by Anita Abriel
They all shook hands and Ricardo collected their suitcases and led them to his car.
“Who can afford this? Only movie stars drive such a car,” Alice said as they approached the royal-blue Lagonda.
“I told you, Ricardo owns a car dealership,” Vera answered, as Ricardo stored the suitcases in the trunk. “It’s his new car.”
“It will be Vera’s when we get married,” Ricardo said, and his eyes danced. “She looks much better than I do behind the wheel.”
* * *
Ricardo dropped them off at the bungalow and said he would return for Vera later. The bungalow was in an outer suburb of Caracas and nearby there were farms with chickens. Vera led her parents through the tiny living room with its two armchairs and felt slightly guilty. Ricardo had offered to pay for furniture, but Vera worried her parents were too proud to accept.
“It isn’t much,” Vera said in English. She decided they had to speak English even when they were alone. Her parents’ Spanish wasn’t as fluent as their English, and if they fell back into Hungarian when they were with Ricardo, he might feel excluded. “I’ll get a bonus soon and then we can afford a sofa and a rug.”
“It’s lovely.” Alice inspected a photo of Vera and Edith on the wall. “We couldn’t ask for more.”
Vera led the way into a space that held the icebox and a small table. “I stocked the kitchen. There’s coffee and milk and sugar.”
Her father went to lie down in the bedroom, and Alice heated milk on the stove. She poured two cups of coffee and Vera was transported back to the apartment in Budapest. How many mornings had she hovered in the kitchen so she could taste her mother’s coffee? Her mother would finish and leave the best part for Vera: the coffee at the bottom of the cup, which was all milk and sugar and hardly any coffee at all.
“Is he all right? He’s very quiet.” Vera motioned at the bedroom door where her father had disappeared.
“When your father arrived at your uncle Tibby’s house, he was so thin, his skin was transparent.” Alice handed Vera a cup. “It was spring, but he was so cold he wore every layer I could find: coats and scarves and sweaters. Your father sat for hours staring into space. He never finished a book, and when someone played a record, he left the room.”
“Why?” Vera asked. Her father loved classical music and reading. Her mother used to laugh that she never met a man who found law books exciting until their courtship, when he reeled off cases as they strolled around Paris.
“He was dying in front of my eyes, trying to finish off himself what the Germans started.” Alice sipped her coffee. “Finally I told him I was leaving him unless he told me what was wrong.”
“Leaving him?” Vera raised her eyebrows.
“I never would have done it, but I had to try something to snap him out of it,” Alice chuckled, and then her voice softened. “He finally told me about a Hungarian boy he met at the labor camp. They became quite close. His name was Sandor and he was twenty, with golden hair and big brown eyes. Sandor had been studying opera in London and was engaged to a British girl, but he returned to Budapest when his mother became ill. Every night your father went to sleep with a song ringing through the dormitory, and it lifted his soul. But Sandor came down with tuberculosis and was sent to the infirmary. For weeks your father waited for Sandor to return, and when he did, he was very weak. Even then, Sandor whispered the songs and your father strained to hear them. One night, there were no songs.” Alice paused. “The Germans had not only murdered the son of a loving family, they took a girl’s fiancé, and silenced a voice that could have made thousands of people happy. Your father didn’t want to live in a world where there was no beauty and no love and no music.”
“What did you say to him?” Vera asked.
“I poured him a shot of my brother’s brandy and said he could stay in this house sitting shiva for thousands of strangers or he could join his wife for a stroll in the garden. If he was lucky, I might kiss him.” She smiled at the memory. “He sat silently for so long, I was afraid I was too harsh. Then he asked for his hat.”
“His hat?” Vera wondered.
“Your father is a gentleman. He would never go for a walk with a lady without his hat.”
Vera took in the story and wanted to hear more.
“I shouldn’t have let you push us off the train. We should have stayed together,” Vera said finally. “The whole time we hid at the farm, I blamed myself that you were at Auschwitz.”
“It’s because of you I survived,” Alice began. “From the minute I arrived at Auschwitz, they started taking things. First they took my suitcase with the photographs and pieces of jewelry sewn into the dresses.” She tried to smile. “What was I thinking? That I would be allowed to wear a favorite dress when they were preparing us for the gas chamber? Then I was taken to the dormitory with nothing but the prisoner uniform, and I thought, they can’t hurt me anymore, they have taken everything that is dear to me. But every day they took something more: the gold fillings in my teeth, the flesh that covered my bones. They took everything except the breath that kept me alive, and I wondered if they would take that, too,” Alice said slowly. “But they couldn’t take my thoughts. Every night I went to bed and imagined you somewhere safe. That’s all I needed to survive.”
Vera’s eyes misted and she remembered Anton saying her mother would have wanted her to be safe.
“Miriam Gold told Captain Bingham that you prayed for me at every meal,” Vera said. “You talked to God, and he listened.”
Alice looked up in surprise. “I didn’t talk to God when I was at Auschwitz.”
“You did. Someone heard your prayers, and then you weren’t at the next meal. I thought you had been sent to the gas chamber.”
“God wasn’t anywhere near the concentration camps,” Alice said firmly.
“Then why did you pray for me?” Vera asked.
Alice gazed at Vera as if she was trying to find the right words. “Just because God was absent, didn’t mean I stopped believing in him. I knew he wasn’t close enough to Auschwitz to help me, but I had to pray for you. I couldn’t let him desert you, too.”
Alice put the coffee cups in the sink, and they moved to the living room.
“I don’t want to talk about the war anymore.” Alice said as she sat on one of the armchairs. “Tell me about your life.”
Vera twisted her engagement ring. She had written about her work at the American embassy in Naples and meeting other refugees in Caracas. She described her job at J. Walter Thompson and Lola’s boardinghouse and even Ricardo’s parents. But she never mentioned Anton or her feelings for Ricardo.
“You know everything,” she said evasively. “Ricardo and I are getting married next week.”
“So you are in love and Ricardo makes you happy?” Alice prodded.
Vera gazed at her mother’s face, a face she thought she would never see again, and nodded. “I am happy.”
There was a knock at the door and Vera answered it. Edith stood outside holding a box of chocolates.
“I wanted to come earlier but it took longer than I thought to pick up Robert at the airport,” she said as she walked into the living room. “He didn’t want to intrude. He’s waiting in the car; I said I’d only be a little while.”
Edith saw Alice and stopped. Edith’s eyes glistened and she handed the box to Alice.
“These are from Robert,” she said shakily. “To welcome you to Venezuela.”
Alice set the box aside and took Edith in her arms. She waited until Edith’s tears subsided and then she motioned her to sit down.
“The day your mother died was one of the hardest of my life,” Alice began. “It was so cold on the death march, we longed to lie down and let the snow cover us. But the Germans kept prodding us with their guns; we weren’t given the luxury of going to sleep and not waking up.” She smiled weakly. “Lily had been sick for days, but she didn’t want to call attention to herself. She was afraid if she fell behind, I would stay with her
and we would both be shot. So we made the time go faster by reliving our memories. We were talking about the play you put on when you dressed up like Greta Garbo.” Alice looked at Edith. “You were the last thing she thought about before she died. She loved you very much.”
Edith’s chest heaved and Alice hugged her.
“The years since your father left were hard for Lily, but she was the best friend I could wish for. I think about her every day and I would do anything to have her here.” Alice’s voice caught. “You and Vera have always been sisters. Now Lawrence and I will be your parents.”
* * *
Her mother went to lie down, and Edith left with Robert. Vera opened the front door and breathed in the fresh air. Her mother’s story about Auschwitz had made her feel ill; she could almost smell the stench on her clothes.
It felt odd to be standing here while her parents were inside. As if her mother should ask her to run down to the delicatessen and get a schnitzel for dinner. How could her parents start over when everything that mattered—the offices where her father practiced law, the apartments of her mother’s friends—were all erased by the war?
She remembered the winter she and Edith spent on the Dunkels’ farm. Each day was so strange and different; it was impossible to imagine there was a better life waiting for them.
* * *
It was November 1944 and Vera had never been so cold. The walls of the barn couldn’t keep out the freezing Austrian air, and she and Edith slept huddled under Ottie’s blankets. The days weren’t much better. They fed the chickens and milked the cows, only stopping for lunch. And yet, Vera knew that Ottie and her husband were lucky. The German officers assigned to the village took pity on them because their son Emil was killed fighting in the battle of Kursk, and let them keep two cows and a small number of chickens. There was cheese to go with the bread they ate for dinner, and milk that Ottie heated before bed.
The worst part was not knowing when the war would end and what they would do afterward. The longer the fighting dragged on, the more afraid they were that there would be nothing for them in Budapest.
“I can’t do this any longer.” Edith pulled the blanket over her legs. “In the morning I can’t feel my feet because they’re frozen, and at night I can’t move my hands because they’re raw from working.”
“The war can’t last forever.” Vera closed her eyes. Even though she was tired, it was too cold to sleep.
“The Russians win every battle, but Hitler keeps calling up more men,” Edith moaned. “When the war is over, there won’t be a single male under the age of forty in Europe.”
“Stefan and our fathers aren’t fighting in any battles,” Vera reminded her.
“You think they have a better chance of surviving in the labor camps?” Edith asked. “We listen to Ottie’s radio. How do you think they make the ammunition? The men in the camps must be working harder than ever. And what about Budapest? It will be like a dollhouse when it’s over. Just windows and doors and a roof with nothing inside.”
“Let’s play a game,” Vera suggested.
“What kind of a game?” Edith asked.
They were curled up, facing each other to keep warm.
“Let’s imagine our lives after the war,” Vera said. “I’ll go first. I’ll move to Paris and get a job as a translator, and in the evenings I’ll write plays. I’ll meet a handsome man who’ll be doing important work, perhaps finding homes for war orphans. Just as my job is up, he’ll ask me to marry him. We’ll buy a chateau in the French countryside and fill it with children and dogs.” Vera paused. “When the children are older, they’ll perform my plays like we did for our mothers.”
“What does he look like?” Edith asked dreamily.
Vera thought for a moment. “He has a kind smile like Robert Taylor in Camille and a sexy French accent.”
“You should have a cow so you can make your own milk.” Edith joined the game.
“We’ll have a cow,” Vera laughed. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I don’t see anything.” Edith turned on her back
“It’s a game, make up something.”
“The only future I could see is with Stefan.” Edith stared out the window at the night sky. “And now all I see is black.”
* * *
Vera shielded her eyes from the Venezuelan sun and noticed Ricardo’s car rounding the bend. The top was down, and the sun gleamed on the walnut dashboard.
What Edith said about Ricardo had been gossip; perhaps the woman was jealous that Ricardo was marrying Vera instead of her niece.
Vera was going to have a wonderful future and she would make sure Edith and her parents did, too. She would take her father to one of the Hungarian refugee get-togethers at Ruth Goldblum’s and find him a chess partner. She could ask Alessandra to include her mother on one of her committees. She could even ask Ricardo to find someone for Edith to date. Edith hadn’t been able to get enough of love in Naples; she couldn’t spend all her time planning her business with Robert.
There wasn’t only one perfect life. If one set one’s mind to it, there were many ways to be happy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
November 1947
The morning of Vera’s wedding, she sat at the dressing table in her suite at the Majestic. Her suite contained a sitting room with gold sofas and a thick red carpet. The bedroom held a massive four-poster bed and a dressing room with a velvet stool and a table where Vera laid out her hairbrush and the diamond earrings Alessandra loaned her for the dinner dance.
Edith stayed with her in the suite last night, but tonight Ricardo would join her. She tried not to think about the wedding night. What if Ricardo discovered she wasn’t a virgin? She couldn’t tell him about Anton.
There were other things that made her anxious: after they returned from the honeymoon, she was moving out of Lola’s home and into Ricardo’s house. What would it be like to live with Ricardo when she was used to seeing Edith’s stockings hanging in the bathroom and hearing Edith’s voice when she came down to the kitchen?
There was a knock at the door and her mother stood in the hallway.
“Please, come in. How is your room?” Vera ushered her inside. “Ricardo insisted it be in the back of the hotel so you’d have a view of the gardens.”
“It’s beautiful. I feel like the Empress of Hungary,” Alice said as she entered the suite. She wore a beige dress that Edith had made her for the ceremony. “Where’s Edith?”
“She had to deliver a dress to a customer.” Vera walked into the sitting room. “Can you believe Edith is working on my wedding day?”
“I can’t believe any of this.” Alice pointed to the tray of bonbons and bouquets of flowers. “Your father and I got married in a synagogue in Paris with two witnesses and a rabbi who was so old, he was practically deaf. We had to repeat our vows twice before he said we were married.”
“Do you think it’s too much?” Vera asked worriedly. “Ricardo is the last child to get married, and the Albees want it to be perfect.”
“I like Ricardo’s parents,” Alice said as she sat on the sofa. Ricardo’s father had loaned Lawrence a tuxedo and Alessandra had offered Alice anything in her closet for the wedding. “They are good people.”
Their parents had met three days ago. At first Vera’s parents were uncomfortable in the Albees’ luxurious villa. But Alessandra made sure they felt welcomed. She included Hungarian dishes on the dinner menu. Pedro mentioned that they had visited and loved Budapest before the war. By the time they moved to the living room for brandies, they were all friends.
“I hoped you’d think so.” Vera let out a sigh of relief. “I like them too.”
“Your father told me he would like you to do something this morning. He was too anxious to ask you himself,” Alice crossed her hands. “He would like you to speak to the rabbi.”
“Which rabbi?” Vera asked.
“Rabbi Gorem,” Alice said. “Lawrence met him a couple of days ago. He leads a Shabbat
for European immigrants.”
“You went to a Shabbat?” Vera said in surprise. “I would have come with you.”
“Rabbi Gorem is going to be Lawrence’s new chess partner.” Alice smiled. “Thank God he has someone to play with. I was afraid I might have to learn.”
“Why would I meet with the rabbi on my wedding day?” Vera asked. “Ricardo and I already agreed on a civil ceremony.”
“It’s not about the ceremony, it’s about children.”
“We haven’t discussed how we’ll raise our children,” Vera offered. “Ricardo was raised Catholic, but his parents are open-minded. And I—”
“How you raise your children is up to you,” Alice interrupted.
“You don’t mind if they aren’t raised Jewish?” Vera’s eyes widened.
“Of course I would like them to know the history of the Jews,” her mother said slowly. “But there are many ways to teach them. Did you know when you were five we had a Christmas tree?”
“A Christmas tree?” Vera was shocked.
“You saw it in a department store and thought it was the prettiest thing in the world: it was decorated with gold ornaments and a star like the Star of David. Your father didn’t mind; it was something pretty to look at—like the set decorations in The Nutcracker ballet.
“But when you came down with diphtheria, I made a pact with God not to have a tree again if you lived.” She paused. “You always envied your school friends with Christmas trees lit up like a million fireflies. But if the war showed us anything, it is that being Jewish isn’t about what you study in synagogue—it’s here.” She pointed to her heart. “You were born a Jew and nothing can change that.”
“Then why does he want me to talk to the rabbi?” Vera wondered.
“Let Rabbi Gorem tell you.” Alice stood up. “He’s waiting in the lobby.”
* * *