The Last of the Wise Lovers (17 page)

   "But it wasn't Dad," Mom
said and looked at me, waiting for confirmation.

   But I couldn't help her.  It
certainly could have been Dad, who might have arranged another quick flight
change and returned home unexpectedly.  Suddenly I found myself hoping
that it wasn't Dad, but the guy from the Lincoln Tunnel.

"Did he cough?" I asked.
 "Clearing his throat, like, between sentences?"

   Mom looked at me in astonishment.

Debbie said, "He had an accent, not really an
accent, but a kind of non-accent, like all Israelis do when they speak English.
 He was the same height and size as your Dad...”

   "How many times have you seen my
Dad?  After all, most of the time he's not even here...”

   "I've seen him enough times, and
anyway, who besides your Dad would be sitting on the swing in your yard looking
at your house?"

   I looked at Mom and asked in Hebrew,
"Now do you believe me?"

   "In English, Ronnyleh, speak
English," she patted my head. "We've had a hard day.  Aunt Ida -
you remember her - suddenly took ill today."

   "Poisoned," I said.

   Both of them looked at me in horror.
 Debbie because she was frightened, and Mom because she didn't yet know
what I knew about the nature of the pills she'd been given.  

Debbie spoke first.  "Are you starting
again?  Next thing you'll be saying it was some kind of joke."
 She shouldered her backpack. "I'd rather sleep in my own house,
alone."

   "In the morning everything will
seem different," Mom said in a tone that once would have reassured me,
too, and led her out of the kitchen.  A few minutes later I could hear
them moving the bed in the basement.  I stayed in the kitchen and waited
for Mom.  When she came back upstairs, I called her.

"Who did you get those blue pills from?"
I asked.

   "What difference does it
make?"

   "Aunt Ida got sick from
them."

   "Nonsense.  No harm can
come from taking vitamins - even a whole bottle full."

   "They were pain killers."

   "Where did you get that
idea?"

   "From somebody who takes the
exact same pills."

   She got serious.  "I've
already told you, Ronny, I've got enough on my hands without your imputations
and the theories you construct on the basis of all sorts of half-baked
impressions that have no connection to the overall situation...”

   "I understand the overall
situation," I said quietly.  "I also know what's going on
between you and Dad.  I even know what's going on between you and...” I
swallowed hard, "someone else."

   She cast her eyes down and was
silent.  I didn't say anything, either.  The silence was so deep that
we could hear the ticking of the clock in the hall.  Mom leaned on the
doorpost and said in a low voice: "What could you possibly know about
things that began before you were born and that have been going on all this
time, while we were raising you... what do you know of life...” she started to
whimper, hiding her face in the door frame.

   "I'm sorry," I went to her,
but she slipped past and went to her room.

   Now I understand that that was a very
important moment, perhaps the most important moment of all during those days.
 It was the moment I sobered up from the illusion that everything could be
resolved by talking to Mom; the moment I realized that she would always cloak
any acknowledgement of reality in a wretchedness which would neutralize
everything, rendering her `sincerity' totally meaningless.

   I waited until the light in her room
went out, and then I went down to the basement.  Debbie sat on the bed.
 I plopped down on the carpet at her feet.  I didn't intend to talk;
I only wanted someone to be nice to me, to help me clear my head of the
terrible racket inside.

   But
she
began to talk.
 "You've found someone else, Ronny; now I get it; now I
understand."

   "I haven't got anyone," I
pulled her toward me.

   She threw herself backwards, on the
bed, and said, "I don't believe you.  I can't tell anymore when
you're telling the truth and when you're lying."

   I climbed up on the bed and pressed
myself against her, breathing in the wonderful fragrance of perfumed clothes
and a scrubbed body. She turned her face to the wall.  I inhaled the scent
of her hair and the nape of her neck - until suddenly I realized that there was
nothing exceptional in these: just another tanned neck and soft chestnut-brown
hair.  You know that feeling when there's no magic anymore, when it's all
over, and the sexiest girl you know - the girl the whole school is dying to lay
- is suddenly nothing more than just a pretty and unexceptional girl from
around the corner?

  
I guess she must have sensed it, because her shoulders started to shake and she
said, hiding her head in the pillow.  "I
know
you've got
someone else, maybe in the City, maybe even at the library, someone that's
willing to do all the crazy things that you like...”

  
This time I knew the elixir.  I started to fantasize about Miss Doherty,
and within seconds I was hot.  But Debbie wasn't in the mood.

"Leave
me alone," she mumbled.  "I want to go to sleep."

  
I stayed there almost two hours.  When I went upstairs, the clock in the hall
struck midnight.  I went through the house again, making sure all the
doors and windows were locked.  Then I went to my room and lay down on the
bed, but I couldn't sleep.  It seemed everything was getting worse.
 I wasted a few more minutes in hesitation (after all, it wasn't exactly
an accepted hour for phone calls), then searched through the blue phone book in
the kitchen.  At twenty past midnight I called you.

  
Now I'm really beat… maybe because I'm getting to the tough part.
 
How much time is there before
you arrive?  Six hours. Actually, almost only five.  There's still so
much to tell; how will I get it all down in five hours?

You didn't answer.  A recording apologized in
your name and referred me to an answering service.  I wondered where you
could be at such an hour.  Then I decided that you must be asleep, but
that since you had dealings with people from all over the world who lived in
various time zones, you probably just unplugged the phone and let the answering
service take care of everything.

   I called the answering service.
 A really nice woman took down our phone number and promised to pass the
message on to you.  I dozed off for a while.  An hour later I woke
up.  When I went to the bathroom I missed seeing the dancing TV screen in
the living room, Aunt Ida asleep in front of it.  Again I thought of
calling the hospital.  I even thought of what I would say, reciting my
message and then immediately hanging up.  "This is about the patient
who threw up, Ida Mitchnik.  She doesn't exactly have a sick stomach; she
took a large quantity of pain killers by mistake."  As I stood before
the telephone, hesitating, it rang.

   During the first two rings I froze
with fear.  But when I remembered the message I'd left you, I was grateful
that you'd called back right away, just as the woman at the answering service
had promised.  By the time I picked up the receiver, I was calm.

   But it was a woman with a gravelly,
if friendly, voice.  "Mr. Levin?" she asked.  "Mr.
Ronny Levin?"

   For the first time ever, I hesitated
to answer to my name.

   Again she asked.  "Mr.
Ronny Levin?"

   This time I answered.
 "Yes."

   "I'm calling on behalf of your
friend, Mr. Kleiner."

   "Kleiner?"

   "K.," she added quickly.

   "Yes."

   I was exhausted, and a little scared.
 She must have heard it in my voice.  "You do know him, don't
you?"

   "Yes, yes, of course."

   "He was brought to us today
and... he asked that you come visit...”

   "Where is he?"

   She gave me the address of a
hospital.  "It's in Brooklyn, not far from Prospect Park.  Do
you know how to get here?"

   "I'll find it."

   "Room 803."

   "Room 803," I repeated.
 "What are the visiting hours?"

   "Every day between 3:00 and
5:00, but...” she hesitated, "... he's not really allowed to have visitors
and my shift is over at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  You'd best come early so
that you'll have some time to talk... since Mrs. Kleiner will be coming at
about 8:00 and... and it seems he doesn't want you two to meet...”

   I didn't understand why I couldn't
meet Mrs. Kleiner, but nothing surprised me anymore.  I wrote down all the
details and hung up.  It was almost 1:00 a.m.  I sat beside the
telephone until I fell asleep.  I woke at around 6:00, locked the house up
tight, and left two notes: one for Mom, reminding her where her keys were, and
one for Debbie, apologizing and promising that we'd go to a movie or dancing or
bowling or whatever she wanted that night.  I rode in on the usual bus to Port
Authority.  (At that hour of the morning New York is different. People
smile at each other; the driver even looked at me before punching my ticket.)
 When I got to Manhattan I transferred to the subway, and after another
half hour of hurtling through tunnels I arrived at Prospect Park.

   The hospital was different from what
I'd expected.  No nurse behind any counter asked me politely, `May I help
you?' and there were no hushed voices in the background calling doctor
so-and-so to please report to the cardiology department.  It was just
another glass door in the middle of a large wall in the middle of Brooklyn.
 Behind the glass door sat a security guard, reading yesterday's paper.

   "Where to?" he asked.

   "Room 803."

   He looked at me strangely.
 "That's upstairs on the eighth floor."

   The buttons in the elevator went as
far as the seventh floor.  I thought of going back to the security guard
and asking again, but when I remembered the way he'd looked at me I decided I'd
find it myself.

   I pushed seven.  The elevator
responded exactly as the guard had: with a little jump, as if I'd requested
something I didn't deserve.  There was a geriatric ward on the seventh
floor, and old people wandered the corridor, leaning on walkers and canes.
 None of them was able to explain to me where the missing eighth floor
was, but hanging on a fire extinguisher was a cardboard sign bearing an arrow
and the words: "To the eighth floor."  I followed the arrow down
a long, long corridor that encircled the building.  The farther along I
went, the clearer it became that this was a part of the hospital that wasn't in
use: the paint was old, but not peeling, and all sorts of junk was hanging on
the walls.  A small sign instructed me to stop and check: did I have any
contagious diseases? Suffer from a deficiency of the immune system?  Take
drugs that might reduce the body's resistance?  Had I ever been stricken
with hemophilia?  Skin cancer?  Pneumonia, or any of another long
list of diseases?

   I pushed a swinging door and found myself
in a large hall. There were a lot of closed doors that led to other rooms, a
few old easy chairs, and a table with a yellowing cover.  Behind it sat a
nurse who was preparing syringes.

"Yes?" she said.

   "I'm Ronny.  Ronny
Levin."

   She got up, indicating a pile of
folded johnny-coats.  I put one on.  In a basket next to them were
rubber gloves and cloth masks.

"Do I
have
to put these things
on?" I asked.

   "If you want to go in."

   I donned the gloves and mask.
 She led me to room 803.  She opened the door, let me in, and closed
the door behind me quickly, as if she were covering a bubbling pot.

   It was a large room but there was
only one bed in it, set right in the center, equidistant from all of the walls.
 K. was lying there, attached to a thin tube, staring at the ceiling.
 I moved toward him, feeling a little awkward in my hospital whites.
 He didn't move his head. "Hello, Mr. K.," I said softly.
 Seeing him lying there attached to a tube made me feel oddly distant;
that's why I addressed him as `Mr. K.'  He turned his head with some
effort.

"Hello, Ronny."

   "How are you feeling?"
 It was a stupid question, but it was the only one I could think of.

   He nodded his head wearily.  I
moved even closer to him, and he extended his hand in greeting.  Something
stopped me from touching him.  He withdrew his hand and said, "Thanks
for coming."

   His voice was no different than
usual, just much weaker.  But his face looked different, as if he'd lost a
quarter of his weight in the 24 hours since we'd seen each other.

"What do you have?" I asked.

   "Pneumonia."

   I said, "Ah," as if I
understood, even though I didn't understand how someone could get pneumonia at
the end of the summer.

   He added, "And when I get over
it - if I do - I'll catch something else.  That's how it works, this
disease."

   Now I understood.  I stopped
breathing.  

He sensed it, I guess, because he said, "You
needn't worry.  It's not contagious."  And in the same
matter-of-fact tone he used to explain everything, he added, "Those things
you're wearing... they're meant to protect me.  Not you."

   There was a childish drawing hanging
on the wall opposite him and on it, in English, in awkward, block letters,
"Shana Tova," and the date of Rosh Hashanah, "September 7".
 That was like a signal, a reminder; it made me glance at my watch and
realize that between last night's confusion and this morning's haste, I hadn't
noticed that it was already September 4th.

   Although he was weak, K. immediately
caught on what I was looking at.  

He said: "My son.  That's all he knows
of Judaism.  That our New Year isn't in January."  He tried to
sit up.  Something about the effort he had to make touched me, banishing
my reticence, and I moved to help him.  He was extremely thin underneath
his pajamas, and had difficulty holding his head up.  From up close I
could see that his eyes were glazed, and that the rash which had begun to flare
under his skin yesterday had erupted in great,
dark blotches on his cheeks and neck. There was a huge black-and-blue
mark on his forehead.  He touched it, as if to make sure it was still
there.  

"I always
get one or two just like that every year," I said from an urge to show
empathy, "in baseball, I stand too close to the batter, and I get a bat in
the face."

   It was stupid and self-righteous, but
he didn't get angry; he actually took it as a request for an explanation.

"I fell," he said, "yesterday
evening, in the library, on the back stairs.  From there they brought me
here."

   "I was worried.  You kind
of disappeared on me."

   "There was a reason for
it."

   "The woman who was standing next
to me?"

   He nodded.

   "Why?"

   He was silent, his eyes closed, and
for a moment I thought he'd sunk into an exhausted sleep.  Finally he
said, "It doesn't matter anymore."

   I told him about how I'd found her in
his office.

   He listened with some difficulty but
without surprise, as if he already knew about what had happened, or had
expected it.  When I finished he said, "I wanted to ask a favor of
you."

   "Sure," I said gladly.
 I was willing to do anything he'd asked.

   He poked a grayish hand into the
night table drawer and felt around.  I helped him reach a small leather
toilet kit that was crammed with bottles of pills and medicines, pillboxes, and
tubes of ointment.  He pulled it toward him, dumped its contents onto his
blanket, and handed it to me.

"There's a membership card in there.
 You'll find it in between the lining and the leather.  The club's
address is listed on it and the magnetic strip will open the door.  My
locker number is 1956; remember it by the Sinai War.  Take whatever's left
there, then throw it out or burn it.  Including the card."

   I tucked the toilet kit under my arm
and said, "You can count on me."

   He really was counting on me, and
acted as if it was the most obvious, natural thing in the world.  He
didn't even bother to thank me.  For some reason it made me respect him,
maybe because I get carried away with a kind of sickening gratitude any time
someone does something for me.

"I'll come visit," I promised.
 "In another...” again that number seven on the wall.  What
would the 8th or the 9th of September be like? "... two days it'll be Rosh
Hashanah...”

   He shook his head.  "It
would be better if you didn't come any more.  There will be people...”

   "After the holiday, early in the
morning."

   "I don't know if I'll still be
here."  I wondered whether he meant the hospital, or life, but he
didn't leave any room for doubt. "I'm dying."

   I didn't know what to do.  It
was the first time I'd had to say goodbye to someone I would probably never see
again.

"Thanks," I said, "for
everything...”

   "Take care of yourself," he
waved weakly.

   When I got to the door I stopped.
 I wanted to tell him that despite everything, we had been friends.
 But when I turned around to look at him he had already sunk back onto the
pillows, his eyes closed.

   Outside I took off the johnny-coat,
the mask, and the gloves and threw them into a large hamper that was standing
nearby.  The nurse peeked at me from behind a small mirror that she was
using to put on lipstick.  The morning bustle had already begun on the
corridor, and in the lobby a black guy was lining up wheeled beds.  I
crossed the street to Prospect Park, sat down on a bench, and separated the
lining from the sides of the toilet kit.  There was a plastic card in
there, cleverly concealed behind the inner pocket.  Above the magnetic
strip were written the words, "The Patrician Club".  The address
- someplace near the end of 42nd Street - was printed in tiny, almost illegible
letters.  I wrapped it in a piece of lining that I'd torn out of the
toilet kit, and wrote "#1956" on it; I didn't want to have to depend
on remembering some war I'd never heard of.

  
*

   Something in my scheduling got fouled
up; maybe I'd spent more time in Prospect Park than I'd intended.  It was
already 9:40 when I reached the steps of the library.  Ms. Yardley waited
until I'd gotten to my post before click-clicking on her high heels across the
room to stand opposite me.

"Do we have an explanation, young man?"

   "The bus," I replied
without batting an eye, "there was an accident on Palisades Parkway and we
were held up." A mere week earlier I would never have been able to make up
a lie that fast.

   She placed her hands on her hips.
 "For your information, I also arrive via Palisades Parkway, and
there was no accident there this morning.  At least not at the hour you
should have been on your way here, if you had made an effort to come to work on
time."

   I was silent.

   She really went to town. "I
think you've got a problem, mister. You're given an inch and you take a mile.
 I didn't say anything when you roamed around all day without working.
 I didn't say a word even when you were caught in the most despicable,
reprehensible act, stealing...”

   At this point, I lost my cool.

"What are you talking about?" I screamed
in a voice that would have made Mom hide her face in shame. "You never
caught me stealing anything...”  Of course everybody turned around to
watch, and they were enjoying themselves immensely.  Such tones had never
before been heard in the hallowed halls of the library.  The
guard at the entrance to the Reading Room
straightened up a little and placed his hand on the butt of his gun - if only
as a matter of form.