Anne Frank and Me (21 page)

The brakes screeched and Nicole opened her eyes. What time was it? She could barely tell; so little light penetrated the two barred windows of the car. She thought it must be early evening.

“Why do they stop and start so much, Nicole?” Liz-Bette asked hoarsely.

“I don't know” Nicole touched Liz-Bette's feverish forehead. “Lean against me and try to sleep.”

As the train sped up again, Nicole looked around. Most of the other prisoners were dozing. They ranged from well-groomed Armand Kohn and his family to a few disheveled Resistance fighters. One of them was David Ginsburg. He was sleeping.

The whole transport was bizarre. They had been loaded quickly and there had been no body searches. So the resistants had been able to smuggle in bread, chocolate, and cigarettes, which they shared. Then, to Nicole's shock, they extracted tools and a tiny saw from inside their bread loaves and began to plan an escape.

This had caused a huge ruckus. They'd been repeatedly warned that in the event of an escape attempt, not only would the captured escapees be shot, so would anyone left behind on the train. M. Kohn had been irate—how dare they propose an escape that would put those who could not jump in danger? What about the little Bernhardt girl, for example? The sick one?

The resistants had been undeterred, and decided to saw a hole in the car's side wall, working only by night.

It was brightening a bit inside the car, which meant that it must be morning. Nicole rubbed her stiff neck. Incredibly, M. Kohn began shaving himself with a straight razor as if it was a normal morning at home.

“Make sure to get every whisker, Kohn,” a resistant named Claude sneered. “When the SS comes again, they will certainly appreciate a stinking, clean-shaven Jew like you more than a stinking, unshaven Jew like me.”

“Now, now, Claude, Herr Kohn is not yet comfortable traveling with the proletariat,” a female comrade declared.

“Pay no attention to their talk of escape,” M. Kohn instructed his four children. “It is an absurdity that will get us all killed.”

“Stupid bourgeois Jew. Let them think for themselves. Kohn the Younger!” Claude called out to Philippe, M. Kohn's eldest son. “Did you read what Brunner scrawled on our car? JEWISH TERRORISTS. You are one of us now, eh?”

“Leave my son alone,” M. Kohn demanded, which only made Claude and his friends laugh.

Nicole leaned toward Philippe. “Why do they dislike your father so much?”

“To them, bourgeois Jews like my father, who stayed in Paris and worked under the UGIF, are not much better than the Gestapo.”

“But that is not fair. What were sick Jews supposed to do? Where were they supposed to go? My father—” She stopped herself. It was the first time she had said the words
my father
since that horrible night in July.

“Your father what?” Philippe asked.

Nicole leaned back against the wall of the car. “Never mind,” she said.

The train rumbled on. When Liz-Bette awoke, Nicole gave her a piece of bread she had saved. Liz-Bette ate half, then fell back asleep.
It is night again,
Nicole recorded in her mind, visualizing the words in fiery streaks against the insides of her eyelids.
Sometimes we stop for hours. At least when we are moving there is a little air.

She felt a touch on her arm. “Let me sleep, Liz-Bette,” she murmured.

“Nicole?”

The voice was not her sister's. It was David. There was so little light in the car she could barely make out his face.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I think they broke my jaw” He winced. “But I plan to live.”

“Good.”

“How is Liz-Bette?”

“Sick.” Nicole looked at her sister, curled up in the corner of the car. “But she plans to live, too.” Their bodies vibrated as the train rumbled over an uneven section of rail bed. “David?”

“Yes?”

“The night we were arrested—do you know what happened ? The night my fath—” Nicole faltered.

“The Resistance staged an ambush. Three officers in the Permilleux Service. Every evening at eight-fifteen, they came out of that metro stop.”

“Were they killed?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She took a ragged breath. “Do you know what happened to my father?”

David hesitated. “I understand he was badly wounded. The Gestapo took him.”

He didn't need to tell her what that meant. Her father was dead.

“How did you get caught?”

David shrugged. “Completely unrelated. I was carrying a bundle of false identity papers. When I arrived at my destination, the militia answered the door. Someone tipped them off.”

Liz-Bette coughed in her sleep, then rolled over and began to snore. Nicole lowered her voice. “Thank you for telling me about my father, David.”

“He was a hero.”

“Yes. Did they shoot Jacques, too?”

“Yes. After he betrayed you.”

“No. It was an accident, he didn't mean to. His brother was dead—”

“Sometimes in a war, innocent people die.” David's tone was cold. “Jacques betrayed you.”

“You don't understand. He kept us alive—”

“And
then
he betrayed you. I knew he would, eventually.”

What could she say? What was the truth? She didn't know anymore. From across the car, they could hear the sounds of sawing as the resistants proceeded with their plan.

“Where do you think we are?” Nicole finally asked.

“Someone boosted Claude up to the window before. He saw a sign for Bar-le-Duc.”

Nicole was stunned. “That means we're still in France.”

“They do not seem to be in a big hurry to get us wherever it is we're going.”

“To a work camp, I hear,” she said.

For a long moment, the only sound was the steady sawing on the wall.

She could feel David's eyes on her. “The hole is almost ready, Nicole.”

She shook her head. “It's too dangerous. There must be SS on the roof with machine guns. As soon as you jump, they'll kill you.”

“They'll kill us all anyway.”

“That's not true. We're going to a work camp—”

“It is not a work camp,” David hissed. “That's just what they say to keep us from rioting. They are killing all the Jews.”

“No. That is propaganda. A lie!” She felt like hitting him for saying such a terrible thing.

“It's true,” he insisted. “Listen to me, Nicole. Everyone is either shot or marched into a big room—for a shower, they'll tell you—but it isn't water that comes out of the spigots, it's gas.”

“That's crazy!”

“Everyone dies, Nicole. Men, women, children—”

She put her hands over her ears. “Stop it, stop it, it's not true—”

“We've had reports from eyewitnesses—”

“They're lying.”

“They're telling the truth.” He pulled her hands from her ears. “It is just such a horrible truth that no one will believe it until it's too late.”

She couldn't speak. What if—No. It was impossible.

“Listen to me, Nicole. The hole is almost done. We will crawl out, straddle the side, then jump. It has been raining. The ground will be soft.”

“You'll die.”

“Maybe. But at least they won't have had the satisfaction of killing us. Jump with me.”

“I can't.”

“You can.”

“Even if I believed you, I can't leave Liz-Bette. She's too sick to—”

“I want you to live, Nicole!”

“God, don't you think I want that, too? But I won't leave my sister.”

The sawing stopped. “We are almost ready,” Claude announced.

David looked at Nicole with questioning eyes. She shook her head again, then put a hand on her sister's forehead. It still blazed with fever. “I understand,” he said.

“I'll pray for you, David.”

“To who? God? He must be on vacation. And He doesn't seem to have appointed a deputy while He's away.”

There was a loud crash as Claude and his comrades pulled away a section of the wall and dropped it on the floor of the car. A cheer went up. Fresh air poured in, filling Nicole with longing. For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to think that perhaps she could jump, with Liz-Bette in her arms, and—

No. It was impossible. Liz-Bette would die.

“David, come. Everyone who is jumping, come!” Claude called. People headed for the escape hatch. Already the first person was climbing through the hole.

“You'll get away, David,” Nicole told him. “You will live.”

“And I'll go to Palestine.”

“Palestine? What is in Palestine?”

“Nothing.” Lights twinkled outside, as they passed a farmhouse close to the track; David's eyes blazed in the reflection. “But someday, Nicole, it will be something.”

Regret washed over her. “I never really knew you, David, did I?”

“No, you didn't.”

“Yet you always cared for me anyway. Why?”

He almost smiled. “Maybe I am grandiose enough to think I knew you better than you knew you.”

“I wish I was as fine a person as you think I am.”

He touched her hand that lay on Liz-Bette's head. “But you see, I was right all along. You are.”

thirty-four

“Nicole, is there water?” Liz-Bette asked.

“They haven't given us any today. Try to sleep, Liz-Bette. The time will pass faster. Maybe when you wake up we will be there. You will go straight to the infirmary. You'll have soup and medicine. You will get well.”