by Alan Isler
But I tell you I can still feel something of the Wun-derkind's exultation as I held tremulously my first published offspring, buckram the color of dark moss, and gold-stamped. Its crisp freshness is still in my nostrils, the riffle of its pages in my ears.
The reviewers were generous. A bright future was forecast for me. Kapsreiter proclaimed me a "bold new voice in a sluggish season"; Drobil welcomed me to the Groves of Parnassus—something of a witticism since this was the name of a coffee shop in Berlin frequented by writers and poets, where he himself held a regular table. But to me most exciting of all was the letter from Rilke, a poet of infinite subtlety and
sensibility, offering warm praise for my "precocious talent." No, I did not lack for encouragement.
Even so, to have immediately submitted an article on poetry to the cultural editor of the Niirnberger Freie Presse required a wayward impudence, a youthful hubris, a chutzpah that still leaves me breathless! The NFP, after all, spoke with an authority in Europe in those days matched only by the Times of London. To appear in the cultural section was to etch one's words in adamantine rock. Max Frankenthaler, the editor then, was a man of colossal energy and integrity, and of extraordinary intellectual rigor. His contributors were the giant voices of Europe: Zola, yes, but also Shaw, Gide, Ibsen. In the NFP my parents' generation found those opinions they could with confidence adopt as their own: liberal enlightenment in the van, comfortably supported by the massed troops of conservatism in the rear. A young writer of quite exceptional talent might reasonably hope to appear in the literary pages at the back of the NFP, but in the cultural section, the feuilleton, the bottom half of the front page, separated from the ephemeral political twaddle of the day by a thick black line that ran from margin to margin? And yet Frankenthaler accepted my article. I was nineteen, for heaven's sake!
The moment in the breakfast room that morning was surely the happiest of my life. We sit around the table, Mother, Aunt Manya, my sister Lola, my father, chatting of this and that. Polished wood, white linen, gleaming silverware, a warm breeze fluttering the curtains at the window. The breakfast smells mingle with the aroma of my father's cigar. In comes the maid with the morning's letters and the NFP; she places them on the table at my father's left hand. I feel my knees begin to tremble. "A little more coffee, Kati, if you please," says Mother. Aunt Manya tells Lola that she will meet her after school for a visit to the dentist. Lola makes a face. Father glances at the front page of his paper. Consternation! I laugh out loud. There
before him is the name of his own son, a boy whose opinions until this moment have been automatically dismissed. The phone begins to ring: our friends and relatives have also been looking at the NFP. For months my mother was to carry that article with her in her purse, showing it to anyone she could buttonhole.
The descent from the heights was almost immediate. There were to be no more volumes of poetry, no more articles in the NFP. The feuilleton that had emblazoned my name among the worthies appeared on the edge of the abyss, a bare fortnight before the events of Sarajevo hurled us all into the darkness. My fate too, it seems, was bound up with that of the Austrian archduke.
The letter from Rilke, retained under glass first in my father's study and then in my own, miraculously preserved even in the concentration camps, yellowed and almost indecipherable along its creases, a spot of warmth between my bones and my rags, that letter is now gone, swallowed up in the maw of the Emma Lazarus.
Shirley Temple, in waistless frocks cinctured with satin sashes, shiny-black Mary Janes and cotton anklets. Her long, frizzy hair she ties back from her moon-round face with a velvet ribbon. In these seminars, she likes to take on the role of the martyr, receiving with painful joy the exasperated and sometimes heated responses she invites us to batter her with. She will make some outrageous, indefensible comment, and when she is challenged ("But what about xandy, to say nothing of z?"), she will assert in a high-pitched squeak, "I know nothing about that, and I don't think I need to. My bubba used to say ..." At times she is driven to tear at her hair with her tiny claws, throw her round head back, and implore the ceiling, high above which no doubt her gnomic bubba is looking down, "Why must they twist everything I say?"
Once I found myself telling Hermione that her intellectual pretensions were placing my entire alimentary system at risk—that, in short, she was a pain. Her pain, however, seemed to me at the time transmuted into excruciating pleasure. "Oh, oh, oh," she said. Still, I don't think she likes me.
But last night's topic was, for reasons I have yet to divulge, of considerable interest to me. I am sorry I missed it. Blum's attention, of course, had been on Hermione's "boobs."
How I long to find myself enrolled once more on the list of solo-ambulants!
doctor that sleeping pills should no longer be a necessary part of my regimen. The fact is, I can't sleep without them, but with them my bad dreams have returned, after all these years. What they contain, I have never known; I know only that I awaken from them in terror, my heart shuddering against my rib cage, gasping for air. The bed is soaked, not alone from the sweat that has been wrung from my withered flesh. Terror gives way to shame: the price for a few hours of drugged sleep is too high.
At any rate, I continued my little deception for a few moments and secretly watched them. Events had indeed been moving forward at the Emma Lazarus. They stood side by side, hovering over me, holding hands and gazing not at the poor convalescent but into one another's eyes. She was caressing his hip with hers, a slow, exquisitely erotic motion. From where I lay, I could not help noticing the effect she was having on him. The foolish jealousy I felt at that moment was scarcely diluted by my certainty of the outcome of this affair: she would break his heart, or what passed in him for such an organ, as she had broken mine, and the hearts of who knew how many others. Ah, Magda, Magda! Meanwhile, well within arm's reach above my bed were her fine breasts, pushing against the material of her dress. Between the buttons and the straining cloth I swear I saw a triangle of warm, dark, swelling flesh! It would have been so easy, so very easy, simply to put up my hand. I longed to join the lovers in their ecstasy. I wanted to plug into them as into an electric circuit. Instead, I coughed and opened my eyes wide. They sprang apart.
Comyns had, at least, the grace to blush. Not so my Magda, who smiled and raised her left brow. "Well, young man," she said, "and how are we this morning?"
Just like that: "Well, young man"! I almost fainted; I don't know what I stuttered in reply. You see, that was what she used
to call me all those years ago! Just so: "junger Mann," in her delightful Hungarian accent. "Talk only when you're spoken to, junger Mann"; "Ach, junger Mann, how boring you are!" Tell me, how did this child from Cleveland know that?
Comyns used his stethoscope and felt my pulse. His fingers were as cold as the metal disk. "You're as healthy as I am," he said. "All you need is a little exercise."
"Ah, but I'll still need my sleeping pills," I said cunningly. "Please, doctor, I'll still need them."
"Not on your life. No more goldbricking." He wagged a finger at me in mock admonition. "You some kind of junkie?"
Success!
Meanwhile, I am to avoid all excitement—what idiocy!— and to do as I am ordered by my therapist, a specialist in whom—here Comyns blushed once more—he has the greatest confidence.
Now it was Magda's turn. She pulled back the covers before I could stop her and revealed my shame. "Tsk, tsk." I closed my eyes. "Let's see now." She bent my arms, raised them, squeezed the muscles; she did the same with my legs. One would have sworn she knew what she was doing. "All right, now let's see what you can do." And I was made to walk around my room, a performing animal, stand in place and bend my legs, swing my arms like a drum majorette, arch my back. At the end of this demonstration of my limberness, the room was spinning. I tried to mask the rising nausea by leaning casually, unconcernedly, against the bureau. She turned to Comyns and they nodded at one another, two specialists of one mind.
"We've got a date," she said. "Eleven sharp, in the lobby. We'll take a stroll along Riverside Drive, look at the birds and the bees, see if they're up to their old tricks." She and the doctor were in lockstep.
"Watch out for him, now, Miss Dattner," said Comyns. "I'm told he's pretty hot stuff."
She winked at me. "Remember, eleven sharp."
"In the lobby," I said.
I watched them contrive to rub against one another as they left my room. How hateful they were! Rage boiled within me. How defenseless we are, we "old folk," in a world of the young. To them I was not a man, equipped with intelligence and feeling. I was a "character," a caricature; more accurately, perhaps, I was a child, incapable of following fully an adult conversation whose nuances were deemed to be well beyond my supposedly immature understanding.
For OUR RENDEZVOUS I dressed with care, hoping to erase the image Magda must be carrying of me, wasted limbs and sodden nightshirt. The mirror was not flattering: I had achieved only modest success. My good gray suit hung shapelessly on me; like my nose, it has grown in proportion as my flesh has withered. On the other hand, a blue polka-dot silk tie, neatly fixed with a pin, and a pocket handkerchief, generously flounced, were after all interesting foci. And so was my boutonniere, a Shasta daisy I had removed from the breakfast room. I examined myself this way and that. No use, no use. As Prufrock puts it, "I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be." Fortunately, I still hold myself erect.
Precisely as the eleventh hour registered on the clock above Selma's bulletproof window, I entered the lobby. Magda Damrosch—no, henceforth I shall call her by her new name,
Mandy Dattner—Miss Dattner was not there. I felt like a rejected swain. Thus cavalierly had Magda herself always treated me. I sat down in a lobby chair and waited. Selma waved to me through the glass. I pretended not to notice.
"Ah, but you have missed him, liebes Frdulein. He was here with the customs officer and the other officials when we stopped at the border. Do please allow me to find him for you."
She closed the door and sat down. "But that is exactly what I don't want you to do."
"But...?"
"With me it's a matter of principle," she said. "Do sit down, young man."
I obeyed. "But what, if I may ask, is the principle?"
She smiled and raised her left brow. The arrow of Cupid lodged itself firmly in my heart. "I cannot be expected to discuss my principles with a young man to whom I have not yet been introduced, a young man who, for all I know, may himself be unprincipled."
We got along famously after that, chattering our way into Zurich. Still, it must be admitted that she revealed little of herself. While she did not scruple to ask me the most outrageously personal questions, she somehow, without actually saying so, made it clear that any personal question of mine would bring our friendly conversation to an immediate halt, a delicate bud blasted by my clumsiness, my bad manners. Was I still a virgin, she wanted to know, or had I freed myself from Mama's apron strings? Such a question in 1915 from a young lady to a gentleman stranger! It was unheard-of. It was also exhilarating, captivating. I was in fact still a virgin, but I did not know whether experience or inexperience would prove the more appealing to her. On the whole, it seemed better to emphasize my independence and let her think what she would. "You see me here without Mama," I said. Then why was I not laying down my life for the Kaiser? This was a sore point. I actually believed at that time all that dangerous, disgusting rubbish about Kaiser, Vaterland, and Kameradschafi. Yes, I really did. I had longed to become a war
hero; to my shame, I still wove fantasies of my exploits at the front:
A bullet came a-flying: "Is it meant for me or thee?" Him did it tear away, Him at my feet did lay, As 'twere a piece of me.
(Excuse the poor translation of Uhland's poem. I've grown rusty.) It was always my comrade-in-arms who received the bullet. As for me, I wiped away a manly tear and went on to living glory. My God, can you imagine!
But in the early heady days of mobilization, when there were not uniforms enough to put on the backs of all the eager volunteers, I had been pronounced unfit for military service, my missing parts denying me access to the Kaiser's sausage grinder. ("So you see, Frieda," Aunt Manya had said, "it all turned out for the best.") There was nothing for it in that sun-bright carriage but to hint at some mysterious war-related mission: "There is more than one way to serve the Kaiser." I suppose I blushed.
"Reasons of state!" She laughed, delighted. "Well, I must not ask you to reveal state secrets, secrets upon which the fate of all Europe no doubt depends." I squirmed.
"Tell me instead," she went on, "what your prewar occupation was."
I toyed for a moment with several possibilities but saw her mocking smile. "I was—I am—a poet." "Wonderful! Say something in poetry." "Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen bliihn —" "Not that Goethe rubbish, something of your own." Goethe rubbish! Good heavens! I began to intone my
favorite poem from Days of Darkness, Nights of Light. In it a young man caught in the coils of a femme fatale expresses his wretchedness.
"Rubbish!"
She had allowed me no more than half a dozen lines. I knew in my soul that hers was the first word of honest criticism my poetry had ever received.
As the train pulled into the Bahnhofzt Zurich, she gave me my instructions. We were to walk together along the platform toward the ticket collector, obviously companions. About fifteen paces from the wicket, I was to put down my bags and begin worriedly to feel in my pockets. I had mislaid something, something important, perhaps left it on the train. Meanwhile, she would herself walk on through the wicket and stop just beyond it, indicating to the collector with a nod of her head that she was waiting for me. Perhaps she would stamp her foot impatiently. I was to open one of my bags, obviously looking for the lost item. But I should contrive to keep an eye on her. When I saw that she had successfully mingled with the crowd departing the Bahnhof I was to give a cry of relief—I had found it!—do up my bag, and go and hand in my ticket to the collector. Should I be asked for her ticket, I had only to tell the truth: I had met the lady that afternoon on the train; only in that sense had we been traveling together.
There, that was easy enough, wasn't it? Did I understand what I was to do? "We'll make something of you yet, young man."
The plan terrified me. She was asking me to abet her in the commission of a crime. My bourgeois soul rebelled against the very idea. If she found herself temporarily embarrassed, I told her as delicately as I could, I would be honored to furnish her with the money for a ticket.
"What a silly mama's boy you are!"
As it turned out, her plan worked like magic. When, with a pounding heart, I handed my ticket to the collector, he merely took it and reached past me for the next. He had forgotten all about her.
Too late I realized that I had no idea where I might find her. All Zurich yawned before me. My eyes smarted, and I cursed my stupidity.
confidently carrying the weight of our world on his shoulders, the sedentary sitting up alertly on both sides as he passed, smiling at him, "Good morning, Dr Weisskopf," solo-ambulant material all. The great man continued on his way.
Three of the four members of I Solisti di Morrisania, our string quartet, scurried across the lobby on their way out, prompting speculation among the sedentary that the group was breaking up, that Menasha Futterman, the missing cellist, was seriously ill, was perhaps already dead. Then Futterman emerged from the cloakroom, rosy-cheeked, buttoning up. "How you doing, Menasha? Feeling okay?" To which, Futterman, alarmed: "Sure I'm okay. What you think? I don't look okay?" And he hurried to join his mates, a hand over his heart. "That's not a well man," the sedentary agreed with satisfaction.
He
rmione Perlmutter skipped in from the street, her Mary Janes twinkling, scanned the bulletin board, found her message, glanced at her watch, stamped a frustrated foot, and turned to skip out again, merely waving at Selma, throwing the solo-ambulant bookkeeping into disarray. For me, La Perlmutter did not spare even a glance, a rudeness duly noted by the sedentary, who nodded to one another very wisely. As I have hinted, she does not much like me.
Hermione and I arrived here in the same week, she a widow of some years' standing and I once more a widower. These circumstances threw us together, for we were both feeling our way into a new community. Perhaps I misunderstood her overtures. It seemed to me that she was after more than friendship. My experience with the Contessa, my second wife, had made me wary. La Perlmutter would often sit and stare at me with a very strange smile on her lips. She was always at my elbow—in the dining room, in the library, on my walks. "Hermione is a bit of a mouthful," she said. "Why not call me Hannah?"
Over the course of those first few weeks, I learned quite a
lot about her. She was born into London's East End, a teeming Jewish community, daughter to a tailor and his seamstress wife, turn-of-the-century Russian emigrants who had stopped off in England on their way to America and settled there. She was the last of seven children, "the baby, everyone's pet," she said, placing a finger upon her chin, a gesture of a faraway time. "As soon as they'd scraped together a little money, Daddy sent for Mummy's parents. Times were hard, but one thing we had in plenty was love. I would sit for hours on my granny's lap, smothered in kisses. She was something of a philosopher, as a young woman an active socialist, later disillusioned. No remark was permitted to stray past her unexamined. 'The Bolsheviks are transforming Russia,' Grandfather might say innocently. 'Wait a minute, smarty,' my granny would interrupt him, 'a Bolshevik is different from a Cossack? A Russian is a Russian. Tell me, what isz. Bolshevik?' And they were off on an hourlong discussion. That was my milieu."
