Our family spends short, quiet evenings in the root cellar, wrapped in coats and blankets against the cold. Everyone says this is the coldest winter we have had in Franklin in ten years, and I have never been so very cold for such a long time. This is not the chill I have felt walking to church in winter with my toes and fingers tingling as I caught snowflakes on my tongue, and eventually sighing with the comfort of warmth and candlelight when we arrived. At night when the sun has set and we have stopped moving our bodies to work, this cold holds me in a tight grip all over my body, and it will not let go. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I am lying still, it shakes me so I cannot sleep, and when I do finally sleep, it continues to squeeze my arms and legs so hard that they ache the next morning. My throat is sore, and I cannot stop coughing.
During the past few days, it has begun to snow hard, and the wind whistles through any opening. Because our chimneys are broken, we cannot build any fires in the proper rooms, and of course there is no fireplace in the cellar. Papa has used bricks to seal the upstairs fireplaces and chimneys as much as possible. He promises that soon we will have coal fires in the downstairs rooms. For the time being, we spend a short time exchanging messages and eating our supper, and then retreat to makeshift beds until the sun rises.
We cannot go upstairs to the second floor yet because of the broken stairs, though from time to time Papa somehow manages to get up there to throw down clothes and blankets. On one of these occasions, he calls to me from above.
“Tillie, your china doll is safe in her cradle, but I cannot bring her downstairs because she could break so easily in all the confusion. I have something for you, though. Pile the blankets right here below me and stand back.”
I obey, and I am rewarded by the sight of my leather horse Blackie, leaping safely from Papa’s hand onto the blanket. I lift Blackie and hug him, and then make him gallop through the air toward Papa on high above us, to say thank you.
That night as we gather in the cellar, Papa speaks more than he has since the battle.
“Amelia, Paul, Matilda, you all show promise as artists, Amelia with piano and voice, Paul and Matilda with drawing and eventually painting. You know what it is to love beauty and to want to recreate it, to share it. The home we must live in now is not the work of art I created for you and your mother to enjoy. It is not the masterpiece I created to show to potential customers what a master woodworker can do so they would want to hire me. People who visited admired the carvings on our portico and finials and columns. They admired the ornaments carved into the furniture and marveled at how I was able to make such a staircase as ours from planks of wood, to shape its curves so perfectly. They said I was a genius with wood, but, though that pleased me, I had to correct them. I am not a genius, and you do not need to be geniuses. I am a simple man who has worked hard at his craft, and this is what you need to do, as well, no matter what befalls you, if you wish to make art.
“I will need to work harder now, and we will have much less than we did before. My masterpieces are destroyed—the piano, the mantelpieces, and even the staircase. I will not be able to replace any of these for a long time, if ever. My woodshop has been torn down. My lumber and even all our trees have been taken. Now only cheap pine wood is available, and it will not weather well. It is not clear how I will begin again to work my craft to support us, but begin I shall. Be patient, children, and hope.”
Mama nods and takes his hand. Amelia and Paul answer that, yes, they will be patient and hope. I simply nod.
“Enough. We will give thanks and break bread,” he says.
And we do, except that we have no bread. Mama has been feeding us potatoes, carrots, and onions from the root cellar. She boils them over an open fire in the hearth of what used to be the kitchen house. Snowflakes sizzle as they hit the fire, but Paul keeps it going with as many twigs and fragments of dry wood as he can find. Mama had us hide away some of our food when the blue coats first came last spring, but she says now that we must save it for when we become really hungry, so for the present we will just eat vegetables. I am really hungry now, but Mama must know what we should do. When Gus asks for milk, though, even Mama weeps. We have no cow; we have no milk. Yet when Papa prays he gives thanks for soup and candlelight and one another. Mama says as long as we are together, it will be all right. I want to believe her.
*****
DECEMBER 1864
(ABOUT A WEEK LATER)
Franklin, Tennessee
We are still sleeping in the root cellar, and I have started up again in the middle of the night from a bad dream, the same bad dream I have had for weeks, the one I have not been able to talk about with anyone.
The boy with the drum lies on his back, his arms flung out and his fingers curled slightly as if he were asleep, but I know that he is not asleep. He is too still—a child is never so still. He is a little older than I am, about the age of my brother Paul. In the dream, I wonder for a moment whether he is Paul, but then I am sure he is not, and for an instant I am glad. But how can I be glad? His eyes are open, and they are a startling blue. I must look away. I cannot look away. His red hair curls around his brow, and his skin—so fair—is freckled from the sun. He is completely still, and perfect, like the dead robin I once found in the garden—like our babies as they lay on the dining table—too perfect and too beautiful not to be alive. Though he is not my brother, I am as sorry as if he were.
*****
DECEMBER 24, 1864
(ANOTHER WEEK LATER)
Franklin, Tennessee
For the past month, though icy snow and wind have kept us shivering even under our blankets at night, we have been so active during the day that we have kept from freezing. Papa finished patching the big holes during the first week, but the rest of the repair is taking a long time. Since the wounded and dead soldiers were taken away, Mama, Amelia, and Paul have been helping to fix things, too. My job now is to stay in the root cellar with baby Gus, and to keep him safe. This would be fun if he weren’t always so hungry, and if I weren’t. Mama says it is hunger that makes him cry so much, and hunger that makes me impatient with him. That helps me to be kinder to him even though I don’t at all feel like it. If it is just my gnawing stomach tormenting me, and not really Gus, there is nothing I can do to stop it, and I can just try to forget about it.
Nearly every one of the chickens and hogs, not only ours but everyone’s throughout the town and countryside, has been eaten by the Yankee soldiers who are still occupying our town, still threatening, still stealing what is not theirs. Although Mama hid away our winter store of flour, the Yankees have torn down our kitchen house and so we had to wait for a break in the storm to repair the exposed oven and bake bread. Finally, yesterday Mama and Amelia were able to bake a few delicious-smelling loaves. Of course we wanted to eat them right away, but we are saving them for Christmas. Some neighbors in town have gotten new cows and have brought us milk and butter from time to time, so we have had a little something nice to add to our boiled vegetables from the root cellar.
“What is Christmas going to be like without any presents?” I ask Paul.
“What is it going to be like without food—real food, not just vegetable soup?”
We are in what once was the dining room, stuffing fresh paper in the gaps between the new boards and we think that no one hears us. We are mistaken.
“What is Christmas going to be like if we do not start thinking about someone other than ourselves?” Mama’s voice replies from the hallway.
“Mama,” Paul says, “your soup is as good as it can be seeing that it is only vegetables. Thank you for making bread.”
Another mother might have laughed, but not Mama.
“It is not soup or bread that concerns me, son. Are we the only ones in this town who have suffered?”
“No, Mama,” Paul answers, looking at the floor.
Mama is silent for a long moment before she asks, “How would you and Tillie like to play a game?”
We stare
at her astonished, he answering an enthusiastic yes, I nodding. There have been no games these past weeks.
“For the next fifteen minutes, I want you to go upstairs and find all the food you can. I have hidden secret supplies in some very unlikely places, so you will need to use your thinking. You may look anywhere—in the closets, the bedrooms, any of the furniture. Put all the food you find in a basket—here, take this one—and carry it very carefully back down the ladder to me. I will wait here and tell you when your time is up.”
Paul takes the basket and, laughing, climbs with me toward our mission, up and up the rough, wide ladder Papa has built between the first and second floors. We check the linen closet first, and surely enough, we find a jar of pickled tomatoes behind a pile of towels. Next, I look through the drawers in Mama’s and Papa’s room, something I have never been allowed to do before, and discover not one but two jars of jam, one blackberry and one currant. I wrap them in a towel, so they will not break against the jar of tomatoes, and lay them carefully in the basket. Paul emerges from his former bedroom with a long string of sausages around his neck.
“Can you guess where I found these?”
I shrug my shoulders and widen my eyes. I am getting good at talking with gestures.
“Under my mattress, of course. But we need mustard, you may be thinking.”
I nod. That is exactly what I was thinking.
Paul pulls a jar from his pocket and waves it in the air. “It was in the pitcher on the wash stand!”
“Time is up,” calls Mama from below.
Breathlessly, we scramble back down the ladder and lay our booty at her feet.
“Now we can have some tasty treats at Christmas, yes, Mama?”
She looks at Paul a long moment, and then says, “Are we the only ones who have suffered, son?”
Paul sighs, whether because he knows he is losing food or because he is disappointed in himself for forgetting so soon his earlier lesson, I cannot tell.
“No, Mama. But will we give it all away?”
“We will see what is needed to fill the basket nicely, and then we will see what is left.”
We follow Mama to the kitchen where she empties the basket’s contents onto the table and lines it with the towel. Then she begins to fill it again, first with large items—one of the loaves of bread we have been eyeing since yesterday and a bottle of elderberry cordial she has magically produced from someplace unknown. Next, she puts in a jar of jam—the blackberry, my favorite—and the jar of tomatoes, and some dried apples. Finally, when it is nearly overflowing, she takes the string of sausages from Paul’s neck and with a sharp knife divides it in half, arranging one half among the other treats. I look at Paul, and he produces the mustard jar from his pocket and tucks it into a small space remaining.
“Can you lift this basket easily, Paul?” Mama asks, tying a red ribbon on the handle.
Paul lifts it and nods.
“Tillie, you go with him to open the doors. Go to the Carters’ house now, and wish Mr. and Mrs. Carter a very merry Christmas from all our family. Give them this food with all your hearts, and remember that no one in our family has died in the battle.”
*****
DECEMBER 24, 1913
(FORTY-NINE YEARS LATER)
Paris
Ferenc and I are celebrating our first Christmas as husband and wife. We have just returned from Mass at the cathedral where we were married just a few months ago. I am beginning to feel more comfortable praying here as I recognize more similarities to the Presbyterian services of my childhood and begin to appreciate the more sacramental Catholic Mass. This is a night to be hopeful, I thought as we walked home through beautiful Montmartre watching snow drift softly down.
Now our apartment glows with firelight and candles. Though it is deep winter, Ferenc has made sure that hothouse flowers bloom on our table—red roses, of course, and white chrysanthemums. Our cook has laid a feast of salmon en croute, caper cream sauce, blackberry tarte, and champagne.
Indeed, we have so much—everything this world can offer—our work, great success, whatever money can buy. But as we stand before the fire and Ferenc takes my hand, it is not any of those things that move me to silent thanksgiving. For the first Christmas in so many years, I have with me someone to care for, to share with. To take me out of my own small self and into who we are together, as Mama and Papa, Joseph, Amelia, Paul, Gus, and I were not separate but an entity together. This entity in which each of us is distinct but united is the finest gift this Christmas.
I have prepared Ferenc a basket of new oil paints, selecting each color carefully with an eye to his landscapes—phthalo blue and phthalo green, cadmium red, burnt umber—and a variety of new brushes, the best available. We have discovered a farm not far outside of the city, with a stone cottage and shapely barn that please Ferenc’s eye, and a pasture of sheep that beckons me. Early tomorrow we will go out with our easels and palettes to catch the morning light.
*****
DECEMBER 24, 1915
(TWO YEARS LATER)
Paris
How can I tell Ferenc that his constant chivalrous attentions are wearing on me, sometimes angering me? He is never cross, never self-absorbed as I so often am. When I speak sharply to him, he is silent. If I offend him, I never hear about it. His aim is always to give to me, to uphold me. I wish desperately that he would think more about himself, or at least stand back to allow me to think about myself. I wish he would rise in the morning and check with himself, rather than with me, about his goals for the day. I wish he would say no to me more often. I am probably a terrible wife, a terrible person.
Is it true that in a marriage one person always loves more than the other? Or is it something other than love or lack of it that is the issue?
Ferenc is seldom anywhere but at my side. When we first became friends, I found his attentions charming, but in those days, after a pleasant interlude together, I would go off to Cairo or London, and he to Morocco or Vienna, and we would not see one another for a year or more. Reunions in Tata or Paris were usually brief since we both needed—and I, at least wanted—to pursue our separate work and lives.
When we were first married, I was concerned at the amount of time he wanted to spend together, but I told myself that we were newlyweds, and that his doting on me would diminish in time as we both fell into the rhythms of our creative lives. It has not. Ferenc usually paints alone, of course, as I do, but when he is not working, he sees my interests as his interests, my concerns as his concerns, even my annoyances—except, indeed, for this one—as his annoyances. I have come to disdain myself as one whose every whim is his object, from a blanket or a cup of tea to a pair of extravagant ruby earrings. Recently, when the noise from a neighbor’s soirée went on a little late and might, just might, have disturbed my sleep, he rose from bed, dressed, and paid the neighbor a visit. I watched from the window as our good neighbor, charmed as everyone is by Count Blaskovits, sent his guests home. Was I happy? I was not. Who am I to be so completely catered to?
It may be that I have lived on my own for too long. I crave hours of solitude not only when I am painting, but often when I am resting. I often like to walk through Montmartre alone with my thoughts, or to read or sketch for hours undisturbed. I like to sit on the terrace or at a window in the morning, sipping coffee and planning the day’s activities. At night, I need to pray and contemplate alone, to remember who I am before the One I shall ultimately face alone. Ferenc would accompany me during any and all of these times if I did not steal some privacy. He is never reproachful, but it when I insist on solitude he seems wistful, while I am distracted by self-reproach.
I think that, when young, most women must be very adaptable. They yield not only their hours and days, but their very bodies to their husbands and to their children. This is right and good. Sadly, disastrously, many yield their minds, as well. This is wrong; this is what I fear. But Ferenc would not wish such a thing.
Though I am neither young
nor adaptable, though I cannot give away my mind and soul, I will give to our marriage what is right. Do I care for, admire, and desire my husband? I do. Do I continue to commit myself to our union? I do.
Yet romance and courtliness, as distinct from love and passion, often suffocate me so that I feel panic when we are together for a long time without respite. When I married, I did not become the lady fair of Count Ferenc Blaskovits, but rather his helpmate. Our relationship began in friendship, and friendship is wonderfully free. In friendship wed to passion it must continue.
As Papa once said about another situation, here I have several difficult truths existing together. I have to find a way for Ferenc to understand, though it may take a long while. I will begin tonight.
*****
DECEMBER 24, 1915
(THE EVENING OF THAT SAME DAY)
Paris, France
Ferenc and I have spent Christmas Eve first at the basilica and later shared food and wine, holding hands as we sat beside the fire. Now we are lying in bed in each other’s arms.
“Tillie, we should go to the country tomorrow morning as we did on our first Christmas. We can sketch in the dawn light, and eat our breakfast under blankets in the carriage.”
“We had a wonderful day that first Christmas in the country. But—”
“Do you remember the bird? La Perdrit Rouge?”
“Yes, the partridge with the red legs and beak. He perched on the snow-covered fence, fluttering his white and black feathers. I sketched him.”
“And on the way home you taught me to sing ‘The Partridge in a Pear Tree’ and we made our own verses.”
“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, one happy marriage and a partridge in a pear tree.”
“On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two hands to hold and a partridge in a pear tree.”
“Ferenc, I do want to go to the country with you tomorrow morning.”
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