There were U-boats and goose-stepping mobs on TV, cinematic collages of newspaper headlines, General Eisenhower waving from a jeep, Nazi officers in stiff-shouldered coats with crossing leather straps, raising their hands over their heads with a look of doom, then scenes of the international diamond trade, greenbacks rolling off the presses, old men with rotted teeth and bulging purses smiling downstage center. I was transfixed.
Sam kept watching me. He didn’t see any of it. “You okay?” he said. “You want a glass of water or something?” I yelled and fell against him. A pit bull had clamped its teeth on my calf—no, it wasn’t there. There was nothing there. Sam grasped my shoulders and held me at arm’s length, regarding me with concern.
How many people had seen that broadcast? How many more such broadcasts would there be, on how many stations, in how many countries? I couldn’t remember what Auschwitz was, or Dachau or Treblinka. But something bad was going on, and Goldeh was in trouble. “You have to tell me what happened with Goldeh.”
“There was that call after your first one. She acted funny. Then the kid came and talked to her. They went in her bedroom. He was bawling, apologizing for something, I dunno. I couldn’t hear much, because I was watching TV. You know. Then he left. Then my mother left. What’s going on?”
“Where did she go?”
“To schul, to see the rabbi about something. I dunno.”
“Sam, you’ve got to turn off the TV right now, and don’t watch it, and don’t listen to the radio or answer the telephone until I tell you.”
“You’re crazy, goddamnit! You were always crazy, you know that? Goddamn actor!”
I was running down the stairs. There was a synagogue two blocks away, down an alley and across a small square, and I didn’t know, but I was betting that that was where Goldeh was headed. The ambulance carrying Jerry’s body had gone, and the crowd was dissipating. Only one cop remained. “Hey, you! Where you running?”
In a clearer state of mind, I would not have stopped, or, having stopped, I wouldn’t have gotten into the car with him. The police radio was haywire with snippets of news, music, and imperious voices speaking half sentences; one of the voices was Weiskopf’s, and I thought I heard Mr. Matsok’s name mentioned, the name that Goldeh had spoken with such horror.
The cop ignored the noise and started talking at me as if we were already in the middle of a long conversation. “First off, there was only two hundred thousand, tops, not six million, like they say. Most of them died of typhus, and they weren’t the only ones, but boy, they made those Germans pay through the nose, didn’t they? You gotta hand it to ’em. Only it isn’t true. None of it. You should watch who you hang around with. Your friend’s a Zionist whore. She’s not going to testify.”
I exploded out the door and started running again. The policeman was laughing, “Hey, you’re not a suspect, you know; it was hit and run! They’ll never catch the guy. You, some highly placed individuals just want to wise up, get it?”
“Forget it!” I don’t think he heard me. Panting between coughs, I covered the two blocks to the square and decided to give up smoking for good. I galloped down the alley and across the park, certain my heart would explode any second. Goldeh was trudging through a grove of trees near the old plaster-domed amphitheater on the far edge. I came closer and saw that she was limping. When I called out to her, she ignored me.
I ran alongside her, and at last she stopped. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Don’t you know me, Goldeh?”
She looked all around the square. Except for us two, it was empty. “Do you want to kill me?” she whispered. “Do you want to kill yourself? Get away from me, Al. Go home!”
“Jerry told you,” I said.
“Yeah, he told me, and now he’s dead, poor boy. But don’t you think they can change that? Don’t be surprised if tomorrow, kaboom! he was never there to die. No dishwasher! No ring in the nose! Even his mother wouldn’t remember.”
“They didn’t get to you, Goldeh. You still know everything. What about the phone call, the one after mine? Wasn’t it Weiskopf?”
“Yeah, it was Weiskopf. Walk with me, if you’re not going to go. I have to get to the schul, the rabbi, the lawyer.”
We walked. “Here’s hoping they’re not listening to the radio,” I said, “or the TV or a telephone. Why didn’t it work with you, Goldeh?”
“I’m dried up, that’s why. I’m a turtle in a turtle in a turtle.” She pressed her forefinger against her heart. “There’s nothing in here to take away. Ever since I left Kovno in 1943, my heart is nothing but numbers and words. They can’t take a thing from me.”
“You’re a kind, warm, loving person, Goldeh.”
“I’m a better actor than you are, Al.”
“No, Goldeh.”
“You’re a naar, a fool.” She stopped to catch her breath. The muscles in her left leg were trembling in spasm.
“What’s wrong with your leg? Why are you limping?”
“You don’t see them?” she said.
“See what?”
“The dogs, Al! The memory dogs. They can’t take a bite out of me, but they won’t let go.”
We had crossed behind the amphitheater and were standing between it and a dumpster next to the rear loading dock. Goldeh’s synagogue was just down the block, but we had to wait for her leg to regain a little strength. Then the men with the black gloves were coming through the trees and down the block, and Lydia Weiskopf herself was standing across the street with a tall, gaunt old man in a tuxedo jacket. He was holding two pit bulls, muscles and teeth, at the end of chain leashes.
“Goldeh, forgive me, but I think we have to hide in the dumpster.”
“So what else is new?”
Shielded from view by the dumpster itself, we mounted the loading dock, and from there, staying low, I helped Goldeh slide in. She stumbled and hit her head against the inside wall as she fell to the bottom. Now there was blood spreading on her kerchief. “It’s nothing,” but she had to sit down. I climbed in after her and spread a few sheets of corrugated cardboard for Goldeh to sit on.
“I better tell you this,” she said. “Maybe it will do some good in case they finish me, but you live.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Just before the Germans invaded Lithuania—1941 it was—the good people of Kovno…”
Weiskopf spoke for the mayor of Kovno. “Al, you are being extremely silly. We know you are in there. I don’t know why you think you’re putting Goldeh through all this insanity.” I didn’t answer. In a lower voice, I heard her say, “For God’s sake, Kazys, pull your dogs back.”
“I’ve spent a lot of money on you, Doctor, to have you order me around.”—The voice of someone who had been smoking non-filters a lot longer than I had.
“You’ve spent a lot of money to have it all be wasted. Get the dogs out of here and tell your men to bring the van round. And make sure they keep it idling, for God’s sake, as long as we’re feeding off the engine.”
The barking and scratching abated. “Al, Goldeh, for heaven’s sake! I don’t know what kind of a monster you think I am. Are you going to stay in that garbage until nightfall? I’m going to come up onto the loading dock. Let me help you out of there.”
Goldeh whispered, “Al, don’t let her. This is the one from the telephone. This is the one from the dogs on my leg.”
I shouted, “Go to hell, Lydia.”
I heard some men trying to dissuade her, but Weiskopf went up onto the loading dock, and we saw her come to the edge of the dumpster. She looked down at us among the cabbages, bottles and crushed boxes. Frightened as I was, I felt ridiculous.
She said, “Mrs. Yudelson, what on earth did Jerry tell you, to make you want to put up with this?”