Davita's Harp

  In the morning over breakfast I asked my mother what the word idea meant.

  “That’s a good one,” my father said cheerfully, looking up from his newspaper. “Work on that one, Annie. That’ll keep you busy for a while.”

  “Your eggs are getting cold, Michael.”

  He put down the paper. I saw his name beneath the headline on the right-hand column of the front page: Michael Chandal.

  “I heard you using idea last night, Mama.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep, my love? You’re acquiring my bad habits, becoming a night person. Beware of the night people, Davita. Avoid us like the plague.”

  “I’ll try to explain idea to you, Ilana. Eat your cereal while I talk.”

  The word idea, she said, came from an old word that originally meant to see. An idea was something that existed in a person’s mind. It could be a thought, an opinion, a fantasy, a plan of action, a belief. It used to mean an image in the mind, a picture of someone or something, a likeness. But no one used it that way anymore.

  “Davita, my love, did we understand any of that?” my father asked genially.

  “Mama, is what you call Stalinism an idea?”

  My father stopped chewing and looked at me.

  “Yes,” my mother said, smiling faintly.

  “Is my being cold in bed at night an idea?”

  “No, darling. That’s a feeling.”

  “That’s an exploiting capitalist landlord, is what that is.”

  “Is when I hear the door harp an idea?”

  “No, darling. That’s hearing. That’s one of your senses, like seeing and touching and smelling. An idea is in your mind, your head. When you think about the door harp, it’s an idea.”

  “When I think about the cottage and the beach and the ocean, is that an idea?” I had suddenly remembered the seaside world where we spent our summers.

  “Yes, Ilana.”

  “Do ideas become dead, like people and animals and birds?” “Sometimes.”

  I sat at the table in our small kitchen and gazed at the pale winter sunlight that shone through the window.

  “Well,” my father said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. “This has certainly been one of my more enlightening breakfasts. Now I’ve got to go to work. There’s an idea for you. Work. A powerful idea. Annie, you’ll remember to call Roger about Jakob.”

  “I’ll remember,” my mother said.

  My father turned to me. “Davita, a writer named Jakob Daw will be coming to stay with us for a while. I’m telling you now so it won’t be the shock it was when you walked in on your Aunt Sarah.”

  “Is Jakob Daw from Maine?”

  “Jakob Daw is from Austria. He’s an old friend of your mother’s.”

  I saw my mother look down at the floor, her face without expression.

  “Does Jakob Daw write ideas?”

  “I don’t know. Does he write ideas, Annie?”

  “Yes. You could say that he writes ideas.” My mother’s voice sounded unusually subdued. “And about things from his imagination.”

  “Well,” said my father, “this has been an interesting breakfast. Will my girl give her dad a hug? A big mountain of a hug.”

  I saw my mother looking at us, her eyes troubled.

  Mama is thinking something, I told myself. She is having an idea.

  “That was a hug!” my father said.

  Two days later my father went off to cover a strike in a textile mill in northern Maine. He was gone nearly a week. He returned with a deep cut on his scalp and a painfully wrenched left shoulder.

  He sat at his desk, writing.

  I wandered silently about the apartment, frightened. One afternoon I passed by my parents’ bedroom and saw, through the partly open door, my father lying on the bed, his hands over his eyes, the light from the desk lamp falling upon his papers and the black Waterman’s fountain pen with which he wrote. On the wall over the desk was the glass-framed photograph of the beach and the horses. I gazed a long time at the photograph. I imagined I could hear the sand-muffled sounds of their beating hooves. Then I heard my father say clearly, in a voice I did not recognize, “Ah, Christ, what the hell is it all about? How can it be anything? It’s not a damn thing. It’s nothing. That’s what it is. Nothing!”

  I backed away quietly from the door and went to my room and stood by the window staring out at the street. Hillocks of dirty snow lay upon the curbs. A few lone people walked stiff as toys through the wind.

  The front door opened. My mother was back from shopping. The door closed. The harp played softly. I went from my room into the kitchen to help my mother with the groceries.

  On occasion my mother would tell me an old Russian tale about a sister and brother fleeing from the evil witch Baba Yaga. Two lost children running through a vast open wilderness of barren stony earth. The boy carried a little leather pouch in which were three magical objects: a pebble, a kerchief, a comb. They could use each item only once. One night the witch drew dangerously close, and from the pouch the brother removed the comb and threw it to the ground. A tangled forest sprang up between them and Baba Yaga. The children journeyed safely on. Days later they again saw Baba Yaga close behind them, dark-garbed, green-skinned, hideous. The boy drew out the pebble and threw it to the ground. A towering mountain rose suddenly between them and Baba Yaga. On they wandered, seeking their home and their parents. Weeks passed. One day they again saw Baba Yaga, in fierce pursuit. Quickly the boy drew out the kerchief and placed it on the ground. A wide, swift river appeared, blocking the path of Baba Yaga. The river swirled and hissed along its banks and was filled with treacherous crosscurrents and whirlpools. The witch Baba Yaga stood along the far bank, screaming and cursing. The children held their ears and fled. That day a farmer found them asleep on a haystack and recognized them and brought them home to their parents. What a joyous reunion there was! And soon the children forgot the evil witch Baba Yaga and their long flight through the wilderness.

  She told me that story again one night in the early spring of that year. I lay half asleep in my bed, listening. When she was done, I asked, “What does magic mean?”

  “It’s too late now, Ilana.”

  “Is there a meeting again tonight?”

  “Yes, darling. But we’ll try to be quiet.”

  She kissed me. Cool and dry on my forehead. Not like my father’s kiss, always warm and moist and on my face. Lips coming toward me and lips going away. Cool and dry, warm and moist. Mama and Papa.

  From the kitchen came the sound of my parents’ voices. I could not make out their words. The doorbell rang. I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hallway. The singing of the harp was drowned by a rush of voices. The apartment filled with noise. I fell asleep finally to the sounds of the ringing telephone.

  The meeting woke me. It was unusually noisy. “What’s the alternative?” someone kept shouting. “Tell me what the alternative is.” A surge of voices drowned out his next words, sharp voices, angry voices. The air in my room vibrated faintly with the din of the meeting. I heard the word Spain many times. I had never heard that word before. Spain. It was a long while before I was able to fall back asleep.

  At breakfast my father sat reading his newspaper and my mother stood at the stove in her pink house dress and white apron. The apartment seemed tense with the atmosphere of last night’s meeting. My father looked tired. He read to my mother a news story about Spain, and they talked about that briefly. I did not understand what they were saying. My mother’s voice sounded strained. I played with my cereal.

  My mother put a plate of eggs and meat in front of my father and sat down at the table. They continued talking about Spain.

  I looked up from my cereal. “Mama.”

  They ignored me. Now they were talking about the writer Jakob Daw. “Mama!”

  “One minute,” my mother said.

  I said, “Last night Baba Yaga ran after me in a dream and I used a door harp like the one we have, only smaller,
and it became an ocean. What is magic, Mama? And what is Spain?”

  My mother said, after a pause, “Later, Ilana.”

  My father said, brightening, “No, go ahead, Annie. I want to hear this.”

  My mother said, after another pause, “Magic is a very old idea, Ilana. If you want it to rain and you say certain words, and if each time you say those words it rains, that’s magic. Words or things that control other things or people or nature. That’s magic.”

  “Is magic real?”

  “Only in stories, darling.”

  “Can magic stop people from being dead?”

  She hesitated. “Only in stories.”

  “We could use some magic in Spain,” my father said. “Azaña could use some magic.”

  “I like the idea of magic,” I said. “What else is magic?”

  “If I could clean up the mess you make at the table just by a wave of my hand, that would be magic,” my mother said.

  “Yes, my beauty,” said my father. “That would be very strong magic, indeed.”

  “If I could stop my room from being cold at night by saying, ‘Cold, go away,’ is that magic?” “Yes, darling.”

  “If I could stop us from moving all the time by saying, ‘Moving, stop,’ is that magic?”

  “That would be magic, all right,” my father said quietly.

  “Finish your cereal, Ilana,” my mother said. “I don’t want you to be late for school.”

  My father pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

  “What is Spain, Papa?”

  “I am off to the newspaper, my love. A brief explanation. All right? You remember the ocean near our beach? Spain is a country on the other side of that ocean. People there hate one another. Terrible people called Fascists may try to take over the country, like they’re trying to take over another country called Ethiopia. I’ll tell you more another time. Give your dad a big mountain of a hug.”

  “Michael, will you find out about Jakob’s itinerary?” “As soon as I get to the paper.”

  “Don’t forget you promised Philip a piece on the Toledo strike.”

  “How can I forget, Annie? You won’t let me.”

  The winter was gone. Grass began to grow in the empty lots and backyards of the neighborhood. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons my mother would take me on a long walk to a park. We went to that park one Sunday that spring, walking along side streets that sloped gently toward green fields and woods and the silvery sheen of a river. Narrow dirt paths wound through the fields and trees. Park benches were set like beckoning laps here and there alongside the paths and in playgrounds. I sat on a bench with my mother and watched thin white clouds sail across the blue sky. Small birds flew by overhead. An early spring wind blew through the trees and brought with it the scent of the river.

  I got down off the bench and played for a while in a sandbox with a girl my age. There were few people in the park. My mother sat on the bench, her face to the sun. She wore a coat and a beret. She had said little to me during our walk to the park. She had a way of withdrawing from time to time: her eyes would dim and she would stare straight ahead and I had the feeling she was looking at memories and images that she would not share with anyone. She was that way that Sunday afternoon in the park.

  I grew weary of the sandbox and went over to the bench and sat next to my mother. Absentmindedly, her face still to the sun, she put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me to her. I inhaled the scents of her coat and skin and sat nesting in her embrace. Then I asked her, “Mama, when is Jakob Daw coming to stay with us?”

  There had been talk of him again during breakfast that morning. And that strange distant look had entered my mother’s eyes.

  She kept her face to the sun as she answered. “I don’t know, Ilana. Soon.”

  “Why is he coming to America?”

  “Certain people are bringing him here to lecture at our meetings in New York and other cities. And to help us raise money for people in Spain.”

  “I hope he won’t stay with us long. I don’t like a strange man in our house.”

  “Jakob Daw is not a stranger, Ilana. He’s an old friend. I knew him in Europe a long time ago. He’s a great writer, though not too many people in America have heard of him or understand what he writes. Darling, listen, I want to sit quietly for a while and think. If I let you play on the bars will you be very careful and not be mischievous and fall as you did the last time?”

  “If I start to fall and I say, ‘Stop,’ and I don’t fall, is that magic?”

  “Yes. But I don’t advise you to try it, Ilana.”

  From the bars near the sandbox I saw my mother on the bench staring down at the gravel path, her eyes wide and moist and dark. I wished she would wear nicer clothes and put on makeup. What was she remembering? A sailboat went by on the river, gliding slowly along like a lazy wide-winged white bird. I hung upside down from a bar, watching my mother.

  • • •

  Suddenly that night the winter returned and snow fell on the spring grass. My room turned cold again. I saw my breath on my window and wrote my name with my finger, using the penmanship I was learning in school. Ilana Davita Chandal. My name written clearly on a window against the cold night. I returned to my bed.

  The winter cold remained. Nights felt endless; days were gray, leaden. People went about as if weighted. There were many meetings in our apartment. Again and again I heard the names Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco. I heard strange words. Republic, militia, rebellion, coup d’état, garrison. And more names. Ethiopia, Germany, Spain, England, France, America. And names with menacing sounds. Anarchist, Falangist, Fascist. And words that frightened me. Murder, bombing, air raid, execution. All the world’s peoples and politics seemed to crowd into our apartment at those meetings.

  After each meeting my parents would stay up late in the kitchen, drinking coffee and talking. The sounds of soft music would come from the radio. Sometimes they would go into the living room and put a record on the phonograph and continue their talking. As they talked, my father’s voice would rise with excitement and my mother would remind him I was asleep and his voice would drop. I wished I could be with them, my room was so cold, the nights were so dark, the winter a wilderness without end.

  Then the cold was gone and the weather turned permanently warm. Suddenly something was wrong with my eyes. Headaches and slow dissolvings of the world. My parents’ faces grew tight. My mother took me to a doctor. He was a bald and cheerful man. He peered into my eyes through a glistening instrument. Could he see the ideas in my head? “Well, young lady, you read a lot, don’t you. Not many girls your age read so much. It’s glasses for you, my dear. To be worn all the time. And make especially sure that you have them on when you read and write. Unless you want to continue straining your lovely blue eyes and end up bumping into walls. Do we want to do that?”

  My parents were relieved to be told that all I needed for my eyes were those glasses. The lenses were thin, mounted on gilded metallic frames. When I put them on the world leaped into a clarity that was startling. I saw people and objects in sharp outline: the boys who lounged around the street lamp in front of our apartment house and hooted at me as I came and went; the owners of the grocery and laundry and candy store on our block; the weary faces of men and women; the headlines in the newspapers on the corner stand; the dust that blew through the streets; the picture of the beach and the horses in my parents’ bedroom; the books and magazines on Spain my father was bringing home.

  The days lengthened. One day in late April my father was sent to Boston by his newspaper. I lay in my bed that night, reading a children’s book about Spain. I looked at pictures of long valleys and sun-baked mountains and wide rivers and hill villages and Moorish castles. I especially liked the pictures of the castles.

  Later, asleep, I heard softly from a corner of my room the sibilant voice of Baba Yaga. My child, my child, come to me. Why are you afraid? How can I hurt you? I am an old lady. Come.

>   I ran across a meadow into a dense wood. Birds leaped from the trees, darkening the sky. I ran listening and heard only silence. I stopped and put my ear to the ground. There! I could hear the heavy thumping footfalls. I jumped to my feet and fled, leaving my glasses on the ground. Baba Yaga followed close upon my heels. And as she sped past the glasses the lenses burst into flame and a chasm opened in the earth. Into this black and bottomless chasm plunged Baba Yaga, twisting and turning as she fell. I could hear her receding scream.

  Over breakfast the next morning I asked my mother, “Do dead people ever come back to life?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  Calmly I ate my cereal.

  A moment later I asked, “Will I ever have another brother?” “Perhaps.”

  “Why did my brother die?”

  “Because he was sick.”

  “Why did he get sick?”

  “I don’t know, Ilana. He just did.”

  I finished my cereal and drank my milk.

  “Mama, why did you tell me the story about Baba Yaga?”

  “My mother used to tell it to me. Did I frighten you? It’s important to know about evil people and how to protect yourself against them.”

  “Baba Yaga won’t bother me anymore. Baba Yaga is dead and will never come back. I’d better go to school now so I won’t be late.”

  My mother stood at the sink, gazing at me, her eyes dark and troubled.

  I walked quickly to school in the early morning sunlight, the world sharp and clear through my new glasses, the magic glasses of Ilana Davita Chandal.

  In class I raised my hand. The teacher had been talking about different kinds of relatives and asked if anyone had an aunt or an uncle. “My Aunt Sarah is in Ethiopia,” I said. “Ethiopia is a country in Africa.”

  I sat in the third row on the side of the room near the wall of tall windows. Heads turned toward me.

  The teacher, a heavyset, middle-aged woman who wore her graying hair in a bun, smiled patiently and said, “What does your Aunt Sarah do?”