In the Fall They Leave, page 27
The train slows again as it approaches what seems to be an encampment of some kind—numerous small, unpainted frame structures set in a grid pattern of streets. At one, a flagpole, and the flag of the Netherlands, its red, white, and blue horizontal bars all but rigid in the wind. The train stops, and Marie-Thérèse looks at the woman alongside her. “Another check?”
“I think they’re stopping to allow someone from the camp to get on.”
“Camp? Are the Netherlands at war now too?”
“No, not yet, at least. We’re still neutral. What you are seeing is a refugee camp. Thousands of people have come across the border since last fall. There are camps all over now and some for British soldiers, even German soldiers. Also, families have been taking in refugees.”
“German soldiers?”
“Deserters. They stay in their own camps, for the most part. We don’t believe they pose a threat and so allow them to remain here. I suppose it could hurt our neutrality. Nonetheless, they’re here. Some of the camps have their own post offices and infirmaries, even schools. They’re very much like small towns.”
Marie-Thérèse stares intently at the camp, wondering if some of those she’d helped escape might in fact be living there. Woodsmoke tilts toward the south. Infirmaries. Post offices. German deserters. “Is there…a refugee registry?”
“Yes, of course. And…you might be pleased to know this…the refugee infirmaries are always calling for volunteers.”
They pass other camps, each flying the red, white, and blue tricolor of the Netherlands.
Built around waterways, Rotterdam is a large city, its design complex, and Marie-Thérèse has forgotten her family’s address. But they easily learn it by inquiring at the grand and new Stadhuis, in an office on its second floor. There they also learn that records are kept of all the refugee camps, not merely those in the vicinity of the city. Their nun-and-postulant disguises elicit curious looks, but clerks are too polite to ask questions of their own.
This, too, seems another world.
The Hulbert row house is on a quiet block. Across the street a park, and beyond it, the canal Marie-Thérèse now recalls. A line of leafless trees, black against the blue sky, and a lawn crusted white evoke that peace she also remembers. Yet anxiousness rushes through her at the thought that they might not be there after all.
She turns the doorbell’s brass key to the right and hears its attenuated, muted ring. After a moment, she turns the key to the right again and holds it there for a longer interval. A frigid wind blows their veils about. She’s about to turn the key yet again when the door opens and there’s Francine, squinting against the strident winter light and bunching her lips in annoyance at having to open the door in such cold. Marie-Thérèse anticipates, exactly, her words. What do you want? If it is food, wipe your feet and come into the kitchen.
“Francine, don’t you recognize me?” With one hand Marie-Thérèse holds back her veil.
“Mon Dieu!” Francine says after a moment. Then she’s shouting, “Madame! Madame! It’s your daughter. It’s Marie-Thérèse! Come in, come in, Sister, please!” Marie-Thérèse pulls the door shut behind them as Francine does her own version of a pirouette. “Where is your mother? I must find her! She might be napping. Go into the kitchen. There is potato soup. No! The parlor. No! Come with me.”
Marie-Thérèse begs her companion to stay and have a bit of lunch, and then Francine is half-pulling Marie-Thérèse upstairs. On a landing, Francine has to press herself against the wall as Madame Hulbert envelops her daughter. While madame sobs, Francine goes on about how Marie-Thérèse needs to eat something. “Mon Dieu, she looks like one of those wraiths in those dances of yours. Pardonnez-moi, madame. Let me pass. I must get to the kitchen.”
And soon they’re in the dining room, potato and leek soup steaming in white bowls, and a loaf of bread and mound of butter at the center of the table. Marie-Thérèse’s father has joined them, and Jacques and Willy summoned from school. Marie-Thérèse is aware of her family’s concern and wonders if she really does look like some ghostly image of herself.
Possibly so. Survivors often do.
The Matron
Other volunteers are now referring to her as “the matron,” which often brings on profound sadness. Sometimes, though, she takes heart at those words and is even able to sign her notes of instruction with the letter M. And though not officially qualified to do so, she’s been training the volunteers in the matron’s methodology as well as occasionally giving brief lectures on basic nursing topics. Through her, she thinks, the volunteers are connected to the real matron and through her to Florence Nightingale. A humbling but nonetheless encouraging thought. Matron Hulbert, they’ll say. Ask Matron. Was there ever a time when her own teacher had felt like an impostor? Possibly at first. Marie-Thérèse wishes she’d asked. It might be that everyone has to learn how to inhabit one’s dreams. Fit oneself into them and then wear them until the dream and the person become one.
At times, she rereads Mother Gonzaga’s letter, left unopened for weeks after her arrival in Rotterdam. At first, she’d told herself she knew what it would say: She was executed by firing squad. So why read those painful words?
She has since come to understand that there was another reason she refused. Left unread, the words couldn’t destroy hope. Left unread, the letter held forth possibility. She escaped, mademoiselle. Against all odds, she escaped as you yourself did. But we don’t know where she is.
And Rudi too. He escaped. It felt good to tell herself these things. And it got her through the weeks. But one day she decided that such thinking was dangerous. Had she come so far only to sink into delusion? She and Jacques had been talking, nights, sitting at the casement window overlooking the little park and waterway. She could see how hard he was struggling to return to rationality and self-forgiveness. So, in time, she made herself open the letter.
My Dear Mademoiselle,
Your dear matron went to her death with great dignity on October 12, 1915. She made her peace with God and faced her executioners with equanimity. I am told she wore her blue suit and fur stole and reindeer gloves. The night before, she told the Reverend H. Stirling Gahan, “But this I would say, standing in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”
These words, and her life’s work, are her gift to you and to us all. Please do not allow her untimely and unjust death to extinguish your desire to do good in our poor world. We must, simply, carry on her work. In this way, she will live through us. So do not despair, my dear petite convict, but live now as she would want you to—in hope and love and the belief that every small good thing you do benefits all.
God bless you,
Mother Gonzaga
Marie-Thérèse placed the letter in a lavender-scented corner of her bureau. Sometimes she takes it out and rereads it.
Lately, she’s been telephoning the Office of Refugee Registry at the Stadhuis to ask if the names Rudolph Fischer and Janine and Elli Arit have been added to the rolls. Each time, she spells the names with care. The clerk recognizes her voice by now, Marie-Thérèse senses, but is kind enough to hide impatience.
“Not yet. Perhaps try again in a day or two.”
And she does.
Often, nightmare scenarios—Rudi facing a firing squad; Janine and Elli, hungry, wandering the streets of Brussels; the two of them huddled somewhere, trying to stay warm; the two of them wondering where she is.
With the help of the Stadhuis and various newspaper offices, she learns everything she needs to know. And then begins composing her own letter.
March 10, 1916
Herr Colonel Bruning,
On a January afternoon of last year, we met on an Antwerp-bound train. You asked where I was going and why and said that I appeared too much the student and should beware of too much reading. You also told me about your family’s brewery in Cologne and kindly invited me and my family to tour it one day. You said an interesting thing after forgetting to introduce yourself. You said, “This war has uncivilized me.”
Much has happened since then. As I told you that day, I was a student nurse at a clinic in Brussels. You mentioned that you had heard of that place and that I might better stay in the Netherlands and not return to Brussels. But I did return. I returned in order to persuade our matron to leave before she could be accused of treason and imprisoned. But she refused to save herself when so many others needed help. She refused to abandon her duty, and for this she was executed. There is nothing to be done about that now. There is something, however, that you, as a civilized and just person, can do, a small, good thing.…
It takes several days to finally choose what she hopes are the right words to tell him about Janine and Elli and how they might be somewhere in Brussels, possibly at a patisserie owned by Monsieur and Madame LaBreque or perhaps in that vicinity. She asks if he would please make discreet inquiries and if approaching them, not be in uniform. She explains why, then goes on to ask that he prevail upon the local authorities and see that the two girls are brought to a refugee camp near Rotterdam, which she names. She explains how, before her imprisonment, she was their unofficial guardian. Finally, in a moment of bravado, or stupidity, she signs the letter with her full name.
But the letter remains there, tucked under a textbook.
Weeks later, clouds of blossoms appear in Rotterdam gardens and orchards. In the camps, pea vines are climbing trellises, and gardeners are harvesting green onions and asparagus—older men with white mustaches and belted jackets who become, momentarily, Papa. She sees Janine in nearly every five-year-old little girl. And Elli in the older ones.
One day at a stationer’s shop she buys red, old-fashioned sealing wax and a brass impress with the letter M in a circle. She buys red ink.
In her room she signs the letter, then inserts the pages in an envelope and seals the flap with the red wax. The letter M stands out in its circle. On the front face of the envelope she adds, to the left of Colonel Bruning’s name and military address, the words, in red ink, Dringend! Geheim!
Urgent. Confidential.
It requires two more days to work up the courage to take the letter to the post office. The clerk looks at it and then at her. He weighs the letter and gives her the appropriate stamps. There is coldness in these actions.
She drops the letter into the slot for international mail and immediately wants to snatch it back. It occurs to her that she has just signed her death warrant.
But really, she tries to assure herself, why should she be terrified? The letter probably won’t reach him anyway, for any number of reasons.
Days, then weeks pass. All her qualms and fears evaporate. It’s as though she never wrote it and the girls are gone forever. Often, as if in compensation, she thinks of Rani. One of her volunteer assistants, Ingel, has the same red-gold hair and blotchy skin, and Marie-Thérèse sometimes finds it disorienting yet comforting. One afternoon the young woman’s back is to her, and Marie-Thérèse calls her by Rani’s name. When the young woman doesn’t turn, Marie-Thérèse is momentarily annoyed.
Then she laughs. Rani has been telling her something all along. That they will see each other again. Somehow.
Piano
She begins telephoning the Stadhuis again to inquire about the girls and a Rudolph Fischer. The answer is always the same: No, sorry. No one by those names. Could they be listed under different names?
That, of course, she cannot answer.
It seems pointless to keep telephoning, yet doing something is somehow better than nothing.
One afternoon, a donated piano arrives at the camp. The four men unloading it from the back of a truck are careful but, nonetheless, one of them loses hold of his end, and the piano tips, slides off the ramp, and hits the ground on its side, with a howling of all its keys. The young man can’t stop apologizing. An assessment reveals that one of the piano’s legs has cracked, so she goes to the infirmary for bandaging tape. When she returns, the young Belgian begins apologizing all over again. The other three offer a number of humorous comments as she wraps the tape around the piano leg. A craftsman will be found, she assures them, who will be able to create a new leg for the piano. When it’s finally in the schoolhouse and she tests a few keys, she adds tuner and simple sheet music to her mental list. The rickety piano stool also needs repair. She’s just relieved, though, that the piano didn’t land on anyone’s foot; getting a doctor out there often took some time.
After they leave, she ripples through scales and arpeggios. The Schubert waltz she tries next sounds like woolly music produced by some barely functioning gramophone. The cast-iron plate will have to be checked as well. She adds another mental note. Despite the awful sounds, she continues playing, stopping only when a child appears at her side. Marie-Thérèse’s heart jolts, but the girl isn’t Janine. She’s older, with dark hair. Her slightly protruding eyes are luminous.
“May I try, Matron Hulbert, s’il vous plaît? May I?”
“Of course!”
Marie-Thérèse rises from the tippy stool, and the girl immediately sits and attacks, firing out the first of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Two-Part Inventions. This piece—Marie-Thérèse is sure of it—has never in its long history been played with such force and speed. The spinet howls and moans until the child finally throws her small hands upward. “I know others too!”
“I am sure you must. What is your name?”
“Karena! I was given lessons in Brussels. May I have them here? Please, Matron Hulbert?”
Marie-Thérèse adds yet another item to her growing list. “I’ll do my best to find you a teacher, mademoiselle.”
“Merci! Merci beaucoup!”
Karena attacks the second Invention, and wanting to cover her ears, Marie-Thérèse escapes the schoolroom.
An elderly woman is standing just outside the door, holding an ivory-colored parasol to shade her from the sun. It occurs to Marie-Thérèse that she might be related to Karena, a grandmother possibly, and that the two of them heard her playing and stopped to listen. But then Marie-Thérèse recognizes petite Madame LaBreque from the patisserie on the rue de la Culture.
“Madame! Are you here now? Is Monsieur LaBreque with you? How good to see you! Do you have news of Brussels? Mon Dieu, what a surprise!”
Madame LaBreque’s mouth is quivering. Her pale blue eyes, behind her eyeglasses, are blinking.
“Did something happen? Is it Monsieur LaBreque?”
She shakes her head. The parasol wobbles
“Let’s go to my office. I’ll get you some cold water, or coffee if you prefer. You can tell me everything. Today is awfully warm, isn’t it? It seems that it might storm, but the gardens need rain.”
Even then Marie-Thérèse doesn’t suspect.
In her office at the front of the infirmary, she invites the woman to be seated, then closes the door. Madame LaBreque is using her handkerchief to blot each eye in turn. Marie-Thérèse gets her water, but she’s too upset to take it.
“Dear Madame LaBreque, you wish to tell me something. One moment, please.” Marie-Thérèse gets another chair from the anteroom and sits near the woman. “Is it about your husband, or the patisserie? Did you lose the patisserie?”
The woman’s entire body seems to be quaking, and then Marie-Thérèse, trembling as well, understands. Not Monsieur LaBreque. Not the patisserie. Blood drains away from her head. Numbness is creeping in. “You can tell me, madame. Something has happened to the girls, hasn’t it? But please, tell me. Whatever it is.”
Madame LaBreque averts her eyes and then begins apologizing like the man who dropped his end of the spinet. Pardonnez-
moi, mademoiselle! Pardonnez-moi! From a cinched bag looped over her left wrist, she extracts a folded letter addressed to Marie-Thérèse.
“Where did you get this, madame?”
After a while, the woman is able to stifle hiccoughing and tears and gain enough control for words. “He came to the shop, a gentleman. A German gentleman. He asked…he asked to speak with us in private. He said he knew we were caring for two girls named Elli and Janine Arit. He wanted to know how they were, if they were healthy. I thought he must be their parent, come looking for them. My heart broke, Mademoiselle Hulbert. We feared the day, monsieur and I, we feared someone would come to claim them. We would think about it and worry and then we wouldn’t. We would try to forget that it might happen. And then it finally did. I could see there was no point in lying. He knew they were with us.
“I told him they are both healthy and happy. I told him how they help us in the patisserie and are learning to bake. The little one is even talking some. I told him they’ve been with us since last October. At first, they were with Madame Kortman, but she brought them to us. She said they were crying all the time and she didn’t know how to help them or what to give them to do. She was afraid to send them to school because she was afraid they might run away somewhere. I don’t know why she would think it but she did. She said she was not the right person to care for them. Perhaps, she said, we could take them and give them something to do in the patisserie.
“Monsieur and I opened our arms and, you know, it was such a gift because later that month we learned that our only son, Claude, was killed at the Battle of Loos, on the Western Front. Oh, we grieved, but there was so much to do to keep everything going and the two girls needed us, and we couldn’t just let everything go while we wept. No! That is not our way. We kept on, we kept everything in order and did everything we could for the girls. Mademoiselle, we told ourselves not to, but we could not help it. We came to love them very much. And being cautious, we did not let it out that they were with us, but of course our patrons sometimes noticed them there, in the back. And then this man comes, this Herr Bruning, and he tells us they should be with you. I told him how happy they are with us and how much they have learned. He sent me here to tell you all this, as we told him. And he gave me the letter for you.”
