy for
me
—that was absurd!

“I’ve seen a lot of men die in the past few days,” he continued, “and believe me, it’s something I’ll never forget. But I also saw many, many men praying—to God, to Jesus, to Mary, to the saints. God is so much greater than we can ever imagine. So why shouldn’t he appear to different people in different forms? Your father was a Christian, but he was also a Jew. He was one of us. We want to ask you if it would
offend your parents in any way if we prayed a kaddish for him.”

“Oh, Uncle Matthew, definitely not! That would be so wonderful… and I couldn’t be at the funeral in Holland, you know…”

“Exactly,” he said kindly. “So that’s settled.”

I hooked my arm into his. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

“So am I, with my whole heart! I heard the most amazing things about you—you being here was the only thing that kept Amanda from total despair. I should never have left against her will. But one word—
la France!
—and there was no stopping me.” He shook his head remorsefully. “And now look what I’ve done! My expensive equipment is gone, I barely escaped with my life, and am more than grateful that my wife will have me back at all.”

“And now?” I asked, letting go of his arm again.

“We’re still at war. I’ll help take care of the Frenchmen and then sign up for the Home Guard. And Amanda wants to go back to helping her old people at the nursing home at least once a week in addition to working at the Elysée. We’ll have to see how we manage everything. While we’re at it, do you have any wishes?”

“No!” I replied, and laughed. “I just want to stay with you. Otherwise I don’t care about anything.”

“That would be my next point,” Uncle Matthew continued in a serious tone. “We’re facing a power that will go to any lengths—I hardly need to tell you that! Over in France they ran right over us, and if they should attack here in the next days or weeks, we don’t have much left to fight them off with. Frances…” He hesitated a moment
and then decided to speak openly. “There’s no reason to think they’ll spare the Jews in this country. Under the circumstances, it would be better for you not to be staying with a Jewish family.”

I stood still in disbelief. Uncle Matthew didn’t notice it because he was looking at the ground as he walked on. “In a different family you might be able to… hide. No one would ever need to know who you are!”

When he turned around there were five paces between us, but it seemed like an entire vast ocean. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole world can know who I am,” I said. “I’m starting to feel quite content with it, actually! You can’t just send me away anymore, Uncle Matthew, because my home is with you!”

“Send you away?! We’re worried about your safety…”

“I know. You want to give me back to my mother unharmed, if she comes. You know, I can hardly stand to hear that anymore.” Suddenly I screamed at him, “Maybe my mother isn’t coming back! Maybe she’s already dead! Maybe I don’t have anyone else left except for you!”

“I’ll be darned,” murmured Uncle Matthew. “I messed it up. Calm down, Frances, no one wants to send you away. Just forget what I said, okay? It was a long night. Maybe we didn’t think it through carefully.”

“Apparently not!” I shot back, and started to tremble—not because I was seriously afraid of being sent away, but because I could hardly believe what I had just said.

My mother might not be coming back.

And Uncle Matthew hadn’t contradicted me. So he and Amanda had already thought of that possibility.

Exhausted, I lay on my bed, where I had started sleeping again two nights ago, and stared at the ceiling, searching inside of me for some glimmer of hope, a prayer, to undo that terrible sentence. But there was none.

Maybe she won’t come back.

It wasn’t a new thought, and I had known for a long time that it was the truth. But I should never, ever have spoken it aloud. It felt as if by speaking the words out loud, I had set something unstoppable into motion.

You can’t do anything more for your mother.

Live! And live well!

My home is with you now.

One thought followed to its end. A new one begun.

Chapter 16

Herr Mittenbaum had a weakness for folk songs. At first it seemed so inappropriate to be singing German songs in a Jewish retirement home. But after several nurses had poked their heads into the room and remarked that it was just the right medicine for the residents’ homesickness, and did I happen to know “
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten
,” I went home and practiced everything the music teacher in Berlin had ever taught us.

This was my second visit with Herr Mittenbaum, and I boldly made my way through all the verses of “
Lorelei.
” The other elderly men who shared the room sat on their beds and quietly hummed along. But I knew Herr Becher was only putting up with it until I finally started translating the newspaper for them.

The sharp, bright tone of the sirens cut right through the song, and right through my chest. I sat with my mouth open, mute, without breathing—my first air raid! In school, I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t been through one yet; secretly I actually wanted to get it over with soon so I could finally be in the know.

But that wish flew out the window the instant the siren started screeching, up and down in a spine-chilling wail. “W-what do we do now?” I stuttered, frozen with fear.

“We wait,” said Herr Becher. “Go ahead and start the first page!”

I reached for the newspaper as if hypnotized and whispered in German: “President Roosevelt intends to increase material support of France following Italy’s declaration of war, but is opposed to the United States entering the war.”

The door opened and a small army of nurses came in pushing wheelchairs in front of them. “Let’s go, into the wheelchairs, gentlemen!” one of them called. “Time for a trip to the cellar!”

“Is everything okay, dear?” Amanda asked, and touched my cheek lightly before she helped Herr Mittenbaum into a wheelchair. I nodded weakly and followed them down a long hallway with a gleaming linoleum floor, where it smelled like the cabbage soup that had been served for lunch.

At the end of the corridor, four more nurses came out of the elevator with empty wheelchairs to go collect more of the residents. Amanda took my hands and placed them on the handle of Herr Mittenbaum’s wheelchair. “You ride down with him, Frances. I’ll take the stairs,” she said.

“
Ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten…
” Herr Mittenbaum sang happily.

The elevator door opened and there was Amanda, who had gotten to the cellar even faster than us. I stumbled out past her.

“Would you like to push Herr Mittenbaum into the shelter, Frances?” she asked.

I grasped the left handle of the wheelchair as she took the right one. Together we steered Herr Mittenbaum through the basement.

It was warmer and brighter down here than I had expected—not the dim, damp room where, in my imagination, the bomb raids played themselves out. There were a radio and gramophone, plenty of blankets, and even beds, which were already occupied by the weaker residents. The wailing sirens only came through quietly and from far away, as if it couldn’t possibly be meant for us. “I’ll help get the rest of the people and then I’ll come be with you,” Amanda said softly.

“
Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städtele hinaus
?” Herr Mittenbaum started to croon. But Herr Becher immediately pressed the newspaper into my hand: “Enough singing, it’s time for the news!”

It was almost two hours before the single, sustained note of the all-clear signal released us from the cellar, and it was another hour before all the old people had been transported back to their rooms and I could catch my first glimpse outside. To my astonishment, absolutely nothing had changed. Nothing had been damaged, and people walked through the streets perfectly calmly, as if they were coming out of a department store instead of air-raid shelters. “Is that it?” I asked, puzzled.

“Well, of course that’s it!” Amanda lifted one eyebrow. “Did you think anything would happen to us now, two days before Gary’s furlough? God’s ways may be infathomable, but I can’t imagine that his timing would be so awful!”

I had missed Gary’s first two visits when I was in Tail’s
End, and even this third home leave wasn’t a sure thing. After Italy declared war on us, an attack on the British bases in the Mediterranean was to be expected. “Now they’ll never let him go!” Amanda had fretted.

But just a day later a telegram arrived from Gary: His well-deserved vacation would take place as planned! He would come, even if it would only be for a week.