The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It wasn’t love, perhaps it was pity. For Rebecca was Jacob’s daughter, unmistakably. She more resembled him than either of his sons resembled him. She had his sharp cheekbones, and a widow’s peak he’d had (when he’d had more hair). She had his restless hungry eyes. She was intelligent, as he was; and distrustful. So very different from her mother who’d been sweet-faced and pretty as a girl, fair-skinned, with fine, fair-brown hair and a way of laughing that was so delightful, you were drawn to laugh with her at the most trivial things. Long ago when Anna had laughed…But Rebecca, their daughter, was not one to laugh. Maybe as a child she’d sensed how close she had come to not-existing. She had a melancholy spirit, and she was stubborn. Like her father. Heavy of heart. Her eyebrows were growing in thick and straight as a man’s and never would any man condescend to her by calling her “pretty.”

  Jacob did not trust females. Schopenhauer knew well: the female is mere flesh, fecundity. The female tempts the (weak, amorous) male into mating, and, against the inclination of his desire, into monogamy. At least, in theory. Always the result is the same: the species is continued. Always the desire, the mating, always the next generation, always the species! Blind brainless insatiable will. Out of their innocent joyous love of a long-ago time had come their firstborn, Herschel: born 1927. And then came August, and at last the little one Rebecca. Each was an individual and yet: the individual scarcely matters, only the species. In the service of that blind will, the secret female softness, moist smells; the folded-in, roseate, insides of the female, that a man might penetrate numberless times yet could not perceive or comprehend. Out of the female body had sprung the labyrinth, the maze. The honeycomb with but one way in and no way out.

  Well! That his daughter so closely resembled him and yet was a small female seemed to Jacob all the more repellent, for it was as if Jacob Schwart did not fully know himself; and could not trust himself.

  Saying, chiding, “Yes. You are ignorant now. You know nothing of this hellhole the world.”

  He tugged at her arm, he had something to show her, outside.

  Telling her how, in the twentieth century, with the actions of Germany and the so-called Axis Powers, all of the effort of civilization from the Greeks onward had been swept aside, with a demonic joy; abandoned and obliterated, in the interests of the beast. The Germans made no secret of it�“The worship of the beast.” Not a one of them now living regretted the war, only that they lost the war and were humbled, humiliated; and thwarted in their wish to exterminate their enemies. “Many in this country were of their beliefs, Rebecca. Many here in Milburn. And many Nazis have been protected, and will be protected. None of this you will learn in your schoolbooks. Your ridiculous ‘history’ books, I have examined. Outwardly now the war is over, since 1945. But only see how this country rewards the warrior Germans. So many millions of dollars given to Germany, lair of the beast! And why, if not to reward them? Inwardly, the war wages. Never will the war end until the last of us has died.”

  He was excited, his spittle flew. Fortunately, in the open air, Rebecca could avoid being struck by any of it.

  “You see, eh? Here.”

  He’d brought her to the graveled lane that led past the house, into the interior of the cemetery. It was the caretaker’s responsibility to maintain this lane, to spread gravel evenly on it; yet, in the night, his enemies had come with a rake or a hoe, to taunt him.

  Rebecca was staring at the lane. What was she supposed to see?

  “Are you blind, girl? Do you not see? How our enemies persecute us?”

  For there, unmistakably, were swastikas raked into the gravel, not blatant like the tar-swastikas of Hallowe’en but more devious.

  “You see?”

  Ah, the stubborn child! She stared, and could not reply.

  Angrily Jacob dragged his heel through the gravel, destroying the most obvious of the mocking lines.

  Months ago, at the time of the initial desecration, he’d exhausted himself removing the tar-markings. He’d scraped tar off the front door of the stone house in a frenzy of loathing and yet!�he had failed to remove it entirely. All he could do was repaint the damned door a somber dark green, except: a large shadowy

  was visible beneath the paint, if you looked closely enough. He and Gus had repainted parts of the sheds, and tried to scour the defaced gravestones clean. Still the swastikas remained, if you knew where to look. “Eh! You are one of them.”

  A senseless remark, he knew even as he uttered it. But he was the father of this child, he might say anything that flew into his head and she must honor it.

  His stupid, stubborn daughter unable to see what was before her eyes, at her very feet! He lost patience with her, grabbed her shoulder and shook, shook, shook her until she whimpered with pain. “One of them! One of them! Now go bawling to your ma!” He flung her from him, onto the lane, the sharp pebbly gravel, and left her there panting and swiping at her nose, staring at him with widened eyes, dilated in terror. He stalked off cursing to get a rake to erase the taunting swastikas, another time.

  Dybbuks! He had not thought of it.

  He was a man of reason, of course he had not thought of such a thing. And yet.

  A dybbuk, cunning and agile as a snake, could take over a weak-minded female. In the Munich zoo he’d seen an extraordinary eight-foot snake, a cobra, so amazingly supple, moving in what appeared to be a continuous stream, like water; the snake “running” on its numerous ribs, inside its scaly, glittering, rather beautiful skin. His eyes rolled in his head, almost he felt faint, imagining how the snake-dybbuk would enter the female.

  Up between the legs, and inside.

  For he could not trust either of them: wife, daughter.

  As a man of reason he did not want to believe in dybbuks and yet perhaps that was the explanation. Dybbuks had come alive, out of the primeval mud of Europe. And here in Milburn. Prowling the cemetery, and the countryside beyond. Dybbuks rising like mist out of the tall damp grasses that shivered in the wind. Snakeroot, cattails. Dybbuks blown by the wind against the loose-fitting windows of the old stone house, scratching their claws against the glass, desperate to gain entry. And dybbuks seeking entry into human bodies in which the souls are loose-fitting, primitive.

  Anna. His wife of twenty-three years. Could he trust Anna, in her femaleness?

  Like her body, Anna’s mind had softened with time. She had never fully recovered from the third pregnancy, the anguish of that third birth. In fact she had never fully recovered from their panicked flight from Germany.

  She blamed him, he felt. That he was her husband and a man, and yet not a man to protect her and their children.

  Yet in the night, another Anna came alive. In her sleep, in her lustful dreams. Ah, he knew! He heard her groaning, breathing rapidly. He felt her flesh-tremors. Their bed reeked with her sweat, her female secretions. By day she turned from him, averting her eyes. As he averted his eyes from her nakedness. She had never loved him, he supposed. For hers had been a girl’s soul, shallow and easily swayed by emotion. In their circle of young people in Munich, Anna had laughed and flirted with many young men; you could see how they were attracted to her, and she had basked in their attention. Now he could acknowledge, Jacob Schwart had been but one of these. Perhaps she had loved another, who had not loved her. And there came Jacob Schwart, blinded by love. Begging her to marry him. On their wedding night he had not known to ask himself Is my bride a virgin? Is hers a virgin-love? The act of love had been overwhelming to Jacob, explosive, annihilating. He’d had so little experience. He had had no judgment, and would have none for years.

  It was on the ocean crossing that the dybbuk-Anna had first emerged. She’d been delirious, muttering and raving and striking at him with her fists. Her eyes held no love for him, nor even recognition. Demon eyes, tawny-glowing eyes! The coarsest German profanities and obscenities had leapt from Anna’s lips, not those of an innocent young wife and mother but the words of a demon, a dybbuk.

  That day
he’d found Anna in the shed. Hiding there, with the little one wrapped in a dirty shawl. Would you like me to strangle her? Had she been serious, or taunting him?�he had not known.

  Now, he could not trust Anna to prepare their meals correctly. It was her practice to boil their well water, for very likely the well water was contaminated, and yet he knew, she was careless and indifferent. And so they were being poisoned, by degrees. And he could not trust her with other men. Any man who saw Anna saw at once her femaleness, as evident as nakedness. For there was something slatternly and erotic in Anna’s soft, raddled body and slack girl’s face; her moist, brainless gaze that excited masculine desire, even as it revulsed.

  The sheriff’s deputies, for instance. Since Herschel’s disappearance they came by the house from time to time, to make inquiries. Jacob wasn’t always home when they came, Anna had to answer the door and speak to them. Jacob was coming to suspect, these inquiries might be mere pretense.

  Often there were men wandering in the cemetery, amid the graves. Seemingly visiting the graves. Mourners. Or assuming that role.

  Anna Schwart had become devious, defiant. He knew she’d disobeyed him by daring to turn on his radio, more than once. He had never caught her, for she was too clever; yet he knew. Now the radio tubes were burnt out and would not be replaced, so no one could listen to the damned radio. There was that satisfaction, at least.

  (Jacob had loosened the radio tubes himself. To thwart Anna. Then he’d forgotten he had loosened them. When he switched on the radio now, there was silence.)

  And there was Rebecca, his daughter.

  Her lanky body was filling out, taking on the contours of the female. Through a part-closed door he’d glimpsed her, washing her upper body with an expression of frowning concentration. The shock of the girl’s small, startlingly white breasts, the nipples small as grape seeds. Her underarms that were sprouting fine dark hairs, and her legs…He had known that he could no longer trust her, when she’d refused to acknowledge the swastika marks raked in the lane. And years before, when he’d discovered her picture in the Milburn newspaper. Spelling champion! Rebecca Esther Schwart! The first he’d heard of such a thing. She had kept it secret from him, and from Anna.

  The girl would grow up swiftly, he knew. Once she’d begun school she had begun to turn into one of those others. He had seen her with the slatternly Greb girl. She would grow up, she would leave him. A man must surrender his daughter to another man unless he claims her for his own, which is forbidden.

  “And so I must harden my heart against them both.”

  From the proprietor of the Milburn Feed Store he would acquire secondhand a Remington twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun, a bargain at seventy-five dollars.

  Five dollars more for a near-full box of fifty shells.

  For hunting, Mr. Schwart?

  For protection of my property.

  Pheasant season isn’t till fall. Second week of October.

  Protection of my home. My family.

  It’s got a kick, a twelve-gauge.

  My wife, my daughter. We are alone out there. The sheriff will not protect us. We are alone in the country. We are U.S. citizens.

  A good gun for protection if you know how to use it. Remember it has a kick, Mr. Schwart.

  A kick?

  In the shoulder. If you grip the stock too loosely when you pull the trigger. If you are not practiced. A kick like a mule.

  Jacob Schwart laughed heartily, baring nicotine-stained teeth in a happy smile. Kick like a mule, eh? Well! I am a mule.

  “Fools! There was no one.”

  Sometime in the slow dripping spring of 1949 the realization came to him. His deepest contempt wasn’t for the ignorant peasants who surrounded him but for the elderly Jews of his long-ago youth in skullcaps and prayer shawls muttering to their ridiculous god.

  An extinct volcano god Yehovah.

  In the night such truths came to him. He sat in the kitchen or in the doorway of the house, drinking. Exclusively now he drank hard cider from the mill down the road, that was cheap, and potent. The shotgun close by. In case of prowlers, vandals. He had no fear of the dead. A dybbuk is not dead. A dybbuk is fierce with life, insatiable. In this place where the tide of history had washed him ashore and abandoned him like trash. Yet his deepest contempt was for the bearded black-clad troll-elders of his long-ago boyhood in Munich. Cruelly he laughed seeing the sick terror in their eyes as at last they understood.

  “No one, you see? God is no one, and nowhere.”

  And Jacob Schwart was not a son of that tribe.

  24

  As if she’d only just thought of it, Katy Greb said, “You could stay with me, Rebecca. Sleep in my bed, there’s room.”

  Always Katy spoke with the impulsiveness of one for whom there is no hesitation between a wish and its immediate expression.

  Rebecca stammered she didn’t know.

  “Sure! Momma won’t mind, Momma likes you real well.”

  Momma likes you real well.

  So touched, Rebecca couldn’t speak at first. Wasn’t watching where she was walking, stubbed her toe on a rock at the side of the Quarry Road.

  Katy Greb was the only girl to whom Rebecca had said certain private things.

  Katy was the only girl who knew how frightened Rebecca was of her father.

  “Not what he’d do to me. But to Ma. Some night when he’s drunk.”

  Katy grunted as if such a revelation, daring for Rebecca to make, was no surprise to her.

  “My pa, he’s the same way. Except he ain’t around right now, so Ma misses him.”

  The girls laughed together. You had to laugh at older people, they were so ridiculous.

  Of course there was no room for Rebecca in the Grebs’ ramshackle wood-frame house. No room for a twelve-year-old girl, almost thirteen, tall for her age, awkward and brooding.

  Somehow it had happened, in seventh grade, that Katy Greb was Rebecca’s closest (secret) friend. Katy was a big-boned girl with straw-hair and teeth that smelled like brackish ditch water and a face big and florid as a sunflower. Her laughter was high-pitched and contagious. Her breasts were jiggly nubs in her chest like fists bunched up inside her hand-me-down sweaters.

  Katy was a year older than Rebecca, but in Rebecca’s seventh grade homeroom at the Milburn junior high. She was Rebecca’s (secret) friend because neither Rebecca’s father nor Rebecca’s mother approved of her having friends. Those others who could not be trusted.

  Rebecca wished that Katy was her sister. Or she was Katy’s sister. Living then with the Grebs, and only just neighbors of the Schwarts who lived a half-mile away.

  Katy was always saying how her momma believed that Rebecca was a “good influence” on her because Rebecca took her school studies seriously and didn’t “horse around” like the other kids.

  Rebecca laughed as if she’d been tickled. It wasn’t true but she loved to hear that Mrs. Greb spoke of her in such a flattering way. It was like Leora Greb to say extravagant things based on not much evidence. “Horse around” was a common expression of hers, almost you could see young horses galloping and frolicking in a field.

  The Grebs were the Schwarts’ closest neighbors on the Quarry Road. Leora Greb had five children of whom the two youngest appeared to be retarded. A seven-year-old boy still in diapers, not yet potty-trained. A six-year-old girl whimpering and jabbering in frustration at being unable to speak as others did. The Grebs’ house was partly covered in asphalt siding, close by the dump. Worse than where the Schwarts live, Rebecca thought. When the wind blew from the direction of the dump there was a sickish stink of garbage and smoldering tires in the Grebs’ house.

  Katy’s father Bud Greb, whom Rebecca had never seen, was said to be away at Plattsburgh, at the Canadian border. Incarcerated at the men’s maximum security prison there.

  In-car-cer-ated. An unexpected dignity accrued to these syllables, when Bud Greb was spoken of.

  What a surprise for Rebecca, to learn th
at Leora Greb wasn’t any younger than Anna Schwart! Rebecca did the calculations, both women were in their early forties. And yet, how different they were: Leora’s hair was an eye-catching blond, she wore makeup that gave her a youthful, glamorous look, her eyes were alert, laughing. Even with Mr. Greb away at Plattsburgh ( his sentence was seven-to-ten, for armed robbery) Leora was likely to be in a good mood most days.

  Leora was a part-time chambermaid at the General Washington Hotel in Milburn, which called itself the “premiere” hotel in this part of the Chautauqua Valley. The General Washington was a large boxy building with a granite facade, white-shuttered windows, and a painted sign at the front meant to depict General Washington’s head, his tight-curled hair like a sheep’s and his big-jawed face, in some long-ago improbable year 1776. Leora was always bringing back from the General Washington cellophane packages of peanuts, pretzels, potato chips that had been opened by patrons in the tavern but not depleted.

  Leora was one to utter wise sayings. A favorite was a variant of Jacob Schwart’s: “Waste not, want not.”

  Another, spoken with a downturn smirk of her mouth: “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

  Leora drove a 1945 Dodge sedan left in her care by the incarcerated Bud Greb and sometimes, in one of her good moods, she could be prevailed upon to drive Katy and Rebecca into town, or along the Chautauqua River to Drottstown and back.

  What was puzzling about Leora Greb, that Rebecca had yet to fully comprehend, was: she seemed to like her family, crowded together in that house. Leora seemed to like her life!

  Katy acknowledged they did miss their pa, sometimes. But it was a whole lot easier without him. Not so much fighting, and friends of his hanging out at the house, and the cops showing up in the middle of the damn night shining their lights through the windows scaring the shit out of everybody.

  “What they do, they yell through a bullhorn. Y’ever heard one of them?”