Their First Night as Anna and Julius

A wedding night in 1920, aboard a night train to Trieste

In a photograph that does not exist, taken after the wedding ceremony on Schopenauer Strasse, Julius and Anna are in a private compartment aboard the night train to Trieste. From there they will travel onward to Cesenatico, an Italian resort town just south of Venice. In the morning they might catch a glimpse of the mountains he loves to climb. Julius tells her that there are coffee houses just like those in Vienna where the Triestini will speak some German.

It was a hot day in Vienna and the evening is still warm. Julius pushes open the window in their compartment to let in the evening air. He takes off his jacket and places it in the luggage rack and unbuttons his shirt. She wishes she could unbutton her dress with the same casual air. He sits down beside her and looks at her with a playful reverence she cannot quite read. Then he reaches for her, crushing the material of her pale blue dress bought for this trip at a shop on Kärtnerstrasse. A nipped waist, belted, with one of the new crinoline skirts.

Everything is new. Anna doesn’t work with Frieda anymore. Soon she will be the mistress of Weimarerstrasse 22, Apartment Number 5. So spacious, with three bedrooms she hopes to fill with children.

“Du bist so schön in blau,”Julius murmurs, six words that vibrate like notes hammered on a piano. You are so beautiful in blue. He presses into the curve of her neck and kisses her cheeks and mouth as he unbuttons the front of her dress. He tastes of the wine they shared in the dining compartment and of the cigarette he enjoyed after the meal. Just one cigarette in the morning and evening, he told her. And she was relieved to know that their future home would not smell of smoke. They kiss until her lips begin to sizzle. She feels his tongue meet hers and dance inside.

Down below, somewhere inside she feels warmth and liquid flowing. She has felt this before, with her poet. He stops his kissing and his hands slide down her legs to her feet. He unbuckles her new shoes one at a time and reaches under the billow of her dress, slowly sliding his hands along her stockings, silk, also new.

“Will you let down your hair?” he asks.

Anna reaches behind to remove the comb securing her curls. His hands have touched other women. Frieda said it must be so and now she is sure. His hands are unhurried, not grasping, as her poet’s were in their stolen hour. The hairs of his mustache tingle her neck and her ears, and then her nipples. “Rest,” he tells her. “All is well. Anna, I am your Julius. I am so glad we have married.”

She wants to rest. Until she remembers all the layers she is still wearing, a silk and cotton fortress of underclothing. A chemise, one of the new long corsets from France to which her stocking are clipped, and a silk slip over everything. Her mother had explained everything to her at home, how to make herself properly ready for her wedding night in the bathroom, not knowing anything about the rushed hour with her poet. He had torn her slip that day.

In her peripheral vision, she can see her suitcases on the floor, and they are shivering from the movement of the train. Inside are the carefully packed garments she needs. A cream-colored nightdress and dressing gown, also new. Even a lacy boudoir cap, a gift from Frieda, though something tells her she won’t be wearing that tonight or maybe ever. Julius is still kissing her. She wonders if he will be able to tell that this isn’t her first time.

He lifts up her dress and she helps him by pulling it over her head. Then the skirt. Then her slip. He unclips her stockings and draws them off her legs and feet with care, setting them aside. He unlaces her corset as expertly as the saleslady who helped fit her. The contraption opens and collapses behind her as she takes her first deep breath since morning. He slides it away and places it on her suitcase. Now she is nearly naked, covered only in her chemise — the last layer.

“Isn’t this beautiful,” he says, caressing the lace and embroidery.

“Thank you, Julius,” Anna says. “I did this myself.” It still feels strange to address him by his given name, but she has found her voice.

He unties the ribbon at the waist and the night air washes over her damp skin. Now she feels his mouth exploring the hills and valleys of her belly. He moves down to the ridges of her hips. He unbuttons the knickers of her chemise and she feels his hands over the skin of her legs and then his fingers part the curly tangle.

“These hairs remind me of the fluffy seed heads of the Pasque flower. I’ve seen them in my walks in the mountains.” His pointer and middle fingers tickle through the Pasque flowers and her belly heaves with laughter.

“It’s important not to crush the flowers when you walk on the trail,” he says. “You must step with light feet so that the blooms remain whole and then make their seeds. If not, there will be no flowers to greet you when you visit the next year.”

“Will we go to the mountains?”

“Oh, yes, my love, if not this trip then very soon. I do believe you will love it.”

“Yes, I think I will.”

His fingers tiptoe between the folds of skin where she bleeds each month. He finds the knopfel, the knotty button she’s discovered on her own, plush and damp, and swirls his thumb over it slowly without stopping. Her ears tingle.

“And this,” he says, as he slips one of his walking fingers just barely inside her knish. “This is like the blue trumpet gentian. And I am like the bee seeking a drink.”

She laughs again, encouraged by his playfulness. She looks down at his face and he looks like a boy, almost giddy, as if this is just a game of pretend among children. She is not afraid of whatever will happen next. His finger moves in and out and his thumb circles over the button around and around without stopping. He is not in a rush.

She closes her eyes and drifts in and out and many minutes pass this way until she feels like she has been caught up in a wind that carries her forward towards an unseen destination, the feeling she has touching herself in bed in the dark. He seems to understand this, that he has caught her. She feels his tickling mustache and mouth on her belly and then it meanders down and his tongue swirls over the button and around the lips of her knish. He begins licking her with the same gestures of his fingers, just a bit faster now and she can feel the pebbly surface of his tongue.

Her button is its own living thing pulsing each time his tongue swirls around and dips inside her, where some part of her is gripping and pulsing, just on the edge of pain as he licks her and licks her until a flush burns her cheeks and parts her lips and forces out pants of air and then she sings a high melody above the percussive beats of the train on the rails as an inner spasm grips and surprises her. When she opens her eyes her vision is altered with blind spots pulsing in a sparkling mosaic. This too is new.

Julius sighs. “You are the blue gentian.” He lies beside her on the narrow bed and she rests in his arms, her breasts vibrating gently to the rhythm of the train. Does he not want more from her, as her poet did? But he seems content to rest. “Julius,” she asks, “do you not want more?”

“No, not now,” Julius says. “We will wait for the hotel to fully undress for each other. My doctor has asked me to wait and so I will. I prefer to wait. Do not worry, all is well. I am a patient man and I have learned to enjoy waiting.”

He kisses her and she welcomes his mouth, which tastes faintly of something like salty-sweet pickles. She wonders how the sea waves will feel against her skin and if those waves will taste as briny as her husband’s lips do now. The chattering of the wheels lulls them both towards sleep. Julius snores lightly, but when she nudges him, he rolls to his side and his breathing hushes. He wraps one arm around her and now the compartment feels gemütlich, cozy.

In the morning she sees her poet’s shimmering sea.

Excerpted from Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind by Julie Metz. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2021 by Julie Metz.

Julie Metz is the author of the newly released memoir Eva and Eve and the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. She has written on a wide range of women’s issues for publications including: The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Dame, sheknows.com, Salon, Slice, Redbook, Glamour, Next Tribe, MrBellersneighborhood.com, and Coastal Living. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies The Moment, edited by Larry Smith, creator of “Six-Word Memoirs,” and The House That Made Me, edited by Grant Jarrett.