Serendipity's Footsteps

by Suzanne Nelson

  “Shhhhh.” Her father gave her arm a squeeze.

  She waited for him to protest, to plead his innocence. But her father, who had never broken eye contact with any man in his life, bowed his head to stare at the floor.

  “Of course we will come with you,” he said in a polite, supplicating tone foreign to Dalya. “Please, I need a few moments to collect my wife and children.”

  “Three minutes,” the tall soldier snapped.

  “Thank you.” Her father bowed his head appeasingly, then pulled Dalya up the back stairs, clutching her hand so firmly that it ached.

  “They can’t arrest you,” Dalya whispered. “What have you done?”

  Her father stopped on the top stair, his face pained. “We are Juden. That alone is a crime to them.”

  Opening the door to their small apartment, they found her mother, brother, and sister waiting. Gone were David’s playful teasing and Inge’s melodrama. Their eyes were wide and scared.

  “We must go with them, but we will be back.” Her father kissed her mother on her forehead. “This will pass soon enough.”

  Together, they walked downstairs to the shop, where the soldiers waited. The tall one stood near the counter, inspecting her father’s shoemaking tools, his lips curled in distaste. And then Dalya saw it—the pot of glue she’d been using earlier, perched on the counter, within perfect range. As she moved past the soldier, she pretended to stumble. She grabbed the counter to catch herself, deftly knocking the pot off the edge.

  It overturned, pouring thick yellow glue all over the soldier’s boot.

  “Schwerfällig!” the soldier growled. “Clumsy!”

  Dalya covered her mouth, feigning horror. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I slipped.”

  Her mother yanked her out of the soldier’s way. “Forgive her,” she said quickly. “She is just a young, absentminded girl.”

  The soldier’s eyes burned, and he raised his hand, ready to strike. But a wail broke from Inge’s throat, surprising him. The hand dropped.

  “Take them outside,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now.”

  Dalya was hurried out, her mother risking one scolding glance in her direction that said she knew the glue wasn’t clumsiness. But Dalya didn’t care. She was glad she’d done it. Even if his hand had come down on her, she’d still have been glad. There was a hidden smile inside her as she watched the soldier trying in vain to wipe the glue from his boot. Finally, he gave up and joined them outside, his face a blister of rage.

  “Get in line.” He nodded toward the other side of the street, where their neighbors stood in one trembling huddle. There were the Buttenheims, the Felsbergs, the Rozens. There was Aaron Scheller, one of her classmates, with his mother, father, and little sister. Chava Scheller was her mother’s best friend, and their families often got together for Shabbos dinner. Dalya had known Aaron since the two of them were toddlers. As a child, he’d often followed her from room to room like a parched animal following a cloud. She’d never tried to hide her annoyance with his devotion. She remembered putting on countless puppet shows and dance performances, laughing and twirling around him as he sat watching somberly on the floor. Though part of her appreciated the attention, there was always too much adoration in his penetrating gaze. It vexed her that he granted it so easily when she felt she hadn’t earned it. Now here he was, watching her again with those same inquisitive chestnut eyes.

  Dalya stepped into the street, glass crackling under her shoes. Shopwindows up and down Kurfürstendamm sat gaping, their glass shattered. The street was one of the busiest in the Charlottenburg district, usually bustling with shoppers, but tonight it was desolate and broken. Whimpers and sobs from neighbors she’d known most of her life, people she’d never seen cry, were an undercurrent to screams and gunshots echoing from the surrounding streets.

  She glanced back at their shop and saw her father, still at the door, hesitating.

  “One more moment, please,” he said to the soldiers. As he turned off the shop lights and locked the front door, a smirk streaked across the tall soldier’s face.

  Her father joined them in line beside her mother and the Schellers.

  Smoke drifted in the air, burning her lungs. A strange yellow haze glowed in the sky over Fasanenstrasse, a few streets over.

  “What is that?” Dalya whispered.

  A cry escaped her mother’s lips. “The synagogue. They’re burning it.”

  Dalya’s stomach churned. Their beautiful synagogue, with its glorious domed roof, on fire. For what? She couldn’t understand. She doubted she ever would.

  Inge’s sobs grew into frenzied howling, and the tall soldier lifted the butt of his gun. “Someone shut her up, or I will.”

  Dalya reached Inge first, sweeping her up because her mother already had David in her own arms. Her mother shushed Inge desperately, but it didn’t work, and soon David’s lip trembled, too. Dalya had to do something.

  “Should we tell a story now?” she whispered to them. She turned her back on the soldier, pressing Inge’s little head into her shoulder so she couldn’t see.

  Inge shook her head, sniffling. “But…it’s not bedtime,” she choked.

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Dalya held her tighter while her father and Herr Scheller planted themselves between the gun and their families. “There once lived a lovely shoemaker’s daughter,” she began, trying to focus on the words rather than the gun at her back. She spoke quietly as Inge’s hummingbird heart thrummed against her chest, her voice the only calm part of her. Aaron moved to stand protectively beside them, and that, along with the story, worked to quiet Inge enough for the soldier to lower his gun. After a few minutes, Dalya was able to hand Inge to her father.

  “They’re destroying everything,” Aaron whispered once Inge was out of earshot. “If they could, I bet they’d shoot every one of us right now.”

  “Aaron!” She stared at him. “What are you saying? They have no right…”

  “They’ll take the right.” His fists clenched at his sides. “They won’t stop after this. They’ll never stop.”

  Her father appeared next to them, his eyes grave. “Listen to me, both of you,” he whispered. “There’s a man here in Berlin. Leonard Goodman, a friend of mine. He’s an American, a Quaker. He has many influential friends. He’s been working these last few weeks to secure visas for us. He said he would help if…anything like this ever happened.” He took their hands in his. “Once this is over and they release you, go to him.”

  Aaron nodded, but Dalya added firmly, “We’ll all go together, Vati.”

  “God willing.” Her father pressed his hand to her cheek, then moved to rejoin her mother.

  Aaron leaned toward her, his mouth nearly brushing her ear and sending an involuntary and unwanted heat through her. “Dalya, I made a promise to your father that I would look after you. If they take us out of the city, if they separate us, find a way back here. Find Herr Goodman, and I’ll find you.”

  Dalya gave a short laugh. “That will never happen. Why would my father have asked you to look after me, when I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself?”

  She fixed her eyes on him, waiting for his answer, but he dropped his own in embarrassment. Suddenly, she guessed her father’s intentions. He must have been hoping that something else—more than friendship—would grow between her and Aaron. That Aaron would be her protector, her caretaker. She bristled. As if her mind could be molded that easily. Why should her future be discussed and planned for in the third person, giving her no part in it? And worse, why should Aaron be privy to the plans when she was not?

  “If there is some sort of trouble, which I doubt,” she said resentfully, “I will find my own way.”

  Aaron’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and the hint of a smile played around his mouth without ever settling onto it. “I wish…I wish you liked me better.” There was a woundedness in his voice, but Dalya convinced herself she hadn’t heard it.

  She opened her mo
uth, but didn’t know how to say it wasn’t true without lying, so she shut it again. Maybe she could’ve liked him better if he didn’t always beg for her approval. But of course, she couldn’t say that out loud.

  Just as the silence between them was becoming awkward, the soldiers positioned themselves around their group and told them to start walking.

  “Where are they taking us all?” Frau Scheller asked, a quietly contained hysteria tingeing her voice.

  Dalya’s mother took her hand. “I don’t know, Chava. But we’re together. And that is a blessing.”

  Dalya glanced at Aaron, and an understanding passed between them. She positioned herself on one side of Inge, David, and Aaron’s sister, Hila. Aaron took up his post on the other. Together, they formed a protective barrier around the children, holding their hands through the street. Inge was still crying, but silently, her earlier outburst having drained her to exhaustion. After she stumbled a third time, Dalya swung her onto her back so she could keep up.

  Aaron offered her a small nod of encouragement. If he was angry with her, he showed no sign of it. His eyes were bright, unwavering, the darkness giving his face a sharpness that was more man than boy.

  “Do what they tell you to,” he whispered. “It will be easier that way. But remember what I said. Even if…” He paused. “Even if you don’t want me to, I’ll find you. I made that promise, and I can’t break it.” His eyes held hers. “No matter what happens to you, what they do to you, hide the best of yourself away where they can’t find it. Until this is over.”

  No matter what they do to you. She shuddered, then nodded, instinctively feeling a division going on inside her. The Dalya of Before tucking herself into the recesses of her heart for safekeeping. The Dalya of After emerging like a fortress ready for attack.

  The moon was a bright orb in the indigo sky, and the loveliness of the night seemed that much stranger when steeped in the bitter fear wafting off the people around her. As they walked, glass shattered a hundred times louder than before. Dalya turned to see the windows of Amschel’s Shoe Store smashed, an open wound in the dark.

  She thought, How silly of Father to lock the door.

  Every step took her farther away from the pale pink shoes buried under the floorboards. She prayed they’d stay there, undiscovered. Then she lifted her chin high, turned her back on her home, and walked into the night.

  CHOPINE MILLER’S BEGINNING

  He was standing on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway when he took off his shoes. The oxfords still gleamed from the coat of polish he’d brushed on at dawn. They were the most expensive pair of shoes he’d ever bought himself. He’d bought them, along with his custom suit, on the day he’d been offered the job of floor broker for Jefferies. His father, of course, had offered to pay for everything he needed, but this time, for the first time, Kent refused to let him. He’d thought of the shoes as a good-luck charm, and maybe even a step toward independence, hoping that if he looked the part, success would follow.

  He hadn’t factored in the panic he felt at the sound of the opening bell each day. Adrenaline was normal, his friends in the industry told him. Adrenaline gave you an edge, kept you hyped up on the trading floor. But Kent could taste the bile in his throat before he even got out of bed.

  This was supposed to be his calling. That’s what his dad had always told him. It was supposed to be instinctual, not excruciating. In the end, though, it was all money. Nothing more. Money that didn’t even exist in hard cash, but spun around the world as a concept, making and breaking corporations, countries, and men.

  On the day Kent abandoned his shoes, he lost two mil on the floor. By the time the closing bell sounded, his toes were numb. Crushing tiredness overwhelmed him, and he staggered off the trading floor, wanting fresh air. But New York City summers are unforgiving, and this one had saved a last hurrah for October, spilling over into fall. Heat smothered him as soon as he stepped outside. He dragged his feet, his shoes tightening with every step. How was it possible for the feet of a twenty-three-year-old to feel so old, so beaten down?

  He sat on the steps in front of the stock exchange, his lungs straining for air. His feet throbbed inside his shoes, and suddenly, he was tearing at the laces, yanking on the tongues. His feet pulled free with a soft sucking sound. His socks were next. He slid them down his calves and off his feet. He sighed and wiggled his pasty toes, laughing. Then he stood up and walked away.

  —

  Linnea Chantal had just cracked open her two-dollar dinner, a can of soda and a Heath bar, when she saw him. He was wandering through the litter-strewn grass of Battery Park, his suit jacket stained with the mustardy remnants of a hot dog, his tie scruffily undone. His suit screamed money, but he seemed way too young for it, with peach fuzz and a lost look that was adorable. Every few seconds, he gave his shirt collar a tug as if he were battling to keep it from choking him.

  Partly because she was new enough to the city that she understood how lonely it could make a person, and partly because she was bursting for someone to share her news with, she offered him a smile.

  “Hey,” she called, “no killjoys at the party!”

  His head snapped up, and he blinked a few times like he was trying to bring her into better focus. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Um…what party?”

  “Mine!” She spread her arms, twirling. “You are looking at the best Éponine that Broadway will ever see!”

  “You’re in Les Miz?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Not yet, but I will be!” she cried. “I nailed my audition today, and now I’m celebrating!” She held her soda and candy out to him and, in her best British accent, asked, “Would you care for some champagne and caviar, sir? I only buy the best.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.” He gave a hollow laugh. “Just tired. So tired.”

  “Yeah, I know that kind of tired,” she said. “The kind that makes you want to sink right into the ground and never get up again. I used to get that way sometimes, too. But that was before I came here.” She thought of the unaccountable sadness that sometimes swallowed her whole, without warning, for weeks at a time, until she pulled herself up from its depths, wasted from tears. It frightened her. It had frightened her parents and teachers, too. But it would never be able to find her here…among thousands of people. She swept her arms across the great expanse of buildings, ignited in the dark like earthbound stars, and felt the thrill of the city’s promise coursing through her. “This is where I belonged all along.”

  “I thought I knew where I belonged,” he whispered, pacing the grass. “Until today.” He stepped on a bottle cap, then cursed, yanking his foot from the ground.

  “Hey, there’s a way better place to go barefoot,” she said. “If you’re brave enough to follow a stranger.” It was a teasing challenge and, she recognized, possibly a reckless one. But nights as brilliant and perfect as these were made for recklessness, and anyway, she was feeling invincible.

  He hesitated, glancing at her ripped jeans and oversized sweatshirt, and she guessed he’d probably never talked to a girl who wasn’t decked out in pearls and cashmere thanks to Daddy’s pocketbook. She wondered if he’d ever done anything for the sheer fun of it, and decided, with certainty, that he hadn’t. She thought he might walk away. But then he surprised her.

  “You have the most beautiful feet I’ve ever seen,” he blurted, then shrank with embarrassment.

  She laughed, her blond hair springing. “They’re only beautiful when I’m wearing my lucky shoes. My Marilyn Monroe shoes. She was born normal-nobody Norma Jeane, but she became somebody.” She swiveled her ankle so her silver rhinestone stilettos glittered. “That’s what’s going to happen to me, too. I gave myself a glamorous new name worthy of the stage, and my shoes will do the rest. I wear them to every audition.”

  He leaned forward and, before she understood what he was doing, gingerly brushed a finger over her ankle strap. Her breath caught. “ ‘Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you l
ast, by the altitude of a chopine.’ ” He smiled, then shrugged. “It’s Shakespeare.”

  She stared at him, her heart pirouetting. No one had ever spoken to her like that. It didn’t matter that they weren’t his words. His saying them meant he understood something about her no one else ever had, and she determined, in that instant, to rescue him. She lifted her hand to the base of his chin and, with a flick of her fingers, unbuttoned his shirt collar.

  He sucked in a long, deep breath, drinking in the air.

  She cocked her head toward the South Ferry subway station. “So, Shakespeare, are you coming with me or not?”

  His eyes rested on hers, the lost look in them gone. “Let’s go.”

  She led him across the street to the subway, and they disappeared over the city’s gilded rim, hand in hand.

  —

  It was a night dipped in magic. Years later, he would still remember the muted sounds of the music and laughter that drifted down the beach from the Coney Island boardwalk, the warmth of her hand in his. His aching bare feet sank into the sand, wicking up its coolness.

  She whipped her hair out of her eyes and faced him, placing one hand over his heart. “Listen to the waves,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his ears. “It’s the rhythm of the world….” She spun away from him. “Doesn’t it make you want to dance?”

  He shook his head at her cartwheels, wishing he could bottle up some of her abandon. It was seductive, and so was she. But there was something feverish about her joy, like it was too excessive not to also be dangerous.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t lived in the city long,” he said.

  “Two weeks,” she announced proudly. “Why? Do I look like a rookie?”

  “No one stays that happy in this city,” he said. “It isn’t possible. Not without money.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he hated himself for saying them. They belonged to his father, and here he was, regurgitating them because he was too scared to believe anything different.