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I never did it again. I'd proven it to myself, and that was enough. From time to time I'd find myself passing the entrance of a certain private club, I won't name names, and I'd think to myself, Shalom, shit-heads, here's a Jew you can't keep out. But after that night, I never pushed my luck again. If they threw me in jail, they'd find out the truth: I'm no Houdini. And yet. In my loneliness it comforts me to think that the world's doors, however closed, are never truly locked to me.
lmao
It came back to me then. That day, sixty years ago, when I'd left her house in tears and caught sight of him standing against a tree holding a notebook, waiting to go to her after I'd gone. A few months earlier, we'd been the closest of friends. We'd stay up half the night with a couple of other boys, smoking and arguing about books. And yet. By the time I caught sight of him that afternoon, we were no longer friends. We weren't even talking. I walked right past him as if he weren't there.
Just one question, Bruno said now, sixty years later. I always wanted to know.
What?
He coughed. Then he looked up at me. Did she tell you you were a better writer than I?
No, I lied. And then I told him the truth. No one had to tell me.
There was a long silence.
It's strange. I always thought-- He broke off.
What? I said.
I thought we were fighting for something more than her love, he said.
Now it was my turn to look out the window.
What is more than her love? I asked.
moved by this
On the other side of the wall, Misha's mother shouted something at his father. Misha propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at me. I thought of the time, the summer before, when we were thirteen and stood on the roof of his building, the tar soft under our feet, our tongues in each other's mouths while he gave me a lesson in the Shklovsky school of Russian kissing. Now we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, "I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend." I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one. But I couldn't, so he leaned down and kissed me.
not sure if there's an intentional reference to Russian formalism or not but this made me laugh
And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of a chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go out into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fritzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh--someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?
My book was nowhere to be found. Aside from myself, there was no sign of me.
</3
- THE SITUATION
That night while my mother was upstairs translating The History of Love for the man whose name she thought was Jacob Marcus, I finished a book, about a character named Jacob Marcus, by a writer named Isaac Moritz, who was the son of the character Alma Mereminski, who also happened to have been real.
- I SHOULD
Get out more, join some clubs. I should buy some new clothes, dye my hair blue, let Herman Cooper take me on a ride in his father's car, kiss me, and possibly even feel my nonexistent breasts. I should develop some useful skills like public speaking, electric cello, or welding, see a doctor about my stomachaches, find a hero that is not a man who wrote a children's book and crashed his plane, stop trying to set up my father's tent in record time, throw away my notebooks, stand up straight, and cut this habit of answering any question regarding my well-being with a reply fit for a prim English schoolgirl who believes life is nothing but a long preparation for a few finger sandwiches with the Queen.
Today the rain stopped and the firemen took down my ark because they said it was a fire hazard. The way this made me feel was sad. I tried not to cry because Mr. Goldstein says that what G-d does is for the best, and also because Alma said I should try to push down my feelings so that I can have friends. Something else Mr. Goldstein says is What the eyes don't see the heart doesn't feel, but I had to see what happened to the ark because all of a sudden I remembered that I had painted mm on the back, which no one is allowed to throw away. I made Mom call the firemen to ask where they'd put all the pieces. She told me they'd piled them on the sidewalk for the garbage man, so I made her take me there, but the garbage man had already come and everything was gone. Then I cried and kicked a stone and Mom tried to hug me but I wouldn't let her because she shouldn't have let the firemen take down the ark, and also she should have asked me before she threw away everything that belonged to Dad.
lmao
One thing I decided is that from now on before I do anything I will always ask myself WOULD A LAMED VOVNIK DO THIS? For example today Misha called for Alma and I did not say Do you want to French kiss her? because when I asked myself the question WOULD A LAMED VOVNIK DO THIS? the answer was NO. Then Misha said How is she? and I said OK and he said Tell her I was calling to see if she ever found the person she was looking for, and I didn't know what he was talking about so I said Pardon me? and then he said Actually never mind don't tell her I called, and I said OK and didn't tell her because one thing a lamed vovnik is good at is keeping secrets. I did not know Alma was looking for someone and I tried to think of who but I couldn't.
lmao i do like this
[...] On my way I passed a fountain. The basin was dry. I looked to see if there were any pennies at the bottom. But there were only dead leaves. They're everywhere now, falling and falling, turning the world back into earth. Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement. Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.