We miss your beloved student, Fr?ulein Martina, who has been forced to do work far from Vienna. Her mother and aunts have also left us, as have our own daughter and her husband. A letter came for Fr?ulein Martina that probably is of no importance, but in these unsettled times, I thought I would let you know so that you can notify her when you next speak to her. We placed it in a familiar family setting, the spot where her own little daughter, K?the, put our Charlotte’s teddy bear.
With all good wishes for your health, my esteemed Professor, yours truly,
(Dr.) Felix Herschel
Lotty’s hands shook as she took the letter from Max. “My Opa, his own handwriting.” She traced his signature with her forefinger. “After the invasion of Poland I never heard from him again, not even Red Cross letters. I kept writing to him from London, to my mother, my grandmother, and never hearing back.”
Her voice turned bitter. “Now at least I know the order of their dying: first my parents, then my grandparents.”
She added after another silent moment, “My Opa loved his books, but he had to start burning them to keep us warm. He held back his favorite titles, but he must have run out of writing paper and used this. I was too little to understand literature, but he often showed me Radetzkymarsch, telling me it was one of the greatest novels ever written. That he tore out the title page—I must go to the library, I must see the original.”
We all sat quietly for a time. Finally I said, “Can you tell me about your teddy bear? Where did K?the—Kitty—put it?”
Lotty tried to put her personal distress out of her mind. Her forehead furrowed as she tried to summon memories she had left buried for most of her life.
“I certainly remember my Teddy. When we were thrown out of my grandmother’s beautiful flat on the Renngasse, we had only a short time to pack. They let us take one small suitcase each. They ransacked the rooms, they stole my Oma’s silver, her jewelry, even my Opa’s World War One military medals. Opa took some of his books; the Nazis didn’t care about books.
“My Opa told me to choose quickly among my toys, that I could take one, and I chose Teddy. He was a beautiful golden brown, and he was my comfort for many years. He traveled to London with me, and cheered me in my cousin Minna’s soulless house. In the end, when I learned I’d earned an obstetrics fellowship at Northwestern here in Chicago I had him cleaned and repaired for the children’s ward at the Royal Free.”
“But where did Kitty put him?” I asked. “Why would your grandfather think that so important to mention?”
“The letter that came to Fr?ulein Martina must have been important, or your grandfather wouldn’t have written Dzornen about it, right?” Max added. “They didn’t really know each other, did they?”
“Not as far as I know,” Lotty said. “Of course, my grandfather was a rather important lawyer before the war. Vienna is a small city; professional people crossed paths. My grandparents probably knew the gossip, that Dzornen was K?the’s father, but the main thing must have been that the letter held something of value, at least to Martina. My Opa knew—must have known by then that they were going to be—that he and my Oma would—would not survive. He was sounding casual, hoping the letter would make it past the censors.”
“Did Kitty take the bear from you?” I persisted, wishing I didn’t have to push so hard on Lotty. “You said she used to come to the Renngasse flat sometimes, and that you lived across the hall from her when you were forced to move to the other place.”
The other place, the crowded rooms in the ghetto. I couldn’t say it out loud.
Lotty’s eyes squeezed shut. “After we moved to the Novaragasse, there was one horrible afternoon when K?the and I had seen a man pushed from a roof to his death. There were so many shocking sights back then, and I’ve tried not to let them fill my head, but that murder—for some reason that death is connected to my bear, but how?”
She hugged her arms around her shoulders, shivering. “Oh, Victoria, if I’d known how much pain these memories would bring, I would never have let you within a mile of Kitty Binder or her daughter. Death is hard enough, but all these deaths, all this violence—everything I saw as a child in Vienna, and now Kitty herself—!”