The Last Train to London

by Meg Waite Clayton

  He removed the skirt she’d just placed in the suitcase and substituted another. “You must trust me on this skirt too.”

  Joop wasn’t one to buy clothes for her; it was meant to be a Christmas present, he said, but he wanted her to have it now. The fabric did match the blouse, and there was no point in questioning him on a thing that didn’t matter.

  He put his arms around her again. “Promise me you will tell me everything,” he said. “Promise me you’ll allow me to know when I ought to worry, so that I won’t have to worry all the time.”

  Truus leaned back slightly, to better see him. “I do promise,” she said.

  He kissed her, his lips so warm and soft that she wondered that she could bear to leave him for an empty bed in an empty hotel room, in a city under Nazi control.

  “And I promise you the freedom to make your own way, as I always have.” He smiled wryly. “Not that you would leave me any choice.”

  The Leopoldstadt Ghetto

  Stephan slipped into a ground-floor apartment stacked like a junk shop with furniture, several families packed into a very few rooms, many observing the Sabbath. In a bleak little room at the back—a room crowded with a few pieces of his own family’s furniture—Mutti slept in the single bed, her arms wrapped around Walter. Stephan knelt beside them.

  “Shhh . . . ,” he said. “Mutti, it’s me.”

  Mutti gasped awake, then reached up as if to a specter and put her hand to his neck. Her touch, dry and papery but offering more warmth than he’d felt in days, left such an ache in his throat that he was unable to speak for a moment.

  “It’s okay,” he managed. “I’m okay. I want you to know that I know where to find you. I’m going to find a way to take care of you.”

  Mutti said, “It doesn’t matter for me, Stephan. It doesn’t matter for me, but only for Walter.”

  He put a bit of bread and a small pat of butter wrapped in paper in her hands, along with a jar of tomatoes marked in Žofie-Helene’s handwriting, brought from her grandmother’s farm in Czechoslovakia last summer, he supposed. He was glad to have the food out of his own hands and into Mutti’s before he could give in to his own hunger. How many times had he left a pat of butter even larger than this unnoticed on his plate at Café Landtmann, a strudel half eaten at the Central? How many chocolates had he eaten, with his initials atop the chocolate in fleur de sel or his name in little chips of toasted almond, or a musical note in gold ganache, or even a tiny little piano painted with a variety of frostings? How many times would he have scoffed at preserved tomatoes? His mouth watered now at the idea of them, the idea of any food other than the small bits of stale bread and cocoa beans he’d been surviving on for days.

  “I’ll take care of you both, Mutti,” he said. “You and Walter. I’ll find a way, I promise. If you need to find me, send Walter to tell Žofie-Helene.”

  “She knows where you are?”

  “It isn’t safe for anyone to know, Mutti, but she knows how to get me a message.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “No,” he said, a half-truth.

  He wondered if Mutti would eat the bread, or if she would leave it all for Walter. She was impossibly thin.

  Mutti said, “They’re beginning to release some of the men they arrested. Perhaps it will be safer for you?”

  “At least it will be easier to visit you here, without Nazis living downstairs,” Stephan said. “And here, you have others to help you.” The thinnest of silver linings on clouds banishing all light.

  Vienna

  Truus exited the plane to the top of the passenger stairway and a view of the Vienna skyline: St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the spire of City Hall, the Prater Park Ferris wheel. It had been too late last night to catch the KLM, so she had had to fly Lufthansa through Berlin. Now it was the Sabbath; she would have to wait until sundown to meet with Vienna’s Jewish community leaders. But that gave her time to clean up and to get her bearings. She descended the stairs, crossed the tarmac, stood in line to show her passport, and found a taxi. No, she assured the driver, her overnight clutch would be fine on the seat beside her, there was no reason to bother with the boot.

  Not Within Our Purview

  Ruchele sat in her wheelchair in the lobby of the British consulate as the line moved slowly forward. It had wrapped around the block already on their arrival, even though it had not yet been dawn, and the Sabbath too. Now Walter was at the top of the stairs, almost to the head of the line of women in scarves and, today, men in skullcaps—men who’d been released from the camps. Ruchele felt an inexplicable urge to scream at them for surviving what Herman had not, but it was Herman’s trying to save her that had killed him. Herman had objected to being taken away from her, and they’d beaten him for that, and he’d survived the beating but not the long ride in the cold, awful truck bed.

  Walter called down to her through the rail, “Mutti! Peter and I are here,” the smile on his thin little face the first he’d offered since she woke him. This was impossible, the hours of one step forward and, slowly, another. But the impossible must be possible now; the impossible was required just to survive.

  The three men who’d spent the hours behind them in line descended the stairs, the crowd in line between them stepping back to make way.

  “All right, Frau Neuman, are you ready?” the older one asked.

  At Ruchele’s ashamed nod, he lifted her from the chair and carried her up the stairs.

  The others followed with her chair, the whole of the lobby falling silent so that, for the first time that morning, the only sounds were the voices of visa applicants and administrators upstairs.

  When she was resettled in her chair, with the waiting crowd again murmuring in their low, despairing tones, she looked expectantly up the line. It continued into a large room and around its perimeter—still a long wait before they would reach someone who would have spent the long morning listening to story after story, someone who might be sympathetic or might be so fatigued that even a dying woman and her young son would be unable to chip his heart.

  Walter climbed into her lap. He closed his eyes and, exhausted, fell into the slow, steady breathing of a sleeping child. She kissed the top of his head. “You are such a good boy,” she whispered. “You are such a very good boy.”

  RUCHELE, AT LAST at the head of the line, woke Walter. She polished the sleep from his eyes and the wetness from his lips, thankful they would be seen before the consulate closed—early today on account of the Winterhilfe decree requiring Jews to be off the street before the opening of the Christkindlmarkt that afternoon. At a nod from the next open desk, she wheeled this last little distance herself, not wanting her conversation with the immigration clerk to begin with him addressing anyone who helped her rather than speaking to her.

  “My husband applied for British visas already,” she began, hoping he would meet her gaze. He didn’t. “But we hear Britain is preparing now to allow Jewish children into the country even before visas are issued, that an effort to transport children from Germany has begun, and one is being planned for us.”

  The man shuffled things on his desk. Like so many people, he was uncomfortable speaking with someone in a wheelchair.

  She made herself as large as she could, to suggest strength. But she was large and strong only in her own mind.

  He said, “Frau . . .”

  “Neuman,” she said. “Ruchele Neuman. My sons are Stephan and Walter. This is Walter. You see what a good boy he is, waiting patiently with me all these hours. My husband has . . . he was killed by the Germans in transit to a camp.”

  The man glanced up, his gaze flicking over her face before fixing on a spot somewhere above and beyond her left ear. “I’m so sorry for your loss, madam.”

  She shifted Walter so that, for a moment at least, the man would face the good boy he seemed intent to deny.

  “Please,” she said, “I don’t want your pity. I want help getting my sons to safety.”

  The man shuffled
papers again—papers that had nothing to do with her. She had as yet been offered no forms to fill out.

  “I believe that a scheme such as you mention is being organized,” he said, “but it has nothing to do with the British government.”

  Ruchele, confused, simply waited until, finally, he met her gaze.

  “But it can’t be done without your government,” she said. “Who would issue or waive the visas?”

  “I’m very sorry, madam,” he said, addressing his desktop again. “I can only suggest you contact the committee.”

  He wrote a London address on a slip of paper and handed it to her.

  She said, “You can’t—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It is not within our purview.”

  He nodded to the next in line, leaving Ruchele with nothing to do but wheel her chair to the top of the stairs. There, Walter climbed down and politely tapped the arm of a man in line and said, “Excuse me, sir. My mutti needs help getting down the stairs.”

  Out on the street, Ruchele thanked the men who had helped carry her, and Walter took the handles of her wheelchair. He couldn’t see over it, but they had made it all the way from Leopoldstadt to the consulate this way, Ruchele telling her son to turn one way or another, to slow for a street corner, to stop at the edge of the walk to let Nazis pass. They would have to hurry now, to be off the streets before the Winterhilfe decree took effect.

  A Very Good Boy

  It seemed to Walter that he had been pushing Mutti in her wheelchair forever; it had grown so heavy. Mutti had grown silent too, when all the way to that place with the long line she had told him what to do and what a good boy he was. He lost his grip and the chair tilted forward, over a curb Mutti hadn’t warned him of.

  “Mutti?” he said. He looked around the chair to see his mother slumped forward, her eyes closed. “Mutti? Mutti!”

  A car swung wide around the corner, to avoid them. The one behind it honked. Passersby too gave them wide berth. It was because he’d yelled, because he was crying now, which good boys never did in public. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t stop. If only Mutti would wake up, he would stop crying, but she wouldn’t wake up and no one would help him wake her, because he was being such a very bad boy.

  He moved Mutti’s feet and climbed onto the footholds to push her shoulders up. Her head tilted back, so that her neck was all stretched white and horrible.

  “Mutti, please wake up,” he said. “Mutti, please wake up. Mutti, I’m sorry I yelled. Mutti, please wake up.”

  He took Peter Rabbit from Mutti’s lap and kissed his soft rabbit lips to her cheek, the way she always liked. “Mutti,” Peter Rabbit said, “can you please wake up? I will make Walter behave. I promise. Mutti, will you wake up for me? I’m a good little rabbit.”

  Walter wiped the snot from his nose on his sleeve before remembering he wasn’t supposed to do that, he was supposed to use the handkerchief in his pocket. “I’m sorry, Mutti. I forgot,” he said. “I forgot.” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket like he was supposed to, and he unfolded it like Papa taught him, and he blew his nose and wiped his eyes. He set Peter Rabbit upright in Mutti’s lap and touched the linen to Peter’s whiskery rabbit nose too, then carefully folded the square back along the pressed lines, and returned it to his pocket. He climbed down from the footholds and lifted Mutti’s feet back up on them, and looked ahead to see where the street ended and the sidewalk started again.

  He pushed the wheelchair across the street, trying to ignore the cars honking at him.

  Finally, a tall, stern woman who looked like Walter’s last teacher but wasn’t, stopped.

  “Is this your mother, son?” she asked. “I think we’d better get her to hospital.”

  Walter looked up into her kind face. “She isn’t allowed at hospital,” he said.

  “Oh, I see.” She glanced furtively about, then dipped her hat to shield her face. “All right, let’s hurry. I’ll help you home, but then you’ll have to run for someone else.”

  She pushed the chair quickly, Walter scurrying to keep up with her, saying “Sorry, sorry” to the other strollers.

  The woman hesitated at the bridge across the canal.

  A man from their apartment building, seeing them, stepped in and took the wheelchair in hand, muttering thanks to the woman. He wheeled Mutti to their room, Frau Isternitz from the next room joining them.

  “Can you find your uncle, sweetheart?” Frau Isternitz asked him. “The one who leaves the envelopes for your mother tucked under the bench on the promenade?”

  “Peter doesn’t like the park,” Walter said.

  “Your uncle would be at his office or at his home.”

  “Peter isn’t allowed to visit Uncle Michael.”

  “He— I see. All right, can you find your brother then? I’ll send someone to fetch Dr. Bergmann.”

  Walter sprinted off as fast as he could, crossing the bridge out of Leopoldstadt without even thinking whether he was allowed.

  Walter

  Otto opened the door to find Stephan’s little brother—what was the boy’s name?—standing in a thin coat without a scarf or gloves or hat.

  “It’s Mutti,” the boy said.

  He stooped to the little boy’s level. “Is she . . .”

  “She’s with Frau Isternitz from next door,” the boy said. “She won’t wake up.”

  Žofie came to the door and wrapped her arms around the boy, who began to cry.

  “It’s okay, Walter,” she told him. “We’ll make it okay. You run back and hold your mama’s hand. You run back and hold her hand and I’ll find Stephan—”

  Otto, looking first to make sure no one saw them, pulled the boy inside the little apartment, Käthe’s apartment where he had been caring for his grandchildren for days now since she’d been arrested. “Žofie-Helene, you cannot—”

  “Grandpapa Otto is going to go with you, Walter,” his granddaughter told the boy. “He’s going to collect our soup first, to take it to your mother.”

  She pulled on her coat. Otto tried to hold her, but she slipped his grasp and took off.

  Walter took off after her. She was already down the stairs, with the boy not far behind.

  “Žofie-Helene!” Otto called out. “No! I forbid you!”

  He scooped up Johanna and ran after them, hurrying down the stairs and out the door and around the corner, where he caught sight of Walter. The poor little boy stood there, alone in the empty street. Žofie-Helene was gone.

  The boy turned to him, and looked up at him bravely.

  “Žofie will find Stephan,” the boy said hopefully.

  “Žozo will find Stephan,” Johanna said.

  Walter slid his hand into Otto’s.

  Otto felt his insides crumble as surely as the clods of dirt he’d dropped onto his son’s grave. He shifted Johanna more securely on his hip, still holding tightly to the little boy’s fragile fingers, which might have been his own son’s fingers only yesterday. It was something no parent ought to have to endure: the death of a child.

  “Let me . . . Let me get the soup,” he said. “Let me settle Johanna with the neighbors.” Unsure who would take her; even the friendliest of their neighbors was afraid now to help the family of a subversive journalist who’d been taken into custody. But to take his granddaughter with him to help Jews? “Come with me, Walter. Let’s get inside. Let’s get you warm for a minute, then back to your mother. If she’s woken, she’ll be . . . She’ll be very worried.”

  The Hotel Bristol

  Truus left her coat on, trying to shake off the chill of her arrival, as she unpacked her overnight bag, setting her toiletries out in the empty bathroom, laying her carefully folded nightclothes on the empty bed as she waited for the hotel operator to ring her back. International calls could take only a few minutes to connect, or they could take as long as three or four hours. She hung her fresh blouse in the hotel room’s empty closet and was reaching for the new skirt when the telephone rang. She
felt a wash of relief despite knowing how high the charge for the call would be. Just a quick call to let Joop know she’d arrived.

  Even as the operator was announcing him, Joop’s beautiful voice was ringing, “Truus!”

  She told him the flight was a bit bumpy and the long layover in Berlin unpleasant, but she had arrived well enough and found her way easily to this perfectly comfortable hotel.

  “You will be careful, Truus? Just stay in the hotel until your meeting with this Eichmann character?”

  There wasn’t actually a meeting set up with Eichmann, not yet. The hope was that the man might open his door at Truus’s knock even though he’d declined to listen to the leaders of Vienna’s Jewish community. But Truus would not remind Joop of that now.

  “I’ll need to chat with the folks here for just a few minutes after the Sabbath ends,” she said lightly, trying to put him at ease.

  “Not in the hotel then.”

  “No, although I’m told they do look the other way for American Jews.”

  “Geertruida—”

  “In any event,” she interrupted before he could lay his fear for her like a paste on her own skin, “I need to see the facilities for organizing this, or to get them organizing if they aren’t already. I can’t just scoop up thousands of children and hide them in the train loo while I bribe border patrol.”

  She’d meant to make him laugh, but he only sighed.

  “Well, be there at sunset and get back to the hotel before it gets too dark?” he said.

  “There are hardly thirty minutes between sunset and the curfew, Joop. I won’t be late.”

  “Have something to eat. Get some rest. I love you, Truus. Do please be careful.”

  After they’d hung up, Truus opened the French doors for the fresh air. She stepped onto a balcony overlooking the Ringstrasse. The winter sun was slanting low, a wetness threatening. Still the boulevard was full of strollers, and the doors of the stunning opera house next door were open wide, the matinee just ending, she supposed. She watched and listened to people chatting, people laughing. She wondered what the production had been.