Emil and Karl jumped up from their places. Right away they grabbed each other by the hand, as if even then someone was about to separate them.
Five buses were waiting outside the building. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark gray and looked ready to start pouring again.
On both sides of the buses stood several dozen men and women, both young and old, who were shouting in unison.
“Jews, go to Palestine! Dirty Jews to Palestine!”
Some of the teenagers in the crowd began pelting the buses with stones. The youngest of the children started crying, but the women quietly helped them onto the buses.
A small stone hit Matilda’s sister-in-law in the head. She started, but she didn’t even turn around and she continued with her work.
Shouts of “Jews, go to Palestine!” could be heard even from the rooftops, where dozens of boys and girls were standing. The children getting on the buses looked up out of curiosity. Paper bags filled with water crashed down from the roofs. The bags burst open and hit a few of the children on the head.
Someone in the middle of the crowd turned on a hose and aimed the water at the children and the drivers. The crowd roared and went crazy. Some became so wild that they went right up to the children and pulled them by the hair, kicked them, and slapped them.
Suddenly Karl felt a shove. A woman, staggering like a drunkard, stood next to him. In the commotion she pressed something in his hand.
He looked closely at her, and he cried out, “Mat—”
But he stopped. He saw her put her hand over her mouth and look at him, smiling through tear-filled eyes.
He tugged on Emil’s arm. Emil also looked around.
“Karl, that’s—”
“Yes,” Karl said, cutting him off, as though he were Emil’s older brother.
Emil also caught a glimpse of Matilda’s smile, but in an instant he watched her twist up her face to look like a drunkard, and she shouted, “Jews, go to Palestine!”
When the buses were loaded and on their way, Emil said quietly to Karl, “She risked her life to come see us.”
“Yes, she’s so brave! She gave me a piece of paper. I have it here.”
Karl opened his hand.
“Two pieces of paper!” he whispered. “On one it says ‘Emil’ and on the other is ‘Karl.’”
Karl gave Emil one of the folded pieces of paper. Quickly he opened up his.
I will die so that Emil and Karl might be able to live together in peace.
Hans
Karl shivered with cold.
“What does your note say, Emil?” Karl asked impatiently.
Emil hastily opened his piece of paper with trembling hands.
I will die so that Emil and Karl might be able to live together in peace.
Hans
Emil and Karl looked at each other in silence and, without saying a word, buried the notes deep in their pockets.
Karl began to wonder how Hans had sent these notes to them, and how they came just as he and Emil were about to go away. Emil also seemed to be thinking about the same thing, because he quietly answered Karl.
“Matilda’s very brave.”
“Oh,” said Karl with a burst of happiness, “she’s braver than brave.”
The buses bounced hurriedly over cobblestone streets. It felt as if they were still being pelted with stones and were trying to run away from the city as fast as they could.
It seemed to Karl that the buses’ rushing over the pavement sounded like “Vienna! Vienna! Vienna!”
He thought about his mother. She must already be dead. She, too, died so that Emil and he might live together in peace.
Mama!
Karl was sure that she would have written a note like that to him and to Emil before she died.
He thought about his father’s picture that had hung in their house. Who knew where that picture was now?
“Vienna! Vienna! Vienna!” the buses growled. His mother had lived in Vienna, his father had lived in Vienna, but soon he would no longer live there. He had to escape.
* * *
There was such a din at the train station that Emil trembled. It reminded him of the terrible commotion when he and Karl had scrubbed the pavement.
Storm troopers and policemen were herding everyone into the waiting room. Women and men embraced their children, weeping. Some women fainted and were left lying in the middle of all the chaos. Storm troopers kept pushing the children toward an open door, through which they could see a train with many cars.
Karl still held on to Emil with a firm grip. The storm troopers were now letting through adults, who had papers to show them. The soldiers examined their papers carefully, inspected their luggage, then gave them a shove or a kick and let them through to the train.
Emil and Karl now stood near the door. All at once Emil tugged on Karl’s sleeve. Karl looked around and saw that the last of the adult passengers to go through was the old man who had scrubbed the pavement with them. All at once the melody that the old man had sung to them then began ringing inside Karl’s head.
“Oy, yo-te-ti-di-day, daylom, daylom.”
He remembered the whole melody from beginning to end.
“Do you see? Zeyde’s also going away!”
Karl began humming the tune, as though he wanted the old man to be able to hear it.
“Be quiet,” Emil advised. “We can sing it later on the train.”
Emil and Karl could hear the old man explain to a soldier that his grandson was bringing him to America.
“Oh, to the Jewish President Roosevelt!”
“What?” the old man repeated, blinking his eyes.
“What!?” The storm trooper became enraged and hit the old man so hard that he fell to the ground.
He picked himself up, smoothed himself out, and started running toward the train, but then he stopped and went back.
“Hit me again!” he said to the storm trooper.
“Hit you again? Why?” the soldier asked, turning red.
“I want to be sure to remember this. You hit me too quickly. Give me another one. A present like that is worth remembering.”
The soldier raised his foot, but instead of kicking the old man he started shouting wildly. “Get on the train now, or else I’ll shoot you like a dog.”
The old man picked up his satchel and walked to the train.
All of a sudden there was a great deal of running and jumping about. The soldiers opened the door and let the children through. Mothers and fathers raced toward the open door, weeping. The soldiers went berserk. They kicked and shoved the children, who fled, panic-stricken, into the train.
Then all at once the conductors closed the doors to the cars of the train and shouted to the soldiers, “There isn’t room to breathe in there!”
“Push more of them in. So what if they choke.”
“Impossible!” the conductors gestured.
Then the soldiers raised their right hands in salute.
“Move on out!”
Karl broke away from his place. Frightened and impatient, he felt his entire body trembling, as if he were about to explode.
He shouted at the top of his lungs, but no one heard him in the midst of all the commotion. He tried to shout louder than everyone else.
“Emil! Emil!”
Emil was no longer next to him. He’d been pushed away and shoved into the train.
The train began to pant, like a huge dog. Huff-huff-huff. Karl watched the train, hoping at least to catch one last glimpse of Emil.
The cars of the train rolled by. They were dark; he couldn’t see anyone. It seemed as if the train had devoured them all.
About forty children and a dozen adults remained standing on the platform. They wanted to go back into the waiting room, but the storm troopers had shut the doors.
“Another train will arrive in three hours.”
Karl felt a sharp pang of hunger in his stomach. He gnashed his teeth.
It started to rain again. The adults moved the children under the narrow roof covering the platform. Karl fidgeted. He couldn’t stay in one place. A voice inside him kept shouting, “Emil! Emil!”
Three more hours in Vienna.
A thirteen-year-old girl with straw-blond hair, a pug nose, and bright blue eyes was eating an apple. She took another apple out of a paper bag and offered it to Karl. He bit into it.
“I’m sure we’ll get on the next train,” she said, with a grown-up expression.
“My friend left on the first one,” he said, and he ate the apple quickly, because he was afraid that otherwise he would start crying.
Karl put his hand in his pocket and discovered that he still had the two letters, the one from Emil and the one from Hans. This made him feel a little happier. It seemed as though he wasn’t completely alone, because he had his two friends with him.
He thought about Emil’s note, stained with teardrops. It was too bad—now it would be so easy for him to cover his letter to Emil with tears. It felt as though he would burst into tears any minute.
“We still have two hours until the train comes,” the girl with the bright eyes told him.
“Two more hours in Vienna!” Karl thought.
He imagined that his father’s picture had just fallen off the wall. The walls collapsed, the whole building crumbled. Emil’s building also fell down; all the buildings in Vienna had toppled over. All the people were buried under the stones that were falling everywhere, raining down on them from all sides, even from the rooftops. The only ones left were those few children and adults who stood there, waiting for the train.
“Will I really get on the next train?” he asked the girl who had given him the apple.
“You can be sure of it,” she replied. “Isn’t that right?” she asked an old woman who stood nearby.
The woman sadly nodded her head.