The Houseguest (26 page)

24.

J
ABOTINSKY LAY PERFECTLY
still on the small bed. Once great Ze'ev Jabotinsky, now a terribly old man in a small bed. It pained Spiro to see the man who had made and shaped him and so many of his other comrades, so close to the end. The man who fought with the British to eject the Ottomans from Palestine and then fought with Israelis to eject the British. The man who had worked tirelessly to export the Jews of
Mitteleuropa
before the Germans could liquidate them.

His eyes were closed. Lozenges of sunlight lay across the sheet on his legs. If he was breathing, Spiro couldn't see it. To be an exile is to be experiencing a constant form of death. But to be a dying exile is to know a special degree of aloneness. Something purgatorial, a sentence, a spell. Jabotinsky had been in the United States for eighteen months, and he was going to die here. In a small bed. He had come to America to try to rouse support for a Jewish army, and while doing so was felled by a heart attack that every doctor consulted agreed was a fatal blow. The actual moment of expiration was the only question that remained. Spiro walked to the window to let in some air, and when he turned back to the bed, the old man had opened his eyes.

“Shmuel,” he said. “I thought you were still in Warsaw.”

“Not me,” he said. “I came to see you last week.” It still didn't feel right to treat him with anything but deference. Even his mental
crevasses had to be catered to. “Too much of a coward, me. I've been here a year. You remember.”

The old man winced at something, an itch or an inner pain.

“How are you?” Spiro asked.

“I haven't been killed yet,” he said. “Or kidnapped and sent back to that prison cell in Johannesburg. So that's something. As for the heart attack, I have no opinion on this, in particular. It is what it is, neither my friend nor foe, and thus of no interest to me. I'd rather hear about you, your Committee. Did you change the name, as you said you would?”

So he did remember. The barmy ancient might have been an act. A disarming gesture while his mind got up to speed.

“We're calling ourselves the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews,” he now answered.

“Good,” he said. “Clear. Direct.”

“I had wanted something a bit more flowery, but the others put up a fight. Someone said if we called ourselves the Girl Scouts people would like us even more.”

Jabotinsky nodded in approval.

“What do you need?” Spiro asked. “Tell me what I can do to make this more bearable.”

There was nothing, of course. Both of them knew. Jabotinsky pondered the sentiment of the offer and deemed it inoffensive enough. “The only thing that helps a bit is distraction. Tell me something pleasant. Tell me about Devorah, the children. Will they be coming to New York soon?”

“No, I don't believe they will. Devorah's met someone else. A chemist. Some German refugee living in Haifa. Three years was apparently one too many. The neighbors began calling her the little widow.”

“She'll come back to you, Shmuel. Of course she will. When the war is over.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Spiro moved toward the window and the breeze. On the sidewalk below a nurse pushed a woman in a wheelchair. They weren't going anywhere. Just being outside with the sun and the birds and the cars.

Another nurse entered Jabotinsky's room. She had the silent purposefulness of weather, not speaking to Jabotinsky as she rolled him to one side of the bed and the other, exchanging the old linens for new ones, then lifting his legs to run them over with a sponge, moving over their inert, mottled surface with an efficiency that was so expert it could be mistaken for care, scrubbing, scrubbing, thinking of who knows what, dinner or a balky radiator, reaching into his deeper spaces and treating them with the same force, places that, if Spiro wanted to, he could affix a kind of occult importance to, but instead he looked away as she continued about her business agriculturally, settling again for the window, the other nurse outside, the one with the wheelchair, now gone, now elsewhere, so Spiro just looked at the trees until he failed to realize Jabotinsky's nurse was finished.

“She's gone now,” Jabotinsky said after the nurse had left.

The old man was by himself again. Unembarrassed. Spiro walked back, pulled a chair up close beside the bed.

“You've heard about the fire at Field's synagogue?”

“I read about it. A few months ago, wasn't it?”

“Yes. They seemed to have stopped looking for the cause. The investigation fizzled.”

“Of course it did. What do the Americans care about one razed synagogue?”

“It wasn't just any synagogue. The rabbi, Field, has connections.”

“Field is the one in charge here? The führer of America's Jews.”

“Inasmuch as they have a leader, yes. To be honest, the concept of leadership seems somewhat foreign to them. As does discipline, sacrifice. What leads here? Plenty leads here. As it was meant to. Instead of
leaders they have banquet halls full of squabbling men. Field squabbles the loudest. Or at least he did.”

“Were you trying to give this Field and the rest of them something else to think about? Something perhaps they had been ignoring?”

Jabotinsky read the strain in Spiro's jaw.

“And did you accomplish your objective?”

“I didn't know it was my objective until it was accomplished.”

“That, Shmuel, is a grave failure in strategy.”

“It is complicated. This woman. I don't know if . . . she was not working on any given directive. She resists the usual limitations of the universe. She thinks she can become anyone she wants to, that one's identity can be taken on and off like a hat.”

“She should be an actress not a Zionist.”

“She is.”

“A Zionist?” Jabotinsky sounded genuinely alarmed.

“An actress.”

“Worse than the British, then. Have you had her?”

He snorted. “I envy her. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want to be able to take the world so lightly? To her, even a burning synagogue is no more than a set piece.”

“But now?”

He waited. The bag of fluids dripped silently, steady as a clock. “Now, I don't know. What she did has been very helpful for us. For our cause. This fire, it's the first time that people here, any of them, have experienced anything like that.”

“The Americans.”

“Yes, and Americans always want to do something when they feel uneasy. They do, do, do. People who wouldn't return my calls—people who wouldn't acknowledge my existence—now they want to talk. From Congress, from the papers. Now they feel like we have relevance. There's interest, there's attention—”

“There's money.”

“Loads of it. Of course. For most of these Americans that's what doing something means. Throwing money at it. Oh no, we're being attacked by the men from the moon. Quick, somebody make a donation. I never would have wanted something like this. For Field I feel dreadful. But to be on the other side of what was a moldering failure? I don't know.”

“What about the actress?”

“We've removed her from the city. I have no idea what I'm going to do with her. I'll push her off a bridge, and if a boat happens to be going by below, so much the better. Some of the Committee feel like the whole thing is just going to go away quietly; others want to find a scapegoat. I've been told there's a gang of boys in the Bronx who got inspired by Coughlin and defaced some temples. But that's just one thought.”

Jabotinsky held up his hands. He could still effect a change with the slightest gesture. “Shmuel,” he said. “Do you remember that boy in the brigade, years ago, when we were crossing to the Port of Haifa. What was his name now? The gingy, Hungarian boy? The one who went mad in the desert and set fire to the Bedouin hut?”

“Jozef.”

“Yes, that's right.”

“I remember. There was a family inside.”

“That boy Jozef was out of his mind. But do you remember what I told you? We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people just like any other. All people want a home. All people need villains. We deserve them. Sometimes we deserve to be them. Don't drop this woman into the sea. A few rabbis in tuxedos shed tears. Let them weep. Let them weep while you reap the harvest in their cinders. This woman, who's to say she can't be useful? Have you forgotten all that I've taught you? Use what is useful. Use what is at hand. Bring this woman home. She helped you. She helped a cause, your cause. Ours, Shmuel. Protect what is yours.” He let out a sigh. “This land is so strange.”

It was. Strange beyond words. Fires blazed and no one noticed. Jews vanished and no one noticed. The rest of the planet was battering itself into continental graveyards and no one noticed. It made as much sense as a dog driving a car, the sun setting at dawn, a tent breathing black smoke in the unbreaking black of a desert night. A big place of nonsense.

And Jabotinsky was going to die here.

25.

A
BE RETURNED TO
the hotel late in the afternoon. The cold had grown thicker now. An early scattering of wet, dying leaves carpeted the pavement. He entered the lobby and felt a sudden stab of imagined pleasure, a sensation he had denied himself until he was inside.

“Miss Beidler, please,” he said to the desk clerk.

“Would that be our foreign guest?”

Abe scowled but nodded.

“She checked out this morning. The foreign lady.”

“My friend,” he repeated.

“She paid up for the week, checked out a few hours ago. Seemed to be in quite a hurry.”

It took all his strength to smile. He nodded again, as though he'd known about her leaving and somehow forgotten. “Did she leave anything? A note? A forwarding address?”

“Not with me. I could check with the evening clerk when he comes in. A letter did come for her after she left. Do you think you'll see her? Perhaps you could pass it along.”

He tried to smile, to seem unfazed, held out his hand for the envelope.

The return address belonged to someone named Jacob Feinman on 12th Street in Manhattan. He put the letter in his pocket, where it nestled in the folds of her slip.

In an instant the world became drab again. Outside, the street smelled of the alley's garbage not yet picked up. The wind had grown stronger, the cold more bitter, yet he walked halfway home without buttoning his coat. The walk took longer than it should have; he could barely find his way, walked in the circles around town for the better part of an hour, kept losing focus, making wrong turns. The streets seemed unfamiliar. The clouds passed quickly overhead like a moving screen. As he walked, he thought back to the last time he saw her. The faint blue vein in her leg and mole on her lip were more real to him, more pressing and present than the ground beneath his feet. His whole soul willed him back into that room with her. A bitter cold blew through him, into his skin and bones. He laughed through the chill. Soon it would be winter. Winter in Utica. Another winter. Another war. How had he borne it all before without her?

A bristling of leaves startled him. He gazed up to see a flock of geese breaking through branches.

IV.

THE DEPARTURE

26.

S
TANDING AT
67
TH
Street and Central Park West, Ana Beidler thought the burning synagogue looked like an uneasy cat, rising, then lowering down, then rising again, unable to find any position of comfort. Or no, it looked like the surge of brightness she saw when stepping onto a lit stage: the familiar but unknowable insistence of light that obliterated the audience, left those who had come to see her as nothing but a presence, a pressure in the dark, registered by her other senses, stepping in for her light-stunned eyes. Briefly, horribly, it seemed to Ana that a curtain had risen, that the crowd around her had paid the price of admission, and she hadn't the slightest clue what the production was.

But they were there for the fire too. And it was no use playing with words. Fire was fire. Destruction carried no subtlety and was as poetic as a cough. She lit a cigarette, and somebody nearby gasped. Something in the burning synagogue, a window, a portion of the roof, burst, sending up a plume of cackling sparks.

“Lookatit!”

A little boy, five or six, watched from his father's shoulders. They had the same flax-colored hair and they both had jackets pulled over their pajamas. Ana wondered, of all the bodies around her, how many were just this side of naked? You don't always get to pick when and where the show goes up, do you?

“Lookatit!”

The boy's pajamas had police cars on them.

They wanted to see something, and Ana could hardly hold it against them. The question, as it was with every show she had ever done, wasn't whether or not people would show up. It was what they would say to each other when it was over.

After a while, she retreated through the crowd, walked ten blocks south. Here, the burning synagogue was no more than a dark patch above the trees, a clamoring in her head. She hailed a cab, rode most of the way across town with her eyes closed.

WHEN SHE ARRIVED
at Jacob's apartment, the apartment she hadn't entered in four months, the door wasn't locked, and she found him sitting at his desk, typing. Jacob Feinman: director, playwright, possible redeemer-destroyer god, noticing and then ignoring her, the same as always.

Not much had changed in the apartment. Jacob's books in their piles. The spirals of papers and cards and ashtrays and clothing radiating out from his desk. The cracked dishes and the lonesome cupboards. The smell (moth and Lucky Strike smoke and the body of a man with irregular sleep habits). The lightbulb in the hallway was still out and hadn't been replaced. Her dressing gown was serving as a bathmat.

She looked around and suddenly felt tired. There was a clawing pain in her throat when she swallowed. She must have breathed in too much of the synagogue's smoke.

“
Gut morgn
,” he said at last. He was thinner all over, but especially in the face, a sallowness to his cheeks that hadn't been there before. Ambition and failure had been working hard on him. He continued to type erratically. She wondered if he was only pressing on the keys to avoid speaking to her.

“Now then,” he said when he finally looked up. “Where've you been?”

She didn't answer. She hadn't imagined that the sight of him would be so difficult. What had happened to her and Jacob now reminded her of the fire. A ceaseless ruining force.

“Well?”

“I've been watching a synagogue burn.”

“Hell of a way to spend a winter.”

“It was rather interesting, actually. It reminded me of the stage.” She paused.

He thought about it for a moment. “What are you doing here, really?” He reached across his desk for a pack of Luckys, leaned back in his chair as he lit one. Then he raised his hand to her. “You know what? Don't tell me. Honestly, I think it's better that way.”

“That's fine,” she said. “However you want to view things is fine with me.” She walked to the sofa, didn't so much sit as fall over the side of it, stretching her legs. “I only came because I'm going to be leaving soon. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“Again?”

She shrugged.

“Where are you going this time?”

“I don't know yet. Someplace where I can be useful.”

He started to suppress a laugh but gave up.

“There are a few things I need before I leave.”

“Is sleep one of them? You look ragged.”

He was right. She felt too weary to fight. The sofa was softer than she remembered. She had passed out here nights and awoken the following morning with a glass of scotch still in her hand. She shut her eyes. When she opened them he was beside her. Despite everything—there was a part of her that still felt for him, felt warmth, tenderness, little ripples of sympathy when she saw him slipping into a moth-eaten sweater or trying to change a lightbulb.

“Tell me where you're going,” he said. “Odd as this may seem, I still find myself occasionally curious about your whereabouts.”

She knew it to be true. She'd come a year before, straight from the refugee center with nothing but a suitcase. After not seeing her for fifteen years. He didn't stay angry or call her out on all she'd missed, but gave her food and shelter. He even found her a part in the new Pinsker production at Folksbiene. And what was his reward? The week before it opened, she vanished once again. It could hardly have surprised him. She hadn't changed in all the years.

Now she spoke without moving, without looking at him. “I'm sorry, Jacob. For everything. I've always done the best I can, which I realize isn't much. But if you're looking for recompense you'll have to get in line. It's a long one.”

He seemed to soften then. “All right. Enough of that. Why don't you take it easy for once? Stick around for a while. Find some older gentleman to take us out to dinner. Like old times.”

“I'm no good for that anymore. I haven't got the stamina. And Second Avenue is dying if it isn't already dead.” She took a deep breath in and felt the remains of the smoke scratching her lungs. Then she sat up, looked at him directly. “Jacob,” she said. “I'm being very sincere now. More sincere than I've ever been in my life. I'm going. I'm leaving this city forever.”

She was fidgeting with her watch, and when she looked down at it, she realized it was the one Szymon had bought for her. Swiss. Gold. He'd bought it for her in a little shop in Vienna, kissed the inside of her wrist before he'd fastened the strap. She remembered that time as like being at the mouth of a vast river with no edge in sight. She freed the clasp and placed it on the coffee table. “You should have this,” she said. “A gift for all you've done for me.”

He picked it up, flipped it over his fingers. “They don't have time where you're going?”

She went to touch his arm but stopped herself. Something curdled in his expression then. “Go,” he said. “Go for good this time, if that's what you want. But remember one thing: you weren't worth the dust
on your shoes before you met me. You were a nobody, a nothing, a pretty
yidena
with nice tits. I got them pointed in the direction of the stage where it turned out you were liked. Remember that in Palestine or Mongolia or Shangri-La.”

She felt no urge to defend herself. He had once loved her completely, fervently, and that sort of love always ended badly. She had hurt him and he wanted his hurt noted before their time was up. He wanted it counted among the consequences of her noble new life. And so she looked back at him and nodded.

“I'll remember,” she said.