Sisters Weiss ~ A Novel Page 18

  And now she was renowned for these very same photographs, which had made her reputation. The numerous awards she had received for this collection spoke of the “compassion and integrity in her moving black-and-white images, which confront the difficult aspects of Haredi society.” She had been praised for her decades of “quiet, watchful, passionate observation of this world.” Words like “gentle” and “respectful” were used to describe her photos, which “do not speak to the cliché perception of outsiders, but present demanding and compelling revelations about a society steeped in tradition as it is forced to confront modern times.”

  Seeing her photos hung up and celebrated that way by the man she loved and admired had given her perhaps the greatest moment of satisfaction she’d ever felt in her work. For, although she had published ten books of photographs and won two Nikon Book of the Year awards, the Kraszna-Krausz Award for Photographic Innovation, the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, the Women in Photography International’s Distinguished Photographer’s Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship, among the people who mattered to her most, she was considered a vile traitor, a festering wound that would not heal. She had no choice but to live with that knowledge. It was a chronic pain.

  Had she betrayed her own world? Or had she illuminated it, bringing out all its facets of good and evil? Why did they judge her so harshly?

  So as not to judge themselves, Henry once told her.

  Henry.

  He had been gone so many years. But this was still their house. He was everywhere.

  She sat down on the couch with a glass of wine, downing it in two large gulps. Then, she put up her feet and closed her eyes, listening to the rain falling wildly against the windowpane, remembering everything with a startling clarity that made it feel like the present, not the past.

  22

  London, 1987

  Cold, depressed, lonely, she feels her feet dragging along the nasty, wet pavement on Great Portland Road as if wearing weights. Her eyes roam desperately, looking for some shelter from the bitter London cold. There. The handsome wooden storefront. The door is heavy and solid as she opens it, expecting to be enveloped by the warm vapors of a tea shop. But there are no tables, no waitresses in uniforms, she realizes as she unbuttons her soaked raincoat in confusion and disappointment. Instead, the walls are hung with photographs.

  A photo gallery! She hasn’t come across a single one since arriving, and now, by accident, she stumbles into one! She steps in closer, staring. She sees a photo of a young girl carrying a baby through the rubble of a destroyed village. Her eyes are large, dark—already old. They stare directly into hers, filled with fear, hope, and a simple resignation that challenge her pity. “What is your pity worth?” the girl’s face seems to say, the baby close in her arms as she steps through disaster toward an unknown future.

  I cannot move, she thinks, mesmerized.

  “I don’t know why they insist on hanging up such rubbish.”

  The voice is deep, rude, male. It wakes her, dragging her back to the present, giving her frustration an outlet.

  “Excuse me? This just happens to be a work of genius! One of the most heartbreaking photos I’ve ever seen!”

  His eyes open wider, amused, surprised.

  He is tall and muscular with a soldier’s straight back and cautious stance. His hair, a dark, curly brown, is cut short; his eyes, a deep, earthy brown surrounded by deepening laugh lines, gaze unflinchingly into her own.

  “I suppose it’s not bad, for an amateur, that is. But anyone wandering around a war zone could have managed it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she says through gritted teeth, her native New York–ese coming to the fore in a primitive rage. “I just happen to be a professional photographer myself—an award-winning photographer—so perhaps I can appreciate a little better than you what kind of talent went into this! Just look at the lighting; it’s surreal! And the graininess, the contrasting shadows just over the child’s head—it’s almost a metaphor for the horror of the situation and the hopefulness of life injected into it … And that child’s expression, her eyes! Why, they’re … they’re…” To her horror, she feels the tears welling up, her throat constricting, choking her.

  “I’m so sorry, I had no idea…” he says softly, the ironic grin replaced by sincere concern. “Here, take my handkerchief. It’s the least I can do.”

  “A handkerchief? You’ve got to be kidding!” she answers rudely, searching desperately through her handbag for a tissue with which to remove as quickly as possible the embarrassing liquids spilling down her face.

  “Well, if you feel that passionately about it—the photo, that is, not the handkerchief”—he grins wickedly, shrugging—“I just happen to know where you could see a lot more of this stuff.”

  She blows her nose, her passionate interest overcoming her antagonism and her embarrassment. “Where?”

  He pauses (perhaps a bit theatrically?) and then says, “At my house.”

  She says nothing, a sunset-red blush climbing up her throat that paints her cheeks scarlet. She takes a quick step toward the photograph, searching for the signature. Henry Gordon. She swallows hard, afraid to look up.

  The world-famous war photographer whose work is a staple in Time, Newsweek, and the National Geographic. Hadn’t he almost been killed or something a few years back? Haiti? El Salvador?

  Slowly, she raises her head, catching the ragged scar across his forehead peeking out beneath the short bangs. How could she have missed that before?

  “I … I … that is…” she stutters, mortified.

  “Please don’t feel uncomfortable. I’m so sorry. It was terribly wicked of me! I was just ‘taking a piss,’ as we louts in London are fond of saying. And I actually meant everything I said about that photo.”

  “You must think I’m an idiot.”

  “On the contrary. I think you are delightfully kind. But I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about these pictures of mine.”

  “You can’t really feel that way about your work…”

  “How I feel about my work is complicated, Miss…?”

  “Rose … Rose Weiss.”

  He offers her his large hand. It is brown and full of old scars. She takes it timidly, feeling lost yet at the same time encompassed and safer than she has ever felt.

  “And you say you also take photographs? Award-winning photographs?” he teases.

  She nods, lowering her eyes. “I’m here on a Guggenheim fellowship for the year.”

  “Impressive! A real artist. Who are you working with?”

  She rattles off the names, her teeth suddenly chattering.

  “They’re the best! And you’re freezing.”

  “I actually came in here to warm up. I thought it was a tea shop.”

  He laughs, a full-throated, joyous sound that holds nothing back. “It was, not so long ago. Unfortunately, a friend of mine who mistakenly thinks photos are more beneficial to mankind than hot tea bought it and insists on putting mine up on the walls. I don’t know why. I think they look out of place outside a newspaper.”

  “No, they are amazing. This one, of the little girl … Where was that taken?”

  “El Mozote, in El Salvador,” he says, his face suddenly grim. “The government killed a thousand villagers in one day. I just happened to be nearby…”

  She can see clearly now the deep lines that etch his face with age and experience, the face of a man used to danger who has seen and been part of things she cannot even begin to imagine.

  “Allow me to make amends. We can’t send you home to the colonies thinking we Brits have no manners at all. Would you permit me to invite you to high tea?”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother…”

  He smiles. “And I don’t want to accost unwilling young women.”

  “I’m willing, I’m willing…” She smiles back. “Like Barkis,” she adds, following him outside.

  “Ah, Davi
d Copperfield. So, you’re a fan of Dickens?”

  “I adore him. In fact, all the English novelists: Lawrence, Forster, Woolf … I think the novel form was actually invented in England. And your theater. There’s absolutely nothing like it, even on Broadway…”

  The conversation flows without end, the awkwardness disappearing. When the taxi deposits them in Mayfair, they are upset by the interruption, almost sad to step out of the intimate, private space.

  “The Brown’s Hotel. Just the thing.” He rubs his hands together, ushering her up the marble steps.

  The place is a Georgian mansion out of the last century. Cakes, scones, and little sandwiches are piled high on Victorian cake stands. Wedgwood china cups and plates are set on the white tablecloth along with polished silver spoons and forks. There are teakettles wrapped in chintz cozies, and little bowls of clotted cream, strawberries, soft butter, and deep red jam.

  He nods toward the huge fire leaping and crackling in the old-fashioned grate. “That should warm you up!”

  It does, the snapping logs sending their comforting heat throughout the room, helping the radiators dry her moist, chilled skin. That and a pianist dressed in a tuxedo playing Chopin make her feel like an extra on a black-and-white thirties movie set. She half expects to see Ronald Colman and Olivia de Havilland stroll by.

  “Thank you, this is lovely.”

  He smiles, pleased. “It’s a bit run-down; I hope you don’t mind. I could have taken you to Claridge’s or the Dorchester, but that would have meant tie and jacket. Very posh and very not me.”

  “Nor me!” She laughs, noticing for the first time how he is dressed: the ragged edges on his hand-knit sweater, the khaki pants with endless pockets, perfect for storing camera batteries, lenses, film. “I’m just a poor girl from Brooklyn.”

  His face relaxes, the lines disappearing, the mouth wide and friendly. “And I’m a poor lad from Manchester. My parents and grandparents were in the shmatta business.”

  She looks up at him sharply. Could it be? But Gordon is such an English name. And plenty of Gentiles used Yiddish words nowadays. They’d become part of the English language.

  “So, how do you like our fair British Isles so far?” he asks, breaking her reverie.

  “Love it! I’ve been an Anglophile all my life. The books I read as a little girl seem to come alive here.”

  “So nice to hear. But the truth is, I have to disagree. London is a bleak, dark, gray miasma with unspeakable weather! Give me New York any day! It’s so brash and full of life, energy, and color! Here, we are all weighted down with the dust of the past, like those horrible antiques crowding the Victoria and Albert Museum…”

  “Still, you do live here, don’t you?”

  “Around the corner, unfortunately. In a moment of insanity, I splashed out on a large, posh place in a posh building no less. The evils of capitalism! But I’m not home much of the time. My work takes me to the four corners…”

  She plucks up her courage, asking him something that has been bothering her, something that might be inappropriately intimate. “What did you mean before when you said that your feelings about your work are complicated?”

  He ignores her question, his head turned around, searching for the waitress. “You’ve got a choice of seventeen different blends of tea, including one invented by Mr. Brown himself.”

  She looks down into her teacup silently, wondering if she should be offended, or if she’s offended him.

  His hand, gentle and persuasive, reaches over the table to touch hers. “Pardon me, but did I miss something? My hearing in one ear is gone and people sometimes think I’m ignoring them.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she answers tenderly, relieved, impulsively threading her fingers through his.

  He leans forward, his face flushed. “Please don’t pity me! I don’t have any complaints. I made my choices with my eyes wide open.”

  “I know what that feels like,” she whispers. “But you torture yourself anyway with the ‘what might have beens,’ don’t you?”

  He sits back, putting his hands into his pockets, staring. “Spoken like someone who has been there.”

  “I have. But my wounds are on the inside.” She sees his eyes soften.

  “I’ve got plenty of those, too.”

  There is a moment’s thoughtful silence as they take each other in, each suddenly seeing something new.

  “What didn’t I hear?” he asks her.

  “Ah, I just … what did you mean before when you said your feelings about your work are complicated?”

  “Oh, that.” He shifts uncomfortably. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve hated injustice, big kids bullying little kids. I wanted to save the world. I started by volunteering to be a soldier, which is how I lost my hearing … It’s a long story … After that, the army gave me a choice of an honorable discharge, or training in their photographic unit. I took the latter, and continued afterwards on my own. But somewhere along the line taking my thousandth photo of some horrible atrocity, I began to feel like a fraud. What was I doing just standing by and watching the horrors unfold? Yes, I took that photo of the little girl in El Salvador. But I did nothing to help her, or her family … Just like those people in Europe who had stood by watching what was happening to my family had done nothing.”

  She was stunned. “Your family? Are your parents survivors?”

  “Holocaust, you mean?” He shook his head. “They left long before that. But my grandparents always talked about how they and their parents hid in barrels to escape the pogroms in Dvinsk the year there was an assassination attempt on the czar. Those who hated the czar and those who loved the czar both blamed the Jews! Their families and communities were decimated by atrocities. They arrived with only the clothes on their backs and spare change in their pockets.”

  “You’re Jewish.”

  It was stunning news.

  He nodded. “Like you.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Weiss…? Brooklyn? The lovely dark eyes and hair…”

  “But not religious?”

  “My grandparents were very religious, the cornerstones of the Manchester Jewish community. But, alas, religion is something that tends to get diluted with the generations. My parents were free thinkers, and I’m … I don’t know what I am.”

  “My parents were ultra-Orthodox.”

  It was his turn to be stunned. “Like those Jews in Golders Green and Stamford Hill?”

  She nodded, noticing his eyes glance over the food she’d put on her plate. “But you no longer observe?”

  “I ran away from home the night before my wedding. I was seventeen. I’ve been running ever since.”

  He reached over the table once again, squeezing her hand gently, his thumb caressing her forefinger. “Who’s chasing you?”

  “No one, not anymore. My conscience maybe? I ran toward freedom, and once I’d found it, I used it to make so many bad choices. My first husband, for one.”

  “Aah. Yes. The pitfalls of freedom! I was also married once, long, long ago, to a very beautiful girl who was also intelligent enough to divorce me in the middle of still another six-month assignment. If memory doesn’t fail me, I think I was in the Congo at the time. I couldn’t blame her. Still, it broke my heart,” he says with a brave little laugh.

  “Any kids?”

  He shakes his head. “You?”

  “A son.”

  “Where?”

  “In boarding school in the States. I miss him terribly, but I’m away so often. It just wasn’t fair to drag him out of school to follow me around the world.”

  “Is his dad involved?”

  “Yes, he does his best. But he’s got a new family and lives in California. They see each other over the summers.”

  “A child. I envy you that. It’s one of life’s greatest joys. I missed the boat.”

  She looks up at him and smiles. “Are you sure?’”

  He smiles back. “I used to be, Rose … Rose Weiss. I u
sed to be.”

  Something small and electric brushes through her heart then. Her ears and fingertips tingle as if she’s been drinking wine, not tea. It is she who reaches over now, boldly, taking his hand in hers.

  “You promised to show me some photos.”

  23

  When she opened her eyes, the living room was dark, shadows playing tricks on her mind as they floated around her, the whispered words and sights of the past flitting through her like fireflies. She made herself a light supper and sat alone in the kitchen eating without appetite. Hannah hadn’t said exactly when she was bringing Rivka over, but she might as well get the room ready, she thought, putting her dishes in the sink, suddenly filled with a new energy.

  She took freshly ironed linens out of the closet, making up the bed, the scent of the lavender water the maid put in the iron rising to her nostrils as she stretched over the bed, smoothing down the sheet and duvet.

  Provence. Their honeymoon. The lavender fields of the high plateau in Sault at the base of Mont Ventoux. That photo he’d taken of her standing there, knee deep in purple blooms. Afterward, hiding from view, making love, their skin drenched in the intoxicating scent.

  She plumped up the pillows, looking at the lavender walls of her daughter’s old bedroom, smiling. Nine months later, Hannah had been born. The color had been their private joke as they put together her nursery. No matter how many times they’d repainted it, they never changed the hue.

  She took some flowers from the living room, transferring them into small crystal vases, which she filled with fresh water and then arranged on the dresser. On the nightstand, she placed a selection of magazines and books she hoped might interest her niece.

  As an afterthought, she went into her own bedroom, opening the closet and reaching toward the top shelf. She took down a small yellowing box. The brittle tissue paper flaked in her hands as she unwrapped the silver-backed comb and matching brush.

  Heathrow, about to board the plane back to New York, while Henry was off to another assignment. He handed her the box. “Start looking for an apartment for us in New York. And don’t use these until I get there,” he’d whispered tenderly, smoothing back her hair with his hand.