The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg

by Geoff Herbach

  Me, Kaatje, and Cranberry (long story—two young people with me—my research assistants, if you will) walked from our hotel toward this Shtetl. It's good little Kaatje and Cranberry came with me. I am cautious around them, because I know they are agonizing over my behavior (another long story, Professor) and have heard them discuss putting me in a hospital, which is not a good idea. With my research assistants around, I do not say what's on my mind, because I need to stay undercover in society. I can't scream when I see the Gestapo, because nobody but me is privy to their presence, and it's better for me not to set off alarm bells. Got it? To put it in terms an anthropologist would understand, I need to observe, not participate.

  Sooo, get this. Not too far from our hotel, maybe a mile or so, we came to the Central Station. (Our train arrived at this station on the way into town, but I saw something strange and ran away from it without ever looking at it.) And, this station. With me finally really engaged in seeing it, really looking, I saw some stuff. I saw people in fur coats and children in hats and Stars of David and I saw bombs falling from the sky. Oh, I knew what was happening, and I was not pleased to know any of this. I knew something about this station. And not just because I see into the past, although that doesn't hurt.

  In August, I received a package that contained several pictures of my likely dead father in front of this very station, standing with various formally dressed people—I assume family members or business associates? And there is a zoo next to this station, through this ornate, pretty gate. And also in the package there was a picture of my dead dad at ten years old or so, black and white, a beautiful little-boy Dad, looking like my son Charlie, standing at the gate of this zoo. The exact same gate I see now! My father is ten, but his face is morose. And I see this gate today, and I also see people in overcoats with Stars of David and men with military jackets blowing whistles, and also present-day businessmen. Whoa! My eyes! I cannot participate.

  Me and my research assistants crossed the front of the domed station. In present day, the civic square in front of it is dug up for some kind of construction, so it isn't pretty, but the building, Professor, it is perhaps one of the most beautiful train stations anywhere, ever. Golden and darkening metal and dirty stone, but majestic. It scares the shit out of me.

  Running along the right side of the station is a long street. This street is filled with diamond shops. As soon as we turned on this street, I knew we were getting close, close, close. Men with dark beards and dark hats rode bicycles. They did not wear Stars of David—these were present-day Jews. Hasidic Jews, so it's hard to tell they're from today. They wore dark wool coats, though the sun was shining and it was in the high sixties. Some were stopped together, in little droves of bicycles, speaking quietly to one another. There were also people who looked more like my dad, big men with big glasses and big rings, climbing out of expensive cars. These, I think, are modern Jews. There were also Indians—from India! Walking around! What do you make of that? Global economy. But mostly Jews.

  Jews, everywhere. Some from the olden days, but mostly from right now, today. My dad once told me that only a few hundred Jews were left in Antwerp after the war. I remember him saying it was terrible, terrible. And his parents dead . . . And his brother escaped to New York (where my dad would eventually follow). There have to be thousands of Jews in the city now. The diamond street was filled with them.

  Because my research assistants were with me and I needed to mind my manners so they didn't commit me, I did not approach anyone on the street to get the lowdown, whatever that might have been.

  Diamonds. I do believe my family dealt in diamonds, Professor, or still does.

  Me and my assistants took a right from the diamond street into a little winding neighborhood where all the storefronts—clothes, grocery, pharmacy, bakery—were Jewish and had signs in Hebrew and, I assume, Yiddish. (That's what Kaatje thought—she is a Dutch speaker and her Dutch helps her even with Yiddish—I had no idea—language!) Mothers in dark coats pushed crying babies in strollers, with little boys bounding next to them in yarmulkes. The mothers' heads were covered in scarves or in obvious wigs. These are fundamentalists, Professor Lewis. They're like the Amish but with money and cars. And bicyclists in black hats and old rabbis with long gray beards and gray, grave faces and grave gaits, moving along with their hands clenched behind their backs. They all mumble. Everyone mumbles, mutters: men, women, children. Either to each other, or if alone, to themselves. I remember this from Dad. Their voices are always rumbling soft in their throats. I can hear it now. Just like my dad.

  In a bakery, case after white case filled with beautiful foods, everything like something I know, but not exactly—cake-like, bread-like, pretzel-like—I caught fire, and even though my research assistants were with me, I stopped simply observing and began participating. I struck up a conversation in English with a middle-aged woman at the counter. Goose pimples raised on my skin. I told her my father lived in Antwerp before the war. And I ordered a knish and potato latkes, and she said, yes, and wrapped up my purchases, and yes, she lives around the block with her husband, who owns this shop, and yes, three children, and yes, blessings, all are doing well in school.

  “Jewish school?” I asked.

  She squinted her eyes at me, nodded.

  So I nodded, paused, almost said a lot more, but didn't, because I wanted her to ask, wanted her to ask me my name, show she recognized me, but she didn't ask.

  Then another woman entered the store, and the shop lady turned her attention to the woman, gravel talking, fast talking, nervous talking in Yiddish, and so I nodded and squinted at both of them, my eyes watering, and then my research assistants grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of the store. I had my knishes, etc., so okay, fine.

  Outside Kaatje said, “You should be careful. I think the shopkeeper was saying something not nice about you to that woman.”

  I'm getting closer in my investigation, Professor, closer to my father. I must tread delicately so as not to blow my cover. Yes. Careful I shall be! Fly under the radar. Not raise the eyebrows. I've got to keep my secrets.

  We wandered awhile longer, the sun so warm in this place though I've been told it's cold, cloudy, and rainy here this time of year. We found a nicely landscaped park, with little hills, large hardwood trees, and long ponds. The park felt familiar, perhaps from my dreams, which I take seriously these days, even though social scientists like us perhaps should not. I saw kids pulling wagons and riding bikes, kids in 1940s woolen sweaters and khaki shorts, and I then considered my need for stealth, so looked away. The sun shone down, and there we sat and ate, Jews and Indians and Belgians all around. And without the earth shaking or the light changing, I saw jeeps pulling guns, panzers that disappeared into air, flashes of fires and marches of civilians, kids knocked to the ground, bleeding, and I couldn't react, so I looked to the sky, but there prop airplanes streaked, popping clouds and exploding, and so I shut my eyes.

  Bakery shop. She knows me in the bakery shop, Professor. I know she recognized me. Perhaps she could provide me information as to the whereabouts of one Josef Rimberg, my father, who likely is or isn't deceased. (What's the difference?)

  I will go about these inquiries with great stealth and control.

  I wish you were here to guide me in my information gathering, Professor. You would be helpful and dispassionate and rational, unlike my research assistants, who watch me like hawks.

  Day Nine:

  Transcript 2

  * * *

  Yes, my father did hit David. I still wanted to find him. I wasn't angry at him for hitting David.

  I don't think Dad hit me, but I do remember him trying that one time.

  No way I would've contacted David. He's my brother only by blood.

  Right, I felt closer to this Professor Lewis, who taught all of these incredible ethnographies that included magic and a lot of violence and scientific discovery. It made more sense to contact him . . . write to him. You know what I mean.

/>   I don't really know Professor Lewis. I don't even know if he's alive anymore. But I needed to write someone who might understand.

  God, yes. I can still see it, Barry, both dream and reality. And I wasn't shocked. It was completely evident that my dreams, since the very beginning in Minneapolis, contained real details of Antwerp . . . that I'd been seeing Antwerp for real. It was also clear at that point that my dreams were happening when I was awake, which was terrifying—not that I was afraid—I was horrified at how brutal, violent things were around me, things that I saw. Lurking soldiers in bars. Flemish kids crouched and eyeballing me with these cold blue eyes. I knew the outcome of Nazi warplanes shooting overhead and the Gestapo at the corner smoking and kids riding their bikes in the park. I knew what was coming. I knew it all. Professor Lewis would not have been afraid. He would've been . . . interested, would've wanted to get to the bottom of this. Cultural anthropologists have a lot of courage.

  Yes, Barry, I could see stuff from the early forties and also from the fall of 2004. I could see it all simultaneously.

  I didn't see the little dream girl on the street when I was awake. I didn't see my dad. Just 1940s stuff.

  I would call these visions . . . Listen, Barry, call them what you want. Those in the medical profession would say I was having a psychotic break.

  I didn't feel psycho. But I imagine most crazy people don't think they're crazy.

  I don't think I was crazy.

  I got locked up. Yup. I did a good job not reacting to things for a few days. But the park. That park. I couldn't stop myself. It was three a.m., and I wasn't asleep because my cough was getting worse. (Probably couldn't have slept even without the cough.) I was awake in my underpants, pacing around, scribbling in my notebook, when it came to me. That park. The one we walked into after the bakery? Stads Park. I understood . . . remembered (though I'd never been there, would have no way of remembering) that my father's childhood apartment was on one corner of that park. I realized I'd been dreaming of that park for six weeks. I knew exactly where the apartment was.

  I don't know. I don't know. This stuff, which happens all the time to me, makes me dizzy . . . because it makes no sense and it makes complete sense, which is also why it doesn't make sense.

  The doctor in Antwerp thought I was schizophrenic. At first. After we talked for a few days he didn't think so anymore.

  It was quite a scene.

  Journal Entry,

  October 5, 2004, 3:12 a.m.

  * * *

  Dream park is no dream.

  Light coming in from the window. You look down at the park in front of the apartment. Dark trees. The path where kids ride bikes during the day. In the corner of the park, an enormous sculpture, maybe of soldiers, bronze shining green in the streetlight. Window open, cold air, springtime, the trees with new leaves, leaves shaking because of oncoming soldiers and trucks and tanks.

  The park you see from the apartment window is the park you sat in yesterday, eating a knish on a bench. It's that park.

  Troops march past the park, down the street, past your apartment, and Belgians are with them, and it's not Dad, not Dad, the little girl in her broken English says it's not Dad, but someone is there in the apartment window when you recede into shadows, spotlights training the windows from the street below.

  That's not Dad in the window. 1940s. He's in the apartment, with you, with the girl, cowering in the corner, shaking, crying. He's just a kid. Who is it in the window?

  It's that park in your dreams. It's that street in your dreams. It's that apartment. The map says the street is Rubens Lei.

  Go see it now.

  Day Nine:

  Transcript 3

  * * *

  Cranberry heard me run out of my room. I wasn't quiet about it. Yanked the door, slammed it, and took off running. Cranberry left his room across the hall from mine and tailed me onto the street. Out on the street he shouted at me. He caught up, but I wouldn't talk to him. Just ran toward the park. Cranberry chased behind, chattering God knows what.

  From married father of three with a corporate job and . . . khakis . . . to jumping in the Seine . . . to racing down an Antwerp street at 3:30 in the morning, hacking out my lungs, wearing a T-shirt and underpants. Right?

  (Laughs.) I don't remember the last time I really laughed. (Laughs.) Barry, I stormed the . . . I stormed my father's apartment. Poor Cranberry. Poor, poor Cranberry outside . . . hearing me screaming and glass breaking . . . (Laughs.)

  You read the letters, Barry. I was sent to a nursing home after that.

  Letter 39

  October 10, 2004

  * * *

  Dearest Jack Nicholson, who won an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,

  I'm writing to tell you I'm like that little guy, your friend, in the movie. Except he commits suicide and I can't. I'm like him, because I need a brother, like you, to guide me, and I am, I think, really fucking nuts. I am also a magician.

  Listen, Jack.

  My dad lived here, in Antwerp, Belgium. It's possible I have ESP because I can see the past in the present. Also, I don't drown in rivers. I'm locked up in a damn home for old crows. I can't stop coughing. What do you think?

  Dear Jack, what was your name in that movie? Randle? That might be it. I'm not like you. My name is Theodore, and I'm not pretending. I see stuff and maybe there is some genius here in my head.

  Jack, I am sitting at a table in a common room in some kind of nursing home or rest home. Institutionalized, my man. And I wish the old ladies would turn down the TV so I can think. They can't understand me. The doctor just gave me a pill, but I'm not sleepy yet. I have ten minutes of consciousness and I'm going to use it.

  Listen, Jack. I did something crazy. Rock star–sized crazy, which you might have done yourself, in a movie or in real life, because that's the kind of guy you are. This will sound familiar: broken glass, screaming, rock throwing. This all happened at the apartment building where my father grew up, so it wasn't a random crazy.

  You weren't in World War II, were you, Jack? You're too young for that. There's some WWII stuff happening in my head and on the street and in that apartment building, which I've been dreaming for months, although I didn't know it was in Antwerp until I got in front of the apartment building and broke it wide open with a rock. The Belgians can't be pleased with me. The Jews in the building thought I was a North African terrorist, middle of the night, going to burn the place down to announce my hatred of Israel and of Jews in general.

  Me? An Arab terrorist? Come on! I'm half-Jewish.

  Okay, I'm getting sleepy. Here's what you need to know: I am in a rest home (a nursing home?) and I am resting my aching head and lungs. I am not free to go.

  I'm surrounded by ancient crow women in bathrobes with no teeth who scream at me bloody murder in French and Flemish. They howl, Jack. And I tell them, “I can't help you. I'm an American. I have my own problems. Please watch TV.” And the old women howl.

  Why am I in a nursing home? I am criminally insane, I think. Like you pretended to be in the movie. You got shock treatment, right? Not me. Not yet. They shouldn't put me with all of these howling old women, though. What if I pick them up from their wheelchairs and throw them out the window? (I wouldn't do such a thing . . . our mother is in a home, Jack, just like this one, except in English—but how would the authorities know that if they think I'm criminally insane?) I should be in jail or in a serious mental institution with my brother (you!) and a tall Indian and we should play some basketball.

  Not that I'm complaining. I don't want to be in a serious mental institution.

  There was a police station at the beginning and a jail cell for a short time (I slept there for a couple of hours, bled a little on my shirt). But by noon the next day I was brought here, to this gravy-smelling, carpeted place, and was told to sleep, which seems very nice, considering I shattered the glass on that apartment building door, my dad's old apartment building, by throwing a large rock, considering how
I wrenched open the door by reaching through broken glass for the handle and then sprinted through the lobby, bleeding, alarms blaring, then took an elevator up to the fifth floor and knew which one was THE apartment, DAD's apartment. I pounded on its door, shouted, “Open up,” then tried to break down the door, while Cranberry screamed on the street for me to stop, cries getting more and more plaintive, and then other people screamed in other apartments and especially in the apartment where I pounded. And while I operated in present time, the 1940s tanks were rolling, the sirens blaring, gunshots up the street ricocheting, echoing, cracking in my ears.

  This is not appropriate behavior. I should be jailed.

  This behavior, however, seemed completely rational at the time (I needed to see if my dreams were true), and I remember the break-in perfectly. It confounds the doctor who visits me each day that I seem so rational. I remember thinking while trying to get in the apartment, “The people who live here won't open up with me screaming and bleeding like this. Better break down the door to get a look inside.”

  A look at what?

  Jack Nicholson, get this: This apartment is THE apartment where my dead dad and his brother Solly grew up, at least until the war (WWII). I know this now to be true and fully believed, no, KNEW it to be true when I did my crime . . . though it was unconfirmed by outside sources, only the voices in my head, which are just thoughts, my thoughts. The owners of the apartment confirmed the fact for me when I was arrested, told Cranberry to tell me I got the right apartment—it was owned by a Rimberg—but went about contacting them in the WRONG way. Please tell him not to come back, they said to Cranberry, referring to me. I can't blame them.