My dearest Eva,
Of all the injustices that both you and I have endured, I believe the greatest one on my part has been to interject myself once more into your life. You see, for all of fourteen years, since I last saw you, I’ve lived in a world of my own making in which you and I never stopped. I walked the valleys with you, I sat holding your hand under the stars, I made love to you a hundred times as I had that first time in the cellar the night before the fire. And I came to Budapest to find you, to take back at any cost what I believed was rightfully mine.
Selfish, I know, to think that your life couldn’t resume without me, even though I knew well enough it would. Nothing at the time could keep me away; nothing could dull this blind ambition of mine to have you for myself again. Then yesterday, I went to Sopron to visit the old gypsy camp and found a tree that still bore my brothers’ names, and I realized that in this hopeless pursuit I lost something that was important to me.
To put it in not so many words, I lost my honor.
So I leave you with one final token of my eternal love: the sketchbook of your portraits. I hope you will look at it once in a while, as you did all those years ago when I drew them for you. During my days at Dachau, it was the only thing to give me hope and led me to everything that I am today.
And one final thing. I’ve decided to donate half of my Dachau collection to the Hungarian National Gallery. I’m told by a reliable source back in New York that this should be sufficient to secure from the Hungarian government three exit visas to Austria. I don’t not know how long it will take for this arrangement to come to fruition, only that I’ve had assurances that it will. Perhaps it will be soon, perhaps in a year. But I do know that the angels will be watching, and faith now is all we have.
In Vienna, should you find your husband, live happily. Live with your family as you’ve never lived before, laugh, love. Forgive Dora. When I came to leave the sketchbook for you this afternoon, we made our peace, and I believe you should do the same. Sometimes, to protect those we love, we must breach our own hearts, as she so eloquently said, and no one understands that better than me. So let her back into your heart as she longs to be. Let there be new beginnings.
As for me, do not worry. By the time you read this letter, I will already be in the sky, crossing the ocean to the only home that I have now. A family of my own awaits there—a father and mother, and a son, whom I intend to embrace in a way in which I have not and could not before. And at the end of the day, isn’t the love for family worth everything?
Yours,
Aleandro
The letter dropped from Eva’s hand.
She didn’t know how long she sat on the terrace with the sketchbook, only that it had grown dark and the first snow of the year fell from the sky. Dora had come out to bring her a blanket and a hat and had retreated inside to prepare dinner. Through the narrowly open French doors, she heard Bianca practicing her violin, and on the boulevard a streetcar clattered by, its bell fading into the span of the city, toward Heroes’ Square. A family passed underneath the terrace, the mother’s voice telling her children to slow down, to not run, for the pavement was slippery. There was the smell of roasted chestnuts, of burning wood coming from one of the neighboring apartments, and a dog was barking on a balcony as if startled by the falling snow.
Someday, she would remember all these surrounding sounds and smells and sights, and how her fingers passed over the portraits, as if seeing them anew, as if for the first time. Aleandro would never be far from her life, for in his final gift, he was making it whole again, and they would always be bound by his sacrifice as much as by their child, of whom he did not know.
She imagined her life going forward. She, Bianca, and Dora would pack up the house, abuzz with excitement and a little sadness as they prepared their belongings for the estate sale, making plans of things they would do and see when they got to Vienna. They would glance back at their home, with its whitewashed cornices and rounded terrace, holding one another in an embrace before climbing into the car taking them to the train station. They would cry meeting Eduard at the end of the journey—Eduard, who’d gone completely gray in the two years they had not seen him, who would cry on their shoulders, vowing to never let them go again.
There would be bridges to rebuild between mother and daughter, daughter and friend, husband and wife. Walks under the lush canopies of trees, and evenings spent at concert halls where Bianca played. And unexpectedly, they would lose Dora one morning, when she simply didn’t wake from her sleep. Eva would have love in her life—tears, too, but mostly love.
But for now, for another hour before Eva would walk back inside and into the rest of her life, there was just her and the sketchbook. She closed her eyes and pressed it to her chest and let herself be carried to a different decade, when a young man had rescued her mother’s satchel and spoken to her under the gathering rain clouds.
And it was enough. It was enough for now.