Back at the hotel, I recalled that I had Haim’s number in my wallet. This fact had been in the back of my mind for weeks, but up to this point, I’d been too busy to consider it directly. I’ve done many unforgivable things in my life, but to avoid Haim while I was here seemed particulary heinous. I made the call on the gray industrial-strength (wartime!) phone.
Haim didn’t seem surprised to learn I was in Israel. It was as if we had last spoken only a few days before, not thirty years ago. Said he’d “heard” about my books. I asked how he was doing. In a hoarse voice, he said he was tired. We agreed to meet and have coffee in a small café near the hotel tomorrow.
June 22, 2006
Began the day with a newspaper interview at the café where I would be meeting Haim later. Ridiculous. First of all, guy’s name was Avi, I had heard, “Amy.” I had hoped Amy would be one of those red-haired freckly Israeli chicks, veteran of the army, iron-thighed and pruriently curious about aging Jewish American writers. No such luck.
Second, the hairy-chested Avi had read nothing but the first two collections of short stories. Didn’t know the new book at all. Asked two perfunctory questions about the old stories (“Where do you get your material?” “Is it true, you tape-record your subjects, then transcribe what they say?”). He warmed up while grilling me on my position regarding the Palestinians! Wanted me to declaim on Bush and the war! The war! What can anyone say about the war? It hit me that while I’m in Israel I represent the United States of America. God!
After I offered only the blandest, most noncommittal responses he gave up with the political stuff. Grinning, he shook my hand with nasty vigor. I was finally left alone with my espresso and a tattered, day-old Herald Tribune while the mustachioed waiter fussed nearby. The service personnel of this country are dedicated to making guests feel uneasy at every opportunity. I have not had a conversation with one cabbie, waiter, stewardess, tour guide, museum guard, nor one immigration or customs officer, who did not possess the chilliest poker face. It’s my assumption that no one is really happy here. This unhappiness transmutes into a deep resentment when they are faced with an American. They hate Americans for being able to go home to a safe place.
When Haim entered, I didn’t recognize him. What was left of his fringe of furry hair had turned white. He was clean-shaven. His buoyant vigor had been replaced by a tentative creep. I embraced him in the classic bear hug of long-lost friends only to find that he’d lost his bulk and shrunken into a little old man. The meekness of our embrace undermined the very notion that we were ever friends. What were we exactly?
In the ugly/modern café the stiff chairs reinforced the formal relationship between Haim and me. This is something we never had when we were living together. We were no longer the roommates who once shared the common denominator of struggling in New York City. We were only two strangers having a coffee.
A view of the morose sea filled the walls of tinted glass. On the horizon line, freighters passed like distant Silk Road caravans. Athens to Cairo? Albania to Somalia? I wondered what filled their holds. Crude oil? Machine guns? Loaves of plastique? Every action and surface here has a sinister vibe. The buildings, the streets, the people are all either girding for war or recovering from the last “conflict.”
I broke the ice by handing Haim an autographed copy of A Gentle Death. He riffled the pages as if he’d never touched a hardbound book before. He scanned the inscription. His expression revealed nothing. I had written, “To My Good Friend and Plum Eater, Haim, Yours—Richard.” He smiled and gently put the book down beside his coffee.
Haim filled me in on how he had returned home to Tel Aviv to recover from his New York adventure. His father owned a small offset shop and Haim had relented and joined him. He spends his days printing menus and wedding invitations while his old father lives in a back bedroom of Haim’s apartment. Haim effectively manages the company. I asked him how business was and he said “Bad, somedays. Worse other days.”
I mentioned Dagmara and Haim dreamily said that she might still be in New York, he wasn’t sure, they hadn’t been in touch. Did she ever get married? He didn’t know that either.
I described running into Tony the hot dog guy in the park and Haim smiled for the first time since our bear hug. I suggested that Haim take a vacation and visit New York. He gazed out upon the flat Mediterranean, left my offer hanging in the air. I described my heart surgery but he wasn’t impressed. He had drifted into some sort of reverie. Had I crossed a line, inviting Haim to New York?
I abandoned the present and reminisced about the night of the blackout. I managed to coax another smile out of him when I mentioned all the pot we used to smoke. I accused him of contracting infectious hepatitis and passing it on to me. And then…the well ran dry.
I paid the bill and we stepped out into the brittle sunshine. The dazzling light illuminated Haim’s face and now I could see how thoroughly unhappy this man was. He told me he was glad I had come to visit because lately he had been thinking about Dagmara incessantly. He turned his large sad eyes on me and said, “You took her away from me. But it was just as well.”
In sum, he confessed that he had never loved a woman so deeply as Dag, that he had worshipped her, but that she and he had not meant to be together and that he could never have made her happy and he was grateful to me for killing the romance. He said that seeing me again was God’s way of telling him that she would never return to him.
A thread of pain stitched my chest but the feeling passed in a moment. I didn’t have the clarity of mind to think of my heart. Instead I was filled with wonder. Was this man talking about me? Was he talking about something that had happened between us thirty years ago? But it hadn’t happened that way. He wanted it to be a revelation, and it was. A revelation of massive delusion.
As Haim said goodbye I anticipated an offer of a tour of the city. But he made no such proposal, so I didn’t have to turn it down.
August 20, 1977
From William Burroughs, Naked Lunch:
Masturbating end-over-end, three thousand feet down, his sperm floating beside him, he screams all the way against the shattering blue of sky, the rising sun burning over his body like gasoline, down past great oaks and persimmons, swamp cypress and mahogany, to shatter in liquid relief in a ruined square paved with limestone.
Crazy huh? Been writing like a demon. Four stories in the last two weeks. I am boiling and churning with ideas. I am a juggernaut, sparks fly from my wheels. I can’t write fast enough. And the guy from the first magazine wants more. Also the guy from The New Yorker called and was all enthusiastic and chatty. Said he wants to see what else I’ve got. Can’t promise anything. I don’t care. I don’t even read The New Yorker.
I’m off work from now until mid-September. My parents called inviting me to some kind of suburban barbecue. The whole family will be there, everyone wants to see me. Blah-blah-blah. And so I’m heading up there to take a break. These breaks are important. Without rest, I can’t keep going at this pace.
Me and Zim and Katie went out drinking two nights ago. Ended up at Zim’s at around four in the morning. Chugging Hennessy and snorting coke. Out of the blue, Katie came on to Zim, and they started French-kissing, rolling around on the floor right in front of me. I decided it was time to go. I said, “Okay, guys, later.” Zim reached out, took hold of my wrist and pulled me toward them. Then Katie turned and smiled up at me and started kissing me. I could feel Zim’s breath over her shoulder. Katie undid my belt while Zim pulled her clothes off her slim body, I guess we ended up in a ménage à trois. The whole time we’re doing this, I’m thinking: I’m in a ménage à trois! It was like I was floating over our bodies watching us do it.
So Zim fucked Katie while she sucked me off. It wasn’t totally satisfying because I was distracted by Zim pumping away at my girlfriend (Is she my girlfriend? Not really.) which made her teeth scratch my dick. It was more strange than satisfying. She wanted me to fuck her next but I was so distracted I figured I was
never going to come so I tried to concentrate on one of her nipples and then I came in two seconds. Plus I kept worrying about catching some kind of disease from Zim, who messes with hookers and junkies. Also seeing Zim’s dick was a strange experience. I don’t think male friends should see each other naked.
Got home around dawn. Jerked off fantasizing about what we had done. Way more satisfying than actually doing it. I think I’ve had sex with Katie three times now (once with Zim. Does that count?).
My train to Boston leaves in three hours. My dick is itchy. I hope I don’t have herpes.
August 22, 1977
I’m back in Stoneham, staying in my old suburban bedroom where I used to smoke dope and listen to Hendrix. I would get completely hypnotized by the wallpaper. That’s when I wrote my first stories. There’s still an old John Coltrane poster up over my bed. And all kinds of shit stored away in the closets. All my high school stuff. Old sneakers. Yarmulkes from my buddies’ Bar Mitzvahs and Grampa’s funeral. A guitar with a warped neck. My writings, my journals. A dried carnation from a prom. I guess I should keep all this stuff. Never know when someone may want to write my biography.
Yesterday the whole family came by. I have so many aunts and uncles I can’t remember their names. They behave like they haven’t seen me in twenty years. Plus the cousins. And the cousins of cousins. Some of them are married and have bought homes already. Our great-grandmother lived in New York City, worked in a sweatshop on the Lower East Side. Once the family escaped, New York was always seen as an evil place. I can tell from the way they look at me what they are thinking: Richard’s living in the corrupt big city answering phones.
Dad tells everyone that I’m not going to be in New York much longer. He explains that I’m going to law school “once he gets this mishigas out of his system.” I don’t remember discussing law school with him at any time. Of course he’s clueless regarding my writing career.
I hung with this old aunt of my Dad’s, Sadie. Everyone treats her like a boring spinster, but she tells great stories. I think she was a WAC during the war. She worked on soup lines during the Depression. I should write something about her. She has absolutely no life in the present. A big event for her is visiting her nephew down the block. She always brings pound cake in a little white box tied with peppermint-striped string.
I smoked a cigarette with my “uncle” Dave (not really my uncle, not sure exactly who he is). Dave used to be a butcher and so he tells butcher stories. Nowadays he sells life insurance. Has a hearty laugh, wears gold jewelry and heavy diamond-studded rings. Sadie dotes on him. I guess that’s where she gets pleasure out of life.
Almost everyone in my family smokes. There’s one guy whose name I can’t remember who just sat and drank whiskey. I think he’s a bookie in Boston’s “Combat Zone.” Most of them were fat and out of shape. But the barbecue was good. Dad cooked steaks. He’s a good barbecuer. I guess it’s a tradition, men and charcoal.
I can’t figure out what’s up between Dad and Mom. They seem to be getting along at the moment. Maybe they’ve just given up on fighting. Decided to bury the hatchet in preparation for their golden years. Or maybe it’s because Ma’s been sick. Not sure exactly what’s wrong, but she’s been different. She barely did any cooking today. She’s going in for some kind of “exploratory” tomorrow.
I snuck away around eight. Went over to Rick and Judy’s. They just had a baby. We pretend that I don’t think they are condemned to this hell on earth forever. All the dreams we had in high school! “The Revolution, man!” Their baby’s cute. If you like babies. I mean, it sleeps. It shits. It cries.
Rick’s older brother showed up with a case of beer around ten. He sees me and the first thing out of his mouth is “How’s New York City? Gotten knifed yet?” Nice. We work our way through a whole case of beer, about six joints and some schnapps. On my way home to my parents, I miss a curve in the road and hit a tree.
August 23, 1977
Heading back to the city. Things kind of helter-skelter in the old homestead because Mom’s going to the hospital today. Everyone’s all worried and freaked out. I took her aside and tried to calm her down. I said, “People go to the hospital all the time.” Right? “Doctors know how to deal with whatever the problem is.” Which I don’t specifically know.
Bought a copy of The New Yorker at the train station and found a Raymond Carver short story in it. He’s kind of inspirational. Also this guy Bellow who I’m getting into more. On the train I ate hot dogs, drank black coffee and wrote a story about the barbecue. Wrote a million notes.
June 23, 2006
Lev picked me up as the sun was rising and we spent the morning crossing the interurban desert on the way to the holy city of Jerusalem. One leaves civilization behind in Tel Aviv and skims over a world of homeless bedouins camped out under cardboard and plastic tarping, endless sand, Orthodox settlements. More sand. Rusted-out tanks squat abandoned by the road. They have been left there as memorials to the 1948 war. You can’t go two feet in this country without being reminded that Arabs are evil and want all Jews dead. We passed through checkpoints. And of course, The Wall. The ever present wall, a typical nonsolution solution, creating more confrontation (although it does keep the suicide bombers out). The days of dialogue, if they ever existed, are over. The soldiers are stern, but much too young, hiding their fear behind officious grouchiness. Because I was traveling with an Israeli, our passports were scanned quickly, then handed back with a snap. Nothing more was said. We moved on.
Lev wanted to talk about writing. My writing, his writing, the writing of Kafka and Heller and Mailer and Roth! He wanted to discuss method and theme and Judaism and “the problem of the Palestinians” and honestly, I didn’t. I pretended to fall asleep.
I checked in at the King David. Much nicer room. But the whole town was so tense my stomach ached. I knew the Holy Land was physically dangerous before I arrived, but in Jerusalem it’s clear that this place is potentially dangerous to me. No matter who’s aiming at whom, a piece of stray shrapnel or a bullet could easily find its way into my body and kill me.
The old city is entered by gates, each specifically named (Herod’s Gate, Lion’s Gate, Sha’ar HaGai, which in Arabic is Babel Wad), supposedly going back two thousand years. But these actual walls and parapets weren’t here two thousand years ago. They were built by the Ottoman Suleiman the Great. At Jaffa Gate Lev pointed out yet another example of Muslim brutality, the grave of the architect who designed the walls. Once he was finished with his work, Suleiman kindly had him beheaded.
Made it past the checkpoints to the Wailing Wall where the davening Orthodox clustered like fat black crows. Individually, they are just bearded men wearing hats. Together, they might just deliver the apocalypse in their attempt to regain the Temple Mount.
In contrast to the two-tone Jews, Christian pilgrims sporting brightly colored baseball hats and pastel sweatshirts followed flag-waving leaders from one Station of the Cross to the next. We ran into them visiting the cave where Jesus was supposedly entombed, memorialized by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Illogically the church was constructed hundreds of years after the death of Christ by Constantine the Great for his mother, who located the holy spot through a visionary dream. It was subsequently destroyed and rebuilt by alternating generations of Persians, Christians, Ottomans and Crusaders. (The Jews were long gone.) These pious modern-day Christians had no use for the enormous mosques on the Temple Mount, only a stone’s throw away (recently rebuilt by the bin Laden construction company). Is it sacrilegious to say the whole enterprise feels like Auschwitz meets Disneyland?
Lev left me on my own when I insisted on visiting the major mosques atop the Temple Mount. I negotiated the cool, shadowed alleys of the old city, finding the bright open area of crumbling tan stone and checkpoints that is the base of the Temple Mount. I ascended up over the Jews bowing to the wall and up to the plateau. The Arab security detail that loitered by the entrances to two of the most holy Islamic shrines
in the world probably detected my Jewishness, but also my Americanness. I removed my shoes and they let me pass. Breathtaking beauty within. The Arabs/Turks sure knew how to throw an architectural party.
Footnote to the afternoon: I found an Internet café and checked the sales of A Gentle Death on Amazon. The number, for whatever reason, had leapt upward again! The book is now sitting above two thousand! The sunshine seemed even brighter as I left the café.
Later I made my way down through a much more satisfying bazaar in the Armenian quarter. I bought some ceramic stuff from an old Armenian potter. All very authentic and old world-y until I met his twenty-five-year-old son who couldn’t wait to return to California where he could have his fill of cars and babes. The truth is, no one wants to be in the Holy Land but the crackpots. All the normal people want out. Who can blame them?
Under an archway, someone had stuck up a leaflet protesting the Turkish avoidance of culpability. It was an old photograph of a stack of severed human heads. Armenian I presumed. What did Hitler say, “Who remembers the Armenians?” These Armenians are interesting. I should write something about them. What really happened ninety years ago?
August 30, 1977
Really late. Drunk. Six hours ago Katie and I were headed over to her place. We started kissing under a streetlamp. Then she told me that she’d just had surgery and couldn’t have sex. Refused to explain what kind of surgery. (We had had a nice night together two nights ago. Just when it gets good, she runs away from me.)
We had been drinking and I was very horny and not happy about this state of affairs. I got angry. She jumped in a cab and left me there on the street. I was pretty high, so I decided it was very important to get more alcohol into my system. I ended up in front of Tier 3, a nightclub down in what we call “TriBeCa” (triangle below Canal Street). I went in for a nightcap. I paid for my drink and since I didn’t know anybody there, I started hanging out by the door, welcoming people in as they entered. A crew of young guys showed up. From the way they were laughing and whisking their hands about I figured they were gay.
Perforated Heart Page 17