The Echo of Old Books(97)
Ashlyn studied the face staring back at her from behind the small rectangle of glass. An angular face with sad, pale eyes and a thick fringe of straw-colored hair. She’d been a beauty once, but something—the war, presumably—had dimmed that beauty, leaving her with a vaguely haunted expression. She also appeared to be supporting a gently rounded belly.
“Was she pregnant when this was taken?”
Marian took back the frame, hugging it to her chest. “She was.” Her eyes glazed over as she continued to speak, her voice flat and almost robotic, as if she were retrieving the story from some dark place in her memory. “Her husband, Janusz, was a violinist with influential connections. When he learned Johanna was pregnant, he used those connections to arrange for her and their son to leave Austria and come to the States. He was supposed to follow a few weeks later, but he was caught with forged papers and arrested. He died a short time later in one of the camps. She never learned which, but it didn’t matter. He was gone and she was alone in a strange country, with a baby on the way.”
“And another child to care for,” Ashlyn added grimly.
“Yes,” Marian said quietly. “Another child.”
“How did the two of you become friends?”
“She lived in the house next to mine. She was so lost, broken really, after all that had happened. She was certainly in no shape to be having a baby, but babies come on their own schedule. She needed someone to look after her, to cook and clean and take her mind off things. I was at her house more than I was at mine. We became close, like sisters. She taught me how to prepare for the Sabbath, how to cook the food and say the blessing. The three of us became a family. And then Ilese was born.”
Ashlyn’s heart caught in her throat. “She was Ilese’s mother?”
Marian blinked away tears. “Yes.”
“And Zachary . . .”
“Is Ilese’s brother.” Marian’s voice faltered and her eyes slid away. “Johanna died a few days after Ilese was born. She’d lost so much blood, so much . . . everything. The doctor knew she wouldn’t make it. She knew it too. She didn’t have any fight left. She asked for a pen and paper, then asked me to call her rabbi—to witness what she’d written.”
Her eyes were shiny with tears now. “She wanted me to take Ilese . . . to raise her as my own. It never occurred to me to say no. She had no one else. And she knew I would love her—love them—as my own. We were already a family. And we would go on being a family. She made the rabbi promise to act as witness, to make sure her wishes were carried out. When he agreed, she closed her eyes and let go.”
Marian put down the photo and blotted her eyes with her napkin. “I’m sorry to blubber. All these years later, it’s still hard to think of her.”
Ashlyn fought the urge to reach for Marian’s hand. “I can’t imagine taking on two children as a single woman. Was it difficult? Formally adopting them, I mean.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like it is now, with ten families vying for every child. The orphanages were full and the entire world was at war. The men were all gone and women had to go to work. No one was looking for a ready-made family—except me. The biggest hurdle was not being married, but Rabbi Lamm vouched for me and I found a good lawyer to help me navigate all the legal hoops.”
“How old was Zachary at the time?”
Marian folded her napkin carefully and laid it aside. “He’d just turned two.”
Ashlyn shook her head. “A toddler and a newborn. How on earth did you manage?”
“It wasn’t as hard as you might think. There was a terrible fuss when we came back to the States, of course. I made the mistake of returning to New York. No one knew who I was in California, but when I came back to the city, it didn’t take the press long to sniff me out. When they learned I’d come back from France with a pair of children in tow, they assumed I was married. When they realized I wasn’t and that the children were adopted, they created this myth that I’d gone to France specifically to rescue a pair of Jewish war orphans. The stories were ridiculous. To hear them tell it, I crawled through the mud with a bayonet between my teeth and liberated them from Drancy. Of course, I was driven to this selfless act of heroism because of the story in the Review—because I’d learned that my mother was a Jew. It was a complete circus. And completely untrue. But it’s hard to stop a train once it’s gotten momentum.”
“Your father must have been thrilled,” Ethan observed dryly.
Marian shot him the thinnest of smiles. “Not especially, no. Naturally, Corinne was livid too. The rumors about my mother’s death had just started to die down, and there I was, back in the news again with my poor Jewish orphans, resurrecting the scandal. Zachary and Ilese couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.” Another smile, this one softer. “The papers made it sound like I saved them, but the truth is they saved me. I was so lost after the business with Hemi. Johanna and the children gave me something to care about, something to focus on besides my woes and the war.”
“And then after the war, you took the children to France?” Ashlyn said, still trying to fill in the blanks.
Marian fixed her with a pointed stare. “You are full of questions, aren’t you? Yes, we went to France—to Bergerac. My aunt’s health was failing and I wanted to go while there was still time. The children loved it there. They learned French and a little Yiddish and all about growing grapes. It was good for them—good for all of us. And of course, there was my work with the OSE. It was hard but rewarding.”