The hours crept by slowly. I paced up and down the living room, every once in a while going to the front door to peer down the deserted street, and then returning to pacing the parquet until I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to go back for another look, hoping for a glimpse of my wife. What could have happened, for cripes’ sake?
The telephone rang at ten-thirty. It was Rivka. She informed me in a cold, formal voice that she was at her parents’ house in Amsterdam.
“What are you doing there?” I asked, astonished “Didn’t you go to the trial? It wasn’t canceled, was it?”
“No it wasn’t, Mordechai,” she said.
I frowned. Rivka only called me by my full name when she was angry with me.
“I was there. It was atrocious; the gallery was chock-full of brownshirts, yelling the most hateful insults at Aaron. The judge had to keep threatening to clear the courtroom. Aaron just sat there motionless, never looking up. He pleaded guilty and said that he deserved his punishment and accepted it. Apart from that he refused to speak. He got twenty-nine months, with credit for time served.”
I was stunned. Naturally, the fact that he hadn’t tried to defend himself or to deny any of it had made a light sentence most unlikely, but nearly two and a half years behind bars—it was an enormous price to pay for a first-time offense. I sighed.
“How awful,” I said. There was silence on the other end. Trying to process the information I’d just been given, I clean forgot how strange it was that Rivka was calling me from Amsterdam. When I did remember, I asked her why she was at her parents’ house.
“I can’t and won’t go into it right now,” she said, still in the same strange, cold tone of voice. “But maybe you’ll catch on, Mordechai, when I tell you that the prime witness was present in the courtroom.”
“Rosie was there?” I could not hide the shock in my voice.
“Yes, Mordechai, she was there. She was very brave and composed, and told the court exactly what happened that day.” Rivka stressed the words that day, and I must confess that I was relieved to hear it.
“And then,” Rivka went on, “Rosie and I had a nice long chat. About how she’s doing, about what happened that terrible day—and about what happened before that day. And you may be interested to know she is pregnant with a child that’s about a month older than the one I am carrying. I have some things to arrange here, Mordechai, for her and for myself too. You’ll have to look after yourself and the girls for a few days, for a change. You’ll be hearing from me in good time.” Then she hung up.
All the blood had drained from my face. I felt dizzy and looked around for a chair, but there weren’t any in the hallway where the telephone was kept. I replaced the receiver and sank to the ground. Maybe I wept—I don’t exactly recall.
31 …
That was the night when I was first plagued by the hallucinations that have been haunting me ever since.
Hauling myself up off the floor, I sat down in my leather easy chair, a glass and a bottle of whiskey within reach, roiled by rapidly shifting emotions: remorse, despair, wounded pride, and anger drowning one another out, leaving my mind in utter chaos.
Then came the Furies. They came slithering out from behind the Art Deco geometrics papered over the baroque scenes of romantic idylls that had once upon a time adorned these walls. The three Furies made straight for me; they were dead ringers for Rivka, Rosie, and Bertha. And as they drew closer they were suddenly transformed into gruesome monsters. Their long, shiny locks turned into writhing, hissing snakes flickering their forked tongues at me; their mouths were twisted into contorted grimaces; the claw-like hands ending in long, pointy nails gripped blazing torches that were waved menacingly at me, while their terrifying eyes oozed thick drops of blood that rolled down their cheeks and fell onto the wood floor with soft, dull thuds. The goddesses of vengeance hovered before me, staring at me with their bloody eyes. I mustered all my strength to withstand their gaze, but I couldn’t bear the awful sight. I lowered my head and shut my eyes, just as I’d done in the staring contest with Aaron, but it only served to draw screams from their distorted mouths, so that I realized there was no way to get rid of them. Stuffing my fingers in my ears did nothing to keep out the ghastly screeching. I cringed and felt the noise devouring me. It shattered my eardrums and drilled into my brain, setting off an explosion there. I felt the heat of their torches scorching my body as if I were tied to the stake with flames lapping at my feet. I could no longer distinguish my own screams from the harpies’ shrieks; it was pandemonium all around.
Until I felt a hand on my shoulder, gently shaking me. “Papa, Papa!” I heard coming from somewhere far away. Slowly the screeching died down. Ruth, my fifteen-year-old firstborn, was standing in front of me, pale in her white nightgown, her long, dark hair tumbling in neat waves over her shoulders, her eyes filled with tears. She was gazing at me anxiously. Dazed, I looked up at her, and then peered around the room to make sure the goddesses of vengeance had really gone. I shuddered violently. Ruth withdrew her hand from my shoulder, cringing as if she thought I was about to attack her.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered. “Papa, are you hurt?”
I tried to paste on a reassuring smile.
“No, sweetheart,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I was just confused for a moment, but everything’s fine again.”
My words did not reassure her.
“Is something the matter with Mama?” she went on. “Where is she?”
“In Amsterdam, with Grandpapa and Grandmama,” I replied. “She’s got something to take care of there, but she’s coming home soon, I promise.”
“Are you … having a fight?” she asked carefully, afraid of being thought impertinent.
“Your mother is a little upset with me,” I admitted. “It’s shaken me up a bit, but everything’s going to be all right, don’t worry.”
My soothing words didn’t sound all that convincing.
“Does it have something to do with Uncle Aaron?” she pressed on. “With what he did to that girl?”
She was looking down at the floor, choosing her words carefully.
We had never told the children about what had happened to Aaron, explaining his absence by telling them he was on an overseas business trip. I had been operating under the illusion that our girls, in all their childish innocence, had been spared having to know the truth about their uncle.
“Who told you about Uncle Aaron?” I asked, trying to hide my alarm.
“Everybody’s talking about it,” she said. “In town and at school …” She hesitated, looking at me wide-eyed.
That was how I came to find out about the bullying and name-calling my daughters were being subjected to by their classmates. They were fed all kinds of disgusting stories, not just about the man they had only ever known as a gloomy but kindhearted uncle, but also about their father, who supposedly abused his female employees in the most dastardly way. I had to draw it out of her. She did try changing the subject, but in the end she confessed, sobbing, that it was all they talked about at school, and that my alleged depravity was ascribed to the fact that we belonged to an inferior race. Perversity and criminal behavior were only to be expected from our sort.
Speechless, I stared at my daughter, who, keeping her face averted and with a few last sobs, asked me, “It’s only gossip, Papa, none of it’s true, is it?”
I tried to reassure her, explaining that her uncle had indeed done a very bad thing, but only because he’d taken the wrong kind of medicine, and that he was terribly sorry for what he had done. And, feeling like the biggest hypocrite in the world, I assured her that of course her father would never, ever indulge in the obscene sort of behavior being whispered about in the schoolyard.
Somewhat mollified, she let me send her back to bed. I poured myself another large whiskey, but I couldn’t shake a deep sense of shame and dull despair.
32 …
My body is growing more sensitive by the day. It’s as if my
nerve endings have lost the ability to distinguish one stimulus from the next, so that everything gets chalked up to excruciating pain.
Mizie caresses my cheek, and it’s as if her fingers are wrapped in barbed wire, scoring deep grooves into my skin. The young thing rubs the pink washcloth dipped in lukewarm, soapy water all over my body, and it feels as if I’m being scraped with burning-hot sandpaper. Their tender palliative care is just plain torture to me.
They don’t take my screams seriously. Mizie croons at me, making the shushing sounds of a mother comforting her baby, and I can’t seem to get it through to her that my oversensitivity isn’t all in my head. Both this physical torment and the harrowing memories are making this futile extension of my life—ha, “life,” is that what this is called?—a veritable season in hell.
Today Mizie has called in a doctor to back up her dearly held conviction that keeping me alive is still the right thing to do. The young man, who calls himself a geriatrician, is the “expert” when it comes to life-and-death decisions. Getting saddled with this jerk must be my comeuppance for all the medical concoctions I unleashed on the world in my lifetime. All those miracle drugs that were fought tooth and nail by the Catholic Church because we had renounced the humility expected of man and taken on ourselves the mantle of creator.
So now the quack is working his depressor like a surgical blade between my clenched lips, forcing them to open wide so that he can determine whether my tonsils are free of infection, and that my wizened tongue has yet to take on the appearance of terminal morbidity. Next he digs his icy stethoscope into my rib cage and avers that, despite my loud screams, he can hear my heart, that piece of creaky junk, still beating strong as an ox, and that my lungs, despite some evidence of fluid, which explains why I sometimes produce a rattling sound when I exhale, still have the wherewithal to pump the required air in and out. Palpating the abdomen, tapping on the kidneys, this whole cursed examination apparently persuades the quack that I am not yet qualified to die. When Mizie, still not completely reassured, asks him why even the slightest touch has me screaming like a banshee, he replies—peeling off the slippery gloves that protect him from getting infected by my vital dribble—oh, she mustn’t worry about it too much. Old people are hypersensitive, that’s all; it’s not to be confused with physical pain. It’s more like the screams of a toddler being made to submit to something it doesn’t like. God, how I wish a long drawn-out deathbed on this subscriber to Car and Driver and Arthritis Today, so that he’ll get to see for himself that even overqualified geriatricians can get it horribly wrong. A specialist is just a guy who’s spent a lot of money drawing out his studies for as long as he could. It doesn’t mean the twit’s any smarter.
This state of pain and wretchedness propels me back to that time of utter despair when both my brother and Rivka were lost to me for good. The misery I felt then was like nothing else that’s ever happened to me in my life. And that deep depression, which I did in the end find the willpower to overcome and never allow to take hold of me again, has begun gnawing through the wall I erected between myself and the pain. The poison is working its way in again, like a mole tunneling underneath the mightiest fortress and causing it to crumble to dust.
“Release me from the poison in my head!” was Hercules’ cry of despair to Zeus. “I can endure any death, but please end this now.” Like the king of the ancient gods, however, the almighty muck-a-muck up there refuses to hear my prayer.
• • •
It was the only time in fifty years of doing business that I called in sick. I told Agnes that I did not want to be disturbed. I couldn’t seem to lift myself out of my funk. It took all I had the morning after Aaron’s trial to face the children and give instructions to the domestic help. I explained that something had come up and Rivka wouldn’t be coming home for a few days, and asked them to look to the children and the household; I wished to be left alone. I locked myself in my study and did not eat for days. I did sip a little water from time to time, but mostly I drank whiskey, leaving me in a permanent state of delirium. I’d sit staring into space for hours on end like a sack of potatoes, or I’d stretch out on the couch only to tumble into some horrible nightmare and wake up again in a sweat. I lost all sense of day or night and received constant visitations from the screeching Furies, who gave me a pounding headache, alternating with the specter of Aaron silently staring me down. Even Levine would appear every so often to chew me out for messing with my brother’s soul glands and exposing him to a minefield of dangers. I was trapped in a cocoon of disconsolate gloom, the despair that had taken possession of me sapping all the strength I’d once possessed.
• • •
I had no idea how many days and nights had gone by when I heard someone trying to get into my room. An incessant knocking gradually roused me from my stupor. The knocking turned into banging, which stopped when I shouted at whoever it was to fuck off and leave me alone.
“I don’t think so, Mordechai,” I heard Rivka say evenly on the other side of the door. “Open this door at once.”
Startled, I sat up and looked around my usually spotless study, which was in a sorry state. Empty whiskey bottles were scattered all over the floor, along with my shoes, waistcoat, tie, and jacket. An overflowing ashtray sat on the coffee table, surrounded by even more strewn cigarette butts. A glance in the mirror confirmed my worst suspicion: I looked awful, with my crumpled shirt untucked and my belt unbuckled; my hair was a tangled, dirty mop, and my eyes were bloodshot. I looked like my brother had on that terrible day that had been the start of our undoing. Rivka began hammering on the door again and I felt I had no choice but to open it and face my wife in that sorry state.
There she stood, the only woman who had ever really meant anything to me in my life—that was what had been dawning on me over the past few days. It’s one of those cruel jokes fate likes to play: not until you’ve lost something do you understand how precious it is. I had taken Rivka’s presence at my side for granted, as something that was mine by right, but it wasn’t until I found myself imprisoned in that gray cocoon that the bitter truth came to me. I was certain that I had lost her forever. Like Orpheus, I was condemned to wander through the rest of my life mourning her. I cursed my blasted sex drive and infernal impatience, the root causes of all our misfortunes.
My wife stood in the doorway, shoulders squared, as if to steel herself for an encounter with the enemy. The troubles of the past days did not seem to have left their mark on her; she looked as beautiful as ever. Her sad, slightly bitter expression was that of a lovely, sorrowing Virgin Mary. Her long, dark curls were held in place by two simple combs, she wore dark-red lipstick, and her hands rested on the slight bulge of her stomach. When she saw me she raised her eyebrows.
“Is this how you look after the children?” she said coolly, averting her face as if I were a putrid rat. “You stink, Mordechai, go get washed, make yourself presentable, and then I’d like to speak with you.”
I sidled past my wife with my head down, unable to look her in the eye, and mumbled that I’d be back as soon as I could.
33 …
Bathed, scrubbed, and wearing a fresh suit, I appeared before Rivka. I had cleaned myself up as best I could, but I couldn’t wash away my pallor or bleariness.
She was sitting in her armchair in the living room as I walked in, and gazed up at me critically. There was a pot of coffee on the table, which she picked up in order to pour a cup. I reached to take it, but she put it down in front of her, showing no intention of pouring me one. I looked at her, surprised, but she just launched into her monologue, staring straight ahead. It seemed that over the past few days she had zealously mapped out a future for both Rosie and herself. She spoke in a loud monotone, as if the only way she could get through what she had to say was by keeping all emotion at bay.
“I’ll tell you what happened, and what I have decided to do. At the end of the trial, Aaron was immediately led away; I never got a chance to speak to him. He left t
he courtroom without a glance at the public gallery. Rosie, however, was quite startled to see me there, which wasn’t at all surprising in light of the story she told me later, after I’d persuaded her to have a bite to eat with me. Her father had thrown her out of the house, and an aunt and uncle in the city had taken her in. At the time of Aaron’s assault, she had already been pretty sure that she was with child. Your child, Mordechai. You had long been taking advantage of her; you had molested her over and over again. How could you?”
I could find nothing to say. She stared at me coldly for a while, and then went on with her story. “She hasn’t told anyone. Not about what you did to her, and as little as she could get away with about her ordeal at the hands of Aaron. ‘As long as you don’t put it into words, you can pretend it never happened,’ was her motto. ‘I’ve never wanted to talk about it with anyone,’ she said, ‘because talking about it makes it real. As long as I’d only had to go through it inside that posh room—I’d never been in such a fancy place in my life!—and as long as it was my little secret, I could tell myself it wasn’t real. I pretended it was just a bad dream, you know, the kind that keeps coming back night after night and you’re helpless to stop it, you just have to wait it out until you wake up.’
The Hormone Factory: A Novel Page 15