IT HAD BEEN a wonderful week, each day filled with new, exciting things to do. I rode the horse every morning, a sweet, gentle old mare that had probably never received a cross word in her life. Her name was Stella, for she had a white patch, almost the shape of a star on her forehead. Sweet Stella, I called her, as she rubbed her nose against my hands and clothing, searching for the carrots and sugar lumps we always brought.
That week opened a new world to me. Who in Berlin had ever picked peas fresh from the garden, or gathered eggs in a hen house? How could I ever have dreamed that a hayloft could be such a marvelous place for play, or for lying down and looking out of the loft window, or for jumping down onto the slippery, fresh smelling stacks below?
I had never seen apples growing on trees. I had certainly never seen a cider press. We trooped up the hill, Erica and I, to her cousin’s house, about a mile along the country road, and then we went into the orchards, where the apples hung ripe on the trees and bushel baskets of picked fruit stood in rows. We brought a gallon jug with us, and Frau Werfel always said with a twinkling smile, “Now this time bring the cider home.” Erica’s aunt would fill the jug with cider, and on the way down the hill we were always tempted to take just a little taste, then another and another, passing the jug back and forth, until when we arrived back at Erica’s house the jug was empty. “Now go back,” Erica’s mother would say, giving her a playful swat, “And this time bring the cider home, you imps!”
Then the last week before school would begin arrived. There is something about that last week of vacation—it is always the very best time of the whole summer. I remarked about it to Erica. “Haven’t you found it so?”
“Only since you are here,” she answered, giving me a smile. “I wish …” She stopped abruptly.
“What do you wish?” I urged her.
“It’s selfish of me,” she said wistfully. “But I—I wish you could stay with us for a long, long time.”
I didn’t want to think beyond that day.
“Do you think your mother will let you stay with us,” Erica asked hesitantly, “until you leave Switzerland?”
“I think so,” I replied.
“My father will ask her today,” Erica said, for that afternoon they were taking me to the hospital to visit Mother. I had spoken to Dr. Gross on the telephone.
“Yes, I think it would be good for your mother to see you girls,” he had said, “but only one at a time, and just for a few minutes. She still needs plenty of rest.”
Doctor Gross was in Mother’s room when we arrived. I was struck with how fragile Mother looked in the great bed among the white linens and wearing a hospital gown. I rushed to her, but she held me away. “Not too close, darling. I don’t want to take any chances. Sit down there on the chair. Let me look at you. Your cheeks are rosy again!” She smiled and her eyes shone.
“Your mother’s getting along fine,” Dr. Gross said, taking up his bag. “She’ll be up and around in ten days or so, but,” he turned to Mother, “you’ll still have to take it easy, and remember that people can’t live on tea and toast—not if they want to stay healthy.”
“I’ll remember, Doctor,” Mother said meekly, half-smiling.
“And you’d best try to keep your daughters right where they are. No use shuffling those girls around like library books!”
“And what would I do all day?” Mother asked him boldly.
“You’ll visit them,” the doctor said promptly, patting me on the shoulder as he turned to go. “Just a few minutes, now, Lisa.”
The Werfels had left me at the door to Mother’s room, unwilling to tire her with too many visitors. They were to come back for me in ten minutes. My head was filled with things I wanted to say, but in my rush to tell everything I was, for a moment, speechless.
“You like the Werfels, don’t you?” Mother asked.
“They are the most wonderful people I’ve ever known,” I replied promptly. “Frau Werfel made me some pajamas to match Erica’s. She said it would be fun for us to have something alike, as if we were real sisters. She’s so kind!” Frau Werfel never made it seem that she was giving me a gift or supplying something I desperately needed. It was the same when she made us each dresses. “She says it’s just as easy to make two,” I told Mother. “How can that be?”
Mother laughed, and her face looked pink and healthy again. “Have you been helping around the house?”
“Oh, yes,” I said quickly. “But it’s fun. I mean, we get to feed the chickens, and Frau Werfel taught me how to darn socks. I made the nicest little patch in one of Herr Werfel’s.”
“Marvelous!” Mother exclaimed. “You’re turning into a young lady after all. And today? What did you do today?”
I took a deep breath, then said rapidly, “We went to church. I—I went too. Is it all right?”
“Of course it is,” Mother said, nodding.
“The Werfels are Catholic,” I said.
“I know.”
“It was a Catholic mass,” I explained insistently.
“You can pray wherever you are,” Mother said soberly, “and still be a good Jew. God is everywhere. I have prayed in many churches. But what’s the matter, Lisa? Were you uncomfortable?”
“No,” I murmured. “It was beautiful.” I sighed, not wanting to ask, but needing to talk about the thoughts that had haunted me. “Do you think that’s what makes them so good? Going to church, I mean, and being Catholic?” Our eyes met intently, and there was silence for a moment. Then Mother lay back against the pillows, hesitating before she faced me fully and asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I did not ask that nagging question, If I were a Catholic, would I be better, too? How could I ask it, even of myself? I loved the synagogue, the songs and prayers, the closeness to God. How could I question the faith of my fathers?
There wasn’t time to pursue it, for a nurse came bustling into the room. “There’s a letter for you, Frau Platt,” she said.
“A letter? But it’s Sunday.”
“Special delivery,” the nurse answered briskly, already on her way out. “From America.”
Mother ripped open the envelope.
“Is it from Papa?” I asked, rushing to see.
“Of course.” Mother quickly scanned the page, then she cried out, “Oh, no! He mustn’t.”
“What? What is it?”
“Papa says—he—he wants to leave America!” she said in a stricken tone. “He mustn’t! He says he got a letter from you and one from Frau Feldin, saying that I was very sick and in the hospital. Lisa, what did you write to Papa?” Her voice was shaking.
“I don’t remember, exactly. I told him about Erica.”
“What did you say about me?” Mother demanded fiercely. “Tell me!”
“Just that you are sick and in the hospital. Just what you told me, and what Doctor Gross said. I told him you would get better soon. I told him you were getting special care and medicine to make you better.”
“That Frau Feldin, such a scatterbrain. I never should have given her Papa’s address. It was only in case of an emergency.”
“She probably thought it was an emergency!” I exclaimed. “With the ambulance coming and everything. Wouldn’t you have thought so?”
“Lisa, for heaven’s sake, don’t argue with me now. I have to stop him. He says he’s making arrangements to come to Zurich. Listen,” she read from the letter, “Benjamin says I am a fool even to think of leaving, but I must come to you and take my chances. I can’t sleep for worrying about you, Margo, thinking of you alone in a foreign city and sick. No matter what happens, at least we’ll be together. I can’t stand …”
She put the letter down, her eyes brimming.
The very thought of seeing Papa filled me with such great excitement that I couldn’t think of anything else. Why couldn’t he come? Why couldn’t we all stay in Switzerland and make it our home? Why America?
“Let him come,” I begged, half kneeling beside Mother’s bed. “Oh, please, don’t stop him.”
Mother sat upright and snapped, “Don’t be foolish, Lisa. You just don’t understand. We can’t stay in Zurich. There would be no work for Papa here. Switzerland is a tiny country. They can’t take immigrants, and it’s too close, too close to Germany.”
“You mean the Nazis might come here?” I cried.
“I don’t know.” Mother shook her head, then took my hand gently. “I’m sorry, darling. It wasn’t your fault—that Frau Feldin, stupid woman! I’ll send a cablegram to Papa,” she said. “Ring for the nurse.”
When the nurse came, she shook her head firmly. “You are not allowed to get out of bed, Frau Platt.”
“Nonsense!” Mother scolded, swinging her feet onto the floor. “Hand me my robe, Lisa.”
“It is against my orders,” the nurse said, standing in Mother’s way. “I’d have to check with Doctor Gross. Now you wait here, Frau Platt,” she said. “I’ll try to find him.”
Mother sat back on the bed. “I’ll wait five minutes,” she said firmly. “That’s all.”
“Now just relax,” the nurse soothed. “Look, you’ve another visitor.” She whispered something to Herr Werfel and he nodded, then strode over to Mother and took her hand.
“Grüss Gott,” he said, smiling. “I hope you’re feeling better, Frau Platt. Oh, your Lisa is a jewel. We want to keep her with us, if we may, until you leave Switzerland. But you look troubled, and the nurse said I am to keep you here. What is it? What can I do?”
When he had heard about the letter, Herr Werfel began to pace back and forth, frowning deeply. “You’re right, of course,” he said to Mother. “If he once leaves America, your husband may have a hard time reentering. In fact, I’ve just read in the newspapers about the quota system, and how many people are waiting to go to the United States.”
“That’s exactly it,” Mother said quickly. “As long as my husband is there already, the girls and I don’t have to come under the quota system. If he were to leave now, the whole thing would have to be started over again, with new forms, new waiting lists. Now all he has to do is send one more certificate. Oh, Herr Werfel,” Mother said pleadingly, “we’ve waited so long. Everything we’ve waited for would be undone!”
The nurse came to the door to announce, “Doctor Gross has left the hospital, I’m afraid. You just have to …”
“Never mind,” Herr Werfel told her. “Frau Platt just wants to send a cablegram. I’ll take care of it for her.”
He pulled the chair over beside Mother’s bed and took a small notebook and pencil from his vest pocket. “Now, take your time,” he said gently. “I’ll write down exactly what you want to say, and I’ll ask for an answer immediately, so you won’t have to worry. It will take a few hours, but at least you’ll be able to sleep tonight in peace.”
Together they composed the message. “DO NOT LEAVE AMERICA. RECOVERING QUICKLY. ALL IS WELL. LOVE. MARGO.”
“You have more than ten words,” Herr Werfel said. “You can omit the word ‘love,’ or pay extra for it.”
“I’ll pay extra,” Mother said, smiling slightly. “It’s worth it.”
“I agree,” Herr Werfel smiled. “I’ll ask for a reply immediately.”
“Lie down again now, Mother,” I coaxed, and by the time Herr Werfel returned she was settled once more under the blankets, but I knew she would not rest easily until she had Papa’s reply.
“We’d better leave you now, Frau Platt,” Herr Werfel said. “Try to rest. We’ll call you tonight. Oh, I nearly forgot, and Erica will be waiting to know. May I tell her that Lisa will stay with us until you leave?”
“Of course,” Mother said gratefully. “You are so kind.”
Erica and Frau Werfel were waiting in the car, and now we told them what had happened. “We’ll call the hospital right after supper,” Frau Werfel said. But it was not until after our third call that we knew Papa’s answer. “Will stay. Sending last form this month. Love to girls.”
“It’s long past bedtime,” Frau Werfel announced, “and you two have school tomorrow.”
But neither Erica nor I could sleep. I was thinking about going to a strange new school again, and about Papa. As for Erica, I didn’t know what was keeping her awake until she asked in the darkness, “What is a quota, Lisa?”
“I think it means that only a certain number of people can get into a country at any particular time. America has a quota,” I told her.
“Does Switzerland?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here anyway.”
She was silent for a time, then asked, “Have you ever seen a Nazi, Lisa?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
“Are they really so terrible?”
“Yes.”
Again Erica was silent, and then she sat up to look at me by the faint light that shone through the window. “Lisa,” she said urgently, “I have to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I have never known anybody who was Jewish before, and it seems to me that you are—I mean,” she faltered, “are all Jewish girls as good as you? And are they all so brave?”
I smiled to myself, and my heart beat faster. How strange it was that she asked me such a question, but no stranger, I realized, than my question to Mother that afternoon. I understood now why Mother had not answered. It was something I had to figure out for myself.
“Some are good and some aren’t,” I told Erica. I didn’t say more. She would have to think it through on her own.
After a long pause Erica spoke again. “You know, Switzerland is surrounded on all sides by high mountains. The German soldiers wouldn’t even try to come here. We’ve never been conquered. It couldn’t happen.”
“Of course not,” I said, but to myself I thought, anything could happen. Hadn’t it happened in Germany?
But even at school, in the geography and history classes, the teachers spoke of Switzerland’s natural barriers. When they introduced me to the class as having come from Germany, they spoke of the Nazis there, and I suppose I became somewhat of a celebrity in the little school, having escaped. At recess the other girls crowded around me, wanting to hear all about Berlin. I tried to tell them that Berlin was just a city, my home. I only wanted to remember the good things, before the Nazis. Finally the yard duty teacher came and started us all in a ball game. To me she said, “You don’t have to talk about it, dear.”
There was talk about Germany every night on the radio that September. While Erica and I were doing our homework at the kitchen table, we would hear the news broadcasts in the background. Afterward Herr Werfel’s face was always very grave, and he and his wife would talk together in low tones.
“It looks bad,” he would say, “very bad. Hitler’s going to make a grab for Czechoslovakia. The Czechs can’t possibly hold out against the German army. And what next? He won’t stop, that madman, until he’s plunged the whole world into war.”
“Maybe not,” Frau Werfel replied. “Maybe other nations will help Czechoslovakia. What about England and France and even America? Don’t they have treaties? Maybe, if Hitler sees they are all against him, he’ll stop.”
“Only force will stop him,” said Herr Werfel grimly. “And that means war, world war.”
I froze in my seat. America at war? How, then, could we go there? Where else in the world could we go to be safe? My imagination gave me no answers. I could only picture countries the way they looked on the large wall map at school. The black boundaries, to me, represented walls, with gates to let people in or keep them out. If there was a war, I was certain, all the gates would be closed. People did not travel freely during war. Hadn’t we learned that in Germany?
All that month and into the next we waited. Even at school, where the teachers gathered in the halls to whisper together, there was a shadow over us, the same feeling we had known in Berlin. People would forget for a time and go on about their business, but then someone would ask a question or make a remark and we would remember that everyone waited, as if for a time bomb to tick to an end. And then the news changed. It was nearly winter, the news announcers said. Hitler wouldn’t move in winter. He would wait at least until spring. Perhaps, they added hopefully, the big scare was over.
Mother got out of the hospital as Dr. Gross had promised and I visited her two or three times a week at the rooming house. On Sundays we were all together at the Werfels, the whole family except Papa. Annie simply went wild over the rabbits and chickens. She promptly named them all Susan.
On Sunday afternoons Frau Werfel never seemed to stop serving food, smiling and saying, “This house should be filled with children.”
“But with such noisy children?” Mother would protest, chuckling.
“Oh, let them run and shout,” Frau Werfel would say. “That’s what childhood is for.”
Even Ruth, who usually considered herself too grownup for such things, romped with us in the hayloft and took leap after leap onto the stacks. She swung higher and longer than any of us on the rope swing that Herr Werfel had tied to a huge oak.
But there were other times when Ruth sat apart from us, thinking troubled thoughts, I guessed, for she wound a lock of hair around and around her finger.
“Leave Ruth alone,” Mother would say, when the three of us tried to make her join in some game. “She needs some time to herself. She’s growing so fast. In Berlin she would be going out with other young people, going to parties and dances.”
Erica and I couldn’t understand Ruth’s sullen moods, or her sudden temper when we interrupted them. Once Annie, holding one of the bunnies in her arms, ran toward Ruth, who was sitting under a tree in the garden.
“Leave Ruth alone, Annie,” I called teasingly. “She’s in one of her ‘moods’ and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
I knew that Ruth had heard, but she ignored me, just as she ignored Annie, who sat down beside her.
“I love it here,” I heard Annie say. “Don’t you love this little bunny? Don’t you want to hold him?”
“No,” Ruth replied shortly. “He smells.”
“He smells nice,” Annie insisted, burying her nose in the soft fur. “I love him. I can’t take him to America, can I?”
“Of course not,” Ruth retorted.
“Maybe we won’t go to America,” I heard Annie say. “Maybe Papa won’t send for us. Maybe Papa’s dead and we’ll never see him again.”
Suddenly Ruth’s hand shot out and Annie lay screaming on the lawn. Everyone rushed over. Ruth made another grab at Annie, shaking her furiously, shouting, “She’d rather have that rabbit than ever see Papa again! She wishes Papa were dead!”
“Ruth, Ruth,” Mother cried, “stop it! She’s just a baby. She didn’t mean that. Leave her alone. Just look what you’ve done. There, there, Annie, Ruth didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean it.”
On Annie’s cheek there was a large red mark, where Ruth’s hand had struck.
“She did mean it!” Annie cried. “She hates the bunny. She hates me, too.”
“No she doesn’t hate anybody. She’s lonesome for Papa, that’s all. She’s upset from waiting and wondering.” I knew that Mother was speaking more to me than to Annie. “Still, it’s dreadful to make such a scene,” she said to Ruth, “and especially when you are a guest here. What must Frau Werfel think?”
But Frau Werfel had gone into the house and not a word was said about the episode. It was so like her to pretend that nothing at all had happened. In all the weeks I was with them, I never saw Frau Werfel lose her composure—except one terrible day in November.