by Rikke Barfod
“I know,” Mum says.
She sits with Ursula on her lap. Oh man, is this weird. I feel a bit superfluous. I go down to the kitchen for some breakfast. Might as well do my homework, now I’m here. Ellen told me where we’re at. I’m just getting my bag out when Mum comes in.
“Is all this very hard for you, Claire?”
Sometimes Mum understands too much.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know …”
Mum fills the kettle and finds the teapot.
“I have something to tell you, Claire.” Mum sounds so serious that the worry-pit in my stomach starts tightening. I look around.
“Where’s Ursula?”
“I don’t know. She floated off. But listen Claire, I want you to come with me and Isaac to Germany.”
“Why Germany?”
Mum sounds excited: “We are going to find my father. Your grandfather.”
“Oh, Yeah, Ursula told me.”
Mum puts the kettle down and looks at me. “Claire, I want you to come too.”
I fish out one of my favourites from the liquorice-bag. Mum grabs the bag away. Hey, where did you get those? Claire, breakfast before sweets, you know that.”
“Granddad.”
Mum hands me back the bag after pinching one of the liquorices. I put the sweets in my school bag.
“Really Mum, I’d much rather stay here. Can’t you just bring him here for Ursula to see?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I can hear they sound a bit lame.
Mum smiles. “No. And there is another reason. Ursula has told me that you look a bit like our father’s sister, Anna, and that I look like my mother. But Isaac says you’re the spitting image of Ursula.”
“So…?”
Mum pretends not to hear the ‘so’. She says, “Tomorrow I’m going to Sweden to talk to my aunt Hannah and get the address of my father’s friend the Doctor. You know Claire, even saying ‘my father’ sounds strange. Gustav and Marie have always been my father and mother.”
I wiggle on my chair: “Can’t you just phone her?”
“She doesn’t have a phone. Anyway, I want to talk to her.” Mum puts down the teapot with a clang.
Weird. No phone? I bite into my bun and ask: “Mum, I have really wondered why you didn’t go to Germany a long time ago to see your father?”
Mum’s hand stops in mid-air. “I did actually decide to go after graduation. I moved to Copenhagen and started studying. I had been admitted to the Library School. It was the beginning of the 1960’s. I moved into a commune, stopped studying, had a boyfriend who played in a band. I got ill. And time just passed. I finished my studies and got a job in Bornholm. I was still waiting for an opportune time.
You know, I stayed with Clara in the beginning. Mogens came by one day. We fell in love and ... well time just passed. And when I finally decided to go to Germany, no matter what, I found out I was pregnant with you and well, life just happened. Somehow or the other, my thoughts about my real father were pushed far back in my mind.”
“Hmm. I am sure I would have gone.”
Mum looks sad and smiles at the same time, “Yes, you probably would. Now, of course, I regret from the bottom of my heart that I never did go.”
I pour milk on my cornflakes and ask: “Is Ursula here?”
“I don’t think so. I think she spends a lot of time under her apple tree.”
I start eating. “Mum, the whole thing is so weird. Is Ursula going with us to Germany?”
“Young lady, don’t talk with food in your mouth. And of course she isn’t. Just you, me and Isaac.”
A brilliant idea hits me: “Can’t Ellen come too?”
“Claire!”
Oh well, it was a nice try.
“Can I go to school now?”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
Chapter 28
Claire
Friday, 8th April 1983
When I come into the classroom, I half expect to see Ursula somewhere near the cupboard. She isn’t.
“Ellen, can you fill Claire in on what she has missed?” Kirsten asks.
Ellen nods. I mumble something and sit down.
“How’s your ghost?” Ellen whispers.
“It’s not funny. Talk later.”
The day drags on. Normally, I like school, but now my whole life seems so unreal with Ursula around. Her presence fills everything, even when she’s not there.
In the break, I tell Ellen that we are going to Germany to find my grandfather.
Ellen claps her hands: “Your grandfather. Did he..? I mean, is he..?”
“Yes, he survived something called Theresienstadt and he does not see any people and the whole thing is so weird.”
Ellen has to go to Elsinore to see her dentist, so I walk home by myself. Louise and Karen are just in front of me.
“You should have been here the other day, Karen, when Claire suddenly screamed in class. It sounded as if she was getting murdered.” Louise giggles.
Karen laughs. “Pity I missed it. Honestly, I don’t understand why Ellen likes her so much. She is really peculiar.”
“I know! And half the time she doesn’t seem to know what’s going on.”
Karen hops a few paces: “I could die for her clothes, though.”
“Me too. My mum won’t let me have designer clothes,” Louise sighs.
“Mine neither. It’s so unfair. And she doesn’t seem to even care about what she’s wearing, but there you are. Anyway, do you want to come over and listen to my new Michael Jackson record?”
Louise screeches, “Of course!” They disappear around a corner.
Interesting. I didn’t know they saw me like that. I shrug my shoulders. I have more important things going on in my life than being upset about someone’s opinions about me. I am not looking forward to going to Germany, to that Heidelberg town. I wish I wasn’t going.
“It’s a very old town,” Mum says when I come home. “Like Elsinore. Fortunately, the Allies didn’t bomb it.”
“I know, I told Kirsten I was going. I had to tell her to explain why I haven’t been to school. I didn’t say anything about Ursula – just that your father has been found, and we’re going. She gave me a book to read about the war. Do I have to read it? It looks boring.”
“Bring it on the train.”
I stare at her: “What train?”
“The train to Germany, silly.” Mum turns around to do the dishes.
“Mum, what about Dad? I miss him. Isn’t he coming home soon?” I ask, unpacking my bag.
Mum rattles the dishes in the sink. “Right now, I don’t know. I know you miss him. He misses you too.”
A thought I didn’t know I had, surfaces. My stomach knots itself and I ask: “Are you getting divorced?”
“I hope not. Would you be very sad if we did?”
I burst into tears. Everything is all wrong.
Mum gives me a hug. “I know it’s hard, but maybe it’s a good thing. We needed to be apart for a while. We have argued such a lot.”
“Is it my fault? Is it because of Ursula, and me seeing stuff?”
“Of course not, Claire. It’s grown-up stuff.” Mum pats my back.
The new bracelet Dad gave me, is suddenly very interesting to look at. I ask: “Mum, why did you marry Dad?”
“For the same reason everyone else gets married. I was very much in love with him.”
I look up and stare at her. “Aren’t you anymore?”
“Claire! Yes, I am, but we need to sort some things out. No more questions, Okay?” she says, puts on her coat and walks out the door to go shopping.
I race up to the attic. I have to know why Mum never did go to see her father. Again, I totally ignore the voice in my head, that’s telling me not to read any more. Quickly, I flick through the pages. Ah, here it is, the last bit I read, 10th January 1964.
Nothing more until:
Tuesday, 27th August 1964.
I’m moving dear friend. I have be
en accepted at the Librarian School and I’ve already found a room in a commune in Copenhagen. Father and Mother are sad, but as they are not saying anything about my father being found, neither will I. I really don’t understand it. Now I have passed my exam, why won’t they tell me about my father?
Should I go to Germany to find him? I don’t even know how to do it. I could ask Isaac, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea and ...
The diary stops abruptly. I don’t understand mum. How stubborn she is. She should just have told them that she knew. I look at the next date. Weird, it is three years later.
Thursday 5 June 1967
Dear friend Diary, it didn’t work out with Niels. I am almost finished with the exams. I’ve got a temporary position in a library in Bornholm. Maybe the time has come to go and see my father. Now, when I almost never see my parents, I would like to have some family. I’ve found a nice place to stay in Bornholm with a woman called Clara. She seems pleasant.
This is so boring. I skim the pages. One page is full of Dad’s name and hearts. Darn, that was the door. I flip the diary back into the box, and run downstairs.
Mum asks me to go and get eggs from old Mrs. Petersen. She lives in the next street in a small house with a big back yard where her hens roam freely. Mum prefers to buy proper free-range eggs, so she always buys from Mrs. Petersen. She is partly deaf so after knocking for a while, I walk in. I am surprised to see a man sitting in her cluttered living room in her favourite chair reading a newspaper. She normally doesn’t have visitors. The curtains are half drawn; I have to walk carefully so not to fall over something. I say hello and go into the kitchen where Mrs. Petersen clatters around.
I ask her who the man is. She looks at me as if I am a lump of earth she wants to sweep out and asks: “What man?” Darn, I should have looked more closely at him. I mumble something about how shadows can look like a person – but anyway Mum has sent me to get eggs.
Why can’t I stop seeing ghosts? I must practice trying to be more normal and not say too much. I wish I was like Ellen who dreams about Peter. For obvious reasons I can’t do that; knowing how much Ellen fancies him.
I need some down-to-earth normality in my life, and run to Ellen’s place. Her room is in a big mess as usual. Clothes and books all over the place. She’s on the floor playing with her dog, Charlie.
“So, Miss Ghost-hunter. What’s up?”
“Shut up. Want to come for a ride?”
Ellen looks devastated. “You won’t believe it, but I’m grounded.”
“Whatever for?” I clear most of the stuff away from a chair and sit.
“Well, let’s see, for answering back, not cleaning my room, not doing my homework and … the list is several kilometers long.”
“Poor you. For how long?” I take a bite of a half-eaten apple.
“Until daddy thinks I should be out in the fresh air. But honestly, can’t I go with you to Germany? I’m sure it would do me good. Improve my character.”
“Very funny. I actually asked Mum. She said no.”
“Is that ghost thing coming?”
“She’s not a ghost thing. No, she’s not coming. I don’t really understand why not. She’s the one who wants to see her father.”
I spit out the apple. “Yuck. Why don’t you throw it out?”
“Nobody forced you to eat it!”
Ellen jumps up and dances around. Charlie starts barking and also jumps around.
“Can he see ghosts too?” She grins. “You know it is weird talking about ghosts, as if we were talking about seeing a movie.”
“I don’t know if he can see ghosts. And I don’t think it is that funny.”
I have thought about it a lot. So, we find Jacov and Mum gets happy. But what if he doesn’t believe us and can’t see Ursula? And where should he see her? The whole thing is so stupid.
Ellen waves her hand in front of my face.
“Come back to earth. By the way, where is your ghost now?”
She keeps popping in and out. You never know where she is.”
“Must be weird.” Ellen twists her hair into a knot. Then lets it all fall down again.
“You bet. I don’t really want to go. Isaac is going too. That ought to be enough.”
“Isaac, is he the …?”
“Yeah, Ursula’s and my Mum’s cousin. The one who did not get Ursula out of the cupboard when they were escaping to Sweden.”
Ellen falls into a chair. “Bloody Hell. It makes my sins look like grains of sand. Ouch, what’s this?” She digs out a hairbrush from her chair.
“Yeah, just imagine you could have saved somebody, and didn’t.” I say.
“Let’s hope it never happens to us. But what are you going to do there? Smell out the ghosts? There’ll be so many. All those Jews Hitler killed.” Ellen grins. “Maybe the streets will be so crowded you’ll bump into them all the time.”
I can’t help laughing: “Ellen, it’s not funny.”
“Okay. Where are you going anyway?”
“To a town called Heidelberg. Ursula grew up there, wherever it is.”
Ellen rushes to her bookcase, throws out a couple of books until she finds a large atlas.
“Let’s see where it is.”
We find the town. It looks as if it is surrounded by mountains.
Suddenly Ellen rolls around the floor, shrieking with laughter, “I know. I know. You know what you should do? You could talk to a couple of ghosts, and find hidden treasure buried during the war.”
“Idiot,” I say and throw a pillow at her. Unfortunately, Ellen’s mum comes home so I have to leave. Ellen is not allowed to have visitors when she is grounded. Anyway, I promised Mum I would clean the living room.
Mum is out. Never has vacuuming taken so little time. Afterwards, I rush upstairs to the attic to find something more interesting in the diary.
Here is something about her visiting Hannah.
Saturday 3rd February 1968
Dear friend Diary. We don’t talk often nowadays, but now I did what Clara told me to. I went to Sweden. I don’t know what I had expected. She looks kind, my mother’s sister. She burst out crying when she saw me and said, “It’s like seeing Leah when I look at you.”
I stayed for quite some time. She found some old photographs. They were not that good. Hannah pointed out the people on the photos: my father, my mother and Ursula. They might just as well be other people, I couldn’t see any likeness to myself. It was difficult to distinguish the features on the faces.”
I asked her why she’d never come to see me.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Firstly, I didn’t want to upset your life with your adoptive parents. Secondly, it would be too hard to see you. It would bring it all back, losing Ursula, losing my sister.”
She got angry when she discovered that Mother never did call me Sarah, nor told me that I was Jewish. Hannah told me about the Jewish rituals. They seem rather meaningless. And I must admit that apart from the fact that she is my mother’s sister I don’t feel we have much in common.
I spoke to Isaac about the visit. “My mother is a typical Jewish woman, interested in gossip, food and clothes,” he said.
I defended her. “She was very kind.”
Afterwards I think again about visiting my father. Hannah dissuaded me. And I do not feel at all like I am Jewish. Perhaps we wouldn’t have anything in common. Maybe he would not feel I was his daughter.
How stupid of you, Mum. It is your father!
I have been thinking about it a lot. How it feels to be blind. Walking around in the dark without seeing where you are. While coming down from the attic I decide to try and walk with closed eyes to see how it feels. I fall down the last couple of steps, just as Mum walks into the house. She rushes over to me: “What happened?”
“Ouch,” I say, nursing my bruised knees. “I didn’t think there were more steps. I hadn’t counted properly.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I was trying out
how it feels walking around without seeing.”
Mum is angry. “Claire, it is not a game being blind. And what if Ursula had seen you?”
“But I just wanted to understand.”
Just then Ursula looks out from the kitchen door.
“It wasn’t easy,” she says. “But it did become like a game in the end. And then Isaac helped, of course.”
Chapter 29
Claire
Tuesday, 12th April 1983
After school I walk over to Granny to get help with my maths homework. It’s funny, Granny is really good at math though the books have all changed. Somehow, she can see the way to solve the problem, even with her limited schooling. She’s a natural with numbers. When we finish, I ask:
“Can’t you tell me some more about Mum when she was little?”
Granddad looks reprovingly at me:
“Claire!”
Granny smiles. “It’s fine, Gustav. I don’t mind.”
She sits for a while gathering her thoughts. A car races past outside. Its radio going at full blast.
“I remember that Inga once in the middle of the night crept into my bed. In a puzzled voice she asked: ‘Who is here? Why does the lady shout Sarah?’ I woke and asked what she was talking about. ‘The lady. The lady who says, Sarah.’ I looked around. I couldn’t see anybody. She went on, ‘I heard it myself. It was a nice voice, but it talked funny.’ Gustav was snoring besides me. He’s always sleeps very heavily.”
Granddad looks a bit embarrassed. I grin. I have seen the curtains flap when he snores.
“I’ll make some fresh tea, shall I?” he asks and disappears into the kitchen.
Granny continues,”Inga fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, like children do. The angst made me stiff as a board. Why did Inga dream about a lady saying ‘Sarah’? Nobody else but us knew her name was Sarah. My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of me. Had they found Jacov? Would he take her from us?
I remember finally getting up, walking into the kitchen, heating up some coffee. Slowly everything fell into place. The pain disappeared when I suddenly remembered: We have adopted her. They can’t take her from us.”
“Granny I understand it must have been hard, but I still really don’t understand.”
