by Daniel Stern
“No, I guess not. As long as you do.”
“Clinger. Albert Clinger. He’s an artist.”
Rovic grinned weakly. “He’d better not cling too hard.” Then he added, “I missed her at the theater after lunch. Has she heard yet? Did Jud tell her?”
Louise nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “I couldn’t fight them all.”
“Did you fight?”
“That girl is damned unusual. You saw her.”
“Yes, she’s so unusual that I’m going to advise Janet to take the standby job.”
“What do you mean?”
“This Dasha is good. In fact, she gave me goose pimples with that last speech. But the excitement comes from an erratic quality. A kind of controlled hysteria. I’m telling you, Paul, that girl doesn’t have the emotional staying power. That hysteria won’t stay controlled. And I want Janet to be standby because when the play opens this eccentric talent will not be on stage. I don’t know where she’ll be, but it won’t be in our play.”
“You’re a prophet tonight.”
“Do you think I’m far off the mark?”
“It must be pretty obvious. Everyone seems to sense it about her.”
“And still, they chose her?”
He nodded.
“Then it must be Jud.”
Paul was silent. It was a silence he didn’t like, but he held it. He took a cigarette and placed it between his lips.
“Did you fight for Janet, Paul? Tell me that.” Paul drew too hard on the unlit cigarette and the taste of tobacco was bitter.
“Yes,” he said, “I fought as hard as I could.”
“Was that what’s-his-name there? The new friend of Jud’s?”
“Walkowitz? Yes, he was with us.”
“Who was he for?”
“You couldn’t tell. He was in between all the time. You can’t tell what he really thinks.” Paul coughed a short laugh. “I nicknamed him the Gray Eminence, and Joe was embarrassed because he thought it was Pope Pius.”
“Will Janet take the standby job?”
“No.” Paul drifted into the living room and toward the broad windows fronting the river. He said into the white swirl, “Do you think it will ever stop snowing? It may be a grim winter.”
“She’ll do it if you tell her to.”
He turned and looked at her quizzically. “Yes, but will it stop snowing if I command it?”
Louise laughed. As he watched the pink curve of her mouth, Paul noticed that there was a musical quality to her laughter that hadn’t been there for a long time. She knew that he would convince Janet to take the standby job if she wanted him to. She only laughs real laughter when she’s winning, he thought. The thought displeased him.
He turned away from her and faced the steady fall of snow. “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell her.”
Louise laid her head on his shoulder. “Good,” she said, and then added, not entirely without irony, “Now try the snow.”
15
“WHY DOES YOUR ROOM have to be so bare?” Marianne said.
Walkowitz smiled. “That’s the idea. The twentieth century monk’s cell is a sparsely furnished Gramercy Park hotel room.”
“You’re not behaving much like a monk.”
“Having second thoughts, regrets, since this afternoon? And apparently you haven’t read Boccaccio or Rabelais on the clergy.”
“I don’t like myself very much for what happened, no. But just because I’m not co-operating any more doesn’t mean I haven’t read—whatever their names were.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use words like co-operating.”
“What would you prefer?”
“Responding, say.”
“And suppose that never happens again?”
Walkowitz reached for her. He kissed her with hard lips and a determined thrust of the head, like a bird pecking at food. Marianne pulled away, angry and aroused. He drew her back again and kissed her persistently. She pulled away from him, pushing out because he did not immediately yield her. She moved and kicked, muttering crazily: “I should have gone away … it wouldn’t have happened … stupid to stay here …”
Suddenly nothing held her. She was free, weightless and giddy. Walkowitz was bent over. His bad leg twitched uncontrollably.
“What is it?” Marianne asked.
“Nothing.” Walkowitz’s face was splotched with white. “It’s jumpy, that’s all.”
“Did I hit it?”
“I don’t know. It’ll stop.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sat down on the bed and held the knee with both hands. She came over to him and stood waiting. After a time the jerking stopped.
Walkowitz lay back on the bed, the leg outstretched and still.
“Carl …”
“Yes.”
“Will it always be like this?”
“More or less, though this jumping business is rare.”
She wiped his face with a handkerchief. Her movements were tentative, as if she expected him to pull away at any moment. She dried the corners of his eyes, too.
“Not true tears.” He grinned. “Involuntary, forced by physical pain. It’s funny, though. It never jumped like that till long after the camps. Strain brings it on, but it still has the feeling of fear with it. As if the leg were getting ready in advance for a blow or a kick that never came.”
Marianne sat on the edge of the bed and bent over the inert limb.
“What nonsense I’m talking,” Walkowitz murmured. Marianne put out a hand and pressed it gently to the kneecap.
“Hurt?”
“It feels good. It felt good to tell somebody about it, too—foolish as it sounds to the naked ear.”
“Why should it sound foolish, Carl?”
He said nothing and she continued to rub the knee slowly. Walkowitz’s hand touched her hip and rested there. A few moments later, when he kissed her, she cradled his head with one hand while the other kept its tender grasp on his left knee.
Marianne watched him through half-closed eyes. He was lying next to her, half turned toward her on his good leg and hip. His chest was bare, and in the bluish light of the hotel room his flesh looked strange. There was a scattering of hair on his stomach and chest; she’d been surprised at how fine it was—thin brown strands bunched together occasionally with a catalyst of gray. She watched half secretively as he reached for her with a huge hand. He spread her legs, moving her with gentleness but determination. Marianne was excited by the way he manipulated her, but she had a moment of panic when she felt him ready to enter her. Past his shoulder, the splotchy walls of the room seemed strange and threatening, like the hotel rooms she’d stayed in when she was on tour; when the bellhop had cornered her in the elevator one night and had come to her room early in the morning and frightened her. But then she saw his half-closed eye almost touching hers, and she reached up to touch the lid, gently. He murmured something.
“What is it?”
“You’re going to stay. You’re not going away, are you?” Before she could answer, he closed her mouth with his.
The hotel windows were poorly sealed, and snow drifted into the corners of the windowsill …
By early the next morning the city was covered by a shallow but well-packed surface of snow. Further uptown, in front of the theater, the truck that was unloading the flats for the stage sets of the concentration camp had a difficult time, its wheels refusing to grip and hold. But by the time it was parked and the driver and his helper were unloading the flats, sweating underneath their heavy clothes in spite of the cold, the snowfall had stopped. A chilly sun slid out from behind a mass of unbroken clouds. In the box office the cashier finished sipping from a container of hot coffee and turned his attention to the boxes of tickets, which had just arrived.
THE JOURNAL OF CARL WALKOWITZ
Everything goes well, but also painfully. Each step taken so far has had something like the desired result, but there’s a by-product I hadn’t c
ounted on. In bringing him closer and closer to that part of the past he seems to have screened out so well, I’m drawn closer to it than even I can bear—and still breathe freely. But that doesn’t matter. If I don’t smother first I’ll survive this determined survivor.
The first step has been taken: the lovely, Gentile wife, Kramer’s sweet reward for his sufferings. Forgetfulness on a blonde pillow for the man who knows how to make the most of his opportunities. But yesterday, when the fortunate moment came, I settled it to my advantage. And strangely enough, the cachet that delivered my sensitive blonde hostage to me was: empathy. Strange gambles sometimes pay extraordinary odds, and I have held Marianne Kramer … and still hold her. She wants me to “understand.” Well, I have seen the sweet sleepwalker awake and asleep, and I understand. Next I will make her understand. And then—
But again, I remember things, small details I never thought to envision. My father and his Sunday night classes in Political Science … the loneliness of Sunday nights with my mother away at her special classes and no one in the house but myself, with my books and the slow Sunday night beating of my pulse …
What calls all this up, now? I think perhaps the way Rovic and Jud play at Father and Son. Yet when I observe them, they are more real than myself and my father. I think that the real “father” or “mother” can be perceived only as fantasy. These superhuman figures that tower over us in infancy and childhood are destined by biology, by the nature of size and perception, never to have their own reality for us; they are automatically elected to be replaced by more workable substitutes. That unreal infant prelude to life in which we are helpless spans a gap that is unbridgeable. Ulysses seeks on.
Last night I was speaking to young Ulysses (Kramer) about the play and he mentioned his family. I kept my composure.
“I was more fortunate than most,” he said. “I had a chance to try and save them.”
“And?” I said.
“I took it.”
“What do you mean?” I said, cool as I could manage.
“It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t save them, finally.”
And the evening proceeded, flowing past that monstrous admission. He was oblivious to his tone or the shadow meanings of his words. How does a man survive such subtractions? Especially today, when subtraction is so final? I think of the burial urn unearthed in the seventeenth century that occasioned Thomas Browne’s book—the book my father used to torment me with when my second subject at the Gymnasium was English. An urn with ashes and bones, in the days when even ashes and bones held possibilities of connection to other men. Only think of Lidice, the twentieth century in action—absolute negation of existence, the era of the uncity, the unperson, of possibilities of subtraction down to zero.
My good friend Kramer, I have subtractions prepared for you. Let us see how you’ll survive them.
1) Wife
2) Father (ersatz)
3) Play
4) ?
BOOK THREE
1
THE SET WAS TAKING form. It was two weeks before the play was to open, and already, on the stage, a camp street was half erected. One flat, painted in perspective to show leafless trees outside a prisoner’s barracks, was in place at the right rear. At the left front, almost at the apron of the stage, the S.S. Sturmbannführer office was slotted in at an angle so that the interior action could be clearly seen. Yet the office was not so separated from the barrack that one could forget the connection between the two.
On Tuesday morning at eleven A.M., Michaels, the designer, was engaged in instructing four workmen in the hanging of an elaborate structure, the gates to the camp.
“Up higher. No, still higher.” He called out to Paul Rovic, who was sitting in the rear row of the orchestra: “How’s that, Paul? High enough?”
“One inch higher and Jud will have your life. Those three words have to be visible and legible.”
“But they’re German. They’ll only confuse the audience.”
“So is Wiener schnitzel, but it doesn’t confuse me.”
“All right.” He was reaching for the replica of the gates that bore the words Arbeit Macht Frei with his elegantly manicured and encuffed hand, when Paul called out: “Are you crazy? Don’t touch that or we’ll have the union all over us!”
Michaels blushed at the grins of the workmen, rapidly descended the ladder and walked back to where Paul sat.
“What do you think?” Paul asked.
“Marvelous, just marvelous.”
Paul smiled. “The very word.”
Michaels changed to a mild pleading tone. “Now that you see I’m being so co-operative, could you push Jud a little on that matter? You know …”
“Your friend, the lighting man?”
“His name is Rolfe.”
“Yes, of course. Don’t worry, I’ll get it settled today.”
“Marvelous, just marvelous.”
Downstairs, in the red plush and carpeted lounge, Jud was rehearsing several members of the cast, while Walkowitz lay on a scratched leather couch, making changes in the script. Jud put his arm around Saul Waite’s shoulder and walked up and down with him. It was an odd sight because Saul was about half a foot taller than Jud; a lanky, dark-blond young man of twenty-two, he was lately from Nebraska and enjoying the release from conventional restrictions—verbal, in particular.
“Don’t say it as if you’re angry. You’re a member of the elite guard, the S.S. When you say to a prisoner, “Aufstehn!” you assume he’ll stand up instantly. You’re used to command. Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of forming the audience’s conclusion for them. You mustn’t have contempt for the man you’re playing, in any way.”
Saul said: “Aufstehn!”
Emmet Thomas leaped up from his chair.
“Jud,” Saul complained, “he shouldn’t reply with a leap like that. You’d think he was a God-damned Nazi, stead of a prisoner. Besides, he’s been screwing a girl over to the hospital nights. He should be a little beat.”
Jud grinned at him and joined Walkowitz on the couch. He looked at the sketch the other man had drawn on his script.
“When Avrum hides in the hospital, he would have to get there by sneaking around the gypsies’ compound. See?” Walkowitz indicated the route.
Jud frowned. “Do you recall the gypsies’ compound?”
“Yes.”
“Then how come I don’t?”
Walkowitz squinted up at him. “Some day we must have a talk about that, my friend.”
“About what I remember and what I don’t?”
“Precisely. But not right now. Where’s Dasha? The stage will be free pretty soon and we’ll need her.”
“She wasn’t feeling too well. She’s lying down in my office.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t give me that. She’s scared a little, that’s all.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m having a lunch interview with Hendrix.”
“Watch yourself,” Walkowitz said, “because Lear will be watching you.”
“I can handle him. And I wish you’d try to get along with him. Not just for this production. I can manage. But if this play comes off the way I expect, Joe Lear will be a real producer.”
“Not just a boy producer, eh?”
Jud ignored this and said, “I’m taking Marianne along to soften Hendrix up.”
“That has an obscene ring.”
“We’d better find you a girl friend, soon.”
“All right.”
“But not till after the opening. I need you twenty-four hours a day till then.”
Paul appeared at the entrance to the lounge. His wave caught Jud’s eye.
“The gates are up if anyone wants to see them,” Paul called out.
Jud closed the script he had taken from Walkowitz and said quietly: “Call lunch now. Everybody onstage at one-thirty.” Then he said in an undertone: “I want to see the gates.”
The others drifted upstairs after Paul. Jud struggled into his
storm coat. “The damned thing hasn’t had time to get dry this winter. Are you busy tonight?”
“I’m on call twenty-four hours a day.”
“I have a meeting with Paul, Joe Lear, and some money people, so I can’t take Marianne to the preview. I wish you would. It’s her newest picture, and the studio is letting her stay here these extra three weeks—sending the costumes East and everything. So she should go.”
He looked at Walkowitz. “You’ve never seen her work? I envy you—you’re in for a surprise.”
“Oh?”
“She’s first rate. The script and the director weren’t too good—”
“But her part was?”
“You’re learning about the theater.”
“Enough to worry about you tonight.”
“Why, what have you heard?”
“Nothing I can phrase, and I haven’t seen anything I can describe. But I know there’s been some dissatisfaction with the way the play is going.”
Jud sat down. He rubbed his eyes. Then he nodded, solemnly. “The bastards—I don’t know why they can’t have a little more faith and patience. One God-damned week of rehearsals and it starts.”
“Bastards, plural?”
“There’s nothing specific, even. Let’s not talk about it. It’s not a good idea to have it in the air that there’s trouble. Next thing, the actors get wind of it and you have a frightened company on your hands. Forget about it. I’ll settle things tonight.”
“Can I say one more thing?”
“Shoot.”
“Don’t forget that Janet was forced out of the lead, that Paul has to contend with that being rubbed in his face every time he sees her hanging around backstage, waiting for Dasha to take a fit of some kind. And God knows what he hears when he goes home at night.”
“You’re crazy. I understand about Louise, but you’re absolutely wrong about Paul. You don’t know the man.”
Walkowitz narrowed his good eye until it equaled the scope of the other one.
“I only know that his notes about the play are from the point of view of how he would direct it.”
“That’s because he’s a teacher. It’s why he makes an unusual producer.”
