My Canary Yellow Star (6 page)

All eyes were still fixed on me. Madam, too, looked at me for a long moment before nodding almost imperceptibly. “Yes, Marta,” she said in a much gentler voice. “I know you’re not responsible for the theft. Let me show you what else I found, ladies.” She carefully smoothed out the newspaper in which the silk had been wrapped and then held it up for all to see. It was the front page of a newspaper called
The New Dawn
, the mouthpiece of the Arrow Cross and the Germans. She held the newspaper by a tiny corner, as if it were dirty and she didn’t want to touch it, then she let it fall.

“There are only two people in my shop who would read such garbage, such … drivel,” she spluttered, “and neither one of those people is Marta. I am positive of that!” She pointed her finger at the Schulz sisters. “What you two have done is unforgivable. Stealing my silk was bad enough. Eventually, in these desperate times, I could have
overlooked that. But to blame your thievery on Marta – that is beyond belief! It’s totally reprehensible. You are wicked girls!” she said. “You have ten minutes to gather up your belongings and get out of my shop!”

“But, Madam, we didn’t …” Irma pleaded. Gizella was silent, biting her lips.

“Ten minutes!” Madam repeated. Her eyes never left the offenders’ faces. “I don’t want to see either one of you inside these four walls ever again,” she said.

The Schulz sisters gathered up their belongings and their pocketbooks. Irma scurried out of the room with her head lowered, her eyes fixed on the floor. Her sister ambled after her arrogantly, in slow motion. At the door, she turned and, with an insolent smile, addressed Madam.

“You’ll be sorry for what you just did, old lady! I can guarantee you that!”

“Out!” said Madam. “Get out of here!”

With a shrug of her shoulders Gizella left, slamming the door behind her.

I hurried home, eager to tell my family about the Schulz sisters’ deceit. Peter had a Levente meeting Monday nights, so he couldn’t wait until Madam had dismissed us. I found my mother sitting at our kitchen table, staring into space.

“You’re late, darling,” she said. “I’ve been home for an hour.”

“Where is everybody? Is something wrong?”

“No, no. Everything is fine. Ervin and Grandmama walked over to Aunt Miriam’s. She invited us for supper. I told her that we’d join them as soon as you got home. Come, rest for a minute.”

I pulled up a chair. I noticed that she had picked the cuticles around her fingers raw.

“I am so dreadfully worried,” she said. “No word from Papa or my parents … not even one letter.”

“Don’t worry. Papa is fine. So are Gran and Grandpa Schlamowitz.”

Mama’s parents lived in Miskolc, far from Budapest. The letters they sent us every week had stopped.

“There’s only one other Jewish woman in the warehouse,” Mama said. “She heard that the Jews in Miskolc have been sent to work camps. What if it’s true? How could Gran and Grandpa survive?”

I took her hand. “You can’t seriously believe that anybody would put old people in a work camp, Mama. They’d be useless there. Grandpa is too old to work and Gran has arthritis.”

“I can’t reach them, Marta,” Mama said. “I’ve been writing to them every day and I never get a reply. That’s not like them, not at all. If only they hadn’t taken our phones away, I could try calling them.” She looked desperate.

“Why don’t you phone one of their neighbors, Mama?
They would probably be able to tell you what’s going on. Mrs. Marton or Mrs. Szabo would let you use her phone.”

“My clever, level-headed girl!” she said. “I can always count on you not to panic. I know that Marika is at home. I saw her come in when I was checking the mail. She was in such a rush that she didn’t even stop to chat.” She stood up. “Come on, let’s go up to Marika’s. I’ll call the Varadis, who live next door to Gran and Grandpa. They’ve been neighbors for a long time.”

We climbed the stairs to Mrs. Marton’s apartment and Mama knocked on her door. No answer. I thought I heard footsteps coming closer, but nobody opened the door. Mama rapped loudly without success, then she rang the doorbell. The sharp sound reverberated in the stillness of the hall. A clock chimed inside the apartment, but there was no sign of Mrs. Marton.

“Marika must have gone out,” Mama said. “Let’s go up to Agi’s.”

We piled into the old-fashioned elevator with its wrought-iron walls. I felt like a bird in a cage whenever I rode in it. I pressed the button for the fifth floor. The sound of piano music wafted through the Szabos’ front door.

“Oh, good,” Mama said as she rapped sharply on the door, “Agi is at home.”

The piano music died suddenly, but the door remained closed.

“I don’t understand this,” Mama said.

I rang the bell, then I beat on the door with my fists. I tried to look through the peephole, but I couldn’t see anything. The apartment remained silent. Mama and I waited a few moments, then we tried knocking once again. No one opened the door. Finally, we returned home.

“Never would I have expected something like this of Agi or Marika,” Mama said. “Not in a million years. I thought they were our friends.”

“There must be some explanation,” I said.

Mama did not reply.

Life at the workshop became more bearable after Irma and Gizella were fired. The other apprentices treated me with more civility than before. I still ate my lunch by myself, and nobody spoke to me unless it was about work, but the girls didn’t call me names or threaten me like they used to. The Schulz sisters were becoming an unpleasant memory. Best of all, at the end of each workday Peter was waiting for me on the street in front of the salon, ready to walk me home. We walked together to the corner of our street, and I would wait until Peter got home before turning the corner myself.

But these happier days were not to last. When I arrived at Madam’s shop on a sunny morning in June, the senior
seamstress informed me that Madam wanted to see me in her office. I smoothed down my hair as best I could and knocked on her door.

After she called me in, she asked me to shut the door and sit down. I had known Madam ever since I was a little girl – first as Papa’s patient and for the last months as my employer. I had seen her angry and upset, happy and satisfied. But what I had never seen was Madam frightened. The Madam in front of me was very, very scared. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, as if she had spent the night crying.

She sat down behind her mahogany desk and waited a long moment before speaking. The silence in the room was broken only by the drumming of her fingers. Suddenly, she jumped up from her chair and rushed to the door. She opened it a crack and looked both ways down the hall before returning to her desk. Finally, she began to speak, but she was so quiet I had to lean forward to hear her.

“I am afraid I have some bad news, Marta,” she stated. “Last night, I had some uninvited guests. Two men in a long, shiny black car appeared at my door. As soon as I saw them, I guessed who they were. The Schulz sisters were not exaggerating when they claimed to be well-connected. They reported me to the Gestapo … and you know what that means!”

She stood up and walked over to the window. With her back to me, she continued to speak. “I was told, in no
uncertain terms, that if I do not fire you, they’ll close down my business and deport me to the east.” She stared out the window for a long moment, silent again.

“Fire me? But…”

When she turned around, I could see that she had regained her composure. She silenced me with a regal wave of her hand. Except for the tears filling her eyes, she was once again the imperious Madam I was used to seeing.

“I am so very sorry, Marta, but there is nothing I can do. If I lose my business, I’ll have nothing left, nothing at all. I must do as they say.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

I wanted to protest, but the right words wouldn’t come.

She took both of my hands in hers. “We live in terrible times, and I fear that we have not yet seen the worst. Who knows where it will all end?”

I was so moved by her distress that I found myself trying to reassure her. I told her that she had already done enough for me, that nobody could have done more. She insisted on giving me an extra week’s pay and promised that she would explain to Peter why I wasn’t waiting for him when he came to walk me home at the end of the workday. But what surprised me most of all was how hard she hugged me when we said goodbye to each other.

M
ama was working the night shift, so I knew I’d have to face both her and my grandmother when I got home. They would be devastated when they heard that I had lost my job. My salary was necessary for our survival. Not even the strictest budgeting would make Mama’s pay enough for both our rent and the inflated prices at the grocery store.

I saw that something was wrong as soon as I turned the corner of our street. A crowd had gathered around a poster affixed to the iron gates leading into our building. Many of the women were crying. I found Mama and Grandmama standing at the back, Ervin next to them. I wasn’t surprised to see him at home – his state high school had recently thrown him out, along with the other Jewish students.

“Why aren’t you at work?” was Ervin’s greeting.

“I’ll tell you later. What’s going on?”

“Look,” he said, pointing at the poster on the gate.

“I can’t see what’s written on it from here. What is it?”

“Three days! We have to move out in three days,” Mama said.

Grandmama’s hands were pressed to her chest.

“We have to move into a yellow-star house,” Ervin said.

“A yellow-star house?”

“Our fair and wonderful government has decreed that all Jews in Budapest are allowed to live only in special houses marked by yellow stars. So we’ll have to move,” Ervin explained.

“That’s not possible! We’ve always lived here! This is our home!”

“Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Ervin said, pushing me toward the poster.

“Of course I believe you,” I muttered. Still, I elbowed my way to the front of the crowd and read the notice. Ervin was right – we would have to leave our apartment in three days.

“Do you believe me now?” Ervin asked angrily. “The government decided which apartment buildings would become yellow-star houses,” he said. “Ours was not one of them, so we’ll have to move.”

“Where will we go? We’ve never lived anywhere else. I love my room … my furniture … sitting on my window seat, reading. I don’t want to go someplace different.”

“We’ll stay with Miriam,” Mama said. “She sent us a message after you left for work this morning. Her apartment block became a yellow-star house.”

“Does she have room for all of us?” Aunt Miriam, my twelve-year-old cousin, Gabor, and Uncle Laci lived in a three-room suite. Even with Uncle Laci gone, I couldn’t see how all of us could stay with my aunt.

“A Jewish family is allowed to occupy only one room in a yellow-star house,” Mama said. “Miriam will make space for us somehow. There won’t be room for all our belongings, though. We’ll take with us only what’s absolutely necessary. Oh, it’ll be so hard to decide what to leave behind. This is the only home I have ever shared with your father.” She looked wistfully at the honey-colored stucco building behind us. The sad group of women and children dwindled. When I turned to go inside, Ervin caught my arm.

“First having to wear a yellow star, now this,” Ervin said. “You wait and see, Marta. Before long, we’ll be rounded up like cattle and deported to work camps like Grandpa and Gran.”

“Shut up!” I cried. “Don’t you let Mama hear you say things like that! Do you want to upset her even more? We don’t know what happened to Grandpa and Gran. Stop
imagining the worst! Even if they have been taken away, maybe the camps aren’t such bad places.” The week before, we had received a postcard from my mother’s friend Ida, who was taken to a camp by the Waldsee in Austria. Mama’s friend had written that she was working hard but enjoying her beautiful surroundings.

“Don’t be so gullible, Marta!” Ervin said. “The postcards people get are fakes! The Nazis force prisoners to write them before killing them. Sam Stein knows. The Resistance knows.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. We are Hungarians. The government wouldn’t let anything so terrible happen to us,” I snapped. “I refuse to believe such foolish rumors even for a second. Mama told you to stay away from Stein and his crazy friends!”

“You’re like everybody else,” Ervin said. “Nobody will believe the members of the Resistance when they try to tell people the truth. I don’t understand why.”

There seemed nothing left to say, so we went into the courtyard. Grandmama was sitting on a wrought-iron bench by the staircase. I touched her arm.

“How will Aron find us when he returns home?” she asked. Her lips were white, her hands trembling. She looked much older than she had just a few short hours ago.

“If we’re not here when Papa gets home, Aunt Miriam’s apartment will be the first place he’ll look for us,” Ervin reassured her.

“Are you feeling all right, Grandmama?” I asked. “You’re so pale. Let’s go inside so you can rest.”

Grandmama sighed. “Who has time to rest? But yes, let’s go inside. I want to help your mother decide what to take with us to Miriam’s.”