Munich Signature (46 page)

“Uh-huh!” Charles said enthusiastically. It
was
important. Charles knew Murphy would not leave him to face the surgery all alone unless he had to go. The child sighed. It
was
important, and yet did Murphy know that Charles was afraid? Could he see it? Could Murphy see that the cello in the corner was not enough to keep him company?

Ah, well, Charles was also aware that the ache in his heart could not change things. And so it had to be.

Good-bye, Murphy. I hope you come back,
Charles’ heart said
. I hope you find Louis and come back for me. Will you forget about me, Murphy? Please come back.

“Okay then,” Murphy said with a buck-up smile, “we’re gonna make it fine.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a ship to catch. I’ll call as soon as I reach France. Mr. Trump will wire me on the ship. It’s all going to go fine, and next time I see you I want you to say, ‘Hi ya, Murph,’ okay?”

A quick hug. No tears. Another quick hug, and then Murphy was gone.

***

Everything was quiet now except for the hollow echoes of city sounds. Charles crept from his bed and tiptoed to the window of his hospital room. He leaned against the cool glass of the pane and gazed in wonder at the vast display of New York City lights that surrounded the hospital compound.

Suddenly the big brick building where he stayed seemed very small. Charles felt very small and insignificant as well. The ache of loneliness and fear filled him as never before. If he closed his eyes he could almost remember what Mommy had looked like—the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand on his head when she held him. She had been soft and had smelled like flowers—always like flowers. His head had just fit beneath her chin and if he sat very still he could hear her heart beating.

Charles put his hand to his mouth. By tomorrow at this time the operation would be finished and he would be on his way to looking like other boys. Like his brother Louis. He would learn to talk and laugh and even sing the songs Mommy had sung to them so long ago. Could he make those words come as clearly to his mouth as they were in his heart? And if Louis never came back, whom would he sing with?

Tonight the city was a study in electric geometry. Neat lines of yellow light. Bright boxed grids of unpeopled windows. Headlights reflected in puddles on the street. The bright orange line of the elevated train as it inched like a caterpillar along a narrow, leafless stem. It was as if mankind had envied the bright chaos of the stars and had sought to arrange a more orderly image below.

From beneath the blackened tin roof of the massive New York train sheds, engines whined and squeaked. The clank of metal against metal sounded like the little brass bells Mommy had hung outside their bedroom window in Hamburg. Summer breezes from the Aussen-Alster had made them ring gently. Often she had sung Charles and Louis to sleep accompanied by the formless melody of those bells.

When winter had come the bells had banged against the glass of the window. No longer pretty, they had blended with the sound of fists against the door. The men had broken down the door and taken Father away. Taken him to the prisoner trains—the trains of Germany that had cried and moaned and carried Father where he did not want to go. Then Mommy had been taken . . . where? To heaven, they told him.

And then the Nazi doctors had strapped Charles onto the cold shiny table and hurt him. He would never forget their words:

“
They should have tossed this one into the Aussen-Alster and let him drown. Well, this will make sure he does not spawn a tribe of monsters like himself.
”

“
Who would ever love such a beast anyway?”

“
Better to make certain
he is armed with blanks just in case he puts a bag over his head and marries a blind girl!”

Their laughter had drowned out his screams. He had been sore for a few days and then he had forgotten the physical pain, although the memory of their laughter rang in his nightmares.

Even when summer had come gently on the breezes of the Aussen-Alster to ring the bells Mommy had hung outside the window, Charles could only hear that terrible laughter in his dreams. And the formless melody mocked him as the white-coated doctors of the Reich had mocked him.

As Charles leaned against the window and stared out on the lights of this unfamiliar city, tears formed and fell silently onto the windowsill. Murphy had left. He was alone. And tomorrow the doctors would again strap him onto a cold steel table and reach toward him with their knives. There was nothing he could do; he could not even tell anyone how terrified he was. He could only cry and wait for morning.

***

Silence reigned in the Brooklyn home of the Rosenfelt family. The old clock at the foot of the stairs ticked off the seconds and minutes and hours of mourning that cloaked the house in grief for little Ada-Marie.

During the seven days of mourning, old friends and neighbors had brought meals for Bubbe Rosenfelt and had sat with her to grieve in silence for the little girl they had never known. It seemed that all of Brooklyn observed shiva that week; every Jew grieved for the dead child and for the ship which had been turned back out to sea. Old men shook their heads sadly as if the great-grandchild of Bubbe Rosenfelt had been their own, as if their own sons and daughters were packed into the holds of the decrepit freighter.

In every synagogue across the country kaddish was recited:

“Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world which He hath created according to His will.”

And with the words of that ancient prayer the question echoed in a thousand hearts:
Did God create such a cruel world? Did He close the gates to these few refugees? Why has this evil come upon them?

For every one of those onboard the
Darien
, a thousand homes now begged to give them shelter—Jewish homes and Christian as well.

“May He establish His kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the House of Israel, even speedily and at a near time; and ye say, Amen!”

In the pulpits of churches across the nation, pastors and priests stood to recount with shame the denial of the U.S. government against the people of the
Darien
. Families from farms and cities stood and asked if they might take even one Jewish child into their homes until the persecution had passed over the Jews of the Reich.

“May there be abundant peace from Heaven and life for us and for all Israel; and ye say, Amen!”

As the silence of shiva continued in the little home in Brooklyn, the public outcry swelled at the sight of the photograph of the tiny coffin on the deck of the ship. That image of grieving father and mother touched a chord in the hearts of parents that transcended all considerations of race and religion.

Letters to congressmen filled mail pouches with seething indignation. Christian ministers stood beside rabbis to question the inhumanity of the government’s decision.

Politicians raised their eyebrows in surprise at the public outcry, then quietly raised their fingers to test the shift in political winds. Was this response the opinion of the majority of Americans, or only a very vocal minority of religious fanatics? Would the interest in the refugees onboard that ship die out as the vision of the photograph faded from memory? Often that was the case in such matters. One big hullabaloo, and then it was over. Washington would wait a bit and take a reading later on. After all, it was election year.

After the seven days of shiva, Bubbe Rosenfelt stood slowly and removed the black cloth that covered the mirrors in her room. She opened her mouth with slight surprise at the image of the old woman who gazed back at her. She did not remember being so very old. Had she aged so very much in seven days?

“It is possible,” she muttered to herself. “God created the whole world in six days. A lot can happen in a week.”

With a shake of her head she washed her face and combed her hair and put on comfortable shoes. It was time to return to the real world, to see if the world had also grown older and wiser in one week. She had not read the newspaper or listened to the news on the radio in all that time. She had asked no questions until now. Answers were one phone call away.

***

A voice in the familiar accent of Hamburg reached out to Charles in the darkness. “It is late, Charles. Tomorrow you have an important day, nu? Why are you still up?”

Charles turned from the window to face Bubbe Rosenfelt. She had come, after all! Even though Murphy had told him she could not,
would
not come, she was here!

He opened his mouth with a cry. Bubbe did not bother to turn on the light but moved quickly toward him and gathered him up in her arms.

Charles had resigned himself to his loneliness; his tears had dried an hour ago. Now he wept softly again as Bubbe Rosenfelt sat down with him in her lap and pressed his head beneath her chin. She smelled like a garden . . . like flowers . . . like Mommy. She stroked his hair and hummed to him as he wept.

His feet dangled awkwardly over the arm of the chair. Maybe he was too big to be rocked, but he did not resist. He rested his head against her and absorbed her nearness like parched soil soaking up rainfall.

He wanted to say, Bubbe.
Thank you, Bubbe. Thank you for coming. Thank you for hugging me. Thank you for speaking in the same sweet accent as Mommy and Father and Louis . . .

But he could not say these things. He had to sit his own silent shiva and be content to let her comfort him.

And then she began to tell him stories about her own little boys. She spoke of her house beside the Aussen-Alster; of sailboats and picnics in the very same places Mommy and Father had taken him and Louis when they were very little. She reminded him of church bells and markets and the big ships in the docks. She spoke of blue skies above Hamburg and white clouds that looked like rabbits and sailing ships and other things.

After a time Charles no longer remembered the banging of fists against the door or the cruel laughter of the doctors in Hamburg. Only happy memories filled his thoughts until at last he became sleepy. He closed his eyes and his fingers became limp. He would tell Bubbe Rosenfelt tomorrow . . . tomorrow, when his mouth was fixed; then he would tell her, “Thank you.”

Charles fell fast asleep in her arms, yet still the old woman rocked him far into the night. Long after his breathing was deep and even, she continued to talk to him. He did not feel the dampness of her own tears against his hair.

“Of course, my son was a little smaller than you then—just a baby, really. And I held him for hours and hours while the artist worked. And I remember thinking that Mary could not have been any happier holding her son than I was holding mine. Just like I am holding you now, sweet kinderlach. Don’t you know? It is you who comforts my heart tonight.” She pressed her lined cheek against his soft forehead and laid her hand over his ear. “Sleep now, Charles. You are not alone.”

***

Things had been quiet in the Czech-Sudeten city of Eger for nearly three days. The Sudeten-Nazi Free Corps headed by Henlein and Frank had been dispersed with clubs and bayonets by the Czech military. Broken glass, burned-out buildings and littered streets were the marred reminders of the riots and violence that had rocked the Czech-Sudetenland. Martial law and curfews now prevailed and the Nazi Brownshirts seemed to disappear into the woodwork.

This afternoon Colonel Ludwig Segki of the Czech Reserve Air Corps had at last found a moment to relax his vigilance. This luncheon with his officers at Hotel Eger was more than a social visit, however. Events of the past days and weeks were discussed. The readiness of the new air cadets was evaluated. The ominous future was probed.

All the men under his command remained silent when officer Theo Linder spoke. They knew that he had once been a hero for the German Luftwaffe. He had been on personal terms with Luftwaffe Reichsführer Hermann Göring.

“As long as we do not negotiate away this territory in the Sudetenland, we will remain safe,” Theo said. “The Maginot Line in France is not even as strong as our line of defense in these mountains. Concrete bunkers, machine-gun emplacements—even from the air, the Luftwaffe could not disable us.”

“And if the Germans fly over our heads to bomb Prague?”

On this issue Theo could not comment with encouragement. He shook his head and let a more senior officer answer.

“I say we arrest the Free Corp Nazis here who cause the violence and jail them all around the city of Prague. Then if the Germans bomb civilians, they will also be bombing their own compatriots.”

The plan met with general approval, but Theo saw the flaw. “With such an idea you are presupposing that Hitler cares what happens to the Aryans in our territory. I do not believe that he cares even that much—” Theo snapped his fingers.

“Then why does he rage so about them? Why send terrorists into our country? Why?

Theo had a theory about that. He hesitated, hoping one of the dozen others would speak. Instead they all looked at him. “Because if he can somehow cross these fortified mountains and possess the Sudeten defenses he will simply roll into Prague, then into Poland and maybe all the way to Moscow. Five miles from the border of the Sudeten territory he desires is the Skoda arms factory in Pilsen. Only five miles, gentlemen, from Hitler to the finest munitions factory in the world. No, Hitler does not care one whit about the Germans who live in the Czech territories. He cares about the ground they live on.”

Such reasoning made sense. Colonel Segki had heard just such matters discussed in staff meetings in Prague, and now from the mouth of a former German-Jew who had once been well connected with the German members of the High Command.

Confident that all of this was true, Colonel Segki instructed his men not to relax their vigilance. Three days without violence in the Sudetenland made it certain that violence was just around the corner.