Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  On seeing Aunt Harriette lounging in a chair in her hospital room, her hair and makeup fully restored to their former luster, my heart leaped with hope. The room bloomed with flower arrangements. Uncle Herman was there, looking much less gloomy. Aunt Harriette urged him to take Isabel and me down to the coffee shop for lunch, but Isabel stubbornly declined, saying she wasn’t hungry. So my uncle and I retreated by ourselves to the cafeteria-style eatery on the main floor of the building, while Isabel stayed behind in the room with Aunt Harriette.

  I had always felt awkward with Uncle Herman when I was alone with him. I wondered if he, too, suffered from feelings of guilt because he had gotten out of Germany safely, and had been unable to save Papa and the rest of our family.

  As we sat at a table over a lunch of soup and salad, my uncle reached into his pocket and put two letters in front of me. “A very popular young lady,” he commented. “I couldn’t help reading the return addresses. I see they’re both from male correspondents.”

  I blushed and bashfully tucked the letters, one from Karl, the other from Roy, into the pocket of my jacket. They had been delivered, of course, to my Westchester address. What would I do if I never got to go back there? I could just imagine Isabel snooping around in our room and reading my letters, just as she had at Shady Pines. While Karl would have written in German, Roy had told me he couldn’t spell in the language at all.

  Following an awkward lunch (I couldn’t bring myself to ask my uncle if he had any further information concerning Papa’s fate), we returned to the hospital room. Aunt Harriette looked much more tired than when we had left. She was back in bed and her eyeliner was smudged. Had she been crying? What had she and Isabel been talking about? Sadly, I had to say my goodbyes to her, as Uncle Herman had to drive Isabel and me back to the Bronx, where he had been invited to stay for supper on the occasion of Arnold’s visit home.

  When we entered the apartment, I immediately excused myself to go the bathroom—it was the safest place to read my letters from Roy and Karl. But I had to be quick. With so many people in the apartment, there was sure to be a tap on the door at any moment.

  Roy’s letter was on blue air-mail stationery. My heart pounding, I read:

  Dear Sweet Helga,

  So you’re feeling better, I hope. Boy, I can’t forget how you were crying that night, especially when we said goodbye.

  My eye skipped anxiously to the next paragraph.

  I can’t tell you much about my life in the Navy. Censorship and all that, you know. But it’s okay out here and I’m making some good pals. No women around, so you’re perfectly safe, you sweet kid.

  Sure hope things work out for you in your new life in the U.S. But you seemed so scared and not sure you would be able to stay with those people who brought you over. So remember what I told you if you ever get in any kind of trouble. I showed you where the key is hid.

  Hey kid, I still don’t believe that was your first kiss. How could anybody stay away from you? So be good, now. Close your eyes and think of me. Roy

  My letter from Karl was a response to the first letter I’d written him. I had told him of my aunt’s illness, my move to the Brandts, and my unpleasant situation at “Simpleton” Junior High School. Karl, as always, was practical and comforting. Do not forget how lucky you are to be in the free world, he wrote, We are orphans, you and I, but not, thank God, in Germany!

  After our hospital visit to Aunt Harriette, Isabel again started asking me questions about my life before I came to America. She told me that her history teacher, Mrs. Boylan, had been delighted with her report on the Kindertransport, and so Isabel was now anxious to learn about my life in England. Somehow, Isabel’s story didn’t sound believable. I kept thinking of Aunt Harriette’s smudged eyeliner, and how she and Isabel had been alone in the hospital room. What had they talked about? Was Isabel just being nosy? Or had my aunt given her some kind of information that had raised her curiosity?

  In response to Isabel’s urging, I told her that the subject was too painful to talk about just now. Perhaps I would write it one day in German.

  “In German! No. In English,” she demanded. “It will be good practice for you. And not one day. Now! Do you want to be stuck in seventh-grade English forever?”

  Reluctantly, I wrote about my life at the Rathbones, in poor English and with many misspellings. I included the part about the village children throwing stones at Tim and me and shouting, The idiot and the Jew, get off with you. No one wants you here. But I wrote nothing about Mrs. Rathbone’s cruelty in not letting me say goodbye to Tim, or about Mr. Rathbone’s leering eyes, too often focused on my breasts. Isabel seemed genuinely incensed at the idiot and the Jew part. She declared that if she and Sybil and Leona had been there, they’d have “smacked them around but good.”

  Happily, at last, Aunt Harriette was home from the hospital! Not only that, but she and Uncle Herman planned to attend Thanksgiving dinner at the Brandts. Sybil and Leona would be there, too.

  The odd (to me) American holiday was, it seemed, almost (if not more) important than Christmas. It appeared to be all about food, as for weeks in advance, the Brandts talked about the menu, which was to include a roasted turkey with stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, and cauliflower. Only the last two vegetables were at all familiar to me, from my life on the farm hostel. I had never eaten turkey or tasted a sweet potato, and I had no idea what a cranberry was.

  In spite of the elaborate menu that was being planned, all I heard around me, even from Isabel and Sybil, were complaints about the shortage of butter for mashed potatoes, and of sugar for fruit pies, due to the war. Also, coffee was soon to be rationed. How innocent, I thought to myself, these Americans are. Even before I left Germany, sawdust was being added to bread flour, and “coffee” was being brewed from the roasted root of the chicory plant, and even from ground nut shells. These foods and many other products were knows as ersatz (imitation, or false).

  At last the great holiday, always celebrated on a Thursday in November, arrived.

  Aunt Harriette appeared, strikingly made up, garbed in a jewel-toned velvet suit, and wearing her mink coat, with hat to match. Despite these adornments, I realized how much thinner and frail she had become.

  At dinner, Aunt Harriette drank several champagne toasts, along with the other adults, encouraging Isabel and Sybil and me to have “a few sips.” “One day,” she declared, “this terrible war will end in victory and our darlings will all grow up and have ‘champagne’ lives!” But despite my aunt’s optimism and high spirits, she was forced, by the end of the meal, to withdraw her earlier invitation for Isabel and Sybil and me to come back to Westchester with her and my uncle for the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend. Both Mrs. Brandt and my uncle agreed that, despite the presence of Maggie, the housekeeper, so much company would be too tiring for my aunt. So the promises of skating, horseback riding, and hikes in the autumn woods for the three of us were canceled, and it was decided that I alone would spend the weekend at the big house in Westchester.

  I packed a small bag, and we took off in my uncle’s Cadillac. Sitting by myself in the back seat, I noticed that Aunt Harriette had slumped down in the passenger seat and likely fallen asleep. Her lovely fur hat of honey-toned mink slipped from her head and dropped over the back of the seat into my hands. I caressed it, with tears prickling my eyes, and acknowledged the unwelcome truth: Aunt Harriette’s own “champagne life” was approaching its final days.

  Over the weekend that followed, Aunt Harriette appeared to weaken visibly, and a private nurse was hired. On the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend, I did not return to the Bronx for school, remaining in the house in Westchester. Miss Anderson, the private nurse, allowed me only brief visits with my aunt, claiming that “madame” must not have bad thoughts or be upset in any way.

  “But I only want to comfort her,” I pleaded to the snub-nosed Miss A., whose piercing blue eyes glared at me coldly through rimless eyeglasses.

&
nbsp; When I was allowed to see my aunt, who now lay in her bed, pale, listless and drugged, she insisted on talking about my future. “You must finish school, Helga dear, no matter what the difficulties, and you must go on to college. Herman and I have talked about this, and he will see you through. And,” she added, “you should seek a profession or a career, not just marriage. You mustn’t be a ninny like me. I never even finished high school. I was lucky to have met your uncle. But I did nothing at all important with my … life.” Aunt Harriette’s breathing had become labored, and Nurse Anderson bore down on me like a bird of prey and shooed me out of the bedroom.

  A few weeks later, on the cusp of Christmas, Aunt Harriette died at home. At the end, her sickroom was equipped with an oxygen tent and other life-saving devices, all to no avail.

  The burial took place on a Sunday. It was preceded by a religious ceremony at a Jewish chapel. I had never been to an event like this before. As people began to gather prior to entering the chapel, I shrank to the sidelines. Among my aunt and uncle’s neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, I knew no one. Everybody, however, seemed to know me. I was “the niece brought over from Europe.” They were “sorry” for my loss. No one could have known the true depth of my sorrow. Was I destined to lose everybody—Papa, Mutti, my two sisters—and now the healing and joyful spirit of my aunt? Again, I saw this as fitting punishment for my betrayal of Helga.

  As the only relatives (no one from Aunt Harriette’s widely-dispersed family came to the service and burial), Uncle Herman and I sat alone in the first row of the chapel, which was reserved for mourners from the immediate family. A closed coffin of richly-carved mahogany rested on a bier beside the rabbi’s pulpit. I closed my eyes to avoid the sight of the coffin, as well as that of the black-bearded rabbi, whose meaningless words had nothing in the world to do with Aunt Harriette. I doubted that he had even known her.

  Once the service was over, we were instructed to get into our cars and follow the hearse to the cemetery, for the “interment.” How elegant these Americans made the process of parting with the remains of the deceased. A grassy green cloth had been laid around the newly dug grave. There were more words from the rabbi, and then the coffin was slowly lowered by whispering machinery into the earth. A shovel was handed to Uncle Herman to cover the costly, burnished coffin with the first clods of earth. My turn was next, and then the shovel was passed from one mourner to the next to complete the symbolic gesture. We all left the grave site before the real covering up of the coffin began.

  Following the funeral, we gathered in my aunt and uncle’s house for a sumptuous banquet. A large buffet table was laden with what Mrs. Brandt explained to Isabel and me were customary Jewish funeral foods. Salty smoked fish was served to replace the tears shed for the dead, and eggs appeared on the table as symbols of the renewal of life. In addition to these, there was an array of salads, cheeses, fresh rolls, and all sorts of miniature pastries. Two hired servants and Maggie, the housekeeper, prepared alcoholic drinks and poured coffee.

  The serious tenor of the mourners at the funeral had given way to a lighter atmosphere. Two of Aunt Harriette’s women friends stood, cocktails in hand, admiring each other’s jewelry. Uncle Herman’s business acquaintances were off in a corner, chatting and drinking highballs and feasting on imported smoked salmon and black caviar. Isabel was greedily filling a plate with tiny chocolate eclairs and jam-filled tarts.

  I turned my back on the self-comforting assembly, and hurried up the stairs to my room. Its cheerful flowered chintz and crisp organdy trappings, caringly designed by Aunt Harriette, were all wrong for me. I didn’t belong here anymore than I did with the merry crowd downstairs.

  Just for a moment, I thought of Uncle Herman. I hadn’t seen him since we had returned to the house. Surely, he was downstairs somewhere among the guests?

  However, I could not and would not go down there again.

  Hastily, I began to pack, concentrating on warm clothes, sturdy boots, and taking along my ice skates. This time I knew exactly where I was going. I took one last look around my artificial world, the home I never deserved. Then, stealthily, dressed in a wool cap and a heavily padded jacket, I descended the back stairs at the opposite end of the long corridor of sleeping rooms, and headed directly for the railroad station.

  Thirteen

  A ten minute walk in the icy air of a late December day brought me to the Westchester branch line, from which I could change trains for Harper’s Falls. I had learned about this from Ruth, when we were at Shady Pines. “If you’re at your aunt’s house this winter, you can easily get up here by train to visit us where we live in town,” she had told me hospitably, explaining that the hotel itself was closed until late spring. “There’s ice-skating and skiing just outside town. You’d have fun.”

  “Harper’s Falls?” asked the woman at the ticket window. Even though a fire was burning in a pot-bellied stove across the room, she was bundled up against the cold. “I could sell you a ticket, but you wouldn’t get there tonight. You’d have to get off to change trains at Highwater Junction. Nothing going out of there until morning.”

  I looked around nervously. “But I want to leave now.”

  “Okay by me, young lady. Only don’t get mad when you sit up there in Highwater all night freezing your tootsies off. Next train out of here’s in ten minutes. Want to grab it?”

  “Yes,” I said emphatically. I could neither go back to the house I’d just run away from, nor could I take the chance of being caught so close to the scene of my escape.

  Unlike the New York City subway where I’d been shadowed by the police officer, the train for Highwater Junction came in quietly and I stepped aboard, grateful to find asylum so quickly.

  To my surprise, the car was filled with soldiers, many of whom were lying across the seats in various positions of sleep. My entrance, though, seemed to cause a ripple of interest, for several of the men straightened up and patted the seats beside them invitingly. I looked around quickly to see if there were any women in the railway car. Seeing none, I took a seat beside an older man wearing glasses and sergeant’s stripes. Since my experience at the USO, I was frightened of hot-headed younger soldiers. But who knew if it was any safer sitting next to a non-commissioned officer?

  “Going upstate for the skiing?” my seat companion inquired by way of opening a conversation.

  I nodded, fearful of even saying “yes.” Suppose he picked up on my accent. Would there be a replay of the melee at the USO? I leaned back in my seat as far as I could and closed my eyes.

  “Okay, miss,” the voice beside me said, with a sharp thrust of sarcasm. “I guess there are some Americans who don’t care to talk to the men who are ready to fight for their freedom.”

  His words stung, but I kept my eyes shut and willed myself into a state of numbness for an hour or so, until the conductor called out “Highwater Junction!”

  The sergeant nudged me. “You getting off here by any chance, duchess?”

  I quickly gathered my things, murmuring a “thank you,” which must have puzzled him, and fled.

  It was dark and extremely cold on the open-air platform, which was speckled with falling snow. I headed for the waiting room, anticipating a pot-bellied stove giving off welcoming warmth while I waited for the first train to Harper’s Falls early the next morning. However, the coal fire had been banked and the ticket window was closed. The snack counter was covered with only a large white cloth, offering access to puny white bread sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and a variety of dried-out muffins and stale doughnuts. I pulled two chairs as close to the dwindling warmth of the stove as I could and prepared to stretch out for some real rather than feigned sleep.

  While it was wonderful to be alone, without questioners and threats of being taken into custody, I wondered how safe I was, alone in the dimly lit waiting room. Although no more trains were scheduled to arrive in Highwater Junction that night, anyone from the surrounding area had access to the station. Even though the war
effort was now giving employment to many Americans who had been without jobs during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were still plenty of vagrants who slept in doorways or camped out in vacant lots. Robberies and murders committed by such people were reported in the newspapers every day.

  But I could not afford to be fearful. What, after all, was I doing here? I was playing out my own death wish. I had gone as far as I could go. I believed that the end of my life in America lay before me.

  The following morning, I timidly opened the door to “Roy’s” cabin. Outside, no people or vehicles were anywhere in sight. The snow of the night before had stopped. The air was icy and crisp. It was a glistening, sun-drenched day. I knew at once that it would be perfect for skating on the lake that served the bungalow colony in summer.

  Having arrived on the early train from Highwater Junction, I’d barely had time to examine the interior of the cottage. In the semi-dark, I had retrieved the key from its hiding place, and, once inside, thrown myself onto the nearest bed. Wrapped in all the blankets I could find, I made up for the lost sleep of the night I’d spent in the chilly waiting room. I had also brought a sandwich and a doughnut along from the Highwater Junction snack counter (for which I’d left payment).

  But I soon discovered that the cabin was stocked with canned goods. Did this mean that Roy’s relatives might be planning on using the place during the Christmas holiday? One thing was clear to me—I couldn’t stay here long.

  On departing the cottage, I noticed that my hiking boots were leaving telltale footprints in the fallen snow, a sure means of detection. All I could do was hope that the sun would quickly melt them.

  I hastened on toward the wooded area that led to the lake, where I took a circuitous route that I had discovered during my visit in the summer. At last the lake came into view, crystalline and deserted. How marvelous it was going to be to skate endlessly in solitude, without the suspicious stares of our German playmates, already indoctrinated into the Nazi teachings regarding Jews.