Authors: Belva Plain
“About her father—”
“I never think of him as her father. Joel was her father,” Jane said stoutly.
“Still, facts are facts. It must have been a blow between the eyes for her.”
“Yes, I remember being stunned myself when I learned about it. I think Eve didn’t want me to know, but Will insisted. I was about twelve when I overheard them talking about me. Will said, ‘If you don’t tell her, somebody else will. Think of how you found
out.’ Eve thought the truth would mar my opinion of her mother.”
“You always say ‘her mother,’ ” David remarked.
“I suppose I do. Eve says, ‘Mom,’ but the name doesn’t come naturally to me. Sometimes I stare at that photograph, and still she doesn’t seem like my own mother, only a lovely woman whom I never knew. And Dad is a loving man whom I remember in fits and starts. He smoked cigars all the time and gave me a Raggedy Ann.”
What odd things you remember, she thought. There was that day when one of Eve’s pupils invited us to her house, and it turned out to be our old house. I can still see the wallpaper.
Peonies
, Eve said, my mother’s favorite. And when I told Lore, Lore said something about how far the family has fallen. Eve didn’t like to hear her talk like that.…
She finished abruptly. “I’m making too much of all this, and I don’t know why.”
“Because I asked you to. You’ve said yourself, Miss Psychology, that it’s bad for people to suppress things.”
“All right, Mr. Curious, what else do you want to know?”
“Nothing specific, although I do admit to being curious. It is an interesting family.”
“Everybody alive is interesting.”
“Of course. But what I mean is, you’ve had such astonishing ups and downs. There’s your grandparents’ awful story, naturally. Then came all the success,
and then that business with your father’s will. To lose all that hard-earned wealth, and the beautiful house! It’s mighty hard to go downhill when you’ve been at the top. I still don’t see why Eve didn’t fight for it.”
“I’ve told you why. I think she was simply too tired to assume another burden. Ever since childhood, she’s been carrying the horrible burden of her father. How would you like to be the son of a rotten Nazi and live with that all your life?”
David grimaced. “I wouldn’t like it at all.”
They were both silent. A woman across the street came out to water the asters and dahlias in her terrace garden, while they watched as the sun broke through the clouds, gilding the day.
David broke the silence. “We have good flying weather, anyway.”
“Hadn’t we better get ready? What time is our flight again?”
“Twelve forty-five. Let’s get started. We can’t miss the connection to Ivy.”
T
HEY
buried Lore in a little churchyard not too many miles away from Ivy. It was still rural there, and Eve hoped it would remain that way.
“Mom always said Lore had a love affair with old trees,” she said.
Her only love affair, Jane thought, in a life of labor and small, lonely pleasures. Nothing more.
It was surprising to see the numbers of people who came to the cemetery. There were nurses and doctors at the hospital from which Lore had long since retired, neighbors in her apartment house, and family friends of the last half century. Emmy Schulman came in a wheelchair to tell everybody how her husband had met Lore at the train back in the fall of 1939.
After the cemetery, there was lunch at Eve and Will’s house. To David, Jane remarked how odd it was that people who seldom ate more than a quick sandwich at noon would eat enormous quantities after a funeral.
“Some wit once wrote that it’s because they are rejoicing over not being dead,” he replied.
“Maybe. I prefer to think it’s because good friends provide food that you can’t resist.”
“Do you know what’s missing?” Eve asked. “Lore’s chocolate cake. I don’t suppose we’ll ever taste anything like it again. What do you think, Jane?”
“I’m afraid you’re right. No matter how I try, mine never tastes like hers, not that I try very often.”
“It will seem so strange not to know that she’s somewhere available when you need advice, or just need to talk.” Eve’s black eyes could shine with tears that she always managed to blink away before they fell. “Whenever there was a crisis, she was there. She was so—so
necessary
. I only hope she knew how much we appreciated and loved her.”
“I’m sure she did. She must have,” Will said.
Jane was thinking what a nice man he was and what an unusually appealing group Eve’s family made in their friendly, simple house with their books, and dogs, and Halloween pumpkins on the doorstep. It was too bad that David’s introduction to them should have come on this day when there was no humor in them, for the young ones were each noted for possessing a wide comic streak. And the fair-bearded father with the scholarly face and outdoor vigor had a delightful wit.
“So you two are off to Europe?” Will asked.
“Yes. The firm has a case that involves some lawyers in Zurich, so we’ll be going there after our pleasure trip. When we come back, you’ll be invited to our little wedding. We’re having a honeymoon in reverse.”
They were all standing in the uncertain silence of people who are weary and who do not know what else to say. The day had worn them down. And David, sensing this, reminded them that, “Unfortunately, it’s never quite over with a funeral. Somebody should go to the apartment and make sure that it’s secure until you’re all ready to clear it out.”
Eve nodded. “I know. Papers and knickknacks. All that’s left of a human being.”
“Jane and I will only be away for ten days. Leave everything to us,” David said kindly. And then he laughed. “Now that you’re about to have a lawyer in
the family, you might as well get a little special treatment. We’ll do it all.”
L
ORE
’
S
rooms were impeccably neat, as might have been expected. The only disorder was the pile of records strewn on the shelf.
“She had been arranging an evening concert for herself,” Jane said. “She always did that. Look, all Wagner. She certainly never expected to die within the next hour or two. I really think she expected to be one of the rarities who live till a hundred and four.”
Lore’s housewifery was superb. Her green plants were well tended, and her books were in alphabetical order by author. The only costly articles were Caroline’s bedroom furniture from the lake house, the sound system, and the heavy silver frame, a gift from Jane, in which was the photograph of last year’s Thanksgiving dinner.
“It’s eerie,” she said now, regarding Lore’s homely, sagging face. “This is my first close experience with death. I was a tiny kid when Dad died, and all I have, as I told you, is my memory of cigars.”
“Hey, look at all this, all these notebooks in the closet. Handwritten, too.”
“Oh, that must be her daily diary from year one. Here. I’ll put it back. Even our grandfather used to tease her about it, Eve said. He claimed that it would
end up being longer than the Bible. David, I know I keep saying it, but I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Well darling, she is, and we had better be going, too. We have to be at the airport again by seven thirty in the morning.”
A
s the little rented Fiat struggled out of Italy up through the Alps, they hoped that the engine would not fail; then, as it inched down deep slides, they hoped that the brakes would not fail. But it was grand adventure. They were moving through a jumble of clouds and slanted shafts of light, of somber evergreens and flamboyant autumn.
“ ‘Ridi, Pagliaccio,’ ”
David sang. “Oh, these heights make me feel operatic.”
“You were operatic all through Italy. I thought I knew you, but I never knew you had a good voice.”
“Flattery will get you a seat in the park.”
“No, it’s true.”
They had laughed their way through Italy. They had hiked its hills, eaten out of a basket on its country roadsides, and been enchanted by its music. It was the morning of their world.
“I won’t need too long in Zurich,” David said. “We’ve done all the preliminaries on the case by phone and fax. You’ll be on your own for two days at the most.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m a walker. I’m not a shopper, but this time will be an exception. There are a few things I want.”
“A cuckoo clock, I’ll bet.”
“Yes, and lederhosen and a hat with a feather for you. I’ll make you wear them, too.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear them at my meetings.”
“Okay, a loud hat and a loud clock with a loud cuckoo. We’ll have fun.”
“We always do.”
It was only when the little car rattled across the border into Switzerland that Jane felt the small shock, the swift return of a hidden, vague unease. Under the peace and sweetness of these days, it had been waiting.
O
N
the second morning in Geneva she remarked, “I was wondering whether you’d like to do a little exploring into the past with me. You remember that my mother spent some time near here before she left for America? She stayed near Geneva with a doctor who’d been in medical school with my grandfather. No one’s ever heard from them since, and I was thinking that I might like to visit them.”
“That’s ancient history. They’re probably dead by now.”
“It’s not so ancient. They’d be old, but not necessarily dead. In fact, Mrs. Schmidt is very much alive, although the doctor isn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“I looked them up. While you were working, I found a medical society and inquired. They were very nice. They even telephoned her for me.”
“It’s not the best idea,” David said seriously. “I should think, given the circumstances then, the peril and the final agony, that the very sight of the place would be insufferable for you.”
She did not answer at once. She was trying to analyze her feelings, which were fearful, sorrowful, and yet resistant to sorrow.
Below the window lay the great lake, flat as a blue platter between a curve of hills. Lore had described everything in detail. The house was old with a timbered overhang, Swiss style. It stood at the end of a long, narrow lawn that ran almost to the edge of the water. There was a narrow walk along the lake. So does a family’s legend stay alive.…
“It’s not far from here,” she said. “Will you go?”
“Jane, I really don’t think it’s wise. It seems like morbid curiosity. It will be bad for you.”
“Perhaps it will be bad,” she said. “Still, it seems to me that if I don’t go, I will regret it once we are home. I will feel that I should have gone.”
It’s a dreadful story, she thought, and I dread
hearing it again. I’ve heard it often enough from Lore, who witnessed it. Yet I need to hear it.
She looked at David. “Will you go?” she repeated.
“All right,” he said gently. “I’ll go. When shall we do it?”
“Tomorrow afternoon? We’ll browse through the Old Town and have lunch first.”
They sped, the next day, over a small road parallel to the lake. On the left lay pastures dotted with grazing cows.
“Cliché,” said Jane. “It’s like a picture book. All clean and tidy.”
“You don’t have to make conversation, Janie. I know how nervous you’re feeling.”
“Yes, I am, awfully. But it would be so much harder for Eve. He was her father, after all, not mine, thank God.”
“Are we almost there?”
“We should be. They told me to watch for a church on the right, about two miles after the village we just went through. It’s a stone church, I think they said. Fifteenth century or older.”
“The more I see of Europe, the more I wish I knew about architecture.”
“I wish I knew more about everything. Oops, we almost went by it. That’s got to be the one. The house is opposite.”
The house, too, was stone. They stepped out of the car into perfect silence, went up a path bordered
in yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, rang the bell, and waited. Around them, the afternoon slept.
After a minute or two the door was opened. A white-haired woman, who might have been ninety or might have been seventy, stood before them. She wore dark blue and a gold locket. Words ran through Jane’s head: Old World. Refined.
She gave their names. “I believe you’re expecting us, Mrs. Schmidt.”
“Yes, I am. Come in, come in.”
They entered a large room that must have faced the lake, for an immediate gleam met their eyes. Here was old, carved furniture, interrupted knitting on a chair, and a row of ruby glass objects on a shelf. Even the swiftest glance around a stranger’s house told fundamental things. Here were tradition and dependability, or so Jane hoped.
And she began, “It’s very kind of you to see us, Mrs. Schmidt.”
“Oh, I’m happy to help if I can. But I have to say I’m puzzled. Some people from the medical society said you want to ask about your relatives. And please excuse my English. I seldom use it and I’m out of practice.”
“I can already hear that it’s a great deal better than my German.”
Who of us is the more tense? Jane wondered. The poor lady is probably expecting to be interrogated about some criminal.
“Come, before we go any further, please sit down. Here, at the window. You are American, I think?”
“Yes, but my mother wasn’t. Did the Zurich people give you any names?”
“To tell you the truth, I forgot to write it down. I didn’t understand anyway what it was all about. I don’t know anybody in America.”
“This was a long time ago, just before the war it was when my mother stayed here with you. Her name was Caroline Hartzinger.”
Jane’s mouth was dry, and in her ears her own voice sounded like the quaver of a child who, not having done her homework, is being called upon in class.
Mrs. Schmidt removed her glasses, stared at Jane, and replaced the glasses. She was trembling.
“I know this must seem very strange to you,” Jane said gently, “I was hoping you might remember her.”
“But you—excuse me, but you are—thirty, maybe?”
“More than thirty. Why do you—”
“Ask? I ask because she went to America, we took her to the train in August 1939, and she died soon after they got to America. How can you be her daughter?”