A Faraway Island

by Annika Thor

  One step at a time, Stephie creeps to the window and crouches down. But her curiosity gets the better of her and she raises her head just high enough to peek in over the sill.

  The light comes from the basement bedroom. Aunt Märta’s sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, a long braid hanging down her back. Stephie’s never seen her hair in anything but a bun before.

  Aunt Märta’s head is bowed. It can’t be true, but she actually appears to be crying.

  Stephie cranes her neck to see better. At that very moment Aunt Märta raises her eyes, and looks right through the window. Stephie ducks as fast as she can, but it’s too late.

  “Hello?” Aunt Märta cries. “Is anybody there?”

  It would still be possible for Stephie to run, grab the bag of provisions, and be out of sight before Aunt Märta got outside.

  “It’s me,” says Stephie, standing up.

  Aunt Märta isn’t angry. She takes Stephie by the hand, leads her into the basement kitchen, and makes her some sandwiches and cocoa.

  “Eat now,” she says. “You must be starving.”

  “I took some food from the root cellar,” Stephie whispers. “It’s in a bag outside.”

  “Were you going to run away?” Aunt Märta asks.

  Stephie doesn’t know how to answer. So much has happened, and she’s very tired.

  “There were these boys,” she begins. “Outside the shop.”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” Aunt Märta interrupts. “I know all about it.”

  A bite of bread catches in Stephie’s throat. Somebody’s already told Aunt Märta what she did. Was it the shopkeeper? Or the parents of the boys? Of course the doctor’s wife must have come down to find out where Putte was. As soon as she has eaten her sandwiches, Aunt Märta will scold her, and tomorrow she’ll have to make her apologies.

  “Vera returned the bicycle,” Aunt Märta says. “Vera Hedberg. She thought you might have run home. She told me the whole story.”

  “But Putte,” Stephie says. “I had to let him go. I think … I think he must be dead.”

  “Dead?” Aunt Märta exclaims. “He’s no more dead than I am. He came hobbling home quite early, around ten o’clock. Apparently he injured a paw, but the doctor’s wife says he’ll be fine.”

  Stephie can no longer hold back her tears. She rests her head on her arms along the tabletop and sobs.

  “I just don’t understand you, my girl,” Aunt Märta tells her. “Crying because the dog’s not dead?”

  Stephie hears Aunt Märta’s words, but she also hears a different voice. Softer than usual.

  “Mimi’s dead,” Stephie manages to say between gulps.

  “Now you blow your nose. Aunt Märta passes her a handkerchief. “And tell me what you’re talking about.”

  So Stephie tells her all about the night when the men with the guns came. The night they took Papa away.

  “They banged on the door, and then knocked it down before anyone could open it. There were lots of them, maybe ten. They all had guns, but none of them wore a uniform. A few came into our room. They told us to get up and go out into the hallway. Mamma wanted to give Nellie and me our slippers, but they wouldn’t let her.

  “We had to line up in the hall,” Stephie continues. “Everyone who lived in the apartment: Mamma, Papa, Nellie and me, the Goldbergs and their baby, old Mrs. Silberstein and her blind son, the Reichs and their three children. The floor was freezing cold. One of the men, the one giving the orders, kept marching back and forth in front of us. Every so often he would point his gun at someone.”

  “I’ve never heard the like,” says Aunt Märta. It sounds as if she is talking to herself, not to Stephie.

  “Mimi began to whine,” Stephie goes on. “Why couldn’t she have kept quiet? I guess their dogs, two huge German shepherds, scared her. ‘Oh, so you’ve got a dog,’ one of the men said. ‘Don’t you know Jew-vermin aren’t allowed to have pets?’ ‘The dog belongs to the children,’ Papa said. That was when the man shot her. Mimi fell on her back, legs thrashing. Then she was still. There was blood on the floor. I got some on my foot.”

  “Dearest child,” Aunt Märta says. “My dear little child.” She puts a hand atop Stephie’s head, stroking her hair. “You go to bed now,” she tells her. “Try to get some sleep. We won’t let anybody harm you here.”

  The smell of coffee tingles in Stephie’s nose. She opens her eyes. Aunt Märta is standing by the stove pouring coffee into a blue-flowered cup.

  “Oh, awake at last,” she says. The voice is her usual abrasive one.

  It must all have been a dream. It can’t be possible that Aunt Märta spoke gently and kindly to her yesterday. Stroked her hair. Stephie must have been dreaming.

  “I’m getting up right now,” Stephie assures her, sitting up in the trundle bed.

  “Do that,” Aunt Märta says. “And put on a nice dress. We’re going to pay a visit to the shopkeeper’s summer guests.”

  That can only mean one thing: Stephie is going to have to apologize to that freckle-faced boy.

  “Do I have to?”

  But Aunt Märta’s already gone into the other room to make her bed.

  Stephie gets dressed and has some bread and butter. She has no appetite, but she forces herself to finish, eating as slowly as she can. Then she combs her hair, as slowly as she can, in front of the mirror.

  Aunt Märta’s getting impatient. “Won’t you be ready soon?”

  “Yes,” says Stephie. “But I can’t find my barrette.”

  She knows very well where it is: in the pocket of the dress she had on yesterday. Aunt Märta gives her a different one.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  Outside, they find Sven crouching down, scratching Putte’s belly. Putte’s on his back, kicking his legs. One of his paws is bandaged.

  “How is he?” Stephie asks.

  “He’s all right,” Sven tells her. “Nothing’s broken, just some swelling. He’s going to be fine.”

  “Come along,” Aunt Märta says brusquely. “You can talk about it later.”

  Stephie sits behind her on the carrier, just like the day she arrived. When they get to the last curve before the shop, Vera appears, jumping off a rock where she’s clearly been waiting for them.

  Aunt Märta walks the bike the rest of the way.

  “Now, Vera,” she says. “Have you considered what I said to you?”

  Vera nods.

  Instead of going into the shop, Aunt Märta opens the gate to the yard. The shopkeeper comes out onto the steps.

  “Good morning,” he says. “Can I help you?”

  “Good morning,” Aunt Märta replies. “There’s something we need to speak with your summer guests about.”

  “I see,” says the shopkeeper. “Well, I believe they’re up.”

  “I should hope so,” Aunt Märta scoffs. “It’s not exactly the crack of dawn.”

  She marches into the yard with Stephie and Vera on her heels. The shopkeeper follows close behind.

  The summer guests are sitting outside having their morning meal. Both boys are there, as well as a younger girl, just as freckly as her brother. The man of the family is tall and heavyset, and almost bald. His wife looks much younger, with neatly permed fair hair. There’s a young girl in a white apron serving them at the table.

  “Excuse me,” says the shopkeeper. “There’s someone to see you.”

  “Märta Jansson,” Aunt Märta introduces herself. “This is my foster daughter, Stephanie.”

  “Aha,” the bald man says. “And what can we do for you?”

  “Can this not wait?” his wife asks, annoyed. “We’re at breakfast.”

  The freckle-faced boy avoids looking at Stephie. He keeps his eyes lowered and seems completely preoccupied with his bowl of oatmeal.

  “You finish eating,” says Aunt Märta. “We can wait.”

  Sylvia appears, coming through the back door of the shop. She stops a short distance from the tab
le in the yard, pretending she’s weeding a flower bed.

  “Go right ahead,” says the man. “Speak your piece.”

  “It concerns one of your sons,” says Aunt Märta.

  “I see,” the man says. “Ragnar, was this the girl?”

  “Yes,” the boy mumbles, without looking up. His spoon clatters against the bowl.

  “We’re prepared to let the matter go,” says Ragnar’s father. “His trousers are ruined, but we’re not going to demand compensation. An apology will suffice.”

  “Perfectly new trousers,” the woman adds angrily. “And bloodstains on his shirt. There must be something wrong with that girl!”

  “If anyone should apologize,” says Aunt Märta very slowly and clearly, “it is certainly not Stephanie.”

  “I see,” the man repeats. “Who do you think ought to, then?”

  “Perhaps your son didn’t explain why Stephanie hit him?”

  “No,” his father replies, waving his hand as if Aunt Märta were a bothersome fly he was trying to get rid of.

  “Well, let me tell you, then,” Aunt Märta goes on. “She hit him because he called her a ‘filthy Jew-kid’ and said the Germans would soon be here to get her.”

  The bald man goes bright red. His palm slaps the table-top so hard the coffee cups rattle and the cutlery clatters.

  “Is that true?” he asks his son.

  “No,” the boy says. “She’s lying. Isn’t she, Gunnar?”

  His brother shrugs. “I didn’t hear,” he replies.

  “Is that so?” Aunt Märta asks. “Aren’t fine folks like you brought up to tell the truth?”

  “Well, it’s her word against theirs,” the man says. “It may be an excuse your foster daughter invented after the fact.”

  “Vera,” Aunt Märta says, “who’s telling the truth? Stephie or that young man?”

  Vera almost whispers her answer. “He called her … that name. And he kicked Putte.”

  “Vera came to my house yesterday morning,” Aunt Märta tells everyone. “At the time, neither she nor I had yet spoken with Stephie, who was so frightened she was hiding. Vera told me the whole story, and a few other things I didn’t know as well. But that,” she says, looking meaningfully at Sylvia and the shopkeeper, “will have to be a later matter.”

  “Ragnar,” the man says, “is what the girls and Mrs. Jansson are saying the truth?”

  Ragnar nods. “But you’ve said—”

  “Not another word!” his father roars.

  “No one,” says Aunt Märta, “no one is going to come along and say such things to my little girl. I don’t care how fine a family he comes from. So Stephie won’t be apologizing. But we’ll pay for the trousers. How much did they cost?”

  The man shakes his head dismissively. His face is as red as a beet.

  “There’s really no need.”

  “Nine seventy-five,” his wife interjects.

  Aunt Märta takes out her wallet, opens it, removes a ten-kronor bill, and sets it on the table.

  “Keep the change,” she says. “Come along, Stephie.”

  “My little girl,” Aunt Märta had said. My little girl! As if Stephie were her very own child.

  Stephie and Vera are lying on the cliff above the swimming cove. Stephie’s wearing the red bathing suit Auntie Alma gave her. Vera’s wearing her green one. They’ve just come up out of the water.

  They lie close together, on their backs, arms at their sides. The sun has warmed the cliff, and the hot rock is heating their backs. Fanned out behind them and dripping wet are Stephie’s long black hair and Vera’s bright red hair. Drops of water glisten on their bare skin.

  Stephie’s never been so tan in her life. “Brown as a ginger snap,” Aunt Märta says. Vera doesn’t get tan. Early in the summer she was pink; now her fair skin is full of tiny freckles.

  “I’ll miss you this fall,” says Vera. “When you’re at grammar school in town. Though I’m happy for you, of course,” she hastens to add.

  “I’ll miss you, too,” says Stephie. “I’ll come home for vacations, though, and sometimes even for weekends.”

  She still can’t really believe it’s true.

  That Uncle Evert and Aunt Märta changed their minds.

  It was mainly the doctor’s wife’s doing, Stephie thinks. When Stephie returned the first pile of books Sven had lent her, the doctor’s wife was the only one at home. She invited Stephie in to sit down, and they talked about the books and about school.

  A few days later the doctor’s wife invited Aunt Märta and Stephie in for coffee. Aunt Märta had to be asked twice, but in the end, she gave in.

  The doctor’s wife told Aunt Märta she considered Stephie a gifted girl, one who ought to be allowed to continue her schooling. Aunt Märta replied she knew that very well, but they couldn’t afford to board her in town, not to mention all the other expenses.

  That was when the doctor’s wife explained that after Karin and her fiancé got married at the end of August there would be an empty bedroom in the family’s apartment in Göteborg. They just happened to live very close by the girls’ grammar school, and Stephie was welcome to lodge in the room. She wouldn’t have to pay for anything but her meals. There were grants they could apply for, too, to cover the cost of books and other school supplies.

  Aunt Märta thanked the doctor’s wife and asked if she could think the matter over. She wanted to talk to Evert about it when he came back from his fishing trip.

  All the next week, Stephie went out of her way to be even nicer and more helpful than usual. She didn’t know whether that was what clinched it, but in the end Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert said yes.

  The doctor’s wife promised to arrange for Stephie to be registered at the girls’ grammar school, even though it was already past the deadline. The headmistress was a friend of hers. Miss Bergström lent Stephie the math book again. Stephie had to work on her own, but Miss Bergström promised to help her if she got stuck.

  “What if you and Sylvia end up in the same class again?” Vera asks.

  “That won’t bother me at all,” Stephie replies.

  She isn’t bragging. Ever since that morning in the shopkeeper’s yard, she’s felt that Sylvia can do her no harm.

  “No, I guess she won’t rule the roost at the grammar school, anyway,” Vera says. She’s quiet for a few minutes, before adding softly, “And in town you’ll make new friends. City girls.”

  “Right,” says Stephie. “I hope so. But you’re my best friend, whatever happens.”

  When she hears herself say that, she feels a tweak at her heart. It’s been weeks since she wrote to Evi.

  “You and Evi,” she adds quickly.

  “Who’s Evi?”

  “My best friend in Vienna. We met in first grade. We always sat next to each other in class.”

  “Do you miss her?

  “Mmm, sometimes.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I miss my father,” Vera tells her.

  Vera’s father is dead. He drowned before Vera was born. He and Vera’s mother hadn’t even gotten married yet.

  “It’s really strange to think about Mamma and Papa and Evi and all the other people back at home,” Stephie says. “To imagine them walking on the same old streets, while I’m here.”

  “Would you rather be there?”

  “I’d rather they were here.”

  “Couldn’t they come?”

  “I’m not sure. The doctor’s wife has promised to write to someone who might be able to help us.”

  Stephie shuts her eyes tight. In the bright sunlight, the blood vessels on the inside of her eyelids shimmer. It’s very hot. She sits up.

  “Come on, let’s have a swim,” she says.

  The water is crystal clear. You can see straight down to the bottom. Dark green strips of seaweed bobble at the water’s edge. Stephie picks one up, pushing on the yellowish bubbles till they burst with a popping sound. The seaweed
is known as bladder kelp, but the children call it bubble kelp.

  “Dip or dive?” Vera asks.

  “Dive,” says Stephie.

  They climb up the diving rock and gaze out over the surface of the water. You have to be careful not to land right on a stinging jellyfish. Stephie had bad luck once, and got red hives all over her chest and arms.

  They see one big orange one floating a couple of yards from their diving rock.

  “We’ll have to jump left,” Vera says. “They have such long tentacles.”

  “I’ll go first,” says Stephie, taking a deep breath and holding her nose. Taking a running jump, she splashes into the water.

  Eyes open, she sinks into the shimmering green depths. For an instant her body hovers, weightless. Then she comes panting up to the surface, just in time to see Vera plunge from the rock.

  It’s been a hot summer. Now that it’s August, the water’s so warm you can stay in as long as you like and not get cold.

  They take turns diving for stones on the bottom. As they’re clambering up over the rocks to get out, Stephie scrapes one knee on a barnacle, a sharp-edged shell that attaches to the rocks, just below the surface.

  Her knee bleeds a little. Stephie examines her legs, covered with bruises, scrapes, and scratched-open mosquito bites. The skin on the bottoms of her feet has grown thick and hard from walking barefoot.

  She’s different now from the girl she was a year ago, when she arrived on the island. It shows.

  Stephie and Vera lie in the sun to dry, then put on their clothes. There’s a thin layer of salt from the water on Stephie’s tan skin. She licks one of her arms for the salty taste.

  Nellie and Sonja are splashing in the water at the shore.

  “Hey, Stephie,” Nellie shouts. “Watch me swim!”

  Nellie’s just learned; she can do both the crawl and the breaststroke. She tumbles in the water like a chubby dolphin.

  Stephie’s and Vera’s bikes are parked just above the beach. Stephie’s gleams red in the sun, as shiny as it was when she got it a few weeks ago for her thirteenth birthday. It was standing outside the basement door when she woke up in the morning. Her very own bicycle.