Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (20 page)

The plot recovered with the reappearance of Josef on the deck of a ship that was taking both my parents to Canada. Here he was, Josef Levitsky himself, sitting on a folding chair, staring out to sea, a blanket around his shoulders. A shadow of what he’d been, the life drained out of him, but alive nevertheless. And still young, after all; only thirty-two. He’d spent nine years working at a resort in Sweden—
nine years we wasted not knowing we both were living—
until the owners decided to relocate to Canada and suggested my father come with them.

My mother rarely mentioned her post-war years in Europe, though I gathered she worked as a dressmaker and waited for missing relatives to show up. At some point Mrs. Blustein came into her life, initially as a customer, and encouraged my mother to join her in applying for a Canadian immigration visa. She was Irma Zimmer back then; her cousins had moved to Montreal years earlier, and they wrote long letters that made her envious. They described toilet seats covered in pink fur, long hot showers, carpets, time-saving kitchen appliances, television … the list went on and on. It wasn’t only a question of comfort: Canada was safer, it didn’t matter if you were Jewish or Zulu, and there would be more eligible men to choose from. And who knew when Canada would change its mind about taking in immigrants, and revert to its wartime policy? My mother and Irma received their visas in time to board the ship that, as if by divine intervention, was also transporting my father and his Swedish friends to Halifax.

For several days my mother stalked my father with reminiscences and, fortunately for me, my father lived long enough to humour my mother, whose ecstatic agenda included marriage and a child. She managed to find a rabbi among the travellers. At first he protested: no, no, he wasn’t a rabbi, he believed in nothing, he hated God. The passengers insisted: everyone remembers you, you can’t hide.

Sullenly, the man followed them to my father’s cabin. My father sat on the bed in the tiny cabin and my mother stood beside him, beaming. Ten witnesses had somehow squeezed in as well, or at least peeked in through the doorway. A Hungarian who was a stickler for proper procedure handed my mother a kerchief and a skullcap. My mother tossed the head coverings back with a laugh, and quickly, to avoid an argument, the rabbi muttered a few words. My father repeated them—and there! My parents were married. A bottle of wine appeared, toasts were made.

Six days later a virus, or maybe food poisoning, struck the ship. The passengers, who had barely recovered from a turbulent storm the previous week, lay in their beds groaning. My father knew this was the end for him and, according to my mother, didn’t much care. He’d asked himself why he’d bothered holding on, for as far as he knew, his entire family—parents, sisters, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts—had been killed. “It’s my time,” he told my mother. “I can leave at last. I’m no use anyway.”

My mother begged him to take a more optimistic view. Her efforts were futile; in the early hours of the morning, my father died. The rabbi was summoned again. This time he was adamant. Locked himself in his cabin, refused to come out. The Hungarian would have to do: he’d studied to be a rabbi and would have been ordained if not for the war. The required prayers were chanted, and my father, hidden inside sheets, was sent sliding down to the depths of the ocean. His body, weighted down with a heavy object, sank at once. His body, which was neither tall nor short, only devoid of life.
Those are pearls that were his eyes
.

On the third day of my bed-in, nightmares worse than any worm museum struck me like a Passover plague. In the nightmares I was aware that I was dreaming, and because I was dreaming I knew that anything could happen—inanimate objects could speak, the floor could crumble under my feet, a door could open onto a brick wall. Terrifying events lurked ahead, and then the things I was afraid of began to happen—sometimes in wild succession—and I would try
desperately to wake up, I would try to locate my body in my bed, in my room, so I could wake, but I couldn’t do it, and with every failed effort the terror increased. When I managed, somehow, to emerge from sleep, I couldn’t shake off the fear. I kept the lights on, and the radio, I tried to read novels to take my mind off my fear and so I wouldn’t fall asleep, but sleep tugged at me; it was as if I’d been drugged, and my eyes grew heavier with every word. As soon as I shut them, the nightmares returned.

My mother’s catastrophe meter went haywire. Luckily she had to work, and I had long breaks from her fidgety attentions. When she was away, Bubby took over, brought me meals on a borrowed trolley, straightened my blankets. Then my mother would come home, brimming with new ideas about what might be wrong with me. Possibly I was exhibiting the first stages of anemia, or maybe it was the Generation Gap that had turned me against society. I tried to stay awake as she expounded on her theories, but my nightmares reached out for me like the Hydra, and my mother’s voice became another horrifically transformed fragment of the real world.

I’d been in this purgatorial state for a week when Sheila showed up. She didn’t bother to call—she simply rang the doorbell and let herself in.

In a single, elegant motion Sheila sank down cross-legged on the carpet next to my bed, retrieved cigarette paper and marijuana from a leather pouch, and began rolling a joint. She was aiming for decadent chic, with her wine-red crushed-velvet skirt, dancer’s leotard, and long hair that fell down her face as if she’d just woken up and who knew where or with whom. But her oval face and refined features were more reminiscent of a da Vinci saint than a turned-on, tuned-in dropout.

Sheila took a drag from the joint, and we both peered at the thin, spiralling smoke that promised so much.

“Want?” she offered.

“No, thanks,” I said, falling back onto the pillow and pulling the blanket up to my chin. “You know I don’t like to get high.”

“Remind me why?”

“It’s all I need,” I said. “Have you met my mother?”

She turned on the radio. Joe Cocker was getting by with a little help from his friends, and from a new arrangement. He started off on his throaty own, and then suddenly there they all were: the organs and guitar and backup singers.

“I saw Joe Cocker,” Sheila said. “I was really close to the stage—I could actually see him. It made you realize, Woodstock, how easy it would be to brainwash the masses. Everyone was zonked.”

“I’m trying to stay awake,” I said. “If I drift off, shake me, okay? I’m having these crazy nightmares. Promise to shake me awake.”

“Okay.”

“How are you?” I asked her.

“Everyone thinks happiness is so important,” she said, shutting her eyes. “People think joy and happiness are important.”

My mother knocked on the door, entered with a tray. Kasha and bowties, canned green beans, fried potatoes.

“Thanks, man,” Sheila said, and my mother glanced at her hopefully.

—such a smell here—
she began but thought better of it and retreated. There were rare moments when my mother had tact.

“Another case,” Sheila said. “We’re surrounded by the living dead. One foot in hell, one foot here. My own parents give me the creeps.”

“I always meant to ask you, Sheila,” I said. “That leotard—what happens when you have to go to the bathroom?”

“Yeah, it’s not too practical.”

“You know, I never knew, until last summer, that men had so much hair down there—just like women. I was shocked. I thought women had the hair, men had the floppy appendage.”

“How could you not know?”

“How would I? You can’t tell from a sculpture, and you don’t really get a lot of male nudes in paintings. It’s hard to paint a nude
guy, for some reason—maybe because you can’t hide anything. It’s either you see it or you have to cover it.”

“Well, how did you find out?” she asked, taking a long drag. “Since obviously not by getting laid.”

“I saw
Women in Love
,” I said. “Alan Bates running through the forest. I was totally shocked. I still can’t believe it.”

“Well, congratulations. Now you have information you’ll never need, as far as I can tell. What’s with you and Rosie, by the way? Are you mad at her?”

“No, of course not.”

“She said you wouldn’t come to the phone when she called. I thought maybe you had a fight.”

“I’m just not in the mood to talk to anyone.”

“She’s a mess too, you know. She’s living in a dream.”

“It’s a nice dream ... ”I said.

“God, you sound wistful. I never heard anyone actually sound wistful. Well, dreams are fine as long as you know where you really are. Does Rosie know? I doubt it.”

“She knows. She just doesn’t always let on.”

“I guess you know her better than I do.”

“Sometimes I’m sure I know her, and then suddenly I think I don’t know her at all. It’s scary, when that happens. When things suddenly change even though they’re standing perfectly still.”

“Is that what brought this on? Realizing we know fuck all?”

“No, nothing like that … I wish my father hadn’t died.”

“Yeah, that’s the pits.”

“And on the darker side,” the radio DJ cooed. Radio announcers had stopped being perky and upbeat. Now they had to sound semiconscious. “Let’s have some ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”

“Altamont, what a bummer,” Sheila said, shaking her head. “Evil is never good. Evil is evil, good is good.” She stretched out on her back and held up a tiny pasta bowtie. “Kasha—dry, absolutely tasteless, with the texture of animal feed. They only ate this back in the shtetl because it was so fucking cheap. And now we’re stuck with it!”

“It’s not so bad with fried onions,” I said, and Sheila came as close as she ever did to laughing—a soft chuckle accompanied by a wary smile.

“Fried onions, the solution to everything. It’s the first thing I do,” she said, “no matter what I’m cooking—fry an onion.”

“I wish I could cook. My mother won’t let me. She won’t let me do anything—I’m not even allowed to change a light bulb.”

“Yeah, well—she lost everything, she wants to make up for it by giving you everything.”

“It just makes me feel guilty.”

“I wish I had that problem. I wish I had something to feel guilty about. I’m like a slave at home. Listen, Maya, you’re going to have to come back sooner or later. You can’t lock yourself up here forever.”

“Are you going to university?” I asked.

“Why not? Nothing else to do. And you?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, you don’t want to stay in your mother’s house forever. Think about it. Think, Maya!”

“What will you study?” I wasn’t sure she’d hear me; my voice was so low I could barely hear it myself.

“Education. I want to be a teacher. Long vacations—and, you know, everyone looking up to you, believing whatever you tell them. You’re the boss.”

“I’m tired. Even chewing is an effort!”

“You can’t always get what you want. You’re living like a nun here, man. No dope, no sex, what a downer. You should read Rollo May.”

“Remember I washed your underwear at camp?”

“God, don’t remind me! I was so hung up! The effects of growing up in the Middle Ages. You were the exact opposite. So open and free. Though maybe now we’ve changed places, is that possible?” She stubbed out her joint, dropped what was left of it into her little pouch, and began picking at the kasha and potatoes. “Aren’t you eating?” she asked.

“I’ll eat later,” I said. “You can have mine, if you’re hungry. You’re way too thin … What’s happening at school?”

“Oh, nothing. Dvora moping over that Carlos guy. Alan said the Dust Bowl was when all the dishes got dusty. The usual.”

“I’m not going back to school.”

“You have to graduate, you have to go to university. You dig art, why not go into art history? You could work at a museum, or you could teach like me. Spread your wings.”

“No, I can’t do it.”

“Why? You’re smart, you’re together. So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen,” Sheila said. “I could show you a couple of things. Do you want me to?”

“Show me what?”

“You know, sex.”

“Oh! That’s okay, Sheila. Thanks, though. You’re very nice to me. I’m just not … I’m not … what’s the word? I’m not…”

“Brave?”

“Yes, that’s it. I’m not brave enough. I’m going to stay here for now. Sheila?”

“Mmm.”

“I’ve been having such nightmares. I can’t get rid of them.”

“You mean like Nazis chasing you? I get those all the time.”

“No, no, nothing like that. No, it’s more like objects start talking—or animals, or babies—and then anything can happen and I can’t wake up. I know I’m dreaming, and I try to wake up, I try everything I can think of, but I can’t, I’m trapped in the dream. I never knew fear was so hard to take. I don’t think I even knew what fear was, really.”

“How did your mother survive, do you know? My mother was with her parents and some other people, they all had to strip and dig a big hole and then get inside and be buried alive. And her mother just said to her, run. And so she ran. They shot at her, but they didn’t get her, they missed, and she saw a wagon on the road
and she climbed under the sacks of barley or whatever. Insane, man. What are the odds? I wouldn’t be here if not for a crazy wagon and whoever gave her clothes and a place to hide. They put her in a convent, actually. My father got a job in a work camp, and he was good at it, so they kept him alive. What I don’t get is how anyone stayed alive in those conditions. Wouldn’t you die of typhoid or whatever right away?”

“Oh, who cares,” I said, barely listening.

Sheila shrugged. “Taboo subject. Too gruesome, or something.”

“I really don’t care,” I repeated.

“Fuck this suffering,” Sheila said complacently. “Karla’s father—he really should be committed. Have you seen the marks on her arms? He completely lost his mind over there. On the other hand, look at Mrs. Adler, dancing when Ephraim gets all the answers right.”

“Mrs. Adler…” I said absently, as if I were very old and hadn’t seen or thought of her for years. She was determined to be happy, determined to enjoy life. All the pieces of her life were in place, held together by logic and popularity.