An Uncommon Family (17 page)

All noise stopped on the schoolyard. The kids stood around and stared at Maja, who wept silently. Wilhelm stood still with his hands deep in his pockets, looking subdued.

When Karla saw Maja’s miserable face and the pain in her eyes, something snapped in her. Her fear and pity for her friend turned to rage. She got up and faced Wilhelm. “You’re an evil, cruel jerk,” she shouted.

Wilhelm shrugged his shoulder. “She started it.”

“That’s not true. You insulted her.” Karla, not knowing what came over her, charged at him.

He took a step back, trying to avoid the girl, who seemed to have turned into a fury. His foot caught on a small branch lying on the ground and he stumbled and fell. The next thing Karla knew was that she was on top of him, hammering his chest and face with her fists.

“What is going on here?” Karla heard a teacher’s voice. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her up. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“He threw a stone at Maja,” Karla yelled. Realizing she was speaking to a person of authority, she swallowed and stared at the teacher’s angry face.

The school nurse took care of Maja’s wound. Wilhelm and Karla were sent to the principal’s office. Wilhelm was suspended for a few days. He received a warning that next time he was caught bullying, he would be expelled from school. His parents were going to be informed of the incident.

“Now to you.” The principal gave Karla a stern look after Wilhelm was dismissed. He was a tall man with a brown crew cut and sharp gray eyes. He reminded Karla of a general in the army and she was always a little afraid of him. She looked down and stared at her shoes.

“I appreciate the fact that you tried to help your friend,” the principal said in a gentler tone. “However, beating someone up is not the way to deal with a problem. Next time something like this happens, you tell a teacher about it and let him or her deal with it. Is that clear?”

Karla lifted her head and nodded. She thought she detected a glimmer of humor in the man’s eyes. Then his face became serious again.

“And so you won’t forget, you’re going to write ‘Hitting is not the solution’ fifty times and hand it in to your teacher tomorrow. Okay?” He squinted his eyes and glanced at her. “Is that scratch on your face from the fight?”

Karla touched her cheek. There was a faint burning sensation. Wilhelm must have scratched her, trying to defend himself. “I guess so,” she said.

“Make sure the school nurse or your moth— . . . I mean, your aunt cleanses it so it doesn’t get infected, all right?”

“Yes, thanks,” Karla whispered.

The principal looked through the window at the courtyard. “I think your friend is waiting for you.” He nodded at the door. “You can leave now.”

Outside, Maja was sitting on a bench. She had a large Band-Aid on her forehead. “I didn’t need stitches,” she said as Karla came outside. She got up and gave her a hug. “Thanks. Are you in trouble now?”

Karla glanced back at the principal’s office. He was standing at the window, watching them, a touch of a smile on his lips.

“Just a little bit,” Karla said and told Maja about the assignment.

Chapter 31

“What happened to your face?” Jonas asked as Karla stepped into the hallway, carrying her art portfolio. Her long dark hair was tied into French braids and there was a whiff of a new eau de cologne on her.
She’s growing up
. The only small blemish on her beautiful face was a faint scratch all the way across her left cheek.

Karla put her portfolio down and checked herself in the mirror. “I got into a fight with a guy at school,” she said.

“You did what?” Jonas raised his eyebrows in astonishment. He couldn’t imagine Karla in a fight with anyone, let alone a boy.

Karla grinned and told him of the incident with Maja and Wilhelm a few days before. Jonas burst out laughing and slapped his thigh. “I would’ve loved to have seen that. You actually pounded him? I guess that taught him a lesson.”

“He’s become a little nicer. At least, he keeps away from Maja and me,” Karla said.

“Well, I’m proud of you for standing up for your friend. Just be careful. Beating up on a bigger boy may not always go over that well. You may get more than a scratch on your face.”

Jonas watched Karla unpack her things. Over the past couple of years he had been working with her, her artwork had matured and he was thinking of new ways to further her talent. “I have an idea,” he said. “I received the go-ahead to paint a mural on one of the city walls with a few of my students. Would you be interested? It’s a whole different kind of painting but I think you would enjoy it.”

Karla gave him a thoughtful look. “I’ve never painted a mural, but it sounds like fun.”

Jonas waved his hand. “It is. Besides, you need to be around other students more. It gets you exposed to different ways of painting and drawing.”

Karla shrugged. “Cool. Can we start now? Look what I got.” She lifted a new box of oil pastels up in the air and grinned at him. “Anna said she was going to end up in the poorhouse because of me.” It was a box of expensive oil pastels Karla had coveted for some time.

“Not bad,” Jonas said. “So what made her change her mind and buy them?”

“I helped her with her accounting and I promised to help out in the bookstore once a week after school.”

“In other words, you bribed her.”

“Yep,” Karla said and winked at him.

While Karla was busy painting, Jonas began to work on a draft of a picture of his own. Every once in a while, he glanced at the girl. Today, it became clear to him how much she had changed over the past few years. Not only had her painting improved but she had become a happier, more open and courageous young girl. She was growing up fast. In a couple of years, she would be a teenager.

Her fight with the boy at school reminded him of his own youth. He had to admit that he hadn’t been half as courageous when it came to defending a friend who was bullied by others. He was thinking of Jakob, his Jewish friend from school.  Jakob came from a fairly Orthodox Jewish family. Some of the other boys had made fun of him because he wore a kippah, the Jewish cap, and went to synagogue on Saturdays.

Jonas and Jakob had been good friends, but Jonas didn’t exactly go out of his way to defend Jakob when the other boys teased him. Jonas remembered an incident when someone made an insulting remark and everybody, including himself, had laughed. He stopped as soon as he saw the hurt and disappointment on Jakob’s face. He told the others to shut up and leave him alone, but it was too late. He had already betrayed his friend.

Fortunately, Jakob hadn’t been the kind of boy who held a grudge. They had continued to be friends. However, Jonas wondered if he had had the courage to defend him against a bunch of bullies the way Karla had done with her friend. Perhaps Karla, who had already experienced the loss of loved ones as a child, was more aware of how precious friends were—something Jonas had only learned later in life. The death of Eva had brought him closer to the people around him that he had up until then taken for granted. They hadn’t been able to take away the pain, but they had saved him from the most dangerous plunge into loneliness.

Chapter 32

Jonas and Anna were sitting in front of Anna’s home, drinking tea and eating a piece of what was left of Karla’s birthday cake. They had celebrated her tenth birthday. Karla and Maja and a few of her other friends were having a sleepover at Anna’s. The girls were lying in their sleeping bags in Karla’s bedroom and had just quieted down after a lot of talking and giggling.

It was a warm summer night. The light breeze coming from the forest nearby brought the scent of pines and an occasional whiff of honeysuckle. Crickets chirped, and in a nearby tree a mockingbird gave a sample of its plagiarized tunes.

“Ten years old already, I can’t believe it.” Anna shook her head and poured Jonas another cup of tea.

“Yeah, time flies,” Jonas said. “I remember so well when I first met her. She was lying on the ground, in tears, her knees all scraped.”

“That was four years ago, almost to the day. It was in August after her sixth birthday,” Anna said.

“She’s come a long way since then.”

Anna turned to Jonas. “You’ve helped her a lot, you know. I’m really grateful to you.”

Jonas waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I may have taught her a few things about painting but she more than compensated me for that. She’s my favorite student and a great kid.” He cleared his throat. “I love her company . . . and yours as well. We make a good team.” He hesitated and Anna felt he wanted to say more. He lifted the teacup, then sat it down without drinking.

She glanced at him. His blue eyes gazed at her with great intensity, making her heart pick up speed.

“Anna . . . I’ve wanted to tell you this, but . . . I guess I’m out of practice. I really enjoy being with you, and . . .” Jonas gave a quick chuckle. “I guess I should stop talking in half sentences.” He became serious again. “I love you and . . . I want us to be more than friends.”

Anna tried to swallow but her throat squeezed shut. When she found her voice again, it sounded unfamiliar. “Jonas,” she finally said. “I enjoy being with you, too. I just don’t know . . . I guess I’m afraid.”

“I understand,” Jonas said. “I don’t need an answer today.”

Anna noticed her hands were white and she realized she had clamped them together so hard that all the blood had drained out of them. She took a deep breath and relaxed them.
I act worse than a sixteen-year-old
.

Jonas cleared his throat again. “And before you decide, you should know something about me, something I’m not very proud of. I know how you feel about honesty in relationships . . . I did in a way deceive Eva once.”

Anna looked at him puzzled. A wave of disappointment surged through her chest.
Not you as well?

“Not with another woman, not like your husband did. It was more like I withheld something from her that I should have told her. But it was a kind of betrayal, too.”

“Yes?” Anna stared at him, relieved that at least he hadn’t cheated on his wife, but afraid of what she was going to hear.

“It’s kind of a longish story, too. I once told you about an uncle I had, who was a Nazi sympathizer?”

Anna nodded.

“Well, there was more to it.”

Chapter 33

It was Jonas’s third visit to Eva’s family. They had just finished lunch and were sitting in the living room. It was a cool fall day and there was a fire burning in the fireplace. A smell of smoke, spareribs, sauerkraut, and German dumplings still lingered in the room. Eva’s mother was of German origin and had prepared a typical German meal.

“Excellent but heavy,” Eva’s stepfather said. “This calls for an after-dinner drink.” Kurt got a bottle out of the liquor cabinet and poured them all a brandy.

They sat in the living room, looking out on an apple orchard. Most of the leaves had fallen and formed a yellow carpet on the meadow. The old trees stood naked and sad looking with their gnarled branches exposed. Eva’s parents lived in a small town along the Rhine River. They had a view of the river as it snaked around one of its last curves before plunging down the rocks into Europe’s largest waterfall.

Somehow, perhaps because of the closeness to the German border, the conversation turned to the Second World War. Jonas knew that Eva’s mother was Jewish. Eva had told him that her mother had come to Switzerland during the War and that Eva’s stepfather, who had been a young soldier then, had helped her enter the country. Jonas was curious to find out how it all happened. After Sara, Eva’s mother, told him the story, however, he wished he had never asked.

“I wasn’t alone,” Sara said in a low, sad voice. “It was spring 1940. One day, when I came home, the Nazis had taken our parents away. We didn’t know where they took them to and there was no way we could find out. I was twenty-four and pregnant with our first child. My husband, Joshua, and my sister, Judith, and I decided we needed to leave. The Nazis could come back any minute and take us, too. It was horrible. We were so scared.”

Sara’s voice broke. Kurt put his hand on Sara’s shoulder.

“You don’t need to talk about it if it’s too painful. I’m sorry; I didn’t know . . .” Jonas said.

“No, it’s okay,” Sara continued, having recovered again. “You should know.

“We packed a few belongings and left. We lived in a small town close to the Austrian and Swiss border and decided to try to get into Switzerland. We knew it would be difficult. The border was closed. In the beginning of the war, lots of refugees made it into Switzerland. It was one of the last neutral countries that hadn’t been invaded.  But later, most countries, including Switzerland, set up tough restrictions against refugees. We heard of a place near Schaffhausen where people sometimes successfully crossed the border illegally.

“They called it the ‘green border,’ because it was one of two places where Switzerland extended north of the Rhine. You didn’t need to cross the river. The river and Lake Constance were well controlled by the army and border police and the Rhine had a strong current. Some refugees tried to cross the river anyway but not many made it. But crossing the border on land was difficult as well. You had to be familiar with the area in order not to get lost.”

Sara took a deep breath. “Well, we didn’t have time to find out where to go. We just had a vague idea and we hoped that someone would help us. We knew there were people on both the German and Swiss sides who guided refugees along the erratic course through fields and forests.

“When we got there, we did find a man who showed us a little part of the way, but he turned back, afraid to go on. If you got caught on the Swiss side, you risked being thrown in jail for violating the law, and on the German side . . . well, I don’t want to think about it.”

Sara became quiet. She lowered her head and looked down on her hands. Jonas thought she didn’t want to continue with the story. When Sara looked up again, there was so much pain in her eyes, Jonas felt bad for having brought the topic up in the first place.