Dog Tags (7 page)

She did smile. “I've spoiled your evening.”

“No. Nothing could.”

“How gallant.”

“It's a stroke of luck,” he said. “You might have been engaged, or somebody's mistress. Another medical student?”

“No,” she said, and then wailed, “it was a god damn basketball player from New Jersey.”

Now her eyes were moist. In pity, but more in embarrassment, Benny stared at the bottom of his glass. Calf-love had passed him by; a boy of the streets, a fornicator at fifteen, he had been denied the more sublime agonies of the youthful heart; blasted incessantly by lightnings of lust, he had suffered for sex and mocked romance. He risked a glance, and caught his breath at the childish vulnerability on the wan face, in the dark blue eyes. And yet how trivial! Or was misery an absolute? For an instant 57359, in a striped prison suit, stood beside Miss Carol Untermeyer, who surely wore furs in winter. Her eyes were wide, her nose straight, a warm, lovely face, the features generous; and she had been hurt. By a sweating, indifferent athlete, crew-cut surely, boisterous, who would kiss his teammates in moments of glory. For the moment that pain defined her. What pains had Benny, all unknowing, inflicted?

He yielded uncertainly to a new and perplexing emotion.

“How's the pâté?” Carol asked him.

“Good. Want some?”

“No. Doesn't go with pike. Or whatever this is. Where'd you learn French?”

Benny was offended: “I am careful not to speak French with waiters.”

“You did all right with quenelles. Kennel?”

“Quenelles. I was in France for a while.”

“What's that look mean? You had a good time in France. Low life in Paris. I bet the tourists were watching you through a peephole.”

“I had a rotten time in France.” He told her. As he talked his third eye roamed her, bright, unquenchable, male. Her small teeth were quite white, the skin of her throat was firm; she was high-breasted, rather conical perhaps, and he wondered if the arms pressed close to the body, the slightly rounded shoulders, the capacious bodice were defensive, self-deprecating. It was a figure that might wear well. He wondered what sort of figure her mother maintained; he had yet to meet her mother. He was still talking when the cutlets were set before them, and the claret poured.

“But that's interesting,” she said. “Not just that war-movie junk. And you have no idea who he was.”

“None.” Two and a half years of his life: war-movie junk. He had saved the world for her.

“Or where the dog tags are.”

“None.”

“You've got to find him.”

“We've tried. We'll keep trying. It's like having a twin brother you've never seen. What is he now? The dictator of some small country. A bank robber in Australia. A maniac, hiding in Hamburg and assassinating ex-Nazis. Then in ten years you find out he's a grocer in Israel. Or an undertaker.”

“No, no,” she said. “A scholar. An authority on enzymes. And the first you hear of him is a Nobel Prize.”

Benny laughed uproariously, and she joined him; across the table affection blossomed almost visibly. “You Jewish mama,” he said.

“Do you suppose that's what I am?” She meditated briefly.

“Whoa,” Benny said. “There's a great big world out there just waiting for genetics engineers. Although …”

“Although.” She nodded cheerfully. “Well, who knows. We don't have to decide tonight.”

Benny's hand checked; he spilled a drop of wine. “We? Decide what?”

“Oh my God,” she said. “I didn't mean that.”

“The spell I cast.” He grinned amiably, spoke lightly. “To know him is to love him.”

She sniffed. “I shall never love again.” She astonished him with a wink: “But you dried my bitter tears.”

“It's a start,” Benny said.

Mellowed by wine, Carol laughed joyfully when Benny told her Jacob's explanation, years before, of the white line down the middle of the Holland Tunnel: “For bicycles.” Sid Berger heard the laughter and came to say hello, becomingly stout and jovial, balding and veined: “Good evening, Miss Untermeyer.” “Hello, Sid. Sid Berger, Benny Beer.” They shook hands and Benny saw his face, name, tailoring and appetites filed away. After minor chat—“My best to the doctor and your mother”—Berger moved off, and shortly there arrived free booze (he said), complimentary brandy (she rebuked).

“My father's really a nice guy,” she said. “Big success, and all that damn
importance
, but a nice guy. My mother's strange. She's so ordinary you wonder about her. She reads best-sellers and works for organizations. She's an Abravanel, you know, big-shot Sephardic. Condescends to the Untermeyers.”

“Who condescend to the Beers. Honor thy father and thy mother, kiddo.”

Kiddo. Of course; she was young. A good kid, real flesh and blood, though a bit small for him; he would not so much embrace her as surround her. As she chattered he meditated love with her, and the tinkling hum of the small restaurant was a chorus to his flight of fancy; she would need kindness, delicacy, simple physical care. With surprise he recalled that he had never—barring a few inconclusive adolescent bouts—made love to a Jewish girl. Folklore: they save it.

The murals were abominable, a sickly brown, heliotrope, magenta, deformed sheep; his eyes accepted them dolefully, as his palate had accepted the overseasoned escalope, the famous claret of a bad year. And these others, oddly metallic women with their apparently dyspeptic swains: how many pounds of meat had they all ingested, what acids foamed within, what gases pressed? And Carol. He took pleasure in Carol. A new pleasure; a suspicious glow. A tribal bond? Life in a tent, among cattle speckled and ringstraked.

“You're not listening.”

“No. I was thinking about us. May I smoke a cigar?”

“Oh dear. Go ahead.”

“Hand-rolled. Forty cents.”

“Forty cents, gee. What do you suppose dinner cost?”

He savored rich smoke. “You chose the place.”

“It smells good,” she said. “I'm sorry if I sound bitchy. Last week I wanted to die.”

“Basketball. Are you pregnant?”

“Am I—” She sat back and assumed defiance. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

He laughed. “A stylist. You learned to talk at the movies.”

“Well, all right.” She smiled in rue. “But I am most certainly not pregnant. That was insulting. I'm a good girl.”

“If you weren't sleeping with him,” Benny said, “it isn't a tragedy.”

“A man of the world,” she said. “And a virgin let you kiss her hand.”

He kissed her goodnight too, a cool kiss and gentle, and left it at that. On the subway platform he saved a drunk from plunging to the rails. The drunk muttered, surly, burly, white-haired. Patiently Benny saw him aboard. A young couple dozed, in their teens, the boy in black tie and stinking of lotions, the girl in a yellow ball-gown, boasting a gardenia. Benny remembered his fierce desire to be twenty-two. Music filled his mind, to the clack of the wheels. Themes converged: age, school, now this woman. Marriage, warmth, soup. An end and a beginning: Benny that was, Benny the boy, fading fast; Benny that will be, Benny the man, doctor, father, rising from a sea of relatives, classmates, hopes, and striking forth into the uncharted fetches of an alien land. Citizen Beer. The implacable grime of subways. Shifting, he experienced minor lust; his lips roamed Carol; he dreamed. Well, it was a life; perhaps the life that luck had laid out for him. Odd: as if a decision had been made. By whom? By what? Omens: he looked for a sign. The dozing children nestled together. There's your sign: that's what life is. Wild oats followed by … crab grass. He grinned. By God, I like that girl. A nice mind and no bore. Well. Easy does it. Dr. and Mrs. Amos Untermeyer announce. Maybe it's time. Then move out, the west, someplace like Phoenix or Salt Lake. Cattle. Speckled and ringstraked. Clean snow. A lodge in the mountains. Old Doc Beer.

Good God. After one date.

Dinner with Amos and Sylvia, too, some weeks after that first date, and Jacob cordially invited, and high-class conversation. Benny had hoped for Pinsky's: would Amos fidget, rattled by that exotic ambiance, or would he jig and shout rowdy Yiddish? Would Sylvia wear a mantilla to make her position clear? But no; it was the Copenhagen, or Maxl's Rathskeller, or the Romanoff, or Mandarin House. Benny saw them as a family of Phoenician traders, roving from port to port. “Nothing like eel,” Amos announced, and Jacob paled. “The Swedes drink too much. I read about it. For centuries every family made its own aquavit. Suicide,” Amos said. “Welfare.”

“This is fine whitefish,” Jacob said heartily.

“Nothing like smorgasbord,” Amos said. “All protein. During the war they had no meat and no heart attacks. No butter, no cheese.”

“I think I'd like a little aquavit,” Benny petitioned humbly. “Good for the heart action.”

“Absolutely,” Amos said. He was utterly groomed; his fingernails flashed, his hair lay flat. Sylvia's scent flavored the fish; her jersey clung. Amos wore blue cheviot, a white-on-white shirt, a shiny monogrammed necktie; beside him Jacob, in rumpled sharkskin, was a clown from the Yiddish theater. Carol wore a gray suit that mantled her figure. “Your ribbon,” Sylvia murmured; Carol's hands flew to her hair.

The acquavit was poured, the talk continued: skoal, skoal. Sylvia glanced from Carol to Benny, from Benny to Carol. “Flukes,” Amos said, and later, “bilharziasis.” With a second course they had leprosy and gingivitis; Amos approached Pap smears and retreated.

Carol spoke suddenly. “Benny. Tell them about that little man.”

They waited. Benny hesitated, reluctant to offer up 57359 on this sumptuous altar. Finally he told them. Tears rose to Sylvia's eyes. Amos meditated before pronouncing, and Benny felt that he had worked a miracle. “God in heaven,” Amos said softly; they stared at him and Benny understood, with relief, that Amos too was flesh and blood. “I'm not sure the human race is worth it,” Amos said. He set down his fork. “The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.” He gazed beyond them, groped for his glass. “You've heard nothing?”

“Nothing,” Benny said. “We wrote to the people at UNRRA, and the Jewish groups, and the Israeli government. There's no record of him anywhere.”

“He may have been killed.”

“Yes. But I have a hunch he's alive. Maybe it's just a wish.”

“Such a nothingness,” Amos said quietly. “An infinity. He could be dead. He could be crippled, a beggar. He could have gone mad. He could have amnesia.”

“He could be in South America,” Benny said. “Anywhere. I couldn't even tell how old he was.”

“God damn them,” Amos said. “Excuse me.”

In the car Amos said, “Benny. When you were talking about that little man I had an insight.” Amos paused, chose his words: “For two thousand years the only good Christians have been the Jews.”

So in August of 1949 Jacob stood by Benny among the crimson curtains bound with silver braid and looked out the french windows at the fair noonday; in the park were lovers, and children shouted. “I'm not losing a son,” he said, “I'm gaining a trust. I was introduced to a millionaire. You can tell. They dress from department stores.”

“My relatives,” Benny grinned.

Jacob too smiled. “A beautiful, beautiful girl. So what if she has money. Love conquers all. Oh Benny. Will you be happy!”

Among Untermeyers Benny murmured and was courtly: many uncles, many aunts. By his side he held his mother-in-law, who said, “Don't be nervous. In a hundred years you'll forget it.”

“You're a help.” But Benny looked kindly upon Sylvia; she patted his cheek. There were diamonds at her bosom. Between rubies, Benny thought, and was appalled by his baseness, and fixed his eyes on hers; her scent rose, and pleased him, and she was plump and sleek and deep, and her eyes were dark and Moorish. “I'm supposed to be weepy,” she said.

“Not you.”

Jacob and Pinsky were inspecting the tables like scouts for some starving village. Pinsky sniffed, pointed.

“No. Just take care of her.”

“Of course I will,” Benny said gently.

“Don't just keep her safe,” Sylvia said. “Keep her happy. Don't be too … busy.”

Her eyes flashed, widened, drew him in; an instant of naked intimacy left him aghast. “I plan to try,” he managed, as Amos came up to them.

“Well. What are you two plotting?”

“Our daughter's future,” she said. “The musicians are here,” and she left them.

Amos gazed after her and admired. “Look at that articulation! I hope you'll do better than I did,” he added privily. “That damn woman's been eating an apple a day since we married.” He shivered himself into laughing fragments. Benny considered prayer.

Uncle Arthur Untermeyer heaped a plate with meats and said, “Winter weddings are better. You can always tell how classy a winter wedding is by the amount of out-of-season fruit.” Benny laughed inordinately. From the head of the table Amos waved. Across from Benny, Jacob beamed, eyes moist, a noggin of whiskey beside his empty wineglass. “Amos is a good fellow,” Arthur said. “Pleased with himself, but a good fellow. A generous man.” Carol's cousin Deborah glided through the conversation piece, craning like a hen to sip at her champagne; a plain girl but stoutly made, and Benny's third eye observed. Behind him the band caterwauled savagely, and made a joyful noise unto the Lord.

“Irv is also all right,” Arthur said, stuffing himself merrily. “He had to be a druggist because there was only money for one medical school. I was luckiest. With me they gave up and let me go into the fur business, so I'm rolling in it. By the way, if you need help don't hesitate. But Gordon is a bastard, the baby brother and spoiled rotten. Don't trust him. Notice how the names go. From Amos to Gordon in regular steps. That's called assimilation. Little Deborah's not so little any more.”