The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  Masha Torte: Inside-Out German Chocolate Cake with Cherries Flambé

  “Little Clouds”: Cream Puffs Filled with Vanilla Ice Cream, Accompanied by Mini Chocolate Fondue for Dipping

  Strawberry, Raspberry, and Blueberry Ice Cream in Chocolate Cups (Available as Trio or Individual)

  Assortment of Chocolate, Walnut-Currant, & Raspberry Rugelach

  1705 2nd Ave. New York, NY 10128 / RE 4–1143 * Reservations If You Please!

  5

  The Bubkes

  On a sunny Monday morning in mid-April 1966, Peter was helping Ruth put in her garden. First he had turned over the soil himself, although Yoshi the gardener would have been happy to do it, Ruth said; moreover, he should—it was his job. What else were they paying him for? But Peter liked the spade’s weight, its splintery wooden handle; he relished wearing an old pair of trousers and jacket and the feeling of being bareheaded in the sweet chilly air. He welcomed perspiring from exertion rather than some bad dream or memory. He even enjoyed his muscles complaining, ones in his back and shoulders that he used differently from in the kitchen. He would be sore tomorrow, but tonight he would have a hot bath with a glass of whiskey. The best soaks of his life were after he helped Ruth put her garden to bed and, in spring, woke it up again.

  There. He had done it. He sank the spade in the dirt at the plot’s edge. It was black and wet and smelled of sulfur, minerals from the nearby Sound. Every so often Peter’s spading had turned up a whole mussel or clamshell, dropped into the garden by a traveling seagull, and white shards salted the soil. Sometimes he found wampum—coins of smooth bright purple that, Peter had learned in his American history book when he first arrived in this country, served the Indians who had settled New England as currency. Peter had been entranced by this wampum. It was all quite unlike the gardens of Peter’s youth—which he had not been allowed to dig in anyway, for his mother, Rivka, had feared and loathed dirt; those had been exquisitely manicured beds of roses, tulips, topiary. But Peter had on occasion been allowed to accompany the cook, Hilde, back to her country home in Boitzenburger Land, where she had shown him how to dig holes twice as big as root balls, to put crushed eggshells and coffee grounds around the tomato plants, to make mounds over melons to protect them. Peter remembered Hilde, a somber woman with orthopedic shoes and a coronet of gray braids, throwing her head back and laughing at Peter’s expression the first time he ate a radish straight from the dirt. That was the moment he made the connection between the seeds he and Hilde had pushed into the ground with their thumbs and what he was putting in his mouth. Peter still marveled at the miraculous alchemy of food growing from earth; it was something he never quite got used to.

  He turned to look at Ruth, who was kneeling on a foam pad she had carried down from the garage, wearing a conical straw hat that she had brought back one year from Thailand. With her head bowed over her work, she looked a little like the Vietnamese women Peter saw on the news. It was disconcerting to see Ruth’s hat against a backdrop of marsh reeds and pale blue sky instead of flaming jungle, helicopters strafing villages and dropping clouds of Agent Orange. Peter wondered if Ruth had put on the hat with any sense of irony or protest. He doubted it. He himself, as much as he thought the war in Vietnam a shame and a waste, was grateful to be able to spend some time in this privileged enclave, to live where nothing was on fire.

  “Hoo!” said Ruth and clapped her gloves to free them of dirt. “That’s finished.”

  “Let’s have a look,” said Peter and walked over to her, his shoes sinking satisfyingly in the dirt. Ruth had planted all the herbs Peter would need for Masha’s: dill, mint, rosemary, oregano, thyme—lemon and Greek; chives, chervil, basil, parsley, garlic, fennel, bay leaves, and lavender, which Ruth used for sachet and Peter’s pastry chef for shortbread.

  “Beautiful,” said Peter, and meant it.

  Ruth looked up at him with a smile no less lovely for her dentures. She had put on lipstick for today’s work, bright fuchsia, and clip-on earrings like golden snails. She held out her hand.

  “Help an old lady up, would you?” she asked.

  Peter did, firmly but gently, mindful that despite her enthusiasm for cooking, gardening, theater, matchmaking, opera, bridge, travel, and mah-jongg, Ruth was in her sixties—the same age Peter’s mother would have been.

  “I know you’re just hustling me,” he said as Ruth groaned to her feet. “How about you put in the green beans.”

  “Oy,” said Ruth and walked stiffly to the lawn chair Peter had carried down for her, a lightweight folding contraption of aluminum and mesh strips, and set on the path next to the garden. She lowered herself into it. “I’ll just rest a minute, Bubbie, and watch.”

  “You do that,” said Peter and turned to the flats of seedlings he had hand-selected from various Long Island farms. These vegetables were the staples of Masha’s spring menu, and he thanked them silently as he tapped them from their black plastic containers, untangled their roots, and set each plant in the soil. The salad greens—Bibb and Boston lettuce and arugula—should be ready by mid-May, along with radishes, and about a week later, spring peas, onions, and leeks. The others would ripen in summer: Big Boy and yellow cherry tomatoes; beets, fingerlings, sweet potatoes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, squash, cucumbers, string beans. Peter checked each type of plant off the list on his notepad once it was in the ground. Again he thought of Hilde as he unfurled chicken-wire fencing along the rows of vegetables that needed to climb; it was she who had taught him to lift the leaves of green-bean plants to look for the pods. “Find one and you will find many,” she said; “see how they grow in clusters? They are the most sociable vegetables,” and Peter, who had been six or seven then, had so loved that idea—companionable beans!—that he had laughed until he had wet his pants, a little.

  “You want iced coffee, Bubbie?” said Ruth from her chair and held up her thermos. “You shouldn’t get dehydrated. No? All right.”

  She drank as Peter pounded in stakes for the fencing. “How is your lady friend? The model?”

  “She’s in Rome,” said Peter, “on a shoot for Dior.”

  “Fancy,” said Ruth and clucked her tongue. Peter smiled over at her. Ruth had her prescription sunglasses on now beneath the hat, although a thin layer of fish-scale clouds was starting to fill the sky.

  “She says it’s not all that glamorous,” said Peter. “It’s her job.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” said Ruth. “You didn’t want to go with? Or maybe she didn’t invite you?”

  Peter sighed inwardly. How many times had he explained, resisted, refused Ruth’s well-meaning invitations for overseas cruises, flights, guided tours? Not even to Israel? That’s nowhere near Europe. “I can’t, Ruth,” he said patiently. “I’ve got work.”

  “Work, schmerk. That Russian terror of yours could keep your place running like a gulag for months.”

  “True,” said Peter, “but then who would you have to kick around?”

  Ruth waved her hands at this, and Peter stood back to admire his efforts. Was the fencing straight? It didn’t really matter, the vegetables would grow either way, but he preferred it if it was. He pulled one of the stakes out of the dirt, readjusted the line.

  “So,” said Ruth. “How serious is it? Do I hear wedding bells?”

  Peter whacked the stake into the ground with his mallet.

  “You hear wedding bells every time I look at a woman,” he said.

  “And this is so terrible?” said Ruth. “Look at me, I’m almost too old to dig in the dirt. By the time I have grandchildren, I’ll be under it.”

  Peter knelt to sink the chicken wire into the dirt next to the seedlings and wrestled with the urge to say, Mind your business, Ruth. It was an old and ineffective strategy. Instead, he said, “You could always adopt.”

  “Ha ha,” said Ruth, “always a comedian.” She tapped her gloved fingers on her thermos. “I thought you really liked this one—June.”

  “I thought you really d
idn’t,” said Peter.

  “Bubbie!” Ruth sounded shocked. She pulled her sunglasses down to peer at him. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because she’s a shiksa.” Peter got up and surveyed the orderly lines of tiny green shoots in the black dirt. “There,” he said, “what do you think?”

  But Ruth was shaking her head. “I’m ashamed my own flesh and blood would think I’m so prejudiced.”

  Peter laughed. “Come on. Every single woman you’ve tried to set me up with over the past two decades has been Jewish.”

  “And is that so bad?” Ruth asked again. “Of course I want you to marry a nice Jewish girl. We lost so many . . .”

  She teared up and looked away, down the path of mud and crushed reeds that led back to the house.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She withdrew a Kleenex from the sleeve of her quilted jacket and daubed her eyes. “I know you don’t like to talk about it. But yes, I want you to carry on our traditions. A nice Jewish girl would be just the ticket.”

  She smiled at him, eyes watering, as she tucked the tissue away.

  “But Jewish, not Jewish, I don’t care,” she said. “If you really love this girl, why not marry her? You can still raise the kids Jewish. I don’t care, Bubbie. I just want grandkids before I’m too old. And I want to see you happy.”

  Peter looked at his workboots, sunk in the black dirt. He was a little surprised to find his throat felt thick. He remembered, unwillingly, the first time Masha had come to his parents’ home, how his mother had thought from Masha’s headscarf and pallor, her rabbity red nose and worn cloth coat, that she was a servant and directed her to the rear door. How his father, Avram, as Peter stood gripping Masha’s hand on the Turkish carpet in Avram’s study, had not even glanced up from the papers on his desk as he said, “You marry her, don’t come back.”

  He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Ruth. I appreciate that.”

  Ruth smiled at him and slid her sunglasses back on. “So?” she said, “this girl? She’s the one?”

  Peter looked out across the acres of waving marsh reeds between the garden and the Sound. They were tall, but he was taller, so when the wind bent them he could see the water glinting navy in the sun. He slid his hands into the pockets of his old trousers. In the left pocket was the ring. It was foolish to be carrying around something so expensive—but after all, it was insured. And Peter wanted to be prepared in case the right moment for a proposal presented itself. He somehow had not managed to find it yet. On New Year’s Eve, Peter had been at Masha’s, June in Paris. Valentine’s Day he had likewise been at the restaurant, for February 14 was the second-biggest moneymaker after December 31; Peter had seated June in the corner banquette, the best seat in the house, and sent her champagne and chocolate truffles, but the night had been too hectic, not to mention a cliché. So what other occasion had there been? Presidents’ weekend? Tax day? Peter thought perhaps June’s birthday—June 10. That was what he was aiming for now.

  “If I pop the question,” he said, “you’ll be the first to know. How’s that?”

  Ruth shook her head. “Bubbie,” she began again, but then Sol came crunching down the path over the reeds, preceded by the sound of ice cubes rattling in the highball glass he was carrying. He was wearing a yellow windbreaker and khaki pants and his fishing hat, covered in lures.

  “You ready?” he said to Peter. They were going out on Sol’s boat to catch whatever was biting, which would become the week’s seafood special at Masha’s. Peter was hoping for flounder, early spring blues.

  “C’mon,” Sol said, “brush the dirt off your pants and let’s go. The fish won’t wait all day.”

  * * *

  Sol’s new boat was called the Bubkes—it was a twenty-five-foot fiberglass Bertram, he told Peter on the way to the Brewer Post Road Boat Yard. Peter tried to look suitably impressed, though the information meant nothing to him. To Peter, a boat was a vessel in which you set out to sea and sometimes caught fish. To Sol and his friend Dutch, Sol’s skipper, it was a fanaticism—the only difference between them being that Sol was a weekend fisherman and Dutch ran fishing charters on their boats year-round, as long as the weather permitted.

  “How ya doin’, kid?” said Dutch as Peter climbed onto the deck. Dutch was a wizened little man with a head like a walnut and a cigarette permanently notched in one side of his mouth. Dutch wasn’t his real name—Peter had no idea what it was. All of Sol’s friends had these nicknames, based on peculiarities of appearance or character. Like Choppers, Sol’s partner, for instance; then there was Pickles, another attorney, who liked kosher dills; Dr. Gorgeous, Pinky, and—Peter’s favorite—Hoo-Hoo, so called because he hollered the phrase at every woman between eighteen and eighty. Like many of Sol’s friends, Dutch, who worked at the shipyard, didn’t seem to be the kind of fellow Sol would naturally cross paths with at his Madison Avenue law firm, but when Peter asked how Sol had met them, Sol had said, “We came up together,” and that was that. Peter understood nicknames as a mark of affection. His own, at the Adlon, had been Tarzan, because he looked so much like Buster Crabbe, the film actor who played the Jungle King. At the Oyster Bar he had been Pretty Boy; at Giuseppe’s, Dreamboat; at Auschwitz he had been known as Chef, even before his transfer to the kitchens. It was why Peter forbade his staff to call him that now, instead permitting Boss or Chief.

  After greeting Peter, Dutch began navigating the Bubkes out of the harbor, he and Sol speaking in fisherman-ese. Peter stood at the bow, enjoying the speed—Sol had told him the Bubkes had not one but two engines—and the fresh salt wind in his face. He tried to imagine June next to him, wearing a big sweater, but she seemed far away. Instead Peter found himself contemplating what he would do with today’s catch: marinate the bluefish in mustard and dill, grill it; make leftovers into a dip for appetizers. . . . Then they slowed and stopped in some indeterminate location. The smell of chum grew strong, and the Bubkes rocked with the swells. Peter started to feel nauseated. He focused on the horizon, which he’d heard sometimes helped. It didn’t.

  “Dutch,” he said, “is there a place I might lie down?”

  “Sure, there’s a bench in the hold. Why, wassamatter, kid?”

  “I’m feeling a little seasick.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” said Sol, who was sitting in a swiveling chair with a rod planted between his knees.

  Peter excused himself and went to the hold, a dark, sloshing space. He dry-swallowed the Dramamine he always brought on these excursions and lay back on the bench, using a lifejacket as a pillow. He focused on a pinpoint of light near the hatch. It was probably the conversation with Ruth as much as the rough seas that had upset him. He hated it when she brought up marriage; it dragged him back. The only time he had ever raised his voice to her was during his first year here, when she said to him, “But Bubbie, don’t you want to try again? What happened to her—to those poor little girls—was so terrible, but it wasn’t your fault,” and he had yelled, had actually shouted, “Shut up, Ruth! I won’t discuss it!” This had been in the solarium, over breakfast. Ruth had slowly gotten up and walked out, and for the rest of the day Peter had been unable to shake the terrible shame, not of speaking sharply to Ruth—although that was bad enough—but because she was wrong. It had been his fault. Completely.

  * * *

  The roundup happened just as Masha had warned—in February of 1943—but it was on a Saturday, the twenty-seventh, and nobody had expected that. Masha had told Peter to be extra careful that week; she had heard from one of the Adlon’s delivery drivers that the Gestapo had requested that Jewish community leaders, doctors, and nurses be on standby. Standby for what? Peter had asked. “Nobody knows,” said Masha. “But it can’t be good. Just stay indoors today, would you? And if anything happens, I’ll find you in the safe space.” And off she had gone to work.

  Peter had tried, really he had. But the girls were restless and fretful, and Vivi had developed a terrible cough that sounded like croup, a seal-pup
bark, so how safe would they be in hiding, anyway? He didn’t dare ask any of the women in the building for medicine; Masha had convinced him that anyone at this juncture, when ration cards were so precious, could be a Greifer who would turn them in. But Peter had to do something. He locked the girls in the apartment and hurried out to see if he could get some brandy, schnapps—anything to soothe Vivi’s cough.

  There was a fellow Peter knew from his own Adlon days who now worked on the black market, selling stolen bottles of liquor from the restaurant he worked at on nearby Rosenstrasse. Peter went to the rear door of the kitchen and asked for him. The price of the bottle was his mother’s earrings. At this point, there was no choice. Peter stashed the brandy in the lining of his coat and hastened back toward the flat, his cap pulled low.

  He started to see signs of the roundup when he reached the Oranienburger Strasse: trucks, with German guards and Gestapo encouraging Jews to climb in—young women, old women, men, children, anyone wearing the Star. Some went with resignation. Some helped others climb up into the vehicles. Some implored the uniformed men to let them back into the buildings; their little boy, their sick husband, their children, were still in there! In the bedroom with pneumonia! Too young to walk by himself! In the communal bathroom! Please! Please! These people were assisted into the trucks not by their fellow Jews but by the Gestapo, who used their batons and pistol handles as encouragement. Peter wanted to run. He dared not. It would call too much attention. He strolled along as nonchalantly as he could, the taste of copper and cotton in his mouth, keeping his eyes down like any good Aryan burgher, until he reached his street.

  There was a truck in front of their building as well—37 Kinderstrasse.

  Peter tried to backpedal around the corner so he could go in through the alley. He would grab the girls and bring them to the safe space, the room he and Masha had created within the ceiling of the cellar. There none of them would be able to stand, or even sit up, but they would lie side-by-side until Masha let them know the roundup was over.