The German Girl (26 page)

Before breakfast on the day that Mama finally left to give birth in New York with her temporary American visa, wearing a loose-fitting jacket to hide her pregnancy, she called Hortensia and me into the living room. She took Hortensia’s hands firmly in hers and looked her straight in the eye.

“I don’t want Hannah to leave the house. Stay here whenever you can. Every Monday morning, Mr. Dannón will come by to see what you need. Look after Hannah for me, Hortensia,” she said, sealing her plea with a fleeting smile.

While Mama was far away, I kept hoping Papa would write and that his letter would reach me rather than her—but there was nothing. By then, war had broken out. England and France had declared war on Germany two days after its September 1 attack on Poland. I imagined Papa unable to leave his dark garret amidst the unending gray of a Paris autumn and winter.

Life was easier after Mother had left. We opened the windows, and I helped Hortensia with the chores. She taught me how to cook custard, rice pudding, bread pudding, pumpkin flan—recipes she had learned from her maternal grandmother, who was from Galicia, Spain, and had always made marvelous desserts.

One day I told Hortensia I wanted to learn how to make a cake with frosting for when we celebrated somebody’s birthday. She went on with her task without replying.

“When is your birthday?” I insisted.

She shrugged.

I thought perhaps they didn’t register newborn babies in Cuba, or
that Hortensia might have come from another country—from Spain, like her grandmother—and so she didn’t have her birth certificate.

“I’m a Jehovah’s Witness,” she said cautiously. “We don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas.”

With that, she turned her back on me and went off to wash the dishes. I was ashamed at being so indiscreet and for putting her on the spot. I tried to imagine her feelings. I remembered our last months in Berlin, how bitter we had felt at the contempt we were shown. An impure religion. So Hortensia herself was also impure in a way. I closed my eyes and saw her pursued along the streets of Berlin, beaten, arrested, driven out of her home.

From her reaction, I thought these “witnesses” must also be seen as undesirables in Havana. Hortensia hadn’t shown pride in her beliefs, although she didn’t seem ashamed of them, either: it was more that her tone of voice implied they were something to be kept private.

“Don’t worry,” I wanted to tell her, “we don’t celebrate Christmas, either.”
That is, unless in her new life here Mama decides to do so in order to pass for a “normal” person and hide the fact she is a refugee that no country will accept
.

I loved spending time with Hortensia, who was a widow, as she told me on one of those airless Havana nights. At that time, so that I wouldn’t feel all alone in the house, Hortensia slept in the room next to mine. I insisted I wasn’t afraid and that I could be left on my own—that I was already twelve years old—but she had promised Mama, and making a promise meant it was a debt she had to honor.

Her husband had died of a terrible illness I preferred not to ask about, and she had a younger sister, Esperanza, who lived on the outskirts of Havana and had recently gotten married.

“It was such a lovely wedding,” she told me, eyes shining, perhaps because her own had been nothing special or because it had ended so sadly.

Hortensia had never had children. Now it was up to her sister to add to a family that had seemed at risk of dying out.

“She is a Witness, and so is her husband,” she said in a low voice.

Another secret between us, one that we resolved not to share with anyone.

By now, I had started to attend the Baldor School, and every afternoon I came back more convinced than ever that there was nothing new for me to learn. I was bored at school, where the intention was to make a young lady out of me. We had lessons in dressmaking, cooking, typing, handicrafts, and handwriting. I was known as “the Polack,” and accepted it. I didn’t try to make any friends, because I knew that in the end we would be leaving this island where we had nothing of value to lose. At school there was constant talk of the war, and that was what truly frightened me.

Whenever we got mail, I hoped to receive a letter from Papa, but all that came were postcards from Mama in New York. Flights could be suspended, because anything could happen during a war: it occurred to me that, for the good of the baby, she might decide to stay and live in our Manhattan apartment. Who then would handle all the expenses? My visa and documents? I didn’t have access to anything. I felt abandoned and took refuge in Hortensia, who spoke more about the life of her parents in Spain than her own life in Cuba. Perhaps this was also a transit island for her, a childless widow condemned to bury her loved ones here—a country where she would probably be buried, too, because Spain was an illusion that belonged to the past.

“It’s a boy. He weighs seven pounds. They’ve named him Gustav. Señora Alma sent word while you were at school.”

Hortensia was even more contented than me. She told me the details while she was stirring a dessert on a slow heat. I think I would have liked the idea of having a sister more, so that I could have played with her and could have gone with her to live in Paris with Papa.

“Having a boy is the best thing that could have happened,” Hortensia
assured me. “A man can make a life for himself and look after the pair of you—two women all alone in this country.”

When I heard I was no longer an only child, I went to our small home library, intending to give my mother a surprise on her return. I made a great effort to remove from the shelves all the books written by Cuban authors, as she had wanted when we first arrived. That would be my gift to her.

Eulogio drove us to a bookshop in the center of Havana where we looked for whatever they had of French literature. The only problem was that the books were in Spanish; there were no editions in the original. Hortensia pointed out the man who worked in the bookshop, or who was possibly its owner.

“He’s a Polack, like you.”

“I’m not Polish!” I burst out. “What is this obsession with Poles?”

When he saw me, the man smiled; it seemed he had realized immediately that I was a phantom like him. That I had the same mark on my face. That we were both undesirables, lost in a city mercilessly punished by the sun’s rays. Hortensia and I went over to ask about books in their original language.

At first, he spoke to me in Hebrew, which made me jump. He went on in German, but I replied instantly in Spanish. When he realized I wasn’t going to change, he reminded me, again in Hebrew, that no one would understand what we were saying, and that there was no need to be afraid. My eyes started to tear, and he must have seen how fearful I was.

Don’t cry, Hannah, nobody’s done anything to you, stay calm,
I told myself, although my legs felt suddenly weak. I never should have left home; I should have followed Mrs. Samuels’s advice! To have stayed hidden, not attracting any attention, avoiding all Cubans, living with the windows closed, in total darkness.

I recovered, determined not to give in.

“Where can I find books by Proust in French?” I asked in Spanish.

The man, who had a huge nose, curly hair, and dandruff all over the shoulders of his jacket, answered in German-accented Spanish
that, because of the war, he couldn’t guarantee the arrival of books from Europe.

“Before, any order from France would get here in under a month.”

Smiling in a friendly way, and following a lengthy explanation in French that was much more fluent than his Spanish, he asked if I was French.

All I managed to do was thank him. Hortensia was taken aback by my timidity, but she didn’t ask me anything. We left the bookshop loaded down with works my mother was bound to love: Flaubert, Proust, Hugo, Balzac, Dumas—all in Spanish. The perfect addition to her Petit Trianon. It remained to be seen whether Gustav would allow her time to read, which had always been one of her greatest pleasures.

Eulogio could not understand why we needed more books when we had not read all the ones in the library. He thought they were good only for making the shelves look less empty. The things rich people did!

Since “Señora Alma” was absent, we broke the rules. For example, Hortensia sat with me in the back of the car and insisted I should find friends:

“The next few years will fly by, and if you don’t get married, you’ll end up an old maid. And a stuck-up young woman, which is never a good thing.”

Her comments made me laugh as we rode along, the wind streaming in through the open windows and ruffling our hair. In my mind’s eye, I saw Leo’s face. I was convinced he would come for me and that we would be together all our lives. But that was my most precious secret, and I had no reason to tell it to Hortensia.

The best thing about my days with Hortensia was that, to some extent, they helped me forget our real problems. I learned that, to survive, it was best to live in the present. On this island, there was no past or future. Your destiny was today.

Shortly before we reached our house, traveling along streets full of drivers who ignored all directions and signs, I plucked up the courage to ask Eulogio about his parents. He told me his family was very poor. His
father had left his mother with nine children: six boys and three girls. Eulogio was the middle child. He had managed to escape this poverty thanks to an uncle on his mother’s side who was a driver and taught him the skills. His uncle used to say that of all his brothers and sisters, he was the only one who was honest and had “character.” He helped his mother and whenever he could went to visit her. The rest of the family had grown up and was scattered all over the island. His grandparents had been African slaves, but his family was from Guanabacoa, a very pretty little village surrounded by hills, where everyone knew one another.

“Where is Guanabacoa?” I asked, intrigued.

“It’s in the southeast part of the city, not far from here. I’ll take you there one day. I bet you’ll like it. I grew up there and know it like the back of my hand.”

He braked sharply to allow a woman pushing a carriage to cross in front of us.

“That’s where your people’s cemetery is, too,” he added.

I couldn’t understand what he meant. There was a moment’s silence. It was an embarrassing situation, particularly for Hortensia, who felt guilty for having let me be so familiar with an employee. If my mother heard about it, both she and Eulogio could be dismissed.

But rather than remaining silent, I kept asking questions:

“What people’s cemetery?”

Hortensia looked at him, waiting to see what he would say. As we turned the corner on Paseo to enter Calle 21, Eulogio explained:

“The Polack cemetery.”

T
he first place we visit in Havana is a cemetery. I had never been in a city dedicated to the dead before. Aunt Hannah has insisted on visiting Alma—her mother, Dad’s grandmother, my great-grandmother—who was laid to rest in Cuban ground in 1970. Mom wasn’t too happy about the idea, but when she sees I am enthusiastic, she gives in.

We climb into another wreck of a car; Catalina up front, the three of us in the back. Aunt Hannah has bathed in violet water, and Mom is wearing a thick layer of sunscreen that makes her look like a corpse. As we go up Avenida 12 and cross Calle 23 to enter the cemetery, I’m assaulted by the smells of all kinds of flowers that have been cut to comfort the living.

The heavy scent of roses and jasmine mixes with traces of orange blossoms and basil. Wreaths of an intense green, as well as red, yellow,
and white roses, are piled on a cart pulled by a gaunt old woman with messy hair and leathery skin.

I want to start taking photos, but the car is still moving. Then we stop for Catalina to buy her roses. The combined smell of cigarettes and sweat coming from the old woman with the cart, the flowers, and the stench in the road make me hold my breath as I point my camera at her. She pulls back in fear. My lungs are crying out for oxygen, I cling to my aunt to protect me with her fragrance of violets. Too many smells!