The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel

by Solomons, Natasha

  ‘I’m looking for this man,’ she said, pulling out the newspaper clipping of George and passing it to the man behind the bar.

  He studied it, scowling. ‘You police?’

  Juliet laughed. ‘No. I’m his wife.’

  ‘Even worse.’

  Juliet tried to take back the scrap of paper but the barman kept his fingers over it. The woman with the dishcloth held out her hand for the picture. Meekly, he surrendered it to her and slunk off to rearrange the glasses.

  ‘You are looking for this man?’ asked the woman jabbing at George with a chipped scarlet nail.

  Juliet nodded.

  The woman studied her from top to bottom and seemed to approve. She banged on the bar for silence and held the picture up above her head, showing it round the cafe.

  ‘Any of you know this man? George Molnár. His wife is here looking for him.’

  There was muttering and laughter in a mix of English, Hungarian and Yiddish.

  ‘Who sent you here?’ called an elderly man in a white T-shirt and open sandals that revealed thin, hairy toes.

  ‘Tibor. Tibor Jankay.’

  ‘Tibor? Mein Gott. When you see him, tell him he still owes Edgar twenty bucks.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Juliet. ‘When you tell me if you’ve seen George Molnár.’

  ‘Don’t trust him,’ muttered the woman to Juliet. ‘He knows nothing. Just likes a little attention from a woman. His wife has ignored him for years.’

  ‘Where you from?’ asked another man, younger than the rest and handsome underneath the loosening of his jaw line.

  ‘England.’

  ‘All that way to find this George? I hope he’s worth it.’ He winked.

  ‘My wife wouldn’t go to Beverly Hills to find me,’ added the first man. ‘Not if I was having a heart attack and a stroke and the screaming heebie-jeebies all at once.’

  ‘I know a George Molnár.’

  Juliet looked round at a round man with a shining, sweating face, sitting behind a chess set. He licked his fat lips with a darting tongue.

  ‘He had an optical store, Gorgeous George’s or something.’

  Juliet stepped forward. ‘Yes, yes, that’s the place.’

  The man glowed with dampness, moisture beading on his head. He wore little pebble spectacles, and had round blue marble eyes and three half-moon chins, so that to Juliet he looked as if he was made entirely of circles. With a saveloy finger he pushed his specs up his nose.

  ‘He had a wife. A pretty little thing. Sharp tongue. Sharper elbows. Only met her once or twice, but it wasn’t you.’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t me,’ she agreed. ‘Are you quite sure the man was this George?’

  She retrieved the paper from the woman behind the counter and presented it to the round man. He gave a single nod.

  ‘It’s the same. I liked him. Good card player. Too good. If you weren’t careful with George you’d lose your shirt.’

  With that she knew it was her George. Her legs turned to cotton wool and she leaned back against the wall. The round man watched her, absently picking up a chess piece to scratch his ear.

  ‘Yeah, I remember his wife. She was Valerie or Veronica or something.’

  ‘Vera?’ asked Juliet softly.

  ‘That was it,’ said the man, slapping the chess piece back down on the table. ‘Vera.’

  • • •

  Juliet didn’t bother trying to sleep. She needed to think. The pale city night melted into a half-hearted dawn, a lacklustre sun slinking up over the buildings. She hadn’t experienced proper darkness since the bus ride from New York. In Los Angeles daylight gave way to the neon dark of late-night drugstores and streetlights and the acid glow of the office buildings. She longed for the deep night of Fippenny Wood – Max insisted that one needed darkness to purify the soul. At dusk he’d pour them both a drink, sighing with pleasure at nightfall. She’d thought it was funny – a man’s love of the dark – until now, faced with this ruthless, light-filled city. It drove away her thoughts. Tibor’s sunshine was suddenly too bright. No wonder his Venice paintings were all livid reds and yellow sand – there was no room for brown and grey and the eyelash soft green of woodland moss. It was a place of colour but no texture.

  When the children woke they found Juliet’s bed empty and the secret door to the roof ajar. Leonard burst outside, half expecting to find his father sipping a cup of coffee on the terrace beside his mother, in the same way he used to fling open the cupboard door under the stairs at home ready to find a burglar. But his mother was quite alone, sitting on the wall, lighting cigarette after cigarette. She sent Frieda down to the beach to tell Tibor that she was ill and couldn’t pose for him. Leonard stayed behind, perched on the wall, wishing he could ask what had happened, but his mother’s unusual stillness made him nervous – like the jumpy feeling in his belly before a spelling test. She sat and stared at the sea without seeming to notice it at all.

  Frieda ate bubblegum for breakfast and Leonard finished the chocolate in the icebox in full view of Juliet but she said nothing, not even when he declared, ‘Well, I hope this doesn’t give me a tummy-ache or upset the old kishkies.’ By three o’clock they were starting to worry. Frieda wasn’t sure whether in the list of telephone numbers their grandmother had provided there was one to call in the event of sudden craziness. But at half past four Juliet roused herself and insisted that they all shower and be ready to leave in less than an hour. Relieved at her mother’s return to reality, Frieda was preparing to make a fuss when she noticed that Juliet’s face was pale with anger. Not the kind of anger caused by Leonard leaving a library book outside in the rain or even the sort Frieda had ignited when she’d borrowed Juliet’s expensive face powder and spilled the tub all over the bedroom carpet. This was a different shade of anger, quiet and adult. When Leonard reached for her hand, Frieda let him take it, even though she wasn’t a kid any more and his fingers were candy sticky.

  They climbed into the Plymouth, neither of the children daring to ask where they were going, and drove inland through streets of low-rise Lego houses. Juliet halted the car, turned off the engine and sat twisting her watchstrap. Leonard nudged Frieda, pointing out the shop front opposite: Gorgeous George’s Glasses.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Juliet with sudden resolve.

  She marched both children across the road and, avoiding the front door to the shop, led them up a narrow alley to the rear of the house and to a second door. The lights were on and through the open window drifted the smell of roasting chicken fat which mingled with the sound of urgent baseball commentary from a wireless set. Juliet reached for the bell. There was shuffling from within and then the wireless fell silent. Vera opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Molnár,’ said Juliet. ‘Where’s George?’

  Vera held a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Her face showed no surprise, her eyebrows painted in a perfect immovable arch, but the hand holding the cigarette trembled so that ash spilled onto her bare feet.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  Frieda and Leonard followed their mother, tripping into a small, untidy kitchen, every surface littered with cookery books, chopping boards, bowls filled with coloured shells and glossy apples. Piles of grey laundry lay heaped on the counter – jockstraps and socks drying over a packet of matzo meal.

  ‘Jerry!’ yelled Vera.

  There was the squeal of sneakers on lino and then the red-haired boy joined them in the kitchen. His mouth formed an ‘O’ of surprise when he saw the Montagues, and he glanced at his mother, who smiled serenely and poked in her purse with one hand, not surrendering her glass of wine or cigarette.

  ‘Jerry, we’ve guests for dinner. Pop to the store and get some ice cream? And I’m not sure there’s enough chicken. Pick up a pizza too.’ She handed him a rolled-up bill. ‘Take the children with y
ou.’

  Frieda scowled at the word ‘children’ but trailed outside after Jerry and Leonard nevertheless. They walked in silence for a few minutes, each sensing that something significant was happening back at the house, but none of them quite sure how to address it.

  ‘How are those paper airplanes working out?’ asked Jerry at last.

  ‘Super,’ said Leonard, perking up.

  Jerry laughed and then lapsed into silence. ‘You wanna see something cool?’ he said after a pause.

  Leonard and Frieda nodded – of course they did. Jerry led them along a side street. After ten minutes a red sign flashed before them, ‘The Studio Drive-Thru Movie Theater’. He halted, hands in his pockets.

  ‘We don’t have any money,’ confessed Frieda.

  ‘Or a car,’ added Leonard helpfully.

  Jerry grinned. ‘Don’t need ’em. We’re not going in the front.’

  The houses gave way to a row of faded shop fronts – a pizza parlour, drugstore, nail salon and a large parking lot. Jerry marched to the back of the lot and, checking over his shoulder, scrambled up a bank. With a strong freckled arm he hauled up the others. There was a high fence, but with familiar confidence he kicked at a panel and squeezed through, Frieda and Leonard following close behind. Jerry leaned back against the wooden panels and gave a happy sigh.

  ‘See,’ he said, waving his hand like a prince showing off his kingdom.

  The setting sun ignited the clouds a red as bright as their grandmother’s electric fire. The glow spread across the cars parked nose to tail, the sun flashing off a hundred windshields. At the front was erected a vast movie screen. Jerry studied it for a second and then sniffed.

  ‘Saw this last week. Was Okay. Kinda dull. Though she does take her top off at the end.’

  He sprawled on a scrubby patch of grass, the others flopping down beside him.

  ‘I can watch anything for free this way,’ he said. ‘Saw West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone and everything with John Wayne.’

  Leonard nodded his approval but Frieda wrinkled her nose.

  ‘What’s the point of seeing West Side Story without the music?’ she demanded.

  Jerry grinned his milk-white grin. ‘I got a portable radio. My dad gave it to me. I tune it in to the movie theatre and I sit up here and watch the movie and listen along and it costs me bupkis.’

  Leonard stared at him, awed at his ingenuity with the portable radio, but most of all jealous that his father had given it to him.

  • • •

  Vera swept the laundry off the kitchen table and onto the floor and started laying places for dinner. Juliet counted five settings.

  ‘When will George be back?’ she asked.

  Vera closed the cutlery drawer.

  ‘Hell if I know.’

  ‘No more silly lies,’ snapped Juliet. ‘Where is George Montague?’

  Vera sank onto a chair. The oven clock ticked and the soup gurgled on the stove. She drained her wine glass and took a breath, her accent growing stronger under duress. ‘I don’t know any George Montague, but George Molnár is gone. Disappeared three years ago.’

  Juliet closed her eyes and felt a weariness seep into her soul like damp. She’d come all this way to find him, only to discover he’d vanished again.

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  Vera shook her head. ‘He was here one day and then he wasn’t. Took some money. Quite a lot of money. And a photo of Jerry and a painting of a little girl.’

  Juliet’s heart beat a little faster.

  ‘A painting?’

  ‘Yes. We used to have it in the living room. She had dark eyes and brown hair and a naughty look that made me think that she was often sent to bed without any dinner. George never told me who the picture was of. I never asked but I guessed. I liked the picture. I liked it very much.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Juliet. ‘He stole it when he left us.’

  Vera stretched her legs, a bare toe wiggling through a hole in her stocking. ‘The picture was very valuable?’

  ‘Quite valuable.’

  ‘Then I suppose that’s why he took it. But so long as he was here, he didn’t sell it, which was strange. Expensive things didn’t last long with George.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Juliet. She supposed she ought to tell Vera the unsavoury truth. ‘I’m afraid when George came to California and married you, he was still married to me.’

  She looked to see what effect this was having on the other woman, but Vera stared back at her, perfectly impassive.

  ‘He never divorced me, Vera. We’re both married to George,’ said Juliet slowly, uncertain that she had understood.

  Vera studied Juliet for a minute and then smiled, not unkindly. ‘Yes, we are both married to George, but what you don’t understand is that I am his first wife, not his second.’

  Juliet felt suddenly very cold, even though the mist and grease from the roasting chicken was slicking the windows with steam.

  Vera conjured with her cigarette. ‘I mean that purely in a practical sense. I married Georgy Molnár on 1 August 1939 in the Rumbach Street synagogue in Budapest. I was already six months’ pregnant with our daughter Ana. Tamas arrived the following year. Tamas had the same blue eyes as Leonard but he did not need spectacles.’

  Juliet blinked and swallowed at the lump in her throat. In her mind she could hear her father’s voice – spectacles were a blessing, a talisman against harm.

  ‘We were happy enough for a while. Georgy and I always fight. But the babies kept us busy and we were as happy as most people.’

  ‘And Jerry?’

  ‘Is the youngest. He remembers nothing of before in Hungary. Thank God.

  ‘In 1944 they took Georgy away with the other men. I guessed he was probably dead. The children and I stayed in the ghetto. We managed for a while and then we didn’t.’

  Juliet watched Vera like a painter, trying to decipher her face. Lines around her eyes, her teeth perfect white. Too white. Juliet realised that they were dentures. Vera noticed her staring and clicked her tongue under the teeth, lifted up the bottom set to reveal her gums, raw and pink as an earthworm.

  ‘There was not enough to eat in the ghetto,’ said Vera. ‘I got sick and one morning I got out of bed and spat out my teeth one by one like orange pips into a bowl.’

  Without her teeth, Vera looked suddenly old. Then she slid them back in place and was herself again, calm and rouged.

  ‘What happened to Tamas and Ana?’ asked Juliet.

  ‘Typhus. Perhaps it was for the best. To die in their mother’s arms, nursed and loved. What came later was worse.’

  These unknown children were the brothers and sister of her own children. George had gone but the rest of them remained connected like a chain of paper dolls.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She swallowed tears, sensing that they would only irritate Vera.

  ‘You ask, so I tell you,’ said Vera, her voice flat. She sucked hard on her cigarette. ‘I have Jerry. We have a nice house, enough to eat. Good friends. I listen when they complain about their husbands. This American life is not so bad.’

  ‘But George found you again?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he was dead. Then one day in 1952 he comes back. He was in England and heard we were in California and he comes and finds us.’

  Juliet blinked. ‘I always thought he disappeared because of some gambling debt. But it wasn’t that at all. He left us for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vera.

  She offered no apology. Juliet supposed Vera did not consider it her fault that George abandoned Juliet and his other children. He chose Jerry over Leonard and Frieda.

  ‘It’s stupid really, but I thought he left us because of money, but he didn’t. He left us for you.’

  ‘Not for me. For the little ones. He wanted Ana and Tamas. But th
ere was only Jerry and me.’

  In the silence that followed, Juliet tried to imagine explaining Vera to her parents and laughed. She would tell them that George was not at the optician’s in Culver City and insist they mustn’t search any more. How could she tell them the truth? George left me and went to America to return to his first wife. She wasn’t dead. George and I were never really married at all. My children are bastards. Mamzerin. Juliet sighed and her laughter subsided like the tide. She wasn’t an aguna or a chained woman or a living widow, she was something worse – a bigamist and an adulteress.

  • • •

  Leonard and Frieda meandered back to the house. Jerry held the pizza box, doling out slices. At the end of the street, all three paused by silent consent and sat on the kerb.

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked Jerry.

  The topic had been raised at last. To Leonard’s surprise, it was Frieda who answered.

  ‘Well, we came here looking for our dad. Our mum thinks we don’t know. Do you want to know what I think?’

  Jerry nodded.

  ‘I think our mum thinks that your mum stole him or is having an affair with him or something ’

  Frieda spoke at great speed and with great confidence, pronouncing ‘affair’ with what she believed to be a French accent.

  ‘My dad’s gone too,’ Jerry said, handed out the last slices of pizza.

  ‘But the radio?’ said Leonard.

  ‘He gave it to me before he left. I think he would have taken it with him. It was real expensive but I was at the movies and I had it on me so he couldn’t. I don’t know if I miss him or I hate him.’

  The words tumbled out of him, a confession of feelings that he only knew he possessed as he spoke them aloud. Leonard and Frieda carefully said nothing so as to spare him the humiliation of their sympathy.