My Family for the War (14 page)

That was a lie. Mrs. Shepard had never placed her hand on mine, only on the bedspread once.

My letter ended with the news that Gary was teaching me
the questions,
the ones the youngest child in every Jewish family asked at the Passover Seder supper. I would practice every day for the next two weeks so nothing would go wrong. Gary’s grandparents were coming for Pesach, and they were supposed to be very strict. And now Mrs. Shepard and I were going to a café together, just like Mamu and Bekka.

Mrs. Shepard had no idea she was supposed to have invited me to a café with her. Sunday and Monday were her nursing home days, and she wouldn’t even notice that I got home from school late because I had been scouring the neighborhood for work for my parents.

As I stood in front of the mailbox and had already put my letter in, and it was too late to take it back, it occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned even a single word about the petition letters I had written and the door-to-door campaign I was about to begin for them! And I had completely forgotten
Papa. I hadn’t even asked how he was doing, not once. He would be so disappointed in me! And Mamu wouldn’t be jealous, just angry, when she read my letter.

I clenched my teeth as I stepped through the first garden gate. The house had a large front yard that might offer something for a gardener, and looked more well-to-do than the houses in Harrington Grove. An impressive car was parked at the curb. The heavy, melodious sounds of the doorbell sounded elegant. I was intimidated even before the door opened.

But the young woman wearing a white kitchen apron who stood before me looked quite friendly. I took a deep breath and recited my memorized speech: “Excuse me, need you a help in the house? My mother is very good cook and sewer and my father a servant or gardenman or…” Thinking on my feet, I pointed toward the car in front of the house and improvised, “carman. You can buy them without money, only for bed and food.”

The young woman smiled, shook her head, tapped herself on the chest, and said something I didn’t understand. I was so confused, I forgot my next lines, and had to pull the paper from my coat pocket and read from it. “My parents are in Germany. They are very clean and educationed.”

The young woman shook her head again, spoke, and tapped on her own chest again. Suddenly I understood: She was the cook in this house! I looked at my paper, said “Thank you for your time,” and ran away as fast as my feet could carry me.

I didn’t stop until I reached the end of the street. I looked
back and, despite the rejection, I felt triumph well inside me. Ha! I had actually done it! My first house! That hadn’t been so bad. Just two months ago I had pressed myself against walls and hidden in entryways—now I could just go up to a stranger’s door and ring the bell! I could hardly wait to go to the next house.

Everything went unexpectedly quickly. I said, “Excuse me,” and the door was already shut again. I didn’t even have time to find out if a man or a woman had opened it! I decided the next time someone opened a door for me, I would smile at them in a friendly way for a few seconds before I said anything.

I practiced the smile as I walked. Someone smiled back. With this encouragement, I rang the bell at the next house. The door was opened by an older man in slippers, and before I had uttered a single word I was invited in: “Come in, dear! Have a cup of tea!”

This was getting better and better! I was already in the house, and now the people would surely listen to what I had to say! Excited, I looked around me. The living room was small and dark, stuffed full of furniture, books, and at least a dozen cats. There were blankets, pillows, and baskets everywhere, and used dishes and cups too. In short: The house was perfect! A housekeeper was desperately needed! The old man busied himself with the teapot.

“My name is Frances,” I introduced myself, but only when I held a cup in my hand. “Need you a help in the house?”

The gentleman lowered himself into a wing chair. Cats came from all directions to crawl onto his lap or chest, and I watched as he almost disappeared under purring cat fur,
all the while answering my question. He talked, called, and coughed, occasionally waved his arms about, pounded on the arms of his chair, and laughed in a croaking voice.

After about two minutes I started to think about Professor Schueler. “Wait with your visits until you understand more English,” he had advised me, and if I had been smart enough to listen to him, I would have at least understood what I had done to launch this man into such a state of excitement!

It was when the old man stood up, went to a cupboard, and pulled out a photo album that I realized he hadn’t understood a word of what I was trying to say to him.

“My mother is cook!” I tried once more.

“You hungry?” he yelled, and fell back onto the couch next to me with the album.

“No! My parents look work!”

It was pointless. The poor old man was deaf as a stone. We bent over the photo album together and all the cats came over to join us on the sofa.

Professor Schueler thought that for a beginner, I had done quite well. Although I hadn’t managed to get a
domestic permit
for my parents yet, I was gaining a lot of experience in knocking at strangers’ doors.

“But since then I’ve been to so many doors,” I protested, “and all of them either have someone or don’t want anyone. My mother could have a job as a cleaning lady right away, but only for a few hours a week, and that’s not enough to get a visa. I just have to find bigger houses. Really wealthy houses!”

“I don’t understand why you don’t ask your host family
for help,” Professor Schueler remarked. “They’re very good to you, aren’t they?”

That’s just the point, I thought gloomily.

“You say they own a movie theater? That means they come into contact with a lot of people. Surely they could keep their ears open for you.”

“It’s a pretty small theater,” I muttered.

But Professor Schueler, who sat at his usual place at the window and had already ordered me another cup of hot chocolate, just continued to brainstorm all kinds of ways the Shepards could do something for my parents. But I was too timid to ask the Shepards, who were already doing so much for me, to do even more.

The last two days had made it abundantly clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to do it. All the houses near my school had already been canvassed. I would have to expand my search, but how could I do that without anyone noticing? So I had gathered all my courage and asked Mrs. Shepard, “Do you have a bicycle?”

“Of course! We have Gary’s old bike!” she answered immediately. “Come, let’s go right now and look!”

The bicycle stood in the shed, slightly rusted and with flat tires, but otherwise perfect. And when I came home from school the next day, there it was in front of the house waiting for me, cleaned up and repaired and with a new bell. I tried it out under Mrs. Shepard’s watchful eyes, riding in a circle, then without hands, then in some wild curves, showing off my skills, and found her all the more worried when I stopped in front of the gate. “You have to promise that you’ll ride carefully,” she warned. “We’ve only borrowed you from
your parents and we have to be absolutely certain that they get you back in one piece.”

Borrowed! What was she trying to say? I had only borrowed a few things myself, but all of them had been things I had been curious about and would have liked to have owned myself. Valuable things. How could anyone want to borrow me?

Borrowed! Congratulations, you’ve been borrowed! You’re valuable!

Even Professor Schueler’s warning that I would someday regret not asking my foster parents for more help was drowned out by that tempting word. But I let my daydream go and came back to our conversation.

“By the way, I’m going to the movies tomorrow,” I said. “Dr. Shepard shows children’s films at a cinema in the East End and I get to go and tear the tickets!”

Professor Schueler went right along with the change of subject and told me about a theater in Munich he had visited often before the Nazis contaminated it with their disgusting propaganda films. The next time we met I would have to tell him everything I experienced, and all about the film too, of course!

While he talked I observed the normal business of the Café Vienna unfolding. This was already my third secret visit, and by now I had noticed that people came for more than just hot chocolate. People came to Café Vienna to exchange the latest news about events in Germany and Austria, and newly arrived refugees came to get practical advice. You could even leave your name and address, in case an acquaintance also came to London.

I wrote my name in the book, my real name—Ziska Mangold, daughter of Franz and Margot Mangold from Berlin-Neukölln. To my disappointment, I didn’t find the name Glücklich, even thought it had been Walter who first told me about the Café Vienna.

“There are lovely moments in the life of a refugee too,” Professor Schueler remarked as he observed my excitement about the address book. But he looked incredibly sad and wouldn’t tell me who he had been thinking of when he had entered his own name more than three years earlier. He was old; maybe there wasn’t anyone anymore who belonged to him. Suddenly I felt terribly guilty about my enthusiasm and quickly put the book back in its place.

I tried to hide my excitement about my trip to the cinema too. “I have to tear the tickets, you know.” I minimized the upcoming experience. “When it starts, I’m sure I’ll only be able to find a seat way in the back and won’t be able to see much of the film at all.”

It felt strange and somewhat uncomfortable to be alone with Dr. Shepard—the member of my foster family I knew the least so far. All I knew about him was that he had been in France during the war and since then had been a great fan of all things French. In addition to running his cinema, he wrote film reviews for newspapers, and there was even a book on the shelves in the living room that had his name on the cover:
The Early French Movie Theatre,
by Matthew G. Shepard.The film he wanted to show came from America and was called
The Kid,
and in order to show it we had to take along the portable equipment that just barely
fit into the car. Dr. Shepard groaned under its weight.

I stood there while he struggled, holding the cash box containing some change and the tickets I was supposed to tear off the roll and hand out to the children. There wouldn’t be anyone standing at the entrance to check their tickets, but Dr. Shepard thought children should receive a genuine entrance ticket for the penny they paid. There would also be children there who had no money. I was supposed to send them to him without making a fuss so they could get a penny from him and get in line with the others.

“You’re paying for them to go to the movies?” I was shocked.

A mischievous expression flitted across Dr. Shepard’s face. “No, why? They give me the money right back.” I studied him furtively from the side while we drove. He looked gentle and compassionate, and suddenly I didn’t find it strange at all to ride along with him.

We were driving right through London toward the Thames and the harbor area, and the city took on a whole new look. The houses were lower, the streets narrower, there were fewer cars and taxis and buses, but more pedestrians. Cranes and factory smokestacks towered just behind the low roofs and wafted a biting smell in our direction. There were clotheslines hung from many of the houses, from which sad, worn clothing hung.

“The poor district of London,” Dr. Shepard said regretfully.

In one street with low buildings that all seemed to house little tailor shops, to my great excitement, I suddenly saw Jewish men with beards and black coats who looked like Herr Seydensticker! Hasidics, Dr. Shepard explained. They
spoke only Yiddish and had almost no contact with English people. And their children didn’t go to school, but had to work all day in factories or little shops in back courtyards.

The children who were already waiting for us in front of a flat, gray hall with dingy windows looked quite cheerful. Many curious eyes followed me as I carried my cash box through the door behind Dr. Shepard. Once we were inside I recognized that it was a gymnasium, where we still had to set out chairs and put up the screen at the speed of light. My cashier’s table was set up directly next to the entrance. Dr. Shepard and two boys lugged the projector inside, set it up, and placed dark cardboard in the windows. The audience was already pressing into the foyer and eagerly held out their pennies toward me. My hands trembled a little at the sheer unbelievability of the situation as I tore off the tickets. I was scared of kids I didn’t know—and had little hope that would ever change—and yet here I was sitting at the table selling movie tickets to a crowd of a hundred. I heard them say “Thank you” to me and saw their respectful glances. I wished my parents could be there and see me!

“Hallo, Ziska! With this crowd today it looks like I’ll have to save you a seat,” someone suddenly said in German, and it took me a few seconds to notice that these words weren’t part of my brief daydream of Mamu and Papa. The boy who stood before me in a worn-out coat with a shiny penny in his hand and a wide grin on his face was none other than Walter Glücklich.