Which was when I turned to Romei. He wrote about the impossibility of New Life, the groundlessness that lies between the lines. There was no sense in Romei that language could reach beyond its limitations, or the abuse done to it, to connect one self to another. Where Celan had written, When only the nothingness stood between us, we found our way, all the way, to each other, Romei instead would write, There was only nothingness. Not just the impossibility of meeting, but the impossibility of there being an Other there to meet.
There was no Other for Romei: just Romei and the failure of language to do its job. His mind was empty—not in a cozy Zen sort of way, but in a barren, all-there-is-is-void, no-point-in-even-trying sort of way.
This had appealed to me in my twenties; not so much now. I had a family, I had my Comfort Zone—what use did I have for the void?
I was staring, I realized, out the window at People of the Book. The bookstore Benny “Jellyroll” Jablonsky ran in addition to editing Gilgul and acting as part-time rabbi to his New Age congregation. A year ago, after helping me with German translations for “Rose No One,” my story about Celan, Benny had made a pass at me, a clumsy offering between bookcases labeled Trash Novels and Filthy Lucre. I avoided the store now. But Benny had given Romei my number; maybe it was time I bought myself some books.
8
BILLBOARD ARTIST OF THE HEART
Inside People of the Book, a green-haired girl wearing a child’s tartan, a happy-face T-shirt (but not a happy face), and a Stop & Shop nametag that said “Hello, I’m Lila!” advised me that Benny was out. She wouldn’t look me in the eye: she needed all her concentration, apparently, for the Daily News Jumble.
I wasn’t surprised: Benny was probably at one of the rabbi gigs he took to support his literary habit (performer of interfaith marriages, virtual mohel for parents who want the celebration without the slice). Or he might be in his apartment two floors above the store, but I wasn’t about to ring the bell.
I found Romei’s books in Benny’s Great Wall of Poetry. Handsome and pricey, they’d been reissued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on the occasion of the Great Man’s sojourn to Stockholm. His by-now-famous face, in different poses, filled the back covers: salt-and-pepper goatee, more salt than pepper. Straight brown hair, a centimeter too long. Pale, plump cheeks, pouchy eyes. Simple wire-rimmed glasses. Yankees baseball cap.
I brought the books to Benny’s folding-table café (one table, reserved for Friends of Benny), drank the organic ginger beer Lila brought me grudgingly from out back.
The store hadn’t changed in the year since I’d visited last: unpacked boxes still blocked aisles and Marla, Benny’s Persian, still held court in her book box. I went over to pay obeisance. She tolerated my head scritch, but withheld her purr, which she reserved for Benny.
How I’d missed this place! Over by the cash register, where bestsellers should have been stacked in attractive pyramids, stood that smallish bookcase holding issues of Gilgul and other literary magazines. What passed for impulse purchases among People of the Book.
I couldn’t resist: I left my table to browse the bookcase, returned to find the table gone, my books gone. Irritated, I got new copies and asked Lila if I could leave Benny a message.
Sure, she said, opening The Anxiety of Influence and handing me a pen. Go for it.
Just then, Benny appeared, trotting down the steps from his mezzanine office, ritual tzitzit fringes flying from the four corners of his garment.
Benny was six and a half feet tall; before he became a rollerblading vegan he’d looked like a dark-haired Santa, with full beard and even fuller cheeks. At his poorest, he’d nearly sold himself to Macy’s, but didn’t—bad faith like that couldn’t be atoned for in a single lifetime, he said. Also, he wouldn’t tuck in his tzitzit, which Macy’s thought might confuse the kiddies.
That was years ago. Now Benny was lean and suntanned: he said his morning prayers while gliding through the park in a cherry-red bodysuit—the only time he dressed without tzitzit.
Shir chadash! he sang out (his psalmic name for me: “new song”).
Rabbi! I shouted.
Why didn’t you tell Marie to come get me?
Marie?
Benny looked tired. More tired than usual. His owl eyes sagged, there was a softness to his patrician cheekbones, his eyebrows were turning a patchy gray.
Uh, I said, looking at Marie-cum-Lila, who looked me in the eye now, though blankly. I figured you were busy.
Don’t mind her, he whispered, pecking at my cheek. She’s brilliant but moody.
All Benny’s protégées were brilliant but moody, which was why his store was such a mess. The manic ones invented new shelving systems, the depressed ones watched as towers of dictionaries toppled onto not-so-politically-correct children’s books. Given the state of the store, I guessed his latest beauty was of the latter affliction.
Benny led me to the back of the store, where he found the folding table and opened it in front of the section marked Victimization Manuals (books you and I might call Self-Help).
She’s a graphic artist, he said, still whispering. Works exclusively on billboards.
Must not bring in a lot, I said, trying not to smile.
She’s between grants, he said. The neck of his Rainbow Gathering T-shirt was frayed; he had a spot of dried tomato on his cheek, above his beard. So! Shira! he said. Nice to see you! What’ve you been up to?
Temping in Jersey. I’m too slow to type in Manhattan! I said, laughing.
Your parents must be proud!
I stared.
It’s been a while. Sorry! Really! I forgot!
How long has it been? I asked, though I knew.
A year? he asked, as if astonished.
Did he resent being dumped? No, Benny wasn’t a hider. Everything he thought, everything he felt was writ large on his face: he was a billboard artist of the heart.
He asked about Andi. She was about to start third grade, I said. Her current ambition: to be a White House intern, so she too could be on TV every night.
Benny looked at me blankly: he wasn’t one for the evening news, apparently.
I see Ahmad now and then, he said. He single-handedly sustains my Nancy Drew section.
I laughed.
He’s greatly interested in the mystery of things, I said.
I assume you’re here because …
Yes! I said. He called!
•
Just a sec, he said, returning a kitten to Marla, who lay regal and sleepy-eyed in her Simon & Schuster box. She stood, and arched her back, and kissed Benny’s hand, apparently uninterested in her prodigal chick, then followed him to his seat and leapt onto his lap. Her purr was prodigious.
Benny asked for the skinny. I gave it to him, Reader’s Digest–style: Vita Nuova, Romei’s strange requirement that I finish by the end of the year.
Shira, that’s amazing! he said when I was done, looking at me in wonder, as if he thought this miracle somehow my doing. Which, given his belief in karma, he probably did. We must drink to your success! Ginger beer?
He put Marla gently on the ground. Offended, she returned to her box.
Libations! he exclaimed when he returned.
L’chaim, I added gamely.
I assume Romei is paying you?
A lot! I said.
Good! You can sponsor Son of Gilgul! It’s reincarnating: next issue by Y2K.
I hadn’t realized Gilgul was dead!
You’d know if you were still sending me stories, ma cherie.
I didn’t bother explaining that I’d stopped writing. Ahmad had despised my last story (“Domino Effect,” about Jonah); Jonah’s sister Jeanette stopped talking to me because of it. I asked instead about the magazine. Benny clasped his hands behind his head and extended his long, jean-clad legs into the aisle.
I had a few lean years. My board forced me to close.
That’s the fate of the gilgul, right? The soul eternally reincarnating?
Unt
il we get it right. Some of us are going to be here a very long time.
I’m sure your gilgul’s in great shape.
Humph, he said. So Romei’s an interesting guy, huh?
I accepted the change of subject.
Imagine, I said, giving up your homeland and language to write terza rima in Roma!
Exactly! Benny said. Prose writers change languages all the time—Nabokov, Conrad …
Ionesco, Tristan Tzara, if we stick to his countrymen. But poets? It isn’t done!
Except by Romei.
I assume he was fleeing censorship and communism, I said.
Or the country that killed his parents, Benny said pensively, staring into the middle distance, which at People of the Book meant the shelf for Games People Play.
Of course, I said, remembering. Benny’s father had been a Russian POW who’d ended up hunting down Nazis after the war. He wasn’t a nice man, may he rest in peace. Benny’s mother had escaped to the U.S. in 1939 after the murder of her first husband, whom she hadn’t particularly liked. She’d been a dancer; in America she kept books for her brother-in-law’s schmatta business. The family she left behind died, like most families left behind.
It makes sense he doesn’t write in Romanian, I said. He would have been an imperialist poet non grata in Romania. No one would have published his books there. Who’s going to read poetry in Romanian, if Romanians in Romania can’t?
Paul Celan wrote in German, Benny added, but German was his mother tongue.
Right! I said.
But still, he said, imagine!
We sipped our drinks, imagining.
So what do you know about his project? This would be his first since, what?
Nonsense Syllables.
And his first “story.”
Yes, I said.
What is this Vita Nuova business?
Early work of Dante, I said. Written in 1294, before the Comedy, before his exile from Florence. Really, you don’t know it?
Benny laughed. Not my cup of tea, exactly.
Vita Nuova traces the evolution of Dante’s love for Beatrice and his poetic response to that love. He includes relevant poems, which he explicates ad nauseum.
For example?
For example: I was thinking of the blessed Beatrice when I swooned and had a vision of the blessed Beatrice and out popped a sonnet about the blessed Beatrice, this one here, in which I swoon, have a vision, and write a sonnet about the blessed Beatrice. Story, poem, explication.
Benny laughed again.
My case is resting, he said. But it’s not just poems and explication—you said it’s a story?
After a fashion, I said. Not quite as gripping as the Divine Comedy, but it has something of a “hero’s journey” structure.
I described to Benny what I considered to be Vita Nuova’s mythic structure (but refrained from offering a copy of the essay in which I elaborated this theory): Call, Threshold, Deception, Muse, Death, Test, and Return. The call identifies Dante as the ur-hero of all story: Adam called by Eve to taste; Sam Spade called by the blonde to solve a mystery. Sometimes the hero is reluctant: happy in his easy chair, he tries to avoid the call, he hides out or runs away. Odysseus feigns madness to avoid the draft; Rick tells Ilsa he’s a sideliner.
The hero eventually has to come around, though, or there can be no story. He makes his commitment, crosses the threshold, and thrusts himself into story, where, aided by mentors, inspired by beauties, deceived by tricksters, challenged by opponents, he makes allies, surmounts obstacles, faces death, and is reborn to face his final test. Victorious, he returns to Kansas bringing exactly what his people need—the elixir, the golden crown. Sometimes he also gets the girl. Not something I made up, I added.
But eccentric when applied to Dante, Benny said.
Not commonplace, I agreed. Especially when you consider that Dante’s hero battles sin, not dragons.
What kind of sin? Something juicy?
Just your garden variety, live-your-life-you’re-bound-to-sin kind of thing.
So young Mr. Dante is a hero in this book about poetry. Can a book about poetry have a hero?
He is a hero, in his own mind! He’s called by love to be a poet, though of course he loves from afar. He writes poems, which of course come up short because nothing is good enough for Beatrice. He tries to contemplate her perfections, can’t always manage it, gets advice, the advice changes—then Beatrice dies, and he’s thrown off course—maybe he even despairs. He finally has a vision of Beatrice in heaven—an ineffable vision—that sets him up for life—aesthetically and, we assume, spiritually. That’s enough to make him a hero, right? A man on a lonely journey toward the good, trying to live his life right? A pilgrim hero!
Coming soon to a theater near you!
Hah! Though his victory is just as inevitable as that of any dragon slayer. Redemption is always the light at the end of the tunnel, isn’t it? Even when Dante strays, you know his narrative will keep him on the straight and narrow …
Sadly, we no longer believe in such a thing, Benny replied.
The straight-line narrative to salvation has been discredited, yes.
By Romei, among others. So what’s Romei want with it? He doesn’t go in much for story.
Or tradition. And now he’s taking on the Big Guy.
If you take on a Big Guy, you take on his Big Work, no?
Right, I said, the Divine Comedy. You admit you’ve reached the middle of your life’s journey, and you survey the terrain.
Romei’s hardly at the middle of his life’s journey! What is he, seventy by now?
At least seventy-five! I said.
So he’s reached the end of his life’s journey, Benny said. You say Vita Nuova was written by a young man about recent events, but Romei, being old, writes about temps perdus.
Yes! I said. Dante writes with pre-exilic promise, Romei from the perspective of been-there-done-that. Another thing: Dante is nothing if not certain—life has meaning and he knows what it is.
Lucky man! Benny said.
But Romei’s made a career out of ridiculing nostalgia for meaning. What will he do now? Stick to his guns, reject Dante’s straight-line narrative to salvation? Or has age placed him in the trenches, where all sinners cry out to be saved?
Silence.
Benny?
Do you believe in forgiveness? he asked. What do you think it is?
Forgiveness? I said. No idea!
Not your favorite subject.
You could say that.
We sipped our ginger beer.
Why do you think Romei’s going public? Benny asked. He’s always been so private.
We talked about this for a while. Okay, more than a while. We wondered about the same things, then found additional things to wonder about.
At one point, Benny sent Marie to get vegan donuts from Cuppa Joe’s; she came back empty-handed: all out, she said, lacking the resources, apparently, to find an alternative.
We didn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion about the mysteries of Romei, but our discussion had been more than satisfactory. When I left, I promised to stay in touch. Benny bowed low to kiss me goodbye, his long beard tickling my neck.
I must be a freak, I thought as I started crossing the street: I’d found our conversation arousing. Had Benny felt it too, the bodily effect of two minds meeting?
Wait! he cried, and waved me back to the store. I blushed as he had Marie credit my card thirty percent. Gilgul alumna, he explained to Marie, whose fingernails, I noticed, were speckled green to match her hair and her eyes, which were empty and flat. She was not as young as I’d thought—in her mid-thirties, at least. I found myself wondering if Benny was seeing her, much as I’d wondered about Gilda, the tapestry artist who’d stolen his stock of erotica and the contents of his cash register when she’d left, or Yasmeen, the daughter of a sheikh, who wore a veil, though she hoped for a career on the stage.
I decided no, he couldn’t be involved with a sullen,
drugged-out fraud of an artist. Who dressed like a child. And was willing to deface books. Could he?
9
Y2K POETRY
We always dressed for Friday Night Dinner: on this evening, Ahmad wore the smoking jacket I’d gotten him at Goodwill, while Andi wore her Pretty Princess backpack and tutu. For my part, I’d brushed my hair and put on some Docksiders. Tonight, because we were celebrating, we went out. Andi requested the China Doll: she enjoyed practicing the Chinese she’d learned at Chinese-Spanish-French quadrilingual preschool. She also knew she could make an entire meal there out of pancakes.
You’re looking radiant, my dear, Ahmad said, as we walked over. I think the absence of Aurora-driving, gold-toothpick-toting flavor salesmen agrees with you.
That was six jobs ago, I said.
Still, he said.
It’s the glow of clean living, I said.
It’s a shtupping glow, he replied. Who is it?
Andi was a few steps ahead of us, skipping and singing a science song.
No one! I said. I’m not shtupping anyone!
Shira Greene, it is not acceptable to keep things from your oldest friend. You know I live vicariously through your adventures.
Ahmad sometimes said outrageous things, and sometimes he believed them: I had few adventures these days and rarely discussed them, whereas he had adventures galore.
No adventure, I said, but I did see Benny today—and I told him with increasing animation about the Great Wall of Poetry, the numb-nut salesgirl who couldn’t buy donuts, Benny’s incisive commentary, how fun it was to talk about books, and didn’t he think Benny cute in his own rabbinical way, for a guy with long legs and gray, patchy eyebrows?
Benny? he asked. Bookstore Benny? Careful!—and he grabbed my arm to stop me walking into traffic.
Good on Paper Page 4
