A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  “Of course,” fraŭlino Bernfeld whispered serenely.

  I leaned forward, wanting to tell them all about Fräulein Eckstein and Ita and about how Ita and the two angels had appeared to Dr. Freud and me, and how Dr. Freud had denied everything; I wanted to tell them that the experience had made me want to dedicate myself to some higher calling, so that when I encountered Dr. Zamenhof and Esperanto, I had seen the hand of God in it. But before I could clear my throat, Dr. Zamenhof had laughed a bitter little laugh of self-mockery.

  “Of course, I can prove nothing,” he said. “And in matters of faith, what is proof, but the poorest of excuses to believe? In Białystok, where I was a boy — can you believe it? — even in this modern age, we were still bedeviled by our so-called saints who advanced all sorts of mad schemes to keep their minions in line.”

  “What sort of schemes?” I wondered aloud.

  “Oh, the usual bag of tricks. Dybbuks, demons, wicked children in the service of the devil, that sort of thing: the closed fist of a punitive God.”

  Fraŭlino Bernfeld laughed scornfully, as did Dr. and Sinjorino Zamenhof. It was a dry, sophisticated laughter, the knowing laughter of those who had freed themselves from a jail that the other inmates believe is locked, but that, in fact, isn’t.

  “Thank God, that world is gone for good,” Dr. Zamenhof said, exhaling a gust of smoke.

  OUR TRAIN ROARED into Paris on the morning of July 28. It was barely ten o’clock and already the sun had turned the city into a brick oven. Furnace blasts of heat reached us as soon as we exited our car and descended the platform. We were all perspiring instantly, squinting against the glare piercing the glass ceilings. Dr. Zamenhof threw his hat onto the back of his head and daubed at the dome of his skull with a green handkerchief. Pigeons and sparrows swooped into the open building, creating a ruckus. fraŭlino Bernfeld, irritated, it seemed, beyond redemption, grew more irritated still. As I watched the muscles of her face tighten, I counseled myself to stay out of her way. In this intense light, I wanted to avoid everything that might worsen the headache I was already feeling coiling up behind my eyes.

  The Parisian Esperantists were feuding, and so no one had come to meet our train: the prize of greeting Dr. Zamenhof was apparently too precious to be either lost or shared, and it was thought best that no one should win it at all. At one point, their jockeying over who should host Dr. Zamenhof in Paris had grown so divisive that various camps begged him not to come at all. As a consequence, Dr. Zamenhof had insisted upon arriving as a private man. Still, none of us had imagined the Parisians would take him at his word. Lidja began to wail, unhappy in the heat, and we couldn’t decide whether it would be more expedient to phone someone and wait or to simply hail a taxi for ourselves. My hands in my pockets, I paced up and down the platform among the milling crowds, as far from the others as I could get without seeming to have abandoned them, each biting hiss of steam from the stationary trains cutting through my head.

  “Ah, here they are, here they are!” we finally heard, as an ebullient convocation of men, dashing down a brass staircase, approached us, easily recognizable as Esperantists by the queer language issuing from their mouths. None of us, of course, had ever heard la lingvon internacian spoken with a French accent. Enunciated thusly, it seems a far lighter, airier, and more complex act of parolation than it did coming from our own throats.

  “We were looking for you in the first-class compartments,” one of these gentlemen said, roaring with laughter.

  They surrounded Dr. Zamenhof, each jabbering away with greater or lesser fluency, each introducing himself, each extending his hand, each offering to carry this or that bag, and all so cheerfully and musically, it was impossible for me, probably even more so for poor Dr. Zamenhof, to distinguish one distinguished gentleman from the next. It was only after I got to know each personally that I was able, in retrospect, to reconstruct the scene: here was General Hippolyte Sébert, fit in his mid-sixties, taking command of the platform as though it were the sight of a great battle, barking out orders, and sending for a porter after personally welcoming each member of our party to Paris. Next to him, offering his long-nailed hand to Dr. Zamenhof, as though it were a rare object d’art, was Professor Théophile Cart. Nearly sixty himself, he wore an inverted pyramid of a beard and a dashing white mustache. His broad-brimmed hat was cocked at a rakish angle, and condescension dripped from him like water from a rain barrel during a monsoon. He had hailed a porter of his own, a rival, and apparently a bitter one, of the porter General Sébert had summoned, and as we all tried to make pleasant conversation, the porters scuffling and arguing behind us created much distress.

  There was Alfred Michaux, pushing an exasperated sigh through his long, battered nose. The organizer of the congress, he wore a white straw Panama, and I couldn’t help noticing that his ears stuck out at a fifty-degree angle from his head beneath its brim. Well over six feet tall, with a beard as luxuriant as a mink’s tail, he towered over the Zamenhofs. It was perhaps to distract them from the embarrassment of the battling porters that he asked Madame Zamenhof if he could hold the baby. When she nervously surrendered Lidja to him, Michaux lifted the child high above his head, giving out a whooping cry. To the delight of everyone and to my surprise, Lidja laughed happily, though Michaux had thrown her, with her eyes unshaded, through a penetrating beam of austere sunlight. Charles Lemaire was there as well. A handsome blond businessman with a florid mustache, he held the distinction of being the second French Esperantist, the first man recruited by the first French Esperantist, the Marquis de Beau-front, who (as Monsieur Lemaire was now explaining to Dr. Zamenhof) sent his profuse apologies. Alas, the marquis was ill and recuperating at his country estate in Rouen. Gaston Moch, arriving on his bicycle later than the others, greeted our party before strutting purposefully ahead of it to whistle down a squadron of taxis, into which we all piled. Michaux, who’d made certain he’d gotten into Dr. Zamenhof’s taxicab, gave orders to the driver in French to carry Mademoiselle Bernfeld and me to the Hôtel le Pangloss, after which he would accompany the Zamenhofs to Dr. Javal’s home, where it had been decided they would stay.

  “Mia kara amiko,” Dr. Zamenhof whispered, clutching my arm as I made my way out of the cab, “would you mind terribly coming along with me to meet Dr. and Madame Javal?”

  “Not at all,” I said, “not at all,” although I felt torn in two. Here he was, holding on to my wrist, pleading with me to see to his needs, while fraŭlino Bernfeld, in a seemingly eternal sulk, tapped her foot impatiently on the curb. Holding a parasol to block the sun, she gave up on me and moved, with a breathy rasp of exasperation, into the hotel foyer.

  “Only let me arrange for our rooms and see to fraŭlino Bernfeld and I’ll be right out.”

  “Bone, bonege, dankon.”

  Framed by the window of the cab, Dr. Zamenhof resembled an orphaned child, captured and taken far from his home. He was overwhelmed, intimidated even, I sensed, by this festive delegation of Frenchmen and by the irresistible beauty of Paris, and he needed a friend at his side, someone who had known him a bit longer than the others had.

  “YOU ONLY?” FRAŬ;LINO Bernfeld said, standing at the front desk with a bellcap, her bags stacked upon his trolley.

  “I thought you’d want to rest,” I said as tenderly as I could.

  “Rest?”

  “Hasn’t it been a long journey?”

  “Years!”

  “Darling, please …”

  “Fine! I won’t go with you then!”

  “Come, if you wish. You know the Majstro finds your company stimulating.”

  “The Majstro?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not you?”

  There was clearly no way to win this. “And I as well,” I said as patiently as I could. “I merely thought you’d prefer to freshen up after the tiring journey.”

  “How very thoughtful of you.”

  “Is that not the case?”

  “That is indeed the case.�
��

  “Then why don’t you go to your room and rest?”

  “Because I was hoping to spend the afternoon walking in the city with you.”

  “Something which you failed to mention to me, of course!”

  “Must I explicitly mention everything that a more ardent man might simply take for granted?”

  Although he was pretending not to, I could tell that the bellcap was listening to our every word.

  “What am I to do with Dr. Zamenhof then? Refuse him in his hour of need? He’s in over his head, fraŭlino. He’s drowning with these people.”

  “Oh and you’re not, because you’re so very worldly!”

  “I’m not worldly, no. Of course not. That is correct. But they have no interest in me and I therefore cannot disappoint them.”

  “Right, right, why should they take an interest in you?”

  She crossed her arms and expelled a breath harshly through her nose.

  “Fine!” I said. “I’ll tell the Majstro I shan’t be going with him then.”

  “And turn me into the villain?”

  “Fraŭlino Bernfeld!”

  “Dr. Sammelsohn!”

  I couldn’t help gritting my teeth. “Go up to your room and I’ll be right back. I’ll ring for you after you’ve bathed and napped.”

  “No. Just go! Go! Go with him! He needs you.”

  “And you’re certain you don’t?”

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life!”

  “Very well then!” My head was pounding. “Good-bye,” I said, hurrying away, lest she once more change her mind. I crossed the foyer and went back out into the dreadful summer sun, preferring its heat to the hell fraŭlino Bernfeld was making of my life. I climbed into the cab and settled in across from Dr. Zamenhof and Monsieur Michaux.

  “Ĉu ĉio estas en ordo?” Dr. Zamenhof inquired, somewhat nervously. Is everything in order?

  “Jes, jes, certe,” I nodded, attempting to smile as simply as I could.

  “Avant!” Michaux called up to the driver.

  “Does anyone mind if I pull down the shade?” I said, hoping to block out the sunlight and coddle my aching head. However, doing so only made the car hotter, stuffier, and dark.

  OUR TAXI CROSSED le pont Alexandre III, with its golden statuary, and turned onto le boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, stopping, not far from the Seine, at number 5. We all climbed out. Madame Javal saw to Madame Zamenhof and the baby first, wisely guiding the travel-worn mother and her fussing child up the staircase to rooms that had been set aside for them. A retinue of servants in livery darted in and out of the house, pulling bags off the car and carrying them in through secret passageways.

  “Monsieur le Docteur, my husband, is waiting for you in his library,” Madame Javal told us.

  “I’ll show them in,” the gracious Michaux offered. He wasn’t intimidated, as Dr. Zamenhof and I clearly were, by the opulence of the Javal home. He led us briskly up the stairs to the house’s topmost floor. I hadn’t seen anything as opulent since fraŭlino Bernfeld’s father had me tossed out of the Arkady Club. Dr. Émile Javal, as Dr. Zamenhof and I knew from our medical work, was eminent. With one of his students, he’d radically improved the ophthalmometer (a device I used daily in my practice), and with another, he’d advanced the world’s knowledge of optics and astigmatisms. He’d invented the stereoscope and the tachistoscope and a dozen other such scopes, and had been, from all appearances, rewarded handsomely for his labors. On every landing, alternating with antiques, were prototypes of Dr. Javal’s inventions, exhibited in glass cases.

  We found our host sitting in his library in a chair near an oval window, overlooking the river, a writing plank laid out across his knee. There was something wrong-seeming about the impression he made, and it was only moments after we’d entered the room that I realized he wasn’t looking at his work nor out the window, but towards it, wearing the sort of smoke-tinted eyeglasses Chinese judges wore in the fourteenth century to conceal their expressions in court.

  “Javal,” Michaux called to him softly, and only when he raised his head, looking not at us, but merely in our direction, did I realize, with a clanging sense of alarm, that the poor fellow was blind.

  “Jes, jes, bonvenon, bonvenon,” he said, sure-footedly navigating the space between us, searching the air for our hands. Out of compassion, one couldn’t help correcting as he corrected, thus inadvertently moving one’s hand away from his in trying to move towards it. Nevertheless, he greeted us warmly, in the French manner, with kisses on both cheeks. A blackthorn switch was fastened by a cord to the buttonhole of his lapel.

  “The variety of handclasps is infinite,” he announced in a resonant voice. “I’ve learned with some surprise that a person who is both blind and deaf and who consequently comes into relation with another only by hand, sometimes recognizes a handshake after an interval of several years.”

  “Is that right?” Michaux asked.

  Dr. Javal nodded. “In Japan, I’m told, the blind have the monopoly on massage. Had my loss of sight been accompanied by a falling into poverty, I should not have hesitated to make myself skilled in that art.”

  He gave us a clear and concise explanation of his malady: “Glaucoma. First the right eye. Sclerotomy. Iridectomy. Complete vision loss. Then the left, which we treated with pilocarpine.”

  “Ah,” Dr. Zamenhof said professionally.

  “However, it did no good. I asked Priestly Smith — you know of him?”

  “I’ve heard of him, of course.”

  “ — to perform an iridectomy.”

  “And?”

  “Too late.”

  “A pity.”

  “Still, a man doesn’t need his eyes to think, nor to dictate, nor even to write, for that matter.” Dr. Javal gestured to the writing plank, and I saw that it was no ordinary escritoire, but another of his marvelous inventions: a scotographic tablet, the apparatus had a stationary rim at its base in which the writer placed his elbow and a ratchet that moved the paper up a centimeter each time the writer passed from one line to the next. With this and an American fountain pen, Dr. Javal was able to create a page as impeccable as any example in a Spencerian handwriting manual.

  (Dr. Javal, I soon discovered, let his blindness interfere but little with his life. One had only to witness him bicycling around Paris on the back of his two-seated tricycle to take the full measure of the man.)

  “I’ve had to give up research and consultation, of course, although this isn’t an absolute,” he said.

  “No?” Dr. Zamenhof asked politely.

  “My successor at the Sorbonne does me the great kindness of coming and telling me from time to time what is being done at our laboratory, and if some former patient of mine insists upon consulting me, well, I call in my old assistant who details the invalid’s condition for me. It gives me the illusion of being useful as a physician. Mostly, however, I’ve dedicated myself to writing and to other intellectual endeavors these last few years. To your Esperanto, for instance, Dr. Zamenhof.”

  “To our Esperanto,” Dr. Zamenhof corrected him.

  “To which,” Michaux boomed, “Dr. Javal has generously dedicated his funds and his own vital energies.”

  “And for which we are profoundly grateful,” Dr. Zamenhof said.

  A servant brought in coffee and pastries, and we were invited to sit. A bullet-headed man, Dr. Javal kept a wonderfully serene expression on his face, though I admit the tinted glasses were unnerving. His beard was a tangle of blackish wires, shot through with grey, and his hands were as thick as a butcher’s. Yet one had only to watch him preparing the pousse-café to see the great skill his surgeon’s hands retained. Ascertaining the precise location of the cups, the sugar cone, and the sugar nips, he unerringly ferried three perfectly nipped pieces of sugar into each cup before pouring a perfectly measured dollop of cream into each as well — he must have been counting silently — a dollop that raised the level of each beverage a perfect two centi
meters beneath the lip of each cup. His own cup he then brought, lacking indecision, to his mouth.

  “Ah!” He swallowed this first sip with a great show of gustatory delight. “Eating and drinking is for the blind the greatest of pleasures. Especially, may I say, in excellent company.” Crossing his legs, he leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands together. “Now, Dr. Sammelsohn …” he said.

  “Yes?” I said, leaning forward.

  “Tell us …”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re a friend of Dr. Zamenhof’s?”

  “I am.”

  “And an oculist as well?”

  “That is correct.”

  “In Vienna?”

  “Yes.”

  “And an acquaintance of Sigmund Freud, I believe.”

  “Correct.”

  “And so you know Dr. Breuer, I presume?”

  “Slightly.”

  “An excellent man.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Related to me through marriage.”

  “That I didn’t know.”

  “Next time you see him, ferry to him, if you will, my kindest regards.”

  “I will.”

  “And welcome to Paris.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And to our home.”

  “Thank you again.”

  “It’s good to make your acquaintance.”

  “And yours.”

  Done with me, Dr. Javal turned to Dr. Zamenhof. “And now, Dr. Zamenhof, let us hear, let us hear: How did the three Zamenhofs and their friends enjoy their journey? Was your arrival in our magnificent city satisfactory?”

  Faultlessly polite, Dr. Javal allowed Dr. Zamenhof to warm to his company by relating nothing of importance. In this way, the two men, who knew each other only through a correspondence conducted in neither man’s native tongue and dominated by Esperantic concerns, might relax together, if only for a moment, before rolling up their sleeves and digging into the work that obsessed them both. Dr. Zamenhof chatted amiably, enwombed in a shroud of cigarette smoke, while Michaux listened avidly. The light pleasantries exhausted, the subject moved on to the congress, and the three men discussed Dr. Zamenhof’s Parisian itinerary for the next few days. This included a trip with Dr. Javal to visit the minister of education, and another with Professor Cart to tour the offices of the new Esperanto Printing Society. A formal banquet at the Hôtel de Ville and a party at the top of the Eiffel Tower were part of the festivities as well. Interviews with journalists couldn’t be avoided, Dr. Javal warned Dr. Zamenhof, despite his well-known reserve.