The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (18 page)

They would invent ever more bizarre chance encounters between the courting couple and laugh when once in a while the exact situation did occur as they had 'predicted' in their jokes.

One day in August Alma decided that the cat and mouse game had gone on long enough. She had noticed the girls giggling and knew that as far as they were concerned, she and Jonah were already a couple. She could not understand why Jonah had not made any move on her yet. She had given him all the right signals, surely he could not be that blind. He seemed to enjoy her company too and he was neither the type to be shy nor to be put off by her openness about her feelings. A different man might be deterred by a woman who shows her emotions but she could not imagine that to be the reason for his hesitation. She could feel the tension between them and he had to be feeling that too.

“Jonah, I think we really need to talk about us,” she said to him one day in the kitchen. Wilma and Greta were already sleeping and she had just
finished cleaning the kitchen and would not go to bed without bringing this issue to a head.

“Do we?” he asked nervously.

“Don't you think so?” she asked.

“Why do you think we need to talk?”

“We are too old to be playing games, Jonah,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. “Don't you agree?”

“I am old, that much is true,” he conceded. “You have a long way to
go before I would call you that.”

“Don't try to evade the subject, Jonah.”

“I am not changing the subject,” he said smilingly. “We were talking about our age.”

“Which leads
us to the question of what we are going to do with the little time we have left? Are we going to behave like adolescent children and carry on our hide and seek game or could we be adults about our feelings for each other and do something about it?” she said forcefully.

“Oh Alma,” he sighed, feeling the fight leaving his body. “So you know about my feelings for you?”

“Yes I think I do. Everyone else knows about them too. Haven't you noticed your daughters giggling and Johanna’s pointed questions?” she asked.

“Yes I have and I have been worried it might upset you,” he admitted.

“Why would it upset me? You must know about my feelings for you.” she said.

“I was hoping you had feelings for me and I
feared it at the same time,” he admitted, but then carried on, looking sad and disillusioned.  “What good could come of it? The times we live in, it is impossible for us to be anything else than what we are now. Just look at Greta and how sad and lonely her life has turned out to be.”

“I am different to Wilhelm,” Alma replied. “I am a middle aged Slovak woman, not a young inexperienced German boy. All I want in my life
now is some happiness, some companionship and some warmth. Jonah, your are the nicest and kindest man I have met in my life and I care very much for you.”

“You don't know the half of it.
” Jonah said, his head hanging down.

“Well, I know you are Jews and I don't care,” she stated forcefully.

“You must care,” he warned her. “If we were to get married you would become a Jew yourself by law. I care for you too much to let you risk your life like that. My family has been lucky so far. Someone somewhere might know about us and one day that person might decide that we have been enjoying our freedom for long enough. If they come to get us I don't want them to take you with them as well. It would be irresponsible for me to get you involved, especially because I have these strong feelings for you.”

“My love is too strong to let you get away, even if that means we will one day be taken away,” Alma said passionately.

Jonah took a deep breath, exhaled very slowly and felt his shoulders sink further and further in resignation.

“Look, Alma
, I saw my wife dying of influenza,” he explained.” The heartache it caused me, the guilt I felt for surviving it myself. I don't know if you ever experienced a loss like that but let me tell you it is harder than you think. I could not face to watch you being deported or hurt because you were with me.”

“I don't care about that,” she insisted. “I
would rather have a few years of happiness with you now and face the consequences when they come than being alone all my life and missing the one opportunity for true love. If my life is going to remain loveless, is it really worth living?”

“Yes of course it is. There is always something to live for, experiences, happiness,
and friends. Love is beautiful, but it is not the only thing in the world,” Jonah insisted.

“If you did not have your children what would have become of you after the death of your wife?” she asked pro
vocatively. “Do you think you would have developed the same strength and sustenance just for yourself? If you refuse me now all I will ever live for is to go to work, to sleep and to eat, without anyone else to care for. What life would that be?”

“You are simplify
ing things,” he stated. “You have to be stronger than that. We both have to be strong. I have thought about us being together for a long time. After Barbara died, I decided to live my life for my children and the business so that I can support them. I never expected any more romances in my life and I have made my peace with it. I was very tempted to have another chance at love when you came into our lives but the circumstances speak for themselves. We both know it.”

“We don't have to make things official,” Alma suggested. “I am your housekeeper, you are my employer. I have my
servant’s room, you have your own. I am not asking you for the official status as a wife or marriage, I am asking for your love.”

“You are serious
ly thinking of a secret affair? Alma, you cannot keep anything a secret. Nosy neighbours, informants, spies, censors. What chance would we have to hide a thing like our love for each other?” he said with bitterness in his voice.

“Little or no chance
that is true but that proves my point exactly. If the Hlinka Guard came in here tomorrow to pick you up, they will already assume that I am your mistress and a Jew lover.”

“Then you must leave at once, move somewhere else. I beg you,” he said, panic filling his body. How could he have been so blind and not realised that what Alma just had said was true and that he had endangered the woman he loved by keeping her near him.

“You are right, you are already in too much danger. I am ashamed I failed to think of that myself. How neglectful and thoughtless of me,” he reprimanded himself, starting to pace the room nervously. “What can we do, where could you live?”

“I will stay right here,” said Alma firmly.  “This is my place of employ
ment, I am a weaver and a seamstress, and I work for a widower with grown children and a grandson. We can try and deny everything with the benefit of some credibility. After all, at the moment nothing is happening between us. Moving somewhere else now will not make a huge difference either. If we had spies or enemies after us, they will have informed on us already and if the Hlinka guard come they will have already made up their mind about me, even if I live somewhere else.”

“Do you have any idea how hard people work in these labour camps?” Jonah asked her with gravity in his voice. “Do you know how bad the living conditions are?
At the rate that people are being taken away, those places must be already crowded. We are not married, we would also live apart from each other. No, Alma, the risk is too great.”

“You can deny me in that way
but I am not leaving. The workshop needs me and so does this house. If you take that away from me I will be left with nothing and I promise you I will throw myself from the nearest bridge,” she threatened.

“Don't be stupid,” Jonah said with panic in his voice. “You are a great woman and you will always have a new chance at happiness. You mustn't put all of your bets on a shlemiel like me. You can always find different work, another family who needs you and you can always find a better match than an old man like me.”

“You should give yourself more credit, Jonah,” Alma contradicted. “You are anything but a shlemiel.”

“You still mustn't risk your life,” he insisted.

“Should the day come when the Hlinka Guard knocks on our door, I am prepared to take the risk because it
is worth taking. I have found happiness here that I have not known before. I promise I will not play the heroine and we can all try and deny that there is anything between us. My Slovak passport might be enough to save me. But now, behind closed doors, let us not waste any more time and let us be together,” she pleaded.

“You are a brave and determined woman, Alma. I wish I could change your mind,” he said defeated.

“Yes I am determined and you cannot change my mind,” she laughed, then went up and kissed him.

“No Alma!” he protested at first and tried to get away, but his resis
tance was very half hearted; soon he kissed her back and that was the end of the discussion. Two decades of sexual abstinence made him less determined and able to control his desires than he would have liked to be.

After a week of spending every night together and failing miserably in hiding their feelings during the day
, Jonah called a family meeting where he officially announced their relationship to his daughters and tried to impress upon his children the desperate need for secrecy for Alma’s sake.

“You'll need to learn a lot more about keeping secrets and lying if you are ser
ious about protecting Alma.” Wilma said cheekily. “At the moment a blind man could come into the house and pick up that you two are lovers.”

“Wilma
is right. You are doing a terrible job of hiding it,” Greta agreed. “Do you remember how persistently Johanna asked about the living arrangements in the house when she met Alma last time? She picked up on the sparks between you even before you did; customers and suppliers might have done the same.”

“We will
have to try harder then,” Jonah laughed. He had always encouraged honesty and confidence in his daughters and could not now complain when this policy came back to haunt him. Besides, he had never been happier in the last twenty years than he was at this very moment and he enjoyed the surge of optimism too much to let it be dampened down by worry. There had been too much of that in his life recently, just for once he wanted to be able to enjoy his life and so he allowed himself to relax and forget about the dangers out there.

By September however
, the high spirits at the Weissensteiners received a big blow when the Slovak government passed a further set of anti-Semitic laws, the Codex Judaicus or Jewish Code. To most citizens, it was a little surprising that it had taken so long for this comprehensive piece of legislation to replace the existing hodge-podge of laws and regulations discriminating against Jews in Slovakia.

The Codex Judaicus finally implemented the harder principles of the Germ
an Nuremberg Laws into Slovak society. It finally defined Jews on racial rather than on confessional grounds and required them to wear the yellow Jewish Badge. Jews were now banned from using cinemas, parks, cafes, restaurants and public transports; they were only allowed to walk in town at certain hours of the day and owning a wide variety of valuables such as cars, radios and cameras was also forbidden.

To Jonah this wa
s a first real crisis of faith. The new laws demanded him to act and identify himself publicly as a Jew. He could either carry on as if nothing had happened and walk around town as the non-Jew people might have come to believe he was. This meant he was risking the punitive measures in place if he should be discovered as the Jew he really was. Or he could follow the laws and make himself recognisable as Jew, which could ruin his life.

Either option was a huge risk and a
fter a long discussion the family decided unanimously that Wilma would best remain indoors as - because of her physical features - she was the most recognisably Jewish. Greta and Jonah were less obvious in their appearances and the family thought they should be able to walk around town safely without being identified as Jews, but only if they really had to and even then they should try to stick to the prescribed times for Jews as an extra precaution. To be completely safe, Alma would take over all of the outdoor tasks for now, until it was clearer how the new laws would be implemented and how violations of the laws were being punished. They could only wait and see.

Sadly
, Alma reported to the family that her experiences on the streets were far from comforting. Transgressions against the Codex Judaicus were met with varying degrees of harshness by the police and the Hlinka Guard. Some offenders were beaten but then released on the spot, some were let go with a broken limb as a warning, others were imprisoned but released very soon and some were used to make big examples of. Entire families - over 6000 Jews from Bratislava alone as the newspapers announced triumphantly - were evicted from the city and sent to forced labour camps right away.

Policemen and members of the Hlinka Guard were out on the streets and would challenge Jewish looking citizens to produce their papers, but Alma said that the language of the people was still more important than those papers. She had heard Jews reply in pure German or Slovak to these requests, saying that they did not have the required papers on them. In such cases the officers were usually not interested any more, they were looking for the Jewish refugees from Galicia and Russia, who usually had a strong and easily identifiable accent. Any of those who were not wearing the Star of David or who were walking around town at the wrong time of the day were taken into custody and not seen again.