The Lost Wife

by Alyson Richman

  CHAPTER 14

  LENKA

  Like a line drawn in the sand, I can mark the unraveling of my life, from the moment I returned to Prague. Those two weeks in Karlovy Vary were the last moments of calm. I had left Prague without the shadow of Hitler and returned with his threat heavy upon the city.

  Suddenly it seemed I could not escape hearing his name everywhere. Would he invade Czechoslovakia or not?

  We began to see parades outside our apartment window—men in lederhosen and women in traditional skirts, marching and chanting German national songs. Swastikas appeared on storefronts. Ugly, angry slashes. Glaring like a scar.

  I returned to the Academy, but my heart was not in it. Věruška also seemed somewhat changed. The liveliness of her eyes and the fullness of figure—all of the things that had made her appear buoyant in the past—had diminished.

  We did not speak of the growing fear within our families. There were more pauses in our conversations. Instead, there was a silent exchange in our eyes when we looked at each other. We giggled far less often.

  Now, over the radios at home, we heard of the German presence encroaching on the Sudetenland, the area on the Czech-German border. Our minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Basel, had ordered Czech troops to patrol the division line, but everyone doubted they could keep the Germans out for long.

  I had not heard of any specific hardship falling upon the Kohns like we had suffered. I didn’t see how Dr. Kohn’s practice could be affected. His patients were almost exclusively Jewish. Jews would still remain loyal to Jews. Babies were not like crates of crystal that people did not really need. Still, who really knew the worries of others?

  Elsa’s beautiful lips now twitched when she talked. I noticed it almost immediately when our classes resumed.

  I didn’t ask her about her father’s business at the apothecary. She still smelled of gardenia and tuberose. But I suspected that, like my father’s, the growing anti-Semitism was affecting his livelihood as well.

  Roth’s Apotek, with its florid Art Nouveau sign, was almost a banner for Jewish mercantilism. It was in a prime location, on one of the side streets just off the center of Prague’s Old Town Square. In the past, every time I passed it, there were people coming and going, their packages wrapped in Roth’s brown paper and recognizable purple ribbon. The sign outside said EST. 1860; the family had owned it for decades.

  I had not heard of any windows being smashed there, or any Nazi slogans being written on its walls. But who knew? In such a short time it seemed like everything had changed.

  At the break, my two girlfriends and I ate our packed lunches outside. The warm sun hit our bare legs and struck our faces with rays of honey-colored light.

  This was our third year at the Academy, and we had always imagined when we were first-years that by this time we would feel like we owned the halls. Instead, we now were all preoccupied with concern for our parents and our life as we knew it in Prague.

  “I wonder if we’ll be able to finish our studies,” Elsa said. Her words sliced through the air like a rapier. “Papa says he’s not so sure.”

  Věruška scowled. “Of course we will! The Czech troops won’t let the Germans cross over our borders.”

  I said nothing because I didn’t know what to believe. Everything I knew about the political situation was gleaned from what I overheard during my parents’ discussions at night. And one thing was certain: they were becoming less confident with each passing day. A different Lenka was emerging, one that existed as two halves—one half wanted to feel alive, to feel happy, to saturate myself in the feelings of first love—but the other half was full of dread. All I needed to do was to look at my father’s face when he returned home from work in order to see the writing on the wall. I hate to admit it now, but there were several nights when he walked through the door when I didn’t want to lift my eyes.

  Things happened so quickly that autumn of 1938. On October 5, our president, Edvard Benes, resigned, realizing that the Nazi occupation was imminent. We had been defeated, without lifting a single weapon. There would be no resistance from our government and no protection for the tidal wave of anti-Semitism that the Nazis would soon unleash.

  We began to hear slurs on the street: “Jewish shit, you’ll be dead by Christmas.” Elsa reported that her brother went into a café after school with friends and was told, “Jews out!” Suddenly the fear that we saw on our parents’ faces was now also on our own.

  We began to hear of neighbors who were trying to secure visas, though neither Elsa nor Věruška mentioned that their families were trying to do so. People we had known for years suddenly left without saying good-bye. We became watchful and guarded.

  That year, I started learning a new art.

  The art of being invisible.

  Mama, too, no longer dressed to be noticed. She dressed to disappear.

  Black coat. Charcoal-gray scarves over a dress the deep shade of graphite.

  We no longer drank from colored crystal. Instead, the ruby-red wine goblets and the cobalt water glasses were all sold for far less than they were worth.

  When I opened my tin of oil pastels in drawing class, I held the sticks of orange and leaf green and felt an acute pain typically associated with hunger.

  One professor began picking on the Jewish boys in our class. He criticized their drawings more than was deserved. He tore Arohn Gottlieb’s sketch of a still life right down the middle and told him to leave his class at once.

  We began to hear stories of schoolgirls who were attacked in Poland. Girls who were attacked by their own classmates after class, their faces scarred by boys who held them down and clawed at their faces.

  Věruška, Elsa, and I now kept our heads down when we were in class. Though it appeared a posture of shame, for us, it was born from fear.

  One afternoon over lunch outside, Elsa collapsed in tears. “I can’t take this anymore,” she said. She had grown thinner over the past two weeks. Her white skin was translucent and as thin as tulip petals, her blond hair wispy as straw. “I can’t draw. I can’t even see what I’m supposed to be studying.”

  Her hands were shaking as I took them in my own. “Elsa, everything is going to be fine.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. As she turned to look at me, there was a wild look in her eyes. And her lips were bright red, but not from lipstick. They were raw and chewed.

  I now saw Josef whenever I could. We met in a small, secluded café on Klimentska Street nearly every other day. We had yet to tell our parents. I wish I could tell you that we kept our romance a secret because we didn’t want them to have yet another burden, the pressure of making something too soon out of our courtship, but that would be untrue. We kept it to ourselves because we were young, in love, and selfish. It was our own perfect little secret and we wanted to keep it all to ourselves.

  I felt as though I were existing on air. I barely ate and I was incapable of resting at night, my head was so filled with thoughts of Josef and our next plans to meet. And although I had no appetite and could not sleep, I felt more energized than ever before. Even my paintings changed. My brushstrokes were freer. I was more generous with my use of color and texture. Even my sense of line changed in my drawings. My hand loosened, as if it had finally gained a sense of confidence, and my subjects became more alive than ever.

  That November, as we both tried to navigate between our studies and our courtship, the threat of war rattled like a storm outside our window. We heard it, but we tried to keep the window shut a bit longer. Each moment was more intense than the one before it. In between learning that his favorite color was green, his favorite author was Dostoevsky, and his favorite composer was Dvořák, we learned how to stretch out our kisses or how the other liked to be touched. There was heat even when there were pauses of silence between us. As I look back on it now, it was during those periods of calm, when we walked down the street and there were no eyes upon us, that I felt the happiest. We didn’t need to talk, so synchronized
were our thoughts. He would slip his hand in mine and nothing else seemed to matter. For a few moments I allowed myself to feel secure.

  This was a fantasy I wanted to suspend for however long I could. But it was far from realistic. As tensions increased in Prague, we soon found ourselves behaving like every other Jew around us. We kept our heads down now when we walked home, and we avoided all eye contact with others. It was as if all the Jews in Prague wished they could vanish. We heard of Jews in Germany near the Sudetenland being forced from their homes and made to crawl to the Czech border and kiss the ground. The Czech guards forced them back, so they were pushed into a no-man’s-land between two countries, neither of which wanted to accept them. Every time it rained and the temperature dropped near freezing, I thought of these men, women, and children. To live like hunted animals with wolves at your heels.

  By January 1939, we felt all was lost. Our government, now headed by Hachá, ordered the police to coordinate with the Germans in suppressing the supposed threat of communism within Czechoslovakia. It was difficult for me to fully comprehend what this meant for us, but my father’s reaction to the news made it all too clear. That night, he raised his hands to the ceiling and said this was a death sentence to all Czech Jews.

  My mother said to be quiet, not to speak like that in front of Marta and me.

  I smiled at Marta, who was holding back tears.

  “We need to get visas,” Mama told him.

  “Who in America will sign an affidavit for us?”

  “We can buy false papers!” she cried.

  “With what? With what, Eliška?” And his high-pitched cry reminded me of shattered glass. “It’s too late now. We should have left when the Gottliebs and the Rosenthals did. There is no money left to buy the papers and passage,” he said helplessly, his palms turned up toward the sky.

  One day, in the first week in November, Elsa did not come to class. Věruška and I exchanged a worried glance. “Maybe they’ve been able to get out, somehow,” Věruška said flatly. I immediately wondered if the apothecary now stood empty, its shelves bare, and the smell of gardenia and rose replaced by stale air. Perhaps Elsa and her family had gotten on a boat with no time to say good-bye.

  But what if it had been something terrible. I was worried.

  I decided to pass Elsa’s father’s apothecary on the way to meeting Josef. Through the broken glass, I could see her sitting by the counter, her face in shadow.

  I stood there staring at her. If I were to go in, I’d be late for Josef and cause him to worry. If I didn’t, I would be distracted when I saw him by this haunting image of my friend, her face as shattered as the store’s glass.

  I walked in; my footsteps on the tile were the only sound. Elsa looked up at me, her blue eyes lifting like a porcelain doll. Her mouth trying to twitch into a smile.

  “We missed you in class today,” I said softly as I approached her.

  “I’m not coming back,” she said. “I can’t concentrate there anymore, and anyway, Papa needs me here to run the sales counter. He had to let Fredrich go, so Papa’s now working the pharmacy in the back.”

  “I thought perhaps your family had left,” I said.

  She looked at me as though she were trying to read my face. “We’re trying to, Lenka. But everything requires money now, and we hardly have any left.”

  I nodded. I knew this feeling all too well.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  She shook her head. Elsa did not look helpless; she looked resigned.

  “I’ll bring Věruška the next time I visit,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.

  We parted with a kiss, and I hurried off to meet Josef, my heart far heavier than it had been that morning.

  He was waiting for me, his throat wrapped in a thick black scarf, his hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea.

  “I was worried about you,” he said, standing up to greet me with a kiss. His lips were still warm from the tea.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I went to check on Elsa. She wasn’t in class today.”

  He raised his eyebrow and shook his head.

  “I don’t think any of us are going to be in class much longer.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said, reaching over the table to kiss him one more time.

  He placed his hands on my cheeks and held them there. His fingers were so long they nearly touched my ears.

  “Kiss me again,” I told him.

  His mouth on mine was like new air being pumped into my lungs.

  “We should get married, Lenka,” he said as he slowly pulled away from me.

  I laughed. “Get married? Neither of our parents even know that we are courting.”

  “Exactly.” He smirked. “Exactly.”

  At night, I dream of myself in a white veil. My family’s black coats and scarves are replaced by ripe colors of red and gold. Their faces are no longer frightened and worried, but radiant and full of joy. I see Papa being lifted on a chair, and Mama and Marta clapping as he bounces about on sturdy shoulders.

  We drink wine in tall rosy goblets, and eat dumplings with the tenderest meat. The chuppah is threaded with flowers. Daisies, asters, and irises the color of jam.

  On my honeymoon night, I lie beside him. He lays his hands above my head on the pillow. He kisses my temples, my heart, my belly, and then below.

  I close my eyes and pass through a world where there is only love.

  CHAPTER 15

  LENKA

  In January of 1939, it seemed as though it would only be a matter of time before the Germans finally invaded Czech soil.

  “We must get married,” Josef implored me. “I’ve told my parents that I’m in love with you.”

  I blew puffs of steam in his face as I stood next to him in the cold. “How can we get married now? The whole world’s turned upside down.”

  He pulled me closer. “If we don’t get married, there will be nothing good left in this life for me.”

  He kissed me again, his arms enveloping me in their warm woolen sleeves. I felt like my heart was flooding with emotion whenever I was near him. But our situation was becoming more and more desperate.

  “How can I tell my parents for the first time I am dating you, and in the next sentence, tell them I am to be wed?”

  “These are strange days . . . things are not as they once were. Listen,” he said, shaking me a little by the arms. “My parents are in the middle of negotiating exit visas for us. I need to marry you so they can secure one for you, too.”

  “What?” I asked incredulously.

  “Father is buying them on the black market. We have a cousin in New York who is sponsoring us.” He was now looking at me with such a ferocious intensity, I was frightened. “Lenka, you need to understand . . . we need to get out of here. The Czechs will sell every Jew out if it means maintaining their sovereignty.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t marry you unless you also secure visas for my parents . . . and for Marta.”

  “That’s impossible, Lenka, you know that.” His voice was now full of force and it surprised me. “You will go first with my family, and then when we are settled you can send for them.”

  “No,” I said. “Promise me you will also get my whole family passports, or otherwise, the answer is no.”

  CHAPTER 16

  LENKA

  We told my parents the next evening. I brought Josef home and my parents, though shocked by the sudden announcement, did not protest. Perhaps delirious and worn down from their own desperation, they would have married me off to even a lesser man if he had promised us safety outside of Czechoslovakia.

  Josef appeared remarkably calm as he told Papa of his plans to take care of me, and to take us all out of Prague.

  “And your parents? They support this decision?” Papa asked.

  “They love Lenka, as do I. My sister adores her. We will all take care of her.”

  “But you will come with us. You, Mama, and Marta,” I interjected. “Dr. Kohn
is arranging papers for all of us.”

  Josef looked at my father and nodded.

  “We’ve either sent away or sold off her dowry,” Papa told him sadly.

  “I am marrying her for love not for money. Not for crystal.”

  Papa smiled and let out a deep sigh.

  “This is not how I imagined your betrothal, Lenka,” he said, turning to me. His eyes lifted toward my mother, who was standing at the threshold of the parlor, Marta’s thin arms around her. My sister was thirteen now, but still seemed childlike to me.

  “Eliška, do you think you can make a wedding in three days?”

  She nodded.

  “So be it,” Papa said as he stood up to embrace Josef. “Mazel tov.”

  My father’s arms lifted to wrap around Josef. I saw Papa’s head rest on Josef’s shoulder, his eyes squinting shut, and the faint trickle of a father’s tears.

  We registered in the city hall and arranged with the rabbi to be wed in the Old Town Synagogue.

  For the three days leading up to the ceremony, my mother was a woman possessed. She first unwrapped her own wedding dress, an elaborate white silk gown with long lace sleeves and a high-collared bodice.

  I was at least three inches shorter than Mama, but for the alterations, she did not call the seamstress Gizela. Instead, she took out a large wooden box and did the job herself.

  The silver shears sounded like blades over ice as Mother cut through the skirt. I was standing on a small stool, the same one that Lucie had stood on the weeks before her marriage. The irony of it had not escaped me as I looked into the gilded mirror in our living room. I looked at my reflection, with my mother now on her knees, the pins in her mouth, her scissors slicing through her own dress. I wanted to cry.