THE GROUND UNDER MY FEET

expect you to act responsibly, she goes on. Just think of the danger walking around Vienna.... What could Frau Doktor and I do if you were caught? (Oh please be firm and strong, I say to myself. I don't want her to be helpless.) Though you're still children, you have to act like adults now. I know it's hard." She leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later with a box of chocolates under her arm. Let's have a treat. She opens the lid of the boxgood Viennese chocolates like I havent seen for monthswith nuts and creams inside. She passes the box of chocolates around. Will we promise to look after ourselves and the younger children? We are the middle children, thirteen and fourteen. She says she trusts us to do right. I adore this woman. If ever you cant protect me, I say to myself, Ill protect you. We promise. Shortly after that episode, Renée and her mother leave for England. When its my turn to leave, I am heartbroken to say goodbye to the teachers and children. But there will be Renée, in England. And my parents, I dont allow myself to question, will make it to America. Goodbye, Vienna, city I hate and love. A year or two later, after I was already in America, I found out that Mutuli emigrated to England shortly after I did and became head of a boarding school there for German and Austrian refugee children. (How grieved I was that I didnt know about this when I was in England. I would have put up a fight to be transferred to her school instead of living, hungry and homesick, with my stingy host family in Southport!) Frau Doktor, I learned after the war, never got out. She was deported together with the artist we thought she was in love with, and murdered in a camp; we never found out which one.

Eva Kollisch