The Puzzle King (29 page)

“Maybe we’ve just been married for so long that we know each other like old socks,” she finally said.

“Time,” said Aunt Hannah. “He needs to get away from work. You need to go away together. Go somewhere beautiful where there are few distractions, and stay for as long as you can.”

That night, Flora told Simon about what Aunt Hannah had said. “I agree with her. You need a real rest and to be away from here and from work. And frankly, we need time together. We barely see each other anymore. And when we do, well, you’re so tired we don’t do much of anything.”

Simon heard the way Flora’s voice got wispy when she said that. He wanted to argue that she was overreacting and if she’d only be patient, things would get better. But he knew that they wouldn’t. Now that they were introducing a line of Popeye Games, and Jigsaw Puzzle Maker Kits, plus the Mystery Jigsaw Puzzles and novelettes, there would be even more work. As he thought about the months and years ahead, he could feel the weight of the steel die bearing down on him.

“So tell me,” he said, rubbing the veins over his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Supposing we had all this
time
. Where would we go? What would we do with it?”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” said Flora. “You promise me the month of July, and I’ll figure out the rest.”

S
HE FOUND THEM
a house to rent in the Catskill Mountains. It was on a lake and had a twenty-foot dock out the back. There was a flower garden filled with wisteria, zinnias, and dahlias the size of gramophone records. In the mornings they would swim in the lake and sit on the lawn reading their books. Sometimes they’d have a glass or two of wine with lunch. After that, they’d take a nap, and often they would make love. In the afternoons, they’d walk in the woods and come back in time for another swim before dinner.

In these daily rituals, they found their way back to each other. Simon told her about Pissboy and the drawings, and how he felt he’d lost touch with the eager creative child he’d been. She
confided to him about Seema: “She uses people up, then throws them away like old lipsticks.” They talked about how much they wanted Edith to come to America. And they fantasized about the children they might have had. “I would hope they’d have your humor and optimism and not my cloudy disposition,” he said. “They would have to have your brains,” she said. “And your looks,” he answered. “Your startling and delectable looks.”

At night, they would eat dinner by candlelight on a wrought-iron table in the backyard. While Flora cleared the table, Simon would stare up at the heavens. They were most likely the same stars he could see from their yard in Yonkers, but here he took the time to study their shapes and the intensity of their light. Sometimes, when he stood there long enough, he thought he could feel their heat through his clothes and in his heart, and it would make him think that it was his mother shining down on him and filling him with her warmth. And he would wonder if, somewhere in the world, his brothers and sisters were staring up at the same stars and thinking of their lost brother, feeling that he, too, was reaching down and trying to touch them.

Simon had other thoughts of a more practical nature during that July of 1933. He thought about time:
Time
magazine and his new fame, and time itself, how it shot by him yet pinned him down. Time wasn’t his to take anymore. He’d put off so many plans for the future, and here it was. What was he waiting for? When it came to him, the decision seemed almost mundane in its absoluteness. Beginning in September, he would relinquish his day-to-day responsibilities as president of Phelps and Adler and become chairman of the board. After that, he would focus all of his attention on finding out who and what was left of his family, and on not letting Flora’s family slip away.

Tee-poo-peep-pa. Tee-poo-peep-pa. Tee-poo-peep-pa
.

Seema stuck her head out the window. “Quit honking that horn, Karl,” she shouted. “I’m coming.”

She stopped in front of the mirror long enough to fluff her hair and check that there was no lipstick on her teeth. She ran her hands over her hips and turned sideways. Not bad. Her stocking seams were straight; there were no scuffmarks on her shoes. She grabbed her pocketbook. Karl hated to be kept waiting, but she would do a quick inventory anyway. Makeup. Hairbrush. Keys. Passport. Wallet. License. Police registration card. And now this, a
Sippenblatt
, proof of pure Aryan ancestry, for which she had Karl to thank. You couldn’t even leave the house anymore without an arsenal of paperwork. Politicians. What a bunch of clowns. Not that she followed politics all that much, but ever since the National Socialists had taken over a few months ago, there was all this rigmarole about what you could and couldn’t do. All of a sudden, it was against the law to have dancing bears at the circus. And those poor Italian beggars with their monkeys
on a string. They were so cute, those monkeys, the way they’d perch on their owner’s shoulders and grasp the coins with their tendril-like fingers. Now, rather than risk being hauled off to prison for two years, the Italians and their monkeys were streaking back to Italy with their tails literally between their legs. It was a joke, really.

Despite all this nonsense, Seema loved Germany. It was true, she’d never thought she’d last more than two weeks in Kaiserslautern, and here she was, five years later, still living in the same room she and Flora had first shared at the Schultz farm. There was something about that room. It was small, yes, but it was perfect. Everything in it was beautiful. It made her feel contained and safe. Her New York apartment, easily eight times the size of this room, was cluttered with expensive furnishings, antique clocks, fine linen hand towels, and crystal wine glasses. None of these items reflected her taste, nor did she own any of them. Living among other people’s belongings, she had begun to feel borrowed herself. She cherished the objects in this little room that were hers: a crockery set with handles shaped like cloverleafs; a bronze figurine of a German shepherd that reminded her of Lulu; the black onyx cross that hung above her bed.

So long as she kept the room clean and helped Frau Schultz with the housework, this would be her place, and no one would be watching how she lived in it or what she looked like when she did. Seema wasn’t the sort to make promises to herself. Why bother if all that came of it was that she’d go ahead and break them? But there was one vow she took in her earliest days in Germany that she held on to for the rest of her life, and that was never to be financially beholden to any man again. At the time she made it she was broke and had no idea how she would earn a
single pfennig. Once again, the neighborly Frau Schultz stepped in. She would talk to her sister, she said, who worked for the family that owned Schweriner, the only department store in town. Schweriner always needed good salespeople.

“But I know far more about buying things than I do selling them,” Seema had argued. “Ach,” said Frau Schultz, making a dismissive motion with her hand. “What is there to know? You know what’s pretty. You know what people like to buy. And look at you. You’re a beautiful woman. People like beautiful women. They want to please them; they want to look like them. Whatever it is—girdles, gloves, bath salts—you’ll have no trouble selling it. This I promise you.”

Frau Schultz turned out to be right. Seema started in the perfume department but was quickly promoted to women’s jewelry. She was equally at ease with the rich women who had all the money in the world to spend and the poor ones with their noses pressed against the display cases. In her life she had been both, and she regarded them all with the same sympathy and natural friendliness. And then there were the men who came in with pockets full of cash eager to spend it on something that would impress, convince, or prompt forgiveness.

When Seema lived in America, people thought her exotic because she was from Germany and spoke with a disarming accent. Now that she lived in Kaiserslautern, she cultivated Americanisms like chewing gum and calling people “kiddo,” and the Germans found her as charming and exotic as had her friends in New York.

Karl said that when he first saw her, she shone so brightly he nearly had to turn away. “It was the hair,” he said, “and the sparkling smile and the light in your eyes. Dazzling, like nothing
I’ve seen before.” She had just wrapped up a women’s gold Patek Philippe watch for a man who had done far too much explaining. “For my mother,” he’d said. “She turns seventy. It’s a nice watch for a mother. It has value but doesn’t shout out to be noticed. Nothing’s too good for one’s mother, wouldn’t you agree?”

“One mother is all you get,” Seema said trying not to think about her own. “Of course she should have the best that money can buy.”

That’s when she noticed Karl. He was standing over the man’s left shoulder, smiling at her as if he’d known what she was thinking. With his salt-and-pepper hair and swimming pool – blue eyes, Karl was hard to miss. He had broad shoulders and wore a fine cashmere coat. His skin was slightly florid, as if he’d just enjoyed a stein of beer or come in from the cold. He was older and shorter than the men she usually found attractive, but there was something about his smile. It was personal and conspiratorial.

She wrapped the watch and handed the package to the man. “
Guten Tag
,” she said, “
Ich hoffe, da Ihre Mutter die Uhr geniessen wird.”
She hoped his mother would enjoy her watch. The man shoved the box into his coat pocket and stared at Seema as if trying to figure out whether or not she’d mocked him. When he was out of sight, Karl stepped close enough for her to smell his pine-scented cologne. “His
Mutter
my ass,” he said.

Seema shook her head, knowing the effect her flickering hair had on men. “What a
Dummkopf
. Does he think I was born yesterday?”

“Men can be such idiots, particularly when it comes to beautiful women.” He smiled.

It went like this for several weeks. Karl would show up every
few days or so, usually late in the afternoon, with stories to tell about the customers Seema had waited on that day. She never noticed him watching, yet he somehow knew everything that had transpired. He’d describe the young woman who bought the diamond ring for herself; the old man who came in several times a week just to run a particular strand of pearls through his fingers; the middle-aged woman who thought, until the guards came, that Seema had not noticed her conceal an ivory brooch on the inside of her sleeve. In vivid detail, he could recall their outfits, their dialects, the coffee stains on their teeth, and the moles on their arms. He startled Seema one day when he said: “You speak German like a
Landsmann
who’s spent a fair amount of time in New York.”

“And you, Mr. Eagle Eyes,” she answered. “Do you have nothing better to do than to spy on a simple shop girl?”

“There is a difference between being interested in someone and spying on her,” he said. “I am interested, and I like to indulge my interests.”

He came back the following week, early on a Thursday evening, just before closing. This time there was no banter or observations. Just this oddly formal declaration: “For many weeks now you and I have had an entertaining exchange, and yet I don’t even know your name. I am Karl Emerling.”

“Hello Karl Emerling. I’m Seema Glass,” she said, surprised at how easily that name slipped out.

“Seema Glass. What a fortunate name. So I am wondering, Frau Glass,” he said, as he stared at the finger where there would be a wedding ring should one exist, “would you like to join me for dinner tonight? I know a café not many blocks from here.”

Seema stared back at his ringless finger: “I don’t see why not. I’m hungry and I like to indulge my hunger.”

The air was raw and the temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees since Seema was last outside. With only a thin wool coat and no hat or gloves, she crossed her arms and tucked her hands under her armpits.

“You’re shivering, aren’t you?” Karl asked after a few blocks. He touched his finger to her nose. “Cold nose,” he said. “Jewess nose.”

“Broken nose.”

“Your hands must be freezing,” he said, and she wondered whether he was ignoring what she’d just said.

He went on: “You’re a lucky woman because look at what I have.” He pulled off his leather gloves. “These will do the trick. Go ahead, put them on.” The gloves were too big but they were lined with cashmere and warm with the heat from his fingers. They walked the rest of the way in silence, the comment about her nose occupying the space between them. Seema thought about Oliver and how he’d made fun of her Jewishness. He made her feel ashamed of so many things that shouldn’t have caused her shame. So what if she was Jewish? She didn’t feel Jewish, didn’t act it or look it, except for that crook in her nose. Besides, she was in Germany now. She was a German. She felt that more than anything else. Seema decided that if the subject came up, she’d say yes, she’d been born Jewish, but she was really a German who for reasons that she could never explain slept underneath a black onyx cross and wore a tiny gold one around her neck. As these thoughts came, she smiled imperceptibly.

“Something has amused you?” asked Karl.

“You don’t miss a thing do you?”

“I try not to,” he said.

When they got to the café, Karl ordered for both of them. “Champagne.” He turned toward Seema. “I am correct in thinking you wouldn’t mind sharing a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, am I not?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The duck flambé with the haricots verts? Yes, I think that we’ll both have that, and some of your pâté to start.”

Karl spoke imperatively, as if he were hammering the periods into the end of his sentences. He was as inquisitive as he was observant, and his questions were direct and unabashed. He asked Seema about her childhood, her sisters, her parents. Had she ever been married? Did she miss not having children? He had an intensity about him that could bend silverware. The way he stared into her eyes made it easy for her to tell him things she would normally keep to herself. When he asked: “Did you leave America because of a failed love affair?” she told him about Oliver. “He was very rich and very married,” she said. She described the apartment on Park Avenue and the parties and jewelry that had come with it. “I had everything money could buy, except my freedom.” She described the car accident to him and how, after she’d realized she’d broken her nose, Oliver had just handed her a handkerchief. He reached across the table and took her hand. His was large and muscular and as warm as the inside of his glove. He rubbed the back of her hand against his cheek and held it there. “Seema Glass, you are a mesmerizing woman.” Then he kissed her wrist and placed her hand back on the table. “So tell me this, you are a Jew, aren’t you?”