Unspeakable Things (2 page)

“A friend,” replied the man. He looked at Herbert, shook his head once in warning, and disappeared again.

From then on, Herbert never asked. “Thank you, my friend,” was all he said, receiving these infrequent letters. Herbert smoothed out the crumpled paper and tried to figure out why, after all these years, Anna had decided to play chess again.

At night, Herbert held Anna’s letters up to a candle to decipher if there were an invisible message beneath her spidery inked scrawl of numbers and letters. But there was none, just the chess game, the continuation of their adolescent passion shared.

There was very little else in the Rat’s letters. The Rat had always included paragraphs in numerous languages, not forgetting Esperanto. The correspondence between Herbert and Anna had always included at least one passage in Esperanto. It had been Herbert’s idea, one summer vacation together, that all the cousins should learn Esperanto. He assured the others that a universal language, in this case Esperanto, would eventually transform mankind’s ability to communicate and thereby bring about world peace. Herbert and his brother, as well as the Rat and the Rat’s sister, seized upon this idea enthusiastically, and for a while Esperanto became their private communication, especially during mealtimes with the families.

Then, years later, Herbert, for a time, gave lessons in Esperanto, zealous in his efforts to promote this universal language. He lectured and wrote in the newspapers on language and brotherhood; and this continued to be an interest long after he had entered government service. But German, Hungarian, Russian, and French had all proved more useful. Herbert had used his abilities in language to learn a bit of Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian; his tongue twisted around these savage sounds. Somehow, in the clash of nations, Esperanto was, if not forgotten, at least put aside.

Herbert’s wife, Adeline, had not showed the slightest interest in all these language studies. For her, music was the only language she paid attention to. She sat at the piano, in a white dress, at dusk, and played the flowers to sleep in the garden outside. Herbert could not interest Adeline in reading; she felt literature too far removed from the real life of feeling. Adeline had been so beautiful, Herbert remembered. Yet, perhaps slightly…silly, Herbert had to admit. But it was her silliness he loved, after all. It was befitting in a woman. Or so he had thought at first. Later he had become a bit impatient with it, but in the beginning of their relationship he had found it charming. Yet, he would perhaps have preferred to spend more time with the little Rat, to pass happy hours in conversation, sharing love of books, of ideas, of chess. But this was not to be.

“J’arrive!”
Now, in the library, Herbert reread those last words. “Expect me! I arrive before you know it.”

At that moment, both Maria and Philip, Herbert’s grandchildren, who had been sitting so patiently beside their grandfather, began to twitch uncontrollably. Maria smoothed her dress again and again as Philip opened his mouth in a wide yawn and began to howl at the top of his voice. Maria roused herself out of her seeming passivity to cry anxiously. “Stop it! Stop it, Philip. Immediately, do you hear? Stop it!” But Philip did not stop; he was just warming up for an operatic yowl.

Herbert looked anxiously around him. “Ach, little ones, little ones,” he said, reproving them gently as he put Anna’s letter in his waistcoat pocket.

Most annoying, Maria’s grandfather was refusing to pay attention to her. Maria pulled on his sleeve, irritated. “I’m bored,” she complained. “Grandfather, I’m bored.” Her grandfather appeared not to hear. “I’m tired of waiting here.” She let her voice rise to a little whine, just loud enough to disturb the soft whispers about them in the library.

Her grandfather appeared to shake himself out of his reverie for a moment, long enough to look at her and pronounce in an automatic and authoritarian voice, “Show me a bored child, and I’ll show you a lazy child.”

With slightly more compassion, he patted her, but he still seemed abstracted. He softened, realizing it must be hard for the children always to wait here. Still, there was no place else for them to be.

“A bored child is a lazy child,” he repeated more kindly. “Is that not true,
Liebchen
? Now surely you must have something to do. Where is that book you were reading?”

“I’m tired of reading.”

In the half-light of the library, far down the corridors and in the reading room, elderly anxious faces turned away from books and newspapers toward the commotion and clamor of Herbert’s grandchildren.

Maria, in a frenzy of anger, reached over and yanked Philip’s hair. “Shut up!” she hissed at him. This had the effect of making Philip yell even louder.

“Children,” Herbert clucked helplessly, reaching into a pocket for two shriveled candied violets with which to pacify the children. But the proffered candies did no good: both children were squirming uncontrollably. The waiting gray heads looked toward Herbert and the children pityingly. Herbert was intensely embarrassed. In response, he closed his eyes, letting himself lapse into a delicious torpor, almost sleep. He pushed the noise of children far away, time for his nap.

But somewhere behind him, Herbert sensed a commotion, a reverberation of confusion that shattered his dream state. The light in the library fractured into shards, as if the noise of fingernails on a blackboard had cracked it. There was the sound of scuffling somewhere, perhaps in the stacks, and then protesting, muffled shrieks.

In answer to that, Maria leaped to her feet. “Grandfather,” she commanded, “stand up. Something is happening.” She reached over and raised little Philip to his feet beside her. Philip, surprised, stopped crying, stuck in mid-yowl.

Near them, the sounds of more scuffling. Herbert still tried to feign sleep. He tried to block out the sounds of a struggle and then, almost beside him, the faint sounds of terrified squeaks. “Grandfather!” Maria pulled at his coat. Herbert reluctantly opened his eyes.

At his feet, as if hastily deposited there, lay a small dusty bundle. But this bundle was shaking; this bundle was alive. Herbert looked more closely. The bundle opened its small dark eyes, eyes that suddenly welled with tears and, as suddenly, with laughter. Could it be? “Anna?” he asked falteringly.

“Yes, my dear Herbert. You see,
‘J’arrive.’
I have arrived! I am here.” The creature closed its eyes again, but the long, pointy nose quivered as tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. The whiskers swayed, catching the tears; three long whiskers, now gone completely white.

“Anna?” Herbert bent down and raised the bundle to its feet. “Oh, my little Rat, but what have they done to you?”

“
J’arrive. Je suis ici.
I have arrived,” whispered Anna, clinging to his arm.

“My little Rat.” Herbert cradled her, surprised. The pointy little face looked up at him.

“Oh, Herbert, do not worry. I am here now; that is what matters.”

“My dear friend.” Herbert wondered how he would cope with this surprise.

Anna’s face took in his wonderingly. She passed a tiny hand over his cheek, as if in disbelief. Then she peered at the children, who, suddenly silenced, stood watching. “And these?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Herbert. “These are David’s children. My grandchildren.”

“Children?” Anna breathed.

“Yes. This is Maria, and this is Philip.” Herbert put his arm around the two children, who stood stock-still, staring at the creature beside their grandfather.

“Dear, dear children,” Anna said. The children stared.

The Rat was tiny, no doubt the smallest woman Maria had ever seen; smaller than Maria herself. Anna, now completely bent over at right angles to the ground, twisted in a grimace of shoulder and torso as she took in the presence of the grandchildren.

Maria looked back into the face of the creature, the curved, eager mouth fringed by three long white whiskers. The huge dark eyes peered damply, red-rimmed, through spectacles. Anna’s eager face strained to penetrate the heart of the onlooker. Maria was fascinated, and immediately she fell in love, although she did not know what that felt like. She could not look away from the Rat’s face and little body.

“They call me the Rat,” Anna said, presenting her hand, unsteady and shaking, to each child in turn. Philip did not utter a word. Maria took the Rat’s hand, and curtsied, as she had been taught, quickly and respectfully. “Yes,” Anna continued. “Do you not think I look a little bit like a little Rat?”

Maria did not dare answer in the affirmative, for fear of offending the creature. Grown-ups sometimes joked, but they did not expect you to joke back.

The little Rat was by now so deformed that her spine resembled that of a shrimp, curved and curled onto itself, more than it did that of a rat. Maria stared at the long whiskers curving out of the mole near the Rat’s nose. The dark red-rimmed eyes smiled kindly. These eyes were ringed with deep circles, the small face grooved with these dark bruised lines. “Yes, these circles are new,” Anna said with a sigh, as if divining the child’s perceptions.

“My dear little Anna,” said Herbert, finally finding his voice.

“It does not matter,” the Rat replied, smiling through tears and patting his arm.

“And your hair?” Herbert marveled. “It has gone completely white.”

“Yes,” said Anna simply. “It turned white overnight. Suddenly. From shock.” She looked at Herbert sadly. “But we will not speak of that now,” she said. “Now we speak only of our happiness in being together, my dear friend.”

“Come, children,” Herbert said suddenly, commanding them. In one quick motion, he bent down and picked up the little Rat in his arms. She wrapped her ragged blanket around her shrunken body as Herbert swooped her up. How small she was. Her little body lay in his arms without weight. He felt the sharp curve of her spine, and gently, almost absently, he ran his fingers over it. His fingers remembered the shape of her body, and his own echoed with memories of desire.

“My dear Herbert, where are you taking me?” she asked. A cloud of dust motes rose around her clothes and hung in the air of the library, turning golden in the late-afternoon sun that slanted into the reading room.

“I am taking you back home with me,” replied Herbert firmly as he walked slowly, carrying the little Rat in his arms, toward the large entrance doors. “Come, children.” He did not turn around to see if they were following, for, as usual, he expected and usually got total obedience from them. Maria took Philip’s hand, and the two children, fascinated, followed Herbert and Anna toward the door. “David’s wife is a good woman,” Herbert said to Anna. “You will stay with us.”

“But, Herbert, are you sure?” Anna asked. Herbert didn’t answer; he was not sure of anything.

“How did you find me?” Herbert was asking the little Rat as he carried her, weightless, shrunk into a third of herself, in his arms through the streets. He bore her ceremonially, draped across his own body. The children followed, trying to catch the words of the older couple.

“It was not a problem, finally,” said Anna. “You have friends. Perhaps I have the same friends. It does not do to look too closely at such matters.”

Herbert nodded yes. He was becoming resigned to yet another burden.

“What matters is that they brought me to you.” Anna sighed, giving herself up to the luxury of being cradled, carried like a child, to some unknown destination. She closed her eyes and seemed to fall into a soft trance, assuaged at the end of a long journey.

“Sleep, sleep, my dear little Rat,” Herbert whispered. His heart swelled.

Maria caressed Philip’s hand. “My dear little brother,” she thought. She had rarely felt so tender toward him.

When they reached the apartment building, they walked past the inquisitive eyes of Shirley, the elevator operator, who closed the iron grating once they had entered. “Evening, Professor,” did not require an answer.

They walked into the little room on the top floor. Maria’s mother looked up as they entered the small room that was home. She straightened, wiping her hands on her apron. She had been peeling potatoes, and the brown rinds lay next to the glowing globes, white knobs of potato bones in the half-light. Herbert set Anna down; she tottered feebly, then straightened herself as best she could to her bent-shrimp position. The Rat looked upward, a tremulous, unsure half smile on her face. The children’s mother looked back intently. Then she extended her hands to the older woman, drew her close, and, putting her arms around her shoulders, led her to a chair.

“So it is decided, then?” asked Herbert, looking at his daughter-in-law.

“Yes, Papa. It is decided. It is fine.” Ilse looked into the face of the Rat.

“Good.” Herbert said.
“Danke schön,”
he added quietly, so that only the air around him heard.

“You will share the daughter’s bed,” said Ilse. Maria looked up sharply, her lips parted. But something in her mother’s eyes stopped her.

“Thank you,” whispered the Rat. She turned her head painfully, so her eyes met those of the girl. “Thank you, child.” So it was decided, and Maria stifled her hot protest.

N
ew York, New York.
City of Dreams. New York, like a brace of trumpets, welcomed them. Received all of them, the immigrants. They poured into her huge maw just as the steam poured out of the smokestacks of the large ships that had brought them there. New York, City of Welcome. The trumpets screamed in unison, held to the large smiling mouths of sweating musicians. The sailors sweated in the engine rooms of the large ungainly steamships. New York, City of Refuge. New York, City of Hope. The strident avenues streaked across the city, silver: fiery arrows like long, bright sounds, almost too much for the ear to bear. And still the band played. Louder. More volume. New York, and the gleaming saxophones entered in chorus. New York. And now the trumpets rose to a wail, a cry of pain, and the saxophones sang of darker things. Sadness. Nostalgia. New York, City of Dreams Left Behind.
New York.

The great ships drew into the harbor, parting a dark veil of raindrops to reveal Miss Liberty, a pigeon on her head. A strange language, sounding to the ears of the strangers like the guttural barking of dogs. Across the water, uptown and downtown, in the gleaming cathedral city, Manhattan, the jarring music lured. New York. Like a faraway walled city of many oblique castles. As in medieval times, there were the lords of the manor, whisked away silently in great soft cars. And there were the serfs, toiling in the streets, to be seen behind the quick, frightened, averted eyes, behind the racks of clothing wheeled through the open air, or, if lucky, behind the wheels of taxis, cunning, swift, opinionated, serfs nevertheless.

The winds swept, merciless, about this city. Like the knife-sharp notes of a clarinet, rising with authority above the insistent throbbing bass notes of everyday street life. The wind pierced the thin bodies of the immigrants. But here, unlike in their native Europe, the skies were blue and clear. The sun shone, jabbing at them through the cold. Snow fell on the city, and for a brief time the snow sparkled in clean light. The sky was blue as a cantata. There was some rain, of course, but never the low skies of Germany or Austria or Russia or Poland.

The immigrants sighed for the gray deceiving light of their native lands. They longed for the cloak of darkness. They had gotten into the habit of scheming. Underground life, in a certain way, suited them. They were not fit for such direct light. New York fixed its pitiless gaze on their struggles and laughed.

But they were to retain their habits of secrecy. Clutching their worn coats about them, those coats of what had once been “good tweed,” they huddled, heads averted, through the city’s arrowed streets, hiding their eyes from this cold, this wind, this all-seeing sky and sun. How could it be so cold and yet so blue? “Blue, blue, blue,” sang the black musicians up in Harlem. But blue was different there: a smoky, aching, shadow sort of blue.

Each week, the ships came into the harbor, disgorging the crippled remains of Europe, already charred, or at least forever marked. “Bring me your huddled masses,” Miss Liberty had cried. And so they came. But for many of them, it was too late. Too late to join the concert of trumpets, too late for joy. They feared these bright Americans, with their “Can do” and “Will do” and easy self-assurance and “How do you do” and their too-open gaze. They crept, half-broken, onto the terrain that was New York and wanted only to rest.

But New York moved quickly. How could one rest? And where? The immigrants shuffled along as best they could behind the city’s optimistic rhythms, searching the darkest corners, that stubborn, dear, familiar darkness, in which to hide.

The immigrants pulled their coats more tightly about their protesting bodies. The coats were worn, but the wool was strong as steel. What once had been soft was now a rigid woven fabric of determination. Though the teasing New York wind found its way into the garments, the immigrants held on to their European values. Their belief in the triumph of humanitarianism, all those examinations of ethics came into play as they attempted to find meaning in suffering. All that education, all that philosophy and music and history and culture: this was what would hold them upright now.

“Baby, I been missing you,” moaned the cheerful musicians uptown. “Oh baby, I’s so blue.” The instruments wheedled and chorused, while the smoke of nightclubs wreathed around their heads. A shaft of early-morning sunlight illuminated the smoke for a moment. “Baby, I been missing you.”

The trains ran through New York, crisscrossing with a wet, nostalgic sound. The traffic poured endlessly through the streets. Impatient, the dark horns of taxis hooted next to the horns of the great ships, swinging into and out of the harbor. And the horns of Harlem played; the music was picking up. Europe seemed far away.

But even while buses rushed through the streets, there was a war going on. America was in it, too. Too late. The immigrants bent their baffled heads and tried to find their way. They had much to tell, no one to tell it to. But for now, that didn’t matter. They tried to get on with their lives.

New York, New York, City of Light. The Great White Way, the waste of light. All that light. The immigrants sought a cool refreshment, shadow, which they knew and loved. The museums. The Public Library. The dark recesses of the smallest, poorest cafeterias. The darkened rooms, unheated, of the tenements. If they were lucky, they found work. Somewhere, in a room without light. Anywhere.

So Herbert, too, king mole of all the moles, had found his shadow space in which to operate. The Automat. The New York Public Library, a hushed, dark place where one could conduct one’s business in whispers.

Wherever he was, Herbert conducted his business. It was like an inflexible dance, which he must dance until he dropped from exhaustion. And even beyond that.

“May I have this dance?” Herbert waited and received his partners. Heads bent, their walk not a dance but a maimed shuffle, the refugees petitioned for favors. They fell at his feet; they slumped to their knees; they kissed his ring. Herbert tried to avoid, in a self-deprecating way, these attentions. The refugees looked directly into his eyes, and he saw in theirs a will that he do what they wished. He could only submit. “I am your servant,” he said, comforting them. “I am at your service.” A long, slow dance, with no lack of partners cutting in and out. “I will do what I can,” he promised again, and he did.

Herbert kept no records, no written files on his work. He relied on his memory, his good word, and the promises of others. Nothing was ever to be found in writing on anything he undertook. When he died, it would be to leave behind only a few notes on Esperanto, a few old books on chess moves, and a small heap of shiny dust, glittering like gold powder: like flakes of himself, shavings of dandruff or halo dust about his shoulders. Just a small shiny heap on the bed where he had floated, scheming.

Herbert’s partners clutched him desperately, dictating the pace and turning in one direction only, inexorably counterclockwise—that is to say, against the clock. He could not persuade them otherwise. He did not know any other steps.

But uptown, elsewhere in New York, the city throbbed with its own beat. The Two-Step, the Chicken, the Turkey, the Herky-Jerky, the Fox-Trot, the Charleston. Disjointed syncopation: new steps invented every day. The dancers, their faces like the masks of grinning animals, bobbed and pouted in their atavistic rituals. Forgetfulness was the name of the dance in New York, waiting to celebrate itself in all its brash optimism. The Yanks were here; the Yanks would do the job. Watch out, Hitler! Watch out, world!

The trumpets blared in their loud promise. Nothing was subtle about New York, nothing.

The sailors, the soldiers, the girls, the coupling, the smoky blues, all cried of entitlement, an arrogance and happiness and optimism untouched by the kinds of losses the immigrants had lived with for centuries. On the stoops of tenements, old men sat uselessly, watching this strange new American race. Old women, and young ones, too, sad and dark-eyed, graven into headstones of themselves, watched with weariness, put down or picked up sewing, then put it down again, wondering. How would they survive such a harsh, bright light?

Dusk was the hardest time. When the diamond lights went on in the big jagged city, when the bluish haze of smoke and evening came down from its perch somewhere up in the sky and curled itself around the avenues, New York began to come alive. A city of night, of jazz, of sound, both comforting and inexpressibly lonely, all at the same time. Hope and despair—loss of a girl, perhaps, or of love. This was jazz.

The immigrants thought of their other losses, all of them—everything lost. For them, dusk was a time of grief, no mocking gaiety to underscore, no irony. Maria, with her grandfather and little brother, after a day at the Public Library, saw the spirit of the city about her. People were moving happily, hopefully, going somewhere. But they were going to the makeshift little room where other people’s pasts would always seem more real than any present moment she might ever choose to live.

Always the past, with its stately progression of dances. The formal waltz, partners held in a pattern of arms and posture that might have contained them all their lives had not history happened. Passions so carefully contained that the merest flicker of a shadow was seen in its most significant perspective. The sun slanting toward autumn in the garden, a glance exchanged, a pressure of hands. A knock on the door. A few discreet words—“Herr Hofrat…”—whispered. There were warnings everywhere, if one could but hear them carefully. Herbert had gotten the family out of Europe just in time. All but Michael.

He had not properly understood the whispered warnings. Never imagined they could be for him. It was David who had understood them finally, poor shabby David, made for the real world in ways the rest of the family was not. “Herr Hofrat, if you know what is good for you, you will…” Eventually, Herbert accepted.

Now he had gotten them into a dance that would never end. A strange dance in a strange city, too fast for them all. The dancers shuffled slowly, pausing to lean and gasp for breath. They would be lucky if Herbert could find jobs for them all, a place to live, papers, false if necessary. Their dance was more of a dirgelike shuffle.

Still, as long as there is life, there is the dance. Though the immigrants kept to their stately formal waltzes, their grandchildren might one day dance to the new rhythms in what would be a revival of jazz. But the first two generations had to live out their lives still in desperate partnership, not quite believing they were in a new place.

In their minds, they would be always young, turning and spinning slowly under the flicker of candles, holding one another at arm’s length, the women’s white shoulders, the gleam of flowers and eyes and hair, the crackle and gossip of a delightfully scandalized city, Vienna, bourgeois, staid, stuffy, and malicious. The Viennese Waltz—Vienna had even given its name to the form of the dance. The music gathered, the string players hummed along with their instruments, and the city rustled with the sounds of the dance. Only David, Herbert’s son, who worked as a decoder in Washington, D.C., sat outside its skirted circle, still bent over the chessboard in the garden, still trying miserably to figure it all out, decode, decipher, live up to his father’s expectations.

So it was that he had heard the warning voices, figured out what was going to happen to them all much before it did. But no one would listen to him. Not for the longest time. They were all too busy dancing.

And what had Herbert had to pay to get them all out of Europe, a Europe in flames? Herbert had given: his house in Vienna, his garden, his wife’s jewels, the summerhouse by the seaside. He had given his bank accounts, all of them. His furniture, his large office on the top floor of the building that housed the Ministry, his library. He gave up his language; he gave up his wife’s sanity; he gave up his profession, and that of his older son, David, and his son’s wife, Ilse. Ilse, who could have safely stayed behind.

And finally, when there was nothing else left to give, he gave up his younger son, paying for their escape with sacrificial blood. The boy was laid on the altar of escape. (Bless me,
bless me,
oh Lord.) With one resolute motion, Herbert slit his second son’s throat. Michael thrashed against the doors of his own death, the boxcar carrying him away forever. Why, why? Adeline stared into Herbert’s eyes, the last look of comprehension flaring and then, horrified, dying forever. “Forgive me,” Herbert pleaded silently. The rest of the family was permitted to leave.

“Father, I forgive you!” But it was too late. Herbert paid.