A Faraway Island by Annika Thor Read Free Book Online

the way to bedtime.
    “Evert,” Aunt Märta calls from the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
    Uncle Evert gets up. “Wash …
waschen
…,” he says, pointing to his work clothes. He vanishes up the stairs.
    Stephie goes into the kitchen to set the table. Three plates, three glasses, three forks, and three knives, instead of the usual two.
    Something hard bumps against her left thigh. The china dog! She’s forgotten all about it. What if it breaks! Or what if Aunt Märta notices the bulge in her pocket and asks what it is. She has to hide it in a safe place. As soon as she hears that Uncle Evert has stopped making noise at the washstand and has gone into his bedroom, Stephie extends her hands toward Aunt Märta and imitates his word.
    “Wash …”
    Aunt Märta nods approvingly. Stephie rushes up the stairs and into her room. Wrapping Mimi in a handkerchief, she hides the china dog at the very back of the bottom dresser drawer, along with her most treasured possessions. Then she hurries out and washes her hands.
    At the table, hands folded, she and Uncle Evert listen to Aunt Märta say grace.
    “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. Let this food for us be blessed.”
    “Amen,” all three of them conclude.
    While they eat, Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert talk about his fishing trip and about the news on the island during his absence. Stephie grasps a word here and there. She pokes around at her portion of cod, removing the slimy gray skin and mashing the fish with her potatoes and gravy. The whole thing becomes an unappetizing white mess.
    As usual, she rinses down her bites of food with milk, and as usual her milk glass is empty long before her plate is. She rehearses silently several times before trying out her new Swedish phrase, the one she heard little Elsa say just a few hours earlier.
    “Would you please pass the milk?”
    Aunt Märta’s chin drops, and she stops talking mid-sentence.
    “Well, I never … !” Uncle Evert exclaims. “Just listen to that perfect Swedish!”
    “She’s a quick learner,” Aunt Märta adds, passing Stephie the milk pitcher.
    “That’s good.” Uncle Evert smiles encouragingly from across the table. “It won’t be long until you sound just like the rest of us when you speak Swedish. Then you’ll be able to go to school.”
    Stephie doesn’t really catch his meaning. But she does recognize the Swedish word for school.
    “Please,” she says. “School.”
    She thinks about her old school in Vienna. Her real school, where she was the top student in her class and always got gold stars for her assignments. Where her teacher liked her—or at least Stephie believed so, until one day in March last year.
    The day after the German army invaded Vienna, her teacher came to school with a swastika pinned to her pretty blazer.
    “Heil Hitler!”
she began the day by saying to the class. No more “Good morning, children.”
    “Heil Hitler!”
some of the students responded, raising an arm in the prescribed salute. Others just stared, unsure as to what the teacher expected of them.
    They soon learned. From that day on, she told them, they were all expected to start the day with
“Heil Hitler!”
All but the Jewish children, that is, who were not allowed to perform the Hitler salute. For that reason, the teacher told them, they must sit apart, in the back row of desks, so she could be sure that all the German children, and none of the Jewish ones, were doing the salute correctly.
    An incredulous mumble rose from the room. What was she saying? Could she possibly mean it?
    “Well …?” their teacher said, a stern expression on her face. “Did you hear me?”
    The class monitor, Irene, got up, taking her books from her desk, and moved from the front row to an empty desk in the far corner at the back of the room. A few others followed. Some of the children who had always sat in the back row left their desks and moved forward to the ones now free. Stephie and Evi didn’t budge from