The Woman in the Photograph Read online

  Carried on the waves of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23, known as the Appassionata, I saw the embryo of my mother’s past come to life in the photographs with the men who awakened her to love.

  The real change began when Erika met Willy during her last year of high school. She soon started spending all her available time with him and his closest friends, who attended the University of Leipzig with him. Alice, though younger, was included. They sat at the corner table at Auerbach’s Keller near the university and drank Gosé, a unique beer that originated in Leipzig. They sipped strong coffee at Kaffeebaum, their ideas and dreams interweaving with the circling wisps of cigarette smoke, getting heavier and heavier in the room as the night wore on. They walked in the park on Saturdays, took the tram to the Rosenthal to watch the swans or sit on the benches to laugh at nothing but the thrill of being young and free. They met on Thursday evenings to see a performance of Beethoven or Schumann at the Gewandhaus, and once took in a dress rehearsal of La Traviata at the Opera House, though Fez was not an opera fan and went out before the intermission to have a smoke in the lobby.

  Unlike the rich, well-tailored boys who came to parties at Grassi Street and shook her father’s hand, these men answered Alice’s longing for wildness and passion. She joined in the intellectual conversation, the heated political debates, the dueling of ripe minds, and the dawning sensuality that they, several years her senior, triggered in her. With their presence in her life, the frustrations with her family, even her father’s temper and her mother’s disinterest, receded into the background.

  What began as a group of friends evolved into romantic rendezvous. Willy’s eyes followed Erika’s every gesture and she drank in his every word. He’d been born in Warsaw and had come to Leipzig to further his studies at the university. He was handsome and muscular, self-confident and protective. His voice had a warm, velvety quality. Ernst was serious, studious, and funny. His glasses perched on his forehead when he wasn’t reading; he could keep the others engaged in some philosophical argument long after their thoughts had wandered to food and beer. More reserved than the other two men, he could be counted on for his loyalty and sincerity. He was quite taken with Alice, and she enjoyed his attention.

  However, it was Fez who had the magnetic pull on her. He was an intriguing man, warm yet elusive. An idealistic and articulate law student, his demeanor was more that of a poet, a dreamer. His mood could shift in just a look or a word—one moment intimate and charming, the next quiet and remote, lost in some reverie of his own. Behind his liquid gray-green eyes lived mystery. No matter how much he told her, she felt there was so much he didn’t say. Women were always attracted to Fez, seeking his attention, but no one woman could really claim him.

  In May 1931, Alice, Erika, Willy, Ernst, and Fez went hiking together in the woods at K!!! The day was gorgeous, clear cloudless blue with no sign of the Leipzig cold and gray skies that could persist even through April. The girls wore short-sleeve cotton print dresses with wide belts to accent their narrow waistlines. Alice felt independent, expectant, vulnerable. After eating their dark bread with Gruyere cheese and sliced liverwurst, the friends reclined together on the soft, fragrant grass. She curled up on her side and lay her head on Fez’s chest; she was stirred by the warmth of his arm around her back.

  The ravages of the Nazis tore this circle of close friends apart. The miracle is that they found each other again in a new world. The passion of these photographs was what Alice had expected to rekindle when she met up with Fez in New York. She must have expected Fez to be the much sought-after man she knew in Leipzig. But by 1936, neither of them was the same anymore, with too much left behind and all they had been through.

  As I turned each page of my mother’s album, I pictured my mother leaning over my shoulder, her heart touched by the images of her youth. But she wasn’t sentimental. I was the one whose tears blurred the edges of the pictures. Outside my dining room window, the sun passed behind a cloud. I watched as a shadow fell over the backyard, and then the sun returned and made the leaves of the bamboo tree shimmer.

  25

  The Journey

  Over the last few years, I had learned to use the Internet as a source of information. Searching through legal and historical documents, I found records of the transatlantic crossings that brought to America not only my mother, but my father, Erika and Willy as well. The manifests with their immigration details told a compelling story that was far from whatever Tom and I had imagined in our childhood.

  Manifest of Alien Passengers

  S.S. BERENGARIA

  Southampton, England, 20 March 1935

  Arrival in New York, 27 March 1935

  Feniger, Jakob, 28 years old, single

  OCCUPATION: business, able to speak English, citizen of Germany

  RACE: Hebrew

  BIRTHPLACE: Gelsenkirchen, Germany

  LAST PERMANENT RESIDENCE: Leipzig, Germany

  S.S. BERENGARIA

  Cherbourg, France, 11 March 1936

  Arrival in New York, 17 March 1936

  Lewin, Alice, 21 years old, single

  OCCUPATION: nil, able to speak English, citizen of Germany

  RACE: Hebrew

  BIRTHPLACE: Leipzig, immigration papers issued in Jerusalem, 11 February 1936

  LAST PERMANENT RESIDENCE: Berlin, Germany

  S.S. QUEEN MARY

  Cherbourg, France, 14 October 1936

  Arrival in New York, 19 October 1936

  Wojewoda[12], Erika, 23 years old, married

  OCCUPATION: housewife, able to speak English, citizen of Palestine

  RACE: Hebrew

  BIRTHPLACE: Leipzig, immigration papers issued in Jerusalem 28 Sept 1936

  LAST PERMANENT RESIDENCE: Tel Aviv, Palestine

  S.S. HANSA

  Hamburg, Germany, 4 Feb 1937

  Arrival in New York, 13 Feb 1937

  Wojewoda, Wladislas, 28 years old, married

  OCCUPATION: farmer

  RACE: Hebrew

  BIRTHPLACE: Warsaw, Poland

  LAST PERMANENT RESIDENCE: Tel Aviv, Palestine

  I called Lynne to tell her what I had found.

  “I know why you didn’t remember seeing Erika when you went with your father to pick up Alice at the pier,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Lynne asked, obviously caught off guard by my unexpected comment.

  “Alice was alone. She came all the way from Palestine without Erika. I found the ship records of their passage to America. Alice came in March of 1936, and Erika didn’t get here until October, seven months later—and she was pregnant!”

  “You’re kidding. I don’t remember that.”

  “And you were right about my father. Dad came first in September 1935, a whole year before Mom. Funny, they both took the Berengaria. He must have felt so lost here without any members of his family and probably no friends.”

  Lynne agreed. “Alice gave your father our address, and he visited us at our home in Mt. Vernon soon after he arrived. I don’t recall the conversation, but I do remember after dinner my father took Fez into the den for ‘men talk.’ I bet Dad wanted to hear all about Leipzig. They had many glasses of schnapps together and spoke for hours in German. My father smoked a cigar while your father lit up his pipe. My nose still twitches when I remember the smell of sour cigar smoke mingled with the aromatic pipe tobacco.”

  “The chronology of their passages to America pulls the whole story together,” I said. “My father’s in America, on his own, and here comes a girl-now a woman-whom he ‘dated’ in Leipzig. They speak the same language, they have close friends in common, and sentimental references that make them feel connected. Was she the woman he would have fallen in love with if circumstances had been different? Maybe not. But he feels close to her, and he lets himself enjoy the relationship. He even convinces himself that he’s in love, but doesn’t think through all the consequences.”

  Vivid images from photographs of Alice and Fez in 1936 filled m
y mind: buying hot dogs from a street vendor in Coney Island, walking barefoot on Brighton Beach at the edge of Brooklyn, having a picnic in the woods at Riverside Park.

  “Remember,” I told Lynne, “Fez was uprooted from his relatively carefree life as a law student. His brother Nathan didn’t arrive until 1938, according to the ship records, and his other seven siblings scattered to Italy, Israel, and even Argentina.”

  I hadn’t paused to breathe through my whole monologue and Lynne hadn’t made a sound. Finally I let out my breath.

  “It’s sad,” said Lynne, “because your mother really loved him so much in the beginning. She deserved to have a husband who really wanted her.”

  Her voice dropped at the end of her sentence and I heard a deep sigh. I knew she was thinking of her own marriage. I remembered visiting her at their beach house on Long Island. I noticed how Al hovered around her and rested his hand on her arm. He laughed when she told a story, his eyes focused on her face as though he was hearing a charming anecdote for the first time. She had been fortunate to marry a man who adored her, but the last half year had been very hard. Al had passed away from heart disease earlier in 2002, and though Lynne remained close to her two grown-up daughters, she had lost the spring in her step.

  I waited a few seconds but had to go on. “Lynne, can I tell you a little more about these records?”

  “Sure, honey. I love all the details. I wish you could find those trunks that the girls sent to the family of Ralph Rotholz. Have you tracked down any clues yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet, but I have a friend who is helping me do research.” Lynne was more obsessed than I was about what was in the two trunks that the Rotholz family would not give to her father when he drove up to Nyack to reclaim them. I promised to keep looking.

  “But for now, can I tell you about the rest of the story as I see it? Look at this,” I said to Lynne, who of course could not see through the phone to examine the papers I had pulled out of my files and spread on the kitchen table. “They sold the Leipzig property in December 1935, and by March 1936, Alice was in New York. No wonder she had no love for Israel. She was in Tel Aviv for less than three months and lost her sister, at least temporarily. When Erika met Willy on the street in Tel Aviv, that was the end of twenty-one years of inseparable sisterhood.”

  Lynne began to say something but I interrupted her. I just had to get the rest out.

  “Lynne, there’s more. Let me finish. Erika also came alone. The records from the Queen Mary show that Erika and Willy were married by then. On the passenger list, she used his last name, Wojewoda, and described herself as a housewife. My cousin was born in April 1937. That means Erika married Willy in Palestine and was four months pregnant when she left him to go on to New York. She was seven months pregnant by the time he joined her.”

  I paused for a second, trying to imagine what it was like to have such a whirlwind of changes in one year. But I had one more thing to run by Lynne.

  “Get this. Alice got pregnant with Tom one month after Erika arrived in New York. One month! Is that an accident? I don’t think so. Her sister was married and pregnant, and I don’t think she was going to be left behind—Erika and Willy, Alice and Fez, two sisters with two best friends. I don’t know if it was all that contrived but on some level…” I knew I was speaking in a rush, but I couldn’t stop. So many puzzle pieces seemed to be falling into place.

  “I don’t blame Mom, or my Dad,” I said. “Look, I’m glad Tom and I are here. But it’s pretty wild, isn’t it? Willy arrives February 13, 1937. Fez tells his best friend that Alice is pregnant. He goes to see your parents and paces and smokes the whole night. Eleven days after Willy’s arrival, Alice and Fez get married. There it is. That just about completes the story I was searching for.”

  “Oh,” said Lynne softly. I had never before left her speechless.

  Even after I hung up the phone, with no more words left, I couldn’t put the subject down. I was haunted by the names printed on the passenger lists and the poignancy of the story they told.

  Winter would still have lingered as Alice hung over the rail of the S.S. Berengaria to watch the pattern of windswept waves in the ship’s wake. This time she is not on a birthday cruise with her sister. She reflects on the events of the last six months and how she had tried to convince Erika to decline the proposal from Rotholz. But Erika could find something good in the most annoying person and she’d seemed so desperate for an adult to tell them what to do.

  After the sale of the Leipzig property, they had packed up their most valued possessions and shipped them to the Rotholz family in upstate New York. Then all three went to stay at Ralph’s apartment in Berlin until they could arrange passage to Palestine to collect the money from the sale of the cows.

  Now she is without her sister for the first time in her life. The cold sea breeze sends a chill up her spine. It was terribly hard to leave without Erika. They had always planned to travel to America together, to live together in New York, to be best friends for the rest of their lives. But when they met Willy on the street in Tel Aviv, all that changed, overnight. The marriage to Willy took her sister away from her. He could not obtain a visa for the United States right away, and Erika chose to stay with him.

  Alice is resilient and determined to make a good life in America, and grateful that Uncle Curtis and Aunt Lilly will be waiting at the port. She looks beyond the churning seas and sees a city with modern buildings and infinite possibilities. She decides to be brave and not show how sad she is. She turns back toward the deck and walks to the dining room for a cup of tea.

  Shortly after Alice’s arrival in New York, Aunt Lilly plans a dinner and invites Fez to join them. How glad he is to see Alice. It warms his heart to hear her Saxon German and see her sparkling dark eyes. He does not formally invite her out on a date. It is just obvious from the start that they are already together. He spends the weekend at Mt. Vernon and doesn’t leave her side.

  They each have a hollow place they cannot fill. He thinks of his family and sometimes dreams of Annalie, who is still in Germany. Alice misses Erika. But they find pleasure and solace with each other. They go to a concert at Carnegie Hall. It is not quite the Leipzig Gewandhaus but the people are elegantly dressed and the couple in the row behind them are speaking German. Alice cranes her neck to hear them. The woman is from Hamburg and has not been able to get her parents to leave their home. Her father has a shop and does not want to give up everything he has built.

  Alice feels her chest tighten. She reaches her hand up to her throat and touches the links of a gold chain wrapped twice around her neck. It was once her father’s watch fob. She remembers seeing her father walking with her mother at Karlsbad. He is wearing a bow tie in the photo she took. “This is all that is left of them,” she thinks, and a dark cloud starts to form in her mind.

  She is relieved to be pulled back to the concert hall by the dimming of the house lights. Fez puts his hand on her leg. The Debussy program conducted by Arturo Toscanini is fabulous. Afterward they drink tea and eat apple cake at the Russian Tea Room.

  They don’t discuss their future. They both sense that these days are a special time, a bridge suspended between a past gone forever and a future not yet seen. The uncertainty fuels their passion, the heat and spark of the moment fills places recently left vacant.

  When Erika arrives on the Queen Mary in October, she is almost four months pregnant. Alice wraps her arms around her and cries for joy, but her pleasure is dimmed by her jealousy of Willy. She fears Erika’s marriage threatens their private immutable bond. Erika tries to reassure her. “Soeurchen,” she says, “don’t worry. We will all be together now.” She eagerly waits for Willy to get his papers, but it is three more months before he boards the S.S. Hansa in Hamburg for his passage to New York.

  Fez does not speak to Alice of marriage. His heart was damaged by childhood rheumatic fever, and he has always believed that he will die young and should not have a family. But he doesn’t fight the curren
t that is carrying him and Alice deeper into the unknown ocean of their life together.

  One month after Erika arrives, Alice notices the change in her body. At first it is a gnawing sensation in her abdomen. Soon the smell of string beans makes her nauseous. Alice’s pregnancy is confirmed by the doctor at three months. She does her best to be stoic and ignore the new sensitivity but is unnerved that she cannot control her body as she always has. She feels vulnerable, and wonders for a moment if she and Fez are ready. But they have been so happy together and she believes that he will rise to the occasion.

  She tells Fez just days before Willy arrives. Marriage and children were not part of his plan. He stays up all night smoking one cigarette after another and talking with Lynne’s parents, Curtis and Lilly, and by morning he has made a decision.

  Alice and Fez are married in a private civil ceremony attended only by Erika and Willy. Alice wears a dark navy dress with large white polka dots and a long sweater-coat with a flower that Fez bought pinned to her lapel. Fez is in a wool double-breasted suit with shoulder pads, a silk shirt and tie. Afterward the two couples go out for dinner.

  In April 1937, Erika gives birth to a daughter, and she and Willy move to their own place. Alice and Fez rent an apartment on Ocean Avenue in a section of Brooklyn called Flatbush. There are many German Jews already living in their neighborhood, and it’s easy to invite friends over for a game of bridge, marble cake and coffee. Erika and Willy often come too, and the two sisters are happy to clear away the dishes and hover over the sink together. Alice washes the plates and cups and hands them to Erika to dry, though neither of them pays much attention. They talk about everything and nothing, nourished by the smell of coffee and their own physical proximity.

  In August 1937, Alice and Fez welcome a son. Soon after Tom’s first birthday, they move in with Erika and Willy in a house the latter purchased in Laurelton, on the outskirts of Queens.