The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane (16 page)

I should have stayed out of the cafés probably, but it was the only place where I could go to be alone. Our house was full of my sisters and brothers and family members who had escaped other places where Jews were being treated even worse. So much worse sometimes, according to the newly arrived, that we didn't know whether to believe their stories. There was a haze everywhere, elusive like smoke, of bad things that might happen to us. I was young and full of hope and didn't want to hear about these bad things, so when I had had enough I would put on all my finest things and come and sit in the café as if I could find the truth of a happier future for myself. I knew unsavory things were happening everywhere, not just to the Jews, even here in the back room of the café. No one made any attempt to hide them from a young innocent girl like me, no, I knew that they thought if I didn't want to see such things I should stay out of Viennese cafés. It was as if suddenly there was a license for those who did not have to worry about their futures to let loose their beasts, you could see them almost, their snarly bestial heads poking out of their chests, the other that they could be. Are we all like that, I wondered. If Father did not have to worry, would there be a beast in him, too? In me? If we knew we could have control of other people, would we use it? Why not? What, after all, would make us different?

I began to see that everywhere there was either the doomed surrender of the preyed upon or the strange ecstasy of those dark figures coming into power and the kind of madness that ensued as people tried forbidden fruits and more and more strangers knocked on my mother's door with stories of atrocities elsewhere. Everyone could feel tensions building. Bad things coming. “All we have left is sitzfleish,” said my mother worriedly. Patience that can endure sitting. But I was very young and I preferred the ugliness of the predators to the kind of pessimism I was seeing at home with my own people. I was tired of it, everyone talking of escape but no one leaving. Why not then go out and have a good time? And more and more men were looking at me as standards loosened, slipped, as I came into the café time and again. What was I offering them, they wondered. I could see I excited just enough curiosity by coming again and again, by sitting alone. Anything that elicited curiosity, that titillated in any way, hooked these men, for a small time at least. They won't look when, if my uncle is right, we are all treated differently as Jews. If, as he predicts, bad things are to happen. Then they will not see me at all. Then I will go from being unseen to not being at all and I am young, I have not yet been, and if I am not to be in the future, I will be now. I will not sit quietly afraid in the house when I have not yet had a life.

One dark November before the Christmas lights would brighten the gloomy streets again, just as I finished the dregs in my tiny china cup and stubbed out my cigarette, a man came in. He was small and neat and beautiful with bright eyes, and he was stopping for directions, but then he saw me, so he ordered coffee and sat at the bar drinking it and looking shyly at me—I have never seen eyes like that—until I signaled the waiter and ordered another cup, too, although it was time for me to go. And then I did something no lady should, I went boldly to the bar and invited this man to come sit at my table.

“Cousin! To find you here!” I said to the man because the waiter was eyeing us curiously. I had never been so bold.

“Ah, you remember me, your cousin Ansel, I thought you might not,” he said, taking his coffee carefully to my table and pulling out my chair.

“Yes, but do you remember your cousin Zisel?” I asked.

“Of course, and I remember how you love cake,” said Ansel and ordered pieces for both of us, sending the curious waiter away.

And as it was getting on into evening the small band came in and began, as they always did at this hour, before being replaced by raunchier acts, the waltzes, and the sound of waltzes tinkled out into the lights of the street, drawing in more and more people until the café filled but we didn't notice, my Ansel and I. Not that night or ever again so long as we were together. And the world slipped away bit by bit. Ansel took me from Vienna to Canada because he knew, too, that bad things would begin happening and it would soon be harder if not impossible to go. And he was not like my family. He would not just wait it out. My mother begged me to wait with the rest of them until they were sure, perhaps things would not be so bad, perhaps stories were exaggerated, this was their home, but Ansel was sure and I was sure of Ansel. And because my family would not go with us, Ansel and I left without them, and I thought over and over how I was the one who did not want to listen to the warnings but I was the one to go, and the rest of them, who talked of nothing else, stayed. But I must admit I thought little of them after I left. For me, the whole world had become Ansel.

When last I heard of my family, years after coming to Canada—because at the time there was never any word, too many had been displaced, lost, died, no one really knew, it was better to wait until news came to you, it was better not to spend too much time thinking: the possibilities were too many and too horrible—it was a friend of a distant cousin who would tell me definitely that they were all gone, all those in my household who had waited too long, put in camps, not even in the same camps mostly but spread out, far apart, to die. Some of the family members, this friend thought, had ended up together, but she couldn't tell me which ones. She had only heard rumors that some had been together. She had been at a camp herself but not with any family. Better that way, this woman thought. She longed for familiar faces but soon she saw it was better not to see those faces dying before you. It was lonely, yes, but better to imagine them with hope, she thought. Maybe not. Maybe to be together would be comfort to all. Maybe there was no better any which way. Oh well, for sure, Zisel, though, all gone. That she knew for sure. There were networks. People worked hard to pass on news. It was all they could do now. Did it do any good or just spread misery? Perhaps they were beyond all misery. Was there a point you got to beyond misery? She didn't know. But I could not speculate with her. I had left my family many years ago in more than one way and made my life with Ansel. And the family friend was only envious when she saw how little it affected me. It would be heaven to be so unaffected, she said. Ich zol azoy vissen fun tzores, she said, and moved on.

Even after I got this news I was too busy to think of them, my dead parents, my dead brothers and sisters. I had babies one after the other, such blessings, and we lived in a bubble together for many years, safe, it seemed, in Canada. Safe forever. This would be my life forever. It did not occur to me that this, too, would pass. There were no Nazis but there was still death. It was not only Nazis who separated families. One by one, they died. Ansel first, then my four boys, one by one, cancer, a car accident took two, and finally my Menachem, my kaddishel. As if everything that had happened to me from the café until his death had been a long and happy dream. The dream world had been the good one. What had I done with my time in those dream days? I had fed them all. It didn't seem much, but I knew now it was everything. It was everything my life. Soups and kreplach and matzo balls. All the things I had learned from my mother. The way to add the ingredients to make the dense honey cake substantial yet light. All the formulas for being the way I had learned to be. And yet, I knew who I became did not come from such recipes, it came from Ansel and our boys. But now there was no one to say, ah, only Zisel can make such a light honey cake, the way Ansel had always said it. His way of saying there was only me in the world for him just as for me there had only been him. No one anymore knew what I was making, let alone that only I could make it so. I had been who I was for so many years because I had been so in Ansel's eyes. It was not that I was wonderful and so he found me so. It was that because he found me wonderful, I was.

 

MARTEN KNOCKERS

“W
HAT IS THIS
, some kind of rat?” I asked Humdinger because the island was full of rats and now it appeared one was dripping on the carpet.

“No, that is a dog,” said Humdinger in patient tones.

“What's he doing
here?
” I asked in astonishment. A dog, of all things. Were we starting a petting zoo?

“You told Jocelyn she could have a dog.”

“I did? I
did?
Fancy that. But it isn't even Christmas.”

“I don't believe it was a present exactly.”

“Presents! You know, Humdinger, I've been so focused on Christmas accessories and paraphernalia that I completely forgot that people get
presents
for Christmas. This opens up a whole other catalog-ordering opportunity, now, doesn't it? I mean, I've never had anyone to buy presents
for.
Goodness, what do
you
want, for instance?”

“I couldn't say.”

“But you
must.
You
must
say. I have no idea what a tall, middle-aged man might desire in the way of Christmas bounty. Do you like neckties? No, you wear that odd kind of collar thing, don't you? A butler collar, I guess it is. Never knew there was such a thing. So I guess butlers don't need neckties.”

“Indeed, neckties are very nicely thought of as Christmas gifts.”

“Yes, yes, yes, I suppose they are. Don't want any myself. Take that off my list immediately, if you please, Humdinger. Yes, well, how about chocolates? Women love the stuff. I hear butlers like to eat. Most of them are on the portly side, which is to say, fat. And it's been my observation that fat people love chocolate.”

“Many people love chocolate, true.”

“You know this is kind of like being in a musical duet with you, Humdinger, where you repeat or paraphrase the tag line of every stanza. I feel we should put this whole conversation to music. Do you sing, Humdinger?”

“Regrettably, no.”

“Pity. Well, I suppose you don't have a sweet tooth either, eh, Humdinger? The old sweet tooth. The foil of many a butler.”

“I wouldn't say sweets were my foil, no.”

“Well, then perhaps some macadamia nuts. People tend to be either sweet or salty in their snacking preferences. The old chocolate or nuts choice, I call it. You know, I've been reading these Christmas gift catalogs and they do seem to sell an awful lot of macadamia nuts. Expensive. Unusual. Exotic. Hawaiian. But now me, Humdinger, I don't associate Hawaii with Christmas. Leis, luaus, hula girls doesn't spell Christmas to me. What you want is snow and reindeer and mistletoe and a lot, really a
lot
of plum accessories. That's what you want. That and a Jesus or two in a stable.”

“One is usually considered sufficient.”

“Yes, but we've got money. Gobs. No use being sufficient when you can be excessive. We'll have two. That way no one will have to fight over them. Have you ever seen people fighting over a baby Jesus?”

“I can't say that I have.” Humdinger started to roll his eyes but stopped. I must say I was surprised. I had never seen him roll his eyes before. It was most unlike him.

“Oh yes, bloodshed, I assure you. I'm looking back now down that long tunnel to my childhood.”

“A lot of baby Jesus fights in your youth, were there?” asked Humdinger politely.

“Well, yes, as in the best of families, of course,” I said. “Bloody things, as I say. My brothers and I would take turns stealing it and hiding it in soap dishes and such. Drove my mother crazy. This way, you see, if anyone feels like stealing it we have a spare for the crèche. Anyhow, one Jesus was clearly not enough. They dispensed with him quickly enough, now didn't they? Of course, you've got to be crazy to volunteer for that job anyway, don't you? I mean really. Lamb of God, ha. Lamb chops. That's what they do with lamb. Ever been around during lambing season, Humdinger? All those wonderful lambs running in the field, spring's miracle, life renewed. Well, they don't just send them all to Club Med, now do they? So sad and yet so tasty, that should be mankind's motto.
Ha!
I don't consider myself a religious man, Humdinger, but everyone knows the story whether you believe it or not. That whole mess at the end with nailing people up on crosses. Of course, Romans were doing that all the time. Regular weekend entertainment, like going to the movies. You know, I think it would make a good paper that, things people do to entertain themselves on the weekend. I mean that in the larger sense, of course. Weekend metaphorically, yes…”

I whipped out a notebook and pencil to sketch out a plan as I stumbled upstairs. I'd be busy for weeks now. When I was researching and writing a new paper I rarely spoke to anyone at all. But all during the holidays, whenever Humdinger passed the crèche he apparently removed the second baby Jesus. I guess he was serious when he said one was quite enough. I would replace it. I ordered quite a few. It made me unaccountably happy to know there was always a replacement Jesus at the ready. And finding one missing confirmed for me what I already suspected, that human nature being what it was, someone was always stealing the baby Jesus. Can't blame them for wanting their own baby Jesus, though. Probably they're all keeping them in their bathrooms in their soap dishes. Thank goodness we can afford for everyone to have his own. But that Humdinger is a strange fellow. I've seen him take three or four already. Greedy. Nobody really needs
four
baby Jesuses, do they? Oh well, must let the butlers have their quirks. Strange fellows. Strange profession to get into. Hope he likes his ties.

 

MELINE

I
T WAS JUST TWO WEEKS
before Christmas when Uncle Marten, Jocelyn, and I finally made it in to dinner all together again. I was feeling well enough to come downstairs to eat for the first time. My temperature was down now and I was eating meals again with regularity. The puppy, I noticed, followed Humdinger wherever he went, having given up on me because I was always asleep when he investigated my room, or Jocelyn, who slept by day and scavenged by night and, since that first night out, refused to take the puppy with her for fear of losing it. She had found a second aileron and part of a fuselage and was very busy. Mrs. Mendelbaum had an odd glazed look in her eye when we saw her at all, which wasn't very often. I'm not sure she had even seen the puppy yet. But Humdinger provided the puppy with regular meals and let it out and in again. He was the only one who seemed to hear its high-pitched cries and could interpret them. He housetrained the puppy and cleaned up after it. He knew when the puppy was hungry or thirsty, when it needed to go out or have a door opened for it. And finally, because no one else seemed to have thought of it, he named it.