“Come on, Charlie, don’t make me beg.”
She stood, turned, and settled into his lap.
He put his arms around her. “Like coming home, right?”
That was what she had been thinking. She reached an arm around his neck, but she couldn’t drop the subject.
“You know what the French term for what I was is?”
“I know.”
“Collabo horizontale,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“You know what the English words are? Lonely. Vulnerable. And one more. Loving. Though I bet you couldn’t admit to that last one.”
She turned her head to look at him. “How did you know?”
“Because I know you.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“There are two ways to take that. I’m too good or I’m too repellent.”
“Repellent?”
“Come on, Charlie. We’ve confessed our moral crimes to each other. Let’s not get coy now. I do know I’m not exactly heartthrob material. But for the record, unlike Clifford Chatterley, I am not hors de combat. Not that you asked, but I just wanted to enter that into the record.”
“Oh, Horace.”
“Oh, Horace?”
She stroked his cheek. “It’s not your physical condition. It’s your marital state.”
“Hannah wouldn’t care. There’s no love between us anymore.”
“You may know me, but you don’t know your wife. She’d care.” Maybe not for the right reasons, she thought but didn’t say. Hannah might not want something, but that didn’t mean she could bear anyone else having it.
“She’d be mildly annoyed. And mostly relieved.”
“I doubt it.”
“She could stop feeling guilty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Young Federman, the budding analyst with the headful of romantic curls. She thinks I don’t know. I know. I just don’t care. Hell, I’m happy for her. It’s the perfect relationship. She’s older, supposedly wiser, and entirely in control. Does that make you feel any better?”
“Not really,” she said, and started to stand, but he went on holding her, and she gave up and settled back in his arms. As she did, a phrase from her childhood came back to her. Two wrongs don’t make a right, nannies and nuns and teachers had warned. Hannah’s behavior was beside the point. Only her own concerned her, and she was the one who was cutting moral corners again. They weren’t committing adultery. That particular transgression was clear-cut. Infidelity was more amorphous. That had to do with what they felt as much as what they did. Locked together in that chair, they were committing infidelity, and then some.
Sixteen
As soon as Charlotte got home from work the next evening, she called Hannah and asked if she could come down for a few minutes. Horace had said she didn’t owe either of them any explanations, but she knew she did. She also knew Hannah would judge her more harshly than Horace or even Vivi. Still, she dreaded that conversation less than she had the other two. She’d been terrified of Vivi’s condemnation. She’d feared Horace’s disappointment. But she didn’t really care what Hannah thought of her. Or rather she knew what Hannah thought of her. Hannah found her lacking as a mother, unconfiding as a friend, and insufficiently grateful. And that was before they figured Horace into the equation.
Hannah led her through the small waiting room and into her office. Charlotte didn’t think that was an accident. The house was joint territory with Horace, but the office was Hannah’s realm. The blinds were closed. A lamp on the desk and another behind a leather club chair pierced the gloom but didn’t illuminate it. A day bed, also leather, stood against one wall. A desk and two chairs took up the rest of the area. Shelves lined the walls. Here and there, small pre-Columbian statues stood among the books. The space was clearly a lair for Hannah. It would be a nightmare for a patient with claustrophobia.
Charlotte hesitated in the doorway. She didn’t want to sit across a desk from Hannah for this conversation, but she didn’t like the idea of the day bed either.
Hannah took the big leather chair with the lamp behind it. Charlotte looked around again, then moved to the day bed and perched on the edge. Now the light was in her eyes. Hannah noticed and adjusted the shade. Charlotte told herself this wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Compassion was, if not Hannah’s natural predisposition, then her chosen profession.
The confession Charlotte made to Hannah was a variation on the sanitized account she’d given Vivi and the self-flagellating story she’d told Horace. Hannah’s reaction was different from theirs, too.
“So I’m here under false pretenses,” Charlotte said when she finished, “and I owe you an apology for that.”
“I’ll stand in line after Vivi and six million others.”
Charlotte tried not to flinch under the blow. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Suppose?”
“I deserve that.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte, but if you heard the stories of suffering I do hour after hour, day after day, if you wrestled with the long-term effects of all that horror and torment and inhumanity, you’d be all out of sympathy or even understanding, too. Or rather you’d be saving it for the victims who deserve it.”
“I didn’t expect sympathy or understanding. I merely thought I ought to be honest.”
“I appreciate the honesty. I just can’t offer exoneration in return.”
“I suppose you’d like me to move.”
“I would if you were alone, but Vivi doesn’t need any more disruption in her life.”
Charlotte stood. “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Vivi,” she repeated in case Charlotte hadn’t understood.
“Nonetheless, I’m grateful.”
Hannah stood, too. “Still, I can’t imagine how you did it.”
Charlotte went on staring at her. No, she thought, you can’t. Because despite the hours and days you spend listening, you weren’t there.
* * *
Charlotte turned out to be right about the news spreading. Vivi told her two best friends. By the end of the week, the entire school knew.
“The funny thing about it,” Vivi said as they stood waiting for a traffic light to change—they were walking down Fifth Avenue to the Metropolitan Museum—“is how relieved everyone is.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I’m disgusted.”
Now Charlotte was surprised. Vivi was frequently disgusted by lima beans or cough medicine or the wrong haircut, but she had never used the term in response to her peers’ behavior, not even when Alice had cheated on the Latin test.
“It’s as if all of a sudden they don’t have to feel sorry for me or tiptoe around me or anything like that. All except Aunt Hannah. Now she’s the one who feels sorry for me.”
“Because you’re not Jewish?”
“Because of my identity crisis. She says it’s hard enough figuring out who you are at my age, but having the rug pulled out from under you while you’re trying to do it doesn’t help. She says she doesn’t blame you, but you should have thought of me.”
“She does blame me, and she’s right to.”
The light changed, and they started walking again.
“No, she isn’t. I’m glad I was Jewish for a while. I mean, I was angry at you at first. For all the secrets. And then it was funny finding out I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
“I keep telling you, you’re still the same person.”
“You know what I mean. But I think I learned a lesson, no matter what Aunt Hannah says.”
“By thinking you were Jewish?”
“By being Jewish for a while and then not being Jewish. I think the whole world ought to go through that. Same about being Negro. Though I suppose that would be harder. But I bet if they did, there wouldn’t be any more prejudice in the world. No Nazis, no Ku Klux Klan, and no Eleanor’s grandmother.”
“Just one big happy family.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
They were at the foot of the wide steps leading up to the museum, and Charlotte stopped and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
“That’s the last thing I was doing. Or maybe I was teasing because I didn’t want to preen with pride. No, pride is the wrong word. That implies I had something to do with it. Awe is le mot juste. I’m in awe of your compassion and decency and intelligence.”
“You mean I have a moral compass like my dad?”
“The very same.”
They climbed the steps. When they reached the top, Vivi spoke again. “You can be proud. You did have something to do with it.”
“Thanks. I hope so. But I can’t hold a candle to you and your father.”
Now Vivi reached an arm around her mother’s shoulders. That was how tall she was getting. “Maybe, but you’re all I’ve got.
“Incidentally,” she went on as they crossed the soaring entrance hall, “I told Mr. Rosenblum I wasn’t Jewish. I know you said I didn’t have to go around making public announcements, but I thought I ought to tell him. I mean, after the business with the menorah and everything.”
“What did he say?”
“That nobody’s perfect.”
Charlotte smiled and shook her head. “I always thought he was a dour old man. But you bring out the comedian in him.”
“You just have to know how to talk to people, Mom.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
* * *
A week later, Charlotte went to the hardware store to buy light bulbs. She’d considered going over to Lexington Avenue for them. Vivi brought out the comedian in Mr. Rosenblum, but she didn’t think he’d find her a source of humor. He hadn’t before, and he certainly wouldn’t now. But the store on Madison was more convenient. And she’d have to face him eventually. Nonetheless, she found herself skulking in the aisles and waiting until he went off to help another customer before going to the cash register. But it was no good. He caught up with her on her way out. It was the first really warm day of spring, and he’d shed his sweater, but his shirtsleeves were buttoned tightly around his wrists.
“So, some news Miss Vivienne brought.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rosenblum.”
“What’s to be sorry about? You were taking up room in a camp that maybe somebody else wanted?”
“It was a mistake. We shouldn’t have been there.”
“Who should?”
“I mean it was a mistake, and I used it to save us.”
His worn face creased in that terrible too-white smile. “For six million, being Jewish was a curse. What’s so terrible if for Mrs. Foret and her daughter it’s a blessing?”
“Thank you, Mr. Rosenblum.”
“What’re you thanking me for? Those light bulbs you found on your own. But I tell you one thing, that’s one nice daughter you’re raising.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“You noticed I didn’t say one nice daughter you got. I said one nice daughter you’re raising.”
“If I stand here another minute, I’m going to start to cry.”
“So nu, don’t stand here. Go home. You got supper to make. I got work to do.”
She didn’t know she was going to do it. Later she’d be embarrassed by it. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
When she pulled away, he lifted his hand and touched his face where she’d put her lips. “Like daughter, like mother,” he said.
Seventeen
This time the letter came to the apartment rather than the office. This time she didn’t toss it in the wastebasket. But she didn’t open it immediately. She waited until Vivi was asleep. She’d told her daughter the story, but she didn’t want to add any new chapters to it. At least not yet.
She sat on the sofa in the living room, staring at the envelope for longer than she should have. She had nothing to fear. They were safe here in America. Vivi knew the truth. So why was she afraid to open it?
She turned over the envelope to read the back flap. He was still in Bogotá. So he was safe, too. There was nothing more she could do for him, nothing more he could ask of her.
She pried open the flap of the envelope, took out the single sheet of stationery, and unfolded it. His handwriting was small, regular, and neat. She thought of the prescriptions she’d got from doctors here and had to smile. That was a good sign. She could smile about him now.
Dearest Charlotte,
I have written this letter many times in my mind, but now the time has come to commit it to paper. My writing it cannot affect you at this point, but it is important to me. Please forgive any infelicities. My English is even weaker than my French, but you are American now so I am writing with a dictionary at hand. Please also forgive me for writing to you a third time. Perhaps you did not get the first letter from Germany or the second from Bogotá. Or perhaps you chose not to answer them, but I cannot believe that. You replied to Rabbi de Silva. I am grateful. Those first letters asked a favor of you. I needed someone to vouch for me, and I am grateful to you for doing so to Rabbi de Silva. This one is to unburden myself.
After the war, others were not as forgiving of a Jew masquerading as a Wehrmacht officer as you were. A rabbi in Berlin whom I went to for help emigrating called me a killer. An uncle whom I wrote to in Palestine answered that it would have been better if I had died in a concentration camp. Who can blame them? How could I expect them to forgive me if I could not forgive myself?
I carry an image in my mind from those days in Paris. I carry many images. Some are happy, or at least not raw with pain. The first time I walked into the shop and saw you sitting with a book, bathed in light, like a girl in a Dutch genre painting. The sun was behind me, but in your eyes. You were about to say bon soir. Then I took a step closer, and you saw my uniform. The disgust with which you swallowed the welcome went through me like a bullet. There are other images as well. You standing at the door of the shop in the predawn darkness, your hair in disarray, your face soft with love. Yes, love, though you denied it always. And Vivi, of course Vivi. I see her looking up at me with those big trusting eyes. I remember her crawling into my lap and nestling there as I read. These are the images I carry like talismans against the shame. But there is one image that is equally sharp, and that is not a talisman but an indictment. I see the gendarmes dragging the professor out of the shop while I stand by and tell you I can do nothing. The other images are of you and Vivi, but that is my self-portrait. Warts and all, the saying goes. Warts are all in that portrait.
But here is the other side of the ugly picture, and it is why I am writing to you. In my worst moments, and there have been many, I think of you and Vivi, not only of the images of love, but of the knowledge that perhaps in some way I saved both of you from the worst. It is not, as the axiom goes, saving the world, but it is better than standing by while an innocent man is dragged off to prison. You are my only bulwark against the knowledge I did that.
Thank you for what you gave me during that terrible time and for the solace the memory of you has given me since. Without it, I would not have survived this long.
All my love,
Julian
She sat for a long time with the letter in her lap. She had images, too. For years she’d fought them, but now they came flooding back. Her conscience ached again, not for collaborating with the enemy, not for giving in to Julian, but for withholding from him, and from herself. She had refused to admit the truth because of the lies she had to tell the world.
She stood, finally, carried the letter to her bedroom, and put it in her night-table drawer. She wanted it close at hand, though she had no idea why.
* * *
The thought followed her around for the next several days. He hadn’t asked for an answer to his letter. If anything, the tone was elegiac. I am thanking you. The chapter is closed. But the more she thought about that time, the more vivid he became in her memory. She saw him standing in the shop, holding a book in one h
and while the fingers of his other tied an imaginary surgical knot. She heard him singing to Vivi in that sad voice that was always just a little flat. She felt his hands on her body and her own on his, the two of them crazy with hunger and loneliness and desperation. Or was she merely summoning those memories as a defense against Horace? She was an immoral woman, careening from collaboration to infidelity and back again. In any event, she had no intention of answering the letter. But then why did she keep thinking about it?
A week later, another letter arrived from Bogotá. This one was from Rabbi de Silva again. He regretted to inform her of the death of Dr. Julian Bauer.
She stood in the living room staring at the words. Of course. How had she been so stupid? The elegiac tone. The statement that he had written the letter often in his head, but now the time had come to commit it to paper. The last line about her providing the solace for him to survive this long. She’d read a love letter. He’d written a suicide note.
Nonetheless, she had to be sure. She wrote back to Rabbi de Silva. Had Dr. Bauer been ill? Had there been an accident? Surely he could give her more information.
He could not, the next letter said. Now she was sure.
For some reason she became obsessed with how he had done it. The rabbi’s letters had been on the stationery of a synagogue. There was a telephone number as well as an address. One morning after Vivi left the house, Charlotte went to the phone on the table in the living room and dialed the international operator. It took some time to get through, but finally she heard the phone ringing on the other end. She wasn’t sure how long that went on before it occurred to her that today was Saturday. Apparently Vivi had taught her more than she’d realized. No one in a synagogue would answer the phone on the Sabbath.
She called again when Vivi went out on Sunday but had no more success. On Monday, she left the office early. Bogotá was an hour behind New York City. Vivi had a rehearsal for the spring play—they were putting on Our Town—and wouldn’t be home until after five. She had plenty of time. She dialed the international operator again.
Paris Never Leaves You Page 21
