Madagascar

by Steven Schwartz

  We sit down on a bench in front of the post office. It is December but the sun is bright enough for us to rest a moment outdoors.

  I am prepared to apologize, no longer able to stand my father’s silence. At the same time I want to explain that school offers me nothing but hypocrisy, lies, false values and mush-headed teachers who haven’t read a book themselves in years, and that I know this frustration has something to do with what I’ve done. But before I have the chance, he says he wants to tell me something about the war, one subject about which I am intensely interested because I always hope he will speak, as he rarely does, of his own experience.

  “You may not know,” he says, “that Hitler had several plans for the Jews. The camps came much later, after he had ruled out other possibilities, such as selling Jews to different countries. He also considered sending the Jews to the island of Madagascar. He wanted to permanently exile them there. Not destroy them, just isolate them on a remote island. This was to be his answer to the Jewish question. I have imagined many times what this situation may have been. I see the beaches, I see the shops, I see the clothes my mother and father wear there—light fabrics, colorful, soft cotton, a little lace on holidays. The sea is blue, the houses white. My mother does not like the heat, but my father welcomes it every morning by doing calisthenics on the balcony. They have settled here, done well, as Jews will do most anywhere, even in Nazi Madagascar. But you see how childish this is of me, don’t you? That I want there to be a refuge in the midst of such undeniable evil. Perhaps it is why I decided to study history after the war. I have the liberty to make sense of the many possible pasts historians can always imagine—but the duty to choose only one. Sometimes I fail to honor my task because it is too unbearable. I do not think you are in a very happy period of your life now, Ephram. We are perhaps letting you down, your mother and I. I hope, though, that you will see I am far from perfect and struggle to make meaning of things as much as you do. It is my wish only that you will not harm others in the process, nor assault your own dignity. Leave yourself a small measure of respect in reserve. Always. You see, even in my worst memories—and I know nothing that can be worse for a man than to remember his mother and father and sister while he walks free in the world—even here I have left myself an escape to Madagascar. So allow yourself the same opportunity and do not think so poorly of your own promise that you must succumb to the disgrace of crime. You are bright, imaginative, resourceful. Surely there is a way out of whatever hell it is you too experience. I do not doubt that you can do better than this.”

  Chastened, I sit in silence with my father while we drive home. After his intercession, charges will be dropped by the drugstore. My mother learns nothing of the incident, and I soon separate from the group of misfits I’ve joined earlier. I also give up the clarinet when I discover—as my teacher agrees—that I feel nothing for the instrument.

  My college roommate freshman year is named Marshall Tiernan. I have chosen to go to a small liberal arts college in Ohio that is not too far from Haverford but far enough so I feel I’m leaving home. Every Tuesday afternoon he asks if I can vacate the room for three hours and fifteen minutes (exactly) so he can listen to music.

  “I don’t mind if you listen while I’m here,” I tell him.

  He shakes his head. He must have privacy. Marshall Tiernan, reedy and tall as elephant grass but not nearly so uncultivated, has an enormous collection of classical records that takes up one quarter of our room. He is studying to be an engineer. Unlike the rest of the men in my dorm, who in the fall of 1968 have grown their hair long and wear patched jeans and army surplus coats, Marshall dresses in Arrow shirts with button-down collars and keeps a well-inked pen protector in his pocket. He has an unfortunate stutter and does not socialize beyond a fellow engineering student he knows from home. We have a respectful relationship, but I can’t say that Marshall is a friend.

  I agree to leave him alone on Tuesday afternoons, but one time I come back early. I have forgotten some notes that I need to take with me to the library. Expecting to hear music outside the door, I hear nothing and decide to go in. On the bed, with large padded earphones, is Marshall, his thin body rigid as slate. He sees me but does not acknowledge that I am here. His clothes, the sheets, everything is drenched with sweat. His legs tremble, a kind of seizure starts. When the record ends, a composition by Satie, Marshall sits up, quickly strips the bed, throws the sheets in the closet (Tuesday the maids bring new linen), changes his clothes and returns to his desk to study.

  We do not discuss the incident.

  Shortly afterward he drops out of school and moves home. I have the privacy of my own room, a lucky situation that enables me to spend time alone with Iris, whom I’ve met at an antiwar meeting. One night while I am telling her, with some amusement, I am sorry to say, about Marshall Tiernan, I suddenly stop. Iris says later the look on my face is as if I’ve seen a ghost, for that is what happens. I suddenly see—no, feel—a twenty-one-year-old man curled painfully in a baker’s oven, his body kept alive by music.

  Thanksgiving vacation my sophomore year I bring Iris home with me. Several years older than I and a senior in anthropology, she helps my mother with Thanksgiving dinner, talks at length with my father, who retains a lifelong interest in Margaret Mead, and makes such a positive impression on them both that my mother whispers to me as we are about to leave for the airport, “She’s a jewel.”

  But at school I sink into a profound depression. My grades plummet and although Iris tries to stand by me, I manage to chase even her away. She finds her own apartment yet continues to call every day to check up on me. I become more withdrawn, however, and after a while I ask her to stop phoning. I watch television and eat chocolate donuts, drink milk from the carton and stare at the dark smudge marks my lips leave on the spout.

  My father appears one afternoon, a surprise visit, he says. I know by the look on his face, though, that he has come because of Iris. I burst into tears when I see him.

  “What has happened, Ephram?” he says.

  But I don’t know what has happened, only that I can no longer study, I don’t care about school and have no chance of passing finals; I don’t care if I flunk out.

  “Your mother is very worried. She wanted to come with me but I thought it best if I came alone. Is there anything I can do to help you? Is there something wrong in school, you don’t like your courses, the pressure perhaps of too many hours…”

  “I haven’t been to class in weeks,” I say. “I can’t go. Even a trip to the store is overwhelming.” I start to cry again. “I want to go home. I want to go back with you.”

  “But what will you do back there?” my father says. “There is nothing at home for you now. You have your studies here, your friends.”

  I look at my father. As always, he is dressed neatly, and warmly, a blue blazer and gray slacks, a wool vest under his coat. Meanwhile, my apartment remains a mess, dishes in the sink, clothes everywhere, my hair unwashed.

  “I’ll find a job, I’ll work and make money.”

  “And live at home?”

  “Yes, what’s wrong with that?”

  My father pauses. “I don’t know. I would think that you’d enjoy the freedom of living on your own.”

  “I have freedom and privacy at home. You’ve never told me what to do or when to come in. I’m not happy here.”

  “But Ephram, changing the place you live will not solve your problems. You need to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I don’t care, I just want to go home! Can’t you understand that?” I am almost screaming. “I have to go back. I can’t make it here!”

  For the rest of the winter I work in a bubble gum factory near Philadelphia. It is miserable, but the more miserable the better because I feel as if I deserve the punishment of tedious, demeaning work for failing in school. I am paid minimum wage, $1.85 an hour. So much sugar hangs in the air—we throw bags of it into a mixing contraption resembling the gigantic maw of a steam shovel—th
at the people who have worked for years at the factory have lost many of their teeth. The gum itself comes out on long (and unsanitary) splintered boards that I carry to racks, which are taken to another station where these long tubular strips of bubble gum—more like waxy pink sausages than gum at this stage—are cut into bite-size pieces with a tool akin to a large pizza wheel.

  One day at the beginning of spring I receive a letter from the draft board. According to their records my student deferment has expired; I am now eligible to be considered for military service.

  My father comes home early from his office hour at school. He himself hates the war, the senseless bombing and killing. He has marched with his college’s students and protested the presence on campus of recruiters from a chemical company that makes napalm. He has, in fact, been more active than myself who has withdrawn into the routine and oblivion of factory labor, for which there are no deferments.

  “What are your plans?” my father asks.

  “I don’t know. Canada, I suppose, if all else fails.”

  “And what is ‘all else’?”

  “A medical deferment.”

  “On what basis?”

  “My mental condition.”

  “But you have never been to a psychiatrist. You have no history.”

  “I don’t know then.” I shrug. I feel numb, resigned. Why not basic training and then the jungles of Southeast Asia? Could it be much worse than the bubble gum factory?

  “You will not go. That is all there is to it. We will make sure of that.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “We’ll hide you, if necessary.”

  I look at my father and almost laugh. But I can see he is serious, alarmed.

  “What are you talking about—hide me? Where?”

  He picks up his newspaper and folds it back, once, twice, three times until he has a long strip of news in front of him. It is the idiosyncratic way he likes to read the paper—folding it up like a map until it is down to a small, tight square of information the size of a wallet or obituary. I think that it must make him feel some control over the world’s chaotic events to read about them in such miniature, compressed spaces.

  My mother brings in a stuck jar for one of us to loosen, and my father puts down his newspaper, which pops open on his lap like an accordion. I am still thinking about his wanting to hide me, aware that the draft has touched off buried fears for him, a flashback to the war, some instinctive response to the personal terror of his family being taken away from him. “I’ll get out of it, Dad,” I say. “Don’t worry. I won’t go.”

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, is that what you think is the problem here? You have put yourself in this position, though I begged you not to. What is there to do now but worry!” He stands up. “I am sick with worry, if you must know. This is my fault. I should have demanded you stay in school, not let you come here!”

  I have never heard him raise his voice like this. His body begins to tremble, and from the kitchen my mother hurries in with her hand over her heart. “What is going on here?” she says. “What are you arguing about?”

  “Nothing,” my father answers. “The argument is finished,” and he goes into his study and closes the door—a sight I am used to from childhood. I hear him weep, but rather than sadness I feel a great relief; finally, something I’ve done has touched him.

  I do not get drafted but receive a high number in the first lottery. The long and tiresome depression, the deadness I have felt, is replaced with the exhilaration of a survivor, a life reclaimed. I make plans to visit Europe, use the money I’ve saved from the bubble gum factory to travel for three months. Guide books about England, France, Spain, and Italy cover my bed.

  I pore over them and come up with a tentative itinerary. But when I actually get to Europe, I find I make a detour from England to Holland. I locate the Jewish quarter where my father hid during the war, find his school—the Vossius Gymnasium—and then what I’ve come for: the bakery. It is still there, although the original owners who saved my father have long ago died. I explain to the current owners who I am; they tell me in broken English that yes, they have heard what happened here during the war, they know about my father and the Koops who saved him; the story is legend. “Does the oven still exist by any chance?” I ask.

  They take me to the back, outside to a shed. It is here, covered with a tablecloth. I ask them if I can be by myself for a few moments and they say certainly, no one will disturb me.

  A squat and solid object, the oven stands only chest high. I pull open the door and look inside. The opening is deeper than it is wide, the height a little less than two feet. I hoist myself up to sit on the edge. Then I swing my legs around and push my body in feet first. My neck is back against the left edge. I cannot go any farther. My shoulder sticks out too much even when I bend my knees into my chest. I do not understand how he did this, but I am determined to fit inside, so I slide out again and try to enter without my shoes and without my jacket. I tuck my legs under and pull my head inside, my back curved tight as an archer’s bow. I hook my finger through the match hole and close the door. The stove smells of mildew and carbon; the scaled roughness of the iron ceiling grates against my cheek. It is pitch black except for the match hole through which I can see. I put my eye up to it and watch. Soon I hear footsteps and I feel frightened, but the footsteps recede into the distance and the bakery becomes silent.

  Many years later my parents come out to celebrate the occasion of our son’s fifth birthday. My father helps Philip build the space station they have brought him. I watch them play together, my father with no awareness of the world around him other than this mission to be his grandson’s assistant.

  While my mother and Judith, my wife, put Philip to bed, my father and I have coffee on the porch. It is a cool summer night and we are in Boulder, Colorado, where the shimmering night sky looks, to my parents, like a planetarium. Judith works in the university’s office of communications, while I teach literature. Like my father, I have become a professor.

  “What are you going to do now?” I ask him. He is on transitional retirement, halftime teaching, and is scheduled to leave the college next year. “Will you finally go to Europe?”

  “Perhaps,” he says, “but your mother’s back may not permit it.”

  I nod. The trip out here has cost her a great deal of pain that she has accepted stoically. If she walks for more than half an hour or sits for that long, the result is the same, inflammation.

  “Have you thought of going yourself?” I ask.

  “I could not leave your mother for that long. She would not be well enough.”

  My father sits with the hiking boots he has bought for this trip out west laced tight on his feet. They are spanking new and he has already cleaned them of mud from our climb this afternoon. I take pleasure in seeing him so fond of the mountains, so open to the world out here. “You and I could go,” I say. “Together. A nurse could help mother if we went next summer.”

  “I will give it some thought,” my father says, but I can see that the veil has already dropped—the complex configuration of blank terror that can still scare me with its suddenness, the yearning on his face vanished. He has gone to Madagascar.

  He empties the coffee he has spilled in the saucer back into his cup. “I have made a mess here,” he says, replacing the dry saucer underneath. He stands up. Pulls down the sides of his jacket. Despite the hiking boots, he has dressed for dinner. “Would you like to go for a walk with me, Ephram?”

  “Yes,” I say, and get my coat, eager as always.

  Last summer Judith and I took Philip to Europe because I wanted to show him where his grandfather grew up. Though the bakery was no longer there—an insurance office now—I described everything about the original building, and the oven. I held him in my arms while he listened with intelligence and care, and I kissed his long lashes and felt his soft cheek against mine. I wondered what he knew that I would never know about him, what pleased him
that could not be spoken. When would he grow past me, leave his fatherland, hack and hew whole forests until he could find one piece of hallowed ground on which to plant the seed of his own self?

  One night in our hotel I could not sleep and began to write: “Every son’s story about his father is, in a sense, written to save himself from his father. It is told so that he may go free and in the telling the son wants to speak so well that he can give his father the power to save himself from his own father.” I wrote this on a note card, put it in an airmail envelope, and planned to send it with its Amsterdam postmark to my father.

  The following morning a call from my mother let us know that my father had suffered a stroke. We flew home immediately, and I rushed to see him in the hospital while Judith waited with Philip at the house. My mother was there by his bed. An IV bottle was connected to his wrist. His other arm I saw had purplish bruises from all the injections and from the blood samples taken. The effects of the stroke made him confuse the simplest of objects, or draw on archaic uses—a pen became a plume. A part of his brain had lost the necessary signals for referencing things and faces with words, and now dealt in wild compensatory searches to communicate. When he spoke of Judith he referred to her as my husband, called me “ram” trying to pronounce Ephram, and, saddest of all, could not understand why I had so much trouble understanding him. He had once spoken three languages fluently, and to see him in this state was more of a shock than I could bear. When he fell asleep, I left his room to speak with the doctor, a neurologist who explained to me that a ruptured blood vessel was causing the illogical and distorted speech. Bleeding in the brain. The image for me was vivid, his brain leaking, his skull swelling from the fluid’s pressure inside and all one could do was wait.

  One day while I sat and read by his bed, he said my name clearly and asked if I could help him get dressed. He had a white shirt and tie in the closet. He spoke with difficulty from the stroke, although his condition had improved and we all believed he would be released soon. I dressed him and because he was cold I put my sweater over his shoulders and tied the arms in front so he looked like a college man again. While he sat up in bed I held onto his hand to steady him, reminded of how we used to waltz together when I was ten. I said something to him that I had carried around with me for a long while, something that had no basis in fact, only in the private burden of a son traversing the globe for a father’s loss. “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” I told him and he answered me in speech slowed by his stroke, “I forget everything, Ephram.” I nodded, but then cried later at his funeral because I thought and hoped he had meant to say forgive.