Later, after they had changed and dressed, Wanda took Marie to talk to the dance teacher. Pandora was busy counting the money she had taken from the class for that week’s lesson when Wanda cleared her throat.
“It’s like this . . . Marie, my aunt, she’s come to visit us . . . from Germany.”
Marie raised her eyebrows in surprise. What was the girl up to now?
“Yes, so?” Pandora put the bundle of paper money into a little box in front of her on the table, then began counting coins.
“Well, you said once that your people are from Germany and that you speak pretty good German yourself,” Wanda went on. “So I thought the three of us could go out and do something together. Maybe go get a coffee, or some ice cream . . . Then you could talk about Germany as well . . .”
Marie felt herself blush. “Wanda!” she said, embarrassed. “I hardly think that’s a good idea . . .”
“Why ever not? Of course we can,” Pandora broke in, smiling. She took a little key and poked it into the lock on her moneybox, then fished out some money. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and I’m ravenous! Why don’t you join me? But I warn you—I have no idea where we may end up or what I feel like eating!”
She took a crimson shawl and threw it over her shoulders with a dramatic gesture, then marched off without even turning around to glance at Marie and Wanda.
They had no choice but to follow her.
“Does she have to do that? Now I feel like a dog being taken out for a walk,” Marie hissed to her niece. Wanda just grinned.
What came next was a tour of a part of New York that Marie had never seen before, a journey of discovery through food. First Pandora took them to the Lower East Side. More than forty thousand Jews lived here, and Pandora’s family as well, though she had no intention of visiting them. Instead she went into a tiny little restaurant with no more than three tables and ordered gefilte fish, coarse rye bread, and something she called a “schmear,” which she spread on the bread and which tasted of mustard.
Marie was hungry as well, and helped herself—there had been nothing for lunch at Ruth’s but salad, again. The food here was unfamiliar, but tasted good. She wasn’t bothered by the fact that they were the only women in the place, nor by the way all the men around them were wearing braided earlocks and little caps on their heads. Pandora explained between mouthfuls that the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place on the planet. “At least that’s what those clever men with their statistics manuals say.” She shrugged. “All I know is that it’s fearfully crowded behind those high housefronts. You’ll often find more than twenty people living in one room—can you imagine? I’m just glad I don’t have to live here myself anymore.”
“It’s not much different back home in Lauscha. There are plenty of families who eat, sleep, and work in one small room,” Marie said. “The ones like us who make Christmas ornaments are always walking around with glitter powder on our skin and clothes. It’s very finely ground glass, and it gets absolutely everywhere.”
Pandora nodded knowingly. “I know all about that, it’s the same with the garment workers here. They end up with cotton threads in their soup and needles in their bed. They say that there are more than a million Jews in New York City, and most of them come from Europe like my family,” she said.
When the waiter came and asked if they wanted more, Marie was ready for another plate of fish. But Pandora said no. “That was just the appetizer,” she said mysteriously, and paid up. Then she leapt to her feet and was out on the street in an instant.
Marie and Wanda looked at one another and laughed. Then they hurried out after Pandora.
“Just a woman out having fun . . .” All at once Marie could hear Georgie’s words from back on the ship. Having fun was easy, she discovered.
They ate sticky rice from tiny bowls in Chinatown, spicy goulash in a Hungarian restaurant, and spaghetti with clams in Little Italy. One of them said that they might be up half the night with indigestion and worse—and the idea seemed so funny that all at once they were crying with laughter.
Pandora was recognized everywhere they went. Like a peacock displaying her tail, she was always the center of attention. The owner came to shake her hand in every restaurant, and she invariably got an extra glass of wine or a basket of rolls on the house. Everybody was happy to have her visit, and Marie wasn’t surprised; Pandora had a way of spreading good cheer wherever she went. Marie also liked the fact that she could say whatever she wanted to Pandora, since they could speak in German.