Number the Stars (4 page)

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 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.”

5

“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.He 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.