Landsman, of course, is sorry, too. He has already apologized to her several times, alone and in the presence of others, orally and in writing, formally in measured phrases and in untrammeled spasms: Sorry I’m sorry I’m so, so sorry. He has apologized for his craziness, his erratic behavior, his glooms and jags, for the years of round-robin exaltation and despair. He has apologized for leaving her, and for begging her to take him back again, and for breaking down the door to their old apartment when she declined to do so. He has abased himself, and rent his garments, and groveled at her shoes. Most of the time Bina has, good and caring woman that she is, offered Landsman the words he wanted to hear. He has prayed to her for rain, and she has sent cool showers. But what he really requires is a flood to wash his wickedness from the face of the earth. That or the blessing of a yid who will never bless anyone again.
“It’s all right,” Landsman says.
She gets up and goes over to the lobby trash can and fishes out Landsman’s package of Broadways. From her coat pocket she pulls a dented Zippo, bearing the insignia of the 75th Ranger regiment, and lights a papiros for each of them.
“We did what seemed right at the time, Meyer. We had a few facts. We knew our limitations. And we called that a choice. But we didn’t have any choice. All we had was, I don’t know, three lousy facts and a boundary map of our own limitations. The things we knew we couldn’t handle.” She takes her Shoyfer out of her bag and hands it to Landsman. “And right now, if you’re asking me, and I kind of got the idea you were, you also don’t really have any choice.”
When he just sits there, holding the phone, she flips it open and dials a number and puts it into his hand. He raises it to his ear.
“Dennis Brennan,” says the chief and sole occupant of the Sitka bureau of that major American daily.
“Brennan. It’s Meyer Landsman.”
Landsman hesitates again. He covers the mouth hole of the phone with a thumb.
“Tell him to get his big head down here and watch us arrest your uncle for murder,” Bina says. “Tell him he has twenty minutes.”
Landsman tries to weigh the fates of Berko, of his uncle Hertz, of Bina, of the Jews, of the Arabs, of the whole unblessed and homeless planet, against the promise he made to Mrs. Shpilman, and to himself, even though he had lost his belief in fate and promises.
“I didn’t have to wait for you to drag your lamentable hide down those lousy stairs,” Bina says. “You know that. I could just have walked out the goddamned door.”
“Yeah, so why didn’t you?”
“Because I know you, Meyer. I could see what was going through your mind, sitting up there, listening to Hertz. I could see you had something you needed to say.” She pushes the phone back to his lips and brushes them with hers. “So just go ahead and say it already. I’m tired of waiting.”
For days Landsman has been thinking that he missed his chance with Mendel Shpilman, that in their exile at the Hotel Zamenhof, without even realizing, he blew his one shot at something like redemption. But there is no Messiah of Sitka. Landsman has no home, no future, no fate but Bina. The land that he and she were promised was bounded only by the fringes of their wedding canopy, by the dog-eared corners of their cards of membership in an international fraternity whose members carry their patrimony in a tote bag, their world on the tip of the tongue.
“Brennan,” Landsman says. “I have a story for you.”
Author’s Note
I am grateful for the help of the following people, works, websites, institutions, and establishments:
The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hamp shire; Davia Nelson; Susie Tompkins Buell; Margaret Grade and the staff of Manka’s Inverness Lodge, In verness, California; Philip Pavel and the. staff of the Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, California; Bonnie Pietila and her fellow denizens of Springfield; Paul Hamburger, librarian for the judaica Collections, Uni versity of California; Ari Y. Kelman; Todd Hasak Lowy; Roman Skaskiw; the Alaska State Library, Juneau, Alaska; Dee Longebaugh, Observatory Books, Juneau, Alaska; Jake Bassett of the Oakland Police Department; Mary Evans; Sally Willcox, Matthew Snyder, and David Colden; Devin McIntyre; Kristina Larsen, Lisa Eglinton, and Carmen Dario; Elizabeth Gaffney, Kenneth Turan, Jonathan Lethern; Christo pher Potter; Jonathan Burnham; Michael McKenzie; Scott Rudin; Leonard Waldman, Robert Chabon, and Sharon Chabon; Sophie, Zeke, Ida-Rose, and Abraham Chabon, and their mother; The Messiah Texts, Raphael Patai; Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dic tionary, Uriel Weinreich; Our Gang, Jenna joselit; The Meaning of Yiddish, Benjamin Harshav; Blessings, Curses, Hopes and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expres sions in Yiddish, Benjamin Matisoff; English-Yiddish Dictionary, Alexander Harkavy; American Klezmei, Mark Slobin; Against Culture: Development, Poli tics, and Religion in Indian Alaska, Kirk Dom browski; Will the Time Ever Come? A Tlingit Source Book, Andrew Hope III and Thomas F. Thornton, eds.; The Chess Artist, ]. C. Hallman; The Plea sures of Chess, Assiac (Heinrich Fraenkel); Trea sury of Chess Lore, Fred Reinfeld, ed.; Mendele (http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/index.utf-8.htm); Chessville (www.chessville.corn); Eruvin in Modern Metropolitan Areas, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer (http:// www.aishdas.orgjbaistefilajeruvpl.htm) ; Yiddish Dictionary Online (www.yiddishdictionaryonline. com); and Courtney Hodell, editor and redeemer of this novel.
The Hands of Esau brotherhood was founded by and appears here with the kind permission of its grand chairman and president for life, Jerome Charyn; the Zugzwang of Mendel Shpihnan was devised by Reb Vladimir Nabokov and is presented in his Speak, Memory.
This novel was written on Macintosh computers using Devonthink Pro and Nisus Writer Express.