Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth

by Edeet Ravel

  “I saw Women in Love,” I said. “Alan Bates running through the forest. I was totally shocked. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Well, congratulations. Now you have information you’ll never need, as far as I can tell. What’s with you and Rosie, by the way? Are you mad at her?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “She said you wouldn’t come to the phone when she called. I thought maybe you had a fight.”

  “I’m just not in the mood to talk to anyone.”

  “She’s a mess too, you know. She’s living in a dream.”

  “It’s a nice dream ... ”I said.

  “God, you sound wistful. I never heard anyone actually sound wistful. Well, dreams are fine as long as you know where you really are. Does Rosie know? I doubt it.”

  “She knows. She just doesn’t always let on.”

  “I guess you know her better than I do.”

  “Sometimes I’m sure I know her, and then suddenly I think I don’t know her at all. It’s scary, when that happens. When things suddenly change even though they’re standing perfectly still.”

  “Is that what brought this on? Realizing we know fuck all?”

  “No, nothing like that … I wish my father hadn’t died.”

  “Yeah, that’s the pits.”

  “And on the darker side,” the radio DJ cooed. Radio announcers had stopped being perky and upbeat. Now they had to sound semiconscious. “Let’s have some ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”

  “Altamont, what a bummer,” Sheila said, shaking her head. “Evil is never good. Evil is evil, good is good.” She stretched out on her back and held up a tiny pasta bowtie. “Kasha—dry, absolutely tasteless, with the texture of animal feed. They only ate this back in the shtetl because it was so fucking cheap. And now we’re stuck with it!”

  “It’s not so bad with fried onions,” I said, and Sheila came as close as she ever did to laughing—a soft chuckle accompanied by a wary smile.

  “Fried onions, the solution to everything. It’s the first thing I do,” she said, “no matter what I’m cooking—fry an onion.”

  “I wish I could cook. My mother won’t let me. She won’t let me do anything—I’m not even allowed to change a light bulb.”

  “Yeah, well—she lost everything, she wants to make up for it by giving you everything.”

  “It just makes me feel guilty.”

  “I wish I had that problem. I wish I had something to feel guilty about. I’m like a slave at home. Listen, Maya, you’re going to have to come back sooner or later. You can’t lock yourself up here forever.”

  “Are you going to university?” I asked.

  “Why not? Nothing else to do. And you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Well, you don’t want to stay in your mother’s house forever. Think about it. Think, Maya!”

  “What will you study?” I wasn’t sure she’d hear me; my voice was so low I could barely hear it myself.

  “Education. I want to be a teacher. Long vacations—and, you know, everyone looking up to you, believing whatever you tell them. You’re the boss.”

  “I’m tired. Even chewing is an effort!”

  “You can’t always get what you want. You’re living like a nun here, man. No dope, no sex, what a downer. You should read Rollo May.”

  “Remember I washed your underwear at camp?”

  “God, don’t remind me! I was so hung up! The effects of growing up in the Middle Ages. You were the exact opposite. So open and free. Though maybe now we’ve changed places, is that possible?” She stubbed out her joint, dropped what was left of it into her little pouch, and began picking at the kasha and potatoes. “Aren’t you eating?” she asked.

  “I’ll eat later,” I said. “You can have mine, if you’re hungry. You’re way too thin … What’s happening at school?”

  “Oh, nothing. Dvora moping over that Carlos guy. Alan said the Dust Bowl was when all the dishes got dusty. The usual.”

  “I’m not going back to school.”

  “You have to graduate, you have to go to university. You dig art, why not go into art history? You could work at a museum, or you could teach like me. Spread your wings.”

  “No, I can’t do it.”

  “Why? You’re smart, you’re together. So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Listen,” Sheila said. “I could show you a couple of things. Do you want me to?”

  “Show me what?”

  “You know, sex.”

  “Oh! That’s okay, Sheila. Thanks, though. You’re very nice to me. I’m just not … I’m not … what’s the word? I’m not…”

  “Brave?”

  “Yes, that’s it. I’m not brave enough. I’m going to stay here for now. Sheila?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I’ve been having such nightmares. I can’t get rid of them.”

  “You mean like Nazis chasing you? I get those all the time.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. No, it’s more like objects start talking—or animals, or babies—and then anything can happen and I can’t wake up. I know I’m dreaming, and I try to wake up, I try everything I can think of, but I can’t, I’m trapped in the dream. I never knew fear was so hard to take. I don’t think I even knew what fear was, really.”

  “How did your mother survive, do you know? My mother was with her parents and some other people, they all had to strip and dig a big hole and then get inside and be buried alive. And her mother just said to her, run. And so she ran. They shot at her, but they didn’t get her, they missed, and she saw a wagon on the road and she climbed under the sacks of barley or whatever. Insane, man. What are the odds? I wouldn’t be here if not for a crazy wagon and whoever gave her clothes and a place to hide. They put her in a convent, actually. My father got a job in a work camp, and he was good at it, so they kept him alive. What I don’t get is how anyone stayed alive in those conditions. Wouldn’t you die of typhoid or whatever right away?”

  “Oh, who cares,” I said, barely listening.

  Sheila shrugged. “Taboo subject. Too gruesome, or something.”

  “I really don’t care,” I repeated.

  “Fuck this suffering,” Sheila said complacently. “Karla’s father—he really should be committed. Have you seen the marks on her arms? He completely lost his mind over there. On the other hand, look at Mrs. Adler, dancing when Ephraim gets all the answers right.”

  “Mrs. Adler…” I said absently, as if I were very old and hadn’t seen or thought of her for years. She was determined to be happy, determined to enjoy life. All the pieces of her life were in place, held together by logic and popularity.

  “Was Mrs. Adler there?” I asked sleepily.

  “Yeah, and she came out normal. Normal and happy.”

  “Normal and happy…”

  “I can’t wait to get away. Why should I take it all on myself? I have my own life to worry about.”

  “I’m falling asleep,” I muttered. “Don’t let me sleep.”

  With Sheila in the room and the radio playing “Let It Be,” I slipped away, and when I woke up, sweating and terrified, Sheila was gone and the radio had been turned off. My mother, whose built-in radar monitored my levels of consciousness, scuffled into the room with a tray of cookies and a glass of milk.

  The next day, in what can only have been a gesture of either true love or true desperation, my mother decided to contact Dr. Know-It-All. The answering service informed her that Dr. Moore was out of town.

  My mother was skeptical: Dr. Moore was no doubt making up stories to avoid going out in the cold—all very well for some people. Remembering that I’d been to her house, my mother asked me for the address. She sat down at the kitchen table with the telephone book in front of her and ran her finger down the list of Moores. Halfway down she found not Vera’s number, which was unlisted, but Patrick’s.

  The door to my room was open when she phoned, and I heard my mother’s end
of the conversation—yes yes Maya’s mother who is this—

  I assumed she was talking to Patrick. I got up to pee and brush my teeth, then returned to bed. I hadn’t washed in days, but I felt clean; Bubby was now changing my sheets every morning, and twice a day my mother rubbed my back and legs with a warm, wet towel, as if I really were bedridden. I shut my eyes and forgot about Patrick and his mother.

  I was half-awakened from sleep by the sound of Anthony’s voice. I was sure I was dreaming; so far it was a good dream, but a good dream could skid into nightmare in a matter of seconds. Anthony was asking my mother, “How are we today, Mrs. L?”

  I opened my eyes and leaned forward so I could peer into the foyer. There he was, standing in the dim light in his socks, wearing jeans and a dark-blue pullover, his black coat slung over his arm. I grabbed a pair of pyjamas from my bureau and slipped them on.

  Fanya as usual eclipsed any surprise I might have felt. She lifted her arms as if facing a volcanic eruption and sank back into the small, flimsy seat attached to the telephone table. My mother had acquired this perilous piece of furniture by collecting several hundred supermarket stamps, and I was sure the chair would one day break away from the table and poor Fanya would come crashing down to the floor.

  —it’s the child the child—

  Anthony was unimpressed. “Take it easy,” he said.

  —the child the child—my mother began to wail—we all we all saw with our own eyes—

  In response either to the claustrophobia my mother generally elicited in people around her, or to an intuition that I was watching him, Anthony turned around. He saw me staring at him through the half-open door, and without further ado he abandoned my mother, came into my bedroom, and shut the door behind him. He looked older—not only by three years, but as if he’d moved into another stage of life altogether. He was more sedate yet also more scattered, more efficient and energetic yet wearier—as weary as me.

  He dropped his coat on the desk, and without a word lay down beside me, placed his arm around my waist, and shut his eyes.

  Anthony! It was not my father but rather a surrogate brother who had appeared out of nowhere. His body was snug against mine, and his socks warmed my ankles. I remembered the postcard he’d sent me from New York, and I wondered what it would be like to be intimately acquainted with Bleecker Street, the Chelsea Hotel, Spanish Harlem …

  I, too, dozed off. When I woke, a long time later, he was gone. I hadn’t dreamed it—Anthony had come to visit. That’s what you were supposed to do, visit the sick. Anthony understood what was happening to me because he was in the same predicament, exactly the same. We’d crashed into the present, and seeing it up close, stripped and exposed, we no longer had any inclination to focus on what lay ahead, couldn’t focus on it. But Anthony hadn’t solved the problem by becoming a recluse; he’d gone off in search of greener pastures. With his arm around me, I had slept peacefully for a change, a deep sleep, free of nightmares.

  I’m slow, always slow, always a few steps behind everyone else. That was the way I was then and that’s the way I am still. It took me a few minutes to piece it all together: Anthony was Tony, the brother Patrick had mentioned. At Bakunin, he’d been Antonio, Anton, Antoine, even Antonius, but never Tony—like me, he must have been hoping for a breach. Now it turned out that we were all linked, like the dancers at the end of The Seventh Seal; everyone knew everyone. Patrick had mentioned that his brother was living in California—he must have moved from New York to California, and now he was back in Montreal for a visit. Or maybe he’d returned for good.

  As soon as I made the connection, I spotted, as if in confirmation, a bulky white envelope leaning against my radio. It was a letter, addressed to Tony Moore, 4 Hillside Road, Beaconsfield. The envelope was made of textured paper, soft as fabric, and the handwriting was tall and spidery. Under overlapping postmarks, the faded stamps—a sea-dragon, a grey and gold goddess launching rays of light—seemed to transmit a foreign loneliness. The return address was barely legible, but I was able to make out the first and last lines: Gerald Moore, Japan.

  Anthony had left me a coded message. That’s what Anthony did—he used codes. I’d thought when we were at Bakunin that he was being evasive, but I was wrong: he was trying to say more this way, not less.

  The letter inside the envelope took up several sheets of pale blue airmail paper, folded in four and covered with the same spidery handwriting. I padded to the kitchen, dug out a box of soda crackers from the cupboard, and returned to my room. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, I began to read.

  Here’s the letter, which I’ve kept inside my diary all these years. It’s remarkably well preserved. Well, maybe it’s not that remarkable: in terms of document conservation, even a hundred years in dry, anaerobic conditions is not a long time. Only in small-scale human terms is it nearly impossible to reconcile the stark numbers with our own inept tallying.

  March 17, 1968

  Dear Tony, my firstborn son, it’s two in the afternoon here and your birthday. I had such a longing to talk to you but don’t have your latest number or, in fact, any number for you. There’s so much I want to tell you, not my usual rambling, but more in the way of biography or autobiography or what have you, and even if you don’t want to read it now or ever, at least I want you to have the option, and also to tell you where you can find more information. I’m in a small room here, on a mat on the floor, paper-thin walls, or rather bamboo thin, and I can hear the woman who runs this place cleaning up. There are chickens in the courtyard, though it’s not really rustic; the noise and hullabaloo outside feel urban, the smells are urban. It’s another universe here, and since I barely speak a word of Japanese, I’m as good as deaf and mute.

  I’m waiting for word from the monastery, and if they take me, I may not have another chance to write. I don’t know what the arrangements are there, what one can and cannot do there. I feel so far from being where I long to be, though even thinking in terms of a goal is probably all wrong … but I promised I wouldn’t ramble and I won’t. What I want to do is tell you some things that I woke up this morning wanting to tell you—maybe because suddenly you seem old enough, or maybe it’s that “lonely impulse” Yeats describes—do you remember our Sunday nights, reading poetry by the hearth? One of the memories I cling to. The Yeats poem was a favourite, wasn’t it? Do you remember? “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” …There is something about telling, just telling, that seems almost like soaring through enemy fire.

  What I’m trying to say is that the impulse may be thoroughly self-centred, a way of shedding something or other before I enter the monastery—if I do go in; a way of trying to move on, or move somewhere, or learn not to move—or whatever it is I need to learn and unlearn. If the impulse is self-centred, forgive me. I feel I’ve lost touch with who you are to such a degree that I can’t gauge these things properly, and maybe that was never my talent. Certainly I have much to atone for as a father, as I well know. For that, I don’t deserve forgiveness, though forgiveness is something I now know has to do with oneself, not others, both the doing and the requesting. Anything else is just manipulation. I’m rambling again … my worst trait, or one of them, anyhow.

  In any case, I would like to tell you about Vera, and also about how we met and how you came to be. If you don’t want to know about it or be dragged into it, here is your chance to stop, throw the letter in the fire, or put it away for another day. Above all I need to say at the outset that this is in no way any kind of justification or even explanation. Why things fell apart, you know as well as I and better, looking at us with your child’s all-knowing eyes. But where it all began—that’s what I want to tell you. You have already heard some things about how it happened that we met and married, the usual answers one gives to a child. We left out all save the quaint, picturesque details, or rather details that could be made to sound quaint and picturesque—Vera was delayed in London, we met in Hyde Park, etc.

  Here then is what actually ha
ppened. The memory has done the opposite of fade; it gets more vivid with time. Isn’t that odd? Like a backward spring, propelling me into the past and giving me more of it each time I visit.

  It was a year after the war—that you know. June 2, 1946, to be precise. London was still in ruins, though also in the throes of reconstruction—not just the buildings, but everything—peace, the future. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere of that year. Horror and grief swept up and discarded, as if it were a duty to dispose of them, which of course it was. To be replaced by work and hope.

  My brother Anthony, whose name we gave you (perhaps wrongly), fell in Dieppe in August of 1942. Of course he was the talented one; a brilliant painter with a great future ahead of him … and I can’t blame my mother or anyone else for resenting that I was the one who was spared and now I was the one who was going to inherit the family fortune—and I didn’t give a damn about any of it. Instead, for reasons that were obscure even to me, I was studying for the ministry before the war broke out, despite my conviction that the story of God and the subsequent addendum of a Son were fiction. I suppose you’ll find this incomprehensible, but I thought even so that I could somehow do some good. Or maybe it was all some adolescent romantic urge to escape from the madding crowd that to this day has a hold over me.

  I left my studies as soon as the war came. How could I ever have thought that an atheist would really fit in? I must have been mad. I started off as a Conscientious Objector—volunteered to do any job that didn’t involve carrying a weapon. I wasn’t a fanatic like some of the others, who refused to participate in any way at all. After Anthony was killed, I would have fought, in fact, but I was needed where I was. Mostly I helped to clear up after the bombings. Thousands of bodies had to be buried, thousands of homeless people had to be sheltered and fed. It was Russian roulette, every minute of every day and night; you never knew where the next hit would be, and towards the end, with the diabolical V2s, there wasn’t even the five- or ten-second warning.