The Houseguest (20 page)

16.

“T
HINK ABOUT IT
,” said Irene, “and I speak to you here”—she cast an overly long stare at her husband—“as one woman to another. Think of the privacy. Of the space. All your own.”

“All at the synagogue's expense,” Abe added.

“And of course you can come back here whenever you like. Whenever you need a home-cooked meal. But when you want your space, you have your space.”

Abe nodded as though for emphasis and lit a cigarette. He wouldn't look at Ana directly. He looked above her, beside her, at the table before her and the linoleum beneath her feet. But not at her face. Not in the eye. Which was fine. Fine, she told him without a word. She held her mouth in a clenched half-smile, slowly rose to her feet.

“I understand,” she said.

“If it weren't for the wedding,” said Irene.

“You don't have to explain. You've both done so much.”

“But it's not as though we're going away. We're still here whenever you need us.”

Ana sat at the table, hands crossed in her lap, listening to these assurances. She listened and nodded and clenched her lips into the slightest of smiles, and all the time she was thinking about this thing she'd always known but occasionally forgot, this unacknowledged fact that places—cities, towns, entire countries—were not as impartial as
people assumed them to be. A place could turn against a person. This was a thing Ana had realized long ago, the daughter of a mother who was always moving, always looking for what came next.

It was not only other groups of people or governments or public sentiment or ideology that grew hostile. She believed this, that a place was more than the ground you walked on and the buildings you entered and the sky above your head. Places, she thought, were the dispensers of curses and good fortune. It was a thing she'd learned to recognize as a child dragged around the world at her mother's side—when a new place was lucky and when it wasn't. Sometimes places seduced you at first, drew you in—suitors appeared, good food and parties, all kinds of luxuries and entertainments—and then, when your back was turned, something shifted. A place could tire of you as easily as a lover. A place could decide to teach you a lesson. Wasn't that what Germany was doing to its Jews now? Places could decide to punish you. They could pretend you didn't exist, close themselves off. Ana had learned to sense such changes, to feel them in her joints the way others read the weather. Once a place turned on you, it didn't matter what form the turning had taken, whether it appeared in the form of a jealous wife, an unpaid hotel bill, a streak of bad reviews, or a pogrom. When a place turned against you, whatever the reason, you left.

She had always known this and she had tried to explain it to Szymon back when there was still time to get out of Poland, when the situation was less desperate. Of course he wouldn't listen. He had his theater, his friends, his other women. And so they stayed until the situation grew desperate, until the city had turned against all its Jews. Only then did he let her try to save them.

She'd begged for favors, written letters. She was composing one when she heard a low, violent moaning rise from the floorboards, an awful sound like a sea animal being dragged ashore. The sound was Mrs. Dolinsky downstairs, mourning her husband who'd hanged
himself in the shower. Mrs. Dolinsky moaned and wept and Ana wrote, stood, paced the length of her living room, then sat down and wrote some more. She was writing letters, not only to old lovers but to every Yiddish actor in America she could think of, asking them to help her family flee. The writing calmed her, kept the terror at bay as the Germans closed in on the city. She wrote to Pinsky and Peretz, to Latainer and Goldberg. She wrote to all the Second Avenue figures, old and young. She wrote to them as though they were on intimate terms. Certainly they remembered her, little Ana, daughter of the great diva. She'd been living and working in Europe for years, but surely they remembered, or had heard of her work—Ana Beidler of Odessa, of Bucharest, of Paris and Warsaw. She might be living in Poland but she was a citizen of the world. That was how she posed it. On and on she went, singing her own praises and her husband's as well, begging for papers since it was her fault they were trapped.

She'd wanted to leave for America years before, the day after the universities began their boycott. “New York. Buenos Aires, wherever you like.” But they had their theater, their circle of actor friends and artists around Warsaw. They had their art and their life. Her husband was a playwright, the founder of the Sambatyon Theater. Ana met him her first night in Warsaw and married him a month later. She described their family of the stage in letter after letter. Her husband was a Polish national. She, an American by birth, living abroad for many years. They wanted to come home to New York, she wrote. It was no longer safe for Jews in Poland. The two of them would begin again in America and would not be strangers in such a place, would find work in a theater, would contribute to the culture of the Yiddish stage. But first they needed affidavits, promises of support, an entrance visa. Ana signed the forms, sealed the letters. The widowed woman's moaning softened, then petered out. Now there was only the sound of the living room clock, the radiator clicking, distant sirens, the soft scratching of her pen.

She sent in the applications and the letters, then waited. She waited for months. When the reply arrived, she knew before she opened it that it was too thin. As an American, she should return without delay. For the Polish husband, there was nothing they could do. Two, three years before, maybe. Now that the war had started, no.

Szymon read the letter over her shoulder. She'd called him to her so they could discuss the matter. “There's nothing to discuss,” he said, deciding it for them, taking the paper out of her hands, pressing his fingers onto her shoulders, then onto her cheeks. She was six months pregnant. She would go because one would be two, and also because abroad, she could be of use.

“And what use will I be if you're arrested?”

“I won't be arrested, because you'll arrange my papers. From America, you can arrange it. And you can have the baby someplace safe.” He said this all so calmly, as though they were in the theater again, she rehearsing lines on the stage, he sitting in the dark, suggesting, adjusting.

She began to cry. He came close, leaned into her, held her chin in his hand. “My little squirrel,” he said. “You have to be strong.”

“I can't leave the theater,” she said. “You . . . maybe.” She laughed through the tears, and the laughter gave him the chance to push forward.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Close your eyes and listen.”

She closed them, felt his hands on her face, his lips close.

“Do you remember our first tour together in Bucharest, how terrified you were, opening night of
Love's Melody
?”

“I wasn't terrified.”

“You threw up three times during our last rehearsal. Just before the curtain opened, you tried to run away.”

“It was an awful script. My Rumanian was laughable.” She remembered. The theater was rundown, a creaking stage, bad lighting, the faint smell of manure from the surrounding pastures. It sat on the edge
of the town center, across the street from an old stone church. The church bells rang through rehearsals. She and Szymon were still new to each other. One morning, before rehearsal, they made love in a field of poppies behind the church. They were exposed but hidden, somehow, by the ringing of the bells.

“It was a miserable script,” he agreed. “It was a cast of amateurs. And there was a band of troublemakers in the neighboring town who warned us there was no place for Yiddish theater in Rumania. They came to the show with barrels of onions. Do you remember? You were terrified. You said you couldn't go on. But what happened? Tell me.”

She opened her eyes, laid her head against his chest, let herself be comforted by the familiarity of his scent. “They wept and fainted and threw flowers at my feet.”

“Of course they did.”

She wiped away her tears. “If I can't get you across,” she said, “I'll kill myself. I won't go on without you.”

He dug out his cigarettes, removed one, placed it between her lips, then took one for himself. “I'd expect no less,” he said.

Dinner that night was a bony chicken, dimpled potatoes, a glass of warm milk with a spoonful of sugar for dessert. Szymon poured wine, a dusty bottle of Bordeaux he'd been saving for a celebration. It tasted sour but Ana drank it anyway. It was a cool October evening. The windows were open. Every few minutes, the quiet of the apartment would be fractured by the sound of glass breaking, a truck door slamming, the distant percussion of gunfire. Ana and Szymon pretended not to hear it. They tried to eat slowly. Dishes were washed. A bath drawn. She sang while she soaked, combed his hair and clipped her nails. They made love once, quickly on top of the covers, then lay down beside each other and watched shadows shift across the ceiling. She watched him drift off, then she did, herself. They slept curled around each other all night, a pinwheel of bodies. In the morning, the bed awash in light,
he stroked her hair and spoke into the back of her neck, so she could feel the words as well as hear them. “You go,” he said. “I'll follow.” And so she did. She left him.

17.

“A
S WE ONCE
again begin the Sabbath, another late summer Sabbath, not quite late enough that we can actually feel autumn's chill seeping in over the mountains but far enough along that the evening light is gone noticeably earlier than it was just a few weeks ago when we all fled to the Poconos or the Finger Lakes; as we enter a Sabbath notched just a little bit closer to the Days of Awe, to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, with our thoughts turning to fallen leaves and football and, as much as I hate to say it, school; with so much behind us and yet so much directly before us, our thoughts turn to what is ours, to the things we hold fast, to the things we hope will help carry us through the cold and the dark that we know, that we may not want to admit but that we know, is not so far off. We are aware of what lies ahead. It is not easy. We think of our loved ones. We think of cherished memories. We think of the freedoms we possess, of the liberty that we know is our due. Even in poverty and in sickness or the deepest, most lonesome sadness, there are comforts for us. It is quite easy to become blinded to the privileges that surround us at all times. That we may gather here, in this sanctuary, as Jews, without fear of persecution or intimidation or the threat of violence. That we may choose who governs us, from this city all the way to the peak of the nation. That we may associate with anyone, no matter what their creed or belief. We forget these comforts because they aren't placed directly
in front of us. Because we're asked to imagine them, to view them as abstractions, things that can be, things that are but that we cannot immediately see. Moses, after his years of travail, begs God to cross the River Jordan so that he may at last see the Promised Land. What is the Lord's reply? He says no. He not only says no but He tells Moses never to ask again. And as if that isn't enough, He effectively tells Moses he's being fired, and that it will be Joshua who leads the Jews into the Promised Land. This happens after God has told Moses to climb Mount Pisgah and ‘behold with thine eyes' all the land that he will never know. It is at once cruel and inspiring. To stand at the threshold of the place he has yearned for, to behold its beauty, to see his people gathered, awaiting permission to cross that river, and to know none of it will ever be his. The crossing or the land or the people inside. It is tempting to be reminded of Tantalus, who as punishment for serving his own boiled son as a meal to the gods on Mount Olympus, was condemned to spend eternity in Hades where fruit to eat and water to drink, while directly before him, always moved aside before he could lay hands on them. Of course Moses committed no such enormity but still he met a similar fate. But what was his response, to God's denying him entry to the Promised Land? He did not complain or curse the Lord or sulk. What he did was remind the Jews to obey the Lord's law, to not alter or spindle it in any way, because this is what would allow them to live upon this land they were being given. It is this part of Deuteronomy,
Va'etchanan,
from which this week's Haftorah is taken. Yet today there are many still who stand on an opposite shore, waiting for clearance to enter a chosen land. We know that God operates on His own timetable; we know that He does not always act in time to do what we, bound here on earth, feel is immediately necessary. But must we remain beholden to an unseen other? Must we wait for an affirmative transmission before we choose to act? Mercy does not defy God. Humane necessity does not defy God. We must behold with our own eyes. We must look from this lofted vantage westward, and northward,
and southward, and eastward, just as God told Moses, and what we see. What we behold. With our eyes.”

Max looked out at the sanctuary. There were several dozen bodies in the pews, all of them stiff and attentive. None of them had faces. Or they all had faces like the morning sky, blank and smooth. He took a quick gulp of breath and blinked quickly. Nothing changed. A crowd of unfaced beings sat before him, waiting for him to continue. Their featurelessness implored him to go on, to continue, the non-eyes expectant and wondering, the fused mouths expressing confusion or concern. The longer he looked the more blank the faces became, blank beyond muscle, beyond bone, receding toward dim, dusty clouds that must have been their spirits. There were things he wanted to scream. Exhortations to return to their bodies. Demands that they stand with their feet on the earth and march. He wanted to scream but he could not. As long as he stood before them he could not and if he didn't, if he did not scream to bring them back, their faces would be lost forever.

He stepped off the bimah and walked out the side door of the synagogue usually reserved for deliveries.

AN HOUR LATER
he was on a Greyhound bus rushing east on Highway 20.

BY DAWN HE
was walking down Fifth Avenue, looking for the headquarters of the Committee for a Jewish Army.

THE ARMY'S OFFICES
were in the Garment District, on a block of tall, gloomy buildings. The front door was locked. The passage of time had evaded him. It was now Saturday morning. Few people had any business being out and about and those who did were moving with far too much purpose for Max to read. He leaned against the concrete, hugging his knees to his chest. Windows full of blank-faced mannequins above him. The subway rattling beneath.

A sensation, warm, binding, overtook him. He recognized it as relief, maybe a version of relief, a feeling of having reached someplace he felt he ought to be. Even at his closest with Hirschler he hadn't felt this way in Chicago. Everything there had been unmoored sound, an unremitting series of yells and doubts. It had made him feel simultaneously narcissistic and obsolete—the self wanted the entire powwow to coalesce into meaning for him but his irrelevance meant that it would not. Here, now, was a power that could draw and actually hold him, that wanted him. It wasn't relief, not yet, but it made noises like peace and sank a heaviness into his chest.

He fell asleep and dreamt of trains. A train that would carry him from Utica back to Germany. His sister was aboard; so was his father, unseen. Hirschler walked by him in a corridor. Ana Beidler explained how they were all going to be shot when they disembarked.

It was Spiro who woke him.

“Max?”

He helped Max to his feet, dusted him off thoroughly, almost roughly. Then laid an affectionate arm around his shoulder. In those moments, while his mind restored itself to the speed of the living, he realized that Spiro had not been coming into the building but going out.

“I see a body outside my door and think these Jewish Committee people must really want to intimidate me.” When Max didn't laugh he added, “They usually start with a brick through the window.”

Spiro began to walk and Max followed. They turned onto Sixth Avenue and suddenly there was the sun. The light pierced Max. He stopped to let his eyes adjust and had to run to catch up with Spiro, who was just about to enter a coffee shop.

He spoke to the man at the counter in what Max recognized as broken, colloquial Greek. The counterman answered with nods and smiles until Spiro asked one final question. The Greek shook his head gravely and gave a long, angered reply. Whatever Spiro brought up infuriated him at some fundamental level, elicited some revulsion that Spiro could
only quell, or rather slow, by saying in English, “Vassilis, I understand. I understand. We are in the same boat. The same sinking boat.”

Vassilis shook his head miserably and had a waitress bring them coffee.

“The Italians are massing at the Albanian border,” Spiro said. “It's only a matter of time until they invade. The Greeks want support from the British but are only getting it in verbal form. If you believe Vass over there the Greek army is made up entirely of members of his extended family. He has a right to feel left in the lurch.”

Spiro took a long drink. He had an effortlessly dissecting quality about him. Max felt like he'd been read two times over since Spiro'd woken him up. Still, Spiro asked, “Why were you sleeping in my entranceway, Max?”

Rather than answering, Max said, “What happens if the Italians do invade?”

“Then quite a few Greeks will be dead. Perhaps a few Italians will also die in the process. One of the fathers of Western civilization will eat its twin. Mussolini would like to have most of the Mediterranean for his own personal swimming pool and a little bit of the Indian Ocean to dip his toes in at night. There isn't much more than the Greeks in the way at the moment. So.”

He took another drink of coffee.

“Would you please now tell me what you were doing a little bit ago?”

Max reached into his pocket and took out a well-folded piece of paper. He smoothed it out in front of Spiro.

F
OR
S
ALE TO
H
UMANITY

70,000 J
EWS

G
UARANTEED
H
UMAN
B
EINGS AT
$50
A
P
IECE

It was an advertisement, full-page, that Spiro's Committee had run in the
Times
weeks earlier. Spiro smiled, half-heartedly, maybe a little wistfully.

“Good work, isn't it. Some of our best.”

Vassilis came by with plates of eggs and potatoes. He muttered something in Greek but Spiro didn't respond. He kept his gaze on Max and while Max felt it was scouring layers of himself away, he knew he wanted Spiro unsure of his motives.

“If you came to purchase one of the Jews, I'm sorry but we've sold out. There was no way they would last at cut-rate prices like that.”

“You've gotten a lot of business since the fire at the Free Synagogue, is it?”

“Business is a narrow way of putting it. We're far closer to the fronts of many minds, how's that?”

“Not in Chicago, you weren't.”

“No. Sorry you had to experience all that rot. Now you know what I'm up against.” His expression shifted. “If it means anything, I appreciated your cables.”

“It was a mess. It was hopeless. If that represented the bulk of the effort to save Jews . . .”

“Then we're probably better off trying to build machines to quickly count the dead than we are trying to get the living to someplace safe. I know.”

The ease with which Spiro was able to talk, the basic conversation over eggs about the annihilation of a people, as though he were talking about baseball or a new pair of shoes, it staggered Max. But at the same time he understood: the deeper you fell in, the more you incorporated the depths. It was like living in a new climate; for Spiro death was atmospheric. He had no choice but to deal with it this way.

“I met . . . a few decent people. A few who would agree with you.”

“Of course,” said Spiro, with a mouthful of potatoes. “I could probably name all six of them. It isn't as though the entire movement is made up of cowards and defectives. But we remain firmly entrenched in the shadows.”

They stopped talking and ate, the silence broken by the clink of forks against plates, of cups hitting the Formica table, of Vassilis's barked orders in the back. Max had forgotten what it was like being in Spiro's presence, to be confronted directly with the man. Time had done him few favors. And yet. And yet. Though he was short and wiry and looked like he was held together with staples; though his clothes might have been filched from a morgue and the tips of his fingers looked like bits salvaged from an automobile wreck; though his lips were violently chapped and his shoes falling apart, despite all that, he radiated a force that was both magnetic and propulsive. You couldn't avoid his energies. Max figured Spiro could get Vassilis and the few other schlubs in the coffee shop to march to the White House if he had ten minutes to grandstand.

With his plate emptied Spiro took out a cigarette and looked at Max sharply.

“Look, Max, I am grateful for what you did for us in Chicago. I am grateful for the help you've given with Miss Beidler. But that does not change the fact that I found you asleep outside my door this morning, which is a profoundly strange thing. Now I have an office to run and business to conduct, even though it is a Saturday or the Sabbath. So you're going to very succinctly explain this strange thing that I saw and then I need to get back to work.”

He lit the cigarette and waited.

Max put a finger on the newspaper ad.

“What?” said Spiro. “What does that mean?”

“I want to join. I want to be a part of the army.”

Spiro made a noise of exasperation and stood up.

“Come,” he said. They walked out of the restaurant without paying. At the door Spiro yelled something in Greek to Vassilis, who just grunted.

Outside, Spiro's stride was even quicker than it had been before. Max got the distinct sense Spiro was trying to get away from him
though he periodically slowed to look back and make sure Max was still following.

The army's office occupied several rooms, what appeared to have once been a doctor's practice or perhaps a very specialized sales operation. The amount of activity for a Saturday morning surprised Max. The place was hardly full but each room had several bodies moving about it. Any number of telephones were in use. Typewriters were hammered at. Everywhere, voices. Footsteps and voices.

“Quit gawking,” said Spiro. “Come.”

He led Max down a hallway, pausing to stick his head into an office to ask a man who was visibly, badly, sleep-deprived, if the birthday gifts had arrived. It was code for something, that much was obvious. The man nodded, looking warily at Max.

Spiro went into the last room in the suite. He pulled down a string and a feeble burst of light illuminated something that didn't really meet the definition of a room. It was a space. An opening meant for things, not people. It was meant to be a pantry or a supply closet and still carried a bitter, slightly medicinal stench. There was room for a desk, which looked like an object lesson in industrial decay, and a chair. Spiro had to inhale and squeeze himself against the wall to reach his chair. He pointed to a three-legged stool for Max.