“…where I was, they melted in your mouth.”

At home, the bread is chewy, and it is not white, but a darker, nuttier mix of grains from the surrounding farmlands. By midday, it is rather hard, but fresh from the oven in the morning, it is delicious and wholesome.

Hannah turns to Ernst. “I am looking forward to coming home.”

When they have finished eating, Hannah closes her eyes and feigns sleep.

In her mind, as the train pulls them onward, she thinks of one of her conversations with Dr. Werther. When was it, a week ago? Two weeks, when her homecoming was already a subject under discussion.

***

Dr. Werther pulls the stethoscope from his ears, carefully cleans the head, and snakes it back into its box. It closes with a snap.

Hannah shakes her head slightly. “I still fail to understand why you do that.”

“Listen to your heart? Your lungs?”

“If the ailment is in my brain…”

He eases down onto his chair, leans forward, and rests his head on his two hands. “Your brain? Perhaps. I prefer to call it your mind, or even your heart.”

She bites her lips. She still, after three months here, feels like she shouldn’t waste the doctor’s time. Ernst would say that they are paying well and good for the privilege. She will do it for Ernst, then.

“I have thought of a tale that my mother would say, or maybe my bubbe, my grandmother, in Yiddish.” She passes her hand over her forehead. “Or perhaps it was a dream. Or some of it was a tale, but my mind has twisted it into something else.”

He picks up his pen, dips it carefully into the inkwell, and blots it. It hangs over a piece of paper, waiting to be written. “Ja?”

Well, let it be. Let there be a witness for her words.

“There were once three sisters. There was Hannah, whose good trait was duty. Rebecca, upon whose lips a laugh could always be found. And then there was Perla, whose height was the length of a forearm.”

He looks up. “Small indeed.”

She inclines her head. “And they were happy. Rebecca made them laugh, Hannah saw to it that they all did their duty, and Perla danced and sang.

“And then a mischievous angel came and mixed them all up. It demanded that Hannah no longer do her duty, that Rebecca forget her laugh. But Perla continued to dance and sing.”

Hannah lapses into silence.

Dr Werther puts down his pen. “And then?”

Hannah looks up and meets his eyes. “I don’t remember the rest of the story.”

“Well, what ending would you give it?”

She is gripping the armrests. She takes a deep breath, and she can do so in this place, because her corset is not tied tightly like it is at home. She can suck in all the air in the world, and for a moment it makes her dizzy with wonder.

“Maybe… that one day an ogre came to town. And Hannah deemed it her duty to protect her family from the ogre. And so she bid Perla to dance and sing in front of the ogre, and when the ogre was absorbed in Perla’s song, so much so that it began to clap its scaly, leathery hands, Hannah picked up a… not an arrow, that wouldn’t be right… Hannah picked up a pen and dashed ink into the ogre’s eyes.”

Hannah takes a breath and closes her eyes lightly. “Then Rebecca and Hannah tied up the ogre, first with bed sheets and then with rope they fetched from the butcher’s shop. The butcher came along, too, and he slit the ogre’s throat. The blood that bubbled forth was almost black, and a drop landed on Hannah’s hand and melted into her skin. The ogre was taken away and buried in a desolate spot, but no matter what ointment Hannah applied, a tiny spot of darkness was on her palm.”

Dr. Werther is scribbling and scribbling. Eventually, he puts down his pen and picks up his head.

“What do you hear in that story?” he asks.

“You’re the doctor.”

He nods. “I hear… strength.”

Of course he would. At this point in her recovery, his job is to convince her that she is fit to leave this place and return home.

“Well,” she says, looking up to meet his eye, “I hear an ogre.”

***

The train is noisy, and it chuffs and chugs as it snakes through the Czech countryside. Autumn colors are out in full force, and the fields are bare. She has missed the harvest. The scything, the winnowing, the bale-making.

At the next stop, Ernst instructs a clerk at the railway station to send a telegram home.

Coming. Stop. Home. Stop. Monday. Stop. Evening. Stop.

With a jingle of coins, he pays the man for the service, and then sits back to relax.

For Hannah, the closer she travels to home, the more tense she becomes, though excited, so excited to see the children. They have been traveling not for a day, not for two days, but for a century.

But then, then, then, they have arrived. In a carriage. Over the bridge. Over the river, the setting sun on the water.

“Welcome to Prague, my dear,” Ernst says. “Welcome home.”

***

She wraps her arms around Emmy, but Emmy gently disentangles them both and looks down at her.

“Now, Mama. How have you been?”

“I am quite well.”

She holds Emmy’s hand in her own, though she feels Emmy itching to be released. “And how have you been? I thank you for your letters, they cheered me.”

“And you for yours.”

“So… what has changed while I have been gone?”

Emmy shrugs. She is wearing a new gown, made of fashionable brocade, with navy ribbons tied at the neck. Nothing on the skirt, though. She should tell Emmy about the fashions she has seen. She wants to reach out, touch the ribbon, touch Emmy’s cheek. “Pretty dress.”

“Oh, it is just an old castoff. Bertha gave it to me.”

She looks around the room. There is a little dust on the paintings, but that is to be expected. The menorah, brass gleaming bright, stands on the mantel above the fireplace. She stands up suddenly, releasing Emmy, wandering the perimeter of the room.

There is an addition. The burnished copper bust of a man. Necktie, open collar, tousled hair, high forehead with a slight crease between the eyebrows, slightly fleshy jowls.

“Goethe.”

She turns. Ernst nods toward the bust.

Of course, Goethe. Who else? A similar bust takes pride of place in many of the homes in Vienna, though she never asked who it was, ashamed to admit her ignorance. She does not recall seeing these busts in Prague, but then, she has never been particularly observant, only noticing the trends when Emmy begs for yet another dress, or declares that she is ashamed to bring her friends home.

“Plunge boldly into the thick of life.” Felix steps toward them, quoting from the poet.

Ernst tips his head to the side, considering. “I prefer, ‘As soon as you trust yourself, you know how to live.’ ”

Trust yourself. She does not want this bust in the living room. To her, it smacks of idolatry. Paganism. Even her rag dolls, when she was a child, were knitted without noses. And now, this bust of this goy just above the Shabbos table..

Felix is watching her face, she can feel it. “Mama does not like it,” he says.

Dr. Werther told her that a woman performs a delicate dance. She must not state outright her wishes, and so she tries tricks and wheedling and subterfuge to get her will done. This can serve to corrupt her true honest nature and causes her… what did he call it? Psychic distress.

“It is true that there is a place for tact,” he told her. “But there is also a place for simply and wholesomely stating that which you desire.”

She had noted it down in his office, asked for a pen and paper and, like a diligent student, carefully formed the letters. She had even underlined the last phrase: that which you desire.

So easy to write, hundreds of miles from home. Now she turns to Ernst and Emmy and Felix and allows a small smile to play on her lips. “It is an accomplished piece of art.”

Not that she would know, of course. A shtetl girl, the only art she knows is the drawings they would scrape with sticks in the mud after rainy mornings. A house, a tree, a flower. After some practice, she grew adept at Havdalah candles with flames, the zigzag of the intertwined wax, a flick of her wrist and a wisp was formed on top of the flame.

A hand on her shoulder. Emmy. “Never fear, Mama, when I marry, I shall take it with me to my new home.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Does it belong to you, then, Emmy?” And what are your sudden plans for a new home, that I am not privy to?

Emmy nods.

“And who, may I ask, gave you this generous gift?”

Emmy simply shrugs.

But Felix leans over and whispers in her ear. “It is from a secret admirer.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 671)