When We Return Read online

  Praise for

  When We Return

  “Eliana Tobias has managed in this moving and intelligent novel to show us two characters who, coming from very different worlds, at the end are telling the same story. The story of disarray, discrimination, and injustice. Showing us as well that hate is everywhere and the only antidote we have is memory and love.”

  –CARLA GUELFENBEIN, Alfaguara-award winner and internationally recognized author of eight novels including the award-winning novel In the Distance With You

  “A spellbinding narrative that spans two continents, Europe and Latin America, at pivotal times of history. We are drawn to the lives of its characters, those that escaped the fractured world of the Holocaust and those in Latin America who struggled for truth and justice. Eliana Tobias has written a mesmerizing novel where history is braided with humanity. A passionate tale of resilience and fortitude.”

  –MARJORIE AGOSIN, Wellesley College, award-winning poet and novelist, author of The Butterfly Hill Series

  “A story about reparations and redemption, When We Return weaves decades and continents, victims of the Holocaust and those reeling from terrorism in Peru, with the struggles of loss and injustice. Tobias explores with insight and compassion the familial bonds that sustain us to ultimately reveal the healing that comes from family, love, and our shared humanity.”

  –CLAIRE IBARRA, author of Fragile Saints and Vortex of Our Affections

  “In a novel with as many victims as there are survivors, Eliana depicts the phenomenal resilience of love that can bridge displaced families across borders and beyond lost time. A thoughtful writer, giving readers history and fiction in equal servings, her words are prime and elegant, adding richness to a beautiful retelling of an ugly past.”

  –MARI JOJIE, author of A Hundred Silent Ways

  “In this thought-provoking novel, the author traces generational history for those who are recipients of life-shattering events. Tobias seeks and provides answers to questions of the rights of recipients of outrageous historical behavior and to what forms such reparations may take. Personalizing such problems, the novel gives a historical background from the Peruvian Shining Path guerilla movement to the European Holocaust and shows through keen characterization how the sharp light of history reflecting national crimes impacts both the recipients and future generations. Can new relationships provide solace to those long ago destroyed? A must-read for philosophical and historical students and deep thinkers everywhere. A highly original and different type of novel.”

  –SUZANNE HILLIER, author of My Best Friend Was Angela Bennett and Sonia and Carl

  “As a Jewish Latina familiar with South and North America, Tobias provides penetrating and perceptive observations on the all-too-human-issues caused by displacement and generational trauma. Weaving a tapestry of trauma as experienced by a Peruvian victimized by the Shining Path guerillas and an American affected by his father’s preoccupations as a Jewish Czech refugee, the author provides a unique window into life and political events. Equally compelling is the struggle of the affected individuals to confront memory and seek justice, each of which proves to be an enormous challenge. After all, the perpetrators rely on the erosion of memory and the avoidance of justice. This story may help inspire those who know that silence is not the answer.”

  –ROBERT KRELL, CM, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, author of Sounds from Silence

  “Eliana Tobias renders this powerful tale of a Peruvian family trying to come together after the murderous corruption of the Fujimori years unfolds with the inevitable grace of a tropical flower blooming.”

  –EDUARDO SANTIAGO, award-winning author of Tomorrow They Will Kiss and Midnight Rumba

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by River Grove Books

  Austin, TX

  www.rivergrovebooks.com

  Copyright © 2022 Eliana Tobias

  All rights reserved.

  Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

  Distributed by River Grove Books

  Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group Cover images used under license from ©Shutterstock.com/hachiware; ©Shutterstock.com/saiko3p; ©Shutterstock.com/

  Adwo; ©Shutterstock.com/Anne Richard; ©Shutterstock.com/Dan Breckwoldt; ©Shutterstock.com/Who is Danny; ©Shutterstock.com/Al Serov; ©Shutterstock.com/Josep Curto; ©Shutterstock.com/NICOLA MESSANA PHOTOS

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63299-534-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-63299-535-3

  First Edition

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: The East San Francisco Bay Area, California, 2008

  Chapter 2: The East Bay, California, 2008

  Chapter 3: En Route to Lima, Peru, 2008

  Chapter 4: Lima, Peru, 2008

  Chapter 5: Lima, Peru, 2008

  Chapter 6: Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1938; En Route to Lima, Peru, 1939

  Chapter 7: Lima, Peru; La Paz, Bolivia, 1939

  Chapter 8: La Paz, Bolivia, 1940s–1950s

  Chapter 9: Niagara Falls, New York, 1951–1958

  Chapter 10: Niagara Falls, New York, 1960s

  Chapter 11: Lima, Peru, 2008

  Chapter 12: Lima, Peru, 2008

  Chapter 13: Washington, DC, 2008

  Chapter 14: Lima, Peru, 2009

  Chapter 15: The East Bay, California, 2009

  Chapter 16: Lima, Peru, 2011

  Chapter 17: The East Bay, California, 2011

  Chapter 18: The East Bay, California, 2011

  Chapter 19: Lima, Peru, 2011

  Chapter 20: Prague, Czech Republic, 2011

  Chapter 21: Lima, Peru, 2011

  Chapter 22: Lima, Cajamarca and El Milagro, Peru, 2012

  Chapter 23: Lima, Peru, 2012

  Chapter 24: Lima, Peru, 2013

  Chapter 25: The East Bay, California; Tuscany, Italy; Berlin, Germany, 2014

  Chapter 26: The East Bay, California, 2014

  Chapter 27: Lima, Peru; The East Bay, California, 2015

  Chapter 28: Lima, Peru, 2015

  Chapter 29: Lima, Peru, 2016

  Chapter 30: The East Bay, California, 2016

  Chapter 31: The East Bay, California; Washington, DC, 2016

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the members of my family

  whose stories inspired this novel.

  “One thing I think about is how humans work—the only thing that can replace one story is another story.”

  —Yuval Noah Harari

  (Quoted by Ian Parker, “The Really Big Picture,”

  The New Yorker, February 17, 2020.)

  CHAPTER 1

  The East San Francisco Bay Area, California, 2008

  The email came late one night as Jerry Gold lay at home in his bed. He rubbed liniment on his right knee before applying an ice pack and, a little apprehensively, asked himself if he should consider giving up jogging at his age. Jerry didn’t make it a habit to look at his messages this late, but the pain kept him awake. When he reached for his cell, he noti
ced an unfamiliar name. Jerry almost deleted the message but, for some reason, opened it.

  Mr. Gold, my name is Dario Alvarez and I’m reaching out to you, wondering if you could be my relative. I was born in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1949 to my mother Soledad Figueroa. When she was close to her death, my mother confessed that I was not the son of the man I lived with and called my father, but of a foreigner she had known by the name of Milan Goldberg. If you have any information about Milan Goldberg, I would appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for your help.

  Jerry shot upright, his green eyes open wide. Are you kidding? Jerry thought. I don’t have time for this. He couldn’t figure out who this Dario was. Carefully, Jerry dragged his tall, slim frame out of bed, reached for his robe, and limped straight to the liquor cabinet.

  He sat on the couch in his condo living room, gulping Scotch, and speculated how this total stranger could have tracked him down. Who is he anyways? Dad never mentioned having another child. This is absolutely ludicrous. I’m certainly not going to deal with an unknown jerk.

  After finishing off his drink, he hobbled back to bed. The Advil he’d taken earlier combined with the liquor were making him drowsy and he didn’t want to risk falling with his injured knee.

  As Jerry lay in bed, he remembered how, at the end of his life, his father began to talk more about his time in Bolivia. Jerry tried to remember what his father had said about his time as a refugee, when he had been known as “Milan,” but Jerry hadn’t paid much attention. At the time, he thought it was best the old man dream about his romantic entanglements rather than what he would have faced had he remained in his homeland in Eastern Europe. Jerry’s father had rambled on about his relationships with Latin women in Bolivia, extolling the virtues of one in particular named Soledad. He said he’d had a serious relationship with this Soledad, who lived in a sheltered environment and had to lie every time she sneaked out of the house.

  But had his dad fathered a child? This went ’round and ’round in Jerry’s mind. Would communication with Dario expose a family secret? He wondered if he should ask Dario for more information before committing to becoming involved. Young adult relationships came and went, and sometimes tough choices had to be made, but Jerry hadn’t really believed his father was in an intimate relationship with Soledad. Not in Jerry’s wildest dreams had he thought the relationship his father had described—sometimes in the most suggestive ways—had, in fact, taken place. Jerry had always thought they’d just been a figment of the old man’s vivid imagination.

  “Were you in touch after you left?” Jerry had asked at his father’s side in the hospital, a few weeks before the old man’s death.

  “Some Christmas cards,” his father responded, sheepishly.

  “Did you hear back?”

  As Jerry stared at him in the dim light of the room, his father shook his head and didn’t elaborate, instead falling asleep.

  After a week of resting his leg and pondering the email, Jerry gave his jogging partner, Ron, a call. He was missing his regular runs and his stress level told him it was time for a workout. Jerry reluctantly said he would have to reduce his mileage, and Ron reassured him he wouldn’t mind shorter runs. They met the following day at the Lake Chabot trailhead.

  “Something odd happened last week, and I was hoping you’d hear me out,” Jerry confessed as they started their run down a paved, open road. It was a warm day, and the forest cover would keep them cool, so they quickly found a softer path leading into the woods. There was nobody in sight when Jerry began to tell Ron about the stranger’s email.

  “It came as a shock,” Jerry said.

  “Jesus Christ, you better watch out; the world’s full of crooks.”

  “I’ve dismissed it, but it still bothers me,” Jerry said. “What if he’s telling the truth?”

  “Or maybe he’s a con artist looking for a sucker.”

  “The email made me think about my dad and the way we lost so many family members during the Holocaust. What if I’ve found a new relative? It’s so unexpected.”

  “Think about his motive for contacting you. You might regret opening that can of worms.”

  “I wonder how this man knew to contact me. You know, my dad liked to give advice and often said you should always watch out for people trying to pull a fast one.”

  “There you go.”

  Jerry needed to stop for a rest when they reached a eucalyptus patch at the top of a gradual hill.

  “Is it hurting?” Ron asked.

  “A bit. The thing is, my dad was a product of terrible times, and he learned to distrust people’s motives early in life. I didn’t like this part of him and struggled to be more open-minded. I don’t want to think that strangers should always be suspect.”

  “Is there anyone in your family who might know how this played out?” Ron asked.

  “Everyone in my dad’s generation is dead and, as far as I know, he didn’t maintain friendships with anyone in Bolivia.”

  They walked back towards the parking lot in silence. By the time Jerry got in his car, he felt as confused as he had before.

  As Jerry went about his work building a set for an art installation in the following days, he thought about the strenuous efforts his father had made to save himself from the dangers of the Second World War brewing before his eyes in his native Czechoslovakia. He’d ended up in a Latin American country by sheer luck. Now Jerry wondered if he had abandoned a pregnant girl or if she had gone through the pregnancy without his knowing. By the end of the week, Jerry started to feel a growing urgency to find out who Dario was and if they were, in fact, half-brothers. No person’s history was certain, and Jerry couldn’t jump to any conclusions about Dario or his dad.

  One evening after dinner, he put his dishes in the sink and went to his desktop computer. Enough worrying. He clicked on his inbox and found Dario’s email. Taking a few deep breaths, Jerry felt his mind settle into the beginnings of empathy for the man.

  Perhaps Dario’s story was true. Maybe he just wanted to create a family tree and was looking for lost relatives. It might be somewhat risky to respond, but Jerry’s father had died many years before and wouldn’t be harmed, and he would be cautious. He’d say just enough to put the stranger at ease and encourage him to reveal the reason for his search.

  Hello, Dario.

  My father was a Czech immigrant named Goldberg, who did spend a few years in Bolivia before moving north. He changed his name to “Miles Gold” before I was born, and he may be the man you are looking for. Unfortunately, I know very little about my father’s earlier private life. Before communicating further, I would like to know more about you and why you have contacted me.

  A few days later the stranger wrote back, saying his mother had saved twenty-five Christmas cards Milan had sent over the years, which was how he’d been able to find Jerry through the internet. His mother and Milan had remained friends, and she cherished his cards until she’d passed.

  After reading that first part of Dario’s email, Jerry stared off into space, then leaped to his feet to pace around his mid-century modern living room.

  I can’t believe it! Jerry thought. My father wrote to Soledad after I was born! Did she know what was going on with him? He was living a double life that included another son. What else was he hiding from me and my mom? Did he leave Bolivia to run from his pregnant girlfriend?

  Struggling to get his emotions under control, Jerry returned to his desktop to read the rest of the email. Dario had spent his early years in La Paz until his family moved to the United States, settling in Maryland. Dario was married, had two adult children, and his oldest was pregnant with her first child. His daughter and her husband were worried about their unborn child’s health, and their obstetrician was considering ordering genetic tests to see if the baby carried certain genes that could manifest as a congenital disorder. As Dario’s wife suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, and his daughter was married to a Jewish man, there was a high probability that the newborn might
inherit the disease. If Dario could find out whether he and Jerry were related, this would help the couple decide whether to undergo an amniocentesis procedure in a few weeks. Amniocenteses were risky, and in light of Soledad’s confession about Dario’s biological father, the doctor wanted to gather health details from up to third-degree relatives before going ahead with the test.

  Jerry Googled “retinitis pigmentosa” and found that it was a rare condition that, over time, would lead to progressive loss of vision. It was most prevalent among Ashkenazi Jewish people. Now it made sense why Dario had reached out to him to ask about his family history. They had to prove there was a genetic match to ensure that they were actually related.

  As the days passed, Jerry tried to recall the stories he was told in his childhood. His dad had talked about an aunt who’d lived with them in Prague and suffered from loss of peripheral vision, eventually becoming blind. His father had said that he saw little of her, as she mostly stayed in her room and didn’t interact with the children when he was growing up. This was an unmarried aunt who, as his father learned, had been transported to the Terezin deportation camp, before ultimately being murdered at a different death camp.

  Jerry emailed Dario to share the few recollections about his father’s family and the little he knew about his aunt. Dario responded with much appreciation and said he was grateful that Jerry was willing to cooperate during this challenging time for his family. He would share Jerry’s information with the obstetrician and would be in touch if they needed to delve deeper.

  In the next email, Dario told Jerry that he would be getting a call from Dario’s primary care provider about giving a blood sample for genetic testing. Jerry wrote back that the test needed to be done immediately, because he would be traveling to Latin America for work in a few weeks’ time. That same afternoon, Jerry received a call to arrange a lab appointment, and soon they would know the truth.