From Ashes Into Light: A Novel Page 5

  A few days later the young soldier, Dmitri, asks for Marta’s papers. Luckily, she still has her marriage certificate confirming that her husband was born in Bavaria. Dimitri says, “My grandfather is German. This is a bad place. I will take you to the train. Go find your husband in the west.”

  Friede and I gaze until walls disappear, and, once again, her spirit flies through the roof, away from the camp, high over the Harz, the mountain forest. We tumble with canyon wind, lifting even higher. We roll along a rim of clouds, somersault on a bank of fluff, flinging winged arms wide. I will stay afloat as long as I can. Friede is laughing, and her laughter sounds like bells ringing.

  As I see the tears of a family separating, Marta leaving for West Germany with her daughter, I am drawn close. The family has been released from the camp. Marta urges her mother and siblings to come with her, but Anna, Marta’s mother, shakes her head. She had heard that some have been released from forced labor camps in Siberia. She wants to stay where her husband might find her.

  I swoop down and almost brush the train that carries Marta and Friede. I wish them well.

  Friede Mai

  Magdeburg, East Germany

  A year later, my Mutti and I return from Bavaria, to visit the family still living in the east in an old farmhouse damaged by war and abandoned by the owner. From underneath her brows, Grandmother Pulver’s wide hazel eyes examine me.

  “Her eyes are darker than I remember,” Grandma says, caressing my cheek as she speaks to Mutti. “She looks sad. How is her fever?”

  “She’s been sick for so long. I’m worried. I hate to leave her here, but she isn’t doing well in childcare and I have to go back to work.” Marta had found a job in a photographer’s lab.

  “We’ll take good care of her. Ursula will give Elfriede lots of attention.” Grandma smiles reassuringly. Ursula is the second youngest of my aunts.

  * * *

  Days later, I am lying on a layer of rags on top of straw packed down near the wood burning stove. I miss my mother.

  Grandma brings a warm broth. She holds my hand. My aunt Ursula, a bone-thin sixteen-year-old comes and sings, “Make me a blessing to someone today. Make me a blessing.” Her voice is clear and sweet, though quiet. I am enchanted. Ursula finishes the hymn and begins a story while my grandmother goes to the kitchen stairs. She calls to Wilhelm to look for more potatoes in that fallow field down the road.

  “Guess what, Elfriede,” Aunt Ursula begins. I face the wall and don’t answer. “I’m sorry,” she continues, “your Mutti calls you Friede, doesn’t she? I forgot.” She rubs my shoulder. “Do you want me to tell you a story?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I dreamed I saw two crows! Crows are unusual these days. One hardly sees any birds. Guess what happened?”

  I don’t feel well and don’t know what to say. Ursula looks into the distance and speaks as though she is trying to solve a puzzle. “It’s the strangest thing. One crow flew up on the roof and marched up and down. He had these really thin, long legs. He looked kind of funny. I think he was mad about something.” I turn my head towards her and I look at my aunt with curiosity. She smiles slightly and continues the story.

  “Another crow landed on the roof. This started a ruckus. The first crow said, ‘Where have you been? You’ve been gone an awfully long time.’ The second crow lifted up a wing and walked to the end of the roof. He peered down. It looked scary there at the edge of the roof, so he came back and pecked at something underneath a loose shingle.

  “The first crow got even more mad. He yelled, ‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’

  “The second crow hopped on one foot. He screeched.” Ursula raises her voice as much as she can. “ ‘Have you forgotten? I told you I was flying south. Had a job to do there. Got back as soon as I could. Is this the thanks I get? Look at you. Your tail feathers are a wreck. What happened to your beautiful black shiny coat? What’s going on here? Have you been sick or something?’

  “The first crow nodded. He calmed down a bit. He said, ‘It’s been hard here without you. I’ve been lonely and there isn’t enough to eat.’

  “The second crow tilted his head. He listened carefully. ‘Hmmm, what shall we do? Why don’t you stay here and rest for a while. There’s a potato field nearby. I’ll see if I can find a nice worm to eat.’ ”

  I make a face. Aunt Ursula giggles, though there is little energy left in her laugh. Telling the story has tired her. “Fat, juicy worms might sound wonderful to crows. But they’re not our favorite food, eh?”

  * * *

  Sitting on the back stairs outside the kitchen door, I wait for Ursula. I am content to watch the breeze blow through my grandmother’s only dress draped over a clothesline, billowing and lifting like a blue-gray balloon I once saw at my other grandmother’s summer home. I sing, “I am a crow.” I flap my arms. “See!”

  Hunger nags, but at this moment life plays a melody of wind, leaves, and sun.

  On a sagging gate post, the remnant of a destroyed fence at the end of a weed-filled garden, a crow appears. The crow peers down. He flaps his wings and raises himself on skinny legs, his black feathers gleaming on his back. I can’t help it, I giggle, and the crow turns around, staring at me.

  The crow makes a full circle, caws loudly, and I laugh at his dance.

  Ursula appears at the top of the steps and notices the crow. She exclaims, “Hallo!”

  She looks around for something to throw at the crow. She sees a stick, steps down, and nearly topples over.

  I reach towards Ursula to catch her. She balances herself, but seems tired. She can barely raise a weak hand. I’m worried. I have watched her with food, when there is any, how it seems strange to her, like she doesn’t know what to do with it. The crow flaps his wings abruptly and flies away.

  Ursula sits down. We watch the crow fly over old potato fields and flatlands my aunt says once had grains, sugar beets, vegetables, and other crops. Whatever food, supplies, or machinery were useful after the war were taken by the Russian army or shipped off to Russia. Farmlands lie empty. The crow flies over sparse, scruffy weeds and dry fields that stretch out in a white-brown haze toward distant mountains. He flies over hills full of burnt, charcoal-colored forests.

  After a few minutes, Ursula takes blond tufts of my hair into her hands and ties them with string she had found hanging from a rose bush struggling to survive. Her touch is so light, spreading like pond water over my body, or like sunlight warming me, reflecting the showers of light flashing along the wall to my side, surrounding us with wonderful a glow.

  I tingle all over. I sit as still as I can, not wanting auntie to stop, but Ursula tires and has to sit quietly. After a while she remembers something in her skirt pocket, and gives me a small apple she says she found along the road next to a picked-clean orchard.

  My hand shakes as I take the fruit. Devouring every bit, I tug at my aunt’s patched, threadbare skirt for more, but don’t whine when she shows her empty palms.

  * * *

  I have been here a few weeks. Grandma strokes Auntie Ursula’s brow. “Goodbye, my child,” she says, “goodbye.” Tears drip down grandmother’s face and onto my head. The tears feel hot, like nothing I have felt before.

  “Wake up,” I say sadly. I know people die, but it is still hard to understand.

  Grandma turns away from Ursula’s body and takes hold of my hand. She presses her lips together tightly. She has lost a child before.

  A few days after the funeral I discover a crater across from the old potato field. I stand at the edge of the large hole, smell moisture, grass, and clay. I want to be with Ursula. Raising my arms, I teeter, and behind me someone screams, “No!”

  Olga pulls me from the edge of the pit by my shirt. “No. No. Elfriede, no,” she scolds and carries me, struggling, back to the house. I kick my aunt, but it does no good.

  Olga plops me down. “Stay here, you little monster. Don’t get away from me again.” Olga pulls out a long hairpin and reinserts it, anchoring
her brown braids folded across each other at the top of her head. She grabs a knife. “We haven’t heard a word from father. We’ve almost used up the money Marta sent. Isn’t this ever going to end? This wretchedness?” She jabs the end of her knife deep into the rotten part of a potato. “I can’t wait to get married, the sooner the better. I’m getting out of here.”

  * * *

  After my fifth birthday my mother returns on her vacation from work, and I happily follow her around like a puppy for nearly two weeks. On the last day of the visit I sit between Mutti and Aunt Emma on the back steps.

  An orange twilight spreads behind the small glade at the back of an old wheat field across the road. My head rests in my mother’s lap and she strokes my hair.

  “I’ll miss you,” Auntie Emma says. Mutti nods and doesn’t wipe away the tears rolling down her cheeks and settling somewhere just underneath her clenched jaw. “I know Friede must go with you, she’ll be in kindergarten, but it’s hard to think of you both gone…the family keeps getting smaller.”

  For lunch the next day Grandma Pulver produces a special treat, small portions of cut fresh fruit placed in a little milk. Afterwards, Emma and Mutti walk down the road with me, each holding one of my hands. We stop to look at a mushroom.

  “What luck,” Emma says, “this one’s edible.” She plucks the mushroom and puts it in her skirt pocket. “We’ll put it in the potato soup. We can’t complain. Thanks to your help and Olga’s husband. Others are much worse off. Mother recently sold her wedding ring.”

  “You still have the faith of the good,” Mutti says.

  “What about you?”

  “No…does that seem ungrateful, since I’m so much better off than you are?”

  “The family still has each other for support. Liebe Marta, have you been very lonely? From now on your little one will keep you company.”

  I listen to my aunt and mother. Mutti’s slower, softer voice mingles with Emma’s higher tones. To me their voices sound like a melody and I want to join in. I sing: “I am a bird. I can fly! Like a bird!”

  The next day mother and I hurry to the station. The rest of the family waits behind, because no one but ticket holders is allowed close to the westward bound train.

  The crowd is huge. People jostle against each other on narrow lanes along the tracks. I can hardly breathe below the giants who surround me as they press forward. I cling to the doll my Uncle Wilhelm had found. Mutti holds me tightly, and I am more and more frightened. I don’t want to go on the train and stand frozen.

  Mutti pulls me; the crowd pushes. I lose hold of my doll and begin to cry. Carrying a package of food and a suitcase in her other hand, Mutti is flushed and exhausted. “Come on, Friede,” she says gruffly.

  Inside there’s no place to sit except in the corridor on our suitcase, where Mutti holds me in her lap as she leans against the wall. The train rumbles and shakes. There are too many people. There is too little air. As I look up at the window shadows flicker, flashing on the glass like ghosts trying to get in.

  Book Three

  Ruth

  It’s the fall of 1939. We are still in Vienna. Mother plucks at Aunt Lili’s down cover and shakes it violently.

  I smooth out the blanket on my cot. Papa, trimming his beard, stands in front of the high mahogany dresser. On the floor, an old newspaper catches the cuttings as he peers at the dresser mirror.

  A squall descends. Mother and papa argue. Sitting on my cot, I remain as still as possible; I soon realize they have forgotten I’m here.

  Once by being still, I had found out my parents had wanted more children. “We don’t know why prayers are sometimes not answered,” Papa had said. “Perhaps what we ask for is not for the greater good.” If I had the brother or sister I’ve often wished for, how would we manage now all in one room? I listen to my parents arguing.

  “Esther, must I repeat? I can’t go to England. There’s still a problem with my visa. You and Ruth will have to go without me. When you get there, you can explain things to Franz. He can help.”

  “Don’t count on it,” mother says.

  Before Uncle Franz left, he had managed to leave his mark on this room we now occupy: England on the wall with pins stuck in and notes scribbled around the sides of the map, books and notebooks on the shelves. I’ve snooped through them all by now. His cello still rests in its case against the wall. But Franz is the relative that mother most dislikes. “A shiftless, rootless spendthrift,” she used to call him.

  “Forget these old feuds. We have more important things with which to concern ourselves.”

  “Who knows what might happen if we separate?”

  Papa raises his voice, something I have seldom heard. “Who knows what will happen if we stay together? Remember after the November attack when everything shut down because the emigration index was destroyed? Remember the trouble we had getting these passports? Going here, going there, paying, paying, paying, and then my passport snagged because they claim I owe taxes. Do you know what a clerk told the woman ahead of me in line who was looking for papers in her purse? ‘Better hurry up, Jew, now the war has started we will kill you all. Don’t try to cheat us out of our money.’ That’s what he said. Just like that. We must not be foolish. Your passports are only short-term. Don’t hesitate. This may be your only chance; be sensible.”

  “No. No. I can’t. If we wait just a little, maybe we’ll be able to go together.” Mother plops on the bed and begins to cry. Papa sits down next to her, and he strokes her loose, flowing hair that this early in the morning hasn’t yet been twisted into a tight bun.

  “Don’t upset yourself; you’ll just get another headache. We have a month. Maybe something will change before you have to leave.”

  * * *

  A week goes by and another. Current events are discussed and argued in every room of auntie’s house. In the kitchen, Mr. Braun takes out his pipe before he remembers he has no tobacco and cannot afford any, being Jewish and jobless.

  Jews are forbidden to possess a motor vehicle and have been forced to hand over every precious metal to the government other than gold-filled teeth or the ring of a dead spouse. Jews are not allowed to visit public places or cultural institutions. They are required to carry identity cards at all times—a card with fingerprints and a photograph taken in the same manner as for criminals. All Jews have had to adopt the first names of “Israel” or “Sarah.”

  Mr. Braun sighs, puts the pipe down on the table, and smoothes his mustache out to either side. “But, Josef,” he says to papa. “Do you really think France can beat Hitler?”

  “There’s England, too, don’t forget,” my father answers.

  “But what will England do? Can Hitler be defeated at all?” Mr. Braun twirls the end of his mustache. “Who can we really count on? It isn’t easy for us to get real news, now that we’ve had to turn in our radios. Newspapers are filled with propaganda.”

  Papa wrinkles his forehead. “I know. Rumors run amok like an epidemic. Panic floods our community. One hardly knows what to believe. Yet one must have faith, Karl, no matter what. If you were my age, you might understand. It is the predilection of humankind towards violence, greed, and power mongering that we really need to examine. All the world’s religions tell us the real enemy lies within.”

  “Josef, I’m sorry, but that is Hasidic nonsense as far as I’m concerned. Is that really appropriate now?”

  “You are young, newly married. Let me read a passage from the Baal-Shem. You should know our suffering is not in vain and will not be in vain.” Papa picks up a book from the table. Mr. Braun, being younger and living under the roof of my father’s sister, defers. However, I see his lips pull back slightly, with resigned impatience.

  Papa also notices this and changes his mind. He sets the book down. “It is said that the Lord of the Night comes to announce the need of the people, and that when weeping overcomes them, the people become pure through their stream of tears and through the refining fire of their heart’s
suffering as they stand before God.”

  “Rather than crying,” Mr. Braun says, “I’d like to see us fight back.”

  Papa clears his throat. “I agree. Sometimes action is required; each to his own capacity and conscience, yet we must not forget…” He clears his throat again. “There are men’s laws, but there is also a higher court beyond that.”

  The timbre of my father’s voice—patient, tolerant, a voice like the low notes on uncle’s cello, stirs my spirit. Is it true? Will something wonderful come out of our suffering, or will our suffering become the suffering of others? Outside, leaves shaped like hands drop all over the garden, red, yellow, and brown.

  * * *

  One early Sunday morning when there is just a little light, we walk through the tall, silent Wienerwald. We walk quietly. We hear no one among the linden trees, not one single other person, thank God. We are coming back to Aunt Lili’s weekend country cottage where we have been staying for a couple of nights for a welcome change of scene. We must be careful. No one must know we are here in a public place. Soon the church bells will ring and people will begin to emerge from their houses.

  We are still a little ways from our destination, where the garden of Aunt Lili’s cottage has sadly gone to weed. The footpaths are strewn with debris. When we arrived during the night by car, driven by one of my aunt’s Aryan friends, we entered through a private door in the tool shed adjacent to the back of the house.

  I am nervous, even though it’s still too early for other walkers. We hardly say a word, aware of the risk. Mother insists on having me walk next to her, ahead of father, because of our blond hair. We are wearing large shawls over our coats in the cool morning air. “If anyone should question you,” mother tells me, looking back at papa, full-bearded in a clean-shaven world that will not tolerate anything else, “you should say he took a wrong turn and asked for directions. We are helping him find the way.” Papa shakes his head, as if to say: if anyone questions us, they certainly won’t believe such a story as that.