From then on, they met every evening at the café. With growing horror they discussed the movements of Hitler’s armies and the rumored actions being taken against the Jews until they became too depressed to speak. “But perhaps something more cheerful,” his friend would finally say, and Litvinoff would happily change the subject, eager to test out one of his philosophical theories on his old friend, or to run by him a new fast-cash plan involving ladies’ stockings and the black market, or to describe the pretty girl who lived across the street from him. His friend, in turn, occasionally showed Litvinoff bits of what he was working on. Small things, a paragraph here and there. But Litvinoff was always moved. With the first page he read, he recognized that, in the time since they had been schoolboys together, his friend had grown into a real writer.
A few months later, when it was learned that Isaac Babel had been killed by Moscow’s secret police, it fell to Litvinoff to write the obituary. It was an important assignment and he worked hard on it, trying to strike the right tone for a great writer’s tragic death. He didn’t leave the office until midnight, but as he walked home through the cold night he smiled to himself, believing the obituary was one of his finest. So often the material he had to work with was thin and paltry, and he had to patch something together with a few superlatives, clichés, and false notes of glory in order to commemorate the life, and bolster a sense of loss over the death. But not this time. This time it had been necessary to rise to the material, to struggle to find words for a man who had been a master of words, who had devoted his entire existence to resisting the cliché in the hope of introducing to the world a new way of thinking and writing; a new way, even, of feeling. And whose reward for his labors was death by firing squad.
The next day it appeared in the newspaper. His editor called him into his office to congratulate him on his work. A few of his colleagues also complimented him. When he saw his friend that evening in the café, he, too, praised the piece. Litvinoff ordered them a round of vodka, feeling happy and proud.
A few weeks later, his friend didn’t show up at the café as usual. Litvinoff waited an hour and a half and then gave up and went home. The next evening he waited again, and again his friend didn’t come. Worried, Litvinoff set out for the house where his friend boarded. He’d never been, but he knew the address. When he got there, he was surprised by how dingy and run-down the house was, by the oily walls in the entryway and the smell of something stale. He knocked on the first door he came to. A woman answered. Litvinoff asked after his friend. “Yeah, sure,” she said, “The big writer.” She jerked her thumb upwards. “Top floor on the right.”
Litvinoff knocked for five minutes before he finally heard his friend’s heavy steps on the other side. When the door opened, his friend stood in his bedclothes looking pale and haggard. “What happened?” Litvinoff asked. His friend shrugged and coughed, “Watch out or you’ll catch it, too,” he said, dragging himself back to bed. Litvinoff stood awkwardly in his friend’s cramped room wanting to help, but not knowing how. At last a voice came from the pillows: “A cup of tea would be nice.” Litvinoff hurried to the corner where a makeshift kitchen was set up, and banged around looking for the kettle (“On the stove,” his friend called weakly). While the water boiled, he opened the window to let in a little fresh air, and washed the dirty dishes. When he brought the steaming cup of tea to his friend, he saw that he was shivering with a fever, so he closed the window and went downstairs to ask the landlady for an extra blanket. Eventually his friend fell asleep. Not knowing what else to do, Litvinoff sat down in the only chair in the room and waited. After a quarter of an hour, a cat meowed at the door. Litvinoff let it in, but when she saw that her midnight companion was indisposed she stalked out.
In front of the chair was a wooden desk. Pages were scattered across the surface. One caught Litvinoff’s eye and, glancing over to make sure his friend was soundly asleep, he picked it up. Across the top it said: THE DEATH OF ISAAC BABEL.
Only after they charged him with the crime of silence did Babel discover how many kinds of silences existed. When he heard music he no longer listened to the notes, but the silences in between. When he read a book he gave himself over entirely to commas and semicolons, to the space after the period and before the capital letter of the next sentence. He discovered the places in a room where silence gathered; the folds of curtain drapes, the deep bowls of the family silver. When people spoke to him, he heard less and less of what they were saying, and more and more of what they were not. He learned to decipher the meaning of certain silences, which is like solving a tough case without any clues, with only intuition. And no one could accuse him of not being prolific in his chosen métier. Daily, he turned out whole epics of silence. In the beginning it had been difficult. Imagine the burden of keeping silent when your child asks you whether God exists, or the woman you love asks if you love her back. At first Babel longed for the use of just two words: Yes and No. But he knew that just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence.
Even after they arrested him and burned all of his manuscripts, which were all blank pages, he refused to speak. Not even a groan when they gave him a blow to the head, a boot tip in the groin. Only at the last possible moment, as he faced the firing squad, did the writer Babel suddenly sense the possibility of his error. As the rifles were pointed at his chest he wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard. He had thought the possibilities of human silence were endless. But as the bullets tore from the rifles, his body was riddled with the truth. And a small part of him laughed bitterly because, anyway, how could he have forgotten what he had always known: There’s no match for the silence of God.
Litvinoff dropped the page. He was furious. How could his friend, who could have his pick of what to write about, steal the one subject about which he, Litvinoff, happened to have written something of which he was proud? He felt mocked and humiliated. He wanted to drag his friend out of bed and demand what he’d meant by it. But after a moment he cooled down and read it again, and as he did he recognized the truth. His friend hadn’t stolen anything that belonged to him. How could he have? A person’s death belongs to no one but the one who’s died.
A feeling of sadness came over him. All these years Litvinoff had imagined he was so much like his friend. He’d prided himself on what he considered their similarities. But the truth was that he was no more like the man fighting a fever in the bed ten feet away than he was like the cat that had just slunk off: they were different species. It was obvious, Litvinoff thought. All you had to do was look at how each had approached the same subject. Where he saw a page of words, his friend saw the field of hesitations, black holes, and possibilities between the words. Where his friend saw dappled light, the felicity of flight, the sadness of gravity, he saw the solid form of a common sparrow. Litvinoff’s life was defined by a delight in the weight of the real; his friend’s by a rejection of reality, with its army of flat-footed facts. Looking at his reflection in the dark window, Litvinoff believed something had been peeled away and a truth revealed to him: He was an average man. A man willing to accept things as they were, and, because of this, he lacked the potential to be in any way original. And though he was wrong in every way about this, after that night nothing could dissuade him.
Beneath THE DEATH OF ISAAC BABEL was another page. With tears of self-pity stinging his sinuses, Litvinoff read on.
FRANZ KAFKA IS DEAD
He died in a tree from which he wouldn’t come down. “Come down!” they cried to him. “Come down! Come down!” Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. “I can’t,” he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. “Why?” they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. “Because then you’ll stop asking for me.” The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children’s hair. They took off their hats and raised them to
the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers’ shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see the man who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn’t wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one, families broke off with a goodnight and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of clothes being dropped to the floor, of lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking under the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind.
That night, a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the windows and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone.
They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It’s said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.
Beneath that page was another page, titled THE DEATH OF TOLSTOY, and beneath that was one for Osip Mandelstam, who died at the bitter end of 1938 in a transit camp near Vladivostok, and beneath that, six or eight more. Only the last page was different. It said: THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD GURSKY. Litvinoff felt a gust of cold in his heart. He glanced at his friend, who was breathing heavily. He started to read. When he got to the end he shook his head and read it again. And again after that. He read it over and over, mouthing the words as if they were not an announcement of death, but a prayer for life. As if just by saying them, he could keep his friend safe from the angel of death, the force of his breath alone keeping its wings pinned for a moment more, a moment more—until it gave up and left his friend alone. All night, Litvinoff watched over his friend, and all night he moved his lips. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he did not feel useless.
As morning broke, Litvinoff saw with relief that the color had returned to his friend’s face. He was sleeping the restful sleep of recovery. When the sun had climbed to the position of eight o’clock, he stood. His legs were stiff. His insides felt scraped out. But he was filled with happiness. He folded THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD GURSKY in half. And here is another thing no one knows about Zvi Litvinoff: for the rest of his life he carried in his breast pocket the page he’d protected all night from becoming real, so that he could buy a little more time—for his friend, for life.
UNTIL THE WRITING HAND HURTS
The pages I’d written so long ago slipped from my hands and scattered on the floor. I thought: Who? And how? I thought: After all these—What? Years.
I fell back into my memories. The night passed in a fog. By morning I was still shocked. It was noon before I was able to go on. I knelt down in the flour. I gathered the pages up one by one. Page ten gave me a paper cut. Page twenty-two a pang in the kidneys. Page four a blockage in the heart.
A bitter joke came to mind. Words failed me. And yet. I clutched the pages, afraid my mind was playing tricks on me, that I would look down and find them blank.
I made my way to the kitchen. The cake sagged on the table. Ladies and gentlemen. We are gathered today to celebrate the mysteries of life. What? No, stone throwing is not allowed. Only flowers. Or money.
I wiped the egg shells and spilled sugar off my chair and sat down at the table. Outside, my loyal pigeon cooed and fluttered its wings against the glass. Perhaps I should have given him a name. Why not, I’ve taken pains to name plenty of things less real than he. I tried to think of a name that would give me pleasure to call. I glanced around. My eye came to rest on the menu from the Chinese take-out. They haven’t changed it for years. MR. TONG’S FAMOUS CANTONESE, SZECHUAN AND HUMAN CUISINE. I tapped the window. The pigeon flapped off. Goodbye, Mr. Tong.
It took me most of the afternoon to read. Memories crowded in. My eyes blurred, I had trouble focusing. I thought: I’m seeing things. I pushed back my chair and stood. I thought: Mazel tov, Gursky, you’ve finally lost it completely. I watered the plant. To lose you have to have had. Ah? So now you’re a stickler for details? Have, didn’t have! Listen to you! You made a profession out of losing. A champion loser you were. And yet. Where’s the proof you ever had her? Where’s the proof that she was yours to have?
I filled the sink with soapy water and washed the dirty pots. And with each pot and pan and spoon I put away, I also put away a thought I couldn’t bear, until my kitchen and my mind returned to a state of mutual organization. And yet.
Shlomo Wasserman had become Ignacio da Silva. The character I called Duddelsach was now Rodriguez. Feingold was De Biedma. So-called Slonim became Buenos Aires, a town I’d never heard of now stood in for Minsk. It was almost funny. But. I didn’t laugh.
I studied the handwriting on the envelope. There was no note. Believe me: I checked five or six times. No return address. I would have interrogated Bruno if I’d thought he’d have anything to tell. If there’s a package, the super leaves it on the table in the lobby. No doubt Bruno saw it and picked it up. It’s a big event when something comes for either of us that can’t fit in the mailbox. If I’m not mistaken, the last time was two years ago. Bruno had ordered a studded dog collar. Perhaps it doesn’t go without saying that he’d recently brought home a dog. It was small and warm and something to love. He called it Bibi. Come, Bibi, come! I’d hear him call. But. Bibi never came. Then one day he took it to the dog run. Vamos, Chico! someone called to their dog, and Bibi took off toward the Puerto Rican. Come, Bibi, come! Bruno cried, but to no avail. He switched tactics. Vamos, Bibi! he shrieked at the top of his lungs. And lo and behold, Bibi came running. She barked all night and shat over the floor, but he loved her.
One day Bruno took her to the dog run. She frolicked and shat and sniffed while Bruno looked on with pride. The gate opened for an Irish setter. Bibi glanced up. Before Bruno knew was happening, she shot through the open gate and disappeared down the street. He tried to chase her. Run! he said to himself. The memory of speed flooded his system, but his body revolted. With his first steps his legs tangled and wilted. Vamos Bibi! he cried. And yet. No one came. In his hour of need—crumpled on the sidewalk while Bibi betrayed him by being what she was: an animal—I was at home pecking away at my typewriter. He came home, devastated. That evening we went back to the dog run to wait for her. She’ll come back, I said. But. She never came back. That was two years ago, and still he goes to wait.
I tried to make sense of things. Now that I think about it, I have always tried. It could be my epitaph. LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE.
Night fell and still I was lost. I hadn’t eaten all day. I called Mr. Tong. The Chinese take-out, not the bird. Twenty minutes later, I was alone with my spring rolls. I turned on the radio. They were asking for pledges. In return you got a plunger that said WNYC.
There are things I find hard to describe. And yet I persist like a stubborn mule in my efforts. Once Bruno came downstairs and saw me sitting at the kitchen table in front of the typewriter. That thing again? The earphones had slipped down to rest like a half-halo on the back of his head. I kneaded my knuckles over the steam from my teacup. A regular Vladimir Horowitz, he remarked as he passed on his way to the refrigerator. He hunched over, digging around for whatever it was he wanted in there. I rolled a new page into my machine. He turned around, the refrigerator door still open, a milk mustache on his upper lip. Play on, Maestro, he said, then pulled the earphones onto his ears and shuffled out the door, turning on the light above the table as he passed. I watched the light chain swing as I listened to the voice of Molly Bloom blasting his ears, THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A KISS LONG AND HOT DOWN TO YOUR SOUL A
LMOST PARALYSES YOU, it’s only her Bruno listens to now, wearing down the magnetic strip.
Over and over, I read the pages of the book I’d written as a young man. It was so long ago. I was naïve. A twenty-year-old in love. A swollen heart and a head to match. I thought I could do anything! Strange as that might seem, now that I’ve done all I’m going to do.
I thought: How did it survive? As far as I knew, the only copy was lost in a flood. I mean, if you don’t count the excerpts I sent in letters to the girl I loved after she left for America. I couldn’t resist sending her my best pages. But. It was only a few parts. And here in my hands was almost the whole book! Somehow in English! With Spanish names! It boggled the mind.
I sat shiva for Isaac, and while I sat, I tried to understand. Alone in my apartment, the pages on my lap. Night became day became night became day. I fell in and out of sleep. But. I didn’t get any closer to solving the mystery. Story of my life: I was a locksmith. I could unlock every door in the city. And yet I couldn’t unlock anything I wanted to unlock.
I decided to make a list of all the people I knew who were alive, in case I was forgetting someone. I busied myself looking for paper and pen. Then I sat down, smoothed down the page, and brought the nib to meet it. But. My mind drew a blank.
Instead I wrote: Questions for the Sender. This I underlined twice. I continued:
1. Who are you?
The History of Love Page 12