If I Told You Once: A Novel (17 page)

When I heard that my sons had been shipped overseas, I knew they were truly gone. I wore black, I tied my hair with black cord, I covered the mirrors, I refrained from washing.

Mother, what are you doing? Sashie cried.

And Shmuel echoed: What are you doing? Do you
want
our sons dead? You’re inviting bad luck, mourning people who are still alive.

Funny that he should speak of bad luck, he who had mocked my precautions all these years.

I knew I would never see them again. I recalled Sashie’s birth, and how Shmuel and the doctor saw what they should not have seen. A tradition had been violated, and these were the consequences.

For the two men who had watched, I had lost my two sons. An even trade.

I grieved for them for weeks, sat up rocking in bed through the night. I studied the few photographs I had of Wolf and Eli, though I did not trust even photos to show me the truth.

Shmuel grew thin and bent, his eyes were cloudy. One evening he seized my shoulders and shook me till my head rattled, shouting: Why are you doing this? Thousands of people are dying, being killed every day! How dare you sit here grieving for two that are still alive!

It’s desecration, he said more softly.

Another time he said: Why are you inviting the worst? Parents should not have to mourn the deaths of their children. It goes against the natural order of things.

Hastily scrawled letters arrived from overseas. Shmuel and Sashie rejoiced in them. I did not believe the charade for a minute.

Shmuel wrote faithfully to them both. One night he said: In their letters Eli and Wolf have asked after the woman downstairs. What should I tell them?

I did not know what to say.

You see, the week before she had hung herself. Some said she had done it because she was grieving for her dead husband; others said she did it simply because she was mad, and that was what the insane did, they killed themselves, it seemed to be the one thing they were good at.

People gossiped, puzzled over her identity.

We would never eat sugar in the same way again.

What should I tell them about her? Shmuel asked a second time. How should I put it?

It doesn’t matter, I said.

He sighed. He said: I’ll tell them she’s peaceful now. I’ll say that she no longer has nightmares. I’ll say that her hair is still white. That is all they need to know.

He bent again over the paper.

Lies again! Lies written down on paper! Even Shmuel used words for lies and dissembling. How could he possibly trust them?

Sashie wrote too, laboring for weeks over a single note to her brothers. It needs to be perfect, she said.

Shmuel played his violin for weddings, funerals, whatever work he could find.

I hardly went outside. When I did the sky was invariably low and gray; the tangles of pipes and fire escapes clinging to all the buildings reminded me more and more of twisted black trees. I tied a scarf around my head to shut out as much as possible.

I sat in the apartment watching night fall and dawn break, over and over like a tedious dream. I dug the ornamented egg, now dull and tarnished, out of a drawer and peered through the eyehole. The scene inside was dim and far away, mist covered the magic lake and the swans had their heads tucked under their wings. I thought I saw two new figures, black haired, leaning from the highest tower.

Days and weeks went by, and I hardly noticed my daughter.

Sashie, I called to her one day.

She came out of her room and said, Please, I want to be called Shirley now.

Why? I said.

She twisted a lock of hair around her finger and said: I hate the name Sashie.

It was my mother’s name, I said. Have I ever told you about my mother?

No, she said.

I knew I had, but she must not have been listening.

She blurted: Sashie is so old-fashioned. I’m American, mother, I want an American-sounding name. Call me Shirley.

I said: You can’t change your name. It’s written on your birth certificate, you can’t change it. And you can’t ever get away from where you’re from. Your past stays with you, you can’t make it go away by dressing up in a fancy name and pretending to be someone else. Remember that.

But I wasn’t born in the old country, I was born right here, she protested.

You can’t ever escape your family, no matter how you try, I said.

She glared at me darkly from beneath her brows, and twisted her hair tighter, and for the first time I saw how much she resembled me. It was like looking into a fairy-tale mirror that gave me back my youth.

She turned then with her shoulders high and tense and stalked back to her room.

I could not understand her at all. And I suddenly looked around me, at my life, as I had not in years. It had taken a shape I could never have imagined beforehand.

I thought how strange it is, the way the shape of your life grows up around you unbidden, like weeds. In the beginning you do not intend to live any particular way, you think you are living freely, are hardly aware of the subtle choices you are making. But as the years pass your life slowly closes in around you, hardening like a shell, crowding you from all sides, hemming you in with furniture and debts and habits, forcing you into narrower and narrower channels until suddenly you find you have no choices any longer and can only continue in the same direction until the end.

I thought too about love, the different kinds of love. There were people you loved by choice, plunging into it recklessly, headfirst, swallowing it whole, giving in to it without a thought.

And then there were the people you loved by default.

*   *   *

A man came knocking, with a shabby suitcase and an exaggerated face like a sad clown.

I called for Shmuel, and when he came to the door he and the stranger embraced without a word.

This man was one of the actors from Shmuel’s company long ago, and he sat in the kitchen and I made him tea. I remembered him faintly; the women’s roles often fell to him because he was very thin and thus could be swept up in the arms of the hero without too much trouble. I remembered him in a golden wig and false bosom, I remembered his gentle laugh.

Now his cheeks were sunken in, his skin yellow, there were hard sores crusted on those lips that most of his comrades, at one time or another, had been obligated to kiss. Deep creases radiated from his eyes; his hair was falling out, pale strands drifting down to his shoulders. He had just arrived in this country.

How did you get out? Shmuel said.

The actor’s face darkened, he started to speak then noticed Sashie listening. He said: I stowed away in a barrel of pickles.

He reached behind his ear and produced a pickle. He reached into his mouth and pulled out another and handed them both to Sashie. He drew pickles from his armpit and nose and pocket, he took off his shoe and found one there. He gave them all to Sashie and kept producing them until her hands were overflowing.

His face never brightened though Sashie giggled and even Shmuel’s mouth relaxed. He was remembering their days of traveling together.

Then the actor rose, and drew Shmuel aside, and told him the news about his family. Shmuel sagged, and his actor friend held him and I held him but he was too heavy for us all.

His parents, his sister and brother-in-law and seven children, all gone. Swept away.

He did not speak for the rest of the day and that night in bed he did not weep, there were no tears, but he groaned and swore and beat his fists against the wall and the mattress.

I thought he would hurt himself, I caught his arms and pushed him down flat and held him there, I put my ear to his chest and heard his heart thundering frantically as if wild horses were trapped within.

I felt his hands then, he touched me as he had not for a long time; and we became reacquainted with each other and took comfort in it.

We both wore black now, though he said my unnecessary grief was a mockery of his.

He spoke less and less as the days wore on and he was losing his hearing as well. It had begun the day he heard the news, and every day the noise of the world grew softer and softer.

The news of his family had hurt him so badly it seemed he could not bear to hear any more.

It’s like the world is buried in snow, he said abruptly one morning. Everything is hushed.

It was one of his last speeches.

He could no longer work, since he could not hear the other musicians, could not hear himself, could not tell if he was off-key.

He squinted as if that would improve his hearing.

I do not think he particularly missed voices, footsteps, traffic, wind. He could have lived without them. But the loss of his music was a terrible blow.

For weeks he stayed in the apartment, sawing away relentlessly at his violin though he could not hear the notes. As if there was a single magical note that would restore his hearing if he could only find it. Finally he put the instrument aside in frustration.

He missed the music so much. Music was the greatest truth to him.

He would not eat, missed his mouth with the spoon, lost his balance crossing the room. It was as if the deafness had dulled his other senses.

He could not speak, his voice was an awkward squawk now. When he needed to communicate he wrote messages on scraps of paper. I struggled to read them, had to ask Sashie for help. I felt like a fool.

But he did not really want to talk. Neither out loud nor on paper.

Some feelings are too broad for words. There are some stories that defy telling.

We understood each other without speech as people do when they have been together for so long.

His hair grew lushly, he hid his face in the thicket. He went about with his face twisted, teeth bared like a madman’s.

I remember the day his scowl lifted.

It was the afternoon that he stood at the window, curtain pulled aside, watching the first snowfall of the season. The flakes fell swiftly, softly, the street below was already blanketed in white. He smiled at me then and held out his arms and I knew he wanted to share this thing, so we could be together in the same white muffled silence.

We stood close in the cold white light from the window, and it fell on us like the softest snow, it lay pale on Shmuel’s head and on the tops of his shoulders. And I looked at his eyes, the blue so vivid, and at his teeth shining like a path of stones glowing in moonlight that would lead me through the forest to safety.

And though we were indoors I pictured the snow piling up around us, burying our feet, muffling every step. We waded through the snow to the bed and sat among the white sheets. Shmuel unbound my hair then, and let it fall, and took it up in both his hands and shook it beside his ear. He smiled as if he could hear the bells.

I had not heard them for years. I did not hear them now.

Or perhaps I did.

He lay down then and closed his eyes. I looked at his black hair spread over the pillow, at his nostrils, his eyelashes, his brows. His eyebrows jumped and waggled at me; he was teasing me, he knew I was staring. I lay down beside him and tucked my head beneath his chin and slept.

*   *   *

In the morning he was cold.

It was because of all that snow, piled up around us.

Don’t you know how dangerous it is to fall asleep in the snow?

I waited for him to open his eyes but he did not.

I knew he was teasing me, it was always like this, I would watch his face and wait and wait until I could hardly bear it, until I thought I would go mad or burst into tears, and then at the very last moment he would open his eyes, and smile, and laugh.

So I waited beside him.

I waited a long time. He knew how impatient I was, he was testing me. This time I would prove my faithfulness, I would not let him outlast me. I promised I would not move from that spot until he opened his eyes.

I waited. This was a good joke. In a moment he would sit up and we would laugh and laugh.

Sashie

When my father died my mother could not believe it.

She sat by his bedside for two days, holding his hand. She would not allow anyone to remove the body.

He’ll be getting up any minute now, she said. In a moment he’ll open his eyes.

I was only a child then and even I understood that he was gone.

He’s an actor, she insisted. He’s only acting.

That blood on his shirt, it’s only chicken’s blood, she told me though his clothes were clean. She said: They hid rubber bladders filled with chicken’s blood in their costumes. So that when they got pricked during the sword fights the blood spurted out like that. It was only a trick, you see.

Any second now he’ll stand up and take his bow.

Your father, you know how he likes to tease.

Another one of his jokes.

She repeated these things and would not be convinced until the doctor came, and even
he
could not convince her until he let her listen to my father’s chest with the stethoscope.

Ah no, she said then. No.

I will say in her defense that my father
did
always look more vivid, more alive than other people somehow. Even in death. I remember his eyebrows were poised, his lips pursed as if he were about to say something. His hair on the pillow still black and unruly. He still had a sharp-featured boy’s face; the lines and creases on his cheeks were incongruous, as if he had drawn them on with his stage makeup for a joke.

*   *   *

The apartment was so empty in those days.

With my father dead, my brothers far away, it seemed like the rest of the world had broken off and drifted, leaving us alone. We had only each other.

There was not much to say.

We circled each other like suspicious dogs.

My mother wrapped herself in black, she sat for hours cradling my father’s violin. Not the beautiful golden one he had bought here, but the old squeak-box he’d brought over from the old country. She enveloped herself in a cloud of grief, and it was as if she had removed herself to an unreachable place, far away.

I admit we had never been close.