I opened the case again and pulled out two pouches: one small and one large. I opened the small one, set the velvet pouch on top of the train case in my lap, and laid the two things it had held carefully on the velvet. “These pieces are all I have left of the emerald parure, the set of jewels you see in the photos. The only things I was able to take with me.” The emerald teardrops gleamed bold as love against their diamond settings, and I opened the other pouch and removed that larger object.
I took some time to lay it out on the purple velvet. A graduated fall of emeralds, each set in a halo of diamonds, and atthe bottom, an enormous stone. The green so deep, the diamonds so bright. I touched the center stone with a careful finger, as I’d done in childhood. “My mother wore the parure often, for it had come to her through her own family, and she loved the necklace as I do. Lippert, her maid, would fuss at her when she touched it, saying that her fingerprints would mar the stones. It became a joke between them. There was a tiara, too, the one you see in the photos, but I had to leave it in its hiding-place, as I had no way to conceal it. These pieces, I could hide by sewing them into the sleeves of my coat, the same one I was wearing when I met you. A coat shabby enough that I wouldn’t receive a second look. It belonged to a young man named Franz, who lost his leg on the Russian front and whose great ambition was to become a butler. He was a very good young man, I think. Cheerful in spite of all, you know. Kind, too, and very young; only eighteen when he died. I took the coat from his body, but I hope he would have understood.”
Joe took my hand again, and I finished it. “Dr. Becker wore that coat all through Germany, and I wore his, for it showed where the star had been. It had been sewn onto the coat so long ago, you see, that the coat had lost its color around it. I didn’t look Jewish, so I became Dr. Becker’s niece, since he and his children were dark and I am very fair, and made up a story about the Gestapo giving the coat to me as they took away an old Jew. I was believed, for it was the sort of thing they would do. We wore our coats, then carried them, through Saxony and then through Bavaria, through winter and into spring. And that summer, when I went to Munich with Dr. Becker and the children to help them get to the Displaced Persons camp …” I had to take a breath. “I sold the brooch to an American captain for nine hundred dollars. I used that money to survive, and yesterday, I used it to buy my new things, to begin my new life.”
“Marguerite,” Joe said helplessly.
“I’m sorry even now,” I told him, “in my heart. And yet I’m not, for I’m alive, and I’m here. I came to you with almost nothing, but the necklace and the earrings, I have to offer. These, and my education, the high and the low of it. The Goethe and the Rilke, the Dickens and the Shakespeare, the French and the English and the Latin, and the baking of bread. All this, I have still. This, and the love of my family.”
9
ANTICIPATION
After that, Joe’s parents embraced me and told me how glad they were to have me in their family, and I wept and told them I would devote myself from now on to being a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law, and they forgave me for being Catholic and German and so terribly blonde and gave our marriage their blessing.
I’m joking, of course. After that, Joe said, “We’ll leave you to think about that,” kissed his mother goodnight, and marshaled me firmly out of the compartment and into our own. Where he kissedmein a very different way,and we fumbled around, taking off each other’s clothes while trying to keep our feet in the swaying car, and Joe bumped his head against the upper berth, lost his footing after all, and fell, sprawling, onto the lower berth, where I fell on top of him.
It was a silly sort of lovemaking, all elbows and knees and clothes not quite off. We laughed as we kissed, and then Joe did some things I’d never heard of. They embarrassed me, but felt … I can’t even describe it. Like when you have to sneeze for so long, and the sneeze finally comes? Only a hundred times better.
The first time we’d kissed, I’d told him in wonder that it was like sparks, and when he kissed methere,well … it was more like lightning. I was very out of breath by the time we finished, and he was sweating. The light was still on, because we’d never managed to turn it off, and Joe had such a smile on his face! And when he got up to turn off the light at last, stumbled over my suitcase coming back in the dark, banged his knee again, swore, and was laughing as I pulled him down into bed with me, both of us without a stitch on?
I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
The journey took three more days. We ate breakfast with Joe’s parents each morning, as he’d promised, where I sat in a sort of glowing befuddlement at being loved so thoroughly—there’s no spice like long absence—and, I’m afraid, blushed a great deal when Joe brushed a curl from my face or smiled at me. During the day, I watched America slide by from the window of the lounge car as Joe read from his textbooks, and felt like an alien fallen to earth. Everything was so much larger here, especially the fields. In Germany, the farms had been small plots, and the farmhouses mostly situated within a village, for don’t people need companionship, and neighbors, and the butcher and the baker and the post office? Also, do you know that Nebraska is almost completely flat, with hardly a tree to be seen for hundreds of miles, nothing but snow-covered fields and the wind whistling by? I understood the Dust Bowl better now. How the dust would roll across all this flatness!
We went through the Rocky Mountains, and I practically pressed my nose against the window—it was like Switzerland before the war, only much wilder and with no towns—and the Sierra Nevada, which are also mountains, and the flat lands in between, where vast quantities of crops grew and huge herds of cattle roamed the land.
Thesizeof the place, like Russia must be, but soprosperous and full of machinery! It was no wonder Americans still had so much to eat, with all these fields and cattle and all this mechanization. They didn’t have to pound their beef thin, layer it with mustard and bacon and pickles and onions, and cook it for hours to make it tender. Instead, they seemed to delight in taking the best possible cuts from the animal and eating them unadorned by more than salt and pepper, after barely heating them through. Which results in a very … meaty taste. Anuninterruptedmeaty taste. And what do they eat with those steaks? Why, potatoes! Again, not made into lovely, light dumplings, but served baked in their jackets, so one has to eat and eat andeatthat potato taste. It was actually physically tiring to cut and chew that much, and rather monotonous, too.
How quickly one adjusts to one’s circumstances! Every time my situation had grown worse during the war, I’d thought,This is too much. I cannot do this.But within a day or two, it would become normal, and I’d no longer rail against it in my mind but would go on as always, surviving once more. The same thing now: after going hungry for so long, I was bemoaning the fatigue caused by chewing too much meat! Or perhaps I was merely an adaptable sort of person. That sounded better, although it was possibly not quite true.
Eventually, we were crossing a sort of plain through California, eating our last breakfast with Joe’s parents. In a few hours, we’d be disembarking in a city called Oakland. From there, we’d cross the bay on a ferry, because there was no railroad bridge. Most people in California, it seemed, drove private cars. Imagine! And fromthere,we would take another train south to a place called Palo Alto, which would be my home.
The thought was making me excited, but also nervous, so I looked out the window. The mountains were behind us, replaced by a landscape of rolling hills interspersed withflatter areas covered by vast orchards of what Joe told me were fruit trees, and fields that he told me would be planted with, yes, potatoes. I tried to focus on the loveliness of eating fruit every day, but didn’t quite succeed, because what I came out with was, “Do you like American food best, Joe?”
He looked up from his omelet—which was made withtwoeggs and was full of onions and, of course, potatoes, as well as cheese; what a feast! He was drinking a glass of orange juice, too. Imagine that—a whole glass of pressed orange juice served to regular people on a regular train, so normal it wasn’t worth a comment. He said, “Compared to what?” Looking wary.
“That was a trick question if I’ve ever heard one,” Mr. Stark said. “Tread carefully, son.” Which was a joke, clearly, and he was smiling a real sort of smile. Mr. Stark might like me a tiny bit, I was beginning to believe, despite my unfortunate ancestry. Of course, he didn’t know about the possible grandson with hemophilia.
“Well,” I said, “compared to …” And then had to stop. “German food is really very delicious, you know. Although not the kind you’ve eaten, I think.”
“Well, no,” Joe said. “Not so much. I mostly remember some very strange sausages with plenty of gristle, and boiled potatoes without butter or margarine.” I made a face, and he smiled.
“There’s French food also, of course,” I said. “French food is lovely.”
“Again,” he said, “I can’t say that any of my stops in France was much of a culinary wonderland.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, naturally.”
“You know what I really like?” Joe asked.
“No,” I said, then blushed, remembering what we’d done last night. I lifted my napkin to my mouth to hide it, but he noticed, because he smiled.
“Pastrami sandwiches,” he said, fortunately, “and Reubens, piping hot on rye bread with sauerkraut. Eaten at the deli counter along with a big kosher pickle. Boy, did I miss those over there. Or, at home, brisket with potato kugel and maybe some coleslaw—that’s a sort of cabbage salad, very German.”
“Brisket is …” I said.
“A tough cut of beef,” Mrs. Stark said, “but very flavorful. Cooked for hours in the oven with garlic and caramelized onions until it’s tender, and served with gravy.”
