The Prince of West End Avenue (22 page)

How many besides my own flesh and blood have I on my conscience? I should have screamed from the rooftops, "Jews, run for your lives!"

Old AS I AM, I am still pedaling, zooming downhill, my heart bursting. The fact is, I cannot stop, and I am afraid to jump off.

She ASKED ME again, did Meta. Asked me? She begged me, implored me. "We must get out now. Now, Otto. Soon it will be too late." Terrified, she plucked at my sleeve, her eyes deep-sunk. "Lola and Kurt will vouch for us, we must go to them, to New York."

This was in 1935, shortly after our countrymen had stripped us of our citizenship. A new outbreak of violence and intimidation was sweeping across the land. Meta and Hugo scarcely went out anymore. Hugo had a tutor at home, a meticulous man, formerly of the Royal College, now dismissed from his post and cast out of his home by his gentile wife. The tutor was a hapless wanderer to whom we were giving temporary shelter.

"Please, Otto!"

But I was deep in a new scheme. "Symbiosis" was its grand name. The idea was to create some kind of state-within-the-state, its citizens known from the word Jude to be imprinted on

an identifying document, but otherwise self-governing and working for the mutual benefit of both entities. How mad we all were! We refused to recognize that they saw us as maleficent bacteria in the bloodstream of an otherwise healthy body politic. There was only one solution, of course. The bacterium having been identified, it must be eliminated, annihilated. Meanwhile, stupidly, some of the bacteria created committees, held meetings, drew up resolutions, produced draft constitutions, fought over words and phrases, grew passionate, toiled long into the night. How could I, a possible future minister of a possible state-within-the-state, my shoulders already bowed with the anticipated burden of office, the fate of German Jewry in my hands—how could I cave in to the hysterical and defeatist ravings of my wife? And how would it look if I, the spokesman for symbiosis, allowed my wife and child to flee while urging others to stand fast? It was out of the question.

It was then, I believe, that Meta began to hate me in earnest. She never asked me again. I cannot remember that she ever again spoke to me, no, not even after Kristallnacht, when my parents retired one night to swallow Veronal, obtained who knows where. They left a note, of course, in my father's neat handwriting: "We execute upon ourselves the judgment of our Fatherland."

So you see, by the time of Lola's suicide, I was already an old hand. In November 1938, however, I was still green. Meta's reaction was maniacal laughter that went on and on until her voice gave out and she lapsed from croaking into silence. She was never quite in her right mind after that. Hugo looked after her. Poor boy, what a world he found himself in!

AND SHE LAUGHED AGAIN when, three years later, they loaded us into the train. By now her flesh had shrunk to the bone. She might have been Hugo's grandmother, an old madwoman, a

crone, pale and ill smelling. A doctor, a fellow "passenger," slapped her sharply across the cheek, a kindly blow, carefully calculated; her pitifully thin face scarcely shifted on its stalk. By the time we arrived at the camp, she was already dead.

Hugo would not leave his mother's body. I had to pry his fingers from her arm. Then I pushed him out of the train and sent him sprawling onto the platform. A blow on his temple from a guards casual rifle butt, and he joined his mother.

How can a man with such crimes on his conscience go on living? Only by dropping a portcullis before the horror, digging a moat around it, locking it away immured in stone. The heart cannot otherwise endure such grief. But why, he must ask himself, should he live at all? He creates a theory of Purpose.

now only three days away!—well, he says, if I don't excite myself, //nothing further "happens," why, he ventures to suppose I'll be able to perform.

In my present mood I seem unable to worry. First, I had a word with La Dawidowicz. The entire company, of course, by now knew of my indisposition. Spirits were low. As for La Dawidowicz, she was already in mourning. Her hair in frizzled disarray, her eyes red and moist, a black dressing gown wrapped around her loose rotundity, she opened her door to me as one gazing into the pit itself. "You too," she moaned. Her teeth were not yet in. "First Adolphe, then my sweet Nahum, now you."

"Come now, Tosca, don't be foolish. Here I am, you see me. I'm fit as a fiddle."

"The Angel of Death points a finger, and you tell me I shouldn't be foolish. I should be happy, maybe?"

"How would you like to be codirector?"

"Codirector of what? A funeral service? That's what you're offering me, big shot? Nahum was right, he should rest in peace: the play's jinxed."

"The play will go on as planned."

"You're a solo-ambulant all of a sudden? You believe in fairies?"

"I ate something that disagreed with me, that's all. I need someone to take over rehearsals, to solve the last-minute problems, someone with intelligence and understanding, someone who can shoulder the responsibility. Now, whom here in the Emma Lazarus could I come to but you? Still, if you're not interested—"

"Codirector?"

"I need someone to rally the ranks, someone with experience, a strong personality."

"The programs have already been printed."

"The Kommandant will make an announcement from the

stage: 'We are fortunate to have as codirector the beautiful Tosca Dawidowicz, our wonderful Ophelia.' "

"Not, you should know, that that matters."

"Of course not. The play's the thing."

To my intense displeasure, she kissed me, a slobbering toothless kiss, on the cheek. "You got yourself a codirector!"

"Work around me as best you can. Kunstler can read my lines, no need to have him act. And Tosca"—I pointed to her black dressing gown—"put on something gay this morning, something to lift the company's morale. You have an eye for such things."

The SEED has put down roots. Today I spotted a green shoot.

Sitting in the waiting room a few minutes before the hour of this morning's "observation," I supposed I heard the doctor calling me to come in. I opened the door and surprised Mandy Dattner and Dr. Comyns in an embrace of the most extraordinary passion. They were, I am relieved to say, fully clothed. Nevertheless, he stood there in the cold winter sunlight that streamed through his window, his hands supporting and savagely kneading her buttocks, his legs slightly bent to withstand the strain, while she, her legs wrapped around his midriff, rubbed herself up and down against him. One of her arms was flung around his neck; with the other she had contrived to reach behind her and beneath his bruising fingers to cup and manipulate the bulge at his crotch. Meanwhile, their mouths sought one another with such eager suckings and smackings that the click of their teeth was audible above their moans.

"Excuse me," I said.

For a moment they froze in place; then they leapt apart, Mandy landing neatly with a practiced bounce on the balls of her feet. Hoopla!

"Grampus!" she exclaimed, and burst into laughter.

Dr. Comyns reached for his stethoscope and straightened his tie. "That will be all, Miss Dattner, thank you." He stroked his beard between forefinger and thumb with the air of a philosopher pondering a problem in metaphysics.

"Yes, Doctor," she said with a wink to me. And she left, pausing only to blow an impudent kiss to him from the door.

His aplomb was masterly, I must grant him that. By not so much as an "ahem" did he acknowledge that I might have seen anything untoward. He examined me with his customary thoroughness, remarked once more on the grayness of my color, put that down to a lack of fresh air and exercise, and sent me on my way.

In THE AFTERNOON Mandy visited me in my room.

"The thing is," she said, frowning, "Ralph thinks it's like his?

"Perhaps it is."

She sat cross-legged on the floor, oblivious of the white lacy strip flanked by rich tendrils of hair that she presented to my view. "I told you, I know when it happened."

I looked deliberately elsewhere. "Freddy Blum can't make babies."

"I never said it was Mr. Blum."

"Your discretion does you credit. Blum it certainly was not. If not Dr. Comyns either, then someone else. About that possibility I neither know nor want to know."

"But I felt a ping."

"A ping is no proof of paternity. Blum is sterile. I tell you this only because you need to know it. Obviously it is not the sort of information to be bandied about."

"O wow, gee, you're sure about Mr. Blum? He's, you know, like what you said?" Up went a tentative eyebrow. She hovered on a smile.

"Sterility," I said pompously, "is a frequent concomitant of priapism; the two go, as it were, hand in hand. Read your Krafft-Ebing, yout Havelock Ellis."

"Gee, I dunno."

"Trust me, I do."

"Wee-urd!" She squirmed on her bottom, the white strip shimmering in the darkness. "Then it'd have to be Ralph! Oh, Grampus!" She leapt to her feet in a single motion, my little gymnast, and flung her arms around me. "Then it's all okay!"

"But now things are serious, Mandy. You're practically a fiancee, and soon you'll be a mother. It's time to impart a measure of decorum to your life."

"You mean I gotta redo my pad?"

Was she mocking me? "I mean it's time to stop fooling around."

She kissed me, delighted. "Fuddy-duddy!"

As FOR BLUM, perhaps he is sterile. At the least I spoke a metaphorical truth.

FOR THE LAST FORTY YEARS I have toyed with the idea of Purpose, have tossed it like a ball into the air, have apprehended pattern, movement, meaning, an ineluctable goal, a striving toward somewhere in the restless chaos of existence. These foolish pages bear witness to the lasting witlessness of my endeavor, a vain defense against the terror of the void. For what "purpose" can any rational being find in my life? No longer can I delude myself that because I cannot see order, ipso facto, it exists. To be sure, every present moment is the pinnacle of all that has gone before. To that extent, all my past was prologue to this now. But Purpose? How laughable! Have I been spared when better than I—much better—were not, in order that I

might tread the boards of the Emma Lazarus in the company of others as decrepit as myself? We, like Dr. Johnson's lady preachers, may justly be compared to dogs trained to walk on their hind legs. The wonder is not that we do what we do well, but that we can do it at all.

No, there is only the present. This was the truth I recognized when Lola died, her poor body hanging grotesquely from the water pipe, her husband crouched in torment on the kitchen floor. But I was wrong to sever the present from the past, for the past has no imperatives that the present cannot refuse. What can we do but grasp the fleeting moment? For me, in this now, that moment is our play. I want to be Hamlet. And I care not a whit for the comical figure I shall cut.

As for Purpose, that comes not from without but from within. The Contessa's lawyers have proved as efficient as ever. Hipsy-pipsy, the papers have been drawn up; pipsy-hipsy, they have been signed and witnessed. When I leave the ever-present now and enter the eternal then, Mandy Dattner will receive in trust for her child that estate which was mine, thanks to the generosity of Kenneth Himmelfarb and the wonderful cunning of the Contessa's saintly Meurice. There's Purpose for you.

Kunstler is mounting an exhibition of recent (relatively speaking) paintings. The penthouse lecture room is being readied for a feminist symposium to be led by none other than Lucille Mor-genbesser, Hermione's daughter, who is donating her time without remuneration, on the topic "Maccabean Women: Keeping the Lamp Alight." The members of the board, the Komman-dant, the staff, resident and nonresident alike, will mingle with the visitors. In short, this is to be a gala occasion.

The GREEN LIGHT this morning from Dr. Comyns. I emerged from his office into the corridor to find an anxious group waiting for me. "So?" said the Red Dwarf. I gave them the thumbs-up sign. La Dawidowicz pinched my cheek. "You should only break a leg," she said. "What kind of talk is that?" said Pfaffenheim. "Theatrical talk. It's a way of saying mazeltov without exciting the evil eye," explained Wittkower. "Such superstitious crap from a boss-coddled elite has always ground the workers down," complained the Red Dwarf. "Good friends, my thanks to all," I said. There were cheers, an unseemly rowdiness. Nevertheless, they meant well, and so I did not rebuke them.

To be honest, I was surprised to have passed the doctor's examination. Earlier I had experienced what I might call a "near episode"—that is to say, a dizziness. Luckily I was sitting on my bed at the time, still in my pajamas, and I waited until it passed over. It left me with a certain queasiness that makes the thought of food repellant. Some nourishment I must take, but common sense dictates that I avoid the seasonal and well-loved potato pancakes, especially this evening.

LIKE Dr. COMYNS, Hamburger is not pleased with my color. "What you need is a little sunshine, some warm air, you look

like shit. Hannah and I are going to the Bahamas once the play is over. Why don't you come with us?"

"On your honeymoon you won't need me." "Not exactly a honeymoon." He looked a trifle embarrassed. "Lucille, the daughter, she's got a tax expert, a brilliant woman, Harvard Business School graduate, highest honors. She's explained we're better off single, taxwise, you understand." A pause. "You think I'm an old fool, Otto?" "Mrs. Perlmutter is an extraordinary woman." "Exactly, you've said it yourself." He shied away from that topic and returned to the matter of my health. "But seriously, why don't you join us?"

"First of all, I like my winters cold. There is a decorum even to the seasons. As for my color, it says nothing about how well I am. Dr. Comyns thinks I'm fine. To be honest, I've never felt better. A few episodes of dizziness don't deserve a trip to the Bahamas."

"A few episodes? There have been more than one?" My tongue was ripe for biting. "And what if there have? Passing phenomena, nothing more."