She falls silent, and Gamaliel comforts her by quoting a thought of Paritus the One-Eyed, one that the old Sage of the Orient repeated sometimes at nightfall: “ ‘We do better not to believe in luck: Our Lord forbids it. I’m old enough to draw on my own experience: Everything happens in this world because of encounters. Meaning that since we are here, you and I, brought together by a force we do not understand, we must act as though everything happened in order to make our encounter take place.’ ”
He moved closer to her.
“ ‘It may be that we’ve lived our separate lives just for this moment, this meeting.’ ”
The words are hardly out of his mouth before he regrets them. Long ago, in another life, he often used that sort of language to attract and seduce women whose misfortune it was that he found them attractive. He no longer does that. Has he lost interest? Is it because he’s had enough of love won easily, too easily? Has he given up in despair over Colette’s death, Esther’s disappearance, Eve’s betrayal? This woman beside him arouses in him a different kind of interest. Should he take her hand? No, that might spoil it all. Only their voices should meet, feed each other, become one.
“Look at me,” he says. “Look and you’ll trust me.”
She does so. I was right: Her eyes are blue, thinks Gamaliel. She smiles shyly.
“What’s happening to me is going to seem crazy to you. . . . A nightmare. Just a year ago, I was still happy. I had everything a woman could have. And now there’s nothing left.” She is silent a moment before resuming on a note of resignation. “I suppose that’s my fate.”
Gamaliel shrugs. “Fate? That’s a big word. We mustn’t blame everything on it. Fate has a face of its own; it has an address, an identity, a will of its own. Would you like to tell me about it?”
She does not reply at first, as if her mind were elsewhere. Gamaliel takes her hand. She smiles, but it looks like the face a child makes when scolded.
“It’s a depressing story,” she says. “Besides, I wonder whether you’d even understand it.”
“Give it a try, and we’ll see. If I don’t understand, I’ll tell you.”
So the young woman begins to speak in a barely audible voice. Sometimes she murmurs so softly, he has to lean close to catch what she is saying. It is as if, because she spends her days inducing her patients to reveal themselves, she can no longer speak of her own problems, her private hurts, but keeps them locked away inside.
“Each of us has a secret garden surrounded by a high fence. But in the end, you have to go on living, even if you’re in the crater of a volcano. . . . And what does living mean unless you’re helping others come to terms with what threatens them? I was lucky. I was happy, really happy. My only anxiety,” she says with a short, scornful laugh, “was at night, going to bed. I dreaded awakening the next morning and finding that my life was only a dream, quickly crushed, easily blown away, stolen by some enemy. But I loved even my fear because it let me savor the gift that life gave me every morning. Yes, I found myself at peace with every new day, and grateful to God for these blessings. No difference between my dream and my life. Indeed, I had a dream of a life. And then . . .”
She pauses, takes a deep breath, as if to muster her strength, and very quickly speaks those few short words that introduce every sad story of a life gone wrong, stricken by misfortune: “And then it happened.” She pauses before saying it again. “It happened. One fine day, it happened.”
IT’S EXACTLY 7:30 IN THE MORNING. SHE REMEMBERS because she’s just glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. The family is having breakfast together, as usual. Orange juice for everyone. Milk for the children, black coffee for the parents. Bread and butter, scrambled eggs, croissants. Al is reading the newspaper, Pamela her book, Ron his work-book. Al looks as though he has something on his mind: the stock market? His wife is about to ask, but he speaks first.
“I’m leaving,” he says without looking up from his newspaper.
The children pay no attention. Dad’s leaving, the way he always does. He leaves for his office every morning at the same time. And Mom goes to her hospital. But something she hears in his voice causes his wife to put down her coffee and ask, “Where are you going?”
“Away,” he says, eyes still glued to the paper.
Now Pamela asks, “Are you going on a trip, Dad?”
“Yes.”
“A business trip?” asks Ron.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Who’s sending you?”
“Nobody.”
“What do you mean, ‘nobody’?”
“No one is sending me, and no one is expecting me, but I have to leave.”
“But you’re coming back!” Pamela says.
“Maybe. I have no idea.”
Lili wonders if this is just a stupid adolescent game intended to scare them, a show of bad taste, staged to make himself more interesting. A challenge, a test by a retarded pupil. What is she expected to say or do? Burst into tears? Leave, slamming the door behind her? A crazy idea strikes her: Is there another woman in his life? She forces herself to appear calm. “Don’t you think we’re entitled to an explanation?”
“Yes,” he concedes, “but I don’t have one.”
“Did something happen? Did one of us do something to offend you? Do you have difficulties at work? Do you have a problem with your health? Have you seen the doctor?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“But . . . aren’t you happy living with us?”
He seems at a loss: “Yes . . . No . . . I don’t know. . . . I’m not sure. . . . I’m not sure of anything now.”
They all fall silent. Al puts down the paper, stares at them unseeingly. He does not appear unhappy, or embarrassed, or even concerned.
“Listen to me, my love,” says his wife. “You are about to wreck several lives, your own included. I don’t suppose you’d do such a thing lightly. Did someone cause you to do it? Tell me who and why.”
“Not you, none of you.” And then after a pause, he adds, “Not even me.”
The children are the first to recover. “It’s male menopause,” says Pamela, the budding student of psychology. “It happens. It lasts a while, and then it’s over. Isn’t that right, Dad?”
Pam, his beloved daughter, so smart beyond her years, she always made him laugh. Not now. He does not reply. Ron, in turn, offers his theory: “Dad, you need a rest, to be by yourself. We understand. Go on, take a few days, a few weeks’ vacation in New England, or at a ranch in Arizona, whatever. It’ll do you good.”
Still no response from the father. Then he stands, stretches, wipes his forehead as if to dispel a headache, clears his throat, and speaks very softly and very slowly. “I love you all. I will love you for the rest of my days. I’m the one I’ve stopped loving. I was happy, but now I’m not. I have no energy; I find no pleasure in living. As the poet might say, my spring has run dry; my sun has gone dark. I can’t go on like this. I’m not worthy of your love. Nothing about me is real. I do everything wrong. I can’t reach any of my goals. I no longer recognize myself in the man you love. I believe I have to change before it’s too late. Change everything—time and place, surroundings, my own soul. Change my being. Don’t judge me; just try to understand me.”
He goes to the door, opens it, hesitates a moment. His wife wants to rush to him and draw him back, or at least embrace him, but she is paralyzed. It is Pamela who, followed by Ron, runs toward their father, who is already outside. He strides off at a determined pace without a backward look.
“THAT’S IT,” SAYS THE DOCTOR. SHE SAYS NO more, just gives him a helpless smile.
Gamaliel wonders what he should say, and how to say it. Tell her about his own tragedies, his defeats? In order to share her pain, as if that were possible? Explain that he had suffered the same sort of blows—almost the same—during the course of his own marriage? That her Al and his Colette were kindred spirits? In ea
rlier years, he would have distracted her by giving his interpretation of what happened. He would have told her about his life, his mistakes, his disappointments, his heartbreaks, his divorce, his wanderings, his metamorphoses, his career as a ghostwriter. Then he would carefully have courted her, told her how attractive she was, praised her finesse, spoken of her right to happiness. It’s all so easy, and so promising, when one is young. But Gamaliel is no longer young. Even so, but with a kind of reticence, he tells her about his past as if it happened to someone else.
“I used to know a man who had no home and no family. Life knocked him about. He ran into one roadblock after another; the ground would give way under his feet. To make a living, he spent his time helping imbeciles who were slaves to their own vanity write nonsense that would win them a false fame, a counterfeit image. He was full of fears and complexes that he’d learned to hide, yet he felt strangely free because, being bound by no social constraints, he could take in everything and explain it all—though in fact he didn’t understand anything. He’d read everything, remembered everything, but it was all on the surface. Nothing moved him deeply. Perhaps he was afraid, afraid of revealing himself, of commitment, of giving up his freedom. Without wanting to, without even being aware of it, he was sowing unhappiness all around him. Those he loved and who loved him always became his victims.”
The doctor has regained her poise. When she speaks, her voice is cordial, but Gamaliel cannot tell if she is accepting or ironic. “That’s all pretty abstract,” she observes. “Tell me, do you have a family and children? Are you happy?”
“A family? Yes, I once had a family. They left me. As for happiness, I no longer look for it.”
“What do you look for?”
The answer given by the wandering beggar in his village comes to him: He looked for stories and faces, from which he would make songs. And Gamaliel?
“I no longer know,” he says to her. “Perhaps I’m seeking the reality and meaning of what I’m running from.”
Somewhere, church bells are striking noon. The age-old summons is crystal clear and insistent. Gamaliel is startled to feel himself shiver. He is back in his wartime childhood, when church bells in Czechoslovakia and Hungary frightened him with their sinister and threatening message. He was afraid of everything. Fortunate that Ilonka was there to reassure and protect him. She would hold him close and whisper in his ear, calling him not “my boy” but “my big boy”: “Never fear. Those bastards will be destroyed, I promise you. If God does not take care of it, I’ll do it myself.” Right now, it is Ilonka, of all the women who have been part of his life, whom he recalls with the greatest emotion. He recalls her warmth, her voice: Ilonka the devout Christian, faithful friend to his parents, protector of their son. Sometimes in the unfathomable depths of memory, her features dissolve into those of the most tender and sweetest woman in the world, his mother. But what about Colette? And Esther, whose name means “secret”? And Eve, whose voice both concealed and revealed her volcanic temper? Esther, whom he loved forever. Eve, his first true love, who brought together a man and a woman who needed each other to complete their lives. Why had he not urgently proposed marriage to the first? Why had he waited till it was too late with the second? They live on, in a sense, strangely joined in his thoughts. They are always there—sometimes very near, at other times far away—in the mists of nostalgia. How to explain their hold on him? His sense of guilt? But where does love come in? Is love for him anywhere but in the past? “I refuse,” said Eve, shaking her head. “I refuse to bottle love up in the past when by its very nature it must transcend that past. My little family was happy because we loved one another. Time did not affect our love, and if you don’t understand that, I’m sorry for you. If you don’t understand that we—my husband, our daughter, and I—went on loving one another after death, it’s because you’ve never truly loved.”
Was she right? Gamaliel answers his own question: No, she wasn’t. He did love Eve, yes, with a love that was total; and he loves her still, to the point that it feels like an open wound. But then why did they part?
And Esther, the wild seed, the clairvoyant who read palms, she was self-confident but never arrogant. She hid her distress and confusion behind a facade of pride, which kept admirers at a distance. Head leaning left, smiling, forever changing, she was like no one else, not even herself. What had he loved about her? The sound of her voice? Her feverish but contained sensuality? The dark flame in her eyes? That was it: He loved her for her eyes. All the depth, all the mystery of the Orient lay in her eyes, and in her smile, and in her voice. She had all the passion in the world at her fingertips. But then she vanished like a wave in the ocean.
Eve was different. When she gave herself to him, she did it as though she were making the ultimate sacrifice. Which of the two would live on within him forever? But to live forever is to cease being, is it not? He’ll tell about them one day, if God grants him time. He’ll make them part of his stillunfinished Book of Secrets. Will that erase his feeling of guilt? No, it’s too late for that. He cannot rewrite the past to suit him: Its truth remains unalterable. Nonetheless, Gamaliel cannot imagine life without Eve. Nor without Ilonka.
The church bells have stopped ringing. It’s a fine day. The sun, very high in the sky, remembers its duty to warm our hearts and bodies. Doors are opening and closing. The street is noisy. Young people impatiently seek refreshments, leave offices and classrooms, employers and teachers. Hurry, it’s time to speak of other things. They debate, they flirt, sometimes they even love. The tables outside the nearby café are being filled at an astonishing rate. In a few minutes, they are all taken.
“Would you like something to eat?” Gamaliel asks.
“No,” says the doctor, shaking her head.
“Something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Shall we walk a while?”
They cross the street and walk alongside a small park where children laugh as they play, or cry when they fall down or cannot retrieve the multicolored ball that a smart, nervy little dog has caught in his teeth. Oh children, do you realize the day will come when you will be grown-up like us and miserable? Where was he when little Jewish girls and their brothers were running around the yards of their homes in Czechoslovakia, trying to catch the wild beams of a sun in flames, not knowing that they were already marked for slaughter? A familiar melancholy weighs heavy on his thoughts, and on his chest, when he thinks of the children.
“Your children,” he asks, “where are they?” Should he add that his own children, his two daughters, have no doubt forgotten him? No, that can wait.
“I don’t know,” the doctor replies. “In school, I suppose.” And after a moment, she says, “I’m afraid for them.”
“Not for yourself?”
“For them particularly. They’re so young, so vulnerable, and their love for their father was so pure.”
They have circled the park without being aware of it. They continue walking aimlessly and talking until Gamaliel halts because his legs are hurting.
“We’ll see each other at two o’clock?”
“Yes, I’ll be with Zsuzsi Szabó . . . the patient.”
She extends her hand; he holds it in his a long moment. She murmurs, “Thanks, thanks for everything,” and is gone. Gamaliel follows her with his gaze until she disappears in the crowd. Then he looks at his watch: It’s almost 1:30. In twenty minutes, he will return to the hospital to see the woman whose memory may hold some flashes of his own.
4
IT’S TIME. AT THE HOSPITAL GATE, THE MAN ON duty recognizes him and waves him on. Gamaliel is two minutes early, but for years now he’s had the strange feeling that he’s always arriving late.
The nurse points him to the corridor leading to the ward where he will find Zsuzsi Szabó. He stands for a moment at the open door. What strikes him first, more than her damaged features, is the isolation of the old woman sitting on her bed in a dark corner of the ward. An invisible screen separ
ates her from the other patients. The others are moving about, talking, complaining; not she. Impassive, motionless, as if cast in stone, she stares bleakly at some distant point in space; her gaze seems neither to focus on that point nor to avoid it. Is she Ilonka? Gamaliel tells himself that yes, somehow this must be she, she and no other, who is awaiting him. Awaiting him and no other.
No, that’s impossible! The sight of her does not evoke any memory, any event, any feeling. Had their paths crossed in another world, in another life? Maybe under another name? Then who is this Hungarian refugee over whom he’s been in turmoil since morning?
It was because of Bolek, the bearded Jew from Davarowsk, Poland, who likes to carry news from one person to another in his own manner. Bolek is sometimes taciturn, sometimes blustering. Formerly stateless, and yet still brother to all the world’s victims. Last evening when they were dining with their three friends, Bolek gave him an urgent message: “I met someone who asked me to tell you that there’s a seriously injured woman who needs you.”
“Needs me?”
“Yes, you.”
“She needs me to write her book?”
“Book? Who said anything about a book? She needs someone who speaks her language.”
Bolek loves a mystery. He’s incapable of speaking to the point. When you question him, his answers are always vague, verbose, and useless. Conveying factual information is not what he does best. With him, one always has to guess. So, rather than ask him for details, Gamaliel went to the heart of the matter: “So she’s Hungarian? But there must be a hundred thousand people in New York who speak her language. Why does she need me? And who is she?”
“No idea. I told you all I know. A woman. Injured . . . seriously. In a car accident, in a plane crash? I don’t know. Maybe she was in a fire. No one can get her to answer the most basic questions. She knows nothing but that weird language that only the Hungarians understand, or at least they say they do.”