Pictures of the Past

by Deby Eisenberg

  She was struck, again, by similarities in their lives.

  By the last weeks of class, all Richard could think about was kissing her. He longed to envelop her sweet full lips with his own, to touch the cashmere of her sweater, to outline the curve of her breasts with his hands. He was counting down the days until school was over like a fifth grader awaiting the vacation bell.

  Finally, on the last day of the term, after grades were distributed so that there would be no hint of impropriety, Richard asked her out. Just a few months later, they were an established “item.” By that time, Ida insisted that he call her “aunt,” and he was gaining weight from her noodle kugels, and bonding with Rusty while playing with presents of trucks and coloring books.

  Soon Rachel began spending evenings with Richard’s parents and small extended family. His parents recognized a new positive energy in him as he emerged from his depression following his last romantic relationship. And Rachel knew to be grateful to his “rejection by Sharon” for helping her, an unwed mother, young son in tow, to be easily embraced by them. Rachel was especially drawn to Richard’s uncle Charles, who they called Chal, a sweet, charming man who had lost a young wife and child in the Holocaust. A diamond cutter in the New York industry that was becoming dominated by Jews, he lived alone and had never remarried and frequently was a dinner guest at the Stones’ home. There was something tender about this thin man, whose sadness was reflected only remotely behind his bespectacled eyes, but not worn outwardly as a heavy coat. He had a broad knowledge of European history, although he skirted any references to his own plight. He loved following the newspapers with a diligence that titillated and educated everyone around him, and he extended their exposure to the fascinating culture of New York City, often inviting them to join him in prime seats for the symphony or ballet.

  Her acquaintance with Chal soon led her to devise a plan. She had long been trying to think of something special she could do for Aunt Ida to make her understand not just how much she appreciated her, but how much she and Rusty really loved her. Rachel still felt extremely close to her parents, and they had continued to contribute to her living and tuition expenses through college, just as they would have if she had remained at the University of Illinois, but Aunt Ida had certainly become her closest source of emotional support and help with her son. After so many years working in the garment industry, Ida had moved from seamstress to supervisor to part-time bookkeeper for a midsized operation, and was so invaluable an employee that her boss accepted her request for an even more flexible work week once Rusty was born. Through his early years, she was always available when needed. After a long day away at class, and then at the library studying, Rachel would come home to see Ida sitting on the sofa listening to a very soft television with the toddler asleep on her lap. Rachel would come up behind her and envelop her shoulders and neck in an embrace. And Ida would apologize to her—"Oh, I am sorry. He fell asleep while I read him a story—in the middle of a sentence—he was listening and even asking questions and then he just closed his eyes. My fault—I wore him out at the park after dinner.”

  “You wore him out? I would think he would wear you out.”

  “Just the opposite, darling. He energizes me. Please don’t be upset. He was too precious to put back to bed,” she would say. “I just couldn’t part with the feel of his soft cheeks on my arm.”

  “Aunt Ida, what would I do without you? You are an angel. I have imposed on you constantly, and yet you never complain.”

  “Complain? I should complain to the person who has saved me by bringing the joy of life back to me? I should complain because now I have people to cook for? Was I happy with wonderful recipes in my memory and no one to join me at the table?”

  Rachel wished she had the means to send Ida on a wonderful vacation, but she doubted that she would even accept such a gift; when she treated her to dinners out, Ida would try to fight her for the check. Gifts of sweaters and dresses remained in their boxes or were returned with the money back on Rachel’s dresser.

  And then she thought of the gift of Uncle Chal! Richard approved of her scheme—it wouldn’t be a planned double date—just an evening out with the pretext of going to an art exhibit. The men would simply stop for a moment to pick up Rachel in the Village on their way to the gallery, and Ida and Chal could meet each other.

  As the evening played out, only minutes after Uncle Chal was introduced to Ida, they were babbling in Yiddish, with Chal showing coin tricks to Rusty (quarters behind ears, disappearing nickels) that sent him into giggling convulsions. When Rachel and Richard told him they would miss the opening if they didn’t leave soon—he just waved them on.

  “You two go ahead. I like the show right here,” Chal said. As it turned out, he and Ida had lived mere miles apart in their youths, and shared a wealth of collective memories. And soon Richard and Rachel would stay home with Rusty, and the older couple would catch a symphony or Broadway show. And eventually, Ida did not resist the touch of Chal’s hand to hers.

  The Woodmere Estate

  Kenilworth

  July 1937

  The cable from Taylor arrived by messenger around lunchtime and Addison Woodmere walked to the foyer from the sitting room to read it. His houseman, as was his custom, stood with him in case it elicited the need for an immediate response.

  FATHER I MUST STAY IN EUROPE LONGER STOP I AM GOING TO BERLIN TO TOUR FACTORIES AND CONFIRM JOINT INTERESTS WITH EMANUEL BERGER STOP

  “What?” Addison Woodmere, Jr., exclaimed rather loudly, as he read the latest cable from his son. “What— on to Berlin—I never condoned that—I apprised him of the European situation. Damn me. I had second thoughts the moment he left about sending him into precarious territories.”

  YOU SPOKE HIGHLY OF THE GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST STOP I AM GOING TO SEE HIS OPERATION STOP PLEASE TELL EMILY STOP

  And as he read the last words aloud, Emily who had been visiting for the meal approached him. “Tell Emily what?” she inquired as he started toward his study to sink back into the leather of his chair. He was rubbing his forehead in his familiar pose of frustration.

  “Please say he is on his way home,” Emily said softly.

  He sat down and read the telegram to her, trying for her sake to hide his own disappointment and apprehension at the words. Bravely, she heard the message and then sat blank faced at the conclusion, as if waiting for more words. First, there was a quizzical look and then a stone set glare in her eyes. Her thoughts and those of her prospective father-in-law’s echoed similarly.

  Just “Please tell Emily,” not “Please tell Emily I miss her or love her.” And as their minds had merged, their thoughts were tandem now. For Addison Woodmere remembered himself at twenty-two and in love, and Emily Kendall, had the fresh images of her almost fiancé seemingly tormented to leave her just three weeks ago. But now he was extending his absence with no words of regret. What kind of business was this?

  Taylor

  Berlin

  July 1937

  Relieved and elated that his suggestion to accompany the Bergers back to Germany was so genuinely welcomed, Taylor felt he was the luckiest man in the world to be seated beside Sarah on a train admiring the European landscape. Their ride to Germany was an illuminating experience, spanning a beautiful portion of the continent, beginning in France, passing through Belgium and on to Germany, traversing fields, mountains, rivers and lakes, villages and cities. Not only did Taylor feel it was a geography lesson come to life, but Emanuel narrated histories of kings and queens and unions and divisions as they proceeded.

  “I still can’t believe how you travel such a short time and you are in another country. It’s not like that in America at all, especially where I live,” Taylor said, as they crossed their first international border.

  “In Europe, we are all family,” Emanuel answered. “You did not know this, I am sure. From King George in the 1700s through George V in this century—every monarch in Great Britain chose a German royal for a spouse.
”

  “I’ve learned just a little European history—marriages are often political matches—not love matches— is that it?”

  “Often. But like any family, what do you think happens? Still conflicts, still wars. In this century, so much tension and hatred between Germany and England— that after the war, the English royal family changed their German resonating surnames to Windsor, more British.”

  “Can you tell already? Papa knows everything,” Sarah said, adding anecdotes of family travels as they continued, smiling and laughing with her father at certain memories, and often comfortably taking Taylor’s hand in hers. In Brussels, she insisted on leaving the train to run into the station house for boxes of her favorite chocolates from Bruges.

  When they retired to their private sleeping compartments after a late dinner, Taylor could not bear the hours of separation from Sarah and tried unsuccessfully to lure her images—her voice, her smell—into his dreams. He lay awake much of the night, his hand pressed against the wall of his bed, as if hers was present just on the other side. In the morning, when they emerged simultaneously from their cabins to meet at the dining car, they exchanged a curiously provocative look that validated Taylor’s impression that she was there, beside him.

  The chauffeur met their train in Berlin at the Lehrter Bahnhof, a station built like a palace in the French Neo-Renaissance style. He supervised the transfer of their suitcases and a few boxes of presents. Taylor himself carried the painting he had purchased in a most protective manner, making sure that it was situated upright next to the luggage and wouldn’t be crushed or compromised in any way. The three travelers settled in the backseat with Sarah in the middle, and she pointed out certain sites along the route from the train station, but having to do more with parks and favorite restaurants than the imposing buildings and monuments of history and government they were surely passing. Taylor twice saw groups of brown-shirted military men marching stiffly in long columns, eight abreast, as if they were in a parade. And along the widest boulevards, elongated red banners, with the Nazi swastika imprinted in bold black, were stretched several stories tall. On this ride, Taylor was surprised that Emanuel barely spoke. He faced away from Taylor, staring out his own window and continually shaking his head. More than once he emitted an “aach” of disgust, and eventually he yelled to the window, “What was I thinking? In a few weeks away do I forget? It makes me sick to see Berlin defiled with his people and his signs.”

  Taylor wondered if Paris had not been a brief respite for Emanuel, away from the political climate of Germany, and this was a reawakening, with any loose ends of the banners that were flapping in the wind acting as a renewed slap in the face of normalcy for Emanuel. Taylor was hesitant to broach the topic, presuming there would be time ahead for that, and then, surprisingly, Emanuel began talking with his recognizable lightness of tone, as if he snapped out of his depression.

  “Here we come upon Oranienburger Strasse. See there, to your right, we pass now the Neue Synagogue. It means new synagogue, which it was in the 1860s. You see, we were not always out of favor in Germany; the Bismark was even there for the inauguration,” he said, putting a boastful emphasis on the leader’s name. There, just at Krausnickstrasse, where we will turn for our home. It is a palace, is it not?”

  “Very beautiful—very ornate—it looks Moorish.”

  “Taylor, you are a student of architecture also?”

  “Not really. It’s just that the dome reminds me of the Baha’i House of Worship near my home, actually farther down our main street, Sheridan Road. It’s been under construction for years, but you can tell it will be beautiful when it is completed.”

  “Oh, I see…and now we come to our street. Did I tell you? Already you are a favorite of my wife, Inga.” The automobile left the main thoroughfare and approached the residential neighborhood. “When she can prepare a room for a guest, or so direct the staff, she feels the house comes alive. She was from such a big family, and yet we were blessed only with Sarah. So a guest gives her more purpose and fills the hollow halls of the upper floors with welcome footsteps.”

  “And I was going to ask if I was imposing,” Taylor responded. “Funny. What you describe is surprisingly familiar to me—so like our own situation at home. Only my mother centers on the emptiness of the long dinner table. I guess this is the universal sadness of a family with an only child.”

  “But then we work harder than most children to fill that emptiness, don’t we Taylor?” Sarah interjected.

  “And you succeed; you both succeed,” her father assured them. “But now, in minutes only, you will meet my lovely wife.” Emanuel was looking past Taylor, pointing out the window to indicate to him which residence on the street was theirs. “Perhaps your father has told you as my own did. Always look at the mother before you choose the daughter.”

  “Oh, Papa, you are too presumptuous. You are embarrassing me,” Sarah immediately groaned, her hand covering her eyes.

  But Emanuel answered with, “Shu, Shu. Never mind. Taylor knows what I am saying. This is man talk.”

  When the car stopped, it was in front of a three-story building with a high front stoop, and Taylor was thinking it was not at all like their residence in Kenilworth, but resembling more the large townhouses that lined the streets of New York’s Upper East Side. It was nestled in a neighborhood that seemed to alternate similar homes with apartments and duplexes. The two men gathered their briefcases while Sarah raced immediately to greet her mother who was waiting at the top of the stairs, and Taylor understood what her father was talking about. Inga Berger was the obvious star that had spawned the ray of sunshine that was Sarah. Emerging from the front door, she stood briefly in an unconsciously elegant pose, one hand still on the door handle. Her blond hair, so like Sarah’s in color, was shorter, but had a similar bounce and bob. She wore a casual black and white print dress with an oversized red silk flower near one shoulder that perfectly matched her dramatic lipstick.

  Inga did not greet Taylor stiffly or formally, but with a warm hug, indicating either that her daughter had held her in close confidence by phone during her time in Paris, or that she felt a maternal connection with Taylor through her closeness to his father.

  “Taylor, welcome to our home. It is as if Addison, himself, has come to our doorstep; the resemblance is so strong.”

  “It is my pleasure, Mrs. Berger. Thank you so much for allowing me to come.”

  At this point, Emanuel climbed the last step, put down his briefcase, and took Inga’s face in his hands. He planted a quick kiss on her lips and then turned her chin toward Taylor. “I have told you the truth, have I not?” he said, winking at the young man.

  After Taylor was shown to his room and they all freshened up from the long trip, they were called to the dining room for a full meal of chicken schnitzel and cabbage with noodles. They described details of the fair and the conference to Inga, and then Sarah left the room briefly, returning with the exquisite Chanel dress that she had already worn that would be now be a gift for her mother.

  “Oh, that is just beautiful,” Inga said, rising and taking the hanger from Sarah and then moving to the mirror over the dining buffet, where she held it in front of her and swayed with it in a dance move. “Sarah, I have taught you well,” she continued, speaking into the mirror, “and thank you, Emanuel, darling.” She then motioned for the maid to take it from her.

  After the dishes were cleared, Sarah addressed her father. “Papa, I know that Taylor has come here to spend time at your factories, but can I please show him the city as well? You know he has never been to Berlin or even to Germany. We don’t want him returning with memories only of dark, massive machinery and their thunderous roar.”

  “That sound, my dear, is the symphony of my work and the substantive support of the food that just graced our very table.”

  “Oh, Papa. You know I understand that very well and appreciate it,” Sarah began, and then looked pleadingly at Inga, who followed her cue and continue
d.

  “Emanuel. Our guest will be just that…a guest, introduced to all aspects of our lives in Berlin. And he will receive the royal treatment. I will work with Sarah on an itinerary. Of course, you know that, dear, and you choose to be obstinate,” she said with an exasperated look and then turned to Taylor. “Taylor, let us start first with your choices—what would you like to see?”

  It was momentarily an uncomfortable question for Taylor, though posed with the best of intentions. He was a very educated young man who always needed to feel prepared when he entered a new situation. Before Paris, for example, he had familiarized himself not only with conference materials, but with a general idea of what locations he would explore. But his impulsive decision to go to Berlin was a decision of the heart and not the mind, and the only research that had accompanied it included analyzing the texture of Sarah’s hair and examining the features of her angelic face.

  He struggled to even think of a famous site of Berlin that was familiar to him. You didn’t need to be a student of France, and yet mention Paris and you immediately conjure images of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame; in Rome, there is the Coliseum; in London, the Tower and Buckingham Palace.

  And then he remembered the Olympics that had taken place the previous year, and he felt proud to appear worldly. “Oh, yes. One thing for sure. I would love to see that enormous stadium—where they held the Olympics last year—our Jesse Owens was a star— what did he have—four gold medals? I remember seeing pictures in our newspapers—and some newsreel coverage too.”

  When he said this, he looked up from his previously shy pose, expecting to see three smiling faces nodding to his great idea. But he was met only with blank looks and an uncomfortable silence. Inga and Sarah exchanged glances, knowing that Emanuel would soon begin his tirade. His voice, however, was quiet when he finally spoke.