I congratulate you with all my heart on your, our, first grandchild [Berthold wrote]. That she was born on the anniversary of our wedding is an omen signifying the continuation of our love . . . I am terribly sorry for Peter and Jigee. I knew for some time that the marriage wouldn’t last and it is difficult to say that one or the other was at fault. I am sad that I cannot be of any help either to her or Vicky of whom I think so often. Yes, we all grasp for some kind of happiness in this crumbling world. For us, the old ones, it will soon cease to exist . . . I have not been feeling well. The circulation disorder in my right leg has improved, but the bronchitis stays with me, an uninvited companion; and yesterday I had an attack of asthma, which could be regarded as a just punishment for a ruthless and selfish pursuit of happiness. Regardless, I am preparing Gerhardt Hauptmann’s Die Ratten. But first I am taking a two months’ vacation, of which I’ll spend a couple of weeks in Bad Reichenhall, then at Liesel’s house on the Grundelsee . . . And so we must go on . . . each of us according to the god in his heart. As long as we have this, no matter in what form, and as long as we are capable of love, what more is there to say . . . Our tiny Christine has just started. I hope and trust, Salka, she has inherited your lioness’s strength.
But even lionesses become dead tired.
•
The Zinnemanns had sold their house and moved to a larger one; Freddie was now one of the most sought-after directors. It was lucky for us that a young physician and his family had acquired their home. Dr. Drenick was not only a very good doctor, but he spoke German, was patience and kindness itself, and Mama liked him because he “didn’t make any fuss.”
From day to day she was getting weaker and her trembling worse, but when Edward and Clara arrived in the summer she again recovered miraculously.
Jigee sent us new photos of Christine, now seven months old, sitting up and smiling and really adorable. She had decided to stay in Klosters, where Vicky was happy in her school and she herself liked living in the small community. She also had many American friends who were spending the winter in Klosters. “Christine has been inspected by everyone with interest and approval.”
Christmas Eve that year was much “merrier” than I had expected. Lynn and Carlton, Wiesen, John Collier, Christopher Isherwood and a young painter, Don Bachardy, joined us for dinner. We had a tree, and Charlotte Dieterle had sent a huge turkey from their ranch. Mama came downstairs dressed in a light, gray silk dress, looking very lovely. She was delighted with her presents and stayed up until two in the morning, enjoying the party. Later, as I helped her upstairs, I noticed that she was short of breath and I made her rest after each step. I called Dr. Drenick, who came immediately, gave her a shot and prescribed digitalis. He said it was her heart. From that day, she did not leave her room. Sitting in her armchair, her breathing quick and shallow, she went on reading her novels. Our rooms were separated by a bathroom, the doors between her and my room were always open. She could see me typing at my desk and when I lifted my eyes I saw her in her armchair. Between us lay Timmy on the bathroom tiles, watching. He remained at a respectful distance from Mama, but he knew when she needed me and would come and put his paw on my knee.
She was pathetically undemanding. Gently and gradually she was withdrawing from life. She had no pain and complained only about the discomfort of her trembling. When I urged her to take some nourishment she obeyed with her usual friendliness, wondering: “Am I so clumsy or so weak that I cannot hold the spoon myself?”
On New Year’s Eve Wiesen brought her sweets, then the three of us drank some champagne. Then on New Year’s Day Gottfried and Silvia Reinhardt paid us a visit and Gottfried went upstairs to give Mama greetings from his mother, who was in Europe. When he returned to the living room he said that he had found her amazingly alert and in good spirits. Next morning she did not want to dress and I saw that she had a fever. Dr. Drenick came and diagnosed pneumonia. He ordered a hospital bed and oxygen, and showed me how to administer it, which was difficult because she refused to have the mask on her face. He gave her penicillin shots and in two days the fever went down and she felt better.
I had drawn my chair close to her bed. Her blue eyes, now very pale and lusterless, never left me. I tried to make her drink some orange juice and she took a sip politely, then thanked me with great tenderness for taking such good care of her, but she could not drink more. Her main worry was that I didn’t get enough sleep, but she no longer knew whether it was morning or night. She did not hold onto life. She simply let it go. Now and then I heard her say: “Emil. . . .” It was the name of her young brother who had killed himself. I asked what she wanted to say. “He wanted fifty Gulden, but Papa would not give it to him. He was an incorrigible gambler—but had I sent the money he would not have killed himself.” During the last days of her illness she had not mentioned Edward, most dear to her, nor Rose nor Dusko—but now, out of the depth of her being, came this heartbreaking whisper, this long suppressed guilt feeling.
Edward phoned asking if he should come, but I thought it would worry and frighten her. He insisted that I take a night nurse so that I could get some rest at night. When the nurse, a friendly, elderly woman, arrived she found Mama in a hospital bed, washed and in a fresh nightgown. “There is nothing for me to do,” she said. The doctor, who had warned me that Mama might get bedsores, insisted that I turn her around frequently. It made her angry. “How stupid,” she said, “it only makes me uncomfortable.” Slipping my arm under her shoulders, I raised her on her pillow. As it seemed to soothe her I remained bent over the bed, holding her thin body until her eyes closed and she fell asleep. Then I withdrew my arm very gently. She was breathing so evenly and peacefully that Dr. Drenick said: “Perhaps—perhaps she’ll pull through.” He insisted I lie down, and the nurse promised to wake me as soon as Mama opened her eyes. It was midnight, the house unusually quiet, Thomas in his room, Hans downstairs reading. I remember that my calendar still showed the first day of 1953, and I corrected the date to January 6, and went to bed. I was sleeping when the nurse burst into my room and shook me, crying hysterically: “Come quickly, dear, your mother is gone.”
I stumbled into Mama’s room. She was lying there exactly as I had left her. I touched her and she was uncannily cold. She had died so softly and quietly that the nurse had not noticed that she had ceased breathing.
I did not want Edward to come to the funeral as it would have been a terrible strain on him and I knew Mama: she would have considered it an unnecessary expense and a gesture without meaning for her. I talked to him and Clara on the phone and cabled to the Gielens and Berthold. After the funeral I wrote a long letter to them.
She looked beautiful, but estranged, as she lay in her coffin. I had cut a few camelias from her favorite bush and put them into her folded hands. We buried her in the little non-sectarian Woodland cemetery in Santa Monica, under a large magnolia tree. As she disliked the mortuary atmosphere and organ music so much, the service took place at the graveside. A light rain was falling, when Hans, Thomas, Fred Zinnemann, Christopher Isherwood, Carlton and Hans’s friend Edwin carried her to her grave. The Rabbi, new in Hollywood, said in simple words how courageous she had been and how loving, and how her life had been haunted by wars and sorrow. Then he asked us to say the Kaddish, and Hans, Thomas and I had to repeat after him the Hebraic words. Our voices were choked and only his was heard. At the horrible moment when one had to leave her in this foreign earth, we found ourselves surrounded by people and I became aware how many had come to say farewell to her. Not only those who were fond of her: the Renoirs, Feuchtwangers, Dieterles, Gottfried, Walter and Hedi, but many Negroes and German refugees and young Americans, some who had only met her once or twice, all sincerely moved and sharing our grief.
Now the house is empty and silent. The daily work continues. She had been so quiet in her last years—still she was there—and I miss her terribly. . . .
44
MY SONS URGED ME to free myself from the house, the man
y chores and the worry connected with it. Thomas had moved to Hollywood, near where he worked; he did not drive a car and the bad bus connections from Santa Monica were too trying. He had his B.A. degree, but refused to go on with postgraduate work. At least for a while he preferred not to study. He was inspecting and cutting film for a small television outfit and liked his work. Hans had passed his exams at U.C.L.A. with honors, but, for “personal reasons,” had decided to return to the University of London. He was working at the Lockheed plant in Burbank to earn the money for the trip.
John Houseman, who was producing films for MGM, and his French wife Joan, came to see me and said that they would like to rent the house for six months with an option for six more. As they did not mind Carlton and Lynn keeping the garage apartment, I was pleased to have them as tenants. It was April and as they wanted to move in on the first of May, I had to vacate the house in a hurry.
I drove around Santa Monica, stopping wherever there was a furnished room or an apartment for lease, but no one wanted me with my big, shaggy dog, and most landladies preferred single men. A pupil of Edward, Lucille Ostrow, took pity on me and invited me and Tim to stay with her until I found a place to live.
If Wiesen had not helped me with the packing I would never have finished. Joan Houseman let me keep some of my things in the house. Finally with Timmy and many suitcases, the largest and heaviest one filled to the brim with letters, notes and diaries, I left the house.
Then a friend of another friend asked me to move to her house near Ocean Park and take care of her fox terrier while she and her husband took a trip. I gratefully accepted for myself and Wiesen, my faithful helper, who was temporarily free, and loved dogs. She was the only one who really disapproved of my giving up Mabery Road. “It’s foolish. You should stay in the house and rent single rooms.” But I was set on going to Europe. I had sold a television script and was waiting to be paid, and Peter, affluent at the moment, offered to finance my trip. That summer Josef, my brother-in-law, was producing and staging plays for the Salzburg Festival, Edward had a commitment at the Mozarteum, Berthold and Liesel were spending the summer in Grundelsee, Peter was in Paris, Jigee in Switzerland, and the ideal place for a family reunion would have been Salzburg. Everyone wanted me to come.
Jigee urged me to live with her, Vicky and Christine. “. . . I do wish we were together now. Please know we think of you constantly . . . I love and need you. . . .”
In the spring Berthold had been ill. For several weeks he was in a hospital but Liesel assured me that he was recovering quickly. His handwriting, which had worried me, was again firm and clear: “Dearest Salka: My new and, I hope, permanent address will now be Zedlitzgasse 1. I am leaving the hospital a regenerated human being, not only looking but feeling as good as new, impatient to move into the new apartment, which Liesel miraculously acquired, and furnished with fantastic ingenuity.”
How strange that Berthold would now live in the Zedlitzgasse, next to the house where, on the night we first met, he had said: “I am going to marry you. . . .”
After the serious warning I had received, I decided to take a long rest: a summer in Grundelsee, which I shall spend collecting poems and letters, also those from our time together which you offered to send me. I cannot cease regretting the loss of our correspondence during the First War, so important and treasured for all the love and ideals it contained . . . I feel the same today, as again and again I am reliving the past, trying to find coherence and unity in the manifold interwoven web. In the last years of our life we should say farewell and once more embrace, and bless and give thanks—even if we don’t know to whom—but certainly to those we have loved and who have given us love, to those who have broken the bread of life with us, in happiness, but also in tears. While I was gasping for breath I was not able to think—it happened so quickly—in the last two years I had been in a bad condition. However, with the last of my strength, I rehearsed Anthony and Cleopatra. Afterwards, in the hospital, when I began to come back to life, all the memories returned and I have thought of you often and lovingly. . . .
We are waiting impatiently for Edward and Clara, and hope they like the nations-devouring Salzburg. As it is close to Grundelsee I shall see them as soon as they arrive. If only you were with us. I know that you don’t understand and perhaps cannot forgive me, that for the last five years I have “lived and died” for the Viennese Burgtheater. It is impossible to explain this to you, as no one chooses the road he has to take. We are all used and digested by life, which consumes us at will. If only I could talk to you, not about the theater, but about the things which tore us apart from each other and keep us apart. You see, Salka, if I had not recovered from this illness, which was quite serious (the doctors say that I am over the worst and the heart and lungs are not affected), we would have never seen each other again, nor Hans, Peter and Tommy. . . .
I read his letter and decided to apply for my passport at once. It was the first of June. After I had filled out the elaborate questionnaire, and confirmed that I was not a bigamist nor an anarchist, the gentleman at the desk assured me that it was only a matter of forty-eight hours to get a passport, as they no longer had to be issued in Washington, D.C., but by the State Department branch in San Francisco. I returned home and debated with Hans which would be cheaper, to go by plane or boat—he was always for boats—and which would be better for Timmy, whom, of course, I would take with me. The two days went by but my passport did not arrive. I waited two more, then telephoned the Passport Office and was informed that my application had been referred to Washington. I wrote a frantic letter and sent telegrams to Washington but weeks passed and they remained unanswered. My absent hosts were coming back and I could not stay in their house any longer. Wiesen took a new job, and again I tried to find a room, where I could keep Tim, who was melancholy and strangely subdued, obviously homesick for Mabery Road. A young actress offered me shelter. She had rented Wolfgang and Lally Reinhardt’s house—they had returned to Germany—and had a lot of room. She was charming and liked Tim. After I was installed, I went to my lawyer and told him about the silence of the State Department. He dictated another telegram but it was August before I received a reply:
Department of State
Washington
In reply refer to
f130-Viertel, Salomea Sara
August 19, 1953
Mrs. Salomea Sara Viertel,
165 Mabery Road,
Santa Monica, California.
My dear Mrs. Viertel,
I regret to inform you that after careful consideration of your application for passport facilities, dated June 1, 1953, the Department of State is obliged to disapprove your application tentatively on the ground that the granting of such passport facilities is precluded under the provisions of Section 51.135 of Title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations. A copy of the pertinent Regulations is enclosed for your information.
In cases coming within the purview of the Regulations above referred to it is the practice of the Department to inform the applicant of the reasons for the disapproval of the request for passport facilities insofar as the security regulations will permit.
In your case it has been alleged that you were a Communist. The Department has concluded that your case also falls within the scope of subsection (b) of Section 51.135 of that subsection as amplified by Section 51.141 (b) of the aforementioned regulations. The opinion of the Department is that the evidence indicates on your part a consistent and prolonged adherence to the Communist Party line on a variety of issues and through shifts and changes of that line during a period of many years. It is alleged that you have been associated with the Civil Rights Congress which has been listed by the Attorney General as Communistic or subversive.
It is also alleged that your connection with Hollywood Arts, Sciences, and Professions Council, has followed the Communist Party line. It is further alleged that you have been closely associated with known Communists.
Under Section 51.137 of the Regulat
ions you may present your case and all relevant information informally to the Passport Office. If you desire to take advantage of this provision you may appear before a hearing officer of the Passport Office or you may take up the matter by mail. In either case you will be required to submit a sworn statement as to whether you are now or ever have been a Communist.
You are assured that any information or evidence which you may supply will receive most careful consideration and that every effort will be made to act upon your application promptly and justly. The Department desires to emphasize that the passport records are confidential government records and any information which you may submit or which may be received from other sources in connection with your application will not be made known to the public or to any unauthorized person unless you release it. The Department reserves the right to disclose factual information to supplement or correct any statement which a passport applicant may release for publication concerning the reasons why he was denied a passport or the Department’s action in his case.
If a reply to this letter is not received within thirty days it will be assumed that you do not wish to have your case reconsidered at this time.
Sincerely yours,
For the Secretary of State:
R. B. Shipley
Director, Passport Office.
I showed the letter to Beilenson. As he had known me for so many years he did not doubt that I could refute the accusation. He made out an affidavit, which I was to sign under oath at a notary’s. With good conscience I could swear that “I am not, nor have I ever been a communist, that I did not act, nor have I ever acted under the discipline of the Communist party, etc., etc.” I was not going abroad “to engage in activities to advance knowingly, willingly or otherwise the communist movement.” However, I insisted that: “the independence of thought and the expression of it, are essential in a democracy . . . and without trying to guess at what shades and changes the Department refers, I can only state that although I have often been on the opposite side of the so-called Communist Party line, on occasions my views coincided with it, because it supported the fight against fascism.”
The Kindness of Strangers Page 43