Last Train to Paris (3 page)

Mr. Hin had wryly informed me, “It's an old Parisian adage that you will wreck your eyes if you read too much—and wear down your skin if you take too many baths.” Every three days—more often if I could afford it—I would go to the public bath on the rue de Vaugirard. The proprietors provided me with a thin piece of soap, a gray, threadbare towel, and a tin tub of warm water. It was never enough; I never felt fresh when I left. I had been brought up breathing the crystalline air on a mountaintop. When I first moved east to work at the
New York Courier
, it took me a long time to become accustomed to the new smells.

 

In Nevada, an old, scarred, red-leather trunk sat closed in the corner under a window in my childhood home. It smelled of mountain dust and memories. In the trunk were tarnished nineteenth-century silver teapots, sugar bowls, and creamers from Russia and England, marked with cryptic stamps and the etched names of artisans. As a child I used to play a game with myself, closing my eyes and running my fingers over the etched names to try to feel out the letters.

Then one day I dug deeper. I discovered a pile of yellowed linens wrapped in tissue paper, which had begun to flake like a thin layer of dry spun sugar. Under another layer of tissue were crocheted doilies and Victorian lace collars; the insides of their rosettes had turned from ecru to umber. Under all of this I found a pink satin-covered candy box filled with letters. Most of the letters were from my mother's sister, Clara Silverman, who lived in that mysterious place, Brooklyn. Her handwriting was scratchy and hard to read, already fading with time. Finding the letters boring and almost indecipherable, I put them aside. It was then that I found a telegram from Clara congratulating my parents.
Mazel tov
on the birth of your daughter
, it said, and I had no idea what it meant.

“Mrs. Cheng?” I said, moving my nanny's arm back and forth to wake her.

“What, Rosie, do you need?” she said.

“What does this mean?” I handed the telegram to her.

“I don't know, sorry.”

“But this doesn't even look like English. Perhaps it's English for a Chinese word?”

“No,” she said as she looked at it again, “sorry, Rosie, not Chinese word.”

I replaced the telegram and closed the trunk.

 

I loved my Aunt Clara. Every other year she would travel from New York City on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe for a visit. I can still see her stepping down from the railway car with smoke billowing around her while she held onto a hat decorated with colorful bird feathers or splendid silk flowers and carried a lumpy, stuffed handbag. Clara wore dangling earrings and the kind of clothing that I never saw in my town. Her brown-leather trunk, bound with a thick strap and closed with a heavy brass buckle, would be put on the cart and then towed into the wagon, and in later years, the trunk of the car. I learned early on that it was filled with amazing gifts: toys and books for me; art supplies and sophisticated big-city clothing for my mother that she never wore. Also in the trunk were books; whiskey for my father; and all kinds of salami, fat loaves of dark bread, and large chunks of hard cheese wrapped in cheesecloth, waxed paper, and then newspaper.

My parents would unpack every last thing, and then carefully smooth out the pages from the
New York Post
. They put the pages in order and savored every word, reading them time and time again. Some of my later love for newspaper work must have come from watching my parents peacefully reading. Those were rare instances when there was no tension in the house; my parents, for the moment, were in harmony.

Unlike my schoolmates, Aunt Clara never teased me about my shortsightedness, about being an oddball with my tightly curled black hair, about being funny looking. Even when I was very young, I could read in her eyes that she loved me. And Aunt Clara, my father, and Mrs. Cheng were the only people I allowed to call me “Rosie”—otherwise I was Rose, without the “i.”

The year I found the
mazel tov
telegram, Clara made another visit. During a Sunday dinner that included a family friend, Father Patrick Maloney, I asked my burning question.

“What does
mazel tov
mean?”

For a pregnant moment, there was silence at the table. “Why, it means ‘good fortune,'” Clara said easily as she looked around the table at the shuttered faces.

My mother was staring at her older sister with a “don't you dare say another word” look on her face. My father was looking down at his plate. Father Maloney took a larger than usual gulp of wine.

“My God, Miriam,” Clara exclaimed, “doesn't Rosie know she's Jewish?”

All hell broke out.

My mother was screaming at Clara, my father was trying to calm my mother, and Father Maloney was intoning to his friends, the angels.

“Listen, Clara,” my father said, “this wasn't my idea.”

“Well,” my mother answered, “all of a sudden my milquetoast of a husband is being a man!”

My father's face crumbled.

“You can't talk like that to him,” I said.

“Oh, shut up, you horrible brat,” shrieked my mother, and struck me across the face.

“Stop,” shouted Clara, “leave her alone!”

Finally, Father Maloney had had enough. “Holy Mother of Jesus. Stop!” he said, and he slammed his wine goblet down on the table, splashing red wine on the white tablecloth, on Clara's crisp white blouse, on my mother's black dress, on my father's collarless white shirt. He missed me altogether. Silence.

Then my father began clearing the table and cleaning up. Clara came out of the kitchen with a dishcloth and went to work. Father Maloney looked about the room and said, “Obviously, this is a family matter.” He got up and left, his black cassock billowing behind him. I stood in the doorway, holding my burning-red cheek and glaring at my mother; she was seated at the table, staring at a mysterious horizon.

 

It is more than seventy-five years later, and I can still recall the slap of her hand. The humiliation I felt was profound. Experiencing it in front of my beloved Aunt Clara was the worst part. Over time, I got over the embarrassment—but it was translated into fury. I nurtured that fury, embracing “poor me” with a stern, unrelenting, unconscious delight. Although, over time, there were many slaps, many spankings, many cruel words said to me, that was the first public slap. It taught me to hate my mother from the inside out.

 

* * *

 

It had taken a little more than two years of good hard work in Paris to convince the guys in the New York office to move me from the society page to the foreign desk. I became a political correspondent, somewhat rare for a woman. Silly as it may seem now, I had to be careful about the way I dressed. I put together a uniform. Black trousers. A dark-colored blouse. Sensible shoes. I wore my hair pulled back with a barrette at the nape of my neck. Sometimes to amuse myself and be contrary, I would wear the round brooch that had belonged to my grandmother. Clara gave it to me—and I still have it. It's an enamel painting of a sweet, idyllic scene in the woods. Leaning against a tree trunk are a couple holding hands. They are dressed in eighteenth-century attire, with ruffles and pointed shoes. The young woman is holding a fan edged with lace; the young man is gazing at her. They look comfortable and a bit naughty, too.

Whenever I wore the brooch, I felt mischievous, daring the men to look at my cleavage. But it was a waste of time. It was obvious that I was completely without glamour. I got used to it. It didn't matter, for I was as excited as a schoolgirl to be working in Paris.

 

It was the summer of 1937, and I had just returned to Paris from an assignment in Berlin. I was sitting outside under a café's canopy reading the
Paris Courier
and having a cup of coffee. As I scanned the “News of Americans in Europe” column, I read at the bottom of the page:
“The actress Stella Mair and her aunt, Miss Clara Silverman, arrived in Paris on the
SS Normandie
. They are staying at the Studio Hôtel on the rue du Vieux-Colombier.'

Soon after I began working at the newspaper in 1933, I had become familiar with this column. At the desk next to me was a day-staff man whose task was to gather arriving ships' manifests and compile the daily list of passengers. The list was then handed over to Ramsey before being sent down to the Linotype machine operators. Ramsey put most of the names in alphabetical order, but he put the Jewish-sounding names at the bottom.

“Why?” I had asked.

“Directive from high up,” Ramsey said, and stuffed a cigar stump in his mouth, ending the questioning.

I had known that Clara and Stella were coming, and had asked Ramsey for permission to return to Paris from Berlin. “Sure,” he agreed, “but no more than two weeks.”

The idea of my family being on my patch of the planet was disconcerting. Although I adored Clara, I worried that they might be a burden. I would have to spend time with them and take them sightseeing. I knew that I would feel responsible for their having a good time. Clara would be easy, but I wasn't sure what I felt about Stella. Stella—the family beauty, the family success story. I was jealous. She was inclined to be dramatic and there was no telling what trouble she could get into. Besides, I couldn't understand why Jews would want to visit the
Exposition Internationale
,
1937.
It was an open invitation to the Germans. Paris was crawling with soldiers of the Reich. The city was being seeded with spies. The soldiers, with their clean, sharp haircuts and trim uniforms, were enthralled with its beauty. They strolled along the boulevards of the Right Bank, side by side with American tourists, all thumbing through their
Guides Bleus
. It was impossible for me to walk to and from the newspaper office without seeing them. I heard more German and English spoken than French.

 

At the same time, thousands of German Jewish émigrés, without official residency permits, were hiding from the authorities while trying to eke out a living on the Left Bank. The Emergency Rescue Committee in Paris helped as much as it could, but its efforts were meager and the human needs overwhelming. Émigrés were forced to move from one cheap hotel to another; they were forced into dealing in the black market, along with stealing, counterfeiting, cleaning offices in the middle of the night, selling safety pins and shoelaces–living hand to mouth. The trick, everyone quickly learned, was not to behave like émigrés or they would certainly be caught. But try as they might not to, the émigrés gave off an odor of fear, easy to distinguish.

I knew the drill. The Café Maurice had become one of the main haunts for displaced persons. The owner, who had a soft heart, allowed people to sleep on the floor at night. Once I saw the French police sweep into the café and line everybody–men, women, and children–up against the wall.

“
Carte d'identité d'étranger
,” they politely demanded. Of course, nobody had them. Arrest. Deportation. And yes, even back to Germany. Wander. Find a safe boardinghouse. Wait for the waning of the moon. Slip back into France under the cover of a black night. Know you will be caught again.

I was curious about the café and would make a point of occasionally walking past. One day I had to force myself to keep my mouth shut. A scraggly band of wanderers was being herded toward police vans. The men and women looked lost, anxious. Some stumbled and were helped by their fellow unfortunates, and some looked stoic, straight ahead, obviously planning their next move. All of a sudden, a painfully thin elderly man, dressed in black with a yarmulke and sidelocks, ran for the door. One of the policemen nonchalantly put his foot out and the old man tripped and fell flat on his face. No one laughed. A young man asked for permission to go to him and was allowed.

“Come, old man,” he said, “let me help you.” I saw that the old man's bewildered face was wet with tears.

This behavior made me sick. I knew there was no way to help. When I saw this kind of harassment, I would coil into a tight ball, like the doodlebugs I used to collect as a child and keep in a jar. The bugs had an armored exterior and would roll up into balls when threatened. I understood that in this atmosphere in France, it was dangerous for me to have Jewish blood. I quite consciously took on the demeanor of a serious atheist, letting my colleagues assume that I was a lapsed Catholic.

I was still afraid. Every couple of weeks, whether in Paris or Berlin, I was stopped and asked for my papers. I showed all my credentials. And even though they were in order, each time this happened I thought it was the end. I knew that, if someone did a little research, I would be identified as a Jew. I felt soiled and ashamed after each encounter—like an imposter. No surprise; I had been pretending to be someone else all my life.

 

But I don't feel I'm pretending any longer. Time has eased the ancient pain of feeling different. It's like my garden. Some varieties of plants flourish. Others struggle to be happy. It's the sad plants that I work the hardest for. I'm convinced that if I'm more solicitous toward them, they'll strengthen their roots and begin to thrive. But alas, I've learned that many of them simply don't belong here. They're not nurtured by the soil. But I've learned where I can flourish.

 

I walked to the Studio Hôtel where Stella and Clara were staying. This would be the first time in four years I had seen them–although Clara had kept in touch with the crisp, short letters that I loved. She had been born in Russia, and had not come to America until she was fifteen. Although she spoke acceptable English, her writing was filled with misspellings and hilarious malapropisms. I kept them, planning someday to use pieces of them in my writing.

The hotel's entrance was dark and it took me a moment to adjust my eyes. As I approached the desk to be announced, I caught a glimpse of Stella. She was on her way out, holding the arm of a truly dashing man—oblivious to me and everyone else. Stella, the chatterbox, was trying to be demure and elegant. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a low-cut bodice, a matching blue hat with a white feather, and scarlet high-heeled shoes, carrying a small red handbag. She looked like an American flag. Stella was smiling at the gentleman with a flirtatious look that I knew well. I didn't want to interfere.