A Ritchie Boy Read online

  As they walked through the door of The Tremont, a few bars from “Almost Like Being in Love” filled the air. Tasa’s cheeks grew red and she scurried to the coatroom. Eli spoke in a low voice to Arthur. “I told you about the organist. Name’s Vivian. She has this way of befriending the couples who dine here.” He rolled his eyes before continuing. “She took a special liking to us when we came a few weeks ago. Let’s just say the Brigadoon piece was her way of saying hello to us.”

  To the strains of “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” Arthur nodded to Vivian as they were escorted to a red leather wall booth not far from where she stroked the keys of a Hammond organ. His eyes took in the large dining room. The Cape Cod wallpaper with its outline of sailboats cast an American feel, but the recessed neon lighting brought to mind the nightclubs in Shanghai.

  “Very festive here.” He smiled at the young couple across from him. “It makes me think of a dance hall in China. Oddly on the top floor of a department store. Had a big band there performing the Broadway songs of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.”

  “I’d love to hear about your time there, Arthur.” Tasa’s dark eyes intently fixed on his.

  “Shanghai’s a bustling city—very cosmopolitan. A bit like Vienna, where I understand you spent some time after the war.”

  “But I didn’t go to dance clubs, as much as I might have wanted to. I never would imagine Shanghai as a place filled with such … well, I have a vague, but more destitute, picture.”

  “The city had that side too. But I dated a Jewish émigré from Salzburg named Ana there. She worked as a hostess in a posh nightclub frequented by the city’s royalty.” Arthur could still smell the aroma of perfume and the foul odor of the streets, two worlds, really—royalty and refugees—living side by side. “Through Ana, I learned about the private clubs—for Americans, British, French, Russians, and Chinese. There was even a German club. They were each an oasis from the misery outside.”

  “Yes. It was the misery, the poverty, that I imagined.”

  “Before Japanese troops invaded and took full control, Shanghai had an area called the International Settlement with many nationalities operating self-governing fiefdoms exempt from Chinese law. It was where much of the wealth was concentrated. Until ’41, Shanghai was a political anomaly.”

  Over the meal of brisket and fingerling potatoes, Tasa and Eli kept prodding Arthur with questions. Tasa wondered how many Jews were actually living in Shanghai. The first group consisted of hundreds of wealthy Sephardic Jews who arrived from Iraq as traders in the mid-1800s, Arthur told her. They were powerful icons who owned luxury hotels and other property. Several thousand Russian Jews who fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 made up the second and larger community. In Shanghai, they gained such status that a main street leading from the heart of the city was often called “Moscow Boulevard.”

  In the late ’30s, Shanghai remained the only city open to Jews without sponsors. During the early stages of Nazi rule, the Jewish population grew by tens of thousands. “By the time World War II broke out, I bet more European Jews had taken refuge in Shanghai than in any other city in the world.”

  “That’s incredible. What happened to Ana?”

  “She’s still there. We eventually grew apart. I wasn’t one for commitments, especially since I had no intention of staying there and Ana wanted to integrate into the Chinese culture. Hard to get serious when you have no sense of a future together.” As he got the words out, he noticed a wistfulness in Tasa and her veiled glimpse at Eli.

  After they ordered banana cream pie for dessert—encouraged by the waitress to try the house special—Arthur sat back to enjoy Vivian’s voice and the melody she was singing. Her lyrics portrayed a “bright golden haze on the meadow” and corn “as high as an elephant’s eye” that was “climbin’ clear up to the sky.” It was a beautiful day, he thought. A beautiful life now that war was past.

  When they returned to the Stoffs’, the house was dark, Lila and Bart out with friends for their weekly canasta game. Eli hung up their coats as Arthur hurried to the kitchen to prepare some tea. Tasa had already taken her violin out when he returned to the living room and was admiring several wood carvings propped along the fireplace mantel—one of a deer, another of flowers—as Eli talked about his mother’s fondness for art, mentioning the classes she often took in sculpture and painting.

  “That’s what I love about Columbus,” Tasa was telling Eli as Arthur set down the tray, the heat of the tea steaming upward. “It’s small enough to easily get around, yet there’s so much here—the arts and culture, access to a great public university, a close immigrant community.”

  “Yes. This vibrant community is what appealed to me,” Arthur chimed in. “It was something that slowly developed in Shanghai as well. When you were in Vienna, did you find a tight circle of Jews there?”

  “I … I stuck pretty close to our apartment in the American district the first few months. I was still shaken by personal losses, just coming out of war. But I began to feel part of the city, started attending school.” Tasa gestured to her violin. “Music helped me get through so much.”

  “Let’s hear a bit.” Arthur sensed that Tasa didn’t want to talk further about her experience. He settled back into the couch next to Eli as she picked up her violin and drew out a few notes, testing and adjusting. Satisfied, she held the instrument to her chin and began with an upward stroke of her bow, unleashing a melody that conjured for him images of peasants living in the forested playground of the Vienna Woods. As her clear and high-pitched twangs, gentle at first, began moving faster, Arthur visualized the peasants’ gaiety and whirling movements, the very folkish scene blurring into a familiar waltz narrative of city life. He let the music enter his entire being, transporting him to his homeland, his past, to his younger self dancing, the triple time guiding him and his partner as they spun rhythmically around and around the floor’s edges. So immersed was he in the music that he was jolted, as if from a dream, when Tasa played her final note.

  “BRAVA!” Arthur rose from the couch, clapping, as did Eli. Tasa took a bow, a blush fanning across her neck as she carefully placed her bow and violin down and eased herself next to Eli.

  “Your playing reminds me of a young Viennese violinist I befriended in a coffee shop in Shanghai.” Arthur had heard the young man playing outside and was impressed with his talent. It was a dreary day, and when raindrops turned into a downpour, he invited the musician to join him for coffee. “To repay me, he invited me to hear his small concert in a dingy hall in the Little Vienna section of the Shanghai ghetto.”

  Eli sat forward on the couch. “There was a ghetto in Shanghai?”

  “Not at first. It formed as Japanese troops invaded Shanghai’s international settlements and took full control of the city after Pearl Harbor. Japan’s German allies pressured them to contain the Jews, so they ordered all DPs into this impoverished one-square-mile area. By the spring of ’43, there could have been twenty thousand of us.”

  “Like the Warsaw Ghetto?” Tasa’s brows fretted together.

  Arthur saw how each of their perspectives on the war came from where they were located: Eli in the U.S., where much information had been suppressed, and Tasa in Poland, trying to evade the Nazis. “Somewhat like Warsaw, but not as threatened. I had to move from my apartment in French Town to Hongkew, as it was called. The conditions were far from ideal, but the residents sought to form a community. They opened a bakery, a butcher shop, a Viennese-themed restaurant, a coffee shop. They even established a school for Jewish kids. And that music hall.

  “The young violinist played like you, Tasa.” As though it were yesterday, Arthur could visualize his young Viennese friend. How his whole body inhabited the music and his entire spirit entered his instrument—his past anguish, the freedom he was beginning to savor, his thirst for survival. “He may have had a different journey, but a common passion. A common spirit. Like all of us.”

  Arthur glanced over at Tasa and Eli
. He saw a glow of pride light up Tasa’s pale complexion. And he caught something new in his young cousin. A sense of fulfillment, as though the evening had brought him clarity. In that flash of contentedness and tranquility in Eli’s eyes, Arthur could see the promise of their future together.

  THE WEDDING

  June 11, 1948

  ELEANOR POSITIONED HERSELF ON a wooden bench in the synagogue lobby facing the front door. Dressed in a simple linen frock, she had her unruly blond hair pulled into a topknot, her nails painted pink for the occasion. The Rolleiflex rested at her side. Here she could see the people as they entered. Her subjects. Those family and friends described to her by Lila Stoff, the mother of the groom. She heard distant laughter outside. Moments later, a stream of light nearly blinded her as the front door opened. It was a brilliant June day, perfect for a wedding.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the three men chortling among themselves, clearly happy to be in one another’s company. As they nodded to her, she figured them to be Eli’s Camp Ritchie friends—the four had trained together to become military intelligence officers before they were sent overseas. They were the lucky ones who returned. She stood eye to eye with them as she introduced herself, her height always making her self-conscious. Only when she was behind a camera did she melt into the scene and feel completely at ease.

  Just last month she received the call from her aunt Emma in Columbus. Emma Goldstein was Eleanor’s mother’s sister. And Lila Stoff was Emma’s best friend. The ladies worked together every day and played canasta in their free time. Their families were close. “Lila’s been fretting about pictures of her son’s wedding,” Emma had explained. “I said I knew the perfect photographer. I told them all about you, and when Lila worried about your having to come down from Cleveland, I said June would be a wonderful time for you to visit our family. Isn’t that so, Eleanor?”

  The thought of recording a festive affair did seem a welcome break, so Eleanor listened with interest to her aunt’s proposition. In the years since she’d taken up her post at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she’d earned seniority and, within reason, could set her own schedule.

  She had arrived two days earlier and spent much of her time with Lila, who was in charge of the wedding arrangements because the bride’s parents lived in New Jersey. Lila gave her a list of family members and close friends who’d be attending and filled in the details of each person’s relationship with the couple. Eleanor asked a lot of questions during their briefing. She knew her keen understanding of each of them would allow her to precisely tell the human story of this wedding day, their precious moment in time.

  She felt at ease staying with her aunt Emma and uncle Simon and enjoyed catching up with them and her cousins, whom she hadn’t seen for several years. Meyer was now twenty and a junior at Ohio State, and Hershel, Eli’s closest childhood friend from Columbus, was married; he drove in from Chicago with his wife, Rebecca. Spending several days in Columbus made this visit feel restful, unhurried. And instead of waking up this morning thinking about which dress to wear (she only brought one) and how to do her hair (get it out of her face), Eleanor’s mind focused on the checklist in her head—camera, film, flash bulb, tripod …

  Now, as she sat alone in silence, she looked forward to connecting faces with the names and backgrounds Lila had given her. Eli entered the synagogue next and immediately joined his friends, striking in a gray double-breasted jacket, with faint white pinstripes running down the length of his cuffed trousers. Lila and Bart Stoff followed behind him, Lila wearing a charcoal suit with a lacy blouse, Bart a tailored suit similar to his son’s. Eli excused himself and walked over to his parents. The three murmured among themselves, seemingly unaware of Eleanor’s presence. As Lila adjusted the knot of Eli’s necktie, Eleanor flashed back to the photograph Lila had shown her of Eli as a toddler playing in a Vienna park. She cleared her throat to get their attention and quickly stood as Lila approached and gave her a hug, introducing her to Bart and Eli.

  “I’ve heard so much about you from your mother.” Eleanor offered her hand to Eli. “A regular war hero.”

  “Nice of you to say, but I was no different than any other GI serving our country.” Eli gave her a warm grin, his pronunciation revealing a slight German accent. “Mom tells me you’re Emma and Simon’s niece. You know we lived with the Goldsteins when we came to Columbus. I’d love to hear old stories about Hershel.”

  “Of course. I’m sure I can come up with a few you haven’t heard before.” Eleanor turned to Bart. “You must be proud of your son, sir. And I’ve enjoyed getting to know your wife.”

  After pleasantries, the three left Eleanor in the lobby and headed to the chapel. She waited until most everyone arrived, particularly wanting to greet Tasa, who came with her parents, Halina and Salomon Rosinski. Tasa appeared angelic in her tailored off-white suit, tiny pearl buttons adorning her quarter-sleeve jacket. Her skirt’s flowing pleats hung midcalf, showing off high heels. Halina wore a brightly flowered dress, her raven hair parted in the middle like her daughter’s, smoothed perfectly into a bun at the nape of her neck. Salomon’s suit was a single-breasted charcoal brown, embellished with a stylish blue tie. Their faces expressed a worn happiness—like soldiers returning from battle, anticipating their reunion with loved ones. Eleanor couldn’t help admiring Tasa’s thick eyebrows, her own so faint and indistinct, and she imagined Tasa often tightening them in concentration or worry, given what her aunt and Lila had told her about the young woman’s early life in eastern Poland during wartime. She also took note of Tasa’s coal-black eyes, her soft, round chin, her easy smile.

  She rose and introduced herself to the Rosinskis. Their voices must have carried into the chapel because the Stoffs returned to the lobby, and there were warm hugs all around. Eleanor had the urge to snap a picture right then. She observed how Eli took in the woman who would be his life’s partner. She watched as Tasa rested her arm on his shoulder. As the time drew near, the rabbi ushered the families into the chapel. Salomon tenderly put his hand on his daughter’s cheek, then kissed the top of her head.

  It reminded Eleanor of her affectionate relationship with her own father, an engineer with an attention to detail and a desire to figure things out. Like him, she was both creative and mechanical, and they shared a love of cameras. When she’d found an old view camera in their attic, he enthusiastically supported her childhood hobby, and by the time she was twelve, she began to hang out at a nearby camera shop and take out books at the library to learn more about what this magical instrument could do. She became the family photographer, taking the usual travel snapshots but also portraits of her parents, her younger brother, her girlfriends. Like her mother, Eleanor noticed everything around her, and the camera’s lens revealed even more than her own eye. While she was drawn to realistic photography and ended up a photojournalist, she always felt the urge to experiment, to better learn how to capture the essence of a scene or person. For her, photography was a way to be exposed to unfamiliar situations and people and, through her camera, come to understand them. Sometimes the Plain Dealer’s tight deadlines constrained her ability to explore deeply enough, to truly reveal through images. At this wedding, she’d put her heart and mind into the preparation so she could squeeze meaning into every gesture of affection and fellowship through her images.

  By now, guests were streaming into the temple lobby, happily mingling. Eleanor decided to stand off in a corner to watch everyone, her camera hanging from her neck by an adjustable leather strap. She reminded herself, based on Lila’s input, of their unique connections with the bride and groom and then snapped a few candid shots, wishing her aunt and uncle would arrive to help her identify people and make introductions.

  Two middle-aged men walked in separately, one resembling Lila. Eleanor surmised he was the beloved Arthur, Lila’s first cousin who now lived with the Stoffs after spending nearly a decade in Shanghai. The other man had a woman at his arm. Eleanor overheard him talking and deduced he was Amer
ican-born and had to be the famous John Brandeis. Their “savior,” as Lila put it.

  Next, two couples arrived, each with a child in tow. A bouncy girl, freckled, her red hair in ringlets, skipped ahead of her parents. Eleanor thought her to be five or six. She had to be Franny, her parents Tasa’s aunt Norah and uncle Levi. Norah Eisen was Halina’s sister. She and Levi were the ones who had fixed Tasa up with Eli not even a year earlier. Eli had worked part-time for Levi while he was finishing college on the GI Bill. They thought he’d be perfect for their niece, who’d just arrived by boat, having survived the war. Norah and Levi drove to Atlantic City and brought Tasa back to live with them in Columbus. A babysitter for Franny and a date for Eli. And today, a bride. Pretty clever, Eleanor decided.

  The other couple had a young son who looked to be nine or ten. She figured this had to be Lila’s childhood friend, Zelda Muni, with her husband Giorgio. She remembered Lila telling her the boy’s name was Umberto. Eleanor could hardly believe the heartwarming stories surrounding this couple who had immigrated to New York shortly before the Depression. Apparently, Zelda had single-handedly convinced John Brandeis to sponsor Lila, Bart, and Eli when Germany took over Austria. Zelda had no previous connection with Brandeis, just her chutzpah and resourcefulness in finding a wealthy Jewish philanthropist willing to take responsibility for three immigrants he didn’t know. This part of the family’s lore seemed to Eleanor nothing short of a miracle.

  So much serendipity and luck, purpose and resilience. It suddenly occurred to her that a photo essay about this family could be a charming story, one that might captivate a nation getting past a world war. If only they’d grant her permission.