Clara Mondschein's Melancholia

by Anne Raeff

  Now she wishes Deborah had not gone out. She heard the front door open and close and lay in the bed thinking that now that she was alone, she would be able to sleep, but apparently Deborah’s presence wasn’t the problem. Mrs. Mondschein rereads the Op-Ed Page of the New York Times she bought a few days ago but can’t concentrate. “I don’t even know what’s going on in the world,” she says out loud and laughs. Yet realistically, how much could happen in a few days? A lot. A lot could happen in a few days, but if something important had transpired, she would know about it—one of the nurses would have said something.

  Normally when Mrs. Mondschein feels like this, she goes to a matinee. She has been lucky so far and does not suffer from insomnia. The nights have been kind to her; it has been the days that, on occasion, have proved insufferable. Yet today, she is tired. “Dead tired,” she says aloud. The thought of descending the stairs, walking to the subway station, waiting for a train, sitting up in a dark movie theater that smells of old lady perfume makes her so incredibly tired that she should be able to fall asleep, but it is not a sleeping kind of tired she is experiencing. She feels like a patient suffering from a concussion who is being kept awake to avoid the risk of slipping into a coma. Karl had such a patient once, a young girl who had fallen off a seesaw right onto her head. He had instructed the mother to stay up with her all night, to walk around and around their tiny apartment, to sing, to play games—paddy whack, Monopoly—but under no circumstances to let her daughter fall asleep. But the mother was so tired; she worked six days a week as a maid. She had varicose veins. She fell asleep and the little girl fell asleep in her arms, and when the mother woke up with a jolt—it had only been fifteen minutes—the girl was unwakeable. “I was so tired,” the mother repeated over and over and over again. Mrs. Mondschein wonders whatever happened to that little girl. She could be alive today, out on her lunch break eating a sandwich at a counter somewhere in Midtown, or she could be alive today, still lying in the hospital, her breath even and steady. Or she could be dead. If Karl were alive, he would be sitting at the table reading—he always preferred to read at the table—and she could ask him, “Whatever happened to that little girl who fell off the seesaw and whose mother let her fall asleep?” But if she doesn’t know, he wouldn’t know either. They had lost track of the case—the hospital had taken over. That is what had happened. Still, she likes to think that Karl had gone to visit the girl, that he had gone every week and then every month, and then whenever he got a chance, just to see how she was. But he would have told her. They would have gone together to visit the little girl. Why hadn’t they ever gone to visit her?

  After a while Mrs. Mondschein stops thinking about the girl with the concussion. She tries listening to music but isn’t able to blank out her mind in the usual fashion. Mozart makes her think of Tommy as does Bach and even Mendelssohn, although they had never listened to Mendelssohn together. He isn’t one of her favorites; there is something insignificant about Mendelssohn. She tries some stretching exercises she learned from the Health section of the New York Times about a year ago. For a while she was very disciplined about her stretching exercises, but in the last weeks she has forgotten all about them. Maybe they will tire her out, she thinks. Then she will be able to sleep. But after doing ten bends to the right and ten to the left, she is restless, bored. She laughs. I am not the type to feel boredom. Perhaps I am finally getting old.

  Somehow the light has shifted in the apartment—shifted to semi-obscurity. She would not be able to read in this light, but she doesn’t feel like reading, so the lights are left off. Maybe she will doze. Maybe Deborah will return soon and they will fix a bite to eat.

  Deborah has decided to take the bus back uptown. After a long day on her feet at the museum, shuffling slowly from one wing to another, the prospect of walking all the way uptown is tremendous, even for the die-hard walker she is. She has decided on the bus despite its excruciating slowness. She tries not to watch the blocks as they ooze by. You could declaim an entire medium-length Emily Dickinson poem in the time it takes the bus to lurch away from the curb, gather speed, and make it to the next corner just as the light is turning red. She does that, recites the three medium-length Emily Dickinson poems she knows by heart—“Because I could not stop for Death,” “Success is counted sweetest,” and “I heard a fly buzz when I died.”

  Finally, the bus creeps to the curbside at 148th Street. There is no light on in her grandmother’s window, but Deborah cannot think of anyplace else to go. She climbs the stairs slowly as if that short time would give her grandmother a chance to wake up, splash some water on her face. Loud music and laughter are coming from Mr. Claromundo’s apartment and, just as she is turning the key in the last lock, Mr. Claromundo’s door opens.

  “Deborah!” he shouts effusively. “Come in, I’m having a party!”

  “Thank you, but my grandmother is expecting me.”

  “So she came back?” he asks laughing.

  Deborah wants to ask him what is so funny about her grandmother’s return, but she simply answers, “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Come over if you get bored. Your granny goes to sleep early.” He winks.

  “Maybe some other time,” Deborah finds herself saying.

  “Is that you, Deborah?” Mrs. Mondschein calls out of the darkness at the end of the hallway.

  “It’s me.”

  “Come sit down,” Mrs. Mondschein tells her granddaughter.

  “Should I turn on the light?”

  “Please. I didn’t feel like getting up, but there’s no reason to sit in the dark, is there?”

  “I guess not.”

  “In the morning we will have to make a trip to New Jersey,” Mrs. Mondschein announces as Deborah sits down after turning on the light.

  “I was hoping you would let me stay with you for a while,” Deborah says. “I won’t be any trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to be any trouble.”

  “Then I can stay?”

  “We must see your mother first. Are things very bad?”

  “You can’t help her, you know.”

  “Yes, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. It’s time I paid a visit.”

  “Why do I have to go?”

  “Because we must all discuss things properly. If you are going to stay with me, we must discuss everything properly. All of us.”

  “She won’t be up for discussions. She’ll just lie there in her stupid bed. You’ll be lucky if she turns to look at you.”

  “We can talk to your father then,” Mrs. Mondschein insists.

  “He won’t care.”

  “Deborah, we must make an effort.”

  “Well, I guess I have to get my cello.”

  So it is decided; they will go to New Jersey in the morning. They stay up a little longer, chatting about music.

  “I have always wondered what it is like to experience the world with a musician’s mind. When you listen to music, are you aware of the names of all the notes and chords? Do you see D sharps and B flats in your mind’s eye?”

  Deborah pauses to think about it because no one has ever asked her such a question before. “I do in a way. It’s like seeing colors. You always recognize blue when you see it or red and colors made with blue like purple and green and you notice dark and light colors, soft and harsh colors, but you don’t say to yourself every time you see something blue, ‘Oh, that’s blue.’ It just is blue and your mind registers it. That’s what I do with music.”

  “It must be wonderful,” Mrs. Mondschein says.

  The next morning is gray and bone-chillingly cold. From the window, they watch people on their way to work—huddled into their coats, scarves around their mouths to protect them from the wind whipping off the Hudson River.

  “It’s too cold fo
r snow,” Mrs. Mondschein says.

  “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow,” Deborah says.

  “Tomorrow it might snow, and then we would have to spend the night in New Jersey. I don’t think I’m up for that. Snow in New Jersey is too clean.”

  Mrs. Mondschein and her granddaughter sit in the fifth row on the left so they can see the New York skyline from the bridge. They have not removed their coats even though the bus is heated. Overheated. Mrs. Mondschein is sitting next to the window. Her granddaughter is in the aisle seat. They both crane their necks, trying to pick out Riverside Church from the general grayness.

  “Your grandfather and I used to go to concerts at Riverside Church,” Mrs. Mondschein says. “But you can’t see it today.”

  “If it warms up a little, it is going to snow,” Deborah says.

  “We can’t turn back now,” Mrs. Mondschein says, and Deborah doesn’t disagree even though it would be so easy to get off in Fort Lee, take the overpass across the highway, and wait for the next bus back to New York. They wouldn’t have to wait for more than five minutes.

  The bus pulls away and they stand directly across from the house, waiting to cross the street. There are no lights on in the house, but it is still morning—ten o’clock—so there is no reason for lights to be on. They have crossed the street and are walking slowly, somewhat reluctantly yet with determination, up the driveway, up the three little flagstone steps. Deborah puts her ear to the door.

  “Do you hear anything?” Mrs. Mondschein asks.

  “No, the typing has stopped.”

  “What typing?”

  “My father was typing when I left. Should we ring the bell, or should I unlock the door?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Let’s ring first.”

  “Yes, let’s ring first,” Mrs. Mondschein says and pushes the doorbell hard as if it were difficult to press. Deborah puts her ear to the door, but hears no steps. They wait a while, and this time Deborah presses the bell. Still no answer, so Deborah unlocks the door after all.

  “Hello,” Deborah calls. No answer.

  “Hello,” Mrs. Mondschein calls. No answer.

  In their coats they walk around the downstairs, quietly, as if they were expecting to come upon a secret. They walk up the stairs slowly. The door to the bedroom is open. A shaft of sunlight slices the wooden floor by the bed. They are sleeping, her father’s face nestled in the nape of her mother’s neck, his arm wrapped around his wife’s middle. At first Deborah thinks they might be dead, but it is only a thought. The smell is still there, as strong as ever, and Deborah covers her nose with her hand. Strange, she thinks, that they left the door open. She thinks maybe it is because they are waiting for her to come home. But then she thinks that maybe they only keep the door closed when she is home, that maybe whenever she is gone, they fling everything open. Maybe they dance.

  Mrs. Mondschein is having her own thoughts, wondering whether Clara would laugh if she woke up now and saw the two of them standing there in their winter coats, watching. Would she think it was a dream? Perhaps later, when they were sitting in the living room drinking coffee, Clara would say, “I dreamt you were standing in the bedroom doorway wearing your winter coat, watching me.”

  “They must be very tired,” Mrs. Mondschein whispers.

  “Yes,” Deborah says even though she can’t imagine what they would be tired about. “I guess we should let them sleep then.”

  “Yes, we can have some tea.”

  They descend the stairs, remove their coats, hang them up in the closet.

  “Should I turn the heat up?” Deborah asks.

  “That would be nice,” Mrs. Mondschein says.

  They sit at the dining room table drinking tea without speaking.

  “Should I get my cello?” Deborah asks. “It might be hours before they wake up.”

  “Do they often sleep so late?”

  “My mother hasn’t left her bed in days.”

  “There’s a difference between sleeping and lying in bed,” Mrs. Mondschein says. “My father wouldn’t leave his bed the last year of his life, but I don’t think he slept for even one hour during that final time. I think sleeping is a good sign.”

  “Your father? I thought he died in Auschwitz.”

  “That was my sisters, my two sisters. My father died just before the Anschluss. Did your mother tell you he died in Auschwitz?”

  “She said everyone died in Auschwitz. She never mentioned anyone in particular. All she says is that everyone except you and my grandfather died in Auschwitz.”

  “I never told your mother anything about my father’s death, but for years we ran a classified ad in the Aufbau looking for my sisters. Your mother must remember the ads. She must have always wondered why we didn’t mention my father. Maybe she never really thought about it. Sometimes I told your mother about my sisters, as a lesson of sorts. I didn’t want her to be like them. When your mother was a child, she always preferred staying in the apartment. She never was one for walks in the park or hopscotch. I used to worry she would turn out like my sisters.”

  “What was wrong with them?”

  “Nothing. They were neither happy nor sad. They liked to cook and eat and avoided the outdoors.”

  “And your father?”

  “He was a bookkeeper, and one day he fell ill. Melancholia was your grandfather’s diagnosis. That’s how I met your grandfather. He was the doctor who diagnosed my father’s illness.”

  “And he died of it? How can you die from it?”

  “I don’t know, but there was nothing else wrong with him.”

  “Melancholia. It sounds like a piece of music, like a slow movement.”

  “I don’t even have a photo of my father,” Mrs. Mondschein says. “I have one of my sisters. Remind me and I’ll show it to you, but my father always refused to have his photo taken. He was extremely Orthodox. One day, not too long before the Anschluss, Karl and I took my sisters to the Prater, and we had our pictures taken, all four of us together. My sisters aren’t smiling in the photo because they were worried about leaving my father alone.”

  “What did your father look like?”

  “He was small and thin and balding, but I can’t really picture him. I probably wouldn’t be able to picture my sisters either without that photo. His fingers were blue from ink and he wore glasses. He looked much older than he was.”

  “Like my father?”

  “No, much, much older-looking than Simon.”

  “Do you think my mother will die from melancholia too?” Deborah asks, thinking about what it would be like to find her mother dead, lying in the same position, but dead.

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. Come,” she says, “let’s see if they’re awake.”

  “Don’t you think we should let them rest just a little more?” Deborah asks.

  “No. They’ve slept enough.”

  Together they mount the stairs, taking each step very slowly, very deliberately. At the top of the stairs they listen for voices coming from the bedroom. There are no voices, no sounds at all, so they proceed to the doorway. They pause and watch for a while, waiting for some movement, hoping perhaps that Simon and Clara will sense someone watching them and wake up on their own. In the end, Deborah has to knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Simon whispers, so they do.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people who, in one way or another, led to the creation and completion of this novel:

  Marc and Lillian Raeff, my parents, for being my first guides through literature and history;

  Josephine and Irving Gottesman, my maternal grandparents, for their stories;<
br />
  Victoria Raeff, my paternal grandmother, for her support of me and my writing and for her one hundred years of strength;

  Catherine Raeff, my sister, for her companionship and for being my first reader;

  Lori Ostlund, my partner, for her encouragement and her (at times brutal) honesty, and without whose support this book would never have been possible;

  Anika Streitfeld, my editor, for her enthusiasm and intelligent scrutiny of my manuscript.