Orphan. Somehow, the word sounded even lonelier in English than in German. He hadn’t meant to be cruel—she was certain of that. He was only saying what any logical, right-thinking person would conclude after reading the harrowing newspaper reports and scanning the lists posted by the Red Cross. Millions had died. How could her parents have been spared? And if, by some miracle, they were alive, why had there been no letter from them in five years?
The queasiness in Martha’s stomach hadn’t subsided since takeoff. The journey had been every bit as arduous as she had feared—two long flights punctuated by a stopover at Nova Scotia to refuel. The military airplane was so noisy that conversation of any kind during the flight had been impossible. There were five men and one other woman in the UNRRA group, but apart from perfunctory introductions as they’d been about to board, she hadn’t had the chance to find out anything about them. The men looked to be late forties or older—past the age limit to have been drafted. The woman was closer to Martha’s age. She hadn’t smiled when they’d been introduced. And she hadn’t looked pleased to be seated next to Martha on the flight. She’d been asleep throughout the second leg of the journey.
Martha peered out at the lightening sky. They were flying above a fluffy blanket of clouds. After a few minutes, holes appeared. It was just possible to see that they were no longer flying over the ocean. She wasn’t sure if the land she could see was England.
Arnie’s face suddenly superimposed itself on the blur of green below. It occurred to her that he would have seen this same view, just over a year ago, when he went with the army to prepare for the D-Day landings. But he’d never made it to France. He’d gotten into trouble days after he arrived in England—arrested for wounding a man in a drunken fight—and had been shipped back to New York with a dishonorable discharge before the invasion of France had even begun.
Martha wondered what he would do when he realized that she was gone for good. She glanced at her watch, still on East Coast time. Probably he was asleep. Probably there would be an empty bottle on the bedside table. Would he have been smoking in bed? The number of times she’d taken a lit cigarette from his fingers when he was out cold . . . She took in a sharp breath. She mustn’t think of him. Mustn’t torture herself over what she’d tried—and failed—to change.
The plane started its descent. She caught a sudden glimpse of the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, looking like an island in a sea of crumbling, bombed-out houses. The realization that London lay beneath her had hardly registered before the pilot veered away from the city, bringing them down to land in what looked like a farmer’s field.
When they juddered to a halt, the woman in the next seat blinked awake and bent to the floor, rummaging for something in her handbag. Martha saw her pull out a set of false teeth and pop them into her mouth. Perhaps that explained her reluctance to smile, Martha thought. But there was no time to find out. They were ushered off the plane and straight into a military truck.
Martha was the only one of the group small enough to fit into the front seat, between the driver and one of the UNRRA men. As the truck bounced along potholed country lanes, Martha tried unsuccessfully to stop her left knee from bumping against the right thigh of her fellow passenger. She turned to apologize, but before she could open her mouth, he asked her where she was from.
“Brooklyn.” She gave something near a smile. It felt awkward, being this close, even if he was old enough to be her father. “How about you?”
“New Jersey.” He braced himself against the dash as the truck lurched around a bend. “Know where you’re headed?” He had the brisk tone of a sergeant major.
“Not exactly. Someplace in the south of Germany: Bavaria.” She’d gone to the library to look it up, not sure if it was a town or a city. She’d sat staring at the map for a few minutes before she realized that it was a whole region, like an American state, with rivers and forests and mountains.
The man beside her nodded. “Pretty place—leastways it used to be. Went there in the twenties. Good skiing.” A shaft of sunlight caught the white stubble on his jaw. “Hope to make it there for a few days come winter.”
“Where will you be working?”
“Up north, near Hanover. The Belsen camp.”
She searched his face, wondering if she’d heard right. Images from newsreels flashed into her head. Harrowing scenes of skeletal figures, barely alive, clinging to barbed-wire fences. “Belsen? Wasn’t that . . .”