by Anita Abriel
“Vera Frankel.” Vera shook his hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”
He gestured at the men in tuxedos and women wearing evening gowns. “I knew two beautiful Hungarian girls would get swept up by Caracas society. Is your friend in a corner drinking champagne and making all the married men wish they were single?”
“Edith is at a work event; she’s become a dress designer,” Vera said coolly. “And I’m a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson.”
“They must pay you well,” he whistled. “This is an expensive invitation. I’m only here because I work part-time at the museum.”
“I’m here with someone,” she admitted. “Ricardo Albee.”
“Ahh, the Albee family.” Julius said with a slight smirk.
“Do you know them?” Vera asked, curious about his mocking tone.
“Everyone in Caracas knows the Albees,” he replied. “Pedro Albee is in politics and his wife supports all those intellectual causes.”
“Alessandra Albee believes in education,” Vera returned. “That’s a good thing.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I’m being rude. I just didn’t expect to see you at something like this.”
“Because I’m a Jewish Hungarian refugee?” Vera wondered.
“Not at all. Your radiance outshines any woman’s in this room.” Julian made a small bow. “It’s just that most of these women are married to men as rich as pharaohs.”
“You’re right.” Vera noticed a woman wearing a sapphire-and-diamond tiara that belonged on a princess. “I’ve never seen so many fabulous jewels, as if every woman raided the Egyptian pyramids.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. Most of the jewels aren’t real.” He pointed to a dark-haired woman wearing a ruby choker. “That’s Esme Puentas. Her husband is head of transportation and he receives more money in bribes than we’ll ever see in our lives. He gave his wife the choker after he got the maid pregnant. Five carats of rubies from Brazil.”
“It’s stunning,” Vera agreed.
“Except the one around Esme’s neck is fake. The real one is locked in the family safe,” Julius corrected. “Jewel thieves in Caracas can bribe a policeman with a stack of bolivares. It’s too dangerous to wear expensive jewelry.”
“It seems a shame to lock up all those jewels,” Vera responded.
“On the contrary, it creates business for the makers of paste jewelry. The insurance companies are happy and the husbands can still apologize for their peccadilloes with a well-placed diamond or sapphire.” He grinned mischievously.
“Venezuelan society seems complicated,” Vera laughed.
“All societies are complicated, but at least in Caracas there is work for everyone.” Julius’s eyes darkened. “If I’d stayed in Europe, I’d be selling my paintings on street corners and washing windows to survive.”
“You’re right.” Vera thought of her mother, who was cleaning houses to eat. She spotted Ricardo in the crowd, his eyes scanning the room, presumably for her. She didn’t want Ricardo to be jealous of her talking to Julius. “I think I see Ricardo; it was nice to see you again.”
“Perhaps Ricardo will commission a portrait of you,” Julius said hopefully.
“I doubt that.” Vera turned and smiled. “But you never know.”
* * *
After she and Ricardo left the museum, they drove leisurely back to Lola’s house. The air was sweet like persimmons and Vera thought Julius was right. She was lucky to live in a country where there was work and plenty to eat.
“I had a wonderful time,” Vera said when Ricardo stopped the car.
“I knew when I saw her in 1939 that she’d drive like a dream.” Ricardo ran his hands over the steering wheel. “I’ve been waiting for eight years to feel her under my hands.”
“Perhaps I should be jealous,” Vera said playfully. She had drunk two glasses of champagne and felt light-headed and bold.
Ricardo turned to her. “You have nothing to be jealous of. In fact, there’s a present for you in the glove box.”
“For me?” she repeated.
“Open it, you’ll see.” He motioned to the glove box.
She clicked it open and inside was a black velvet case. “I don’t need more jewelry. I have my silver earrings.”
“It’s not just a piece of jewelry.” He took out the case and held it open. “It’s something I have never given a woman.”
Vera glanced down and saw a square-cut diamond on a gold band.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t have historical value, since my mother wears the family heirloom,” Ricardo said with a smile. “I had it made by a local jeweler, and he assured me it’s one of the finest diamonds in South America.”
He took Vera’s hand and brought it up to his chest.
“Vera Frankel, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you at the party at the Hotel Majestic. I have waited all my life to meet a woman with such intelligence and grace.” He looked into her eyes. “Nothing would make me happier than if you did me the honor of becoming my wife.”
Vera’s cheeks turned red. “You can’t ask me to marry you; we haven’t known each other long,”
“I fell in love the night we met. Do you remember? You said you weren’t interested in suitors; you could take care of yourself. I’m used to strong women, but there was also a vulnerability about you that you couldn’t hide.” He touched her chin. “I love you and I want you to be my wife.”
“It’s so sudden; I don’t know what to say,” Vera stammered.
“All you have to do is say yes.” Ricardo’s voice was steady.
If she said yes, all hope of being with Anton would disappear. But if she didn’t, the things she envisioned for her life—the intimate dinners and conversation, the hope of one day having children—would be lost like Cinderella’s glass slipper at the stroke of midnight.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
Ricardo put the velvet case in the glove compartment and handed Vera the car key.
“What are you doing?” she said in alarm.
He smiled at Vera and his expression was warm and understanding.
“I’m going to catch the streetcar home. In the morning, you can drive the car to my house and give me your answer.”
“I’ve never driven a car like this! What if I get in an accident?”
“I trust you with the car.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “And I trust you to make the right decision about our future.”
* * *
Vera sat at the small desk in her room and stared at the velvet case. She couldn’t leave it in the car; it might get stolen. But it didn’t feel right having it in her room, as if she had already given Ricardo her answer.
How could she decide the most important question of her life by morning? Then she remembered her dinner with Anton at the Quisisana. He asked her to marry him and she answered “yes” before her seafood ravioli got cold.
What would Edith do if she got married? And what about her parents? She still couldn’t ask Ricardo to pay for their passage; he might wonder why she agreed to marry him. And she didn’t want to start the marriage by owing Ricardo something. But he was also traditional, and if he didn’t allow her to keep working, she would never afford her parents’ passage.
It seemed simple with Anton; she loved him and couldn’t imagine life without him. With Ricardo, she weighed her feelings as carefully as the butcher weighed her mother’s meager purchases during the war.
She remembered pacing around her hotel room in Capri and wondering what life would be like without children. Ricardo would give her as many children as she pleased, along with nannies and family holidays. Ricardo’s parents would be doting grandparents. Her life would overflow with ease and happiness.
So what was holding her back? She pictured the first time she saw Anton at the embassy. He had answered the door in his uniform and her life had changed. But even saying no to Ricardo wouldn’t bring Anton back.
Her eye caught the case for
Edith’s pendant on the nightstand.
She couldn’t.
But the more she thought about it, the more it took root, like the flowers in the Austrian Alps in springtime.
What if she agreed to marry Ricardo and took his ring to the pawnshop Edith told her about and had a paste replica made in its place? She could pay for her parents’ fare and even get them a small flat. Eventually she would find a way to buy back the ring, and Ricardo would never know.
It was an impossible plan, but wasn’t that how Vera’s mother felt when she devised the plan to jump off the train to Auschwitz? How could she let her parents stay in Budapest when she could bring them to Venezuela, where there were jobs?
Julius had offered to paint her. She could pay Julius a small sum and give Ricardo a portrait of her as a wedding present. In return, Julius would find someone who would make a paste diamond ring fabulous enough to deceive her prospective husband.
Her mother had risked her life for her. Vera could gamble her own happiness. Under the circumstances, how could she do anything else?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
October 1947
In two hours, Vera was going to collect her parents from the RMS Mauretania. She wanted to write down the date, like the other important dates she had noted at the end of the war: April 30, when Hitler committed suicide; May 6, when Goering surrendered to the US Army; and May 8, whenWinston Churchill announced on the radio the fighting was over.
It hadn’t been over for Vera then; there were the long months on the Dunkels’ farm waiting to learn anything from the concentration camps. There was Captain Bingham bringing news of their mothers’ fates, and Edith’s insistence that Stefan was dead.
Even in Naples, with the delicacies Paolo procured on the black market, there were signs of war everywhere: shops run by widows because their husbands and sons never came home, babies with new last names because their fathers were dead and their young mothers would marry any man willing to raise their children.
But this afternoon, when the RMS Mauretania docked at the port in La Guaira, it would be like when Edith cut the last thread on a dress before delivering it to a client. Europe, with all its beauty and heartache, wasn’t Vera’s any longer; everyone she loved would be in Venezuela.
Ricardo offered to drive her to the port, and at first she refused. She was afraid she would break down in front of him. But he asked again, and she agreed. After all, they planned to marry the next week, and she needed to introduce her fiancé to her parents.
In the four months since Ricardo had proposed, he had been everything she could wish for in a fiancé. He took her to meet friends and relatives, but made sure they left before it became overwhelming. He gave her free rein in planning the wedding, only insisting that he was in charge of the honeymoon. When she laughed and said she wouldn’t know what to pack, he whispered she’d look beautiful in anything.
They agreed on a civil ceremony at the Albees’ villa followed by a dinner dance at the Majestic. Edith made two wedding dresses. The dress for the ceremony was patterned after the dress Princess Elizabeth wore to announce her engagement to Philip Mountbatten. Edith studied the photo of the royal couple on the balcony of Windsor Castle until she could count the pearls in Princess Elizabeth’s necklace from memory.
Edith entered the room and searched for her gloves.
“I have the best news!” she said to Vera. “Kitty wants four evening gowns for New Year’s Eve. When her friends find out, they’ll order dresses, too.”
Edith was picking up Robert at the airport at the same time that Ricardo was taking Vera to greet her parents. Robert had only been gone a month, and he had found a new supplier in Venezuela who was offering him and Edith the finest raw silk at half the usual price. Vera couldn’t help but worry that Edith was overextending herself. Bolts of fabric were already stacked so high in her workroom that she couldn’t see the ceiling.
“Are you sure you need more fabric?” Vera wondered. “You already owe more money than what has come in.”
Edith smiled. “Don’t worry. I write every amount down: the cost of the fabric and the overhead for the workroom and even the mousetraps I had to buy for the mice.”
“I don’t know how you keep it all straight. The only numbers I’ve been working on are the guest list for the dinner dance,” Vera sighed. “The Albees know everyone in Caracas.”
“I still can’t believe you’re getting married. Look at that ring.” Edith pointed at the square-cut diamond. “Don’t you remember when we made rings out of daisy chains at the house in the country?”
Vera followed Edith’s gaze and winced. She had decided not to tell Edith her plan, so Edith wouldn’t have to lie to Ricardo. The pawnbroker gave her enough money for her parents’ passage, and rent for a small bungalow. Julius found someone who would make the paste ring and Vera told Ricardo that an organization that helped Jewish refugees paid for her parents’ fare.
“You are happy, aren’t you?” Edith noticed Vera’s expression.
“Of course I’m happy.” Vera pulled her mind back to what Edith was saying.
“You don’t have to get married so soon,” Edith warned, fiddling with her gloves.
“We’ve been planning it for almost four months!” Vera smiled. “I’m going to be the most elegant bride since Carole Lombard married Clark Gable.”
“I heard something today…” Edith said hesitantly.
“Heard what?” Vera asked.
“Just gossip, probably, but I can’t keep it from you.” Edith shrugged. “I had a dress fitting for a woman whose niece dated Ricardo a few years ago. They were practically engaged.”
“Engaged?” Vera said sharply. Ricardo never mentioned he had been engaged. But then again, neither had she.
“Not officially,” Edith corrected. “The niece was nineteen and studied at the university. Ricardo became jealous of one of her professors, and she broke it off.”
“What do you mean jealous?” Vera asked uneasily.
“Ricardo began appearing at the university without warning,” Edith continued. “Once he burst into the professor’s office because he thought they were together. The professor was giving dictation to his fifty-year-old secretary.”
“Maybe she gave him reason to be jealous,” Vera suggested. “I’ve spent hours alone with Julius, and Ricardo hasn’t said a thing. He can’t wait to see the portrait.”
“Julius has a nose like a hawk and he’s thin as a scarecrow,” Edith retorted.
“Ricardo is very understanding.” Vera picked up a hairbrush. “He doesn’t even mind if I keep working for a year after the wedding.”
“A year is nothing!” Edith exclaimed.
Vera remembered the conversation when Ricardo suggested Vera would be happier furnishing their new house and preparing for a baby. “I don’t mind putting my professional aspirations aside for a while. Ricardo and I want to start a family.”
“You’re only twenty,” Edith reminded her. “You’re too young to spend your days knitting baby booties and holding tea parties for Venezuelan matrons.”
“There’s plenty of time to discuss it; we’re not married yet.” Vera hugged Edith and laughed. “I’m going to have the life I dreamed of, with a husband and a good job and a family.”
“This isn’t the life we dreamed of,” Edith said, turning away. “That was going to be in Budapest with apartments on the same floor and a shared house in the country. Stefan and your husband would have chess tournaments, and on Saturday nights they’d take us dancing.”
Vera touched Edith’s shoulder. “Stefan would be so proud of you.”
“I don’t need anyone to be proud of me.” Edith walked to the door. “All I need is every woman in Caracas who can afford Dior’s New Look to buy an Edith Ban design instead.”
* * *
Vera stood at the port in La Guaira and waited for the RMS Mauretania to dock. The ship’s decks were filled with men and women wearing coats and hats. Little kids crammed their
faces between the railing and Vera heard a band playing.
“I see a couple waving at you.” Ricardo pointed at the ship.
“Where?” Vera asked. Suddenly the crowd on the dock lurched forward and Vera felt as if she was in the cattle car to Auschwitz. She remembered the women clutching their children, as if at any moment the guards might take them away.
“Are you all right?” Ricardo asked. “You look like you might faint.”
“I’m fine; the sun is so bright.” She waved at the sky and then gasped. She saw them! Her father was almost bald and his arms were thin as matchsticks. But her mother looked miraculously the same. A navy dress peeked out from her coat and her hair was curled around her shoulders.
“It’s them!” Vera said excitedly. She grabbed Ricardo’s hand and pulled him toward the gangplank.
“They haven’t started disembarking!” He laughed at her enthusiasm. “We might stand here for hours.”
“My mother will be so anxious and I haven’t seen my father since I was fourteen. What if he doesn’t recognize me?” Vera moved to the side. “I want them to see me when they arrive.”
The first-class passengers appeared, and Vera was reminded how elegant Europeans could be. The women wore crepe dresses and she could smell their perfume when they walked by. The men wore dark-colored suits and carried leather briefcases.
Her mother’s face bobbed behind a man, and Vera stepped forward. For a moment Alice disappeared, and then her arms were around Vera.
“Vera, kedves, dragam, Vera, Vera, darling, darling Vera,” Alice said in Hungarian. “Itt vagyunk, itt vagyunk. We are here, we are here.”
Vera looked up at her mother. Alice’s eyes were bright and tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Mindannyian egyutt. We are all together,” Vera said in English and Hungarian, hugging her tightly.
Her father stood beside her mother and he was so thin she almost cried out. But he put his arms around her and held her gently.
She turned to Ricardo and her voice was thick with emotion. “This is Ricardo. These are my parents, Alice and Lawrence Frankel.”
