Why was I here at all, you may wonder, inviting such glances? Because I loved Joe, and Joe wanted me here. And because I was stubborn. We won’t examine which of these was the most true.
I hadn’t understood one word of the Hebrew prayers on that earlier visit—Greek and Latin I had, but Hebrew was a mostdifferentlanguage, spoken very much from the throat—but the singing by the cantor had been very beautiful. I’d thought my own thoughts and prayed my own prayers instead, and hoped that was enough. The point had seemed to be to thank God for the survival of loved ones, and this I was easily able to do. I’d prayed especially for the welfare of the Beckers, as my last letter to Dr. Becker had gone unanswered. I hoped this was because he and his family had moved on from the Displaced Persons’ camp, and that wherever they were, they were safe from war.
But were they? The new nation of Israel had, as Sophie had foreseen, been engulfed by war with its Arab neighbors ever since coming into being. I didn’t know what was right and what was wrong in such a case, but should this really be on the Jews alone to solve, when so many nations had refused them asylum before the war? Wasn’t this the world’s shame?
Of course, it was above all Germany’s sin and Germany’s responsibility, but so destroyed was Germany still that the people couldn’t even feed themselves. In April, to makematters worse, the Soviets had cut off West Berlin, that tiny island in the midst of the Russian Zone, in a bid to force the West to abandon the city. The Soviets had proved, as I and everybody else with a thought in their head had foreseen, to be very fickle allies indeed.
The Western Allies had risen to the challenge once more, with the Americans and British flying food and supplies into the besieged city by air in a near-continuous stream for more than six months now. An aircraft landed in Berlin, I’d heard, every forty-five seconds. The scale of the thing! The Soviets had scoffed at the start, claiming such an operation could never work, but they weren’t scoffing now, were they? The airlift would go on, we’d been told, for the duration. Not for the sake of the German people, but for what the newspapers called “the balance of power.” Losing Berlin was apparently unthinkable; perhaps it was a symbol?
How I felt for my country! The Berliners might now be the only Germans with sufficient food, for rations had dwindled in many places, the papers said, to a thousand calories a day or less, and the people had been starving to begin with. How many had died of hunger and cold since I’d left? And this was only the parts of Germany controlled by the West. How much worse was it in Saxony? How much worse in Dresden?
If I were meant to atone today, how to atone for leaving my people as I had? For as with marrying Joe, I wouldn’t have made a different decision even if I’d known how guilty I would feel. I couldn’t have helped by staying, I reminded myself at such times, merely starved along with the others. The guilt of surviving, though, that I’d carried since first seeing the bodies of everyone I loved in that cellar … was there any religious service in the world that could heal that? Or was this a burden one carried forever?
When I sold the necklace, I would do something. Donate to the Red Cross, perhaps? Yes, that would help.
Much of this would have to be for God to answer, for I couldn’t, and among the Starks, of course, I’d refrained from discussion of any such topics. Joe and I, though, had wrestled with them for many months, first taking the argument one way, then the other, without any satisfactory result. I could only pray for God’s guidance, and for safety and mercy for all peoples. I’d thought the war was over, but war was never really over, for greed and pride and resentment were with us always. Original sin, or something like that.
I thought all this, and then I didn’t, for the service was beginning. The cantor did some more of the beautiful singing, and then there was Joe, for he was up there now too, playing the same melody most hauntingly on his cello. It lasted only a minute before the cantor repeated the song, and then Joe laid down his cello and returned to sit beside me. He’d carried the instrument in its case on the train just for that one minute, and I knew it had been worth the effort. When I thought of all he had faced and all he had lost, and of my gratitude to God for his survival, I got a chill down my back and a lump in my throat.
Repentance, and forgiveness. This practice was alike for us both, Catholic and Jew, and surely these actions were more important than almost anything else. But how would the German people ever atone? How did one begin to know how?
Perhaps our religions had the right idea, for such things might be best done one person at a time, imperfect as we were and flawed as our efforts would always be. And I’d tried, hadn’t I? Though it hadn’t gonepreciselyas I would have hoped.
One was meant to ask forgiveness before the holiday began, so at dinner tonight, held before sundown, Joe had most manfully expressed his regret for not telling his parents about me, or about our marriage, until after he’d returned home. “It was cowardice, I realize now,” he’d said, “to hide allthat from you. I didn’t want to hear your objections, but of course I’d have heard them soon enough anyway, so it wasn’t even worth the cowardice, was it?” He’d smiled in a lopsided sort of way, then gone on. “I’ve tried to remember how hard all this has been for you, but I haven’t always succeeded, and I apologize for that, too.”
“And I,” I’d said—impulsive once more, you see—“I too must apologize. Not for marrying Joe, because I couldn’t have chosen any other path, and I do most truly believe that God intended me for him, and him for me. Why otherwise did I so foolishly run out into the midst of battle to pull an enemy soldier to safety? It seemed like the only thing I could have done, and our marriage seemed the same. This feels wrong to you, I know, and perhaps my parents would have said so as well, but such is my heart. I am indeed very sorry, though, that my love for him has meant such pain for you. And I regret very much not telling you of my illness at the beginning. This was my failing. Not Joe’s, who tried only to protect me, but mine.” There. That was good, wasn’t it?
Except that everybody had stopped eating and stared. Barbara, who was hugely pregnant—surely this baby wouldn’t wait much longer to make an appearance—paused in the eating of a breast of chicken, which wasnotdry—I must ask Mrs. Stark for the secret—and looked at David, who looked back at her calmly. Sophie said, “What illness? Why doesn’t anybody ever tell me anything?Do you have cancer or something, Marguerite?”
A collective indrawn breath at that, for cancer was something not discussed. Not in Germany, and not in America. Mr. Stark said, “Ask forgiveness for that, Sophie,” in a very sharp tone.
“Sorry,” she said, “butwhat?”
“I had assumed you all knew,” I said, then told Mrs. Stark, “I must thank you for keeping my secret; it was charitable ofyou.” Which I thought rather noble of me, for it had probably not beenentirelycharitable. She may have simply not wished to think about it, in the hope that I would be struck by a bolt of lightning before the baby issue had to be addressed.
Repentance,I reminded myself. Alas, I was a better sinner than a repenter; at least I practiced the sinning more! I went on, in hopes that God at least would see an effort. “This is my sin, that I’ve lied too many times since coming to this country, or failed to tell the truth for my own gain, and I can’t continue to act in this way. I am a carrier of hemophilia,” I told Sophie. “It doesn’t hinder me much; I’m fortunate. It causes me to bruise a bit more easily, that’s all. And it means that I’m not allowed to do the complete fast with all of you tomorrow, for the doctor says that although I can abstain from food, I must drink water.”
“Oh,” Sophie said. “But if it’s no big deal, why do Mom and Dad even care? So you bruise more easily and have to drink water during Yom Kippur. So does Barbara, because she’s pregnant. So what?”
“I’ll answer,” I said, “but first—David, I think you knew.”
“Yes,” he said. “Joe told me in confidence, out of concern for you.”
“I should have told you,” Joe said to me.
“No,” I said, “of course you should have confided. This has been a great burden to you. And it’s important, Sophie—and Barbara, too—because there is a chance of giving birth to a hemophiliac child.”
“A hemophiliacson,”Mrs. Stark said.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be the most severe outcome.” I pressed my nails into my palm to keep back the tears. “And Barbara, I have at times been envious of you. For this too I atone.”
“Oh, Marguerite.” She wascrying a little, but then, pregnant women cry easily. “I’m so sorry. How awful.”
“Well, it’s not awfulyet,”Sophie said. “Nobody’s had any diseased kids, have they?”
I had to smile. “You’re right. It’s not awful yet. And while Ihavefelt envy of your sister, I’ve confessed my sin to my own priest and done penance. Alas, I’ve had to do this many times over, as it doesn’t seem to have worked as well as it might. Perhaps it will work better now that I’ve told you directly, Barbara.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I really do.”
