Sima. You’re being terrible.
Now I am the terrible one. I don’t know why I do anything for you anymore, or for her. She’s on vacation, I bring her all her favorite foods, she won’t eat them, this one is bad for her, that one has too much dairy. Why do I do it? I should forget it. I should forget everything.
Chaim sipped. He wanted to get up to add more hot water to his mug, but to get up, even to move to the stove with his back to her, would be to prove her right, that he fled rather than fight.
“I’ll say something,” he said in English. “I’ll talk to her.”
He waited until the next morning to approach. He found his daughter in the kitchen, scooping large amounts of coffee grains into the filter.
“Maybe you can put it a little less harshly when you speak to your mother,” he began.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to discuss it.”
“I wasn’t going to discuss anything,” Chaim said. “I just wanted to say it.”
They poured their coffee in silence.
“Your mother has arranged for us to make a little film.” The words came out of his mouth before he realized he was raising the subject.
“I heard,” she said.
“You did? What did you hear?”
“Ma just said—you know, she was doing it, she hoped you would do it—” Lola sat at the table, began cutting at an apple, the same neat gesture her mother used.
“But you don’t think I should do it. I think you’re right, the Spielberg project makes me a little uncomfortable too.”
“I didn’t say that. That’s not what I meant yesterday. Anyway, the movie has nothing to do with us. With real people.”
“But you think I shouldn’t do it.”
“Just the opposite, Dad. I think it would be—I mean, but only if you wanted to.”
“When did your mother talk to you about it?” So they talked about him. That was new.
“Couple of days ago.” She looked up at his face for a moment, then away again. “She said you can still cancel.” Something in her voice was hesitant. Her mother must have said something to her much earlier, long before yesterday’s argument. Did Lola realize then that he would be afraid? Coward, she might be thinking now. Shirker.
Her face was turned to her plate, concentrating on the apple. She cut what remained of it into thin slices, saying nothing, his strong-willed daughter, of whom he was asking advice, genuine advice, for perhaps the first time.
“Sorry, Dad,” she finally offered. “I really don’t have an opinion.”
HE HAD A BURDEN of shopping bags to drag home. He supposed he should take the bus, make sure he arrived home with enough time to lay out the food, make everything comfortable for Sima, who surely would be tired from the talking and remembering.
But he wanted to walk. The cool April air would clear his mind, and the mile on a busy Saturday street would do him good. A man needed exercise. He looked at his watch: it was almost eleven. He still had plenty of time to come home, prepare the table and plan what to say. In fact, the walk would save him time. He could think as he walked, pacing his points to the beat of the warm bagels and cheeses tapping his legs, even and steady.
He passed the movie theater. Years ago they had all gone to see a new documentary, many hours long, that profiled old men who had worked in the crematoria of the camps. There was a special screening for survivors in New York, and Pavel had gotten Chaim a ticket, because Fela hadn’t wanted to go. Survivors would be able to sit through it, or so it was advertised; the film had no blood and no hunger, only old men, now more or less healthy, living in Israel, speaking. But Pavel had lasted ten minutes. Chaim had been able to watch the whole way through.
There had been a scene in the film where a man had stopped speaking. The man had been describing something terrible, not ashes and flesh, but something personal, a conversation he had overheard between two people, one on the way to her death. He didn’t want to tell what he had heard. But the filmmaker and his translators had told him: You must tell it, you must. You know that you must. You must, you must, spoken in the film in French and in Yiddish, written on the film in English subtitles. The scene hurt Chaim for reasons he couldn’t explain to himself. But the man had been witnessing for hours of film. Already the testimony caused him much pain. He was testifying to all the crimes he had seen in his youth. But he himself was not on trial. Why was he forced to add this small piece? Was the piece worth more than the man’s wish to rest his memory, to keep a woman’s death face private, to sleep without that particular dream disturbing the night? Why must he? thought Chaim. Why the word must?
HE TURNED THE CORNER on Broadway, walked slowly toward the river. It was close to eleven. A father and two children were walking their bicycles toward Riverside Park. Lola had jogged there in the mornings during her visit, even when it rained. She had become very fit.
With Lola gone, their life had regained its peace and emptiness. Chaim and Sima returned to their own schedules, no center to gravitate toward, each separate from the other, working, sometimes reading alone, sometimes a movie together. No competition, just peace. And affection—Sima was still, after so many years, an affectionate woman. She touched and caressed. After thirty years of marriage she no longer walked around with no clothes, teasing him into bed, but still they had their nights of intimacy, once a week, much more, he knew, than others far younger than he.
There were nights he could talk for hours to Sima. But when pushed for something to say, he became trapped, afraid of hearing how he sounded, afraid of being corrected. To plan to say something, one had to be careful, eloquent, poetic. That was what speaking was for. In his day-to-day life he was successful at sounding quite refined, he thought, even at rambling too much to his friends and coworkers. But to speak of his childhood—he didn’t know how to make it come out clear. It wasn’t so clear in his own head, and he believed he preferred it that way. Besides, did these cameramen really care what he had to say? He had been on the run for most of the war, and sometimes Americans lost interest if one did not say the words concentration camp. As if what gave the experience its importance was the form of torture one had endured, rather than the loss of everything, mother, father, family, culture, language. They preferred violence—the gory details, as Lola would say—to grief. Or perhaps people simply liked tales that matched with the pictures they had already seen.
Chaim fiddled with the lock in the door. What would he do? It was so easy for his wife. She was quiet and careful in public, but when telling stories she became a comedian, making fine and elaborate tales about everyday business, a drive to the airport, a trip to the shoe store. Her stories from forty years ago came out like folktales, varnished and distant, colored and shaded, not photographs but paintings. He already knew what story she would recount over lunch, the one with her father making his favorite joke to her mother, in Siberia: You know, Dvora, one day, you’ll come to the table and say, Berel, would you like more bread? And I’ll say, No, my dear, no thank you. Sima would let a second go by, a pause. And then the punch line: No thank you, I am full. The way Sima told it, it still sounded funny.
The bags suddenly felt heavy. He lifted them into the kitchen, tried to unpack them as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the filming. Perhaps they would be tired after all the morning work. Perhaps he could speak better if he went to them alone, to their offices. Perhaps he did not have to do the Spielberg at all; he could call up the Yale people, the ones who did not like family involved. Surely the cameramen in his home would be relieved to have one less interview today. It was one thing for them to hear the dramas of Sima’s childhood; she knew how to keep her listeners rapt and pleased. He was a different story. It couldn’t be so interesting for them, just to see a man suffer.
He began to wash the grapes, let them sit in a colander to drain. Then he set out the plates, turned on the coffee percolator Sima liked to use for guests. She would be disappointed that he would not join his story to hers on ta
pe. But here he had made something else, a small but elegant meal, laid out on a clean cloth, for the two of them to share with strangers. The table was ready. For this Sima would be glad. She would acknowledge his efforts with few words, not history words, not memory words, but the same words she gave him every day. It looks nice. Thank you. Did you put out enough sugar?
He stepped out of the kitchen to breathe. The door to the living room was closed, and a white line of light emanated from the crack at the threshold. Inside, his wife was making her testimony. Chaim pressed his ear to the door. If he stayed quiet, he knew he would hear her bright voice.
Garment
March 1997
THEY HAD BRUISED HIS throat and vocal cords when they ripped out the breathing tube, so on the day Pavel met his sister for the first time in seven years, he could announce with sincerity that he could not speak. He could not speak! It was true. He made the statement in a pained rasp that was only slightly more exaggerated than the day-to-day mutterings he gargled to his wife. He was thirty pounds thinner than he had been before the bypass surgery, and he had been a trim man to begin with; worse, his lung capacity was down, perhaps forever, from the effects of fifty-six years of smoking. He was weak. Anyone could see that.
But not so weak. He had agreed to the reunion only if Hinda and his cousin Mayer would come to the small club at which the fine-textile traders on Seventh Avenue did business, where he had a membership and they did not. He had a tab in the dining room and would pay for lunch. Neither could get in without him, although he brought Mayer often. He was proud of the membership, even if he used it only to play chess or cards with the retirees. He hadn’t had it when they’d had the business together, and even now Hinda’s husband couldn’t get one. Pavel knew someone on the committee, and that someone was loyal to Pavel. Everyone knew what had happened.
Mayer had found a parking space right at the corner, and Pavel had sat in the passenger seat, looking straight ahead through the windshield. It was too cold and windy for him to be standing, waiting. But Hinda came more or less on time. Mayer saw her from across the street, ankles wobbling despite the low heels. Tiny, tinier than before—Fela had heard that she had put on weight, but this was not the case—and whiter, her hair unconvincingly red near her pale forehead. When they got out of the car, Pavel shook her hand. She let her hand go limp and turned her eyes away from his, past his ear, as if she was hoping for someone else to come down the street and rescue her. He didn’t want to kiss her, and she looked like she did not want to kiss him. That was fine. He could not speak; he told her and coughed.
Hinda said, “All right.”
They went up the three entryway stairs, Pavel ahead, holding on to the railing with one hand, onto the lapel of his serge coat with the other. He put two feet on each step before lifting to the next. No need to rush. Inside, Mayer and Hinda waited before the security man while Pavel dug into his wallet and flipped through the cards for his membership identification. He went slow, and why not? What did the other two have to do with themselves?
Mayer couldn’t bear the silence. In Yiddish, he said, Do you have it, do you have it?
Pavel gave him a glare and exhaled heavily. The moment he got sick, it was as if Pavel could do nothing. Who was the eldest, after all? He had the card, of course he had the card; he signed them in with his own pen.
Mayer pointed out to Hinda where they were going at each step, as if the place belonged to him. Here’s the conference room, he said, and here the lounge, and here the dining room. This is where we eat. Pavel thought he could hear her joints stiffening; perhaps she did not want Mayer to speak Polish so publicly. But better than Yiddish, no? An ugly language, she had frequently said, and Pavel had felt fear, at all those holiday dinners and Thanksgiving lunches, that his children would believe her. Sha! he would say to her, his jaw jutting forward. And she would mutter something bitter under her breath. Her husband, that thief, that swindler, was no better, but he had the excuse, linked as it was to his cosmopolitan pretensions, of speaking Yiddish like an ox. In Pavel’s family they had learned how to speak it, and what’s more, how to write it. It was a pride, not a shame.
Mayer drew out a chair for Hinda in the dining room. Hinda took off her own coat; she wore a pleated wool skirt and an olive sweater, what looked to be silk knit. Pavel hung his coat on the coatrack, tipped his hat onto the coat’s collar. The room was bright: wood tables, no cloths, plain menus. They were next to the window facing out on the street. The waiter was not familiar, but Pavel didn’t care. They got ice water. Hinda ordered coffee.
Pavel looked at the center of the room. There was a friend sitting there, someone from years ago, from camp. Hersh waved a hand. Pavel lifted his in a half-salute. They had morning coffee together once in a while, more now since Pavel was out of the business. Hersh dealt in damask, and Pavel had had occasion to buy in small supply at prices advantageous to Hersh. Pavel had not minded mixing business with pleasure. Business was pleasure, or at the very least, loyalty. Business was loyalty. To work among materials like silks and chintzes and wools, soft objects that would become intimate coverings, blankets, curtains, upholstery for the home, garments for the body, one had to take seriously the idea of trust and loyalty. Family.
Pavel turned to his own table. His sister, ordering tuna fish salad like a teenager, rubbed at her napkin as she talked to the waiter. Skinny hands, skinny fingers. And nervous, so nervous. Her wrists seemed to shake. Mayer still attended to the menu. Always difficult for him to choose. Pavel ordered the same thing every time, a fresh turkey sandwich on rye, with onions, no tomatoes. He asked for extra mustard on the side. Now more than ever he needed the taste of something sharp. Otherwise it was simply impossible to stimulate his stomach to digest, to keep the food down. And he had to keep it down. The thought of vomiting scared him. His throat could not take the trauma.
They began to talk, only in Polish, gossip, children, acquaintances, funerals, with a few words tossed in English. “Needs a vacation,” nodded Mayer, talking of his son; “nervous breakdown,” said Hinda, in reference to her daughter-in-law. She almost seemed pleased to say it, thought Pavel. Imagine! But maybe it was true. Pavel thought he had heard it from someone else. There were grandchildren. Hinda’s were younger than Mayer’s. She just got a new one, it seemed. How was Hinda with an infant? He couldn’t remember from the early years of his nephews. They had been difficult teenagers, hippies almost, at least the older one, but as infants, he could not remember them or their parents. He lived with them then, when he first came to this country and they had been resettled three years, maybe four. He lived with them, but he could not remember how she was with infants.
The food came. Pavel looked around for his extra mustard. He motioned for Hinda and Mayer to start without him, but the waiter brought it and added coffee for Hinda.
You look very thin, Pavel, said Hinda. Like you’ve lost too much weight.
He was so sick, said Mayer. So sick, it was terrible. A short operation, a long recovery.
Pavel glared, but Mayer wasn’t looking. It wasn’t her business!
She was still speaking in Polish, and looked at him, her lips turned downward: Don’t you smoke anymore? You always said you would never stop.
He didn’t want to speak. He could not speak!
“No more!” he croaked, in English, pushing his hand through the air, as if to swat at a fly. It was over, the cigarettes. Since the first heart attack. He saw Hinda fidgeting. She was dying for one. Dying. It made her more nervous. But what could she do? If she left to smoke outside, she couldn’t come back in. Not without him.
Pavel bent to his coleslaw. Swallowing was not such a pleasure either, thanks to the damage done by the respirator, but he had to gain weight, add muscle. It was necessary. His daughter had given a start when she saw him standing the day he left the hospital, wearing his own clothes, his dark pants ballooning around his waist and legs. He had looked different, pretty good even, in the step-down unit, at least ne
xt to the others. But in the apartment things had worsened; he had lost another two pounds upon first arriving home, like a baby in the first days after birth.
Kuba was very sick, said Hinda. Has an ulcer that started seven years ago.
Pavel kept eating. Was he supposed to sympathize?
All the stress gave him an ulcer. He bled from his stomach.
In English, Mayer said, “Hinda, please.”
It was difficult for everyone, said Hinda. Not just you, Pavel. Her hands were shaking.
Pavel looked at her straight in the eye. He couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to, even if his voice was a young man’s. Was she crazy? She must be crazy. He’d lost his business! To his partner, his brother-in-law, who had pushed him out when it came time to sell, who had taken more than his rightful half, plus a salary too, from the company that bought, who had told Pavel that the new owners did not want old blood! Who, to make Pavel go along, threatened to report some mistakes Pavel had made years ago, taxes on wholesale or retail, it hurt Pavel even to remember exactly. Yes, Hinda must be crazy. Married to a blackmailer and traitor, someone who lived to rip things apart, and pretending it was all just a little argument.
Mayer went to Yiddish. Hinda, this is not how to talk about it.
“What I’m trying to say is, I still love you.” She forked her tuna fish.
Love! thought Pavel. Love! He needed a new dictionary to find out what she meant by that word. There she was, trembling like a drunk into her salad, not even hoping that God would forgive her. There was nothing to forgive! She was just covering all points, just to make sure. Just in case she one day stopped sleeping so well.
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