The Houseguest (9 page)

“That's quite a love story,” she said when he was through. “An American love story. And I must admit I'm a little jealous. No one has ever chased after me with a needle and thread.”

“It was more fumbling than chasing.” He began to say more but stopped. There was still an inch of vodka in his glass. He swirled it, then drank, then, for a moment, he let himself do nothing but watch her. Irene and Judith were right. Something didn't fit, though he couldn't say what or why. Europe and all of its misery hung on her loosely like old clothes. She had the grayness beneath her eyes, the exhausted, crumpled posture, but not the sallowness or frailty, not the dead gaze or broken teeth. When she smiled, her face seemed to contain all the light of the universe concentrated, condensed. Such smiles weren't possible in European soil, not for a Jew. But then, before his eyes, the smile faded and there was that familiar blankness and anguish he remembered, though he'd tried to forget. Now, she was neither smiling nor frowning but occupying an in-between place.
She shivered slightly, then let out a long, soft sigh, blinking slowly, bringing the cigarette to her lips in a careful movement, returning his gaze as she exhaled. He didn't look away as he normally did or hurry on to more small talk. The room was quiet, dark, only a sliver of moonlight from the window. The cover of darkness set him at ease, emboldened him. It shifted something in the air between them, allowed for this unabashed looking. She must have felt it, too, because she leaned forward and said, “I feel so comfortable with you, Abe. I can't tell you what a relief it is, to be here with you and not an American.”

He snorted. “I'm not an American?”

“Of course you're not. You've been here quite some time, I know. And you have an American wife, an American daughter, an American home, but this country, it's not in your blood and never will be. I can see it so clearly. I could see it the moment you greeted me at the train. Is it not clear to you?”

He hesitated. “No . . . I don't know. I don't talk about my life before I came here.”

“Of course you don't. That's exactly what I mean. You're like me. You left a part of yourself when you came here.”

He waved it away.

“You think I'm wrong?”

“I think you overestimate me. I'm not as complicated as that.
Ikh bin stam a yid.
I'm a simple man.”

Her eyes pressed into him, penetrating. “Very well,” she said. “I'll take you at your word.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Abe sipped his vodka, thinking that in a moment, she'd yawn, announce that she'd grown tired and stand to take her leave. Instead, she waited until he set his glass down on the table, then said, “May I tell you a secret? May I tell you why I go for my walks so late at night? Would you like to know?”

“I'm glad to listen, but only if you—”

“Please. No more politesse. It's too late for manners. It's an easy question, really. You want to know or you don't. Yes or no?”

He waited a moment. “Yes.”

“There are two reasons, and one has nothing to do with the other. The first reason is superstition. I believe that if the police come for me, it will be at night. I have no facts or reasons other than my intuition. But intuition can exert a great force.”

“But who would come for you here? There's no Gestapo in Utica. You're safe with us.”

She didn't respond to this at first, just stared at him, weighing his words, tapping her feet against the carpet. “Yes,” she said at last. “My mind knows this, or a part of my mind does, but there's another part.”

He began to speak, but she stopped him. “I know what you're going to say, that I'm here, in this world and not in the other, and I know that means that I'm safe. But sometimes, I get confused. I forget things. The worlds blur together. I hear a loud noise in the night, and for a moment, I'm back in our flat in Warsaw, terrified, preparing to flee. So I do the only thing I can do. I leave my bed and I leave your lovely home and I go for long, aimless walks through town.”

“I understand,” he said.

“But there's another reason, and this one is harder to explain. You see, I'm visited by my husband at night. We walk side-by-side, the two of us. We go downtown to city hall, to the train station and the park. If I lose my way in the dark, he tells me whether to turn left or right, just like in our life together in Warsaw.”

“Will he be joining you here one day?”

“No,” she said. “I don't think so. I'm afraid I won't ever see him again, or any of those I left. I haven't heard word in almost a year. He worked with the Resistance. He's probably dead by now. I try to think sometimes what I must have been doing at the moment a bullet pierced him.” She drank. “It's strange, the things I think about. My mind wanders, won't hold still.”

Abe slid his empty glass across the table. The wet rings rolled across the wood, and he wiped them with his sleeve. There was a calmness to the quiet between them. He was afraid to disturb or disrupt it. After a few minutes passed, he responded as simply as he could. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry for your misfortune.”

“But I don't want your condolences. I want to know what you think of my reasons for wandering the streets of Utica at night. And before you answer, let me be clear. When I say I walk with my husband, I do not mean that I feel his presence as I walk, or that I feel close to him or my memories of him. I mean he is there beside me, talking to me, conversing. I perceive him with all of my senses as clearly as I perceive you right at this moment. Now, tell me, am I crazy?”

“Many people see those who are gone, who are missed. Husbands, brothers. Some might feel it's a comfort.” He shrugged. “You've been through a horrible ordeal. I suppose it's possible that—”

“Many things are possible. But what is true?”

He raised his hand to his mouth, covered the stubble of his chin for a moment while he looked at her. “Let me ask you this: Do you like seeing your husband on these walks? Do you enjoy his company?”

“Of course I do. He was the love of my life.”

“In that case, I don't think it matters whether you're crazy or not. I'll take comfort over sanity any day. In fact, now that I think of it, a person would have to be a little crazy to stay sane in this world. To hell with sanity, I say.”

She didn't react at first. She held her face in perfect stillness, perfect composure, so coolly and without a trace of any humor or warmth that he thought perhaps he'd offended her. But just as he was about to say more, her mouth widened into an enormous smile, the butterfly smile he'd seen that first evening. Then it retreated as quickly as it appeared. Her eyes softened. A tinge of color rose to her cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Auer. That's very kind of you. I think perhaps you're one of the few people in the world who understands.”

She looked as though she was going to stand up, but instead she leaned forward and said, “Will you do something else for me, Abe? Will you tell me a story? A pleasant one. I don't feel quite ready to sleep yet. This is another problem we creatures of the theater contend with. It's a nocturnal existence that's not so easy to reverse. But here we are with our vodka. It's a summer night. Your family is sleeping. We have our health and good company and the moon in the window. Instead of the usual pleasantries, why don't you tell me your fondest memory of your life back there? After all, you're not so different from me. We're both strangers here.”

He waved it away.

“I'd love to hear it. I would.”

“I can't remember anything from before last week. Probably, I breathe in too many fumes at the junkyard.”

“So many excuses. I can't accept them.”

He closed his eyes. He knew he had them. But what was the point of recalling pleasant things forever passed? “It's been too long,” he said. “I left when I was seventeen and I've spent the last twenty-six years not thinking about it.”

“And yet you do remember some things. I can see it. My father used to say to me when I couldn't sleep at night, ‘Imagine summer. Imagine the sea.' What do you imagine about that old life that wasn't dreadful?”

She leaned closer, and he became conscious not just of her body but of its proximity to his own, the narrow space between their knees, their arms.

“All right,” he said. “There's one thing. I was twelve. It was one of the nights the Cossacks visited our village. I don't know why, but that was what we called it when they came. Visits. A bomb had been set off in the neighboring town during a welcome parade for the czar, and so they came searching for anarchists or any Jew they thought might be making trouble. They didn't make any distinction between the two.
My older brother Shayke was gone, attending one of his socialist youth meetings. My sister, Lorka, she was only twelve; she'd had a friend playing at our house. I can't remember the girl's name, but she was very small and had bright red hair. I liked her. She was a smart, sweet kid. Sometimes I'd help her with her Russian, and when she came to see my sister, she'd bring me these wonderful Turkish apricots—I never learned where she got them. Maybe she had a relative in Palestine. Each year a few more Jews from our town would leave. Palestine or America. . . . That was the big divide. She'd walk up to me so shyly and ask me to hold out my hands, and when I held them out to her, she'd place a couple apricots wrapped in tissue paper in them and then run away, giggling.”

“It sounds like she was in love with you.”

“No. She was just a girl. So small. Small for her age. And a bit sickly. She had tuberculosis at one point and she was still frail. She was at my family's house on this night the Cossacks came. Her father was sick—everyone was sick with something, it seemed, and she pleaded to go home after dinner, but of course it was out of the question. Too dangerous for her to go alone, too dangerous for anyone to go with her.”

“So she spent the night with you?”

“No. My parents thought she would have to, but I had an idea. We lived on the top floor of a house with three families in it, and often, when I wanted to be alone, I'd sit on the roof. From there I could look at the stars, see the lights of the town. The houses were all very close together, so I walked her all the way home along the rooftops, hopping from one building to the next. It was a summer night—so still. We could see the Cossacks going from house to house below, but to them we were invisible.”

He leaned back on the sofa. That was over thirty years ago, yet he still remembered the elation of the night, his taking the lead and not Shayke, the confidence he'd had as he'd ushered this child to safety above the purple hue of the streetlights, below the clouds that seemed
in the moonlight to glow from within, the excitement of protecting something precious, and of his impending adulthood, which at the time he mistook for freedom. Most of all, he remembered how unafraid he'd been.

“That's a lovely story,” she said. “A story with a hero is the best kind. There aren't enough of them these days.”

“I'm glad you liked it.”

She placed another cigarette between her lips. At first her lighter only spat a few sparks into the air. Then it ignited, and she drew in deeply. “Will you tell me another story?” she asked.

“I can't. That's the only one I have.”

“How can that be?”

“It's the truth. And besides, it's your turn now to tell me a story. Isn't that the way it works?”

She leaned forward, balanced her cigarette on the ashtray. “The way what works?”

He pointed to her and then to himself. “This. What we're doing. Conversation. I tell you something. You tell me something. Back and forth. It's more interesting that way.”

“And what is it you'd like me to tell you?”

Who are you?
he thought, but said instead, “What will you do now? With your life? You won't stay in Utica. There's nothing here for a woman like you.”

She leaned back, her eyes gleaming. “Let's not think about the future now. The truth is, it's the future that frightens me more than the past, more than these ghosts. Let's agree to meet here tomorrow and talk again of everything but the future. Midnight. We'll meet downstairs after everyone is sleeping, and you'll come with me on one of my walks, and together we'll reenact that wonderful story of the rooftop escape, the two of us. It will be the moonlit tour of Utica I haven't had. A tour with a story behind it. The Cossacks are all around. We don't know if this city will be here tomorrow, or if we will. But I am an
alluring young maiden, sweet and vulnerable and all those things men find so irresistible, and you are determined to see me home, safe across the city, rooftop by rooftop.”

He snorted.

“You think I'm joking? I'm serious.”

“It's a truly interesting proposal, but no.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“It would feel disrespectful, for one. People were dragged off to prison that day.”

“It will be in their honor. They'll be our audience. Their spirits will spur us forward. Don't you think the dead want to be entertained as much as anyone? What's your next excuse?”

“Irene and Judith. There are a few other people living in this house, if you haven't noticed. We'll wake them.”

“They'll turn over and fall back asleep.”

“If they don't, and see us both gone, what would they think? Besides, you already have a companion for your nighttime strolls, don't you? If I come along, won't I scare off your husband?”

Her face, which had been so happy only a moment ago, hardened. “Didn't I tell you?” she said. “We had a terrible argument the other evening. I have no wish to see him right now.”

“I didn't know ghosts could argue,” Abe said.

“Why should it be different in death than it was in life?” She rose, carried her empty glass toward the kitchen.