by Belva Plain
As for me, I shall miss my parents, my young brother and sister, most terribly. And Vienna. Theo’s father and Papa had arranged to buy a lovely small villa for us near Grinzing. Up to now we have been living in a very nice apartment only a short walk from the Ringstrasse. I shall miss it all so much.… And I forgot to mention I was invited to start next season playing with a small orchestra here. At last I felt I was really getting somewhere with the piano. It will be hard to start all over in New York.
But I realize, if it should turn out that Theo is right about the Nazis, our lives here would be in danger because of being Jewish. It’s strange, because I have never felt Jewish. I have always felt Austrian—Viennese, to be exact. Forgive me if I offend you, since I remember Papa said you are still quite religious. But then, I am sure you will understand; to be religious or not is entirely personal, is it not? And one does whatever makes one happy.
Speaking of religious people, you may not know that Uncle Dan has already left. He and his whole family went last month to Mexico. He tried to go to the United States but it was impossible because of having been born in Poland; the quota is filled for years ahead. Of course Papa thinks Uncle Dan is quite stupid—they never seemed to get along very well, did they? Anyway, I hope they will succeed there, better than they did here.
This has turned out to be a very long letter, longer than I intended. Now I hear Fritzl up from his nap. We all thought he was going to have red hair like Papa and you, Aunt Anna, but his hair has turned quite blond, almost white.
I hope you are all very well, and I thank you so much for whatever help you can give to Theo. He doesn’t need any money, only advice.
With hearty greetings,
your loving niece,
Liesel Stern
2.
Vienna, March 9th, 1938
Dear Sister and Brother-in-law,
Your letter came here this morning, and I am sick with sorrow. To lose your son, your dear son! Destroyed in a pointless accident! Not even in a war, fighting for his country! That would be painful enough, but at least there is some reason in it, and hence some consolation. But this! I am sick for you, heartsick, and so is Tessa, so are we all. (I understand that Liesel wrote to you only a day or two ago, not knowing.) If only I could do something for you, dear Anna, dear Joseph.
It seems that all of a sudden the world has gone mad with sorrow. Not that I compare my burden with yours, of course not, but we here are bent down with the grief of parting.… As you have learned by now, my son-in-law, a fine young man of excellent family, has got a wild idea into his head about going to America. Please do not think I am prejudiced against America. When you went, Anna, from where we lived, it was understandable. But to leave Austria, because some fanatic across the border makes threats—it’s absurd. Even if the Germans were to take Austria, and believe me, it would not be so easy, even then it would not mean the end of the world! Possibly some of the extremists here would deprive some Jews of their jobs; there’s nothing new about that. We’ve always had that sort of thing in Europe, sometimes a little more, then again, a little less. It’s nothing that one can’t live through. And anyway, I tried to tell Theo, his own parents tried to tell him, with our family connections we are the last people to be brothered.
Tessa’s people have lived in Austria for so many centuries that nobody knows when they first came. Her father is a top-level official in the Finance Ministry. Her grandfather’s sister married a Catholic and converted; one of their grandsons just became a bishop! So much for Tessa. I can’t boast of any such connections of my own, unfortunately, but I have made my modest success. Also, as you know, I fought in the war and wear the Emperor’s Medal of Valor. Really, I can’t see any reason for this hysterical behavior. Ah, well, the young are often unreasonable, and so it is.
Forgive me for talking about all this when your hearts are so full. Please, take care of yourselves and your daughter Iris and the surviving grandchild. Know that we are thinking of you. We are with you, praying that you will find the strength to endure this terrible thing, and go on.
Ever your brother,
Eduard
3.
Paris, March 15, 1938
Dear Aunt and Uncle,
I write in haste to explain my failure to arrive in New York. By now you must be wondering why I wasn’t on the ship, or perhaps you have understood from the news why I wasn’t.
The day before I was to sail Austria was occupied. I have been trying to get through by telephone to my house, to Liesel’s parents or to mine. But the lines are dead. I must assume that they have all left Vienna for the country. Perhaps they have gone to Tessa’s people’s mountain house near Graz. At any rate, I am taking a train tomorrow for Vienna, where they must have left some message. I will write as soon as I know something.
Respectfully,
Theodor Stern
4.
Paris, March 20, 1938
Dear Aunt and Uncle,
I write again in great haste because I can imagine how anxious you are. I am almost out of my mind. I can’t find out anything. It has been a nightmare. I tried to get back to Austria, but they told me in France here that if I tried I would be arrested on the train. I didn’t want to believe it, but then the papers here in Paris began to print names and incidents involving people who had tried to rush back to their families just as I was trying to do. And it’s true, they were all seized and imprisoned. So, obviously, that would not have done anyone any good. But I have some contacts here that will surely be of help. I shall keep you informed.
Respectfully,
Theodor Stern
5.
Paris, March 26, 1938
Dear Aunt and Uncle,
Still nothing. The earth has opened up and swallowed all the people I love. But that’s not possible. I can’t believe it. I won’t. I am working day and night. I shall write immediately whenever I learn anything.
Respectfully,
Theodor Stern
6.
Paris, April 3, 1938
Dear Aunt and Uncle,
Thank God! They are alive! They are in the detention camp Dachau where prominent people in government, journalism and so forth have been taken for interrogation. I am told that the purpose is to weed out subversives … so then we have nothing to fear; certainly our families have hardly been subversive! So it should be over for them very soon. I have people working in the highest circles and shall be getting them out to France to join me here.
The way I found out all this you can’t imagine. I mentioned my father’s business contacts here in Paris. But I recalled also that one of my friends from Cambridge, a German fellow, was now attached to their embassy here. So I got in touch with him, and through him, plus the International Red Cross, I managed to get some important telephone calls through.
Oh, if they had only listened to me! True, I did not know it was coming so soon. I thought we had another year’s leeway, or I would have made Liesel and the baby go with me right now. But there is no use in such thoughts.
My German friend assures me that they will be released in a short time. I have put a large sum of money at his disposal and that can’t help but hasten things, the world being what it is. Meanwhile, I am making arrangements with the Cuban visa office to have Liesel’s parents go to Cuba, where they can wait in peace and comfort for my father-in-law’s turn to be reached on the Polish quota for the United States.
I shall write to you again, probably by next week, as soon as I hear more.
Respectfully,
Theodor Stern
7.
Marigny-sur-Oise, August 14, 1938
Dear Monsieur and Madame Friedman,
You don’t know me, but I am a friend of the family of Dr. Theodor Stern, and so I believe indirectly of your family’s, too. Dr. Stern has been living with my wife and me for the last three months. We had been acquainted with his father many years ago. Last April we met him again in Paris, where we tried to be of some service to him wi
th regard to his wife, child and parents … but, tragically, we were able to do nothing.
I understand that when you last heard about your relatives they were in the concentration camp Dachau. Dr. Stern had moved heaven and earth to obtain their release, but it is heartbreaking to say that he was unsuccessful. All of them, the entire family, has gone to its death, some there and some in other camps to which they, and many thousands with them, had been transferred. The only detail we know is that the baby died of pneumonia a few days after their arrest. As for the others, one doesn’t want the details.
Dr. Stern was taken very ill at the news. I personally had been concerned about him even earlier, as he had had no rest, hardly slept, was unable to eat, ran around Paris like a madman calling upon every source of possible help. When the news came he collapsed, quite understandably. It was then that we took him to our country house, a quiet place, where we obtained an excellent doctor, and have tried to do the best for him.
He seems somewhat recovered now. He eats a little and is calm, but very quiet. He asked me to write this letter for him, and I thought it was a good suggestion, rather than have him put all this into writing, freshening it all in his mind again, as it were.
Yesterday he told us that he had decided to go to England where he spent such happy years at the university. He plans to offer his services to the British army and be ready for the war which he is certain will come soon. I am to tell you that he will write to you again, since he feels you are a link with the wife he lost.
Be assured of my very kind regards,
Jacques-Louis Villaret
8.
Mexico City, August 23, 1938
Dear Joseph and Anna,
It is a long time since I have written to you, and you must be wondering what happened to us. So I write to tell you, and hope that you will let our brother Eduard and his family know where we are. Give them our address and please send me theirs. I suppose they must have left Vienna, but as Eduard has always had so much influence in high places I am sure they are all right, and thank God for that.
As for us, well, it has been quite a change, as you can imagine. We would have preferred coming to the United States, not only for the sake of the country itself, but because it would have been good to live near you. Family is everything; what else can you count on in this world? I would so like to be with you, to break bread together every Friday night, but it can’t be helped.
Still we are doing all right for a beginning and we can’t complain, especially when we read about what is happening in Europe. It doesn’t bear thinking about, and I could wet this page with my tears if I were to go on thinking about it.
Mexico City is very grand. The mansions along the avenues are more grand than anything in Vienna! We arrived last February having left in great haste and it was very odd to be in such a springlike place at that time of the year! We have rented a quite decent little house, built around a small courtyard, the way they build houses here. Dena has planted flowers. Everything grows in this sunshine. And the old man—I forgot to tell you the old man is with us, ninety-three years old, and still keen in the head—the old man sits outside moving from the sun to the shade, and he actually enjoys it here, I think. At first he didn’t want to come, you know, but of course we wouldn’t leave him behind, so we forced him and he stood the voyage very well. You would be surprised.
I have got a job as a furrier with a fine firm. The fur business is good, in spite of the mild climate. There are many rich people here and they are very fashionable. Tillie, our younger daughter-in-law, is a first-class seamstress and has also got a good position with a dressmaking establishment, copying Paris models. Saul is a watchmaker and he has a job too, while Leo is still looking, but I am sure he will find something. Our younger ones, all five of them, have started school and have learned Spanish so well in these few months that we take them with us for shopping or business. For Dena and me it is much harder to learn a new language. After all, we are over forty, and this is the second time in our lives that we have come as immigrants and strangers to a new country and a new language. But we shall manage. Even the old man has learned a few words. You would laugh to hear him!
Our plans are to save as much as we can and then in a few years my sons-in-law—and by that time my sons will also be old enough—we shall open some sort of import-export business together. I think it will be much easier to get ahead here than it was in Vienna. There seems to be room for newcorners here as there wasn’t over there. Anyway, thanks be to God, we are at peace here. We rest easily at night, all of us together, and what else matters when you come down to it? We hope you are all well, and now that you know where we are let us hear from you often.
Your loving brother,
Daniel
P.S. I had no idea North America was so big. I was about to say come and visit us, when I looked at a map and saw that New York is thousands of miles from Mexico City. Still, perhaps you will come anyway?
25
On a blowy, bleak morning early in November the telephone rang. When Anna answered it, she heard an unmistakable voice.
“Anna? I’m here. I got off the ship last night.”
“Paul?” she questioned in disbelief.
“Right after your card arrived I caught the Queen Mary over. I don’t know what I can do for you, or whether anyone can do anything. But I had to come.”
Ah, yes! A month or more ago, on a very hard day and in one of those hours that come long after a great grief, and are worse to live through than the first hour was, in such an hour, driven after long silence by some unexplained impulse, she had sent a card to Paul. “Maury is dead,” she had written, and nothing more: no signature, no date, only a cry from the heart. She had mailed it to London and afterward been sorry that she had.
“Anna? Are you there?”
“I’m here. I can’t believe you’ve come all this way—”
“Well, I have. And I’m taking no chances this time with broken appointments. I’m downstairs across the avenue with a car. So put your coat on and come.”
Trembling and agitated, she ran a comb through her hair, found a purse and hat and gloves. All these years! Three or four times a year their brief messages had gone back and forth: “Iris graduated third in the class”; “Leaving for Zurich on business, back in six weeks.” She had grown used to thinking that this was all the contact they would ever have. Now here he was.
He was waiting beside the car. When he took her cold hands in his, it was without greeting, without a word. How thin he had grown! Thin and grave, Anna thought as she stood there, letting him search her with his eyes. When they were in the little car together she repeated, “I can’t believe you’ve come all this way.”
“Can you tell me what happened, Anna? Do you want to talk about it?”
Very simply, she told him. “It was an accident in a car. His wife was killed, too. Last March.”
“Last March? Why have you waited so long to tell me?”
She made a little gesture of resignation.
Paul mourned, “I know what Maury meant to you.”
“He left a little boy, two years old. But we don’t see him.”
“Why not?”
“There’s been a sort of feud. His other grandparents have him.”
Paul said softly, “It’s a good thing you’re very, very strong.”
“I? I feel so weak, you can’t imagine.”
“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known!” He put the car into gear and it began to roll down the avenue.
“Let’s ride around a little. Do you want to tell me any more? Or would you rather not?”
“There isn’t any more to tell. That’s it, the whole of it”
“Yes, it speaks for itself.”
“But it is good to see you, Paul. It’s been six years since that day in Riverside Park.”
“Seven in the spring,” he corrected. “It was the third of April.”
The car turned eastward through
Central Park, emerging on Fifth Avenue where General Sherman still rode his proud horse to victory. The first time she had seen that statue she had been a greenhorn, fresh from Miss Mary Thorne’s class. The city had sparkled like diamond dust, city of a million secrets: secrets between the covers of books and behind the doors of great stone houses. A rich city it had been, rich with music and flowers; the world itself had opened before young eyes like a great curled, closed flower.
“We went to the Plaza for tea,” Anna said, thinking aloud.
“Yes, and you didn’t want to accept the hat I had bought for you.” He smiled.
I wonder whether it’s a good thing or not that we can’t look ahead to see what’s going to happen.”
“A bad thing,” Paul answered promptly. “If we could see wed do a lot differently.”
“Not if what is to be is ordained anyway.”
“Ah, metaphysics! You know, it seems forever since I’ve been in New York! London is a magnificent old lady, but New York is a young girl preparing for a dance. Look there, Anna! To ride down Fifth Avenue! Isn’t it splendid?”
She knew he was trying to coax her into a lighter mood, but she answered anyway, “Only when you’ve got nothing on your mind and something in your pocket, I think.”
“How are things in that area?”
“Better, although were being terribly frugal. Joseph is putting every cent he can find into land. When the Depression ends prices will soar, he says.”
“He’s right. They will. Tell me, do you have to be home at any special time today?”
“I have the whole day. Joseph’s not coming home to dinner and Iris is going to study at a friend’s house.”
“Then you can spend the day with me. I want to hear about Iris. I want to talk about everything. Do you like the seashore in the winter?”