The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “Look,” he began again, “I’m sure that—” and then he was suddenly interrupted.

  “I’m not leaving without my daughter. You of all people ought to know that. We have to find her first.”

  The way she had spoken, as if she was challenging him to a duel, caused a new surge of anxiety to stab at his insides. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He coughed in his fist. “Not right now. You will not be able to board that train with her. The papers are for you and him alone.”

  “I’m not going without her,” she told him again in that defiant tone. “I will die here in your attic, I will die in the streets at the hands of the Death Squad, but I will find her. I’m not leaving the city without her.”

  It was too hot up there all of a sudden, and he had to yank off his tie, crumple it in his pocket. This was precisely what he had feared, the whole thing coming apart at the seams, after all he’d wagered for their safety, after all he’d risked. It occurred to him that if he became too forceful with her, she might do something foolish. He feared she might burst through the attic door and run out into the street. He pictured her throwing herself out of the window.

  “You will come back for her later, when it’s safe. When all this madness, this fury, has passed. I will help you. This is my promise. As long as I live, I will help you.”

  “How do you know that I will ever be able to come back? That the fury, as you call it, will pass? How will she be safe, a small child alone in a city where people like her, like us, are rounded up and killed by the hundreds? How do I know that I will ever see her again?”

  “Please listen to me,” Stefan implored. “I cannot pretend to know how difficult this must be for you. But even with the new papers, there is still a good chance that you will not make it past the border. The noose is tighter than ever. The Legionnaires have gone mad again, and it isn’t just them this time but Antonescu’s full army. Every train is being inspected, especially ones headed out of the country, every identity card looked at with a magnifying glass. I’ve done all I could, but the papers, as you know, are not authentic. If you are caught, there will be no hope. No hope for her, either.”

  Again he paused, wiped the sweat from his forehead. How could he put in plain words that they may be heading to certain death and that still it was their best and only option? How could he ask them to sacrifice their only child, knowing too well what that would bring in its aftermath?

  “If she is on that train without papers, she will most surely be taken away. And you two along with her. Do you understand me?”

  The woman crouched on the floor and began to sob. “No. I will not go. We will all die together. Here, in Bucharest.”

  Every fiber in his body told him at this point to be quiet. There was nothing more to say, nothing that he could say without a breach of a different kind. He had been sworn to secrecy, and it extended much further than this wretched event; it branched to the heart of his family. But the way this woman looked, crouched there on the plank floor of his attic, made his chest tighten with sorrow, and as tears sprang to his own eyes, he could hold back no longer.

  “I think I know where she is,” he said finally. “I believe she will be safe. But only if you can let her go.”

  9

  GARA DE NORD WAS FAR busier than they had expected. Half the city’s population seemed to have descended on it at once, even though the sky was just beginning to lighten over the glass-and-steel cupola. Families with babies and young children, soldiers in uniform, peasant ladies bundled in shawls, and men and women in elegant clothing filled nearly every platform. Children chased one another around mountains of trunks as their parents fanned themselves impatiently with pamphlets, ironing out details about their trips. The scent of diesel mixed with that of faint perspiration and freshly baked covrigi was almost too much to bear at such an early hour.

  Stefan walked slightly ahead of the couple, ushering them through the swelling mass, past the endless row of ticket booths, vendors selling newspapers, gypsies who had queued up along the platforms with buckets of flowers. It was not easy for them to follow; all those months in the attic had atrophied their muscles, and there was a fragility about them that screamed of suffering and illness, despite the expensive suit Stefan had forced his young friend to wear and the dress of green velvet that, although one size too big, flowed elegantly around the wife’s tiny frame.

  He stopped and turned only slightly, waiting for them to catch up, pretending to be checking his watch. Now that they were here, his own uneasiness was mounting by the moment, yet he could not risk showing it. No doubt, if he did, they would abandon the plan and try to go back for the girl. Then all hope would be lost for them, and for him and Maria, too. Trying to block this last thought, he had picked up his pace again, when suddenly his own legs seemed to weaken, bringing him gradually to a stop.

  “Please stand aside! Make way, please!”

  The voice, when it cut through the crowd, had the effect of a blade, parting it in two. There were boots and the usual uniforms and a ripple in the air he knew well. A station patrol pushed open a swing gate to let the officers pass. Everyone watched as one of them flipped open the top of his holster and extracted a small black pistol. He motioned to the other men to do the same, and the whole troop jumped onto a train that had already begun to roll out of the station.

  Forcing air into his lungs, Stefan reached inside his pocket and extracted the tickets.

  “Platform six. Here, give me this,” he said as calmly as he could manage, taking the valise from his young friend. He could not help but notice how ashen he looked, how a gust of wind would be able to knock him down. He had to get them on that Geneva coach. He had to do it now, before it was too late, and so he began walking again, trying to steady his own heart, his own step, even though he himself felt like running.

  Near the edge of the concrete strip, he set down the suitcase and stood there with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly under his breath. Only minutes remained before they were to board, yet he had never felt time stretch with such stubbornness. There was nothing more that he could do for them now, except force himself to look ordinary, to keep calm. They were just an average family bidding their good-byes, he had to remind himself, just an average family. There were no other officers—the platform was clear—and he felt himself relax for a second, or maybe it was just numbness.

  “Remember what we talked about,” he said finally, keeping his voice low so that only the young man could hear him. He felt the thinness beneath the old jacket when his hand touched his shoulder, when his other descended further to deposit the tickets and a roll of cash into his pocket. “Remember what to do with that money. If it comes to that,” he whispered, and pulled quickly away.

  He watched them as they moved from his peripheral vision, inching toward the steaming locomotive. With effort, they climbed the steps, panting a little, pausing on each one. The woman was the first to disappear inside the car, and when she did, her husband turned, and a flicker of a smile passed over his face. It was a smile of gratitude, but there was so much more in the young man’s eyes, so much more that Stefan had to look away. And then he was gone.

  Pressing his hat to his chest, Stefan stood still a while, thinking that he would never see them again, that this last image of them would imprint itself on his mind forever. As passengers swarmed past him with their trunks and packages, he began moving slowly against the crowd, trying to catch a last glimpse of them. He finally spotted them in one of the end compartments. The woman was staring ahead, and her husband’s arm lay limply around her. They did not see him wave from down below.

  You are free, Stefan whispered to himself, feeling a knot form in his throat and, strangely, a smile. Free.

  On the outside steps of the station, he loosened his tie and sat down. The sky was gray, with an indigo heaviness, and he imagined what the weather might be like in Geneva. In less than a day, his friends would be there, in their new city, in safety.

 
He picked up his hat and stood up. Never before had he missed home more or wanted to get back there so badly. His eyes traveled across the busy intersection, scanning for a cab, hoping that one might be dropping off passengers. And then he saw them.

  For a moment, he thought it was him they were coming for, to arrest or shoot him right there on the spot. But then they marched right past him, up the row of stairs, and into the building. One of them brushed his shoulder accidentally.

  “Pardon,” he said, as he kept up his ascent.

  But Stefan had come to a halt, and his arms had fallen to his sides. For a while he thought he might be able to distract them somehow, but he couldn’t think of a way; he couldn’t breathe or move.

  He ran instead. Not caring how he might look now, he ran after them back into the station, a vise gripping his chest. He thought he should shout out, but what exactly he didn’t know, and then it was too late. The officer who looked to be in charge was already inside the train marked for Geneva, advancing along the corridor that connected one car to the next. “Papers out, please,” was the last thing Stefan heard though an open window as the train began rolling forward with a loud clang.

  10

  January 1944

  THE FIRST DAY OF THE year turned out to be the coldest one in nearly half a decade. The streets were vacant, for no one dared venture outside in the frigid wind that lashed and whipped about so fiercely that one could hardly draw a breath or take a step against it. Only the intermittent clatter of empty streetcars and the scrape of shovels clearing ice from the sidewalks sounded distantly beyond the frost-encrusted windows and bolted doors.

  In the firelit drawing room, seven-year-old Natalia was displaying the fruit of her work, a Chopin piece she’d been practicing for the better part of the year. She loved the way it carried her on its wings, the way she could rise and dip with each shifting rhythm, though today more than once, she’d made a mistake and had to start again from the beginning. Normally, it would have nicked her pride and made her want to scream with frustration, but at the moment, she wasn’t concerned about playing perfectly, only playing. As long she did, her parents would keep talking, and she could eavesdrop on their exchange by the fireplace, their voices for once above a monotone whisper.

  “Let’s go to the Black Sea for a couple of weeks,” her father suggested, lifting the poker iron to stoke the flames. “We could rent a small house right on the shore, ride horses on the beach, go on walks. It would be good for Talia.”

  “You want us to leave the city in the middle of winter, Anton? Why, that’s just simply insane!” Her mother’s voice rose abruptly, no longer restrained.

  With shoulders perfectly squared, she glided over the thick Persian rug and stopped in front of the window. There was something across the street that caught her gaze, past the flurry of snowflakes hitting the glass at an angle. Silently, he came up behind her and, circling her slim waist, drew her near. Her tense features softened a little, giving way to a faint smile that she couldn’t suppress despite her best efforts. As she let her head drop against his chest, her jet-black hair cascaded like a tide pool of ink against the immaculate whiteness of his button-down shirt.

  “Why do we need to go on vacation?” Natalia dared to ask. She had stopped playing abruptly, and they both turned to her, startled, her father with patient tenderness, her mother with a look of surprise. “Is it because the Allies are going to bomb us?”

  “Where did you hear this, Talia?” her mother said, paling a little, as if it had never occurred to her that at the age of seven, Natalia was old enough to grasp such things. “Where could you have possibly heard something like this?”

  Swiveling around on her bench, Natalia smiled with a gleam of pride for being able to demonstrate such maturity. “Well, it’s hardly a secret, Mama.” She rolled an auburn lock around her finger and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “It’s all over the radio, you know.”

  That was true indeed. One could hardly tune in to a station these days that didn’t drone on and on about the Germans’ chain of battlefield successes and how nearly all of Europe had fallen under Hitler’s boot. War was coming their way, everyone was saying, and it was only a matter of time before the Allied bombs would rain over the city. But to Natalia, they were just words, empty words that held no meaning. The war had been going on for years, but in Bucharest, there was no sign of it.

  Here there were still parties and afternoons at the horse races and evenings at the opera and the theater and weekends at the sea. People were making vast fortunes in the middle of war, as endless barrels of oil left Romania for Germany, fueling the unrelenting Nazi machine, feeding their tanks and military trucks single-handedly. And the train stations, including Gara de Nord, served as transit points for German troops departing for the Eastern Front in Russia, where they were to embark on their fiercest battle yet.

  Even under their own roof, little had changed in the nearly three years that Natalia had been living with them. Even though her father talked endlessly about cutting back on expenses and how they needed to tighten their belts, their home was still constantly filled with people, so many relatives and friends coming and going that there was hardly a Sunday free. Every weekend was a repetition of the one before: thirty-odd people gathered around the dining table set with fine china and crystal glasses of all sizes, endlessly chattering as Sofia ushered in a parade of dishes and wine bottles, dessert trays, and then bottles of port and cognac. Later, as the pendulum struck midnight, the appetizer platters began again. Long past the time Natalia had gone up to bed, she could still hear voices downstairs, rising and falling, bursting into intermittent laughter, lulling her to sleep. As she wrapped her body around a pillow, she pictured her parents in the smoky living room, swaying in each other’s arms, the sound of American jazz filtering through the candlelit haze like a sash of velvet, her mother in one of her beautiful silk dresses resting her head on her father’s shoulder.

  Why was it that she found comfort in such simple things? She did not know. Just as she did not know why just the thought of them being near filled her with such peace. Why hearing their muffled voices somewhere in the house was enough to calm the hammering of her heart when, late at night, she jolted awake from some terror that she could never remember.

  “Talia,” her father said now, coming to sit next to her on the bench and taking her hand in his. “Talia, you know that you are safe here with us, do you not? That we will never let anything happen to you?”

  “I know, Papa,” she said, smiling brightly.

  “Good. Good, my love.” He patted her hand and stood up. “I’ve got a call to make. Be back in a minute.”

  “I’ll get some tea on,” her mother said, following him out of the room and closing the door behind her. The conversation, she knew, would be finished away from her prying ears.

  Alone in the parlor, Natalia closed the piano lid and moved to the sofa, plunked herself down with a sigh. There was a photo album on the side table, and she picked it up, flipped it open to the beginning pages. Her eyes passed lazily over the photographs that her mother had arranged chronologically and with meticulous care. Afternoons in the park. Picnics at their summer house at the edge of the lake. Lunches on bistro terraces, under red parasols. Her favorite was the one where she was seated at her piano, her cousins gathered all around her in a flurry of holiday velvet and white satin. She recalled the delight sweeping through her as she played “Clair de Lune” for the first time to an audience, the way they had all applauded at the end. Her tutor, Miss Eliade, a spinster who often found herself in their company around the holidays, had stood there and beamed proudly, as if she alone was responsible for the performance. But Natalia had not minded. The notes had a way of flying from her fingers easily, as if they had a life of their own, so she didn’t think she deserved to be the subject of such praise.

  It wasn’t just that occasion but also many others—her entire life, it seemed—that had been captured in those pages. In more ways t
han one, it had truly begun with that first one, for if there had been anything before that, another home, another anything, she simply did not remember. Somewhere along the way, her past had faded to black, and she had been more than happy to bid it farewell. It was only once in a while, when catching a long sideways glance from one of her mother’s sisters, that a sharpness sliced through her. It was only then that she was reminded what she was, who she was, that they regarded her still as a late postscript to their perfect family. But her mother was never more than an arm’s length away and embraced her so fiercely that the feeling didn’t last long. Now she simply ignored those looks. She hardly noticed or cared, for nothing could alter what the three of them had become.

  Closing the album now, she curled up into a ball and rested her head on a pillow. Her eyelids were heavy with sleep, and she felt herself drift into a pleasant slumber, cocooned in warmth and the soft leap of the flames. In a matter of days, there would be no more lounging around in the afternoons. It would be back to school and that dreary old institution that her mother referred to as the best academy in the country, to long hours of math and English and French and that awful uniform that scratched her skin no matter how many times Sofia washed it. At least as a day student, she was allowed to come home in the evenings, unlike the majority of those poor girls who were forced to spend the long months leading to summer under the ever-watchful eye of Mother Superior. Oh, how she wished this holiday would not have to end! It had been the very best Christmas.

  As sleep carried her off, she relived Christmas Day once more from start to finish. There had been the traditional horse-drawn sleigh ride after supper, and this time, her father had taken her and the other children to the Arc de Triomphe. Along the way, they had stopped for chocolate éclairs and hot cocoa. Later, as her father led the sleigh around the sleepy, cobblestone plaza, it had begun to snow, and she had tried catching snowflakes on her tongue as they fell in a curtain from the moonlit sky. But the best part had come after that, back at the house, where presents awaited them under the tree.