Eight Girls Taking Pictures (39 page)

And then it was time to go.

This time it was Charlotte who stood on the ship’s deck, holding little Barrie in her arms, gazing down at Ines. This time Ines and Charlotte didn’t watch each other, not daring to move; this time Ines, on the dock, mugged for Charlotte. She blew kisses, threw her arms wide, then settled her hands back over her heart in romantic exaggeration. She fluttered her eyes, waved wildly, mouthing the words “Don’t forget me.”

Charlotte watched her lover’s antics with amusement; Ines had always been the more expressive of the two girls. She’s the one who should be living in Argentina, thought Charlotte.

When the ship pulled away from the dock, Charlotte stood there, watching Ines grow smaller and smaller until she was lost in the crowd.

There was relief in knowing that Ines made it to America. London no longer felt like a refuge; Europe felt precarious enough for Charlotte to book passage back to Buenos Aires and for Ines to marry a young New Yorker she had known for six months. When Ines arrived in the States, she picked up her camera and began taking portraits and art shots, making a small living but a living nonetheless. She no longer shot advertisements.
My heart is not in it
, she wrote to Charlotte, though she didn’t have to say as much.

The war came and still no word of Trilby Blum. Charlotte’s parents stayed in Toronto and their relatives in England weathered the Blitz. It was strange being in another country because you could no longer stay in your own. Hannah Arendt wrote that it isn’t enough to enter a new country and willingly and happily take on its nationality, because you will never be French, or Swiss, or English, or Czech, you’ll only ever be a Jew. Patriotism, you learn, isn’t an option. She said of Hitler that no one wanted to know that these times had formed a “new kind of human being,” found in concentration camps, and in internment camps—sent to each by enemies (the former) and friends (the latter).

Persecution erased all the differences of nationality, social class, religious or secular beliefs. Your social alignment was no longer your own;
you became Them. And immigration wiped away your professional identity. If you can’t practice law, are you a lawyer? To go from “somebody” to “nobody” takes its toll.

Somebody who, at a very young age, had her own photography studio, kitten + kohl; somebody who made avant-garde advertisements and won a prize; somebody who had friends who worked in films, flew planes, and raced cars; somebody who fell in love, lost that love, regained it, then had to surrender it. Somebody whose famous father believed so absolutely in the spiritual and utopian properties of living in glass that he began an ongoing epistolary conversation called the Glass Chain among ten brilliant, like-minded men.

Steady yourself.

Then break the chain.

Charlotte stepped onto the dock in the sunlight of Buenos Aires’s January summer, still a little disconcerted by the reversal of seasons. The jacarandas were in full bloom, dropping their papery purple blossoms all over the sidewalks to be crushed underfoot, often attached to the soles of shoes.

Charlotte used her time at sea getting over Ines, trying to reconnect to the life around her. Little Barrie forced her to move outside of herself and her sadness, except for the nights when she was unable to stop thinking. Then she arrived in Buenos Aires, Ignacio meeting them at the dock, his smile meaning even more to her now that it was reproduced in the loved face of their daughter. Their mirrored smiles made Charlotte reconsider (again) being a wife and mother.

In the three months that she had been back, the only times Charlotte picked up her Rolleiflex was to take the infrequent picture of Barrie, sometimes Ignacio with Barrie; the two were like a mutual admiration society, which pleased Charlotte more than it gave her feelings of exclusion.

She cooked, oversaw the maid who cleaned the house. She made a halfhearted stab at gardening before hiring someone for that too. All around her she saw untaken pictures, which still didn’t move her to pick
up her camera. Ignacio rather liked Charlotte’s devotion to their family; though he didn’t say it, she could tell. There was a shadow of formality between them now, a bit of distance that she tried to bridge by supporting his work, and spending her energy being domestic. In this way they were almost normal by Argentine standards. No one seemed to notice that she wasn’t making pictures anymore.

If anyone had, she would’ve told them that she’d lost her voice. She was so derailed by news of the war, her friend Maria’s death (she never got to build her houses), and the imprisonment of Giselle Weiss (who was Jewish) and her husband (who wasn’t). She heard a rumor that mentioned a baby; Charlotte hoped it was just a rumor.

Still no word of Trilby.

Ines wrote that she liked New York because it was so eager to please and guileless.
Charlotte,
she said,
we would be great here.

In 1948, with the war behind the world (Trilby living in Zurich with Bruno and Marcelle Blum, too broken by his years at Dachau to live alone), Argentina had become the unlikely destination for Germans. Charlotte imagined that most expatriates, upon hearing their native language, sought out the speaker, just to talk to someone with a shared knowledge of a lost place. Not so in Argentina, where the German voice could be Jewish or it could be Nazi, and so the expats lived side by side as if the other didn’t exist at all.

Charlotte still wasn’t seriously taking pictures, even though Barrie was getting older and more independent. What no one tells you about having children is that it isn’t the physical demand they make in your life that affects your art, it’s the emotional space they fill, crowding out your art. So even when you have the time to work, you’re still mentally occupied.

She referred to herself as the Dilettante, something that she could see irritated Ignacio, who said it was just a way of feeling sorry for herself.

“You have everything,” she would say. “A career you want, a child, a wife. I think we can all agree that I am the Perfect Wife.”

“No,” said Ignacio, before storming from the room, “you’re the Dilettante.”

A dinner party at Ignacio and Charlotte’s could include architects, a magazine editor, two college professors, and all their wives, along with one professor who had a wife and mistress in attendance, though one knew about the other while the other remained in ignorance. Charlotte liked these parties made up of colleagues and intellectuals, people they knew mostly through Ignacio. Some were people he had known in school; others he’d met professionally. The women always ended up together near the kitchen, even when none of them were cooking. And no matter if they had professions of their own, it was always understood that their careers came second. No one questioned this arrangement, not even the women.

When they were together one-on-one, or if there was enough wine and the men were out of earshot, the conversation made enough turns to arrive at locations of discontent. This, it must be said, didn’t mean that a wife didn’t love her husband, especially since some of their husbands (and lovers, as it sometimes happened) were far more broad-minded than society at large. Then again, these were the sorts of men who would be drawn to women who wanted more than domesticity even when they made no significant move to change the status quo.

Then everyone would thank the Martíns for a lovely evening and life would continue accordingly.

Charlotte wasn’t unhappy with Ignacio, and their arguments were infrequent. Then one night she dreamt about Ines; it wasn’t only the particulars but also the quality of the dream. They were in Berlin, before the war, surrounded by Neile, Grete Grun, Giselle Weiss, and Maria at the Wannsee. The sunlight hit the water of the lake. Then they were in New York, and Charlotte had been living there for months.

When Charlotte woke up she was crying.

And all because she had received a letter from Ines that said, Charlotte,
we would be great here.

Charlotte sent a letter to Ines while she was out shopping for the dinner party that night, that read,
Anything is better than this lonely fate. I love you and I miss you and I’m leaving him.

On this particular night, her decision to leave had the effect of making her more relaxed than she had been in years, and also more energized by happiness. What was the point of surviving Germany if it was to settle for a life marked by an absence? Barrie was old enough to spend summers with Ignacio, and she would love New York; the Martins were lucky enough to have an adaptable, curious child who enjoyed novelty.