Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

“They got out in time,” Roland said.

“They’re not Jewish. Intellectuals, though, liberals …”

“National Socialism had no use for them. Which one is our landlady, do you think?”

Sonya peered at the faces, alike but different — one wore glasses, one had very full lips … Roland coughed, touched his chest. “The curly one,” Sonya decided.

And so, the identity of their more-or-less landlady more-or-less established, they turned to other things. Roland’s job at the Joint kept him busy, and Sonya was playing hausfrau and taking long walks. She got to know the butcher, the grocer, the fishmonger. She was a steady customer at the hardware shop and the lending library and the dry cleaning establishment. She patronized a coffee shop on Fourth Avenue, and established an ersatz friendship with its proprietress. Through the Joint she and Roland met apprehensive immigrants and were kind to them. And Sonya made two real friends: women who’d known one of her cousins — a jewelry designer on the East Side, a social worker on the West. Sometimes, on weekends, Sonya and Roland went to the movies with these women and their husbands, or out to a restaurant. “Normal life,” she exulted. She thought of Ida, the camp secretary, maybe safe in Israel née Palestine, maybe killed by mortar fire.

There was an armoire in the room they called the study. Sonya had stored her few summer dresses in the right side of it, and Roland’s one summer suit. He had a winter suit, too. Insufficient; the Joint asked him to provide himself with a tuxedo at its expense. He was more and more in demand as a speaker, requested now by organizations of wealthy philanthropists, not just Zionists and socialists. Roland reluctantly bought a tuxedo at Macy’s, and Macy’s altered it to fit. It was delivered on a Saturday.

“I’ll hide it in that armoire,” he said. “And I’ll hope that I don’t ever have to pull it out, that those fellows find somebody else to harangue them. Just thinking of their dinners I get heartburn,” and he groaned in his easy chair.

“Don’t get up, I’ll put it away,” Sonya said quickly.

She opened the left door of the armoire; and held the tuxedo high, like a lamp. It was shrouded in the new element plastic. She attempted to hang it and encountered resistance. Something was already hanging there. She opened the right door and thrust the tuxedo among the summer clothes. Then she took down the something.

It was a long black narrow coat of soft wool. It was double-breasted: buttons on its right side, buttonholes on its left, and so — she had to look down at her own striped cotton blouse to be sure — it was a coat designed for a man. It had a shawl collar of fur — brown fur, mink probably. Her friend the jewelry designer had a mink jacket, its glossy hairs similar to this. There was a producer who lived on West End Avenue; Sonya had seen him in his famous mink greatcoat.

She peeked into the living room. Roland was dozing now, the newspaper in disarray across his lap. She took the coat from the wooden hanger and, carrying it across her two extended arms, brought it into the bedroom.

There she put it on. The stripes of her blouse peeped between the crescents of fur like some other species. This coat needed a brandy-colored silk scarf costing perhaps one month of Roland’s salary, perhaps two. A bit of black would suffice. She reached into her middle drawer, pulled out a black slip, draped it within the collar. There.

Women’s slacks were just catching on. They were not generally for street wear, unless the streets were in the Village. Sonya had adopted them enthusiastically. They suited her long stride. She could buy men’s pants off the rack. She was wearing black trousers today, and oxfords.

A pier glass stood between the two bedroom windows. She walked slowly toward it.

What a distinguished gentleman. How well the white-haired head sat above the fur collar. The owner of this coat must be a slender fellow — the garment barely skimmed Sonya’s thin frame. A man like this had had the cash to get out of Vienna, then get out of Paris, then get to New York — not like the little shoemaker Yenkel and his numerous children, not like chess-playing Claud, smoking and coughing on his lower bunk …

She took off the coat and brought it into the living room. Roland was awake. She showed him the garment like a saleslady, displaying the fine workmanship of the buttoned right cuff. The other cuff, she discovered, had lost its button.

“Very nice, but no use in California,” Roland said. “So she left it in New York.”

“He.”

“He, I suppose. We might have figured. A woman irons.” There’d been no ironing board when they arrived; they’d had to buy one. “A woman would have chosen different draperies — a softer color. Yes: this is a man’s apartment.”

“There’s no spice rack above the stove,” Sonya said. Roland gave her a thoughtful look. She turned from him and laid the coat at an angle on the Biedermeier sofa, its shoulders against the strict back, its skirts spread on the seat.

“But the photographs,” Roland said suddenly.

“Oh, your first guess must have been right.” She turned from the coat and walked back to Roland. “The pictures of that pretty family were taken by the coat’s owner, our landlord, the beloved young uncle.”

“No longer young,” he said, sighing.

“Still beloved,” and she touched his arm.

SHE TOOK THE COAT to the neighborhood yarn shop — its missing button preyed on her conscience like a hungry pet. “Can you match this?” Sonya handed the buttoned right sleeve to the woman on the other side of the counter. The rest of the coat remained in her protective embrace.

“Ach, you don’t meet such buttons anymore. May I see the others?” Without waiting for permission, the woman leaned forward and grasped the coat under the arms and took it from Sonya and laid it on the counter. She examined the carved leather hemispheres on the breast. She raised little green eyes to Sonya’s. “We have nothing like this here. I would not know where to look, though in Budapest …” and she trailed off sentimentally. “But maybe!” She thrust her ringed hand into the coat’s pocket, a pocket that Sonya had not guessed was there, so flat it was, so cleverly disguised by the seam. “Ach,” she said again. “He knew it was loose, ripped it off, kept it safe.”

“Who?”

“Your employer.” Sonya had pulled on an old cardigan sweater against the October chill. She supposed she did look like a housekeeper. “A tailor should sew this on; don’t try it yourself.”

The tailor on University Place did the job while she waited. A sudden wind swept newspapers against the shop’s grimy window. Once outside, Sonya noticed that the temperature had dropped. So she put on the coat.

Only three blocks to home — one westward, two north. She was moving like a chess knight. No, a king. No, no, how self-important — minor nobility.

Roland wasn’t yet home. So she let the coat sit in his chair until, after five, the elevator began swishing up and down. Then she stowed it.

The next afternoon it kept her company in the kitchen while she cooked. Another afternoon, while she lay on the bed reading, the coat slumped on a rosé chaise.

She did not wear it again until after the Christmas holidays. Then there was a cold snap. Her own coat was warm, yes; but would not the old gentleman’s be warmer still? — its lining, unseen between silk and wool, was light yet effective. When she held the fabric between thumb and fingers, something slid within, as if alive.

She bought it a scarf — not real silk, something synthetic, oh, these new fabrics. The color was perfect — cognac. She bought cashmere-lined leather gloves on sale. In a thrift shop she found a hat in the shape of a squat cylinder, mink-dyed squirrel.