The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

Suddenly Orvid urinates on Arnold. All over him. He directs his penis like a fire hose. When Arnold moves his body, Orvid moves his stream. He gets Arnold in his crotch, in his mouth, all over his face and hair, in his eyes. He must have been drinking water for days, because he seems to have an awful lot in him.

  Finally he finishes. Arnold is drenched. We’re all standing in pools of Orvid’s pee, staring down at the concrete basement floor. Arnold appears to be in shock.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. One by one we leave. Billy goes first.

  “See you.”

  Then Dodo grunts in departure.

  I wait to see if Mordy wants to walk out with me, but he doesn’t even look at me, he just leaves.

  I give Orvid a weak smile wave and take off. I don’t even wonder how Arnold’s going to get home all naked and smelly, or what he’s going to tell his folks.

  Some dividing line has been crossed but into what kind of territory, I have no idea.

  * * *

  Though I’m afraid to go home to the family drama, I want to take a hot shower that will wash me clean of piss and blood. I feel dirty all over. The apartment is deserted, thank God, and I stand under the shower for an eternity, looking into the steam trying to decipher feelings and reactions and discovering only more questions, attempting to sing a few of my usual shower anthems, only to discover that my voice cracks. When I finally step out red as a beet, I find my shower’s water has flooded the floor. I stand in it and it’s like standing in Orvid’s piss. Indeed, the tile on the bathroom floor is a sort of sickly yellow color. I nod my head in understanding at these coincidences. I am talking to myself a lot now. I have a new memory to add to the rest of my life. I use my bath towel to sop up the water.

  I walk to the kitchen to get something to eat and I find a note from Rivka taped to the refrigerator. Philip’s ulcer started to bleed and she’s taken him to the hospital in an ambulance. She’ll be back when she can, she says; she’s left me some money for food, just in case she has to stay.

  The information that my father is bleeding in a hospital passes over me like the hot shower. I pause for a moment to wonder what his death might mean in my life. Since I’ve been fantasizing about it for so long, it’s not a new thought, nor does it summon any new emotions beyond willing acceptance. What I’m really thinking more about is the sight of Orvid pissing on Arnold. And Mordy—Mordy doing everything, egging us on like a cheerleader.

  David, wherever you are, you are going to get out! Do you hear me?

  It turns out to be just as well that Philip chooses this day to have his hemorrhage, and that Rivka stays with him at Soldiers and Sailors intensive care for a couple of days, because Mrs. Botts has a field day with this one. The next morning, all of us kids are summoned by phone to some lawyer’s office. Mordy’s there with his father, Abe, who nods a lot but looks uninterested and unsurprised. Billy’s parents are high Wasp and buttoned-down. Dodo has obviously been chastised, to judge by his discomfort in sitting down; his parents, his mother wearing an enormous crucifix and his father fingering rosary beads, alternately glare at their son and offer beggarly smiles to the man Mr. Geiseric keeps calling “Avvocato.” Neither Orvid nor his parents are present. The lawyer says in a tone of sad regret that Mr. Guptl refused to appear without a legal summons.

  Then the lawyer begins a long speech condemning the acts of yesterday afternoon; he states that Mr. and Mrs. Botts do not wish to press charges, though in his estimation they certainly have more than sufficient grounds to do so, and that they will be moving away from Masturbov Gardens shortly—

  Abe suddenly grunts. “It’s about time. Six notices. They owe six months’ rent.”

  —but they wish us to know that these acts were “very ugly indeed” and have no doubt scarred their “precious, beloved, and peace-loving” son forever. We all want to smirk at this description of Arnold, but we don’t. There’s something frightening about the lawyer’s sanctimoniousness. Is this how justice is dealt out in the grown-up world?

  Now Abe speaks up strongly. “I won’t have this! That kid is a monster. He destroys property all over the place. You been inside their apartment? No? You should go look. It’s a stink bomb. Everything’s defaced or broken. Filthy. They live like slobs. They want to use this as an excuse to move away? Good! It’s going to take me hundreds of dollars to fix the place up. They want to threaten and accuse my son? Screw that! I piss on all of them!” And he grabs Mordy’s hand and pulls him out of the office.

  The rest of us are about to leave when the lawyer tries to return to the severity of the matter. He reminds us that Mr. Masturbov has changed the subject, the subject being the sexual molestation of a child. Oh, I thought as I walked out in the middle of this sentence, is that what it’s about? I’ll be sure and remember.

  Outside the office, which is in downtown Washington, on Connecticut Avenue, Abe Masturbov turns to me.

  “How is your brother Lucas?”

  “Fine, I guess. He’s going to go to Yaddah Law School in the fall.”

  “I know. I told him I’d be his first client. Mordecai tells me you weren’t bar mitzvahed.”

  “No. I didn’t want to be.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  He nods. “That is very perceptive of you.” He has his limousine take me home after dropping him and Mordy off on Sixteenth Street. Nobody says anything. For the rest of the trip I pretend it’s my car, my chauffeur. Going into our apartment brings me back to earth. Masturbov Gardens is the death of any fantasy. For a few days I eat all the cupcakes and doughnuts and candy bars I want. I get sick to my stomach.

  I go and visit my father in the hospital. I told you about that visit and all the rain and the mess in our living room and what Philip told us about our not having a last name, not being Jerusalems.

  A week later Billy moves to North Carolina. His parents decide Masturbov Gardens is no place to raise a young boy. The problem is that Billy doesn’t want to move, so he makes his way back on foot, sleeping who knows where until he comes down with pneumonia and is found dead trying to keep warm in that laundry room behind that Bendix dryer that still isn’t connected. No one really knew Billy. He was a small blond kid, quiet and eager to please. Evidently his parents punished him for the Botts debacle by not talking to him and he missed us a lot. So he came back to talk to us. But when he got here, he didn’t know where to go, whom to go to, and he was too polite to ask anybody for anything, like food or a warm bed. He was still carrying Arnold’s penknife.

  When he was found, his body was entirely purple and his anus was mutilated and caked with blood. That’s what Arnold Botts said. He found him.

  Billy is the first person my own age I know who dies. No, the second. Tibby Chesterfield committed suicide. Well, Billy’s the first friend I had whose last name I didn’t know.

  This seems like the end of childhood. I would say innocence, but what a stupid notion an innocent childhood is, don’t you think, Fred? Who thought that one up?

  And if I’m not a Jerusalem, who am I?

  WHAT’S COMING NEXT

  Yes, the war is going on and people are killing each other all over the place. Yes, of course that’s important. Yes, but more important is what’s going on to facilitate the killing of many millions more. Yes, it’s all coming closer and we’re not talking about the war. There will not be nearly enough of us dead from just a war. Wars don’t always kill enough of the right people. Now, as with so many seminal events in history, Major Important Things are happening, many of which are not going to be discovered until some future date, if ever. A perfect case in point is David’s story, which follows next in our chronology, although David will not share it with anyone for many years.

  DAVID’S WAR

  Our father was awful to Daniel. He yelled at him and called him names. He called him a sissy in front of people. Sometimes he hit him. He never talked to him like he talked to me, like a son. He never talked to him
like a human being. Philip either ignored him or yelled at him at the top of his lungs. Philip was only interested in me. Lucas and Stephen could see this. They had little interest in me because they didn’t like Philip much, or Rivka either. I think all my brothers felt I was not on their side. I wanted to be. I wanted to be part of their closeness. I just didn’t know how. I only knew how hard it was to live and feel like this.

  I can remember Philip taking me in his arms when I was still a baby. I can remember his warmth and his love and his kisses all through my childhood. One day he asked me, “If I could arrange for us to go away and live all by ourselves, away from your mother and your brothers and your twin, perhaps never to see them again, but we would always have each other, would you like that?” I was six years old. I had nothing else. Philip was the only one who loved me. I said yes.

  When he took me with him to Berlin he entered me in swimming contests. I was an excellent swimmer, as I’d I discovered when I was three years old. I accidentally fell into a pool. Rivka screamed but I instinctively started paddling. I loved it. I paddled to the other side of the pool and before she could yank me out I turned and flapped myself back. I was laughing.

  My father was proud of me. He had me taking lessons at the Jewish Center in no time. I won my first race when I was four. The other contestants were all between six and twelve.

  Daniel didn’t like my new skill. I don’t think he was jealous. I think he was afraid of losing me. I certainly was afraid of losing him. At night we slept together and hugged each other close. He would come into my bed. I was too shy to go into his. He was smarter and nicer. Everyone liked him. I seem to have different insides in me. They are full of suspicion. Daniel believes everything will work out. I believe nothing will, and I don’t expect it to. Nobody liked me. Nobody liked Philip either. I assume that’s why we were close. Daniel never wanted to come swimming with me.

  Philip and I would go for long walks around Masturbov Gardens and into the country. One day he started talking to me in German. It made me laugh. The words sounded funny. “This is how I learned German from my mother. We made it a game.” He got me to repeat what he said. It became our secret. At first that I was learning it at all. And then our secret language that we could speak to each other when no one was around. It made me feel important to have my own language with my father.

  I went to the Jewish Center every chance I could. Lucas and Stephen played basketball there, or Philip would take me in the evenings or on weekends. I swam until I was exhausted. I loved to swim underwater particularly, making myself go faster and faster beneath the surface to the far end, coming up only when my lungs said I must. Only then would I reluctantly surface, gulp every bit of air I could without losing my rhythm, and go under again. I would do this over and over. Until I swam my last race in Berlin I won every race I was ever in.

  The Jews of Berlin were well organized athletically. Grandma Zilka had written to some distant relations and they all came to watch me win my races, even though she’d gone back to America. Philip discovered there was a Jewish Junior Olympics at the same time as the regular world Olympics. The winner got a gold medal and a chance to compete in the All-City, Jews and gentiles together. Father was eager for his American son to show these Germans up. This would be the last race Jews were allowed to swim in.

  Some of our relations were being moved into different neighborhoods. There were people crossing the city day and night. I wasn’t accustomed to big cities, so I didn’t question these movements. Philip’s friends lived in big houses in rich neighborhoods. These were the people I spent my time with. I was only seven, and who talks about such things to children?

  I won both big races, the Jewish Olympics and the All-City. Since I was younger by far than any of the other contestants I became a little celebrity. My photograph was in the newspapers. I was interviewed on the radio. That I could now speak German made me more of a novelty. Other children asked for my autograph.

  At the Jewish Olympics I met Pieter. He congratulated me with a smile that told me he meant it. That never happened in America, where people got angry at you when you beat them. We became friends. He showed me around his Berlin. His school. His house. His grandparents’ house where he was born. His family was rich. We looked a little alike. We both had blond hair and blue eyes. Even though we were the same size, he was older. I could see in the locker room that he was already growing hair around his penis. When I stayed overnight at his house he told me that he was ashamed of this, and of being so short.

  “I’m a freak!” he said, with tears in his eyes.

  I put my arms around him. “No, you’re not,” I said.

  One day we’re waiting for the Jewish swimming pool to open when a man pulls Pieter and me out of line. We’re frightened and hold on to each other. The man says he prefers identical twins but fraternal twins will do. We’re taken to a clinic of some sort. When we’re alone in a small examining room he tells us in a kind voice that he is Dr. Grodzo and he hopes to prove that physical and psychological characteristics are inherited. He tries to explain further but it goes over our heads. He asks us if we love each other. We are silent. “But do not brothers, particularly twin brothers, love each other?” I catch on. “Yes, we love each other very much. Isn’t that always the way with twins?” And I take Pieter’s hand and give him a big kiss on his cheek. Dr. Grodzo laughs. Pieter catches on.

  Grodzo makes us strip. When we’re naked he says sternly, “You must tell me why your twin brother, who talks so little, has hair around his penis and you do not.” I want to cry. I don’t know how to lie yet. “I guess I’m backward,” I try to joke. “Yes, you must be backward.” The doctor smiles. I feel sick to my stomach from the horrible smell everywhere. No one has given us anything to eat. I’m shaking because I have no idea what’s happening except that I know I’m not safe. When Grandma Zilka first disappeared, I was taken to a police station and men with the same brown shirt as Dr. Grodzo were unpleasant. “Don’t be upset, little one,” Grodzo says. He gives us chocolates. Pieter refuses his. Dr. Grodzo takes me and Pieter in his arms. “We are a threesome. We are a family,” he says, hugging us tightly. “Come, lie down.” He takes us into another room. We are still naked. He lays us side by side on a wooden platform so that he can examine us more closely. “So one of you has pubic hair and one of you does not and you are Jewish fraternal twins and so we must try to discover what has happened to you.” Here he pulls my penis. “And to you.” He pinches Pieter’s penis. “We must discover how you are different when you are meant to be alike.”

  He leaves us. The room is cold and the platform is hard and uncomfortable. Pieter and I cling to each other. “Help me, help me,” he sobs. “No, no, not here.” I put my hand over his mouth.

  A flashlight wakes us up. Pieter and I have fallen asleep in each other’s arms. “So you are lovebirds too,” Dr. Grodzo says. His expression is very stern. “This is not right. But perhaps for the history of science and medicine it is good that I am noticing your affection for each other. I must discover if you love each other because you are twins or because you are homosexuals.” A nurse comes in pushing a cart with instruments on it. I don’t know what a homosexual is.

  Several guards bring in four older twins. They’re naked too. They’re ordered to hold us down. They’re shaking so much that a guard slaps one of them across his face. Overhead lights suddenly make the room like day. I now see there are perhaps a dozen sets of twins in beds around the room, all shivering in fear. They are all ordered to stand around our platform. “Do you not notice, David, that these twins are identically developed? Both twins in each set have pubic hair, or do not. Except you. I must understand you more thoroughly.” Men in white coats now circle our platform too.

  Pieter screams out violently. Dr. Grodzo drops Pieter’s penis and his scrotum into a bowl. Pieter’s crotch is a pool of blood. I don’t faint like a few of the other twins do. I lie there beside Pieter. I watch Dr. Grodzo watching me.

  Th
e nurse hands Dr. Grodzo an enormous needle with thick thread. He sticks his hands into Pieter’s bloody pool and starts to stitch up his flesh. Pieter has lost consciousness. I hope he’s dead. “I am making Pieter into a woman,” Dr. Grodzo says. “I am giving him a hole.” One of the guards vomits on the table while Dr. Grodzo finishes sewing. Pieter’s crotch looks like raw liver. Dr. Grodzo roughly lifts me up and puts me facedown on top of Pieter. “Now you must fuck your sister,” he orders me. What does he mean? I lie there not moving. He grabs my waist and lifts me up and down against Pieter. I feel our crotches sticking together. Many of the boys are crying loudly.

  “Bring me Heimat,” Dr. Grodzo orders. I will learn that Heimat is one of the camp idiots. He walks around with a constant erection. He wasn’t an idiot when he arrived. He was kind and gentle.

  A guard pulls me off Pieter and shoves Heimat into my place. Heimat pumps away. He’s laughing like a baby playing in a bathtub. He pumps and pumps until he screams out happily and pulls out from Pieter. He sits up on the table, looking sad. He is looking down at his bloodied penis, which is still erect. He hits it to try to make it go down. Strings of white semen connect him to Pieter like a cobweb. Dr. Grodzo pushes Heimat aside and sucks up liquid from Pieter’s hole with a large syringe. “For my specific protein studies,” he says to me. I’ve been holding Pieter’s hand but it’s let go of mine. Please, God, let him be dead.

  Dr. Grodzo takes my arm and injects me with Pieter’s blood. I am numb so I don’t seem to mind whatever he is doing.

  The guards who have vomited have been taken outside. I hear them being shot.

  * * *

  I believe I am eight years old. I no longer know how long I have been here. By now Dr. Grodzo knows I am American. He speaks perfect English. “Dr. Mengele and I have been to America many times.” He tells me there are three kinds of camps. The first is the ghetto, where unwanteds are isolated, “for the time being.” The second is the labor camp, which “is far away where they cannot be seen, is just what it says, a place where harsh physical labor is imposed rigorously without stopping.” Then there is the concentration camp, where everything is devoted to torment and extermination. Mungel is one of these. I am in Mungel. It is near to Drensk, where Grandma Zilka was born and where Dr. Grodzo will tell me that she died. We are just outside Berlin, although I will not know this for many years to come. By now my body is scarred from the many needles and experiments they have performed on it. My back is particularly bumpy and feels like my favorite corduroy pants I used to wear to school. It looks worse, my back, than it ever felt, whatever they are doing to it.