by Daniel Stern
What the hell was he doing down here in this deserted park in Walkowitz’s neighborhood? Did he hope, vaguely, to see the man again? And what was there left to say?
He was taken by an apprehension that quickened his breath. It came accompanied by the compulsive, repetitive beat of a name, over and over again, his sister’s name: Miriam, Miriam, Miriam—announcing a fantasia of pictures and half-visualized images. Miriam dressed up in her long dress, playing Queen Esther in the Purim play—and the succession of nights imagining Miriam lying in a ditch, bloody and still. … His father looking on with wide, uncomprehending eyes at roll call on that wet morning when the barracks Kapo dragged out the emaciated body of his good friend of years, and answered the roll call for him: “Gross, Leo”—and his father picking up Leos shattered pince-nez, stolid-faced, unweeping. … And his own Bar Mitzvah speech, which the Rabbi had written for him, delivered by Judah in the basement of the synagogue after the religious ceremonies—while the men ate and drank and the women wept and his friends grinned nervously, envisioning or remembering their own ordeal of confirmation. …
The fantasia shifted … the entire block of prisoners enduring roll call after the day’s work in the quarries—everyone dismissed to rest, but the Jews ordered to stay behind to sing the jingle they called the “Jew Song.” The band played with stiff fingers and the prisoners sang:
“… And now with mournful, crooked Jewish noses,
We find that hate and discord were in vain.
An end to thievery and to food aplenty,
Too late, we say again, and yet again.”
… remembering his desperate attempts to memorize the words, knowing that failure to sing them out clear and strong was punishable by anything from a kick to a pistol shot … thinking of himself, in those last days, when there was almost no food left and few of them had the strength to do anything at all … When the ones they called the “Musselmen,” just some scabrous skin covering bones that could hardly move, were everywhere. He had been chosen as a corpse carrier, and he saw in his mind’s eye the pimpled face of the S.S. sergeant who stood near the barracks, overseeing the work. In those last days the selections were most rigorous. The least sign of weakness meant death. There had been rumors (there were always rumors) that the Allied armies were on their way, and that the S.S. was anxious to get rid of all prisoners. In any case, Judah knew he must not show the slightest sign of exhaustion.
The scene was laid out before his eyes like a painting. (Walkowitz, Jud thought; I have Walkowitz to thank for this clarity.) He saw the skinny, burning-eyed child of fifteen pick up a body by the heels and toss it into a wheelbarrow, dragging it along the gravel past the S.S. sergeant, stone-faced and silent; then returning, on a sudden impulse he seized two bodies, and with a great effort managed to move them both onto the wheelbarrow, one of them almost slipping from his grasp. The arms flopped on the ground, making a scraping sound. He renewed his hold, and passing the S.S. sergeant, he put on a burst of speed and energy summoned from some unknown reserve. He looked up at the S.S. noncom and smiled as he moved past him with the double burden—smiled to show his eagerness to be of help, to show that his strength and willingness entitled him to receive food, to remain alive. …
Tears had been running from beneath the closed lids for some moments before Jud realized he was crying. He was occupied with the shame. The shame of the eager look, the desire to please the Nazi in order to live. Tears and the shame merged. He heard again the muffled pulse of his sister’s name, and it changed. Not as Miriam, but as Marianne … Marianne … Marianne. … But the name faded into silence. It was too new, too much of now.
Jud wanted desperately to get up and go away from this empty landscape of memories. But he lacked the strength. Some despairing lassitude made him both participant and spectator; it was a parade, first of indistinctly remembered occurrences, then a parade of faces. Unexpectedly, it was peopled with the faces that had existed on the periphery of childhood, all with familiar and barely recorded features.
The parade brought with it an eerie sensation—not one of these half remembered figures from childhood (like Kessel, the glazier) would ever be encountered by chance, on some unexpected street. (“Judah is it you? I said to my wife while we were crossing the street, I said, That fellow looks a little like Judah Kramer. Of course he’s much older and he looks so American. But—well—here you are.”) Kessel, material for schoolboy jokes: “Sit down in front. Who do you think you are, Kessel the glazier?”
The others, too. Rev Solomon, the old rabbi with the always dirty caftan and the nose-picking fingers, but whose eloquence turned weddings into riotous festivals and funerals into orgies of weeping.
His cousin David, the successful businessman from Romania, only twenty but already full of money and experience. “… the breasts should be big, full, Judah. That means a good-natured woman. A woman with mean breasts has a mean heart.”
There were many others passing in a blur of movement and sound. Without any startling realization, Jud knew why they were there. He thought, If this were a dream, if I were asleep, they would all be pointing fingers at me, accusing me of living instead of them. They were witnesses for Walkowitz; they knew everything—hadn’t they seen his shame at the eager display of energy before the S.S. sergeant? They knew things more secret than he had told Walkowitz, since they existed in his mind—the only existence they would ever have, now.
Why Walkowitz? he thought suddenly. Perhaps they were witnesses for him, for Judah. But what could they say in his behalf? That he wanted to live, wasn’t that something they could say? All of them had probably wanted to live, until some breaking point, different for each. And, perhaps some of them had wanted to live all the way to the last moment—to the last instant. Wasn’t that something to be valued? It seemed to Jud that if Walkowitz were there at that moment, he, Jud, would be eloquent, persuasive, would sing with reasoning, dance with emotional and Talmudic logic.
The moon moved from behind a bank of clouds. It was poised in Jud’s sight precisely over the center of the park gate. Jud stood up and walked to the gate. It was locked. He had a moment of panic. Quickly his eyes measured the gate’s height, what grasping points there were, how slippery the iron surface was. He tried to calm himself, but his heart was beating quickly and his face felt flushed. He forced himself to wait—he couldn’t tell how long, perhaps no more than a minute. Then he started to shinny up the iron bars, holding his knees tightly around the icy metal. He fell back twice and started again, slowly, with intense concentration. Finally he reached the top and swung his feet over the grillwork, twisting his body around so that he faced the park. He avoided looking directly down, even though he knew the drop was not great. For a moment he hung there on the gate’s peak, suspended, dreamlike, over the park. The moonlight was bright now, illuminating the snowscape like a searchlight. The silent, frozen air was cut by a sound—a cough, a dog barking, someone laughing? The ambiguous night sounds, for some reason, quieted his trembling. He leaned his face against the cold, snow-flecked gate. It was like riding on the back of a cow, close to the moon, in some Chagall night landscape, with the dreamlike ability to see everything from above. He searched out the place where he had seen the shadow figures, but there were only trees, their stumpy shadows, and the indefinite shapes of benches. No one spoke; no one answered.
Clamping knees and hands tightly around the bars, he inched his way down to the ground. He leaned against the gate, wearily, and smiled at his own disproportionate reaction. He had escaped from Gramercy Park.
Then he walked back to the hotel and tried to sleep. He knew Marianne would be concerned about where he was, but he could not go home, and he didn’t want to call up in the middle of the night. I could call Walkowitz, he thought, and we could have a chummy cup of coffee at some Third Avenue coffee joint. That would be cozy.
Abruptly the ironic mood left him, and he thought of what he would like to say to the man—something simple, for which there had
been no room in the rough-and-tumble on the stage. Just—forgive me. But the words sounded inadequate.
Still, the desire to speak to Walkowitz stayed with him. Perhaps in the clearer aftermath he could make himself understood. But how do you do it? How do you tell a man that, in some undefined way, you were grateful to him. Because, until Walkowitz (he smiled ironically, knowing that from now on time would be measured “Before Walkowitz” and “After Walkowitz”) he, like everyone else in the whole, sleeping world, had written off the camps as something so senselessly horrible that the only response possible was a mindless silence. It was the greatest excuse in the world. But there were no free rides. That was what forgetting was—a free ride. Until the arrival of Walkowitz, saying: All right, now, pay up! And such a price—Anna and Josef “Kroger” to go with him to the grave. (Wonderful irony, too—there he’d been in the midst of a play that was, in a sense, saying the same thing to its audience: No free ride. This happened in your time. You participated, if only by sharing existence in the same years.)
There had to be a way he could say it to Walkowitz. To tell him that he had been successful at last. He had, at least, imposed a price. Jud would never again see himself in quite the same way. And if he had wanted anything short of Jud’s life, Walkowitz had wanted, essentially, that.
Perhaps Marianne had been right. Tomorrow he would talk to Walkowitz. No matter what insanity had passed between them, they were still two men—men who breathed, made breath into words, made words into thoughts.
He started to drowse, thinking, Judah, my name is Judah, it’s me, Judah. …
3
WHEN HE WOKE UP it was bright morning. He could not recall having dreamed at all. He reached for the phone and gave the operator his home number. The phone rang four times and finally the service answered. Jud left a message saying he’d called and hung up. He glanced at his watch. It was eight-thirty. Mentally he rehearsed the possible morning routine: Ginny taking Sarah to the park, Marianne on some errand or refusing to answer the phone, Mrs. Broderick shopping.
After a moment he picked up the phone again and called Paul.
“Paul, this is Jud.”
“I know who it is,” Paul said sleepily. “Think I forgot your voice? I called you last night.”
“I just got the message from my service.”
“It’s important. I have to talk to you right away.”
“This is right away.”
“On the phone?”
“Why not?” Jud heard the hardness in his own voice. “I knew something had to happen after last night.”
“Well—” Paul hesitated.
Jud plunged ahead. “Look, I have an offer to make that can settle everything. I’m going to have Larry check over my finances and I want—”
“Hold on a minute.” When Paul came back to the phone he sounded more awake. “Before you start about offers, let me tell you what the situation is.”
“Okay.”
“Joe called me last night, late. He was very disturbed.”
“That was how I left him. I always seem to leave Mr. Lear disturbed.”
“There’s no sense being circumspect. Joe is pulling out of the production unless you’re out, immediately. You know all his reasons.”
“Translate, Paul. Does that mean I’m through?”
“We can’t open without the rest of the money.”
“How about the money he’s already invested?”
“He’s willing to write it off if he has to.”
“And you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you out, with him, or will you help me raise the money and keep everything together?”
“I can’t do that. It’s much too risky. I’m not a money raiser.”
“And what happens if I agree to step out?”
“What happens? Well, it goes on, I guess.”
“Who will direct?”
“Joe wants me to take over. I’ve been close to the play from the start.”
“You mean as director?”
“Yes!”
The swift emphasis with which Paul punched out the word convinced Jud that he had no alternative. “This was my project, from the start,” he said, “and I’m not going to be dealt out now.”
“How do you think I feel, Jud? You know how much I’ve wanted this for you. But there’s nothing else I can do. I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re a very articulate man. Think of something.”
“For God’s sake, Jud, we both saw it coming. You didn’t help any. You’re not flexible. You could have worked things out better.”
“There were a few things beyond my control, but never mind about that. I can’t act too surprised. You sort of warned me. When we had our talk about your illness … I should have known …”
“Jud, I’m just responding to a crisis here. I have no big directing ambitions. There’ll be some re-staging, some working with the actors a little differently. You’ll still get your royalty. Maybe your name can even stay as director.”
“Let’s talk straight business. I don’t want to embarrass you because of all the things you said that day, so let’s keep it business.”
“Jud—”
“I want to buy out the production.”
“What?”
“That’s right. The whole production. I’ll back it up with everything I have, everything I’ve earned with my work.”
“Does Marianne go along with this?”
“That doesn’t matter. I haven’t asked her.”
“I mean, both your futures are tied up in this.”
The familiar tone of concern angered Jud. He said, “You can’t play both sides of the fence, Paul.” It felt strange. He had never in his life spoken to Paul in such a peremptory tone.
The older man’s response was silence. After a time he said, “I’ll ask Lear and let you know.”
“Have I been removed as director as of now, or can I take the morning rehearsal?”
“You may as well keep on for now.”
“Thank you. Good-by.” Jud hung up quickly.
4
WHEN HE ARRIVED AT the theater Jud saw that the title At the Gates had been set on the marquee. The three sheets were on display along the front, with Dasha’s name and his listed among the others. But he did not linger over what was usually a pleasant moment. He entered, briskly, by the stage door and clumped his feet free of snow in the vestibule. On the way down, while the taxi inched its way through weatherbound traffic, he had rehearsed a speech to the cast—one designed to tell them about the present problems without throwing them into a panic.
When he walked through the flies onto the stage he had to force his steps. He found the entire company already in a kind of deadened, controlled panic.
They were scattered across the stage and through the orchestra. Dasha sat on the floor near the stage-right corner. She wore blue jeans and a white turtle-neck sweater against which, notwithstanding, her dark face seemed pale. Emmet was whispering something to her. Her response was an ambiguous shake of the head. She looked as if she were controlling tears. Saul Waite, Janet Rovic, and Larry were exchanging subdued comments. A young actor was handing out coffee in cardboard containers. He went quietly from group to group. Everyone spoke in varying degrees of whispers.
Jud’s immediate thought was: They already know. His carefully practiced speech had been pre-empted by rumor. The cast of a play in the final weeks of rehearsal was an impossibly delicate mechanism. If the schism between him and Paul and Lear had been presented bluntly, the effect on their confidence could be disastrous.
Larry saw him first. He grabbed him by both arms and pulled him aside.
“I called you,” he whispered.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“It’s Walkowitz. He killed himself. It happened this morning.”
Jud turned his head away and looked out into the blur of the orchestra. He closed his eyes. He could tell, as if it were someone el
se, that he was shaking his head, idiotically, from side to side. With an effort, he stopped it.
“How did you find out?”
“The hotel knew he worked here. The manager called after they found him. About an hour ago. Isn’t it horrible? He took gas.”
Jud opened his eyes. He saw Marianne sitting in the back of the orchestra. Joe Lear was next to her. She was hunched over, holding a handkerchief to her mouth.
“Killed himself,” Jud said. He wondered at how he could feel such sadness and yet have no sense of surprise. His eyes stayed on Marianne.
“It’s so strange,” Larry was saying. “We all spent a lot of time with him these last weeks. But I don’t think anyone knew him very well. Except maybe you and Marianne.”
“He’s not easy to know … wasn’t. Larry—call the rehearsal off.”
“I did. They’re all hanging around out of shock. And to find out about the funeral details.”
Jud shook his stare from Marianne. “My God,” he said, “there’s no family. Nobody.”
“That’s right.”
“I’d better handle the arrangements.”
“Joe said he’d take care of it,” Larry said.
“He means he’ll pay for it. There are other things.”
Jud stepped down from the apron of the stage and made his way back to where Lear and Marianne were sitting.
Lear said, “Isn’t this an awful thing? Awful!”
Jud ignored him and bent over Marianne. He took the hand clenching a wet handkerchief away from her face. Then he pressed his mouth to her cheek. She did not look up at him, but she pressed her face, hard, against him. He could feel her body trembling. Her flesh was cold.
Lear was saying something. Jud turned and beckoned him away from Marianne. They stood behind the railing in the rear of the theater. Jud took the time to light a cigarette, partly for the smoke and even more to make sure his voice was under control when he spoke. Shaping the words with care, he said, “Isn’t suicide a police case?”