Davita's Harp

by Chaim Potok

  Normal days of school followed, and dismal spring rain. That Saturday night my mother went out again to a neighborhood movie—this time with one of the men who came periodically to the meetings in our apartment. And a week later I lay again on the grass of Prospect Park and listened as my school happily celebrated Lag Ba’omer, the holiday that commemorates that day, about two thousand years ago during the Jewish revolution against Rome, when a raging plague that had been killing the students of a great sage had begun to ease. The sage, Rabbi Akiva, had been a leader of that revolution: a scholar like my mother and a fighter like my father.

  I lay beneath a tree in a beam of sunlight and listened to schoolmates playing on the grass. Some were off on the side with bows and arrows. Others were in running games and in a tug-of-war. Their noises drifted over me, dreamlike, gossamer, an illusion. The air was soft and warm. Far above us in the blue sky, so small it seemed a dark stiff-winged bird, an airplane flew slowly by, its engines droning lazily. I could feel the vibrations on my skin and in my ears. A voice called to me to join the game but I closed my eyes and lay very still in the beam of warm light. It seemed then that someone came and stood over me for a long moment, concealing the sun. Give us a hug, my love, I heard a voice say. A big hug. It has to last a long time. That’s right, my love. That’s a hug!

  I opened my eyes and sat up on the grass. Schoolmates played at their games and teachers stood about, watching. The lake glistened through the trees. A boy stood at the edge of the lake, tossing stones into the water. Someone called my name. I sat very still, watching the boy toss the stones at the lake. The stones struck the water with little splashes and disappeared into its depths. Again someone called my name. I rose and brushed grass from my skirt and joined my classmates in a game of tug-of-war.

  That summer we stayed in the city. My mother enrolled me in the city-sponsored day camp in Prospect Park. They didn’t want to take me back at first; there was a fuss, and my mother prevailed. I played with others on the grass and went boating in the lake. In the early weeks of the summer a counselor sat next to me in the boat. Then they let me sit with a camper. I trailed my hands in the wake of the boat and looked down into the water. Warm and darkly golden on the surface and then dark and cold and darker still. I remembered the farmhouse and the beach and the horses of the previous summer and wondered if it might not somehow all have been a dream. Where was Aunt Sarah?

  My mother was going out often with two or three of the men who came to the meetings in our apartment. Very early one Sunday morning Mr. Dinn pulled up in his black sedan and we drove out to Sea Gate and spent the day with him and David in the house next to the cottage where we had once lived in the summers. Another couple lived there now with many children. It felt a little strange, peering over at that cottage from the screened-in porch of the house where David now lived. From the porch I looked out across the dunes and saw my mother and Mr. Dinn walking together in bathing suits on the crowded beach. Mr. Dinn’s tall frame was bony and pale; my mother seemed so small beside him, her hair loose and long, her skin white. David asked me if I wanted to build a castle and I said no, I was not in a mood for castles. Nor did I want to swim. I walked with him down the beach and watched him in the water, swimming skillfully, his long tanned body flashing in the sunlight, and wondered who had taught him. “My father,” he said, shaking the water from his dark hair and drying himself with a towel. “It’s in the Gemora. A father is supposed to make sure his child learns how to swim.”

  In the third week of July my mother received a letter from Aunt Sarah inviting us to the farmhouse. She had returned from Spain and was remaining in America. She would be at the farmhouse all summer and would love us to join her there. But I didn’t want to go without my mother, and my mother couldn’t go because of her work. She wrote back, regretfully declining the invitation.

  In August, amidst the usual letters in our mailbox that were appeals for funds for labor defense committees, for refugees from Spain, for assistance to striking workers, was a letter from Jakob Daw. He was now in Marseilles. His health had improved somewhat in the warm air of the Mediterranean. He lived in a flat that looked out on the sea. He could dream of Dakar and Martinique as nearby places of refuge if Hitler ever came to France. Yes, he was still writing. A small collection of his stories would soon appear, translated into French. He was grateful to my mother for her work on the English edition of his stories. He had dreamed of that once: the two of them writing together. But in the dream he had neglected to specify that they not be separated by an ocean. Another of the many ironies of our century: it played with human dreams as a child played with sand. He lived now off the generosity of his publishers and friends. How much did one man need in order to live? And a sick man at that. If Hitler came to France he would leave Marseilles. He would need an exit visa, a transit visa, a final visa. That would require a bit of money. Did it sound insane, Hitler coming to France? As insane as had once been the possibility of Franco taking all of Spain. At any rate, he would be prepared. He would go to Martinique and Santo Domingo. That was the route. He had made the necessary inquiries. He would not be trapped again as he had once been trapped in Spain. How was Ilana Davita? “Tell her our bird still nests peacefully in our harp and listens with pleasure as she recites her Hebrew lessons. Who would ever have believed that the daughter of Michael and Channah Chandal would one day attend a yeshiva? Nothing I write can be as astonishing as life, which is indeed the strangest story of all. Jakob Daw.”

  At the end of August, Ruthie returned from the mountains with her parents, and in the first week of September we were back in school.

  My mother had begun to go out regularly with one of the two men who used to come to the apartment on Sunday afternoons for the study sessions on Karl Marx. He was a short thin man with sparse blond hair, angular features, and gray, unsmiling eyes. He wore tweed jackets and chain-smoked. His name was Charles Carter and he was an assistant professor of modern history at Brooklyn College. He had an intense air and a high voice. He talked a great deal and used words I could not understand, and once when I asked him to explain some words he grew annoyed and impatient, and I did not ask him again.

  My mother asked me one night if I liked him.

  “No,” I said.

  She looked hurt and upset. “Why?” “I don’t know.”

  “He’s a brilliant person, Ilana, and a loyal member of the party.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, in a quiet voice, “Do you think you might like him as your father?”

  I stared at her. A chill darkness moved through me.

  She said, after a long moment, “You have no idea what it’s like to be alone, Ilana.”

  Mr. Dinn came over one Saturday night that fall and took my mother to a theater in Manhattan. How dignified he looked in his dark coat and suit and hat. They returned home very late. The door harp woke me. I heard them go through the hallway to the kitchen. I fell back asleep and was awakened sometime later by their loud voices. They were in an argument and were making no effort to conceal their anger.

  “Think of what you’re doing, for God’s sake!” Mr. Dinn said. “Isn’t one mistake enough? Think!”

  “You have no right to meddle in my life, Ezra,” my mother said. “No right whatsoever.”

  “Then think of the child, Channah. What’s the matter with you? You’re a brilliant woman. You solve the whole world’s problems, but you can’t solve your own. You’re so filled with anger at your foolish father that you can’t see how you’re hurting yourself and the child.”

  “I don’t want to hear you talking that way, Ezra. I’m a grown woman. I’m not your little cousin from Europe. Don’t preach at me!”

  “You’ll take the child from here and move with her to Chicago? Where is your head, Channah? We don’t live forever. The mistakes we make now are harder and harder to clean up. Who will clean up this one in Chicago? You have no one in Chicago.”

  “Michael was not a mistake, Ezra. I
loved him. You know that. And Charles won’t be a mistake. Don’t treat me like a child. He’s a brilliant man. And he writes and—”

  “And you’ll help him with his books and his monographs. You’ll raise Ilana as a nice midwestern girl. You’ll organize for the party in Chicago. You’ll bear his children.”

  “I don’t want any more children.”

  “My God, Channah. What are you doing to yourself?”

  “I don’t want any more of this conversation.”

  “I will not stand by and let you—”

  “Ezra, stop. Please stop.”

  “Think of your mother. Think of your grandfather.” “Don’t do that to me, Ezra. You tried that once before. Don’t—do—that—to—me!” There was a long silence.

  “All right,” Mr. Dinn said in a drained voice. “All right. Good night, Channah.”

  I heard a chair scrape against the kitchen floor and his footsteps in the hallway. The door opened and closed and the harp sang.

  My mother remained in the kitchen, sobbing.

  I got out of bed and went through the dim hallway in my bare feet. My mother sat at the table, her head in her hands. I squinted in the light.

  “Mama?”

  She looked up, startled, and quickly wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands. Her face was puffy. Strands of wet hair lay upon her cheeks. Her lipstick was smeared.

  “Are we moving again, Mama?”

  She stared at me through the sheen in her eyes.

  “I don’t want to move again.”

  “Ilana—”

  “Can I live with the Helfmans if you move with that man to Chicago?”

  Her mouth fell open. I saw her face go white. “Go to sleep, Ilana.”

  “I don’t want to move to Chicago. I’m happy here. Why are we moving to Chicago when I’m finally happy?”

  “Ilana, I haven’t the strength to—”

  “Papa wouldn’t want you to move.”

  Her lips stiffened with sudden flashing anger.

  “I won’t go to Chicago with you and that man. I don’t like that man. I think he’s—”

  “Young lady, don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!” She raised her hand to strike me. I drew back. She had never raised her hand to me before. Her eyes had a dark, wild look. She stopped and lowered her hand and sat at the table, breathing heavily, staring.

  I went back along the hallway to my room. My feet were cold. I lay in my bed in the darkness, frightened by the hate I felt for my mother.

  I wrote to Jakob Daw in Marseilles and to Aunt Sarah at the farmhouse. I attended school. At the end of October I was asked to see the head of the Hebrew Department, an elderly man with gray hair and moist lips. He informed me that I was being moved up one grade in Hebrew. I saw David in the yard during the morning recess and told him. He let out a whoop of joy and encircled me with a crushing hug—from which he immediately retreated in red-faced embarrassment. Ruthie jumped up and down and squealed with delight. My mother nodded absently and said, “Very nice, Ilana.” She had other things on her mind.

  She was seeing Charles Carter very often now. He had accepted an associate professorship at the University of Chicago and would be leaving New York the following summer. He tried hard to become my friend by showing an interest in my Hebrew studies. He had no religion and was not Jewish. When he came into my room he smoked and often left ashes on my floor. As soon as he got to Chicago he would start his research for the new book he was planning on the rise of the labor movement in America.

  “Will you write about strikes?” I asked him one night.

  He stared at me. It seemed always to be difficult for him to reconcile my questions to my age. “Certainly,” he said. “You bet.”

  “Do you know how many different meanings there are for the word strike?”

  He squinted at me through the smoke of his cigarette and appeared not to know what to say.

  “You’re showing off, Ilana,” my mother said.

  “My father used to write about strikes. When I was a little girl he used to go away to strikes and write about them for his newspaper. Did you ever write about strikes for a newspaper?”

  “No,” he said, and exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke that rose slowly to the ceiling of the kitchen.

  “Were you in the war in Spain?”

  “No.”

  “Will you be going to Spain?”

  “No. I teach, you see.”

  “What do you teach?”

  “Modern history.”

  “About wars and things?”

  “Wars and things. You bet.”

  “My mother was in the big war. She was in a pogrom.”

  “Ilana.”

  “Are you going to marry my mother?”

  “Ilana!”

  “We’ve talked about it.”

  “You can marry my mother if you want, but I won’t go to Chicago!”

  “Ilana!”

  “I think I’ll go to bed now. I’m very tired. Good night. I hope you write a good book about strikes.”

  I left them in the kitchen and went to my room.

  Some days later my mother received a letter from Jakob Daw. It was in German and she would not translate it for me. She read it at the kitchen table, her face slowly stiffening. She looked at me. “You had no right,” she said angrily. “I have my own life to live.”

  “Can’t I write to Uncle Jakob?”

  “Write to him about the weather. Write to him about your school or his stories. Don’t write to him asking him to change my mind.”

  A letter arrived from Aunt Sarah addressed to me and my mother. She was working in a Boston hospital and living in Newton Centre. She wished my mother well. She planned to spend the last ten days of December at the farmhouse. If my mother and I could somehow manage to break away for a few days we would be welcome. The beach had a special loveliness to it in the winter. She understood that Chicago was a raw and bitterly cold city with little culture and a pervasive odor from the slaughterhouses. Still, she wished my mother all the luck. Was it at all possible that we could come up in December?

  “Whom else have you written?” my mother asked.

  “No one.”

  “You will not write anyone again about this.” I said nothing.

  “Do you hear me, young lady?” “Yes.”

  A letter arrived for me from Jakob Daw.

  “Dear Ilana. I understand. But you must understand that your mother is young and beautiful and deserves her own life. You will be a good girl and not cause her sorrow. She has had at least two lifetimes of sorrow already. She is the kindest and gentlest of little birds, the sort whose suffering is almost never noticed. We must care for her and be gentle with her. Write to me again. Uncle Jakob.”

  I was at my desk one night that November doing my Hebrew homework when the apartment door opened. I heard the harp and waited for my mother’s greeting. Always she called out, “I’m home!” Now, instead, she went with urgent steps through the hallway. The door to her room opened and quickly closed. The apartment was silent.

  I went from my room into the kitchen. The newspapers which my mother always brought home with her lay on the table. I looked at the headlines and read a few paragraphs about a vengeance shooting of a German embassy official in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Polish émigré Jew whose parents had been expelled by the Nazis from Germany back to Poland with nothing more than a few articles of clothing.

  I read some of the paragraphs again. Then I looked up. How silent the air had suddenly become, how hushed—as if all the world were holding its breath.

  I went from the kitchen and stood for a moment outside the door to my mother’s room. I heard nothing. I returned to the kitchen and read some more. I was slowly reading the piece in The New York Times when my mother came into the kitchen. She put on her apron and stood at the sink.

  “Will it hurt Uncle Jakob?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Her back was to me. “I don’t think so.”


  “The Jewish man shouldn’t have done that.”

  “He shouldn’t have, Ilana. You’re right. But sometimes if you hurt a person badly enough, you cause him to do crazy things. Are you done with your homework? Can you help set the table?”

  Three days later, as I walked past the candy store on my way to school, I saw on the front page of The New York Times, NAZIS SMASH, LOOT AND BURN JEWISH SHOPS AND TEMPLES UNTIL GOEBBELS CALLS HALT. A second headline on that page announced, ALL VIENNA’S SYNAGOGUES ATTACKED; FIRES AND BOMBS WRECK 18 OUT OF 21.

  My briefcase felt very heavy. I put it down and stood in the cold November air, reading.

  “BERLIN, Nov. 10.—A wave of destruction, looting and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years War and in Europe generally since the Bolshevist revolution, swept over Great Germany today as National Socialist cohorts took vengeance on Jewish shops for the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath, third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.”

  I read it again. I picked up my briefcase and walked quickly to school.

  David said to me during recess, “Did you see the papers? We have relatives in Germany.”

  “I’m frightened, David.”

  “Do you have relatives in Germany?”

  “No. Won’t it happen in America?”

  “What?”

  “All the breaking and the burning and the hurting of Jews.”

  “The government won’t let it happen here.”

  “But there are Fascists in America. They demonstrate in the streets of New York. I’m really scared, David.”

  My mother said to me that evening during supper, “The Nazis are barbarians and must be stopped. Do you understand now why I let your father go to Spain?”

  I did not respond.

  Faintly, through the walls, drifted the Shabbos songs of the Helfmans from the apartment below. Didn’t they know what was happening? Why were they singing? I wondered if the Jews in Germany and Vienna were singing Shabbos songs. Broken windows, plundered synagogues, burned Torah scrolls. Later in my room I looked out my window and imagined broken glass everywhere on our street and when I lay in bed I imagined broken glass all up and down Eastern Parkway and the windows of my school smashed and the synagogue thick with smoke and flames. Everywhere fire and glass; tiny glistening slivers along the sidewalks and in the branches of the trees and on the winter grass in Prospect Park and in the lake. I remembered a story I had read in a magazine one summer in the cottage at Sea Gate. POGROM IN SEPTEMBER! Someone had patented a special weapon called the Kike Killer. What had he said? “We’re not going to drive the Jews from this country. We’re going to bury ’em right here!” That was where I had first seen the word pogrom. But I had been too frightened then to ask my mother what it meant. Pogrom. I fell asleep and woke in the morning, tired and chilled with sweat. I pulled aside the curtains and raised the shade. Brilliant sunlight entered my room. I dressed quickly and walked along tranquil streets to the synagogue.