Last Train to Paris (6 page)

 

I never got a university degree, nor did it matter. I accepted the offer to work as a printer's devil and jack-of-all-trades for the
Territorial Enterprise
—the newspaper
for which Mark Twain had been a writer. My writing career began with hand-setting headline type, and learning the Linotype machine. Finally, I worked my way upstairs to the newsroom and writing. I loved everything about the newspaper. The smell of the ink—the smell of newsprint—the concentration required to find the right word. Once my boss reprimanded me for agonizing over every turn of phrase. “Listen, kid,” he said, “you've got talent, but you don't have the same twang as Twain. You've got to find your own style. Your strength is in your descriptive observations of how people behave. Work on it. You'll be fine.”

Early in February 1929, quietly, without saying anything to my family, I applied for a job at the
New York Courier
. In my letter to the personnel officer, I wrote, “I've been sitting in Mark Twain's chair and working at his desk for almost four years. Now I'm looking to move on. Also, I'm fluent in French, German, and Mandarin.” I got a job as a social reporter. At first, I was furious to be put at “the women's desk.” But I was so longing for an adventure that I would have swept the newspaper office's floors. It still amuses me to think about how my parents had longed to leave New York—and how I longed to go in reverse. The craving for change and adventure must have run in my family.

Although leaving my hometown was emotionally confusing, the bustle of preparing for the journey made it easier. My budget allowed for one steamer trunk and a knapsack. “You can take the old red trunk,” Mother said. “If I ever get the chance to leave here, I'd rather a new case.” I accepted. It opened with a key that I was petrified of losing. I wore it on a piece of twine around my neck. The trunk opened like a book. On either side there were six small drawers made of cardboard, each covered with faded red-and-white
fleur-de-lis
paper, which I took out to give myself more room. My clothes and an Indian blanket filled half the trunk, and the rest of the space was taken up with books, my shiny black Smith Corona typewriter, a stack of notebooks, and two reams of cheap onionskin paper.

My father drove me down the bumpy and dusty Geiger Grade to Reno in their first car, a used black 1930 Model A Ford. My mother claimed that she was too busy to take the time. When I said good-bye to her at the car, I leaned to kiss and embrace her. But she turned her body, as if she had seen something down the road. Saying good-bye to my father at the station was harder than I had imagined. Surprisingly, although we had lived under a resolute armistice for many years, we had become an odd triangle of a real family.

 

The journey to New York City's Penn Station took four days. It was torturous. I had to sit up all day, and recline ever so slightly to sleep in the same seat at night. When I finally exited the train, I was struck with a blast of hot, sooty, humid air. I had only ever felt the dry air of the West; this was an entirely new experience. And the noise! I had no idea.

A part of me felt foolish, like a bumpkin; the other part was awed and scared and excited. I placed my trunk in storage and, with detailed instructions from Aunt Clara, I haphazardly made my way on the subway to Brooklyn.

It was a relief to find her house. And there she was in the window waiting for me. Clara, forever a spinster, still smelled like faded mothballs, but also still had beautiful dark eyes protected by her black, untamed eyebrows.

On my first morning, as I was washing my face, I realized that there was no mirror. I almost blundered and asked where it was. Then I remembered another Clara story: she had unscrewed the medicine cabinet's mirror many years before and stashed it in the basement. She didn't need one: she felt her hair into place—she sensed the cleansing of her face.

Mother had told me that Clara had felt she had been wearing a mask—and an unfortunately ugly one at that. But, over time, she began to see herself differently. The longer she didn't glance at herself, the better looking she felt. That pleasant feeling of self-approval took on its own visual persona. When she caught an accidental glance of herself, Clara didn't recognize the woman staring back. The charade had become a part of her life.

Clara lived upstairs over her button-and-lace shop on Havemeyer Street in Brooklyn. The shop was called New World Notions. “I named this,” she said, “in honor of my becoming an American citizen and being free to have my own ideas.” Running along three walls of the store were built-in cabinets with rows of drawers filled with buttons. On the front of each drawer was a white ceramic knob and around each knob were painted colors and shapes to denote the drawer's contents. Above these cabinets, secured to both sides of the long and narrow shop, were spools of lace and ribbon displayed on dowels that were balanced over the heads of the shoppers. The shoppers would point to what they wanted, and Clara would climb a wooden ladder with a cloth measuring tape draped around her neck and cut the desired lengths. Being Clara, she always added an inch or two.

“I've fixed the spare room for you,” Clara said. “You can stay as long as you want.”

I had been planning to stay at a women's boardinghouse on the Lower East Side of Manhattan until I found an apartment. Now, I wasn't sure. It was nice to be with family—but maybe a little too nice. I would have to think about it.

 

One Monday night when the theaters were dark, I saw Stella at Clara's.

“Oh, Rose, it's unbelievable! Two months ago I played Molly the whore in
Threepenny Opera
! I couldn't believe it! Now I'm rehearsing
The Mask and the Face
with Humphrey Bogart. It's so exciting!”

“Stella,” Clara said, “calm down and act like a lady.”

The next Friday night the family, five people, gathered for dinner at Uncle Saul and Aunt Leah's house. Leah sat at one end of the table, Saul at the other. Seated on either side were Clara, Stella, and me. The only Brooklyn relative who wasn't there was David, Stella's brother, who was on a business trip. It was the first time I had been around so much family, and I felt besieged. Questions and more questions. They couldn't get over the idea that I knew so little of my own family's history, while I sensed that they lived too much in the past.

When they lit candles, I asked, “Are we celebrating a special event? Is it someone's birthday?”

They were shocked. “Didn't your mother tell you anything about being Jewish?” Stella asked, laughing.

“Your mother,” Leah said, shaking her head, “your mother —”

“Ma,” Stella said, “let's change the subject. Come on, let's eat.”

And then there was a great commotion about food. “
Es, es, mayn kind!
” Eat, eat, my children! Clara said in Yiddish.

Leah remained quiet. I found her cold and distant and felt as if she were passing judgment any time she opened her mouth. In the middle of serving the soup, Leah stopped, the ladle suspended in the air, and said, “Miriam has always hated being Jewish. Do you have any idea why?”

“None,” I answered. “Why don't you ask her?”

“I never dared,” Leah said. “Not with her temper!”

Well, I thought, this is indeed something we share. But I kept quiet.

“Can you answer another question?” Leah persisted. “Why did your mother leave us to marry a Catholic stranger? You know, it's a tragedy in our family. Nothing could be worse, except marrying a Negro.”

I could see that everyone around the table was mortified.

“That's an awful thing to say,” Clara said. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Paul's a lovely man, and Rosie's father, for heaven's sake!”

And I felt like tipping the food-laden table onto Leah's wide lap.

“Look,” I said, taking a deep breath, “you know nothing about the circumstances of my father's and mother's lives. Only Clara and Stella have taken the time to visit them.”

“Well,” Leah said haughtily, “they could have come here.”

“Yes, but how?” I asked. “First of all, they didn't have the money. And second, they're aware of your disapproval. And now,” I said to their stunned faces, “excuse me, but it's time to go.” I had made up my mind. I would leave Brooklyn and find a cheap apartment in the city.

Clara left with me. “I'm so sorry, Rosie, you didn't need to hear that. Leah can be so difficult—”

I cut her off midsentence. “Don't worry, Clara. Both Leah and Miriam are difficult. But now I certainly understand why my parents never wanted to come back for a visit.” And putting my arm through hers, I said, “I wish you had been my mother.”

 

Stella invited me to see her in the play. But neither I nor New York would get to enjoy
The Mask and the Face
. The play closed. Indeed, half the theaters were dark.

Stella, near tears, was sitting in Clara's living room. “Damn this Hitler character,” she said. “He's making us all so nervous.”

“It's a scary time, Stella,” I replied. “I don't think any of us can find a context for what we're feeling.”

“All I know,” Clara said, “is that I'm reminded of the past—of Russia—of close calls.”

 

* * *

 

For almost two years, I worked at the
New York Courier'
s main office on West Forty-third Street. I worked hard—did whatever I was asked, met all my deadlines, learned more about celebrities and wealthy people than I had ever wanted to know. I had a few friends, mostly colleagues who all went home to their wives and children. I went home to a five-flight walk-up, one-room apartment on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village. The bathtub was in the kitchen, the toilet in the only closet. Sometimes I had dinner with my relatives, but I stayed away from going there on Friday nights.

 

I was very busy—having sex, dreaming sex, and trying to stay interested in the boring job of covering social news. Many weeknights were spent in bed with lovers. I had two long affairs, concurrently, with married men I had met while covering stories. To this day, I can't remember their names.

Then I got my break. A society-desk job opened up in Paris. By then I was a pro at composing those stories. That ability, along with my fluency in languages, cinched the deal. And I sensed from my interview that if I did a good job, they would move me to another desk—if I were lucky, a political one.

My Aunt Clara, being as sweet as she was, gave me a bon voyage
gift. A fur coat. A mink coat! She had bought it from the estate of one of her clients. The edges were slightly worn. I didn't care. It made me feel
très chic
! “Just look at you!” she said as I modeled the coat for her. “I'm proud of you, Rosie, I really am.”

 

Summer, 1933. I sailed from America with the hope that I would charm and transform the world of journalism. That was one side of my dream. The other side was more like a nightmare: I felt inadequate, terrified that I would make a fool of myself. But I couldn't help marveling that I had set myself free—that I was no longer tethered to my native shore. Truly, but with trepidation, I was proud of myself for getting a writing job in Europe. Where I came from, the rest of the world was very far away.

Crossing the turbulent Atlantic, I shared a cabin with a young man and woman who had just been married. We were on a tramp steamer that was loaded with pecans, cotton, soy oil, and we three courageous passengers. We were all seasick. And even though I was miserable, I had a good time between the visits to the railing or the sloshing buckets. The poor newlyweds could hardly stay on deck for more than a few minutes. They were both poets and would scribble away between their battles with the sea.

 

* * *

 

The day after the argument with Stella, it was still humid and overcast. But my spirits had lifted. I had wanted to take it easy. Maybe have my hair washed, do laundry–get myself together before seeing Clara and Stella again. I was sitting at Henri's Café, drinking coffee and reading a book. But my attention was interrupted by the awareness of an unsettled feeling. Perhaps, I said to myself, it simply had to do with the drama of slapping Stella. I was afraid that Clara was angry with me–that I had disappointed her with my violent behavior–that I was an echo of my mother. I feared that now Clara would see through me, see that I was an immature, neurotic mess; see that I was a fraud, a two-bit hack, a nothing in comparison to the excitement of ‘our' Stella.

Then, without warning, a newspaper was slapped on my knee and I was rudely forced from my reverie.

“Did you see this one, R.B.?” my colleague Pete Grogan asked, sitting beside me. Pete, a British freelancer, worked at both the
Paris Courier
and the
London Times
. He was a short man with a rotund belly that hung between his red plaid suspenders. A protruding chin, accentuated by his dark hair, which was parted in the middle, set off his face. He was one of the few writers who seemed to have a stable home life. I liked him. Actually, I envied him.

“For Christ's sake,” I said, “I'm not working until tonight. Please. Go home to your beautiful wife.”

“Ha, I'd like nothing better,” Pete replied, “but Ramsey sent me to find you and give you this morning's paper. It may be a sensational case,” he said, stretching out the word “sensational.”

“What does that have to do with me? I've been covering politics for the past two years.”

“What's the difference?” he said.

“Oh, stop being a two-bit philosopher—leave me alone.”

“Just read the article,” he said.

“All right, all right—but I need another coffee. Give me a few minutes.”

 

New York Actress Kidnapped. Just to the left of it was Soviet Union Begins Great Purge. “
The American actress Stella Mair is missing from her hotel in the rue du Vieux-Colombier, the Préfecture de Police announced last night
.”