by Sarah Laing
CHAPTER 9
New York, 1949
Klara first laid eyes on the man she was to marry at an outdoor concert in Central Park. It was July and the day was hot and soupy. Friends of hers from Juillard were playing, and she knew their fingers would be sliding all over their strings, even though they’d have talcum powdered them beforehand. Everyone was fanning themselves, with their handkerchiefs, or ebony fans they kept in their pocketbooks. Klara wished that she could have gone to Long Island with her friend Miranda, who had rich parents and a big house, French doors thrown open to a sea breeze, but she had musical engagements. One playing lunches at a Gramercy Park hotel, another substituting in the orchestra pit of South Pacific, a show for which her sister Esther sewed and fitted costumes. She was going to cook; it was an oven down there. But she was also going to pay the rent for the Upper West Side apartment she shared with other students from Juillard.
Miranda had rich parents; she didn’t need to earn money for rent. Miranda was studying the oboe while she waited for a suitable husband. And as much as Klara loved Miranda’s parents, as much they welcomed her, gave her scarves and pins, they made the absence of her own parents more painful. At least Klara wasn’t waiting for them any more. She finally knew they were dead: her father executed in Sachsenhausen in 1939, her mother dying in Auschwitz in 1944. Miranda’s parents, the lucky ones who had emigrated last century, turned to Klara for absolution. Klara wanted to give it to them, but she couldn’t. She felt ill, a paralysis taking hold whenever she bought rugelach off the man who’d survived a concentration camp. In summer, he would roll up his sleeves, revealing the serial number on his left forearm. His cheeks were still sunken, perhaps because of the teeth he had lost, and it shook her, the thought of her beautiful mother, her nails broken and dirty, her flesh starved off her. Every day, Klara massaged her hands with rose-scented cream and filed her nails into ten crescent moons. Mama, mama, mama, she intoned to the stroke of the emery board.
Now considered heroes, her parents had found foster families in America for over a hundred children. But they hadn’t saved themselves, and if Klara was truthful, she was angry at them for being martyrs. A hundred lives seemed insignificant in the balance of the millions dead. Klara and Esther needed their parents — they should have figured larger in the equation. They could have decided ninety-nine fostered children was enough; they should have climbed on board the boat themselves. But she felt guilty at even allowing such thoughts to enter her head.
Sometimes she hated Miranda, and her sense of entitlement. She was so sheltered, unaware of the dangers of the world. She made Klara want to slap her. The war had passed her by while she went to ballet lessons, had her Bat Mitzvah and her debutante’s ball. English was her first and only language, and she believed that New York was the whole world. She took her freedom for granted. Miranda never asked Klara about her parents; it was as if they didn’t exist, or Klara was just a romantisised orphan from Miranda’s childhood books. Occasionally Klara wondered whether Miranda knew her at all, or whether the bright, protective façade that Klara had created over the years was all she saw. Klara wondered why she sought out the company of someone so profoundly irritating. Maybe because Miranda was also so charming.
Small, bright-eyed and jittery, eager to go dancing, grabbing Klara’s arm and yanking her down Broadway to look at the cutest shoes, to buy the prettiest cake, to see the most amazing Chinese street violinist. They were always on a lark somewhere, bent over on a street corner holding in their giggles and trying not to pee their pants. Miranda played her oboe with the same crackling energy, much more assured in allegros than in largos.
No, she hated her. Miranda was shallow and was probably practising Esther Williams moves in the kidney-shaped pool right now, but here was a breeze, in Central Park; who needed a summer house anyway? Klara pulled damp linen away from her skin: her dress, cinched at the waist and starched to flare, had wilted, and she was sure her armpits were staining the fabric yellow. Her hair, which she had tamed in pin curls last night, had become frizzy and dishevelled, strands sticking to her forehead. She looked at the man standing beside her. He was tall and seemed out of place. Which was odd, because half of New York was immigrant, and being out of place was normal. He was slim, with shoulders that looked like they’d done physical labour. He had taken off his hat, and was pushing back his chestnut hair, which was determined to flop on his forehead. His shoes were English, brogues, the colour of horses, and he had a satchel, like a schoolboy’s, between his feet. Despite the heat, he looked transfixed by the quartet, his chin thrust forward in concentration. Maybe that’s what set him apart: his unchecked enthusiasm.
The music stopped. ‘What was that?’ said the man, turning left. No one answered. He turned towards Klara, his eyes clear and gold-flecked. ‘Who wrote that music? I haven’t heard anything like that before.’
‘Bartók,’ said Klara. His accent was strange, maybe English, maybe South African.
‘Bartók. Never heard of him. Then again, I’m a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music. Just thought I’d come along to this because it was free.’
‘He’s modern. He lived here for a while, after he left Hungary. He was born in Transylvania, the same as Count Dracula.’
‘Have you seen Nosferatu?’
‘No.’ Klara didn’t go to the movies much, although she did see Gone with the Wind. She saw it five times and sobbed in the theatre every time through.
‘You should, it’s a wonderful movie. The lead actor has teeth like a rabbit’s.’ The man smiled to reveal his own, which were white and overlapped like a fallen sheaf of paper, at odds with his even features. ‘I don’t think he’s had a part in another movie since, but then he was made for that one. Incredible art came from Germany in the early twentieth century. God, it breaks my heart when I think of what the Nazis destroyed.’
‘Yes, mine too,’ said Klara. She wondered whether this man had lost a brother or a father: there were so many with invisible wounds, it was as if all the world had phantom limbs.
‘Of course, you Americans sorted us out in the end, didn’t you?’
‘What makes you think I’m American?’ said Klara. But she smiled teasingly; she might as well be. The traces of German were gone from her voice, erased within a year of her arrival. Her musicality helped; she was an excellent mimic. Although she still spoke German with Heinrich Weiss and Tante Dagmar, she spoke English with her sister. She dreamed in English. Sometimes it was easier to just be an American girl, because it meant she didn’t have to explain anything.
‘So where do you come from then?’
‘The Lower East Side.’
‘A genuine New Yorker! I knew it.’ He looked very pleased with himself, as if he had uncovered a rare specimen.
‘What about you? Where are you from?’
‘New Zealand. Do you know where that is?’
‘In Holland?’ Klara was confused; he didn’t seem Dutch.
‘It’s in the South Pacific, next to Australia. Some Yanks were posted there during the war, caused all sorts of trouble with their chocolate and cigarettes. There are a number of half-American babies still waiting for their fathers to claim them.’
‘The South Pacific — I’m in the orchestra pit for that musical!’
‘I’m sure New Zealand is nothing like your musical. Where I come from it’s cold and it rains a lot. None of these bare-breasted Gauguin women with arms full of fruit. More like a whole pile of sheep.’
Klara folded her arms across her own breasts. She shouldn’t be talking to a strange man in Central Park; it wasn’t proper. And yet there was no one to chaperone her; she wasn’t going to be reprimanded for her transgression. Esther was risking far more, going to bars where there were only women, some of them dressed as men, staying out all night drinking.
‘So are you a farmer?’ she asked.
‘God no, I ought to be, but I’m running away from all that. I was a farmer in the war, which meant I
didn’t get called up. If I hadn’t been a farmer, I might have been a conscientious objector, which my fellow countrymen would have interpreted as cowardice and traitorousness.’
‘Really?’ Klara felt angry. The man’s strength and height were diminished by this admission. Although she abhorred war, it would have been worse to do nothing, to object on principle. The Americans had hung back too long. Had they not waited until they were attacked, her parents might have survived. Or maybe not — she felt so defeated. She would have been a conscientious objector herself, had the war not involved her so inescapably. ‘What do you do now?’
‘I’m interested in art. I want to open my own gallery when I return home. And here, oh, it’s overwhelming: de Kooning, Duchamp, Le Corbusier, Miró — all the greats. I don’t know where to start. Not that I have much money, only enough to buy a few pieces by some unknowns. There are artists in New Zealand, of course, but the art buyers are a timid bunch. They won’t come unless I have international work to hock. Something to match their Sanderson prints. They’d prefer European work, but Europe is so wrecked, painters murdered, and unless you buy it off a surviving artist, how do you know that the work wasn’t stolen in the first place?’
‘My first cello teacher had a work by George Grosz on his wall,’ said Klara. ‘He was friends with him. He made an awful lot of money out of the sale, considering that the picture was given to him in the first place.’ She didn’t know much about art, but she did remember Heinrich’s consternation over the price he received for the drawing. She remembered him saying, ‘It only took George fifteen minutes to draw. I was there. He took a pencil out of his breast pocket. I spent a month on this cello, and I will be selling it for the same price.’
To Klara, the cello was the more beautiful, the more valuable of the two, and she was glad the picture was gone. She hated the distorted figure blaring her genitals.
‘George Grosz is phenomenal. A Dadaist, you know. What I wouldn’t have done for a peephole into 1920s Berlin.’
Klara knew it wasn’t her sheltered-parlour Berlin he was after; he wanted Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker, jazz, nightclubs and Metropolis. There was no point telling him where she was from.
‘Of course, his American stuff is rather sentimental. I believe he’s on the decline.’ The man cocked his head, and Klara thought he might be younger than she had first assumed, fooled by his weathered skin. ‘Does your friend have any other work for sale?’
‘No, no, unless you’d like to buy a violin.’ She smiled at this handsome, intense man. But there were her friends from the quartet, waving, calling for her to have a drink after the performance. ‘I really should go,’ she said.
‘Must you?’ The man looked slightly wounded, as though he suspected he might have said something wrong. And Klara felt reluctant too, because she felt happy in his company. ‘I thought you might like to accompany me to the zoo. I want to see how the penguins are doing in this heat.’
‘What about the poor polar bear? I wish I could put him on a train to the Arctic Circle.’
The man laughed, extending his hand. ‘Goodbye, it’s been a pleasure.’
‘Goodbye.’ Klara’s hand was bare, her gloves scrunched in a ball at the bottom of her bag. The man’s clasp felt shockingly intimate, his palm only slightly damp, its mounds filling her own valleys. She thought she might not let go. But then her friends called to her once again, ‘Klara Bow! Hurry, we’re leaving!’ and she pulled her fingers out of his own.
The hotel had big ceiling fans, pushing the hot air round the room. It was an improvement on her own apartment, with the fan that roared so loudly Klara wondered whether she might never sleep. Not that she much liked the dreams sleep brought her. She loved this hotel in Gramercy Park, with its chandeliers and granite floor like shiny blue cheese. She was lucky to have a part-time place in this orchestra, insignificant though it might be, since orchestras favoured men. Women were thought to be a distraction, their playing not nearly as reliable. Which made Klara mad; she was better than most men she encountered. The music the hotel insisted they play was mainly schlock, scores from movies and musicals, but sometimes the conductor would slip in something glorious — usually Beethoven — towards the end of the dining session, when the diners were drunk and sated, less likely to complain about the racket. Klara tried to ignore the obliviousness of her audience, chewing on their own dramas, and instead enjoyed the sensation of moving as one beast, the physicality of playing for two hours at a time. Sometimes she let her mind wander, listening in to conversations. She had overheard accidental pregnancies and confessed affairs — why did these people think that no one was listening? Or were they fooled by the film scores, imagining themselves to be actors in melodramas or perhaps screwball comedies?
Klara was putting away her cello after lunch service when a diner approached her. ‘Miss Bow?’ he said.
Klara caught her breath. It was the man from the park, the one so passionate about art, except now his hair was smooth and his shirt looked pressed and dry. He was tall, and Klara had to bend her neck to talk to him.
‘That’s not my name.’
‘But your friends in the park, they called it out.’
‘They say it to be clever, since my first name is Klara.’
‘Well, mine is Owen Quinn. I was hoping I might run into you again. I shouldn’t have let you go off the other day. I should have insisted you had a drink with me instead.’
Klara hesitated. She knew she was about to be too forward, that he might get the wrong idea, but she’d been thinking about him, and this seemed like too much of a coincidence to let pass. ‘I’m free this afternoon.’ Klara smiled at him, feeling nervous and excited. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
They walked across town towards the West Village, the man carrying her cello, stopping for a rest in Washington Square. A few blocks further south they arrived at the Parisian-style corner café with curved glass windows, booths and counter stools. Klara came here quite often with Juillard students, and she’d liked the mixture of company: writers and painters, wealthy businessmen and their flibbertigibbet girlfriends. People stayed until the early hours of the morning, arguing, drinking and laughing.
Mr Quinn was excited and nervous. ‘I walked past here the other day, but I didn’t feel up to going inside. It looks like something Edward Hopper might paint, although there are too many people here. They don’t seem lonely enough.’
‘Do you like it?’ She sat down at a table near the window, hoping to catch a breeze.
‘Yes, yes I do.’ He looked around, removing his jacket to reveal a shirt soaked in sweat. ‘Now what can I get you to drink?’
‘A lime and soda would be fine.’ The other nights she drank martinis but she had to perform later on; she must keep her wits about her. Today the hectic jazz trio wasn’t playing, but there was a pianist, his chords abstract and formless to her ear. She liked it, though, and the excitement she experienced when she sensed the pattern, the repeated motif.
Even though his accent was slightly difficult to understand, Mr Quinn was very funny. He told Klara stories of his childhood, his fearsome mother shooting rabbits in the hills. She gathered them up by their ears and made rabbit pie, announcing herself to be Mrs McGregor.
‘Mrs McGregor?’ asked Klara.
‘From Peter Rabbit. Remember, that’s why Mr McGregor was trying to catch Peter. That and to rescue his lettuces.’
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Klara.
‘I forget you Americans have a different cultural compass.’
Klara flinched at the accusation. He didn’t have a clue where her coordinates lay.
‘Beatrix Potter, a wonderful English watercolourist. Of course, too old-fashioned for my official taste in painting. As a child I tried to emulate her, sitting in paddocks and drawing the animals and the bugs I saw there. I had a little portable easel my aunt gave me. It made my father very angry — I was meant to be helping with t
he farm, docking the sheep and shifting the cattle. And my mother too because of the grass stains on my trousers.’
‘So are you still a painter?’
‘No, I was hopeless. All my sheep looked like dogs and I could never get their eyes to line up. Horses, they were my downfall, the point at which I realised I had no faculty for art. It’s in the legs — I never remembered which way they curved.’
‘I’m hopeless at drawing too. And needlework. In fact, the only thing I am good at is music.’
‘And you’re very good at that. The most elegant cellist in the orchestra.’
‘Oh, please don’t judge me by what you saw at the hotel. We play the most dreadful repertoire.’
‘I found it quite pleasant. Better than the food — tasteless stuff.’
‘Is it? That’s comforting. I see it go past and I feel starved.’
‘Shall we order something? I’m feeling peckish myself.’
The menu was French, and Klara decided on vichyssoise. She couldn’t cope with anything hot.
‘Make that two.’
The waiter nodded, turning on his heel, not needing to write it down.
‘I ate that in Paris. It’s delicious, although Mum would be horrified — cold leek soup. She always serves food hot enough to blister the roof of your mouth. Have you ever been to Europe?’
‘Actually, I was born there.’ She was sick of pretending, and perhaps Mr Quinn, Owen, might understand.
‘You were? Although I might have guessed — you have such a sophisticated air about you. Where were you born?’
Klara didn’t feel sophisticated; more serious and bookish. She supposed the black orchestra gown gave him that idea, but maybe there was something about herself that she wasn’t aware of. ‘In Berlin.’
‘You mean Germany?’ His face fell; even he, with his talk of watercolours and conscientious objectors, imagined her to be a Nazi.