The Time Between (30 page)

The words began to jump under my eyes until I realized that my whole body was shaking. I made it to the love seat and sat down, forcing my arms to remain steady so I could read and reread the last two lines over and over to make sure I had them right.
From the Reichmann Family Collection. Believed lost in the bombing of Budapest, July 1944.

Could Helena be related to the Reichmann family somehow? And why was the painting believed lost when it was hanging on the wall in an old house on Edisto Island? I frowned, my mind jumping from one possible answer to the next, but none of them resolving all the questions. Such as why Bernadett had requested this book from the library and why she hadn’t wanted Helena to see it.

My gaze traveled to the wall across the room, to the other portraits hanging there, the overhead lights emphasizing the waves in the unstretched canvases. Helena had framed them herself and had not wanted anyone to come in and appraise them, despite Finn’s repeated requests. Yet she had sold several of them over the years, according to Jacob Isaacson—an assertion that seemed to be confirmed by the blank spots on the walls.

Jacob Isaacson.
As an art dealer, he could probably answer some of my questions. And maybe even some I was afraid to ask. I thought for a moment about calling Finn first, and just as quickly dismissed it. What I’d just discovered had nothing to do with my job. And if I did find something, I wanted Helena to be the one to tell him.

Placing the library receipt in the book as a bookmark, I left the art book on the piano bench and moved into the foyer. He’d given me a business card for Helena, with his phone number for her to call, and I remembered it falling to the floor and slipping under the small space between the bottom of the small hall chest and the floor.

After removing the lamp from the table, I braced myself against the solid piece of furniture and managed to slide it until I spotted the small white rectangle lying faceup, waiting to be found.

I picked up the card and replaced the furniture, knowing that if Helena saw it she would know immediately what I’d been looking for. Then I returned to the music room, where I’d left my phone, and called the number before I could talk myself out of it.

He picked up on the third ring. “Jacob Isaacson.”

“Mr. Isaacson, this is Eleanor Murray. We met a couple of weeks ago, when you came to Edisto. I work for Helena Szarka.”

“Yes, of course. And please call me Jacob.” From his excited tone, I knew that I had his full attention.

“I, um, wanted to talk with you, because when you were here, you mentioned a particular painting that Bernadett wanted you to see. I was hoping you could give me a little more information.”

There was a brief pause. “Eleanor, as eager as I am to discuss this subject further, I hesitate since you’re not a member of the family—”

“I understand,” I said, cutting him off. “And I’m not expecting you to give me any more details than you feel comfortable revealing. I just need to know a couple of things. So that . . .” I paused, no longer sure of my motive. “So I can put my mind at rest.”

“All right,” he said, excitement and trepidation wrapped around each other in the two simple words.

I took a deep breath. “Are you familiar with Pieter van der Werff’s
Portrait of Woman with Ruby Necklace
?”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone, filled with hushed anticipation. “Yes. I’m very familiar with it.”

“Is that the painting Bernadett wished to discuss with you?”

Instead of answering my question directly, he asked, “Have you seen it?”

I thought for a moment. “I saw it in an art book. The caption says that it was lost during the bombing of Budapest during the war.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I know.”

“Who were the Reichmanns?”

“They were a wealthy Jewish family who lived in Budapest before the war. They were bankers, at least until the Horthy regime allied with Germany and Jews were no longer allowed to be anything but menial workers.”

“Do you know what happened to them?” I closed my eyes, wanting to block out the images from the history books I’d been reading, images of skeletal humans in rags, and piles of empty shoes.

“They were put on a train and sent to Auschwitz. All of them died there—the mother, father, three children, grandparents; they all died. Except for the youngest, a daughter, Sarah, who was hidden by neighbors when the Nazis came.” There was a brief pause, and I imagined the somber young man measuring his words. “Sarah Reichmann was my grandmother.”

I felt pressure on my chest, as if I was lying beneath a wall of stone, and I realized that I had stopped breathing. I recalled Nurse Weber’s words to Helena.
Breathe in, breathe out.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing how inadequately stupid those two words were.

“Did you know, Eleanor, that during the war the Nazis confiscated the personal property of the Jews they forced into ghettos and then sent to the camps? All across Europe, they took jewelry and silver and fine art. Some of it has been recovered, but so much of it is lost now to the survivors. Sold privately over the years, and hanging in homes where most people don’t realize that the painting is more than a lovely portrait of a landscape. Or a beautiful woman. They don’t see the blood of six million Jews. They don’t think to look, or if they know, they look the other way.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Are you there?” he said, his voice sounding very far away.

“Yes. I’m here. I need to call you back. I need to speak with Miss Szarka again.”

“I understand. And Miss Murray—Eleanor. It’s not about the money. It’s never been about the money.”

We said good-bye and I ended the call, my phone frozen in my hand. A cloud crossed over the sun outside, darkening the corners of the room as if trying to hide all the secrets that had gathered there, unseen, for too many years.

Eleanor

I
sat on the piano bench staring at the painting of the woman in the red dress, wondering how many people had seen it in the years it had hung there.
Sold privately over the years, and hanging in homes where most people don’t realize that the painting is more than a lovely portrait of a landscape. Or a beautiful woman. They don’t see the blood of six million Jews. They don’t think to look, or if they know, they look the other way.

I heard the thump of Helena’s cane banging on the wall, but I still couldn’t move. I felt chilled to my core, reminding me of the only other time I’d felt this kind of inertia. It had been the night the storm took my father away from me, and all I could do was sit on the dock and stare out through the pouring rain, thinking that if I just looked hard enough, I’d spot his boat.

The thumping came again, and I willed myself to move, wishing for a star to lead the way, to tell me what I was supposed to say to this woman whom I thought I knew, and, if I was honest with myself, had grown to like. I considered calling Finn in New York, but I couldn’t let go of the thought that there was some other explanation besides the obvious, that Helena was innocent of any wrongdoing and there was another reason why art that had once belonged to a prominent Jewish family was hanging on Helena’s wall. And why she’d lied and said she had brought all the paintings from their little house in Budapest.

Slowly, I walked toward Helena’s bedroom. She sat up in bed, her cane held aloft as if she was preparing to bang it against the wall again. I stared at her, half daring her to do it while I watched. She lowered the cane and let it rest against her night table.

“Where have you been? I woke up and called for you and for Nurse Weber and nobody answered. I thought I had been left alone to fend for myself.” She gave me a petulant smile. “The housekeeper has moved my Herend roosters where I cannot see them. I need you to move them back to the little table by my bed so I can enjoy them.”

I was glad she was doing all the talking and giving me orders. It gave me a reason to move my limbs and kept me silent while I tried to think of a way to ask a ninety-year-old woman why she had a painting that didn’t belong to her, and why she’d lied to me about where it came from. I wanted to know the truth, but more important, Finn
needed
to know the truth. If he didn’t already.

I picked up the two roosters from the dressing table and moved them closer to Helena, where she almost purred with satisfaction at seeing her two treasures again.

I stared at the broken tail of the orange rooster, my mind’s eye flickering like an old movie, trying to guess the plot before it happened. “Helena, remember how you told Finn and me about how you broke the rooster?”

“Yes, of course. I was clumsy. I am sure you find that hard to believe.”

I didn’t rouse to her distractive bait, and for the first time I saw a glint of wariness in her eyes.

“You said it was the night the Americans bombed Budapest. I read in one of my books that they did it to convince the Hungarian government to stop the deportations of Jews that had started in March.”

“Yes, but I did not know that then. I was too busy trying to earn money for food for my sister and myself. We tried not to involve ourselves in politics.”

“You told me before that you sang in cafés to earn money for food. Is that how you met Gunter?”

A secret smile touched her lips.
He was the love of my life.
“Yes. The Germans were encamped outside of the city, but when they had leave they would come into Budapest. Gunter came to my café every night he could and sat at one of the front tables. It took him nearly a month before he said anything to me. And then it was only to ask me if I was thirsty. He told me I was too thin and bought me dinner. He would not allow any of the men to say anything he considered too rude. Gunter was only a butcher’s son, but he was a gentleman.”

I looked into her face, trying to see what I needed to know. “Did it bother you that he was a German soldier?”

The wariness returned to her eyes. “I did not see him that way. I only saw him as the young man who brought me flowers and spoke to me of the life we would have. The war did not exist for us.”

“But I imagine it did for Bernadett.” I waited for that to sink in. “Did Bernadett ever join you in singing for the soldiers?”

Gnarled fingers started picking at her bedclothes. “She was very shy and did not like to perform in front of others. But no, she did not join me. She could not.”

“Because of Benjamin?”

Her hands stilled and she sent me an odd smile. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.” She sighed. “They were difficult times for everybody. I did not care who I sang for, or who gave me money. You would understand if you knew what it is to do without, and the things that you would do to be safe, or to have food in your belly. It is a choice we sometimes have to make.”

I reached over and picked up the broken rooster again. I rubbed my thumb over the rough stub where the tail had once been, wondering what it had been like for her. For Bernadett. To know how fragile life could be. “I’m curious about something.”

She tilted her head back, narrowing her eyes. “And all of my warnings about the curious cat have not stopped you with your questions.”

“No. Not yet. My sister, Eve, told me it was one of my good qualities.”

“And when have you ever listened to your sister?”

“Not often enough, apparently,” I said, knowing I never would have admitted such a thing to Eve. “And you could always ask me to stop.” I wasn’t sure why I’d said that. Maybe because a part of me didn’t really want to know. Or maybe because I’d always sensed something in Helena, a darkness she tried to hide from the outside world. A darkness she wanted to shed. Maybe it was this last thing that made me ask Helena if she wanted me to stop.

She didn’t say anything.

I continued. “I suppose it’s because I’ve been reading all of those history books that I’m so intrigued. Especially since you were
there
. I have a firsthand witness to what I’m reading about now.”

“A witness?” Her hands stilled on the bedclothes.

“Yes. To the bombing and your escape. It couldn’t have been easy to get out of Hungary. It had pulled away from Germany and was looking to ally itself with the Allied forces. So Germany invaded Hungary, and all the countries surrounding it were already under German control. I can’t imagine they would have allowed just anybody to walk across the border.”

“You have a strange way of asking questions, Eleanor. You say you are curious and are going to ask a question, and then you do not. Instead you tell me things I already know.”

I pressed my thumb hard against the stubbed tail, hard enough that I broke the skin and made it bleed. “I’m just trying to help you with your memory. Trying to set the mood, so to speak, and the scene, so you can picture that night and tell me what you saw. You can tell me how you and Bernadett escaped during the Nazi occupation with a broken china rooster and a collection of valuable paintings that came from your tiny house.”

Her gaze turned steely, but I wouldn’t look away. Nor did she ask me to stop.

“Did you escape before or after the bombing? I’m trying to picture you and Bernadett with all these rolled-up paintings stuffed under your coats, trying to cross the border without being stopped, and I can’t. Did Gunter help? Or Benjamin? I’m hoping you do a better job than my imagination in telling me how you managed it.”

“I would like some water, please,” she said, her feeble voice at odds with the feisty woman I’d just been speaking with.

I got up and went to the kitchen and returned with a glass. I put it in her hands and sat down again. “If you’d rather rest now, we can stop.”

Her eyes met mine and she lifted her chin. “I am not so old that I need to rest all the time.”

I leaned back in my chair. “So how did you leave the country?”

She stared into her water for a long moment, and when she looked up at me again, her eyes seemed to be warring with light and shadow. “By vegetable truck,” she said, her mouth twisted in a crooked smile.

“A vegetable truck?”

“I do not know what Gunter promised the farmer, but he got us a truck. We could not leave on foot. Bernadett was ill—too ill to walk.”

“What was wrong with her?”

The glass in her hands shook. I reached over and held it to her lips, then placed it on the bedside table. “She had been ill for nearly a year. She would divide her food rations with the children at the convent where she taught music, and she was too thin. She had colds and coughs constantly so that she never regained her strength before the next ailment. This last was typhus. Gunter was able to give us some medicine for her, and food, but we knew that would not last. She needed penicillin. Everyone knew that the war was over for the Germans, and they were becoming desperate. And the Russians were eager to take over when the Germans left. So Gunter and I made plans for Bernadett and me to escape.”

“And you made plans to meet and marry after the war.”

“Yes,” she said. “He promised to come back to me.” Her voice broke, and I had to look away.

I wanted to ask her about the paintings, ask her if the truck made it easier to conceal rolled-up canvases. But her story made me pause. It made me picture my own sister, starving and sick, whose only hope was me getting her to safety. I leaned closer. “Where were you trying to go?”

“America eventually. Magda’s husband had booked us passage from England—a prospect that terrified me. The German U-boats were everywhere, and even though the Allies had invaded France the previous month, I was afraid to cross the channel, much less the Atlantic Ocean. But there was no other way. First we had to get to Switzerland for medical care. If Bernadett died, I did not care what happened to me, so I did not dwell on anything after Switzerland. There would be time to think about it later.”

“And Bernadett—what did she think?”

Helena turned toward the window, to allow light on her face or to hide from me; I couldn’t tell which.

“She was delirious with fever. It was a good thing that she could not fight me. She would not have gone.”

“Why? Surely she knew how desperate the situation was.”

Helena continued to look out her window, seeing sights too large for my own imagination. “There were some she would not leave.”

“Benjamin? Could he not go with her?”

She looked at me then, her face contorted with grief, and I waited again for her to ask me to stop. And still she did not. It was almost as if she’d been waiting all these years to tell someone.

“Benjamin?” she echoed. “No, she would not have wanted to leave without him, just as I know he would not have left with her. It was the children. The children in the convent where she worked. She would not have left them. But I told her that I would take care of things, as I always did. And she believed me.”

I sat up, remembering the silver box. “The convent where Bernadett taught the children—was that at the motherhouse of the Daughters of the Divine Redeemer?”

She looked at me with only mild surprise, as if her thoughts were turned so far inward that she could not focus on anything else. “Yes. That was it.”

“Would you like more water?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. Then she blinked as if she’d just realized I had spoken. “Yes. Please.”

I lifted the glass to her lips. “And so Gunter got you a vegetable truck. Did he drive you all the way to Switzerland?”

“He would have if I had asked, but it was too dangerous for him. Dangerous for us, too, but more so for him since he was a soldier and he would have been shot for desertion. I had to do it on my own. Gunter arranged papers and passes for us, and train tickets through Austria, but he could not go with us.” She studied her hands as if she were surprised that they were hers, surprised not to see the smooth skin and straight fingers of a young woman.

I, too, saw the young woman, determined to save her sister. Despite the danger and uncertainty and threat of losing her own life. I thought of Eve, saw her fall from the tree again, felt the need to get to her as quickly as I could. I could still feel the rough tree bark slipping through my hands, slicing my finger, and the pain as my skull hit the hard-packed dirt of the road. I had thought of that moment many times in the years since, and not once had I considered reacting differently.

“Have you ever told Finn your story?”

She shook her head. “I have never spoken of it. Even to Bernadett. It is not something we wished to remember.”

“But you made it. With a broken rooster and a collection of oil paintings.” I waited for her to speak again, my words suspended in the air between us, a hole into which we both could fall. When she didn’t say anything, I said, “You were very brave. I don’t know if I could have done what you did.”

“She was my sister,” she said, the words simple yet filled with meaning. Her gaze swept past me to the window again. “We gave away one of the paintings to the farmer near Bern who fed us and let us sleep in his barn for three days. He and his wife were very kind and did not ask questions. The wife made chicken soup for Bernadett and gave her medicine. I do not know if Bernadett would have made it if we had not stopped there on our way to the train station in Bern.”

“It was a small price to pay, then. To give them a valuable painting in return for Bernadett’s life.”

“Yes. It was.” Her gaze met mine, the old arrogance back in them as she regarded me. “There are some things in life for which the cost cannot be measured. Even if it means paying for it for the rest of your life.”

The hair rose on the back of my neck as our gazes met. “Did you know the Reichmanns? They were a wealthy family in Budapest before the war.”

Her expression didn’t falter. “No. I am not familiar with the name. Should I be?”

“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly unsure of what I needed to know. Or why I needed to know it.

I stood. “I want to show you a picture I found in one of the library books about art—one of Bernadett’s books.”