Child of the Journey (6 page)

She leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek. "Yes, Beadle Cohen," she said, mostly for the boy. "We will meet again. Next year, in Jerusalem."

M
isha huddled under the train-station bench and occupied himself by squinting upward through the slats at the lights hanging from the high roof overhead. He cupped a grubby hand over one eye and then the other, noting the way the lights appeared to be moving when he did that, even though he knew they were not.

It was the only thing he could think of with which to occupy himself until the train left with the beadle on it. He had to consider what he was going to do next.

His course had seemed perfectly clear and simple to him sitting in the sewer, awake while the beadle slept: stay in Berlin and find Mama and Papa. Exactly how he was going to find them, or how he was going to stay warm and fed during his search had seemed irrelevant then. Now that his stomach was rumbling and he was shivering from the cold November draught blowing across him from the open railroad tracks, he was less sure of himself. It was not that he was any less determined to keep his promise to himself to find his parents, he told himself; it was just that, like Mama and Papa always told him, it was a big world out here and he was only a small boy.

Forgetting his game, he flattened himself on his belly and looked up and down the platform. Though the ticket inspector was on the steps, a whistle in his mouth, the beadle continued to rush up and down the platform, with complete disregard for his own safety, looking for the boy. In his hand he held the satchel that Misha knew contained what food had been left in the sewer, minus the few pieces of bread and chocolate he had secreted away in his pocket.

Misha took out the chocolate, smelled it, felt himself salivate, but resisted the temptation to nibble. He allowed himself a corner crust of bread, and replaced that, too, in his pocket. His hunger could wait to be appeased, It wasn't going anywhere. It would sit there like something alive, making noises inside his stomach, and eventually he would have to eat. But not now. Not yet.

"Misha," the beadle yelled. "Mishele.
Nu, komm schon
. Come already. Do not do this foolhardy thing."

It was cold and draughty so low down near the cement of the station platform. Misha wrapped himself up with his own arms and determined that, no matter what happened, he would not cry. Not now or ever again.

Dry-eyed and feeling like a traitor, he watched the beadle give up the search and, holding his hands palms-up in exasperation, board the train. "Goodbye, Beadle Cohen," he whispered. "I'm sorry to be a trouble to you."

The inspector gave three long blasts on his whistle. The train rattled its own warning, chugged forward a hiccup, and stopped. A swirl of steam rolled down the platform. Misha watched it hopefully. If it reached him, it would improve the look of his wrinkled black pants and gray shirt, and warm him up a little.

Three short blasts on the whistle, and the beadle was gone.

There's no time to panic, Misha told himself, pushing away the feeling of total isolation that threatened immobility. What he needed now was a plan. That much he had to have. He could not just wander around Berlin. For one thing, by tonight the robbers and destroyers could own the streets again; for another, it would be cold and probably raining. Maybe even snowing.

He stood up and dusted himself off. He would run, if he knew in what direction. As he reached the cherub clock, someone called his name.

"Papa?"

Heart beating wildly, Misha turned around. Herr Becker, the owner of the bakery around the corner from the temple, waved from across the platform. He was a gentle man who used to put old bread out at the back for people to take to the Zoo Gardens to feed the ducks and the swans. Misha's hunger tempted him to answer, but then he remembered that Herr Becker didn't feed the birds anymore. Now, even when the bread was old and hard, he
sold
it. Readymade toast, Mama used to joke.

Misha waved back and turned to run, as if he were late for an appointment.

"Why is a cute little boy like you running around this place on his own?" A fat man held Misha by the arm and spun him around. He had a nasty glint in his eye and stank roundly of herring and beer. "If you don't have any place to go, you can always come with me. I know someone who would love to take a bite out of you." He smiled, showing a row of rotting teeth.

Stories about Georg Haarmann, murderer and cannibal, rose to the surface of Misha's memory. A fat, no-neck, heavy-joweled man like this, Misha was sure, ugly as a bulldog. Bet this one kidnapped boys and girls, too, and cut them up, and cooked them and ate them. And it was all true. Twenty years ago, Papa said, but true. He thought his papa had said the man was dead, but--

He shook himself loose, stumbled, fell, got up and ran on, feet automatically running in the direction of home.

Several blocks from the station, he finally slowed down. He looked into the shattered glass of a Jewish shop window and caught his fractured image. He had to look pretty closely to see even a glimpse of Rabbi Czisça's neat young son. For the first time, he noticed the hole in his pants his falling onto the pavement had caused. Such a klutz, Papa used to say. Other people wish they had a third eye in their heads to improve their psychic abilities, or in their chests to add to their understanding. Not our son. He needs a third eye underfoot.

Less afraid now of being recognized, but feeling no less hungry or helpless, he continued in the direction of home. Or what used to be home. He was almost at the Kempinski corner before he admitted to himself that he was being followed. He glanced back over his shoulder.

The no-neck man grinned, making no secret of being in pursuit.

Less afraid now that he was out in the open, in the streets, Misha crossed the street at Kempinski corner, and hovered at a gap in the hedge that separated the building from the people who walked the sidewalk. Between the glass windows of Kempinski Café and the hedge lay an outdoor dining area. Stacks of square green iron tables and chairs stood unusably wet from the early morning rain that lay in puddles in the narrow corridor.

Suddenly he heard the echo of Miriam's voice:
I'm forced to breakfast there tomorrow.

There
was the Kempinski, and today was yesterday's tomorrow, Misha walked quickly through the break in the foliage. Perhaps God had sent him a piece of luck because he was doing what Papa always told him, and helping himself.

Sure enough, as he neared the cafe's plate-glass window he saw Fräulein Miriam and a uniformed man seated at the table nearest the light. She must have been cold, for her coat was thrown around her shoulders. With one hand she toyed with a bowl of fresh strawberries; her other had lay ungloved on her lap, beneath the table. The man's uniform was different from the ones the men who had taken his parents away had worn, but it still succeeded in reminding him of them. A covered wicker basket of bread lay untouched between them, and a pot of what he assumed must be coffee.

As if she felt his presence, Miriam looked up and turned her head. She seemed to be looking straight at him, yet she did not react. Perhaps the glare of sunlight on the glass was distorting her view, he thought, moving to a different position.

He waved at her, and pointed at the table, expecting to be beckoned inside. Miriam started slightly, looked straight at him briefly, and shook her head. She made a similar gesture with the hand that was out of sight, pointed down the street, indicating that he should leave, and clenched her fist.

Shocked, he walked on, past the entrance to the hotel. He glanced into the lobby, at the huge displays of flowers, the knots of tourists and business men in pin-striped suits, the uniformed black-booted officers with their Gestapo leathers.

He was at the corner when the same fat male hand spun him around.

He kicked out and felt his toes connect. No-neck yelped and momentarily released the boy.

Giving no thought to direction, Misha took off at high speed --and barreled straight into a tall man in black.

"Hey, there, young man," Konrad said, his hand lightly but firmly on Misha's shoulder. "Where's the fire?"

Misha glanced quickly around. He was standing between the entrance to the Kempinski and the street where Miriam was seated half-in half-out of the back of a shiny limousine. No-neck had disappeared, as had the uniformed man. Was the uniformed man, Misha wondered, the one called Erich, of whom Fräulein Miriam had spoken when she talked to Beadle Cohen?

"Get him into the car and let's go, Konnie," Miriam said. She slid across the back seat of the car and patted the seat beside her. "Get in, Misha. Quickly. I'm late for the shop. We can talk on the way and you can tell me why you aren't on the train." She paled. "Did something happen to the beadle?"

"He's fine, Fräulein Miriam," he said. "I ran away and he looked for me but I hid, and--"

"Thank God. Now get in the car."

"But...but--"

"No buts. Get in."

Totally confused by her mixed message, Misha copied the gesture she had made earlier. "You shooed me away," he said, "like the son of Rabbi Czisça was a...a street beggar."

"I'm sorry, child. I did what I had to do. I'll explain later, I promise."

Shaking his head, not knowing whether to be grateful or terrified, Misha climbed into the car. As Konrad started the car and pulled away from the car, Misha knelt on the seat and looked out of the back window. At once, Miriam's hand came up to steady him. Its warmth comforted him almost as much as the fact that the fat, no-neck man was nowhere in sight.

K
osher or not, Solomon had grown to like Amsterdam's Javanese food. He liked the variety, and the manner in which it was served--in many small bowls, and with condiments as varied as raw fish and sliced bananas. Except he was tired of eating alone.

Tonight, he decided, his mother and Recha would join him at the little restaurant he frequented when he sought diversion from teaching and his own studies, which currently centered on the relationship between present mystical thought and that of the ancients. His latest obsession was with the Lost Tribe, and with the Falashas--Ethiopian Jews who lacked knowledge of Hebrew and the Talmud, and who had priests rather than rabbis.

He chose the long route home from the temple where he taught Hebrew school. As always, on his
Spaziergang,
he mulled over the latest news from Berlin. It had been a month since
Kristallnacht;
the temple buzzed with talk of an underground, of German rabbis transported to camps, of cantors and beadles whose services, should the men escape, might become available to Dutch congregations.

After his two years in Amsterdam, Berlin seemed at last to be losing its hold on him. He had spent the first year mourning his father, the second growing to think of Holland as home. He still mourned the loss of Miriam. At first, each minute was tinged with the anticipation of hearing from her, seeing her, especially after Hitler declared Holland to be neutral territory. When the letter he had been waiting for finally had arrived, his hands shook so much he could not open it.

Recha had no such reluctance. As if without thinking, she had read Miriam's letter aloud. "...I have come to realize that I love him."

"I don't believe it," Sol said. "I
won't
believe it."

"You had better believe it, Sol." Recha had handed him the letter.

How vigorously he had charged to Miriam's defense, refusing the evidence of his own eyes, insisting Erich had dictated the words.

Recha's counter-argument was irrefutable. She took him to see the Movietone News clip of Miriam honoring her uncle's assassins.

He went home and tore up the letter he had started to write, affirming his love. If he were to write at all, it must be to break the ties between them. He could not do it, not while the hope existed that she would change her mind. She had let go of him, but he was not ready to let go of her. Recently, to his amazement, though the ache remained, the pain had begun to lessen.

Then, three months later, her face stared up at him from the pages of the Sunday tabloid. She was dancing in Hitler's arms, "and not for the first time," the text said. Erich stood proudly by. The paper also reported that the niece of Walther Rathenau had renounced her heritage and married Major Erich Alois, "her childhood love."

After the tears, after the sorrowing, Sol no longer had any choices to make. In the beginning there had seemed to be a need for decision: run to her and pull her out of Erich's embrace, or stay here and wait for her to come to him. Slowly, surely, he had begun to realize that
he
had no choice because she had already made it. If she wanted to be in Berlin, with Erich, then she must have what she had chosen. There would always be times when he would wonder what she was feeling, if she had thought of him when she danced with Adolf Hitler, if she had buried him when she buried her heritage...just as there would be times, like now, when he wondered about Erich.

Had Erich really risen to such dizzying heights in the Party? Did he ever remember that he once had a brother in blood?

Turning away from the grassy walk along the canal, Sol descended the steps to a concrete platform, built next to the water. He sat down next to a narrow culvert opening, balanced Joseph Halévy's study of the Falashas on the inside of its curved edge, and leaned back.