by Edeet Ravel
Your grandparents stayed out in their big house in Hertfordshire, though one wing was being used for some military purpose or other. They were involved in art evacuation and all sorts of other wartime projects. After Anthony was killed, they went on, stoically, but they needed me more than ever, supposedly to help out in the family business, though really for moral support, and I made up my mind to yield as soon as the war was over. I would become a part of the family antiques firm, in spite of my deep aversion to that whole scene. Auctions made me sick, everything about them. And I had no talent for it, no gift at all. I couldn’t tell one saucer from another, one century from another. I never told you or anyone else about my aversion to your grandparents’ occupation, mostly because I didn’t think Vera would understand, and we had enough chasms over which to shout at each other, and you know if there’s anything Vera loves besides her sons, it’s beautiful things. I only thank my stars that when we first met, I was a well-brought up English boy and didn’t breathe a word against my parents or what they did, and by the time we were close enough for me to tell her … but I’m jumping ahead.
Back to the fateful day. I was sitting on a bench in Hyde Park with a sandwich I wasn’t eating—it just lay on my lap, wrapped in paper. I didn’t want to eat in front of the woman who was sitting on the bench opposite me because she looked hungry and food was still very scarce, and anyhow it seemed rude. Of course I couldn’t go up to her, a total stranger, and offer her half my lunch.
So I sat there with the sandwich on my lap. I’d stayed on volunteering, with your grandparents’ blessing, of course, and I’d been at it all week, clearing debris sixteen hours a day, but I’d changed back into civilian clothes. I was headed for Hertfordshire for a weekend leave, and I dreaded going, as usual, so was taking my time, gathering emotional energy for the journey. The woman—Vera—was wearing white gloves and her hands were folded on her lap. I’d never seen anyone sitting so motionlessly, as though she were posing for a painting, or had turned into one.
I tried not to stare. She was haunted and haunting then, and the attraction I felt was like a sort of rope hauling me towards her—towing me, that’s what it felt like. There is no real explanation for these things. Somehow I found the courage to cough and then smile at her, and she didn’t smile back, but she nodded and that was encouragement enough for me. I asked her whether she was a visitor—she had a small suitcase with her, so it seemed all right to ask.
She nodded again and said, “I was supposed to leave today for Canada. The ship has been delayed, they do not know for how long.”
She spoke excellent English, though with a European accent—she’s almost lost it entirely now. I introduced myself and she said, “I’m Vera Elias, from Prague.” I said something daft about the weather, and I wanted the earth to swallow me up in shame, but at the same time I just couldn’t let go. I really was worried about her. So I asked, “Have you got a place to stay?”
She said, “I have an address of someone … I have not yet contacted.” She stared at me with those blue eyes of hers, and both of us knew that I was going to offer her a place to stay and that she would accept. Because there was absolutely nothing available that summer. It was impossible to find a room anywhere; there were still thousands of homeless people. It turned out later that the address she had was of the cousin of a maid who had worked for her friends in Prague. At best she would have shared some attic bed.
I said, “I have a flat where you could stay, if you like. I was on my way to my parents’ house in the country, so you’ll have the place to yourself. I can check in on you in the morning.” And then I asked her if she’d like to share my sandwich. “It’s beef,” I said, because it occurred to me that she might be Jewish.
She removed her gloves and accepted half my sandwich, but her hands began to tremble so uncontrollably that I had to take it back. She was perfectly composed otherwise; only her hands shook. I could tell it wasn’t that she was ill—it was nerves. I’d seen that sort of thing often enough after a bombing, trying to give tea to people who had lost their homes and possibly half their families, and their hands shaking so they couldn’t lift the cup.
She said calmly, “I’m sorry, it must be the journey, it’s tired me out,” and that helped a little, but I was at a loss. “Let’s walk,” she suggested, “and I’ll eat while walking.” On the second try she dropped the sandwich on the ground. She laughed. That’s your mother for you, isn’t it? She laughed at herself and picked it up. Though everything was still being rationed, I didn’t want her to eat bread that had fallen on the ground. She seemed amused at my concern, but she separated the two pieces of bread and managed to eat the part that hadn’t touched the grass, and the rest she scattered for the birds.
We walked and she told me that with the help of the father of an old schoolmate of hers she’d succeeded in getting a student visa for Canada and now she was going there to complete her medical studies, which had been interrupted by the war. I started telling her about myself, but I saw that she wasn’t interested, or couldn’t concentrate, so I stopped.
We went to my service flat in Fitzrovia and when we got there she asked me not to go to Hertfordshire. She said she wanted me to sleep with her because she didn’t like sleeping alone. I assumed she meant sleep on the sofa, but that’s not what she had in mind … Forgive me for writing about this. I don’t know how to leave it out. I wondered what I’d done to deserve this angel landing in my life from out of nowhere. And then she decided to tell me about her experiences during the war. I think it was because she thought she would never see me again and she wanted to discard as many of her experiences as she could relate in a single night, record them in another brain, my brain, and then leave them behind forever, like an exorcism. That’s what I think. There may have been other reasons … some sense of duty, some historic urge. Or a deeper need—who knows? I felt it was because she trusted me. She didn’t love me or desire me, she thought it was only some chance encounter, and she knew I was safe.
As it turned out, we spent the whole of my leave together. After I’d heard her story I was afraid to touch her, but the last thing she wanted was to be cast out because of her experiences, to be pitied or set apart, and I understood that. I owe your mother so much—beginning with the vistas of freedom that she opened to me. Mostly, I was just overwhelmed—first with joy, then grief and horror. I confess I knew very little about the atrocities. There were rumours all the time, and an abysmal waxworks exhibit based on those rumours, with a free amusement corner for children, which I kept hoping someone would have the decency to shut down. The stories in the newspaper about what the Nazis were up to were often just as sensationalistic, and that created a screen, because you didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Everything is hidden in war, everything is censored, secret, even information about the bombs falling on your head. A month before the war ended, some newsreels came out, but I didn’t join the queues to see them either. I suppose I’d had enough of dead bodies, and I couldn’t help wondering whether the people in those queues were motivated by the same sort of prurience that drew visitors to the waxworks. It took me weeks, really, to assimilate everything Vera told me, and I began taking an interest after she left. I felt there wasn’t enough awareness, and I wrote an article, but no one would publish it. It was “in poor taste”, its sources were “questionable”, it was time “to put all that behind and move on”.
Then Vera left for Canada. She wouldn’t let me see her off. It never occurred to me that she might be pregnant, even though she wouldn’t let me take any precautions—she seemed convinced it wasn’t necessary. When she found out that she was expecting, she remembered the address in London, and she wrote to me there and told me. I don’t know what she had in mind; I have never asked her what she was thinking. Maybe she barely knew herself. Of course, I was beside myself with happiness, that she was willing to take me, to marry me, because I was heartbroken, really heartbroken, when she left.
The thing is, my dear boy, and this i
s what my letter is really about, I wrote everything down, after she left. I think I got most of it, because there are things you hear that you can’t forget even if you want to. She doesn’t know that I did this, though I think she hated me simply because I knew, and my presence reminded her, when the plan had been to forget. I put a dent in that plan, do you see? So telling her would have made it even worse. I suppose I was misled by her one-time outpouring, thinking it was because of who I was, not knowing it was an aberration and that what she trusted was that I would vanish along with her story. And in due course I did. I have vanished.
Now, Tony, this is very important. I’ve hidden the notebook in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. It’s brown, leather-bound, with our family name embossed on the front. The key to the cabinet is in the jade cigarette case next to the paints in the basement. I don’t know why I hid the key, maybe to protect you. But if you want to read about your mother’s past, that’s where the key is. It’s a choice you must make for yourself.
I’ll just tell you this one thing, before you decide. Vera was married before the war and had a baby. Her husband and the baby were both shot together the day they were arrested, because her husband protested. That was how they got people to be quiet and do exactly as they were told … shoot on the spot anyone who spoke out, or a child who was crying, or a mother who was hysterical or even someone who was sitting quietly, just to keep everyone terrified. So that’s what happened. Her husband was holding the baby and they were shot together.
The rest, everything that happened to her after that, or at least what she managed to tell me, you can read in the notebook.
That night, when she sat on the bed and in her soft voice began her story, there had been a power failure and I lit candles, and there were such eerie shadows in the room. Ambulances passed every so often from the hospital nearby, and it was as if her words were setting off the sirens. I had to leave the room a few times. I pretended I was going for a glass of water, though really I needed to vomit, but I came back and listened to more, and then more, because I loved her, and when you love someone, you can bear anything. I told her I loved her, but she didn’t seem to hear me. All she said was that she would not allow her past to shape her future. I think if you read what I wrote, you’ll understand her better, because no matter what Vera did after the war it was heroic, and no matter how much I suffered it was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what she’s been through.
I never told you any of this—how could I? It would have meant betraying Vera, and anyhow you might have misunderstood about the way we ended up marrying, because I loved you from the second I heard you existed or were about to exist, and Vera did too—she loved you and loves you both. That’s what I want you to know.
I have a headache coming on—yes, I was up too late and there was too much carousing but soon all that will be over, I trust. So I’m going to stop here and mail this before I regret writing it. I hope this is not the wrong thing to do.
Your loving father, Gerald.
After I read the letter, I showered and dressed, put on my mummy outfit, and went outside for a walk. My mother and Bubby were asleep and didn’t hear me leave. It was as cold as ever, but I didn’t mind—I’d manage not to freeze. I filled my lungs with glacial night air until I was dizzy, then climbed one of the high mounds of snow that lined the curbs. I lay on the snowy hill and looked up at the empty sky, its stars obliterated by city lights.
Yes, I decided, I would be brave. I’d sign out of the monastery, I’d return to real life.
The next day, a mahogany sleigh bed arrived at our place. My mother was at work when the delivery men rang the bell, and I was sure they’d made a mistake—my mother never purchased anything without a great deal of pre-publicity. But they showed me the receipt, and there it was: our address for shipping, the Moore address for billing. Anthony had bought me a double bed.
I let the two men in. I didn’t own a bathrobe, and when the doorbell had rung, I’d grabbed my winter coat. “Where do you want it?” the men asked. I was clutching the coat around me so it wouldn’t slide open; my bare feet and tangled hair completed the Hogarthian scene. In only three weeks I’d lost the ease one normally has with strangers, and I found myself stuttering as I directed them to my bedroom. The delivery men looked fright-ened—they must have thought I was a mad shut-in—and they fled before I had time to find change for a tip.
Bubby and I stood at the entrance to my room and gaped. In spite of my modest efforts—clippings on the wall, an Egyptian runner draped over the lampshade—my bedroom was condemned to suburbia manqué, while the antique sleigh bed would not have been out of place in one of the lost rooms of Wuthering Heights. I never dreamed I’d own anything half as beautiful as this.
“Try it,” I said to Bubby. Gingerly, she uncrumpled her body on the striped silver-and-blue mattress. Her splayed feet, knobby inside soft cloth slippers, slid sideways like small burrowing animals. I stretched out next to her and held her hand, which was as round and smooth as a child’s.
“Well, Bubby,” I said, “here we are.”
1972
The hospital waiting room, with its inhospitable cadmium yellow chairs. Rosie is sitting on one of the chairs, her bare legs folded sideways, an open bag of peanuts from the food machine on her lap.
It’s autumn, the beginning of our final year in high school, and something has come over me. Even my handwriting, in diaries dating from this time, is ragged and jagged, as if pushing against a barrier, yielding gloomily, pushing again. Malfunctioning staplers, knots in shoelaces, transparent tape that twists before you have a chance to use it—every small thing sets me off. An insane perfectionism makes my life intolerable. If the peas my mother serves me are oversalted, I stomp out of the kitchen. Fanya’s ludicrous response—running after me and begging forgiveness, when what I deserve is to be ignored, at best—only adds fuel to my aggravation. If it were possible, I’d be turning my mother into more of a wreck than she already is, but luckily it’s not possible.
It all reached an intolerable pitch this morning. When I arrived at school, already in a state because the bus had taken forever to come, because it was overcrowded, because why, why, why couldn’t this stupid city run more buses at rush hour, because sines and cosines were idiotic, designed to bring misery to millions, were only ever meant to be studied by mathematicians—when I charged into school, I found everyone in a heightened state of excitement as they broadcast the news: a shipment of frogs had arrived at the lab for dissection. Mr. Lurie must have mentioned the dissection while I was immersed in Under the Volcano—he no longer bothered regulating my behaviour, as long as I sat in the corner and didn’t disturb anyone. Or else I’d been skipping class altogether so I could catch matinées at our downtown repertory cinema.
Dvora spotted me and came over. She held her stomach and groaned, “I. Feel. Sick.” The staccato syntax meant that she was more than usually upset, but it wasn’t the prospect of dissecting frogs that was making her sick. She’d been in a staccato mood for several weeks now, partly because she was hopelessly failing all her subjects, but mostly because she’d been dumped by Carlos, her drug-pushing boyfriend. She wanted to run off to San Francisco with flowers in her hair, and on weekends she switched to hippie attire that was meant to convey a belligerent, anti-establishment impulse. The effect was more genial than radical; the wide print headbands suited her sweet, round face, and under tie-dyed T-shirts her braless breasts seemed to be issuing a gentle invitation.
Animals and the way we treat them—this is what I’m ranting about, here in the hospital waiting room. Rosie’s also been skipping school, though not in order to watch movies downtown. Her father is sick, and she’s installed herself semi-permanently at St. Mary’s Hospital.
“How can people not care about animals?” I fumed.
Rosie lowered her head. “I know … but I like steak. I’m very selfish.”
There were shadows under her eyes. “Go home and get some sleep, Rosi
e,” I said. “I’ll stay until you come back. Take your time, I don’t have anything else to do.”
“You’re so nice to me, Maya.”
“I’m a bitch these days,” I said. “I’m just a jangle of nerves.”
“No, no—and you’re right about the animals,” she said. Then she stood on her toes and kissed me goodbye. A mystic kiss to ensure that the gods looked upon me kindly. “I’m just going to shower. I’ll be back soon!” she promised.
I dug into my ever-dependable shoulder bag and retrieved a package of soda crackers and Under the Volcano, which seemed never to end. You read page after depressing page, and it was still the Day of the Dead in Quauhnahuac, the Consul was still drunk, Yvonne was still drifting. I set the book aside and peeked into Mr. Michaeli’s room, but he was asleep. At long last, Rosie returned. Patrick was walking morosely behind her, like a stalker under arrest.
“Look who I met in the elevator!” Rosie announced happily, as if we were all there for a wedding. “He’s here to visit Daddy.”
“I have a book for Mr. Michaeli that I promised to give him two years ago,” Patrick said.
He hadn’t changed—but I had. He’d been Vera Moore’s son when I last saw him; now he was Anthony’s brother. And not a very good brother, as far as I could tell.
Patrick sensed my critical eye, and the expanse it opened up between us relaxed him. He switched to courteous mode and asked, “How’s it going?”
“I’ll go see whether Daddy’s awake,” Rosie said.
Though there was no one else in the waiting area, Patrick slumped into a chair on the other side of the room, as far away as possible from other life forms.
“I know your brother,” I told him. “He was my counsellor at camp.”
“Really?” Patrick managed to modulate his voice so it hovered halfway between neutral comment and, just in case, disparagement. I remembered the strategy; he had used it when he’d referred to his father’s spiritual quest. I’d never met a more distrustful person.