Displaced Persons (23 page)

He had been thrown in with the rest, inexperienced European boys near the border with Syria; with his small understanding of rifles
and stealth, he had stood out as less nervous, more poised, able to lead a group of five, assisting the lieutenant with his halting Yiddish. He was a new man, he wanted to be a new man, but even as his body looked calm, stiff, in control, his mind shrank from the idea of violence, and the patrols to which he was assigned were a slow torture.

He could wear a strong face with his peers in the three years of straight military service, but once he was married it became terrible, a mask he dreaded putting on. He developed stabbing pains, giant knives in his gut that woke him up in the night, thinking of his future, the prospect of reserve work: his strong years spent dreading the month of patrolling, his old age spent watching his children—would he have children?—it seemed so much to take on, another life—go to battle against their neighbors. But he had found himself unable to confess to the army doctors, for fear of arousing their disdain at his diaspora cowardice. Each time he was called to the reserves he was pulled out of his peaceful life with his wife, her terrible cooking of which he made fun, his work as a technician at one of the radio stations. He did not want to fight. After all his troubles in Europe—once he had time to think, he became afraid, then angry. His life had been struggle enough. Jewish natives of Israel thought him a traitor, even his wife felt reluctance and guilt, but he knew he couldn’t protect himself there. He needed a life without battle.

Here the pain was much less frequent; it did not distract him: that was America. A phone ringing in the evening did not signify a military emergency but simply a request to visit a friend of Pavel and Fela’s, to install the new hi-fi just so. A police car speeding by, siren wailing, was on its way to someone else’s tragedy. An argument with his wife did not result in him doubling over and her giving up on the discussion, horrified by his suffering; he could buy pills over the counter that quieted him down, sometimes for a week. He had his morning ritual of choosing a shirt, he had the coffee shop where he picked up his coffee with milk, no sugar—on doctor’s advice he could drink moderate amounts—he had even the little office disputes, the routine
he had devised for organizing his morning tapings, the frenzied afternoon shouts of his supervisor, whose endless ability to misunderstand the new equipment could on occasion seem endearing, sweet, naive. Once Lola arrived, and with her the increased company of Fela and Pavel, substitute grandparents, he had almost no episodes at all; it was as if the intense, almost disturbing love he had for his child had mitigated his ability to feel pain.

Sima felt pain. At times he could gather up envy at his wife’s grief, parents to care for as they died. He envied even the solitude of her burden, the fact that she shared nothing with a brother or sister, that she alone was responsible, full. He was empty.

H
E WENT TO BED
after the recording ended and fell asleep quickly. But then he awoke in the night, no pain, no dream. Restless. He looked over at Sima, lying in the bed beside him, shoulders hunched, breasts hidden, the grief in her face apparent even in her sleep. A good woman, a good mother. On drives she would paint her lips, blot with a tissue, then draw with the lipstick a face above the lip print to give to Lola in the backseat. He was a lucky man. Lucky. But he wanted to be more than lucky. He did not want his happiness to come in bursts. He wanted the explosions of his life to be over. He wanted to have the sound of happiness moving softly within him, beside him as he walked, following him and guiding him, like an accompanist at the piano.

H
E MET HER IN
a café near her Midtown hotel at two, just after the lunch rush. Basia was waiting for him in a booth; he was surprised, expecting her to be later than him. She was dressed simply, in a
caramel-colored blouse and skirt, a wedding ring her only jewelry, but still she seemed to glitter.

Chaim, she said.

Hello, he answered in Hebrew.

But she continued in Yiddish. You grew up. I meant to say it to you yesterday, but I was so shocked—so taken back in time, you know.

He nodded.

So I say it now, she continued. You grew up.

He gave a nervous laugh. Yes. As did you.

Yes, she said. I have two daughters.

I have one.

Don’t tell me her name. I’m sure she is beautiful.

Not beautiful, said Chaim. Not exactly. But a charmer. Very smart.

Of course, said Basia. How could it be otherwise?

He ordered a soup and half a sandwich, but when it came he found it hard to swallow more than a spoonful or take more than a small bite.

Such a delicate eater, said Basia. But she herself had a full salad in front of her, almost untouched.

Sometimes my digestion is unpredictable, said Chaim.

He waited for the pains to flicker inside him at the reminder, but he felt nothing. Calm.

She began to hum. “
Vedrai carino, se sei buonino, che bel rimedio ti voglio dar.
”

That is something you sang last night, yes?

Basia smiled. From
Don Giovanni.
She is trying to heal her lover, trying to comfort him.

What does it mean?

“
Sentilo battere, toccami qua,”
Basia sang. “It means: feel it beating. And
toccami qua
: touch me here. Touch me here, touch me here.”

She is almost ridiculous, Chaim thought. But he did not laugh.

She repeats it, said Basia in Hebrew, until he does it. He knows he will be healed.

When she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room he called for the check, breathing slowly, blinking away the image of her chest struggling against its sequins as she sang the night before.

Do you have the afternoon? Basia said, returning. Let us walk.

He had told his supervisor Russell that he was sick, and Russell had waved him off—it occurred to Chaim that he had not taken a sick day since eight years ago, when Sima had given birth, and he felt more troubled by his deception to Russell now than by his betrayal of his wife.

Was it a betrayal? No, no, it wasn’t to do with her but with him. It wasn’t expected that he should be a man in hiding while she grieved. He had remained steady to her, in love with her, truly attached to her all the years of their marriage.

He had been with other women in Tel Aviv, of course, though not in the first two years they were married, and only on the reserve weekends. Since Lola’s birth he had been with someone else only once, a young woman he had met one morning when the church down the street had burst into flames, an electrical fire, they said, the same church in which a deaf black boy had been killed by police because he had not heard them shout at him to turn around. But this was different from the girl at the church fire, this was a real wind in him. At the lobby of Basia’s hotel, when they stopped, he did not wait for her to ask him upstairs. He clasped his arm around her full waist. She did not try to escape.

B
ASIA DECIDED TO STAY
an extra day and made some excuse to her husband and daughters. Chaim had two days of her, one afternoon and another full day—he was sick, he told Russell, working late, he
told Sima—spent in her hotel bed and walking in Central Park, and he felt himself to be in a French movie. When she left he felt a half-pleasant sensation of pull and loss, an easy loss. He carried her bags for her the morning she left, and on the train platform she gave him a modest kiss on the cheek that he imagined he could smell and feel throughout his day at work, cutting tape at the radio station for a public service announcement, adjusting the volume in the recording room for the announcers.

What was it that Basia had sung that night? He wanted to call up the tune in his head, but he couldn’t remember it completely, only a note or two, the shadow of the melody. He thought of her plump white chest in the hotel bed beside him, then in the sequined dress. Her voice the opposite of her body: thin, unembellished, pure. Her body as full of music as his own was empty.

Why had she left Israel? Her career had called her. Her husband, a Hungarian pianist, had left Hungary for the same reason.

Really?

Well, when the Communists came, it was more difficult.

He must speak Yiddish.

Of course, but now I speak a little Hungarian. I speak everything! She laughed. I am a citizen of all countries. It is crazy, but we communicate most in English now. I don’t know why. His Hebrew is all right, anyway.

But he did not want to move there.

You know what they say about us, Chaim. I felt that people looked at me like I had committed some crime, or else I would not be alive. Didn’t your friends say such things to you?

I didn’t talk to my friends, said Chaim. They did not want to hear it.

But on the subway home he thought it was not quite true. Berel had wanted to hear it, and Dvora, and even Sima. Yet Sima knew almost nothing. Her willingness to listen had softened his need to talk, had relieved him of the burden of having to say anything, as if
the only reason to tell her was to make sure she would believe it. But if she already believed, he was absolved of the obligation to speak. Almost a healing silence, as if she knew with medical precision where not to cut.

On the subway he felt thinner, cleaner, a new man. But Sima did not look up when he came home. He went into their bathroom, washed his hands, rubbed them hard with his wife’s embroidered towels. While brushing his teeth he hummed to himself an American song, words he half remembered from a tape Basia had put on in her room.
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
. The rhymes so clean and easy.
When we’re out together dancing, cheek to cheek
.

A
FTER DINNER HE STAYED
in the kitchen, reading a Yiddish weekly that Pavel had left for him and sipping tea. He slipped a spoonful of jam into his mouth, rolled it around under his tongue.

I need some things, said Sima, her voice sharp. She had appeared at the doorway of the kitchen without his noticing her arrival, her dark robe tied loosely around her waist, her hair pulled back. On Ninety-third Street the drugstore is still open. We need Q-tips.

Chaim’s lips parted. There was a question in his mouth, but no sound came out.

And soap, Sima continued. Dial soap. The kind of soap we use is Dial.

I know what kind of soap we use, Chaim said, then regretted it instantly. He had showered at Basia’s hotel.

Sima looked at him, a kind of puzzled expression on her face. Please go, she said.

It was eleven o’clock at night. He wanted to ask, What, now? But as he thought the words he stopped them, and his face flushed with relief at having held himself back from what would have been a ter
rible stupidity, possibly something worse than what he had already done.

Words moved into his head, bubbled inside his chest. Please—I don’t know what you are talking about—let us think about it—you don’t know—I did not—my love, I have missed you so much, I only—it was about the music, it was something from my past—how can I—

He said: All right.

His mind turned blank as soon as he got outside, marched uphill to Broadway in the chill. Dial soap, Dial soap, he thought, the words bouncing in his head in an even rhythm, Dial soap, Q-tips, Dial soap, Q-tips. When he came back he sat in the kitchen for an hour, the pharmacy bag on the table in front of him, staring at the red and yellow lettering. He had a feeling he should be scared, but he was not. At last he got up to walk to the bedroom but stopped at his daughter’s door and pushed it open. Sima was lying in Lola’s bed, her arm thrown over their daughter’s waist.

L
OLA HAD A RECORD
that told the story of Mozart’s life, interrupting the narrative with music. A child who played his first chord at age three, who, under the tutelage of his father, had written his first compositions for piano at age seven, his first symphony at thirteen or fourteen—out of his body and hands had come these pieces that now flowed through the mouth and body of a singer, a pianist.

They gave their daughter piano lessons, though she struggled with them and would cut short her required half hour of practicing a day. She wasn’t a musical child, not a performer. She preferred stories, records, lying around listening to her mother tell tales of Siberia, tugging at Pavel’s arm for some story of escape, begging Chaim to describe what his mother had looked like. She did not understand
what she was asking. When Berel was last in New York, after the first surgery, he had gone into a rage at Lola one night when she refused to finish what was on her plate. He had snapped at her in the middle of his own meal, and then, confronted with the child’s stunned face, shouted at Sima and at Chaim. Then he had gotten up and gone to the room he shared with Lola and closed the door.

It makes him suffer, unfinished food. Sima, tears in her eyes, had tried to soothe their daughter. And now his medication, it bothers him. He is sorry, Laiush, he is sorry.

Lola was forgiving.

O
N
S
UNDAY
C
HAIM SAT
on a park bench watching Lola roller-skate around the little median in Riverside Park.

After a few rounds she came and sat down. Next to him on the bench was his radio, turned off, and a magazine, unopened.

“Daddy,” she said.

He felt a little sweat come out on his forehead. Sima had spoken maybe twenty words to him in the last four days, and he had a sudden thought that Sima had told Lola that she was asking Chaim to move out, that Sima had told their daughter before telling him. Irrational, crazy, but the images of what might happen hurtled through his mind like a movie, Lola would ask him where he was going, when he was coming back, what could she do to make him and Sima live again in one bed—all things he knew from his workmates that children asked when their parents separated. What did one say? Everything would be all right, it was not Lola’s fault, whatever her mother told her she should listen.