The Lost Wife (30 page)

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Authors: Alyson Richman

BOOK: The Lost Wife
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I shook my head. I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was what existed or didn’t exist within Terezín, and everything about the transports east seemed like one big black hole.
“But what if he is right, Rita?” I whispered to her. “Is it worth the risk? Now you have a safe assignment at Lautscher and Oskar’s job as an engineer gives you some added security within the camp. Take him up on his offer to get married now, and start your family later.”
I could not believe I was actually telling my friend to end her pregnancy, especially one involving two people who wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. I knew that if anyone had made such a suggestion to me when Josef left for England, I would have despised that person with every ounce of my being. But since our transport nearly a year before, I had witnessed the roundups for the trains “east.” I saw how the majority of those sent away were sick, old, or pregnant. And now when a new transport arrived, even some healthy prisoners were shipped off. It was clear to me that wherever the Nazis were sending these people, it was bound to be a place far worse than Terezín.
I could only imagine the horror and betrayal Rita must have felt at hearing me tell her this. I’m sure she expected me to support her, to tell her that I would speak to Oskar and convince him that he was wrong.
“I suppose it’s that you have no idea what it’s like to have a baby growing within you, Lenka.” She looked at me with eyes like a cornered animal. “If you did, you would never tell me what you just did.”
“Rita,” I said, my voice cracking even though I spoke in the faintest whisper. “I do know what it’s like to be pregnant.”
I did not elaborate about my miscarriage, of the sadness of losing my only connection to my husband, who had drowned in a freezing ocean. There was already too much sadness around us. I just reached to squeeze her hand.
 
For the next two weeks, I watch Rita struggle, caught between Oskar’s fear for her safety and her desire to preserve the life growing inside her. In this barren ghetto, where no sapling or flower grows, the capacity to create life was still a miracle. How many women had I heard say they no longer got their periods and believed their emaciated bodies were now incapable of conceiving anything during a hurried, unromantic encounter with their boyfriends?
Rita shows me her decision without speaking directly of it. When she sits, she now folds her hands over her belly as if the two flat palms can protect what grows secretly inside.
When she talks, she does not look straight ahead, but toward her lap.
“Oskar is sick with worry,” she tells me. “The only way I can silence him is by putting his hand here.” She unfolds her hands and pats her stomach. She is four months along now, yet still not even the slightest bump shows. “I feel flutters,” she says, and her face is flushed with happiness. “I know I don’t look pregnant, but I still feel it.” I look at Rita and try to push away the fear and enjoy the sight of my friend so alive, so full of life.
 
Oskar tells her he wants them to marry before the baby is born. He fashions a makeshift engagement ring out of some twisted electrical wire and proposes to her on bended knee, just after she has finished her day’s work at Lautscher.
There are no extended engagements in Terezín. Within days they are married in the chamber of the Council of Elders. The night before her wedding, the girls in Rita’s barracks all got together to wash her hair. They placed a large bucket under the spigot in the wash sink, where it remained for several hours, collecting the droplets of water until there was enough to bathe Rita’s head. Her hair is short and cropped around her sharp face, but two girls stand and fuss over her and use their fingers to arrange it as best they can.
Rita wears an old brown dress with a frayed hem and a worn collar. She is solemn-looking, a bride without adornment. There is no veil, not even a single flower for her white fingers to clasp.
Theresa appears and quietly tells Rita she has brought something for her to wear.
She hands Rita a small package wrapped in old newsprint. The parcel, which seems almost weightless as it is placed in Rita’s hands, seems suddenly to become heavy and worthy of reverence as Rita slowly unwraps it.
We all watch awestruck as she peels off the layers of newsprint to reveal a small corsage constructed from strips of painted canvas, sewn together with a yellow felted center, a blooming flower made from nothing but scraps.
“It’s for your hair,” Theresa says quietly.
She withdraws a small piece of metal wire from the pocket of her dress. “Here. You can use this to twist it around some of the strands, perhaps just above your ear.”
Rita touches her face to fight back the tears. “Thank you, Theresa. Thank you.” Her fingers now reach to cup the girl’s face. She kisses her cheeks. “Only you could make something so beautiful out of nothing.”
Theresa blushes from embarrassment. “It’s really nothing . . . I—I . . .” She is stammering from all the attention her gift has brought her. “I just wanted you to have a flower.”
It is true, Rita holds no wedding bouquet. Yet she is beautiful with her handmade corsage pinned to her hair, her hands folded protectively over her slightly swollen belly. Oskar’s four friends hold up wooden sticks, a white sheet making the marital canopy over their heads. We all gaze at them as the chief rabbi of the ghetto evokes the seven blessings. An old glass bottle is placed in a napkin and Oskar smashes it beneath his boot.
“
Ani L’Dodi v’Dodi Li
,” the rabbi tells them to say to each other. “
You are my beloved and my beloved is mine
.”
I think of those words and remember my own wedding day. It seems so far away and yet like yesterday at the same time. I try to hold back my tears at the memory.
The other girls all clap to congratulate the couple, and I see them absentmindedly touching their fingers to their hair. We are all wishing for another time, where there could be an abundance of flowers—or even just a handful—so we all could have one to tuck behind our own ears.
 
Rita’s belly grows no bigger than a loaf of bread. She wears the same baggy dress she has always worn. She learns to walk even straighter so that the little bit of new weight is even less noticeable. I take fewer bites of bread for myself, and pour half of my soup into a watering can. I bring both the half-bitten morsel of bread and the watery soup with a single piece of turnip to her barracks.
“Eat,” I tell her.
She refuses my ration. “I don’t need any more than I have,” she insists. “Please don’t save your food for me, Lenka. You need to eat, too.”
“You’ll need it when the baby comes,” I say.
I leave the food, despite Rita’s pleas. Later, when I run into Oskar, I notice how thin he looks. “I try to give her my ration, too,” he says. “She refuses it, but I won’t leave for the evening until I see her eat it.”
“You need to keep your strength up, too,” I tell him, and touch his elbow in a sympathetic gesture.
 
The next time I go to bring Rita food, she uses a stronger voice with me.
“Lenka, you
must
stop this. I am serious.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. “You need to eat more, for you and the baby.”
“I don’t want to eat more! I can’t get any bigger than this, or they’ll figure out I’m pregnant and send me away!”
I looked at her, her wide green eyes now filled with a wild fear.
“But the baby needs nourishment, Rita.” I could barely force out the words.
“The baby will take what it needs from me. I just want it to be born in Terezín . . .” She began to weep. “I am too afraid to go anywhere else.”
I understood now what she was saying. So I did the only thing I could think of: I took Rita in my arms, just as I remembered my own mother doing to me when I was scared and pregnant back in Prague. Hoping that the warmth of my embrace gave her at least half as much comfort as I remembered Mother’s giving me.
CHAPTER 37
 
JOSEF
 
One of my earliest gifts from my grandson Jason was a paperweight he made when he was three. It was a stone he had painted blue, with two black-and-white eyes and an orange felt nose. It still sits on my desk alongside my papers, adjacent to the photographs of my family members, all now grown.
I love that paperweight. Every time I place it atop a pile of bills or a notepad, I remember the day he brought it home from preschool.
He called me “Gampa” back then, the closest thing to “grandpa” he could manage. He pulled it out of his little red knapsack and handed it to me.
“For you. Gampa.”
I held it in my hand and smiled. The stone was wrapped in wax paper, its opaque paint still a bit wet; the felt nose was off center, and the two plastic eyes wobbled back and forth.
“I’ll cherish it,” I told him. We went to the kitchen and placed it to dry on a paper napkin. Then we washed our hands together, the water running blue.
I close my eyes and remember my grandson when he was small. The first time I took him somewhere, just the two of us, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I led him through the Temple of Dendur, explaining the history of the Egyptians, the magic of hieroglyphics, and the curse rendered on those who had excavated the tombs. There was the joy of his first visit to the Central Park Zoo, the sweetness of his first frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, and the wonder of our first visit to the Hayden Planetarium, when he asked me if every star represented a person who had died.

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