Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

  “Merano is in the north of Italy, you know, in Tirol; once it was part of Austria. There were plenty of Nazi sympathizers among the Tirolers, who longed for reunification. When Franco was courting Hitler, Merano was the first Italian town to expel its Jews. So it had its poisoned past, this Eden. But with defeat, the rats had to crawl back into their rat holes. I saw the town with fresh eyes and so did your father. All was washed clean by the sun, the mountain air, the new era. We walked freely through villages where before we would have been terrified of betrayal. We dined in open-air tavernas, beneath arbours. Julius would spend his last lira on a meal of pasta and wine. He had recovered from an illness and was like a man born anew. He was witty, gallant, charming, passionate. Yes, passionate. The war was over. We were alive. For me, those years were the best. I would have found a way to make a new home for us in Italy, as my brothers did, but Julius wanted to leave Europe. And he had a falling out with my brothers— it’s not important what about. A man’s pride is so delicate. He wasn’t quick to anger, but he could hold a grudge forever. We came here. The beginning was hard. We struggled, but we succeeded. It seems to me now the better our success, the more he became cautious, closed within himself. All his meshugas developed in this country where he believed we could have a fresh start. As if he was afraid to lose everything again.”

  Lisa sucks in a deep breath. Toni fiddles with the salt cellar, twisting and untwisting the cap, scattering the white grains, as she absorbs her mother’s words with growing unease. Her mother’s disappointments were always apparent, but never so clearly spelled out. She had had something grand once and lost it. He was witty, gallant, charming, and passionate, the man who took himself away. The man Toni never knew. This isn’t fair. You henpecked him, you pushed him into his shell.

  “He wasn’t always gloomy,” she says instead.

  “Ach, ya. We had our moments,” her mother sighs. “Funny thing is, he didn’t mind reminiscing about our nice times in Italy with me. As long as it remained there.” Her mother stretches her arm, palm outwards, to indicate a distance.

  “As long we did not discuss a real trip to the real place. The same with Vienna. But he could talk about places and people we once had known. He remembered my home town of Karlsbad very well. Now I don’t even have that, someone with whom to share those memories. Ach, never mind. One has to look forward. Forward.”

  She fixes Toni with a piercing gaze. Her clenched fist raps the table, making the teacups rattle.

  Her mother is thankful to hear that Toni doesn’t want to go back to Israel, that she doesn’t care about missing a year of university. A flurry of emotions passes over Lisa’s face: guilt and worry, along with relief, and then a dull, unfocused bewilderment. Toni vows she’ll get a job and apply to McGill next year. Avoiding specifics, she lets it be understood she has her own reasons for staying put. She expects the questions: Where were you those two weeks in August? The landlady on Bialik Street had no idea. What was going on? Before the questions can be asked, she volunteers a vague story about a camping trip in the Sinai. Her mother swallows it, too convulsed with grief to probe. Getting away with her sins is a relief, but awful, too. A poisonous snake of a story has gnawed at her mind since the day she heard the news in Jerusalem. Papa was sick with worry about his daughter gone missing, and that is why his heart failed. The fact that her mother’s frantic calls to Mrs Katz on Bialik Street came after his heart attack doesn’t still the accusations within. He must have known, or suspected, or feared. He never wanted her to go to Israel in the first place.

  “Mama,” she blurts out in her anguish. “It’s my fault.”

  She begins a confession—or at least tries to—about the truth of her disappearance, how bad she was, how terrible she feels, and how she wishes she could apologize to him, but her mother cuts her off.

  “You are not to blame. Nonsense. Put that out of your mind at once. Of course he worried with you so far away. So did I. When did we not worry? That has nothing to do with what happened. He had a … what did you call it? A cardiac infraction.”

  “A myocardial infarction.”

  “That’s it! You see?”

  Lisa pounces on the scientific name as if it were some kind of answer and absolution.

  “He had a bad heart, and we didn’t know it. The doctor should have known, but then your father was not so good about going to the doctor. Regrets do no good. One has to look forward.”

  Then her mother’s flare of spirit fades and she slumps back on the bench, staring at her cup of tea, confounded by the sight of the whitish brew. In her distress, she added milk. She never takes milk in her tea.

  The door to her father’s study stays shut. Her mother has taken out the papers she needs and works at the kitchen table on the bits and pieces of wrapping up a life. Forms. Bills. Phone calls. In a furious swoop, she had ransacked drawers and closets, packed up his clothes for the Hadassah bazaar and left the bags in a row by the wall on his side of the bed. And there they remain. As if she’s forgotten the next step. She sleeps on the living room couch (when she sleeps). The bedroom has become dangerous, a minefield of memory. The study is worse. She can’t face the room that contained so much of him. Then, one morning she tells Toni in a tone of flat finality, “Take a look through your father’s books and keep whatever you like. I’m selling the rest. I’ll get a dealer in for an evaluation.”

  Toni is shocked. It seems a sacrilege to even contemplate dislodging the books he so painstakingly collected over the years. Every few weeks, a package would arrive from far away. He would carry the parcel to his study, a slight bounce in his otherwise solid step and open it carefully. He would lift the book to the light, examine its pages, and record something on an index card. Then came the ritual of placing the volume on the shelf according to some system of his own. The rows of books always stood silently at attention. They were his children and his sanctuary. And now, her mother wants to just tear that all apart?

  As if reading Toni’s thoughts Lisa says, “He put nothing in his will about the books. I was surprised. He made every other kind of provision. I don’t want them, and I don’t want to keep them as a museum.”

  Bitterness, long-harboured resentment, sours her voice.

  When Toni enters the study, she’s greeted by the room as her father left it, ordered and ordinary. The big oak desk, scratched and dented and familiar as her father himself, stands by the window. On it are objects that speak of a lifetime of methodical work: the big ink-stained blotter that covers most of the desk’s surface, the goose-neck lamp, pens and sharpened pencils in the pencil tray, his glasses case, his watch. The cushion on the swivel chair bears the imprint of its years of service. The workspace is embraced on two sides by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. Nothing creates such an effective sound barrier as books, her father used to say.

  Where to start? She feels like a marauder come to pillage. As she leafs through antique books by some of his favourite German authors, she finds notes on which her father jotted down where he found the volume, when, how much he paid. The sight of his handwriting—the small, neat, closely spaced letters—arouses a sudden craving.

  She rummages through his desk drawers, through the stationery, ledgers, files, index cards of addresses, boxes of cheque stubs, to-do lists. She’s not sure what she’s looking for exactly. Something personal, something beyond the dry, factual notes.

  Interspersed among his businesslike items she finds strange hoardings: cellophane wrapped crackers, Melba Toast and cookies, packets of sugar, salt, ketchup, vinegar, coffee whitener. The kinds of things provided free of charge at lunch counters. In a bottom drawer she finds an unopened carton of Camel cigarettes. But her father never smoked, at least not that she knew. She opens a pack. They are stale. She lights up and nearly faints—she hadn’t realized how stale. The cigarettes must have lain in the drawer for years. What sort of catastrophe did he think to fend off with this odd assortment of provisions?

  A discovery in another drawer—le
tters she sent from Israel—sears her with guilt. Such a small bundle, and filled with such chatty nothings. On the top is the postcard of the Dead Sea Scrolls with belated greetings for his sixty-first birthday. She continues to poke around, but finds nothing more of interest. What she wants, she realizes at last, is something addressed to her. A letter in which he explains himself. She recalls something the funny man—Mr Abbott, the bookseller—at the shiva said about her father: “He had his sensitivities.” A complete stranger seems to know her father better than she does. A fury surges inside. Her mother is right. Sell the books, truck everything out, erase all traces of the father who wasn’t really here anyway. She slams the drawers shut.

  She is about to storm from the room when she notices something tucked into the corner pocket of the large blotter. She snatches it up, then almost wishes she hadn’t. It’s an old snapshot, cracked and faded and vaguely familiar. The photo shows a young girl of about eight in a lacy white dress and white stockings. Her hands are clutched in front of her stomach, as if she’s just been told to stop fidgeting and is doing her best, but the results aren’t entirely successful. Her hair is parted to the side, creating a severe, boxy look, the fashion of the time, and topped with a floppy white bow. On the girl’s face is a guarded, brooding expression. Toni recognizes Papa’s younger sister, Ida, the one who, along with her parents, was among the first to be taken away when deportations from Vienna began.

  Something was terribly wrong with Ida, Toni remembers. Her mother once said that her father grieved for his little sister more than for anyone else. He grieved for the sufferings he witnessed throughout her brief life and for the agonies of her end. These are the facts Toni grew up with and that always seemed both unremarkable and filled with a deep, mysterious horror. Toni’s childish questions drew reproachful adult silence, and eventually her curiosity about Ida became dulled. She accepted that here was a riddle, one of many, without an answer. Looking now at the photograph, her heart sinks because she realizes that this brooding Ida holds a family secret. Something wrong with her. Something shameful. An inherited defect of some kind. Was this the reason her father would sometimes look at Toni with despairing concern, then avert his eyes? Some days later, she brings the photo to her mother.

  “What was the big deal about Ida?” Toni asks, affecting a casual air. “She wasn’t normal, right?”

  Lisa looks up from a legal document, startled. She peers at Toni over the tops of her glasses.

  “Why was Papa ashamed of her? Don’t pretend he wasn’t. I know he was.”

  Lisa says nothing. She purses her lips, thinking. Then her shoulders twitch in a little shrug as if she’s come to a decision.

  “He was not ashamed. Ashamed is not the right word. He was careful. This wasn’t something to talk about. He didn’t know if the condition would come up again in another generation, or whether the information could be used against us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Whether there might be consequences for you, when you wanted to marry. He lied, you see, on the immigration application, the part that asked for a medical history.”

  “Papa lied? About what? Tell me.” Toni leans forward on the built-in table of the breakfast nook, bracing herself.

  “All right. All right. I’ll tell you, but you must keep this to yourself. Ida was epileptic.”

  Toni stares at her mother, not comprehending.

  “The poor child had fits,” her mother explains.

  “Is that all?”

  “That is enough. Perhaps nowadays there’s better treatment, but in our day such a child couldn’t go to a regular school and had to be watched every moment. It was considered a terrible defect. In the Nazi time, anyone—even pure Aryans—suspected of carrying this condition was sterilized. The procedure was called the Hitlerschnitt. The Hitler cut.”

  “The Nazis were crazy. Everybody knows that. But why the hush-hush afterwards?”

  “Always they ask on forms if there is this or that in your family history. We agreed it was better not to say, just in case they would refuse to let us into Canada. And God forbid someone should find out now and take the citizenship away.”

  “Mama! That’s so medieval. Epilepsy is just a common illness. You make it sound like possession by the devil.”

  “Of course, an illness, an inherited illness,” her mother sniffs. “It was hard enough to get into this country. You have no understanding.”

  “But no one could take our citizenship away because of something like that. This is Canada, 1968. We’re not in Nazi Germany.”

  “Maybe not,” her mother concedes. “But prejudices still exist. It is better to be on the safe side and—”

  “And keep deep, dark secrets?”

  “No. We don’t make a secret. We simply don’t need to tell this story. One day you will meet a man you want to marry, and if you tell him this, he might change his mind. Don’t give me such a look. Of course it could happen.”

  “But you married Papa! You’re not being rational!”

  “My instincts told me it would be all right to marry your father. Not everyone has such strong instincts. I knew any baby of mine would be normal in every way.”

  Toni sits down on the bench across from her mother, stunned. Ida merely had a condition that today would be controlled with medication. What would her mother think if she could see into the state of her daughter’s heart? Toni pushes the question away. Back into the dungeon of banished thoughts it goes.

  chapter 22

  Only the front end of Browsers’ Paradise is all set up. Displays of art books catch the eye on bright, white shelves at the front of a long, narrow room. A rocking chair invites the customer to bide a while. The cash register sits on a desk by the door, unattended, save for a fat grey cat with a baleful gaze. Its yellow-eyed stare seems to say, “Come in for Pete’s sake, if you’re coming, but close the door. There’s a draft.” The cat appears to be the sole proprietor until Toni spies Mr Abbott at the back of the room stooped over heaps of books. Stacks of precariously balanced, unopened cartons cover the floor. Teetering piles clog the aisles between shelves. Toni breathes in the smell of dust and fresh paint as she stands in the doorway holding a heavily laden shopping bag.

  “Miss Goldblatt, what a lovely surprise,” he warbles. Today he sports a red beret, worn at a rakish angle, and a loosely knotted ascot in a red-and-cream paisley print. Silky grey hair lifts like wings as he rushes forward to greet her. His several rings glitter.

  “Still a bit of organizing to do.” He waves toward the disordered piles and boxes. “And I’ve got a basement full, too. I go to an estate sale and can’t resist. Whole libraries sold in lots. Much of it dross, but some pearls too. I suppose you wonder where I’ll find room.” He waves again toward the towers of books. “Turnover, my dear, turnover. Once people start to buy, there’ll be space for these orphans.”

  “I don’t suppose you want any more,” Toni says, raising her shopping bags for him to see. Inside she’s stuffed Langenscheidts’ German-English dictionaries, Churchill’s six-volume series, The Second World War, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The books are in fine condition and the series complete.

  “Very nice,” Mr Abbott murmurs as he examines her offerings on the desk with the cash register. The grey cat decamps with offended flicks of its tail. “They were your father’s, weren’t they?” And when she nods, he lifts his hands in protest. “But you should keep them. You might find them handy. You’re a student, aren’t you?”

  “Not right now. I’m looking for a job.”

  “Money worries?” His mild blue eyes seem genuinely concerned.

  “Nah. Just the way it worked out.” She shifts from foot to foot. “We’re selling all his books,” she blurts out.

  “All?” Abbott’s eyelashes flutter. “You don’t mean that, surely?”

  “I do,” she says gruffly. “I don’t read German. My mum doesn’t care for his books. She’s negotiating with Mr Heineman
n on a price.”

  “His Wassermanns? His Georg Hermanns too? Oh dear, that is sad.”

  Abbott puts his hand on the side of his head as if the news has disturbed the delicate workings inside. “I suppose you know the type of authors your father liked to collect?”

  “Not really.”

  “Your father had a soft spot for Jewish German-language authors of a certain vintage who’d lost their audience because of the war or whose careers were nipped in the bud or who’d fallen out of fashion. Authors who no longer fit with the time. Wassermann was one such. He was a giant in his day, according to your father. And now, who reads him, who’s heard of him? Georg Hermann, who died in Auschwitz, is a similar case. Another of your father’s favourites, Hermann Ungar, was a rising light in Czechoslovakia during the brief democratic era. His works are shunned there now. The communists, you see? They don’t care for Jews. Oh, there are many others.”

  Abbott makes an expansive gesture to conjure up the multitude of books by persecuted, obscure, and has-been authors in her father’s library.

  “He collected a few pure nobodies too. Writers who weren’t particularly good—he told me this quite frankly—because he felt sorry for them. Isn’t that sweet?”

  Abbott flashes a smile. Toni experiences a prickle of irritation. Her father loved those who in some way failed. She doesn’t see the glory of this at all.

  “Thing is, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she says harshly. “Doesn’t matter who he liked and why. He’s gone.”

  “Well!” the bookseller says, taken aback. “Well.” He gives his head a small shake as if trying to dispel her cold pronouncement. “The monetary value was never the main point, you see? To your father a book was a soul and each had intrinsic value. He was on a rescue mission of sorts. To rescue those crushed by fate, destined to oblivion, by at least giving them a place in his library. Quite a quixotic fellow, your papa. I must admit I rather fell in love with him.”