The Empire of the Senses (59 page)

Franz winced, feeling his nerves sharpen.

“White! Gets dirty easy!” the man added.

“Yes, it does,” Franz replied, willing the light to change.

“But you can always launder it!”

“You can, yes.”

The light changed. Franz walked briskly away from the man, who lumbered after him, clutching his walking stick. The man smiled benignly at another passing pedestrian. Some people just like to chat; he didn’t notice anything in particular, Franz thought. I just have to get on the train to Moritzplatz without incident. It’s a simple plan, he told himself.

On the train, he sat next to two women who smelled of strong perfume. It nauseated him. They talked about a purse. A beaded purse without a handle. A clutch, they called it. They both wanted one, but the purse was too expensive.

“A week’s salary!” the girl exclaimed.

The other woman nodded sadly. “But if I work overtime,” she said, bumping his shoulder. Franz jerked away. “Excuse me!” he said hotly.

Both of the girls smiled with condescension. The train rattled and swayed, pushing her into him again.

“Is a woman’s touch so repellent?” she joked. She had no eyebrows and reminded him of a ferret.

Franz stared at the man across from them, leafing through the paper, bored.

“Well,” the other girl said, “you can’t win over everyone.” Then they erupted into inane laughter.

Franz clenched his jaw, thinking he had already drawn unwanted attention. Possibly, they could sense how much he wished to be left alone, which only spurred them on. After a few moments, their laughter subsided and they resumed their discussion about the clutch.

Franz felt his head empty and grow light. It was really happening.

45

Monday, June 11, 1928

Maya flipped through a film magazine on the bed, a glass of iced tea on the side table next to her. She leaned over and took a long sip from the straw. Vicki smiled at her through the smudged mirror propped up against the wall. She was getting ready for the party. The small bedroom in Maya’s apartment trapped the late afternoon heat. The sun beat against the green shutters, which had been opened at a slant, allowing a small amount of air into the room, but not enough.

Vicki gestured at Maya’s languid pose. “Enjoy this while it lasts.”

Maya looked up from an article, the page spilling open to reveal a large black-and-white photograph of the film star Lil Dagover wearing a snowy-white mink.

Maya shrugged, one strap of her slip sliding off her shoulder. “At least there’ll be straws in Palestine. I hate drinking without one. Ice makes my teeth ache.”

Vicki stepped into her dress. “There won’t be straws.”

Maya tossed the magazine aside. “Of course there will be!”

“Can you zip me up?”

Maya sighed and got up from the bed. Standing behind Vicki, she said, “You paint such a black picture.”

“It’s only …” She paused, waiting for Maya to finish gliding up the zipper. “They keep telling us how hard life will be, how much work needs to be done. When will we have any time to enjoy ourselves? Isn’t that important too?”

Maya turned Vicki around to face her. “They say this because they
want people to immigrate who are truly committed. No dilettantes need apply.”

“I’m not a dilettante!”

Maya tried to hold back her laughter. “I never said that.”

Vicki looked down at her dress, a soft cream shift with two deep front pockets. “Is this too plain?”

“It’s perfect.”

Vicki forced a smile, but warring thoughts flitted through her head. She pressed her thumbs into her temples. Should she wear the lapis earrings her father gave her, or was that too sentimental? In the next room, someone flipped the radio dial through the stations, pausing on a jazz quartet. That would be all right, if they played jazz. Had they purchased enough alcohol for the party? Her father would hate this place, hovering on the edge of conversations in his three-piece suit. She could already envision him tasting the cheap wine with displeasure. And her mother had developed another one of her famous migraines.

It was Monday and they were leaving Thursday. Three days. Half of Vicki’s things were packed in boxes standing in the middle of her room, the other half strewn around this apartment. In the past weeks, she’d been sleeping here most nights, sharing a bed with Maya, preparing coffee for Zev and Geza in the morning, going over lists and supplies they would need, their collective life already taking shape. Sometimes, it jarred her when Maya, wearing one of Vicki’s dresses, a dress she favored, accidentally splashed black tea onto it. Conveniently, Maya only stained Vicki’s dresses while somehow making sure her own dresses remained pristine. But then Vicki would push this thought away, because they shared everything now, and she reminded herself that the idea of personal belongings was petty and overly individualistic. On the collective farms, women even shared the burden of breast-feeding, the children belonging to everyone. And so owning a dress, saying it was yours, carried no weight in the Holy Land.

Maya was now rummaging through a box of clothes. “Everything’s already packed. I can’t find anything to wear. Did you hear the Katz twins might stop by?”

Vicki shook her head, deciding she would wear the earrings. She remembered when her father gave them to her as a present last year, before she’d even met Geza. How odd it was: only a year ago she was dreading French exams and fighting with her mother about cutting off her hair, and then she went to the library and her life changed. Forever.

Maya sighed with exasperation, a lavender dress draped over her shoulder. Actually, it was once Vicki’s lavender dress, the one with the low-slung sash.

“And the sculptress Renée Sintenis.”

“She’s coming?” Vicki moved her head from side to side, pleased with how the hanging lapis earrings swayed along with her.

A string of beads hung from Maya’s forefinger. The lapis beads that were meant to match Vicki’s earrings. “You don’t mind, do you, if I wear this tonight?”

“I …” Vicki began. A lump gathered in her throat.

The bedroom door swung open, and Zev stood there in his suspenders and white undershirt. “Hello ladies! You’re looking lovely.”

Maya charged him with a pillow. “We’re only half dressed!”

He grabbed her waist and pulled her into him. She half struggled to get free.

“This black slip is more than enough clothing,” he murmured.

Vicki glanced away, embarrassed. Breaking the silence, she asked, “Where’s Geza?”

Maya had freed herself and was now sliding the lavender dress over her head.

“He went to get tea lights,” Zev said.

“It’s not a funeral,” Maya protested, turning around so that Zev could button up the back.

“Candles are festive,” he added.

“Candlelight makes everyone beautiful,” Vicki said, stepping into her high heels.

The party had started an hour ago, and already the room was buzzing. A woman in a headscarf was talking to Vicki about the need for nurses.
And elementary school teachers. Her hand skimmed Vicki’s bare shoulder. “Making the desert bloom is not just an agricultural endeavor.”

“I see,” Vicki said, scanning the room for her father, wondering if he’d arrived yet. The woman’s black eyes, the way she held her gaze so intensely, made Vicki nervous.

“But you see,” the woman resumed, undeterred, “the children are raised in communal children’s homes. Mothers work in Palestine!”

Vicki nodded, noticing that Greta, her old school friend, was talking to Maya. It gave her a funny feeling to see them together, as if two disparate parts of her life had collided for a moment, before floating away again. She was surprised Greta even came; they hadn’t seen each other in months, and when they spoke for a few minutes, trading polite questions over the thumping jazz, Greta appeared ill at ease. She had overdressed for the party and tugged nervously at her gloves. Well, Vicki thought, watching the woman’s chapped lips form words and sentences about communal child care, Greta was in love with her brother, something she wouldn’t wish on any woman, seeing how he avoided her, stationed on the other side of the room in deep conversation with Wolf. Every so often Greta’s gaze floated over to the fireplace, where Wolf and Franz stood, using the mantel as a base, as if it was their own little fiefdom.

“Scheduled breast feedings provide relief for active mothers,” the woman intoned. “For example, while you work in the olive groves, I breast-feed your child, and vice versa. They are all our children.”

“Hmmm,” Vicki said, trying to catch Franz’s eye, hoping he’d come over to her, but he stared at the floor while Wolf whispered something into his ear.

A little girl tugged on Vicki’s hem. She made a squawking sound and stared up at her mother with round anxious eyes.

“Oh, Netta.” The woman hoisted the little girl up onto her hip. “What are you doing?”

The girl scrutinized Vicki’s earrings, her little fists clutching her mother’s blouse.

Vicki smiled. “Do you like them?”

She buried her face into her mother’s shoulder while still peeking at Vicki, her eyes trained on the dangling lapis stones.

The woman smiled apologetically. “All the new people here make her shy. She’s normally very independent.”

Vicki excused herself and went outside to find Geza, who had disappeared from the party. She flattened her body, pushing through the crowd, but was stopped various times along the way by well-wishers, congratulating her on making aliyah, their drinks raised upward, as if the Holy Land hovered just above their heads.

The night had cooled. She paused a moment on the landing, listening to that language her mother shunned and her father hid away, a language that carried an elusive taboo, a language she now used with ease, the syllables having grown familiar on her tongue, despite how Geza kept telling her Hebrew, not Yiddish, was their new language, and she must keep practicing. She saw Geza and her father sitting side by side on the top step, their backs hunched over in the same way, their kneecaps nearly touching. But then Geza said something that made her father’s back stiffen, and she called out, “Having secret conversations without me?”

They turned around and produced the same jovial grin.

She motioned to her father. “You’re here.”

He stared at her, his face mournful and tired, and she felt a stab of guilt. He got up and announced, “Tonight is a celebration. Where’s the champagne?”

The three of them walked arm in arm back into the hot living room. Out of the corner of her eye, Vicki saw Maya talking to the woman in the headscarf. The little girl wandered nearby, clutching a stranger’s leg that she mistook for her mother’s. Maya waved Vicki over, but Geza pulled her in close, and she turned away from Maya to kiss him, inhaling his scent. For a moment, the hum and flow of the party froze, and she felt as if it were just Geza and herself encased in a cocoon, and the rest—the music, the people, her friends—stood outside of it. Was this love, to feel so closely tied to one person that the world, with all
the people in it, existed apart from the intimate knowledge that passed between them?

She traced her finger along his lower lip, and he squeezed her shoulder, tilting his head toward the crowd. “I’m going to make sure no one’s glass is empty.”

Their intertwined hands broke apart.

Lev took Vicki’s arm. “Keep me company for a while—I don’t know anyone here,” he whispered.

Vicki giggled. “But you’ve always been so good at mingling, Papa.”

Lev shook his head. “No, that’s your mother.”

Despite all the music and chatter, and the heat of other bodies jostling past them, she gave him a long look. His dark eyes were glassy, radiating a faint melancholic light. “Is there something—” She paused.

Lev threw up his hands. “Whatever happened to that champagne I brought?”

She started again. “Papa—is there something you’re keeping from me?”

Someone turned up the music. A few couples started dancing the Charleston in the middle of the room, their feet pounding on the wooden floor.

“Because we’ve always told each other everything,” she added, trying to suppress the sensation she might cry right there in the middle of the party, with everyone looking.

He stroked her cheek. “You’ve always been so very astute.” Breaking into his sunniest smile, he added, raising his voice, “Go dance—don’t worry about your old papa. Everything’s as it should be.” He stepped back, taking a little bow.

The music thumped through her, vibrating up her legs, into her chest. “But Papa,” she said, reaching for his arm. She wouldn’t give up this easily. Even if Geza evaded her, her father would not.

Lev grinned again. “Where’s Geza? You two should be dancing!”

Vicki glanced over her shoulder and saw Geza pouring beer into a long glass, making a show of it, while a man wearing a panama hat laughed. Then she saw Zev spin around, his face tight with anger. He punched Franz in the arm, but Franz kept moving toward Geza as if he
had something urgent to say. Her father’s face clouded over, and for a moment their eyes met, and she felt her throat tighten and go dry. She tried to scream but she was breathless. Lev grabbed her arm and pulled her down to the floor before leaping up and hurling himself into Geza. A gunshot ricocheted through the room.

46

Monday, June 11, 1928

Tonight, he would get the information from Geza about Leah’s whereabouts. Geza had promised him this much, and he knew that in the meantime, Geza had made inquiries, writing to Leah’s relatives in Riga and Mitau. But what if Geza hadn’t received any news yet? What if letters were lost in the mail? If Leah wasn’t in New York, Lev would abandon the lie he had already told Josephine about Rhodes Hart textiles and pretend the linen deal had fallen through. Or, if she was there, he must book his ticket, confirm first class, and prepare. Prepare to meet his son. Prepare to see Leah again and reopen the wound of having left her in the first place. But the uncertainty was driving him mad, as if he could only ever balance on one foot, and was eternally hopping from one to the other like a dancing monkey. During dinner last night, he tried to contain his anxiety, pouring himself a generous glass of red wine. He listened to Josephine go on about a certain kind of orchid. She wanted some for the rooms upstairs. He nodded in agreement. She added that Dr. Dührkoop kept the same orchids in his office and they were absolutely stunning as well as resilient. Then he made some quip about how everything Dührkoop had must be fabulous. Josephine scowled and left the table.