Briar Rose (10 page)

Jane Men

"Oh, Daddy!" she repeated.

He kissed the top of her head. "We are so lucky, you know," he said. "Whatever Gemma went through and remembered, or didn't remember, we are so lucky."

"I know, Daddy," Becca said softly. "Listening to Harvey Goldman and seeing all those photographs and the number on his arm and ... Daddy!"

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"What?"

"Gemma didn't have any number. So she couldn't have been in a camp. So what kind of refugee was she?"

"Not all the camps burned numbers into the prisoners' arms, Becca," he said. "Not all of them kept their prisoners long enough."

"How do you know that?"

He spoke into her hair. "I read more than medical journals, my sweet. Go to bed."

She stood up, turned, and hugged him, then dutifully went up to her room. She didn't hear him on the stairs and pictured him sitting at the dining room table turning the pieces of paper over and over as if, by touching them, he could solve the puzzle.

Stan and she sat on a blanket by the waterfall and shuffled through the papers once again. The one Stan finally stopped at was the biographical data form.

"This," he said, pointing to the line that was crossed out.

Squinting in the sun, Becca read: WHAT WAS YOUR LAST

PERMANENT ADDRESS. "Can't read it," she said.

"It's our only clue, Becca. We're going to have to read it. Let's see if we can enlarge it." He stood and pulled her to her feet. "Come on.17

Hastily Becca picked up the yogurt containers an~ Stan's grindey wrapper while he gathered Gemma's papers. They left the blanket for later.

At the Xerox machine, Stan enlarged the paper three times untf the scratched-out portion was large enough to read.

"That's a K," he said.

"K-E-L ... Kelm, something?" Becca asked.

"Looks more like Kulm something," Stan said.

"I think you're right. Kulm ... and maybe hef or hof There's tha Briar Rose

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slash through it, though, so I can't tell if it's an e or an o. Sound German to you? Or middle European?"

"Polish," Stan said, running his fingers through his hair. "Don't forget that princess stuff. That was Polish. She'd lived in Poland at some point. My guess is she came from there."

"Or came through it."

"Good point."

"so .... ?"

"So get on with it. Check the atlas, call the university and .

He grinned.

"What about my work? I've got a couple of stories to do and-"

"Ais is going to make one hell of an article," Stan said. "I can feel it." He turned abruptly and walked back into his office, shutting the door with such finality, it felt like punctuation.

Becca stared for a long moment at the closed door, trying to imagine what Stan was doing behind it: sitting at his desk with his feet up, shooting rubber bands at the picture of George Bush in a golf cart; doodling on a paper with those blank-faced monks in robes that he always drew during story conferences; or making phone calls to old girlfriends. None of it seemed likely. Or real. What seemed real was the paper in Becca's hand and she stared down at it, and at the word-Kulmhef or Kulmhof or whatever-that had been scratched out by her grandmother in
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anger or horror or grief so many years before, She went over to the atlas and opened it to the Ks. Leaning over the high desk and using the magnifying glass attached by a red string, she found the right place.

"Kulm, North Dakota," she read aloud, shaking her head. "Sure!"

She read further. "Kulm in Switzerland, two different cantons.

Kulmain and Kulmbach, both West Germany-possible. Kulmasa, Ghana, definitely not." She wrote down the two possibles and, at the last minute, wrote in the Swiss towns as well. Then she slammed the book shut.

"Becca, phone!" someone called out.

Taking the piece of paper with her, she returned to her desk. The call had to do with an old story and she fielded the questions deftly, all the while underlining the West German town names over and over. By the time she hung up, she had gone through the paper with the pen point in two places.

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Jane Men

But something about the names bothered her, and she shook her head back and forth as if that could dislodge the problem. Before she could puzzle it through, Stan's door opened and he leaned very casually against the jamb. "Anything?"

"One North Dakota and one Ghana, two Swiss and two West German. None of them exactly Kulmhof or Kulmhef "

"Hmmm." He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished them on the front of his shirt. He didn't speak again until he'd replaced them on his nose. "Maybe we should call Samantha's friend and ask."

"Which one?"

He cocked his head to one side and twisted his mouth, as if to say: You kidding?

"Harvey Goldman," she answered herself.

"I have his card here somewhere," Stan said, pulling out a handful of change, car keys, and about ten business cards from his pocket. "He gave it to me before he left. 'In case you need to know anything,' he said. 'Or want to buy a shirt.' " He sorted through the cards quickly. "Here: Harvey's Haberdasher's." He chuckled.

"Can't believe anyone would still call a store that!"

Becca took the card from him, careful not to touch his hand, and went back to her desk. She sat down slowly and pushed each button on the phone as if it were made of glass. For some reason she was suddenly reluctant to call, not at all the way she usually felt when moving ahead on a story.

The phone rang twice, then was answered by a cheery young female voice. "Harvey's. Can I help you?"

"May I speak to Harvey Goldman, please. It's not business, so I can wait," Becca said.

"Grandpa!" the girl yelled, her voice only slightly removed from the phone.

Becca heard a slight shuffling, then an admonishing, "Don't yell, Mirra," and finally a clear and recognizable voice said, "Harvey

Goldman here."

"Mr. Goldman, this is Becca Berlin, the woman tracing her grandmother. We met Saturday at Samantha and Linn's house."

"Yes, yes, I remember. I am very good with names," Harvey said.

"Except, of course, your grandmother's." He chuckled.

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Becca's hand felt sweaty on the phone. "I ... we ... that is, Stan Briar Rose

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and I enlarged one of the forms on the copier and we discovered something we thought you might be able to help us with."

"Anything," Harvey said. "Oh excuse me a minute. Mirra, please help that gentleman. Yes, you were saying, Becca?"

"There is a line on one of the forms-'what was your last perma-nent address.' And the answer's been crossed out, but we were able to make out something, only I can't find any reference to it in our atlas. At least not exactly. And Stan thought you might recognize it."

"I will try. What does it say?"

Becca took a deep breath. "It says, well it looks like ... Kulmhof or Kelmhof or maybe hef " She stopped and waited.

There was no sound except a kind of heavy breathing on the other end of the phone.

"Mr. Goldman? Harvey?"

Nothing.

"Are^you there? Did I pronounce it wrong?" Becca asked.

"Kulmhof!" he said. "My God!"

"Is is somewhere?" Becca asked, her voice a harsh whisper.

"In the darkest regions of hell."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You asked where it was, Rebecca, and I answered you. Kulmhof. It was not even a concentration camp. It was simply a place of ... extermination."

"Then my grandmother was there?"

"That is not possible, my dear," Harvey said, his voice suddenly very old. "No woman ever escaped Kuhnhof alive."

I

"As the prince's hand came near the thorns, all the bones of the many pri who had been there before him rose up from the thorn bush singing. "

"What did they sing, Gemma?" Becca asked. She'd never aske.4

question before. She and Gemma were part of a class trip and the C

children on the bus were busy throwing things and punching one anothi the arms. Only Gemma and Becca-and a boy named Barney who something wrong with his hands and so no one else would play him-were listening to the story.

For a moment Gemma looked stumped. Then she sang:

"Tsvantsik mayl bin ikh gelofn

Hob ikh a shtibI ongetrofn.

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Balebos! Git mir a shtikl broyt;

Zet mayn ponem, vi bleykh un toyt.

Ikh hob zikh gevashn un gebentsht, Iz arayn a khapermentsh. . . . "

Her voice trailed off and she looked out the window.

The words of the song were so harsh and ugly, Becca was afraid t(

what they meant. But Barney had no such fears.

"Mrs. Stein," he said, "is that silliness? Or what?"

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Gemma pulled her eyes from the window and stared directly at Barney.

"Or what. "

"Gemma, flnish the story, " Becca begged, suddenly afraid. "The real story. "

"I don't like stories I don't understand, " Barney said. "My dad always says to ask if you don't understand something. " Barney was a great asker in school.

"So-what do you want to know, Barney?" Gemma said.

'What those funny words mean. Do they mean anything?"

Gemma nodded and looked out the window again.

By this time Becca was caught up in the contest of wills. "What do they mean? Tell us."

Gemma sighed. "It's an old song. An old song for an old story. They say: I ran and ran for twenty miles

Until I came upon a house.

Sir! Give me a piece of bread;

Look at me: I'm pale and dead.

I had already washed and said the blessing in walked the khapermentshn . . . "

"What are khaper ... " Barney began.

... mentshn?" Becca flnished.

"Kidnappers, " Gemma explained curtly.

"Kidnappers?" There was outrage in Barney's voice. "There aren't any kidnappers in Sleeping Beauty. "

Gemma looked at him flercely. "What do you know about stories? What do you know about Briar Rose?"

Under her withering gaze, he turned around in his seat and did not look back again. Gemma did not say another word the rest of the trip home.

"And he said Kulmhof was one of the first of the exterm camps to open," Becca said that night at dinner, her plate lying untouched in front of her.

"Becca, eat," her mother said, not touching any of her o

"When had it opened?" her father asked.

"Sometime in 'forty-one, he said. His voice was real sha he talked about it, but not like he was
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scared, more like angry. Furious. Furi ' ous and unable to do anything about tha Becca said. She looked down at the cold food. Normally beef sauce was a favorite of hers. "Jews and Gypsies, he said, main victims at Kulmhof."

Dr. Berlin cleared his throat. "It was an awful long time said. "We can't do anything about ...

"This was Gemma, " Becca said.

Her mother reached out and touched her; it was as if h were hot as a brand. Becca could feel it sear right down to th

"But Mr. Goldman said no woman had escaped from the couldn't have been Gemma."

Becca ignored the burning hand. "He said Kulmhof wa fifty miles northwest of Lodz in Poland."

"Poland Mrs. Berlin said.

) I

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"And here we are in a Polish farm community," Dr. Berlin said.

"No wonder Gemma chose it."

"But no woman ever escaped from Kulmhof," Becca whispered.

"And why would she choose to live among Poles here in America, if . . .11

"It was probably her family that died in Kulmhof, then," said Dr.

Berlin. "And maybe she thought by living amongst Poles here, she might somehow get word of them."

"What family?" Mrs. Berlin asked, "I always thought I was all her family."

"Until we came along," Becca added, remembering how often Gemma had said, "This is my family, " loudly and with such outland-ish pride at each graduation or Honor Society induction or ball game that they had all been embarrassed.

"It explains a lot," Dr. Berlin said, pushing his plate away with both hands.

"It doesn't explain anything," Mrs. Berlin said quietly, almost in a whisper.

Becca waited a moment for the silence that followed to be broken. Then she said, matching her mother whisper for whisper, "There is a place where it could all be explained."

"No!" Dr. Berlin said, shaking his head. "No!"

"At Kulmhof-if it still exists. Fifty miles from Lodz." She pronounced it carefully, remembering Goldman's voice as he said it, the horrible hush.

"Not possible," her father said.

"I promised Gernma. I swore I would find our inheritance.'

"A concentration camp is not an inheritance."

"A burden?" Mrs. Berlin said, still quietly. "A family secret?"

"I promised," Becca repeated. "I swore." She stood and smiled grimly. "It's a kind of fairy tale, isn't it."

Her parents began to argue even before she left the room.

She thought about it as she lay in bed and her dreams were filled with images of the camps, gleaned from many horror movies: the scarecrow men, their ribs protruding like hideous maps; the piles of bodies in the mass graves all grown together as if in a garden of death; children with
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eyes like devalued coins, caught behind the wire barbs.

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Jane Yolen

She got up early, exhausted, and was in the office even be]

Stan; she was tracing several possible routes to Lodz in the a when he walked in.

He didn't even say hello, just came and stared over her shou as her finger moved across the Polish border towards Lodz one n time.

"A sudden passion for galumpkis?" he asked.

She smiled briefly, then moved away as if his shadow on hers an uncomfortable burden. Turning instead to look directly seriously at him, she said, "I called Goldman."

"I thought you might." He did not pursue it, waiting patientli her.

"He said Kulmhof was an extermination camp."