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The baby comes out and doctor says “Got it, it’s a girl,” and starts to hold it up but says “But you knew that, right?” and nose is suctioned again, eyes cleaned, umbilical cord’s cut and quickly does some other things and hands it to the nurse who rushes to the warmer, pats the baby dry, says “Heartbeat’s normal, color’s a healthy pink,” weighs and measures it and wraps it up and brings it to them and says “So who gets her, Daddy first?” because his arms are out and he says “She’s still a bit dizzy and weak, I’ll hold it OK,” and takes it in his arms, shows it to Denise, who’s being sewed up while waiting for her placenta to pass, and breaks into such deep sobs that the nurse takes the baby from him and puts it on Denise’s stomach. Breaks into sobs during his wedding ceremony. Rabbi smiles, says “Let’s hold it a few seconds, people,” looks at his watch because he has to officiate at a funeral in an hour, he told them before the ceremony, and it’s a half-hour cab ride from here. Sobs when he hears a certain Bach cantata on the radio and the woman says “It’s a beautiful piece and a very lovely interpretation, I know,” and he says “It’s not that. I should have turned the radio off when the announcer said what number it was, for I know what it does to me and I didn’t want to screw up such a nice dinner.” “It’s done, so maybe if you want to eat, you should say,” and he says “It reminds me of my brother. A few months after that ship he was on got lost and probably split up and sunk, I bought a record of this same cantata. Not for it but for the much more exalting one on the other side whose number I’ve since forgot — thirty-three, I think. I played it, after I played the one I bought the record for a few times, and right at that sad part just before my brother popped into my head and I started sobbing more for him than I had since he was lost. To top it off, for about ten years after that, whenever I wanted a good cry, I’d put that cantata on. Though first I’d have a couple of vodkas or half bottle of wine, and would douse the lights — it was always at night — or just keep a low-watt one on and sit in a chair with another vodka or the rest of the wine and often with some poetry books to turn to two or three of what I knew were particularly sad poems, and my brother would automatically appear about five minutes into it and I’d sob uncontrollably. It rarely failed and would probably work for me today if I had the record and there weren’t too many scratches on it and the sound wasn’t too inferior to what we have on records today.” Sobs the first time he sees a certain Russian film. Went to the theater alone, it was about a year after his brother was lost, good reviews, a friend whose opinion he respected had told him it was a terrific film, interesting and moving and cinematographically near perfect, the second or third contemporary Russian film to hit the States since the new Soviet-American cultural exchange, sat in back, film was touching in places and light and a little trivial and dull in others and as far as he could tell very well acted and made. But the ending. Young soldier returning to the war front, never coming back, babushka’d mother seeing him off minutes after he got there, as he’d spent his entire leave getting home — powerful music, serious voiceover with a few words Howard could make out because of similar ones in German and English, closing shot of him on the bed of the truck that had taken him the last few miles to his village and will drive him back to the train, but before that shouting “There, there,” and pounding the truck’s cab and directing the driver down a country road, jumping out, kissing his mother — she was working in the fields with other women — soon the driver shouting “Come on, soldier, we don’t have time, you’ll miss the only train,” and they hug and kiss and paw some more and the driver honks and he climbs aboard, his mother and he waving to each other as the truck gets smaller and smaller as it drives to the main road. He sat sobbing when the Russian word for “The End” appeared and then the music stopped and screen went dark and houselights came on. It was an art movie theater so almost everyone had seen it from the beginning and was now leaving when someone coming up the aisle said “Tetch?” Newsman he knew from Washington. Introduced his wife, said “This guy and I covered Congress at the same time, used to interview Kennedy together right in the Senate cloakroom sometimes, since we each had a 50-kilo station in Boston and my outfit one in Wooster — Remember, Jack tapping his pen on your mike when he talked, then on his teeth while he was thinking till you had to tell him to stop? Clink-clink, he was killing the tape — This guy was a maniac reporter, all over the place. Three to four interviews going at once sometimes — his outfit just edited and aired them separately — and who once boxed me out of a once-in-a-lifetime interview with Nixon when he was veep and who no one thought gave single radio interviews. But he catches him flying through the halls and shoves the mike into Nixon’s mouth and starts asking questions, and when I see it and try to set up to join in, he says ‘Stubbs, this is mine, back off.’ Nixon’s just laughing but wouldn’t give me one after his was over. But I got him back with an excluso with Hoffa on some hearings and one with Lyndon on Ike taking too many naps and golfing days that for a while had that town upside down. But the real killer was when he gets one with Khrushchev, if even only for two minutes and in translation, by breaking ranks with the rest of us cordoned-off reporters and running with his tape recorder and gear up the Lincoln Memorial steps. ‘Who is this imp?’ we all later hear Nikita say through his translator on radio that day. Nothing much of substance — he’s sure he’ll enjoy his brief stay. But just to have got the first interview with English in it three hours after he steps off the plane? And then quickies with Mrs. K. and his son-in-law from