“No.”
“I can’t imagine. The only ranch I’ve ever been to was the divorce ranch in The Women. At Metro.” She glanced around. “Fay certainly knows how to go all out,” she said, half-laughing. “I remember when it was soup and crackers.” She reached for a canape on a tray, showing a green flash of emerald bracelet.
“You’re friends?” Liesl said, polite.
“Mm, from the good old days, and thank God they’re over. Are you in pictures or-?”
“I translate books. From German,” she said, with a sly glance to Ben, waiting for Paulette to bolt.
But Paulette was impressed. “Do you really? I wish I could. Anything like that. They say you’re not supposed to regret anything, but when you don’t have school- I started work so early, I don’t know anything. You never catch up, really.”
“Well, translation, it’s not so brainy,” Liesl said easily. “Just work. And they’re my father’s books, so I can always ask him what he meant. Then find the words.”
“Your father?”
“Hans Ostermann. He’s not so well known here-”
“ Central Station, ” Paulette said immediately. “I read it. Warners made it. God, what a mess. Mary Astor. He must have hated it. But I read it in English, so that was you? I’d love to meet him sometime. Just coffee or something, if he sees people. Oh, there’s Rosemary. Have you met? Rosemary,” she said, drawing her to them, “come meet some people. Liesl Kohler,” she said, remembering it, something they didn’t teach in school. “My old friend Ben-we were on the Chief together.”
Rosemary hesitated, staring at Liesl, that first appraisal women make at parties, seeing everything, then shook hands with them both.
“Are your ears burning?” Paulette said. “Everybody’s talking about you.”
“The picture isn’t even finished yet,” Rosemary said, glancing again at Liesl, then facing Paulette, a subtle ranking.
“That’s the best time. When everybody still thinks it’s wonderful. But I hear you are.”
“Well, you know, everybody likes dailies and then it comes out and-”
“Just hit your marks and cross your fingers-that’s all any of us can do.”
Rosemary flushed, clearly pleased to be included in “us.” In person, without the glow of backlighting, her features seemed sharper, everything less soft. She looked around, slightly nervous, perhaps still self-conscious about being the center of attention.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful house,” she said, apparently meaning it.
“Well, it’s not my taste,” Paulette said. “I can’t even pronounce it. Louis Quinze?” she said to Liesl, saying it perfectly. “Liesl’s a translator, so she can be mine tonight. Quinze,” she said again, at Liesl’s nod. “I always think about dusting it. But Fay loves it. She always had a good eye. I can’t tell one vase from another. But Bunny says the Sevres is museum quality.” Again pronouncing it correctly. “So you see, she knows.” She turned, seeing Bunny coming over to them. “Isn’t that right?”
“Darling, I have to borrow you,” Bunny said, ignoring the question. “Come meet the congressman. He loved Standing Room Only.”
“God. And he got elected?”
“Nicey, nicey. Come on. You can talk to Ben at dinner. Rosemary, you know Irving Rapper’s here. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.” A firm do-yourself-some-good nudge, Liesl and Ben just table fillers.
“Now’s your chance,” Ben said to Liesl, nodding toward the woman at the window. “To join the wallflowers.”
“Who is she? She hasn’t talked to anyone.”
“Fay’s cousin. Has to be. I don’t think she has any English.”
“Then go rescue her. I’m going to the ladies’, find out what people are really saying.”
Fay’s cousin didn’t turn when he came up, her gaze still fixed out the window.
“Entschuldigung. Pani Markowitz?”
“Pani? So you speak Polish?” she said in German, finally turning. Ben smiled. “No. A courtesy only. I was told you were Polish. I’m Ben Collier.”
“I was born there, yes,” she said, her voice flat.
It was then that he took in her eyes, the same faraway emptiness he’d seen in some of the others’, a blind person’s eyes, no longer needed, nothing more to see. Her collarbones stuck out, barely covered by the thin layer of skin.
“I thought I would die there, too, but no.” She half turned to the window. “And now look. So many lights.”
“You lived in Berlin?” Ben said, to say something. “I was there as a boy. A few years.”
“Yes, Berlin.”
“And you’re Fay’s cousin.”
“Her father and my mother-but he came here. A long time ago, before the first war.”
“Your mother stayed.”
“My father-he did very well. There was no reason for us to leave. It was a different time then. My mother always said Max left for the adventure. They thought he was a no-good. To leave your family, your country. So who was right?” She turned fully to the room, the rich end of Max’s gamble. “A daughter living like this. To think all this still exists.”
“You were in a camp.”
She raised her eyes, still not really looking. “We all were. My husband, my sister. Everyone.”
“Are they-?”
She shook her head. “Now only me.”
“I’m sorry.”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if the words were not just inadequate but puzzling, irrelevant.
“I don’t know why. I was not so strong. Leon was stronger, for the work. But they took him. To the gas. I don’t know why. No reason. You survive, no reason. Or you don’t.”
“I knew you’d find each other,” Lasner said in English, genial, putting his hand on Ben’s shoulder.
“You speak English?” Ben asked her.
“A few words only.”
“But now that you’re here, you have to try. I tell her, if she gets every other word, she’s at least halfway there, right? You tell her about the picture?”
“Not yet.” Ben switched to German. “We’re making a documentary for the Army, about the camps.”
“You want to put this in a film?”
“So people will know. A record. Eisenhower ordered them to film it when we got there. He said no one would believe it otherwise. A kind of proof.”
“A proof.”
“That it happened.” He looked at her. “We don’t have to talk about this, if you’d rather not.”
“Put her in the picture. You can tell your story,” Lasner said.
“What would I say? I don’t know the reason for any of it.” She reached down to the coffee table for another cigarette.
“You ought to go easy on those things.”
“I’m sorry. For me it’s a luxury. A whole cigarette.”
“I didn’t mean- I just meant for your health. Your life is a gift now.”
She stared at him, saying nothing until, slightly flustered, he changed the subject.
“You know who this is?” He nodded at Ben. “Otto Kohler’s kid.”
Now her eyes did move, suddenly alert, as if she’d heard another voice.
“Otto’s? But-”
“You knew my father?”
“Otto,” she said, the flat tone now a little agitated. “There was a boy, yes. But I don’t understand. You’re not-”
“My brother. I was in England.”
“Your brother. Taller,” she said, measuring. “What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
She drew on the cigarette and looked down. “Yes. Of course he would be dead.” Her voice flat again. When she looked back up at him her eyes had retreated behind their blank wall. “So now this,” she said aloud, but to herself. “Otto’s son.”
“I knew you two would have lots to talk about,” Lasner said in English.
She turned to him, hesitating, translating in her head, then looked back at Ben, an almost wry expression on her lips.
“Yes, much to talk about,” she said and then, suddenly skittish, “Excuse me.”
She left before either of them could say anything. Lasner raised his eyebrows.
“So I was wrong?”
“She’s grateful to you, you know,” Ben said, an instinctive peacemaker. “It’s just maybe too much for her.” He opened his hand to the party. “So soon.”