Echoes (18 page)

“All my letters came back,” Beata said as she blew her nose.

“I never knew you'd written. Papa must have returned them without showing them to me.”

“I knew that,” Beata said sadly, remembering her father's handwriting returning them to her. “The ones I wrote to Brigitte came back too. I saw her on the street once, and she wouldn't talk to me. And Ulm and Horst.”

“We sat shiva for you,” her mother said sadly. It had been the worst day of her life. “He won't allow us to even speak of you. And I think Brigitte is afraid to upset me, so she doesn't say anything.”

“Is she happy?”

Her mother shook her head. “She's divorced. She wants to marry someone else. Papa doesn't approve. Are your children Jewish?” her mother asked hopefully, and Beata shook her head.

“No, they're not.” She didn't tell her mother she had converted when she married Antoine. Maybe hearing that would be too much for her. This was enough. And then her mother surprised her with what she said next. She assumed correctly that Beata had converted. She had somehow thought she would, once she married Antoine.

“Maybe it's better that way, with the way things are these days. The Nazis are doing terrible things. Papa says they'll never do it to us. But you never know. Don't tell anyone you were Jewish. It would take them a long time to find the records. If you're a Christian now, stay that way, Beata. You'll be safer that way.” It was a powerful thing for her mother to say. And then she looked at her daughter with worried eyes. “What did you tell the children about me?”

“That I love you, Papa didn't want me to marry Antoine because he was French, and we were at war. I said his family felt the same way about me. The girls were shocked, but I think they understood.” As best one could. It was a big bite, and tough to swallow, but Beata thought they had.

“Did his family ever see you?” Beata shook her head. “How did he die?”

“A riding accident. His father had died two weeks before.” And then she smiled. “I'm a countess now.” Her mother smiled, too.

“I'm impressed,” she teased, with a sparkle in her eye. And with that, the girls came home, and walked cautiously into the room. They looked at the woman they knew was their grandmother, and saw the smile that lit up their mother's face. She introduced Amadea to her first, and then Daphne, as her mother sat looking at them with tears rolling down her cheeks, and she held out both hands to them. “Please forgive me for how foolish I have been. I'm so happy to meet you both. I'm so proud of both of you. You're so beautiful,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief, as the girls slowly approached. Daphne thought she looked nice. And Amadea wanted to ask her questions about why she had let her husband be so mean to their mother, but she didn't dare. She thought she looked like a good person. She cried a lot, and their mother did, too. And as they all drank tea together, and talked, they realized that she reminded them a lot of their mother. She even sounded like her. They had a lovely time together, and finally Monika stood up, as Daphne looked at her with interest.

“What are we supposed to call you?” It was a sensible question for an eight-year-old. Amadea had wondered about it too.

“Would Oma be all right?” Monika asked hesitantly, glancing first at them and then Beata. She hadn't earned it, but it was an endearing term for grandmother. “I'd be honored if you'd call me that.” Both girls nodded, she hugged them both before she left, and then held Beata in her arms. They couldn't get enough of each other.

“Will you come again?” Beata asked softly as she stood in the doorway.

“Of course,” her mother answered. “Whenever you like. I'll call you in a few days,” she promised, and Beata knew she would. She had always kept her promises, and Beata sensed that she still would.

“Thank you, Mama,” Beata said, and hugged her one last time.

“I love you, Beata,” her mother whispered, kissed her cheek, and finally left. It had been an extraordinary afternoon, for all of them.

After her grandmother left, Amadea came to find her mother. Beata was sitting alone in the living room, lost in thought.

“Mama?” Beata looked up with a smile.

“Yes, sweetheart. What did you think?”

“I think it's sad that she was gone for so long. You can see that she loves you a lot.”

“I love her too. I'm just glad she came back, and that she got to meet you.”

“I hate your father for what he did to you,” Amadea said in an icy voice, and her mother nodded. She didn't disagree with her, but she didn't hate him. She never had, although her father had caused her untold grief, as he had her mother. His decision to banish her had taken a huge toll on them all, and probably him too, although he would never admit it. But he and Beata had always been close. It had been a huge blow to him when she left. It was the ultimate betrayal, in his eyes. Beata had never expected her banishment to last the rest of their lives. But even if she'd known it before, she would still have married Antoine.

“Don't hate anyone,” Beata said quietly. “It's too much work. And it only poisons you. I learned that a long time ago.” Amadea nodded, as she listened to her. She suspected what her mother had just said was true. But she still thought her mother was a remarkable person for not hating her father. Amadea was sure that in her shoes, she would.

Amadea sat down on the couch where her grandmother had been, and hugged her mother close, just as Beata had hugged her mother, and was so grateful to have been able to do so after all these years.

“I love you, Mama,” Amadea whispered, just as Beata had. It was an endless chain of echoes and bonds that went on and on. And in the end, in spite of distance and time, and unspeakable differences, it was an unbreakable bond. Her mother had proven that to her that afternoon.

9

F
OR THE NEXT TWO YEARS
, B
EATA'S MOTHER CAME TO VISIT
them once a week. It became a tradition and a ritual that Beata came to count on, and for each of them, a precious gift. Beata and Monika got to know each other in ways they never had when she was young. She was a grown woman and a mother now, with children of her own, and both of them had suffered inordinately and grown wiser with time. Monika had even approached Jacob once and tried to get him to relent about their daughter—she said she had seen her on the street with two young girls—and his eyes were instantly fierce as he looked at her.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Monika. Our daughter died in 1916.” The subject was closed. He was made of stone. She never dared to bring it up again but contented herself with their visits, as did Beata. She no longer hoped to see the others again. Having her mother back in her life was enough. She was grateful for that.

Her mother brought her photographs. Brigitte was still beautiful, and she was living at home again, with her children. Their mother was worried about her, said she went to too many parties, stayed in bed all day and drank too much, and she wasn't interested in her children. All she wanted was another husband, but most of the men she went out with were married to someone else. Horst and Ulm were both doing well, although one of Ulm's children was frail and often sick, and Monika worried about her. She had a problem with her heart. And during the years of their visits, she developed a deep attachment to Beata's girls. Amadea thought her grandmother was interesting and intelligent, but she never quite forgave her for allowing Jacob to banish their mother. She thought it was cruel, and hung back from her grandmother as a result. But Daphne was young enough to fall unreservedly in love with her. She loved having a grandmother as well as a mother and sister. She didn't remember her father, and hers was an entirely female world. As was Beata's. She had never looked at another man since Antoine died, although she was still beautiful. She said that the memories of the years she'd spent with him were enough to last her a lifetime, and she wanted no one else. In 1935, two years after the visits with her mother began, she turned forty and her mother sixty-five. They were a great comfort to each other. The world had become a frightening place, although it had not touched them. Yet.

Amadea often spoke with outrage over the growing anti-Semitism in Germany. Jews had been banned from the German Labor Front, and were no longer allowed to have health insurance. They could no longer obtain law degrees, and had been banned from the military. It was a sign of things to come. Beata feared it would get worse before it would get better. Even actors and performers had to join special unions, and were rarely given work. The signs of the times were increasingly frightening.

Monika spoke to Beata about it quietly one afternoon when they were alone, before the girls got home from school. She was worried about Beata's papers, and even the children's. Even though she knew that Beata was now Catholic and had been for nineteen years, she had nonetheless been born Jewish and the girls were half Jewish. She was afraid it could make trouble for them if things got worse. Poorer Jews, and those without power and connections, had been shipped off to work camps for the past two years. Although Jacob insisted it could never happen to them. Those being sent away were “marginals,” or so the Nazis claimed. Convicts, criminals, loiterers, Gypsies, unemployed, troublemakers, Communists, radicals, and people who couldn't support themselves. But now and then people they knew remotely were caught up in it. Monika had a cleaning woman whose brother had been sent to the camp at Dachau, and subsequently her entire family was sent away, but admittedly her brother was a political activist, who had printed leaflets against the Nazis, so he had brought it on himself and his family. But still, Monika was deeply concerned. Little by little, Jews were being squeezed out of productive society, singled out, and hampered at every turn. If things got worse, she didn't want anything to happen to Beata and the girls. And Beata had thought of it herself. They had no one to protect them and, if trouble happened, nowhere to turn.

“I don't think they'll cause problems for people like us, Mama,” Beata said quietly. Monika always worried about how thin she was too. She had always been slight, but in recent years she was wraithlike, and without makeup her face was startlingly pale. She had worn black and no other color since Antoine's death. And overnight, it had turned her into a seemingly much older woman. She had closed her doors to the world, and all she had in her life now was her children. And at last, her mother once again.

“What about the children's papers?” Monika asked with concern.

“They don't really have any. All they have are student cards with ‘Vallerand’ on them, they were born Catholic. I'm Catholic. Our parish knows us well. I don't think it ever occurs to anyone that I wasn't born Catholic. And since we came here from Switzerland, I think some people think we're Swiss. Even my marriage certificate to Antoine shows that we were both Catholic when we married. My passport expired years ago, and the girls never had any. Amadea was a baby when we came back, and she came in on mine. No one's going to pay any attention to a widow with two daughters with a noble French name. I'm listed everywhere as the Comtesse de Vallerand. I think we're safe, as long as we don't draw attention to ourselves. I worry more about the rest of you.”

Everyone in Cologne knew the Wittgensteins and that they were Jewish. The fact that they had banished Beata two decades before and listed her as dead would protect her in a way, and her mother was grateful for that now. The rest of the family was far more visible, which was both good and bad. They assumed that the Nazis were not going to single out a family as respectable as theirs to persecute. As many were, they were convinced that it was the little people, the loose ends of society that they were after, as Jacob said. But anti-Semitism had certainly become the order of the day, and both her sons admitted that they were concerned. Both Horst and Ulm worked at the bank with Jacob, who was thinking of retiring. He was seventy years old. In the photographs Beata now saw of him, he looked distinguished but ancient. She worried that in disappointing him, she had contributed to his looking so old. Unlike her mother, he looked older than his years. Amadea refused to even look at the photographs of him. And Daphne said he looked scary. Their Oma wasn't.

She always brought them little presents, which delighted them. Over time, she had given Beata a few small pieces of her jewelry. She couldn't give her anything important, for fear that Jacob would notice. She told him she had lost the small things, and he chided her for being careless. But he was often forgetful now, too, so he didn't scold her too much. They were both getting old.

The only real concern Beata had about their Jewish origins was Amadea's desire to go to university. She was desperate to study philosophy and psychology, and literature, as her mother had wanted to do before her, and wasn't allowed to by her father. Now it was the Nazis keeping Amadea from it. Beata knew that if Amadea tried to go to university, they would discover she was half Jewish. The risk was too great. She would have to show not only her birth certificate, which was benign and showed both her parents to be Catholic at the time of her birth in Switzerland, but she would have to show papers as to her parents' racial origins. Antoine was no problem, but that was the only instance in which Beata's birth as a Jew was likely to surface, and Beata couldn't let that happen. She never explained it to Amadea, but Beata was adamant that she didn't want her going to university. It was too dangerous for them all, and the only way in which Beata could imagine their being put at risk. Even as a half-Jew, Amadea would be in serious trouble, as Beata had discussed with her mother. So Beata was intransigent about it. She told Amadea that in troubled times, a university was not the place to be, particularly for a woman. It was full of radicals and Communists and all the people who were getting into trouble with the Nazis, and being sent to work camps. She could even be caught in a riot, and her mother refused to let that happen.

“That's ridiculous, Mama. We're not Communists. I just want to study. No one's going to send me to a work camp.” She couldn't believe her mother was being so stupid. And to her own ears, Beata sounded like the echo of her father.