Great Kisser
Page 22
“Later on they notified us he was killed by a car in Germany. He was buried in Frankfurt in a Jewish cemetery. I had him taken out about eight years ago and shipped to Israel. I bought a plot in Israel for my family. I buried my father there too. At least there’s one place in the world, not scattered all over and you don’t know where anyone is.”
When Oscar’s mother died, he could not talk to me about it. Within two weeks, Oscar was diagnosed with throat cancer. After his surgery he lost most of his voice. When he spoke to me now over the phone, it was in a fierce and torturous whisper, and there still was no trust in it toward me.
Then Oscar dropped me. He said, “It’s not the right thing. It’s not good and proper. What can I tell you?”
His voice is here.
Although this is a story that has been told many times before, it is still hard to hear it. In writing it, I heard it for the first time. I heard Vilna, Dachau, Lodz, Warsaw, Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen. I heard the Dreyfus case. I heard Lucy Dawidowicz, who came to me in loving friendship in what was to be the last year of her life, who gave her life to elucidating the war against the Jews. I heard Hannah Senesh and Anne Frank. I heard Abba Kovner and Abraham Sutzkever. I heard the journey of the St. Louis and the journey of the Exodus. I heard the shots fired at the Jews trying to reach safe shore.
I heard Oscar Schwartz.
About the Author
David Evanier is the author of seven books. His work includes novels, story collections, and biographies of entertainment legends. Evanier’s work has been published in Best American Short Stories and has been honored with the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for short fiction. He is a former fiction editor of the Paris Review and a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, as well as a fellow of Yaddo and of the Wurlitzer Foundation. He has taught creative writing at UCLA and Douglas College. He lives in Brooklyn and is currently writing a biography of Woody Allen.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The Man Who Gave Up Women” and “Sabbath Candles on Brooklyn Bridge” originally appeared in The Saint Ann’s Review. “Rabbits in the Fields of Strangers” originally appeared in River Oak Review. “The Great Kisser” (under the title, “Mother”) originally appeared in Southwest Review. “Danny and Me” originally appeared in TriQuarterly. Sections of “The Tapes” originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Heeb Magazine. With special thanks to The Writers Room and its director, Donna Brodie, and to Eva Fogelman and Jerome Chanes.
Copyright © 2007 by David Evanier
Cover design by Kathleen Lynch
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4163-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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