The Keeper of the Walls Page 25

  Old Herr Steiner had warned her against sending the children to school. Instead, he invited a gifted young man he knew to come to the house to tutor Nicky and Kira. In just a few months, they had both learned German. Lily’s days were occupied with walks in the Prater, with matinee concerts with Maryse and Mina, and with trips to the local library to familiarize herself with German literature. She’d studied the language for a few years with the sisters, but now learned it with a diligence that won her the praise of Maryse’s father-in-law. She had begun to read some Goethe, the dictionary by her side.

  She’d wanted to find students, to help pay for the maintenance of her apartment and maid, and to take care of the tutor, young Herr Krapalik. But Wolf led her to understand that both he and his father would be insulted. She was their guest. She was much more: she was a part of their family. Overwhelmed, she wept. But she wrote to her mother, asking her to find out if there was a way to unlock some of the money from her dowry. Misha was sending her funds for the children: she had sent him back the first two checks for herself, and he had understood, and not continued to include them in the mailings.

  Jacques Walter answered her that Brasilov Enterprises was going through a difficult period, and that Misha had been forced to liquidate the apartment in the Rue Molitor, and to let the servants go. He wrote that her dowry was somehow tied into Brasilov Enterprises, and that, because of this, he and her mother preferred to take care of her themselves. After that, every month, he sent her a thousand francs. He was a fine man, and never asked why she had left her husband so suddenly. He and Claire wrote regularly, light, pleasant letters about their activities, the people they saw, the small trips they took. They were delicate enough never to mention Misha after that first reply from Jacques concerning her dowry.

  With the money from her parents, and the checks from her husband, she was able to start paying the tutor herself, as well as the maid. But when the Steiner servants went out to market, they made it a habit to buy for all the inhabitants of 2, Schwindgasse. She and the children lived in gracious luxury, all their needs met. It was almost as if she’d gone to sleep, and awakened in a world of good fairies who, by magic, had removed all the stress and heartache and replaced them with quiet, gentle kindness.

  Still, it wasn’t the same. Maryse’s life was different from her own, because Maryse was happily married. In late afternoon, she always rushed off to get dressed for Wolf, reappearing fresh and inviting. When he came home, Lily would feel a pinch of the heart: the two would hug each other, Wolf lifting his wife into a pirouette of joy, as if he’d been gone a month and not just a day. His office lay on the other side of the enormous house, but Maryse had always respected the mental barrier that separated her husband’s workplace from the rest of the apartments. Wolf received his patients through an entrance on the side of the house, and had a nurse and secretary whose rooms lay on the top floor of the building. But these women were seldom seen and never heard. When Wolf came home, he wanted to breathe freely, to let the troubled souls whom he was helping slide off his own, healthy one, for the evening. Then, in the morning, he would feel renewed by Maryse’s love, and reenergized by Nanni’s adoration and baby prattlings. Lily couldn’t help but feel that she was an intruder in what otherwise constituted an intimate family setting; and sometimes, when she went to bed alone, in her own apartment, she yearned for a similar existence, with a man’s loving caress and strong shoulder to lean on.

  Lily hadn’t wanted to tell Maryse too much. Her friend had always been outspoken, critical of any injustice. Especially, Maryse was loyal; if anybody hurt someone close to her, she responded with virulence against the one responsible. Lily was a little afraid that if she knew the truth, Maryse would never stop haranguing her about Misha’s perfidy and unforgivable sins. Lily knew that this was one subject she couldn’t bear to discuss. Yet she felt a need to speak about her pain. One day, she’d made an appointment with Wolf under an assumed name; and when she’d been the one to be ushered into the suite, Wolf had been surprised, but had immediately understood. She’d lain down on the couch and closed her eyes, and related everything that had happened over the last few years: what Claire had unveiled; the abortion; and finally, the degrading shame of learning that she had not been enough woman for her husband, and that another woman was carrying his child.

  Wolf hadn’t condemned Misha. He’d laced his fingers together and said: “It wasn’t that you were lacking, Lily; it was he who lacked confidence. Men who feel the constant need to pursue other women, even when they are very happy with their wives, are insecure and want reaffirmation. This fits in with Misha’s anti-Semitism. People who focus their animosities on a group outside their own lives, are simply afraid to face their own inadequacies. If a businessman can blame the slump on the Jews, it’s because this way, he won’t have to examine his own mistakes in helping to bring about economic disaster.”

  She opened her eyes and asked, in a very small voice: “But I was right to leave, wasn’t I?”

  Wolf had smiled. “You were right to obey the signals of your own conscience. You were true to your values.”

  “But ... is that good?”

  “Lily,” he had declared, “in life there is no good and no evil. There is weak and strong, fair and unfair. We are each of us a finely tuned instrument whose sounds cannot be measured in general terms. You are not the soft young girl I met years ago. There’s a resiliency in you that shows how healthy you are, in spite of all the injustice to which you’ve been subjected. You’re going to be all right, sweetheart. But it’s not going to be easy.”

  She’d felt the tears running onto her cheeks, and had whispered: “In a strange way, I miss him. At least I miss the life we had.”

  “You miss what you thought you had. You miss what you perceive Maryse and I to have. Let’s be frank, Lily: you miss a man’s arms around you, and you have an unfulfilled physical need.”

  “But he’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”

  “Maybe that’s why, when your needs cry out, you tag them with his name. You have to realize that divorce isn’t the black spot it used to be, nowadays. There are other, better-adjusted men who could make you happier—but for this, you have to accept your own actions, and not condemn yourself for leaving Misha.”

  It was then that Lily had gone to a lawyer, in Vienna, to instigate divorce proceedings. She’d felt it would be better to finish with this part as quickly as possible; that any lingering would simply cause the pain to remain that much more poignant.

  The Steiners, after her visit to Wolf’s office, began to make it a point to include her and the children in their Friday-night ritual. The first time, Wolf simply sent their maid to her apartment, to invite her to join them for the Sabbath meal. She’d understood. He wanted to continue what Rabbi Weill had begun. And so, her heart filled with gratitude, she went. Kira had asked about the beautiful candles, and Nicky had wanted to know about the language of the prayers. Wolf had said: “Do you want to learn it? It’s called Hebrew, and it has a special alphabet.”

  “When I grow up, I want to speak twenty languages. I already know three: French, Russian, and German. Will you teach me Hebrew, Uncle Wolf?”

  To Lily’s amazement, the psychiatrist had reached over to caress Nicky’s cheek, and, in the softest voice, had answered that it would be his pleasure. And now, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Wolf finished his work, he always stopped off for two hours at Lily’s apartment, where he would closet himself with the boy and teach him about this old biblical language, which rang with the wisdom and pain of thousands of years, and of a noble people who had wandered through the earth in search of a home.

  In November, Lily had received a letter from Claire. Her mother was writing to announce Claude’s marriage. Lily was flabbergasted. She was sitting in Maryse’s parlor when Kira had walked in with the mail. “My brother’s gotten married,” she said.

  “To whom?”

  “I don’t know! Let me read the rest of the letter.”
She sat forward and proceeded aloud:

  You will be as surprised as we were by the news.

  I had always hoped for a steady young woman, someone with softness and charm, to bring out the tenderness that I feel exists in Claude’s heart, though he seldom expresses it. This girl isn’t a “girl,” actually; she’s a mature woman, a number of years older than Claude; and she’s streetwise. I’m not sure yet if I like her, for we were confronted with a fait accompli: they had just returned from getting married in the country, just like that!

  I won’t tell you that she’s a lady, but I will say that she’s sophisticated. A bit hard, but then, I imagine life hasn’t been very good to her until this point. She isn’t pretty, but she is most fashionable. In fact, she’s had a job in fashion for over ten years. She’s worked . . .

  Lily had turned an awful shade of ghastly white, and the letter had shaken in her fingers. Maryse, openmouthed, had seized the vellum paper and taken up where Lily had left off:

  She’s worked for the Maison Poiret, as a model. We’ll send you photographs when they come, and you’ll be able to see for yourself what she looks like: rather exotic, I believe. Claude seems to adore her, and after all, that’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it?

  Her name’s Henriette, and there’s another piece of news you will deduce from the photograph. The new Madame Bruisson is well on the way to having a baby! Life has a number of surprises in store for all of us. I’d never thought Claude could ever have fallen in love as hard as he seems to. She isn’t my dream for a daughter-in-law, especially given the differences in background between them—and her age. But if Claude has chosen her, I shall welcome her with a full heart, and expect that you will also.

  Maryse sat staring at Lily. “Come on,” she said. “An elopement is an elopement. Old Claude’s done it after all—who’d have expected it? But it’s no reason to look as if you’d seen a ghost!”

  Lily had jumped up and run from the room, leaving a bewildered Maryse still holding Claire’s letter. Later, when Wolf had come home, she’d told him what had happened, and shown it to him. He hadn’t hesitated for a moment. “I’ll be right back,” he’d murmured. “I have to go find Lily.”

  He’d found her in her room, immobile, staring at the wall. When she saw who it was, she’d started to speak. “She’s passing Misha’s child off as my brother’s,” she’d said, her voice dull and thick.

  Wolf sat down on her bed, and took her hand. “Misha never wanted to marry this woman,” he remarked. “Probably, when she came to him after you’d left, he sent her packing. I suppose your brother fell in love with her and was willing to accept the child as his own.”

  Lily said, tears streaming down her face: “History has a strange way of repeating itself. Now this horrible person is going to be in my family forever, and her child will always remind me of...of everything. . . . Why? Why does it have to be this way, Wolf?”

  He’d put an arm around her, and held her. “You don’t have to live with her, Lily. You and your brother have always led separate lives. Maybe you should tell Claire the truth—and Maryse.”

  She’d shaken free, and said: “No. There’s been enough mess, enough dirt as it is. Let Claude believe what he wants to believe. It isn’t the first time a woman’s lied to him.”

  “At some point, you have to make complete peace with your mother.”

  “I thought I had.”

  They stayed silent after that, listening to strains of Kira’s playing, on the baby grand piano in the sitting room. Then he’d said to her: “At least there seems to be some good news these last few days. In Germany, all is going quietly and smoothly, after the scare of Chancellor von Papen’s resignation. It looks as though Hindenburg’s seeing Hitler, but people are inclined to believe there’s little chance that he’ll give him the cabinet to compose.”

  “And . . . what do you think?”

  “Hitler may not be the warmonger everybody expected. But I, for one, feel somewhat relieved. If all stays quiet in Germany, then nothing will be changed for the rest of us. We’ll just continue our lives and make fun of his toothbrush mustache, and he’ll become a parlor joke.”

  Lily had smiled at him. He was so kind to her and the children; she thought of him as a benevolent brother, much closer to her than Claude had ever been. But she somehow couldn’t relate to the problems in Germany—not on this day that she had learned the disastrous news about Henriette Rivière. She’d felt a little guilty, watching Wolf light a cigar and make herself comfortable in the parlor, afterward. She’d needed him, and he’d given her the support that she’d been craving; but now, what she wanted was peace, not a political discussion.

  And so, kissing him on the cheek, she’d closed the conversation, saying to him: “Maryse said she received a letter from Leon Blum, and that he thought after the recent elections that Hitler is now excluded from all hope of power. So I suppose you must be right, and we can all relax again.”

  Wolf had stayed for a few more minutes, talking of “Uncle Léon,” and of his prediction. The French, he said, were more removed than the Austrians from the German question. And they’d finally signed the nonaggression pact with Russia. They were the strongest country in Europe: their line of defensive forts, designed by Andre Maginot, and the kind treatment that Briand had shown toward Germany, seemed to protect them from fearing the monster with the toothbrush mustache. Wolf finished his cigar, and stood up, sighing. “So if Uncle Leon has made this bold statement, it looks as if we shall remain a safe nation.”

  She’d asked: “You mean, you Austrians?”

  And he had regarded her pointedly, and shaken his head. “No,” he’d responded. “I meant we the Jews.”

  The New Year had come. And then, to Wolf’s profound surprise, Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany on the thirtieth of January. This was how 1933 had started off. In February, the household had been upset, reading in the news about a terrible snowstorm in England, which had buried alive some motorcyclists, while eighty children in a bus had completely disappeared. Mr. Dizengoff, the mayor of Tel Aviv, had come for a short visit, and Lily and the children had been included when the Steiners had feted the dignitary by going to hear Arthur Rubinstein playing Vivaldi. Then, on Tuesday, February 28, while Lily, Mina and Maryse had been making masks for the three children to wear for the feast of Purim, Herr Steiner had walked in on them and announced that the Communists had set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin, and that one hundred thirty of them had been arrested and a plot uncovered. At dinnertime, Wolf had argued with his father that no one knew for sure the Communists were responsible, and that, if a plot existed, he was inclined to suspect Hitler of inventing an excuse to blame his opposition and jail the members.

  On the first of March, Claire cabled that a son had been born to Claude and Henriette, and that he would be baptized Alain Paul Bruisson. Lily sat alone in her room, holding the telegram—thinking of the child she’d wanted for her father, Misha’s last child, which had been taken before its birth. She cried, moaning aloud and hugging her sides. Now Misha had a third child, and it wasn’t hers; and it had been given her father’s name, but she had not been the one to do it for him. Life was so cruel, so mocking. All her dreams, all her plans—all her life!—had come to nothing, while the woman who had shattered all was lying comfortably in her bed, holding the child she, Lily, would have given everything to hold. And the supreme irony was that Lily’s mother, and Lily’s stepfather, were probably at her side, making cooing noises to a baby that wasn’t their grandchild, but which had been granted the right to live, and to live within Lily’s own family—when it, and its mother, were the ones responsible for her pain and her children’s.

  On March 7, one year to the day after Aristide Briand’s death, Maryse and Lily had sat listening to the disturbing news of the suspension of the Austrian parliament; Dolfuss had just assumed semi-dictatorial powers, and all, it seemed, as part of the general wave of Nazi feeling in Germany. Then, on March 10, they’d
read about the possibility of a war in Poland, over the Free City of Danzig, which Hitler wanted. And Herr Steiner had said to the two young Frenchwomen: “If there’s a war, France will have to march.”

  Mina Steiner had asked, in a hushed voice: “Then, Isaac, shall we have to leave Vienna?”

  There had ensued a horrible pause in which Maryse, Lily, and Wolf’s mother had scrutinized the faces of the two men sitting in utmost seriousness on either side of the china bowl of Mehlspeise pudding. Then Wolf had said: “Don’t you think we’re all overdramatizing a bit? Danzig is very far away.”

  And the women had sighed with relief, and Nicky had eaten two helpings of the thick rice pudding, and Kira had consumed five apple fritters with jam.

  The next day, they heard of a devastating earthquake in Hollywood, California. “Where they make moving pictures?” Kira had demanded.

  “In all of Los Angeles, darling,” Wolf had answered.

  “Did many people die?” Nicky had asked.

  “There were twenty-three tremors, and yes, many people were killed. The city suffered much destruction.”

  “Uncle Wolf,” Kira had piped up, “does that mean there won’t be movies anymore? We won’t get to see Spinelly and Noël-Noël?”

  “But those are French actors,” Mina Steiner had replied indulgently.

  And now, in the middle of the month, the world in revolt seemed to have calmed down. Yesterday, for Purim, the children had dressed up, and Kira, in her long brown dress with ribbons of rope in her hair, had disappeared for three hours, returning with a button missing and a dirty face, and had stuck a match in the lock of the front door, which had become jammed. She’d cried angrily, when Lily had spanked her: “But it’s stupid to wear the same costume for eight days! I’m not even Jewish!”

  Lily had stepped back, staring at the vivacious green eyes: Misha’s arrogant eyes, and his cleft chin. She could hear again, like an echo, her answer to her rebellious daughter: “In a sense we are all Jews, Kira. Don’t forget that Jesus Christ was a Jew, and that he was proud of it.”