Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  “Helga, meet Karl”

  “Karl, meet Helga.”

  “Everybody, meet Sophie.”

  Sophie is modest and soft-spoken. Helga tells us she is seventeen and also studying midwifery, but is only in her first year, one behind Helga.

  As we all settle down to decide what to order, Helga remarks wryly, “This is much too elegant for the likes of us. You know, it’s either baked beans or spaghetti on toast for us at school.” Both young women are dressed in their student-midwife uniforms of pale blue, accented with white stripes, and they are wearing jaunty peaked caps to match.

  Helga then addresses Karl. “You must have a posh job here in London,” she says challengingly. “How did that come about?”

  I can’t help but intervene. “Karl works for the British refugee board, trying to reunite children with their families in their home countries.”

  Helga catches my sharp look and backs down. I had earlier informed her of Karl’s background as a German airman, shot down over England, and of his enmity toward his father and all things related to the Nazi regime. But I have sensed that she does not think this former POW worthy of British hospitality.

  I ask Sophie about her family and find out that she was a Pied Piper child, sent to the countryside during the London Blitz of 1941. “I was billeted with a minister and his wife in a small village,” she tells me. “They were kind to me, but it was very lonely at the manse. There were no other children about and I begged to go back to my parents and my brother. My wish was about to be granted when a direct hit destroyed our home and my loved ones with it.” Sophie’s eyes cloud over, and Helga gives her a series of consoling pats on the shoulder, which makes me feel guilty for ever having inquired.

  “You see,” Helga remarks, “Heartlessness is the German way.”

  After that, everyone goes silent. It’s a relief when the food and drinks are finally served. Helga and Sophie, obviously used to war rations, have chosen modest dishes: Shepherd’s Pie and Cottage Pie, which contain minced beef and minced lamb, respectively, baked in a mashed-potato crust. Karl, on the other hand, has munificently ordered grilled Mutton Chops, and while I am trying the steak and kidney pie, which I’ve never sampled.

  We eat quietly, making little more than small talk. I can’t help noticing that Sophie frequently glances at Helga, in an almost helpless way. She says very little.

  When it is time for dessert, we each go all out with regard to the hard-to-resist sweets menu: toffee pudding, treacle tart, apple crumble, and a summery cold trifle made with sponge cake, custard, fruit, and whipped cream.

  When the meal is over, we all say our goodbyes and disappear into the London night. Later, I lie in my bed in the darkness of my room, thinking about Mutti and Papi and Elspeth. And Helga, and Sophie. And Karl.

  The cable I sent to Uncle Herman on the day I found Helga has been answered: He is delighted that another survivor of his brother’s family has been found, and he wants to know Helga’s plans. Does she want to come to America, where she can continue her education, perhaps even go beyond midwifery and obtain a medical degree as an obstetrician? Wouldn’t that be an achievement for a Jewish refugee child, as well as payback to the Nazis for the loss of Papa, Mutti, and Elspeth?

  However, when I to talk to Helga about joining our family in New York, she tells me she doesn’t want to go. “What family?” she asks. “I don’t know your Isabel and her relatives and friends. As to Uncle Herman, I’m afraid he was too slow to do anyone but you much good. It’s too late now. I will stay in England with Sophie. We two have been family since we met as war orphans in 1943.”

  I write to Isabel, who has already declared that she can’t wait to meet Helga:

  Don’t count on meeting Helga anytime soon, I inform her. You have to understand that Helga has always been the independent sort, not wanting help from anyone. She still seems to harbor some resentment toward me, in spite of my many apologies. And I’m sure now that she doesn’t like Karl. He is just too German for her.

  And then there is Sophie. Helga will go nowhere without her. In fact, she seems to have appointed herself caregiver of this waif-like creature. Perhaps Helga has always wanted such a role in her life?

  I miss you all. I will be sad, of course, to leave Karl. But I have two more years of college and I must make some kind of career for myself. Do you think I am too vainly ambitious?

  Love, Lilli

  *

  “No, you can’t think of leaving so soon,” Karl says with alarm.

  We are sitting on the slightly-damp grass of a park that is being replanted with trees and outfitted with new benches. I have already chosen the steamer and booked my passage. Soon after I reach New York, I will have to get ready for a July camping trip with my college sisters. In our sophomore year, six of us formed a congenial group and took up housing in one of the towers of the old-fashioned Main Building, with its austere white-walled rooms and ancient plumbing fixtures, including relics such as claw-foot bathtubs. In late August, classes will reconvene, and I’ll return to the tutelage of my journalism professor, the enigmatic Dr. Barbara Bagby.

  Karl knows all this. “I had hoped you might make a little more time for me, Lilli,” he says sadly. “Perhaps you would come over for the Christmas holidays?”

  There it is again, that vague but insistent yearning in Karl’s voice that I find both stirring and disturbing. I know that our relationship has changed in these last few weeks, but I was so driven by my search for Helga that it was easy to close my eyes to Karl’s subtle pleas and the growing appeal of his physical presence. Now, I suppose, whatever has been taking place between us has to be acknowledged. But before I can put this thought into words, Karl leans close to me, turns my face to his, and kisses me impetuously on the lips. “Lilli,” he breathes huskily, “can’t you tell? I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  I draw the hair back from my face, seeking air, space, a means of escape. But, of course, it is too late. Even though I have only received Karl’s embrace, I know I am implicated in what is already a mutual problem.

  Shy and wordless, we get to our feet and begin to walk slowly through the park.

  “I know I presume too much,” Karl says. “But perhaps you could continue your studies in London. I know it’s dreary now, but it will recover.”

  The very thought of giving up my friends and family in America sends shivers through me. How spoiled and selfish I’ve become! Karl reads my shuddering shoulders and puts his arm around me. “All right, all right, Lilli. I am a fool. I have nothing to offer you.”

  We stop on the path, and I throw my arms around his neck. “No, no! You must never say that, Karl. It’s just … well, we are too young. We are so … unformed.”

  “You, perhaps,” Karl whispers. “I feel, Lilli, like a very old man.”

  We try to end the evening on a cheerier note, in a cozy, softly-lit pub. Over an ale for Karl and a lemonade for me, we sum up our situation. I promise that we will continue to correspond as before, even though I know that it will be with a bit more intensity on Karl’s part, and that I must not make any careless promises simply to give him hope.

  Karl lowers his voice. “I know your sister does not like me.”

  Impulsively, I clap my hand over his mouth. “Now, that,” I reply firmly, “has nothing to do with us. Helga is a separate matter.”

  “But surely you are hurt, Lilli, that she does not want to reunite with you.”

  I think about this for a while. “N-o,” I answer slowly. “My wish was only to find Helga alive and well. If this is the life she wants, with Sophie …”

  “Ah, Sophie,” Karl sighs. “And what are you thinking?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe Helga always wanted to be the ‘big sister.’”

  “She wanted to be you?” Karl queries.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not.” I know, now better than before I found her, that parts of Helga’s life will always be a mystery to me.

  It is the eve
of my train journey to Southampton, where I will catch the steamer for New York. Helga and I are having our second major parting, this one in her room at the College of Midwives. It’s a gloomy, metallic gray, prison-like space, which she shares with two other second-year students.

  “If you ever change your mind, Helga, or even just want to come for a visit … ?”

  “I can see you’ve been converted, Lilli, to the soft life of your precious America,” she interrupts. “And why not? What do they know of Nazi marching boots, of street beatings and arrests, of gas chambers and human incinerators?”

  I want to tell Helga that America has been less than comfortable for me at times. But I know her mind is fixed, and further apologies or explanations will be of no use.

  We have not discussed the fate of Mutti and Elspeth at length. The one thing we seem to be agreed upon is that Margreet de Jong is correct in her belief that Mutti and Elspeth were victims of one of the Nazi death camps. Before we separate, I tell Helga that I’ve written to Mrs. de Jong to thank her for saving Helga, and have told her about our reunion. “I think you should write to her, too,” I add. “She was hurt that she’d never heard from you. If she knew you were alive, she’d be so gratified.”

  Helga sighs. I’m sure she knows she’s been at fault. But all she says is, “If you’d ever seen the way she rushed me through the streets, holding me by the collar like some unwanted mongrel, and then hurled me up the steps of that rickety van …”

  I stand up, prepared to leave. “Oh Helga,” I say in a choking voice, “you are too … ungracious.” I press two addresses into her hands; Margreet de Jong’s in Amsterdam and Uncle Herman’s in New York. “Write!” I order her.

  She is still sitting on the bed. I can’t read her expression. Her chin is cupped between her hands. Apparently, she’s not going to walk me out of the building. I pause in the doorway. Perhaps there will be one more word from Helga. She lifts her head and remarks tonelessly, “You haven’t said goodbye to Sophie.”

  Karl and I stand close together, gazing up at the ship on which I’m about to sail. It’s a former British luxury liner, still disguised in its drab wartime paint, known as the “Grey Ghost” for its ability to carry troops and passengers across the Atlantic.

  “Now,” Karl warns, “don’t go falling in love with one of those American soldiers on his way home. I hear they’re a pretty wild lot.” He draws me to him in an almost rough embrace. His grip reminds me of Roy’s, the sailor I met at Shady Pines during my first summer in America, who I still feel somewhat attracted to, in spite of our sporadic and generally inane correspondence. These embraces confuse and weaken me. Why do I seem to melt every time I find myself in the clutches of an attractive young man? Where is my head?

  The last of the “All Aboards” are being called. Karl and I kiss with intensity. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Huge tears run down my cheeks. Perhaps it’s the drama of departure, the human hubbub, the ship’s horn sounding. Overcome with emotion, I pull away and run up the gangplank.

  Later, from one of the lower decks, I look down at the waving crowd. Karl is still there, hat in hand, signaling to me. If the ship never got under way, he would stand there forever. Perhaps I am not so unformed as I think. At this moment, I feel Karl has been right for me since that moment when he waved at me from the piano in the village hall.

  But how can one ever know for sure about such things?

  Seventeen

  At Isabel’s insistence, the Brandt family is holding a welcome home party in my honor. Unlike the victorious troops who returned from the war, however, I was only abroad for a few weeks. But civilian travel is so rare these days that my exploits in Amsterdam and London appear to have been momentous—particularly to Isabel.

  Uncle Herman and I drive to the Bronx on a steamy Sunday afternoon. To my surprise, the apartment is crowded with people, family, friends and strangers. Sybil and Leona are present, of course, and so is Sybil’s father, the merchant seaman who had been plowing the hazardous Atlantic since the outbreak of the war. He’s bearded and amiable, and I like him on sight. Arnold, Isabel’s brother who was recently discharged from the Air Force, has a cuddly new girlfriend attached to his right arm, and also seems to have brought along a few of his war buddies (at Isabel’s command?). And, as a special treat, Ruth has made the trip down from Shady Pines.

  Even though all the windows are opened and electric fans, placed at strategic intervals, are doing their feeble best, it’s stifling in the apartment. So, everybody convenes at the enormous punch bowl on the dining-room table, gulping the icy pink liquid that has limp frozen strawberries floating in it. On the table beside the punch bowl are platters of kosher corned beef and salami, sliced rye bread, and pickles and coleslaw.

  In spite of eye contact and a few words exchanged, nothing seems to be happening between the girls and Arnold’s war buddies. One of them confides to me that he’s only interested in “older women.” He tells me that “when a fella’s seen action in the field, he ain’t lookin’ for a kewpie-doll to talk to.” He traps me beside a wall and says with feigned interest, “So, I hear you been over there in the war zone yourself.”

  This seems a good time to politely excuse myself and duck out from under his extended arm.

  I head for the bedroom that Isabel and I shared, and find that she and Ruth are already there, decrying the “drips” that Arnold brought to the party. “It is so true,” Isabel declares. “You can always depend on a big brother to pick out the creepiest guys to bring home. He must have found them in a garbage can. So, okay, tell me more about this Rudy …”

  “Oops, sorry,” I mumble.

  “Oh, no,” the two girls cry out, scrambling to make room for me on Isabel’s bed. “Ruth’s been seeing this fellow all winter,” Isabel explains. “And it’s getting … well serious. We need your advice, Lilli.”

  “Me? Oh, what do I know?”

  “You know plenty,” Isabel bellows. At sixteen, she’s grown taller and more shapely, but her twelve-year-old voice and mannerisms still hover beneath her new teen façade.

  She elaborates for Ruth, who of course already knows the whole story. I, Lilli, have not one but two “boyfriends.” I haven’t told her much, she complains, about all the time I’ve spent with twenty-one-year-old Karl in London. Surely that must have been romantic, as we searched together and eventually found my lost sister Helga. And, there’s always the possibility that Roy has been discharged from the Navy by now. He might in fact turn up any day.

  Is Isabel psychic? She can’t possibly have been snooping through my hit-or-miss correspondence with Roy, since I’ve been living miles from her in another borough of the city and then away at college for the last two years. Yet, it’s true. Roy has telephoned. He just got home from overseas and wants to see me. I’m his “girl,” he told me. Don’t I know that? Our date is to be next Saturday night. Dinner. Dancing. Maybe a night club. Would I like that?

  By this time, Sybil has joined us in the bedroom, and we get back to discussing Ruth’s beau. At sixteen, Ruth has taken on a mature, almost settled air. Perhaps it’s the result of all the mothering she does at Shady Pines every summer. She tells us that she and Rudy would like to become engaged and get married as soon as she finishes high school. Rudy is older, and works in his father’s insurance and real estate business in Harper’s Falls. He’s a really good catch, she tells us.

  Sybil, who’s been sitting cross-legged on the other bed, emits a screech. “Married in your teens! To one of the only fellows you’ve ever gone out with. This is 1946. What are you thinking, Ruth?”

  Isabel rushes to Ruth’s defense. Everybody already knows that Sybil is transferring this year to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, which was formerly a boys’ school and is admitting female students for the first time. “Listen, Sibby, she’s not some kind of math genius like you. What do you expect her to do, growing up in a small town like that?”

  “Get out!” Sybil declares, her carroty
-red cheeks and forehead growing livid. “Get out, look around, notice how the world is changing. Especially now, after the war.”

  While I am all for what Sybil is saying, I’m not so sure about the world changing for women … yet. Sybil will be part of a tiny female minority in the male-dominated field of science. And her own mother, Leona, has already lost her job as a welder to a returning serviceman. Real change for women may not come so soon.

  When I express these thoughts, Isabel and Ruth look somewhat gratified.

  They point out that there are good jobs around for women who want to be teachers or nurses.

  “Yes, but those jobs have always been the professional limit for women,” Sybil remarks more calmly. “The point is women just can’t meekly return to the kitchen stove in this brand new era. And they certainly shouldn’t get married in their teens. Would you, Lilli?”

  “N-no,” I stammer, my vision clouded by the image of Karl waving to me from the dock as the “Grey Ghost” blasted its farewells.

  Dinner? Dancing? Maybe a night club? Baffled as to what to wear on my date, I eventually decide on the classic “little black dress.” All the fashion magazines say that, with this standby, you can never go wrong. I arrange my hair in a French knot, fastened with some of the mother-of-pearl combs that Mutti sent me in her parcel from Amsterdam, I also wear her single-strand pearl necklace.

  Uncle Herman accompanies me to the lobby of our apartment building so that he can greet Roy, who neither of us has seen in the four years since that lunch at Shady Pines. The day is still vivid in my memory: the teeth of the maddened barking dog, Roy’s soothing words as he lifted me in his arms, the trip in the borrowed auto to the doctor’s in Harper’s Falls. I can still see Aunt Harriette fainting as I came limping toward her. (As always, I experience a throb of aching sadness at the loss of her bright spirit.)

  Once again Roy has borrowed a car, an old prewar model. I hadn’t thought we’d go driving around Manhattan on a busy Saturday night. A bus or the subway would have been more convenient.