I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  “Are you Andy Smith?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But you look just like him.”

  I could see Harris giving me all kinds of signals that I didn’t understand.

  The girls kept saying how much I looked like Andy Smith and I kept telling them that unfortunately I wasn’t.

  They drove off laughing.

  Harris was angry. “Couldn’t you see what they wanted? They wanted to pick us up. You must be an idiot. We could have slept the night with them.”

  Bell was laughing at all this.

  We slept the night at the Y and over breakfast Bell suggested that we go to the British consul in Minneapolis and tell him who we are and that we have no money and see if he would lend us some to get back to the station. He didn’t lend us money but he gave us bus tickets to Winnipeg and showed us, proudly, aerial photographs taken of the Mohne and Eder dams, in the Ruhr, after they were breached by Lancasters.

  Two months later we graduated from Winnipeg as pilot officers. And separated when we were posted overseas to different parts of England and Scotland.

  I don’t know what happened to Harris. But some time in the spring of 1945, Bell turned up on the same squadron that I had not long joined. The war in Europe was nearly over and the trips into Germany were getting longer. We were given pills to take with us to keep us awake. While over the target there was more danger of bumping into another Lancaster than of being shot down.

  When I came into the crowded briefing room I saw, by the stretched red ribbon on the flat map of Europe, that it was going to be another long trip.

  Briefing had started. The intelligence officer was in front telling us why it was necessary to go and bomb the railway yards just outside Leipzig . . . when I saw Bell stand up, by one of the small wooden tables, about fifteen feet away.

  The intelligence officer also saw him.

  He stopped what he was saying and said to Bell, “Have you a question?”

  And Bell quietly said,

  “I want to kill Hitler.”

  I could see he was tense. And he began to tremble as he repeated, “I want to kill Hitler. I want to kill Hitler . . .”

  Then he began to shout it out.

  Two service police, standing by the wall, quickly came over and forcefully bundled him out of the room.

  We were all relieved when the trip to Leipzig was cancelled.

  After that Bell disappeared from the station.

  I heard he was shipped off to Florida. And a joke was going around the mess that he was spending his days lying on a Florida beach recuperating. While gossip had it that it was because of his wife—she was having a baby. Then I was told he was discharged LMF. And I heard nothing more—until this phone call to the television station.

  I did hear Bruce Grace. I was flying, as a passenger, to England. And somewhere over the Atlantic, in the dark, I plugged the headphones into the armrest. And, on one of the channels, he was singing how marvellous it was to wake up in the morning and to see the start of a new day.

  I saw Lydia more recently. When I returned to Toronto I went to see a film in Cumberland Street, not far from where the talk show took place. She was playing the part of a middle-aged woman who has cancer. But, according to the film, she didn’t know it. Her husband was taking her on a trip across the country . . . seeing relatives, friends, and going to different places. There was one scene . . . they had come to a deserted beach in California. And Lydia, on an impulse, took off her shoes and stockings and ran along the white-yellow sand to the tideline. Then she began to do a slow circular dance . . . her hands above her head . . . her head tilted up. She looked like a young girl just enjoying being alive.

  CONTINUITY

  I

  When I was eleven my parents arranged for me to spend the summer holidays on a farm a few miles out of Ottawa. I was a city kid. But that summer I learned how to smoke by packing the dry hairs from the end of a cob of corn into a clay pipe. I was taught how to pitch horseshoes at a steel stake driven in the ground. I rode a farm horse bareback and was shown how to lasso a fence post. On hot dusty days I drank cold water out of a tin ladle like the film cowboys (Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson) that I saw in the Français. And, at night, I sat on the wooden veranda and listened to the cowboy records being played inside: “I Have No Use for the Women”; “Strawberry Roan.”

  The farm is no longer there—it is part of Uplands Airport. But when I was growing up in Ottawa it was owned and farmed by Mr. Marcovitch and his four sons. They grew sweet corn in the summer. And I helped by going beside the horse and the high cart (with the two wooden wheels) pulling the ripe cobs from the stalks, throwing them into the cart and later counting them into sacks for the Ottawa market.

  Mr. Marcovitch—a short lean man with a black moustache and reddish face—had come to Ottawa from Europe, as had most of the small Jewish community. He had been farming here for almost twenty years. There were a few other farms around. Poitvin was the nearest. But the territory hadn’t been farmed very long. The cemetery was a small green field with three headstones.

  I didn’t forget that summer. Because next year when I decided to run away from home, one Saturday morning, I hitchhiked to Marcovitch’s farm. They let me stay the weekend. Then talked me into going back.

  Thirteen years later I got further away when I sailed for England with the manuscript of a first novel in a black Gladstone bag. It was 1949. And because of the wartime interest in reading it was still comparatively easy to find a publisher. When the novel was accepted I lived a kind of bohemian life with other hopefuls. We were mostly in our twenties, with little money. But we thought of ourselves as writers and painters.

  When the novel came out it earned me fifty pounds. And as I had got married I took a job—head of the English department—at a boys’ grammar school in North Devon. And again lived on a farm.

  Unlike Marcovitch’s farm, this one had red soil, lush vegetation, and thick hedgerows. It was also quite isolated. Just two farmhouses not too far apart. There were the Sweets—we rented the house from them. And further down were the Whites—he was something like Governor of Gibraltar or Malta or Cyprus before the last war. He brought us holly at Christmas from their trees. The postman came from Barnstaple. He came, once a day, on an old bicycle, when he picked up our letters and put them inside his cap. He couldn’t pronounce our name and called my wife “Mrs. Leaving.” Later, I would see him in Barnstaple on a corner selling newspapers. If the papers were not being bought fast enough he would make up headlines: “Nude Girl in Street,” he shouted. “Girl in the Nude—”

  At breakfast I would watch cows go by the front door on their way to the fields. And there were always ducks around. And more by the small river. And lots of daffodils that my wife used to pick. And guinea fowls in the field across the road between the apple trees. And there were horses and rabbits and foxes. And badger hunts. And ferreting on Saturdays. It was all very green and luxurious and relaxed. Rolling hills everywhere.

  At Christmas the boys in the class brought butter, eggs, chickens, for the masters. And I was invited to their homes. The large hams hanging from the ceiling, the highly polished saddles. They showed me the work they had to do on the farm. School, I realized, was for them only a small part of their lives.

  Before the year was up the headmaster (he also had a farm) asked me to stay on. But I was restless, and I wanted to write, not teach.

  When we were leaving my wife said,

  “I’m glad we are going. Everything here is so rich—it makes you feel poor.”

  We left Devon. And for a while moved around. In London. In Brighton. Before coming to rest in this seaside town in Cornwall. But I haven’t forgotten that time in the country. Living by the sea with all this grey stone (and the colourful sunrises and sunsets over the bay, the fine sand beaches, the gulls) I find I miss trees, green fields
, and things growing.

  Then this summer.

  The front doorbell rang. And our eldest daughter, now twenty, called out, “Dad, there is someone at the door who says you taught him English.”

  I came down and saw this tall man in a white shirt. He was smiling. He had rosy cheeks with black straight hair thinning on the top.

  “Yes,” he said after hesitating a bit and still smiling. “Yes.”

  “Hello,” I said shaking his hand and not knowing who he was.

  “I’m John Barrett,” he said. “You taught me in 4A. I’m here on holiday. I was here last year. I tried to see you but you were away.”

  “John Barrett,” I said.

  “You taught us The Mayor of Casterbridge.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I don’t read much,” he said. “But I have read that book four times since.”

  I introduced my wife.

  We sat in the front room. My wife brought in coffee. He told us that he was farming. That he had five hundred cows, eight hundred sheep, and two trout streams. That he sang in the local choir. That he played cricket for the local team. And rugby for the local club. That he hadn’t been away from home for the first thirteen years of working on the farm. “I didn’t sleep one night away from my bed.” And that he hadn’t forgotten those days when I taught him.

  All the time he was talking I tried to remember who he was. But couldn’t.

  “What happened,” I said, “to the postman who sold papers in Barnstaple?”

  “Gerald.”

  “Yes, what happened to Gerald?”

  “He died last year. Thousands came to his funeral.”

  “He used to call my wife Mrs. Leaving.”

  “Do you remember Watson?” he said. “He came from Scotland.”

  And I remembered a thirteen-year-old in short trousers, brown blazer, and cap. A toothy smile, well-mannered, anxious to please. I had to set him an essay to write to see if he was good enough to go to the school.

  “He joined the Air Force,” Barrett said, “and was killed just after he soloed in a jet—Remember Shepherd?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He’s playing cricket for one of the counties.”

  “The fat little boy in the second form that no one could bowl out?”

  “That’s him.”

  He kept telling me names that I tried to fit faces to. Now and then I did. They were all doing well, he said. So I finally asked him.

  “Anyone not do well?”

  “No,” he said hesitantly. “I can’t think of anyone.”

  I thought I’d show him where I work. And led him up the stairs to this large attic room. He looked at the wooden desk, the papers, the books, the magazines, the proofs. Then he walked over to the window and looked out to the bay.

  “You’ve got a nice view. But do you have enough work to keep you busy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I wonder, sometimes, what I would do if I had nothing to write about.”

  He didn’t understand. For he repeated, “But you have enough work to keep you going?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re doing all right?”

  “A lot better than ten years ago.”

  We went back downstairs.

  I asked him how long the farm had been in his family.

  He said he was farming the same land that his father did, and his grandfather, and great-grandfather. That a builder had offered him 175,000 pounds for it. But he wouldn’t sell.

  I told him that I didn’t even know my grandfather. The furthest I could go back was to my father.

  Again he looked bewildered.

  So I said, “There are some people who belong to the place they live in. There are others who don’t. They just pass through.”

  It was the only time I felt I was still his teacher.

  He replied by saying that he liked meeting people. And liked to keep in touch with those that meant something to him when he was growing up. Then he told me of what he did on the farm. How the work was never finished.

  I have met so many amateurs in my line of work that it was nice to hear a professional talking.

  “We have a house with over twenty rooms,” he said. “If you’re ever in North Devon, let me know. I’ll come and get you. And you can stay with us.”

  We had talked for over two hours. And I didn’t know who he was.

  Then, at lunch, while he was sitting opposite me at the table, I said, “You sat in the middle of the class.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were a bit fatter then.”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to wear a lot of green—and you had a bit more hair and it was straight and black.”

  He grinned.

  “Yes,” I said. “I remember you.”

  After that things went even better.

  On impulse I decided to give him something to take back. I left him with my wife in the front room while I went upstairs to see what I could find. While I was looking I heard singing. It was coming, very clearly, from downstairs.

  I went quietly down the stairs. And saw him standing by the piano. His feet were apart and he was swaying a bit as he sang.

  Where my caravan has rested

  Flowers I leave you in the grass.

  All the flowers of love and friendship

  You will see them when you pass.

  He looked to me a happy man. And when he left I felt regret.

  II

  In 1964, at the end of August, a friend of mine, a painter, died from a gliding accident. A week later, another friend, a poet, died from a heart attack. The painter was forty-six. The poet was thirty-six. The painter was a Cornishman. And he was buried not far from where he was born and where he had lived and worked all his life. The poet was born in New York, brought to Scotland as a child, moved to London during the war, then to Cambridge. And he died while in Plymouth. His ashes were scattered on the sea outside Plymouth.

  It was not long after this that I went into Penzance to see if I could find the old Jewish cemetery that I had read was there.

  I kept asking old people in Market Jew Street. But they didn’t know. A schoolboy told me to go up a side street from the railway station, then by a narrow dirt lane, beside the backs of terraced houses.

  From the outside it didn’t look like a cemetery, but a small backyard that had been walled up. There was an old green door in the front wall, with a new bolt and lock. And on the door it gave the name of the caretaker and where he lived. Nothing to say or suggest what was inside.

  I tried to look over by climbing. But there was nothing to get hold of. Finally, I went to the address that was painted on the green door and an elderly man came out with a key.

  It looked even smaller inside. There were old gravestones close together. “In memory of Lemon Woolf, aged 65 years.” I couldn’t read the Hebrew, only the English. “Sacred to the Memory of Jacob James Hart Esq., late her Britannic Majesty’s Consul for the Kingdom of Saxony and a native of this town.”

  I looked around this walled backyard with its slate and granite stones. What did this have to do with me? I wondered how I would behave if there was still a Jewish community in Penzance. I know I would have bought the bread, the salami, the hot dogs. Gone to a Jewish restaurant, if there was one. But anything more than that?

  Over the next year I tried to find out what I could about the extinct Jewish community of Penzance. I asked the public librarian. He didn’t have much information.

  “The Jewish community,” he said, “lived in Penzance from the middle of the eighteenth century to 1913, when the last Jew moved away. The small cemetery is all that is left.”

  Then my wife came across references. In a specialized book on British clockmakers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there
were several clockmakers in Penzance. And some had Jewish names. She looked through old copies of local papers for anything she could find. It was becoming more like a detective story. But we had few clues. And after a while I began to lose interest. And I didn’t think about it.

  Until this April when the phone rang. And a young man’s voice said that he was speaking from Penzance. That he heard from the Penzance librarian that I was interested in the old Jewish cemetery. So was he. Could he come and see me.

  “Of course,” I said.

  He arrived in a white sports car. He stood at the door carrying a folder with papers. And he had an easy smile.

  “My name is Jonathon Singer,” he said.

  I asked him in and introduced my wife.

  Jonathon Singer was thirty. And he looked as if he was used to the good life. He had a lively, intelligent face, brown eyes, brown wavy hair. He smiled often, showing good teeth. He had on a flowery shirt with a light orange kerchief at his throat. And he wore casually a well-cut grey suit.

  “Have you come far?” my wife asked.

  “I go all over the country,” he said. “I’ve seen old Jewish cemeteries in parts of Scotland, at King’s Lynn, at Yarmouth. I’m now doing the West Country. I thought I would start at the end of the line, Penzance, and work backwards. From here I’ll go to Plymouth, then Bath, Gloucester, Cheltenham.”

  I had a fire going in the grate. He sat in a chair on one side warming his hands. I was in the other. My wife brought coffee. And we all had hot coffee and biscuits.

  “What do you actually do?” my wife asked.

  “I’m a professor of Hebrew at Cambridge,” he said. “I give courses in medieval poetry. But I’m doing this for the Jewish Board of Deputies in London. I go to places where there once were tiny communities. I go to the cemetery. And note down every stone. What condition it is in. Whether it is granite, marble, or slate.”

  “Which lasts longer?” I interrupted.

  “Slate,” he said. “I note down whether the stone is flat or upright. And what it says on it.”