An Orphan's Tale

by Jay Neugeboren

  He said his father could talk anyone into anything but that he had never been able to talk his own son into believing in the settlement. Dr. Fogel’s voice remained gentle even as he insisted with his eyes that Danny pay full attention. Danny stared at Dr. Fogel’s right hand and he believed that Dr. Fogel wanted him to touch it. Dr. Fogel was saying that he was certain a bright boy like Danny knew the words to the psalm: How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning….

  Dr. Fogel laughed to himself, gurgling slightly, and said that he had disobeyed his father and run away when he was nineteen, but that his father had, in his bitterness, willed the land to him anyway. It was his joke, Dr. Fogel said. Danny thought that the fingers on Dr. Fogel’s right hand were growing red and scaly, but he knew it was all in his imagination and so he concentrated on Charlie’s face and imagined himself telling him who he was and where he had come from. He saw Charlie smiling the way he had when Danny had been looking into the store windows.

  Danny looked up. Dr. Fogel was no longer sitting next to him. “Come,” Dr. Fogel said, standing at the door. “Enough. I shouldn’t bother you with such tales. Come.”

  Danny wanted to stand but he couldn’t. Dr. Fogel asked Danny if he knew that the great Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, had wanted to buy land in Argentina or Uganda for his Jewish Homeland? Did Danny know that Herzl had advocated having all Jewish children baptized?

  “Why?” Danny asked.

  Dr. Fogel turned away without answering.

  “What will happen to your land when you die?” Danny asked.

  Dr. Fogel’s back passed through the doorway as Danny spoke and Danny thought Dr. Fogel felt bad because he had told more of his story than he had planned to, even though Danny didn’t believe he had done anything to force him to.

  He sat for a while, looking at the faded blue velvet curtains that covered the ark. How much, he wondered, would he need to know to be able to feel completely what it would have been like to have been Dr. Fogel’s father when he was just past thirteen being smuggled on the wrong ship across the Atlantic Ocean?

  *

  WEDNESDAY (MORNING)

  I never slept last night.

  I thought about the end of the world.

  I read in the library that the end of the world will come not from war or starvation or radiation or overpopulation but because man’s creation of energy will add too much heat to the earth’s atmosphere.

  If you were the only Jew left on the face of the earth would you contain in your genes the entire history of all the Jews who ever lived, and if you found one Jewish woman and started all over would you be able to repeat all of past history? But if you could, wouldn’t it mean that because the past is finite and you were multiplying into the future based on the past that the future would be finite also?

  I spent my last evening in the Home watching TV with the other boys. Years from now will I become somebody so that they’ll want to say they knew me now? Will they remember what I looked like today?

  Nobody will be able to explain me.

  DANIEL GINSBERG HEREBY DECLARES THAT THE MAIMONIDES HOME FOR JEWISH BOYS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. ANYTHING WHICH MAY BEFALL HIM, GOOD OR ILL, IS DUE TO THE EXERCISE OF HIS OWN FREE WILL.

  I am grateful to the Home for having fed, clothed, and educated me for the past 5½ years of my life.

  Possessions left in my locker if and when it is opened shall be divided among the other boys with 100% orphans getting 1st choice and those with 1 living parent 2nd choice.

  I forgive my mother.

  Yesterday Dr. Fogel told me about land he inherited from his father who was a Zionist. He said that he and his father agreed on only one thing about land, that it was the only thing God wasn’t creating more of!

  What I’d like to do: learn to play a musical instrument, either the flute or the violin. I don’t think I’m too old to start. Years ago they used to have bands in the Home but I didn’t see Charlie’s picture in any of their photos.

  I was born near the spot where I 1st saw him but I’ve never been outside of New York City in my entire life as far as I know.

  Remember to look up: Herzl and baptism.

  Now that I’m leaving I can say what my great desire is someday: to have friends who will be like brothers! Since my stay here was only temporary and the Home itself will soon be gone, it’s a good thing I didn’t become attached to anyone here who I might not see again for years and years. It got easier to say nothing to them as the years went by.

  If I was a real genius it wouldn’t be so hard for me to memorize things.

  It’s easy for me to figure out why I want friends like brothers, but the reasons don’t matter to me. I believe that my chance will come soon and that when it does I will have a great deal more to offer another person because of the way I’ve been saving myself.

  DANNY GINSBERG WILL SAY NOW THIS 1 TRUTH THAT EVERYTHING HE TELLS YOU IS A LIE.

  Two

  From where the boy sat, on the hill above the playing fields, the grass appeared to be black. There was, he knew, a physical explanation: the sun, setting in the west, was in his eyes so that he squinted, and the breeze, coming from behind him, was blowing the blades of grass away, in shadows, all down the slope of the hill. The soft blackness, coming after lush green, comforted him.

  Beyond the playing fields, upon which boys were working out in football uniforms and girls were playing field hockey, the school itself seemed cold and beautiful to him. There were no turrets, no towers, no old stone, no shadowy recesses: it was all rectangular and shining, and this pleased him. He imagined that he was sitting just inside the rim of an enormous plastic dome, his back grazed by its hard smoothness; the frantic yelling of the girls and the chants of the boys, rising to him, were buffered by the enclosure so that, reaching his ears, the sharpness of each isolated cry was gone. The dome seemed to be protecting them all from harm.

  He thought he could hear the panting and feel the warm breath of each individual girl. They wore blue skirts and white blouses; those who sat on the sidelines, or watched the boys practicing, wore blue blazers with red and silver emblems on the left breast pockets.

  Some of the boys were pushing blocking tackles, grunting like cattle. Other boys stood along the sidelines, and on the edges of the fields, away from the games, he saw boys and girls with each other, lounging on the grass. He wondered if they would kiss in front of their teachers.

  He heard a rustling and his heart thumped. He didn’t want to be caught or questioned before he had done things his way. He stood and lifted his green sack, shielding his eyes with his left hand. He saw her skirt first, and then her thigh—the knee was lifted and bent slightly. She had her back against a thick birch tree and the boy held on to the tree with both hands as he pressed into her. Their blazers were folded into one another like rich drapery, and he saw the boy’s hand move underneath her school emblem. Behind the calf her ankle gripped the boy’s leg. Their school-books were scattered around them among the ferns.

  He watched them for a while, mesmerized by the rotating motion of their heads as they kissed one another. His heartbeats came more slowly, and he felt calm again. He didn’t, he realized, even feel jealous of them. They seemed to kiss so quietly that he actually felt that he wanted to be able to tell them how happy he was for them….

  He moved to his left, along the ridge where he had been sitting; the sun, molten orange, was now below the tree line and he could see more easily. The shadows on the playing field were longer, the colors, in the afterlight of the bright sun, more intense. The green of the lawns was more profound, more lush, and the trees seemed larger. The glass windows of the school buildings, without any reflections, were black, and he could now see beyond the buildings themselves to what looked like formal gardens: hedgerows, mazes, clusters of color among the green rows, geometric shapes along borders. There were flashes of reds and yellows along trellises, and mo
re delicate pinks and purples and blues within the rows. He realized that he knew nothing about trees and flowers, not even their names.

  The students seemed to have such easy ways with one another! He watched them shout and wave, touch briefly, and then move off. He imagined this: that the girls were, as they ran across the field chasing one another, swimming in clear green water. Their motions were fluid. He was unaware of their shrieks. The sunlight, coming through the trees at a low slanting angle now, tempered the driving bull-like movements of the boys. Their drills were mechanical, yet graceful. The football spiraled through the air soundlessly. He had never, he felt, seen any scene that was so peaceful—as if, he thought, the boys and girls were about to do things. As if, really, they were not even there and what he was seeing was an empty field, and images that they were watching with him—images that they would, when they played on the field itself, imitate with perfection.

  He thought of a story he knew about a king, Frederick II, who ruled Italy in the thirteenth century, and who had wanted to know what language was the true language of mankind. He had therefore placed a group of newborn infants in a room together in the remote part of his castle and raised them so that they were clothed, fed, and nurtured without ever hearing the sound of an adult voice. His philosophers observed them. In this way the king believed he would discover what the true universal language of man was.

  There were women who fondled and kissed and played with and loved the children, and the children seemed normal in all ways: they ate, they crawled, they cried, they laughed, they walked, they played-all without ever hearing the sound of a human voice.

  Then, one morning, when the servants opened the door they found that the children had, during the night, all died. The oldest child was not yet four and the youngest just past three. The king grieved, for he had loved the children.

  It was a story, Danny thought, that would have appealed to Dr. Fogel.

  He saw the girls running together, their hockey sticks in the air, toward the buildings. The boys lined up in rows and were racing in groups, as hard as they could, toward the far sideline. They ran with their helmets off and they swallowed air in giant gulps. Boys in blazers collected the balls and equipment.

  Danny felt hungry. He had not eaten since nine that morning, when he had had two Hershey bars and a Coke. He felt his stomach flutter, and he hurried down the hill, digging his heels into the sod for balance. His palms were moist and his throat dry. His thighs quivered slightly, as if his pores were about to open and allow the sweat to rush out over his skin. Under his arms, the soft hairs were already drenched.

  He breathed slowly and deeply and walked to the man with the megaphone and clipboard. In their uniforms, with shoulder pads and hip pads under the red jerseys and blue pants, the players seemed monstrous to him. Their faces, framed above the red and blue bulges of fabric, seemed absurdly young. Some of them were his own age, though most seemed older.

  When he spoke, his voice was stronger than he had expected it to be. He had planned to recite the Home’s motto first, so that he would be able to see Charlie’s eyes sparkle with illumination, but now that he was in the midst of the actual situation he found that he felt so totally disconnected that he could recover only by speaking to the point.

  “My name is Danny Ginsberg,” he said, “and I come from the Home. I came here to tell you that it’s going to close soon. You have to save it.”

  “What?”

  Charlie turned, the megaphone moving sideways in an are, and he looked down into the boy’s face. “Next—ready—go—!” he yelled to the last row of boys, and they sprinted across the field, helmets cradled under arms or swinging by their sides. “Move your fat sissy ass, Hills!” he called, and, winking at Danny, he started out across the field himself. He caught up to the players before they were halfway to the other side, and he whacked the clipboard against their rear ends, one after the other. Then he veered to the left and yelled for all the boys to follow him.

  They ran around the field three times, and Danny, inside the circle, turned slowly to watch their progress. Charlie drifted among the runners, now taking the lead, now dropping back to force stragglers toward the front of the group. On their fourth time around he led them through the goalposts and yelled to them to sprint to the building. Danny felt cold, watching them.

  Charlie trotted to him, smiling, then leaned over, hands on thighs, chest heaving, and he thought, if I make it to forty, I’ll make it to fifty. He pressed his hand against his chest, on his blue nylon windbreaker, and he felt his heart pumping hard and fast. The tones were strong. He touched his fingertips to his wrist and watched the second hand move on his watch. Seventeen months to go.

  “Come on,” he said, impatiently. “Tell me again. Talk to me. Talk to me—”

  Danny shivered. He watched the sweat pour off Charlie’s face, and he saw, where Charlie had been pressing his hand against his chest, a moist dark handprint. Danny stared.

  “Come on,” Charlie said again, sucking in air and taking his pulse a second time. His rate was dropping fast. He noticed the boy’s hazel eyes. “Come on. Talk to me—”

  “My name is Danny Ginsberg and I come from the Home. I came here to tell you that it’s going to close soon. You have to save it.”

  “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” Charlie asked, and laughed at the line. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Listen, Danny—that’s what you said your name was, right?—you eat steak and drink lots of milk and work with the weights and then try us again next year, okay?”

  “But I’m from the Home!” Danny cried, and he pulled away. “I saw you in the city—in Brooklyn—and I recognized you from your photos. I’ll prove it—I’ll give you facts.”

  Charlie squatted, so that he was just below the boy’s eye level. The boy’s hair, with slanting rays of light filtering through from behind, seemed to float just above his head in golden puffs. In his head, Charlie was making lists of things to do for the evening and for the next day. “Listen,” he said, laughing at himself. “Do you know what I do some times?-If I finish something that wasn’t on a list I made, I write the thing down anyway just so I can cross it out.” He clapped Danny on the shoulder. “What do you make of that?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Danny said. “I saw you in the city. I come from there—from the Home—and I need a place to stay. Please. Would you let me stay with you for a while?”

  Charlie brushed a picture of Sol from his head. “Let you what?”

  “I can prove things,” Danny said. “Dr. Fogel was the coach. The laundry room used to be behind the boiler room in the West Wing. Dr. Fogel gave out nipples if you acted like—”

  “Hold on, hold on—” Charlie bent down again, let his clipboard and megaphone drop, and took the boy’s hands in his own. “You mean you came from there today?”

  He watched the boy nod, and he saw the tears in the boy’s eyes.

  “And you told me that they’re going to close it and that you ran away to come stay with me, right?”

  The boy nodded his head again, but did not speak.

  “Christ!” Charlie said, and then Danny saw the light in Charlie’s eyes that he had dreamt of seeing.

  Charlie shook his head, half laughing, half helpless. “What do you make of that?—I mean, what do you make of it?”

  “I won’t be a bother,” Danny said. “I have some money. I could help you learn to read. I—”

  “You know about that, huh?” Charlie ran his tongue along his lower gums, searching for something sweet. He let go of the boy’s hands and stood. He heard screaming and cursing from inside the building, and in his head he could see the boys snapping towels at one another and grabbing balls. “I mean, you have to see that this interferes with my life, right?”

  “Yes,” Danny said, and he could see the sentence that he’d memorized, as if the words were hanging in front of him: “But this is what I figured out that made me come—if they close the Home, then when y
ou die and I die there’ll be no living memory of what we were like when we were boys.”

  Charlie blinked. “How old did you say you were?” he asked.

  “I’ll be thirteen soon.” Danny showed Charlie his green sack. “I have my talis and tephillin with me. Dr. Fogel taught me how to put them on.”

  “And what you’re looking for,” Charlie said, amused at the words that had occurred to him, “is a home away from the Home, right?”

  Danny nodded, and, as Charlie smiled, he saw the slender white scar appear on Charlie’s lower lip. Charlie put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “We’ll try to work something out, all right? Here—” He handed him the clipboard and used one of Sol’s lines: “Do something for your country. Carry this.”

  They walked across the lawn, in silence. Charlie liked these autumn evenings, after a good workout. He needed the silence to fill up on. He held the door open, so that Danny passed inside, under his arm. “But listen,” he said, “why’d you pick me?”

  Danny shrugged. “I liked the way you looked in the pictures on the walls there….” The lights were off in the corridor, and the change, from the daylight, made it seem black, with spots flickering in a funnel shape toward the far end. “And then when I saw you in the street last week I just…” Danny stopped. “I don’t know. It seemed right.”

  “I want you to meet Murray—Murray Mendelsohn. I’ll shower first and then we’ll see if he’s still in his office. He’s from the Home too—you knew that, didn’t you? He got me the job here—he’s the headmaster.”

  “I saw his pictures on the walls,” Danny said. “But I never looked him up. I didn’t know he was here.”