Authors: Alyson Richman
The Lost Wife (9 page)
“Here,” he said, opening up the two glass doors. “Now you can breathe in all the fresh air you need.”
“And hopefully there won’t be any dying birds in the garden. It would embarrass me greatly if I couldn’t resurrect one for you.”
I laughed. “Hopefully your medical powers won’t be needed for birds or for Věruška’s or my sake!”
“Well, I’ll let you rest before dinner, then. You must be tired from the journey.”
I looked at him and nodded. “A little rest would do me good.”
As I walked with him toward the door, I could feel the heat spreading across my face. It wasn’t until he had left the room, and closed the door completely behind him, that I was actually able to settle in. Only then, as the redness of my skin began to dissipate, did I take off my sandals, stretch my legs across the bed, and close my eyes. My head filled with thoughts of Josef as the breeze brushed against my skin.
That afternoon I was breathless as I walked through the house. The crystal chandeliers sparkled in the sunlight. There were large pieces of carved Bohemian furniture, and beautiful china already in place on the dining table next to tall, handblown cobalt wineglasses. In the middle, Pavla had arranged a handkerchief vase full of daisies.
By evening, the same handkerchief vase was rearranged with roses. The dining room, which hours before was filled with sunlight, was now dark except for the low flickers of candles. Tall, etched goblets were filled with red wine. Rounds of white porcelain lined the table and a tall silver pitcher cast a warped reflection.
I had forgotten how different Věruška and Josef’s parents were from mine. After engaging in a few obligatory pleasantries with me, Dr. Kohn questioned Josef about his studies for the rest of the meal.
“What reading have you brought with you, Josef?”
Josef paused for a second over the cutting of his meat. “
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, Father.”
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
, Father.”
“Really now, Josef.”
“Really, Father. The anatomy descriptions are proving quite helpful to my studies, among other things.”
Josef looked over his wineglass in my direction. He was smiling and the top of his lip was stained darker from the wine. He looked like a little imp—a mischievous boy hoping to make me smile.
Věruška and I nearly choked on our wine laughing, but Dr. Kohn did not seem to find any humor in his son’s antics. Whereas Věruška’s little anecdotes were smiled upon, the elder Kohn tolerated far less levity from his son.
“
Your
studies are important, Josef.”
Your
studies are important, Josef.”
Josef’s face reddened. “Of course they are.”
“Being a doctor is not just a profession; it is an honor.”
“I realize that.”
“Do you?” Dr. Kohn brought a napkin up to his lips. “I often wonder if you do.
“I have lost count of the exact amount of children I have brought into this world,” Dr. Kohn proffered. “But nothing was more important to their parents, and I am blessed to have helped them.”
“Yes, Father.”
“The practice of medicine is not something to be taken lightly.”
As Dr. Kohn spoke sternly to Josef, I tried to picture the wounded bird in his palms. I wished that he could be as soft with Josef, allow himself to smile in his company, and not question him so relentlessly. This man, who had known exactly what to do with a fragile, injured bird, lacked those instincts with his own son.
I could see Josef struggling under his father’s glare; his jaw was stiff and his face was now serious.
When I looked over at Věruška, it was the first time I saw her resembling her mother. They were like two china dolls, their heads tucked downward, their eyes staring motionless at their plates.
In the reflection of the silver pitcher, I saw my own face. A forced smile that belied a frown.
CHAPTER 6
It used to bother Amalia that every evening after I returned home from the hospital, I would lock myself in my study for half an hour. She always had dinner on the table for me. The usual fare: a pot roast, a basket of rye bread, and an overboiled green vegetable. The only time I ate my dinner while it was still warm were nights when there were no deliveries, which was rare.
There was no lock on the door to my study, but Amalia and the children knew not to disturb me there. My days at the hospital were long and hectic and I needed a few minutes of privacy in order to clear my head.
I had become an obstetrician because I was tired of being haunted by death. There was something reassuring about my hands being the first ones to touch a new human being as it was born into this world. To usher life into this world is a gift, let me tell you, it’s a miracle every time it happens.
I kept a list of each child I delivered, from the first one in 1946, to the last one I did before I retired. In a ledger bound in red leather, I had columns for the infant’s name, sex, and birth weight, and whether it was a vaginal or, less common, cesarean delivery.
I wonder if after I die my children will find my ledger. I hope they will understand that it was not an act of vanity on my part. I had delivered 2,838 children by the time I retired. Every name I recorded was as meaningful to me as the first. Every time I placed the tip of my pen on the space in the lined paper, I paused to think of the million and a half children who perished in the Holocaust. I imagined that after so many years in the profession, my feelings of honoring the dead would lessen, but they never did. If anything, as I grew older, as I became a father and grandfather myself, those feelings only intensified. When I looked at my children, I now understood how my own father must have felt at the threat of extinction for his family. How many times did I cradle them when they were babies in my arms and wonder what evil could have wanted to extinguish this joy, this singularly most perfect creation?
My love for my children was so intense that it occasionally triggered something approaching panic. I found myself obsessed with every aspect of their well-being. I rode Amalia’s waves of concern during their painful teething episodes and their first fever or flu. I looked at our children’s pediatrician with distrust. He had grown up in the comfort of Forest Hills, and had no experience with the threat of typhoid or diphtheria. Part of me realized I was behaving irrationally and another part of me thought such vigilance was something that just came with being a parent.
There was a pain, a bittersweetness in my heart that my father had not lived to see me embrace my role as both a parent and a physician. Why was it now, years after my father’s death, that I could finally understand all those lines on his face? Had it taken me this long to recognize that I now looked just like him? Now, when I imagined his eyes, I could see the look he carried for a patient who might be in distress, or that quiet devastation—so personal that it defied words—that overcame him when he lost a child in delivery.
I could finally peel away the layers of his formality, his rigidity, and see the human part hidden beneath. I could see how I wrestled with my own expectations that I held for my son—ones that probably would never be achieved—and understood how frustrated my father must have been with me.
There were some nights I wished I could bring him back and have him sit across from me. I would tell him how I now understood what he was always trying to convey to me, that a sanctity existed within our profession. That I finally understood that my hands were blessed to hold something as sacred as a squirming, hollering newborn experiencing its first moments of life.
But these are only a few of my many regrets. These thoughts, I tuck away among so many other things. Just as Amalia’s locket remained shut, my returned letters to Lenka were hidden among old shoe boxes from Alexander’s and Orbach’s. I find myself alone in my office with the door closed, seeing solace in a ledger of 2,838 names.
CHAPTER 7
Those two weeks in Karlovy Vary were magical. I awakened every morning to the scents of Pavla’s freshly baked bread and wet grass on the breeze. We took our breakfast outside to the sounds of birds and the sight of an occasional scampering rabbit. Pavla brought wild strawberries to the table, a bowl full of homemade preserves, baskets of warm rolls, and a pot of freshly brewed coffee on a silver tray. Věruška had no desire to sketch or paint while we were there, and made it clear to all who asked that she intended only to indulge herself in plenty of rest and good food.
During breakfast, I usually tried to watch Josef out of the corner of my eye. He would typically arrive after me, his black hair tousled from sleep. He was quiet in the morning, concentrating on his food rather than on conversation. When Věruška arrived, her nightgown peeking from underneath her linen robe, I always felt somewhat relieved to hear her chatter.
After breakfast, I’d pack a small knapsack with my sketchpad and a tin of oil pastels and venture outside to draw. I didn’t know when I’d have a chance to get to the countryside again, and wanted to draw from nature as much as I could.
By the time I’d leave the villa each morning, Josef was usually reclining on one of the Kohns’ iron chaise chairs with a book on his lap. His feet would be stretched out and his ankles crossed. Sometimes he would look up from one of his books, but other times his gaze never ventured from the page.
“You’re off to go sketching?” he asked that first afternoon. The second and third time I left he nodded to me without remark. After four days of this, he looked up from his medical book and asked if he could come along.
I had imagined him asking me this question nearly every night. In my mind, I had always been bold and told him, “Certainly.” But now, with his question hanging in midair, I stood silently like an awkward child, my head racing.
I looked down at my sundress as if it would answer for me. The cotton of my skirt was creased, my shoes scuffed from days of walking the terrain outside the garden.
“If you prefer to be alone, I understand,” he said softly. “I wonder where you go every afternoon.”
I finally managed to turn to him and smiled. “Every day it’s a little different. I’d be happy to have you come along.”
We walked the first half of the way in silence, our footsteps on soft, quiet earth. Without a cleared path, I had learned not to be bothered by jutting branches or the thorns from the wild bushes. I could hear Josef’s breathing from behind, which grew more rapid as we walked uphill. I began to worry that I couldn’t find the place I had come to only the day before. But just as I began to lose hope, the small valley opened up before me and I turned to face Josef.
“This is it,” I told him, and pointed down below. He walked closer, nearly grazing my shoulder as he came to take a better look. He was so close to me at this point, I could smell the faint scent of his soap coming off his skin.
“I used to walk these woods with Věruška,” he said, turning to me. “We looked for strawberries in the summer and mushrooms in the fall.”
“We would carry baskets and bring home everything we found to Pavla. She’d show us how to wash everything. With delicate things you have to be careful.”
He smiled and looked at me. “I have never seen the valley from this angle, though. It’s amazing, but you’re showing me something new. I thought I knew every corner of this forest.”
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