The news left Robert crushed and humiliated. With the small amount of cash Hanna had left, the couple couldn’t afford even the slightest luxury and were forced to leave The Carlyle for a tenement on the corner of Thirty-Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue. The apartment was crammed and shabby, located in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, a poor, Irish neighborhood too dangerous to walk in after dark.
Hanna refused to consider staying there long. She spent her first week in New York combing the classified ads for a better apartment, something modest yet affordable. She found an enclave on the Upper West Side where many European Jews had settled after fleeing Germany in the thirties. There, the owner of a massive townhouse that had been converted into apartments agreed to rent them a ground-floor studio at a reasonable price with no security deposit. The move brought Hanna relief, however short-lived. At least now she had found a neighborhood where she could walk safely, even as far as the park, when time and weather permitted. When she walked past the extravagant buildings on Central Park West, the sight of the broad front gates and impeccable doormen reminded her of her childhood visits to New York. The Dakota stood out above all others. Hanna would gaze up at the windows and dream of the charmed lives of those living within.
As for Robert, he quickly grew disheartened by the harsh homecoming, as he was forced to swallow his pride and slog through one odd job after another. He would leave home early in the morning to make the rounds at the employment agencies, and was lucky if he managed to lock down even the most precarious short-term job. He picked up shifts on the docks or in the stockrooms of clothing stores, until he eventually landed a permanent position driving delivery trucks for a beverage company. He worked for a friendly man who expected hard work and long hours, yet still treated his employees with decency and respect.
Toward the end of fall, Robert was approached by another driver and became entangled in a scheme delivering black-market goods. Robert would keep the keys to the truck on him after his official route had ended, and then, after hours, he would pick up the truck, cross the Hudson River, and drive down to the docks on the Jersey side to load crates of cigarettes and other contraband for distribution.
It was a victimless crime, but it would have come with heavy consequences if he’d ever got caught. Yet the pay outweighed the high risk, a full fifty dollars per truckload. With four runs per weekend, he was at last able to offer Hanna a better life. He could now take her out to dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays, or even dancing at a West Village jazz club.
One night, Robert came home from work to find Hanna crying at the kitchen stove. She wept soundlessly, as the steam from a pot of fresh vegetable soup rose up into her face. Robert sat down at the table without a word, and after Hanna had set down the tureen and served his dinner, she headed off to bed. Robert followed shortly after, lying in the bed beside her and waiting for his young wife to speak.
“I see how hard you’re trying, darling. I don’t blame you at all. Rather, I’m indebted to you for everything you’ve done for me. It’s just . . . life here . . . isn’t what I thought it would be,” she said.
“We’re going to be okay,” Robert insisted. “We just have to wait it out. If we stay strong and stick together, we’re going to make it.”
“Stick together?” she sighed. “I already feel like I’m going it alone, almost all the time, every day of the week. And don’t think I’m blind to what you’ve been doing on the weekends; I’m no fool. All I have to do is look out of the window to see who you’re cavorting with in the dead of night, and what you’re mixed up in. I know a deliveryman’s wages would never pay for all those meals out, not to mention the new ice box last month, or that dress you gave me.”
“I’m just trying to give you the nice things you deserve.”
“I won’t wear that dress, Robert. I don’t want dirty money, and I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Hanna had been spending far too much time walking around posh neighborhoods. She watched the refined, attractive people wearing the most lavish attire and driving around in shiny new cars. She peered through the windows of places she was now barred from entering, gazing at the very people with whom she had spent her entire childhood. The war and the loss of her father had forced Hanna into exile. She was looking in from the outside, wandering about like Alice in Wonderland in search of a secret door that would lead her back to her old life and the world to which she belonged.
“You don’t understand, Robert. We’re never going to get anywhere with you driving a truck, and I can’t stand the thought of you in prison—at least, not unless it’s for something worthwhile.”
“Are you serious?” asked Robert, astonished.
“Of course not! If you join the Mafia, I’ll walk out on you. I only wish we could find a way to get back to France . . .”
“And just what would that change?”
“One day I’ll tell you.”