by M. E. Kerr
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
It is interesting how stars figure into things with us. The song you heard Wolfgang sing that summer night, which seems so long ago, is always coming over the radio, reminding me of you and a time when we weren’t so out of touch.
I hope you will remember something always: I am not a fair-weather friend. Do you have that expression in German? It means I am not there for you just in good times, and just when we agree on things, and just when we are near each other.
Elisa, when you wrote me telling me how proud you are to be a member of the League of German Girls, I was so delighted, not because I know anything about that group but because you trusted me enough to tell me how you feel about Germany. You may think I can’t understand your new feelings about your country. What I can understand is that the League is something you care dearly about, so of course I want to know more without you having any fear we won’t think alike. What if we don’t?
I never became friends with you because you believe Les Misérables is such a wonderful book. Do you want to know the truth? I had to plow through it! I always copy passages from books I read, but I copied only one from this book by Hugo: “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.”
I don’t even think that’s very profound or original, but it was all I could find in the book to mark. The other thing is: I didn’t care that much for Jean Valjean. It’s probably because of Slater Carr. Reading it, I did think of him in his “blues” with the B cap, and with his angel face, but not any longer with sympathy or fondness. So you see, we do not think alike maybe, but you are and will always be my only dear friend.
I wish when you suffer any unhappiness, you can feel my concern and trust that no matter what happens in the years to come—even if we lose track of each other—I am still for you, no matter what.
I think of lazy days we “lollygagged” about in our iron swing on the front porch, talking about everything and talking about nothing.
I really miss you, Elisa. I am sorry about your Papachen.
If you don’t want me to write, just say so. Please don’t.
All stars are ours.
Love, Jessica
P.S. Remember Dieter? He comes home weekends from A&S often. We take long walks in Hoopes Park. He does not act at all like his brother. He is full of bash and quiet.
April 16, 1936
Arts & Science Academy
Paris, New York
Dear Jessie,
The enclosed is for you from my brother. I’ll call you when I get home the weekend after next.
Yours, Dieter
(ENCLOSED)
Dear Jessica,
Knowing your interest in Elisa Stadler, I am asking Dieter to pass this on to you.
I saw Elisa several weeks ago in downtown Berlin. I saw her, I thought, before she saw me, and I had no intention of compromising her by speaking to her. A Jew doesn’t walk up to a member of the League of German Girls and say Howdy!
I begin to understand why she wasn’t friendly before. She doesn’t want to jeopardize her reputation in her new “sorority.”
Those girls were busy taking down all the insulting signs about Jews, which are everywhere in this city. No, there has not been a change of heart in this country. The signs will go right back up as soon as the Olympics are over. Hitler does not want Germany to look like Germany when the foreigners arrive for their sports games. Guests of the Third Reich may have heard a little about the persecution of Jews, but there will be no sign of that (no signs!) thanks to dedicated daughters of Hitler like your friend Elisa…. I can remember when I was slightly under her spell, but she is not that young woman anymore.
I was wrong to think she hadn’t seen me, for she had. She looked right at me as they marched by, or should I say she looked right through me? I have never seen anyone with such cold eyes. Yes, I was undoubtedly a threat to her, but there are ways to let someone know that. She could have told me when we were there about the piano. On the street she could have winked, given me a sign, something, but she is a bona fide Nazi, I’m afraid.
I am sorry to tell you this, Jessica, for I know you were dear friends with her, but I advise you to put her out of your thoughts.
I am sending all of this correspondence through a friend who is leaving the country and can mail this somewhere else. We do not send letters from here for fear they will be opened and never reach their destinations.
I would also advise you not to write to her if she is not writing to you. It will not help her to receive mail from a foreigner, particularly one from the U.S.
Although my grandfather died a month ago, I remain here hoping for news about Father. We know he is in the concentration camp, but all reports from places like Dachau are hearsay. You may have been informed that Elisa’s father was killed in Dachau, but of course there are no details.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang Schwitter
EPILOGUE
FOR TEN YEARS I thought of Elisa, wondering what happened to her and if I would ever see her again. After America entered the war in 1941, we learned more about this Hitler and his idea of a master race. We made fun of him in jokes and songs, never truly comprehending what his “final solution” meant until we saw photographs of our troops liberating what was left of the Jews and other captives of the concentration camps. On my desk blotter, up in the corner, I have still the photo Elisa sent me of herself in the uniform of the League of German Girls. I have all her letters, of course, including the last one, in which she announced that Hitler had restored Germany’s pride and wished me a happy 1936, presumably her goodbye to me. Although I wrote her for a while after that, she never answered, and finally my letters were returned “address unknown.”
Dieter Schwitter told me that his brother refused to talk about Germany. Wolfgang told him he preferred to let the theater take him to fantasy land forever; he would not look back. Unlike Wolfgang, Dieter vows to dedicate his life to studying the Holocaust, and he is already finishing his doctorate on that subject.
It seemed that small but ever-so-important part of my growing up, making my first friend and my first acquaintance with someone from another country, would never have a conclusion and would always remain a mystery to me.
Then, out of the blue, one day I had word of Elisa again. It came to me in a letter from her mother, addressed to the Alden Avenue house the prison still provided for my father.
September 3, 1946
Dear Jessica,
In 1944 I married a violinist I met in Paris, where I have lived since 1943. In summers, we come to the Languedoc in southern France, where we have a small villa.
It was unthinkable to so many that my daughter, Elisa, became such a zealous member of the Bund deutscher Mädel in 1936.
Few knew how terribly she suffered when the Red Cross informed us that Heinz had died in Dachau. The Germans were aware of Heinz’s socialist leanings and looked for any reason to rid the world of him. Word got through to us that Heinz was shot in the legs and then hung by his feet in freezing weather for continuing to play chess while Hitler’s speech was being broadcast in the Dachau bunkhouses.
Shortly after Heinz was taken, Elisa learned that her beloved professor Herr Doktor Kai Kahn had been killed in the street, in front of his apartment.
Even I was surprised to see Elisa strut about in the navy-blue-and-white uniform of the Bund deutscher Mädel. But I did not discuss her newly found patriotism with her or try to discourage her. I knew she had suffered those losses, and I was sure she was terrified too, for the Nazi government had no one to answer to. On whim they took away whomever they wanted to. Your fine citizen Reinhardt Schwitter was killed in Dachau finally too. Rumors were that for a time he was made to play his violin for those in line to be ga
ssed. Then it was his turn.
At the time I thought maybe Elisa is right: Break with any Jews, friends of Jews, sympathizers, even those with dichotomous surnames. Better to join the Nazis than to be harassed by them, possibly killed.
What I did not understand was my daughter. I had no inkling that she was this brave, courageous child who had on her own made contact with the resistance. Posing as a loyal member of the Bund deutscher Mädel, she did underground work for a partisan organization involved in hiding Jews and undermining the everyday functioning of the Reich.
I had no knowledge of that affiliation, for those courageous people could not even confide in the ones closest to them. I am not even sure today exactly when she joined the resistance. I believe she made contact with them through her old professor, Kai Kahn, just before they shot him. She was growing increasingly cautious about things. I remember how she disapproved of our having the Schwitters by to see if we had space for their Beckstein piano. I expected her father to reprimand her, but he did not, and often I wonder if he knew something about her plan or even assisted her. She could never do anything to give away her position. Therefore I never knew the courage of my beloved only child.
She was killed in 1942, by then operating as a courier for a resistance group hiding in the forest not far from my mother’s home in Potsdam. Of course she knew those woods very well from playing there as a child.
I do not have and do not want the exact details of her death. I did, however, receive just last winter a small bundle of her belongings from someone who was able to track me down here in Aniane. There were not many things there, but all your letters were saved.
I thought you might like to have them, and they are enclosed. I also felt obliged to write you, so you know finally what became of Elisa.
May God bless you and your family.
Sincerely,
Sophie Stadler Leblanc
September 29, 1946
Dear Mrs. Leblanc,
I am so very sorry to learn details of Heinz Stadler’s death, and of course my beloved Elisa’s.
Dieter Schwitter, Wolfgang’s younger brother, is my Verlobter, so I knew about Reinhardt Schwitter’s murder by the Nazis. I thank you very much for writing me about Elisa and for sending the letters I wrote to her.
I thought of her always as my dearest friend, even though we knew each other for such a short time. I do not think I would be at Cornell University now, earning my Ph.D. in English literature, if our paths had never crossed. It was Elisa who taught me to love language, poetry, and literature. She was the one I always thought of as “the teacher,” and now I am set on my own path to becoming a teacher myself, and perhaps a writer. Elisa used to tell me I told “sensational” stories. She was such a good listener too.
Elisa would have liked to know that our friend Richard Nolan declared himself a conscientious objector rather than fight in any war, and he was in a CO camp doing civilian service without pay for four years. The first time Elisa and I went anywhere together, it was to the film All Quiet on the Western Front, which as you know is about a pacifist.
My brother, Seth, was killed fighting in the Pacific in 1942. We feel fortunate that we have his son, Arthur Horace, age six, living in Cayuta with J. J. Joy Myrer. They live across the street from my mother, in the old Sontag house.
Thank you again for your kindness.
Jessica Myrer
BOOKS BY M. E. KERR
SOMEONE LIKE SUMMER
YOUR EYES IN STARS
2007 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
SNAKES DON’T MISS THEIR MOTHERS
SLAP YOUR SIDES
2002 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
2002 ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice
WHAT BECAME OF HER
2001 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
BLOOD ON THE FOREHEAD: WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WRITING
1998 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
DELIVER US FROM EVIE
1995 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1995 Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (ALA)
1995 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book)
1995 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
1994 School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
1994 ALA Booklist Books for Youth Editors’ Choices
1994 Best Books Honor (Michigan Library Association)
LINGER
1994 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
FELL DOWN
1991 ALA Booklist Books for Youth Editors’ Choices
1992 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
FELL BACK
1990 Edgar Allan Poe Award Finalist (Mystery Writers of America)
1990 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
FELL
1987 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1987 ALA Booklist Books for Youth Editors’ Choice
1988 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
NIGHT KITES
1991 California Young Reader Medal
Best of the Best Books (YA) 1966–1986 (ALA)
1987 Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (ALA)
ALA Booklist’s “Best of the ’80s”
LITTLE LITTLE
1981 Notable Children’s Books (ALA)
1981 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1981 School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
1981 Golden Kite Award (Society of Children’s Book Writers)
1982 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
GENTLEHANDS
Best of the Best Books (YA) 1966–1992 (ALA)
1978 School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
1978 Christopher Award
1978 Outstanding Children’s Books of the Year (The New York Times)
1979 Books for the Teen Age (New York Public Library)
IF I LOVE YOU, AM I TRAPPED FOREVER?
1973 Outstanding Children’s Books of the Year (The New York Times)
1973 Child Study Association’s Children’s Book of the Year
1973 Book World’s Children’s Spring Book Festival Honor Book
DINKY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK!
Best of the Best Books (YA) 1970–1983 (ALA)
1972 Notable Children’s Books (ALA)
1972 School Library Journal
Best Books of the Year Best Children’s Books of 1972 (Library of Congress)
Credits
Cover art © 2006 by Kim McGillivray
Cover design by Karin Paprocki
Copyright
Translation of “As Much as You Can” from the original Greek graciously provided by Marina Padakis
YOUR EYES IN STARS. Copyright © 2006 by M. E. Kerr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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