"They wouldn't care. And I'm fitter than I look—not well, by any standard, but certainly not the walking cadaver I appear to be."
"Don't talk like that!"
"I stopped lying to myself long ago, Magda. When they told me I had rheumatoid arthritis, I said they were wrong. And they were: I had something worse. But I've accepted what's happening to me. There's no hope, and there's not that much more time. So I think I should make the best of it."
"You don't have to rush it by allowing them to drag you up to the Dinu Pass!"
"Why not? I've always loved the Dinu Pass. It's as good a place to die as any. And they were going to take me no matter what. I'm wanted up there for some reason and they are intent on getting me there, even in a hearse." He looked at her closely. "But do you know why I told them I had to have you along?"
Magda considered the question. Her father was ever the teacher, ever playing Socrates, asking question after question, leading his listener to a conclusion. Magda often found it tedious and tried to reach the conclusion as swiftly as possible. But she was too tense at the moment for even a halfhearted attempt at playing along.
"To be your nurse, as usual," she snapped. "What else?" She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them, but her father seemed not to notice. He was too intent on what he wanted to say to take offense.
"Yes!" he said, lowering his voice. "That's what I want them to think. But it's really your chance to get out of the country! I want you to come to the Dinu Pass with me, but when you get the chance—at the first opportunity—I want you to run off and hide in the hills!"
"Papa, no!"
"Listen to me!" he said, leaning his face toward her ear. "This chance will never come again. We've been in the Alps many times. You know the Dinu Pass well. Summer's coming. You can hide for a while and then make your way south."
"To where?"
"I don't know—anywhere! Just get yourself out of the country. Out of Europe! Go to America! To Turkey! To Asia! Anywhere, but go!"
"A woman traveling alone in wartime," Magda said, staring at her father and trying to keep her voice from sounding scornful. He wasn't thinking clearly. "How far do you think I'd get?"
"You must try!" His lips trembled.
"Papa, what's wrong?"
He looked out the window for a long time, and when he finally spoke his voice was barely audible.
"It's all over for us. They're going to wipe us off the face of the Continent."
"Who?"
"Us! Jews! There's no hope left for us in Europe. Perhaps somewhere else."
"Don't be so—"
"It's true! Greece has just surrendered! Do you realize that since they attacked Poland a year and a half ago they haven't lost a battle? No one has been able to stand up to them for more than six weeks! Nothing can stop them! And that madman who leads them intends to eradicate our kind from the face of the earth! You've heard the tales from Poland—it's soon going to be happening here! The end of Romanian Jewry has been delayed only because that traitor Antonescu and the Iron Guard have been at each other's throats. But it seems they've settled their differences during the past few months, so it won't be long now."
"You're wrong, Papa," Magda said quickly. This kind of talk terrified her. "The Romanian people won't allow it."
He turned on her, his eyes blazing. " 'Won't allow it?' Look at us! Look at what has happened so far! Did anyone protest when the government began the 'Romanianization' of all property and industry in the hands of Jews? Did a single one of my colleagues at the university—trusted friends for decades!—so much as question my dismissal? Not one! Not one! And has one of them even stopped by to see how I am?" His voice was beginning to crack. "Not one!"
He turned his face back toward the window and was silent.
Magda wished for something to say to make it easier for him, but no words came. She knew there would have been tears on his cheeks now if his disease had not rendered his eyes incapable of forming them. When he spoke again, he had himself once more under control, but he kept his gaze directed at the flat green farmland rolling by.
"And now we are on this train, under guard of Romanian fascists, on our way to be delivered into the hands of German fascists. We are finished!"
She watched the back of her father's head. How bitter and cynical he had become. But then, why not? He had a disease that was slowly tying his body into knots, distorting his fingers, turning his skin to wax paper, drying his eyes and mouth, making it increasingly hard for him to swallow. As for his career—despite years at the university as an unchallenged authority on Romanian folklore, despite the fact that he was next in line as head of the Department of History, he had been unceremoniously fired. Oh, they said it was because his advancing debility made it necessary, but Papa knew it was because he was a Jew. He had been discarded like so much trash.
And so: His health was failing, he had been removed from the pursuit of Romanian history—the thing he loved most—and now he had been dragged from his home. And above and beyond all that was the knowledge that engines designed for the destruction of his race had been constructed and were already operating with grim efficiency in other countries. Soon it would be Romania's turn.
Of course he's bitter! she thought. He has every right to be!
And so do I. It's my race, my heritage, too, they wish to destroy. And soon, no doubt, my life.
No, not her life. That couldn't happen. She could not accept that. But they had certainly destroyed any hope she had held of being something more than secretary and nursemaid to her father. Her music publisher's sudden about-face was proof enough of that.
Magda felt a heaviness in her chest. She had learned the hard way since her mother's death eleven years ago that it was not easy being a woman in this world. It was hard if you were married, and harder still if you were not, for there was no one to cling to, no one to take your side. It was almost impossible for any woman with an ambition outside the home to be taken seriously. If you were married, you should go back home; if you were not, then there was something doubly wrong with you. And if you were Jewish...
She glanced quickly to the area where the two Iron Guards sat. Why am I not permitted the desire to leave my mark on this world? Not a big mark ... a scratch would do. My book of songs ... it would never be famous or popular, but perhaps someday a hundred years from now someone would come across a copy and play one of the songs. And when the song is over, the player will close the cover and see my name ... and I'll still be alive in a way. The player will know that Magda Cuza passed this way.
She sighed. She wouldn't give up. Not yet. Things were bad and would probably get worse. But it wasn't over. It was never over as long as one could hope.
Hope, she knew, was not enough. There had to be something more; just what that might be she didn't know. But hope was the start.
The train passed an encampment of brightly colored wagons circled around a smoldering central fire. Papa's pursuit of Romanian folklore had led him to befriend the Gypsies, allowing him to tap their mother lode of oral tradition.
"Look!" she said, hoping the sight would lift his spirits. He loved those people so. "Gypsies."
"I see," he said without enthusiasm. "Bid them farewell, for they are as doomed as we are."
"Stop it, Papa!"
"It's true. The Rom are an authoritarian's nightmare, and because of that, they, too, will be eliminated. They are free spirits, drawn to crowds and laughter and idleness. The fascist mentality cannot tolerate their sort; their place of birth was the square of dirt that happened to lie under their parents' wagon on the day of their birth; they have no permanent address, no permanent place of employment. And they don't even use one name with any reliable frequency, for they have three: a public name for the gadjé, another for use among their tribe members, and a secret one whispered in their ear at birth by their mother to confuse the Devil, should he come for them. To the fascist mind they are an abomination."