The Last of the Wise Lovers

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  "My boy," Mom answered, coming up behind me and wrapping my arm around her waist, "my good, big boy." She leaned her head on my chest in a way that embarrassed both the guy and me.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "The old lady," he said, "she swallowed something."

  "She was sick," Mom said, "she was sick and not very stable."

  The guy looked at us dubiously. Then he asked, "Is there a father here?"

  "He's away on business."

  He sealed the bag with a strip of tape. "You can clean up now," he indicated the carpet. I looked at him, uncomprehending, and he explained, "It's vomit. Just vomit." Then he nodded his head at Mom and said, "Put her to bed, she's had a hard day."

  After he had gone and Mom had gotten into bed (and insisted I sit next to her and hold her hand "like you used to when you were a boy," but without talking, because she had a terrible headache) I found out that just as she had been about to go out, she had found Aunt Ida sprawled at the top of the stairs, lying in a pool of phlegm and vomit. She had tried reviving her with water, giving her something against vomiting, and contacting Dad through the consulate's secret number. The last effort had borne some fruit, because the consulate receptionist had sent over an ambulance to take Aunt Ida to the hospital - where they determined that she had suffered severe poisoning and had contacted the police - which Mom took as a personal insult, considering that our house was spotless, all the food was fresh, etc., etc.

  But I understood only too well what had really happened, and it filled me with dread. I waited until Mom had fallen asleep, and then I went through the house locking all the doors and windows. I found the empty bottle in the bathroom wastebasket. The cover and all of the pills were gone. I stood and looked at it for a few minutes, contemplating the fact that, with my unquenchable need to know, I could have killed my great aunt. My hands shook and my head burned. I got undressed and began to take a shower. The water didn't make me feel any better. The last pill was still in my pants pocket. I wondered whether I should call the hospital and suggest that they run tests on it. I turned off the water, intending to go to the phone. That's when I heard the knocking.

  It was a thin, continuous knocking, and it was coming from the kitchen door. I ran out, dressed only in my underwear. When I got there, Mom was already embracing Debbie, who had come to sleep over (which I remembered after several uncomfortable seconds) while her parents were away. I was sure that Mom had also forgotten that she'd invited her, or maybe hadn't even meant the invitation seriously (sometimes she's so anxious to please that she volunteers for things she can't possibly do) but both of them looked at me as if only I was guilty of having forgotten, and of something else that had happened of which I was not yet aware. I stood facing them, practically naked and shaking with cold, a complete outsider. They looked so attached to one another, bound by some female solidarity, that I just had to do something to get closer to them. I went up to Debbie and gently took the backpack off her shoulder. It was as light as only a backpack containing a toothbrush and a change of underwear can be. Once, the thought that she hadn't even brought a nightgown would have filled me with desire and expectation. This time all I felt was alienated and uncomfortable, seeing my girlfriend and my mother hugging like that.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  Debbie started to whimper. Mom glared at me reproachfully: "Haven't you a shred of sensitivity? She's just now calmed down."

  Only then did I realize how much had actually happened before I'd gotten there, and that they had already discussed it all and closed the case. It was so like Mom, so indicative of her total negation of my right to know, that I couldn't give in, even at the cost of an argument.

  "Why can't you tell me what's going on?"

  Mom tried to say something, but Debbie yelled, "I don't want to talk about it."

  "That's not like you," I said angrily.

  Mom said, "All right, now stop it," and handed Debbie a tissue. She wiped her eyes with a vigorous movement that was meant not only to wipe away the tears, but to erase a terrible experience.

  I couldn't hold back. "In case you've forgotten, you're not her daughter, you're my girlfriend."

  "All right," she burst out, "if you really want to know, what happened is that your father scared the life out of me out there, in the yard."

  I think a shiver of fear ran through me, too, then, because Mom grabbed my arm and said very convincingly, "Now, now, that's impossible. He's out West, on business," but at that point it was impossible to hold Debbie back. She said that she had wanted to take a short cut from her street, Sycamore, to our street, Elm, so she'd walked through the playground and crossed the neighbor's yard. When she'd reached our back yard she'd seen Dad sitting on the swing that hangs between two trees and staring at the only lighted window in the house (the bathroom, where I'd been). She had gone up to him and said, "Hi, Mr. Levin," and Dad had gotten up in alarm. She had tried to reassure him. "It's me, Debbie," and had come closer to ask why the house was dark and if everything was all right, but Dad had said something like, "Stop. Don't come any closer."

  Debbie had asked, "Has something happened?" In a mean, hard voice, Dad had ordered her, "Get out of here. Go on," and had vanished in the darkness.

  Debbie had run toward the house, which was dark and closed. She had banged on the back door, on the basement window, and finally on the garage door (if you'll remember, I'd locked them all). Finally she had tried the door to the kitchen. Mom had gotten there first, then me, and, well, you know the rest.

  "But it wasn't Dad," Mom said and looked at me, waiting for confirmation.

  But I couldn't help her. It certainly could have been Dad, who might have arranged another quick flight change and returned home unexpectedly. Suddenly I found myself hoping that it wasn't Dad, but the guy from the Lincoln Tunnel.

  "Did he cough?" I asked. "Clearing his throat, like, between sentences?"

  Mom looked at me in astonishment.

  Debbie said, "He had an accent, not really an accent, but a kind of non-accent, like all Israelis do when they speak English. He was the same height and size as your Dad...”

  "How many times have you seen my Dad? After all, most of the time he's not even here...”

  "I've seen him enough times, and anyway, who besides your Dad would be sitting on the swing in your yard looking at your house?"

  I looked at Mom and asked in Hebrew, "Now do you believe me?"

  "In English, Ronnyleh, speak English," she patted my head. "We've had a hard day. Aunt Ida - you remember her - suddenly took ill today."

  "Poisoned," I said.

  Both of them looked at me in horror. Debbie because she was frightened, and Mom because she didn't yet know what I knew about the nature of the pills she'd been given.

  Debbie spoke first. "Are you starting again? Next thing you'll be saying it was some kind of joke." She shouldered her backpack. "I'd rather sleep in my own house, alone."

  "In the morning everything will seem different," Mom said in a tone that once would have reassured me, too, and led her out of the kitchen. A few minutes later I could hear them moving the bed in the basement. I stayed in the kitchen and waited for Mom. When she came back upstairs, I called her.

  "Who did you get those blue pills from?" I asked.

  "What difference does it make?"

  "Aunt Ida got sick from them."

  "Nonsense. No harm can come from taking vitamins - even a whole bottle full."

  "They were pain killers."

  "Where did you get that idea?"

  "From somebody who takes the exact same pills."

  She got serious. "I've already told you, Ronny, I've got enough on my hands without your imputations and the theories you construct on the basis of all sorts of half-baked impressions that have no connection to the overall situation...”

  "I understand the overall situation," I said quietly. "I also know what's going on between you and Dad. I even
know what's going on between you and...” I swallowed hard, "someone else."

  She cast her eyes down and was silent. I didn't say anything, either. The silence was so deep that we could hear the ticking of the clock in the hall. Mom leaned on the doorpost and said in a low voice: "What could you possibly know about things that began before you were born and that have been going on all this time, while we were raising you... what do you know of life...” she started to whimper, hiding her face in the door frame.

  "I'm sorry," I went to her, but she slipped past and went to her room.

  Now I understand that that was a very important moment, perhaps the most important moment of all during those days. It was the moment I sobered up from the illusion that everything could be resolved by talking to Mom; the moment I realized that she would always cloak any acknowledgement of reality in a wretchedness which would neutralize everything, rendering her `sincerity' totally meaningless.

  I waited until the light in her room went out, and then I went down to the basement. Debbie sat on the bed. I plopped down on the carpet at her feet. I didn't intend to talk; I only wanted someone to be nice to me, to help me clear my head of the terrible racket inside.

  But she began to talk. "You've found someone else, Ronny; now I get it; now I understand."

  "I haven't got anyone," I pulled her toward me.

  She threw herself backwards, on the bed, and said, "I don't believe you. I can't tell anymore when you're telling the truth and when you're lying."

  I climbed up on the bed and pressed myself against her, breathing in the wonderful fragrance of perfumed clothes and a scrubbed body. She turned her face to the wall. I inhaled the scent of her hair and the nape of her neck - until suddenly I realized that there was nothing exceptional in these: just another tanned neck and soft chestnut-brown hair. You know that feeling when there's no magic anymore, when it's all over, and the sexiest girl you know - the girl the whole school is dying to lay - is suddenly nothing more than just a pretty and unexceptional girl from around the corner?

  I guess she must have sensed it, because her shoulders started to shake and she said, hiding her head in the pillow. "I know you've got someone else, maybe in the City, maybe even at the library, someone that's willing to do all the crazy things that you like...”

  This time I knew the elixir. I started to fantasize about Miss Doherty, and within seconds I was hot. But Debbie wasn't in the mood.

  "Leave me alone," she mumbled. "I want to go to sleep."

  I stayed there almost two hours. When I went upstairs, the clock in the hall struck midnight. I went through the house again, making sure all the doors and windows were locked. Then I went to my room and lay down on the bed, but I couldn't sleep. It seemed everything was getting worse. I wasted a few more minutes in hesitation (after all, it wasn't exactly an accepted hour for phone calls), then searched through the blue phone book in the kitchen. At twenty past midnight I called you.

  Now I'm really beat… maybe because I'm getting to the tough part. How much time is there before you arrive? Six hours. Actually, almost only five. There's still so much to tell; how will I get it all down in five hours?

  THE SIXTH NOTEBOOK

  You didn't answer. A recording apologized in your name and referred me to an answering service. I wondered where you could be at such an hour. Then I decided that you must be asleep, but that since you had dealings with people from all over the world who lived in various time zones, you probably just unplugged the phone and let the answering service take care of everything.

  I called the answering service. A really nice woman took down our phone number and promised to pass the message on to you. I dozed off for a while. An hour later I woke up. When I went to the bathroom I missed seeing the dancing TV screen in the living room, Aunt Ida asleep in front of it. Again I thought of calling the hospital. I even thought of what I would say, reciting my message and then immediately hanging up. "This is about the patient who threw up, Ida Mitchnik. She doesn't exactly have a sick stomach; she took a large quantity of pain killers by mistake." As I stood before the telephone, hesitating, it rang.

  During the first two rings I froze with fear. But when I remembered the message I'd left you, I was grateful that you'd called back right away, just as the woman at the answering service had promised. By the time I picked up the receiver, I was calm.

  But it was a woman with a gravelly, if friendly, voice. "Mr. Levin?" she asked. "Mr. Ronny Levin?"

  For the first time ever, I hesitated to answer to my name.

  Again she asked. "Mr. Ronny Levin?"

  This time I answered. "Yes."

  "I'm calling on behalf of your friend, Mr. Kleiner."

  "Kleiner?"

  "K.," she added quickly.

  "Yes."

  I was exhausted, and a little scared. She must have heard it in my voice. "You do know him, don't you?"

  "Yes, yes, of course."

  "He was brought to us today and... he asked that you come visit...”

  "Where is he?"

  She gave me the address of a hospital. "It's in Brooklyn, not far from Prospect Park. Do you know how to get here?"

  "I'll find it."

  "Room 803."

  "Room 803," I repeated. "What are the visiting hours?"

  "Every day between 3:00 and 5:00, but...” she hesitated, "... he's not really allowed to have visitors and my shift is over at 9:00 tomorrow morning. You'd best come early so that you'll have some time to talk... since Mrs. Kleiner will be coming at about 8:00 and... and it seems he doesn't want you two to meet...”

  I didn't understand why I couldn't meet Mrs. Kleiner, but nothing surprised me anymore. I wrote down all the details and hung up. It was almost 1:00 a.m. I sat beside the telephone until I fell asleep. I woke at around 6:00, locked the house up tight, and left two notes: one for Mom, reminding her where her keys were, and one for Debbie, apologizing and promising that we'd go to a movie or dancing or bowling or whatever she wanted that night. I rode in on the usual bus to Port Authority. (At that hour of the morning New York is different. People smile at each other; the driver even looked at me before punching my ticket.) When I got to Manhattan I transferred to the subway, and after another half hour of hurtling through tunnels I arrived at Prospect Park.

  The hospital was different from what I'd expected. No nurse behind any counter asked me politely, `May I help you?' and there were no hushed voices in the background calling doctor so-and-so to please report to the cardiology department. It was just another glass door in the middle of a large wall in the middle of Brooklyn. Behind the glass door sat a security guard, reading yesterday's paper.

  "Where to?" he asked.

  "Room 803."

  He looked at me strangely. "That's upstairs on the eighth floor."

  The buttons in the elevator went as far as the seventh floor. I thought of going back to the security guard and asking again, but when I remembered the way he'd looked at me I decided I'd find it myself.

  I pushed seven. The elevator responded exactly as the guard had: with a little jump, as if I'd requested something I didn't deserve. There was a geriatric ward on the seventh floor, and old people wandered the corridor, leaning on walkers and canes. None of them was able to explain to me where the missing eighth floor was, but hanging on a fire extinguisher was a cardboard sign bearing an arrow and the words: "To the eighth floor." I followed the arrow down a long, long corridor that encircled the building. The farther along I went, the clearer it became that this was a part of the hospital that wasn't in use: the paint was old, but not peeling, and all sorts of junk was hanging on the walls. A small sign instructed me to stop and check: did I have any contagious diseases? Suffer from a deficiency of the immune system? Take drugs that might reduce the body's resistance? Had I ever been stricken with hemophilia? Skin cancer? Pneumonia, or any of another long list of diseases?

  I pushed a swinging door and found myself in a large hall. There were a lot of closed doors that led to other rooms,
a few old easy chairs, and a table with a yellowing cover. Behind it sat a nurse who was preparing syringes.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "I'm Ronny. Ronny Levin."

  She got up, indicating a pile of folded johnny-coats. I put one on. In a basket next to them were rubber gloves and cloth masks.

  "Do I have to put these things on?" I asked.

  "If you want to go in."

  I donned the gloves and mask. She led me to room 803. She opened the door, let me in, and closed the door behind me quickly, as if she were covering a bubbling pot.

  It was a large room but there was only one bed in it, set right in the center, equidistant from all of the walls. K. was lying there, attached to a thin tube, staring at the ceiling. I moved toward him, feeling a little awkward in my hospital whites. He didn't move his head. "Hello, Mr. K.," I said softly. Seeing him lying there attached to a tube made me feel oddly distant; that's why I addressed him as `Mr. K.' He turned his head with some effort.

  "Hello, Ronny."

  "How are you feeling?" It was a stupid question, but it was the only one I could think of.

  He nodded his head wearily. I moved even closer to him, and he extended his hand in greeting. Something stopped me from touching him. He withdrew his hand and said, "Thanks for coming."

  His voice was no different than usual, just much weaker. But his face looked different, as if he'd lost a quarter of his weight in the 24 hours since we'd seen each other.

  "What do you have?" I asked.

  "Pneumonia."

  I said, "Ah," as if I understood, even though I didn't understand how someone could get pneumonia at the end of the summer.

  He added, "And when I get over it - if I do - I'll catch something else. That's how it works, this disease."

  Now I understood. I stopped breathing.

  He sensed it, I guess, because he said, "You needn't worry. It's not contagious." And in the same matter-of-fact tone he used to explain everything, he added, "Those things you're wearing... they're meant to protect me. Not you."