Seven Types of Ambiguity

by Elliot Perlman

  11. After all the reading and talking about saints and sainthood by my girlhood friends and me, we were all of the opinion, even before we’d left school, that it wasn’t worth it. We didn’t want to be saints, none of us. The effort required was too great and the pay-off, so far as we could see from the earthly vantage of a Catholic girls’ school, was too small.

  Each of us had our own particular saints to look into either because we were born on their day or for some other perhaps even more arbitrary reason. My father was a baker, so I looked up the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, one of the patron saints of bakers. Born to the king of Hungary in the first years of the thirteenth century, she was, at the age of four, promised to the eldest son of a duke. They were married when she was fourteen and he twenty-one. So far so good. She had known him throughout her premarital childhood and it is said she was very happy married to him. Elizabeth had three children. She devoted herself to prayer and charitable works, giving away much of her family’s wealth. She turned the basement of the family castle into a hospital and personally helped to nurse the sick. This was all very compelling and easily pictured by a young girl at school.

  I could imagine just how it all looked, the thirteenth-century Hungarian poor outside her castle every day waiting for her to provide food, money, even jobs. It was all going fairly well for her until she was twenty, when her husband died of plague on his way to join the Crusade to Jerusalem. This led me to look into the Crusades, only to discover that the “good guys” sometimes had a relationship to goodness that might most tactfully be described as ambiguous. I started asking questions about Muslims and Jews. The questions were answered but always as briefly as possible and never encouraged. I wondered if I would ever meet a Muslim or a Jew.

  When St. Elizabeth learned at the age of twenty that she was a widow, a month after she became one, she was said to have been utterly distraught. Her family expected her to remarry. They didn’t know that she and her husband had vowed that should one of them die before the other even while they were still young, the survivor would not remarry. It was a vow she intended to keep. Instead of remarrying, she moved to Marburg and, from her inheritance, established a hospice for the sick and needy. It was there that she came under the supervision of Konrad of Marburg, known for his scholarship, his asceticism, and, as an inquisitor, for his severity with heretics. Konrad imposed a rigid discipline on Elizabeth, which he enforced on occasion with “physical chastisement.” For all that, Konrad was said to have helped her with the distribution of her funds to the poor and her care of the sick, traditionally a male domain at the time. Throughout it all Elizabeth worked tirelessly with humor and good grace. But whatever the state of her spirits, the constant work and the depredations of the life she led caused her health to deteriorate rapidly. She died a few years later at the age of twenty-four and was canonized only four years after that.

  As romantic as it was, the story troubled me. Why didn’t she help slightly fewer people, live a little better, and die a lot older? “What was the point of it?” I asked my mother.

  “She was a saint. The woman was a saint!” was my mother’s reply.

  When I went to my father with Elizabeth’s story, he said, “Terrible, terrible, isn’t it, what some of the saints went through for us? Oh well . . . What’re you gonna do, huh? Terrible. Don’t think too much about this stuff, Anna tesoro.”

  “But, Dad, she was the patron saint of bakers!”

  When I asked him about Muslims he screwed up his face as though he had just tasted something unexpectedly bitter or sour. He said they were backward people, strange and uncultured, but that I needn’t worry because there weren’t any here. When I asked him about Jews, he looked around from side to side before saying anything, as though he didn’t want his answer to be overheard.

  “You have to be careful of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re everywhere. They turn up when you least expect it.”

  “So?”

  “So whatever they say, however sweet or clever the words, they’re trying to trick you with their . . . imbrogli.”

  “ ‘Trick you?’ ”

  “Trick you, or steal from you.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just how they are. I don’t think they can even help it themselves. Too clever for their own good. It’s their curse, I suppose. Always been that way.”

  “Always? How come?”

  “Since they killed the bambino Gesù.”

  “Really, they killed Jesus?”

  “Oh, mio Dio! Don’t they teach you anything at school? The Jews killed Gesù in the biblical times. Now they trick you. Some of them can look like very nice people but sooner or later . . . it’s a part of their cleverness. They’re also mixed up with the sindacato.”

  “Really, the Mafia?”

  For as long as I can remember, my father had always cursed the sindacato and I had always assumed he meant the Mafia. But I later learned that sindacato meant trade union.

  I have had two occasions as an adult to think about all this. Once was when my father went back to visit the bakery he called his factory. He had sold it at least five years earlier and hadn’t been back since. He had said that he’d been invited back, but I doubted that. It was more likely that, despite his preoccupation with his investments, he was bored and suffering from what Sophie called new-wave nostalgia. The first wave was for the old days back home. The second wave was for the old days at the bakery. Whatever it was that had made him take it, the trip down memory lane had not gone well for him. It had left him alternately angry and listless. My mother brought my father around to our place the following Saturday in the hope that, by playing with his grandson (Sam couldn’t have been more than two at the time), my father might forget whatever it was about his visit to the factory that had upset him. Joe, as he often was when my parents came to visit, was out.

  My father played a little with Sam but not with his usual gusto. When I asked him if anything was wrong, my mother, unable to contain herself any longer, blurted out that he had been this way since he’d been back to the factory.

  “Did she ask you?” my father snapped at my mother.

  “No, but I worry about you.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, dismissively.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?”

  What was wrong was that the bakery he had lovingly nurtured and expanded, the first of two he had ended up owning, had changed. It had become high tech. There were computers and screens now, and the old ovens had been replaced by new ones wired to the computers. None of the old guys were there anymore, not even the newer old guys. Strangers were working strange shifts in “his factory,” never touching the dough, never kneading it.

  “They don’t touch the bread,” he said. “They never touch the bread.”

  Icons appeared on computer screens providing options for every stage of the manufacturing process. Bread-colored images appeared, permitting the operator to choose from a menu—Italian, French, rye, roll, loaf—and various oven temperature options. The operators didn’t watch the ovens. They could monitor each stage of the process on the screen. Frequently, the computer failed to assess the precise nature of the raw material in the oven at the time and the loaves burned. There were large dump bins near the ovens holding mounds of blackened loaves. The bakeries were now two of a small chain. It seems it was more efficient for the chain to just throw out the failed loaves and provide a standardized product from each of its stores in its standardized bags, each with a caricature of a short, stocky, Southern European man holding a tray of baked goods in one hand and putting the thumb and two fingers of his other hand to his lips.

  “They never touch the bread,” my father repeated.

  The operators walked off the job even though the oven bells were ringing. They left it to the next shift to come and add the charred loaves to the mounds already in the dump bins.

  “They don’t care,” my father began after a pause. “One walks aw
ay from his mess not caring and a new one comes on and he doesn’t care ’cause it’s not his mess. They’re not bakers, these people. I don’t know what they are, these musi gialli, but they’re not bakers. I’m telling you that for sure.”

  “Are they Chinese?” I asked him.

  “Most of ’em, some kind of musi gialli. They can’t even speak English. I tried . . . you know . . . I saw them burning every third loaf, and I tried to stop it. You know, to look into it. There must’ve been something wrong with the computer’s instructions to the ovens. What do they call it? You know, the computer . . .”

  “The software. The program.”

  “Yeah. So I point it out to the manager. Even the manager’s muso giallo. Can you believe it? I point to the burned loaves and then to the computer and I tell him, ‘Something’s going wrong here, Mr. Ng.’ That’s the name on his badge. Is it a joke? It’s not even a name. And he just nods and says something about head office.”

  “It’s not your problem anymore, Dad.”

  “I never had problems like that. I’m telling you that for sure. I would never have had all those pagliacci. You can’t tell them what to do because they can’t speak English. They can’t fix the computers when they break. They don’t even want to.”

  “Don’t blame it on the Asians, Dad. I hate it when you talk like that.”

  “I know it’s not their fault; they don’t know bread. It’s not their culture. They didn’t have it till Marco Polo gave it to them. That’s right, isn’t it, Anna?”

  “Dad—”

  “You know whose fault it really is? It’s the new owners. They don’t care about the quality. They just want to get it out as fast as possible so they can sell more. I built that place, Anna, from nothing and now—”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Dad.”

  “What doesn’t make sense?”

  “They must care about the quality to a certain extent. If the quality is poor, people will stop buying their bread and they care about that.”

  “Who?”

  “The new owners.”

  “Ah, they don’t care about quality, Anna. Are you kidding with me? They go into the bedroom with the sindacato and that’s why they have all the Chinese, and then they make up lost sales with lower costs. You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s the new owners.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Dad.”

  “It’s the Bergs and the Steins. That’s one of their old tricks. You know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying the new owners are Jewish and you blame them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you would know if they’re Jewish.”

  “Sure they are.”

  “What are their names?”

  “What names?”

  “The names of the people you sold the bakery to.”

  “I can’t remember that now. It’s been years.”

  “Do you remember if they had Jewish names?”

  “They hid them, Anna. They’re clever people. They always hide their names. They know how to do it. I’m telling you that for sure.”

  “Dad, what do you mean, they hid them?”

  “They don’t use their real names. They use a company name.”

  “So it was a company that bought the business from you?”

  “Sure. It’s not my fault. They offered a good price. How could I know the names behind the company?”

  “But you’re saying they were Jewish?”

  “Anna, principessa . . . These people, it’s what they do.”

  12. The second time that I had occasion, as an adult, to think of Jews and of saints and martyrs was more recent. I had left work early to pick Sam up from school. This wasn’t something I usually did, but the housekeeper was off that day and Joe had some reason for not being able to take Sam home. We had argued over whether Sam was old enough to walk home from school by himself. It was my view that he wasn’t and I decided I’d pick him up, something I now wish I had done every day.

  It gave me the opportunity to take an old bracelet in to a local jeweler for repair. It was just a simple bracelet Simon had given me but, despite the passage of time, I could never bring myself to stop wearing it. Somehow it had become a part of me, one of the few parts I hadn’t wanted to change. From time to time it would break—sometimes the clasp, sometimes a link—but I always got it repaired. The first time it broke Simon and I were still together and, for a reason unknown to me then, Simon had wanted to take it to one particular jeweler to be repaired. I thought it might have been because the store was in a small strip mall and looked as though it could use the business. Whatever Simon’s reason, that’s where I’d been taking it whenever it needed fixing.

  The old man, the suburban jeweler, and I knew each other to the extent of smiling a smile of recognition each time I went in there. I don’t think I have ever been in there for any reason other than to have Simon’s bracelet repaired nor do I think I had ever brought Sam in with me before. The old man probably assumed I was coming in because of the bracelet. He had at times refused any payment, insisting that the repair hadn’t taken him long. He always greeted me with a smile and a slight twinkle in his eyes. The twinkle was always there in this small man who never aged but seemed to have always been old. His hair was white and thin, and he spoke quietly with a gentle Eastern European accent. The smile seemed to say that we shared a secret: the bracelet. I wondered then whether perhaps Simon had bought it from him all those years ago. Time had stood still in the little shop, as if trapped by history.

  This time I walked in with the same bracelet in need of a similar repair but also with a little boy, my son. The man’s smile was a little wider this time, the sparkle in his eyes a little brighter.

  “Your son is getting bigger,” the old jeweler commented, looking at Sam, who had by this time gone to examine some watches, or more particularly the rotating watch stands that held them.

  “Yes,” I smiled, to which the jeweler said nothing verbally but registered silent and clear approval through those shining eyes of his.

  “It’s the same bracelet again,” I said, taking it out of a plastic bag.

  “Ah, yes. How could I forget it, this bracelet. You still like it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I . . . it’s simple but—”

  “Very nice,” the jeweler interrupted softly. I wasn’t sure whether he was finishing the sentence for me, telling me what he thought of it, or commenting on my continued fondness for something so unprepossessing.

  Sam was rotating the watch spinner faster now, and I asked him to stop.

  “It’s all right,” the old jeweler said, and Sam kept going, making it spin even faster.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said to him, and then called to Sam, “Come on, Sam, come over here. Don’t you want to see how the man is going to look at my bracelet? He has to look very carefully, more carefully than we normally do when we look at things.”

  At this Sam came over quickly and stood quietly beside me at the counter. I ran my fingers through his hair as we watched the old man take a jeweler’s magnifying glass and affix it to his eye.

  “Of course, it’s not that the links are so very small,” he began apologizing, “but my eyes . . . well, they’re not so big anymore. They get smaller as I get older.”

  “No, mine too,” I said too quickly, as though to assure him—of I don’t know what—that he wasn’t that old, or that everybody’s eyes deteriorated as they got older. The old man picked up a small pair of tweezers, hesitated, and put them down again. We watched in silence as he undid the button on his left shirtsleeve and began to roll it up his arm. Then he took the bracelet and the tweezers to the light of a lamp on the counter and for a moment everything was perfectly still. Sam was leaning in close as though a momentous discovery were about to be made and I stood behind him, suddenly loving him a little bit more for his deep interest in the jeweler’s inspection of the bracelet. The two of them peered in a
t it, and that was when I noticed for the first time that the jeweler had a series of numbers tattooed into the flesh of his forearm. It had never occurred to me that this old man I had been visiting periodically for ten or so years to have my bracelet fixed was a Jew, much less a Holocaust survivor. I’d never thought about his origins.

  “It’s this link here, of course, but maybe also this one next to it. I would tighten this one but the other one will probably break again.”

  “Oh no! Really?”

  “I probably have in the back . . . If you could leave it with me . . . I know how much you like this. I have a collection in the back of links and old bracelets. I am sure I could find a silver one very much like these to replace this one, the weakest one, but it will take some time to go through all of them to find the right one, the closest one. Can you leave it with me for a bit? My wife used to say, ‘Stop keeping this junk,’ but in this junk now might be the link that saves you. We can see. Can you leave it with me for a little bit?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’m sure I’ll have something for you,” he said.

  “Oh, thank you . . . so much.”

  “And for the little boy . . . what is his name?”

  “Sam.”

  “Sam! That’s a good name. Do you like your name, Sam?” “Yes,” Sam answered a little uncertainly.

  “Then you like my name. Do you know why?”

  “ ’Cause it’s your name too?”

  “That’s right, but they call me Samuel. Some of them . . . when they call. Anyway, Sam, for being such a good boy, for you I have something,” he said, reaching into a drawer under the counter. He handed Sam a piece of candy wrapped tightly in cellophane.

  “Is it all right I give him . . . ?”