* * *
Δ Franz looked in the rearview mirror and saw Isabel’s face half hidden by the orange gauze that secured her Italian straw hat. He could not see but imagined her green eyes, her long neck, her tanned shoulders, her sleeveless dress of yellow shantung. Then her face was concealed entirely as Javier kissed her. Javier’s shaved cheeks. His sad dark eyes, closed now. His thick eyebrows and his thinning, graying hair.
“I can’t wait to get where it’s hot,” Isabel whispered.
“We’ll be in Veracruz tomorrow.”
“That’s not soon enough. Why can’t we drive all night? I can take turns with Franz.”
“Our plan was to loaf along slowly and see everything. It was your idea.”
“We can see everything on the way back. Now I want to be in the heat and the sun as soon as I can. I want to be in the sea. Don’t you?”
“No, I want to kiss you. Why did you open the door?”
“How will we manage tonight?”
“I’ll think of a way.”
You laughed softly, Pussycat, and tickled Javier’s ears.
* * *
Δ As he released you and fell exhausted on the bed, you remained there on all fours, shaking your loose hair like a lioness. You would have liked to be able to roar at him. Instead you said curtly: “So now there’s nothing left, eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“That was all that was missing.”
“When it’s all over, anything left is surprising,” said Javier.
“Don’t babble. Oh, you’ll use it.”
“Yes? Just how?”
“To get rid of another illusion. Go on, Proffy. I can Freudianize you as far as you want.”
“You speak the damnedest Spanish I’ve ever heard, Isabel.”
“Never mind what kind of Spanish I speak. It’s a living Spanish, at least, and you can use a little life, Professor. That’s why you don’t write anything.”
“Just what do you know about it?”
“Plenty, my love, plenty. I’ve got a nose that can smell some stinks a mile away and against the wind.”
“May God bless you and your perceptive nose, Isabel.”
“You’re impulsive, my love. That’s what you are.”
“Yes, I may be impulsive. And you, aren’t you tired of standing there humped like a camel?”
“Leave me alone. It still burns. Look, Javier, you just can’t be a middle-aged beatnik. It’s out of the question. So for Christ’s sake stop playing games. If you’re a son of the age of Don Porfirio and Queen Victoria, that’s what you are, don’t you understand, and you better stop fooling yourself. Face up to the truth. Stop losing sleep. You’re not a romantic, so forget it. So … No, Javier! No, no, stay still. Javier, Javier, not that way…”
* * *
Δ You sat in the rocker for several minutes, Elizabeth, your eyes still not adjusted to the darkness. The small glowing hands of your watch showed 8:15.
“So you still don’t want to answer me. I’ve startled you and you haven’t had time yet to think what to say. Or maybe it’s just that you aren’t here. Are you here, Javier? Really and completely here? Okay, okay, don’t talk to me. I wouldn’t listen if you did. I would think about something to avoid hearing you. The Virginian, for example. Richard Arlen and Mary Brian, but Gary Cooper and Walter Huston had the leads. At the end they shot it out in the street while everyone ducked for cover. The good guy and the bad guy. Gary Cooper.”
When you say that, smile, pardner.
Sure, smile, Dragoness. Laugh. And when you and Jake hid in the closet you had to put your hands to your mouth and nose to keep from laughing. At first her voice was as calm as usual. “Beth, Jake, come on, we have to go out.” She was making an effort to control herself, you could tell that. You held back your laughter. “I’m telling you to come on. They’re waiting for us. We shouldn’t be late.” Jake pinched you and you shook silently. “Children, children, where are you? It is Friday evening and they are waiting us. The food will get cold. Be good now. There’s going to be matzo balls and gefilte fish. Don’t that sound good? Children, come on out now. It’s late already and they’re waiting.” Jake pinched your thigh and you tugged on your braids to keep from laughing and your mother’s voice rose and began to tremble. “They’re not here? Out with their father, that’s where they must have gone. I bet they went out with their father! Bethele, Yankele, where are you? You are tormenting me, stop it! Come on out! The Mendelssohns will be insulted! On time we can never be now, please, please!” You and Jake held hands, waiting, calm now, quite certain of what she would yell next. “Beth! Jake! You’re scaring me! You’re making me afraid! I’m afraid, don’t you hear me? I’m afraid!” With your eyes closed in the darkness of the closet you could see her clearly, her hair drawn severely back but as always wavy and electric with tones of copper, a few rebellious wisps surrounding her pale, transparent, veinless face. Her thick arms and her knotty hands extended beseechingly.
“Beth, make the light.”
She would never turn on the light herself. She always asked someone. And when the light went on, her hands would move absently to her forehead as if she were brushing something away. One Friday a month you were invited to the Mendelssohns. The Mendelssohns who had known Rebecca’s parents in the old country and here were successful, already well-to-do, and Rebecca when she came in from the street, from the half darkness of that thirteen-block walk, would put her hand to her forehead, brushing the light away.
“Gershon took them with him.”
You and Jake stood laughing beside Gershon at his stand in the street. He sharpened his razors and now and then shouted: “Razors! Good honest razors!”
You laughed hardest once when he reached out and stopped a man with long hair and a curly beard and asked him: “You still are going to shul?” The man nodded and your father laughed and by the lapels of his coat pulled him closer. With a swift movement of a razor, he cut off a lock of the man’s long hair. He laughed. “See how good they cut? Razors, razors, fine sharp razors!” And the man stood there, stupefied, first touching his shorn hair, then grabbing the oily lock from your father’s hands while howling incomprehensibly in Polish. You and Jake rocked with laughter and Gershon frowned and shouted: “Now he is trying to insult me! Not yet has anyone ever been able to insult me, and now he is trying! How much is it worth to you, eh? Two cents? Three? For three cents’ worth of hair he’s calling me names! Listen, my friend, the man who can insult me has not yet been born! Razors! Razors!” And the Polish Jew walked away caressing his lock of hair and muttering and you and Jake and your father laughed and the man in the next stand, who sold neckties, held his wares up to his customers’ throats and Gershon shouted: “Mordecai, those are ties you are selling, or sausages? Mister, let me tell you, to buy a tie from Mordecai is like to buy a rope from the hangman. Those ties have been stolen.”