9
20 Aug
89
So,
my journal, I have turned forty. La quarantaine. The quarantine, as Tina said
last March when she refused to celebrate her 40th and chose to spend the day
alone (it was a Saturday and the kids were with Louis).
But I
celebrated mine. It was a month ago, my journal, but you werent there. I left
you at home while B, D and I were on vacation out west.
I had not felt
like writing since I wrote about papa and Tante Clotilde, back in December.
Since that time life has been going smoothly, and I have not wanted to disturb
the smooth flow with too much introspection.
For the winter
vacations we went again to Mont-Tremblant, and the difference from the previous
year was striking. D was so attentive to the girls! Of course they flirted with
him, but this time he noticed, and responded, and not necessarily to the
prettiest ones. And this time, when I received some flirtation, I gave myself
permission to acknowledge it, even in B and Ds presence.
When we came
back to Montréal there was a letter (!) from George. He found an apartment and
would move there in the middle of January. He made an agreement with Doris that
Amy would spend weekends with him and schooldays with her. This meant of course
that if we were to see each other again it would have to be weekday evenings.
The way he wrote it gave the impression that he took it for granted that I
would want to. I was not so sure but in view of the condition that I had given
him I felt obligated, so I agreed. So far I have not regretted it.
After school
resumed, Betty reported some gossip. (Now that she is on the main campus of
NAA, she and the other girls in Sec. III gossip about the older kids.) For a while
D was dating the prettiest girl in school, with the reputation of a bitch, but
then he changed to a plain-looking girl with the reputation of a dyke.
Well, in
Rimouski girls gossiped too, and I am sure they gossiped about me. Thérèse
Fontaine found out about me and M. Daigle, and I doubt that she kept it to
herself. Poor Thérèse. Not really ugly, but
well, plain. Une quelconque. No
boy ever gave her a second look. But I was friendly with her, and she
appreciated it. That is probably why she didnt tell any grownups about it.
In the spring
there was more gossip about Daniel, but from another source: George. D was now
dating Megan, the daughter of Gs cousin Phil, a very precocious girl according
to G, intellectually and sexually, quite the opposite of the innocent Amy (who
is 15 like Betty). I said nothing, but I have my doubts about how much the
father of a teenage girl knows about her innocence.
And then came
our summer vacation, probably the last one that the three of us have taken
together. We went to Western Canada (and the Northwest US). We rented a camper
and D and I shared the driving. For the most part we camped but we stayed in
hotels in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle.
My birthday
celebration was in Victoria. B and D took me out for dinner, gave me presents
(B a jade necklace, D a silk scarf), and we went to the theatre (Shaws
Pygmalion, a very good production). We got back to the hotel at 11. B & D
went to bed but I had another hour of birthday celebration left so I went to
the bar for a drink.
From my seat,
as I was sipping my drink, I saw an attractive man, about thirty, at a table
with a blond woman whose back was turned to me. They were talking but the man
seemed bored. A few times his glance moved towards me and I saw a spark of
interest. After about ten minutes they stood up and shook hands, and the woman
left. As she walked out I saw that she was young and pretty, though a little
plump. (Very big boobs.) The man then looked at me with undisguised interest. I
smiled at him and he came over.
To cut a short
story even shorter, my journal: his name was Mike, he was from Seattle, and he
was staying at the same hotel. It didnt take us long to agree that we would go
to his room, since mine was between B & Ds rooms, and I wanted the freedom
to leave when I felt like it. And I did, after an hour and a half or so, but
not before he gave me his phone number when I told him that I would be in
Seattle in a few days.
When we got
there I was tempted to call him, but I didnt. We had a lot of fun, visiting
the Space Needle and the Pike Place Market and watching the Torchlight Parade
and other events of the Seafair. As enjoyable as my birthday one-night stand
was, I didnt need another. (Tina, needless to say, thought that I should have
called him, especially after I told her that he called himself, with some
justice, fastest tongue in the west. He also thought that my 40-year-old
breasts were still beautiful.)
Since coming
back to Montréal D and I have been doing some business errands downtown, and it
is only because he is a month short of eighteen that I needed to be with him in
order to authorize money transfers etc. Otherwise he could easily have handled
the matter by himself. He is very adult already. I am very, very proud, my
journal, of the two children that I have raised.
In a little
over a week he is moving to New York. He fell in love with New York the first
time he went there, the way I fell in love with Montréal and the way Miki, as
he told me on our first date, fell in love with Hamburg.
I should have
told Daniel about this; he would have appreciated it. But I persist, sometimes
in spite of myself, in my reticence about Miki to Daniel, and especially in
reference to Hamburg.
Why? And why
have I not visited Hamburg on our European vacations? Because Brigitte is still
there? Why should that matter? I won Miki away from her, the beautiful blonde
film star, didnt I? According to D she is an absolutely lovely person.
No, it isnt
Brigitte per se. Its the fact that Hamburg, and Germany more generally, is
where Miki lived with Brigitte. But that was not my Miki, the Miki of Montréal
who spoke English and French (and maybe Yiddish and Polish with Fela). The
Hamburg Miki who spoke German was, as far as I was concerned, a different man.
But of course
its different for Daniel. He hardly knew my Miki any better than he knew
Brigittes. To him its all one: his father.
And which is
the more cruel fate: to have a father one loves who disappears, or a father one
hates who stays alive? I dont know, my journal. Good night.
Serendipity,
NY
Settling in as a freshman at Columbia turned out to be a
hurly-burly experience, and he did not feel inclined to pay much attention to
girls. They were present in his classes and on campus, some pretty and some
not, and his hormones were undoubtedly active. In the back of his mind was the
thought that one of these days he might call Gen to let her know that he was in
New York. But his mind was mostly on academic matters.
On
the basis of his high-school transcript and his SAT subject test, he enrolled
in the second year of German. But, not having taken any in his senior year at
North Am, he found himself rusty, and had to spend a lot of time catching up.
For
the science requirement of the core curriculum he decided to take biology,
which he had not studied before; the only science classes he had taken were
chemistry and physics. What little he knew of biology he had learned piecemeal
from his mother. But even the introductory biology course that he enrolled in,
not intended for science or pre-med students, challenged his scientific skills,
especially in organic chemistry. It was fortunate that the teaching assistant
in charge of his recitation section was quite helpful.
Ms.
Rozen, as she introduced herself, was Israeli, a doctoral student in cell and
molecular biology. (I am not yet Doctor Rozen, she said.) She was about
thirty years old, tall, very shapely and pretty in a dark, Mediterranean way.
She was the first woman at Columbia who caught Daniels attention qua
woman. One of the students in the section, a Southerner named Matt Billings
with whom Daniel was becoming friendly, commented that our TA has got herself
some nice TnA. Daniel agreed.
From
her demeanor in class and outside, it was clear to Daniel that Ms. Rozen would
have no interest of a sexual nature in a young man of his age. What most struck
him about her was that the door card in front of the office
that she shared with
other teaching assistants gave her first name as Ora. It was a name he
remembered from Brigittes narrative.
The
Monday of the third week of classes happened to be his eighteenth birthday. He
had no one to celebrate it with, except perhaps Gen, and he had been remiss
about contacting her. He vaguely knew that there was something he had to do on
that day, but couldnt quite remember what it was. Itll come to me, he
told himself. Ça me viendra.
After
the biology section he approached the teaching assistant in the hallway. Ms.
Rozen, he asked, is Ora a common name in Israel?
Not
very common, she said, but not unusual. Why do you ask?
Nothing
Its just that my father, who is not alive, had a friend in Israel with a
daughter named Ora, and she would be about your age.
Do
you know the name of your fathers friend?
Nili.
Ora
Rozens expression suddenly changed from amusement to astonishment. Really? My
mothers name is Nili. What is your name? I dont know all the names of the
students yet, Im sorry.
Daniel
Wilner. He made a point of pronouncing it Vilner, as an Israeli would.
Wilner!
I remember that my mother had a friend named Wilner, a long time ago. His name
was Miki, I think. He was a writer.
By
all rights, Daniel should have been stunned by what he had just heard. Had he been recounting his story he should
have written He could scarcely believe his ears. Instead he said simply,
That was my father. He died in the Yom Kippur War. He was covering it as a
journalist.
Why
am I not astonished? Daniel asked himself as they walked together in silence
until they reached the elevator, which Ora would take in order to go up to her
office. While waiting for it, Ora said, I am going to call my mother and tell
her about you. Maybe you want to talk to her.
Want
to? I have to, Daniel said.
Thoughts
of his father filled his mind again as he walked back to his room. Serendipity
had brought him another, unexpected, chance to learn more about him! And where
else but in New York? The capital of serendipity!
Suddenly
he remembered the obligation that he had to fulfill on that, his first day as a
legal adult: to have the affidavit that Greg Berman had prepared for him,
giving Betty an equal share of his inheritance, notarized. He had already
noticed that a stationery store on Broadway, just across from the campus,
offered notary services, so that after dropping off his books he took the
document with its pre-addressed envelope and his passport to the store, had his
signature notarized for ten dollars, and then walked down Broadway to 112th
Street, where he turned left in order to have it mailed, registered, at the
Columbia post office. Along the way he noticed numerous businesses for which he
might find some use in the future: dry cleaners, a travel agency, Chinese
restaurants, coffeehouses
He
was now eighteen. Had he been in Montreal, then a week hence he would have been
able to cast his first vote in the provincial elections. But of course he would
have voted for Robert Bourassa, who was not only running for reelection as
premier but was also the representative of their Saint-Laurent riding in the provincial
parliament. And Bourassa was sure to win even without Daniel Wilners vote.
His
mail on that day and during the next few days brought a small shower of
birthday cards. The one from Fela included a money order for 180 US dollars. He
wondered if his great-aunt knew that he was now wealthy in his own right, heir
to a portion of Leons hard-earned fortune.
In
the course of the week Daniel sent postcards to all those who had sent him
birthday cards, and eventually to all of his Montreal friends.
The following week, on Quebec election day, Ora found
Daniel in the lecture hall – just before the professor showed up – and gave him a
slip of paper. I spoke to my mother, she said, and she would like you to
call her. Here is her number. The best time to call is about eight to ten in
the evening, so thats one to three here. The professor came in, and Ora left.
The class would end at two, so that he could go back to his dorm room
immediately and call Nili from there, using his calling card.
Hello,
he began after hearing Shalom, I am Daniel Wilner
Daniel!
she exclaimed, accenting the last syllable, as in French. Ora told me about
you. Your father
I
I loved your father. She sounded on the verge of crying.
I
dont know too much about him, he said, not quite truthfully. What can you
tell me?
Nili
laughed. In the telephone? Not much. I would have to talk with you in
in the
body. I mean, she corrected herself, in person. She laughed again.
I
have winter vacation in January. I could fly out to Israel.
To
Israel? No. Better if we meet in Cyprus. I like to go to Cyprus. I used to meet
with your father there. It was too dangerous for him in Israel. She sighed
deeply.
You
used to meet with him? When was that?
When?
One thousand nine hundred and seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two, the last time
seventy-three. She sighed again. He told me that he has a son in Canada.
Did
you know
that he was married to my mother?
She
laughed. Yes and no, she said. What did she mean? We must talk about this in
person. Can you go to Cyprus? There is an Arab company, I think it is called
Gulf, that goes from New York to Cyprus.
Yes,
of course I will come to Cyprus. Is the first part of January all right with
you?
Let
me see
Yes. Call me again when you make reservations.
He
remembered the travel agency on Broadway that he had passed on his walk, a week
earlier, from the notary to the post office. He now went there and found out
that an airline called Gulf Air did in fact fly from New York and to Larnaca,
but not directly from New York to Larnaca. The travel agent a blond
middle-aged woman with a European accent that he couldnt place suggested
instead that he take Olympic to Athens and then Cyprus Airways. Daniel picked a
week, Monday to Monday he thought that he might as well do some sightseeing
while in Cyprus, perhaps even ski in the Troodos Mountains so that he would
get back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, since spring classes would begin the
next day.
He
postponed reserving a hotel until he had checked with Nili. He wondered where
it was that she and his father had their trysts when he was a baby. Or were
they trysts? He needed to find out.
The
travel agent who was called Mrs. Taylor, a name that gave no indication of
her origin urged Daniel to let her make the hotel reservation once he had a
place in mind, since she could get him a much better rate than he would get on
his own.
When
he told Ora Rozen about his travel arrangements, she smiled. You will like
Cyprus, she said. My mother sometimes took me there. She sometimes goes there
on business.
What
kind of business?
She
is a lawyer, and her specialty is divorce. Cyprus is the closest country to
Israel that has civil marriage and divorce, and so Israelis who dont want to
do the religious stuff go there. Especially if they belong to different
religions. I got married there my husband was an Israeli Greek and I
got divorced there.
Thats
interesting, he said. Your mother told me that she used to meet my father
there.
Ora
laughed. Not only your father, believe me, she said. My parents got divorced
when I was little, so you can imagine
Daniel
felt uncomfortable. Nili had obviously made less of an effort to hide her
personal life from her offspring than Mireille had, except for the time in the
Magdalen Islands.
Do
you know where she stays when she goes to Cyprus? he asked.
Usually
in a hotel in Larnaca, on the beach, between the airport and the center I
dont remember what its called. But before, I think, nineteen seventy-four she
used to go to Nicosia. Then there was a war, and the Turks destroyed the
airport of Nicosia.
With each meeting Daniel became more aware of what an
attractive woman Ora Rozen was, and thoughts of sex were now encroaching on his
mind. He felt ready to call Gen. When she answered and he began to tell her who
he was, she interrupted him and told him, sotto voce, that she would call him
back. She barely gave him enough time to give her his number.
Carlos
is in town, she said when she called him the next day. Hes sailing in a
week. Ill call you when hes gone.
But
in the course of the week during which he tried to call Nili several times
but got no answer he began to be interested in a fellow freshman, a redheaded
Barnard girl named Audrey Seligman who was in his Contemporary Civilization
discussion section. Though her home was in Westchester, she came across as a
quintessential New Yorker: brash, opinionated and very funny.
With
Audrey, for the first time, Daniel encountered resistance to his advances,
which she deflected with jokes, as though not taking them seriously. After a
while he gave up. He calculated that by that time Carlos should be well at sea,
so that he called Gen again. She was available, and he started taking afternoon
trips by subway to Greenwich Village a few times a week. Staying overnight was
out, because during the school year Gen was an early riser; she had a long
commute to her school on Staten Island.
One
afternoon, while walking along Broadway to the subway, he ran into Audrey,
going the same way. Under her raincoat it was a drizzly mid-October day she
was wearing a dress or a skirt instead of the jeans that she usually wore to
class, and medium-heeled ankle boots. Her calves were shapely. She was wearing
a wool hat, and droplets were falling gently on the smooth red tresses that the
hat left uncovered.
I
won my bet, she said to him after they greeted each other.
What
bet?
I
bet Madeleine a friend of hers who was also in their section that you
didnt mean it when you were, like, hitting on me.
And
what makes you think you won?
Because
you stopped.
Because
I got frustrated, Daniel said. I meant it.
You
did?
Hell,
yes. I can prove it.
How?
Come
to my room with me.
Arent
you going somewhere?
I
was. Arent you?
I
was, she said in a suddenly soft voice, and smiled at him shyly. Hand in
gloved hand, they walked back to the dorm. He would have to find an
opportunity, he thought, to call Gen and let her know that he wasnt going to
see her, but somehow he knew that he would find one.
When
they got to his room he noticed that his answering machine was blinking, but he
ignored it. Audrey took off her hat and coat, and turned out to be wearing a
surprisingly low-cut dress. He thought of asking her where she had been going,
but he didnt want her to ask him the same question in return, so he said, You
look good in a dress. Audrey, indeed, was at that moment infinitely more
attractive than Gen, and he could easily transfer his lust for one to the other,
in spades.
I
hope I look good out of it, too, she said.
Lets
see.
Let
me use your bathroom first, she said.
It
isnt exactly my bathroom, he said. Its shared with a double room next door,
and its off the hallway.
Thats
okay, Audrey said. She took her raincoat with her. Meanwhile he checked the
answering machine. The message was from Gen, saying that she would be late
getting home. He called her and left a message on her machine, telling her that
something had come up and he couldnt make it. He then unplugged the telephone.
Audrey
came back wearing nothing but her raincoat as a robe, but buttoned and her
boots, with the rest of her clothes folded in a neat pile that she carried on
her forearm and put on a chair. She slowly unbuttoned her raincoat, languidly
slipped it off her before dropping it on the floor, and lay down on the bed, on
her back with her legs spread, as though expecting him to mount her
immediately. She seemed quite surprised that he delayed doing so for twenty
minutes, during which she had two orgasms. When he felt ready and pulled a
condom package from under his pillow, she said, in a breathy voice,
You
dont need this.
Are
you sure?
Ive
been on the pill since I was fifteen, for irregular periods. She paused. Come
on in, she said, sounding very much like Angie when she uttered those very
words in front of her apartment house.
The next day the news of Honeckers resignation in the
face of protests in East Germany began to spread. Daniel began to follow the
quickly developing events in Germany with fascination, but his attempts to
share it with Audrey were met with indifference. In November, when the fall of
the Berlin Wall filled him with rejoicing, she greeted it with something
verging on hostility. Why does a Jewish guy like you care so much about
Germany? she asked.
What
makes you think Im Jewish? he asked in return.
Daniel
Wilner? She gave the name a mock-Yiddish pronunciation.
My
father was Jewish, but I didnt know him. He died when I was two.
Im
sorry. So what are you?
French
Canadian.
You
mean Catholic?
No.
My mothers family is Catholic, but shes not and Im not.
So
all this time Ive been dating a goy? Oy vey, what would my bobeh say?
It became clear that, however much they enjoyed each
others company, in bed and out of it, Daniel was no more in love with Audrey
than with any of his previous girlfriends, nor she with him. It was Audrey, in
fact, who first said, Were not the least bit in love with each other, and he
agreed: he had experienced no emotion that he would identify as being in love.
By December, with the end of the semester approaching, it was understood by
both of them that their attachment would not survive the monthlong winter
break, when he would first go to Montreal and then to Cyprus.
On
the last day of biology recitation section, Ora Rozen opened with a bit of
news. Do you remember, she asked the class, what the professor said about
the possibility of getting DNA information from dead bones? Daniel did, in fact,
remember. Well, I just read a paper in Nature that it was done in
England with skeletons that are hundreds of years old, some even thousands.
She went on to explain how it was done, with the help of something called PCR,
the invention of an eccentric California scientist named Mullis.
He
finally managed to reach Nili, who had been out of town. After telling him that
she could fly out to Cyprus on Friday and back to Israel on Sunday, she told
him that the Larnaca hotel where she usually stayed was called Flamingo Beach.
He felt tempted to ask her where she stayed in Nicosia in the years when she
met Miki there, but he didnt feel comfortable doing so over the telephone.
He
immediately called Mrs. Taylor. The Flamingo Beach, she said, was in her book,
and she would fax the reservation request immediately. An hour later she called
him with the confirmation.
Of the friends to whom he had send postcards in September,
the only one who answered quickly was Megan. She wrote that she was no longer
at North Am but at an anglophone CEGEP, since she had decided to stay in
Montreal for university, either McGill or (more likely) Concordia. They kept up
their correspondence, about a card a month. In November she wrote about her new
boyfriend a second-year CEGEP student but hinted unambiguously that she and
Daniel could still get together when he was back in Montreal for Christmas. And
in fact they did so, several times, including New Years Eve, when some of
Megans CEGEP friends gave a party, which the new boyfriend Keith had to
miss because of a case of the flu. The party was relatively somber, with much
drinking but little laughter. The city, and especially its young people, was
still reeling from the shock of the École Polytechnique massacre. Megan somehow
seemed less affected by the horrible event than other young people. Shit
happens was the gist of her reaction.
On
New Years Day Daniel, after sleeping off the effects of the party, was
lounging in bed and trying to decide when to go back to New York. It suddenly
dawned on him that he had not told his mother about his upcoming trip to
Cyprus.
He
got up and walked into the kitchen, where Mireille was sitting at the table in
her robe and slippers, drinking coffee and reading Le Devoir. Happy New
Year, maman, he said and kissed her on the cheek.
Bonne année, chéri, she said. What
plans do you have for the rest of your vacation?
It
was an opportune question. Ill be going back to New York in two or three
days, he said.
So
soon?
Im
going to Cyprus next week. A week from today, in fact.
Cyprus? Chypre? Pour quoi
diable faire? What on earth for?
Im
going to meet with Nili.
Who
is Nili? It struck him like a thunderclap that in the three years since the
meeting with Brigitte he had never come around to telling his mother about it.
She
was papas girlfriend, in Israel, when he was sixteen, and then
then
they became friends again a little bit before you met him. Its
its pretty
complicated, maman. But they met a few times in Cyprus, and by a very
strange coincidence I managed to connect with her, and were going to meet in
Cyprus.
I
remember getting a postcard from him from Cyprus, a little bit after you were
born. Mireille frowned, and for the first time her son noticed wrinkles on her
face. He didnt mention anything about a Nili.
Of
course not, Daniel said.
So
youre still going after your father, the hero? Mireille made no attempt to
hide a sardonic tone in her voice.
Are
you being sarcastic?
Moi?
Sarcastique? Bien sûr que non. Mireille
laughed. Of course not, she added. Was she mocking him? he wondered. And why
was she repeating herself, in French and English?
Okay,
he said, Im still trying to find out what I can about papa. Is that a
problem?
Mireilles
face softened. No, she said gently. Good luck! Instead of the bonne
chance that he expected her to say she gave him a warm kiss on the cheek.
Send me a postcard from Cyprus! she added with a laugh.
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