“We’re at war, Caroline. Winning it is the best thing we can do for those people.”
“That’s a smoke screen and you know it. Seventy thousand Romanian Jews refused asylum here? The St. Louis turned away? How many innocents sent back to certain death?”
Rector Brooks turned to look at us, and David pulled me farther into the shadows.
“It’s a slow process, Caroline. Every visa form must be perfectly vetted. Nazi spies might come here posing as refugees. It’s in the best interests of the United States.”
“It’s anti-Semitism, David. There was a time when you’d have done the right thing.”
“Brother dear,” Betty called.
David held up an index finger to her. “Let’s admit what this is really all about. If you weren’t pining away like a schoolgirl for your lost married boyfriend, you’d be back at the Junior League knitting socks for servicemen.”
“I’ll forget you said that if you promise to at least try—”
“David, now,” Betty said.
“Okay, I’ll ask.”
“I have your word?”
“Yes, for God’s sake. Are you happy?”
“I am,” I said with a smile. For a moment, I thought I caught a flicker of sadness move across David’s face. Regretting our breakup? It was hard to tell, for it retreated as quickly as it had come.
We turned to see Mother and Betty ease Sally down into a back pew. Rector Brooks watched like an anxious father as Mother dispatched choirboys in search of a basin. Sally’s cries echoed about the church as Mother wadded her coat to cushion the poor thing’s head.
“My God,” David said, stricken.
Betty ran to David and pulled his arm. “Get over here. She’s about to erupt. No time to get to St. Luke’s.”
It seemed David would not be going home for Cook’s roast after all.
CHRISTMAS 1943
Christmas of 1943 was an especially grim one for Zuzanna and me. With Matka and Luiza gone and my sister wasted almost to nothing, there was little reason to celebrate. There’d been not one letter or package from Papa in so long. Was he even alive?
We had off from Appell on Christmas afternoon, so the camp guards could have their celebration. Zuzanna lay next to me, so thin from dysentery one could see the sharp edge of her hip bone jut through the thin blanket as she slept. As a doctor she knew what was happening and tried to instruct me on how to make her well, but even when the girls in the kitchen snuck her salt and clean water, nothing worked. Though many of our fellow prisoners shared their own precious food with all of the Rabbits, without packages of our own from home, we had become living skeletons.
Zuzanna lay on her side, hands clasped under her chin, and I dozed next to her, my chest to her back, her breath my only happiness. The women in our block had voted to allow us to have a bottom bunk to ourselves in light of our situation as Rabbits. This was an extraordinary gesture, since some bunks hosted more than eight prisoners! The Russian women, many of them doctors and nurses captured on the battlefield, were especially kind to us and had organized the vote. As a Christmas gift, Anise had given us a louse-free scrap of a blanket she’d taken from the booty piles, and I’d wound it around Zuzanna’s bare feet.
I watched a few Polish girls stuff some grass under a piece of cloth. This was a Christmas tradition we’d followed in Poland since we were young where fresh straw is put under a white tablecloth. After supper some maidens pull out blades of the straw from beneath the cloth to predict their future. A green piece predicts marriage, a withered one signifies waiting, a yellow one predicts the dreaded spinsterhood, and a very short one foreshadows an early grave. That day they all looked very short to me.
With Marzenka away for the moment, some Polish girls sang one of my favorite Christmas songs, “Zdrów b?d? Królu Anielski,” “As Fit for the King of Angels,” in low, hushed tones, since singing or speaking in any language except German was forbidden and could land one in the bunker.
The song took me back to Christmas Eve in Poland, our little tree covered with silver paper icicles and candles. Exchanging gifts with Nadia, always books. Dining on Matka’s clear beetroot soup, hot fish, and sweets. And going to church on Christmas Day, our family there in the same pew as the Bakoskis. All of us crowding in with Pietrik and his gentle mother, like a dark-haired swan. She’d been a ballet dancer before she met Pietrik’s father and always wore her hair gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Mr. Bakoski standing tall in his military uniform and Luiza in her new pink coat snuggling close to me. His family smiling as Pietrik pulled me close to share a prayer book. His scent of cloves and cinnamon from helping his mother bake that morning.
I spent more time in memories then—anything to escape that freezing block—but I could feel the hunger taking the place of any love I had. Most of the day I thought only of bread and ridding Zuzanna and me of our lice. Zuzanna had developed a rigorous delousing routine for us, since she was terrified of typhus. As a doctor, she knew too well the consequences of contracting the disease.
My thoughts were interrupted when the old electrician from Fürstenberg came to work on the wires in our block. He was a frequent visitor and one whose presence was much anticipated. He stepped into the block, stooped and white-haired, toting his canvas bag of tools and a wooden folding stool, the shoulders and sleeves of his tweed coat dark with wet patches. He shook the rain off his mustard-yellow hat and then did something he always did, something extraordinary.
He bowed to us.
Bowed! How long had it been since anyone else had done this for us? He then walked to the center of the room and opened his folding stool. On the way he glanced at Zuzanna, asleep next to me, and smiled. For some reason, he seemed especially fond of Zuzanna. She had that effect on people. Did she remind him of his own child? On a previous visit, he’d snuck her a sugar cube, wrapped in white paper, that we made last for days, waking up at night to take little licks of it. And once, he “accidentally” dropped a headache powder packet near her bunk.
Why, you ask, would starving girls be happy to see this German man? Because Herr Fenstermacher was no ordinary workman. He was a kind, cultured man with a voice like warm molasses. But this was not the best thing.
He sang for us. In French.
But not just any songs. His own songs, made up of the newspaper headlines of the day. Yes, we knew about some war events just by listening to the distant thud of bombs to our south. But Herr Fenstermacher brought us, at great risk to himself, a gift more precious than gold. News of hope. The name Fenstermacher means “window maker” in German, and he was our window to the world.
He always started the same way: He stepped upon his stool and fiddled with the bare lightbulb and sang: “Recueillir près, les filles, et vous entendrez tout ce qui se passe dans le monde.” Gather near, girls, and you will hear all that is happening in the world.
That Christmas Day he sang of American troops landing on European soil; of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill meeting in Tehran; and of the British Royal Air Force successfully bombing Berlin. So that was who’d been flying overhead! I pictured handsome, young English pilots in their planes causing the air-raid siren to sound, sending Binz and her Aufseherinnen into panic. Did those pilots even know we were down here waiting to be freed?
Those who knew French whispered translations to the rest. You can’t know how happy we were to get this gift. The electrician ended with a pretty “Merry Christmas to you, dear ladies. May God help us all soon.”