“How do you do,” she said. “Speak German?”
“Of course. Of course!” I said.
And she quietly told me, “I am Ruth Wolff. Leon’s wife.”
Now, three years later, here I am sitting on my porch, remembering my confusion of shock and relief. Meeting Leon’s wife wasn’t what I had had in mind.
“Where’s Leon? How is he? Tell me, please, tell me—”
“Be patient,” she said harshly. “This is hard for me.”
“Sorry.”
“We met,” she began, “in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, thirty-five kilometers north of Berlin.”
“Oh, my god,” I blurted. “I was so close to him when I was in Berlin!”
I could see Ruth flinch and told myself to be calm.
“Sorry,” I said.
“We both had worked for Gerard von Schmitt,” she continued, disregarding my outburst. “But we were in different buildings. So I never knew Leon until later. We were fortunate to be imprisoned where we were, considering the alternatives. When Leon healed from his concussion, Gerard had him sent to Sachsenhausen. And here he joined the lucky ones.” Ruth laughed—and she had a lovely laugh. It melodically moved around me as if a light wind. And then, like a door had been slammed, she changed course.
“I won’t go into the horrific details of the camp. Since you are a journalist, I’m sure you’re well informed. But we fell in love.”
“Oh, my dear,” I said, “I’m not sure I want to hear this. It’s too painful.”
“No, no,” Ruth protested. “Listen!”
“I can’t listen to this,” I said. “I thought he loved only me!” And then I was embarrassed by my confession.
Ruth looked at me as if I were pathetic. And then her face changed and she became sympathetic.
“I’m sorry, Miss Manon, please excuse me. I’m being insensitive. Meeting me must be startling. I’ll leave,” she said, and she started to rise.
“No, please stay,” I said, putting out my hand. “I want to know. I need to know.” I could see her try to relax.
“At any given time,” she continued, “there were fifteen to eighteen forgers working in the shop. If someone made a mistake—didn’t do a good enough job—tried to sneak food out for others—he or she was either eliminated or severely punished. Our lives depended on how well we worked. Otherwise, we were fed well enough—because we were considered essential to their ‘cause.’ Leon helped us survive. He would remind us that we needed to enjoy the craft we were involved in. ‘Just think,’ he would say, ‘how beautiful a typographic serif is on an italic letter inked with a quill pen. It doesn’t hurt us to make a beautiful forgery. We can’t blame ourselves for collaborating with the enemy. We are saving our lives, while praying that these beautiful, official papers will get lost, or be burned, or never used. Honoring this art will keep us in practice for when the nightmare ends.’”
“But Leon?” I said.
“Please, let me continue in my way,” Ruth insisted. “Leon and I would talk at the end of the day; only work-related talk was allowed in the shop. And of course, there was always a guard sitting by the door. Always with an Alsatian shepherd—and this frightened me since I’m afraid of dogs. Anyway, to continue—Leon told me about you. And I told Leon about my husband and children.”
“Oh, you had a family. What happened—”
“Please, Miss Manon, this is hard for me. Please, I must take my time.”
My memory of that evening is of the two of us sitting on dark-green upholstered chairs facing each other, a small table between us. I had a whiskey, Ruth a coffee. But I don’t remember anything around us. Although I knew we were in a busy lounge, nobody else in the room was really there. I was fidgeting—she was calm. I smoked more than usual. She didn’t smoke at all.
“All of us in the shop tried to help each other,” Ruth said. “I think what helped Leon and me the most was that we already knew what had happened to the people we loved. Many others in the shop had no idea, so they had to live with a different kind of anxiety. My husband was a teacher, and we had two small children, my little girls. No,” she said, “please don’t say anything,” and she held up both hands to protect herself from my questions.
“We were all rounded up and shipped to Sachsenhausen in trucks. On the platform, I was quickly separated from them—as I was on the list as an etcher. They didn’t survive the night.” Again she held up her hands. “And this is all I’m going to say about them. Please.
“After the war,” she continued, “through a resettlement agency, Leon and I were given an apartment.”
“He lived through the war!”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why didn’t he contact me!”
There was a long pause.
“Because he married me instead, Miss Manon.”
Another long pause.
“Tell me the rest,” I said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “the apartment was on the wrong side of Berlin. Yet again, we were fenced in—this time here, in the eastern section of the city. We simply did not have the emotional energy to get out in time. Nor did either of us really care who was running the country—as long as we could be living in clean quarters and able to eat nourishing food and drink fresh water. Simple, isn’t it, in the end?” she said. “Basic amenities. But our problem became one of health. Between Leon’s working with metals and his incessant smoking, he became ill, with what we thought was severe bronchitis. But in fact, it was lung cancer. He refused treatment. I understood and accepted his decision. He died in 1979.”
She’s so straightforward, I thought. Died. Done. Leon gone.
“I’m sorry to bring you this news, Miss Manon.”
“Why?” I asked. “Our relationship was over such a long time ago.”
Ruth was not comfortable with my question. She was wringing her hands. ‘Many of us who survived the war,’ she said quietly, forcing me to lean forward, ‘have a deep sense of needing to complete our unfinished business. We know our families are dead. We know we’ve lost everything–but many threads had been left dangling. I don’t suffer this need–I have no unfinished business. But Leon did. With you and Gerard.’
“Gerard! I shouted. “For Christ’s sake. He let Leon be arrested. When I met him, I begged him to free Leon.”
“Please, Miss Manon, please, don’t yell,” she said. “You make me very nervous.”
“Ha! Didn’t Leon warn you that I was opinionated and noisy?”
I was irritated by Ruth’s regal calmness. I was fidgeting like a crazy old hen.
“Is there no justice?” I said.
Ruth sighed, “There is very little. But please know that Leon also loved you. To him you represented an unforgettable vigor and exhilaration for life. All I could offer was the comfort of devotion, of simply being with him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t understand why he didn’t contact me.”
“Miss Manon,” she said, “you know it is possible to love more than once in a lifetime. For the last part of Leon’s life he loved me.”
And then she stood, smoothed her skirt, and picked up her purse.
“Oh, no, you’re not going,” I said. “Please stay and have dinner with me. I promise not to scream and yell.”
“No, Miss Manon, thank you, but I must go. This meeting has been hard for me and I need to leave.”
We shook hands. There was no embrace. She turned and left.
Finally, in Berlin, in 1989, the dream ended.
For most of my life, my anger has flared like a wild brush fire on the steppes of the Nevada mountains. Some people say that getting old softens your view of the world. Not me. I see the behavior of the world more clearly, allowing my anger to be more precise. Yet, although I still like to argue and engag
e in intellectual combat, the anger is cooler and I’m not as critical as I used to be.
It is twilight. I have walked around to the west side of my house. I keep a chair there so I can watch the sun go down. Tonight the air is being softly pushed about by a flock of noisy sparrows. I hold down the pages on my lap, tempted to let them be lifted by the wind. What am I waiting for?
THE END
SOURCES
New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, Paris, 1937–
1939.
P. Berthelot, Graphologie, in La Grande encyclopédie, 2nd ed. (Paris: 1886–1902), vol. 19, p. 220.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before turning to writing, Michele Zackheim was a visual artist whose work was shown in numerous museums and galleries. She is also the author of the nonfiction book Einstein’s Daughter: The Search for Lieserl and the novels Violette’s Embrace and Broken Colors (Europa). She lives in New York City.
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