In the endless blanket of white I imagine our tiny farm, close to the Dutch coast, the air thick with salt and chilled by the North Sea, where I lived with only my parents. Though we had been spared from the air raids that had brought Rotterdam to rubble, occupation had come down hard. The Germans had focused on defending the coastal towns, mining the beaches so we could no longer walk them and billeting soldiers everywhere—which is how I met the one who fathered my child.
He hadn’t forced me. If he had, or if I had pretended it, my parents might have been more forgiving. He had not even tried during the fortnight he stayed at our farm, though I could tell from the long looks across the table that he wanted to. His tall, broad-shouldered presence had been too large in the close cottage space, a piece of furniture that did not fit. We all breathed a sigh of relief once he had been moved to new quarters. But he returned, bringing a half-dozen fresh eggs like we hadn’t seen since before the war, and later chocolate to thank us. I was weary—the war had been raging since I was twelve, taking all of the dances and normal things I might have known as a teenager with it. For the first time with the soldier, not much more than a boy himself, it seemed like I stood out.
So when he came to me in the night, slipping through the back door and into my cold, narrow bed, I’d felt chosen, and excited by his touch—a man so much more certain than the fumbling boys I’d known at school. I didn’t see the uniform, with the same insignia that the SS marching Steffi Klein away had worn. He was just a soldier who had been conscripted into the army. Not one of them. My memories of our one night together are hazy, like a half-forgotten dream of desire and then pain that caused me to cover my own mouth so my parents wouldn’t hear my cry. It was over just as quickly, leaving me with a longing not quite fulfilled and a sense that there should have been more to it.
Then he was gone. The German did not come around again and two days later I learned that his unit had moved on. I knew then I had made a mistake. It wasn’t until about a month later that I realized how serious my mistake had been.
The end came without warning on a spring day warmer than most. Morning sun bathed our seaside village of Scheveningen and gulls called to one another above the inlet. Lying in my bed, it had almost been possible to forget about the war for a few minutes.
Then my bedroom door swung open and the knowledge of the truth raged in my father’s bulging eyes. “Out!”
I stared at him in disbelief. How could he possibly have known? I had told no one. I had not expected to be able to keep it a secret forever, but surely for another month or so, long enough to figure out what to do. Mama, who had walked in while I was dressing a few days earlier, must have seen the slight curve of my stomach. The rest, the timing of when the German had been with us, would not have been so very hard to figure out.
Papa was proud and staunchly Dutch, with a limp from the Great War to prove it. My affair with the German was the greatest betrayal. Surely, though, he did not mean for me, his only daughter and just sixteen, to leave. But the same man who had once laced my boots and carried me on his shoulders now unrelentingly held the door open for me to walk through a final time.
I braced for him to strike me or berate me further, but he simply pointed to the door. “Go.” His eyes did not meet mine.
“No!” Mama cried as I went. There was no strength behind her voice, though. As she ran after me, my heart lifted. Perhaps just this once she would stand up to him and fight for me. Instead she just pressed the money she had tucked away into my palm. I waited for her to embrace me.
She did not.
A horn whistles long and low in the distance. I duck behind a tree as a train appears from the same direction we’d come, snaking a path through the field of white. Though I can’t be sure, from a far distance there is a train car that looks exactly like the one from which I pulled the baby. Headed east, like the other trains of Jews. Babies taken, as my own had been, but from families with two parents who loved, wanted them. Stifling a cry, I step from the trees, wanting to run after it and take other children as I had this one. But the baby’s body sinks warm and heavy in my arms, the lone life I have saved.
Saved—at least for now. Behind the receding train, the sky is lightening to gray in the east. It will be dawn soon and we are still too close to the station. The police could come at any moment. Snow falls heavy, soaking my thin coat and reaching the child beneath it. We must keep going. I push deeper into the woods, out of sight. The air is still with that silence that only snow can bring. My feet are icy bricks now, legs weary. I am weak from the little I’ve eaten in my months at the station and my mouth is dry with thirst. There is nothing beyond the trees but endless white. I try to remember from my journey to the girls’ home months earlier how far it is to the next village. But even if we make it there, no one will risk his own life to shelter us.
I switch the baby to my other hip, brushing the snow from his forehead. How long has it been since he last ate? He has not moved or cried since we left the station and I wonder if he is still breathing. Hurriedly I pull aside into a thick cluster of trees and unwrap him a bit more, keeping him close for warmth. His eyes are closed and he is sleeping—or so I hope. His lips are cracked and bleeding from dehydration, but his chest rises and falls evenly. His bare feet are like tiny bricks of ice.
I scan the forest desperately, remembering the other babies on the train, most already gone. I should have taken some of their clothes for the child. I am repulsed at the thought. I unbutton my coat and blouse, grimacing at the blast of ice and snow against my skin. I hold the baby to my breast, willing some of the thin gray liquid that I’d squeezed out to relieve my discomfort nearly four months earlier to appear in tiny dots. But my movements are clumsy—no one had taught me how to nurse, and the child is too weak to latch on. My breasts ache with longing but nothing comes. My milk is gone, dried up. After I’d given birth, the nurse had told me there were women who would pay for my milk. I’d shaken my head, unwilling no matter how much I needed the money to have that taken from me, too. With my child gone, I was desperate to be done with the whole thing as quickly as possible.
My child. Part of me wishes I had not held my baby that once, that my arms had not memorized the shape of his body and head. Maybe then my arms would not ache every second. Once I had considered what I would have called him. But as names appeared in my mind, a knife of pain shot through me and I had clamped down on the thought. I wonder what he is called now, praying he had reached people who cared enough to give him a really good, strong name.
Pushing thoughts of my own child aside, I study the baby in my arms. His face is squared off a bit around the full cheeks and perfectly pointed at the chin. The shape is distinct and I just know there is a whole family out there—please let them still be out there—with faces exactly that same shape.
Something crackles behind me in the distance beyond the trees. I turn back, squinting to see through the falling snow, but the way we’ve come is obscured by the tangle of branches and brush. My heartbeat quickens. It might be a car engine. Though we are well-hidden by the trees now, there is a road not far from the edge of the woods. If the police followed us, my footprints in the snow would easily lead them here. I hold my breath, feeling like a hunted animal as I strain to listen through the stillness for voices or other sounds. Nothing—at least for now.
Closing my coat, I press forward through the trees. I hold the baby clumsily in one arm, using the other to clear a low branch in front of us. Snow shakes from it and falls down the collar of my coat, icy and wet. My feet, soaked through the patchy secondhand boots, begin to ache.
The baby grows heavier with every step. I slow, breathing heavily, then reach down for a handful of snow to ease the dryness of my mouth, the coldness burning through the holes in my glove. I straighten, nearly dropping the child. Is he thirsty? I wonder if giving him a bit of snow will help or make things worse. Holding him at arm?
??s length, I am suddenly helpless. There is so much I do not know. Other than those fleeting seconds after I had given birth, I have never held a child, much less cared for one. I want to set him down. Empty-handed I might make it to the next village. He would have died in that train car anyway. Would this be so much worse?
The baby’s hand, no bigger than a walnut, shoots up, grasping for my finger and holding tight. What does he think when he looks up and sees a face different from the one that he had known since birth? He is almost the exact same age that my own child would be. I imagine a mother whose scars still ache like mine. Looking at this child, my heart breaks open. He once had a name. How could a child too young to know his own name ever hope to find his parents? I will him to breathe, to keep going until we can find shelter.
I cradle his head gently before covering it once more. Then redoubling my efforts, I press on. But the wind grows stronger now, whipping the snow-clad branches at me and making it hard to breathe. Stopping a second time had been a mistake. There is no shelter other than the train station for many kilometers. If we stay here, we will die, just as surely as the child would have on that train.
“I can’t do this!” I cry aloud, forgetting in my desperation that I must not be heard.
The wind howls louder in response.
I try to move forward again. My toes are numb now, legs leaden. Each step into the sharp wind grows harder. The snow turns to icy sleet, forming a layer on us. The world around us has turned strangely gray at the edges. The child’s eyes are closed, and he is resigned to the fate that has always been his. I take a step forward and stumble and stand again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, unable to hold him any longer. Then I fall forward and everything goes black.
4
Astrid
The squeak of a doorknob turning, hands pressing against hard wood. At first, they seem part of a dream I cannot quite make out.
The sounds come again, though, louder this time, followed by the scraping of the door opening. I struggle to sit. Sharp terror shoots through me. Inspections have come without warning in the fifteen months since my return, Gestapo or the local police who do their bidding. They have not noticed me yet, nor asked for the ausweis Herr Neuhoff had gotten for me, the identification card I fear will not be good enough. My reputation as a performer is a blessing and a curse in Darmstadt, giving me the means to survive, but at the same time making my false identity a thin veneer, nearly impossible to maintain. So when the inspectors come I disappear into the bottom of one of the tarp-covered wagons, or if there is no time, into the woods. But here in Peter’s cabin, with its lone door and no cellar, I am trapped.
A deep male voice cuts through the darkness. “It’s only me.” Peter’s hands, which I feel so often in the night these past months, stirring me from dreams of the past I do not want to leave, rub my back gently. “Someone has been found in the forest.”
I roll over. “Who found them, you?” I ask. Peter hardly sleeps, but walks at night, prowling the countryside like a restless coyote even in deepest winter. I reach up to touch his stubbled cheek, noting with concern the circles that ring his eyes more darkly now.
“I was down by the stream,” he replies. “I thought it was a wounded animal.” Peter’s vowels are over-rounded, v’s nearly w’s, his Russian accent undiluted by time as though he had left Leningrad weeks and not years ago.
“So naturally, you went closer,” I say, my voice chiding. I would have gone the other way.
“Yes.” He helps me to my feet. “They weren’t conscious so I carried them back here.” His breath holds a hint of liquor, drunk too recently to have gone sour.
“They?” I repeat, the word now a question.
“A woman.” A bit of jealousy passes through me as I imagine him holding someone else. “There was also a child.” He pulls a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket.
A woman and child, alone in the woods at night. This is queer, even for the circus. No good can come from strange happenings—or strangers.
I dress hurriedly and pull on my coat. Below the lapel I can feel the rough outline of torn threads where the yellow star had once been sewn. I follow Peter out into the frigid darkness, tucking my chin low against the biting wind. His cottage is one of a half dozen scattered across the gently sloping valley, private quarters saved for the most senior and skilled of performers. Though my official residence is in the lodge, a long building set apart where most of the other girls sleep, staying with Peter had quickly become the norm. I slip back and forth at night and before dawn with only the slightest pretense.
When I came back to Darmstadt, I had meant to stay only long enough for Herr Neuhoff to find a replacement aerialist and for me to figure out where I was going. But the arrangement worked, and as I prepared to join the circus on the road that first year, my visions of leaving waned. And I met Peter, who had joined the Circus Neuhoff during the years that I was gone. He is a clown, though not the type of buffoon whom noncircus folk normally associate with the title. His performances are original and elaborate and they combine comedy, satire and irony with an artistry that even I have never seen before.
I had not expected to be with anyone again, much less fall in love. Peter is a decade older, and different from the rest of the performers. He had been born to the Russian aristocracy when there was one; some said he was the cousin of Czar Nicholas. In another life we never would have met. The circus is a great equalizer, though; no matter class or race or background, we are all the same here, judged on our talent. Peter fought in the Great War. He had not sustained injuries, at least none that were visible, but there is a kind of melancholy that suggested he has never recovered. His sadness resonated with me and we were drawn to one another.
I start toward the women’s lodge. Peter shakes his head and guides me in a different direction. “Up there.” The light of his cigarette gleams like a torch as he inhales.
The newcomers are at Herr Neuhoff’s villa—also rather unusual. “They can’t stay,” I whisper, though there is no one else around to hear.
“Of course not,” Peter replies. “Just temporary shelter so they wouldn’t die from the storm.” His shadow looms over me. It is not only Peter’s sorrow that makes his greatness as a clown so improbable. He told me once that the first time he had tried to join a circus, they sent him away, saying he was too tall to be a clown. So he’d apprenticed at a theater in Kiev, developed an ironic persona that suited his craggy features and long-legged style and then gone from circus to circus, building fame around his act. Peter’s antics, which often feature a humorous disregard for authority, are known far and wide. Through the war years, his routines had grown more caustic and his hatred of war and fascism less veiled. As his reputation for daring irreverence grew, so did the crowds.
He opens the door to the villa, where I’ve been only for the holiday party Herr Neuhoff throws for the entire circus each December and a handful of other times since my return. We slip inside without knocking. From the top of the staircase, Herr Neuhoff gestures that we should join him. In one of the guest rooms, a girl with long blond hair sleeps in a mahogany four-poster bed. Her pale skin is almost translucent against the rich burgundy sheets.
On the low table beside her, a baby lies in a makeshift bassinet, fashioned from a large woven basket. Moses on the Nile, watching us with dark, interested eyes. The child cannot be more than a few months old, I guess, though I have no experience with such things. It has long lashes and round cheeks that one seldom sees for all of the deprivation these days. Beautiful—but aren’t they all at that age?
Herr Neuhoff nods toward the child. “Before she passed out, she said he is her brother.”
A boy. “But where did they come from?” I ask. Herr Neuhoff simply shrugs.
The girl sleeps soundly. With a clear conscience, my mother might have said. She has thick, blond plaits, like a
lass out of a Hans Christian Andersen tale. She could have been one of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls, striding along Alexanderplatz with arms linked, singing vile songs about the Fatherland and killing Jews. Peter had described her as a woman but she could not be more than seventeen. I feel so very old and tired by comparison.
The girl stirs. Her arms shoot straight out, searching for the baby in a gesture I know all too well from my own dreams. Then sensing emptiness, she begins to flail.
Watching her desperation, the words run through my head: there is no way that is her brother.
Herr Neuhoff lifts the child and places it in the young woman’s arms and instantly she calms. “Waar ben ik?” Dutch. She blinks, then repeats the question in German: Where am I? Her voice is thin, wavering.
“Darmstadt,” Herr Neuhoff replies. No recognition registers on her face. She is not from these parts. “You are with the Circus Neuhoff.”
She blinks. “A circus.” Though to us it seems quite normal—indeed for more than half of my life it was all I had known—to her it must sound like something from a fantasy tale. A freak show. I stiffen, instantly reverting to the defensive girl facing down stares on the schoolyard. Throw her back out into the snow if we aren’t good enough.
“How old are you, child?” Herr Neuhoff asks gently.
“I’ll be seventeen next month. I fled my father’s house,” she offers, her German smoother now. “I’m Noa Weil and this is my brother.” Her words come too quickly, answering questions that no one has asked.
“What’s his name?” I ask.
A moment’s hesitation. “Theo. We’re from the Dutch coast,” she says with another pause. “Things were very bad. My father drank and beat us. Mother died in childbirth. So I took my brother and we left.” What is she doing here, hundreds of miles from home? No one would flee Holland for Germany now. Her story does not make sense. I wait for Herr Neuhoff to ask if she has papers.