The Christmas Train (7 page)

“
Nein
, they never come back. Things are not right anymore. First comes the
Mischlinge
signs against the poor Jews. Oh, it was very bad. Very bad. But it gets worse. The
Nacht und Nebel
comes, the night and fog, where people are taken away and we don't know where or why. So much fear and suspicion. Soon there is no food in the shops, only what we grow in our little garden. And even then the soldiers take it like
we
are the enemy. We are hungry all the time. All the time. And then comes that last winter. I never forget it. I
want
to forget it,” she added in a lower voice. “But I cannot.”

She pressed her lips together, breathing heavily through her nose. In the background Christmas music played. Just the music, no words. But Anna knew the words from the Christmas pageant. The fourth-grade chorus had sung “Let It Snow” and now her mind sang the words alongside the music until an announcement broke in, a departure for Chicago and points east.

Anna propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her cupped hands. “Was it a very cold winter?”

The old woman pursed her lips. “Bitter cold. And so much snow.” She was far away in the past, like Nana Rose used to get. “I climb out the window.
‘Mach schnell,'
Mutti says. She pushes my bag out after me. ‘Run and hide.' I have only my ankle boots on, not my tall boots with the fur lining.”

Anna's attention was riveted on her. “Why did your mother tell you to run and hide?”

“The Madman sends his soldiers to get us because of Karl and the Resistance.”

“To get you? To put you in jail?”

Miss Eva swallowed hard, her eyes fixed blindly at the wall. “They call them work camps. But they are worse than the jail. That night when the soldiers come for us? That is when I stop being a German and become an undesirable. An enemy in my own country!”

It sounded like a movie, not somebody's real life. But Anna didn't doubt a word of her tale. “Where did you go?”

Like a window shade pulled closed, Miss Eva's pale lashes and blue-veined eyelids came down over her eyes.
“Nein.”
She whispered the word, fluttering one of her hands as if to erase that part of her past.

Nein.

Anna stayed beside Miss Eva a long time, afraid to talk to her, afraid to leave her alone. Miss Eva sat so very still, like a statue. Anna could never sit that still for that long. But she tried.

A big clock hung on the wall and she timed herself, watching Miss Eva, but peeking at the clock to see how long she could sit absolutely still. No foot swinging. No squirming. No yawning or looking around at all the people coming and going. She could only do it for six minutes, though. That was the longest she could last.

But Miss Eva . . . she sat in that restaurant chair, her hands in her lap and her eyes closed, and she seemed to disappear into her past, into that bad winter in Germany with the wrong boots on.

Anna began to swing her legs at 2:44. At 2:50 she began to worry the broken nail on her left thumb. At 2:53 she got too worried to stop herself. “Miss Eva.” She reached over to nudge the old woman and whispered a little more urgently. “Miss Eva.”

With a start the old woman came wide-awake.
“Vas ist das?”
Her eyes were wide and staring, but she stayed very still in her chair.

“It's me. Anna. You fell asleep.”

“Ah, Anna.” She smiled, obviously relieved. As was Anna.

“We have almost four hours until we get on the new train. I'm getting hungry again. And bored. Can we walk around or something?”

“Of course,
Liebchen
. Of course.” Gripping her purse and carpetbag, she pushed heavily to her feet. “Where do you want to go?”

They visited the ladies' room again, and were crossing back to the restaurant when a pair of guards approached them. “Anna Spano?” one of them asked, studying Anna.

When Miss Eva gasped, Anna clutched her arm, knowing Miss Eva thought they were soldiers. “You're scaring her,” she accused the two men. “Come on, Miss Eva. You don't have to be afraid.”

“But . . .” She began to cough. “The . . . the soldiers.”

“Sorry, ma'am. Sorry. But we got a report of a missing child.”

“I'm Anna Spano. Okay? We missed our train, that's all. I already talked to a lady about it. We—my grandmother and me—we're just waiting for the next train.”

While Anna reassured Miss Eva, one of the men used his radio to confer with somebody while the other man hovered over them. “She's just tired,” Anna said, more worried about Miss Eva's coughing than by him. “She'll be okay once she catches her breath.”

The other guard interrupted her. “Your dad's at the station in Ennis. You want to talk to him?”

It was Anna's turn to get scared. Talk to her father? Now? She shook her head.

“No?” the guard said. “You don't want to talk to your own dad?”

When Anna remained mute, the other guard said to his partner, “Probably a custody thing. Kid doesn't want to spend Christmas with Dad but the court says she has to.”

Anna let them think whatever they wanted. After all, it wasn't that far from the truth. By the time they'd passed word to her father that she was safe and waiting for the next train, Miss Eva was a little calmer. At least she wasn't coughing so hard. The security guards brought her a wheelchair to sit in, but Miss Eva refused. With Anna beside her, the old woman marched defiantly into the restaurant, sat down, and ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and milk for them both. Afterward they browsed the several small shops that lined the main station walls. At least Anna browsed them. Miss Eva sat in a central location where she could keep her eye on Anna's comings and goings.

Anna let her think that was the plan. But really, she was keeping an eye on Miss Eva. Just like the security guards were keeping a casual watch over the two of them.

It worried Anna that Miss Eva was slipping in and out of her memories so much. At least she moved too slowly to wander off very far. Fortunately she seemed content to just sit and watch Anna. And she seemed more energized. Their brush with the security guards—soldiers, Miss Eva had insisted—had put her on high alert.

But by seven o'clock, when they began their trek down platform four to board their train, Miss Eva had again begun to fade. The moment they left the cavernous warmth of the station terminal with its piped-in music and Christmas decorations, and entered the frigid wind tunnel of the departure platforms, she began to cough in earnest.

“Cover your face with your muffler,” Anna suggested.

“This wind—” Miss Eva broke off, coughing. “It snatches my—snatches my breath away.”

Their conductor this time was a smiling, cheerful woman. “Let's get you inside out of this wind, ma'am. Here, let me help you up.”

If not for her uniform, Anna suspected Miss Eva would have welcomed the attention. But she refused to release her bag or accept the woman's help. Anna just shrugged at the conductor, then steadied Miss Eva as she struggled up the steps.

“Thank you,” Anna told the woman once Miss Eva picked their seats.

“Let me know if you need anything, sugar. You hear?”

“Yes, ma'am. But I think we'll be okay.”

“Heading to Ennis?” she said. She scribbled something on a card and slid it into a slot above their seats. “Dining car is ahead one. Viewing car is behind one and on the second level.” She paused a moment. “You're good to go, then?”

“Ja,”
came Miss Eva's curt answer.
“Danke schön.”

“You're welcome.” Then she left to help others with boarding.

Anna wanted to ask Miss Eva why she had to be so unfriendly to such a nice person, but it was pointless. Whenever Miss Eva saw a uniform she thought the person was a German soldier, and it was just too hard to try to make her believe otherwise. Anyway, in a few more hours they'd be getting off the train and going in different directions.

Anna shivered, cold with apprehension. Traveling with Miss Eva, watching over her and listening to her stories, had helped her not to think about what would happen when they got to Ennis. She stared out the window at people huddled against the vicious cold, scurrying down the platform. She hoped she spied her father before he saw her. She'd be better able to figure out what was what by the first look on his face. Except that she didn't know what he looked like. Most likely like her, she decided, with blond hair and blue eyes because she sure didn't look like her mother.

Would he look angry? Frustrated? Would he glare coldly at her? Even if he smiled, she would be able to tell if it was a real smile or just the fake kind. Like her mother's.

What if he was just like her mother? Selfish and always drinking? Somebody who only thought about herself and nobody else. And why wouldn't he be? All her mother's other boyfriends were just like her.

Except for Hank. He'd been nice, a man who had a regular job and a nice truck, and who never got ugly drunk, just happy tipsy. While they were together her mother had been happy, too.

But it hadn't lasted. Anna had been afraid to hope it would, because that was sure to jinx it. But a little trickle of hope had leaked out anyway. A little trickle of hope, and then a giant flood of disaster when her mother finally drove Hank away.

He'd left without telling Anna good-bye, because, of course, her mother had yanked them out of their apartment and run back to Nana Rose. That time, though, Nana Rose had finally stood up to her daughter. She would let five-year-old Anna stay, but not Carrie. No matter Carrie's rage, and then tears, Nana Rose had refused to let her daughter live in her house again.

That was the only time Anna had ever heard Nana Rose bring up Anna's father. She'd yelled at Carrie that she was not fit to raise a child, moving in with one man after another. Anna shivered now to remember that day, sitting on the back steps where Nana Rose had sent her, but still able to hear their ugly words. Then Nana Rose had told Carrie that if she didn't leave Anna with her, she would search out Anna's father and tell him to come and take her.

Anna remembered being terrified. She didn't want to be sent away to a father she'd never seen. Didn't Nana Rose want her either?

But Nana Rose had known what she was doing, because her words had shut her mother up. Carrie had stormed off without even telling Anna good-bye. After that, Anna lived with Nana Rose. Her life became nice and calm, and she started going to the school down the street. Her mother moved into the city, and didn't visit much, only sometimes to get money from Nana Rose. But she never stayed with them.

It had been good, the happiest time of Anna's life. But then, right after Anna's birthday in October, Nana Rose had gone into the hospital. Then they'd moved her into a nursing home, and after two weeks there, she died.

Anna closed her eyes against a tidal wave of sorrow. Nana Rose was gone forever. And now Anna had been shipped off like a box of old toys, sent back to a man who never wanted her.

A harsh burst of coughing cut into her mournful thoughts.

“Are you okay?” She leaned toward Miss Eva, who was bent over her lap, coughing into her yellow-embroidered handkerchief.

After several more racking coughs the old woman straightened up, then collapsed back in her seat, obviously exhausted. “I always have the weak lungs, ever since I catch pneumonia.”

Pneumonia? Anna's heart leaped in her chest. Nana Rose had pneumonia when she died. “How long ago since you had it?” Anna asked, more worried than ever. “Do you have any medicine for it?”

“Ah, child. No. No medicine. That was a long, long time ago.”

Anna stared at her wan face, devoid of any color. “Was that when you jumped through the window and ran away from the bad soldiers?”

Miss Eva stiffened and her eyes came into sharper focus on Anna. “How do you know about that? Who tells you?”

“You did. Remember? You said it was in the war with the Madman, and it was very, very cold. And you had on the wrong boots.”

“Oh,
ja. Ja.
” Like a deflating balloon she subsided into her seat and after a moment began to unbutton her fancifully embroidered coat. “
Ja
, that is when I am so sick. But I find a place where they fix me up.”

Anna cocked her head. “How long did it take to get from your house to there? Was it a regular hospital? Did you know anybody when you got there?” She was curious about Miss Eva's story. She'd never known anyone who'd had to be that brave.

“How long?” Miss Eva sighed and her gaze seemed to peer back into her past. “I look on the map one time. It is five hundred fifty kilometers. In America we say three hundred and six miles.”

Anna's mouth gaped open. “Three hundred six miles? You walked three hundred six miles in the snow, and only your ankle boots on?” Though she couldn't exactly imagine how far three hundred six miles was, she knew it must be like walking all the way across Arkansas. “How long did it take?”

“I'm not sure. I lost track of time, you see. Over a month, I think. But it is not a hospital where I am fixed up. No, it is a farmhouse with a nice lady. I get there—” She shook her head, breathing heavily. “I am so hungry. Nearly frozen. My feet, I don't feel them, they are so cold. I stand on a little hill, hidden in the trees, and I see this lady digging, digging. She is trying to dig, but the ground is too hard and she does not have the strength.”

A shudder ripped through her, so strong that Anna saw it. It was as if Miss Eva was on that hill again, frozen with the cold, and with fear.

“I am afraid,” she continued, her voice faint now. “But I am too hungry to stay away. And her little house, it looks so snug and warm with a big tree by the door, and smoke coming from the chimney. So I go down the hill. She doesn't see me. But I see she is crying and still the digging.” Miss Eva gestured with both her hands. “So I ask her what is wrong? Why does she cry? And dig?