The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  Rudi guffawed. “You’ve come a long way since your days as a polite English schoolboy. You must stay a while, Sinclair. I have missed your honesty.”

  There was a long moment where I equivocated. Was I giving Sofia away? Probably. Could he be trusted? Probably not. Where there is no choice, there is no fear. Hat in hand, I leaned forward in my seat. “I need a favor,” I said.

  Of course I did. He pressed his fingers together, leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know what I can do,” he murmured.

  “I need to get someone out.”

  He nodded absently, rubbing a place over his eye. I had forgotten how marked his skin was, from a childhood disease, or an adolescent bout with acne, I never found out. “Who is it?” he asked with some interest.

  I explained, keeping it brief. Old girlfriend from before I was, ahem, changed. I thought she had married and gone off to America. Turned out she hadn’t.

  “Jewish, I presume,” he added languidly. “Otherwise you would not be here.”

  “Yes.” I said. “And another thing. There’s a child.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Yours?”

  Should have been mine. “No,” I said.

  “About the Jews, Hitler is intractable.” With one swallow, he finished his schnapps. Then he leaned forward, picked up the phone, said something in German, waited. A tall, capable-looking SS man knocked lightly, entered. Rudi gestured him towards the inner door. From inside the other room, I heard his voice, abrupt, direct, and then the door opened again. A pretty woman emerged, olive-skinned, dark-haired. She was trailed by a younger version of herself, eleven or twelve, with just the beginnings of hips, breasts. The girl turned on me a helpless stare, eyes large and liquid and frightened, like a fawn. Rudi smiled encouragingly. They were guided into the hallway, where the guard quietly shut the door behind them.

  “Mother and daughter,” he explained, with an upward flick of the eyebrows, a sound of satisfaction. He rummaged through some papers on the desk, extracted a cigarette from a gold case.

  “What is her name?” he asked.

  “Sofia,” I said. “Sofia Wizotsky.”

  “Like the tea?”

  “The family business.”

  “Ah.” He took a measured drag on the cigarette. “And where are they now, the Wizotskys?”

  “She’s the only one left.”

  Rudi turned out the desk lamp, moved fluidly to the window, pushed the blackout curtain to one side. Stars winked overhead in a moonless sky. The tip of his cigarette glowed red in the dark.

  “I have money,” I said. “Swiss francs, American dollars. Whatever it takes.” I took a chance now, bared my soul. “I love her, Rudi. The boy, too. More than my own life. I was out trying to forget her the night Anastasia found me. She’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  This seemed to stir him. He turned towards me; only one side of his pocked face was visible in the dim light. “You love her, this Jewish woman?” he said.

  “With all my heart.” I said fervently.

  A sharp report cut through my words, coming from the direction of the courtyard. A gunshot. Then another. The sound rang off the hard stone surfaces of the surrounding buildings.

  He took a deep draw on his cigarette, let smoke drift slowly out of his mouth. “Because if you care for her,” he said, staring down at the courtyard. “Really care for her; go back to her. And kill her yourself.”

  There were loud bumps and grinds, fitful starts and stops, as we crept through towns invisible in the dark. At various times, I woke as we were shunted right or left, wheels and couplings whining with the effort, to let other, more urgent transports pass. Once, I stared blearily at a train lurching slowly westward to find human eyes peering back at me from between the wooden slats of a cattle car.

  By the time I arrived in Wlodawa, it was late in the afternoon. It had snowed. Ice covered the ground, slowing me down. It was bitterly cold. Head down into the wind, I didn’t notice at first that something was wrong. It wasn’t until I reached her corner that I realized it was too quiet.

  The sounds of dogs barking, pots and pans rattling on the hob. The shouts of children playing, mothers raising their voices, husbands arguing with wives. The syncopation of wagon wheels clattering over cobblestones, the steady tread of footsteps on pavement. The background noises that accompany everyday life.

  There weren’t any.

  Panic rose into the back of my throat like acid. Now I broke into a run, my footsteps deafening in the unnatural silence.

  Wishniak Street was dark, deserted. Doors yawed open on their hinges, outlines of cold chimneys pierced the sky. Black and lightless windows accused me from every building. The only sound was the sobbing of the wind, periodically joined by a loose shutter banging disconsolately against the side of a building.

  It looked as if I had just missed some kind of demented jumble sale. Dress shirts and dishes were strewn haphazardly along the pavement, keeping company with someone’s embossed leather wedding album and a cast iron frying pan. A baby doll in a pink dress lay near my shoe.

  I picked my way through ghostly piles of abandoned belongings. A Victrola sat on a stoop, alongside a stack of fragile lacquer records. A bundle of letters tied with a satin ribbon rested on top of a child’s English grammar book. There were opera hats and feather quilts and hairbrushes and stamp collections and teapots. Silver candlesticks lay toppled on their sides like so many defeated kings on a chessboard. A crinoline petticoat lent a certain air of gaiety. A grandfather clock was laid out across a doorway like a coffin.

  Halfway down the block, I stopped. The corpse of a young man was sprawled in the snow on the steps to her building, the cap fallen off his head. Sofia’s drawings lay scattered in the gutter. As I stood there, the wind stiffened and picked up, blowing them around in a lazy spiral.

  One thing was clear. They had left in a hurry.

  Drawers were pulled open and dumped out, discarded clothes were heaped in drifts on the bed. Drawings and photographs papered the floor; stern bearded ancestors mingled with charcoal sketches of children begging for bread.

  Near the furnace, I found Isaiah’s toy car. I picked it up, warming it in my hands. I felt like I was in a dream, the one I used to have at school, where I am chased through my father’s townhouse by a man without a face. But it was cold in the apartment. No dream could be that cold.

  I made myself walk slowly to the back of her rooms, to the kitchen. The oriental carpet was still in place, the trapdoor was closed. I knocked softly.

  “Sofia,” I whispered into the blackness. “Sofia, my love. I should have been here, I know. But I’m back. I’m home. You can come out now.”

  I knew they were gone. Had they been there, I would have felt their presence long before I saw them. But the human heart has an infinite capacity for hope. I eased the trapdoor open, then, half-expecting to see their white faces looking up at me in the dark. A cold draft rushed up to caress my face. It was empty.

  Now I bolted for the train station. Behind the ticket counter was a prim little man with a mustache that curled up at the ends, wearing a coat with a fur collar and a high peaked cap.

  “Where’s the train?” I asked him. I tried French, German, English. He lifted his shoulders, shook his head.

  “Train,” I said impatiently. “Choo, choo.”

  His blue eyes lit up with understanding. He nodded, pointed me towards the schedule board.

  My temper flared. I wanted to lean into his booth, grab him by his skinny neck and shake him till he spoke English. Instead, I pointed to the mountain of suitcases left behind on the plaza.

  “That train. Where did it go?”

  He stared into my eyes, finally comprehending the nature of my question. He tilted his head, as if he couldn’t believe what an idiot I was. He made a slashing motion across his neck with his thumb, a kkkhhhhhht noise deep in his throat. Then he reached up over his head, and with a bang, rolled down the metal shutter in front of his booth.

  I k
now I’ve omitted a certain fact overshadowing the arc of this story, the one fact you already know. That Sofia and Isaiah were on a train that would only unlock its doors when it had reached the fiery gates of hell. That they would be freed only to join the long lines of men, women and children shifting on their feet, patiently waiting their turns to enter the gas chambers, to climb into the sky as a pillar of smoke.

  For decades afterwards, I punished myself with images of Sofia standing naked in the snow, shivering, clutching a chunk of cement that a guard had told her was soap, in the worst winter Poland has ever known. But as I stared at the empty train tracks and thought of the stationmaster making the schoolyard slash across his throat, I had no idea what he was talking about.

  I could not have conjured up the kind of man who would be willing to design an oven that would be economically fueled by the fat of the men, women and children it was burning. I would not have believed that these same engineers would find other men willing to carry out their monstrous plans. I, too, would have dismissed it as propaganda, that one kind of human being could industriously collect and kill six million of another kind of human being. Somewhere along the line, there would have to be someone who said no.

  Forgive me, Sofia. Forgive me, Isaiah. I did not know.

  After the war, I returned to Paris, to my flat in the Rue Fleurus. I found the painting Sofia had made of us in 1939, buried in the maid’s room behind the kitchen. Holding it with as much care as I would have held her body, I unwrapped it, watching her come slowly to life.

  My Sofia. Face shaped like a heart, her lips a smudge of scarlet, eyebrows two up-and-down slashes of bluish black, skin the translucent white of skim milk. Me, arching over her, protecting her forever.

  When the end came, was it quick? Was it a bullet or the gas? Was she frightened? Did she suffer? Did she think of me, and wonder where I was? Could she ever forgive me? I ran my fingers over the strokes and crevices her brush had left in the paint, kissed her painted lips. There was a painful ache where the bullets had lodged in my heart.

  My sketchbook was still there, a reminder of someone I used to be, sitting on a side table next to the armchair. Under the seat, I saw the corner of a sheet of drawing paper.

  I leaned over, slid it out. One drawing, one final gift from the artist Sofia Wizotsky, who, for a short while in 1939, lived and worked in Paris. Somehow, it had found refuge under my armchair as I threw the others on the fire. You know the one. It hangs in my foyer, over the fireplace.

  A Madonna and Child, in pen and ink, after Raphael. I blew off the accumulated dust, smoothed out the creases. As I gazed upon it, the loving mother, the capering child, visions of Sofia cradling a laughing Isaiah came crowding into my memory.

  My hands began to shake. I fell to my knees as tears came spattering down through my fingers.

  I don’t know how long I wept. When I could, I put her artworks in a blanket, wound it gently around them as if it were a shroud.

  Sofia Wizotsky was an artist of rare talent and heart. She was also courageous, loving and compassionate. When she entered a room, the air stirred around her, whether that room was a café in Paris or a hovel in Poland. People seemed wittier, the occasion had more weight. You wanted to make her smile. You wanted to change the world.

  She was my ray of light, my compass rose, my morning star. I had been mistaken; she was my angel of healing, not the other way around. With her, I was climbing the rungs of a ladder back to humanity. When they took her away, the last shreds of my soul went with her.

  Talent and heart. That was Sofia Wizotsky. That is your legacy.

  I thought you should know.

  He turned his head away from her, brushing the back of his hand across his eyes. He was at the window, hands in his pockets, gazing over the rooftops of the city. The clock said six a.m. Dawn. Soon he would have to draw the curtains.

  He took a chance, glanced her way. He couldn’t see her face, it was buried in her hands. All that was visible was the tumble of bright hair cascading onto her knees.

  “I’ll understand if you want to leave,” he said to the window.

  She straightened up, swung her legs off of the couch. Getting to her feet, she came up behind him, silent as a ghost, bare feet padding across the oriental carpet.

  He felt her arms slide around his waist, her warm cheek against his back. With that, everything flowed out of him, as if a door had opened inside. He was exhausted. He bowed his head, resting it against the cold glass of the windowpane.

  “How can you,” he said wearily. “After everything you’ve just heard. How can you.”

  She took his hand, led him upstairs. She unbuttoned his shirt and slid it down his arms, undressing him as if he were a child. She made him sit, pushing his shoulders down onto the pillow, then lifted his legs onto the bed and took his shoes off one by one. He let his eyes close then, his features lined with fatigue, drained of color in the gray light of early morning.

  Then she withdrew. His eyes fluttered open to see her walking away. But she was only closing the drapes; they came together with a silky swish. Then she folded back the covers and got into bed, fitting herself around him, protecting him with her small, warm body for what was left of the night.

  “Sleep, Angel of Healing,” he heard her murmur as he drifted off. “You’ve been so brave for so long. Go to sleep.”

  Part Three

  1

  Tessa rode up the elevator with a model who had a smooth, blank face and a ripple of straight hair the color of autumn wheat. At the twenty-second floor, the doors schussed noiselessly open, and they both got out. A tall thin girl in a black turtleneck came out to retrieve the model, while a receptionist with a helmet of blond hair whispered at Tessa to wait on the couch.

  She gazed out of the picture window in the undistinguished reception area. An orange sun was setting in a fiery ball over the city. She had nothing suitable to wear for an interview at the world’s premiere women’s magazine; all her clothes were, to varying degrees, speckled with paint. In the end, she’d had to settle for the least soiled of her sweaters and jeans. Trying not to look as nervous as she felt, she picked up the February issue of Anastasia sitting on the Noguchi coffee table and flipped through it. The perfume ads made her sneeze.

  “Anastasia will see you now,” snapped a severe little woman with a British accent. Tessa followed obediently behind her as she wheeled around and scurried up the bright white hallway.

  Her first impression was that she had landed on a planet populated only by women. Short women, tall women, medium height women, all on the thin side, all with straight hair, all in a tightly regulated uniform of black skirt, black tights, black flats.

  A long-haired girl hurried down the hallway in the opposite direction, carrying an armful of layouts, colorful collages of xeroxed photographs and headlines. Another lingered outside an office, waiting till someone within finished a phone call. A third girl, thinner than the rest, trotted alongside a rolling rack of Easter-egg-colored clothing swinging on hangers. But the majority of the populace was parked behind low-walled cubicles, staring unblinkingly into monitors, assistants to other, more senior editors occupying the offices behind them. And everywhere, the insistent chime of phones ringing, ringing, ringing.

  They reached the end of the floor. “You can go right in, she’s expecting you,” said the severe little woman, disapprovingly indicating the door with her chin, already deeply absorbed in some papers on her desk.

  Tessa took a deep breath, knocked lightly on the plain wooden door marked Anastasia deCroix, Editor in Chief. The door swung slowly open.

  Anastasia was seated behind a massive desk in the corner of the room, angled so it would face the entry. In startling contrast to the sea of black outside her office door, she wore a fitted wool suit of cinnabar red shot through at wide intervals with thin yellow lines of windowpane plaid. Mutton-chop sleeves came down almost to her knuckles; a ruffed collar stood at attention around her white neck, rising from a pl
unging décolletage. The short peplum jacket clasped her waist like a pair of hands.

  Tessa couldn’t stop looking at her. The perfect skin, unlined, white as milk. Enormous dark eyes, prominent and round, their intelligence hooded behind drowsy eyelids. Her gleaming hair, styled to seem carelessly chic. Full lips, as red as blood, even without lipstick. The trademark dark glasses had been put aside for the time being, resting on a pile of manuscripts.

  She was on the phone. She motioned with one long arm for Tessa to sit, indicating one of the silky red chairs in front of her desk. Tessa glanced around the office. There was a brushed aluminum conference table scattered with layouts, many pots of cattleya orchids. Heavily shuttered windows, making the room dark and cocoon-like. A door marked Private. Meanwhile, Anastasia chattered on in rapid French, switching midsentence to German. She finished with a cheerful flourish of Italian, and hung up the phone.

  “Hello, my darling,” Anastasia said. In her voice remained a trace of a French accent. “So nice to see you again. Between what I’ve heard from our friend Lucian, and from our dear Raphael, I feel like I know you.”

  Tessa tried a smile. Anastasia’s eyes glowed like the caldera inside a volcano.

  “What do you hear from our honeymooners? Are you in touch?” Tessa recoiled as from a blow. “No? But why not? Don’t you want to know how it all turns out?” She leaned forward, smiled her rapacious smile. The fire in her eyes banked to a crimson red. “I find that old lovers make the best of friends.”

  At a loss for words, Tessa didn’t answer.

  “So. How is our boy? He is so enraptured with you, he has no time for old friends. Et, voila. Down to business. You are looking for a job. We have a temporary opening in the art department. One of our designers is taking a computer class. We need someone to cover for her in the late afternoons for the next eight weeks. It takes someone with good organizational skills. Have you ever worked at a magazine?”

  Tessa shook her head no.