“Come,” said the professor. “My jeep is parked on the other side.”
Again he had to jog to keep up. “Why don’t you park by your house?” he asked, as they entered the professor’s jeep, camouflaged by trees at the end of a rice paddy.
“The government tracks my whereabouts,” the professor said. “So, I like to make things difficult for them. They hate the youthful bomb makers, they hate the villagers, and they definitely hate me.”
He didn’t have a chance to probe as the jeep turned onto a dirt road. They were heading due east, the sun coming through the treetops. A mile or more in they came onto a paved path, and the professor drove faster. Jaryk clutched the door to keep from being jostled each time they hit a pothole.
“Almost there!” the professor yelled through the wind.
Eventually the jeep swerved onto another turnoff, which led to a hilly road. The professor leaned on the gearshift so hard that it seemed like it was his own force of will, and not the crank of the engine, that was moving them forward. In a little valley surrounded by small hills stood rows of huts and a field of goldenrod.
“This is Gopalpur,” the professor said. “This is where they will perform your play.”
This time Jaryk didn’t bother to correct the professor that it wasn’t his play. He was looking at the goats tethered to a barn, at a lonely cow that grazed the field. Next to the huts there were rows of gardens. In the center was a well; a boy drew water, the squeak of the pulley against the hinge like a long-lost melody.
“That one knew Misha,” the professor said. “The people here were so curious. They’d never seen a pale giant before, and now they will have seen two.”
But Jaryk hadn’t been thinking about Misha. He’d been imagining what it’d be like to live in the country again, rise before dawn, more crickets than cars. All that good work, the purpose of the day, crowned in the gardens with the goats. He’d once tried to explain it to Lucy. “Just imagine,” he’d said, “what it would be like to live like that.” She’d laughed, though she came from a small town herself. For a moment, he tried to imagine her here with him, making a hut of their own.
“Come on,” the professor called, handing him a flask of what he’d come to regard as the bitterest, darkest coffee—the taste reminiscent, years later, of those mornings in the mud. “There’s much to be done and so little time.”
He watched the boy struggle with his bucket of water all the way back to his hut. A woman came out to bring him back inside, and Jaryk saw—though it was nearly concealed in her sari—that she was carrying a rifle in her left hand; with her right, she waved to the professor.
“The people here are good people,” the professor said, waving in return. “Quite friendly.”
Years later, he would remember the moment when the woman with the rifle held her son’s hand—the glint of light that revealed the steel she kept balanced against hip—and he would wonder, time and again, why he hadn’t at that moment commandeered the jeep, turned it around, headed back to the airport. But he had not. He had stayed to learn of Misha’s end.
The Blessing Circle
warsaw—august 1, 1942
Most days of his life Pan Doktor believed in the goodness of the world, but this morning, the air felt dense with the evil of man. The Great Deportation had begun, and soon he knew it would be their turn. Still, he removed himself from bed. That was the hardest part, the first step. With the second, his body reminded him of how old it was, how hungry, how bruised and harmed; there was fluid in his lungs, and soon the heart would go, if the liver didn’t go first.
Through the light of a single window, he observed his attic room. The orphanage had overflowed with too many children. There was never enough space, so a few had begun to sleep in the attic with him, arranged so beautifully on top of a single mattress that he nearly wept with delight. The world had betrayed them, but these ones still slept like children. In the early dawn light, he watched as dream after dream traveled over their brows, and he tried, with the full force of his intellect—by pressing his thumbs deep into his temples—to remember his own dream.
What was left of the dream now, the first he’d had in weeks, was mostly rubble and ghosts, but he could remember the shape, the voice, the look of a particular man, a gray-bearded mystic who had visited the orphanage. As soon as the mystic had spoken, Pan Doktor knew it was the myriad-minded man, the perennial artist, the one from far away. They had walked together into an English garden with hedges that rose leagues above their heads; sheltered by orchids and bougainvillea, Pan Doktor explained that they had been chosen for resettlement to the east. Many thousands had already gone, but Pan Doktor suspected there was no resettling to be done: the only way forward was death. The mystic listened with a bowed head, with his open palms held toward the sky, and then he said, in his quiet singsong voice, “Old friend, you must bless the world. You must bless the world before you die.”
This morning what Pan Doktor remembered most was the mystic’s face as he had said those words: between the wrinkles, some mixture of compassion and brotherhood and mercy but also shame. It was difficult to bless the world with an empty belly, but Pan Doktor tried his best: he sat cross-legged on the pocked wood and breathed the attic’s stale air until his heart slowed. Several summers ago, he had learned of meditation, and now he channeled what he knew, taking breath and giving it away, again and again.
It was difficult to keep the eyes shut. He peeked to see the sleeping children. There was Mordechai, who told jokes to passersby on the mouth of Pawia Street. Sometimes people stopped to listen; sometimes they even laughed until their bellies hurt. In the evenings, Pan Doktor would sit Mordechai down and pluck the lice from his head. Then there was Hanna. She had lost the most weight, though the more she became skin and bone, the less she cried. She was ten years old, but she had begun to think like the elderly. Yesterday, he had found her staring at a column of ants climbing the walls for the whole of playtime hour. He didn’t say a word to stop her—what could he have said? Finally, there was the youngest one, Jaryk, a nine-year-old who had come to him from the countryside, whose skin was covered by a layer of the ghetto’s oily dust, some mixture of dirt, shit, and blood. Pan Doktor cleaned the sleeping boy’s face with his handkerchief.
Again he closed his eyes. Again he tried. But the meditation would not come: you couldn’t bless the world if you no longer believed in its goodness. His knees had tired from the sitting, but no, it didn’t come, because hope was still on the other side of the sea, where the mystic was, where the gardens were as wide as the squares of Kraków. Pan Doktor surveyed his room. He had carted his books and journals into the attic, using what little space remained between the children to make piles. The Little Review newspaper, the books he’d written for children, medical tomes, and his favorites, the dream journals.
He had taught children in the orphanage to capture their dreams and to write to him or to Stefa. Stefa saw the dream journals as books of grammar instruction, so she would mark along the pages so thoroughly it was sometimes difficult to read the child’s handwriting. But for him the dream journals had been a window into each child’s psyche, all the unbearable fears and joys. So he would write back, as honestly as he knew how.
He shuffled through the pile underneath his cot and found Jaryk’s. They never learned how the boy had discovered the orphanage. He seemed to have walked an enormous distance, and his little legs had trouble carrying him up the stairs. At first, the dream journals were the only way he would make his feelings known.
September 1939—Dear Pan Doktor,
Here I begin. A moocow I see. A moocow I see jump moo moon. On the other side the swift horse big hooves. He runs from field to house my field my house. He has a wet carrot in his big brown mouth.
This is the dream I like to have.
Pan Doktor had written back, careful when beginning the dialogue with n
ewcomers:
Dear Jaryk,
Thank you for sharing this beautiful dream. I will not easily forget this cow who jumps so high he crosses the moon.
Have you settled in with your fellows? Do not be shy. If there is something you want to share with me but are afraid to with others around, this is the place. Speak your mind and do not fear.
Dear Pan Doktor,
Today Hanna lost her tooth but is funny I found it. I found it by the tree Miss Esterka reads. I said to Miss Esterka do you know where a tooth goes?
I said Hanna lost it.
She said no but she helps me dig. We push the dirt.
Then long time pass we find the head of Old Dog. One Old Dog with holes for eyes. I say to Miss Esterka don’t be afraid.
Then I open Old Dog’s mouth and find inside Hanna’s tooth. I take this tooth and Hanna says she take it to Pan Doktor because Pan Doktor will give lozenges.
I say what about me? I want lozenges also.
Dear Jaryk,
Thank you for finding Hanna’s tooth. When she’d learned she lost it, she was indeed distressed. I understand she lost it by our courtyard maple—it is a wonder of wonders how many prized possessions that one tree has kept for us.
Many years ago, there was a tree I myself would go to. It was an apple tree that produced especially sweet apples, up until the first snowfall. I never saw a dog by this tree, but I did see the face of the pet canary I once had to bury. This was when I was your age, and it was the first time I experienced life leaving this world. I would see the canary, who had sung for us, who had greeted all the guests faithfully from his position in the living room—I would see his sweet face anytime I went near that tree, anytime an apple fell.
This Old Dog—were you friends with him? Madam Stefa and I know so little about your life before the orphanage. Was the dog an unhappy memory from your life before?
Now as for candies. As you may know, I give lozenges to our children on special occasions, but I believe your finding Hanna’s tooth merits its own reward. Come see me after your class with Miss Esterka.
If they lived beyond resettlement, Pan Doktor believed, he would look for a pet. A queenly bird, who behaved with only the right strangers. From the street, he heard a donkey bray; he peeked from his window to see it rise on two legs and protest its master’s whip. He turned back to his journal. The pages smelled faintly of sulfur. There were stains above the margin. He would not burn these pages for kindling, though he’d often considered how wasteful it was to covet such luxuries. But the lozenges, which many a child believed could cure all the world’s ills—those were long gone.
Dear Jaryk,
So, you are not speaking to me. I can accept this, but will you keep writing? Will you keep sharing your dreams?
Dear Jaryk,
I know you were in a fight today. I know the Council of Children reprimanded you with extra-time-in-room. I do not object to their decision, because we all must accept the consequences of our actions. After you have been here for six months, you may yourself run for the Council, at which time you may try and pass your own laws, but at this time, the best option is to accept extra-time-in-room.
However, to ease your mind, I have requested one of my best juniors to keep you company. Almost ten years ago, he came to this orphanage, just like you, from a farm outside Warsaw. When he first came, he knew no one. He was so afraid he barely spoke. Now he is nearly a man. He is someone I look to.
His name is Misha. Make sure you call him Sir. I’m not much for titles, but he seems to like that from the younger children.
Dear Pan Doktor,
Misha is good I push him he push me.
When Misha was my size he had moo cow too.
If you speak to cows before the sun they give milk. My aunt said once say your prayers in a cow’s ear if you do this the moon will listen too.
I am a little sorry I hit Mordechai not a lot just a little.
If a dog has no food it dies even Old Dog with no food so I see his face all the time.
Last night Madam Stefa comb my hair one hundred times before bed I dream white corn the Old Dog.
Do you think Pan Doktor Old Dog will come back?
Dear Jaryk,
I am glad to hear you feel repentance about what happened with Mordechai; we all fight, once in a while, even with those we love, but the key is to see the goodness after the dust.
Regarding Old Dog: well, it is not an easy question. The best way I can answer your question—even begin to answer your question—is by telling you a story. It’s an old Indian story with a prince named Nachiketas, who’s sacrificed by his father and goes to the underworld. There he meets Yama, the God of the Afterlife. Yama teaches this boy many things he would not have known had he lived his life as a prince. Later, when Nachiketas passes through the world of death and back into life, he is a little wiser, a little more aware of the darkness and the light.
Perhaps Old Dog is speaking with Yama now. Perhaps they are having a fine conversation about the apples in the trees. Perhaps Old Dog is learning about the force that makes the seeds that grow the apples. When he comes back to this earth, he will know that much more about the soil and the love of God.
part 3
Bee Hides
india—august 1972
Over the years Lucy’s father had accumulated a series of nonsensical expressions. He’d arrive home from work and use them as if they’d always been part of his vocabulary. Her mother found the expansion of his speech maddening—“mice keep” (referring to disorderliness), “tomato catcher” (for someone stuck in a bad job), or “curly-toed Susan about town” (whenever Lucy was late).
If Lucy had called her father to explain that she was flying to India to meet her boyfriend, who had disappeared on her and whose child she was carrying, he would have likely said, “Is your brain full of bee hides?” He’d asked her that question whenever she’d been on the precipice of doing something dumb or bold, depending on her perspective at the time, and she didn’t have the courage now to ask for his blessing.
Instead, she called Timothy to explain and not explain. She would be away, she said. Away for a week. India, she said. For the man she’d told him about. But not only that. There was more but she couldn’t talk long.
Timothy was too polite to press her for the details. “Well, if that’s the way it is,” he said, “I know you’ll tell me more when it’s time.”
“You don’t have to worry,” she repeated, before she said her goodbyes.
Her plane ticket was sold on the cheap (a bucket seat with two stopovers in the Middle East, she was duly informed), but when she landed in Calcutta, after a day of nearly missed connections, the spell of fearlessness dissipated.
Now, she was terrified of the officer with the handlebar mustache, who palmed her passport with his greasy hands and said, “You find transport out there”; terrified by the maul and lurch of the seemingly hundred thousand orphans who came to greet her; terrified by the cow with a nose ring who walked into the middle of the road (expecting what exactly, she wanted to ask the animal), though as soon as she stumbled into the courtyard of the Park Hotel, which was the fanciest hotel she’d found (and fancy, she figured, was what she would need walking onto foreign soil), she felt herself slow down.
Her gut told her being here was the right thing to do, but in this first trimester of her pregnancy she also knew it to be an ill-advised trip. Being from India himself, her doctor had warned her about the “hordes of infectious diseases, rampant and running around.” But she wanted to tell Jaryk the news herself. She wanted to tell him in person, not over the phone and not by letter.
The Park Hotel sheets were softer than any she’d ever slept on, and the staff treated her as if she were the queen of England. On her bed was a single pink rose, and on the nightstand was
the steaming glass of milk she’d asked for. She scraped off the top layer of milk fat before she drank. This was her first time leaving America, though she’d once planned a budget trip around Europe with Connor so thoroughly she imagined she’d already been there. But there was no substitute for experiences like the taxi ride, which had been filed now into Lucy’s lexicon of inconceivable adventures. She drank her milk, then slept uninterrupted for eighteen hours.
When she awoke, a few errant bands of sunlight had made their way through her window; she followed the pale-orange streaks and raised a window slat to find evidence of morning. She was on the eighth floor of the hotel, but even from that height and even at that early hour, she could tell Calcutta was a city of multitudes. Men in loincloths hurried rickshaws past girls dressed for convent. Barbers shaved their customers right on the street. A decrepit trolley overflowed with the rush-hour traffic, or was it merely the early-morning traffic? She had no way to be sure. She tried to imagine Jaryk wading through this city, but she couldn’t. How had he known where to go? What had he eaten? Who had helped him along? He could be prideful, but she hoped he’d allowed someone to show him the ropes.
She was content to remain in the Park Hotel until the plan to reach Shantiniketan firmed up. Before getting her passport, she’d reached Professor Rudra Bose on the phone, but the connection was poor: she’d heard her every word echoed back—“Should I bring anything?…Are you sure he’s going to be there?…Who should I call if I can’t find you?”—and the professor had answered each of her questions patiently, in his fine British-Indian accent.
A Play for the End of the World Page 14