Читать книгу Lies, First Person - Gail Hareven - Страница 14

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When Satan arrived in my parents’ house, I was already in boarding school, and a feverish round of schoolwork and social activities gave me an excuse for cutting down my visits to a minimum. I was in Jerusalem, but the Jerusalem I was in was very far from the one in which I grew up.

Life in boarding school made my head spin with the range of possibilities it offered: interesting lessons, a history teacher who was particularly interesting, youth movements, a theatrical society, a writing club, stealing out and hitching rides, beer, kisses tasting of beer, political arguments, volunteer activities in the deprived neighborhood of Katamon, nocturnal excursions to the Old City and the churches of Ein Kerem, hesitant experiments full of self-importance with marijuana—I said yes to everything, I wanted everything, and every leap and every opportunity seemed to be the very one I had been waiting for.

I was surrounded by people who were as hungry and packed with energy as I was, and our hunger went on raging on the weekends and holidays too, which we were supposed to spend at home. We went on hikes, camped out and attended courses, and I did not refuse a single invitation: I spent Passover with a girlfriend on a kibbutz, and on Sukkoth I went to harvest olives at an Arab village. Every month or two I fell in love with someone else, a boy or girl whose uniqueness was always revealed to me in a flash. Amos, at the piano, singing songs by Georges Brassens. How could I have overlooked him before? Betty, cradling the face of a tiny boy who had cut his chin in the yard of the youth club in Katamon. Dror, declaiming Mark Anthony’s speech in a British accent. Amichai, telling jokes all the way up the stiff climb to Massada without a single pant.

I was full of falling-in-love, and the love, like a moving spotlight, fell unexpectedly on one new object after another.

In order to visit my sister and my parents I had to walk for forty minutes on foot or ride on two buses for about half an hour. But for months at a stretch I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t interested.

But nevertheless, from my rare visits I remember the talk that preceded the arrival of the serpent from America: Your uncle, girls, the professor, the historian and commentator Aharon Gotthilf. Aaron he calls himself today.

“Uncle Aaron,” my mother would say, taking care to flatten the “a” and drawl the “r” so that it would sound American. Uncle Aaron would arrive in December, when it was Christmas vacation over there. He intended to spend three weeks with us, but it was possible, very possible, that if certain things worked out as he hoped, he would stay longer.

Aaron was coming to attend his son’s wedding in Jerusalem. It turns out—such a surprise, we had no idea—that he has a grown son, a son from an early marriage. Suddenly, now Uncle Aaron tells your father that he was once married to some Czech, a woman with serious mental problems. He met her when he was living in Paris. A sad story, very sad. Because the son grew up without him, and the mother, who didn’t have a clue, sent him to a Chabad school, and what can you expect when you send a child to Chabad? The boy grew up ultra-Orthodox, came to Israel, didn’t serve in the army, landed up in a black-coat yeshiva. Now they’ve arranged a match for him, and even though to this day he never had much contact with his father, he invited Aaron to the wedding out of honor for his father. That’s one good thing that has to be said for those people, I have to admit: Honor thy father and thy mother. Aaron has another son who lives in New Mexico, about him we actually knew, we even told you once, his mother is a professor of archeology, she studies the Indians, and this son, who is your second cousin, treats his father very differently. Aaron told us that he isn’t even prepared to come and visit him, even though he offered the mother to pay for the tickets.

Aaron came in December but they already started talking about him in the summer, in the wake of a surprise letter and a long, expensive phone call in which he renewed the connection with my father, his dear cousin. It occurs to me now that my parents described him in way that would have fitted nicely into one of Alice’s idiotic columns: I even remember my father defining him as “a classic Jewish intellectual” and a “colorful character on the personal level.”

I don’t remember him being spoken of before, but once the letter arrived, the talk began to bubble and the anecdotes about “Erwin, to me he’ll always be Erwin”—overflowed to the paying guests as well. All my parents’ acquaintances were required to bask in the glow of our uncle’s glamour, whose glory could be assumed to reflect on his more modest relatives too.

My grandmother Sarah Gotthilf and her sister-in-law Hannah escaped from Vienna in November 1938, carrying in their arms sons who were intended to be the first but turned out to be the last. My grandfather was murdered in Dachau and his brother in Nisko, but we won’t go into that here. The women crossed from Switzerland to Italy, where they spent six months in Genoa—judging by the way my father told the story it sounded as if they had set out on a tour of classical Europe—and then Sarah, who had contacts with the Zionists, obtained a certificate and sailed with her baby for Palestine, while the beautiful Hannah and her son Erwin—that’s what they called him then—made their way to England.

Equipped with enthusiastic recommendations—her dissertation on Feuerbach came out in book form and Freud himself sent his compliments—Hannah Gotthilf found her way to the most interesting circles of the period, and in ’47, two years after the end of the war, she married a well-known economist from Oxford who was also an aristocrat boasting the title of Sir.

As you may imagine, the son of Lady Hannah received the best possible education—the sciences, the arts, classical languages. His Hebrew was classical too, and at the age of twenty-one Erwin, who had in the meantime become Aaron, was already studying for a doctoral degree at the Sorbonne in Paris.

His reputation preceded him, wherever he went he stood out as an original thinker, and since the academic world in France before the students’ revolution seemed fossilized to him, he didn’t wait to complete his doctorate but took advantage of the first opportunity that presented itself to emigrate to America. There are mean-spirited dwarves everywhere. Pettiness and envy too are universal, but Aaron in his innocence believed that he would enjoy more intellectual freedom in America than in Europe.

The main subject of his studies was modern totalitarianism, and he shocked many people when he chose to focus on the writings of the Marquis de Sade. The Marquis, claimed Aaron, drew a dark, prophetic and amazingly accurate picture of modern tyranny.

The issues that engaged Aaron were always broad, too broad for the Procrustean bed of academia, and despite the high esteem in which he was held, the trailblazer also acquired a number of enemies. For three or four years it seemed to him that he had found himself a home in the University of Columbia, but for a man like Aaron every home is only a port from which to sail onward. In the wake of all kinds of slander that arose, he transferred to the University of New Orleans, and from there this Jew went on wandering to other stations and other ports.

Unlike those of his colleagues who secluded themselves in ivory towers, Aaron turned from the outset to the non-academic public as well. His articles were published in dozens of newspapers, and he made frequent appearances on television as well as on the radio. But Aaron was not the kind of sycophant who was only seeking popularity, and the things he wrote and said gave rise to more than a little opposition. The hippies considered him one of theirs, until he poured scorn on them in a stinging essay. A highly regarded Jewish journal flaunted him, until he insisted on publishing a paper on “Jewish murderers in the service of Stalin.” The New York left, which in the past had attempted to embrace him, has not forgiven him to this day for a brilliant article analyzing their psychology. That’s Aaron. A complex personality. Not an easy person, clearly. Not an easy man, but a deep one. Possessing a profundity you don’t often see today.

Uncle Aaron’s history was not always recounted from the beginning, sometimes my father expounded on a single chapter: Genoa, England, the title of Sir, the interesting circles of the period, the Sorbonne University in Paris, the Marquis de Sade, stations and ports. But I remember well how every chapter of the story concluded with the same words: deep, profound, complex.

“Aren’t you sick of hearing about him?” I asked Elisheva. But my sister said that she was glad for Mommy and Daddy. She was glad because both of them were glad, and now that Daddy had a cousin he was sure to be happier, because family was good, and it was sad when somebody had a relative he didn’t see.

If it had been voiced by anyone else, this sentence could have been interpreted as a complaint about my absence, but Elisheva never hinted, and I ignored the non-existent hint and the unuttered complaint and slipped away again to pursue my own affairs. If they were all happy, why should I question their happiness? And to my friends at school I threw out: “A cousin of my father’s is coming, a British aristocrat or something, now they’ll force me to come visit all the time, what a bore.”

What room should they give him? My parents debated the question, and dwelled pleasurably on the subject right up to the eve of his arrival. First floor or second? Opposite the stairs or at the end of the corridor? Double or single? Our uncle would pay, he had made this an explicit condition, the income from three weeks was nothing to be sneezed at, but we had always preferred guests who came for a prolonged stay, and the ones who became like part of the family always received preferential treatment. If he preferred a double room, we would give it to him at the price of a single room. Number eighteen had a pastoral view, twenty-two was more modest, but he would have more privacy there, and for someone who was writing a book there was nothing more important: quiet and privacy, privacy and quiet—that’s what our place gave its guests and that’s what we could offer someone who had stayed in some of the most luxurious hotels in the world. Pay attention, girls, we won’t disturb Uncle Aaron, and on no account will we impose ourselves on him. We’ll spend just as much time with him as he wants to spend in our company, and we have to understand that he won’t spend as much time with us as he might wish, because he’s working on a book.

•

The business of the book was especially thrilling to my mother. From the intimate way she spoke about it you would have thought that he sent her drafts for her comments: Aaron will take advantage of his stay in Israel to go into the archives, but what Aaron’s working on isn’t just another piece of ordinary research. We know that this time it’s something much more literary. Aaron has set himself a high literary challenge. Aaron is about to deal with something that nobody before him has even dared to touch. His book will present a historical angle that other people haven’t had the courage to approach up to now. Aaron says that anyone who writes something so innovative has to expect a tremendous scandal after publication. And we, of course, are with Aaron. This is the small contribution that his family can make, and it goes without saying that we’ll give him all the conditions he needs for his work. If Aaron decides afterward to mention that he began writing the book here with us in Jerusalem, fine, we’re not hiding and we’ve got nothing to hide. A family has to be prepared to stand together even when there’s a huge scandal, and we’re not going to ask Uncle Aaron to hide anything either.

The excited anticipation improved my mother’s health to no end. People quite often used to say to me “You have a beautiful mother”—and when I was very small I thought so too. By the time I was in grade school she already seemed to me embarrassingly affected—but shortly before Aaron’s arrival I remember hearing such admiring remarks again. And I also remember my father saying: “Did you see how beautiful your mother looks today?”

The excitement took her almost every morning into the dining room, away from the account books, and from keeping account of expenses altogether. New glasses were purchased, both for cold drinks and for tea. And somehow she managed to persuade Jamilla to polish the ornamental samovar on the counter. In the evenings I know that she lingered to chat to the guests, smoking a slender cigarette, only one—she was permitted one little indulgence, who could deny her, life was short anyway—tapping off the ash with a finger freshly tipped with scarlet, gracefully inclining her chin, and waiting for another opportunity to insert Uncle Aaron into the conversation.

What was this special angle on history about which the professor was writing? To this Erica had no reply, and from the sly expression on her face it was hard to tell if she didn’t know the answer or if she had promised to keep the secret. Only the subject may perhaps be revealed, revealed but not elaborated on: Aaron had taken it upon himself to write about Hitler. Yes, Hitler. Imagine the strength of mind required to tackle such a subject. A historian, and moreover a Jew, and with Aaron’s personal background too, where did he get the courage? You’ll agree, said my mother, that his strength of mind must be tremendous.

He arrived in December and extended his stay beyond what my parents had dared to hope, but more than three weeks passed before I saw him. It was morning, and I was standing in the little kitchen cutting up vegetables: cucumbers and tomatoes for a salad. Breakfast was served to the guests at seven o’clock. It wasn’t yet seven, and he was already sitting in the dining room.

My father had gone out early to do some chores or other. My mother promised that she would finish getting dressed in a minute and come down to help me. Elisheva complained of stomachache, and I drew the curtains in our room and left her to rest in bed.

I stood and sliced vegetables; the tomatoes were a problem. My father was in the habit of buying crates of cheap vegetables, and the vegetables he bought were often too ripe or not ripe enough. Green tomatoes were easier to bury in a salad than those close to rotting, and that morning, I remember, the slices of tomato drowned in the juices on the board.

•

The tomato. From the point of view of its botanical classification a fruit, and not a vegetable: a flower-bearing dicotyledon, perennial plant of the family Solanaceae, native to tropical America. Thought to have been cultivated already in ancient Peru, but considered poisonous by Europeans who encountered it.

I have a lot more to say on the subject of tomatoes. I even know a song written in their honor, with a refrain which goes: Tomato, tomato / sing high, sing low / the song of the tomato / oh, the song of the tomato.”

I am prepared to sing the song of the tomato. It needs to be sung from the depths of the chest, taking a lot of air. I am also prepared to provide information on the nutritional value of this vegetable-fruit, which would no doubt be of interest to the reader and contribute to the public health.

I’m ready to do a lot of things—to sing, to investigate, to lecture, but apparently I am not yet ready to introduce the serpent. I knew that I would have to prepare myself for his introduction, and now that the time has come, I am not prepared.

Because what I am supposed to say about him—what? And how am I supposed to do it? Should I focus on his body and describe his appearance, so that he’ll come across as a “real person?” Should I mention, to make it more authentic, the cartilage of his gigantic ears? Let’s say this: he was very tall, his long legs were stretched out in front of him, feet clad in moccasins, his one ankle rested on the lower calf of the other leg. He was tall and quite broad-shouldered, and although I thought of him as old, he looked a little like a movie star or some important politician. Not somebody in particular, but somebody. A persona. A persona on vacation, in a jacket with leather elbow patches.

Is that enough? For me it’s definitely enough, and even if it isn’t enough, how the hell am I supposed to remember exactly how he looked to me then, when all my memories are colored by what happened afterward? Am I supposed to fabricate a description of Satan in order to convince you that he exists?

He came. He was there, he sat there in the dining room—all these are facts. And I wondered in my embarrassment whether to wait for my mother or to go up to him and introduce myself, or not to introduce myself and simply to ask in a professional manner if he wanted tea or coffee. In any case the water hadn’t boiled yet.

Is that important? What’s important?

It’s important that he stayed with us for almost six months, and that during this time he raped my sister consistently.

It’s important that after he got her pregnant, he arranged for her to have an abortion and, immediately afterward, when she was still bleeding, he raped her again. He was turned on by the blood. And by her pain. Do I have to go into detail about that too? And why, exactly? In order to justify myself and what I did years later? In order to justify myself do I have to paint a close-up picture of my sister with a tear trickling down her round baby face? Or perhaps I should paint her holding a teddy bear, like in the pictures they publish in the papers to illustrate a story about child abuse? Elisheva didn’t have a teddy bear. She collected make-up and little scent bottles, empty ones too, and she’d left her toys behind her a long time ago.

She actually had chubby cheeks, but at the time in question she suffered from adolescent pimples, which my mother forbade her to squeeze. She never had a lot of pimples, only a few, but for people like Alice it only takes a hint of that yellow pus to spoil the whole picture.

This story can be briefly told, the facts can be summed up as follows: he raped her consistently, but two years passed before she broke down. It happened when she was already in boot camp, and more time passed before she spoke about it, first to her psychologist in the mental hospital, and afterward to us. But up till then her weight gain and all the other symptoms of depression were attributed to her difficulties in school and her fear of the few matriculation exams that she sat for. We found this explanation convenient, and even when the psychologist invited my parents to come in for a joint session, they refused to believe it, at first anyway: my sister was crazy, and crazy people invent all kinds of things. To the important psychologist they said nothing, of course, they only made shocked noises, but I understood that they didn’t believe it and I was the one who had to make them believe.

That’s it, that’s the whole story. Except that after I made them believe it, my mother took off with Digoxin, my father got on a plane to Italy, and I stayed with my sister until I couldn’t stay with her another minute. And that’s really everything.

Really everything?

When my mother came into the dining room, perfectly made up, she introduced me to my uncle immediately: “You haven’t yet met our clever Elinor.”

“Elinor and Elisheva,” he said in his strange accent. “Two daughters. Eli and Eli.” And then, as if playfully, he took my hand and lifted it to his mouth, and fixing me with a colorless stare under half-lidded, he kissed it.