My aunt Kristina (Tinka for short) was murdered by her lover, in 1954, at the age of 35. Her image, one of my earliest memories, lingers crisp and amazingly accurate, after all these years. One winter day, her last winter, she was standing in our living room, warming her back against the tall, coal burning, ceramic tile stove. I remember her against the shiny, ornate tiles. She was wearing a short fox coat and an ankle length narrow skirt. She had seamed silk stockings and golden brown leather high heel shoes. Her hat was bright green, with a feather on one side. She was eating warm popcorn, picking each peace slowly with her long, perfectly manicured fingernails, polished in shiny red. (Mother is amazed, to this day, that I remember this image so clearly.) I was not even four.
Aunt Tinka was the only person in our family that exhibited creativity and artistic talent. The oldest child of my grandparents, she was sent, at barely sixteen, to a private school for seamstresses. This was at her insistence and grandfather couldn’t resist. His daughter would be a professional woman, not a housewife. The time was before WWII, and my grandfather's bankruptcy.
In her youth, during the war, at the tender age of 22, she supported the entire family by sewing clothes for the wealthy. After the war, she opened a fancy 'salon' for fine lingerie and single stitch, custom tailored, men's shirts. She rented a storefront in beautiful downtown of our, Eastern European, small but fashionable city. Her business was booming as faithful customers kept coming back. Five or six women employees helped sew my aunt's creations. The shop was a prominent place for the ones who could still afford custom shirts, silk nightgowns, and embroidered slips. Mother said that Tinka had beautiful handwriting and could free hand any fancy monogram on silk.
Men were mesmerized by Tinka and she was always in love. My uncle Joseph was her second husband. He was a handsome, wealthy landowner's son who liked to spend nights drinking and gambling. Gradually, he gambled away everything. First the land, than the furniture, several sewing machines and even a bedspread, slowly disappeared... Finally, uncle Joseph was arrested for embezzling money from a company where he worked as a bookkeeper. He spent two and a half years in jail.
Tinka decided that she did not love him anymore. The golden blue eyed boy of her life was reduced to a repulsive symbol of unattained bliss. While my uncle was away, a dark, tall, 27 year old Stephan, who suffered from advanced tuberculosis, appeared in Tinka's life... The relationship turned into an obsession that will forever change lives and shatter dreams. Several days before my uncle was to return from prison, Tinka announced to my father, her favorite brother in-law, that she was getting death threats from both her husband and her lover: “If you decide to leave me, I will kill you.” Stephan became violently possessive and gave her a black eye. All in the name of love. 'O my man, I love him so, he'll never know. All my life is just despair, but I don't care....', sang Billie Holiday in those days. And of course, 'Gloomy Sunday' was played by the Gypsy violinists, every night, in every cafe.
My next memory is of my uncle in a Fedora, standing on the street, urgently knocking on our window and saying something to my mother who began to cry hysterically. He never came in, just disappeared into the grayness of the street. I held my mother's apron, crying because she was crying... She was 6 months pregnant with my youngest sister Rad but I remember her as being small and skinny. The news was that the day before, my aunt went to her girlfriend's house to spend a farewell night with her lover. As they apparently argued violently in bed, Stephan held her neck, with both hands, for too long. When he realized what he had done he tiptoed out, very early in the morning, and went straight to the Police Station to turn himself in. The horrid job of calling out to my aunt, breaking the lock and finding her, upper torso and uplifted arms, hanging from the edge of the bed, dark fingermarks on her throat, was left to her faithful friend.
My memory of the funeral is a hazy vision as through a silk chiffon: Her daughters, my cousins Olga and Yella, five and six at the time, clad in long, black dresses, holding hands, were walking slowly behind the huge wax chrysanthemum wreaths and the glass shielding a slow moving coffin in an ornate lacquered carriage. Kind of like that 'Imitation of Life' scene, except that the horses were brown. The priest was called but refused to come. She was a sinner, it was clear, a small procession whispered.
My memories end here but I'm told that there was a long trial that only mother and aunt Mila attended. The town newspaper faithfully reported the scandal. Stephan was sentenced to 14 years. There were rumors that he died, only months later, in prison, of TB. Of course, no one knew for sure. Father reported sightings of Stephan on several occasions. But father was among those who were convinced that Hitler escaped 'the' bunker and that life, in general, is not fair.
This is a story of family's shame and pain. My grandparents and their remaining children kept it a secret, never to be discussed in front of strangers. Now I wrote it down. I'm giving a bottle of red nail polish in memory of my aunt, the villainess who ‘shamed them all.’ When you polish your nails with it, remember that, in the 1950's, talented, smart, passionate and independent women cracked open doors, ever so slightly, for us all. The outstretched hand; perfect manicure; blood red nail polish.
Mirjana
Chicago, Illinois
