A Play for the End of the World

by Jai Chakrabarti

  “What an idea,” she whispered.

  They were seated in the balcony, and he’d brought along a pair of binoculars for her to see. She knew he didn’t need them; he could make out faces a football field away.

  “What can I say, I’ve been branching out,” Jaryk said.

  At the end of the third act, she found him weeping. She kissed him under his eyes, knowing he’d allowed himself to be unguarded in her presence. He was a man who could be moved by music, which was important for her. That night he was tender. He kissed her a hundred times on her ankles, as if she were a princess, which she often felt she was in his presence, or at least someone of value, someone worthy of his deep and singular attention.

  At work, even Miles Norton couldn’t take away her happiness. That was a testament to the life she and Jaryk had made together. During the early part of March and into April, as the first tendrils of spring settled on the city and Central Park was full again with strollers, panhandlers, musicians, and the two of them, they went to the waterfront to watch the construction of what would become the tallest towers in the world. In the evenings, they grilled meat on Jaryk’s fire escape.

  They made a date of getting their passports. “Just in case,” he’d said to her, but this opened up possibilities in her mind: a life of travel, a little vagabonding abroad with the man she loved.

  Then came the eighteenth of May. She had bought a white dress that came down to the middle of her thighs, and she was going to surprise him with it, and with a new pair of shoes she’d bought from a store on Madison. She was going to cook him a nice meal, and maybe they were going to see the new Redford movie.

  She tried her key on his door, but the lock was bolted from the inside. “Jaryk,” she called through the door, “you home early?”

  She got that funny feeling in her belly even before his voice came back. “Go away.”

  “Go away,” he said again. This time, she heard the sound of bottles and the shifting of furniture.

  “Jaryk, it’s me, Lucy,” she said. But there was only silence.

  She pounded on the door until her knuckles ached. The pain was good—at least, it lessened the worry.

  Jaryk’s Ukrainian landlord lived next door. She could hear the old woman washing her laundry in the bathtub, the pounding of the sheets aligning with the rhythm of Lucy’s own body, with the memory of her own furious knocking. She smoothed her dress and rang the doorbell.

  “Yah?” The old woman appraised her from shoes to hair.

  “I need to use your fire escape,” Lucy said.

  “You are the girlfriend.”

  “Something’s wrong with Jaryk,” Lucy said. “I need to get in.”

  The landlady shrugged. Perhaps she had once loved with all the curiosities of her soul funneled into another being. Perhaps she had been on the verge of loss. “You go ahead,” the landlady said.

  The fire escape jutted five floors above the city, and three feet away was the entrance to Jaryk’s apartment. The landlady had used half of the space to host geraniums and forget-me-nots. By the far corner, there was a grill and Lucy climbed atop it, balancing with her hands on the railing. The wind blew up her dress and she heard pockets of noise from the street. The buildings huddled together in the Lower East Side, and she could imagine their history as tenement dwellings, all the misspent promises of those who’d come to the country for riches only to end up living in filth.

  From down on the street came the catcalls of the street preacher, who loved to spread the word of God as much as he loved his women; Lucy heard, too, the trilling of a domestic argument in rapid Spanish, and she heard the voice of the Ukrainian landlady, who was standing at the balcony door. “If you are to do, do it,” she said.

  She did it. She jumped and landed on Jaryk’s fire escape. It was full of rust and going a little uneven, but it held her weight. “Thank you,” she yelled to the landlady, a little breathless and terribly alive. She crossed herself, crawled through the open window, and there he was. Passed out on the couch. A little dribble on his five o’clock shadow. The smell of liquor surrounding him like a wet blanket.

  “Jaryk,” she said. “What in heaven’s…?”

  It took a little bit of shoving, but he came to. Vile breath. He smelled of everything the future father of her children shouldn’t. His first words were “I don’t want any.” His hair was caked with sweat; he raised his head to say, “Misha’s dead.”

  She felt a piece of his heart lift away. It was gone with the sound of the name. Misha. Two syllables and a whole past. Misha was the man who’d lifted the veil to reveal an orphanage in the Old Country and Jaryk as a boy. Misha had watched over him before everything fell apart. “Misha. Oh, God—how?”

  “Dead because I wasn’t there for him.”

  She took a wet cloth to Jaryk’s forehead and brushed the hair from his eyes. Then she made a stone soup with the few things in the fridge: carrots, a bunch of parsley, leftover strips of chicken, and a beef broth. Eventually, he sat up and ate, but he refused to look at her the whole night. He was willing to be cared for, but only to a degree. She could tell he was in his own world, and he wasn’t ready to make room.

  * * *

  ………………

  Lucy was working her caseload, coaching a middle-aged woman on how to rejoin the workforce, when Miles walked into her office to tell her she had a phone call.

  “It’s about a funeral,” Miles said, trying his best, she knew, to come across as caring, though it did not come naturally to him. “I transferred it into Albert’s room.”

  Albert was a caseworker who’d retired last year but left his office decorations intact, as if he were only gone on holiday. His room was filled with family photos, and some days during her break she would sneak in, just to stare at the children and grandchildren he’d had with a succession of three wives.

  “Lucy,” Jaryk said. “I’m outside your office.”

  “Stay put, I’ll be right there,” she said.

  She found him a block away, wearing a black fedora and faded jeans, standing near the pay phone. When he saw her, he seemed relieved.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I tried to find you in there, but there was no receptionist. It was awfully confusing.”

  She imagined him entering the labyrinth that was the unemployment office, thinking which of the hallways would lead to her. She knew he hadn’t asked anyone for help, had likely wandered for minutes until he tracked his way to the pay phone. That was Jaryk. Until he knew you, he’d never ask for a good word.

  They walked to City Hall Park and from a distance watched a lady in a wide skirt Hula-Hoop.

  “There’s a tradition to invite people to funerals in person,” he said finally. “A lot easier when you live in a village.” He told her it was to be held tomorrow morning at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. “We’re going to have vodka in Misha’s memory,” he said.

  The lady with the Hula-Hoop had tired herself out, her skirt tracing a snow angel in the parched grass. Lucy wasn’t sure what she could ask Jaryk. Not “How are you?,” which forced folks to make politeness out of misery. Nothing could undo the grief of a beloved friend, a brother, departed. She led him onto the grass, and she lay down—what did it matter if she soiled her work clothes?—and he beside her, the two of them staring into the midday sun.

  * * *

  ………………

  When Jaryk had said “morning,” apparently he had meant the earliest part of the morning. Lucy got to Green-Wood Cemetery at seven o’clock and by that time the men from the fish market were already assembled in a line by the gravesite. Ten men, each of whom Jaryk had personally invited. Each one rose to eulogize their departed colleague. Earl Minton’s was the one she’d remember through the years.

  “He was a king amongst us,” Earl began. “He didn’t care if you were Jewish or Irish or whatever. He�
��d fight for you whoever you were. That was Misha’s way.”

  Jaryk didn’t take a turn. He had worn an oversized black coat for the occasion, and after each man finished his speech, he fidgeted with his collar and poured a shot of vodka.

  “L’chaim,” said the men who were Jewish. “Sláinte,” said Earl and Misha’s Irish friends.

  She walked into the circle and saw there was no casket, no hole in the ground. Only “Misha Waszynski” carved on a gravestone that barely fit the letters. Had she missed that—the viewing of the body, the lowering into the earth? Jaryk wasn’t meeting her eye. The men from the docks circled closer, and she had to worm her way to him. She whispered into his ear that she would cook dinner for them tonight, if he wanted to be with her—if he didn’t, she understood that, too.

  He looked at her and nodded what could’ve been either yes or no. Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she retreated from Jaryk and the circle, feeling that her entry had upset some ritual of brotherhood.

  * * *

  ………………

  That night she made his kind of comfort food. Ribs, mashed potatoes, alongside a decent red wine. She waited until nine o’clock, then called his apartment, but there was no answer. He was out mulling things over, she figured. She fell asleep to the rhythm of a welcome rain. Finally, there would be respite from the heat, which had come quick and overstayed its welcome.

  Jaryk came over the next night. From the circles under his eyes, she could tell he hadn’t slept much.

  “Misha’s ghost keeps me up,” he said, by way of a hello. “I go all the way down to the river. It doesn’t help. I feel his whiskey breath on my neck all the same.”

  She reheated the ribs and mashed potatoes, which he consumed without a pause—not a piece of meat left on the bone.

  “I’ve been walking these streets, thinking that if I get tired, it will help me fall asleep. Except, Misha and me used to walk everywhere when we first came to this country, so it reminds me of him, you know. The tenement houses on Orchard and Ludlow. The old synagogue on Elizabeth that’s so small you’d think it was for little people. We went in there once, and Misha couldn’t fit in the seats. We had a good laugh.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said. Her table was a little askew, or maybe it was her prewar floor. Either way, he left his seat, used his napkin to support the offending leg, then sat back down, leaning forward, hands on lap. “Have you ever in your life just wanted to get away?”

  “Yes, I have,” she said. “That’s how I came here. That’s how I met you. Do you want to take a trip upstate? Go to the Catskills?”

  “That won’t cure what I have.” He went to the sink and began washing the dishes she’d neglected all week. Unlike her, he was careful to scrub away each spot of grease, an attention to detail she’d always appreciated.

  “Ribs,” he said, drying the plates and placing them back in her cupboards. “With your famous barbecue sauce. I ate so quickly I didn’t even say thank you.”

  She laid her hand on the small of his back, told him it was not a one-time event, that such simple joys could be had again. They walked to the foot of her bed, but he stopped and gripped her arm.

  “There’s something I’ve kept from you, Lucy,” Jaryk said. “Misha didn’t die here. He died far away. He died in India.”

  He’d paused for her reaction, but she was more confused than anything else. What had India to do with Misha?

  “He met a professor from India, who offered him a free trip if he’d just come and help stage a play. I was supposed to go, too. They bought me a ticket, but I never got on the plane. Misha went alone, and a week into his trip he died of a heart attack.”

  All this time she’d thought they were finally sharing their lives with mutual trust, but she’d been wrong. He’d kept things from her. There was Misha and India and whatever else he wasn’t talking about. “So this explains the hole in the ground without a casket,” she said. She paused to think over the last few days. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”

  “Because it was one more of Misha’s crazy dreams. Because I didn’t think it was going to come to pass.”

  “You should’ve called the day it happened, Jaryk. I don’t know how, but I could’ve helped you.”

  “There’s one more thing. They had to cremate him. Misha would’ve wanted to be buried, but the professor in India told me they didn’t have any other options in his village. I have to go there to bring back his remains.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. They can put those ashes on a plane.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t stay here, Lucy.”

  She was trying not to take it personally, his insistence that he could not stay. Surely he didn’t mean here as in this moment, the breath between them, the rain arriving on the windowsill. She was trying not to take what he was saying as a long goodbye, but she felt distant from him, the walls thick.

  “Are you breaking up with me?”

  “No, of course not,” he said.

  “Look me in the eye and say it.”

  “I have not a single reason in the world to break up with you,” he said slowly, as if he were selling her an insurance policy.

  “Not a single reason—there’s a compliment! So, if you go, when would you go?”

  “Rather soon.”

  “For how long?”

  “The professor called it ‘a semester-long trip,’ which I took to mean several months. He wants me to help finish what Misha started.”

  “A semester—are you serious? Promise you’ll talk this over with me again before you do anything stupid.”

  “Sure, Lucy.”

  He was keeping all of his regret and fear to himself, and she didn’t know how to break him out of it. It felt like a piece of glass in her stomach, sitting there, waiting to scrape her into a deeper misery. She wanted to punch him out of his brood, but when he sat on the bed next to her, she didn’t have the heart. Instead, she found herself weeping. She felt ashamed at breaking down in front of him, for not being as hard as the city demanded, and for not being able to hold the grief that was turning him away. She thought of Mama, who’d died in her own bed surrounded by everyone she’d loved, but Misha hadn’t had the comfort of family. He’d outlived a war only to die in a foreign land.

  The tears softened him. He cradled his body around her, and that was a message she could understand.

  Between sleeping and waking, they made love; entangled in the sheets, their bodies fused into shapes the nimbleness of night allowed. When she opened her eyes, the sun was shining through her window, and his body was fierce with light. She sensed he was going to leave her, knew his escape from all that ailed him was imminent. What she didn’t know was whether she would follow, whether they would see each other again. “A semester-long trip,” he’d said. “Maybe longer,” she’d heard.

  * * *

  ………………

  Later that day she called him, but he didn’t answer. She tried a few more times, but no luck. Come the weekend she walked to his apartment on Orchard. She knew Roger Garcia, the building super and a veteran of the Korean War. Roger always wore a Mets cap, and once he’d shown her that it was to hide a scar that traced across the back of his skull. Sometimes he’d have flowers for Lucy. When she was in a rhythm visiting Jaryk, he’d always let her know how happy he was to see her, offering her a rose, trying, maybe, to make Jaryk a little jealous.

  This morning he didn’t give her his usual smile and wink.

  “Why the sad face? Did you find another girl, Roger?”

  “You’re still my girl, Lucy. Hold on just one second.”

  He returned from the storeroom with a letter in his hands. “Jaryk left you this,” he said.

  “He’s not been around?”

  “You could take a look yourself.”

  She went up to the fifth flo
or and opened his apartment door to find the place empty. Not empty, exactly—there were a few left-behinds: a floor mat, a broom and dustpan, the bamboo plant she’d bought him when she’d first started spending time in his apartment, but otherwise it was as if he’d never lived there at all. For a moment, she thought she’d mistaken his apartment, but no, this was 5B, so simple to remember. That was the bamboo plant she’d watered so he’d have at least one other living thing. No, he’d simply gone. She’d figured they’d have weeks together before he made any decision, but it seemed he’d already made up his mind.

  She tore open his letter.

  Dearest Lucy, Jaryk had written,

  You gave me a beautiful life. I thought the way we were would go on forever.

  Then Misha died. Everywhere I walk in this city I see his face. Somewhere in India they’ve got his ashes, and maybe holding his remains will bring me relief.

  I told you about the professor who bought Misha’s ticket and asked us to stage a play, but I didn’t tell you how much the play meant to us. We performed it when we were children living in Janusz Korczak’s orphanage, and it shaped our days. It gave me a purpose.

  You have your life in the city, so this is crazy to even ask: will you come to India and be with me?

  I know that you’ll read this and think I’m a coward. I wish I had the courage to ask you in person.

  I’ve included the information for Professor Bose if you want to get in touch.

  I love you, always and everywhere

  —J

  She surveyed the empty space of the studio. So many hours spent here and out on the fire escape. All of it like lost time. But what nerve he had, to leave without saying goodbye! Now he expected her to halt her life, follow him to India of all places. She picked up the bamboo plant and threw it against the wall. The pot shattered into pieces. It was a while before she’d calmed down enough to clean up the mess. On the way out his door, she saw the sign she’d missed: Apartment for Rent.