5. Who Is the Dark-Haired One?
"Do you really think anyone will come?" Ellen asked nervously,
turning to Annemarie in the bedroom. "Your father doesn't think
so."
"Of course not. They're always threatening stuff. They just like to
scare people." Annemarie took her nightgown from a hook in the
closet.
"Anyway, if they did, it would give me a chance to practice
acting. I'd just pretend to be Lise. I wish I were taller, though." Ellen
stood on tiptoe, trying to make herself tall. She laughed at herself,
and her voice was more relaxed.
"You were great as the Dark Queen in the school play last year,"
Annemarie told her. "You should be an actress when you grow up."
"My father wants me to be a teacher. [ Ic wants everyone to be
a teacher, like him. But maybe I could convince him that I should go
to acting school." Ellen stood on tiptoe again, and made an
imperious gesture with her arm. "I am the Dark Queen," she intoned
dramatically. "I have come to command the night!"
"You should try saying, 'I am Lise Johansen!'" Annemarie said,
grinning. "If you told the Nazis that you were the Dark Queen,
they'd haul you off to a mental institution."
Ellen dropped her actress pose and sat down, with her legs
curled under her, on the bed. "They won't really come here, do you
think?" she asked again.
Annemarie shook her head. "Not in a million years." She picked
up her hairbrush.
The girls found themselves whispering as they got ready for bed.
There was no need, really, to whisper; they were, after all,
supposed to be normal sisters, and Papa had said they could giggle
and talk. The bedroom door was closed.
But the night did seem, somehow, different from a normal night.
And so they whispered.
"How did your sister die, Annemarie?" Ellen asked suddenly. "I
remember when it happened. And I remember the funeral—it was
the only time I have ever been in a Lutheran church. But I never
knew just what happened."
"I don't know exactly," Annemarie confessed. "She and Peter
were out somewhere together, and then there was a telephone call,
that there had been an accident. Mama and Papa rushed to the
hospital—remember, your mother came and stayed with me and
Kirsti? Kirsti was already asleep and she slept right through
everything, she was so little then. But I stayed up, and I was with
your mother in the living room when my parents came home in the
middle of the night. And they told me Lise had died."
"I remember it was raining," Ellen said sadly. "It was still raining
the next morning when Mama told me. Mama was crying, and the
rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying."
Annemarie finished brushing her long hair and handed her
hairbrush to her best friend. Ellen undid her braids, lifted her dark
hair away from the thin gold chain she wore around her neck—the
chain that held the Star of David—and began to brush her thick
curls.
"I think it was partly because of the rain. They said she was hit
by a car. I suppose the streets were slippery, and it was getting
dark, and maybe the driver just couldn't see," Annemarie went on,
remembering. "Papa looked so angry. He made one hand into a fist,
and he kept pounding it into the other hand. I remember the noise of
it: slam, slam, slam."
Together they got into the wide bed and pulled up the covers.
Annemarie blew out the candle and drew the dark curtains aside so
that the open window near the bed let in some air. "See that blue
trunk in the corner?" she said, pointing through the darkness. "Lots
of Lise's things are in there. Even her wedding dress. Mama and
Papa have never looked at those things, not since the day they
packed them away."
Ellen sighed. "She would have looked so beautiful in her
wedding dress. She had such a pretty smile. I used to pretend that
she was my sister, too."
"She would have liked that," Annemarie told her. "She loved
you."
"That's the worst thing in the world," Ellen whispered. "To be
dead so young. I wouldn't want the Germans to take my family
away—to make us live someplace else. But still, it wouldn't be as
bad as being dead."
Annemarie leaned over and hugged her. "They won't take you
away," she said. "Not your parents, either. Papa promised that they
were safe, and he always keeps his promises. And you are quite
safe, here with us."
For a while they continued to murmur in the dark, but the
murmurs were interrupted by yawns. Then Ellen's voice stopped,
she turned over, and in a minute her breathing was quiet and slow.
Annemarie stared at the window where the sky was outlined and
a tree branch moved slightly in the breeze. Everything seemed very
familiar, very comforting. Dangers were no more than odd
imaginings, like ghost stories that children made up to frighten one
another: things that couldn't possibly happen. Annemarie felt
completely safe here in her own home, with her parents in the next
room and her best friend asleep beside her. She yawned
contentedly and closed her eyes.
It was hours later, but still dark, when she was awakened
abruptly by the pounding on the apartment door.
Annemarie eased the bedroom door open quietly, only a crack,
and peeked out. Behind her, Ellen was sitting up, her eyes wide.
She could see Mama and Papa in their nightclothes, moving
about. Mama held a lighted candle, but as Annemarie watched, she
went to a lamp and switched it on. It was so long a time since they
had dared to use the strictly rationed electricity after dark that the
light in the room seemed startling to Annemarie, watching through
the slightly opened bedroom door. She saw her mother look
automatically to the blackout curtains, making certain that they were
tightly drawn.
Papa opened the front door to the soldiers.
"This is the Johansen apartment?" A deep voice asked the
question loudly, in the terribly accented Danish.
"Our name is on the door, and I see you have a flashlight," Papa
answered. "What do you want? Is something wrong?"
"I understand you are a friend of your neighbors the Rosens,
Mrs. Johansen," the soldier said angrily.
"Sophy Rosen is my friend, that is true," Mama said quietly.
"Please, could you speak more softly?" My children are asleep."
"Then you will be so kind as to tell me where the Rosens are."
He made no effort to lower his voice.
"I assume they are at home, sleeping. It is four in the morning,
after all," Mama said.
Annemarie heard the soldier stalk across the living room toward
the kitchen. From her hiding place in the narrow sliver of open
doorway, she could see the heavy uniformed man, a holstered pistol
at his waist, in the entrance to the kitchen, peering in toward the
sink.
Another German voice said, "The Rosens' apartment is empty.
We are wondering if they might be visiting their good friends the
Johansens."
"Well," said Papa, moving slightly so that he was standing in
front of Annemarie's bedroom door, and she could see nothing
except the dark blur of his back, "as you see, you are mistaken.
There is no one here but my family."
"You will not object if we look around." The voice was harsh,
and it was not a question.
"It seems we have no choice," Papa replied.
"Please don't wake my children," Mama requested again. "There
is no need to frighten little ones."
The heavy, booted feet moved across the floor again and into
the other bedroom. A closet door opened and closed with a bang.
Annemarie eased her bedroom door closed silently. She
stumbled through the darkness to the bed.
"Ellen," she whispered urgently, "take your necklace off!"
Ellen's hands flew to her neck. Desperately she began trying to
unhook the tiny clasp. Outside the bedroom door, the harsh voices
and heavy footsteps continued.
"I can't get it open!" Ellen said frantically. "I never take it off—I
can't even remember how to open it!"
Annemarie heard a voice just outside the door. "What is here?"
"Shhh," her mother replied. "My daughters' bedroom. They are
sound asleep."
"Hold still," Annemarie commanded. "This will hurt." She
grabbed the little gold chain, yanked with all her strength, and broke
it. As the door opened and light flooded into the bedroom, she
crumpled it into her hand and closed her fingers tightly.
Terrified, both girls looked up at the three Nazi officers who
entered the room.
One of the men aimed a flashlight around the bedroom. He went
to the closet and looked inside. Then with a sweep of his gloved
hand he pushed to the floor several coats and a bathrobe that hung
from pegs on the wall.
There was nothing else in the room except a chest of drawers,
the blue decorated trunk in the corner, and a heap of Kirsti's dolls
piled in a small rocking chair. The flashlight beam touched each
thing in turn. Angrily the officer turned toward the bed.
"Get up!" he ordered. "Come out here!"
Trembling, the two girls rose from the bed and followed him,
brushing past the two remaining officers in the doorway, to the living
room.
Annemarie looked around. These three uniformed men were
different from the ones on the street corners. The street soldiers
were often young, sometimes ill at ease, and Annemarie
remembered how the Giraffe had, for a moment, let his harsh pose
slip and had smiled at Kirsti.
But these men were older and their faces were set with anger.
Her parents were standing beside each other, their faces tense,
but Kirsti was nowhere in sight. Thank goodness that Kirsti slept
through almost everything. If they had wakened her, she would be
wailing—or worse, she would be angry, and her fists would fly.
"Your names?" the officer barked.
"Annemarie Johansen. And this is my sister—"
"Quiet! Let her speak for herself. Your name?" He was glaring
at Ellen.
Ellen swallowed. "Lise," she said, and cleared her throat. "Lise
Johansen."
The officer stared at them grimly.
"Now," Mama said in a strong voice, "you have seen that we are
not hiding anything. May my children go back to bed?"
The officer ignored her. Suddenly he grabbed a handful of
Ellen's hair. Ellen winced.
He laughed scornfully. "You have a blond child sleeping in the
other room. And you have this blond daughter—" He gestured
toward Annemarie with his head. "Where did you get the darkhaired
one?" He twisted the lock of Ellen's hair. "From a different
father? From the milkman?
Papa stepped forward. "Don't speak to my wife in such a way.
Let go of my daughter or I will report you for such treatment."
"Or maybe you got her someplace else?" the officer continued
with a sneer. "From the Rosens?"
For a moment no one spoke. Then Annemarie, watching in
panic, saw her father move swiftly to the small bookcase and take
out a book. She saw that he was holding the family photograph
album. Very quickly he searched through its pages, found what he
was looking for, and tore out three pictures from three separate
pages.
He handed them to the German officer, who released Ellen's
hair.
"You will see each of my daughters, each with her name written
on the photograph," Papa said.
Annemarie knew instantly which photographs he had chosen.
The album had many snapshots—all the poorly focused pictures of
school events and birthday parties. But it also contained a portrait,
taken by a photographer, of each girl as a tiny infant. Mama had
written, in her delicate handwriting, the name of each baby daughter
across the bottom of those photogrpahs.
She realized too, with an icy feeling, why Papa had torn them
from the book. At the bottom of each page, below the photograph
itself, was written the date. And the real Lise Johansen had been
born twenty-one years earlier.
"Kirsten Elisabeth," the officer read, looking at Kirsti's baby
picture. He let the photograph fall to the floor.
"Annemarie," he read next, glanced at her, and dropped the
second photograph.
"Lise Margrete," he read finally, and stared at Ellen for a long,
unwavering moment. In her mind, Annemarie pictured the
photograph that he held: the baby, wide-eyed, propped against a
pillow, her tiny hand holding a silver teething ring, her bare feet
visible below the hem of an embroidered dress. The wispy curls.
Dark.
The officer tore the photograph in half and dropped the pieces
on the floor. Then he turned, the heels of his shiny boots grinding
into the pictures, and left the apartment. Without a word, the other
two officers followed. Papa stepped forward and closed the door
behind him.
Annemarie relaxed the clenched fingers of her right hand, which
still clutched Ellen's necklace. She looked down, and saw that she
had imprinted the Star of David into her palm