It had been strange enough bringing the boy inside his office; Cohan had let his own measured affability play in neat counterpoint to the comedy of this Negro standing here: He imagined Jesler was owed that much. But having the boy speak … that would have been taking things too far.
Raymond knew to keep his mouth shut.
Jesler said, “I’m sure you’re feeling just as comfortable with your boys up the coast. It’s always good for men in our position to know we’ve got everything under control.”
Cohan shifted in his chair. Jesler thought he might have seen the colonel tighten the grip on his saber, and Cohan said, “What is it you want, Abe?”
“The money, Harry. The money’s good where it is. All those extras. They’ve topped out, I think. We’ve hit a good limit. So I’ve got no trouble with that. You just need to make sure your boys understand. That they won’t be asking for any more.”
“My boys know what a schedule is, Abe. Paying on time no matter what you think you owe. We’re clear on that? When the money’s due? How much it is? Because as long as that’s been cleaned up, I think we’re fine. And sure — we can leave the money where it is. For now.”
“Good.”
“Just so you know — for the future — my boys work well enough without any advice from Atlanta. Hirsch doesn’t need to make any more telephone calls.”
“That was a mistake.”
“Yes, Abe, it was. He wants to keep you off the radar up north, that’s fine. Smart. But what goes on in this port, that’s none of his concern. And any of his friends who’d want to poke their noses in here, check up to make sure that good old Abe Jesler is being treated kindly, well … that’s not something he should worry himself with. We understand? There’ve been mistakes on both sides. I’ll give you that. We can all learn to keep our enthusiasms in check from now on. As you say, growing pains, water under the bridge.”
“Good. I just wanted you to know that that holds true on our side as well.”
Cohan stared for a moment before snorting a quiet laugh. “Your side?” he said derisively. “What in the hell are you talking about, Abe?” Even the practiced friendliness now misted into the heat. “Your side is you and this crippled boy and Hirsch in Atlanta, doing his jobs with the unions, and everything’s fine. Don’t talk to me about sides. You got something smart going now. Good for you. But don’t drag a nigger into my office and tell me how we’ve got an understanding when the only thing you need to understand is how to pay what you owe on time otherwise certain paperwork won’t be going just to the Italians. We clear? If it makes you feel better to bring your boy, you keep doing it, but that doesn’t put you in any other place than where you are. The reason we’re square is because that’s the best way to play this. How you play it on your end … that’s up to you.” He extended his hand. “Take it, Abe. Take it so we can end today on a cordial note.”
Jesler hesitated before shaking Cohan’s hand. Then he stood, and had his ears not been ringing, he might have heard the distant sound of the clack, clack, clack like nails being hammered into a coffin.
Hours later Jesler found himself alone by the river, across from the vacant tract where he and Pearl had had their first home. He couldn’t remember the last time he had driven this far down. The place was quiet except for the sound of moving water somewhere off in the distance.
He thought how it was almost ten years since they had torn it all down, far longer since he had seen it. Not that there was a purpose in coming tonight. Why would there be? He had driven; that was all. It was a place not worth his nostalgia — memories marked by the promise of things to come, naïve things that said, once he was far from here, the world would show itself in a fuller, warmer light and reward him for having made the climb out. Yet here it was, always this close no matter how far behind him he thought it might be. But the climb, the climb … wasn’t that worth something, and he chided himself for the self-pity that had tramped after him tonight like a stray dog.
He kept his lights on as he stepped from the car. Higher up the rise, the first of the new shacks showed flickers of kerosene lamps — doors and windows left open, where families sat waiting until it was cool enough to sleep. His lights led him down toward the river and he followed the tapering beams, then beyond their reach into true darkness. The grass grew higher here and his shoes began to sink deeper into the mud. The feeling was cool on his feet, and he thought he might take off his shoes, but he was so enjoying the ease of it that he kept moving, the grass now at his palms as he edged slowly forward.
He might have walked farther still, down the bank itself — for he could hear the water now — if not for a quiet “Mr. Jesler” that stopped him. The voice was less startling than the sound of his own name and he turned to see the broad outline of Raymond’s shoulders and narrow frame standing in front of the car lights. Raymond’s truck was parked behind, its beams trailing up the incline.
Jesler brought his hand up to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness and he waited for Raymond to speak, but the boy just stood there.
“Raymond,” Jesler said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Raymond said nothing.
“Son, what are you doing here?”
“You okay, Mr. Jesler?”
Jesler heard the genuine concern.
“Raymond —”
“You been driving a lot tonight, Mr. Jesler.”
Only then did Jesler realize how long it had been. Hours, he thought. It had been hours.
Raymond said, “Things didn’t seem right after Mr. Cohan so I thought maybe I’d drive with you. Make sure.”
“You’ve been —”
“Yes, suh.”
Jesler brought his hand down. How much smaller self-pity felt when set against this. He said, “I’m fine, Raymond.”
“I can see that.”
Jesler glanced over at the water, then back at Raymond. “I grew up in here. That’s all. Just back there.”
“Yes, suh, I know.”
“I just thought … I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just good to see it.”
“Remind yourself.”
“Yes … I suppose that’s right.” He started to move but felt his sodden shoes deep in the mud, firm and rooted. It took some effort to slowly bring them out.
“You stayed behind me in your truck that whole time?” Jesler said. “That’s … that’s something.” Jesler joined him at the car. He pulled off his shoes and tossed them into the back. “I’ll be good from here.”
Raymond stood with him for a few moments longer, deciding whether that was true. He nodded. “Okay,” he said and turned to head for the truck.
Jesler watched him go — the thick hand on the wheel, the grinding of the gears, the tires hitching on the rocks and mud — and, for the first time, felt that here was a memory worth taking.
11
GOLDAH TOOK a shirt and tie from the closet and laid them on the bed atop his open suit. His shoes waited on the floor, just below the pant legs, and it struck him how the whole thing looked like a body on the verge of standing, except somehow all the life had been pressed out of it. His other suit remained where he had taken it off, still damp from the rain and curling at the collar. He doubted the jacket was even salvageable.
Two days ago he’d been handed a reprieve of sorts. Pearl had telephoned to say that Miss Posner was still not suitably acclimated to receive guests of any kind, and Goldah was happy enough to be lumped in with the rest. Who they might be — Fannie and Selma, the ever-inquisitive Mrs. Jelinek — was pure speculation, but that was less a concern than what Malke might actually be acclimating herself to: the heat, her medication, Pearl’s feelings of duplicity and vindication at every turn. Goldah wondered if he might just send the suit along by itself and let it suffer through the joys of a first meeting.
He reminded himself that this kind of self-mocking wasn’t cruel or frivolous: The weight of Malke’s arrival lay upon him with just as much desperation and ambiguity as eve
ryone would have imagined. How else could it be? And who better than he to work through the eternal calculations of what it was to be a person then and a person now — what was lost, what was gained, so much more believing then, so much more resilient now.
He tucked the shirt into his pants and tied his tie. He was missing Eva.
She had been beside him in bed when the call from Pearl had come through, too familiar with his single-word responses to read anything into them. When he told her they had been given a few extra days, she — saying how glad she was for their night together, truly glad — told him it would be better if she were to go. There would be too much time now to think about it, too great a chance to feel as if they were betraying something else, at least that was how she was going to feel, and so even though she would have given anything to stay here with him … no, she just couldn’t. He told her then that he had never been with a woman before and she smiled gently and placed a hand on his cheek. Then, as if afraid to look at him again, she had taken hold of her rain jacket and hat and, at the door, said, “Tell her she looks well. Do that, no matter what.”
“She won’t believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter. And tell her how lucky you are to be seeing her.”
“Why are you saying these things?”
“Because you are lucky. After everything, to have someone who understands it. None of us will ever be that for you.” He said nothing. “She’ll want to know you share that.”
Now, sitting in the Jeslers’ front parlor, Goldah thought the flowers in his hands a foolish gesture. How was it that a man could set himself on display in order to court his own past? Yet here he was, if in fact the past beyond that door was his: All the doubts and uncertainties — Hilliard, the Lubecks, his own terrible wishing it not so — would come to a head. He would sit with her and they would talk and he would know. It was as simple as that.
He heard them on the steps and he stood. Jesler was the first through, then Pearl, solemn and joyful as only she could manage in this contrived rite of presentation. Jesler had been directed where to stand, his nod of deep appreciation for the moment hesitant but well performed. He had done all he could at the front door to prepare Goldah for the gravitas to come. He had even admitted he was feeling this might be a bit too much for the girl — his own idea had been to send Ike up to her room by himself — but Pearl had said that wouldn’t be fitting. Fair enough. Jesler mentioned he liked the flowers.
Pearl now took her place by her husband, and Goldah half expected to hear a few strains of Mendelssohn trumpeting through the doorway, but that would have required walking in time and he wasn’t sure any of them could have worked that up with sufficient aplomb. For some reason he held the flowers a bit higher on his chest and watched as the woman calling herself Malke Posner stepped into the room.
“Well,” Pearl said with surprising finality, just as if they had spent a long afternoon together, “Abe and I will let you have all the time you need. You must have so much to talk about.” And with that she quickly motioned Jesler out — this, too, had been rehearsed — and Goldah found himself utterly alone with her.
Standing in the silence, he noticed how familiar her face was, not for anything specific but for the sallow skin and the tight gaze, those shared features from the DP camps and beyond. He recalled how women had always been so much quicker to reclaim themselves — a bit of lipstick or a pin in the hair — whatever might delineate one sex from the other. Goldah had always thought that, for them, to be human again wasn’t enough: It was the feminine that brought them back. Whoever this might be — and it could very well have been her — Goldah noticed only the gentle shading on the cheeks and the smell of lilac perfume on her hair. The nose, the eyes, the chin — these were shadowy aspects of a woman he had known long ago and who perhaps was once again standing in front of him.
She said in German, “These people are absurd,” and with that Goldah knew instantly this was his Malke. “Do you see how ridiculously they have me dressed? And the hair? I look like some sort of doll.”
Goldah was still holding the flowers, absurd all on his own. He said, “You look well.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become ridiculous as well?” Her lips and eyes curled unevenly into a smile. Remarkably he saw a playfulness behind them. “I think they need me to be pathetic, Yitzi, someone to be pitied. I haven’t helped things much, I know, but let’s sit down. I still get tired so easily.” They sat, and she said, “I suppose we could embrace but that was never the way with us.”
No, he thought. It wasn’t. He laid the bouquet on the table and saw how easily they were setting everything aside.
“It’s a palsy — my face. The doctors say it will pass but it’s still here. I’m sorry.”
“Well.” He managed to sound hopeful. “Then I’m sure it will pass.”
“Yes. No doubt you’re right. And you’re looking —” Her smile returned. “I was going to say ‘well’ but then I’ve just told you how silly that sounds. Although you do look it.”
“Perhaps.”
“More than perhaps, Yitzi.”
“And you’re feeling all right now?”
It was a cruel thing to mention so quickly; she was at her best when not lingering on things, and yet she was playing this out with such courage. Her stamina was something he had always admired.
“Ah, you mean my episode,” she said. “Yes, how wonderful to arrive with that and then have all the hysteria afterward. No — I’m being unfair. They were very caring. Probably for the best to take a few days. They’ve told you about my memory, of course, but it wasn’t that. You just looked … in all those photographs … you looked so comfortable, happy … in this place. It was a long time since I’d seen that. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever known that person. I have trouble now, keeping things … well, you know it was never perfect beforehand … Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course.”
“It turns out you were right. I should have taken more interest in English. I’m just terrible and it only makes things worse.”
It struck Goldah how effortlessly the great question had been resolved: Here was Malke. All that was left to them was the filling of a future. He said, “Well, you’ll have plenty of time now to get better at it.”
“They think a great deal of you,” she said. “And I saw your piece in the newspaper. I couldn’t follow most of it but they say it was just wonderful. A lot of people are talking about it. How nice for you to have that again.”
“Yes,” he said absently. “You should know … that first night in the Lager. I didn’t know. I thought you had been —”
“Yes,” she said with a sudden hollowness. “They told me. I’m sorry. That must have been very hard for you to live with.” Her eyes wandered; then, with greater strength, “Let’s not talk about that now. Would that be all right?”
“Of course.”
“After all, it would be so hard for you to understand.”
And there it was, he thought. This morning he had imagined he would know everything she had lived through. How foolish of him. He had forgotten the one truth of the Lager: that nothing is ever shared. Hunger and cold, yes, but the rest … those horrors lived inside the mind in pure isolation.
“No, you’re quite right,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”
If he had anticipated this first encounter as their chance to ease into a distant familiarity — an hour or so sitting in quiet conversation, perhaps a walk before both agreed they needed to rest — then Goldah had forgotten how Pearl oriented herself to the unknown. The afternoon progressed much like the opening ceremony: Half an hour in, Malke was presented to the Fleischmanns and the Kerns with all the requisite pomp and circumstance — words of appreciation for her hair and dress, small gifts to make her feel more welcome, and a single, too-eager comment on how handsome the young couple looked together. Whatever jocularity Pearl had been hoping for quickly ground down to an awkward pleasantness as Goldah was forced to play the
role of translator so as to make sure everything Herb was saying hit its mark: “She understands what a hamburger is, doesn’t she? That’s the joke. A hamburger on a roll? No — never mind. If it’s not making sense, I just thought it was amusing. Does she like the pictures, music?”
Pearl’s choice for dinner was Chinese, the Canton, where they spent a great deal of time making sure something called an egg roll was prepared without shrimp. Mr. Wu, the owner, played a lively Chinese fiddle while Joe took the lead and cracked one of the egg rolls open, moving his finger gingerly through its innards and pronouncing it “ninety-five percent kosher” before taking a healthy bite. “Batel b’shishim,” he said. It was the first untranslated phrase that Malke fully understood.
“They know the Hebrew,” she said quietly to Goldah, “but they use it so loosely — like a convenience. It all seems just for show.”
Joe asked what she had said and Goldah explained how she was finding everything so exotic and wonderful. Nothing like this in Prague, he said, and Joe told him how he had once tried his hand at a bamboo flute that Wu kept somewhere around the place but that the whole thing had ended in disaster. Joe laughed and finished off the last of the egg rolls while Goldah sipped cautiously at his own wonton soup.
The crowning event came with dancing at the Sapphire Room downtown, where an eight-piece orchestra led by a guitarist named Gordon Gould — Gould had recently played with Frankie Carle and Shep Fields, Herb explained, up in New York and Atlanta — swung and waltzed and two-stepped beneath a canopy of plaster palm fronds and dim light. Malke smiled and, through Goldah, said she was too tired to take to the floor but was so happy to be watching everyone else enjoying themselves. Goldah remained by her side.
“So this is how it will be from now on,” she said. “The war was nothing but this for them, night after night, and now they’ll be the ones to show the world what a Jew is. I wonder what Lotte and Franz would have said about that.”
Among the Living Page 17