Another indication of its racist content is that Bernie didn’t enjoy hearing my anger characterized as Hispanic. When Uncle Harry said in apparent good humor—“That’s his Latin temper”—Uncle Bernie frowned.
“That’s his will to win,” Uncle Bernie corrected his brother in a stern tone. “And a good thing too, because he can be a great man.” He proceeded to tell the room about his investigation into my academic record, including my IQ score. All the aunts and uncles, all the cousins—except for Julie, who looked unhappy—listened as if it were a matter of the gravest importance.
[I cannot emphasize enough the worshipful attitude of most of the Rabinowitzes toward material evidence of superiority, whether it was IQ tests, victories at games, degrees from Ivy League colleges, awards from professional organizations, or their favorite standard—money. Besides the fact that they were culturally inclined to this focus—the double whammy of living in America and their origins as poor immigrants—I believe Papa Sam’s traumatic business failures during the Depression and their lowly status as not only Jews, but Russian and Polish Jews, infused these symbols of security and recognition with a powerful narcotic of affirmation that they became hopelessly addicted to. In a sense, just as the Latins in my family worshipped an illusion of social redemption which was to recede as they approached it, the Jews pursued symbols of success instead of real achievement, and were ultimately to feel hollow. Their own judgments and likes or dislikes were irrelevant: if the world didn’t give them an award for it, then it wasn’t worth doing. In one way, the Rabinowitz children were spoiled; in another, their childhood had a Dickensian gloom of joylessness.]
I was worried by Bernie’s bragging. The eyes of my family—those wide-apart, slightly startled and clever Rabinowitz eyes—all tracked me. I was especially bothered by the amazed, almost appalled look on the faces of Aaron and Helen, Uncle Bernie’s son and daughter. They had come home from college for this occasion. Unbeknownst to me they were having difficult times academically—which meant they were having an altogether miserable time since it was the current all-important symbol in their lives. Every compliment Bernie spoke about me was a blow to them. I sensed that much at least. I looked away from their hurt and envy to concentrate on Julie. Her beauty and genuine friendliness was attractive anyway, but it was her precocious sexual maturity that had a special significance for me. And her frown of disapproval about Bernie’s talk was intriguing.
After telling the room what my teachers reported about me, Bernie hit them with my IQ. (It was said and experienced as a coup de grace.) He went on to describe the chess match at his club. He told how I had fallen behind, how the Retail King goaded me and how he had encouraged me to “Never give up!”
At this point, Julie commented, quietly but distinctly enough to be heard, “That’s disgusting.”
“Julie, don’t interrupt,” Uncle Harry said automatically, without bothering to turn his head in her direction, as if this were an injunction he had to make often.
Julie’s mother, Aunt Ceil, looked puzzled. She was much less intelligent than her husband and daughter; or at least claimed ignorance so they frequently needed to explain things to her. Julie and Harry behaved as if the need to correct Ceil was an annoyance, but it supported Uncle Harry’s fragile self-esteem (he suffered greatly from living in the chill of his brother’s gigantic shadow) and also nurtured Julie’s genuine self-confidence. “What do you mean, dear?” Ceil asked, loudly, so that Uncle Bernie paused. “Rafael wasn’t being disgusting.”
“Not him,” Julie shut her eyes, drew her legs together, coming to attention and inhaling. This pushed her breasts out against her angora sweater. I watched them.
[Strangely, perhaps hilariously, I must attempt to explain my interest in her breasts. I had been prematurely sexualized by my mother. The ways in which that made me different from other nine-year-olds requires careful consideration. After all, it is difficult enough to make correct distinctions between normal childhood sexuality and adult sexuality. Consider the mess geniuses such as Freud and other psychological theorists made of infantile sexuality, a concept they were brilliant enough to discover and human enough to equate with adult passion, especially as regards volition. That error led Freud to overrate it, Jung to dismiss it … This gets into a technical argument of little real use. But if a clear explanation eluded two generations of brilliant scientists, what hope do I have of elucidating the difference between normal childhood sexuality and that of an incest victim? Only this, that I have the benefit of their brilliance and error and, of course, the advantage that I experienced it myself. At nine I knew there was adult arousal, adult orgasm and understood erections in a pragmatic postpubescent way. I had been erect on at least three occasions because of the touch of another person, an important difference from the normal childhood experience of accidental or self-stimulated genital excitement. By logical extension that meant I had a tactile understanding of sex (the most profound understanding one can have) as well as the non-reproductive interest adults have in the human body. A normal nine-year-old boy (I mean, of course, a non-sexualized nine-year-old) might have factual awareness, might understand that Julie’s breasts were a symbol of her adulthood and wish to see them, but he would not be genitally aroused by them in the adult way. To be even more precise about the distinction, a normal boy would not think that he ought to be aroused, would not aspire to be aroused. I did. I looked and thought, or rather willed myself to feel that I should like those breasts. At night in bed, when I was most lonely, missing the fantasy of my courageous and beautiful parents, I had begun to masturbate. Again, not in the adult sense, not because I was, to put it crudely, horny. I masturbated because I knew I could, as a matter of mechanical fact, not as part of normal child-like self-stimulation, which is for the pleasant sensation itself, unaccompanied by fantasy or an attempt to reach orgasm. No, my self-touching was that of an odd little man, wishing to heighten the experience using memories of my taboo experiences with my mother and hoping to achieve a climax as she had. Why this ambition? A blossom of reasons: to imitate the behavior of an adult male: to be desirable to my mother: to win back the love and comfort I had lost. My behavior wasn’t really mature sexuality, with the desire to touch others and be touched by them, and it wasn’t child-like self-pleasuring. I had been spoiled, unable to be a man or a boy and yet longing to be both. Thus, a twelve-year-old girl with the secondary characteristics of a woman seemed a perfect love object. Alas, I have succumbed to jargon.]
I looked at Julie’s precocious breasts, her full lips, her long black hair (pulled back that day), her intelligent eyes, and felt I loved her, that I wanted to marry her. What she said that afternoon about Uncle Bernie’s bragging made me love her more.
“I mean it’s unfair of Uncle Bernie to tell everyone what Rafael’s IQ is.” She pronounced it RAY-FEEL, but my love for her continued to grow unchecked. “And I think it’s disgusting to make him prove he’s smart by beating another boy at chess.”
“Julie,” Uncle Harry said in the same critical tone he had used earlier, only it was more serious this time. This time he turned away from his brother and faced her, to emphasize his disapproval. “That’s a very rude thing to say to your uncle. I want you to apologize.”
Julie blushed. “I won’t apologize,” she said and clenched her fists, more to steel herself than to threaten. “He should apologize to Rafael.”
“Julie!” Uncle Harry shifted forward to the edge of his seat—he was on one of the couches opposite Bernie’s position in a wing chair—and wagged a finger at her. He was threatening.
“Take it easy, Harry,” his sister Sadie said in a mild, humorous tone. “She’s a woman now so you won’t have any of your sisters on your side.”
This comment broke the tension, causing general hilarity among the adults and teenage cousins. I didn’t laugh, but I understood at least part of Sadie’s remark. The other prepubescent children grinned reflexively at the grown-up amusement; they were puzzled, however,
and searched their parents’ faces for more information.
Julie’s blush, needless to say, deepened. Her fists opened, however, and she didn’t drop her eyes. “I think I’m right,” she said with an effort, yet still loudly and clearly enough to be heard through the laughter.
Harry had his way out. It did involve humiliating his daughter, however. “Well, if she’s got The Curse I can forget about an apology.” This provoked bigger laughs from the adult males. There were looks of embarrassment on most of the aunts, including Julie’s mother. Bernie’s wife, Aunt Charlotte, appeared disgusted and Aunt Sadie frowned. The teenagers were deeply embarrassed. The kids were baffled. (I knew that meant Julie was menstruating. My mother made a sarcastic remark about The Curse as an introduction to her scientific explanation of the soggy red mass I found unflushed one morning. So I was right to love Julie: she was a little woman to my little man.)
Julie sagged. This time, she certainly looked as if she might cry.
“I don’t think I understand, dear,” Uncle Bernie’s cello cut off all the uncivilized ruckus. He was given immediate silence to play solo. And I understood why he had such command. It wasn’t merely his power and wealth. He made music while the rest of us made noise. I believed he represented what was wrong with the world but I was enthralled by the graceful sound of his evil. His tone to Julie was gentle; in charge, yet unhurried and tender. “What’s wrong with my enjoying that Rafe won?”
“That’s not what I said!” Julie was exasperated, embarrassed, and defeated. She looked at me for the first time. “I’m sorry …” she stammered to me. “I’m glad you’re so smart and you won.” She looked back at Uncle. I wanted to fling myself at her feet and promise to die for her. “I just meant you shouldn’t talk about him to all of us like that—even if it is all good things. It’s like he’s your pet. And you shouldn’t make him perform for your friends. He shouldn’t have to win some dumb chess game to prove he’s smart.”
“Of course Rafe’s not a pet.” Uncle nodded slowly in my direction with regal grace and smiled broadly. “I’m proud of him. He’s my nephew and when my relations do something I’m proud of, I want to tell the world.” It may have been projection, but I swore I saw Aaron and Helen stiffen. Bernie had said nothing about his children throughout the afternoon games and birthday dinner. In fact, I don’t think he addressed a single comment to them. He uttered a perfunctory thank-you on opening their store-bought gifts whereas he made a fuss about the poem I wrote to him, a quite dishonest—I thought at the time—verse of gratitude for his rescue of me. “You miss the point about the chess game,” my uncle continued his exquisite melody. “Rafe did win. He didn’t have to. But he did. He’s not just smart, he’s got the will to use his brains.”
I felt the heat of their feelings and was warmed. Their love, their envy, their admiration, their pity—especially Julie’s—was palpable, a nourishment.
[Let me be clear: I played my role enthusiastically. I was nine and ought not to be blamed, but I’m sure there are those who will blame me anyway, although they might express their disapproval politely. Not having sympathy for me. Amazement at my behavior. Not understanding how anyone could live that way. Sympathy, empathy, an understanding heart—they are talents, or at least faculties, that have to be developed, and regrettably their training is in short supply. I was not my real self to my mother’s family: I lied implicitly and explicitly to them, although they meant me no real harm. Indeed, by their lights, they offered only kindness and acceptance. If you cannot see this situation as tragic, and instead must find someone to blame, you have several candidates and certainly I should be considered the prime one. But I must risk your intolerance by not understanding the thoroughness of my acceptance of Uncle Bernie’s favoritism or the pleasure I took in triumphing over my cousins. Indeed, I was proud of the cleverness of the false self I created and the lies I told. To conceal this aspect would—as is so often the case in autobiography—sentimentalize my state of mind and eliminate the ambivalence and complexity which makes the human character worth studying in the first place. I needed Uncle’s praise. His admiration was not as satisfying as living with my parents and possessing their love, but it was the best substitute available. I must accept blame for that fault, if you wish to label it as a flaw. I must accept ownership of a need to be the special heir of a powerful male. It is natural and it is also me.]
I lived in terror of losing my new crown as Prince Rafael. I told few outright lies and I told fewer truths. No feeling was revealed or given a voice without first undergoing a meticulous examination by the Stalinist censor and Jewish coach in residence in my head. I was undercover. I still had no Walther PPK, yet I was a master spy stalked by jeopardy. I was a Martian in residence on Earth, wearing a superbly crafted false skin of obedience and innocence to cover the otherworldly horror and beauty of my real self. I had my father’s letter (I changed its hiding place often to avoid discovery) to read in the locked bathroom, or when I was supposed to be sleeping. After finishing a re-reading, I often held my little penis and manfully tried to stroke it to summon a passion as yet unborn. In the morning I had no reluctance donning my disguise. Would these people have loved and admired the real Rafe? No. I was not wrong about this assumption: if discovered, that child would have been cured or destroyed. He had to be kept hidden in his cramped cellar, quaking at the sounds of the policeman’s tread.
I did not step forward and announce to everyone that I still loved my father and mother, that I had worked so hard to win the chess game in order to keep my uncle happy with me, that although I smiled when Bernie said I was going to begin Hebrew school to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah, I didn’t believe in God and certainly not in the notion that I was Jewish, fully Jewish. Instead, I interrupted the scolded silence of the Rabinowitzes—shamed by hearing Bernie say I had the will to use my brains (with its implication that they did not)—and I asked Julie in a solemn voice, “Do you play chess?”
She looked confused.
Danny said, “Girls don’t like to play chess.”
Julie said, “That’s ridiculous. I just don’t know how.”
“I can teach you,” I said, moving toward the hall. “Come with me.”
“Some other time, Rafe. We have to get going,” Uncle Harry said and groaned as he rose from his chair. Inspired, there was a general commotion of goodbyes. They were relieved to go. They worshipped Uncle, but there were no comfortable benches in his temple.
I seized this moment of general noise and movement to slip up to Julie. I got on my toes to bring my mouth near her ear, exposed by the backward sweep of her hairdo. I admired its small perfect form and whispered to it, “I love you.” She turned toward me in surprise, opening her lips. Yet before she could speak, I quickly, more like a stab than a caress, kissed her cheek and hurried away, frightened.
Heart pounding, I hid in the pantry and ignored the faint calls for me to come out to say goodbye. I had allowed Julie (and whoever else might have seen) a peek at my real feelings. I was in a panic, afraid I had lost control. I stayed hidden behind stacked cases of soda, particularly because I could distinguish Julie’s voice above the others, mispronouncing my name as she wished me well.
Eileen had the night off. Once the guests were out the front door, Uncle Bernie—not Aunt Charlotte—called out that it was time for me to go to bed.
I emerged from my hiding place. “You’re putting me to bed?” I asked as I approached Bernie in the kitchen.
“Think I don’t know how? I put your mother and her brothers and sisters to bed a thousand times. Mama and Papa Sam used to work late at the store. At your age I was in charge of getting everybody to eat dinner, clean up, do their homework, and get into bed.”
“Really?” We were walking down the hallway of Papa Sam’s old wing, toward my bedroom.
Bernie laughed, a deep chord of pleasure. “Can’t picture it, huh? You bet I did. Mama and Papa had to work to all hours at night. So I was the Little Father of the family.”
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I took his hand, his monkey’s paw, strong, thick and warm, the knuckles decorated by fine black hairs. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” I said and meant it.
We had reached my room. The chess set he had given me was on my bed, the pieces set up to move 14 of José Raul Capablanca’s first win of the World Championship Match against Steinitz. In the box of chess books Uncle had given me there was a collection of Capablanca’s best games. He was a Cuban prodigy, a world-class competitor while a mere child, a champion as a teenager, and one of the greatest players of all time as an adult. I was infatuated with his games, identifying, or wishing to identify, with a Latin genius, and, of course, genuinely moved by Capablanca’s purity and grace as a tactician. He was the Mozart of the game, a beautiful killer. Uncle looked at the pieces, frozen in the combat of giants, as if their presence were an affront. I assumed the mess bothered him. I let go of his hand and said hurriedly, “I’ll clean it up.”
“Sorry for what?” his voice asked after me as I swept away Capablanca’s army. “You said you were sorry. Sorry for what?”
I had to think. I had forgotten what we were talking about. Remembering, I explained, “I’m sorry you had to take care of everybody when you were so little.” I finished putting the chess set away. I turned back to Uncle. His round infant’s head was cocked, curious and somewhat timid.
“I didn’t mind taking care of them,” he said. “I’ll tell you something.” Bernie sat in the child-size folding chair at the pine desk near the window. It had a view of the tennis court. Beyond there was a slice of the circular driveway. The headlights of one of our relative’s cars bounced as it swung toward the main road. Uncle looked huge in the small seat. I sat on my bed, attentive. “I’m still taking care of them. I’m still tucking them in and checking their homework.” There was a note of discovery in his voice. He raised his eyebrows and grinned with regret.
Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil Page 13