I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories

by Norman Levine

  “Slate,” he said. “I note down whether the stone is flat or upright. And what it says on it.”

  “In Penzance,” I said, “I could only read the English.”

  “The Hebrew,” Jonathon said, “is much more interesting.”

  “There is a stone there to the father of Lemon Hart,’’ I said. “He had the rum concession for the British Navy.”

  Jonathon looked eagerly through his folder and picked out a single sheet of paper. “I’ll translate by sight—

  “Here lies a faithful man, President of the Congregation, who walked in the ways of the good, righteous and upright, bold as a lion and fleet as a deer to the voice of Torah and prayer, evening and morning his house was open wide, he gave of his bread to the hungry, his body dwells among the holy ones who are in the ground, but his soul is in the Garden of Eden: the President (of the Congregation) Rabbi Asher, son of the President Rabbi Hayyim died 9th Adar II, buried the 10th, in the year 5608 AM, may his soul be bound up in the bundle of life.

  “And in English it has, ‘In memory of Lemon Woolf, aged 65 years.’ The year 5608 would be 1848.”

  He turned over a few more loose pages in his folder. “Probably there was a learned man in the community who would know how to phrase these things. People would come to him. Listen to this—

  “And Jacob’s days came close to death and he called to his friend and said, I shall sleep with my fathers, bury me in their grave, give thirty pounds to my sister: the grave of Jacob son of R. Solomon the Levite, who died on the eve of the holy Sabbath, 24th Shebat, buried on Thursday the first day of the New Moon of Adar in the year AM 5606.

  “Then in English it has, ‘Sacred to the Memory of Jacob James Hart Esq., late her Britannic Majesty’s Consul for the Kingdom of Saxony and a native of this town . . .’”

  “Are you doing this for a book?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “Other people will come after me, and make something from this information. But it’s important to have it. And to have it recorded accurately. It is also something I enjoy. When I am in one of the cemeteries, I feel a sense of continuity. These are my people.”

  I opened a bottle of red wine. And my wife went to the kitchen to prepare lunch.

  “Your wife isn’t Jewish?”

  “No,” I said. “And I’m not a believer.”

  “Christianity and Islam,” he said, “put great emphasis on belief. You can be a Jew without believing.”

  “But it’s impossible to be a Jew by yourself,” I said. “You need a whole life-supporting system around you. Sometimes in the past, here, I would see in the diary that tomorrow was Yom Kippur or Rosh Hoshannah. And I would get all dressed up in a new white shirt and tie, put on a new suit. And when my wife and kids said, ‘Why are you all dressed up, Dad?’ I would say, ‘Today is Yom Kippur’ or ‘Today is Rosh Hoshannah.’ But where could I go? There’s no synagogue in Cornwall. And if there was one, I doubt if I would go in. So I’d go for a walk. And remember my childhood in Ottawa.”

  “I can go back several generations in England,” Jonathon said. “My great-great-grandfather was chief rabbi.”

  “My parents came to Ottawa from Europe in the early 1920s.”

  “You have an immigrant’s past,” he said. “It brings problems.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Insecurity,” he said.

  “At one time I wanted to go to Poland,” I said, “to see where my parents came from. But my mother told me it wasn’t a good idea. In any case, she was certain that the town she came from was wiped out by the Germans.”

  “Is your father alive?”

  “No,” I said. “The biggest stone in Ottawa’s Jewish cemetery is his. My mother put it up with the insurance money. She bought a double grave.”

  “My grandmother did the same thing in London when my grandfather died,” Jonathon said. “She bought a double grave. Two years later she married again. Now she doesn’t know what to do.”

  I filled our glasses with more wine.

  And Jonathon said, “I’m also a rabbi. I didn’t have any vocation for it. I just thought it was something I’d like to be.”

  “Have you married and buried people?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I read something by Graham Greene. He was writing about Norman Douglas. He said that there are some rabbis who perform circumcision with their thumbnail so rapidly and painlessly that the child never cries.”

  “No,” Jonathon said. “They wouldn’t be allowed to do it that way. They have to use an instrument.”

  My wife came in and asked us to go into the kitchen. The table was laid out. She said to Jonathon, “It’s just eggs, cheese, and a salad.”

  “It’s just what I wanted,” he said. “I’m a vegetarian.”

  While we were eating he told us, with enthusiasm, how Jewish peddlers used to work the West Country. “There was a man called Zender from Falmouth. About 1750. He hired peddlers to go around Cornwall on pack horses. And there were certain inns they would make for. The landlord had a key to a cupboard for the cooked things. And on the frying pan there would be the person’s name, who last used it, the date, and the appropriate quote of the day from the Torah. And when the peddler was ready to leave he would wash up, put his name in chalk on the bottom of the frying pan, the date, and a quote from the Torah. So whoever came after would know it was all right.”

  “It’s fascinating,” my wife said. “You make it all come to life. Shall we go in the front room for the coffee? It’s much warmer there.”

  I stayed to give her a hand in the kitchen.

  “Who does he remind you of?” she asked me, as she put cups on the tray.

  I didn’t know.

  “Those early photographs of your father.”

  I hadn’t thought of it. But now that she said it I saw the resemblance. The brown wavy hair, the full lips, the manner.

  “He looks so secure,” she said, “so happy in what he is doing, in knowing where he belongs.”

  “He is secure,’’ I said. “He told me he has his job at Cambridge for life. He can’t be fired.”

  Later, in the front room, Jonathon became impatient. He suggested that I go with him, in his car, for part of the trip to Plymouth. And he would leave me off at a railway station on the way so I could go back.

  Soon we were in the country. How marvellous the orange-yellow gorse looks, the bluebells and campion in the grass on the sides.

  Suddenly it began to snow.

  “This is the first snow we’ve had this year,” I said. “And it has to come in April.”

  “I knew it would snow,” Jonathon said. “It was so cold in the cemetery, I had to wear gloves while I was writing.”

  We passed small fields with their hedges. And in the valleys, light green and dark green trees and here and there a copper beech. I’ve seen this landscape often. But either I keep forgetting or else it changes. Because every time I see it I think, how beautiful.

  And just as quickly the snow stopped. The sun came out.

  “This has been a very lazy day for me,’’ Jonathon said as he drove into Bodmin Road Station. A quiet country station. “I don’t have time to be sidetracked.”

  The only other person at the station was a farmer, by the side of his car, releasing some pigeons. A sudden whirr. The pigeons rose, flew one way, turned, they seemed confused, before they all turned west and disappeared.

  “They have to line up with the sun,” the farmer told us, “to find their direction.”

  Jonathon looked at his watch. “You have another seven minutes to wait. Do you think you’ll stay down here much longer?”

  “No,” I said.

  After he drove away, I walked slowly up and down the long platform. I listened to the birds. Looked at the surrounding farming country. How full of colour. T
he upward-sloping grass fields, the trees—the sun shining on them. Until the train appeared on the curve of track.

  GIFTS

  Late november 1979 I flew to Canada to give three lectures and readings. In Toronto and Montreal I would talk at universities. In Ottawa—where I was to start—I would give a reading to the blind. A light snow was falling as the taxi went through heavy afternoon traffic to the Château Laurier. I was shown into a large, comfortable room on the second floor, newly furnished, with a double bed, easy chairs, a writing desk, telephone, colour television. From the window I could see the Peace Tower, not far away, hear the chimes on the quarter-hour. In the other room, bright from the fluorescent lights, the bath was long with no taps, just a metal wheel that I could turn for hot or cold. I flicked a switch by the television; soft music came in both rooms.

  After the bath I felt refreshed. I rang an old girlfriend. She wasn’t in. I rang my mother.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Château Laurier.”

  “What are you doing in the Château Laurier?”

  “They have put me up here.”

  “How much is the room?”

  “I don’t know—I’m not paying. See you in half an hour.”

  “Yes,” she said. “When you come you’ll have something to eat.”

  No matter how many times I have told my mother that I now earn a living from my work and I can travel where I want to, whenever I’m in Ottawa and go to see her, she is convinced that I have no money and that I’m hungry.

  I walked across Confederation Square in the fading light feeling cheerful. In the window of Books Canada there was a poster about the reading to the blind. I went down Elgin to Laurier, crossed the canal by the bridge, down Nicholas to Rideau . . . and realized I was following the route my father used to take with the horse and wagon.

  There were now, of course, no horses and wagons. And there were other changes. But the slowness, the small-town atmosphere of this part, was the same.

  I took a shortcut by Rideau Flowers and came out, opposite the little park, to the senior citizen building. I rang the bell, the downstairs door buzzed. She was waiting at the open door of her apartment.

  “You look well,” I said and kissed her.

  “I feel much better than a couple of months ago.”

  The small apartment was very warm. The table in the living room was set with all the courses laid out for me: orange juice, salad, marinated herring, gefilte fish, chicken with potatoes and carrots, and apple compote.

  “Sit down,” she said. “You eat—I’ll talk.

  “I went to see the doctor last week for a checkup. He tells me I’m in good condition. Good condition. ‘How can I be in good condition, Doctor, when I’ve had seven operations?’

  “’For a woman your age you are in good condition.’ Then he says, ‘I’m not saying tomorrow or next week, but did you think of going into a nursing home?’ This upset me. ‘Doctor,’ I told him, ‘as long as I don’t burn my dinner and I don’t have to run with my water to the bathroom every few minutes—why should I go to a nursing home?’

  “’That’s the time to go to a nursing home,’ he said, ‘when you can enjoy it. There is no shopping, no cooking, no cleaning. You come and go as you like.’

  “He made going into a nursing home sound like going to Florida. The gefilte fish—”

  “It’s delicious,” I said.

  “—I no longer make it. It’s from a tin. Do you want another piece?”

  “I don’t know if I can eat all this.”

  She had lost weight since my last visit. It suited her. The flesh on the underpart of the arms was hanging loose. But the alert expression in her pale face, the large blue eyes, were the same.

  “In the last war,” she said, “you were in the Air Force. If you were in the last war then the government will give you a job here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Being a commissionaire at one of the government buildings.”

  I thought I might as well go along with her.

  “But there must be a lot of people still alive from the last war,” I said. “How can the government give every one a job as a commissionaire?”

  “They work shifts,” she said.

  She went to the kitchen and came back with a large cup of hot coffee. I listened as she told me how they put the pacemaker in: “It saved my life.” How she fell and broke some ribs: “That was a killer.” All the while she talked about her ailments, I thought how independent she was and spirited and self-contained.

  “When I’m in hospital I try to get on my legs. And I walk up and down in the room. Then I get better.”

  She caught sight of herself in the wall mirror and, a bit of vanity, casually smoothed her thinning white hair.

  “No one in my family has lived this long.”

  “Do you see many people?”

  “When I go for a walk . . . or in the park. I don’t have people come here any more. It means I’ve got to cook. And the talking wears me out. I watch television, I read the paper, and I have the telephone. Sometimes I get lonesome—and feel sorry for myself. Then I take a bus to a shopping centre. Not to get anything. Just to see people enjoying themselves . . . buying things, looking at the merchandise, the money changing hands. I like all this. Years ago, Pa and I should have got a little business. I know I would have made a success—”

  I looked at my watch. I had to go back to the Château for an interview. A reporter from the Citizen was going to be there in fifteen minutes. I told this to my mother.

  “I enjoyed this visit,” I said. “Thanks for the meal.” And stood up to put on my coat.

  “It’s a pleasure to talk to someone you know.”

  She tried to give me a five-dollar bill.

  “Mother, I should be giving you money.”

  At the door she opened her purse and took out a handful of change and insisted that I take it. “You can always use a few quarters and dimes.”

  When I came out of the building I looked back. She was at the window waving.

  A young man with pink cheeks and a black straggly beard was sitting at a table by the wall drinking a cup of coffee. He had two of my books beside him.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  While I was answering his questions and he was writing in his notebook I noticed two young men and a girl sitting at the table opposite. They were finishing their supper. They kept glancing in my direction. After the reporter left, and I was on my second cup of coffee and a cigarillo, one of the young men walked over. He said my name.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We like your stories. May we come and join you?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Are you staying at the Château?”

  “We’re on the third floor.”

  “I’m on the second. Where are you from?”

  “Toronto.”

  “I’m going there the day after tomorrow.”

  They were youthfully attractive. And appeared uneasy . . . perhaps they were shy. The girl was called Julie. She was very compact in her smallness—alert dark eyes, dark hair, small nose, small mouth. She had a look of slight surprise on her face. She told me she wrote poetry and had some poems in the Canadian Forum. The taller of the two men, with a head of dark wavy hair, was called Frank. He had conventional good looks and wore white corduroy trousers and a black roll-neck sweater. The stockier one, Jim, had brown curly hair, a wide face, was in jeans and denim windbreaker over a blue T-shirt. They were students.

  “I read in the paper,” Frank said, “that you are coming back to live here.”

  “Yes, in the spring.”

  He looked disappointed.

  “After what you wrote, I didn’t think you would want to come back.”

  “Circumstances change,” I said.

  “B
ut what made you leave is still here,” Jim insisted. “If anything it has got worse.”

  I listened while they told me how provincial the life still was . . . that the centre of a community was the supermarket . . . that people’s attitudes were “there must be something in it for me.” And that the country remained on the edge of the map—”Things happen somewhere else.”

  “It just isn’t good enough,” Jim said.

  “It’s a lot better than it was,” I said.

  “Maybe. But it still isn’t good enough. We only have one life and I don’t see why we have to live it out here.”

  They didn’t look like social misfits. And I could tell they came from people with money. They had another year at university but they couldn’t wait to get away.

  “What do you need a university education for?” Julie asked.

  “For when you’re in solitary,” I replied.

  By the time I finished another cup of coffee, I realized that Julie was with Frank, and Jim was a friend. And the sort of society they wanted was something between socialism and utopia.

  Changing the subject, Julie said, “I have only read a few of your stories in magazines. I like the way you describe the small details of everyday life. But if I may make one criticism—you don’t make use of fantasy. If you could have fantasy in your stories then you would reach a wider audience.”

  I wasn’t going to try and explain the complicated way I go about writing anything.

  “You may be right,” I said.

  “Look at Isaac Bashevis Singer,” she said. “He believes in the afterlife, in demons, goblins—God.”

  “I’m not a believer,” I said. I suddenly felt tired.

  “If you will excuse me, I have to get up early for an interview.”

  “Perhaps we will see you at breakfast,” Julie said and smiled.

  “Yes,” I said.

  They were not there for breakfast. But I didn’t linger, as I had to go to the sixth floor to the radio studios. And from there a car was waiting to take me to the outskirts of Ottawa for a TV interview. I came back after lunch to the room to go over the parts I would read from my books. At three-thirty, as I still had a half-hour, I thought I would walk to the institute. It was a cold, bright, sunny day. As I came near the place, in a residential area, I could see men and women in winter coats walking in the same direction and could hear the tapping of the white sticks.