Finding Sophie (11 page)

U
ncle Gerald came down to London. He and Aunt Em and Dr. O'Malley consult endlessly about how to reunite me with my father. Uncle Gerald thumps the table and says, “Red tape. Stupid bureaucrats who do nothing but shuffle pieces of paper.”

“Gerald, dear, you are not in a court of law. You don't have to convince us,” Aunt Em says.

One afternoon three weeks later, Bridget, Marianne, and I are sitting in Bridget's garden. We've made lemonade from the first lemons to reach the shops in over a year. It would taste better with more sugar.

“Father's on a crusade. If he can help to bring Mr. Mandel over, he feels it would make up for …” She looks at Marianne. “You know, some of the people he couldn't help.”

I keep telling myself how grateful and happy I am – I mean, I'd be a monster if I wasn't – but deep down I'm dreading telling Father I want to stay with Aunt Em.

Father and I write regularly to each other. More than anything else, it was the socks that pleased him.

Father writes of people I've never heard of whom he's trying to locate. Each letter ends with the same words – that he's impatient to see me again.

I find it hard to know what to write about. It's usually a variation of the weather report and comments about his health. Aunt Em's not much help. She says I should write about my life, ordinary things. It feels dishonest somehow not to tell him about my plans to stay in England forever. I take Aunt Em's advice.

I write we're still short of food, queues for almost anything are endless, and that large parts of London are bombed and laid waste too. It's like writing to a stranger and the thought of meeting him unnerves me. I can't talk about that to anyone, least of all to Marianne, who is still mourning her father.

One Friday afternoon in late July, a few days before the end of term, I find Aunt Em waiting for me outside school. She hasn't done that in years.

“Is something wrong, Aunt Em?”

“On the contrary. Your father has been granted a temporary visitor's permit. He'll be here in a few days. It's exciting news, isn't it, Sophie?”

I wonder what Aunt Em really feels.

“Yes, it is.” I do my best to sound enthusiastic.

Marianne and I manage to get a ten minute break together in the cafeteria during my Saturday shift at the hospital.

“I'll be thinking of you next Saturday,” Marianne says, when I tell her the news.

“I'm frightened, Marianne.”

“Don't be. I'm sure he's nervous about meeting you again too. Have you sent him a picture of yourself? Bother, times up. I've got to get back. We're horribly busy. Talk to you soon, Sophie.”

I know I can't live up to being the only person Father's got left in the world. Being sorry for all he's been through is not enough to make me want to live in Germany again.

On Monday morning a letter arrives from the Home Office. They apologize for the delay, due to the many enquiries they receive of a similar nature, etc.

They returned Matron's letter to me.
I'll just have to find enough courage to tell my father how I feel.

H
e's arriving today! I didn't sleep at all last night.

Neither Aunt Em nor I manage to eat lunch. Tea is ready to be wheeled in on the little trolley in the kitchen. “Perhaps he'd prefer coffee. I'll make some,” Aunt Em says and leaves me alone in the sitting room, staring through the window, so I can open the front door the minute he arrives.

Dr. O'Malley's gone to the airport to fetch Father. It was decided he'd stay with the O'Malleys because his health is not up to managing stairs yet, and Dr. O'Malley thinks it'd be a good idea if he was nearby. Father will spend most of the day with us.

A car draws up outside. A frail-looking stooped man with white hair, wearing a suit that seems much too big for him, gets out of the car hesitantly. Dr. O'Malley offers his arm. I suddenly think of my grandfather.

“Aunt Em, they're here.”

I rush upstairs, and fasten the Star of David necklace around my neck. Voices drift up the stairs. “No, thank you. I can't stay for tea, Margaret. I'll be back for you in an hour or two, Jacob, and then you can settle in.”

I don't know how I get back down. In the hall we stare at each other, the old man and I. He moves toward me, and touches my hair.

“Wie deine Mutter.
Like your mother.”

Aunt Em disappears and we're alone in the sitting room. I've been practicing what to say.

“Papa. I've been waiting for you. Did you have a good journey? You must be tired. Please sit down.” We sit beside each other. “I'm sorry, Papa, I've forgotten how to speak German.”

“Don't be sorry. I am happy to speak English. Zoffie, you are a grown-up young lady. What a long time it has been.”

“Yes. In English my name is pronounced Sophie. Sorry.”

Now I have to apologize again. I shouldn't have corrected him.

He smiles at me, showing broken teeth.
Gaunt.
Now I know what
gaunt
looks like – it's this – those dark sad eyes watching me. I look away, afraid I'm going to cry.

I don't remember you at all. My real father is young and handsome and smells of pine trees.

I try not to stare at the bent fingers and thick knuckles.

Are you truly my father? Where is Aunt Em? Why isn't she here?

Father takes a grubby piece of paper from his pocket. It's been folded many times. He offers it to me. I'd prefer not to touch it. I do, of course. The paper is almost transparent. I look at the way
his bony wrist protrudes below his shirtsleeve. He's wearing the white shirt I sent him from the Red Cross. I remember Mama ironing a clean shirt for him every day.

“Allow me, Sophie.” Father unfolds the creases very carefully, as if afraid the precious paper might tear.

It's a drawing of a house. Two windows decorated with window boxes. Red dots for geraniums. A crayoned yellow sun shines in a bright blue sky. Smoke billows from the chimney in perfect circles. The house is surrounded by a neat fence. Stick figures walk along the path. A man and a little girl with a bow in her hair. The girl holds a red balloon.

The letters in the bottom right-hand corner are faded. I can just make them out:
FÜR PAPA. SOPHIE
5.

He takes the drawing back, folds it again. Puts it away in his pocket.

“I kept it hidden –
immer –
always.”

The days pass quickly. Papa and I gradually get to know each other again. There are so many things we can't talk about. When he looks at me, I can see him wondering where his “Zoffie” has gone, just as I puzzle about the half of my life he and Mama spent without me.

I show him my favorite places, though Papa can't walk very far yet. He loves the penguin pool in Regent's Park. “I knew him.”

“Who, Papa?”

“Lubetkin – the man who designed the zoo. That was before he was famous.” I'm suitably impressed.

Aunt Em drives us down to meet Uncle Gerald and Aunt Winifred. She gives me a long lecture about what she expects of me. I'm on my best behavior.

Papa is an instant success. He bows over Aunt Winifred's hand. For a horrible moment, I think he is going to kiss it.

“Let me show you my garden, Mr. Mandel.” Aunt Winifred takes his arm!

Before we go home, Papa designs a rose arbor for Aunt Winifred, down by the place where the Anderson shelter used to be.

In the car on the way home, Aunt Em says, “How did you do that, Jacob?”

“Yes, Papa. I've never seen Aunt Winifred all fluttery like that.”

Papa says, “She seems a charming lady.”

I don't know my father well enough yet to know when he is serious or joking, so I keep quiet. Perhaps after the Nazis, everyone seems charming to him.

One afternoon we're in the garden. I'm weeding the border under the kitchen window, and Papa's resting, watching me from Aunt Em's old basket chair.

“How happy you must be here, Sophie,” he says.

“I am, Papa.” I sit on the grass beside him, scraping damp soil from my fingers.

“Have you always been happy with Miss Em?”

“Mm.”

He's leading up to it. He's going to say it – tell me we'll be happy in Germany too.

“Mama and I hoped for this so much. Your happiness, until we could have you back home with us.”

I jump to my feet.

I'm not brave enough to tell you, Papa. Not brave enough to say you left me too long. I can't go back with you! I love you, but I can't go back.

“My hands are filthy, Papa. I'll wash and then I'll bring down some of my sketches to show you, if you're not too tired.”

“I have a better idea. Help your old papa up the stairs. I want so much to see your room, your studio.”

Papa sits at my desk, catches his breath. “This is a beautiful room, Sophie. When I was a student in Heidelberg, I lived in a little attic room – up four flights of stairs. It was much smaller than this one. From my window I could see the walls of Heidelberg Castle. Germany was beautiful once. A good place to be an artist.”

Papa looks at all my drawings carefully. Once or twice he makes a comment about perspective, or the shading on a face. “This one, Sophie, this one is my favorite. I like all your work, but this one is special.”

“It's Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath. I'll ask Nigel to frame it – he's really good at carpentry. I want you to have it, a present to remember me by.”

The minute I say it, I know I shouldn't have. I didn't mean to blurt it out like that. It's as good as telling him I'm not leaving.

Papa looks at me. He smiles.
Does he understand?
We make our way downstairs, one step at a time.

I don't see how there can be a happy ending. Papa knows it too, that's why he hasn't said anything yet. We're all trying not to upset each other. No one seems to want to start talking about what comes next. Not Papa, not me, and certainly not Aunt Em. I'm under twenty-one. … I may not have a choice. According to the Home Office letter, I don't.

T
his is Papa's last week with us. Aunt Em and I are having breakfast. Papa's coming at ten and we're going to the National Portrait Gallery.

Aunt Em cuts her toast into neat triangles. “When we started out together, Sophie, I tried never to think about this moment and how hard it was going to be to part with you.”

“Please talk to Papa! Tell him you need me. Why can't he stay in England? Why has no one thought of that?…. Someone's at the door. Much too early for Papa.”

“I suggest you go and see who it is, Sophie.”

“Papa, you're early. Come in. We were just talking about you.”

“Jacob, how nice. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Papa sits down. “Nothing, thank you. I have something important to tell you. It cannot wait. I cannot wait.”

“Papa, I have something to say too. …”

I mustn't put off telling him any longer.

“You will let me finish, please, Zoffie?”

That old German name. I can't listen to this.

Aunt Em puts her hand over mine.

“Before I left Germany, when I was still in Munich, in the hospital, a nurse helped me to write a letter to the British Home Office. I told them about you, Zoffie – how it is important that we find each other, that we must be together because we are the only ones left, you and I.”

Papa takes out a letter. “This arrived with the early post today. It is from the Home Office.” He reads:

“Oh, Papa, it's wonderful.” I throw my arms around his neck.

“Sophie, stop. You are choking me.”

“I am very happy for you both,” Aunt Em says, “for all of us.”

“I am a lucky man. Do you know, Miss Em, your brother and Dr. O'Malley wrote on my behalf? They sponsored me. So now, I can begin again. A small studio, no stairs, I promise. I shall plan gardens, teach drawing. What do you think, Sophie?”

“Let's put up a sign:
JACOB MANDEL – LANDSCAPE GARDENER
.”

“There is one more thing I want to say. Miss Em, dear Miss Em, Charlotte and I had Sophie with us for seven years, and then
she came to you for another seven years. The question is, what shall we do with her now?”

This time I don't hesitate. “I think you should share me. I would like that very much,” I say.

“I agree one hundred percent,” Papa says. There is a pause.

“Thank you, Jacob.” Aunt Em's eyes are bright. “That sounds like a perfect solution.”

I live with Aunt Em and see Papa most days. He rents a little flat close to Hampstead Heath. We walk, and go sketching together. On Fridays I cook supper for him and I've learned to say the Hebrew prayer for lighting the Sabbath candles. Marianne joins us whenever she can.

It's hard for Papa to talk about the war, about the past.

“I want to ask you something, Papa. You don't need to answer me if you don't want to.”

“What is the question?”

“How did you go on when … after Mama … in the camp, how do I say it?”

“Aushalten –
Endure? Each day, in my head I drew a garden and I tell myself, one day I will find my Sophie. One day we will draw gardens together.”

The End