Davita's Harp

by Chaim Potok

  “Good morning, llana Davita. Your mother and I saw you from the porch. That was a terrible storm.”

  “It wrecked my castle.”

  “I see. I am very sorry.”

  “I have to rebuild it now.”

  “Your mother asks you to come to breakfast.”

  “Not now. Are you feeling better, Uncle Jakob?”

  “Yes. The fever is gone. It will take you a long time to rebuild this castle, Ilana Davita.”

  “It’s our protection against the Fascists on the other side of the ocean, Uncle Jakob. I have to rebuild it.”

  He said nothing. I felt his hooded eyes looking at me.

  “It’s our magic protection. We’ll live in it and never move from it. That’s why I can’t let it be wrecked.”

  I felt him standing there and looking at me. I worked on the sand. The ocean rolled quietly and rhythmically upon the shore.

  Jakob Daw coughed and cleared his throat. Then I heard him ask in his soft and raspy voice, “Ilana Davita, may I help you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He bent stiffly over the castle and put his white hands into the sand. His delicate fingers kneaded the sand, shaping it, smoothing it. Overhead in the enormous sky birds wheeled and screamed. A distant freighter moved ponderously toward the horizon. Jakob Daw and I worked together rebuilding my castle.

  During those summers in Sea Gate my parents and their friends would meet together regularly in different homes. The night after the storm my mother went to a meeting alone and left me with Jakob Daw, who was tired and did not wish to go out. When I went to bed he was on the porch, writing. From the window near my bed I saw him seated at the table, hunched over his pad. The spectacles he wore when writing gave his face a scholarly look. Insects, attracted by the light, flew against the screen walls of the porch. Through the darkness came the monotonous sounds of the surf. I returned to my bed and sat propped against my pillow, reading a children’s book about Spain that I had found during my weekly trip with my mother to the local public library.

  There was a faint knock on my door. I called out and the door slowly opened and Jakob Daw came hesitantly into my room. He had seen my light burning, he said. Wasn’t I tired from the day’s work on the castle? He had promised my mother I would not stay up late. Was there something he could get me? Perhaps a glass of milk? Water? Perhaps I would like to hear a story. People sometimes said that his stories put them to sleep. Yes? A story? Good. Very good.

  He sat on the edge of my bed. I put the book down and lay back on my pillow and listened. He spoke quietly in his hoarse voice and sometimes I had to strain to hear his words.

  “There was a horse that lived in a narrow valley at the foot of a tall range of mountains. This was a young horse, a beautiful horse, gray in color, all gray, even its eyes and mane and hooves and tail were gray. The grayness had about it a special quality: it glowed with a warm, soft light. Can you imagine such a horse, Ilana Davita? A young, strong, gray horse, shining as it galloped about during the day, shining as it stood asleep during the night. A very beautiful horse.

  “In the mountains along the valley lived a herd of black horses. These were powerful creatures who always went racing about in the gulleys and crevices and along the shoulders of the hills. Often the gray horse, hearing the distant beating of their hooves, would look up and see them running along a high ridge, silhouetted against the sky. They were entirely black; their manes were black, their eyes and hooves and tails were black. And the black was a deep black, with no glow, no light, a flat, strong black, like a night without moon or stars. Sometimes it stormed in the hills and the gray horse would see the black horses running in the rain and outlined against the sky when lightning flashed. They were awesome seen like that, running in the lightning and the rain.

  “The little valley where the gray horse lived emptied onto a broad, sandy plain. Here lived another herd of horses that grazed peacefully in the oases that grew out of sand watered by underground streams. White was the color of these horses, a white that hurt the eyes. Every part of them was white—their eyes, their manes, their tails, their hooves. Pure, clean, dazzling white. On dark nights their whiteness was seen for miles, each horse a pulsing glow of light. The gray horse would look at the white horses on dark nights and at the black horses during the day and in lightning storms.

  “As the years went by, he began to feel more and more disturbed by the thought of being forever between the light of the peaceful white horses and the darkness of the powerful black horses. He did not understand why living that way should disturb him; but he knew it did. Perhaps he felt that he was living in a very dull between-world, and the older he grew the less inclined he was to remain in this state of betweenness. Often it seemed to him that what was especially bad about his own world was the way the horses of the other two worlds went about ignoring his presence. Sometimes the horses from the mountains would gallop through the valley and meet with the horses from the plain. Sometimes the horses from the plain would go roaming through the valley and climb the hills to be with the horses from the mountains. On occasion those meetings would end in whinnies of anger, in bites and kicks. Despite this, they appeared to need one another’s presence and continued their visits. But no one seemed to need the gray horse, and all treated him with utter indifference. Sometimes he managed to have a conversation with a white or a black horse and conveyed to them unusual ideas that came to him as he grazed peacefully in his little valley. On occasion he would overhear white or black horses discussing his ideas without letting on where they had originated. He was lonely. Perhaps that was the reason for his unhappiness. There is no feeling more terrible than loneliness, no feeling worse than the sensation of being locked inside your own heart. And so one day he decided to leave his little valley and go off in search of other gray horses like himself.”

  Jakob Daw fell silent. I felt him very silent on the edge of my bed.

  I asked, “Is he like the bird, Uncle Jakob? Is he still looking?” “No. He is no longer looking.” “What happened to him?”

  “He searched a long time and could not find another gray horse. He returned to his valley.”

  “Is that where he is now?”

  “No. He decided one day to join the black horses in the mountains. One night during a terrible storm he was struck by lightning. The lightning burned him black, all black. He was killed. That is the end of the story.”

  There was a silence. Through my open windows came the murmurous sounds of the surf.

  “I don’t like that story,” I said finally.

  Jakob Daw said nothing. He sat on the edge of my bed, one leg crossed over the other, his hands holding his knee. He seemed a faint, wraithlike presence.

  “I didn’t understand some of the words,” I said.

  “Ah,” he sighed. “In many of my stories the words are complicated.”

  “And I didn’t like the ending.”

  He sighed again, softly. “Some people do not like my stories when they are without endings; others do not like them when they are with endings. It appears that you do not like them either way. I am very sorry. But never mind. One day I will tell you a story that you will like.”

  “Why couldn’t the horse use magic to change his color?”

  “Why couldn’t he use magic? Because, Ilana Davita, he lived in a world that was without magic.”

  “But why was he hit by the lightning, Uncle Jakob?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I liked the gray horse.”

  “Yes? I liked him, too.”

  “I wish he didn’t have to be hit by the lightning.”

  “So do I.” He got to his feet and stood near the bed and looked down at me. “Now I think I will say good night and you will go to sleep.”

  “Good night, Uncle Jakob.”

  I watched him recede into the shadows that filled the corners of my room. The door closed softly.

  I dreamed about the gray horse that night. He came into my room
, his hooves strangely silent on the wooden floor. He clung to the corner shadows, glowing faintly, his eyes dark, forlorn. Then he moved slowly and soundlessly through the hallway and the living room to the porch and the dunes. He whinnied softly and shook his head, his long mane flowing, his muscled skin rippling. Over the beach flew a small black bird, circling, searching. The gray horse moved down the dunes to the beach and abruptly broke into a gallop. Along the end of the beach there rose a range of dark hills. The gray horse ran along the beach toward the hills. Clouds gathered swiftly over the sea and moved inland. The horse entered the range of hills and began to climb. Drops of rain struck the ground. I heard the rain pelting the sand and falling in the hills. A jagged bolt of lightning tore apart the night sky and struck the gray horse. I heard his cry, saw him stagger, watched him fall to his knees. He lay very still. Overhead the small bird circled for a while over the body of the blackened gray horse. Then it flew off toward the sea and disappeared.

  I woke shivering and bathed in sweat. My nightgown was soaked. I pulled it over my head and dropped it on the floor near my bed. Naked, I got out of bed and went out of my room and past the room of Jakob Daw. The door was partly open. He was not in his bed.

  I went to the bathroom and returned to my bed. How dark the night was! No moon, no stars. Hot air pulsing with insect life, ocean winds stirring the poplars and the deutzia shrubs. Noises moved through the darkness. The night seemed airy with soft, rhythmic, musical sounds that came drifting in from the other side of the cottage, sounds like wings fluttering, like cicadas singing, like distant laughter, like horses galloping on the yielding sands of a fabled beach.

  In the morning the heat was gone and the air was cool. I came out of my room and saw that the door to Jakob Daw’s room was closed. I ate breakfast alone and went down to the beach.

  An unbroken layer of gray clouds covered the sky. The sea was the color of slate; the beach looked desolate. I worked on my castle. Once I glanced up and saw David Dinn standing on the dunes and watching me. He turned away and went down toward the water, a thin melancholy figure, walking alone on an empty beach, gulls calling overhead, dull gray water breaking and rolling across the smooth wet sand at the ocean’s edge.

  All that morning my mother and Jakob Daw remained in the cottage. I saw them on the porch, talking together. In the afternoon my mother came out for a swim and Jakob Daw sat on the porch, writing. I played with a few girls my age on the beach. I did not see David Dinn.

  My father returned home before supper, tired, grimy, bringing with him newspapers and magazines and the news of serious rumors of revolution in Spain. From the porch I heard him talking inside the cottage with my mother and Jakob Daw. He came out to the porch. “Hello, my love. Why are you out here? How about a hug for your weary dad? No, an ocean of a hug. That’s right. That’s an ocean of a hug!”

  All through supper the three of them talked as if I were not there. They talked about a senator who was killed in an automobile crash, about the king of England’s narrow escape from assassination, about a new workers’ party that had just been organized in New York State. After supper they went out on the porch and continued talking.

  Through the window of my room I saw David Dinn and his uncle emerge from their house and start up the driveway to the street.

  I told my mother I was going out for a walk.

  “Take along a sweater,” she said, and went back to her conversation with my father and Jakob Daw.

  I went quickly out of the back door of the cottage and walked to the edge of the sidewalk and looked both ways. There they were, almost a block away, walking together, David Dinn holding his uncle’s hand. I waited until they had reached the end of the block. Then I followed, keeping close to the trees in case they should turn suddenly to cross the street. Between the trees and houses I caught glimpses of the beach and the ocean, dull-colored and deserted. The chill air was heavy with the briny scent of the sea.

  They stopped at a corner and turned to cross the street. I slid behind a tree. There was no traffic. They crossed and continued up the side street. I crossed carefully and ran to the corner where they had crossed. I turned cautiously into the side street and saw they were nowhere in view.

  A long black car went slowly by. A gray cat gazed at me warily from the stoop of an elegant turn-of-the-century house. From somewhere nearby came the voice of a radio announcer. I started quickly up the street. A wind blew in from the sea and I heard it in the trees. I wore a light summer dress beneath my sweater and the wind chilled me as it ran across my legs.

  At the next corner I stopped and looked up and down the street and could not see them. I turned to start back to the cottage and saw, coming toward me, two men in dark suits and dark felt hats and dark beards. I let them pass. They turned right at the corner. I went to the corner and saw them enter a beige-colored house.

  The house was a small one-story frame building. It stood on a street of empty lots and scraggly trees and similar small houses, some white, others pale brown. Lights shone from its windows. I walked past it and saw over the entrance a sign that read BETH ELOHIM. A narrow porch encircled the building. I heard voices from inside and climbed the stairs to the porch and went to the side of the house. There I stood at an open window, looking in.

  I saw a small hall-like room crowded with wooden folding chairs arranged in two sections and separated by a narrow aisle. The chairs faced a podium covered with a purple velvet cloth. On the far wall, facing the chairs, was a closet of some sort covered with a long purple curtain. Near the rear wall stood a curtain seven or eight feet in height and made of muslin held in place by unpainted two-by-fours. The three or four rows of chairs between the curtain and the wall seemed separated from the rest of the room. There were about fifty chairs in the room, and three boys and a dozen or so men, all standing. A middle-aged man stood in front of the podium, chanting in a toneless voice. A lengthy silence followed the conclusion of the chanting. In the front row of chairs David Dinn stood next to his uncle, swaying slightly back and forth as he read from the book in his hands. The man at the podium began to chant again. From time to time there were responses from the others. All were now seated. The man at the podium fell silent. Then two elderly men and David Dinn stood and recited something in near-unison. Again there were responses from the others. David Dinn sat down and leaned his head on his uncle’s shoulder. I saw his uncle put an arm around him and hold him in a gentle embrace.

  I moved quietly away from the window and down off the porch. It was nearly night. I walked quickly beneath the trees in air that was dark and cold. The trees whispered and moved as if alive in the wind. When I returned to the cottage Jakob Daw and my parents were still on the porch, talking. A huge leftist parade in Paris; Hitler and his accord with Austria; Roosevelt leaving Maine for a two-week vacation cruise aboard his yacht; the Fascists ready to move against the government of Spain. I went into my room to go to bed and through my window saw David Dinn and his uncle come up the driveway and go into their house. My parents and Jakob Daw were still on the porch talking when I fell asleep.

  • • •

  All the next morning my father sat at the kitchen table, writing about the hunger march in Pennsylvania, and Jakob Daw sat at the table on the porch, writing a story. From my castle on the beach I watched Jakob Daw writing. He was in his middle thirties, about the same age as my father, but seemed at times almost an infirm old man. He would remove his spectacles often and rub his eyes. For long periods of time he would stare off into space. He was like my father then: writing and yet not writing. What did he see when he sat staring like that? Ideas? Images? Dreams? His birds and horses?

  I asked him over lunch what his new story was about. He smiled tiredly.

  “I do not know. There is a young woman in it and a bird and a river. But I do not know what it is about. I have not yet completed it.”

  I didn’t understand how anyone could begin to write a story and not know what it was about.

  �
��In Vienna you wrote stories that even your classmates understood,” my mother said.

  “I was very young in Vienna,” Jakob Daw said. “So was the century.”

  “My story is about hungry and angry people,” my father said. “It’s about the beginning of the end of capitalism.”

  “Perhaps I will not know what my story is about even after I complete it,” Jakob Daw said. “Others may have to explain it to me.”

  “But what kind of story is it if you don’t know what it’s about, Uncle Jakob?”

  “Indeed,” Jakob Daw said. “Many ask me that question. I do not have an answer.”

  In the afternoon my father swam alone for a long time while my mother sat on a chair beneath an umbrella on the beach, writing a letter to Aunt Sarah, and Jakob Daw lay on the bed in his room, resting. I worked on my castle, enlarging it. From time to time my mother would stop writing and gaze out at the sea and I knew she was remembering things from her past that I knew nothing about. It seemed strange to know so little about your own mother. She had had another life across this ocean and in this city before I was born and she never talked of it with me. I watched her sitting on her beach chair gazing at the sea and the sky and the gulls that circled and called overhead.

  My father came out of the water and walked up the beach to my mother, his muscular body wet and glistening. He rubbed himself briskly with a towel and lay down on a blanket in the sunlight. I saw my mother look at him and then continue her letter to Aunt Sarah.

  Later, working on my castle, I looked up and noticed David Dinn wading in the surf a few yards from the far jetty. He wore dark trousers and a white shirt. He seemed fearful of the water and, hitching up his trousers as far as they would go, danced quickly back from an onrush of surf in the wake of a sudden tall wave. I watched him for a while and turned back to my castle.

  A shadow fell across the sand near my fingers. I looked up. David Dinn stood gazing down at the castle.