Pictures of the Past (21 page)
“Just before the camp was liberated and there was a mad rush to escalate the extermination, my main officer fled, simply allowing me to hide, as if that act would make me thankful to him. So you see—my art—my talent—was a blessing and a curse. Yes, it allowed me to skirt death. But, you know, because now they are starting to write more about those times— it is called ‘survivor’s guilt.’
“If my talent had been the violin, I might have been one of the pretty girls in skirts playing tunes like ‘The Merry Widow’ as the prisoners followed the path to the ‘delousing area,’ which was really the gas chamber. That memory might have even been worse.”
And now Rachel was the one to stare blankly and search for her voice following the emotional narrative. “But, Aunt Ida, maybe you are looking at this wrong— punishing yourself for nurturing a talent—maybe the moral is that we all need a talent—something that will distinguish us and make us valued. Something that will save us…”
Ida would hear none of it—while Rachel thought only of the word “survivor,” she could focus only on the word “guilt.”
O
nly weeks before her wedding, Rachel was kissing her two men good-bye and was returning to a prestigious suburb near her Chicago hometown for her first permanent staff assignment at her new magazine. When she entered the home of Blaise McCormick, she was overwhelmed on two levels. First was that she should have the good fortune not only to tour such a fabulous property, but also to get paid for it. And second was that instead of pandering to the whims and wants of the Twiggy-thin models, she was being pandered to by residents, proud and humbled that
Architecture Today
had chosen their property. “Would you like some coffee or tea? Perhaps should I move this vase? What can I get for you, dear? Are your accommodations satisfactory or would you care to stay in one of the guest bedrooms?” Now
this
was a dream job. A few times at these beginning assignments on Chicago’s North Shore, she was baffled by an owner’s mention of their friends, the Woodmere family, as if Rachel should know them, but she smiled noncommittally and offered no reply.
On the grounds of the McCormick property, in the expanse of back lawn that bluffed gently to the magnificent Lake Michigan, were seven distinct planting areas, a private botanical garden. Had Mrs. McCormick herself not been an amateur horticulturist with a vast knowledge of her grounds, Rachel would have felt thoroughly ill equipped to conduct the interview. But Blaise McCormick offered a wealth of knowledge about each annual and perennial and the European gardens on which her designs were based.
Over the two days of her assignment, Rachel became increasingly enamored not only with the landscaping, but with the lyrical narration of the owner, with her captivating and eclectic dress style. And then a further idea came to Rachel. What if she convinced
Architecture Today
to expand to a new media and produce a television special on Great Homes and Great Owners. Ideas were developing in her mind that she would let remain at this point on the back burner. Who was she to pretend that she had enough experience in the field? How naïve she was to think that she didn’t need a great deal more tutelage in all related fields before she was qualified to even make the proposal.
It was her work personality, with its wizened nods and “of courses,” and “oh yes, I am familiar with that,” that helped her to bluff her way through this initial amazing assignment. And such a loquacious socialite as Blaise McCormick was most comfortable and would be most forthcoming when she had no competition for knowledge, just a responsive ear like Rachel’s. In the future, though, she would be better prepared, because she knew she should be more the one in control, knew the traps journalists fall into when they are in too much awe of their subjects.
And these were all things that Rachel would come to understand in her new field. The subject could be as much the homeowner as the home—each with a distinct personality, most often in a tandem mold. But most magazines missed the opportunity to feature this. The totally traditional mansion—with no painting dating past 1907, for instance, was most often hosted by a soft-spoken, modestly dressed couple, who needed to be prodded with each description.
In the most contemporary homes—where horizontal lines, multi-levels of glass windows and leather furniture in black and white would present themselves, there would be similarly dressed owners in all-black or all-white linen fabrics, wrinkling at the photo shoots. Black-rimmed clear lenses and blacked-out sunglasses identified the interchangeable residents. Rachel didn’t seek out those assignments, though, for she found the homes so minimalist that she was often struck with “writer’s block.”
It was actually on her honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel that she expanded her professional vision. But first, on that sacred, romantic weekend, she fell even more in love with Richard than she could have believed. In the morning, emerging from the movie setting of the magnificent bed, she walked over and pushed the drapes aside to reveal the horse carriage lines fronting Central Park. Richard awoke almost simultaneously from her stirring and took his place behind her. He put his hand around her waist and once more began to lower the straps of her nightgown so he could gently caress her shoulder and kiss her neck.
“Good morning, Mrs. Stone,” he whispered in her ear, as he slightly nibbled it.
“Good morning, husband,” she returned. They had never been so truly alone, feeling the luxury of waking up together, knowing that no one was wanting them right now—that the only people needing them that morning were each other. And so with just the slyest of smiles, they returned to the bed and replayed the scenes from the night before.
But later, when Richard had left the room to grab a newspaper and wait for her at the restaurant for breakfast, after she had time to luxuriate in a morning bath in the opulent suite, she called her editor and said simply, “We’re doing hotels too.”
Her first such assignment was the Drake Hotel in Chicago, boasting the city’s premier location as gateway to the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue. It was one more assignment that would prove a magnet to her, pulling her back to her hometown, to the comfort of her roots.
Rachel would introduce the property by pointing out important historical notes. “In the palatial Italian Renaissance style, the Drake was built in 1920 at a cost of $10,000,000. The vision of the flamboyant architect Ben Marshall, working for the Drake family of hoteliers—he not only designed the impressive exterior, but was extolled for his interior shopping arcade, destination restaurant, the Cape Cod Room, and magnificent ballroom, the Gold Coast Room. Over the years, the guest registry would include such notables as England’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and Winston Churchill, U.S. presidents Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower, and even Walt Disney.”
The management treated Rachel royally, offering her a magnificent corner suite. Out one window and the shopping mecca of Michigan Avenue presented itself. Out another window, and you were overlooking Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan, as the steady parade of cars on Lake Shore Drive swung into view. There was no conflict of interest in her accepting luxury accommodations like this, as it might have been had she been a journalist writing a review. When you do an assignment spread in a pictorial magazine, it is already assumed that a positive, even exuberant write-up will follow.
She was even allowed a discreet peek at the guest list of the Drake, which revealed, for that weekend alone, among the guests—one rock star with a six-room entourage of band members, stagehands, light and sound coordinators, managers, and possibly some female groupies. The hotel management intimated that a security deposit of several thousand dollars had been required, as past entertainers in that particular field had done everything from stealing towels and lamps to trashing rooms.
Elsewhere in the hotel, a senator from a neighboring state was enjoying the Chicago summer with his family, although rumors were floating that when they went off on their museum explorations, he went off to a room on a lower floor, also charged to his Capitol Hill account.
And seven members of a major national sports figure’s family, whose team was in the off-season, were seen frequenting the lobby and lounges of the hotel. The football player, his wife, parents, and children were actually mannerly and quiet people, but all of such an enormous stature that housekeeping had already been in their rooms with three times the normal complement of towels and it had been necessary to repair sagging bed frames and replace a broken toilet seat.
F
inally, her third night on the ship, Sarah did not immediately cave into the physical and emotional exhaustion of the journey and fall quickly to sleep. Now she stayed awake in bed and welcomed the solitude of her own reflections. It had been almost six months since she had to end her communications with Taylor. Inga, in her obsessive desire to protect both her and her daughter, would not even allow trusted contacts to notify Taylor as to their whereabouts. By the time they arrived in Hamburg, it had been almost two years since she had been enveloped in his embrace.
But even now, among this multitude of passengers aboard the
St. Louis,
every masculine silhouette of his approximate height and exhibiting his same general posture and broad shoulders would remind her of Taylor. The simplest imitation of his hand gestures or the echo of his inclusive laugh or the hint of his freshly groomed scent would transport her back into a dream state. She would be with him in Paris or Berlin or Potsdam, holding his hand or wiping croissant crumbs from his lips. Sometimes she thought she heard, not just remembered, the way he spoke, how his American-accented attempts at French or German made her cover her face so that he would not see the pathetic look it reflected. “OK, I have no gift for languages—I don’t want to be too perfect,” he would shoot back at her in his defense.
What a cruel trick that life was playing on her now. Two years ago, she had been a contented, fairly self-absorbed adolescent, not yet truly aware of the passionate secrets the adult world would unveil to her, certainly not yet fully aware of her own sexuality. When young men had leered and whistled as she passed by, she had never taken it seriously, had accepted it as a tease, almost a joke, not understanding the physical power of her presence. And now how ironic—that one wonderful man had changed her small world’s perception of love at the same time that one evil man had heightened the larger world’s perception of hate. On so many counts her naiveté and innocence were visibly diminished, but her dreams had not yet vanished; her optimism was reduced, but not depleted.
Now understanding more about love and life, she tried to be strong, to buy into her mother’s philosophy that if they survived their ordeal then the future would work itself out. In fact, she was wondering if her unexpected relationship with Taylor had actually been part of some master plan, that all that writing to him had given her a certain proficiency in English that would serve her well now, as if it had been her preparation for her new role on the ship.
When her mother had first presented her as an English tutor for the young family, she wasn’t even confident that she had the necessary skills for keeping children’s attention. She had always prided herself on being very adult. At school, she made friends easily and tried never to act intellectually snobbish. But she would always much prefer lingering behind in the classroom with the teachers at the lunch hour, continuing the discussion of a book or challenging herself with one more math problem, instead of wasting time gossiping with her classmates or experimenting with makeup.
As an only child, Sarah had never been required to babysit, to even watch young children for five minutes while their mother or nanny was otherwise occupied. She was not in an extended family with younger cousins living nearby and her older cousins were not yet bringing around babies. She could recall now just one young neighbor, Gerta, who was often at her house, always wanting her attention. Sarah was remembering how Gerta immediately noticed the Lebasque painting when it replaced the old one in the foyer of her home.
“I like that painting and that little girl in it. I never liked those frowning people that used to be on your wall,” little Gerta had said. Of course, Sarah never told Gerta how the painting had appeared there, and now she felt guilty knowing how she had always ignored her, thinking she was too babyish to comprehend affairs of the heart, and missing the opportunity to nurture the interest in art they both shared.
Before the latest edicts forbidding Jews to attend college and dismissing Jewish instructors, Sarah was contemplating a future teaching at a university, certainly not babysitting at a nursery school. So it was a surprise even to her that on this ship she slipped into this nanny-type role easily and felt comfortable and fulfilled immediately.
Sarah had become a type of Pied Piper for a large group of children on the
St. Louis
—ages about three through ten, who began by tagging along with her and the Blumberg family. She taught them all English with activities such as putting them in lines and counting off and telling ages. On the trip west toward Cuba, she found that she had no trouble keeping them occupied from her memory vault of games she was recalling from her youth. But she would always think of a twist to help transition the children to English—for instance, saying, “Ready or not, here I come,” in English now.
But this sailing to freedom aboard the
St. Louis
would not turn out as any of the passengers had envisioned. As the ship broke through the first strong Atlantic waves and the salt water mist sprayed the views of the lower portholes, the majority of travelers had been busy unpacking their suitcases and feeling their anxieties would find a short reprieve aboard the cruise. Captain Schroeder and many of those on an ad hoc passenger committee, however, had been aware almost as soon as the ship left Hamburg that trouble might be brewing for them at their destination. The Cuban authorities were not going to honor the immigration documents of all but a small group of the passengers. It would be a combination of circumstances, ranging from blatant anti-Semitism to a general hostile environment for immigrants, from corrupt Cuban officials peddling false papers and demanding bribes, to the miscalculations of representatives of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that would keep the
St. Louis
from finding safe harbor once it finally arrived in Cuban waters.
For days after their arrival, the ship lingered at the port awaiting word that intense negotiations would be successful in allowing them to dock. While they floated under Cuban guard, dozens of small private boats filled with friends and relatives of the arriving refugees surrounded the large ocean liner and audible cries of longing, pleas to reunite with loved ones, filled the air. A desperate Arnold Schuman gazed with a visible hunger at his two brothers signaling to him from their small craft below and it was only the strong arms of nearby passengers that kept him from jumping overboard. And this scenario played itself out again and again at many positions along the rail.
Finally, Captain Schroeder ordered that the ship follow a northerly path along the American coast, hoping for word that a United States disembarkation would be allowed for the
St. Louis.
For this stint, U.S. vessels closely shadowed her every move, and many of the passengers swore at their crews, assuming that they were guarding against any unauthorized attempts to land. Later there would be rumors, however, that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, from a prominent German Jewish family himself, was interested in monitoring the path of the ocean liner to ensure a rapid response should President Franklin Roosevelt acquiesce and grant them U.S. entry. But President Roosevelt could not be persuaded to fight the unsympathetic, isolationist mood of the United States. And so, despite the monumental efforts of the ship’s captain and others, eventually the
St. Louis
was commanded to return to an eastern crossing of the Atlantic.
Two or three deep standing along the rail, the entirety of passengers looked longingly at the lights of the American shore blinking to them like the teasing eyes of a flirt. Here, a young teenage boy turned to his mother. “But what will we do? Papa will be waiting. Papa will be heartbroken.” Not even understanding the repercussions of their return, he ached for his father’s loss. “You and me and Julia—we’ll have each other. Papa will still write how lonely he is.”
Another boy in his late teens assumed the stance of the mature man he needed to become. He comforted his distraught mother and said pointedly to his innocent, young siblings surrounding her, “Understand now that I will be in charge and please do not cry anymore.”
When the ship made its final definitive turn back east toward the European continent, the adults were busy in anguished meetings discussing their plight. At this point, Sarah organized a group of children to draw pictures of their favorite things, houses or flowers or animals or the big ship, pictures they would let fly off the side of the vessel. She explained that maybe when they returned to Cuba or the United States that they would find their artwork washed up on the shore. Of course, it didn’t make sense and a few of the older children were voicing their skepticism—"The colors will wash away…The papers will sink…Fish will eat them…Maybe they will be washed on a different beach.” But none of them challenged that they would return to freedom, and therefore Sarah knew she had succeeded in alleviating, if even for a brief time, the children’s fears, while their parents dealt emotionally with the harsh reality that the ship was leaving still waters and heading into a maelstrom.
In the late afternoons, when the children were napping, Sarah allowed herself time to be alone, time to lose herself in her own reflections, to create a positive scenario with fairy tale happy endings and dramatic reunions with friends and family. This was the one that worked best for her and kept her hopeful and directed:
Finally the St. Louis, as it headed sadly back across the Atlantic to Europe, would be called to turn west one more time and would be welcomed at the Port of New York. Cuba’s rejection of the passengers, though frightening and aggravating, actually brought her closer to her chosen destination. When the President of the United States of America, Franklin Roosevelt, finally acknowledged the need and admitted the German refugees, he would be there personally to greet them and hear their stories. He would be so horrified by the accounts of the passengers that he would directly order an assault on Nazi Germany. All those in the jails would be freed, all those interned in the camps would be released, and medical professionals would attend to any needs.
Hitler himself would be captured and hung in full view of the country. This would be a deterrent for any others dreaming and plotting to be dictators, scheming to destroy the Jewish people.
At his home outside of Chicago, Taylor, who would have been desperately looking for her, would read about the plight of the St. Louis. Finding her name in newspaper accounts of the passengers, he would be ecstatic with the most glorious emotions of love and relief and would board a train immediately for New York. By the time they had been processed and she was emerging finally from the customs port to the harbor deck, he would be waiting for her with a luscious kiss and a bouquet of flowers. She would motion for a porter to personally hand him the Lebasque painting, Jeune Fille à la Plage, the painting that she had lovingly wrapped in her quilts and securely packaged, and that was bearing the address of the Woodmere residence, as a precaution
—
in case she was separated from it.
And then to complete the dream, her parents, who had their home, business, and possessions all reinstated, were able to join them in beautiful Kenilworth, Illinois, for a spectacular wedding on the back lawn of the estate he had described overlooking Lake Michigan.
She was not alone on the ship in imagining a future with happy endings. In the evenings, as the Blumbergs put their children to sleep with bedtime stories, Sarah began to wander from one discussion group to another and found that there were many perspectives on their dilemma. There was a palpable division in thought among the passengers and divisions among the divisions. First, were the true optimists, usually those closest to her age—on the brink of adulthood and understanding all of its promise, and though even to be on the ship they had to have had frightening experiences, they still maintained a cushioning naiveté.
Then there were the verbal optimists—those were mainly the young parents, those who had to bolster the spirits of their dependents. But at night, they shared fears with their spouses, fought back tears, and worked to have alternative methods of survival.
That second night on the return voyage she overheard the raucous voices emanating from one lounge and it was to this third group that she was drawn. Here were young men and women, mainly in their twenties and thirties, the single crowd and the young married couples she had watched interacting on the ship. They were the realists, daily becoming hardened to the futility of their plight. Even if the United States would eventually accept them, some of them now knew that they would never truly feel safe. And they no longer wished that they could recreate their old lives in the cities they fled, as some of their elderly relatives hoped, even if that were somehow possible. No, they were now talking about the Resistance Movement and they were talking about Zionism. They began holding small group meetings centered on their desire to protect fellow Jews from the Nazis now, and then to establish a nation for the Jewish people. And daily those meetings were drawing more and more interest from the general disenfranchised population of the ship.
“I think we have all been duped,” one voice rose above the others. “We were easily allowed to ‘escape’ on this Nazi ship as part of Hitler’s plan.” Some of the others looked at the speaker skeptically, while many of the group immediately began nodding their heads in total agreement. “Think about it. Hitler has now shown to the world that no one believes we are in real jeopardy in our homeland—and he has proven that no one wants the Jews. This is the best scenario he could have imagined and it didn’t happen by chance—he orchestrated it. Imagine, even the great United States does not want more Jews.”