“You’ll tell me when you’re tired?” Lidia asked.
“I’ll tell you.” What an odd young woman, Malkiel thought. An odd interpreter, too: guardian angel or a shrewd policeman? Why does she follow me? What do I represent in her eyes? What does she want from me? A promotion at my expense? A pass? The chance of living some other way, dying somewhere else? I’m stupid; it can’t be that. Then what is it? I am daydreaming.
He checked his watch. After eight. The trees were dense around him, and so was the silence.
“What are you thinking about?”
A flirtation? Is that what she wants? I’m not much good at that. My mind wanders. And I’m a bit too old for it. And then, I didn’t come all this way to flirt, or even to dream, but to identify my father’s dreams. Time now to separate them from my own, before I scramble them all together. Head in the clouds on a sunny day, that doesn’t do the job.
But Malkiel could not help it. He was like that. A matter of character, of temperament. Of habit, too. There was a time when he fell in love quickly; he loved to love. A man in love, he thought, says “we” like a king. A man in love babbles of his childhood like an old man. But he spoke seldom about his early days. He had few memories of childhood; he had mostly dreams. Vibrant and intense, but nowhere sharply etched. Now he needed to transform those very dreams into memories. Not easy. In the mountains he dreamed of mountains. On the bank of the river he dreamed of the river. And in this town buried in the Carpathians, he saw himself in an other town, buried in this one’s heart. He hastened toward someone calling him, he ran, when he was actually groping for his way, he ran until he was out of breath, and onlookers cheered him along, and the dead inspired him: Faster, go on, they’re waiting for you. And in truth just at the end, on a hill taller than the mountain, a young woman was waiting for him, beautiful and proud and anguished, not this one squeezing his arm, as if to remind him where they were, if not who they were.
“Lidia, who are you?”
“Oh, no! Don’t you know that yet? I’m your professor of Romanian. Your interpreter. Your guide. The woman in your life, you might say.”
Of course. Professor of Romanian to Malkiel Rosenbaum, reporter for The New York Times, on special assignment in Transylvania. The day after his arrival he had a visit from an official in the tourist bureau. The man welcomed him and put him through a courteous but searching interrogation. Did he speak Romanian? Hungarian? Not that either? But then how would he manage? “Well, don’t you worry about it. I have someone for you. Recommended by the public affairs division in the foreign ministry. And by a rabbi in the capital. Believe me, you won’t be able to do without her.” Lidia came to see him that same day. With a grammar textbook. “Thanks, but I don’t need it,” Malkiel said. “It would take too long.”
Was she disappointed? She gave no sign. “Whatever you like,” she said, still polite. “We’ll study without a textbook.” He explained that he was not looking for a professor; he needed a guide, an interpreter. “I’m a professor of Romanian,” she said, “but that doesn’t stop me from working as a guide. And interpreter.” Further proof that she was working for special services.
“Lidia,” Malkiel said, “I didn’t ask you what you do, but who you are.”
She did not answer immediately. She thought it over. While she thought she ran her right hand through her hair. She seemed upset. Why this hesitation? What was she hiding?
“I don’t believe,” she said finally, in an artificially official tone, “that my private life can be of any interest to you.”
Malkiel detected a trace of spite in her voice. Was she married? Unhappy at home? What was her game? He was about to quiz her but changed his mind. “Let’s talk about something else, all right?”
Annoyed, she let go of his arm. The street stretched before them, empty and inhospitable. Low houses stood in rows like sand hills shot through with light and color.
“Why and how my life—”
He interrupted. “I’m a reporter, after all.”
“Didn’t you tell me you were in charge of obituaries?”
Malkiel bit his tongue. “You’ve got me there. I’m interested in the dead, that’s true enough.”
“Isn’t it too late?”
“Too late for whom?”
“For the dead,” Lidia said.
“Maybe. But when it’s too late for the living, that’s when things become serious.”
She took his arm again and squeezed it, but said nothing.
For two weeks now they had met every day. In the morning before he went to the cemetery, and in the afternoon when he came back. Sometimes they dined together. Sometimes they strolled about in the evening. They chatted in English, or in German when Lidia couldn’t find the proper word.
At first she tried to draw him out, make him talk about himself, his family, his work, his colleagues, his studies. With the real questions smuggled in: what was the true purpose of his stay in this insignificant village, shrouded more in legend than in history, with few tourists clamoring to discover its exotic charms? Why did he visit the cemetery every day? What was he looking for among graves the most recent of which was ten or fifteen years old? Malkiel knew how to avoid her questions; he wasn’t a reporter for nothing.
A strange young woman, all the same. When she smiled, she was radiant. When she turned inward she was disturbing. Was she trying to seduce him? To gain intimacy? And yet he’d leave tomorrow and they’d never see each other again. So much the better. Father is ill; have I the right to amuse myself with an unknown woman? I’m betraying him, just as I’m betraying Tamar. Ah yes, Tamar: will you hold it against me if I sleep with her? Will you break off? Equally important question: Am I capable of making love to a stranger? She has beautiful eyes: when I looked into them that first day, I saw depths that dizzied me. True, it lasted only a second. Will you hold the dizziness against me, Tamar? And yet you know how I live for the moment. I am fascinated by it. I open my arms to embrace a woman, and at that moment she may believe herself happy, and I know myself open to happiness, to love. I also know the poison will take effect later, but I don’t regret offering my hand. I smile at a child playing on the beach and he smiles back, not yet aware that he is doomed to grow up in a lunatic world; but I don’t regret the smile. When I tell a beggar, Come on, I’ll buy you a meal, I’m only emphasizing his solitude, his exile, but I don’t regret speaking to him. Should I sacrifice the present on the pretext that it’s fleeting? What do you say, Tamar? No, I mustn’t think about you. You have no place here and now.
“Are you hungry?” Lidia asked.
“Not particularly. You?”
“Me neither.”
All their conversations ended the same way: Are you sleepy? No? Me neither. Are you thirsty? Yes? Me too. In the center of town two or three cafés or inns were still open.
“Shall we?”
“We shall,” Malkiel said. “But when we get there you’re going to tell me who you are. Promise?”
“When I was a little girl, I promised my mother never to make promises.”
When she was little, when I was little … What sort of boy was I? What was it like to be young? A gust of nostalgia drew him deeper into his shell. By turns timid and brash as a child, he had sought happiness where it was not to be found. So he invented it for himself. To play with it, destroy it and reinvent it.
Yet his childhood in New York was almost average. His father, careful not to lean on him, tried—sometimes without success—to stay in the background. Malkiel could ask his friends to the house for dinner. Loretta never complained at having to feed five unexpected guests. Elhanan respected his son’s independence, even if it meant standing by while he committed foolishness. One day he said to the boy, “You should know, my son, that no one can suffer in another’s place. All I can promise is that when you suffer, I’ll be present.” What an irony, Malkiel mused. Our roles are reversed. He’s suffering and I can’t suffer for him. I can remember for him, that’s all.
“I’ll tell you about me if you’ll tell me about you,” Lidia said.
“And then?”
“Then I’ll know.”
“What will you know?”
“Whatever you want me to know.”
“Exactly. I don’t want you to know.”
She stopped, shot him a scornful glance and chuckled. “How complicated you are!”
Malkiel and Lidia came out onto a badly lit, still crowded square. The strollers seemed lugubrious, dragging their feet; they seemed to be slipping on the cobblestones. One moment they clung together, and the next moment, as if to flee an enemy, they dispersed. Malkiel looked inside an inn where singing drunkards were being scolded by waitresses. “Here?” Malkiel asked.
“No. Let’s go somewhere else.”
“You don’t like the innkeeper?”
“He makes passes at me.”
“Are you afraid he’ll see us together?”
“He’s too drunk to see anything but his bottle. And I’d prefer a quieter place.”
“Do you know one?”
“Yes.”
“Where the boss won’t bother you?”
“No, he won’t. I promise.” And after a moment’s reflection, “See? I’m betraying my principles: I just made you a promise. Shall we go, then?”
She led him toward a tree-lined alley. Once within, she began to hurry. A disconcerting interpreter, Malkiel thought. She intrigued him. Nothing unusual there. All women intrigued him. Because he never knew his mother, and sought her in each of them? Here in a Communist country he might do well to be wary, especially of women like this one. He’d read enough articles about it. Innocent tourists traveling alone, letting themselves be trapped by secret police who shoved a gorgeous creature into their beds. Then the crash of a door broken down, and flashbulbs, and an outraged husband lunging forward crying scandal, demanding an arrest: all burlesque. Reporter friends warned Malkiel as they said good-bye: “If it happens to you, enjoy it. You’re not married and you’re not risking a thing. They can’t blackmail you.”
“Seriously, where are we going?” Malkiel asked.
“To a serious place.”
“Really.”
“Trust me.”
“When I was a little boy …”
“I wonder if you were ever a little boy.”
Finally they stopped before a modest two-story house.
“Don’t tell me there’s a tavern in there.”
She took both his hands. “You’re a fool, Mr. Rosenbaum.”
How many times in his life had he heard those words? You’re a fool to stay in the house on a beautiful day like this, you’re a fool not to go out with us tonight, not to go to the beach, you’re a fool to spend so many hours with your old father, you’re a fool to love too much or not enough.… You should, you could be happy, take advantage of life, sunbathe, give in to temptation.… You’re a fool, such a fool, to seek and search when you don’t have to, not to seek and search when you should.…
Lidia raised her head. “This is my house. I live here.”
“I see. You live in a tavern.”
“I can offer you a cup of bad coffee, but still better than the hotel’s.”
Yes, no? Malkiel wanted to say, Yes indeed, I like you, let’s go to your place. But the image of his sick father rose within him. Drive it away? Of course not. Make love in its presence?
“Not tonight, Lidia. Don’t hold it against me. Another time—I promise.”
After a moment she smiled again. “I see you did not promise your mother not to—”
“No; I promised her nothing.”
All right. Where now? The hotel? The café just off the main square? His father’s house? Malkiel held his breath. He knew that house from doorway to roofline, although he’d never seen it. Every room and every piece of furniture: he knew the layout. Above the stove, in the dining room, the ceiling seemed low and blackened; two windows looked out on Barracks Road, and you could see the theater and the cinema, and the crowd rushing up to the ticket windows. To the left you could see the entrance to a garden where young people gathered on Saturday afternoons to wink at each other and gossip a little, just to get acquainted. Malkiel was gripped by a sudden desire to run over there, knock on the door, wake up the people asleep inside and live his dream to the end: invite his dead mother and his sick father to come and join him. Come on, I’ve fixed it all, restored everything; I’ve thrown out the intruders, the house is waiting for you, the nightmare is over; as if there had never been a war, as if there had never been deportations. The living are still alive, Death does not conquer all. Look, Father, you’re home. I? For you, I am nothing but a suppressed desire, a muted voice.
“I’d better go home,” Lidia said. “Don’t you think?”
“Yes, Lidia. Tonight …”
“I understand.”
A quick handshake. Lidia left him without looking back. In his mind Malkiel already saw himself running to his father’s house. Faster, faster. No more waiting. Give up this game and shout the truth to the whole world: “The real reason for my journey here? I lied to you; what I’m looking for is not engraved on headstones, but …” His train of thought halted. What am I saying? Where will I find what I’m looking for? And what am I looking for in the first place?
And yet the authorities had believed his story; it made sense. Editor of the Times obituary page, he was fascinated by ancient epitaphs. At the ministry an official had nodded and mumbled, “But of course, Domnul Rosenbaum, we understand; you were right to come visit our cemeteries. You’ll stay awhile, won’t you? At least we hope so.”
And indeed he might linger. For long? How could he know? Only God knew all, always. Only God pierced the mystery of the future. Yesterday, tomorrow, never. These words don’t have the same meaning in New York and Bombay. The beggar and the prince move toward death at different paces. What separates an individual from his fellowman? What keeps the past from biting into the future? All men need rain, prayer and silence; all forget, all will be forgotten. Me too? Me too. And my father, too? And God? He, too?
Oh, to recover faith! And the innocence of before. To live in the moment, to hold desire and fulfillment in one’s grasp, to fuse with someone else, with oneself; to become infinity. For his father, unfortunately, infinity was merging with oblivion. The past like the future was only a vast black hole. Nothing more? Nothing more.
Malkiel felt a touch of nausea. He had eaten nothing all day. His body was taking revenge for being neglected, disdained and punished for no reason. What if he were to stop at the tavern for a bite, a slice of their bad cheese? Better still, he could retrace his steps, ring Lidia’s doorbell and confess his uneasiness, his weakness: I’m stupid, Lidia; I’m hungry and I was ashamed to say so, I want you and I didn’t dare admit it.… Well, Malkiel? Yes?
Seated on a bench in the main square, Malkiel attracted the attention of a few passersby, who watched him from the corners of their eyes. A sturdy fellow reeking of alcohol brushed past him. A woman whispered something he did not understand. Malkiel rose and walked back toward the river, which opened to the sky as if to rock it with melancholy. A bizarre urge seized him: to plunge in, float, let himself be swept as far as the sea and beyond, to be drawn up to the heavens and higher; to go away, to see nothing, to hear nothing, to feel nothing, to possess nothing, to sacrifice nothing. A death wish? A desire to forget death? To join his father in a common oblivion?
A loud, raspy voice saved him. “Come buy me a drink. It’ll do you good.”
It was Hershel the gravedigger. Where did he come from?
“How about it?” Hershel laughed. “God will pay you back.”
“I thought gravediggers knew all about death, not God.”
“But, my dear stranger, they work together, don’t you know that? I have a lot to teach you! Come on, buy me a drink. We’ll drink to God, Who created men in a drunken moment.”
Malkiel did not reply. So between a beautiful woman and a gra
vedigger, I’ll have chosen the gravedigger. What a life, he thought.
“My dear sir, you look depressed to me. What is it, now? Are the stars against you? Is the earth spinning backward under your feet? Will you feel better if I tell you about the Great Reunion?”
“Let’s go have a drink,” Malkiel said.
As they walked along, the gravedigger went on with his chatter. “People don’t appreciate us, I swear. But what would they do without us? We’re the only ones who know what death is all about. And the earth itself. Just let somebody try to muscle in on our work, and the earth will swallow him up like that, believe me. The earth is kind to us gravediggers. It doesn’t complain, it lets itself be worked over. It accepts what we give it. It endures the assassin’s arrogance and the victim’s tears. It’s open to everybody at any moment; the great conqueror is the earth, for it is the earth that tames the dead and feeds the living.”
Was this gravedigger already drunk? Who taught him to speak with such eloquence? “Is the tavern far?”
“Nothing is far, for us,” said the gravedigger, laughing.
That voice, Malkiel wondered, what gives it such force? Death? Is it the voice of doom and damnation?
“Will you listen to me?”
“Of course I’ll listen to you, Father.”
“You won’t lose patience?”
“I’ll listen carefully.”
“And you’ll try to remember everything?”
“I’ll try.”
“And take everything down?”
“I’ll take everything down.”
“Even the most insignificant details?”