Pastel Orphans (26 page)

C
HAPTER
33

I will soon meet Henrik’s mother and his aunt Femke, and suddenly I fear they will not like me.

Henrik sketches in his art book. It is a scene of the three of us near the fire, on a clear, starry night. He has drawn himself like a giant beside us, his muscled frame bursting through his shirt.

Greta and I share a room. When she is asleep, I creep into bed with Henrik.

Henrik talks about Zamosc and about how much he loves me. I kiss him to stop him from talking. At that moment I am just happy to lie together in the present; the outside world is suddenly too big. I put my head on his chest.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“I am frightened of losing you.”

“You will not lose me.”

“What if your mother doesn’t approve of me?”

Henrik laughs at this. “She will love you like I do.”

I do not fall asleep straight away but lie in the crook of Henrik’s arm and feel his chest rise and fall. I listen to the crickets outside the window and the night birds. It is as if they know we are inside, as if they are singing to us. I fall asleep and dream of rivers and blue skies.

We load our packs with the remaining food and fill our water bottles. I change into the dress that Henrik said he liked months earlier. I find a dress for Greta. It is too big but I think that a dress will make her feel good.

Henrik says that Tobin had a secret place to hide medicines but that they are gone. Perhaps taken by the partisans, knowing it was unlikely they would return. I have nothing with which to treat the scratches and sores on our feet, so I tear up strips of fabric and make them into bandages.

It is early when we set out. Henrik is keen to get home. In the back of my mind I am still worrying about Zamosc, still worrying about what we might find and whether there are Germans there and what they are doing. I hope that the partisans are safe wherever they are, and say a prayer for my brother that he is alive, and that we will find each other in Zamosc at the end of the war.

As we walk, the forest becomes brighter, as if we have come out of the darkness. Through the trees we can see a village but there are no signs of life. Henrik creeps to the edge of it and returns to say there is no one there. There is no smoke from kitchen fires.

We walk into the village, eager to find more food. I walk between two small houses and Henrik and Greta walk the other way, to the other side of the village. As I walk around a corner, I see that several people have congregated in the center. Several Germans with guns have surrounded them. I see the Nazi symbol on the front of the car and shrink back against the wall.

I turn to go the way that Henrik and Greta were headed, towards the back of the huts closest to the forest, but the tip of a gun is now pointed at my face.

“Halt,” says a man with a hard, craggy face. “Are you alone?”

I say nothing, overcome with disbelief. He asks me again. Once I nod, he shoves me towards the center to join the others.

There are several women, old and young—and children. One woman holds in her arms a baby who suddenly starts to cry, the sound bouncing loudly off the forest walls. My legs are trembling and I look around cautiously to see if Henrik and Greta are watching. I hope the sound of the baby has alerted them.

We are steered towards a large truck. One German grabs my arm roughly and tells me to climb up into the vehicle. The back is filled with people. Some are lying down, others are crying, and some look like they have been there for a long time, all traces of hope gone from their faces. A couple with one small suitcase clutch tightly to one another, and I am forced to climb over them to make room for more people climbing behind me. It is hot in here.

At first I feel nothing, like this was always to be my destination. But then I feel regretful that I have let Henrik down, and Kaleb, that I have been so foolish as to be caught. I think of Greta and wonder if she is worrying about me. And then in the back of my mind I wonder if I have only held on to life temporarily, if I was meant to go with Mama and Papa.

The doors close and I am in darkness. There is a smell of urine, feces, and sickness. I feel nauseous and lean my head against the wall as the vehicle starts to move.

And suddenly there is more commotion outside.

“I’m a Jew! Take me too,” a voice says.

The truck stops, the doors open again, and the light shines in brilliantly. I hadn’t noticed before, but it is a perfect sunny day, without a cloud in the sky. A dark silhouette fills the space of the doorway but I already know who it is. I have already recognized the voice.

He looks around at the mass of bodies that fill up every space in the compartment. I do not put up my hand. I do not have to. It is Henrik and he can find a needle in a haystack. He found Greta in Poland. His eyes lock onto mine, and he scrambles over people to get to me, moving assuredly as always.

“You must let me through,” he says, and no one argues, for Henrik has an urgency that can never be ignored.

He squeezes between me and an old man who does not look up. The man’s coat is wrapped around him like it is a cold day.

Once I feel Henrik’s body, I know that I can breathe again.

I listen to his voice. It is low and gravelly. It reminds me of the men who used to stay late after dinner and talk with my father in soft, gentle voices, which always put me to sleep.

P
ART THREE

G
RETA

C
HAPTER
34

1956

Mama looks small and frail behind the piano. She has suffered much. She did not want to leave Zamosc before the end of the war. But now she never wants to return, because they are Jew haters, she says.

When I returned after my kidnapping, Mama had mostly recovered from her stroke, though she did not move as fast as before. I did not see her when she was first struck down but Femke told me that she nearly died. When Henrik did not return with me, there was too much pain. Mama would sit for hours at the window. She would look at the pictures he had drawn. She would talk about him throughout the day. She would say, “Remember when . . .” and then remind us of the things he had said and done. Her memories were so vivid that sometimes I could picture him standing there in the living room, telling the stories himself.

Femke seemed a different person also when I returned. The person I left was hard and bitter, but Henrik’s departure softened her. She stayed strong during that time for all of us.

“We must never give up on him, Greta,” she said. “Henrik will return one day. He will find us. Henrik can do anything he puts his mind to.”

We had no choice but to leave Zamosc shortly after I returned. We had no food. There was nothing to farm and the Germans took over the land. Femke was ill—she had been sick for a long time but had kept this hidden. We went to Warsaw and just after we arrived, we heard of fights in Zamosc between the partisans and the Germans. We were thinking of returning, but Femke died and then Mama met a German officer.

I kept her secret: that she was kept by a German officer. Many would not have forgiven Mama if they knew her secret. But I was there. I know what it is to have no food in your stomach, to have nothing—not even a roof over your head or medicine to cure illnesses. Mama did what she did so that we could both survive.

Her German soldier said that he was powerless to help her find Henrik. It was like sorting ants; there were too many and they were now just numbers.

Mama suffered many nightmares towards the end of the war, worried that Henrik would return to Zamosc and she would not be there for him. She wrote letters to people she used to know there, letters that went unanswered and finally were returned by the postmaster.

Then it was 1945 and the Russians were coming, and the German soldier returned to his country and his wife when the Nazis began losing the war. Mama and I were left alone again in Warsaw. When the war was over, carrying nothing but suitcases containing our clothes, we returned to our village in Zamosc and found that our house was no longer there. It had been destroyed and another had been built in its place. Our land had been divided up and we had no proof that it was ours, no claim to anything. There was no one left there that we knew, and the ones we didn’t know weren’t welcoming. The atmosphere in the town and villages was hostile. We stayed for a day and left quickly to return to Warsaw.

My Polish had never been good, perhaps because I refused to try too hard to learn it, and Mama and I had always spoken to each other in German. The Allies were shipping all German-speaking people back to Germany and we didn’t feel safe in Poland. At the end of 1945 we returned to Berlin. The conditions were awful but we suffered because we had to. Because we were German too.

Our Berlin apartment had been seized and part of the street was bombed, so we moved into a small, empty apartment on the other side of the city. Mama destroyed our fake identity documents so that we were no longer Klaus. We took back Papa’s name of Solomon. Many Jews did not return to Germany, emigrating to America, Australia, Palestine, and other places where they believed peace was assured. We helped the community repair itself slowly while we tried to heal inside.

Mama tells people her name now. She is no longer afraid but there is still an air of caution as if, to some, our Jewish name is somehow to blame for everything that happened.

Mama still has nightmares. She lives in hope that Henrik will return to Berlin.

Today, I kiss Mama good-bye and tell her that I will return soon with any news. I shut the door behind me and walk across the pavement, past the street vendors, towards the bus.

I get off the connecting train from Warsaw but there is no one to meet me. I have to walk several miles to reach the rural villages of Zamosc. I pass farms that are plentiful and walk along the streets. Much has changed, even the air. Here the air now smells free. There is no one to fear, no one who will take me away.

I pass the old school that Henrik and I attended before we were told that schooling was only for those who the Germans thought worthy. I remember the time I was taken. I remember how lonely I was, and how I was taken to live with a family who did not seem to welcome me at first. Over time, I was accepted, and the food there was good and the people were nice to me. But the things I learned later about the suffering my mother went through do not make the memory a good one.

I take the path to the forest and find our secret burial place beneath the memory tree—Henrik’s and mine—near the edge of a clearing. A new warehouse has been built not far away, and I wonder if someone is watching me, if they will come to ask what I am doing.

With a rock I dig away until the rock hits the top of the tin. Inside, there is no message to me from Henrik, but there is a torn patch: a Jewish star. I sit and ponder this. I feel a moment of excitement but then the questions surface: Did he put this here before the war or afterwards? Was this perhaps a star from someone he knew or could it be his?

Then I pull out the yellowing notes, each with our distinctive writing from when we were children, many years ago.

Henrik’s reads:
I hope that Greta will not be mad at me when she discovers that I tricked her into leaving wishes beneath the tree.

Mine reads:
I hope that my family will be together, and Papa will come, and Henrik will make him laugh.

I pass a decommissioned tank, now used for other pastimes. A child stands atop and gives me a salute as I pass. I wave back, then come to a little cemetery by a chapel to read the headstones and the memorial wall bearing the names of the dead.

I see the two-story house that stands in place of our own, with its gabled roof and bright paint. I knock at the door but there’s no answer. I turn then to walk across the fields I used to run in as a child, always following Henrik. There is a man nearby. He is pulling lettuces and other vegetables from his crop, planted in the field of rich, black soil. I approach him.

He has aged. His hair and beard are gray, and he is holding his lower back as he stands. He is no longer as big as I remember.

“Hello, Mr. Lubieniecki,” I say.

“Hello,” he says. “And who might you be?”

“Greta Solomon . . . Greta Klaus, I mean.”

He looks a little confused and then his face brightens.

“Little Greta?” He holds out his hand to show the height of me the last time he saw me. “I remember. Karolin’s daughter.”

“Yes,” I say.

“For a minute I thought you were Karolin. The resemblance is remarkable, though you perhaps are a little bit taller, no?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Well, this is a surprise.”

“When did you come back?” I ask. “You weren’t here after the war.”

“No. It was 1947 before we had the courage to return. And then we managed to secure our home again. How is your mother . . . and your aunt?”

“Mama suffers from aching joints and she never fully recovered from the stroke, but she is teaching piano again. It makes her happy to be with children.”

I tell him about Femke’s passing, and he says that she was a fine woman and good worker. He talks about the farm and about his daughter and grandchildren, who have moved away. I ask about the doctor and his wife who hid beneath their stairs. My aunt often spoke of the doctor, of how brave he was to come out of hiding to help Mama and others.

The farmer shakes his head sadly. “I do not know. They left one night to try and make their way to England but I never heard from them again.”

He tilts his head back suddenly.

“Oh, I have something for you. You must come to the farm.”

I help with his baskets of vegetables and we carry them to his house with its small front porch. His wife is there and she greets me warmly. She is smaller and rounder now. She asks about my life and I tell them that I am a secondary school teacher, of mathematics, German, and English.

“You always were a bright one . . .” He pauses before remembering. “Oh yes, the letters.” He turns to his wife. “The letters for Greta. Where are they?”

Mrs. Lubieniecki puts on her glasses and disappears into the next room. She reappears with two letters. One is addressed to Greta Klaus, the other to Mama.

“The people in the new house, where you once lived, brought these to me a couple of years ago and asked if I knew you. I did try to make inquiries as to where you might be, but we could not find any trace of your mother or you. We feared the worst. But I kept them anyway, hoping that one day someone from your family would come back.”

The envelope has an Australian stamp.

“Most of the mail to unknown recipients is returned to the sender and if there is no return address, it is returned to the post office or ends up as waste. It is a miracle that these did not meet a similar fate.”

I touch the front of the letter, tenderly looking at the uneven, tall letters written in black ink. A flood of memories rushes at me: Henrik marching me up and down the hallway, with me dressed up as a soldier’s assistant; Henrik carrying me on his shoulders as he crosses a creek; Henrik’s face in the chicken coop, the shock of seeing him there, and my desire to hug him hard until he broke. It is the memory of a brother who stole me back. Tears threaten to escape from the corners of my eyes.

“Are you all right?” asks Mrs. Lubieniecki. “This must be quite a shock. War separated so many.”

“Yes,” I say.

“I will make some tea, if you like, and you can go and read the letter on the porch.”

“Thank you.”

I walk outside and look up and down at the uncurbed streets. I can see the remnants of a broken stable, the top half of its walls missing; grasses grow over unused, unworkable machinery, and opportunistic trees sprout where nature was once torn up by its roots.

Apart from the broken building, there is little evidence of the atrocities committed along this street, of people taken. The lands are green and there is a familiar smell of fertilizer and smoke coming from recovering factories, and there are sounds of cars and bicycles, and of people making their way in a free society. I do not belong here. The memories that we made here, Henrik and I, have been replaced.

I open the envelope carefully, so as not to tear the precious paper sent from the other side of the world.

There are several pages, folded. Some are cartoons taken from newspapers. The first cartoon shows Adolf Hitler dressed as the Pied Piper. It depicts him losing control of his army. His face is flushed and puffed with anger and there is steam coming out of his ears. In his hands he holds a broken pipe, in two pieces. There are many rats in little coats with swastikas, all scurrying to the corners of the room where there are mouse holes, but these are too small to squeeze through. They are all trapped. The words underneath are supposedly Hitler’s:
Who broke my pipe?
The type is in English and a German translation is handwritten underneath.

The next cartoon is a picture of SS officer Karl Höcker, the man responsible for sending so many Jews to their deaths, his name in the center of a star tattooed on the top of his arm. The former SS officer is lying on an operating table. There are dots on his forehead to show where the operation will take place. He is tied down and his lips are stretched in terror. Above him stands a doctor who wears a Jewish skullcap and a sinister smile. The caption below says
I hear you have had trouble remembering.
It makes fun of the Nazi who denied he played any part in the atrocities inflicted upon the Jews.

At the bottom of both cartoons is the artist’s name in italics:
Rik Solomon
.

I read the first sentence of the letter:

Dear Gretel,

If you have this letter, it means you are alive and as you can see I have found an employment that suits me.

I start to cry and have to put the letter down for a moment to clear my eyes. My funny, silly brother, who never gave up, and never gives up still.

I returned to Zamosc after we were freed from the camp but I found no trace of you and people said that if you weren’t there, you were most likely dead. Jews and Germans were no longer welcome and since I fell into both those categories, I had no choice but to leave. I took the opportunity to return to Germany but not to stay. I went to Munich, where I recovered from the camp.

I think how close we came to finding each other. It may have been that we were in Zamosc at the same time. I think how unlucky it was that we did not meet.

I chose Munich as it was something I had been planning to do before I found you in Cracow. I had memorised Otto’s address. You may not remember what I told you of Otto because we had so little time together but he was a good German who died for no good reason. Though that story is probably best told in much more detail when we meet.

Otto’s house was half-destroyed by bombs and I found his mother and two sisters living there. They were most keen to hear Otto’s story, and I told them of his unfortunate end. I assured them that he was very brave. They told me that many of their friends had died during the Allied bombings at the end of the war. Otto’s brother had also been killed. At just fifteen, near the end of the war, he was sent to Berlin and told to fight like a man. He died in his first battle—a street battle that included only young and old Germans against the force of the Russians.

I stayed with the Petersens and helped them rebuild for a while, then moved on. I did not know whether you were in Germany, someplace else, or dead. I sent a letter to the apartment in Berlin and did not receive a reply. I wrote another letter to the Berlin Registry but they had no record of you, and no one had been there to list me as missing. They also advised me that our apartment building was badly damaged and there were no occupants. I thought there was no point in going back. Perhaps it was the trauma of being in the camps, perhaps I was scared of what I would find. Some memories are too painful to relive. Berlin was a place I had decided I would never see again. But then never is perhaps too long, isn’t it, dear little Gretel?