My Canary Yellow Star (5 page)

I could smell the borscht as soon as I entered the apartment. Grandmama must have heard me come in, for she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen with a wooden spoon clutched in her hand. A large, flowery green-and-blue apron covered her neat navy dress. As usual, her hair was set in implacable gray waves, but she had loosened her collar in the warmth of the spring afternoon. I could see the heavy gold of the Star of David necklace that was usually hidden by her clothing. I was struck by how proud Grandmama was of her necklace and how ashamed we all were of our yellow stars. The necklace had been in our family for longer than anybody could remember. It was always worn by the oldest daughter. One day it would be mine, but not, I hoped, for a long, long time.

I was surprised when I didn’t get my usual welcoming hug.

“Where have you been?” she snapped. “I’ve been out of my mind with worry.”

“I’m sorry, but Madam asked me to stay late. It’s a real nuisance not having a telephone. I don’t like to call Mrs.
Marton with messages unless I absolutely have to.” Mrs. Marton lived in the apartment right above ours. She had been a good friend in the past, but of late she had become more and more distant.

“Never mind that now,” Grandmama said. “Never mind. Thank God you’re home. Your mother hasn’t come back from her sister’s yet, and I don’t know what to do about your brother. He got into some kind of a fight at school and won’t tell me what happened. Try to talk to him.”

My brother and I had become very close over the past few months. With Papa gone, and Mama and Grandmama more and more nervous as the days passed with no word from him, Ervin and I got into the habit of discussing our problems with each other. We soon learned that if anything went wrong, Mama would begin to cry and Grandmama would get chest pains. It was easier for us to rely on each other than to share our troubles with the adults.

I entered Ervin’s room without knocking, ready to retreat if he decided to throw something at me. He was hunched over his desk, so absorbed in his writing that he didn’t even look up. Crumpled pieces of paper littered the floor around his desk.

“Ervin, it’s me! Look at me! What’s the matter with you?”

“Leave me alone! Get out of my room!” he cried in a muffled voice, his back still to me.

I took a cautious step toward him. “Come on,” I coaxed in a tone I would have used with a little child. “Come
on! It’s me!” I repeated. “You know I won’t get mad at you.”

Slowly, Ervin swung his chair around. I gasped when I saw his face. He had received a terrible beating. One of his eyes was swollen shut, his face was black and blue, his lips were twice their normal size, and streaks of dried blood decorated his forehead. I sunk onto his bed.

“I’m quite a mess, aren’t I?” he exclaimed almost cheerfully. “Believe me, I gave as good as I got!” His battered face was proud.

“What happened? You promised Mama that you wouldn’t get into any more fights.”

“Well, you know, it was really unavoidable,” Ervin muttered through swollen lips. “It started in geometry class. Old Nemeth returned our final exam today. I had only one mistake, but he gave me a C. I should have got an A. Sam Stein, who is the only other Jewish boy in the class, sits beside me. He had two mistakes, and Nemeth gave him a D.

“Pfeiffer was sitting in front of us, and I could see that his paper was marked up all over by Nemeth’s red pencil. You know what an idiot Pfeiffer is. He’s always getting into trouble and making a fool of himself. But the teachers are afraid of him because he wears his Arrow Cross uniform to class and his buddies are the Fascist bullies in the higher grades.” Ervin sighed.

“Old Nemeth always reads everybody’s mark out loud to the whole class. When he announced that Pfeiffer got an
A, I couldn’t believe it! I put my hand up to ask him about my mark. He pretended not to see me. I was finally forced to address him without being called up.”

“Oh no! You didn’t!” I groaned.

“I had to, Marta. He just wouldn’t call on me. I swear I was very polite. I said, ‘Sir, could you please explain why Pfeiffer, whose examination is full of mistakes, received an A, while Stein, with two mistakes, was given a D, and I, with a single mistake, got a C?’ Nemeth’s face became so red that I thought he’d have a stroke. But no such luck. He only threw me out of the class.”

“Oh, Ervin! How could you be so foolish? Mama’s right: you look for trouble!” I wondered what Papa would have thought of Ervin. In my heart, I knew he would have been proud of him, but I also knew I shouldn’t tell that to my brother.

“You’re completely wrong, Marta!” he snapped. “I try to avoid getting into trouble, but in this case I had to say something. I just
had
to. Nemeth was so unfair. I kept asking myself why I should have to put up with such unfairness, such injustice. I wrote the better test, so I should have got the higher mark.” He banged his fist on the table. “I couldn’t stand it any longer! I’ve never done anything to them! I can’t understand why they hate us so.” He quickly wiped away the tears running down his cheeks. I pretended not to notice.

“Finish your story,” I said. “You still haven’t explained what happened to your face.”

Everything will be fine in the end. Germany will lose the war, and then everything will be back to normal. You must learn to be more patient.” My words sounded hollow even to my own ears.

“Stein meets with some older kids who are with the Resistance. You know what we’ve heard about the Jews in Poland and Slovakia? Those aren’t rumors, Marta.” He sighed deeply. “I don’t want the same thing to happen to us. Look, I’ll show you what I’ve been doing, but you must promise not to tell Mama or Grandmama. I don’t want to raise their hopes.”

“I swear!”

Ervin handed me a sheet of paper from his desk. It had a list of names and addresses on it. Then he picked up one of the crunched up pieces of paper from the floor, smoothed it out, and gave it to me without another word. It was a letter, and this is what it said:

“There isn’t much else to tell,” Ervin said a little more cheerfully. “Sam was kicking me under the table to shut me up, and the rest of the boys were booing me in support of Pfeiffer.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That just made me more angry. Old Nemeth hushed the class and started yelling at me, calling me an officious Israelite who shouldn’t dare to compare himself to a fine Aryan boy like Pfeiffer. He sounded so idiotic that by then I didn’t even care about his stupid mark.” Ervin laughed, wincing at the pain from his cracked lips.

“Your face?” I interrupted, prompting him.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that!”

“Well, after school ended, Sam and I were walking home. Just after Sam turned down his street, Pfeiffer and two of his Arrow Cross buddies jumped me and beat me up. They must have been lying in wait for me. But I put up a good fight! Pfeiffer has a bloody nose and one of his friends is missing a tooth. I could have got all three of them, but they had wooden planks. In the end, I had to run away. They wouldn’t stop hitting me with the boards and calling me names. People passed us, but nobody stopped to help me.” His face darkened. I thought of my dreadful afternoon in Madam’s salon, but this wasn’t the time to tell Ervin about it.

“Thank God you had the common sense to run away! They might have crippled you – or worse. But don’t worry.

“Get up! Something’s happening outside!” Somebody was leaning over my bed and whispering urgently in my ear.

I sat up. The first thing I saw was Ervin’s face. His swollen lips were twitching from excitement and fear.

“Come on! You’ve got to see this!” He motioned for me to follow him into his room. “Don’t turn on the lights!” he warned.

Mama and Grandmama appeared in the doorway.

“What’s going on?” Mama asked. “Do you realize it’s two o’clock in the morning?”

“Shhh!” Ervin warned, his finger over his lips. “Something’s wrong at the Weltners’ apartment.”

Ervin’s window faced our building’s courtyard, and the Weltners’ suite was directly across from his room. He parted his drapes ever so slightly and we all peeked through the slit in the curtains. The lights were on at the Weltners’. We could see several figures moving about. Loud noises: the sound of broken glass and a scream. One of the figures fell down. Then a door slammed.

We ran into Papa’s office as quietly as we could. The windows there faced the street, and we could see a long black car parked under the street light.

“Oh my God, the Gestapo!” Mama whispered.

“Oh no! Not Zsuzsi! Not Pista!” Grandmama said.

Three figures appeared on the street. When they reached
the street light, we could see that two men in dark suits and fedoras were escorting Mr. Weltner. The old man was dressed in pajamas, his feet in bedroom slippers. One of the men had grabbed Mr. Weltner’s arm and the other was pointing a gun at his head. The two men pushed him into the waiting car.

Suddenly, old Mrs. Weltner came running out of the house. She was in her nightgown, her white hair flapping about her face. She was crying and begging the men to let her husband go. The man with the gun swung around and aimed, and a loud flash of fire lit up the street. The bang was deafening in the stillness of the night, but Mrs. Weltner crumpled to the ground without making a sound. The car sped away.

We were totally silent, afraid even to whisper lest a member of the Gestapo had stayed behind in the Weltners’ apartment. Everyone in the block had suddenly become deaf and blind, and Mrs. Weltner’s body lay untouched in a pool of her own blood on the moonlit street. When I finally risked sleep at dawn, I couldn’t help feeling grateful that the Gestapo hadn’t come for anyone in my family.

I arrived at the workshop a few minutes before eight the next morning, exhausted and nervous. Although it was still early in the day, the spring air was sticky and unseasonably
hot. The gloomy skies seemed to echo the sight of Mrs. Weltner, lying crumpled in the moonlight.

Before breakfast, I had balled up several pages of an old newspaper and then covered the ball with another page of newsprint. Like me, most of the other girls had wrapped their bundles in newspaper. A few of them carried packages wrapped in rags. We all took our bundles – large, small, rectangular, cylindrical, round, or irregular in shape – into the salon before we went into the workshop. It was all done very quietly.

I spent the morning trying to make shoulder pads for ladies’ blouses. It was difficult to concentrate, for I kept hearing in my head the deafening bang of the Gestapo gun. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the shoulder pad I was working on less lumpy. To distract myself, I tried to think about Peter and how much I enjoyed his company. Unfortunately, this distraction didn’t work. The latest shoulder pad I was making puckered more than ever. I tried to unpick my stitches and pricked my finger in the process. Now the shoulder pad was not only lumpy, but also had a bloodstain on it. It made me think again of the pool around Mrs. Weltner’s lifeless body.

The workshop door opened and Madam came in. The sewing machines immediately ceased their monotonous song. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Madam’s face was grave. She was carrying a bundle
wrapped in newspaper, but it looked no different from all the other bundles that had been left in the salon. She stood at the front of the room, facing our sewing machines and chairs, which were arranged in four rows, one behind the other. I was sitting in the last row by the wall. Madam looked at her employees for a long moment without uttering a word.

“Well, ladies, we have our culprit,” she announced sadly. Slowly, she unwrapped the newspaper covering of the package she was holding and took out a rolled-up bolt of blue silk. She unrolled the silk and held it up for us to see. Clinging to the blue cloth was a scrap of yellow material, the exact same shade as the yellow star pinned to my uniform. All eyes turned to stare at me.

“I think it is very obvious who stole the material,” Madam said.

“I knew it! I told you, Madam. It was the Jew! The Jew did it! I knew she was the one!” Gizella crowed.

“It was her!” Irma said, pointing her finger at me. “You can see it was her. A piece of her yellow Jew material stuck to the silk.”

Automatically, I lifted my hand to hide the canary yellow star affixed to my chest. But as soon as I became aware of what I was doing, I forced myself to drop my hands into my lap. By now, the room had become silent.

“So, Marta, what do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.

“Madam, I did not steal your silk! Please, please believe me!” I pleaded, tears running down my face. “I wouldn’t do such a terrible thing to you!”

“How do you explain the presence of this yellow material?” she asked, holding the scrap in her fingers and waving it in my direction.

“I can’t explain it, Madam,” I said. It was difficult to keep my voice calm. “I don’t know where the material came from. I can only assure you that I’ve never seen it before. I swear that I did not steal your silk.”