Leaving Home

“Hannah, are you ready? It’s almost time to go,” David said to his wife.

She picked up her suitcase and the briefcase, which held all of their documentation that would get them past the border into neutral Sweden from Denmark, and took one last look around their beautiful home. Ready? How could she ever be ready? Were her bags packed? Yes. But how could she fit their whole lives into one suitcase? Were the boys ready? Yes. But how can they know that this was forever and not a vacation like she had made it sound to them?

“Oh, David, how did it ever come to this?” She sighed. Many of their friends and family had left Denmark when they began hearing of what happened to the Jews in Germany and Poland. It wasn’t long before they heard the Nazis were turning north. Their closest relative, a cousin of David’s, and his wife packed up and moved to America a month after Kristallnacht, over a year before. They were young and had no children. They worked as teachers in the city. They were easily uprooted and transportable. They hadn’t spent their lives running in the Danish countryside. They hadn’t worked their hands to the bone milking and caring for cattle for their livelihood. They hadn’t turned an acre and two milking cows into one of the most profitable farms in Denmark. They hadn’t built something they had planned to give their children one day like her parents had given to her and David.

“Mommy, now we are going to take our boat ride?” Immanuel stood beside her. He was bundled in his coat, hat, and mittens for the ride. Even though it was September and 50 degrees she had made them all wear as many layers of clothing as they could so that they’d have more when they got to Sweden.

“Yes, baby.”

“Hannah? I have to do it now. Are you ready? Put everything in the car we have to be at the boat in three hours. I have to do it now,” David said poking his head into the bedroom where she and Immanuel stood.

She nodded. “Come, Immanuel, let’s go find Adam and the three of us will play the piano and sing one last time before we go.” She toted the bags to the car and she and Immanuel called Adam in from the yard to sit down at the piano. David trudged out to the barn with his shotgun over his shoulder. Hannah suppressed a sob as she saw Lady, their Shepard, bounding along beside him.

“Momma? What’s wrong?” Immanuel asked.

“Oh, nothing! What shall we sing?”

“‘Op, Lille Hans!’ ‘Op, Lille Hans!’” Immanuel chanted.

“No, that song is for babies. Please can we sing something more fun?” Adam whined, since he had turned 10 and was now a “double digit,” he thought the sweet things of his childhood were behind him. How Hannah wished she could keep him and her five-year-old Immanuel innocent forever.

CRACK! A gunshot echoed through the air.

“What--?” Adam started, but Hannah began banging on the piano keys and singing “Op, Lille Hans” as if her life depended on it. Immanuel joined in and began dancing around the sitting room. Hannah sang louder. She could still hear the gunshots. “Grab some pots for drums!” She shouted on a break from the lyrics. Immanuel grabbed pots and wooden spoons from the kitchen. Adam took two lids and banged them like cymbals. The boys stomped and sang and banged their pots.

Damn, David thought as he puked again. He stood panting over the corpse his favorite cow. He’d killed her and her stall mate first not sure that he’d have the courage to save them for last. She hadn’t done anything to be his favorite. There was just something about her big eyes that seemed so humanlike. She had always pranced a little when he came in for milking. She was the only cow he talked to. Hell, when Hannah and the kids were staying at her parent’s house in Randers that cow and Lady were the only two living things he spoke to.

Lady. Damn. Damn! Damn! Damn! They had been so focused on the boys and setting up the boat and destroying the cattle so that the Germans couldn’t use them, they hadn’t decided what to do about Lady. She lay whimpering in the corner of the barn. The gun had scared her; and yet she didn’t leave him. She still trusted him. She couldn’t go with them. If she stayed at the house there would be no one to feed her. If he let left her outside she’d freeze or starve to death soon. There was no one they knew who could afford to take her in and things would be tighter once the Nazis arrived.

He bent down, cupped his hand under Lady’s chin and kissed her nose. Her tail thumped the floor. David scratched her belly one last time in her favorite spot and she squirmed with pleasure. With shaking hands David reloaded the gun and stood over his dog.

On what felt like the thousandth round of “Op. Lille Hans” David stumbled into the room. Tears streamed from Hannah’s face, but she couldn’t stop singing.

“Hannah, it’s done. We have to go,” he croaked.

She couldn’t stop singing. “Hannah!” he shouted. “Hannah!” The boys had stopped singing and their instruments dropped to the floor. Hannah continued to sing. David put his arms around her. “Hannah, I did it. It’s over, we’ll be OK.”

She drew her fingers away from the piano and David led her to the car. Hannah gasped when she saw the flames licking the side of the barn.

“Shhh,” David whispered. “Don’t let them see.”

She nodded. “Why?”

“I couldn’t let them lay there and rot.”

She nodded again. With the boys in the backseat and the bags in the trunk, David grasped Hannah’s hand with one of his and with the other he drove them away from home.