Evergreen (38 page)
Authors: Belva Plain
6
.
Paris, April 3, 1938
Dear Aunt and Uncle,
Thank God! They are alive! They are in the detention camp Dachau where prominent people in government, journalism and so forth have been taken for interrogation. I am told that the purpose is to weed out subversives … so then we have nothing to fear; certainly our families have hardly been subversive! So it should be over for them very soon. I have people working in the highest circles and shall be getting them out to France to join me here.
The way I found out all this you can’t imagine. I mentioned my father’s business contacts here in Paris. But I recalled also that one of my friends from Cambridge, a German fellow, was now attached to their embassy here. So I got in touch with him, and through him, plus the International Red Cross, I managed to get some important telephone calls through.
Oh, if they had only listened to me! True, I did not know it was coming so soon. I thought we had another year’s leeway, or I would have made Liesel and the baby go with me right now. But there is no use in such thoughts.
My German friend assures me that they will be released in a short time. I have put a large sum of money at his disposal and that can’t help but hasten things, the world being what it is. Meanwhile, I am making arrangements with the Cuban visa office to have Liesel’s parents go to Cuba, where they can wait in peace and comfort for my father-in-law’s turn to be reached on the Polish quota for the United States.
I shall write to you again, probably by next week, as soon as I hear more.
Respectfully,
Theodor Stern
7
.
Marigny-sur-Oise, August 14, 1938
Dear Monsieur and Madame Friedman,
You don’t know me, but I am a friend of the family of Dr. Theodor Stern, and so I believe indirectly of your family’s, too. Dr. Stern has been living with my wife and me for the last three months. We had been acquainted with his father many years ago. Last April we met him again in Paris, where we tried to be of some service to him with regard to his wife, child and parents … but, tragically, we were able to do nothing.
I understand that when you last heard about your relatives they were in the concentration camp Dachau. Dr. Stern had moved heaven and earth to obtain their release, but it is heartbreaking to say that he was unsuccessful. All of them, the entire family, has gone to its death, some there and some in other camps to which they, and many thousands with them, had been transferred. The only detail we know is that the baby died of pneumonia a few days after their arrest. As for the others, one doesn’t want the details.
Dr. Stern was taken very ill at the news. I personally had been concerned about him even earlier, as he had had no rest, hardly slept, was unable to eat, ran around Paris like a madman calling upon every source of possible help. When the news came he collapsed, quite understandably. It was then that we took him to our country house, a quiet place, where we obtained an excellent doctor, and have tried to do the best for him.
He seems somewhat recovered now. He eats a little and is calm, but very quiet. He asked me to write this letter for him, and I thought it was a good suggestion, rather than have him put all this into writing, freshening it all in his mind again, as it were.
Yesterday he told us that he had decided to go to England
where he spent such happy years at the university. He plans to offer his services to the British army and be ready for the war which he is certain will come soon. I am to tell you that he will write to you again, since he feels you are a link with the wife he lost.
Be assured of my very kind regards,
Jacques-Louis Villaret
8
.
Mexico City, August 23, 1938
Dear Joseph and Anna,
It is a long time since I have written to you, and you must be wondering what happened to us. So I write to tell you, and hope that you will let our brother Eduard and his family know where we are. Give them our address and please send me theirs. I suppose they must have left Vienna, but as Eduard has always had so much influence in high places I am sure they are all right, and thank God for that.
As for us, well, it has been quite a change, as you can imagine. We would have preferred coming to the United States, not only for the sake of the country itself, but because it would have been good to live near you. Family is everything; what else can you count on in this world? I would so like to be with you, to break bread together every Friday night, but it can’t be helped.
Still we are doing all right for a beginning and we can’t complain, especially when we read about what is happening in Europe. It doesn’t bear thinking about, and I could wet this page with my tears if I were to go on thinking about it.
Mexico City is very grand. The mansions along the avenues are more grand than anything in Vienna! We arrived last February having left in great haste and it was very odd to be in such a springlike place at that time of the year! We have rented a quite decent little
house, built around a small courtyard, the way they build houses here. Dena has planted flowers. Everything grows in this sunshine. And the old man—I forgot to tell you the old man is with us, ninety-three years old, and still keen in the head—the old man sits outside moving from the sun to the shade, and he actually enjoys it here, I think. At first he didn’t want to come, you know, but of course we wouldn’t leave him behind, so we forced him and he stood the voyage very well. You would be surprised.
I have got a job as a furrier with a fine firm. The fur business is good, in spite of the mild climate. There are many rich people here and they are very fashionable. Tillie, our younger daughter-in-law, is a first-class seamstress and has also got a good position with a dressmaking establishment, copying Paris models. Saul is a watchmaker and he has a job too, while Leo is still looking, but I am sure he will find something. Our younger ones, all five of them, have started school and have learned Spanish so well in these few months that we take them with us for shopping or business. For Dena and me it is much harder to learn a new language. After all, we are over forty, and this is the second time in our lives that we have come as immigrants and strangers to a new country and a new language. But we shall manage. Even the old man has learned a few words. You would laugh to hear him!
Our plans are to save as much as we can and then in a few years my sons-in-law—and by that time my sons will also be old enough—we shall open some sort of import-export business together. I think it will be much easier to get ahead here than it was in Vienna. There seems to be room for newcorners here as there wasn’t over there. Anyway, thanks be to God, we are at peace here. We rest easily at night, all of us together, and what else matters when you come down to it?
We hope you are all well, and now that you know where we are let us hear from you often.
Your loving brother,
Daniel
P.S. I had no idea North America was so big. I was about to say come and visit us, when I looked at a map and saw that New York is thousands of miles from Mexico City. Still, perhaps you will come anyway?
On a blowy, bleak morning early in November the telephone rang. When Anna answered it, she heard an unmistakable voice.
“Anna? I’m here. I got off the ship last night.”
“Paul?” she questioned in disbelief.
“Right after your card arrived I caught the
Queen Mary
over. I don’t know what I can do for you, or whether anyone can do anything. But I had to come.”
Ah, yes! A month or more ago, on a very hard day and in one of those hours that come long after a great grief, and are worse to live through than the first hour was, in such an hour, driven after long silence by some unexplained impulse, she had sent a card to Paul. “Maury is dead,” she had written, and nothing more: no signature, no date, only a cry from the heart. She had mailed it to London and afterward been sorry that she had.
“Anna? Are you there?”
“I’m here. I can’t believe you’ve come all this way—”
“Well, I have. And I’m taking no chances this time with broken appointments. I’m downstairs across the avenue with a car. So put your coat on and come.”
Trembling and agitated, she ran a comb through her hair, found a purse and hat and gloves. All these years! Three or four times a year their brief messages had gone back and forth: “Iris graduated third in the class”; “Leaving for Zurich on business, back in six weeks.” She had
grown used to thinking that this was all the contact they would ever have. Now here he was.
He was waiting beside the car. When he took her cold hands in his, it was without greeting, without a word. How thin he had grown! Thin and grave, Anna thought as she stood there, letting him search her with his eyes. When they were in the little car together she repeated, “I can’t believe you’ve come all this way.”
“Can you tell me what happened, Anna? Do you want to talk about it?”
Very simply, she told him. “It was an accident in a car. His wife was killed, too. Last March.”
“Last March? Why have you waited so long to tell me?”
She made a little gesture of resignation.
Paul mourned, “I know what Maury meant to you.”
“He left a little boy, two years old. But we don’t see him.”
“Why not?”
“There’s been a sort of feud. His other grandparents have him.”
Paul said softly, “It’s a good thing you’re very, very strong.”
“I? I feel so weak, you can’t imagine.”
“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known!” He put the car into gear and it began to roll down the avenue.
“Let’s ride around a little. Do you want to tell me any more? Or would you rather not?”
“There isn’t any more to tell. That’s it, the whole of it”
“Yes, it speaks for itself.”
“But it is good to see you, Paul. It’s been six years since that day in Riverside Park.”
“Seven in the spring,” he corrected. “It was the third of April.”
The car turned eastward through Central Park, emerging on Fifth Avenue where General Sherman still rode his proud horse to victory. The first time she had seen that statue she had been a greenhorn, fresh from Miss Mary
Thorne’s class. The city had sparkled like diamond dust, city of a million secrets: secrets between the covers of books and behind the doors of great stone houses. A rich city it had been, rich with music and flowers; the world itself had opened before young eyes like a great curled, closed flower.
“We went to the Plaza for tea,” Anna said, thinking aloud.
“Yes, and you didn’t want to accept the hat I had bought for you.” He smiled.
I wonder whether it’s a good thing or not that we can’t look ahead to see what’s going to happen.”
“A bad thing,” Paul answered promptly. “If we could see wed do a lot differently.”
“Not if what is to be is ordained anyway.”
“Ah, metaphysics! You know, it seems forever since I’ve been in New York! London is a magnificent old lady, but New York is a young girl preparing for a dance. Look there, Anna! To ride down Fifth Avenue! Isn’t it splendid?”
She knew he was trying to coax her into a lighter mood, but she answered anyway, “Only when you’ve got nothing on your mind and something in your pocket, I think.”
“How are things in that area?”
“Better, although were being terribly frugal. Joseph is putting every cent he can find into land. When the Depression ends prices will soar, he says.”
“He’s right. They will. Tell me, do you have to be home at any special time today?”
“I have the whole day. Joseph’s not coming home to dinner and Iris is going to study at a friend’s house.”
“Then you can spend the day with me. I want to hear about Iris. I want to talk about everything. Do you like the seashore in the winter?”
“I’ve never seen it then.”
“Ah, it’s beautiful! Just gulls and silence! Even the noise of the ocean is another kind of silence, I always think.” He turned the car toward the tunnel. “We’ll drive to the
Island. I’ve a little place there, which has been rented out the last few years. But it’s vacant this time of year, of course. Well walk on the beach and it will do you good.”
The highway was almost empty. They sped easily through villages and past sere fields.
“You wanted to hear about Iris. She’s a fine student, doing very well at Hunter.”
“What about boys? Is she enjoying life?”
“Not really. She’s so timid, so self-conscious. She thinks she isn’t pretty.”
“And isn’t she?”
“I’ve a picture here in my wallet. You can decide for yourself.”
Paul drew to the side of the road. For a few minutes he studied the photograph. While he was doing that Anna studied him, his keen profile, his somber eyes. What feelings must be stirring in him now at sight of this young woman who belonged to him and whom he did not know?
At last he spoke. “No, she isn’t pretty, is she? But she has a distinctive face. I’ve seen the same face on young Roman noblewomen whom people call beautiful only because they’re aristocrats and haughty.”