by Ruby Namdar
And yet what, really, had it amounted to? Nothing at all except for Ann Lee’s having gone off early in the morning without making herself coffee, saying good-bye, or leaving one of her adorable notes signed “Me,” and for the bottom sheet permanently stained with blood. Andrew took off his shoes and placed them in their corner, aligning them with his toes, and waited a moment before entering the bedroom. The bed was neatly made, its fresh, cool, white sheets looking stiffly starched. The white bathroom tiles gleamed. His fear of encountering the snarled pile of soiled bedding that had lain there the night before like a heavy, menacing corpse in its shrouds was baseless.
The memory of it came wrapped in such nightmarish images that it was hard to believe it had all actually happened. Something terrifying had woken him in the middle of the night, jolting him out of a deep sleep. There was a scary creature in the bed! Some poisonous, crawling thing—a viper that killed with a glance, a barbed armadillo, its teeth rusty with blood—was wriggling next to him, rubbing its scales against his bare skin. He retracted his hand convulsively, dealing himself and the tangled sheets a blow. But there was nothing there. The bed was empty except for Ann Lee sleeping on its far side. He sat up and looked around with dazed eyes, still unsure it had been only a dream. Yet although his heart kept pounding like the twitching of a beheaded animal, his mind, its bad dream over, was already sinking back into sleep. His head fell onto the pillow and his eyelids fluttered in preparation for the next round of nocturnal imagery.
Just then, however, a new wave of panic swept over him, less extreme but more penetrating than the first. Jarring him into full wakefulness, it forced him to raise his head, open his eyes groggily, and look around. The room was not wholly dark. The lurid light of the streetlamps shone through the window, whose blinds they had forgotten to lower, painting Ann Lee’s curled-up body an eerie pink. On any other night, he would have reached out to gather her slumbering, birdlike form to him. Now, though, under his indifferent gaze that descended the curved stairway of her spine to cast a cold eye on her bare buttocks and sharply boned pelvis, her familiar nude form seemed an alien presence. How strange: he was not in the least attracted to it. Quite the opposite: something about it repelled him—and the more he stared at it, the more irrationally, unaccountably profound his revulsion became, heightening the dread he had felt since waking. He turned his back to her and tried settling back into the crumpled pillow. She must be cold. He should cover her, pull the blanket over her slim shoulders. Yet all that was reflected back to him from her side of the bed was his own chill anxiety. He shivered. What was happening to him? He reached behind him, groping in the tangled sheets for the corner of the blanket. His fingers, making their way across the bed’s rumpled surface, recoiled as though bitten by a snake. Something disgusting, something warm and wet, was sticking to them. His uncontrollable cry of fear as he jerked his hand away woke Ann Lee from her sleep. Rising on all fours, she stared in alarm at the dark puddle forming on the sheet beneath her. Andrew leaned to turn on the lamp on the night table, but quicker than him, she had already jumped out of bed and run like a pathetically naked, frightened little girl to the light switch on the wall. The violent glare that filled the room brought to mind a Hollywood murder scene. Ann Lee stood in one corner, pale and thin, her small hands covering her gaping mouth, regarding the horrifying sheet that pullulated like a sacrificed bird with that bright shade of red called “pigeon blood” by interior designers and jewelers.
Andrew had leaped out of bed, too. Standing naked at the other end of the room, he tried unsuccessfully to turn his eyes from the gruesome stain to Ann Lee. Although he knew he should run to her and break the evil spell by taking her comfortingly in his arms, his body refused to budge. Agonizingly long seconds passed. Ann Lee was the first to recover. She ran to the bed, furiously stripped its soiled sheets, rolled them into a lumpy bundle in which the bloodstains were swallowed up, dragged it to the bathroom, and slammed the door behind her, catching sight as she did of Andrew, transfixed, staring guiltily at a splotch on the bare mattress. She stayed there a long time, running water and flushing the toilet over and over to drown out her spasmodic sobs of humiliation, each of which cut like a lash into Andrew’s unprotected goose flesh. Hurriedly, he remade the bed with fresh sheets. He should knock gently on the bathroom door, go to her, persuade her to come out. Nothing would be simpler than to make a joke of it all, an amusing incident. Yet his body refused to listen to his mind’s advice. He finished making the bed, spread a blanket over it, and walked aimlessly about the apartment, waiting for the bathroom door to open and Ann Lee to come out. Not until the lights went out in the bedroom did he quietly reenter it. Ann Lee’s small, trembling body was huddled under the blanket like a wounded animal. Instead of lying down next to her, though, he walked wordlessly to the bathroom and shut the door. It was all he could do to keep from locking it.
The usually refreshing coolness of the floor tiles, colored by the streetlamps the same sickly pink that had bathed Ann Lee’s body, was no help. His bare foot touched something that filled him with new horror. It was the bloody bundle of sheets, which lay on the floor like a frightening white mummy, its hidden stain the beating heart of a monster come to life. He felt a volcanic eruption of anger and repugnance. She was a spoiled, self-indulgent child! An unclean, polluted thing! Right after which, however, came a rush of astonished shame at himself, at his strange response. What did he want from the poor girl? It wasn’t her fault. She had done nothing wrong. What had come over him to make him so hostile? He stood facing the mirror, leaning on the sink. He had to get a grip on himself, exorcise the demons, turn on the light.
Andrew straightened up and forced himself to press the light switch. The sight made him gasp. The entire face of the mirror was splattered with blood, its glass a living integument lanced by thousands of needles. How hideous! Feeling trapped in a horror movie, he turned the light off and fought back the scream that was about to burst from him. He was dreaming, that was all! It was a nightmare. He took a deep breath and made himself turn the light back on. To his relief, the blood spots were gone. Another breath. It had been a hallucination, nothing more, it was all in his imagination.
But it wouldn’t go away. While the blood was gone, its frightful, abhorrent presence lingered on, as if the whole room were contaminated by it. He scrutinized the walls, the floor, the ceiling. There was no trace of blood on them. He turned back to the mirror; his red-eyed, bedraggled reflection stared emptily back at him. Gray bristles surrounded the ugly rash on his face, forming a single coat of hair that covered his face, throat, chest, and stomach. He could feel the frightening, defiling presence of blood, it was there, very close to him. His gaze dropped to the bottom of the mirror. An instant wave of nausea, as if he had known what he would see even before his battered nerves could transmit it to his brain, overcame him. His testicles, pubic hair, and penis were caked with a ring of dark, rusty brown dried blood.
He felt a new surge of fury, disgust, and panic. He had to wash himself, to scrub his polluted flesh with soap and scalding hot water. The voice of reason, echoing in the empty chamber of his mind, was hollow and unconvincing. Why on earth should he feel this way? What had happened, for goodness’ sake? She had gotten her period, that was all. He wasn’t born yesterday. She was simply menstruating—surprisingly heavily, it was true, and not, if he recalled correctly, at her usual time, but it was all a minor mishap. Why feel so angry, then? Nor could he possibly shower while she was lying there listening to his every movement. Nothing escaped her. She had the intuition and keen senses of a wild animal. She would hear the running water; there was no chance that she wouldn’t: he couldn’t do it to her. Should he wet a washcloth and wipe away the blood from his privates? Just thinking of the damp, bloodied rag made him feel sick. Absolutely not!
He opened the faucets and washed his hands with hot, almost boiling water, holding them under it for as long as he could before drying them thoroughly. He hung the towel back on
its rack, then grabbed it, flung it on the heap of sheets in the corner, and tiptoed into the bedroom, pretending he was trying not to wake her even though it was obvious that she wasn’t asleep and that he knew it, and she knew that he knew. If only he could stretch out by himself on the living-room couch! Yet as queasy as the thought of lying next to her made him, it would be madness to give in to such an urge. The wretched creature would be wounded to the core.
The dried blood on his loins stung like a burn. He groped in the dark for his pajama pants, put them on, lifted the blanket, and slipped silently between the fresh sheets, whose ironed crispness failed to make him feel better. Turning cautiously on his side, he lay with his back to Ann Lee, a stranger in his own bed, waiting for her breathing to become slow and regular. What a ghastly night. Why wasn’t she falling asleep? What in the name of God was keeping her awake?
12
A young, fiery red, sweat-slathered stallion gallops freely down a gray asphalt road. Bronzed village boys, young colts themselves, chase after it, but it’s too fast for them. At the sight of it, an old, black Mercedes screeches to a frightened halt in the middle of the road. The horse’s hard hooves stamp the asphalt that is softened by the heat and sink into it time and again, leaving their imprint in it. The unbridled power of its muscular, bloodred body! It’s as wild as can be, an unbroken mustang. Quick, rhythmic, violent movements. Bare, rounded hills. Dry ravines. Far-off minarets appear and vanish in the purple haze like mirages. The road runs south to Bethlehem. How do I know it’s Bethlehem? Some things don’t need to be explained. You know them and that’s enough. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. A memory? A fantasy? It’s too real to be a dream.
13
April 30, 2001
The 7th of Iyar, 5761
Nine thirty a.m. The fast train to Washington, DC, pulled into the station on time and the loudspeaker announced boarding. The empty car, whose light-blue upholstery and nicely styled plastic panels made him think of jet travel and uniformed stewardesses, looked clean and welcoming. He found an empty row, settled into the window seat, and took the latest issue of Daedalus from his briefcase. In it was a much-discussed article on foundational myths that he was eager to read. He looked forward to the cozy two-hour ride with its lulling, almost imperceptible cadence of wheels on rails and the April sunlight gentled by the passage through double windows. Although his on-the-spot acceptance of an invitation to a conference at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia had surprised even himself, it was the perfect chance to get some rest. That was something he needed more than ever.
The need for peace and quiet may have explained his overreaction when, his eyes on the magazine’s table of contents, a broad male body sinking into the seat next to him invaded his private space. Stifling a muttered protest, he turned automatically and not very courteously toward the window. He was still searching for the article when the newcomer said in a voice that, if not exceeding the publicly permitted level of decibels, came close to doing so, “I see you’re interested in culture.”
Andrew’s fingers froze halfway through turning a page. Flabbergasted, he looked up to regard the intruder. A huge baby face was smiling at him sociably. The man’s broad, conservative tie was loosened, baring a patch of pinkish-white neck, and his off-the-rack suit jacket hung limply on a bulky, flabby frame. “That gives us something in common!” he boomed in the hearty tone one expects of traveling salesmen and weather forecasters. “I’m interested in it, too. Pleased to meet you: Herman Lindenbaum!” His plump hand, though unexpectedly dry, was repellent to the touch. Andrew squirmed in his no-longer-comfortable seat. Herman? Who still went around with such a name? The man’s outward manners concealed a flagrant lack of boundaries such as Andrew had not encountered in a long while. “You’re a college teacher, I presume?” he asked. Andrew nodded, murmuring a few vague syllables of qualified assent. For a moment, before realizing how ridiculous it would be, he was about to say, “Professor. University. NYU.” Instead he chose silence, hoping to bring the unwelcome exchange to an end.
But the crass stranger persisted. “I could have been a university prof myself. I went to Harvard.” His Jewish accent made “Harvard” sound like the name of a neighborhood in Brooklyn. “I graduated summa cum laude. My senior thesis won a big national award. You must have heard of the Stuart Ratner Prize.”
Andrew murmured something indistinct again, making a last-ditch effort, though it was clearly in a losing cause, not to be drawn into conversation with this annoyingly collegial flaunter of dubious and irrelevant academic credentials. “But I chose another path in life,” the man went on. “I’m a lawyer. I represent big corporations against the environmentalists. Not that I don’t care about the environment, mind you. I’m very ambivalent about the whole thing—very.”
Andrew pursed his lips, refusing to say a word. He hadn’t fallen into a trap like this in ages. It was beyond him how he had let this person encroach on him and gain his attention. “To tell you the truth, though,” Herman said with a mysterious glint of satisfaction, “my little secret is that I’m an artist.” With a dramatic flair suitable to a Grade B Hollywood movie, he produced from his jacket pocket a stack of half a dozen black-framed slides, the claustrophobic reductions of as many uninspired, overly busy, abstract oil paintings. Andrew stared at them blankly, overwhelmed by their abundance of detail. The man paused to gauge the impression made by them and continued: “I write poetry, too, though I haven’t published any yet. You see, I have a big ego and can’t take criticism. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
This question caught Andrew unprepared. He had never been asked if he was Jewish before, perhaps because a Cohen could hardly be anything else. With a bob of his head that fell short of being a nod, he stammered “Yes” more hesitantly than seemed called for even by so gross a question.
“So am I,” declared the man triumphantly. Unfazed by Andrew’s unforthcoming mien, he had the air of a bridge partner playing a trump card kept up his sleeve. “I was a yeshiva boy until I ate from the forbidden fruit and lost my faith.” He gave Andrew a long wink, followed by an ostensibly cynical snicker.
An ex-yeshiva student! That explained things, thought Andrew without knowing exactly why it did.
Herman Lindenbaum pursued his monologue:
“Seeing as we’re both Jewish and men of culture, I’m sure you’ll be interested in what I have to tell you. You see, I had this problem, a real phobia, a terrible fear of water. It was totally irrational and had no obvious cause. I went for therapy, for psychiatric treatment—nothing helped. It just got worse. I had to stop washing. I cleaned myself with a washcloth dipped in alcohol. I shaved with a dry razor. I have sensitive skin, very sensitive, and I developed acne and rashes all over.”
Although Andrew edged closer to the window, the more intimate the details of Herman’s story became, the nearer to him the man kept moving. The proximity of his fat, pallid, unwashed body was abhorrent, nauseating. Nor, to judge from the smell of him, had he completely gotten over his phobia. Yet at the same time, Andrew was taken aback by his own malice. The pressure of the metal window frame against his arm served to remind him to show some consideration. Shutting the magazine that he had kept open until then as a symbol of passive resistance, he folded it resignedly and turned to his traveling companion.
Herman, evidently not as oblivious of others as he had initially appeared, took note of this and plunged deeper into his story, the details of which piqued Andrew’s curiosity while in no way lessening his unease. “In the end, after trying everything, from psychoanalysis to hypnosis to behavioral psychology, I went to see a well-known psychiatrist who was recommended to me, a Jew named Weisberg. Professor Stuart Weisberg of Miami. It’s funny how they’re all Jews, isn’t it?” A knowing glitter in his eyes and his oily s’s hissed through small teeth, Herman was increasingly resembling an anti-Semitic caricature himself. “I’m sure you must have heard of him. He’s developed his own technique, he’s written books
about it.” Andrew shook his head, trying not to seem too interested. “He works with hypnosis, too, but he doesn’t limit it to your present incarnation. He permits and even encourages his patients to go back in time to their previous lives and look there for the source of their problem. Needless to say, I’m a rational man with a scientific outlook just like you” (Andrew felt a burst of indignation at this comparison), “but I eventually let myself be talked into it. What did I have to lose? I decided to go with an open mind to Miami.”
The renowned rationalist’s departure for Miami was related as portentously as if he had been a bemedaled general operatically surrendering his decorated sword to an enemy commander. “It’s a very expensive treatment, but I could afford it. I’ve got a highly successful practice with eight people working under me. I live in a luxury apartment in Midtown Manhattan with a view of both rivers.” Herman smiled with apologetic superiority. “It works by stages. Dr. Weisberg put me in a hypnotic state and began taking me back in time, first to my adolescence and then to my childhood and infancy. That’s when it happened. There was something beyond infancy. I was visualizing other scenes from other lives. It began with a name: Yossil-Chaim. I had no idea where it came from. It was as if someone had whispered it in my ear, a nearby voice that didn’t bother to explain. It happened a few times. I knew the name, of course: it was a common enough Jewish one. It just never occurred in my family. Then came another whisper: Zuritsh. It was in a different voice that belonged to someone else. And there was a third one, with an entirely different way of speaking. It whispered a date: October 3, 1941.