The Lost Wife (45 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
I believe those who have the luxury to die in their own bed can often sense when the end is near. And this was the case with Carl. His breathing suddenly became labored, his skin took an unearthly pallor. But in his eyes, there was a fierceness—a determination to use every ounce of his powers to see me clearly for the last time.
I took his hand in mine. “Put the music on, Lanie,” he whispered. I stood up and went to the old phonograph and put on his favorite record by Glenn Miller. Then I returned to sit next to him, slipping my old wrinkled hand in his.
With all his strength, my Carl gently raised his arm as if he were about to lead me in a dance. He swayed his elbow and my arm followed his lead. He smiled through the cloud of medication.
“Lanie,” he said. “You know, I have always loved you.”
“I know,” I told him, and squeezed his hand so hard, I feared I might have hurt him.
“Fifty-two years . . .” His voice was now barely a whisper, but he was smiling at me with those dark brown eyes.
And then it was as if my old heart finally tore open. I could feel the shell that I had so carefully maintained for all those years come undone. And the words, the feelings inside, seeped out like sap from an old, forgotten tree.
It was there, in our bedroom with the old faded curtains and the furniture we had bought so many years before, that I told him how much I loved him, too. I told him how for fifty-two years I had been blessed to spend my life with a man who held me, protected me, and gave me a daughter who was strong and wise. I told him how his love had turned a woman who only wanted to die after the war into someone who had a full and beautiful life.
“Tell me again, Lanie,” he whispered. “Tell me again.”
And so I told him again.
And again.
My words like a kaddish for the man who was not my first love. But a love all the same.
I told him until he was finally gone.
Dear Eleanor,It is hard for me to believe that tomorrow you will be getting married. I feel I have lived so many lives in my eighty-one years. But one thing I am sure of is that the days on which you and your mother were born were the two happiest days of my life. On the day I first saw you, the sight of your red hair, your white skin, I was struck speechless—I could not help but think of my mother, your great-grandmother, and my beloved sister. How wonderful for this color hair to reappear in the family after all these years. You remind me so much of my mother. You have her lithe frame, and that long neck that turns like a sunflower up toward the light. You have no idea how this makes me feel, to see her in you. To see her live through the blood in your veins, the sparkle in your eyes.I pray you will understand the wedding gift I am giving you and Jason. I have carried it with me for over fifty-five years. I made it for a dear friend, who is no longer here. I made it in honor of her child, who she was only able to hold in her arms for a few short hours. This painting was done with my heart, my blood, every part of me wanting to make something to keep this moment alive for my friend.It was buried through the war under a dirt floor, hidden there by a man who risked his life to hide hundreds of paintings that were done by men and women like me who needed to record their experiences in Terezín.I returned to Terezín after the war and dug it up myself. My hands worked quickly, as my spade dug through the earth to find the tin canister in which it was rolled. I eventually found my buried painting and wept with joy that it was still there. My friend, you see, was now with her child and her husband in whatever heaven there is. But the drawing remains as a testament to their lives, cut short but filled with love nonetheless.I have waited until now to share it. I have not wanted to burden your mother’s life or yours with stories of what I endured during the war. But this painting should no longer be hidden in my closet. It has spent its life in darkness. It deserves to be seen by eyes other than my own.Eleanor, I am giving you this painting not as a sign of morbidity, but because I want you to be its guardian. I want you to know the story behind it. To see it as a symbol not just of defiance, but of eternal love.
I placed the note on the canvas and rolled the painting up.
CHAPTER 58
I dress myself the day of my grandson’s rehearsal dinner with a careful reverence. I had laid out my clothes the night before. The navyblue suit, and the white shirt that I sent to the laundry the week before. I think of Amalia on this day, how happy she would be to see our grandson with his beautiful bride. It will be a grand wedding. The bride’s family is sparing no expense for their only child, a girl who looks so familiar to me, I can hardly say why.
I shave my face slowly, below my neck and the line of my slackening jaw. The mirror is merciless. My once-black hair, and my eyebrows, are as white as cotton. Somewhere deep beneath the lines, and beneath my paunch, there is a young man remembering the day he got married. His bride waiting for him under a white lace veil, a trembling body that would receive his gentle hand. I have so much love for my grandson. To see him getting married is a gift I never thought I’d live long enough to receive.
I pull on my undershirt, slip my arms through my shirtsleeves, and button myself carefully so as not to miss a single hole. I dab a little pomade on my hands and smooth out my few remaining curls.
Isaac arrives at four o’clock. The salt-and-pepper hair he had at Amalia’s funeral has now turned completely white. He comes into my room and stands behind me, both of our reflections cast in the mirror above Amalia’s old vanity. I can see his eyes fall to the porcelain tray that still holds her silver-plated brush, her pot of cold cream, and a tall green bottle of Jean Naté that she never felt she had the occasion to open.
He is not carrying his violin case, and somehow the sight of him without the leather case, the bow tucked inside, is soothing to me. I marvel at the sight of his two unencumbered arms, dangling like a schoolboy’s from the dark sleeves of his suit, his gray eyes sparkling like two silver moons.
Jakob has come out of his room and greets us in the hallway. My fifty-year-old son surprises me with a smile.
“Isaac,” he says, nodding a friendly hello. “Dad,” he says. I see him clasping his hands to steady his nerves. “You look great.”
I smile at him. He looks handsome in his suit, the first sprouts of gray hair around his ears remind me of my own. His eyes remind me of Amalia’s.
“What a night,” Jakob says as the three of us walk out under the canopy of my building. The doorman whistles for a cab. The moon is shining over the skyline. The air smells of autumn. Crisp as apples. Sweet as maple sugar.
The three of us slide onto the cab’s blue vinyl seats and fold our hands in our laps on the way to my grandson’s wedding rehearsal.
I look out the window as we drive across town, through the channels of a jewel-lit Central Park, and think I have lived to be eighty-five years old, to see my grandson on his wedding day. I am a very lucky man.
EPILOGUE
At a table in the back of the restaurant, long fingers of moonlight strike an aging couple. The bride-to-be and the future groom are dancing.
Her sleeve is now pulled upward. It is not the six blue numbers that have made the old man weep, it is the small brown birthmark on the flesh just above them. He trembles as his old finger reaches to touch it, that small raisin shape he had kissed a lifetime ago.
“Lenka . . .” He says her name again. He can barely get the word out of his mouth. It has been stuck there for sixty years.
She looks at him with eyes that have seen too many ghosts to believe he is who she thinks he might be.
“I am Lanie Gottlieb,” she protests weakly.
She touches her throat, encircled in a seed-pearl necklace that once belonged to an elegant redheaded woman in Prague. She glances over to her American granddaughter, her eyes filling with tears.
He is about to apologize, to say that he must be mistaken. That for years he thought he has seen her face in the subway, the bus, in a woman on line in the grocery. Now he fears he has finally lost his sanity.
She pulls down her sleeve and looks directly into his eyes. She studies him as a painter might study a canvas that she had long abandoned. In her mind, she colors his white hair black, and traces the arch of his brow.
“I am sorry,” she finally says with a shaking voice and tears in her eyes. “I have not been called Lenka in nearly sixty years.” She is covering her mouth, and underneath a fan of white fingers, she whispers his name: “Josef.”
He is trembling. She is once again before him, a ghost who has miraculously come to life. A love that has been returned to him in his old age. Unable to speak, he lifts his hand and covers hers with his.
Author’s Note
This book was inspired by several people whose stories are woven throughout its plot. I had planned on writing a novel about an artist who survives the Holocaust, but ended up writing a love story. With any novel, unexpected plot and other developments typically arise, and you find yourself going in a direction that you hadn’t originally planned. In this case, while getting my hair cut one afternoon, I overheard a story told by a guest at a recent wedding where the bride’s grandmother and the groom’s grandfather, who had not met prior to the ceremony, realized they had been husband and wife before the Second World War. The story stuck with me, and I decided to use it in the first chapter of my novel. I then created two characters and set out to fill in the space of the sixty years they spent apart.
Lenka’s experience is partly inspired by one of the actual characters mentioned in the book, Dina Gottliebová, who studied art in Prague and later worked for a short time in the Lautscher department in Terezín painting postcard scenes before she was deported to Auschwitz. She immigrated to the United States after the camps were liberated, and died in California in 2009. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., proved to be invaluable in providing an oral testimony of Dina Gottliebová’s experiences, working both in Terezín and in Auschwitz, where she created the mural of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
for the Czech children’s barracks. The mural came to serve as a comfort to the children, and also helped to save Dina’s life. After she completed it, an SS guard informed Mengele of her artistic talent. Mengele then promised to spare her and her mother’s lives if she painted life portraits of the men and women he used in his horrific medical experiments.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
for the Czech children’s barracks. The mural came to serve as a comfort to the children, and also helped to save Dina’s life. After she completed it, an SS guard informed Mengele of her artistic talent. Mengele then promised to spare her and her mother’s lives if she painted life portraits of the men and women he used in his horrific medical experiments.
Several other characters who appear in the book were also actual people. Friedl Dicker Brandeis arrived in Terezín in December 1942, and almost immediately began teaching art classes for the children there. In September 1944, upon hearing that her husband, Pavel Brandeis, was being transported east, she volunteered to follow him on the next transport. She perished shortly after her arrival in Auschwitz. Prior to her transport, however, she gave two suitcases, containing 4,500 drawings, to Rosa Englander, the chief tutor of the young girls’ home in Terezín. At the end of the war, Willy Groag, the director of the girls’ home, was entrusted with those suitcases, and hand-carried them to the Jewish community in Prague. Of the 660 children who created art with Friedl Dicker Brandeis in Terezín, 550 were killed in the Holocaust. All of the remaining drawings are now in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Prague, and many are on display for all the world to see.
Bedřich Fritta perished in Auschwitz on November 5, 1944. His wife, Johanna, died while in Terezín, but miraculously, their son Tommy survived. Leo Haas made it through the war and returned to Terezín to find the artwork he had hidden in the attic of the Magdeburg barracks. With the assistance of an engineer, Jíří Vogel, he was able to recover the hidden paintings made by Fritta and their other colleagues from the technical department: Otto Unger, Petr Kien, and Ferdinand Bloch, who had all since perished. Upon hearing that Tommy Fritta was left orphaned, Haas and his wife, Erna, adopted the boy and moved back with him to Prague.
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