And After the Fire

by Lauren Belfer

  Yet he didn’t want anything misconstrued, so maybe he did need a gift note. He tried some examples. Belated Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year. These didn’t sound right.

  Maxim, the cat, stared at him from the armrest of the old sofa that Dan and Julie had put into his study when they bought a new one for the living room. Julie had added a variety of pillows and something called throws to conceal the sofa’s shabbiness. Maxim liked to use this sofa as a scratching post. He also took a perverse pleasure in rolling over it, spreading his fur. Thus Dan never sat on the sofa. Maxim’s fur was black, with accents (as Julie called them) of white on his paws and chest.

  Julie had adopted Maxim when an elderly woman from church died and the pastor’s wife e-mailed the congregation to find a home for a grieving cat. This was exactly the type of cat Julie liked, a grieving cat who needed a home. Maxim had been named after the main character in the novel Rebecca. Although Dan hadn’t read the book, he’d seen the movie, and the cat’s original owner must have been lonely indeed to name her cat Maxim. Julie went to meet Maxim, and it was love at first sight for them both. They became inseparable. During Julie’s last days, spent here at home with hospice nurses, Maxim had never left her bed except to eat and do his business. Dan had found Maxim licking Julie’s face after she died, before the undertaker arrived.

  Dan had never liked Maxim. Because of this, he’d never stopped to consider how Maxim was taking Julie’s death. Dan supplied the cat with food and water, and cleaned the litter box, but he’d made no effort to pay attention to Maxim, despite what Julie would have wanted. Since Julie’s death, Maxim had slept on Becky’s bed.

  Unblinking, Maxim continued to eye Dan, passing some inscrutable judgment as Dan prepared to send CDs to a woman not his wife.

  To hell with that accusing cat. Dan looked again at the Arkiv request for a gift card. Keep it innocuous. Thought you’d enjoy these. Dan clicked on the SEND button.

  Chapter 18

  After the real estate closing in downtown Buffalo, Susanna felt wrapped in sadness. With her childhood home sold, and her high school friends scattered around the country, when would she ever return to this city?

  She and her mother bid a temporary farewell to Diane and Jenna for the short drive to the art museum, where the four of them planned to share a celebratory lunch. Heading to the parking lot where they’d left their rental car, Susanna and Evelyn walked along sidewalks defined by snow mounds. The city’s nineteenth-century architectural landmarks rose around them with a resplendent grandeur. The air itself seemed to shimmer, the wind across Lake Erie carrying ice crystals that sparkled in the winter sun.

  Snow began to fall, even as the sun was shining . . . a light snowfall of fat, floating flakes. The combination of snow and sunshine turned Susanna’s much-maligned hometown into a place of enchantment.

  Evelyn stopped walking. “This is so beautiful,” she said. “You want to know something surprising, Susanna? I’m going to miss that house. Even though I never really liked it.”

  Evelyn’s eyes were watering—from the cold, or was her mother crying? Snowflakes accumulated on her mother’s hat and scarf, accentuating her Florida tan. Everything about her, from her stylish short haircut to her suede boots, seemed well thought out, as if now, in retirement, she finally had both the time and money to become the type of person she’d always hoped to be.

  “I never thought I’d spend so much of my life in this city. But now that we’ll probably never come back, I feel, I don’t know, like I never looked at it before. After your father died and we were alone . . .” Her words drifted off.

  Evelyn had never spoken about herself to Susanna. These fragments of her mother’s thoughts felt precious, like an entry into who she really was, behind the parental façade she put on for Susanna.

  “Of course, if we’d moved somewhere else, I never would have met Jack.” Before his retirement, Jack had been an attorney at the law firm where Evelyn worked as a secretary. After his wife died, they began dating. “So everything turned out okay in the end.” Evelyn wiped her eyes and tightened her scarf. “We should get going. Diane and Jenna will wonder what’s become of us.”

  The moment of confidences was gone. Nonetheless, Evelyn’s few revelations gave Susanna courage: “Mom, I’ve been trying to find out what happened to our family in Europe.”

  “What family in Europe?”

  They turned onto Washington Street. The parking lot was up ahead, at Swan Street.

  “We don’t have any family in Europe,” Evelyn added.

  “From before the war. Your aunts and uncles and their families. Your cousins.” When Evelyn said nothing, Susanna felt compelled to ask, “Remember?”

  “Not really,” Evelyn said, as if they were discussing something insignificant, like a mislaid pair of gloves.

  “There are websites now where you can trace people who were caught up in the war. Not everyone is listed, but many are.”

  “Oh, honey, why stir up the past?”

  “After the war, did Grandma try to find our relatives?”

  “I think there were ways to find people, right after the war. If they were alive. I was young then, so I don’t really remember. Your grandparents didn’t talk about it. At least not to me.”

  “Didn’t you wonder about your lost relatives?” Susanna’s questions felt even more pressing after what she’d learned about the text of Henry’s cantata manuscript.

  “Why should I? I was young. I had other things to think about.”

  “You must have wondered.”

  “It wasn’t something we ever talked about.”

  To Susanna, Evelyn’s reaction sounded rehearsed, long kept in reserve for a moment like this.

  “I don’t believe you.” Immediately Susanna regretted this, feeling she’d overstepped a boundary. No going back now, however. “I overheard you and Henry whispering.”

  “Whether you believe me or not, that’s what happened. And we may have been whispering, but not about that. Most likely about you,” she added with what sounded like affection.

  “An entire family . . . you mean you pretended they never even existed?”

  “We didn’t have to pretend or not pretend. It was what it was. The relatives had our address and if they survived they could have found us, if they wanted to.”

  “What if the kids were the only ones who survived? Did the kids know where you were or even who you were?”

  “Susanna, it’s seventy years since the war started. They’re all dead by now anyway. What does it matter?”

  “Are you dead? Am I dead?” She didn’t want to goad Evelyn, but she couldn’t help herself. “Don’t you wonder if you have cousins, even living in this country? They could have ended up here in Buffalo. They might be ordering lattes at Spot Coffee right now.”

  “You should let it go.”

  “Is it so awful, to want to know about my own family?”

  Evelyn said nothing.

  “I need to confirm the spelling of your mother’s maiden name.”

  “What for?”

  “For the Internet search. There are a lot of variations in the spelling of last names.”

  They turned into the entryway of the parking garage. They walked up the grease-stained incline to the second level. The noxious odor of gasoline filled the air.

  “There’s the car,” Evelyn said, spotting it up ahead, a well-scrubbed white Nissan. “Jack says we’re going to need a new car next year. This might be a good choice. A level up from the Honda, but I think we can swing it. Why don’t I drive to the art gallery. See how it feels.”

  Susanna found the keys in her purse and passed them to her mother. Susanna got into the passenger side of the car.

  “I wonder what’s on the menu these days at the restaurant at the Albright.” Evelyn adjusted her seat and the mirrors. “I hope we’ll have time to look at the art. Remember how you used to volunteer with the young kids in the art classes, and how you loved seeing the paintings?”

&nb
sp; Susanna did remember. Sunday afternoons at the museum . . . splashes of colors across giant canvases. The Albright specialized in abstract expressionism.

  “I should have checked on the special exhibitions,” Evelyn said. “What with worrying about the closing for the house, it went completely out of my mind.”

  They drove out of the parking lot. When they reached Delaware Avenue, they made a right, and they drove past City Hall, majestic in its Art Deco splendor. Snow and sunshine still surrounded them.

  “I like the way this car handles,” Evelyn said. “Nice and easy.”

  Susanna tried again: “Mom, I know I shouldn’t have done this, but once when I was a kid, I looked through your desk, and I saw a document that gave Altschuler as your mother’s maiden name.” She spelled it. “Is that correct?”

  She didn’t tell Evelyn that she’d already tried this name and found nothing. She didn’t want to give Evelyn the opportunity to say, You see—I told you so.

  “The websites offer alternate spellings,” Susanna said, “but the search will be easier if I have the closest spelling I can get. That’s how a computer works.”

  “I know how a computer works.”

  Susanna felt foolish. Evelyn’s law firm had organized computer classes for the staff, to bring them up to date on software advances.

  She tried another question: “What was the family’s profession?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Susanna tried not to sigh like a surly teenager. “How big was the family?”

  “I’m sure it was huge.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “All families were large in those days.”

  “What about the name of the town or village they came from?” Susanna insisted, sounding like a child even to herself, slipping into the role that Evelyn set for her. “Did Grandma ever mention the name? Did you ever see the return address on the letters?”

  “Susanna, I was young. My guess is the place doesn’t even exist anymore. The Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic. How can you figure anything out?”

  “It must have had a name.”

  “I do remember my mother saying it was outside one of those spa towns. Marienbad, maybe. Or Karlsbad. I remember my mother talking once about going to Marienbad, or Karlsbad, when she was little, to see the emperor ride his horse in a parade. I think it was the emperor. The Austrian Jews loved Emperor Franz-Joseph, I do remember her saying that. He gave the Jews freedoms they’d never had before. But it may have been just a prince or an archduke that she saw.”

  “How far away was Marienbad, or Karlsbad, from her town? Did she have to stay overnight, was it that far away from her home?”

  “This happened to your grandmother a hundred years ago. Before the First World War. Your grandmother wanted to forget all that. Look what a wonderful country this is: your grandparents came to this country with nothing, and here you are, working for a family so rich they might as well be the Rockefellers. Helping them give money to charity. Doing mitzvahs every day. For complete strangers. That couldn’t happen anyplace except in America. Henry was so proud of you.”

  Susanna knew this was true.

  After several minutes passed, Evelyn said, as if offhandedly, “By the way, it’s Alshue.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My mother’s maiden name. Alshue.” Evelyn spelled it. Susanna found a pen and paper in her purse and wrote it down.

  “A-L-S-H-U-E?” Susana asked doubtfully, looking at what she’d written.

  “Yes, that’s right. I don’t know what document you saw, or imagined you saw, years ago, but the name is Alshue.”

  Susanna wondered if this was only half a name. Still, it was more than she’d had before.

  They rounded Gates Circle and drove onto Chapin Parkway, a broad boulevard with six rows of trees across it and well-kept homes on either side. Snow dusted the branches.

  “Since you’re so eager to learn about the past, Susanna, I should tell you that even in America things weren’t easy for Jews when I was young. I don’t know what happened to our family in Europe, but I do know why more Jews didn’t end up in America: because America wouldn’t take them. America didn’t want any more of their kind. Our kind. The immigration quotas were low, but even the low quotas weren’t filled because supposedly there weren’t enough people who were acceptable to be future Americans.”

  Susanna did already know this. When she was an undergraduate at Columbia, she’d taken a history course on America between World War I and World War II. She’d learned about the anti-Jewish radio tirades of Father Coughlin. About the hatred promulgated by Henry Ford, who received a medal from Hitler. The negative sentiments expressed even by Eleanor Roosevelt, in her younger days. The rise of the pro-Nazi German American Bund. The quotas on university admissions. Susanna had seen photographs of signs posted outside country clubs and hotels: No Hebrews. Sometimes the signs said, No Hebrews, no dogs.

  But the history course had covered many topics of American life between the wars, and Susanna had never thought specifically about her own family when she learned American history. She’d never taken the history personally. Besides, other minority groups, especially African Americans, had faced much more difficult discrimination.

  “The war ruined my mother’s life. She lost her family, and she couldn’t find out what happened to them. She was nervous all the time, ready to snap. She worried about every little thing. Each morning when I left for school, she was afraid that I wouldn’t come home at the end of the day, because they would take me away. She never specified who they were. I couldn’t wait to get away from her. And Henry—the war ruined his life, too. I don’t even know everything that happened to him. He wouldn’t tell me. He was tortured inside himself.”

  “So that’s why—”

  “You think the war is over, Susanna? It isn’t over. Don’t you understand why so many of the survivors don’t want to talk about it? Oh, yes, the fighting stopped and everybody declared peace, but the war, what it did to people, goes on and on and still hasn’t stopped and probably won’t ever stop. Look at you, seventy years later and you’re still asking questions.”

  Susanna stared at Evelyn. Evelyn stared at the road. She took the curve around Soldier’s Place. They were only a few blocks from Lynfield Street and their old home. As if to avoid Lynfield and its memories, Evelyn made a right onto Lincoln Parkway, with its regimented rows of trees. The snow had stopped.

  “This car is so smooth. When I get home, I’m going to tell Jack to arrange to do a test drive.”

  They drove past a row of mansions, and the street opened into a magnificent vista of Delaware Park. On their left was the Albright-Knox Art Gallery with its columns and caryatids evoking the Parthenon. In the distance was the neoclassical Historical Society. On their right was the park lake, frozen and covered with snow.

  Chapter 19

  PALAIS LEVY

  HINTER DEM NEUEN PACKHOF 3

  BERLIN, PRUSSIA

  Late June 1811

  The June weather was exquisite. Sara’s formally attired guests walked along the river, or gathered in shifting groups across the lawn. In her role as hostess, Sara stood at the open doors leading from the house onto the veranda. She greeted newcomers as they arrived.

  Although the French occupation continued and Prussia remained a vassal state, the political situation in Berlin had stabilized. The royal family had been allowed to return to the city. In large measure, the soldiers who had once patrolled the streets had been withdrawn. Sara’s gatherings of music and conversation had resumed, although not in their former splendor. Friends who had left the city because of financial difficulties had not returned. Friends killed in battle would never return.

  Alexander von Humboldt was here this afternoon. Karl Gustav von Brinkmann. Carl Friedrich Zelter. And a new generation had begun to visit her salon, men and women in their twenties. With their commitment and determination, they gave Sara hope for the future. In recent years, Sa
ra had become a mother of sorts: young poets, writers, and artists stayed at her home (hardly an imposition considering the size of the house, entire wings unused). She introduced them to society, listened to their romantic torments, and urged them to complete their musical compositions, their books and plays, their essays and poems.

  “Bettina, Countess von Arnim,” the butler announced.

  Sara crossed the reception room to greet her. “My dear Bettina, welcome.”

  Twenty-six-year-old Bettina von Arnim, geborene Brentano, was a writer. She was striking in a disturbing way, plain and stolid, her eyes too big for her face. Her husband, Count Ludwig Achim von Arnim, was an essayist, and he had lived here at Sara’s home for a time. In fact, Arnim had proposed to Bettina in Sara’s garden. The two were only recently married.

  “Thank you for inviting me, Frau Levy.” Because of their age difference, Sara called Bettina by her given name, and Bettina called Sara by her family name. Bettina seemed to hold back from Sara today, uncharacteristically timid.

  “I’m so very glad you’re here.” Sara had heard a report from her nephew Moritz Itzig, who studied philosophy at the university, that recently Count von Arnim had delivered a lecture filled with anti-Jewish invective. Military defeat and economic hardship often brought out such nonsense. The presence of French soldiers in the streets had led many to idealize German history and folktales, and to yearn for a mythical German purity.

  After Napoleon was defeated, as someday he must be, these misguided passions would dissipate, Sara felt certain.

  “Will Count von Arnim be joining us?” Sara had invited them both, despite the report she’d heard from Moritz. To invite Bettina to this gathering without her spouse would be rude.

  “I don’t know.” Bettina seemed nervous. “Perhaps later.”

  “No matter,” Sara said, trying to find a way to set Bettina at ease. “You’ll find many friends in the garden.” Regardless of what happened in the harsh world outside, Bettina would always be welcome here. “Please, enjoy this lovely day.”