The German Girl (5 page)

There was no mention of dogs or cats, lost moons or enchanted forests. So it was a book of adventures. First mystery solved.

I started to read it with Dad syllable by syllable. Every night, we would conquer a page. At first, it was a struggle. Soon, though, the sentences flowed without me even realizing it.

That story of a man shipwrecked on an island where there were only two seasons, rainy and dry, stuck in the middle of nowhere with his friend Friday, whom he had saved from cannibals, filled me with hope. And later I began to create my own adventures.

Dad could be lost on a faraway island, and I would sail my majestic ship across seas and oceans, battling terrible storms and huge waves till I found him.

But today isn’t a reading day. I have to tell him about the package that came from Cuba, a real family relic. Because if anyone knows anything
about that boat and the dedication in German, it has to be him. I’ll persuade Mom to go to a photo lab to get the pictures developed. I know he’s going to help me figure out who they are. Probably his parents are there, too, or even his grandparents, because as far as we can tell, the photographs were taken before the war. The Second World War, the most terrible of all.

Every morning, when I wake up, I pick up the photo and kiss it. Then I prepare Mom’s coffee. That’s the only way I can make sure she gets up.

When I make her coffee today, I breathe through my mouth because the smell makes me nauseous. Mom likes it, though, and it wakes her up. I carry in her big cup very slowly, and I hold it by the handle to avoid getting burned. It’s like a magic potion that will snap her out of her daze. I knock twice on her door, but as usual, she doesn’t reply. I open the door slowly, and light from the hall pours in with me.

Then I see her: she’s totally pale, not moving, her eyes rolled up, and her chin pointing up to the ceiling. Her body is all twisted. I drop the cup of coffee, which falls to the floor with a crash and stains the white bedroom walls.

I run out into the hall, struggle to open the front door, and then race upstairs to the fourth floor and knock on Mr. Levin’s door. When he opens it, his dog Tramp leaps up at me. “I can’t play with you now, Mom needs me.” Mr. Levin sees how worried I am and puts his arm around me. I can’t hold back my tears anymore.

“There’s something wrong with Mom!” I tell him, because I can’t say the word I fear most. That I’ve lost her, that she’s gone, that she’s abandoned me. From now on, I’ll be an orphan not only because of my father but also because of her. Maybe I’ll have to leave my apartment, my photographs, my school. Who knows where they’ll send me to live. Maybe Cuba. Yes, I could ask the social workers who come looking for me if they would find my family in Cuba—to find Hannah, the only person I have left in the world.

I rush down the stairs with Tramp. Mr. Levin takes the elevator. I
arrive first and wait outside Mom’s bedroom, not daring to look inside. My heart is pounding. It’s beating so hard my whole body aches. Mr. Levin enters very calmly, switches on the lamp, sits on Mom’s bed. He takes her pulse, and then looks back at me and smiles.

He begins calling her:

“Ida! Ida! Ida!” he shouts, but the body still doesn’t move.

Then I see Mom’s arms slowly start to relax, and she tilts her head slightly to the left, as if trying to avoid us. Color comes back to her cheeks, and she seems annoyed by all the light in her room.

“Don’t worry, Anna, I’ve already called an ambulance. Your mom will be fine. What time does your school bus arrive?” asks the only friend I have in the entire universe, who happens to own the noblest dog in our building.

Mom can see the tears streaming down my cheeks, and it seems like this makes her sadder than ever. It’s like she’s ashamed and is asking me to forgive her, but she doesn’t have the strength to say a single word. I go over and hug her gently, so as not to hurt her.

I dry my tears and run down to catch the bus. From the street I see Mr. Levin out on our balcony, making sure the driver picks me up. As I climb aboard and walk down the aisle to my seat, the other kids can tell I’ve been crying. I sit at the back, and the girl with braids in the row in front of me turns to look at me. I’m sure she thinks I’ve been punished because I’ve done something wrong: not finishing my homework, or cleaning my room, or eating my breakfast, or brushing my teeth before leaving the apartment.

Today I find it impossible to concentrate in any of my classes. Luckily, the teachers don’t bother me with questions I can’t answer. I don’t know if Mom will have to spend some days in the hospital or if I’ll be able to live with Mr. Levin for a while.

When I get home after school, my friend is out on the balcony again. I think this must mean Mom is in the hospital and that I will have to find somewhere else to stay.

I get off the bus without saying good-bye to the driver, then wait
near the entrance to our building for a few minutes because I don’t want to go in. I notice the first green shoots of the Boston ivy covering the side of our building.

I pick up the mail, like I do every day, then rush up the stairs. When I enter, Tramp runs over and starts licking me. I sit on the floor and stroke him for a while, trying to postpone having to go into the living room. When I finally do, I see Mr. Levin, now with Tramp at his feet, and Mom in her leather armchair next to the open balcony door. Both of them are smiling. Mom stands up and strides over to me.

“It was nothing more than a scare,” she whispers in my ear so that Mr. Levin won’t hear. “I promise it won’t happen again, my girl.”

It has been a long time since she called me “my girl.”

She starts stroking my hair. I close my eyes and snuggle against her chest the way I used to when I was little, when I really had no idea what had happened to Dad and was still hoping he might appear, walking through the door at any moment. I take a deep breath: she smells of clean clothes and soap.

I hug her, and we stay like that for several minutes. All of a sudden, the room seems enormous, and I feel dizzy.
Don’t move, stay like this a little longer. Hold me until you’re tired and can’t hug me anymore.
Tramp comes to lick my feet and wake me from my daydream, but when I open my eyes, I see Mom is standing up, smiling, with color in her cheeks. She is beautiful again.

“Her blood pressure dropped too far. Everything will be fine,” says Mr. Levin. Mom thanks him, pulls away from me, and goes into the kitchen.

“Now we’ll have dinner,” she announces, entering a place that’s been foreign to her for the last couple of years.

The table has already been set: napkins, plates, silverware for three. The smell of salmon with capers and lemon wafts from the oven. Mom carries the dish to the table, and we start to eat.

“Tomorrow we’ll go to a photo lab in Chelsea. I’ve called and arranged to see them.”

This is what I need to hear to recover from today’s scare. I feel guilty somehow; I know that sometimes I’ve wished she wouldn’t wake up, that she’d never open her eyes again; just keep sleeping, free from pain. I don’t know how I could ask her to forgive me. But for now we’re going to find out who is in these photos. And I feel Mom is regaining control, or at least has more energy.

I walk Mr. Levin back to his apartment. On the way, we run into a cranky neighbor who can’t stand the noblest dog in the building.

“It’s a filthy dog they picked up in the street,” she has told our other neighbors several times. “Who knows, he may be covered in fleas.” They all think she’s crazy.

But Tramp still greets her when he sees her. He doesn’t care that she rejects him. He has a droopy eye. He’s a bit deaf. There’s a kink in his tail. That’s why the old woman hates him. Mr. Levin rescued him and talks to him in French.

“
Mon clochard,
” he calls him. He told me the dog used to belong to an old French woman who lived on her own like him and was found dead in La Touraine, one of the oldest apartment buildings on Morningside Drive.

I remembered suddenly that Mom used to say, “We live in the French part of Manhattan,” in the days when she would tell me bedtime stories.

When the janitor opened the old French lady’s door, Tramp escaped, and they couldn’t catch him. A week later, during one of his early-morning walks, Mr. Levin noticed the dog struggling up the steep steps of Morningside Park. Then Tramp sat down at his feet.

“
Mon clochard,
” he called him, and the dog jumped for joy.

Tramp obediently followed Mr. Levin, a stocky old man with bushy gray eyebrows, back to his apartment. From then on, he became his faithful companion. The day he introduced Tramp to me, he said very seriously, “Next year I’ll be eighty, and at that age, you count the minutes you have left. I don’t want the same thing to happen to my
clochard
as it did last time. The moment they break my door down to find out why I haven’t been answering, I want my dog to know the way to your home.”

“
Mon clochard,
” I said to Tramp in my American accent, stroking him.

Even though Mom has never let me have a pet—apart from fish, who don’t live even as long as a flower—she knows she can’t refuse to have Tramp come to live with us, because we owe it to my only friend.

“Anna, Mr. Levin is going to live a long time yet, so don’t get your hopes up,” she told me when I insisted we’d have to look after his dog.

To me, Mr. Levin doesn’t seem old or young. I know he’s not strong, because he walks very carefully, but his mind is still as active as mine. He has an answer for everything, and when he stares you in the eye, you really have to pay attention.

Now Tramp doesn’t want me to leave and starts whimpering.

“Come on, you bad-mannered dog,” Mr. Levin comforts him. “Little Miss Anna has more important things to do.”

As he says good-bye to me at his front door, Mr. Levin touches his mezuzah. I notice a single old photograph on the wall. It shows him with his parents: a good-looking young man with a smile on his face and thick black hair. Who knows whether Mr. Levin remembers those years in his village that was then part of Poland. It was such a long time ago.

“You’re a girl with an old soul,” he says, laying his heavy hand on my head and giving me a kiss on my brow.

I don’t know what it means, but I take it as a compliment.

I go into my bedroom to tell all the day’s events to Dad, who is waiting on my bedside table. Tomorrow we’ll drop off the negatives at the photo lab. I tell him about Tramp and Mr. Levin and the dinner Mom made. The only thing I don’t mention is the scare we had in the morning. I don’t want to worry him with things like that. Everything’s going to be all right, I know it.

I feel more exhausted than ever. I can’t keep my eyes open. I find it impossible to go on talking or to switch the light off. I’m dozing off when I hear Mom come into the room and turn off my bedside lamp. The unicorns stop spinning and take a rest, just like me. Mom covers me with the purple bedspread and gives me a long, gentle kiss.

The next morning, a ray of sunshine wakes me; I forgot to pull down
the blinds. I get up startled, and for a few seconds I wonder: Was it all a dream?

I hear noises outside my room. Somebody is in either the living room or the kitchen. I dress as fast as I can so I can find out what’s going on. I don’t even comb my hair.

In the kitchen, Mom is cradling her coffee cup. She drinks slowly, smiles, and her brown eyes light up. She’s wearing a lilac blouse, dark-blue pants, and shoes she calls “ballerina slippers.” She comes over and kisses me, and I don’t know why, but when I feel her near me, I close my eyes.

I begin to eat breakfast quickly.

“Take it easy, Anna . . .”

But I want to finish as fast as possible. I want to find out who those people in the photos are, because I think we’re very close to discovering Dad’s family. The story of a ship that maybe sank in midocean.

As we leave the apartment, I see Mom turn back briefly. She locks the door and stands there for a moment as if she’s changed her mind.

When we get outside, she walks down the six front steps that have separated her from a world she has forgotten without holding on to the iron banister. When we reach the sidewalk, she takes me by the hand and makes me speed up. She seems like she wants to gulp down as much air as possible, even if it’s a bit cold, and feel the spring sunshine on her face. She smiles at the people we meet on the way. She seems free.

Downtown at the photo lab in Chelsea, I have to help her open the heavy glass double doors. The man behind the counter, who is expecting us, puts on a pair of white gloves, spreads the rolls of negatives on a light box, and starts to examine them one by one through a magnifying glass.

We have received a treasure from Havana. I am the detective in a mystery that is about to be revealed. The images we see are reversed: black becomes white; white, black. Our phantoms are about to come alive beneath powerful lamps and chemicals.

We pause at one image in particular that is marked with a white cross. In the corner, there is a blurred inscription in German, which
Mom translates for us: “Taken by Leo on 13 May 1939.” There’s a girl who looks a lot like me staring through the window of what the gray-haired man thinks could be a ship’s cabin.

I think Mom is a bit worried when she sees me so excited by the negatives. She thinks I’m hoping they’ll provide too many answers and will be disappointed. Now we’ll have to figure out where they come from, which of Dad’s relatives appear in the photos, and what became of them. We know at least that one of them went to Cuba. What about the others?

Dad was born at the end of 1959, but these negatives are over seventy years old, so we’re talking about the time my great-grandparents arrived in Havana. It’s possible my grandfather might also be among them, as a baby. Mom thinks they are photos from Europe and the sea crossing, when they were escaping the fast-approaching war.

“Your dad was a man of few words,” she says again.

In the taxi back home, she takes me by the hand so that I’ll give her my full attention. I know there’s another piece of news she wants to pass on, something she’s kept to herself all these years. She still thinks I’m too young to understand what happened to my family.
I’m strong, Mom. You can tell me anything. I don’t like secrets. And it seems to me this family is full of them.