Night Angels(25)

“How kind of you to visit. Sara is fetching Lola in her room. She should come out in a minute.” Mrs. Schnitzler took me to a sofa near the window and offered me a cup of water poured from a silver pitcher, apologizing for the lack of tea and biscuits. The store had turned her away, she explained, and she had not gone grocery shopping for three weeks. I could have misunderstood, but it sounded as if she was banned from grocery shopping.

Lola’s home looked like an apartment ready for rent. It had few pieces of furniture, only a tall seven-drawer Biedermeier chest, and a faded blue rug. The walls were painted in cream, bare, without the ubiquitous paintings I had seen everywhere in Vienna.

“Grace, I can’t believe it’s you.” Lola, in a long flowery dress, appeared, holding a violin. She looked groggy, her eyes rimmed with red threads. On her plump face were uneven stitches in black thread—a jagged scar, a swollen caterpillar of malice.

I apologized for visiting without an invitation, but Lola waved her hand and sat on the sofa next to me, her violin on her lap. She looked happy to see me, waiting for me to speak. It was as though we were in the coffeehouse again, chatting about the Viennese men and their facial hair.

“You got stitches. I’m so glad. How many stitches did you get, Lola?”

“Twelve.”

“Where did you go?”

“An old friend. She used to be a nurse.”

“She could have done a better job,” I said without thinking.

Lola looked like she was going to smile but held her face.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? How long will it take you to heal?” Months, probably, and with the scar so wide and deep, she would never look the same again.

“I won’t worry about it, Grace.”

I took out the can of Tiger Balm in my handbag. “This might help, or might not. I don’t really know. It’s not medicine, but its scents will soothe you. I hope you’ll like it.”

“Smells good.” She dabbed it on her forehead.

“No, no, not on your forehead. Let me.” I smoothed a tiny bit of the pale-yellow ointment on her wrist. Lola sniffed at it; she seemed to like it.

Sara, who was Lola’s sister, and Mrs. Schnitzler leaned over. Lola smeared some Tiger Balm on their hands. They smiled, sniffing the aroma, murmuring in German. Lola and her mother were tied by a strong bond of affection, I could tell, unlike my mother and me.

A girl in a pink ruffled dress whom I hadn’t noticed earlier appeared by Sara and said something in German. She had curly hair, expressive, large green eyes like Lola’s, and looked younger than Monto. Sara pulled her aside and covered her mouth with her good left hand, looking mortified. I looked at Lola.

“This is Eva, my niece. She needs to learn her manners. Eva, go to your room,” Lola said.

“Let her stay. What did she say?” I asked.

“Eva was asking if you ate foie gras every day.”

“Why would I eat foie gras every day?”

Eva studied me, my oatmeal-colored cloche hat, my pearl necklace, and my sage-green dress of chiffon and lace. “I see.” I told them about my awkward life as a diplomat’s wife in Vienna. I had once sat on a sofa at a ball attended by the Hapsburg royal family members and diplomats and their wives. To my puzzlement, the wives gasped and stared at me strangely. Seconds later, an official in a uniform with many golden buttons evicted me from the sofa. I was mortified; I had not known that according to the protocol, a sofa was reserved for a duchess only.

Eva burst out with more German.

“Eva!” Sara looked at me apologetically.

“What did she say?”

“She said you were very small. Why wouldn’t she share?”

I laughed. A little dynamite of a girl, who barely knew me, was defending me; if only Monto could do that.

Later, when it was time for me to leave, Lola saw me out to the door. I wrung the strap of my handbag and asked whether I could come to visit again.

“Of course, Grace, but you might not know this: non-Jewish Austrians are not allowed to visit us.”

The arrest in the park, the attack in the coffeehouse, the people in the park. I understood what her life was now. “But I’m a foreigner.”

“It’ll be dangerous for you.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Her green eyes glittered—the look she’d had outside the clinic when she looked up to stop tears from rolling out—and then she smiled. I stepped forth and hugged her.



I went to Lola’s apartment again a few days later, bringing a box of Swiss milk chocolates in colorful wrappers, another bunch of fresh lilacs, and roses. But soon, I realized they needed something other than flowers—they had run out of flour, cream, cans of fruit, and yeast because of the shopping ban. So for my following trip, I brought groceries, a loaf of bread, a bag of raisins, some baked strudels with meat and potato, more chocolates, and crackers from the shop where I had bought Monto pencils and candies. It now had a sign that said No Jews Allowed.

Lola’s family accepted my gifts with genuine happiness; they sat in a circle, passing the crackers, the raisins, and the chocolates. They appeared to be appreciative of anything I brought, including Tiger Balm. Mrs. Schnitzler claimed the fragrance of menthol did wonders to calm her nerves. Eva was sorry that it didn’t contain real tiger bones. All tried to speak English so I would be able to join their conversation.