The Goddess’s Berlin glamour had given way to the most discreet simplicity. The truth was she didn’t have the time or energy for nostalgia. Her beauty rituals had also been reduced to having her hair cut at home. Scissors in hand, Hortensia made sure her locks remained at shoulder length.
“Cut away, Hortensia, don’t be afraid!” she would encourage her novice hairdresser, who gingerly snipped off another inch.
Hortensia knitted cardigans for Gustav that he refused to wear, and put so much starch into his collars that he began to howl the instant he saw them. To calm him, she would clutch him to her breast and sing him boleros about deaths and burials that made my hair stand on end, but which for some unknown reason seemed to soothe him.
By the time he was two and a half, Gustav was a curious child, restless and rebellious. He had none of the Rosenthal reserve: he was more than ready to show his emotions openly. He saw me more as an aunt than a sister; and, far from disturbing us, Mother and I were touched by his closeness to Hortensia.
To him, Spanish was the language of affection, games, tastes, and smells. English meant order and discipline. Mother and I obviously were part of the latter.
Without our realizing it, Gustav, the ship captain’s name, slowly became Gustavo, and we accepted it. The Spanish version was better suited to that impatient young boy who almost always went around half naked and covered in sweat.
He had a voracious appetite. Hortensia fed him Cuban food: rice with black beans, chicken fricassee, fried plantain and sweet potato, thick soups full of vegetables and sausage, as well as the desserts I had learned to make like an expert. In the afternoons, I would help Hortensia prepare the sweets she used to spoil him with. In fact, she would have liked to have him all to herself; she spoke to him all the time in diminutives.
Gustavo had not inherited anything from Mother or me. We had not succeeded in transmitting to him a single habit or tradition of our own. We had no idea if one day he would discover that his first language was German, and that his family name was not Rosen but Rosenthal.
Gustavo was Hortensia’s. Still under the shadow of Papa’s absence, Mother gradually had less and less to do with his upbringing. Insecurity, misinformation, and the impossibility of being able to think of the future prevented her from focusing on a child she had not asked to bring into the world. Sometimes Gustavo even slept in Hortensia’s room, or went with her to spend weekends at her sister Esperanza’s house, where they also didn’t celebrate birthdays, Christmas, or the New Year.
For Gustavo, life outside the Petit Trianon existed thanks to a simple woman whom we paid to look after us. At nighttime, Hortensia was the one who put him to bed, told him scary stories about witches and sleeping princesses, and sang him lullabies: “Duérmete mi niño, duérmete mi amor, duérmete pedazo de mi corazón.” That was her formula to make Gustavo capitulate until the next morning.
He was playful, even mischievous. He liked sitting on Eulogio’s lap behind the wheel of the car, pretending he was driving at top speed.
“You’ll go far in this country, my boy,” Eulogio would encourage him. “This boy knows a lot!”
This prediction terrified us. Who wanted to go far in “this country,” when all we wished was to get out as quickly as possible and settle as far away as we could from this interminable heat?
Three years later, I was as tall as an adult woman; too tall for the tropics. I was even taller than the boys in my class, who for that reason avoided me. They saw me as an ally of our teacher. Occasionally the poor woman did call on me for help in controlling that bunch of ignoramuses, who, because they came from rich families, thought they were better than her. They taunted me all the time: Polacks only married among themselves, they didn’t wash every day, they were mean and greedy. I pretended not to hear them: in the end, I thought, those idiots were never going to realize I wasn’t a Polack and that there was no way I would ever want to be accepted by them.
Mother continued to design and make her one black-and-white tropical outfit. Communication with Papa had been cut completely, and we had heard nothing about Leo and his father. What else could we have done? The Second World War was at its height: every night before I closed my eyes, I prayed for it to end. But in my innocent prayer, I never spoke of who might lose. What interested me was for order to be reestablished—and by “order,” I meant above all international mail service: I wanted to be able to receive and send letters to Paris, to hear news of our loved ones.
One Tuesday afternoon—it had to be a Tuesday!—in midsummer, the worst time of year in this godforsaken city, the lawyer looking after our finances appeared without warning at our home.
That day, which was to be added to my list of tragic Tuesdays, I understood that Señor Dannón was one of us. Even though the tropics had softened his “impurities,” he was as undesirable as the Rosenthals, whom he helped for a monthly fee. He was never called a Polack, though, because his ancestors had come from Spain or possibly even from Turkey. Like us, his parents had fled and found shelter on an island that admitted his entire family. Without splitting them up, as they had done with ours.
In a gruff voice, Señor Dannón asked us both to take a seat in the living room. Hortensia took Gustavo out onto the patio to leave us alone. Even though she did not entirely trust him, she knew that the lawyer always brought important news.
I can’t reproduce what he said, because I didn’t properly understand it. Only the words camp and concentration made an impression on me. I found it impossible to understand why we still hadn’t finished paying for our guilt. I wanted to run out into the street and shout “Papa!” But who would hear me? What had we done? How long would we have to go on carrying this burden of grief? I buried my face in my hands and began to sob uncontrollably. Papa! Papa! I could at least shout his name silently inside and weep in front of Señor Dannón, even if Mother did not like it. Papa!
In a sudden show of solidarity, the lawyer—who, after all, was nothing more than a stranger to us—told us that he had lost his only daughter. A typhus epidemic that had claimed the lives of thousands of children in Havana had kept her in bed until her tiny, frail body finally succumbed. That was why he and his wife had decided to stay in Cuba, close to their child’s remains.
I felt like saying to him, “We don’t have the strength to weep over an unknown girl. How stupid of me. We have so few tears left, señor. Don’t expect compassion from us. We still have a lot to weep over.”
“Papa!” It was more than I could bear, and I shouted his name out loud. Alarmed, Hortensia came bustling in. Behind her, Gustavo began to yell.
I ran up to my room and shut myself in. I tried to comfort myself by thinking of Leo but avoided imagining him in Paris. I had no idea what his fate had been! Only the Leo I had known, the one I had run with along the streets of Berlin and the decks of the St. Louis, could be of any help to me at that moment.
I shed all the tears I had left. I waited for the pain to subside in my chest, for my eyes not to show the anguish and hatred eating me up. I longed for a typhus epidemic or any other calamity that could get me out of there. I saw myself in bed, yellow and weak from typhoid fever, my hair falling out in clumps on the pillow, surrounded by doctors, and Mother pale and nervous in a corner of the room. What about Papa? And Leo? Neither of them appeared in this daydream of mine, even though I was the one who decided how it began and ended.
Mother, also shut in her room, spent the night in despair. She stifled her crying in her pillow, but I could still hear her.
I stayed in my room until the next morning, until I felt I had run dry of tears. Hortensia did not ask what it was all about. She must have thought the worst, but we had breakfast as though nothing had happened. After all, we did not really know Papa’s fate.
I didn’t dare ask if it wouldn’t be better to go to our apartment in New York, where Mother had once told me we could see the sun coming up from our living room overlooking the park. To a city where there were four seasons and
where tulips grew. I understood that perhaps Mother was afraid she would not be able to escape the Ogres’ tentacles, now that they had reached the farthest corners of Europe. Paris was filled with the loudspeakers of terror and draped with the most awful combination of colors: red, white, and black.
Soon we would feel their presence in Cuba, a country that seemed to be favoring them already. In fact, I was sure the Cubans had reached an agreement with the Ogres to prevent the arrival of the ship that could have been our salvation.
From that day on, Mother never went near “la Singer” again. I sensed that our stay on the island would no longer be a temporary one but would last forever.
Anna
2014
Diego appears freshly bathed, with wet hair, and in his smartest clothes: an ironed shirt tucked inside wrinkled shorts, white socks, and the black sneakers he wears on special occasions.
I have to define his scent, but it’s not easy: a mixture of sun, the sea, and talcum powder. In Havana, all the people dust themselves in talcum powder. You can see it on women’s chests, babies’ arms, the napes of men’s necks. The white powder contrasts vividly with Diego’s skin. I realize why he leaves his hair wet: it looks combed. As they dry, his curls start to become one big, messy tangle.
Things I’m not allowed to do in New York seem to be fine here. It’s not so much that Mom has great faith in Diego, who must be the same age as me; it’s more that she doesn’t want to go against Aunt Hannah, who insists she shouldn’t worry, that Diego is a good boy liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
“Let her enjoy herself. Nothing’s going to happen to her,” she reassures Mom.
I think I could live in Havana. I feel free; Diego senses this and laughs. He takes me by the hand, and we run together down a side street. “To the sea,” he says. On the corner, we come across a skinny dog, and Diego comes to a halt.
“Better go this way,” he says, and heads off in the opposite direction toward the tree-lined avenue I recognize at once: Paseo, the one we drove down when we first arrived.
Diego is afraid of dogs. I don’t ask him why but follow him without a word. I don’t want to embarrass my only friend here. We walk down the middle of Paseo, heading for the shore.
“Beyond that, there’s nothing but the North, where you live,” he explains. “My father went there one day and never came back.”
We reach the seawall called the Malecón. I can’t tell from here how far this crumbling cement structure stretches. I ask Diego if the whole of Havana is surrounded by a wall like this.
“Are you crazy, girl? This is just one part. Come on, let’s go!” he says, setting off at a run.
Even though I can hardly breathe, I run for a while, too, because I don’t want to lose sight of him: I’m not sure I’d know how to get home. Up Paseo to Calle 21, I repeat to myself, so I won’t forget. Paseo and Calle 21, and from there, yes, I think I could find my aunt’s house. Besides, she’s the only German in that neighborhood, so everyone must know her and would give me directions. I’m not lost. I’m not going to get lost.
At last, Diego stops and sits on the rough wall that’s dripping with salt spray and blackened from car exhaust.
“How is it going with your aunt?”
He makes me laugh. He doesn’t hold back, simply asks whatever he feels like. I think I should answer like that, play his game, but he speaks before I have the chance to.
“My grandma says a long time ago your aunt smothered her mother with a pillow. That the old woman wouldn’t die, so your aunt grew tired of her and killed her.”
I can’t stop laughing, and when he sees I’m not offended, he goes on with his cheap soap opera:
“There was no funeral. People say she still keeps the dried-out body in a bag hidden in a wardrobe.”
“Diego, yesterday we went to the cemetery. We visited my great-grandmother’s tomb. I saw the headstone with her name on it. Believe me, there’s no mummified body in the house. But if you want, you can come and ask my aunt to her face. I dare you!”
“The Rosens have been cursed ever since they came to Cuba,” he babbles, pouring out words he only half pronounces. “One died in a plane crash. Another, when the Twin Towers went down.”
“That was my father,” I interrupt him, and it’s the end of the game. Diego turns serious, eyes downcast, ashamed of himself. I wait a few moments, to prolong the torment. I don’t tell him that I never knew my father; that he died before I was born. That it doesn’t upset me if he talks about his death, because this is how it’s always been for me: I have no memories of him.
He’s the one who breaks the silence and again sets off running along the Malecón, until we come to a plaza filled with black flags and banners with weird messages on them. Some kind of speech is coming from loudspeakers that I can’t really understand: “We owe everything to the Revolution.” “Socialism or death.” “No one here will surrender.” And “We will keep fighting.”
“What is this?” I ask. Diego can see I’m frightened.
“It’s nothing,” he says, laughing. “We’re used to it.”
But even though he tries to calm me, I’m sure I have stumbled into a danger zone. The men in uniform could come and arrest us.
“Don’t worry. You’re a foreigner, and that’s more valuable than being a Cuban. No one is going to arrest you. If they arrested anybody, it would be me, for being with you.”
“Let’s get out of here, Diego. I don’t want them to worry at home. We’ve gone too far.”
Between the screeching loudspeakers and Diego’s explanations, I begin to feel even more nervous and start shaking.
The next day at the breakfast table, Aunt Hannah is waiting with a yellowing photo in her hand. Her lips are curled in a smile, and there is a special gleam in her eyes.
“It’s all we could recover that belonged to Papa,” she says, showing us the small image of a little girl sitting on a woman’s lap. “There was also his yellow star, which was placed in his tomb in the Rosen mausoleum. Another of Great-grandmother Alma’s ideas.”
The photo is of Alma and Hannah. It was the last snapshot they took before leaving Berlin; my great-grandfather Max kept it through his entire long ordeal.
“After the St. Louis was turned back from Havana and was also refused entry into the United States and Canada, Papa was one of the two hundred twenty-four passengers placed in France. Perhaps because he was fluent in French, or because he knew the city, Papa ended up there rather than Holland or Belgium, two other countries that took in passengers. If he had been among the two hundred eighty-seven they sent on to England—the only ones who were spared in the Second World War and did not end up in concentration camps—today we would have a body we could honor in the mausoleum alongside my mother’s.”
Aunt Hannah tells the story rapidly in a low voice, as if she herself did not want to hear it. She mentions figures and dates so coldly it surprises Mom. Aunt Hannah’s smile starts to fade, and her eyes are now a misty blue.
“On the night of July 16, 1942, my father was one of the victims of the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup when all the impure were arrested by the French police. He was transported to Auschwitz, the death camp . . .” She sighs. “He didn’t survive. He was very weak, and I’m sure he let himself die. In our family, we don’t kill ourselves; we let ourselves die.”
She stares us in the eyes and clasps our hands. Hers are cold, possibly because she has blood circulation problems or because she is telling us something she wanted to forget but couldn’t.
Mom, who until now has kept her composure, begins to weep silently. She doesn’t want to upset Aunt Hannah, who is struggling to finish her story.
“A friend of your great-grandfather’s named Mr. Albert, who was with him during the first months in Auschwitz, managed to save the photo and star.”
“Papa asked him to send them to me, because he thought my mother must have succumbed on the way and would be resting in peace. They all underestimated A
lma.” She smiled again. “She was stronger than we thought. Until the day came when she could no longer go on.”
Mom looks like her heart is about to break. Aunt Hannah continues:
“We should have stayed together on the St. Louis.” Now my aunt is speaking resignedly, and her blue eyes have turned to gray.
“Mr. Albert, who closed Papa’s eyes, visited us in Havana after the war.” She smiles again, as though remembering how grateful they were for this. “He felt he owed a debt to the man who had helped him survive. When Papa reached the death camp, Mr. Albert was finding it impossible to get over the loss of his wife and two daughters, and he had fallen ill. Papa looked after him, doing all the work he had been ordered to do in his place until Albert had recovered a little.”
At this, Aunt Hannah closes her eyes and is quiet for a long time.
“ ‘Work will set you free,’ is what they claimed,” she said with a sigh. “ ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.’ That was the inscription in German over the entrance to that hell. One day it was Papa who could take no more and let himself die.”
Another long silence.
“ ‘You keep Max’s yellow star. He was a good man,’ Mr. Albert told us years later in Havana. He said that he had been sent to Auschwitz because he and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then he said sadly, ‘But I don’t have anybody to leave my purple triangle to.’ ”
“To me, Mr. Albert was lucky,” my aunt goes on. “But to him, Max was the lucky one. What sense did it make to survive after witnessing the annihilation of his wife, his parents, his two daughters—all his family? As he saw it, Papa had fallen by the wayside, but the two of us were safe. Mr. Albert would have preferred that fate. He was all alone, with all that loss in his heart and the purple triangle of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in his pocket.”
The German Girl Page 21
