After a short ride in the soldiers’ white jeep, they arrive in Trieste, pulling up outside the United Nations headquarters and are shown inside to a large, airy office while their documents are removed for inspection.
‘May we offer you some food or coffee? Milk for the little one?’ But Cibi waves away their hospitality. She is thinking only of her sisters now. They are waiting for her, and these people are standing in her way.
‘We don’t have tickets from Trieste to Genoa, Mischka,’ Cibi whispers, when they are alone in the room. ‘We should have tried harder to buy them.’
The couple had assumed it would be easy enough to buy bus or train tickets for the last leg of their landbound journey, but this oversight is now their downfall.
An official comes back into the room. ‘How did you imagine you would cross from Yugoslavia into Italy without a visa or right of passage?’ he asks them, to which they have no reply.
We’ve been fools, thinks Cibi. And all the while we thought we were so clever.
They have been escorted to the dining room, but Cibi can’t eat or drink a thing. Her stomach is in knots. Magda and Livi are waiting for them; her thoughts are spiralling, she knows, but there is little she can do about it.
‘Cibi, the last thing we need right now is for you to fall apart,’ insists Mischka, handing her a cup of coffee. She takes it and gulps, scalding her tongue.
One of the blue berets is approaching their table and Cibi sits up straight, desperate to hear the news that they may proceed with their journey.
‘I can’t find an Italian senior officer to consult with,’ he tells them. ‘They will need to grant you entry.’
‘And if they don’t?’ asks Cibi, feeling the last ounces of her energy drain away.
The blue beret looks at his feet. ‘Then you will have to go home.’
‘Home?’ explodes Cibi. She shrugs off her coat, her cardigan and pulls up the sleeve of her jumper, thrusting her tattooed arm under his nose. ‘This is what happened to me at home!’ she tells him.
The officer’s face falls as he studies her arm. ‘I am so sorry,’ he says.
Mischka pulls down Cibi’s sleeve and puts an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. ‘We have been through too much already,’ he tells the officer. ‘Please help us.’
‘Madam, sir, we will not resolve this today.’ The officer has regained his composure, but he addresses them with more kindness now. ‘Tonight you will be our guests.’
But there is no sleeping to be done. Their bedroom, on the upper floor of the headquarters, is stuffy, and Kari isn’t happy, despite the fuss that is made of him in the dining room at supper.
‘We just need to get through the night,’ Mischka tells Cibi, but Cibi can’t so much as blink. Everything hangs in the balance, in the hands of anonymous officials who have no idea what they have endured to come this far.
‘I need to be with my sisters, and I will use Auschwitz and Birkenau and the death of my mother to get to Israel,’ says Cibi.
*
The next morning, back in the dining room for breakfast, the senior officer has arrived and now he takes a seat at their table.
‘Here are your tickets,’ he says, handing Cibi an envelope containing tokens for the fourteen-hour bus ride from Trieste to Genoa, where they will have to wait until their ship is ready to sail. To cover this, there is also a voucher for two nights’ accommodation. ‘The hotel is very close to the port. This little one must be eager to get home,’ he says, offering Kari a warm smile.
Cibi’s eyes fill with grateful tears and Mischka takes her hand. The kindness of others, she thinks. When did she forget such gestures were still possible? She looks around the room, catching the smiles and nods of good luck from everyone present.
‘We are all keen to get home,’ Mischka says.
And soon they are speeding through the Italian countryside, the first blooms of summer wishing them well as they speed by. They pass through small towns, and tiny villages, through the cities of Venice and Verona, and then on to the coast.
At last, Cibi sets eyes on the dazzling blue of the Mediterranean and the ships docked in the port. Which is ours? she wonders. The Independence? A good name for a ship, because that’s how she feels in this moment: independent and free to proceed to the promised land.
*
On the day of their departure, hundreds of other passengers materialise from the edges of the town to join them; Cibi and Mischka hold hands as they walk up the gangplank to their future, Kari in Cibi’s arms.