First
person
Saturday August
11, 2007
Victoria
Neumark inherited a houseful of old oak furniture; it is
dark, depressing, oppressive. Friends tell her to get rid
of it, but how can she when her family's history is in its
very grain?
'You should get rid of that furniture," say my friends.
Dark oak, redolent of 20s provincial Germany: it doesn't
fit in these light, breezy times for interior decoration.
But I like the furniture. It is comfortable. Its gloominess
is comfortable. It allows me to be gloomy, if need be. And
it sets off merriness, too. The table seats 26, if you pull
out all the leaves, and is perfect for family reunions,
Passover and birthdays. I feel free within the constraints
of the furniture, just as I used to feel free when I hid
under the table with my younger sister, as a little girl.
In the shadowy
tent formed by the tablecloth we played house for hours,
sheltering. It was not clear what we were sheltering from:
my mother's depression, my father's rages or just the dusty
boredom of the days. In retrospect, those were the good
days, but at the time they seemed to go slower than the
ticking of the grandfather clock.
How could I get rid of the furniture? I did my homework on
the table, listening to Bob Dylan. I served my first
dinner-party food on that table, my mother acting as
flustered kitchen maid as I misread recipes. The furniture
that still fills my home brought me up.
But there are other reasons for sticking with the
furniture.
It comes from a vanished world. My grandfather managed a
furniture factory in Bavaria. He was the most successful of
his large family, often helping the more impecunious
members out. Perhaps because of this burden, he was
famously grumpy and in middle age made an arranged marriage
to my grandmother, whose bad temper was also a legend among
her own family. After their marriage, the couple made
sulking an extreme sport.
So this grumpy family - for two sons, a nanny and a man who
cooked joined the happy pair - lived in a gloomy apartment
in a small town in Germany. It was entirely furnished from
the factory. The dining-room set was heavy, dark-stained
oak, carved, matt, art nouveau - my grandad Moritz's idea
of respectability and investment. The drawing room was
light ash and beech, polished, art deco - reflecting my
grandmother Rosine's arty side. Later on, my gay uncle got
the art deco stuff and my straight father got the real
deal. Or so they thought then. Now art deco is the rage and
all my friends are suggesting I get rid of the dark oak.
But I can't. Our history is in it. When Hitler came to
absolute power in March 1933, my father was in Paris,
studying at the Sorbonne. The storm troopers came to the
gloomy apartment, arrested my grandfather along with a few
hundred other Jewish businessmen, and took them to the
town's athletic stadium. The storm troopers were
middle-aged and overweight; not in the best of health. With
their shiny whips and shiny boots they kicked and lashed
these gentlemen round the stadium "for their health". After
three days, half died. My grandfather survived. He was not
cowed and terrified. He was furious.
My father related this story to me for the first time when
I was 14. "They smashed the place up, all our best
furniture. And," here his voice cracked, "my fossils, my
collection that I polished since I was a boy, they smashed
them and laughed. My mother told me. They said, 'Stupid
Jews, keeping stones.'" He paused. He uttered his most
damning epithet. "Nice people!"
Not long after this, my father came home for the summer
holidays. His parents were horrified. "Why have you come?
Don't you know? Didn't you get our letters?" No, he didn't.
He didn't know. As the sticky summer crept on, they
discussed and discussed what to do. My father hung around
with his best friend, Franz, smoked cigarettes, and went to
the library. Soon, he wasn't allowed to go to the library.
Or the park. Or non-Jewish shops. Not much fun, the summer
of 1933.
One day, he was asked to go to his old school, to the
gymnasium. He went and found the three other Jewish boys
from his year. It was after hours and the headmaster had
drawn the blinds. "Leave now," he told them. "Things are
going to get much worse. So much worse you can't imagine."
My father resolved to leave for England. His parents
started to transfer money, a little at a time, into foreign
bank accounts. They got Ernst, my dad, ready. They put gold
coins in the hollowed-out soles of his shoes. That was
risky, because taking currency out of the country was
forbidden for Jews.
At the border, he was pulled off the train, slapped around,
asked why a Jew-dog traitor was leaving the Fatherland. He
was calm, even when they asked how he was going to manage
with no money, even when they tipped up his shoes. They let
him go. They didn't find the money.
He came to England and lodged in Hampstead. He joined a
synagogue. He met my mother and got engaged.
Back in Bavaria, things were indeed getting worse. Life was
closing down. By 1936, it was impossible to run a business
any more. My grandfather was still bailing out his more
feckless relatives. He lent them money, money that later
became the subject of bitter dispute, against the surety of
their property, soon to be seized. He urged them to leave,
but they said, "No, how can anything bad happen in Munich?"
Moritz plotted his own departure. His sons had gone and
now, very carefully, filling in all the forms, paying all
the right people, he sent all the furniture to the USA and
to Great Britain. Then the Neumarks went "on holiday" to
Merino, Italy. It was the winter of 1936-37, snowy. They
never came back.
Moritz and Rosine landed in New York in December 1937.
Moritz died two days later of a heart attack.
Meanwhile, the furniture had begun its tortuous journey
across Europe. Finally, it arrived in Southampton dock
three days after war had been declared, September 6, 1939.
My father could not be there to greet it and shepherd it up
to London. He had that same day been sent as a medical
officer to Hemel Hempstead. London had been evacuated.
Enemy aliens, whether professedly refugees or not, were not
allowed in the capital, by order of the Ministry of War.
None the less, within a few months, my father made his way
down to the docks and paid for the furniture to be driven
to London. While seeing the furniture safely into lodging,
he was arrested for breaking the curfew. The newspaper
reported that when apprehended, my father stamped his foot
and swore. In court, he denied this; but it rings true.
In May 1940, after news reports branding refugees Nazi
infiltrators, mass internment was introduced. My father was
sent to Huyton, where his internment lasted many months and
was, above all, boring.
With release, romance burst out anew and my parents were
married in June 1941. But the furniture would not fit in
their little flat.
It was not until 1954 that they bought a house in Belsize
Park and filled it with the furniture. My mother
immediately had a nervous breakdown. The furniture was too
dark and heavy and the whole house too hard to clean. Too
much responsibility for a woman who had just lost her
mother and elder sister.
Polishing the furniture became a Saturday task for me and
my sister. The smell of Johnson's lavender wax, the
slippery feel of the cloth in the tin, and the gleaming
surfaces slide in my mind into the long feel of those
endless weekends when nothing happened apart from my mum
crying.
Later, she cheered up and took the position that housework
was pointless. Then no one polished the heavy oak. I
preferred to listen to my new record player and my sister
played with the dog.
When my father died, the furniture came into its element.
Directly after the funeral no one went into the dining room
for two months. It was a hot July. When I went in again in
September, the smell of flowers rotting in vases seized me
by the throat. The gloominess of the dark wood was a
comfort: no need to be bright and breezy.
When our refugee family came from across the world, they
ate with us. Most are no longer here. Franz, best childhood
friend, died in Dachau; the family of Onkel Jakob and Tante
Rosa, who refused to believe that anything bad could happen
in Munich, perished in Theresienstadt.
A table is spread for anyone to eat, says the Jewish holy
book. Wisdom lies in giving. And so on. I claim no special
virtue for the vanished world of German Jewry. How stupid
are people who polish stones? Who send their furniture
ahead of them round the world yet fail to save their
family?
Yet who am I to discard their world? And if I discard it,
what am I?
I'm older now than my father was when he died. I know why
he went to all that trouble for a lot of old furniture.
I've bought some polish.
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