The Attempt (2 page)

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I
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American Footsteps

1

I
'D ALWAYS WANTED TO LIVE IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
. Right in Manhattan, in one of those high-ceilinged gloomy apartments lined with bookshelves that were ingrained in my memory during the short trip I took there as a teenager and which I've associated with intellectual life ever since. Dark apartments with a view into the windows of the apartments across the way, where the ghosts of old Europe lounged about beneath yellow lamp shades and in purplish clumps of dust. Where the damp smell of the subconscious wafted up from the drainpipes and ventilation shafts.

I couldn't tell you the origin of my desires. The images I identify with, where did they come from? Family legends? Books? Childhood memories? In times of crisis, our secret longings emerge, hurling us forward, drawing us in like a planet sucking up a handful of cosmic dust.

Around the time of my thirty-fifth birthday, I felt like a horse harnessed to a cotton gin. I always made a point of taking the tram in to work, to make the trip last as long as possible, and one day on the tram I decided to write down a list in my notebook of all the things I would never do. Just to give myself some perspective, get it all down in black and white.

        
1. I will never write a novel.

        
2. I will never make love with another woman again.

        
3. I will never move from one friend to another, with nothing except a backpack of books and a toothbrush.

        
4. I will never learn proper French.

        
5. I will never live in New York City.

That was just four years ago. I smile when I think back on it now. You've got to keep hope alive. That and faith in others, who, like my ex-wife, have plans of their own.

One day my wife decided to find someone else to provide for her, and suddenly I was a free man. I applied for a scholarship to a university in New York. Gave up my job at the paper. Cut down my workload at school to part-time. Moved in with friends. Decided to take up history again. And write. But before any of that, I made love with a woman who wasn't my wife. I crossed that off my list first.

There's actually a theory I have connected to my image of New York. It goes back to 1925, when my great-grandmother Friederike married a man from a town in northern Bohemia. With one edge, one corner of my heart, it also relates to my best friend, Josef, who planted two fixed ideas in my head: one, that writing is the best vocation in the world, and, two, that I'm not actually the great-grandson of the factory owner Emanuel Schwarzer, as I've always assumed, but the great-grandson of the Russian-American Jew and anarchist Andrei B., with whom, in 1924, my great-grandmother Friederike had an affair in Berlin.

I
WAS BORN IN
P
RAGUE
in the early seventies. By that point, my family's upper-middle-class origins were ancient history. My grandfather, being half German, had his property
confiscated by the Czechoslovak government after World War II. They told him he should be glad they hadn't run him out of the country. The only thing they let my family keep was a caretaker's apartment in the north Bohemian town of L., in a villa we got back—one of the few things returned to us—after the revolution in 1989.

The house had been built before World War I, with glassed verandas and Art Nouveau friezes on the walls, and a half-timbered gable that my great-grandfather had had decorated in the mid-twenties with a sign in elegant script reading
VILA FRIEDERIKE.
Till the day she died, my grandmother Týna tended to the garden, which no longer belonged to her. For as long as she could grip the pruning shears, she trimmed the rhododendron and azalea bushes and poked around the rock garden, her pride and joy. The space tucked away under the old yew trees, with the red trunks of the pines tilting precariously over them, seemed mysterious to me as a little boy. Every summer I built my bunkers in a different place, together with Josef, who lived with his proletarian parents on one of the upper floors of our villa. He was four years older than I was and had already read a great deal.

Nothing changed when the villa was returned to us. My parents were still young and had too many ambitions of their own to pour money into the upkeep of a ramshackle house. But they weren't ready to sell it yet, either. I visited L. to see my grandmother, until she died, and later on to see Josef. In 1999, the year I got married, Josef published his first book. His parents passed away and his sister got married, so he was left on his own. He moved out of the beautiful third-floor apartment into the caretaker's apartment my
grandmother had been living in. By day he worked in the local secondhand bookstore and by night he wrote, slowly blossoming into a true eccentric. When he published his second book, I used my contacts in Prague to help him get a review in one of the papers. It had no impact either on sales or on Josef's fame.

The last few years before he died, Josef was obsessed with Andrei B., a Russian anarchist who, he claimed, was my real great-grandfather.

Over and over, he read and reread the few letters from Andrei that Friederike had neglected to destroy, searching for clues and hints. Written in English, they clearly highlighted the one area where, despite their strong sexual attraction, there was friction: Friederike merely flirted with the idea of equality. Flirting was her life philosophy. She was also much younger than Andrei, who at the time had been in his fifties.

Josef was fascinated by anarchism but still couldn't quite fathom it. He had read Bakunin and Kropotkin in the original, studied the legacies of Nestor Makhno and Emma Goldman.

It can't just be dismissed, he maintained. Even Sartre in his twilight years declared himself an anarchist. It was the only label he was still willing to claim.

Speaking of labels: Among the stacks of unfinished projects, in one of the boxes Josef had confided to my care, which his sister helped me load into the car immediately after his funeral (she wanted to be rid of his things as soon as possible), I found a notebook labeled
ANARCHIST.
It was an unfinished text, apparently notes for a novel that Josef had planned to write at some point. Inscribed in green ballpoint
on the cover of the blue notebook filled with finely ruled graph paper, it said:
Compassion as a chest wound. There is no way of life that accords with our conscience. The anxiety. Everything was easier under totalitarianism. Freedom opened up an abyss too deep for me to see its bottom.

2

S
UMMER
, N
EW
Y
ORK, RAIN.
At the ticket counter of the Kolman Museum, I purchase an overpriced ticket from one of the ladies you see volunteering at every New York museum. With their surgically smoothed faces and wrinkled, gold-laden hands, they look like antiques themselves.

The lobby is dark, a set of French doors giving on to a garden where the rain drizzles into a marble pool overgrown with water lilies. The wooden floor creaks beneath the luxurious carpet; the showcases along the walls are filled with porcelain. A cord blocks the staircase leading to the upper floors. Everything above the first landing is drowned in darkness. Green velvet drapes cover the windows inside the rooms. When I draw them back, I can see Central Park.

I've been in New York two weeks now and still can't believe it. I feel like an actor on a movie set. Central Park, the Metropolitan Opera House, Fifth Avenue. Last Wednesday, at the suggestion of one of the other students from my university, I took the ferry that shuttles back and forth between lower Manhattan and Staten Island. It's free and as good as any sightseeing tour you can take. I didn't expect to be so moved seeing the smoky blue of the Statue of Liberty.

O
NE GORGEOUS
V
ERMEER
, two El Grecos, some Renaissance Italians, and
The Education of the Virgin
by Georges de La Tour. The rest is mostly kitsch: idyllic landscapes, a fluffy Fragonard, portraits of languid ladies by Burne-Jones and Whistler. An odor of dust issues from the tapestries and shelves of antique books. The whole opulent mansion feels like a prison, a den where some old rodent comes to deposit its prey.

Kolman's daughter Eleanor, who after her father's death had the building converted into a museum, is painted next to her father in a dual portrait that hangs above the fireplace in what used to be the study. His manly profile stands out sharply in the foreground: a white-bearded chin jutting forth dynamically, a straight, short nose, a low-hanging brow, and a small round head of meticulously groomed white hair. Half-hidden behind him, as in a fog, is the face of a young red-haired woman, wrapped in a light muslin veil of the sort ladies used to wear to shield themselves from the sun.

The museum also has a cinema screening a film titled
J
.
C. Kolman: Collector and Philanthropist
every thirty minutes. There's only fleeting mention of the assassination attempt; nobody is named. On the other hand, there's plenty of footage of a sparkling pond with ducks paddling across the surface—to evoke a feeling of serenity, I assume. The credits list Eleanor C. Kolman as chief consultant on the project. Her mother, Alice, appears only once, in a wedding photo from 1882. After that, not a single mention. Where did she go? What happened to her? Why isn't there a single trace of her in the house where she lived for thirty years?

I come home from the museum and sit by the window a long time, looking out at the street. It has stopped raining
and the air is thick with humidity. I watch as a man in a bright-colored shirt, with carefully smoothed gray hair and a strong nose that reminds me of Josef, pulls the remains of a sandwich from a trash can, removes the foil wrapping, and lays it out tidily on a concrete pedestal. He crosses himself and eats standing up, a look of deep satisfaction on his face.

T
HE
WOMAN IN THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
of the Kolman Collection suddenly got her guard up when she realized what I was looking for.

“How did you know we have that here?”

“It says so online.”

“Where exactly?”

“In your catalog.”

“Are you sure it isn't Eleanor Kolman's correspondence you're looking for? We have that here, of course. Everything that relates to the collection.”

“No, these were the letters of her mother, Alice.”

She picked up the phone and dialed the archive.

I explained my request again to a young woman who introduced herself as Julie.

“We have some of it here,” she admitted. “What do you need it for, though?”

“I'm a historian from Prague and I came here on a research scholarship. I'm doing a study of American women at the turn of the twentieth century. Did you know the wife of the first president of Czechoslovakia was American? Have you ever heard the name Masaryk?”

She handed me a form to fill out: name, address, telephone
number. Plus a statement saying I wouldn't quote from any material without the express consent of the Kolman Reference Library.

“Which period are you interested in, exactly?” asked Julie.

“I'm interested in all of it.”

She appeared with a box a few moments later. She asked me to place the letters back in their envelopes when I was through with them, and said with a smile as she walked away, “Alice had terrible handwriting. Totally illegible, you'll see.”

The box contained a series of folders labeled by year, beginning in 1882, the year of Alice's wedding. The last letters had been painstakingly transcribed by someone on a typewriter; the others, as Julie had warned me, were nearly impossible to decipher. From John C. there were only a few decorative courtship cards: “My dear Miss Alice, it would be an honor if you would accompany me to the horse races tomorrow afternoon. . . .” Then just some telegrams sent from a steamer crossing the ocean from the New World to the Old. A few postcards from Europe.

There was almost nothing from the period around 1890, except a clipping from the
Chicago Herald
about the Johnstown flood.

I love the feel of old letters, and when the librarian wasn't looking, I quickly stole a sniff.

Eagle Rock, Massachusetts, 6/4/31

Dear Ellie,

Since you want me to write you regularly but complain that you cannot read my handwriting, I have decided to dictate my letters.

I am dictating this to Miss Bodley, who was kind enough to
bring her typewriter into my bedroom so I can lie down while I “write.” The one disadvantage of this arrangement is that I won't be able to complain about Miss Bodley. Not that I have reason to.

There is not much news. As soon as I arrived, I asked to be shown around all the rooms (or at least I think all of them; I am not even certain how many there are). I found everything entirely in order, apart from a wet spot on the ballroom ceiling, and the railing on the grand terrace will need to be repaired and a few cracked tiles will need to be replaced.

If you could see the wisteria! It is splendid this year. It hangs like a canopy over the entrance, climbing up to the windows on the second floor.

The peonies and irises are also in bloom. The roses haven't frozen.

The rabbits had babies. Just these silky little balls. I held them in my hands awhile. Maybe we could sell them
—
twelve dollars a pair? Think about it.

That's all for now. Soon Simon will be calling me down for lunch.

Write soon, and above all, do come.

Your loving Alice

Eagle Rock, Massachusetts, 6/10/31

Dear Ellie,

The weather has been steady, sunny but not too hot, practically made for going on walks and horseback riding. Your room is ready; you can come anytime.

The wisteria is slowly losing its blossoms, as are the peonies, but the jasmine and some of the roses are starting to bloom. This morning in the garden, Simon cut me the most beautiful bouquet
you can imagine, but I had to have it taken away, as the smell gave me a headache.

If you can imagine, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are on their honeymoon. They are constantly all over each other, Mr. Smith ruffling Mrs. Smith's feathers. I had the cage moved closer to my bed so I could see them better.

Have you given any thought to those rabbits?

And are you coming soon? I didn't understand what you said on the phone. What are you waiting for?

I send you kisses and look forward to seeing you.

Your mother

Eagle Rock, Massachusetts, 6/12/31

Dear Ellie,

Today I have great news. Imagine, if you will, Mrs. Smith has laid an egg. There's only one and Mr. Smith is sitting on it. It seems the honeymoon is over. Mrs. Smith just sulks about and sharpens her claws in the corner. They don't say a word to each other. I just hope the egg stays warm; it would be nice to see the little one peck its way out.

There's nothing new otherwise, except perhaps that Miss Bodley and Miss Lindsay took the car into the city by themselves and landed in the ditch when they swerved to avoid a horse and buggy. Nothing happened to them, and they both laugh when they tell the story. Now Miss Bodley is frowning, saying that she doesn't want to write about it, but what other news have I got? Miss Bodley is a darling, and for that matter so is Miss Lindsay, who is such great fun. She has begun to learn ancient Greek and is planning a big trip to Europe along with Miss Bodley.

Yesterday Simon brought me the first strawberries; they were
delicious. Soon we will have cherries and apricots, too. I shall send you a basketful if you don't come before then. But I would really much rather you came.

The peaches on the south side of the house should also ripen this year, provided there is enough sun. The weather is steady, warm but not hot, much more agreeable than in New York.

I send you kisses and remain ever yours,

Mother

Dear Ellie,

Only briefly today, the weather is muggy and I am not well; even dictation exhausts me. I had them carry me out to the terrace, but it wasn't agreeable and I felt even more tired afterward. I'm better off inside, here in the bedroom.

There is no news. Perhaps only that Mr. Smith had a quarrel with Mrs. Smith and pushed the egg out of the cage.

Lately I have no appetite, which is making Simon sad. He spends all day preparing delicious food for me and I barely even touch it. Have you thought about when you will come? And for how long? Only because you asked about it on the telephone, I will say I still suffer from constipation constantly. The doctor says it's due to my long-term use of laudanum.

Kisses, Alice

Eagle Rock, 7/15/31

My dear Ellie,

You needn't worry about me. I am sure I will feel better once the hot spell has passed. This morning we had a great commotion. The caretaker's dogs raided the henhouse and throttled several hens and
a number of chickens. They didn't even eat them, they just did it for sport. Naturally, they were punished for it.

The Mapplethornes are marrying off their second daughter; the ceremony will be next Sunday at their home on Long Island. Could you order a set of dishes and send them as a gift in my name? 145 or 150 dollars should be plenty, no more than that.

Also, I forgot to tell you on the telephone that I've ordered a new carriage. The contract says they have to deliver it by no later than the thirtieth; otherwise I won't pay.

It should be here by the time you arrive.

Kisses, your mother, Alice

7/27/31

Dear Miss Kolman,

I tried to reach you by telephone, but I had no luck, and in any case the news I have to share with you is better written than said over the phone.

Your mother has, unfortunately, not been well these last days. It may be because of the heat wave we've been having. Madame Alice practically doesn't go out, remaining indoors all day with the blinds pulled down. She refuses to eat. Occasionally, we manage to talk her into a bit of broth or a glass of milk, but she refuses solid food.

Dr. Hartley, who comes to the house every day, considers your mother's condition to be quite serious and advised me to tell you not to postpone your visit for too long.

Apart from that, however, your mother remains balanced and takes delight in the smallest details: a flower or a plate of fruit. Even if she does not eat the fruit, she likes the smell and enjoys touching it, especially the peaches. She says they remind her of her
children's faces. I have the impression Madame Alice no longer recalls some of the events of her life.