* * *
Δ You found Franz, Dragoness, outside Isabel’s door.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
Franz raised his finger to his lips. You put your arms around his neck and hugged him and did not try to listen too, because inside you a creeping snail was telling you softly about your dream and then as you stood there embracing Franz you saw the white empty corridors of an insane asylum, the white and chrome rooms of a hospital, nor did you think for a moment that Franz might have a dream very like yours, that he might be seeing also a world of black tiles covered by a cold tangle of low twisted trees growing over seventy-eight thousand corpses, the dead of seven centuries gathered layer upon layer in Prague’s Jewish Cemetery under the carved symbols: Israel’s clusters of grapes, Levi’s sacred cup, Cohen’s open and joined hands; and stones are at the corners of the graves because these dead are in the desert and the wind of Exodus must not be allowed to uproot them and carry them away converted into sand; no, they must become the stone and moss of centuries, and Franz looked among the black stones for a name, Rissenfeld, Lederova, Waldstein, Schön, Maher … But he found only the names of the places on the monument raised at the entrance to the cemetery:
Belsec
Majdanek
Flossenburg
Lodz
Stutthof
Ravensbrück
Riga
Monovice
Piaski
Mauthausen
Trostinec
Oranienburg
Treblinka
Auschwitz
Bergen-Belsen
Buchenwald
Dachau
Raasika
Terezin
There are no tombstones standing erect and worn, covered by moss and lichen. The name he seeks is not there. And you, embracing Franz in the corridor of the hotel, stopped on the Long Island highway without hearing or seeing the cars passing and finally opened your eyes, shivering with your hands deep in the pockets of your raincoat and the brim of your hat down. You lost all contact with reality and saw only the vertical stones of Mount Zion cemetery, the gray tombstones crowded together, the graves squeezed against each other, a plain of graves stretching all the way to the horizon and eventually becoming lost on this autumn afternoon against the skyland of Manhattan across the river; and in Queens this cemetery was the model or anticipation, perhaps the specter of the city and when you returned home you sat on the old couch with its worn velvet and the crocheted backs and armrests and you thought about Jake, looked at your hands, stretched them out, twitched them, and thought about Jake while your hands sought something to protect, cover, conceal.
“Why are we alive?”
And in the hotel corridor in front of Isabel’s room you hugged Franz and did not hear the voices, violent, imploring, of the two Mexicans locked behind the door. You smelled Franz’s sour sweat. He seemed not to notice you; he was intent on his eavesdropping. You could safely murmur that it need never be mentioned, that you had promised, that no one should ever have to be taken by night, in a taxi, to that house beyond Avenida Ribera de San Cosme, and Javier, invisible behind the door, was looking at you beseechingly, with his hands telling you not to go on, not to speak those words which you would never need to speak but which finally you would be unable to hold back, betraying with your utterance not Javier or the promise you had made him but yourself. For we have not yet reached the state of grace, Dragoness; we must still go through crises and make exaggerated, emotional gestures in order to convince ourselves that we are ourselves. Yes, you know, all right. And as you move away from Franz you tell yourself that both he and you know why you have sought each other out and made love together: it’s because you, like him, can keep a secret: how to reveal the consequences of behavior without mentioning the behavior itself.
You walk away, alone, down the hotel corridor, you return to your room and Franz remains there as if he had not heard you or touched you, his ear against Isabel’s door. You walked alone and satisfied, for you were telling yourself that all that matters is the external, swift, always changing surface of the world, that throb of the real which denies our private and hidden sordidness, which drowns out our stories, old stories, ever repeating, dead without knowing it before they are born.
* * *
Δ Becky moved away from the door without looking at anyone, neither at you, who were staring at your hands, nor at Gershon, standing beside the window with his hat on, staring also, down at the empty street, at the iron fire escape beyond the gauze window curtain; without looking at either of you, Becky said: “It is all forbidden.”
She took off her hat. Gershon did not turn. She went on: “And who told me that things would be this way, that we should never get out of this city where they shut us up? That was not the promise. They promised us that the walls would come down. You, Betele, give me the duster.”
You got up from the sofa and brought her the feather duster from the closet.
“Here, Mama.”
She snatched it without looking at you. Her eyes were very narrow, almost yellow, old and secretive, set deep in the broken porcelain that clung to the bones beneath them. She began to dust. The clock, the shelves, the sofa, the knobs of the doors, the sills of the windows.
“Maybe some day we will be able to leave the city. No one has lived in cities so long as we have. Sometimes I can’t go to sleep, trying to think of someone in our family who ever lived in the country. You know one? Nor me, neither. There is not one. We live like animals, crowded together in a herd. But we’re alone. Isn’t that funny, we lived piled up on top of each other, yet alone, like lepers. Jake was an alien. My son was an alien. Like a beggar he lived here. Like a schnorrer, yes, yes. I remember him like he was an old man sitting outside the synagogue. Oh, Jake, so much you have learned! Look, you have let your hair and your beard grow. With your hand stretched out, you are asking for alms. Oh, Jake, Jake, with such insolence you receive those pennies as you sit in your wheelchair that is a throne. Oh, Jake, my son, so much you have learned! Come here and let me kiss you, little boy. To the man who gives you money you do a great favor. You save him. Because of you he is nearer the Lord’s heaven. And at parties I push your chair and all of them you surprise by laughing and singing and dancing. You’re a little clown, Jake, you’re very funny. And you won’t be a renegade. That I won’t allow. You’ll wear your hair and your fine long black coat and your boots and your beard when you grow up. And you’ll be afraid to go out on the street, to go beyond the streets with me, for you know they can kill you, Jake. No, don’t dare to go out. Stay here with me, little darling. I’ll tell you something. You can escape only to another city and it will be just the same. Wherever you go, always the same. Do you think I can’t understand? My poor son, a servant. He is a servant in his blood. My poor little son.”
Gershon took off his hat and lit a cigarette.
“Becky. Be quiet now.”
“Is that you? Can that be you?” She did not look at him. She went on dusting. “And do you know that there is no escape?”
“Yes, there’s escape,” Gershon said loudly. “He has done it.”
“No.” Her smile was as distant as the smile of a statue. “He knows that here we were born and here we must die. And if he runs away, how should he hide his shame for having abandoned us? He can’t escape from us. I will go every day alone and visit his cradle and tell him that. How should he run away? And if you two don’t want to go with me, I go alone.”
“Mother, Mother, please be quiet.” You looked at her sadly, knowing that she would not look at you, that she would never look at you again. “Leave him in peace.”
“I’m telling you, he has escaped already,” said Gershon.