by Betsy Carter
Art held the apron in both hands like a folded flag. “This is what I expect from people like you. You think you’re too good for this place, but let me tell you something: I gave you a job. I gave you respect. I taught you how to work in America. If you think you wasted your time here, Mr. Schneider, you’ve got another thought coming. And I haven’t even mentioned my letter to the president. Who did you turn to when you were in a pinch? Art Able. Who came through for you? Art Able. I don’t even want to think of what might have happened had the president not responded to my letter. Not a pretty picture at all. So tell me, Mr. Schneider, do you have a new job lined up? Are you going to be a physician at some fancy hospital? Have you suddenly inherited a windfall from one of your relatives in Europe? What do you plan to do next?”
“I cannot say for sure.”
“Well, whatever you do next, you can stay the week and collect your full pay at the end of it.” Art stuck out his hand.
Egon shook it and gave him a strained smile: “Thank you, that is a very kind offer, but I am finished with the grocery business.”
“That’s your decision, but never let it be said that Art Able is anything but a fair and decent businessman.”
“You are a decent businessman indeed. I am grateful for the opportunity you gave me.” He made a slight bow, then went behind the delicatessen counter and retrieved his old sweater.
Outside, Egon spread his arms, breathed in the fresh air, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Thank you,” he whispered. Then he crossed the street to a phone booth and called Catrina at the ASPCA. “I quit my job.”
With all the barking in the background, he couldn’t be sure if she laughed or sighed. “Oh my, when it rains it pours,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Tonight!” he shouted. “We will discuss it tonight.”
Meyer sounded impatient when Egon called him. “Very nice, but now what are you going to do?”
“Maybe I will take Georg’s place at the dry cleaner’s. How can I know, Meyer, I only quit five minutes ago?”
“Here’s what you must do right now,” said Meyer. “Go home and sit quietly. Think about what you’d really like to do, and what you must do to achieve that. And for God’s sake, please don’t call me with any more startling news.”
Egon took Meyer’s advice. At home, he rummaged around his desk. He pulled out his mother’s drawings, his parents’ books. He walked around the apartment. He studied his reflection in the bathroom cabinet mirror. His hair was thick but grayer than he remembered. His father’s face stared back at him. He opened the cabinet door. The old bottle of Kreml. He rubbed some in his hands and smoothed back his hair, put on cologne, and brushed his teeth. His blue eyes shone; maybe they were still the kind that women could fall into. “I will be all right,” he said to the man in the mirror.
Whether out of pity, kindness, or necessity, the old man who managed the ASPCA gave Egon a temporary job. Catrina would overhear him talking to the dogs in the small voice his father had always used with animals. “Eat up now, sweet boy. You give me your paw and we shake our hands.”
“You miss this, don’t you?” she asked him one day.
“I miss Johnny.”
But he did miss them: the brave dogs, the wounded rabbits, the shy turtles. He had shopped around Manhattan for a veterinary school, but the closest one was ninety-six miles away in Pennsylvania. It was Meyer who noticed an ad for a small college in Staten Island that was opening a department for veterinary medicine.
The late October wind spun the first chill of winter as Egon and Catrina boarded the Staten Island ferry. Egon carried his old briefcase filled with his diploma, a record of his grades from the university, and—for good luck—his Doktor Egon Schneider brass plaque. They sat inside on benches made out of slats of wood. Egon stared straight ahead at the flat gray water and drummed his fingers against Catrina’s thigh as if he were keeping rhythm to a private song.
She watched his hand. “Are you nervous?”
He stopped drumming and looked at her as if he’d just remembered she was there. “Am I nervous?” he repeated.
“Yes, you seem a bit twitchy.”
He put his hands on Catrina’s shoulders. “I have not been on a boat since I came to this country. Now I am crossing the water with the woman who will be my wife, hoping to enroll in a school where I wish to learn my new occupation, and some American woman whom I have never met will determine whether this is possible. Nervous? Is that what you call it when you have butterflies in the stomach?”
Catrina clapped her hands over his. “You’ll be fine. You know how it is with Americans: First, they’re suspicious, then they get to know you and they come around. You’ll charm whoever it is, you’ll see, you and those big blue eyes of yours.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Catrina laughed. “Egon Schneider, did you just wink at me?”
The school, such as it was, was two blocks from the ferry and housed in an old multicolored brick building with two gargoyles on either side. Above the arched doorway were carved the words PUBLIC BATH CITY OF NEW YORK. Egon checked the address he’d written down against the number on the building to make sure they were in the right place.
A piece of paper was tacked onto the door with the handwritten words Staten Island University. Egon and Catrina both looked puzzled.
“Meyer said it was new; he did not say I would be going to school in a public bathroom,” said Egon.
Catrina laughed. “Before people had plumbing in their apartments, they would take their baths in public places like this.”
“So, at least we know it will be clean,” he said, trying to sound more lighthearted than he felt.
The heavy wooden door creaked as he pushed it open. Inside, the walls were bare and stripped down to their original stone. There were no pictures or signs. The only light streamed in from the outside and left billowy shadows on the inlaid marble floor. There was a long corridor of closed doors but no people. Egon walked up and down calling, “Hello, hello?” until a stout woman with braids pinned around her head like a halo emerged.
“Ah, you must be Mr. Schneider,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Mrs. Flint.” Her grip was firm and she smelled of peppermint Chiclets.
After introductions, Mrs. Flint led Egon and Catrina to her office. They sat in rusting chairs in a small room that still bore the faint odor of bleach. Mrs. Flint must have noticed how Catrina’s eyes roamed the empty space. “It’s not much to see yet,” she said, “but we have ample room, and big plans. My father—my late father—” She swallowed hard before she continued. “He endowed the veterinary medicine department.” She pointed out the window. “Our farm was across the way. We had sheep and cows and horses, and though his methods were crude and unsophisticated, my father learned to care for them himself. But he believed that animals deserved to be taken seriously and treated professionally. When they started to talk about this college nine years ago, he said he’d do everything he could to make sure that animal medicine would become part of our college curriculum. And he did. It’s my job to make sure it’s a success.”
Egon was moved by the way the woman spoke about her father. “I too had parents who were interested in animals,” he said. “My father wrote a book about birds, and my mother illustrated it. They taught me how to treat animals and how to understand them. They wanted me to follow in their footsteps, but I became an ophthalmologist instead. Since I came to America, I find it is the animals that draw my attention. Catrina and I, we have worked with them together.”
Catrina nodded and shot Egon a look that seemed a warning. He took it to mean that if he told Mrs. Flint too much about their experience in Washington Heights and his run-in with the INS, it might jeopardize his chances of going to this school. He stopped talking and began to fidget in his briefcase. As he pulled out his diploma and his immigration papers, the brass plaque fell to the floor. Catrina picked it up and showed Mrs. Flint. “This was on his office door. He was a f
amous eye doctor in Frankfurt.”
Mrs. Flint ran her fingers over the plaque. “So shiny after all these years. We don’t have many doctors here,” she said. “Mostly it’s neighborhood kids who can’t afford to go to state schools. You’ll have more medical experience than some of our teachers. I’d like to introduce you to Dean Okrent, if he’s around. Let me go look.”
After she left the room, Catrina whispered, “How are your butterflies now?”
“They are circling.”
Privately, Egon worried about whether he would be able to follow the teachers’ English. How could he keep up with young people? What if he was too old to learn new medicine? Only when he realized that he’d voiced all these questions to himself in English did he understand that these were old anxieties, that he had already answered them.
Mrs. Flint returned with Egon’s papers in hand. A man so flimsy, he could have been made of straw, stood behind her. “Dean Okrent, this is Egon Schneider.”
The two men shook hands. “A pleasure to meet you,” said the dean. “Welcome to our little school. You can start auditing in November and begin the new semester in January. All things considered, if your grades are adequate, we think you’ll be able to complete our four-year program in two years.”
Catrina smiled. “His grades will be adequate, I can assure you.”
Dean Okrent smiled at her as Mrs. Flint turned to Egon and said, “In our own way, we follow in their footsteps, don’t we?”
On the ferry ride back, Catrina and Egon sat outside, the cold air pricking their skin. They held hands as they sailed by the Statue of Liberty. Neither spoke, but Egon kept shaking his head.
“What is it?” Catrina finally asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “I was thinking about the Schnabels. How I will use their money to help pay for my tuition. How they will have a toehold in America. I wonder what they would think of that?”
31.
The man in front of the classroom speaks so quickly that his words roll over one another. He is holding a rubber-tipped pointer to an illustration of a horse’s eye. “This is unlike any other,” he says.
The teacher hurries along: “Horses have the largest eyes of all land mammals. Because their eyes are on the sides of their heads, they can see their surroundings on both sides and detect even the slightest motion. That’s why wind makes them jumpy.”
Egon is curled into his desk. The old wooden flip-top is ink-stained and carved up with initials. On the desktop he has laid out a new composition notebook and a row of six freshly sharpened pencils. This is his first day of class, and he has purposely chosen a seat in the back of the room so as not to call attention to himself. The teacher is probably younger than he is by ten years, and the students by twenty. Egon is wearing a suit and tie, as was proper when he was in medical school. Here, the dress is more casual: The men wear slacks and sport shirts without ties, and the one woman—a girl, really—wears brown-and-white saddle shoes and a skirt and sweater.
The room is cold, but the air smells fresh. Small black and white tiles in hexagon patterns cover the floor. They must be left over from the baths, thinks Egon, and he can imagine the sound of wet bare feet slapping against them. In this room, illustrations are taped onto the walls: the anatomy of a cow, a goat, a horse. The animals are all the same salmon color, but the details are distinct: the gullet of the horse; the sternum of the goat, the rear flank of the cow. Only one drawing is in black and white: a bald eagle in flight. Egon is drawn to the precision of its tail wings and layered feathers neatly stacked up against one another like dominoes about to tumble.
His heart shifts.
The teacher is continuing: “They see out of one eye at a time. Monocular vision. When a horse sees movement using monocular vision, he will usually turn his head to see with both eyes. When they look with both eyes, they can only see directly down to their noses and not straight ahead. That is binocular vision. They can’t use binocular and monocular vision at the same time.”
Egon doesn’t need to write down this piece of information; it will stick in his brain like all the facts he learned about the human eye in Berlin. But the other students are earnestly scribbling in their notebooks. He doesn’t want to appear arrogant, so he scratches down a few words: Horse eyes. Binocular. Monocular.
The teacher, who has been facing the horse illustration, suddenly whirls around and says, “Can anyone tell me which animal is best at color detection?”
Egon sits up straight. No one has raised a hand, and he considers whether it is wise to do so on his first day. He waits a moment to see if anyone else will answer. When no one does, he takes a deep breath and shoots his hand into the air.
The teacher points to him, and everyone turns in his direction.
“This would have to be birds. They can see many colors,” says Egon, horribly aware that he has said “Zis would have to be birds.”
He remembers his early days at Art’s, when people complained about his English and told him to go back to where he came from. He grimaces at the memory of that first Thanksgiving at Catrina’s when her awful neighbor Mr. Delaney cupped his ear and asked Egon to repeat what he’d said after he’d wished everyone a “Happy Sanksgiving.”
The teacher asks, “Why is that?”
“The extra number of cones in birds’ eyes makes them exceptionally sensitive to color,” says Egon.
No one laughs. No one asks him to repeat what he said. The students return to their notebooks.
“Excellent,” says the professor. “And, you sir, what is your name?”
“My name is Egon Schneider.”
So our story begins.
—Meyer Leavitt, from his book In the Free Country, published December 1946
Acknowledgments
Like the characters in it, this book took a long journey before finding safe harbor and graceful direction at Grand Central Publishing. I will always be indebted to Deb Futter for getting me there and to Millicent Bennett for her kindness and good judgment in steering the course. Victoria Skurnick, intrepid friend and agent, I will forever owe you.
I am blessed with fellow travelers who also happen to be great readers: Kathy Robbins, Rachelle Bergstein, and Barbara Jones. It’s rare to have good friends with great taste and the patience to read and advise, but Becky Okrent, Oliver Kramer, Linda Eisenberg, Pam Friedman, Ellen Schrier, and Scoop Wasserstein all answered the call.
My writing and reading groups inspire and encourage me: Alexandra Horowitz, Elizabeth Kadetsky, Sally Koslow, Aryn Kyle, Jennifer Vanderbes, Meakin Armstrong, Lorrie Bodger, Bill Glass, Andrey Henkin, Nancy Novick, and Karen Wunsch.
Miriam Brumer, my sister, grew up in the world of Washington Heights and helped me fully realize the places and people in this novel.
The exuberant team at Grand Central—Michael Pietsch, Ben Sevier, Brian McLendon, Matthew Ballast, and Tracy Dowd—made all the rest possible. With her keen eye and precise vision, copy editor Laura Cherkas ensured that dates, places, and commas ended up where they were meant to be. Art director Anne Twomey brought time and place into reality with her gorgeous cover. I am lucky to have publicist Andy Dodds in my corner, and I am grateful to Siri Silleck and Jessie Pierce for their competence and cheerfulness in making this all come together.
Lisa Grunwald writes like a dream and edits like one, too. Thank you, dear friend, for your advice, your ear, and your generous spirit. This book would have never landed without you.
The New York Society Library and its warm staff provided a sanctuary where I could write and research. I am particularly grateful to head librarian Carolyn Waters, who uncomplainingly guided me to answers about everything from bunnies and table linens to Oscar Levant and pigeons.
And always, my husband, Gary Hoenig. Thank you for inhabiting this parallel universe with me. The characters in this novel and I would not have survived without your care, your wisdom, and your unrelenting love.
About the Author
Betsy
Carter is the author of the novels Swim to Me, The Orange Blossom Special, and The Puzzle King, as well as her bestselling memoir Nothing to Fall Back On. She was the founding editor of New York Woman magazine and has worked at many other magazines, including Newsweek; Harper’s Bazaar; and Esquire. She lives in New York City and is the daughter of immigrants.
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