Message From My Grandfather

By M. Willow

I hope you enjoy this story.  I’ve researched it, but my apologies if I inadvertently erred on historic facts.  My thanks to MWH for listening to endless revisions of this story.

Starsky turned the page with reverent care.  It was a special gift from his mother, sent earlier in the afternoon, an old photo album filled with family pictures.  He hadn’t seen it in years, way back when he’d been a know-it-all kid living in New York.   Now, it was late evening, the sun going down, casting its red-yellow glow across his living room, and he couldn’t put it down.  His back was hurting like nobody’s business because he was sitting on the floor with it in his lap. 

Funny, when he was a child it had been the last thing he wanted to see.  His mother used to love to pull it out and reminisce.  This is old Aunt Aliza who used to keep gold fish in the bathtub.  This is my mother who died in childbirth.  Then it was cousin after cousin and tales of his mother’s happy childhood.  Strange thing was it was Germany and hardly a time anyone would have called happy, especially if you were Jewish. 

“We were proud Germans,” his mother used to say.  “Our family had lived in Germany for generations.   Papa insisted that we speak proper German.  He knew it was the way to success.  Starsky just shook his head, trying to understand how anyone could be proud to be a part of a country who’d considered them less than human. 

Starsky eyed the amber bottle sitting in front of him.  He picked it up and stared at it.  He didn’t want it.  Hadn’t even taken a sip.  Yet earlier, it had been all he could think of.  In fact, he had called in sick just so he could stay home and get drunk.    Hutch had not been included in his plans, something that obviously bothered the blond because he’d put up a fight about it.  But in the end, Starsky won and Hutch had ended up hurt and gone to work. 

Starsky put the bottle of booze down and went back to the photo album, flipping it back to the beginning again.  He’d gone through it several times, all the while trying to figure out what his mother wanted him to see.  She’d put a note on it asking him to call when he got it.  He’d made the call immediately and received the rest of the instructions from her:  “First look over the album, paying special attention to your grandfather.  Look at him carefully and see if you can see it before you read the letter.  He has a special message for you.” Starsky had spent the next three hours doing just that, desperately trying to see what the it was, but all he could see was a bunch of people he’d never met.

Grandmother Adela.  She’d been beautiful with wavy hair piled high on top of her head and small, delicate features.  She was standing next to his grandfather Jacob.   His mother said that his grandfather’s eyes were the color of the sea, but the picture was in black-and-white and didn’t do them justice.   Starsky looked at his grandparents.   It was their wedding day.   1913.  He could almost feel the love between them.  Later, they would have two children and his grandfather would own three restaurants, but now they were vibrantly young, their whole lives ahead of them. 

His grandfather was standing alone in front of his first restaurant in the next picture.  Starsky paid special attention to him, recalling his mother’s instructions, but what had she expected him to see?  The man seemed ordinary.  He was tall, solidly built, and even in the black and white photo, he could see the intense color of his eyes.  People didn’t smile back then so he looked real serious.  His Ma once told him it was because it took a long time to take a picture back then.  Probably why most people looked serious, but Starsky could see the pride in his grandfather’s eyes. 

He fingered the letter.  Put it down.  His mother had been specific.  Look for it, then open the letter and read.   He looked at the wedding photograph.  His grandfather’s clothes were tattered because he didn’t have much money before the restaurant.  Starsky couldn’t tell much about the shoes, but they seemed ordinary.  Back to the face.  He had a beard, of course.  It was customary for Jewish men to have beards back then.  And he wore a hat.  The couple stood next to each other not touching.  Just wasn’t done back then. 

Starsky looked at several more pictures of the couple before coming to the one with his grandfather standing in front of his second restaurant.  He wasn’t smiling, but he stood proud, his hands tucked inside his well-tailored suit, chest out as if saying, see what I’ve built.   The caption read, second restaurant, 1920.  “It was a huge success,” his mother once said.  “People came from miles around just to eat there.”   Of course, in a few years his grandmother would get pregnant with his Aunt Rosie.  She would never get to see her child, and his grandfather would never be the same.  He would spend the rest of his life striving for success, leaving his two young daughters to be raised by a series of nannies.   

Starsky turned the page.

Rachal, summer, 1923, the caption read, which meant she was three years old in the picture.  She was standing in front of a large white house with a pretty girl with golden curls and skin as light as Hutch. The two of them looked like dolls to Starsky, each the opposite in color, sort of like he and Hutch.  Starsky recalled his mother saying that the little girl was her best friend and that her name was Bessie something or other.  She wasn’t Jewish, but in those days that wasn’t entirely unusual for Jews and non-Jews to hang out.  Starsky saw a ton of pictures with the two girls on the next pages, alone with his aunt Rosie, then he was staring at his grandfather again.   This time he looked older, his hair almost completely grey.  He had a cold look in his eyes, almost lifeless, like life had thrown him a curve.  “He was empty inside,” his mother had said.  “Nothing could take the place of my mother.”  The caption beneath the photo read 1926 which meant that Hitler and his gang hadn’t made it illegal for Jews to own stuff yet and the old man was still on his way to success.  By then, he’d opened his third restaurant.

A skinny kid stood in front of a swimming hole in the next picture.  Guessed they’d started smiling by then because he was all smiles as he held out a fishing pole with a large fish attached.  Caption read Harvey Weiss, 1934.   He was his mother’s cousin, Starsky recalled her saying.  Harvey looked to be about fourteen in the picture.  He’d be dead within the next seven years or so, unless those ridiculous lies were true and millions of Jews were off living it up somewhere.

On to the next page, and Starsky pushed himself up and turned on the light.  It was getting too dark and he could barely see.  He wished Hutch were there.  His partner would be getting off soon, but he wouldn’t come there.  Not after the way Starsky had behaved.  He’d screamed at him to stay away.  He’d wanted to be alone and made no bones about it.  Terry was dead and so was he in a way, except Terry had stopped breathing while Starsky had only stopped living.  He couldn’t recall when he’d felt good.  He couldn’t recall when he’d gone on a date, or laughed, or just enjoyed life.  He’d been breezing through, doing his job like some robot programmed to do his masters bidding.  Hutch had tried to help, but the poor man was struggling himself.  Hutch was alive, but just breathing too.  They were sad caricatures of the vibrant cops they’d once been. 

Starsky’s eyes blurred and he wiped a tear away.  With a shock it dawned on him what his mother meant for him to see.  He turned the pages quickly, looking for another picture of his grandfather.  He found him standing in front of his third restaurant and he looked into his eyes. Starsky’s heart skipped a beat and he turned back to the first page.  It was his grandparents wedding day.   In this pictured his grandfather’s eyes were alive, passionate.  He had the woman he loved by his side.  With shaking hands Starsky looked at the other pictures, turning from page to page, seeing the same thing—the eyes of a happy, vibrant man.  Then in 1924 everything changed when the woman he loved died and the once happy man forgot how to live.  His eyes were a reflection of what he felt inside.  Starsky saw no life in them.

“Papa was never the same after mother died,” his mother had said.  “He just went about the notion of breathing.” 

“Oh, God, oh God, it’s me,” Starsky cried out, rocking his body back and forward, clutching the album to his chest.  The tears were falling in streams now, and he wiped them away.  There was no time for tears.  He’d shed a million since Terry died, and then he learned to live a different life.  Every day he got up, bathed, ate, went to work, came home, slept.  His grandfather had died on the day his wife died, but he’d gone on breathing, occupying a body, eating and sleeping because he had to, but his joy for life had died on the day he’d lost his beloved wife.  Now, more than forty years later, history repeated itself in his grandson.  Starsky had lost Terry, and with that his joy for life.  If he looked in the mirror what would he see?    Would he see his grandfather’s eyes?

Starsky hands were still shaking as he flipped the page.  He was seeing the world with new eyes now, so what he saw was totally unexpected--   Jews and gentiles laughing, smiling, welcoming 1935 in a large party held at his grandfather’s home, but the old man was nowhere in sight.  “My father didn’t attend parties,” his mother had once told him.  “He would stay up in his room.” 

He looked at the picture carefully, scanning the faces as if expecting to see something else startling.   He saw his Aunt Rosie.  He saw his mother standing next to a tall, attractive young woman with long blond hair.  The caption read, New Years, 1935, Bessie and Rosie.  And so it began.  In November of that year the Nuremberg Race Laws would pass, stripping the Jews of their German citizenship and defining who was and wasn’t a Jew.  It wouldn’t matter that his grandfather had been a proud German, and that his people had lived in Germany for centuries.  Later, businesses would be taken away and it would become illegal for any Jew to hold professional positions.  In this new world, the doctor would become a janitor and the lawyer would sweep the floor right next to him.  In another few years it would even become illegal for a Jewish person to receive medical treatment from a non-Jew.  But now it was 1935 and the people in the picture did not know that they were already dying.

Starsky flipped the pages quickly, paying special attention to his grandfather, focusing on his eyes and the sadness in them.  Watching the sadness turn to stark fear as the Nazis grew more aggressive.  Before he’d posed in front of his restaurants or house, but now the pictures were infrequent and Starsky knew that the home and restaurants had been taken away.  And soon, his grandfather would have to act quickly to save the lives of his two girls.  The last picture was dated 1938 and in that one his grandfather stood alone, his clothes tattered like they’d been on his wedding day.

Starsky let out a breath, clasping his hands over his mouth, feeling himself transported back to that time.  He was a silent witness to the death of people he’d never met.  He felt raw rage, a pain that seemed to rip through him.  Only two would survive the Nazi’s tyranny.    Why had his mother done this to him?  Why had she made him feel again?  There was nothing he could do to change the past.  They were dead years ago, then Starsky’s mind moved to a time when his mother had cried in agony because his father had died.   

Starsky remembered standing outside her bedroom door, listening to her cries.  He was the man of the house now, but he’d stood there powerless.  He would lose her too, he’d thought.  But then one day she sat at the kitchen table with the album.  She sat there looking at each picture as if she’d never seen them and she read her father’s final letter as if she’d never read it before.  Not long after, Starsky had his mother back.  

Now, Starsky picked up the envelope, running his hands across the yellowed paper before opening it.  He pulled out a single sheet and looked at it.   His grandfather was Jewish, and proud of it, but he’d always believed in speaking and writing in proper German.  He believed it was the only way to success, therefore, he spoke Yiddish at home, but his German was equal to anyone he spoke to outside the Jewish community.   Now, it presented a problem because Starsky didn’t understand the language. 

“Okay, now what?” he said aloud.

His mother never spoke German around him.  She’d honed her skills, speaking English like a native New Yorker.  She never taught him her native language.  But she’d sent a letter written in German.  

Starsky rubbed his head.  He had two choices.  He could call his Mother or he could call Hutch.  Hutch’s father had insisted that the blond learn German.  His partner spoke it fluently, but never around Starsky.   Hutch was part German and very sensitive about his heritage and how people like him had killed and tortured so many Jews.  It didn’t matter that Hutch’s family had come to America in the 1700s or that the kind Blond didn’t have a vicious bone in his body.   Starsky had even pointed out to him that not all Germans were bad and that some had even helped the Jews to escape or hid them away.  Hutch could be stubborn when he wanted.    Funny thing was if Hutch had been in Germany in those days, he would have been risking his life to save Jews.  He was that type of man.  Course his family would have been right at Hitler’s dinner table toasting to the success of the final solution.

Starsky was resolved.  He would have to call his mother.  He was just about to do just that when Hutch walked in.  He’d used his key and stood at the door staring at him as if waiting for permission to come in.

Starsky subconsciously wiped the tears away and attempted a smile.  “Why don’t you go grab a beer and join me?”

Hutch didn’t say anything, just headed to the kitchen, coming back a moment later with a can of beer in his hand.  He looked uncomfortable, but he sat down next to Starsky and opened it.  “You okay, Gordo?”

 “Sorry, Hutch.  Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t.” He took a swig of the beer, looking at him over the lid.  “I know you need to be alone sometime.  Shouldn’t have tried to force my way in here.”

Starsky smiled at the irony since Hutch had done just that only moments ago.

“What’s that?” Hutch asked, eyeing the letter, and sitting the can on the floor next to him.

“A letter from my grandfather.” 

“It’s in German?”  Hutch asked, his eyebrow raised.

“Yeah.”

“You learn some new language skill  I don’t know about, Gordo?”

“I wish.  Ma sent it.  She knows I don’t read German.”

Hutch took the letter from him.  “I can translate for you if you like.”

Starsky gazed at him, looking for any sign of discomfort.  Seeing none, he went on, “If it don’t bother you.”

“Of course not.”  Hutch started to read silently.

Starsky immediately wished he hadn’t asked.   Hutch looked upset and he could tell he was becoming emotional.  He put his hand on the back of the big blonde’s neck, squeezing  slightly.  Hutch relaxed beneath his fingers and cleared his throat.  “I’m gonna read it first in German, Gordo.  Then he started reading, shocking Starsky at first.  He’d never heard his partner say anything in another language other than English and Spanish.    His voice was clear and precise, and he spoke without the slightest trace of an American accent.  Starsky was surprised at the beauty of the language, the softness so unlike anything he’d heard on television or the radio when the language had come from the mouths of hate mongers and had been shouted. 

He closed his eyes, letting his mind linger on every word uttered, picturing his grandfather sitting next to him speaking the words.  Starsky saw him in his mind’s eyes, hair grey, eyes astonishingly green.  His grandfather had used his grandmother’s jewelry to pay for his daughters’ passage out of Germany.  On the night they left, they had only the clothes on their backs and a small suitcase.  They’d said their final goodbyes and left for a new land.  The album and the letter had been hidden in a secret compartment.  It was all they had left.  It was a final memento of a family wiped out by hatred.  

Hutch was visibly crying now, and Starsky felt warm tears slide down his own face.  And then Hutch said the words in English. 

My dearest daughters:

 I’d hoped to leave you with a fine home and enough money to last several lifetimes.  It was not to be, and I find myself leaving a different inheritance, one of wisdom.  You see, my children, after your mother died, I forgot how to live.   I missed her so much that I couldn’t imagine a life without her.  I no longer derived happiness from life.  I just existed, doing only what was needed.  I failed to see what I had and instead focused on what I had lost.  For that I apologize.   

Now I am at the end of my life and so much is undone.  You see, I’ve spent years racing through life, never taking the time to look at each day; never taking the time to cherish you.  I saw flowers, but did not see them.  I tasted the sweet nectar of fruit, but did not taste it.  And now it is too late to go back.  But for you, my sweet Rosie and Rachel, you can avoid my mistake and pass this message down through the ages so that no one in our line makes the same mistake.  See that you do so when you see the time is right. 

I say to you, my children, and my children’s children, no matter what life gives you, never forget to cherish it.   Live life with vibrancy.  Thank God for each day that you have with your loved ones.  Look into the eyes of those you love, those who matter most and appreciate them.  Love them and if they should go before you, thank God for the time you had with them. 

With all my love,   

Your papa  

Hutch tucked the pages back into the envelope.  For a moment, neither spoke, both lost in thought.  Starsky broke the silence.

“I guess I’d forgotten how to do that.”

“We both had.”

“Been a tough year, Hutch.  It was hard, but I made it harder I guess.”  Starsky met his partner’s eyes, staring into what matters most.  “It’s just that losing Terry…well…it sort of knocked the wind outta me.”

“I know, buddy. It knocked the wind out of me too.”

“I had this whole life planned out.  Kids, home, growing old together, and then it was just gone and I forgot how to live.”

Hutch nodded.

“Guess this letter set me straight.  I ain’t been livin’ for a long time, Hutch.”

“I guess neither of us has.”

Something dawned on Starsky.  “Ma told ya to come, huh, Hutch?”

“Yeah, buddy.  She told me what she was planning and to stop by later.  You angry?”

“Naw.  Sort of glad.  I mean, well, I think I still may need help with this livin’ thing.”

“I’m  here every step of the way.”

“Thanks, Hutch.”

“You got it.”

Starsky picked up the photo album and  handed it to Hutch.  “I got some people I want  cha to meet.”

The End