Enemy of the Tzar

by Lester S. Taube

  Jules took a deep breath. “I wish you hadn’t said that, Natalie.”

  “It would be true,” she replied. “I wonder how we would have gotten through the years without our solid rock.”

  “They would have been emptier, wouldn’t they?” mused Fergl.

  “Do you think she likes him?” asked Natalie of nobody in particular.

  “He’d be hard not liking,” said Jules. “Even I said I liked him.” He pushed an ashtray nearer to Fergl. “Why do you always light a cigar when something important is being discussed, Uncle Freddy?”

  “It keeps him from speaking,” said Martha, chuckling. “Fred thinks a lot.”

  “So, Uncle Thinker,” went on Jules. “Puff away a couple of times and talk to us.”

  Fergl tapped off an ash and looked up. “Yes, she likes him. Hanna likes everybody. I don’t think she realizes it. It’s her nature. But there is the ghost of Stephen.”

  They were quiet a few minutes longer. “So, what do we do?” asked Martha.

  “Don’t push,” said Fergl. “Let nature take its course.”

  Bernard’s boat came gliding into the cove shortly after Jules had dropped anchor. They all stood by the rail and watched him bring it to a dead halt a few meters away.

  “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

  “Bring it over,” said Fergl.

  “Good idea,” replied Bernard, positioning bumpers on that side. After the boats were tied together, he jumped aboard, a basket in his hand.

  “Champagne,” he said, holding it up. “Kosher, believe it or not.”

  “Who makes kosher champagne?” asked Jules, taking out a bottle.

  “A private production of the Rothshields,” said Bernard. “They are friends of mine. I think they even keep the kosher vines from the goyisher ones.”

  “Are gentile vines male or female?” asked Jules. “For if they are female, they would have to be called goyisheh, not goyisher.”

  “Suppose they grafted a Jewish sprig to a gentile stem?” asked Fergl, getting into the playful mood. “What would you get?”

  “Talmud states that Judaism is passed from the mother,” said Bernard. “Therefore, you’d have to graft a goyisher sprig onto a Jewish stem if you wanted a kosher grape.”

  “He sounds like Jakob,” laughed Natalie, seated in a deck chair with a blanket over her waist. There was a sudden silence as all looked towards Hanna, resting against the rail.

  Hanna smiled wistfully. “It is all right, Natalie. Come to think of it, Jakob would probably have said the same thing.”

  Bernard had kept from glancing directly at Hanna. Now he looked at her. She was wearing a knee length bathing suit with half sleeves, and it fit her just right. He wondered if Jakob had been her husband. Then abruptly he felt sad. Jakob would have to have been an unusual man to have won her, and for the first time in his life, he felt less than adequate.

  Paul trotted up from the cabin in his bathing suits. “Can I go in now?” he asked his mother.

  “All right.” She looked at Fergl and Jules. “Over the side.” Fergl and Jules jumped in, making a great splash to Paul’s delight, then treaded water while Martha and Hanna lowered the boy down to them. Already a good swimmer, Paul started off towards the shore, the men trailing close behind to guard him.

  “Don’t you swim?” asked Bernard of Hanna.

  She shook her head. “Not very well. We have visited here for four years now, and I still get water in my nose. I swim only when my feet can touch bottom.”

  “You struggle, that’s why. Just relax, hold air in your lungs, and you’ll float. Come on, give it a try. I’ll hold you up.”

  She climbed over the rail, held her nose, and dropped in, Bernard quickly beside her. At once she began flailing her arms.

  He placed an arm around her waist. “Stop,” he said calmly. “Just relax, and move your arms.”

  She took a few tentative strokes, then turned her face to him with surprise.

  “I’m swimming,” she said with pleasure. At that, she swallowed a mouthful of water and began coughing. Bernard held her securely upright until she recovered. She grinned. “I guess I spoke too soon.”

  He chuckled. “You’re doing fine. Try again, but don’t talk.”

  He felt her breasts against his arm as she began swimming, and his own breath grew short in his chest. He could not remember when he had so much enjoyment at such a simple act, and it was with a sense of loss that he felt his feet touch bottom.

  “You are in now,” he said, helping her stand.

  She stood wiping the water from her face. “Did you see that?” she said excitedly to Martha standing to one side.

  “Good for you,” replied Martha, grinning. “You did great.”

  She looked at the boats, ten or fifteen meters away. “Do you think I can swim back?”

  “Give it a try. I’ll swim next to you.”

  She made it easily, and Bernard could not discard a sense of disappointment that she did not need him any longer.

  Back in the shallow water, Paul frolicked, jumped, and dived while the adults floated and lazed about. Time passed so quickly that the sun reached its zenith before they knew it.

  “To lunch,” said Martha, and with the adults shepherding the boy, all swam back. After a quick drydown and opening of folding tables and chairs, they started working on a mound of tasty food. When all sat back gorged, Jules brought out his gramophone and put on waltz music.

  “Go ahead and dance,” he invited the others.

  Martha reached down for Fergl. “Come on Fred. You can use the exercise.”

  He grunted. “I’m too full to prance around.”

  Remorsefully, she kept pulling at him. “It will do you good.”

  Sighing, he rose. Once on his feet, the others could see that he was a nimble and experienced dancer.

  Bernard bowed to Hanna. “Would you give me the pleasure, gnädige Frau?”

  “In a bathing suit?” laughed Hanna. “But I warn you. I do not know how to dance.”

  Hanna’s moves were awkward only briefly. In tune to Bernard’s exceptional sense of confidence, she soon enjoyed the pleasure and rhythm of dancing.

  She was an enigma, he thought. She was treated with such respect by the others that there just had to be more to her story. Who went through life never knowing the joys of swimming and dancing?

  In late afternoon, it was time to start back. Fergl invited Bernard to spend the night at his house, but he declined. “I have some papers back at the hotel I must work on,” he stated. It was not true, but he needed time to think. Somehow, someway, Hanna had gotten under his skin, and he had to step back, as he often did during a delicate operation, to put things into perspective.

  Bernard came sailing up a couple of days later in the midst of a cool, windy day. Even with his skill, he had trouble tying up, and was grateful for Jules’ help.

  “You’re just in time for cake and coffee,” said Jules, leading the way into his house. “We’re having some peace for a change. Uncle Freddy and Tante Martha took Paul to a nearby village for a puppet show.”

  Bernard’s heart lifted when he learned that Hanna was still about. She and Natalie were in the kitchen, preparing the coffee.

  “Hello, Bernard,” said Natalie, as she was wheeled in. “We saw you through the window as you sailed in. Neat work. You also brought some rain with you.”

  He took his eyes away from Hanna long enough to see that it had begun to drizzle. “Hello, Natalie. Hello, Hanna.”

  “Good morning,” she replied in her precise, almost formal voice. She speaks like that, he had deduced, because she had to learn from scratch. Somehow he sensed that she had never been given a thing–that she had to earn whatever she might have, guilder by guilder.

  Frau Weiss served coffee and pound cake in the parlor.

  “It’s good,” said Bernard, holding up a forkful of the cake.

  “By Hanna,” said Natalie, trying to be unconcerned about the remar
k.

  Bernard saluted her with a wave of the hand. He had changed to tan ducks, a brown striped shirt, and matching tan jacket with brass naval buttons. Hanna was surprised to see that the brown blended well with the blue of his eyes. Since she dealt with colors as well as fashion in her dressmaking, she was conscious of harmony or clash even before identifying the cause.

  “How long are you staying on the lake?” asked Jules.

  “I have another five days. Usually, I sail the Ijsselmeer. Your Zuiderzee,” he said, giving the German name. “I go out to the North Sea when the weather isn’t too fierce.”

  “What kind of surgery do you do?” asked Hanna.

  She was dressed in a soft, cotton skirt of gray stripes that fell to the calves of her legs, and a white shirt waist trimmed with the same gray stripes. On her feet were low cut, gray canvas shoes. He liked the way she dressed, with very good taste. But something was strange. The color schemes were excellent, the tailoring perfect, but the materials were of just average quality.

  “I’m in general surgery. That means I haven’t decided on a specialty.”

  “What would you like to do?” she continued.

  He admired her direct questions. She was not merely making conversation, but was genuinely interested. “Orthopedic surgery,” he said softly, and Hanna saw at once that he had bared his innermost desire. He leaned forward in his chair; his intense blue eyes becoming even more alive. “I want to work with deformed children. You would never believe how a rather simple operation can alter the entire course of a child’s life. It sometimes takes only a mere tenotomy, the severing of a tendon, to make a change so profound that you marvel for as long as you have the patient.” He shifted to the edge of his chair, his long, tanned hands stabbing at the air to punctuate his point. “Just a year ago, a physician in the United States, a Doktor Albee, developed a motor bone saw that opens entire new doors in bone-grafting. For a medical problem that offered so few remedies just a year or two ago, we are now able to see results that boggle the mind.”

  “Why have you not done it, if you feel so strongly?” Hanna asked. Then her face flushed with embarrassment at having been so forward.

  Bernard stopped a hand in midair, his lips apart as if to speak, his whole body becoming motionless as the question struck home. “I don’t really know, Hanna,” he said honestly. He rubbed his mouth, thinking. “Perhaps I have been gathering material for a novel so long that I forgot to write the book.”

  He lifted his cup and sipped at the coffee. “It must be cold,” said Hanna.“I will get you a fresh cup.” She got to her feet.

  “How very interesting that was,” remarked Natalie. “I can see how the mother of a deformed child could worship the ground such a surgeon walks on.”

  “Hey, we’re not heroes. Just mechanics–with a knife.”

  “You’re a lot more than that. Come on, Jules, I need a hand into the sitting room.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  She eyed him. “I need you to lift up some things,” she said warningly.

  He finally caught on, that they were to get lost, as he had joked about her parents when he was courting her. “Oh, yes,” he said, climbing to his feet and wheeling her out of the room.

  Hanna came in a few minutes later with a fresh cup of coffee. She placed it on the table. “More cake?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough.” He took a sip, and then wiped his bushy mustache.

  “You get to taste everything twice,” she chuckled.

  “Sometimes more,” he laughed. “Especially when I’m sailing long distances and can’t wash from day to day.” She resumed her seat. “Hanna, I hope I’m not being forward, but may I take you to dinner tomorrow evening?”

  “I would like that, thank you.” Then her chuckle returned. “But how do we get to a restaurant on your boat?”

  “Just half an hour’s sail east of here, not far from the Austrian border, is an inn on the lake with food that would break a dieter’s heart. Suppose I come at four or four-thirty?”

  “All right,” said Hanna. Bernard stood up. “Are you leaving now?”

  “I have more work to do.” He still did not, but there was some thinking to do.

  “It is still raining.”

  “Rain’s no bother. Makes sailing more interesting.”

  Hanna went to the doorway. “Natalie, Jules. Bernard is leaving.”

  They came in at once. “I’ll help you off,” said Jules, slipping into a raincoat. After goodbyes to the women, Bernard led Jules out to the dock.

  “I’m glad you came out,” said Bernard, stopping at the boat. “I’ve invited Hanna to supper tomorrow night.” He toyed with one of the tie lines. “Am I stepping on anyone’s toes?”

  Jules shook his head. “Hanna’s husband, Stephen, has been missing for several years. We don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. She hasn’t looked at a man since.” He cleared his throat. “She is a very dear friend of ours.” Jules pulled the coat tighter around his neck. “You’d better get out of the rain.”

  “All right,” said Bernard, swinging aboard. He dropped down into the cabin and came up shortly in waterproof pants and a rain jacket. He signaled for Jules to cast off the lines, then he set sail and started off.

  The weather the following day was bright, clear, and almost balmy. Bernard was back shortly after four o’clock. Everyone in the house had been waiting in a form of suppressed excitement, Fergl and Jules going about with expressions approaching those of overprotective brothers. But Martha and Natalie were all in a tizzy, helping Hanna select, from her limited wardrobe, what to wear. “That Bernard”, they stated at steady intervals. It was just like a man, to ignore telling his date whether that little inn was haute cuisine or Meyer’s Gasthaus.

  “Do you remember that hotel in Berlin?” said Natalie, in a voice of doom to Jules. “Remember what they wore? Formal gowns to breakfast.”

  “That was different,” said Jules. “That was at the most expensive hotel in Germany at the height of the opera season. Furthermore, stop talking like this is an international incident. Hanna’s merely going out to dinner.”

  “The gray suit,” said Hanna. “I will wear that with the ruffled shirt waist.”

  “You wore the skirt when he was here for coffee,” observed Natalie.

  “That may be, but it is the only suit I brought along.”

  Bernard liked the suit, and said so when he saw her, so with waves of goodbyes, he handed her aboard and set off at once.

  “It is a lovely boat,” she said, as he tacked into the wind. “Do you keep it here all the time?”

  “No, at Amsterdam. I had it sent here by railroad last spring. To Friedrichshafen, on your side, then I sailed it to my port in Switzerland.” He hesitated a few seconds. “I have only two more days left, and then I will have it sent home.”

  “I guess you will be glad to get back to work.”

  “I thought so, a week ago.”

  The wind was favorable once he was out, and in less than the specified half hour, he drew into a docking area able to hold a dozen boats. It was part of a cozy hotel, built out on concrete piles into the lake, with a large, semi-circular terrace on the lakefront. She was happy to see that she was properly dressed, although some of the guests who arrived by boat were more casual.

  They ordered fish, small boiled potatoes covered with sour cream and sprigs of parsley, artichokes served with a sauce of oil, vinegar, and hot mustard, and side dishes of fresh vegetables.

  He signaled the waiter. “Herr Ober. Some bread, please. With butter.” Then he spoke to her. “These German restaurants never serve bread.”

  An orchestra had taken a position in a corner of the terrace and struck up a popular ballad.

  “What will you do with yourself after the vacation period?” he asked.

  “I am a dressmaker.”

  “Oh, no wonder your clothing is so well tailored.” He also knew now why the material was of moderate quality. The dessert wa
s served, Black Forest cake and coffee for him; a dish of ice cream and pot of hot tea for her. “I have something for you.” He reached into a pocket and brought out a small box, gift-wrapped. He offered it to her.

  “I cannot take a gift from you,” she said.

  He arrested his hand in mid-air, and then set the package on the table in front of her. “I have not been very bright today, offering a gift to a person of such short acquaintance.” She said nothing, just looked at him with a half smile on her face. “However, Hanna, there is a rhyme and reason. I think very highly of you.”

  “Thank you, Bernard. And I think you are a most unusual person.”

  “I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”

  “It is a statement of fact.”

  “You’re always…well…direct, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so. I have never given it any thought.”

  “Then perhaps I should be as direct. I want you to have the gift to remember me. So that we can make plans to meet again.” Hanna suddenly appeared tired. “Hanna, did I say anything wrong?”

  She shook her head, her face wistful and sad. “I do not think we should see each other after you return home.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  She toyed with the spoon of her ice cream dish. “I am married, Bernard. I am sure you know it.”

  He pursed his lips. “I heard that your husband has disappeared–for many years now.”

  “That does not change anything.”

  He was silent for a long minute. “Forgive me. In my eagerness to know you better, I intruded. May I please give you this gift–as a friend?”

  She smiled. “I think I can accept it now.”

  With a bow, he passed it over. As she unwrapped it, she thought of the two gifts of her life–the cameo and earrings from Stephen. She opened the box. In it was a delicately scrolled gold locket and chain. She pulled it open. Inside, printed in small letters, was “Many best wishes” written on a card that could one day be replaced with a picture.

  “Turn it over,” he said. On the rear of the case were engraved the letters, BR to HC.

  “It is very beautiful. Thank you so much, Bernard. I will treasure it always.”