Leah's Journey

by Gloria Goldreich

  Seymour lit a cigar and puffed a cloud of smoke upward, signaling that his presentation was over. Behind them Mollie breathed heavily.

  David nodded.

  “I believe you. I don’t know much about business but anyone can see that there’s more money around and of course mass production and advertising are the clues to the future. That even I can see. But Seymour, what’s it to do with me? What are you telling me for? When you started the business you didn’t ask my advice. When you expanded and when you expanded again you also didn’t ask me. So why now?” There was honest puzzlement in David’s voice.

  It was Leah who answered him.

  “Seymour is talking to you about it because this new line has to be something different. If we’re going to take that kind of a chance, make that kind of investment, we have to offer something different from what most ready-to-wear manufacturers are shipping out. What we’re looking for is an inexpensive line with high-fashion design. And for that we have to get a lot of different ideas, use different kinds of fabric. But most important are the designs and such designs I’m not going to dream up in Brighton Beach. For such designs I have to go to Europe, to the Paris shows. Maybe even to Italy to see what the designers there are doing. Then I can put out a line for the kind of market Seymour has in mind. The time is right, David. I can feel it. We’ve got to take the chance.”

  “To Europe?”

  Immediately, the front page of the morning’s Times flashed before his eyes. He saw the hate-twisted features of the moustachioed little German leader, his hand jerked upward in a Roman salute to his own avarice and evil. Europe now was a tinder-box, arranged by Hitler, ready to be ignited by a single incident. He had plucked Leah from too much danger and pain to allow her to travel back into that smoldering continent. What was the matter with Shimon? Didn’t he read any newspaper besides the Womens Wear Daily? Even now, as they sat silently around the table, the deep tones of Edward R. Murrow’s voice reporting from London boomed out of the children’s room and they heard snatches of his report in the somber voice David had come to fear. “A rally in the Reichstag drew record crowds.… New provisions in the anti-Semitic Nuremberg legislation.… Books by Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud are now banned in Germany.…” The listeners in the Brooklyn dining room remained quiet, eerily sharing the incredulity of the seasoned announcer himself. Abruptly one of the young people turned the dial and soft music filled the air. Rebecca giggled, Anne laughed, and then the door closed and the four adults sat around the table, not meeting each other’s eyes, as though unwilling to read therein the knowledge they shared with fear and certainty.

  “You know what’s happening in Europe now. And it will get worse. If that Austrian bastard has his way he’ll make the Odessa of 1919 look like a playground. You want me to tell you it’s all right to go back to that because of a few designs?” David asked bitterly.

  Immediately, he regretted mentioning Odessa. Familiar lines of pain creased Leah’s eyes and in the face of his wife, the assured, stylishly dressed woman with her black hair cut in the fashionable new cap and her figure rounded by childbearing and contentment, he saw the frightened young girl, still in her teens, her face pale beneath a coronet of braids, sitting silently beside him in a deserted park while gypsy violins played a mournful lament. But when Leah spoke her voice was quiet and controlled.

  “Actually, it is because of what’s happening in Europe that I want to go. I had a letter from Moshe. He has written again and again to Mama and Papa asking them to come to Palestine. They refuse and he cannot go to Europe. Neither can Henia and she is worried also about her family. The kibbutz is in danger from the Arabs and they’re doing everything they can to settle what children they can get out of Germany into Palestine. I also have written over and over but letters are of no use. To my parents Germany is another world. My mother answered me that my father didn’t even know who Hitler was.”

  “He’s not mentioned a great deal in the Talmud,” Seymour said dryly.

  “So I thought, if I went to Europe, from Italy I could try to get to Russia and talk to them. Make them understand what’s happening. If I didn’t try, David, I would never forgive myself.” She moved across the table and stood beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder.

  Once again, David was astounded by the swiftness with which Leah made decisions. Having listened to Edward R. Murrow’s somber voice, David quaked inwardly, worried and agonized, and made dire predictions. But it was Leah who molded the improbable into the possible. To work while he studied medicine, to fight for a union, to fall in love, to mourn and then to love again: all that was Leah’s doing.

  “I could go with you,” he offered weakly, knowing that with the suggestion he acknowledged that she would, after all, make the journey.

  “Could you leave your practice, the hospital?” Seymour asked. He could not, of course, and he shrugged in defeat. “What about the children?” he asked.

  “Now it’s May. I wouldn’t leave until school was over in June. Aaron and Rebecca will go to camp and Michael will be with Mollie in the mountains.”

  “I see. It’s all been thought out, arranged. What is there left to say?”

  He wondered bitterly how many conferences they had held without him, making their practical decisions while he, the family luftmensch—the intellectual dreamer—pondered in his consulting room. But his resentment evaporated as he felt the touch of Leah’s hand in his and the smoothness of her arm leaning against his cheek as she stood behind him, bending slightly so that his shoulder brushed against the softness of her breasts.

  Mollie and Seymour rose to leave then, Seymour turning suddenly to touch his sister-in-law’s hair and then to shake David’s hand. As though embarrassed by the gestures, he hurried after Mollie and Leah and David remained alone in the empty dining room.

  “In June,” he said softly.

  Her lips moved hard against his in silent answer and from the rear of the house they heard small Michael laugh suddenly in his sleep. But even as they stood in their urgent embrace, their bodies pressed together, their mouths sweet upon each other, the wail of an ambulance siren pierced the quiet night.

  They moved toward the window and watched the flashing red lights of the emergency vehicle rip past their house and disappear, speeding toward Coney Island Hospital. The shrill warning of death and danger trembled briefly on the dark air, so fresh with the odors of newly blooming lilac and the salt sea. They remained there for a moment, arms entwined, sheltering each other from the fear and apprehension they would not name.

  10

  THE SLENDER BLONDE MANNEQUIN in the black suit walked slowly across the stage and pirouetted in easy, practiced movement within the circle of moving rose-colored light. The subtle spotlight followed her as she continued on across the raised platform, bending easily to show the flow of the skirt and lifting her arms in a graceful arc, embracing the perfumed air, to demonstrate the generous cut of the sleeves.

  “Charmant,” murmured the small moustachioed man who sat next to Leah. “Très extraordinaire.”

  “Quelle simplicité,” the woman seated behind her whispered to a companion.

  “Peut-ệtre de trop de simplicité,” the other woman answered with a slightly derisive laugh.

  The model, her perfect features frozen, twirled about once more, rounded the stage with laconic elegance, and disappeared behind the taffeta curtain.

  The buyers and private patrons leaned forward on their small gilt chairs, some making almost imperceptible signs to the saleswomen who hovered discreetly about the room. A raised eyebrow summoned a middle-aged woman in a smart black dress, who bent her carefully coiffed blue-white head to answer a query. Silently, Madame’s assistants glided about the room, offering pencils and order forms, whispering the answers to softly voiced questions. The suit was cut of heavy silk on a wide margin. There was, naturally, a brief waiting period. One had to be honest—it might even take several weeks. Madame would rather lose an order than disappoi
nt a customer. No—there was no worry about individuality. Madame herself was limiting the production of the model.

  Leah smiled thinly and dug the heels of her brown-and-white spectator pumps deeply into the thick mauve carpet. The small notebook on her lap, similar to the ones used by the buyers for the Fifth Avenue stores, contained an almost completed sketch of the suit. She worked quickly, keeping one hand cupped about the sheet of paper. The jacket of the suit was unusual, the stark simplicity curving into a fishtail at the back. Madame Chanel was truly a genius, using the simplest lines and the most obvious fabrics to create these stunning classic patterns. Of course, in mass production they could not work with heavy silk, but Seymour had found a southern manufacturer who was producing a polished cotton which would just suit this design. If they cut on a narrower bias and used fake pockets instead of the real ones (which the blonde model had so artfully demonstrated, turning them inside out in a deft movement), they would save both fabric and production time. And the rapidly expanding army of women office workers in America would love that suit. Leah wondered how it would look in the marvelous peacock-blue cotton Seymour had shown her—perhaps with a pale blue blouse. She smiled, feeling the surge of excitement that always filled her when she juggled fabrics and colors.

  “Your order is complete, Madame?” A saleswoman stood beside Leah and smiled at her with patient insistence. Leah quickly covered her clandestine sketch and fumbled for an answer. She wondered if the woman had seen her drawing and remembered Seymour’s earnest warning.

  “Try to memorize the designs,” he had said. “Because if they catch you at one show they’ll pass the word to all the coutouriers and your invitations won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on.”

  Now she looked helplessly about and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  “Can’t you see that Madame is indecisive?” A man’s voice, laced with irritability, shot the question out at the saleswoman who nodded apologetically and moved away.

  Leah had noticed the man at other shows and had observed that he too carried a pad which he concealed beneath order forms and brochures. He was obviously employed as she was and although she was grateful for his swift intervention, she had stiffened when she recognized the guttural German accent that blanketed his fluent French. Still, she glanced at him and smiled. He acknowledged her with a nod, his lips curving upward in a slow smile which could also be construed as an invitation. He was a tall thin man with a black-and-silver moustache that precisely matched his hair, the two colors evenly vying for dominance. He was dressed in the requisite formal attire for a Paris fashion show: striped trousers, gray vest, and black afternoon coat. His cane and hat rested on the chair next to him and Leah thought that he was the sort of man who wore such clothing for a stroll in the park. He probably ran a small salon in Berlin on Unter der Linden or Kurfuerstendamm and his customers were plump frauleins from the provinces who increased their orders as his thick moustache tickled their pink-and-white palms in appropriate kisses of approval and welcome.

  But the next model had moved onto the stage and she forgot about him as her fingers moved deftly and surreptitiously, making notes next to the tiny line drawings. “Green silk with gold lamé trim—afternoon dress—perhaps add extra stole for evening wear—skirt pattern similar to number five—both numbers can be cut in one operation…”

  Behind her, Frederic Heinemann also filled his pad and wondered who the dark-haired American woman was. She was obviously new at this sort of thing to be so intimidated by one of Chanel’s saleswomen. He knew she was American because he had caught a glimpse of her green passport when she opened her purse, and like most of her compatriots, she seemed to know no other language but English—although she seemed to have a slight accent. What arrogance Americans displayed when they refused to master another language. Their assumption seemed to be that the whole world had to understand them, and too bad if it didn’t.

  He thought of the little corporal, the Fuehrer, who insisted that it was a punishable crime to speak anything but German. Ridiculous little man, with his nonsensical talk about a master race. Frederic Heinemann frowned deeply. Master race, master language—such nonsense. People were people and languages were languages. What a relief it was to be away from Germany for this short trip to the Paris showings, to have left behind the streets filled with strutting youths in their dark shirts with that red-and-black swastika emblazoned everywhere. It was a fever—a temporary viral reaction to the diseases of defeat and unemployment and the contagion of inflation. It would pass, of course.

  But meanwhile it was distressing and he did not blame his Jewish friends who were leaving Germany. Why should one stay in a country which denied them basic citizenship, the right to work? He had found it hard to believe when Heinz had told him that the ridiculous Nuremberg laws even denied Jews the right to listen to Bach and Beethoven, lest they corrupt the music. He had almost been relieved to find that Heinz was right. Such ridiculous legislation proved on what nonsense the entire regime was founded. Hitler and the maniacs he surrounded himself with—failures like Goering and Himmler—were Philistines. He had told Emanuel Schreiber that, but poor Schreiber was already insane with worry. His son had been sent to some sort of work camp because of an affair with an Aryan girl and then some of those Hitler Youth hoodlums had pasted crude anti-Semitic posters across the show windows of Schreiber’s beautiful store on Tautzienstrasse. And then, of course, Hilde, who had worked for Frau Schreiber for years, had had to leave because of that mad law that made it a crime for women under forty-five to be employed in a Jewish household. Madness. He had advised Schreiber to be patient but his friend was determined to leave and Frederic Heinemann could not blame him. The Schreibers were in Paris now, waiting for a visa to the United States. He would see them this afternoon and try to persuade them to take some money from him. The Tautzienstrasse store had been sold for only a fraction of its worth and the house they had not been permitted to sell at all.

  Damn—with his thoughts wandering this way he had missed sketching that last evening dress. But perhaps the dark-haired American woman had caught it.… With an effort he forced himself to concentrate on the show.

  The last model, wearing a lemon-yellow evening dress with an accordion-pleated skirt, danced across the stage. The sleeves were like gossamer butterfly wings and the model moved lightly, balanced on her toes and coming to a graceful halt so that the patrons might see how gracefully the flowing fabric settled into rich folds. The girl’s flaxen hair matched the gown and Leah thought that S. Hart might manufacture it in brown for brunettes, yellow for blondes. She visualized a series of dramatic color advertisements with each model photographed in a dress that matched her coloring. What was that song Aaron played on his guitar—“Black, black, black is the color of my true love’s hair…” They could use that as the heading for an advertisement and the dress would be of a midnight-black crepe—they had a lot of such fabric left from a style cut last year which had not done very well.

  The show was over and polite applause filled the room as the overhead lights flashed on. The audience, jarred back into the real world, blinked reluctantly and moved awkwardly, slowly returning to the demands of an atmosphere where lights were not muted and soft music did not soothe the air. Women adjusted their hats nervously and men felt for their wallets. The salesladies moved quickly about the room, answering questions and accepting checks and folded order forms. Someone opened the window and the sounds of early evening traffic on the Champs Elysées filled the room.

  Leah slipped her papers into her large shoulder bag and pulled her bright-red cloche hat down over her sleek dark hair. After a week of attending showings in Paris fashion salons, she no longer felt any trepidation after a show. The patrons chatted in small groups at the exits, some making plans for dinner or the theater that evening. Several of the men viewers had disappeared and could probably be found at the models’ exit, waiting for the lovely slender girls with porcelain features who seldom fulfilled th
e tantalizing promise of the rose-colored spotlight. Leah’s exit would go unmarked just as her invitation (obtained by Seymour from a friend of a friend on a New York fashion journal, at considerable cost) went unchallenged at the door. In her smart red, belted dress and hat to match, she looked the role of a buyer for a small Manhattan shop and the only time she had ever felt any apprehension was that afternoon when the saleswoman approached her. She would take the Métro now, as she had every evening for the past week, and return to her small hotel on the Rue du Bac where, after a light dinner, she would spend the evening doctoring her sketches with as many details as she could recall. It was difficult to be accurate in the perfumed dimness of the showroom and occasionally she added small details of her own.

  “Madame, excuse me if you will.”

  It was the moustachioed German buyer who stood before her now, his black leather portfolio tucked under his arm, his well-brushed gray felt hat in his hand. She felt herself stiffen but smiled politely and replied in the cool, controlled voice which she had cultivated through the years.

  “You wish to speak to me, Monsieur?”

  “Allow me to introduce myself.” He held out a card which identified him as Frederic Heinemann, proprietor of a shop for women on Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin.

  “I’m afraid I do not have a card with me,” she said, “But I am Mrs. David Goldfeder and I am from New York City.”

  “So pleased, Madame.” He bent to kiss her hand and as she had supposed the hairs of his thick zebra-striped moustache tickled her skin, causing her to smile and breaking her apprehension.

  Together they walked out into the cool of the evening. The Paris sky had thickened into the purplish-blue tones of early twilight and the faint aroma of chestnut blossoms sweetened the air.

  “Does Madame Goldfeder stay in this district?” Frederic Heinemann asked.