“Soon, I hope. So, I’ve been thinking about a new—”
“Listen, Sasha. Do you remember a kid named Lambert in your unit? Nick Lambert?”
“Sure,” he replied, fearing the worst. He leaned into the wall, steadying himself. “He’s a good kid.”
“His father, Robert Lambert, contacted me. He’s a producer in town, and about a year ago, I slipped him the Western you wrote before you left, Clementine, and Lambert heard about how you helped Nick and the rest of his unit on Omaha Beach, and now he’s all fired up about Clementine. He wants to put up the money for it, so get back here as soon as you’re able. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sasha said, and as quickly as Charlie had got on the line, he got off, leaving Sasha standing there against the wall, clenching the receiver in his hand, relieved Nick was okay, and only after that sank in did he begin to feel excited about Clementine, and pitching The In-Between Man. He went back into his room, and started to pack.
* * *
• • •
On his last morning home, around three a.m., Sasha crept downstairs and sat at the kitchen table, not bothering to turn on the light. In his palm, he clenched the red ribbon his mother had given him from Russia, for good luck. “Something from the past,” she had said, “to keep you safe.” He had pinned it to the inside of his fatigues, and by now, it was discolored with sweat and blood.
Sasha laid it out on the cool wooden surface, next to his glass of scotch, and just stared at it, somehow knowing it was his father’s. He rested his head on his forearm, stretched out across the table, and tried to imagine what it had been like between his parents. He tried to imagine his father, and wondered if he was anything like him, disbelieving the story his mother had always told him: that his father had joined the Russian army, as all the men did, and died early into the war, on the Carpathian pass. Then why the sense that he was marked in some way, if she was merely a widow, like so many other women in their village, left husbandless after the war? Why the shameful silence when he was little and he blurted out questions about his papa, missing him, wanting him to come back? Why did they have to endure the neighbors’ spiteful glances, or the way his aunt and uncle looked at him with sadness and distaste?
This wasn’t all he remembered.
Other things, blurry and faint but memories nonetheless, had started to come back to him during the war, and continued to gather intensity now that he was home with time to think. A golden pocket watch someone used to dangle from a chain before him, swinging it like a pendulum, and the sound of rueful laughter at his fascination with the watch. He tried to grab it mid-swing, and when he succeeded, a male voice, deep and resonant, said in Yiddish, “Good boy, my boy.”
His mother’s hair smelled of cigarettes, but only sometimes. He didn’t like it.
The black boots at the foot of the bed. He put his little bare feet inside of them and tried to walk, falling down. Always falling.
Digging and digging through snow to find a chocolate bar that his father had hidden for him. When he found it, his hands red and throbbing with cold, his mother scolding him for not wearing mittens, her voice jumping with concern. His father laughing. Always laughing. “He’s okay.” He gestured to Sasha. “Look, he loves chocolate.”
* * *
• • •
The sky started to lighten when he heard his mother’s footsteps on the stairs, her tired sigh, and then she appeared in the doorway, her face creased with worry. She had aged during his time away, the depressions under her eyes more pronounced, her hair thinner, her back slightly hunched, and he felt a rush of guilt for all the fear and anxiety she carried because of him.
“What were you doing down here, sleeping with your head on the table, in the dark?”
He gestured to the picture window. “It’s almost morning.”
She sat down across from him, rearranging her quilted robe. Then, with hesitation, she touched the frayed ribbon. “You kept it.”
He felt the old urge pounding in his chest, making his throat close up, his voice winnowing down to a whisper: Tell me about my father. As he started to ask, she sprung up and hugged him, her small frail body crushing into his. “It protected you,” she said, her voice breaking. “I protected you.”
He gripped her arm and buried his face in the crook of her padded elbow. She wept into his hair, her breath short and jagged, and he sat here with her, not asking about the past. That’s what she wanted, because the past, he realized, was another country, with borders he shouldn’t cross.
Chapter 22
SASHA
October 1944, Los Angeles, California
On his first night back in town, Charlie took him to Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills to celebrate his return. He even surprised him with a chocolate cake decorated with K rations and lined with Sasha’s favorite cigars, Optimos. Charlie had reserved a table outside in the garden, and the night wind was warm and dry, the sky above them as black as velvet with little stars burning into it, pinpricks of brilliance. Sasha looked up and felt as if he could drink up the sky and everything in it before he dove into his pitch for The In-Between Man.
When he finished, Charlie took a long sip of scotch, hesitating, and Sasha recognized this tactic of his, not wanting to admit he disliked it right away.
“Listen, Sasha,” Charlie began, but then Sasha blurted out, “You hate it.”
“Not quite hate, but why make a picture like that at a time like this? People want to celebrate the good things in life . . . They’re tired of the war.”
“But it’s not about the war . . . It’s about what comes after, how difficult it is to feel . . . normal again.” His eyes wandered over to the bar, where a few guys in uniform, recently discharged, stood drinking in silence amidst the celebratory air.
Charlie noticed them too and then met Sasha’s gaze. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Sasha said. “As long as I keep writing and telling the stories I need to tell.”
Charlie raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.” He paused, a slow smile spreading over his face. “And to Clementine. Looks like you got your shot at directing.”
Sasha jumped up. “What do you mean?”
Charlie leaned back into his chair, grinning. “I told Lambert over the phone that he could have the script for free on the condition that you direct it.”
Sasha flung his arms around Charlie in an unexpected rush of affection, and Charlie slapped him on the back, laughing and saying, “Glad you’re home, kid. Glad you’re home.”
* * *
• • •
Two weeks later, Sasha found himself at Romanoff’s again. Cigarette girls glided around the perimeter of the dining room, ignoring Sasha’s attempts to flag one of them down for a cigar. But the clink of crystal tumblers, the beautiful women throwing back their necks in laughter, the band playing Benny Goodman, all distracted Sasha from the tingling expectation that coursed through him after having just met with Robert Lambert out in the San Fernando Valley at his sprawling estate. They discussed casting and prep time for Clementine, and Lambert explained that he had a fourteen-day slot open in January on the little lot he owned; it even had an Old West town built into it already.
But, Sasha thought, watching the cigarette girl make her way toward the bar, anything could happen: Lambert might get cold feet, run out of money, or back out for some unforeseen reason. Sasha took a long swig of vodka, relishing its abrasive sting. He would revise the script over the next ten days, and by January, he’d be directing a picture.
A waiter passed by, ferrying a sizzling lamb chop, and Sasha realized he was hungry from having skipped dinner. His mouth watered at the thought of sausages on buttered toast, his favorite here.
The bartender, a young kid with slicked-back hair, vigorously shook vodka and Cointreau, adding a splash of apricot liqueur at the end. Sasha tried to place him, but the nattering debutantes at the bar
were distracting. In high chirping voices, they discussed the possibility of wearing an off-the-shoulder dress to a luncheon. He was about to lean over and order another vodka when the cigarette girl appeared before him, packs of Chesterfields and Camels artfully arranged and cellophane-wrapped in a tray poised beneath her voluptuous breasts. He took in the short flared skirt and cheap perfume, her hair molded into conical points on either side of her head.
“You got any Cubans?”
“We’re out,” she said, gazing flatly into the mirror running behind the bar, reflecting Romanoff, in his signature white dinner jacket, holding court at the corner table, snubbing patrons and spoon-feeding steak tartare to his two bulldogs.
He bought a pack of Camels, and she slipped the quarter into her front pocket before turning away, not acknowledging the tip.
“They had some Romeo and Julietas in last week. Rich and strong,” the bartender said.
“Yeah, I prefer La Aroma de Cuba, if given the choice.”
“No choice tonight,” he joked, funneling a tomato juice cocktail into a long glass. He expertly sliced a lime and wedged it onto the salted rim, and the way he cocked his head at a jaunty angle brought Gussie to mind, the French kid who helped them out in Normandy.
In the long mirror, Sasha watched the padded front door swing open as more people streamed into the place.
“You okay, buddy?”
“You just remind me of someone I used to know.”
The boy shook his head, clearing empty tumblers off the counter. “No one dead, I hope. That’s bad luck, you know. Even if I’m his exact semblance, do me a favor. Don’t tell me about it.”
The bartender went on about how his mother, a devout Catholic, saw his dead father every evening sitting at the edge of the bed, asking for his usual whiskey on ice. Sasha half listened, his stomach growling, remembering when they played a joke on Gussie and pretended to drive away while he was flirting with a farmer’s daughter, talking to her about how the birth of a colt was full of warmth and blood and new life while caressing her hand. Midway through his seduction, Gussie noticed the departing jeeps and the rest of the guys laughing. He quickly kissed her on the cheek and jumped into the back seat, his regular place next to the driver already occupied. Sasha rode in the first jeep, looking back at Gussie, who was still grinning at the girl.
A few minutes later the jeep hit a land mine, killing the man in the passenger seat and tearing off the driver’s legs. Gussie came away with a few cuts and bruises, but that was it. Such chance, luck, fate, or whatever you wanted to call it still gave Sasha the chills, and he shook his head, knowing how very little separated anyone from death, as it was always breathing beneath the surface of things, slumbering and waiting until it arbitrarily plucked you from this earth.
“No, not dead,” he told the bartender. “Maybe it’s good luck.”
* * *
• • •
When he got home, a letter from his mother awaited him, unusually thin. He opened it, and a clipping from the Scarsdale society pages announcing the engagement of Margaret Altman to Bobby Schneider fluttered out. A blurry photograph of Margaret smiled back at him, and he remembered the mystified look she’d given him when he told her that he was moving out to Los Angeles, as if it were the most ungodly, foreign place in the world.
He stuffed it back into the envelope and flung it across his desk. You see, he heard his mother say. That could have been you, and I would have finally been happy.
He was supposed to call his mother tonight, but it was too late, and he was grateful. Instead, he started banging out notes on his script, working until his eyes burned and the last light went out on the street.
* * *
• • •
Sirens blared in the distance, echoing off the ocean as he tossed and turned under his sheets. Another brushfire probably raged in the canyons.
He would eventually have to make the disappointing call to his mother. He was supposed to go home for the holidays, a date she hung her heart on, but now, with shooting scheduled for right after New Year’s, along with casting and prep, he had to stay here. He imagined the withholding silence that would settle over the line after he explained this—a silence that felt worse than any reprimand or guilt-laden comment.
To drown out the blaring sirens, the neighbors Gloria and Ray turned up their radio and Vera Lynn’s elegant voice sang that old wartime favorite, and for a moment, Sasha felt at ease; he used to listen to this song during Operation Torch when none of them could sleep.
With sirens cutting in and out of his dreams, he was brought back to those cool little beds of North African sand, his fingers sifting through the fine granules as he stared into the night sky vibrating with hot white stars, as though each one contained a heartbeat. Just as they nodded off, that sultry American voice drifted across the desert dunes from a hidden German loudspeaker, cutting into the dead quiet. “Hello, boys. Hello, Big Red One! Wake up . . . This is Axis Sally bedding you down for the night.” She told them not to bother searching for the loudspeaker, buried in the sand somewhere, under a land mine. “Churchill is smoking his cigars, watching all you GI Joes die, he doesn’t give a damn. You should ask yourselves: Why are you fighting for the Brits and not for us? Pretty soon, the Germans will be toasting their victory in Moscow, while in the Pacific, the Japs butcher you by the thousands.”
Into the darkness, someone yelled, “Finish your damn report already and play our song.” All the soldiers laughed, and they burrowed deeper into the black cool sand, waiting for it.
“Here’s a nice little lullaby, and while I’m singing sweetly to you, imagine your wives and high school sweethearts spreading their legs for those draft dodgers and good old 4-Fs. Good night, boys. Sleep tight.”
The ghostly sound of a harmonica accompanied her smooth voice, which trembled over certain notes of “Lili Marlene,” a song that sent him into rich and sonorous dreams.
Chapter 23
VERA
October 1944, Los Angeles, California
It was very difficult to get an appointment,” Max explained in the car on the way over. It had only been a few months, but already Max was pressing her to see specialists—psychiatrists, psychologists, herbalists—thinking all these appointments would help her come to grips with what had happened at Oradour.
Turning onto Bedford Drive, Max added, “I had to pull some strings.” He called his cousin Dr. Adler, asking him to put in a call to Dr. Bettelheim, as the two had been colleagues in New York, and for this, they were lucky, Max reiterated. “Try to have an open mind,” he said, parking in front of a low brick building with white shutters.
* * *
• • •
Dr. Bettelheim sat in a leather armchair with a notepad balanced on his knee. The cream carpet and dark paneled walls, combined with the walnut desk and leather furniture, made it seem as though Dr. Bettelheim had been planted into this scene with such perfection that his expertise was indisputable. He instantly reminded Vera of a turtle, with his small rounded head tilted to the side as he gazed at them inquisitively, his wrinkled neck straining out of his collared shirt. Leather-bound volumes of Goethe and Heine lined the shelves, and a gilt-framed diploma from the University of Vienna hung behind his desk.
He leaned back into his chair and gestured for them to sit on the couch opposite, giving Vera a half-hearted smile before directing his gaze at Max.
Clearing his throat, he then repositioned his body before beginning to speak. “Dr. Adler provided me with a general sense of the trouble, but it would be immensely helpful to hear it from you, in your own words.” His thick Viennese accent struck certain vowels with unintended emphasis, simultaneously relaxing and jolting the senses into submission.
Sensing their hesitation, he explained that he was from Würzburg, but he came to New York for a fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital, in the psychiatric department.
Vera nodded, noticing that Max’s hand had inched across the leather couch toward hers, but she felt no desire to hold it. Of course Max wanted so badly to give what she had a name instead of the wordless, inexhaustible range of emotions that punctuated her days. But when that unwanted darkness seized her, it was not necessarily connected to a particular memory or event, as the doctor described. Her dark moods could be provoked by the color of the walls at a particular moment, the sight of children playing at the beach, or a recent dream. The slightest thing—a word, a scent, an object—left her defenseless. And this defenselessness had only worsened.
“That’s very interesting,” Max said, nodding at the doctor, whose small obsidian eyes scanned their faces.
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