Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (4 page)

When Ruth began to carry out her threat, twisting toward the door and yanking me at it, I straightened. “Okay,” I said, head down to avoid her eyes. I was angry and I was ashamed of my anger. She was my mother: I loved her; she was the god of my universe; to hate her that much was painful and confusing.

I began to cry: choked sobs of thwarted anger and disappointed love. A beautiful cousin—Uncle Harry and Aunt Ceil’s daughter, eleven-year-old Julie—stopped in her progress down the mahogany staircase. Her long straight black hair draped her narrow face, the ends curling inward, nearly touching under her chin. I was ashamed and quickly looked away, but not before a glimpse of her told me she was sympathetic. The quizzical tilt of her head—perhaps it was merely her beauty—convinced me she understood I was the victim of an injustice.

“What’s wrong?” she called down to my mother. Julie had a sweet and yet confident voice. Later, it served her well in business. When she challenged you, there was no challenge in her tone.

“Nothing,” my mother said impatiently. She pulled me to her, covering my face and muffling my tears. “Calm down!” she whispered. But it was an order.

Of course, it was my attempt to quell the anger that brought on hysterical tears. But I accepted her injunction and fought them.

“He can search with me,” Julie said. She finished her descent and walked over. Her alert brown eyes scanned us with curiosity and maybe (perhaps this is a later imposed memory) a hint of condescension.

In any event, at her offer I cried louder. Ruth pressed me tight into the smooth fabric of her skirt. “This is a family discussion. Could we have some privacy, please?” Ruth’s tone was unpleasant.

Julie was brave. She answered in her unchallenging and bold voice: “Well, if you want privacy you’re in the wrong place. This is the foyer,” she added and let go of a short volley of laughter.

“I know this is the foyer,” my mother said, and added sourly, “We’ll get out of everybody’s way.” Being at her brother’s mansion drained Ruth of her sense of humor. She walked me—still hiding in the slippery fabric of her dress—toward the narrow hall where Daniel had disappeared. We moved awkwardly, like a mother-and-son team in a three-legged race. I was coughing at this point, coughing from the tears I had swallowed.

“Calm down,” she said again, this time tenderly. She stopped and rubbed my back.

“I’m trying,” I said in a pathetic way, coughing and choking. At least we were alone in the narrow hall. It was dark. The only light came from two doors leading to adjoining rooms.

“Try a little harder,” she said, but again tenderly. She bent over and kissed my wet cheek.

It occurred to me Daniel might come by any minute. The thought of him witnessing my babyish behavior stopped my tears.

“I want you to understand,” my mother said. To be on my level, she knelt on one knee. Her tone was anguished. She had made me the victim of her dissatisfaction with the world; I could hear, although not comprehend, her regret. “Your uncle has made a lot of money and he thinks that getting money is good. That it shows how smart and great a person is. Well, most geniuses, most of history’s great men, never made any money at all. And they certainly didn’t care about making money. Looking for the
Afikomen
is just supposed to be a fun game—it’s not supposed to be a test. When my father—when Papa used to lead the Seder—” she stopped. I couldn’t see her face that clearly. Besides, I was distracted, furiously wiping away my tears, to remove the evidence should Daniel happen by. Meanwhile, Ruth had reminded herself of a neglected duty. “Come,” she said and took my hand. “We’re going to visit Papa Sam.”

I was leery of seeing Grandfather. I remembered from my visit to Great Neck in December that he was confined to a wheelchair. There wasn’t much substance left to his body, a body that was once, especially for an immigrant from Europe, tall and muscular. Indeed, his athletic figure had been the cause of his initial success in life. At seventeen, Papa Sam was chosen for the Tsar’s personal guard. The men selected for that honor were picked because they would look strong and handsome on state occasions. Papa Sam was the only Jew to wear the bright red uniform with gold buttons and a fur collar. His fellow guardsmen regularly abused him for being a Jew. They would form a circle, put him in the middle, and take turns kicking his legs with their hard-tipped boots while they called him kike. He couldn’t fight back. To resist meant a court martial, and a sentence of at least twenty years’ hard labor, if not death. That was the story he liked to tell about his life. Papa Sam would bring out a photograph of himself in the honor guard uniform, standing at attention in front of a palace, and then show us his scarred shins.

One day Papa Sam informed his colonel that his mother was ill; he asked permission to visit her in the small town of his birth. In fact, the news he had gotten was of her death. He was granted a leave. He walked all the way to Paris and eventually made his way to London, where he met my grandmother. The emigrated through Ellis Island to the United States seven years before my mother was born.

Unfortunately, by the time I met Papa Sam, heart disease had shrunk and warped his tall frame. In December, his big head looked precarious atop a skinny torso that scarcely filled his wheelchair. His bony shoulders were hunched forward; they carved a bowl in his chest. His skin was loose and bloodless; his eyes dull and hopeless; the mouth slack and stupid. He probably smelled as well, but I don’t remember that. In any event, the prospect of going to see Papa Sam didn’t thrill me or compensate me for missing out on the
Afikomen
hunt.

However, this time I was obedient. Ruth led me toward the kitchen. I could see into it. The black women were cleaning and readying the real dessert. The cabinets were closed and there was no sign of Daniel. I heard the hilarity of the grown-up relatives through the service door to the dining room. They were raucous. Some sang, “Chad Gad Ya! Chad Gad Ya!” Others teased the singers about their lack of musicality. My young cousins, of course, raced above, behind, and below—full of their own energy and happiness. Only my mother and I were glum non-participants. Just before we reached the kitchen, Ruth turned into another hallway that was new to me. It led to a short addition to the mansion, built to accommodate Papa Sam and his nurse after my grandmother died. It consisted of two small bedrooms and a bathroom, a kind of motel for the sick old man. During the December visit I had seen him in the living room and I had assumed he lived elsewhere, probably in a hospital, since his nurse looked and behaved like a nurse, with a white uniform and a crabby manner.

Papa Sam was in bed, covered up to his neck, his arms outside the blanket. He appeared mummified. His nurse sat in a chair by the door, reading. Her tensor lamp provided the only light.

“Is he asleep?” my mother asked the nurse in a whisper.

“No …” Papa answered in a groan. He lifted his huge hand—it looked large because his wrist and arm were now so thin—above the plaid blanket and gestured for us to come close. “Is that the Little Gentleman?” he asked.

In the shadows he was a gloomy, dying presence. The nurse got up and turned on his bedside lamp. Its light cast shadows across Papa’s wasted face.

“You remember,” my mother said as we approached. She kissed him on a gaunt cheek. Papa hummed with pleasure at her touch.

“Of course.” I am not reproducing his classic Yiddish intonations and accent. They were very thick. I had to concentrate to understand him, often not realizing what he had said until a few seconds after he spoke. That made me shyer than usual. “You’re the Little Gentleman,” he said, rolling his great head to the side. His lifeless eyes didn’t seem to focus. I wasn’t really sure he could see me. In December he made a speech to my mother that I had always, even as a toddler, been a perfect little gentleman. Ruth explained to me later he was impressed that I had not only sat quietly and listened while the adults talked, but contributed to the conversation. Papa also commented with admiration—the significance of this wasn’t clear to me—that I seemed to be very tall. He was vain about his height and considered mine (I was in fact tall for my age) to be a genetic achievement that was to his credit.

I nodded and looked down. Again I couldn’t meet the eyes of a Rabinowitz elder. I was scared by the old man’s physical deterioration. And, as professionals among my readers already realize, I was no more of a Little Gentleman than any eight-year-old. The polite role I had once played accidentally seemed too difficult to repeat on purpose.

“We just wanted to say hello. We’ll let you go back to sleep,” my mother said.

“No!” Papa croaked with as much energy as he could. “I can’t sleep. Stay and talk for a little.”

I kept my head down, staring at the carpet. I wasn’t seeing it, however. I pictured Daniel, standing on a stool, reaching with glee into the kitchen cabinet to find the
Afikomen.
,

“How are you?” my mother asked.

“I can’t
get
a breath.” He made a gurgling sound in his lungs, whether to illustrate or involuntarily, I didn’t know. He sounded bad. Death was in the room with us; I felt my mother’s dread in her moist hand.

“You relax, Daddy. Don’t exert yourself.” Ruth talked softly over my head to the nurse. “Would you like to take a break? We can stay here until you come back. Is that all right, Papa?”

“Sure,” he said.

“All right. Thank you, ma‘am. I could use a cup of coffee.” The nurse’s voice was loud. She wasn’t afraid of the implacable presence waiting to take my grandfather. “I’ll come back in fifteen minutes?” she asked.

“Take your time,” my mother said. And yet she was uneasy; I heard tension in her voice. The nurse left quickly, as if worried that Ruth might change her mind.

“Fifteen minutes is probably all I’ve got,” Papa said and tried to laugh. The strangled whine he made sounded like a balloon leaking. It raised my eyes from the carpet. Papa’s face turned a strange color, not red or white, a sort of greenish pallor. He struggled to quell something and ended up coughing. “That’ll teach me not to make jokes. So where’s your handsome husband?” he said in a hoarse voice. Papa sounded relaxed. He seemed to feel no bitterness about his condition. At the time I didn’t know his attitude was exceptional. Perhaps he had avoided so much death during his life—the Tsar’s punishment for desertion; America’s Depression; Europe’s Holocaust; and three attacks from his own heart—that this peaceful finish seemed to be good fortune. Anyway, I never forgot his pleasant humor and bravery.

“He’s still working on his book,” my mother said.

“His book? About that guy with the beard in Havana?”

My mother smiled. I did too. It was amusing to hear the great Fidel, a man who was spoken of by my father as the embodiment of strength and virtue—the bull whom all the women of Cuba wanted to, or had, slept with; the gourmand who ate a dozen eggs for breakfast; the military genius who had defeated a dictator’s army with a band of untrained peasants; the Cicero who could hold a nation rapt for three-hour speeches; the Cuban George Washington and Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson all wrapped into one—to hear him called (in a Yiddish accent) the guy with the beard was funny. “That’s the one,” she said. “Fidel Castro.”

“He likes cigars, too,” Papa said. His dull eyes were on me; the blank look of a blind man. “Like Groucho,” he added. “Think maybe Castro is Jewish? Sephardic? Could be. Now that would be something to write about. You know there are people in Spain—” He stopped. The punctured balloon whined again. His white color changed to green and he coughed.

“Relax, Papa,” my mother said nervously. She reached out to touch the plaid blanket covering her father’s chest. It trembled with each cough.

“Can’t—” he said. The green changed to a duskier color—purple. “Can’t—” he tried to say again. He looked as if he were being flooded with blood under the skin, drowning from the inside out.

“Get the nurse,” Ruth said to me. Then she changed her mind. “Wait,” she said, holding my arm. I don’t know if she saw fear on my face. Perhaps it wasn’t what she saw; she could have realized an eight-year-old was a poor emissary. Leaving me alone with the sick man wasn’t acceptable either. Both choices were bad. She decided not to spare me, but to find help for her father as quickly as possible. “I’ll get her. Stay with Papa,” she said and ran out before I had a chance to react.

I was alone with a dying man. Grandfather couldn’t produce any sound other than a gurgling struggle to speak. His eyes were wild with fear. He reached for his constricted throat and pulled at the invisible strangler’s grip.

His chest jerked as if he were being electrocuted. I put my hand on top of the plaid blanket, at the epicenter of his torsos earthquake. I didn’t look at his choked face. I stared at my hand and thought very hard:
Get better, Papa.
I wished for a healing bolt to flow through my arms and into my palm; I willed it to soothe Papa’s wounded chest.
Get better, Papa,
I thought, beaming the magic power, wishing with all my heart to heal him.

After a moment, Papa’s hands covered mine. The long bones of his fingers, although they looked fragile, pressed down hard on my palm.

Get better,
I sung silently to his hand.

Papa pushed harder and harder on my little hand. I was horrified at what he was doing. I thought he was going to push it right through his chest. I pictured my fingers falling inside and touching his blood and heart and my vague idea of what else would be inside a human being. And then he released the pressure.

“Oh, that’s better,” he said in a clearer voice than I had yet heard from him.

The nurse, my mother, and Uncle Bernie appeared. I looked at my grandfather. His skin was back to normal. His eyes were no longer dead; they shined at me. And he continued to hold my hand against his chest; but now lightly, the way someone would caress a favorite object.

The adults fussed and questioned him.

“I was dying and the Little Gentleman saved me,” Papa said, but in a lilting, jocular intonation.