Your Eyes in Stars (12 page)

March 9, 1935

My dearest friend Elisa,

You do not mention the package I sent you for your birthday/Christmas celebration. I hope it did not get lost in the moving.

There is some good news, some bad. Daddy did not get a demotion. He did not get a year-end bonus either, but he said with the times the way they are, he might not have gotten one anyway.

The bad news is he cannot have a band at the prison, not even one that remains in the prison and
is never allowed outside its walls. This makes him very discouraged, because the music was always a morale booster for the inmates. (And Daddy too.)

He says that it is his own fault. I tell him that it is all the fault of Slater Carr. He says, “Maybe we can’t forget some things, but we can forgive them. After all, Mr. Carr had a life he missed. That was my mistake, Jess, thinking he had no one and would adjust to The Hill. But everyone has a life of some sort.”

Seth feels bad that Mrs. Joy has moved all the way to St. Louis, Missouri, where she has a sister! Of course J. J. had to go with her. Seth would travel there for Easter vacation, but we do not have the money, says Daddy. Not for that, he says, so Seth has taken an after-school job at Hollywood Hangout, and also an early-morning job delivering
The Cayuta Advertizer.
Mother is very proud of him. She would like nothing better than to see her son marry a “shoe Joy,” as she calls J. J.

Please let me know about the package. I can send another.

I am reading
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
by James Hilton for English. You would like it, I think. It is about a beloved schoolmaster like your Kai (I forgot his last name), who got you to read
Les Misérables.

I wonder what you do daily. Can you give me an idea?

The only thing new about my day is that now I write you and also sometimes even hear from you (Hint! Hint!).

Love from your best friend in the world!
Jessica

March 23, 1935

Dearest Elisa,

Now I will tell you something amazing. Last night Daddy took me for a walk to Hollywood Hangout. I can count on one hand the times we have gone for a walk together, so I knew he was going to say something important. I never dreamed he would say what he said.

What he said was that my mother had one lung removed when we moved here because she had gotten tuberculosis! It was not the pneumonia that she was always talking about at all. It had to be this big secret because by law she would have had to go to a sanitarium since it is a contagious disease. Instead Daddy decided to keep her home
and to keep it between themselves and a doctor in Rochester. She could not tell a single soul for fear news would get out and she would be sent away. She would never have told anyone anyway, since she was so ashamed, believing (wrongly) that only lower classes get it.

Over the Fourth of July on her regular visit to Rochester, the doctors told my mother if her next checkup bears it out, she no longer has TB! Well, she doesn’t.

That makes everything clearer, doesn’t it? I now know why she coughed so much, why Daddy took her walking every day, and why she kept her distance from me. No wonder I never saw them embrace anymore. They always seemed so frigid to me, particularly when across the street on the Sontags’ porch were the lovebirds.

Think of all the times I said they weren’t doing it, and you said they had to be doing it. No wonder poor Daddy got obsessed with winning the Baaa. He’d always wanted to win it, but after we got here, it seemed like all he thought about…and then his attachment to Slater came. Slater would make his dream come true!

I have promised Daddy you are the only one I will tell. He does not even want
me
to tell my
mother I know. She is still humiliated and still believes only poor, uneducated people get TB. She was always so terrified someone would look down on her. After Daddy told me this, all I could think of was all the dirty books she kept under her mattress. I guess because she couldn’t do it with Daddy. And of course that explains the sleeping porch and why they weren’t lovey-dovey and why I thought she was an icicle.

When I say it explains almost everything, it doesn’t explain why she couldn’t cough up a few words of affection now and then. That part makes me mad! It also makes me determined to always let the people I love know it. No matter what happens in life, we should always show our feelings, I think.

You have helped me be able to do this, in case anyone should ride up on a bicycle and ask you, as my mother would say. Before you came along, I was this drip who couldn’t find words to express myself, particularly sentimental ones. That’s probably why I didn’t take to poetry, which now is #1.

My feelings about you, besides love, are anxious ones. Even though Daddy says you can get over things, that you must to go on, I will never get over thinking about you and hoping that you’re okay. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what you’re
doing. Is your family well? Please, please write, Elisa.

Your friend forever, Stars,
Jessica

P.S. You never mention Wolfgang anymore. How come?

March 22, 1935

Dearest Jessica,

Thank you for the fudge, but I must tell you something about packages. I did not receive yours for a long while, which is why I said nothing, fearing it was lost. Then came a notification from customs that a box addressed to me contained a book and a paper forbidden entry to the Reich.

Dear friend, you must understand this is a time of reorganization in Germany and there are controls. Most books you would send would be censored as the Millay one was and a paper like the one about Teasdale too. Do not send your Sinclair Lewis either. Send nothing! I will not get it. It is best not to send me packages of any kind,
and I will not send you any.

I must make this short.

Xxxx Elisa

P.S. You ask me always about Wolfgang Schwitter. You sound sometimes like
Mutti
worrying that I will never have a
Verlobter.
Even if he was here, I do not have time for boys.

April 19, 1935

Dearest Elisa,

Our letters crossed and I’m afraid I sent you some more books and fudge without knowing I wasn’t supposed to.

Have you moved to Berlin? Your last letter was just a note. I was so worried that I called the Schwitters to ask when Wolfgang and his father would be going there and have they plans to see you and your family? Mrs. Schwitter invited me to a spring vacation party she was giving for Dieter’s friends from Paris Arts & Science and Miss Thacker’s School for Girls. I actually enjoyed myself! It was then that she told me Mr. Schwitter and
Wolfgang will perform soon in Berlin. They were in New York City making arrangements. She said they would probably see you at some point. Wolfgang wants to live in New York City when he returns and try his luck with theater.

I took Richard with me. He always claimed he did not like what he calls “big society parties,” but he behaved so well. When we were going home, he asked me if I really liked Dieter, as I seemed to, or if I was just being nice to him to remember you. I did really, really like him. He is not high hat or anything you would think a Schwitter could be. But I didn’t understand this remark of Richard’s.

I said, “What does being nice to Dieter have to do with Elisa?”

“Didn’t she tell you to be nice to a Jew? She did me.”

“Dieter is not a Jew, silly.”

“Before I went there tonight,” said Richard, “my father told me he saw Reinhardt Schwitter once in a men’s room, and he was circumcised. He said he had also heard somewhere that Schwitter was born Jewish. Doesn’t that make Dieter a Jew? And Wolfgang?”

I said, “I don’t believe you! Why would Mr. Schwitter buy the town a Christmas tree every year?”

Richard said, “Because he’s not religious. My father was born Catholic, but have you ever seen him at Holy Family? Not all religious people stay religious, and I don’t think Dieter or Wolfgang ever were.”

What do you think of that?

I remember you told me Jews in Germany now couldn’t go to concerts or perform, but the Schwitters are going to perform there, so I think Richard’s father has wrong information. When I told my mother what Richard said, she said Richard was crazy! She said of all people to accuse of being Jewish, the Schwitters were the most unlikely.

When do you think you’ll be heading back?

My mother is practically swooning over the idea I know Dieter because he is a Schwitter. He calls me just to talk sometimes, not about anything in particular, about anything that comes to our heads. He’s an intellectual like you, only he is very serious and worried about Germany. Seth calls him “the likable Schwitter.”

I know you probably still think of Slater, and I don’t want you to keep from mentioning his name because I have trouble forgiving him for what he did. But have you thought about the way everything changed because of him? You might still be
in America, and my poor father might still be in charge of The Blues, if Slater hadn’t escaped. At night I trace everything way back to my own blame in this. I never should have told you all the stories about the prisoners and how Daddy liked murderers to work at our house. You went and told your mother, and she got more and more afraid. Did you ever think that if I hadn’t done that, maybe Slater would have kept on doing his away work in our yard? Then Daddy would never have sent him to the Joys’. He wouldn’t have even known where they lived.

I have never told anyone about Daddy’s helping the Joys out that way. Mother must have agreed with the idea, since she sent Myra over too.

If Daddy had sent some other inmate to work there, Mr. Joy would still be alive. Slater might even still be loose. So here and now I want to apologize for my big part in all this trouble. Could God be punishing me for this by keeping you in Germany? I don’t think I even believe in God. There’s so much trouble in the world, if He is there, why doesn’t He do something about it?

Are you in school or what? You say you don’t have time for boys, so what do you do? I can’t envision your day. What is it like? I am studying
Spanish in school. They don’t teach German, or I would take that.

Hasta luego
and
yo te amo,
Jessica. Stars! Write!

P.S. Send a photograph before I forget what you look like. I am having some film developed, so I will send you one too.

June 3, 1935

Dear Jessica,

Yes, Wolfgang and Herr Schwitter are in Berlin. They will both be in the all-Mendelssohn concert given by the
Jüdischer Kulturbund
this week. Herr Reinhardt Schwitter will play the solo part in the violin concerto. Only Jews can attend, and only music by Jewish composers can be played. No Aryan music allowed! I am so disappointed, because I love Mendelssohn and I would like to hear the Schwitters play too.

My father said he simply forgot Reinhardt Schwitter was a Jew, if he ever knew it at all. He said Germans have never paid attention to that until recently. Now it seems Judaism is not
considered a religion but a race. No one has a choice to say they are or are not Jewish. It is a fact, on record.

No, it is not easy for them, Jessica, they are not a popular race in Germany today. Of course I did not have an inkling the Schwitters are Jews. My mother cannot believe it.

I have seen Wolfgang only one time on the street, then only long enough to tell him how sorry I was that Wurst had to be suddenly taken. Jews can no longer have pets. Without warning they were taken away.

Jessica, I do not know when we will come back, but it will not be this summer.

It is nobody’s fault.

Of course I am disappointed, but I cannot always have my own way.

With much love,
Elisa

P.S. Do not feel that you have to write so much to me. I have no time to answer. Then I feel bad. Notice Berlin address, but do not put your name on the return address. By now I know from whom the letter comes.

September 14, 1935
Arts & Science Academy
Paris, New York

Dear Jessie,

How good it was to see you last weekend. I never used to look forward to going home for weekends, but now I do, and it is all because of you. I must say there is no one I talk with so easily. I wonder if you noticed that about us.

I know you probably want news of Elisa, so I am enclosing three pages of Wolfgang’s latest. This letter will probably explain, too, why I made no effort to call you this week. As you can imagine, I am not in a mood to talk. None of this has been told to the newspapers because my mother fears reprisals if it got out that we are trying to make an incident of what is happening there. We have other means of communicating with family and friends who know more about the political climate in Germany.

Last month my father was taken away for sitting and talking with Mr. Stadler on a park bench.
Stadler too was grabbed, but not put in the truck my father went into with others who had made various “mistakes.” Aryans are not allowed to sit with Jews anywhere in public and vice versa. We do not know what became of Mr. Stadler. We are concerned for Father, for he may have been shipped off to the mysterious “unknown destination” with other Jews.

They have wanted Father for a long time but waited until the
Jüdischer Kulturbund
Mendelssohn concert was over. My father was a feather in Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ hat. Not only did the
Kulturbund
make it look to the world as though the Reich is not abusive to the Jews, but also they boasted there was the famous musician Reinhardt Schwitter, who came from America to star in its concert!

There is no word about my father. Jews are whisked away for any small infraction of rules and sometimes never seen again. Or they are simply grabbed from the streets for no reason. This is particularly true of ones they suspect are Communists or professionals like teachers, doctors, etc. Even if someone is just too brilliant to suit them (a Jew should not be brilliant!), it is enough. They take away (to God knows where)
anyone from a poor tailor to a university professor or a rich manufacturer.

Certain Aryans disappear too, particularly friends of Jews.

I will call you soon when I know the next weekend I can come home.

Sincerely,
Dieter

Please send back the pages of Wolfgang’s letter. They are for your eyes only.