The Forgotten Page 12

  Like all teenagers, Malkiel had had misunderstandings and disagreements with his father. He wanted to go out more often, and Elhanan tried to dissuade him: “Have you done your schoolwork? Did you revise that composition?” Malkiel would happily have gone to every baseball game of the season. Elhanan claimed it was too much. “You’re not of my generation,” Malkiel said. “You can’t understand.” How many times had Malkiel said those words? He remembered them now, and they seemed childish and wicked. I made my father suffer, he thought. I made him doubt his own authority. Not for long; but it was still too long.

  A memory: father and son at dinner. Both silent. Loretta tried to start a conversation. No luck. Malkiel said something; he stared at his plate.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you so moody?”

  “I’m not moody.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Why don’t you talk to me?”

  “I don’t feel like talking.”

  At that Elhanan’s eyes filled with night.

  Another time: Malkiel put on his overcoat, ready to go out.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have a date.”

  “With whom?”

  “A friend.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A friend.” A trace of hostility in his voice, Malkiel added, “Haven’t I told you that I don’t like questions about my personal life?”

  Elhanan bowed his head. “And here I thought I was part of your personal life.”

  Another scene: Elhanan was dressing, putting on his best suit. “Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah. Are you coming to synagogue with me, Malkiel?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Were you expecting to pray somewhere else?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you know how I like praying beside you.”

  “I know.”

  “Malkiel.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you go out of your way to hurt me?”

  Now, in Feherfalu, Malkiel thought, That’s true. Why did I sometimes feel that perverse need—even if it was unconscious—to wound him? To be like the other kids? To punish him for bringing me into a world that is ugly, unjust, stupid, doomed? To break free of his hold on me? To put a distance between his nightmares and me? Still, before he got sick he rarely talked about the past. I knew when he was thinking about it, though. He would grow peaceful, serene. He would rejoin my mother, and his eyes would become veiled. Then he would meditate on all things with a kind of primordial clarity. And me, did he see me at all?

  Well, I know: all adolescents stumble over the same difficulties with their parents; but my situation was different. First, I had no mother. And my father? Didn’t he belong to my dead mother?

  One day during a stormy argument Elhanan tried to explain the complexity of our relationship. “You’re the center of my life, Malkiel. It’s you who make me invincible. But it’s you who also make me vulnerable: if anything happened to you I couldn’t stand it—I’d die.”

  “You have no right! You have no right to saddle me with a burden like that! Let me live my adolescent life. Don’t force me to grow up so fast!”

  “Now it’s my turn to say you don’t understand me. You don’t understand that only you can make me happy—or make me give up all hope of happiness.”

  “I refuse!”

  “To understand?”

  “No. I understand, all right. I refuse the role you want me to play!”

  “You refuse to be my son?”

  “I refuse to be anything but a son to you!”

  “And you don’t see that your refusal is a repudiation?”

  “Repudiation of what?”

  “Of my whole life.” And gently, sadly, he went on: “How many times have I described my concept of a Jew, Malkiel? We are all cloaked in the memory of God.”

  He went on talking, and I had a date with a charming young girl, the prettiest in my class. I stood up. So did he. He walked to the door with me, and for some unknown reason he dragged his chair after him, as if it were a corpse on a deserted battlefield.

  Malkiel scrutinized a window in his father’s house as if he might find there an answer to his question. Why did I make him suffer? Of course that phase didn’t last. But the question does.

  “Sleep well, Lidia?”

  “Very well, thank you,” said the young interpreter. “Is my sleep so interesting?” Lidia was in a bad mood. Natural enough. No woman likes to be rejected. Even, or especially, if she’s working for them.

  It was early in the day, and the main square was bustling. Surly peasants, civil servants in a hurry, schoolteachers and housewives, still half asleep: the day’s whirl brought these men and women together before dispersing them.

  Seated on the hotel terrace, Malkiel and Lidia discussed the day’s plans as they did every morning. Of course. To inform others she must inform herself. Like Satan, Malkiel thought. He, too, needs to be everywhere at once, to shatter alibis and excuses. Satan: the creature of a thousand traps. And Malkiel thought of Satan, which reminded him of Rosh Hashanah. When would it be? Soon, in a few weeks. And where would he be? Where would he go to pray? Was there a synagogue in this town? His father had told him of several, but Malkiel could not locate them. The Communist authorities had either closed them or changed the street names. Ask Lidia? She would then tell her superiors, who … what for? There was no Jewish community left in Feherfalu.

  “What’s on the agenda?” Lidia asked. “The cemetery again?”

  “Why not?” Malkiel said. “There are still plenty of inscriptions to translate.”

  “And of course you don’t need my help.”

  “Not unless you read Hebrew.”

  Scowling, Lidia sipped her coffee, her mind far away.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No,” she lied. And then, “Yes, I am. Do you behave like that with all women? Attract them just to reject them?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  An answer came to his lips, but he held it back.

  “Are you afraid of me?” she went on. “Suspicious of me? Do you think I belong to them? Is that why?”

  He experienced a sudden, curious pity for her, as if for a defenseless child. As if it were she that the police were watching. “Give me your hand, Lidia,” he said softly.

  Still pouting, her eyes hard, the young woman seemed defensive. Then she held out her hand, and Malkiel covered it with his own.

  “I’ll explain everything someday,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Someday.”

  “Someday is a long way off. And it’s vague, and I don’t like vagueness.”

  Malkiel kept her hand in his. She made no effort to pull away.

  “Last night,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Last night I wanted to love.”

  She did not say “to love you” but “to love.”

  “Why me?”

  “That I don’t know. I felt as if you were in another realm. Walled off from love. A man who spends his life in cemeteries doesn’t love life. I thought I could help you. Cure you.”

  Malkiel felt himself falter, ready to drop his guard. Lidia was no beauty, but there was something else. She was real. Mouth open or shut, brows arched or furrowed, whether speaking or listening, she did not lie. When she loves, she loves with her whole body; and when she is on the lookout, all her senses are on alert.

  “And after love?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What comes after love?”

  She withdrew her hand. “I feel sorry for you,” she said harshly. “I pity everyone for whom love isn’t an end in itself. What is it to you? A game? Then what are the rules?”

  Malkiel felt an unpleasant sensation. “Let’s ta
lk about something else.”

  “As you like.”

  Love, love. Sooner or later you collided with it. Did his father endure the same trials? There was Vitka, and Lianka.… But after Talia died? In any case, he had never talked about it; and he never would. The truth was that Malkiel’s father had never known any woman but his own wife. A matter of fidelity? Not even that: only love. Which writer said that you could love two women but you could only be faithful to one? Malkiel’s father might have known an occasional surge of love, but he had loved only one woman. She was always present to him. Sometimes he spoke to her, asked her opinions. He missed her and told her so.

  Malkiel thought back to the women who had counted in his own life. His cousin Rita. One year younger than he, she fascinated him with her fiery temper, her mischievous, sparkling wit, and the power of her sensuality. She wanted to be a liberated woman. She said it over and over. Free in act and commitment. “God’s equal; free as He.” So she defined herself. Proud and stubborn, Rita was.…

  They saw each other often from the earliest years. They attended the same grade school and the same religious high school (where she provoked one scandal after another by trying to seduce her professors). Sometimes they had dinner together and took in a movie. Malkiel felt a sort of tenderness for her, mingled with dread: she intimidated him and encouraged him at the same time. He had never dreamed that there could be anything serious between them. But in time they went on trips to the Catskills together. Or swam in her parents’ pool. They were playmates, that was all. Cousins are meant to tease one another, to plot together, to make fun of the grown-up world, but they seek adventure on their own. One evening Rita suggested that they spend the weekend at Tanglewood. It was the beginning or middle of August; New York was crushed by a heat wave. Why not go off where it was cool and enjoy beautiful music at the same time? Rita drove a convertible and cursed the drivers who passed her. Her hair streaming in the wind, she steered with her left hand and drew Malkiel to her with her right. At first it was innocent: to show him a billboard, an old tree, a cloud formation. Malkiel sensed her warmth, but their closeness seemed of little consequence. Malkiel thought of nothing special, nothing new, and neither, no doubt, did Rita. They reached Lenox early in the afternoon and proceeded to the motel where they had reserved two rooms. Unfortunately, there was only one left, the clerk informed them, apologizing for the confusion. To make up for it, he would give them the room at half price. “Okay?” she said. “Okay,” he said. It was the beginning of a beautiful and stormy affair.

  The concert beneath the stars was majestic. The magic of Schubert and Bernstein: total strangers, spellbound, exchanged greetings. “Beauty makes us all dreamers,” said a girl with shoulderlength black hair, a music student. “It makes me shiver,” Rita said. Yet the night was warm. Their summer clothes clung to their bodies. “Let’s go for a swim,” Rita said. “The pool at the motel looked inviting.” It was late, but Malkiel agreed. The swim did them good. So did dinner. The truth was, Malkiel would have lingered; he was strangely uneasy about being alone with his cousin. The room had one bed, a small sofa, two chairs and a table. Well, he’d sleep on the floor. But Rita had other ideas. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “The bed is plenty big enough for two.” He was stammering a timid “All right,” when she interrupted: “You know, we’re really not living in the fifteenth century. And we’re all grown up, aren’t we? And cousins, after all.” That settled it. Deep down he was even pleased at the way things had developed. Rita took a shower and emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel that barely covered her suntanned breasts. “It’s yours,” she said. He took the longest shower of his life and reappeared in blue pajamas. Stretched out on the bed, impassive, Rita was reading a newspaper. Malkiel tried to busy himself. He hung up his shirt and pants, inspected his socks, went back for a glass of water. “You’re making me nervous,” Rita said. “Come to bed.” He wondered what he was feeling. Desire, apprehension, curiosity—all that and more. Shyly, cautiously, he stretched out along the edge of the bed. “Do you want the paper?” she asked. “Thanks; I have my book.” She wanted to know what he was reading. His answer was muddled, unfocused. “Hard to say what it’s about,” he told her. For a long moment they read in silence. In the hall, young people were calling noisy hellos and good-byes and making dates for the next day. Tense, Malkiel tried to picture himself among them, so that he would not picture the half-naked young woman beside him. And then, neither knowing how or why, their two bodies touched. And Malkiel soared to seventh heaven before plunging to seventh hell. In torture, in ecstasy, he wanted to sing and to weep; he had never felt so torn or so whole. “Was that the first time?” Rita asked. He was ashamed to admit the truth but admitted it anyway, not going so far as to tell her what he felt now: a mixture of guilt and remorse, a sense of defeat. His whole religious memory was suddenly judging him. Had he not violated one of the Ten Commandments? How would he answer at the Last Judgment? What would his uncle think? “Got the blues?” Rita teased him. “You poor virgin. Come here and let me cheer you up.…”

  And Leila. The beautiful Muslim, fierce and exasperating. His fellow student at Columbia. She was a Tunisian, a diplomat’s daughter, extremely intelligent and dynamic. One of the activists at the forefront of the student protest, she stood up to her professors, whom she called every name. And to the administration, which she repeatedly sent to hell. Malkiel had come to interview her for the Times.

  It was the end of 1968, a turbulent, even volcanic period. The students were front-page news. Inflammatory speeches; financial demands, and sociopolitical, educational and philosophical ones. The professors could only hold their tongues and mind their manners, because their students, being younger, knew more than they. Down with the rich and culturally privileged! Down with the powers that be! Make way for idealistic youth, whose future is at stake, make way for the purity of their motives and the generosity of their aspirations! A wave of fervor and words swept through the campus. Down with everything old, and up with everything new; time to start again! Every speechmaker saw himself as Danton, every agitator was Robespierre. Smash the idols, unmask the priests, demystify all those received ideas and beliefs: that was the goal. To accomplish it they invoked the individual’s fundamental right to immediate happiness and knowledge, to friendship without taboos, to the magic of LSD, and also and most of all to love without limits or inhibitions. Opposing them, in what they disdainfully called “the establishment,” adults saw things differently and denounced the promiscuity of mindless young people, their depravity and simplistic slogans. The students ridiculed their critics scornfully: “They’re all impotent. Their ideas aren’t even worth examining.”

  To “cover” the rebellion, Malkiel interviewed its most prominent leaders, among them Leila, the movement’s Passionaria.

  “So, Mr. Reporter, you’ve already sold out to money and power, at your age?” That was how she greeted him. Their first interview took place outside, in front of the library. At the top of the stairs a spokesman was reading out the latest resolutions adopted by the executive committee after a night of stormy debate. The crowd cheered for each paragraph as if the fate of the world depended on it.

  “Could we talk seriously?” asked the reporter.

  “You mean that the needs and demands of your own generation aren’t serious? Just what do you want anyway?”

  “I need answers.”

  “Then let’s have the questions. What do you want to know?”

  “Why a beautiful girl like you raises hell.”

  Leila glared at him. “What are you? A boy scout? J. Edgar Hoover? Do I owe you any explanations? Who are you to talk to me that way?”

  Against the tirade Malkiel could only stammer, “Sorry, sorry.” In an instant, the young reporter lost all his assurance and became what he was, the son of a refugee.

  “Enough of all that,” Leila said. “Let’s talk. You can be useful to us. The capitalist press has exploited us long enough; now it’s our
turn.” She plied him with propaganda, overwhelmed him with news “from an unimpeachable source,” “top secret” analyses, “confidential” rumors. Happily, a rewrite man restored perspective. Under Malkiel Rosenbaum’s byline, the article was a reasonably accurate account of the situation at Columbia. Next day Leila promptly insulted him. No jeer or insult was omitted. Too timid to defend himself, Malkiel let her wear herself out. Finally she asked him, “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “Yes. I still want to know why a beautiful girl like you goes around raising so much hell.”

  She shot him another scornful glance and left. They saw each other several times after the protests had quieted down. She ran into him at one of the campus gates and asked, “Is a capitalist reporter rich enough to buy me a cup of coffee?”

  “I think my newspaper can afford it,” he said. That same night they became lovers.

  Malkiel often considered telling his father about her. But Elhanan would have taken it badly. He would have cried, “What? You, a Jew, with a Muslim woman? I’m sure she hates Israel.…”

  And indeed she did. Leila, a future follower of the PLO, was already anti-Israel. Between her and Malkiel, argument followed endless and sometimes violent argument. Yes, yes, Israel has suffered, she would say; but does that give them the right to make Palestinians suffer?

  Malkiel: You know very well it isn’t Israel making them suffer! You can blame the Arab governments for their tragedy; why did they exhort them to flee their homes in 1948? And then let them live in refugee camps?

  Leila: You Jews did all you could to uproot those people and drive them from their land, and now you blame the Arabs? If you hadn’t come along, there would have been no tragedy!

  He: We didn’t come along, we came back. Easy enough for you to forget!

  She: I’m not forgetting anything, but you forget that the Palestinians have been living on that land for centuries, and you abandoned it two thousand years ago!