Morning Is a Long Time Coming (22 page)

“Finif,”
I called out, wondering if he would recognize my specific dialect of German as Yiddish. If only I could also say in the dialect of my ancestors, “Please sir, I beg of you—don’t harm my children!” Maybe he would have remembered hearing that during his soldiering days.

I unlocked the door to room 515, snapped on the bedside lamp, and consulted the telephone directory. Seven-six-eight-eight just like before. I took the phone into my lap, and let
my index finger get in a little practice by falling into the appropriate holes without actually dialing them. I noticed an unmistakable tremor in both hands, but seemingly more pronounced in my right hand. I’m confident that will not present any real problem. I’m not the least bit worried about that!

My finger can still dial, but what then? Don’t panic, just stay as calm as I am now because nothing’s really difficult. All very simple. Keep telling myself: all very simple, very natural. When the phone is answered simply say, Mrs. Reiker, please. Shouldn’t I say,
Frau
Reiker? No! Then she’ll begin answering in German and then where will I be?

Not so. When she hears my accent, she’ll immediately revert back to her Manchester, England, English. Maybe, but what if she doesn’t? Doesn’t realize that I can’t speak the language? What if she considers my lack of response simple rudeness? A university student playing a practical joke? With a controlled, but very real, aristocratic anger, she’ll hang up. And, at that moment, our connection will be broken for all time.

My stomach began burning mildly and I wondered if it was from the wine or from the stress: I dialed room service and after what seemed an endless wait, a woman’s voice answered, saying something. Not a word of which I understood.

“Milchik,”
I said, at the first pause.

She answered with a question of her own which I partly understood, partly only guessed at. I supplied my name and my room number and when I heard her say,
“Bitte,”
I knew that she had understood.

As I hung up, my stomach began to swirl like a just
-flushed toilet. I reached the bowl just in time to unleash a river of wine (but no blood—thank God, no blood!). I staggered back to the bed while giving an endorsement to the absent. “I should have listened to you, my dear Dr. Kopelman. You told me, in no uncertain terms, to especially avoid the double As: alcohol and aggravation.” Oh, God, why the hell can’t I learn to listen?

It’s not that I don’t listen. It’s that (in spite of all the evidence) I have a hard time believing that I am actually vulnerable.

I’ve felt invulnerable—completely invincible for such a long time. At least as far back as Miss Judith Hope Dixon’s third grade. I remember it was Miss Dixon’s overgenerous arithmetic assignment that I was working on one evening at our dining-room table. The room was lit by a small crystal chandelier which had three candlelike bulbs, each giving out a candleful of light.

To make dimness even dimmer, every time I would lean over my book, I’d block out what little light there was. Suddenly I yelled up at the chandelier, “The dumbest thing anybody ever did was to go and buy you!”

Then it happened: My father rushed through the door. I looked up just in time to see his extended palm fly toward my cheek. I screamed as the slap threw me off the chair and against the wall.

“How dare you question what I spend my hard-earned money on,” he cried out. “You goddamn ingrate!”

He stood there with his feet apart, staring down at me as though he were the just-proclaimed heavyweight champion of the world, and I were the evil scum he had defeated. Even so, I understood that his full release from tension could not
come until I totally dissolved into sobs so hysterical and uncontrolled that there would not be the slightest question of my defeat.

And so only by concealing my own pain could I deny him what he needed. If I refuse to concede defeat, then how can he celebrate victory? I sucked in my tears to look at him directly and full-faced, because it was very important for us both to understand that nobody, not him or anybody else, could ever destroy that which is indestructible. Me.

At the door there was a knock, low and discreet. I rose while cautioning myself, “Spending marks is just like spending real money,” and opened the door on a gray-haired woman wearing an almost identically colored uniform. With well-practiced efficiency, she set down a tray containing a white porcelain pitcher of milk emblazoned with a bit of heraldry, a crystal glass, a white cloth dinner napkin, and two sugar cookies.

I sipped the milk and felt it coating my burning gut with cooling substance. By the time I began congratulating myself on a really remarkable recovery, it was 9:40
P.M.
and too late to call.

In Jenkinsville, anyone who hears the phone ringing past nine or nine thirty automatically becomes a little frightened. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, will be soon enough. If I hadn’t won an actual victory, I had at the very least won the next best thing—a temporary reprieve.

Inside my window, the square panes were becoming opaque from frost. I pressed my palm against the glass and watched a thin ribbon of icy water race down. I kept wiping away errant ice and excess water until I had what I wanted:
a sort of oblong bit of clarity which allowed a sugar-glazed, white magic view of the city.

Göttingen was quiet and softly lit; a few cars drove slowly down narrow snow-edged streets, passing a few heavily garbed and briskly walking people. In the square across the street was a larger-than-life statue of a young girl standing steadfastly under an ice-coated canopy of wrought-iron wildflowers. And in each frozen hand she was clutching a perfectly enormous goose.

It wasn’t until I looked up, though, that I really saw this city. Rows of frosted tile roofs topped narrow stucco and half-timbered buildings, and just ahead was a tower so obviously medieval that its stones had to have come from quarries now long forgotten. Everything seemed very familiar and yet I had never seen anything like this before except ... except maybe in a certain picture book which was showing advanced signs of age long before it was passed on to me.

And years after I grew too old for picture books, I still loved that book,
Tales from Far Away Places.
It told how a poor cobbler’s apprentice slew the dragon and saved the kingdom, and how the king lost and then regained his virtue. It also told of a lonely girl who ran away from her cruel stepmother, only to wander over many miles and face many hardships before finally finding her real mother. The one who loved her.

27

A
FTER A COMFORTING
dream-filled night, I woke just before the breaking of dawn. For a while I lay in bed unsuccessfully trying to recapture even one of those nighttime visions. But just because I can’t recall it doesn’t mean that I didn’t experience it, and I’m going to cling to my good dream aura like a good omen.

It didn’t take me long to bathe and dress because even before leaving the states, my decision on what to wear on this
day had already been made. I’d given it a lot of thought. It had to be respectable without being boring and it had to convey the impression that I’m not there to take anything that isn’t mine. Because obviously I don’t have to.

Before punching the elevator’s down button, I allowed myself a long, thoughtful look in the almost full-length hall mirror. The vibrant pink blouse that I wore under the charcoal gray jacket and pencil thin skirt was good looking, and more important, I looked good in it. Even my figure, I’ll have to admit, wasn’t half-bad.

Now where was that elevator? Maybe I should save time and take the stairs; it’s only four flights down to the hotel’s street-floor restaurant. Dumb idea! In my present recuperative state, that would consume roughly my entire day’s ration of energy.

When the elevator door opened before me, I checked my watch. Not yet eight o’clock and phone time is still more than two hours away.

But two hours or two minutes or two years, it was all future time and I wanted to concentrate on this time. Maybe this moment is my moment of triumph because, for better or worse, I have done exactly what it was that I set out to do one-third of my life ago.

At the double doors of the dining room, I was greeted by a gentleman wearing a black bow tie. He would have struck me as being extremely dignified except for one thing—he bore a certain resemblance to Harpo (or was it Chico?) Marx.

I hadn’t realized it last night, but the dining room of this venerable hotel offered a fascinating street-level, leaded-glass view of the city. I was seeing what Anton had once
seen. And that’s when it happened. I felt touched by fresh grief from a very old wound.

It was like that. Sometimes I’d go for a period—days or weeks—without feeling the full sweep of my loss, and then as unexpected as a thunderclap, the realization would rip the protective coating from my senses. Maybe that’s the way it is with trick knees and aging griefs. Totally pain free one moment and absorbingly painful the next.

The white-jacketed waiter brought me my eggs (over light), a pewter pot of very hot coffee, and a mahogany bread tray filled with thick slices of rye and almost black pumpernickel. The bread was honest bread, all right, but ah ... the coffee was wonderful. So much better than French coffee, which is so strong that only masochists and philosophers even claim to like it.

By nine thirty, all the coffee had been drunk, the eggs and most of the pumpernickel eaten. Time to go back upstairs and prepare for the call.

In my hour-and-forty-minute absence, the maid had already cleaned room
finif-eins-finif.
Another good omen? I smiled (laughter almost never happens to me when I’m alone), for if she hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it, surely I would have contrived to make that a good omen, too.

I took off my jacket, washed my hands, patted cold water across my forehead, cheeks, and eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Checked the time: exactly eighteen minutes before the hour. Went to the window to stare at a flying flag atop a stone tower and wondered why my belief was growing stronger and stronger that this ancient (and seemingly magical) piece of Germany was soon going to embrace me.

Time check: seven, maybe six minutes before ten o’clock.
I inhaled. Exhaled. Splashed still more chilled tap water across my face, leaving it there to air dry, aided and abetted by a well-directed air current of my own breath.

Five minutes before ten. It pleased me that I had, with unaccustomed foresight and efficiency, thought to synchronize my watch with the grandfather clock in the lobby. As a precaution against having fingers the temperature of chilled marble which would prove awkward in dialing, I replaced my suit jacket. Fingers, you will dial with ease. Stomach, you will resist any and all tendencies toward garrulousness.

Eyes, would you like your glasses? What for? The number is committed to memory. That’s not good enough! Everything has to be checked and rechecked. There’s no room here for error. Now do you want your glasses? I’m completely capable, as you must know, of reading the directory without benefit of glasses.

Inhale. Exhale. Time check: 9:58
A.M.
I watched the second hand make almost imperceptible stops at each and every marking. 9:59
A.M.
Inhale. Exhale. Now pick up the book. Recheck the number. And dial.

There it is! Reiker, Prof. E. C. Buhlstrasse 64 ... 7688. See, 7688 exactly like before. Time check: ten o’clock. It’s ten o’clock!

I submitted my body to the telephone with the same sense of impending oblivion that a condemned man must experience at the moment of submission to the electric chair. Ridiculous! I’m not about to die. I’m about to be born again, only this time to whom and where I belong.

Okay, I’m calm. Perfectly calm now. First for a dry run. Now reach for the first digit. Good! Good! See, not difficult.
Then after all the digits are dialed, the phone will ring. I’ll hear it ring. I’ll hear Mrs. Reiker lift the receiver to send out greetings to the unknown caller.

Unannounced, my heart began striking against my chest cavity with quickening regularity. It’s okay. Perfectly okay. It’s natural to be a little nervous now. Anybody would be. Just dial, wait until she answers, and tell her your name. Say Patricia Bergen ... Patricia Bergen ... Patricia Bergen. But that’s only sounding somewhere within the silent cavity of your brain. Come on now, say it out loud. Say Patricia ... Patricia.

I know very well you can do it. All I want you to do is to say audibly what you say so well in silence.

“Nooo-oh.” Don’t make me do what I can’t do. I fell back across the bed, to wait for the spinning spiral of heat and nausea to wind down. After a while, I found I could control the dizziness by keeping my eyes focused upon the ceiling light. Shortly after that, the excess heat evaporated from my body to absorb itself into the pink fabric of my blouse.

10:18
A.M.
I was able to walk (with only the slightest unsteadiness) to the bathroom where I shed jacket, blouse, and bra to wash with glycerine soap and cool water all the salt-laden perspiration from my body. By the time I had redressed, I understood exactly what it was that I had to do.

28

J
UST OUTSIDE
the main door of the Hotel Göttingen a single black car adorned with a rooftop taxi light waited for a fare in the ice-house cold. Wait no more. You have me. We have each other. I opened the door and slid in while thrusting the opened telephone booklet in front of a slightly surprised driver.
“Buhlstrasse fier
and
sexig.”

He smiled his recognition before driving off with all the confidence that is given to those that know (or think they
know) what they are doing. I sighed. Too bad I can’t catch confidence like some highly communicable disease. But I don’t need anybody else’s, for I have my own. I settled far back into my seat to prove it.

Not until the driver turned on his windshield wipers did I realize that there was a soft snow falling on Göttingen. Sunshine and snow. I wondered ... should I consider that as a double or only a single singularly good omen?