The Lost Wife

by Alyson Richman

  Amalia and I were at battle with our memories. That is what I remember mostly of our marriage. We feared we might drown in all those lost voices and other lost treasures from our homelands. I became a doctor, and she the mother of our two children. But every night in the thirty-eight years that I held her, it was as if she wasn’t really there.

  CHAPTER 5

  LENKA

  Josef became my secret. I carried his image with me every morning as I walked the steps into the Academy. When Věruška would mention her brother in passing, I was helpless to stop my cheeks from turning red.

  At night, I would imagine his voice, try to conjure up the exact inflection of his speech when he had asked me if I liked to dance. And then I would imagine us dancing. Each of our bodies softening into the other like warm clay.

  When Věruška and Elsa spoke of their crushes, I listened intently. I watched as their faces came alive at the prospect of a secret tryst and how their eyes widened when they described the heat of a stare or the graze of a certain hand. I asked them questions, and made a concentrated effort to show enthusiasm regarding the boys whose affections they courted. All the while I was keeping a secret that I sometimes felt would choke me.

  I struggled with whether I should tell my friends how I felt about Josef. There were several opportunities to confess my feelings. But every time I got close to opening up, I feared Věruška’s disapproval. How many times had I heard her complain about Josef being the focus of her parents’ attention, or the afternoons she loathed to return home because her father insisted on complete quiet in the house so Josef could study.

  “Let’s go to Dåum Obcenci for cake,” she said, trying to rouse us all one afternoon after class. “It’s final-exam time for Josef, and I’ll have to walk on tiptoe if I go home now.”

  “Why doesn’t he study at the medical library?” Elsa shook her head.

  “I think he’d prefer that,” Věruška said as she placed her sketchpad in her satchel. “But my father wants to make sure he’s really studying.”

  “Your poor—”

  “Don’t say it!” Věruška lifted her hand up to Elsa. “Poor nothing. He’s their diamond. Their treasure. Their only son.” She let out a mocking sigh.

  My eyes flickered with the thought of him hunched over the dining-room table, his fingers running through his hair as he struggled to concentrate.

  So for now, I kept him a secret. Every word he had said to me on our walk home was committed to memory. Every one of his gestures now moved across my mind like a carefully choreographed dance. I could see his eyes turning to me, envision his hands on my cheeks, feel his cloud of breath in the winter air.

  First love: there is nothing like it. All these years later, I can remember the first time I looked up and saw Josef’s face, the flash of recognition that defied words.

  It was in those first glances, those first exchanges, that I sensed not the uncertainty of love between us, but rather the sheer inevitability of it.

  And so at night, I allowed those feelings to swim through my body. I closed my eyes and colored my mental canvas with strokes of red and orange. I imagined myself traveling to him, my skin against his, like a warm blanket, wrapping him in sleep.

  Věruška, Elsa, and I spent much of the autumn of our second year struggling with our classes. We were being pushed harder than in our first year. Life-drawing class, which had once been off-limits to female students, was now part of our curriculum. We had not yet seen a male model, as only women had appeared on the small draped bed in our classroom, but we all still struggled to get the accuracy of every limb, curve, and angle.

  At lunchtime, we sat in the school’s courtyard and ate our packed sandwiches while enjoying the sun and fresh air. Elsa would sometimes bring little samples of cream and perfume from her father’s apothecary. Everything was packaged in little glass vials that were elegantly labeled.

  “Try this,” Elsa said to me. “It’s rose oil.

  “It’s my favorite,” she said as she moved my hair behind my ear and dabbed a little of it on my neck.

  “Oh, that’s such a nice smell,” Věruška agreed. “How come you never tell us about your crushes, Lenka?” She poked me. “Elsa and I blabber on and you never mention a single boy!”

  “What if I’m afraid you’ll disapprove?”

  “Never!” She let out a little squeal. “Tell us!”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure you’d be able to keep a secret, Věruška,” I teased.

  She giggled and reached for the little vial of rose oil from Elsa’s hand.

  “I don’t need for you to tell me,” she said as she applied some oil behind her own ears. “I already know.”

  “Who?” Elsa was now in on the excitement. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Freddy Kline, of course!” Věruška said between giggles.

  Freddy Kline was a very short classmate of ours. He was sweet and kind, but I suspected he didn’t have any interest in girls whatsoever.

  I laughed.

  “Věruška, you’ve found me out.”

  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.

  “Here,” he said, opening up the two glass doors. “Now you can breathe in all the fresh air you need.”

  “And hopefully there won’t be any dying birds in the garden. It would embarrass me greatly if I couldn’t resurrect one for you.”

  I laughed. “Hopefully your medical powers won’t be needed for birds or for Věruška’s or my sake!”

  “Well, I’ll let you rest before dinner, then. You must be tired from the journey.”

  I looked at him and nodded. “A little rest would do me good.”

  As I walked with him toward the door, I could feel the heat spreading across my face. It wasn’t until he had left the room, and closed the door completely behind him, that I was actually able to settle in. Only then, as the redness of my skin began to dissipate, did I take off my sandals, stretch my legs across the bed, and close my eyes. My head filled with thoughts of Josef as the breeze brushed against my skin.

  That afternoon I was breathless as I walked through the house. The crystal chandeliers sparkled in the sunlight. There were large pieces of carved Bohemian furniture, and beautiful china already in place on the dining table next to tall, handblown cobalt wineglasses. In the middle, Pavla had arranged a handkerchief vase full of daisies.

  By evening, the same handkerchief vase was rearranged with roses. The dining room, which hours before was filled with sunlight, was now dark except for the low flickers of candles. Tall, etched goblets were filled with red wine. Rounds of whit
e porcelain lined the table and a tall silver pitcher cast a warped reflection.

  I had forgotten how different Věruška and Josef’s parents were from mine. After engaging in a few obligatory pleasantries with me, Dr. Kohn questioned Josef about his studies for the rest of the meal.

  “What reading have you brought with you, Josef?”

  Josef paused for a second over the cutting of his meat. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Father.”

  “Really now, Josef.”

  “Really, Father. The anatomy descriptions are proving quite helpful to my studies, among other things.”

  Josef looked over his wineglass in my direction. He was smiling and the top of his lip was stained darker from the wine. He looked like a little imp—a mischievous boy hoping to make me smile.

  Věruška and I nearly choked on our wine laughing, but Dr. Kohn did not seem to find any humor in his son’s antics. Whereas Věruška’s little anecdotes were smiled upon, the elder Kohn tolerated far less levity from his son.

  “Your studies are important, Josef.”

  Josef’s face reddened. “Of course they are.”

  “Being a doctor is not just a profession; it is an honor.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Do you?” Dr. Kohn brought a napkin up to his lips. “I often wonder if you do.

  “I have lost count of the exact amount of children I have brought into this world,” Dr. Kohn proffered. “But nothing was more important to their parents, and I am blessed to have helped them.”