Waiting for a Train

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“Mary, that guy say he’s waitin’ for a train to Le Havre?”

Mary sighed as she poured the coffee. “That’s what he said.”

“Hell, that’s in France. I ran supplies through there during the war.”

“I just serve ‘em Curt, don’t try to understand ‘em.”

She returned to the customer, placed the coffee on the table, and offered to take his order. He said to her, “No, I’m waiting for the train to Le Havre.”

Curtis watched as she came back around the counter. The man at the table had not removed his coat. He looked pensive, not touching his coffee. “Strange,” the cabby said, with a shake of his head. He dropped a dime on the counter and tipped his hat as he left.

For an hour, the man sat alone, the coffee untouched, as customers trickled into the restaurant. A police officer arrived and took a long hard look at the man. The officer sauntered over to the waitress and asked in a low voice, “He been here long?”

“’Bout an hour,” Mary said. “He’s waiting for a train to France or somewhere.”

“Uh, huh,” the officer said. “Lemme use your phone?”

After he finished his call, he headed over to the man at the corner table, telling the waitress, “Mary, bring me a cup of coffee, will ya?”

“Sure will, Ted.”

The officer smiled as the man watched him remove his cap, pull out a chair and seat himself. “Going to be a cold one tonight,” the officer said. “Mind if I join ya?”

“I’m waiting for the train to Le Havre.”

The officer nodded. “Are you Mister Elijah Low-bell?”

The man’s face animated at the sound of the name. “Löbel,” he politely corrected. “Eli Löbel, Wien kleidet Geschäftseigentümer an.”

The officer looked perplexed. “I don’t understand.”

“I was dress shop owner in Vienna.”

The officer sipped his coffee. “How did you get here?”

“It’s a long story,” Eli said.

The officer nodded. “I like long stories.”

“Would you like to hear mine?”

The officer glanced at his watch. “Sure, sure, I’d like to hear it.”

Belgium, September, 1939

Eli laughed, amused by how his wife fretted over the easiest of decisions, which she was doing now with breakfast. She studied the menu and asked many questions of the patient Belgian waiter in his white apron and black bowtie.

She finally decided on the special egg dish. Eli lit a cigarette and watched the waiter hurry purposefully toward the kitchen. Then he turned to Beth and teased her about making the least important things major life decisions.

“Not so, dear,” she said, and smiled, confident in her meal choice. “Eating is very important and choosing what to eat requires a well-considered decision. You want to enjoy what you eat, don’t you?”

He balked, half seriously, at her argument. “Nonsense,” he said, and sipped his coffee. “It’s trivial compared to leaving our homeland, that’s a large life decision.”

Beth sought to placate him, but Eli continued on about how he spent the good part of two years before deciding conditions had become unbearable; and that a new life abroad where Jews were at least tolerated was best for them.

“Now,” he began to lecture, which, in their thirty years of marriage, she came to dread. “When we didn’t care for the dining car food, I needed no more than a second to decide that it would be best if we came here to eat.”

They were outside a busy station on the Belgian frontier, waiting for their train to change engines before going on to Le Havre, where they would board a ship to sail the English Channel for London, and then America.

The conductor assured them they had more than an hour before the train was to leave, plenty of time to cross the street to the restaurant.

Perhaps he’s right, she thought. She knew how silly she sometimes is trying to decide the littlest things such as whether to have onions with her potatoes. But she would beg to differ with him on one point. When it came to accepting his hand in marriage, when it came to choosing to have two children and no more, she gave careful, reasoned consideration—not silly worries. These were life-altering decisions.

“You had to think about marrying me,” Eli said, playfully.

Beth smiled. “Luckily, I loved you, so I didn’t have to think too hard.”

Eli laughed, “Life would be better, if none of us thought too hard about things.”

“Well,” she said, “we did think hard about sending our boys and their wives to America.”

Eli nodded solemnly. It was not the decision he wanted to make. Having his children nearby allowed he and Beth to enjoy their company, watch them grow as men, and, in another month for Stefan whose wife Lisa was expecting, as fathers.

Stefan and Isaac knew it was time to leave their homeland, but argued that their parents had to leave with them. Eli, ever the optimist as a dress shop owner should be, believed things would get better in a couple of years and his children could return. No, he told his sons, they would remain and keep the business going.

For Jews, though, things in Vienna only grew worse and one year after sending his sons off, Eli began to question whether he and Beth had a future in Austria. When things became so unbearable, when some of their non-Jewish friends seemed indifferent to their plight, Eli told Beth he believed it was time to leave. She sadly agreed.

Their sons welcomed the news. Both became established with small businesses of their own, helped by relatives who years ago immigrated to the New Country and who served as a support network for arriving family. Stefan started a small grocery in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Isaac a men’s shop in Kansas City.

Lisa and I just bought a four-bedroom house. We want you to stay with us, Stefan wrote his parents upon learning of their decision.

Eli listened to the train whistles of arriving and departing trains and smiled at the thought of becoming a grandfather. He told his wife how he looked forward to spending time with his grandson. Beth laughed. “How are you so sure Lisa will have a boy?”

He winked. “Just a feeling I have.”

Beth smiled.

Their breakfast arrived and they ate happily, unaware of the commotion brewing at the front of the restaurant. Suddenly, a uniformed Belgian border official interrupted their meal with an announcement:

“Germany invaded Poland early this morning and Belgium, France and England have declared war. The borders are now closed for those waiting for trains.”

Eli called out, worriedly: “What about the train leaving for Le Havre?”

“It has already departed monsieur.”

Beth grabbed Eli’s arm. Eli’s mouth went dry as he said in a hoarse voice, “No, it couldn’t have. Our luggage, our things … ”

The official spread his hands, “I am sorry monsieur.”

Eli’s voice became shrill: “But we’ve tickets for that train.”

“Monsieur, I am sorry, but all trains were ordered ten minutes ago to depart for their destinations.”

“Why didn’t you warn us earlier?” Eli demanded. “We have family waiting.”

The official, no longer wishing to discuss a matter already decided, spoke abruptly, “It is war; there is nothing more we can do. Please be advised trains are running through Germany and Austria, if that was your point of departure.”

The man turned on his heels and exited the restaurant.

On the way back to Vienna, Eli sat in a comfortable, well-appointed compartment and listened to the click-clack, click-clack of train wheels rolling over the tracks. Beth rested her head on his shoulder. He tried to understand what had happened to them.

How could a trivial decision like where to go for breakfast result in such a catastrophe?

He asked himself that question repeatedly. A few months later back in Vienna, sitting at a café in Leopoldstadt, the Jewish Quarter, he repeated it to Beth.

She sat, reflective for a moment, before answering him.

“It wasn’t that decision,” she said, quietly. “It was another decision.”

Eli looked perplexed.

Beth spoke gently. “It was our decision to stay after we sent the boys away or it was our decision to stay after the Anschluss, when they made us clean the streets because we are Jewish, or it was our decision to stay after they took our business, or after they sent many Jews to the concentration camps.”

Eli said nothing. She repeated, quietly, “It was our decision to stay.”

They returned to Vienna with just the clothes on their back, their savings – a significant enough sum to rent a room in the apartment of a Jewish family—and Beth’s gold jewelry, which with presence of mind she carried in her handbag. They acquired some articles of second-hand clothes, donations from Jewish friends, and planned another exit from the country.

Their efforts proved fruitless. For the next two years, they tried to leave Vienna, but could never secure transit visas for passage. Eli believed Herr Kunzler, the Austrian Nazi bureaucrat who decided such matters at the Foreign Office, purposely wanted to prevent their flight.

“Herr Löbel, you were already provided a transit visa and it expired because you failed to leave the country so why should we provide you with another?”

Kunzler was a thin, young man with a narrow face who peered over his spectacles like a disapproving school teacher while Eli tried to explain. “No, you see, Herr Kunzler, we did leave the country, as I told you before … ”

Kunzler interrupted him to demand loudly, “Then why are you here?”

“I, I told you … ”

Kunzler waved a dismissive hand. “Come back next week, Herr Löbel, and we will see if there is anything we can do.”

After months of this game, Eli told Beth, “They will not give us a visa. We must find another way out of the country.”

Beth nodded. “Talk to Mrs. Linder, she seems to know another way.”

Eli looked skeptical. “How would that old woman know? She’s hardly left her little apartment for as long as we’ve known her.”

“Some who have consulted her already fled and one of the women at the café told me she would know who to talk to.”

Eli was reluctant, but the following morning he paid a visit to Mrs. Linder’s apartment, next to the Stadttempel, the only synagogue not burned by the Nazis during Vienna’s Kristallnacht in 1938. She was a small, frail woman with a strong face.

“I am ninety-one years old tomorrow, Herr Löbel,” she said, ushering him into a living room where framed photographs crowded the tables and piano. She moved slowly, her back hunched as her body battled age. “You are here for a reason, yes?”

“My wife told me to come,” he said. “She said you knew of another way out of Vienna, out of Austria.”

Mrs. Linder let out a little laugh as she walked to a table and took a pen and wrote on a piece of paper. She walked over, pressed the paper into his hand, and said, “When I was a little girl, my father was an engineer for the city. He took me often into the sewers under the city. Did you know Vienna has wonderful sewers?”

Eli shook his head. She whispered, “Talk to the old Brit. He can help. God go with you and your wife.” She walked him to the door and bid him goodbye. Eli examined the paper. It had a name and an address: Charles Thayer, 23 Vogel Strasse.

Thayer lived in Brigittenau, the district neighboring Leopoldstadt. Eli traveled there, at Beth’s urging, in the shadows of dusk, worried about the stories he had heard of roaming groups of Nazi youth who beat up Jews.

He pressed the buzzer to Thayer’s apartment. A moment later the door unlatched automatically and he ventured in carefully. He took the wide staircase to the second floor where the apartment door stood open. An elderly voice from within called in English, “You’re at the right place, come in and close the door.”

Eli entered a spacious, well-appointed foyer that lead to a large living room where Thayer, a rumpled man with a full beard sat, smoking a pipe and sipping tea. Eli looked amazed. A British subject living so openly in a country at war with Britain.

“Dual citizenship, old chap,” Thayer said, pleasantly. “I was born in Austria. At the time, you see, my father, an engineer, was making modifications and improvements to the city’s sewer system. Well, his firm had an extended contract and my father elected to remain and see it through and all that. After shuttling between London and Vienna for so many years, I decided I preferred Vienna.”

Eli shook his head. “The authorities, they don’t bother you.”

Thayer laughed. “I’ve been around a long time – followed in dad’s footsteps and all that. I know many people and many people know me. No, they don’t bother me. I’m seventy one, much too old to worry about.”

Eli looked at the carpeted floor. “I should tell you why I’m here.”

Thayer waved him off. “Care for tea? My friend, Mrs. Linder, would insist.”

“You know why I’m here?”

Thayer nodded. “You’re visit is most fortuitous.”

“Then you can help us?”

Thayer smiled. “After some tea.”

They spoke little as Thayer heated water for the tea and poured. He motioned Eli to sit close to him as he leaned forward and whispered instructions. Eli listened in stunned silence. When Thayer was satisfied Eli understood, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, thanks for visiting.”

As Eli left the apartment house and started down the cobbled street, someone behind him called in a menacing tone, “Jude.” He turned to three young teenage boys who were upon him quickly, grunting as they kicked and punched until he collapsed onto the cold stones. One spat on him. Then they laughed and wandered off.

He managed after a few minutes to pull his bruised body off the street and wander home. Beth looked in horror at his bloodied face as she helped him into a chair and demanded, “Who did this to you?”

Eli grunted, “A couple of kids, ignorant.”

After Beth cleaned his face and checked to ensure he did not sustain any broken bones, she relaxed, relieved. Eli told her in an urgent tone that they would leave Vienna the following night.

“They plan to start transporting the remaining Jews in the city to concentration camps in the next few days,” he said. “Thayer says we are in great danger.”

Beth gasped. “Then we went to Mrs. Linder just in time.”

Eli spent the following morning sewing what cash and jewelry they had left into the lining of his overcoat. Beth started to pack a suitcase and he told her to stop. “All we are allowed to bring is the clothes on our back,” he said.

Late that evening, they left their apartment in the Jewish quarter. They walked with trepidation, fearing an attack from the roving youth, to Karlsplatz. Their journey was uneventful. They waited nearly ten anxious minutes near the subway pavilion for Thayer.

He arrived at a casual gait, smoking his pipe; just a man out for a stroll. He nodded for them to follow. He walked to a kiosk off the square, gave a furtive glance around, and opened a narrow door that led them inside and down a circular stairway.

Beth looked startled, but Eli assured her as they descended into Vienna’s labyrinth sewer system. Thayer switched on his flashlight to illuminate the way. At the bottom they followed narrow, stone-constructed corridors until they reached the canal, where a wide stream of water rushed under the city to the Danube.

“I say, old chap, hold the torch while I re-light my pipe, will you,” Thayer said.

Eli took the flashlight and Beth asked cautiously, “What are we doing here?”

“Not to worry, my associate will be along shortly and you’ll be off.”

“You know the sewer system well,” Eli said.

“Ought to, old chap, not only have I been hunting down here since I was a lad, but during the February uprising in thirty-four I helped a couple of Shutzbund boys escape the fascists firing squad.”

“Hunting?” Beth queried.

“Playing,” Thayer clarified. “Exploring, doing what young lads do.”

Footsteps echoed toward them, startling Beth. “Ah, here he comes,” Thayer said.

As the man approached, his face made visible in the light, Eli gasped in panic as Herr Kunzler, the Nazi bureaucrat from the Foreign Office, stood before him and grinned.

Defeated, Eli turned to Thayer. “Surprised, old chap? Let Franz explain.”

Kunzler bowed his head, politely. “Frau Löbel, Herr Löbel. I will escort you to Switzerland.”

Eli stood disbelief. “You, help us? But you’re ...”

“Yes, I am a fascist, but more important, I’m not a murderer,” Kunzler said.

Eli was blunt. “Why do you help me now, but not when I needed a visa?”

“Herr Löbel, you know what is going on in our country today. No one can be trusted, even I, the head of the visa department, can not trust my employees. As dedicated a fascist as I am, the Gestapo suspect people like me because of my Austrian loyalty.”

Thayer spoke, an edge of anxiety in his voice. “I say, you can discuss this more while you’re on your way. It is time to get started.”

Kunzler shook Thayer’s hand, and then motioned to the Löbels, “Come, speed is of the essence.”

The Löbels hesitated. Thayer urged, “Go ahead, old chap, it’s your only chance.”

Eli thought about his decision to leave the train that September morning, and wondered whether he was about to make another fateful one.

“Herr Löbel, bitte, there is not much time,” Kunzler pleaded.

Eli looked at Beth.

Thayer hissed, “Bloody hell, man, if I was going to give you up I would have done it on the Karlsplatz.”

Indecision shadowed Eli’s face. He stood hesitantly.

“You are wasting precious time,” Thayer insisted.

“I just don’t know,” Eli said.

Thayer, exasperated, said to Kunzler, “I’m afraid you’re going alone, old chap.”

Beth looked into her husband’s eyes, an assured smile crossed her face as she squeezed Eli’s arm. It was all he needed. Whether or not they were being lead to their demise did not matter. They were going together. That’s how she looked at their life.

Eli looked at Kunzler. To Thayer’s relief, he said, “We’re ready.”

The Löbels followed Kunzler, prepared for whatever the outcome. They hoped they were indeed escaping to Switzerland. They walked more than a mile along the main sewer line, a large underground canal. From there they went through a series of narrow passageways that brought them to an overflow tunnel. The tunnel led to a heavy iron-lattice gate, beyond which the outside, a secluded location on the Danube’s dark shores.

The tall creaky gate swung open as Kunzler pushed. They walked to the shore, where a row boat awaited. Kunzler directed the Löbels into it before pushing off and hopping aboard. The two men rowed silently, guiding the boat westward, as Beth sat quietly, watching them.

They rowed several miles close to shore until they came to a Dutch barge, one of hundreds that ply the Danube daily. Its hull was painted black and the low-slung cabin roof forest green. They tied to it and climbed aboard. Inside, to the Löbel’s surprise, was a delightful house boat.

“We will travel this way until we reach the other side of Linz,” Kunzler said. He started the engines and the boat left its mooring for a two-day trip that proved uneventful until they stopped at an inspection station. Kunzler had Eli and Beth hide in a tight, secret compartment under the floorboards.

They barely breathed as they listened to the river inspector and Kunzler chortle about the comfortable, but sometimes lonely life of a river inspector. The conversation turned serious when the inspector asked: “Is there anyone else traveling with you?”

“No,” Kunzler said.

The inspector paced the floor. “I’ve been told to watch for smugglers, particularly those who smuggle Jews.”

“Why would anyone smuggle Jews?”

“It’s not me, you understand, but the Gestapo. They check my records every day and ask me if I checked for stowaways.”

“Yes, well, I do have a couple of Jews hiding underneath the floor boards, but they are old Jews, no good to anyone.”

The conversation paused. The Löbels panicked. Then the inspector broke out in loud laughter. “Ha! You almost had me there.”

Kunzler laughed. “I cannot pass up an opportunity for a good joke.”

“I would have appreciated it more if you had said frauleins.”

“Ja!”

“You don’t have any of those around, do you?”

Kunzler smiled sadly and shook his head.

“Ah, a river inspector can only hope.”

“Well, then, inspector, if there is nothing else.”

The inspector stamped his papers and ambled off the boat. Half an hour later, as the boat chugged along the river, Kunzler lifted the floor boards and freed the Löbels.

Eli angrily confronted Kunzler: “What were you doing, trying to get us killed?”

Kunzler spoke quietly. “Please trust me. I felt I had to say something to him, and sometimes the truth is harder to believe then a lie.”

“But he might have believed you.”

“However, he didn’t, did he?”

They reached their destination in darkness. Kunzler steered the barge toward a wooded area of shoreline, a spot where he often left it moored. They walked a few hundred yards to a road where a sedan and a driver, a tall young man, waited. Kunzler greeted the man warmly, first with a handshake, then a hug.

The man looked sullen as he whispered into Kunzler’s ear. Kunzler’s body tensed and he stood motionless, head bowed, until the man finished his words. His face drawn, Kunzler turned to the Löbels and said, “Let’s go.” He motioned to the sedan’s backseat.

Eli became suspicious, unsure what to make of what he watched transpire. He sensed something wrong. “Where are we going?” he demanded.

“To Switzerland,” Kunzler said. “We must travel along the back roads, where there are no patrols, to reach the border. Please, get in.”

“I don’t like this?” Eli said. “Who is this man? Why does he whisper to you?”

Kunzler’s voice broke. “This man is my friend. He just informed me that my lover was killed by the Gestapo. Now, please … we must … hurry … if we are to make it to Switzerland.”

Beth nudged her husband. Eli reluctantly climbed into the sedan with her. They began a long journey along twisting, rural and mountainous roads toward Switzerland.

Near dawn, they arrived at a farmhouse outside the village of Gargellen, nestled among snow-capped mountains.

Deserted, the farm appeared to have been untended for several years. Kunzler turned to the Löbels: “This is Schmidt’s place.” He nodded at the driver. “An inheritance he fails to upkeep, but there’s food and a place to rest.”

“Rest?” Eli asked.

Kunzler pointed to the mountains, dusted with the first snows of October. “We leave this evening, on foot. Switzerland is on the other side, about a day-and-half walk.”

Eli looked worriedly at Beth. She smiled assuredly. “I can do it,” she said. He studied her face, looking for a hint of apprehension, but there was none.

Anticipating Eli’s questions, Kunzler assured him the trail through the Rätikon Alps was neither treacherous nor too strenuous. An old trade route used by smugglers centuries earlier. Along the way, an old alpine hut awaited where they would rest.

“What about border patrols?” Eli asked.

“A guide will arrive later to lead us through the mountains,” Kunzler said. “He will take us to a house in Switzerland for refugees such as ourselves.”

“You? Are there that many political refugees fleeing Austria?”

Kunzler smiled, sadly. “Herr Löbel, my politics has nothing to do with my flight, though I’ve come to fully realize these last few days that my politics is incompatible with myself as a person, with who I am.”

Beth asked, softly, “And who are you?”

“I am a homosexual,” Kunzler said, looking at Beth, then Eli. “It is being used against me for political reasons – the Nazis want to purge society of homosexuals, just like they are doing to the Jews.

“And so, there’s a man in my office, long wanting my position, who has exposed me. Sadly, he himself is a homosexual. I know because I have seen him at the clubs, though he lives a heterosexual bourgeois life with a wife and three children.”

“Why didn’t you expose him?”

“That is not the type of person I am,” Kunzler said. “Besides, this man has powerful friends in the party while I had one friend, not powerful, but who warned me and my lover that we had been accused of immoral acts and that the police were coming for us. I managed to escape to O-Five, the resistance movement in Vienna; Johann, my lover, had not.”

Kunzler looked at the driver. “Schmidt said they beat him to death – trying to get him to tell them my whereabouts. Unfortunately, he had no idea where I went.”

“I am so sorry,” Beth said.

Kunzler could not look at the couple. “Don’t. I’m paying for poor decisions, one of which is not having helped you and your husband to get a visa two years ago when there was still a chance to get you one.”

By now Schmidt had made a crackling fire in the large fireplace and had produced bread, cheese and a dusty bottle of chardonnay. Beth and Eli sat close together on a sofa near the hearth, sipping wine with their food. Kunzler and Schmidt conferred quietly.

They slept late in the morning and into early afternoon. Schmidt served a hearty stew as darkness fell over the Alps, then produced hiking boots for Beth and Eli. They smiled at one another as they pulled them on and tightened the laces.

An hour after dusk, there was a soft knock on the back door. The guide, a young Austrian man, brown-haired and ruddy cheeked from the cold, entered and urged they begin the journey immediately.

“Did you see any patrols?” Eli blurted, anxiously.

The guide shook his head, but warned a patrol could appear at any moment.

The group set off. Kunzler bid Schmidt goodbye with a long hug. Eli and Beth faced the last leg of their journey with excitement and anxiousness. A cold, hard wind whistled across the alpine pasture as they ascended into the mountains.

A few hours into their trek, high in the Alps with the winds kicking up and snow flurries whipping about, the guide stopped and pointed across a deep valley below, to a toe path winding upward, where a small light moved along. “It’s a patrol,” he said.

“Are we in danger?” Kunzler asked.

The guide shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He looked up at the peaks before them. “Our trail takes us through those and on the other side is the old hut, just about two hours away from here. I don’t think the patrol will go that way.”

“How are you so sure?” Eli demanded.

“In about an hour we will leave this path and follow an undistinguished path to cross over to the old smugglers trade route in the Rätikons,” the guide said. “Few people know about the cross-over path or the smugglers route.”

The group trudged onward. As they reached the cross-over path, heavier snow fell and frigid winds howled. The guide stopped and produced a rope from his rucksack that he tied around his waist before passing it to Beth who traveled behind him. He ordered everyone to secure themselves to the rope.

“I’m afraid we are in for some whiteout conditions, which means the going will be slower,” the guide said. “Everyone stay close. The whiteouts are usually momentary, but we must stop so as not to get lost or go over a cliff.”

They moved onward through heavy falling snow and snapping winds. The hour to reach the old hut became nearly two because of the whiteouts. Eli felt relief when they arrived at the large, one-room, low-slung cabin, built into the side of the mountain.

Inside, the guide built a fire. The room warmed. Kunzler produced cheese, brandy and bread. The winds howled outside. The snow stopped, leaving a starry night and a white blanket several inches deep.

“It’s early in the season, but the heavier snows are coming,” the guide said, to no one in particular.

“How far are we from the Swiss border?” Eli asked.

The guide thought for a moment. “Not quite four hours. It’s downhill, but the terrain is rugged.”

Beth and Eli lay together discussing the events that brought them to this place, high in the Alps. “It started when we were waiting for a train,” Eli remarked. He looked at his wife and told her that through all their troubles and tribulations since that day he had come to love her more than ever. Beth kissed him sweetly and told him the same.

For Eli, the world, as insane and violent as it was, seemed better than ever.

After food and two-hours rest, the group set out again. Heavy clouds obscured the starry night sky as a front moved in and snow began to fall. It became treacherous along the toe paths that hugged the soaring rock faces, the going slow. They formed a line along the path: the guide, Beth, Kunzler and Eli.

Snow fell faster, heavier. The wind soon became gale-force. The guide stopped, and once more removed the rope from his rucksack to tie around his waist when a powerful gust swept the side of the mountain.

Beth lost her footing. She gasped as she tried to regain it, but slipped and tumbled from the toe path. Kunzler reacted too quickly to grab her and lost his footing. Together, they plunged silently into the white darkness, falling thousands of feet.

Eli stood in disbelief, unable to move, unable to speak. The guide spoke to him, but he did not respond. The guide started shouting over the screaming winds: “We must move and get off the path. Now. Before it becomes impassable.”

The guide tied the rope around Eli and together they moved forward, against whipping winds and furious snows. Despondent, Eli kept one hand on the guide’s shoulder, for comfort as well as safety. A little more than an hour later, they reached a wide path cut through the mountains that opened their descent into Switzerland. The way to freedom Eli longed to take with Beth.

Against relentlessly harsh weather, he and the guide followed the serpentine path down for more than two hours when, with the winds dying and the snow finally ending, they reached a Swiss valley. Dawn was about an hour away.

Eli looked back at the mountains, where he wanted to search for his wife, but the guide told him the darkness and snows made it impossible. “I am sorry, but it’s too late in the season for a search party, not until spring,” the young man said.

At a nearby village gasthof, Eli settled into a room arranged by the Resistance. He tried to gather his thoughts and emotions. Never had he felt so alone. Disbelief engulfed him. A few days later, he accepted a place on a communal dairy farm, where he earned his keep with daily chores while he waited out the war.

In late spring of the last full-year of the war, Eli accompanied an Alpine search and rescue team into the snow-covered mountains, but they were unsuccessful at finding the remains of Beth and Kunzler. Eli wondered and hoped she survived, although Swiss authorities told him that was hardly possible.

Two years later, with the war over and Europe beginning to reconstruct its cities and societies, Eli reached America as a refugee.

He went to Harrisburg to live with his son, Stefan, his wife, Lisa, and their now three children. A successful grocer, Stefan owned a large supermarket at the corner of Emerald and 3rd Streets. He expanded their large home anticipating both his parents.

Eli never put to rest his replay of that day on the Belgian frontier in 1939 when they missed the train to Le Havre. Would she be with him today? They should never have left the passenger car.

Stefan and Lisa made Eli comfortable in their home, but Eli’s passion for life no longer burned bright. He mostly stayed home, where he spent hour reading the newspaper and listening to the radio. Sometimes, he visited his son’s supermarket.

One day, when memories of the Alpine journey became unbearable, he concluded that Beth was actually waiting for him in Le Havre. He left the house to catch the train to meet her. He knew she would be there.

A whistle blew and Eli smiled at the officer. “So, I’m waiting for the train.”

The policeman nodded. He listened to his sad story for nearly three quarters of an hour. The door to the Alva opened, letting in a blast of cold air. Eli looked up to see Stefan, approaching with a frantic expression. “Dad! Are you alright?”

Eli smiled, oblivious to his son’s concern. The officer stood. “He’s fine, Mr. Low-bell,” and then whispered, “I think he may need a doctor. He thinks he’s in France.”

Stefan nodded and thanked the officer as he escorted his father to a forest-green sedan. It was curious to Stefan and Lisa that his father would suddenly depart the house without a word to either of them. More worrisome was how distant Eli appeared.

Before Stefan and Eli returned home, Lisa found on her father-in-law’s chair a newspaper, folded to a small article in the international section. Curious, she read the headline, “Remains of man and woman found in Alps.” She read further: “Swiss climbers came across the skeletal remains of a couple late last summer but authorities found nothing to determine their identification or reason for their demise. The investigation is continuing, but authorities are doubtful of solving the case.”

Stefan believed it unlikely the identities of the couple would ever be known, but he and Lisa gently questioned Eli about the article. “Dad, you don’t think this is mother’s remains, do you?” Eli just gave his son a silent, watery eyed response.

Doctors concluded Eli suffered a condition known as delusional disorder. They surmised the newspaper article may have been the trigger; the grief of losing Beth finally became too much for him. They assured Stefan that his father was normal, that he only used his delusion to escape the reality that his wife was gone.

Eli lived to see the Bar Mitzvah of his oldest grandson, Elijah. Until his death, he would from time to time disappear to the Alva and sit at the corner table, which they kept reserved for him. And each time Stefan came to gently collect his father, Eli told his son: “I’m waiting for the train to Le Havre.”