Page 11 of Margins of Love
Her face was blotchy, and her eyes red. She did not want to break his heart; she knew he meant well. He had not intended to hurt his only daughter , that much was clear even to Rachel, despite the underhanded scheme. She was hisklige maidale, his smart girl. But how could she possibly welcome a wedding to a stranger? The abstract possibility had always loomed over, an event in the distant future. She had imagined herself grown and resigned by the time a suitable match sealed her fate. At this moment, she felt neither surrendered nor inclined to obey her parents. She was too old to do as she was told but too young to know how to choose her own path. Wary of the new and unfamiliar sharpness of rebellion, Rachel gave her father a cutting look. But the goodness in his eyes overwhelmed her and tears blurred her vision again.
She sniffled. “I have to marry a stranger in just over two months, Papa?”
Her father lowered his head, and he remained silent. Then he left the room.
“Now, now.” Her mother pulled Rachel onto a settee next to her. “I am not going anywhere. I will be by your side every step of the way.”
And with her mother’s declaration of support, Rachel felt the sad reality set in: she would be married in two months. And she would be lonely for the rest of her life.
CHAPTER9
Later that morning, Rachel felt too lethargic to rise until Sammy knocked on her door. Seeing him—or trulybeingseen by him—always gave her just enough energy to tidy her hair, stand up straight, and assume the air of an impervious big sister. She took great pride in being his role model.
“Mama told me everything. Will you be all right?” Sammy perched on the side of her bed. He bore a plate of cheese, biscuits, and a large cup of chocolate, and her stomach rumbled at the sight. It was midday already, and she had missed dinner and breakfast.
“Whatever do you mean?” Rachel tried to downplay her sadness and straightened the wrinkles in her coverlet.
“I know you don’t want to marry a stranger and that you don’t have the privileges a boy does. It’s not fair.” He looked weighed down by guilt.
Her heart warmed at the thought of her little brother, all but eleven years old, shouldering the burden of the injustice between the sexes. She cut him off with a warm embrace.
Sammy burst out from under her arms. “You are all sweaty and not even under the covers. I never forget to crawl under the covers.” He frowned as if she had disrupted the natural order of bedtime routines.
For the first time, Rachel felt acutely aware of their age gap. She appreciated his limited knowledge of her problems—he was too young to fully grasp such seriousness. Nonetheless, Rachel warmed at his attempt to distract her.
“Mama tucks you in and makes sure you are nice and warm,” she said.
Their mother always anticipated their every need, paying special attention to their warmth. However, discussing their desires was largely frowned upon, especially because Stella feared that her children might appear spoiled. “I wish I could toot your horns, I am so proud of you.” Stella usually said before social events in London, an old-fashioned display of modesty to limit the appearance of affection, partially justified through fear of being envied and ultimately persecuted as a result. Thus, keeping her children warm—a trifle for most other mothers living such lavish lifestyles as the Newman family’s—was a source of intense stress for Stella.
By her father’s appeal, Rachel and Sammy had to promise not to mention their nightmares to Stella. Rachel had been unwilling to fall asleep the night before. She feared her recurring nightmare, in which she found herself back in Lausanne, in their old house overlooking Lake Geneva, on Lac Léman as the Francophones called it. Even now that she was awake, she was still lost in the dream’s daze.
Her parents had enjoyed the peace, quiet, and serenity of the cold lake nestled in the mountains with a view of the distant glaciers. The air was fresh and crisp, clean and pure. Their tiny house had been a haven. Rachel missed her window seat in the old house. Her mother had sewn lilac curtains and matching throw pillows for her. The whimsically dressed window, decorated in hues of soft purples kept her warm inside her little room, a stark contrast to the chilly lake beyond. Oh, how many pensive moments she had spent on that window seat, books in hand. She remembered the magical clouds of condensation she created on the cold windows when she blew on the glass pane, and the screeching of her fingers when she drew pictures in those clouds.
The air was always cool, but Rachel was never cold in her sensible felted coats. As Swiss Jews, they had dressed differently, her father in a black frock, his sideburns hanging in curled locks from either side of his face. Her mother had covered her hair in a shawl when they went to town. People made a point of bumping into them, spilling their groceries, and once even rolling a barrel toward their carriage, nearly causing them to crash. But it had been worth it to be out of the ghettos in Germany, to have a house above the smelly, busy, bustling town of Lausanne below them.
Not all locals had realized that Rachel’s family was Jewish. Most villagers were too ignorant to question why it was acceptable to pick on the odd German family. And the Newmans never fought back. If they had, they would have had no legal protection. Jews had barely any of the rights afforded to citizens.
One day, the local butcher, who had known they were Jewish because he supplied them with kosher meat, needed money. Ilan lent it to him, but he kept coming back asking for more and more. The butcher became greedy and deceived Ilan, selling him meat that he had not bled out to make it kosher. One day, Ilan had been upset that he could not bring meat home for Shabbat dinner and gave the butcher an ultimatum to force him to repay his debts.
The butcher had spread vicious rumors about Ilan being a loan shark. He lied, saying that Ilan imposed illegally high interest rates, costing the butcher his last penny and leaving his family to starve—when the reverse was true. It was common practice to single the Jews out as scapegoats, to spin the truth against them. The Newmans were used to such tactics. Then came the night that still colored Rachel’s every nightmare.
Rachel had been fourteen, perched on her window seat. Through the ice frosting on the pane she saw sudden flickers in shades of orange and white. She saw men outside with torches, gathering quickly and surrounding their house. Ilan picked up Rachel’s baby sister and carried her to her mother, who had been clutching Sammy’s shoulders in front of her. Then came a brutal banging at the door.
“Sortez!” A crude man yelled for them to come out. Rachel did not remember the next moment, except that her father had led the family into the lake. It was cold and dark, the antithesis to their smoking house, which had been set on fire. The wooden walls buckled under the flames; Rachel’s nose was assaulted by a burning stench. No longer was the lake a crisp beauty; it became a frozen depth of horror.
That November night, Rachel, Sammy, Ilan, and Stella, with the baby, Maya, had been chased into the ice-cold lake. “Requins à l’eau. Requins à l’eau.” Sharks into the water. The hundred or so men whispered all night until the torches burned out, and the Jews were out of sight. Rachel knew they had been unwanted but she had—in her childish innocence—not realized the degree of hatred against her kind.
Rachel would never forget the cold prickling her skin when she lost the feeling in her feet and could no longer tell whether she was standing in the icy muck or had long fallen into the water. Most of all, she remembered her father’s pleas to keep still, to make sure the water did not ripple around them despite their shivering—hoping the locals would think them already dead and leave.
And so, Rachel and her family had watched as their house burned and every local awaited their death, even Rachel’s former playmates. Her mother had held her baby sister, who had only been nine months old. The relentless repetition of their dooming whispers, calling the Newmans sharks into the water, dehumanized the family. The locals made it sound like they were solving a pest problem rather than erasing the reminders of their unpaid debts by killing the Jews.
When the last locals had withdrawn and the last torch had disappeared, her father led them to a moonlit spot within the lake. Maya’s lips were purple by then. Her rosy baby cheeks were blue, her eyes immobile, frozen into a squint at the moonlight. Her mother began to shake with the stiff baby in her arms in a way that had terrified Rachel, and her father’s voice froze. He still did not speak much. Probably because the cold had frozen his pain, forever preserving it in his heart. Rachel had watched in horror as realization dawned on her little brother. Their childhood had ended that night. Their lives would never be as they knew them. Mama still said the cold swallowed her happiness that night.
Between the heat of the flames and the coolness of the glacial lake water, everything was lost. Their baby girl, home, money, and memories disintegrated into the early morning fog that hid their emergence from the water. Their heavy woolen clothes froze under the sub-zero temperatures, but they had nothing else left. Because they were Jews, the authorities did not intervene. Rachel had spotted the magistrate among the men with torches. The irony of their inhumane status had struck her repeatedly. Instead of using fire to heat up the water, or water to put out the fire, the locals had trapped them in the cold water to watch their lives burn. The murderers were free of guilt—a set of rules governed their world where gentiles were not punished for persecuting Jews.
When her father had instructed her mother, “Lass sie geyn,” let her go, Rachel knew that Maya would not even have a proper burial. The locals’ cruelty had dehumanized the tiny baby; a Jew without a funeral was a soul that could not come to rest. Rachel sometimes wished she could forget her last image of Maya, bloated in the cold, unsinkable as the truth—Jews were tolerated but never wanted. Her father had pried little Maya from her mother’s arms and had let her float away. He wanted the locals to find the small lifeless body to confirm the family’s demise. When Maya floated atop the water, caught between a few angled sheets of ice forming on the surface, Rachel’s mother’s legs had given way. Her father had to dive to catch her and bring her back up.
Sammy had screamed, “Mama,” but Rachel shushed him into silence, in case the locals still lurked in the shadows. She had switched into survival mode.
