by Gwen Bristow
She liked Kessler so much, and yet he had for her an almost irritating attraction. His wise sympathy never ceased to delight her. Yet with it there was always the bothersome sense that she had done all this before. Though she tried to ignore it, and laughed at herself for it, the feeling would not down. It kept returning, like the teasing involuntary search for a name, a line, or a tune long ago forgotten and too unimportant to be worth remembering, but which lay so close to the surface of her consciousness that no matter how much she tried to ignore it, it kept trying to push through, troubling her in the most unexpected places by knocking on the door of her memory and demanding that it be let in. She would have been glad to let it in and so be rid of it, but this required opening a door to which she had long since lost the key.
She was ashamed to keep asking Spratt to help her remember. She had tried that several times, and he only laughed and shook his head. “Wherever you saw him, I wasn’t there. And if you’ll forgive me, my dear, I suspect Kessler wasn’t there either. He certainly doesn’t remember you.”
All of a sudden one day it occurred to her. “Is it possible that I can’t remember because I don’t want to remember?” The idea was startling, but the longer it stayed with her the less startling it became. She had read about the thoroughness with which the mind rids itself of matters it does not want to remember.
And then, without any more effort on her part, the question ceased to annoy her. She did not deliberately put it aside; as long as she had tried to do that she had been unable to achieve it. But for some reason, as soon as it occurred to her that she had forgotten something she did not want to remember, the question simply ceased to exist. Queer, she thought, how it had pestered her in the beginning. As if it mattered. He was a splendid friend to have. Both she and Spratt, as well as the children, were drawing into closer intimacy with him, and now she could be glad they had all found so excellent a companion without worrying about whether or not she and Kessler had previously exchanged a glance at the Brown Derby. Kessler enjoyed coming to their house. Spratt often brought him in after work, when he would advise Brian about mounting his specimens or discuss school and the day’s events with Dick and Cherry. Kessler had not yet said anything to Dick about Dick’s approaching part in the war. He was too wise to walk up to him with a peremptory “I want to talk to you,” without first making sure Dick was ready to listen. But the subject of the war appeared one day unexpectedly.
Margaret was going to have a Christmas party for some of her schoolmates, and Elizabeth suggested that she and the two older children come to Kessler’s apartment one afternoon to decorate the Christmas tree. As it was hard to buy ornaments in the stores they brought their own, part of an abundance left over from earlier holidays. Margaret was there, jumping with excitement while Kessler looked on. He liked Christmas, and enjoyed her pleasure in it. While he was showing Elizabeth the silver fountain pen Spratt had given him as a Christmas present, Dick was dragging in a ladder, and calling to Elizabeth to move out of his way. “We’ll start at the top,” he said, setting up the ladder by the tree and beginning to climb. “You hand me the junk, Cherry.”
With Elizabeth’s assistance, Cherry handed up the junk. Margaret helped, her arms full of tinsel and her eyes wide and joyous. “It’s just beautiful,” she kept saying over and over. “It’s just beautiful.”
She got close against the resplendent tree and looked up through the branches. “I can see you up there, Dick! Look at me.”
He bent down, scratching his face on the branches. “Sure, I see you. Hello.” As he leaned over, a collection of glass balls slipped out of his hand and smashed on the floor at her feet.
“Oh!” Margaret cried in dismay.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cherry reassured her, “there are plenty more.”
“You’ve hung up about all it will hold, anyway,” Kessler observed as the door opened and the housekeeper came in to tell Margaret her supper was ready. Margaret shrank back against the tree, looking down at the broken glass before her.
“I—I’m scared,” she confessed. “I might fall down and get cut.”
“Yes, so you might,” Elizabeth agreed. “Come give her a lift, Dick.”
“Okay. Wait a minute, Margaret.”
Dick scrambled down from the ladder. Remarking that he had jolted some lights out of place, Cherry climbed up to adjust them. Dick reached across the broken glass.
“Put your arms around my neck and hold tight so I can lift you, Margaret. There you are. She’ll be along in a minute,” he said to the housekeeper, and as she went out he swung Margaret across the pile of glass and set her down. “Right?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Right, thank you. I’m always scared of falling down on broken things. I fell down once, and got a bad cut on my neck. See?” She drew the collar of her dress aside.
Dick bent to look at the scar she showed him. “Why, you did get a bad cut. How did that happen?”
“A man kicked me,” said Margaret, “and I fell down.”
“What?” said Dick.
The eyes of them all turned to her—Elizabeth, her hands full of tinsel, Cherry on the ladder adjusting the lights, Dick standing beside Margaret at the foot of the tree. Kessler, sitting in his chair near by, said nothing. But Margaret appeared not to realize the start she had given them.
“What man kicked you?” Dick demanded, and stopped, absorbing the idea of men who kicked little girls.
Margaret answered without any excitement. “The man who killed my mother.”
She said it as matter-of-factly as a German child in a happier era might have said, “The Three Bears.” For an instant the others around the Christmas tree stood immobile, frozen with a horror the more shocking because Margaret seemed unaware that there was any reason why they should be surprised.
Elizabeth could not say anything at all. She was thinking, “We hear of these things. A thousand anonymous deaths, ten thousand of them, and we’re blunted. But hearing it, like this, this makes it sharp again.”
Cherry was the first of them to catch her breath. Standing on the ladder by the tree, she gasped, “But Margaret—where were you? When was this?”
“In Germany. A long time ago—oh, a long time ago,” Margaret answered, looking up at her. “I was very little.” She glanced at Elizabeth. “I told you, didn’t I, Mrs. Herlong? I told you my mother and father were dead.”
“You told me they were dead,” Elizabeth said with difficulty. “But you didn’t tell me what happened to them.” She glanced at Kessler. He was looking at Margaret, his mouth tight with pity, but he did not try to stop her.
“They came looking for my father,” Margaret explained. “He wasn’t there, and my mother said he wasn’t there, but they wouldn’t believe her, and they broke things up looking for him. They were terrible men, the Nazis, they used to push us off the street, and my mother would not take me out. They broke things up, and they hit her, and I was scared and I cried, and the man kicked me out of the way and I fell down, and when I saw the blood I got more scared than ever. It was dreadful.” She shivered. “Nobody does things like that here in Beverly Hills. But my mother bandaged up my neck and made it stop bleeding. She was a doctor and she knew how to do things like that. She didn’t cry at all. I don’t cry either now, I’m too big. The Nazis were gone then. She made me take some medicine. It tasted awful, but she made me take it, and I went to sleep. But I know they came back while I was asleep, because they killed her, and they killed my father too.”
Dick swallowed and wet his lips. He had heard stories like this before, but hitherto they had been something that happened to people who had the far-off quality of anonymity. Hearing it reported as a matter of course by a little girl in his own home town was something else again. He looked at Kessler, and back at Margaret. Cherry, who had sat down on top of the ladder, was looking at Kessler too, as though they both wanted him to say it hadn�
�t really happened like this.
“Come here, Margaret,” said Kessler gently.
She went to him, and he put his arm around her.
“It was dreadful in Germany,” said Kessler. “But we aren’t afraid any more.”
She looked up at him artlessly. “Oh no, of course not. Not here.”
“Nobody does things like that here,” said Kessler. “There aren’t any Nazis in America.”
“Oh no,” Margaret said again. She laughed at a recollection. “When we first came here,” she said to the others, “I was scared of the men in uniform. But they were just policemen and soldiers. They didn’t bother anybody.”
“No, everybody is safe here,” Kessler went on. “Nobody comes into a house without being asked. If they want to come in they ring the bell, and if you tell them not to come in they stay outside. Nobody is scared in the United States. Margaret used to be scared, but she isn’t any more.”
“It’s different here,” said Margaret.
“And your supper is getting cold,” Kessler suggested. “You’d better go eat it.”
“All right.”
“And aren’t you going to thank Mrs. Herlong and Dick and Cherry for helping you with the tree?”
“Oh yes! It’s just wonderful. Thank you so much.”
“We’re glad we could help,” said Elizabeth. She took Margaret’s hand and went with her into the dining room where her supper was ready. Margaret started to eat with a healthy appetite, evidently not appalled by the story she had told. When Elizabeth returned to the front room Dick was still standing by the tree and Cherry still sat on the ladder, apparently too horrified to move; Kessler was speaking to them.
“If it seems cruel to let her go on talking, it’s less cruel than making her shut it up inside herself. I thought it was easier on you to listen than it would have been on her if I had told her to stop.”
“But what sort of cattle are they?” Dick exclaimed. “We hear a lot of things about them, cruel and vicious and all that, but not just going around kicking little girls!”
“I told your mother once,” said Kessler, “that your only fault was that you didn’t realize how superior you were to your neighbors.”
“To my neighbors? But I don’t know anybody like that!”
“No, you don’t know anybody like that.”
“Good Lord,” said Dick. He went over to another side of the room and sat down.
“Why did they kill her parents?” Cherry asked breathlessly.
“They didn’t. Her parents killed themselves.”
“Ah!” Cherry let go her breath audibly.
“Margaret thinks the Nazis killed them. They killed so many others. I haven’t tried to tell her any differently. She doesn’t understand suicide.”
“But why?” exclaimed Cherry. Then she added apologetically, “I’m sorry. I guess it’s none of my business.”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know,” Kessler answered. He glanced at Elizabeth. “Shall I go on, Mrs. Herlong?”
“Yes, if you can bear it. After all, Mr. Kessler, we’ve heard it before. It’s been in the papers and on the radio.”
Cherry said what they had all been thinking. “But it’s different when it happens to somebody you know! You mean it happened to Margaret’s family like what we read about?”
“Why yes, the same old story,” Kessler answered. “She and her mother were shoved off the sidewalk, she didn’t have enough to eat and even when her parents went without there wasn’t enough for her, they saw other children beaten and starved and knew there was nothing else in store for Margaret. Their old friends crossed the street when they saw Margaret’s parents coming because they were afraid to be seen speaking to Jews. They tried and tried to get away and every door was shut against them. They stood it as long as they could. They were a brave and gallant pair. But that day Margaret told you about, her mother’s spirit broke. She tried to kill Margaret, and she succeeded with herself. She was a doctor and there were still a few drugs in the house. The only reason she didn’t succeed with Margaret was that she wanted the child’s death to be quick and easy, and she gave her too much.”
Cherry was staring at him, unconscious that there were tears in her wide-stretched eyes.
“And her father?” Dick blurted.
“He and I came in together. We had been out to buy food. We had to stand in line to buy it, and I tried to help him, because as I am not Jewish things were easier for me. But I can’t stand in line very long, or carry any parcels except what I can put into my pockets. We used to do the buying, it was too frightful for Margaret and her mother on the street. When we came in we thought they were both dead. We knew the house had been searched because it was in such disorder. Jacoby—Margaret’s father—knew they would come back for him. With Margaret and her mother gone he had no more reason to keep trying. He was like an insane man. He had no gun—they had taken that long before—so he stepped out of the window.”
“But Margaret?” Elizabeth exclaimed as he paused.
“God knows how I ever realized, just then, that the child wasn’t dead. I knew something about first aid, and I did the best I could for her, and got help from a doctor at the hospital where her father had worked before the Nazis took over. We worked with her, asking ourselves every ten minutes why we were doing it. We almost agreed with her mother that it would be better to let her die. But I managed to get a letter to the French studio that had bought two of my books, and they gave us help. That was just before the war began. A few more weeks and it would have been too late.”
There was a moment of stricken silence. Then Elizabeth demanded,
“How can you talk about it so quietly! Your friends driven to death, a mother trying to kill her own child—and you might be talking about the weather!”
“You have to learn to talk about it like that,” Kessler said. “If you don’t—” He shrugged.
“Was he a very good friend of yours?” Dick asked.
“My best friend. He saved my life after the last war, and made it possible for me to walk instead of spending these years in a wheel-chair. He was a very great man.”
Dick considered a moment, scowling at the rug. When he looked up, he said, “You know, I never have been able to get this business of suicide. People do it, but I never did understand how they could. But I guess over there, you do understand it, don’t you?”
Kessler nodded. “Yes, you understand it. People take their own lives when they’ve lost faith in living. That’s what happened to Jacoby. He had already been pushed close to the limit of endurance. Then when he came in and found his wife dead, and thought Margaret was dead too, and knew there was nothing ahead for him but slow torture in a concentration camp, he had nothing left. The terrible tragedy of it was that after he had given faith to so many others, he lost his own.”
Dick said, as if forgetting his mother and Cherry were there, “You mean he was really a great man, a famous doctor, and all this happened to him?”
“He was one of the most famous surgeons in Germany. And more than that, he was, as I said, a very great man. Through the worst disasters—and there were plenty of them in Germany after the last war—he had clung to his belief that no matter what happens there is always something worth saving, in one’s self and in humanity. Then when he had lost everything else he lost that too. I’m not blaming him for it, but I’m sorry for it.”
“I don’t get it!” Dick exclaimed abruptly. “I hear about such things and hear about them, but I don’t get it. Why were Margaret’s parents treated so?”
“Because they were Jews, for one thing.”
Dick shook his head, as though the room had got dark and he was trying to see. “But I still don’t get it, Mr. Kessler. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Even if you were brutal and anti-Semitic and all that, why should you want to kill a doctor who might
save your life? You might get sick and need just what he could do for you—don’t they ever think about that? It doesn’t make sense,” he said again.
Kessler did not try to tell Dick that he was asking a question that half the human race had already asked. He only replied, “It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t get it either, Dick. The Nazis and their babble, and then a child like Margaret.”
“A nice sweet helpless little girl!” Cherry exclaimed.
Kessler turned toward her, and spoke earnestly. “It’s not only that, Cherry. There are people in the world who haven’t your sense of humanity toward helpless little girls. But it’s what Dick said—even if you had no sense of humanity, why should you do that to yourself?”
“To yourself?” said Cherry, puzzled.
“Why yes. Why should you want to destroy your own hope in the future? Margaret’s heredity includes two of the finest minds in Germany. If parents give their children anything of themselves, and we know they do, the chances are a hundred to one that Margaret is a genius. Only God knows what she’s capable of becoming, but they tried to destroy her.”
“Gosh!” said Dick. “Mr. Kessler—you mean that kid’s liable to do something like discover radium, and she nearly got killed?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t know that Margaret’s a genius, it’s too soon to tell. But I know that in this mad killing of theirs the fascists from Berlin to Tokyo have destroyed genius, and they’re still doing it. They’re destroying their future, and yours. That’s the real tragedy of our time. It’s so terrible we don’t often think about it because we can’t bear it. Margaret’s parents had at least had a chance to contribute something to the world. But she’s never had any, and those other children who didn’t escape had never had any. And what it amounts to,” he said clearly to Dick and Cherry, “is that your children may die of loathsome diseases because the scientists who could have saved them were killed when they were four years old.”
“Oh, my Lord!” cried Cherry from the top of the ladder: Her hand caught at her throat. “That’s what they’re doing. I never thought of that till this minute. That’s what it’s about.”
