2
12 Dec.
86
Hello,
my journal. Its nice to see you again after 6 weeks. I no longer have that
morning half-hour alone at the office. So we will meet in the evenings, just
before bedtime.
The news:
Daniel made a lightning trip to New York for the weekend. It was in order to
meet Brigitte. Brigitte Wilner, the German film star, Mikis first wife. He
expects to learn more about his father from her than he ever could from me. He
is right.
He will be staying
at Sam Zuckers apartment, though Sam will be out of town. Perhaps its just as
well that he will not meet Sam, who was my first lover after Miki. After
assisting at Bettys delivery, and the tubal ligation that followed, he told me
that I had the most perfect pubis he had ever seen. How could a girl (and
though I was a widow of 25 with two children, I was still a girl) resist that?
But if it so
happened that he met Sam at the same time as Brigitte, there would be a kind of
tragicomic symmetry: old flames of his father and his mother.
Speaking of
flames, I have been getting friendly (perhaps more than friendly) telephone
calls from George Kenner. I met George years ago, when a patient of mine was
taken to ER at MGH and he was attending. In September I met him again, at the
meeting for parents of new pupils at NAA, with his wife Doris. And again at
Tinas party, without Doris. Yes, my journal, I am attracted to him, as I
havent been to anyone since it ended with RG. What else do you want to know?
Did I flirt? Probably. Tina once told me that I am like La maman et la
putain (that interminable French film that we saw together a dozen years
ago, when we were residents, and I was chaperoning her first date with Louis)
but in one body. When I am with the kids I am the mother and nothing else. When
I am without away from them I am, well, of course not a whore but
certainly a flirt.
I told her
that my father did in fact call me a whore. Tes une petite pute, he once said.
It was when he saw me talking with M. Daigle, the history teacher. Le prof
dhistoire. Cétait bien une histoire. Ça ne peut pas se dire en anglais. Dommage.
Ou plutôt tant mieux. Tina understands. I have told her about M. Daigle and me.
My father also
calls Daniel (whom he has never met) le petit bâtard juif. The last time I
heard him say it was when we went with Betty to Rimouski, Betty and I,
in the spring of 83. It was for the funeral of Tante Clotilde, my maiden aunt,
the only one in the family who didnt just love me but approved of me and my
choices. (Daniel stayed in Montréal with the Bermans.) Betty told Daniel about
it, and he found it funny. He said that since I, his mother, was married when
he was born and not Jewish, he is neither a bastard nor a Jew. So much
for his grandfathers wisdom.
Some day I
will tell him what my father called me, to give him a perspective. When I am
ready to talk with him about my intimate private life. And when will
that be? Well, certainly not before he has one of his own.
I wonder: if
Daniel had met Sam, would he have sensed something? No, probably not yet. Hes
mature in many ways, but I have not yet seen that he an interest in
girls or anything related to sex. He is fifteen already. We will see what
happens when he is sixteen.
Tina, by the
way, is a pretty good mother but not as maternal with her kids as I am with
mine. She decided, when she and Louis were separated, that she would not
compete with him for their affection and just try to do a good job as a mother.
They are your kids, not your patients, I told her at the time. But she is who
she is. She is my best friend, and I love her.
Brigitte
He was in the Plaza lobby well before ten, feeling rested
and refreshed after his cleanup and breakfast at Sams small but well-appointed
apartment. He was distracting himself with the New York Times crossword
puzzle when he heard Hello, Daniel from a melodious mezzo-soprano voice
behind him.
Startled,
he turned around and stood up to greet Brigitte Wilner. They shook hands and
exchanged kisses on the cheek. Hello, Brigitte, he said, pronouncing the name
as though it were French.
She
laughed. My name is Brigitte, she said, saying it in the German way. But
when I was young, people would flatter me by comparing me with Brigitte
Bardot.
You
are much more beautiful than Bardot, he blurted out.
And
indeed she was a very beautiful woman, even at fifty-something. Daniel was used
to beautiful women his mother was one but in Brigittes presence he
suddenly understood the meaning of sensual. There was about her an aura
that invaded all of his senses besides the visual: her voice when she greeted
him and laughed, her touch when they shook hands, her smell when he got near
her to kiss her cheek, the taste of her skin when he did so. He was filled with
a feeling of excitement that he had never experienced before. He felt himself
blushing.
Brigitte
sat down, and he followed suit. You are very sweet, she said. Women will
like you, I can assure you. You are a lot like your father. You are fifteen,
yes?
He
nodded.
Thats
how old Miki
Do you mind if I call him Miki, not your father?
No,
of course not.
Thats
how old we were when we became lovers.
Lovers?
Did she really mean lovers in the grownup sense, he wondered, or sweethearts?
Really? he said, not knowing what else to say.
Yes,
really. I was four months older than he and I was also, shall we say,
precocious. It happened on the sixth of August, nineteen hundred fifty. And we
were lovers for twenty years, except for the time that he spent in Israel. But
after he came back we were together for eighteen years. I called myself
Brigitte Wilner even before were married. I liked the name much better than
Bechmeyer. And we were true to each other. At least spiritually.
Spiritually?
Daniel wondered if this was a mistranslation from the German, though her
English had so far been almost flawless.
I
will explain that later, she said with a mysterious smile. At the kibbutz
where Miki lived it was expected that teenage boys and girls would have sexual
relations with one another. He told me about it when he came back, and I wrote
an essay in high school comparing it with what Margaret Mead had observed in
Samoa. He also told me that there was only one girl that he liked, who was
called Nili. I am telling you because she is important in the story.
He
made a mental note to himself to tell her, at some later moment, that Margaret
Meads findings had recently been refuted by a New Zealand anthropologist named
Freeman, but said nothing.
There
were two other people who are important. One was a boy named Tzvi, who at first
was Mikis best friend and later became his enemy for a reason that we dont
need to talk about. The other was a teacher named Hanna, who was originally
from Hamburg. She helped Miki with his German, so that he could write letters
to me. He wrote beautiful German. I have all his letters and all the essays and
articles that he wrote. Do you know any German?
Ive
just started studying it. Ich habe
angefangen
he stammered.
Sehr
gut. I will make you photocopies of everything that your father wrote, so
that you can read it when you have learned German. And when you come to Hamburg
I will show you photographs that he took, especially on Norderney, an island in
the North Sea where we often went on vacation. He was a wonderful
photographer.
Did
he have any other hobbies?
Football
he was a big fan. She meant soccer, of course. And of course there was
music. He played the piano beautifully. Do you play music?
Guitar,
Daniel said. I took classical lessons for a year, but now I just play around.
Miki
played classical music my mother was his teacher
I
know.
and he also accompanied me when I sang show tunes. I played in American
musicals, you know, especially Kiss Me Kate. My special song was True
to you in my fashion. Brigitte smiled.
What
did you mean by spiritually? Daniel asked.
She
smiled again. I thought that you would ask. Miki was faithful to me
physically, as far as I know, till the end.
He
waited for her to go on, and she did. For me it was different. I am an
actress, and in most of the roles that I play, even now that I am older, I am,
how do I say, romantically involved with a man. She paused again before going
on. I discovered early on that I cannot play the role convincingly if I
havent had a sexual experience with him, just to get to know him. Not an
affair, just an experience. It was a kind of permission that I had given
myself. Do you understand?
I
think so, he said uncertainly. Did my father know?
Your
father was a brilliant man, an intellectual, a philosopher, a linguist, a
historian. He could make amazing predictions about political events that
usually came true. But understanding individual human beings was not his strong
point.
So,
youre saying that he didnt know, he ventured. But
he added after some
hesitation, but you were a celebrity, and
and I guess your leading men were
too, at least some of them.
Yes,
she said with a smile and a nod.
So
so wouldnt there have been gossip that he might have heard, or read?
Another
good question. Perhaps there wasnt so much celebrity gossip then, before the
seventies, or perhaps we were all discreet. Any way, the answer is no, he
didnt know, till the end, August nineteen hundred seventy. I must tell you
what happened in that month. Another pause. But before, there is something
else thats important. I could never have children.
Did
you want to?
You
ask good questions, Daniel. No, very frankly, I didnt want to. I was very
happy with my career and my marriage.
What
about my father?
Another
good question. He never said that he wanted children, but I always had a
feeling that he did, and that deep down he resented my
my infertility. Is that
how you say it?
Yes.
And
when he called me half a year after we separated to tell me that he was going
to be a father your father I knew, even before he said it, what he was
going to say. And he sounded so happy that I felt happy for him, though of
course I missed him.
You
really do understand people, he said.
Its
my profession. She smiled. So now lets go back to August nineteen hundred
seventy. We were on vacation on Norderney, our favorite vacation resort, as I
told you. It was where I had my first acting job, while Miki was in Israel, and
I was there again in the next summer when he came back to Germany. I did not
know that he was coming back, but when he came to meet me backstage, very
strangely I did not feel surprised; it was as if he had never gone away. I was
having an affair with my leading man, but I stopped it immediately. And I never
had another affair.
Only
experiences, Daniel said, smiling.
Exactly.
You understand. So now lets get back to August
No, there is something else.
In the year before, when his book The Long Seventh Day came out in
Israel, he went there to talk about it, and he noticed that at every talk there
was a young woman, or girl, with big earrings, but she always disappeared
before the end. He told me about her, and we joked about it.
So
now here we are, at last, on the sixth of August nineteen hundred seventy, the
exact twentieth anniversary of our first time together. I was reading the
newspaper, and I noticed a
a news
A
news item, he suggested.
Yes,
a news item about a man named Axel Hemme who had been murdered in a village
near Stuttgart. Now, Axel Hemme was the name of the SS officer who had sent
Mikis mother and little sister away to be deported, and he shot Mikis father
right in front of him. But when Miki saw the picture in the paper he said that
it was not the same man. Even if he had received plastic surgery and later
there was a report that he had received it Miki was absolutely sure.
A
few days later, when we were back in Hamburg and I was working in the
television studio, the Israeli girl with the big earrings came to our house.
She told Miki that her name was Ora, and she told him a story that she was
Nilis daughter and Miki was her father. If that had been true then she would
have been seventeen, but to Miki she looked at least twenty, so he didnt quite
believe her. By a strange coincidence, a few days later his old teacher Hanna
came to Hamburg for a visit. She had written him a letter about it, but she
sent it in care of the publisher, and it was a month before he got it, just a
few days before Hannas visit.
It
turned out that she had been in touch with Nili, and Oras story was a complete
fabrication. Nili in fact had a daughter named Ora, but she was only ten. I
suggested to Miki that he should go to Israel to investigate, and he agreed,
but meanwhile the police in Stuttgart blocked his passport and summoned him to
go there to be questioned. It turned out that they found the killer, a
Bulgarian convict, who claimed that Miki had hired him to kill Hemme, but he
quickly admitted that he had been hired by a young woman who was probably the
same as our Ora.
This
is becoming like a mystery novel, Daniel said.
It
gets better. As they say in American slang, you aint heard nothin yet. Miki
made an arrangement with the police that he would go Israel in disguise, under
a false name, to clear this up. He met Nili, and she told him that most
probably the person behind the plot the two connected plots, Ora and Hemme
was his former friend Tzvi, who was a high official in the Mossad, though he
still lived in the same kibbutz where he took care of the fishpond. So Miki
drove to the kibbutz, on a Saturday when Tzvi would be probably at home, and he
found him at the fishpond. At one point Tzvi said something that got Miki so
angry that he punched him. Tzvi was so surprised, since Miki was not a violent
person, that he lost his balance and fell into the pond, face down. Perhaps he
drowned, perhaps not. Miki didnt wait to find out but escaped.
Wow!
was all that Daniel could think of saying.
So
you see, Daniel, your intellectual father suddenly became a man of action when
it was necessary. And when he came back home and told me about his experiences,
I told him.
About
your experiences?
Yes.
I knew that I was taking a risk, but I felt obliged to give him his freedom.
Freedom was very important to him, intellectually. He wrote his dissertation
about it. But this was personal freedom. He needed it. And thats why you are
here.
Thank
you, Brigitte, Daniel said, welled up with emotions he had never felt before.
I
am very happy that I met you. By the way, I once stayed here at the Plaza with
your father, and we were very happy. A singer named Kitty Kallen was performing
in the Persian Room, and from her I learned True to you in my fashion.
She glanced at her watch, which, to Daniels surprise, looked like a mans. I
could go on for a long time, she said, but I have to go now I am having a
very busy time but come see the film thats being shown tonight.
Is
it subtitled? he asked.
No,
but for you that wont be a problem. Its called La Grande Paix and its
in French. Actually some parts are in German and they are subtitled in French.
Its a German-French coproduction. I made it when I was twenty-six, exactly
half of my age now. She laughed. For you, twenty-six is old, but for me
She
stood up, and once again they shook hands and exchanged kisses on the cheek.
The weather in New York on that afternoon was crisp and
cold, but not so bone-chilling as it had been in Montreal. Daniel walked for
miles in both directions, downtown as far as Greenwich Village where he had
some delicious pizza for lunch and uptown as far as Columbia University. His
meeting with Brigitte Wilner had so aroused his senses that he promptly fell in
love with the city, with its sights and sounds and smells and tastes and
textures. When he got back to Sams apartment his future, at least for the next
decade or so, seemed set: after finishing secondary school, including the
pre-University year, he would go to Columbia College with a major in German and
a minor in history, and then to the Graduate School of Journalism.
In
the evening he went to see La Grande Paix. He found it somewhat mawkish
and old-fashioned, quite unlike the Nouvelle Vague films that had been
made in France at the same time, but he found Brigitte playing a German woman
married to a Frenchman living in Lorraine during World War I (which the French
called La Grande Guerre) fascinating.
After
the showing she managed to spare a few minutes for him. She invited him to
visit her some day in Hamburg, in the house that she had shared with his father
for two years. It was, she told him, in a beautiful suburb called Blankenese.
That
night he dreamt that he was in Hamburg, though it was only a slightly distorted
version of Montreal. He was looking for the suburb where his father had lived,
but in the course of asking for directions he forgot its name. He managed to
speak some German, but on waking up he knew immediately that he had it all
wrong, that what he had been speaking in his dream was a hodgepodge of English
and French.
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