For the first time, I felt angry with her. I got out of bed and began pulling on my clothing. “Is there a reason I need to be somewhere advanced? I write poems. I own a bookstore. I play charango. Do these require a state-of-the-art country? Scientific progress didn’t do us much good in Vienna.”
She was silent for a moment. “I know. It’s just, what is there for you here? In a run-down little city with no oxygen and no theater, no opera, all the culture you love. You’re so far from the world.”
Her words stunned me. “You don’t think Bolivia has a culture?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do. Ana, La Paz for me is not far from the world. It is the world.”
She looked chagrined. “I’m sorry. I guess you’ve been here so long . . .”
“Everything important that has happened to me since I was ten happened here. Isn’t it the same for you? Isn’t France yours now?”
She looked back out the window, as if she could see France from there.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But at least France has art, publishing, doctors, everything. Opportunities to do something with your life.”
“Am I not doing something with my life?” Furious now, I began picking up items of clothing from the floor and folding them into my suitcase.
“That’s not what I meant!” She sprang from the chair and came toward me. “I’m sorry, Orly. I guess I don’t understand.”
I stopped packing and looked up at her. Her dark eyes, so clouded, so near me.
“Ana. My daughter is Bolivian. My husband.” I say this as if maybe she hadn’t noticed.
She reached for my hand and I stepped away. Her eyes filled with tears. “I guess you’re Bolivian now too.”
“I guess I am.”
Anneliese bent to pick up a discarded nightgown from the floor, folded it, and tucked it in her suitcase, avoiding my eyes. There was nothing more we could say. Thousands of stories were left untold, but none that could resurrect us.
Not until we had finished packing our bags and taking a last look around the room did I notice that on the wall above our bed was a woven tapestry of birds. Beautiful black birds, woven into a sunset-striped background. I climbed onto the bed in my stockinged feet to examine it more closely. Thin threads bound the birds to the earth. They were not free to fly. Below the tapestry to the right a tiny card was pinned to the wall. Song of the Earth, it said. By Nayra. My heart lifted. A connection to Mahler after all.
* * *
• • •
BY THE TIME we arrived back in La Paz, Anneliese was sick again, limp against my side. I walked her to her train and watched as a man tied ropes around her suitcase and hauled it to the top of the car. She turned to me, curled herself into my side, closed her eyes against the people swarming around us. I inhaled the scent of her neck one last time. My Anneliese. Despite everything, for a moment I wasn’t sure I could let her go.
She was the first to loosen her arms. “Maybe in some other lifetime we could exist, Orly? Some other universe.” Tipping her face up to me, she looked almost hopeful.
I brushed a few stray hairs from her face, tucked them behind her tiny ears. “We have always existed, Anneliese.” The tears came then, finally, like rain. “We will always exist.”
She turned to climb the stairs to the train car and was gone. Gone, just like that. I stood there letting the tears roll down my lips and into my mouth, tasting the salt. Looking for her in the windows. She was in none of them. She was gone, severing that last thread between me and the land where I was born.
I watched as the man in the white shirt leapt down to unlock the metal gates to allow the train to leave the station. Stood there watching as the whistle blew and in a cloud of steam it lurched down the tracks. Stood there, my feet unwilling to take a step away, until a station cleaner chased me out with a broom.
Though I had been traveling all day, I needed space before I returned home. Time. Yet I could not bear the thought of a solitary night, another night away from Isidora. From Miguel. I needed to be moving toward them; I needed time.
I walked home.
* * *
• • •
I STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of our house, my suitcase still in my hand. It was quiet and dark. Were they both asleep? From the kitchen came the scent of rosemary and garlic. Sweet potatoes. Camote. Miguel had cooked. From my left came Izzy’s voice. Setting my suitcase down by the door, I stepped quietly across the living room to the open doors to the terrace. There they lay, side by side, their heads on sofa cushions, covered by an alpaca blanket María Teresa had made for Isidora.
“Will we ever go there, Papá? To Pluto? To Jupiter?”
“It’s not inconceivable.” This was Miguel’s answer to nearly everything. He could conceive of it all. He thought in potentialities. “We are already closer than almost anyone. Imagine, manicita, little peanut. Who is as close to the sky as we are?”
“Aren’t mountain climbers close?”
“Only the bravest and most foolish of mountain climbers. But most are below us.”
“Can I touch the sky?”
“We touch it all the time, Izzy. You are touching it now, with your face and your hands.”
“Can it touch us back?”
“Can’t you feel it?”
Leaning against the doorframe, I closed my eyes and I could feel it. The sky had infinite fingers. They were cool on my hair at night, they burned my eyes in the morning. The sky was powerful and not always kind. Yet I wanted to press myself against it, pushing upward, propelling myself into space.
How could I have contemplated leaving them, leaving this? Yet I had, if only for one wild moment. I had wanted to live two lives, love two—three—people. I wanted to be everywhere at once. I didn’t want to miss anything.
Miguel turned his head, saw me standing in the doorway. Even in the dark I could see his smile. “Mira, Izzy. Mira. Your mamá’s home.”
He lifted the blanket and I walked to them, slipped into the warmth between them. I kissed Izzy and pressed my face against Miguel’s. “Please don’t go to Jupiter,” I whispered. “Please don’t go to Pluto.”
“As long as you’re here, we won’t go anywhere,” he answered. “Not without you.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN THEY WERE BOTH ASLEEP, I tiptoed inside and walked in the dark to the corner shelf where I kept my charango and unzipped its case. Sitting on the sofa, my heartbeat loud in my ears, I plucked a few strings. But I didn’t want to play alone. I walked back to the terrace and lowered myself onto the tiles. They didn’t turn their heads. They were dreaming. I rested the fingers of my right hand on the strings and thought. How to begin?
Think of two people or objects or ideas or places that have nothing in common. Anneliese and Miguel. Austria and Bolivia. Quinoa and croissants. Sky and earth. Friedenglückhasenland and Krokodilland. Words and music. France and Tarija. Anneliese and me. Miguel and me. Isidora and me. The world and me.
Now, write the connection.
Acknowledgments
Entire countries of people contributed to the creation of this book, far too many to thank in these pages. But I will try. I want to acknowledge my debt to all those who allowed me to interview them or who penned memoirs about their experiences fleeing Austria and/or finding refuge in Bolivia, as well as to the historians, novelists, and Holocaust experts I consulted. I could have researched this book until the end of time, were it not for editorial deadlines. At times I have forced history to bend to my narrative—as far as I know, no one named Willi was deported with the children of Izieu, none of Klaus Barbie’s bodyguards was poisoned, and Erich Eisner never conducted Jakob. But I have done my best to accurately portray the context in which my characters lived.
INFINITA GRATITUDA:
John Gelernter, whose assistance and exper
iences guided my first shaky steps. My Bolivian readers, Raul Peñaranda, Ana María Yapu Flores, and Wayra Anahi Ramos Yapu. My Bolivianish friends Violaine Felten and Susan Frick, whose thoughtful notes and corrections on early drafts were invaluable. Guillermo Wiener S., for his story. Angela Estenssoro for her friendship. Tito Hoz de Vila for his warmth and support from our first days. María Teresa Torres, for friendship and sanity in uncertain times. Walter Mur Bardales, for his ever-smiling assistance. Karola Guzmán de Rojas, for spinal support. Vico Figueroa, for his patience with the erratic progress of my Spanish. Diana Syrse, who corrected my many musical mistakes and helped me to hear this novel.
DANKE VIELMALS ZU:
Dietrich Hausherr, Austrian honorary consul in Bolivia, for research assistance and friendship. Ian Wekwerth, pianist for the Max Raabe & Palast Orchester, for his expertise on the music of the era, and for Orly’s recital piece. Anna Goldenberg, for help with Austria research. Walter Juraschek for the stories and Stones of Remembrance. Gregory Weeks, for responding to each of my emails with five of his own, and for generosity with time and resources. Ruth Mateus-Berr, for her Austrian expertise, especially about Fasching. Michaela Raggam-Blesch for her emails.
GRAZIE INFINITE PER:
Barbara of Milk & Honey, my Genoa guide.
INFINITE GRATITUDE TO:
Everyone at Craigardan but particularly Michele Drozd, whose passion for the arts and commitment to creating a supportive and inspirational environment for writers and artists is exceptional. I was given not only time and space to write and piles of organic vegetables but an unforgettable residency with my daughter, who spent her days climbing mountains while I wrote. It’s rare to find a residency that acknowledges that some writers have families, don’t have child care, and that children can be part of the creative process. We love you. And your car.
Kate Moses, for the invitation. Megan Moody, for the farming. Zachary Gerhardt Clemans for the food. Alison, Lorene, Christian, and Ellen, for guineapigging with me.
Kimmel Harding Nelson for the time and space to finish the first complete draft of this novel. Also for the writerly and artistic companionship I found there. Thank you, Holly, Pat, Yaloo, Yukari, Julia, Junyi, Rachel, and Jennifer.
Leo Spitzer, for his brilliant books and his willingness to talk me through his early experiences as a child in Bolivia. Joy Haslam Calico for opera expertise. Wendy Reiss Rothfield for the interview and Maggie Worsdell for the book. Brigitte Sion, Elizabeth Anthony, PhD, of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bill Ecker of Harmonie Autographs and Music, Inc., Christine Schmidt of The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide in London, the JDC staff and New York archives, and the Leo Baeck Institute and Center for Jewish History in New York City for research assitance. Olivia Katrandjian, for inspirational conversation and books. My students, for new perspectives and for the constant reminders of craft. Seraphima Kennedy and NAWE for the community. Jill and Marc Mehl for treating us as family.
My beloved agent and friend Brettne Bloom, whose passion for this book almost before I got words on the page has been an unstoppable force. Brettne, I owe you everything.
Sarah Stein, for being among the first to believe in this book, and for her wise early edits.
Laura Tisdel and Amy Sun for patient, enlightened, and just plain genius editing. Also Jane Cavolina for making sure all the trees in my forest were in the right place and the entire team at Viking for their diligence and enthusiasm.
Last, nothing I do is possible without my family. Theadora, my firework of invention, your spirit infuses every page. I owe you infinite bunnies. Tim, my love, you provide the architecture of our existence, a never-ending stream of literary inspiration. To me, you are more home than man. (Without you, who would iron our underwear?)
About the Author
Jennifer Steil is the author of two previous books, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, a memoir of her experience as a journalist in Yemen, and The Ambassador's Wife, a novel about a hostage crisis that was also inspired by Steil's own experience. She currently lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with her husband and daughter.
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