Frieda can feel their opportunity slipping away. If war breaks out, the borders will close and no one will be allowed to travel, despite their papers. They will be trapped, like all the other Jews in the country.
On September 1, the day she is set to go to the Gestapo, Wolfie runs into the apartment shortly after dawn and shouts for them all to wake up. He has just come home after a night of gambling. Someone had a radio on during the game.
“The Nazis have attacked Poland!” he cries. “Oh, they say Poland provoked them and attacked first, but everyone knows that’s a lie. Poland hasn’t got a chance! You know how they defended themselves against German tanks? With swords for God’s sake!”
The Eisenbaums spend the day by the radio that Wolfie won at cards, listening to the solemn pronouncements: if the Germans don’t retreat from Poland immediately, Britain and France threaten unjustly that they will declare war. Imagine, a colonial empire telling us we cannot restore our own territory.
Frieda mulls it over for a while; finally, she puts on her jacket to go out.
Oma looks up from the radio. “Where are you going?”
“Our papers are supposed to be ready today.” Oma stares at her in disbelief. “Sit down, child. You can’t go out today. It’s too dangerous.”
“If we wait till they declare war, it’ll be too late.”
Oma stands up, takes Frieda’s elbow, and propels her to the room where Wolfie is sleeping. “Wolfie, wake up! Talk some sense into your sister.”
Wolfie lifts his head from the pillow, his thick brown hair rumpled from sleep. “Umm ...?”
“Tell your sister she mustn’t go to the Gestapo today.” He blinks awake. “Gestapo? Are you crazy?”
“Our papers will be ready today,” Frieda says. “They’ll declare war soon, then it’ll be too late for us to leave.”
Wolfie sits up, his eyes heavy with sleep. “It’s already too late for that.”
The next day, England and France declare war against Germany. The Eisenbaums are trapped.
chapter twenty-five
It was nearly eight when Rebecca pulled up her jacket collar against the evening chill, walking south through the campus. Brown maple and oak leaves lay curled everywhere, scattered by the wind. The street-lamps illuminated the sidewalks but didn’t penetrate the large grass round of King’s College Circle, its centre murky in the dark. Like the Sentrys. Even Erich, who was nice enough but had impenetrable dark spots. Understandable, considering his parents’ history. And his father! Something was missing there. By design. They withheld things, she was sure, on principle. It seemed to be a way of life for them. Could she blame them? She couldn’t imagine what they had suffered. They had been through the unspeakable. She wasn’t going to judge them. But she wouldn’t go out of her way to seek them out either.
She had been disappointed when Erich didn’t suggest going out for a bite. Unlike Salim, she and Erich hadn’t eaten enough for a meal at the reception and she was peckish. She would have been happy to suggest a restaurant herself, but saw the impatience, his weight shifting from one foot to the other as they stood before Hart House. He said the nearby Bloor subway would take him directly home to his house on the Danforth. How nice for you, she thought. She also thought of the string of Greek restaurants arrayed like pearls along the Danforth, but said nothing as she waved goodbye.
Miriam would be lonely around now, she thought, heading across College Street, down McCaul, toward the rear of Mount Sinai. The wind blew her into the Murray Street entrance, where she pulled a tissue from her purse to blow her nose. Winter was looming.
She always felt like she was coming home when she set foot into the hospital. She had interned here, slept in the staff lounge when she was on call, delivered babies on the maternity floor, and after graduation worked in the Emerg to develop a patient base. She wasn’t usually here on a Saturday night. Few people were around as she stepped down the stairs to the basement cafeteria, where she bought a slice of pizza.
Upstairs, on the preemie unit, she pulled on a hospital gown and scrubbed her hands with disinfectant soap. Here and there parents sat whispering solemnly beside their babies’ incubators. Sound and lighting levels were kept low to avoid overstimulating the fragile infants, but she realized the soft quiet also acted like a soporific on the nerves.
She smiled at the sight of Miriam inside her incubator. The baby lay on her stomach fast asleep, face scrunched to one side, her tiny mouth pursed like a flower. Rebecca brought a chair over to the Isolette and sat down. So her little niece wasn’t hankering for company either.
After forty minutes, Miriam had barely moved. She was out for the night. Rebecca blew her a silent kiss and reluctantly left.
She exited the hospital at Murray Street and walked the half-block to Elm, where the hospital residence for married interns stood. Her year there with David rose around her like an exquisite cloud, the bittersweet details of their tiny apartment distracting her on the way to McCaul. She sensed rather than noticed a car rolling along the street behind her. In the hospital district, cars often crept along looking for parking, so it didn’t alarm her. She crossed to the south side of Elm and continued down McCaul for half a block, then stopped, ready to cross to D’Arcy on the other side. She looked both ways down the quiet residential street before stepping off the sidewalk.
She was nearly halfway across, feeling lonely on a Saturday night. All at once tires screeched to her right. A car roared out of a shadowy parking spot. A dark sedan was barrelling down on her! Her brain froze, but instinct took over — she leaped for the other sidewalk faster than she thought possible. She landed on one knee and crouched there, stunned. The car zoomed away. Just like that. Her heart raced in her mouth; she could barely breathe. What had just happened? She stood up slowly, her knee throbbing.
She thought she knew D’Arcy Street. It had never stretched this long before. Hurry up, she thought. Her knee hurt and she began to limp, though it didn’t slow her down. She’d have a good bruise there tomorrow. She wouldn’t cross another street without looking for the sedan. As long as she was on the sidewalk, she was safe.
She rushed, limping, past the semi-detached houses, their stamp-sized front lawns separated by steel fences, picket fences, waist-high hedges. Ignoring the pain, she dashed through the piles of leaves fallen from the towering maples and chestnuts.
Then she heard it behind her. A thud. Tires rolling along something not meant for tires. She turned her neck. Headlights aimed at her. The sedan had mounted the sidewalk and was rushing toward her angled like a drunk, one tire on, one tire off the curb. Her breath caught in her throat. She lurched forward, hemmed in by the hedges and fences of the lawns. She only had a few seconds! If she dashed into the street, he could run her down there. If she turned into one of the houses, he could probably trample down a hedge with his car. What about a fence?
The sedan bore down on her. Praying it wasn’t locked, she swung open a steel gate and pitched herself through it, falling hard onto the leaf-strewn concrete walk. The tires squealed to a halt. His headlights, a few yards away, burned through the dark. She heard the car door open. Lifting herself up on her forearms, she craned her neck to see where he was. A dark-haired man hovered near the hood watching her. He looked ready to fly, his eyes darting up and down the street. An ordinary brown-skinned man, receding hairline, thin moustache. Then he took a step forward.
Can’t stay here! Get up! Leaves flying, she scrambled onto her hands and knees. Clambered up the stoop. Flung herself at the door, pounding on it. Please be home! Please, someone! In her fog she knew the driver was waiting. She breathed through her mouth until the front door opened. A bewildered Latino man appeared in the doorway.
“Police!” she cried. “Call the police! He’s trying to kill me!” She sagged into the door frame, shaking. Behind her, she could hear the car backing up, hurtling away. Thank you, Whoever rules the universe, thank you.
The man in the house tilted his head to peer around her.
“Qué pasa?”
“Quién es?” a woman’s voice called out.
A small woman in her thirties appeared beside him. She assessed Rebecca for a split second, then pulled her inside the door. Music played on a TV somewhere.
She gave her husband instructions in Spanish, then asked Rebecca, “Wha’ happen?”
“A man tried to run me down with his car. Please call the police.”
Her husband returned with a fleece blanket and a damp handkerchief. The woman wrapped Rebecca in the blanket and led her to an upholstered chair in the small living room where three young children sat watching TV on a sofa. Julie Andrews was singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” The children, all with straight black hair and broad cheekbones like their parents, stared wide-eyed at Rebecca. The woman picked a leaf out of Rebecca’s hair, then bent over her, dabbing the handkerchief at her cheek. She pulled it away, red with blood.
Rebecca swallowed when she saw it. “Thank you.”
“Your husband try to kill you before?”
“My husband! No! I don’t know who it was. Please, where’s your phone? I have to call the police.” She could see their reluctance about the police and recognized the fear of immigrants. In some countries, the police were the ones to dread.
When she realized she had dropped her purse outside on the sidewalk, the husband went to retrieve it for her. Her hand was still shaking as she dialed the number on the card Fitzroy had given her. He was off that night, but the sergeant who answered said he would send someone.
While she waited, Rebecca sat wrapped in the blanket over her jacket, sipping from a mug of hot chocolate the woman had handed her. The husband pulled in a chair from the kitchen for himself — they had probably given her his — while his wife sat ensconced among her children on the couch. Two little girls and a boy smiled shyly at Rebecca. They all turned to the TV, where Julie Andrews was teaching the children of the Von Trapp family a new song amid the splendour of the Austrian Alps. Music filled the room. The scene seemed surreal. Maybe she had gone into shock and was hallucinating. She looked down at the mug of hot chocolate: it shook in her hand. No, she was awake. She rested it on the wooden arm of the chair and stared vacantly at the TV.
In twenty minutes, a decisive knock sounded at the door. Huddled in her blanket, she followed behind the husband, who opened the door to two young police constables, one dark-skinned and Asian-looking, the other fair with pale eyes.
“We’re looking for Dr. Rebecca Temple. She called the station.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Doctor?”
Rebecca smiled weakly. “I called.”
“May we come in?”
The man stood aside, eyes lowered.
Rebecca said to him, “It’s all right. It’ll be fine.” To the constables, she said distinctly, “These people rescued me. They’ve been very kind.”
During the commercial of The Sound of Music, they had exchanged tidbits of information and she’d found out they were from Guatemala.
The two men filled the hallway in their thick police-issue winter jackets and peaked caps. She described how she had been walking home when the black sedan had come after her and tried to run her down. The one with the pale eyes scribbled in a small notepad.
“Did you see the make of the car?” asked the dark one, his hair a shiny black. “A licence number?”
“It might’ve been a Dodge, I’m not sure. I was too busy running to catch the licence number.”
“Could you describe the driver?”
“Young brown-skinned male. Could be Mediterranean. Or Indian. Maybe Middle Eastern.”
“And you never saw him before?”
She shook her head. “Any idea what’s going on here? Why this guy comes out of the blue trying to run you down?”
“I’m completely baffled.”
“Could it be a prankster out on a Saturday night?”
“He wasn’t fooling around. He was trying to kill me.”
“Are you hurt? Apart from the cut on your face?” She put her palm gingerly to her cheek. “I hurt my knee when I fell.”
“We’d like to take you to the hospital. Get you checked out.”
It was probably protocol. But she knew she would wait hours for an X-ray in the ER. “That’s all right, officer. Nothing’s broken. Just cuts and bruises. I’d rather go home and take a bath.”
“We’d feel better if you got yourself checked out. Got that cut looked at.”
She pulled the blanket from around her shoulders and folded it up. No more looking like a patient. “I’ll put disinfectant on it when I get home. Look, tell Fitzroy I refused to go. You’ll be off the hook and I’ll get a peaceful night’s sleep.”
“You know Fitzroy?” The dark-haired constable exchanged glances with his partner. Some signal made him put his notepad away.
“He’s looking into the death of the homeless woman killed here last week,” she said. “I found her. Just across the street.”
The two men looked at each other again. “That’s kind of a coincidence,” said the fair-haired one.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Though they arrested someone for it,” she said. “A street person. Stanley something. I thought he killed her, but I’m not sure of anything anymore. You better tell Fitzroy to call me.”
“If you’re not going to the hospital, we’d like you to come down to the station and give a statement. While everything’s fresh in your mind.”
After she had described the incident at the station, the car, the driver, his bold pursuit of her on the sidewalk down D’Arcy, a woman police constable drove her home.
Her whole body ached as she lifted herself from the bath and crawled into bed. Just as she was falling asleep, the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Rebecca? What’s the matter?”
How could he tell from “hello”? “I’ve had an accident. Well, not really an accident. Someone tried to run me down. But I’m all right.”
An intake of breath. “Someone tried to kill you?”
“I’m all right. Really. Just shaken.”
“What happened?”
“I left the hospital after visiting the baby. And a car started chasing me. He came out of nowhere, he just came at me ...”
“Did you see who it was?”
“A Mediterranean-looking man. Never saw him before.”
“Did the police catch him?”
“No.”
“What about the car? Did you give the cops a description?”
She sighed. “I didn’t see much. I was running for my life.”
“Christ! I thought Toronto was supposed to be a safe place. First this woman gets killed. Now someone’s after you ... There’s no connection, is there? I mean, why would someone try to ... What did the cops say?”
Now she was sorry she’d told him about Birdie when he’d called the other night.
“The beat cops who came out didn’t like that it was a coincidence. But I haven’t spoken to the detective yet. Look, don’t worry. They’ve got the guy who probably killed her.” What was the point of alarming him with speculation?
“You sound tired. Did I wake you up?”
“Kind of.”
“I’m sorry. Look, get some sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She didn’t get up the next morning. All her muscles ached. She lay on her back in bed listening to music by Schubert and Mahler on CBC. By noon she got hungry and crept out of bed in her pyjamas. She poured milk over some muesli in a bowl and sat down carefully at the kitchen table. After half an hour, she decided she needed to lie down more than she needed coffee and limped back into bed.
Beneath her half-drawn blind — she didn’t like the room completely dark even at night — she could see the day was overcast. She thought she was still looking out the window at the leafless branches of the linden tree out front when the doorbell startled her awake. What time was it? Her clock radio read 2:20 p.m.
She wasn’t ex
pecting anyone. Could someone with evil intentions find out where she lived? She wasn’t listed in the phone book. If they had followed the police car home last night, they wouldn’t have waited till now, would they? It would be rather clever.
She lifted herself slowly and put on her silk robe, wincing. Stepped down the stairs one at a time, her knee singing out in pain. First stop, the kitchen. She pulled a steak knife from the drawer and held it behind her back as she approached the front. She couldn’t see anyone through the small square of glass in the door. Either the person was a dwarf or they were hiding off to one side. She was going to call the police ...
All at once a figure moved into her line of vision in the glass of the door. Someone with a sheepish grin on his face. Nesha.
She swung open the door. He stood with his head bent, looking up at her like a supplicant. The fervor in his eyes belied the hands stuffed casually into the pockets of his cracked leather jacket.
“How did you get here so fast?”
“I have my ways. Is it all right?”
She had fallen for the melancholy in his eyes when they first met. She couldn’t bear to add to it now. Put him out of his misery. She put down the knife and held out her hand. He took it and let her pull him inside. He swept her into her arms, smelling of leather and soap.
“Have I slept right through? Is this Thursday?”
“I changed my ticket. I told them I had urgent business in Toronto and they put me on a flight first thing in the morning.”
“Urgent business?”
“I thought you needed a bodyguard.” His head motioned to the knife on the hall table.
“You want to guard my body?”
“I’d love to guard your body.” He pushed her back to arm’s length. Fine, wavy brown hair framed his face. He wore a lopsided grin, examining the bandage on her cheek. “I better guard your face too. If I catch this guy, I’ll kill him.”
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 82
