And I couldn’t remember Sam. I couldn’t remember who he was to me, what I felt about him, or why we’d done anything together; all I had left of Sam was empty words. Then, without the feelings to color them, the facts themselves began to drop away; I ceased believing them. I could see the whole process unfold in my mind between the time I hung up the phone and washed my hands until I reentered the kitchen and took my place at the butcher block. Stanislavski in reverse—a draining away of meanings! Goldeh looked different, but it wasn’t her; the eye through which I saw her had changed.
“My ears are burning,” she said. “Someone has been talking about me.” From his station at the sink Jerry turned to me and winked. His radio was blasting the Horst Wessel Song, or so I imagined. “Screw you,” I said. “And turn that thing off.” He looked hurt, more than hurt, afflicted.
I was sweating. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t keep the walls vertical. I sat down on the floor and put my head between my knees. She can change anything. She can rectify anything. I can’t ever pick up the phone again. I can’t turn on the radio or the TV. My own memory is a ball of clay. I don’t know who the hell I am.
“Al…” Goldeh was bending over me. “Are you sick? Do you want maybe a glass water?”
“He’s all right,” Jerry said. “Same thing happened to me.”
“I’m not all right,” I said.
I punched out early and took the bus home. Actually, I got out a few blocks from my place and walked the rest of the way. A standee down the aisle had been listening to a small transistor radio, and I didn’t dare let myself hear it. My home answering machine had four messages tallied on it—call-backs for auditions?—but I couldn’t take the chance. I took the phone off the hook, pulled down the shades and went to bed.
In the dream, the judge asked me, “Do you know someone named Sam Yudelson?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re not acquainted with Sam Yudelson?”
“Well,” I said, “I may be acquainted with him, but I don’t actually know him. I know his mother, Goldeh, though, from work.”
“Then you can’t tell us anything about Sam Yudelson?”
“Well, I guess I could, this and that, nothing important. You know, you’re acquainted with lots of people. It’s all pretty much the same.”
Like a trap springing shut, I sat up in bed, hyperventilating. I was straining to focus inward on things no longer there. I had to call Goldeh. It was six o’clock. The phone book was full of names and pages, and I kept forgetting the order of the letters. At last—“Hello, can I speak to Goldeh?”
“Al, is that you?”
“Yes. Can I speak to her?”
“This is Sam.”
“I know it is. I need to speak to Goldeh.”
“This is Sam Yudelson. What’s the matter? You sound funny.”
“I know who you are. I need to talk to Goldeh.”
“Screw you too.”
Goldeh got on the phone: “Hallo?”
“Goldeh, this is Al. Listen to me carefully. Do you know about an outfit called the Institute for Historical Integrity?”
“What are you, kidding? Those mamzers? What do you want, I should give you a contribution? You’re a member? You should go and get cholera. This Institution is a liar what hates a Jew and kills a Jew.”
“Goldeh, I know. I know. I’m not one of them. I’m not a Jew hater. You know me. You gave me cookies and milk when I was still watching Mickey Mouse Club.” Sam had been there when I watched Mickey Mouse Club—I think. Sam had eaten cookies and milk with me—I think. They had stolen a part of my life.
“You watch too much TV, Al.”
“Listen to me. They’re after you.”
“After me? Who? What for?”
“The Institute. A pal of Jerry’s named Lydia Weiskopf. And it has something to do with the mayor of Kovno.”
“Matzok!”
“What?”
“Matzok! Oh my God! He knows who I am! He knows where I am!”
“Goldeh…”
“I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know any more. I don’t want to die any more.”
“They’re not trying to kill you, Goldeh.” I said this to comfort her, but I knew that what they were after was really much worse. “Listen to me. Don’t pick up the phone. This has to be the last time you talk to anybody on the phone. And don’t watch TV or listen to the radio either.”
She hung up. I had to make sure that Goldeh understood, that she would not pick up the phone. A while later I called again.
“Hallo?”
“Goldeh, I told you not to answer.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Al.”
“It’s who?”
I hung up. So it was already too late!
They go from house to house, looking for signs prophesied by the previous Dalai Lama. Maybe the infant has a birthmark on the sole of one foot, or some peculiar mannerism. Maybe the parents hve under a certain cliff in a certain village or have a certain unusual surname. The previous Dalai Lama is ashes now, but he soon reincarnates as a human infant. The holy men find the infant—“tulku.” They take him away to tutor him about his past incarnations; eventually, he “remembers” everything. Memory is such a malleable and fragile thing, and yet, a dozen incarnations from now—what’s that, a thousand years?—the Dalai Lama may “remember” his visit to Auschwitz. I wonder if the Institute has thought of that.
I raced downstairs to see if I couldn’t pull Goldeh’s mind out of the fire. I hailed a cab and gave the cabby too much money to take me straight to Goldeh’s, because I couldn’t be bothered to wait for change. “Shut off the radio,” I barked.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
There was a commotion outside Goldeh’s apartment building. An ambulance blocked our way, and policemen with notebooks and walkie-talkies were scurrying around, pushing back the crowd and making self-important noises. I just managed to see a man and a woman in white lift the mangled body off the cobblestones and onto a stretcher before they covered its face and slid it into the ambulance. I knew him.
Choking back tears, I found my way through the crowd, slipped into the security door when someone came out, and pounded up four flights of stairs to Goldeh’s little place. I beat my fist against it. “Goldeh! Open up. It’s me, Al.”
A rotund little man with curly red hair and thick bifocals opened the door. “Nu?” he said.
It took me a moment to remember his name, and that we were supposed to be intimates. I combed my memory for information. Nothing was missing, but it took a Herculean effort to invest any of it with meaning. Then I performed one of the most challenging thespian exercises I’ve ever essayed: I had to invent within myself the truth of something I already knew to be true—that Sam Yudelson was my very old friend—and I had to act appropriately through gesture and intonation.
“Sam, I’m sorry I acted so funny on the phone, but I’ve got to talk to your mom. There are some people who want to hurt her.”
“What’s happening outside?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Did anybody call after I called? Was anybody here to see her?”
“Yeah. Both. What’s going on? Who the hell would want to hurt my mother?”
“Who was here?”
“Some little punk. I don’t know. What is this, some role you’re working up? Come in and watch TV, have a soda pop.” He threw open the door, and I could see the television screen next to the window, its glare competing with the late afternoon sun and its sound just audible above the sirens and voices from the street. I couldn’t see Goldeh.
“Where is she?”
“Get your ass in here. What is this?”