“Like the poem I recited last night to you,” Joe said. “By Rilke,” he told his father. “What I think it says is this: that there are three entities in a marriage: me, you, and us. A person can’t disappear into another person.”
“Nonsense,” his mother said. “Pure nonsense. Of course the wife must convert. To do anything else would be unnatural. Your children wouldn’t even be Jewish! What will our friends say? What will I tell Rabbi Goldstein?”
“But you see,” I tried to explain, not touching the “children” idea with a ten-foot pole, forthatsecret, I intended to keep, “I’m exactly as Catholic as Joe is Jewish. It’s a … a most important part of me, and my … my …” How I wished for the correct words!
“Heritage?” Joe asked.
“Yes. My heritage. Nobody else was Catholic, you see, but we were, and there was the church beside us, there in Dresden, and … and everything. My grandfather was—” I broke off.
“Your grandfather was what?” Mr. Stark said. “What’s all this about servants, and dungeons? Whoareyou? Your passport says ‘Daisy Glucksburg.’ Who is Marguerite, and what are you trying to pass yourself off as?”
I stared at him, at a loss for words. That doesn’t happen to me often. It doesn’t happen to meever.
Joe said, “She’s not trying to pass herself off as anything.” His voice was still level, but it was absolutely firm.
“I’m going to have to explain,” I told him.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you are.”
“This is beyond ridiculous,” Mrs. Stark burst out. “I have no idea anymore what’s true and what isn’t, but the entire thing sounds like a fairy tale. I told you, Joe, the minute you told us you’d married her—marriedher, so now it’s too late!—that you knew nothing about this girl. She could be anybody! Her father hid Jews, and hated the Nazis? What a story! She arrives practically in rags, and within a day, she’s outfitted like a princess? She doesn’t want to spend your money, yet the moment she’s here, she spends so much of it? Open your eyes!”
Joe’s hand was shaking now, or maybe it was mine. He said, “She’s outfitted like a princess because sheisa princess. And she didn’t spend my money. She spent her own.”
Oh, the drama! But also, what a relief that Joe had told them about the clothes! About everything, really, but most especially the clothes, for my good intentions had been wavering with every hard look from Mrs. Stark at my lovely suit, and I wasn’t sure how long I could have kept from bursting out with the truth.
“A princess,” Mr. Stark said flatly when I’d explained. “A Catholic princess, when all of Saxony is Lutheran? I did my research as soon as Joe told me. You should have said you were from Bavaria if you wanted us to believe you’re royal.”
“Now, wait just a minute, Dad,” Joe said. His color was up, and his eyes were harder than I’d ever seen them.
I didn’t let him continue. Why should he fight this battle for me? “Yes,” I said coldly. “A Catholic princess. You may wish to research Augustus the Strong, who became a Catholic in 1697 so he could become King of Poland as well as Saxony. The Saxon populace is Lutheran. The monarch is Catholic. My father and mother were Catholic, and so am I.”
No help for it. I opened the train case and took out the two photos within. They were creased, for I’d carried them a long time out of their frames. I held out the first one. “My grandparents, of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. This was taken on their wedding day.” The uniform, the moustache, the ramrod-straight posture, the sash across his chest, the many extravagant military decorations. And my grandmother in her gown of figured silk, her long white gloves, her air of assurance even in her youth. The emerald parure, too, with the tiara gleaming in her dark hair like acrown. Even a black-and-white photo couldn’t dim the grandeur.
“These could be anybody,” Mr. Stark said. “A photo proves nothing.”
“Do you want me to cut myself off?” Joe asked. “Is that what you’re going for here?”
“Yes,” his father said. “That’s the thought.”
Joe stared at him, and his parents stared back, all of their chests rising and falling. I wasn’t the only one with a temper, it seemed, for Joe had discovered his. I thought that, then realized what they’d said. “I don’t know the precise meaning of this,” I said, “to ‘cut oneself off.’ But I think Joe meant from you, not from me.”
“Fromus?”His mother looked like she couldn’t believe it.
Joe would have spoken, but I said, “Wait. Please. It’s a terrible thing to lose one’s parents. It’s the last thing I want for you.”
“I’m sure,” Mrs. Stark said. “We’re the golden geese. Oh, what have I done to deserve this?” She didn’t say, ‘Oy, vey!’but she may have wanted to. Joe’s parents seemed as carefully assimilated as Dr. Becker, other than the pork. Another thing I wasn’t going to say, for I suspected it wouldn’t be well received, and what did I know about being Jewish in America?
I didn’t answer any of it, in fact. Instead, I held out the second photo. “My parents.”
This time, Mr. Stark took the photo from me, and both of them stared at it, horror-struck. Not the first time I’d seen that look on a person’s face; I’d watched it happen all my life. “My father was burned,” I said, “in the Great War. This is why Dr. Becker was our physician, you see; he was a very great specialist in the treatment of burns. My father was the Crown Prince until the title was ended, and of course never crowned King as my grandfather had been, but kingship cannot soeasily be put away. His face, his arm, his chest were ruined. The man was not.”
“Again,” Mr. Stark said, “it’s a picture.” He sounded less sure of himself, though. “But your mother looks—the woman looks?—”
“The Queen,” I said. “Before her marriage, Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. My mother. Yes, I’m like her in face and figure, though she was much lovelier, and had a … a beautiful fragility, and a light about her that people felt when she entered a room. Whereas I, as you can perhaps tell, favor my father in temperament.”
Mr. Stark said, “It’s compelling, but it’s not conclusive.”
“Why would she make it up?” Joe said. “What would be the point? She told you, it meant the Russians would mistreat her if they found her, and so would the Gestapo, because her father was an enemy of the regime. She never told anyone in Nuremberg, and Dr. Becker kept her secret, but he’d known her since she was a baby. I was able to talk with him again on the day he came up from the DP camp to give her a character reference so we could get permission to marry. Unless he’s a fraud, too—and he’s not; he’s a doctor, all right, and a Jew, and he and his kids were like scarecrows when I met them—she’s exactly who she says she is.”
