A Perfect Madness (16 page)

“
You need not feel
foolish, dearie. The preaching you can ignore. It’s the reading of
the Old Book and the singing that would be for you.”

Most of the congregation was already
seated when Julia arrived and took her seat next to Mrs. McFarland,
who was holding Anna. Many of the women were dressed no better than
she, with scarves of poor color covering their heads. Others,
wearing the brightest of their Sunday best, sat proudly with their
families, all the while looking around at Julia. But the pride was
Angie McFarland’s this day, sitting next to Julia—a distant young
warrior from Prague who would be fighting alongside their own
Scottish lads against the Germans. Nevertheless, for the rest of
the congregation, seeing a Jew sitting in a Presbyterian church
this far north in Scotland, where even a Catholic might still fear
to be, was a rare treat for the tongues of those who cared. And
Julia felt it, even though their tongues kept silent. The final
amen would not come too soon for her.

Riding back to London on the late
afternoon train, the wonders of the weekend played on Julia’s mind
like the soft chords of a Brahms’s lullaby. The sweetness of Mrs.
McFarland was everywhere. She had boxed a small dinner of raw
vegetables, with buttered raisin bread and oatmeal cookies, none
store bought, for Julia to eat on the long ride home. Looking back
at the day, getting through Easter services wasn’t too bad, Julia
thought. Everybody was polite, some more than others, and smiled.
It was the preaching that was miserable. An hour and a half of
condemning sin and about everything else rotten in the world didn’t
leave much room for talking up what was good. That is, unless there
was a lot of explaining to do among the church folks. Praying was
special, though, because the good Lord was asked to protect all
those souls soon going to war enough times to include her and Eva,
Julia believed. Then everyone recited the 23
^rd
Psalm,
her father’s favorite, which sent cold shivers down her spine with
the “valley of death” waiting in Prague for her.

Julia felt good now. In all her life,
with churches circled around her, she had never once sat through a
Protestant or Catholic service, not that she didn’t want to, or was
prohibited by her father. Julia knew she wasn’t welcome unless she
was ready to become a Christian, which she would never do. Mrs.
McFarland was different, though. Being a Jew was who Julia was, and
being a Presbyterian was who she was. Nothing else mattered and
Julia loved her for it. As Julia was leaving, Mrs. McFarland had
taken her hand and said, “We are family now, you and me. So you
must not call me Mrs. McFarland anymore. Angie is my name, you
know, and I love you dearly.” What wonderful stories she would keep
to tell Anna someday.

Julia watched the early evening
shadows racing along beside the train and over the open green
fields and hills, where every now and then a gathering of sheep
stood together watching the train pass by. As the shadows darkened
to night, lights began to appear among the sprinkling of cottages
on the hillsides near the tracks. Easter day was over for these
good people, Julia thought; and her own Passover, too, she guessed,
unsure when the Jewish festival celebration of freedom was to begin
and end. A nostalgic sadness smothered Julia, pulling the air from
her lungs. Longing for home is a terrible thing; only now did she
know and understand this.

***

ELEVEN

E
va and Hiram came
into Julia’s view the moment the train rolled to a stop alongside
the passenger platform in King’s Cross station. Stepping down
hurriedly from the car, she rushed to embrace both of them. Why Eva
and Hiram were together was a story Julia wanted to hear, but it
would come later when she and Eva were alone. Right now, her
brother’s face was all she wanted to see. Months had passed since
they had been together and talked. Julia looked at her brother,
older by two years than she, now proudly dressed in a Royal Air
Force uniform. After months of studying English, as Julia did, he
enlisted in the RAF, along with a group of other Czech men. Hiram’s
intellect and advanced schooling moved him quickly into the pilot
training program for the new four-engine Avro Lancaster bombers
arriving weekly at Mildenhall.

“
I will be flying out of
the Mildenhall air base, forty or so miles from here,” he said,
beaming with that wide grin that set him apart from most other
men.

“
You are so easy to look
at, and my brother, too,” Julia laughed, throwing her arms around
Hiram’s neck and kissing him. Hiram was handsome, in a
distinguished way. “A fine Jewish-looking man,” their father used
to say teasingly, as if there were such a thing.

Like his father, Hiram was overly
proud of his Jewish blood, perhaps more so than Julia. Together,
they had initially frowned on Julia’s close relationship with
Erich, but each gave way as the goodness in Erich became apparent.
Hiram had hoped his sister would come to see the rapidly increasing
walls of hate rising everywhere throughout Europe against the Jews,
and the terrible ending that was sure to come from her relationship
with Erich. But the day Julia told him she loved Erich—“every inch
of his German skin,” she had said, bursting with rapturous joy, he
embraced Erich as he would a brother. They became even closer the
day the Sudetenland was annexed by Germany and the trashing and
beating and killing of Jews began. Fearful for Julia’s safety and
his mother’s, he rushed home to find Erich standing on the front
porch, a steel bar in hand, ready to face alone what might come.
Through the passing of the night they sat together on the steps,
talking endlessly at first, then resting, but all the while
listening to distant angry sounds in the night, of marauding youths
looking for someone to hurt. When the given grace of dawn came, he
eagerly embraced Erich before he left, as he would his father, or
anyone else he loved. From that day on, no one would speak ill of
Erich in front of Hiram.

After greeting Hiram, Julia glanced at
Eva, who was waiting patiently to be hugged, too. Three days of
separation in alien lands can seem like a year, where the feeling
of belonging still eludes you. Julia and Eva were embraced by their
small group of Czech comrades, but still looked on with great
suspicion by many others as intruders in their kingdom. Ever
mindful of this fact, Julia and Eva never left each other’s side,
always appearing humble and grateful wherever they went in public.
Even Hiram felt the silent glances at first, too, but as casualties
among the airmen rose, the glances were replaced with smiles.
Little would change for Julia and Eva, though, until the Nazi
blitzkrieg that crushed France and England stood alone—a time which
was soon to come.

“
Did Hiram keep you
company while I was in Scotland with Anna?” Julia asked, fishing
for a reason Eva and Hiram were together.

“
Yes, quite nicely, I
might say,” Eva replied teasingly, causing Julia to step back with
a puzzled look at her friend and then at Hiram.

“
We went to a small
synagogue together Saturday, hardly a place to get in trouble. It
was Passover week, you know, or had you forgotten?” Hiram
said.

Julia had never thought of Eva and
Hiram being together. “A sophisticated intellect” was the best way
to describe Hiram, though he always kept his feet firmly planted on
the ground with his head just beneath the clouds. Eva kept her head
nowhere near the clouds, and her feet deep in the rich soil of her
farm home along the winding Danube River, edging Bratislava. Coarse
in language and manners and poorly educated, she was everything
Hiram wasn’t or likely to become. A peasant of the land, Eva
inhaled the staleness of life others avoided as easily as the fresh
air around her, never complaining, never afraid of what the next
storm might bring to her life. Unreligious all her life, she
believed that all God requires of anyone is that they live and die
the best they can. Eva was as beautiful as Julia, yet in a
different way. Long sought as a prize by the young and old men
working the endless vineyards and fields around her, no one could
reach her heart. Strangely though, it was Julia who filled her soul
with love.

Walking between the two as they left
the train station, Julia took hold of Hiram’s and Eva’s hands,
eagerly entwining her fingers with theirs to capture for a few
moments longer the warm happiness of being together. After but a
few steps, Hiram stopped and turned to Julia, discarding the mask
of gladness he was wearing when she arrived.

“
Denmark and Norway have
surrendered to Germany. The Netherlands and Belgium will be next.
When that happens, they will crush the French army and take Paris,”
Hiram said.

“
France—how can that be?”
she asked, stunned by the unexpected news.

“
Stupidity mostly,
ignoring a festering sore until it became cancerous. That’s what
Europe did, thinking it would get well by itself. The German cancer
will spread here, too, when it is ready.”

“
It will be more difficult
for them to move their army across the channel. The British will
not quit so easily,” Julia said defiantly.

“
Perhaps. But Hitler will
come after England as sure as he marched into Prague,” Hiram said,
walking away from Eva and Julia back towards the
station.

Hiram’s reference to Prague brought
tears to Julia’s eyes. Germany was there and would be for years to
come, if not forever, it seemed to her. And they will be here, too,
maybe. Then nothing would be left of hope and all of the tomorrows
she wished for Anna.

“
There is no promise, not
even from God, that children will have a world to live in, that
things will always be the same,” her father had whispered to her
the evening before she left Prague with Hiram. “Even God was not
that foolish to think this might be. But we must smile and hope, as
if it were so.”

Then they walked onto the front porch
and sat down on the steps together for the last time, looking at
the stars and the passing moon and all else they had seen a million
times before. After long moments of silence, he took Julia’s hand
and held it tightly, whispering again to her, “You must remember
that a time of happiness has no separate existence of its own, no
separate breath apart from the moment we experience it. When that
moment passes, what we lived withers in the darkness and is gone.
It takes courage to love life, Julia, and for that it takes a gift
for life. You have that gift, my precious daughter, more than
anyone in the family.” Then, standing, he started to return indoors
but stopped and looked back at Julia for a long minute, knowing
without thought that the future would take her from him.

“
You remember Goethe’s
words, don’t you, Julia?” he asked, with tears now covering his
face.

“
What words, Papa? I don’t
remember.”

“
His words from the game
we used to play when you were ten, reading the great philosophers
and trying to figure out what they were trying to tell us. Goethe
was one of your favorites.”

“
I still don’t remember,
Papa, there were so many,” Julia said, trying desperately to find
the words her father sought from a distant time.

“ ‘
There is nothing more
valuable than this day.’ I’m surprised you have forgotten such
beautiful words. You shouldn’t, they will carry you in the days
ahead.”

“
I won’t, Papa,” Julia
said, but her father had already gone inside, leaving her to cry
alone.

Later, she knew the words spoken by
her father were true. The great joy she had experienced with Anna
and Angie McFarland the last two days was gone, as if it had never
been.

Hiram stopped at the main exit door
and took Julia in his arms, holding her close for several
seconds.

“
I must stay here at the
station and wait. The train to Mildenhall should leave in less than
an hour.”

“
We will wait with you,”
Julia said quickly, refusing to let go of Hiram’s hand and starting
back into the station with him.

“
No, go. You have your own
schedule to worry about, and it’s late. We will be together again
soon, I promise you.”

With that, Julia embraced Hiram,
sobbing at first, then unleashing a sea of tears unabashedly,
causing a few in the station to look her way.

“
We’ll all be together
soon, won’t we, Hiram? Papa and Mama and you and me—our
family.”

“
Yes, in time. Who knows,
England may sue for peace, if France falls,” Hiram half jested,
signaling to Eva with his eyes to leave quickly with Julia, which
she did.

As they turned a corner away from the
station to begin the long trek to their billets, Eva released her
hard grip on Julia’s hand, then gently took hold of it again as
they walked along in silence.

“
It seems we are always
saying goodbye in this world,” Julia said after a few minutes,
wiping the tears from her eyes. “I wonder if we’ll ever stop doing
so.”

“
I don’t know. Goodbye is
too harsh a word, so I never say it,” Eva replied.

“
That doesn’t seem
right.”

“
Well it is. You never
leave a person as long as they can remember who you are and were.
If they can’t, it doesn’t make any difference what you say, or if
you’re gone, or standing there with them.”