Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (3 page)

I lowered my eyes immediately. I was annoyed at myself and quickly looked back. Too late—I had lost his interest. He had shifted his intense gaze to Daniel. If I knew a harsh curse to abuse myself with, I must have used it then because I can still remember the sharp disappointment I felt that I had failed to hold my rich and powerful uncle’s eyes. I vowed not to make that mistake again.

“Aren’t you going to negotiate with them?” Uncle Harry asked. That was the tradition in our family and in many others—namely, that the Leader hid the
Afikomen
and bargained the amount of the reward with the child who found it. This is a fractured version of the correct tradition: in Europe, Jews did not have the Leader hide the
Afikomen;
rather the children (males only, of course) stole it and refused to make restitution until the Leader paid a ransom.
Afikomen,
by the way, means “dessert” although it is a symbolic treat, another Seder reminder of the deprivations of the Hebrew slaves of Egypt, since it is in fact nothing more than a piece of plain matzo. I find this change in the Passover ritual interesting because it reflects the shift from the harsh demands made upon Jewish children in the ghettos of the Old Country to the comfort and dependence of their lives in the United States. The original tradition placed a value on initiative, independence and ability to earn a living—even to the point of larceny. That must have been necessary to a Jewish family’s survival in Eastern Europe. The revised tradition is a hide-and-seek game created and controlled by adults, symbolic of the prolonged childhoods of my generation of Jews in the New World. (The stereotype of the overprotective Jewish mother is, I suspect, an American phenomenon.) I’m sure my uncle preferred the old
Afikomen
ritual and that night hoped to restore a little of its former character, to once again make it a test of manhood. Bernie, remember, had had to go to work as a child. (Thirteen, in spite of puberty and Bar Mitzvah, for the majority of boys is still essentially a time of childhood.) He believed, as do most unanalyzed people, that the misfortune of his life—his premature role as family wage-earner—had been good for him. He argued that all children should be responsible and self-reliant as early as possible. He often quarreled in public with his wife that their children—in college by 1960—were spoiled. I, of course, did not know that, or anything else about the inner life of my uncle. All that mattered then was his challenge, “It’s a test,” followed by a stare right at me. Then he looked at Daniel, and one by one at my other male cousins. He skipped the girls, although they would also be searchers.

“A test of what?” my mother asked. She snapped the final
t,
whipping the sound scornfully. I cringed because of a fight my mother had had earlier in the day with her oldest sister, Sadie. Aunt Sadie had picked us up at the Great Neck train station to drive us to Uncle’s estate. Conversation had been pleasant until we pulled into the driveway, and then she said to my mother, “Don’t make trouble today with your brother.”

My mother laughed. “Its a non-aggression pact. If he doesn’t fire I won’t shoot back.”

Aunt Sadie warned her again, repeating in different words that Ruth shouldn’t fight with Uncle Bernie. “Even if he does shoot first,” Sadie added.

My mother lost her temper. I was startled. I had seen her angry with my father, but that was only once or twice, and never with anyone else. Her thin face and smooth white skin were quite different in color and shape from her dark brother’s oval head. Enraged, her high cheekbones lifted, pulling back her lips to expose her small bright teeth, and her green eyes narrowed. She might have been a big cat in a furious fight for her life. She bobbed her chin at Sadie and said, “Don’t tell me how to behave! I’m not a child! I’m not on this planet at Bernie’s sufferance! I’m not living off him like the rest of you! You’re terrified I’m going to blow up the Bernard Rabinowitz gravy train—well, don’t worry, it won’t be me who cuts his throat. It’ll be the working class. It’ll be people like those workers down South. Those poor people he brags he brought to their knees.”

“Shut up already,” Sadie said, both scared of the cat’s angry motions and also conscious of my presence. She indicated me with a nod to my mother.

“I’ll never forget him gloating about how his paid thugs drove a truck over one of the strikers!”

“All right, I’m sorry I said anything!” Sadie opened her door and fled. My mother panted, angled at Sadie’s vacated seat as if her prey were still there. From my back-seat view, I saw a single green eye in profile. That eye seemed to find me, with the spooky myopic stare of a bird. “Come on, let’s go in,” she said to me. She added, without irony, “We’ll have fun.”

What I got from all that was that my uncle was a powerful man, a dangerous man, an important man. If he had devised a test for me, then I wanted to pass it: to avenge my earlier defeats at tennis and football, to win my cousin’s love, to please my mother, to represent my alien father well, and also, finally, to hold the gaze of my terrible and handsome uncle.

“A test of their character,” Uncle Bernie said to my mother. He continued quickly to us children, “I’ve hidden the
Afikomen
somewhere in this house.” His fingers continued to play a silent tune on the white cloth.

“You haven’t left the table,” Cousin Daniel said. “You still have the
Afikomen.”

As Leader, at the beginning of the service, Uncle Bernie had broken off the
Afikomen
from a plate of matzos on display at the table. He wrapped it in a thick napkin with a shiny white satin border and put it in his lap. As he did, I overheard my cousin Daniel whisper to his older brother, “I’m gonna watch him this time.” I didn’t know what Daniel meant. At eight I didn’t remember the previous year’s Seder. He meant that he would keep an eye on Uncle, waiting to see where he slipped away to hide the
Afikomen.
Bernie hadn’t left the table during the Seder and therefore, Daniel had reasoned, he must still have it in his lap.

Bernie’s mouth widened into his beneficent smile. “You mean this.” He lifted the napkin from his lap. “Very clever, Daniel.”

“Yes!” Daniel got to his feet. “I win!”

“Not so fast,” Bernie said and raised his hand like a traffic cop. There was something comic, not mean, about Uncle’s expression and tone. Most of the adults chuckled and commented on Bernie’s wisdom and Daniel’s greed. Uncle ignored his grown-up audience and continued to address us children. “This year we’ll do it differently. This is only the symbolic
Afikomen.
I hid the real one—”

“Call it what it is,” my mother interrupted. “A door prize.”

She was shushed by the grown-ups. The children, including me, ignored her. But my uncle didn’t. He flicked a glance in her direction and the emotion in his eyes amazed me. It was contempt and hatred. But only a flash. Immediately, his eyes were friendly again and he continued in his smooth deep voice, a resonant cello, “I hid the real one while you were playing outside. The child who finds
that Afikomen
will find it not only because of his intelligence and his perseverance but because of the strength of his character.”

My mother made a rude sound with her lips. Daniel got out of his chair to leave the table. His father restrained him; Uncle Bernie hadn’t signaled us to begin our search.

Bernie ignored my mother’s contemptuous noise. Instead, he smiled generously at Daniel. “You stand like greyhounds in the slips,” his cello vibrated. “Straining upon the start.” Bernie raised his right hand, decorated with tufts above the knuckles. “The game’s afoot,” he said and waved his arm like a racing flag.

Daniel and the others bolted. I made my move as well, running behind Uncle’s chair and passing four or five other adult relatives, until I was caught up short. A hand had taken hold of my left arm. The sudden yank caused me to stumble. I fell against the chair of the person who had stopped me. It was my mother.

“You stay here,” she said and she sounded angry. I assumed she was angry at me. “You’re not playing this stupid game.”

“Mom,” I complained and tried to wriggle out of her grasp. My struggle for freedom proved how much I wanted to win that contest. I was not a bold child. In fact I suffered from acute shyness, especially in front of adults, and although these grown-ups were my people, some were totally unknown to me, thanks to my mother’s role as the family black sheep. I was shy and I was not defiant of my parents. Normally, if my mother grabbed me in public and forbade me from something in an angry tone I would obey her injunction silently, if unhappily. Indeed, my attempt to get away so surprised her that I easily freed my wrist from her loose grip. For a moment we exchanged a look of mutual shock at my action—and then I ran.

Uncle’s formal dining room had a wall of glass, allowing a panoramic view of his unblemished lawn sloping to the water—the pool and tennis court were placed discreetly on the ground’s perimeter. I ran from there into a huge living room, itself the length of most people’s homes. It too had a view of Long Island Sound; only here it was provided by four windows with small panes of leaded glass, a kind of latticework that distorted the manicured lawn and tranquil water into a moody Impressionist painting. Two cousins were in there, one on his knees checking the wall cabinets, another on his belly peering under the sofas and love seats.

My mother pursued me. She caught me as I reached the large central hall, painted a light yellow color, and dominated by a sweeping dark mahogany staircase. My cousins’ feet thudded and trampled on the second floor; occasionally they raced across the landing in their movement from one bedroom to another. They were having their chance at glory while I was under arrest. This time Ruth’s grip on my arm was tight and painful. She was incensed. Today, I suspect she was more humiliated that I had defied her in front of her siblings than infuriated by my contrariness. At the time I was baffled by her. “Don’t ever run from me like that again!” she shouted. Her words hurt, too. The violence of her tone hurt. “You’re not going to play this ridiculous game! You’re not a performing monkey!”

“I wanna!” I protested and pulled at her grip. This confrontation changed my understanding of myself and her. I was shy, I was obedient, yet I was willing to fight her. And, although I was not to understand why for many years to come, I discovered that day that this inner self, the adult growing so far undisturbed in an unilluminated corner of my child’s soul, was a person my mother didn’t want to meet. She only wanted to know the sweet, bashful, compliant boy. (And why not? Such a child was a great compensation for the abrasive and selfish personalities who had been her lot in life. One of the first practical lessons of psychology is that neurotics aren’t fools. Typically, they are clever people whom the world has thwarted.)

“No, you don’t!” She shook my arm so hard my entire body trembled. She was shaking all the intransigent men in her life; she was trying to dislodge the stubborn materialism of her family and her nation. So she had to shake hard. She had to shake as hard as she could; and yet she could never shake hard enough.

Daniel, of all people, came down the staircase like Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood, dancing, leaping, using the banister to propel himself three, four steps at a jump. His wide face, the characteristic Rabinowitz oval, was flushed.
He’s found it,
I thought, heartbroken.

Daniel raced around us. “I figured it out!” he bragged as he disappeared down the narrow side hall that led toward the kitchen. But he was empty-handed, not carrying the heavy white napkin which would be wrapped around the
Afikomen.

He hadn’t found it!
I was thrilled.

“Look at me!” My mother wanted to shout; shame suppressed her demand into a maddened whisper. My head had turned to follow Daniel. Why the kitchen? What did he think: it was still in the matzo box?

I was convinced of this suddenly. My uncle was a businessman and he had probably thought of matzo’s production: returned the
Afikomen
to its box, stashed the box in a kitchen cabinet, in the working section of the house, tended by the black cook and maid. The lesson would be clear: a reminder of work and service. Obviously, at eight, I couldn’t have articulated this reasoning, but that, more or less, was the logic I theorized. Had Daniel? Was that what he meant when he cried “I figured it out” and ran toward the kitchen? Or was he headed to some other room? There were many others in that direction: the family den; the back stairs to the finished basement; the pantry; an office for my uncle. The house was huge, more than twenty rooms; I hadn’t seen most of them.

First, I had to
get
free. I sagged against my mother’s hold on my wrists, a premature sit-in protester, becoming a dead weight.

“Stand up!” she ordered, trying to hoist me to my feet. But she wasn’t especially strong—this was more than two decades before women of her age pumped iron. I felt a malicious pleasure at her impotence. She frowned and complained, “Stop it! Stand up!”

My legs bumped her shins. “Ow,” she said and kicked the heels of my Buster Browns, first one foot, then the other. Not hard. Now we were both behaving like frustrated eight-year-olds.

I drooped, ass hanging low, arms stretched to the limit. I thought they might pop out of my shoulder sockets, but I didn’t care. “I know where it is!” I shouted at Ruth. “Let me go! I can win! Let me go!”

She quit trying to lift me. Instead she pulled me toward her face, a face distorted by rage and frustration. “Stop it right now or we’ll leave this minute! I swear to God I’ll drag you by the neck all the way to New York.”

I pictured the humiliation of such an exit. As yet there were no sixties images of noble passive resistance to inspire me. To be dragged out by my angry mother in front of all my cousins, the pretty aloof girls in their dresses, the self-confident and athletically skilled boys with their rougish shirttails hanging out, seemed to me to preclude any chance that they might one day respect and like me.