The German Girl

by Armando Lucas Correa

  It’s time for us to leave, and I don’t know how to say good-bye. Mom is coming and going in and out of the house with our cases. She smoothes her hair nervously and wipes away the sweat while I stay out on the sidewalk, halfway between Aunt Hannah, who is on the front porch, and Diego. He is standing at the street corner with his back to me.

  “Anna, it’s time to go! We can’t put it off any longer. Come on, we’re not going to the ends of the earth!” Mom’s voice snaps me out of my daydream.

  I run back to my aunt, and as I hug her, I can feel her leaning against me so she won’t fall.

  “Be careful!” Mom warns. “Remember, your aunt is eighty-seven.”

  Eighty-seven. I don’t know why she thinks she has to remind me.

  “Give me another hug, Anna. That’s it, my child; now get off this island as quickly as you can,” my aunt says, her voice shaky.

  I can feel her cold hands on my shoulders, but I keep my arms around her. I don’t know whether Diego is still there or has gone.

  “Look, Anna, this teardrop is for you. Can I put it around your neck?” Her voice seems really weak now. “It’s a flawed pearl, and you are somewhat like it: unique. It’s been in our family since long before I was born, and it’s time you had it. Take good care of it. Pearls last a lifetime. Your great-grandmother always said every woman ought to have at least one.”

  I touch the tiny pearl. I mustn’t lose it. When I get home, I’ll have to keep it safe, in my bedside table, together with Dad’s souvenirs.

  It seems as though the minutes are flying by and that we will never come back.

  “My mother gave it to me in our cabin on board the St. Louis on my twelfth birthday. It’s yours now.”

  I clasp the pearl and try to move away from her, but she is still holding me tight.

  “Don’t forget, when you reach New York, you must plant tulips, Anna,” she whispers. “Papa and I used to love to see them flower from the window looking out onto the courtyard of our apartment in Berlin. Tulips don’t grow on this island.”

  I run to Diego and hug him from behind. He doesn’t dare look at me because I know his eyes must be full of tears.

  He turns and gives me a kiss I can’t avoid. Diego kissed me! I wonder if anyone saw. My first kiss! I want to shout but haven’t got the nerve.

  “This is for you,” he says, staring at me.

  Opening his right hand, he holds out a small shell that is yellow, green, and red. I take it from him very carefully and then give him another hug.

  “We’ll meet again soon, you’ll see.” I want him to be sure I’ll be back.

  I walk away from him, counting each of my steps to the car, where Mom is waiting. Aunt Hannah is still standing on the porch, but I don’t want to look at her; I don’t want to cry. All at once, the breeze drops. All of them are frozen in time, and I take the last step in slow motion.

  “Anna!” my aunt shouts, and I walk back to her. “Here’s another story for you to explore.”

  She hands me my grandmother Viera’s brown leather album that she had kept with the blue box. We embrace again.

  “It’s yours now.”

  Slowly she lets go of me. I get into the car and lean on Mom, who opens the window just as we are pulling out, without looking back.

  In one hand, I have the shell. In the other, the photo album.

  “My first kiss, Mom. I just had my first kiss . . .”

  “You will never forget your first one,” she says, smiling.

  We remain silent as we pass by the old redbrick school where Dad studied. I imagine him in the blue-and-white uniform my aunt described to me. There he is, marching in some procession they have to take part in. Or sitting on the school wall with his classmates, waving a paper Cuban flag.

  Good-bye, Dad. I take his photo out of my blouse pocket.

  “We’re here, fulfilling your dream,” I tell the photo, giving it a kiss. “We made the journey together.”

  I put the photo into my grandmother Viera’s album and close my eyes.

  We reach the airport, which is crowded with families carrying huge suitcases. I study their faces, which seem familiar to me: a frail old lady off on a visit to Miami, a soldier carefully checking the travel documents of a couple with a daughter, a little girl who takes a look at me and then runs to hide behind her mother. In their eyes, I discover a fear of being shunned by the ones who stay.

  Through the plane window, I say good-bye to the country where the father I never knew was born. We leave Havana behind and fly over the Straits of Florida. I can’t help wondering if this will be the last time I see Diego and Aunt Hannah. I don’t know if someday we will return to the land where my great-grandmother is buried. I lean my head against the window and fall asleep until they announce we’re arriving in New York.

  I look up at Mom, who is stroking my hair, and see she has tears in her eyes.

  We’re about to land. I open the photo album, and the first thing I see is a postcard of an Atlantic liner with the insignia St. Louis, Hamburg-Amerika Linie.

  “Remember the tulips, Mom. We’re going to plant tulips.”

  Hannah

  I still have a destiny; at least today, a Tuesday. And I’m going to choose it. I can decide where I go, where to aim for. I can be whoever I like, abandon everything and start over, or end things once and for all. That is my sentence. I feel set free.

  I can wander one last time among the colorful croton bushes, the poinsettias, the rosemary, basil, and mint herbs in the neglected garden of what has been my fortress in a city I never came to know. I let the aroma of recently filtered coffee envelop me, mixed with the smell of cinnamon coming from the oven. I am able to see and experience whatever I like. How fortunate I am!

  On the threshold of our Petit Trianon, where I first caught sight of Anna and recognized myself in her, I clasp her warm hand and around me see the world I will never know through her eyes, which are mine.

  Mother hated farewells. She did not have the courage to say good-bye to me. She hid herself away in bed with her eyes shut tight and let her body shrivel.

  But the truth is, I need farewells. So much time has passed, and yet still I cannot forget that they did not allow me to say good-bye to Leo, my father, the captain, or Gustav, Louis, or Julian. Today nobody is going to stop me from doing so. With every minute, I see myself in Anna; in what I might have been but wasn’t.

  I’m confused. Anna stands in the shadow of the ship sailing out of the bay. I can’t make out the faces of those still shouting good-bye to us, but all of a sudden I hear Papa’s voice:

  “Forget your name!”

  I can’t say good-bye to Anna calmly. I hold her in my arms while in my ears I hear the desperate cry of the noblest man in the world.

  If I close my eyes, I am with Diego and Anna, who are embracing. Yes, Diego, it’s so sad to say good-bye. Go on, kiss her, take advantage of every second. Thank you, my children, for giving me this moment.

  The sky has turned a deeper blue, the clouds are scudding along, leaving the sun to shine as it sets, its dying rays less painful on my skin, which cannot take much more. The smell of the sea invades my nostrils. The breeze starts to ruffle our hair. The three of us, alone on this corner in Vedado. What about Leo? Leo isn’t here.

  Next to Anna I am happy. We’re so close . . . Diego kisses her. It’s her first kiss. I can’t believe it, either. She has kissed a boy at the start of her thirteenth year, and I have to endure saying good-bye to her.

  I open my eyes and let her go. Everything comes to a halt. She is leaving. I lose her. The distance between Anna and Diego, between Anna and me, starts to widen painfully.

  Diego and I are left at a loss. He can’t stop crying, but when he realizes I’m watching him, he runs off.

  These last two weeks have been an eternity. I have relived every instant of a life that was always deprived of meaning. Seventy-five years trapped in an unreal city, seeing so many people leave, flee, and abandon us here, condemned
to be laid to rest in a land that never wanted us.

  I should have liked to be Anna for a few minutes more. I leave the past in this run-down mansion: I have had enough of paying for other people’s sins, for their curses. I don’t care if everything we have suffered is forgotten. I’m not interested in remembering.

  They have all gone. Only Catalina is here behind me. I turn and embrace her. I don’t know how to say good-bye to her, either. She looks at me and knows; she understands but prefers not to say anything. She turns her back on me and walks slowly and heavily back into my Petit Trianon, which is hers now. The door slams shut.

  I hear the ship’s siren. That’s the signal. Time to return to the sea.

  I descend Paseo, counting every step I still have to take to reach the Malecón. I discover new buildings, overgrown gardens, the roots of leafy trees that refuse to stay beneath the asphalt.

  Anna is no longer with me, and that hurts. I try my best to look at the faded houses and the children hurtling down Paseo on their bikes, but I find it impossible. All I can see is her, even if I know she wasn’t born to live on this island where I am condemned to die, as Mother used to say. In the end, I’m comforted by that idea.

  A day like today, after I have celebrated my birthday, I find it hard to understand how I have survived everyone in my family. Leo, who drew our fate in maps made of water and mud in the alleyways of Berlin. Julian, a vain hope that from the start was destined to vanish into nothingness.

  I have no wish to return to the past. Time to end it all: even pain has its expiration date. I live in the present, yes, the here and now, whatever can give me another breath, even if it is the last. The goal is in sight, and I feel I have a voice. I exist, even if now I am no more than the ghost of what I once was.

  It seems as if everything I am wearing is smothering me. The pearls pull me down toward the ground like a deadweight. My dress is a suit of armor that prevents me from breathing. My shoes cling to the sidewalk as if unwilling to take another step. The faint rouge I’ve dabbed on to show myself I am still alive is no more than a childish weapon in this battle to live in the present.

  My memory is dense—so dense that the good-byes are lost in forgetfulness.

  I can reconstruct every last detail of the dress Mother was wearing when she boarded the St. Louis seventy-five years ago, but I cannot recall what I did before I said good-bye to Anna. Did I close my bedroom door? I’ve no idea if I left the lights on, if I said good-bye to Catalina, if Anna accepted our pearl. I at least know I’m wearing rouge. Yes, my face has some life in it. Or at least the semblance of it.

  The only thing I’m interested in is today. Yesterday and tomorrow are for other people, not for an old woman who has reached the age of eighty-seven. Anna, you are in charge of the remaining traces of a family that should never have survived. That’s why I passed on those photos and the pearl.

  Yes, the moment has arrived, and I’m here for you.

  Can you hear me, Leo? I’m carrying my little brown bag. In it are the keys, my compact, the lipstick, the threadbare lace handkerchief Papa brought me from Bruges on one of his trips. And your gift, Leo, the last one, the one I have waited until today to open: the small indigo box you put in my hand before I was torn from you. We didn’t have the chance to say good-bye, not like Anna and Diego did. I was never able to give you the promised kiss.

  I still have a voice, I tell myself again, to convince myself, but the rouge on my cheeks separates me from you, from my childhood. Yet I know that every step I take brings me closer to you.

  At last, I see the horizon. I lean against the wall that protects the city from the sea, eaten away by the years and the salt spray.

  “I’m eighty-seven,” I say out loud, surprising a loving couple sitting on the Malecón wall. They respond, but I can’t hear what they say. I’ve grown accustomed to living in a constant murmur. As time goes by, I understand less and less what other people are saying. I no longer even try to make out phrases or learn new words. At my age, what would be the point?

  I continue walking until I come to the tunnel linking Vedado with Miramar. I find it hard to breathe; I feel cold and start to tremble, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid. My heartbeats are fading, and my breathing is failing.

  Here among the rocks by the ruins of an abandoned restaurant, I collapse onto an iron chair that was once silver. I sit and watch the waves break on the reefs, far beyond the port. I’ve reached the age we promised we would share together. Remember, Leo?

  “I am the only survivor of my family, but I am not prostrate in bed like the Adlers,” I say, to convince myself that this wait was worth it. “No need for more thought. I’m ready.”

  I have kept all my promises, and it comforts me to know that Anna is the best thing that could have happened to us, the Rosenthals. So many lost generations . . .

  I search carefully in my bag for the indigo box you gave me when we were separated on that chaotic deck of the St. Louis. I kept my promise, Leo. I can’t help but smile, even as I realize that during all those years of solitude in the city my parents condemned me to, you were always with me.

  The moment has come to stain my hands with indigo. With all the strength I have left, I grip the small box you gave me seventy-five years ago while my father was pleading with me to forget my cursed name.

  It’s time for me to say good-bye to the island. The small, faded box has been my amulet right up to today. Eighty-seven years old. We’ve made it, Leo.

  I muster what little energy I have left to devote to you. This is our moment, the one for which we have waited so long. Thank you, Leo, for this gift, but I can’t open it on my own. I need you here with me.

  I close my eyes and feel you drawing close. You, too, are eighty-seven, Leo, and you walk slowly. Don’t rush. I’ve waited for you so long that one minute more will not change our destiny. I breathe in deeply, and you come to me with all the intensity you used to convey in those childhood years of ours in Berlin, when we were playing at being adults.

  You are close. I can feel you. You are here.

  You take me by the hand, and I stand up to embrace you, something we never dared to do back then. You are trembling, and I lean against you so that you can gradually pass me your warmth. This is no moment for tears: this is our dream.

  You are taller and stronger than me. Your skin looks even darker now that your curls are white, as white as my poor tresses. And your eyelashes? They still arrive before you do . . .

  You waited seventy-five years to reappear, because you knew for certain I would be here, on the seashore, as the sun goes down, so that together we can unearth the treasure I guarded for you.

  I’m dreaming, I know that. But it’s my dream, and I can do as I like with it.

  Together we open the box very slowly. Here it is, intact: your mother’s diamond ring. Look how it glitters in the sunlight, Leo. And beside it, I can’t believe my eyes: a small piece of yellowing glass.

  My heart looks for strength where there isn’t any and beats a little more rapidly. I must hang on.

  I close my eyes and finally understand: it’s the last cyanide capsule my father bought before we embarked on the St. Louis. The third capsule, the only one left. You kept it for me, Leo!

  I regret—and it is one of the few occasions in my life that I have done so—I regret accusing you of betraying me, thinking that you and Herr Martin had stolen the capsules meant for me and my parents. I understand now: you had no way of knowing how many other islands would be closed to you. All the islands in the world hidden behind silence. And as we know, in wars, silence is a time bomb.

  It was inevitable that you should keep them. It was written in all our destinies.

  The old, priceless capsule you kept for me is out-of-date now. It cannot cause me instant brain death or paralyze my heart. But I no longer need it. I waited this long because I gave you my word: I kept the promise I made to the boy with the long eyelashes. It’s time to be on my way, to let myself depar
t.

  I see you closer to me than ever, Leo, and I’m so happy, I tremble. Yet I can’t help feeling guilty, because my parents are absent from my final thoughts. Because in all truth, it is you and Anna who are my hope and light, whereas Max and Alma are an intrinsic part of my tragedy.

  I don’t want to feel guilty. Lightness is essential from the moment you have made up your mind to leave.

  Sunset is all the more intense when it’s the last one. The breeze takes on a different dimension. My body is still too heavy, so I concentrate on the waves, the awful smell of sea spray that always made Mother feel nauseous, the noisy youngsters going through the tunnel, and the music blaring from passing cars. And, of course, all the time I can feel the humid, irritating heat of the tropics that I’ve had to put up with until today.

  I lose all sense of time. I let my mind drift away, and just as I feel my heart is about to give out, you slip the diamond ring onto my finger. I raise the capsule to my lips—the last thing you touched with your still-warm hands—as if at last I were kissing you. In that instant, we are together in my parents’ luminous cabin on the St. Louis.

  The tulips, Leo, soon the tulips will be in bloom, I whisper in your ear as I gaze at you—can you hear me? With your eyes tight shut and those long, long eyelashes that always arrive before you.

  You are twenty now, and a handsome young man. I am also twenty, an age neither of us was able to enjoy. I bring my face up to your still-warm one and at last give you the kiss I promised for the day we met again on our imaginary island. We are still holding hands, closer than ever, and I see you next to me, at the top of the mast, the closest point to the sky on the magnificent St. Louis. The weight I have been carrying since we were torn apart drops away, and I acquire the lightness I need to let myself leave.

  We start to fly over the long Malecón seawall, look down on the avenue from up on high. For the first time, Havana belongs to us. Crossing the bay, we settle by the silent Castillo del Morro and gaze back at the city, which looks like an old postcard left by a passing tourist.