Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (44 page)

“I’m sorry
about Uli, Christopher, and Karolina and everything.”

Christopher
looked across at her and then back at the ground in front of him. The day was
fading, the streetlights coming to life. “Stefan is a wonderful boy. He’s
fourteen now, so much like his father.”

A young
couple brushed past them, their arms linked. The woman whispered something into
her lover’s ear. Christopher looked at Rebecca and she at him and then away.

Rebecca was
silent for a few seconds. “It’s so hard for me to think of Uli as a German
soldier.

“He wasn’t
SS, Rebecca.” Christopher didn’t look at her as he spoke. “I was SS. We were
the ones who committed the atrocities.”

“You didn’t
commit any atrocities. You weren’t one of them, Christopher.” Her eyes were
adamant.

“I was an SS
man. I can show you the tattoo they gave us. It’s still with me, it always will
be.” His voice was weary, grey.

Rebecca
reached over and grabbed Christopher’s arm. Her grip was strong as she held
him. They stopped. They were outside a bakery. Fresh cakes in the window
adorned by colored lights reflected in her eyes as she spoke, the smell of
bread through the open door filled their nostrils. “You were not one of them,
Christopher. I know that. You were there for me. You joined the SS for me.”

Christopher
tried to smile, but it came as a grimace, and he looked back at her and up the
street. “We’re nearly there. You said you were hungry, didn’t you?”

Rebecca
didn’t answer the question, just looked back at him. Christopher moved away,
but her grip was tight on his arm. “You were not one of them, Christopher. You
wore the uniform and you got the tattoo, but you weren’t one of them.”

Christopher remembered
Anka, saw her in his office and her tiny body beside Schultz in the snow. “I
knew you weren’t dead,” he said. “It’s hard to say why, even after I couldn’t
find you, even after all the signs pointed to the fact that you were. Somehow,
I knew we’d meet again.” He coughed, conscious of where he was, and the people who
were brushing past them on either side as they stood there. “I would see you
everywhere. I was in London only a few months ago and I thought I saw you,
walking along under a black umbrella holding hands with a little girl, and I
ran after you, who I thought was you, and I put my hand on that woman’s
shoulder. When she turned to me and after I apologized I felt sick, a deep
nausea passed through my whole body.” Rebecca let go of him, but was still
staring into his eyes. “I see you every day. I think about you all the time. I
feel like I’m going crazy sometimes.” Christopher looked away and up towards the
park. He raised his arms. “I feel like telling the kids about you all the time,
and sometimes I do talk to Hannah about you. She feels as if she knows you. But
now what do I tell her? That I met you in New York, that we had dinner together
and you’re alive and married and happy and you’re living in Israel?” Rebecca
didn’t speak. “I feel like we shouldn’t be doing this, as if somehow this isn’t
right as if we’re starting something now that shouldn’t have an ending.”

“Is there
ever really any ending other than death? I mean, we both fought so hard to be
alive, for this. And if I never see you again, if you walk away now and don’t
let me back into your life, that wouldn’t be the end. That wouldn’t be the end
of anything. I’d still go on and so would you, but that’s not what I want. I
didn’t come back to you today for that.”

“What did you
come back to me for?”

“I don’t
know. I really don’t know, Christopher, all I can tell you is that when I heard
about who you were, who you really were, and why you joined the SS, I had to
come. It was all I wanted to do.”

“You don’t
owe me anything, Rebecca. You don’t need to feel any obligation to do
anything….”

“I know that,
and believe me, I don’t. You were the center of my life, the fulcrum of the
happiest times I’ve ever had. To know that you were out there and the real
reasons for what you did and to not come back would have been more than I could
bear.”

Christopher stared
down at her staring back at him and then raised his hand to point up the
street. “You said you were hungry, didn’t you?” She smiled and nodded. “Well,
we can talk about all of this over dinner. This is all going be so much easier
with some food in our stomachs.”

“Yes, let’s
go.” They turned to walk back up the street towards the Plaza Hotel where David
and the other members of the American Jewish Committee had brought him on his
first night in the city. There was a bar ahead. Christopher peered inside as
they went. It was almost full, the smooth sound of live jazz music inside
sliding out onto the street and following them as they walked past. Christopher
thought to ask her to stop but didn’t.

“So, what’s
it like being married? You haven’t really mentioned your husband much.”

“What do you
want to know? Ari is a good man.” Her words were sharp, as if he had ventured
onto private property.

“I think I should
like to meet him someday,” Christopher replied, trying to form a picture of
Rebecca’s husband in his head.

“Would you
really?” Her exasperated tone did not encourage further questions and
Christopher did not really want to talk about him. The boundaries were painful.
It was easier to pretend they didn’t exist.

“Do you still
think about our time on Jersey?”

 
“It seems like a dream from a previous
life, as if I saw it happening to me but never participated directly in it
myself.” Rebecca held her eyes closed for a second and then opened them again.
They crossed the street as she began again. “I think everyone changes as they
get older; you don’t have to be a survivor of the camps to realize that our
experiences change us as we get older.”

“And are you
different now?”

“Because of
the camps?”

“Or
otherwise.”

“We all are,
Christopher. We’re not the same people we were when we lived together in Jersey
for those years. The camps accentuated that.
 
I felt scarred for many years, as if I’d
never be able to love again. I felt indebted to those who died there, as if when
I met them again when I died they’d ask me what I did for them, and what they
died for. I have a duty to them, for the rest of my life.”

Christopher
took a breath through his nose. “I thought the dreams, the visions I have,
would fade over time, but they haven’t.” He smiled to himself, shaking his
head. “The kids, they’re used to it now, almost expecting to hear the screams
from my room in the night. Hannah comes in when she hears me, gets into bed
beside me and holds me until I fall back to sleep.” He could feel Rebecca’s
eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to her, just kept walking. “But I wouldn’t
change it. Even if I knew that I wouldn’t find you I would still go to
Birkenau. Hannah wouldn’t be alive today if I hadn’t been there and that’s
enough.” He felt her hand in his. “And the other kids, and the ladies from
Canada, I hear from many of them. I get five, six, sometimes fifteen letters a
month. They’re all over the world now; there are even some of them in Tel Aviv.
I’ve spent my days here in New York seeing some of them and their
families.
 
So there’s no way I can
regret any of the places I’ve been or the things I saw. But still it seems like
so little.”

“It doesn’t
seem fair that they knew who you were and I didn’t, and they were right there
in Tel Aviv, right in the city I live in.” Her voice was distant, as if she
were picturing them together in Tel Aviv.

They
walked on in silence for a minute or more before Christopher spoke again. “You
still haven’t answered the question.”

“What
question?”

“The
question I asked you about married life.”

“Why,
are you engaged? Looking for advice from an old pro maybe?” Christopher didn’t
pander to her, just looked back with a half-smile on his face, waiting for her
to continue. “Ari is a good man, very dedicated to what he fights for. He is
what the state of Israel needs, righteous and true, determined.” Her voice was
unsteady as she spoke, like a candle flickering in the breeze.

“Are you
happy with him?”

Rebecca
held a hand to her face and brought it up to push her hair back. Her voice was
heavy now. “You mean would I be happier with you?”

“No, I
don’t mean that at all.” But he did. Christopher looked away, felt her eyes on
him and brought his back to meet hers. His initial reaction was to smile, but
her expression was earnest, completely real.

“In my
mind I’ve always compared him to you, even though I thought you were something
you weren’t, someone I could never love. But I felt that I had lost the ability
to love like I once had, like the experiences in the camps had somehow taken
that away or the amount of love I had inside was only so much and because I had
given it so completely to you that I could never have it back, like it wasn’t
even mine to give any more.”

“That’s
not true, Rebecca, you’re still the warm, loving person I’ve always known. Of
course you’ve changed. Everyone has, and everyone would have even if the camps
had never existed. You can’t live your life holding back. You have to give all
of yourself.”

“I did
give all of myself. I gave myself to you.” She stared up at him with wistful
eyes.

“And
that’s it then, is it? You just give up on your whole life? Because of me and
what we had?” Christopher’s voice was soft, but it was hard to keep the words
from bellowing out onto the street where strangers slipped past them on both
sides.

They crossed the street at 58
^th
and made their way across towards the Plaza. Christopher didn’t speak, still
waiting for an answer to his question, but Rebecca stayed silent as they walked
towards the hotel and then inside.
 

The
Maître d' seemed to recognize Christopher from the
previous night and led the two of them across the restaurant to a table in the
corner. Christopher thanked him as they sat down. They had barely spoken in
several minutes. They were directly opposite one another. Rebecca didn’t look
across at him as she sat down. Christopher ordered the wine.

“This is amazing.” She looked around
the room and back at him.

There were perhaps forty tables in
the packed dining room, each covered in white tablecloths with sparkling silver
cutlery. The drapes were brown as was the carpet beneath their feet. Many of
the diners were in evening dress. Christopher had buttoned his top button as
they moved to their table, but Rebecca had not even mentioned the notion of
their being underdressed.

“I did always bring you to the best
places.”

“I think that this is a cut above the
Red Lion in St Helier, Christopher.” They both laughed. “I wouldn’t say they
get too many fishermen in here.”

“No, I wouldn’t have thought so.” He
paused, waiting for the right moment before he began speaking again. “What
happened to you after the war, Rebecca? You still haven’t told me. There’s
still so much I don’t know.”

“Do you have to know everything?
Aren’t some things better left unsaid?”

“I’ve been thinking about you every
day for all these years and you were out there. What were you doing?”

“Trying to piece my life back
together.”

“How? Where were you?” Christopher
brought the glass to his mouth and felt the red wine sliding down his throat.
There was an elderly couple at the table next to them, the man had a large
white mustache and was glancing over between bites of the generous steak on his
pristine china plate.

Rebecca took a sip of wine and fixed
her eyes on his. “I was in hospital for a while. I was probably days away from
death when those British soldiers found me. They tried to feed me from the
rations they had, but I couldn’t keep them down. The food they gave me made me
even sicker. They nearly killed me.” Rebecca was looking into her wine as it
rolled against the sides of the glass. “After I got out of hospital, I was put
into the displaced persons camp. There were thousands of us, all with nowhere
to go, and no way to get anywhere.” She looked at him but skirted around his
eyes and then away. “It was there that I met my father. Some of the other
prisoners had spoken to him and remembered that he was from Jersey and they
brought me to him.”