The Lost Wife (20 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
My mother knelt down and kissed her on the forehead. “Stars belong in the sky, dear. Remember that.” Lucie’s eyes were full of tears as she came over to Mother. Lucie took her daughter’s hand in hers and kissed it. I so wanted her to hold mine, too, for I remembered the safe feeling of that hand. The warm padding of her palm as it held me close, the reassuring security it gave me as a child as we walked down the street. The memory of my own childhood when the only stars were just as Mother said, those burning in the midnight sky.
One afternoon, I went to get what little groceries I could with my ration coupons. There were only a few hours each day during which Jews could shop. The lines were long and there was hardly anything on the shelves to be bought. On this day, however, I was lucky enough to get a little flour and butter, a few radishes, and two apples.
Walking home, I ran into a girl who was in the class above me at the Academy, Dina Gottliebová. She was not wearing a yellow star and I was surprised when she stopped to talk to me.
“I’ve just come from seeing
Snow White
,” she said. “I took my star off to see it.”
Snow White
,” she said. “I took my star off to see it.”
I was shocked. I would never have imagined taking such a risk.
“You cannot imagine the drawings that made this film possible.” She was brimming over with excitement. “The characters were so lifelike . . . the colors so saturated. I want to race home and draw all night.”
For a few seconds I had forgotten about the star on my coat, and my hungry parents and sister waiting for me in the apartment. There I was enraptured by the sight and voice of my old classmate waxing enthusiastic about a film.
We talked for a few more minutes, before the sight of a German officer walking in our direction frightened me from continuing the conversation.
How I wanted to remain there with her. Her energy was infectious and I admired her bravery, but she was the one now with the yellow star in her pocket, while mine was clearly sewn on my lapel. The two of us talking openly could only ignite trouble.
“Dina.” I touched her arm gently. “I am so happy to have seen you, but I must go home and get these groceries—what little there is of them—home to my mother.”
She nodded and smiled in a way that communicated that she understood why I had become nervous. “Let’s hope we see each other soon,” she said, and then we parted ways.
That night, over a watery soup of flour dumplings and two quartered apples, I imagined what it might feel like to sit in a dark theater and watch an animated film. To laugh at the lively images dancing on the screen, with the light from the projector illuminating my hair, and my yellow star buried deep in my pocket.
CHAPTER 25
At night, I sometimes wake up from a dream in which I am sitting in that lifeboat, with Isaac sitting next to me, his violin on his lap, his black eyes scanning the water, searching for the exact place where he dropped his bow.
In the dream, I am not watching as the
Athenia
raises its nose to the starry sky. I am not focusing on the horror of the mangled lifeboat or the blood staining the waters red.
Athenia
raises its nose to the starry sky. I am not focusing on the horror of the mangled lifeboat or the blood staining the waters red.
I am staring at all the empty seats in the boat. The places where my family might have sat, and my life would have been wholly different. I have heard other survivors speak of this guilt—the boat that could have held one more, the family that could have been persuaded to hide one more child, or the wife that should never have been left behind.
If I am feeling particularly low, I try and imagine Lenka there beside me. I wiggle my old bottom to the side of my mattress and make room for her on the wooden seat. I place my hand on a stretch of white sheet to warm it for her, to search for her fingers, to wait for the grasp of her hand. Sixty years later, and I still can remember the sensation of Lenka’s hand.
I tell nearly all my patients the same thing when I come to check on them after their delivery. They are almost always sitting up in bed in their robes. The baby is slightly unwrapped from its hospital blanket, its face peeking toward its mother’s breast, its fingers threaded into hers.
There are two sensations of skin you will always remember in your lifetime: the first time you fall in love—and that person holds your hand—and the first time your child grasps your finger. In each of those times, you are sealed to the other for eternity.
Lenka’s hand was the whitest I have ever known. The fingers long and elegantly tapered. The first time she took my hand, my heart beat so fast I could hardly breathe. She never smelled like turpentine or chalk dust even after a day of painting or drawing. I would press my lips to her smooth knuckles, and inhale the scent of rose and geranium. I could fall into the memory like a softcushioned chair. I could smell a lifetime of happiness. I could close my eyes and see us growing old together, our hands knotted together wrinkled and brown.
The day at the station when we parted, I honestly did not think it would be the last time. But to this day, I can still feel those fluttering hands against my cheeks. I can feel her fingertips over my eyelids, inhale the scent of flowers, and recall the flash of her white skin.
When my daughter, Rebekkah, was born—that grasp of two infant fingers over my single one—was equally powerful. And when my son was born and I cradled him in my arms, the sensation was just as profound.
When Amalia was dying, lying in a bed with tubes threaded through her nose, one taped to her arm, I would take her hand and talk to her.
That hand, small with delicate fingers and pale, moon-shaped nails. My daughter’s hand, but older. Liver spots and skin as fragile as rice paper. I would kiss her hand. I would find myself crying when her eyes were sealed closed. I would wipe my tears with the back of her palm and I would squeeze it as if trying to communicate with her through Morse code.
But in my heart, I knew that even in the best years of our marriage, the sensation of Amalia’s hand never gave me the same thrill or comfort as Lenka’s. But when Amalia’s heart stopped beating and her hand grew cold, I ached, yearning for that fleeting sense of warmth and comfort, all the same.
CHAPTER 26
We were informed by letter that our family would be transported to Terezín in December 1942.
We were not the first to receive notice of their transport. Dina and her mother had been sent earlier in the year, and Elsa that October with her parents. By the time we heard that we were to be sent, we were almost looking forward to it. We hoped to be reunited with so many of the people from our circle who had already been sent. “It will be a place of only Jews,” Father told us. Oddly enough, that sounded like a relief to us at that time.
Every transport was assigned a letter of the alphabet, and we were
Ez
. We were instructed to bring a total of fifty kilos that could fit into one suitcase, a rucksack, and a roll of bedding. Marta and I went through our clothes and packed three outfits each. One pair of pants, a dress, and two skirts and blouses. Stockings. Shoes. Underwear. Papa said Marta and I could each pack one book, but I chose to bring two sketchpads, along with one tin of vine charcoal and one small box of oil pastels.
Ez
. We were instructed to bring a total of fifty kilos that could fit into one suitcase, a rucksack, and a roll of bedding. Marta and I went through our clothes and packed three outfits each. One pair of pants, a dress, and two skirts and blouses. Stockings. Shoes. Underwear. Papa said Marta and I could each pack one book, but I chose to bring two sketchpads, along with one tin of vine charcoal and one small box of oil pastels.
When we learned we would be sent to Terezín, Mother took the news so silently, so inwardly, that it was impossible to gauge her feelings. She worked like a machine, efficiently and without emotion, reading the guidelines and then making the necessary preparations. She saved two sausages over the course of three weeks. Then, as the transport got closer, she cooked milk and sugar for a long time until it turned brown, and then packed it in paper containers. She also made a roux of butter and flour and rolled it in wax paper. She baked small cookies and one cake, and several loaves of bread. She packed most of this between her and father’s rucksack, packing little else for them but two sets of clothes and underwear. No extra shoes. Not a single book.
She took our sheets and pillowcases and boiled them the color of coffee so they would not look dirty when they eventually became worn. Marta gave her the pillowcase that Lucie had embroidered so many years before and asked her to boil that in coffee, too. “I want to bring it,” she had said. Mother took the pillowcase, already fragile from being on Marta’s bed for so many years, and boiled it.
After Marta and I had packed our suitcases, mother checked what we had packed and refolded the clothes, as if she needed the ritual of preparing the things for each of her children’s journey. We were no longer young children—even Marta was now sixteen—yet, in her eyes, we were ever still in need of her care.
Father used a thick black pen to mark our suitcases and rucksack with our transport numbers. I was 4704Ez, Marta 4703Ez, Mother 4702Ez, and Father 4701Ez. We also were given identification tags with the same numbers that we were required to wear around our necks.
The night before we were to leave, Lucie came to our apartment. She was solemn. Her black hair was pinned behind her ears and her face was tense. That beautiful white skin of hers—which only a few years ago had looked like porcelain—was now showing the first whispers of age. The fear on her face was so visible that I felt a chill down my spine. I could not look her straight in the eyes.
And so I focused on my mother. I watched as she took Lucie’s capelet and smiled as she glanced over the fine navy gabardine that looked as good as the day she’d given it to her. She reached to touch Lucie’s shoulder, and Lucie responded by opening her arms and enveloping Mother in such a tight embrace that I saw the fabric of Mother’s dress gather into the grasp of Lucie’s fingers.
When I saw the two of them, Mother bending to embrace Lucie, her chin resting on Lucie’s shoulder, I thought of the history between these two women. How each of them had loved me through my childhood, and had mothered me in her own way. But watching them together now, it was clear that their connection was more like the bond between Marta and me. They did not say a single word, but each movement, each gesture, was like a pantomime of worry and reassurance, of fear and of the other extending comfort. All expressed without the utterance of any sound.
Lucie sat next to my mother at the dining-room table. She watched as my mother opened three velvet boxes. As required by the Germans, my parents had turned in their other valuables weeks ago. The shelves in the basement of the Spanish synagogue—a designated collecting station for the German authorities—were filled with silver candelabra, mother-of-pearl gramophones, sets of sterling, as well as paintings and jewelry. All of these things, now considered extravagant luxuries, would be sent abroad to enrich the senior members of the Reich. We had stood in line for hours to hand over our watches, Father’s cuff links, Mother’s strands of pearls, Marta’s earrings with the faceted stones, and my favorite garnet ring. But Mother’s engagement ring from Father, the gold choker with the seed pearls that Grandmother gave her on the eve of her wedding, and the small ring Father gave her when I was born, those things she had kept hidden.
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