The Lost Wife

by Alyson Richman

  We took him to specialist after specialist. He perplexed everyone with his intelligence scores, but he seemed unable to function outside his own bubble.

  The Yeshiva school in Brooklyn was the only one that would take him, and he seemed to blossom under the care of its teachers. He loved the Hebrew language, taking to it as if it were a mystery he needed to decode. The schedule was rigid and the children there were obedient and left him alone.

  He embraced the uniform; although it was black and white rather than blue, he liked the consistency of having to wear it every day and the material didn’t irritate him like so many other things did.

  He liked the little brick building and the benches in the schoolyard, and that no one bothered him if he played by himself or simply watched from the side. When he rocked back and forth or flapped his arms, the teachers told the children it was Jakob’s own method of prayer.

  My adult life is cursed with a constant duality. It is as if someone came and took a cleaver to my existence so that I cannot enjoy one thing without seeing the sadness on the other side. I married Amalia, but couldn’t stop thinking about what my life would have been like with Lenka. I saw my beautiful daughter grow into the woman she is, while I saw my son barely able to eke out an existence with all his various limitations.

  Those years, when Jakob and Rebekkah were teenagers, our daughter would dress up in her corduroy skirt and turtleneck and meet friends for a hamburger or milk shake down the street, while Jakob joined Amalia and me in front of the television. I cleared the plates of Amalia’s overboiled vegetables and overcooked meat, scraping them quietly into the dustbin as I heard my son answering every answer correctly on one of the quiz shows before any of the contestants even had a chance to respond.

  And I watched Amalia and Jakob’s heads staring at the screen. I wanted my wife to look at me, but she continued to gaze ahead. I know she must have heard Jakob calling out the answers, but she did not smile with any pride. Nor did she cry. She simply ate her food that had no taste and looked at a TV show that, for her, had no meaning, and never said a word.

  Rebbekah is now a wife and mother. Married to a lawyer with a son. My son, now fifty, still lives with me at home. He is competent enough to live by himself, but has always refused the opportunity.

  “Why, Dad? I’m happy.... I’m happy here with you.” His speech is careful and deliberate, as if he is weighing each word in his head before he articulates it.

  I raise my eyebrows and stare at my son’s wan complexion, the pale of his eyes like cracked ice. The nervous hands. Part of me wants to raise my hand to him, to release so many years of frustration at seeing my brilliant child cocooned in his own silken shell. But I don’t have the will.

  He reads my mind. He reads my sadness. He reads my anger. It flashes across my retinas like lightning in a storm.

  And then it’s gone.

  CHAPTER 32

  JOSEF

  At Amalia’s funeral, Isaac played the Kol Nidre. He looked ancient to me now. He was entirely gray, his once-black hair now looked like a heap of curling leaves dusted in snow. But his thin body was still elegant and straight. He was dressed in a tasteful black suit, the one he wore when Amalia and I went to hear him play at Carnegie Hall years earlier. When the rabbi called his name, he rose from the pew behind me and reverently walked to the bimah. His violin at his side as he walked down the stairs; he held his bow carefully to his heart.

  There was complete silence as he stood still, the gilded ark behind him and the scrolls of the Ten Commandments flanking him on either side. There were only a handful of mourners around us, those few people who had become friends over the years, Benjamin’s family, my two children, my grandson, and a few patients I had become close with.

  He stood there for what seemed like several seconds, looking out beyond the pews as if trying to catch someone he hoped in vain was still there. I sat with my hands folded, watching as he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He finally raised the instrument to his shoulder and he settled his chin. Then he lifted his bow.

  He played more beautifully than I had ever heard him play. The music resonating like a heart torn wide open, each note released onto golden wings. The skin of his cheeks shuddered as he played; the lashes of his eyelids sealed his gaze. But it was clear to me as I watched him—almost an epiphany as I heard him play—that he had always been in love with Amalia. That all those years when he sat in our little kitchen quietly watching us, he had been there to be around her.

  Rebekkah wept as he played. Her body shivering and quaking, her thin frame unable to contain her grief. My son stared ahead, his clear eyes ethereal in his mourning. A single tear streaking his face.

  And my tears eventually came, too, as the music, slow and mournful and then rising and falling, came like waves in the sea. I cried because yes, I missed Amalia. But also because it was all too clear to me that my best friend had loved my wife in a way that I never could.

  The kaddish he played consisted of the notes that came from my heart, my yearning for a love eternally lost. But not for a woman who now lay in a pine coffin before me. It was for a woman I left forty-five years ago in a crowded train station in Prague, who had never been given a proper funeral. And had I played the violin, my sorrow for having lost her would have sounded exactly like Isaac’s did for Amalia. Each note played hauntingly in the fullness of its sorrow, each chord emphasizing the loneliness that she was gone.

  CHAPTER 33

  JOSEF

  We sit shiva in our apartment, Rebbekah with her young family, me and my lethargic son. As custom dictates, we cover the mirrors with cloth. We rip our clothes. We sit unshaven on low stools.

  My grandson reads a book in my office. He is in high school now, and loves books as much as I did when I was his age. His mother chides him so he will sit with her and her brother, but I tell her it’s fine. He is young. He is vital. Let him not sit in a dark room with us and receive visitors he couldn’t even name.

  Another plate of rugelach and a platter of bagels with smoked fish arrive from one of my daughter’s friends. She writes down each arrival on a small pad so she can write them thank-you notes afterward.

  The sofa is covered in the slipcovers that Amalia had sewn herself. The curtains are drawn so there is no sunlight. Outside on Third Avenue, the taxis honk their horns and mothers call out to their children as they get out of school. Inside, the containers in the cabinets are still marked with labels in Amalia’s careful hand: Flour, Sugar, and Salt. The phone numbers she had written for the hospital, the fire station, and the police are still taped to the wall.

  Already, I can barely remember the sound of her voice. A week in the ICU after a stroke, a long sleep, and then a wordless good-bye. I know, in the weeks that will follow, I will look for her in the simple cotton dresses that hang in the closet, in the tube of hand cream by her nightstand, or in the round of rye bread that will go stale without another mouth to share it.

  I don’t imagine Amalia will now visit me as a ghost. She will be busy elsewhere, searching the heavens for her family, flying to the arms of her mother and father and beseeching forgiveness from her sister, who will tell her she should have forgotten long ago.

  Her ghost will finally be at home now. Because that’s what happens when we eventually return to the ones we loved but left behind. To the ones we never forgot. We slide into them like two perfect hands. We fall into them like two cotton-filled clouds.

  Isaac attends Amalia’s burial but doesn’t come to pay his respects at the house. For seven days I expect him to walk in the door or call. But he doesn’t. I finally hear from him the following week, when he tells me he is sorry. He tells me that he had a bad cold and was in bed all week. He also mentions in passing how he seemed to have dropped his bow somewhere and so now must buy a new one.

  But something in his voice reveals that he is not telling me the truth about either thing. I suddenly imagine him burying the bow alongside Amalia. And as soon as I think it, I
know in my heart it’s true. While my children and I were walking to the limousine, I looked back and saw him standing there alone beside her grave, his head tipped solemnly down.

  I imagine he placed it there in the earth, when no one was looking, to be buried beside her. Quietly. Just as she was quiet. A single note hanging in a crowded sky.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I understand. You’ll just have to get a new one.”

  “Yes,” he says. “A new one.”

  I think of the two bows Isaac has lost over the years. One dropped in the sea where I lost my parents and sister, and one placed with my wife of thirty-eight years. Each of my own losses marked by a single slip of his hand.

  CHAPTER 34

  LENKA

  My mother had grown even thinner that summer in 1943. I could see the ligaments under her skin, her collarbone protruding in such high relief that it reminded me of a scythe. Her cheekbones so sharp they reminded me of the bladelike facets in the glass drops of a crystal chandelier.

  The Jugenfursorge, the welfare initiative started by the Council of Elders, had set up a schedule for the children, ensuring that they had some schooling in secret and some exposure to poetry, drama, and music. Mother would come home from the children’s barracks bleary-eyed but invigorated. It was strange to see Mother’s much younger artistic self now resurrected in Terezín. The woman I had imagined so many years ago that afternoon in the cellar with Lucie, her long-stored-away paintings executed in a palette of aubergine and mottled plums, was now appearing before me. She was burning with excitement from her work with the children.

  Mother said there would soon be an exhibit in the basement of one of the children’s quarters. The children were all working on collages and paintings, so I continued to steal what supplies I could from the technical department for them.

  I was now an expert in stealth. Every few days I would take a colored pencil or a small tube of paint that was nearly finished but could still be squeezed to bring forth a few drops of pigment. Theresa and Rita also hid things for me to pass to Mother, as they were just as adamant as I that not a single piece of art supplies be wasted. Theresa was so quiet, saying almost nothing as she pulled out two squares of torn canvas from her skirt. Rita would look defiant as she pressed crumbs of charcoal or pastel in my hand.

  When I was able to visit Hans, he always asked if I could draw him. I would joke with him and say, “Well then, you must draw me, too.” I would take a small piece of sketchpad paper from its hiding place in my blouse and break a piece of charcoal in two.

  “Here,” I would say. “You try.”

  He would look at the paper and then at me, squinting his large green eyes, and begin drawing. A lopsided circle would appear on the page. Two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth. But he was only four, and I knew this was a milestone for a child so small.

  The best part of it all was knowing that something that could have easily occurred outside the walls of Terezín could still be achieved within them.

  I reached over and put my arm on his little shoulder.

  “Lenka,” he said quietly. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  But before I could begin to cry, he reached for my hand and pressed it down on the paper.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said.

  “Yes, my turn,” I said with a smile.

  And I began to draw.

  The exhibition of the children’s art was an amazing feat. Mother, Friedl, and the other teachers had spent countless hours with the children, and now their beautiful collages and paintings hung on the walls.

  Marta and I walked through the exhibit with our fingers raised to our mouths, so moved were we by the sight of the work, and of its breadth. There were images of trees and butterflies. Some children had drawn pictures of their families, their old pets, and memories of their lives before Terezín. But the most moving of the images were those that tried to document their current situation. One child had drawn his memories of his arrival in Terezín. Seven figures in a line, each with their identification numbers written on their rucksacks, the face of each person sad and fearful. Another child had drawn a bunk bed in a barracks—a dream image floating above the sleeping figure’s head—clouds filled with bars of chocolate and jars of candy.

  I was transported by the children’s images. I could close my eyes and remember my own childhood watercolors, the sensation of first seeing paint drip from my brush, the rivers of inky colors bleeding onto the page.

  I was so proud of my mother that evening. She was standing in a dark basement, her students’ drawings tacked on the walls, in the same simple dress she had worn the afternoon of our transport. It was now stained with paint, sections were threadbare, and it hung on her bones like an old sack thrown over a scarecrow. But Mother stood there with her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes beaming, in a way that reminded me of the way she had been before the war. She had a smile of satisfaction that lit up the whole room.

  CHAPTER 35

  JOSEF

  Among Amalia’s possessions I half expect to find love letters from Isaac. I go through her belongings wondering if I will discover a secret life. I look over the shelves for tapes of classical music, a program from Carnegie Hall, a hidden photograph, or a lock of salt-and-pepper hair. If I died first, would she do the same? Would she find the photograph Lenka packed of our wedding day, the only thing I had on me when I was lowered to safety in the lifeboat? Would she finally see the face of my ghost, the one I had never shown her, whose eyes pulled at me from deep within her nameless grave? Would she finally reach under the bed and uncover my box of returned letters? Or would she, as I suspect she would, respect the sanctity of the past and keep the letters within their box, the lid tightly closed?

  Her closet is half empty, the ample space between the hangers telling more about her than the clothes themselves. The coat she wore in the winter reminds me of her, with its checkered fabric and knotted belt. I look down at her three pairs of shoes and see the faint scuffs, the imprint of her feet on the insoles, and the leather straps worn thin. On her vanity, I reach for her brush and notice a few wisps of hair. I unwind a half-used lipstick, the color so pale it reminds me of sand.

  I pull memories of us and they appear before my eyes like negatives of film. I see her cradling Rebekkah in her arms, I see her running her fingers through our son’s hair. I see her with her back turned to me, warming my dinner after I’ve returned home late from the hospital.

  So that night, as I go to sleep, I don’t dream of Lenka, as usual, but of Amalia. I let her finally go back to her family. I say good-bye to her, and I see her as I did the first day I met her, a cotton dress and wispy blond hair. I see her beside me at Café Vienna, a cloud of steam rising over her cup of hot chocolate, her brown eyes cloudy with tears.

  CHAPTER 36

  LENKA

  The Terezín children were staging a repeat performance of Brundibár, an opera written by Hans Krása with scenery created under the direction of one of Prague’s most famous theatrical designers, František Zelenka. The set consisted of a makeshift fence constructed of scrap boards and three posters: one each of a dog, a cat, and a sparrow. Each poster was hung on the fence; a circle was cut out in the center so that the child assigned to the role could insert his or her face and be put immediately into character. The painted image thus eliminated the need for a sewn costume. The set was amazingly convincing. How many people in my office and in Lautscher have been secretly feeding supplies so that this can take place? I thought to myself. The children squealed with delight in their transformation, distracted for a moment from their hunger and deprivation. We all applauded as they took to the stage.

  The opera is about two children, Little Annette and Joe, who set out to buy milk for their sick mother. On the street they encounter an organ grinder by the name of Brundibár. They sing a song for him in the hope of getting some of his coins, but he only chases them away. That night, the children fal
l asleep under the painted posters of the dog, cat, and sparrow. When they awaken, the animals have come to life and they all join forces to fight Brundibár. They sing a beautiful song and the villagers throw coins at them, but Brundibár is not yet vanquished. He returns to the stage and steals the coins. The opera ends with the animals and children victorious over the organ grinder, their caps overflowing with coins as they return home with milk for their mother.

  Almost all of us in Terezín loved this opera. For the children, in their performance, had created a message of resistance all their own. As they triumphed over the evil Brundibár, the metaphor of the opera was lost on no one.

  That evening, when I saw Rita carefully untacking the posters from the fence, I immediately sensed that she was pregnant. Although she was still rail thin, her breasts appeared fuller and noticeably rounder. Even her face looked slightly different. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she looked more beautiful then ever, a tiny yet ethereal figure.

  Later that night, after the exhilaration of the children’s performance, I was able to corner her without Oskar’s presence.

  “Rita,” I told her. “You and Zelenka did a fantastic job on the scenery. But you look tired.” I touched her arm. “Are you all right?”