The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  Peter was astonished. “How did you know?”

  Lena shrugged. “She is whore, like all models. Open her legs enough, get knocked up. Is math.”

  “Lena!” Peter roared.

  Lena began dicing the rabbits for stew—poor hairless creatures, Peter could not watch. “Is little bastard yours?”

  Peter sighed. He slid the trays of croutons into the oven and stood suddenly at a loss. “Yes,” he said.

  “At least she tells you this.”

  “And I believe her. June’s no liar.”

  Lena shrugged philosophically. “She will have abortion?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What, you don’t know?”

  “I haven’t talked to her.”

  Lena nodded. “This is smart. You avoid her. She wants marriage?”

  “I don’t know,” said Peter.

  “She wants husband,” said Lena. “All skinny whores want husband. But this way you don’t get tied down.”

  “That’s not it at all,” said Peter. “I’ve been meaning to propose to her for months.”

  Lena slid him a sly look. “But you don’t.”

  Peter shook his head, not in negation but confusion. “I need to start the pea soup.”

  “Why don’t you ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Lena said. “This is little-boy answer.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Lena,” Peter said in her language. Lena laughed.

  “I think you are little boy,” she said. “I think you want to marry skinny whore. Is this good idea? No. Will she bring nothing but trouble? Yes. But you make baby, you take care of baby. One way or another. Coat hanger or wedding. Enough bastards in world already.”

  Peter balled his hands before he could seize the nearest object—a meat pounder, a frying pan—and strike Lena with it. He had never hit a woman before, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity. He stood wrestling with his temper while Lena serenely tournéed potatoes and carrots for the stew. He had known her for fifteen years, since her twenties; she had been with him when he first opened the restaurant as Masha’s. She had been a prep chef then; there had been no question of putting Lena anywhere near the front of the house, as a waitress or even a busser, where she would terrorize the customers. Lena didn’t want that anyway; according to her, waitresses, hostesses, and coat girls were also whores. She had requested to cook from the start, and Peter had hired her even though it was extremely rare for a woman to work in a professional kitchen as anything other than a pastry chef. For one thing, his other staff had not immediately realized that Lena, who threw anyone who offended her up against a wall to dry-hump him, was a woman in the first place. For another, her knife skills were unparalleled—in this way, if no other, she had reminded Peter of Masha. And there was the moment, during her audition, when Peter had requested Lena make beef Bourguignon, that she rolled up her sleeves and he saw the row of crooked green numbers on her skin. “What?” she had said, when she’d caught him looking. “I was political prisoner in Nazi camp,” and she had spit in the sink. “You have problem with this?” No, not at all, Peter had said. It was the only moment in all his time in America that he almost unbuttoned his cuff of his own volition to expose his own tattoo. Almost.

  Lena had been his right arm for all these years, and she could say things to him that nobody else could—not Sol, Ruth, or June. In fact, Peter had told Lena about Sol, and Lena had said, “Da, Jewish mafia, big deal. If were Russian mob, then you worry.” Peter had still not cut ties with Sol. He suddenly found his own inertia, Lena, and even his beloved kitchen intolerable. He threw down his rag on the cutting board.

  “Watch the croutons,” he said. “I’m going for a walk.”

  * * *

  One of the best things about Masha’s Upper East Side location—which Peter would not have chosen had he not inherited the restaurant; he would have preferred the West Fifties, near the theaters and Carnegie Hall—was its proximity to Carl Schurz Park. It was three blocks south and three east, at Eighty-Sixth and East End Avenue, and many were the restless hours Peter had spent there, pacing along the East River, admiring the Triborough Bridge and absently petting the heads of amorous dogs. In his English classes, one of his more demanding instructors had assigned Moby-Dick, and in Carl Schurz Park he always thought of the passage about the calming effects of being near water. He also often thought of the novel’s final epigraph: And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

  Today he quickly found a bench and sat, mopping his face and neck with the sleeve of his chef’s whites—his handkerchiefs, like his street clothes, were back at Masha’s. The morning was not hot, but it was damp, the sun a distant silver coin trying to break through the fog, gulls wheeling and crying over the river, the air smelling of diesel and fish, pedestrians passing with coffee, white paper bags, and dogs, each encapsulated in his own early morning thoughts. Peter watched the barges pushed by stalwart tugs, the water lapping at Roosevelt Island and its salt-shaker lighthouse. In the early days, Peter had sometimes wondered how hard it would be to scale the fence, with its sharp iron points, but then he had realized the drop here was not very steep, and probably the worst thing that could happen to a person who jumped into the East River from Carl Schurz Park would be some foul skin disease from the polluted water. Now he knotted his hands and leaned forward, as if in doing so he could see past the river, island, and the bridge all the way to the Atlantic and the continent he had left behind.

  Lena was quite right: he was being a coward. But Peter had always been a coward; he had always known that about himself. It was his worst, most damning trait, the one that defined him, the secret at his core he tried and tried to keep hidden but that inevitably surfaced, time and time again. It was his inability to act, his paralysis in crucial situations. His inability to jump. To cut. To call. To decide. To keep his family safe. To leave Germany while there was still time. For of course, Peter had had ample warning of what could happen. His own father had told him. His father had worked with Sol to get Jews out by any means possible, first legal—before the Night of the Broken Glass—and then illegal. That was why the Nazis had sent Avram to Buchenwald in 1941. That was why Peter’s mother had been detained and had caught her fatal flu in the detention center. That was why Peter had the constant argument with Masha that reminded him of the physics conundrum about the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object: they had to get out, she said. It was too dangerous, he said. They had to leave. They had to stay. Over and over and around and around, Masha suggesting ridiculous things like alternate identities, hiding in attics, in church basements, hiking over the Alps at night. You sound like a spy novel! Peter retorted. This insanity will end; the outside world will realize what’s going on and put a stop to it. Besides, the girls, Peter said, pointing to the newborns sleeping in their laundry basket, the infants in the cradle he had fashioned from a crate and discarded rocking chair, the toddlers in their parents’ bed. The girls, the girls, what about the girls?

  In the end, what happened was very like the roundup dream, except without the alternate conclusions Peter’s mind kept trying to write for it. Peter and the twins were rounded up in what was now known as the Fabrikaktion of 1943. They had been taken in a truck to one of many processing camps, theirs at the Clou Concert Hall—several thousand people crammed into a space meant to hold a few hundred. Masha had come running from the Adlon’s kitchen, still in her whites, a sympathetic supplier having alerted her to what had happened. By some miracle, she had managed to find them in the melee—that was one thing the dream got right, the miracle of Masha locating them amid all those people. Peter had scolded her as they stood together huddled and crying, their arms interlaced around their children, a tiny buoy in a heaving, wailing human sea. “You should not have come,” he said over and over, kissing Masha’s cold wet face. “Foolish Mashi, brave Mashi! You can’t stay. You must go. Go now. Go.”

  “And leave you?” she
said. “Never.”

  “At least all these other people keep us warm,” said Peter, trying to smile. “Mashi, please. Go. Get the papers from Dietrich—”

  “It’s too late for that,” said Masha, “don’t you see? Can’t you see that, Petel? There are thousands and thousands of people here.”

  She stood on tiptoe, then jumped, trying to get a view over the hats and kerchiefs and shoulders and bare heads. “Sorry,” she said to an old woman whose foot she trod on; the lady just looked at her with the befuddlement Peter had seen on air raid survivors. Masha put her hands over her face.

  “It’s hopeless,” she said, “it’s all over,” and she cried very hard for a minute. Peter comforted her as best he could by pressing his body against hers—his hands holding both girls against him by their bony little bottoms.

  “Shhh, Mashi,” he said, “we’re together, we’ll be all right. . . . Shhh.”

  As abruptly as she had started, Masha stopped crying.

  “Stay with them,” she said, “I’ll be right back,” and before Peter could stop her, she began eeling her way through the crowd.

  “Mamaaaaaaa!” wailed Vivian, “where’s Mama going? Mama!” Her outrage woke Gigi, who was too weak to match her sister’s sobs but keened in Peter’s other ear.

  “Shhh, girls,” said Peter. “Mama will be right back.”

  A woman next to him—about Masha’s age, nursing an infant—gave him a half pitying, half scornful look, and for the first time Peter thought: But maybe she won’t. Despite the crush of people, he felt as though he were falling.

  “Shall we sing, girls?” he asked. “What shall we sing?”

  Vivian patted Peter’s cheek and said, “Sing you, Papa. Sing you.”

  She meant Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev’s children’s composition, which both girls thought had been written about Peter—they loved the musical story of the hero boy vanquishing the wolf. Peter whistled the opening bars of their favorite part, when the menace had been captured: “And off they started to the zoo!” he began.

  Vivi recited with him: “Now just imagine the triumphant procession! Of course, Peter was at the head . . .” They had sung their way to Grandfather and the cat, Peter and Vivi saying in the deep Grandfather voice, “And what if Peter hadn’t caught the wolf? What then, eh?” when Masha did come back, pushing her way through, an all-white apparition with her pale skin and hair and chef’s jacket, except for her red and streaming nose.

  “Good news,” she said, “they’re processing Aryans and Geltungsjuden at another center, at Rosen Street. All we have to do is get to a guard and show our papers to prove we’re married. They’ll take us over there straight away.”

  “Is that true?” said someone nearby, and “If you’re Aryan? If you’re married to an Aryan?”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Masha.

  The breastfeeding woman, whose armband over her shearling coat bore the Star, smirked. “A fat lot of good that does most of us,” she said.

  Masha gave the woman a look of great sympathy. “Courage,” she said. Then she took Vivi from Peter and said, “Come, girls.”

  “Papaaaaaa,” cried Vivian, “I want Papa,” and she lunged toward Peter. “I want Papa! I want more Peter! I want to go home!”

  “I know, sweet love,” said Masha. She took Peter’s arm and kissed Ginger’s forehead, then recoiled in alarm. Gigi was lying with her head on Peter’s shoulder, her eyes glazed with fever, her thumb sliding listlessly out of her mouth.

  “Petel, she’s burning up,” said Masha. “We have to do something.”

  “Hold the girls,” he offered, “I’ll take off my shirt and put it over her.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Masha, “you’ll catch your death.” She was right; it was February, ice and frozen mud treacherous beneath their feet, their terrified breath puffing with thousands of others’ into the air. Masha stood on tiptoe and looked around.

  “See there,” she said, “that older lady? She looks like she might not put up much of a fight. See if you can get that fur hat off her.”

  “Mashi! I can’t do that.”

  “We have to do something.”

  “But not that. Here. I’ll put Gigi beneath my coat—”

  Masha made an impatient noise. “That won’t be enough. I know how you feel, but it could mean Gigi’s life against some stranger’s, somebody who might not last very long anyway, I’m sorry to say . . . I’ll be right back.”

  “No,” said Peter, “Mashi, stay! I’ll do it.”

  But Masha had already let go of his sleeve and was sliding through the crowd toward her target, a drooping woman who did indeed look as though she might expire at any moment. Masha crept up behind her and tweaked the woman’s hat off her head, and she was turning triumphantly to Peter when there was an outcry on the far side of the square. It was a jumper: a woman who plunged from a top window straight as an arrow, feet pointed earthward and arms at her sides, her skirt flying up around her.

  “Masha!” Peter yelled. “Stay put.”

  He began battering his way toward her, clamping Ginger’s hot damp head to his shoulder. “Don’t look, baby,” he panted, although Ginger was unconscious. “Don’t look.” He felt a spreading warm wetness on his side as Ginger’s bladder let go.

  “Masha!”

  More screams and shouts, and Peter knew there must be another suicide. He focused with all his might on the flash of Masha’s white coat, on shoving toward her through the crowd. But panic seized the detainees, and it was as though Peter’s feet were thrown off the ground by an earthquake. With everyone around him pushing and screaming—mouths wide open, spit stretching from teeth, sour breath, a crush of wool, outstretched hands—Peter lost sight of his wife. More frightening still, somebody shoved Peter so hard he and Gigi almost went flying; he clung to his little girl, trying desperately to keep his footing and not get trampled.

  “Come, baby,” he panted; her head lolled, her eyes were rolled up; had she had a seizure? “Let’s find Mama.”

  There were gunshots. More screaming. “Halt,” said the loudspeaker. “Stay where you are.”

  Peter saw Masha about a dozen people away. She caught sight of him at the same time. She waved the fur hat.

  “Masha!” he shouted.

  “I’ll see you . . . Rosen Street!” she called.

  “Papa,” called Vivi, and Peter saw a wink of her hand in the weak winter sun, and then the throng surged over them.

  “No,” Peter screamed. “Masha!” He began thrashing through the wall of backs, shoulders, bodies. But that was when the guards started separating the crowd, wading in and using their rifle butts and whip handles, and Peter went flying. He overbalanced, hit the ground on his back, and lost his grip on Ginger—one minute he had her gripped to his side for dear life, and the next she was gone.

  Peter got to his knees, peering through a forest of shoes and pant legs and skirts. This couldn’t be happening. She had been with him! He had been holding her! How could she be gone so quickly! She had to be here. She couldn’t be more than a meter away. Two at most.

  “Gigi!”

  He crawled. Which direction had she gone? She was wearing a pink nightgown. Only a pink nightgown. He saw boots and cuffs. Somebody stepped on his right hand, a woman’s sharp heel, piercing deep into the skin between the veins. The shoe’s owner was shoved and she fell and Peter’s hand was freed. He scrambled forward on the icy cobbles.

  “Gigi!” he screamed. “Gigi!”

  He pulled himself up using the nearest man. “My little girl, have you seen her?”

  The man stared past him, walleyed with fear. The guards were getting closer. “Gigi!” Peter yelled. “Gigi! Has anyone seen a little girl?”

  He flailed in every direction. Everywhere a wall of strangers. Peter was crying. “Gigi! Gigi!”

  He staggered up against a guard, an impassive young man in uniform and helmet. “I lost my daughter—Gigi—she’s Aryan—please help me, I lost my little
girl!”

  The guard looked at Peter’s hand on his sleeve and shook it off with a grimace. “Everyone’s Aryan today,” he said, and hit Peter across the face with his baton.

  By the time Peter came to, he was indeed at Rosen Street—how he got there, he did not remember. He did not remember the people who had picked him up and found his papers and shown somebody in charge that he was Geltungsjuden—married to an Aryan. Peter was duly processed and sent to the work camp for such privileged Jews: Theresienstadt. But there were so many people at the Clou Concert Hall that day, and at Oranienburg and Grosse Hamburger Strasse and the Putlitz train station; regrettably, given the scope of the Fabrikaktion, the processing wasn’t as efficient as it might have been and mistakes were made, so that while Peter was transferred to Rosen Street, Masha and Vivian were sent with another transport of full-blooded Jews to Oranienburg, then to Putlitz, where their train took them to Auschwitz. No record of Ginger Rashkin, age three, was ever found.

  * * *

  When Peter left Carl Schurz Park, he didn’t have a plan in mind, but as his feet carried him automatically back toward Masha’s, one started to grow. Instead of returning to the restaurant, he hailed a cab; he was halfway downtown before he realized he was still in his chef’s whites. But that didn’t matter. This would either work on first sight or not at all. Peter asked the cabbie to stop near the Washington Square Arch, where a blind man was selling carnations from a plastic bucket; when they reached Minetta Lane, Peter asked the driver if he minded waiting.

  “Whatever, man, it’s your dime,” the cabbie said.

  Peter stood in the quiet winding street outside the little beige three-story building with its neat black shutters that reminded him of a doll’s house. He checked his watch: it was 8:30 a.m. No wonder there were no signs of life at 16 Minetta Lane; its inhabitants were its owners, two Broadway performers known for their tap-dancing abilities and very loud arguments; three stewardesses on the second floor; and, in the top-floor apartment, an aspiring opera singer and June. Not an early riser among them. Peter felt bad disturbing them, but it couldn’t be helped: he had no key. He rang the doorbell marked dahl/bouquet. Nothing happened.