Why did you say I admired him who allowed you. Then you don’t? I admire no one. Not even me? You I love. What do you care if I said you admired him it will make him read your material (material?) I mean what you’ve written more sympathetically. I don’t need sympathy I need truth. Truth is different when told with sympathy. But what kind of a writer is he? What sort of stuff does he write? Read it yourself. I don’t have time for literature I’ll read what bodes time has been kind to when I retire but what does he write about what subjects describe one book. Don’t be absurd you can’t describe books like his. That’s what must make him so important.
Important. Another code word.
I knock on the door and open it softly. A small room with a big blond baby girl on dirty linen gnawing on a doll behind crib bars. I push open the next door. An old snake in a shabby black turtleneck shorter than I imagined sturdier than I imagined older than I imagined leaning over some page proofs with a tall young man. A huge dilapidated light-colored armchair ravaged like an old woman a clutter of pipes a large desk a poorly lit wood-paneled room with books on the windowsill beyond them the peaks of mountains a lambskin rug a record soundlessly spinning a deep un-Israeli room full of dark wooden figurines and sharp male tension.
“Excuse me ... your wife said I should come in ... I don’t know if you remembered ... my husband ... at ten o’clock ... my name is Dina Kaminka...”
Coffee dregs in tall glasses ashtrays full of burnt tobacco an airless room the smell of literature in action. His eyes beam at me brightly the young man glowers. I’ll let them take in (what else do I have to show?) my beauty.
“My wife? Well, never mind. Is it ten o’clock already? You’re right, we do have an appointment. Come in, sit down ... I’ll be with you right away...” I make a beeline for the tumbledown chair and flop right into it sinking all the way to the floor. Reliably precise-looking in his worn corduroy pants he clears papers and the coffee glasses off his desk and tells the young man with the proofs to step out it won’t take long he whispers sympathetically regarding my flaming face with its strained smile trapped in this armchair still sinking lower I cross my legs and bare the cause of so much pain. Not mine.
He remains standing there contemplating me genially objectively seeking to cope with what the morning has unexpectedly turned up.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He closes the door behind the tall young man who has left without a word or glance he puts on his glasses and begins going through drawers and moving piles of paper until at last he finds a yellowish sheaf and starts to read silently. He turns the pages beaming he sits down and takes off his glasses.
“You know, your poems made a great impression on me.”
Can it be? The miracle. And so painlessly.
“Honestly?” I sink soundlessly ecstatically deeper into the chair.
“Where have you been until now? Your poem Pleasantly My Body is absolutely marvelous.”
“Which poem?”
“Pleasantly My Body ...” He leans ceremoniously toward me to read with me from the yellowish manuscript that’s covered with a strange curvy disturbed scrawl. He’s mixed me up he’s thinking of someone else.
Pleasantly My Body?
“Amid all the junk that comes my way at last I find a new sound, the prospect of a new linguistic key.”
In a crumbling yet courageous voice:
“One minute, I think you’re mistaken ... those pages aren’t mine ... Dina Kaminka ... you’re mixing me up ... my husband gave you a notebook with a floral design...”
He’s stunned. Turns red. He drops the manuscript smiles (what’s so funny?) grabs hold of his head and slaps it lightly gets up sits down gets up bends over mumbling just a minute excuse me that’s right how could I have confused you. He kneels to pull out a bottom drawer talking to himself just a minute everything’s all jumbled up here they’ve turned this room into an editorial office yes Dina Kaminka of course your husband Asa’s in the history department of course I remember...
“You didn’t get around to reading it ... it doesn’t matter ...” With a sudden feeling of relief I seek to extract myself from the jellylike armchair and vanish.
“No, just one moment. I did read it. I’m sure I did ...” He rummages feverishly through some papers. “There was a story there, wasn’t there? About a young woman ... just one minute ... it takes place in a shop on a winter day ... one minute ...”
One minute for what? Some other woman has already found a new linguistic key amid all the junk that’s being written. She can look forward to the joyous prospect of hearing it from you perhaps she’s already coming up the stairs. But behold he has my notebook in his hands triumphantly he shows it to me. My first mistake was to copy everything out into a high-school notebook. I should have written on yellow disturbed paper yea to take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate and they shall spread the cloth...
Silence.
He clutches the notebook predatorily racing through it quickly filming digesting with supreme concentration he’s not embarrassed to read it now in front of me. At last he shuts it puts it down stands up and smiles at me kindly.
“Which will it be, Turkish or instant? Or perhaps you’d like something cold?”
“No, thank you. I really don’t want anything.”
“Turkish or instant?” he persists, still smiling his patronizing smile. “I wanted to make some for myself anyway.”
“No, thank you, really ...”
He steps up to me and takes the liberty of laying a warm hand on my shoulder.
“You’re angry at me. But I really did read it ... it was just one of those things. If you don’t have coffee with me, I’ll feel hurt. Turkish or instant?”
“Turkish.”
He energetically loads the glasses and the remains of some crackers on a tray lays my notebook on top of them and leaves the room.
I rise from the bottomless depths of the armchair and loiter by the row of books drawn to the yellow manuscript left on the desk with its strong curvy scrawl.
Death can fall from the dark
Like a poem—
But a poem was all that it was.
Laughter from the kitchen. I return to the books unable to read even their titles my eyes on the watery light swirling over the mountains.
The door opens and he carries in a tray with coffee cups cookies and my notebook. The stage is set he glances hesitantly toward me at the other end of the room I’m still rooted to my place by the window have a seat he smiles and I float to another chair (enough of that mortifying armchair) and sit down by the steaming cup while he offers me sugar. He lays my notebook on his knees picks up his cup and drinks from it vigorously.
“My first question is just out of curiosity. Are you religious? Do you come from a religious background?”
“I went to religious schools.”
“High school too?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
He’s tickled pink with himself.
“It’s something one senses in your language, your imagery, your values, your way of dealing with things, of approving or disapproving. It’s something one can smell. It’s a new phenomenon, this writing of literature by religious Jews. There’s already a whole school of you.”
He’s classed me with a whole school, and a religious one yet. He’s got the world all figured out.
“But I’m not so observant anymore...”
“That doesn’t matter. These things run too deep to be easily cast off. It’s a whole outlook.”
“Is that good or bad?” I inquire submissively trying to grasp the steaming-hot cup.
“On the whole, it’s a welcome new source. Not that I myself can subscribe ... on the contrary ... but it’s a new climate for literature, a new possibility. How old are you? Please, drink your coffee, why aren’t you drinking?”
He was asked for a literary
opinion and he’s already made himself my guardian he thinks he can ask what he wants he does have a technique though for dealing with young scribblers.
“I’m twenty-two ”
“Are you a student?”
“I finished a year ago.”
“In what field?”
“Social work.”
“Not literature?”
“No.”
“That’s good. But how did you manage to finish so quickly?”
“I was exempted from the army.” I look straight at him waiting for the scornful smile of the injured solid citizen. He says nothing suddenly blushing at a loss.
“But drink something. It will get cold. Have a cookie.”
“Thank you.” I lift the cup noticing with revulsion the lip prints on the rim I quickly slurp a drop of bitter Turkish coffee and put it down again.
“Do you have any children?”
“What? No, not yet.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Yes. In the municipal department of social work.”
Why all these questions? Is he playing for time or gathering material for a diagnosis?
“How long have you been writing?”
“For quite some time. I began in the eighth grade. I was sick for a few months ... some kind of rheumatic fever ... that’s why I didn’t serve in the army. It wasn’t on religious grounds.” (Take that, you varmint!) “I was bedridden for a long while, and it was then that I started to write. To this day when I want to concentrate on writing I get into bed and write on the pillows.”
I’m talking too much.
“Into bed?” He laughs amazedly warmly excitedly leaning toward me.
“To tell you the truth” (just lay it on me gently please) “your story is weak, still juvenile. It gets too involved for no good reason in the middle and lets itself off too easily in the end. Basically, the poems are better. This one here... For You Raised Me Like a Thistle ...it really sings, it even deserves to be published. At any rate, it’s no worse than a lot of poetry that does get published these days. So if you’ve come to ask me which to devote yourself to, prose or poetry” (I didn’t) “I should obviously say to you: poetry. And yet still ... I can’t help thinking ... that you shouldn’t stop writing fiction either. There are definitely some good passages in this story, not all that many, but a few. The descriptive ones in particular. What’s the one that I’m thinking of ... ah yes, in a grocery store, isn’t it? An old-fashioned sort of grocery. Something in your description of it struck me.” (I shut my eyes.) “The shelves, the dim bread compartment. There was a wonderful, humorous bit about a hunk of white goat cheese—you captured the absurd shape of it perfectly, you used a precise image there, I can’t remember it, but I recall having marked it.” He rapidly leafs through the notebook. “Well, never mind...”
“A pale brain.”
“That’s it. With that married old grocer couple. Good, concrete prose, even funny ... it’s too bad, though, that your heroine moves in such a vague, undefined vacuum ... that you saddle her with all those emotional clichés...’’
Earnestly:
“I hope you’re not upset with me for telling you what I think. It’s only my opinion, of course, and it would be less than honest of me to conceal it behind empty compliments ...”
“That’s quite all right.”
He reaches out to hand me the open notebook.
“It’s as though you were afraid to touch on the real problem ... if there is one, that is, and of course I know nothing about you ... but I did feel that there was one, especially in that comic sketch in the dark grocery. I felt some sort of bitterness there. You have to get more deeply into it, to open it up. Even in your poems ...”
“In my poems too?” I sound crushed.
“Yes. In your poems too.” Suddenly he’s annoyed. “Wherever an emotion is called for you retreat into scenery, into some neutral description of nature. All alone all alone O vain seeker bent over that small body frail clouds of morning in the window. When someone is bending over the body of a dead child...’’
“A dead child?”
“Dead or sick, it doesn’t matter. That small body demands a response, not frail clouds of morning in the window. That’s an evasion, an aesthetic indulgence. You can’t write without the willingness to expose yourself, and even then nothing is ever certain. But without it you’re wasting time and paper. And in general, you overwork the word ’frail.’ I counted it five times on the first page alone.’’
Hail frail snake.
He reads aloud. He reads well. A seasoned professional. He’s gotten the feel of it right off even if he did probably read it for the first time in the kitchen between the kettle and the coffee cups.
Silence.
“Is it important to you?”
“What?”
“Writing.’’
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then give it all you have, please. Otherwise...” His voice dies softly away his glance caresses my legs. A baby bursts out crying in the hallway there’s a scraping of chairs. Suddenly I have a bad taste in my mouth. All in all a negative opinion.
“You say that my story isn’t developed, but in your own fiction it
He bristles. “What about my fiction?”
“Never mind...” I don’t pursue it. I get up to go the baby is still screaming. His head is bowed with a wise understanding smile. I reach out again for the notebook.
“I think someone is calling you.”
But he’s distracted still deep in his chair he won’t let go of the notebook he leafs through it again quickly loath to part with it.
“First things, objects, physical realities, only afterwards ideas and symbols derived from them. That’s literature. The full immediacy of the moment as it happens to you or others, the ability to empathize rather than abstract, to be down-to-earth ... to keep closing the gap between life and the written word ...”
I smile my hand still out to take my story. The baby is having a tantrum I hear the young man’s steps utensils are falling. He rises slowly still holding on to the notebook. Now that we stand facing each other I can see that he’s actually shorter than I am not that that keeps him from stalling still more.
“Give my regards to Asa. When he first approached me at the university I didn’t realize who he was. I remember him as a small boy. His father, old man Kaminka, was my teacher in high school.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“He was a sharp fellow. An odd person, though. And one who got on your nerves. Still, he did make me think. What’s with him? Is he still alive?”
“Of course. He’s been in America the last few years.”
“Kaminka? What is he doing there?”
“Teaching at some half-Jewish college. I’ve actually never met him. He was already there when we were married.”
“And he didn’t come back for your wedding?”
“No.”
“That sounds just like him. An odd fellow. Complicated. He made life tough for us. You never met him?”
“No. But he’s here now on a visit. In fact he’s due in Jerusalem today.”
“Is his wife still alive? I believe she was ill or something.”
“Yes. There was something.”
“A strange man. Talented but wasted. There were times when he drove us up the wall.”
(And you? Odd, strange—three times on the same page.)
“Give him my best. He’ll remember me if he wants to. Our relationship was never very good. And if you’d ever like me to read other things of yours, I’ll be glad to. You don’t have to ask me through Asa.”
I catch a whiff of his tobacco-smelling breath. He ushers me outside his hand on my shoulder he gives me my notebook back.
“That poem you said deserved to be published ... whom shall I send it to? Do you think that you might ... that is, perhaps you ... might give it to someone...”
He steps back his hand slips from my shoulder. But I give him
a soft look mustering all my beauty.
“You already want to be published?”
“Just if I deserve to be ... if you think ...” The page is tom from the notebook and given to him. He takes it reluctantly then hands it back and asks me to write my address on it. We are in the hallway by the kitchen door the tall young man is standing with the baby in his arms. Her face is wet with tears she emits a muffled gasp reaching out for him but he ignores her and continues seeing me out my page of poetry crumpling in his hands.
A big sharp-eyed woman opens the door with a key she enters quickly and snatches the baby at once. Through an open door at the rear of the house two youngsters are blowing up a ball. I tiptoe back out to the madding crowd unable to restrain myself any longer.
“Excuse me for asking, but how many children do you have?”
He turns around quickly.
“Two. Why?”
“Nothing. I just wondered.”
A slight bespectacled mouse of a girl ascends the stairs. Perhaps it’s she who has found the new linguistic key. My provisional mark: an honorable failure with hope for the future. My best effort so far is that hunk of white cheese the dimness of the bread shelf that’s where I’m most at home. Yet I did feel the warmth of the truth when I wrote it. To look hard not to fear self-exposure to dig deeper into the problem if it’s there. Farewell frail clouds. He’s right. Though what will I do without “frail” that magic word that helps in hard transitions? An old snake on a rock an old errant snake? I must find a substitute.
Meanwhile the hunk of cheese has come to life out of the pages of my story. Here’s my father slicing it with a long knife his large handsome face so weary tall blond a skullcap pushed back on his head. Objects give me of yourselves come you breads you biscuits you smoked fishes you jars of jam you yoghurt containers come smells I need your inspiration. Joking with the fat voracious short-tempered lady customers struggling with stained little chits of bills I slip silently by him to the storeroom in the back where amid beer crates oil bottles and bags of powdered detergent mother bends in the gloom with her glasses on writing new prices on items.
A Late Divorce Page 9