Chapter 6 All Aboard
ALL ABOARD
Dinner that evening was served in the dining car—with Joe’s parents.
We’d barely started on our soup, which was oxtail and would have been almost a meal in itself back in Germany, when Joe said, “Attention all passengers. It’s been great to have you here to get to know Marguerite, Mom and Dad, but I’d like to announce here and now that I reserve the right to dine alone with my bride for the rest of this trip.
We’ll be happy to meet you for breakfast, but I’m bound and determined to make a honeymoon of this thing. ”
His mother said, “Of course, dear, if that’s what you want,” but she exchanged a most knowing glance with Joe’s father, then went on, “You could be grateful to us for allowing you to travel with her in so much style, but never mind, we understand.”
Joe said, still calmly, “If you recall, I wasn’t planning on doing this on your dime. Remember how Dad bought the tickets as a surprise? Which I appreciate, and I’m sure Marguerite does, too. And the Plaza was a nice touch, so thanks for that.”
“And this way,” his mother said, “you could afford to pay for Marguerite’s very …
beautiful new wardrobe. You may have to adjust your ideas a bit, dear, in the future,” she told me.
“I’m sure it seems like all Americans are fabulously wealthy, after what you’ve known, but remember, Joe’s going to be a student working toward his law degree, which will take many years.
Do you remember when you were in law school, Jacob? And that little apartment we had?”
“I sure do,” he said. “You made some good meals there.”
“On the weekends, I did,” she said. “During the week, I worked as a secretary to help put Jacob through school. I had to quit when Barbara came along, but I certainly enjoyed being a career woman until then. We did have some lean times, though, when we were more than happy to go to Mom and Dad’s for dinner and bring home a nice plate of leftovers. ”
“What about the job was especially nice?” I asked.
“I plan to do the same—to get a job while Joe becomes educated. I’ve been working for nearly three years, so I’m accustomed to it.
” That was as near as I felt was polite in reply to the comment about my new wardrobe.
I wanted to say, “I bought all this myself,” but would that embarrass Joe? I didn’t know. Better to be silent.
“It was a firm of stockbrokers,” Mrs. Stark said. “In a beautiful old building in San Francisco. The Roaring Twenties, you know; a very good time to be in the investment business. I picked up quite a bit of useful knowledge there, didn’t I, Jacob?”
“You sure did,” he said. “I don’t mind saying that I take my investment advice from you. You haven’t steered me wrong yet. I’d say you earned that new mink jacket.”
“But then,” she said, “I had my degree, of course. My parents sent me to the University of California, across the bay in Berkeley. It was unusual for a girl to receive a college education at that time, but my father was a doctor with a rather exclusive practice.”
“And if there’s one thing Jews believe in,” Mr. Stark said, “it’s education.”
Mrs. Stark picked up the thread again. “Without a degree, though, you can’t expect to find such a prestigious position. I take it you weren’t sent to college at all, Marguerite.”
“No,” I said. “I was too young when my parents died. Hitler didn’t believe in educating women, but my father did.
Unfortunately, he didn’t live to send me, and then, as Joe may have told you, things became very difficult.
My schooling stopped when Dresden was bombed.
I don’t know typing or shorthand anyway.
I could get training for them, I suppose, but I prefer my former profession. ”
“And what was that?” Mrs. Stark asked, before eating a dainty spoonful of soup. “You worked in a shop, I think Joe said.”
“Yes,” I said, “but mostly, I was a baker.”
I achieved one thing. Everybody stared at me.
Then the waiter removed our soup bowls and returned with our main course.
In my case, it was a piece of fish with Meunière sauce, while Joe and his father had selected steak.
I hadn’t seen a piece of meat that large in years, but it arrived without any sauces or special preparation, which was odd.
I said, attempting to change the subject, “Is that type of meat easy to cook? It seems as if it might be. Fish, also. The same as cooking sausages, I expect. You put them in a pan and turn them.”
“Even I can cook a steak,” Joe said.
“I’m afraid you didn’t understand me, dear,” his mother said. “Steak is a very expensive cut of meat. You’ll be expected to manage your household on the budget Joe sets, and as I mentioned, he’ll be a student.”
“On the GI Bill,” Joe agreed. “Which just about covers Stanford. If I’d gone to Cal—the University of California—it would cost less, because it’s a state school, but I started at Stanford, and the South Bay’s a pretty nice place and much less foggy.
I figure we can make it with a little extra hustle on my part, and if you have a job too, it’ll be that much easier.
The apartment isn’t much, but it’s sure better than what we had in Nuremberg.
Warmer, too, and with more electricity. And don’t worry, Marguerite.
We’ll set that budget together, and there can’t be another woman in America as frugal as you. ”
“A job as a baker,” his mother said flatly. “Really?”
“Marguerite bakes the best bread you’ve ever tasted,” Joe said.
“Dozens of loaves of it every day. That’s what she was doing when I met her, didn’t I say?
Somehow, she managed even when she couldn’t get wheat flour, or yeast, or a single spoonful of sugar.
Her potato bread makes the stuff in the supermarket seem pretty flat. ”
“I’ve never heard of a woman baker,” his father said. Less critically, which was a welcome change. “Was that what your father did, then?”
“Uh …” I looked at Joe. “No.” I went to take a bite of green beans—there were potatoes on the plate, too, but I wasn’t eating those—and knocked against Joe’s side. “Pardon me.”
“Your train case is lovely, dear,” Mrs. Stark said, “but it would be better not to bring it to meals. It’s rather in the way. I’ll just hint to you that other than a quick touch-up with your lipstick, it’s not done to apply makeup at the table.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But I have some possessions that I prefer to keep by me.”
“What did your father do for a living? Joe’s barely told us a thing about you,” Mr. Stark said.
It was a terribly inappropriate thing to ask, by my standards, but he was my father-in-law, so that might be different, and this was, after all, America.
He also may have been trying to change the subject. .
“He certainly didn’t tell us much, “ Mrs. Stark said, “except that he’d married you. After he came home. The news came as quite a surprise.” Not a happy one, I was guessing.
“My father had no profession,” I said, deciding to ignore the other part. That was between Joe and his parents. “Not as you know it. He served in the war—the first war—as an aviator, but was badly wounded.”
“Goodness,” Mrs. Stark said. “How did your family manage? And how would they have sent you to college? Was your mother the baker, then?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. She looked rather offended, so I settled my expression and said, “My father was a landowner. My mother as well, for she brought property with her to the marriage. In—in our sort of family, that was done, you see; women receiving, uh … I don’t have the word for this.
Money and property that one’s family gives upon marriage? ”
“A dowry?” Mrs. Stark said.
“Settlements,” Joe said. “At least that’s what it was called in Brideshead Revisited.” He grinned. “The source of most of my knowledge of things like that, I’m afraid. Money settled on the wife by her father, and sometimes by the husband, too.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “That is what it’s called in the books of Jane Austen also.
Thank you. Yes, settlements. My mother had property settled on her upon her marriage.
That was long before Hitler, and of course before the Red Army came to Saxony.
I imagine all of it will have been taken by the state now.
The Russian state, probably.” I ducked my head and concentrated very hard upon cutting a piece of fish, trying not to think of the Grünes Gewolbe, the Green Vault that had been my family’s museum and treasure-house.
Did it even still exist, in all its marble and gold-leafed glory, its many gold-framed mirrors and beautifully painted ceilings, or was it all burned to ash?
And what of its thousands of precious objects, which had been stored for safekeeping during the war in the fortress at Konigstein, high in the mountains near the Czech border?
Had the Soviets found those, too? And why did the thought hurt so much, if I wasn’t going back?
Joe had stopped eating. That was because he’d taken my hand under the table.
“Brideshead Revisited,” Mr. Stark said, his dark eyes as keen as Joe’s. “That’s about the British aristocracy, isn’t it? I haven’t read it—well, I tried, but—”
“Oh, yes,” I cried in relief. “It’s a most tedious book, isn’t it?
I finished it, but only by giving myself a stern talking-to.
We were discussing it, Joe and I and our friend Dr. Müller, and he would have known if I’d shirked, for he’d been a professor at the university and knew all the tricks of students. ”
“I enjoyed it very much,” Mrs. Stark said. Another strike against me. “It paints a clear picture of the lives of such people. It should probably have been titled, “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”
“Oh, like the books by Edward Gibbon!” I said.
“That’s very clever of you. Those were rather anti-Catholic as well, weren’t they?
Imagine thinking that Rome fell because it became too Christian.
I expect Joe has told you I’m a Catholic.
I hope not the kind in Brideshead Revisited, though.
You’re right; it was a very declining book. ”
Mr. Stark said, “He did mention it. We assume you’ll be converting.”
“Uh …” I blinked. “Converting?”
“To Judaism,” Mr. Stark said. “I’ve had a talk with Rabbi Goldstein already. It takes quite a bit of study—a year or more—but Joe says you’re very bright. You’re certainly well-read, and you speak some other languages, I understand.”
“Well, yes,” I said, not sure which item to address first. “French, of course, and a smattering of Italian. And Latin, naturally, and some Greek, too. Perhaps you feel that a girl doesn’t need so much education as that, but I was my parents’ only surviving child, you see, and my father was rather old-fashioned in this way.
He said that a—that a person in our position must know the classical world.
He believed that the Greek virtues especially were necessary to lead a morally, uh, a morally … ”
“Morally upright?” Joe suggested.
“Yes. That is the word I want.” I’d forgotten all about my fish, but then, I’d eaten more already today than I had during any three days in Germany.
“A morally upright life. Wisdom, justice, fortitude, temperance, and striving for excellence in all one does. Charity and honesty, too. I believe I’ve remembered them all, but it was a very long time ago. ”
“All great qualities,” Joe said, “if you can manage them. There’s many a slip, and so forth.”
“Oh, Robert Burns!” I said. “That’s very good.
Those same virtues became, after all, the basis of our Christian notions as well, through St. Augustine and so forth.
Those, and the teachings of Judaism, for I learned about that also.
Not at school—that would never have happened—but earlier, from my governess and tutors, and more lately from Dr. Müller, who was both learned and wise.
Although, really, what religion does not require those virtues? ”
“Yes, what else would a religion teach you?” Joe said.
“To do whatever you can get away with, because getting ahead’s what counts?
There’s probably a religion like that somewhere, but it hasn’t come my way.
Most of us need to have those ideas hammered home, it seems to me, if there’s any hope at all for the world.
If Hitler was taught about them, he sure did forget the lesson. ”
I’d say that silence fell over the table at that, but it wasn’t silent.
The train, which was called “The Twentieth Century Limited” and was designed, from the locomotive to the ceiling trim and light fixtures, in a rather fabulous Art Deco style, like a fairy tale illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, was rattling along as trains do, though rather faster than I was accustomed to.
A spy would have an excellent opportunity to converse in secret here, covered by the noise.
But then, he wouldn’t be able to overhear anything, so perhaps not.
The waiter came and took our plates, and Joe said, “Coffee, Marguerite?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Coffee would be lovely. There is as yet no real coffee in Germany,” I told the others.
“There hasn’t been since the war began. There’s a blockade, you know, which is sad, for Germans love coffee as the British love their tea.
I must see, if one can indeed get butter and eggs and flour and milk here simply by purchasing them—it seems almost too fantastic to be true—whether I can bake German Kuchen, for there’s nothing as wonderful as Kaffee und Kuchen in the afternoon.
I may even find recipes for some of the many sorts of torte, although I believe I must start more simply.
The tortes can be a true work of art, and I’ll be a poor apprentice at best. Buttermilk, now … do they have buttermilk here also?”
Mr. Stark said, “We can discuss that some other time. Right now, I’d like to hear more about why you won’t be converting to Judaism. If you didn’t realize that, Joe, or worse, if you didn’t realize that it mattered, I don’t know quite what to say.”
“Oh, I expect you do,” Joe said. “Probably that I should get rid of my wife.” His father was studiously calm, and so was Joe, but I could practically see the waters roiling underneath.
“Sorry, Dad. That’s not going to happen.
And yes, I knew. I know pretty much everything about Marguerite, and she knows pretty much everything about me. And we got married anyway.”