Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (42 page)

“Wait, you have a daughter? The
newspaper article never mentioned that.” Her eyes were wide, her amazement
visible.

“I wanted to keep her out of the
newspaper. I didn’t want to get her involved in this.”

“What age is she? What’s her name?”

“Her name is Hannah, she’s eleven.
She’s back in Jersey with my father and her cousins. I spoke to her last night
long distance.” Christopher heard Hannah’s voice again in his mind and it
warmed him.

“She’s eleven?”

“Yes, she’s adopted. She was one of
the children I took out of the camp. The head of the Sonderkommandos at the
time,
Klaczko, brought her to me, the night before
I was due to go to Berlin. He had smuggled her out of the crematorium, hidden
in an old coat.” Christopher grimaced at the thought of the baby in the coat,
something he had never sanctioned at the time. Klaczko just brought her to him.
He shook his head at the impossible bravery of that. “The next morning I took
her out of the camp in the car, brought her to my father in Berlin.”

“How did
she stay quiet when you were driving out?”

“Hannah
was only a baby, maybe around a year old at the time. I gave her some vodka,
some of the really good stuff. She never made a sound.” Christopher smiled to
himself. “She was too young to go to the safe houses or the orphanage we had
organized so my family took her in. They raised her for those first few months.
That was in October ‘44. Hannah was the last child I got out of Birkenau. It
all fell apart after that. She’s Hungarian. We searched for any family she
might have had left after the war, but it was impossible.” He pictured his
daughter as a baby as he spoke, with the family that should have raised her. “There
were no records of who her family were or even of what her name was. Alex used
to bring her to visit me when I was in the internment camp, after Dachau. And
when I got out, when Alex went back to Jersey she left Hannah with me. I
adopted her as my daughter. She was absolutely everything to me, my savior. I
don’t think I would have made it through if it wasn’t for her.”

“What
happened to the prisoner, Klaczko?”

“He
died. He was murdered by the SS.” Christopher looked out in front of him, felt
the pain as he remembered Klaczko. He and the Sonderkommandos he had worked
with were all dead.

“I would
love to meet Hannah someday.” Rebecca’s face was pure as she spoke, utterly
sincere, and Christopher thought about the possibility of her meeting Hannah.

“I’m
sure she would love to meet you too. She’s heard all about you. I’d say she’d
probably think you were a ghost.” He smiled.

“Who
says I’m not?”
 

Christopher
poked her in the shoulder with a rigid finger. “Nah, you’re no ghost.”

Rebecca
smiled and stopped a young man in a grey suit walking past. “Excuse me sir, do
you have the time on you?” The man smiled at her and offered the answer; it was
6:45. Rebecca thanked him and turned to Christopher again. “We should turn
back. You have an interview to get to.”

Christopher
looked at her for a few seconds
.
“Do we have to?” Rebecca
nodded and turned around to walk back. Christopher stood still, watching her
from behind as she went and the swish of her dress in the warm air. They were
walking through a tunnel of trees, the branches intertwining overhead and the
light of the evening sun sprinkling shards of light down through layers of
leaves. He was still watching her as she turned around, her blue eyes sparkling
as she spoke.

“Am I
going to have to drag you back there?”

“I think
so, yes.” But he started walking after her. She turned to him, smiling and
stood still as he caught up to her.

“I can’t
believe you’ve got a daughter.”

“Have
you any kids yourself? I noticed the wedding ring.” Christopher felt the pained
smile on his face as he asked.

“No,
we’ve no children.” She looked out ahead, towards the end of the pathway and
the exit out of the park. “I miss Jersey. I think about it all the time. Tel
Aviv is wonderful, right on the Mediterranean, the beaches, the sea, just like
Jersey, but there’s something missing, you know?”

“Me?”
Christopher smiled.

“The
Nazi war criminal you mean? No, I don’t think so.” Christopher smarted as she
said it. He hadn’t expected to, but he did and she saw it.

“I did
it for you, Rebecca.”

“I know
that, I know that now,” she said and reached across to take his hand. It felt
wonderful. She squeezed his palm and released, leaving his hand dangling by his
side. “So the years have been good to you, Christopher, a few greys at the side,”
she said, brushing her knuckles to the side of his head, “but you look good.
How do I look?”

“Wonderful,”
he answered. He stopped, expecting to say something else, but nothing came.

She
smiled. “I used to think about that day you found me in the hedge down by my
parents’ house when I was in the camps. Funny, isn’t it? The only thing I ever
thought about other than you and Jersey was food. Those were the only things
that I ever thought about, not the war, not what I was going to do afterwards,
not how I was going to bring the monsters running the camps to justice, just
those three things. But even then, I never thought about you as much I would
about getting a piece of bread, or a potato. It’s a strange, horrible thing to
be always hungry, always cold. A friend of mine, Emily Rosenfield, died and
left me her spoon. She said it would save my life. I used to carry that spoon
with me everywhere I went so that I would be ready.” She looked at Christopher
but he didn’t know what to say. She had a strange smile on her face. “I ate it
all, wood, leaves, grass. I learned to look for the juiciest pieces of grass,
the ones with the most ‘meat’ on them. It hardly seems real now.”
erHer H

 
Her voice seemed hollow as she spoke as
if it wasn’t her talking, but some pale reflection of the person he knew. “It’s
funny but I don’t think I would have made it through if I’d had what people
think of as ‘normal’ parents. Their bad parenting gave me the best possible
training for life in the camps.” Rebecca moved close to him, interlocking arms
with his, she whispered, “I never thanked you for what you tried to do, what
you did, for me. Thank you, Christopher.”

Christopher
felt her warmth against him. “Oh Rebecca, I never had a choice. How could I
leave you there? I had to do what I did. I never had a choice in any of it. I
couldn’t not do it.”
 

The
light of the evening sun reflected off the windows of the cars and Christopher
felt a drop of cold sweat down the center of his back. He undid the top button
of his shirt, lit a cigarette and offered one to Rebecca. She shook her head
and they walked on, crisscrossing through the traffic until they were back on
Broadway. They had not spoken for a minute or longer. There was almost too much
to ask and far too much to say. Christopher looked down at her hand, swinging
loosely by her side and desperately wanted to take it. He drew a deep pull into
his lungs and began to speak again.

“So,
you’re married? Whatever happened to Jonathan Durrell?”

“He died
in ’47, in a motorcycle crash on the island. I hadn’t seen him since I left.”
She turned to Christopher again. “Let’s not talk about him. That’s ancient
history now.” She ran a hand through her hair, letting it fall down to the
side. Christopher felt his heart turn inside him. “You never got married
yourself? What happened, Christopher? There must have been a line of eligible
ladies all the way from the house in St. Martins down to St. Helier. None of
them ever managed to snare you, no?”

“No. They
had a tough act to follow, you know?” He turned to her but she didn’t look at
him. Christopher took another drag on the cigarette. The weight of the silence
between them was suddenly huge and he broke it. “There were women, of course,
but there was never anyone truly special. I was raising a young daughter, and,
with little Stefan in the house, I was practically raising two kids with my
father. I wanted a mother for Hannah; I still do, but I didn’t want to fake it.
I couldn’t.” Christopher looked at Rebecca again, waiting for her to talk, wishing
that she would redirect the conversation but she didn’t. “It took me a long
time to get over you and to accept the fact that you were dead. I don’t suppose
I ever really did.”

“I’m not
dead, Christopher.” Her words were soft, not more than a whisper.

“I can
see that, but we still haven’t fully ascertained whether you’re a ghost or
not.” He smiled but she didn’t. Christopher looked at his watch. The interview
was starting again in less than ten minutes. He threw down the cigarette.

“I’d
been doing so much better lately; I thought I’d made a breakthrough in my life.
I was so much happier until I read about you again. Everything I’ve based my
life on these past nine years has been a mistake. I survived the camps but I
left a massive part of me behind. When I finally began to believe that you were
SS, the last part of my innocence died, because the memory of you was the only
evidence I had that love really existed in the world, and that there was a life
to be lived afterwards that would be worthwhile, that could be a real tribute
to all the people I saw die.” The tears were coming down in great swathes now.
Christopher put his arm across her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.
They stopped on the street. “I’ve tried to live my life as a tribute to those
people, that’s why I’ve lived the way I have since. It’s all been for them.”
Rebecca put both hands up to her face. Christopher reached down, tried to take
them away, but she kept them in place, locked against her face. “Now I come to
meet you here and all this is revealed. I knew I should never have come, I
should have left things the way that they were.”

“No,
Rebecca, you’re wrong. Finding out that you’re alive is the greatest joy I
could ever have.”

She took
her hands away from her face and looked at him. Her eyes were dewy and wet.
“Finding out that I’m alive and married, Christopher? I’m married,
Christopher.”

“I know
you are, Rebecca, but just the thought that you’re happy and alive is enough
for me.” It wasn’t easy to lie. His insides were heavy and it was becoming hard
to breathe.

“Is it?
The thought that I’m lavishing in my perfect marriage, that’s enough to keep
you happy until you die of old age wondering how the girl you became an SS
officer in Auschwitz for is doing in over in Tel Aviv with her husband?”
 
Her voice wavered as she pushed out the
words.

“No, of
course not,” he looked at her, directly into her blue eyes. “But it’s up to me
to construct my own happiness. I can’t rely on you for that, not anymore. Maybe
I could come over to Israel, some of the kids live over there, now. They write
to me all the time inviting me over…”

“Yes,
that sounds just perfect. You could watch Ari and I play happy families
together. If you’re lucky he may even be around long enough for you to have a
proper conversation with.”

“Does he
know who I am?”

“No, if
Ari ever found out that I was with an SS officer…I don’t even know. Maybe he
wouldn’t even care,” she said, turning away. “We need to get you back to your
interview.”

“Oh, I
don’t care about that.”

“I do.
You said that you’d be back there and you’re going back.” She strode away, back
toward the studio.

Christopher
stood still, feeling her words course through him as he watched her walk away
and just for a brief second, he contemplated letting her go, and never seeing
her again, about knowing that she was alive and that being enough. He walked
after her. He had to jog to catch up, and she turned to him as he began to
speak again. “I’m not saying that what I went through was anything compared to
what you did, I never would, but after the war I had to build a new life for
myself too. Everything had been focused on finding you, and the wonderful life
that we were going to have together, on the life that we deserved to have. But
when I found out you were dead, everything else died too. I did the things I
did because I thought you were watching over me all the time and that was what
you would have wanted me to do. And I’ve thought about you every day since.”