by Neil Gordon
This, too, is a matter of record. And this, too, Little Lincoln found and synced to me from London all the while I was writing whatever it was that I was writing about Molly, whatever it is, that is, that you have just read.
Whatever it is, I emerged from writing it to find this fact in some of the ten gigs of data that Little L. had sent and, for a moment, so huge was my momentum, that I nearly went right into it. Why was she there? What was she doing? And what made her go to the seder?
Did it have anything to do with my grandfather’s death?
But remember? I am the consummate professional. Molly was way gone, by then, her five afternoons and nights of talking having given me a couple straight weeks of writing at my perch over the Pacific, twelve, fifteen hours a day, such profound access into those days in November, fifteen years ago, that there are times when I rose, and lit a Marlboro Light, and felt my mane of black hair shaking down my back, and the weight of my breasts, and the strength of my runner’s legs, and only with a real effort did I manage to see that it wasn’t my body I was feeling, it was Molly’s.
The difference meant increasingly little to me.
I wrote fueled by the minibar, and by the last of my Rasta’s Focalin, and down in the lobby very early one morning, when the hookers were going home, I scored some pot.
Practically a health cure.
Then, when I finished, knowing I had just written the best thing I had ever written in my life, I had so much momentum that I had to stop myself from going right on to the Passover of 1996 and the last set of lies in my little family that I have to explore.
The thing was, I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t have the reporting, for one thing.
I just had what I was imagining, and even if, in my heart, I knew it to be true, that wasn’t enough.
For another, I had the minor matter of the $175,000 I was being paid.
So I ventured out in the Mitsu V6—beautiful car, which I had so far driven once, from the airport—and went to the Apple Store at the Grove, where I bought a copy of Final Draft, on my own dime, as I did not think it wise to expense it and let my employers know that they had been paying my hotel for two weeks and I did not even have the software necessary to write a script. Then—and here, I invested the time to get a medical marijuana card from some doctor in San Fernando, requiring me to recall all my high-school Spanish—I set to work translating Cuntman into a screenplay, nuts and bolts work, organizational more than creative, and except for being annoying and a waste of time, a total walk in the park: Establishing—Night—Riyadh Hotel, blah blah blah.
See, I did not have to worry about it being good.
I knew that whatever I handed in, they would want to change, whether it was brilliant or terrible, because no matter how you slice it, everything you think about film people is more or less true—though the fact that they are dishonest, disingenuous, and designing does not, as it turns out, stop them from also being a great deal of fun—so I just tossed the thing together. Then, when their response, which was apt to be senseless, actually got back to me, I would get back to work to make it good. Only, I would make it good my way, and they would think it was they who had done it with their incisive notes.
Meanwhile, I tracked down my Aunt Maggie who, I vaguely remembered, had told me she was going to Paris. Upon investigation, I found that not only had she gone, but she was staying: Uncle Danny was taking a sabbatical while she, Maggie, spent a year seconded by her law firm to the International Court of Justice. And Aunt Maggie, when I reached her in the Hague, listened to my question with interest, and then told me that if I wanted to know anything about Aunt Klara, she advised me to go ask her. Which, don’t you know, is just an invitation to a person like me. Source one sends you to source two for an answer? That is just an invitation: first to get the answer from source two, then to go back to source one and beat them to a pulp with it, because there is nothing more suspicious than someone who won’t answer a simple question, even if it’s your Aunt Maggie.
But aren’t you just the little Puritan? Go to Tel Aviv in mid-July without an assignment? Travel without someone paying? My take for the year was already over three hundred thousand dollars, and it was hardly half over. But spend money on traveling to Paris and Tel Aviv to write something I was dying to write, and I needed to write, and which was turning out to be the best thing I had ever written? That did not fit my work ethic, not one bit.
So I cast around a bit for an assignment. But none of the stories being so predictably rounded up and printed by the global entertainment-information complex fell even remotely in my purview. And no one seemed to be looking for the burned-out daughter of a ’60s burnout to write anything for them. I even drew a blank with the Times, who had been literally begging for a piece but who told me that the next thing they had for me was in November, the School of the Americas Protest in Fort Benning, Georgia. It seems that I could write anything I wanted for the Times, as long as it was about America, and as long as it was about my father.
Cuntman submitted, and too smart to expect a read within any reasonable span of time, I spent a couple days at the pool, reading Little Lincoln’s research, wrestling with my conscience.
What turned the trick was the realization that from Paris, the flight to Tel Aviv was, like, three hours. And in Tel Aviv, I could find out why my Aunt Klara had come to New York in Passover of 1996.
Without quite admitting to myself what I was doing, I called the concierge in Paris and had Momma’s apartment on Cherche Midi opened, then packed and flew over.
I toyed with flying coach.
Or not renting the spanking new Lamborghini that caught my eye when—purely by mistake—I went to the celebrity rental website at Charles de Gaulle.
After all, the whole thing is a tax deduction.
And it is only when I am safely seated next to a bottle of champagne in the first row of an Air France first-class cabin that I launch iData again and start reviewing what Little L. sent about my Aunt Klara and her flight to America in April of 1996.
Know what I do then?
I arrive at Charles de Gaulle and walk straight over to my favorite place, the ticket counter.
This one is easy.
I buy a ticket to Tel Aviv.
I take the endless hike down to El Al at the very end of Terminal Two.
Security takes three hours. I actually end up telling them what my Parsha was at my Bat Mitzvah.
On the other hand, I virtually breeze through at Ben Gurion—a mere four-hour wait in the Arab Room, which beat the hell out of the Yemini Twins—Christians from London, here for a Biblical tour—who have been there already for six, or the stunning Palestinian-Texan journalist, who has been there for seven, or the Italian film maker, who held the record at eight and a half.
When I leave I pick up a modest Mercedes 300 series, the best car available at that hole of an airport.
The irony is not lost on me.
I check into the Intercontinental Tel Aviv.
And the next morning, in brilliant Mediterranean sun reflecting off of the white buildings around me, I climb unannounced the stairs to Klara Singer’s address of record, an airy walkup on the third floor of a Bauhaus apartment building on Rothschild Boulevard, and ring the doorbell.
2.
Klara Singer in person turns out to be a woman in her fifties or so, with jet-black hair turning white and jet-black eyes which, as they focus on me through the open door, appear first defiant, then turn confused, and then, as if suddenly flooded with understanding, very sharp indeed. She wears a sleeveless black dress that sits flawlessly on her dark skin and, save for bright red lipstick, no makeup. A black jacket, folded over the back of a chair, and black espadrilles, on the floor next to an overstuffed briefcase, evidently make up the rest of her work clothes: it is nine in the morning, and she is about to go to the office. She is shockingly beautiful and, I had always assumed, from the fact that she was single, gay: as such she was a very, very convincing old
er gay woman. I’d go to bed with her in a second—she smelled great, too—Opium, I thought—were she not my aunt.
But then, she isn’t really my aunt, is she?
I know—I have heard it so many times—that this fact is key.
What I don’t know is why.
Yet.
Whatever she is, and why ever it matters, she looks at me with those sharp black eyes for a long moment, sharp black eyes that actually have me at a loss for words, no mean feat. When she speaks, her voice is deep and tinged with staccato Israeli diction, which surprises me: she lived in the States from thirteen to thirty.
“So. I understood you might be coming this way one of these days.”
She stood aside and, as I came in to the apartment, looked at me appraisingly and critically. “How?”
“How what?”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“Molly told me that you might.”
“Are you in touch with Molly?”
“My sister-in-law? Of course. Have a seat.”
I sit on a little couch—the décor is suited to the neighborhood, which is the largest collection of Bauhaus architecture in the world. The room is viciously clean, and sparely decorated with high-modernist furniture including, I note, a Kroll sideboard with, visible through glass doors, a collection of bottles. Klara, in the meantime, goes off to what must be the kitchen, where I hear her on the telephone excusing herself in Hebrew from work because “akhyaniti hagia l’California”—my niece has arrived from California. This is interesting to me, that she knows I am coming from California; interesting to me, and meaningful to me. Also interesting, incidentally, that she refers to me as her niece. We have never met. When she returns, it is in jeans and a white men’s shirt, the jeans showing a slim waist and rounded hips, the white shirt showing full breasts. She is carrying a tray with little cups of Turkish coffee and little white biscuits.
“Maggie is your sister-in-law too.”
If I expect her to be surprised, I am disappointed. “This is your grandmother’s recipe, these cookies. You knew her, didn’t you?”
“I did.” I take the coffee, wishing it were a drink, and looking around—fruitlessly—for an ashtray. Noticing that, she rises and resettles us out on the little balcony from where, between two tall buildings, I can see the Med.
Settled, she watches me light a cigarette. Then she gives me a smile that, for its pure warmth—even if not for its beauty—was little less than breathtaking.
“Yes, Maggie’s my sister-in-law, too. No, I haven’t spoken to her. I guess that’s what you’ve come to discuss with me, haven’t you? If I understand correctly.”
We regard each other in the sunlight for a moment without embarrassment—on either part. Then:
“I’ve been reading your work for a long time. You know you’re regularly translated in Ha’aretz, don’t you? The little piece on March 6th in the Times gave me a hint of what you’re up to. Then I heard some chatter. Writing a book about the year of Daddy’s death? What brought you to that?”
Daddy. That does take me aback. But she thinks of my grandfather thus, doesn’t she? Again, I choose not to answer. No answer seems required. Indeed, she has turned to show me her profile as she looks out over the low rooftops.
“Well, I suppose she has her right.” This she says to the distance. But then, as if waking up, she turns those honest black eyes back at me. “But why do you? What gives you the right? You’re not asking me to tell you a political story.”
I didn’t understand. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re asking me to tell you a personal story. It has nothing to do with whatever you’re trying to write about.”
Still, I don’t understand, and I guess I show this with my expression, because she says:
“Surely, what you’re after is a political story.”
“Ah. Well, that’s just it. I think it is a political story.”
“How? I have a right to my intimate life. Surely that in itself is a political commitment.”
I know that to be wrong. But as she says it, with such conviction, it is hard to formulate why, and I am trying—or better, trying to try—when she goes on.
“Maybe your father. Maybe even your uncle. I don’t even have children.”
An instinct moves me. “My uncle?”
And indeed, she says the name unwillingly. “Daniel. I don’t have children. I don’t have the same responsibility to you.”
Israelis. Always the victim. I watch her for a moment. Then I rise, walk into the living room through the sliding doors to the sideboard, choose a bottle—scotch—and pour myself a drink into a heavy piece of crystal. I down it, and then come back and light a cigarette.
I hadn’t expected to have to go here.
I don’t know what I had expected.
“I have three answers to that, Aunt Klara. The first is that I dispute that your experience is personal, not political. The second is that I dispute that you have any right to your own experience. And the third is that I dispute that you have any choice.”
Do I expect her to be shocked? As I told you, there is honesty in those eyes. I should add that the honesty is huge. “Okay. Let’s hear the first.”
I gather my thoughts. “Let’s grant that the distinction is meaningful, which is not necessarily true, but fine. To say that your experience was intimate, and personal, is to say that it was not politically determined. Are you sure of that? That you were even in America was politically determined.”
She interrupted me. “Historically. Historically determined.”
“Well, I don’t know what history is, but the decisions that resulted in your being in Israel, never mind America, were to a one political. Hitler’s, Eichmann’s, Stalin’s, Roosevelt’s, Ben Gurion’s. You know that.”
“Okay. That’s an interpretation, but okay. It still doesn’t change anything. I’m not talking about those kinds of events. I’m talking about interior events.”
“Aunt Klara, I have yet to find a single intimate event in the Sinai family that was not politically determined. Not a single one. Jack’s secret death. My father’s secret life. Not a single thing.”
This is indisputable, and although I know I’ve trapped her in a simplification, and indeed, that she’s only accepted that simplification because she has already assumed the very maternal responsibility for me that she denies having, I am not going not to accept my advantage when she says next:
“Okay, khallas. Khallas. Number two.”
This one is harder, and I resist the urge to go for another shot of the lousy scotch, although it seems fair enough to me that I should get one drink per answer.
“Your right to privacy is superseded by my right to understand the reality of my life. That’s axiomatic. People have the absolute right to understand the truth of their lives, no matter what damage that does. Something happened during Passover of 1996. I don’t need to know what it is to know that it casts a shadow over our family as big as a house. But I do need to know what happened in order to get out from under that fucking shadow. Then there’s two logical correlatives. A: my very willingness to understand, and my talent, as a writer, to understand it thoroughly, as thoroughly as if it happened to me, grants me the right to know it. I’m sorry, but I believe that, and I believe it so strongly that if I ever have this argument again, I am going to raise it from a logical correlate to an axiom. And B: unless you are radically different from every other member of your family, the thing I need to understand is a lie. A lie that has been perpetrated, by you at least in part, which I consider a political crime and one in which you are implicated. What I need, and have every right in the world to understand, is how, where, and why you told a lie, because lies are always, always, always wrong, and the truth is always, always, always right. Fair enough?”
“No. Not at all. Not even remotely fair enough. But it’s one of those arguments so tightly wound up with its own self-interest that it’s virtually impossible to argue.
And what, may I ask, is answer three?”
Now I draw a blank. “Three? I’ve forgotten.”
“That I have no choice.”
“Oh. Well, that one’s simple. When I leave here I’m going to see Danny and Maggie, and there’s no way on God’s green earth they’re not going to talk to me, so if you want me to get it right, you’d better also.”
Below us, someone is shouting in Arabic for someone else to move a car. Then I hear a car start. The canopy of sky, above, is light gray, dropping this pastel light that had struck me on the street.
“So where do I start?”
I put my iPhone out on the table, and adjust the mic for the ambient noise of the city below us.
“With the trip you took to New York in 1996, in April, when you were recalled to Washington.”
She laughs, but not as if she were amused. “You make that sound easy.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Motek, you have no idea what you’re asking.”
I let a little dead air hang on that one.
And then, fixing me in a gaze that, so direct, accomplished what some might call the Herculean task of silencing me, she begins to talk.
Five days later, I retrace my steps from Tel Aviv to Paris. I take a taxi into town, drop my bag in Momma’s place—big greeting from the concierge, shocking view of leaden rooftops stretching over to the seventh—then I go right back out and take another taxi to the rue d’Ulm, a straight shot down Saint-Germain which, in the glories of early summer, with its wealth of retail, would usually be something like heaven for me.
But I am not here.
I haven’t been here since I got to Israel.
Uncle Danny is at his office desk at Normale Sup, where he’s spending his sabbatical, when I come up the stairs. He’s in a light blue denim shirt and—I see when he comes out around the desk to kiss me—khakis, a light blue tie. American. I make a mental note to tell Maggie where to take him shopping. The jacket over his chair is black, and I don’t need to see him put it on to know that it doesn’t fit. He has my father’s and grandfather’s blue eyes, but only the remnants of blond hair around the edges of his bald head. The result is a surprisingly open face, a face you want to believe, and one that slows you down when you begin to appreciate the subtlety, the ambivalence, of what he is actually saying.