The Old Brown Suitcase (7 page)

As my English improved, I began to answer the students’ questions about who I was and where I came from. But I was still afraid to tell anyone the truth about myself.

Instead, I told them stories about my favourite heroine, the Russian Princess Nina Dzavaha, as if they were the stories of my life. I changed her place of birth from Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains to the Polish Tatras. It was exciting! I became the brave Polish princess who rode her swift black stallion in the valleys of the Tatra Mountains. Persecuted by my royal father’s enemies, I went into the mountain caves to hide.

No one objected to my stories, and even Joshua listened with interest. But I was frightened that someone would challenge my lies.

One day Eva came up to me in the corridor.

“We both have blond hair just like princesses,” she said pleasantly. “Won’t you have a soda with me after school? We’ll walk to the drugstore downtown. How about it?”

I should decline, I thought, but my curiosity made me say, “Tomorrow we go. I ask my parents today, O.K.?”

“O.K., tomorrow it is.”

That evening I told my parents that I would be home a little later than usual because I had found a nice girl at school who wanted to be my friend. They were very pleased.

The next afternoon over a soda Eva made me nervous.

“Your stories sound like something out of a novel. Where were you in Poland during the war? she asked with the same look of suspicion I had seen before.

“Some lives are unbelievably terrible,” I replied, unwilling to bare my soul to her. Besides, she would not believe the real story either.

Suddenly she changed the subject.

“By the way, what does your father do?”

“He is a lawyer. What does your father do?”

She glanced at me as if surprised that I didn’t know.

“My dad owns Schmidt’s Supermarket, and he is the chairman of the school board,” she said proudly. “Did you know that your friend Joshua is a Jew?” she asked, placing great emphasis on “your friend.”

I said nothing but stirred my soda.

“My father says that Jews are liars and schemers. If I were you, I’d stay away from Joshua. Jewish people are not popular in Rockville. Most of us here are Christian. Joshua and his parents never mention their religion, but everyone knows that they keep kosher by bringing their food in from Montreal. They never buy meat at my father’s store,” she said, as if this were a crime.

Then she added, “Say, why don’t you come over for supper tomorrow night? My father says that if you are from Poland you must be Catholic.”

I could hardly speak. I didn’t want to say no, but the way she spoke about Joshua and the Jews made me angry. Yet I was afraid to tell her I was Jewish too.

“I ask my parents. Tomorrow morning I tell you,” I said, collecting my books.

After supper I crept into my pit, searching for an answer to my dilemma. But none came. Could it be that Jews weren’t liked in Rockville? Wasn’t this supposed to be a free country where people of different races lived in peace? Wasn’t that why we came to Canada?

Before bed, I asked my mother if I could go to Eva’s house for supper. She wanted to know more about Eva’s parents. I told her that Eva’s father was an important person in town, and she consented, but reminded me, “Just remember to keep our family matters to yourself.” There it was again.

“Why do people hate Jews?” The question burst out of me unexpectedly.

“Why do you ask such questions?” Mother said, looking puzzled.

I didn’t give up.

“Why does our being Jewish have to be a secret?” I asked.

“Mother is still afraid for us, because as Jews, we have suffered so much.” My father’s voice answered. I hadn’t known that he was listening. He was sitting in a chair by the window in the evening dusk.

“A minority always has to struggle harder to survive,” he continued. “When I went to school in Warsaw, I had a teacher who deliberately tried to make me fail. He picked on me constantly even though I was an ‘A’ student. One day I threw a bottle of ink at him and almost got expelled from school. But our family was rich and money speaks.” Father sighed and went on.

“To survive you need money, but you also need an education. That is why you must strive to become educated, no matter what. I struggled hard in order to become a successful lawyer in an anti-Semitic country, and I succeeded. All that success collapsed overnight when the war began. But that was Poland. You should not have to keep your Jewish-ness a secret here.”

Mother turned on the light, and I suddenly noticed how pale and tired Father looked. He grew silent and returned to his reading, holding onto his side.

“What’s wrong with Papa?” I asked Mother in the kitchen.

“He has not been feeling well lately,” she replied. I sensed that she wasn’t telling me everything, but I had other questions to ask.

“Mama, what’s kosher mean?”

“Questions, questions,” she snapped. “It means that if you’re Jewish you shouldn’t mix meat with milk, and you shouldn’t eat pork. During the war we were lucky to get anything to eat, let alone worry about whether or not it was kosher. And now please go and do your homework!”

I finally understood. Although we were Jewish we did not keep kosher. When we ate chicken we always put butter on our potatoes. It made me realize that I didn’t know much about being Jewish, except what I had learned in the Ghetto.

The next morning I dressed carefully for my supper at Eva’s. I was as uneasy after my conversation with her as I was curious to see how other people in the town lived.

When I got to school, I told Eva that I could come to dinner, and she telephoned her mother to let her know I was coming. We promised to meet in the playground at four o’clock.

In school that day, as usual I sat through a math lesson I did not understand. During the French period, however, we had a quiz, and I scored the second highest mark. The teacher shook her head in bewilderment as she collected our papers.

“If you could only do as well in other subjects,” she said with a half-smile.

At lunch, Joshua was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria eating his sandwich. I remembered what Eva had told me about him. He was somewhat of a loner, but he certainly didn’t look like a liar or a schemer.

I wanted to sit beside him but felt shy. Suddenly he looked up and waved. I went over and sat down without saying anything. I wanted to know more about him, his home and his parents. I didn’t dare approach the subject of religion, or anything else personal. Why not invite him over to our place one day after school for tea? When I did, he gave me that warm smile of his and said he would gladly come.

Sitting next to him that day felt somehow different. All the times before he was just someone who took pity on me. Today I felt flushed and embarrassed, and wondered if he thought me pretty. I didn’t dare to ask. Instead, I asked him if he liked reading books.

“I’ve read some Mark Twain and Dickens. I was particularly interested in
David Copperfield.
He had a difficult childhood.” Joshua paused, then asked, “Did you have a difficult childhood?”

“Very difficult,” I replied, afraid of being questioned.

“Even as a princess?”

“Yes,” I said seriously, “even as a princess.”

The bell rang just in time.

I saw Eva glaring at us as we stood up. She bent over and whispered something to the girl next to her. I felt my ears burn, as if Joshua and I were doing something wrong.

At four o’clock sharp I was waiting in the playground. Eva came a few minutes late, all hot and sweaty, saying she had just come from a basketball try-out. We started walking.

“That Joshua, he thinks he is the cat’s meow. He practises day and night at the basketball hoop. No wonder he is on the school team. I just about got on the girl’s team today, but the teacher said I need more practice. I just don’t have the time to practice as much as he does, with all the homework and everything.”

“Joshua’s good in all subjects. Sports too,” I said.

“Big deal. How come you and he are so chummy?” she asked derisively. “Is it because he does your homework for you?”

I was choking with rage, but we were already walking up the path to her house. A tall, blond woman greeted us at the door.

“Come in, come in. I have heard so much about you,” she said taking our school cases and putting them in the closet. “Eva, please take Elizabeth to your room while I finish dinner.” The house was big, with a square entrance hall and a staircase leading upstairs. I glimpsed a spacious living room on one side, and a formal dining room on the other, similar to the one we’d had before the war. Upstairs, Eva’s room was full of dolls from different countries. There was even a doll from Russia. Then she took me to another room, like a study, but without many books.

Hanging on the wall were a rifle and a pistol. Both reminded me of the ones I’d seen the German soldiers carry. I remembered the soldier who pointed his rifle at me the day we were thrown out of our room in the Ghetto.

“What’s this?” I asked, suddenly feeling very strange.

“Oh, the rifle belongs to my dad. He loves hunting. See,” she said, pointing to a stuffed moose head above the fireplace. She touched the rifle gingerly. “You can touch it too.”

“I don’t want to touch it,” I said and looked at the moose. It had a stupid look on its face. Its eyes were like plastic beads and should have been closed. Then my eyes went back to the pistol. Eva was quick to notice.

“This belongs to my uncle Horst. He is visiting us from

Germany. You know, he tells stories that are almost as good as yours.”

“What about?” I asked. It was an effort to speak.

“He was an officer during the Second World War, when the German army captured Kiev. Germany lost the war, but my uncle thinks that Hitler was a great leader who tried to save Europe from Communists, gypsies and Jews.”

I felt like throwing up. Why did I come here?

“What’s wrong?” asked Eva.

My stomach heaved.

“Where is your bathroom?” I managed.

She pointed to a door down the hall. I walked away slowly.

I locked the bathroom door behind me and leaned over the sink for a moment. I didn’t throw up but sat down on the toilet thinking with horror that I was among people who admired Hitler and hated Jews. What to do? I had to go through with the dinner. Mrs. Schmidt was calling us, so I walked back to Eva’s room, preparing my act.

Eva led me into the dining room and sat me down next to her. Just then two men walked in. They were both of medium height, fair and heavy-set.

Eva introduced me.

“This is my father and my uncle. Papa and uncle Horst, this is my school mate, Elizabeth Lenski. She doesn’t speak much English, and she is from Poland.”

The two men bowed and sat down. They started speaking German to each other and I heard the word
Polnische.
Hearing this language again, after all that had happened, made me shudder. I remembered what the German soldiers did to the city of Warsaw and to our family.

“Papa, Elizabeth is really a Polish princess. She says that she rode wild stallions in the Tatras, and was pursued by bandits, and had to hide out in caves till her father’s regiment rescued her.”

I tried to keep from trembling.

They all looked at one another, and Mr. Schmidt said, “Is that so?” His “s” sounded like a “z.”

But the conversation went no further, because Mrs. Schmidt set the platter on the table.

“These are pigs’ feet,” said Eva enthusiastically. All I could see in front of me were blobs of fat.

“And this is
Sauerbraten
, also a German dish,” she added, pointing to the second platter set down on the table by her mother.

I put a bit of each on my plate. I managed to eat the
Sauerbraten
, but the pigs’ feet were just too sickening. I thought of Mother saying that Jews who were kosher didn’t eat pork. Joshua certainly wouldn’t eat it.

“Don’t you eat pork?” asked Mr. Schmidt.

I started to shake my head to say no, then decided to explain that I wasn’t very hungry.

The two men spoke German to each other again and laughed. This time I heard the word “
Juden
,” the German word for Jews.

“You don’t eat pork? Why?” asked Eva. I looked at the two men, who continued to converse in German. They seemed to ignore Eva and her mother.

“You understand German?” I asked Eva, evading her question.

“No, I was born here. So was my mother. Only my father was born in Germany,” she replied.

After supper Mr. Schmidt offered to drive me home and asked Eva to come along. I gave him the address. When he pulled up his shiny car in front of our rickety house and let me off, Eva was strangely silent. I said “Thank you” to both of them and ran into the house.

“How was it?” asked Father.

“It was just fine,” I lied. I wasn’t accustomed to lying to my parents, but I was getting better at it all the time. I couldn’t talk. Only my diary would learn how I really felt, and I had to wait till they went into the bedroom. In the dark, I snuck out to my hiding place. I dug out my diary, brought it into the house, and poured out my heart.

When I came to school the next day, only Joshua and his bright smile helped me through the morning. I glanced at Eva sideways during math class. She didn’t look at me at all, and at recess she ignored me. I went up to her — more from curiosity than feelings of friendship. She was sitting at a table alone drinking a Coke, when she burst out, “You’re a fraud. My father said so. You’re not a Polish princess. My uncle said that stories like yours were made up by Jews during the war to fool people. You’re a liar!”

I turned around and walked away. The situation was getting out of hand. What to do? All week I watched Eva. She never spoke to me, but I saw her talking to the other classmates, whispering and pointing at me. Something strange was happening. I wanted to tell Joshua, but he left with the basketball team for Cornwall on Thursday.

Friday I walked home after school as usual. When I arrived at the main street leading to our house, I heard laughter behind me and noises. I turned around.