The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Leaving university, the younger Rebecca railed against her father’s totalitarian regime. Refusing any financial support, she lived on an academic’s meagre wage in a squat in Brixton. Eight years later, aged thirty-two, she returned to the Winkleman compound with a husband and a child in tow. Her husband, Carlo, then an aspiring film director, was unable to support his family. Rebecca tried for three years to stretch her wages to cover more than rent and food but it would never extend to childcare. Under pressure from Carlo and her father, Rebecca eventually resigned from her job at the Courtauld Institute and accepted a Winkleman salary; as head of curatorial she worked closely with her brother who was head of sales and deputy chairman. Their father did not need a job title.

  With a sense of relief and failure, Rebecca had floated back into Memling’s orbit and under their communal roof. Her family was assigned a house in the row on Curzon Street next to her brother Marty. There was a shared gym, staff, cars and drivers. There were offices in Paris, New York, Geneva and Beijing, and family holiday homes in Africa, St Barts and the South of France. To live under Memling’s rule was alternately luxurious and infantalising, and sometimes demoralising, but the absence of ultimate responsibility was preferable to life in the Brixtonian wilderness. Memling justified this centralised system as a way of protecting those he loved; he never saw it as controlling or domineering.

  Rebecca defended her decision to go back as strictly professional. Winkleman was the pre-eminent dealer and many of the world’s greatest pictures passed through the company’s hands. When every scholar, dealer and curator dreamed of working for that company, why would Rebecca deny herself the opportunity? Privately, she was exhausted by penury and relieved to be returning to a world of cosseted living, beautiful surroundings, domestic staff, wonderful clothes and first-class travel. There was another element too. Rebecca loved and revered her father: he was the cleverest and best informed of men; he knew instinctively who would sell and buy; he was fearless in decision-making and blamed only himself for any mishaps or bad calls. Above all, he put family first. These were the qualities that Rebecca most admired.

  Putting her phone to her pocket, Rebecca stepped forward and rang the bell to apartment 409. To her surprise it was answered quickly.

  ‘Jah?’

  Rebecca spoke fluent, textbook German, though her father rarely spoke to them in his native tongue.

  ‘I am so sorry to bother you. My name is Rebecca Winkleman,’ she said, feeling foolish as she still had no idea why she was there, or who she was looking for.

  ‘Winkleman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come up to the fourth floor,’ the voice answered and a buzzer sounded.

  The entrance hall to the block of flats was pokey. A light spluttered in the dark-panelled hallway and Rebecca’s heels clacked noisily on the liver-coloured tiled floor. There was a small lift, probably installed in the 1950s, but Rebecca decided to take the stairs.

  Though she was fit, Rebecca was out of breath by the time she reached the fourth floor. There were two identical long corridors leading to the left and right. At the far end of one, she heard a woman’s voice.

  ‘In here,’ it called out.

  Rebecca walked towards the voice and after one hundred feet stepped through the small hall into a living room where a woman sat cross-legged on the floor changing her baby’s nappy.

  ‘Sorry, can’t get up! I’m Olga; this is baby Britta,’ she said, fixing the last straps on the baby’s nappy.

  ‘Do you always let complete strangers into your apartment?’ Rebecca asked, smiling.

  ‘The magic word is Winkleman. The lady down the hall said a family of that name once lived here.’

  Rebecca tried to mask her astonishment – this was where her father had grown up? Memling had always said that Allied bombs had razed the Winkleman family’s home.

  ‘I am trying to find out more about my father’s family,’ Rebecca said, looking around at the cramped quarters and trying to imagine Memling and his parents here. ‘Do you know anything about them?’

  ‘Very little. The old lady said they had all perished. It’s fantastic that one survived,’ Olga said with real enthusiasm. ‘You must stay and meet my husband Daniel – he will be so pleased. His grandparents were at Treblinka. Only his grandmother made it.’

  Rebecca smiled. She had never imagined that a kind of kinship could exist among the heirs of a great tragedy. Memling rarely spoke of his experiences during the war and yet the Holocaust mired every aspect of the family’s life like a faint, dark stain. Most of her mother’s family had also perished, after the war, when their boat travelling to Israel had sunk; only her mother and two others were rescued from their makeshift life raft, a piece of cargo. Knowing others her own age were living with similar ghosts made Rebecca feel less alone. Then another thought occurred: maybe some relations had survived and this trip would result in finding a family she never knew she had. Grace could become friends with cousins her own age. Growing up, Rebecca and Marty had never met any relatives from either of their parents’ families.

  ‘Have a look around – it won’t take long!’ Olga said cheerfully, getting to her feet and lodging Britta on her hip.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ Rebecca said automatically; she’d only ever liked one baby, her own.

  Rebecca walked around the apartment. It had two bedrooms, each just big enough for a small double bed, and a parlour with a large window that looked on to the street. Behind this there was a tiny kitchen whose window faced on to the triangular central well of the block.

  ‘It is the perfect size for three people,’ Rebecca commented.

  ‘It works for us but must have been squashed for the six members of the Winkleman family,’ Olga said. ‘I have seen them all lined up in this room in Danica’s photo album.’

  ‘Six?’ Rebecca said trying to hide her confusion. Memling always told them he was an only child.

  Olga looked empathetic. ‘Your father must have been trying to shield you from pain – or maybe shield himself. Daniel’s grandmother was the same – she told him that only a few of her relations suffered when the whole family was wiped out. It was easier to rewrite history than accept the truth.’

  ‘Perhaps the old lady made a mistake?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘There is a decent-sized loft. Maybe your father and his brother slept up there. We use it to store old books and clothes.’ Olga pointed to a trap door.

  ‘May I see it?’ Rebecca assumed the Winklemans had stored all their friends’ works of art in the loft. She thought back to the paintings; her father had once said there were over thirty that the Winklemans had either bought from or hidden for fellow Jews. Some of the company’s greatest works, including two Veroneses, four Degas, three Corots, a Fragonard, a Tiepolo sketch and two Rembrandts came to them this way.

  ‘If you take that pole,’ Olga pointed to the corner, ‘you can pull down the hatch and a ladder appears automatically. It’s a bit stiff.’

  Rebecca climbed carefully up into the loft. With each step her heart felt heavier. The stairs were just wide enough for her slim frame; she could not imagine pulling a large Renaissance masterpiece up the rickety treads. Reaching the top, she found a tiny cupboard room, measuring about eight foot by five, full of the new family’s belongings. Boxes and bags were neatly stacked. It would have been impossible to manoeuvre the large paintings up the retractable ladder and into this box room. Even if they took the pictures off their stretchers and out of their frames, the larger works would not have made the tight corner.

  Rebecca came down the ladder slowly.

  ‘There’s not much to see,’ Olga said apologetically, ‘it’s our first flat.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Rebecca asked, hoping that Olga had met Marty.

  ‘Only six months – the last people left some years back – it’s been empty for a while.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Rebecca said, trying to shake off the feeling of foreboding.

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p; ‘Go and see the old lady in 411 – she’s very old and lonely. She has photographs from that time – there are pictures of your family.’

  Half an hour later, Rebecca was sitting in an even smaller apartment with ninety-six-year-old Frau Danica Goldberg.

  ‘Of course I remember your family,’ she said. ‘We played together, but,’ she leaned over and looked at Rebecca hard, ‘they all died in the camps, except for the daughter Johanna. Johanna died afterwards when the Allies, trying to be kind, overfed the survivors: her stomach split.’

  Rebecca shivered; Danica put her hand on the younger woman’s arm.

  ‘It was insensitive of me to break the news in that way. I am sorry,’ she said.

  Rebecca looked out of the window. If only she was shaking for that reason alone.

  The two women sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘There was man who came here asking these same questions. I have his card somewhere.’ Heaving herself up, Danica went to the brown side table and, opening it, felt inside. Moments later she produced a business card and held it out to Rebecca.

  ‘Here it is.’

  It had Marty’s name and in his inimitable wild handwriting, his mobile number. Rebecca felt tears prickling the back of her eyes.

  ‘My brother,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘I knew you must be related somehow. I was so happy to meet him.’ Danica said, smiling broadly. ‘I thought the whole Winkleman family died, but no. I asked him to ask my old friend Memling to visit. But he has not as yet.’

  Rebecca’s head spun. Why hadn’t Marty told her about this visit? Was it a clue to his sudden death? Tiny beads of sweat broke to the surface of her neck and temples. Her heart clattered. No, she told herself, it was an accident. The coroner recorded ‘death by misadventure’. Suddenly she was not so sure.

  Rebecca looked at the floor – the patterned carpet swam in her tear-filled eyes. Danica patted her on the arm.

  ‘The man that came was dark. You are so fair.’ Danica spoke clearly, if softly. Age had hardly diminished the power of her voice or, it seemed, her memory.

  ‘Marty takes after my mother – she was Italian – a Jewess from Verona,’ she said remembering that people often assumed she and her brother were not related.

  ‘And you look like your father?’ Danica asked.

  ‘Uncannily, or so I am told,’ she said. ‘When did Marty come?’ Her brother had died seven years and two months ago.

  ‘Eight . . . or was it seven years ago? He asked to see photographs. Would you like to see them?’

  Rebecca nodded: all she could think about was Marty. Marty sitting where she was sitting; Marty looking at the photographs; Marty falling over the railings of the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry on New Year’s Day. Could he have done it on purpose? The circumstances surrounding his departure from London without luggage or a telephone call to say goodbye had always bewildered Rebecca. There had been no note, no explanation. For the first time since news of his death came through, Rebecca wondered about the cause.

  Very slowly, Danica got up again and, going to a sideboard, brought out an old photograph album. ‘My father was a studio photographer. He had his own shop in Mitte and took beautiful formal portraits. The Nazis torched his shop and all those records. A whole generation went up in flames. Wiped out. They wanted to exterminate memories as well as lives. He also had a little Brownie, used to take pictures of the families here in Friedrichstadt. The Jewish Museum wants my book – they can have it when I die. But until then this is the only friend I have left.’

  ‘Have you got children and grandchildren?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I could never bring children into this world. I could not bear for others to experience it.’

  Rebecca went to sit beside Danica on the small couch. The lady smelled of stale urine, old cabbage and talcum powder. Rebecca wanted to run away but forced herself to stay.

  The exploration of the album took a long time. Danica needed to tell the history of every now long-deceased person. After each description she added, ‘May they rest in peace.’

  As she spoke, Rebecca tried to imagine Marty sitting where she was. At over six foot tall, Marty would hardly have fitted on to the sofa. A man who hated to sit still for more than a few seconds, Marty would surely have taken the book from her hands and flicked impatiently through the pages. Rebecca felt a deep twisting ache as she thought about her brother – his ebullience, open-hearted generosity and childlike enthusiasm won him many admirers but no one, Rebecca imagined, could have loved him as she had.

  ‘Here are all the children from the fourth floor,’ said the old lady, tilting the book so that Rebecca could get a proper look. She spotted the young Memling immediately – he must have been about eight and looked just like her daughter Grace. It was the first time she had seen a photograph of her father as a child. Even in a black-and-white photograph, Rebecca recognised the broad open face, pale blue eyes and shock of blond hair.

  ‘That’s him,’ she said to the lady.

  ‘That’s what your brother said too,’ Danica said thoughtfully. ‘That’s not a Winkleman; that is Heinrich, the youngest member of the Fuchs family from 407. They were the caretakers, the only non-Jews in the building. Fritz Fuchs and his wife, I forget her name, had fallen on hard times and had no choice but to live here – he hated it. He hated us. He had lost his foot in the First World War and had been unable to find work. He was the moaning, complaining type who needed a scapegoat. Sometimes it was the Jews, most of the time it was little Heinrich. That poor child. If little Heinrich got something wrong at school or behaved badly, he was beaten and put out on the street with no clothes on.’

  Rebecca took a closer look at the little blond boy – had she made a mistake? ‘Which ones are the Winklemans?’ she asked.

  ‘They are so easy to spot,’ Danica laughed, pointing to two tiny girls and two even smaller boys, all with curly hair and shining dark eyes. ‘We used to joke that it was good they were so tiny – how else would they have fitted in that apartment?’

  Rebecca was starting to feel overcome by the lady’s smell; the room’s walls were closing in around her.

  ‘I need to get some air,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a balcony out there,’ Danica said, nodding to the window. ‘You get a view, of sorts. I will make some tea.’

  Stepping on to the balcony, Rebecca gulped down chilly gusts of air and tried to steady her feelings. Had Marty burst out on to the balcony when he saw the photograph? Had his heart beaten as uncontrollably? Hot tears coursed unchecked down her cheeks – how dare Marty not tell her about this discovery? If only he was here now. Marty, who knew the answer to everything; Marty, who had always made things bearable. Wiping her tears away half-heartedly, Rebecca tried to dampen down her sense of panic and foreboding. Entering the building, she had held certain cast-iron beliefs re-enforced by her father at every major event. Again and again he had told her that family loyalty was the most important thing in the world. Family was all they had, all that was worth protecting.

  The Holocaust had hovered over the family for two generations: even Grace spoke of her grandfather’s terrible ‘wound’. Standing on the balcony looking down into a tiny muddy park, Rebecca went over what she knew of Memling’s history again. The young boy and his family forced into a train’s carriage, a long suffocating journey and the arrival at Auschwitz. His grandmother, almost blind, had stumbled on the station platform and was beaten to death in front of her family. His mother had given up her meagre rations so that her sons and daughters could eat a tiny bit more, starving to death in front of their eyes. His friends disappearing, one by one; his father taken away without explanation. Rebecca and Marty had stitched these details together over the years. On their father’s arm was the tell-tale tattoo, a string of random numbers the ultimate symbol of suffering. They had seen it only a few times and felt the weight and responsibility of survival, knowing they must live life for those who did not make it and make the most of every single op
portunity on behalf of those who perished.

  Memling taught his children to be discreet, secretive, distant, removed – never trust anyone, assume that another attack could happen at any moment. Their whole way of life was predicated on their father being a Jew and narrowly escaping death in a concentration camp. What am I supposed to do now? Rebecca thought. What if my father is not the Holocaust survivor Memling Winkleman but a German called Heinrich Fuchs? Suppose, she felt panic rising, he was a member of the Nazi Party?

  While she and Marty had not been brought up in the Orthodox tradition, being Jewish was a fundamental part of their identity, an inescapable fact. Being Jewish was akin to having an ever-present shadow that cast different shapes according to given situations. It was something she neither celebrated nor rejected but it was there, feeding her sense of identity and belonging. She was a child of Europe, one of a long line of German-Jewish teachers who had migrated centuries earlier from the Holy Lands to settle in Europe. The extermination of every member of her father’s family in the Holocaust, while never discussed, played out in most areas of her life. The gaping absence of relations, of customs, of graveyards or mementos, created a black hole in her history, as significant as a highly peopled extended family. Now suddenly she was to give this up, to rethink her past and, worse still, to become allied to the very oppressor that had defined her. How could she hate the enemy of her father when she was the spawn of the enemy? Had her mother known? Why would anyone, how could anyone, create and then inhabit such an appalling lie?

  Rebecca’s body shook violently and she held on to the railings for support. Breathing deeply, she tried to compose herself by concentrating on the view opposite, the landscape of central Berlin on a cold February evening; the people returning from work, children playing in the tiny park. Their lives were continuing while her own had been shattered by a photograph.