by Lily Tuck
One day a week, Irène goes to another studio. She has taken up oil painting. Her paintings are, for the most part, abstract, messy splashes of colors—green, orange, yellow, colors Irène admits she does not like—and are thickly layered, too bright and rushed. Edgar, the owner and master of the painting studio, makes an occasional remark about how Irène is expressing her unconscious or subconscious feelings—he does not differentiate between the two—and he encourages Irène.
“You should come to the studio more often,” Edgar tells her. “Once a week is not enough. You have talent. Trust me. I know. You have to work harder. Make it count. Make it your life.”
But Irène does not want to make painting her life. Her life, she thinks, is filled up enough with her new country, a new husband, and, of course, Liliane.
If, from time to time, Irène brings one of her paintings home from the studio to the apartment, the painting does not fit in with the chintzes and English antiques and she ends up putting the painting away in a closet.
Irène’s new American husband, Gaby, is not as encouraging as Edgar, the owner of the studio. He does not much like Irène’s paintings or, more accurately, he does not understand them. He is accustomed to representational artwork—ancestral portraits, familiar landscapes, still lifes. As a result, he does not know what to say about Irène’s paintings, except to say that he is glad that they keep her occupied.
Gaby has never been married before. Gaby has never met anyone like Irène before. To him, she is both glamorous and mysterious. Exotic, he might say. A German-French divorcée, with a past and with an eight-year-old child. Gaby is conservative, as is his family. Good Episcopalian Republicans from New England who can trace their ancestors back to the Pilgrim Fathers and who make no bones about being disapproving. About being bigoted. Among themselves they whisper: A German? A woman once married to a Jew? And what about the child with the unpronounceable name? Nothing good can come of it.
Gaby does not know what to make of the child either. For one thing, she speaks Spanish and French and has not yet learned English. She is a bit overweight in a pale, unhealthy, or, more likely, a badly nourished sort of way; she has straight brown hair and does not look like her mother.
Lillian—he calls her.
Liliane looks a little like Barbara, the middle sister, a brunette. Barbara is a doctor. A dermatologist. Married briefly and divorced, Barbara is kind and even-tempered. Like Irène, she will come and live in America. Only she will come to America several years later, in the mid-fifties, under different circumstances—with little money and no marriage prospects—and Gaby has to sponsor her and sign an affidavit that Barbara will not become a public charge. Once in New York, Barbara rents a small apartment in Queens. Before she can practice medicine again, she has to go back to school and take refresher courses—the United States does not recognize her German medical degree because she obtained it in 1945, when the Germans were thought to have rushed medical students through school in order to have enough doctors for the war effort. Poor Barbara, at first, she has a rough time of it: at her age—she is nearly forty—she has to work as an intern in a hospital, she does not have much money, and she has to relearn everything in English. The good news is that everyone, right away, likes Barbara. Everyone except, perhaps, Irène.
Irène does not dislike her sister but her sister irritates her. Liliane hears them arguing in the library.
“How can you go out with him?” Irène says. “He’s a Nazi.”
“How can you say he’s a Nazi when he’s Jewish?”
“He’s German,” Irène says. “I don’t want German friends. And he’s a dwarf.”
“You’re such a snob, Rehlein,” Barbara says, laughing. “He’s not a dwarf, he’s just short.”
“And I wish you would wear something a little nicer when you come here for dinner,” Irène says to change the subject. “What will Gaby think?”
“What’s wrong with my skirt? What’s wrong with my sweater?” Barbara asks. “They’re perfectly fine. And I don’t think Gaby will care.”
“Well, I care how you look,” Irène says. “And what happened to all the clothes I gave you?”
“I have them,” Barbara says.
“Well, why don’t you wear them,” Irène says sharply.
Irène and Barbara rarely speak German together. They rarely reminisce about how as children they lived in a large, sunny apartment in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin and how, from the balcony of the apartment, they could look down on the manicured lawn and ornate flower beds of Karolinger Platz. It would be pointless. Or too painful. Barbara was there when, in 1942, the apartment building on Karolinger Platz was bombed in an Allied air raid. She watched everything burn to the ground. Nothing was left of her family’s belongings—not a scrap of cloth, not a dish, not a single photograph.
Soon after, Barbara and her parents, Waldemar and Louise, left Berlin. They went to live in Austria, where they owned a summer chalet.
Liliane remembers the chalet; she and her mother went to visit Louise in Innsbruck immediately after the war. By then, Louise was living alone. Waldemar, a heavy smoker—so addicted that during the war, when cigarettes were scarce, he picked butts off the street—had died a few years earlier of lung cancer. Louise, too, was nearly dead, from malnourishment—she weighed eighty pounds. The chalet was requisitioned during the war and each room was occupied by a family of refugees. As the owner, Louise was allowed to choose a single room and, wisely, she chose the kitchen. On account of the stove, it was the warmest.
Up a steep hill banked with flowering bushes, the wooden chalet with its balconies and peaked roof looked like a storybook chalet. Liliane half expected to find Heidi and her grandfather, surrounded by friendly goats, inhabiting it. The outside of the chalet was pretty and bucolic but the inside was quite different. The refugee families had recently left and left a mess—broken furniture, mattresses with the stuffing coming out, torn curtains, broken dishes, and bottles littered the floor. Louise was making preparations to leave as well, and go to Nice. Frail, worn out, depressed, she wanted to live in the sun.
What Liliane also remembers about Innsbruck is the amputees. Nearly all the men in the city were missing an arm, a leg, or both legs. They hobbled on crutches or walked leaning on canes, their empty sleeves or pant legs, neatly pinned up, useless reminders. A main transport hub, where four important rail lines converged, Innsbruck was also a railroad supply center for Italy and a strategic target in 1943. For two years, the city was heavily bombed. By the time the war ended, the railroad yards and 60 percent of the buildings in Innsbruck—the seventeenth-century Servitenkloster monastery; the Bartholomäiskapelle, one of the oldest buildings in Innsbruck; the Landhaus, or federal state parliament, built in 1724; the city hall; St. James’s Cathedral; and the Jesuit Church (fortunately, the crypt that houses the tomb of Archduke Leopold V of Austria and his wife, Claudia of Medici, the founders of the church, survived the bombing)—were either destroyed or badly damaged.
During the war, Barbara studies for her medical degree in Innsbruck. More than once, she watches as the Allied planes, their metal bodies glistening in the sun, drop their load of bombs on the city; she can see how the bombs fall and how, when they hit the ground, they explode and, like leaves in the wind, everything blows up in the air. The first time, the Allies were aiming for the bridges across the Inn River; instead they hit the houses along the riverbanks. As yet, there were no air raid shelters in Innsbruck and 265 people were either injured or killed. Barbara saw many of them—both those who were brought to the hospital in time as well as those who were not.
The first Allied troops to arrive in Innsbruck after the war are the Americans. How Barbara makes friends with them Liliane guesses—
Late one night, a jeep drives up and brakes abruptly at the emergency entrance of the Innsbruck hospital. Two soldiers jump out, carrying a third soldier who is
unconscious and bleeding.
The soldiers have been drinking. On their way back to the barracks, one of them fell, impaling himself on the spike of a metal railing. Once inside the hospital, a soldier shouts, “Emergency! We need a doctor, right now!”
A dark-haired young woman, dressed in a white coat, who has been asleep at her station—her head resting on the desk—quickly rouses herself.
“Yes, I’m a doctor,” she tells them in a heavily accented English.
The American soldiers bring Barbara food—chocolate, coffee, butter, dried eggs, tinned ham—which she shares with poor, undernourished Louise. They bring her cigarettes and whiskey, too, which Barbara does not share with her mother. Instead, for the first time since before the war, she has fun, she relaxes. She drinks, smokes, and dances with the American soldiers; she even falls in love with one or two of them. Why not? She has not had sex in a long time. Before they leave, the American soldiers promise not to forget her. They promise to help her.
At long last, Barbara receives her medical degree in America and she is allowed to practice dermatology in the state of Rhode Island. She rents a modest apartment in Newport—a bedroom, living room, and kitchenette (Barbara rarely cooks and, more often than not, she eats her dinner standing up, straight out of the can)—with an adjoining office on the ground floor of a private house on Touro Street. Touro Street is a few blocks from the harbor and, after work, in the summer, Barbara likes to walk down among the tourists and look at the boats, then go and sit in a café and order a glass of chardonnay. Always friendly and curious, she often starts up a conversation with a stranger at the next table.
“Where are you from?” the stranger may ask. “I mean because of your accent.”
“Germany.”
“My brother was stationed in Germany right after the war,” the stranger volunteers. “He was with the Twelfth Armored Division and I still remember some of the pictures he took while he was over there. There was one of a whole bunch of German prisoners being marched down the street, their hands up in the air, a lot of them are smiling and laughing as if relieved—relieved the war is over and relieved to be alive, I suppose. I am trying to remember the name of the city he was in—it was on the Danube.”
“Dillingen,” Barbara says.
“Yes, that’s it! Dillingen! How did you know?”
“After the war, I worked there as a doctor, in Luitpold, a displaced persons camp.”
“You’re a doctor? So am I,” the stranger says.
“Small world,” the stranger adds.
On summer weekends, in Newport, Barbara goes to the beach and swims. She is a strong swimmer and not afraid to swim far out. Depending on the weather, she swims long after Labor Day and after the tourists have gone home, and she swims alone. Once, from Bailey’s Beach, Barbara was nearly swept out to sea by a riptide. When she mentioned it, she made light of it.
“The important thing is not to panic and to keep swimming parallel to the shore until you get free of the current.”
“You could have drowned,” Liliane says.
Barbara works hard at her medical practice and, over the years, acquires a lot of patients—some of whom are rich and have well-known names—and an excellent reputation. One day her secretary gets a call from the White House. The person on the phone from the White House wants to know whether Barbara will fly down to Washington to take a look at the blemishes on the First Lady’s face. Of course Barbara will. The blemishes turn out not to be serious—the First Lady is not using a proper cleanser. Barbara has been told to be discreet about her visit. She is—for the most part—but she cannot resist telling her sister Irène.
“What did you charge Jackie?” Irène wants to know.
“What I always charge,” Barbara answers. “Twenty-five dollars.”
Liliane loves this story. An American success story.
Liliane is especially fond of Aunt Barbara. Although she is no fonder of Barbara than she is of her own mother, she is fond of her in a different way. Partly because Barbara is a doctor, which grants her special knowledge, but mostly because Barbara is interested in what Liliane has to say or what she thinks.
For instance, Liliane tells Barbara what she, as yet, has not told anyone: “I think I want to become a writer.”
Or, what is also a great deal on Liliane’s mind at the time: “If I sleep with someone for the first time, how can I make sure not to get pregnant?”
Like Uli and Irène, Barbara married very young—at nineteen. She married a man who was twelve years older and who shared none of her interests. Soon after, like Uli and Irène, Barbara got divorced, but unlike Uli and Irène, she does not remarry.
“Did you have to get married?” Liliane asks her.
“No.”
“Were you in love then?”
“No. Not really.”
“Then why?” Liliane insists.
“I wanted to leave. Leave home.”
“Why?” Liliane asks again.
But it is one of the things Barbara does not want to talk about.
“The same reason your mother left home,” Barbara answers.
“Ask her. Ask Rehlein,” she also says.
III
In July 1940, Irène, Liliane, and Jeanne, the young nanny from Brittany, set sail from Lisbon to New York on board the SS Exeter. The SS Exeter, the SS Excalibur, the SS Excambion, and the SS Exochorda are nearly identical ocean liners known as the “Four Aces.” Built in the early 1930s by American Export Lines, the ships were considered the ultimate in comfort as they plied their way back and forth across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Each had superbly furnished staterooms with private bathrooms, elegant lounges with painted woodwork, a Smoke Room Bar upholstered in green leather, and dining rooms set with the finest crystal and bone china. But when the war breaks out in Europe, these luxurious cruises come to an abrupt halt and, instead, the SS Exeter and the SS Excalibur make several risky round-trip voyages—by 1940, the Atlantic is heavily mined—between Portugal and the United States, transporting thousands of refugees to safety. Once the United States enters the war, the “Four Aces” are appropriated by the U.S. Navy and converted into troopships. The SS Excalibur is renamed the USS Joseph Hewes and is torpedoed by a German submarine in 1942; in the same year, the SS Exeter, renamed the USS Edward Rutledge, is also torpedoed and sinks off the coast of Casablanca; in 1943, the SS Excambion, renamed the USS John Penn, is sunk by a Japanese torpedo bomber off Guadalcanal; only the SS Exochorda, renamed the USS Harry Lee, survives the war.
Irène has had to leave behind almost all her belongings—her beautiful Patou suits, her Revillon furs—in the apartment on Rue Raynouard, as well as the silver, the china, the paintings, and Liliane’s elegant midnight navy Silver Cross pram which, in any case, Liliane will have outgrown. A photo taken on the deck of the SS Exeter shows Irène leaning against the ship’s railing, looking tan and fit. She is wearing white shorts, and, on her head, tilted at a jaunty angle, she wears the ship captain’s cap. In another photo, Irène, who loves to sunbathe, is stretched out on a deck chair wearing a two-piece bathing suit. In a third photo, still in her two-piece bathing suit, Irène is holding Liliane on her lap. In all these photos, Irène is smiling—there is no sign of anxiety or worry on her lovely face. In mid-Atlantic, can the war already be so far behind and forgotten? There are a few photos of fellow passengers—nameless women and children—most likely refugees like Irène and Liliane. And, finally, a photo of the captain himself, who has recovered his cap and is smiling. There are no photos of Jeanne.
Jeanne is pale, plain, nearsighted. She comes from a small town on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, once famous for its sardine fishing and canning industries; a town with a nearly unpronounceable name—Douarnenez. Jeanne will devote five years of her life—her young life—to taking care of Liliane. Five years she will spend in Peru.
Peru
of all places.
What was she thinking?
Jeanne, we have to leave Paris. Leave France, is what Irène says to her.
You’ll have to get a passport. A visa.
Oui, madame.
Does she have a choice?
Might she have said, Non, madame, I have to go back to my home, to my family?
The men in Jeanne’s family are fishermen, the women are robust, hardworking, and uncomplaining. Except for her parents, who spent their honeymoon on Mont Saint-Michel, none of her family has ever been farther away from home than the city of Brest. As far as they are concerned, Jeanne has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Pérou, where in God’s name is that? Jeanne’s father, a large man with an appetite for food and life, might well ask his wife, Jeanne’s mother. But he has to look it up for himself in one of the children’s school atlases. He shakes his head sadly; in his heart, he knows he will not see Jeanne again.
Pérou, Annick, Jeanne’s younger sister and the prettiest, says with a huge sigh. How I envy her. I would do anything to get away from this stupid place. And, in a few months’ time, on a warm summer morning, wearing her best dress, a sleeveless, red-and-white flower print, and bicycling quickly, without giving the village a second glance, she does just that.
Jeanne does not speak Spanish. How will she manage? Handsome, curly-haired Daniel, the cleverest of Jeanne’s brothers, asks.
Is she so attached to the child that she cannot be parted from her? wonders Catherine, a schoolteacher, and Jeanne’s favorite sister.
More than likely, a simple girl, Jeanne feels it is her duty.
And, a Catholic, she is deeply religious.
Or, perhaps, she has misunderstood—misunderstood the way everyone else has at the time.
The British call it the Phoney War.
The French, la drôle de guerre.
Those terms refer to the six-month period, from October 1939 through March 1940, that followed the German occupation of Poland, after war had been declared between Germany and the Allies but when no armed hostilities take place. Already, however, German submarines have torpedoed several British ships, including the HMS Courageous with a loss of 518 men, the HMS Royal Oak with an even greater loss of 833 men, and the SS Athenia, a passenger liner, on its way from Glasgow to Montreal, causing the loss of 117 lives. One of those lost lives belonged to a ten-year-old Canadian girl named Margaret Hayworth. Her death was widely publicized in the newspapers and became a rallying war cry. A thousand people met the train that transported Margaret’s body back to Ontario and her funeral was attended by many Canadian government officials as well as by the entire Ontario cabinet.
