Deep Sea (8 page)

“What have you heard?”

“… about Jewish girls,” says Bengt. “They say you’re the hottest girls in town. That’s what I’ve heard.”

Stephie just stares at him. She can hardly believe she saw anything handsome or kind in his gray eyes. Now she finds them ugly, bleary with drink, and scary in some other way, too. She gets up.

“I’m leaving,” she says.

He doesn’t answer her. Just slouches on the settee,
watching her put on her coat. She hears Vera giggle in the cabin.
How can she?

Stephie stumbles down the porch steps. The singing from the other cabin sounds more like drunken bellowing now. But above it she hears Bengt’s voice, saying awful words.

“Just go, then!” he shouts. “Go to hell, you little Jewish slut.”

She practically runs down the path through the woods. The moon has gone behind a cloud, and it’s hard to see her way. The bushes rustle and a big bird rises. She wishes she could turn around and run back to the brightly lit porch. But Bengt is there. She never wants to see him again. Never!

Stephie stumbles, breaking one of the heels on her borrowed pumps. She takes them off and continues in her stocking feet, paying no heed to the fact that she is still wearing Vera’s silk stockings. She’s sure to have ruined them already. What does she care, though? This whole thing is Vera’s fault. She ought to have known better. She’s used to being around boys.

Stephie finally reaches the country road. There are no buses at this hour, of course. She pulls off the torn silk stockings and starts walking barefoot in the direction of town. After a while, she gets a lift with a truck driver. He’s a nice man and asks her no questions. He drops her at Järntorget, in the middle of town.

It’s beginning to get light out, and the trams have
started running. Stephie reaches Sandarna at half past five. She unlocks the door quietly and sneaks inside. Luckily, May’s parents don’t hear her, but May wakes up when Stephie gets into bed. Stephie tries to give her a smile, a smile that says everything’s all right.

Though nothing is really all right. Nothing at all.

S
tephie dozes uneasily for a couple of hours. The sheets tangle around her, trapping her arms and legs.

She dreams someone’s trying to catch her. Hands reach out, touching her body. She’s got a tingling sensation in the palms of her hands, on her lips, between her legs.

“Stephanie,” a voice says. “Stephanie, Stephanie!”

The voice resembles Sven’s. She turns around fast, and finds herself looking into a pair of gray eyes. But the eyes aren’t Sven’s, they’re Bengt’s, and the expression on his face is cold and scornful.

When she wakes up, she feels dirty. She spends a long time in the bathroom, washing her body from head to toe.

She tells May she went to Vera’s to spend the night,
but they sat up talking until dawn, so she decided to head home.

“What was it like?” asks May. “Did you get to dance much?”

“Quite a lot,” Stephie tells her. “But not as much as Vera.”

She tells her what it looked like at Rota and what she and Vera wore. But when May asks about the boys she danced with, Stephie answers curtly.

“One with glasses. And another one called Bengt.”

Not until one-thirty, just as she’s about to leave for Miss Björk’s, does Stephie realize her own clothes are still at Vera’s. And her shoes, what about her shoes? They are her only spring pair. She has to put on her heavy winter boots in spite of the warm weather.

“Good luck!” May wishes her. “I hope Miss Björk’s thought of something.”

Half an hour later, Stephie arrives at Hedvig Björk’s apartment and rings the doorbell. When she is let in, she hangs up her coat and leaves her boots in the tiny hall before following Miss Björk into her combined bedroom, study, and living room.

Stephie has always liked this apartment. The walls have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In front of the large window are a desk and a good chair. The bed in the corner is hidden during the day by a pretty curtain with calming colors—burgundy, gray-blue, and a pleasant
shade of yellow. A comfortable armchair for reading sits in front of the fireplace, and next to it is a little table holding a pile of books.

Miss Björk moves the books aside and pulls the desk chair over to the table. While she’s in the kitchen getting the tea tray, Stephie examines the photographs on the mantelpiece. There’s a cute picture of Hedvig Björk as a child, and several of her parents and relatives.

Stephie notices a new picture, one that wasn’t here two years ago when Stephie was staying with Miss Björk. A woman in her thirties is looking solemnly into the camera. Could this be a sister? No, Stephie’s teacher has never mentioned brothers and sisters, and the woman in the picture doesn’t look at all like her. The woman’s mouth is softer, her nose pointier, and her face is surrounded by a mound of frizzy hair.

Miss Björk sets down the tray, which holds a teapot, two cups, and some slices of bread with butter and cucumber.

“English sandwiches,” she explains with a smile. “You sit in the armchair. I spent the morning there.”

She serves the tea and sips hers thoughtfully. Stephie is all pins and needles.

“I’m assuming you really want to continue on to high school,” Miss Björk finally says.

“Very much.”

“And that you’re prepared to make some sacrifices to do so?”

Sacrifices? Stephie doesn’t really understand, but she answers, “Yes.”

“In that case, I have a proposal,” says Miss Björk. “I’ve had a word with the headmaster, and he believes, as I do, that your grades and sharp mind are strong enough for you to skip the first year altogether. That would mean you’d only have two years to go, just one more than for the junior secondary diploma. We might be able to get the relief committee to accept that as a compromise. Of course, you’ll have to do the first-year courses on your own over the summer and take an entrance exam to the second year before the fall term begins. It won’t be easy, but I have an idea how to solve that, too. I’ll tell you in a few minutes. What do you think?”

“Miss Björk, are you sure I can manage it?”

“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t suggest it. There’s one further condition, though.”

“What is it?”

“That you call the relief committee yourself and put the proposal to them. It’s your future that’s on the line. You’re old enough to take on the responsibility.”

Stephie nods.

“And now for my second idea,” Miss Björk continues. “Since you’d be studying a whole year’s worth of coursework over the summer, I think you’d need help. Do you know whether your foster parents have already rented their rooms to summer guests?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“In that case, would you ask them if a woman friend of mine and I could be your summer tenants this year?” Miss Björk asks. “I’ll work on the math and science courses with you for a couple of hours every day. My friend’s from England, so she’ll give you English lessons. She’s the woman in that photo, by the way. Her name is Janice. You’re going to like her. You already speak German, so that’s not a problem, and I’ll get you a reading list.”

“But don’t you want the summer off if you’re going to spend it on the island?”

Miss Björk smiles. “Summer days are long,” she says. “And you’re the one who’ll have to do most of the work. You won’t have much of a vacation, of course. Any second thoughts?”

“None.”

“Well, then why don’t you call the relief committee right now? I’ll go out to the kitchen so you can have some privacy.”

Stephie sits down at the desk, and Miss Björk leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. Stephie has to start by calling Aunt Märta to ask for the number of her official guardian on the relief committee.

“You’re not going to call and nag, are you? I don’t think it’s any use,” Aunt Märta says.

“Miss Björk has an idea,” Stephie tells her. “If it works out, I’ll tell you all about it.”

She takes the opportunity to ask Aunt Märta if she already has tenants lined up for the summer. She doesn’t.

“Miss Björk and a woman friend of hers would like to rent,” says Stephie. “For the whole summer.”

“I’ll give her a good price in that case,” says Aunt Märta. “Ask her to phone me, and I’m sure we can work it out. Incidentally, did you hear they found the
Wolf
?”

No, Stephie hadn’t heard.

“On Tuesday,” Aunt Märta tells her. “A fishing boat from the island of Hälso thought their nets were stuck on the seabed, but it was the
Wolf
. The navy brought in divers. They said a mine had done it in. Everyone on board was dead. It was awful. Young fellows, most of them.”

After their conversation, Stephie sits there for a few minutes, receiver in hand. Her mouth is dry. She gets her cup and takes a swallow of cold tea. Then she calls the number she’d jotted down.

She knows the lady on the other end is the one who accompanied her and Nellie from the railroad station to the boat when they first came to Sweden. But she hasn’t seen her since. She can’t remember what she looks like, only that she was wearing a yellow suit.

“Hello,” Stephie says. “Stephanie Steiner speaking.”

“Stephanie,” the lady says. “How are you?”

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” Stephie says, “on a Sunday and all.…”

“Yes?”

She has to pull herself together. Tell the woman why she’s calling. Like a grown-up.

“It’s about my education,” she goes on. “High school. I want to continue very badly.”

“I see,” the lady says. “But as I’ve already told Mrs. Jansson, we cannot afford to put every child through upper secondary school. You must realize you’re not the only one who wants further schooling.”

“But you said yes to one year?”

“As I told Mrs. Jansson.”

“What about two?”

“Two?”

“My homeroom teacher has offered to help me through the first year over the summer,” Stephie explains. “So I can finish high school in two years.”

There is silence at the other end of the line.

“An interesting proposal. Let me think about it,” the lady says. “I cannot make such a decision on my own. What’s your homeroom teacher’s name?”

“Hedvig Björk.”

The lady asks for Miss Björk’s telephone number, and Stephie gives it to her. She promises to have an answer for Stephie within a week. They agree that she will inform Miss Björk of the committee’s decision since there is no telephone where Stephie lives. Stephie says thank you and hangs up.

“I did it,” she rejoices to herself. “I did it!”

Hedvig Björk and Stephie take a walk along the streets in the neighborhood, which are empty on a Sunday afternoon. Then Miss Björk accompanies Stephie through the park with the lily pond and down the steps to the tram stop at the crossroads. She waits with Stephie until her tram comes.

“It’s all going to work out. I’m confident,” she says, giving Stephie a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving.

The tram is almost full, but Stephie spots a seat behind two girls, one her own age, the other a couple of years younger. There’s something familiar about the older girl’s face, but Stephie can’t place her. She doesn’t know her from grammar school, anyway. Her hair is curly and strawberry blond, her eyes are blue, and her skin pale and freckled. In spite of being fair-haired and blue-eyed, though, she doesn’t look Swedish.

As soon as Stephie sits down, the girl with the curly hair turns around.

“Stephanie Steiner?” she asks in German. “Aren’t you Stephanie Steiner from Vienna?”

T
he memory flashes through Stephie’s mind like a bolt of lightning. Of course she knows the girl! They were in the same class at the Jewish school in Vienna for several months. The crowded classroom with far too many pupils. The hunger. The fear.

“Yes, indeed,” Stephie says. “I’m Stephie Steiner. And you’re Judith Liebermann.”

Judith nods. “I didn’t know you were in Göteborg, too,” she says. “How long have you been in Sweden?”

“Since August 1939. What about you?” Stephie asks.

“April.”

Right. Stephie remembers Judith leaving the class sometime that spring. Nobody paid much attention. Children came and went at the Jewish school. People
suddenly got emigration permits. But Judith’s family was one of the ones with the least chance of getting out to the West. Polish Jews, lots of children, no money.