by Daniel Stern
He began to shiver from cold. The face of an old woman with long reddish hair appeared from behind him. He wondered why they had not sheared her hair like the others. She began to retch and then to vomit wildly, flecking his cheeks with slime. Judah turned his face away as much as he could. He could hardly breathe. There was a burning spot in the middle of his chest that seemed to stop the foul air from going in or out. A few feet away, a sixteen-year-old boy he knew, named Jankl, was holding a little girl wrapped in a bright blue scarf. She looked dead.
Momma, Judah thought suddenly, Momma—did you and Miriam die like this? His mother’s face was clear and distinct to his closed eyes, her brown eyes narrowed under a quizzical forehead, her full mouth smiling indulgently, absently, or worriedly at him or Miriam—how could she not be living? And the thought was closely followed by: How could she have borne this? He was not as close to her as to his father; she was somewhat remote. But he knew she took to her bed with headaches at the first threat of any serious problem that could not be solved by food, love, or money. The death of anyone she knew always resulted instantly in the awful pain and the kerchief soaked in vinegar and tied around the forehead. This nightmare—how could she have lived through it? Then he remembered she was dead.
There was a flush of anger in his head, his stiffened mouth, his bloodshot eyes. He thought, I’ll kill them. The thought melted away. The anger faded into tears and a vicious grab of hunger in his stomach. Then, more tears and wracking sobs that hurt his bones. While crying, he thought, I’m alone, now—I’m alone …
Suddenly, he reached up with his left hand and grabbed his almost paralyzed right hand. He forced it down, furiously, ignoring the pain to himself or the discomfort to the old man and his son who huddled next to him. Finally, the hand was down to a more natural position at his side. Then Judah stopped weeping and let the moaning and screaming drift away. He dozed for a few minutes.
It was impossible to know how long the trip took. Finally the train came to a halt. When the car was opened and an S.S. corporal stuck his head inside and yelled, “Raus!” Judah was somehow amazed to see that it was night. And so the nightmare continued. All those who could move were herded to the ground carrying suitcases, bundles, torn parcels. Strong searchlights illuminated the area.
Several S.S. men, who seemed to Judah like giants with shiny, black boots, stood waiting for them. As he half jumped, half tumbled from the train, Judah saw, from the corner of his eye, the old man and the boy who had been next to him fall to the ground. He was going to run to them to help them up, but he saw that they were quite still.
There was a table set up near the tracks. Behind it were seated two S.S. men with neat piles of paper before them. The rest of the scene was chaos. S.S. men moved among the surviving prisoners, kicking at random. Several shots rang out, but Judah did not see anyone fall. A hail of rocks was thrown by some S.S. men loitering near the stationmaster’s building. A rock struck Judah on the arm, but he felt nothing from the blow. When he was standing in the rough semblance of a line leading to the table, he heard a strange sort of hammering sound. Two men, a few yards in front of him, fell to the ground. One kept moving, a line of blood trailing behind him. An S.S. man stepped up to him and aimed a truncheon at the back of his neck. The man stopped moving. Then the S.S. man picked up the small parcel the man had been carrying and walked off with it, tugging at the string like a child anxious to open a present. The hammering sound came again and Judah followed it. He saw, then, on the roof of the stationmaster’s building, a group of S.S. men. They were shooting prisoners at random.
Judah went out of control. The absolute helplessness—He began to scream: “No, what are you doing to us? No—don’t do this—” An S.S. man stepped up to him and slammed him in the stomach with a rifle butt. Pain burned his intestines. He was on his knees, his mouth full of sticky liquid. He knew it was blood, and he wondered why his mouth should be full of blood so quickly. He spat, and panic stiffened his leg muscles. He stood. The last few steps before he reached the table were managed somehow. Behind the table two grave-looking S.S. men were seated.
He was being shoved from behind now, and realized that his eyes were closed. He opened them. Leading from the table were two lines. One to the right, one to the left. Searching for something to help him stay on his feet, Judah thought, over and over again: Thank God Poppa isn’t here … Thank God Poppa isn’t here …
When he was a few feet away from the table, he was seized by some strength that made him stand straighten They mustn’t think he was sick or weak.
He tried to spit into his hands. His mouth was dry, but it finally yielded enough saliva for him to rub his cheeks into a semblance of health. In front of the table he stood up as straight as he could, hoping that they could not see the tremor he felt rocking his entire body. One of the S.S. men at the table said to the other: “Captain?”
The Captain waved a languid hand to the right, the direction away from death. …
Jud’s cheek was cold from resting on the damp old shirt he had used to dry his face. From outside the office he heard a door slam and then a spurt of voices. He felt drained and a little foolish. Only a tiny knot of nausea in his stomach seemed to insist on the validity of his fears. He forced his thoughts further, looking for extra strength. It Paul died, as his father had—as everyone had—what would happen? He would go on. When the others died you went on.
But if Paul deserted him—how to survive that?
3
THE CONGRESS OF JEWISH Charities Dinner was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock. At six o’clock Jud entered the apartment. Marianne was in the middle of the living room, surrounded by dresses—silk dresses, cotton dresses; dresses half sewn, then ripped apart to be sewn together again so that the lines would flow in exactly the desired manner; dresses of brilliant sun colors, warm pastels.
He paused in the doorway. Marianne, at the moment, was wearing a white half slip and white bra—a pale, blonde blur of a girl engulfed in the scattered rainbow of cloth. Jud could not take his eyes from her. She shone like new silver. He leaned against the doorjamb, weariness needling the muscles in his arms and back, and thought in surprise, I’m married to a very beautiful woman. How did this delight ever come to me?
When he’d met Marianne as a young actress anxious for a chance to enter Paul’s Workshop, she had been only a pretty girl, far from the prettiest of those he knew. She had been callow; the mellowing process had not done its work as yet. An ambitious young shiksa from out-of-town—that had been the chauvinistic judgment he instinctively passed on her as he made preparations for his first pass. Not for marriage, just for fun. The independent mechanism by which love works, and whatever secret and powerful plans determined young girls like Marianne make, decided otherwise. But his feelings about her beauty had grown more and more definite as they lived together, as the curve of hip, cheek, and thigh became familiar, specific as a place. The birth of Sarah seemed to add to Marianne’s loveliness a darker quality that had nothing to do with pigment. So that, by the time Marianne was “discovered” as a movie actress, and was an official beauty, Jud could feel that the world was simply confirming his own feeling.
A creature appeared from somewhere near the foot of the wall mirror—a plump, middle-aged lady with a tape measure around her neck, a mouth all pins, and fingers made of chalk. Jud could hardly recognize his mother-in-law. “Be through in a minute,” she mumbled, draping some yellow satin material over Marianne’s shoulder and making some occult passes with pins.
“I can’t budge, darling,” Marianne said, pursing her lips in a make-believe kiss.
“I married a clotheshorse,” Jud said. He stepped over the colorful debris and eased himself onto the couch. “My house looks like the MGM wardrobe department.”
“How did it go today?”
“The rehearsal went all right, I guess. But today was really Paul’s day to howl. I had that talk with him. Do you realize we’ve forgotten that he’s a sick man? We try
to push it away, but there it is.”
“Since it happened, I haven’t been able to look at Paul without remembering that he has a heart condition.” Marianne tugged at the fabric. A moan rose from her mother.
Jud scowled. “That’s going to be a lovely dress,” he said, “if it lives.”
Marianne twisted her neck around to see him better. “I was thinking,” she said, “about what Walkowitz said. That business about Paul criticizing the play as if he was directing it and not you.”
“That’s what we talked about, today, among other disturbing subjects. What were you thinking?”
“Maybe Walkowitz made it up.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. Why did he call you up, in the first place?”
“A job.”
“Why you?”
“When you see that a man you used to know is directing a play on Broadway and you’re not doing too well, you call him. Usually it’s for money. This time it was for a job.”
“Were there ever any peculiar shenanigans between you two? Anything he could be angry at you for?”
“I didn’t even know him in the camps, as far as I recall. I wasn’t as social in those days as I am now.”
“Are you telling me to shut up?”
“No, I just don’t remember Carl at all.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Maybe he’s lying. Maybe the numbers on his arm are India ink. Maybe I was never there. I spent two years at Groton, then went on to Harvard, from which I escaped but was brought back to serve out my term in the School of Dramatic Arts until liberated by Paul Rovic and Mrs. Broderick’s daughter, Marianne.”
Marianne jerked her shoulders angrily.
There was a muffled protest from behind the pins in Mrs. Broderick’s mouth, but Marianne continued, picking up steam as she spoke. “He’s a damned strange man and I think you’re crazy to trust him so completely, and leave yourself so vulnerable. His feelings about you seem peculiar. He’s with you so much, involved in your work, a friend of the family—but he’s always ironic and detached.”
His eyes still closed, Jud felt a shiver, an unpleasant flash of remembrance: Marianne and Walkowitz in front of the theater, arguing, Walkowitz brandishing a cigarette lighter. He brushed the image away.
“… bitter about everything, including you, me and the play,” Marianne was saying.
“That’s his style,” Jud said. “I’ve considered other possibilities. He’s not an easy man to figure out. He’s drifted for fifteen years, whispering his grudge to the gods. He may resent my success, or my beautiful actress wife …” He smiled beneath his shut eyes, as he might smile in his sleep during a pleasant dream. “But I think he’s with me more than he’s against me. And that’s all you can ask of anyone. Even a wife or a husband. The rest is only a question of degree. But, most of all, he helps me. Why would he help me if he meant me no good?”
Marianne tugged at the cloth in her mother’s hands. “Oh, that’s enough, Mother,” she said. “We can finish it tomorrow. I’ve got to get ready for this damned dinner.”
Mrs. Broderick gathered all her odds and ends of dresses and cloth. “Don’t curse, dear. I’m going,” she said.
Jud kissed her cheek before she left the room. Then he asked Marianne where Sarah was.
“She’s at the Museum of Natural History—with Walkowitz and Ginny.”
“That’s very funny after your speech.”
“Isn’t it,” she said, pulling her robe on and seating herself next to Jud on the couch. He leaned forward to kiss her, but she pulled away.
“Carl told me something terribly disturbing today,” she said.
“So that’s what all this is about.”
“He said this man Rolfe, the lighting fellow, is an anti-Semite. He made several offensive remarks to Carl, and I think you had better fire him right away before it goes any further.”
Jud looked up in real surprise. “What kind of nonsense is this? What did he say to Carl? And when? And why didn’t Carl say anything to me about it?”
“What’s more important is, what to do about it. With all the trouble you’ve been having, I’m not going to see you subjected to that kind of thing.”
“Wait, wait a minute. I haven’t been subjected to anything except confusion. Apparently Carl is the one who’s gotten the brunt of it. But why didn’t he tell me? Why you? Christ, Marianne, I’m so depressed today about the play, and Paul, and everything. The last thing I need is trouble like this.”
“But if he is anti-Semitic, you wouldn’t keep him on, would you?”
“He has a contract. And I can’t fire a man because of his opinions of a group of people, even if it happens to be my people he’s talking about.”
“Well, my God!” Marianne’s shock was genuine. “There’s a limit!”
“Let me talk it over with Carl, darling. It’s kind of peculiar, him not telling me about a thing like this.”
“I imagine he thinks I can be trusted with it.”
“Oh, don’t you get offended now. That’s all I need.”
“Well, can’t I be trusted with it? Just because you disagree about firing the man—” Marianne stood in the middle of the living room, brushing her hair agitatedly with her hands.
“It’s not a question of your being trusted with it. But if he talks to someone besides me about this, maybe he’s done it about other things. It’s not you.”
“I wish it was.” She was at the point of weeping, and she struggled for control. “I wish you listened more to me than all these other people, about everything. You’ve never really talked to me about things that—”
Her control was gone. The tears came and her hands descended from hair to eyes. “I don’t know what I stayed here for. I should have gone. You don’t need me. No, leave me alone now. You’re the same as he is.” Her voice was shrill and unsteady. “Just two different sides, that’s all. But you’re really the same.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s no way for you to know what I’m talking about. There’s no way. Maybe now you’ll see how alone that makes someone feel.”
Jud knew better than to try and hold her or to use touch as a means of consolation. At such moments Marianne grew sensitive as a wound. Perhaps it was the residue of growing up as a pretty girl who was never sure if a boy liked her or was just saying it as an excuse to touch her. Jud’s first instinct was always to hold and be held. But he was too bewildered now to care about that.
Marianne was so upset she was incoherent. Both the same … two different sides. … Was she talking about him and Walkowitz? Again that troubling vision of the argument, the cigarette lighter. Things seemed to be slipping away from his grasp, from his control. An awful strangeness seemed to have entered his relations with everyone—Paul, Marianne, even Sarah. And Carl seemed to weave through them all in some way he couldn’t pin down.
He felt as if he were being punished for a crime that no one was convinced had even happened.
Marianne was standing now, her back to him, holding her head with both hands. She was trying to quiet herself.
Jud said: “Marianne, I’m sorry.”
She whirled, her robe open, the white flesh now seeming sickly pale to Jud. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
She fled into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Jud stretched out on the couch. He was wondering what the elegant lighting man had said to Walkowitz. Anti-Semitism seemed such a gross malady for the slender, gifted fop. He listened for a moment, trying to hear if Marianne was still crying, but the only sound was that of a radio playing somewhere in the building.
4
PAUL ARRIVED HOME IN a daze. He had wandered the white afternoon and was unable to remember what he had done or where he had been. He was still distracted when Louise presented him with various household matters that needed attention, having b
een pre-empted for too long by the demands of the production. Her expressed exasperation brought him out of the haze long enough to ask, in transparent defense, where Janet was.
“At a TV rehearsal—that Christmas spectacular.”
“I should have gone. Who took her?”
“Al Clinger.”
“Who?”
“Paul, wake up. Albert, the artist fellow she’s been seeing.”
Paul rubbed his nose reflectively. “She’s seeing a lot of him,” he said, as if in discovery.
“She likes him. He seems nice.”
“I’m not going to support two households.”
She looked at him in feigned amazement. “Observe the aging artist. Afraid to have a real live painter in the family?”
“I’m an aging teacher, if you don’t mind. And—I was joking. Janet’s old enough to make her own choice.”
“She’s been making her own choices since she was five. That reminds me.” She pushed a past-due bill along the table. “We have to decide whether or not to continue dancing school.”
Paul glanced at the bill. “Three hundred dollars for six months. That’s a lot of money.”
“Not for Martinu.”
“Janet will never be a dancer. And the conventional wisdom has it that Romanians always pad their bills. I’m getting worried about money. This play has taken away a lot of teaching time.”
“All right, don’t get excited. Janet doesn’t care that much about the dancing lessons. She’s a dramatic actress.”
“How much does she care for this Clinger boy?”
“The boy is thirty years old. And she cares. How conventional you’ve turned out in your old age.”
“I’m just trying to see that my house is in order. The play is in such a state of chaos …”