The Last Train to London

by Meg Waite Clayton

  “I know he does,” Mutti said, and she hugged Walter and Peter one last time.

  Stephan lifted the two suitcases.

  “His hand,” Mutti insisted.

  Stephan gave Walter the lighter suitcase, his own suitcase, and took Walter’s heavier one in his own hand. He intertwined his fingers with Walter’s, around one of Peter Rabbit’s ears.

  “Walter won’t remember us,” Mutti said quietly. “He’s too young. He won’t remember any of us, Stephan, except through you.”

  Numbers

  Westbahnhof station was already crowded when Stephan arrived with Walter. Everywhere, women held tightly to children clutching stuffed animals and dolls. Men in black hats and black beards and sidelocks said Hebrew blessings over young heads, but most of the families looked more like Stephan’s, most might have been any Vienna family but for the small suitcase on the platform beside each child.

  A mother who looked something like Mutti stood quietly in the crowd, a basket in one hand and a baby in the other. A father took a wailing child from his mother’s arms and scolded him to behave like a big boy. Everywhere, Nazis patrolled, many with dogs straining at their leashes.

  A man called names from a clipboard. A woman draped a numbered card fastened to a string over a boy’s neck, like a necklace, and affixed a tag with a matching number to his suitcase. The child, suitcase in hand, walked away from his parents, to the waiting train.

  The woman they’d been told to address as Tante Truus was arguing with one of the Nazis. The official was saying the cars would be sealed, to be opened only for the document check at the border leaving Germany.

  “The train must be sealed for the safety of everyone,” the official said.

  “But we’re allowed only six adults and there are ten cars,” Tante Truus objected. “Ten cars with sixty children each! Now you’re telling me the adults won’t be able to move from one car to another to check on the children?”

  “It’s an overnight train,” the official said. “Surely they will sleep.”

  Stephan was caught off guard by the sight of Žofie even though he’d known she would be here. He’d have been horrified if she hadn’t come. The train couldn’t go without every one of the six hundred, and she was one. She looked more grown up than he had ever seen her, with her hair long and loose down her back, still damp from having been washed, and her breasts below the necklace she always wore straining at the buttons of her coat. Even as she kissed her sister again and again, her big green eyes behind her glasses remained intent on her grandfather, who was telling her first one thing and then another, trying to pack a lifetime of advice into a goodbye, the same way Mutti had.

  A quiet settled over the station as Eichmann walked through with the awful dog at his side. Stephan shrank back as Tante Truus stepped forward.

  “Good morning, Herr Eichmann,” Tante Truus said.

  “Six hundred, Frau Wijsmuller,” Eichmann said without stopping. He disappeared up a staircase to the upper-level offices.

  Slowly, the station returned to life, more subdued now.

  Stephan wrapped Walter in a wordless hug. “Wall-man,” he said. He wanted to be like Žofie-Helene’s grandfather, he wanted to make sure Walter knew everything he would need to know for the rest of his life. But he could not form a word beyond this nickname for his brother. It seemed not enough. It seemed he ought at least to say his brother’s name. But to say “Walter” would alarm him. Wall-man. Steady and solid.

  Still holding tightly to Walter’s hand, as he had since they’d left Leopoldstadt—as Mutti had asked him to do all the way to England—Stephan walked over to join Žofie and her grandfather and sister. Only then did he kneel down to Walter’s level, to tell him the truth.

  “There was no room for me on this train, Walter.” Using his name now, so he would know how serious this was, and working so hard to keep his eyes steady. He so wanted to cry, but he needed to be the man his mother imagined. “But Žofie-Helene will be with you,” he continued. “She’ll take care of you just as if she were me, and I’ll be on the next train. I’ll be on the next train, and I’ll find you as soon as I arrive in England. I’ll find you wherever you are.”

  The tears began to stream down Walter’s face. “But you promised Mutti you would hold my hand all the way to England!”

  “Yes,” Stephan admitted, “but Žofie-Helene is me, see?”

  “No she’s not.”

  “Walter, Mutti wants us to go to England. You know that, right? You promised her you would be a good boy all the way to England.”

  “But with you, Stephan!”

  “Yes, with me. But the thing is, they can only take six hundred on this train, and I’m number six hundred and ten.”

  Žofie-Helene said, “It’s a very lucky number, Walter, six hundred and ten. It’s the sixteenth number in the Fibonacci sequence.”

  Walter looked up at her with the same doubt Stephan himself felt. She meant to reassure him, Stephan knew that. But the last lucky number today was an even six hundred. Why hadn’t he run faster?

  “Žofie-Helene is going to be me just for this little bit,” he said. “Just until I can get to England.”

  “Peter and I can go on the next train, with you.”

  “But you can’t, that’s the problem. If you don’t go on this train, none of the others can go. None of us will ever go.”

  “It’s binary,” Žofie-Helene said quietly. “Six hundred or none.”

  “But I’ll be on the next train,” Stephan assured him, without promising. He had resolved at some point—maybe when he’d learned earlier in the week that he’d been too late for the first train—that he would do whatever he needed to do to get Walter on the train with Žofie, that he would lie if he had to, but he would try his best to stay with some kind of truth. “Until I get there,” he told Walter, “Žofie-Helene will take care of you. Žofie-Helene will be me.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Walter’s nose. “You just remember that, Wall. Žofie-Helene is me.”

  That much was true, just as what he’d told Mutti had been true: that he would make sure Walter got safely to England. Žofie-Helene had promised to keep Walter with her, to take Stephan’s place.

  “Žofie-Helene is me,” he repeated one more time.

  “Except she’s smarter,” Walter said.

  Stephan smiled up at Žofie. “Yes, Žofie-Helene is me, but much smarter.” And so much more beautiful, he thought. “She’s me until I can join you, and I’ll be on the very next train, since I’m the sixteenth number of the Fibonacci sequence. I don’t know how many more they will take, but I’m sure it will be at least ten.”

  “And we’ll go to a family together?”

  “Yes. Exactly. I’ll find you in England, and we’ll go to a family together. But until then, you do whatever Žofie says, just like she’s me.”

  Walter took his own handkerchief out and touched it to Peter Rabbit’s nose.

  The man with the chart called a girl with bright red hair, and the aides draped her with a numbered placard and tagged her suitcases.

  Žofie-Helene said, “I think we’re next, Walter. Are you ready? You’d better give your brother a final hug.”

  Stephan held Walter close, breathing him in one last time as Žofie kissed her sister a dozen times more.

  The man called, “Walter Neuman. Žofie-Helene Perger.”

  Žofie handed her sister over to their grandfather, but the poor little girl began to wail, “I want to go with Žozo! I want to go with Žozo!”

  Stephan wanted to wail too. He wanted to grab Walter’s hand and Žofie’s too, and run. But there was nowhere to run to.

  Herr Perger said, “Be a good girl and make the way ready for your sister. We’ll get her on a train to you as soon as she turns four. Your mother and I will write. We’ll be coming too, as soon as we can arrange visas. But, Žofie, we will always be with you, no matter what. Like your father always watching over you as you do your maths, we will always be there.”<
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  Žofie-Helene took Walter’s hand with the rabbit ear, the same way Stephan always did. The two walked the few steps to the man with the clipboard. They ducked their heads as the women draped numbered placards around their necks.

  Number 522—that was Walter. And number 523—that was Žofie-Helene. Stephan fixed the numbers in his mind, as if they meant anything at all.

  Necklace

  Žofie straightened Walter’s number on the string around his neck. “Number five hundred and twenty-two! That’s a very special number,” she said. “It’s divisible evenly by one, two, three, six, and . . . let’s see . . . also eighteen, twenty-nine, eighty-seven, one hundred and seventy-four, and two hundred and sixty-one. And of course it’s divisible by itself, five hundred and twenty-two. So that means it has ten factors!”

  Walter looked up at Žofie-Helene’s number.

  “Mine is a prime number,” she said. “It’s not divisible by anything but one and itself. But that’s special in its own way.”

  Still Walter frowned. “Peter doesn’t need his own necklace?” he asked her.

  Žofie hugged Walter to her, then kissed his Peter Rabbit. “Peter gets to ride for free on your ticket, Walter. How about that?”

  She took his hand and they queued up at the train carriage Herr Friedmann had directed them to, behind the redhead from in front of them in line when they registered. As they waited, Tante Truus came over.

  “Žofie-Helene, you are a good, smart girl,” she said. “For this car, I’m putting you in charge. Do you understand? There will be no adult, so you will have to make very smart decisions for everyone. Can you do that for Herr Friedmann and me?”

  Žofie nodded. Tante Truus, looking at her, seemed suddenly alarmed. Had she said something wrong? But she hadn’t said anything at all.

  “Sweetheart, you can’t take that necklace,” Tante Truus said.

  Žofie fingered her infinity symbol necklace, her father’s tie tack that Grandpapa had made into a necklace. It was the only bit of her father she had left.

  “Take it to your grandfather,” Tante Truus said. “Go quickly now.”

  Žofie ran back and handed the necklace not to Grandpapa but to Stephan. She kissed him on his scarred lips, which were wet with his tears and slightly swollen, and so soft and warm they made her insides go soft and warm too. It was all she could do not to cry.

  “Someday you’ll write a play that makes people feel like that music does, I know you will,” she said, and she hurried back to the line, took Walter’s hand, and climbed onto the train.

  A Seventeen-Year-Old Jewish Boy

  All around the station, parents waited expectantly, devastated to be saying goodbye to their children while so many others—parents who’d helped pack suitcases for their children in the awful hope that they would get the chance they had not yet been given—were devastated not to be saying goodbye. So many little Adeles. So many mothers’ faces filled with the same sad hope that Adele’s mother had shown that morning in the Hamburg station. Truus wondered how Recha Freier had told Adele’s mother about the child’s death, and how Frau Weiss had borne it, how much she must blame Truus for taking the child from her, or blame herself for giving Adele up to be taken. How could this be the right thing to do, to take children from their parents?

  She scanned the station for Eichmann, wondering where the cruel man was now.

  “We can’t pull the child from his bed and put him on the train,” Frau Grossman was saying to Truus and Desider Friedmann, her voice low lest the Nazi patrol overhear. “The lot of them would have the measles before they arrived in Harwich, and the whole effort would halt. Surely there is another seven-year-old boy we could send in his place.”

  “Obersturmführer Eichmann has the cards,” Truus said. “The Germans will check them before the train is allowed to leave Germany.”

  So many grieving parents waited for a final wave goodbye to children who now might not even leave on account of one sick little boy. It was the problems you failed to anticipate . . .

  “We’ll have to find a child who can pass for the child in the photo,” she said, “and who is very good at pretending.”

  “But the risk if the lie is found out,” Herr Friedmann objected with a nervous glance up to a second-floor window overlooking the platform.

  Truus followed his gaze to the man and his dog standing perfectly still up there, observing. She thought, oddly, of her mother standing at their window in Duivendrecht on that snowy morning two decades ago now. She supposed this man was laughing even though she had no snowman this time. His laugh would be of a far different sort than her mother’s had been.

  “What choice do we have?” she said softly. “Without him no child will leave, not now and likely not ever.”

  The three of them scanned the faces of parents searching the train windows for their children, others wishing for that chance, praying for that chance.

  Truus caught sight of the older boy whom that dear little Žofie-Helene—Žofie, to be more “efficient”—had brought to her, only too late for him to be allowed on this first train. What was his name? She prided herself on being good at names, but six hundred was so many to remember, and he wasn’t even in the six hundred. He stood, with a suitcase on the ground beside him, watching the carriage into which Žofie-Helene had taken his little brother. Truus did remember him—the little boy, Walter Neuman. Walter Neuman and his brother, Stephan.

  Truus followed Stephan’s gaze to see Žofie, inside the train carriage, wiping the condensation from a window, then little Walter holding a stuffed animal up to look through the glass while Žofie helped another child settle.

  “That boy, Stephan Neuman,” she whispered to Herr Friedmann and Frau Grossman, and before they could object, she took the placard and luggage tag and hurried over to Stephan.

  “Get on the last car, Stephan,” she whispered, handing him the numbers. “I’ll be there in a minute. If you’re asked before I get there, say your name is Carl Füchsl and they’ve made a mistake on your age. Go on, quickly.”

  The boy took the placard and grabbed his suitcase, repeating, “Carl Füchsl.”

  “The boy is ten years too old!” Herr Friedmann objected as the boy hurried to the train.

  “We’ve no time,” Truus said, careful not to look to Eichmann at the window, to avoid the appearance of doing anything out of the ordinary on this queer morning. “We must get this train on its way before there is any hint of a problem.”

  “But he’s—”

  “He’s a clever boy. He’s successfully evaded arrest for weeks. And I’ve put him in the last carriage, with me.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “He is a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Herr Friedmann. He’ll likely age out before we can arrange a second train.”

  She turned the list over to a Nazi official, to be taken to Eichmann for his approval before they could leave.

  The Other Mother

  Žofie was trying to get a mute little thumb-sucking boy to take a seat when Walter called out, “Stephan!” and climbed over the child on the seat next to him. He raced down the aisle toward the carriage door.

  “Walter, no! Stay on the train!” she called, hurrying after him, seeing Stephan now out on the platform, veering from the carriage behind them toward Walter.

  Stephan bounded into their car, lifted Walter high in the air, and laughed, the scar on his lip almost disappearing with the wide stretch of his smile. “I’m here, Wall! I’m here!”

  Žofie, at the carriage door, searched the crowded station until she found Grandpapa, his back to the train. Johanna watched Žofie over Grandpapa’s shoulder.

  “Žozo, I want to go with you!” Johanna called out.

  “I love you, Johanna!” Žofie called back, trying so hard not to weep now, not to think that she might never see Jojo or Grandpapa or Mama ever again. “I love you!” she shouted. “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

  A woman on the platform whose children had not
been called became hysterical.

  Stephan took Žofie’s hand as Nazis emerged from every corner and surrounded the woman and her children, the barking of dogs fierce around her, fierce all over the station.

  One of the dogs broke his leash, or was let go. He was on the woman, ripping at her clothes as Nazis beat her with batons.

  In the panic, parents rushed the platform.

  “Žofie-Helene,” someone said, a woman’s voice.

  The woman from the registration line, the baby’s mother with the lilac eyes, stood weeping just outside the train. She set a picnic basket into the carriage, at Žofie’s feet.

  “Thank you,” Žofie said reflexively.

  From inside the basket came a cooing noise.

  The mother looked up at Žofie, as panicked as Žofie herself felt.

  “Shhhhhhh,” the mother said. “Shhhhhhhh.”

  She said something else, but Žofie was no longer listening, Žofie, sobbing now, was calling out, “Jojo! Grandpapa! Wait!”

  Grandpapa disappeared around a corner, Johanna with him.

  “Please take care of her, Žofie-Helene Perger,” the lilac-eyed mother said.

  The mother stepped back as a Nazi closed the carriage door, locking them in. The clank of the train brakes releasing sounded, and they began to move slowly forward. Outside the carriage door’s window, the lilac-eyed mother watched as the space between them grew. A father climbed onto the side of the moving car, calling to a child. Other parents ran beside the train, weeping, waving, calling out love, as the train picked up speed.

  Inside the car, the children watched silently as the father let go and tumbled to the ground beside the tracks. They watched as first the parents and then the station receded. As the snow-dusted Ferris wheel grew smaller and smaller. As the Vienna roofline disappeared.

  Five Hundred

  Snowflakes hit and melted on Stephan’s window, beyond which it was nearly as dark as the underground back home. The train clacked over the tracks, slowing and rocking at a curve. Children in the rows ahead ate food their parents had packed, or chatted or sat quietly, or practiced English, or slept, or pretended not to cry. Walter lay in Stephan’s lap in the back row, with his head on Peter Rabbit up against a window. In the row across the aisle, Žofie changed the baby’s diaper, at the same time retelling a Sherlock Holmes story to three children crowding the seat ahead of her.