Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
He made a gesture as if to stop me, and I stopped talking.
He seemed to be trying to digest my words, to understand them. After a bit, he said: My brother's granddaughter, Priscilla,
is a student at Smith College in Northampton, not far from
here. A very distinguished college ... When the Catholics came
to Northampton, they built a splendid church there, next to the
college dorms. Do you know what the scholars of Smith College
did? They put the chemistry lab in a building next to the
church. The windows of the chemistry lab face the windows of
the church, and for fifty years, sir, the Catholics, now the majority of the population in the city, except for the members of the
college, have had to suffer the stench ...
I nodded as if I understood the parable, even though I didn't
yet completely fathom what he was talking about, I felt the
shining chrome of a new Pontiac and now, in his sterile church,
between a Ford coupe, an elegant Mercury and a big white Lincoln, Mr. Brooks tried to smile. I saw the lines of his face refuse
to illustrate a real smile. The layers of his face interwoven with
thin red threads expressed some grievance, maybe anger, maybe
even a threat, but under the threat I made out lines of serenity.
He said: Melissa died years ago ... I don't read books, sir, but
I saw you on television and I read about you in Time. You look
and sound like a rational and honorable man, you come from a
country I admire for its practicality, its culture, its industry. Do
you know how much I wanted to sell BMW and Mercedes? Listen, he said, and now at long last he managed to smile, I'd be
glad to have you over to the house, let's go there, you'll have
lunch at my house, but sir, Melissa no longer is, she's not in me,
and now he almost raised his voice, she's not in the house, she's
not in my wife, she's not finally and definitely, it's been many
years since I stopped missing her, I've got two sons and one of
them will surely take over my business, Priscilla can stay at her
college, in the chemistry department and know she's still fighting an ancient war against Catholics, and with us, that's a rare,
maybe desirable, case of a sequence of generations, sir ... We're
not like you, and it's too bad, he added sadly.
He took me to his office overlooking the showroom, ordered
coffee for me, and went out. I munched a crunchy cookie, I
drank the coffee, and I waited. He came back, we put on our coats, and went out into the harsh cold. We got into his white
Lincoln Continental, the heat came on immediately, he started
the motor and we glided to his house.
I won't weary you with the details of the meal. There were
whispered conferences, the mounted hides are still there. We
drank sherry, Melissa's mother is a charming, gentle old woman,
much harsher than her husband. One of the sons asked me a lot
of question about the two Germanys and I tried to answer him
to the best of my understanding. The lemon mousse (after the
ribs and roast potatoes) was excellent, and the more we talked,
the more perplexed we became. Why am I here, they weren't
the only ones who wondered, I also wondered myself and didn't
know what to say ...
I knew the moment of truth was approaching, I was worried,
and so were they, and Mrs. Brooks, with that cleverness our
wives call "feminine intuition," told me a young man came years
before and then they found out that his name was Sam Lipp,
and now everybody's talking about him. I told her: I'm doing
research for a new book, maybe not so new, and I met a lot of
people, including Sam Lipp. Mrs. Brooks showed signs of restrained excitement. For a moment she looked both desirable
and shriveled, like some mounted hide of insatiable passion. She
drank a lot of wine and her tongue became faster and maybe a
little inarticulate. She talked about Sam Lipp, about the articles
she read, that he isn't interviewed, that there aren't any photos
of him, and nevertheless she said: I recognized him, I knew that
was him. Maybe she recalled that dog, called her dog to come to
her, it was a new dog, she patted his curly head with a sense of
mastery, of revenge for Sam Lipp, some terrible sense for chilly
melodrama. And then she got up, paced back and forth, and
Mr. Brooks lit a giant cigar, smoked it slowly, and belched clouds
of white smoke, and the maid brought a tray with coffee cups.
Sam Lipp, she said, also went to the cemetery and we chased
him. The dog betrayed us, we should have caught him, that famous stage director, what is he doing? I'm afraid to go to the
play, Bud and Priscilla tell wonders and miracles about it. He patted the dog. The dog melted in his hands. I'm talking a lot.
What hatred there was in him. Anger. What did I do? That anger
of his. Melissa isn't his. He loved her, he said. Jesus!
I was silent and looked at the crease in my pants. Mr. Brooks
was quiet and pensive and his look was caught in the smoke wisping up from the cigar. His face was impassive, and then suddenly,
something in Mr. Brooks's dead face lit up. That flash I sensed in
him before, something that would look inside, immune, creating
stories about the chemistry department turned from an alloy of
tiny red gills and miniature lizards into an almost savage audacity, and the shriveled silence turned into genuine rage. He said:
There is in them that anger, the stubbornness, the cleverness,
the nerve to get into the wrong places, where they're not wanted.
There are reasons, natural reasons, aren't there? And you know,
who knows better than you.
Yes, I said, and tried not to get upset, not to give it away.
No, that's not what was in him, she said. True, he's one of
them, but no. Even then I thought, a trapped wolf, foreign, with
a frightening, almost filthy beauty, some generosity in evil, some
agitation in rottenness, his play, even then he tried to please ...
What did Melissa have to do with him?
And I knew she meant, What do I have to do with Melissa?
I told you, sir, said Mr. Brooks, somebody didn't build enough
chemistry departments next to what could have been a cemetery!
Those were strong words and I kept silent, Henkin! She shut
up, and unlike her husband, she didn't trust me. The perplexity
about my coming hadn't yet been explained. But he was swept
up now in some old, gnawing enmity. He didn't know Melissa,
she said, he tried to steal her! There was one who sneaked in, but
we knew how to get rid of him, and now Mr. Brooks was incensed
against the writer sitting there, and he barked: We're playing
with words, what do you have to do with Melissa! What do you
want after fifty years, what, what, what?
I said: I met Sam Lipp, and-
And what? Melissa wasn't his, she died before he was born!
I'm investigating!
Investigating what?
I'm investigating the death of our children, I suddenly said,
the death of Sam, who's disguised as living. The death of my son,
the death of a boy named Menahem Henkin, the life of somebody who learned the history of the world by heart, Melissa is
somehow interwoven in that story, I don't understand how, but
I know and so I came here. Even before he met Licinda Hayden
and called her Melissa, long before that, he was in love with
Melissa and didn't even know her, just as I came from Cologne
and find myself an unwelcome guest in your house, trying to
know how you miss or don't miss Melissa. My son is dead. Sam
Lipp, or as he was called before, Samuel Lipker, is also a fellow
named Boaz Schneerson, and his events and the events of his
father, I'm trying to write together with my friend who lives far
away from here. He was in love with your daughter, knew her in
another plane of time-an expression I learned from my spouse
-and he's still searching for her, maybe in his disappointed love
for Licinda Hayden who acted Lilith in his play ...
I don't grasp what that has to do with it, said Mr. Brooks. He
got up, his legs unsteady. He picked up the big glass ashtray
standing there, and maybe he inadvertently dropped it and it
shattered into thousands of slivers. At the sight of the smashed
ashtray, he tried to smile, but his face managed only to grimace
a little.
I do understand, Mrs. Brooks almost whispered. I remember
looking at photos of Licinda Hayden, I saw her in Time, Newsweek,
T h e N e w Y o r k T i m e s . I remember looking at the photos and thinking, I know her, but I didn't connect it ... now I do. Does Sam
know about Melissa's closeness to Licinda?
I'm not sure, I groped for something opaque and astonishing
that I heard in her voice now. Mr. Brooks said: I'm sorry about
the ashtray. He called the maid to come clean up the slivers.
We sat silent and pensive and waited until she finished. Mrs.
Brooks got up and left the room a moment. Mr. Brooks said to
me: She was a beautiful child, Melissa.
I know, I said.
She shouldn't have died, he said in a voice that cast off fifty
years of thick walls, I should have listened to him and taken her
to a hospital in New York, but I was too proud.
I'm fond of people who, at a certain moment, can say something contrary to the foundation of their whole life, and can feel
human remorse, and I thought of my father who never could. I
almost loved that man.
Suddenly there wasn't anything more to say. I looked out the
window and saw the naked trees, the rebuked, aristocratic, frozen
landscape wrapped in snow, an enormous sun startled me, as if
your blinding light that exposes everything fell on me here of all
places, a beam of light from another world, and I fell silent. And
then Mrs. Brooks came back. In some way that seemed marvelous,
but equally clumsy, Mrs. Brooks tried to connect Licinda with
somebody who could have been Melissa. Maybe the fact that
three strange men came during fifty years to love Melissa endowed her daughter-and even her yearnings for her had vanished with the years-with some importance, some metaphysical
refinement. She was surely thinking of Lionel, of Sam, of me, she
thought Licinda lived for us what Melissa could have lived eternally for her. I'm talking now of disappointment. I don't know,
tangled threads unite us, and to whom am I telling these things!
You? My self-mockery perplexes me and I almost suggested to
them to establish an international committee of parents, without
any distinction of sex, religion, race, or nationality, would Mrs.
Brooks accept that idea? I was amazed at myself, not at her, she
spoke about family, maybe a stub of memory of Licinda rose from
there. Maybe she really did say that Licinda is a distant relative,
and maybe I'm fantasizing and quoting things she didn't say, but
there was one thing I'm sure she talked about-she talked about
some rabbi named Kriegel who came to Providence, Rhode Island,
in seventeen seventy-three, about her family graced with a Protestant minister named Stiles, who then lived in Providence and
was an expert in Hebrew and wrote a book about that Kriegel. I
thought: Where do I know the name Kriegel, and I recalled, contemplating that rabbi from Hebron who performed the marriage of Rebecca Secret Charity with her dead lover, Kriegel, who went
from Hebron to America. Mrs. Brooks spoke of him with uncritical generosity, as if she missed him, and this is not the place to tell
what she said, since that story has nothing to do with our issue,
but at night, when I came back to New York and got into bed, I
thought maybe I heard something that's important for us to know
and I didn't yet grasp the end of its thread, and I also knew, a few
seconds before I fell asleep, that maybe as I talk about Licinda,
she herself is extraneous to the story, it doesn't concern her, but
Lilith that she personified, or perhaps it's Lilith who personifies
Licinda?
I went back to the public library and a fellow Lionel recommended helped me. He showed me some interesting research on
Kriegel, relations with the Protestant minister Stiles, the sermon
Stiles delivered in the synagogue on Shavuoth, how Kriegel came
to America in seventeen seventy-three, wearing a turban, a handsome, radiant man. The connection, which I still don't understand, pleased me. Between Kriegel, Minister Stiles, Melissa and
Licinda. Did Melissa grow up and become Licinda? Were the two
of them distant relatives, was Captain Jose Menkin A. Goldenberg really-as I found out-the offspring of that Kriegel? Did he
know he was his offspring? Could he have spawned his sons even
after, beyond the generations that preceded him?
I sat with Lionel and Lily. It was late at night. Outside snow
was falling. Sam and Licinda went out. Renate fell asleep. Then
Lionel fell asleep too. Lily and I sat tired, our eyes almost shut,
drunk, and sang children's songs. The next day, we flew home.
Dear Hasha,
I had a vision that lasted a whole day and I couldn't get rid of
it. Menahem and Friedrich met in New York near Bloomingdale's. They went shopping. Friedrich bought leather suspenders
and Menahem bought handkerchiefs and a belt. Menahem's hair
was long and Friedrich's was shorter and the flap of a forehead
could be seen on his head. Friedrich lied and said he had shot
himself. Menahem said: You didn't shoot yourself, Friedrich, you shot somebody else and missed. They went to a Chinese restaurant. Neither of them knew how to use chopsticks. The old Chinese man laughed. They didn't know that was funny and ate with
forks and knives. At the hotel, Melissa brought wine and they
drank. Boaz came and jumped out the window. Menahem was
impressed by the jump and Friedrich wasn't. They were drunk
and sang. Friedrich was older than Menahem. They walked to
the seashore. There was a cave there. Intense red colors were
blended with sickly bluishness, a chaos of serenity they disappeared into dimness, as if out of weakness, wrapped in a thin halo
of pinkishness, a kind of eternal sunset. Who said there's no life
near death, they only said that there's no life after death! Everybody drowned there, alone. My husband claims I have a fever. I
lie and write you. Maybe love is also preparing an alibi for the
future, or the past. Menahem and Friedrich are consoled, they
walked together on Fifth Avenue and laughed. Those were frozen
tears of death. They flowed on him, on them, I felt an emptiness,
maybe I yelled: Menahem, Menahem. I yearned for him.