Days of Winter

by Cynthia Freeman

  She went to her desk, propped the painting up against the desk lamp and called Camail to thank him for giving, in a way, a part of her child back to her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NOT A DAY WENT by that Leon didn’t see his brother. With the passing of the years, Rubin seemed to be mostly content. Watching his daughter grow up was the one great joy in his life. If time had any meaning at all, it was on her birthdays. Once a year he could forget himself, seeing her eyes gleam in the candles’ light just before she blew them out. …How many had there been? Eleven? Twelve? Yes, twelve. Childhood’s end. …

  Rubin sat in the park on his small canvas chair, his painting before him on an easel, chatting with Leon. From time to time, as he and Leon talked, he glanced at Jeanette. She caught his eye and smiled, then returned to her letter writing.

  Dear Tante Solange:

  Tomorrow I’ll be thirteen. Papa and I are going to Scarborough. Aunt Deborah and Uncle Leon have given their permission. It will be my birthday gift. I feel quite grown up today. Thank you so much for the presents, especially the pearls. …

  As always, Solange called Magda the morning the letter came. Magda stopped in during the afternoon to read it. She sat in Solange’s bedroom. Solange had spent the last few days in bed, her arthritis so painful she could barely walk.

  When she finished reading, Magda put the letter back into its envelope. She pressed it to her bosom, as though by doing so she was holding Jeanette close. She looked up, tears in her eyes. “Where have the years gone, Solange? Imagine, our little doll is already thirteen. …She loves the pearls … if only she knew they came from me. …But at least she has something of mine. …”

  Magda took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Dearest Solange, I know how proud you are … but please, let me send you on a holiday. …”

  “Thank you, Magda. And it isn’t pride. Believe me, I’d accept your generous offer without protest, but I’m afraid this awful arthritis … just makes things too difficult.”

  Once again Magda felt the tears, remembering, in spite of her determination not to dwell in the past, the exquisite Solange she’d met at Emile Jonet’s so long ago … the startling red hair … the black toque with egrets … how gracious, how kind she’d been. And now to see the deep lines etched on that lovely face, the gnarled hands, the bent back. …

  “All right, dearest friend, but this I do insist on. …You are coming to live with me. I insist—”

  “That, I can’t do, Magda. This is home to me—”

  “But you can’t go on living as you are, alone … with no help. …You must let me take care of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Magda. …”

  Magda suspected, but did not say, that there were other compelling reasons for her refusal … her feelings about Magda and Alexis living as they did was perhaps one, but far more important she was sure, was that to do so would, for her, be an act of disloyalty to Rubin. …

  The two women looked at each other. Close friends, lifelong antagonists …

  Rubin continued to see his child grow closer and closer to him. Her attachment to him was almost motherly, their roles seemingly reversed. He was the child, she the parent. Jeanette was becoming a young woman, nearly sixteen now.

  She did seem to be happy, which greatly pleased Rubin. If anyone had the right to be morose and disheartened it was Jeanette, but it was not so and he thanked God for that.

  Today, though, his heart would have broken had he seen her as Leon sat trying to comfort her in her grief. She had received a letter this morning from Magda though sent anonymously. It ended simply with … “I have been a friend of your Tante Solange.” For Magda it meant the loss of her last contact with her child. For Jeanette it was like the death of her second mother.

  Solange, with characteristic grace, had died quietly, without fuss, in her sleep.

  On Jeanette’s eighteenth birthday Deborah arranged a small party for just the four of them. When Rubin saw his child sitting across from him at the table, he knew that in spite of his loneliness, in spite of the depressions he suffered, the decision to let her live with Leon and Deborah had surely been the right one. His daughter was cultured … educated … and so accomplished on the piano that she could have become a concert pianist. However, that wasn’t her inclination. She had been given the advantages the daughter of a Hack should have been born to. God had, finally, been merciful and kind. …

  Jeanette was pleased to see her father so happy. Since Tante Solange had died, she needed him even more. She tried to spare him her longings … her disappointments. …Life was not nearly as serene as she pretended. She still couldn’t understand why her mother had left her, or her father. Secretly she prayed for only one thing—to graduate from school and take care of her father. She lived for that time. She wanted to make a home for the two of them. …She was well prepared to be a teacher in both French and music. She would make up to her father for all that life had denied him. She loved Deborah and Leon. They could never be her parents, no matter how hard they tried, but she would never let them know her feelings. As Jeanette looked back, she realized that she’d been deprived of the one thing most children take for granted. The house she lived in was not really her home. …Home meant a mother and father. Home also meant being accepted, and the other Hacks had never accepted her. If she happened to be home when the other Hacks came to call, she was completely ignored. …

  She had become aware of the stigma in her life when she was eleven. Her cousin Julien, who usually avoided her, had interrupted her piano practice.

  “I suppose you’re going to be an actress like your mother,” he had said. Julien’s smirking, arrogant face was filled with hatred; his voice sounded accusing … sinister. Jeanette couldn’t understand why. Still, she felt ashamed. …But ashamed of what?

  “There’s nothing wrong with being an actress,” she said.

  Julien smiled, a mean glint in his eye. “I’m sorry, I should have said ‘adulteress.’ That’s what your mother was, after all.”

  Jeanette had slapped him. Then she left him standing there without shedding a tear, holding her head very high. Julien had called after her, “Like mother, like daughter.” But not until she reached her room did she allow herself to break down and cry. And what was foremost in her mind was … “Poor Papa. She’d take care of him … she’d make up for all the hurt. …”

  She was, after all, a grown woman now. In July she’d be nineteen, and soon she’d be able to take Papa away. She had already decided where they would go. She only hoped she would be in time, for recently he seemed to be worse. Much worse.

  Rubin sat at the window, watching the torrential rain. For days he had sat in the same chair, in the same place, in the attic which had become his refuge, his exile, his prison. …

  Suddenly he turned away from the window. Overpoweringly, he felt the futility of his existence … the failure of his life. He looked at his canvas in progress. …After all these years, any woman he painted still became Magda. The bodies … the forms … were all different, but what did it matter? The face was always Magda’s.

  Why was he fooling himself? He couldn’t paint. …The occasional pieces he sold were bought out of charity. Nobody really wanted his work … except Jeanette. His daughter. Who would destroy her life to take care of him, to take the place of her mother. …That, by God, he would not allow. Not that too, Magda. …

  He searched out a piece of paper, took up a pencil, sat down at the wooden table, and wrote:

  My dearest daughter,

  Without you my life would already have ended … I have nothing to give you except a trade … my unfortunate life for the promise of yours. I can’t allow you to sacrifice your youth and your beauty on a man who is already dead. I cannot let you do this. I want you to get away from London. You’ve suffered enough for all of us. You can’t have a decent life here. Please go away before we all destroy you. Please believe in my love … it is everlasting. …

  Papa
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br />   Leon found him the next day, hanging by a cord. For a long, stricken moment, Leon could not move. Then, without thought, he got a chair and cut the cord, and Rubin’s body fell to the floor. He called out to the landlord, who, when he saw Rubin, turned ashen white. “Oh, bloody hell, what a sight,” and he fled from the room. Bending over his brother’s body, so cold, so thin, Leon wept. …

  The most difficult part was telling Jeanette. She kept repeating over and over again, “Why …? Why …? I would have given him the love he needed. He lived his life without a moment’s peace … oh, why …?”

  Leon and Deborah couldn’t console her. There were no words. When Phillip came by to pay his respects, Jeanette refused to see him. In fact, she told Leon that Phillip was not to attend the funeral. She knew the other Hacks wouldn’t even want to be there.

  The next day Rubin was put to rest in the family tomb, with just the three of them standing by, watching the coffin reach its final resting place.

  At long last Papa was home. Sleep well, Papa, near your mother and father, who loved you as I did. Sleep well.

  It was not until that evening that Leon could bring himself to show Jeanette her father’s letter, and he turned away so not to intrude on the awful pain and shock in her eyes as she read, and reread, the words that had earlier torn out his heart as well.

  Finally, tears on her cheeks, shaking her head to deny the reality of what she’d just read, she asked her uncle to at long last tell her about her mother.

  “Darling, why pain yourself needlessly … especially now. …”

  “No, this is the time. All I know is what I’ve gathered for myself, bits and pieces … partial truths. I think I have a right to know what happened.”

  Leon looked at this lovely girl who already wore such deep scars. He hesitated.

  “Uncle Leon, I must know. I don’t want to be protected any longer.”

  He started from the beginning, leaving nothing out that he was aware of. When he had finished, Jeanette stood up, went to the window and looked out. “Uncle Leon,” she said, “do you think traits are inherited?”

  “No,” he answered quickly. “Have no fear on that score. You’re in no way like your mother—”

  “I wonder. …You know what I want now more than anything else in the world? I want to be loved … at least to be accepted … for what I am or am not—not for what my mother may have done. When I was very young, I never understood why all my relatives didn’t like me. Well, I hope the other Hacks rest easy. I’ll no longer be an embarrassment to them. I’m leaving London. That’s what my father wanted, what he gave his life for … so I could find a place where I belong. …”

  “Jeanette, dearest, please listen to me. Try to understand. Your father’s mind was confused, I truly don’t believe he realized what he was saying—”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle, but I believe he did. I ask you, what chance do I have here? Who would marry me? I love you and Aunt Deborah, you’ve both sacrificed enough because of me”—she shook her head energetically to cut off his protest—“I’ve been responsible for the breach in the family. It’s been years since you have accepted an invitation. When Elise married you didn’t even go to the wedding because of me.”

  “That’s not true. Aunt Deborah was not up to it—”

  “Thank you, but that’s not all of it. I remember how your brother Maurice said I was responsible for your offending him by not accepting the invitation—”

  “How in the world do you know that?”

  “How? Julien was very kind and kept me posted on all important details. Perhaps I am like my mother … but I truly despise them beyond words. I thank you for your love and goodness to me, but I will no longer live here. I want to go to Paris.”

  “But why Paris?”

  “Because in a way I think I am a child of two worlds. …I don’t ever want to see my mother, not as long as I live. I’m sorry, but I just can’t forgive her for what she did, even though I think I understand some of it. It may be that she lives there, she did once before … but I will make no attempt to find her. Still, something draws me there. Perhaps because of the brief happiness my father had there before the war. I remember times when we were together, he would look back to the Paris of his youth with real fondness. And Tante Solange lived there. …I’ve kept all her letters and the postcards she sent me. She kept her promises.”

  Leon sat quietly. Finally he answered. “Well, so be it. If that is what you really wish, I will provide for—”

  “I’m most grateful, Uncle, but I do have a bit of my father in me. I just cannot accept your generous offer. You supported me and my father all these years, and now it is time I began for myself. After all, I’m qualified to teach. I have credentials in music, and there must be a demand for English tutoring in Paris.”

  “Jeanette, please, my dearest, you are very hurt and angry, but you are like our child. Be sensible—”

  “I’m trying to be, Uncle … and you are right. I am angry and hurt, but I will have to solve that myself.”

  Finally he saw there was no point in arguing further. “At least, let me give you enough money to see you settled.”

  “Only on one condition, that it be a loan.”

  He shrugged, nodded. “I have a barrister friend in Paris. Charles Dryfus. I’ll write to him that you’re coming. At least I’ll know that someone is looking after you.”

  Jeanette went to him and put her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Uncle, I know I sound stubborn and ungrateful, but you know how much I love you and Aunt Deborah. I don’t know how I can really thank you … for being my comfort, the way you were my father’s. …”

  “We loved you both very much. …When will you go?”

  “I would like to stay until after the first of the year, February, March perhaps. I need the time to be close to my father and visit his grave. …You know I remember once my father looking out through the window here, and talking as though he were seeing Paris. He said he loved Paris, especially in the spring. The last time he’d been there, he told me, was in April of 1914. He was so … well, poetic and carried away that I remember crying. …I want to be there, in Paris, by April.”

  Leon looked at his niece, and then held her close. Together they shed tears for the past. Pray God, he thought, she would have a kinder future. …

  Jeanette

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE PENSION JARDIN DE Neuilly had been a family dwelling in one of the best parts of Paris in the 1800s. It was a large mansion with a formal salon, a dining room, a small, charming sitting room, and a large kitchen on the first floor. The imposing circular staircase led to the second floor where there was a master suite, replete with a bedroom, a bathroom and a dressing room. For many years, this suite had been occupied by an elderly couple. In addition, there were seven other bedrooms and a central bathroom. The old servants’ quarters on the third floor had been converted into guest rooms. Jeanette was fortunate; hers was the only room with a private bath. Other guests had to trudge to the toilet down the hall in the middle of the night, if need be. A shower had been installed in one of the hall closets by the present owners.

  Jeanette had loved the spacious, light room the moment she saw it. The walls were soft pink-mauve, and the double brass bed was covered with a blue velvet spread. But, best of all, the French windows looked down on a garden below. The first thing Jeanette did after unpacking was write a letter to her aunt and uncle. It was a cheerful letter, but a short one. Then she took out the journal she’d been keeping since her father’s death. She began to write:

  February 3rd … Dearest Papa,

  I arrived in Paris this afternoon and stood in front of the station San La Gare for a long time, with so many thoughts, and most of them were of you. It was as though you were beside me. …I couldn’t see your Paris, or remember its first embrace, because tears blurred my vision. Then I took a taxi to Monsieur Dryfus’ office. They greeted me warmly, and surely not as a stranger. You would have been proud. Monsi
eur Dryfus is a charming man with three sons … two are barristers and one is in banking. It was he who found my lodgings.

  A strange thought occurred to me, Papa, as I waited to be seen. You were once a barrister … but, imagine, I’ve never even seen the inside of the Hack office where you used to work. Isn’t it strange what we think of sometimes. …Monsieur Dryfus offered me little encouragement so far as teaching piano is concerned. Paris, he says, is full of starving musicians. He was more encouraging about tutoring English. Somehow, dearest Papa, the bravado I started out with seems to be crumbling a little … but big adjustments aren’t easy to make, are they? Who understood that better than you? Monsieur Dryfus was so kind, I could almost imagine he was you. On his desk was a portrait of his children as small boys. …I often feel that I never had a childhood … my mother came to my mind. …Why did she discard us so easily …?

  I don’t need to pretend with you, Papa. I miss you terribly. I’m unsure of myself, but with your inspiration to guide me I will conquer myself. And now I say good night … and sleep well.

  Jeanette closed the journal slowly, put it back into the desk drawer, and sat for a moment.

  Taking her purse and keys, she went downstairs to post the letter to Leon and Deborah. Two blocks away were shops and vending stalls. She went to the tobacconist’s to buy stamps, attached one to the letter, kissed it and posted it. Then she bought a small slice of cheese, a loaf of French bread, a can of sardines and a crocheted shopping bag into which she put two of her purchases. In the French style, she carried the thin loaf of bread under her arm. Tonight she wouldn’t have dinner with the other guests; she was afraid all eyes would be on her. Tonight she would eat at a table for one.