Monastery Read online

  Go on in, child, go on in.

  She had taken out a bunch of keys, had opened the heavy black iron door.

  I closed my umbrella and went quickly inside as she held the door for a group of tourists, then guided them toward the elevator, told them to go on up to the third floor. I stood looking at the lobby: large, ostentatious, the whole place clad in green, gray, and beige marble, with friezes sculpted in plaster and meticulously adorned in gold leaf. On the walls were poorly maintained gaudy bas-reliefs of chubby children at play, and chubby children with flutes, and chubby children riding on the backs of goats. There was a huge stained-glass window in the ceiling, also in poor condition. When I was a little girl, she said to me, looking upward and shaking the water from her raincoat, they decided to paint black over it and cover it with wood planks. She took off her gloves. She took off her cloche hat. She ran a hand through her short salt-and-pepper Afro, while the pink tip of her tongue emerged and ran over her top lip, then her bottom lip, maybe licking away the raindrops. To protect the window, she said. From an expected atomic bomb.

  We walked over to the elevator. And as we waited for it, I imagined her as a little girl, growing up there, playing and running in the lobby and in the corridors and surrounded by all the gilded children and all the famous residents of the building and always wearing her bloodred boots.

  Have you known Marjorie a long time? I asked. Yes, a long time, she said. She was a good friend of my parents. I considered asking who her parents were, whether they still lived there. But I thought it inappropriate. On Sundays, I help her out however I can, she said. Sometimes I set out the chairs. Sometimes I put in the blue lights. Sometimes, during the break, I serve the orange juice and cookies to the guests. Sometimes, I help a few lost souls find their way. She gave me a graceful smile. It’s my way, however small and useless, she said, of honoring the memory of a dead son. She fell silent, and it occurred to me that she’d said these last words with a different voice. Perhaps with a voice that was trembling, or hoarser, or breaking slightly. Perhaps with the restrained and false voice of a ventriloquist. And I knew then, with absolute certainty, with total conviction, that she too had lost a son.

  The elevator doors opened, we stepped inside, she pressed the button, and we went up slowly, in silence. Both of us looking straight ahead, both of us looking up, both of us looking again at her bloodred boots, and feeling or imagining that we were feeling, in this space that was no space, in this small antechamber, the devastating and heroic strength of a mother for her dead son.

  Suddenly, a bell rang. The doors opened. Here’s where you get out, she said, I go on to the top floor. I was a little surprised. I’d assumed that she was also going to Marjorie’s, that she’d be accompanying me to Marjorie’s, and I told her so. She shook her head. Not today, she said. Today, I survive alone.

  I stepped out into the hallway. In the distance I could hear, sounding muted, muffled, the sweet and dissonant melody of a piano. I turned to the elevator, to Shasta. I thanked her. On the right, she said, apartment 3F, and hurry, child, you’re already late. The sound of the piano stopped, then silence, and gentle applause. She smiled at me with just her eyes. I held out my hand, a bit hurried and proud, perhaps wishing to defer the inevitable for a while longer. It took her a moment to understand, but then she also held out hers. And we stayed like that for a couple of seconds, maybe not even that, each of us on separate sides of the doors.

  Prologue at Saint-Nazaire

  I’m looking out at the submarine base. In 1940, here, in Saint-Nazaire, a port town on the French Breton coast, the German Kriegsmarine erected this enormous base for building submarines. The famous U-boats, as they are called in English, or U-Boote, in German, an abbreviation of Unterseeboote. I look down through the window and I can see, directly opposite, the gray-brown block, oblong, dismal, vast (three hundred meters long, eighteen meters tall); then I turn my gaze to the pieces of paper scattered over my desk, photocopies of the correspondence between Chekhov and his friend Pleshcheev.

  It is January 1888. In a letter to poet Alexei Pleshcheev, Anton Chekhov remarks on the process of writing “The Steppe,” his first long story. He tells him that writing long things is extremely tedious and much more difficult than writing trivial things. He also tells him that, in order to earn a little money, he is considering writing something short for one of the newspapers, perhaps for the Novoye Vremya, perhaps for the Peterburgskaya Gazeta. His friend Pleshcheev writes back at once, dismayed. He tries to dissuade him. He insists that it would be a great shame to put his long story aside and write something trivial just for the money, for newspapers that are read one day, he writes, and used as wrapping paper the next.

  I watch a group of children running around on the roof of the submarine base. An outing from some French school, I think, and I think about the word trivial, about the importance of the trivial in art, in literature. Isn’t the trivial, after all, the raw material of the short story writer? Aren’t anecdotes that seem trivial—that is to say, insignificant—the very clay with which the short story writer carries out his craft and shapes his art? All of life, I think, is codified in these trivial, minuscule, transparent details—details that seem not to contain anything of importance (a leaf of grass, wrote Walt Whitman, is no less than the journey-work of the stars). A great short story writer, I think as the children play on the old submarine base, knows how to make something immense of the brief, something transcendent of the insignificant, knows how to transform nothing at all into a few pages that contain everything. I recall now a story about Chopin that Ingmar Bergman told when somebody asked him why he made intimate movies, movies about couples, why he made chamber cinema instead of bigger, more epic productions. At the end of a concert, said Bergman, a lady asked Chopin a similar question—why he didn’t write operas or symphonies instead of his short preludes and nocturnes. And Chopin replied: Well, madame, mine is a small kingdom, but there I am king.

  I turn my gaze back to the papers on my desk.

  It’s January 1888. Chekhov receives that letter from his friend Pleshcheev, arguing against triviality, insisting that he continue with his long, serious story. And Chekhov writes back to him: Many thanks for your kind, sweet note. What a shame it didn’t come three hours earlier. Just imagine, I was scribbling a poor tale for the Peterburgskaya Gazeta. As the first of the month is approaching, with debts to be paid, I played the coward and sat down to write a piece of work in haste. But it doesn’t matter: the story took me no more than half a day.

  This rather poor tale, this triviality that was a mere six folios in length, this piece of work written in haste that only took half a day’s work and seemingly no effort at all, ended up being one of his masterpieces, the story “Sleepy”.

  I look at the pieces of paper in disarray on my desk, some of them already crumpled, some of them stained with coffee rings. I see the Chekhov book, open to the first page of that story. Night. That simple, that dry. With a single word, he begins this story about dreams and delirium, violence and poverty, crying out for life and crying out for death; about the nameless boy and the nursemaid Varka, who lulls him in his cradle; about children.

  I look outside again, down from this tenth-floor window. There are seagulls in the air. At the Loire docks, I watch the coming and going of yachts, sailboats, tugboats, small fishing vessels, cargo ships. There’s a drawbridge, which at the sound of a bell is raised and opens the way to the locks. There is a grand-looking white cruise ship (Norwegian Epic, it says in sky blue letters), anchored down, surrounded by cranes, in the final stages of construction. I think about another cruise ship (the Champlain), which, setting out from this same port, transported another Russian writer, in 1939, to New York (Nabokov recalled with nostalgia the gardens of this Breton town). But the only thing that interests me is the old submarine base. I look at it, and it’s easy to imagine the black submarines coming in and out beneath the Loire’s waters. Multiple swastikas fluttering in the sea breeze. And my P
olish grandfather, still a young man, still skinny after his release from Sachsenhausen concentration camp, close to Berlin (there’s a black-and-white photograph of my grandfather in Berlin, soon after his release from Sachsenhausen: young, thin, dressed in jacket and tie, riding a bicycle on some deserted Berlin street; he isn’t smiling, but the expression on his face is serene), getting ready to weigh anchor from here, from Saint-Nazaire, to America: first to New York, where he spent a few weeks, where he bought the black-stone ring he would wear for the rest of his life, on the pinkie finger of his right hand, as a sign of mourning; and then, just because he had an uncle there, to Guatemala. And it’s also easy to imagine my Polish grandfather walking over and around that imposing gray-brown cement structure—a structure, in fact, that proved indestructible. It could never be knocked down. Not by the constant bombardments of the Allied aircraft (which did manage to flatten most of the town of Saint-Nazaire). Nor later by the French themselves, who continue to insist that its demolition would have been extremely costly, almost impossible, due to the roof and walls of reinforced concrete, which in some places are up to nine meters thick.

  The longer you look at one object, wrote Flannery O’Connor, the more of the world you see in it. And so I keep looking at the submarine base outside my window. I can’t help it. Or I don’t want to help it. I know there’s something important in that old submarine base, something symbolic or perhaps poetic, something at once ephemeral and indestructible. Like in a story. Like in a good story. I see there’s nobody there anymore, no children playing on the roof, no children anywhere, no longer any life.

  Monastery

  The clunky brown Citroën was parked in front of Hotel Kadima.

  I opened the door and had to move a small suitcase from the passenger seat before I could get in. I asked Tamara what the suitcase was for. A surprise, she said, tossing it into the back. So, where are you taking me? I asked, but Tamara just started the engine and smiled again and asked about my brother. So that was your brother with you at the airport? I said that it was, that it was my younger brother, that I was fourteen months older. You look exactly alike, she exclaimed. Yes, I said, at first glance, though we’re actually very different. Different how? she asked, jamming on the brakes. My brother’s taller, I said. Darker. Sweeter. Freer. And he’s got the hands of a god. Tamara gave a quick laugh. What about your sister? Oh, my sister, I started to say, and then stopped, thinking or maybe feeling for the perfect word. My sister is the most intrepid, I could have said. My sister is the most ethereal, I could have said, but ethereal as in mercury, as in a dry leaf in the breeze, as in those little habits like cracking your knuckles or running your tongue across your upper lip, habits that don’t mean anything and at the same time mean everything. When’s the wedding? Tamara asked. Tomorrow afternoon, I said, but I’m not going. She turned to me, confused. What are you saying? She was driving atrociously, erratically, speeding up and then braking violently at the last minute, jerking the gear-shift back and forth as though in a rage. I thought I might get queasy. I decided not to go to the wedding, I said, gripping the door handle tightly and overstating my resolve. I can’t go, or I don’t want to go, I said, I’m not sure which. She mumbled something. Maybe a reproach. Maybe just a groan. Maybe she didn’t believe me. After a pause, I asked her about her friend Yael. What friend Yael? Your friend, I said, Yael, the one who was traveling with you when we first met. I don’t know who you’re talking about, Eduardo. When I met you, I had just finished my military service and I was traveling through Central America. Alone.

  I didn’t understand. I thought she was kidding. I thought about saying Yael, that girl who worked in the Scottish bar in Antigua, with my same last name, with the beautiful shoulders and the silver belly-button ring.

  Tamara leaned over to the glove compartment and took out a small green box. She had no idea she’d just run a stop sign. She pulled halfway over to the curb and parked appallingly. She leaned over to the glove compartment again and took out a stack of papers or maybe postcards. Look at this. And she turned on the hazard lights.

  THEY WERE BLACK-AND-WHITE photos printed on cardboard. They still had a chemical smell. They were all out of focus, out of frame. In one I could make out the profile of a nose; in another, a half smile; in another, part of a neck; in another, one thick dark eyebrow. I didn’t understand. What is this? I asked. A friend of my father took them, Tamara said. An old Jew, she said, and then, like a quick jab, she added: A blind man. She wasn’t smiling. Her hands were playing with the small green box. A blind photographer? I asked. Can there even be blind photographers? A car behind us honked, perhaps insulting us for her terrible parking. His pictures are all of Palestinian children, Tamara said. He travels to Palestinian cities and towns and takes pictures of Palestinian children. Once, I went with him and my father to Ramallah. He would sit on a bench or sometimes he’d sit on the ground and wait for a boy or girl to come up to him, and then suddenly he’d hand them his camera, an old Leica. The children were as fascinated by his camera as they were by his trust and by his blindness. And while they were touching the camera, he would reach out a hand and start touching them. Their hair, their arms, their shoulders, especially their faces. Slowly. Gently. With something akin to affection. He was getting to know them with his hands, I suppose, with his touch. The children hardly noticed, or just giggled. Then they’d give him back the camera and he’d take a single photo of each child. Or I guess of a single feature of each child. Very quickly. Almost without their realizing it. Later, on our way back home, I asked him how he decided which feature to photograph. Tamara paused, waiting for a noisy truck to pass. First he told me he didn’t know. Then, after considering it for a little while, he said that it was always the most beautiful feature, of course. Then, after another little while, smiling, he said one’s eyes could always find the most beautiful feature. Tamara opened her door. Those are copies of the pictures we took that day in Ramallah, she said. Do you like them? I was going to say yes and no. I was going to say that Paul Wittgenstein, after losing his right arm in World War I (What kind of philosophy must it take to overcome that? his brother Ludwig wrote), not only learned to play the piano with one hand but commissioned great composers—like Prokofiev, Strauss, Ravel—to write him oeuvres and concertos for the left hand. I was going to say that, according to the notebooks of Thelonius Monk (or Melodius Thunk, as his wife used to call him), a genius is the one most like himself. But I just stuck the pictures back into the glove compartment with the slew of maps and papers and candy wrappers and chocolate wrappers and something that looked like two condoms, still sealed in plastic.

  Here, she said handing me the small green box. I’ll be right back.

  Noblesse, in white letters. Virginia Blend, in black letters.

  I LIT A CIGARETTE. It was hot inside the Citroën. Perhaps because the images of those children were still in my head, I noticed two girls on the other side of the street, playing among the pedestrians. They must have been ten or twelve. Sisters, maybe, or best friends. Suddenly, one of them flung herself to the ground, head-first, and did a handstand. And just like that, straight up on her hands, nimble, she began to walk among the pedestrians. Like it was nothing. An upside-down pedestrian. A feet-up pedestrian. An inverted pedestrian. Then, still on her hands, she turned and walked back to where the other girl was. Now it was the other girl’s turn. She didn’t have the nerve. Her friend or sister seemed to be encouraging her, explaining to her how to do it. To no avail. The first girl stretched tall once more, raised her slender arms up into the air, and again hurled herself down, again walked feet-up among the pedestrians. Perfect. Elegant. With the precise and studied grace of a gymnast. Her legs straight. Her feet pointed way up in the air, amid all the pedestrians’ heads. When she finished, the other girl clapped. They both clapped. I rolled down the Citroën’s window, and as I tossed my cigarette out, it occurred to me that pirouettes are always incomprehensible. Then something strange occurred to me: that I must not
forget that scene; that I must make an effort to recall the scene of the girl walking upside down on a sidewalk in Jerusalem, feet-up in Jerusalem, feet-up among the Israelis; that I must find the most beautiful feature and take a mental photograph, a blind man’s photograph; that some day I’d understand why. I closed my eyes as though imitating the old photographer, as though that were enough, as though my eyelids were the shutter and just by closing them the image would be fixed. When I opened them, the two girls were racing off, zigzagging, almost leaping through the crowd, holding hands.

  I LIT ANOTHER CIGARETTE. I looked at my watch. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my T-shirt. The ticking of the hazard lights was starting to annoy me.

  There was a homeless man on the sidewalk beside me. Old, bearded, filthy. Swathed in rags and blankets that looked like the colors of the Israeli flag. He was muttering to himself, kneeling on a piece of cardboard. I smoked awhile before realizing that the lump beside him—small, white, stock-still—was a cat. It seemed illogical to me that a cat could be so still with that many pedestrians around. Too stiff, I thought. Maybe it was a stuffed animal. Or maybe it was sleeping. Or dead. Was it dead? I opened the door and got out.