Night Angels(26)

The scar on Lola’s face was healing slowly, turning into a glistening red mound of skin. In her cheerful way, Lola taught me German, one word at a time. I repeated after her. Die Sonne, der Mond, die Blumen, die Lebensmittel, die Freundinnen. Foreign words, words with gusto, words like portals. I ate them up, filled my lungs with them, and felt larger with them, but I forgot them as soon as they were released into the air. In turn, I introduced Lola to Dickinson, whom she had never heard of. She had not read much poetry, she said, but she was fond of Nietzsche.

Mrs. Schnitzler, unlike my alcoholic mother, was a superstitious woman—I was told flowers must be given in odd numbers, for an even number of flowers indicated funerals. When Lola sneezed, Mrs. Schnitzler tugged Lola’s ear lest an evil spirit hear and latch on to her. To keep the evil spirits away, I was also told to step out of a house with the right foot first. There was a painful history behind this, she said, that went back to Spain’s Edict of Expulsion in 1492; during that time, many Jews left their homes with their left foot out first, and they were all either persecuted or forced to leave the country. Mrs. Schnitzler believed that this was a critical survival lesson for Jews and that their life depended on the order of the foot stepping out of the home.

Lola’s sister, Sara, was always busy doing housework, despite her deformed hand. She collected the dishes, picked up the chocolate wrappers, and wiped the banisters or rubbed the rug’s stains. She could knit with her feet—she was too modest to demonstrate but obliged at Lola’s insistence. Her toes clutched the thick sticks, in and out, in and out, making magic with the threads. She was a widow; her husband died of pneumonia a few years ago and left her with Eva.

Eva, a nine-year-old, was very different from Monto. She was curious, full of energy, and loved to dance and sing. She had a favorite toy, a music box with a ballerina that played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. She wanted to be a dancer when she grew up.

I also met Lola’s brother, Josef, a typical Austrian, uptight, formal, enjoying operas and following the traffic rules. He wore the Austrian men’s trademark beard in the shape of a crescent curve, peered at me through his thick glasses, and always paused before he spoke. He had a reserved manner, rarely smiled, and smelled of pills. He was twenty-three years old, born in Vienna, and worked at a pharmacy that was said to be associated with Dr. Freud. He reminded me of a stuffy British diplomat I once met at a dinner table.

“Dr. Freud, is he a witch?” I couldn’t remember where I heard it.

“Oh, people have called him worse: a madman, an idiot, a psychopath, but as far as I can tell, he’s a doctor who treats your mind by looking into your dreams,” Josef said, his finger pushing his round glasses with silver frames.

Looking into your dreams. It sounded as though dreams were handkerchiefs that could be held in one’s hands. A novel concept I had never heard of before.

Sometimes Lola played “The Lark Ascending” on her violin. She had been scheduled to attend an audition a few weeks ago, but it had been canceled. She loved this piece, I could tell, and she explained how the composer created the serene melodies to evoke the image of a chirping lark, and indeed, when she drew her bow, the elegant melody resembled a divine trill of lively tunes of birds, leaping and diving. She had good skills; she should perform for the public.

Listening to Lola play the violin, I thought of my childhood. When Mother told me to go away, I would sometimes climb on a giant elm near the house she cleaned. At the nook of branches on the top of the tree, above the ground, I could see beneath me the grassy land, the barns scattered like old toys, the loop of a winding dirt path, and the pearly horizon like spilled milk. Often, I would sit on the branch for hours, reading Dickinson, watching the arrows of sunlight glint through the leaves, the chipmunks’ ballet-like pirouettes, the brown beetles with wings flaring like cupped hands. Creatures came to visit, sitting close to me, the woodpeckers, the cardinals, the goldfinches, the red-breasted robins, the blue jays, like fussy aunts and amiable uncles that I never knew.

In Lola’s sparsely decorated family room, sitting with her family, listening to her music, watching her red scar, a broken chord, a ridge before the storm in Amherst, I felt I was back to the tree of my sanctuary again.



But always, the shadows of danger loomed. There were Sara’s nervous whispers in German the moment I stepped into their family room, Josef’s careful and distressing account of harassment at work, the visits of the uncle who had taken over the Schnitzlers’ fabric shop at last and now demanded the key to their apartment, and the disturbing news in the newspaper—the new restrictions, recent riots, and heartbreaking property destruction, which I made Lola translate for me. Then it was ordered that the Schnitzlers report their bank accounts and donate all valuables over five thousand reichsmarks to the government. Lola was furious. They had barely gotten by, and now they must surrender the last of their valuables her father had left for them.

Anxious, Josef mentioned leaving Vienna—he believed the rising hostility was detrimental to his career. Palestine, the United States, and Britain were ideal destinations, he mentioned. I had never paid attention to visa applications in the consulate before, but, concerned, I asked Fengshan about the process. China didn’t have an immigration policy, Fengshan said casually.

Anyway, Lola didn’t want to leave Vienna. She was a Viennese, she said. Her music career and her life belonged here; she had no plan to go.