by Karen White
“Is that what this is about? Misplaced guilt over Bernadett’s death? I know she killed herself—Finn told me. And you wanted to die—but not because you couldn’t live without her. It was because you couldn’t live with the knowledge of why.”
“How dare you?” I said in the feeble voice I used when I wanted to get my way. “I am an old woman. . . .”
“Yes, you are. Which is why, I would think, you would not want to die with whatever guilt you have hanging over you. And I can’t stop thinking how, after all of this time we’ve been together and I’ve been digging into your past, you haven’t once asked me to stop. Not once. I never stopped digging because I couldn’t help but wonder if you’ve been hoping all this time that you would be forced to tell your story.”
“None of this has anything to do with you.” Even I could tell that my voice had weakened, that my protestations weren’t real.
“I suppose in the beginning it didn’t. I was simply curious and digging up your secrets meant I didn’t need to dwell too much on my own. And your antagonism toward me from the beginning encouraged me.”
She bit her lip, something I recognized as a sign that she was measuring her words. But I already knew what she was going to say before she had even uttered the first word.
“It is my business now. Because of Finn, and because of that sweet little girl whom I’ve grown to love as if she were my own who is fighting for her life. How will Finn feel when I tell him that he could have just called you and told you on the phone, since you don’t apparently care about what happens to Gigi? I know that’s not true.” She pressed her hand against her heart, reminding me of Gigi. “I know you love her, and I just want to understand how something that happened in your past could come to this. I need to know. . . .” She stopped, her eyes widening, like a person seeing the stars for the first time. “I need to know because for a long time I could see myself in your place sixty years from now—guilt ridden and lonely.”
I wanted to yell at her, to tell her she was wrong and insulting and that she had no idea what she was talking about. But I had seen it, too, and knew that she was very, very right.
Eleanor took a deep breath, and I felt her weariness. “Whatever happened to you and Bernadett is part of your family’s legacy. Something to pass on to Finn and Gigi. Good or bad. You survived, Helena. When so many did not. I don’t know what it is to have my home invaded by a foreign army, or to have bombs falling on my roof while I’m trying to save a dying sister. I cannot and will not judge you for whatever choices you’ve made. Maybe you just need to be forgiven.”
“Is that all I need?” I asked, my words bitter-tasting. “Did your sister forgive you?”
After a moment she nodded. “Yes.”
“But have you forgiven your sister?”
She stared at me, not comprehending.
“Forgiveness works both ways. It will not be finished between you two until you both are at peace with choices you’ve made that hurt the other, regardless of your intent.”
“And for you and Bernadett, you think it’s too late. But what if it’s not?”
“And what if it is?”
Eleanor returned to the chair by the side of my bed and took my hands in hers again. “How will you know unless you try?”
The last strand popped, and I was suspended, it seemed, as if I hadn’t been the one holding on to them all of these years, but they had been clinging to me. A relic of my Catholic school education emerged from my mouth. “Veritas vos liberabit.” I smiled at her confusion. It was not as easy as I had once hoped to stump Miss Eleanor Murray, but I had finally managed it. “I should have assumed your American education neglected to teach you Latin. It translates to ‘The truth shall set you free.’”
“Something like that,” she said, her eyes grave, and I found myself wishing that I had married after all, that I’d had a child, and that she’d been a daughter just like Eleanor. But wishes are only food for small children and fools.
“All right,” I said.
She leaned back, her expression wary. “All right, what?”
“I will start at the beginning of my story. But what will you give me in return?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You expect me to tell you all my secrets, yet you still hold back your own.”
“I don’t have any secrets. Not anymore.”
“We all have secrets.”
She began to protest. “I don’t know—”
“Will you play the Chopin for me? The Nocturne in C Minor that was your father’s favorite?”
“I don’t think—”
I cut her off. “Everything has its price. You just have to decide if what you want is worth what you need to give up. And perhaps you will find that there are also things you have held on to that need letting go.”
She stared at me in horror, and I wanted to laugh, feeling for just one moment that I had won after all. But she was the daughter I had never had, and of course I knew that she would not declare defeat so close to the finish line.
“All right. I’ll play it.” She sat still, as if waiting for me to make the first move.
“You go first,” I said, our eyes meeting in an unspoken challenge.
“All right,” she said again, and I knew that I had won. Or maybe I had lost after all.
CHAPTER 33
Eleanor
I took my time hunting for the music, even though I knew exactly where it had been filed, and even though I knew every note from memory. It was a mournful piece, full of loss and longing and too many memories of my father. Thinking of Gigi would make it even more difficult.
And so you honor him by dismissing the music he taught you. Helena’s words haunted me, as did the memory of my father in the moments after the car crash. He’d been wanting to say something, but no matter how hard I tried to reach him, I couldn’t. Maybe because I already knew what he’d wanted to say to me.
My phone buzzed and I eagerly read the screen. It was a text from Finn. “Still stable. Nothing’s changed. Will keep you posted.” It was the fourth I’d received so far that day, in addition to three phone calls. And each time, I held my breath until I no longer thought that I could remember to breathe on my own. I read the text out loud, hoping to get a reaction from Helena.
Helena sat perched on the love seat, freshly dressed, her hair brushed, and said nothing. A cup of tea sat on the small table beside her, the steam catching the light from the windows. We’d both walked past the painting of the woman in the red dress without comment, the pink elephant waiting its turn.
“Do you want me to correct your mistakes while you are playing or wait until you are finished?”
Ignoring her, I placed the music on the stand and raised the fall board before adjusting the bench. It was too close up, the edge of the bench matching up to the edge of the keyboard. It was where Gigi sat when I worked with her on her lessons, her short legs unable to reach the pedals.
Swallowing thickly, I sat down, determined to remember the Gigi swinging her legs from the piano bench instead of the girl I had seen pulled from the car wreckage. I opened the music and studied it, the melody plucking like harp strings on my heart. After a deep breath, I began to play the first notes, stumbling over the keys, my fingers as stiff as twisted twigs of driftwood. I lifted my hands from the keyboard and stared at the raised fall board, waiting for Helena to say something. When she didn’t, I lowered my hands and played the first note again. And then I stopped.
Don’t see the notes. See the music. See the story it is telling you. Allow the music to change you. Allow it to give you the courage to do whatever you need to do. My father’s voice was so real that it was almost as if he were sitting on the bench next to me, his beard tickling my cheek. I’d forgotten those words, just as I’d forgotten how it felt to play with my heart instead of my hands. How it felt to be the E
llie of the brave heart and fearless soul. “I remember,” I whispered quietly to the black and white keys and to my fingers, which sat poised like hands in prayer.
I folded the music and put it on the floor. Then I closed my eyes to see the music and allowed my fingers to play the first notes. The piece was one of Chopin’s lesser-known nocturnes, published after his death. Maybe that’s why it had been my father’s favorite, and my own—a piece of music we shared with the composer and only a small number of people. The music became a river, and I a boat, winding my way through tidal creeks and marshes, following the current toward the river and out to the ocean. Yet the music took unexpected turns and I followed it through the waterways of my childhood, going against the current in places, drifting aimlessly in others. It was a journey filled with sadness and joy, life and death. Mournful yet uplifting, ultimately conquering. Each note a strand of time, a piece of sweetgrass woven into a basket.
The last notes faded and my hands fell to my sides. I was breathing heavily, my cheeks wet. I waited for Helena to tell me that it hadn’t been horrible. Or that it had. It no longer mattered to me what she thought.
“They killed the children first,” she said. Her voice was strong, resonating in the nearly empty room, the woman in red staring at us in silent accusation.
I turned around to face her. “What?”
“We had an agreement. You play the nocturne, and I tell you my story. So I am going to start where it starts. Where it ends. With the children. With Bernadett’s son.”
Helena
I crawled into the back of the truck, the odor of rotting vegetables mixing with the smell of fear and the sickly-sweet scent of fever. I pressed the cool rag against Bernadett’s forehead, and I felt her turn to me in the darkness.
“Where are we?” She moved as if to sit up, but I knew she did not have the strength to do it on her own.
“Do not worry. I will take care of you.” I tried to hide the urgency in my voice, to mask my panic at the growing sound of running feet passing us on the old cobblestones of the street. A window shattered nearby, and the smell of spoiled fish spilled out into the night.
She moaned and I pressed my eyes shut. The distant sound of a bomb vibrated the night air, sending a faint tremor through the truck. “What is that?” she asked, her words slurred.
“It is nothing to worry about.” I pressed the pill Gunter had given me on her tongue, then brought water to her lips. “Drink this, and you will sleep.”
“Where is Samuel?”
“He is safe at the convent. Gunter has promised to keep him and the children safe.”
“Take me there. You said we would go to him.”
“They have bombed the bridges, and it would take all night to get to him. People and soldiers are everywhere, clogging the streets. We will have to come back for him. When it is safe we will come back.” It wasn’t the plan at all, but I wanted her to go to sleep with the knowledge that we could come back.
“You promised. . . .” Bernadett’s head lolled back in my arms as sleep overtook her, and I was spared from uttering one more lie. We had planned to bring Samuel. But the Americans and their bombs had changed everything. Gunter had told me that the Nazis were flooding the city, shooting innocent civilians, blocking those trying to flee. It might already be too late for us, and we could not waste the precious time it would take us to get to the motherhouse on the Pest side of the river. I wanted to argue with him, but I knew that he was right. They were looking for Bernadett already, and it was simply a matter of time.
I wiped away the hair that stuck to her forehead. “It is better this way,” I whispered to my sleeping sister. “He is only a baby, and he will be safe. We can move faster, and we will not have to worry about him getting your sickness.” I closed my eyes, hoping I was telling her the truth.
I reached into the small bag of Bernadett’s possessions and found the small silver box that had been gifted to her from the motherhouse for her service to the children there. I pulled out the rosary and wrapped it around Bernadett’s clenched hands, a talisman against evil.
Sliding from the truck, I reached for Gunter, smelling his sweat and the wool of his uniform. A woman holding a child’s hand ran past us, bumping into Gunter and pressing him against me.
“Do not be afraid, my love. When we are old we will look back and laugh at how difficult things once were.” He paused. “I have wrapped the paintings inside maps, just in case. But if anyone should get close enough, tell them that the paintings are from St. Stephen’s Basilica and you are taking them to hide them from the Russians.”
“Who will believe that? The Russians are not here.”
He lowered his voice. “They will be. We cannot fight everyone on all fronts. The Führer knows this, and things here will get even more difficult. I will rest better knowing you are safe.”
“The paintings—are they really from St. Stephen’s?”
He kissed me gently. “Do not worry yourself. They are our insurance. They are what paid for your passes and train tickets. My commanding officer ordered me to get them out of Hungary, and so I am. It is not up to us to question this gift.”
“It is not a gift,” I said. I took out the folded piece of paper and held it for a moment before pressing it into his hands, feeling like St. Peter and waiting for the cock to crow. “It is something awful I cannot name.”
He took the paper and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “The children will be safe, I promise you. I will give the sisters advance warning, and the children will be hidden. And that will be the end of it. After tonight Hungary’s regent cannot afford the wrath of the United States and must stop the deportations here in Hungary. It is the beginning of the end.”
“And when this is over, you will find me, and you will bring Samuel to us.”
He held me close. “Yes. I promise.”
“And you will tell Benjamin?”
He tensed. “Benjamin is gone.”
“Gone?” My unease at his words mixed with relief.
“He was caught coming from a safe house with forged papers and documents. They have taken him away.”
“What shall I tell Bernadett?”
“She does not need to know. Tell her that Benjamin will find her after the war.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Gunter did not answer, and my twenty-two-year-old self refused to see what lay behind his silence. I did not want to think of Benjamin being taken to the Danube and shot. I only wanted to think of him as the man who had brought danger to my doorstep, had involved my sister, with her blond, bright hair, in traveling with supplies to the labor camps outside Budapest and returning with contraband letters. My beautiful sister, who was so shy and allowed me to make all of her decisions for her and take care of her, had become another person for Benjamin. She showed no fear delivering messages or running the supplies to the camps. It was at the labor camps where the typhus had found her.
Yet Benjamin was Samuel’s father, too—Samuel, my darling nephew with the dark hair and laughing eyes whom we had been forced to hide both before he was born and now after. The sisters at the convent were happy to pretend that he was just another child Bernadett spent time with.
Gunter took my arm and gently led me to the driver’s seat, and I felt his urgency, his nervousness that all of our plans would go awry because of all nights the Americans had chosen to come tonight. He did not need to tell me that we would not have another chance. “I have covered the top half of your headlights to make it harder for the planes to see you. And I have marked your map so that you are traveling away from their targets, north through the countryside. And if you are stopped by soldiers, show them your passes. I have secured for you the highest clearance.”
He kissed me one last time. “Godspeed, my love. I will find you. When all of this is over, I will come back for you.”
He clos
ed the door and I started the engine. I did not look back as I headed toward the darkness of the suburban forests, exiting through the medieval town gates to plunge into the foothills. It was military territory, where vehicles could be stopped for any reason or no reason at all, but I had run out of choices. The distant fires burning buildings along the Danube flamed in the rearview mirror as I drove away, the road like scissors neatly clipping my life into the time before and the time after.
Eleanor
“The note you put into Gunter’s pocket, what was it?” I felt sick—sick with exhaustion and worry over Gigi, and sick with the knowledge of a harrowing night that had happened nearly seventy years before, yet still echoed in the walls around me and in the heart of an old woman.
Helena’s face betrayed no emotion, and I wondered if she’d had the long trip through the dark forests of Hungary to teach her how. “It was the name of the convent and their address.” She closed her eyes. “We had it all planned, you see. Gunter would warn them in advance so they could hide. I had no choice. The Gestapo knew about Bernadett, that she’d been working with the underground. They had been following her, so it was simply a matter of time before they knocked on our door in the middle of the night and dragged her from her bed.
“She could not afford to be in a prison camp. She had been sick and weak since Samuel’s birth, giving her food rations to the children. She would not have survived. I had no choice. And Samuel, we were supposed to pick him up that night, but we could not because they had bombed the bridges. With the confusion in the streets, and the Nazis flooding into the city, it would have taken hours to get to him, and we could not afford the time. They knew who Bernadett was. We had a much better chance if we were stopped and questioned out in the countryside, where they did not know who she was.”
I continued to stare at the woman across the room from me, her face becoming older as she spoke. The words from the small booklet swam in my mind, the words in their black-and-white hygienic way telling about the children from the convent. About the informant and the subsequent raid. They were deported to Auschwitz. All believed to have perished. And I remembered the Bible I’d found in the basket beneath Bernadett’s bed.
