The Last Train to London

by Meg Waite Clayton

  “You Viennese and your ridiculous Ferris wheel,” Eichmann said angrily. “Six hundred trains delivered by seven this evening.”

  He turned and left the office, the dog at perfect heel beside him.

  Mercifully, Anita stood with the elevator gate open—not a smart girl by any means, but she did have an uncanny sense for what was needed. As the elevator door closed off the man and beast, she mouthed to Michael, “He was made to leave his wife and children back in Germany.”

  Hiding Infinity

  The children sat, silent and wide-eyed, as a border guard entered the carriage. Stephan, on the back seat, held Walter’s hand firmly in his. Žofie-Helene sat across the aisle with the thumb-sucking boy beside her and the basket with the baby at her feet. The mercifully silent baby. But if the soldier began tearing through the car, if the children started screaming like children on the other carriages had, the baby would wail. She was just a baby.

  Stephan wished Tante Truus were here with them. He wished she knew about the baby, knew how to explain the baby. But she’d disappeared with one of the other adults, following the twins Walter did not want to join any more than Stephan did.

  “Everyone will stand,” the border guard demanded.

  They all obeyed, and the guard looked them over, his eyes lighting when he noticed Žofie-Helene. Stephan didn’t like that at all: the way the man eyed Žofie’s long hair and her big green eyes, her breasts straining at her blouse.

  The guard, as if sensing his thoughts had been read, turned his gaze to Stephan. Stephan, with Walter’s hand in his, looked to the carriage floor.

  Her necklace, he remembered. Žofie-Helene’s necklace that was too valuable to be taken on the train—her necklace that Tante Truus had sent her back to leave with Herr Perger—was in Stephan’s pocket.

  The guard, still watching Stephan, said, “I will call your name, and you will repeat it, and only when I nod will you sit.”

  The guard began reading from a list, checking after each name to see which of the children repeated it, and nodding. Stephan, after each name, tried to judge whether he might surreptitiously take a seat. Carl Füchsl wasn’t meant to be on this car; what had he been thinking? He was ten years older than the boy whose name he was to listen for, a boy who was supposed to be on another carriage. And he hadn’t even thought to tell Walter or Žofie about it.

  The guard, as if suspecting that Stephan meant somehow to deceive him, glanced back at him again and again as he read the list, and, one by one, the children sat.

  I’m an impostor, Stephan thought. I’m an impostor who will be given away by my unsuspecting brother. I’ll be beaten this time the way Papa was beaten, or shot the way that man was shot outside the burning synagogue as he watched his wife bleed to death.

  The guard called out the name of the cross-eyed redhead Walter said had been in front of them in the line when they signed up. The man stared at her, disgusted, before checking off her name. He repeated her name and told her she could sit.

  “Walter Neuman,” the guard called out.

  Walter repeated his name, and the guard looked at him still holding tightly to Stephan’s hand, his Peter Rabbit held to his chest.

  The guard made a check mark on the list and said, “You may sit, but the rabbit stands.”

  Walter, terrified, clung to Peter and stared.

  The guard said, “You Jews have no sense of humor.”

  Stephan leaned down to whisper to Walter, “Peter rides on your ticket, he does whatever you do,” thinking it didn’t matter about himself but he had to keep Walter safe.

  “Žofie-Helene Perger,” the guard called.

  Žofie repeated, “Žofie-Helene Perger.”

  The guard looked her up and down but didn’t nod, as if he wanted her to sit before he’d allowed it, to have that excuse to do something to her. Stephan didn’t want to think what it was the guard might do. He felt Walter’s little hand in his. He couldn’t afford to think about what the guard might do to Žofie-Helene.

  Žofie stood calmly, waiting—so sure and beautiful, like he imagined the woman from Zweig’s Amok must look. Everything here running amok, like it did in the story. The necklace. The baby. The Kaleidoscope that was too dangerous to have been brought, but he hadn’t been coming on the train when he’d packed his suitcase, he’d been number 610. He watched the guard, seeing the obsession of the doctor from Zweig’s story in the man’s hungry look at Žofie, or perhaps in his own reaction to the guard’s hunger.

  Looking through her smudged glasses.

  The notebook. Everything he’d written in it. They would need nothing more to condemn him than his own writing, even if they believed him to be this Carl Füchsl he was not, even if they accepted the mistake of ten years on the paperwork, even if Walter did not, in failing to understand what had not been explained to him—why hadn’t he thought to explain it?—give him away.

  The border guard took a step toward them.

  Still, the baby was quiet.

  The guard approached Žofie, closer, then closer and closer until he was in the aisle between Stephan and Žofie, facing Žofie but so close that Stephan could reach out, Stephan could put his hands around the man’s skinny neck. No more a man than Stephan himself, he realized, and Mutti’s voice echoed, I know you’re young, but you must be the man now. All over Germany, boys were masquerading as men.

  The guard reached out and touched Žofie’s hair, the way Stephan had longed to touch it since he’d seen her at the station, her hair flowing loose and wavy down her back.

  The guard nodded.

  Žofie stood regarding him.

  Don’t do it, Žofie, Stephan thought. Don’t do anything. Just take your seat.

  Stephan raised Walter’s hand in his, so that Žofie might see it, and he coughed, a quick, stifled sound.

  Neither Žofie nor the guard turned. From outside, the sounds of the search. A dog barking.

  Stephan put a finger to his lips, willing Walter to remain silent. “It’s okay, Wall,” he said, whispering loudly, as if he meant not to be heard.

  Žofie and the guard both turned at the sound of his voice in the silent carriage.

  When the guard turned back to Žofie, he nodded again and, mercifully, Žofie sat.

  The guard returned to the front of the carriage and read the last few names one at a time. Stephan watched with growing dread as each child took his seat.

  Only Stephan was left standing.

  The guard said, “You are not on the list.”

  Stephan said, “Carl Füchsl.”

  Walter looked up at him. Stephan swallowed nervously, willing his brother not to give him away. The seconds ticked as slowly as centuries. Sweat trickled down his back, and gathered on his hairless lip. Why hadn’t he listened to Tante Truus? Why hadn’t he done what she’d told him to do?

  The guard looked him up and down.

  Stephan stood absolutely still, Walter’s hand in his, which was damp, too, wet skin against wet skin.

  The guard examined his list as if the mistake might be his—nearly as afraid as Stephan was, in his own way. When had the world begun to run on nothing but fear?

  “Carl Füchsl,” the guard repeated.

  Stephan nodded.

  “You will spell it,” the guard demanded.

  Stephan tried not to show the alarm he felt: a boy would never misspell his own name.

  “C–A—”

  “Your surname, you fool,” the man said.

  Žofie said, “He’s number one hundred and twenty.”

  The guard turned to her.

  “It’s five factorial,” she said.

  The guard stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “We’re all identified by number,” she said. “It will be easier to find him by his number.”

  The guard eyed her for an uncomfortable moment, then turned and left the carriage. Stephan watched him step down to the platform, then go to consult with an officer.

  He said to Walter, “
It’s our secret, Wall, but if anyone asks, I’m Carl Füchsl, okay?”

  He took Žofie’s necklace from his pocket and stuck it in the seam of the seat behind him, where no one was sitting, no one else could be blamed. There was no hiding the book or the notebook, but he could hide the necklace, at least.

  He repeated, “I’m Carl Füchsl. Number one hundred and twenty.”

  “It’s five factorial, a very lucky number,” Žofie-Helene said.

  “I’m Carl Füchsl,” Stephan said a third time.

  “Forever?” Walter asked.

  “Just until we get to England,” Stephan said.

  “After the boat,” Walter said.

  “Yes, after we get off the ferry,” Stephan agreed.

  “Is Žofie-Helene still you, then?”

  The guard reappeared at the front of the car. “You are on the wrong carriage, Carl Füchsl,” he said. “Now you will all open your luggage and empty your pockets.”

  Stephan, with no choice, opened his suitcase along with the others. The edges of his book’s pages were wavy with the dampness from the diapers. His journal too was damp, but not likely so damp as to be unreadable.

  As the guard went through other children’s suitcases, Stephan surreptitiously wrapped the diapers around the book and the journal, then wrapped the whole mess up in his single change of clothes.

  The guard picked through the children’s belongings, tossing them so that they landed on the dirty carriage floor. No one questioned him. When he found a photo of one of the children’s family in a small silver frame, he made the child strip his clothes off, and he shook them out. When he found nothing else, he pocketed the frame, photograph and all, and continued on to the next child. He found a gold coin hidden in another girl’s coat lining, and he smacked the child hard across the face so that her lip split open. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she remained silent as he pocketed the coin.

  Just as the border guard reached Žofie and Walter and him in the last row, the smell of excrement filled the air.

  The guard looked to the little thumb-sucking boy.

  Please, make the mistake, Stephan thought.

  The guard looked from the boy to the basket at Žofie’s feet. He looked to Žofie, then to the basket again. He licked his lips and swallowed, a hard Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny, hairless neck.

  Stephan held Walter’s hand tightly and said, “The basket is mine.”

  “It’s not,” Žofie insisted. “It’s mine.”

  They all waited for the border guard to demand they open the basket. In the silence, the baby cooed. Just one small sound. One unmistakable baby sound.

  The guard looked as terrified as Stephan felt.

  “What is taking so long here?” a voice demanded.

  A second border guard entered at the front of the car, and the first snapped to a salute, saying, “Heil Hitler!” He glanced at the basket; he didn’t want to be the one to turn in a baby, Stephan could see that in his face now, but he couldn’t be caught letting an unlisted child go, and there were no babies listed for this train.

  “Ugh,” the second border guard said. “These dirty Jews, they don’t even know how to use a toilet.”

  The whole car watched him.

  “If they’re all in order here, we’re rid of them,” he said to the first guard. “They’ll be the problem of the Dutch.”

  In Another Direction

  Žofie leaned over, trying to quiet the baby still in the basket as the train crept out of the station, toward a red hut and a dirty white fence hung with a Nazi flag. Was that the border with the Netherlands? The train stopped suddenly, knocking Žofie’s head against the seat back in front of her. The train lurched forward, and stopped again.

  The children sat silently, waiting, the only noise the baby, who fussed as the train jerked.

  The train began to move slowly backward, away from the red house.

  Walter said to Stephan, “Are we going back home to Mutti?” with the same hopefulness a small bit of Žofie felt too, the part that imagined that if she had a second try at this she could at least bring her sister with her, that if a baby with no one at all to take care of her could come, then Jojo could too.

  The train stopped again. From outside, the clanking of metal being struck by a hammer rang out.

  The children sat perfectly still and quiet, terrified.

  The train lurched slightly again; it was hard to tell in which direction, but it was only the one little bit. Žofie looked to Stephan. He had no more idea than she did what was happening.

  The train began moving so slowly that she couldn’t tell which way they were going. There ought to be some paradox for this, she thought as she watched the red house, trying to tell if it was getting closer or farther away. But if there was one, she couldn’t call it to mind.

  The train whistle sounded, the train moving forward now, Žofie was pretty sure of it. The little red house was getting closer, wasn’t it? She watched expectantly, focused on the swastika flag, the red house, the coal piles behind it.

  Stephan came to her seat, settled next to her, and pulled Walter up into his lap. He put his arm around her shoulder, his touch somehow heavy and light at the same time. The Stephan-is-touching-me paradox. He didn’t say anything. He just sat with his arm around her, and Walter held Peter Rabbit to her face and made a kissing noise, quietly, and she tried not to think of the Peter Rabbit she never did buy for Jojo.

  Slowly at first, then more quickly, the flag and the red house and the coal piles grew larger in her vision, although of course not in reality. They were passing the house, the sound of the train on the tracks changing from tjoek-tjoek-tjoek-tjoek to tjoeketoek-tjoeketoek-tjoeketoek, when a jubilant “Hurrah!” sounded from the carriage behind them, where Tante Truus was. The children around her, hearing the others, took up the cheer, “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  Carl Füchsl

  The train stopped again just minutes later, this time at a station in the Netherlands, where there were no soldiers and no dogs. A woman in a white-fur-collared coat approached the carriage with a huge tray of packages of some sort in hand. She tapped on the dirty window three seats ahead of where Žofie sat, and one of the older children opened it. The carriage doors were still locked.

  “Who would like cookies?” the woman asked, and she began handing the packages to the little hands reaching out the window. She told them there were baked goods and butter and milk coming, but they could eat the cookies now, they could eat as many cookies as they wanted, even before they had proper food.

  “Not so many that it will make you sick, though!” the woman said brightly, and she held the tray up to the window, and the three children there passed the packages back to everyone before they took ones for themselves.

  All the length of the carriage, other windows were lowered.

  Žofie saw, outside her own dirty window, Tante Truus enfolded into the arms of a man who kissed the top of her head. Žofie felt the weight of Stephan’s arm still across the back of her hair, his hand on her shoulder. She thought of Mary Morstan, of Dr. Watson talking of his sad bereavement in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” and later moving back in to No. 221B Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes. She couldn’t say why she felt so sad when everyone was so happy.

  The doors were unsealed, and more women boarded with more food and with hugs and kisses, strangers mothering these strange children in this strange new country. Walter hopped down from Stephan’s lap, and Stephan hurried after him. The little thumb-sucking boy did too, leaving Žofie alone with baby Johanna, who slept in the basket despite all the commotion.

  Johanna was such a good baby. Žofie wanted to take the infant in her arms, but she was afraid these women might take her away.

  She watched through the dirty window as, out on the platform, Tante Truus spoke to the man who had kissed her head, then left him and boarded the front carriage, taking one of the chaperones with her. A minute or two later, she debarked the front c
arriage and climbed onto the second one.

  Women escorted children from the front carriage. Not all of them. Just a few.

  In the carriage around Žofie, children returned to their seats, carrying milk cartons and chattering, released from the prison of their fears. Žofie wanted to feel that way too. Stephan and Walter and the boy who never had told her his name returned with a carton of milk for her. She set it on the seat beside her before anyone else could sit there.

  Stephan looked from the milk carton to her. She looked away from the little bit of hurt there in his eyes. He sat in the seat across the aisle, and the boys climbed up next to him.

  Tante Truus boarded their carriage and called for everyone’s attention. The carriage quieted, all eyes turned to her. She explained that most of the children would be going on through the Netherlands all the way to Hook of Holland, where they would board a ferry for England. There wasn’t room for all of them on the first ferry, though. There was only room for five hundred. So her friends had arranged for one hundred of the children to stay in the Netherlands for just two days, until the ferry returned for them.

  “I want to go wherever you go, Stephan,” Walter said.

  Stephan leaned close to him and whispered, “Can you remember to call me ‘Carl’ until we get to England? It won’t be long now.”

  Walter nodded earnestly.

  Tante Truus said a friend of hers named Mrs. Van Lange would come to read from a list of names, and those children were to go with the ladies. There would be hot chocolate for them in the station, she said, and beds for them to sleep in. Suddenly all the children wanted to stay in the Netherlands.

  ŽOFIE WAS SURPRISED to see that Tante Truus’s friend was pregnant. She stood at the head of the carriage and read a dozen names of children who were then taken in hand by the ladies, their suitcases found. She seemed so nice that Žofie considered telling her about the baby. Surely if she was about to have her own baby, she would let Žofie keep Johanna.