Legacy of Silence Read Free Page B

been religious Christians. Also, she understood that Christina would not have dared to talk like that to any of her current friends. Caroline had an impulsive wish to trust and confide, to ask about Walter, to ask anything. But, almost instantly thinking better of it, she did not, and watched with a hidden shudder as Walter’s father, bulky, important, and with his close-shaven head a caricature of his kind, walked into his house.
    So she embraced Christina and went home with foreboding like a chill all through her body.
    To tell or not to tell. This was too crucially important to keep secret. On the other hand, once her parents knew, it would be the end of Walter. And there was no other place for them to meet besides her house, which in itself wasn’t wonderful; her parents sat and sat, as if he had come to visit them. When finally they did go upstairs, it was almost time for him to leave, anyway.
    At dinner that night, very casually, her father inquired, “Is Walter coming again this evening?”
    Her reply was equally casual.
    “I don’t know. He might just drop in.”
    “He has been here five times in the last two weeks,” Mama said.
    Lore winked at Caroline.
Take it easy
, her wink meant.
    “We only mean,” Father said, “that you shouldn’t be getting any ideas. I certainly don’t have to give you reasons why.”
    “Goodness, he’s only a friend. We talk, and it’s fun. And I don’t have—”
    Father interrupted. “You don’t have any fun, and young people should have it. We know that all too well. That’s why the sooner we get away, the better. God knows we’re trying,” he finished wearily.
    There had been no replies from the United States to any of the appeals that they had been sending, the so-careful letters that, because of censorship, darednot reveal the fear, the terrible urgency, and the terrible truth.
    “It’s almost like putting a message in a bottle and floating it out to sea,” Mama said.
    But Father, true to his nature, reminded them that other people had received answers and had even been taken into American homes by total strangers.
    “It happens, although I admit it’s asking an awful lot and there can’t be too many people in the world who will do it. Still, I have a feeling we’ll be lucky.”
    “What shall we do for money?” asked Mama. “They’ve frozen everything. Frozen. Stolen is more like it.”
    “We can raise some when we sell the furnishings, and buy some jewelry to hide. We’ll see. We’ll work it out somehow.”
    But Mama had no faith. Sometimes, whenever she was not doing some chore around the house, and constant reader that she was, she would sit with a book; but it was only to put it down on her lap and stare into space. After a while she would rise abruptly and go to the piano, filling the rooms with waves, a tumbling ocean of music.
    “Poor Eva. She drowns her sorrows in it,” said Lore, who saw through everyone.
    Walter arrived one evening while Eva was still playing. “I stood at the front door until you finished the sonata before I rang the bell,” he explained. “It was too beautiful to be interrupted.”
    “You shouldn’t have done that, standing in the cold,” Eva said. But she was pleased.
    “Am I interrupting anything else?” he asked. For the little group looked as if it had gathered for a purpose.
    “Not at all,” Mama assured him. “We were only having our usual discussion about emigration, and as always, since we were getting nowhere, I decided to make some music. Come, Arthur, we’ve some things to look at upstairs.”
    At last they are taking some pity on me, thought Caroline. For once I can talk to him without them.
    Yet suddenly now, alone with Walter, she could not think how to begin. She was too aware of him and of the way he examined her, making her wonder whether her hair and her dress were right, making her awkward.
    “There’s a beautiful feeling in this house,” he said, “with the pictures and the books lying