by Bari Wood
He came out of the phone booth and through the trees he saw a little yellow house that looked like it had been there since the Saw Mill was a coach road. On impulse he walked toward it. Behind him cars went by, the pump rang, gas fumes collected under the trees. But ahead the little house looked peaceful. The undergrowth scratched his shoes and caught at his trousers. The house was empty but there was still a semblance of a garden. Crocuses were up, and he thought he recognized lilac and azalea, not yet in bloom. The house was small but well built. He walked across the lot, which was just starting to go wild, and into the trees on the other side. The woods were dense. The highway noise receded and he could hear birds and smell wild onions. There was a ridge ahead and he thought that over it he would see a valley divided into ploughed squares of cold dirt, and out over the valley, to the west, the river.
But he came out of the trees and faced a Cyclone fence that stretched as far as he could see. There was no open valley, no ploughed earth, only hundreds of small houses painted yellow, green, and pink. Asphalt shingled roofs spread solidly to the top of an enormous factory-office complex in the distance. He knew that if he went down there he would find new cement walks and squared off streets with fresh signs that read Enterprise Avenue, Industry Row. There would be baby birches that grew fast—and died fast—and creeping juniper planted in gravel. He wondered what they’d torn down and dug up to make this ugly, dismal place. He could almost hear Pinchik, drunk and declaiming at Vinnie’s. “It’s over,” Pinchik cried, “the Nazis weren’t Martians, they were Europeans. Christians out of Jews. Us. Western man is dead . . .”
Hawkins went back to the parkway. He didn’t try Garfield again, he called Pinchik instead.
“Yeah . . .” Pinchik answered.
“Hello, Eli. It’s Roger.”
“Roger fucking Hawkins! Where have you been?”
“Queens,” Roger answered.
“You poor bastard. Why call now? . . . it’s not Hanukkah or Christmas or Rosh Hashanah.” He stopped. “It’s Passover,” he cried. “You’re calling to wish me gut yontif for Passover!”
“Fuck you, Eli.” Hawkins laughed wildly because they would have had the same conversation if he’d talked to Pinchik every week. “I’m calling because I’m in Riverdale.”
“Rose . . .” Pinchik screamed, “Rose! We got extra kugel?”
“Noodle kugel?” Hawkins asked.
“Potato kugel,” Pinchik answered.
“I hate potato kugel,” Hawkins said.
“So do I,” Pinchik said. “You can have my portion.”
Cabala, Kabbalah, Qabalah, the words blurred as Hawkins and Pinchik had another vodka. “They can’t even agree on the spellings,” Hawkins said.
They pushed away the half-eaten kugel while Hawkins looked in the books. Pinchik drank and waited. Rose and the kids were in another room. Hawkins heard game-show-type yelling and looked up.
“Hollywood Squares,” Pinchik said.
Cabalism is of interest only to Jews, Hawkins read. It can have no relevance for Gentiles. Then it gave a short definition.
Cabala, it said, is a system of Jewish theosophy, mysticism, thaumaturgy, marked by belief in creation through emanation . . .
Emanation. Hawkins thought of comic-book rays of light and advertising-art sunrises.
The definition went on: . . . and a cipher interpretation of scripture.
Cipher as in number. So they believed God was a ray and the Bible was numbers? He asked Pinchik if that could be true, but Pinchik didn’t know either and he was getting drunk. Hawkins went back to the books, but none helped. He did find out that there were two kinds of Cabala: Iyunit, which was theoretical Cabala—the respectable kind; and Ma’asit, which was practical, and not so respectable because it was the practice of magic.
Magic. The word he’d been waiting to see, but as soon as they used the word, they disclaimed it. Cabala was esoteric, but not magic, not practical. But he saw a diagram of a tree, with circles at the ends of the branches to correspond to sections of a man’s body; the circles had names in Hebrew and the tree looked magical, no matter what they said. There were chapters on demons and angels; he remembered the word dybbuk from a play by Paddy Chayefsky; and the word golem because Ableson called Matt Breslow, who was big, slow, and stupid, the golem.
He read on and on. In the end the men who wrote about Cabala sounded as confused as he was. He closed the books, drank down the last of the vodka.
“Nu?” Pinchik said.
Hawkins shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You won’t tell me what this is all about?”
“I don’t know for sure. . . .” They didn’t say anything for a moment, and then Hawkins asked, “What do you think of Jacob?”
“That’s a hell of a question.”
“Answer it anyway.”
Pinchik said, “He’s a good man. Very good. But you can’t forget, Roger, he was in the camp.”
“How does that change things?”
Pinchik thought. He drank some more and poured some for Hawkins. He picked at the remains of the kugel, deep in thought. Then he said slowly, “Roger, did anyone ever call you a nigger?”
“Of course.”
“How’d you feel?”
“Like killing.”
“No. That’s how you felt about the guy who said it. How’d you feel in yourself.”
After a moment, Hawkins said, “Like a nigger.”
Pinchik nodded as if he had expected that answer. “The power of the name, right?” He pulled the biggest of the books to him and found the page he was looking for.
“This much I remember from Cabala.” He read from the book: “The power of the name is almost limitless. Spirits guarded their names and when Jacob asked the angel he’d wrestled for his name, the angel kept it secret for fear that the name would give Jacob power over the angel. In other words, Rog, when the man calls you a nigger, he makes you a nigger for an instant. The name has power. So much, that for that same instant, you are what he called you, even to yourself. Now imagine what names the Jews in Europe were called. Kikes, yids, whatever. But worse, Roger, much worse, they were called animals, bestial, inferior, vile. And not just called, but locked up, starved, beaten, killed . . .” He closed the book. “Remember the instant when Mr. Whoever calls you nigger; stretch it out from 1939 to 1945; add prison to it, and slaughter. Not execution, Roger, slaughter, like we slaughter animals, so it is quick, neat, cheap, and won’t damage what we want of the animal. In this case, the gold teeth, hair, odd jewels. Imagine it. . . .
“We have this bubbemysah**** that suffering ennobles. It doesn’t. It coarsens, brutalizes. Ask a doctor who treats patients in pain. . . .”
Hawkins was quiet, and Pinchik said with inexpressible sadness, “I think Jacob Levy was a good man for a long time. But if you are a nigger in your own mind, even for a second, because of a name, what do you suppose Jacob is in his?”
Hawkins drove downtown. He meant to go home, or to Brooklyn to Alma for comfort. He didn’t have to decide which until he got to Fifty-ninth Street. The westside drive was backed up and he knew the Cross Bronx would be, too, but Riverside was good into the Eighties. Then it blocked up, too, and he cut over to Broadway. At Eighty-seventh he missed the light and he jiggled in his seat, trying not to think of anything. He looked out of the window and saw a jewelry store on the corner. The window was lit up and he saw gold Mogen Davids on chains and mazuzahs like Peg wore around her neck.
He knew the Ten Commandments were inside the gold cylinder, but he didn’t know why people wore it. Maybe for protection, and in spite of what he’d said to Ryder, and what he’d always believed, it suddenly didn’t seem so silly.
He pulled over, parked in front of the store, and went in. The man behind the counter was old; he didn’t have a beard, but he wore a yarmulke. When he saw Haw
kins, his old pale skin whitened even more. Hawkins was big and black; he looked wild, and the old man had been held up twice in the past three years. He normally kept the door locked, but he was old and he’d forgotten to lock it after the last customer. He fought his fear and tried to resign himself. He waited while Hawkins looked into the floor case and into the glass cases on the wall. Then he pointed to a small gold mazuzah hanging from a thin chain. The old man was too frightened or he’d have asked Hawkins what he could possibly want with a mazuzah.
“How much is this one?” Hawkins asked, and the old man went through the motions. He took out his black velvet cushion and displayed the mazuzah on it. It was marked eighty, the old man calculated as if they were really going to have a sale here.
“You can have it for sixty,” he said.
“With the chain?” Hawkins asked.
The old man considered. “That’s a good price.”
“I know . . .”
“You’ll pay the tax?”
Hawkins nodded and they made the deal. Now the old man hummed, the color came back into his face; he put the mazuzah in a velvet box and they said good-bye. It was seven o’clock; with good steady driving, and no traffic jams, Hawkins thought he could be in Laurel by nine.
Jacob talked, made jokes, played with Leah, but Rachel stood at the sink with her back to him. No matter how hard he tried to engage her, she’d gone to Willa’s funeral today and she couldn’t look at him. He stopped talking and she concentrated on rinsing dishes for the washer. Levy’s chair scraped and she heard him cross the kitchen to the back door. The door closed, and she saw him walking across the yard toward the woods. It was chilly out, he was in his shirt-sleeves, and she had to stop herself from calling him to come back for his jacket. He turned and looked back at the house. The sun was still setting; his figure cast a long shadow on the grass, and she thought of the shadow on the wall in Prague, of ugly cobbled streets and frightened people behind blank windows.
The wind went inside Levy’s clothes, his skin pimpled, but he stood still and watched his daughter-in-law through the window.
He wanted to help with the dishes, to pour a cup of coffee for her and a glass for himself. He wanted to sit alone in the warm, clean kitchen while she put Leah to bed. After that, they’d take brandy to the den and make plans for the spring inventory. Should they put in another rack of paperbacks, or add candy? Or both? “Paperbacks,” he whispered, “I vote for paperbacks, Rachel.”
His arms hung at his sides and he talked to the woman across the yard on the other side of the window in a normal tone of voice. “We left Belzec in April, Rachel. Me and Abe, Isaac and Moshe, Hirshel, Victor . . .” They left the backs of the trucks open so we had air and could smell the pines. They drove us across that compound and through the gates for the first time in four years.” Rachel emptied the leftover stew into a glass container and put the container in the refrigerator. She turned on the dishwasher and the sound of its motor came through the window into the yard.
He said, “Don’t shut me out, Rachel. From Poland to Cyprus to Palestine to here, I looked through the windows of kitchens I couldn’t go into. Through the barbed wire on Cyprus, I watched the commander’s servants cook and wash dishes. In Palestine I watched Arab women cook for their families by oil light. The night I landed here, and Isaac came to get me in Walinsky’s car, and we all cried, then laughed because Isaac was such a bad driver, all the way across the Island, past the exploding cemetery, the bread factories, the tool works, and into a section of houses covered with green shingles, I saw lit kitchen windows, and women behind them. . . .”
The coffee was done. Rachel took out a cup for her, a glass for him.
“Isaac says we’re heroes; that’s drek, but they killed my son and Isaac’s grandson. Who would be next? You, me, Leah? There were three thousand of us in Dabrowa, then thirty-five, now eight. Eight! Add the children, there’s twenty-one, add the grandchildren, there’s thirty-three. Thirty-three, Rachel . . . out of three thousand. Okay, I’m corrupt, unworthy, tainted, whatever you think, but what would you have done?”
When he came back inside, Rachel saw him shiver and asked him if he was all right. He nodded wearily, went into the den, and lay down on the couch. He fell asleep and didn’t hear the phone ring. It was Hawkins. He was at the bar on Main Street and he wanted to see her.
Leah was asleep upstairs, Jacob was asleep downstairs. She put on her coat, left the porch light on, and walked toward town. The grass, trees, road were cold green, hedges rustled, and she walked faster. There were six or seven cars parked at the meters at the end of Main Street and she couldn’t remember what kind of car Hawkins had, what color, anything. But Hawkins saw her coming, and he got out of his car, a Pontiac, and waited for her. When she got to him, he took a small velvet box out of his pocket, not a ring box, and handed it to her.
“I got this for you,” he said.
She opened it, and took out the gold mazuzah.
“Put it on me,” she said. His hands were big and she thought he wouldn’t be able to manage the little clasp. But he got it open and she turned her back so he could put it around her neck. He fastened it and she slipped it into the neck of her sweater. His hands rested on her shoulders, then without planning it, almost without thinking, he slid them down the front of her jacket to her breasts. She didn’t move and he put his hand under her sweater and kissed her hair and the back of her neck. She reached behind her to touch him, but he had a wild image of people spilling out of the little bar, climbing out of cars up and down the street and seeing him reaching under her sweater and her reaching into his open fly, and he caught her hand and laughed.
Her nipples were hard under her sweater and he ached to rub them.
“Get in the car,” he said. “Please, get in the car.”
They drove east on 25A, through towns she’d never been in. At Wading River, he turned into a smaller road that was rutted and twisting. They were close to the water; in the distance she saw a section of the unfinished expressway. They passed that, and were in the country; trees bent over the road, the road surface got worse, the turns sharper. Stone walls ran along the road, interrupted by closed estate gates. She didn’t ask where they were going; she didn’t think he knew either. The moon showed through, and the air coming through the open window was warmer. They must be right at the edge of the Sound, on the rim of the North Shore. She saw more estate gates, and he slowed down.
“Most of the houses are probably empty now,” he said. “No one’ll see us.”
The first open gate had a stone cottage next to it, with lights on, and they kept going. But the next one was rusted and half off its hinges. He pulled in and she got out and pushed the gate all the way open. They drove up a long gravel track under a canopy of elms that were still alive.
The gravel on the drive was washed out in places; stalks of weeds and dead grass came up through the dirt. There was a big stone terrace ahead, wrought-iron lawn furniture rusted on it, and grass grew between the flagstones. The drive curved, their headlights shone on empty casement windows and on a garden full of weeds and vines. He stopped the car and turned off the lights.
He kissed her and she pulled up her sweater and unhooked her brassiere. His lips rubbed against her nipples; he was sweating and his hands got slick and slippery. He felt wild and he thought he’d bite her, so he made himself sit back away from her and lean against the car door, trying to catch his breath. She reached out for him, chest level, and felt the gun and holster.
“Please take that off.”
He unsnapped it and put the whole thing on the dashboard. Women were supposed to love guns, he thought. Alma did. She said it made her hot. But Rachel didn’t look at it.
She moved her hand down his chest and belly and between his legs. He pushed against her palm, then got scared that he’d come in his pants like a kid, and he stopped moving and held her h
and still.
“We gotta git in back,” he said. His voice was low and hoarse and he was talking black for the first time in years. “Front’s too small . . .”
The back was, too. He couldn’t get on top of her, so she straddled him. The air was quiet, there were no night noises, and a fog was coming in off the Sound. He eased her down on him as slowly as he could and tried to make it last and couldn’t. But he wouldn’t let her go, and after a minute he moved again, very, very slowly, and she moved with him. He thought of Adam and he wished he could be both of them at once. Afterwards, she tried to get up, and he wanted to keep holding her, but he felt her legs trembling with strain, and he let her go.
The fog covered the car, and he could barely see the overgrown garden through it. The edges of everything glowed and looked magical. She crouched next to him on the floor with her skirt bunched up around her waist, and looking at her like that excited him again. He rubbed her belly.
“I love you,” he whispered. His back ached, his legs were stiff, but he didn’t want to move.
“I love you, Rachel.” He remembered the other Rachel from the Bible his grandmother had told him about, and as he caressed Rachel’s bare skin, slipped his hand lower on her belly, and slid his finger into her, he whispered the story to her. His fingers slid and circled as he talked, her body moved with his hand.
“Rachel was Laban’s daughter,” he whispered, “and Jacob called Israel saw her at a well and fell in love with her. Like I did with you. He asked to marry her and her father said he could, but he had to work for him for seven years first. Jacob did it, I would too. But Laban tricked poor Jacob and sent his older daughter to him on the wedding night. He didn’t know till morning and then it was too late; poor Jacob. But he didn’t give up, Rachel; I won’t either. He worked another seven years, and then at last, the ol’ man kept his bargain, and Israel got his Rachel. . . .”
