The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

  “One day Grandma Zilka decided she wanted to go find her birthplace in Drensk. She was old and she wanted to see the place one more time before the war made it impossible. Who knows, she said, maybe I stay and die over there. She bought herself a stateroom on A deck. Nobody knew she had so much money. That little grocery store in Northeast, she’d been raking it in. She sails over to see her son and grandson. Isn’t that right, dear?” Her “dears” were not dears of love. They were like poison darts.

  Philip, to my surprise, has returned. He just stands there, in a corner, near the doorway, like a little boy. He listens to her tell his story.

  “When she gets there Zilka takes David and they go schlepping around asking how do you get to Drensk while your father goes to the moving picture studios and to the factory where they are processing the films that the producers are making in the studios for—”

  “Mr. Hitler?” I interject. Where that came from I don’t know. Maybe from David at last talking to me after all across time and space.

  The name makes her scream so loudly that I know I’ve hit some truth. Then she starts shaking her head, as if trying to jiggle something into place.

  This story is taking forever, and I want to cut to the chase: Where is my brother and how can I get him back? I will not consider the possibility of his death.

  “For Amos Standing,” he finally says from his corner. “Don’t say the name Hitler in this house.”

  “Who’s that?” Then I remember. “Lucas’s middle name is Standing.”

  Philip, with an enormous sigh, hauls up his shoulders like a heavy burden and shuffles from the room like a beaten man. We hear him go into their bedroom and close the door. I think I hear sobs from inside, but perhaps it’s my imagination, always troublesome.

  But she’s heard it. She jumps up and runs to their bedroom, hurling open the door. Indeed, Philip is sobbing mightily, his bulky body heaving on their double bed like some giant bellows. “NOW YOU CRY!” she screams. Rivka the yeller—God knows I’ve heard her yell often enough, but she’s never raised her voice to such a pitch. She throws herself on the bed, kneeling over him, and pounds his back over and over, as if he’s some big swollen pike that Grandma Libby is pummeling into gefilte fish. He takes it all. He sobs and she clobbers him and I want to run out to the street and get as far away as I can. But not knowing David’s fate keeps me riveted in place. David, cast out of our shared world because of our discomfort with each other, cast into some other hell—oh, how I long for him now more than ever. Oh, what a supreme instrument of guilt he is for me now! That I have let so many years go by without him, all allowing this!

  It would be presumptuous of me to try to tell David’s story. I’m not trying to back out again, or justifying its delay. He should be permitted to describe his own hideously wounded self. Let me just say, for the sake of carrying this history forward, that Grandma Zilka disappeared in Drensk, where she’d taken David. She found her birthplace, a tiny home and adjoining barn where her father once made bricks, now turned into a movie theater of all things. What had been the outskirts of town was now the center; there was a small inn across the street, and she checked herself in with David. That evening they went to the movies. Then David went to bed and Zilka went out drinking at a club in her old hometown. When David woke up in the morning she wasn’t there. David was all alone in this remote outpost on the eve of war, with no money, a limited facility with the language, and no idea where Philip was, just a note from his grandmother saying, “I go out tonight to find my youth.”

  And where was Philip? Philip was with Amos Standing, he who provided Lucas with his middle name. With Amos Standing in an inn on the Wannsee. In a romantic inn on the Wannsee. In a bed with Amos Standing in a romantic inn on the Wannsee, under one of those famous German comforters stuffed with down. My own father, once upon a time, actually found love, with a man. That inn on the Wannsee quite possibly held the only happiness he ever knew. He had told Rivka. He had little choice. She cross-examined him so furiously trying to piece together the minute-by-minute scenario of this trip of David’s to Germany that he finally confessed. She knew.

  “Oh, I knew.” She is still pounding him violently on their bed, in their bedroom, blaming him for everything gone wrong. “I always knew.”

  “But where is David?” I plead.

  “Today is his bar mitzvah day too,” my mother wails helplessly.

  “Can he be saved?” I bellow. “What are you doing to save him!” I scream even louder.

  “He’s safe!” Philip blubbered. “I always promised you he’s safe!”

  But she isn’t having any of this.

  “And I don’t believe you!” She tries to strike him once again but this time her heart isn’t in it, and her arms fall to embracing herself as she sobs.

  I look at them both. She’s now collapsed on top of him and he’s lying there like a slug, a sack of potatoes, albeit one with tears streaming down his face. Her sobs have clogged her throat and she coughs and coughs. If they know more, which I am fearful that they do, that they must, it’s not going to be forthcoming right now. I leave these two people to their bed of pain.

  * * *

  I see the gang playing on the concrete bank that funnels the “river,” or would if there was ever any water in it. But I don’t want them to see me, so I cut to the left, running along the grass that’s been planted at the top of the culvert and around this newest section of Masturbov Gardens, which will be receiving its first inhabitants any day now. This place is growing like Topsy. Abe can’t build these warrens fast enough. The war is crowding out the District and we’re no longer such a small faraway place. All of us used to know this terrain inside out. Now we get lost. Now there’s no end to basements leading to garbage rooms and laundries leading to endless new miles of underground tunnels we haven’t mapped out. Still, in my desire not to see or be seen, I plunge underground.

  I wish I’d come upon a dead body, say, which would have been much less awful for me. But let this day be marked down somewhere as the day of days for Daniel Jerusalem. There can’t be worse to come, but the day isn’t over.

  I sit down on the floor of a laundry room filled with brand-new Bendix washers and dryers, all lined up ready for the tenants. The floor is cold and I soon feel numb. I’m staring into space and it makes me wonder if this is how Philip feels when he does that, just stares out at nothing. If you took a piece of string and stretched it from his eyeballs to the point on the wall you think he’s staring at, you’d discover he wasn’t looking there at all. Vaguely I feel I’m becoming a prisoner to powerlessness. Will I be like my father? I’ve hated him as far back as I can remember and I thought my anger would protect me, but now some new element lurking in the shadows in the back of my head is making hate less cooperative. Philip seems like a prisoner too.

  Amos Standing. Does Philip long to see him every minute and kiss him all over and hold him in his arms in his sleep and waking up kiss him again, and be kissed, oh God yes to be kissed, as I still want Mordy, Mordy who has left me? What happened to Amos Standing? Do they still meet secretly somewhere? Or has he left too, walking away forever? My father is so physically unattractive, but I don’t know what Amos looks like. Maybe he’s not so hot either. Is Philip as uncomfortable with his body as I am with mine? I sense a growing war between me and me, between the me I want and the me I am. Does Philip have the same problem? Does everyone? I think about all this as I sit on the stone cold floor. Why would Mordy want me? Why would Claudia want me? Why would David want me? Why would anyone want me? I’ll wind up someday on a sagging bed in a benighted suburb with some unhappy spouse beating me in fury for failing her. Her? Him. Him!

  Why am I thinking about Philip and Amos Standing? Why am I not thinking about David Jerusalem in a concentration camp? Because I can’t bear thinking about David Jerusalem in a concentration camp. That way lies total despair and madness.

  I’m staring up at Arnold Botts. I am sitting backed up, leaning aga
inst the cement wall. He is walking closer and closer to me. He has his penknife out. When I move to the left or right, or forward, he feints like a boxer to imprison me.

  “If you can do it to Mordy you can do it to me.”

  Does Arnold Botts shadow the entire world?

  “Open your mouth.”

  His delivers his orders in a low, sinister voice.

  “I’m going to put my dick in your mouth, so the faster you open it, the less I’ll have to hurt you.”

  “Didn’t you get in enough trouble for lying about Claudia and me fucking?”

  His knife darts forward like the tongue of a poisonous snake. I scream and jump up to evade him. But he pushes himself right into me and a streak of blood appears on my arm. I feel the tip of the knife against my stomach.

  Just then, just like I’m Pearl White on railroad tracks, Mordy, Billy, Dodo, and Orvid run in, summoned by my scream. They were scouting out the new underground tunnels, too.

  Arnold turns to face them, like a hoodlum cornered, his shiv out in front of him as he weaves back and forth. We all circle him. “Why are you defending this pervert and his dirty, filthy, disgusting acts!” He hisses, lunging at me and slashing my other arm, more deeply this time.

  “Botts, have you gone crazy?” Dodo yells.

  “Not so you could see, you blind Coke bottle!” Arnold spits at Dodo’s glasses.

  “You want to know from dirty, filthy, disgusting acts!” Mordy yells, grabbing Arnold from behind. “I’ll show you dirty acts.” And he twists Arnold’s arm so that the penknife falls to the floor, to be claimed by the quiet Billy.

  Mordy is in command. He’s fighting to protect me!

  Arnold is screaming “Fuck!” and “Shit!” and “Prick!” and “Cunt!” all strung together with our names, but we’re a long way from where anyone can hear us. Even so, Billy instinctively puts his palm over Arnold’s mouth and Arnold bites him viciously. Then Dodo just yanks Arnold’s pants down, and his underpants, too, just tears them right off and hurls them in a ball out the window, which still lacks glass, and into the Masturbov River. Billy then rips off Arnold’s shirt and undershirt and pitches them out as well. Orvid, a big, strapping, dirty-blond farm boy whose father works for the Army, holds Arnold’s arms while Mordy instructs Billy to take off Arnold’s shoes and socks and get rid of them, too. Arnold is stark naked. Orvid pinions him against the cement wall with his back to us. He’s actually kind of pretty, arms and legs and trunk in nice proportion, and his behind looks white and soft and round; I wonder if anyone has violated it and made him cry uncle. I’m angry at myself for allowing his pretty nakedness to interfere with what should be my anger at him.

  Mordy spins him around, taking his waist like a dancing partner and yanking him away from the wall. Arnold screams holy murder and we see why. We all stare in rude awe. He has an exceedingly tiny penis, more like a little bump. It almost isn’t there. Not that we’re so accustomed to seeing bigger ones, but we recognize short shrift when we see it. Dodo, who wants to be a scientist, bends closer to study the little thing more critically. He’s about to speak when Billy says, “The poor kid.”

  Arnold, much to eveyone’s surprise, collapses in a heap on the floor, almost as if he’s fainted. He lies there looking helpless. We stand above him, staring down, less at him than at that little thing and the tiny bit of pubic fuzz around it. I look up to trade glances with Mordy—some sort of conspiratorial exchange that might bring us together—but his eyes stay down. Arnold’s passivity turns to ruse. When he sees our attention is elsewhere, that no enemy arms impale him, he slithers through our legs to make a dash for freedom.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Mordy says, tackling him easily. “You don’t get away!” We hear Mordy’s body go splat against the concrete floor as he gets a hold on Arnold’s legs.

  Like some grand entrance just before the final curtain, Claudia arrives. She is back, presumably from Switzerland. “I don’t like him. I’ve never liked him. And he’s never going to be likable.” She says this like the lady of the castle dictating with a wave of her wand that her knights dispose of the unwanted body in the moat. She looks around at all of us. “I just don’t want to see it.” And she departs.

  Billy, Mordy, Dodo, Orvid, and me. Against Arnold. It’s hardly a fair match. But when is such a crafty enemy subdued by fairness? We have Arnold pinned to the floor. Five of us to control his thrashing fury. Each of us has part of him in check. Dodo, like a doctor at a patient’s bedside, keeps looking at that almost invisible bump. “Have you been to a specialist about this?” he finally asks. “Modern medicine does wonderful things. If it doesn’t improve, look me up when I get out of med school.” This provokes an awful scream from Arnold. Again Billy clamps a hand over his mouth, only to be bitten again. “Jeez,” Billy yells, curling his bleeding hand into a fist and slugging Arnold’s jaw. Billy has never done anything like this, and he looks sort of proud. “Good work, Bill,” Mordy says. “Thanks,” Billy replies. “He’s a fairy too! Billy’s a fairy too,” Arnold screams. “Shut up!” Billy commands, slugging Arnold again, and Arnold, midway into formulating another insult, shuts up. Dodo pokes unbelievingly at Arnold’s penis with his fingers, sticking his face in closer, his thick glasses magnifying his eyes. He tries to stretch the penis, but it jumps back like a tiny rubber band. After a few more tugs it begins to get a little bigger. A few more and it begins to have an erection. We all stare at it. It looks like a pencil that’s been shortened to a stub. Mordy, who has a knee placed on each of Arnold’s shoulders, suddenly leans forward and takes Arnold’s tiny erect penis in his mouth. Why is he doing this when he said he didn’t want to anymore? And why to Arnold? Does this mean he’s got it in his makeup after all? Does this mean he just doesn’t want me? Does this mean he’s still one of … us? Who else is us? Billy? Somehow I doubt it.

  I feel my own penis start to get hard as Mordy sucks and sucks, up and down in slurpy spurts. He never did that to me. No, he never did that to me. Doesn’t he care what the others are thinking? What are the others thinking? They’re all staring at Mordy with bulbous eyes. Mordy smiles at them when he sees the effect he’s having. (It will be a while before I figure out the clue to Mordy: novelty is all. He’ll try anything.) When Arnold tries to take advantage of this lull in his captors’ concentration and squirm away, Billy tightens his hold on Arnold’s ankles, his eyes glued to Mordy’s mouth. Dodo hasn’t lost his professional expression of “Very interesting.” Mordy, coming up for air, stares straight into Billy’s stare and clamps his hands on either side of Billy’s head, like a vise, pullling it down, slowly, because Billy is resisting, until Billy’s mouth is right on Arnold’s penis. Billy’s lips are locked tight, but Mordy keeps the pressure on the back of Billy’s head with one hand while he sticks the fingers of the other into Billy’s mouth until the penis goes in. Then he moves Billy’s head up and down. After a few up-and-downs, Billy starts to do it on his own, and Mordy relinquishes his tutelage. Arnold has stopped struggling by now and is moaning softly. I guess he’s beginning to feel something. Billy performs for a long time. Finally, breathless, he sits up and smiles at Mordy as if he’s been dared and has answered the call.

  Dodo abruptly springs into action, yanking off his glasses and going down on Arnold now himself. Arnold screams out, “Don’t bite me!” and Dodo slurps out, “Sorry,” and must have readjusted his mouth and lips because Arnold seems to relax.

  It’s Orvid Guptl, whom none of us knows much about, who now takes over for the finale that causes all the trouble, not that what went before it wouldn’t have been enough for Mrs. Botts.

  “I thought you were angry at the guy,” he says from the sidelines. “I thought you wanted to teach him a lesson.”

  Nobody says anything.

  “You’re just pleasuring him,” Orvid continues. “Shit, I wouldn’t mind that myself.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Mordy finally asks.

  “Hey, Dodo, get up! Now everybody stand in
a circle around little Arnie.”

  Dodo’s head stops bobbing. We all stand up.

  “Don’t stop!” Arnold yells. When nobody returns, he starts masturbating himself.

  “Let him finish,” Orvid commands, and we do.

  Or try to, but soon Mordy pulls out his penis and starts masturbating too. Billy follows, then Dodo, then me. The only one who doesn’t is Orvid, who stands to the side waiting.

  One by one, everyone ejaculates, including Arnold. Even Mordy. Everybody’s semen shoots all over Arnold, who screams in protest. I’m amazed that Mordy climaxes so quickly; I guess this is all more exciting than being in some distant field with me. Still, it’s exciting for me to watch him, and everyone else. I shoot a second after he does, then Billy comes, and Dodo finishes. His penis is actually quite large, and he has as much pubic hair as Ponzo Lombardo, but since he goes to a Catholic school, I haven’t had the opportunity of noticing. Billy seems the most polite and well-bred. He uses his handkerchief to wipe himself off, and then he bends to wipe off Arnold.

  “Don’t do that! Shit!” says Orvid. Billy immediately steps back.

  Then Orvid unbuttons his fly and pulls out the strangest penis. It’s uncircumcised, with a foreskin that’s hugely long and dangles, like a big sloppy sock off a small foot. Almost everyone in gym is circumcised; there are one or two who aren’t, but we all have a good idea what we’re looking at, and what we’re looking at is freaky. We know it’s freaky and Orvid knows too, but he’s proud of it. He gets a kick out of showing it off. So there’s Orvid acting as if he owns the best cock in the world while the rest of us are looking at it as if it belongs in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The only person uncritically fascinated is Mordy. (I hear him ask Orvid a few days later if he can take a picture of it.)