Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  She was about to climb into the transport with the other older children who had not been claimed when she felt a tap on her shoulder. “There are some people here asking about you,” said the refugee officer. “Come and speak to them.”

  Mrs. Rathbone, whose first name is Agnes, is tall and thin-lipped, with black hair that is scraped back from her face and gathered into a tight knot. She did most of the talking, while her stout, gray-bearded husband, Wilfred, stared silently at Lilli through small, watery eyes.

  “You’re a tall one. Have you already finished school?”

  “Nein,” Lilli hastened to reply, adding in English that she wanted to go to school to learn to read and write the language.

  “Ah, but you already understand it,” answered the canny Mrs. Rathbone. “There’s a school for the young ones in the village, if they’ll take you. As for your new home, we’ve a poultry farm in the countryside with lots to keep you busy. Life there is a bit old-fashioned but it’s a healthy place and you’ll be safe from the bombs Hitler is sure to drop on our towns and cities.”

  When the refugee officer asked if she accepted the offer to go and live with the Rathbones, Lilli readily answered, “Yes,” in English. Her belongings were removed from the Army truck and tossed into the open back of the Rathbones’ farm vehicle, which was filled with straw, chicken feathers, and numerous egg crates.

  Twilight is beginning to descend when Mr. Rathbone drives off the unpaved road, lined with hedgerows, into an even narrower one. Soon the farmhouse and its surroundings come into view. At first, the snuggling house, built of rough stone and topped by a roof of thatch, reminds Lilli of pictures in the German storybooks she read when she was small. For Lilli, who has lived in a city all her life, the image of a country cottage has always been a romantic one. So she is startled when she steps from the truck into a slab of thick mud, toward which chickens come running from all directions, accompanied by the barking of two large dogs. For a moment, Lilli wonders if, like Alice in the book she has been reading, she has fallen into a rabbit hole.

  “That’ll teach you, my lady,” says the burly Mr. Rathbone with a basso laugh. “Have you never been on a farm before?” Mrs. Rathbone doesn’t wait for an answer, hurrying Lilli—who struggles to retrieve her suitcase and backpack from the truck—along impatiently. “It’s already late for tea, and we’ll have an early night for certain,” Mrs. Rathbone mutters seemingly to herself.

  Lilli follows her hostess out of the filthy yard and up a pathway of half-sunken paving stones to the farmhouse entrance. Framed in the doorway stands a small, roly-poly boy, with the broad Mongolian features of a child born with a defect. He appears to have been crying, his knotted fists still rubbing at his eyes. But he lights up at the sight of Mrs. Rathbone, reaching to grasp her about the hips.

  “Have you been a good little son while we were away?” asks Mrs. Rathbone, already rushing past him to get the “tea” ready. “Look, Tim,” she points to Lilli, “we’ve brought you a sister.”

  Lilli learns that the Rathbones’ farmhouse, with its stone floors and tiny windows, has no electricity or running water. It is also revealed to her—thankfully—that “tea” in working-class England can also mean supper. She has been terribly hungry for a long time now.

  Sitting at the rough wooden table in the kitchen that is also part sitting room, Lilli partakes with Tim and the Rathbones of bread, cheese, pickles, and scalding cups of strong dark tea. She is offered sugar lumps but warned that, with the war on, she must restrict herself to no more than two.

  Tim sits across from Lilli on the wooden bench, his huge, nearly black eyes boring into her.

  “Now, mind your manners,” Mrs. Rathbone cautions, as bits of moist chewed bread dribble from Tim’s mouth. Lilli can see that he has trouble controlling his slobbering. He is also extraordinarily excited by the presence of this tall, graceful young girl, with gray-green eyes and tawny hair. When Lilli smiles at him, he giggles back and wriggles with happiness.

  “Tim’s a good boy, he is,” Mrs. Rathbone assures her. “He’s ten years old and a bit mischievous, but he means no harm.”

  Lilli asks if Tim goes to school.

  “Learning’s not for the likes of him,” Mr. Rathbone growls. Lilli is struck by the harsh tone and the note of dismissal in Tim’s father’s voice.

  When they are finished eating, Lilli climbs up the ladder to her room, which is in the loft under the eaves. Suddenly, the sadness she’s been trying to repress overwhelms her. The moment she gets into bed, the sounds of small skittering creatures all around her in the dark, she begins to weep uncontrollably. She is crying for Helga, for Elspeth, for Papa, for Mutti. She knows that, although she is out of the grasp of the mad Fuhrer, her loved ones are not. She would give anything to leave this strange place and take her chances hiding with the others in the coal bin of the Bayer house in Germany.

  Lilli’s life with the Rathbones quickly falls into a pattern. In the mornings, she wakes up early to feed the chickens before walking three miles to the local primary school. The students there are from the surrounding countryside, and Lilli is placed in a grade where no one is older than nine. Lilli, at age twelve, feels idiotic sitting at the back of the room, trying to learn as much English as she can while the class drones on doing multiplication tables and memorizing the names and dates of the monarchs of Great Britain.

  When she inquires about attending a higher-level school, Mrs. Rathbone tells her that most advanced schools in England require fees. “Surely you can’t expect us to manage that, Helga my dear,” she says. “The funds we receive from the refugee committee barely cover your keep as it is.”

  Lilli frequently dwells on this as she does her daily after-school chores, sweeping and scrubbing the stone floor, gathering eggs, cleaning out the chicken coops, as well as looking after Tim. The last thing is something she cannot avoid, as he often comes into her room without invitation, wrapping his short, thick body around her with rough affection. He even walks to school with her and waits outside, peering in through the windows to the amusement of her schoolmates, until the teacher drives him away.

  A few weeks after her arrival, Lilli writes her first letter to Mutti—in German, of course—trying to explain her new life.

  “I find it very strange,” she writes, “that people in the English countryside are so poor. They do not own their farms; they rent them from some great landowner who lives in a castle and rules over the entire domain. They must pay him from their earnings or they will be driven off the land.”

  “What odd foods we eat, especially for ‘tea,’ which is supper. Mainly, there is dried salty fish and boiled eggs, because we have plenty of those. There is no running water or indoor toilet, as we had on Heinrichstrasse and with the Bayers. The outhouse is full of spiders. And now that the weather has begun to turn cold at night, the chamber pots in the cottage have begun to freeze, for there is only the fireplace for heat. When I climb up to my bed in the loft, I take a heated brick or a large stone, wrapped in layers of flannel.”

  Lilli also tells Mutti about her grimly silent hosts, and about Tim. “I don’t think they are mean people, but they are very sad and disappointed by their sick little boy. I disagree with Tim’s father. Tim should go to school and he should have friends. Sometimes I give him a few lessons. He is not stupid.”

  Lilli tries to keep her letter as factual as possible. She does not tell Mutti how heavy her heart is, with an ache that never goes away. She ends the letter hoping the family is still safe at the Bayers, and imploring Mutti to write back soon. But who knows what is happening now in wartime Germany?

  It is now January 1940, and the English winter, with its bleak skies and chilling rains, has set in. Nonetheless, Lilli and Tim are venturing forth on a walk to the village, which Tim dearly loves to do. Lilli is focused on the small country post office, where she has been hoping for months to receive an answer to her letter to Mutti.

  Tim is pointing as they tread along to the distant �
��castle” where the rich landowners of the estate live. It is the largest house Lilli has ever seen, four stories high and topped with numerous turrets and spires that appear to challenge the sky.

  “Have you ever been inside the manor house?” Lilli asks Tim.

  He shakes his head violently. “No. Mustn’t never go there.”

  Lilli tries to imagine what it must be like inside: high ceilings, fireplaces and heating stoves in every room, elegant furnishings and draperies, and servants to look to one’s every need. Could anything be more different than the chill and spare life at the Rathbones?

  The soggy unpaved road on which Lilli and Tim have been navigating the puddles gives way to a hard surface as they approach the village, with its parish church, its pub, its inviting shops, and, of course, its post office.

  As they are about to enter the main street, they come face to face with two little girls, who are, strangely, dressed in what Lilli would call “city clothes.” They are bundled up against the cold in woolen coats and matching bonnets. Yet their knees are bare, and their shoes seem hardly suitable for country roads. Lilli, who is happy to see new faces, greets them with a smile. “You look like sisters,” she can’t refrain from remarking.

  “Yes, we are. I’m Clarissa and this is Mabel,” says the older of the two, who looks about ten. “We’re from London. Where are you from? And what’s the matter with him?” Tim clutches Lilli’s hand more tightly.

  So many nosy questions, Lilli thinks indignantly. “Nothing at all is the matter with him,” she replies, and she promptly asks a nosy question of her own. “If you live in London, what are you doing here in the countryside?”

  “Oh, we’re Pied Piper children,” Clarissa declares. “We’ve come to stay at the manor house until the Jerries stop blitzing London. There are four of us here now and more coming soon.” Since the war began, there had been talk of a Blitz, an all-out bombing of British cities and towns by the terrifying Luftwaffe, the German air force. So the government organized the Pied Piper Operation, where British children are evacuated by bus or train to the countryside, where they will be out of harm’s way.

  Lilli can’t help feeling jealous at the luck of the two sisters. Imagine if something so fortunate had happened to her and Helga. “What’s it like there?” she inquires almost timidly.

  “Ooh,” Mabel speaks up for the first time. Lilli guesses she’s around seven. “It’s lovely. We’ve nothing so posh at home, our own rooms and a cook and a server for meals. We’re even allowed to ride the horses. Today, we’ve come into the village in the van. My lady is going to outfit us with proper country clothing and allow us to buy sweeties.”

  Clarissa gives her little sister a sharp look. Perhaps Mabel is talking too much.

  She narrows her eyes and says to Lilli. “You have an odd way of speaking. You’re not English, are you?”

  Lilli shakes her head. “I’m a refugee from Germany. I’m living now with a farm family in the nearby countryside. Tim here is their son.”

  Clarissa nods, but still seems a bit confused. She looks down at Lilli’s boots, the same ones Grossmutter bought her at the Kaufhaus last spring. They are encrusted with farm filth, and the seams have begun to split. “You should get a new pair of those while you’re in town,” she says.

  Angry tears spring to Lilli’s eyes. She tugs hard at Tim’s hand, and whirls him around in the direction of the village post office, walled with gray stone. Why have I come here? Lilli agonizes. These people are strangers. Everywhere there are strangers!

  Six

  “My Beloved Child,” Mutti writes in her fine slanted hand, “We are in Amsterdam!”

  Lilli is so excited at having received her very first letter from Mutti that she hasn’t even taken notice of the postmark and the unfamiliar stamp. She is sitting with Tim on the low stone wall that skirts the village post office. Tim is restless, kicking his short, solid legs against the wall. He has been begging for “sweeties” ever since the little Pied Piper girl, Mabel, mentioned them. “Yes, yes, Tim,” Lilli promises. “I have only a little money but we will go to the sweet shop as soon as I read my letter.” She shows him the single sheet of paper that she has withdrawn from the thin blue envelope, even though the writing is in German and, in any case, Tim has not been taught to read.

  There is more good news from Mutti. “I have with me, thanks to God, your sisters Elspeth and Helga. This move came about through your grandparents, who could no longer keep us with them.” Mutti, however, offers no details as to why or how the family left the Bayers. “It was most fortunate that I received your letter before leaving Germany. Even though the ways of your host family are strange to you, be grateful that you have reached a place of safety. I trust that you have written to your uncle in America. He is the only hope for us to survive.”

  As instructed, Lilli wrote to Papa’s brother in America as soon as she could after coming to stay with the Rathbones. But four months have passed and there has been no answer. She promises herself that she will write to her uncle again immediately.

  “For now, Lilli, you must write to me at the address below. Kind people here have taken us to live with them for a while, so that I can work and earn some money, and your sisters can go to school. But, as you may know, Hitler is determined to invade Holland. Already there is a Dutch Nazi party here. What will happen to us then, I do not know. Sadly, there has been no word from Papa for a very, very long time. Your sisters and your Mutti send you their deepest felt love.”

  “Why are you crying?” Tim asks Lilli as she carefully refolds the nearly transparent sheet of paper and puts it back into the envelope. The letter is dated December, 1939, and Lilli wonders how long will it be before the Jews living in Holland have yellow stars sewn onto their garments? She tries to stem her tears with her fingertips. “Come,” she says to Tim. “You’ve been very patient.” She helps him to get his thick body down from the wall. “I’ll buy you some sweeties. What kind do you think you will like?”

  It is early April, and the English countryside is greening and flowering shrubs are in bloom. Lilli goes to school every day, hoping that her English will improve enough for her to be advanced to grade six, the highest in the primary school. As it is, she is still in grade four.

  She often sees Clarissa and Mabel, surrounded by other Pied Piper children who are now living with them up at the manor house. Even ten-year-old Clarissa is in a higher grade than Lilli.

  One day, Clarissa and some of her classmates approach Lilli as she is leaving school with Tim, who has come to walk home with her. The little girls are fascinated with him. “Can he talk?” one of them asks.

  “Of course, he can,” Lilli retorts stiffly. “He’s just shy, especially when people keep staring at him.”

  “Will he ever grow up?” one of the other girls wants to know.

  Lilli doesn’t answer. She takes Tim’s hand and they start to walk home. But the girls, who have now been joined by a few boys, follow them, calling out, “Tim, oh Tim, why won’t you talk to us? Do you have a funny accent like Lilli?”

  Lilli turns indignantly to face the group that has been teasing her and Tim.

  “Why did you run away from Germany?” a friend of Clarissa’s asks her. “It’s because you’re Jewish, isn’t it?”

  A great flush of anger and fear washes over Lilli. She turns from the children and tries to hurry Tim along. But he can’t walk very fast on his short legs. Suddenly, Lilli feels a spray of pebbles on her back. Tim must have been hit, too, because he has stopped walking and is bending down to pick up pebbles to toss back. “No, no, Tim,” Lilli cautions. He likes to throw pebbles at the chickens at home, so he probably thinks this is a game. And, of course, he would love to have friends to play with. However, Lilli is aware that the children are intent on playing a game of their own.

  Lilli is bending down, prying a pebble out of Tim’s hand, when the children start to chant something. At first, Lilli isn’t sure what they are saying, but then the shouted
words become clear to her. “The idiot and the Jew, get off with you! No one wants you here. Get off with you.” Tim doesn’t understand the chant. He simply wants the game to continue. He picks up another stone, and throws it—surprisingly well—hitting an older boy on his bare leg.

  Tim is now laughing gleefully, and Lilli can’t hold onto him. Armed with yet another missile, he runs toward the enemy, only to fall down and receive a swift return blow to his forehead from a sharp-edged bit of rock. He lies in the road, bleeding heavily.

  Lilli kneels down in horror. She rips off Tim’s shirt and binds his head as tightly as she can to stem the flow of blood. When she looks up, the children have vanished. All she can see is a patch of country road littered with pebbles and small rocks.

  Lilli and Tim are picked up by a passing motorist, who drops then off at the farm. Tim is crying and writhing about as Lilli helps to carry him into the house and place him on the sitting room couch.

  Mrs. Rathbone runs into the room. “You wicked girl!” she shrieks at Lilli. She bends down over her son and unwraps the improvised bandage. “What have you done to him?”

  “It was the children at school,” Lilli tries to explain as she rushes around gathering water and cloths with which to cleanse Tim’s wound. “They attacked us for no reason. Stoned us. Called us the … the …”

  But Mrs. Rathbone isn’t paying attention. She shoves Lilli aside, snatches her offerings, and gently bathes her little boy’s forehead. Lilli is relieved to see that the wound is not as bad as it first appeared. There is a fairly large bruise and some torn flesh, but the bleeding is lessening.

  “There now, there now,” Mrs. Rathbone murmurs as she strokes Tim’s hair. Lilli has seldom seen her act so tenderly with Tim. Suddenly, she looks up sharply at Lilli. “Now, tell me, girl, how did this happen?”

  Lilli’s lips cannot bear to form the word that was directed at Tim … idiot. “It was because of me,” she replies. “They called me a Jew. They kept repeating, ‘Jew, Jew, get off with you. No one wants you here.’ Then they started tossing pebbles at us, and then rocks. The bigger boys joined in with the girls who started it.”