The Witness Tree

by Brendan Howley

  “Want a hand up those stairs?”

  Eleanor rose, shaking her head no. “How’s Mrs. Musser and that great plum cake?”

  “Me, can’t live without it. The missus, though, she was laid up there for a while, but she’s over in Jersey, at her cousin’s. Still thinks the world of you for that national pension you wrote about in the paper, Miss Dulles. I’m hoping that’ll do some good there, down in Washington.”

  “I’m teaching at Bryn Mawr, but I’ll fight for a pension for old people, you can count on that. Give her my best, Mr. Musser,” Eleanor offered as she climbed the rest of the way to the sixth floor. After a slow ascent she used her own key and fought off a wave of nausea as she shut the front door behind her. In minutes she was asleep atop David’s sagging bed, too tired to do more than draw the blinds and let her shoes drop to the floor.

  She woke to a kettle whistling in the kitchen. David’s clock ticked on the window ledge. Replacing her spectacles, she let her stockinged feet dangle over the bedside rug. An oblong of light from the hall fell across the desk—there was David’s hat. Eleanor lifted the hat, thinking to hang it on the coatrack behind the bedroom door.

  Beneath the hat lay a thin stack of postal receipt flimsies, perhaps ten in all, neatly pinned together with a seamstress’s straight pin. She wouldn’t have thought twice, save a single receipt had tumbled free when she’d lifted the hat. That receipt and the one atop the stack were identical—but dated precisely one month apart. Curious, she riffled through them.

  They were all the same—to Paris and sent the third day of every month, going back to the fall of 1932. To 128 rue Dufau, in the fourth, the Marais, the Jewish quarter of Paris. She knew where that was—around the corner from the mairie, on place Baudoyer.

  He’s having an affair, Eleanor thought, suddenly very much awake. Mechanically, she dropped the hat to its spot on David’s desktop then stepped back, away from the light. She lowered herself to the creaking bed, her heart a separate living thing, flying away. Footsteps. She lay down facing the wall and shut her eyes. The hall light clicked off and the door edged open again.

  “Darling? Darling, it’s me. I’m making iced tea.”

  Eleanor barely breathed as the door drifted open. David came closer and she heard him at the desk, things moving in the darkness. Then the door closed and, after a moment, the radio in the kitchen began to play, a voice, far off, then music, something mournful, with horns and violins, diminuendo.

  She opened her eyes. I must clear my head. She turned over and searched the dim outlines of the room around her, the city lights leaking through the cheap blind.

  The hat was gone, the receipts on David’s blotter too.

  I have to see him, look into his eyes. She slipped into her shoes and opened the door, silently rehearsing her first question.

  And then something swirled up from her belly, a bubble of a new kind of seasickness, and in that moment she knew a kind of solitary knowing that swept everything else away.

  Sprouting torn-paper bookmarks, David’s big medieval French tome lay open on the dining table, next to the teapot and a torn loaf of Viennese bread and the near-empty paper packet of Pocatelli’s best ham and the half wheel of cheese, gored by Eleanor’s knifework. There were fine olives and a sprig of scallions and she devoured those too, emptying the icebox in a trice. “Good thing I stopped at the deli on the way home,” David observed. “You might’ve eaten the furniture.”

  “I’ve never been so hungry. I want the dime breakfast at Carl’s tomorrow.”

  David gave a low whistle. “So when did you know?”

  “I literally had my hand on the bedroom door to come out and see you.” Eleanor shook her head and smiled.

  “Well, I’ve never seen you cry like that. Buckets. Oceans.” David gathered her close, kissing her gently. When she opened her eyes, he was studying her from behind a big grin. “Of course, I’ve never seen you eat like this either.”

  “We won’t know for sure until I see Dr. Matlin,” Eleanor warned, her mind going like a locomotive. “We’re going to have to get married, David.”

  He beamed at her. “That goes without saying. Have you a date in mind?”

  “This is serious. How are we going to do this, David?”

  “Do what?”

  “Live with me at Bryn Mawr and you shuttling between Columbia and Johns Hopkins and have a baby?”

  David hesitated. “I could ask Hopkins for a research fellowship here at Columbia. That would help.”

  “That’ll last a year, David, never mind diapers, a crib, bottles, a nanny so I can work. After a year, then what? A baby means a different life.”

  His face froze. “I realize that, darling. I do have a child of my own.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Don’t be so … oh, let’s not bicker. Not now, David.”

  “But the fellowship is how I can help.”

  “All right, apply, see what the department says, but I think we should use my savings to live on. We know that’s a sure thing.”

  David reached over the table and closed the tome of medieval French poetry.

  Eleanor put her hand on his. “You know that I know how important your work is, David. But we’re having a baby and things are what they are. When the pensions job in Washington starts, then we can be together there. Does that make sense?”

  He worked his fingers through his beard, then nodded.

  “But for now, darling, let’s be gentle and cautious, for the baby’s sake.” She could see the clouds in his eyes. “Columbia and Hopkins together wouldn’t pay you enough that I could give up Bryn Mawr. What would the fellowship pay? Barely enough to cover the rail tickets back and forth. I think we have to go where the money is, hard as that is. Honestly, I don’t have a better solution.”

  David took a deep breath. “If that’s the best thing, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Eleanor hesitated, then she nodded, keeping her silence. She felt a terrible need to brighten him. “It’s the best thing, David. Easy or not, it’s for the best.” She kissed him, wanting to gather him close, but there was, she knew wordlessly, in her bones, a part of him she could never hold.

  Carbon copy of original from Misha Resnikoff’s papers

  February 6 1934

  Stockholm

  Dear Reuven

  Motta Gurevitch arrived at stepfather’s cottage.

  I gave Motta the valise from the safety deposit drop at the bank in Charlottenburg with the Berlin stock certificates—that should keep you afloat for a few months, judging from the contents.

  Cambridge is an exotic place, especially for a Balt like myself—the old paneled halls, the libraries, the perfect English river and the stone buildings and the sheer greenness. My maths tutor is a fellow called Turing, a genius typical of the place. I couldn’t imagine him anywhere else.

  I’ve met several Party people, upper-class socialists gone hardline, a mix of naïveté and passion. In my first year the “comrades” included Kim Philby, head of the university socialist group, who shares an economics tutor with me, Professor Carlyle. We met weekly almost from the start of last year’s first term, at Carlyle’s rooms, known far and wide as “the red house.” The people are quite appealing and many of them destined for the highest reaches of the civil service.

  Philby’s a smooth one, a stutterer with real ambition to escape his Arabist father’s shadow. We debate endlessly British control of Palestine and who really makes British policy in Arabia—Philby stoutly maintains it’s the oil companies.

  There are others more or less Communist in persuasion if not in fact. I’m not certain how deep the allegiance to Moscow runs in many of these people—it’s more the ideals of the Communist International. I am the sole Jew except for James Klugman, about whom more later.

  Through Philby and a voice on the telephone I never identified, I met a photographer and teacher, Edith Tudor-Hart.

  She was born a Suchitzsky in Vienna and has come to England to escape the
Nazis. Her photographs of the children orphaned during the Vienna crackdown last year I saw in the basement of the local church. Most moving, I must say; so too her photograph of the Welsh miners come to Oxford—a huge column of them, all the way to the horizon. Very much a true believer, she is. I’m meeting her again in a fortnight.

  You should know that Adela and I aren’t seeing each other, for which I blame you utterly.

  All best

  Misha

  PS At the Cambridge-Oxford boat race last spring, I met an American Jew Adela knew from Germany, James Kronthal. Kronthal’s a rower too, a Yale man who’s worked in various German “privatbanks,” including his family’s own. Suggest you have a go at him.

  NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT

  February 21 1934

  statement of PO Terry ADAMS [4309] / see attached statements of Dr BRIERLY, PO MCKIERNAN 5666

  Acting on information received from Mr James MUSSER, building supervisor of 116 W 126th St, at 1238 pm I entered apartment 6B, sixth floor back in the company of PO MCKIERNAN [5666]. MUSSER reported a smell of gas when he was about to change a light-bulb on the landing near 6B at approx 1145 am. He checked with the two other occupants in their apartments at that hour, Mrs Sally MILLS in 6A and Mr Julio MARTINEZ in 6D. Neither had noticed the smell of gas until MUSSER called it to their atention [sic].

  MUSSER and MARTINEZ tried 6B at approx 1150 am but got no response. Both MUSSER and MARTINEZ indicate there was a strong odor of gas from 6B. MUSSER did not have a master key to 6B with him, so he returned to his office to retirve [sic] it.

  MUSSER and MARTINEZ entered 6B at approx noon. MUSSER entered the kitchen and found the deceased AARON DAVID BARENBERG lying face down in the oven, a number of wet bath towels around him. BARENBERG had made a tent from the towels, MUSSER reports.

  MARTINEZ immediately pulled BARENBERG from the oven. MUSSER turned off the gas and opened the kitchen window.

  BARENBERG was blue, MARTINEZ reports, and his eyes were open. MUSSER attempted to revive BARENBERG by dragging him to fresh air. MARTINEZ reports shouting and slapping BARENBERG but received no response.

  BARENBERG appeared to be dead to both MUSSER and MARTINEZ at approx 1202 pm at which time MUSSER and MARTINEZ went to the MARTINEZ apartment and called NYPD.

  I found BARENBERG lying on his back near the window. His eyes were open. He was not breathing. BARENBERG wore a red dressing gown and undershirt and underpants. His spectacles were on the kitchen table. PO ADAMS found a note in the right dressing gown pocket. The note was in the French language. PO MCKIERNAN called ambulance at 1246. Dr Malcolm BRIERLY attended and pronounced BARENBERG dead at the scene at 0102 pm. Probable cause of death: self-asphyxiation.

  [signed]

  badge 4309

  XVI

  MARCH 1934

  Eleanor woke, hollow with growling hunger, to a streaky pink sunrise outside her hospital window and the distant sounds of newborns wailing in the nursery. She had completely lost her sense of time; her world was an enameled bed and a steel table and a body that barely felt like her own. The baby’s last feeding had been at four a.m.; now the obstetrics ward bustled with breakfast carts and determined nurses on squeaking rubber soles. Since four, frigid showers had come; sharp icy drops tinked against the windowpane. She stared at the melting world outside, listening for her daughter’s cry. One of the night nurses entered, on the last of her rounds before signing off.

  “What time is it, Katharine?” Eleanor asked, her throat parched. She coughed and put on her spectacles.

  “Suck on the ice, dear. It’ll help.” Katharine was tall and thin and dryly focused, with slightly protuberant eyes and a wise smile. “Just past six. She’s sleeping better now. Feeding in fifteen minutes. Your brother is here.”

  Eleanor felt as if she’d been riding a horse for a week. She rolled over and a fist of pain shot right through her. She stifled a groan. “Which one?”

  “The older one. Mr. Foster Dulles.”

  “See him in, Katharine. Thank you. I forgot where I put the telegrams.” Eleanor reached for her side table and this time the groan wasn’t so quiet.

  “The stitches. I wouldn’t do that again for a few days, dear,” warned Katharine. “But don’t you worry. Get your rest, that’s the only thing you’ve got to worry about.”

  “Of course. Thank you.” Eleanor closed her eyes, drifting, still drugged from the anesthesia, muddled and lost. She awoke as Foster came in, homburg in hand, in full suit and sprucely shaven and to all appearances a man who’d been up for hours.

  “Congratulations, mother. How’s the wee bairn?” He bent to kiss her.

  Eleanor felt rather than knew the baby was next to her, and that discovery gave her a quiet, wondering thrill. She looked over at the pink shape, minuscule and finely black-haired. “She’s sleeping. A hard night. Such a beautiful child, isn’t she?”

  Foster craned over the tiny shape, staring. “Ah, yes. The Dulles forehead, I see.”

  “You’re up early.”

  “So are you. Get any sleep?”

  “A little. It’s such a miracle, isn’t it? I mean, new life. There. Right next to me.”

  Foster nodded. “I’m on my way to the office, but I wanted to see you two quickly before the whole clan descends this afternoon. A quick visit, in, out, you know.”

  “Foster Dulles,” Eleanor said reprovingly, “I do believe you’re nervous. It’s only a baby, a little girl. Your godchild, you should know.”

  “Well, that’s just wonderful. Thank you. I’ll do my best. Does our latest Dulles have a name yet?”

  “I’d thought of all sorts. My word, I can barely hear her breathing,” she said, listening close. “I’m very partial to Sophie, after Great-aunt Sophia. There was a Sophie in David’s family too, somewhere.” She shook her head. “Oh, Foster, it comes in … in waves of it. I miss him so much, and I’m all over the place.” She blinked back the tears, uselessly, the sorrow breaking out of her.

  Foster stepped back and gently closed the door with a click. “I’m sure it does, Ellie.”

  “I feel so awful, even thinking of being happy,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Mother. Widow. I don’t know what the words mean, I don’t know where I am. I wish Mother were here. I miss her almost as much as I need David.”

  Foster bent and embraced her clumsily, then extricated himself. “God sends us what’s to improve us.”

  “Well, He never went through labor, Foster, I can tell you that,” she said, blowing her nose. “Look. She’s stirring.”

  Foster didn’t smile. “No, I don’t suppose He did.”

  Eleanor exhaled, the first deep breath she’d ventured since the operating room. “Forgive me. I’m so tired I say the first thing that comes into my head. Everything now seems so unimportant except the baby. Nothing else matters.”

  “You may feel that now, but—”

  “—you know, Foster, you do mean well, but I don’t want to think about how I feel for a while. I’ve never been this tired in my life. Talking exhausts me.” She offered Foster the stack of telegrams. “Aunt Eleanor’s is lovely.”

  “Nice to hear from cousin Meredith, all the way from China,” Foster said, riffling through the slips. “Have you given any thought to a last name?”

  “I’m already Mrs. Barenberg. Why?”

  Foster looked up from the telegrams. “I thought you might want to think of returning to Dulles,” he said slowly.

  “You’re ever so terribly obvious, Foster,” Eleanor replied. “That’s why you’re here at the crack of dawn, in your best suit, isn’t it?”

  He was stone-faced. “Well, have you?”

  “My daughter isn’t Dulles property, Foster, proud as I am of our name, my name. She’ll be her own woman, you have my word on that.”

  “Then why not give her the best start she can have? Your name.”

  Eleanor suddenly felt sick. “What’s wrong with David’s name?”

  “Let’s be practical, Ellie. Right
or wrong, a Jewish name is hardly an asset in most circles.”

  “And Dulles is going to help, you think?”

  “Hasn’t hurt so far, has it?”

  Little Sophie stirred in her bassinet. “She’s going to need feeding in a few minutes.” Eleanor hauled herself upright, grimacing, and began to brush her hopeless hair. “I’m afraid to look in a mirror. Foster, you forget one thing: Sophie’s going to face far more difficulties because she’s a female than if she’s taken for a Jew.” “Mistaken for a Jew.”

  “Mistaken for a Jew?

  What are you getting at?”

  “Exactly my point,” Foster replied.

  “My God, you are serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Foster moved his hat in his fingers for a moment. “I wanted to get here before they had you sign the birth certificate forms. These legal things can take some unraveling, you see. Her eyes are open.”

  Eleanor lifted her daughter to her. “Here, darling, here …” She began breast-feeding Sophie. “We’re getting good at this, aren’t we? There, there …”

  Foster looked away. “I thought the latest was to bottle-feed. Baby formula, they call it. We have clients who make—”

  “I get one chance at this,” Eleanor interrupted, her voice flat. “I’m thirty-nine. I’ll see to my daughter how I want. Would you call the nurse with that bell push, please?”

  “These things are not easily undone,” Foster replied. He cleared his throat. “It’s not a—”

  “Foster, I’m nursing my baby,” she said frostily.

  The door clicked open and Katharine appeared behind Foster.

  “Should I lift her like this?” Eleanor asked.

  “You’re doing fine. She’s just sleepy. She’s fine.”

  The nurse left, leaving the door open.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did you change your mind at the last minute?”

  “At the wedding?”

  “Your name. Yes.”

  “She’s gone to sleep. I’ll just hold her. Pull that pillow over, will you? Thanks. Do you have time for this?”