Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

from one suitcase to another, examining the luggage tags. “Here’s a familiar name, Mia. I remember the woman well. A dear, sweet person, and she was small like you.”

Bertha poked and pressed the lock until the lid opened. She untied the satin ribbons that held the clothes down. A scent of perfume drifted past me. Bertha pulled out a long-sleeved green dress. “I think this would suit you quite well, Mia,” she said.

“Oh, Bertha, I couldn’t. It would be stealing.”

“She wouldn’t think so. She was kind and generous,” Bertha said. “If she were here, she would give you the dress. But she is not here. She was sent away months and months ago. She will never come back. None of them will.”

“I don’t feel right taking her clothes,” I said.

“Mia, she was ill when she left, and old, very old,” Bertha said. “I remember that when those people were ordered to go to the railroad siding, she had to be helped to the train. It would be a miracle if she survived the journey. Your underwear is in rags, Mia. Now take what you need, while I find some clothes for myself.”

A large woman with wide hips, Bertha was a head taller than I was. “Take what you need,” she said once more, and went off in search of a valise that had belonged to a woman who was her size.

Slowly and carefully, I removed the folded garments from the suitcase Bertha had opened and placed them in a neat pile on a trunk. I tried to picture the old woman who had packed her belongings so neatly in this brown leather suitcase. The woman had packed exactly as I would have: Underwear on the bottom, handkerchiefs and stockings tucked in corners, no space left unused. In the folds of a pale pink silk nightgown, I found her sachet, the source of the perfume scent. I could see her now. I was watching the unknown woman in her bedroom in Mannheim. I imagined a thick gray carpet and drapery in pink and gray patterns. I imagined her preparing for an evening at a concert or a dinner party. Slowly, hampered by stiffness in her fingers, the old woman was closing the buttons at the neck of the green dress. Watching the frail, old woman dress, intruding into her most private actions, I cried out, “No, I won’t! I can’t!”

Bertha appeared at my side. “Mia, our clothes are in shreds. We have almost nothing left.”

“Bertha, I can’t,” I said. “They don’t belong to me.”

“Be sensible,” Bertha said.

“I will not take her dresses or skirts. I can see that they were especially altered for her. They would fit me, but I could never wear them.”

Bertha looked at me in disbelief.

“Don’t you see?” I asked. “I would be robbing the dead. What would be the difference between me and the Nazis?”

“All right,” Bertha said. “Let’s just take old clothes, and things that we really need.”

Reluctantly, I took a pair of stockings, some underwear, three handkerchiefs and the slip that I had come for. “That’s all,” I said, and carefully repacked the valise, replacing the garments in it as I had found them. I retied the satin ribbons and shut the lid.

In the far corner of the storeroom, I spotted a stack of blankets. I walked over to the pile and took one made of burgundy wool. “Here is our answer, Bertha. We will do what the French peasants do. I’ll show you.”

The next evening, working in my room, we cut the blanket in half and sewed simple, identical shift dresses.

I saved my new dress for Shabbos. My mother had always said, “Don’t wear anything new for the first time on an ordinary day.” When Shabbos came, I wore the new burgundy shift. The coarse wool scratched my skin, but I could not bring myself to put on the slip. Nor did I wear it the following Shabbos. It remained folded and hidden under all my other things.

I became the owner of a second new dress from an even more unlikely source. A Red Cross truck pulled into Gurs, filled with clothing from America. Each woman inmate was permitted to select one dress and one pair of shoes. I selected an aqua cotton garment in a style popular before my marriage in 1929. Lola, my washerwoman friend, picked the same dress in yellow. The shoes I chose were made of kid leather and had pointed toes and Louis XIV heels. The last time I saw shoes in this style was in my mother’s shoe store in the early 1920s.

“I know about shoes, Lola,” I said. “These shoes must have been sitting in a warehouse for twenty years. They went out of style that long ago.”

“They are really quite nice,” Lola said.

“Yes, and they’re well-made and comfortable. I’m going to save them for special occasions.”

We were walking back to the laundry when a Gypsy woman tapped me on the shoulder. I stopped, and she handed me an envelope. It was completely blank. I opened it slowly. Inside was a note from the Mother Superior of Haute Vienne district.

Dear Madame,

Your little daughter is with us, and I write to tell you that she is well and well-cared for. She is very bright, a little angel. God is watching over her, and I pray for her every day.

Lea was all right! She was well! I ran after the Gypsy. “Please, I want to answer. Where did it come from? There is no address.”

“I know nothing,” said the Gypsy, and walked away.

It was the first word in almost a year. I was elated. “She is in a convent,” I said to Sal. “It never occurred to me that was where the Underground would hide her. I had imagined that she must be with a family somewhere. I have been trying to picture the house where she might me. Now I know.”

After that, several letters from Lea were delivered to me in the regular mail. The envelopes, addressed in delicate writing that matched the note the Gypsy had given to me, bore the stamp of the censor of Gurs.

Lea was six-and-a-half years old. She wrote in French, using script.

Dear Mama,

I am well. I am happy. I am first in my class, I hope the war will end and I can be together with my dear parents and sisters.

None of the letters bore a return address, so Sal and I never knew the name or location of the convent where Lea was hidden.

Lea’s handwriting was neat and legible, and the messages varied little, unlike the letters Ruth and Eva had written during the first months they were in America. Leaving almost no margin, they filled the page, describing the new coat Ruth had received for her birthday, how easy arithmetic was and how lenient the teachers were, and how strange the taste of peanut butter and watermelon was. I thought they must speak English quite well by now and was sure they must be first in their class. They had ended their letters with many kisses, their number increasing in each letter. Ruth’s last letter, which reached me when we were still at La Couret, had ended with a hundred million billion kisses. It was hard to believe that was just one year ago, because we had lived through so much since then.

Now in the spring of 1943, everything looked so much better. Through news passed on by the Gypsies, we had learned that the Nazis had been halted at Stalingrad, and the Russian armies were pushing back the enemy and reclaiming territories. Since the war began, we had dreamed that the Americans and their Allies would land in Europe and end the Nazi terror. We heard of Allied success in North Africa and thought the Allied invasion had to be near. We began to believe liberation would come soon.

Even so, the offer of release from the camp was totally unexpected. At the end of May, 1943, the Gurs commandant informed the inmates that able-bodied men were needed to work on farms and factories in Occupied France. They would receive wages for their work, and they would be housed in a free camp. As further inducement, the wives of volunteers would be released from Gurs and transferred to the free camp of their choice.

Sal and I sat with a group of inmates discussing the offer. “What exactly is a free camp?” we asked.

“That means you have to report to the camp every night and sleep there,” Dr. Neder said. “But during the day, you are free to come and go without supervision.”

“Like the Gypsies here at Gurs,” Bertha said.

“What I like about this,” Sal said, “is that if I go, Mia will be released. She can go to a free camp.”

“You’re safe here,” Lola said. “Who knows what will be outside?”

“Lola, outside is always better,” Dr. Neder said. “If I were younger or if my wife were alive, I would go.”

Someone asked, “What’s to stop a man from disappearing altogether?”

“If the only identity card you have says you are a resident in a free camp, it would be a foolish risk to attempt that,” Sal said.

“What do you think, Dr. Neder?” A balding German asked. His name was Felix, and he shared Sal’s conviction that to be sent to Germany meant death.

I knew his story. When the deportation from Gurs began the year before, Felix’s name was on the list. “The French are not as meticulous as the Germans,” he had told Sal and me one night. “They didn’t seem to care about an ordinary man like me. I was not a black marketeer, or a political activist. When I found out I was on the list, I dug a hole in the floor of the barracks, crawled in, and covered myself. I suppose they called my name, and maybe they checked me off as going on the train. I really don’t know. What I know is that I didn’t eat for two days. When I figured the last train had left, I crept out of my hole and looked out of the door. I saw just a few French Jews among the Spaniards and the Gypsies. I went to one of the barracks where some men remained and took a bed there. I immediately volunteered to do my share to keep the barracks clean, and that was that. No one reported me.”

Now Felix sought Dr. Neder’s advice. “I would like to get out, but the authorities don’t know I’m here. Gurs seems the safest place for me. Outside, I need documents. Here, in prison, I am free.”

Dr. Neder said, “With this offer, the camp population will be reduced again, and there will be no young men like you left, Felix. There aren’t more than thirty or forty now.”

“You’re right, I’ll stand out,” Felix said. “So I shall count on their inefficiency and volunteer.”

This time I did not insist on staying together with Sal as I had when the police came to arrest us at Le Couret. I knew where he would be, and he would know where I was. We could write to each other. Although our mail would be censored, we would be able to stay in touch.

Only two dozen volunteers appeared at the commandant’s office to sign up for work outside. When Felix gave his name, the clerk could find no record of him. The commandant drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk while the clerk searched through file cards and ledgers. Felix stood there, his face expressionless. After a while Dr. Neder, who was standing with the inmates, said, “It is odd that you have no record for him, but what difference does it make?