4. It Will Be a Long Night
Alone in the apartment while Mama was out shopping with
Kirsti, Annemarie and Ellen were sprawled on the living room floor
playing with paper dolls. They had cut the dolls from Mama's
magazines, old ones she had saved from past years. The paper
ladies had old-fashioned hair styles and clothes, and the girls had
given them names from Mama's very favorite book. Mama had told
Annemarie and Ellen the entire story of Gone With the Wind, and
the girls thought it much more interesting and romantic than the king and-
queen tales that Kirsti loved.
"Come, Melanie," Annemarie said, walking her doll across the
edge of the rug. "Let's dress for the ball."
"All right, Scarlett, I'm coming," Ellen replied in a sophisticated
voice. She was a talented performer; she often played the leading
roles in school dramatics. Games of the imagination were always fun
when Ellen played.
The door opened and Kirsti stomped in, her face tear-stained
and glowering. Mama followed her with an exasperated look and
set a package down on the table.
"I won't!" Kirsti sputtered. "I won't ever, ever wear them! Not if
you chain me in a prison and beat me with sticks!"
Annemarie giggled and looked questioningly at her mother. Mrs.
Johansen sighed. "I bought Kirsti some new shoes," she explained.
"She's outgrown her old ones."
"Goodness, Kirsti," Ellen said, "I wish my mother would get me
some new shoes. I love new things, and it's so hard to find them in
the stores."
"Not if you go to a fish store!" Kirsti bellowed. "But most
mothers wouldn't make their daughters wear ugly fish shoes!"
"Kirsten," Mama said soothingly, "you know it wasn't a fish
store. And we were lucky to find shoes at all."
Kirsti sniffed. "Show them," she commanded. "Show Annemarie
and Ellen how ugly they are."
Mama opened the package and took out a pair of little girl's
shoes. She held them up, and Kirsti looked away in disgust.
"You know there's no leather anymore," Mama explained. "But
they've found a way to make shoes out of fish skin. I don't think
these are too ugly."
Annemarie and Ellen looked at the fish skin shoes. Annemarie
took one in her hand and examined it. It was odd-looking; the fish
scales were visible. But it was a shoe, and her sister needed shoes.
"It's not so bad, Kirsti," she said, lying a little.
Ellen turned the other one over in her hand. "You know," she
said, "it's only the color that's ugly."
"Green!" Kirsti wailed. "I will never, ever wear green shoes!"
"In our apartment," Ellen told her, "my father has a jar of black,
black ink. Would you like these shoes better if they were black?"
Kirsti frowned. "Maybe I would," she said, finally.
"Well, then," Ellen told her, "tonight, if your mama doesn't mind,
I'll take the shoes home and ask my father to make them black for
you, with his ink."
Mama laughed. "I think that would be a fine improvement. What
do you think, Kirsti?"
Kirsti pondered. "Could he make them shiny?" she asked. "I
want them shiny."
Ellen nodded. "I think he could. I think they'll be quite pretty,
black and shiny."
Kirsti nodded. "All right, then," she said. "But you mustn't tell
anyone that they're fish. I don't want anyone to know." She took
her new shoes, holding them disdainfully, and put them on a chair.
Then she looked with interest at the paper dolls.
"Can I play, too?" Kirsti asked. "Can I have a doll?" She
squatted beside Annemarie and Ellen on the floor.
Sometimes, Annemarie thought, Kirsti was such a pest, always
butting in. But the apartment was small. There was no other place
for Kirsti to play. And if they told her to go away, Mama would
scold.
"Here," Annemarie said, and handed her sister a cut-out little girl
doll. "We're playing Gone With the Wind. Melanie and Scarlett are
going to a ball. You can be Bonnie. She's Scarlett's daughter."
Kirsti danced her doll up and down happily. "I'm going to the
ball!" she announced in a high, pretend voice.
Ellen giggled. "A little girl wouldn't go to a ball. Let's make them
go someplace else. Let's make them go to Tivoli!"
"Tivoli!" Annemarie began to laugh. "That's in Copenhagen!
Gone With the Wind is in America!"
"Tivoli, Tivoli, Tivoli," little Kirsti sang, twirling her doll in a
circle.
"It doesn't matter, because it's only a game anyway," Ellen
pointed out. "Tivoli can be over there, by that chair. 'Come,
Scarlett,'" she said, using her doll voice, "'we shall go to Tivoli to
dance and watch the fireworks, and maybe there will be some
handsome men there! Bring your silly daughter Bonnie, and she can
ride on the carousel.'"
Annemarie grinned and walked her Scarlett toward the chair that
Ellen had designated as Tivoli. She loved Tivoli Gardens, in the
heart of Copenhagen; her parents had taken her there, often, when
she was a little girl. She remembered the music and the brightly
colored lights, the carousel and ice cream and especially the
magnificent fireworks in the evenings: the huge colored splashes and
bursts of lights in the evening sky.
"I remember the fireworks best of all," she commented to Ellen.
"Me too," Kirsti said. "I remember the fireworks."
"Silly," Annemarie scoffed. "You never saw the fireworks."
Tivoli Gardens was closed now. The German occupation forces
had burned part of it, perhaps as a way of punishing the fun-loving
Danes for their lighthearted pleasures.
Kirsti drew herself up, her small shoulders stiff. "I did too," she
said belligerently. "It was my birthday. I woke up in the night and I
could hear the booms. And there were lights in the sky. Mama said
it was fireworks for my birthday!"
Then Annemarie remembered. Kirsti's birthday was late in
August. And that night, only a month before, she, too, had been
awakened and frightened by the sound of explosions. Kirsti was
right—the sky in the southeast had been ablaze, and Mama had
comforted her by calling it a birthday celebration. "Imagine, such
fireworks for a little girl five years old!" Mama had said, sitting on
their bed, holding the dark curtain aside to look through the window
at the lighted sky.
The next evening's newspaper had told the sad truth. The Danes
had destroyed their own naval fleet, blowing up the vessels one by
one, as the Germans approached to take over the ships for their
own use.
"How sad the king must be," Annemarie had heard Mama say to
Papa when they read the news.
"How proud," Papa had replied.
It had made Annemarie feel sad and proud, too, to picture the
tall, aging king, perhaps with tears in his blue eyes, as he looked at
the remains of his small navy, which now lay submerged and broken
in the harbor.
"I don't want to play anymore, Ellen," she said suddenly, and put
her paper doll on the table.
"I have to go home, anyway," Ellen said. "I have to help Mama
with the housecleaning. Thursday is our New Year. Did you know
that?"
"Why is it yours?" asked Kirsti. "Isn't it our New Year, too?"
"No. It's the Jewish New Year. That's just for us. But if you
want, Kirsti, you can come that night and watch Mama light the
candles."
Annemarie and Kirsti had often been invited to watch Mrs.
Rosen light the Sabbath candles on Friday evenings, She covered
her head with a cloth and said a special prayer in Hebrew as she
did so. Annemarie always stood very quietly, awed, to watch; even
Kirsti, usually such a chatterbox, was always still at that time. They
didn't understand the words or the meaning, but they could feel
what a special time it was for the Rosens.
"Yes," Kirsti agreed happily. "I'll come and watch your mama
light the candles, and i'll wear my new black shoes,"
But this time was to be different. Leaving for school on Thursday
with her sister, Annemarie saw the Rosens walking to the
synagogue early in the morning, dressed in their best clothes. She
waved to Ellen, who waved happily back.
"Lucky Ellen," Annemarie said to Kirsti. "She doesn't have to go
to school today."
"But she probably has to sit very, very still, like we do in
church," Kirsti pointed out. "That's no fun."
That afternoon, Mrs. Rosen knocked at their door but didn't
come inside. Instead, she spoke for a long time in a hurried, tense
voice to Annemarie's mother in the hall. When Mama returned, her
face was worried, but her voice was cheerful.
"Girls," she said, "we have a nice surprise. Tonight Ellen will be
coming to stay overnight and to be our guest for a few days! It isn't
often we have a visitor."
Kirsti clapped her hands in delight.
"But, Mama," Annemarie said, in dismay, "it's their New Year.
They were going to have a celebration at home! Ellen told me that
her mother managed to get a chicken someplace, and she was going
to roast it—their first roast chicken in a year or more!"
"Their plans have changed," Mama said briskly. "Mr. and Mrs.
Rosen have been called away to visit some relatives. So Ellen will
stay with us. Now, let's get busy and put clean sheets on your bed.
Kirsti, you may sleep with Mama and Papa tonight, and we'll let the
big girls giggle together by themselves."
Kirsti pouted, and it was clear that she was about to argue.
"Mama will tell you a special story tonight," her mother said. "One
just for you."
"About a king?" Kirsti asked dubiously.
"About a king, if you wish," Mama replied.
"All right, then. But there must be a queen, too," Kirsti said.
Though Mrs. Rosen had sent her chicken to the Johansens, and
Mama made a lovely dinner large enough for second helpings all
around, it was not an evening of laughter and talk. Ellen was silent at
dinner. She looked frightened. Mama and Papa tried to speak of
cheerful things, but it was clear that they were worried, and it made
Annemarie worry, too. Only Kirsti was unaware of the quiet tension
in the room. Swinging her feet in their newly blackened and shiny
shoes, she chattered and giggled during dinner.
"Early bedtime tonight, little one," Mama announced after the
dishes were washed. "We need extra time for the long story I
promised, about the king and queen." She disappeared with Kirsti
into the bedroom.
"What's happening?" Annemarie asked when she and Ellen were
alone with Papa in the living room. "Something's wrong. What is it?"
Papa's face was troubled. "I wish that I could protect you
children from this knowledge," he said quietly. "Ellen, you already
know. Now we must tell Annemarie."
He turned to her and stroked her hair with his gentle hand. "This
morning, at the synagogue, the rabbi told his congregation that the
morning, at the synagogue, the rabbi told his congregation that the
Nazis have taken the synagogue lists of all the Jews. Where they
live, what their names are. Of course the Rosens were on that list,
along with many others."
"Why? Why did they want those names?"
"They plan to arrest all the Danish Jews. They plan to take them
away. And we have been told that they may come tonight."
"I don't understand! Take them where?"
Her father shook his head. "We don't know where, and we
don't really know why. They call it 'relocation.' We don't even
know what that means. We only know that it is wrong, and it is
dangerous, and we must help."
Annemarie was stunned. She looked at Ellen and saw that her
best friend was crying silently.
"Where are Ellen's parents? We must help them, too!"
"We couldn't take all three of them. If the Germans came to
search our apartment, it would be clear that the Rosens were here.
One person we can hide. Not three. So Peter has helped Ellen's
parents to go elsewhere. We don't know where. Ellen doesn't know
either. But they are safe."
Ellen sobbed aloud, and put her face in her hands. Papa put his
arm around her. "They are safe, Ellen. I promise you that. You will
see them again quite soon. Can you try hard to believe my
promise?"
Ellen hesitated, nodded, and wiped her eyes with her hand.
"But, Papa," Annemarie said, looking around the small
apartment, with its few pieces of furniture: the fat stuffed sofa, the
table and chairs, the small bookcase against the wall. "You said that
we would hide her. How can we do that? Where can she hide?"
Papa smiled. "That part is easy. It will be as your mama said:
you two will sleep together in your bed, and you may giggle and talk
and tell secrets to each other. And if anyone comes—"
Ellen interrupted him. "Who might come? Will it be soldiers?
Like the ones on the corners?" Annemarie remembered how
terrified Ellen had looked the day when the soldier had questioned
them on the corner.
"I really don't think anyone will. But it never hurts to be
prepared. If anyone should come, even soldiers, you two will be
sisters. You are together so much, it will be easy for you to pretend
that you are sisters."
He rose and walked to the window. He pulled the lace curtain
aside and looked down into the street. Outside, it was beginning to
grow dark. Soon they would have to draw the black curtains that all
Danes had on their windows; the entire city had to be completely
darkened at night. In a nearby tree, a bird was singing; otherwise it
was quiet. It was the last night of September.
"Go, now, and get into your nightgowns. It will be a long night."
Annemarie and Ellen got to their feet. Papa suddenly crossed the
room and put his arms around them both. He kissed the top of each
head: Annemarie's blond one, which reached to his shoulder, and
Ellen's dark hair, the thick curls braided as always into pigtails.
"Don't be frightened," he said to them softly. "Once I had three
daughters. Tonight I am proud to have three daughters again."