Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (4 page)

“What was that?” Stefan said, looking
across the table at his brother. Christopher kept his head down. “What was
that, Christopher?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, still
not looking up. Another thump followed by gentle footsteps came through the
floorboards above their heads.

“Christopher, have you something to
tell us?” Uncle Uli asked. “Did you bring a cat home? Your father made it clear
last time you did this.”

“No, no. There’s nothing there. It
must have been the wind.”

“We’ll see.” Stefan said, forcing his
chair backwards. “Come on. You had better hope it was the wind Christopher,
after all the trouble you’ve given me.”

“No Father, no. There’s nothing up
there. Can’t we finish dinner?”

Stefan grabbed Christopher by the arm
and dragged him off the chair. Uli said something but Stefan ignored him.
Alexandra followed as Stefan brought Christopher out of the kitchen and past
the bare floors and onto the freshly sanded staircase. Alexandra laughed as
they heard another noise from upstairs and Christopher tried to apologize but
his father wasn’t listening. Christopher tried to wriggle free but his father’s
grip was too tight and he forced him up the stairs. Stefan made straight for
the door to Christopher’s room and threw it open with a loud crack.

She was sitting in the middle of the
floor, Christopher’s mother’s pearls hanging around her neck and one of her
hats almost covering her eyes completely. Christopher grimaced as he saw her.
He had told her to stay in the closet until he came back up. But she had come
out and knocked over a carafe of water on the bedside table.
 
Christopher heard uncle Uli laughing
behind them but his father wasn’t laughing.

“Who is this Christopher?” he said in
English.

“It’s my friend, Rebecca.”

“And where does Rebecca live?”

“I don’t know.”

Stefan let go of his son’s arm and
bent down to the little girl sitting on the floor in his dead wife’s hat and pearls.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he said reaching down towards the puce shaded bruise
on the side of her face. She just looked back at him. “Where do you live,
Rebecca?” She took the hat off and pointed out towards the window.

Stefan took the hat into his hand and
helped Rebecca take the pearls off from around her neck. “You live over there
do you? Is it far?” The little girl shook her head slowly and stood up. “Do
your parents know you’re here?” Again the girl shook her head. “Well don’t you
think they will be worried?”

“No.”

“Of course they will be,” Stefan said,
running his hand through his hair, but the girl turned her head away and walked
over towards the window. Christopher looked up at his father but the look he
got told him he wasn’t getting away with this, no matter how cute the little
girl happened to be. “Are you hungry?” he asked after a few seconds. “Would you
like some food?” Rebecca nodded. Christopher looked across at her looking back
at him, a doleful expression on her face. Why couldn’t she have stayed in the
closet like her told her? It was no good being sorry now. So much for her plans
to run away from home.

Uncle Uli led Christopher and
Alexandra downstairs with Stefan and Rebecca just behind them. Stefan was
trying to see where she lived and who was there but she wasn’t talking. He set
up a chair for her at the table and they all sat down to dinner again.

Uncle Uli was first to speak.
“Christopher,” he was smiling again. “Where did you meet your new friend? What
brings her here to visit us?”

Christopher prodded at the potatoes
on his plate. How could he tell them that Rebecca had tried to run away, and
that he was only trying to help her? He looked across at Uli, and then at his
father and Rebecca. “I met her near the beach. She was crying so I thought she
needed some help.”

“Bringing her back to the house and
sticking her in your wardrobe isn’t going to help her, Christopher,” Stefan
said. Uncle Uli was laughing again. “Uli, please, I’m talking to my son here.”
Stefan glared at his younger brother. Uli laughed still but moved his hand up
to cover his mouth. Stefan shook his head and moved his attention back to his
son, who seemed to be trying to slide underneath the table. “Where does this
little girl live? What happened to her face?”

“I don’t know. I heard her crying in
a field near the beach. I thought she could stay here for a while.” He hoped
that Rebecca didn’t speak German and couldn’t understand.

“Oh did you? You were going to hide
her in your room were you? How long were you going to keep her there for?”

Christopher looked at his plate, at
eye level now as he had slumped down. “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about
that.”
 

“There’s a shock,” his father said.
“You never think do you?” He looked over at Rebecca, who had stopped eating. It
was almost seven o’clock and the sun was still high in the summer sky, but it
was time for Alexandra to get to bed. Uli picked her up and brought her over to
kiss her father. Stefan ran his hands through the thin blond hair above her
ears and kissed her on the cheek. Alexandra waved down towards Rebecca who
managed a smile back. Uli took her upstairs, still laughing. Uli was up the
stairs before Stefan spoke again. “Rebecca,” he said in a low voice, “you need
to tell us where you live. I know that if Christopher or Alexandra were out at
this time of the evening, I would be very worried. Now you don’t want anyone to
be worried about you, do you?”

Rebecca looked down at the table in
front of her and shook her head. Stefan had opened his mouth to speak again
when she answered. “I live two houses away. I spilled my tea and mother hit me.
She fell down and I ran out.”

Stefan immediately stood up from the
table. “I think I need to see your parents now, Rebecca. It’s time to take you
home.” Christopher looked across at Rebecca and then up at his father, he tried
to speak but didn’t know what to say. Rebecca tried to squirm away from Stefan
so he picked her up and carried her out through the front door. He called up to
Uli to say that he was taking Rebecca home. Christopher ran out behind his
father, pleading with him to come along. “It would be good for you to see
Rebecca’s parents, probably half-sick with worry.” Stefan put Rebecca down as
they reached the road, making her promise to be good and to hold onto his hand.
“This is some way to meet the neighbors,” Christopher heard his father mutter
as he walked along with Rebecca clutching onto his hand, with Christopher
lagging a few feet behind them. Christopher saw Rebecca’s face as she turned to
him but there was nothing he could do.

They shuffled along the rough-hewn
road for a few moments in silence before Rebecca spoke. She pointed to a small
house just off the road, unkempt and weather beaten, much like their own before
they had arrived and started painting it. Rebecca slowed and Stefan almost had
to drag her into the driveway. Christopher caught up to them and ran up to
Rebecca, wrapping his fingers up in the palm of her hand. Silent tears dripped
down her reddened cheeks. Stefan walked up to the door, peeled and flaking
brown flecks of varnish. The window by the door was grey, unwashed and only the
layer of spider-webs that ringed it were visible through it. Christopher was
frightened and thought of asking his father to go back but he just watched as
Stefan rapped on the door. There was no sound from inside, nothing but the
sound of the sea sliding onto and stretching back from the shore below them.
Stefan looked down at Rebecca as he knocked once more.

“Your parents must be asleep,” he
said, more to himself than to Rebecca. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
He looked down at her.

“Yes, I have a brother, Peter. He is
ten.”

Stefan knocked harder this time and
the door came ajar with the force of his closed fist. He called out a few times
but no answer came and he pushed back the door to walk inside.

The house was musty and old, with a
long passed grandeur. They entered into a hallway with the kitchen on their
left. The carpet was worn and threadbare and Christopher felt a nail jabbing
into the bottom of his shoe, but he didn’t speak. No one did. A shaft of golden
light from an open window led them through the end of the hallway and into a
living room with paintings of local scenery on the walls. There was a broken
bottle on the floor, but there was no one, no sound. Then they heard the voice
from behind them, cracked and rough, uneven.

“Where the hell have you been?” They
all turned around and Rebecca hid behind Stefan’s leg. The man, seemingly Rebecca’s
father, was standing in the doorway. He was older than Christopher’s father but
it was impossible to tell by how much. His brown hair suggested a much younger
man than the lines on his face. His brown eyes darted down towards Rebecca and
then back up at Stefan, but the anger did not fade. “Who are you? What are you
doing in my house? Why is my daughter with you?”

Christopher’s father stepped forward
and proffered his hand. The man shook it, saying nothing. Stefan cocked his head
and then straightened it before speaking. His words were slow, deliberate. “My name
is Stefan Seeler.” The man’s face changed as he heard Christopher’s father’s
heavy German accent. His eyes bulged. “My son found Rebecca on the beach
earlier today. It seems she was in some distress.”

“You are German.” The man’s accent
was French.
 
Stefan nodded. The man
continued. “She’s always getting into some kind of trouble, clumsy…. You know
children these days.” The man rocked backwards slightly as he spoke.
Christopher watched his father as he listened, saw his jaw tighten.

“Christopher, could you take Rebecca
outside for a moment please?”

“That won’t be necessary. Thank you
for bringing back my daughter, but now you must leave, before my wife comes
home.”
 

Stefan looked down at the little
girl, clinging tight to his trouser leg, and then down at his own son. “Come on,
Christopher, let’s go.” He bent down to Rebecca. “We have to leave now, but you
know you can always…”

“Goodbye, Mr. Seeler.” Rebecca’s father walked over, grabbing
Rebecca by the arm. He walked her into a back room and Christopher and his
father were alone.
 

It was the next day, after he had
woken up and eaten breakfast, when Christopher saw her again. She was sitting
in the tree house that Uncle Uli had made for Christopher and Alexandra, her
head down and facing out towards the sea. She looked up and smiled, walking over
to the open hole where the window should have been to wave as he ran down
towards her. Alexandra came out of the house and ran down too but she made far
too much noise and Christopher’s father knew that there was something going on.
Christopher turned around and saw his father coming out of the house just as he
reached the tree house at the bottom of the garden and climbed up inside.

“Rebecca. You came back.” She only
nodded. She had brought an old doll with her and although it had an eye missing
and was scratched and worn, its hair was perfectly combed into smooth golden
streaks. She held the doll close to her chest and then looked at Christopher.

“This is Susan.”

“Alexandra has dolls too, don’t you
Alexandra?” he asked his sister as she arrived at the tree house beside them
and Stefan was there too.

“Children, I’d like to speak to
Rebecca for a moment. Hello, Rebecca.”

“Hello, Mr. Seeler.”

Christopher saw his father smile and
then stiffen once more. “Rebecca, did you ask your parents if you could come
over here and play?”

Her eyes seemed to melt and she
looked down and to the side, not into his face as she had before. Christopher
wanted to say something, wanted to be the person to ask her and the person that
she could look to, but she didn’t look at him either. His father asked the
question again, in the same smooth tone as before and she shook her head. He
looked up and away from her and blew a breath out.

“Do they even know where you are?”

“They were still in bed.”

“They were still in bed when you left
this morning? Don’t you think you should have told them where you were going?”

“I don’t know. They were up very late
last night. I could hear them talking.”

“Where is Peter, your brother?”

“He went out riding his bike. He made
me breakfast.”

“That was nice of him. He is a very
good brother.” Rebecca nodded. “Do you miss him when he’s not around?” She
nodded again. “What about your parents. Do you miss them?” She looked up at him
and gently shrugged her shoulders.

“I like it here.”

“Can Rebecca stay here with us Father?”
Christopher asked but the look his father gave him silenced him immediately.
Christopher reached over and took Rebecca’s hand and felt her fingers clasp
around his.