Rebecca had driven to the cemetery with her parents, who let her sit quietly in the back while they talked about how nice the salads, cheeses, smoked fish, and herring looked, all ordered from a local restaurant. Would they survive, crammed in the fridge waiting for the guests who were invited after the service? Her sister, Susan, in from Montreal with her husband, how tired she looked, and no wonder, did you see how tall and rambunctious the three boys were? Wonderful boys, so smart. Her parents went quiet then. Rebecca understood the silence. Her younger sister had a husband and children while Rebecca’s husband was lying beneath the stone that was about to be unveiled. She had put off having children until her medical practice was established. But then David was diagnosed with diabetes and one complication followed another. Before her disbelieving eyes, he went blind, developed kidney failure, and died. Her beautiful, beloved David with the red hair and mischievous eyes and irreverent humour.
He would have scoffed at the traditional unveiling. Wasn’t it enough to just erect the stone? Why did Jews have to make such a production out of everything? The man at the funeral home had said something about emotional healing through the expression of grief. As a physician she understood that. But as a mourner, she dreaded it. She desperately evaded her grief, hoping that if she didn’t acknowledge it, it might just lie there beneath the skin and leave her alone. She could go through the motions of her life, tend to her patients, deliver babies, read medical journals during dinner, and not remember, for a few hours at a time, that she had lost the love of her life.
Rebecca was pulled out of her reflections by her mother’s tightening grip on her arm. She tried to focus, but all she could see was David lying lifeless in the hospital, his skin grey, his mouth open.
Sooner than she expected, the rabbi leaned over the stone, pulled the strings that held the cloth covering in place. It fell off to reveal the lettering. Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat. “David Adler” was chiselled in the black granite. “Born December 27, 1945, Died October 5, 1978.” David Adler. No longer a person, now only a name on a stone. Until that moment, her life had seemed suspended, as if time had stood still since David had taken his last breath. Now it was over. He was really dead and death was final. She would never see him again.
“In the name of the family of David Adler, and in the presence of his family and friends, we consecrate this monument to his memory, as a token of our love and respect. May his soul be bound up in the bond of life eternal. Amen. Let us recite the memorial prayer, Eil Malei Rachamim.
“Eil malei rachamim sho-khein bamromim hammtzei m’nukhah… God all compassionate, grant perfect peace in Your sheltering presence, among the holy and the pure… Now the mourner’s kaddish: Yis-gadal V’yis-kadash sh’mey rabo… Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel speedily and soon; and say Amen.”
Grief was like sex, Rebecca thought, balancing a plate of food on her knees at her parents’ house. It went on in private behind closed doors. Everyone knew it was happening, but no one talked about it. No one really wanted to know the details. Not even those closest to you.
Rebecca, picking at the egg salad on her dish, sat between Iris, her office assistant, and Susan, both of them agreeing that Montreal’s restaurants were more interesting than Toronto’s, but would lose customers since the Anglos were leaving in the wake of the separatist surge. Iris and Susan exchanged the names of favourite restaurants. Rebecca didn’t blame them. It felt good to be distracted. They all understood that this was their job here. They didn’t want to know the pain in her heart any more than she wanted to know about their sex lives.
Most of the guests had eaten lunch, expressed their condolences, and left. Rebecca was helping her mother and sister clear the dishes from the living room when Sarah approached her. She looked tired. Her mother-in-law was an elegant woman of five-foot-two in a black linen skirt and matching jacket. She always wore heels higher than Rebecca, who insisted on sensible shoes. Apart from lipstick, Sarah wore no makeup, but she coloured her chin-length wavy hair auburn. She had been quietly pretty once, still was, really, with her small nose and delicate mouth. She would have looked young if not for her eyes: careful, self-protective, dark with the memory of pain.
“Could I speak to you a moment?” she asked, with her trace of Polish accent.
Rebecca led her to a corner of the living room.
“I hate to ask you today — we’re all upset — but I’ve been putting it off.” She glanced at Rebecca for direction.
Rebecca nodded for her to continue.
“I used to know a woman in Poland, she was connected to my family. She’s coming here in September, bringing her daughter for medical treatment — I think she has leukemia. Anyway, she asked if I could find a doctor for her. And I remembered you worked with a professor who specialized in blood. Am I right? Is it a blood specialist she needs for leukemia?”
Rebecca was confused. She had always understood that Sarah had no one left in Poland. After the Holocaust, Sarah and her sister were the only survivors of her family. “Did you say someone connected to your family?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s a long story.” Sarah stopped there, watched Rebecca.
“I thought people couldn’t leave Poland. The Communist government and all that.”
“She has special permission. Because of her daughter’s illness. I told her I would ask you about the doctor.”
Rebecca could see Sarah was not going to give her any more details. Not that it was her business. She was not about to pry into a past that was laden with heartache. Yet for as long as she had known Sarah, and as long as she had been married to her son, Sarah had never mentioned anyone left behind in Poland.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
chapter two
Sarah
September 1979
Sarah felt old as the world. The buoyancy of the airport crowd dismayed her. All those expectant faces fixed in one direction: the glass door through which would spill those they loved. There was no door on earth like that for her. No people like that for her. Certainly not Halina. Sarah had never thought she would see her again. Or at least she had hoped. So how had she ended up here, in the centre of the mob, the dizzying excitement, the impatience of the young men shifting foot to foot, the brown family sharing pizza out of Tupperware?
Through the plate glass partition she watched the passengers mill about, collecting luggage from the rotating carousel. Waiting for Halina was like staring down a tunnel into her former life. The tunnel had always lain in ambush, but so far she had managed to avoid falling in. Now Halina beckoned to her from a darkness that had been waiting there for forty years.
Halina had not asked to be met at the airport, had given no other information in her letter than the date of her arrival. It had taken only a phone call to the Polish airline for Sarah to learn the flight time. There was only one flight a day from Warsaw.
Halina would be sixty-four now. Odd the way she had stopped aging in Sarah’s mind. All she could remember was the way Halina had looked just before the war. Tall and shapely at twenty, she stood behind the sparkling glass counter of the jewellery shop in Kraków, her straw-coloured hair in a sleek pageboy. On the wall behind her hung an elaborate clock in a carved gilt frame darkened with age. The clock’s hands had stopped at two. A broken clock will not inspire confidence in our customers, Sarah’s father had said, coming into work one morning. Sixteen-year-old Sarah had gawked at Halina, awed by her beauty. The clock isn’t broken, Halina said to her. It’s waiting for us. And she began to laugh, her coral red lips baring white teeth.
The memory was so elusive after all these years, Sarah wasn’t sure it was real. She only knew that four years later the Germans had attacked Poland and she desperately needed to get out of the city. She turned to Halina, who had worked for Sarah’s parents for six year
s in the store. She was the only Gentile Sarah could trust. So she had saved herself, her husband. But at what cost? She came back to Kraków when the calamity was over. Only there had been one more calamity to befall her. At Halina’s door.
Six years of war had taken the freshness out of Halina’s complexion. Her large bones kept her from looking hungry, but the shop was gone. Everything was gone. Everyone. Her precious one. Halina stood at the door saying something she couldn’t comprehend. She heard the words, but they made no sense to her. They did not penetrate. She finally heard Halina say, You mustn’t blame me. Yusek stood beside her, patting Sarah’s head as though she were a dog punished by mistake. It wasn’t my fault, Halina had said. There was nothing I could do.
Sarah flinched. A small Indian girl bumped into her arm, and the airport materialized around her.
She moved her head from side to side to loosen the knotted muscles in her neck. Deep breath from the bottom of her diaphragm, the way she taught her students. Not that she was going to burst into song, but it felt good to gain a modicum of control over something. People kept moving in front of her, blocking her view.
What would Halina look like, at sixty-four? Sarah was pleased at how well she had aged. She dyed the grey in her hair, had gained only fifteen pounds after forty years. Still, would they recognize each other?
Passengers stepped out through the automatic doors at a slow but steady pace. Sarah spotted two blonde women heading for the glass doors, one pushing a luggage cart brimming with suitcases. A shock of recognition when she looked more closely at the taller one struggling with the cart. In a grey business suit: Halina. Her hair thinner, a whiter blonde, her waist thickened but her legs still shapely in pumps. She carried herself like a queen, head held high, her eyebrows arched critically. Her companion was much younger, though her hair was a startling white, lifted off her neck and pinned into a roll. Her pale face was unhindered by makeup. Sarah felt a sudden pang through the heart. It was the daughter. Yes, she was sick, but at least Halina had a daughter. She had had a daughter for all those years.
Sarah stepped around the crowd, keeping them in sight. Mother and daughter advancing in her direction. The arriving passengers were separated from the waiting crowd by ropes that framed a corridor of escape. Halina, looking haggard after the long flight from Poland, examined the faces of the crowd and suddenly settled on Sarah. Sarah had forgotten that she’d be unexpected. Had just assumed that Halina didn’t know anyone in Toronto and had taken it upon herself to pick them up.
The cautious look on Halina’s face kept Sarah in her spot. Thirty-five years separated them. That, and events neither could control. The hands of the clock waited as Sarah searched Halina’s face for the young woman she used to know. Halina hurriedly peered around, as if someone else might be waiting for her, then handed her daughter the large black leather handbag she was clutching. She headed straight for Sarah.
She placed her hands on Sarah’s arms and kissed her on both cheeks, stopping short of an embrace. “I didn’t want to trouble you,” she said in Polish, using the familiar “you” as if it weren’t a lifetime ago since they’d last met.
“It was very kind of you,” she continued. “I would’ve recognized you anywhere. You haven’t changed at all. You look so young.”
“You, also, have not changed. Still beautiful.” She replied in Polish, though the language felt strange in her mouth, like someone else’s tongue forming the words. She rarely spoke her native language, lately only in times of distress, like when David had died.
“This must be your daughter,” she said in Polish, looking at the younger woman who had approached and was leaning on the cart.
“This is Natalka,” said Halina.
The daughter came away from the cart and held out her hand. “How do you do?”
Accented English. Her long elegant neck, the high cheekbones, gave her the look of a gazelle.
“You speak English?” Sarah asked her.
“I studied a little.”
Natalka’s green eyes illuminated her pale face, the wisps of white hair that had escaped the pins to curl around her cheeks. The skin beneath her eyes was dark. She was striking in an olive green cape. When Halina had written about her daughter’s leukemia, Sarah had felt an abstract kind of sympathy. Too bad, so young to be that ill. Now with Natalka beside her, the horror of the thing became real. Halina was going through the same thing with Natalka that Sarah had experienced with David. But she didn’t feel sorry for the mother, only the daughter. Halina had had her for all those years. She should be grateful.
“Was it a long flight?” Sarah asked.
Natalka looked at her watch. “We left early this morning on the train to Warsaw. Then the plane left shortly after noon.” She twisted her arm around so that Sarah could look at her watch. “This is the hour for us.” It was fifteen minutes past midnight. Barely dinnertime in Toronto.
“You must be exhausted,” Sarah said.
She turned to Halina, with sympathy, only to find her attention elsewhere. She appeared to be communicating with someone at a distance. Very slightly shaking her head, giving a short jerk of her hand near her waist where it might go unnoticed. Sarah kept smiling at Natalka but searched the crowd for the target of Halina’s signals. Sarah was impatient with the intrigue: if Halina knew people here, why didn’t she say so?
“Was someone picking you up?” Sarah asked.
Halina flushed and abruptly began to move the luggage cart toward the exit. “No, no, we were going to take a taxi.”
Sarah took a last look at the people still waiting for passengers: no one appeared particularly interested in them.
“Where are you staying?” she asked them.
Halina took a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and handed it to Sarah. In a large, bold hand the name and address of an apartment hotel on Yonge Street in midtown Toronto.
It was five-thirty and rush hour when they hit the 401 highway.
“I can’t believe all the cars!” Halina cried. “Are we far from the hotel?”
“About half an hour,” Sarah said.
Halina was watching out the side mirror as they drove. Was she expecting someone to follow them? Sarah began to check her rearview mirror but didn’t know what she was looking for.
One time she checked in the mirror and found Natalka watching out the window with cool, intelligent eyes. She really was lovely with good skin, though pale, and a high forehead. Had her hair turned white during her illness? Natalka met her eyes in the mirror and Sarah looked away.
Halina had settled into her seat and seemed to doze off as they travelled east along the highway. Sarah drove her Camaro at barely the speed limit in the right lane, letting cars pass. She used the highway out of necessity, but she didn’t like it. The speed frightened her. Several cars stayed behind her in the slow lane. The one immediately behind was a blue compact. At one point it passed her, leaving a black sedan in its wake. She didn’t recognize the makes of cars the way David had. David could’ve named every car driving past her. He’d loved cars since he was a little boy. The Camaro had been his until he fell in love with the sporty red Jaguar. He told her the Camaro would make her younger, so she took it off his hands to please him. Her darling David.
It was nearly a year now since he’d been gone. She couldn’t bring herself to say “die,” to even think “die.” Children were not supposed to die before their parents. She didn’t know how she had survived it; she had simply gone on. Her heart had not stopped as she thought it would. Her lungs kept breathing, though every now and then she gasped for air. The room would become close and suddenly there was no air and she prayed for death. In that moment she would think, What would I regret? My sister, Malka, and her husband. Rebecca, who suffered when David died and still cannot bear my presence because my face reminds her of his. My music… Then she would begin to breathe again and the moment would pass.
The car radio flickered into her consciousness. “U.S. President Jimmy C
arter met Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at his Camp David retreat to discuss plans for peace in the Middle East. Mr. Sadat denied rumours that he has received death threats at home from factions opposed to his conciliatory position on Israel.”
Sarah switched the channel to some classical music. She exited the highway at Yonge Street and drove south about a mile to the hotel. It turned out to be an elegant four-storey building in an art deco style.
“Let’s see if they can help with the luggage,” Sarah said, leading the way to the entrance. Halina carried the large leather purse on her arm.
Behind a polished wooden desk sat a muscular middle-aged man with a moustache, his dark hair thin at the front. He surveyed them without expression.
“This is Mrs. Nytkowa and her daughter,” Sarah said, taking charge as the English speaker. “You have a room reserved for them.”
His brows furrowed as he glanced at some papers out of their sight. “Mrs.—?”
“Nytkowa.”
His thick lips pursed, he flipped some pages, shook his head. “You sure you have the right place?” Slight accent, east European.
Sarah was surprised when Halina began in accented English. “Sir, this is Natalka Czarnowa, famous concert pianist. Pan Baranowski bring us…”
“Pan Baranowski?” he exclaimed, sitting up very straight. “He don’t say nothing to me.”
“You call him!” Halina said.
The man picked up the phone wordlessly and dialed.
Sarah took another look at Natalka. A scrap of memory tried to surface. Natalka Czarnowa. Fifteen or twenty years back there’d been a pianist who had caused a stir with her idiosyncratic rendition of a waltz in the Chopin competition in Warsaw She developed a reputation in Poland, then performed in the Eastern bloc — Moscow, Kiev, Budapest. Every now and then Sarah had come across a notice about her but had never connected it to Halina’s daughter, since she didn’t know her married name.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 24
