“Let me speak to them first,” said Max, opening his door. Leo watched him walk over with a smile, explaining in a loud, clear voice who he was before he reached the Benns.
“They seem to recognize his name,” said Hani. Relieved, she pulled the scarf off her curls and sighed loudly. “The man has put down that weapon.”
“That’s not much of a weapon,” said the chauffeur. “Especially not when it’s being brandished by an eighty-year-old farmer.”
“Did Papa give a lot of money to Olis Benn?” asked Leo.
“Enough so that his parents should let us sleep in the barn for a night or two,” said Hani, opening the car door when Max waved to them. “Even if they don’t like Jews.”
To the family’s relief, the Benns were kindly people, seemingly indifferent to Nazi propaganda. They brushed their white hair and changed out of their field clothes after the family came into the house and thanked Max repeatedly for his generosity toward their son and grandchildren.
“Of course you will sleep in the house, not in the barn,” said Alfred Benn, Olis’s father, through a gap-toothed smile.
When they were seated in the living room, on a faded velvet couch, Leo looked at the wooden cross on the wall, family photographs hung around it. And then he noticed the piano.
He walked over to it, put his hand on top, and looked at his parents.
“Do you play, son?” asked Alfred. “Please, feel free to play.”
“I don’t, my mother does,” said Leo, looking at Hani. But he wasn’t thinking about his mother, or music. He was thinking about Emi Kato and her father.
“We should ask Norio Kato for help,” he said to his father. “If we could get in touch with him, with the Japanese Consulate, maybe there is a way he can help us get across to Switzerland.”
Max looked at his son, surprised. The Benns stood up to leave them, seeming to understand that this conversation was more important than the piano, and Hani sat on the piano bench, a smile starting to appear. She looked at her husband and said, “Yes, Max, you must.”
“It’s a good suggestion, Leo,” Max said after a pause. “Let’s call their house if the Benns will allow it.”
He left the room to consult with their hosts and returned quickly, smiling. He nodded at Leo.
“It’s all right,” he said. “But you should be the one to call, Leo. Emi’s father might find it harder to say no to you.”
That evening, when Leo guessed that Norio Kato would be home, he dialed the operator and was connected to the Katos’ residence. The phone rang several times before Norio picked it up and said hello in Japanese.
“Mr. Kato, this is Leo Hartmann,” said Leo, trying to keep his voice calm and steady. When Norio immediately asked what was wrong, he guessed he hadn’t done a very good job of it.
“We didn’t make it across the border to Switzerland,” Leo told him. “The border guard threatened to turn us over to the Gestapo, but we were able to flee and are now in the countryside. We are in Lienz at a friend’s home. They’ve been kind enough to put us up for the night.”
Leo paused, then said urgently, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Kato, but I’m afraid we are desperate for help. Without someone intervening, they won’t let us into Switzerland, even with our visas, or with bribes. We tried that as well. Nothing has worked.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then Norio assured him, in his always-formal German, that he would do what he could. Everything he could. Leo explained where the house was, gave him the phone number, and Norio said he would call back within three days.
When Leo hung up, his mother lunged for him, wrapping herself around him.
“Can he do something?” she asked. “I don’t want to have to try to enter Switzerland again without help. It would be like walking ourselves over a cliff. You were right to think of him, Froschi.”
“Let’s not relax into thinking he’s saved us yet,” said Max.
“You said Switzerland was a certainty!” said Hani, looking at her husband angrily. “That with what we could pay, we would never be turned away. But now we are without anything, we could die here—”
“He will help us,” Leo interrupted. “I’m sure he will. He said not to move from this house. That he will contact us in a few days.”
“I will stay here, then,” said Max, putting his hand on the phone. “I won’t move from the telephone.”
“Don’t touch it,” said Hani. “You could rattle it by accident. Keep it from working.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Max, settling back onto the couch. “You should both see what help you can be to the Benns, Hani. They are very kind to let us stay here. And now we might need to stay longer than one night.”
Hani nodded, her eyes tearing up.
“Not yet, Hani,” said Max. “If we don’t hear from Mr. Kato in the next three or four days, we will have to leave. We can’t continue to impose on the Benns. It’s obvious that they are scared having us here, even if they are too kind to say so. Then you can cry.”
“And where will we go?” asked Hani. “To the border again? We can’t go back to Vienna.”
Leo put his arm around his mother, then walked to the front window, where the gingham curtains were pulled close. The Benns had told them they could stay as long as they needed to, provided they did not leave the house. They did not want their neighbors, however distant, to see strangers. The Hartmanns’ car was hidden in the barn and Alfred had taken out their things after it was dark.
By their third night in Lienz, Max was whispering with his driver about what other Swiss entry points they could try and Hani’s head had acquired a permanent droop, making her neck ache. Leo took over his father’s position near the telephone.
As the late evening turned to the quiet of night, Hani and Max were so caught up in their discussion of other scenarios of escape, most of them impossible, that Leo was the only one to notice the lights of a car pulling slowly up to the house. Impulsively, he abandoned his post by the telephone and ran outside. When Hani saw him, she screamed, and Max ran after him. He grabbed Leo by his shirt collar, accidentally choking him as he dragged him back inside.
“You’re not to leave the house!” Max said as Leo coughed. “You could be shot running at a car like that. What are you thinking?”
But before Leo could answer, they saw the distinguished figure of Norio Kato walking up the path from his car.
Max sprang to open the door for him, apologizing for their behavior and welcoming him inside.
“I thought it was safer if I didn’t call,” said Norio. “I’m sorry I startled you.”
Leo looked out to the car, hoping Emi was with him, but only Norio and a chauffeur had made the journey.
“I have a solution,” said Norio, when they were all sitting down. “It’s not Switzerland, but in many ways it could be safer. If you can leave with me, immediately, I will explain everything on the road. Right now, we need to get you to Italy. And in two days, you will be sailing to Shanghai.”
CHAPTER 19
LEO HARTMANN
DECEMBER 1938