Wedding Bells… Not! - Part I
I married well known Czech photographer, Werner Forman, on a dark rainy day at a registry office in London, largely because my mother, who had a crush on him, insisted. Her feelings for Werner, her desire to keep him in the family, were what led to his proposal of marriage and everything that followed.
THIS IS PART 1 of a NINE-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
Werner’s book cover
I married well known Czech photographer, Werner Forman, on a dark rainy day at a registry office in London, largely because my mother, who had a crush on him, insisted. In fact, those were the words he used: “Your mother (pronounced mozair) thinks we should marry.” We were in New York City at the time he asked. We had just been through an upheaval -- the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia, Werner had managed to get out and was now a British resident alien, traveling on a stateless passport. When, pushed by circumstances, I told my parents about our secret love affair, they insisted we both come straight to New York. In a sense, we put the cart before the horse because what ensued months before that dark wedding day in the registry office was, with my parents’ encouragement, a honeymoon-type trip through the south Pacific with Werner who was doing a book on the explorer, Captain James Cook.
In New York, when my parents first met the now stateless Werner, it was instant love and appreciation. Why not? They were all from the same region and culture. My father was born in Hamburg, Germany, but his family was originally Czech, and my mother, daughter of an opera singer, was also from Hamburg, which meant all three were German speakers, had grown up with the same art, books, music... in the same era of growing fear and repression leading into Nazi times. So they all immediately bonded. I was the odd man out, the “adolescent” who knew nothing. This made for a very weird situation. My mother, at sixty, was only twelve years older than Werner (I was a vast twenty-six years younger). The girlfriend Werner had before me, a woman named Trude to whom he was still very attached, was fourteen years older than he was. My mother, who’d already had at least one facelift, was drop dead gorgeous -- tall, dark-haired, slender, with the high-cheekbones and thin eyebrows of Greta Garbo (the resemblance was so striking that people used to chase my mother through the streets of Paris, demanding autographs).
Franyo (left) & Greta Garbo
It had been planned that Werner would stay in a hotel during his month in New York, but my mother, with her growing crush, insisted he stay at the house.
This meant he moved into my room on the third floor of our townhouse while I moved upstairs to share a room with my governess (yes, I still had a governess, Suzanne, now my mother’s chief confidante and companion). I’d start on the top floor and then sneak down to spend the rest of the night with Werner. In the meanwhile, my mother’s fondness for Werner grew by leaps and bounds. We could see this in the way she dressed, the way she did her hair and put on makeup, the soft flirtatious way she spoke to him. Neither my father or I said anything about it, but for sure her feelings for Werner, her desire to keep him in the family, were what led to his proposal of marriage and everything that followed.
Cover photo: S. Ruvalcaba