In their cabin, Rachel was trying to console Masha. They were together on one of the bunks, Masha lying back against Rachel, with her aching head pillowed on Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel held her tight, kissing her temple.
‘Don’t cry any more, Masha. You’re exhausted.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about Mama and Papa. Don’t you think about yours?’
‘Yes, of course, my dear.’
‘Then why don’t you cry too?’
‘I suppose,’ Rachel replied slowly, ‘because I had already parted from them.’
‘I said goodbye to Mama and Papa in Bremen. But I always thought I would see them again.’
‘My parting with my parents was some years ago,’ Rachel said quietly, ‘and of a more definitive nature. We’ve seen very little of each other since then.’
‘Was it because of this love affair of yours?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t know.’ Masha pressed the palms of her hands against her swollen eyelids. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to pry into something so painful.’
‘It’s all right.’ Rachel gently took Masha’s hands away from her eyes to stop her rubbing them. ‘Her name was Dorothea.’
‘Whose name was Dorothea?’ Masha asked tiredly.
‘The person you have been so curious to know about.’
Masha was puzzled for a moment. Then she sat up and peered at her cousin closely. ‘A woman?’
‘Yes, a woman.’
Masha gasped. ‘Rachel!’
‘She was older than I, an assistant teacher at the conservatory, which of course made it all far worse.’
‘Are you telling me that you are a—’ Masha stopped herself before uttering the word.
Rachel nodded. ‘Ever since I can remember, I’ve known I was what you cannot bring yourself to name. Now you understand why your family thought I was a danger to you. Are you appalled?’
‘How can I be appalled when I love you so?’ Masha asked. ‘But – don’t you like men?’
‘As a class, you mean? I don’t dislike them. But I cannot desire them.’
‘Perhaps you just haven’t met the right one, yet,’ Masha said innocently.
‘I think it goes a little deeper than that,’ Rachel replied, her tone light.
‘Did something happen to you to make you this way?’
‘What should have happened to me, Masha?’
‘I don’t know – a bad experience with a man, perhaps.’
Rachel smiled a little wearily. ‘Do you think that’s what makes us one thing or another? A bad experience?’
‘Sometimes it does, I’m sure.’
‘Not in my case. I never had any confusion about myself or what I wanted. Do you think I don’t feel the same tenderness you do? The same yearning, the same desire – the same love? I longed for my Dorothea long before I knew she existed. And when she entered my life, I thanked God for her.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Trust me,’ Rachel replied wryly, ‘everything that could be said on the matter has already been said a thousand times. My ears are still ringing with it. My father even took me to the celebrated Professor Freud in Vienna, which by the way was very expensive, in the hopes that I could be cured by psychoanalysis.’
‘What did Professor Freud say?’
‘He said that I was incurable. In the sense that I did not need to be cured. He said that my condition was neither an illness nor a neurotic conflict, and that eliminating my feelings was not possible or desirable. I liked him very much, as a matter of fact. To be spoken to like a human being was worth whatever it cost my father.’ She made a bitter face. ‘Naturally, that didn’t please him. It did nothing to soothe his outrage to be told by the great Sigmund Freud that my disgusting perversion, as my father called it, was innate biology.’
‘Oh, Rachel. How awful.’
‘Freud told him, in my presence, that in most cases, any “cure” achieved is just a superficial compliance to avoid conflict. I added that I wasn’t the bravest woman on earth, but that I had enough courage not to pretend to be something I was not. So we went back to Leipzig no happier than we left it.’
‘And your friend – Dorothea?’
‘They tried to forbid me from seeing her of course. And then the Nazis expelled me from the conservatory anyway, because I was a Jew, so it seemed that was that. But I found I couldn’t live without Dorothea. I left my father’s house, and got work, and we set up in a small apartment together.’
‘That sounds so cosy,’ Masha said wistfully.
‘We were very happy for a while, even though our families disowned us both. But as you once put it, the darkness came swiftly. It started to become obvious that I couldn’t continue to live in Germany. Like you, I had a brush with the Gestapo which left me bruised in body and soul. I always had difficulty in keeping my mouth shut. My parents decided that, wicked as I was, they would help me to emigrate. Of course, I refused their help at first – but it was Dorothea herself who persuaded me to go in the end.’
‘And she stayed behind?’
‘It broke my heart to leave her,’ Rachel said calmly. ‘It breaks my heart every morning to awaken without her beside me. She had planned to join me in America, once she got her visa, but now that the war has begun, I don’t know whether we’ll ever see one another again. We parted four months ago in Leipzig, and I’ve heard almost nothing from her since then.’
Masha touched her cousin’s hand timidly. ‘I’m so sorry. How much you’ve kept inside, Rachel. I wish you’d confided in me before.’
‘One never knows how people will react.’
‘Did you think I would be disgusted?’
‘I thought you might be alarmed.’ The corners of Rachel’s eyes lifted for a moment in that secret smile. ‘When other women find out, I often see a look of trepidation on their faces. Perhaps they think I might pounce on them like a hungry lioness. But I assure you, you’re safe from me.’
Masha kissed her. ‘Of course I am. How could I think otherwise? You don’t want anybody except your Dorothea.’
‘You’re right, I should have spoken earlier. But I’ve learned to live inside myself, Masha. I live a concealed life. I’ve had to hide what I was, not only from society at large, and especially from the Nazis, to whom I am an abomination, but from my own family. I’ve grown some sharp corners as a result. I’m like one of those suits of armour one sees in museums, all spikes and uncomfortable protrusions. I know that. I’m very glad you’ve learned to put up with me.’
‘I’ll do much better from now on,’ Masha said. ‘And I know you will find Dorothea again, when all this is over.’
Rachel shrugged. ‘If the Nazis neglect to send her to a camp. And the British neglect to drop a bomb on her. I don’t entertain hopes. I’ve learned not to.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ Masha, who had found some distraction from her grief in these intriguing revelations, settled herself among the pillows. ‘Tell me about her. Don’t hold anything back!’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘I’m sure she’s beautiful. Tell me what she looks like.’
‘I don’t know whether you’d think her beautiful,’ Rachel said reflectively. ‘She is to me, but most others think her plain. She’s tall and slender. She wears round-rimmed glasses which she hates to take off because her eyesight is poor. Her hair is the same colour as yours, and very long. She usually wears it braided and coiled around her head in the old-fashioned German style, but when she lets it loose, it hangs all the way down her back.’