Good-bye Marianne (8 page)

T
hey woke up when the train stopped. Werner said, “We must be close to the Dutch frontier.” He looked out of the window. “Gestapo coming on board. Sit up straight. Don’t say or do anything.”

The children sat motionless, waiting.

The Gestapo entered the carriages, one officer to each compartment. “Passports.”

The children held out the precious documents. Marianne put her hand in Sophie’s coat pocket and, thank goodness, the passport was there. She held it out with her own. The officer barely glanced at the pictures. He pointed to the luggage racks.

“Open up,” he ordered.

They put their suitcases on the seat for inspection.

The Gestapo officer, with a quick movement, overturned each case and ran his black-gloved hand through the contents. He pulled out Werner’s stamp album and flicked carelessly through
the pages, then put the album under his arm. When he opened Marianne’s suitcase, he pushed the party dress aside, reached down inside the suitcase, found Marianne’s bear, and hit the cherished toy sharply across his knee.

What was he looking for?

Marianne looked down on the dusty compartment floor, where her dress had slipped out of its tissue-paper wrapping. Under the green velvet sleeve, a small white envelope, with her name written in her mother’s neat lettering, protruded.

Silently, without seeming to move, Marianne stepped forward. Her foot covered the paper. Marianne tried to steady her breathing; willed herself not to tremble.

The officer opened the back of Liselotte’s framed picture of her parents, stepping deliberately on Brigitte’s clean white blouse, which had fallen to the floor. Josef’s prayer shawl was thrown aside. Sophie’s doll was grabbed, its head twisted off. Then the officer turned the doll upside down and shook it.

Sophie cried quietly.

Marianne saw Josef clench his fist and open his mouth. She knew he was about to say something that would anger the officer. In desperation, she curled her fingers around the motor-horn in her pocket and squeezed. In the small space, the sound was as deafening as an explosion.

The children watched. No one moved. Josef’s eyes met Marianne’s for a moment. She looked down.

A second pair of black boots appeared at the door of the compartment.

“Enough,” said a voice. Marianne looked up. The Gestapo were leaving the train.

Josef smiled his thanks. Marianne’s knees were trembling so hard she had to sit down. The train whistle blew, and the locomotive began to pick up speed.

Brigitte said, “Sophie, we’re in charge of the doll hospital.
Fraülein
, please hand your doll over for repairs.”

Sophie smiled.

With careful fingers, Brigitte twisted the doll’s head back onto the neck and said, “Good as new,” and returned the doll to Sophie.

Only then was Marianne sufficiently under control to pick up the envelope and take out the letter it contained. It read:

Marianne was crying. This time she did not attempt to hold back her tears. “It was a letter from my mother,” she said.

Werner blew his nose noisily. Josef turned his back and started throwing all his stuff back into his suitcase. Marianne watched him spend a long time folding his prayer shawl before clicking the lid of his suitcase shut. Liselotte and Brigitte had their arms around each other.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” said Sophie, and held out her hand to Marianne.

When they got back, the others had repacked Sophie’s and Marianne’s things as well as their own.

The train steamed into a station – a Dutch station! The children on the train went wild. Windows were pulled down, hats and handkerchiefs waved, voices shouted greetings, strangers shook hands.

Women, wearing clogs, handed drinks and bags of food through the open windows.

Werner took in a huge basket full of white rolls, butter and cheese. There were even bars of chocolate for each of them. A note with
GOOD LUCK
was pinned to a clean, white napkin which covered the food. The compartment which minutes before had been tense, angry and tearful, hummed with laughter and thanks.

“Good-bye.”

“Safe journey.”

“Thank you.”

The train passed through the neat Dutch countryside, and the sound of children’s voices floated out of the windows, over the dikes and windmills, into the December skies. A train of sadness had been transformed into a holiday train.

Josef began the song, sung at the end of the Passover meal – the festival that celebrates the flight of the Jews from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land. What did it matter that it was the wrong time of year? Weren’t they an exodus of children?

Just as they began to sing the verse about the Holy One, “Blessed is He,” the train stopped.

T
he train emptied its load of children. Eager hands helped them down the steps, patted cheeks, found luggage, tucked chocolate bars into pockets, and pointed them towards the quay. Tiredly, they filed out of the small, clean, train station and into the cold December darkness of the cobbled square.

“My face stings from the wind,” said Sophie, running to keep up with Marianne. “Where is the sea? Why isn’t it here?”

“I can smell it, mmm, like herrings. We’ll be there very soon.” The long line of children followed the path down to the water.

“My case feels as though there are rocks in it,” Marianne said to Sophie. “Can you still manage your rucksack?”

A ripple of sound, like seagulls calling each other, shivered through the weary procession. “The ship, the ship.” Everyone took up the cry.

There, looming up out of the darkness like a great white bird against the gloomy December sky, was the boat. They could see
it clearly, shifting impatiently on the waves, eager to be free of its moorings.

Marianne said, “It’s called De Praag. Look, the name’s painted on the side.”

Some men in uniform waved and came running toward the straggling line. The small travelers stopped moving. Sophie grasped her doll more tightly. Marianne took her free hand.

Could it be a hoax? The Hoek of Holland. That reminded Marianne of the hooks of the swastika. Were the Gestapo going to drown them?

A whisper filtered through from the front of the line. “They’re friends, pass it on. Sailors from the ship. The uniforms are British.”

A cheer went up from the ship as the first children reached the wooden gangway and climbed excitedly on board. Marianne stood leaning over the ship’s railing, looking out into the darkness. So many children still to come. How had the train held them all? So many parents sitting tonight with empty places at the table.

Ruth out there in that friendly country. Would they meet again one day?

Other children joined her at the railing, wanting one last look at land before they sailed, at all they were leaving behind.

“What are you thinking about, Marianne?” asked Sophie beside her.

“My father said to me once, ‘We can be together in our thoughts, even if we don’t live together.’ I’m remembering, storing up so I won’t forget.”

The ship’s engines began to hum steadily. The last child was on board. Sailors removed the gangway. The ship started to move.

“At last. We’re going. Tomorrow we’ll be in England,” said Marianne.

“What a long journey,” said Sophie.

“Yes, but we’re almost there.”

The ship sailed on, into the darkness, into safety, into the future.

Good-bye Marianne
is a work of fiction based on factual events.

The De Praag arrived at Parkstone Quay, Harwich, England on the morning of Friday, December 2, 1938 at 5:30
A.M.
On board were the children of the first
Kindertransport
. There were to be many more, organized by the British government, and helped by the Children’s Refugee Movement and dedicated people who offered aid of every kind.

Irene Kirstein Watts lived at Richard Wagnerstrasse 3, Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany until she was sent to England by
Kindertransport
on December 10, 1938. She was then seven and one-half years old.

The transports continued until the outbreak of the Second World War in September, 1939. The
Kindertransportes
were a lifeline that rescued 10,000 children from Europe.

The Nazis murdered one and one-half million children under the age of fifteen.

Copyright © 1998 by Irene N. Watts

Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 97-62177

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Watts, Irene N., date
  Good-bye Marianne

eISBN: 978-1-77049-057-4

1. Title.

PS
8595.
A
873
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6 1998      j
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813’.54      
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97-932437-8
PZ
7.
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37
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 1998

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

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