“And I’ll go to Palestine.”
“Palestine? What is in Palestine?”
“Nothing.” Lights twinkled outside, as they passed a farmhouse close to the track; David’s eyes blazed in the reflection. “But someday, Nicole, it will be something.”
Regret washed over her. “I never really knew you, David, did I?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yet you always cared for me anyway. Why?”
He almost smiled. “Maybe I am grandiose enough to think I knew you better than you knew you.”
“I wish I was as fine a person as you think I am.”
He touched her hand that lay on Liz-Bette’s head. “But you see, I was right all along. You are.”
thirty-four
5 September 1944
Liz-Bette and I are on another transport, packed into a cattle car with twice as many people as the train that left Paris. It is twice as hot, twice as uncomfortable.
David did jump that night. Twenty-seven other people did, too, including Philippe Kohn and his sister Rose-Marie. M. Kohn, his son Georges-André, and the rest of his family stayed on the train.
Some hours after the escape, the train ground to a halt. Three of Brunner’s aides burst into the car. We were marched into a field to be shot in reprisal for the escape. The SS threw shovels and ordered us to dig our own graves. But then an officer of the German Air Force intervened and said that the only people who were going to be shot were the SS men who allowed the Jews to escape. He put us back on the train and we began rolling again.
Liz-Bette and I were transferred soon afterward to another train that deposited us in Westerbork, in Holland. Why? Who knows? We stayed there approximately a week. Practically no one spoke French. Then, they put us on a massive transport that left on 3 September.
We have been traveling for three days and two nights. There are no seats, no space, no quiet. We have one overflowing toilet bucket that gets emptied through a crack in the floor.
I heard a couple making love in the dark last night. I didn’t want to hear, but I heard.
Where are we going? Where are the Allies? Even if they do not come, why don’t they bomb the rail lines?
“Nicole, is there water?” Liz-Bette asked.
“They haven’t given us any today. Try to sleep, Liz-Bette. The time will pass faster. Maybe when you wake up we will be there. You will go straight to the infirmary. You’ll have soup and medicine. You will get well.”
Liz-Bette closed her eyes, and Nicole put her head in her hands. She was so lonely. No one else on the car but Liz-Bette spoke French. A cramp gripped her. She had fought the urge to use the bucket for hours.
But she had no alternative, so she began to wend her way through the packed car, murmuring “Excuse me, please,” hopeful that she could be understood.
Finally, she reached the bucket. A tall man leered at her. How could she possibly use it in front of him? “Could you look away, please?” she asked in French. He kept leering. A girl sitting nearby scolded him in Dutch, and the man turned to the wall.
Nicole nodded her thanks. “Spreekt U Nederlands?” the girl asked. When Nicole didn’t respond, she switched to French. “You were speaking French just now. Is this better?”
“Yes.” The oddest feeling came over Nicole, as if she knew this girl. She was about Nicole’s age, perhaps a little younger. Petite, thin, and pale, with dark, thoughtful eyes. She carried a coat over her arm.
“You are staring at me,” the girl pointed out.
“Sorry.”
“You’re still doing it. Just an observation.”
Another cramp hit Nicole. “Excuse me, but I need to use the—”
“It’s all right,” the girl assured her, holding her coat open for Nicole. “This will give you some privacy.”
“Thank you.” Nicole squatted over the bucket.
“All I ask is that you do the same for me when the time comes.”
“Yes, I will.” Nicole finished as quickly as possible, then wiped her palms on her skirt. It was the best she could do. Nicole stared at the girl again—something about her was right on the edge of Nicole’s memory.
“You are doing it again,” the girl noted, as an old man roughly pushed between them. They moved as far as possible from the bucket, stepping over sleeping bodies. “At least it doesn’t smell quite as bad over here.”
“I know this will sound insane,” Nicole began slowly, “but I feel as if I know you.”
“Have you ever been to Amsterdam?”
Nicole shook her head. “I’m from Paris.”
“Well, I’ve never been there. Although I will go someday, I can assure you of that.”
Something long buried in Nicole’s mind swam upward until, like an air bubble in a pond, it surfaced. “I do know you,” Nicole declared. “Your name is ... Anne Frank.”
The girl looked incredulous. “That’s right. Who are you?”
“Nicole Bernhardt.” Waves of knowledge washed over her. “I know so much about you! You were in hiding for a long time—in a place you called the Secret Annex.”
“How could you know that?”
“You were with your parents, and your older sister ... Margot! And other people—”
“M. Pfeffer and the Van Pels, they’re all back there asleep—”
“No! Van Daans!” Nicole exclaimed.
“This is impossible, Nicole. I only called them by that name in my writing. How could you possibly know that?”
“And Peter! Your boyfriend’s name is Peter!”
“How could you know that?”
A sudden bump on the track jostled them; they reached to steady each other—Nicole felt as if jolts of electricity were coursing through her. “I remember ... you thought your parents disapproved that you were kissing him.”
Anne’s voice became a whisper. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know—” Nicole began, then stopped. Because suddenly, she did know. “You kept a diary. I read it.”
“But I left my diary in the Annex when the Gestapo came. You couldn’t have read it.”
“I did, though.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole admitted. “Believe me, I wish I id.”
Anne gave her an arched look. “This is a very strange conversation.”
The train lurched violently. People cried out in fear, but Nicole was oblivious as a new thought surfaced, one so absurd that she was almost too embarrassed to say it. “Anne, I feel like it was—I know this will sound crazy—but I feel like it was in the future.”
“This is a joke, right? Peter put you up to this.”
“No.”
“Daddy, then, to take my mind off—”
“No.”
Anne looked dubious. “Maybe you are a mind reader.” She closed her eyes, fingertips on her temples. “What number am I thinking of right now?”
“I have no idea,” Nicole admitted. “Anne, do you believe in time travel?”
“Science fiction? Like Jules Verne? I’m to believe you’re from the future? Really, I’m much more intelligent than I look.” She wagged a finger at Nicole. “I know someone put you up to this—”
“Nicole? Where is my sister? I lost my sister! Nicole?” Liz-Bette was screaming, pushing blindly through the car.
“Here! Liz-Bette, I’m here!” Nicole waved her arms high so that her sister could see, and Liz-Bette edged through to her.
“I woke up and couldn’t find you,” she sobbed, clutching Nicole. Her words were interrupted by deep, hacking coughs. “I was so scared. I thought they had taken you away.”
“Never. I’ll never leave you. Lie down and go back to sleep, Liz-Bette. I’ll stay right by you.”
“Here?”
“Here.” She and Anne moved a bit so that Liz-Bette could stretch out.
“Your sister?” Anne asked softly.
Nicole nodded.
“And the rest of your family is here?”
&nbs
p; “No. My mother was on another transport. They shot my father.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“And my boyfriend. My best friend, too, I’m sure.” Nicole’s blood ran cold with bitterness. “Anne? Do you think God is watching us right now?”
“Yes.”
“Someone told me God must be on vacation. Maybe there is no God. Maybe we just made Him up so we wouldn’t all go crazy.”
Anne’s gaze was steady. “I don’t believe that.”
“Then nothing makes any sense. My best friend died because she tried to save our lives. My boyfriend died because he felt betrayed by my father, so he betrayed us in return. My father died to save Jewish lives, but ended up killing innocent people. All that suffering and death. I can’t make any sense of it. So I really want to know, where is God now?”
“Right here,” Anne said softly. “Right beside us.”
“We’re in a cattle car!”
Anne lifted her chin toward the barred window at the top of the car. “But we can still see the stars.”
Nicole looked out at the sliver of sky. “Anne, are you scared?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you have faith in God?”
“Yes.” Nicole heard the tremor in Anne’s voice as the train slowed. “Nicole, I want to ask you something. If you really are from the future, and you read my diary, then you must know what happens to me.”
“No—”
“You can tell me,” Anne insisted. “Please.”
Nicole hesitated. “I never finished it”
“You never ... ?” Anne burst out laughing. “Very funny. Now I know that Peter put you up to this!”
“I did read a very juicy part about you and him, though, about how you loved him and didn’t think you needed to wait until you were a ‘suitable age.’ ”
Anne grinned mischievously. “I am a free thinker.”
“You sound like my sister. She’s planning to run away with Clark Gable.”
Anne leaned close, a conspiratorial gleam in her eye. “Don’t tell Peter, but I don’t think he’s the perfect boy for me after all. I’d like to break a million hearts, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And see the whole world—”
“And have a million adventures.”
“I want to see Paris.”
“It’s wonderful! After the war I’ll take you everywhere,” Nicole promised. “The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower—”
“Where do you want to go?”
Nicole thought a moment. “Palestine, maybe.”
“Palestine? Really?”
“I think a friend of mine is there.”
“Then you’ll go there.” Anne squeezed Nicole’s hand. “Everything is possible. Don’t you see?”
Anne’s eyes searched Nicole‘s, and Nicole saw herself reflected in them—grimy, hungry, lice-ridden. But this much she knew: She would not change places for a moment with the people who had made her that way.
“Yes, Anne,” Nicole whispered. “Yes. I do.”
thirty-five
A squeal of brakes, a long grinding, as the train slowed, then stopped. “Have we arrived?” Liz-Bette asked hoarsely. “Can we get water?”
People shouted as families tried to organize themselves and their belongings. From outside came the sound of amplified German. The car’s door swung open, and uniformed SS—also some men in blue-and-white striped prison garb—rushed in, shouting orders. “Dalli, dalli, dalli, alles hinaus!” the SS men bellowed, swinging their truncheons. “Schneller, schneller!” At the same time, the men in the striped uniforms were shouting in different languages. It was bedlam.
“French, we are French, I don’t understand, what do we do?” Nicole cried, holding tightly to Liz-Bette’s hand.
“Go!” one of the uniformed prisoners instructed them, in Polish-accented French. “Leave your luggage, you’ll get it later. Go, go, go!”
“We have no luggage. Where are we?”
“Birkenau! Go! Go, be healthy!”
“What does he mean, Nicole?” Liz-Bette asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Schnell, Juden, Schnell!” More orders were broadcast by loudspeaker. “Alles austreten, alle Bagage hinlegen. Alles austreten, alle Bagage hinlegen.”
Nicole and Liz-Bette stepped out of the car and into the night. Up and down the track, hundreds of other frightened people climbed out of cattle cars, the chaotic scene illuminated by two huge beacons. Nicole scanned the crowd for Anne, but couldn’t find her.
That was when the horrible smell hit. Cloying, nauseating; the odor of a stomach-turning barbecue. “What is that smell?” Liz-Bette gagged.
“I don’t know.”
“Jews!” Another prisoner shouted in French. “Those of you who can walk, move on. Those too sick to walk, trucks will take you where you need to be.”
“Can we wait for the truck, Nicole?” Liz-Bette begged. “I am so tired.”
“Yes,” Nicole agreed, since Liz-Bette could barely hold herself up. “We’ll wait here and—”
“No!” The French-speaking prisoner insisted. “No truck! You must walk, be healthy! Walk.” Something told Nicole to follow his directions, so she pulled her sister along. Looking back, she saw a few dozen exhausted old people sitting on the platform.
As the crowd pressed forward, the intense smell grew worse. It seemed to come from a building several hundred yards away that belched thick smoke from its smokestack. “Men left, women right, men left, women right, men left, women right!” the SS men roared, their words translated by other prisoners. “Separate and keep walking! Form fives, form fives!”
Many families were trying to proceed as a unit. Directly in front of them, an SS man tore an infant from a woman’s arms and flung him toward a group of men. Then, he slammed the woman in the stomach with his truncheon; she collapsed.
Liz-Bette began to cry. “Don’t look,” Nicole said sharply. “Act as if it is something you are reading in a book, not real. Don’t look.”
Moments later, two long columns of several hundred people, separated by sex, stood on the platform. Nicole and Liz-Bette were at the outside edge of the women’s group, closest to the road. Across that road was a fence topped by barbed wire; beyond that, a mass of low-slung buildings. What had the man called this place? Birkenau? Across the fence, more prisoners watched those arriving. In the harsh light, Nicole could see that they were ghastly thin.
“Hey, Vel d‘Hiv girl! Hey!”
Someone was yelling in French from the other side of the fence. Nicole’s eyes searched the faceless forms, perhaps forty yards distant, trying to discern who was calling. “Hey, Vel d‘Hiv girl! Over here!”
There! A prisoner—impossible to see how old she was or what she looked like—was waving her arms. “Vel d‘Hiv girl!”
Nicole waved back. “Me? You mean me?”
“Yes, you! I know you! Listen to me. Be healthy!”
“Who is that?” Liz-Bette asked dully.
Nicole squinted. “I don’t know.”
“Vel d‘Hiv girl, I know you!”
“Who are you?” Nicole yelled.
“I am Paulette. From the Vel. I helped your friend escape. ‘Water for the children!’ ”
Nicole tried to recall—it was so long ago—more than two years. Had she met someone at the Vel named Paulette? She searched her memory. There was Claire, of course. The mother with the baby who had stood behind Nicole in line for the toilet. And a beautiful girl with flaxen hair who had helped—
Nicole gasped. Was this her? “You had golden hair?” Nicole called.
“Yes, Vel d‘Hiv girl! You must listen. Go to the right! Go to the right! Always go to the right!”
Liz-Bette looked up at Nicole. “Did she lose her mind? Is that why she is yelling?”
“I know her.” Nicole cupped her hands to her mouth to call back. “What do you mean, to the right?” But the din on the platform escalated, as the SS waded into several family groups
that were refusing to separate, swinging their truncheons. The girl shook her head that she couldn’t hear Nicole.
The column of women moved forward. Nicole had no choice but to move with it. When she looked across the barbed-wire fence again, Paulette was gone.
Their column clomped along. Escape was impossible. Not only were they weak with hunger, but ranks of heavily armed SS guarded them, weapons at the ready.
“What’s happening?” Liz-Bette asked. “Where are we going?”
“I think we’re being admitted to a camp. Hold my hand. Don’t let go.” As the ranks pressed forward, Nicole could see a uniformed Nazi at the end of the platform, a shorter SS man by his side, bullwhip in hand. As each woman approached, the taller man would make a quick appraisal, point right or left with his chin; the SS man indicated the direction with his whip.
Nicole watched carefully. An elderly woman was sent to the left, then a girl younger than Liz-Bette. A woman who looked to be in her thirties was sent to the right. Suddenly, Liz-Bette pointed. “Look, Nicole, it’s your friend from the train.”
Up ahead, Anne and a girl who looked like her—her sister? —approached the two Germans. They were sent to the right. Nicole leaned toward Liz-Bette. “Liz-Bette, listen to me. No matter what happens, we must go to the right. Do you understand?”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
The column pressed forward. Nicole was four rows away from the end of the platform. Right, left, left, left, left, right, left, left, right, left.
Nicole was next. She stepped forward and stood before the Nazis, grasping Liz-Bette’s hand until the last instant. The taller one regarded her. Time stopped. Right, his chin jerked.
“Nicole?” Liz-Bette called anxiously.
“I’ll be right here,” Nicole called, backing toward the right. “I swear it. I can still see you. As long as I can see you, we are still together.” Liz-Bette stood before the Nazi’s diffident scrutiny.
Please, Nicole prayed. Dear God, please.
Liz-Bette coughed, a deep, hacking cough. The Nazi’s chin jerked left.
“No!” Nicole screamed. “Nein!”
“Let her go,” a prisoner in a striped uniform told Nicole. “She’s bound for the ovens. Save your own skin.” But Nicole ran back to the tall man who had made the selection.
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