Dreams of Bread and Fire (29 page)

But Ani, dear, Mrs. Duke had said, why don’t you try some New Testament verses?

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is
the book
of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

That wasn’t quite what Mrs. Duke had in mind either.

Suddenly tired, Ani closed her eyes and drifted into sleep.

When Ani woke up, the sky was dark outside the window. She went to her desk and picked up her address book. She pulled out the telephone directory and found what she assumed was her aunt’s phone number.

“Is this Leah Kantrowitz?” Ani asked.

“Yes. Who is this?” the woman asked.

“This is Ani Silver, David Silver’s daughter.”

There was a sharp intake of breath.

“I’m in graduate school here in the city,” Ani said.

“You must be twenty-three?”

“That’s right.” Ani wasn’t sure what to say next. There was a long silence.

Leah Kantrowitz sighed loudly. “After so many years. I’m sorry. I have nothing to say to you.” She hung up the phone.

Levin asked, “Were you disappointed?”

“Of course I was disappointed,” Ani answered. There were tears streaming down the sides of her face into her ears. “The problem with this couch is that the water gets into your ears and then goes running down your neck.”

Levin slid a tissue box toward Ani along the back of the couch.

“You probably buy these things wholesale,” Ani said, pulling a couple of tissues out of the box. “Where were my grandparents from? What job did my grandfather have? Does somebody have a copy of the family tree? I can just see it, with my father’s branch amputated at the elbow.”

“The phone call might have been a shock to her. She may need some time to think about it. You could call her again in a few weeks. Or you could send her a letter.”

“Are you actually giving me practical advice?” Ani asked.

Levin laughed. “Maybe I am. But we’ll have to talk about that next time.”

That night Ani wandered again in a big warehouse full of dreams. She scribbled them down in her journal in the morning and brought them dutifully to the session with Levin like a cat returning home with a dead mouse dangling from its jaw.

Ani said, “And then Van lobbed a bomb into the Willards’ house. Asa and May and Asa’s parents all ran screaming from the house as it exploded into flames. Baba was standing on the sidewalk outside, shaking his head, and he said, That crazy boy got the wrong house. The Turks live up the block.”

Levin was silent.

“Aren’t you going to offer an interpretation?” Ani asked. She had never given Levin the information she needed, however, to interpret Van and the bomb.

“Do you want me to?” Levin asked.

“Well, I mean, isn’t that your job? It seems like you don’t have anything to say about my dreams unless you can somehow figure an angle to see yourself in them.”

“Is that what it feels like to you? That I’m only interested in myself?”

“Lord almighty, do you always have to answer me with a question?”

“You want me to give you answers?”

“This is hopeless,” Ani said. “It’s going to take years to get anywhere at this rate. How long is this supposed to take anyway?”

“Are you worried about how long it’s going to be?”

Ani said, “For once, could you just answer the goddamned question?”

“Generally, it takes between six and twelve years.”

“I might be thirty-five and still lying here on this couch?”

“Do you like that idea?”

“Well, it is kind of reassuring, because I have no idea what else I’ll be doing.”

“What do you imagine?”

“Okay. As I see it, there are several possible scenarios. One: I’ll be an assistant professor of French literature at some New England college, married with two children, a Volvo, and periodic depressions. Two: I’ll be helping to run a lesbian commune in western Massachusetts, supporting myself by doing bodywork and selling hand-painted greeting cards. Three: I’ll be living in liberated Armenia near Mount Ararat, knitting woolen sweaters for Van and our five doe-eyed children. I’m still working on the fourth and final possibility. I’m open to suggestions, so if you have any sage advice, now would be a good time to offer it.”

“A lesbian commune?”

“That would be the one you picked up on, and I’m sure it has something to do with you,” Ani said sourly.

When she arrived at her building, Ani opened the mailbox in the lobby. There was a letter from her mother, but when she opened the envelope there was another envelope inside that her mother had forwarded. It had been postmarked in Montreal six days earlier. She hurriedly pulled out a sheet of onionskin on which these words were typed:

I was one of the birds who didn’t seek for grain on the ground,

I would always fly, fly and avoid the snare of love.

But my snare had been set in the sea, though about that I knew nothing.

Every bird stood trapped by its feet, but I stood trapped, both feet and arms.

Nahabed Kouchag

(16th century)

The Canadian postmark, the Armenian verses with an oblique and cryptic message from an anonymous sender: this was Van’s work. Since when had he started reading poetry? He was still in love with her. Montreal was not so far away. He might appear on her doorstep, in a day, or a week, or a month.

better a wise sinner than a righteous fool

“Sorry, I’m late,” Ani said, as she tossed herself onto the couch. “Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

“Yes?” Levin prompted.

“It’s about Van.”

He had lied to her and then abandoned her: that was the version she had told Levin. But confiding in a shrink wasn’t like telling anybody else. Saying it out loud here would be okay. Everything Ani said within these four white walls stayed here, out of time and ordinary space.

“What about Van?” Levin asked.

“He planted a bomb outside a Turkish tourist office in Brussels,” Ani said.

“Why?”

“It’s an Armenian thing, you know. He’s in this underground army, or he was in this underground army, but now he’s hiding from the leader because there was a split after the bombing at Orly. I really don’t know what he’s doing now. Or what he’s going to do next. But I got a note from him yesterday. He’s in Canada.”

“You never mentioned these details before,” Levin said.

“I swore I wouldn’t say anything to anyone. But I figure telling you isn’t exactly like breaking the promise because you’re a shrink. If he comes back—”

“You would want him back?” Levin interrupted.

Ani shrugged and sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“It wouldn’t trouble you that he was a terrorist?” the analyst asked.

Ani glanced at the shoes on the black ottoman. They were red leather pumps. What would a woman in red leather pumps know about revolutionary struggle?

“Revolutionary,” Ani corrected. “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. When a revolutionary wins he becomes the hero and leader of his country. Look at Fidel Castro—or George Washington, for that matter. But anyway, there was this guy who was an assassin for the Dashnaks’ Operation Nemesis in the early twenties. He hunted down and killed a couple of Young Turk bigwigs—you know, the guys who masterminded the Armenian Genocide. Then he married his sweetheart, moved to New Jersey, and became a successful businessman. I think he ran a dry cleaning store or something like that. On Sunday after church he was just the Armenian guy next door outside mowing his lawn.”

“You think he was justified in killing?”

“Justified in killing the men who orchestrated the deaths of over a million Armenians? They planned it. They made it happen. What do you think? I mean, it’s a bit murkier when you start shooting Turkish diplomats who weren’t even born in 1915, but these other guys were guilty of genocide. They were role models for Adolf Hitler.”

“You think Van might become the guy next door mowing the lawn?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get over it, but right now I still love him.”

Ani returned to her apartment. She finished lunch and sat on the couch, the telephone resting on her knees. She willed herself to pick up the receiver and dial Leah Kantrowitz’s number. What was the worst thing that could happen? Her aunt would slam down the receiver. She had done that before. Maybe this time she would shout something horrible and insulting into the phone before hanging up. Ani would survive that as well.

Ani’s shoulders were bunched up near her neck, as though tensed in anticipation of a blow to the head. The line rang, one, two, three times.

The woman picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Hello, Mrs. Kantrowitz?”

“Yes? Who is this?” the woman asked.

“This is Ani Silver.” Ani winced, fearing the effect of this name.

There was silence on the other end.

The telephone wire ran from Ani’s ear, into the wall, out into the street, and then snaked in cables underground until it emerged in the basement of Mrs. Kantrowitz’s building, climbed to her apartment, and inched into the live handle the woman held against her ear. It was practically an act of violence and stealth. Would Mrs. Kantrowitz refuse the connection?

“I hope you don’t mind—” Ani began.

Mrs. Kantrowitz interrupted. “I’ve been thinking about you since you called. You want we should meet?”

Several hours later Ani, wearing a skirt and jacket as though dressed for a job interview, presented herself in a gilt and marble lobby on West End Avenue. The uniformed doorman with bushy eyebrows called upstairs to announce Ani’s arrival, and a taciturn elevator operator dropped her on the seventh floor.

Ani wiped her feet on the woven straw mat outside her aunt’s door. On the right side of the doorframe there was a small wooden bar with Hebrew writing on it nailed on a diagonal. Ani pressed the cream-colored doorbell button, and the jangling bell echoed inside the apartment. She heard slow footfalls coming up the hall and then the door opened.

Leah Kantrowitz was short and stout with straight chestnut hair that curled in at her shoulders. The eyebrows were a very different shade of brown. Mrs. Kantrowitz—“Aunt Leah” seemed a presumptuous form of address even in thought—wore a drop-waist tan dress that fell to just above her ankles.

“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Kantrowitz said.

As Mrs. Kantrowitz turned to lead the way into the apartment, her hair shifted in one unit. It had to be a wig.

A lace-covered oval table and a chandelier of crystal teardrops dominated the dining room. From the west-facing windows Ani could see the avenue and a sliver of river glittering at the end of a side street. Most of one wall was covered with framed photographs spanning from turn-of-the-century black-and-white studio portraits to professional color photos of babies and small children who were probably Mrs. Kantrowitz’s grandchildren.

“Why don’t you take a seat. Would you like tea or coffee?” the woman asked.

“Just water, thanks,” Ani said.

Mrs. Kantrowitz returned with a glass of seltzer and a plate of cookies, sitting down across from Ani, whose palms were damp and cold.

“You have his eyes,” Mrs. K. said. “Same shade of gray. Otherwise you look like your mother. I met her once. That was all a long time ago.” She sighed heavily, her eyes clouded with the past. Finally, she twitched her head slightly, awakening to Ani’s presence. “What is it I can do for you?”

What could Mrs. Kantrowitz do for Ani? She could throw her arms around her and welcome her home like the lost sheep in the parable or like the prodigal son.

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

But that was the New Testament. This was an Old Testament world with a fierce and wrathful God.

What would her father’s family do? Once you had been cast out, would they ever take you back? Would they tell you the stories that made up their family mythology? Would they initiate you into the rituals of their particular cult?

Ani made her claim modest. “We have only a few pictures of my dad when he was a kid. I was wondering if you could show me an old photo album.”

“This I can do. Wait here,” Mrs. K. instructed.

The woman went to the living room and came back a few minutes later with a large leather-bound book. The pages were of thick black paper on which the black-and-white photos were held in place with little gummed corners. Someone had taken great care in mounting the photos and in typing captions on slips of paper that were glued below each picture.

Mrs. Kantrowitz sat in the chair beside Ani, pointing out faces. “Those are my parents. They both died a few years ago, within months of each other. There’s me, and my brother Sol. The baby there is David.”