“I asked you if you wanted to take the ferry over to Ellis Island, and you had a very strong ‘no’ reaction.”
“Oh, but not because of the ferry. It’s the island itself. It was so frightening to me. Even my parents were frightened. I could see it and feel it. The officials herded us through that immigration building like cattle. And they had so much power over us. We were so helpless. No, that was bad. Earlier, when we came into the harbor, we all came to the railing of the ship to see the statue, and that was a very good and heady feeling. We were experiencing the country itself, and the promise of what it might have in store for us. But it’s different when you have to deal with the officials of the government of that country. I never want to set foot on that island again.”
“So . . . ,” Raymond said.
“So?”
“There’s something in all this that you think is shameful, and that you never even told Luis. But I’m not hearing it.”
“Well. It may be hard for you to understand, Raymond. But I need you to understand it, so try very hard to put yourself in my shoes. We paid off a corrupt official and left everybody else behind. All my friends from school. All my friends from school were Jewish, because we weren’t allowed to mix with the non-Jewish population as time went on. My grandparents. All my extended family. We just left them there. We ran away and left them all behind.”
“You were eleven.”
“Yes. I was eleven.”
“You had no control over any of this.”
“No.”
“This is what you feel shame about? You couldn’t have done anything! What could you have done?”
Mrs. G sighed deeply. She looked out across the harbor as though there were something out there for her to see. But maybe she was only hearing and smelling.
“Seven years go by, and of course you know the war ended in ’45. My parents had been following the news, but trying to keep it from me and my siblings as much as was possible. But you hear things. After the war, my father, I think he would have been satisfied leaving the past alone. He did not care to know too much. But not my mother. My mother wrote letters to everyone. Every single person we knew in Germany whose address she had noted in her book. Jews and non-Jews alike. She wrote to every one. Guess how many letters she got back?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I can’t guess.”
“Zero. Not one letter. Not even from the neighbors who were not Jewish. Surely some of them still lived in their homes and had survived the war. But they did not write back and answer my mother’s questions. So she traveled there. By herself. We were in school, and besides, they would not have subjected us to that avalanche of horror. My father had to work, but I don’t think he would have gone either way. My mother traveled there to see who was left of all the people we knew. All the people we called family or friends.”
Raymond pulled the collar of his jacket more tightly around his neck and waited for her to say more. He glanced over at her to see if she looked cold. But she seemed comfortable wrapped in her knitted shawl.
A gaggle of young tourists ran to the railing, laughing and talking in a language indecipherable to Raymond, taking pictures of each other with the statue far in the distance.
Mrs. G did not say more.
“So . . . ,” he began. Tentatively, in case she wanted to stop him from asking. “Did she find any family or friends alive?”
“She did not.”
“Every single one of them had died?”
“Well, we don’t know, Raymond. It is hard to know. There was research involved to learn the fate of each person who had gone into a camp during the war. Maybe someone else was able to slip away as we did. Maybe someone survived the camp and staggered out with the Allied troops and went somewhere that felt less like hell to them. But that is all optimistic thinking. My mother, who was a realistic woman, called them ‘missing and presumed dead.’ If anyone survived, we never found out about it.”
“That must have been . . .” But he could not think of a way to say more.
“I wonder if you can imagine it, Raymond. If you can possibly think of everyone you know, all your friends, the teachers and students in your school, all your cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and then imagine that they are all gone, leaving you and your immediate family alone standing.”
For a moment, he tried. And it might not have been that he couldn’t have imagined. It might have been that he wanted badly not to.
“So . . . ,” he began. “The part of this with the shame. I’m still not sure if I’m clear on that or not. You feel guilty because you . . .”
“Survived.”
Silence. For maybe the count of ten.
“If you had stayed and died with them,” he said, “I don’t see how that would have helped their situation.”
“All right. You look at it that way. I look at it this way: Who was I to survive? What was so special about my life that I was allowed to keep it? It weighs on you, Raymond. Millions of people had their lives taken, but I was allowed to keep mine. At first I felt I had to live on their behalf. I thought I would have to live the most remarkable life anyone had ever lived in the history of the world. I felt as though I had to live life for all of them. But then after a couple of years that idea grew utterly overwhelming, and I fell to the other side, and I lived the least remarkable life one can imagine. I worked as a seamstress all my life and never had children. But I was always determined that I would live a very long life. To one hundred or better. Because it was my duty to make the most of what I was given. But still I was haunted by why I was given it. You know why, don’t you?”