After the Train Page 6

“Of course, but keep in mind, Peter, that we tell secrets grudgingly—that is why they are secrets. If you tell me something you have been careful to keep to yourself, you may regret it and then you might become angry with me for hearing that secret. Think carefully before you tell a secret; and Peter, I must reserve the right to break my promise of secrecy if I feel it is for your welfare.”

  His solemn words nearly silence me, but I have already determined that I will tell him. I open my mouth and the words tumble out. “It started because of Herr Schmidt at my school telling us about what happened to the Jewish people, people like you and your parents. My father was in the army and I got to worrying about what he did during the war, so I snooped around the house. I read letters Father had written to Mother.” When I see Herr Schafer frown, I blush with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have, but I had to know.” I blurt out the contents of the letters to him. “The really strange thing is that there is this picture of a woman and I recognize her.” I tell him of my nightmares. “Father tells me I can’t know the truth just yet. He promised to tell me who I am, but I’m not sure now I want to find out. I think maybe I’d just rather be me.”

  Herr Schafer is staring closely at me. “You believe that this woman might be your mother?”

  “Yes, I believe she gave me to Mother. It’s just like my nightmares—the woman giving me up.”

  Slowly, as if he isn’t sure of how his words will come out, Herr Schafer says, “Peter, have you wondered why the woman had to leave her child and why your parents made such a secret of it?”

  “At first I thought I might have been one of the children that they took away from Claus von Schauffenberg and his family. I even wrote to the family, but they got all their children back. Maybe my real mother was sick or poor.”

  “Poor people, even sick people, seldom give their children away, Peter. And wouldn’t she have kept in touch with your mother; wouldn’t she want to know what happened to you? I wonder that you haven’t thought of people who were facing death for themselves and for their children as well.”

  Herr Shafer is looking at me in a strange way. It has never occurred to me that I might be Jewish. In my daydreams I have been the son of a hero like Stauffenberg, someone rich and maybe famous. I remember the crying woman and the look of misery on her face. Of course she could be Jewish. I have heard stories of Jewish children who were saved by someone taking them in and hiding them. St. Mary’s Church stands only a short distance away. I look at the church. It is one thing for Herr Shafer to work there, but I belong there. I remember how Mother has wanted me to go to church and Father has never insisted. I can barely get the words out. “You think I might be Jewish?”

  “Certainly it is a possibility. How would you feel about that?”

  What would it be like to be Jewish? What would Kurt and Hans say? There is St. Mary’s, which I am so proud of. What if it’s no longer my church? Once when I was little, I had been sailing a toy boat on the canal. The string attached to the boat broke. Before I could stretch out my hand to rescue it, the boat sailed away. Now, like that boat, my world is slipping away, the string that holds it together broken.

  Herr Schafer must see the look of shock on my face, for at once he puts an arm around me. “Ach, Peter,” he says. “I should never have suggested such a thing. It’s my own sad experience that puts that thought into my head. I want to believe that someone has reached out to save a child as I wish someone had reached out to save my family. I’m sure there is a simple answer. Now it’s time to get back to work.”

  Reluctantly I follow him back to St. Mary’s and begin piling bricks on the pallet, thankful for the mindless work that leaves me to think my thoughts, which now are like tangled snakes I can’t unravel, and am not even sure I want to. I like and admire Herr Schafer, but he is the only Jewish person I really know. Right after the war the city had no Jews; then a handful of Jewish families like his returned to the city. No one gives them trouble, but I have seen people stare at them and whisper after their passing. Complications pile up in my head faster than the bricks pile up on the pallet. Though he has tried to make little of his suggestion, I believe it at once. It all fits. There was Mother’s letter to Father suggesting she had done something dangerous. There is Father’s reluctance to make me go to church. There is Father’s silence.

  When the workday is over, Father is waiting for me. Reluctantly I walk along with him, hanging back so he will know I am angry and wish I weren’t there. We walk in silence that is much louder than talk would be. When we reach the small park where Herr Schafer and I had our lunch, Father says, “Let’s stop here a minute, Peter.” The park is deserted. The kids who usually play there have gone home to supper, to homes where, when they walk through the door, they will be certain who their mothers and fathers are. This morning I saw the fledgling falcons teetering on the edge of their nest. Even the birds have homes.

  Father puts his hand on my shoulder. “Peter, I am sorry that I put off giving you an answer, but I needed the time to think how I would tell your mother. These last days I have been wondering what to say to her. I know she doesn’t want to talk about it, that she thinks it is better to put it behind us. But it isn’t fair to you. Tonight I promise I will tell her.”

  Of course I know who Father means when he says “your mother.” Now for the first time I realize my mother might be someone quite different. I ask myself, Who is my mother and where is she? It’s not just a quiet question but a silent shout. I have to know at once.

  “Father,” I insist, “can’t you at least tell me who my mother is?”

  “Peter, if I could tell you I would. The truth is, I don’t know.”

  NINE

  I WALK INTO OUR HOUSE, but I don’t. The boy who walks in isn’t me. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the house and everything in it has vanished. The boy who isn’t me looks around at all the familiar things, but they look as if they have come from some story that isn’t real, right out of a book or a movie. In spite of what Father says about not knowing who my mother is or where she might be, I wonder if I shouldn’t be there with her instead of here.

  Father says, “Peter, please go upstairs and wash up for supper. I’ll call when it’s time to come down.” The words come out sounding like Father is announcing the end of the world.

  Mother has a puzzled expression and, underneath it, fear. “What is it, Bernhard? Why are you speaking in that tone of voice? Has something happened?”

  Father shoots me a sharp look that sends me clambering up the stairway. I don’t belong in my room, for the room belongs to the boy I was. My books, records, magazines, even my clothes have nothing to do with me. In all the familiar, I am a stranger. How can it be that they don’t know where my real mother is? What does it mean for mothers to get lost? What if Mother and Father don’t want to find my mother for fear she will take me away? What I can’t decide is whether I want to find my real mother. What if I don’t want to be her son? What if I have to move away from school and all my friends and from St. Mary’s?

  It doesn’t seen fair to have to give up something just to have what was mine. Why should I have to choose between two lives, especially between a life that I know and a life I know nothing about? I want to stay right where I am, where everything is familiar. Yet the other life is something that belongs to me as well, something I have coming, something I must have. I know my mother and father love me, but what about the woman who is my leibliche Mutter, my birth mother—my wirkliche Mutter, my real mother? If she’s alive, wouldn’t she want her son with her? What if she needs me to take care of her? Maybe I can be with Mother and Father half the year and with her the other half—but then with two lives, I would be two boys. Wouldn’t that be confusing? And if I turned out to be Jewish, what would that second life be like? And worst of all, Father has said he didn’t know who my mother was. How is that possible? Where have I come from?

  On my desk are my notes from Herr Schmidt’s class. I remember how bored I was in that class a
nd how I resented hearing about the fate of the Jews. That might have been my fate. I hear Mother, her voice always so low and calm, give a shrill cry. I head for the stairs and stop when I hear Mother say, “We agreed to silence on the matter.”

  Father says, “He has half guessed, Emma. He has a right to know.”

  “What is the good of bringing up the tragedy of that poor woman now? War is full of tragedies, but we can’t go back and undo them all. We have to get on with our lives.”

  Father says something I can’t hear. He’s calling to me. Step by step I drag myself down the stairs, worried about what Mother will have to say to me. Will she be angry about my reading the letters? When I get downstairs, I see she is wiping away tears and I feel awful, as if all this is my fault.

  “Peter,” she says, “your father tells me you recognized the woman in the photo you saw, that she was the same woman who was in your nightmares, but that’s impossible. You were only a toddler. Can’t you put all that out of your head? It is only a nightmare.”

  “I have to know where my—my real mother is,” I say. Immediately I am sorry, for who is more my real mother than the one who stands before me?

  “Real mother? How can you ask such a question? I am your real mother. I have cared for you all these years. Who could love you more than I do?”

  “We had better tell Peter everything,” Father says. He takes a deep breath as though he is ready to run a long race, and then he plunges in, talking rapidly, getting it over with like a quick swallow of medicine. “When your mother and I were married, there was no thought of war. We only wanted to settle down and have a family. The bad days of the Depression were over. New buildings were going up in Germany. As an architect I was getting work. We had a pleasant home in Ulm with a bedroom for the child we hoped to have, but no child came along. We worried that we might never have a baby. Then the war came. I was drafted into the army as an architect; your mother and I were separated.” He looks at Mother.

  “I hated the war,” Mother says, “but it was impossible to escape it. I gave up my teaching position and joined the Red Cross, where I thought at least I could do something to help those who were suffering. We met trainloads of wounded soldiers and tried to comfort them while they were awaiting medical care. It was heartbreaking, Peter. The trains and the wounded never stopped coming, the soldiers getting younger and the number of wounded increasing. Some of the returning soldiers told us stories of German losses that were never reported in the German papers.”

  I see Mother clench her hands. I feel terrible for her, but I must know. “Other trains came through the station while we were tending the soldiers. Those trains were boarded shut. They were like the trains that ship animals to a slaughterhouse. Sometimes we could hear pounding on the doors or the voices of people inside shouting. There were many guards with dogs around those trains, and at first we thought the cars were transporting Allied soldiers to prisoner-of-war camps. The German Red Cross distributed food packages sent from overseas to such soldiers, so I knew of those prisons.

  “Rumors began to circulate about the sealed trains. The official story was that there were young men on the trains who were on their way to a work camp, but it was whispered that the trains held Jews forced to go to a concentration camp at Dachau. At first I refused to believe such stories; still, the pleadings and the screams from the trains haunted my dreams.

  “There was no knowing when the trains with wounded soldiers would arrive in the station. The Allies had bombed the tracks all over Germany, and trains were often delayed, sometimes getting in late at night, so our Red Cross teams had to work around the clock. One night several trucks arrived at the station, pulling up just a few feet from me. Immediately soldiers with their guard dogs surrounded the trucks. When the doors were opened, hundreds of elderly people and women with little children spilled out and were herded by the soldiers toward a train that stood nearby. I saw at once the yellow stars sewn on the prisoners’ clothes and knew they were Jews. We had heard rumors, but we didn’t want to believe. Now the proof was right in front of me. There was a lot of confusion. The children were crying and some of them tried to run away. Peter, I wept. What had my country come to?”

  As Mother talks, I think of Herr Schafer’s parents. They would have been sent to their deaths on such trucks.

  Mother sees the look on my face. “I am almost finished now, Peter. At that moment the attention of the soldiers was diverted to a truck where men were making an attempt to break loose. Some of the soldiers headed in that direction, leaving fewer to guard the truck near me. The prisoners passed by me in the dark, so close I could have reached out to touch them. When a woman holding a toddler in her arms bumped into me, I felt the warmth of the child against my chest and instinctively reached out my arms. ‘Take him,’ the woman begged. ‘For the love of God, save him.’” Mother takes my hands in hers and holds them tightly. “Peter, how could I not do as she asked?

  “There was only a second before the rest of the soldiers would return with their dogs and their guns. I was alone. The other Red Cross women were busy elsewhere. The remaining soldiers were occupied herding the people onto the train. No one was watching us. I tell you, Peter, to this day I don’t know why I took you. Had I been caught, it would have meant prison or worse. I don’t know whether it was my pity for your mother or my own wish to hold a child in my arms, or both. God will have to judge me, but I saved your life and that is what your mother wanted. You must never forget her sacrifice. To give you up must have been worse than death for her.

  “I had a basket of sheets and bandages to use with the wounded soldiers. That is where I hid you, just as his mother hid baby Moses in a basket in the bulrushes.”

  I know the story from Sunday school. The pharaoh of Egypt ordered all the sons of the Jews killed. When a son was born to one Jewish woman, she took him and hid him by a river. The baby was found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who saved the baby. The baby became Moses, who led the Jewish people out of Egypt to the promised land. I can’t take in Mother’s story, but one thing I understand. I say, “I’m Jewish.”

  “Peter,” Mother said, “you are our son. That is the important thing.”

  “Father?” I look straight at him.

  “Since your mother was surely Jewish, then you are Jewish, but the faith that you choose to follow will be up to you.”

  “What do you mean, Bernhard?” Mother asks. “Peter has been confirmed at St. Mary’s. Surely he is a Christian.”

  There is only one question I want answered. “Where is my mother?”

  Father shakes his head. “We have looked everywhere for her, Peter. Those trains went on to Dachau. We believe she was killed.”

  “But where did you get the picture?”

  Mother says, “The picture was tucked into your jacket. We showed the picture to as many survivors as we could reach. No one could identify her.”

  “How do I know you really tried to find her? You say you always wanted a baby. What if you were afraid she would take me away from you?”

  Mother begins to cry again. “Peter, how could you think such a thing? Do you believe we are so cold-hearted? It would kill me to give you up, but I would rather die than keep you from your mother.”

  Father says, “Peter, locked in my desk is a folder full of letters we sent. I will show them to you. Believe me, we tried. Did we hope she was alive? Of course. In our hearts she had become like a daughter to us. Did we want to keep you? Yes. But did we know you belonged with her? Yes, again. We only hoped that if we found her, she would allow us some part in your life.”

  Mother says, “All this is a shock for you, Peter. You must understand we did all we could. We have to put this behind us and get on with our lives.” She stands up and, straightening out her apron, tries a smile, which doesn’t work. She gives me a hug that nearly smothers me, and as she always does, she brushes back the hair that falls over my forehead. “Come—dinner is almost ready,” she says. “I have made your favorite�
�spareribs and sauerkraut.”

  “If I’m Jewish, maybe I shouldn’t eat pork.”

  Mother throws up her hands. “Peter, what are you saying? You are our son. That is all you need to know.” She throws her arms around me, but I squeeze out of them.

  It’s too much for me. I run out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I feel pulled apart, as if someone has one arm and someone else the other and they are both tugging at me. After the shock of hearing who I am—or really, who I am not—it dawns on me that only a miracle has kept me alive. If my mother hadn’t given me up and my other mother hadn’t taken me, I would have been killed like millions of other Jews. What Herr Schmidt taught in his class not only happened, but it happened to me! When I sat in his class bored and wishing I were somewhere else, somewhere I wouldn’t have to listen to such terrible stories, how could I know I was listening to my own story?

  All the while I walk, I ask myself questions. What does it mean that I was saved and millions of other Jews died? Was it just chance that the soldiers had their attention turned for a minute so that my birth mother could hold me out and my mother stretch out her arms for me? I can’t get over the idea that maybe it is more than chance. Doesn’t the Bible say a sparrow can’t fall to the ground without God knowing it? So why did he save me and why did so many die? I have never thought about it like that. I had never asked questions; but now it is about me, and I have a lot of questions.

  TEN

  I THINK ABOUT THE BOY who wrote the letter to the Stauffenbergs. For a moment I wonder about how much of a hero Stauffenberg really was. When my own mother and the rest of the Jews were being rounded up, Stauffenberg was fighting to help Hitler win. Probably he wanted Germany to win. But he was German, so why wouldn’t he? I don’t feel the same about him now.

  For the first time I think of my mother and father and how what they did was brave too. Herr Schmidt told us that it meant death for anyone to hide a Jew. My parents risked their lives just as Stauffenberg did. So weren’t my parents heroes? That seems impossible—my father, with his glasses slipping down on his nose and his hair mussed from his habit of running his fingers through it when he’s thinking; and Mother, with the carpet slippers she wears when her feet hurt from being on them all day at school, and the way she worries over whether her spätzle will be light enough and not too heavy with flour. Somehow I thought all heroes would be soldiers in the middle of a war. I never thought they could be just everyday people.