The Lost Wife (12 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
There is steam rising from Marta’s untouched cup of cocoa. Her eyes are filled with tears. Her red hair limp behind her ears. I drink my coffee black without sugar.
The emperor, seeing the destruction cast upon his city and its people, begged the rabbi to stop the Golem. In exchange, he promised to stop the persecution of the Jews. “To stop the Golem’s deadly and vengeful path,” I explained, “the rabbi only needed to erase the first letter of the Hebrew word
emet
or ‘truth’ from the creature’s forehead. The new remaining word would thus read
met,
which translated as ‘death.’”
emet
or ‘truth’ from the creature’s forehead. The new remaining word would thus read
met,
which translated as ‘death.’”
This act of ending the Golem’s life was done with the understanding that should the Jewish people ever be threatened within the walls of Prague, the Golem would rise again.
I took a deep breath and looked at my sister. Her crying had stopped and her color was less pale. Still, she was clearly shaken from the fire at Papa’s warehouse and by the motive of the attack.
To reassure her, I added what was always my favorite part of the story. Legend has it that the Golem’s body is stored in the attic of the Old New Synagogue. There he waits to have the missing letter on his forehead replaced so he may avenge any who seek to harm the Jews.
I can see the eyes of my twelve-year-old sister at the end of this story, like a child who still wants to believe that magic could exist.
“Will the Golem wake up and protect us now?” she says, staring down at her cold cocoa.
I tell her he will. I tell her if not Rabbi Loew’s Golem, I will take the clay from my modeling class and make one of my own.
CHAPTER 12
I have always believed in the mystical. One cannot study the science of conception and the practice of obstetrics without being in awe of how the human body can create new life. In medical school, we learn that everything that is essential to life exists in the midline of the body. The same can be said about love.
The mind, the heart, the womb. Those three are all threaded in a sacred dance.
A woman’s pelvis is like an hourglass with the capacity to tell time. It both creates and shelters life. When the mother’s diet is insufficient, nutrients are pulled from her own teeth and bone. Women are built to be selfless.
As a young man, I fell in love with a girl who loved me. Her smile was a golden rope around my heart. Wherever she pulled me, I followed.
But sometimes even the thickest rope frays and one gets lost.
I still dream of her. The first girl whose hand ever laced through mine. Even when there was another woman in my bed, I’d dream only of her. I’d try and conjure her face at twenty, then thirty or forty years of age. But as the years passed and I grew older, I stopped imagining her with a face that was lined or with hair tarnished like silver.
Every person has an image or a memory that they hold secret. One that they unwrap, like a piece of hidden candy, at night. Pass through there and you will fall into the valley of dreams.
In my dreams, I imagine her naked. Long white limbs, reaching to thread through mine. Hands reaching to undo damp, fragrant braids. Chocolate-brown hair falling over a collarbone as sharp as an archer’s bow.
She crosses her arms over her breasts.
I kiss her hands, the pale of her fingertips. I turn up her palms and lift them from her breasts to my cheeks. She finds my temples, then my hair, pulls me toward her lips, and kisses me.
The kiss. The kiss. I am haunted by that kiss.
Sleep.
If only I didn’t have to wake so soon. The beeper sounding that I am needed. The number at the hospital telling me I must go.
To sleep, where I am young again. To wake, where I am old, with weary limbs. The sound of that beeper that tells me where I need to go.
CHAPTER 13
I no longer could stomach the taste of strawberries after I arrived in America. It wasn’t that their sweetness could not compare to those we had every summer, but because they reminded me of Lenka.
Lenka, sitting under the shade of our garden in Karlovy Vary, her white shoulders bare in her cotton sundress. Her blue eyes. Her clavicle, the shape of a heart I long to kiss.
I sit across from her. Watch her as she scans the long wooden table that Pavla has crowded with plates of smoked meats, jars of homemade jam, and a basket of warm rolls. But it is the bowl of handpicked strawberries that delights her. She reaches for the bowl and brings one berry to her perfect mouth.
Her mouth. Her mouth. Am I such a beast because I cannot suppress the urge to bite it? Nibble at its tender flesh. Feel the softness of its inside. Run my tongue over her teeth. Feel the velvet of her tongue.
Sitting there, I watch her. All I can do to stifle my urges is to stare at her. How stupid I must look in this memory. Awkward and hunting her all the same.
When I walk next to her, I can barely breathe. I cannot speak. Four years older than she and I feel like I am without experience. There have been other girls, but their faces and their touch have all vanished from my memory.
I walk behind her. The taut muscle of her calves, the gentle slope of her backside, the glimpse of her neck, are a seduction all their own.
When she places her sketchbook down, I can feel the heat of her body next to mine. I can smell her. I want to breathe her into me like a child’s first breath. I want to wrap my arms around her and melt her heart against mine.
I want to taste her. I want the sweet syrup of her mouth. I want the flesh of her tongue. I want to kiss her more than anything in the whole world.
The kiss. Am I too forceful? Am I too eager? That mouth sealed to mine . . . the taste of freshly picked strawberries.
I am gasping. My mouth open. My heart cracked like a smashed pomegranate. Ruby seeds heaping in my hands.
But then I awake.
I open my eyes and Amalia is reaching to turn the radio alarm off.
She kisses me.
Dryly. Absently. The taste of water.
My Amalia kissing me.
There isn’t the faintest taste of strawberries in her kiss.
It is the taste of a snow cone without the juice.
Ice, without the color blue.
CHAPTER 14
Like a line drawn in the sand, I can mark the unraveling of my life, from the moment I returned to Prague. Those two weeks in Karlovy Vary were the last moments of calm. I had left Prague without the shadow of Hitler and returned with his threat heavy upon the city.
Suddenly it seemed I could not escape hearing his name everywhere. Would he invade Czechoslovakia or not?
We began to see parades outside our apartment window—men in lederhosen and women in traditional skirts, marching and chanting German national songs. Swastikas appeared on storefronts. Ugly, angry slashes. Glaring like a scar.
I returned to the Academy, but my heart was not in it. Věruška also seemed somewhat changed. The liveliness of her eyes and the fullness of figure—all of the things that had made her appear buoyant in the past—had diminished.
We did not speak of the growing fear within our families. There were more pauses in our conversations. Instead, there was a silent exchange in our eyes when we looked at each other. We giggled far less often.
Now, over the radios at home, we heard of the German presence encroaching on the Sudetenland, the area on the Czech-German border. Our minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Basel, had ordered Czech troops to patrol the division line, but everyone doubted they could keep the Germans out for long.
I had not heard of any specific hardship falling upon the Kohns like we had suffered. I didn’t see how Dr. Kohn’s practice could be affected. His patients were almost exclusively Jewish. Jews would still remain loyal to Jews. Babies were not like crates of crystal that people did not really need. Still, who really knew the worries of others?
Elsa’s beautiful lips now twitched when she talked. I noticed it almost immediately when our classes resumed.
I didn’t ask her about her father’s business at the apothecary. She still smelled of gardenia and tuberose. But I suspected that, like my father’s, the growing anti-Semitism was affecting his livelihood as well.
Roth’s Apotek, with its florid Art Nouveau sign, was almost a banner for Jewish mercantilism. It was in a prime location, on one of the side streets just off the center of Prague’s Old Town Square. In the past, every time I passed it, there were people coming and going, their packages wrapped in Roth’s brown paper and recognizable purple ribbon. The sign outside said EST. 1860; the family had owned it for decades.
I had not heard of any windows being smashed there, or any Nazi slogans being written on its walls. But who knew? In such a short time it seemed like everything had changed.
At the break, my two girlfriends and I ate our packed lunches outside. The warm sun hit our bare legs and struck our faces with rays of honey-colored light.
This was our third year at the Academy, and we had always imagined when we were first-years that by this time we would feel like we owned the halls. Instead, we now were all preoccupied with concern for our parents and our life as we knew it in Prague.
“I wonder if we’ll be able to finish our studies,” Elsa said. Her words sliced through the air like a rapier. “Papa says he’s not so sure.”
Věruška scowled. “Of course we will! The Czech troops won’t let the Germans cross over our borders.”
I said nothing because I didn’t know what to believe. Everything I knew about the political situation was gleaned from what I overheard during my parents’ discussions at night. And one thing was certain: they were becoming less confident with each passing day. A different Lenka was emerging, one that existed as two halves—one half wanted to feel alive, to feel happy, to saturate myself in the feelings of first love—but the other half was full of dread. All I needed to do was to look at my father’s face when he returned home from work in order to see the writing on the wall. I hate to admit it now, but there were several nights when he walked through the door when I didn’t want to lift my eyes.
Things happened so quickly that autumn of 1938. On October 5, our president, Edvard Benes, resigned, realizing that the Nazi occupation was imminent. We had been defeated, without lifting a single weapon. There would be no resistance from our government and no protection for the tidal wave of anti-Semitism that the Nazis would soon unleash.
We began to hear slurs on the street: “Jewish shit, you’ll be dead by Christmas.” Elsa reported that her brother went into a café after school with friends and was told, “Jews out!” Suddenly the fear that we saw on our parents’ faces was now also on our own.
We began to hear of neighbors who were trying to secure visas, though neither Elsa nor Věruška mentioned that their families were trying to do so. People we had known for years suddenly left without saying good-bye. We became watchful and guarded.
That year, I started learning a new art.
The art of being invisible.
Mama, too, no longer dressed to be noticed. She dressed to disappear.
Black coat. Charcoal-gray scarves over a dress the deep shade of graphite.
We no longer drank from colored crystal. Instead, the ruby-red wine goblets and the cobalt water glasses were all sold for far less than they were worth.
When I opened my tin of oil pastels in drawing class, I held the sticks of orange and leaf green and felt an acute pain typically associated with hunger.
One professor began picking on the Jewish boys in our class. He criticized their drawings more than was deserved. He tore Arohn Gottlieb’s sketch of a still life right down the middle and told him to leave his class at once.
We began to hear stories of schoolgirls who were attacked in Poland. Girls who were attacked by their own classmates after class, their faces scarred by boys who held them down and clawed at their faces.
Other books
Elfcharm by Leila Bryce Sin
Star League 4 by H.J. Harper
Snowy Mountain Nights by Lindsay Evans
Drive by Tim Falconer
The Smuggler Wore Silk by Alyssa Alexander
Got Mistletoe? (Mistletoe Madness) by Andi Anderson
Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel by Holly Brown
The Assassin King by Haydon, Elizabeth
Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel) by Downs, Tim
The Living End by Stanley Elkin