***

On the designated date and time, Hannah pushes through the wind and rain and arrives, windswept at the von Albrecht’s mansion, in the new part of Prague.

She barely has time to adjust her hat, take off her thick, woolen gloves and replace them with her best white, silk pair, before the butler ushers her up a large flight of stairs. From alcoves in the walls, alabaster angels with six wings stare at her. The Imperial eagle of the German empire hangs from the ceiling and Hannah shivers, suddenly imagining it descending upon her, talons wide open, and picking her up by the shoulder.

Frau von Albrecht sits on her chair like it is a throne. She has iron gray hair, piled on top of her head like a helmet; two larger bumps on either side of her head make Hannah think of a picture Felix once showed her of a Viking. His helmet had two small horns on either side. A sudden, nervous laugh bubbles up from inside and she gulps it down.

“I have been waiting for you to come.” Her voice is low, with a slightly gravelly quality that comes from smoking too many cigarettes.

Only upper-class women allow themselves to smoke; the real climbers. All other women deem it to be unfeminine. Perhaps it is like her pitchfork, to match her helmet.

“So your daughter — Emmeline, is it.”

She nods. If she had thought, wanted, expected this to be a polite but empty chat between two equals, she was wrong.

Ernst would say that this is like being summoned to the conductor. The only makes her heart beat faster, for Ernst has been called to the conductor.

Just look the woman in the eye.

She lifts her face and forces herself to stare in return. There is harshness there. Or is that just her imagination?

“I have heard that she conducts herself with polite gaiety, she is pretty and intelligent.”

Hannah gives a nod.

“And I believe — and now, looking at you, I understand — that she has a touch of the old-fashioned. That can be rather attractive in a woman, you know.”

Emmy? Old-fashioned? How ironic.

“Especially for someone like my Joachim, who has a rather keen sense of our history.”

Ah, a historic replica. That was what Ernst had thought, when they had met. Why he had been so enchanted. Why he had kept returning to the countryside, to their home.

Like mother, like daughter, she thinks bitterly, even if the daughter is nothing like her mother at all.

“At any rate—”

She is tired, suddenly, and something about this conversation makes her feel angry, although she doesn’t really know why. “May I sit down?”

Frau von Albrecht waves her hand. “If you must.”

She sits on the edge of a velvet stool. It is far from the fireplace, and a draught makes her shiver suddenly, even though she is warm inside, from the anger, from the long, windy walk.

“At any event, it is not a match to be encouraged.”

Of course it is not. But now she feels indignant on Emmy’s behalf. “And, pray tell, could you explain yourself?”

“Certainly.” She sniffs, looks toward the fire so that there is the slightest orange tinge to her skin. “My husband has sacrificed for the safety and well-being of our family.”

Sacrifice? What does that mean? The words always makes her curl up inside.

“Sacrifice?” she says, faintly.

The woman takes a deep breath, clasps her hands together and rests them on my lap. “My husband was one of 12 children. The youngest. These brothers and sisters are today scattered throughout Bohemia and Moravia.”

She opens her eyes wide and looks directly at Hannah. “It is only 30 years since the Familiants Law was repealed. There were quotas in place. Only so many Jews were allowed in Prague. Only the eldest child was permitted to marry. Others who married left the city. Found some town, somewhere, where they would be allowed to settle, do a little business.”

Hannah nods. She knows this, they all do. Although, living in the shtetl, she was never touched by it. So somehow, it didn’t seem real.

“Oh, there were always those who married in secret. And those who had connections” — she rubs thumb and fingers together — “or money.”

She looks away again, so Hannah cannot read her face.

“My husband and I could not be in Prague to be with his parents during their decline.”

A long silence. A dimness settles on the room, for these wintry days are short, and there is only the light of the fire.

“Money and connections were the two things that stopped him. He decided that with his own household, he would remedy that. And he sacrificed to do so.”

Sacrifice, to Hannah, means a man keeling over in hunger, for he hasn’t eaten for days: the bread that he received, on credit, from the baker, he gives to his children.

Sacrifice is when a ten-year-old takes off his boots and gives them to his six-year-old brother, for his brother will tremble from the cold and he can manage by simply wrapping his feet in rags.

What is this woman calling sacrifice? That her husband found his way to the baptismal font. As if it is an act of nobility. As if Yiddishkeit is a luxury, something that can be given up for a higher ideal, in this case, the advancement of his family.

“Money and connections are not the only things that make a good life, Frau von Albrecht.”

A sniff. “Oh, I know what you will say. A good life is a moral life.  Morals. Well, yes, morals protect society and all of that. But morals also cause a parent to cast off a child, or a child to reject a parent. And so I put something above morals. Family.”

Oh, Felix, you would know how to argue this one. Are morals more important than family? What if family is doing something wrong, sinning — playing in an orchestra on Leil Shabbos — would you reject them for that?

Her head is starting to pound.

There was a story that Tatte used to tell: of a king and his adviser who lived in a country of madmen. There was something about the crops that made them all lose their sanity. And the king and his advisor drew a mark on their heads to remind themselves that, although different from everyone around them, it was not they who had lost their sanity, but instead, the entire nation had succumbed, lost their minds.

She takes a deep breath. Oh, nation that worships reason, what has happened to you all?

And what has happened to her? How did she get so confused?

“Frau Schwebel,” the woman says suddenly, her voice reaching Hannah from through the gloom.

“Please tell your Emmeline to leave my son alone. He has no business fraternizing with a family such as yours.”

“And what is wrong with my family?”

“Oh, we have no complaints against your husband. We have heard that he is quite a figure of Kultur and Bildung. Quite the model of refinement and self-improvement. We have done our research, do not fear. It is simply that we could not imagine a situation in which our son were the grandson of a zeide fun der shtetl.”

Hannah jumps to her feet. This woman. This upstart of a woman. She — he — they do not deserve to have a connection to her father. And woe to her, that she could even think of countenancing it.

“Ja,” the woman continues, and to Hannah her laugh sounds like the tinkle of breaking glass. “Do not think that we have lost our Yiddish. We hold on, believe me. Just not in the same way as you.”

“My… my zeide fun der shtetl, as you call him,” Hannah says, her voice low but insistent, “he is a man you may laugh at. Oh, yes, bent over, long white beard. Your Joachim may look at him and mock. Or maybe he will think that he has come upon Santa Klaus. But my Tatte is a man who has found a good life not in money and not in connections, but in the world of the spirit. And no, that world is not that of Mozart and Bach. It is in the way he sings Hallel. It is in the way every morning, he wraps himself in a tallis and puts on his tefillin, and dedicates his day to serving not himself, not his family, but the Eibeshter, the Creator of us all.”

Shaking, Hannah turns to leave.

Before she does, the image of Dr. Werther flashes before her. A little smile hovers on his face.

“Whatever I may think of the match between Joachim and Emmy,” she says coldly. “I will not act as your go-between, as a messenger girl between you and my daughter. Whatever you wish your son to tell her, he can do so himself.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 685)