by David Layton
“You’re driving very well,” she told Petra, who beamed with pride that she’d reached an age where she could take responsibility for adults.
Aaron guiltily remembered the promise he’d failed to keep about taking his daughter to her final driving test.
When they arrived, Aaron escorted his mother to the house, the same one he’d grown up in and couldn’t, at the time, wait to get away from. He still carried a key, and perhaps because he’d just been admonished for trying to lock in his father, he pulled it out and opened the door for her.
“I had a very nice time today,” she said.
“Me too, Mom,” Aaron answered, and as he turned and walked away, the thought came to him that after his father left her, Aaron had essentially followed him out the door. He had not been a good son.
“I think Grandma’s lonely,” Petra said, after he slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.
“What gives you that idea?”
“What doesn’t?”
Petra pressed down on the accelerator, and as they drew away from the house, he saw the upstairs bedroom light turn on. Somewhere in that patch of light stood his mother.
“She really enjoyed herself today,” he said, echoing his mother’s words to him but adding none of his own.
“Did she ever meet anyone after Grandpa?”
“Funny you should ask. I was just thinking about this guy called Lenny. He was in the band years ago.” They passed the church again, and Aaron pointed to it for no good reason.
“And?”
“And nothing much. This was years after I’d already left, and you know your grandma—she keeps things pretty close to the chest.”
“So maybe she’s got tons of boyfriends.”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah, me too. I need to take her shopping.”
“And we need to take her to the dentist—”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Petra asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Are you dating anyone?”
“No. Are you?”
“I was sort of seeing someone.”
“That guy I met in the mall?”
“You didn’t meet him but, yeah, that guy.”
“So what happened?”
“The thing is, Dad, we’re all sort of lonely, right?”
“Is that the thing? Are you feeling lonely?”
“I went to the bank with Grandpa,” she said.
Aaron was having trouble keeping up with his daughter’s abrupt changes.
“What bank?” he asked.
“His bank. We went for a walk, and he took me there.”
“That’s entirely inappropriate. He shouldn’t be taking you to a place like that.”
“It’s not like he took me to a strip club. Anyway, the point is, I found out about a few things.”
“Grandpa’s financial issues have nothing to do with you. He’s going to be fine.”
“It’s not about the money.”
“Well, it is, actually.”
“Okay, then it’s about who he’s been sending money to.” Petra pulled the car over to the curb. They were not yet home, and this sudden standstill on a residential side street made him feel trapped.
“Grandpa should never have brought you into this. Whatever this is. I told you, there’s a world scrambled up in Grandpa’s head and—”
“Don’t you know who he’s been sending money to? I think Grandma knows. We all know. Even you.”
“Let’s go home.”
“You mean let’s drive to your apartment.”
“Our apartment.”
“And what about Grandpa? Where does he live?”
“He will soon be living at some very expensive assisted-living facility that I’ll probably be paying for.”
“He doesn’t belong there.”
“I’ve never known where your grandfather belongs.”
“I do,” said Petra.
This time she hit the accelerator and sped off with a force that snapped his head back.
14
ILSA WAS PACKING HER BAGS, EXCITED to be going on her first major trip since they’d arrived in Puerto Plata.
“I’ve hardly had a chance to wear good clothes,” she said, admiring in her closet several dresses she’d brought with her on the ship but had outgrown. “But Daddy says we can buy new clothes when we’re there. Can you believe it? New clothes! Bought in a proper shop.”
“That sounds exciting,” Karl said, without any excitement.
“Isn’t it?”
Ilsa was far too taken with her trip to hear what Karl really meant. And why should she? thought Karl. The sound of his voice, even with the wind behind him, wouldn’t carry much farther than the road, never mind the capital city, a full day’s journey away by bus.
“I wish you were coming,” she said. “We could see everything together.”
“I will see it when you come back and tell me all about it,” said Karl.
Mr. Weinberg, worried about being away from his farm, had sat Karl down and recited what things needed to be done while they were away. “I’m leaving you in charge,” he said, but Karl didn’t feel in charge. He wanted to be invited to their trip to the capital.
“I haven’t even gone, and already I’m sad about coming back,” Ilsa said.
“I’ll be here waiting.”
“Yes, of course you will.”
“And we’ll go for a swim.”
They hardly ever went swimming together anymore. The town was too far away, and while there was a beach near the homestead, he was too busy on the farm, tending cattle and planting crops, erecting fences and clearing new land, for him to disappear in the late afternoon.
“Did you know that they have swimming pools in the city?”
Karl had never given the subject any thought. What did it matter? he wondered. They had the sea.
“And there are stores, real stores selling clothes and pastries and books. I won’t have to smell a single cow for the entire time I’m away.”
But I will, thought Karl, helping with the baggage. He’d come out to work on the farm and be close to Ilsa, but all she wanted to do was head for the city.
It was an overcast morning, with rain threatening to fall, but the family, wearing some of their better clothes for the journey, didn’t seem to notice or mind. They waited for the single milk truck that hadn’t been taken by the government to give them a lift into town. There would be no milk for the truck to collect this morning, at least from the Weinbergs’ homestead.
“It will be good to put my mind on other things than tending cows,” said Mr. Weinberg, echoing his daughter.
The purpose of the trip was to attend a conference organized by the Americans about the fate of Jewish civilization after the war. Jacob had been invited and had explained the reasons why in some detail, but for some reason Karl had been unable to retain the information. From the moment Jacob Weinberg unfurled the map onboard the ship and showed him where and what they were sailing toward, Karl had relied on him to offer a broader, more complete picture of things—his very survival depended on understanding what lay beyond the border—but now he felt hostile toward any notion of a world outside Sosua. He didn’t want to think about the end of the war, and just as urgently, he didn’t want others to think about it either.
“Don’t get lonely,” Ilsa whispered in his ear, as the truck came into sight.
“I won’t,” Karl answered.
The family waved at him as they motored down the road, and he waved back as if happy to see them go.
While they were gone, he slept in Ilsa’s bed. He was ashamed at doing this and worried that he’d replace her scent with his own and that she’d find out, but he couldn’t help himself. Their rooms were side by side, separated by the thinnest of walls, which had been erected for his arrival to the homestead. There were nights when he’d press his hand against the wall, willing her to do the same. Now that he was lying on her bed looking at the wall
from the other side, he pressed his hand against it in the hope that his other self, the one in the other room on the other bed, would feel better.
“I love you,” he whispered to the Karl who was listening on the other side.
The Karl on the receiving end was silent, unable to answer. He felt a deep strangeness at being so alone and wondered if he was being overtaken with fever. If so, what would happen to him? He’d been abandoned.
Karl kept the hurricane lamp on during the night, though it cast flickering shadows that made him feel dizzy. Still, it was better than the total darkness of a moonless night. The Weinbergs had left during the darkest part of the month, and Karl considered if this was not some sort of test to see if he was capable and worthy.
He’d worked hard ever since arriving on the homestead. Jacob, as he now called him, for all his will, was not a strong man, or not strong enough for the labour required for raising crops and cattle. Besides, Jacob was never fully satisfied with being a simple farmer. He wanted always to talk about politics and economics and other subjects that made him forget where he was and what he was doing. Karl listened, because his education had stopped after leaving Vienna, or at least the formal kind Ilsa was receiving at the school in Sosua. Karl feared that the longer he spent on the homestead, the less he’d want to know about the world that lay beyond his grasp. At first they had cleared the land, opened it up to the sky, but that only made the boundaries around the field more pronounced and powerful. Success meant at the same time a closing in. It troubled Karl that his interest was ever more focused on what was directly before him—the pasture, the cows, the crops, the freshwater well, the fruit trees, the fenceline—but the wider world seemed to him a disruptive place that, among other things, threatened to take Ilsa away from him.
When she was there, they slept almost beside each other, the wooden wall an impenetrable dividing line. Karl accepted the need for patience and silence. They woke up at the same time but never together, and Ilsa would ready herself for school, while Karl dressed for the fields. Then they’d sit and eat breakfast together, at first fresh eggs, until the chickens they’d acquired succumbed to disease and infertility, and then beans and rice and salted codfish. Then Ilsa would mount her horse and begin the journey into town. He would see her late in the afternoon, unless she went for a swim with friends at the town beach. Now that they were so close, she never took his hand except for brief and unexpected moments. “I always feel safe with you,” she’d tell him, and then, just like that, she’d pull herself aside and act as if nothing had happened. It confused Karl, but if it was patience that was needed, he would offer it. For now, he would lie alone on Ilsa’s bed and wait for sleep to overtake him.
“I SEE YOU’VE found the perfect place.”
It was just like Felix to catch him like this. He hadn’t heard the sound of an engine or the approach of horse’s hooves.
“What are you doing here?” He didn’t get off the bed.
“I heard the Weinbergs went to the city,” said Felix. “I thought you might like to come back to Sosua.”
“I’m busy.”
“I can see that.” Felix briefly rested his eyes on the hairbrush that lay beside the bed Karl had slept on but mercifully chose not to say anything.
“They’ve started serving cold Pepsi-Cola at the shop. We could play a game of chess, if you came.”
They hadn’t talked since their fight outside the theatre, nor had he played a game of chess with him since Diepoldsau. But it turned out that Felix, who hardly ventured anywhere beyond the beach, had walked all the way out here, which constituted something of a miracle if not an outright apology.
Peeling away Ilsa’s sheets, Karl got out of the bed, pulled on his pants and led his friend to the outside porch. It was early morning, everything newly begun and so fresh that the world seemed edible. A rooster crowed, and he saw despite the coolness in the air that Felix was sweating profusely.
“How are you?” Karl asked.
“I had a touch of malaria recently.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It happens to the best of us.” Felix grinned crookedly as if to ensure there’d never be any possibility of him being the best of anything. “It’s actually rather pleasant. Not the malaria, of course, but time spent convalescing in the mountains.”
There’d been several waves of malarial infections since Karl’s arrival in Sosua. Some of the earliest work Karl had done when joining the colony was digging drainage ditches to prevent the mosquito larvae from hatching. Any stagnant body of water was a potential hazard. Though a great deal was being done to battle the disease, it hadn’t been eradicated, and those infected were taken away from the coast. He’d heard it was agreeable up in the mountains, a cooling reminder of their past homes.
“They have pine trees up there,” said Felix. “It actually gets cold at night, and you sleep with a blanket. Can you imagine?”
Karl couldn’t, not really.
“I was even told it snows at the top of Mount Trujillo, but don’t believe it. Dominicans like to exaggerate, though how can you really blame them, when their leader names the tallest mountain after himself?”
“And the capital city,” said Karl.
“Where the Weinbergs have gone,” added Felix, understanding where Karl’s interest lay.
“I wonder what it’s like.”
“Well, may I recommend getting a dash of malaria, then maybe they’ll confuse the city for the mountain, and you can find out for yourself.”
“I think there must be an easier way.”
“Don’t think, do,” Felix said, mimicking Jacob. “Though, look where that’s led us.”
Felix remained on the farm and during the next few days did practically nothing to help with Karl’s chores, though in his defence, he’d had another attack of malarial fever. He spent most of his time out on the porch with a blanket around his knees. At night he slept in Karl’s bed, which allowed Karl to sleep in Ilsa’s without the sense of strangeness that had attacked him on those first nights.
“You must find it difficult to sleep here,” Felix said through the thin wall separating the two bedrooms.
“What do you mean?”
“Ilsa. She’s an attractive girl.”
To claim he hadn’t noticed would only make him sound foolish, but Karl didn’t want to admit outright to anything either, so he remained silent.
“She must be the reason why you are here.”
“I like being here,” Karl said.
“It’s so . . . rural.”
“Sosua isn’t exactly Vienna.”
“Or Cuidad Trujillo,” Felix pointed out. “So what’s the plan?”
“Plan?”
“You can’t just lie in her bed and masturbate every night.”
“Who says I need to masturbate?”
“Karl, I’ve known you since Diepoldsau. I was with you in Lisbon, when you lost your virginity. I know that nothing has happened. Personally, I prefer Dominican women, and normally I would urge you to do the same but I know you won’t think of anyone else but Ilsa. So my question again is, what’s the plan?”
“I don’t have one,” Karl admitted.
“I can see that.”
With that admission came many more about how Karl felt ignorant and how he felt he was being tested and how Ilsa kept telling him to wait, to be patient. He confessed to Felix that he worried Jacob Weinberg didn’t believe he was good enough for his daughter. It all came out, more than Karl ever intended or had even realized he felt. Felix listened from the other side, and after Karl was finished, he knocked on the wall to announce himself.
“Passover is in two months,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose.” Karl didn’t actually have any idea when it was.
“And Weinberg, being a socialist and a Zionist, is also a confused refugee like all of us.”
“So?”
“So he’s religious. He believes in God.”
“I suppose he does.”
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“Don’t be obtuse, Karl. He believes in God and the Jews, and that means Passover is very important to him.”
Karl was familiar with the rituals of Passover from his own family, which had been conducted with a casual allegiance, interrupted with animated talk at the table between the visiting business associates his father had always invited. An air of prosperous ease accompanied the eating of bitter herbs; one did not wish to suffer or attach oneself to the effusive sentiments of the poorer Jews of Leopoldstadt district, their piety alien and embarrassing to his own family.
As the youngest, Karl’s sister had been required to ask aloud “Why is this night different from all other nights?” For Karl the answer was that on this night he and his sister would go in search of the matzoh, hidden earlier that evening by his father. His reward was often a new coin for his collection of Austro-Hungarian currency, the bearded and stern profile of Emperor Franz Joseph offering, in Karl’s imagination, a portrait of Moses.
Karl was no longer a child interested in collecting coins or going in search of the matzoh. Thinking of Ilsa, he knew it was something more exciting and serious that he was after.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
Felix sang his answer. Karl had never heard Felix sing before and had not known that he had a beautiful voice. The words were Hebrew, a language he didn’t know Felix was familiar with.
“You’re full of surprises!” Karl called out, but his voice was lost in the rising intensity of the song, which grew louder and faster, Felix banging against the wall to keep beat, until Karl feared the house might collapse.
When he finished, he asked, “Do you recognize it?”
“No,” said Karl.
“You must be familiar with the basic songs at Passover, though I’m sure your Viennese family were too sophisticated to sing them. But this song is important, and I will teach it to you. Now repeat after me: ‘Mimitzrayim gei’altanu umibeis avadim pedisanu.’”
Karl stumbled over the Hebrew. “What does it mean?” he asked.
“From Egypt You redeemed us, from the house of slavery You delivered us.” Felix laughed. “This is something Jacob Weinberg ought to like. You’ll see. I’ll teach you how to sing the song. You’ll impress everyone, and then you’ll stop having to masturbate.”
