by Daniel Stern
Jud introduced Walkowitz to Larry and then said: “What’s the matter? Are they taking the theater away from us?”
“Never mind now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Is it important?”
“Well—yes. But it’s not the end of the world.”
“You can speak in front of Carl,” Jud said, aware that it was his first use of the name. “He’s going to be working with me on the play.”
At this, Larry unwound a little. He sat on the edge of a chair and said, “Well, it’s a publicity problem, really, so it’s not for the director to worry about.”
“Never mind that. Come on.”
“Well, look. What I mean is, there’s been some adverse comment about your—you know, your experience in the concentration camps.”
“What?”
“Some talk about your—call it capitalizing on that, publicity-wise. And now that you’re doing a play about it—” Misinterpreting the look on his face, Larry said: “Now don’t get mad at me, Jud. It’s ridiculous, I know. But it’s a publicity problem we have to think through.”
“A gimmick,” Jud said directly to Walkowitz. “They think it’s a gimmick.”
Walkowitz began to roar with laughter, his face perspiring, his gray hair rumpled. He wiped his face with his hand as the laughter rocked him back and forth, harder and harder. By the time Jud joined in the growing hysterics and people at other tables were staring, Larry excused himself. He left the two men still gripped by a wild, unbelieving laughter.
2
THE THEATER WAS DARK except for the work light Jud had switched on, a glaring, yellow eye on the stage. Jud and Walkowitz were alone with the musty odors of plush seats and curtains, the dusty, grainy odor of wood.
“What the hell good will I be to you?” Walkowitz asked. They were standing now in the middle of the stage, which was empty except for some scattered folding chairs and one big comfortable chair usually reserved for the stage manager.
“You’re a great one,” Jud said. “Who wanted the job?”
Walkowitz shrugged. “Yes, but this isn’t training. This is the real thing.”
“It’s too bad, but there is no other learning situation. You can help me a lot.”
“How?”
“I think you know.”
Walkowitz gave his characteristic shrug again, a gesture that was understated, but which included a slight creasing of his eyebrows and forehead as well as a raising of his shoulders. Now it was an unspoken acknowledgment of the shared experience.
“Let me read the play,” he said.
“I have some copies in the office backstage.”
Jud strode across the stage, beckoning to Walkowitz, who followed more slowly.
“Do you see where these strips of white tape are? This one outlines the barracks area. Over here, this oval strip, that’s the interior of the S.S. Colonel’s office. And this long rectangle, here, this is the infirmary where Avrum, the main character, hides out when he finds that his name is on the extermination list.”
“I knew two men who—”
“You see. That’s just what I had in mind. We’ll be able to trade a hell of a lot back and forth that I can draw on. You’ll earn your money. And you’ll learn about the theater at the same time. If not from me, then just from listening to Paul Rovic.”
“Your teacher?”
“Teacher, friend, guardian, you name it.”
“Oh, yes, I know about Rovic. He’s had a certain amount of noisy success,” Walkowitz remarked dryly. “I’ve followed his career.”
Jud squinted at him. “We detect Carl Walkowitz, the frustrated actor.”
“No. Everybody lives a life of a sort of imaginative deceit. I do it very well, but an actor—not me.”
“At least an actor sometimes gets a reward for it. You have to furnish your own.”
“That’s the way I like it. The world furnishes my punishments and I give my own rewards.”
Jud rose and twisted the chair restlessly. “A bad bargain. Pain can go on and on, but pleasures all seem to come with a built-in time limitation.”
Walkowitz took the chair Jud was aimlessly rocking. He sat down as if he were carefully placing a fragile object on a delicate surface. He leaned a hand on his good leg and stretched the other one as far as he could. Then he looked around at the gleaming lines of tape that defined the imaginary S.S. office area.
“What you said about pain and reward,” he said, “there’s an old Yiddish saying—”
Jud interrupted. “It’s not so wonderful to have money as it is awful not to have it.” He gave Walkowitz a good-tempered shove on the shoulder, a spontaneous expression of pleasure and rapport. Walkowitz returned a shadow of a smile.
“My dear director,” he said, “I’m the translator. It should go: There is not half so much pleasure in being rich as there is misery in being poor.”
“I yield,” Jud said, “and I haven’t forgotten about your translating. That’s the other reason you’re right for the job. Don’t forget Bolet is dead so I have no writer to work with on the play. The translator is in Czechoslovakia. And the play needs a lot of work.”
“You’re the director,” Walkowitz said in a sardonic tone. “Fly him in.”
“I looked into it. He’s just a scholar who did a translating job. I need more than a linguist.”
“So, enter Walkowitz with the famous line from Whitman engraved on his chest: ‘I was the man—I suffered—I was there …’ that the idea?”
Jud nodded, looking off toward the back of the orchestra, buried and unseeable in the artificial night of the theater, then up at the flies, at the tangle of ropes, the suspended lights in their chipped black casings. He was silent for a moment.
Walkowitz spoke. “You were there …” he said, and left the air weighted with the heavy, unspoken question.
After a time Jud said, still looking away from Walkowitz, “Does it ever seem like a dream, Carl? Like it never happened—or happened to someone else who was you at the time?”
“Not often. Sometimes during the afternoon, for a moment or two. But the night is too real for dreams. The night is specific. It has names, faces, and the blows are struck right on the kidneys or the teeth or the balls.” His voice grew softer and more intense. “At night you can smell the piss everywhere, at night blood is that clear, muddy brown when it’s dried, at night the smell of the smoke—”
“You’ve answered my question,” Jud said abruptly.
“I imagine I have.”
“You know,” Jud said, “I should have told that Yiddish saying about money to Nancy. You know, the nervous girl in Downey’s?”
“Why?”
“Her husband, our producer, has got enough money for her to feel guilty. It’s his money and contacts for money that bought us this neat little theater. Otherwise I’d be setting up rehearsals in some little studio on Second Avenue.” Jud watched Walkowitz closely.
He sprawled in his chair, stretching his bad leg straight out as if to ease a sudden spasm of pain.
“Leg hurt?” Jud asked.
“Tired.”
Jud grinned. “The way you’re stretched out in that chair,” he said, walking around the taped rectangle, “in the middle of the S.S. office area, you look like a Blockführer I knew. That’s the way he used to sit, with his leg stretched out in front of him. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind about me—a kind of a hate-love thing. He used to call me into the office and suggest …” He paused. “All right, Carl. You guess what he used to say to me. No, don’t move. That’s just the languorous way he used to sprawl in his chair. Of course you should be a little fatter.”
“And I need boots.”
“Do without the boots.”
“All right.” Walkowitz waited half a moment and then said, sharply: “Kramer.”
Jud stiffened.
“Look at you. You’re in rags.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That�
��s all I have.”
“Why don’t you send back home for things, for money?”
Without waiting for a reply he continued, “You’re a Pole, aren’t you?”
“Hungarian.”
“Derselbe Dreck.” Walkowitz lapsed into German for the moment. “At least you could help yourself by following the ‘Greens’ around. Take clothes and possessions from people who have died during the night. Aren’t you as smart as a common criminal?” He raised his hand in an abortive angry gesture that made Jud flinch a little in spite of himself.
“The ‘Greens’ wouldn’t let me near them, anyway,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a Jew.”
“You’re what?” Walkowitz paused and grinned malevolently at Jud.
Jud’s memory granted him the smile’s meaning instantly.
“I’m a filthy, yellow, degraded piece of shit that pollutes the German air.”
“Correct. But somehow I like you, Kramer—and I don’t know what’s the matter with you. What work details have you been assigned to?”
“I have been clearing the barracks area of bodies.”
“And with the fine opportunity of being a corpse carrier, you’re still in rags? You see, it proves the lowest German thief knows how to take care of himself better than any Jew.”
Jud swallowed and closed his eyes for a second. Then he opened them, and as if with great effort, said, “My father told me: ‘Judah, never fight with anyone over bread or clothing. Even people you think love you will kill you for a dead man’s coat or for bread. Promise me.’ And I said: ‘Poppa, I can’t really promise, but I’ll try not to.’”
Walkowitz returned his stare for a long time. Then he said brusquely, “Write home to your people for money and clothes.”
“They are Jews. They have nothing now.”
“Write home, I said. I give you my word, if anything comes for you, I will see that you receive it. Get out!”
Jud broke the real-unreal spell.
“Bravo,” he said. “I was curious to know what you’d choose. At Bergen-Belsen they kept telling everybody to write home for money, for anything. They made fortunes that way—but not much from the Jews, by that time.”
Still speaking softly, Walkowitz said, “This is not Bergen-Belsen. This is Auschwitz.” He was speaking past Jud, not to him. The spell was not broken yet. “It felt so strange saying words from that other mouth, that thick, pink mouth. He wasn’t a Blockführer, he was a Sturmbannführer, named Rauschner. I remember once he played a game with me.” Walkowitz stood up from the chair with more vigor than Jud had seen him display. He moved close to Jud, standing a few inches taller, half in yellow brilliance, half in shadow.
“Walkowitz,” he said to Jud, “hit me!”
Jud shifted his weight, unnerved, wondering if he hadn’t let the charade go too far. He’d wanted to open Walkowitz up, to find out what was behind the man who presented himself at lunch as if he was a document, a result of causes instead of a man—to find out, perhaps, what had really motivated his sudden telephone call, if it was anything more than a simple need for a job. Also, Jud was aware there had been a need to test the reality of the man’s experience in the camps. Now he faced him, his strong, sharply planed face, with the almost completely closed right eye squinting down at him, his grayish hair gleaming in the semi-darkness, a flare illuminating—or distorting—the past. He’d reversed their roles, calling Jud by his own name.
“Hit you …” Jud muttered, sliding, against his will, back into the charade.
“Yes. Hit me as hard as you can.”
“You’ll have me killed if I hit you.”
“I’ll kill you myself if you don’t obey me. Hit me, hard.”
Jud didn’t move; he waited.
“I’ll have your bladder filled with water till you pray for it to burst, and your prick will be a bloody piece of crud when you try to piss.”
Jud shook his head, almost imperceptibly. There was an odd ringing in his ears. Sweat slid from his upper lip and he tasted salt.
“Or would you rather have your leg twisted in a vice till you pray for it to break? Or maybe you’d prefer a needle inserted, ever so gently, into your eyeball and left there to—”
Without exactly knowing what he was doing or why, Jud landed a powerful blow on the other man’s chest, hard enough to knock him against the chair. Immediately, like a startled sleepwalker, he awakened to what he’d done. But by then Walkowitz had hurled himself at Jud, knocking them both to the dusty floor of the stage, and rolling over and over in a mad melee of pummeling fists. Even as he struck and felt the wind knocked out of his throat by a fist, Jud couldn’t feel it was really happening.
Marianne entered the stage from the wings, her heavy coat over her arm. She was dressed in a pink wool dress and she carried a black clutch purse and a pair of white kid gloves with glowing pearl buttons. She had a young, fresh elegance. A light, flowery perfume dusted the air as she moved.
Her eyes, still carrying the glint of the afternoon sun, blinked and adjusted to the darkness of the theater. Then she saw them.
3
LOUISE ROVIC PAUSED A moment before answering the doorbell, glancing into the wall mirror to see that her blouse was neatly tucked into her skirt. Then she opened the door and admitted a large butterball of a woman, covered in yards of appropriately yellow material, loosely shaped into a coat. She was topped by a white, sequined Juliet cap that gave her a faintly ludicrous look, like a Juliet who had survived the thirteenth year and grown into her fat, self-important fifties.
Louise kissed her on the cheek, which smelled of perfume and caked powder.
“You’re a little early, Fanny,” Louise said.
Fanny accepted the kiss as if it were a tribute from a subject nation. “Is Paul still teaching a full schedule?”
“You know Paul.” Louise hung up Fanny’s coat and the woman stood revealed in a dress of equally bright butter yellow.
“What a pretty dress,” Louise said.
“Loehmann’s,” Fanny shrugged. “You have to make Paul take care of himself. After all, a heart is a heart. Only one to a customer.”
Louise forced a smile. “It was only a mild coronary. He just has to take it a little easier. He’ll be through in five minutes. Let’s have some coffee.”
Fanny followed Louise into the kitchen and sank into a chair as if the short walk had cost all her strength.
“It can’t be good for him, all this excitement, becoming a producer.”
“A co-producer, Fanny. Don’t make so much of it.”
“With Joe Lear as co-producer, believe me, Paul is the whole producer, not co-. How’s your darling daughter?”
“Fine. She’s up for a big part in an NBC spectacular. Did you read the play, Fanny? I think it’s perfect for the Daughters of Israel.”
Fanny’s puffy, purplish eyelids lowered slightly. Louise knew the look. The family friend was being replaced by the businesswoman.
“I know it seems so when you think about it right off, Louise. I mean I had a second cousin who lost one whole side of his family in the crematings.”
“Crematoriums.”
“Yes. So I know how important it is for plays like this to be done.”
“That’s what Paul and Jud feel. I’m glad you agree.”
“Well, look Louise, don’t take that last remark as an endorsement exactly.” She shifted her bulk in the chair. “I mean I’m not a free agent. I represent two thousand women who expect good entertainment.”
“Two thousand Jewish women,” Louise said.
Paul entered the kitchen, walking slowly and rubbing his hands ruminatively.
“Hello, Fanny darling. How are you? Some coffee for me, too, Louise?”
Louise smoothed her graying hair, controlling the desire to object, to insist that he have hot chocolate instead. The doctor had not forbidden coffee but Louise felt it was too strong a stimulant and had imposed a private ruling which Pa
ul resented but rarely combatted. She knew he was taking advantage of Fanny’s presence. Immediately after his attack they had agreed to minimize his illness to anyone in the business. But for many years there had been a series of rulings by Louise and passive resistances by Paul. It was not the entire truth of their marriage, but it ran through it like a strong thread that helped, perversely, to hold it together.
She served him the coffee, punishing him by not returning his pallid smile and by quickly turning her back.
“So what do you think, Fanny? Have you read the script?”
“As much as I could. I’ve got so many shows to book this season. It looks very strong. It’s very literate. And the subject is so important …”
“But—”
“Who said a but?”
“Fanny, this is Paul. I know you from the old Labor Temple days on Fourteenth Street. Talk straight, please.”
“I don’t see what Fourteenth Street has to do with it, but—” She took a deep breath, the extra pressure bulging her bosom against the tight dress. “I just don’t know if it’s the kind of play that my women want to see. I, personally, feel it’s very important to—”
“I know, Fanny, some of your best friends are concentration-camp survivors. You’re a very liberal girl.”
“Don’t get sarcastic, Paul. I have to represent—”
“You have to represent a few thousand housewives who think they’d rather see a revival of Abie’s Irish Rose; Fanny, I’m telling you, this play will be a tremendous experience for them.”
“Well, look, I haven’t read the whole play, but—”
“And it’s not just—”
“Paul, will you let me finish a sentence?”
“No, not now. It’s not just because At the Gates is a fine play, though it is that.” Paul downed half the cup of coffee in a single swallow. “It’s because of a unique combination of circumstances that you and your ladies will witness the marvel of marvels—the right play with just the right director at just the right moment in history.”
“Don’t overexcite yourself, Paul. My God, you certainly believe in this play.”
Paul looked at her as if she had missed the entire point.