by Maisie Mosco
The elder David, though, had anglicized his surname. While Nathan sipped the wine someone had handed him, listening with half an ear to the genial mohel relaying a tale to Alan and the fellow rabbinical students helping him celebrate, he allowed himself to journey backward in time.
To one of the most heated family rows he could remember, and many there had been. That one had taken place in the kitchen of his parents’ home and he was sure his mother was present. But for some reason she was not part of this memory. Only his father, seated in the rocking chair by the fire.
For once, Nathan reflected with a smile, my father stole the scene. Abraham Sandberg had long since let his wife, the indomitable Sarah, take the reins – and what a runaway horse her extended family must eventually have come to seem to her.
Nathan’s middle brother was there, too. But when did mild and gentle Sammy ever make his presence felt? The opposite of David, whose announcing his intention of changing his name to Sanderton had evoked in his father an unprecedented wrath.
Abraham had sprung from his chair to confront David eyeball to eyeball, hurling at him words to the effect that the family name was no longer good enough for his big-businessman son.
It was the one and only time Nathan had ever seen his confident brother quail. But David had nevertheless gone ahead with what he said he was doing for business reasons, lending strength to Abraham’s words.
Thus his son Ronald was Dr Sanderton. But his son would be Rabbi Sandberg. Alan’s decision to study for the rabbinate was coupled with his reverting to the family name.
As though, Nathan thought now, Alan’s dedicating his life to Judaism had made him the more aware of his immigrant forebears and he saw himself as their standard bearer.
A gale of male laughter prodded Nathan from his musing.
“Mind you,” the mohel was saying, “that was just one of the occasions when I’ve seen a father turn green and faint at his baby’s Brith. Alan, though, bore up remarkably well, he only turned grey! – but it will be some time before his son causes that to happen to his hair. May I please have another slice of that scrumptious gateau?”
“Thank you for the compliment,” said Shirley.
“You actually made it?”
Marianne hoped he would not inquire who made the chopped herring.
The women were grouped around Carla, plates of food in their hands. “Another redhead in the clan,” Shirley remarked, admiring the baby.
“But his features aren’t Carla’s, they’re Alan’s,” said Ann.
“Isn’t it remarkable,” said Carla’s friend, Tricia, “how a baby in the room acts like a magnet, for women?”
“Apart from his having hair my colour, I don’t think he resembles either of us at present,” said Carla eyeing him raptly. “When my maternity leave ends, I’ll have trouble prising myself away from him to return to work.”
Shirley looked horrified. “You’re going to hand over that sweet little thing to a baby minder? Your daughter reminds me of mine, Leona.”
“I have to work, too, Mrs. Kohn,” Tricia told her. “How else would Carla and I get by, married to men who aren’t yet earners? It’s necessary for us to subsidize their grants –”
“And a fortune they’ll never earn,” said Shirley, which did not surprise her relatives.
Lyn, who had so far said little, remarked to Carla and Tricia that she had often wondered how clergymen’s wives found time to raise their children.
“It’s a daunting thought!” Tricia replied. “But somehow we’ll cope. Right, Carla?”
“You bet!”
Leona surveyed her daughter. Where had the pert little girl gone to? In her place was a calm and contented young woman. Nor did Leona doubt that Carla was capable of sharing with Alan the responsibilities of his calling.
Tricia’s appearance was of a blonde fragility, emphasized by her pretty, pink dress. But the way she had responded to Lyn’s remark implied her strength of character. Her husband, a bearded young Berliner, was now conversing earnestly with Howard. What were they discussing?
Marianne too had noticed. Also Howard’s strained demeanour, though he had done his best to join in the celebrating. His little boy, no longer the youngest of the clan, was now six. And no one was under the illusion that Howard had learned to live with the separation.
Howard’s rarely mentioning Ben was but his method of dealing with his inner feelings. Nor had he yet brought the boy to England, a further disappointment for his parents. When Marianne tackled him about it, all he was prepared to say was that Christina would rather he didn’t. Why hadn’t he asserted his paternal right? – a question Marianne had stopped herself from asking. What went on between her nephew and his ex-wife wasn’t her business.
The welfare of her great-nephew, though, was, and each time a neo-Nazi incident in Germany was reported in the press her skin prickled with apprehension.
Christina was now remarried, and Ben the half-brother of twin toddlers, a boy and a girl. Marianne was happy that he would now grow up with the sibling companionship she’d had from Harry and Arnold. But what was the twins’ father like? There was too the doubt that Ben could fit into that German gentile family. A child whose looks would not for a moment allow those raising him to forget he was fathered by a Jew.
Did Christina want to forget it? Given that she had finally fled, Marianne thought the answer had to be yes. Christina had suffered the ongoing effects of past events in which she herself had played no part. And when would a Jew stop being for a German a reminder of what he or she preferred not to think about?
Christina, though, was a kindly girl and would surely not have refused Howard’s request that their son be allowed to visit his British grandparents.
She was also, Marianne reflected, of that ilk of markedly feminine women who allow their men to make the decisions. Before her remarriage her father would have done so for her. And now – well, it had to be her new husband exerting his influence.
Meanwhile, but a single ray of brightness had lit Howard’s life since Ben was whisked from him: the girlfriend he saw on his trips to Germany. Why he had not brought her to meet the family remained a mystery.
Chapter 6
Before 1985 drew to a close, a young Viennese relative whom the clan had not known existed presented himself on Laura’s doorstep.
“You are Laura Kohn the photographer?” he inquired politely.
“What can I do for you?” she replied warily.
Even a caller as presentable as this lad could be up to no good nowadays, and she had as always left the chain on the door.
“I am not wishing for you to do anything,” he said with a smile. “Only to introduce myself to you. My name is Kurt Kohn, and I say to you, how do you do?”
“Kurt Kohn was my paternal grandfather’s name,” Laura said when she found her voice, “and if I seem astonished, I am!”
She undid the door chain and ushered him inside. “My father isn’t going to believe this,” she told him on the way to the living-room. “He thought all his relatives died in the Holocaust.”
“Except for your father and mine, it is true that they did,” the boy confirmed, “and Father will be so happy to learn that his cousin, Peter, survived. He too thinks himself the only one of his family who did. I shall telephone tonight to Vienna to tell to him this wunderbare news. I am unable to reach him in the daytime.”
Laura could barely control her excitement. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Kurt. You and I have a lot of catching up to do. My father lives in Tel Aviv. He and his second wife – my parents divorced – have a restaurant there. My stepmother does the cooking. What does your father do?”
“He is a surgeon. My mother also. And it is not guaranteed that I shall reach him on the telephone tonight. It is not unknown for them both to be called in the evenings and from their beds to operate.”
“And his name is Leopold, isn’t it? It would have to be, since my dad told me he had only one male cousin.”
“What mine told to me,” said Kurt with a laugh, “is that he and Peter, when they were young, found it necessary to ally themselves in a family full of girl cousins who enjoyed to make fun of them.”
A shadow flitted across Laura’s pleasure in meeting Kurt. The girls he had just mentioned were her family too. She would not let herself dwell upon how their short lives had ended.
She forced herself to smile when Kurt said in his pedantic English, “It is now definitely established that we are relatives.”
But Laura had not required confirmation. There was about Kurt something that reminded her of her father. The snapshots she’d seen of Peter as a boy, and he had retained the same slim stature and finely modelled features she was surveying now. Like Laura’s dad, Kurt would look youthful even when his mid-brown hair turned grey.
“How did you find me, Kurt?”
“It was not too difficult. I have since arriving in London to study seen your name in magazines – and have looked for your telephone number and your address in the directory –”
“Lucky for you, and for me,” said Laura, “that unlike my author cousin, I’m not ex-directory. But once you’d looked me up, what took you so long?”
“It is not for me simple to explain that to you –”
“Before you do, tell me what you’re studying and how long you’ve been here.”
“I have enrolled in October for a psychology course.”
“Why not in Vienna where the great pioneers in the field made their mark?”
“There I shall afterwards study further,” he replied. “My parents have advised me that it would be good to spend some time not in my own country.”
A lad who listened to his parents! Laura told him that Janis too had enrolled in October. “She’s reading English Literature and is an active member of the University Jewish Society. Have you joined it, Kurt?”
He shook his head. “The friends I have made at college are not Jewish.”
“Janis has gentile friends as well and they support the activities I mentioned. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be her friends and she’d tell you it’s time you joined in them, Kurt.”
Jewish students were increasingly finding it necessary to unite against anti-Semitism on some of Britain’s college campuses. We can no longer fool ourselves that the bits and pieces we heard about before Janis was a student are isolated incidents, thought Laura. Monitoring of what was happening up and down the country provided a disquieting picture.
“Is it at me you are now frowning?” Kurt asked hesitantly.
“Certainly not.” But even on the joyous occasion having him here was for Laura, the menacing outside influences Jews in the eighties had found themselves having to live with were liable to impinge from afar.
Even a bride arriving at a synagogue on her wedding day was not spared the sight of those guarding the premises, often with walkie-talkies in their hands, and she would surely recall that along with her happier memories.
“And let me say to you what I haven’t yet said, Kurt,” Laura went on, giving him a warm smile. “You are welcome to come here whenever you feel like a home-cooked meal, or the company of your cousin and her family.”
“I much appreciate the kindness that you are offering to me. And why I did not to contact you more soon – you are a well-known person, are you not? Who might perhaps have thought –” Kurt brushed a recalcitrant lock of hair from his brow. “I am sure that you must understand what I am meaning.”
“Since you put it that way, I suppose I do. Help yourself to something from the fruit bowl, Kurt.”
“I have been thinking that the grapes look extremely tempting,” he said, doing so. “They are not South African grapes, I hope?”
“The only products of that country allowed in this house are human beings,” Laura answered, “and there are some who wouldn’t be. It’s where my husband and his children come from, and you’re unlikely to meet people more against apartheid than they are.”
“I am pleased to learn that we have in common more than our blood relationship.”
They exchanged a smile.
“But I have not yet finished explaining why I had hesitated to telephone or to call on you –”
Kurt deposited some grape pips in an ashtray on the coffee table, his expression rueful. “One evening when my parents were not at home, I telephoned an American industrialist whose name is Kohn. He was visiting Vienna and there was about him an item in the newspaper. He was staying of course at the Hotel Imperial –”
“My mother, she is the sole survivor of her family, as my father thought that he was,” he added after a pensive pause, “and for me to have only my parents – it was not a good feeling. Since I have not mentioned brothers or sisters, you will have correctly assumed that I have none,” he said, collecting himself.
Laura, who took being one of the clan for granted, thought of all the times in her youth when she’d felt like telling them all where to go. Kurt, though, yearned for what he’d never had.
“I was connected to Mr. Kohn’s suite, but it was his gentleman secretary who spoke with me,” Kurt went on. “After I had told to him that I am possibly a relative, he promised to pass on the message and that Mr. Kohn, he would call me back. He did not do so.”
“And if that Mr. Kohn is perchance one of us, which I doubt, it strikes me we’re better off without him,” Laura said.
“It was my impression also. But I trembled to press your doorbell, after I had obeyed the impulse to open the gate and had walked up the drive. Today I am to lunch at the home of a girl who lives in Hampstead and have found myself in the avenue where Laura Kohn lives.”
Janis entered the room clad in her bathrobe and towelling her hair. “Why didn’t you tell me we had company, Laura!” she said, stopping short.
Kurt rose from his chair, displaying the good manners apparently still prevalent in Vienna, Laura registered. If Jeremy were here he would grin at Kurt’s being so polite to his sister.
While introducing them Laura thought humorously that something in the air did not bode well for the girl who had invited Kurt to lunch. Even attired as she was, Janis remained stunning. The two seemed unable to take their eyes off each other.
It would be some time before Laura realized that what she had witnessed that morning was love at first sight.
Chapter 7
Howard’s first meeting with Karin had not rendered him momentarily dazed, nor caused his heart to thud, as was the case for Janis and Kurt. His relationship with the beautiful German girl had nevertheless deepened into something a good deal more than he might have wished, though he was still not sure if he loved her, or she him.
When he was with her the painful burden he carried was briefly eased. But how few those interludes had been, he reflected on yet another flight to Munich. And on this trip as on some of those preceding it, there was no certainty that when he arrived Karin would be there.
He had never failed to let her know when he was planning to visit Ben, but, even so, her involvement in her father’s business meant she might be required at the head office in Berlin, or to deal with a company crisis elsewhere.
They did not waste time discussing their work when they were together, but Howard’s impression was that much of Karin’s was that of a trouble-shooter, a function requiring the steeliness he found hard to relate to the warm femininity she displayed to him.
Since she had yet to suggest that he go with her to Berlin to meet her parents, he had not asked her to visit him in England. Are we biding our time, he asked himself, while a stewardess refilled his coffee cup. Or playing safe? Thankful for the little we have and scared to make a move forward from which there would be no going back?
What we’re doing, Howard mused, is living for the present with no thought for the future, lest it lead us to the conclusion that together we don’t have one. Meanwhile, three years have slipped by, during which, though Karin’s work doubtless took her to England frequently, she hasn’t
bothered calling me because she had to fly back to Germany the same day. And the one time she did call from London where she was staying overnight, Howard was stocktaking at the store and unable to get away. Ours is that kind of affair and there’s nothing to be done about it, was Howard’s final thought as the announcement he sometimes heard echoing in his head resounded: “Ladies and gentlemen, we shall shortly be arriving at Munich Airport.”
Karin had given him a key to her pied-à-terre. But how often, by now, had he stayed there alone?
While the aircraft made its gradual descent, he re-lived a conversation he had had with Christina a year ago.
“I’d like Ben to stay the night with me, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. Where would he stay with you but in your girlfriend’s apartment? Where Ben he has told me he sometimes eats lunch when he is with you. I do not think it suitable he should see his father in bed with a woman to whom he is not married.”
“Then I’ll take a room for him and me at the Bayerischer Hof.”
“I could not ask you to make such a sacrifice. The answer to your request is still no.”
How and when did Christina become so smug and sanctimonious? Howard thought. Well, she’s the one who’s got Ben, isn’t she? And is now married to a man from her own strait-laced background – if you don’t count the beer swilling. But she was as mad for me as I was for her when we met at that ski resort. Would marriage have been the outcome, though, if I hadn’t got her pregnant?
With the benefit of hindsight, Howard doubted it.
He was shocked when he discovered he had deflowered a virgin, a rare species at the après-ski parties that featured in the winter sports scene. Howard remembered Christina tearing herself from his arms at the crack of dawn, to be back in her bed before her roommates awakened. Also his having a comical vision of one of them doing what she was and their bumping into each other on their way back to the room. In retrospect, though, it struck him as part of the hypocrisy imposed by some parents upon their children.