A Faraway Island (14 page)

Aunt Märta pulls the letter opener through the flap on the envelope from the Swedish relief committee, even though it’s addressed to Stephie.

The letter is typed. The ribbon must be old, because some words are blurry. It begins with the word “Dear” followed by a handwritten “Stephanie.”

“Dear Stephanie,” Aunt Märta reads aloud. “The relief committee wishes you a Merry Christmas and hopes that you feel at home in Sweden now.”

Aunt Märta straightens her reading glasses, glancing at Stephie over the top. Stephie nods eagerly. All right, she feels at home. Anything to make Aunt Märta keep reading. She wishes she could just grab the letter and read it herself. Does it or does it not contain the message she is hoping for?

“… be obedient to your foster parents and grateful to them for having taken you in…. Try your best to improve your Swedish…. Learn from your Swedish friends.”

With every sentence Aunt Märta reads, Stephanie loses more and more hope. If she were going to be leaving soon, such admonitions would be unnecessary. Yet she listens impatiently until the very end, just in case the words she longs to hear are there after all.

“Never forget,” Aunt Märta reads, “that ungrateful, lazy children do a great disservice not only to themselves but also to our work as a whole, and to all the Jews.”

Aunt Märta puts the letter down.

“Is that all?” Stephie asks.

Aunt Märta nods. “Except ‘Our very best wishes’ and the signature.”

She pushes the letter across the table. Stephie picks it up and glances quickly through it. Nothing but admonitions.

“Wise counsel,” Aunt Märta says. “I hope you’ll take those words to heart. Save the letter and reread it now and then.”

Stephie folds the letter and closes the envelope. She intends never to open it again.

After dinner she goes up to her room and shuts the door. With trembling hands she opens Papa’s letter. Perhaps he and Mamma have gotten their entry visas after all, but the relief committee ladies don’t know.

There are two sheets of paper in the envelope. One is in her father’s handwriting, the other in her mother’s.

My sweet Stephie
, Papa writes.
When you and Nellie left, we believed we would be apart only for a short while. Now four
months have passed and it seems that we will not be reunited for some time. In spite of all my efforts, we have not been granted entry permits to America. The future looks bleak, but we must not give up hope
.

“Not give up hope.” Where is Stephie supposed to get hope from, when all she ever feels is disappointment? The tears in her eyes make Papa’s handwriting go blurry. She wipes them away and continues reading. Papa writes that he is now being allowed to work at the Jewish Hospital.

It is very tiring, because there are so few of us and so little equipment and medicine. But this is my only opportunity to work as a doctor, and every single day I am aware how sorely my services are needed
.

Dearest Stephie, you are a big girl and must be brave. Take care of Nellie, she’s younger and cannot be expected to understand things as well as you. We must all continue to see this as a passing situation, and believe that we will soon be together again. It is a great comfort to your mother and me to know that you two are safe, whatever happens
.

Her father’s letter ends with best regards to Stephie’s “Swedish family.”
Please tell them how grateful Mamma and I are that they are taking care of you
, he writes. Grateful, grateful, and more grateful!

She puts down the sheet of paper with its tiny handwriting and opens the letter from her mother.

My dear one! I miss you and Nellie so. Every day I look at your framed photographs and at the picture from our picnic in the Wienerwald. But the pictures are old now and you have surely grown in the salt sea air. I would so much appreciate receiving new photos. Has anyone taken your pictures recently? Perhaps
with your Swedish families in them, too? Please send any you might have! If you have none, perhaps you could ask someone with a camera to take your pictures? Tell them your mother so badly wants to see what you look like after four months in Sweden
.

Stephie’s hand flies to her neck, touching her hair and the naked flesh below it. What will Mamma say when she sees Stephie without her braids? She used to love them so.

Last summer, when they’d first arrived, Auntie Alma took some pictures of Stephie and Nellie playing with Elsa and John. Perhaps Stephie could send them to Mamma and say there are no more recent ones.

Sooner or later Mamma will find out. But hair grows faster after it’s cut. Perhaps it will be back down to her shoulders by the time they get to America.

Sylvia
sneers when she sees Stephie’s hair.

“Goodness, did your whole mane burn up?”

“No, she must’ve chopped it off with sheep shears,” Barbro comments.

Stephie doesn’t reply. Back home she was good at defending herself with words. Whenever anyone said something nasty to her, she would make a quick retort. But in Swedish her words come out so slowly and are so insufficient. She just turns away.

After the end-of-term program Stephie walks home, filled with good feelings from the beautiful Christmas music and all the candles.

“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming …,” she hums to herself, almost unaware of Nellie’s presence beside her and of what her sister is talking about.

“Sonja gave me a Christmas present,” Nellie boasts. “But I mustn’t open it until Christmas Eve. And Auntie Alma’s going to take our pictures today, too. I’m going to send one to Mamma for Christmas.”

Stephie stops in mid-step. “Who told you that?”

“Mamma wrote that she wanted one,” Nellie replies. “Didn’t she write and ask you, too?”

“No,” Stephie lies.

“Oh, well, she asked me,” Nellie says. “So I’ll buy a frame when we go into Göteborg to do our Christmas shopping. We’re going to a pastry shop, too.”

“There are no pastry shops in Göteborg,” Stephie asserts. “No real ones, anyhow, like in Vienna.”

“Oh, yes there are.”

That’s when Stephie notices that Nellie is answering her in Swedish, although Stephie has been speaking German.

“Why are you speaking Swedish with me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because we speak German, that’s our language.”

“It sounds so stupid,” Nellie says. “If anybody else hears.”

“So do you think you’re Swedish now, or something?”

Nellie doesn’t say anything, just takes a wrapped present out of her pocket and rattles it near her ear.

“Mamma and Papa would be upset if they heard you,” Stephie tells her. “Very upset and angry.”

Nellie thrusts the present back in her pocket. She sticks out her bottom lip and doesn’t say another word the rest of the way to the house.

Auntie Alma has set the table and prepared raspberry
juice, saffron buns, and ginger cookies. She asks to see their report cards and praises them for having worked so hard.

“Before you know it you’ll both be best in your class,” she tells them. “As soon as you’ve really mastered Swedish.”

“I think we’ll get our next report cards in American English,” Stephie tells her. “If our English is good enough by then.”

Auntie Alma’s forehead creases. “Oh, my dear,” she tells Stephie, “I don’t think you ought to count on being able to travel to America this spring.”

“But,” Stephie begins, “Father wrote …”

Elsa and John are tired of sitting still. They leave the table and start chasing each other around the kitchen, shouting loudly. Nellie slides off her chair, too, catching John in her arms. She tickles him and he laughs so hard he’s near tears.

“I don’t doubt that your father is doing his very best,” Auntie Alma continues. “But travel is not easy when there’s a war on.”

What is Auntie Alma trying to tell her? Will they be staying on the island all the way to the end of the war? How long is that going to be?

“But America …,” Stephie begins. “America’s not involved in the war.”

Auntie Alma is busy with the children and has stopped listening.

“Don’t forget you’ve got your good clothes on,” she scolds them. “We’re going to have our pictures taken today, you know.”

That, too. Stephie had nearly forgotten.

“Do we have to get new pictures?” Stephie asks. “Can’t we send the ones you took last summer, Auntie Alma?”

“No, Nellie’s told me your mamma asked for more recent pictures. And since you’re dressed up today, it’s the perfect opportunity.”

Auntie Alma takes their picture on the steps in front of the house. First Stephie and Nellie alone, then all four children.

“Now you take one with me in it, too,” Auntie Alma tells Stephie.

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s easy,” Auntie Alma replies. “I’ll set the focus and distance, and all you have to do is click the shutter.”

Auntie Alma shows Stephie where to stand and which button to press. She goes over to the steps, holding John in her arms. The little girls stand one on either side of her. Stephie holds the camera as steady as she can. There’s a little metallic click when she presses the shutter release.

“I’ll leave the film in Göteborg to be developed,” Auntie Alma says. “Sigurd can pick it up after Christmas.”

Nellie looks disappointed. “I thought it would be my Christmas present to Mamma,” she whines.

“No, dummy,” Stephie says to her. “Not even a regular letter would get to Vienna before Christmas if you mailed it now.”

Nellie sticks her tongue out at her sister. “Know-it-all,” she says.

Stephie helps Auntie Alma clean up in the kitchen, hoping the whole time that Auntie Alma will invite her to
join them on their outing to Göteborg. But Auntie Alma just chatters on, and Stephie can’t get herself to ask if she may come along.

Nellie walks Stephie to the gate when it’s time for her to go.

“Stephie?” she begins.

“What?”

“I’d like to buy Sonja a Christmas present, since she gave me one.”

“Do,” Stephie replies. “Buy her something in Göteborg.”

Nellie shakes her head. “Auntie Alma promised me enough money to buy the frame for Mamma and something for you. There won’t be enough for Sonja, too. Do you have any money?”

Stephie has the coin the sailor tossed her that day so long ago, and another Uncle Evert gave her. But she doesn’t want to give all her money to Nellie to spend on a present for Sonja, who she thinks is a pesky little girl.

“I need the money I have for my own Christmas shopping,” she says.

“What should I do, then?”

Stephie shrugs. “How should I know? Ask Auntie Alma for more money.”

“I can’t do that.”

“So don’t buy anything for Sonja.”

“But Sonja’s my best friend. She’s the nicest girl in my class. And I’m sure she got me a really special present.”

“Give her something of yours,” Stephie suggests. “One of the things you brought from home.”

“Like what?”

Stephie answers without thinking. The words just pop out: “Your coral necklace.”

Nellie blanches. “Oh, I could never give that away. It’s Mamma’s.”

“No, she gave it to you.”

“Do you really think I should?” Nellie’s voice trembles slightly. “Give it away?”

“Yes,” Stephie tells her. “Unless you’ve got something else.”

Nellie shakes her head.

“Do whatever you think best,” Stephie concludes. “Goodbye.”

After walking a short distance, she turns around. Nellie’s still at the gate. She looks so little. Stephie wants to go back and tell her she didn’t mean it about the necklace. But somehow she just keeps walking.

Nellie would never really do it
, she thinks.
Never
.

The
week before Christmas, Aunt Märta and Stephie clean the house from top to bottom. They hang handwoven Christmas motifs on the kitchen walls and put an embroidered tablecloth with elves and evergreen boughs on the table in the front room. Aunt Märta bakes bread and prepares a ham.

When it’s time to marinate the herring, Aunt Märta discovers she’s out of vinegar.