The Beautiful Possible (23 page)

August 2003

The Lawrence Welk Nursing Home is located one strip mall away from Eden Ranch, which is no longer an eden or a ranch, but the site of a Lexus dealership. A social worker leads Maya into a room where a dozen elderly women pour bingo chips into paper bags. A man with a thick mop of white hair sits among them and accuses the women of cheating.

“I saw everything!” he shouts. “Nothing is lost on me.”

“That’s him,” says the social worker. “Such a pity when a brilliant man declines. You should have known him in his prime. A self-proclaimed guru, apparently.”

“Does he remember anything?”

“In and out. He’s generally quite sharp, but moody. You need to be careful with him.” She pushes his wheelchair away from the others. “Let’s not start up today, Professor Richardson, okay?”

Paul windmills his arms.

“No punching today either. Agreed?”

Paul notices Maya and stares. He wheels close.

“I know you,” he says.

Maya smiles and reaches out her hand. “I’m—”

“No need for formalities. You’re Walter’s daughter.”

“Yes,” says Maya. The sound of her own voice seems unnatural to her. “I believe I am.”

“Belief is not imperative,” he says, “but it’s a good place to start.”

He grabs Maya’s hands and kisses them.

“How did you know? When you saw me, I mean—”

“I loved him as a father loves a son.”

“Good to meet you,” says Maya.

“Let’s not waste time being polite, baby girl. Wheel me to my room. We’re just down this godforsaken hallway. Do you know this place was once a resort? Now it’s a shit farm for old people who wear diapers and dwell in dwindling reality. Welcome to my new Eden Ranch.”

Maya wheels Paul down a long hallway and into a small, cluttered room.

“It’s right here.” Paul reaches into a pile and pulls out a yellowing journal article. “Your father wrote this. The paper that started it all, translated into English. You like the Song of Songs?”

“I’m more of an Ecclesiastes type, actually.”

“Ah! Then you’re either a religious existentialist or a depressed soul.”

“Neither.”

“Naturally Walter’s daughter won’t be pinned down.
Floating in the boat is a person I’ve never seen, playing the flute
,” he recites in a sing-song melody. “That’s you.”

“I don’t understand—”

Paul smiles. “You’re so much like him.”

Maya glances at the article and reads aloud.
“The words of the texts echo in the lives of the people who read them.”

“Your father lived those words.”

Your father
. Which one? The only one Paul knew, of course, but Sol, her father, lived his texts too.

“Take the pile with you. Don’t need it anymore. The books also. I’m finished with the detritus of my life.”

Maya reads the titles:
Ordinary Sacred; Religious Themes in Tagore’s Poetry; Imposed Grace: The Clergy’s Dilemma; The Radical Theology of Atheism; Cremation in World Religions.
She opens one and reads the inscription:

“I cared for him deeply,” says Paul. “More than I can say.”

“I don’t need all the details,” says Maya.

“Then why have you come? I have a kid of my own, grandkids too. I don’t need charity visits from strangers. It’s bingo time for me. If you don’t want details, why bother?”

Maya begins to cry. “I only just found out. Please understand.”

Paul shakes his head. “You are just like him, baby girl. You’ve got your head in some spice sack that smells sweet.”

“You don’t know me.”

Paul pulls Maya close and unbuttons his shirt.

“Look at this scar.” He takes her hand. “Touch it. Go ahead. I’m not some old lech.”

Maya touches the raised zipper of skin on his chest and flinches.

“Open heart surgery. They cracked open this old salt at eighty years old. So don’t tell me what I don’t know. Anyone else on this planet understand your father like I did?”

“My mother, apparently.” Her eyes focus on the stack of books.

“I loved him more than words can say. He followed me off the
Conte Rosso
, baby girl, but the story didn’t start there.”

Maya caresses
Religious Themes in Tagore’s Poetry
, examines the spine.

“Spice sack like I told you. Put down the damn book. I’m talking to you.”

“I’ve never read Tagore,” says Maya.

“Walter’s daughter hasn’t read Tagore? How old are you?”

“Too old to admit my gaps.”

“Pitiful! Who the hell raised you?”

Maya touches his arm. “I’ll catch up with Tagore. I promise.”

“Suit yourself, baby girl.”

“Tell me how it started. Please.”

“Not yet.” Paul snatches the book from her hands. “Read this one. Aloud.” He points to a line.

“The traveler has to knock on every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer walls to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”

“I read that sentence aloud when I dumped his ashes.”

“Dumped—”

“In the Ganges. He was cremated, of course.”

“That was his epitaph,” she says.

Paul jabs his finger in Maya’s face. “You are his epitaph.”

“I’m practically a stranger.”

“Then go, baby girl. Like I said, I don’t need visitors.”

“Please understand how confusing this is. Be patient with me. I’m unenlightened.”

“Clearly.”

Paul bows his head, rests his chin in his hands.

“Early 1938. I was in Berlin on fellowship, researching common religious themes in Heine’s and Tagore’s poetry. Heady stuff. Good material for a brash young man. It became the foundation of my career, for all it was worth. And then I heard her sing in a café.”

“Who?”

“Sonia. She had an endless mane of blond hair. Down to her waist. And a voice like Billie Holiday. You know Billie Holiday or is she another mystery to you, like Tagore?”

“Don’t insult me. My parents listened to her recordings.”

“Your parents.”

“Yes. Rabbi Sol and Rosalie Kerem.”

Paul leans forward in his chair. “Get out, baby girl!”

“But—”

“Your father was a great man. He may have been an appendage to your family but he deserved more.”

Maya shudders.

“She sang Brahms. Sonia had the kind of smoky voice you hear once in a lifetime, maybe twice if you’re lucky. I waited for
her to finish and bought her a drink. She told me she was Jewish, and that she was learning Hebrew, and she had a crazy fascination with the Song of Songs.

“If Billie Holiday sang Brahms she would be you—

“I assume that’s a compliment.

“The highest. Come to England with me, and then to America—

“My fiancé and I are going to Palestine.

“Your homeland?

“Yes.

“She got this faraway look in her eyes, as if she were listening to music inside her body. I waited for her to come back to my gaze.

“You are breaking my heart.

“But I am already in love.

“I should have been the first.

“And then we kissed. Spent the night. A single sleepless night. I’ll leave the details to your imagination, baby girl. I’ll never forget how her long blond hair cascaded down my arm like a curtain, how she winked at me. I wanted to save her, grow old with her. She showed me a photo of Walter and said,
One day you’ll come to Palestine and I’ll introduce you
. She told me how they had certificates in hand; they just had to convince his father that his public denouncements of the Nazis had branded him a target, and a new life in Palestine was preferable to no life at all. And then Sonia reached into a bag and handed me a brown felt hat.
I was going to give it to my fiancé
, she said,
but I’d like you to have it. And take this too.
She gave me Walter’s paper on religious desire in the Song of Songs.
He wrote this for me and it’s very good. Maybe you can translate it into English.
”

Maya remembers the time she asked her mother why they chose Sonia for her middle name.

Your father and I liked it, Maya. Not all of our choices are imbued with deep meaning.

“I translated the paper and got it published. She sent me a simple note:
You can’t have me but the words you translated for Walter will link us together.
And that was it. She was shot, along with his father. It was all backwards.”

Maya reaches for Paul’s hands.

“You loved her.”

“Were you born yesterday, baby cakes? Of course I loved her. And whomever Sonia loved would connect me to her again. I was due to leave Berlin when a mutual friend told me that Walter was on his way to Trieste. I tracked him down and then shadowed him around the port, like an undercover agent. And when he boarded the
Conte Rosso
, so did I.”

“He never made it to Palestine.”

“Walter wasn’t meant to live there without Sonia, I suppose. Karma, divine providence, the alignment of stars—call it what you like. But throughout his life, your father told all his students how he followed a man off the ship in Bombay. A man who wore a brown felt hat. It became his little mantra.”

Your father.
She may want to know everything but she can’t build a bridge between the barefoot man named Walter and the words
your father.

“I was the man wearing the brown felt hat.”

Maya tries to imagine a younger Paul moving through a ship like a spy, a brown brim shading his eyes.

“Do you still have the hat?”

“You want souvenirs, baby girl? Life isn’t a gift shop. I lost the hat a long time ago. I lost everything but my words.”

Paul leans in close and grabs Maya’s arm, almost twisting it. She winces.

“Will my words be enough for you?”

She nods.

“I boarded the
Conte Rosso
because I wanted to watch over him, coax him into disembarking at Bombay with me. That part was easy; he was eager to follow a man he didn’t know. But then he got swallowed up in a crowd, and I lost him. I searched for a few days and was just about to give up when I found him at a market stall, getting high on spices.

“At first I needed to be connected to the man Sonia loved because it was the only way I could keep her alive. Walter was the living link to Sonia, just like I’m the living link to Walter—for you, now. It’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? But when I talked to him for the first time I felt that we somehow belonged to each other. I wanted to save him for myself.”

“What was he like?”

“A wreck! Your father was a forlorn vagabond from a world that was quickly being destroyed.”

Paul coughs.

“I never told him.”

“Told him what?”

“That I was in love with his fiancée. I needed to keep it a secret, something for myself. But after a while Sonia didn’t matter. Walter needed me to save him and I needed him to love me as a student
loves his teacher. We completed each other; we translated Tagore’s work as if we shared a brain. We could go to the symphony and hear the music in the same way. We could speak to the students at Eden Ranch about the price of laundry detergent and if we called it dharma they would cry over our words and declare that we changed their lives. Walter didn’t need to know how our own story began.”

“What about his time at the Seminary?”

“I arranged it through my university connections; an administrator wanted to help a refugee like him. I made the introduction, then let him find his way.

“Your father was a broken man. You should have seen him wearing his green kurta with that black yarmulke they popped on his long greasy hair. He was skinny and handsome and frightened and foolish and so very brilliant. That defined Walter Westhaus: never one thing or another; he was always
all of the above.
When I walked away from the Seminary without him beside me, I wondered how he would make out among those young rabbis, but I had immense faith in him.”

“He met my parents there.”

“He brought your mother to Eden Ranch.” Paul laughs. “She looked so out of place among our disheveled tribe, but I could see how she loved him.”

Maya closes her eyes.

“Is this too much for you?”

“As long as you feel up to it,” she says. “Please.”

“Walter always had women falling at his feet. No one permanent, baby doll. And after you were born he told me he had a secret daughter, a child who belonged to another family.”

Maya wipes tears from her face and looks at the pile of books. My father wrote those, she thinks. My sad father. My second sad father.

Paul coughs again and Maya pours him a cup of water. She watches him sip from a straw, one tiny drop at a time.

“Is there anything else?” she asks.

“There are lifetimes of anything elses, baby doll! Infinite realities! Warped memories and flawed interpretations! If this is too much for you, go to a photo booth, sit behind the curtain, and say ‘capture.’ You’d still be all wrong, but at least you’d have the photo to keep as a souvenir.

“When I found him in Shantiniketan, he was resting in the shade of the date palm trees. We talked, your father and I. He learned English at the ashram and he was eager to try out his new vocabulary words. He told me his dreams. The books he wanted to write. The places he would live, the women he would love, and that one day he would have a daughter who would track me down in a shit factory near the Pacific Ocean and she would—”

Paul’s voice booms and he begins to sob.

“He told me that you would come to me near the end of my life and we would hold each other tight and you would save me from the shadows that linger in the bingo parlor where the old broads steal my chips and turn my words into salt and—”

Paul’s forehead is beaded with sweat and Maya thinks about calling the social worker but then stops herself and holds both his hands, tightly. Paul lets go, pounds the air with his arms, and then drops them. He leans against her, whimpers for a while, and then stops.