Legacy of Silence Read Free Page A

sadness.
    “We don’t argue. I respect my father. Besides, he is a man with whom people never argue. This has troubled our relationship because I can’t speak openly.Still, he must know how I feel about affairs here. It is often what one does not say that expresses things as clearly as what one does say.”
    Then, brightening as if with an effort, he changed the subject. “Well, Caroline, since we find ourselves in rather special circumstances, where are we going to meet from now on? It can’t be always in the middle of the park, especially because”—and he held out his hand—“it has started to rain.”
    “We will go back to my house,” she said.
    A ND SO , Caroline’s life reached a divide: There was before Walter and then there was after Walter.
    Lore, who had been at home that first afternoon, was intensely curious. “You go for a walk in the park and look what you bring back! His manners, his looks. Real elegance. But tell me, does he know—know about—”
    “About Mama? Of course. He doesn’t care. He’s a cultured, intelligent man. What do you think, that he’s some kind of Brownshirt thug?”
    Lore teased, “Look at you, defending him already. Have you fallen in love so fast?”
    “What’s wrong with you? I have not fallen in love, Lore.”
    “Maybe not yet, but I’m sure you will. It’s only natural. And they say it’s wonderful,” she added wistfully. “Still, in these times, you have to wonder.”
    There was great confusion within Caroline, adread of appearing foolish, as if her thoughts could be visible to other people. She embarrassed herself with the thoughts that were taking shape in her head.
    When the week passed and there were no more daily walks in the park, Walter began the evening visits that introduced him to the family.
    “A fine young man,” her father said cordially. But after the first two or three times, he expressed his doubts. “I don’t have to tell you that we are living on the thin edge. Walter should be more careful, too. I’m surprised that he comes here at all.”
    Mama says nothing, thought Caroline, because she feels such a weight upon her. A heritage that she had always been proud to hand on had now, in this mad time, become a danger to her daughter. Her husband had lost his career and was leaving his country for her sake.
    “What do you know about his family?” Father asked, meaning: What is their work and do they belong to the Party? “No, of course they can’t, or else he wouldn’t—” he said, thinking aloud, and then stopped, resuming a moment later. “Anyway, we shall be leaving soon. And you are so—”
    So young, he meant. Father’s little girl. He had developed this new habit of spilling half a thought into a broken sentence. And Caroline remembered how he had used to be, positive and sanguine, a doctor, a father who knew all the answers to whatever you needed to know.
    One day she took Peter for his walk in the directionof Christina’s house. As little girls up to the age of twelve, they had gone to school together. After that, when Caroline changed to a school run by Jewish teachers, they had, in memory of that first childhood intimacy, kept hold of a tenuous friendship. Nostalgia now drove her simply to walk past the house without having any intention of going in.
    It happened that Christina was coming along the street from the opposite direction, and glad to see each other they rushed to meet. Yet after the first few greetings, each felt some constraint. Christina was a university student. She was going to Italy over the holidays. There was little else to say, and they were about to part when a long black official-seeming car with a chauffeur stopped at the next house.
    Christina grimaced. “Litzhauser. Ball bearings. With a swastika on his lapel. Big Party man,” she said contemptuously. “My parents detest him, although I don’t have to tell you, he’ll never know it.”
    Caroline understood: Christina’s people had always