The Last Train to London Read online

  The words spoken with a sureness of the existence of a God that Truus worked harder and harder not to doubt.

  A baby was handed in to them then, her perfect little fingers reaching to her sister’s face.

  “This is Nanelle,” Genna said. “She’s the youngest.”

  Nanelle—a name impossibly close to that Truus and Joop had chosen when Truus was pregnant the first time; if that first child had been a boy, he was to be named for Joop’s father, but a girl was to be Anneliese, whom they would call Nel. Perhaps that child had been the most loved, the only one for whom they had dared choose a name.

  “Nanelle,” Truus repeated to Genna. “I suppose your mother and father ran out of G names?”

  Genna answered, “She’s really Galianel. Only we call her Nanelle.”

  “Well, Genna and Gisse and Nanelle, I’m Tante Truus.”

  Tante Truus, the name she’d taken when she’d turned to social work five years into her marriage, when she’d come to think there would likely never be a Nel.

  “Can you remember that?” she asked the girls. “Tante Truus.”

  “Tante Truus,” Genna repeated.

  Truus nodded to Gisse to repeat it too. It was an easier thing to ask a child to repeat an improbable name than to ask her to lie.

  “Tante Truus,” Gisse repeated.

  “Nanelle doesn’t talk yet,” Genna said.

  “No?” Truus said, thinking, Thank heaven. It was impossible to guide a baby’s words.

  “She says Gaga,” Gisse said, “but we don’t know which one of us she means!”

  The two sisters giggled together. All right then. This was going to be okay somehow.

  “So I’m Tante Truus, and I’m going to take you to Amsterdam. I’m going to have to ask you to do some funny things on the way, but I want you to remember through all of it that if you are asked, I am Tante Truus and you are coming to spend a few days with me in Amsterdam. Can you remember that?”

  The girls both nodded.

  “All right then,” Truus said. “Which of you is best at pretending?”

  Pretending

  It was as cold as the devil by the time Truus approached the wooden guard hut, but cold and dark and dinnertime was the best time to avoid a thorough border search. She slowed the car, willing the two guards smoking cigarettes inside the hut to conclude what lazy soldiers so often did, that a single woman driving a car with Dutch plates might be waved across the border with no bother at all. But as her headlights illuminated a closed chain-link gate draped with a large fabric swastika fringed on the bottom in white, one of the soldiers emerged.

  Truus, with her single passport already in one gloved hand, tidied the folds of her long skirt. She rolled the window down to the frigid night air, said good evening, and handed the guard her passport. She returned her hands to the steering wheel, already taking his measure as he shone his flashlight on her documents. His collar under his coat was tidy and square, and his boots were polished, and even this late in the day his chin bore no stubble. Likely a new recruit, as he wore only the trenchcoat that might be issued this time of year, never mind that the chill night called for something heavier. He was too young to be married, he and his colleague too, she supposed, and probably too idealistic to be bribed. Well, she had only her mother’s real ring this time, anyway—she’d used all the paste copies, and there hadn’t been time to arrange more—and in any event it was too big a risk to try to bribe one Nazi in the presence of another. Each would have to trust the other, and real trust was such a rare thing these days.

  “You are going home, Frau Wijsmuller?” the guard asked.

  Respectful. Well, that might help.

  She felt the stiffness of the gas pedal and clutch under her feet, the warmth against her legs. A respectful border guard was less likely to ask her to step out of the car.

  She said, “Home to Amsterdam, yes, Sergeant.”

  He flashed the light carefully around the car’s interior, onto the coat sitting on the seat beside her, and into the empty back seat too. Truus tried not to show any expression but respect. He shone the light through the back window, examining the floorboard. He went around the car and repeated the check of the back floorboard on that side, then underneath the car. So thorough. What kind of God would arrange for her to have to pass through this meticulous boy’s needle?

  He returned to Truus’s window. “Your coat?”

  She lifted the coat beside her, letting it spread to show that it was just that, just a coat.

  “You won’t mind if I check under the seats?”

  She draped her coat again on the seat beside her. “Of course you must check everywhere,” she said, “although I hope you won’t have to disturb the things in the boot. It’s awfully packed.”

  The guard nodded to his comrade in the guard booth. The comrade reluctantly set his food aside, drew his weapon, and joined them, keeping his Luger trained on the trunk while the first opened it. Truus watched in the mirror until the flashlight beam caught the mirror glass and it became impossible to make out what the soldiers were doing. She let go her tight grip on the steering wheel and set her hands on her skirts.

  “Steady, girls,” she whispered. “Stay hidden.” Thankful for just that moment that the girls were small. So small and so terribly thin.

  The guard returned to the car window, leaving Truus to see in the mirror his companion standing with his gun in one hand and a carefully folded blanket in the other. Truus returned her yellow-gloved hands to the steering wheel.

  “I wonder, Frau Wijsmuller, if you might tell us why you travel with so many blankets?” the guard asked, sounding more like a boy than a man, a poor young boy made to stand all night in the cold to prohibit people from leaving a country that didn’t want them, a country that he’d been raised to believe in, the way Truus imagined her own child would believe in the Netherlands. Just a young, idealistic boy, doing his duty.

  She said, “Would you and your colleague each like to take one? I don’t believe there has ever been such a cold May night as this.”

  He called back to his companion, who took two blankets and set them at their post.

  “Thank you, Frau Wijsmuller. It is such a cold night. You ought to put on your coat.”

  Truus nodded, but she left her coat on the seat beside her and her foot on the gas pedal as she watched the comrade return to the trunk.

  The boy said, “You won’t mind that we must empty the whole trunk?”

  He returned to the back of the car and began removing the blankets one by one while the other kept his gun carefully trained on the trunk. Truus stared ahead at the cold silver of the chain link, the red and black of the swastika flag, the improbable white fringe.

  The Simplest Thing in the World

  Stephan,” his father said, “your mother asked you a question.”

  Stephan looked to Mutti, smiling across the table set with silver and china and the new crystal his father had purchased to replace what had been broken the night of the Anschluss. His mother’s chop was untouched, her dumplings cut but uneaten, her cabbage salad rearranged to appear more eaten than it was. But she had come to the table tonight, when so often she was only there in the portrait on the wall: Mutti younger even than Stephan was now, and Klimt still painting in a more traditional style, his mother not draped in gold but rather in white balloon sleeves and a hat that sat high atop her hair, not a way she ever wore a hat, but it emphasized her perfect dark brows and huge green eyes. Mutti would think Stephan’s attention was on his writing, and he would let her. She would work to make this new life seem normal, and so would he.

  “How did your play rehearsal go?” his mother repeated.

  “We aren’t going to do the play, after all,” he answered, and to the concerned expression in his mother’s tired eyes, “Žofie is busy with her maths.”

  Walter said, “She brought Stephan a whole bunch of copies of a book, but he won’t even read it to Peter.”

  His lousy
play. She’d had it typeset on that Linotype machine in her mother’s office, or maybe she’d even set it herself, but that only made it a dozen copies of a lousy play instead of just one.

  His father started, “I don’t think—”

  “Friendships come and go even in the best of times,” Mutti interrupted. “It’s just as well, Stephan, as we’ve found a tutor to work with you on your English for the summer. He can only give us an hour a day, so he’ll have to work with you both at the same time.”

  “I get to study English with Stephan?” Walter said. “And Peter too?”

  Stephan set his fork on his plate, as he’d been schooled to do, and with a forced lightheartedness said, “When we have tests, Wall-man, you have to leave your answers uncovered so I can copy them!”

  Walter whispered to his rabbit, “Peter, you have to leave your answers uncovered so we can copy them!”

  Mutti reached and took the stuffed rabbit’s hand, though only weeks before Walter had not been allowed to bring Peter Rabbit to the table. “You must race to see who will be the best before you go away for school!” she said. “My money is on you, Peter.”

  “Ruchele, even if we had visas for the boys,” Papa said, “I don’t think they want to leave their mother to—”

  “You can’t ignore Hitler rolling down the Mariahilfer Strasse in his six-wheeled Mercedes limousine, Herman. You can’t ignore more than a million of our neighbors voting for annexation.”

  “The plebiscite wasn’t legitimate,” Papa objected.

  “Do you see anyone standing up to say so?”

  STEPHAN HAD FINISHED his Germknödel and was surreptitiously scooping up the last little bit of plum filling and poppy seeds with his finger when Aunt Lisl burst in, suitcase in hand. Why hadn’t Rolf taken it at the door?

  “Michael is demanding a divorce!” she said.

  Mutti said, “Lisl?”

  “He can’t be married to a Jew. It’s bad for his business. He’s thrown me out. He can’t be married to a Jew, but still he means to keep my fortune.”

  Papa said, “He wouldn’t have his business if he hadn’t had your fortune to save it.”

  “He’s transferred it into his name! He means to have my share of the chocolate business too.”

  “He can’t just up and take half my stock,” Papa objected. “It’s in your name, Lisl.”

  “Calm down, Lisl,” Mutti urged. “Have a seat. Have you eaten? Herman, do buzz Helga and get her to bring Lisl something to eat, and perhaps a brandy.”

  “Michael can’t effect a transfer unless it’s entered into the stock book,” Papa said to Aunt Lisl, ignoring Mutti, “and I simply won’t enter it.”

  “He’s already had the paperwork drawn up, Herman,” Aunt Lisl insisted. “He says if I refuse, he’ll just have you arrested and sent off to a work camp. He says it’s the simplest thing in the world, to turn in a Jew.”

  Chrysalis

  Truus pulled the car to a stop at a small market just across the border. “We’re in the Netherlands,” she said.

  Gisse, huddled in a ball on the floorboard underneath Truus’s long skirts, climbed up onto the passenger seat.

  “I was quiet,” she said earnestly.

  “You were perfect, Gisse,” Truus said as she reached down to take the baby from Genna, who was wedged under her skirts and against the door on the other side. “You were all perfect.”

  She opened the door carefully lest Genna fall out, and the girl crawled out of the car, came around to the passenger door, and sat next to her sisters. Truus climbed out and pulled her coat back on, worrying now about the complications, the lack of Dutch entrance visas. The little store was closed, but she went to the public telephone booth at the road’s edge and placed a call to Klara van Lange, to let her know she had three children. Four children, she thought, but the one child would go with Truus wherever she went.

  * * *

  THE VIENNA INDEPENDENT

  * * *

  GLOBAL MEETING OF REFUGEES PLANNED

  * * *

  Paris accepts U.S. proposal for meeting in Évian-les-Bains

  BY KÄTHE PERGER

  May 11, 1938 — The United States government has proposed a meeting of an intergovernmental committee to facilitate the emigration of refugees from Germany and Austria. It is to be held in Évian-les-Bains, France, beginning July 6.

  All of Europe has been marking time, waiting for America to lead the coordination of efforts with respect to Jewish refugees, and suggest new ones. Expectations are high that, as host, the U.S. will open the conference with an offer of a grand solution. More than thirty nations are expected to attend.

  It is believed that most of Germany’s Jews would leave the Reich now if given a chance, but the barriers to immigration are rapidly becoming insurmountable. Fixed immigration quotas leave Jews with nothing but years-long waiting lists. Refugees to most nations, including the United States—where the State Department has refused to allow even the limited quotas imposed by the Johnson-Reed Act to be filled due to the challenging economic situation—are made to guarantee they won’t ever require public assistance.

  While immigrants must arrive with assets to support themselves for a lifetime, the Germans on April 26 passed their Order for Disclosure of Jewish Assets, requiring all Jews with assets in excess of 5,000 reichsmarks to submit a declaration of wealth by the end of June. Real estate. Personal possessions. Bank or savings accounts. Securities. Insurance policies. Pension payments. Every silver spoon and wedding gown must be itemized. Already, Germany claims, too many Jews have fled with wealth that properly belongs to the Reich. They now require all property of any Jew wishing to emigrate to be forfeited. . . .

  Raised Hopes

  It was the heat, Truus supposed—as stifling for early June as it had been frigid the night she smuggled the three sisters out of Germany, just a month before. She sat across the breakfast table from Joop, trying to hide the worst morning sickness she had yet experienced. She’d meant to make him broodje kroket before she left this time, a nice sturdy breakfast, but when she’d woken, she knew she couldn’t stomach the smell of frying. She instead made wentelteefjes, using the wonderfully sweet and cinnamony suikerbrood that was to have been tomorrow’s breakfast. “French toast,” a friend of hers had told her this was called in America, where it was served at fancy hotels but was not, her friend assured her, as good as Truus’s. It was so easy on the stomach that Truus might eat it every morning until the baby came.

  She would be showing soon; she would have to tell Joop. If she spent more effort on fashion, the pencil-thin silhouettes that were the rage might already have given her away. But women were always more aware of changes in their bodies than men were, and Joop was distracted with his work at the bank, the difficult financial climate on top of all the difficulties of the world. She might still have a week or so to be more certain before she raised his hopes.

  “Italy and Switzerland have declined to attend the Évian Conference,” Joop said, still reading his newspaper. “Romania has asked to be treated as a refugee producer.”

  Truus said, “I heard yesterday that President Roosevelt is sending a nobody as his representative.”

  “Myron C. Taylor,” Joop said, looking up. “A former U.S. Steel Corporation executive. Roosevelt is granting him the powers of ambassador, as if that will give him— Truus, you don’t look well. I wish you would reconsider letting me go to Germany for you this time. I—”

  “I know, Joop. I know you would go in my place, that you would rather go yourself. You are such a good man. But a woman traveling with children raises so much less suspicion than a man doing so.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Van Lange could go?”

  Klara was with child too, but Truus had no intention of conceding that a woman with child should not rescue children. She said only, “Mrs. Van Lange is quite clever, but she’s not yet ready for solo flight”—although Klara often did surprise, with her unexpected competency.

  “Not
ready because it’s gotten too dangerous,” Joop said, “which is precisely why I should go in your place.”

  Truus forked together a bit of the eggy bread and the fruit, avoiding the cream. Even the wentelteefjes now seemed too much for her stomach.

  “Joop,” she said, “I mean this in the kindest way: you are a terrible liar.”

  “This lot don’t have exit visas?”

  He knew she brought children into the Netherlands without Dutch entry visas, but that was far less risky than smuggling them out of Germany without exit visas.

  “Recha is arranging everything on the German end,” she said.

  “Then what need would I have to lie?”

  Truus stood to clear their dishes and avoid Joop’s question. In the motion, a cramp caught her off guard so surely that she had to set down the plate she had in hand. She felt the gush of warmth, and smelled it again.

  “Truus!”

  Joop stood and reached across the table, the plates clanging frighteningly to the floor.

  For a moment, Truus imagined the small pool of red was just the strawberry compote. She thought to assure him it was her monthly, to spare him, but the pain made her double over, a new gush of blood drenching her stockings and staining her dress.

  The Cost of Chocolate

  Stephan was holed up in the cocoa cellar, staying cool in the summer heat and mapping out a new play, when he heard the commotion upstairs. He tried to ignore it—he was just getting this new idea down, and ideas had a habit of disappearing if not immediately committed to words. It was hard enough to hold on to the appeal of them once they were in ink in his journal, but if they didn’t get that far, they didn’t get anywhere.

  He focused on the words he’d just written: A boy who used to sit at the front of the class now sits at the back, behind a yellow line. He knows the answer the teacher is looking for, but raising his hand only provokes ridicule. No matter how right his answers are, they will be found to be wrong.