Exodus - Leon Uris [33]
As he left, Kitty shook her head. It was mad. Why did she come? Why did she come? She fought to get herself under command—to brace herself to look at that girl again.
The door opened and Kitty tensed. The girl stepped slowly into the room. She studied the girl’s face, fighting off the urge to clutch the child in her arms.
The girl looked at her curiously, but she seemed to understand something and her gaze conveyed pity.
“My name ... is Katherine Fremont,” Kitty said unevenly. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
What a lovely child she was! Her eyes sparkled and she smiled now and held out her hand to Kitty.
Kitty touched the girl’s cheek—then she dropped her hand.
“I ... I am a nurse. I wanted to meet you. What is your name?”
“My name is Karen,” the girl said, “Karen Hansen Clement.”
Kitty sat on the cot and asked the girl to sit down, too.
“How old are you?”
“I’m sixteen now, Mrs. Fremont.”
“Please call me Kitty.”
“All right, Kitty.”
“I hear that ... you work with the children.”
The girl nodded.
“That’s wonderful. You see ... I ... I may be coming to work here and ... and, well ... I’d like to know all about you. Would you mind telling me?”
Karen smiled. Already she liked Kitty and she knew instinctively that Kitty wanted—needed—to be liked.
“Originally,” Karen said, “I came from Germany ... Cologne, Germany. But that was a long time ago ...”
Chapter Eleven
COLOGNE, GERMANY, 1938
Life is quite wonderful if you are a young lady of seven and your daddy is the famous Professor Johann Clement and it is carnival time in Cologne. Many things are extra special around carnival time, but something that is always extra special is taking a walk with Daddy. You can walk under the linden trees along the banks of the Rhine or you can walk through the zoo that has the most magnificent monkey cages in the entire world or you can walk past the big cathedral and stare up at those twin towers over five hundred feet high that seem to push right through the sky. Best of all is walking through the municipal forest very early in the morning with Daddy and Maximilian. Maximilian is the most remarkable dog in Cologne, even though he looks kind of funny. Of course, Maximilian isn’t allowed in the zoo.
Sometimes you take Hans along on your walks, too, but little brothers can be a nuisance.
If you are such a little girl you love your mommy, too, and wish she would come along with you and Daddy and Hans and Maximilian, but she is pregnant again and feeling rather grumpy these days. It would be nice if the new baby is a sister because one brother is just about as much as a girl can bear.
On Sunday everyone, except poor Maximilian, who has to watch the house, gets into the auto and Daddy drives along the Rhine River to Grandma’s house in Bonn. Many of the aunts and uncles and bratty cousins gather every Sunday and Grandma has baked a hundred cookies, or maybe even more.
Soon, when summer comes, there will be a wonderful trip along the coast up north and through the Black Forest or to Brenner’s Park Hotel at the springs at Baden-Baden. What a funny name—Baden-Baden.
Professor Johann Clement is a terribly important man. Everyone at the university doffs his cap and smiles and bows and says, “Good morning, Herr Doctor.” At night there are other professors and their wives and sometimes fifteen or twenty students pack into Daddy’s study. They sing and argue and drink beer all night long. Before Mommy’s stomach started showing she used to like to joke and dance with them.
There are so many wonderful tastes and smells and feelings and sounds for a happy seven-year-old girl.
The best times of all were those nights when there would be no visitors and Daddy didn’t have to work in his study or give a lecture. The whole family would sit before the fireplace. It was wonderful to sit on Daddy’s lap and watch the flames and smell his pipe and hear his soft deep voice as he read a fairy tale.
In those years of 1937 and 1938 many strange things were happening