When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “No, not today. I think today is a good day to revisit our old spot. I would say, quite necessary. Besides,” she said, gesturing to the picnic basket, which she’d placed in the back seat, “I packed your favorite sandwiches, and you can’t refuse my labor of love.”

  * * *

  A half hour later, after they spread out their blanket and lunch things and he opened the wine, she reached into the bottom of the basket for the photo album.

  “What’s this? Don’t tell me you’re finally ready to introduce me formally to your illustrious family?”

  “You might be surprised. Go on, open it.”

  The photographs revealed the trajectory of Eva’s life backward in time. There, floating beneath the glare of the first sheet protector, was Eva, perhaps just a few years younger than she was now, her hair softened with gray and piled into an elegant chignon, her arm around the waist of a young, dark-haired woman with eyes so direct they seemed to pierce right through the film. They were standing on a sidewalk, and the woman was leaning her head on Eva’s shoulder with her arms splayed wide as if to ignite the bright lights of the Vienna Philharmonic behind them. In the photograph below, she was wearing the same black dress and had her arm linked through that of a blondish man in a tux, who held up a violin of his own as they kissed for the camera.

  “Bianca. This is Bianca?”

  “Yes, my daughter. And that’s Sebastián, her ex-husband. At the time they were married, but I guess you can say they were both more committed to their craft than they were to each other. It didn’t last, but they are still friends, still tour together once in a while. Well, go on, keep looking.”

  Bianca’s adolescence and childhood were then revealed in the form of endless recitals. She bore the same look of concentration playing her violin, which he had witnessed that day a long time ago in the Andrássy park. Her at a picnic table many years prior, drawing with a cup of crayons at her side, her dark curls pinned back from her face with two huge ladybug barrettes. Her again, no more than a toddler, riding on the shoulders of a man who had to be Eduard—older than Aleandro had pictured him, temples dipped in gray, glasses askew as they both grabbed for an apple from the tree underneath which they stood. Dora was there in the album as well, precisely as he remembered her when he’d come to deliver the sketchbook in Budapest: silvery hair pulled back severely, though her face was etched with doting affection, blurred slightly behind a huge cake lit with candles.

  A whole life had been captured in these photos—moments, occasions, like pearls on a string. Eva’s life. A homage to what Eva’s life had been, a homage to her daughter. His hand slid away from the sketchbook, dropped limply in the space between them. It seemed impossible to go on.

  “I know.” Eva’s voice pulled him back from the wash of dejection. “I know this must be hard. But please keep going. Let’s get to the end. We’re almost there.”

  How could he say no? How could he say no to this one simple thing she was asking of him? It was plain to him that this was important to her, and so he picked up the album again, forced himself to turn another page.

  The last one. This one, shot in black-and-white, yellowed with the passage of time. In it, Eva’s face greeted him, the face he knew in his own youth: her full lips curved into a half-smile, her eyes bright and alert, though with a toughness he’d not seen in their earlier time. In her arms was a swaddled bundle, the whisper of a hand-knitted bonnet peering over the blanket. A younger Dora, exuding country robustness, was also in the picture, standing above the sofa where Eva sat, one hand on the baby, one on Eva’s shoulder. Beneath it, a date had been inscribed.

  June 1944.

  A shadow passed over his face, a tremor, something Eva couldn’t quite read, although she could see well enough that the date had made an imprint. June 1944. Less than a year after the fire. He looked at her, tears rising, begging for understanding. All she could do was nod through her own tears.

  “I wanted to tell you, Aleandro. God, how I wanted to tell you. But when I saw you in Budapest, there was so much at stake, so much I could have lost by telling you. Then after that, after Eduard died, I looked for you, wanting to at least send you a letter, but you had disappeared. Everything was a dead end. Then I read in some article that you might not be alive at all, and by then Bianca was a grown woman, and there seemed no reason to tell her if she wouldn’t even know you at all. So I sealed this secret inside my heart, became at peace with the fact that I would take it to my grave.”

  A cry left his lips. His face came away from his hands, and they were wet with tears. He looked up to the sky, where two hawks zigzagged under the white swirls of clouds, but he couldn’t speak, and neither did Eva. They just let the silence enfold them.

  “Oh, Eva, how could I have not known?” he said after what might have been an eternity. “I think I must have known all along. I think, deep down, I knew when I met Bianca in Budapest. I was just too blind to see it.”

  It was her turn to sound astounded. “In Budapest? But you said you never spoke, that you two never met.”

  “No, not in recent years, but yes, in Budapest, when I was there for the exhibit in fifty-seven. It was in the days after you left my hotel, and I was so confused and stunned, really, and to be honest, not ready to go back to New York. So I took walks, and somehow, once, I got lost near the Operaház. That’s when I met her. It was in a park, right next to your home on Andrássy. She was playing the violin, and my God, I’d never seen a child play quite like that, not even the Romani children, so I approached her. We spoke for just a few minutes, but instantly I knew she was your daughter. I just knew. She touched my heart, and for a few moments that day, I thought there could still be a possibility for us, that perhaps my running into her like that meant that we should be together. Even though she spoke about her father with such deep attachment and told me how much she wanted to be reunited with him in Vienna, I still believed it. I don’t know, I think I so much wanted to.

  “But then, the next day, I came here. I came to see what remained of my old life, and I saw my brothers’ names carved in a tree, and it was in that moment that I understood, truly understood, that no person could alter the way she felt for him, because it’s what I’d felt for my brothers. That nothing I could offer her would ever replace him. And I felt so ashamed, Eva, that I’d considered this so little before.” He was winded, yet there was more he needed to say, so he kept going, needing this unburdening. “I knew then that she would always belong to him. And she always did, didn’t she? Despite everything, it is him whom she’s always loved.”

  “Yes,” said Eva, her own voice breaking. “Bianca in a way will always be Eduard’s daughter, and nothing on earth will ever change it. But don’t you see, Aleandro? There is always time for new bonds to form, always time, at the very least, for new friendships. There is always a way to let a new person into your heart, to love and accept, to embrace, as I have with Dora, as you have with Rudolf, and with his family. Blood ties or no blood ties, in the end all that matters is our capacity to love.

  “Now show me your tree,” she said, and she stood from the grass, reaching for his hand.

  * * *

  The tree was there, and afterward they sat in the grass by the water, watching the sun dip into the pond, ripples forming on the golden, glassy surface. It was the end of summer, summer as it would be again a hundred, a thousand times, when they would no longer be here to see it.

  The land behind them was no longer barren, nor was it scattered with the old wine barracks that had been the remnants of a failed wine venture after the Soviet occupation. A golf terrain was sculpted in its place. The villa at the top of the hill, which had been Eva’s summer home, lay under a scaffolding, the facade stripped, the window casings replaced to maximize the view of the vineyards when it opened as a luxury hotel at Christmas. There, across the strip of water, a restaurant with pure white walls in the style of a Greek-isle casita would soon be built, and red umbrellas would pepper the tiled terrace in
another year’s time. And here in the grass, there was just the two of them.

  An eyewitness might have suggested that amid all the changes, they represented the end of an era, but how wrong that person would have been. For they were not at the end; they would never be at the end. They were only just beginning.

  EPILOGUE

  HANS, HERE SHE COMES. HERE she comes.”

  Silence fell over Salle Pleyel Paris and its rows of red velvet peppered with suits and gowns and fans, the art deco balconies gleaming in all their polished starkness under the dimmed light behind them. Leaning forward in his chair, Aleandro struggled for composure, stifling the desire to shout out. It was not exactly the right venue for that kind of behavior, so despite the hammering of his heart, he reclined in his seat, seeking Hans’s arm for support.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way, his heart tightening in his chest in the moments before she would walk onto the stage. He’d followed her around the world for nearly three years, seen more than a dozen performances, and this was a common thing. Stuffed in that old tuxedo or stodgy suit he’d always hated, he’d sat just like this many times, gripping his knees for dear life in the front row. But tonight, Hans was here with him, and he felt a little less on edge, his heart a little calmer. Tonight would be different, or so he hoped. God, how he hoped.

  The silence stretched on, laden with anticipation. Not a single whisper was heard. The conductor appeared and bowed before taking his place on the podium, facing the black-clad orchestra members. Then, a second flurry of applause erupted as she came on, stunning in a long green velvet gown, her dark hair cropped into a glossy pixie, the first signs of middle age visible in the creases around her eyes and her smile, a softness underneath her arm as she held up her violin and took a bow of her own.

  Everyone was on their feet. He, too, stood with Hans’s help, who doted on him in the usual way, even though his eyes were only on the virtuoso, smiling as though the sun had broken through the rain clouds. Dear God, it was worse than he imagined. Hans was utterly lost to him. He knew that look better than anyone, and as they resumed their seats, he sighed in resignation.

  Just six weeks prior, when Bianca played in New York, Aleandro bought Hans a front-row seat along with a premier membership to the New York Philharmonic, hoping this would be enough to get Hans backstage access, where he could try to persuade Bianca to meet with him. All he wanted was a cup of coffee, a walk in a park, no more. All he wanted was the simple chance to speak with her, but several hours later, Hans had returned with no answers, but rather a seeming lack of recollection of why he’d been sent there in the first place.

  Bianca Kovaks, Hans had bubbled effusively, was charming, funny, confident, direct, and kind. She was beautiful. And would Aleandro mind if he sent her flowers or chocolates?

  Did he mind? he recalled asking. Did he mind? Well, if he minded or objected, it was evident it would have made no difference, so he’d only shaken his head, realizing that in the course of this battle tactic, he’d lost his best foot soldier. Then, at the last minute, he’d invited Hans to join him in Paris. If things didn’t go his way again, he figured, Paris was no place to be alone at Christmastime.

  Now, pinning his eyes back to the stage, Aleandro watched Bianca glide to her gold-plated seat on the conductor’s left. The Stradivarius in her hand gleamed under the lights. He watched her lift the violin, her eyes distant, turned inward, half-closed. She raised her bow—

  And then, beauty. So much beauty in those sounds that Aleandro felt needles in his chest and thought that he might die in this very chair, and how inopportune that would be, because he did not intend to die in Paris, nor New York, but in Hungary, where Eva was, where they would always be together, where they’d shared in the course of twenty-two months more than most couples did in a lifetime. God, how he missed her. How he missed waking next to her at sunrise and being able to touch her face; to paint her again and not just from memory; to soothe her even in her weakest moments with his zany humor; to hold her, above all, in the light of sunset. And to remind himself of that, he patted at his suit pocket, where every day, next to his heart, two golden bands rested. Their secret bands.

  A squeeze of his hand. He opened his eyes, and Hans’s gaze was on him now, eyebrows knitted with worry. He hadn’t realized he was gripping at his chest. The younger man offered him a bottle of Evian, his gaze tender, authoritarian, instructing. Please drink this. Aleandro accepted it and drank, wishing it were whiskey or at least wine or champagne, then after he handed it back, there were no more disruptions of any kind, no more concerned looks, no more water bottles, no more worries over his failing heart.

  Closing his eyes, he let the sounds carry him. Across oceans, and decades, and starry skies, over the rumbling of the subterranean trains of New York and Paris, over ponds of the Hungarian countryside and baroque buildings and bridges of Budapest, the sounds carried him.

  * * *

  At the end, an explosion of applause brought him back to his senses. He stood from his seat—this time swatting away Hans’s fervent hands—and watched Bianca hand her violin to an orchestra member so that she could collect the bouquets carried onto the stage for her. One in particular was large enough to require a cart or a wagon, and as she took it and glanced at the card tucked in the folds of the cellophane, her eyes flashed over the crowd, then came to rest directly on Hans. And she smiled.

  Beet red, Hans turned to Aleandro with upheld hands and apologetic eyebrows, as if to say, It was from both of us, I’m not to blame here, but Aleandro had already made up his mind.

  This time, damn it, this time he would not let her slide away without a glance in his direction, so he stopped clapping. Stopped, while everyone still applauded. Below the edge of the stage, he stood on his old spindly legs, willing her to look at him. Look at me. You are my daughter. You are my daughter, and you can’t ignore me forever. I am here.

  He didn’t know what made it different this time. Perhaps it was Hans standing alongside him in solidarity—just two men, one old and one young, connected by their past as much as their adulation for the great Bianca Kovaks. Or perhaps it was just being here in Paris, the city of love.

  For suddenly, unexpectedly, the acquiescence he’d been praying for finally came.

  From the mad foliage of baby’s breath and myrtle and evergreen fern and every flower on earth obscuring her face, a single rose came away. A single red rose as tight as a baby’s fist that she placed down on the stage’s edge before him. Another look. This one, with a tiny nod, for him, just for him, their nearly identical eyes, save for their color, locked on each other’s. Then she strode off with her proud shoulders pulled back, her chin upturned, the green gown’s train trailing behind her.

  There were many moments in Aleandro’s lengthy life that he would never forget—many lessons he’d learned, words that would haunt him. But now it was Eva’s words, his love’s words, ringing in his head as he collected his rose with shaking, rheumatic fingers.

  But don’t you see, Aleandro? There is always time for new bonds to form, always time, at the very least, for new friendships. There is always a way to let a new person into your heart.

  And she’d let him. Finally, she had let him.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GROWING UP IN BUCHAREST, ROMANIA, gypsy music was an indelible part of my life. In summertime, I’d often hear it emerge from restaurant terraces or busy squares where players would serenade passersby, and I would stop to listen, enraptured by those soulful tunes of loss and longing.

  Yet, despite the Romani’s unparalleled talent as musicians, I also witnessed far too often the way in which mothers would rush their children along while passing them on the street, the way others would walk right by them without a glance in their direction, as if they were invisible. Why were they treated with such disdain, such suspicion, when they did nothing more than bring some vibrancy to an ordinary afternoon? Why were they seen as outsiders in their own birth countries when the
y made up such a large part of the population? These questions, even in the years after I’d moved to California, never stopped haunting me.

  It wasn’t until several years ago when I began researching the turbulent and complex World War II history of Romania’s neighbor Hungary that the idea of integrating this little-understood and mystical culture in my new novel solidified. It was important for me to portray not only the bohemian existence of the Romani in times of peace but also their cruel fate during World War II when, much as the Jewish population, they were persecuted, stripped of possessions and rights, and deported in mass numbers to labor and concentration camps. What I found most surprising—and equally disconcerting as my research progressed—is that while a quarter of Europe’s Roma reportedly perished at the hands of the Nazis, so little has been written on the subject. Ultimately, my hope is that through Aleandro’s heart-wrenching journey and losses, I could shed a little light on what some historians call “the forgotten Holocaust.”

  While this is a work of fiction, it bears mentioning that many aspects of this novel are drawn from real life. For example, the art of Aleandro Szabó was inspired by that of Latvian artist Kalman Aron, who, after losing his parents when Germany invaded Latvia, was assigned to slave labor and moved through seven different camps in Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. When his skill was discovered by the guards, he was exempted from hard labor and was given extra food in exchange for portraits or replicas of family photographs. In 2018, a New York Times article announcing Aron’s death at the age of ninety-three quotes him as telling documentary film maker Steven C. Barber: “I made it through the Holocaust with a pencil.” After the war, Aron moved to Los Angeles, where he began re-creating his painful memories in a series of paintings that garnered him worldwide acclaim. Today, one of his more prominent pieces, Mother and Child, is displayed at the entrance of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.