Good on Paper (5 page)

The next morning I felt wonderfully well—the kind of
well
that comes from knowing
things are happening
, the New Life is upon us. I went to Cuppa Joe’s, where I ordered a decaf-skinny-mocha-capp and two bear claws from Joe himself, a tall, bulky Iranian (né Ali) with whom I’d once been “intimate.” I was still here often, though Joe had married a Persian maid half his age, siring black-haired twins.

I nodded at the regulars—it was too late for the silk-clad boutique lady, and the bespectacled Barnard student, but the latte-drinking actor who once starred in a sitcom about fat men was there, as was the black man with the deformed hand—then I stopped across Broadway to tithe Nate, our local panhandler who, over the years, had transformed himself from “down on his luck” to “Vietnam Vet” to “victim of Agent Orange” to “homeless man with AIDS (not homosexual).”

Can I offer you some change? I asked as I gave him his claw.

No, thanks, he said, I’m fine the way I am.

Our favorite joke.

I brought my breakfast to Straus Park, known in our Den of Propinquity as Slice of Park, because it’s shaped like a piece of pie. Slice of Park commemorates Isidore and Ida Straus, who had a summer home nearby. Isidore immigrated to the U.S. in the 1850s and began his career in Macy’s china department, eventually buying the store with his brother. He and his wife perished with the
Titanic
, but still, not bad for a new life!

The park had itself recently been revived. We’d watched out our window, bemoaning the Port-a-Potties, the loud equipment, the seemingly endless labor. But it was worth it, because, with minimal West Side fanfare, the park finally reopened. The rotting benches were gone, the statue of Memory was restored, her fountain no longer dry.

I sat often in Slice of Park when the weather was clement, feeling sun-blessed. From my bench I could see Joe’s, People of the Book, the Dollar Store, the Love Drugstore. A few blocks away, beyond my sightline: larger parks, Cohn’s Cones, the China Doll. Just north: Abdul’s Papad Palace, the Eight Bar. Ten blocks south: Symphony Space, the express train. All my cultural, entertainment, transportation, snacking, and discount-shopping needs met within half a mile. I called it my Comfort Zone.

On this morning, I beamed out at the world—at the women checking themselves out in the drugstore window, the nannies pushing strollers, lapdogs bouncing in straw bags against matronly hips,
alte kockers
gesticulating in the Broadway island. The red-headed boy pushing a scooter as his brother reached desperately for it from his father’s arms. At taxis, buses, kamikaze bike messengers, all honking, screeching, and converging
right here
, as if Slice of Park were the center of the universe—which to me it was.

New York was more than the places I loved, the people I cared about: it was the web that held us together, that made us all possible. It was the history of this park, of places that were no more—the Pomander Bookshop, the Ideal Restaurant, the Olympia Deli, the summer home of Isidore Straus—it was Memory! It was Iranian pastry chefs and Victims of Agent Orange, it was Old and New World ladies and men. I felt vast love for all who dared to make a life for themselves here.

It was in this exalted mood that I gave notice.

But you have a future in prosthetic legs! Mr. Ferguson said.

7

ODOROUS OBJECT

Once home, I thought I should dignify my New Life with a ritual—a sacrifice of some kind, a naked dance in the woods. The best I could come up with was to brew some Philosopher’s Tea. The original PT, procured by Ahmad in Azerbaijan, was long gone, but I continued to refill the box with English breakfast. If the philosopher’s stone could transmute base metal into gold, so too could PT transmute my oh-so-base thoughts into words; all that was inchoate would be graced with form. Hallelujah!

I drank it whenever I translated, which meant it had been a while. On the box, a reminder of the professional standard to which I aspired:
High-quality tea recalling odor and smack lemon. Store at a dry place away from odorous object
.

I brought my tea to the loveseat in the study. I didn’t know when Romei would send his book, but I could prepare for that moment by rereading some of his work.

When I left grad school, I’d wedged my copies of his books under wobbly tables at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, my idea of a joke. I found Ahmad’s copies and arranged them in chronological order against my chest, from
Mother Tongue
to
Nonsense Syllables
.

They emitted a mild electric charge: my body was buzzing, my arteries thrumming. I opened
Mother Tongue
, broke the binding, and began to read.

•

Maybe I fell asleep. There was the matter of the wine I’d drunk the night before and, well, the matter of Romei’s poems. I put the books in my mom-bag and went back to Cuppa Joe’s, where I ordered a mocha double-half-caff and, all virtue, said no to a chocolate bomb.

I read some more, then put the books away and stared out the window. If they had been my copies rather than Ahmad’s, I might have slipped them under Joe’s wobbly table and been done with it.

There was a time when I would have translated Romei for a latte and a package of peanuts. I felt close to him then; I could have gotten closer—I could have gotten very, very close. Translation requires, and generates, a rare kind of intimacy. Like sex done right, I’ve always thought. The translator makes a holy commitment to understand, to listen with all possible intensity, to step backward, ever backward, through the labyrinth of an author’s ideas and devices, uncovering his decisions and triumphs, line by line, until she arrives, finally, at the moment of creation
—and before
, when words are merely phonemes and breath, and the author lies naked and drunk with his obsessions, visions, and agonizing aphasia. The translator, like one of Noah’s sons, bears witness to this primal scene. It takes a strong stomach. And an attractive host. You had to
want
to get close.

When I translated Dante’s
Vita Nuova
, I’d wanted to get close: Like Dante, I was in love, with T.;
Vita Nuova
seemed written just for me. Dante lived for his true love’s greeting? So did I! His love was a paragon? So was mine! A glimpse of his love made him stupid? Me too! Beatrice was heaven-sent, Dante’s love divinely sanctioned? T. and I were also meant to be. He was my Beatrice, the sum of all virtue, the reason I had been put on this earth.

I found my place comfortably between Dante’s lines then, his nakedness didn’t bother me.

Until it did. Romantic events shattered the pretty idea I had about God’s plan for man, and with it, any interest I had in “getting close.” I hated Dante then—Dante and his stupid
Vita Nuova
! The
libello
, his libelous little book, was nothing more than a reminder that I’d been
abandoned not just by the love of my young life, but by every hope I’d had that the world was as Dante described—ordered, designed to manifest a greater Love.

Which was when I turned to Romei. He wrote about the impossibility of New Life, the groundlessness that lies between the lines. There was no sense in Romei that language could reach beyond its limitations, or the abuse done to it, to connect one self to another. Where Celan had written,
When only the nothingness stood between us, we found our way, all the way, to each other
, Romei instead would write,
There was only nothingness
. Not just the impossibility of meeting, but the impossibility of there being an Other there to meet.

There was no Other for Romei: just Romei and the failure of language to do its job. His mind was empty—not in a cozy Zen sort of way, but in a barren, all-there-is-is-void, no-point-in-even-trying sort of way.

This had appealed to me in my twenties; not so much now. I had a family, I had my Comfort Zone—what use did I have for the void?

I was staring, I realized, out the window at People of the Book. The bookstore Benny “Jellyroll” Jablonsky ran in addition to editing
Gilgul
and acting as part-time rabbi to his New Age congregation. A year ago, after helping me with German translations for “Rose No One,” my story about Celan, Benny had made a pass at me, a clumsy offering between bookcases labeled
Trash Novels
and
Filthy Lucre
. I avoided the store now. But Benny had given Romei my number; maybe it was time I bought myself some books.

8

BILLBOARD ARTIST OF THE HEART

Inside People of the Book, a green-haired girl wearing a child’s tartan, a happy-face T-shirt (but not a happy face), and a Stop & Shop nametag that said “Hello, I’m Lila!” advised me that Benny was out. She wouldn’t look me in the eye: she needed all her concentration, apparently, for the
Daily News
Jumble.

I wasn’t surprised: Benny was probably at one of the rabbi gigs he took to support his literary habit (performer of interfaith marriages, virtual
mohel
for parents who want the celebration without the slice). Or he might be in his apartment two floors above the store, but I wasn’t about to ring the bell.

I found Romei’s books in Benny’s Great Wall of Poetry. Handsome and pricey, they’d been reissued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on the occasion of the Great Man’s sojourn to Stockholm. His by-now-famous face, in different poses, filled the back covers: salt-and-pepper goatee, more salt than pepper. Straight brown hair, a centimeter too long. Pale, plump cheeks, pouchy eyes. Simple wire-rimmed glasses. Yankees baseball cap.

I brought the books to Benny’s folding-table café (one table, reserved for Friends of Benny), drank the organic ginger beer Lila brought me grudgingly from out back.

The store hadn’t changed in the year since I’d visited last: unpacked
boxes still blocked aisles and Marla, Benny’s Persian, still held court in her book box. I went over to pay obeisance. She tolerated my head scritch, but withheld her purr, which she reserved for Benny.

How I’d missed this place! Over by the cash register, where bestsellers should have been stacked in attractive pyramids, stood that smallish bookcase holding issues of
Gilgul
and other literary magazines. What passed for impulse purchases among People of the Book.

I couldn’t resist: I left my table to browse the bookcase, returned to find the table gone, my books gone. Irritated, I got new copies and asked Lila if I could leave Benny a message.

Sure, she said, opening
The Anxiety of Influence
and handing me a pen. Go for it.

Just then, Benny appeared, trotting down the steps from his mezzanine office, ritual
tzitzit
fringes flying from the four corners of his garment.

Benny was six and a half feet tall; before he became a rollerblading vegan he’d looked like a dark-haired Santa, with full beard and even fuller cheeks. At his poorest, he’d nearly sold himself to Macy’s, but didn’t—bad faith like that couldn’t be atoned for in a single lifetime, he said. Also, he wouldn’t tuck in his
tzitzit
, which Macy’s thought might confuse the kiddies.

That was years ago. Now Benny was lean and suntanned: he said his morning prayers while gliding through the park in a cherry-red bodysuit—the only time he dressed without
tzitzit
.

Shir chadash!
he sang out (his psalmic name for me: “new song”).

Rabbi! I shouted.

Why didn’t you tell Marie to come get me?

Marie?

Benny looked tired. More tired than usual. His owl eyes sagged, there was a softness to his patrician cheekbones, his eyebrows were turning a patchy gray.

Uh, I said, looking at Marie-cum-Lila, who looked me in the eye now, though blankly. I figured you were busy.

Don’t mind her, he whispered, pecking at my cheek. She’s brilliant but moody.

All Benny’s protégées were brilliant but moody, which was why
his store was such a mess. The manic ones invented new shelving systems, the depressed ones watched as towers of dictionaries toppled onto not-so-politically-correct children’s books. Given the state of the store, I guessed his latest beauty was of the latter affliction.