Margot: A Novel (35 page)

suddenly sad for her, that she could never have a baby,
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because she would’ve have been the best kind of mother,
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fierce and smart and beautiful and protective, and always,
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always with a plan. Not so dissimilar from my own mother.
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“So are you going to tell me what happened?” Ilsa asks as
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our heels click in step against the sidewalk.
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“I don’t know,” I say.
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“Margie.” Her voice is kind and stern all at once.
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“My boss,” I finally say, because there is no way I can tell
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her about P. Pelt. And now I am beginning to understand,
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that maybe this is really what it has been about these past few
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months. Not Peter, but Joshua. Who have I really been think
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ing about as Shelby’s love songs have played on her Friday
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afternoon radio? Who have I been watching through the
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glass, waiting for the moments when he says my name?
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“Yes,” Ilsa says. “What about him?”
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“He wants me to do things I cannot,” I tell her.
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She stops walking, turns to me and frowns. “What kind of
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things?” she asks.
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“Help him defend murderers,” I say, but what I am really
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thinking is,
Watch him marry a woman he doesn’t love
. Watch
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her walk in every afternoon gloating that she is his wife.
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She tsks and shakes her head, and we start walking again.
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“I am surprised he cannot be more sensitive, after all you
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have been through.”
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“He doesn’t know,” I say softly. “He doesn’t even know I’m
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Jewish.”
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“Oh, my dear,” she says, shaking her head again.
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N29

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We turn the corner, and we are up the street now from
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the cinema. The red letters are still there, blinding me, on the
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marquee, and I wonder how long they will remain. Is this the
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longest-playing movie ever in the city of Philadelphia? Surely,
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it only feels that way to me. I look away, not wanting to see
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them again. My sister’s name against the bright white light of
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late morning, the way the letters appear in red, in the movie’s
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title, they are nothing at all like my sister, the way she was as
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a person, not some silly, nearly invented icon.
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“Have you seen it?” Ilsa asks as we pass by.
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“What?” I ask, playing dumb. Only this never works with
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Ilsa. She nods her head in the direction of the marquee. “Oh,
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that,” I say. “Yes, of course. Hasn’t everybody?” I cannot keep
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the bitterness from my voice. It is so sharp, so biting that it
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almost surprises me.
Oh, the lies.
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“I wasn’t sure if you would have,” she says slowly, as if she
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is treading water with her voice. “Did you like it?”
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I remember what Joshua said, sitting there, so very close
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to me on the stool in O’Malley’s bar.
It’s not something you can
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like, is it?
Like school. Or the doctor’s. I sigh. “I don’t know,
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Ilsa,” I say. “Let’s not talk about this now.”
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Ilsa shrugs, but in true Ilsa fashion, continues to talk
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about it. “I saw it,” she says. I nod. Of course she did. Every
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one has. The entire world. “It was beautiful, in a way. Only
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very sad. I kept thinking of you.”
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She stops walking, and she turns and takes my hands in
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her own. She rubs my fingers between hers, as if she is warm
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ing them. “That was you, wasn’t it, my dear?” she asks me. I
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am so surprised by her words, by the easy way she says them,
that all I can do is shake my head, back and forth and back
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and forth. My brain feels numb, and yet my head aches. How
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could Ilsa say this? Just like that. How could she know?
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My heart pounds in my chest, and I am sweating, pools of
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water building down my arms, swallowing my ink. “No,” I
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whisper. “No.”
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“Eduard told me, when he first wrote me about you, that
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your name was Margot Frank.”
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“No,” I whisper again, but it is so strange to hear it, some
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one say it aloud.
Margot Frank.
Someone whom I know and
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whom I even love saying those words. I have not heard them
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spoken out loud in so long that they cannot be real. It feels
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like a stranger’s name, or the name of someone I once knew,
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long ago, but whom I can barely remember.
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“But then you arrived and said, your name was Margie
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Franklin,” she is saying now. “And I thought you were Amer
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icanizing yourself, the way we all have when we have come to
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this country. I thought nothing more of it. I never got a chance
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to read the book. But recently, after Bertie and I saw the
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movie . . . And then lately, the way you have seemed so on
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edge, the way you just reacted when you saw the marquee.
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My dear . . .” She puts her hand to my cheek and turns my
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face toward her. Her green eyes are filled with kindness and
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sadness.
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“Ilsa,” I whisper. “I am not the person you think I am.”
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“I understand that,” she says. She reaches for my cheek
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again and strokes my hair back gently, the way a mother might
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do to a very small child.
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“No,” I say. “You don’t. I am not her.” Because this is the
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truth, I am nothing like the girl she saw in the movie. She is
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only a character, the boring fictional sister of an icon. Noth
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ing about it seems real to me, except that we were Jews, and
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we were hiding.
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“Okay, my dear.” She pauses for a moment. “I do not know
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what happened to you then. But I love you now. In my heart
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you are the child that I never had. I worry about you.” She
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pauses again. “I want to help you,” she says. “And if you are
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her, well, then your father is still alive, isn’t he? He is living in
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Switzerland, yes?” It occurs to me that this was maybe the
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real reason for the invitation to join her and Bertram on their
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trip.
You can go home again,
she’d said
. I’ve always wanted to
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see the Alps.
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No. No. No.
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“You don’t understand,” I whisper.
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“You are afraid,” Ilsa says.
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“I’m the reason she’s not here,” I whisper.
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Ilsa frowns, confused. “Who?” she asks.
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“My sister,” I say. “I killed her.”
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And now that I have said it out loud, finally, at last, the
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truth, I feel my hands shaking against the weight of Ilsa’s, and
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then I am not sure I can stand any longer.
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Ilsa leads me to a bench, on the sidewalk by South Seven
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teenth Street. We are not too far from Casteel’s, and I cannot
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help but think of that other morning, when Joshua found
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me and led me gently inside. Where we shared a meal
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together. And where Joshua pretended that he was mine and
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I was his.
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“Tell me everything,” Ilsa says now, when we are both
sitting. Her voice is calm but stern, and her green eyes, they
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pierce me, until the whole story comes out of me, all of it. I
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tell her about Peter, and about the way my sister said his
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name, just before the Green Police stormed the annex. I tell
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her about the line at the camp, how I cannot remember now
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my sister’s number. And then I tell her about my mother’s
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plan, the train taking us from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen,
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when I escaped the Nazis.
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“We were lumped in a cattle car,” I tell Ilsa, and the
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words tumble from me now as if I am in a trance, describing
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a nightmare I have relived over and over and over again, and
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yet have never spoken of before this moment. “With so
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many women. Every one of us was just a heap of bone and
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loose flesh. It was hard to tell whether anyone was dead or
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alive, unless they happened to move a limb or twitch an
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eyelid.”
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Ilsa shudders, but then motions for me to keep on talking.
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“The train started moving slowly, and we were by the door.
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I was holding on tightly to my sister’s hand, and I saw our old
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neighbor, Schmidt, guarding our car. My mother had prom
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ised he wouldn’t shoot me. And then I knew I had to jump, or
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the train would be moving too fast, and then it would be too
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late. I couldn’t stay on the train any longer.”
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“And then what happened?” Ilsa asks, her eyes the size of
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silver dollars.
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“I jumped,” I say. “I let go of my sister’s hand, and I jumped.
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There were gunshots. And screaming . . . And that is all I
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remember until the next morning, when I woke up on the
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ground not too far from the train tracks.”
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I close my eyes, and I am imagining that morning again,
the feel of Brigitta’s hand on my shoulder, her German whisper in my ear. I could not hear her at first because the sound
of gunshots and my sister’s screams, they were ringing so
loudly in my ears. But I had not been shot. And I had not
taken her with me. I’d let go of her hand; I’d left her there to
die, to take Schmidt’s bullets for me.
“Oh, my dear.” Ilsa wipes at the tears on my face with her
thumbs, then wipes at tears on her own face. “It is so heavy
to be you, to carry all of this around, for so long.” She pauses.
“I do not believe you killed your sister,” she says. “I do not
believe that even for a moment.”
“That’s because you are you,” I tell her. “And you believe
the best in people.” In this way Ilsa, she is not so dissimilar
from my sister. But Ilsa was not there. During the war. Then,
anyone was capable of anything.
She is shaking her head now. “You are telling me that
maybe your sister was telling stories about her and Peter. But
what of herself? Was she strong and full of life and courageous as the movie suggests?”
I nod. “Yes,” I say.
You are such a paragon of virtue,
I hear
her saying in my head, laughing, chewing on the end of her
fountain pen.
“And you say you cannot actually remember those last few
moments on the train?” Ilsa asks.
I shake my head.
She thinks about it for a moment, and then she takes her
hand in mine. “My dear,” she says, “I want to tell you a
story . . .”
* * *
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In 1944, the train started.
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It was taking them from one camp to another, from Aus
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chwitz to Bergen-Belsen. Margot and Anne were lumped in
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a cattle car, with so many other women, heaps of bones
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and loose flesh. It was hard to tell whether they were dead
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or alive, unless they happened to move a limb or twitch an
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eyelid.
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The train moved slowly, at first, and Margot was by the
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door.
He won’t shoot you,
Mother had promised, and Margot
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saw him there, Schmidt, guarding their car.
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I will run, and he will shoot me,
Margot thought. Oh, the
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idea of running, out in the fresh air, though. It felt glorious
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and unbearable, after so very long.
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Margot held on tightly to her sister’s hand. They had to
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jump, or the train would be moving too fast, and maybe they
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would die as they hit the ground, from the impact alone. A
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heap of bones and flesh: they might snap. But it was then, or
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it was never. And Margot promised Mother.
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“Run,” Margot said to her sister, pulling as hard as she
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could on Anne’s arm. But Anne was too sick, too weak. She
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couldn’t run. Her almond eyes were saucers.
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“No,” she whispered back. “I can’t make it. Run. With
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out me.”
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“I won’t leave you,” Margot cried. “You’re my sister. I won’t
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leave you.”
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“Yes,” Anne said. “You must.”
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Schmidt turned his head, and he stared directly at them.
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His hand moved to his belt to grasp the handle of his gun,
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and that’s when Anne pulled all the strength she had to reach
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her hand up, put it tightly on Margot’s shoulder, and push her
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hard enough so that her body found the door and it fell, crum
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bling into one with the parched earth.
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