A Curable Romantic (64 page)

But first, of course, she’d have to relent and agree to meet me!

I looked ahead at the shoreline curving off into the distance. All about me, French families were frolicking with their children. What my father had maintained appeared to be true: even when they were scolding them, the French sounded as though they were instructing their children in the most sublime of philosophies. I couldn’t help thinking how different my life might have been had I been raised in this milieu! Stumbling late into work, tumbling out of the bed of my lust-crazed wife, downing the darkest of coffees with good pals at the local café, putting in a few carefree hours attending to my patients (most of whom, blinded by syphilis, accepted their fates, ne regretting pas), I’d lunch on red wines and creamy cheeses and spirally mollusks before engaging in a session of dizzying lovemaking with my underaged mistress, never for a moment feeling the slightest pang of guilt, never anxious that my sybaritic ways might be a
hollow, shallow waste of life. And why should I, when the long history of rebukes received from my parents, from my teachers, from my headmasters, from my employers, from my lovers, from my spouses sounded as sweet as an air by Couperin? Addressed in this way from childhood on, who wouldn’t become a lovable scoundrel, an endearing rogue helpless against his own endearing rogueries?

But instead, I was a God-bedeviled Jew, burdened with so many commandments, it didn’t matter whether I kept them or not, I was always falling behind in my accounts.

I’D STAYED LONGER
on the beach than I’d intended, and by the time I thought to return, the sky was already darkening. My hotel was a tiny building, indiscernible in the distant landscape above me. The air was chilling gradually, and I shivered a little inside my sea-bespattered clothes. My muscles ached, my stomach groused, and I had no choice but to tramp back to my hotel, wending through the tiered streets of the little city. My mood was lightened somewhat when, nearing the hotel, I crossed a town square and saw an unworldly sight. Flying, it seemed, from every flagpole and hanging from the balconies of every building, was the Esperanto flag with its green star of hope. Though the opening ceremonies were hours away, outside the City Theater where we would be meeting later in the evening, crowds had already begun to gather, forming themselves into smaller groups, little knots of new and instantly intimate friends, all (as I could hear more clearly with each step I took) speaking Esperanto! I stopped beneath an electric lamp and took in the amazing sight: here were Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutchmen, Turks, Latvians, and Letts chatting away. Three fellows with a guitar, a fiddle, and a bass were even singing songs in Esperanto! Surely, this isn’t France, I told myself, but the very Gates of Heaven!

My joy in the moment could only have been greater if, according to the cliché belonging to every solitary person, I’d had someone to share it with. Knowing there was no chance of locating either fraŭlino Bernfeld or her room, or of persuading the one, if I happened to find both, to let me into the other so that we might step out onto its balcony and take in
the gratifying scene, I decided upon alerting the only other person I knew who might enjoy the spectacle as much as I, if not more so. I slapped my forehead. But of course! Dr. Zamenhof must experience this!

I wasted so little time throwing on my shoes that I neglected to roll down my pant cuffs. What a sight I must have made, rushing through the austere lobbies of the Hotel Boulogne with my boater on the back of my head and my pants nearly as high as a boy’s knickers. I didn’t care, however. I felt as larky as a schoolboy on his birthday, bounding up the stairs.

The door to Dr. Zamenhof’s suite was open, and as a colloquium of voices issued from it, my knocking apparently went unheard. Torn between twin rudenesses — the rudeness of barging in or of knocking again, loudly enough this time to be heard — I chose the middle ground: to walk away and to return later, when the heat of the conversation had died down. I hesitated long enough to permit myself to overhear some of the conversation. I was only human, after all. Indeed, holding my breath, I even pushed the door in a bit, or enough at least to get a view of the room’s inhabitants: these were Dr. Zamenhof and six or seven of the French Esperantists.

His tie hanging loosely around his unsprung collar, Dr. Zamenhof looked small and tired, defending his position against the blows of this illustrious armada of French intellectuals.

“Please please please!” one of them was saying. “No one is telling you what you can and cannot do, nor what you can and cannot say.”

“You are the Majstro!”

“Certainement!”

“But, however …”

“I would hate to think I left Russia and came to France only to be censored by enlightened Frenchmen.” (Though I strained at first to identify the other speakers, I could easily discern Dr. Zamenhof’s voice, not only because it was familiar to me but also because of its sad tones and its soft lisp.)

“Heaven forbid!” someone said.

“It’s just that when, last week, we discussed the matter, before your arrival, all of us at Professor Cart’s apartments — ”

“You’ve already discussed this?”

“In good faith.”

“You sent us a copy of your speech, and naturally we read it, and naturally having read it, we met to discuss it. There is nothing devious in that.” This was Michaux, I believe. “And on the assumption, I might add, that that’s exactly what you had meant for us to do with it all along.”

“If you didn’t wish for our advice, why consult us beforehand?”

“You’ve no idea how the Dreyfus case continues to divide all of France.” I recognized the voice of Dr. Javal.

“Émile, no one has said anything against you Jews,” Professor Cart said, meaning both Dr. Javal and Dr. Zamenhof, I supposed. “Dreyfus is an individual, we understand that, and not a representative of his …” Professor Cart searched for the appropriate word, with how much repugnance, I couldn’t tell, before offering “race.”

“Guilty or innocent as he may be,” someone else cut in.

“Guilty or innocent? Of course, he’s guilty!”

“Oh, and where’s the evidence of that?”

“A man needn’t be pardoned for crimes he didn’t commit!”

“He’s petitioned for a retrial. Does that sound like a guilty man to you?”

“No, only a foolish one. Captain Dreyfus is a fool.”

“At last, we agree on something!”

“Having been twice traduced by so-called French justice — ”

“How dare you speak in this way!”

“ — he puts his hopes in it for a third try? For what reason? To wind up again on Devil’s Island!”

“Where, I should say, he belongs!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”

“You can see, Dr. Zamenhof, that even among ourselves the matter is highly combustive.”

Standing in the hallway, I remembered my first Tarock game with Dr. Freud and how obsessed the pediatrician Rosenberg was by the fate of poor Alfred Dreyfus, at that time still pacing the rocks of Devil’s Island. By 1905, Captain Dreyfus had been court-martialed, publicly degraded, deported, imprisoned, conspired against, defended (most audibly and to
his eternal credit by the novelist Émile Zola), rioted over, retried, reconvicted, and pardoned (as were all those who had conspired against him). Did he have any idea how his figure still haunted our continent?

“Javal, speak up! Tell him. You’re a Jew as well and know the dangers,” General Sébert prompted his friend. “Public opinion — against you, against the movement — will be stirred up in a moment if the general population realizes who you actually are, Dr. Zamenhof.”

“All we’re asking is that you drop the final stanza of the prayer.”

“I think the entire prayer is a poor idea.”

I heard an exasperated sigh, followed by a buzzing conspiracy, murmured on the side en français.

“Now you’re being extreme,” someone said.

“Extreme? We are men of science. Esperanto is a scientific endeavor! Let us leave the God of Israel out of it entirely!”

“If I may. Please,” Dr. Zamenhof said in his small, piping voice.

“Let him do as he wishes.”

“We’ve spoken and I hope not out of turn,” one of the men said to Dr. Zamenhof.

“‘Do as he wishes?’ We know what he wishes, which is precisely what we’re here to prevent him from doing!”

I’d heard enough and slipped down the passageway and up the stairs to my own room. Dr. Zamenhof had read us a draft of his speech on the train, and we had found nothing offensive about the speech or the prayer. It wasn’t even a prayer, really, but a poem, addressed to “Vi,” the powerful and incorporeal You of the Universe, ending with what I thought was a final, stirring sentiment: “Kristanoj, hebreoj aú mahometanoj / Ni ĉiuj de Di’ estas filoj.”

But apparently the Kristanoj wanted little to do, publicly at least, with la hebreoj.

NEEDLESS TO SAY,
the joy I’d felt in the town square ebbed away. I stood before the full-length mirror, drawing on my formal clothes, newly purchased. Gazing at my reflection, I began to wonder if I were being too naïve. Did I imagine everything Dr. Zamenhof hoped to achieve could be won without a fight? (Of course, had I imagined a war around Esperanto,
I would never have imagined a civil war fought between brothers on the same side.) Perhaps this wasn’t a war at all, I told myself, but simply a case of the French, natives here, offering sound advice to a conquering foreigner. Perhaps an invocation of universal brotherhood among Jews, Christians, and Muslims
would
rankle to the point of offense. Still, hadn’t Dr. Zamenhof been clear from the start that Esperanto was not and could never be simply a useful tool for international scientific and cultural and mercantile exchanges?

No, without the “inner idea,” it was nothing at all.

The time was late, and I’d had nothing to eat. A woven basket in the shape of a wunderhorn had been delivered to my room with chocolates, pears, and a small bottle of brandy inside. I wolfed down a pear, eating over my cupped hand, my back hunched over like a question mark, in order not to spill its juices onto the satiny fabric of my suit. I should have eaten the pear first and dressed afterwards, but I didn’t think of this in time. It seemed ridiculous to dress, undress, eat, and dress again. I hid the chocolates inside a kerchief, which I stuffed into my jacket pocket, hoping they wouldn’t melt. Realizing that they would, I unwrapped them and popped them — one! two! three! — into my mouth. “Pah!” I said, licking my lips. I daubed at my mustache with a hand towel, took up my top hat, and departed the room. The brandy could wait until I returned.

ALL FOUR GALLERIES
were full, and I was among the last to squeeze into a seat near the back of the auditorium on the ground floor. I was hoping, vis-à-vis fraŭlino Bernfeld, to repeat the incredible good fortune I’d had with Fräulein Eckstein when I found myself in the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein sitting directly behind her. However, I put no stock in this hope. I had no idea if fraŭlino Bernfeld had even remained in France for the congress. I felt I hardly knew her anymore and could no longer anticipate any of her decisions. And certainly, if an Esperantist as essential as the Marquis de Beaufront could stay away, fraŭlino Bern-feld’s premature departure needn’t signal to anyone a lessening in her ardor for the cause.

Everyone was in evening dress, including some red-fezed Turks. The crowd was growing not restless, but restive, from a giddy sense of
anticipation. I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, peering over the shoulders of the people in front of me, trying to get a look at the dais, although nothing upon it had changed since I’d entered the hall. Though I couldn’t see him, I assumed the orchestra leader must have entered the pit, because the first few rows broke into an applause that undulated over the auditorium until even the back rows, myself included, were applauding — not so much in response to the conductor, I think, but as a form of insistence that the proceedings begin. Finally, the notes of the “Marseillaise” were enunciated by a solo bassoon, accompanied, after a measure, by a cello, before the sound of everyone rising drowned out this odd arrangement. By the time we were all on our feet and could hear again, the anthem was all brassy and polished, as one usually hears it. We remained standing, at its conclusion, as the luminaries ascended the stage, led by the quite tall Michaux. He was followed by Dr. Zamenhof, who, naturally, looked even more like a child next to him; then Professor Cart, Dr. Bourlet, and Rector Boirac in full academic regalia; General Sébert with a chestful of war medals; Dr. Javal with his blindman’s switch; and three or four local dignitaries: the mayor, a town councilor, the president of the chamber of commerce.

The mayor, a tall man with a shock of white hair, was the first to address the crowd — disappointingly in French, with Dr. Bourlet translating. Tears welled up in my eyes: I felt as though I were witnessing a piece of metal rusting at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Never again will one man need to translate for another before a third! The world in which such things happen is as doomed as the Mayan Empire!

The president of the chamber of commerce stood next, a portly man with a black beard and the closely cropped hair of a recently freed convict. Unlike the mayor, he welcomed the crowd in Esperanto, and the crowd roared back its approval.

When he was done, all heads turned toward Dr. Zamenhof.

Six hundred and eighty-eight pairs of eyes, half as many pairs of glasses, pince-nez, and lorgnettes, half again as many monocles were raised to get a better look at this little elfin man whose odd preoccupation with boundless love had somehow radiated out of the dingy court on Dzika Street to all points of the globe, and in response to which we
were all here now, laughing good-naturedly, as the giant Michaux placed a wooden crate behind the flag-draped lectern and returned again from his seat to drastically lower the height of the carbon microphone.

Despite the grey in his beard, Dr. Zamenhof looked like a studious eight-year-old as he peered into the assembly. Even with the aid of the crate, he seemed to struggle to look over the lectern, the lights glittering off his spectacles. This was the first time many in the audience would hear la lingvon internacian spoken in an accent other than their own. It’s one thing to converse with your neighbor in an international auxiliary language, quite another to speak to a man not from half a block, but half the world away.