And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

"What did she do?"

"Stop asking questions and I'll tell you!" Erna exclaimed in exasperation. "First of all, I had perfectly wonderful holidays. I stayed most of the time with a nurse from the hospital. My mother and father are getting a divorce and I'm glad." And she stared at Flip and Jackie defiantly.

"Oh, Erna," Jackie cried.

"Well, mutti's not a bit like your mother," Erna said, "and she's never liked me. But my father was just wonderful and Marianne, she's the nurse, was awfully nice, too, and took me to the movies when she was off duty. And she told me my father was a great surgeon and a wonderful man and I saw an operation and I didn't faint or anything and my father told me he was very happy I was going to be a doctor and he'd help me all he could. And he talked to me lots and lots and said he was sorry he never had time to write me or anything but he loved me just the same and he'd try to write me more. And then he told me he and mutti disagreed about many things and they disagreed about the world and Germany and people and things in general. They'd disagreed about the war and the Nazis only father couldn't say anything because of my brothers and mutti and me and everything. He said all the injured and wounded people needed to be taken care of and it wasn't their fault, mostly, not the fault of—what did he call them? the—the little people. So he felt all right taking care of them and he was glad I was here at school because he thought it was the best place in the world for me right now. And it was really wonderful, kids, because he'd always been so kind of stern and everything and I'd never really known him before or felt that I had a father the way you two do, and now I have, even if mutti still doesn't love me."

Flip and Jackie listened, neither of them looking at the other or at Erna because there was too much emotion in the room and they both felt full of too much pity for Erna even while she was telling them how happy she was. But they caught the sorrow in her voice when she spoke of her mother, and Flip felt that having your mother not love you would be the bitterest way of all to lose her.

"Well, I expect you're wondering what all this has to do with Percy," Erna continued, her voice suddenly brisk. "My father's brother, my uncle Guenther, is a doctor, too, and he used to know Percy's sister, the singer, and he knew about this school and that's how I happened to come here. He was a Nazi for a while and then he wanted to stop being one and they put him in a prison but they needed surgeons and so they let him out and he had to pretend he was a Nazi but all the time he was trying to work against them. Really he was. I know lots of them say that now because it's—what's the word father used—expedient—but Uncle Guenther really did try, and then he just took care of the hurt people like my father did because hurt people should be taken care of no matter who they are."

"It's all right," Jackie said. "We believe you. Do go on about Percy."

"Well, Percy's sister sang in Berlin for the Americans and Uncle Guenther came to see her and they got to talking about old times and everything and then they talked about the war and how it was awful that friends should be enemies and they each said they'd wanted to be on—on the side of life and not on the side of death. And Percy's sister said she hadn't been able to do anything but sing. Madame and her husband had been living in Paris where he taught history at the Sorbonne and Percy taught art at one of the Lycées. They were both wonderful skiers and they left and came to Switzerland, to the border between Switzerland and Germany, and they became guides who helped people escape into Switzerland. Their daughter had died of pneumonia just at the beginning of the war and it made Percy very serious. Uncle Guenther said that before that she had been very gay and used to love to go to parties and things. Anyhow, they became these guides, I mean Madame and her husband did, and once when they were bringing a party over the border they were discovered and Percy's husband was shot just before they got into Switzerland."

Tender-hearted Jackie had tears in her eyes and Flip's face was pale.

"Well," Erna said, "I just thought you'd want to know and you were the only two people in school I could tell it to."