“You can tell me,” Henry says. “Believe me, this is something I know about.”
Ed walks on, looking at the sidewalk. It’s true, he thinks. Henry’s been in analysis how many years? He’s worked on his psyche laboriously. Stripped down and redecorated in layers. Draped himself with cultures and collections. Developed the most complicated persona possible—the expatriate Brooklyn Jew in Oxford. The unaffiliated scholar and aesthete as businessman. Henry has made himself at home in contradictions. Meanwhile, he, Ed, is completely at sea. At a loss.
“Is it Mother? You’re worried about her?”
“Oh, partly, but it’s not just that. It’s the way the time is going. The way she’s getting. The way the kids are getting. The generations are sort of flipping over. I think,” Ed says slowly, “it would be very comforting to believe in God. Just for some sense of permanence. The stability. I think I would like to believe in God.”
“You? Never!” Henry laughs.
“Why not?” Ed asks.
“Because you’re a pragmatist and you always have been,” Henry says.
“No, see, I know what it would take,” Ed says. “I know what could convince me. If you showed me a miracle, for example.”
“One miracle? Oh, Edward, if we saw a miracle you would either find some explanation or say it was a fluke.”
“No. I could be convinced. Under the right conditions I could. Look at these analytic philosophers—these positivists—discovering God now that they’re old and gray. I heard that A. J. Ayer on his deathbed actually lay there and said all his work was a lie and he actually did believe in the divine and in the immortality of the soul—and that it was possible to make ethical and aesthetic judgments. A few hours later he came out of it, though. Said he’d just panicked, and denied it all.”
“Well, that’s good,” Henry says.
“Why?”
“Because it would have been so terribly sad for him to lose everything he believed in just like that. His life’s work in sense perception. Everything he stood for as an atheist.”
They walk along in silence. Ed pokes with his straw at the ice in the bottom of his cup. “The last two weeks have been bad,” he says. “I’m not getting any work done. I’m not sleeping at night. I just lie awake thinking. Things will never be the same with Ma.”
“She doesn’t seem so different to me,” Henry says. “Whenever I visit it strikes me how things are moving along so smoothly—in the same comforting old ways.”
“What old ways? What are you talking about?” asks Ed. Can’t Henry see that the house is splitting apart? “Miriam is getting married. Mother has decided to move in with us—”
“I’ve always looked to you and Sarah as constants,” Henry says, “while I’ve gone through all the turmoil and changes in my life.”
Ed just stands stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, because Henry never ceases to amaze him. Constants! he wants to scream. The universe is expanding. The continents are sliding. The kids are shooting off from the house like comets, and he and Sarah are turning fifty-six in their wake. In the trails of dolls and old clothes they leave behind; in the dust of their mineral collections. “I just feel, when I’m talking to you and to Ma, that the time is getting bent,” he says finally. “That things are bent out of proportion. All I want is for things to be normal. Where the kids are kids and Ma would be an adult, and the generations would be sort of in order. Henry, will you stop touching me!” He shakes off Henry’s hand. “I hate it when you do that. The thing is, if Ma moves in with us I’ll have a nervous breakdown. I know it makes her happy, living in that pink room, but it’s too weird for me. I just can’t take it if I’m supposed to be her father. And there is just no possible way to talk to her about it. How can you tell your mother something like that? There is no way in the world I can sit down and explain the situation to her.” The brothers stand there blocking the sidewalk. Unconsciously, each rattles the melting ice in his cup.
Meanwhile, at home, Sarah is explaining the situation to Rose. “Mother,” she says, “we all have very different personalities. Very different routines. You have your own life in Venice and your own network. Your doctor, your friends. Here in Washington you’d be completely isolated. You wouldn’t have the support staff, the activities, the, uh, backup nurses.”
Rose looks up desolately from the pink bed and Sarah shifts in Miriam’s desk chair, knees knocking the underside of the desk.
“I don’t have roots in Venice,” Rose says.
“But you’ve lived there ten years,” Sarah reminds her. “And we can’t provide you with what you have there. Not without giving up our jobs. That’s why I’m calling the travel agent.”
Rose is crying softly on the bed, and Sarah comes over to her and puts her arms around her. “But you’re coming back in June,” she says. “Won’t that be lovely, when you come back for Miriam’s wedding?”
Rose thinks about it. “I could go on to England,” she says.
Sarah hesitates a moment. Then she nods, feeling only slightly evil. “That’s right,” she tells Rose. “You can visit Henry and Susan in their cottage.”
“The Cotswolds,” Rose sighs. “Everything will be blooming.”
“The heat never gets so bad there,” Sarah says.
“That’s true. They don’t have that humidity. Your humidity is unbearable.” She reminds Sarah of Ben’s July bar mitzvah, when the air-conditioning failed in the social hall and she was nearly overcome by the heat. “I will never forget it. Never.” Her voice trembles with laughter, even though she is still crying.
—
Henry returns to England. Rose flies back to California. The Sunday after Rose leaves, Ed and Sarah drive to JCPenney to look for miniblinds for Miriam’s room. “We’ll get the toys into boxes,” Ed says as they walk through the store.
“And we’ll have to replace the carpet,” adds Sarah.
“Why? What’s wrong with it? We spent good money on that carpet.”
“I thought the color—”
“I like the color. It’s a very nice color for a guest room.”
“Well, it’s not going to go with miniblinds.” Sarah trails her fingers down the plastic slats on display.
“So let’s get some curtains. That’s what I said in the first place.”
“But they have to go with dusty rose.”
“Fine.”
A saleswoman finds them studying the white Battenberg curtains. “May I help you?”
“Well, Phyllis,” Ed says, reading her name tag. “We’re looking for something forty-five by fifty.”
“That’s the window size?” Phyllis asks.
“Yeah.”
“And what kind of room would this be?”
“A bedroom,” Sarah says. “Sort of a girl’s room.”
Phyllis nods. “How old is the girl?”
“Twenty-three,” Ed says.
“She doesn’t live at home.” Sarah feels silly. “She’s at Harvard Med.”
“Actually, she’s getting married in June.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Ed says. “We’re turning it into a guest room, but we want it to sort of—go with what we have in there already.”
“It’s a dusty-rose room,” Sarah explains.
“Let me show you what we have.” Phyllis leads them to a window display.
“Mmm,” Ed hums uncertainly.
“Then we have this with the eyelet…”
“No, no.” Ed grimaces at Sarah. “What’s that by the wall?” he asks. “That’s not bad.”
“This is new,” Phyllis says.
“That’s very pretty,” says Sarah.
“It’s called Fantasy Rose,” Phyllis tells them. “It’s got the overall rose print in blush, gray, and cream in fifty-fifty cotton-poly. You’ve got the valance here, and the swag—” She fluffs out the material. “And then here’s your basic tier. You use two curtain rods.”
“That would look beautiful with the
carpet,” Sarah says as she and Ed talk it over by the water fountain. “If you’re sure you don’t want to replace the carpet.”
“We’re not replacing the carpet,” Ed says. “I’m not spending a thousand dollars to replace a perfectly good carpet.”
—
That evening after they hang the curtains, Sarah drags the telephone into Miriam’s room, lies down on the bed, and calls Cambridge. “Hello, Miriam?” she says. “This is Mom. I’m calling from the shrine. We just put up the most beautiful curtains. They’re pink with sort of gray and cream. I know. I know. Ed! You can pick up the phone. I got her.”
“Ow, you’re screaming in my ear,” Ed says from the kitchen. “Hi, baby. Everyone’s gone home. We got you these pink curtains. They’re beautiful. They’re ridiculous. It’s going to be a guest room for when you and Jon come down. We’re going to get a convertible sofa.”
“You could have a baby girl,” Sarah says, “and she could sleep here when you come visit.”
“You could just come down by yourself when you finish Anatomy,” Ed says, sticking to the near future.
THE PERSIANS
In memory of Marion Magid
Ed goes all the way to the campus mailroom to sign for his registered letter. He had complained about it over lunch, and said it was inconvenient, but as soon as he left the cafe, he went over to get the thing. He has been receiving a great deal of mail recently as well as phone calls: requests for comments on radio and television. In the wake of the bombing at the World Trade Center, Ed is in demand as a terrorism expert—and working at Georgetown makes him accessible, too. This very afternoon he is having a pre-interview with a radio producer from Talk of the Times. Over lunch he brushed off jokes that the letter was an invitation to the White House, but walking to the mailroom, he has no trouble believing it’s from the Feds. He has received letters from the CIA in the past, although they were not particularly dramatic.
The letter is from Iran, on stationery with the letterhead in Persian. It is typed in English, and it reads:
In the Name of the Most High
Most Respectable Scholar,
Professor E. Markowitz:
Salaamon Alaikom—With our wholehearted greeting:
We acknowledge the estimable occasion to inform your highness that the “Celebration Congress of the Great and Glorified Divine Mystic Mullah Sadra” will be held in the City of Isfahan from 1st to 6th Zelqadan.
Hereby, we find it most timely to request to know when we may enjoy your high presence. Most pleasurably we will be informed that your excellency are leaving for Iran at the soonest possible convenience. As such, we may make preparations regarding the provision of tickets and rooms in the ancient city of Isfahan, of which it is said: Isfahan nisf Jahan—Isfahan is half the world.
With greatest respect for your graciousness,
Dr. V. P. Jamil
The Secretary
The Committee of the Celebration Congress
Ed has never seen a call for papers in quite this form. He stands there in the mailroom and reads it through twice. The glorified divine mystic Mullah Sadra is certainly not within his area of expertise, and he can’t imagine where they got his name. It is a little frightening, although it is also proof that he is developing a truly international reputation. These are heady times for him; he is being sought on many levels. But it is the language of the letter that rings in his ears and puts a skip in his step as he walks back to his office. In this day and age, when one’s graduate students call up and ask for “Ed”—the undergraduates waiting for only the slightest encouragement to follow suit—it is undeniably a delight to be referred to in the royal plural and to be called excellency. There is, perhaps, a courtier in every scholar; especially in those like Ed who study the modern world and do not have a chance to savor the past.
He paces around his office, waiting for his three o’clock phone call from the radio producer, Jill Bordles. He sorts the papers on his two desks, moving offprints from one pile to another. It’s a large cluttered office with pictures on the wall of Sarah and the children. “This is my daughter who’s getting married this summer,” he will say to visitors, although the description does not match the picture of Miriam in her band uniform. The phone rings.
“Professor Markowitz,” Jill Bordles says. “Hi. How are you?”
“Oh, fine,” he says. “Busy. How are you?”
“I’m great. Let me tell you how we do this. It’s really just a chance to find out about you and your work. To ask you some questions.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“I have a paper here you wrote in 1989, ‘The Terrorist as Other.’ You say here that our very attempts to understand the terrorist are already compromised by hidden assumptions that the terrorist is alien to us. That his morals and motives could never be shared by any of us in the civilized world.”
“That’s exactly right,” Ed tells her. “And that’s what puts us into a bind, because many of us have a double standard. In the Jewish community, for example, we refuse to see that the birth of Israel was facilitated by terrorist acts. The terrorist who acts against our own established political and social institutions is an alien and a renegade; we refuse to see him in our own history. In essence, we refuse to see the terrorist in ourselves.”
“And so,” Bordles says, “when we learn American history in school, we don’t read about something like the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act—because it has become part of our myth about ourselves.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Although, of course, strictly speaking, terrorism as a concept was invented in the nineteenth century by Georges Sorel and put into practice by the Narodnaya Volya movement in Russia. But to speak about it in a more general way, then, absolutely. Something like the Boston Tea Party is a perfect example of my point. This is a heroic event for us from the third grade on. The destruction of English property never becomes an issue in the classroom. We don’t think of it as a terrorist act at all. And yet, when we look at it closely, we find insurgency, secrecy, and sabotage—the three fundamentals of terrorist activity. And so what we are practicing in the classroom is a perfect case of sublimating the act to our iconography—or, in other words, what we are teaching is that the ends justify the means if the end is the United States.”
“Professor Markowitz,” Bordles asks, “do you then excuse something like the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York?”
“This is a question that we have to examine in its complexity,” Ed says. “And so I prefer to use the word understand rather than the word excuse. This is what I think we all have to learn. We have to recognize our own contradictions. What have we allowed and excused in ourselves? What kind of rhetoric do we use to cloak our own rebellion, our own battles, our own invasions—the genocide and slavery in our own history? Then, with self-knowledge, we can look at the culture that produces the terrorist; we have to understand his—or her—mores and motivations.”
“ ‘One country’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter,’ ” Bordles quotes from Ed’s book.
“You’ve really done your homework,” Ed says.
“Oh, well, it’s my job,” she tells him modestly.
“I’m impressed.”
“No, I was fascinated by your book. Particularly with one point—” He can hear her leafing through the pages. “There is a very subtle point you make here in chapter 6, where you say that, on the one hand, we have to understand that our own culture and history are rooted in violence, and not merely in the myth of pacifism and agrarian isolation that we promote. But, on the other hand, we have to avoid judging the terrorists of the Muslim world by the strictures of our own Judeo-Christian tradition as it is institutionalized in America.”
“Yes, you are really getting to the heart of it there. You really put your finger on it.” Ed is warming to his subject. “We have to look very carefully at the insurgents we call aliens. It is vital for us to examine the ‘Other’ in order to understand ourselves. But at the same tim
e, we have to remember that the terrorist really is alien to us—his otherness is real, and his world is different from ours—and here’s my point: if we can learn about ourselves from great, generous liberal minds like Tocqueville or Crèvecoeur, then we can learn from the terrorist as well. And if we have trouble with the parallel, then that says a great deal about us, and what we are willing to find in the mirror the Other presents to us. We have to be willing to broaden our reading of the responses to America, and move beyond the classics of democratic ideology to think about what these visceral reactions by terrorists tell us about America and its policies, its military might.”
He has not quite finished, but Bordles interjects, “Professor Markowitz, I want to thank you for your time. I think you are going to be our perfect guest, because you have the kind of expertise and the kind of balance that we’re looking for—not just in the political sense, but as a scholar.”
“Listen, it’s a pleasure,” Ed says. “And feel free, if you want to ask any other questions; just give me a call.”
“We’ll be looking forward to seeing you on Friday.”
—
Over dinner Ed tells his wife, Sarah, “She really read my book. It was very flattering. She was quoting me, chapter and verse.”
“I like the letter,” Sarah says, looking at it lying on the table next to her plate. “Are you going?”
“You want me to go to Iran?” Ed asks.
“Of course not. We still have to pick up that present for Katie Passachoff.”
“I thought we said we weren’t going to that bat mitzvah,” Ed says.
“No, we’re going.”
“Oh, why?” he groans. “After a week like this, I have to get up on Saturday and drive out to Shaarei Tzedek for the whole day?”
“We discussed this a month ago,” Sarah says unruffled. “We’re supposed to look at their band for the wedding.”
“Just look? Do they play any instruments or do they just stand there?”
“You know what I mean. They’re having Phil’s Harmonic, and they’re supposed to be wonderful, according to Liz Passachoff.”
The Family Markowitz Page 15