by Belva Plain
And then there was this. “ ‘So she’s marrying a schoolmaster instead of the California millionaire. It’s all theater, this life is, a theater. Caroline herself used to say her own life had been a drama. Sometimes one has to feel sorry for all the little actors with their pride and sense of independent power. And I do feel sorry for us all.’ ”
The notebooks lay between them in a jumble on the floor. Jane sat there in disbelief. Like coiled, poisonous snakes ready to rear and strike, they lay.
“David, I don’t want to read all this about Lore. It’s distorted. It’s terrible. Let’s throw these things away.”
“You know we can’t do that. Somewhere here we’ll find the truth about Walter.”
Three notebooks remained. Jane’s arms were almost too limp to hold a notebook on her lap. Her eyelids wanted to close. And the clock ticked on through the awful, interminable day.
“Here, I made notes from an earlier book,” David said. “1927. ‘Graduation,’ she writes, ‘I have my cap. I passed third in my class. They gave me a little party at home. Some of Father’s colleagues came. They are all so good to me.’ ” He stopped. “The other side of the coin, isn’t it? Love and gratitude.” He read on. “ ‘They will get me a job in the hospital. Even Mama, who is not too bright except at the piano, treats me like a daughter. I am a daughter of the house. Father is so proud of me. Oh, how I hate calling him “Father”! He has everything a girl could want. Handsome and tender and wise. I love him so. If only he were younger and I were older.’ ”
“My God, in love with my grandfather!”
“Here’s more. ‘There’s so much loving in this house. I remember when I came here how they fussed over Caroline.… Where I lived before, there was a new baby every year and people hardly paid attention to it except to feed it. In most ways I admire all this loving and yet—it’s funny, but sometimes it annoys me. I almost feel angry. Watching them together. Is that queer of me?’ ”
“Yes,” Jane said. “Queer and very, very sad. David, I really don’t want any more of this. I’m too confused, too angry.”
“I’ll do the rest. You can stop.”
“No, I take that back. This is my family’s problem and I should have the guts to deal with it. I’ll finish.”
After a long, quiet hour David made a sound that came out midway between an outcry and a groan.
“Jane, Jane, listen to this. ‘Caroline is slowly dying. It is terrible to watch her suffer. I think of all the times she has been so dear to me, sometimes like a mother, and sometimes like a daughter. I think of the things I should never have done.’ ”
“Now I really can’t stand any more,” Jane said. “David, I can’t.”
He looked at her. “You’re played out. Lie down on the sofa while I finish the rest myself.”
The eyelids that had been trying to close now did close; yet no sleep came. Wide awake, as the noisy clock kept on, her thoughts struggled to find order in a tumbling sea of tragedy and killing rage. How Caroline had suffered! And Lore the comforter, the wise adviser who had done so much good, was at the same time the stranger, seen through a fog, glimmering for an instant and fading again into the dark.
The only thing that was clear, she thought at last, is that Lore had been miserable. She called herself an “outsider.” But why, considering how we loved her? Perhaps she was not capable of unconditional love? Dreadful things seem to have happened to her before she came to live with the family, things that no one knew about.
And slowly, as she had been trained to do, Jane tried to form in her own mind a picture of Lore’s mind. She despised her body. Among handsome people, she must have felt stigmatized. She had said so often enough. She wanted a man to love her body, and no man ever had. Our grandfather is supposed to have foreseen a hard life for her. Perhaps as a doctor, he had seen something that other people couldn’t.
She woke to find David standing over her with an extraordinary look of anxiety and tenderness upon his face.
“You finally fell asleep. You needed it. I’ve finished them all.”
She sat up, questioning. “And what?”
“Amalia Schmidt was right. Lore did tell him that Caroline was dead. She didn’t want any ‘further contact’ with the Schmidts, didn’t want Caroline ever to know anything. So she sent one letter saying that she, Lore, was moving out West and giving them no forwarding address.”
“That’s it?”
“No, there’s more,” David said solemnly, and paused.
“The story about Walter? True or not?”
“True.”
For a moment neither spoke. The last gray-blue light, as the shortening day gave place to night, lay on the windowpanes. And grief wrote itself on David’s bowed back as he stood there.
“My God, Jane. She says that she never went to that house in Berlin. Never spoke to the servants about Walter. Never went anywhere to look for him except for a minute to the university address, where some students told her he had gone to the country. So all the Nazi business, the entire story that she took back to Switzerland, was a fabrication. Let me read: ‘I wasn’t able to find out anything at the university. He must have gone off with another woman and jilted Caroline. Found somebody else with big eyes, marvelous hair, fine teeth, and none of the complications that go along with Caroline. What else can it be? Lucky girl, whoever she is. It’s all luck, anyway. If I had half a chance I could make him so happy! Those few times we were alone together, when he gave me a lift in his car and once when he took me to the theater, we had such marvelous, intelligent conversations. We were exactly right for each other. Why couldn’t he see that we were?’ ”
“I don’t recognize Lore at all,” Jane whispered. And memories flashed: Lore walks fast, she bustles from one task to the next; she is busy, she is so cheerful—
“What else?”
“She was glad they were going to America together. Then the parents might come, and the family would be reestablished. If they should fail to come, at least she would have Caroline and would not be alone in the world. Walter would have taken her away. So she made up a story that would remove him forever. She turned him into a Nazi.”
“She simply made it up. She simply broke a girl’s heart, just like that. My mother’s heart.”
“The shocking twist is that forever afterward, according to the diary, her conscience tormented her. She felt she had ruined Caroline’s life. But of course it was impossible then, if it had ever been possible, to make any atonement. She had caught herself in a tangle of lies. Oh,” David cried, “do you realize how Lore manipulated your lives, all your lives?” Then he broke off. “Stupid question. Of course you realize. But can you explain? Can it be explained?”
Jane was barely able to speak. “A love-hate syndrome,” she said at last. “Needing people—us—to assuage her loneliness. Resenting us because she was obliged to us; being proud and hating herself for being dependent.”
“Psychology!” David said, half scoffing.
“Well, I am a psychologist.”
“Go on, then.”
“I guess you have to say that she was taking her revenge on life because of what she missed and felt entitled to. I’m certainly not sure of any of this, David.”
“Psychobabble. She was pathetic, but she was a witch, too. As simple as that.”
Jane shook her head. “It’s never as simple as that.”
“It is. It’s pure evil.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“From what I’ve seen in my profession alone, I’d say yes, there is.”
“I suppose in the last analysis each of us has a valid argument. They argue it out enough in the courts, I know.”
“Well, we look at it differently, and there’s no use arguing about it.” As always, David was practical. “The question is now: What do we do with this junk on the floor? There’s enough of it to paper a house.”
“Burn it.”
“Or shred it. I’m wondering why anyone would keep such inc
riminating stuff. Surely she knew she would die someday and people would find it.”
“I thought of that. You know, it’s possible that in a perverse way she wanted us to know the truth about her.”
“Then she was really crazy.”
“To a degree, yes. But what degree? There are hundreds of them. Whatever it was, we must have pity for her.”
For a moment they stood there, clinging together as people do in the face of disaster or the force of a storm. They had passed this whole day in disaster and storm.
“What to do about your sister now that we know Mrs. Schmidt was not mistaken?”
“Well have to think hard. It’s pretty clear that Walter’s dead, but we still don’t know whether he ever intended to go back to Caroline.”
“And we’ll never know.”
“Perhaps we should just let it stay as it is, leaving out the gory details of his death. He was shot, that’s all. That’s enough, and bad enough.”
“I’m assuming you don’t want to say anything about Lore and the diary.”
“No, I know Eve can bear it, but why should she if she doesn’t have to? She’s borne enough in her time. And why should we spread the story of poor, troubled Lore? Let her rest with her reputation intact. Let everyone keep a good memory of her.”
“Okay, let’s gather up the evidence and dispose of it.”
He was bending down to begin when he straightened again and inquired curiously, “What happened to your anger? You were furious before and now suddenly you aren’t.”
“You’re wrong, I’m still terribly angry and always will be. But I’m also pitying and sad and willing to put the tragedy away. I told you before, there is nothing simple about any of this.”
For a moment David regarded her with an expression of wonder and a small, tender smile.
“How do I love thee? Shall I count the ways? Well, because I love your curly hair and your pretty laugh and your brains. Also, you are a wonderful lover. But mostly I’m thinking right now, that I love you farthest down in my heart for all the goodness that’s in you.”
And he put his arms around her.
SOME weeks later a letter from Amalia Schmidt arrived in New York.
“I do want to thank you for the lovely roses you sent. I have been thinking much about the afternoon we spent together. It was very moving for me and I can only try to imagine how it must have been for you.
“Something has just occurred to me. Perhaps if you agree that it makes some sense, you might want to investigate at the banks here. Walter could very well have gotten some money out of Germany—I wouldn’t be surprised. It seems worth a try.”
“Looking for a needle in a haystack,” Jane said.
“Probably, but not necessarily.”
“David, the sooner we put this entire horror behind us, the better.”
“Yes, but have you any objection if I call those lawyers in Zurich and ask them to take a look? They owe me a small favor.”
“It seems absolutely ridiculous, but I suppose there’s no harm.”
NINETEEN
The day being very warm for early spring, Will had opened the doors to the porch, so that Jane now looked out directly upon a row of pear trees in white bloom that she had helped Will plant when they were saplings no taller than the child she had been then. She turned her eyes toward the other people in the circle, people of various bloods from various places, carrying their separate memories, like hers, of the pear-planting. At the moment they were all connected by the thin, strong thread of an event that had occurred on another continent half a century ago. It is a truism, she thought, that each one of us is the result of decisions made by those who came before us, and they in turn are the product of actions taken by others, and back and back.… It is a truism that we rarely think about. Yet here we are. Eve has been controlling her tears. Holding her hand in loving protectiveness, is Will. On my left hand is the symbolic ring that David put there, while my mother’s ruby is relegated to my right. David’s own hand rests on a sheaf of papers, from which, with care and thought, he has for the last hour been reading.
“Fifty thousand dollars in a joint account. That’s like half a million today.”
No one answered. A numbness had set in. There had been all too much to encompass.
Then Eve’s voice came faintly, as if from another room. “Poor Lore. If only she could be here with us now! Those people told her he was a Nazi because it was well known in the neighborhood that she was not one. So they mocked her with their lie.”
Poor Lore, indeed. But she must curb her angry tongue. “Poor Mother,” Jane said.
“It’s a miracle that Mrs. Schmidt kept the picture all these years,” Eve marveled, holding it up to the light with an expression of disbelief and awe.
And Jane, trying to imagine how you must feel on seeing for the first time the face of your father, was unable to imagine it. She had grown up among albums full of her own father’s cheerful, beaming face, and among people in Ivy who had known Joel well.
“I wonder what he was really like,” Eve mused. “Lore said he knew art and architecture and loved music. Still, that doesn’t tell you very much, does it? I could have asked Mother for more, I guess, but it would have been too cruel. She was so in love with Joel that she had almost forgotten, or made herself forget, the past.”
Do you really believe that? Jane thought. I don’t.
“I apologize, Eve,” David said, “for opening the letter that came with the documents. I hadn’t realized that it was a personal one.”
“I don’t mind that you saw it, or who sees it. It isn’t my letter, anyway. It belonged to our mother, and it’s as much Jane’s as mine. Here, Jane. You read it aloud. I already know it by heart.”
“My German is too awful.”
“Then I’ll do it. The date is May, 1939,” Eve read.
“ ‘Darling Caroline, when we are together again, I will be able to tell you what I am doing here. Then you will understand why I could not have told you sooner, and why I am writing this on the remote chance that my undertaking does not succeed.’ ” Eve raised her head. “It’s so scrawled, he must have been in a tremendous hurry. This money is for our life in America, and I pray God, for the life of your dear parents when they join us there. I write this in great haste, as when one runs toward shelter in bad weather.
“The storm I see is a war so awful that it will change the world. I see Europe devastated once again, as it was the last time. It will be worse this time. I see the victims in the concentration camps, the bloodied dead and wounded, the bombarded, burning cities, and the refugees on the country roads. I see my own country in ruins. I see Americans coming across the ocean to die. It is a nightmare beyond description.
“ ‘Darling Caroline, understand that it is just five minutes before midnight on the clock. I want to stop the clock.
“ ‘Darling Caroline, I remember the day you wore your black silk hair in braids like a schoolgirl’s, with red bows on the ends. And I remember your pink summer dress. Save it and wear it again for me. And I remember—’ ” Eve faltered and stopped. “That’s enough for now.”
“It’s too much for you,” Will said gently.
“And for Jane, too,” added David.
They were all subdued. From outdoors came the fragrance of rain upon wet grass. The carriage clock tinkled on the mantelpiece. Lore had appropriated it from the house on the lake.
“Your mother was fond of it,” she’d said. “She would have wanted you girls to have it.”
Eve’s modest house contained some lovely things of Caroline’s: her candelabra, and books, and Dresden figurines.
“I stole them all for you,” Lore had said with a mischievous grin. “Vicky doesn’t need things she doesn’t know enough to appreciate.”
It is like threads in a weaving, Jane thought. They start together, and separate, and come together again; sometimes they fray, and the pattern goes awry.
“To get back to the subject,” D
avid began, “the money is clearly yours, Eve. Half at least is in your mother’s name, and Walter was your father. The rest is Jane’s, I should think.”
Jane said quickly, “Oh, no, I don’t want it.”
Eve followed. “Nor do I.”
She rose and stood in the doorway with the green spring evening at her back. Tall as she was, she seemed even taller in her dignity.
“Are you quite sure?” David asked.
“Quite sure. Let it go to survivors in need. That’s where it belongs. Will and I have everything.”
Yes, it was plain when you looked at them together that they did have everything.
“It’s your legacy,” David said.
Eve smiled. Her face was illuminated. She is extraordinarily beautiful, Jane thought.
And Eve spoke. “I have my legacy. Now at last I know who I am. I know my father. He was a good man, and honorable, and very brave. He was a prince.”
Don’t miss
Belva Plain’s
stunning new novel,
HER FATHER’S HOUSE
coming from
Delacorte Press
in August 2002
