The Lost Wife (15 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
“You can’t be telling me that you refuse to come?” He buries his forehead in his palms.
“Yes, I am, Josef.” I am crying now. “That is what I’m telling you.”
“What can I do, Lenka?”
“You need to get us all visas. That’s what you promised . . .” I am shaking so much that I can’t even stand up. I reach for a chair and collapse.
“Your father wants us to go . . .” Josef’s arms are now wrapped around my shoulders.
“I cannot do that. Don’t you understand me?” Suddenly I wonder if our whole courtship has been a fantasy. That he doesn’t realize that I can be stubborn and willful. That as much as I love him, I could never abandon my family.
I feel sick. I feel the heat of his body flowing through mine. The warmth of his breath, the wetness of his tears on my neck. But for the first time, I am incapable of giving him what he wants.
I know only one thing. One doesn’t abandon family. One doesn’t leave them, even in the name of love.
I left Josef that afternoon in that beautiful apartment, and arrived at my parents’ home with my hair still braided and twisted upward like a bride.
“What are you doing here, darling Lenka?” Father cried when he opened the door. “You should be enjoying the day with your new husband!”
My mother took one look at my face and knew that Josef had told me about the lack of passage for them. “Lenka,” she said, shaking her head. “You cannot take on the sorrows of the world.”
“No, but I can take on the sorrows of my family.”
They shook their heads and Marta wrapped her thin arms around my waist. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wide and far more childlike than her teenage years would suggest. I knew in my heart, no matter the consequences of my marriage to Josef, I had made the right decision. I would never, under any circumstances, leave behind those I loved.
It was not that my parents did not try to dissuade me. Over and over again they tried to convince me to go where it was safe.
“You will go first and we will follow later,” they both said.
“Josef will go first and we will all join him later,” I replied.
They looked at me with sad, fearful eyes. My father implored me. He spoke of the comfort he would feel in knowing that even just one of his children was safe. My mother held my hands clasped to her breast and told me that I must now follow my husband. It was my duty as a wife. But my sister never said a single word, and it was her silence that I heard the loudest.
CHAPTER 17
Sometimes, when the children ask about our wedding day, I can see the apartment in Queens with the blue-white snow on the fire escape. The bridge table with the plates of creamed herring and baskets of sliced rye. I can hear Frank Sinatra on the radio and imagine our living room filled with a few people we knew from Café Vienna. But I still have difficulty remembering Amalia’s face.
I remember that she had made the dress herself. She had spent nearly two days cutting and sewing a dress that, in the end, seemed rather unremarkable. A square collar and two bell sleeves, without a stitch of lace or ribbon. Her shoes were the same brown pumps she wore every day.
I want to be able to tell my children and grandchildren that she looked beautiful and that her face beamed clearly through the absence of a veil. But, for some reason, her face remains a mystery. Was it because she kept her eyes lowered? That her hair, braided and lifted behind her ears, was an artful distraction? Or was it because I was somewhere else, even at that moment. Somewhere that Amalia also understood. The strongest force attracting us to each other, the reason we were there holding hands.
We were not married by a rabbi, but by a judge. There was no religious ritual when we exchanged our vows. There was no cantor. I didn’t even break a glass.
I simply held Amalia’s small hands in mine and slid a gold ring on her finger, kissing her with a dry, careful mouth.
I did love Amalia. Those who ever doubted that are wrong. One finds love in transparency. To see wholly and without question. No one was standing there with a shucking knife trying to pry open my past. I told Amalia only once about the boat. The loosening of hands. The waters the color of coal.
But once was all that was needed.
I loved Amalia because she let me be. Who else could just let me stare out the window and not get annoyed by my silence? Who else would not mind the stack of books on my nightstand, and the lonely nights when I was at the hospital?
I tell my children I can remember Amalia’s face most clearly on the days she gave birth to them. To my daughter, who wriggled into this world with a cry that struck me straight to the heart, I tell her that her mother was like a dreaming angel during her birth. I see Amalia with a cone of ether over her mouth. She is in a twilight sleep. Her face like a doll’s, her eyes closed, her blond lashes pale against even paler skin.
She is so peaceful as the forceps bring our daughter kicking and screaming into this world. Hours later, Amalia will hold her, nurse her, and look into her baby’s eyes and see her own mother reflected there. She names our daughter Rebekkah after her mother, her middle name Zora, after her sister. She dangles the locket with the photo over her newborn head and says the kaddish.
I kiss both of their foreheads and I pray with her for the first time in years.
CHAPTER 18
My sister and I had barely spoken since the wedding. Initially she was furious that neither Lenka nor I had told her about our courtship. And now she was furious that I had agreed to leave my new bride behind. Věruška’s silence sliced through me like a saw to the bone.
The truth was, Lenka’s father always knew that mine could not secure enough visas for the rest of her family. We had a distant cousin who was sponsoring us and the U.S. State Department had told our cousin he could sponsor no more. I had come to her father before our wedding and told him so.
I had assured her father that we would have one visa for Lenka, and he seemed to breathe easier knowing at least she would get out of Czechoslovakia soon.
“It will be good that you all get abroad first,” he had said, trying to sound hopeful. “You can get things settled and then send for us.” He shook my hand. “I am entrusting my daughter to you and your family. Promise me you will always take care of her.”
It was his idea that I not tell Lenka until after the wedding, thinking that it would only upset her on what would otherwise be a beautiful, sacred day.
“Let’s not disturb her joy,” he said. He embraced me as we parted.
I had been conflicted by this suggestion. I certainly did not want to spoil our wedding day, but I thought it only fair to enter into this already rushed matrimony with Lenka knowing the truth.
But that afternoon, when I saw her radiant with the thought of our impending nuptials, I just didn’t have the heart to say anything.
Was I a coward? Probably. But, like her father, I thought I had her best interests at heart. Was I selfish? That was certain. But I wanted to look into her eyes after her veil was lifted, and only see tears of joy.
And so it was that I held the news from her. As I bathed the afternoon before the ceremony, I imagined her doing the same. Her white body deep in the warm and scented water. Her skin soft and awaiting my touch. I had memorized every feature of her face, every small line, as if committing it to part of me.
I shaved carefully with my face turned up to the mirror, a warm towel around my neck. As the sun began to set, I walked over to my bed and got dressed. My darkest wool suit, my whitest shirt, and my cuffs clasped with the links my father had given me when I entered university.
From my room, I could hear my mother and sister talking softly. They had spent three days packing our apartment, and their arguing had temporarily ceased only because I was to be wed that evening.
As I walked into our living room, I hardly recognized it. The bookshelves were empty, and mother’s treasures were no longer on display. All that remained were the walls and the furniture. If someone were to enter, they would have thought we had already gone abroad.
Father had sold so much in order to pay for our passports and passage to America. My mother had no particular attachment to clothes, and parted easily with what she had brought into the marriage years earlier. Her mother’s china and silver were sold for a fraction of their worth. How many Jewish families had already sold all their valuables in the same way? Czechoslovakia was already flooded with so many abandoned china services and cut crystal, the entire Vltava couldn’t have washed them all.
My family was dressed in what finery they still had left for the occasion. Věruška was dressed in a red gown, and her hair was pulled up and tucked with two beautiful combs.
They all turned to congratulate me.
“Josef,” my mother said quietly. “You look so much older today. How can that happen in just one day?”
I smiled and walked over to her and kissed her on her soft, powdered cheek. She was wearing a long black dress and a string of white pearls.
Father was smoking a pipe and his eyes, through his silver round spectacles, seemed to be taking every inch of me in.
“Mazel tov,” he said as he shook my hand and handed me one of the four remaining snifters of brandy.
“Have you told her?” he asked. I swallowed, and my belly filled with warmth and a false sense of calm.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Josef!” Věruška let out a small cry. “You must tell her!”
“Let the boy have his wedding, Věruška,” Papa said sternly. “We can have all the tears tomorrow.”
“It was her father’s idea,” I offered as an excuse.
She shook her head and turned from me. “To start out a marriage like this . . . I don’t even know what to say.”
“Then say nothing,” Father snapped. He took another strong swallow of brandy.
“Everybody’s saying nothing now. But—” Father cut her off again.
“Enough talk already, Věruška, we need to go now, or we’ll be late!”
She looked at me with an expression of such disapproval it could have broken glass. My sister did not like to be silenced. Smart as she was, she now let her eyes speak for her.
Under a descending sun, we walked to the synagogue. I remember looking at every building, every lamplight, and trying to force them into my memory. I didn’t know when we would return to Prague, and I wanted to remember its beauty on the eve of my new life.
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