Bess and Frima

by Alice Rosenthal

  “Oh, come on! I’m talking about Saint Vinny the Red. You know you took his word as God’s.”

  “I did no such thing, though I’d much rather take his word than yours. ‘Saint Vinny the Red?’ You didn’t just make that up, did you, you clever bastard? You’ve had time to refine your nastiness. And whatever you think, Vinny was a fine man, a brave man who died for his country—which is more than you did!”

  “I doubt he died for this country!”

  They glared at each other, murder in their eyes. Then just before Frima was forced to intervene to separate them, their glances fell, and they stood appalled at how far they had gone to injure each other. Beth quietly picked up her bag and walked out of the apartment. Frima immediately followed her.

  “Please, Bethie, he didn’t really mean it. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  Beth stood silent for a moment. Then she nodded her head and gave Frima a quick hug before entering the elevator.

  Returning to her living room, Frima opened fire immediately. “How could you say such things to her? She’s done nothing to deserve that from you. She’s had enough loss. Do you want to disown her, like your impossible father did? Well, I won’t—I’m telling you right now, and you’d better believe it. You have got to call her and apologize. Maybe she’ll be generous enough to forgive you. Are you listening to me, Jack? Look at me when I speak!” She was suddenly taken aback by his face. All the fight had gone out of him. He looked exhausted.

  “Do you think it was right that she practically called me a coward?” He asked this quietly, without anger or rhetoric, as if he really didn’t know the answer.

  “Of course, Bethie was wrong, but she was very upset. You really attacked her. I know she can be irritating to you, but you must apologize.” She paused for a moment, but he did not respond. “On second thought, I think you should write to her. I’ll look it over before you mail it. I’ll talk to her tomorrow—”

  “Frima, can’t this all wait until tomorrow? I’m suddenly unbelievably tired, somehow. I’ve got to take a nap or just call it a night.”

  He really did look exhausted, and she relented. “Okay, I’ll be in later. I’ll try not to wake you.”

  She cleaned up the kitchen, emptied ashtrays, feeling tired herself, but unwilling to face any of these chores in the morning. She wanted tomorrow to be a clean slate. Still perturbed, she wasn’t ready to join Jack. She lay down on the sofa with her feet up, trying first to distract herself with a magazine, then a half-read mystery when a sudden sound of something crashing to the floor brought her to her feet—Lena? Jack? She ran toward the back of the apartment to find her husband lying in a dead faint in the hallway just outside their bedroom. He had been sweating profusely. She knelt over him. What to do? Fear made her momentarily an idiot—she could recall nothing about fainting from her Red Cross classes. Cool water? A cold compress? But before she could get to the bathroom Jack was rising to his feet. He pushed her roughly out of the way and slammed the bathroom door. She heard him lean over the toilet, vomiting.

  “Jack, are you all right? I’m coming in.”

  “No, don’t! I don’t want you to see me like this. I’m okay. And you’re pregnant,” he added lamely.

  “A pregnant woman doesn’t know about throwing up?”

  She heard him flush, then move to the sink. He opened the door.

  “It’s just food poisoning,” he commented, by this time able to rinse his mouth and squeeze toothpaste on his brush quite competently.

  “Funny, I don’t have it.”

  “It affects people differently.”

  “But you fainted.”

  It’s over now. I’m sorry I pushed you,” he said, gently caressing her stomach. “But I think I’ll sleep on the sofa so I don’t disturb you if I have to run to the bathroom again.”

  He was looking better now, his color was coming back. “No, the bedroom is closer if you need to get up, and you’ll sleep better in bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa. Don’t worry, I’m not made of glass.”

  Jack didn’t protest, and she left him as he fell asleep again. She wasn’t convinced that he was entirely recovered, but she was weary and she quickly dozed off on the sofa, only to awaken to the sound of her husband entering the bathroom again, more quietly than before. This time she didn’t go after him. Some ginger ale over ice is what he needs, she thought. If it helps me, it ought to help him. He needs fluids sipped slowly.

  She felt in charge now, as she approached the bathroom, glass in hand. But when she came to the door, it was not retching she heard, but sobs—ugly, tearing sobs. She had never heard such uncontrollable crying from her husband. She wanted never to hear anything so awful again. She straightened her back and forced herself to speak calmly. He had locked the door.

  “Jack, what is it? Let me in.”

  “I’ll be all right. Just let me alone, please!”

  “I most certainly will not. If you don’t come out immediately and talk to me, I’m calling the doctor—I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night—I mean it!”

  He took this as a threat, as if he were a child, and she heard the door unlock. He emerged slowly, wiping his face with a cold washcloth.

  “I’m a trained medic, you know. I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She led him into the living room as if he were a child and sat with him on the sofa. She handed him the glass.

  “Sip this slowly.”

  “Better if it were whisky.”

  “That’s the last thing you need now,” she said quietly. “Now talk.”

  “I never wanted you to know—not you, Bess, my parents—nobody.” He halted, struggling against silence.

  ‘Know what?” she asked, again as if talking to a child and suddenly afraid that he was just that. She stroked his shoulder, but he removed her hand gently.

  “Please. Just let me talk. Say it.”

  Frima moved away a few inches, and Jack slowly began to talk into the silence.

  “You can’t imagine it. The photos can’t convey the stench. We were moving through pretty country, near Weimar, which had been bombed, but you didn’t see that. But the stench! We thought we were near pig farms. You know, like in New Jersey—Secaucus—but so much more putrid. Word came down the line that we’d come to Buchenwald. A prison camp? We didn’t know what to expect. And that’s all I remembered until tonight. I ran away, they told me. They found me in the woods. I didn’t recall anything before that. Temporary amnesia from the shock, they said. They couldn’t say if and when I would remember. They didn’t call me a deserter or anything like that . . . I think there were others who ran into the woods. They just gave me an early discharge, and sent me back to the States.”

  “But, Jack, there’s nothing shameful about what you did. Anyone decent human could react the same way.”

  “No, shh, please. Let me finish. It’s what I remember now, what I’d shut out until tonight. When we got to the camp—we weren’t the first Americans to get there—there was this confusing number of people: GIs, officers shouting orders, inmates wandering around the enclosure. The SS guards weren’t around. Probably they had run away or had been arrested. Some of the inmates were thin, in prison stripes, looking like prisoners of war who had lived through tough conditions, sort of like what you’d expect. But the others . . . Oh, God . . . the ones emerging out of the barracks! The real dead, the naked gray-green skeletons that the Nazis had tried to hide were stacked up like logs, but these coming to us now were the living skeletons. They were in rags and patches and they spoke a babble of languages. Some couldn’t walk without help, but some were smiling. They knew we were Americans and they were happy to see us. There was this little old man who looked like my own grandfather. Maybe he wasn’t that old . . . even the kids looked old. Anyway, I said something to him, like, Zayde? His eyes lit up and he reached out to me with his arms, and I ran away! I thought he could give me a disease or something. I ran to hide, like a coward!
Like the damn SS! I think that old man will reproach me forever—if he doesn’t curse me.”

  Frima put her arms around him. “He will do neither. And it will be better now. You know, it’s like an infection draining, this remembering, like a boil lanced. It will be better now.”

  They sat holding hands silently. When she could see that he was calmer, she got up to make them some tea.

  So, you thought you both came out of the war unwounded!

  CHAPTER 23

  By the time a bleary-eyed Frima entered the kitchen the next morning, Jack was on the phone with Leon, talking hotel business, and Lena was playing with her blocks in the living room. Dishes in the sink, unwashed, naturally, revealed that he had already scrambled some eggs for Lena and himself.

  “Coffee is on the stove,” he called out.

  She poured herself a cup and made some toast. So this was to be a nice normal morning?

  “Listen, honey, I called my mother earlier and canceled their coming over tonight. Told her I had a cold coming on. I figured it would be a little too much for you after last night.”

  And for you. “I have all that food.”

  “I told her she could come over and pick it up. That’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

  “That’s fine,” she answered, “We’re both too tired for company. But, remember, you have to make your peace with your sister.”

  “I know. I’ll write to her, like you said.” He was silent for a few moments, shuffling papers around his desk and seemingly absorbed in business from Ellenville. “If you talk to her today, Frima, I don’t want her to know anything about last night.

  “She’ll have to know something, Jack. No details. Just that the trials, the talk yesterday, brought back some upsetting war experiences. Beth won’t pry.”

  “We’re still talking about my sister, right?”

  “Very funny. But in some ways I know your sister better than you do.” This was the understatement of the year, Frima thought, but added only, “Beth will not pry. She’ll keep the peace, and you must too.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He came back about a half hour later, looking ready to take on the world, but instead of a quick kiss and a rushed exit, he pulled up a kitchen chair and seated himself on it backward, facing her with a serious expression. Frima waited warily for more speech.

  “You know, honey,” he began, “there’s going to be more and more about the camps and the Nazi war crimes as these trials go on. Without going into detail—there was enough of that last night—I’m only saying there were places worse than Buchenwald. And I don’t think you should see them. There’s been quite enough upset around here, and in your condition. . . . ”

  “You think I’m not going to read the papers, that I’ll retire to the ladies’ room when the movie newsreels come on?” She gentled her tone as she realized with some tenderness that he was gathering about him the shreds of his male authority and protectiveness toward her. “Well, we’ll see,” she said, as she kissed him goodbye.

  With housework finished and Lena napping, she sat down at the piano to warm up with some scales before turning to Mozart for a little uplift, but her hands remained motionless in her lap. No escape here; she was too deep in thought about good and evil.

  Frima had been gently reared, as she put it to herself. Not in the class sense—she had no pretensions to that. But her parents in their different ways were both humanists. There was no terrifying concept of evil and damnation in her home; no vengeful, eternal punishment. Neither were there blissful everlasting rewards in heaven waiting for the good. No living creature deserved either such punishment or such reward. You did the best you could and were good to each other, looked out for each other. If you lived together, you loved each other. You also tried to widen your vision—the people and things you looked out for, cared about. You tried to appreciate. This was the good life—and it was its own reward. It astonished her now, as she sat at the piano unable to play, just how much that good life had been envisioned not only in German music, but in the German language.

  They had never spoken German in her childhood home; she came from an Eastern European Jewish background and was well aware of the half-humorous cultural antagonism between German Jews and Eastern European ones—a distinction that Hitler had unwittingly blurred forever. Her home language had been English as long as she could remember. Frima understood the Yiddish her parents used together but could now only speak it haltingly, and she knew nothing of the Polish they occasionally exchanged. In high school Frima had ignored the more popular French and Spanish for her required foreign language classes and had enthusiastically chosen German instead, the language of her favorite composers. To her it had seemed soft and a little guttural, like Yiddish, and it was full of pleasing cadences in the art songs of Schubert or Brahms. But now all that was overwhelmed by the hysterical shrieking of Hitler and his henchmen. The Nazis adored Wagner, that arrogant little anti-Semite, with his huge helmeted screaming sopranos. The ultimate anti-humanist. Frima had never liked him, but she had grudgingly recognized his power. Now she’d never listen to him again. She couldn’t stand the sound of any German now. Would it always be so? She would hate the Nazis until the day she died, perhaps never forgive Germany or its people for fostering them. Could she ever forgive this enemy?

  She didn’t feel that way about the Japanese—the other enemy. She was ashamed to say that she barely thought of them, now that peace was restored. But, then, they were still mostly hidden from her. Since childhood, of course, comic strips and animated cartoons had depicted fearsome images of the Yellow Peril—first the Chinese, then the Japanese—but she’d been essentially unimpressed by such nonsense, and living on the East Coast in a provincial Bronx neighborhood, she knew no Japanese Americans. Why, she knew little more about a real living Japanese person than the Mikado audiences did—or Lena. But the Nazis were something else. They were an explicit, graphic horror. Realistic detailed photos and live reports had shown her the depths of depravity, of cold-blooded evil, humans were capable of. And Beth was right; the most frightening part of it all was that they were and are human. The same people who had produced Bach and Beethoven had given birth to Hitler and Goering. Artistic geniuses and monsters and sometimes, like Wagner, a mixture of both. If the Germans could do this, so can we, or the Chinese, or the French. They are not changelings. They are us.

  This was a concept so chilling she was relieved to be distracted by Lena’s calling her. She was happy to leave off dwelling on the German character and the heights and depths of the entire human race. Lena wanted a snack. Her child was not one of the poor children in Europe or anywhere else, and she, her mother, could tend to her wants quite easily by opening a box of graham crackers and pouring a glass of milk.

  A bit later she called Beth at work, calculating that she would be finishing for the day.

  “Bethie, I won’t keep you long, but I’m so sorry about last night!”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” Beth responded evenly.

  “Then I’m apologizing for Jack. He was very hurtful, very unfair. But there are things he can’t talk about yet, upsetting things he saw overseas, and somehow, you—we—brought it all back to him.”

  “You’re being diplomatic again, my dear. It was me. He wasn’t angry at you—he never is.”

  “Be that as it may, he’s very thin-skinned right now, so please, Beth, walk softly. He says he’s going to write to you and apologize, but I doubt that he’ll go into much detail.”

  “And neither will you, right? As usual with you, still waters run deep.”

  Frima sighed. “I guess that’s lucky for me, married into your family.”

  Beth gave a short but not ill-humored laugh. “You got that right. Okay, I’ll walk softly, but I’ll still carry a big stick.”

  “So, what else is new? Let’s talk next week, okay?”

  “You bet.”

  With purposeful lack of subtlety, Frima left some stationery, a pen, a stamp, and Beth�
�s address on the living room desk in full view. Then she gave Lena her bath and supper. When Jack came home he calmly sat down and wrote a short, well-meaning apology, not much different from Frima’s spoken one, only adding that he hoped Beth would come to visit again soon.

  At sundown, Frima lit the Friday night candles, which Lena loved to see. Then while Jack took the child off to settle her for the night, she warmed up the appetizing leftovers from last night and put out wine glasses. They had learned to like dry red wine from Vinny, and Beth had brought a bottle with her yesterday. Ironic, that. But mostly she felt a renewed peace and good humor after the stormy last days. A pretty, pregnant mommy, a handsome contented daddy who was reading a story to his bright, beautiful daughter; glowing candles, good food, good wine. And, certainly, love later that night.

  She would not hide, though. She would not bring up anything more tonight, but she would read the news and listen to the radio and follow the war crime trials. Not every moment or everyday, but she would see what she had to see. Jack could not and should not protect her or himself, for that matter. How could you do anything about such evil if you refused to look at it for what it was? They weren’t kids in the playground.

  CHAPTER 24

  Hair up or down? Beth peered at the mirror. Up, definitely, to expose neck and ears. A better line and silhouette with the open-necked dress, which was sufficiently low cut but not too obvious. Don’t pull your hair too tight—you don’t want to look like a Flamenco dancer—just a few tendrils allowed to come loose. Beth was lucky her hair was easy. Very dark, thick and wavy, it was a tad coarse but basically easy to control. She left it long because she couldn’t afford beauty parlors to keep it in line. Style conscious as she was, she had nevertheless scorned the intricate hairdos of the war years. They were dying out now, those rolls of hair needing lots of hairpins and requiring a personal lady’s maid or a flock of beauticians on a Hollywood set to get them right. It made you wonder that in the time of Rosie the Riveter and women piling into the workforce, fashionable hair styles were so elaborate. Probably another class issue. Women factory workers would wear kerchiefs to cover their hair; besides they had no time or money to wrestle with styles so quickly ruined. And you need another class issue like a hole in the head, so just forget it! Lucky she didn’t worry about hats. Although she had the height and presence to carry them off, she seldom wore them—too uncomfortable.