The Ringmaster's Daughter: A beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 love story

by Carly Schabowski

  My English is better now. I practise all the time, and I do not get asked anymore what I just said. Perhaps now I am an American?

  It is Christmas Eve. I sit in my armchair. The radiator gurgles and bangs as it heats the apartment. The pipes are old, and do not like how we humans drain them in this weather.

  I have no music, so I sing to myself. A tune I sang one evening in France when I was attacked, a song I sang to Frieda as we sailed to New York, and the song that takes me back to her – on those cold waves, in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.

  We had been sailing for a few days, our progress hampered by the heavy waves and restless wind, about to see out October and welcome in November.

  ‘What does the ocean look like?’ Frieda’s voice had been low, crackled with dryness. I gave her some water.

  ‘It is dark now.’

  ‘In the day – what does it look like?’

  ‘It is blue. The deepest of blues, and then white as it is churned up by our wake. Hush now, and drink this.’ I passed her the water.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘America.’

  ‘And Papa will be there, won’t he? Papa and Maman?’

  I felt her forehead; it burned under my palm.

  ‘Hush now.’

  ‘It is blue… the sea?’ Her eyelids fluttered.

  I began to sing, softly, gently, knowing it would calm her.

  Christmas has arrived once more. Another year gone – 1943. I do not know where the time is going. It seems to be taking me so much time to write down my journey here, to America, though during the year I try to think of little else than working, existing. Yet something seems to happen to me at Christmastime – perhaps because it is the time for family and my thoughts go to Frieda, to Bertrand and the others.

  This year though, I feel a little lighter – brighter somehow – as if the heavy clouds do not bother me as they used to.

  I have been dancing; mais oui, I have. With my boss’s daughter, who is kind and funny and a very charming lady; made even more so by the fact that she mourns her husband still, and sees me as a brother, or, dare I say it, a best friend.

  She has shown me all of New York. From the tourist sights – Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building and the lit-up theatres of Broadway, which remind me of Montmartre – to some of the darker bars and clubs in Brooklyn. We sometimes go to the pictures, or to a comedy club where we sit and laugh and drink and pretend that inside we are not hurting. Perhaps we are not, in those moments. Perhaps we give ourselves over to some life and fun and we actually do forget. I don’t know. Forgive me; I have been reading Hemingway, which has got me worked up. My words come quicker; my thoughts and feelings seem to be tumbling from me, when, since I arrived, they have remained hidden in the depths of my soul.

  Now. Here they are.

  Miriam and I have decided to go Christmas shopping together. I have not been shopping much in years. She takes me by the arm to Bloomingdale’s, and we look at all the things we cannot afford and pretend that we will come back for them later.

  I do not buy much, as I do not have many to buy for, and money is still tight. But I manage to buy Miriam a hat pin and her daughter, Sarah, a doll. I even stretch to buying Levi a new tie and my Polish neighbour Katarzyna a tin of biscuits with a red robin on the front.

  It is cold out. Every Christmas here seems colder. Miriam tells me it is because I am skinny. I ask her if she means it. She says I could put on a few pounds and then maybe the girls would look at me more. I tell her I don’t want the girls to look at me. She does not ask why.

  We stroll arm in arm down the busy sidewalk, every now and then stopping to hear a brass band or some such who play on the street for charity. I give a few cents to a children’s hospital and Miriam says I am kind.

  We say goodnight outside the launderette, which she lives above with her parents and daughter. I wish her a merry Christmas, and she reminds me that she is Jewish and does not celebrate it. I nod, but the truth is that it never occurred to me. ‘You like Christmas shopping though?’ I ask her.

  ‘I like the lights. The colours,’ she says. ‘That’s all.’

  I nod again, and she goes inside to her family and I go home to my apartment, the gifts laughing at me in their brown paper bag.

  When I reach my door, I decide to give Katarzyna her biscuits. She opens the tin quickly, then eyes me strangely – I have never given a gift before, so I am worried I’ve chosen the wrong thing.

  I tell her it was just a thought, a kindness for all the food she has given me.

  She tells me to come to her apartment tomorrow, Christmas Eve, and we will celebrate together with some of her friends. I agree, even though deep down I am not sure I want to.

  It is Christmas Eve and I descend on Katarzyna, with nothing to give her but a pleasant smile. She opens the door and does not care that I bring no food or drink, and ushers me into her apartment, introducing me to her friends – Marta, Bartek and Tomek. They work at the university, she tells me. Bartek is small and wiry. He speaks little. They are very clever, helping the government, she says. I do not disagree with her; they look clever. They have that air – one I cannot describe properly – they can wear old clothes and make them look like regal hand-me-downs. They all wear glasses, black-rimmed, and they all smoke. Together, but especially Bartek, they remind me of Kacper. At first it gives me a pain in my chest – the pain of wondering what has become of him – but then the pain disappears and I feel a little comforted by Bartek, by this group, as if Kacper is right here with me.

  They do not engage in normal pleasantries – they talk of newspapers, of politics, of what will happen next. I am by no means averse to reading the newspaper, nor a book, but I do not wish to spend my Christmas Eve knee-deep in political debate. So, I change the subject. I ask them what Christmas was like for them at home, and suddenly they soften. Marta tells us of her childhood in Warsaw. She wishes she was at home now. She says she wishes she knew where her family are. The others nod in sympathy.

  Finally, Katarzyna breaks the maudlin atmosphere with a mulled alcohol that breathes cinnamon from its cup. She has small pastries too. ‘American,’ she says, ‘or at least, that’s what I thought.’

  Next, she brings out her Polish specialities and this is when the party begins. The politics and all our memories of happier times fall away as our nostrils engage with the smells of rich food.

  ‘This arthritis is really slowing me down,’ Katarzyna says, as she places the tray on the table.

  ‘You have done a wonderful job,’ I tell her.

  ‘I know some people and I must feed them. They like my food.’

  The people who like her food eat quickly, as if there might be no more food tomorrow.

  Someone puts on a record. It is Frank Sinatra. I tell them I like it, and someone starts to sing along. There is more food and more drink, and Katarzyna sits and tells us that her family are all in Poland and she does not know who is alive and who is dead.

  Everyone goes quiet again, but then Bartek says we shouldn’t be like this. It is Christmas, and Tomek tells a joke and everyone laughs.

  The doorbell rings and more people come to the party. There is a singer from one of the jazz clubs I visited with Miriam, and his girlfriend. I am impressed at Katarzyna’s social circle. She says it is easy to make friends if you try. So, I talk to the man and his girlfriend. She is coffee-coloured and his skin is darker, reminding me of the African traders I so often saw in Paris. His voice is light when he talks, almost as if he is singing. We drink and then everyone sits down and there is that lull again, when everyone is scared to talk in case their fears or their sorrows fall from their mouths and we all drown in them.

  The singer, Freddie, says, ‘Tell us, Michel – tell us how you came here.’

  I am drunk on the two glasses of whatever I have been served, and I like the way he sang my name even when he wasn’t singing. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you.’

  One
of the Poles fills my glass, and Katarzyna complains that her arthritis is stopping her from bringing out the rest of the food, and I begin.

  We were into November 1940, and Frieda was sick day and night. I could not get her to eat. We shared bunks with an Italian woman and her husband; both were as sick as she. The Italian woman tried to read the Bible for Frieda, to calm her. She only stopped when she herself grew too sick, instead talking deliriously in Italian, her husband, pale as snow, trying to tend to her.

  I did not leave Frieda’s side other than to fetch things or use the toilet, which overflowed. I was surprised that more of us weren’t sick.

  One of the crew told me that we were a mere two hours away from docking. I went back to the bunk room and told Frieda to hold on – we were nearly there. Her face and body were flaming with fever, and a rabbi’s wife had come to sit with her. She told me to leave for a while as she was going to undress her and cool her.

  I stood on deck, and it was as though all of the ship’s passengers were there too – all waiting for a glimpse of their new home. But the weather was not kind and the sky was dark even at midday, a thick grey that reminded me of how smoke looked rushing out of chimney pots on a cold day. Perhaps New York was a very cold place, and everyone had fires lit.

  The ship slowed and even more people came on deck. Before I could turn to go back below there were so many people emerging – children crying, women weeping with relief – that I could not move.

  I was pinned against the rail, and it took all my strength not to allow the swell of people to push me overboard into the murky water.

  As the Statue of Liberty appeared, her hand reaching to the sky, a calm and reverent silence overcame us all. Tugboats churned through the water noisily, turning up the sea, making it green and grey at the same time. The city came into view; buildings that reached the sky, the tops of some hidden in the low-hanging storm clouds that held a belching of snow.

  The wind whipped about us, making us hold on to our coats, our hats. I blew warm air into my cupped hands, which were raw and red.

  And as we docked, it felt almost magical. Chains jangled and men shouted at each other on the quayside as they secured the ship. Horns blared from other vessels, causing soot from their chimneys to fill the air, dirtying the overcast city.

  Mothers told their children to get off the railings as they perched, waving their hats, their chubby hands and even their kerchiefs in the air at the people that waited. Some waved back, shouted to their family and friends. Most were smiling, relived to have made the crossing; relieved to have found safety.

  The gangplank was lowered and hit the concrete of the port with a loud thud and shudder. Within moments, everyone had got themselves into lines to disembark as soon as possible, their papers clutched in their hands. Those without the proper authority stood aside smoking, worried looks on their faces that they would be sent back.

  I weaved through the crowds and finally reached our cabin. Frieda was gone.

  ‘The medics took her,’ the rabbi’s wife said, and gathered her things. She put her hand on my forearm. ‘It does not look good.’ She squeezed my arm.

  The Italian couple were gone too. ‘They all have the same thing, I think,’ the rabbi’s wife said, holding a scented handkerchief to her nose.

  I collected my belongings quickly and took our papers out. We shouldn’t be detained long; we had the right papers, I was sure. Henri would not have given us the wrong things. I opened mine and saw a stamp, the approval of a US consul and my name. Frieda’s were the same. But where had they taken her without any papers?

  I raced back on deck and asked one of the crew where she would be. He said there was a hospital and told me to get off the ship.

  There were queues everywhere, waiting to get inside the grey stone building.

  ‘Over there.’ Someone shoved me towards the back of a queue.

  I had to wait. I had to queue like the rest of them, my hands holding the papers, my heart almost in my mouth.

  As we waited, a woman gave her children a stale biscuit. They were tired, hungry, and looked as though they could fall asleep at any minute.

  Soon we were inside, and families were taken together to be questioned, stamped, checked by a doctor. I stood with the other men, those from the deck who had looked worried.

  I asked a security guard where the hospital was. He told me a doctor would see me soon. I tried to tell him it was not for me, not about me, but he pointed to the line, to the worried men, and told me to wait.

  Hours passed. It was warm inside, and all I could smell was the sweat and grime from our journey that clung to our tired skin. Now and then the smell of saltwater wafted through the air, and I welcomed it.

  Someone behind me asked if there was any water to drink and someone else told him to shut up, all of them eyeing the security guard in his dark blue suit with shining brass buttons.

  It was my turn at last.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked the man as he stamped my papers.

  ‘Next,’ he said.

  ‘No, please – look,’ I said, my English muddled. I pointed at her name. ‘Sick.’ I mimed being ill as best I could, and he pointed to a desk in the corner.

  ‘Missing persons over there.’

  I was not sure she was missing, but I did as he said.

  There was a woman there with two children; she had misplaced her third. The man behind the desk wore small rimmed glasses. He called over a woman who spoke gently to the frazzled mother, led her to some chairs and gave her some tea.

  ‘Yes?’ the man asked me.

  ‘Frieda. Frieda Bonnet?’ I said. Her name on the papers was no longer German. My fake wife. ‘She is sick. She was taken away.’

  The man picked up the phone and dialled a number, the dial turning slowly and making me angry with its sluggishness.

  He spoke. I heard her name. He nodded, then looked at me, then at the woman who was now reuniting the mother with her young son, who looked suitably abashed at having run off and given her such a fright.

  The man nodded into the phone, once, twice. The he put the phone in its cradle and smiled at me for the first time.

  ‘One minute,’ he said. He stood and went to talk to his female colleague, who nodded a lot and looked at me with sadness in her face.

  I felt my whole body go cold. I felt sick. She walked towards me, smoothing down her jacket as she did.

  My legs fell from beneath me before she reached me, and the man with the glasses fetched me a chair.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ the woman said. ‘She died.’

  Seventeen

  Le Jour de la Libération

  Five years away from France, five years away from Frieda.

  1945: the first winter of freedom, Miriam has called it. Even though the German army never reached America, she is right; there is a change in the air, the exhilaration of knowing that maybe soon, things can go back to normal.

  Miriam asks me over coffee and a bagel in the diner next to the launderette if I will go back to France. Her father has died; she is worried that she cannot manage the business alone.

  ‘I don’t have a reason to return,’ I say.

  ‘You have a reason to stay though, to help me?’

  ‘I cannot marry you, Miriam,’ I tell her. I know this is what her father wanted, but we are like brother and sister.

  She laughs. I like it when she laughs, as she so rarely does. She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to marry you, Michel. But that does not mean we can’t be partners, right?’

  I smile and we shake hands. We are partners – business partners, and the best of friends.

  This year she is breaking with her traditions and coming to Katarzyna’s for Christmas Eve. I told her about the fun from the last couple of years, and she thought she would like to try it.

  She will get a babysitter; she tells me the next day at work.

  ‘Will the jazz singer be there again?’ she asks, her eyes alight.

  ‘Perhaps.
’

  ‘I do hope he is.’

  That afternoon, I come home to receive a letter with a familiar scrawl – Bertrand.

  I have sent him letters over the years, but I have never received a reply. A part of me resigned myself to the fact that he was dead – the bombs that fell in 1943 and ’44 decimated such large parts of Paris and Europe that it would have been a miracle if he survived.

  I sit in my chair by the window, the condensation making it hard to see the street below. Yet I do not need to see the street – I have something more precious in my hand.

  My dearest Michel.

  Before I begin, with so much that I have to tell you, I must first offer my sincerest apologies that you have not heard from me sooner. It is not for want – that I can say, at least. It is because I have only just returned home to Paris, and I have only just now been able to read the letters which you have so dearly sent to me, and see the address to which I can reply.

  I am so sorry to hear of what happened to Frieda. I cannot imagine the pain that you endured. I wish I was with you, my friend, to ease the pain. But time will heal you, Michel. It has been five years already, and I am sure that whilst the ache still lives on inside you, it has become easier for you to get out of bed each day, to eat, to smile without feeling guilt that you are here and she is not.

  Be strong, my friend. We all must be.

  This war has taken so much from us all, and I am amazed that I am still here. You must be wondering what happened that night you left, and here I will tell you – but prepare yourself, Michel, we have lost much.

  When the car pulled away with you and dear Frieda inside, loud fireworks were set off so that the crowd would come outside the tent and watch them.

  Henri took the triplets and the horses back to his house and stashed the triplets away in the attic as he promised he would.

  Serge hid those soldiers well, Michel. When he told me of what he had done, I must admit I laughed – it was rather comical to me to think of those Boche all tied up with rags in their mouths!