Pictures of the Past
Page 28
He was visibly nervous as he waited for her, his assistant straightening his jacket for the second time at his request. He alternated between studying the batches of pictures that she had sent him and pacing within the reception area. Emily had been gone for five months now, and he held Sarah’s condolence card, as her words carried a warmly supportive, empathetic message.
In the most recent photograph Sarah had sent, taken at a child’s birthday party, he could probably best recognize her smile and her eyes. “I don’t want you running to some young, blond Alice who is walking off that flight,” she had told him on the phone. “And then you find out I’m really that old great-grandma in the rear.” In the photo, she was still a striking woman; her physique was lean, without the stoop of age, but her exposed hands betrayed an appropriate frailty. Her blondish-gray hair, at chin length, was pulled back by two tortoise shell combs. Of course, the soft, cream perfection of her seventeen-year-old face now had the lines and color that a harder life reflects, the biography of years in the Israeli sun. But it gave her a strength of character that a fully lived life deserves.
Finally, as the Customs doors opened for this next wave of arriving passengers, Taylor rose and his hands could not help a slight shake. The exquisite bouquet he was holding dropped to the floor. As he bent down frantically to retrieve it, his aide began gathering the flowers and tightening the bow.
And then when Taylor lifted his head, she was there—laughing at him, then laughing with him, then feeling his arms drawing her to him, cocooning in his embrace as he kissed her forehead. They separated and looked at each other, simultaneously smiling and nodding approval, but both finding it hard to speak. Taylor took her hand and kissed it in the style of an old-fashioned suitor, and then brought his lips to hers.
People surrounding them, each involved in the drama of their own lives, enacting similar meetings spiced with a potpourri of international dialogue, were drawn for a moment to the magnetic attraction of this handsome, elderly couple. Perhaps they were each envisioning this as a symbol that time would not diminish their own feelings for the loved ones they now greeted so eagerly, taking it as a hopeful sign that true love endures forever.
Although the initial scandal of a stolen painting had a short-lived play in the papers, it was only the resolution that caught and kept the national and international media’s attention. Even Time magazine saved some pages to retell briefly what they termed “a heartwarming story, spanning generations, finally giving peace to those seeking provenance, giving closure to those clinging to pictures of the past.”
Acknowledgements and Historical Notes
Writing this novel has been a fascinating journey, where a relaxing project became a consuming passion. Attending the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference and New York’s Book Expo early in the book’s development, I was truly surprised and validated by the encouragement of writing colleagues and publishing professionals. During the process, I met and corresponded with two extremely talented writers, Tatiana deRosnay, author of Sarah’s Key, and Betsy Carter, author of The Puzzle King, who so graciously provided me with their contacts. The enthusiasm for the story from Mitchell Levin of DreamWorks was one more step in keeping my dream alive. Much thanks to respected editor Ann Patty, who has worked with such esteemed novels as Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us, and who helped to identify areas to expand in the narrative of Pictures of the Past.
I am especially thankful for the love and support of my family as I worked on the book—my husband Michael, our children and their spouses, Carlee and Keith Londo, Rob Eisenberg, Abby and Chad Eisenberg, and my littlest inspirations, Skylar and Jace Londo. I was guided in my endeavor always by the memory of my beautiful, supportive parents, Berdie and Bernie Rothblatt, and I actually began the novel as a diversion to cope with the untimely loss of my brother Steve, a highly regarded director at the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, and a loving husband and father.
I am forever grateful to more than one hundred readers, friends and relatives (and their friends and relatives) from the Chicago area, Florida, New York, France, Germany, and Israel, who anxiously asked for their turn with the manuscript and so enthusiastically embraced the story that it compelled me to follow it through to publication. Although so many people deserve to be listed by name, a special thanks for their encouragement goes to my very earliest audiences, my husband, of course, and Judy Farby, Essie Landsman and Stan Stein who indulged me to read it aloud to them over iced tea breaks, and Gail and Bruce Greenspahn, our traveling companions, who followed Taylor’s adventures as we had our own.
In some ways I wrote this novel for the Sisterhood Book Club of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois, where I have been the leader for over sixteen years. Like the family of book club readers everywhere, they are such a bright, interesting, warm and supportive group of women. They want to learn about people in contemporary times and in the context of history, but they also want to fall in love with a good story. When we are particularly challenged by the literature, I remind them that this is why we are in a book club. We want to expand our vision of the world and enhance our experience with language. And I thank them, as a teacher without a classroom, for joining me in this rewarding venture.
Long before I was drawn to books that influenced me to become a writer, I discovered the books that made me become a reader. Among my favorite classics are Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev drew me at an early age toward the wealth of Jewish literature, and then I discovered the strength of Holocaust literature with Leon Uris and Exodus and Mila 18. Taylor Caldwell’s Captain and the Kings introduced me to intriguing family saga, and soon I was captured by Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel, Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and James Michener’s Hawaii. Of course today, with such a proliferation of good literature in every format, people are drawn to the hottest, the edgiest, and the most current best sellers. But I do encourage young people to visit many of the best books from the past.
In researching the people and periods covered in Pictures of the Past, I must give credit to the following: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center; The Art Institute of Chicago; Refuge Denied, by Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie; Rise and Fall of the Nazis, by Claire Welch; Jews in Berlin, edited by Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps and Hermann Simon, English translation 2002 by Henschel Verlag; Inside Hitler’s Germany, Life Under the Third Reich, by Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann; Can It Happen Again? Chronicles of the Holocaust, edited by Roselle K. Chartock and Jack Spencer; The Holocaust Chronicle, Louis Weber, publisher; Memories of My Early Life in Germany 1926-1946, by Ralph Neuman, and We Survived, Berlin Jews Underground, by Inge Deutschkron.
While the general framework of the story for Pictures of the Past played for me as a movie in my mind, oftentimes my characters, mainly Taylor and Sarah, told me what would happen as the story unfolded. And this was especially true for the incorporation of the St. Louis episode. Some years ago, our friend Steven Safran, in relating to us his treasured family history regarding his grandmother, Dorothea Heymann, who had been a passenger on the ship, must have placed the kernel of an idea in my mind. When I reached the point of the story where Sarah and her mother Inga sought to escape Germany, I was drawn to the St. Louis along with them. It happened that I had become aware of a lecture regarding the historic voyage scheduled at Chicago’s Spertus College of Judaica, where the speaker was Scott Miller, director of the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was not surprised to see the Safran family in the audience, as well. Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie, director of the National Institute for Holocaust Education at the museum, had researched the fates of all nine hundred thirty-seven passengers on the doomed voyage of May, 1939, in their book Refuge Denied. I owe a special debt of gratitude to them, as I found their work both informative and inspirational. Sadly, Dorothea Heymann
was among the two hundred and fifty-four passengers who did not survive the Holocaust when the St. Louis was turned back to Europe from Cuba and America. Dorothea, Steve’s maternal grandmother, went first to Holland and eventually to Auschwitz, where she was said to have lived no more than a week. I hope that in some small way I have honored her memory.
Although the basic facts of the voyage of the St. Louis are true to the documented history, the passenger group meetings, the character of Joseph Levin, and the formation of a Resistance force from the ship, if actual, would be a coincidence of the merging of fact and fiction.
As for Henri Lebasque, while he was an actual French Impressionist painter, both of his paintings described in the book, Jeune Fille à la Plage and Fille de l’été, are not, and their true provenance can be traced only to my imagination.
In structuring the novel, I chose 1937 as a realistic year prior to World War II when Americans might still seek to travel to Europe for business or pleasure. I admit to having had no prior knowledge of the famous, and for me fortuitous, Paris Exposition of 1937, which revealed itself to me in beautiful detail through internet research. Serendipitously, I had already chosen Henri Lebasque as the perfect artist for my story, accomplished, but not well known, when his showing at the very real Exhibition des Maitres d’Art Independants at the Petit-Palais was confirmed.
Deby Eisenberg
www.debyeisenberg.com
Book Review Discussion Guide
Pictures of the Past illustrates our constant striving to maintain endearing human relationships despite the challenges of life, from the simple trials of young love to the complex terrors and heartbreak of war. Discuss the many examples of this within the book, including the quote, “How ironic that one wonderful man had changed her small world’s perception of love at the same time that one evil man had heightened the larger world’s perception of hate.”
What effect do family heritage and expectations play in a person’s development? Do “only children” bear an added weight of responsibility in a family? And just as with the lineage of a work of art, what impact does our provenance have on our future?
Readers should discuss the randomness of survival in the Holocaust. Draw on familiar stories in literature or in family histories. Does this lead only to survivor’s guilt or also survivor’s pride?
Man versus society, good versus evil, the loss of innocence… so many of the traditional literary themes course through the novel. How does Taylor fit as the archetypal “tragic hero?” Was Taylor actually a complex individual? Discuss perfection and flaws in characters.
Which characters change and grow in the story? Is Taylor’s return to Emily understandable?
Follow the examples of parent-child relationships and discuss which are the most healthy. What is the result of strong or weak mothers and fathers?
How does Rachel’s profession work well with the novel? What epiphany does Rachel have when she visits the Newport, Rhode Island mansion where she conducts her interview?
The author, herself, states that once she molded her characters, they began to tell her where they would take the story. This was especially true when she realized that Sarah’s mother, Inga, did not intend to join her daughter on the St Louis. Do you understand her action?
Explain the many references that could have created the title, Pictures of the Past.
About the Author
As the leader of an established Chicago area Book Club, Deby Eisenberg challenged herself to write a novel that her avid readers could not put down and would love to discuss. With a Masters Degree from the University of Chicago, she is a former English teacher and journalist. Inspired by so many wonderful books and formidable authors, and drawing on her love of literary research, art, architecture, Jewish history, and travel in the United States and Europe, she tried to envision a multi-generational love story that would inform as well as entertain, that would broaden the mind and open the heart. Deby and her husband Michael, an obstetrician-gynecologist, live in Riverwoods, Illinois. They have three grown children and two grandchildren.
Visit her at www.debyeisenberg.com.