The Forgotten Page 22

  Yes, Malkiel thought. Too bad.

  His thoughts took flight. His father. Tamar. Tamar and his father. “Go ahead and marry her,” his father had said. “Marry her while I still have my faculties. Don’t wait, son. In my condition I don’t want to see anything put off.” And again: “This zivug, this marriage, was made in heaven, I can tell. What have you got against this girl? She’s radiant, beautiful, she’s like your mother, if you only knew how much like your mother.…” Malkiel had seen his mother only in photographs or through his father’s eyes, in his father’s nostalgia. Yes, she was beautiful. Her Yemenite smile suggested unimaginable depths of fantasy, boldness, understanding, need. Whenever Malkiel thought about his mother he felt cheated of happiness that was his due.

  Tamar, his mother, his mother’s happiness, the curse on his father. Tamar, and the fear of losing her. “I’m not married,” he said. “It’s an old story.”

  Lidia was lost in reflections. “You’re not drinking my tea,” she said. “You reject my friendship. You refuse my body and all that goes with it. You lack courtesy, Mr. Rosenbaum.”

  “It has nothing to do with you, Lidia.”

  “Then with whom? With what?”

  From the depths of his memory rose his father’s tale and his mother’s phrase “Not in this place.” He had not undertaken this pilgrimage to sleep with a stranger. “It’s a matter of place,” he said.

  “You don’t like my flat?”

  “It has nothing to do with your flat. It’s this city. It’s oppressive.” He stood up; so did she.

  “Thank you for being honest,” she said.

  “Thank you for understanding,” he replied.

  She walked him to the door, stopped, and said, “To thank you in another way, I should repeat my advice: be careful.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They’re suspicious of you.”

  “What do they suspect? That I lack courtesy?”

  But she was serious, even grave. “Be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you. They don’t believe you. They think your passion for epitaphs is a ruse.”

  “Tell them they’re wrong.”

  “All the more reason to tread lightly.”

  Malkiel was uneasy. Am I jeopardizing her security? Should I trust her? Tell her about the widow? And my father?

  I’m a fool, he thought. A still young woman offers herself to me, and I look for excuses to sleep alone.

  Malkiel recalled his father’s encounter with the witch. It was all sharply etched in his mind. He saw the woman’s face, noted her harsh expression, heard her deep strong voice as if he himself had been her victim.

  A boy was walking down the street. It was early in the morning. He was shivering. The sidewalk was a sheet of ice. The boy had to be careful not to slip. He slipped. He fell. He hurt himself. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth. He was afraid. He would be late.

  Fortune smiled upon him, in the guise of a woman who had just opened her window. She gestured: come closer. “Come here. Let me see your bruises.” He made no answer. He did not know her. A boy did not speak to strange women. “You can’t just walk on like that,” she said. “Let me wash you off.” She was already opening the door. He was already crossing the threshold. Now he was in a dimly lit living room. For some reason the shadows were reassuring. He had no idea why, but he let the woman take his overcoat, when it was only his face that needed attention. “You’ll feel better,” she said, as she took off his jacket and wiped his bloody eyes and lips with a damp handkerchief. “Your buttons,” she said. “How can you breathe? You’re suffocating, for heaven’s sake!” Yes indeed, he was suffocating. Why had she sat him down on the sofa? Why was he just sitting there? He ought to stand up, dress himself, thank her and be on his way. He did none of that. She stopped him from doing it.

  “I’m not finished,” she said every time he moved to free himself. “Sit still, boy. Be patient. I’m not finished.”

  He felt panic. He had just noticed that the woman was naked. She was wearing a dressing gown and nothing beneath it. He blushed. He recognized the Tempter. He must leave now, right now. He felt it, and his body told him the same. But he was glued to the sofa, his body damned. How could he save himself? His mind sought an answer, but it was too late. Holding a small handkerchief sprinkled with perfume that went straight to his head, she gazed upon him, transformed. Her cheeks flamed. Lips and eyes wide, she was panting. She dropped the handkerchief and made a gesture toward him, one that frightened him: he thought she would strike him, insult him, throw him out. “Take me,” she whispered. “God Himself sent you this morning; let His will be done.” In one quick motion she cast off her dressing gown. The boy closed his eyes to forestall sin. “Look at me,” she ordered him. “Look at me and dare say that I am not beautiful.” He refused to open his eyes. “Are you a virgin, or what?” she went on, her voice suddenly vulgar. He did not answer. “You are! Oh my God, how happy that makes me! I love virgins!”

  She was trying to undress him, and he resisted. She forced him down, covered him with her body, ground her breasts into him, kissed him furiously as if to tear his flesh, chew him up, annihilate him. He was dizzy. His whole being was tense, overflowing with desire but obstinate in its refusal. “Take me, you idiot, what are you waiting for? Take me! Are you afraid? Have I frightened you? God will forgive you, I promise! Take me as hard as you can and you’ll approach God—because you’ll be in paradise.” She whispered those words into his ear, onto his eyelids, and the lips he kept tight. “Be free, big boy. Be a man. Rape me and be king.” But the boy was too young. Too timid, too much a believer. In a burst of energy he managed to break loose. Like Joseph in the Bible he ran for the door, leaving his coat behind. He was already outside, out of breath, when he heard the woman: “Hey, kid, you’ll catch cold—here’s your coat.”

  When he reached school, late of course, he did not dare go to class; he went to the washroom. Standing at the mirror, he studied his face for many moments, sure that he would find some outward sign of his sin. A master had once told him, “When one denies God, it is the first step that matters; one transgresses a law and realizes that nothing has changed. The heart beats as before, the blood circulates, people come and go, the universe remains the same. That is the beginning of separation.” The boy wondered, Have I changed? Does my face still belong to me? Have I lost everything in losing my innocence, am I lost forever?

  For a long time after that, he refused to look at a naked female body.

  Grandfather Malkiel, I stand before you as before an invisible judge, a severe but charitable judge. Shall I confess to you what I’ve made of my life? After all, I bear your name; you have the right to know if I’m worthy of it.

  First you should know that I have never betrayed that name. Even though in America immigrants and refugees rarely respect their original names. If you knew the transformations Ellis Island has perpetrated! Slomowicz became Salvatore if the immigration officer was Italian, Slocum if he was Anglo-Saxon or Irish. Isaac didn’t sound right? Then they made it Irving. You cannot imagine how many people tried to mutilate or embellish or doctor “Malkiel.” “What kind of name is that?” wondered Loretta, that splendid Southern woman. “Wouldn’t you prefer Sam?” Everybody saw a linguistic barrier in “Malkiel,” if not an obstacle. They suggested Melvin, Malcolm and even McDonald. Not a chance. I stuck to my real name. Only once did I hesitate, on the day when the Times published my first piece. The editor looked at my byline and shook his head. “Malkiel?” he said, annoyed. “That just won’t do. Is it a pen name or what?” I enlightened him. “I don’t know anybody by that name. If you ask me, you’d do better to find another one, more familiar to our readers.” For a few moments, I wondered if my stubbornness might cost me my career. Luckily the editor, busy with other aspects of the news, shrugged: “Do as you like. It’s your name, not mine.”

  As the years passed, the people I spent time with grew accustomed to my name. At least I think they did
. Some accepted it. Others gave me a nickname: Malki, or even Ki. At first I corrected them, with just a touch of irritation: “My name is Mal-ki-el.” It was tiresome. And no less so when a new acquaintance asked me about it: “Malki-what? That’s some crazy name. Who saddled you with that? What does it mean?” You’re going to laugh, Grandfather: I won a beautiful woman’s favors thanks to that name. She found it musical. To be perfectly honest, I ought to confess also that a fair number of no less lovely women rejected me because of that same name. Too bad. At home we say, “You win some, you lose some.” That’s life. You win and you lose. Tamar, for example—I think she loves me because she loves my name. She says it often, for no good reason, just to hear it. “Malkiel, you want to take a walk? Malkiel, are you hungry?” Or else, “Do you know Nepal, Malkiel? Ah, Malkiel, if we could make the trip together …”

  Tamar often comes with me to visit my father; sometimes she goes alone. Then she says to him, “Talk to me about Malkiel. “And my father replies, “My son?” If she’d asked, “Talk to me about your son,” he’d have answered, “Malkiel?”

  They understand each other. There’s an intimate rapport between them that gratifies me. She owes him nothing, yet she denies him nothing.

  One evening I found them shaken, sitting hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes, as if sharing the same quest and hitting the same wall. “I’m afraid,” my father said, his eyes half shut. “Everything in my head is muddled. Names, dates, words. I see a face in front of me and I recognize it, but I don’t know if it belongs to the present or the past. Who are you, Tamar? Which period of my life do you belong to? Are you perhaps Talia? Am I reliving my past even as it deserts me?”

  Tamar would do anything to help. And so would I. And you? Grandfather! Help him by helping me!

  You who sacrificed your life for your people, for our people, guide me. Tell me what to do, how to defeat not death but the abyss that will swallow up the lives of the living and the memory of the dead. You whose memory shapes mine through my father’s, tell me how I can keep silence from smothering the word, and also …

  The handsome face, usually serious, now twisted and contorted. The pain was more than mental now; it was physical as well. “I want …” Out of breath, Elhanan stopped. His hand groped and waved in the air.

  “What is it you want, Father?”

  Elhanan opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again to gasp for breath. He wanted to speak, to ask for something.

  “Yes, Father?” Malkiel stared intently at him. If only he could understand.

  “I don’t know.… I don’t know.…” Huddled in his armchair near the window, he seemed harassed—but by whom? by what?

  “What is it you don’t know?” Malkiel was sinking into a depression as deep as his father’s. Had the sickness crossed a new threshold? “You’re upset, Father. Take it easy. You’ll feel better soon.”

  Elhanan obeyed his son. Eyes shut, he folded his arms and seemed to drift slowly into a soothing lethargy. Relieved, Malkiel suddenly wanted to kiss his forehead as if he were a child, Malkiel’s child, fallen asleep in the middle of a bedtime story. He noticed a single tear running down his father’s cheek. Was he weeping in his sleep? But Elhanan was not asleep. “I want … I want an apple,” he asked timidly.

  Malkiel hurried to the kitchen. Seeing him, Loretta was worried; what had happened? “An apple. Quick. My father wants an apple.”

  Eyes still shut, Elhanan held out his hand. Malkiel put the apple in it. Elhanan caressed the fruit sensuously. “It’s terrible,” he said with a faint smile.

  “What’s terrible, Father?”

  “I wanted an apple. But I couldn’t think what to call it. Can you understand that? I envisioned the apple, I knew it was a fruit, I remembered its smell and its taste, I could have drawn a picture of it, but … its name escaped me.”

  Was that how the disease progressed? He would have to ask Dr. Pasternak. Tomorrow. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised. He knew what was bound to happen, if not when: little by little the sick man would lose his vocabulary. Each day the sponge would grow thicker, greedier, more absorbent.

  Malkiel was careful not to show his own distress. But Elhanan felt it and made few demands, so as not to increase it. Feigning sleepiness, he asked for nothing. If he was thirsty he would go to the kitchen himself. There, alone with Loretta, he would point to the teapot.

  To ease the tension, Malkiel adopted an air of false gaiety.

  “I have a riddle for you, Father. Which is better, to hold a fruit in your hand or to be able to name it?”

  A moment of truce, of reprieve. After the “crisis”—so each episode was called—Elhanan seemed to improve. In a lighter mood, he once again became the professor: “Adam’s superiority lay in his ability to name the animals that God showed him. Not being able to name things was for the Romans the ultimate malediction: Nomina perdimus rerum, they complained. A deaf man does not hear the words, but he knows them. A mute does not say them, but he understands them. But what is an apple to a blind orchard keeper?”

  “So here you are again on my turf! Who you talking to? The dead?” The gravedigger’s guttural, hollow voice. Though Hershel laughed, his coarse features were frightening. “Leave the dead alone, Mr. Stranger. They have a right to peace and quiet, don’t they? Come have a drink with me instead. They’ll thank you for it, believe me.”

  “It’s too early to go back to town,” Malkiel said.

  “Too early, too late. Meaningless words. If you have any sense you’ll come along and trust me. I’ll tell you more stories, about other meetings.” His whole immense body jiggled when he laughed. His arms flapped and his chest swelled. He hopped and skipped like a carnival bear.

  “All right,” Malkiel said, “let’s go.”

  In the street, people turned for a second look at this odd couple. The gravedigger was as slovenly as Malkiel was neat. Malkiel wondered if he was being followed. Hard to tell: there were too many people in the streets. After half an hour’s walk they stopped before a seemingly empty lot surrounded by a crumbling wall. “It’s the old cemetery,” said the gravedigger. “They haven’t used it for a hundred years or more.” He pushed at a squeaky gate. A bare courtyard; way in the back, a little shack. “Here we are. This is where I live.”

  Inside, in the gloom, a man was sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Surprised, Malkiel drew back.

  “Fear nothing,” Hershel said. “He’s not dead. Sit down there.” He pointed to a grimy chair. Malkiel overcame his reluctance and sat down. Across from him, the other man was breathing loudly. His hands clasped on the table now, he seemed to be staring off into space. Malkiel waited, calming himself.

  “I lied,” said the gravedigger, pouring himself a glass of brandy. “I’m not the only Jew in town. Ephraim here wants to talk to you. Just let him finish his prayer. Which prayer? Don’t ask. You never heard of it. He invents his own prayers. Every night he has a new one. You want to listen? Be my guest.”

  “Adoshem sfatai tiftach,” the man intoned. “Others have sealed my lips; it is for You to open them. For You to tell me if I should weep or sing; if I do one or the other of my own will, I’m damned; I know it. Can that be Your wish? I can’t believe it; I’m too old to doubt You. I refuse to believe that man was created to choose between two maledictions. Show me the way. Tell me the answer I’m afraid to decide all alone. I’m too old to allow myself the slightest mistake. That, too, I know.

  “Upi yaghid tehilateha: I may never again sing Your praises. Silence would be easier. First of all, I’m in the habit. Since I lost my sight I have felt that my words too were blind. Can it be that You have forced me to take this road, to witness so much horror, for the sole purpose of blinding me? I am accustomed to the night, but not to the silence of the night.

  It is driving me mad. What is it that You wish? To deprive me of my sanity?

  “I have traveled about the world, passed through towns and villages, met old men greedy
for the future and children thirsting for dreams.… Will I ever see my loved ones again? Will they make me share their judgment of me? And of all of us? And of You?

  “Decide for me, I beseech You. Let me see what my eyes can no longer see. Give me the power to speak without lying, or to be silent without turning my silence into a lie. Teach me how to interpret Your will, and how not to oppose it to the will of free men wrenched from life: that is the will I respect most deeply. Is it because Your will and theirs are not the same that You treat me as You treated the Seer of Lublin? At his wish, You deprived him of sight. But at whose wish did You deprive me of mine? Do You need it? So be it; take it. Bestow it on whomever You wish. But do not touch my memory. Does it hinder You? Does it weigh upon You? Too bad for me. But I cling to my memory as I cling to my life, I cling to it because it is my life. It is I, Ephraim son of Sarah, Your servant, who ask this of You. And he is weary and worn, Your servant: You know it, don’t You?”

  The seated man fell silent, but his words echoed throughout the room. “Who are you?” he asked suddenly.

  “My name is Malkiel.”

  “Malkiel what?”

  “Malkiel Rosenbaum.”

  “And what was your father called?”

  “Elhanan Rosenbaum.”

  “Then you are Malkiel son of Elhanan?”

  Malkiel cleared his throat; he felt as if he were appearing before a judge. In the end he only said, “Yes.”

  The seated man clapped twice. To summon someone? A ghost? “Malkiel son of Elhanan, you say? I knew him. He was a martyr. By what right do you usurp his name?”

  “He was my grandfather.”

  Furious, the gravedigger knocked over his glass. “No fooling!” he shouted. “Ah, no! Not that!”

  The unknown man stood up. “Come to the window,” he ordered Malkiel. “I want to see you.”

  How can this blind man see me? Malkiel wondered, even as he obeyed. Ephraim walked with his hands straight out in front of him. Malkiel was feeling something new and was not sure what it was. He saw himself again as a child, on the eve of Yom Kippur. Hands outstretched, his father blessed him.