Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind (10 page)

The Smullian boy wanted to go to a regular school. He decided to run away to a nearby city. He wasn't sure how to get there. Portia could direct him. Portia could lend him some money from her drawer. But she didn't. So, he just waited for something to change.

Portia knew that it was very important to learn how to wait. A child is so small, the tunnel so dark and long and the way so treacherous that a child is best protected by waiting, patiently, without noise, for a change that must come with time.

What the Smullian boy needed was a friend. Portia knew it. It was not right for a boy to live in a forest so far from all others. She wanted to invite him into her bedroom, both of her bedrooms, and have him become her brother. But Portia was a cautious child and she could see that having a brother might be a calamity. She might be banished herself to a distant forest and a passing wolf might devour her or perhaps she would just disappear from lack of being seen. If no one sees you, it occurred to Portia, your body might forget how to be visible.

And so her mother explained the facts of life to her. And she said, You will grow up and have children of your own. I must? asked Portia. You'll want to, said her mother. No, said Portia, I won't.

That night she decided she was too old for the Smullians. She planned an avalanche, a giant block of snow from the mountain above, and she watched as it came roaring down the mountain and fell on the Smullians' cabin where the three family members were sleeping. The dog was on the boy's bed. The mother's body was curled next to her husband's. There was a terrible groaning sound, the roof cracked open and tumbled down. The cabin walls collapsed inward. Bones broke. It was swift and deadly, this avalanche, and there were no survivors.

Not quite true. Under the boy's bed, there lived a city family, in two apartments, across town from each other. There was a girl who lived there too, sometimes in one apartment and sometimes in another.

That family, Portia's family, survived the avalanche.

Portia's mother told Dr. Berman that Portia was doing well. She had made a new friend at school. Who is Portia? Dr. Berman was not sure. Had her patient told her about Portia before? Portia was at school. She must be a child, not a pet. Children are resilient, said Dr. Berman. They have resources that would astonish you. Dr. Berman stood up and ended the session with her usual nod. When she rose, Portia's mother saw a white napkin stained with food that Dr. Berman had been sitting on. She also saw a crushed banana in the corner of the chair. Portia's mother didn't want to say anything, but she was puzzled. Had she interrupted Dr. Berman's lunch?

My early morning patient left his hat on the end of the couch. It was one of those gray fedora hats men used to wear before they didn't. I could hear him in the outer hall but I didn't rush after him. I was going to put the hat on my desk just as the bell rang and I went to open the door for my supervisee. I tossed the hat on my chair because I didn't want to open the door with a hat in my hand. I walked back to my office and the supervisee sat down in the chair and I sat down on my chair and I could feel it under me: my patient's crushed fedora. I just sat there, imagining the little feather in the band bending apart. The hat did not look so good after forty-five minutes under my bottom.

Dr. H. told this story to Dr. Z. as they were waiting for their wives to join them for a Chinese dinner before the theater.

Dr. Z. said, Were you coveting your patient's hat?

Dr. H. said, Or other parts.

Dr. Z., What parts?

Dr. H., The part that is going on vacation to the fjords next month.

 

 

six

His mother had died just weeks before his bar mitzvah. All the pink ribbons in the world wouldn't have been able to save her. The color pink made him want to throw up. His younger brother had been in the room the moment she stopped breathing. He said the dying was all right. He didn't think it hurt her. Del had been waiting his turn to go to her. He had felt like punching something all morning. He had felt like punching his brother for days. When his father came to tell him he could go in and see her, he felt like punching his father, who in fact looked like someone had already punched him, his face was caved in, unshaved and there was spittle on his chin and his hair was uncombed and his eyes had this strange evasive look as if he were ashamed, as if he had been caught stealing.

Now it was two years later and Del had been expelled from the fine school he was attending in beautiful New England where in the fall the leaves turned golden and red, and blew to the ground in a rain of glory: a fact of nature pointed out in the school catalogue along with the college acceptance record of last year's graduating class.

He had to see the doctor or the school his father had found in the city wouldn't take him. He had no interest in seeing the doctor. He had an interest in going to the park and smoking pot with his friends. He had an interest in powders and pills that changed the way you saw the world, kept you awake, and made you think no harm could come your way. He also liked video games in which flares, bombs, assault weapons figured prominently. He did not like Ulysses or Hector or Ajax or Agamemnon, old and dead, they bored him. But it seemed useful for the moment to tell his doctor all about the war in Troy. His doctor listened.

When her colleague, Dr. H., mentioned that the patient she had referred to him seemed to be willing to talk about Troy for the next two thousand years, Dr. Berman said, Troy. Not worth the loss of life and treasure. An old story.

It is an old story, said Dr. H., whose own father had died in the Korean War just months before his birth.

If I were Penelope, she said, I would have married one of those suitors.

The wealthiest one, I assume, said her colleague.

Of course, said Dr. Berman. Was either of them joking?

First he stole
Time
from the table in the waiting room and tossed it in the trash can at the corner. Then when the doctor excused himself to answer a knock on the consulting room door in the middle of the session he stole a small Indian statue of Vishnu that was sitting on a shelf behind his chair. An arm or a leg bulged out of his backpack but Dr. H. was thinking he should have brought an umbrella to his office that morning and did not notice. Del sold the statue to an art dealer in the East Village and felt very American, an entrepreneur.

His doctor had suspicions, but no proof. His doctor missed his Vishnu. He had bought it in a dusty shop in London the summer he had gone to an international conference there. He was going to give it as a wedding present to his cousin's son but then decided to keep it instead. It wasn't particularly valuable. His attachment was simply sentimental. But sentiment has a value too.

What is it about the killing of Hector that you find so interesting? asked his doctor. His patient was silent. The doctor was silent.

His patient said, I'm going.

Why? asked the doctor. His patient got up and walked out and slammed the door behind him and did not return.

What do I do? asked his father.

Give him time, said the doctor.

Even Odysseus showed up eventually.

He had a shank of black hair that fell across his forehead. He was tall and thin, maybe scrawny would be the better word. He wore black leather bracelets on his wrists with protruding silver bullets warning the world to stay away. Girls in fact were attracted to him. The smell of danger, the indifferent way he noticed their breasts, their legs, and the cloud of nicotine that clung to his clothes. The heavy iron cross he wore around his neck. Was he Dracula or was he Dracula's next victim. It was hard to tell. Girls knew that under the dark glasses, behind the tense smile, a boy was waiting for someone to hold him close and chase away the monsters from the depths of the closet. Girls thought they could find him when he couldn't find himself.

It is in the nature of some boys to drive their cars into cement walls. It is the nature of some girls to ride ambulances to the scene of the accident.

No needles. He was afraid of needles. But other things were all right. At night in the park, with some guys from uptown, at a party on Park Avenue with a girl from his school, other things were all right, even comforting.

His father had a cousin who had gone to Israel and had founded a dot-com that provided information on insurance options. It sounded dull enough to be something you could do in New Jersey. Del packed a duffel and flew El Al. Why not? Why anything? As the plane lifted into the air leaving Kennedy Airport, he looked out the window and down to the harbor below and saw the Statue of Liberty, torch raised like a middle finger into the sky. Goodbye forever, he said to himself, and then wondered why he had said forever. His father had supplied him with only sufficient funds for a six-month stay and his return ticket was in his backpack stuffed behind his iPod and the pack of condoms his brother had given him as a going-away present.

The meeting was downtown in the Village where the head of the appointments committee lived in a brownstone with geranium pots in the windows and a collection of paintings that included a Larry Rivers and an early Magritte. Some analysts understood how to survive in a city of rabid dogs and others became like mendicant priests, resisting investment tips from patients because of an ethical code, using up inheritances, sending too many children to schools that paused in their pleas for donations only on the Fourth of July when most of their marks were out of town.

In the cab on the way, Dr. Berman said to Dr. Z., Who would you be, if you had to be one character in the
Odyssey
? He thought: Agamemnon. It took him a half second to realize why. His wife, ten years ago, had left him for six months to move in with a TV producer. She came back. His late night committee meetings, the paper he was writing and rewriting, “The Narcissistic Cathexis to the Missing Object,” had left her feeling abandoned. Or he just wasn't as good as the other guy in bed. She hadn't murdered him, but he was sure she wanted to. He said to Dr. Berman, I would be the horse.

You are not taking me seriously, she said. He was. An army of invisible fighters armed with steel blades sat within him, waiting for a signal that never came.

You would be Helen, Dr. Z. said to her as the cab moved slowly down Seventh Avenue. No, she snapped at him. Why be mortal when you can be a goddess, Hera, Venus, power to force others to bend to your will . . . He was silent. Personally he would prefer to be mortal. He did not think that eternal life was necessarily a good thing. Enough was enough.

So Del arrived at Tel Aviv airport. He waited in a long and interminable line for his passport to be stamped behind five children, two aunts, one grandmother, four great-uncles, father, mother, all members of a Hasidic family carrying a new TV, a printer, an air conditioner, and a small fridge, two Cuisinarts, ice cream makers, a laptop, a fax machine, a vacuum cleaner, in boxes, presents for relatives, or perhaps they were opening a store.

His cousin was waiting for him on the Israeli side of the fence and he was holding a sign high with Del's name written in block letters. Before the day was over Del was enrolled in a Hebrew-language immersion school in Jerusalem, settled in a dormitory room, and had found out where to buy cigarettes and how to stay away from the tourists who wandered around wondering why they felt like strangers on Ben Yehuda Street and at home in their place of exile, perhaps Scarsdale or Port Jefferson or Des Moines.

Well, said Dr. H. when he heard the news from Del's father. It doesn't surprise me.

It surprises me, said his father. I sent him to Israel, not to the twelfth century. Dr. H. said, This might be for the best.

It is not for the best, said Del's father. I don't want him to be one of those parasites who live off the work of others.

I'm sure, said Dr. H., that is not how he sees it.

Would you be pleased if he were your son? asked Del's father. Dr. H. didn't answer. Actually, he would be angry and hurt and sad and he would spend pointless time trying to figure out where he had failed his son. On the other hand, officially, theoretically, he believed in the variety of human possibility. He believed in resilience and solutions to grief that were not his own solutions. He believed, especially for this other man's child, that the choice belonged to Del and perhaps it actually was all for the best. At the same time he knew it was all for the worst, the very worst. If a person were to spend their lives on texts, he would prefer Shakespeare, García M
á
rquez, the United States Constitution, the poetry of Dylan Thomas, anything that didn't require a costume from the winter season in Poland's backwaters, fresh made by the tailors of a long gone century not known for its logic. Del would have a coat of one color soaked in the primitive fears of the powerless and the poor.

I failed my son, Del's father told Dr. H. Dr. H. looked at the digital clock discreetly sitting on the bookshelf behind the man in the chair in front of him. He said, Every father fails their son: it started with Abraham and Isaac and I think it's fair to include God and Jesus.

Del's father was not amused. He did tell Dr. H. that his other son was pre-med at Princeton and that he himself had married again. His new wife, his second wife, his much younger wife, had given birth to a baby girl.

Congratulations, said Dr. H.

And so it was that Del, now named Avram in a round black hat, with a matching black beard, with a very white shirt, with strings hanging out beneath his jacket, met his father at the same airport where he had arrived just a few years before.

On the evening of the second day of his visit, Del took his father to the home of his rabbi, his teacher. He said to his father, This is a holy man, this is a good man. I am his student. Please understand. I want you to understand.

Del's father heard the urgency in his son's voice. Beneath the beard, he recognized his fiery child. I will try, he said. I promise you, I will try. Either way, he said, you are my son. He thought about embracing him, but the young man backed away. Not yet, the father thought to himself.

And all went well through dinner. The rabbi's wife served a pale plucked chicken and some stewed fruit. There were prayers before eating and even longer prayers after eating and the Jerusalem heat poured into the small apartment, and when the meal was over the rabbi said to Del's father, Your son has a gift. For what? wondered the father, but said nothing. He has a loving nature, said the rabbi. Really, said Del's father. He had not seen that in his son.

Del's father looked at his son. Your brother misses you, he said. Write him a letter at least.

Avram shook his head. No, he said. This is my family now.

I don't understand, Del's father said to the rabbi, I thought you people had a commandment about honoring fathers and mothers.

We do, said the rabbi.

Del's father said to his son, You weren't meant to take that bar mitzvah as a draft notice.

Del (Avram) said, I have a people, a faith, a place. You have nothing.

Del's father did not feel love for his son. He swept the bread crumbs that had gathered at his place at the table into a small mound. He felt contempt. He also had stomach cramps. There had once been a little boy in his wife's lap, his head leaning on her breast, and his wife had been reading. And the wild things said we love you so we could eat you up, and the child had said, again, he wanted to hear it again, and the father had hopes, and those hopes he no longer had.

But he had something. It just wasn't something that could be put into a slogan, into a sentence. He could eat a meal without declaring allegiance to anything. It was his life and it had meaning even if he believed it had no meaning which is what, philosophically speaking, he believed.

Del's father who was now the father of a third-year medical student intending to specialize in neurology, an older son who was planning to move to a small settlement on a hill west of Nablus, and he was the father of a little girl who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and wore princess masks at Halloween, a sight that her father had actually found frightening. He had trouble sleeping. He had become irrationally afraid of losing his mind. His wife had begged him to see someone.

Del's father told Dr. H. that he would not be allowed to meet or even see from a distance the grandchild that had just been born in Israel to his son and his wife. The reason—and here Del's father turned pale and his glasses misted over, and he took a long time before he was composed enough to speak.

Del, now named Avram, says that the secular Jews, Jews without synagogues, Jews in modern suits, Jews who ate bacon with their scrambled eggs, Jews who worshiped the false idols of science and fell to the temptations of the theater and the opera, in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, caused the Holocaust.

Dr. H. said, Bullshit.

Del thinks, his rabbi thinks, they all think, that the Jews who did not keep kosher, did not keep the Sabbath holy, who did not follow the laws made God so angry that he brought down on their heads the catastrophe. He did it in the days of the Babylonian Exile. The prophets warned the Jews to behave in a way more pleasing to God and they ignored the prophets and first the Assyrians and then the Babylonians came down the mountain pass and swept them off to exile. It was the Jews' fault for straying. That's what they believe.

Bullshit, said Dr. H. again.

My son believes, Del's father said, there is a straight line from Sigmund Freud's Christmas tree to Auschwitz. That is what my son believes and he is afraid I will corrupt his child with the leprosy of the modern world. My son believes that the way I live caused the death of six million souls. What kind of a God would do that, would punish like that? asked Del's father. How could a sane person believe that? he asked.