Davita's Harp

  “Is the man who wants to send you back to Europe a Fascist?”

  “I do not know who wants to send me back to Europe.”

  “I’m afraid of you going back to Europe.”

  He drank from his cup and sat there staring down at the table. “I think I will lie down for a while,” he said. “I am very tired. Please forgive me, Ilana.”

  I sat at the table, listening to him go slowly along the hallway to his room.

  My mother returned from her work. Jakob Daw joined us for supper but said little. After supper my mother came into my room and stood near the door.

  “Ilana?”

  I looked up from my reading.

  “Mrs. Helfman told me this morning that you said Kaddish in the synagogue.” I said nothing.

  “You are not supposed to say Kaddish.” “I want to.” “Ilana—” “I want to.”

  She looked at me and seemed not to know what to say.

  “Mama, do you want me to stop saying it?”

  There was a silence. She stood rigidly near the door, looking at me, her dark eyes burning, her face pale. “I don’t even want you to go to that synagogue,” she said finally. “But I won’t stop you. Not if it means that much to you.” And she went from my room.

  That night I woke and heard sounds from the darkness of the apartment. I thought at first that Baba Yaga had returned, but there was no evil in the sounds; there was wind in trees and a distant sighing and the softest of laughter amidst the silken back-and-forth sliding of night surf. And softly out of the darkness, through walls that somehow always yielded to my listening ears, came a far-off rhythmic beat like the thudding hooves of stallions racing across the red sands of an endless beach.

  • • •

  The days passed. Sometimes in the evenings visitors would come to the apartment, people I had never seen before. Many were well dressed. They would sit in the living room, speaking respectfully with Jakob Daw and listening intently to his words. I marveled at the deference in their manner, the awe in which they held him. He seemed the shyest of people. Diffidence clung to him, a nervous reluctance to offend. He bent toward you as you spoke, inclined his ear to your words.

  On occasion he and my mother went out together of an evening. He never wore anything other than baggy pants and wrinkled shirts and sometimes an old sweater if the evening was cool. His shoes were scruffy, unpolished. Color had returned to his face; much of the darkness was gone from around his eyes. He still coughed from time to time but I had come almost not to notice it.

  At times my mother and Jakob Daw would go to Manhattan on their evenings out and bring back newspapers and magazines in languages I could not read. Once Jakob Daw brought me a book of stories by two brothers named Grimm.

  “The brothers Grimm claimed they went out in the country among the German peasants and collected true folk tales,” he said when he gave me the book. “But now we know they lied. These tales were told to them by members of their own family. Nevertheless they are very interesting stories.”

  Rumpelstiltskin. Sleeping Beauty. Hansel and Gretel. I found I could not stop reading.

  Often Mr. Dinn would come into the apartment late at night and the three of them would sit together in the kitchen, talking.

  David said to me one Saturday as we stood outside the synagogue, “Don’t you know what’s going on, Ilana?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you read the newspapers? There are petitions and all kinds of letters being sent to Washington.”

  “I don’t read newspapers anymore.”

  “People are trying to save him.”

  “Uncle Jakob says it won’t help.”

  “My father won’t let him be sent away.”

  “Did you know there are Fascists in Washington, David? Can your father fight Fascists?”

  “My father says—”

  “David, are you going back to the beach this summer?”

  “I think so. For a few weeks.”

  “My mother says we’re not going. We don’t have any money for the beach.”

  He looked down at the sidewalk.

  “The Fascists killed my father and now they’re going to send Uncle Jakob away. I wish you a good time at the beach, David. Do you know how to build sand castles? Remember the one we built together? That was nice.”

  “Ilana—”

  “I’m tired. Did you notice that a lot of women answered amen when I said the Kaddish this morning? Did you notice that?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you and your father say Kaddish?” “We don’t have to anymore. You say it for eleven months after the funeral.”

  “I’m going to miss the beach. We don’t know where we’ll be this summer. Uncle Jakob isn’t allowed to leave the city. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “At least your friends don’t laugh at me anymore. They weren’t nice when they laughed at me. Good Shabbos, David. Your father has a beautiful voice. I wish he would lead the service in the synagogue.”

  I felt him watching me as I walked away. The air was warm on my face and arms. I moved with care so as not to trip over the cracks in the sidewalk.

  In the apartment I found Jakob Daw at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He wore pajamas and a frayed dark-blue robe, and his hair was uncombed. He gazed at me for a moment and seemed not to know who I was. Then his eyes cleared.

  “Ilana. Good morning. Is it morning? Where were you?”

  “In shul.”

  “Shul,” he said. “Yes. Your mother went out shopping. There is a note here somewhere from her. Where did I put it? Take yourself some milk and cookies and sit down and keep me company.”

  “Were you up all night writing?”

  “Not all night. Most of the night. I went to sleep as the birds woke. Do you hear the birds in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beautiful sounds. Beautiful music to fall asleep to. Yes, sit here. Be careful with your milk. I remember the birds on the beach. Do you remember those birds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some made very strange sounds. Like women laughing and crying. Is the weather nice outside?”

  “It’s warm.”

  “Perhaps we will go for a walk later. It is not healthy to be indoors so much. In Europe people walk much more than they do here. Europe is made for walking. We will go to the park and watch the rowers on the lake.”

  “Uncle Jakob?”

  “Yes, Ilana.”

  “Are they going to send you away?”

  “I do not know. They are certainly trying.”

  “David Dinn said that lots of people are writing letters and signing petitions to keep you from being sent away.”

  “Yes. People are doing that. But I do not think—”

  I heard the downstairs door close with its loud click and thought it was my mother with shopping bags.

  “Mama is coming back.”

  I went to the door and opened it and heard Ruthie and her parents in the hallway downstairs. I closed the door and turned. Jakob Daw had come up behind me. The music of the door harp resonated softly through the apartment.

  Jakob Daw stood very still, watching the wooden balls as their motion slowed and the music died away. Then he lifted one of the balls with his fingers and let it fall on the taut wire. Ting. The sound echoed softly. Ting ting ting ting ting. He lifted a second wooden ball and let it fall. Then he began to lift them one after the other. They bounced jauntily upon the wires.

  The hallway filled with the music of the harp.

  I stood there watching him and then heard him say, to the accompaniment of the music of the harp, “I know now what it is that happens to our little bird, Ilana. Shall I tell you? Yes? All right.” He was silent a moment, the wooden balls rising and falling beneath his fingers, the harp sending out its vibrating tones. “Our little bird flew back across the ocean. Yes, he flew and flew against the wind.” The harp sang and sang as Jakob Daw’s fingers kept lifti
ng the wooden balls and letting them fall. “The wind was very strong. And cold. And the bird was burdened with strange baggage: bits and pieces of broken dreams that kept piercing his troubled heart like shards of glass. He did not care anymore about the music of the world. He wanted to rest. He flew on against the wind, straining his fragile wings. And as he flew a curious thing happened: he began to grow smaller and smaller. And soon he was no larger than the tiniest of birds and you could barely see him in the vast sky. He flew low over the ocean, skimming the water, and once or twice a wave reached up as if to pull him down. And suddenly there along the horizon was the land; and by this time the bird was no bigger than a butterfly. And still he grew smaller and smaller; and soon he was no bigger than the tip of your thumb. And he grew smaller still and now he was the size of your fingernail. And he flew slowly over a beach and across land and came to a quiet street with houses and trees and he heard a peculiar music coming from one of the houses and he circled and circled about the house and flew in one day when the little girl who lived in the house opened the door—and there was the music, rising from a bit of wood that hung from the door! It was the kind of music the bird thought he could listen to forever: sweet but not false, a comfort but not a deceiving caress; a music of innocence. And the bird continued growing smaller and smaller and then entered the circular hollow within the wood, above which the balls and wires made their music. And there he nested. And there he lived. And there he lives to this day. And there he will continue to live. In our door harp.”

  He lowered his hand. The wooden balls grew still. The music faded.

  “In our door harp,” Jakob Daw said again, as if echoing his own words. Then he turned and went slowly into his room and closed the door.

  I stood very still in the silent hallway, staring up at the door harp.

  The downstairs lock clicked sharply. I opened the door. The harp sang. I listened to its music and imagined the tiny bird inside, listening too. I went quickly down the stairs to help my mother.

  Mr. Dinn came over that night with David and again chanted the Havdoloh prayers. Afterward we sat around the kitchen table. Mr. Dinn would not eat anything. David had a glass of milk but politely refused the cookies.

  It was a hot gloomy night. Mr. Dinn kept saying he could not understand what was going on in Washington, nothing like this had ever happened to him before. The pressure against Jakob Daw was enormous. Sometimes he had the feeling it was coming from inside the White House itself. Nothing he could be sure of; nothing he could pin down. His Washington connections refused to talk to him about Jakob Daw. Sure, he was a great writer. He was also a Bolshevik. He was a Communist who had advocated revolution in speeches and articles. He was no longer a Stalinist but a Trotskyist? The fine distinction was lost somewhere in the bureaucratic labyrinth at immigration. Someone wanted Jakob Daw out of the country. Indeed, maybe it had nothing to do with Jakob Daw’s communism. Maybe someone was making points with his department chief. Maybe someone was settling an old grudge. Maybe someone didn’t like Jakob Daw’s stories.

  My mother sat staring down at the table and saying nothing.

  “We have a long way to go before it’s lost,” Mr. Dinn said. “We have certainly not exhausted all our possibilities.”

  “In our time, Mr. Dinn,” Jakob Daw said, “a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods, you must understand, were far more imaginative than our bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops, not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this. Was it worth the effort? I think I shall take another cup of coffee. You are spending so much time here these days we ought to make the apartment kosher so you might eat here.”

  David’s father smiled thinly.

  “Should we organize a demonstration?” my mother said. “Demonstrations won’t affect the law, Channah,” Mr. Dinn said.

  “I do not want demonstrations,” Jakob Daw said. “I do not want this to drag on and on and become a political circus. The left will demonstrate for me, the right will demonstrate against me. We will go to the courts and get postponements and delays and in the end the government will win anyway. I have no desire and no strength for such a battle. We will go as far as the first hearing.”

  “But what can they possibly find that will bring you to a hearing?” my mother asked.

  “I was a wild and wanton youth,” Jakob Daw said. “I relied heavily on wine as an antidote to shyness. But I have no recollection of any criminal activity.”

  “Jakob, this is not a time for your dark humor,” my mother said.

  “I believe I was on the wanted list in Barcelona,” Jakob Daw said. “A few chance remarks on my part about the heroism I had witnessed by anarchist militia in the front lines around Huesca and how it might not be too difficult to sympathize with the P.O.U.M. secured for me a serious threat of arrest as a Fascist. Can you imagine that? In the eyes of the Stalinists I had become a Fascist. Why does that not qualify Jakob Daw for permanent residence in America?”

  My mother and Mr. Dinn looked at each other and said nothing.

  “You cannot imagine what it was like in Barcelona. They said more than a thousand workers were slain. It was a civil war inside a civil war. Workers killing workers. Machine guns, grenades, rifles, barricades, red and black flags, anarchists and Stalinists and Trotskyists. You think the Russians desire revolution in Spain, Channah? They do not. What they want is to preserve the friendship of France, and France does not wish to see a revolutionary government on its southern border. The Communists of Spain are now counterrevolutionists and are killing anarchists, who are the true fighters for a workers’ revolution today. That was Barcelona, Channah. Do you hear me? I was there. These eyes saw Barcelona. However, I do not think the people in Washington will be impressed by the fact that to the Stalinists I am now a Fascist.”

  My mother rose stiffly from the table, went over to the stove, and refilled her coffee cup. She returned to the table.

  “Ilana, why don’t you and David go into your room for a while,” she said.

  “Mama.”

  “Do you mind, David?”

  “No,” David said reluctantly.

  “Mama.”

  “Go ahead, Ilana.”

  I finished my milk and went from the kitchen, followed hesitantly by David.

  “Did you understand what they were saying?” he asked as we went along the hallway.

  “Not all of it.”

  “I didn’t understand the part about Barcelona. Your mother looked very upset.”

  We came into my room.

  “I don’t understand politics,” David said. “It’s very boring.” “No, it’s not.” “It’s boring to me.”

  “Wasn’t the Jewish revolution that Rabbi Akiva led against Rome politics? And when Abraham destroyed all the idols, wasn’t that politics? And the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and when all the Jews were expelled from Spain? Wasn’t all that politics?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “If it’s American politics or politics about the world, you’re bored. But if it’s about Jews, you’re not bored.”

  He stared at me. “Please, I didn’t mean to make you angry, Ilana.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.” There was a brief silence.

  “They’re going to send Uncle Jakob away. How can they do that?”

  David looked at me out of his wide dark eyes and made no response.

  The weeks of June went slowly by. School ended. The air grew sultry; nights were hot. Terrifying rumors of polio in distant parts of the city drifted into our neighborhood. My mother would leave for work early in the morning and return to make supper. I played in the backyard with Ruthie. Her father had rigged up a swing on the sycamore and we would take turns on it. I loved the sensation of rising and falling, flying and plunging, t
he hot winds of the summer on my face.

  One day a big car came to the house and took Ruthie and her parents off to the mountains. I played on the street with the children of the neighborhood. On occasion I sat alone in the backyard near the flowers, reading, daydreaming, waiting for Jakob Daw to waken so we could go to Prospect Park and the lake and the zoo and the botanical gardens. We went nearly every day. He had learned to row and often we went out on the lake. I sat in the boat in the sun and let him take me slowly across the smooth water. How calm the water was. How different from the churning ferocity of the ocean. And there was nothing here with which I could build a castle, no sand, no surf, only the mind-dulling calm of a mirrorlike lake.

  One Sunday in early July the three of us took a train to Coney Island and went along the boardwalk and sat on a blanket in the sand. Jakob Daw would not go into the water—would not even put on a bathing suit. I swam with my mother, the hot sun on my face, the waves swelling and cresting and falling, acrid salt water in my mouth and eyes and nose. Later that afternoon I built a castle with the help of Jakob Daw and my mother; it came nearly to my shoulders. We left it there in the wet sand along the edge of the sea, glowing pink and red in the setting sun. I dreamed of the stallions that night, saw them galloping across a red beach, hooves thundering, sand flying, racing on the rim of the sea toward the horizon along which ships slowly moved beneath an evening sky.

  In the second week of July David Dinn left for Sea Gate. His father remained in the city and went to Sea Gate only for the weekends. He came often to the apartment, always at night, and I would lie in my bed and listen to the three of them in the kitchen. In one of my dreams during those weeks a short, round man in a dark suit motioned to me from behind his desk, which was piled high with papers, and when I looked at him I saw his face was as vacant as an egg.

  The week David left for Sea Gate Jakob Daw took me to Prospect Park. It was a hot sunny day and the park was crowded with mothers and little children. Jakob Daw took me out on the lake in a boat. I sat on the stern seat facing the sun and felt the smooth and lulling motion of the boat in the water. Jakob Daw rowed slowly and awkwardly and from time to time one of the oars would go into a skimming slide across the surface of the lake and send forth a spray of water. I saw dark water spots on his baggy trousers and wrinkled shirt. His long bony arms strained at the oars. The lake was crowded and he rowed cautiously, keeping out of the way of the other boats.