The German Girl (38 page)

Mom doesn’t want me to worry, so she tries to pretend this discovery of ours is not important. But I can’t help noticing a look of terror on her face that I have never seen before. She tries to lessen the tension:

“I’m sure she’ll change the date. At her age, you think you already have one foot in the grave. Don’t worry, Aunt Hannah will be around for some time yet.”

Catalina’s withered flowers are still there, as well as the stones Mom put on each of the headstones apart from Aunt Hannah’s. She offers another stone to each of our dead relatives. She pauses in front of Aunt Hannah’s headstone, probably thinking she’ll leave one there, too, but then decides not to. She knows what I know: Aunt Hannah has already made up her mind, and nobody can make her change it. She slips the stone back in her bag.

As we walk back to our taxi, the sun beats down on this white sea of marble, blinding us. I think my aunt has reached an age she never dreamed she would, in a country where she never thought she would stay. She prefers to go back to her rose valley.

We return home and start preparing the birthday celebration. Catalina and I are going to bake a cake for my aunt. I beat the eggs until they
become frothy and rise so much they almost overflow the china bowl. The flour gradually makes the froth thicker. A spoonful of oil, a pinch of salt, grease the tin, and into the oven with it! Before that, though, I sprinkle it with vanilla, and the air becomes sweet and warm. My first cake!

Next, I make the icing. The white froth rises; I sweeten it until it thickens. A few drops of lemon juice, salt, and cinnamon powder. The icing covers the cake, turning it into a lopsided snowball: my gift to Aunt Hannah.

Mom is astonished and says we must bake a cake together every year.

The birthday girl has been watching us the whole time with that lovely smile of hers. She radiates a gentle sense of peace that I have never seen before. To know that we are leaving the island, that the possibility denied to her and her mother from the day they disembarked from the
St. Louis
is open to us, is enough to make her happy.

Catalina sits in an armchair for a rest, and falls asleep. Whenever she gets the chance, she settles down anywhere she can, closes her eyes—and we have to shake her to wake her up. She hears less and less. There must be such a symphony of sounds inside her head that she cannot make out clearly what is going on outside.

“It’s old age, there’s nothing to be done,” she says with a brief smile, and then gets up to do something—anything—to keep busy.

Mom thinks Aunt Hannah and Catalina need someone to help them. She talks about them both as though they were family. They are.

Aunt Hannah asks us to celebrate her birthday at dusk: the hour when the captain of the
St. Louis
appeared in her cabin with a postcard for her that we now have. Her twelfth birthday. What followed was a long life in this place where she never felt at home. For her, the years in Cuba are the least important. Her real life took place in Berlin and on board the
St. Louis.
Most of the rest has been a nightmare.

Catalina found a half-burned candle in a kitchen drawer and has stuck it in the center of the white sponge cake. I go out in search of Diego and invite him in to taste my first cake.

We switch off the dining room lights, and Mom lights the candle.
First we sing in English, because of me, although my birthday has already come and gone. My aunt insists, and we do it to please her. I close my eyes and make a wish. What I most want at this moment is to be able to come back to Havana.

We light the candle again, this time for Aunt Hannah. Catalina sings a Spanish version of the song I have never heard before: “Congratulations on your birthday, Hannah, may you be happy and joyful, many years of peace and harmony to you, happy, happy birthday . . .”

Moved, Aunt Hannah leans over the cake, closes her eyes, and makes a secret wish. There’s a lengthy pause, and then she blows at the candle, but her weak breath does not put out the flame. In the end she snuffs it out with her fingers, smiles at all of us, and gives me a big hug.

When I go to bed that night, I find on my pillow a small bottle of violet water and a note written in big, shaky writing: “For my girl.”

I
t’s time for us to leave, and I don’t know how to say good-bye. Mom is coming and going in and out of the house with our cases. She smoothes her hair nervously and wipes away the sweat while I stay out on the sidewalk, halfway between Aunt Hannah, who is on the front porch, and Diego. He is standing at the street corner with his back to me.

“Anna, it’s time to go! We can’t put it off any longer. Come on, we’re not going to the ends of the earth!” Mom’s voice snaps me out of my daydream.

I run back to my aunt, and as I hug her, I can feel her leaning against me so she won’t fall.

“Be careful!” Mom warns. “Remember, your aunt is eighty-seven.”

Eighty-seven. I don’t know why she thinks she has to remind me.

“Give me another hug, Anna. That’s it, my child; now get off this island as quickly as you can,” my aunt says, her voice shaky.

I can feel her cold hands on my shoulders, but I keep my arms around her. I don’t know whether Diego is still there or has gone.

“Look, Anna, this teardrop is for you. Can I put it around your neck?” Her voice seems really weak now. “It’s a flawed pearl, and you are somewhat like it: unique. It’s been in our family since long before I was born, and it’s time you had it. Take good care of it. Pearls last a lifetime. Your great-grandmother always said every woman ought to have at least one.”

I touch the tiny pearl. I mustn’t lose it. When I get home, I’ll have to keep it safe, in my bedside table, together with Dad’s souvenirs.

It seems as though the minutes are flying by and that we will never come back.

“My mother gave it to me in our cabin on board the
St. Louis
on my twelfth birthday. It’s yours now.”

I clasp the pearl and try to move away from her, but she is still holding me tight.

“Don’t forget, when you reach New York, you must plant tulips, Anna,” she whispers. “Papa and I used to love to see them flower from the window looking out onto the courtyard of our apartment in Berlin. Tulips don’t grow on this island.”

I run to Diego and hug him from behind. He doesn’t dare look at me because I know his eyes must be full of tears.

He turns and gives me a kiss I can’t avoid. Diego kissed me! I wonder if anyone saw. My first kiss! I want to shout but haven’t got the nerve.

“This is for you,” he says, staring at me.

Opening his right hand, he holds out a small shell that is yellow, green, and red. I take it from him very carefully and then give him another hug.

“We’ll meet again soon, you’ll see.” I want him to be sure I’ll be back.

I walk away from him, counting each of my steps to the car, where Mom is waiting. Aunt Hannah is still standing on the porch, but I don’t want to look at her; I don’t want to cry. All at once, the breeze
drops. All of them are frozen in time, and I take the last step in slow motion.

“Anna!” my aunt shouts, and I walk back to her. “Here’s another story for you to explore.”

She hands me my grandmother Viera’s brown leather album that she had kept with the blue box. We embrace again.

“It’s yours now.”

Slowly she lets go of me. I get into the car and lean on Mom, who opens the window just as we are pulling out, without looking back.

In one hand, I have the shell. In the other, the photo album.

“My first kiss, Mom. I just had my first kiss . . .”

“You will never forget your first one,” she says, smiling.

We remain silent as we pass by the old redbrick school where Dad studied. I imagine him in the blue-and-white uniform my aunt described to me. There he is, marching in some procession they have to take part in. Or sitting on the school wall with his classmates, waving a paper Cuban flag.

Good-bye, Dad
. I take his photo out of my blouse pocket.

“We’re here, fulfilling your dream,” I tell the photo, giving it a kiss. “We made the journey together.”

I put the photo into my grandmother Viera’s album and close my eyes.

We reach the airport, which is crowded with families carrying huge suitcases. I study their faces, which seem familiar to me: a frail old lady off on a visit to Miami, a soldier carefully checking the travel documents of a couple with a daughter, a little girl who takes a look at me and then runs to hide behind her mother. In their eyes, I discover a fear of being shunned by the ones who stay.

Through the plane window, I say good-bye to the country where the father I never knew was born. We leave Havana behind and fly over the Straits of Florida. I can’t help wondering if this will be the last time I see Diego and Aunt Hannah. I don’t know if someday we will return to the land where my great-grandmother is buried. I lean
my head against the window and fall asleep until they announce we’re arriving in New York.

I look up at Mom, who is stroking my hair, and see she has tears in her eyes.

We’re about to land. I open the photo album, and the first thing I see is a postcard of an Atlantic liner with the insignia
St. Louis
, Hamburg-Amerika Linie.

“Remember the tulips, Mom. We’re going to plant tulips.”

I
still have a destiny; at least today, a Tuesday. And I’m going to choose it. I can decide where I go, where to aim for. I can be whoever I like, abandon everything and start over, or end things once and for all. That is my sentence. I feel set free.

I can wander one last time among the colorful croton bushes, the poinsettias, the rosemary, basil, and mint herbs in the neglected garden of what has been my fortress in a city I never came to know. I let the aroma of recently filtered coffee envelop me, mixed with the smell of cinnamon coming from the oven. I am able to see and experience whatever I like. How fortunate I am!

On the threshold of our Petit Trianon, where I first caught sight of Anna and recognized myself in her, I clasp her warm hand and around me see the world I will never know through her eyes, which are mine.

Mother hated farewells. She did not have the courage to say good-
bye to me. She hid herself away in bed with her eyes shut tight and let her body shrivel.

But the truth is, I
need
farewells. So much time has passed, and yet still I cannot forget that they did not allow me to say good-bye to Leo, my father, the captain, or Gustav, Louis, or Julian. Today nobody is going to stop me from doing so. With every minute, I see myself in Anna; in what I might have been but wasn’t.

I’m confused. Anna stands in the shadow of the ship sailing out of the bay. I can’t make out the faces of those still shouting good-bye to us, but all of a sudden I hear Papa’s voice:

“Forget your name!”

I can’t say good-bye to Anna calmly. I hold her in my arms while in my ears I hear the desperate cry of the noblest man in the world.

If I close my eyes, I am with Diego and Anna, who are embracing. Yes, Diego, it’s so sad to say good-bye. Go on, kiss her, take advantage of every second. Thank you, my children, for giving me this moment.

The sky has turned a deeper blue, the clouds are scudding along, leaving the sun to shine as it sets, its dying rays less painful on my skin, which cannot take much more. The smell of the sea invades my nostrils. The breeze starts to ruffle our hair. The three of us, alone on this corner in Vedado. What about Leo? Leo isn’t here.

Next to Anna I am happy. We’re so close . . . Diego kisses her. It’s her first kiss. I can’t believe it, either. She has kissed a boy at the start of her thirteenth year, and I have to endure saying good-bye to her.

I open my eyes and let her go. Everything comes to a halt. She is leaving. I lose her. The distance between Anna and Diego, between Anna and me, starts to widen painfully.

Diego and I are left at a loss. He can’t stop crying, but when he realizes I’m watching him, he runs off.

These last two weeks have been an eternity. I have relived every instant of a life that was always deprived of meaning. Seventy-five years trapped in an unreal city, seeing so many people leave, flee, and abandon us here, condemned to be laid to rest in a land that never wanted us.

I should have liked to be Anna for a few minutes more. I leave the past in this run-down mansion: I have had enough of paying for other people’s sins, for their curses. I don’t care if everything we have suffered is forgotten. I’m not interested in remembering.

They have all gone. Only Catalina is here behind me. I turn and embrace her. I don’t know how to say good-bye to her, either. She looks at me and knows; she understands but prefers not to say anything. She turns her back on me and walks slowly and heavily back into my Petit Trianon, which is hers now. The door slams shut.

I hear the ship’s siren. That’s the signal. Time to return to the sea.