The Ring (27 page)

But what about Gerhard? You don't think that maybe he went to Lausanne after all? Or stayed somewhere in Zurich, that if I got there, maybe I'd find him? But the hope was gone now from her eyes, too.

I'm as good as certain, Ariana, There is absolutely no trace of him, and if he were alive, there Would be. I think it happened as I told you. He and your father must both have been killed. She shook her head slowly, letting the finality of it sink in. She had lost them all. She could let herself lie down and die, too or keep going.

Fighting back the waves of dizziness and nausea, she looked at Jean-Pierre sitting in his wheelchair beside her bed and nodded. Some instinct deep inside her made her say it, and to her ears the voice didn't sound like her own. All right I'll go.

Jean-Pierre's large black Rolls pulled sedately into Le Havre harbor. Ariana sat wanly in the back of the car. They barely spoke all the way from Paris. The roads were cluttered with trucks and jeeps and small convoys conveying equipment between Paris and the port. But the situation around Paris had settled down nicely, and apart from the drab color of the army vehicles, the roads looked almost normal as they drove along.

Jean-Pierre had watched her quietly during most of the journey, and for the first time in his years of assisting the homeless refugees, broken and frightened, he felt at a loss for words that would offer comfort. The look in her eyes said so clearly that nothing anyone could say would ease her terrible burden.

As they drove along, the reality of her situation was hitting her. There was no one left in the world she cherished, no one to turn to; no one could ever share a memory of what had been her past, no one would ever understand without translation, have memories of her brother, her father, the house in Grunewald ' her mother ' Fr+nulein Hedwig ' the summers at the lake ' or the laughter behind Berthold's back at the table' . No one who would have smelled Gerhard's chemistry set as it burst into flame. Nor would there be anyone who had known Manfred not in this new world she was going to. There would be no one who understood what it would be like to be caged in that cell. Attacked by Hildebrand ' and then saved by Manfred, spirited away to Wannsee. With whom could she possible share the memory of the stew she had made from liver sausage, the color of the bedspread in that first room or the look in his eyes when he had first made love to her or the touch of his face when she had found him at last outside the Reichstag in Berlin. They would never know anything of the past year of her life, or the past twenty, and as she rolled along beside Saint Marne on the way to the ship that would take her away forever, she couldn't believe she would ever share herself with anyone again.

Ariana? He called her with his deep voice and French accent. He had barely dared speak to her that morning until they left for Le Havre. She'd been too ill to get up. On the day before, she had fainted twice. Jean-Pierre noticed that now she seemed a little stronger, and he prayed silently that she was well enough to survive the trip to New York. As long as she made it, they'd let her into the States. The United States had opened her arms to the refugees of war. Ariana? He spoke to her again gently, and slowly she returned from her distant thoughts.

Yes?

Were you and Manfred together for very long?

Almost a year.

He nodded slowly. I suppose right now that a year must seem to you like a lifetime. But a small smile attempted to offer her hope "at twenty, a year seems enormous. Twenty years from now, it won't seem very long.

Her voice was frigid when she answered. Are you suggesting I'll forget him? She was outraged that Saint Marne would say it, but sadly he shook his head.

No, my dear, you won't forget him. For an instant he thought of his wife and daughter, lost only three years before, and the pain of it seared his heart. No, you won't forget. But I think in time the pain will be duller. It won't be as unbearable as it is for you now. He put art arm around her shoulders. Be grateful, Ariana, you're still young. For you, nothing is over. He tried to warm her, but there was nothing hopeful he could read in her great big blue eyes.

When at last they reached Le Havre, he didn't leave the car to accompany her to the boat. It was too complicated to get his wheelchair out of the trunk and have the chauffeur help him get into it. There was nothing more he could do for her now. He had arranged passage to New York, where he knew she would be cared for by the New York Women's Relief Organization.

He reached out a hand to her through the open window, as she stood there with the small cardboard suitcase his housekeeper had brought up from the basement and packed with some of his wife's clothes, probably none of which fit. She was so tiny and childlike as she stood there, her eyes so huge in the unbelievably finely carved face, that suddenly he wondered if he had done the wrong thing in arranging her passage. Perhaps she was really too frail to make the trip. But she had managed the six hundred miles from Berlin, on foot and by car and by horse and cart and jeep, over nine treacherous days surely she could manage yet another week to cross the ocean. It would be worth it, just to put that much distance between herself and the nightmare, just to find a new life in a new land. You'll let me know how you are, won't you? He felt like a father banishing a treasured child to a school in a foreign land.

Slowly a wintry smile came to her mouth and then to the blue eyes. Yes, I'll let you know. And Jean Pierre ' thank you ' for all that you've done.

He nodded. I only wish that things could have been different. He wished that Manfred had been standing there at the side of his bride.

But she had understood his meaning, and she nodded. So do I.

And then in a gentle voice he whispered, Au revoir, Ariana. Travel safely.

Her eyes thanked him one last time, and she turned toward the gangway to the ship she'd be taking. She turned back one last time, waved solemnly, and whispered, Adieu with tears streaming from her eyes.

The SS Pilgrim's Pride was appropriately named. She looked as though she had been used by them long before they had switched their business to the Mayflower. She was small, narrow, dark, and smelled of mold. But she was seaworthy. And she was filled to the gills. The Pilgrim's Pride had been bought jointly by several American rescue organizations and was run primarily by the New York Women's Relief Organization, which thus far had overseen four trips of this nature, bringing more than a thousand refugees from war-torn Europe to New York. They had provided sponsors for everyone through their assorted sister organizations across the United States, and they had hired a decent crew to make the journey, bringing men, women, children, and the aged from the wasteland of Europe to their new lives in the States.

The people traveling on the ship were all in fairly poor condition and had reached Paris from other countries as well as other regions of France itself. Some had traveled on foot for weeks and months; others, like some of the children, had been roaming, homeless, for years. None of them had seen real food in longer than they could remember, and many of them had never even seen the sea before, let alone sailed it in a ship.

The Relief Organization had not been able to find a doctor to sign on with their ship to make those crossings, but they had hired a remarkably competent young nurse. On each crossing so far, her services had been vital. She had already delivered nine babies, assisted at several grim miscarriages, four heart attacks, and six deaths. So Nancy Townsend, as ship's nurse, had to contend with homesickness, fatigue, hunger, deprivation, and the desperate needs of people who had suffered the price of war for much too long. On the last voyage there had been four women who had been held in jail outside Paris for almost two years before the Americans arrived to set them free. But only two of the women had lived through the sea voyage to New York. Each time, as Nancy Townsend watched the passengers boarding, she knew that not all of them would reach New York. Often it was easy to spot which were the strongest and which were those who never should have undertaken the trip. But often, too, there were those who seemed sturdy and then suddenly gave way on this last leg of their escape. It would seem that the tiny blond woman on the lower deck, in a room with nine other women, was one of those.

A young girl from the Pyrenees had come running to find Nancy, screaming that someone was dying right below her bunk. When Nancy saw the girl, she knew she was dying of seasickness, hunger, dehydration, pain, delirium it was impossible to tell what had pushed her over the edge, but her eyes were rolled back in her head, and when Townsend touched her, the girl's forehead was hot and parched with a raging fever.

Taking her pulse, the nurse knelt quietly beside her and motioned to the others to stand back. They had been staring at Ariana in discomfort, wondering if she was going to die in their room that night. It had already happened to them two days earlier, on their fourth day out from Le Havre. A small rail-thin Jewish girl who had traveled from Bergen-Belsen to Paris had not survived the last leg of her trip.

Twenty minutes after she had first seen her in the overcrowded cabin, Nurse Townsend had Ariana moved to one of the two isolation rooms. It was there that the fever raged higher and that she developed fierce cramps in her arms and legs. Nancy thought she might go into convulsions, but she never did, and on the last day of their voyage, the fever finally broke. Ariana was vomiting constantly, and each time she had attempted to sit up in bed, her blood pressure dropped so low that she fainted. She was able to remember almost none of her English, and she spoke to the nurse constantly in desperate, frightened German, none of which Nancy understood except the names that had recurred over and over ' Manfred ' Papa ' Gerhard ' Hedwig ' again and again she had shrieked, Nein, Hedwig! when she had unseeingly looked into the eyes of the American nurse. And when she sobbed late into the night, it was impossible to console her. At times Nancy Townsend wondered if this girl was so sick because she no longer wanted to be alive. She wouldn't have been the first.

Ariana looked at her blankly on the last morning; her eyes were less feverish but filled with pain.

I hope you're feeling better. Nancy Townsend smiled gently.

Ariana nodded vaguely and went back to sleep. She never even saw the ship pull into New York harbor or the Statue of Liberty with the sun glinting gold on its arm holding the torch. Those who could stood on the decks and cheered wildly, tears streaming down their faces, their arms locked around each other they had made it at last! But of all this Ariana knew nothing. She knew nothing at all until the special immigration officer came downstairs after they docked. He greeted the nurse quietly and read her reports. Generally they were able to send most of the passengers on to their sponsors, but this was one of those who would have to wait. Given the delirium and the fever, they wanted to be sure that she carried no disease. The immigration official praised the nurse for putting the girl in isolation and then, looking down at the sleeping girl and then at the uniformed woman, he raised an eyebrow in open question.

What do you think it is?

The nurse gestured silently toward the corridor and they left her sleeping. I can't tell you for certain, but it could be that in some way she's been tortured, or maybe been in one of the camps. I just don't know. You'll have to watch her. He nodded in answer, sympathetically glancing through the open door.

No open wounds, infections, obvious lesions?

Nothin I could see. But she vomited all the way across the Atlantic. I think you ought to keep an eye on that. There could be some internal damage. I'm sorry she looked at him apologetically I'm just not sure about this one at all.

Don't worry, Miss Townsend. That's why you're turning her over to us. She must have kept you pretty busy. He glanced down at the charts again.

But the nurse smiled a slow smile into the harbor. Yes, but she made it. Her eyes went quietly back to his. I think now she'll live. But for a while there '

I can imagine. He lit a cigarette and glanced below them to watch the others disembarking. He waited while two orderlies came and gently moved the girl onto a stretcher. Ariana stirred slightly, and then with a last look at the nurse who had kept her alive, Ariana left the ship. She didn't have any idea where they were taking her, and she didn't really care.

Ariana? ' Ariana ' Ariana' The voice seemed to call at her from a great distance, and as she listened, she wasn't sure if it was her mother or Fr+nulein Hedwig, but whoever it was, she couldn't make herself answer. She felt terribly tired and heavy, she was on a long journey, and it was too much trouble to come back. Ariana ' But the voice was so insistent. Frowning gently in her sleep, Ariana was aware of a sensation of coming back from a long distance. She would have to answer them after all ' but she didn't want to ' what did they want? Ariana ' The voice kept on calling, and after what seemed like a very long time Ariana opened her eyes.

There was a tall gray-haired woman dressed in black. She wore a black skirt and a black sweater, and her hair was pulled back into a heavy knot. And she was smoothing Ariana's hair back from the pillow with strong, cool hands. When at last she took her hand away, Ariana could see a large diamond ring on her left hand.

Ariana? The girl found that her voice seemed to have left her and she could only nod in response. But she couldn't remember what had happened. Where was she? Where had she been last? Who was this woman? Everything in her mind was jumbled and out of context. Was she on a ship? Was she in Paris? ' Berlin? Do you know where you are? The smile was as gentle as her hands had been on Ariana's tangled hair, and she spoke English. Now Ariana remembered, or at least she thought so, as she looked questioningly at the woman. You're in New York. In a hospital. We brought you here to make sure that you were all right. And the odd thing was that as far as they could tell, she was.