Chapter 3 The Welcoming Committee #2
I laughed. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it.
“Goodness. Do you imagine they are all marrying bankers and lawyers? My friend Paula’s husband is a clerk in a shop and hopes to own a shop himself one day.
They want a little house, yes, or a flat to call their own.
One that is whole, with no broken windows and no pile of rubble in the street, that they can keep clean and tidy and be proud of.
They want a little kitchen and a bathroom, and to be able to go to the shops and find food to buy, and no ration coupons.
Is that so very wrong? Our greatest luxuries, once Joe came into our lives, were sugar and canned ham.
How we shared out that first can of GI ham! ”
“Joe is Jewish,” Mrs. Stark said, looking not so much into my eyes as over my shoulder. “He won’t be eating any more pork.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, “I do understand that, although it’s rather a pity that pigs are unclean.
Pork is perhaps what we missed most, and really, pigs are rather lovely, aren’t they?
Muddy sometimes, yes, but so friendly and curious.
Perhaps it’s better not to eat them after all.
A pity they’re so delicious. But oh, the things we ate before the war!
Not so much French cuisine, you know, not in my home, but Saxon, which is a very comforting sort of food.
Venison with lingonberries, when one of my father’s friends had hunted—he couldn’t hunt himself anymore, for he had the use of only one arm—with the loveliest potato dumplings.
Pork roast with caraway and mustard, too, but never mind, I do understand about the pigs.
And the cakes! No, you really cannot imagine the cakes.
There has been no butter, you know, for the longest time—two ounces a week in Britain, I’m told, and as for sugar and cream!
There was often no lard or even margarine, either, and then eggs …
What can one prepare with only one egg allowed each week?
So of course, now that the war is over, the women talk of baking a cake in their own oven.
They wish so much to wear a pretty apron and serve their husband a lovely dinner, and to be able to buy a new frock or a hat nearly as beautiful as yours, or to have perhaps a sewing machine to make their own clothes.
All of that was no doubt appealing, but it’s quite understandable, and not the only reason.
And don’t you think that a woman who has suffered such privation might be more grateful and work harder to be a good wife and mother than one who has led a more carefree life?
They know what matters in life, they who lived through this. They know about loss.”
“You think you know about loss.” My recital had had the opposite effect from what I’d intended, for her color was up now, and she was looking at me. “You, who are a German, and an Aryan.”
“I thought we were discussing the British,” I said, throwing all good sense to the wind and riding my temper straight to disaster.
“But yes, I know about loss. Not as much as the Jews know, not one fingernail’s worth, because Joe told me what went on in those camps, and so did Dr. Becker, who was my friend.
He knows better than anyone, perhaps, for he treats the ones who survived, and he says the wounds they carry inside may never heal.
But I too lost my family, my friends. I lost them all, but that’s why I love Joe, do you see?
Because he’s the … the opposite of all those bad things that happened, so calm and wise and decent and …
and good. There can never be too much good in the world, can there? ”
I was trembling a little—too much emotion, and I hadn’t managed it well—but she didn’t seem to notice.
At any rate, she didn’t answer. She opened her purse—it was black leather, sleek and elegant—took out a folded piece of paper, and held it out to me between gloved fingers.
“The Queen Mary sails back to England tonight. You can sail on it—you have an American passport now, after all—or make a fresh start here.”
I stared at the paper. I didn’t take it, but said slowly, “It’s a check, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s a check. And yes, I know that Joe says he loves you.
Well, of course he does! He’s barely twenty-one, and you’re a very pretty girl.
In your ragged coat and limp dress, too, so grateful for any crumbs, seeing him as the hero who only wants to take you away from that life—well, Joe’s always had a soft heart.
But if you care for him, don’t you want him to have more than you can give him?
A wife he can be proud of, who’ll fit in with his family, his friends?
Eventually, that is, once he’s had time to look around him and make a careful choice.
A wife who’s gone to college, who can be his intellectual equal.
Above all, a Jewish wife from a good family, who’ll share his background and his traditions, who’ll raise his children as Jews and help his career along in a Jewish firm.
Can you imagine you’d be welcome when he has dinner with the partners?
Could you be happy knowing you’d stood in the way of his success and his happiness?
We’re offering you five thousand dollars; a small fortune.
You’ve got your passport now. You’re free, you’re out of Germany, so take the check.
You say you’ve had a hard time, and I’m sure it’s true.
So take it, start that new life you want, and I’ll explain to Joe. ”
I would have answered, but it was too late.
Joe was here. And his father. And a battered footlocker that I’d bought in Nuremberg from a one-legged soldier desperate to sell anything he could.
It was heavy, for it held many of Dr. Müller’s books, the old friends I’d brought along for comfort.
Otherwise, I owned only memories, a priceless emerald-and-diamond necklace and earrings, and one small, very shabby, and largely empty suitcase that had also been Dr. Müller’s.
Who was dead now, like almost everyone else I’d ever loved.
Well, this was an excellent start. What had possessed me, to have rattled on like that about food, of all things? About pork?
And what did I do to fix it?