Douglass’ Women (11 page)

I’d best hurry. Scribble these words before time disappears, love disappears. Before I’m so cold, so solid, I cannot move except to cross the ocean from which there is no return, no renewal. No gliding across the great Atlantic. No recrossing of seas. Only stillness and death.

Always, I’d wanted to sail to America. “Land of High Purpose and Dreams.” Think of it—a bold experiment—to have one’s customs, one’s culture begin anew. To be reborn! To carve from the landscape a new world. Not a nightmare
world but a realm of magical dreams—a land so vast and wide, anything can happen. A land—not chained or closed tight and small like Germany.

I hadn’t counted on love’s treachery. I’m dying. In Paris. The City of Light. Except there isn’t any light.

Douglass isn’t here.

Once upon a time …

Mama and Papa created an oasis. A house overflowing with much love, books, music, and painting. My parents, elegant and refined, presided over artistic, intellectual salons. Of course, Mama was far more gay and lively. But, on Sunday afternoons, when it seemed all of smart, creative Hamburg was in our parlor, even Papa, less dour, hugged me close. I delighted in smelling his tobacco, feeling the itch of his beard.

At two, I sat on Feodor Wehl’s knee. Herr Steinheim introduced me to chess. And Fräulein Orff commented on my early paintings of bold suns floating in purple skies. “Lots of color but little technique.” But, at five, it didn’t much matter. Both Mama and Papa exclaimed “how smart,” “how beautiful” I was! And even when my sister was born, their attentions, rather than lessening, redoubled.

What pleasures of childhood! Two enlightened parents who didn’t believe a girl was only fit for sewing and bearing babies. Two parents who thought love was worth all sacrifice. Indeed, worth any scorn. Papa, the gifted physician; Mama, ex-governess, now painter. Both poets celebrating their passion. Creating a cocoon for their daughters to fly!

Outside our home, there was far less light. Like a Grimm’s tale, a world dulled by a witch’s spell. Odors were less of sweet bread and more the rank of hard toil. Sunlight rarely pierced the maze of brick. Linen, drying on clotheslines, collected the air’s dust.

Hamburg’s Jews were well-educated, prosperous. Nonetheless, prejudice had blunted opportunities like unleavened bread. Dark men in prayer shawls whisked silently through lanes; little boys and girls wrapped in thin cloaks, played, kicking cans. Mothers bartered in the market for coal and candles to shelter against the long, winter nights. Of course, because they were Jews, some found it even harder. Women whose husbands and sons had gone missing. Orphans who’d lost entire families. Strange disappearances afflicted the ghetto like plague.

Once I gave my gloves to the butcher’s daughter, a little girl who was shivering in a shop with no warmth other than a black kettle-stove which instead of being steaming hot, was warm enough for me to touch. Mama was buying a roast hen. Our maid was sick, and I’d pleaded with Mama to let me help with chores. For me, it was a grand adventure.

The little girl’s black eyes seemed to sink inside her head. Blue veins were visible on her forehead and wrists. Her dark hair reminded me of my sister and it might have been merely that resemblance that encouraged me to move toward her. I couldn’t have been more than seven. Mama was supervising the weighing and plucking of the hen. The girl was as tall as me. But she looked like a scrawny chick in her shift and shawl, whereas I was plump and warm in my coat with fur cuffs and collar. She sniffed, wiping her nose with her palm. I offered her a handkerchief, embroidered with my initials:
O.A
.

“Are you a princess?”

I giggled.

Butcher Stein spoke sharply in Yiddish. In secret, my grandparents taught me Yiddish. Butcher Stein told his daughter not to bother me, to leave me alone. He told her I had no heart. I was no more a princess than the dead hen in his hand. Then, he looked at me, a fierce, intent stare, and I felt shame. Mama sensed it, too. Some shift in the sawdust, the blood-scented air. “Let us go. Deliver the hen.” She motioned for me to go. Impulsively, I pulled off my gloves, stuffed them into a little ball into the girl’s hands. “Auf Wiedersehen.”

The girl, her nose running, stared at the floor.

“Stubborn people,” Mama kept repeating all the way home. “Stubborn people.”

I looked at Mama, her cheeks red from the cold, her blond curls wild beneath her hat. In the coach glass, I could see both our images. We did indeed look like a queen and princess from a fairy tale—all golden and prosperous. But, even as a child, I knew from dreams that darkness overtook the beautiful.

“No enlightenment without suffering,” Papa would say.

That afternoon, going up my house’s steps, I realized keenly the differences between outside, inside. I stepped into the vestibule and Nanny was immediately upon me, clucking about the cold, asking where I’d lost my gloves. Even when she’d hung my coat, I felt, compared to the butcher shop, our home was an oven. I smelled sauerkraut and sausages.

Inside was a riot of colors: red, gold, blue, not just weathered wood, black caulking, and dulled brick. Portraits of our family hung on the wall in gilt frames. And Papa was
at home that late afternoon, for I remember him playing his favorite melody—Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor
. (Herr Rellstab renamed it “Moonlight Sonata” because it reminded him of moonlight over Lake Lucerne. But I always thought of it as Papa’s song. Sad and dreamy.) Mama rushed forward, kissing Papa, and he kissed her all about the face while Nanny took me upstairs to biscuits and tea.

Jews lived outside. Christians, like us, lived inside. Surrounded by Jews. Yet, my grandparents were Jewish; Mama’s and Papa’s friends were Jews. “I converted to Christianity to marry Mama,” explained Papa. “But I refuse to pass.” He was Jewish by culture; Christian, in religion. “But none of this really matters, little one. Individualism is beyond culture.”

I didn’t understand him then. I don’t understand him now. Even the choices that I thought were all about me—were they? Or were they merely reflections of sweeping social change, of my own self-delusions, of Frederick?
Abolitionist. Suffragette. Shadow wife
.

I do remember the next morning, packing my clothes, my books, my favorite doll. I wanted to give them to the butcher’s girl. Mama hugged me and Papa called me his dear little girl.

Mama consented to a few clothes but took away the books. “The child can’t read.”

I was shocked. All afternoon I cried. Not reading stories was great poverty to me.

At ten, I asked directly, forthrightly: “Why don’t people like Jews?”

It was Mama who kissed my fingertips in turn. “Religious
differences. Belief in an Aryan superiority. Nationalism without compassion. If each German could love one neighbor as I love your father, there’d be no room for hate.” Then, she pretended to bite my thumb. I laughed and squeezed her tight.

1830. Pogroms had begun.

Only inside our house could you escape violence. But sometimes it’d come right up to our door.

Of the four of us, Papa and Ludmilla looked the most Jewish. Ashkenazi heritage. Both tall, dark, thin. Ludmilla would sometimes have eggs splattered on her. Papa would come home, suit torn, hat missing. Bruises on his face and arms. Mother and I could roam unmolested throughout Germany. Only our Jewish neighbors knew us, and many would mutter “half-breed,” as I passed by. This was nothing compared to Papa’s and Sister’s trials. Ludmilla felt resentful. Sometimes, she’d pinch me. Or cut my best gown. I never told.

“Germany is a great nation,” Papa believed fervently. “In time, it will give up these cultural prejudices and realize Jews are as patriotic as anyone.”

1835. Pogroms again. For weeks, months, dark clouds would consume Papa. He’d barely eat or sleep. Even pretty Mama, whom he loved more than anything, couldn’t cajole him with her kisses.

“You children are our experiment,” Papa said. “Our proof that enlightenment is a moral, not cultural choice. Everyone is equal.” But even as he said the words, a stain of sadness would rest upon his face and mouth. He’d drink another glass of schnapps.

It was Papa’s choice to convert for Mama. Papa’s choice to change our name from Assur to Assing. Papa’s
choice to live in a Jewish community. Yet, as I grew older, I wondered what choices Papa would’ve made if he looked blond and blue-eyed like me? I dared not speak these thoughts aloud.

Just as Ludmilla and I dared not go to school and endure endless taunts. Mama taught us things no conservative German would condone: “Life is for the senses”; “Passion over propriety”; “Great literature instead of morality tales”; “Nature is the heart of a woman.”

Summers, we traveled abroad. We met George Sand (how I adored her). Visited Keats’s grave in Italy. Weeping, Mama made us recite
The Eve of St. Agnes:

Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be

For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee
.

Traveling abroad, we were always happy. No questions about identity, religion, or morality. All of us equally free to follow our hearts’ desire.

For my fourteenth birthday, Mama gave me an ink drawing of America. How I laughed! Germany could fit inside New York. America had grown acres and acres—a living, vital thing, pushing farther into the vast wilderness. Right up to the Mississippi River. Amazing.

I painted landscapes. Me, inside America: atop the Appalachians, peering out the window of a Delaware train, or paddling the Erie Canal in a canoe. Sometimes I was in an elegant city parlor—New York, Philadelphia, Boston—expounding on the nature of freedom.

Like Columbus crossing the sea, I never doubted I’d find myself in America. Not Jew, half-breed. Nor German. Just Ottilie. Me. My best self.

How naïve I was!

One afternoon, when Papa should’ve been seeing patients, he burst into the parlor, surprising me and Mama. “Don’t apologize for who you are. Never apologize.” He was red-faced, furious.

Mama shooed me from the room. I could hear Papa ranting first about Rabbi Shel. “What does it matter if Jesus is a Jewish prophet or a martyred Christian? European faith can hold both. We live in Germany, not Palestine.” Next, he ranted about the politicians. “Bourgeois bureaucrats. Idiots. Fools. Aryans were not the first to settle Germany!”

Mama soothed Papa’s storm. She took him upstairs, closed the bedroom door. This was the pattern. No matter the time of day. A closed bedroom and hours later, Papa would emerge optimistic, elated. When Ludmilla and I were young, Nanny pulled us away to play with blocks and dolls. Later, I painted or read in the library. I learned to accept there’d always be hours when Mama and Papa were both inaccessible. So close. Behind a slight, wooden door, never to be disturbed. No matter the sounds: the shouts, the creaking springs, weeping, or thundering silences. The maid would leave dinner outside their door. Sometimes breakfast too.

Mama tried to explain love to me.

“Passion is fierce sometimes. You desperately want, need each other.”

“Why do you cry? I hear you crying.”