The Lost Wife (17 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
His parents were furious with my decision. They had gone to great lengths to include me in their plans, and now Dr. Kohn and his wife believed their beloved son had married a fool.
Věruška, however, understood my decision. “They should have told you before the wedding,” she said, shaking her head. “They should have told you the truth.”
I smiled and reached for her hand, squeezing her slender fingers in mine. “Everything is so rushed . . . I want to be mad at my father and Josef, but there doesn’t even seem like there’s time for that . . . Does that seem silly?”
She smiled weakly. “I want you to come with us . . .”
“I know,” I told her. “I just can’t leave my family . . . I just can’t.”
“I understand,” she said, though I could hear the sadness and regret in her voice.
She adjusted the red scarf around her throat. Her eyes were glazed with tears.
“Part of me thinks we should all wait here until we can go together,” she said. “Honestly, what has this world come to? Everything has turned upside down.”
I tried to soothe her, even though it was I who wanted to cry. I took her small fingers and held them. “We’ll go shopping in New York soon. You’ll be wearing a new red dress and shoes with silk ribbons. We’ll drink cocoa in the afternoon, and go dancing together at night.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. My voice was now close to breaking. I didn’t think I had the strength anymore to maintain this facade of bravery for her—for Josef—for my parents. My own emotions remained behind floodgates that I feared would collapse at any moment. I did not want to think about Josef’s betrayal, my father’s complicity in not telling me. I remained steadfast in my decision to stay in Prague. I did this because it was what my conscience told me to do. But inside, I felt that my entire world was crumbling.
I held Věruška for several seconds. When I opened my eyes, I saw Josef standing at the doorway. He had wrongly hoped his sister could persuade me to join them. I saw him stare at the two of us, then shake his head and go to another room.
“We will see each other soon.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very soon.”
She rose from her seat and kissed me on both cheeks. “I always wanted a sister, but now that I have one, I’m leaving her behind.” She shook her head and dabbed her tears.
“I am coming,” I whispered through my tears. “Just not now.”
In the end, I was the one who convinced Josef to go without me.
“You will be the scout,” I told him like a general giving orders. “You’ll go and make a home for us. You will take English classes so you can start medical school there. You’ll get the American government to support my family’s application for asylum, and then we will all be together. There’s simply no other way.”
I said it as if it were written in stone. Clearly. Strongly. So ultimately, he believed he was doing the right thing for all of us until my family and I could join him.
Two days before they were to leave, however, Josef came home waving a letter. “I have good news,” he told me, kissing me on the lips.
“We are going to stay in England through the summer. Papa just heard there’s a Czech doctor running a clinic in Suffolk who needs obstetricians. He’s been able to rearrange our passage with the ship company, so we’re now booked to depart from Liverpool in September, first for Canada and then on to New York. This will buy us some more time to work on passage for your family.”
“That’s wonderful!” I cried, and let him wrap me in his arms.
“I’ll tell Papa that I will stay here with you until the end of the summer, and then join them in London before the boat leaves.”
I looked at him with such sweetness. “Josef, leave with your family now and don’t cause them any more stress. I’ve already complicated things enough. Hopefully, we can get visas for my family over the summer and we’ll all join you in England and board the boat together.”
I kissed him again. The letter fluttered against my back.
The day soon arrived for their departure to England. Josef and I were still using Miloš’s apartment. We woke up early and made love one last time.
I remember that he cried in my arms before he got dressed; his face was sealed to my breast as my fingers touched his curls.
“There’s nothing to cry about,” I lied. “We will see each other soon.”
My voice was flat and the words practiced. I had rehearsed them in my head while I had lain underneath him, my head staring at the ceiling. I had not slept the entire night. Josef had fallen asleep on my chest; his cheek was warm against me, his fingers laced through mine. In his slumber, he had looked like a sleeping child, an image that both filled my heart and wounded it at the same time. As I watched the clock, counting the hours we still had between us, I had marveled at his capacity to dream.
I would never tell him what I was secretly thinking—that I was tired of having to pretend to be stoic. I did not doubt my decision because I truly believed that Josef and I would eventually be reunited. But I was still secretly heartbroken that I was forced to make a choice between the man I loved and my family. It seemed terribly unfair and, again, I was afraid that if I let myself cry, I would never be able to stop.
Josef packed little to take on the journey so he could help his parents carry their trunks and valises. We had little as a married couple. Even our wedding portrait, taken by my mother with a family camera, had yet to be framed.
I had carefully placed it in a piece of folded brown paper. I wrote on it in pen, our names and the date of our wedding.
“You take it,” I told him. I bit my lip. I was forcing back my tears. “Place it by your bed in England, and when we’re finally in the States we’ll have it framed.”
He took it from me and placed it not in his suitcase, but in the breast pocket of his jacket.
We ate breakfast in a reverent silence, gazing at each other over steaming cups.
When we dressed, we stole greedy glances at each other, as if trying to store the sight for the months ahead. The entire time I felt as though I were holding my breath. A sob felt only seconds away. Again, I told myself, our separation was only temporary. We would see each other soon.
At the door, before we were to leave for the station, I stood next to him, my cheek pressed to his lapel.
When I pulled back in an effort to compose myself, I noticed a stray hair—a solitary brown string—dangling to the fiber of his coat. I took my finger to pull it away, but Josef caught my wrist.
“No. Don’t, Lenka.”
“Don’t what?”
“Leave it be.”
I can still see the glassiness of his eyes. Staring at me. Holding my wrist.
“Let me bring that little bit of you with me,” he said.
That little stray hair. He cupped his hand over it, as if it were a shield.
At the station, we met his family at the track. They were wrapped in heavy coats, a stack of suitcases on the cart. Věruška looked grave.
I went up to them and greeted them, taking their hands and warming them with my own. I looked at their faces and tried to press them into my memory. I pulled each of them close and kissed them on both cheeks.
“Good-bye, Lenka,” each one said to me. “We will see you soon.”
I nodded and tried to push back the tears. Josef’s mother and father were stoic, but Věruška could hardly look at me, there were so many tears rolling down her face.
When the train pulled into the track, his parents and sister boarded first so that Josef and I could have some privacy in our last moments together.
We no longer spoke of my decision to remain behind. He understood my reasons by now.
And perhaps that was the beauty of our farewell. The unspoken understanding between us.
He stood before me and reached out to kiss me. I placed my mouth over his and felt his breath within my own. He placed both of his hands over my head and caressed my hair.
“Lenka . . .”
I pulled back and lifted my head to his. I was fighting back tears.
“Please just hurry and send for us.”
He nodded. I took a step back to look at him one last time. Then, just as the train whistle began to sound, Josef reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a small package. “This was my mother’s,” he said, placing what felt like a miniature box wrapped in brown paper in my hand.
“She wanted me to give it to you. Open it when you get home.”
He placed his finger beneath my chin and lifted me one last time to his mouth.
“I love you,” he whispered. And then I let go of him and stood at the platform as the train pulled away from the station.
The box contained a small cameo, carved from a smooth, pink carnelian stone, the face in white relief.
I could hear his voice telling me the face resembled mine. The long, narrow eyes. The full waves of hair.
I knew this was a conciliatory gift from his mother. A thank-you for convincing Josef not to stay with me.
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