“I said to myself, ‘Millions of Jews are being outraged and tortured in concentration camps. Why should I have it better?’ For once I tried to be a Christian and answer hatred with love. It didn’t help. I ordered potatoes and the waiter brought me a bowl of cold spaghetti with cheese that smelled to high heaven. I said ‘Gracias,’ but that son of a dog did not answer. He looked at me with mockery and scorn. A man’s eyes—even his mouth or teeth—sometimes reveal more than any language. I wasn’t as much concerned about the wrongs done to me as I was consumed by curiosity. If what was happening to me was not merely a product of my imagination, I’d have to reappraise all values—return to superstitions of the most primitive ages of man. The coffee is ice-cold.”
“You let it get cold.”
“Well, forget it.”
II
Chaikin stamped out the last cigarette of his package. “If you remember, I always smoked a lot. Since that voyage I’ve been a chain smoker. But let me go on with the story. This trip lasted twelve days and each day was worse than the one before. I almost stopped eating altogether. At first I skipped breakfast. Then I decided that one meal a day was enough, so I only came up for supper. Every day was Yom Kippur. If only I could have found a place to be by myself. But the tourist class was packed. Italian women sat all day long singing songs. In the lounge, men played cards, dominoes, and checkers, and drank huge mugs of beer. When we passed the equator it became like Gehenna. In the middle of the night I would go up to the deck and the heat would hit my face like the draft from a furnace. I had the feeling that a comet was about to collide with the earth and the ocean to boil over. The sunsets on the equator are unbelievably beautiful and frightening, too. Night falls suddenly. One moment it is day, the next is darkness. The moon is as large as the sun and as red as blood. Did you ever travel in those latitudes? I would stretch out on deck and doze just to avoid the two Italians and the Greek. One thing I had learned: to take with me from the table whatever I could: a piece of cheese, a roll, a banana. When my enemy discovered that I took food to the cabin he fell into a rage. Once when I had taken an orange he tore it out of my hand. I was afraid he would beat me up. I really feared that he might poison me and I stopped eating cooked things altogether.
“Two days before the ship was due to land in New York the captain’s dinner took place. They decorated the dining room with paper chains, lanterns, and such frippery. When I entered the dining room that evening I barely recognized it. The passengers were dressed in fancy evening dresses, tuxedos, what have you. On the tables there were paper hats and turbans in gold and silver, trumpets, and all this tinsel made for such occasions. The menu cards, with ribbons and tassels, were larger than usual. On my table my enemy had put a foolscap.
“I sat down, and since the table was small and I was in no mood for such nonsense I shoved the hat on the floor. That evening I was kept waiting longer than ever. They served soups, fish, meats, compotes, and cakes and I sat before an empty plate. The smells made my mouth water.
After a good hour the waiter, in a great hurry, stuck the menu card into my hand in such a way that it cut the skin between my thumb and index finger. Then he saw the foolscap on the floor. He lifted it up and pushed it over my head so violently it knocked my glasses off. I refused to look ridiculous just to please that scoundrel, and I removed the cap. When he saw that he screamed in Spanish and threatened me with his fist. He did not take my order at all, but just brought me dry bread and a pitcher of sour wine. I was so starved that I ate the bread and drank the wine. South Americans take the captain’s dinner very seriously. Every few minutes there would be the pop of a champagne bottle. The band was playing furiously. Fat old couples were dancing. Today the whole thing does not seem so great a tragedy. But then I would have given a year of my life to know why this vicious character was persecuting me. I hoped someone would see how miserably I was being treated, but no one around me seemed to care. It even appeared to me that my immediate neighbors—even the Jews—were laughing at me. You know how the brain works in such situations.
“Since there was nothing more for me to eat I returned to my cabin. Neither the Greek nor the Italians were there. I climbed the ladder to my berth and lay down with my clothes on. Outside, the sea was raging and from the hall above I could hear music, shouts, and laughter. They were having a grand time.
“I was so tired I fell into a heavy sleep. I don’t remember ever having slept so deeply. My head sank straight through the pillow. My legs became numb. Perhaps this is the way one dies. Then I awoke with a start. I felt a stabbing pain in my bladder. I had to urinate. My prostate gland is enlarged and who knows what else. My cabin mates had not returned. There was vomit all over the corridors. I attended to my needs and decided to go up on deck for some air. The planks on the deck were clean and wet, as if freshly scrubbed. The sky was overcast, the waves were high, and the ship was pitching violently. I couldn’t have stayed there long, it was too cold. Still, I was determined to get a breath of fresh air and I made an effort to walk around.
“And then came the event I still can’t believe really happened. I’d reached the railing at the stern of the ship, and turned around. But I was not alone, as I thought. There was my waiter. I trembled. Had he been lurking in the dark waiting for me? Although I knew it was my man, he seemed to be emerging out of the mist. He was coming toward me. I tried to run away but a jerk of the ship threw me right into his hands. I can’t describe to you what I felt at that instant. When I was still a yeshiva boy I once heard a cat catch a mouse in the night. It’s almost forty years away but the shriek of that mouse still follows me. The despair of everything alive cried out through that mouse. I had fallen into the paws of my enemy and I comprehended his hatred no more than the mouse comprehended that of the cat. I don’t need to tell you I’m not much of a hero. Even as a youngster I avoided fights. To raise a hand against anybody was never in my nature. I expected him to lift me up and throw me into the ocean. Nevertheless I found myself fighting back. He pushed me and I pushed him. As we grappled I began to wonder if this could possibly be my arch foe of the dining room. That one could have killed me with a blow. The one I struggled with was not the giant I feared. His arms felt like soft rubber, gelatin, down—I don’t know how else to express it. He pushed almost without strength and I was actually able to shove him back. No sound came from him. Why I didn’t scream for help, I don’t know myself. No one could have heard me anyhow, because the ocean roared and thundered. We struggled silently and stubbornly and the ship kept tossing from one side to the other. I slipped but somehow caught my balance. I don’t know how long the duel lasted. Five minutes, ten, or perhaps longer. One thing I remember: I did not despair. I had to fight and I fought without fear. Later it occurred to me that this would be the way two bucks would fight for a doe. Nature dictates to them and they comply. But as the fighting went on I became exhausted. My shirt was drenched. Sparks flew before my eyes. Not sparks—flecks of sun. I was completely absorbed, body and soul, and there was no room for any other sensation. Suddenly I found myself near the railing. I caught the fiend or whatever he was and threw him overboard. He appeared unusually light—sponge or foam. In my panic I did not see what happened to him.“After that, my legs buckled and I fell onto the deck. I lay there until the gray of dawn. That I did not catch pneumonia is itself a miracle. I was never really asleep, but neither was I awake. At dawn it began to rain and the rain must have revived me. I crawled back to my cabin. The Greek and the Italians were snoring like oxen. I climbed up the ladder and fell on my bed, utterly worn out. When I awoke the cabin was empty. It was one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“You struggled with an astral body,” I said.
“What? I knew you would say something like that. You have a name for everything. But wait, I haven’t finished the story.”
“What else?”
“I was still terribly weak when I got up. I went to the dining room anxious to convince myself that the whole thing had been n
othing but a nightmare. What else could it have been? I could no more have lifted that bulk of a waiter than you could lift this whole cafeteria. So I dragged myself to my table and sat down. It was lunchtime. In less than a minute a waiter came over to me—not my mortal adversary but another one, short, trim, friendly. He handed me the menu and asked politely what I wanted. In my broken French and then in German I tried to find out where the other waiter was. But he seemed not to understand; anyway, he replied in Spanish. I tried sign language but it was useless. Then I pointed to some items on the menu and he immediately brought me what I asked for. It was my first decent meal on that ship. He was my waiter from then on until we docked in New York. The other one never showed up—as if I really had thrown him into the ocean. That’s the whole story.”
“A bizarre story.”
“What is the sense of all this? Why would he hate me so? And what is an astral body?”
I tried to explain to Chaikin what I had learned about these phenomena in the books of the occult. There is a body within our body: it has the forms and the limbs of our material body but it is of a spiritual substance, a kind of transition between the corporeal and the ghostly—an ethereal being with powers that are above the physical and physiological laws as we know them. Chaikin looked at me through his horn-rimmed glasses sharply, reproachfully, with a hint of a smile.
“There is no such thing as an astral body. I had drunk too much wine on an empty stomach. It was all a play of my fantasy.”
“Then why didn’t he show up again in the dining room?” I asked.
Chaikin lifted up one of the cigarette stubs and began looking for his matches. “Sometimes waiters change stations. What won’t sick nerves conjure up! Besides, I think I saw him a few weeks later in New York. I went into a tavern to make a telephone call and there he was, sitting at the bar—unless this too was a phantom.”
We were silent for a long while. Then Chaikin said, “What he had against me, I’ll never know.”
(Translated from the Yiddish by Friedl Wyler and Herbert Lottman)
Dark Angel
Edward Bryant
I can still see the blood. It had been darker than I’d expected; and it ran slowly, like a slow-motion stream in a dream.
Daddy’s little girl again…
“Was it worth it?” my father had said to me. That was thirty years ago. I was seven.
“So they chased you home from school,” he continued. “Danny and his idiot brother. Kids do that. So what? What would they have done if they had caught you?” He’d looked at me speculatively and said, “Never mind.” My father claimed to be six feet tall, but he missed that by at least two inches. From my height, he looked as though he were ten feet tall. “Remember what I said yesterday?”
“You said you’d hide in the trees beyond the school. And if they chased me again, you’d help me. You’d throw snowballs.”
“You were upset. I meant what I said later,” said my father. “After supper.”
I said nothing.
My father said, “I asked you if you didn’t think it would be unfair for me to help you gang up on them. I waited until you’d calmed down.”
“I just wanted you there.” My eyes burned, but there were no more tears. “I just wanted you to help me throw snowballs.”
He pondered me silently. “Snowballs,” he finally said. “Not rocks.” My turn for silence.
“Dan may lose his sight in one eye.” My father looked at me, into me, through me. “Was it worth it?”
Thirty years later, I stared past the shoulder of my client, tuning out her prattle. She was self-pitying, a bore. I let my face form a polite mask. I had fulfilled her request, was handling business; I am a professional. But there are some things, some people, with whom I shouldn’t be afflicted. I tried to lose myself in the cool, dark recesses of the restaurant.
In the Café Cerberus, beached between a Bloody Mary and the French onion soup, I saw a ghost.
The Café Cerberus can most charitably be described as fashionable. Wood—everything is wood. Oak beams gird the ceiling; the walls are lined with barn-wood bleached by the rural sun. Abstract works of stained and leaded glass fill the frames of the few exterior windows. Occasionally adroit graphics by local artists decorate the walls, a patronage provided by the restaurant management, who changes the displays every two weeks. The pictures are priced and expensive. Greenery—the immaculately groomed plants hang suspended in hand-thrown pots cradled in macramé. When I lunch in the Cerberus I think of the hanging gardens of Nineveh.
Above all, the café is fashionably dark. It was dark even before the energy crises. One peers past the young lawyers in natty suits and the young executives in expensive jogging uniforms to seek out professional athletes, the important local media personalities, entertainment entrepreneurs, the occasional visiting music stars here for club appearances or concerts. It isn’t the easiest task to pick out the important people. But then they have an equal handicap trying to figure out if you’re a star, too.
It’s a grand game, something to do when the conversation palls somewhere between the initial cocktail and the soup and salad. I’m not immune. I sometimes astonish myself with the wit I display on automatic pilot while my mind is taking in the foxy guy at the next table.
Have you ever noticed there sometimes appear to be only about eight distinct physical makeups in the world—and that everybody you know fits one of them? You look at the man across the aisle of the plane, or the woman standing at the corner waiting for the light to change, or the cashier at the bank. And for just a moment you know you know them. The eyes are right, or the mouth. The tilt of the head. The cut of hair. No, you don’t know them. But they had you going for a while. The experience disorients you. I suspect for many people it’s a pale version of seeing a ghost.
Seeing just any ghost in the Café Cerberus wouldn’t have made me spill the remainder of my drink in my lap. But this was a particular specter.
****
My mind slowed it down, the tomato juice and vodka slopping over the rim of the tilted glass, cascading down, staining me. The Bloody Mary was dark in the dim light of the room, dark against the tan thighs of my slacks. I felt the cold seeping on my skin. Most of the liquid was absorbed. I felt a single large drop run down the back of my calf.
I stared down at myself.
Somewhere in the distance I heard my client start to say, “What’s the matter? You look like you saw—”
Everything speeded up to normal. “I’m all right,” I said. “It just spilled. I’m clumsy.”
My client dipped her napkin in her water glass and handed it over. “I hope that will come out.”
“It already is.” I rubbed vigorously at the fabric.
“Just like magic.” She smiled self-consciously.
“Indeed.” I looked back toward the ghost. Alone at a table ten yards away, his attention seemed totally absorbed in the menu. Maybe I was mistaken.
“I’m not sure I can pronounce this,” said my client. “You should include a pronunciation guide.” She stumbled over the first syllable. I gently took the portfolio from her hands and pulled it to my side of the table. My client was a fiftyish woman, faded blonde with a perpetually timorous expression. I understood her situation. Empathy demanded allowances.
I slowly said, “Pchagerav monely. Pchagerav tre vodyi. It’s Romany. It means ‘Thrice the candles smoke by me. Thrice thy heart shall broken be.’”
“And they don’t have to be special. The candles.”
I shook my head. “Buy anything. Cheap is fine. Get them at Woolworth’s.” I handed her back the portfolio.
She glanced down at the paper. “I doubt I can buy the—” She hesitated. “—the, uh, private parts of a wolf at Woolworth’s if this has to be taken a step further.”
“It’s a big if,” I said. “We’ll worry about it only if the candle ceremony proves out. I can provide you with the names of several good paraphernalia sellers.”
The w
aitress brought us our lunch. My client had the diet plate with the lean broiled burger. I had the same without the cottage cheese. Things generally have to be paid for, and I had to pay for the carbohydrates in the drink, even if I’d spilled half of it. While we ate, I kept glancing at the ghost—the man I thought I knew. He looked as though he thought he might know me. But he wouldn’t sustain eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time.
Dark Forces Page 4