She stood up, slipping from my grasp, and turned out the light.
* * *
• • •
DURING THE DAYS, we walked up uneven cobbled streets to nearby apartment buildings to look at rooms. The floors were coated with grime and the hallways dim. What we could afford with the loan from SOPRO was smaller than my room at home. Many apartments lacked lights or water. “Dear God,” said my mother. “It’s like going back in time.” Her despair deepened with each apartment we saw. “Do they not have soap and water here? Do they not have paint?”
Walking the streets by her side, I saw pretty red and yellow electric trams carrying passengers up and down the sides of the city, their bells ringing out as they rounded a corner. I saw men in brightly colored blankets sitting on the steps of the church playing little wooden flutes. I saw women in flouncy skirts laughing as they strolled in pairs down wide avenues. I saw the grand government buildings clustered around Plaza Murillo. Above all, I saw the mountains. Every time we turned down a new street, I was delighted anew to see the mountains at the end of it. To be confronted with the majesty of snow-tipped Illimani and her companions as part of our everyday errands tinted our days with magic.
It frustrated me that my mother couldn’t see the same things. That her eyes absorbed only dirt and disappointment. How could she fail to note that every place we saw looked better than the few filthy feet of floor space we had had in Leopoldstadt? I didn’t care what our apartment looked like, as long as it was ours alone. As long as it meant we were safe.
Some refugees lived in boardinghouses, some in one-room apartments. In one of the buildings we considered, there were twelve families per floor, each with just one room. A single toilet served them all. My mother walked back down the stairs without speaking. “Vati?” I began tentatively, as we walked to the next building. “How long will the loan last for?”
“Until I can find work, I hope. We have a little extra your mother’s friend Violaine sent us from Paris.”
“Can Violaine send money to Willi where he is?”
“She has, sweetheart. At least to where we last knew he was. But she hasn’t heard anything from him.” He squeezed my fingers gently. “Maybe he’s just on a ship.”
My breathing relaxed. I was grateful that my mother had traveled, that she had friends in other countries—countries that allowed money to be sent to Jews.
Two weeks later, we found two rooms in a white stucco house on calle Genaro Gamarra in the neighborhood of Miraflores, a twenty-minute walk downhill from the central Plaza Murillo. Our apartment was adjacent to that of a German couple, Mathilde and Fredi, who were friends of the Grubers. We split the top floor, sharing a toilet and bath. Chani, who told us about this place, said the landlady had recently lost her husband and needed the extra income from boarders.
She and her children lived on the ground floor. The landlady, a diminutive, hazel-eyed woman we were introduced to as Señora Torres, met us and Chani by the front door. “Bienvenidos!” She smiled, kissing my mother’s cheek and offering my father her hand. As she continued speaking, my mother and father and I looked at each other in confusion. Chani stepped forward to translate.
“I see you don’t have luggage. I’ll bring you some towels and a cooking pot.”
“Ah! Danke,” said my father.
Señora Torres let us in to our rooms, gave us the keys, and apologized via Chani that she had to get back downstairs to fix dinner for her family.
As soon as they heard us in the hallway, Mathilde and Fredi emerged from their room. They were about the same age as my parents, and had arrived a few months before. Mathilde, fair and frail, wasn’t much bigger than I was. “We brought you a few things,” she said smiling. In one hand was a pitcher of water and in the other, a vase of roses. The sight of them brought tears to my mother’s eyes. It had been a very long time since anyone had given her flowers.
“Danke,” she whispered. I pushed open the door of our apartment and they all followed me in. The wood floors, painted a dull brown, were flaking and dusty. Olive green paint crumbled from the walls. Dust coated the sills of the two windows. Even the air looked dirty in the morning light. Mathilde set the water and roses on the floor and looked around. “We’ll have to find you some mattresses.” She spoke in German. “How are you doing with the altitude?” This is still the first question we ask new arrivals; only the altitude remains unaltered by time. Mathilde’s wide blue eyes were gentle and kind. “Have you been ill?”
“Not since the first few days. I suppose one adjusts?” My mother glanced around her for something to clean with. Her whole body hummed with disorientation.
Mathilde shrugged. “Everyone is different. Some people never adjust and they have to move to Cochabamba or Coroico. But some don’t even feel it.”
“I don’t feel it,” I piped up, eager to prove my sturdiness.
“Good,” said my mother, fixing her eyes on the dirty floors and windows as if they were a personal affront. “You can help clean.”
“Oh, I’ll help too! Everything gets so dirty between tenants. It’s the dust, it’s so dry here and everything comes in the windows. I’ll get some rags.” Mathilde ran into her apartment and returned with a handful of torn cloths and a bucket of soapy water. “Here’s a start.”
The three of us wiped the walls, windows, and floorboards of our new rooms until they shone, although there wasn’t much we could immediately do about the paint. Once I had finished the second window, I stood staring out at the mountains the dust had obscured, at snowy Illimani, sharp against the clear blue sky. Our Vienna apartment had been a place of luxury in comparison, but it didn’t have a view like this.
The men wandered across the hall to Fredi and Mathilde’s rooms, discussing the probability of war. Fredi and Mathilde, my father told me later, had recently arrived from Berlin, where they had both worked as journalists. Like us, they had left most of their families behind. They were just beginning to learn Spanish and to look for work.
Listening to my mother and Mathilde talk in German, with the murmur of the men’s voices in the background, I could almost pretend that we were still at home. If I closed my eyes. And if I didn’t notice the missing tenor.
That first night, the three of us made a nest from our coats and went to sleep on the floor. Mathilde and Fredi had given us one of their blankets to use until we could get one of our own. I wriggled in between my parents, still wanting them to stand guard between me and the world. We had kept our clothing on against the cold and my father’s jacket was scratchy against my cheek. Despite my exhaustion, I found it difficult to sleep. I wanted my old bed. My Stefi. My Lebkuchen. My brother. I wanted to wake up in the morning and have hot chocolate and bread. I wanted to run upstairs after breakfast to fetch Anneliese for school. I even wanted school itself, a normal rhythm to my days.