Street Dreams

24

If there were D.T.’sfrom too much food, Decker was experiencing the phenomenon. Rina had learned cooking from a pro, but over the years, she had lightened the cuisine. Her sauces weren’t as heavy, her side vegetables barely blanched and often served plain except for a little salt. Mama was still in the old country, serving mass quantities ofheavyfood. But that didn’t stop Decker from stuffing his face. If he had eaten any more chicken paprikash, his face would have turned red and blotchy. But self-loathing had an upside: His mother-in-law was very pleased with his gustatory enthusiasm.

“It’s always a pleasure to serve you,” she told him. It came out:Eets alvays a pleasurrrre to serrrrve you.Her Hungarian accent was light and lilting.

Magda Elias was wearing a blue pullover sweater and white jeans. She was still beautiful and trim-a woman who took pride in her appearance. Her dyed black hair was always coiffed and she always wore makeup. Rina was a simpler, younger version of her mother.

They were eating in the formal dining room-a paean to porcelain. Magda’s breakfront was filled with her good dinner china, figurines, decorative plates, and vases. There were also a dozen pieces of expensive European silver. The woman could have opened up an antique shop.

“It’s always a pleasure to eat your cooking, Magda,” Decker parried.

Magda smiled. “You are being very charming tonight.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

She hit his shoulder. He and Rina’s parents got along well, although it hadn’t always been that way. It had taken a dozen years and the production of a granddaughter to get to this level of congeniality. He thought about that as Cindy came to mind. Decker had slipped up with Koby. He was still smoldering from her relationship with Scott Oliver and maybe that was the problem. He was too involved. Black, white, purple, old, young, female, whatever-he should have done better with her date. He made a pledge to mind his manners in the future, regardless of whom she brought home.

Sammy and Jacob pushed away their plates and groaned. Sam said, “Really dynamite, Omah, but I ate too much. No room for dessert.”

“Aaah.” She dismissed his announcement. “Just a leetle strudel. Mostly fruit.”

“Apple?” Sammy asked.

She nodded. “And a little nut cake.”

“There are cookies, too,” Jacob added. “I saw them in the kitchen.”

“For Hannah!” Magda explained.

“Where’s Papa?” Rina asked.

Magda pointed to the back room. Without fanfare, Stefan Elias had retired to the den, to his chair and his TV programs. Usually the routine required Decker to join him between dinner and dessert. Rina began helping her mother clear the dishes. Decker picked up a platter. He whispered to his wife, “So when are we going to talk about Hannah’s family-tree report?”

“Soon, soon,” Rina told him.

“Why don’t you just tell her-”

“Shhhh.”

Decker rolled his eyes. “Are you going to wash the dishes?”

“No, the boys are going to wash.”

“We are?” Jacob said.

“Most definitely.”

Magda interjected, “I have a dishwasher.”

She had adeeshvasher.

Rina said, “This is good china.”

“I have a delicate cycle, Ginny. You think I live in the nineteenth century?” She turned to her grandsons. “You just rinse and put it in the racks, okay? Then you work up an appetite for dessert.”

Sammy said, “Yeah, I hear that dishwashing is the new aerobics, Omah.”

Decker smiled and elbowed his son’s ribs.

Magda said, “You go join Stefan, Peter? He is expecting you.”

“In a few minutes. I wanted to hear you talk about your family with Hannah.”

“I don’t have much to tell.” Magda’s face tightened. “It was not a happy childhood.”

“I know that.” Decker went over to her and kissed her cheek. “If it’s too hard, we can skip the childhood and start with after you came to America.” Rina gave him dagger eyes. He ignored her. “It’s totally up to you.”

“That would be better.” Magda went back to the dinner table and began gathering dirty dishes.

“The boys will do that,” Rina said. “Sit.”

“No, I like to move around.”

Decker said, “Like mother, like daughter.”

They brought a new round of soiled dishes into the kitchen.

“Oh goody,” Sammy said. “I was almost through and just hoping for more.”

“Stop complaining,” Rina told him.

Magda went back out to the dining room. Decker and Rina followed.

“Sit down, Magda,” Decker told her. “The boys can get the rest.”

The old woman sat.

Rina said, “How come you listen to him and not to me?”

“He eats my food,” Magda retorted. “Where is Channaleh?”

“With Opah,” Decker answered.

It was interesting how he called Rina’s mother Magda but Rina’s father was Opah-grandfather. Decker sat on one side of his mother-in-law, Rina on the other. “The two of them are watching Animal Planet. How about we do this, Magda? You go over your childhood really briefly so Hannah will have something to put down. Not more than a couple of minutes. Just things like where you lived in Germany, what you remember about Munich before you moved to Budapest-”

“Not too much,” Magda said. “I moved when I was nine.”

“What year was that?” Decker asked.

“It was 1928 or maybe 1929. Before ’33. We moved because my mother died.” She whispered, “You know about her?”

Decker nodded. “I know what happened to her, yes.”

She looked around nervously. “I don’t want to tell Hannah this.”

“I agree,” Decker said. “Too much for her.”

Magda went on. “Then in Budapest, my father met my stepmother and they get married. They have three children together. So with my sister and me, we are five. Only my sister and I survived. I was at Monowitz, you know. That was the goyish side of Auschwitz. All the rest of the family went to Birkenau. Only my sister Eva made it through. I still see her. She lives in New York. She married very well.”

“So did you,” Decker said.

“Yes, I did,” Magda confirmed. “I married thebest!”

Rina smiled. It was wonderful how much her parents still loved each other.

“Is Eva a whole sister or half sister?” Decker asked.

“Half sister,” Rina said. “The middle of the three girls from Mama’s stepmother.”

“And Eva only survived because she was transferred back to Dachau-not to the main camp but to one of the smaller camps.” Magda’s face tightened. “There were many smaller camps-twenty, thirty in southern Bavaria-all of it Dachau. You know?”

Decker shook his head and looked at his wife.

“Satellite camps,” Rina said. “The entire complex was referred to as Dachau. It was very ironic. Hitler had succeeded in making GermanyJudenrein-Jewish free-but then toward the end when things were falling apart, he became desperate for domestic labor. So he brought the Jews backintoGermany to work in armament factories-slave labor. Most of these smaller camps produced weapons and armaments, but they were also death camps. We don’t have to talk about this, Mama. How about happier times, like earlier in your childhood?”

“They were not so happy…”

“Before it happened,” Decker said. “What do you remember about your mother?”

“She was very, very beautiful.”

“So you must have looked like her.”

Magda’s smile was radiant at the compliment. “She made beautiful gowns. The mostwunderbarfabrics.”

“Silks?”

“Ja, ja, seide-silk. In such beautiful colors.”

The woman was Hungarian, but when she spoke of her childhood, rudimentary German came back. Decker said, “Who’d she sew the gowns for? Who were her clientele?”

“The rich people-the aristocrats, the bourgeois.”

“You know, Peter and I just came back from Munich,” Rina told her.

Magda was quiet.

“We saw a lot of old Jewish Munich. You lived near Gartnerplatz, right?”

She thought long and hard. “Nein,not the Isarvorstadt. That is for the Eastern Jews… the poor ones. My father was only a tailor, but my mother made money, enough for us to move. We were middle class. We even had a cleaning lady twice a week-an Austrian girl from Tirol. All the cleaning girls were Austrian.”

She searched the recesses of her memory.

“They used to fight-my father and my mother. He did not want her to work. It did not look nice, like my father was a poor man. But my mother loved to sew.” Magda furrowed her brow. “I used to go with her to visit the women, to the beautiful villas in Bogenhausen.Ach,such splendor, I remember so clear, especially the villas where the Russian aristocracy lived. There were many Russians in Munich… those who fled the revolution.”

She was quiet.

“My father did not think this was good for a woman to visit by herself to the rich goyim. They fought about it. It was not happy times.” She brushed her hand in the air. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t blame you,” Decker said empathetically.

Rina tried to hide her frustration. “But you don’t remember whereyoulived, Mama?”

“I remember the name of the big street. We lived off of Turkenstrasse.”

“Schwabing,” Rina said.

“Ja, ja,Schwabing, of course!” Magda hit her head. “I am an old woman.”

“Schwabing was and still is kind of a bohemian area.” Rina kissed her mother’s cheek. “Very sporty of you, Mama.”

“It was probably my mother’s idea. She was very sporty. My father was a good Germanbürger.A good man, but very strict.” Her eyes started to water. “He would have been so proud of you, Ginny.”

Rina held her hand. Magda brought the free one to her chest. “It is so hard to talk.”

Decker said, “We can move on, Magda.”

She wiped her eyes with her finger and nodded.

Decker said, “Just for the record, do you happen to remember any names of childhood friends? I think that would be neat for Hannah to hear. You know how your granddaughter feels about her buddies.”

Magda gave him a tearful smile. “Let me think. There was Briget and Petra.” A pause. “Oh… there was also Marta. She was Marta number one. I was Marta number two. Marta was my name before we moved to Hungary.”

Rina was surprised. “You changed your name?”

“My father changed my name. So I would fit in better with the Hungarians, yes.”

“All these things I never knew.”

Magda shrugged.

“Last names?” Decker said.

“Of the girls?”

“Yes. Do you remember their entire names?”

“Not the first two, no. The memory is gone. But Marta, yes, because in theschule,I was Marta Gottlieb and she was Marta Lubke. I was the Jew and she was the Protestant, which was not so common in Munich. Bavaria is very Catholic. My sister and I went to a very liberalschule-also my mother’s idea. My father wasn’t happy about that, either.” She sighed. “I remember my father with my mother; then I think about my father with my stepmother. The first marriage… I don’t think it was a happy one. I won’t tell Hannah this, either.”

“I think Hannah would like to hear about how her grandparents met and got married and came to the United States,” Decker said.

“We escaped in ’56 when the Communists came. Another story.”

Decker patted the old woman’s hand. “You’re a real old-fashioned hero.”

“Bah!” She slapped him on the shoulder and stood up. “I go see what my boys are doing in the kitchen. Do you want a piece of strudel, Peter?”

“Only if you serve it with decaf coffee.”

“What you think? Only decaf at this hour. Otherwise I spend the night on the phone with Ginny.” She laughed at her joke.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Rina whispered, “You did a good job of drawing her out.”

“Thank you.”

“But we barely even scratched the surface. We still don’t know anything about her mother’s life.”

“And we’re going to leave it at that,” Decker whispered emphatically.

“Peter-”

“Rina, listen to me. She’s what? In her eighties? It’s a painful memory in a woman who has suffered many painful memories. We’re not going to push her any further. End of discussion.”

Rina sighed. “In my heart, I know you’re right. I just think she… she deserves to know what happened.”

“She’s fine with it. You’re the one who’s curious.” Decker rubbed his temples. “Rina, from what she told us, it could have been her father who murdered her mother-”

“No!” Rina was appalled.

“Yes!” Decker insisted. “By her own recollection, they had a troubled relationship. How would you feel uncovering that?”

She was silent.

“I have a few unsolved cases that still bug me, but I’ve learned to live with them.”

“It’s not your grandmother.”

“Then talk to her when I’m not here. I’m not going to be party to any more subterfuge.”

“All right,” Rina conceded. “You’re the detective, I’ll trust your judgment.”

“Thank you.” Decker regarded his wife. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ve got an idea. I asked for the full names of her girlfriends for a reason. The memory may be painful for her, but probably not at all painful to Marta Lubke-ifshe’s not dead,ifI can find her, andifshe remembers anything.”

Rina looked at her husband with newfound admiration.

“Yeah… I’m good at what I do.” He unbuttoned the waistband of his pants and untucked his shirt. “I ate too much.”

“I’ll make a light supper tomorrow night.”

“For the next six nights, please.”

“Thank you, Peter, for going beyond the call of duty.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gave her a mock frown, then kissed his wife’s lips. “You’re welcome. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Rina kissed him back.

He stood up. “I’m going to join your father and Hannah and watch Animal Planet. Last time I checked, they were watching a special on Vietnamese potbellied pigs. I should feel right at home.”