Read River's Edge Online

Authors: Marie Bostwick

River's Edge (4 page)

BOOK: River's Edge
4.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“Yes, Father.”
He bent over to kiss the top of my head and left. I sat alone at the long table and finished my bread and chocolate.
 
A year later I waved good-bye to Father and to the shores of Germany from the gangway of the
SS Deutschland
as she prepared to weigh anchor and sail to America. Actually, that isn't true. I didn't wave good-bye.
New political developments in Germany meant that Father was busier than ever, but Uncle Wilhelm had insisted that Father borrow his car and personal driver to take me and Frau Finkel, who was to be my chaperone, to the dock in Hamburg. Our conversation during the drive was uncomfortable and confined to questions regarding what I had and had not remembered to pack.
When we reached the port, he escorted me to the gangway, told me to be a good girl, shook my hand, and kissed me quickly on the forehead. Then he shook hands with Frau Finkel and disappeared into the waiting staff car. He didn't turn back to look at me. I didn't expect him to. He had already made it clear that his decision was final. “I am an officer, Elise. When war comes, it is my duty to go into battle. You have your duties as well.” And well did I know what my duty was—to board the ship with Frau Finkel and follow Father's orders without complaining or questioning, at least not out loud.
Frau Finkel was an old friend of Mother's family. Once she had been wealthy, but the war had left her widowed, and the depression had left her broke. Father hired her as a sort of governess, to help me with my lessons. She'd earned enough to pay for most of her passage to New York. Father paid for the rest in return for having her look after me during the voyage. After delivering me to America, Frau Finkel planned to go and live with her married daughter in Buffalo. I liked the sound of the word
buffalo
and the look of the enormous shaggy beast I had found pictured in
The Children's Encyclopedia of Animals,
but I did not like Frau Finkel. She treated me like a child, and she never stopped talking. As the days passed, the ship seemed smaller and smaller to me because Frau Finkel filled every empty space with the sound of her chatter. By the third day I had simply stopped talking to her.
“Elise! She looks just like your mother! Don't you think so? Her eyes are so deep. So caring. They see right into your soul!”
Frau Finkel was standing behind me and squeezed me tightly as we gazed out past the prow of the ship at the Statue of Liberty. Then she clamped her hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face her, her eyes dripping with sentimentality—and the remains of the cold that had plagued her for the whole of the trip. Leaning down so her brow was level with mine, she said, her voice raspy and confidential, “You must remember this day, Elise. I know you don't want to be here, but you are lucky. You understand? Your father did right to send you to America. You'll be safe now, and you'll be part of a family, a real family. I know you miss your dear mother, but in some ways”—she sighed to herself—“who knows? Maybe it was a blessing ...”
I glared at the old woman, but she ignored me.
“Anyway, your mother wouldn't want you to go on like this, so angry and silent.” Extending a gnarled finger, she pointed toward the mist of the harbor. “When you miss her too much, maybe you can think of that lady out there and you won't feel so lonely.” The old lady smiled to herself and sighed theatrically. “The eyes. So caring. Just like dear Lale's.”
She is ridiculous,
I thought. They were all ridiculous. Soaking wet, with not an umbrella among them, the passengers cheered like schoolboys when they caught sight of her, but Lady Liberty was unmoved by their adulation. She stood her ground, a judging expression on her face as she looked over these newcomers, not sure if she welcomed yet another boatload of uninvited guests to her shores. I couldn't blame her. They were fools, and Frau Finkel was the biggest fool of them all.
The statue was gray and cold and flat. Eyes, hair, dress ... all the gray-green of seawater. Mother's eyes had been blue, the blue of meadow flowers, so much prettier than my own, which I thought too large and too dark, of a color like melted chocolate. Her hair was dark brown and thick, the same as mine, but she'd worn her braids wound around the back of her head in a coil instead of hanging loose down her back like mine did. She had smelled like the lavender soap she had sent to her from England and menthol lozenges. Her eyebrows were a thin, dark line above her lashes, and the rest of her face looked like ... I could not remember, anymore, exactly what she had looked like. I could remember pieces of her. Her nose, short and turned up a little at the end. Her lips, fuller than mine. The texture of her skin, white and smooth and delicate as that of a wax doll. Though I remembered each little part of her, I could no longer knit those parts into the whole picture that was my mother, but one thing I knew for certain. She looked nothing like the statue in the harbor.
I turned my gaze away from the water and back toward Frau Finkel, who was still eyeing me hopefully.
“I see no resemblance,” I said coldly.
The old woman's left eyebrow shot upward and transformed her syrupy expression to one of irritation. “You are a hard girl, Elise. Stubborn.”
She glowered at me, and I glowered back until she grew tired of trying, unsuccessfully, to move me to shame. “Well,” she harrumphed. “At least you're finally speaking, though I'm not sure it's an improvement.” She eyed me critically, her attempts at establishing a motherly connection between us apparently abandoned. I continued glaring at her stonily.
“Come on,” she said with a sigh of resignation, “we might as well go below and pack. I hope Herr Muller is there to meet us. I wish him better luck with you than I've had.”
Frau Finkel shuffled off toward the staircase that led to our stateroom. I followed behind but hesitated for a moment before going inside. It suddenly occurred to me that today was May 14th—the same day that Mother had died, the day I would set foot on American soil for the first time. I looked out once more at the face in the harbor, and it stared back at me as though knowing something I did not. The next chapter was beginning.
Chapter 2
1939
 
“
M
r. and Mrs. Muller? Mr. and Mrs. Carl Muller?” The social worker called in a flat, nasal accent that refused to acknowledge the existence or need of the letter R.
She gripped my hand tightly, as though concerned that I might try to run, which meant she was a good judge of character. The idea of bolting away and somehow escaping into the street had crossed my mind, though only briefly. There was no place to run to, no ship that could take me back to the life I had known before. I had no choice but to let go of the social worker's hand and approach the couple who emerged from the crowd of anxious, waiting relatives to greet me—Mother's third cousins, whom she'd never met, from the distant branch of the family tree whose great-grandparents had left Germany decades before.
The man was tall and muscular and approached us in big, confident strides, as though he were crossing a stream by leaping across a path of stones. His eyes were deep brown and flecked with green. His gaze held maturity and intelligence in spite of his boyish grin and loping gait. His suit was clean, but he wore it carelessly, and I could see he'd forgotten to button the bottom button of his vest. He wore a clerical collar, which instantly made me suspicious of him. Father hadn't told me that Mr. Muller was a minister.
Father always said religion was a fine thing for women and children, but that no true man could possibly embrace such superstition. Frau Finkel was an enthusiastic converted Catholic. That alone convinced me that religion was a waste of time and the people who practiced it were mere sheep. But I didn't know what to make of the broad-chested masculinity of the man who approached, whose appearance was a direct contradiction of all my ideas on what clergymen looked like—skinny, bookish, and bespectacled, knowing nothing of industry or discipline. It was all very puzzling.
Except for a smile that was equally broad and warm, the woman beside him was his complete opposite—petite and polite-looking. Her blue suit was simply cut, but she wore it well. The bar pin on her lapel was shiny and polished, and her gloves were beautifully white. She had penciled her eyebrows, just as Mother always had, into a careful arch, and her red lipstick had been perfectly applied. I did not yet know that she had “put on her face,” as she called it, just to come to the city and collect me. On the farm there was no time for such vanities, and she only put on lipstick and powder for Sundays and special occasions.
Standing side by side, they were complete contradictions, only their welcoming smiles making them a matched set. They were keeping up appearances, I thought. I didn't want to leave my home and come to America to live with the Mullers, and I couldn't think of any reason they would have wanted me there.
“Yes. Hello. I'm Reverend Muller, and this is my wife, Mrs. Muller.” The husband kept looking at me from the corner of his eye even as he tipped his hat to the social worker, revealing a shock of thick red hair that seemed to spring out from all directions when released from under the brim of his crushed homburg. His accent was pleasant to my ear, even though it lacked the soothing vowels of German, those lovely
u
's that oozed out like thick cream from between layers of sweet pastry, or the preciseness of Germanic consonants.
“You must be Frau Finkel?” he said doubtfully to the social worker, and though my face was a perfect mask of indifference, I smiled inwardly to think that anyone could mistake this pretty, youngish lady with her quick step and starched manner for the ancient and bent Frau Finkel.
“I'm Miss Barnett,” the social worker corrected him politely. “I work with the Department of Immigration. Mrs. Finkel came on the ship with the little girl, but she seems to be a bit ill. She'll be kept in our hospital for a few days.” Mrs. Muller looked concerned and started to ask a question, but Miss Barnett continued before she could interrupt. “I'm certain it's nothing serious. Most likely just a bad cold, but she must be kept under observation for a few days before we can be certain she is well enough to enter the country. We've notified her family in Buffalo. They'll come and get her just as soon as she is well and can travel.”
This time it was Reverend Muller who began to interrupt her, but Miss Barnett was not a woman who was easily steered off course. “You mustn't worry. It's all being taken care of. Besides”—she smiled artificially, anxious to be rid of me and move on to the next case—“I understand that you are here to meet this young lady, aren't you?”
She turned to me and smiled even wider. “Elise, these are the Mullers,” she said in broken German that was positively painful to listen to. “You are to go with them now. Do you understand?” She nodded at me helpfully, but my only response was an aloof blink.
“I don't think she speaks any English,” Miss Barnett said to the Mullers. “In fact, she hasn't said a word since she arrived. It must all be very confusing to her.”
“Or maybe she hasn't found anything worth saying?” said Mrs. Muller with a knowing smile, addressing her comments to me as though asking a question. Her voice was soft and a bit deep for a woman's. Though her English had none of the musical lilt of the British English my mother had learned from her tutors and had in turn taught to me, I liked the sound of it. This was partly because of the gentleness of her tone, but mostly because, unlike the social worker, she did not talk about me as if I couldn't understand her, even though she had no reason to suppose I could.
“Come, Elise,” she said, holding out her hand to me as Reverend Muller picked up the trunk that contained everything I owned. “Let's go home.”
Home. Where was that now?
 
The second I stepped out onto the street from the comfortable limbo of the immigration station the world changed. I have often heard the word “bustling” used in reference to New York City, but that is too pleasant a phrase to describe what I saw that day. Chaos. Pandemonium. Bedlam. Any of those words would do.
Horns honked incessantly, and people talked too loud in an English that was so fast as to be beyond understanding. The buildings were huge—ten times, a hundred times taller than any I'd seen in Berlin. They were awe-inspiring, but only because of their sheer size. I saw no beauty in their construction, only mass. They rose around me like the walls of a vast, inescapable canyon, a valley of shadows that blocked out the sun.
I was terrified. As we waded into an ocean of people, I clutched Mrs. Muller's hand like a sinking swimmer grabbing a rope. All the people were moving—all walking fast and in the same direction, and it seemed to me that we were carried along by the force of the crowd's current. They were all so sure of themselves. A thought flashed in my mind, as bright and clear as the streetlights that were blinking around me:
I am the only one here who doesn't know where he or she is going.
Suddenly I was conscious of the clothes and faces and manners of everyone around me. Everything about me was different from everything about them, and I realized that they knew this just by looking at me. A man walked by eating what I later came to understand was a hot dog. I thought he was very vulgar to be eating as he walked on the street, and I stared at him. He stared right back. His eyes swept over me, with my long braids and woolen stockings sticking out beneath my skirt, which I suddenly realized was too long. He threw me the same amused and superior smile I had reserved for the country visitors to Berlin. I hated him for his arrogance even as my face colored with shame at this revelation of my own lack of sophistication.
Mrs. Muller must have sensed my discomfort. “It's simply enormous, isn't it?” she said. “I have been to New York several times, and it still makes me feel so small and out of place. It is exciting in a way, but I am always glad to get back to Brightfield.”
I was relieved to learn that we would not be staying in New York. There was a whispered conversation between them about there being a train to catch, but it was decided that there was enough time to get something to eat first because they guessed I must be very hungry. I did hear Mrs. Muller mumble under her breath something about not having enough to pay for a restaurant meal in New York, but Reverend Muller said we could go to the Automat and that wouldn't be much. Hearing this exchange made me realize that the Mullers were poor. In my childish self-absorption I wondered, not at their kindness at taking me in despite their own financial strains, but if they had always been poor or had recently become poor. The difference in my mind was important—it marked the boundary between gentility and peasantry.
Many people in Germany, people of good family, had become poor after the war. The cost of everything rose so high and so fast that a loaf of bread that cost a bucket of marks one week might cost a barrelful the next. At least that was what Father had told me. I don't remember it myself. Though we lived in the great house that other Brauns had built in grander days, we were no longer wealthy. But Father made me understand that no matter what happened, I was a Braun, the last in a long and distinguished line of military aristocrats, and I had every reason to be proud of my heritage.
Brauns had occupied our beautiful home on Alexander Platz for five generations. The house was like a museum of our family history. Portraits of generations of Brauns looked down at me from the walls, wondering if I measured up to the family name. Nothing ever changed in our house. Worn fabrics weren't replaced. Chipped china was ignored. Growing up, I thought it was out of respect for history, but now I realize there were other reasons for this. Mother was simply too ill to oversee the care of such a large home, and the cost of her medical care must have been significant, forbidding any possibility of remodeling or refurbishing. In spite of our reduced circumstances, however, Father insisted we maintain our standards and our dignity. Our home was always ordered and formal. How shall I explain it? It was very German, just like Father. Things were run predictably and efficiently with a minimum of emotion and drama, utterly different than the chaotic world I now found myself plunged into.
Yet, in spite of my fear and confusion, there was something exciting about finding myself carried along on a tide of scurrying New Yorkers. The streets vibrated with an urgency completely unknown on the tree-lined boulevards of Berlin. Everyone here seemed to be in hot pursuit of something terribly important.
The Automat was the first thing I truly liked about America. In every space that wasn't taken up by tables were shiny white machines with glass fronts and rows and rows of food, each in its own separate, lighted compartment, sitting on a clean white plate. All you had to do was put in some money, pull a lever to choose what you wanted, and a door would open, so you could take your food out, all ready to eat. It was as though in America people simply wished for food and it appeared before their eyes like magic. As if just thinking about a thing would make it so.
I was fourteen, too big to believe in fairy stories, but I couldn't help myself—I wished on a piece of chocolate cake.
Let me go home,
I thought. Then I remembered the realities of the situation and the cold kiss Father had planted on my forehead as he said good-bye. Going home was impossible, at least for a while. I added a codicil to my wish, which at the time seemed only slightly less probable than my leaving America soon.
Or let me like it here.
 
We took a train to Hartford, and when we arrived at the station, Reverend Muller carried my trunk himself rather than paying a porter to do it. He had a black Ford truck that was far from new. I had never ridden in a truck. I did not think Father would approve of me doing so, as though I were some sort of delivery person, but I had no choice. Reverend Muller boosted me up into the cab. The engine sputtered rather than hummed, and the ride was bumpy. I sat wedged between the Mullers, watching the scenery go by.
At first I did not like New England. The buildings in Hartford seemed as devoid of ornamentation and artistic sense as the skyscrapers of New York. The edifices I saw out of the passenger window of the Mullers' Ford were utilitarian at best.
I despaired to think that the whole of America might be like this, but as we reached the edge of the city and headed north, the landscape began to change. Buildings were spaced farther apart and gave way to houses that boasted small gardens and trees. We passed a sign that said “Welcome to Massachusetts” and drove into a land of farmhouses and fields, canopies of oaks, and pastures enclosed by miles and miles of stone walls. I could not help but crane my neck to get a better view. The scenery was beautiful, though it lacked the order and settled look of German farmland. In spite of the stone walls that stood as a solid, ancient testament to man's long struggle to tame the land, there was a wild, almost junglelike quality to the scene. The battle between man and nature was still very much in progress here, and it was anyone's guess as to which side would prevail.
In the village of Brightfield—it could not in all honesty be called a town—man had clearly gained the upper hand. Nothing could have been more settled and orderly-looking. Though I later came to realize that in architecture and design it was much like any other small New England village, it seemed to me that day, as it still does, to possess a unique charm.
BOOK: River's Edge
4.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Heartbeat by Ellis, Tara
The Confessor by Daniel Silva
The Lesson of Her Death by Jeffery Deaver
Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs by Norman Jacobs
The Last Enemy by Grace Brophy
Banished by Tamara Gill
The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson