The Last of the Wise Lovers

by Amnon Jackont

  A car came from beyond the corner and crossed the intersection without stopping. It didn't drive down our street, but stopped at the corner and turned its lights off. I stood and watched. It was hard to make out the details from such a distance. The wind suddenly turned cold and a light rain began to fall. I shivered. The windshield wipers of the car moved once, as if to signal something. The engine came to life. The driver's door opened. In the dim light that came on inside the car I could see two heads touching, moving apart, and then coming together again. A woman got out and closed the door after her. The car took off immediately. The woman walked quickly on the cement sidewalk. The car passed her and its lights shone on her for an instant. The woman blew a kiss off the tips of her fingers, then increased her pace, searching her purse for her keys as she walked.

  You've undoubtedly guessed who she was. I ran into a nearby yard and took the short cut home. When she came in I was already in bed, pretending to be asleep. But she didn't come in to check and didn't even go to her room; she stayed in the kitchen. After what seemed like an hour I snuck there. I found her sitting with her back to the door, shoes off, writing furtively in her yellow recipe notebook.

  *

  When I woke the next day, she was still asleep. I quickly got through the whole morning ritual, left the house quietly at 7:20, and strode briskly to the bus stop. My knees hurt, but it helped me work out the anger and concern that were pent up inside.

  It was business as usual at the library, except for the fact that Mr. K. didn't show up. In the afternoon someone said that he'd called in sick and Ms. Yardley hissed something under her breath. Nevertheless, I made a few trips to the corridor of the administrative wing, obsessed with a powerful and unexplained need to get the slide back. Once I cautiously jiggled the doorknob to his office. The door was locked.

  When I got back to my post, Ms. Yardley was there, too, poking around in the papers and registration forms. That woman - I'd forgotten her name just then - was standing opposite her. This time, instead of patched jeans she was wearing a khaki dress with a plunging neckline. Her hair was gathered in a honey-colored ponytail. She looked much younger and so different that for a moment I was somewhat embarrassed.

  But she immediately broke the ice.

  "Hi," she said as if she were an old friend. "I probably caused you a lot of trouble."

  "... and where are her papers, if I may ask?" Ms. Yardley asked me sourly.

  "Underneath," I reached down to the shelf. She bent over and reached it before me. The bones of her spine stuck out ludicrously through the thin fabric of her shirt. The woman and I exchanged a bemused glance that Ms. Yardley caught the end of when she stood up.

  "Here you go, Ms. Doherty." She placed the list on the counter with a flourish that illustrated exactly what she thought of us. "The books will be brought to you in the other room, window number five."

  "Thank you." She took the list, nodded her head to me, and walked off with soft, self-contained steps. I stared after her until she disappeared, and I immediately paid the price.

  Ms. Yardley said, "If you would be so kind as to give some of your precious time to your work, Mr. Levin, there are a few things that need to be done...” and off she sent me to the storage room to send invitations to "Music at the Library - The Final Concert of the Summer". Around midday there was some heavy traffic in the Catalog Room, and Ms. Yardley sent for me. I passed through the Reading Room on my way. The woman was sunk deep in a pile of books, twirling her ponytail with her hand.

  At exactly 6:00 I took off for home, before any more punishments could be heaped on me. When I got there, I found Mom planting bulbs in the garden. She smiled at me. Once upon a time, Mom's smiles had been the greatest thing I'd known. Now, perhaps because of the events of the previous night, I was filled with the awful suspicion that all the days of my childhood, which had been filled with those smiles, were nothing more than a fraud.

  "Is everything all right?" I asked, surrendering my cheek to a kiss.

  "Why shouldn't it be all right?" she asked.

  And really, why shouldn't it be? There was a completely repaired car in the driveway, and a note on the kitchen table. I remember it in detail: "Debbie called looking for you. She said she called yesterday as well but there was no answer. She asked that you call." I reached out for the telephone, but then I discovered another note tacked to the bulletin board above it: "Atlantic Siren, Dock 2, 4th of September".

  I bent out the window to call Mom, but she was already on her way inside.

  "The riddle," she said as she came in. "I won the trip. This afternoon they called from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body...”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Her solution was wrong - I was certain of that - and the swiftness with which the notification had come made me suspicious. Just then the world seemed like the least consistent thing I knew. But I didn't have time to think about it. From outside came the sound of Dad's horn as he pulled his car into the driveway and up alongside Mom's car. He waved from the window. There was an old lady sitting next to him.

  Mom said, "Aunt Ida, that's all we need right now," and went outside.

  I opened the fridge. It was empty. I remember thinking: with all those recipes she's been writing down, a guy could expect to find something to eat around here.

  Then I went outside to greet Dad.

  All of a sudden I'm afraid I must be boring you with all these petty details. I wish I knew exactly what you wanted to know.

  tHE THIRD NOTEBOOK

  I wonder if you knew that the reason for Aunt Ida's visit had something to do with you - or, rather, something to do with the event that you'd planned at the temple which took place a few hours ago, and which I ruined. But wait - I promised to tell you everything, so I'll stick to the order in which things happened.

  Aunt Ida came into the house and said, "It was so nice of Jeremy (she can't pronounce Dad's name in Hebrew - Yermiahu) to bring me here so that I wouldn't have to spend the holidays all alone in Chicago. No one," (and here she meant none other than you) "bothered to invite me, even though there's been so little happiness in my life since Marvin died," and then it was all over, because the minute Aunt Ida runs into the word `Marvin', she starts to tell the story of her marriage from the very beginning, from their famous meeting in the Indianapolis Botanical Gardens, through the opening of their first photography studio, and the second, and the third, to their raising of Myrna, who, even though she is Dad's distant cousin, looks like his sister, and so on and on and on.

  In the meantime, out in the kitchen, Dad had managed to find a quarter of a fried chicken and an ancient container of potato salad.

  "I'm dying of hunger," he spluttered with his mouth full. "I drove from Chicago without stopping, except for once, at a gas station, when she had to take a leak...”

  Mom was boiling. "What am I supposed to do with her now?"

  Dad waved a chicken leg.

  "You could've asked me... "

  "I didn't think you'd mind. After all, she's my family."

  "You pander to her...”

  "I'm just trying to be nice...” he swallowed fast and managed to smile.

  But Mom could no longer stop herself. "... so that you can get in on Uncle Harry's business or get a piece of Aunt Ida's will, or maybe one of the studios in Chicago...”

  That's usually when I come in, just a second before they really start to fight.

  "Hey, son," Dad said happily and swung a fist playfully into my shoulder. "How's life?"

  "Ok," I said without thinking and went to pour myself a glass of water. Mom watched me, pale as a ghost. Suddenly, without understanding why, I realized that I knew the reason: she was afraid of me or, more precisely, afraid of something that she thought I might say or let slip. The thought that she could doubt my loyalty shook me. I was thinking how to hint to her not to worry, that I wouldn't talk, but before I could say anything she barked, "Don't leave Aunt Ida alone...”

  "She's all set,"
I said quickly, "telling the tale of Marvin...”

  Mom was already on the verge of exploding. "That'll be enough of your wisecracks, especially at the expense of a miserable old woman...”

  Meanwhile, Aunt Ida was busy rearranging the drawers in the living room.

  "I think," she said from inside a cabinet, "that there are some pictures here that Marvin took. It's not possible that there aren't any of his pictures here, right? They're just scattered, that's all, and I must collect them and organize them in albums, maybe make an exhibit, too...”

  Part of the contents of the drawers was already strewn all over the rug. I bent down and gathered everything as best I could.

  "One morning," she twittered faintly, "I discovered one of his pictures in the window of a shoe store. Just like that, lying there in the back, a little dog inside a big shoe. Marvin took it in 1938 for three dollars and forty cents. I even remember the night he printed and mounted it." For a moment her twittering sounded human, even invited sympathy. "At 10:00 when they opened the store, I talked to the owner. He didn't want to sell it. His father had passed the store on to him and the picture was like a good luck charm...”

  I finished stuffing everything back in the drawer and shut it. But it wouldn't close.

  "Finally," said Aunt Ida, "we agreed on a thousand. A thousand dollars for the photograph of a master is not much, especially if you consider what's written in the papers about the sums artists get at auction...”

  I pulled the drawer out. Something was stuck in the back and was preventing it from closing.

  "I went to the bank and told the manager. He'd known me for years, and he'd always advised me...” I stuck my hand in. It was Mom's yellow notebook, which had been hidden behind the top, locked drawer and had fallen down and gotten jammed along the back wall of the cabinet. I stole a sidelong glance at the old lady. She was standing in the middle of the room, telling some invisible point in mid-air how the manager had called the store owner and finally convinced him to sell her the picture for $100.

  I opened the cover of the notebook. From the curlicues of paper clinging to the spiral binding I could tell that quite a few pages had already been torn out. The top page was covered with the impressions left by a pen. The words and letters were clear enough, but I didn't have time to read them because Dad called from the kitchen.

  "Ronny.”

  I stuffed the notebook back into the cabinet and ran out to him. He was standing by the sink and pointing outside at the repaired, painted, and waxed car that was parked in the driveway.

  "What happened to the car?"

  "It was an accident...” I mumbled and looked at Mom, who was coming up from the garden.

  "Was it your fault?"

  Mom came in.

  "He's not to blame," she said from behind my back, and before I could start to explain, added, "Someone hit us in the parking lot of the deli."

  I looked at her in surprise. Dad caught something of this. He narrowed his eyes at her, then at me, then back at her.

  I felt terrible. The telephone saved me.

  Dad picked up the receiver, said, "One minute," and went off to whisper into the phone that was in the bedroom. Mom and I were left alone.

  "Thanks," I said softly, "but you didn't have to...” She didn't answer. I went to my room and lay down on the bed. The telephone intoned electronic beeps as Dad finished the conversation and immediately began to dial. I had an overwhelming urge to listen in. Too many things were happening around me that I didn't understand. It's amazing, but among all the desires I'd had until that day - to eat, to drink, to look good, to be successful and loved - I'd never before included this simple desire: to know.

  For a moment I toyed with the idea of carefully lifting up the receiver, but Dad is, as you know, a professional. That's why I tried something else, less risky. I disconnected the telephone, picked up the receiver, and pressed down on the cradle with my finger. Then I re-connected the telephone and lifted my finger at the same time.

  Dad was in the middle of a sentence about a flight to Los Angeles via Las Vegas. A female voice answered that there were only fifteen minutes between landing in Vegas and take-off for Los Angeles, and that if the plane were late Dad would be forced to wait two hours for the next plane.

  Dad thought for a moment and asked, "What choice do I have?"

  The woman suggested Phoenix. There was a three-hour wait there before take-off. `America West' would of course be glad to provide him with lunch, etc., etc.

  "No good," Dad said. "Haven't you got some combination with a twenty minute or half an hour wait in Vegas?"

  "You can fly from New York to Boston and from there take a flight to Las Vegas that will get you in half an hour before take-off for Los Angeles."

  "Good," Dad said gladly, reserved a place for someone named Jenkins, and put down the receiver. I pressed the cradle at the same time. A moment later, the telephone was again intoning electronic beeps. I waited, my finger on the cradle, wondering why this Jenkins - whoever he was - insisted on waiting no more than half an hour in Vegas. Maybe he was a heavy gambler who only needed half an hour to win a million; or else one of those guys who called at odd hours and asked - without superfluous niceties - to talk to Dad; or maybe he was one of those rich Jews that Dad went all over the continent to meet and try to convince to donate works of art, rare books, heirlooms, or just plain money to the State of Israel.

  Dad finished dialing. Ten numbers - that is, out of state. I lifted my finger.

  "Yes," someone answered on the first ring.

  Dad gave the details of the flight he had just reserved.

  "Ok," the man said, "what name?"

  "You'll know me."

  "What name?" the man asked again. "I don't intend to run around looking for you. I'll ask that they page you over the loudspeaker."

  "Jenkins," Dad said, and immediately hung up.

  The minute I pressed the cradle he began to dial again. The other side picked up after quite a while.

  "The Society for Cultural Exchange."

  "Mr. Shapira," Dad said to the secretary, and I couldn't decide whether Shapira was the name of the man Dad wanted to speak to or a new name he'd given himself, like Jenkins.

  There was a brief buzz and someone said, "Shapira."

  "It's set," Dad said.

  Shapira was silent a moment, then said, "Vegas?"

  "Vegas."

  "And the lucky number?"

  "Six thousand eight hundred twenty-seven."

  "Do you think...” Shapira paused, choosing his words carefully, "you'll succeed in getting to that number?"

  "I hope so. If not in one guess, then in two. No more."

  "Good luck," said Shapira, and hung up.

  Anyone who knows Dad knows he's never so much as bought a lottery ticket. What were they talking about? I didn't even have to think. I remembered only too well the bottom line on the slide: "Agitator; diagram 1,205 of 6,827."

  The knowledge that `agitator' was something connected to the secret side of Dad's work made me feel a bit relieved. At least here everything was as it should be. That's what Dad's life had been like for as long as I'd known him. In between the exhibition openings and receptions in honor of Israeli authors, the fund-raising concerts and film festivals, there had been a different life - one of whisperings over the telephone, trips, locked briefcases, and dozens of keys to mysterious locks.

  For the rest of the evening Dad tried to develop a conversation with me. He asked about the league results (he wasn't really interested so I just gave him a brief run-down, to fulfill my obligation) and about my getting ready for school, and told about a new film he had seen on a plane. Then he discovered the FMR that had come in the mail, lay down to read it, and fell asleep. Mom stayed in the kitchen and chopped vegetables. I made myself a cup of cocoa and sat down opposite her at the table.

  "Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked.

  "In a little while," I answered.

  She put the cut-up
vegetables in a bowl and went into the living room to make up the couch for Aunt Ida. I thought about the lie she'd told for me that night, about the car that had brought her the night before, and about what had happened in the Lincoln Tunnel. Was the threat that the man in the back seat had delivered related to how she spent her nights? From the bedroom came the sound of Dad snoring. If I had had any thoughts yesterday of sharing the problem with him, the solidarity that Mom had shown me this evening made it impossible.

  Were her intentions really only good? I had often seen her angry, sad, worried, tired, annoyed, "straightening corners", or smoothing things out to suit her needs, but I had never seen her lie, deny, stupefy, falsify, and pretend like I had these last few days. Somewhere in my brain there was a word to explain why she was behaving like this. I had to concentrate for a moment in order to dredge it up: haunted. She felt haunted.

  I rested my cup on the table by the color brochure from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body. The thought that the solution was apt to contain the sentence "fruit is sweet" was so contestable as to be insulting. Suddenly I had another idea: if what had happened in the Lincoln Tunnel wasn't an accident, and Mom really was being threatened by someone, what was the chance that her winning the cruise was no more than a plot, designed in advance - without any regard for the correctness of her answer - in order to harm her or get back at her when she'd be on the ship, far from help?

  I knew from experience not to pay attention to nocturnal musings, not to let them get the better of me. I remembered Mom's notebook. What could be more real than that? I walked through the living room, carefully avoiding Aunt Ida's white, spindly legs, which were sticking out off the end of the couch. The drawer barely opened. When I got hold of the notebook I tugged at it, slowly, so as not to make noise. Then I looked for a place to read.