Authors: Alyson Richman
The Lost Wife (8 page)
Those afternoons of laughter would soon fade. My own father’s business began suffering as I entered that second year at the Academy. By the winter of 1938, his clients stopped placing new orders. Only one was honest enough to tell him it was because he was nervous to be associated with a Jew. Lucie was the only Gentile we knew who remained loyal to us. She continued to visit with the baby, a round cherub who now walked and made little noises, and brought a much-needed vitality to our otherwise concerned household.
The contrast of Lucie’s baby on my mother’s lap revealed how she had begun to age. The strain of Father’s failing business and the unspoken fear of rising anti-Semitism had begun to wear on her face. As if visited by an etcher’s point, her face was now feathered with thin lines that made her appear sadder, and perhaps more fragile, than before.
I hold the image of my mother with Lucie’s baby, Eliška, on her lap, like a postcard from a long-ago holiday. I have the sensation that I was once in the parlor in our apartment on Smetanovo nábřeži, a tuft of red upholstery beneath me and a cup of tea resting between cupped hands. Here I am, a daughter looking at her mother aging before her eyes. I see my nanny’s child with her life stretched before her, in dark contrast to my mother’s. I have never actually painted this image, even though I think of it often. Like poetry that is recited but never written down, more powerful because it is held solely in the mind.
I continued to throw myself into my studies during that second year at the Academy. While Věruška toted her sketchpad to the Café Artistes every afternoon, and sat seductively among the brooding intelligentsia, I walked back to our family’s apartment to work on my homework assignments and keep an eye on my parents.
I knew that Marta’s presence would have been enough, but I was increasingly worried about them. My own life had not changed yet. I was still attending school, and socializing occasionally when I felt like it. But the financial burden of supporting his family under deteriorating conditions was weighing on Papa. Like rain running down a gutter, his concern trickled down on all of us.
They had already let the maid go, and Mother’s visits to the seamstress, Gizela, had ceased. Mother had taken to doing her own cooking, too. Papa was trying to sell off most of his inventory in an effort to downsize and raise money. There were whispers about perhaps trying to emigrate to Palestine, but how could they start anew in a country where they had no family, and no knowledge of the language or culture?
I lay in bed every night with my eyes shut and my ears hearing bits and pieces of their heated discussions. I loathe to admit it now, but I was still a self-absorbed young woman at the time. I did not want to believe that my family was suffering and that our life was beginning to unravel. I only wanted to distract myself. And so I would go to my room and try to think of something that made me happy. I thought of Josef.
Tensions began to escalate throughout Europe that June and my parents welcomed the news when I told them that Věruška’s family had invited me to spend two weeks at their summer home in Karlovy Vary. I was overjoyed to learn that Josef would be escorting us on the train.
Although my parents were happy that I’d have a distraction, Marta was not so pleased.
“Do you really have to go?” Marta was twelve now and had become particularly sullen when not included in what she perceived as my entertainment. I was folding my dresses as neatly as I could because I didn’t want them to be creased.
“Marta.” I sighed. “You would be bored silly. We’re probably just going to take our sketchpads and draw by the river all afternoon.”
“Josef will be there.” She stuck out her tongue. “That’s why you want to go, I know it.”
I snapped my leather valise shut and walked past Marta, tugging playfully on one of her braids.
“It’s only for two weeks,” I reassured her. “Take good care of Mama and Papa, and don’t eat too much chocolate.” I blew up my cheeks like a fat toddler and winked at her. I remember how her pale skin reddened with fury in response.
At the station, Věruška and her brother stood together. Josef was in a pale yellow suit; Věruška’s sundress was poppy red. When she saw me she leaped to greet me and thrust her arm through mine.
Josef stood there watching us. His eyes were firmly on me. When I met his gaze, he turned his eyes in the direction of my suitcase. Without asking, he took it and carried it in the direction of the porter, who had a trolley filled with his and Věruška’s things.
The ride to Karlovy Vary would take three hours by train. Věruška’s parents had a house in the country, only a short ride from the famed spa where one drank the curative waters.
It was my first trip there. “Take a cure for us,” Papa had said sweetly. “You’ll come back even more beautiful.” My mother looked up at me from her needlepoint when Papa said this, and I had the distinct feeling that she was trying to memorize the way I looked, as though her young daughter was becoming a young woman before her very eyes.
I had packed a small sketchpad, a tin of vine charcoal, and some pastels so I could sketch the countryside during my two weeks at their house.
After nibbling on smoked fish sandwiches and some tea at the station’s café, the three of us headed back to the first-class compartment where the porter was already waiting with our things.
Josef unbuttoned his jacket and folded it on top of our suitcases on the upper rack.
It was unseasonably warm, even for the month of June, and I envied the casual way Josef had taken off his coat. There was little I could do about the heat, and I was jealous that I could not also lose a layer. Certainly my dress was not too heavy, but with my slip and stockings, and the closeness in the compartment, I worried I might start to perspire. The thought of stains spreading underneath my arms was horrifying. I wanted to sit there in my dress like a medieval Madonna, not a tattered street urchin with moisture under my arms. My plan to attract Josef was coming undone.
We still had another twenty minutes to wait before the train departed for our long trip, and I hoped that Josef would open the window. Instead, he just sat across from Věruška and me, his legs crossed and his fingers absentmindedly running through his hair.
“Josef!” Věruška complained shortly to her brother. “Why don’t you please pull the window down?” He stood up and forced it open. The noises of the station rushed into our compartment. Families juggling their luggage, hasty farewells, and porters crying out that the train would be leaving in fifteen minutes. I closed my eyes and wished we were already there. But the breeze coming in from the train window cooled me, and I sensed that Josef had not actually forgotten about his overheated train companion. For he continued to look up from his book and sneak glances in my direction.
We pulled out of the station on time, and Věruška chatted for nearly the entire trip. Josef had taken a book out of his suitcase and I envied his ability to tune out his sister. If the trip had been less bumpy, I might have pulled out my sketchbook and asked to draw sister and brother, but I knew my hands would not be steady enough with the sensation of the wheels underneath me.
We took a horse-drawn carriage when we arrived in Karlovy Vary, passing the town with its multicolored facades and peaked rooflines. Josef spoke to the driver, giving him directions, and when he caught me staring at him, he returned my gaze with a slight smile. We had not really talked during the train ride. I had returned Věruška’s chattiness with a diligent and attentive ear and Josef had managed to read his book in its entirety.
When we arrived at the Kohns’ home, deep within the mountains, I knew almost immediately that I’d have ample opportunity to sketch. The scenery was lush and majestic, with stretches of verdant green that reminded me of illustrations of fairies and wooden kingdoms from my childhood books. The smells of wildflowers, tails of lupine, and star asters dotted the landscape. The house itself was beautiful and old, with a broad porch and a Bohemian turret that looked as though it could pierce the sky.
We were greeted warmly by an old woman named Pavla, who I later learned had been Josef and Věruška’s nanny when they were little. Josef bent down to kiss Pavla on both cheeks, his large hands nearly enveloping the entirety of her tiny round head.
“Your parents arrived last night and decided to stay at the spa until this evening,” Pavla told them. “I’ve made your favorite cookies with the jam in the center. Would you like them now with some tea?” I had to suppress the urge to laugh, for she spoke to them as if they were still three years old.
Josef shook his head no, but Věruška, who was always hungry, eagerly jumped at the invitation. “Oh yes, Pavla! That would be wonderful!” She turned to me. “You will need to take a cure at the spa after two weeks of Pavla’s cooking. We will be as big as stuffed geese when we return to Prague.”
“I just need to wash up and then I’ll join you,” I promised. I was eager to unpack and change my clothes.
“Let me take your suitcase, Lenka,” Josef offered. His hand was already wrapped around its handle.
I went to stop him, but he was already walking in the direction of the stairs. “It’s this way,” he said.
I walked behind him, winding my way up the steps, his shadow and mine two moving cutouts against the white walls. When we arrived at the guest room, he placed my suitcase on the floor and walked over to the window that faced the mountains. There below was a garden filled with roses and a large outdoor seating area with an old wooden table and some white-painted iron chairs.
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