A Parachute in the Lime Tree

by Annemarie Neary

  Papa didn’t get up the next morning. Mama made him a tisane and Elsa saw in her eyes that she blamed her. When he did get out of bed a week or so later, he insisted on putting the altered picture on the wall, in that most honoured position over the fruit bowl that he and Mama had bought in Venice on their honeymoon.

  ‘How kind of the Professor to give us all such a charming gift. A most thoughtful farewell.’

  Elsa could detect no irony. Mama looked at him with a kind of desperate love.

  He threw himself into an orgy of letter writing. In address books, diaries, he underlined everyone who might be of use. Former colleagues, people who got out in the years he’d spent clinging on to the clerk’s job, academics who once cited his papers and now didn’t even reply to his letters. People in France, England, America. There was something about Madagascar. Just as suddenly, his furious optimism seemed to fizzle out and he went back to bed.

  Then came the night Mama had predicted and Papa said would never happen: the synagogue in flames, a fury on those with the wrong names. The glass was shattered and once that went, almost everyone was within their reach: Herr Goldmann for one; the old man gone, his door in splinters, the shop a tangle of coloured yarns like a shredded tapestry.

  A whole day passed and still the Frankels remained untouched. Elsa put it down to the painting. She decided that it had absorbed all their hatred. The harm they might do was trapped there in the slashes and stabs of paint that made up the girl’s face. For the first time, she understood their fervour for magic images, now that she had one of her own.

  All night long, men and boys paraded up and down Zweibrückenstrasse and there was always the chance that the painting would fail them. Elsa watched from the attic window. She knew now that blood or no blood, somewhere Oskar was amongst them.

  Next day, Beate walked out the door, her bag rattling with Frankel silver. The girl in the red dress disappeared too. Overnight, she was overcome by thick crimson daubs, all trace of her obliterated. Papa sat back in his chair to observe his work. Elsa went to the piano. She played Scarlatti with the shutters closed.

  At dinner, Papa took out his medal and propped it up on the table in front of him, leaning it against the pepper pot. Iron Cross, First Class. Won for gallantry in the war against France and England. He peered at the medal as he ate, barely pausing to draw breath between one mouthful and the next. When he had finished, he picked it up and tossed it up and down in his palm. Later that night, Papa was in the garden. When everyone had gone to bed she heard him digging, and the medal was never seen again.

  Not long after the loss of Papa’s job came the news that the money in his Sperrkonto had been confiscated. Even though Mama begged him not to, he wrote a letter of protest to the Gestapo, headed it ‘Polite Request’. There was no reply. Money began to run short, then very short. He was desperate to see what the post brought each day and took to standing outside embassies in the hope that someone from somewhere would give them a visa. Eventually, it was Mama who made the decision to leave. ‘It’s not that we have anything left here. If we go to Hanne and Rudi in Amsterdam, at least we’re with family. We can look out for one other.’

  By the time Holland became a real possibility, it seemed almost local after Argentina, America and all those other places Papa had talked of. The relations there were Mama’s. For all that, Elsa worried more about Mama than Papa when it came to living in Holland. Mama had always said there didn’t seem to be a lot of point to Holland. In fact, none at all that she could think of other than tulips and she could manage to grow those well enough herself, thank you very much.

  After Beate left, there was a change in Mama. Her convictions about even the most minor things had become stronger but they were always short-lived. She moved the furniture around incessantly and changed the curtains from winter to summer and back again every other week. She engaged in frenzied activity about the house; dusting, sweeping, emptying cupboards. She bristled when Elsa suggested they visit the shop for some food for the long journey to Holland.

  ‘Shop? What shop? Hirsch, with his face crushed like a tomato? Or Goldmann? No more Hirsch. No more Gold-mann, either, to let us live on credit.’

  On the last morning in Zweibrückenstrasse, Mama and Elsa walked through the house to see if there were any last items they might try to fit in. Mama took a silver locket with a hollow centre from a drawer in the writing desk. She turned it over and over in her palm. ‘If you put something you treasure in it, you’ll keep it safe.’ She smiled a little uncertainly as she handed it to Elsa.

  Elsa went to her bedroom, to the old cigar humidor in which she’d kept her treasures ever since childhood. Most were things she didn’t value any more and she could hardly remember why she’d ever kept them: Salzburg sweet wrappers, a wooden peg doll, an autograph book with the names of people long forgotten. From a small fold of tissue paper, she took the lock of Oskar’s hair, fairer then than now, and placed a strand inside the locket.

  Downstairs, Mama was selecting some volumes of Schiller from the bookcase for Papa. Elsa stood in front of the mantel-piece, as if trying to decide which photograph she couldn’t bear to leave behind. Finally, she chose a photograph of her great-grandparents, surrounded by all seven of their sons, and left it on the hall table. Great Grandpapa was sitting open mouthed, a black slick of hair across his forehead. Great Grandmama looked like a stuffed doll, with fierce little eyes and a large hat.

  It wasn’t until they were on the train that Elsa realised she’d forgotten to pack the photograph. She had pinned the amulet to her underclothes but her great grandparents had been left all alone on the hall table. She felt ashamed to have remembered Oskar when her own people had been left behind.

  Guest

  From the moment they arrived in Amsterdam, the Frankels took up too much space. Mama seemed too wide for the narrow hallway and Elsa’s limbs too unruly with so much china about. Aunt Hanne lost no time in getting everyone organised. She had lots of very neat friends with scrubbed faces and weak smiles: friends who knew things. In no time at all, one of these brought news of the Kindertransports. It seemed Elsa was still young enough to qualify as a Kind even though she was almost eighteen and had been wearing foundation garments for three years at least. Elsa would go to Belfast.

  One evening, they all sat around the atlas. They looked for Belfast on the map of England. Elsa had never heard of Belfast before: no composer, no performer, not even a conservatoire. Mama drew a spiral around London with her finger then ran it up the coast to Scotland. It was a while before they realised that Belfast was not in England at all.

  ‘So, Ireland then.’ Elsa must have looked blank.

  ‘Come on Elsa, it’s just the next island along. The last one before America.’

  Aunt Hanne’s friend explained that, though it was Ireland, it was a part that England still owned. Elsa was lucky, she said. There was lots of open space in Ireland to grow good wholesome food. As for music, many people had a piano in the house. It should not be impossible for Elsa to keep up her music.

  The day of the journey was one of scuffed goodbyes. Aunt Hanne said she wouldn’t be coming along to the port. ‘You mustn’t take offence,’ she told Elsa. ‘It’s just there’ve been so many, that’s all.’ Papa was unwell again. There was dread in his eyes but he seemed unable to express it. He got out of bed but Mama decided it would all be too much for him and sent him right back again. He clutched Elsa’s hand a moment, then slowly shook his head and walked away. As for Mama, she talked all the way to Rotterdam. Aunt Hanne had told her about the wedding of a distant cousin whom neither of them had ever met. Now, Mama discussed it as though she had seen it all with her own eyes: the Bruges lace in the girl’s dress, her shell-pink roses. Uncle Rudi said not a word, his eyes fixed firmly on the road.

  Later, Elsa sat next to the porthole. She rubbed at the glass with her sleeve to see out better but the haze and grime seemed to be on the outside. She imagined them on the quayside, their eyes strainin
g in the morning glare then settling on someone in the same shade of blue. Nearby sat a girl of ten or so in a crinkly dress. She was sobbing, crunched up like a bonbon in its wrapper. For fear of being infected with such hopelessness, Elsa turned her back. When she could stand it no more she went up on deck but the girl’s misery followed her like a fog. She knew she should have offered some comfort but somehow she was unable.

  As she watched the flat coast slip under the horizon she began to cry herself and once she started, the tears tripped over one another. She tried to be quiet, to avoid setting anyone else off. She kept her shoulders set firm as a rack but soon she was howling into the North Sea. She leaned over the rails and shook her face back and forward into the sharp sea wind, tears smarting on her cheeks. When she had cried herself out, she walked along the deck, and there she noticed others, wailing just as she had done. Some were no more than babies. One tiny boy sat with his face pressed into the barrier, his thin arm reaching for the retreating coast. ‘Mama,’ he kept shouting. ‘Mama.’ Elsa tried to touch his shoulder but he pushed himself further into the rails and so she let him be.

  In her head were girls who hadn’t crossed her mind since the day she left school in Berlin. She could see her old classroom, that haze of heads in the rows in front of her, blonde and off-blonde. Gerda must be an accompanist all the time now. She’d be pleased with that. Even Marti can’t have been too sad. Marti, with her loose blonde curls and her way of laughing with her teeth joined perfectly together.

  ‘After all,’ Mama said once, ‘her father’s made a fortune out of the boycott. They’re doing well now. You can’t expect Marti to be sorry things are as they are.’

  The arrival at England took her by surprise. When she awoke, children were crowding around each porthole, the little ones hopping up on tippy toes to see better. When they docked at Harwich, there were lots of people, bright flashes. They seemed welcome.

  ‘Here, Miss. A little smile for England. And again. Come on, little lad. Lift teddy up. Show him the camera.’

  Elsa caught sight of the little boy she’d noticed on deck the night before. He came and sat next to her. Silently, he slid his hand into hers. When the women with papers came to divide the children into groups, they seemed confused by Elsa and the little boy. They conferred in whispers. Eventually, someone gently prised the little boy’s hand out of Elsa’s. He went off with a woman whose hat had cherries on the brim. He didn’t cry but his eyes stayed on Elsa until he was out of sight.

  A train ride the width of the country. All the way to Liverpool with just sugar-pink Lili for company. The mail boat to Belfast smelt of vomit and tobacco and there were so few other women or girls that Lili and Elsa curled up together on deck, shivering in the rain and spray. By the time the boat docked, they were exhausted. The woman who met them on the quayside drew her hands over her mouth in a pleased little peak and called them darlings. She placed a hand on Lili’s wavy hair, picked lint off Elsa’s coat. Her dress was old fashioned, Elsa noticed, and she spoke with great articulation. Each movement of her mouth was exaggerated, allowing a thorough display of her large teeth. The woman explained that, normally, they’d both be going out to the Farm. Lili, she said, would still be going there.

  ‘I’m sure, Lili, you’ll love farm life. We’ll have you milking in no time.’

  Lili looked horrified.

  ‘Elsa, you, being just a wee bit older, are going Elsewhere.’

  There were some, the woman murmured, half to herself, said so what if she’s a bit older … she’d be better off at the Farm … fresh air … exercise … a tonic for lungs half starved in city air. The Farm sounded trying, Elsa decided, and she was glad to be going Elsewhere. Elsa was to be placed with a spinster in the east of the city, a Miss Jacob.

  ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Not as far as I know. No piano.’

  It was a short drive from the port to the stolid reddish house that stood back from a long tree-lined avenue. Elsa gathered that, having the means and the space and being Jewish herself, Miss Jacob had been prevailed upon to take her in. A woman whose face seemed to sink into her chin, Miss Jacob showed little interest in what life had been like for Elsa. ‘A bad business,’ was all she said.

  Every day, a lady came to polish and shine, jiggling like a jelly as she worked. At first, Elsa thought the woman might have a persistent cold, she seemed to sniff so much. Then, she came to imagine disapproval in those sniffs. One day, Elsa stood at the cupboard full of cleaning substances and tried to work out what each was for. She tried to remember what Beate used to do back home in Berlin before deciding she need no longer take orders from Mama.

  Elsa adopted the cleaning of the brass on the front door and the broad plate that splayed over the threshold. Each morning she would stand there, clutching at the doorknob with a soft cloth, rubbing a little, watching the distortion of her own reflected face. This position, half in and half out of Miss Jacob’s house, seemed to suit her. She was always first to see the postman, a little man with two stripes of hair plastered over his pate.

  Mama’s letters from Amsterdam were written in tiny handwriting on fragile paper. She talked of the weather, the flowers in Aunt Hanne’s window boxes, Papa’s bronchitis. Uncle Rudi played chess with Papa, she said. Elsa wondered if he let Uncle Rudi win.

  ‘Papa is very hopeful that soon we will follow you to Ireland,’ she wrote. ‘Our application should be considered presently.’

  Later, she stopped mentioning the visa application. Instead, she wrote about the canals, the pretty houses and Aunt Hanne’s talent for homemaking. She mentioned no feelings of her own. There was never a word of Berlin.

  When she wrote back, Elsa invented a beautiful Bechstein. In her letters, Miss Jacob was only a few years older than Elsa, a musician as well. She had glamorous friends who danced and told wonderful stories. Together they went to the theatre. The weather was not good; that much she admitted. No skating, of course. But the music, the piano. The opportunities she had to practise, to accompany Miss Jacob on the violin. She was building herself up, getting stronger. Soon she would be able to try more muscular music. Maybe, one day soon, her first concerto.

  Meanwhile, life went on without music. On Thursdays, Miss Jacob and Elsa were driven into the centre of Belfast to a room of gilt and mirrors where elderly women in hats took afternoon tea, their chicken necks choked with pearls. The ladies would make polite enquiries as to the state of knees and hips before a hush fell on the room in readiness for the entry of the mannequins. On Elsa’s first visit, the ladies ignored her, save for an occasional nod. She overheard one of them ask Miss Jacob who her wee guest was.

  ‘That’s my refugee,’ Miss Jacob corrected her, and then a mannequin swept past the table and no more was said. Elsa felt their eyes on her and after that she was never quite sure how a refugee was supposed to behave.

  A month without a piano and Elsa’s head was so full of notes she felt it might burst. Her fingers ached for the cool precision of the piano keys. The only music in Miss Jacob’s house was the ticking of the many clocks. They made time stretch through being so marked. Elsa took to sitting at the polished table in the empty dining room. She would sit there for hours with her eyes closed, playing things like the Kinderstücke, little pieces that required no concentration she knew them so well.

  Her fingers flew across the table or sang out a melody or plunged deep chords into its surface until it seemed as though the wood itself began to yield, as though there was some faint reply from the living tree it had once been. Before long, she could tell immediately that she’d played a wrong note, hear that a thumb was thudding in among the runs of notes.

  For all that, she found that she couldn’t play her favourite things. A single phrase of Chopin tore into her heart like a ripcord. It made the walls of the little room dissolve and the music slide away from her. It made her see the world from high above her own head. Beneath her was this windy island, the grey corner into which she’d been tucked. Far over to her rig
ht was Berlin, where Marti and Gerda would be at the lake or having dancing classes with Herr Schreiber, whose hair gleamed like black satin. Somewhere in between was Amsterdam, flat on its back against the sea. This view of far-distant things brought too much pain and so she avoided Chopin. Her practice finished, she would take a soft cloth from the kitchen and wipe away the music from the surface of the table.

  One Thursday, as Elsa was returning from the Ladies’ Powder Room, just before the mannequin parade, she overheard Miss Jacob mention her name.

  ‘You see, she’s been spoilt rotten. Doesn’t lift a hand. You do something out of the kindness of your heart and you get nothing back. Hours she spends, sitting in the dining room. I know, now, she’s had it hard but you’d think the girl could show some gratitude. If you ask me, a guest should behave like one.’

  A few days later, war broke out. Everywhere, the news-paper boys were yodelling about it. Miss Jacob and the ladies at the mannequin parade seemed amazed by the depth of Elsa’s shock. While they were kind enough and kept refilling her cup with the dark orange tea they all drank, she saw them exchange glances when she muttered that she’d never really believed that this would happen. Miss Trimble placed her hand on Elsa’s and told her not to worry. ‘There’s no war in Amsterdam, love,’ she said. ‘They’ll be right as rain over there.’

  One of the other women said it might do no harm to blend in a bit. Become Elsie, maybe, rather than Elsa.

  The next morning it was raining when Elsa left the house to collect Miss Jacob’s pineapple creams from the baker’s shop at the end of the road. Each day since war broke out, she’d written a letter to Mama without knowing if it would ever arrive, though the little postman assured her that, ‘So far, now, neutral places is fine.’ She was clutching the latest in her hand, had barely strayed beyond the garden gate, when she heard the ping of something hard against the railings beside her. A sharp stone hit her in the calf and she gasped and jumped to one side. There were just two of them; little boys, no more than seven or eight, tongues out, thumbs waggling from their ears, shouting nonsense as incomprehensible as the newspaper boys on every corner. Then they started goose-stepping towards her, their fingers laid under their noses, their right hands jutting up in front of them.