The History of Love (38 page)

October 7

Today was Saturday so I did not have to pretend I was sick again. Alma got up early and said she was going out, and when Mom asked me how I felt I said Much better. Then she asked if I wanted to do something together like go to the zoo, because Dr. Vishnubakat said it would be good if we did more things together like a family. Even though I wanted to go I knew there was something I had to do. So I told her Maybe tomorrow. Then I went up to her study and turned on the computer and printed out The History of Love. I put it in a brown envelope and on the front I wrote
FOR LEOPOLD GURSKY
. I told Mom I was going out to play for a while, and she said Play where? and I said Louis’s house, even though he’s not my friend anymore. Mom said OK but make sure you call me. Then I took 100 dollars out of my lemon-aid money and put it in my pocket. I hid the envelope with The History of Love under my jacket, and went out the door. I did not know where Grand Street was but I’m almost 12 and I knew I would find it.

A + L

T
he letter arrived in the mail with no return address. My name, Alma Singer, was typed on the front. The only letters I’d ever received had all been from Misha, but he’d never used a typewriter. I opened it. It was only two lines.
Dear Alma,
it said.
Please meet me at 4:00 on Saturday on the benches in front of the entrance to the Central Park zoo. I think you know who I am. Sincerely yours, Leopold Gursky.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting on this park bench. The light is almost all gone, but when there was light I was able to admire the statuary. A bear, a hippo, something with cloven hooves I took to be a goat. On my way I passed a fountain. The basin was dry. I looked to see if there were any pennies at the bottom. But there were only dead leaves. They’re everywhere now, falling and falling, turning the world back into earth. Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement. Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I’m not older than the rain. It’s been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.

I read the letter again. I think you know who I am, it said. But I didn’t know anyone named Leopold Gursky.

I’ve made up my mind to sit here and wait. There’s nothing more I have to do in life. My buttocks may get sore, but let that be the worst of it. If I get thirsty it wouldn’t be a crime if I got down on my knees and licked the grass. I like to imagine my feet taking root in the ground and moss growing over my hands. Maybe I’ll take my shoes off to speed the process. Wet earth between the toes, like a boy again. Leaves will grow from my fingers. Maybe a child will climb me. The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain, he wasn’t too old to climb trees. You could tell he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn’t made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?

Maybe it really was from Misha. It’s the sort of thing he might do. I’d go on Saturday, and there he’d be on the bench. It’d had been two months since that afternoon in his room, with his parents yelling on the other side of the wall. I’d tell him how much I missed him.

Gursky—it sounded Russian.

Maybe it was from Misha.

But probably not.

Sometimes I thought about nothing and sometimes I thought about my life. At least I made a living. What kind of living? A living. I lived. It wasn’t easy. And yet. I found out how little is unbearable.

If it wasn’t from Misha, maybe it was from the man with glasses who worked at the Municipal Archives at 31 Chambers Street, the one who’d called me Miss Rabbit Meat. I’d never asked his name, but he knew mine, and my address, because I’d had to fill out a form. Maybe he’d found something—a file, or a certificate. Or maybe he thought I was older than fifteen.

There was a time I lived in the forest, or in the forests, plural. I ate worms. I ate bugs. I ate anything that I could put in my mouth. Sometimes I would get sick. My stomach was a mess, but I needed something to chew. I drank water from puddles. Snow. Anything I could get hold of. Sometimes I would sneak into potato cellars that the farmers had around their villages. They were a good hiding place because they were a little warmer in the winter. But there were rodents there. To say that I ate raw rats—yes I did. Apparently, I wanted to live very badly. And there was only one reason: her.

The truth is that she told me she couldn’t love me. When she said goodbye, she was saying goodbye forever.

And yet.

I made myself forget. I don’t know why. I keep asking myself. But I did.

Or maybe it was from the old Jewish man who worked at the City Clerk’s Office at 1 Centre Street. He looked like he could be a Leopold Gursky. Maybe he knew something about Alma Moritz, or Isaac, or The History of Love.

I remember the first time I realized I could make myself see something that wasn’t there. I was ten years old, walking home from school. Some boys from my class ran by shouting and laughing. I wanted to be like them. And yet. I didn’t know how. I’d always felt different from the others, and the difference hurt. And then I turned the corner and saw it. A huge elephant, standing alone in the square. I knew I was imagining it. And yet. I wanted to believe.

So I tried.

And I found I could.

Or maybe the letter was from the doorman at 450 East 52nd Street. Maybe he’d asked Isaac about The History of Love. Maybe Isaac had asked him my name. Maybe before he died he’d figured out who I was, and had given the doorman something to give to me.

After that day when I saw the elephant, I let myself see more and believe more. It was a game I played with myself. When I told Alma the things I saw she would laugh and tell me she loved my imagination. For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love, both sides were heads: I knew I couldn’t lose.

And now, at the end of my life, I can barely tell the difference between what is real and what I believe. For example, this letter in my hand—I can feel it between my fingers. The paper is smooth, except in the creases. I can unfold it, and fold it again. As certain as I am sitting here now, this letter exists.

And yet.

In my heart, I know my hand is empty.

Or maybe the letter was from Isaac himself, who’d written it before he died. Maybe Leopold Gursky was another character in his book. Maybe there were things he wanted to tell me. And now it was too late—when I went tomorrow, the park bench would be empty.

There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead. I assumed the position. I thought: At least here they’ll find me before I stink up the whole building. After Mrs. Freid died, and nobody found her for three days, they slipped flyers under our doors saying KEEP YOUR WINDOWS OPEN TODAY, SIGNED, THE MANAGEMENT. And so we all enjoyed a fresh breeze courtesy of Mrs. Freid who lived a long life with many strange twists she could never have imagined as a child, ending with a final trip to the grocery store to buy a box of cookies she’d yet to open when she lay down to have a rest and her heart stopped.

I thought: Better to wait out in the open. The weather took a turn for the worse, a chill cut the air, the leaves scattered. Sometimes I thought about my life and sometimes I didn’t think. From time to time, when the urge struck, I conducted a quick survey: No to the question: Can you feel your legs? No to the question: Buttocks? Yes to the question: Does your heart beat?

And yet.

I was patient. No doubt there were others, on other park benches. Death was busy. So many to tend to. So that it did not think I was crying wolf, I took out the index card I carry in my wallet and safety-pinned it to my jacket.

A hundred things can change your life. And for a few days, between the time I received the letter and the time I went to meet whoever had sent it, anything was possible.

A policeman passed. He read the card pinned to my chest and looked at me. I thought he was going to put a mirror under my nose, but he only asked if I was all right. I said yes, because what was I supposed to say, I’ve waited my whole life for her, she was the opposite of death—and now I am still here waiting?

Saturday finally came. The only dress I had, the one I wore at the Wailing Wall, was too small. So I put on a skirt and tucked the letter in my pocket. Then I set out.

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you’re a person and the next day they tell you you’re a dog. At first it’s hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There’s even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human.

I got out of the subway station and walked toward Central Park. I passed the Plaza Hotel. It was already fall; the leaves were turning brown and dropping.

I entered the park at 59th Street and walked up the path toward the zoo. When I got to the entrance my heart sank. There were about twenty-five benches in a row. People were sitting on seven of them.

How was I supposed to know which was him?

I walked up and down the row. No one gave me a second look. Finally I sat down next to a man. He paid no attention.

My watch said 4:02. Maybe he was late.

Once I was hiding in a potato cellar when the SS came. The entrance was hidden by a thin layer of hay. Their footsteps approached, I could hear them speaking as if they were inside my ears. There were two of them. One said, My wife is sleeping with another man, and the other said, How do you know? and the first said, I don’t, I only suspect it, to which the second said, Why do you suspect it? while my heart went into cardiac arrest, It’s just a feeling, the first said and I imagined the bullet that would enter my brain, I can’t think straight, he said, I’ve lost my appetite completely.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. The man next to me got up and walked away. A woman sat down and opened a book. One bench down, another woman got up. Two benches down a mother sat and rocked her baby’s carriage next to an old man. Three benches down a couple laughed and held hands. Then I watched them get up and walk away. The mother stood and pushed her baby away. It was the woman, the old man, and I. Another twenty minutes passed. It was getting late. I figured whoever he was wasn’t going to come. The woman closed her book and walked away. The old man and I were the only ones left. I got up to leave. I was disappointed. I don’t know what I’d hoped for. I started to leave. I passed the old man. There was a card safety-pinned to his chest. It said: MY NAME IS LEO GURSKY I HAVE NO FAMILY PLEASE CALL PINELAWN CEMETERY I HAVE A PLOT THERE IN THE JEWISH PART THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

Because of that wife who got tired of waiting for her soldier, I lived. All he had to do was poke the hay to discover that there was nothing beneath it; if he hadn’t had so much on his mind I’d have been found. Sometimes I wonder what happened to her. I like to imagine the first time she leaned in to kiss that stranger, how she must have felt herself falling for him, or perhaps simply away from her loneliness, and it’s like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and she never knew, and how that, too, is part of the history of love.

I stood in front of him.

He barely seemed to notice.

I said, “My name is Alma.”

And that’s when I saw her. It’s strange what the mind can do when the heart is giving the directions. She looked different than I remembered her. And yet. The same. The eyes: that’s how I knew her. I thought, So this is how they send the angel. Stalled at the age when she loved you most.