After a moment, I bowed a little and left. A couple of the howlers waved.
I have no idea what took place during breakfast. It's all strange, Uncle. I need more rest. I need quiet. There is civil unrest in this home based on my presence here, a now divided group of elderly women. There is tension.
Really, Uncle Charley (I wish you were really my uncle, or that I was actually writing my real uncle), if my administrative staff would come back for me, I'd be gone today, right now. Unfortunately I have no idea where they are, and my calls to the hotel to find them go unreturned. Things could get bad for me if I don't get some relief. The doctor yesterday told me I'm in pretty good shape mentally, much better than he would've imagined, and I agreed with him then . . . I haven't dreamt for days and I feel much like myself. Or rather, felt much like myself. But this is frightening, and I fear I won't be okay for long.
I need rest. I need information. I'd like to know if I'm a criminal or a hero. I need to know. I want to leave.
Why am I writing to you?
Journal Entry,
October 12, 2004
* * *
A ticket. Crinkled. Ferry. Rosslare, Ireland, to Cherbourg, France. The date is June 17, 1990.
On the back: “How is it I love you so much?” That's my handwriting. I wrote it in 1990.
On the back: “Are you still such a romantic? What are you doing here, T.?” The message is in a woman's handwriting. The ink is fresh.
This came in an envelope that was delivered to my room by the fat cow nurse. She said a woman in a black skirt with black hair—the nurse gestured curly with her hand, and at first I took it to mean crazy—left it for me at the lobby.
There is no name, no phone number, no address.
But I know.
Julia Hilfgott.
Letter Faxed to Fr. Barry McGinn,
August 17, 2005
* * *
Note hand-written in top margin: This is the only correspondence I received. Thank you so much for the news about T., strange as it was. I feared the worst. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. —Sincerely, Julia Mendez
October 12, 2004
Julia,
You know, of course, that I am confused.
Look at the evidence. I'm incarcerated in a nursing home for ancient and angry Jewish women. This I still find confusing, but less confusing now that I know you met my administrative staff on the morning of my arrest. Why didn't you reveal yourself to them? Who did you need to convince to keep me out of jail? Thank you. Thank you for this. If it weren't for the controversy I'm causing in this home, I would gladly stay here forever.
Julia, I am confused. What are you doing here? You live in Antwerp? My administrative staff tells me you live next door to the building where my father grew up. I find that amazing and, of course, completely appropriate to our short relationship. Did you know my father? If so, why didn't you contact me? He apparently knew where I lived, though he gave me no indication he was alive until the time of his death, when he sent me some letters.
Will you see me, Julia? Please? I could use a sane voice.
Can I come see you, so you don't have to go out of your way? (You already have, but I want to take some responsibility.)
I'm sending Cranberry (purple hair). Please send word back.
T.
Day Nine:
Transcript 7
* * *
You've spoken to Julia? She's okay?
Did you talk to her about everything that happened in Antwerp?
Good. I'm glad she verified it. I know the stories are hard to believe. Even if I'm mentally ill, I'm not that crazy.
It wasn't romantic between us this time. Not at all. Things change.
Yes. Julia makes me think . . . makes me think life isn't random. I mean—her showing up . . . When she walked into the waiting room, the light intensified.
Me and Julia are connected. And it wasn't romantic.
You're helping me tremendously, Barry . . . I guess . . . starting in Poland, during the winter, I just stopped all thinking. I haven't reflected at all on this. I stopped thinking. Thank you for helping me.
Julia did know my father.
No, not when I was with her in 1990. She didn't live in Antwerp then. She was visiting.
She didn't know him well. Her husband sued Dad's business once.
Within an hour of Julia coming to get me, she and I were in a restaurant and I was sobbing, and Julia was holding me, because she'd told me that Dad had died, that it had been in the early summer, two months before I received his letters. He'd had cancer, and it was fast. It was in the papers. I could have figured it out on the Internet, actually. I kept saying to her that I should have known he was dead since he sent an inheritance . . . but it wasn't an inheritance exactly, there was nothing legal-seeming about the check, and the letters he sent with the money sounded so present . . . so I thought he wasn't dead.
Yes, I was really crushed. For whatever reason, I did really believe Dad was alive, even though I repeatedly called him my dead dad. I hoped. When she told me, I apologized to Dad, you know, “I'm so sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry.” It really didn't make sense considering he left me . . . but I thought he'd been calling for me, maybe, with the dreams.
Poor Julia kept apologizing while I cried. She thought I knew where Dad was all these years. She was always afraid she'd run into me in Antwerp. She didn't want to see me.
The news couldn't have come from a better source. Julia makes me feel in my skin. I needed family. I wrote in the journal someplace that Julia must've been my sister in a past life.
After breaking the news, she walked with me for hours, pointed out where Dad's business was (and it's still there—his partners bought him out in the spring before he died . . . well, sort of ). She sent Cranberry and Kaatje for my stuff and put me up in her apartment for a few days. Then she set up this thing with Mrs. Fisher.
Julia's husband was in the apartment. Of course. Mendez. He's a very good guy.
Yes. I knew she was pregnant. I knew . . . I think before she did.
Is the baby healthy?
Good.
A photo?
Look at that hair! That's Julia's hair!
Letter 43
October 15, 2004
* * *
Dear David,
I don't have anyone else to tell.
Do you remember Julia Hilfgott, Julia from Dublin in 1990? You called me an idiot for leaving her. Remember? Well, you were probably right. Julia's here.
You don't know where here is. You were such an ass to me a couple of months ago (you've been such an ass to me forever), so I didn't tell you I left the U.S. for good.
I'm back in Antwerp, where Dad lived (although we didn't know it) and Julia lives here. She saved me from going to jail.
I broke into the apartment building where Dad and Solly grew up. Julia convinced the authorities to put me in a private rest home and to have me psychologically evaluated. Julia apparently had to work hard to keep me out of jail. She was there when I broke in because she lives in the building next door to Dad's old place. She heard the glass crashing and police sirens and ran outside and recognized me.
Two days ago Julia managed to get me out of the home. She told me she knew Dad and she told me he died. Sorry, David.
I wanted answers. That's why I'm here. I wanted to know why Dad left us, where Dad went. There are lots of secrets. It's opened up a new world, this investigation. Julia introduced me to an old woman named Mrs. Fisher who grew up across the hall from our family. I got my answers, and I think I should give them to you.
This isn't an easy decision. When Charlie was born, I called you, and you said, “Good luck with that.” That's all. But I am preparing to tell you what I know. This is your family, too.
T.
Day Nine:
Transcript 8
* * *
Has Julia told you any of this?
Okay. Well, Kaatje and Cranberry were confu
sed. They were at the police station, of course, the morning of my break-in. And there was Julia arguing vehemently with a whole crowd of people who wanted my head for causing such a disturbance. And everyone knew who I was, because I look a lot like my dad. Kaatje and Cranberry didn't know what was going on. Why did people know me? Who was this woman? How did she know so much about me? Confusing.
When they asked her, Julia would only tell them she knew me through my dad. They asked her to talk to me. She refused, made them promise not to tell me that she was involved or even in Antwerp. Kaatje and Cranberry were so confused, but they agreed not to tell. They were worried I'd get put in jail if they revealed her identity.
No. Julia had no interest in seeing me. I didn't know the impact I'd had on her when we were so young. She thought she'd found her true love, her soul mate . . . and I disappeared from Antwerp without saying goodbye. She was devastated. You know, she was twenty-two then. Twenty-two is tough. It put her into a deep depression.
Julia and I are a lot alike, except she's always known herself and has managed to keep working to do what she wants to do, instead of falling to pieces and starting over every couple of years like I did.
She believed she'd never forgive me for what I did.
Dramatic, yes. But true, I think.
It was only after Kaatje and Cranberry came to her with the Yiddish newspaper article that Julia agreed to get involved further. Cranberry told her I was searching for Dad. She couldn't believe I didn't know he'd died. It broke her heart . . . she's dramatic. She decided she had a responsibility to get me information. Not because I was me, but because people deserve to know what happened to their parents. European Jews are very big on this recovery of history, I think. Julia knew Mrs. Fisher well.
I had to write David. Who else was there? My kids are too young to understand. I'll tell them someday.
An act of forgiveness? I don't know. I mean, I'm not a great person. David's not a great person. Neither of us deserves anything. I just thought he should know, even if he doesn't have any interest in knowing. At least I gave him the opportunity—or would have had I sent him the letters. And . . . I almost didn't tell him everything.
Letter 44
October 15, 2004
* * *
David,
I'm writing you from a balcony overlooking Stads Park. This is Julia Hilfgott's apartment, which is adjacent to the apartment where our father spent the first ten years of his life. Strange?
I've been told it is not so strange. The Jews in Antwerp live in the same neighborhoods they always have since the beginning of time, clustered a bit by sect. Julia knows dozens of families who have lived in all of the buildings along this street, this park. This is what I've been told, though I suppose I still find the coincidence unfathomable. But there aren't that many buildings, and there aren't that many Jews of our family's kind, modern Conservative Jews.
There are people in this neighborhood who knew our family and remember them well. One old lady in particular, Mrs. Fisher. Mrs. Fisher lived across the hall from our family. She still lives in that apartment, across from where I pounded on our father's door. She remembers everything.
She doesn't know everything, though. Mrs. Fisher, for instance, had no idea our father had children, certainly not goyische children. How everything has changed, she said.
But she knows a lot. And now she knows even more—she's even been a first-hand witness to my emergence onto this scene. Mrs. Fisher nearly had a heart attack that night—breaking glass, screaming man. My assistant, Cranberry, screaming in the street. I caused her bad memories. She thought it was the Gestapo waking her up at three a.m.
Can't blame Mrs. Fisher for feeling ambivalent about me. Can't blame her for her anger toward our grandfather, either—she hates him. And that's fair, David. He wasn't a good man.
Luckily Mrs. Fisher is lonely, and her desire to talk to someone, anyone, even the enemy, outweighed her ambivalence about me.
Are we the enemy? Not you and me, David. Not really, except that I woke her up. Grandfather certainly.
Maybe someday I'll tell you about the ancient howling ladies at the rest home. They knew exactly who I was, David. It was in the Yiddish newspaper. It was alive in their graying memories. They knew I was our grandfather's grandson.
Laurence, our father's father, was a powerful man. He became the president of the largest synagogue in the city. He was a very very rich man. Not from diamonds, though, which is what I thought.
What did our grandfather, a poor Polish immigrant, whom we never met, who died before the end of World War II, do to get filthy rich?
He was a steel importer and exporter. He became wealthy by making contracts with the German government after the First World War. In a way, he helped rebuild the Reich (sort of ). He helped rebuild German productive capacity and then purchased iron and steel products from them and exported them all over Europe and to Latin America. Yes, he helped build the Third Reich, but only in a physical sense. And not many in Antwerp believe Grandfather could see into the future, see what devastation was coming from the Nazis he did business with after 1933 (Mrs. Fisher actually believes he could see into the future).
Here's what Mrs. Fisher said (imagine a tiny and bent Gabor sister, her voice like Eva in The Aristocats): “Your grandfather knew something. He always knew something before everyone else knew anything. He was magic, because he always understood what would happen before it happened. That's why he was so respected. And feared, too. Sure feared. That's why others accepted his investment in their businesses even when it came at such a price. He knew what would happen before it happened.”
But we're not to the terrible secrets yet, David. Grandfather was not terrible because he could possibly see into the future and was a tough businessman and had business dealings with the Nazis before the war. His perfidy to the Jews was much worse. Our grandfather was a terrible traitor.
We spent the afternoon with Mrs. Fisher. Julia, me, and my two assistants were sitting at a table on Mrs. Fisher's balcony. It was a gray day, as most are here, but the air felt good and we could see bikers and walkers, Hasids and Indians, moving past on the street below. It was an important day.
I took pages and pages of notes. I'll copy them and send them to you, I think.
Mrs. Fisher prepared much food for our meeting. She served tea and scampi and iced water with lemon, and then cake and finger pastries and coffee, and then wine. And then, after hours, some other kind of fish, as it moved toward late afternoon and we all were losing energy. She enjoyed having company, even me, and clearly enjoyed telling her stories, speaking about these ghosts from her past. I haven't ever had a meal prepared like that.
I just thought of something, David. I'll write this when I can. I have something to do first.
T.
Letter 45
October 15, 2004
* * *
Dear Julia Child,
I just heard you died a couple of months ago. I'm sorry. When I was a kid, I'd turn on Public Television looking for Sesame Street or the The Electric Company, and I'd find you, cooking and smiling. You sounded like a Muppet, a chicken caricature of a New Englander. Bok bok bok. You caught my attention. In my own kitchen, there was always one lightbulb out in the ceiling fixture. It was always dim in there as my mother made another box of macaroni. On the television, you laughed and wore colorful blouses and whooped and clucked while preparing some kind of chicken, while discussing the proper wine to drink with it. I couldn't take my eyes off you. Do you know how much we've lost?
T. Rimberg
Day Nine:
Transcript 9
* * *
Sitting in that building, on that balcony, eating in that way with people all around . . . it felt like I was part of a family. This is how my dad and his parents spent free time, on these balconies, eating, talking. There was no TV to baby-sit the kids.
It was an odd combination. In some respects, I felt so good sitting out there. I felt something a
bout what was right with my family before I was born. At the same time, this terrible history, which can't entirely be blamed on my grandfather . . . I mean, he didn't create the Nazis . . . was being revealed.
It was a strange thing to do, to write Julia Child. I guess I needed to acknowledge something right in the way they lived.
Letter 46
October 15, 2004
* * *
Dear David,
We're ghosts from the past. Here are Mrs. Fisher's thoughts, written from my notes of our conversation. Get ready.
Mrs. Fisher was born in February of 1925. The next month our Uncle Solly was born in the apartment across the hall.
One of Mrs. Fisher's earliest memories was listening to our grandfather verbally bludgeon our grandmother, Aida. “Your grandmother wanted to have a real house. And sure Laurence could afford a house! But he would not pay for a house staff and said there was too much room already—it was a very nice apartment, still very nice, you should look in. I was in the park with my mother and the governess and your grandmother and uncle. Your grandfather happened on us as he walked home from his business, and he screamed at Aida that he would not pay for a house, not ever. I don't know why this memory is so vivid. Perhaps his viciousness?”
The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 15
