My mother had taken over responsibility for all of our paperwork. My father was too slow, too methodical, and too likely to get distracted by the children crying from the corners of the squalid apartment, the adults bickering over food, or even a birdcall outside the window. My mother attacked our visa applications with the zealousness she once applied to a daunting aria. She wielded her fountain pen so fiercely she often punctured the papers upon which she wrote.
When the U.S. embassy turned us away, one or all three of us waited in lines at the embassies or consulates of France, Ireland, Latvia, Hungary, Brazil, Australia, Yugoslavia, Argentina, New Zealand, and Canada. We still thought we had a choice. My parents still thought we might move somewhere with symphonies and theaters.
None of these countries wanted Jews, particularly Jews who were guaranteed to arrive penniless. They didn’t want musicians, actors, composers, singers, professors, writers, or intellectuals. They wanted people with practical skills who would earn a steady and taxable income. They wanted plumbers, undertakers, electricians, and carpenters. “Surely there is more to life than the fulfillment of basic needs for shelter and water,” said my mother, flinging a stack of paperwork to the floor. “Surely there are souls in these countries who cry out for music. Why else live?”
“It is entirely possible, my love, that these countries have their own musicians and philosophers.”
“Who don’t want competition? Is that it? But I can’t do anything else but sing!”
“I don’t know.” My father offered her a faint smile. “Your cooking isn’t half bad.”
* * *
• • •
WE KNOW NOW how lucky we were to be denied visas to the countries of Europe, but we did not feel lucky at the time. We were running out of options. It stopped mattering to us where we went—my parents no longer made any mention of their careers—only that we be allowed to go somewhere.
Finally, there were just three countries left that might take us. We might be allowed into Japanese-occupied Shanghai, which didn’t require visas. Or into the Dominican Republic, which had taken some distant cousins. And then, through the whisper network of those desperate to get out, came word that Bolivia was still taking Jews.
I had never heard of Bolivia. Bolivien. I rolled the word around in my mouth like a sweet. When my parents talked about going to Bolivia they used words like “primitive,” “wild,” and “tropics.” My father had been on tour in South America (though not in Bolivia) with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1923, but when I pressed him, he would only say it was different from Europe. Later, I would find out that three members of the orchestra had died on that journey. Two contracted malaria and one committed suicide.
Left to my imagination, I envisioned living on a vast farm of some kind and riding horses across green fields, into lush forests, picking unfamiliar fruits from the trees as I rode along. In my mind Bolivia merged with Friedenglückhasenland until they were no longer distinguishable. They were my Eden, my promised land, my escape from fear. In Bolivia we would have land and raise rabbits. In Bolivia there would always be sun. In Bolivia my parents could work again. In Bolivia when the sun set my mother would sing as she made Käsespätzle.
At the same time, I could not imagine a land without Anneliese. She had always been there. She was part of the architecture of my life. How could I venture into any world without her?
Dear Anneliese, I wrote on scraps of paper in the darkness of our room at night as the other children whimpered or slept. Did you know there are sinkholes in Friedenglückhasenland? Sometimes you fall into a hole in the street and fall and fall almost forever. You could stop halfway down, but then you have no way to get back up. It’s best to just let yourself fall until you are on the other side of the world.
I never sent the letter; my mother told me I might endanger Anneliese if I did. No one’s letters were private anymore. This did not stop me from writing. I needed to speak to her, even if she never heard my words.
* * *
• • •
GETTING VISAS FOR OURSELVES was difficult enough, but my parents also wanted to save their families. My mother had two younger sisters still in Graz, who remained reluctant to leave Austria, unable to imagine a life elsewhere. The younger of those two had a husband, my uncle Marcel, and a daughter, my little cousin Violette. My Graz grandparents’ bakery had been “Aryanized,” meaning it had been stolen by the Nazis. “How will they eat? They cannot survive there,” my mother fretted to Thekla. Yet things were hardly better in Vienna.
We needed fourteen visas. Not counting Willi, and not counting my uncle Franz, my father’s brother, who lived in Berlin and refused to consider leaving.
I walked to the Bolivian consulate with my father, grateful to be out of the clamor and stench of the apartment. The consulate occupied the top floor of a cold and narrow house on Waaggasse, just two and a half blocks from the Naschmarkt, where we used to go on the occasional Sunday for lunch. My father liked to buy the Austrian pancakes called Palatschinken, while I helped my mother pick out cherries, Turkish honey, and fresh fish. Knowing we no longer had enough money to stop, I didn’t slow my steps as we passed the market. Maybe they wouldn’t even take our money anymore. Jewish vendors had been driven out, their wares stolen.
At last we caught sight of the Bolivian flag, fluttering red, yellow, and green above Waaggasse. As we drew closer, my father pointed out the Bolivian coat of arms in its center. A long-necked animal stood beside a palm tree and a golden sheaf of wheat as the sun rose over a mountain in the distance. Above it all, a bird was poised for takeoff. This pleased me. A country with such a pretty picture on its flag could not be too scary. Not as scary as a country with flags like ours.
In a throng of other supplicants, we spiraled up the narrow stone staircase, pausing to catch our breath before the brass plaque announcing that we had arrived. We were not permitted to see the consul himself, but a diminutive, sepia-skinned woman let us in and—after we had waited with the others for nearly five hours—gave us the stack of documents we needed to complete in order to apply for visas. “You will need thirty-six dollars per family member to launch your life in Bolivia,” she said crisply.
“We can’t take that much out of the country,” I whispered to my father.
“We’ll worry about that later.”
On the forms, we had to state how we intended to make a living in Bolivia. It would help our cause, the woman in the consulate informed us, if we would agree to become agricultural laborers. My father stared at her as if she had asked him to join the circus. “Agricultural laborers?” he asked in wonderment. “But we are Viennese!”
“I am trying to help you, Herr Zingel.” The woman was clearly offended. “If you want the very best chances of getting out of Austria, you will agree to become agricultural laborers.”