Until We Reach Home (23 page)

“Listen, Sofia. You have to face the truth. It’s nice that you made a friend, but Mrs. Bjork says Elin will be getting out of the hospital soon, and we’ll be leaving this island. You’ll probably never see him again.”

“I know,” she murmured, “I know . . . But Kirsten . . . is it better not to fall in love at all, or to love someone for a little while, even if you have to say good-bye?”

“It’s better not to love,” she answered quickly. “Good-byes are terrible. Papa couldn’t bear to say good-bye to Mama, remember? He couldn’t live without her. I don’t want you to go through that much pain or to feel the way I feel, loving Tor and having to leave him.”

Kirsten’s admission surprised Sofia. And so did the strength of her own feelings for Ludwig Schneider.

“It’s too late, Kirsten. I already love Ludwig.” She knew it was true the moment she spoke the words. And she also knew the answer to her own question. “I may never see him again, but the gifts of joy and hope that he has already given me are worth any pain that might come.”

“You say that now, but you don’t know . . .”

Sofia pulled Kirsten into her arms and they held each other again. When Sofia could speak, she said, “No matter when I have to say goodbye to Ludwig, it’s going to hurt. But until then, I want to be with him as much as I can. Please let me do that, Kirsten. We’ll be in plain sight all the time. There’s no place to go on this island to be alone. There are always thousands of people here. Besides, we can’t even talk to each other properly. I just . . . I just want to be with him while I can.”

Kirsten slowly shook her head. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I hope you’re not sorry . . .”

“I know. I hope I’m not, either.”

For the next few days, Sofia spent every waking minute with Ludwig as she waited for Elin to get well. The days passed much too quickly, each one bittersweet. Now that Sofia knew she was in love, she suddenly understood the meaning of all the love songs she’d ever sung and all the love stories she’d ever read. She saw her love for Ludwig mirrored in his eyes and heard it in the music he played for her and felt it in his touch when he reached to caress her golden hair or brush his fingers across her cheek. As the moment when they would have to part drew closer and closer, their time together became more and more precious.

“I have some very good news,” Mrs. Bjork told Sofia and Kirsten one afternoon. “Your sister Elin is going to be discharged from the hospital tomorrow morning. I’m sure you’ll be happy to get off this island and be on your way,
ja
?”

Nej.
Grief welled up inside Sofia at the thought of leaving Ludwig. God had answered her prayers and restored Elin’s health—but that meant she and Ludwig would have to say good-bye. How would she tell him?

“I’ll be in the Registry Room tomorrow to translate for you,” Mrs. Bjork promised.

In the end, Sofia didn’t have to tell Ludwig that tomorrow would be their last day together. He must have read the news in her sorrowful expression, because he pulled out the picture she had drawn on their first day together and pointed to the stick figure of Elin. She nodded. She had already erased the
X
she’d drawn through Kirsten’s picture; now she took out the pencil and began to erase Elin’s
X
. Her tears dropped onto the page as she worked.

Ludwig reached for her hand to stop her, holding it tightly in his own, as if by preventing her from changing the picture he could prevent her from leaving.

“Sofia . . .” he whispered. “Oh, Sofia . . .” He finally released her hand and pulled out his Bible, paging quickly through it to find what he wanted to say. He stopped at the Song of Songs—a book Sofia had never read before—and waited for her to find it, too. He pointed to chapter one, verse fifteen:
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!

She looked up at him again. No one had ever told her she was beautiful before.

He flipped ahead a few pages and pointed to chapter four, verse nine:
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart. . . .

Sofia laid her palm over her own heart for a moment, then rested her hand on his chest, leaving it there. She could feel the strong beat of his heart beneath his shirt. “My heart is yours, Ludwig,” she murmured. “I can’t bear the thought that we may never see each other again. Please tell me that we aren’t saying good-bye forever. . . .” She wished she could understand what he said to her in return as he placed his hand over hers.

Sadness permeated their final day together. Kirsten gave them the gift of privacy, and Sofia and Ludwig remained side by side until it was time to return to their own dormitories for lights-out. In the morning, Sofia and Kirsten dressed in their Sunday clothes and pinned all of their immigration tags and cards to their dresses as they prepared to meet with the American officials. Sofia knew she should be happy to leave Ellis Island and grateful that Elin was finally well, but sorrow filled her at the prospect of leaving Ludwig.

Ludwig sat with Sofia and Kirsten at breakfast, but Sofia didn’t feel like eating. Afterward, Kirsten looked at the two of them and said, “I’ll go by myself to wait for Elin. We’ll come and find you when she arrives.”

“Thank you,” Sofia said.

As soon as she and Ludwig were alone, her tears began to fall. She saw Ludwig’s grief in his tear-filled eyes, and in the way his shoulders slumped, and in the deep sigh he uttered. He reached into Sofia’s bag, which lay at her feet, and pulled out her Bible, opening it to a verse. He didn’t open his own, so she knew that he must have stayed up last night searching for the right verse to leave with her. Once again, he turned to the Song of Songs. She read the words through a shimmer of tears:
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

He took the Bible from her and gathered both of her hands in his, speaking urgently, as if begging her to understand what he was saying. When he finished speaking, he pulled his violin and bow from his bag. She thought he was going to play one final song for her, but he didn’t unwrap them. Instead, he pointed to the violin, then to her as he placed the bundle in her hands.

“No, Ludwig. You can’t give this to me.” She tried to hand it back, but he shook his head, holding up his hands, refusing to take it. He pointed to New York City and once again pantomimed swimming across the river. “No . . . oh, please don’t try to swim. You’ll never make it! Nobody can swim that far. Isn’t there any other way?”

He picked up her Bible and pointed to another verse from Song of Songs:
I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves.
He pointed to her, to himself, to the verse.

“And you want me to keep your violin for you? Until you find me?”

He nodded as if he had understood her words and took the instrument from her. He knelt down and carefully tucked it inside Sofia’s satchel, then placed his German Bible inside, as well. He was giving her his violin as a promise of his love, a promise that he would search for her and find her. Sofia wanted to believe that he would be able to swim all the way across the river, but she was filled with fear for him.

Ludwig stood again and folded Sofia’s hands inside his own, then he bowed his head to pray. She couldn’t understand his prayer, but she prayed silently along with him, begging God to keep him safe and to bring them together again.

When he finished, Ludwig exhaled as if preparing himself for the long swim. Then he pointed to her many tags and gestured as if writing something down. Of course, he wanted the name and address of Sofia’s uncle in Chicago. She wrote it out for him on a piece of paper.

Sofia still wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him, but when she looked up, she saw Elin and Kirsten emerge from the building, looking all around for her. She and Ludwig were out of time. Ludwig followed her gaze and when he saw Kirsten, he suddenly reached for Sofia and folded her into his arms. He was so tall that he could rest his cheek on the top of her head. Sofia clung to him, not caring if it was proper or not, not caring who saw them. She loved this man and she didn’t want to let him go.

“Promise me that we’ll see each other again,” she wept. “Promise me that you won’t try to swim that far, that you’ll find another way. . . .”

“Sofia,” he murmured. “Oh, Sofia . . .”

When he finally released her, his cheeks were wet. He pushed a folded piece of paper into her hand, then turned and hurried away, as if unwilling to watch her go. Sofia didn’t take her eyes off him until he disappeared into the crowd. She couldn’t seem to move. She wanted to sink down on the ground and weep, but Elin and Kirsten were approaching. She pulled Elin into her arms, pretending that her tears were for her.

“I’ve missed you so much, Sofia,” Elin said. “I feel like I’ve let you down—that I wasn’t here to take care of you like I promised I would.”

“You couldn’t help being sick,” Sofia said hoarsely. “Besides, God took good care of me while you were away.”

“I see that. You look wonderful, Sofia.”

“And you look . . . like you could use a good home-cooked meal,” Sofia said, trying to smile. It was true. Her sister looked very thin and pale. “But thank God He spared your life.”

“Come on,” Kirsten said. “Let’s get through this immigration ordeal and get on that train to Chicago.”

Sofia felt hollow inside as she followed her sisters into the Registry Room and joined the long lines of waiting people. She and her sisters slowly progressed from one official to the next, each one peering at their many tags, then directing them to the next official. The last one motioned for them to sit down on one of the long wooden benches to wait for their names to be called.

Sofia had watched the procedure from afar for almost two weeks and knew that getting the stamp of approval from the men standing behind the tall desks was the last step. But all she could think about was Ludwig. Leaving Ellis Island meant she might never see him again. She looked all around the room for him, and up in the balcony where the dormitories were, desperate for one last glimpse of him.

“What are you doing?” Elin finally asked her. “Who are you looking for?”

“For—for a friend I met while I was waiting for you.”

“Was she Swedish? Why didn’t you introduce me to her?”

“Not Swedish, German.”

“You don’t speak German, Sofia. Did she understand Swedish?”

“No. We talked without words. . . . I can’t explain it, but we became good friends. I told him that—”

“
Him?
You spent time alone with a strange man? Are you crazy, Sofia?”

She didn’t trust herself to reply. She was going to burst into tears and then the immigration officials would think there was something wrong with her, and all three of them would be refused entrance into America. Just in time, Kirsten rescued her.

“I met him, Elin, and he’s really very nice. Besides, from now on we’ll have Uncle Lars to protect us, right?”

“I guess so.” Elin still looked doubtful, but again, Kirsten distracted her.

“Sofia told me that she’s been watching this whole procedure while you and I were in the hospital—right, Sofia? And she says it’s just like the Day of Judgment in the Bible, where we have to stand before St. Peter and he looks in his book and decides whether or not he’s going to let us through the pearly gates into heaven. America is like heaven, right?”

Kirsten babbled on and on, fidgeting so nervously that Sofia wondered what was wrong with her. She seemed afraid for some reason—and that wasn’t like Kirsten. Elin finally shushed her.

“If you don’t be quiet, we won’t hear our names being called and we’ll be stuck in this place forever.”

The wait seemed endless. Sofia still clutched the scrap of paper that Ludwig had given her, but she didn’t dare rummage in her bag for her Bible. Ludwig’s violin and German Bible were on top and she was afraid to let Elin see them. Finally Mrs. Bjork from the Immigrant Aid Society arrived, and after talking to one of the immigration officials for a few minutes, she called them over to his desk, one at a time. Sofia went first. The official examined her tags and paged through his ledger book until he found her name, then asked several rapid-fire questions, which Mrs. Bjork translated: “Where were you born? Are you married or single? Where are you going? How much money do you have? Have you ever been in jail? Are you able to work?”

Finally, he handed Sofia a card and asked her to read it. “It’s to prove that you’re literate,” Mrs. Bjork explained.

Sofia was surprised to see that it was a Bible passage, taken from Job 1:19:
“Suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”

The verse seemed fitting to Sofia considering all the losses that she and her sisters had endured. Like the biblical Job, they also had lost everything, yet they had survived.

Kirsten was the last one to appear before the official, and even from a distance, Sofia could see that she was nervous. She wondered if it had something to do with Tor—if Kirsten felt reluctant to take this final step and sever all ties to their homeland. But the official passed Kirsten through, as well, and Mrs. Bjork escorted them downstairs to find their trunk, which had been sitting in the baggage room all this time. Finally, Mrs. Bjork waited in line with them at the railroad ticket office and helped them book passage on the next train to Chicago. Sofia looked around in vain for Ludwig.

“I’ll help you send a telegram to your family in Chicago, and then you are free to go,” Mrs. Bjork told them. “All you have to do is take the ferry from here to Hoboken, New Jersey, then show them your railroad tickets and they’ll put you on the train to Chicago.”

“I feel like a bird being let out of a cage,” Elin said. “How can we ever thank you?”

“It’s my job to help you, and I’m happy to do it. Good luck to you all.” She waved as she strode away.

Sofia was still searching for Ludwig as Elin led the way to the pier. They joined the long line of people waiting for the ferry to arrive. “Just one more boat ride,” Elin said, “then one more train ride and our journey will be over.”