Lilli's Quest (3 page)

Lilli glances at her yet-unknowing sister, for much has become clear to her during the many wakeful hours of the early morning. Something . . . she does not know what . . . has been planned for “the darker one,” which would be Helga, who has Papa's olive-toned complexion, and his deep-brown eyes and hair. Lilli is fair, with gray-green eyes and honey-toned hair.

The innocent Helga finishes her porridge, and Grossmutter offers her breakfast cake and milky coffee, which she accepts politely. Lilli seethes. She knows that there are plans to send Helga away. Why doesn't somebody say something?

Then, as though has heard Lilli's inner plea, Grossmutter seats herself directly opposite eleven-year-
old Helga and declares, “Grossvater and I have good news for you, my child. How would you like to travel to a good home in England, where you can hike, swim, and skate, go to school with other children, enjoy the cinema and other pleasurable outings? Wouldn't you like such an opportunity? It would be only until things are easier in Germany. Then you could return to us.”

“Yes, my child,” Grossvater chimes in, “you are lucky, for it has been arranged with the Jewish committee for the saving of the children that you are to have a place on the Kindertransport . . .”

Lilli jumps to her feet. She has heard vague talk of taking tens of thousands of Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied Europe by train and boat—from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia—before Hitler's armies invade even more of the continent.

“Yes!” Lilli declares. “And I want to go, too. We must all go, Elspeth, too. Papa would want it that way. How can you think of separating us so cruelly?”

But no one is listening to her. All eyes are on Helga, who has dashed her coffee cup to the floor and run screaming from the breakfast room, “No, no never! Never will I be such a coward as to let myself be driven out of Germany. Never.”

Three

It is the middle of the long, hot summer of 1939. Several months have passed since the anguished scene at the breakfast table in May, and there has been no further mention of sending Helga away on the Kindertransport.

Yet, everyone knows that the danger for Jews hiding in Germany is drawing closer every minute. And so, too, is war with England. The girls' tutor, Mr. Anton Hess, is their main source of information. He has told them that England is threatening to attack Germany if Hitler attempts to occupy one more country in Europe.

“Ah, but,” says the all-knowing Mr. Hess, his
pincenez
glasses flickering as he lowers and shakes his head in scholarly fashion, “the
Fuhrer
has already announced in May that Germany must have more
Lebensraum
, living space. He has vowed that he will have his armies in Poland by late summer.”

The threat of war, as well as further actions against Jews everywhere, has started all sorts of rumors. Gerda has murmured tidbits to Helga and Lilli about the attic room no longer being a safe place in which to hide them
from the Nazis, in spite of the Bayers' connections with members of the government.

“Where will they put us then?” Helga challenges.

Lilli looks at her sister anxiously. Helga has changed a great deal in the past months. She has become more assertive and outspoken.

Gerda tosses the girls fresh linens with which to make up their beds and replies as she leaves the room. “There is perhaps the coal bin.”

Helga and Lilli stare at each other, wide-eyed. Then they do their room chores and, as usual, don the drab clothes that Grossmutter purchased for them in the spring. It's become obvious that their grandmother's intention was for the girls to be as incognito as possible, even inside the Bayer house.

But the onset of summer has allowed the two older Frankfurter girls one privilege—they are permitted to spend time in the grim, overgrown, walled garden that surrounds the large house. There, they pass the hours rereading English-language books, assigned to them by Mr. Hess, according to Grossmutter's orders. They skip rope, they toss a ball around, they even play hide and seek among the overgrown shrubs.

“This is stupid and childish,” Helga exclaims one day. “I will not continue to be trapped in here like an animal.” She walks away from Lilli, declaring that she is going to search for an escape hatch in the garden well. Lilli shakes
her head in despair at Helga's foolishness and tries to concentrate on reading a peculiar English book called
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
.

After a long while, Helga returns. She is flushed and perspiring, and her hands and knees match the dirt color of her khaki skirt and blouse. “I've found a place behind the shrubs,” she reports excitedly, “where the wall is crumbling and the earth beneath it is soft.”

Lilli jumps to her feet, letting the annoying
Alice
book fall to the ground. “You are out of your mind,” she retorts. “What are you thinking? Even if you
could
make a space to wriggle through, where would you go?”

“Skating,” Helga replies triumphantly. “Oh, Lilli, remember how we loved to skate before we were forced to wear the yellow stars. On the ice, in the park, such a wonderful feeling of flying away, of freedom! I wear no yellow star now. Who would know what I am? I could be just any child out for play.”

Lilli grabs her sister's arm almost roughly. “Helga, come to your senses. Germany will soon be at war. It is already more dangerous than ever for a Jew in hiding to be discovered. You heard what Gerda said about the need to perhaps hide us in the coal bin. You could ruin everything—for Mutti, for Elspeth, even for the Bayers.”

Helga shrugs off Lilli's arm. Nothing more is said that day about Helga's plan to slither out of their stronghold for a skating outing.

* * *

For the rest of the summer, Lilli keeps careful watch over her sister. When the two of them are in the garden during the oppressive days of August, trying to cope with its dankness and humidity, Lilli barely takes her eyes off Helga, who sulkily drags herself off to some distant perch with her schoolbag of reading assignments.

Sure enough, there comes an afternoon when Lilli looks up to where Helga was sitting. Her sister is nowhere in sight! Lilli quickly makes her way to the spot Helga had shown her, beneath the crumbling wall. The hole, now larger than when Lilli first saw it, shows signs of having recently been disturbed. Lilli, her heart pounding, contemplates following Helga out into the dangerous world of the open streets. But suppose she cannot find her sister and they are both discovered missing? Suppose they are both apprehended by the Hitler police and found to have no identity cards—an immediate sign that they are hidden Jews?

Lilli paces the area around the hole in the wall. Where is the schoolbag that Helga brought with her into the garden? Then, Helga's deception becomes clear to Lilli. The schoolbag did not contain books; it contained Helga's roller skates.

Anguished minutes go by and add up to nearly three-fourths of an hour. Gerda may appear at any moment to call the girls indoors. What will Lilli tell her? How far
can they trust Grossmutter's loyal servant, whose true feelings toward them have always been a mystery?

Lilli tracks the garden restlessly, returning every few minutes to examine the hole in hope of Helga's return. She is at the point of despair when she hears a rustling in the shrubbery behind her and there, rising from a crouch to her full height, is Helga, her skates in one hand and her empty schoolbag in the other. Her dark eyes are flashing, and she wears a challenging smile. A single tear of bright red blood descends from a cut high up on her forehead.

Lilli dashes forward. “What have you done? Oh, Helga . . .”

Helga touches her forehead lightly, glances at her reddened, glistening finger, and continues to smile. “No, Lilli, it's not what you think. No one threw stones at me. The other children did not chase me. I fell, that was all. The skating path was not so smooth.”

But Lilli knows better. Last year, she and Helga were stoned several times by the Hitler Youth, at the ice rink, in the park, on their bicycles. They would seek out new places, but their enemies would always discover them. Eventually, they were forced to remain indoors.

Lilli hurries Helga silently toward the house. They stumble up the back stairs to the bathroom, where they wash Helga's cut and compress it to stop the bleeding. Lilli puts a plaster on the wound and Helga combs her
thick dark hair on a slant across her forehead. The two of them gaze into the mirror. In spite of her anguish, Lilli bursts out laughing. “Do you know who you look like? Ah, if only you had a moustache!”

It is August 27, 1939. Mr. Hess has arrived to give Helga and Lilli their morning lesson. The tutor is in a jubilant mood. He struts around the room with his hands behind his back, exclaiming, “Today the
Fuhrer
has demanded Poland's port to the sea, as well, of course, the rest of the country. The Polish army, such as it is,” he sniffs, “is mobilizing. And Britain is ready to declare war on Germany. “Young ladies,” he adds, “you are about to see history being made.”

Lilli, who has on occasion mocked the stuffy Mr. Hess behind his back, declares, “What is so wonderful about going to war? Everyone will suffer, even the Germans.”

Helga backs Lilli up with a sarcastic remark. “When Hitler goes into Poland he will find many more Jews to kill. That will give him even more
Lebensraum
.”

Mr. Hess looks a bit flustered. He's been teaching these half-Jewish students because he needed the work, and the Bayers convinced him his undertaking would be kept secret. Before he can respond to the challenges of his too-well-taught students, there is a rapid knocking at the door, and Mutti enters the room, with Gerda directly behind her.

Lilli and Helga are instantly alarmed, and Mr. Hess seems a bit taken aback, too. It's most unusual for Mutti to visit the girls during the day. Her expression is sad, though she is smiling.

“The papers have come for you, my Helga dear.” she says softly. Mutti is holding up some official-looking documents. “Your passport has been approved, and there is no time to lose. The next Kindertransport is to leave for England on September 1st. In just a few days. If war breaks out, heaven spare us, this train may be the last to reach safety. Gerda will help you pack the things you must take with . . .”

Mutti never finishes her sentence. Helga, once the most obedient of the three Frankfurter sisters, hurls herself at Mutti, screaming furiously.
“I told you I would never go. I refuse to give in to their threats and persecutions. I am not a mouse to be chased away with a broom.”

Mutti brushes a tear from her cheek. “Be sensible, my child. You are one of the fortunate ones. There is room for only a limited number of children on this final transport. You must not give up your chance for freedom.”

Lilli turns her back and walks to the window. She gazes down at the street below, which is almost deserted in the summer heat. She's never told Helga what she overheard the night she spied on Mutti and Captain Koeppler. Tears spring to her eyes. Perhaps she and Helga have not been the closest of sisters, despite being only
one year apart in age. Still, they have grown up together, and experienced the increasing harshness of the Nazi offensive against Jews. And, although they try never to speak of it, they are both almost certain they've lost Papa to the brutalities of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The mysterious postcards, with staggered dates but the same bland message, have long ceased to arrive. And Mr. Hess has whispered rumors of prisoners being worked to death in the harsh Buchenwald stone quarries. “
You must fight such hatred all your lives,”
Papa said upon being arrested on
Kristallnacht
. What, Lilli ponders, is the best way to do that?

She turns away from the window. This is what she will tell Helga.
It is, after all, what Papa would have wanted . . .

But Helga is nowhere in sight. Mutti has collapsed onto the bed and is sobbing uncontrollably. Gerda is bustling out the door, calling after Helga in German,
“Halt, Halt!”
Mr. Hess is rapidly gathering up his teaching materials, preparing to make a swift exit.

Lilli is much fleeter than the chunky-bodied Gerda, and easily slips past her on the staircase and races into the garden, just in time to see Helga disappear behind the untidy shrubs that conceal the hole beneath the crumbling wall. This time Lilli doesn't hesitate. She dives crazily into the loose earth, wriggles through the opening, staggers to her feet on the deserted street, and chases after Helga.

Both girls have always been fast runners, winning races even back when they were quite small and attended the German school. But today Lilli fears she will never catch her sister, who is sprinting ahead. She musn't lose sight of Helga, whose drab clothing could easily help her to vanish into the crowd on the next street, where a trolley line runs and there are shops rather than large houses surrounded by garden walls.

Where can Helga be going? Does
she
even know? Doesn't she see the danger of attracting attention? Lilli has a vision of Helga causing a scuffle in the street and being arrested by the Nazi police, who will take her to headquarters. There, she will be forced to reveal the hideout of her half-Jewish sisters. Mutti and the Bayers will be found guilty, and they will all be swallowed up into one of the concentration camps.

These images push Lilli to pursue Helga with a renewed burst of energy. The busy traffic street at the corner is already in sight, and Lilli has very little time to pounce on the fleeing Helga and bring her to the ground. She imagines herself a cheetah, an animal she saw once on a visit to the zoo, said to be the fastest land animal on earth. She wills herself to give all she has to the chase.

The distance between the sisters begins to shrink. Lilli is getting closer and closer. Finally, with one fierce effort, she hurls her body into the air, thrusts her right
arm as far ahead of her as she can, and catches the sleeve of Helga's blouse.

There is a loud thud, followed by a cracking sound that sends a wave of sickness through Lilli's body. Her stilled prey lies before her, moaning in pain.