A Feather on the Water

Williamsburg, Brooklyn: June 1945

Martha sneaked into the hallway in stocking feet and stood for a moment, listening. The snoring had a steady rhythm, like waves breaking on pebbles. So long as he stayed asleep, she was safe. Closing the door as gently as she could, she tiptoed across the cracked linoleum and made her way down the stairs, hugging the suitcase to her body to stop it from catching on the banister. Only when she reached the front door did she slip her feet into her shoes.

The linden trees on South First Street were heavy with blossom, their honey scent tainted by the stink of garbage as she passed the alley that ran alongside the grocery store. Ahead of her, on the corner of Wythe Avenue, a young man in paint-spattered pants was doing pull-ups on a bar of scaffolding. As she passed by, he whistled. She dug her chin into the collar of her blouse, dodging past him.

She headed downhill, toward the welcome black shadow of the Domino sugar refinery. Pausing to catch her breath, she tasted a sweetness mingled with fumes from the factory chimney. From where she stood, she could see the East River. The water was smoky quartz beneath a clear blue sky. Great barges and motorboats glided past. And on the other side, glinting in the morning sunshine, was the towering glory of Manhattan.

It was too early to get the subway to Queens. She set her suitcase down next to a low wall by the river’s edge. It was as good a place as any to kill time. He’d never think of coming to look for her here. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a newspaper cutting and unfolded it. There was a stain over the first couple of paragraphs, from when he’d thrown an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s across the kitchen, and the dregs from the smashed remains had spattered the front page.

She smoothed out the scrap of paper and laid it on her knee. WAR LEAVES 4 MILLION HOMELESS IN EUROPE. Under the headline was a photograph of a hollow-eyed woman standing outside a makeshift shelter, a baby in her arms and a frightened child peeping out from beneath her skirts. It was impossible to look at those faces without something tightening under her ribs—as if some invisible thread were tugging at her heart. She’d read the report so many times, she could almost have repeated it with her eyes closed. And at the end was an appeal for recruits: a few short sentences that had set her mind reeling. “Must be free to travel at short notice. No dependents.”

The interview had been easier than she’d expected. She’d felt foolish at first, when they’d asked her if she spoke any foreign languages. How could she not have realized that they’d want that? She’d mumbled something about knowing a little Louisiana French Creole, courtesy of her New Orleans grandmother. To her relief, they’d simply nodded and moved on to what seemed of far more interest to them: the fact that she had run the food distribution section of the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side. Had. Until Arnie came back from the war and put a stop to it. Thankfully, they hadn’t asked her reason for giving up her volunteer work. Nor had they inquired why, as a married woman, she was applying for a job overseas. To her amazement, she’d been offered the post of assistant director at a camp in southern Germany.

In another compartment of her handbag, concealed inside an empty powder compact, were the two red patches they’d handed her at the end of the interview. She rummaged around until her fingers found the cold metal edge of the compact. Snapping it open, she picked out the patches. Each bore the letters “UNRRA” stitched in white: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. She’d been instructed to sew them onto the uniform she would be given when she arrived in Europe: on the cap and at the top of the left sleeve of the jacket.

As she tucked them back inside the compact, she caught her reflection in the mirror. In the bright sunlight her skin looked paler than usual. She hadn’t been able to get hold of face powder for months, but in the past few days it had reappeared in Walgreen’s. Only one shade was available—and she’d applied it a little too liberally to conceal the scar on her left cheek. Her lipstick was called Tea Rose—nothing too bright, she’d thought, for this first day. The only other makeup was a touch of mascara on her top lashes.

Arnie had once told her that the color of her eyes reminded him of Hershey Kisses. She snapped the compact shut, trying not to remember. In just a few hours’ time, she would be far away from him. Her insides flipped at the thought of flying across the Atlantic. She’d never been on a plane. Never traveled outside the USA. The longest journey she’d ever taken was the train from Mobile to New York in the summer of ’32. She’d been a different person then. Nineteen years old and brimming with fantasies of the new life Arnie had promised.

She fixed her gaze on a passing coal barge, counting the seconds before it slipped beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. A mindless exercise to block out the images jostling for space in her head: his eyes as they could look, as they used to look; his hands stroking her skin, in the days when she could let him touch her without tensing up at the thought of what might follow; her face in the mirror as she took off her jewelry on their wedding night, winking at her reflection—so elated, so certain, so hopelessly naïve.

She made herself wait until three trains had thundered across the bridge. Then she got to her feet and picked up her suitcase. Clenching her fingers around the handle, she told herself that crossing thousands of miles of open ocean couldn’t possibly be worse than the fear she was leaving behind.

Newhaven, England: Two Days Later

Kitty heard the sea in her sleep. The distant smack of waves against a wooden pier. The sound triggered a dream about her old school in Austria. She was in the yard, jumping a rope that slapped the ground as she chanted a rhyme. “Schifflein, Schifflein, fahr nach Holland. Die Wellen schlugen hoch, hoch . . .” Little boat, little boat, go to Holland. The waves beat high, high . . .

After she opened her eyes, it took a few befuddled moments to work out where she was. The train compartment was in semidarkness, the curtain shifting in the draft from an open window. Why had they stopped? Moving slowly so as not to disturb the slumbering body beside her, she lifted a corner of the moth-eaten fabric and peered through the dusty glass.

The sky was tinged pink with the coming sunrise. She could see the corner of a building up ahead, and the first four letters of a sign: “NEWH.” They must be almost there, then: waiting for some signal to allow the train to enter the station. To her right were metal railings, through which she caught the glimmer of water. Craning her neck, she saw that they were at the mouth of a river, where it met the open sea. The swell, ruffled by the breeze, turned the surface into a silver shoal of ripples. The masts of fishing boats swayed back and forth.

She spotted the hull of a big ship heading slowly into port. Was that her ship? Even from a distance it looked old, battered. But everything that had come through the war looked that way: buildings, bridges, vehicles. People, too. She glanced at the man slumped in the seat opposite. His thinning hair was gray above a face that looked anxious, even in sleep. He’d wished her good evening in an accent that marked him as foreign, as hers had once done. She wondered if, like her, he’d come to England to escape the war. And what he’d be returning to.

Looking back at the view through the window, she watched the climbing sun streak the water with gold. She thought how different the sea looked from the image she’d carried inside her head for so long: a memory of gunmetal waves whipped up by an icy December wind; gulls screaming; children crying; the stink of rotting fish as she’d marched up the gangway, clutching her little suitcase.

She’d been too young then to know the name of the water she was crossing. At twelve years old, all she knew was that the boat was taking her to England. The safe place. You’ll like it there. Her father’s voice echoed down the years. He’d taught her one phrase in English, which she’d repeated over and over as the boat lurched through those angry waves: “I’m hungry—please, may I have some bread?”

Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the faces of her parents. There had been no photograph wrapped in the clothes inside her suitcase, because they’d tried so hard, when they waved goodbye, to pretend that everything was normal. Just a little while, and we’ll all be together again. Why was it that she could recall her mother’s voice—those parting words, whispered in German—but couldn’t remember the color of her eyes?

The train jolted back to life, bringing murmurs and movement from the other passengers in Kitty’s compartment. As it drew nearer to the station, she caught sight of a man holding a cardboard sign with the letters “UNRRA” scrawled across it. She felt her mouth go dry. It was real. She really was going. Those untidy black letters spelled escape from this country that had both saved her and held her captive. Before the sun went down this evening, she would be in France. And after that, she’d be on her way to Germany.

As she reached up to the luggage rack to retrieve her bag, she remembered the words Fred had hissed in the darkness of the theater on her last night in Manchester. He hadn’t wanted her to go. In a clumsy sort of way, he’d asked her to marry him. And when she’d said that she couldn’t think of settling down until she’d found out about her parents, he’d gone quiet. Then, as the lights went down and the show was about to start, he’d said: “Why can’t you just face it? You’re an orphan, Kitty.”

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 . . .”

“It’s a Displaced Persons Center now,” he cut in. “Awful for them, but there’s no choice. Too many people with no place to go—and these camps lying empty. Just gotta make the best of it.”

Martha stared through the windshield, the trees and fields a blur of green. It was beyond awful. Like a sick joke. People punched senseless by war, forced to live in a place where thousands had been put to death. Please, God, don’t let me be going to a place like that. Even as the thought entered her mind, she realized how cowardly it sounded.

“Plenty of other places being used as well.” His voice was gentler now, as if he was trying to reassure her. “The army’s commandeered all kinds of joints—factories, Boy Scout camps—even a zoo up in Hamburg. Guess you’ll be . . .” He broke off, shading his eyes with his hand. “Ah! There’s the English Channel!”

She craned her neck to catch the glimmer of water on the horizon. The fields gave way to houses as the truck rattled downhill. Soon they were driving past yachts and fishing boats. Farther along the quayside, the bigger boats were anchored. She saw a man standing by a gangway holding up a sign with “UNRRA” handwritten in black letters.

The man beside her had the door open before the driver had cut the engine. He held it for her as they scrambled out. As they waited in line for their papers to be checked, Martha studied the people climbing the gangway. Only one was female. Martha was struck by how young she looked. Her glossy black hair, worn in a long braid, blew out behind her in the breeze. She was wearing bobby socks, and she took the steps two at a time, as if she couldn’t wait to get aboard. Could she be the daughter of one of the men boarding the boat? But the recruitment ad had said no dependents.

Half an hour later, Martha was up on deck. She covered her ears as the foghorn signaled their imminent departure, and gazed back toward the land they were leaving, at the town of Newhaven with its jumble of quaint houses, so very different from the skyscrapers and apartment blocks surrounding New York Harbor. She wished she’d had more time in England. Time to explore the countryside they’d sped through—and to see London. Maybe she’d have the chance to visit sometime in the future. The man in the truck had talked about traveling when he had time off, of going skiing in the mountains. But it was hard to square that idea with the images of Europe in the newsreels and the papers. Impossible to imagine taking any kind of vacation on a continent ravaged by war.

She felt the boat shudder as they began to move away from the quayside. When she could no longer make out the people and the buildings, she turned away from the rail and scanned her fellow passengers. There was no sign of the man she’d talked with in the truck, nor the woman she’d sat next to on the plane. The only person she recognized was the young girl she’d spotted on the gangway. She was standing alone at the bow of the boat, staring out to sea. There were knots of men in army uniform nearby, smoking and chatting. They were casting the odd sly glance at her.

“Hello again!” Martha turned to see the British man who’d checked her papers standing beside her. He was peering at her through thick horn-rimmed spectacles. In his hand was a clipboard. “I’m pairing people up for when we get to the other side,” he said. “You’re in the American zone: sector twenty-three.” He ran his finger down the list of names attached to the clipboard, then took off his glasses, shading his eyes against the sun as he scanned the passengers. “The young lady over there is in the same team.” He was looking at the girl with the long black braid. “I wonder if you’d mind introducing yourself?”

“Yes, of course.” Martha made her way toward the bow of the boat, one hand clutching her beret to stop the breeze from taking it. She dodged unsteadily past the groups of soldiers, avoiding their eyes. Some of them called out as she passed by, asking her name, offering cigarettes. She didn’t look back.

It wasn’t until she reached the girl that she realized how tall she was—probably not far short of six feet. Martha had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the noise of the engine. “Good morning!”

A pair of large gray eyes met Martha’s. They had a wariness and a hint of something else. Something feral. Like a wildcat about to lash out. Her lips were painted a bold shade of red that instantly dispelled the childlike image conjured by the hairstyle and the bobby socks. She held out her hand to the girl. “I’m Martha Radford. I’m told we’re going to be working together.”

The girl eyed her for a moment longer. “Kitty. Kitty Bloom.” She slid her hand from her jacket pocket. Her grip was hard, like a man’s. “You’re American?”

Martha nodded. Her free hand went to her head, her fingers tucking a windblown wisp of hair back under her beret. The uncertainty in the girl’s voice had made her feel self-conscious. Probably the only American women this girl had seen were Hollywood stars.

“From New York?” Kitty’s accent wasn’t like the English voices Martha had heard in movies. She made “York” sound more like “Yark.”

“Yes. But I grew up in Louisiana.”

From the look on her face, Kitty had never heard of it.

“How about you?”

“Manchester.”

Martha nodded. She had only a vague idea of the geography of England. “Is that far from here?”

“Far enough,” the girl replied. “It took all night to get here. Everything’s slower than it used to be because of the bombs they dropped on the rail tracks.”

“Was your town bombed?”

Kitty nodded.

“That must have been terrifying.”

A slight tightening of the lips was the only response to this. Martha wondered how old Kitty would have been when the war started. It would be tactless to ask. She remembered how it felt to be taken for someone younger than your actual age: if it happened now, she’d be flattered, but back then, it had made her mad.

“Are you hungry?” Kitty cocked her head at the white-railed staircase that led below deck. “There’s a place you can buy sandwiches.”

Martha followed her down the metal steps. It had been many hours since she’d last eaten. The ordeal of flying had robbed her of her appetite—and now the motion of the waves was making her feel queasy again. But perhaps it would do her good to try to eat something.

She changed her mind when she saw what was being offered. The bread was a grayish color, and there were only two fillings to choose from: Spam or fish paste. The only other food for sale was packets of something called Rich Tea.

“What are these?” Martha picked one up, peering at the tiny writing on the back.

“Biscuits,” Kitty replied.

“Do they come with gravy?”

Kitty gave her a blank look. “Gravy? With biscuits?”

“I think they’re cookies.” Martha recognized the voice of the man from the truck. He was standing in line, a couple of places behind her.

“Ah!” She nodded, feeling foolish.

“They’re quite nice if you dunk them in tea,” Kitty said. She was smiling, and it transformed her face. She had the most unusual eyes—pale gray irises that were almost lilac, with an outer ring of charcoal.

Martha felt even more idiotic when she came to pay for the tea and cookies. The woman behind the counter frowned at the dollar bill she proffered. It hadn’t occurred to Martha that she might need British money. The only foreign currency she had in her purse was German reichsmarks.

Kitty pulled coins from her pocket, counting what she had left, when the familiar voice behind them said: “Let me get that.”

“Thank you,” Martha said when he came over to their table, carrying a plate piled with sandwiches. “I can pay you back in German money if that’s okay?”

He waved the offer away. “You hold on to your money—you’re gonna need it. The pay’s not much to write home about, is it?”

“Well, thank you.” It was true. They were getting food and accommodations plus four dollars a week. But she hadn’t taken the job for the money.

He sat down, smiling at Martha. “Now,” he said, “I know a little about you—but what about this young lady?” He turned appraising eyes on Kitty. “Why did you join this outfit?”

“I could ask you the same question.” She looked defensive.

“Oh?” He grunted. “Well, I guess I was frustrated at being stuck across the pond. Too old to fight the Nazis. But not too ancient to help clear up the mess they’ve left behind.”

Kitty’s expression softened a little. “I’ve been working in a factory, sewing uniforms. I tried joining the Wrens, but they only wanted typists. They wouldn’t let women go to fight.”

“Well, you’ll be in the thick of it soon,” he said. “You won’t be fighting, but you’d better be ready for some grim sights.” He bit into a sandwich and swallowed it down. “Do you know where you’re headed?”

“The south.” Kitty looked at her plate. “Somewhere near Dachau.”

Martha frowned. This was news to her. She hadn’t picked it up when she’d pored over the map of Bavaria in Williamsburgh Library.

Their companion nodded at Kitty. “You know about that place?”

“Yes.” She peeled back a corner of bread, examining the pink, mottled slice of processed meat underneath.

Martha couldn’t see her face. But the girl’s discomfort radiated from her like the smell of the Spam in her sandwich. Kitty had thrown out the name of the German concentration camp like a baited hook. Martha had seen kids at the Henry Street Settlement do a similar thing: let out some morsel of insight into things they shouldn’t know about, to make you probe deeper, to make you dig up the story they wouldn’t tell you. She wondered what had happened to Kitty in those years of sewing uniforms and dodging bombs to make her want to name such a place.