The Time of the Uprooted: A Novel

  Actually, Colette’s age wasn’t on his mind. What disturbed him was her willful, often authoritarian personality. She was a stranger to doubt. She was at home everywhere, always sure of herself. She never hesitated; she always knew just what to do, where to go, how to get there, and how long to stay. She seemed to enjoy keeping her lover under tight surveillance.

  She introduced him to her parents and her two adolescent brothers, both lycée students. Her father was cordial. He was sixtyish, round-faced, and potbellied; he was constantly relighting his thick cigar. He owned a fancy leather business and would talk shop with Gamaliel. “Just in case,” he said one day with a laugh. “You and Colette . . . you should know your way around.” Gamaliel blushed and looked away. Colette’s mother, always decked out in jewels and pearls, as if for a charity ball, did not hide her lack of enthusiasm. “You speak our language well, young man. What nationality are you?” she asked. Gamaliel replied that he was stateless. “Stateless?” she burst out. “Just what does that mean? Is it a nation?” “Maman,” one of the boys said, embarrassed, “it’s someone who has no nationality.” “But then . . . ,” she began. Her husband tried to silence her, saying, “Then nothing. A stateless man can easily become French like you and me. All he has to do is marry a French woman.” The mother shook her head in disbelief. “It’s not right, not right at all, that’s what I think. It seems too easy, that’s it, just too easy.” “Easy?” the other son asked lightly. “What do you mean— easy to become a citizen or easy to marry?” Colette, trying to change the subject, said, “In any case, Gamaliel—sorry, Péter—hates things to be too easy.” Her mother would not let go. “But just now you called him by another name, a peculiar name. . . .” “I made a mistake, Maman. His name is Péter.” Her mother made a gesture of dismay. “How about your parents, young man? Where are they? What does your father do?” “Maman! That’s enough!” Colette said angrily. “Péter has no parents!”

  Their civil marriage was performed two months later, after the High Holy Days, by a polite but indifferent deputy mayor. A young Sephardic rabbi presided at the religious ceremony, which was followed by an ostentatious reception, complete with band, in Colette’s parents’ luxurious apartment. Fine leather work all over. A few poor refugees leapt at the invitation to a sumptuous repast. Over in a corner, Yasha was singing melancholy Russian songs; Diego was drinking and cursing fascist Communists and Communist fascists. Flowers and presents and wines and sweets in profusion. An amused Bolek was studying a poorly lit masterpiece. Colette was beaming. Gamaliel was saying to himself, It’s only natural for all these people to be here, but where is Esther? And what am I doing here? He seemed to be participating in an occasion that had nothing to do with him. In his mind’s eye he was again a child with his parents, then with Ilonka.

  That same evening, he formally took up residence in Colette’s apartment, but he still kept his hotel room, where he left a few books and some clean shirts in Bolek’s custody.

  His naturalization was expedited, thanks to her father’s connections. He was happy when he went to police headquarters to obtain his precious carte d’identité. “At last I’m a citizen of someplace!” he exclaimed. Colette had urged him to register himself as Péter. Certainly not Gamaliel. “Do you want people to laugh at me?” she asked. But this time, her husband did not give in. Still, Colette never called him Gamaliel.

  A week’s honeymoon in Nice. They went by car; Colette drove. The couple spent a day in Italy. At the border, Colette handed over two passports: her own and her husband’s. Again, Gamaliel thought, I’m no longer a man without a country. I’m no longer regarded as suspect; policemen and customs officials are courteous. Yet I haven’t changed; I’m still the same person. When Colette asked if he was happy, he said yes. She would ask him often, sometimes all day long. Sometimes she even awakened him in the middle of the night to ask, “Are you happy?” He would answer that he was, but then he couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Colette was possessive, insatiable; she was always caught up in passing fads, whims, phobias. She was prone to fits of anger or resentment. In the morning, he was forbidden to speak to her until she had put on her makeup and done her hair. In the evening, he was forbidden to exclude her from his thoughts. The sight of a bald man upset her. “The day you go bald,” she told her husband, “I’ll kick you out.” She said the same about an unkempt beard or a bad haircut, or children who cried too loud.

  Gamaliel still had not adapted to his new life after a year of marriage, with its ups and downs. He was more at home with his refugee friends. Diego would tease him, saying, “Do you still have time for us?” Yasha would say, “Forget it, Diego. We and Gamaliel will never be divorced.”

  Just when did Gamaliel notice the change in Colette’s behavior? She was quicker to lose her temper, shouting obscenities, smashing dishes over a word, a moment’s grumpiness. When Gamaliel would ask her why, she would reply, “Because you don’t love me anymore.” “Why do you say that?” “Because it’s true.” “How do you know it’s true?” “Because you’re not happy.” He would try to calm her, to mollify her by one means or another. But with time, he came to realize his efforts were in vain.

  “Listen to me, Péter my boy,” she said one day. “I want to talk to you. I’ll thank you not to interrupt. What I have to say to you is important. I loved you; I married you for just one reason: to give you the happiness that life has denied you. Apparently, I’ve failed. The only time you’re happy is with your stateless pals. You have more in common with them than you do with me. Well, go back to them. Leave this house. Let’s separate, the sooner the better for all concerned.” Gamaliel stared at her in bewilderment. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Did I do or say something to displease you?” She shook her head. “No, you didn’t do or say anything. That’s just it—you’re always there, doing nothing, saying nothing, unless I push you to it. Now I’m fed up with living like this, as strangers. Go away!” He turned toward the door. She detained him. “Just one thing more. Be aware that I know myself well. I know what’s going to happen with me— hate is going to take the place of love. That’s why it’s better that we part ways.” She’s crazy, Gamaliel thought, and he told her so. She didn’t contradict him. “You say I’m crazy? It may well be. Crazy with love yesterday, today crazy with hate.” She burst into hysterical laughter. “Want to hear something funny? I went to the doctor yesterday. Would you like to know what he said? He told me . . . that I’m . . . he told me I’m pregnant.” She kept on laughing for what seemed a very long time. Gamaliel, standing at the door, didn’t know whether he should return to her, console her, congratulate her, love her as he had before, better than before. He started back, but she stopped him, yelling, “No! Whatever you do, don’t come near me! Get out of my sight and out of my life! I never want to lay eyes on you again!” Her face was distorted with contempt.

  Six weeks before giving birth, Colette told him again how she hated him, how he disgusted her. She was consumed with a desire for vengeance. “Go away, quick, vanish. I can’t stand you. You horrify me. . . .” But immediately she changed her mind. “No, stay here. You won’t suffer so much if you’re away from me. I want to see you suffer.”

  She gave birth to twin girls.

  At the hospital, Gamaliel was dismissed by his mother-in-law, who was enraged to the point of violence. “We never want to see you again, Mr. Stateless. I always knew you were no good. My daughter gave you everything, and in return you made her miserable. Get out!” “But the babies . . . I’m their father,” Gamaliel protested. “So much the worse for you and for them. They’ll have a new father soon enough, I promise you that. Now clear out, or I’ll call for help. Then they’ll sweep you out the door.” She’s crazy, Gamaliel thought, crazy like her daughter.

  Colette fell ill. Hate was eating at her like a disease. She lived only to give expression to her aversion to her husband. Contrary to her parents, she did not want a divorce. “I’m determined to keep him right here, s
o I can witness his torment.” Eventually, she infected Katya and Sophie. Yet at first, they loved their father as he loved them, which only fed Colette’s anger. He took them to Parc Monceau; he told them stories about happy kings and unhappy princes. He explained to them how clouds have a world of their own, and trees have their own sovereign. He lived only for them. He would accept whatever Colette said or did; a glance from Katya, a blink of the eye from Sophie helped him through the grief that day by day became heavier and more suffocating. Then everything fell apart. The twins had just celebrated their twelfth birthday. That night, Colette, disheveled, her face contorted, began hitting her husband in a fit of rage. “You’re happy with the twins, and that I will not tolerate! When you’re with them, you’re comfortable in your skin, while with me you’re a monster of selfishness and hypocrisy. You make me sick! Stop . . . or I’ll call the police. . . . I’ll tell them you beat me, that you want to kill me, that you’ve got the idea in your head that the girls aren’t yours and you’re planning to do away with them. . . . The police will take over. . . . You’ll lose your citizenship. . . .” Was she capable of stooping so low? In any event, Gamaliel refused to be separated from the twins. The hellish scenes became ever more frequent, and they were more and more savage. Still worse, the twins could no longer bear it, and, being too young to hold their mother responsible for her own unhappiness, they came to blame it on their father. After months of one crisis after another, he had to accept the only way out: separation. Gamaliel offered to take the blame for a divorce, in order to avoid any possible scandal; Colette, stubborn to the end, refused. So ended a dismal period in his life.

  In time, Katya and Sophie came to hate him. All they knew about their father, gone to the United States to join Bolek, was that he deserved to be banished because he had made their mother unhappy. They were fifteen when Colette committed suicide by swallowing an overdose of barbiturates. They, along with their grandparents, held Gamaliel responsible for her unhappiness and her death. Often he tried to get in touch with them, always in vain. His letters were returned unopened. Now he, too, felt the pain of depression, of doubt and remorse. In what way was I at fault? he would wonder in his sleepless nights. What did I do to cause so much misfortune? Was Colette right to resent my being immune to happiness, or even love? I would like someone to explain it to me.

  Colette had taken her explanations with her to her prison in the sky. Gamaliel made a short trip to Paris to meditate at her grave. He spoke softly to her. He asked her forgiveness. He told her, “Maybe I didn’t love you enough, passionately enough. I no longer know. Yes, I feel guilty, but I don’t know why. I feel so guilty I can no longer love.” He picked up a stone and placed it on her grave. On leaving, he felt that he was parting from his own self.

  Poor Colette, her own victim.

  And Gamaliel, hapless victim of the victim.

  Then came Eve.

  EVE AND HER INHIBITIONS. A LOVE DESPERATE AND despairing. Dazzling and humbling. For one as well as the other? “I’m bad luck,” she would say with a clear, cool certainty that was almost superstitious. “You mustn’t love me,” she added, “and I’ll do my best not to love you.” One day, she used one of Colette’s favorite phrases: “I’m telling you this for your own good.” But coming from Eve, it was a warning, not a threat. “In my case,” she asserted, “love always includes something evil, something harmful.” And yet every moment he spent with her, when they were listening to music, or reading, or just riding the bus, had been a time of fulfillment. Then suddenly, Samaël had appeared on the scene. Had she made him unhappy, too? Gamaliel wondered later. But no, Samaël was incapable of happiness or unhappiness. What he did was make others unhappy. Eve had resisted him strongly and valiantly, but in the end she succumbed. Eve and Samaël, Eve and Gamaliel: Was she the same woman?

  Gamaliel was ready to give up everything for her. Even to marry her. Despite the memory of his failure with Colette. Once again, Eve dissuaded him. “Why endanger a relationship that feels good as it is? In what way would marriage make our happiness greater?”

  He persisted. “We’d do the same things, but under another name, differently.”

  “ ‘Differently’? What do you mean?”

  He didn’t know how to explain. In any event, they were already like a married couple in the eyes of those who knew them. No one would invite one without the other. What happened to one involved the other. Gamaliel asked her one day, “Could we live the rest of our lives like this, even though we’re not married?”

  “If it is written on high that we’re destined to live like this till we die, it matters little whether or not we’re legally or religiously joined. One has to know how to read the Book of Life, that’s all.”

  “And I suppose you know how to read that book?” he said, trying to provoke her.

  “You’re the writer, not I.”

  “The writer writes so the reader may read. So go ahead and read it.”

  “But the writer has to know how to read before he can learn how to write.”

  So be it, Gamaliel thought. Why not let her have her way? She has her reasons, and to her they are no doubt valid. Does her reticence grow out of her first marriage? Stop! Minefield ahead: no trespassing. We will live together “as if” we are married, he thought. As long as we’re in love.

  Eve went on, “We’ll live together, provided we’re not married.”

  “With love?”

  “No, Gamaliel, without love,” she said with a smile. After a brief kiss, she added, “Love isn’t everything. You should know that.”

  “Go on.”

  “There is something above love and beyond it.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The secret.”

  “What secret?”

  “The secret that gives us humans the ability to transcend ourselves in good as well as in evil.” Another kiss ended the discussion. Gamaliel conceded defeat; Eve was superb in these debates. She always won, and that didn’t bother him. Quite the contrary: With her, nothing bothered him. Besides, “winning” and “losing” had no place in their relationship. With Eve, Gamaliel was always seeking just the right word.

  Wondrous days, spellbinding evenings of discovery and sharing. Who said one can’t be happy among the gigantic towers of stone that huddle together on the Manhattan skyline?

  Walks in Brooklyn, picnics in Central Park, open-air musical evenings, excursions to the Catskills. Could he have known the same happiness with Colette had she not lost both her spirit and her sanity? Does happiness, like man, resemble the one who gives it birth?

  “Sometimes you’re off with a ghost, somewhere far away,” Eve observed one day. “Tell me, can you still see me?”

  “Of course I see you. In fact, you’re all I see.”

  “Impossible. You can’t see two beings at the same time with the same pair of eyes.” She paused to kiss him, then asked, “Can you speak two words at the same time?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can say one word that contains another within it. Some words are like Russian dolls.”

  “I forgot that you spend your time opening those Russian dolls.”

  “Not all my time. I also spend time looking at you.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful, very beautiful, a beauty that is whole.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Almost all.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “I told you: You’re beautiful.”

  “But it takes more than that to define or express who a person is,” she said, pouting.

  “Oh? Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know. I know it from people.”

  “So change people.”

  “From living.”

  “Change your life.”

  “I know it by instinct.”

  “You’re not listening very well. You have to be a good listener in order to love. And the opposite is also true: You
must love in order to be a good listener.”

  “Stop it!”

  “I didn’t say I love you; I just said I love beauty.”

  And they loved each other.

  Gamaliel also got the upper hand when they discussed a subject on which their opinions turned out to be diametrically opposed. They never raised their voices, but their disagreement almost led to a break that would have been irreparable. Gamaliel was sitting on the sofa with Eve’s head in his lap. They were talking about the news of the day— politicians’ debates, AIDS, feminism, militancy—and then the conversation turned to Gamaliel’s trade. Eve hated it. “Aren’t you deceiving the reader when you write a book that has someone else’s name on it as author? Aren’t you lying to him?”

  “No, Eve. I’m doing the job of a banker: I lend words to those who need them. As it happens, I have an ample supply of them in the secret drawers of my desk. I look around among them, I choose a few words, and I lend them out for a reasonable fee.”

  “And afterward you take them back?”

  “Precisely. I take them back, and then I rent them out to other clients, but arranged in different patterns.”

  “But that’s dishonest!”

  “Dishonest? You’re exaggerating.”