The Lost Letter

by Jillian Cantor

  That night, Kristoff couldn’t sleep, and he walked downstairs and made his way out to Frederick’s workshop the way he had done so many times before. Though Frederick had given it to him, Kristoff didn’t know if he’d ever think of it as his. It was Frederick’s. It always would be. In the middle of the night, he still felt like an intruder.

  Inside the workshop it was so dark, quiet. Kristoff had been hoping Elena would be here. But she wasn’t. He was all alone.

  He lit a candle, and he ran his hands across all the tools, the metal plates. Frederick’s stack of letters from Vienna still sat on top of the worktable. Kristoff picked one up, lit the edge on fire with the candle’s flame, threw it in the woodstove, and watched it burn. As it turned to ash, he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have. That maybe the Germans would decree him a criminal, too, simply for destroying their instructions. For being here, with the Fabers.

  He was startled by a knock on the door. Elena? But no, why would she knock? It came again, and it was too loud, too hard, a pounding that couldn’t come from Elena, or Miri. German soldiers? He hunted around for something to defend himself with, though he understood it was futile. Should soldiers be at the door wanting to take Frederick’s things, Kristoff couldn’t do anything to stop them.

  “Elena,” a man’s voice called. It was familiar, but Kristoff couldn’t place it, at first. The knock came again. “Elena, open up.” Josef?

  Kristoff knew Elena left at night sometimes still, to meet with Josef, he assumed. He was a light sleeper, and Elena would climb in and out the side window, just beneath his room. Her footsteps would always wake him, and then he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. He’d lie in bed awake for hours, unable to let go of the image of Elena, off in the woods with Josef.

  “I see the candle,” Josef said with another knock on the door. “I know you’re in there. Open up.”

  Kristoff grabbed the candle and opened the door. In the candle’s light he could see Josef more clearly than he had the last time, the only other time they’d met, that night in the woods last March. Josef had dark hair and dark eyes; a small beard framed his mouth, and he was a head taller than Kristoff. Kristoff stood up straighter.

  “Elena?” Josef pushed past Kristoff to look inside the workshop, and then upon realizing Elena wasn’t inside, he stepped back and frowned. “Where is she?” Josef asked.

  Kristoff nodded his head across the yard to the main house. Why had Josef tried here first? Why would he not just knock on the door of the Fabers’ house instead?

  “Go get her.” It was a command, not a question.

  “It’s late.” Kristoff was reluctant to help Josef. He didn’t think Frederick would approve of this, whatever this was. “She’s asleep,” he added, though he honestly wasn’t sure whether she was or not.

  “Wake her.” Josef’s voice was a growl, reminding Kristoff of an angry dog. “The Germans have made it to town. The temple is already burning.”

  “The temple?” Kristoff’s voice shook as he repeated the words. “But Frederick was staying there tonight.”

  Josef nodded. He knew. That was why he was here. “Now go get Elena. You’re wasting time standing here talking to me.”

  Los Angeles, 1989

  THE NAME FABER STICKS in my head the next morning as I drive to work. Frederick Faber, the stamp engraver I’d found in the book. Frl. Faber, it had said on the letter, and I want to know who she was and if, and how, this fräulein was related to the engraver. A love letter, Benjamin had said, commenting on the upside-down placement of the stamp. And I’m still less interested in any possible value of this stamp and more in the story behind it.

  I call Benjamin as soon as I reach my desk, but I get his machine. I remember what he said about not sleeping, doing his best work at night, and maybe it’s too early in the morning for him. I leave him a message about the picture of the Edelweiss stamp in the book I’d found, the similarities, and the matching last name of the engraver and the recipient of the letter.

  When I hang up, Daniel is standing right in front of my desk, and I hope he didn’t hear the message I was leaving for Benjamin. It’s not because I’m worried about doing something wrong by calling Benjamin when I’m supposed to be working, but just because I don’t want him to know. I want something new, something that Daniel’s completely not a part of. Something all mine. Daniel knows nothing of stamps or love letters.

  Daniel is tall, lanky, classically handsome, with light blond hair and pale blue eyes. I like to think that leaving me has made him somehow less attractive, but then when I see him up close like this, I remember again that it hasn’t.

  “Feeling better?” he asks. He sits on the edge of my desk and tilts his head, genuinely concerned. He probably thinks he knows me well enough to feel sure that I wouldn’t have missed work yesterday unless I was really sick.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Much better today.” I force myself to smile but don’t offer him any more. And besides, I kind of like the idea of him worrying about me. Although I shouldn’t.

  He leans in closer, lowers his voice a little. “Did you get the papers? My lawyer said they were sent.”

  I’ve misread his concern. It wasn’t for me, my well-being, but about whether or not his divorce papers got lost in the mail. “Yes. I got them.”

  “Good.” He glances at his watch. “I need your review in thirty minutes, okay?” His tone hasn’t changed at all. He seems to care equal amounts about the divorce papers and my review.

  “No problem,” I tell him.

  Truthfully I haven’t started, but I can work fast under a deadline. And I just want him to leave my desk, go away, go back to his own office. I don’t want to think about him, the divorce papers, or how my favorite part of working here used to be working with him, having him this close to me.

  I don’t want to wait until Sunday to take the letter to the Willows to show my father, so I decide to drive over there after work, and I suffer through crushing rush-hour traffic. As I wait on the freeway, my mind wanders back to Daniel, sitting on my desk this morning, so close, so familiar, asking me about the divorce papers, as if they weren’t a big deal.

  I met Daniel at a reelection party for Mayor Bradley in 1981. I was there to cover the election for the Tribune, where I used to work the city beat, and Daniel was with his mom, Gertrude, as invited guests. (His mom was a big donor.) I was standing on the fringe, taking notes in my reporter’s pad, when my pen ran out of ink. I searched my bag for another one, and then Daniel appeared, out of nowhere, pen in hand. “Looks like you could use this,” he said. When I looked up, the first thing I noticed (after the pen) was how blue his eyes were, how tall he was, how his tux fit him perfectly. He owned it, I remember thinking. It wasn’t a rental.

  The formal party was out of my league, and I’d run out to Macy’s the night before to buy a dress. (I’d chosen the cheapest one, having no need for such a fancy dress other than this night.) It was black velvet, with puffy shoulders, and too tight—a size too small, but that was what they’d had on sale. I felt outrageously uncomfortable, nothing at all like my normal self. And here this gorgeous man was standing in front of me, offering me a pen. This wasn’t the kind of man who normally offered me anything.

  I took the pen and thanked him, and he smiled. He had a perfect smile, straight white square teeth. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bored.” He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, as if we were already friends. “Want to get out of here and get a drink?”

  I did, but I was supposed to be working. That was, sadly, my most exciting assignment in months, a huge step up from dreary city council meetings I’d been covering. I told him that, and he laughed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Then how about you give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow and ask you again?” I wrote my number on a piece of paper, ripped it off my pad, and gave it to him. He touched my bare arm briefly, folded the
paper, and put it into the inner jacket pocket of his tux. Then he disappeared back into the crowd.

  My notes for the rest of the night were a jumbled mess, indecipherable to me the next morning at work. And when I got home later that night, I called my father, and I told him that I’d met this amazing man.

  These days, my father can’t even remember Daniel’s name. One of the first signs of his insidious disease was when he began calling Daniel simply “your husband” when he asked after him. At first I thought it was because he didn’t really like Daniel. Later, I realized it was because he genuinely couldn’t remember Daniel’s name. According to his doctor, it’s fairly common for Alzheimer’s patients to remember the names of their children, but not their children’s spouses, or their children’s children, because those memories were added later in life. Suddenly names are replaced by generic relation: husband, child, and so on.

  Ex-husband, I think now, as I finally pull into the parking lot of the Willows. It’s such a small distinction in the semantics but one my father wouldn’t remember, even if I did tell him the truth.

  I don’t recognize the nurse on duty at the front desk tonight, and when I tell her who I am, she reminds me, not so gently, that it’s nearly seven, and I only have a few minutes with him before visiting hours are over. Then she asks if I’ve ever been to see him after dinner before. I shake my head. “He’ll probably be worse than you’re expecting,” she says. But I hate her probably; she doesn’t really know him. And I hate that he’s here, surrounded by strangers like this, though I know it’s necessary. “Sundowning,” she adds.

  I’m familiar with the term. When my father was first diagnosed, I read books, articles, anything I could find in the library about his disease. Sundowning refers to the fact that many patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia get markedly worse at night, once the sun goes down. For a moment I’m tempted to leave, to just come back on Sunday, the way I always do, when it’s morning, still light out, and my visit with my father is at its usual time, what I’ve come to expect of him. But I drove all the way out here and I’m excited to show him the letter, so I thank the nurse and walk toward his room.

  I watch him from the hallway for a moment before I go in. He’s already sitting in bed, and the TV’s on, a special news report from West Germany, the commentators wondering, will it finally happen? Will the wall finally come down? I can’t believe it will. Germany has been divided nearly my whole life. I still remember being at my grandparents’ house sometime just after the wall first went up. I was eight or nine and Gram was crying, my mother trying to console her. The East, where my mother’s parents had grown up, had become a Soviet-run communist state, its citizens locked in behind a literal iron curtain. Gram was certain she would never be able to return to the place she’d been born. And my mother had told her gently that she didn’t need to, that she had a wonderful life here in the United States, with us.

  My father seems to be listening carefully to the news report, considering the possibilities of a reunification of Germany, the way the newscasters are. He suddenly looks toward the doorway, notices me standing here, and he squints a little, so I’m not sure if he knows who I am or not. “Damn Germans,” he says. My father was also born in Germany, like my grandparents, but he left when he was very young, a small boy, and he doesn’t have any sense of connection the way Gram still does. He still bears just the slightest hint of an accent, barely noticeable, except in times like now, when he seems to be remembering a piece of the past, and his accent becomes somewhat more pronounced.

  “East Germans, you mean?” I try to bring him back to here, to 1989. He frowns, but he doesn’t say anything else. I tentatively step farther into his room, clutching the plastic tightly in my hand. “Dad.” I hear my voice trembling a little. “Dad,” I say again, a little louder, lending a forcefulness to my tone that I don’t truly feel. “It’s me, Katie. Kate the Great,” I add, hoping to jog his memory back to the present with the familiar, his familiar term.

  He looks at me, and he nods. I pull his armchair closer to the bed and I sit down. He’s still watching the news, and I pick up the clicker from the nightstand. “Mind if I turn this off, so we can talk?” He doesn’t respond one way or another, so I turn it off. The screen goes black, his room is silent, darker than I’d realized. I switch on the lamp on his nightstand, and the yellow light illuminates his face, his sagging wrinkled cheeks, the pale liver spots on his mostly bald head, and the wisps of gray hair that I have to resist the urge to comb down for him. Doesn’t anyone do that here, remind him to comb his hair? I feel an almost irrational anger. But it’s nighttime, he’s already lying in bed. Who cares what his hair looks like?

  I look away from his hair, and back to the letter in my hand, the reason I came here tonight. “I brought you something,” I say. “Something the stamp dealer, Benjamin, found in your collection. Something interesting.”

  “Benjamin?” He shakes his head. He can’t place the name. He doesn’t remember our conversation just a few mornings ago, his presumption about Benjamin’s religion. Of course he doesn’t. In the vast bleeding sieve of his mind, why would Benjamin Grossman’s name remain, a name I mentioned to him only once?

  “I took your stamps to be appraised, but then you asked me to get them back, and I promised I would. I am,” I say gently, hoping to jog his memory with my even tone.

  “You can’t show them my stamps,” he says. His voice sounds distant, and he doesn’t look at me when he says it, so I’m still not sure he’s really here, whether he really knows who I am.

  “I know. I’m not going to sell anything. I’m getting them all back. I promise. It’s just that Benjamin noticed an interesting one. I wanted to show it to you.” My hands are shaking as I lift the letter and hold it out for him to see. I hate that I feel this way, that my hands, my body, betray me, show my fear, that I have fear sitting here, with my own father. I don’t really know what I’m afraid of.

  My father’s eyes scan the letter, the stamp. He sighs a little, and I’m not sure if that means he recognizes, understands. Or if it means he doesn’t.

  “Benjamin said this particular stamp could be your gem,” I tell him. That’s not, of course, what Benjamin said at all. But I feel the need to be overly positive, upbeat.

  My father shakes his head again. “You shouldn’t have this,” he says.

  “You gave me your collection,” I remind him. When he doesn’t respond to that I gently put my hand on his arm. “Dad,” I say.

  “Your father’s gone,” he says sternly, as if I’m a small child and he’s reprimanding me, in a way I can’t ever remember him doing back then. But he’s also right, my father is gone. The realization hits me all at once, and it’s hard for me to breathe. “You need to go. You need to leave,” my father shouts at me.

  It’s one thing when he thinks I’m my mother—his disease allows me a window of comprehension, understanding. I have my mother’s gray-blue eyes, her dark brown curls, her apple-shaped face. At quick glance, I could be mistaken for her, as she was, once. But he has never yelled at me before, gotten angry like this.

  That night nurse was right, I shouldn’t have come. Sundowning is no longer just some clinical term I read about in a book I checked out of the library.

  “I’ll be back this weekend,” I say softly, biting my lip to hold back tears, not wanting him to see me crying, even if he doesn’t really see me at all. I gather my things, move the chair back, and walk toward the door.

  “No,” I hear my father say as I reach the doorway. “You can’t ever come back.”

  I run down the hallway, wanting to get out of the Willows as fast as I can, this awful beautifully maintained place where nothing makes sense. The nurse at the front desk looks up, notices me, and I half expect her to stop me and say with a smirk, I told you so. But instead she pulls a tissue out of a box and reaches across the desk, holding it out for me to take on my way by.


  My hands are shaking too much to drive home through traffic, so I drive just a few blocks west of the Willows to what used to be the Santa Monica Mall, but now, renovated, is the Third Street Promenade.

  I park in the garage and walk down the promenade for a little while. The night air is chilly, it’s close to eight, and I should probably grab dinner. I don’t feel hungry, though. And I haven’t yet remastered the art of eating in a restaurant alone. Once I calm down a little I’ll drive home, pour myself a glass of chardonnay, and pop a frozen dinner in the microwave.

  I spot a pay phone in front of the record store and I stop and fish around in my purse for some change. I put a quarter in, and dial Benjamin’s number, which I realize I’ve memorized. I’m hoping to leave a message. I’m done, I’ll say. I don’t care about the stamp. What it means or what it’s worth. I’m coming to pick up the rest of the collection and then you won’t hear from me again. But Benjamin picks up on the second ring.

  “Hello,” he says, and I don’t say anything for a minute. “Is anyone there?”

  “Hi,” I finally say. “It’s me. Katie.”

  “You got my message?” he says glibly, assuming that I have.

  “No. I’m not at home.” I don’t ask him about the contents of his message. I don’t think I want to know. I picture myself hitting the erase button on my machine later tonight without listening to it.

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  But instead of answering him I say, “Look, this was a terrible idea. I’m just upsetting him.”

  “Who?” Benjamin asks.

  “My father. I thought this would . . .” But I don’t finish my sentence because what I thought was stupid. That these stamps, these silly inanimate squares of paper and faded ink would help me understand him, preserve him. Would keep me from losing him? You can’t ever come back, he said to me. Come Sunday morning I guessed he wouldn’t remember those words, our visit tonight. But I would. “I’m done with this stamp. Whatever it is.”