The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  But it was too late. One of the Gestapo had seen him.

  “Peter Albert Rashkin?” he said, consulting a clipboard.

  Peter pretended not to hear. He made a show of digging in his pocket as though he had forgotten something, then turned. The guard grabbed him by the shoulder. He was blond, brown-eyed, not much taller than Peter himself and much younger. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen.

  “You’ve forgotten where you’re going?” he said.

  Peter tried to smile. “I forgot rolling papers, for my cigarettes.”

  He was hoping this could be construed as a bribe—he’d heard you could sometimes trade tobacco for a few minutes’ freedom, just enough time to look the other way. But the guard said, “You won’t need your cigarettes. Papers.”

  Peter handed over his identity card. The guard checked it against the list on the clipboard he held.

  “Get in the truck,” he said.

  Peter started to shake.

  “Sir—”

  “In the truck,” the guard said and casually swung his baton. It hit Peter a careless blow on the chin, and his teeth clacked together on his tongue. His mouth filled with blood.

  “Please, sir,” he said, trying not to drool. “I’m exempt. I’m Geltungsjude—married to an Aryan. Margarete Rashkin, née Stusskopf. Our daughters are Aryan. You see, it’s stamped right on my papers?”

  “Did you say daughters?” The guard consulted his list. “Vivian and Ginger Rashkin?”

  “Yes,” said Peter, “their mother is Margarete Stusskopf Rashkin, full-blooded—”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Upstairs, sir. Margarete is at work—”

  “Get them,” said the guard.

  “Sir?”

  “Get. Them.”

  Peter ran upstairs, shaking. He spat as he went, but still the girls squealed like piglets when they saw his bloody mouth. “Shhh,” he said and gathered them up. He stared frantically around the room for their prepacked valise, for their coats and hoods, but something seemed to have happened to his mind; he couldn’t spot the satchel anywhere. He felt slow and stupid, time speeding past as he stood with a girl on each hip. The cellar or the truck? The truck or the cellar? If they went down the fire escape to the safe space, perhaps the guards would grow bored with waiting and move on—or maybe they would be caught and shot . . . But maybe if they complied, they could stay together—

  “What number is he?” he heard one of the guards say on the stairs.

  “Seven.”

  “Unlucky for him.”

  “And for you, Klaus, since you get to climb all the way up to fetch him.”

  Laughter. Peter snatched up the closest thing at hand, the blanket on the bed, and darted from the room. Gigi coughed in his ear. Her face was hot against his cheek. Vivi was crying indignantly.

  “Slower, Papa,” she said.

  “Shh,” said Peter. He opened the door to the back stairwell, where the window to the fire escape was. The young guard was on the landing.

  “I’ll give you ten seconds to get in the truck,” he said.

  There was nowhere to sit. Peter stood sandwiched in with the girls, one on each hip, the blanket slung over their shoulders. Gigi dozed. Vivi stared around. An old lady in a fur-trimmed hat and coat, the Star on her lapel, made faces at her—grinning, then wiping her hand across her face to reveal a grimace. Vivian buried her head in Peter’s neck.

  “Beautiful girls,” said the woman sadly. “Twins?”

  “Yes,” said Peter. He didn’t want to talk. He was trying to figure out from the distances and rights and lefts where they were going.

  “How old?”

  “Three.”

  “May God keep them,” said the old woman.

  “Please, Mother,” said another man whose breath had the dog-shit smell of malnutrition, “be quiet.”

  “Where are they taking us?” asked Peter.

  “I heard to a Russian POW camp,” said the man from the side of his mouth, “an empty one, in Wuensdorf.”

  “I heard the East,” somebody else murmured.

  “The East?” Somebody laughed. “Where, the Orient?”

  “Wherever it is, it can’t be good.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Quiet!”

  The truck ground to a stop, and the rear door was thrown open. The guards started pulling them out by the ankles, the legs, the arms, whatever they could reach. Was this really necessary? Peter wanted to ask. They would all come peaceably if given a chance. He was shoved forward. “Hold tight to my neck, girls,” he said, struggling to jump down from the truck without losing his grip on them.

  Once out of the truck he stood for a few seconds, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. They were in a square—outside the Clou Concert Hall. It was jammed with people. Hats, heads, coats, children riding on parents’ shoulders, a group in hospital gowns? It was like a pointillist painting—Peter had to blink to make them all into individuals. Otherwise it was a solid mass of people. There must have been more than four thousand. The Gestapo and guards were driving them toward the hall. An announcement droned over and over: “Move forward. You will be processed inside. You will receive food and water. Move forward. You will be processed inside. You will receive . . .” How on earth, Peter thought, did they expect everyone to fit?

  “Get moving,” somebody said from behind Peter and jabbed his back.

  Peter didn’t have a choice; the people around him carried him and the girls forward. But for every step he took forward, he also tried to push sideways. If only he could get to the periphery. If only he could—

  “Petel!”

  He turned. Masha was pushing through the crowd toward them—God alone knew how she had located them in this mass. Her coat was open over her chef’s whites, and there was a spatter on them that looked like Burgundy wine, or blood.

  “Mashi? Is it really you?”

  She hurled herself at them. “Petel, Petel,” she cried, “girls,” and they stood in a huddle, all of them crying and shaking together until Peter was unable to tell whose limbs, hair, or tears was whose.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Masha, “quick.”

  “How? And go where? You should not have come, Mashi.”

  “And abandon you? And the girls? Are you crazy?”

  “You were right, Mashi. They didn’t care that you’re Aryan and I’m Geltungsjuden. I should have listened. I should have listened . . .”

  “None of that matters now,” she said.

  “Foolish, brave Mashi. You must go before they spot you . . .”

  “Don’t be silly, Petel. We’ll all go. Come. I know a special way.”

  She took Peter’s coat and started leading him through the crowd, Peter straining to keep his grip on his girls’ bony bottoms. He had thought they would have to push, push, push, but the crowd parted magically for them as if Peter and his family were a hot knife slicing through butter. Over the loudspeakers came not the recorded voice telling them to stay where they were, they would all be processed, stay where they were, they would all be processed, but a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. “And now, imagine the triumphant procession! Of course, Peter was at the head,” said the speakers. The girls missed it, their favorite story, because they were asleep, one head on each shoulder, their thumbs in their mouths. They reached the perimeter, and Peter saw the sun shining between two buildings, highlighting the golden alley through which they would make their escape. “And if you listened very carefully, you could hear the duck quacking inside the wolf. Because the wolf, in his hurry, had swallowed her alive,” said the loudspeaker.

  Masha turned and smiled brilliantly at Peter.

  “See?” she said. “I told you I knew the way.”

  The relief in Peter was so great that his legs went weak, his arms. Masha saw and lifted the girls from him before he could drop them.

  “Mashi,” he said. “How can this be? You made it? The girl
s? You’re no longer dead . . . ?”

  * * *

  When Peter first woke in the hold of the Bubkes, he flailed, sure he was back in the police truck—it was dark, and he was moving—or maybe the boxcar to Theresienstadt? Then he pitched off the bench onto the floor, heard the slosh of water and a zzzzzzz! overhead and remembered where he was: in a boat, on the Long Island Sound, in America. In 1966. He tried to sit up, but lifting his head produced such nausea that he quickly changed his mind. He lay very still, trying to think of something, anything but the dream.

  The dream. The dream. The terrible roundup dream. Peter had thought he’d outgrown it. He hadn’t had it in years. It had plagued him constantly when he first arrived at Sol and Ruth’s; every night in Ruth and Sol’s guestroom his dreaming mind had tried and tried and tried to rewrite history, to change what had happened, a different ending each time but with one important similarity: No, you’re wrong! They’re still alive! Each morning Peter had awakened, seen the glitter of the Sound beyond the window, turned his head to the wall, where the slanted-eyed red toile deer, eternally pursued by hunters, had looked inscrutably back at him, and wished he were dead too. To this day Peter could not see the shape of a stag in a photograph, tapestry, or painting without being transported back to the dread of those mornings. The fathomless black despair. He could not go back there. He could not. If the dream was starting again, he would . . . he didn’t know what he would do.

  Think of something else, he told himself. Focus.

  The smell of cigar smoke drifted with diesel and fish guts into the hold. The two men talked overhead.

  “What’ve you been bringing in this week?” Sol was asking Dutch.

  “I got mostly eight-, ten-pounders—stuff you’re supposed to throw back,” said Dutch. “Baby blues and fluke. Though I heard a guy off Montauk caught a thresher.”

  Sol wheezed laughter. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Guy thought he’d hooked a buoy at first. Goddamned if it wasn’t a shark. . . . Hand me those binocs.”

  “We got bubkes here today,” said Sol. “We should change the name of the boat.”

  “Choppers said there were big blues running here over the weekend. Another half hour and we’ll move. So how’s your fishing been this month?”

  “Pretty good,” said Sol. “Not great but decent.”

  “How much you net?”

  Sol said, “Three hundred K.”

  Dutch whistled. “That’s some serious gelt.”

  “Young Zionists helped us out a lot,” Sol said. “And the Friends of Israel. They coughed up a bundle. And I got Ruth to work her Hadassah girls.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Dutch.

  “It’s good,” said Sol, “but it could be better. Moshe needs more fast. Ever since the French pulled out . . .”

  “Buncha gonnifs,” said Dutch. “But whaddya expect from the French? The way they rolled over for Hitler—puh puh.”

  “Not all of ’em,” said Sol. “My cousin Avi had good connections outside Vichy. Impressive resistance.”

  “True,” said Dutch. “Even still, I never felt a hundred percent about them. You should only really trust your own people, nu?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s this month’s catch gonna go for?” Dutch asked.

  “Moshe says he’s looking at Skyhawks mostly,” said Sol. “Some M48s. Johnson promised to make up the difference when the French pulled out, but we know his promises are worth bubkes. He’s no better than that momser Roosevelt. And it won’t be enough.”

  “It’s never enough,” said Dutch.

  “True. They need more AK-47s too. And Garands. And ammo. But mostly planes and tanks. Moshe says there’s movement at all the borders.”

  “Egypt again?”

  “And Jordan. And Syria. You know that Nasser, he wants to blow us off the face of the earth.”

  “Fucking momsers,” said Dutch and made the spitting noise again. “You think Moshe’ll get the appointment?”

  “Hope so. Yeah. If we can get him the money fast so he can get the goods, that’ll get him in extra tight with Defense.”

  “Good,” said Dutch.

  “Yeah,” said Sol.

  Footsteps overhead, then another zzzzzzzz! as one of the men recast his line.

  “Euh,” Dutch said, “we got drek here. You wanna try another location?”

  “Nah,” said Sol, “I gotta get back. Ruth’s having people. Lions of Judah.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s a good group. Okay, let’s go. Business is business.” More walking overhead. “I don’t know what happened to the blues,” said Dutch, “but we got some nice mackerel for Sleeping Beauty down there. That should make him happy.”

  “He’ll be thrilled,” said Sol. “He’ll wrap it in pastry or some meshuggaas.”

  “He know anything about . . .”

  “What?” said Sol. “Defense? Nah. Far as he knows it’s all hospitals and schools, the feel-good stuff.”

  “He doesn’t know from anything?”

  “No. That pretty face of his helps raise money, but otherwise I don’t want him involved.”

  “I guess that’s smart,” said Dutch doubtfully, “not to bring in immediate family . . .”

  “It’s not that,” said Sol. “It’s that he’s soft.”

  “Yeah, I got the impression he was kind of a peacenik,” said Dutch. “No offense.”

  “None taken. He’s got his head permanently up his tuches. Didn’t even get his family outta Europe on time. That kinda help we don’t need.”

  “I remember Ruth told me something about that,” said Dutch, “when you first brought him over. Shiksa wife and . . . was it a daughter?”

  “Two,” said Sol. “Twins. Prettiest little girls you ever saw . . .”

  There was a pause and the honk of Sol’s nose.

  “Aw, that’s too bad,” said Dutch. “Sorry, Solly. Poor kids. But life goes on, nu?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. . . . You should see what he’s shtupping now.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Supershiksa,” said Sol. “Ruth says she’s some big model. Legs up to here.”

  “That right?”

  “I’m telling you. If it weren’t for Ruth, I’d like to . . .”

  Whatever Sol wanted to do was lost in Dutch starting the engines, and from then on Peter heard only their noise and the slap of water against the Bubkes’s sides as it bounced over the waves. Peter was sitting up now, thinking. Skyhawks were fighter planes, that he knew. M48s—tanks. And any schmuck, as Sol would say, knew what Garands and AK-47s were. And Moshe was . . . Peter tried to remember the complex moving parts of Israel’s political machine, but he had never paid much attention. He apparently hadn’t paid much attention to many things. He thought of the meetings Sol and Choppers and their friends had taken at Masha’s, tramping in through the kitchen, saying “Hey kid, send in some bagels and schmear when you get a chance, wouldja?” before shutting the door, locking Peter out of his own office. He thought of all Sol’s fund-raisers—how the money had rolled in. Peter sat with his back braced against the bench, trying to keep his head from knocking against it, grimly putting pieces together.

  * * *

  “I feel like a dog,” said Sol. “You wanna dog?”

  “Do I want a . . . ,” said Peter. It took him a minute to translate what Sol was asking. They were swerving along the Post Road from the marina in Sol’s Volvo, Sol’s characteristically carefree driving made worse by the whiskey he must have consumed on the Bubkes. It did nothing to help Peter’s aching head or roiling stomach, the aftermath of seasickness, the stench of diesel in the boatyard, and fury.

  “No, I don’t want a hot dog,” said Peter. “Watch it!” and he grabbed the steering wheel to bring them back into their own lane. Sol made a sweeping right turn onto Delaney Street.

  “Keep your pants on,” he said, “I know what I’m doing.”

  “What I want,” said Peter, “is to know how
long you’ve been using my restaurant to launder money.”

  Sol ignored this. He made a left onto Palmer Avenue without looking—luckily nobody was coming—and parked on a slant outside Walter’s, a hot dog stand housed in a Chinese pagoda, complete with dragons bearing lanterns on its green copper-tiled roof. This was one of Sol’s favorite places, and normally Peter was fond of it too, though more for the amusing architecture than the hot dogs, which he considered a bastardization of wursts.

  Sol opened his door and got out. “I’m getting a foot-long,” he said. “You want one?” Peter shook his head. Sol slammed the door and stumped across the sidewalk to the order window, where there was a line, even on a Monday afternoon. Construction workers, schoolchildren just released from class, a young mother cooing into a baby carriage, and a couple of what Sol would call other alte kockers like him: aging Jewish men in chinos, zipper sweaters, light jackets, glasses, their hands covered with liver spots, their hair graying and missing in patches and tamed with pomade, their backs slightly stooped. Sol looked just like the others as he took his place at the end of the line—maybe a little more florid. The only other difference was his mustache and his fishing hat with its brim of lures. Nobody would ever suspect him of running anything more illegal than a weekly poker game.

  Peter got out of the car. He needed air. He walked to the bench a couple of feet from the hot dog pagoda, under some trees, and sat down. Eventually Sol came toward him with a white cardboard boat in each hand.

  “I got you a Puppy Dog,” he said, and he sat and leaned forward to take an enormous bite of his double foot-long. A splat of mustard and ketchup fell to the sidewalk.

  “Whassamatter?” he said. “Quit looking at me like that, you’re giving me shpilkes.”

  “I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”

  “What?” Sol said irritably.

  “How long have you been laundering your money through my restaurant!”

  Sol wheezed. It took Peter a moment to realize he was laughing. He coughed and thumped himself on the chest, then looked at Peter with watering eyes, a strand of sauerkraut clinging to his mustache.

  “Listen to you! So it’s your restaurant now. Aren’t you some big macher.” Sol shoved in another inch of hot dog. “That place would be a dry cleaner without my money, sonny boy, and don’t you forget it.”