The Last Train to London

by Meg Waite Clayton

  Nineteen Candles

  Stephan woke with a start, disoriented by the dreary little cabin and his brother tucked up against him in the bunk. Today was his eighteenth birthday. If he were still in Vienna, he would no longer be allowed in the Kindertransport program. He was already in England, but he hadn’t yet been placed with a family. Would they send him back?

  He closed his eyes and imagined waking up in his own warm bed, in the palais on the Ringstrasse that he’d never considered might belong to anyone but his family, even after the Nazis had taken it. He imagined descending the marble stairway under the crystal chandeliers, touching each sculpture at each turn all the way down to the stone woman at the bottom, the one with breasts like Žofie’s. He imagined passing the paintings in the entry hall—the birch trunks with their funny perspective; the Klimt of Malcesine on Lake Garda, where they sometimes spent summer holidays; the Kokoschka of Aunt Lisl. He imagined entering the music room, Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 playing—his favorite. He imagined a cake made with his father’s finest chocolate and cooked by Mutti even last year, when she’d had to take to her bed the entire day from the exhaustion of making a simple cake. His father would light his birthday candles as he had every birthday of Stephan’s life, until this one. Nineteen candles, it would have been, one for each year and one for luck. And Stephan would have watched out the window for Žofie, with a new play in hand for her to read. He ought to write another play. He ought to write one in English, his new language. But he wasn’t sure he could bear to write about this place.

  He wouldn’t say anything to anyone about it being his birthday. Not to Walter. Not even to Žofie-Helene.

  He dressed in the freezing room, and woke all the boys and helped them dress, and hurried everyone across the cold yard to the main building. He set the boys loose to play, Walter going off with them, he was glad to see. He watched his brother for a moment before looking around for Žofie, who stood at the end of a long post office line.

  He joined her and they waited patiently, amusing the baby. When their turn came, Stephan was handed a letter and a package, which he barely had time to be surprised about before Žofie said, “Look, Stephan!” and thrust an envelope at him—one addressed not in her grandfather’s back-slanting hand like his own envelope was, but in a gracefully looped script.

  She handed the baby to Stephan and tore open the envelope.

  Stephan set his letter and package on one of the long tables lest he drop the baby. His letter was as always addressed in Mutti’s handwriting to both Walter and him, with the address in Herr Perger’s. He would save it until Walter was done playing; he was glad for his brother to be making friends. But the package was addressed to him alone, not also to Walter, and in a tidier hand than Mutti’s or Herr Perger’s. With no postmark?

  “It’s from Mama!” Žofie-Helene exclaimed. “They’re in Czechoslovakia! Mama was released last week and they went immediately. They’re out of Hitler’s reach.”

  She began to cry, then, and Stephan, with the baby in one arm, awkwardly put his other arm around her, hugging her and the baby together. “Hey, don’t cry,” he said. “They’re safe.”

  Žofie only sobbed more violently. “They’re all together,” she said, “and now they won’t ever come to England, not even Johanna.”

  Stephan took the letter with his free hand and scanned it. “Your mother says they’ll apply for English visas from Czechoslovakia, Žofe. It won’t take long; it’s much faster for non-Jews. I bet they’ll be here by spring.”

  STEPHAN DIDN’T THINK again about his own mail until Žofie had stopped crying and was sitting down for porridge and milk poured from the big white jugs. As he eased the package open, Žofie grinned.

  “It’s your birthday!”

  “Shhh,” he said, and she looked suddenly alarmed. Eighteen.

  He extracted from the brown paper outer wrapping a book, carefully gift-wrapped and ribboned. He peeled back the paper to reveal a brand-new volume: Stefan Zweig’s Kaleidoscope—the book that had been his father’s, that his father had given to him and he had given to Žofie, that Žofie had brought back to him during those awful days when he was living in the Vienna underground.

  “What a beautiful book,” Žofie said.

  Stephan opened the cover and turned the pages. “It’s in English.”

  Žofie said, “It’s signed, Stephan. Look. It’s inscribed by Stefan Zweig. ‘From one writer to another, with birthday wishes from a woman who admires you very much.’”

  “‘From one writer to another, with birthday wishes from a woman who admires you very much,’” Stephan repeated.

  “It’s from your mother?”

  Stephan eyed her skeptically. Was she being coy? His mother would have identified herself in the inscription. His mother would have written “love” rather than “admire.”

  He combed through the cast-off wrapping, thinking if it really wasn’t from Žofie, whoever sent it must have included a note. But there was nothing more to indicate where it had come from. No card. Not even a name or a return address on the package.

  “It didn’t come in the post,” he said. “No postmark.” Which meant it had to be from Žofie.

  “It was hand delivered?” Žofie said.

  “Žofie,” he said, “I hate to tell you, but no one here knows it’s my birthday today except you. Even Walter doesn’t remember, or realize.”

  The expression on her face: the sudden shame. She didn’t have anything for him. Of course she didn’t have anything for him. None of them had anything.

  “I bet it’s from your mother,” she said.

  But who besides Žofie even knew that this was the very book he’d brought with him, that his copy had been wrapped in wet diapers, then vomited on by his brother? Who besides Žofie might imagine he’d kept the ruined volume? Ruined. Unable ever to be read again.

  “You must be right,” he said, unconvinced. “And the letter is definitely from Mutti!” It was postmarked Czechoslovakia. Herr Perger must have had it to mail for Mutti when Žofie’s mother was released and they fled Austria. He supposed he should count himself lucky that Herr Perger had remembered to mail it at all. He hoped his mother would be able to find someone else to mail her letters. They were what kept Walter going, washing his face every Sunday morning and putting on his best clothes, taking off his coat to sit in the big, cold room to be picked over again. He supposed he ought to wait to open the letter with Walter, but Walter was playing happily, and it was his own birthday, after all.

  He opened the envelope, extracted the thin paper inside, and read: Birthday greeting from Vienna.

  Mutti was sorry she couldn’t send him a gift to mark the occasion, but he was a man now, he was eighteen, and she wanted him to know how very proud of him she was.

  The Unchosen

  Žofie-Helene sat yet again at a long table with baby Johanna, watching Stephan. Grandpapa would have said he needed a haircut, but then all the boys still at the Warner’s Holiday Camp now needed haircuts. Žofie liked this more casual Stephan, though. He looked spiffy, if cold too, without his coat and gloves.

  He took Walter’s coat off and straightened his shirt collar and blazer. “One more time, Wall-man,” he said.

  Walter said, “Peter doesn’t like the way the grown-ups look at him.”

  “I know,” Stephan said. “I’m beginning to feel like a rotten apple in the market too. But it hasn’t been that long. One more time, c’mon.”

  “Good afternoon. It’s very nice for you to visit us,” Walter said without enthusiasm.

  Žofie snuggled into the baby’s neck, thinking of the real Jojo at Grandmère Betta’s now, with Mama and Grandpapa. Maybe someday Stephan would make a play about this, one with a character like this pleasant-looking woman already approaching Walter. He was such a cute little boy. He would already be with a nice family if Stephan would only let him go, but each time she tried to raise it with Stephan, he only said he had promised his mother, and anyway, she was
one to talk. But surely now that he was eighteen—too old for a family even if he was pretending not to be—he would let his brother go.

  The woman said to Walter, “What’s your name, little boy?”

  Stephan answered, as he always did, “He’s Walter Neuman. I’m his brother, Stephan.”

  Žofie sighed.

  Walter said, “Good afternoon. It’s very nice for you to visit us. This is Peter Rabbit. He comes with us too.”

  The woman said, “I see. You boys want to stay together?”

  This was what the parents always said when they realized they would have to take Stephan with Walter.

  Žofie said, “Stephan is a very talented playwright.”

  “A baby!” the woman exclaimed. “I thought there weren’t any babies!” She dangled her keys in front of Johanna, and the baby reached for them, cooing.

  Žofie let her take Johanna. She always let people she liked hold the baby. It was hard for them to give the baby back.

  “Oh yes, I do believe I have just the home for you,” the woman said to Johanna.

  Žofie asked in her best English, “Where do you live?”

  The woman, taken aback, repeated, “Where do I live?” She laughed warmly, the kind of elliptical laugh Žofie associated with the best kind of person. “Well, we have a place on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, don’t we, dear?” she said. “And Melford Hall in the country.”

  Žofie said, “That sounds very nice.”

  “It is, yes. It is indeed.”

  Žofie said, “Is it near Cambridge?”

  “Melford Hall? It is actually. Yes.”

  “I could be the baby’s nanny,” Žofie said. “I took care of Johanna while I was working with Professor Gödel. At the University of Vienna. I helped him with a generalized continuum hypothesis.”

  “Oh! I . . . But . . . Well, I don’t know how Nanny Bitt would like that. She’s been with us since my Andrew was born, and he’s about your age now, I’d venture. Are you . . . the baby’s . . . sister?”

  Žofie-Helene watched her, trying to decide how best to respond. Something different was needed, she knew that, but she didn’t know what.

  Johanna reached for her then, saying, “Mama!”

  The woman, startled, handed Johanna back to Žofie-Helene and hurried off.

  Žofie called after her, “Johanna and Žofie-Helene Perger.”

  She turned to Stephan, who was staring at Johanna.

  “I didn’t know the baby could talk,” he said.

  Žofie said, “I didn’t either!”

  She nuzzled in the baby’s warm little neck, saying, “You’re a smart Johanna, you are.”

  * * *

  THE PRAGUE GAZETTE

  * * *

  LIMITED REFUGEE BILL FOR CHILDREN PROPOSED IN U.S. CONGRESS

  * * *

  Bill urgently opposed by organizations concerned for needy Americans

  BY KÄTHE PERGER

  PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, February 15, 1939 — A bipartisan bill has been introduced into America’s Senate by Robert F. Wagner of New York and into its House of Representatives by Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, calling for the admission over a period of two years of 20,000 German refugee children under the age of 14. Numerous charities are working in earnest to obtain support for the bill, against fierce opposition born of the fear that support for foreign-born children will come at the expense of needy Americans.

  Loosening of immigration restrictions against Reich citizens is urgently needed in light of the vile treatment of those of Jewish descent in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, which was ceded to Germany under the Munich Pact executed last September in exchange for peace. Despite the pact, Germany has recently renewed threats to destroy our city unless Czech borders are opened to its troops . . .

  Another Letter

  Stephan curled up, his arms wrapped around Walter—too early for bed, but it was dark already and it was cold and, anyway, what did it matter what they did? He tried not to think about the letter, the sixth since his birthday, one letter continuing to arrive each week. His name and Walter’s in Mutti’s hand, and the letter inside beginning as it always did, saying how much Mutti missed them, but she wanted them to know she was fine. The rest of the letter reporting the doings of her neighbors in her little apartment in Leopoldstadt, in Vienna. But the envelope again was addressed in Herr Perger’s hand, again postmarked Czechoslovakia, with Czech stamps pasted over the Austrian ones.

  On the Beach

  Stephan, Walter, Žofie, and the baby sat on a blanket on the sand, Žofie working through a proof in the notebook in her lap, Stephan writing in his journal. Winter had broken, the sand now more golden and the ocean bluer with the bright sky. If it wasn’t exactly warm, still it was pleasant enough to sit outside in their coats, with the sea lapping up toward them, just out of reach.

  Walter threw his storybook onto the blanket, complaining, “I can’t read this at all!”

  Stephan closed his eyes, seeing still the sunshine through the thin skin of his eyelids, feeling the guilt of it all: of ignoring his brother for days as he wrote on the typewriter Mark Stevens, one of the students who taught the children English and a fellow Zweig fan, had brought him; of wanting last Sunday to hand Walter over to some parent, any parent; of the disappointment Mutti would feel in him.

  He put his arm around his brother and opened the book. “Can Peter help us read it?” he asked. “He’s very good at reading in English.”

  “He’s better even than you,” Walter said, cuddling up into Stephan’s side, needing love. Of course he needed love. Of course Stephan couldn’t turn him over to some stranger. Only sometimes Stephan imagined what he might do himself, unburdened of the care of his brother. Sometimes he imagined leaving this camp and getting a job somewhere, any job, where he could begin a life for himself, make money to buy books and paper of his own, have proper time to write.

  Stephan said to Walter, “Remember all the books in Papa’s library? I bet Peter could read them all now.”

  Hearing Mutti’s voice: Walter won’t remember us. He’s too young. He won’t remember any of us, Stephan, except through you.

  Johanna took off crawling over the blanket, toward the sand, and Žofie tossed her notebook aside to scoop the baby up, saying, “Oh no you don’t!”

  “Mama,” the baby replied.

  “I’m not Mama, silly,” Žofie said warmly. “Mama is for whatever lady takes us home.”

  Stephan, watching them, fingered the script in his satchel—the satchel also from Mark. “I wrote a new play,” he said, gathering his nerve and pulling it out, handing it to her. “I thought you might read it and tell me what you think.”

  There, it was done. It was said. It had to be.

  As she took the pages, Stephan scooped up Walter and stood, setting his brother to stand on the sand beside him.

  “Race you!” he said, the way his father used to challenge Stephan himself on summer vacations in Italy.

  Together they raced to the waterfront, Stephan resisting the urge to look back to Žofie-Helene until they were well down the beach, Walter chasing after a bird in the surprising sunshine. Žofie sat with the baby in her lap, her head bent over his pages, her hair falling toward the words he’d written just for her:

  THE LIAR’S PARADOX

  by Stephan Neuman

  ACT I, SCENE I.

  In the main room at the Warner’s Holiday Camp, children sit more patiently than children should be expected to sit. Prospective parents browse the tables as if searching for a chop for dinner, an unbruised pear, an eggplant to set in a bowl on the table, just for show. Only older children are left, the toddlers all claimed in the weeks before.

  Tall, elegant Lady Montague approaches a beautiful teenage girl, Hannah Berger, who holds a baby.

  Lady Montague: Isn’t this a dear baby. You aren’t the child’s mother, are you? I couldn’t take a baby from its mother . . .

  Just a Baby on a Train

/>   Stephan picked up Walter’s blazer and Peter Rabbit from the ground, and called Walter out of a soccer game outside the main building.

  “You weren’t supposed to get dirty,” he said.

  “Adam said I could be goalie.”

  Stephan tucked in Walter’s shirt and helped him put on his blazer, the sleeves already too short, but it was the best clothing Walter had. He handed Walter the Peter Rabbit. “All right,” he said. “One more time, Wall-man. C’mon.”

  Walter said, “Good afternoon. It’s very nice for you to visit us.”

  Inside the main building, Žofie was already seated at one of the long tables, with the baby on her lap and a notebook open. The baby was bathed and wearing a clean dress someone had donated to the camp. Žofie’s hair was released from its usual braids and combed, long and wavy.

  “Let’s sit at a new table today, Wall,” Stephan said.

  Walter studied him for a long moment, as if he might be able to read his traitorous thoughts.

  “Peter wants to sit with Johanna,” Walter said, and he walked off to join Žofie and the baby, climbing up into the seat next to them.

  “This is a proof I’m working on, Johanna,” Žofie was saying to the baby as Stephan joined them. “See, the problem is—”

  She looked up at Stephan.

  Stephan reached across Walter to take her glasses from her face. “She’s a baby,” he said as he cleaned her smudged lenses on his shirttail. “She can’t say three words.”

  “Papa used to say mathematics is like any language,” she said. “The earlier you learn it, the more naturally it comes.”

  She eyed her equation through clear lenses, saying to the baby, “See, the problem is—we’ll call it ‘Stephan’s Paradox’—is the set of all friends who have been inexcusably unkind to each other and refuse to apologize still friends? If they apologize, then they aren’t quite so inexcusably unkind. If they don’t, then they aren’t friends.”