The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘Stay where I can see you, and keep an eye on your brother,’ called Juliet.

  ‘I’m right here,’ said Leonard. ‘I’d rather stay and see the picture.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Tibor. ‘You may assist.’

  ‘Are you using oils or acrylics?’ asked Leonard.

  Tibor chuckled. ‘You are a painter too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonard, preening a little. ‘But I don’t mind just being an assistant today.’

  Juliet spread out a towel and lay across the bench, watching the kites flap against the sky, and listened to the patter of the men.

  ‘You’ve got a foreign accent,’ remarked Leonard.

  ‘So do you,’ replied Tibor.

  Leonard paused, considering. ‘I suppose for you I do. But your accent isn’t American foreign or English foreign, it’s foreign foreign.’

  ‘Hungarian.’

  Juliet glanced at Leonard, wondering if this meant something to him, whether he remembered that his father was Hungarian.

  ‘Did you always like doing paintings?’ Leonard asked.

  ‘All my life. And that is a long time,’ said Tibor stretching out his arms. ‘It would have been a short time, but a picture saved my life.’

  Leonard stopped rinsing brushes and looked up at Tibor. Juliet wriggled round on the bench.

  ‘You,’ he said pointing with a palette knife at Juliet, ‘don’t keep fidgeting. Stay still and I’ll tell you.’

  • • •

  His brush moves across the canvas, quickly in bold red strokes – he has the confidence of an artist of many years who doesn’t much care whether anyone else likes his picture or not. He’s never sold a picture, not in sixty years. He likes to joke that he’d sooner sell his kids but he doesn’t have any kids, only a house full of pictures. Pictures all the way up the stairs, on the landing, in the bedroom, piles of them stacked against the wall in the spare room and leaning against crates in the garage. He doesn’t care that there isn’t any room left – they’re not for sale. Not now. Not ever.

  Her hair appears first, flying in the wind like the tail feathers of the kites. Next comes the hot disc of sun, bouncing on the horizon like a yellow beach ball. He talks. They listen.

  • • •

  ‘I was on a train, a terrible train headed for somewhere unspeakable. One of those places that steal men’s souls. We were packed in so tightly that even when someone fainted or died, they kept standing up, rooted in place by the others. But in my pocket I had my chisel and I chipped away at one of the wooden panels until it was just wide enough for a skinny man to fit through and I was skinnier even than you.’

  He wiggled a brush at Leonard, who sat watching, not wanting to interrupt.

  ‘My neighbours screamed at me, yelling curses that I’d brought trouble on them all and everyone would be punished for what I had done. I argued and begged for them to come with me. But do you know how many did?’

  Leonard shook his head and Tibor continued.

  ‘None. Not one. So, I went alone. I spied through my peephole, watching the white landscape rush past. Sometimes there was a farmhouse and sometimes a few of them together, little wooden houses huddled to make a village, but I waited until the train was far, far from anywhere, and then as the women screamed at me and the men rained fists down on my head, I slid out through the broken panel and onto the snowy tracks. I lay still as a mouse when he knows a housewife with a rolled-up newspaper is waiting to clobber him. The train roared over my head and I thought that probably I should die but I choose that I die like this than shot in the back of my head or—’

  He paused, catching sight of Juliet who shook her head, ever such a little. He shrugged and continued.

  ‘Your mother is quite right. You don’t need to know all these things just now. So the train goes on for ever, cars and cars of it rattling above my head and then suddenly it is quiet and I’m alone. It’s dusk and the cold is getting colder. You are from England?’

  Leonard nodded, blinked.

  ‘Then you don’t know what real cold is. Your country is a little damp but you are a summer boy. In the East, the cold freezes your bones so they shatter into dust and make more snow. I knew that I must find somewhere to spend the night or I would die anyway. But I was nowhere. A big empty nowhere with nothing but white snow and black trees and here and there the hungry yowl of a wolf, skinny as me. My coat was thin and I had no scarf and I walked until the moon was up in the sky, until at last I saw a light. A lonely farmhouse on the edge of the waste.’

  ‘Did they let you in?’ asked Leonard. ‘Did you get supper?’

  Tibor smiled. ‘I was much too frightened to knock on the door. Instead I crept into the farmyard where there was a huge haystack made of straw and chicken shit and I crawled inside, stuffing handfuls of the stuff inside my clothes to keep warm.’

  ‘Wasn’t it scratchy?’ asked Leonard.

  ‘Terribly itchy. There were wriggly creatures inside the straw too.’

  Tibor glanced up and caught Juliet’s eye so that she understood this bit was for Leonard’s benefit.

  ‘So, I fall asleep. So fast asleep that I fall through the world and then the sky, past the moon and yellow stars.’

  As he said this, Juliet saw that in the corner of the picture he was painting a bright starfish in the sand. He leaned back, examining it, and with a tiny shake of his head smeared yellow beach across the starfish and it vanished into the canvas, hidden in the layers of paint like a fossil.

  ‘And in the morning, I wake up to a fierce pain in my leg and then my backside – something is biting me. I burrow out of the haystack and the farmer stands over me with his pitchfork, ready to jab it into me again. “Thief! Jew!” cries the farmer and he grabs at me and I know that he’s going to fetch the police. He’s got me by the collar and I am choking but I cry out, “I’m not a thief. I’m going to pay for my night’s accommodation!” The farmer stops jabbing at me with his wretched pitchfork in order to laugh. It’s a nasty thin sound like the rattling of an empty tin can. “What will you pay me?” he says. “Your coat? Your shoes?” I look at my broken boots and my coat and I think, “If I give these to you, I’m already dead. I’ll die tonight of cold.” And then I remember that in my pocket, I have a pencil and a sketchbook. “Your portrait!” I say. “I’m an artist and I shall draw your picture, if you don’t like it, then, you can turn me in or take my shoes, whatever you like.”

  ‘He grunts something, and I think it is a yes as he takes me into the farmhouse kitchen so he can sit in the warm. I’m grateful as I don’t think I can draw outside with shivering fingers. It is a bare room with a single table and a dirt floor and a tiny stove that is not too clean and two chairs. He sits on one and I take the other and I begin to sketch knowing that my life depends on it. My fingers are swollen with chilblains and they don’t move the way they should – I’m like a piano player trying to perform Beethoven in gloves – but I force them to do my work. I draw him as he wants to be seen – a heroic figure, strong and fierce, but I make awful sure that it is still him. He won’t want his friends to laugh and deny the likeness – I keep in the piggy eyes and the vodka nose. I show him.’

  Leonard leaned forward. ‘And? What then? You didn’t finish the story.’

  Tibor was silent for a moment, then he stood, squinting against the sun. Juliet gazed at him, eyes big with sadness, understanding he’d softened his story into an adventure for Leonard. She wanted to say something, didn’t know what it should be. Tibor acknowledged this and nodded at both Juliets – the flesh and the painted. He adjusted his hat and turned to Leonard with a shrug.

  ‘And what then? I live. I spend the rest of the war as a pedlar-painter going from house to house, drawing farmers and their wives and their pretty daughters and their ugly ones and I live.’

  Juliet watched as Tibor turned back to his easel. A painting saved me too, she decided. Charlie’s portrait rescued me from quiet despair and brought me into a world of colour.<
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  • • •

  The next morning Tibor continued his painting of Juliet. Leonard stuck beside them, at first watching Tibor and then asking for a piece of paper for his own picture.

  ‘What are you going to draw? The sea? A portrait?’ asked Tibor. ‘An artist needs the correct tools for the job.’

  Leonard cast his eye across the beach to where Frieda sprawled a few yards away sunning herself.

  ‘Portrait.’

  Tibor reached into his bag for a set of pencils. ‘Start with these.’

  Frieda glanced round and glared at Leonard. ‘Who says you can draw me?’

  ‘Be quiet or you’ll ruin my concentration.’

  Frieda grumbled and closed her eyes but the trickle of a smile revealed she was pleased. After half an hour Tibor set his own brush down and leaned over Leonard’s drawing, studying it with solemn concentration. He gave a single nod.

  ‘Yes. The kid has got her. The mouth is a little big, and her chin is not so sharp but the eyes. Yes. There she is.’

  Juliet looked at the picture and kissed the top of Leonard’s head. Frieda wriggled round to see.

  ‘It’s not terrible.’ She almost smiled. ‘Come for a swim, squirt.’

  Squabbling happily, the children raced across the sand.

  Tibor stretched and gave a great yawn. ‘So, Juliet Montague, why are you here in beautiful California? Just a simple holiday? I think France or Norfolk might be easier. Norfolk is England, right?’

  ‘I’m here because of a painting. A painting and a gallery.’ She reached into the pocket of her sundress and brought out the scrap of newspaper. He scrutinised it, his lips moving as he read the Yiddish.

  ‘The Gallery of Vanished Husbands,’ he said, translating. ‘This man with the circle round him, he is your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think he is here in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Yes. But I haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘You should try this Gorgeous George’s Glasses. It says—’

  ‘I’ve tried already. He wasn’t there. Do you know where I might ask about him? Someone must know him.’

  Tibor stared at her blankly.

  ‘He’s Hungarian,’ said Juliet. ‘His name was Molnár.’

  Tibor shook his head and went back to his painting. ‘I don’t know any Molnár. I don’t know any Hungarians any more. They all go to a cafe.’

  Juliet sat up, knocking over a vase of brushes so that a river of green water trickled along the cement. ‘Will you take me?’

  Tibor shook his head. ‘No. I never go. I tell you where it is.’

  • • •

  Juliet toyed with asking Mickey to keep an eye on the kids but decided on reflection that they’d be safer alone. She waited until they were in bed, listening to the rhythmic patter of their breath to signal they were asleep, and then crept out of the apartment, shoes clutched in her hand.

  • • •

  Leonard, who was only pretending to drift off and was a little concerned he might have overdone it with the snoring, sat up in bed and listened to the click of the door. He knew she was plotting something from the minute he saw her put on lipstick instead of brushing her teeth. He crept down the stairs in the dark behind her, trying not to trip over his pyjamas, which were embarrassing hand-me-downs from Frieda, listening as the front door to the building opened and closed. He rushed down to the porch, watching through the glass as his mother climbed into the Plymouth and drove off. He watched the taillights of the car vanish around the corner. Perhaps tonight she’d find him. Perhaps tonight his father would come home.

  • • •

  The steering wheel slid through Juliet’s damp palms, the tyres squealing against the kerb as she parked. The lights from the cafe dribbled out onto the pavement, nicotine yellow. She wound down the window and listened for a moment to the grunts of laughter and drifting music. Years ago, she’d been to plenty of these places with George. In the first days of their marriage he’d taken her with him – and she’d even enjoyed sitting at his elbow watching as he played chess, pinking with pride when he trounced the old men who lost with Slavic melodrama, slumping back against their wooden chairs and grabbing at her arm, ‘Ach, your husband, he kills me! He robs the blood from my veins. Show a little pity and fetch a fellow another schnapps. And a little poppy seed cake.’

  A fiddle cried out into the night and boots stamped a long-remembered rhythm – a shtetl lurking in Culver City. She wished Tibor was with her but he’d been immovable in his refusal. ‘I won’t go back there. Hungary is much too cold. I told you it’s this quality sunshine that keeps me kicking.’

  Juliet hoped that the noise and the packed bodies would mean that she could slip in to the cafe unnoticed, but the fiddler lowered his bow and twenty pairs of eyes turned to stare. Looking straight ahead, she walked to the bar.

  ‘A coffee, please.’

  A balding middle-aged man bent with some difficulty, his shirt buttons straining to contain his spreading stomach. He filled her a small glass with clear, pungent liquid. She sniffed at it dubiously.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Coffee,’ said the man with a snort.

  Behind the bar a stout woman in a flowered pinafore dried glasses with a dirty tea towel and yelled at unseen children. From somewhere echoed the sound of a TV show and canned hilarity. The patrons stopped staring at Juliet and returned to their games of chess and cards and recreational bickering. In a corner someone read the Jewish Daily Forward and Juliet wondered about the husbands featured in this month’s gallery. The faces around the cafe were familiar – there was her father’s bald head, Uncle Jacob’s smirk and Uncle Ed’s filthy laugh. She relaxed a little. The fiddler began to play again, a leisurely polka – slow enough for even the very old or very drunk to dance to.

  ‘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 f
orward. ‘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.