The Oriental Wife (10 page)

“I hope that’s not true.”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s good in a way, it’s just … never mind.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, rising to his feet. “Get me that information as quickly as you can, I’ll see what I can do.”

Even before the answers arrived from Germany—once they had paid their exit taxes, there would be very little money left; Franz had only one remote acquaintance in America, a fellow lawyer he had had some legal dealings with in Munich before the war and corresponded with until 1914—Rolf got to work. The thought of Jeannette entering domestic service, as other refugee women had done, was too unlikely to consider; even if she would take such a job, she would quarrel with everyone in the household inside of a week. So special financing would be required. He accepted a long-standing invitation for dinner at the Park Avenue home of a couple he knew from the committee, to
request their help: would they be prepared to find a suitable sponsor for an elderly lawyer and his wife? “I am very fond of them both,” he said awkwardly, by way of explanation, and because he had never made such a personal appeal they promised him, as they sat in their green-and-gold living room after dinner, to treat the matter as urgent. They themselves could not do it, they already had their quota of commitments, but they would find someone who could.

“What about your parents?” the wife asked him, with a certain avidity, never having presumed to inquire even that far before, and he told her, which was true, that he had all the affidavits ready. He had saved enough money to serve as their sponsors himself; he was only waiting for them to declare themselves ready to come.

He began preparing similar affidavits for Louisa’s parents; he requested, and received, copies of their birth certificates, the results of their medical examinations; all the papers were waiting for the moment when a sponsor was found. When the couple on Park Avenue reported that their first approach had been refused—the man in question felt it was the young who must be gotten out—it only increased his determination. He began writing letters to everyone on his list of sponsors, rising to new heights of eloquence, describing Franz’s charitable work for the veterans and the unwed mothers back in Germany. If there was anyone who had earned the right to be assisted, he declared, it was this man.

He imagined himself bringing the sponsor’s letter home, placing it before her, then leaving the room. But when the papers came from Germany, he only thanked her and put
them in his briefcase; he did not want her to know the strings he was pulling, the favors he was calling in. Ever since that night in her room, she had been unnaturally humble with him: she was always offering to share her supper, she asked him polite questions about his work, though he was sure it bored her. Already, it was clear, she felt under an obligation. He would not take advantage of it—that would be blackmail, more dishonorable than what Phillip had done. Best to stay out of her way altogether.

He began leaving for the office earlier in the mornings, and taking the committee’s files downtown with him, so that he could work on them in the evenings, when everyone else had left. The cleaning woman no longer looked startled when she poked her head into his office and found him there. On weekends he had the whole place to himself; he got more work done than ever. It was, he saw, the ideal arrangement; he should have adopted it months ago.

Throughout those weeks, he kept thinking he saw Louisa on the street—a woman in a gray hat crossing Fourteenth Street, a woman in a blue suit emerging from the subway, even a red-haired mannequin he caught sight of in a shop window on his way to work. When he turned around a fat man in a checked waistcoat was unbuttoning its dress. Meanwhile, he avoided encountering the real Louisa as much as possible, and hardly spoke when they did meet, resisting all her attempts to draw him out.

Early one Thursday morning, as he emerged from the bathroom after shaving, she was waiting for him in the hall in her Chinese dressing gown, clutching a towel and a pink drawstring bag.

“May I speak to you for a minute?”

“What is it?” He was uncomfortably conscious of standing there in his bare feet, with his shirt unbuttoned; he sucked in his stomach.

“I just want you to know I’m saving as much of my salary as possible. As soon as I find out what’s happening with my parents, I’ll either get an apartment here or use the money for my passage back.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I do worry. I realize what a nuisance it is, having me here.”

“It’s not a nuisance.”

“Of course it is. Don’t pretend.” Her lip trembled. “You’re never friendly to me any more.”

He cleared his throat while he tried to think how to answer, and then wondered if she’d mimic him to Otto later, if she’d clear her throat in exactly that way. “Have you talked about this to Otto?”

“A little.”

“And what does he say?”

“He says you’re just preoccupied, that’s all, I shouldn’t take it personally. He says it has nothing to do with me.”

“That’s not true,” he said, suddenly angry, the blood pounding in his ears.

“Yes, I know. That’s why I’m telling you this.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant … Never mind. Forgive me. I should let you get ready.”

“But I want to hear what you meant.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. Really.” Her face, clean of makeup, had a naked look; her expression was so sad and puzzled it was almost more than he could bear.

“You’re not a nuisance,” he said thickly, and then he took a step toward her. Somehow he had his arms around her, pink bag and all, and was kissing her. He had never known how heavy a weight he’d been carrying all his life until he felt the shock of her body against his own.

O
tto, as was only fitting, served as their witness. Finally his luck too was changing; he had been offered a job in Baltimore, teaching German at a private school. They set the wedding date for his last day in New York. He not only bought Louisa a whole sheaf of roses but managed to borrow a fine German camera for the occasion, so he could take their picture on the steps of city hall. It was one of those glittering fall days in New York when the wind was up and the air seemed to give off sparks; trees and scarves and flags all fluttered rhythmically. In one of Otto’s snapshots, you can see not only the newlyweds but a young girl in a shiny coat, also with a bouquet, peering anxiously down the steps to the street, as though afraid that her intended might not show up.

Louisa, of course, looks very glamorous, in her cape with the velvet collar, her brown hat pulled down slightly over her face. There are flowers pinned to its brim, and she cradles the roses like a baby. But it is the groom, in his bulky overcoat and trilby, who seems almost deranged with happiness, his eyes gleaming crazily, his mouth cracked open in a smile of painful joy. The truth is, it does not suit him, this radiance; stripped of his dignity, he looks ordinary, even homely, his mouth too thin, his cheeks already going jowly. So perhaps it was for the best that his ecstasy would be so short-lived; soon enough he could resume his becoming gravity.

First, though, there was the trip to Havana, that incongruous fleshpot, where he was being sent on business by his firm, the first such trip ever. It allowed them the luxury of a honeymoon, like other couples. Louisa wore her wedding outfit on the flight, though she left the flowers behind. There was her old pigskin suitcase; there was a dressing case with her new initials on it, Rolf’s wedding gift to her, a pledge of all the trips they would take together some day. She did not mind that her husband worked ten hours a day on their honeymoon; she could hardly imagine him not working. In the mornings, she accompanied other married ladies, whose husbands were also there on business, on guided tours of the city arranged by the hotel. They drove past marble villas with filigree iron gates, to disembark at churches studded with glass rubies, with bright blue heavens painted on their ceilings. When the other women spoke of “my husband,” she did so too. She gave handfuls of pesos to the skinny children who surged around her on her way from the tour bus to the church; they grabbed the coins and ran away quickly, as though she might change her mind. In the afternoons, she swam in the hotel pool; she sat on the balcony and read the novels she had brought with her; she painted her toenails and let her hair dry in the sun.

She did not even mind that they were expected to entertain the clients, so that their evenings too were often not their own. They ate dinner in restaurants with heavy, mustachioed men, the customers of the pencil company, who seemed delighted with the situation: to the honeymoon couple, they said, winking raffishly, and raised their glasses high. They had orchids delivered to the table, they flirted with her and pinched her cheek. They told her about their mothers,
crossing themselves; they ordered special, peppery dishes for her, and roared with laughter when she gasped and sputtered. They were almost brutally jovial, with an edge of cruelty, she thought—Rolf protested at the idea—but she wasn’t frightened. Nothing could frighten her just then.

And then, when the gentlemen had dropped them off at their hotel, kissing her hand, they went upstairs to their room and shut the door. Sometimes, while he was shaving at the sink—for he did not want to scratch her—she would take a bath and, stepping naked out of the tub, do a mock-Spanish dance behind him, until he caught sight of her in the mirror and turned around, laughing. She always felt a thrill when she made him laugh, though really it wasn’t so hard to do, even if he seemed taken by surprise each time. Otherwise she might have felt too humble, a cheap silly person compared to him. She would like to work with him on the refugee committees when they got back, she said; she wanted to do something to help. It hurt her feelings when he did not seem pleased, when he only said she might find it very boring. “I’m not expecting to be entertained,” she said.

He worried that after a while he too might bore her. He told her that in bed; he told her many things in bed. She remembered supposing, before she went to bed with Julian, that two people could say anything to each other then. Only it had never happened. She had not learned until now how talking could feed desire, make it urgent again.

Nobody had any right, living in those times, to be happy. She knew that, and yet she was. She had never anticipated loving him like that, she had only expected to feel grateful, relieved, full of good intentions. To find herself joyful when she caught sight of him in the lobby, to get such pleasure from
touching his face, so that she had to shut her eyes: it seemed remarkable to her, more than she deserved. The smell of bougainvillea and hibiscus came in through the balcony windows as they lay in bed. She marveled at that, and at the balminess of the night air: it was the first week in November. In New York, they read in the paper, there had already been some light snow.

They took a taxi from the airport to the apartment on Bogardus Place, another unwonted luxury. Among the bills crammed into their mailbox was an airmail envelope containing a letter from Franz and a photograph of the two sets of parents, who had celebrated the marriage together in Nuremberg. There they were, on the horsehair sofa in Jeannette’s drawing room, in front of the portrait of Jeannette’s brother, raising their glasses in a toast to their children.

The women’s heavy silk dresses are cut square at the neck, to let them display the double strings of pearls their own fathers gave them when they got married. On the table beside them are a plate of iced petits fours and a large open box of chocolates, their crinkled papers mostly empty. The glasses they hold aloft are of leaded Bavarian crystal; so is the chandelier above their heads. From the way they are smiling at the camera—even Louisa’s mother has mustered a smile—one might almost think that their snug and prosperous lives had gone on uninterrupted since the departure of their children five years before. Of course the chocolates and the cakes had to be purchased at certain hours, the times set aside for Jews to do their shopping; Mrs. Müller and Ilse had long since departed, Aryans no longer being permitted to work in Jewish households; the chandelier itself had been taxed with a special tax. Still, the women are only slightly
thinner than before; the men exude
Gemütlichkeit
; there is no trace of the special armbands with the yellow stars that have to be worn on the street.

But earlier on the day that Rolf and Louisa returned, the horsehair sofa had been ripped open with a butcher’s knife, to see if there was gold hidden in the cushions; the chandelier had been smashed with an ax, the pearls snatched from the jewel case in Jeannette’s bedroom. The remains of the box of chocolates had been hurled from the sideboard and trampled into the carpet, along with the shards of crystal. The two proud fathers, with Otto’s father Emil, who had taken the photograph, were dragged from their houses with shouts and curses, and kicked down the steps. Both Sigmund’s eyes were blackened; Emil lost three of his teeth. They were shoved into the back of a van that, when it had its full complement of Jews, rattled through the darkness toward Dachau. It was what the American papers would call the Night of Broken Glass.

Because all three men had been awarded the Iron Cross in the war, their names appeared on the list issued by the Reichsbureau a month later, allowing for the release of decorated front fighters from the Bavarian camps. But by the time the seals had been properly affixed and the orders arrived in the office of the Kommandant, Emil was dead, having collapsed during the morning roll call a week earlier. The young SS guard—he could not have been more than twenty; he had just been promoted to captain—shouted at him to get to his feet. When he failed to do so, the boy kicked him in the head and dragged him over to the flogging blocks; there he began
whipping him, but halfheartedly, because he had stopped moving. The SS guard threw the whip aside and stalked off. Later two of the prisoners were ordered to bury him in the pit set aside for that purpose.

So it was only Sigmund and Franz, Rolf’s and Louisa’s fathers, who returned to Nuremberg, driven home by the Red Cross, because it was clear that Sigmund was in a terminal state. Somehow Franz managed to carry the dying man up the steps of his house—he weighed under a hundred pounds, Franz himself had hardly more flesh on him by then—and then to his bedroom, where he lowered him, in his stinking, shit-smeared camp uniform, onto the remains of the mauve eiderdown that had been part of Rolf’s mother’s dowry, and which the SS had likewise slashed in their hunt for diamonds. For an hour Franz sat in a chair opposite while Trudl bathed the scabs on Sigmund’s face and spooned broth into his shriveled mouth. Each time the liquid came up again, pure greeny-gold, shiny with the putrefying fluids of his stomach lining, until she put the bowl aside and stroked his face, murmuring the same words she used to say to him when he’d had a bad dream. Then Franz left to go tell Jeannette he was safe.