“No,” said the man with the knife as he tore the skirt from my legs. “You’re a Jew.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN I RETURNED in the shredded remnants of the dress, my parents were furious. “What were you thinking?” my father yelled. “Do you not understand the danger you put us all in when you call attention to yourself? Do you really not understand?” My mother was almost more concerned about the fact that I now had only one dress left, a worn green frock already too tight. Part of me, some irrational, reptilian part of me, wanted my parents to go back to Alsergrund and fight for me, to go after the people who had stripped me, hurt me, made me sweat until I thought I’d faint. But they wanted to live. They wanted me to live.
Twenty
On November 12, 1938, the Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life bars Jews from operating any kind of business.
After Pogrom Night, my parents began to talk seriously about sending me to England with a large group of children, a rescue effort by the British government that was being organized by German Jewish organizations. Kindertransport. The first transport was just for German children, but there could soon be more.
Our visas had still not come through, and we did not know how much longer we could survive. My parents argued about whether to keep me by their sides, or send me to safety. It was urgent that they get me out of Austria, my father said. They could always meet me somewhere later. But we can still get her out with us, my mother cried. The visas could come any day. Haven’t I already given up my son? She could not see any new life without me.
I didn’t want to go on any transport. What child wanted to leave her parents? But then, what child was given a choice?
Unaccustomed to idleness, my parents paced the floors of the cramped apartment, beating out desperate rhythms on the bare floorboards with their feet, dodging arguing children and the elderly huddled on mattresses in the corners. My aunt Thekla and uncle Tobias, in contrast, were still. They stared out the window as if they hoped to catch a glimpse of their son passing by. Klara looked after them, scavenging with me for food, making her parents drink water. She had even gone to the police station to inquire about Felix but had been told no one knew where he was. In the early evenings, we all pressed close to the small radio someone had salvaged from home, trying to predict the future.
“Mutti, sing,” I would say to my mother when she tucked me in with the other children or beside her on the floor. And she would only shake her head, folding her lips into her teeth. “I’ll sing again when we are free,” she whispered. “I will sing when we are safe.”
It occurred to me only later that she never even asked if Bolivia had an opera.
“Is this what war is?” I asked my mother.
She looked away from me, toward the kitchen, her fingers pinching the fabric of her dress, sliding it back and forth. “No. Yes, in a way.”
“Will we stay here?”
“No, my love. We will not stay here. I don’t know where we will go yet, but we will not stay here. Here is already gone.”
* * *
• • •
A CALIGINOUS AUTUMN descended on Vienna as we waited for our visas, or what would come in their place. As we made what preparations we could make. Mist clung to our streets and the chill sank into our marrow. I missed going to school. Some people in the apartment had books, and I read them all. I played games with the older girls; I held the babies; I plotted ways to find my way back to Anneliese before we left. If we left.
Finally, when we had begun to consider various illegal ways to smuggle ourselves out of the country, a letter arrived from the Bolivian consulate saying our visas were ready. My father and I were pulling on our shoes before my mother had even finished reading it to us. “What if someone else gets there first?”
“They’re our visas, Orly, they can’t give them to anyone else.” But he beat me to the door. I had to run to keep up with him all the way to the consulate, where we discovered there were visas for only the three of us.
“Regular visas?”
“Regular as visas go.”
“I won’t have to plant anything?”
“My understanding was that you didn’t want the agricultural visas.”
My father straightened. “Thank you.”
“I hope you know how lucky you are. I don’t know how many more of these there will be.”
“I understand. Thank you. We are grateful.”
Visas for the rest of our family, she said, would—perhaps—come later.
“But!” my grief-stricken father began.
“I said, we have three visas. Do you want these three or shall I give them to the gentleman in line behind you?” Her voice was weary rather than unkind. Our misery had numbed her.
My father closed his mouth and collected our visas. As we turned to go he remembered our last visit and stopped. “And if they agree to be agricultural laborers? My parents?” I tried to imagine this, tried to imagine my stout grandfather planting rows of corn in his pin-striped suits, tried to see my militant grandmother pushing a plow.
“We will do our best, Herr Zingel.”
My Vienna grandparents insisted they were relieved. “We’re too old to travel so far from home,” my grandfather announced. “We’re better off somewhere nearby. France, Poland.” He said this as if those countries were real possibilities. As if those countries were safe. My aunts and my Graz grandparents promised to keep trying to join us in Bolivia. Aunt Thekla and Uncle Tobias said they would not leave without Felix.
* * *
• • •
WE NEEDED NOW to find enough money for the ship and the landing fee demanded by Bolivia in return for accepting us. My grandfather gave us a little of it, bills he had hidden away in his office filing cabinets and carried with him in the lining of his jacket. We’ll pay you back, my father told him. We’ll send you money for your own tickets. But it wasn’t close to enough. My mother went out early one morning and was gone for most of the day. When she returned, she had an envelope of bills in her girdle. “But where did you get it, Mutti?” All of our relatives were in our same situation. She gave me a thin smile. “Odiane and Ilse.”
“Really?” I had forgotten Odiane and Ilse. I guess they were not Jewish. They could still work.
“Really. There are some good people left, Orly. Some very good ones.”
When we had counted out just enough schillings to purchase our tickets, we walked to the Italian Line offices in the Opernring.
* * *