of the tape the next day.
She hung up on me.
I sat at my desk a long time, blinking back tears of
my own. My arms ached. I lacked the will to move or act in any meaningful way,
but in the end, I picked up the phone and continued dictating my notes to the
word-processing center. When I had finished that, I got up slowly, like an
invalid, and printed out a copy of my contract for Don Strzepek.
“Maybe if I talked to Dr. Herschel myself,” Don said
now, as we sat on Morrell’s porch. “She’s imagining me as a TV reporter
sticking a mike in front of her face after her family’s been destroyed. She’s
right in a way, about how we comfortable Americans and Europeans like to
titillate ourselves with tales of torture. I shall have to keep that thought in
mind as a corrective when I’m working on this book. All the same, maybe I can
persuade her that I also have some capacity for empathy.”
“Maybe. Max will probably let me bring you to his
dinner party on Sunday; at least you could meet Lotty in an informal way.”
I didn’t really see it, though. Usually, when Lotty
got on her high horse, Max would snort and say she was in her “Princess of
Austria” mode. That would spark another flare from her, but she’d back away
from her more extreme demands. Tonight’s outburst had been rawer than that—not
the disdain of a Hapsburg princess, but a ragged fury born of grief.
Lotty Herschel’s Story:
Four Gold Coins
My mother was seven months pregnant and weak from
hunger, so my father took Hugo and me to the train. It was early in the
morning, still dark, in fact: we Jews were trying not to attract any more
attention than necessary. Although we had permits to leave, all our documents,
the tickets, we could still be stopped at any second. I wasn’t yet ten and Hugo
only five, but we knew the danger so well we didn’t need Papa’s command to be
silent in the streets.
Saying good-bye to my mother and Oma had frightened
me. My mother used to spend weeks away from us with Papa, but I had never left
Oma before. By then of course everyone was living together in a little flat in
the Leopoldsgasse—I can’t remember how many aunts and cousins now, besides my
grandparents—but at least twenty.
In London, lying in the cold room at the top of the
house, on the narrow iron bed Minna considered appropriate for a child, I
wouldn’t think about the cramped space on the Leopoldsgasse. I concentrated on
remembering Oma and Opa’s beautiful flat where I had my own white lacy bed, the
curtains at the window dotted with rosebuds. My school, where my friend Klara
and I were always one and two in the class. How hurt I was—I couldn’t
understand why she stopped playing with me and then why I had to leave the
school altogether.
I had whined at first over sharing a room with six
other cousins in a place with peeling paint, but Papa took me for a walk early
one morning so he could talk to me alone about our changed circumstances. He
was never cruel, not like Uncle Arthur, Mama’s brother who actually beat Aunt
Freia, besides hitting his own children.
We walked along the canal as the sun was rising and
Papa explained how hard things were for everyone, for Oma and Opa, forced out
of the family flat after all these years, and for Mama, with all her pretty
jewels stolen by the Nazis and worrying about how her children would be fed and
clothed, let alone educated. “Lottchen, you are the big girl in the family now.
Your cheerful spirit is Mama’s most precious gift. Show her you are the brave
one, the cheerful one, and now that she’s sick with the new baby coming, show
her you can help her by not complaining and by taking care of Hugo.”
What shocks me now is knowing that my father’s parents
were also in that flat and how little I remember of them. In fact, I’m pretty
sure that it was their flat. They were foreign, you see, from Belarus: they
were part of the vast throng of Eastern European Jews who had flocked into
Vienna
She hung up on me.
I sat at my desk a long time, blinking back tears of
my own. My arms ached. I lacked the will to move or act in any meaningful way,
but in the end, I picked up the phone and continued dictating my notes to the
word-processing center. When I had finished that, I got up slowly, like an
invalid, and printed out a copy of my contract for Don Strzepek.
“Maybe if I talked to Dr. Herschel myself,” Don said
now, as we sat on Morrell’s porch. “She’s imagining me as a TV reporter
sticking a mike in front of her face after her family’s been destroyed. She’s
right in a way, about how we comfortable Americans and Europeans like to
titillate ourselves with tales of torture. I shall have to keep that thought in
mind as a corrective when I’m working on this book. All the same, maybe I can
persuade her that I also have some capacity for empathy.”
“Maybe. Max will probably let me bring you to his
dinner party on Sunday; at least you could meet Lotty in an informal way.”
I didn’t really see it, though. Usually, when Lotty
got on her high horse, Max would snort and say she was in her “Princess of
Austria” mode. That would spark another flare from her, but she’d back away
from her more extreme demands. Tonight’s outburst had been rawer than that—not
the disdain of a Hapsburg princess, but a ragged fury born of grief.
Lotty Herschel’s Story:
Four Gold Coins
My mother was seven months pregnant and weak from
hunger, so my father took Hugo and me to the train. It was early in the
morning, still dark, in fact: we Jews were trying not to attract any more
attention than necessary. Although we had permits to leave, all our documents,
the tickets, we could still be stopped at any second. I wasn’t yet ten and Hugo
only five, but we knew the danger so well we didn’t need Papa’s command to be
silent in the streets.
Saying good-bye to my mother and Oma had frightened
me. My mother used to spend weeks away from us with Papa, but I had never left
Oma before. By then of course everyone was living together in a little flat in
the Leopoldsgasse—I can’t remember how many aunts and cousins now, besides my
grandparents—but at least twenty.
In London, lying in the cold room at the top of the
house, on the narrow iron bed Minna considered appropriate for a child, I
wouldn’t think about the cramped space on the Leopoldsgasse. I concentrated on
remembering Oma and Opa’s beautiful flat where I had my own white lacy bed, the
curtains at the window dotted with rosebuds. My school, where my friend Klara
and I were always one and two in the class. How hurt I was—I couldn’t
understand why she stopped playing with me and then why I had to leave the
school altogether.
I had whined at first over sharing a room with six
other cousins in a place with peeling paint, but Papa took me for a walk early
one morning so he could talk to me alone about our changed circumstances. He
was never cruel, not like Uncle Arthur, Mama’s brother who actually beat Aunt
Freia, besides hitting his own children.
We walked along the canal as the sun was rising and
Papa explained how hard things were for everyone, for Oma and Opa, forced out
of the family flat after all these years, and for Mama, with all her pretty
jewels stolen by the Nazis and worrying about how her children would be fed and
clothed, let alone educated. “Lottchen, you are the big girl in the family now.
Your cheerful spirit is Mama’s most precious gift. Show her you are the brave
one, the cheerful one, and now that she’s sick with the new baby coming, show
her you can help her by not complaining and by taking care of Hugo.”
What shocks me now is knowing that my father’s parents
were also in that flat and how little I remember of them. In fact, I’m pretty
sure that it was their flat. They were foreign, you see, from Belarus: they
were part of the vast throng of Eastern European Jews who had flocked into
Vienna
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