I dug the grave in the shade of the apple trees. I hadn’t held a shovel since Auschwitz. As I ripped open the rain-soaked earth, something inside me kept telling me that it was Stella who I was burying. Where inside me this new conviction came I had no idea, but I accepted it. I was too drained to squabble with myself any longer.
Now I sobbed as I carved out a hole in the earth. I didn’t want to believe that this was all that remained of the girl I had loved in Drancy and had dreamt about in Auschwitz, Dora, and Ravensbrück. That she died alone, far from home, unable to ask her mother to hold her tight or have her father sing her a lullaby. I felt wrong hoping that she had thought about me, but I couldn’t help myself.
Why had she come this far, paid so dearly for a freedom she would never enjoy? Why did she have to endure the death rattles of those four other women and feel the rats scurry over her to get to their meals? Why couldn’t she have died in Auschwitz? Why couldn’t she have hid in a neighbor’s cellar? Why couldn’t these be tears of joy?
I don’t know how long I cried, but at some point I realized that I couldn’t stand in that hole with a bowed head any longer. If I was going to return to Arthur’s before nightfall, I had to act now. By the sun I could tell it was mid-afternoon. I finished digging and slid the coffin into the hole.
In Monowitz I had fantasized what my life in Nice would be like with Stella. I would have proudly showed off my prized jewel to family and friends. With the bells chiming midnight, Stella and I would have strolled out of the cinema hand in hand, like movie stars. After dinner at my parents we would have gathered in the parlor and enjoyed my mother’s singing and Stella’s violin. Oh, I saw us with a flock of healthy, red-headed brats and living a joyous life.
Standing next to the open grave, I realized that if my Stella had lived (or was alive), more than likely the memories of our experiences and hardships would have torn us apart, never allowing us to find the innocent hearts that we had in Drancy. I doubt either one of us would have wanted to bring offspring into such a vile, rotten world.
CHAPTER 25
Arthur and Mrs. Novak were listening to classical music on their shortwave when I returned that night.
“How did it go?” Arthur asked.
I shrugged. “I’m tired. I’m going to make myself something to eat and go to sleep.”
“I made you dinner,” Mrs. Novak chimed.
“Thank you.”
I braced myself for a barrage of questions, but Arthur must have seen in my face that I wasn’t much for conversation. I went into the kitchen with a familiar ache in my stomach, something I had longed never to feel again. I ate without tasting, then went out to the greenhouse where my exhausted body dragged me to slumber.
If I had nightmares I couldn’t recall them in the morning. I awoke early, but stayed in bed staring out the glass roof at the cloud-filled sky. By the time I forced myself out of bed, Arthur was already attending to his mayoral duties. I visited my traveling companions to make sure our departure was still on schedule. Indeed, it was. Carlos and Ilse had been concerned that I hadn’t stopped for a visit the day before. I told them about Stella.
“What a shame,” Carlos said, then he went on and on about the rumors that one bridge on our route might not be standing. Ilse gave her condolences and went back to making lunch. It seemed that they were relieved that nothing or nobody was going to interfere with my will to leave Wustrow. I was stung, but I couldn’t fault them. Like so many in Europe, death was now all too common for Carlos and Ilse. Carlos had witnessed the Spanish Civil War and lived through the camps. Ilse had survived the bombings of Berlin.
To be affected by the death of a person they had never met was pointless, a waste of precious energy. There were more pressing issues to deal with. Those women lying next to Stella didn’t move me emotionally. I didn’t bury them. I didn’t know them. Carlos and Ilse didn’t know Stella. She was just another faceless corpse.
After lunch I loaded some jars of preserves into our wagon, a discarded stroller with one missing wheel, that Carlos had “organized.” To make it a fairly sturdy, I moved the remaining front wheel to the center of the thin axle. Carlos attached a rope to the buggy so we could pull it.
As Carlos helped Ilse pack her belongings in the buggy, I said,
“Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.”
“How about D’Artagnan?” Carlos asked.
“He wasn’t one of the Musketeers,” I informed him. “Tenemos que salir manan˜a en la manan˜a.” (We have to leave tomorrow morning.)
Ilse looked at me bewildered.
“Morgen früh ziehen wir ab.” (Tomorrow morning we pull out.) My next stop was the mayor’s office. Over a game of chess I told Arthur about my dreadful reunion with Stella.
“Of all the things I wanted to be for her, why did I have to be her gravedigger?”
Arthur sat silent for a moment. “I thought you said you weren’t sure it was her.”
“Well, yes. Not absolutely sure, but…”
“But sure enough to bury her.”
I nodded.
“Then I hope you remember her as she was when you fell in love with her.”
I didn’t think that was possible, but I kept that to myself.
Arthur changed the subject. “Do you think Ilse is up to the long trip?”
“I hope so. You know I should apologize to your wife about those remarks about the rapes,” I admitted.
“Don’t worry, she doesn’t carry a grudge for long. Besides, some of these Nazi bitches deserved it. Don’t tell my wife that.”
“Were there many women in the Party?” I asked.
Arthur nodded.
“Without their vote he never would’ve been chancellor. I’ll never understand what excited them about that Austrian nobody.”
Neither of us could remember whose turn it was and we abandoned the game.
I knew Arthur had told his wife about Stella because at dinner she was overly attentive. She kept looking at me while clearing the table. Suddenly she took my hand and expressed her condolences. I thanked her and blurted out, “If she wasn’t meant to survive, why couldn’t she have been gassed on our arrival?”
“It’s hard to understand God’s will.”
I bit my tongue—hard.
I could barely sleep that night. Stella, the anticipation of finally going home, and what I would do with my life from here on had me fidgeting under the blanket. Was my father still fighting off cancer or had he surrendered? I was pretty certain that Claude, mon ami who hid in my family’s outhouse so long ago, had been able to stay one step ahead of the Milice and the Gestapo. I couldn’t imagine Meffre not surviving. He would have a few well-deserved medals on his lapel for his service in the Maquis. I feared that my radio-loving classmate Bernard was dead. I wasn’t able to picture such a sickly boy surviving any Nazi-scripted ordeal.
Would I finish my college prep classes? In France, after you graduated from high school you took a year of either math or philosophy, depending on what you wanted to specialize in at a university. I’d had six months of philosophy classes when I got arrested.
Could I fit back in? Would I be able to tolerate the carefree snickering and giggling of the other students? I couldn’t imagine sitting at a desk and having the patience to listen to philosophical lectures.