by Rhoda Lerman
“No! You saw everybody?”
“It wasn’t so terrific. Filth, cold, murder, disease, hunger, humiliation. The people wore rags, bark on their feet. Fools, saints in long white gowns, dancing, begging, drinking, studying, praying. Their wives weeping, their kids starving. I’m sorry I went. Maybe the reason HaShem destroyed the Jews in Europe was so we shouldn’t look backward any more. Maybe that’s why we’re in America. So we look forward.”
“What’s forward.”
“That’s what I want to tell you.” He nodded, agreeing with himself, some inner voice, God knows who. “You know how many words are in the Torah?”
“Millions.”
“One. Listen. One long word, the name of God, written in dark fire. No grammar, no punctuation, no sound. It’s the blueprint for creation. But until men give it sound, it means nothing. Until it’s brought into human affairs, it waits like yeast, someone should come along and give it a new shape, add the light, add the white space between the letters to make words. The shapes from our past … maybe they don’t fit into our time. Maybe this is for your generation to do. Maybe that’s why Europe is in ashes. Baruch HaShem.”
“You should have been a rabbi.”
“Very funny.”
“Who can make the new words?”
“The sages said the Torah has seventy faces. Seventy interpretations. It’s time.” He held Yussel by the shoulders, looked above him toward the mountains. “Who but you would understand this?”
“Totte, you hear about the old Jew who walked into the SS recruiting office before the war? He comes in half-blind, crippled, palsied. He goes up to the Nazi recruiter and says, ‘I just came in to tell you, on me you shouldn’t count.’ ”
The people in the room next to theirs at the Pueblo Ranchero were making love. Their pressed oak headboard banged against the wall behind Yussel’s head, shook his pressed oak headboard. Shoshanna slept peacefully on the other bed, Dina snuggled alongside her. Probably Shoshanna heard the same noises he heard but was faking sleep, being brave. Yussel held the pillow tightly over his ears, tried to think about the future. Berel had written that the new agent who had Yussel’s territory was a Reform Jew, so nobody was taking from him because a Reform Jew in the eyes of Yussel’s friends and relatives was a Christian, which meant Yussel could now get his territory back. He’d borrow enough from his uncles to set up the business, get his family. In a couple of years he’d be liquid again, walking along the boardwalk, sitting out on the jetties watching the waves, lying in his bed with the windows open, listening to the roar of the ocean in a storm, walking over to Edgemere Avenue for fresh bagels and the Sunday Times. That’s all he wanted. He tried not to hear the woman’s cries, the man’s rough groans, tried not to think about the train ride, not to think about Lillywhite, tried not to think whether he would, should, could, whether Lillywhite would demand he do things he wasn’t allowed to do, things they’d whispered about in Yeshiva, things nobody would believe anybody in their right minds would do to each other or allow to be done to themselves, things they were doing in the next room in the Pueblo Ranchero. He wiped his hands on his pajamas. “This is what You want?” he asked HaShem. “This is really what You want from me?”
The Amtrak station was a grand old high-ceilinged building falling to pieces. Pigeons flew in and out of the broken glass panes in the ceiling. “The first stop, I’ll call.”
“I won’t know right away. He’ll take blood tests, maybe X rays, maybe biopsies. I won’t know.”
“I can call anyway, can’t I?”
He bought a ticket on the California Zephyr with a connection to the Lakeshore Limited in Chicago, forced himself not to look around for Lillywhite, picked up Dina, squeezed her tight. She whimpered, “Totty, Totty!” A drop of Dina’s blood stained his cuff. He looked over Dina’s head at Shoshanna who stood so small, so scared, her butterfly wing eyes wet, her eyelashes glistening. “Listen, Shoshanna, I’ll be back in a week. I’ll call every minute I can. If you can’t reach me, you’ll call Uncle Nachman at Yale. If you have a problem, you’ll call Mendl. If you need money, you’ll borrow from Babe. Everything will be okay. I promise you, Shoshanna, in less than a month, we’ll take a walk after supper on the beach. You hear me? I’ll buy you an ice cream sandwich and we’ll take off our shoes and walk on the beach.” Leaving her was like cutting his own veins. “Totty! Totty!” Dina screamed at his back. In her scream he heard the woman’s cries at the Pueblo Ranchero, Chaim’s howl at the Flower Child’s grave.
The first time his father had come to him after he’d died, he’d asked, “Yussele, do you feel pain?” Yussel had answered no. Now he didn’t know what it was like not to feel pain. Look at Shoshanna. Listen to Dinela. Her cry is glass breaking in my heart.
His father boarded the train with him, took his arm. The aluminum slats of his doors glinted in the morning sunlight. He wore safari-style khaki pajamas, khaki mules, and a quilted calico jacket, an Abercrombie and Kent safari flight bag, took a runway turn, hand on hip, smiled coyly. “I told them I was taking an overnight trip, so they give me a smoking jacket and safari gear The jacket’s okay, isn’t it? I mean without the safari stuff? You think it’s too busy in Pierre Deux?”
“I’m about to lose my portion in the World to Come and you’re talking smoking jackets.”
His father clicked his jalousies like castanets. “There’s a paradox for you, Tottele. You get stripped, I get covered.”
Yussel didn’t see Lillywhite on the train as he walked through the cars. He found his compartment: greasy walls, a narrow bunk, a crisp white linen napkin pinned to the pillow. Yussel put his things neatly overhead, stuck the ticket in his pocket, tried to breathe. He slid his briefcase under the seat, gave the conductor his ticket, went into the corridor to find some water, found Lillywhite in a gorgeous white silk suit. She pressed against the wall of the narrow aisle to make room for him. He flattened himself against the corridor like a fruit tree gardeners train to climb walls. Even so, his body swelled, stretched out toward her. People with luggage, porters with trays pushed past them.
“Let’s get inside,” Yussel suggested smoothly.
Lillywhite opened the door behind her, sat on the lower bed. Yussel closed the door, turned a chair around so the back faced the bed, straddled it so the back caged his business. “So?” he said, meaning nothing. “Here we are.”
“I had to do this.”
“How did this happen to us?”
Her legs looked silky. Lillywhite put a pillow behind her, lay back against the wall, curled up a little more. Her skirt rose above her knees. She sighed.
“What do you want?” He could see the outline of her belly.
“Teach me,” she whispered so softly Yussel had reason to hope he’d heard “Touch me.”
Yussel let go of his breath enough to say sure. The word escaped from him like steam from an engine. “Sure.” So she was being coy. “So, what do you want?”
She curled up on the bed. Yussel unwound his legs from the chair. “What do you want?”
“Make believe I’m your son and it’s the first day and you’re teaching me. Teach me the first day.”
“This is what you want?” Maybe this was teasing. Frum women don’t know about teasing. They wear perfume and think they’re teasing. They make a kugel and think they’re flirting.
“We have all day and all night. So I’ll ask to begin at the beginning. Teach me as you’d teach your son.”
He sat down next to her. Lillywhite took a little curl toward him, slight, but in the right direction. Yussel wondered if they both had their feet off the floor would that constitute the act and therefore, without him doing anything really, could his father then go to Heaven?
“We take our sons to cheder on the first day. For each letter he gets a little honey so he knows learning is sweet.”
“That’s it. Wait. Wait here.” She left the room, left the door open. Yussel sat on the bed, tried to catch his breath, relax, figure out what
she really wanted, how she would tell him, how he’d agree, whether he had it to give to her. She came back with a handful of little white-and-gold packets of honey, red spots on her cheeks, closed the door behind her, sat on the bed beside him.
“Give me honey with each letter.” She handed him the packets. “As if I’m your son.”
“For this I have to run away from home? For this you have to blackmail me, ruin me, my friend?”
She stuck her tongue out. It was astonishingly naked. You want a little skirt for it, Yussel? It’s just a tongue. “Okay, okay.” Yussel squeezed a drop of honey on her tongue, watched it retreat, watched her lick her lips, licked his. “Okay, first letter. Watch my mouth.” Maybe this was her way to get him to relax. He opened his mouth and said, “Aleph.” She opened hers and said, “Aleph.” He squeezed more honey on her tongue. Her breath tickled his lips. He made a little kiss to show her bes. She made a little kiss and said, “Bes.” He fed her another lick of honey. He could taste the inside of her mouth. He decided to get her on the lamed. He moved quickly through gimmel, daledh. She followed. Her face was inches from his. “Lamed. You touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue.” She stuck her tongue out, then touched the roof of her mouth with it.
She smiled up at the ceiling, her chest rose and fell. Yussel’s clothes felt tight all over. His breath was short. Lillywhite’s face was an inch from his, maybe less. She was very excited. He wanted to feel her come, to sing out his name, that’s what he wanted.
“Go on,” she insisted. “Lamed, then what?”
He went on. It was torture. He loved it. At the end she repeated the alphabet for him, hesitated, let him fill in, did it finally by herself, grinned, clapped her hands. “I love it. I love it. Thank you. I love it. Now tell me about the letters. Tell me about Torah.”
“Lillywhite, this is what you want?”
“Let me tell you another dream I had. You put your arm around my shoulder. We were in an elevator. In my dream I couldn’t understand why you were touching me, but then your arm became bread, a long bread arm holding me, nourishing me. You just told me what the dream meant.”
He put his arms around her, leaning toward her, felt the soft fat pressure of her breasts against his arm, her hair brushing his cheek. “Take a bite. See if it’s bread.”
She sat up, pulled her skirt back over her knees. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I’m listening to every breath you take, to every beat of your heart, every rustle of …”
She didn’t move. She stared at him, reading him, “You said that door was closed. Leave it closed.” She pushed him away. “The eyes of the innkeeper’s wife are crooked.”
He remembered what his father said about shame versus cancer. If they offer you a choice between shame and cancer, take the cancer. “I … thought you wanted … what the hell am I doing here? Why did you make me come on the train? What the hell are you doing here? I better go.” Yussel went into his compartment, locked the door, slid the chain across it, climbed into his bed, pulled the pillow over his face. The honey was still on his fingertips.
In Chicago, in the evening, they had to change trains. She walked with him to a bank of telephones, waited as he called Shoshanna, lit a cigarette. He couldn’t look at her. There were no results yet, but Dina’s color was a little better. And her appetite. He should call tomorrow. They boarded the Lake Shore Limited, took their separate compartments. Lillywhite asked if he wanted to sit with her in the dining car while she ate dinner. He said no.
She said, “Listen, I just figured it out before you did. It’s not that … that it wouldn’t have been wonderful.”
He said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll see you in the morning.” He closed his door, turned the key, slid the chain across it, turned his face to the wall, heard her close her door, was grateful, furious, ashamed, grieved. In his mind he went through the aleph bes with her, couldn’t get to the toff. He slept on and off during the night, rocking between panic and fury.
He had no idea how she got into his compartment. She was sitting on his bed, touching his face. He woke up. She reminded him for a moment of Pecky. “I’m scared to be alone tonight. I want to be with you.”
“Wait. Let me get up and wash my hands.”
She stood by the sink, watched him pour water, from a blue plastic pitcher with two handles, over one hand and the fingertips of the broken hand. She held out her hands. He spilled the water on his pajamas, refilled the pitcher, poured water on each of her hands, made the blessing. He saw her smiling in the mirror as he dried her hands for her. She repeated the blessing very slowly, whispering. Then he laid down on the bed and she sat down beside him.
“I had a terrible dream about graves and suffocating and then a wonderful dream. I’ll tell you my wonderful dream. I dreamed of dancing with you in your long robes and golden slippers and that beard in a golden room, waltzing around and around with you, breathless, someplace high, glorious, a palace with gardens and waterfalls and magical lights and tiny white deer. You took me into the paths, down the lanes of gardens with fruit trees. The trees had square leaves. I knew I was someplace else. Around and around you turned me until I couldn’t see and I just clung to you and you were smiling that smile I saw the first time I saw you and your eyes were filled with light and I loved as I’d never loved anyone, anything, any idea in my life, and yet it felt as if I always had. You wore golden shoes and I remember thinking they had to use a lot of gold because your feet were so big. We danced in the gardens all night. Once I saw couples coming from a grove of apple trees. They weren’t human. Two by two, these very delicate couples walked toward me from under the apple trees … a long line of them. They were pale and small, like aliens from a movie, unformed, maybe gray, although the grass and the trees were clearly green. They were coming from the tree and I think I knew in my dream that it was a Paradise tree. I knew for sure in my dream that they meant heavenly marriages.”
“Souls travel while you sleep. Your soul went very far.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t make love. It was wrong. It isn’t why I wanted you to come.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She lay her head on his chest. “I did. I’ve known that … that’s why I wanted you to open another door.” She lay her hand very lightly on his. “For a long time I’ll be making believe it’s you when I’m with someone else. You know that.”
“I can’t. That’s not the way to conceive.”
“That’s okay.”
“My baby’s really dying, Lillywhite.”
“Because of us?”
“I’m not sure. Because of me, maybe.”
“Teach me to say Kaddish.”
“Here? At two in the morning?” No one would believe this one.
“Will you?”
“Sure. It won’t matter, you know. Women don’t say it. It won’t mean anything.”
“I want to say a prayer for my father.”
Yussel let out a big breath, put his hands over his head, hit his cast on the wall by mistake, flinched with pain, wondered if it were a sign. Signs. So what. He was finished with signs, with all of it. He was finished. The only sign he expected was a train crash. They’d find the both of them burned to death, lying in the same bed. “Kaddish isn’t a prayer for the dead. It’s an exaltation of God.”
“I don’t want to be scared tomorrow. I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to be afraid. I want to talk to him.”
“Kaddish raises the soul of the dead to higher rungs. But a son has to say it. It doesn’t do anything if a woman says it. But I’ll be happy to teach it to you.” He gave her his pillow, made a pillow for himself out of his bathrobe, wished his pajamas weren’t soaked, wondered why he wasn’t excited, why his parts weren’t popping out of his pajamas, was grateful, felt gracious. First she learned it in English, word for word. Then she learned it in Hebrew. She wept the first time she said it by herself in Hebrew. He wiped her eyes with the corner of his bathrobe. She sa
id it again and again and again. Yussel fell asleep while she was saying it. When Yussel woke up she was gone. He was sleeping on his bathrobe. The pillow was still warm next to him where she’d been. He washed his hands, made a blessing, talked to HaShem. “All right? You’ll leave me alone now? You’ll let me go home to the ocean? I did it. I didn’t do all of it, but some of it. That’s what You wanted? That’s what You got. I’m finished. We’re finished.”
The train was rocking along the Hudson. He saw sailboats and barges, utility poles, other trains along the tracks. He knocked on her door. She was dressed in her white suit.
“I thought you’d never get up,” she said. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
Yussel followed her through the train, swaying, grabbing the backs of seats, toward the dining car, sat in front of a vase with a yellow rose in it. She ordered an enormous breakfast. He drank coffee, watched her, waited for her to say something about sleeping in his bed. Finally, he asked, “Lillywhite, last night. How did you get into my room?”
“Me? I never left my room.”
“I poured water over your hands and I spilled it on my pajamas and my pajamas are wet.”
“I never left my room.”
“Did you dream?”
“No.” She blushed. He’d never seen her blush.
“Tell me the truth.”
“Yes. I had frightening dreams about falling in a grave and suffocating and then I dreamed I was lying next to you and I felt better. I told you a dream and you washed my hands and taught me to thank God that He returned my soul to me.”
“You told me about leaves.”
“Square leaves. Yes. I saw square leaves on a fruit tree. How would I get in your room?”
He’d slept with her soul. She left her animal soul in her room, came to him with her Neshama. She looked up at him over a forkful of pork sausage. He shook his head.
“What’s the matter? The pork?”
“I saw your soul.”
“It’s about time. Listen, before we get in, would you write out the Kaddish so I can read it over in the cab?”
