I'm investigating the death of our children, I suddenly said, the death of Sam, who's disguised as living. The death of my son, the death of a boy named Menahem Henkin, the life of somebody who learned the history of the world by heart, Melissa is somehow interwoven in that story, I don't understand how, but I know and so I came here. Even before he met Licinda Hayden and called her Melissa, long before that, he was in love with Melissa and didn't even know her, just as I came from Cologne and find myself an unwelcome guest in your house, trying to know how you miss or don't miss Melissa. My son is dead. Sam Lipp, or as he was called before, Samuel Lipker, is also a fellow named Boaz Schneerson, and his events and the events of his father, I'm trying to write together with my friend who lives far away from here. He was in love with your daughter, knew her in another plane of time-an expression I learned from my spouse — and he's still searching for her, maybe in his disappointed love for Licinda Hayden who acted Lilith in his play…
I don't grasp what that has to do with it, said Mr. Brooks. He got up, his legs unsteady. He picked up the big glass ashtray standing there, and maybe he inadvertently dropped it and it shattered into thousands of slivers. At the sight of the smashed ashtray, he tried to smile, but his face managed only to grimace a little.
I do understand, Mrs. Brooks almost whispered. I remember looking at photos of Licinda Hayden, I saw her in Time, Newsweek, T h e N e w Y o r k T i m e s. I remember looking at the photos and thinking, I know her, but I didn't connect it… now I do. Does Sam know about Melissa's closeness to Licinda?
I'm not sure, I groped for something opaque and astonishing that I heard in her voice now. Mr. Brooks said: I'm sorry about the ashtray. He called the maid to come clean up the slivers. We sat silent and pensive and waited until she finished. Mrs. Brooks got up and left the room a moment. Mr. Brooks said to me: She was a beautiful child, Melissa.
I know, I said.
She shouldn't have died, he said in a voice that cast off fifty years of thick walls, I should have listened to him and taken her to a hospital in New York, but I was too proud.
I'm fond of people who, at a certain moment, can say something contrary to the foundation of their whole life, and can feel human remorse, and I thought of my father who never could. I almost loved that man.
Suddenly there wasn't anything more to say. I looked out the window and saw the naked trees, the rebuked, aristocratic, frozen landscape wrapped in snow, an enormous sun startled me, as if your blinding light that exposes everything fell on me here of all places, a beam of light from another world, and I fell silent. And then Mrs. Brooks came back. In some way that seemed marvelous, but equally clumsy, Mrs. Brooks tried to connect Licinda with somebody who could have been Melissa. Maybe the fact that three strange men came during fifty years to love Melissa endowed her daughter-and even her yearnings for her had vanished with the years-with some importance, some metaphysical refinement. She was surely thinking of Lionel, of Sam, of me, she thought Licinda lived for us what Melissa could have lived eternally for her. I'm talking now of disappointment. I don't know, tangled threads unite us, and to whom am I telling these things! You? My self-mockery perplexes me and I almost suggested to them to establish an international committee of parents, without any distinction of sex, religion, race, or nationality, would Mrs. Brooks accept that idea? I was amazed at myself, not at her, she spoke about family, maybe a stub of memory of Licinda rose from there. Maybe she really did say that Licinda is a distant relative, and maybe I'm fantasizing and quoting things she didn't say, but there was one thing I'm sure she talked about-she talked about some rabbi named Kriegel who came to Providence, Rhode Island, in seventeen seventy-three, about her family graced with a Protestant minister named Stiles, who then lived in Providence and was an expert in Hebrew and wrote a book about that Kriegel. I thought: Where do I know the name Kriegel, and I recalled, contemplating that rabbi from Hebron who performed the marriage of Rebecca Secret Charity with her dead lover, Kriegel, who went from Hebron to America. Mrs. Brooks spoke of him with uncritical generosity, as if she missed him, and this is not the place to tell what she said, since that story has nothing to do with our issue, but at night, when I came back to New York and got into bed, I thought maybe I heard something that's important for us to know and I didn't yet grasp the end of its thread, and I also knew, a few seconds before I fell asleep, that maybe as I talk about Licinda, she herself is extraneous to the story, it doesn't concern her, but Lilith that she personified, or perhaps it's Lilith who personifies Licinda?
I went back to the public library and a fellow Lionel recommended helped me. He showed me some interesting research on Kriegel, relations with the Protestant minister Stiles, the sermon Stiles delivered in the synagogue on Shavuoth, how Kriegel came to America in seventeen seventy-three, wearing a turban, a handsome, radiant man. The connection, which I still don't understand, pleased me. Between Kriegel, Minister Stiles, Melissa and Licinda. Did Melissa grow up and become Licinda? Were the two of them distant relatives, was Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg really-as I found out-the offspring of that Kriegel? Did he know he was his offspring? Could he have spawned his sons even after, beyond the generations that preceded him?
I sat with Lionel and Lily. It was late at night. Outside snow was falling. Sam and Licinda went out. Renate fell asleep. Then Lionel fell asleep too. Lily and I sat tired, our eyes almost shut, drunk, and sang children's songs. The next day, we flew home.
Dear Hasha,
I had a vision that lasted a whole day and I couldn't get rid of it. Menahem and Friedrich met in New York near Bloomingdale's. They went shopping. Friedrich bought leather suspenders and Menahem bought handkerchiefs and a belt. Menahem's hair was long and Friedrich's was shorter and the flap of a forehead could be seen on his head. Friedrich lied and said he had shot himself. Menahem said: You didn't shoot yourself, Friedrich, you shot somebody else and missed. They went to a Chinese restaurant. Neither of them knew how to use chopsticks. The old Chinese man laughed. They didn't know that was funny and ate with forks and knives. At the hotel, Melissa brought wine and they drank. Boaz came and jumped out the window. Menahem was impressed by the jump and Friedrich wasn't. They were drunk and sang. Friedrich was older than Menahem. They walked to the seashore. There was a cave there. Intense red colors were blended with sickly bluishness, a chaos of serenity they disappeared into dimness, as if out of weakness, wrapped in a thin halo of pinkishness, a kind of eternal sunset. Who said there's no life near death, they only said that there's no life after death! Everybody drowned there, alone. My husband claims I have a fever. I lie and write you. Maybe love is also preparing an alibi for the future, or the past. Menahem and Friedrich are consoled, they walked together on Fifth Avenue and laughed. Those were frozen tears of death. They flowed on him, on them, I felt an emptiness, maybe I yelled: Menahem, Menahem. I yearned for him.
Your love.
By the way: the director of your national theater held negotiations here with Sam Lipp to come to Israel to direct his play.
Love, Renate
Tape / -
Mr. Schneerson, do you really think ancient blood flows in us, don't you think you adopt a dangerous language? A kind of theatrical fascism, bereft of sharp positive critical thought-
I don't know what I think, my memory is me. I didn't ask others if they were fascists or progressives. Nor do I know where progressive people progress to. Thanks, Mr. Schneerson. No problem, when will Samuel come back?
Tape / -
And Rebecca Schneerson sat in her chair and felt in her bones how she was growing numb. When a giant bouquet of chrysanthemums came, sent by the grandchildren of the founders, she burst into a brief laugh. A note was stuck to the bouquet: May you live to a hundred and twenty. She looked at the floor and saw blurred spots. That cataract, she said, aside from that I'm healthy and could have had children, but there's nobody to do it for, she yelled at Ahbed: Put the flowers in a vase with a lot of water. See if the house is clean, and if they brought the jugs to the dairy, serve the mixture, and say if it's raining, Ahbed! He asked: Put out a finger? She said: Put! He stuck out a finger, got it wet a little, took a deep breath and said: It's not raining. Said the old woman: May Allah have pity, Bidak Zuker! He laughed and went off. The day began to leak to her through the cracks in the shutter, from the hayloft rose a sourish smell of wet straw. She said: There's a smell of flower piss here. In fact maybe she wasn't waiting for anybody, and so she drank black coffee Ahbed spiced with cardamom and basil. She lit a cigarette. At the age of ninety, she said to Horowitz's greatgrandson, you start smoking cigarettes, it doesn't impair health or longevity anymore. Horowitz's great-grandson came with his classmates to congratulate her. The children wanted to see the birds. They were taught in school about the birds of the first son of the settlement who died in the Holocaust and came back to life. Ahbed explained to them: They come from the whole country, even from abroad, want to give a lot of money, but she doesn't sell. She keeps everything. Even the mosquito nets are kept. Maybe the anopheles will come back, she said. After they left, she shut her eyes and since she didn't have anything to do, she waited for evening.