by Daniel Stern
I only had a few minutes to glance through the journal. But some of the entries are amazingly different from most of the others. The later ones have the Walkowitz quality that we knew—questioning, ironic … many are about me, the case against me, and his “plan.” I think killing himself was something that had to happen at the finish of that plan. He considered that he had been destroyed in the camps—with a postponement, for the sake of justice. Well, I have paid a little, in advance. And, if there are later payments, I will pay, as I must.
About you and me. I can’t hide it—I am sick when I think about you and Carl. It’s almost too painful to bear thinking about—so, naturally, my mind worries the sore spot, continually. But that’s a job for time. In some strange way I feel that nothing that was mine has been taken away from me. I hope I can hold on to that feeling.
I have to win this play because I think I understand more, now, about all of it. I think we need the “Walkowitz part,” to fully understand. The naked nerve, complaining under the ache of suffering, ready to have the universe destroyed rather than give an official approval to pain, injustice, and death. It is, of course, death to live that way. He proved that for us. But it is slow, freezing ruin to live without it completely. He proved that for us, too.
I love you,
JUD
Marianne shut her eyes. A simple movement like reaching into her purse for a tissue was beyond her for the moment. Oh, the hell with it, she thought, opening her eyes onto a wet blur. A tear burned its path from an eyelid to a corner of her mouth. She tasted the saltiness with a kind of relief, and groped in her purse till she found a tissue.
The stewardess was bending over her.
“Pardon me, Miss Broderick,” she said, “the people across the aisle saw your last picture. They’re great fans, and they wonder if you would autograph their ticket folder?”
Marianne frowned at the girl. She had betrayed her. Abandoning her attempts at repairing the damage, she took the folder and signed her name.
Then, with a sense of pleasure that surprised her, she turned her tear-blotched face to the elderly couple who were watching and waiting, and she smiled.
8
THE FLOOR OF THE study was littered with afternoon newspapers. Jud had been studying them all, closely, for any mention of the Walkowitz-Rolfe incident. When he got back from the airport, Larry had called to say that Paul and Lear had agreed to let him buy out the production. Larry was bewildered by the whole negotiation. He was even more confused by the low figure at which they were offering the play. Something just under twenty thousand dollars.
“Can I make it?” Jud asked.
“With or without Marianne?”
“Without.”
“Just barely. But that’ll about clean you out.”
“Okay, let’s clean.”
“I meant it for real, Jud.”
“So do I. It has to be done.”
“If it’s not a hit you’ll have to mortgage yourself to TV.”
“It has to be done,” Jud repeated.
“All right. Paul and Lear will be over to the house later for final discussions before the legal stuff.”
Jud sent Ginny out to get the early morning editions. There was no mention of the Rolfe matter in the drama sections or the gossip columns. Walkowitz’s death was a brief item on the obituary page of The New York Times. Larry had phoned it in.
Finally, Paul and Larry came, bearing Joe’s apologies; business in South America beckoned, but Paul would deal for him. Larry left the two men alone.
Jud forced himself to look directly at Rovic. The older man looked pained, his stance uncertain, formal. Jud couldn’t bear it.
“Come in to my study and let’s sit down,” he said. In spite of himself his own tone was formal.
Paul appeared to be sitting tensely on the edge of the stuffed chair in the study, but the chair’s softness swallowed him, and his rigid poise as well. Jud watched him, afraid of what he was going to say. He had gone over the various possible statements Paul might make, the questions he might ask and the explanations he might put forward. For over an hour he had composed answers to the imaginary remarks, all of them equally unsatisfactory. Now he waited while Paul extracted a cigarette from a crumpled package and placed it carefully between his lips.
Then, unable to wait any longer, Jud broke the intense silence. “You’re smoking too much,” he said with a tight smile.
Paul laughed, nervously. He took a long drag on the unlit cigarette, then twisted it in his fingers.
“A lot of pressure these days, you know. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Yes.”
“I want to stay with the production.”
“Why?”
“I suppose you’ve earned that question the hard way.”
“I don’t mean to sound self-righteous.”
“No, no. The fact is that I believe in the play. I think I demonstrated that long before any trouble started.”
“Yes,” Jud said.
“And”—this was more difficult—“the fact that I believe in you. I think I still have a lot to contribute to the production. Not just the Workshop’s name, though that’s very important to me, but myself, too.”
“Paul, I don’t know what to say.”
Rovic’s trembling smile froze. “We’ve always said what we believed,” he remarked quietly.
“But I don’t know if anything that used to be, works any more. So many things I could have sworn were impossible have happened. I don’t know what I can count on any more. Except myself.”
“If you can be sure of that, Jud, that’s no small thing.”
“I can’t be sure, yet. But I have to start trying it out. That’s one of the reasons I bought out the production. It’s a kind of insane, extravagant gesture. Like backing yourself to win a race. But it seemed the only way—after what happened.”
Paul nodded. “Coming here, I went over in my mind the different possible ways in which you might reproach me. This is a softer way that hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Paul, I don’t want any false humility from a man I’ve respected as much as you.”
“Not false, Jud. And maybe not humility. Just say chastened by events. So it really comes down to whether or not you can forgive me, doesn’t it?”
Jud studied the floor. “I don’t want to think in those terms.” He paused. In some way Paul’s use of the word “forgive” had given him his response. He wanted to clear the air of the word and its aftermath.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to stay with the production, Paul. I’m sorry. But it has nothing to do with forgiveness or any of that.”
“Oh?” Rovic stood up abruptly, as if the allotted time for his visit was over. His eyes seemed deliberately vacant, so as not to show feeling.
Jud looked up at him and said, “But I’d like you and the Workshop to have your name on the play as co-producers. All the work you’ve done up to now justifies that.”
Paul looked at him steadily, for what seemed to Jud to be a very long time. Then he nodded and said: “Good.” He extended a hand to Jud. For an instant Jud was terrified that he was going to say “thank you.” But they shook hands in silence.
When Paul had gone, Larry said, “I hope you weren’t too rough on him.”
“Not too.”
“You may need him.”
“Walkowitz used to call him my ‘ersatz’ father. Shouldn’t I behave like an ‘ersatz’ son?”
The Walkowitz part, he thought, that’s the Walkowitz part talking.
Larry put on his coat. He looked out at the night sky streaked with snow. “If this snow keeps up,” he said quietly, “you’ll open in a blizzard. Then you’ll be an orphan. You’re not in a good spot, Jud.”
“A poor spot,” Jud said, “but mine own.”
The apartment was silent. Jud sat trying to gather his thoughts so that he could begin to spend the rest of the evening in pro
ductive work. Well, it’s done with, he thought as he gathered his scripts and rehearsal notes together. How about this, Captain Brockhurst, my colleague. It may not be a very seaworthy boat, and the storm doesn’t look as if it’s going to let up—but I seem to be the captain now.
There was no satisfaction any more in conversing with his imaginary mentor. The times were not young and he was no green sailor with his belongings stowed in a duffel bag on his back. He had a family to take care of and the company of a play was his responsibility. He had an idea that no wise New England words his straight and sturdy Captain Brockhurst could have told him would possibly have helped him understand about Walkowitz or Marianne or Paul—the mysterious imbalance of loss and gain that was still to be measured in its final result.
He went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. The white floor and polished silver handles on the cupboards gleamed in the spacious, tiled emptiness. Sarah was crying. He went into the bedroom and picked her up. She smelt of soap and milk and cool linen. Her face was hot. He pressed his lips to her forehead. She didn’t seem to be feverish, but she was whimpering and shivering.
He rocked her in his arms and said: “Did you have a dream, sweet-face?”
“No,” she murmured, her eyes shut in the pleasure of being rocked. “I was walking with you and Mommy and Ginny and a man …”
“You had a dream, darling.”
“No,” she whispered patiently, “I was walking with—”
“S-s-h-h. … Do you know where you’re going tomorrow, with Ginny?”
“Uh-huh.” She was sleepy again. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Where?” he asked, lowering her to the bed.
“The Coast.”
“Where?”
“Coast,” Sarah said. “Mommy makes a movie.”
He was still grinning when he put out the light. Then he went into the study to prepare the next day’s work, and to wait for Marianne’s call to tell him she had landed safely. He pulled the comfortable chair in front of the table, which was covered with books, papers, empty cigarette packs, and the battered scale model of the set. He was determined, for the moment, not to think about how the actors would take the big change, about what the release to the papers should say, about the need for setting the opening date back to give him an extra week’s rehearsal.
His wife was thousands of miles away and miles up in the air; his daughter was asleep, perhaps dreaming of walking in a magic place called “the Coast”; his daughter’s godfather was gone behind his despairing eyes; and his arch-friend was buried beneath the snow on Long Island.
He felt drained. He wanted only to think about something abstract, like the work there remained to do with Emmet on the character of Avrum.
He had been working for more than an hour when the phone rang.
“Hello.” He expected to hear the Long Distance operator. Instead, an urbane voice carefully enunciated: “Mr. Kramer, this is Glenn Rolfe.”
“Yes …” Jud could afford to wait.
“Sorry to call so late, but I want you to know, well, it’s about that—what I was supposed to have said, what I did say, actually—except I think I was misinterpreted.”
“Why exactly did you call?”
“To give you the option, if you know what I mean?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“About the play. I mean, if you prefer not to have me working with you, I understand, and I’ll forget about the contract. There’s no need to get involved with lawyers.”
“You have a contract,” Jud said.
“Well—”
“We’re sticking to it and so will you.”
“You mean you don’t believe—”
“Don’t assume anything. Did Walkowitz quote you accurately?”
“By now it’s impossible to tell. Hendrix didn’t give an exact quote in the paper, and the tone he implies wasn’t really there. But I said what I said, and that’s why I called to get you off the hook.”
“Very thoughtful of you, but I’m used to living on the hook. I know you’re an anti-Semite and the chances are you know it, too. But still, it’s not going to be impossible to work together. I’m a gentleman. We will both live through it.”
“There’s not much I can say or do, is there?”
“No. You’re a good lighting man, Rolfe. But there are others around quite as good. I’m sure you’re sharp enough to know that. So it would have been easier just to sock you after you’d opened your mouth that fine afternoon—even easier just to hire somebody else.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know then. I have a better idea now, if you’d care to hear it.”
“Delighted,” Rolfe said stiffly.
“Well, it has something to do with seeing things as they really are—with both eyes open. To begin with, I’m a Jew and you’re an anti-Semite. There’s a secret and special kinship between us. I’m not paranoid, Rolfe—I know you’re no Nazi in black boots. You probably don’t even think about the whole business very often. You’re the mild, nonvirulent variety, sort of typical, which makes it all the more appropriate because I’m pretty much of an assimilated Jew myself. I rarely go to synagogue. I’m not kosher. For all my confusion about what Jewishness really is, the only ‘camps’ I could have known might be summer camps. I was getting too comfortable. I was forgetting that wherever there are Jews there are always anti-Semites—sometimes the gentleman kind, like yourself, sometimes the other kind. I was sleepwalking—as a friend of mine used to say. But with you around now, I don’t think I’m likely to forget what or who I am. I think we’re well-matched, Mr. Rolfe. You’ll keep reminding me that I’m a Jew, and that it’s a dangerous identity, but at least it’s mine. As for what I’ll do for you—I’ll have to leave that up to you.”
After a pause Rolfe said: “I think you may be as crazy as he was.”
“Maybe.”
Another pause, and Rolfe said: “Why did he kill himself?”
Had this question been, perhaps, the real reason for the call?
“I don’t think I want to discuss that with you, Rolfe. I’ll see you at rehearsal in the morning. Good night.”
Jud picked up a brown paper parcel closed with scotch tape that lay on the desk. He opened it and took out Walkowitz’s passport, journal, some old letters—two in French, one in Polish. Opening the journal, he turned to the last entry. It was not dated, and it consisted entirely of a four-line poem.
We die so many deaths …
How, then, to tell which one
Is Death; except it puts a stop
To all this dying.
Turning the pages back, he found the other entry he was looking for. It had been made years before, and was, unlike the later entries, dated:
THE JOURNAL OF CARL WALKOWITZ
May 19, 1947
Paris is suddenly full of color. I’ve never seen gray melt away so swiftly. It’s a rotten metaphor, but the city has become a state of mind. All through March and half of April it rained, and the free-lance assignments were pretty scarce—no girls (Il pleut dans mon cœur comme il pleut dans la ville). Now the city blazes with a cool sunshine; there are yellows, purples, a million blues. Antonescu has given me an assignment to write an article for Paris Soir—to say what I believe about the Nazis, the Germans, the camps, all of it, with no restrictions on subject matter or length. Phenomenal! I think I will forgive him for promising me a job and getting me to Paris before he confessed that it was only free-lance.
I must forgive him. Why? In one word—Josanne. I had given up finding someone like her. Such crazy vitality, such mercurial spirit. I call her ma jolie Brésilienne, meaning nut, of course. And she laughs. Except when she cries. It’s always a tossup. But she understands a great deal. She eased my mind about betraying my poor Ruth with her, just by her mentioning it when I could not. And she understands about the book I want to write. I read to her from the article for Paris Soir. She said right off that it should be pa
rt of the book—that it was the theme, the heart of it. She said, too, that already people change the subject, embarrassed, when one speaks of …
… Maidenek, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Auschwitz. Let them always be remembered as the places where man discovered unlimited freedom, and renounced it. Laboratories where fifteen million suffered and died as animals, outside of history. What was learned from the experiment? The lesson that must be learned again, in every generation. Everything is not possible—Man is not Divine. There is something of the Divine about him, but the qualification already negates it. Are there partial gods? Then let them be called men! If there are gods, then men are animals, by comparison. But if the possibility of the absolute does not exist? Enter the human.
Once the “truth” is known, what decent person would not enforce it, totally, for the good of all? I’m sure I would. How else could I satisfy that wild longing for justice, for a life that makes sense, that has solutions (in the precise sense of the word, the problem dissolves in the solution)? How else satisfy the longing to settle the tensions between a man whose heart has hyper-sensitive ears and a sky that keeps its silence—that hopeless desire for completion.
The Nazis had a true calling: to save what they believed most valuable and to destroy what was not. Idealists (save me from saviors). In Maidenek there was a Communist who tried to teach me about Communism; he was a fine man, but I could smell the Messiah.
The urge to save is damnable and dangerous, and offers great satisfaction. It springs from a monstrous, unconscious egotism. The desire to help, within limits, is blessed, but less satisfying. Only, one must retain the senses: touch, hearing. Skeletons, moans, and the smell of certain smoke, these warn against the truth that saves.
That is why each generation, each man, must waken, eat, love, sleep as if he were the first one to do so, must learn again what he already knows. That, good or bad, treacherous or loving or cruel, all men suffer and die. Such a fellowship cannot be treated lightly.
Until a God shows his face, sounds his voice, and we all become children under one Father, obedient to His truth, till then we are fatherless brothers who know, now, what Cain did not know when he raised his hand against Abel; what, afterwards, must have made him stand, mute, before he ran to hide in fear and shame. The knowledge that men have one reason to love each other: that is because they die.