Shattered Crystals, Mia Amalia Kanner [cat reading book txt] 📗

“The first step is to save the child.”

The winter at Le Couret had been extraordinarily hard. We were always cold, and I looked forward to the summer, to warm weather and more plentiful vegetables and summer fruits. When it finally arrived, I could scarcely enjoy it. Reports from OSE officials and the French Underground were ominous. The Nazis had been putting pressure on the Vichy government to take stronger action against Jews. Happy to comply, the Vichy Council of Ministers stepped up its arrest of Jews in early July. Even more frightening was that the Vichy had turned over fifteen thousand Jews to the Nazis who interned them in camps in France. We feared those fifteen thousand included the mothers of those whom the OSE had sent to America.

The OSE continued its efforts on behalf of Jewish children. During the autumn and winter months, it had managed to bring dozens of children out of Gurs, some of whom came to Le Couret. At the beginning of the summer, eight more children came to us from Gurs.

Madame Krakowski brought one of them to me. She was Ruth’s age, a girl of twelve.

“My mother said I was to tell you she is a cousin of your brother-in-law, Herr Felber,” the girl said. “She wrote this letter for you.”

It was a short note, only two paragraphs.

I send you my two children, dear Frau Kanner. I don’t know what the future will hold or what will happen to us. The authorities told us we were going to Germany to work and gave us the choice of taking our children or leaving them behind.

I do not know where we are going, but I am afraid. I beg you to take care of my children. God will surely bless you.

I could not remember Herman mentioning this woman. I was positive I had never met her, but everyone now used even the most tenuous connections. Somehow, this woman must have learned that I was at Le Couret. I put my arms around the girl, and said, “You mustn’t worry. You and your brother are safe here. Come and talk to me when you like.”

On a warm July afternoon, Sal and I found time for a brief walk along the lake near Le Couret. When we came back, Madame Krakowski was waiting in the doorway. She took my arm and pulled me inside.

“Two village policemen came searching for you while you were out,” she said.

I wanted to ask what happened but was unable to make a sound. I felt myself swaying. Sal guided me to a bench in the vestibule.

“They said they were looking for Salomon and Amalia Kanner and their three daughters,” she said. “I said you weren’t here and that they were free to look through the house if that was their duty. But they said, ‘If they are not here, we cannot bring them in.’ They went away. I prayed that you would stay clear of the village road and come back through the path from the woods.”

“Do you think they will return?” Sal asked. “What do you advise us to do, Madame?”

“I already sent a message to the Underground,” she said. “We should hear soon.”

In the kitchen that evening, Sal heated water, and I scrubbed pots. Madame Krakowski had told me the children would clean up everything that night, but I had refused. I wanted to keep busy so that I would not panic. But it was impossible not to think of the danger that faced us.

“I thought we’d be safe, isolated in the country,” I said to Sal. “What if we had been here?”

“The Underground will help us, Mia,” he said.

“What can they do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We have to wait.”

“Why are the children on the list? Lea is only five years old.”

“Thank God at least Ruth and Eva are in America.”

Madame Krakowski came into the kitchen. “Our people say the first step is to save the child. They are coming for Lea early tomorrow morning.”

I was numb with shock. But how could I have known? How could I have known it would come to this when I had refused to let Lea go to America? “She is so small,” I argued. “Who would want to harm such a little child?”

Night came. I tucked Lea in, but I did not sleep. How could I give up my baby? I raged. I wept. I prayed. I found no help, no answer.

In the morning, an ambulance arrived at Le Couret. “This is the safest way to drive through the village,” the driver said. “The police never look inside. People get appendicitis even during war.”

I picked Lea up and kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her hair. “I love you, little one. I love you.”

Sal was beside me, urging me to let go of the child. “Come, Lea,” he said. I released her. “Come, Lea,” he said again. “We are going to ride in the white truck.”

The driver lifted Lea into his vehicle. Sal climbed in after her. It had been agreed that he should ride with her to her destination. The ambulance pulled away. Lea was waving to me from the one small window in the back of the ambulance. She was much too small to have reached the window. Sal must have lifted her up so that she could look out and so that I could get one last look at her.

When he came back, it was mid-afternoon, just twenty-four hours since we had returned from what had been a brief, carefree summer walk. “She never stopped crying in the ambulance. I told her she was going on a vacation to a nice place, but she shouted ‘Not true! Not true! I don’t believe you!’ I can’t remember when I ever felt so helpless.”

“What happened then? Where did you leave her?” I asked.

“The ambulance stopped on a deserted road, and Lea and I were transferred to a car that was waiting there. We rode for an hour. Lea stared out of the window and didn’t say a word. We came to a large house, very well kept. My guess is that it was in a Limoges suburb. A woman stood by the door. She was tall and had silver hair. I carried Lea up the stairs and told her she would have a good time. She shook her head and said, “I don’t believe you, Papa.”

There was not much else for him to tell me. The driver of the car made sure Sal had enough money to board a train and then directed him to the local railroad station. Afraid he might be recognized at the Le Couret station in the village of La Jonchere, Sal got off the train one stop before and walked on the road the ambulance had driven for almost two hours.

“Lea will stay in the house just for a few days,” Sal said. “They told me it would be safer if we did not know where she was going.”

I was beside myself that she was gone. I thought I would go mad. “I have to know where she is!”

“The Underground is going to hide her,” Madame Krakowski said. “Be reasonable.”

“I have to know,” I insisted.

Madame Krakowski shook her head. She did not understand. She had custody of one hundred children and took her obligation very seriously. I could think of no one who could have handled that awesome responsibility under tremendously difficult circumstances any better, but she did not have children of her own. That was the difference. “I have to know,” I insisted. “I have to know where she is.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she said.

I don’t know how I got through the next two days. They are a blank. I can’t say what I did. I imagine I took care of my work in the kitchen. All I know is that Schlachter came to me with a message from the Underground: if I would risk a trip to Limoges the following day, I could see Lea once more before she was taken to her permanent hiding place.

Risk? The word was meaningless, irrelevant, nothing to do with me. They were letting me go to her.

Schlachter drove me to a train station beyond La Jonchere. We sat in the car until we heard the train clattering into the station. He warned me to be careful and handed me a ticket. The Underground had secured it for me so that I would avoid contact with the station master. The less visible I was, the better.

The train journey passed quickly. In Limoges, I walked, boarded a bus, and walked again without concern for my safety. I paid attention to nothing, but it was as if my legs took me automatically to the right roads and made me turn at the correct corner. It was as if all my will was focussed on arriving at the house in which Lea lived. The directions, the address, the description of the house that Schlachter and Sal had given me to memorize must have guided me unconsciously. I do not know. But when I came to a large, white villa, I recognized it instantly and thought: this is where Lea is staying.

A maid opened the door before I rang and ushered me into a large foyer. A porcelain vase filled with fresh yellow roses stood on a side table in the hallway. I was taken to a richly furnished drawing room, and for an instant, I was carried back to my life in Germany before Hitler and before the war. Then I saw my little one sitting on a bench, facing a grand piano.

“Lea,” I said.

She jumped up and ran to me. “Oh, Mama,” she cried. “Can I go home now?”

“No, my darling, but you are going to a really nice place after this,” I said. “It will be like a vacation.”

She said nothing. She did not have to. The child had not learned to mask her feelings. The radiant joy in her eyes gave way to reproach, mistrust and betrayal. I should have known better than to try to mollify my five-year-old daughter with platitudes and untruths. She looked at me patiently, until my shame gave way to anguish, and I could pretend no longer.

I took a deep breath and said, “It is too dangerous for you now in Le Couret. You can’t go back there anymore. If you do, the Germans will take you away. Papa and I can’t let that happen.”

The maid entered with a tray of cakes and cocoa. “Chocolate for you, little one,” she said. Before Lea had drained the cup, a tall, silver-haired woman entered. “I am sorry, Madame,” she said. “It is time.”

I embraced Lea for the last time. “You have to be brave and grown up.”

Lea nodded. “I’ll try, Mama,” she said. “But it’s not a vacation.”

“No, it’s not a vacation. I shall come for you when it is over. Remember that I love you.”