The exquisitely embroidered linen sheets and pillow cases, the table damask with huge monogrammed “SS,” arrived and were put away in a special closet. A seamstress sat in one of the children’s rooms, sewing yards and yards of batiste. My mother enjoyed herself like a little girl with a new doll’s clothes.
That summer our doctor persuaded my father to take a cure in Kissingen, which had been successful some years before. My mother went with him and as the cavalry regiment left for maneuvers, I got rid of Lieutenant Schoen for at least a whole month.
My mother’s sister, Aunt Wilhelmina, arrived with her three children to spend the summer with us. She was as dark as my mother was fair, and a great beauty. Three years younger than my mother, she came between her and the unfortunate Emil, and was about seven years older than Aunt Bella. She was witty, her sharp tongue not altogether kind. The one to suffer its sting was her husband, our handsome Uncle Fritz, an Army officer, who had resigned in order to marry her as she did not have the required dowry. Aunt Mina vowed that her daughters would never repeat her terrible mistake of marrying for love. She thought that my mother, with her prearranged marriage, had fared much better.
My cousins, Alice and Olga, were strikingly beautiful, especially Alice. On the street people turned around to look at them. Their arrival reopened the discussion of my acting career. Aunt Mina, though not optimistic about my chances, said that she would talk to Mama, as she herself wanted Alice to be an actress. The Viennese theater offered the right opportunity, because if she failed in her stage career a beautiful, young actress had many other chances: an Archduke might fall in love with her and make her his Pompadour or Lavallière. Aunt Mina was dead set against legality and matrimony. But I soon found out that she despised the bourgeoisie only as long as my father was away. The moment he and my mother returned she reversed her opinions completely—at least as far as I was concerned.
My father was feeling much better—Mama gay and radiantly happy. She had had a wonderful time, made many friends, among them an English lady she had invited to spend a few weeks with us. My father shrugged and said that my mother was insane to believe that Mrs. Annesley would take the invitation seriously and come to Sambor. How wrong he was.
Mrs. Annesley arrived after Aunt Mina and her children had taken leave, and created a sensation not only on the Promenade, but also among the Orthodox Jews and the rural population, with her eccentric elegance and lavish use of make-up. She was not young but she must have been very lovely once.
She was the first Anglo-Saxon I had ever met. Now I am aware of how typical she was of a certain social set. She spoke German and French with an abominable accent and a limited vocabulary, but as none of us spoke English, we all began to imitate her and invent a new language by mispronouncing French and German. But she was sweet and droll and we liked her at once. By that time Marie was not with us anymore, and Mrs. Annesley stayed in her room. The rituals of her baths, breakfasts and lunches appeared hilarious to our servants. And she always expected to find snakes in the garden, probably because she had lived in India and South America for many years.
Wychylowka provided all kinds of excitement, which made Mrs. Annesley lose her self-control. “Wherever I look I see red,” she would cry out. “I have scarlet fever. I keep seeing red pants.”
The red pants were part of an officer’s uniform and were worn by Lieutenant Schoen. Mrs. Annesley fell madly in love with the pants, with the cavalry and with Lieutenant Schoen. One evening she came into my room, her face thickly covered with cream, her hair in pincurls, and implored me to give him up because he was her last and only love. It took me more than an hour to convince her that it would make me very happy if she would marry Lieutenant Schoen, as soon as possible. She left me, saying that she had spoken to Mama and had already written to her brother in England. Apparently the only person not informed about her plan was Lieutenant Schoen himself.
My mother immediately forgot that Schoen was a prospective son-in-law and was delighted to get him for her friend. Such a match was certainly more amusing than having to have the dull man in her own family. Still, she felt obliged to warn Mrs. Annesley that Schoen was Jewish and from a different background than hers. Rose Annesley was willing to be converted to the Mosaic religion—“It’s not as painful for women as for men, is it?”—and she did not give two hoots about Lieutenant Schoen’s background. She knew he was not rich, but she had enough money for both of them. Tactfully, my mother mentioned the difference in their ages (he was twenty-six), but Mrs. Annesley had a friend who had married a Frenchman, twenty years younger and she was blissfully happy. All she demanded from my mother was that she tell Schoen that he was completely free to give his attention to her. My mother promised her support. As things moved too slowly for Mrs. Annesley, she asked me to suggest to Schoen that he had a great chance to marry into the British aristocracy.
That same afternoon as I was out riding with two cadets and one sublieutenant, we were joined by Lieutenant Schoen. He maneuvered me into a forest lane and we lost the others. I assume they had their orders. Reaching for the reins of my horse, he brought it to a halt and put his arm around me. I burst out: “Mrs. Annesley is in love with you!”
“What, who?” He looked at me, flabbergasted.
I repeated: “Mrs. Annesley, my mother’s friend, you know her, the English lady. . . .”
Schoen bent over to kiss me. I moved away and said firmly: “No. I don’t want to be kissed by you. It is Mrs. Annesley who is in love with you. She is very nice and also rich.” And I trotted away to find the others.
I was pleased to see that at the picnic to which the officers had invited us, Schoen and Mrs. Annesley were inseparable. She was talking in her silly German, mixing it with upper-class English and he was listening, flattered, and smiling sheepishly. She stayed with us until they got engaged, and a few months later they were married in her brother’s castle.
Just before the First World War my mother received a letter from Mrs. Schoen saying: “Alas, my Austrian husband is like a beautifully plumed parrot, who sits on a tree and repeats ‘Gib Geld, gib Geld’” (“Give money, give money”). She divorced him shortly afterward.
Amalia Kanarienvogel gave up looking among the armed forces for my future husband. There was nobody as eligible as a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer who had arrived in town and joined the office of one of my father’s colleagues. His name was Stanislav Hoeniger.
[1] Praga is the name of a suburb in Warsaw.
5
EVERYBODY WAS PUSHING us toward each other: his aunt and uncle, my mother and Amalia Kanarienvogel. I don’t think he was aware of it. He was a stranger, rather out of place in such a provincial garrison town. I remember his eyes, large, dark blue, looking at me with tender amusement, but I cannot recall his voice, although I know that it was his voice which attracted me when I first met him. He had gone to the University in Vienna, then lived in Krakow, where life was less lethargic than in Sambor. Later he told me that if he had not fallen in love with me, he would not have stayed a week.
It was by pure coincidence that he came into my life. An army physician, Dr. Eisenstein, had been transferred to Sambor, and Mrs. Eisenstein, who was Stanislav’s aunt and had a deep affection for the son of her dead sister, persuaded him to spend a year in a Sambor law office before opening his own.
As soon as they were settled, the Eisensteins called on my parents. I was surprised when my mother invited them to her Sunday afternoons, because they were rather stuffy and not the kind of people with whom she would usually make friends. Then, after I had met Stas, and seen the speed-up on my trousseau, her motive became transparent.
I hardly ever was alone with him, but one day we ran into each other on the A-B and together we headed toward Wychylowka, making a long detour across the fields. Suddenly he held me back and kissed me. I was numbed and could only say: “I don’t love you!”
He turned pale and murmured that he was sorry. He had had the impression I was fond of him.
Yes, I was, but love must be quite different. Yes, of course, and he would not impose himself upon me again. Immediately I was horrified at the thought of not seeing him anymore.
“Why can’t everything be as it was?”
He smiled: “This is a philistine town—I asked your mother. . . .”
“You are conventional, aren’t you?” I interrupted indignantly.
Just then two dark figures appeared, walking in our direction. It was old Lamet with one of his sons. They were wearing their holiday kaftans and fur-trimmed hats. It was their field on which we were standing. Only a few days before I had seen them plowing it. To pass us they had to step into the wet, black earth. The old man, who usually greeted me with a smile, looked severe and disapproving. As they went on I could see clumps of earth sticking to their polished boots.
“They can’t be going to the synagogue?” I said to Stas.
“They are. It’s Yom Kippur. Didn’t you know?”
I had forgotten. I had always been awed by this day; it made me uncomfortable with all the Jewish men and women fasting and going to the temple, looking reproachfully at us apostates.
I was terribly unhappy. Stas said he would take me home.
My mother was waiting for us and immediately knew that something had happened. I excused myself. She asked Stas to stay and they talked for a long time. After he left she burst into my room. She was very angry. “You’ll never meet anyone like him again.” Not only was he handsome and brilliant but in love with me, something she could not understand. Who did I think I was? A stage-struck idiot! “You’ll end up an old maid or even worse, a streetwalker.” I wondered if an old maid wouldn’t be worse than a streetwalker.
Mama was through and left, slamming the door.
I undressed and went to bed without supper. Rose had eaten with the family and when she came into our room we talked while she brushed her hair. I wanted to know how Papa had reacted to the whole thing. But apparently all he had said was: “Doesn’t that Hoeniger know better than to propose on Yom Kippur?”
For a week I avoided going to town, so that I would not run into Stas or his relations. Then one afternoon my mother went shopping and returned, gay as a lark, with him carrying her packages. He acted as if nothing had happened.
He resumed his visits, and in a short time I would be disappointed when he was busy and could not come. We saw each other alone now. This “amitié amoureuse,” of course, appealed to me very much. I poured out my frustrations to him. I loathed my idle, meaningless life; I wanted to work in a profession I loved.
He listened with humorous tenderness, often suppressing a smile and often moved. After a while I ceased being preoccupied with myself and became concerned about him and his feelings. Once this concern was aroused, and I realized what a wonderful person he was, all my resistance broke down.
My parents gave a party to announce our engagement and Niania cooked a fabulous dinner; but what enchanted me most was my first trailing dress and the champagne. This provoked Papa to observe that I was rather childish and that he did not wish me to marry before I was seventeen. But he offered Stas a partnership in his law firm. This put an end to my secret dream of moving to a big city, but by then I was so much in love that I was willing to stay in Sambor for the rest of my life.
As Papa and Stas were in daily contact now, their conflicting political views caused the inevitable friction. Papa’s favorite bête noire was a man named Diamant, a socialist member of the Sejm.* Extremely overweight, he annoyed his opponents by getting up in the House and opening his speeches with: “We starving proletarians . . .” which infuriated Papa. Such a fat man had no business to call himself the champion of the starving. Stas supported Diamant, and I was torn between my love and loyalty to my father. No one could deny that during his “paternalistic” government the city had been cleaned, the roads repaired, wages raised and electricity installed. I opposed Papa’s contempt for socialism (“mob rule!”), but I admired his integrity and, paternalistic or not, his concern for the underprivileged. He could not stomach Stas’s sympathy for the overfed Mr. Diamant. But, whatever his appearance, Mr. Diamant told the truth: the workers were starving. Little industry as Poland had, the conditions in it were medieval, and he was one of the first to arouse and organize the apathetic proletariat.
A general strike was called in the district of Sanok, not too far from us. There were bloody clashes with the gendarmerie, and the cavalry charged into the crowds. The dead and wounded lay on the streets, and hundreds of strikers were arrested and had to stand trial in the District Court. Only a few lawyers volunteered to defend them; Stas was one of the first. My father put before him the alternative of either withdrawing from the defense or severing their partnership. Stas chose the latter and decided to open his own office in Sanok. Papa retired to his room, and let me know through Mama that he expected me to break off my engagement immediately. Of course I refused. Mama was on my side. She was sure that once the trial was over my father would change his mind. Perhaps I should stay for a while with my Aunt Wilhelmina in Czernowitz. Stas and I thought it a very good suggestion and that same evening we parted: he to Sanok and I to visit my relatives.
Aunt Mina and her two lovely daughters and even the usually indifferent Uncle Fritz, were most sympathetic. They tried to amuse me, showing me the pretty town with its mixed population of Moldavians, Rumanians, Austrians, Ukrainians and German-speaking Jewish intelligentsia. Czernowitz appeared like a metropolis to me. Stas arrived for a brief visit; he looked haggard and pale and said that he was exhausted by his work. Hundreds of people were in jail; among the strike leaders were many Jews, a fact which was being exploited by the anti-semitic press. Innumerable witnesses were to be heard and, as usual, the Court took its time, while the families of the defendants were starving. Although Stas joked about his health, I worried and insisted that he see a doctor, which he promised to do.
My aunt and cousins were considerate and left us alone. Stas rested most of the time, stretched out on the couch, his head in my lap. We were happy and peaceful together and it was unbearable to part. I told him that I did not care whether Papa disowned me, that I wanted to live with him in Sanok, without the blessing of a rabbi. He was moved but his reaction disappointed me. He said we were not in a position to brave convention. The scandal would jeopardize his case and make it impossible for him to defend his clients. And what a blow to my parents—they did not deserve that! We had to wait. But he wanted to see me more often and asked me to return to Sambor, which was much nearer to Sanok and where we could meet on Sundays at the Eisensteins. Obediently I went back home, where life went on as usual: Papa aloof and withdrawn, but not unkind.
The preparations for the trial continued, and from Sunday to Sunday Stas looked worse than when I had seen him last. But he was sure that he would win an acquittal for the group he was defending.
One dark Sunday evening we walked arm in arm to the station. The train arrived and, seized by an inexplicable anguish, I broke into tears. I stood there crying until Stas’s white face in the compartment window disappeared in darkness.
There was another temporary postponement of the trial, but he did not come to Sambor. He wrote me that the doctor suspected he had an ulcer and had advised him to go to Vienna and consult a surgeon. He could not bear the thought of a long-drawn-out treatment and would rather submit to an operation. He did not tell me he had had a hemorrhage.
It was November 28 and the weather was awful—at three in the afternoon it was so dark that the lights had to be switched on. For three days I had had no news from Stas and, disregarding a snowstorm, I went to town to see if any mail had been delivered at Papa’s office. I had almost reached City Hall, when our coachman caught up with me, saying that my mother wanted me to come home. We stopped at the office, but there was no letter.
Niania was standing in the open front door, but when she saw the carriage she disappeared inside. I got out and ran after her. My heart was pounding.
I cro
ssed the dining room; the door to the drawing room was open and I could see Papa walking up and down, holding a handkerchief to his face. I had never seen Papa crying and I was petrified and could not take a step toward him . . . I was aware that Niania was holding me and that my mother was kissing my hands. She too was crying. I wanted to ask her why she was kissing my hands, but could not speak. She was sobbing: “A telegram arrived while you were gone . . . my darling child, a telegram. . . .”
She did not have to say it. I knew.
Stas’s stepmother had wired that he died two hours after the apparently successful operation.
I had no desire to live; I wanted to die. My parents took me to the Adriatic coast, to Abbazia. For hours I walked along the shore or sat staring at the sea dotted with the ochre sails of the Chioggia boats. But the gypsy who had told me to live near the water proved right. I began to recover.
Esther Mandl invited me to stay with her in Vienna and my parents agreed. Wychylowka was too full of memories of Stas.
•
The hugeness of the Zentral Friedhof and the thought of Stas buried among all these thousands of dead, was another shock. But Esther found his grave quite easily and turned away as I knelt down and kissed the brown earth. I still had Niania’s simple faith that the dead feel the presence of those who loved them.
Whenever I could escape I visited Stas’s grave. One day a strange thing happened. Returning from the cemetery in an almost empty streetcar, I noticed a young girl on the opposite bench staring at me with Stas’s eyes. She leaned forward and asked: “Aren’t you Salka?”
The Kindness of Strangers Page 6