Margot: A Novel (24 page)

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“Well, Miss Franklin. Look who’s breaking the rules now.”
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“It’s only just a little early,” I say, though I glance at the
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clock and see it is not yet 11 a.m. I swallow back the thought
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that I am doing something wrong. Joshua is already off to
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Margate. Most likely with Penny. Any work I have left, I can
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finish up early Monday morning, before everyone else arrives
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at the office. Joshua will never know the difference. And even
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if he does, I’m not sure he will care.
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Shelby laughs, waves me toward the elevator, and goes
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back to her typing, so I know she’s not going to tell anyone.
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I walk out of the office building and toward the bus stop at
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the corners of Market and Seventeenth streets.
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I walk quickly, as I hear the sound of footsteps behind me.
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The gait of boots, heavy. I quicken my pace. The boots ache
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louder against the pavement. I am almost there, almost at the
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bus stop. And then there is a sound so loud it pierces my ears
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with its explosiveness. I jump.
Gunshots.
I close my eyes, and
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I picture Schmidt in his Nazi uniform, standing at the door
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way to the train, his hand cocked on his gun. The shots echo
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in my ears, breaking them. “No,” I say. “No. No.”
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“Miss Franklin?”
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I turn to look behind me, and there is Charles Bakerfield.
He smiles at me in a way that makes my skin turn cold even
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underneath my sweater. “Don’t be alarmed,” he says. “It was
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only a car backfiring.”
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A car backfiring. I breathe. In and out. In and out. His
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green eyes fix on my face; his gold tooth catches the sunlight.
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“Taking the bus somewhere?” He motions with his head
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toward the bus stop, just steps in front of me. I still cannot
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breathe. I try, but my lungs are too heavy to move. “I hate the
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city buses,” Charles says, shaking his head. “So dirty.” His
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green eyes wash across my face, as if he is examining me now,
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in a way that I have not felt in a long time, in a way that
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makes me feel an old horror. “Can I give you a ride some
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where?” he asks.
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My chest, it is so heavy, but I manage to shake my head.
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“Are you sure?” Charles asks. “My car is right over here in
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the lot. It won’t backfire. I promise you.” He motions with his
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head toward the lot where I know Joshua parks, and I wonder
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if Joshua has left yet, if he is already in his car, driving toward
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Margate.
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I see the bus pulling toward the stop, and I exhale. “No
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thank you,” I say, and I stumble up the stairs of the bus,
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nearly falling with relief into the seat. Out the window, I can
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still see Charles standing there on the street, watching me,
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even as the bus begins to move away.
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By the time the bus reaches Olney Avenue ten min
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utes later, I have forced the image of Charles from my
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mind. I have escaped him now, ridden the bus toward some
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thing else that also fills me with fear. Now I am thinking
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about the image of the pink Cadillac resting in the drive at
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2217.
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I get off the bus, but this time I do not walk like a spy.
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Instead I walk quickly, nearly breaking into a run to make my
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way to the 2000 block before I change my mind and run in
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the opposite direction toward home.
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Though I have been on this part of Olney Avenue before,
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now at the lunchtime hour, on a Friday, it feels different
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somehow. Just before noon, Olney is awake with children
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walking to and from school on their lunch hour. Roses have
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bloomed since I have been here last. I do not see them, but
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their scent is intoxicating, nearly overwhelmingly so, until I
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feel I might vomit.
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I reach my destination, and I stand there for a moment, in
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front of 2217, where the mailbox by the front door reads
Pelt
.
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There is only one car in the drive now, I notice, only the pink
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Cadillac. The black Volkswagen is gone.
He’s at work,
I think.
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And then, before I can decide to walk to the steps or turn and
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run, the crumbling green door swings open and I hear the
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sound of a women’s voice.
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“Don’t worry, darling,” she is saying. “You don’t need to
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cry.”
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I listen carefully, and I believe it is the same voice I heard
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on the phone. My sister’s voice, what it might have become
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now, all these years later. The voice of a woman who is strong
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and smart and confident, and who always get what she wants.
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But I look at her as she walks out of the door, and she is
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nothing at all like my sister. She is very tall and quite thin,
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dressed in fashionable plaid shorts and a bright pink top. She
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is red-haired and, I think, has freckles across the bridge of
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her nose. Certainly not in the least bit a Jew.
Of course
.
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She yanks something hard across the doorway, and when
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I process what it is, I cannot help it, I let out a little gasp. It
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is a pram, and inside there is a baby, a girl I am guessing,
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judging by the pink she is draped in.
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The woman turns and looks in my direction, perhaps hav
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ing heard my conspicuous gasp, and I want to duck, or run,
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but my feet stay frozen. “Miss, do you mind?” she asks me. I
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turn to make sure it is me she is talking to, but I am the only
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woman standing there on the sidewalk. “This stroller is
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impossible to get down the steps.”
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I realize she is asking for my help, and I walk in her direc
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tion, toward the sound of her pure and self-assured voice. I
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climb up the steps slowly. One, two, three, four, five . . .
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“Could you hold this end while I lock the door?” She
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pushes the handle of the pram in my direction, and then I
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have no choice but to take it or watch the baby plunge
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down the steps. I take the handle. “I don’t know what I was
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thinking. A house with steps like this and a stroller.” She
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shakes her head as she turns the key in the lock. The baby
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lets out another cry, and I grip tightly to the handle. It is
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metal and cold against my burning flesh. “Don’t cry, darling,”
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the woman says, making eyes at the baby. “Mommy will be
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there in a second.” She locks the door, and she grabs the back
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end of the stroller. “Do you mind helping me carry this down
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the steps?”
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I don’t say anything. I cannot. But I am not going to let go
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of the handle either. Partly because I do not want the baby to
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fall, and partly because I am staring at her, this woman and
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the sharpness of her red hair, and yes, the cluster of freckles
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on the bridge of her nose. She is adorably and distinctly
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American.
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We reach the bottom of the steps, and she smiles at me.
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“Thank you so much,” she says. I nod as she turns the stroller,
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and then I can see the baby. She is a big baby, maybe closer
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to a one year old, or maybe just big. I do not know enough
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about these things to tell. She is swathed in pink, and for a
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moment I wonder if her name is Auguste, after Peter’s mother,
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or Margot, or even Anne.
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“What’s her name?” I murmur, before I can stop myself.
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“Eleanor,” the woman says, smiling at me as she pushes
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the stroller toward the powdery-pink Cadillac. She waves as
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she helps the baby into the car and folds the pram into the
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trunk. “Thanks again,” she calls as she slips easily into the
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driver’s seat and backs out of the parking space.
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Eleanor,
I think. There was no Eleanor in Peter’s family.
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But then I remind myself, only Jewish people name their
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children to honor the dead. The Gentiles, they name their
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children to honor the living.
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In my sister’s published diary, there is a place where she talks
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about kissing Peter for the first time, and everything in that
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kiss, it changed her. She was no longer a girl, but a woman.
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Suddenly she was lovable.
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Every time I read that passage, I feel as if I am reading a
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memory, the retelling of a dream, typed out right there inside
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a book probably millions of people have now read. That is me.
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Surely, these feelings, she found them in my diary first.
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But there is something else. A line she wrote that catches
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me every time, a line that says my sister and Peter, they kissed
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by the window.
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I did not write that. I did not do that. Peter and I, we
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always stayed on the divan when we were in his room. After
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a while the window frightened me, the idea that we could be
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spotted, or even become swathed in moonlight. When you are
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hiding for so very long, light becomes your enemy, a beacon
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of exposure. I never went to the window in Peter’s room. We
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never kissed by the window.
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“Who’s Johann?” My sister asked, about my first diary.
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“No one,” I said. “I’m just telling stories.”
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My sister had a gift for telling stories. She told them some
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times to Mother when she wanted to get out of chores, or to
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Father just for fun, just to make him laugh. She told them to
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me as we lay there together, our pens dancing across the
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pages of our diaries. “Margola,” she would say, “I have a fairy
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tale for you. With a happy ending. I adore happy endings,
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don’t you?”
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I often tell myself that in her diary, she was romanticizing
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what she thought love might have been, in hiding, and at her
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tender age. Perhaps she thought the window would make a
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nice symbol of the outside world, so close to freedom, and yet
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so far away.
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But as I lie in bed, late into the night, thinking about the
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red-haired woman and baby Eleanor, I cannot stop imagining
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my sister and Peter standing by the window, holding on to
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each other tightly, kissing each other, as if it is not a story at
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all, but a memory I have now long since forgotten.
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What if I have been wrong?
I wonder.
What if I have been
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wrong about everything?
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Chap
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When my phone rings Sunday morning, I am still
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thinking about baby Eleanor. I have been thinking about her
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all weekend, actually. Through the glow of my Shabbat can
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dle Friday night, in the unsteady words of my novel yesterday
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afternoon, and now this morning as I stare blankly at my
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paralegal studies, I am trying to remember if I saw her eyes.
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They were blue, I am sure of it. Blue, like the sea. Or maybe
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paler like sky. Or were they green, like the redheaded wom
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an’s must have certainly been. The fact that I cannot really
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remember makes me want to go back the house, to watch the
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mother and child again, to see if I can see it there, even the
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smallest bit of Peter in Eleanor’s face.
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But then the phone begins ringing. Rabbi Epstein’s Jews.
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Three women calling, all of them, one after another, as if they
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planned it this way, and I wonder if they are friends.
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I picture them sitting inside Beth Shalom on hard pine
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benches, their shoulders touching as they listen to Rabbi
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Epstein speak: Ada, Miriam, Reisel. I imagine them as older
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women and frail, their tattoos stretching over wrinkled flesh.
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But Ada tells me that she was born in Philadelphia, that her
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mother emigrated from Lithuania, and so I imagine she had the
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American version of wartime, that she is not even marked as a
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Jew, and that it’s possible even that she is younger than I am.
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“How much can you get for us?” the third woman, Reisel,
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asks me. She says it as if she is bargaining at the Reading
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Terminal Market, the way Ilsa always tries to. “Selling those
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peaches at such a price is highway robbery,” she’ll insist, and
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yet she’ll buy them anyway, even if the vendor won’t bring
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down the price. But most of the time, for Ilsa, they do. She
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has that effect on people.
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“Right now,” I tell Reisel, “my boss is just collecting names,
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and we will contact you when he has a plan.”
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“But how much can you get for us?” she repeats. “What is
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the price for being a Jew these days in Philly?”
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I cannot tell if she is being serious or facetious, but I can
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feel her hatred, thick and overpowering, like the wool of a
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sweater, even through the telephone. “Should I give my boss
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your name?” I ask her.
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She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then: “Why
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not? What else have I got to lose?”
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I think about Reisel, even after I hang up the phone.
What
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else have I got to lose?
she asked me. I wonder then, what she
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has lost. Or not what, but how much, who?
There were stories of guards—and not even the guards
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they hung after Nuremberg, but ones who slithered away into
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the world after the war—who came in at night after everyone
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was sleeping and took a woman out to rape her. Sometimes,
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if she was lucky, they brought her back. Mostly they beat her
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and then threw her away, like garbage. There was Josef
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Mengele, a doctor, who I heard Walter Cronkite talk about on
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the radio, afterward. “Angel of Death,” Mr. Cronkite called
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him, for the medical experiments he performed on Jews, sim
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ply because he could. Josef Mengele was not at Nuremberg,
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though, he should’ve been. What happened to him? I imagine
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he escaped like me and is hiding somewhere in America.
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That he has also found a second skin, working as a physician
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in an American hospital. America is a good hiding place, for
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Jews as well as Nazis—a faraway place where the war was
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something else, something entirely different.
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I do not like to think about these things, about the camps,
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about what did happen, about what could’ve happened.
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I do not like to think about them, but then Reisel’s words,
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they do nothing but make me think about them.
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If we are counting up losses, really truly counting each and
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every thing, I would also include my diary from that time,
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those two years in the annex. Maybe it seems like nothing,
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not compared to the people, the places, the lives. But it was
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not nothing—it was something. Two entire years of my life. It
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was my story. If I had it now, that time would still be real.
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For a long time I imagined that it was Miep who found my
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sister’s diary on the floor in Peter’s room after we were taken.
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I imagined that she picked it up. That she also found mine
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hidden under the mattress.
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When the war was over, I imagined Pim returning to 263
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Prinsengracht. He walked into the office and found Miep at
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her desk, and she pulled the books out of the drawer where
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she’d hidden them.
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Pim had hope then that we were still alive, until he saw
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the Red Cross lists, the same ones that Brigitta brought to
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me, which said it, right there, my sister’s name and mine,
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marked with crosses
.
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I do not imagine that Pim would’ve even opened the dia
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ries until he thought we were dead. Pim would not ever have
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read our diaries without our permission. But then, once we
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were dead, I imagined that he opened them because he was
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grieving. Because it was all that was left of us.
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If nothing else, Father is a good businessman, and when
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he realized he could get the diaries published, make money,
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profit from the books, I am sure he thought,
Why shouldn’t I?
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Perhaps he also thought at first that it was the only justice he
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could get for us, for all of us. Hanging a few Nazis, it was
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nothing. The world needed to understand more, to see more.
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But this is where my imagination goes awry. What hap
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pened to my diary? Why did Pim publish my sister’s and not
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mine?
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For a long while I imagined it was the publisher who said
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to Father that he could not publish two daughters’ diaries,
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that it would confuse his message, sully it, tarnish the face
he might be able to give to the terrible suffering for the Jews,
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the face of a young, innocent girl who had so much life left to
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live when it was stolen away.
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I imagined they said to Father,
This is the only way.
The
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only justice you can get for both your daughters.
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And then I imagined they looked Father in the eyes and
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said,
Now, which one
?
Whose diary is it? Who is the face of the
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Holocaust, Mr. Frank?
And of course, who would he choose?
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But now I do not know what to believe. Father is a good
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businessman. If he had my diary, I think of all the money he
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could make from telling the other sister’s story, my story. So
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maybe it conflicts with my sister’s; so maybe the world would
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be just as confused as I am now about who it was that Peter
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loved. But still, there is money to be made. Justice to be had.
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Now I often wonder if the reason why my diary has not
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been published is that it was never recovered. I hope that is
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the truth. Because the other option is that Father has it, that
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he hangs on to it still, waiting, waiting, for just the right time
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to release it into the world.
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I lie in bed awake for a long while, hearing Reisel’s
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voice, imagining Eleanor’s eyes, and thinking about my diary
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resting uneasily in Pim’s hands. When I finally do fall asleep,
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I have the nightmare I have had so many times that some
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times now when I awake, I cannot remember if it is just a
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nightmare or a memory I’ve suppressed.
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My sister and I, we are huddled together, in a pile of bod
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ies in the camp. There are fleas jumping on us, and we watch
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them bounce in the air like sparks. We would be itching but
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we are too tired, too sick to move, and besides, we are no
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longer feeling anything.
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Mother is next to us. “Hold on,” she whispers. “Just a little
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while longer.”
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And then suddenly she is bleeding. Blood pours from her
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mouth, like a faucet turned up too high, red spilling every