But then, I’ve always thought time ran a crooked line. Like a river meandering, so it seems to run backward or even parallel with itself. The green Vistula with the ice in it? No, I can’t remember the Vistula. But that’s how I imagine it when they talk to me of Krakow. Or the Hudson’s dirty sleeve.
In school, I liked geography better than anything except English. I liked the ideas of cliffs and rivers and whole oceans changing their shape. I liked to picture a river that flows both ways, like an underground train. And yes, my own river, the Hudson, too close to home, was such a river. Yes, it flows both ways. I loved that.
So high school was fine. My friend there was Millie. Her address was 3960 Broadway and we’d go to her bedroom with its Keep Out! sign and play her doo-wap records and eat crackers with peanut butter and jelly. Once she took me to 126 Street and we saw the crowds for the Apollo Theatre. It was late afternoon and I still had my school bag but the people were there already to catch a glimpse of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Who were white. So it was a big deal. Some of the crowd didn’t like it, and a few of the women hissed at me, the gawky girl from the Upper West Side. But Millie said it was all right. I was with Millie and Millie was a celebrity on that stretch of Broadway, a cool street cat in her tight red trews and hair piled high with a red barrette.
I could see the men looking at Millie but she never glanced back. Not even once. She was an eel wriggling through the crowds and I had to follow as best I could. And Millie would turn to look for me and say don’t get lost, and suddenly we were at the back of the theatre and Millie pushed a door and we were in a corridor and then we stepped out into the auditorium. Not a soul about.
All I remember is the smell. Women’s perfume. And that lemony stuff the men used. The dance floor was like a lake of black ice. Millie wiggled her hips and spun round on her bottom on the polished blocks. Her ass was just a perfect red heart. So I held my bag like I thought you might hold a boy. Then I hugged it and smooched it, and Millie hooted and then a man chased us back down the passageway and I went home on the 1 Train.
And, yes, I remember the little cabbages. They grew on the sidewalk at West End. Ornamental cabbages with dainty leaves, green going mauve. Cabbages for show? How peculiar. The Kazimerz cabbages would have been eaten, every one. Or so they tell me. Cabbage zupy with dark green and pale green shreds. Stinky cabbage soup in every kitchen. I think that’s what I’m supposed to remember. But I don’t remember. I don’t remember the attics where I was kept, or the ocean liner that brought me to New York. No, the first things I remember are the West End cabbages. And the elevator in our building. It had a mirror in it with a gold frame. That’s how I came to know what I looked like. Going up. Coming down. A man polished it every day and sometimes I helped.
In 1961 when David asked me to marry him I didn’t understand. I was twenty-one, and he was David. I had lived with him for fourteen years in the big apartment. Yes, I came from Krakow. Yes, I was concealed. Smuggled like a parcel from roof to roof. But I thought David was my brother now. David who had never kissed me. His older sister, who was my sister, lived with us on West End too. And their mother, who was my mother. And now he wanted to marry me.
David was exactly my age and at twenty he had started going downtown every day to the bank. With his briefcase, his umbrella. Careful David, his sandy hair already sparse, his wire glasses pebble-lensed.
The week before our wedding he moved out to the Hotel Wales, over on Madison. Sometimes we had all gone there for brunch or Sunday recitals, the whole family. They wheeled the palm trees round on castors. So David was comfortable. I stayed there too on the wedding night, and then we took the train to Los Angeles.
That way I saw America. The highways, the swamps with their night herons. Then the deserts, and one evening a herd of horses running beside the train, wild white eyes and streaming tails outside our window until they veered off. Like stars, I thought, the lather on their flanks. Soon even their dust was gone. Or maybe that was a dream, like everything else. Dream horses in a dream life, the dream horses that go round and round on their carousel, Rachel and David and Nathaniel. Where had I seen that carousel and the horses’ names? On the cobbles of Kazimerz? Maybe Coney Island where we went twice a year, I think.
During our train journey there was a sign. Flagstaff it said, and I remembered the Navajo. How small the town was. But the train kept on through the parched land, the red dream desert racing away as we followed the line to Union Station. When I stepped on to the platform I stumbled. Perhaps I fainted. Our sleeping carriage had been so small. We were much too close. But instead of taking me in his arms, David called a porter to give assistance. David wringing his hands. David my brother, David my father. David my husband in his white nightshirt, his spectacles gleaming, his jars of wintergreen and goosegrease upon our sleeping car’s cabinet de toilette. Yes, my David. Skinny with a pot belly. Once I wetted my forefinger and traced the vein in his cock. Just like my forefinger on page after page of the atlas, following the railways, the roads, the great blue rivers. But he tut tutted and pulled down a handful of hem.
After we returned we stayed on in West End. We had the third floor to ourselves. His sister loved him, his mother needed him, loved and needed David who went downtown every day, a rolled Times, a furled umbrella, David who worked for Sachs until his seventieth birthday, and then said, yes, we must go. To Israel. We must go. It’s all arranged.
The apartment was sold quickly, his sister provided with a place hidden away near the Nicholas Roerich Museum. West side again, on 107. Another dreary street. More cabbages behind the railings.
Now I sit outside, under the olive tree. David is comfortable in the cool room, the cedar shade over the window. The young man has hoisted him from bed to chair. A young woman will put him back this evening. David will drool, David will murmur and I will spoon him bread and milk. Sometimes I damp his lips with the local wine. Diluted of course. The Baron’s wine they call it here, the best wine in Israel. I often take it myself and sit and talk to myself as I always have. And then I will read to David from the English newspaper.
No, we never really spoke, David and I. We were husband and wife, so he saw no need. As to children, there was never a sign. Never a flutter under my heart.
Yes, David spoke in announcements. There have been many great announcements in our life together. David was retiring. We were departing for Israel. But the first, and greatest, of course, was that David and I were to be married. But since his stroke it’s impossible for him to say very much. So I read to him. David seems old now, a ghost in his nightshirt and diaper. Without the bright pebbles upon his eyes he looks like a blind man.
Sometimes I think it must be now that he tells me what he has to tell. It must be now. Time is very short. I don’t know what he did at Sachs, but he had the same secretary for many years. Perhaps I should have spoken to her. When I looked up at him from the platform in Los Angeles he seemed lost. But if Israel was his dream he never explained it. After we bought this house in Zichron Ya’akov he used to walk out under the olives and look over the ridge to the Mediterranean. How blue it was. Like new laundry.
And then the catastrophe. Which has killed David and has not killed him. So he lies in the shadow and I sit in the shade, watching the hooded crows in their grubby frocks. Listening to the olives drop.
After we were married I always did my best. David collected things, and his favourites were matchboxes. So I helped him. Because that’s what I thought a wife must do. In the mornings I would walk in Central Park and pick up the interesting boxes. I knew David liked the Dutch varieties, made by Vlinders. They had pretty pictures of the stars, like Chubby Checker and Natalie Wood. Yes, I thought. These people are even famous in Holland. And I used to think about all the Dutch people coming to New York and walking around Central Park and striking matches and lighting their cigarettes and throwing the empty matchboxes away. Sometimes I searched on Broadway or Seventh Avenue, and yes, there were Vlinders boxes there
too.
Or maybe, I thought, maybe it’s the same man who is dropping all these matchboxes. Boy, he smokes a lot. And I made myself laugh so much I had to sit down on one of those granite boulders in the park and wipe the tears from my eyes. Oh David, I thought. David who is my David. With your albums. Your albums of matchbox labels in their little plastic wallets. Sorted by year, by country. Thank you so much, Mr Dutchman. Thank you Natalie Wood. You have made my David happy.
As I said, David communicated in announcements. One morning he informed me we were moving to Florida. Somewhere near Tampa. Sachs wanted experienced staff because Florida was exploding. The markets were exploding. Yes, that was the word he used to me. Then he left for the bank.
All I knew about Florida was the state’s shape on the map. A peninsula, a dangling penis, big and sliced like David’s. Florida was hot and green. There might be hurricanes. So, why not Florida? I asked myself. Anyway, it was already happening, like everything else was already happening. Florida was part of everything else, waiting for me to catch up.
We lived on a long straight road in, or near, Seminole Heights. Were we in or were we near? It was hard to tell. The houses were big and some had swimming pools. The garden lawns were being laid, trees cut down and other trees planted. I can remember walking along the road to my friend’s house. When it rained, the earth smelled of ginger. The wild ginger grew everywhere, and the big raindrops rolled down the leaves of the papaya trees. David left for the bank every morning in the Impala. Then I would have more coffee and walk out to see Robin.
Yes, my friend Robin. She lived a mile away. I would step out through the wet air and the long cars would pass and the ginger smell ooze out of the ground and the raindrops would sparkle on the eucalyptus leaves and I would think: yes, this is me. This is Florida. This is my life.
Robin was my first friend since Millie, and she was the last. She taught me about daiquiris and manhattans and we would take our glasses into the pool in her garden. The hummingbirds would crowd the feeder, and Robin would fix another drink, and maybe another, and we would take off our costumes and stand together in the water, our breasts touching, our breath tasting of peppermint or strawberry or whatever Robin had put in the pitcher. David never liked any of that schmutzy stuff, as he called it, and Robin told me that if I had a problem, that was it. The schmutzy stuff.
Then Robin would make a salad and a papaya shake. She grew fruits in her yard but there were so many they shrivelled up. Or just lay on the earth. I used to wander the garden touching the mangoes, the oranges. Once I saw a snake under a tree. Striped, thin as a whip. After lunch Robin would drive us into town to the American Picture House. Sometimes we were the only ones in the theatre, shivering together in the aircon. Even for Apocalypse Now, we were almost on our own. I thought the napalm was all around us. I couldn’t look.
And yes, I remember once, after a movie, we were across the street having coffee. Or maybe Robin was drinking a martini. Usually we sat at a sidewalk table but Robin preferred to be inside the dark saloon, out of the glare. How mysterious it was in the bar. The shapes of men came looming out at us. Once, I asked her who the Seminoles were.
Hey, honey, Robin laughed. Better watch out.
For the Seminoles?
Sure, she said. You’re living on their land.
But they’re gone.
Oh yeah? From Seminole Heights maybe. But honey, we’re still at war.
War?
Yeah, war. With the Seminoles. They never surrendered. Or at least they never signed a treaty.
Aren’t they dead? I whispered.
Well, most of them, I guess. We did a pretty thorough job. But they’re still hanging around, out there in the Glades.
Then, Robin winked. You’d be surprised, she said, who’s living in the swamps. What’s left of them.
I thought of the old Navajo again, his face the colour of the red rocks David and I passed on the train in Arizona.
Then Robin was laughing. She was always teasing, especially when she was tipsy. She wore coral pink lipstick. Even in the pool. Her mouth was like a hibiscus flower. Oh Robin was beautiful, and yes, now I see she was my best friend. Robin could hold her breath so long underwater, I’d get frightened.
Woosh, Robin would gasp, coming up at last. Hey chicken, fix me another.
I was always listening to the radio. It played in the kitchen when I was getting David’s dinner ready. Robin would drop me home and I’d have to wipe her lipstick off, and I’d do meatballs and mashed potato, and sometimes ‘On a Carousel’ would play. By The Hollies. I’d bought the single in New York, years earlier, in its Imperial sleeve. It was Top Ten on Billboard. Round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round, the singer sang in his odd voice, and my head would be spinning too, and I’d think of the horses, dream horses, David and Rachel and Nathaniel, the carousel blue, the horses dappled grey with their names in gold, the poles that held the horses polished by all the children’s hands, the top of the carousel like an emperor’s crown in a fairytale, and the singer singing about changing horses. Then the Impala lights would swing into the driveway and I’d put the skinny green beans to steam. They needed only three minutes but David liked them soft. So five minutes. David always said give them at least five.
Coming back from Florida was the last long journey we made. Until, that is, David said we were coming here to Zichron. So when we were back in New York, I would walk across the park to the museum to see the dioramas. These were huge paintings on glass showing all the American landscapes. I’d seen some country from the honeymoon train, the wetlands, the deserts, but in the museum I was close up. Some days I would stand staring for hours. There were eagles and bison, grizzlies and chickadees, with real autumn leaves and poison ivy. There was the red wolf too, that lived in New York before it became New York. I gazed into its eye and saw myself.
At first I asked David to come to see the dioramas on the weekend, but those were his album days when he’d trawl through the catalogues. And mother was ill and he’d be on call, he said. And sister might need him, our sister Rebecca who played the piano in her room and combed her hair and cried. Yes, we were a quiet family.
But once we went to Washington DC. Once we stayed at the Carlton Hotel. After that I started to dream. I didn’t dream every night but when I dreamed it was the same dream and in every dream I spoke. I spoke what I heard on the soundtrack to the film they showed. This is what I said in the dream.
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And in the dream I would go on speaking.
In Kazimerz the mist’s a mere where I mistake the moon for a mattock. And such mist. It rises from the Vistula and rolls over the brass founder’s and the vulcaniser’s, the tenements and the pasture.
At dawn I watch that mist rising in the streetlight. It sweeps the ground like a peacock’s tail. But now the traffic unfreezes and my driver makes up time and soon I am in the queue for coffee with condensed milk, and there are Doktor Mengele’s twins ahead of me, white as wishbones, both now at the counter with plates of dumplings and sauerkraut, ladled from the vats by an apple-cheeked peasant girl.
Next I walk under the gate. Arbeit Macht Frei it says. Strange that the people who made this place chose those words. Because, in a way, they were right. Work makes you free. Yes only work, the
right work, makes a human being free.
Then, I begin to count.
Ten thousand shaving brushes. Two thousand kilos of women’s hair, fifty pfenigs a kilo. The bookkeepers’ pride means every monocle and magnifying glass still exists. All the better to see them with. Such clerical diligence. The bookkeepers’ ink the barbed wire where corpses hang.
Now what’s this? The starvation cell. I look through the spyhole. After sixty years, Father Klobe is still praying. And here? The suffocation chamber. Then here? This is the room where darkness itself has been imprisoned. When I listen closely I can hear darkness pacing the floor. In the dusk the latrines are a cabinet of blown eggs. And there in the corner? That’s the nightsoil bucket fog has filled.
Yes, maybe it’s night. Somehow. The moon a scythe rising. Head in a hood I hold a hand before my face and watch it dissolve. On Dove Street I disappear from myself, am translated into different dust. No matter how much I know, I know I know nothing.
What this fog means is I go where there’s no going. There’s no flow in this field. A folkless film has fallen on the world. Yes, the fog’s an agony on this field. The huts have their unhutting, the chimneys are iron corkscrews trying to pull the earth out of the earth. Ten thousand shaving brushes will not sweep this fog away.
Now the next day. Time’s speeding up. A sun is rising in an irrigation ditch. That sun a spool of copperwire. Out of the mist the bald faces of the corncrows.
Hsst! Here’s the Sonnokommando. On the double or we’re for it.
Keys of Babylon Page 18