The Lost Wife by Richman Alyson

Author:Richman, Alyson [Richman, Alyson]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2011-09-05T20:00:00+00:00

At the Lautscher Werkstatte, Rita and I became close friends. I was continually learning from her the ins and outs of the system. Sometimes a German or Czech soldier would appear and bring a photograph and order us to do a portrait for him. Rita would always ask him if, by any chance, he had any extra food on him. “Of course not!” he would bark. But then a few days later, when he would reappear to claim his portrait, he would slide a small bar of chocolate into her hands or an extra gram of sugar. Those two things were coveted more than gold.

Rita also showed me the art of smuggling out some of the art supplies. At the end of our work shift, she showed me how she took near-finished tubes of oil paint and placed them in her brassiere so she could paint on her own late at night or save them for the children. The stealing of supplies and the creation of art other than for the Reich were punishable offenses, but she took the risks without hesitation.

“What more do I have to lose?” she said when I looked at her. “If they take away my ability to see, to record . . . I am already dead . . . And if we can get some of the paint and materials into the children’s hands, then even better.”

I knew what she meant. Aside from the joy it brought me to get supplies to the children, I also had an unyielding desire to channel what I was feeling. I had not felt such an overwhelming surge to capture what was around me since those first few months when Josef and I were falling in love, and all I wanted to do was paint in a palette of red and orange.

But I was not allowed to paint what I was feeling. Had I been given that freedom, I would have used a palette of black and dark blue. Instead, I was forced to paint these inane caricatures of bouncy, rosy babies with captions that read Congratulations on the birth of your little angelic boy, when the Jewish children all around me were getting sick from typhus, or their bellies starving for more than a piece of stale, moldy bread.

I looked at my palette of soft colors: the carnelian red, the pale yellow and powder blue, and remembered the colors of the Old Town Square with a bittersweet wistfulness. How many years before had I sat in the café with Father and looked up at the great Orloj clock. If I closed my eyes, I could almost taste the pastry, sticky on my fingers, with Father sipping his coffee with steam rolling off the white porcelain cup. Now, outside, there was only melting brown snow, black smoke from the chimneys, and skeletal men walking in half-torn clothes. Or women with hollow eyes, and children to whom a glass of milk and a chocolate biscuit would be heaven.

Our daily rations were one hundred grams of bread and a bowl of soup.

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