Legacy of Silence

by Belva Plain

  “Obviously, I was on the grass, Lore! We went up the hill one day to the pastry shop in the village, and coming back down, I fell on the wet grass.”

  Was she imagining that Lore’s look was queer? Well, no matter. There was too much else to worry about besides whatever Lore might be thinking.

  IT was very late on the fourth evening when Lore and Dr. Schmidt, who had gone to call for her at the train, returned. Caroline, coming down from her room, was stopped on the stairs by their voices.

  “A great deal can happen in a couple of months.” That was Dr. Schmidt.

  “No doubt his father got hold of him. And there’s such great, patriotic fervor now, spreading like a forest fire or a disease. ‘Germans are being mistreated in Poland and we have to stop it’—oh, you’ve read it all. You know.” That was Lore.

  “His peers must have gotten hold of him, too,” said Dr. Schmidt. “At that age, just out of the university … The schools are hotbeds for this stuff.… Some of the best minds can be turned. Have been turned.”

  Caroline, grasping the banister, descended fearfully.

  “She was too young, anyway, to get herself involved. I said so from the start. Now I hardly know how to tell her.”

  “Oh, the poor girl,” cried Amalia.

  Caroline rushed into the room. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “No one’s dead, no one’s hurt. Come here. Please, Caroline.”

  “What is it? For God’s sake, tell me. Has anything happened to Walter?”

  “No, he’s not hurt or anything. He—Oh, Caroline, I don’t know how to tell you, but he’s not coming back here. It’s impossible to believe, but it’s true. He’s gone over to the other side. I checked, and it’s true.”

  “Other side? What are you talking about?”

  In sorrow and concern, they had all drawn their chairs close, as if to protect her.

  “What a pity,” Amalia murmured. “What a pity.”

  Lore drew a long breath. “It’s his father. It must be. I went to the house. There was no other way to find him. At the university, there were some fellows. They didn’t want to talk, but I said I was his cousin, and they said he’d gone away to the country. That’s all they would, or could, tell me. So then I knew there was more to it, and I went to the house. There were only servants home. No family. I said my sister was his girlfriend and hadn’t heard from him. The chauffeur was there, washing the car. He said Walter was away someplace, and when I asked where, he said, well, Walter was a member of the S.S., and you didn’t question where they went. He was a Party man now. My sister should stay away. I said innocently, “A Party man? That’s wonderful.” I said I hadn’t known Walter was so active in the Party. One of the maids said yes, it was quite a change for him, very recent. He had been seeing a Jewish girl and the family found out. But the boss, his father, had finally opened his son’s eyes. They all seemed very pleased, very proud.”

  Caroline stared at the three faces, at her own numb hands, and at the slowly spinning walls.

  “He has gone insane,” she said, very low. “Either that, or I have.” Then she jumped, seizing Lore’s shoulders. “Tell me this crazy story again. Do you know what you’re saying? Do you?” It was as if the full force of the news had suddenly, really, struck her. And she screamed again, “It’s not possible! No, no, you don’t understand what you’re saying!”

  Softly, Lore reminded her that she herself had told them about Walter’s family, and he had told her, too.

  “More than once, Caroline, heaven help him.”

  “No, Lore. You can’t have understood. This is Walter you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re saying,” she sobbed.

  “What can I do? What else can I say?” And Lore threw up her hands.

  Dr. Schmidt, in his quiet way, reasoned, “Caroline, my dear, it makes no sense that anyone would have invented such a tale. Everything tallies, what is known about the father’s family ties, and, above all, more than anything, the fact that Walter has not returned.”

  “He seemed such a fine young man,” lamented Amalia. “An intellectual, still so full of youthful spirits. An idealist, too, I thought. How can he have become a Nazi? It seems such a contradiction.”

  “Contradictions and deceptions are common to humanity,” Dr. Schmidt replied. “You have only to look around you. It’s perhaps best that Caroline has to find out now, so she won’t be hurt even more cruelly later in life.”

  Words went buzzing past her head. She had risen to stand in the center of the room, looking around for the door, the hall, the outer door, and the night outside. To flee, to run! To find an explanation, to find Walter, to cry to him: Why? Why? You love me. You can’t do this. You don’t mean what you’re doing.

  Her stomach heaved, and she ran upstairs to vomit in the bathroom. Afterward, she sank down on the cold floor.

  “So he’s left me,” she said aloud. “Everything that happened means nothing. Nothing.” And she lay there.

  “Open the door,” Lore called. “You’ve been in there too long. Caroline, let us help you. Please open the door. Must we break it down?”

  Amalia had brought hot herb tea. “It will soothe your stomach.”

  Dr. Schmidt came into the bedroom to offer a sedative. “If you think it will help you, I have a pill here. My best advice, though, is to fight things through with all your faculties intact.” He held her hand. “You’re a strong young woman, Caroline. I can tell.”

  But she did not feel strong, merely strong enough and prideful enough to hold back her tears until the door had closed and she could be alone in darkness. There she wept, her body shaking with long sobs, muffled lest Lore hear and come back again.

  She raked over the past, the months, weeks, days, and hours, from that first meeting in the park. Had she missed a clue, some remark or gesture that should have warned her? No, she had simply trusted her own belief in love. But perhaps, as Father often said, nothing is really “simple,” not even love.…

  There came now a jumbled recollection, fragments of random speech: peace, sometimes at any price … my gentle mother … I dread going home … the pressure … the survival of the family … people don’t argue with my father …

  They must have been tearing him to pieces, those people. Pity moved in her throat, and she longed for him, to hold him, to speak to him.

  But he wears their insignia! He has renounced me and what I am! Then bitter rage fought the pity, and she thought of her parents and of their suffering because of those madmen, so that a dreadful panic overran both pity and rage.

  The sailing date from France was only twelve days away. How could they leave without knowing about Mama and Father? She beat the pillow and implored the air. There was no answer. There was no answer to anything.

  ON the ninth day, a note arrived in the mail. Unsigned, it was in her father’s hand: Will see you shortly. The Schmidts and Lore puzzled over it. Obviously it meant that they were on their way to Switzerland.

  “Without a visa? I don’t understand,” Caroline said.

  Dr. Schmidt stared down at his breakfast plate. When he looked up, he spoke somberly. “I don’t want to tell you this, but I must. There’s a new order this month, August: Refugees without a transit visa will not be admitted. They will be turned back at the border no matter what their circumstances.”

  Horrified, Caroline repeated, “Turned back? What will happen to them?”

  She need not have asked the question. No one spoke. She was sick. She had been stabbed. Against all reason she had thought, and hoped, that the note might be from Walter. Now this note, mysterious and alarming, had come instead. And she read the future exactly as the others at the silent table were reading it. No, not exactly as they were reading it, for those two fugitives—the bright, brisk, hopeful man and the soft, skeptical, dreamy woman—were her father and mother.

  She saw them standing before some uniformed official, he indifferent and hasty, they desperate and supplicating, perhaps dust
y and worn out.… She was sick again. And excusing herself, she ran toward the stairs.

  From behind came Dr. Schmidt’s voice. “It’s a horror. Those poor people. That poor girl.”

  “She’s been sick for the last two weeks, ever since the Walter affair,” Lore said. “And now this. She vomits every morning.”

  “Her nerves,” said Amalia. “I’m glad you’re with her, Lore, glad she doesn’t have to go the rest of the way alone, with all that’s happening to her.”

  THE little house, during the days remaining, took on an atmosphere of gentle concern as houses do in which someone is ill or has died. On the last day the husband and wife took Lore and Caroline to the train.

  “I will keep in touch with people I know,” the doctor promised, “and if there is any news of your parents, Caroline, you will get it at once. Meanwhile, look forward, and God bless you both.”

  She would remember the Schmidts to her own last day.

  THE ship was crammed. Not only was it almost the end of the tourist season, but there was also the looming war; permanent residents were racing back to safety, and refugees were racing out of danger. This was farewell to Europe, the end of the past.

  Although it made no sense to do so, Caroline immediately read the passenger list. By some miracle, could her parents have managed to board? Or could Walter? And, as the shores of France slipped away and the ship moved through the Channel, she strained for the last look, as if somehow she might glimpse them standing on the shore. Then she braced herself, left the railing, and went below.

  At home they had had their separate rooms, so being cooped up here with Lore was a new experience. It was uncomfortable for her to be sick in the cramped bathroom within hearing distance of another person. The North Atlantic was rough; nevertheless, she spent hours on deck. Tossed against the ship’s rail, she groped her way to a chair, there to lie wrapped in blankets and gaze at the cold, tumultuous clouds, the heave and swell of the dull-green ocean.

  “You look miserable,” Lore said. “Wouldn’t you be better off in the room?”

  “Father told me once that fresh air is good for seasickness. Also, that one should look steadily at the horizon.”

  “Yes, and eat a chicken sandwich. I’ve heard that, too. But I still think you should see the ship’s doctor.”

  “Do you have to wonder what’s wrong with me besides being seasick, Lore? Maybe I have a few things on my mind, on my heart?”

  “I’m only trying to help you, Caroline.”

  “I know. I didn’t mean to be impatient.”

  Lore sighed. “I understand.”

  They kept to themselves. On this crossing there was none of the gaiety that they had always read about. Faces were thoughtful, and conversation in the lounges and the dining room was subdued. People crowded around the ship’s officers, asking for news.

  “Do you feel as if you’re at the theater?” Caroline asked one day. “None of this seems possible. Where are we going, Lore? We don’t even know where we’re going.”

  “Well, we know we’re going to bump into land. Wherever the ocean ends, the ship has to stop.”

  The empty response was purposeful. Lore was worried about her and did not want to show it. A moment later, though, she did speak very earnestly.

  “I talked to the ship’s doctor about you this morning. He can see you right after lunch.”

  “Me, and all the rest of the seasick passengers. He must be bored with the sameness of it. Anyway, you treat me as if I were a child again, and I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I’m very well aware that you’re not a child. You’re a woman who needs help. And I am a nurse, remember? I’m not entirely ignorant. You forget that.”

  “All right, I’ll go.”

  “Good. He’s a nice young man—French, but he speaks English or German, whichever you want.”

  He was a pleasant young man, who began by telling her that he understood she was going through a very hard time. “Your sister has explained it all.”

  She hoped he wasn’t going to be too sympathetic. People meant well, but often they did not understand that sympathy can make a person cry.

  “So we won’t have to go into all that,” he said.

  “No, since the main cause is seasickness.”

  “I’ll be blunt. Your sister thinks you may be pregnant.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Doctor.”

  “Well, if it is … If you’re sure it is completely impossible, there’ll be no sense in going further.”

  Completely impossible … If you’re a virgin, he meant.

  She put her hand on her hot cheek, murmuring, “It’s not impossible. But I don’t think—”

  “Let me ask a few questions.”

  Aware that he sensed her dismay, she was grateful. The ensuing dialogue, which was very short, proceeded in cut-off clauses whose meaning was, nevertheless, quite clear to both of them.

  “—not always regular, so that I was not concerned—”

  “—but nausea, generally in the morning, I believe?—”

  “—true, but nerves, all the trouble, not sleeping much—”

  “—might undo your blouse, if you don’t mind—” She minded terribly, but minded more that the wrong answer might send her into another fit of weeping. But to be pregnant! And she had asked Lore whether she felt as if she were watching the theater.…

  “I’m not a gynecologist,” the young man said, carefully not looking at Caroline, “but by the appearance of your breasts, I think it’s safe to conclude that you are well into the second month.”

  “My God,” she whispered.

  “You must have a proper examination when you get where you’re going.” Now he looked at her. “Above all, keep it a secret. You might have a lot of trouble at immigration if you don’t. I believe they have something in the States called ‘moral turpitude.’ ”

  Her fingers fumbled at the buttons on her blouse. Her heart hammered. Yes, it was like a small hammer held by a frantic hand. She stood up, thanked the man, and stumbled out of the office. Then she went to her suitcase—in which, for some stupid reason, she had packed a little photo of Walter—walked to the deck, and threw it overboard.

  She had expected a display of some sort from Lore; shock, or dismay, or wringing of hands, but there was none. Instead, she was calm and tried to console.

  “I’m not going to ask you any questions. There’s nothing to ask, anyway. It happened, and it has to be faced, that’s all. You’re not the first, Caroline, nor will you be the last. We’ll think of something. First, let’s get our feet on land.”

  They spent half the night talking while the ship creaked and sped westward.

  “I’m stunned, Lore. I hate him. How quickly love can turn to hatred!”

  Lore put a hand over hers. “Listen to me. He was no good. Your parents were right. Not that I want to make you feel guilty, but they only went along with it for your sake. They didn’t want to deny you any joy, but they had their doubts. And if you recall, so did I.”

  Caroline tried to imagine herself walking into the library at home and telling her parents, who would be reading in the chairs beside the big window, that she was pregnant with Walter’s child. It was unimaginable. She cried softly.

  “I loved him so, Lore.”

  “Of course you did. But you’ll get through. Remember. You’re not alone.”

  She looked into the good, homely face. “Thank God for you, Lore,” she said.

  THEY were two days away from the Statue of Liberty when the news came. It was September 1, 1939. Germany had invaded Poland, and the Second World War had begun. If ever there had been a chance for Father and Mama, there was none now. If ever it had been possible for Caroline to speak of “the end of the past,” it was not possible anymore. Her past was to stay with her for the next seven months, and for the rest of her life.

  THREE

  “Only two of you?” With a shy smile, eyebrows raised in surprise and a large paper square marked “Jac
ob Sandler” pinned to his chest, he was there waiting when they emerged from Immigration.

  Through several long formalities, the retrieval of the luggage, the clamor and shouts in the new language so hard to understand when too quickly spoken, panic had almost overpowered Caroline. What if there had been some misunderstanding and no one was there to meet them? Where would they go?

  But here he was with his friendly, outstretched hand, saying friendly words. “You must be Caroline. And this is Lore. You see, I know all about you. Your father wrote everything. Is he—” He stopped, looking from one to the other; his smile died, for Caroline’s eyes had filled.

  “My English,” Lore said quickly, “it’s not fast. I try—”

  “My parents—I hope they will come later. We don’t know whether …”

  “Well,” Mr. Sandler said briskly, “let’s load up the car. I’ve brought my friend Lew to help, and borrowed his delivery truck, too. For myself, I don’t own a truck or a car. You don’t need a car in New York. You walk, or you take the subway. I myself take the subway to work every day.”

  He was chattering, Caroline knew, to fill empty space. These facts, our coming here and the probable reasons for my parents’ absence, are painful for him, too. Yet it seemed unnatural to ignore the facts. Wet eyes or not, she needed to express herself.

  “I wish I knew some words that could thank you enough, Mr. Sandler.”

  “Jake,” he interrupted. “And my wife is Annie. She’s home making a good dinner for you. I hope you’ll be hungry. You don’t need to thank us again. Your father did it many times, wrote beautiful letters.”

  Lore, understanding much of all this, tried English again. “The ship was seasick. We don’t eat much there.”

  “Is that so? Me, I never was on a boat, but my mother was. Came from the old country long before I was born. Must have come on a tub, the way she tells it. Not like this one.”

  Behind them the grand liner towered, with its flags and pennants stretched in the wind. The Old Country, Caroline thought. This ship was her last link with it. She stood for a moment, taking a final look, and then turned to watch the two men hoist the trunk and suitcases into the small truck, RIGHT AND READY DRY CLEANING it said on the side.