Clara Mondschein's Melancholia

by Anne Raeff

  “‘No, thank God.’

  “‘You don’t like them?’

  “‘Are you living in a dream, sir? Anyone who is not thankful for having no children under these circumstances would be completely out of her mind.’

  “‘I suppose you’re right. Forgive me. I wasn’t thinking of our present circumstances.’

  “‘So you just ignore what’s going on here? Is that your way of living with it?’

  “‘I am not a fool, Mrs. Mondschein, or a coward. Have you forgotten the little story I told you last night?’

  “‘About the boy who killed his friend?’

  “‘Did I say they were friends? One must be very careful not to change the facts of history.’

  “‘Are you saying that the event was less tragic since they were not friends?’

  “‘No, I am only trying to keep things accurate. Should I repeat the story to make sure you have it straight?’

  “‘That won’t be necessary, Herr Kommandant.’

  “‘Good. Do you remember that I told you I was greatly affected by that event, that, in fact, I envied the boy who threw the rock, envied his torment?’

  “‘I remember.’

  “‘You are an intelligent woman. I will let you interpret. You Jews are such talented psychologists, are you not?’

  “‘Are you referring to Freud?’

  “‘Don’t be such a literalist. It doesn’t become a woman of your intelligence.’ He had a way of making absurd comments and then making me out to be the fool for pointing out their absurdity. And he loved it, grinning happily like a schoolboy prankster every time he managed to trick me.

  “‘So you want me to explain to you what this distant childhood event has to do with the way you are behaving in the present?’ I asked disbelievingly.

  “‘Well put. But I don’t want you to explain it to me, since I already know the answer. I simply want you to think about it.’

  “Then he left me there to think, and didn’t appear until morning. I tried to sleep since I had a comfortable couch in a warm room and perfect quiet—no coughing to keep me awake, no boots tap-tapping back and forth outside our bunker all night long. But I couldn’t sleep. It was as if he had cast a spell on me, forcing me to envision the boy throwing the rock, and the other boy falling down dead, and the commandant watching from a distance, and all the boys gathering around the scene of the accident, and the shocked expression on the murderer’s face, and the murderer as a young man drinking himself to death in some dive of a bar in Berlin, and his family begging him to see one of those Jewish psychiatrists. Or I saw a quiet man with glasses prone to depressions—a librarian perhaps, with a small family—living in a provincial capital. His wife is unfaithful to him, but he doesn’t mind. It gives him time to himself. On Sundays after church, he takes the children out for cake. Or, I thought, perhaps he has become a real murderer, a particularly bestial camp guard, a rapist, wielding his guilt in the butt of his rifle. Perhaps the boy was the commandant himself, I was thinking the very moment the commandant appeared before me.

  “‘I see you are awake,’ he said smiling. ‘Do you have any theories?’

  “‘A few.’

  “‘Good. Now you must return to your quarters. Here,’ he said, thrusting some bread and butter into my hands. I almost thought he was going to click his heels to dismiss me, but he just opened the door to the hallway, where a guard was waiting to take me back.”

  The Eclair

  The twins have a way of monopolizing my father’s attention, which is one thing that really bothers me about them. I suppose I’m a little jealous because I think they liked me better as a child, when they could tell me their stories and I would believe them, drag me around to all their favorite weird places in New York and I would walk as fast as I could to keep up with them. Last night my father and the twins were up late, playing chess with a timer, so the clicking drove me crazy. I don’t know why I didn’t go downstairs and ask them to stop because they would have. The three of them just don’t know when they’re being annoying.

  In the morning Samuel made matzoh brei even though it’s not Passover. It’s the only thing he knows how to cook and Mordechai can’t cook at all. Everyone was quiet during breakfast except my father, who asked me what was going on at school these days, and the twins acted like they were really interested. They leaned forward on their chairs as if I were about to divulge some kind of big scientific secret, but I said, “Nothing interesting.” I hate when people ask me what I did at school like I’m a fourth grader, especially since we never do anything at school worth discussing. I could have told them about the German soldiers’ feet, but they probably know all about it already. The twins love that kind of information. Once they went on “Jeopardy” because they thought they would make tons of money. That was when they were still members of the Communist Party. They were going to give all their money to the Cause, but they were eliminated during the auditions because of, according to them, their limited knowledge of popular culture, but my father said that Mordechai blanked out completely, couldn’t remember that Hera was Zeus’ wife.

  “Nothing interesting?” Mordechai laughed. “Public education is really going to pot, isn’t it?”

  And they all laughed and my father said maybe he should have sent me to the Yeshiva, maybe he should have dressed me up like a boy and sent me to study with the rabbis and they all looked at me as if they were trying to picture me dressed up like a boy, a yarmulke pinned jauntily on my head. Normally, I would have laughed with them, but this morning it just seemed like such a stupid thing to say, so I got up from the table without saying anything, grabbed my coat, and walked out of the house. And when I was out of the house, standing in the driveway in the cold, I felt like an idiot for getting so upset, imagining them shrugging their shoulders, saying, “Youths.” My father loves to call teenagers “youths.” Whenever we’re driving through town and he sees some saggers with earrings and tattoos, he always says something like, “What charming youths.”

  That’s what made me decide to ditch school and take the bus to New York. First, I wandered around the Village and almost got my hair shaved off at Astor Place. I thought maybe I needed a new look, something to attract attention, but then I decided my face is far too round to pull off a shaved head, so I went to the Strand Bookstore instead and spent a couple hours looking through the art and poetry books, but I didn’t buy a book because I didn’t feel like carrying anything. I went to Tower Records too and looked through their used CDs for a while and then I felt like being outside, so I started walking uptown and somehow I found myself on 72nd Street right in front of the Eclair. The Eclair is a Viennese restaurant run by Hungarians where you can get Wienerschnitzel, goulash, cucumber salad with sugar in the dressing like my grandmother makes it, mocha eclairs, and good dark coffee with real heavy cream. I guess I decided to go in because by the time I had reached 72nd Street, I was freezing and starving. All the customers were women, except for one tiny man with a gray wool suit and polished shoes sitting way in the back. I decided to sit in the back next to the lone man and felt the eyes of all those women—dressed for Sabbath even though it wasn’t Sabbath—on me as I tried to slip nonchalantly into a chair across the way from the old man. The waiter brought me a huge Wienerschnitzel with boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, and cucumber salad. I kept glancing over towards the women, but they had gone back to their own conversations, which, I am sure, were more interesting than staring at me.

  “I don’t think I know you,” the old man said from his corner. “I’m Saul Kaufman.”

  “Deborah Gelb,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.” I can’t help but be polite, I guess.

  “Any relation to Aaron Gelb, the upholsterer?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said and then added, “But we’re not very close to my father’s side of the f
amily since my paternal grandparents died when I was young.”

  “I see. And your mother? What is her family?”

  “Mondschein. My mother is Clara Mondschein, my grandmother is Ruth, and my grandfather—he died—was Karl.”

  “Karl Mondschein, the doctor?”

  “Yes. Did you know him?”

  “Yes, I knew him,” he said sadly. “How is your grandmother?”

  “She’s fine, okay, I guess. Were you and my grandfather friends?”

  “Yes, not good friends, but sometimes we saw each other at the opera and in the park. Do you like opera?”

  “It’s not my favorite musical genre. I prefer choral music when it comes to singing.”

  “Church music?”

  “I suppose it is church music, but I don’t look at it that way. I like it because it’s melancholy even though it’s not supposed to be. I guess it’s supposed to be some kind of joyous praise, but it doesn’t sound that way to me.”

  “Yes, a joyous praise for a Jew nailed to a cross. I don’t find all that very interesting. Love, suicide, now that’s life.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t like about opera. It’s so exaggerated. My grandfather used to take me all the time, though. I used to stare at the cellists. I’m a cellist.”

  “A cellist! A mournful instrument, but very beautiful. Now, how would a young girl like you know that opera was exaggerated? You must wait until you are my age and then you can say if it’s exaggerated.”

  Usually I hate it when older people tell me I can’t know something because I don’t have enough experience, especially when they don’t know a thing about my life. But I liked him and felt it must be hard to be one of the few men left in a world full of women, so I didn’t say I thought opera was really tacky and that the exaggeratedness wouldn’t really bother me if it weren’t tacky. Instead I smiled and said I did like Porgy and Bess, which is true.

  “Then there’s still hope,” he said, putting his hands together as if he had been about to clap and then decided not to. “But tell me about your grandmother,” he said. “How is she doing?”

  “Fine,” I said. “She’s fine, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “And your mother? How is she? I remember when she used to work at the clinic. She was very quiet.”

  “I would prefer not to talk about my mother” was my answer.

  “Then we’ll talk about something else. Would you like some Mohnstrudel? It’s the only dessert I ever liked. When I was young, I thought I would die if I ate too much Mohnstrudel because opium is made out of poppy seeds or poppies; I never knew which.”

  He ordered two pieces of strudel and we ate our dessert in silence, giving the poppy seeds their proper respect. “How long were you married?” I asked him to break the silence.

  “Fifty years. I seem to be one of the few men who has outlived his wife. She died eight years ago,” he said in a way that made me feel his sadness.

  “Did you love her?”

  “Love her? What a strange question. Of course I loved my wife.”

  “Did you love others, too?” I said for some reason.

  “Deborah, you should not ask an old man such questions.”

  “Why not? It’s not like I would tell anyone.”

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t find my life very interesting,” he said, shaking his head.

  “More interesting than mine, I bet. You had to leave your home, figure out a strange new country, learn English.”

  “Ah, Deborah, history does not make a person interesting. I have made my life safe and comfortable, just like this place—a bowl of good, hot soup, a nice dessert, noodles.”

  “But you had to leave your home and didn’t people in your family die? Don’t you miss your wife?”

  “They died and I have lived. Death is not unique either. And I do miss my wife, but millions of people miss their wives.”

  “What did you do for a living?” I asked to change the subject a little.

  “I was a jeweler. I had a little shop on 84th Street. I sold watches and gold chains and wedding and engagement rings. I made a decent living. I have an apartment on West End Avenue.”

  “Were you bored?”

  “Bored? No.”

  “You sound like you were bored, like you wish you had done something else.”

  “No, I am just trying to explain to you why I like opera.”

  “Because you had an undramatic life?”

  “Exactly. And I have lived to tell the tale. I have lived to sit in the back of a Viennese restaurant in New York. I have outlived my wife.”

  “So, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “Nothing. Are you looking for advice? Everyone these days is looking for advice. If you go to Barnes & Noble on Broadway, you will find a whole wall of books that offer advice about living with cancer, surviving divorce, grieving, loss, dieting, alcohol, abuse, sex.”

  “I wasn’t looking for advice. I thought you were trying to explain something.”

  “Explain? There is nothing to explain.”

  We sat in silence again, but it was a pleasant silence because we had understood each other somehow. He ordered two more pieces of Mohnstrudel.

  “This is a special occasion,” he said. I ate my strudel and he insisted on paying for my dinner, too. I thanked him. We shook hands. I said that I had to get back to New Jersey. He said that he had enjoyed my company and that I could find him there every evening at the same time.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of eating the same food?” I asked.

  “No, I guess I’m just a creature of habit,” he said.

  Then I walked all the way up to the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal, even though it was dark and raining and freezing. I tried to walk really slowly, like I was just out for a jaunt, through the especially dark, scary parts around the Elevated at 125th Street and along the cemetery at 157th Street. It’s so easy to get mugged or raped around those desolate parts. My parents would die if they knew I was walking around there in the dark. But I like being a little scared, listening carefully for footsteps behind me, wondering what could jump out at me from behind dark, empty warehouses surrounded by barbed wire. I prefer the danger to bright lights and blaring music and people rushing home carrying umbrellas.

  My mother used to roam all over the city, day and night, east and west, up and down and through all the boroughs. That was when you could walk from one tip of Manhattan to another in the middle of the night and nothing would happen except maybe some drunk, bored, or lonely person would throw onions at you from a sixth-story window. That happened to my mother once. I think she even wrote a poem about it, but I’m not sure about the poem, only the incident. She told me about it when we were out on one of our walks. She told me it was important to understand what she called “the depth of human loneliness,” and that’s how she explained it. She told me the story about the onions and said that it illustrated, better than anything else, “the depth of human loneliness.” I was ten at the time, eleven tops. Did she think I knew what she was talking about, or did she think I’d remember later, like now, and finally understand?

  Because it seemed to me as if I had been so far away—from one tip of Manhattan to the other—for a moment I had the feeling that I would come home to a house transformed, that my mother would be back to normal, that she and my father and the twins would be sitting around the table, drinking wine and eating my father’s delicacies. But nothing was different at all except that my feet hurt, and I had that tiredness you get only from accomplishing something physical like shoveling the driveway, not like how you feel when you’ve finished reading a really long and hard book or even after spending six hours practicing the cello. That’s a different kind of tired, the kind of tired that keeps
you awake for hours, tossing and turning with melodies repeating over and over in your brain.

  But nothing had changed—nothing at all. My father had cooked couscous and he and the twins were dining late. “She’s upstairs,” my father answered when I asked where my mother was, obviously annoyed that I had entertained the thought that she had gone to the opera or out to a movie with one of her nonexistent friends.

  Even though I tried, as I often have when my mother is lying upstairs and my father is carrying on with things, I couldn’t get myself to feel angry with my father because what was he supposed to do? We both knew from experience that my mother’s mood wouldn’t change just because we dragged her downstairs and settled her in front of a piping hot plate of couscous. Still, we could have tried it once—dragged her, by the hair perhaps, so her head wouldn’t hit the stairs. Standing there, in front of the table full of good food and in a room rich with discussion, my father sitting serenely, cupping his wine glass as if it were a hot mug of coffee, I finally understood that my playing the cello for her through those long nights had never made any difference at all, that it was just something my father made up so we both could feel better, that it was him, not my mother, that my music had helped.

  “Would you like me to play some music?” I asked.

  I would have played all night if he had asked, but he answered very quickly without giving it a thought. “Not now,” my father said. “We’re all tired tonight, aren’t we?” He looked at Mordechai and Samuel, and they nodded.

  I should have gone upstairs to sleep. I should have cried quietly into my pillow. I should have listened to some music or snuck a bottle of Jack Daniels up to my room and gotten smashed all by myself with the lights off and the music on low so as not to disturb anyone. But, without really thinking about it, I called Mercedes. This time she was home, and I told her I had to get out of the house or I was going to go crazy, and she said she was going crazy, too. Mercedes was at my house in fifteen minutes and I could tell by how loud she was talking that she had already had some drinks, but I decided not to say anything, not to worry about getting into her Volkswagen Jetta with her behind the wheel. I didn’t really care and she didn’t seem that drunk to me. Just loud.