A Curable Romantic (57 page)

The happy, drunken, sated faces around the table all looked up at me expectantly, except for fraŭlino Bernfeld’s. She kept her eyes on the tablecloth, lightly fingering its pattern.

I cleared my throat again. “It’s been quite cold since we arrived,” I said. “Yes, and … but … the welcome couldn’t have been warmer.”

An impatient murmur substituted for the applause I’d anticipated.

“And so” — I raised my glass and took a deep breath, my voice trembling — “I’d just like to say to fraŭlino Bernfeld …”

The Zamenhofs and their neighbors quieted down. You could practically hear the snow falling outside. Everyone stole a look at fraŭlino Bernfeld before attending to me again.

“Fraylin Bernfeld. Rather Fraylin Loë,” I said. “My darling …”

Fraŭlino Bernfeld raised her eyes and met my gaze. Two crimson smudges reddened her cheeks. Her lips parted, the adhesive membrane of each separating from the other slowly; the tip of her tongue probed the opening, breeching the white border of her teeth, wetting her lips, as she prepared, it was clear, to answer a question about which, given the conspiratorial nature of the household, she must surely have been forewarned. I’d switched to Yiddish for the benefit of the Seidmans, and I stared as intently at Fraylin Bernfeld’s mouth as might a dentist, trying to discern if the tip of her tongue was poised to rise against her palette in order to pronounce the word
ja
or lowered against her bottom teeth for
neyn.

“Darling,” I heard myself saying, “thank you so very much for proposing this wonderful adventure and … and also for buying the train tickets.”

I sat, and as I did, I hit the table with my knee, causing my water glass to tumble. I caught it before it fell, but a measure of the liquid flew out. From all sides, napkins were thrown towards me to stanch the spill. After a dulling moment, Sinjorino Zamenhof said, “Zofia,” and the little girl got up to help her mother bring in the Knödel.

“I don’t think I could ingest another mouthful,” I said unhappily to no one in particular.

FRAÜLINO BERNFELD CONTINUED
doing her best to cheer up the household, hiring a seamstress to mend the children’s clothes and a cleaning woman to straighten up the rooms. I was ordered to stand in for Dr. Zamenhof in his consultancy, so that he and the fraŭlino might spend our two days in Warsaw with their heads pressed together, poring over the proofs of her Dutch-Esperanto dictionary and her translation of
La Dua Libro.

(Her clothes so reeked of Dr. Zamenhof’s constant cigarette smoke that, back home in Vienna, she simply threw them out. “I’ll never get the smell out of my hair,” she said, “but it was worth it.”)

Between the two of us, we contrived never to be alone during the remainder of our stay, and the opportunity to propose marriage continually failed to present itself. It was just as well, I supposed: just as a refusal at the dinner table would have ruined the rest of the evening, so a refusal at any time would have ruined the rest of our trip. Better to propose after we’d left, I told myself; and mindful of my promise not to return to Vienna without having done so, I decided to offer myself to fraŭlino Bernfeld in marriage at some point during the train ride home.

We took leave of the Zamenhofs at dawn and traced our way in a hired droshky back to the station, where in the café, we breakfasted on strong coffee, brown bread, and pungent cheese. We ate quietly, I nervously leafing through the morning papers. Soon the sun penetrated the black drapery of sky, lighting all of Warsaw with its filmy light. When the train to Vienna juddered to life, we paid our bill and strolled across
the platform to the track, no longer burdened with fraŭlino Bernfeld’s many packages. We sat in a compartment across from each other, our knees bumping. fraŭlino Bernfeld opened the window, and the air, though soot-stained, seemed fresher than the stale air of the compartment. Though I held the newspaper before my eyes, I read nothing in it, too busy rehearsing my opening gambit, too conscious of the little jeweler’s box in my pocket, cutting into my ribs. When we finally pulled out of the station, I folded my newspaper and glanced at fraŭlino Bernfeld, swaying softly to the rhythm of the train.

“Anything interesting?” She nodded towards the newspaper. I shook my head. “Lutek needed a little bolstering, don’t you think?” she said a moment later.

“Lutek?” I said.

“He asked me to call him that.
Majstro
apparently embarrasses him.”

“Yes, so I understand.”

Fraŭlino Bernfeld gazed out the window and said, “Klara’s fortunate to love such a worthy man, to sacrifice so much for everything he believes in.”

“Although could you really be happy living as they do?”

“What woman wouldn’t be?” she said simply.

I nodded, although this was a vexing turn. I couldn’t tell by her tone whether, in her estimation, I belonged to this pantheon of worthy men for which one might sacrifice everything or whether I was barred from it completely. I glanced out the window, lost in thought. Was I the sort of man who believed in the exalted things a woman could happily sacrifice herself for? It was hard to say. What
did
I believe in? I’m certain, from any objective point of view, I appeared committed to no cause greater than my own happiness; and even there, I worked at it fitfully enough. Less a cause, it was more of a hobby, something to do with myself when I was bored. I couldn’t hide from myself the fact that in all likelihood I was exactly the sort of man who served as a deriding counterexample to Dr. Zamenhof: a proper medical man committed in his spare time to nothing more exalted than the playing of cards and the drinking of whiskey. (Although, in fact, neither of these pastimes appealed to me. I
much preferred dropping in on Herr Franz’s puppet theater for the late matinee.)

“I’m sorry you never met my mother,” fraŭlino Bernfeld said.

I turned from the window, grateful for this change of subject. “As am I,” I said.

“She was quite beautiful.”

“I could only imagine.” I was too nervous to add
like her daughter.

Fraŭlino Bernfeld told me how fortunate her father had been to marry a woman whose every waking moment was committed to the welfare of her husband. According to his daughter, the illustrious Herr Bernfeld could never have achieved all he had without his wife’s support. Why, with it, he was able to stride the globe as a colossus, her love giving purpose and meaning to his extraordinary business skill. Without a family to cherish and raise, Herr Bernfeld’s wheelings and dealings would have had no more significance than a long and lucky day at the roulette table.

I could only scowl. This last confused me greatly. Was fraŭlino Bernfeld offering herself to me, advertising the advantages of married life, or was she rather letting me know that such a marriage was beyond my means? Certainly I could never compete with these great striders of the globe, Dr. Zamenhof and Herr Bernfeld, the one linking all of humanity with the invisible telegraphic system of a universal language, the other overseeing an invisible empire that stretched from São Paulo to Johannesburg to Constantinople to Rome.

“Ah, look! The Vienna Woods!” she said, pointing out the window. “We’re home at last!”

I fingered the little box inside my pocket but seemed incapable of withdrawing it. Concealed from the world, we huddled as closely as was publicly decent in the fiacre on the ride to her apartment, the blankets pulled to our chin. Still, I was helpless to broach the subject. When I saw her to the door, she laid the palm of her gloved hand against my cheek in what I interpreted as a gesture of regretful farewell.

I rode home, the interior of the cab redolent with her perfumes. I climbed the front steps of my building and limped down its familiar passageway. I’d been gone only a few days, but everything seemed smaller,
stuffier, greyer. Inside, I dropped my bags to the floor and threw off my heavy coat. I set the coffee to boil. What else was I to do? Redon my coat, dash out into the freezing maw of winter, return to her apartments, and pound upon her door?

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I answered myself, but still I did nothing; and it was precisely at that moment that a banging sounded at my own door. Perhaps because I was expecting no other face or form than fraŭlino Bernfeld’s to greet me there, the identity of the stranger who crossed the threshold and threw herself upon my neck was an even greater puzzle to solve than it might have otherwise been.

CHAPTER 6

Uncle Moritz and Aunt Fania weren’t certain you were home. Were you away?”

“Was I away?” I answered numbly.

“In any case, I thought I’d wait in the coffee house across the road and see if you came back. I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you.” She picked up her bag again and faced me. “Are you going to stand there all day? Or are you going to step aside and let your sister in?”

A grown woman now, Sore Dvore gripped the handle of her bag with both hands, shrugging against its weight. I stood on the other side of the door, my hand on the knob. She had, from any objective point of view, explained everything: she was in the city; our aunt and uncle had suggested she contact me, though they weren’t certain I was in town; she’d come anyway and waited; when I arrived, she’d crossed the street; and now we were standing across from each other at my door.

However, though I could understand every word she said, I couldn’t make sense out of any of it.

“Yankl?” she said. “Is there a reason you’re not letting me in?” Like everything else my sister said, this question baffled me completely.

“A reason?” I said, unable to think of one. “I don’t think so.”

“Then may I come in?” She laughed, and I stepped aside. “You act as though you’ve seen a ghost.” Sweeping by me, she lugged in her bag.

“A ghost?” I said, shutting the door and following her into the parlor. “Why on earth would you say such a thing?”

“Are we all so very ethereal to you?”

She removed her hat and unbuttoned her winter coat. I took a step towards her.

“Sore Dvore,” I said.

“Sarah is sufficient.” Tying up her hair, with her hat pins in her mouth, she said, “I’ve dropped the Dvore completely.”

“I never expected to see you again.”

She held her things out to me, but my mind was too cloudy, and I couldn’t think to take them. Finally she laid them across the arm of the divan. “May I sit?”

I motioned her to a chair. “Please.”

For some reason, I neglected to sit myself.

“Why don’t you sit as well, Yankl?”

“Of course,” I said, doing so.

We looked into each other’s faces. The youngest of my sisters, she’d been the closest to me in age, and I hadn’t seen her since she was fourteen. Now she was grown. Though her thick hair was, like our mother’s, the color of golden raisins, she and I resembled each other not a little.

She crossed her arms. “That little beard of yours is charming.”

I shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m a bit vain about it, I suppose.”

“Oh!” She clapped her hands, remembering something. “Mama sent along some things.”

“Ah! Very good!”

She reached into her bag, but then thought better of it. “I’ll unpack it all later.”

“How is she, anyway?”

Sore Dvore looked at the twin knobs of her enskirted knees and placed her hands in the vale between them. “Not good, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Things have been hard since you left.”

“Well, you can tell her when you return that I’m well, that you saw me, and … and that I’m well.”

“That’s just it,” she said, raising her voice as I left the room to bring in our coffees. “I’m not going back.”

“Father drove you out as well?” I said lightheartedly, sticking my head out of the kitchen, as though my expulsion from our family had been a merry joke and not the defining catastrophe of my life.

“Not at all. Oh, not at all,” she said. “On the contrary, I’m on my way to Palestine.”

“Ah, to Palestine?”

“With Father’s blessings, yes. Thank you,” she said, reaching for the coffee. She took a provisional sip. “Oh, but that’s strong!”

“He gives out blessings now as well as curses?” I asked. “Sugar?” I handed her the bowl. “Perhaps it will sweeten the bitterness.”

I had intended not to mention our father, and I cursed myself for bringing him up. This silent curse penetrated the air between us, and I found it difficult to say anything afterwards. Ignoring my diffidence, Sore Dvore unpacked the bread and the cheeses and the briny olives and the salty fish Mother had sent, either as a gift for me or as traveling food for her, it was never made clear, and as she did, she told me all about her life: she’d had become an ardent Zionist. She had, in fact, attended the first Zionist conference in Basel.

“Oh, Dr. Herzl’s speech was simply electrifying, Yankl! Do you know him, Dr. Herzl? Because he lives in Vienna, doesn’t he?”

I spun my coffee cup on its saucer like a top, admitting that although I did not know the great Dr. Herzl, I had called upon him once, inquiring for him at the offices of the
Neue Freie Presse
, where he worked.

“Yes? And? So?” Sore Dvore leaned forward excitedly.

“Well.” I shrugged, embarrassed. “Perhaps I didn’t enunciate his name clearly,” I said, explaining that I had been taken to meet not Dr. Theodor Herzl, but Dr. Theodor Hertzka, also a writer at the paper, also the author of a utopian novel, although his,
Freiland
, unlike Dr. Herzl’s
Altneuland
, had nothing to do with Palestine or a Jewish state. As my interview with Dr. Hertzka wore on, I became confused: why on earth would the great Zionist leader go on and on about public land reforms and urge me to emigrate, not to Palestine, but to British East Africa, where advocates of his ideas had recently founded a model community?

“But for that,” I told my sister sheepishly, “I might be a Zionist as well.”

(These sorts of confusions continued to dog my life. For example: arriving in the Promised Land myself, years later, a Zionist in fact, if not in theory, I made a fool of myself by purchasing a large bouquet of roses and hiring a taxi to Bethlehem one bright and ringing morning so that I might lay them as a tribute to the Yiddish poet Itzik Manger beneath what I’d anticipated would be a plaque erected for him in Manger
Square. How fortunate, I told myself on that bright day, how fortunate it is to live in one’s own country where one’s own squares may be named in honor of one’s own poets!)