CHAPTER 38

TORONTO FEBRUARY 1949

Crunchy and white beneath our feet, the snow continues to fall thickly. It blows and swirls around us like floating eiderdown. Huge drifts are piled at the curbsides. It has been ten years since we last saw such snow, except for our view of the far distant peaks of Mount Fuji in Japan. We have not felt its welcome tingle on our skin or revelled in the icy joy of winter for a seeming lifetime. Although we are foreigners again, facing the uncertainty of a new language and culture, this time there is a feeling of surprising familiarity.

Poldi’s cousin, Joe, a tall lean man with a friendly smile, easy manner, and gravelly voice, meets us at the train station and packs us into his car for the ride to his home. There are no soldiers at the station, no trace of the military strife that we have left behind in Europe and in China. The streets are calm. Along the way we are captivated by the winter snowscape, everything coated in pristine white. The spiny boughs of tall evergreen trees are so heavily laden with the thick new-fallen snow that they are bending from the weight. Icicles hang like dripping wet crystal from the eaves of the rows of brick houses along the way, and puffs of smoke are rising in lazy curls from the chimneys.

As we drive along the busy streets, we see people pulling their coats and hats closer to shield themselves from the wind’s swirling gusts. Red streetcars, attached to overhead cables, clang past us on metal rails. A milk wagon, pulled by a slowly plodding old horse, munching on its feed bag, clunks by. Children are laughing and throwing snowballs in mischievous glee at annoyed passers-by, or busy rolling the snow into fat balls to fashion snowmen. Other youngsters are on their way to one of the frozen rinks, with skates slung over their shoulders. Shops are brightly lit, filled with an abundant supply of food and all types of wares. The snow turns to grey mushy slush on the much travelled roads and sidewalks. A man in sooty overalls is delivering coal. He is bent from the weight of a lumpy sack carried on his back, his thick boots turning the snow black where he has trod. A pair of uniformed policemen on horseback are clicking nonchalantly along at an easy pace by the curbside of the road. They are smiling and look friendly, tipping their caps politely to an elderly couple making their way, arm in arm, across the intersection. Throughout so many years I have dreaded the sight of men in uniform, first the Nazis, then the Japanese, then the Chinese Communists. Here to my great relief and even surprise, there are uniforms that don’t signal alarm or fright but security and comfort.

I’m enthralled by the sights and sounds of normal life, things that I have longed for, but feared I might never see again. The simplicity of the moment is in itself an astonishment. The terror and violence we have known is replaced with sounds of unremarkable life, so real and ordinary that it is shocking. The skies above are quiet, no storming fighter planes or threat of bombs. People are rushing about, newspapers tucked under arms or loaded with brown paper bags filled with groceries to make the evening meal for families coming together at the end of the day. My tears flow but I don’t try to hold them back. They are warm and comforting and allow me to release years of sorrow and pain, washing me clean, as pure as the snowflakes floating from the sky. Our children are asleep in my arms as the car rumbles along the city streets. I offer silent thanks to God for bringing us to this place, and for answering my prayers at last, here in this perfect sliver on the Earth where we hope to raise our family in peace.

We arrive at Joe’s home after a long drive through the city. The two men have been talking in the front seats and I have been in the back with our sleeping children. It has given me a chance to collect my thoughts without the interruption of conversation. Pulling up to the curb, we stop in front of a store with a door to its left side. Joe and Poldi remove our belongings from the trunk and set them in a heap by the entrance. Poldi helps me and the children out as Joe tells us, “I’ll just go and park my car. Wait here inside the doorway for me and I’ll be back to take you upstairs.”

Joe has an upholstery business in a storefront. In the shop we can see skeletal chair frames, awaiting the stuffing, tacking, and cloth covers to be fashioned from the stacks of fabrics piled on tables and in corners. He works here and lives with his family in the apartment above. We stand transfixed, huddled at the bottom of a high, narrow stairway. Holding our two young children, bundled against the cold, we are momentarily hushed and immobile. Thinking of the great journey we have experienced, a weighty fatigue overcomes us. I feel shrunken and almost invisible, in danger of dissolving into air. We remain motionless in the doorway, stunned and glued to the spot.

Partway up the frame of the door I notice a mezuzah, a small ornamental rectangular object, tilted on an angle and nailed into the wood. In it we know there is a small scrap of parchment with a prayer in Hebrew for the safety of the household. It is a startling sight because it proclaims boldly that a Jewish family resides here in freedom. Jews in Canada do not shrink and crouch in fear of discovery. They are able to proudly proclaim their heritage without concern for the consequences. Poldi reaches up to tap the sacred symbol of our people, then touches his lips with his fingertips. The significance of this common gesture holds us suspended, caught in a dreamy trance. We have still not spoken nor moved.

Suddenly, we are shaken from the silence. Joe’s wife, Minnie, a woman of generous proportions, stands silhouetted at the top of the high narrow stairway. She calls to us in a hefty, chuckling voice. Her whole body heaves with delight as she shouts down, “Welcome to Canada! The Chinese cousins are here! Come up, come up!” She is obviously tickled with her own wit and laughs uproariously at her joke. She stretches her fleshy arms in welcome.

She appears warm and huge to us, as if she could shelter all the refugees in the world in her outstretched arms and hug them to her bosom. A light comes on at the top of the stairs, and in it we see the maternal roundness of her form. Her dress is cut deeply at the neck to reveal mounds of jiggling soft flesh. She has a brightly coloured apron tied around her middle, decorated with a motif of ripe red strawberries hanging from curling vines along the bottom and up the sides. Each of the two pockets is a huge single red berry patch sewn on either side.

Behind her, her three teenaged children are shouting and poking their heads into the doorway, trying to get a better look: “Why are ya hollerin’, Ma?”

They are all chewing gum. The two girls are dressed in sweaters and rolled-up blue jeans. Their hair is tied back in ponytails. The boy has a very short haircut, close to his head. They stare at us in stupefied silence.

Minnie calls to us again and the spell is broken. Delicious cooking aromas filter down to us as we slowly mount the many steps. We are beginning to feel flushed and excited as we near the top. From inside the apartment we hear the sounds of music from the radio and then the ringing of a telephone. When we step over the threshold, we will begin a new life, for ourselves and for our children. Somehow, we have survived to this day, a day filled with hope and possibilities.

We know that the rest of the family is already en route and we are sure we will soon be reunited. If ever there was a true miracle on this Earth it must be the salvation of the whole family. Except for Mama, who perished in China, and the devastating loss of Poldi’s parents, we will all make our way to Canada – Erna, Fritz and Lily, Stella and Walter, Dolu and Eva, Willi and Susie, and we four. There were so many, so very many who did not live to witness this day. We have survived our own Exodus, making our way across a great part of the world to arrive at a new beginning in peace.