The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  The Dohrns offered us shelter and the Hoffmanns provided us with furniture for a bedroom, and a living room with eight windows and two glass doors leading to a large terrace. It was a princely room but the central heating did not function. As we would not stay for the winter I thought I could rely on the fireplace to keep us warm on rainy days.

  There were only a few people living in the large house, all refreshingly disconnected from any bourgeois reality, all reassuringly eccentric, kind and helpful. There was a small kitchen at the end of the hall, but I cannot remember anybody’s using it except me and the painter Walter Spiess, a blond, strikingly beautiful, nineteen-year-old giant.

  Life in Hellerau, in spite of the severe scarcity of food, was much more friendly and congenial than in Dresden. The Hoffmanns were not too far from us. Camil and Irma attracted to their house many intellectuals. Later, in Berlin, when Camil became head of the press bureau of the Czechoslovakian Legation, their house was to remain the gathering place for liberal politicians, writers, conscientious objectors now out of jail, theatrical people, and journalists. Bianca Segantini, the daughter of the well-known Swiss painter, who enhanced her resemblance to Dante by a medieval headdress lived in our house. Then there was Herr von Luecken, an emaciated Estonian nobleman, who never washed, but was the kindest soul in the world. He often came to see us and insisted on giving me his weekly meat ration, because I was “carrying life” and he was “not distant from death.”

  Berthold was using the summer to work on a new book of poems. His publisher Jakob Hegner and his young wife also lived in Hellerau. Then we had to get a piano, because Edward arrived, to stay with us until the child was born. Rose was appearing in a play in Berlin and had no vacation.

  We were always hungry, the world looked grim, the victors in Paris were betraying the peace—but I had Berthold, and Edward, and the child in me, and would have been absolutely happy if it had not been for the war in Poland. Dusko was still in the Polish army fighting the Bolsheviks. This was the scanty news which reached us through Esther, but she had not heard from my mother directly.

  It was August and my child was due any day. All I could provide for it was a big straw basket where it would sleep, and a few shirts and diapers made from an old linen sheet. One day I was sitting on the steps of our Greek mansion and Walter Spiess, blond, sunburned, wearing only his white shorts, was telling me that in the north of Siberia mothers never dressed their babies—they smeared grease on their bodies and wrapped them in furs. The children were strong and healthy, and all the fuss European mothers made was nonsense. But I did not have even a tiny bit of fur and remained unimpressed by Siberian childcare. Then the mailman appeared with two large boxes for me from Munich. Right there on the steps I opened them and discovered the loveliest, complete baby layette. On top was a letter from a woman, an utter stranger. She had seen me play Paulina in Winter’s Tale—“at least five times”—and was deeply disappointed that my name had disappeared from the billboards. She had inquired about me, heard I was pregnant and knowing how impossible it was to get baby things was sending me the layette of her own children, all born before the war.

  I was so moved that I wept. Walter looked at me, disgusted, and said: “I would never have thought you’d be so conventional.”

  On the first of September my doctor advised me to go to the hospital. Hellerau was too distant for an emergency. The clinic was small and old-fashioned, but immaculately clean and cheerful. My room had red wallpaper and except for the white furniture and hospital bed, it was like a hotel room.

  The birth was difficult. The endless hours of agony were interrupted by an unexpected joy. Walking up and down in the room, timing my pains, I approached the window and was sure I had a hallucination: wasn’t that my mother on the other side of the street, walking with Edward toward the hospital? Screaming “Mama!” I ran out of the room, down the stairs and onto the street, with the midwife and nurse after me. And indeed it was Mama, who, braving the war in Poland and disputed frontiers, had traveled two long weeks under appalling hardships to be with me when my child was born. Miraculously she had arrived on time. After forty-six hours of torture, they took me into the operating room and I shall never forget the blissful moment of oblivion when they put the mask on my face.

  My mother’s voice, calling from a great distance, woke me. First I saw a sky full of red clouds, it must have been the wallpaper of my room, then I felt Berthold’s hand touching my forehead and then my mother saying in Polish: “Open your eyes, look, you have a son.” Before my eyes could pierce through the red clouds I heard him cry. It sounded like a cello, a deep and soft “aa.” They put him in my arms. He was long, skinny, had Berthold’s forehead and dark eyelashes, and seemed a little mangled after his difficult entry into the world.

  The ensemble of the Schauspielhaus showered the most gorgeous flowers upon me. Nurses and patients flocked into the room to admire my little John Jacob.

  •

  It is commonly assumed that to give birth is the happiest moment in a woman’s life. Why then was I possessed by such an abysmal sadness, such black depression? I was exhausted and had the feeling that something in me had died and that I would never be my old self again.

  They kept me in the hospital for three weeks. When I finally recovered, Edward had returned to Vienna and Mama had gone with him. Sambor was now Polish. The dual monarchy had fallen apart and with it my father’s entire fortune. My mother never complained: “I am lucky to have you all,” she said. “My sons are alive after the holocaust, my daughters have the profession they love and Papa is well and still active.” After twenty-five years as mayor, my father had resigned to devote himself to his law office, which had suffered through his political activity.

  It was a cold and wet autumn, when I returned with my son to the Grecian mansion, and we froze in our large room. Everyone crowded around the fireplace: my bed and the baby’s crib stood close to it; Berthold’s table was pushed near it; our guests sat around it; and Emma our new maid insisted upon drying the diapers on the mantel. Like gypsies we lived around the fire. Walter Spiess was displaying a remarkable talent for baby care. It was he who with great patience explained to Emma the importance of modern hygiene.

  Olga Fuchs, the young actress, who had become our guardian angel, was trying to get an apartment for me in Leipzig. There was nothing to be had except rooms in a pension, which ordinarily would not tolerate a woman with a newborn child; but the land-lady was mad about the theater and relented, at a higher price of course. Hans, as John Jacob was called, was six weeks old when, with Emma, we moved in. He astonished the guests in the pension by never crying. My schedule was rigorous: I nursed him every four hours, from six in the morning until after the evening performance. During rehearsal Emma would bring him to my dressing room and my colleagues gathered around me when I gave him his “lunch.” He was a most admired baby.

  My first role was once more Laura in Strindberg’s Father; the second, Medea in the big house. Berthold came every second weekend, often nervous and harassed.

  Medea was a great success. The critics compared me to every wild beast they could think of: a lioness, tigress, panther, leopard, even a she-wolf. Soon I became a very haggard one. The play was staged on steps with platforms in between, and during each performance I climbed and ran down the forty steps more than a hundred times. We played night after night with matinees twice a week.

  After four months I had to stop nursing. Owing to the blessed activities of the Quakers, the milk supply for small children was well organized and with a doctor’s prescription one could buy the ready-made formulas at the pharmacy. My son remained strong and healthy.

  One Sunday, in March, 1920, I took the streetcar to go to friends, who had invited me for lunch, and saw thousands of workers, men and women, marching toward town. They were quiet and orderly, keeping their distance from the streetcar, a huge gray stream moving in the middle of the street. I asked the conductor what was happening and where these peo
ple were going.

  “It’s a demonstration,” he said uneasily. “Some damned Putschists or something again.”

  At my friends’ I learned that an anti-government Putsch had been staged by a man called Kapp, who had proclaimed himself Chancellor of Germany, and was joined by the Kaiser’s ex-chief of police, Herr von Jagow, and General Ludendorff. The socialists were expected to declare a general strike. “Then I’d better go home,” I said to my hosts, “the streetcars may stop running.” I was right; within an hour all public transportation had come to a standstill. Two ladies, who had succeeded in getting a cab, saw me at the tramstop; they had recognized me and offered me a ride. They told me that there had been considerable shooting on the Augustusplatz; “Of course, the unions started it! It is high time that all those Bolshevik agitators should be hanged.” I did not share their joy about the Putsch, and hurriedly got out of the cab.

  Next morning there were barricades on our street and the shooting went on for a week, with many killed and wounded. The windows in my room were shattered by bullets which lodged in the wall, just above my bed. Emma and I had moved Hans’s crib into the windowless hall, where other guests of the pension also camped. They all were hoping that the Putsch would bring back the Kaiser. My son was indiscriminately bestowing his most radiant smiles upon the bloodthirsty monarchists.

  The workers had notified all householders that every day at noon shooting would stop to give mothers a chance to buy food. Each noon I hurried to the pharmacy for the baby’s milk, but I often had to take shelter in doorways to dodge bullets. Some Putschists did not observe the cease-fire.

  After the Ebert Government regained control of the situation and the fighting ceased, the theater reopened, and on the surface life returned to normal.

  During the whole Putsch Berthold and I had not been able to communicate with each other. The sympathetic leaders of the Dresden Theater, Paul Wiecke and Lothar Mehnert, tried to find a way to reunite us. As the lady who had played Medea in Dresden was now in her sixties, everyone agreed that the ensemble needed a younger actress for tragic roles. They also knew that to hold Berthold in Dresden it was necessary that we be together, especially at such a turbulent time. Of course, I could not become a member of the Schauspielhaus, but I could appear as a guest. They offered me three roles with fifty performances during the season. There was a valid reason which made me accept: I was expecting a second child.

  15

  MY SON PETER, blond and fair, arrived feet first into this world. We were both battered and exhausted, but Peter, determined to take a firm hold on what life offered him in adoration and nourishment, recovered in a few days, while I needed more time.

  After six weeks of exercise and dieting I began to rehearse Donna Isabella in Schiller’s The Bride of Messina. The director was Paul Wiecke. He was afraid that my vitality might “dynamite” the traditional staging. Berthold was not permitted to watch the rehearsals, and I was glad because they were tiring and uninspired. The première was well received by the audience, but the morning press was divided between bewildered praise and hostility. The critic of the most important paper wrote only that he saw no reason to impose an “alien” personality upon the public. Other reviewers were more appreciative, and as a whole I had fared quite well in the opinion of Wiecke, and those colleagues who knew their Dresden.

  My second role was Medea and after the reception it had had in Leipzig, nobody had the slightest doubt that it would mean my conquest of Dresden also. Indeed, after the curtain went down the audience applauded wildly, my colleagues, and the directors embraced and congratulated me. But next morning we read surprising notices. The leading critic exploded this time with a blast: only nepotism could explain my playing Medea at the State Theater. Poor Paul Wiecke could not believe his eyes.

  Berthold’s sense of humor began to deteriorate and he was inclined to overestimate the importance of provincial attitudes. I went through my fifty performances and hoped we would move to Berlin, which offered us both interesting work.

  It was true that Berthold’s temperament made him exaggerate trivial incidents, and it was not surprising that his insistence on staging controversial plays, casting small roles with important actors and choosing young artists like Walter Spiess to design sets, annoyed the old Hoftheater cliques, which only Count von Seebach could hold in check. Their motto was: “We have done it for so many years, why change now? Mr. Viertel stages the new plays only because he wants to impress Berlin.”

  Meanwhile the war and unrest in Poland came to an end. I had not seen my father for three years and he did not know his grandsons. We decided to spend the summer at Wychylowka. Rose would also be there and Edward had asked if he could bring a young pupil. Talented but self-centered, moody and difficult, Hilda did not make life easy for any of us—including Edward. I knew immediately that he was in love and would marry her.

  My parents were delighted with my two little boys and so was Niania. I was shocked to see how much she had aged, but she still ran the house and was able to give me a hand with the children.

  Grandmother was now living permanently with my parents. Deaf but patient and undemanding, she still read her French novels. As she had never taken any exercise, she was heavy and walking was a strain for her. The afflictions of old age were making her lonely. Viktoria was four years old, very intelligent and considered “Panek,”* as she called my father, her exclusive property. He had to apologize to her when Peter or Hans sat on his lap, but he impartially distributed his love and attention among the three children.

  After Edward arrived there was much music and long political discussions. My father was bitterly disappointed with “that dilettante,” Woodrow Wilson, who had no knowledge of Europe. “It’s insane to dismember the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Small nations are like little children and have to be ruled before they learn to rule themselves; otherwise they are the prey to demagogues and corrupt politicians. The Treaty of Versailles is the worst disaster that ever happened to the world.” Twenty years later I remembered Papa’s prophecy, though I never shared his faith in the Hapsburg monarchy.

  Sambor was dirty and neglected. The walls of the buildings were peeling, the streets either dusty or muddy after the rains, the sidewalks torn up, the electricity failing every few days. But pretty girls still promenaded on the Linia A–B, where the Austrian officers were replaced by students and Polish government employees, loafing in front of the two cafés. Amelia Kanarienvogel was disconsolate about the fall of the Hapsburgs and mourned the disappearance of the Hungarian cavalrymen, who had lavished perfumes and silk stockings on their girlfriends. Now everybody was poor, even the Steuermanns.

  Many of my parents’ friends were dead or had left during the war. Others had expressed nationalistic and anti-semitic opinions and my parents did not see them anymore. Mama was joined in her charity work by several young Jewish women. They were a dedicated generation, with intellectual interests, trying to alleviate the misery surrounding them. The majority were Zionists.

  That summer Rose was more silent than usual. She was in love. Having lost patience with her slow progress in Berlin, she had signed a contract with the Stadttheater in Koenigsberg, which offered her all the roles she desired. There she met the young actor and director, Josef Gielen, just demobilized after four years in the trenches. Dusko was his old self again, the champion of the soccer team. It was quite a sight to see him playing, in his white shorts, his golden hair gleaming, and the girls among the spectators chanting: “Dusko! Dusko!” He received worshipful admiration from everybody but Papa. “Who can make a living playing football?” Dusko did not help in the fields or garden; he did not study and had no intention of looking for a job.

  No, Wychylowka was not what it had been. The “patriarchal feudalism” was gone. Everything had become less noble, less comfortable and much less clean. Cobwebs and dust gathered in all corners; weeds grew in the flowerbeds. Niania and young Ivan could not cope with house, garden and field. Papa walked around in hi
s beige silk duster and cap, suspiciously inspecting his immaculate hands after he had touched a piece of furniture or when he wanted to sit down on a garden bench. Viktoria, always at his side, would wipe it with her petticoat. When later I saw Kachalov play Gayev in The Cherry Orchard, I thought of Papa. Mama’s vitality made her rise above the dust and difficulties, but her hair was white now.

  In August, rested and full of new ideas, Berthold went back to Dresden, promising to find us a new apartment. The summer days were so glorious that I did not have the heart to take my healthy children back to the city.

  In the fields and orchard the harvest was in full swing. Niania was busy supervising the hired farmhands, when one morning the postman brought a Red Cross card and Niania asked me apprehensively if it was not from her son Vassili. I read the card and must have turned white, because she grabbed my hand and said: “Read it.” We were both standing on the steps to the veranda. I read it to her and like a felled tree she dropped to the ground. Vassili had died of typhus.

  I sat down on the steps, cradling her in my arms. Her eyes were closed, the face drained of blood. Mama came and helped me lift her up. There was nothing one could say. I knew what hopes she had had and how she had waited for him. Her brother Fedja had come back, so Vassili would come back too. Now he was buried somewhere in Siberia.

  After a while she got up, took the bucket she had left on the steps and turning her haggard face to me said: “I have to feed the animals.” I followed her while like an automaton she went about her chores.

  Because of Niania I was glad I had stayed longer, but a telegram from the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, inviting me to play Medea, precipitated our departure. From the professional and financial point of view the invitation was very welcome, and with my two sons I set off on the long journey. I had first to leave the children in Dresden with Berthold, who was still looking for the apartment and a children’s nurse. Peter was ten months old and I had to carry him—a sweet but not a light burden. We had to change trains first in Przemysl, then on the Czechoslovakian frontier, then again in Prague, from where, at last, we had a direct connection to Dresden. Because of the inflation with its changing prices and currencies, I had to buy tickets at each transfer. I had with me a few Polish zloty; the rest of my money was in German marks. The provisions Niania gave us dwindled. In Krakow I had to buy milk and was staggered at how expensive it was; all my zloty were gone.