A Curable Romantic (63 page)

Before either Dr. Zamenhof or I could speak, the marquis had sent his charge, one of the Graf’s littler sons, into the kitchen for a coffeepot and pastries, and the child was now struggling underneath the enormous weight of the tray.

“Another napoleon?” he inquired. “They’re quite good.”

“Quite good,” Dr. Zamenhof agreed.

“From the finest patisserie in all of Rouen!”

“Thank you,” I said, taking another one, although I’d had quite enough of the hard dry things.

The marquis watched the boy leaving the room with the heavy tray. Crumpling up a half-finished letter that lay on his bedside table, he said, “Pay no attention to this. I place intentional spelling errors in all my correspondence in order to test the children.”

With two twisting moves of his hands, he resharpened the points of his mustache. He glanced out the window, and the lenses of his pince-nez filled with a white light.

“Now,” the marquis suddenly said, “you must hear me out on this.” He clutched Dr. Zamenhof’s hand. “Now you must promise me that Esperanto shall never be reformed. You remember how you erred in ’94, offering the language up to the reformists! Why, if it were left to you, you would have torn your work to bits long ago! But in the meantime, either Esperanto has become stronger or you have become weaker. You know with what constancy I’ve always supported you, and I’ll continue to act in this way. Still, I must tell you the truth: your genius is so great that it seems to actually rob you of your ability to perform in the role of master over the rest of us. Now, we must swear to each other, as duzenbrüder, as samideanoj — which is a term, did you know, Dr. Sammelsohn, that I myself coined — but more important, as men who have given the best of their lives to our cause, that we will stand firm against these disastrous calls for plibonigoj, for so-called improvements and reforms. As you know, as everyone knows, as I myself have written to you countless times, bowing to the perfection of Esperanto, which I recognized immediately, I abandoned my own Adjuvanto.”

He pronounced the word as though it were the name of a long-dead mistress.

“Adjuvanto, Dr. Sammelsohn,” he said to me, “was my own universal language scheme and the work of a considerable number of years. Indeed, I was quite far along with it, but it was nothing compared to Esperanto.” The marquis shook a scolding finger at Dr. Zamenhof, who, by habit, had begun to demur. “You see, that’s his problem. He’s too modest. No, he is! And where will they stop, these reforms? Today it’s
the accented letters; tomorrow the accusative -
n
; on Wednesday, this one can’t bear the Slavonic roots; on Thursday, another thinks the vocabulary must be more French. Who knows what Friday and Saturday will bring? The only thing I can assure you is that there’ll be no resting on the Sabbath. And in the meantime, what will happen to my grammar and my textbook?” His voice sharpened to a querulous point. “These are real books, Majstro, and not the little pamphlets you yourself have distributed. Our adepts cannot be expected to replace their entire libraries! And furthermore,” the marquis said with a sudden ferocity, “it works! Esperanto
works
! Why, the language is perfection itself!”

“On that score, Marquis,” I said, in the hopes of hurrying the conversation along, “you and I are in complete agreement.”

The marquis sipped his coffee in a distracted manner and stared out the window. He sighed, as though he’d been charged with a necessary task he found distasteful.

“And yet,” he said, “the thing we all must remember is this: France is not Russia. And though you Russians might model yourself upon our superior culture, the exchange is like a river: it does not flow backwards. Here in France, we are coldly intellectual. We are rationalists — we pride ourselves on this — with no warmth in our hearts left over for any sort of mysticism, whether Russian or Jewish or” — here, he curled up his nose — “Jewish, especially in light of ex-Captain Dreyfus whose shame continues to taint our nation. Now don’t misunderstand me: I cannot blame the Jews, like Javal, who blind themselves to Dreyfus’s perfidy. How could they not side with the traitor as one of their own? However, the Frenchmen who do so disgust me.”

Dr. Zamenhof shifted in his hard wooden chair. Our time was growing short, and the marquis’ falling out with Dr. Bourlet had yet to be resolved. Now was perhaps the only time before the congress a rapprochement might be essayed between these two former friends. Since arriving in Paris, Dr. Zamenhof had been beaten and battered with the news of their squabble. Before our cab had even pulled away from the train station, Carlo Bourlet had stuck his bearded face in through the window and said, “Before the day is through, Majstro, a word, please, about these publishing contracts!”

There’d been no time to speak of it then, but the following day, Dr. Bourlet pulled Dr. Zamenhof aside. “Though I’m loathe to bring up a delicate matter, Majstro, I must, concerning Monsieur de Beaufront.”

Dr. Bourlet had gone to great lengths to secure a publishing contract for Esperantan books with Hatchette & Co., a leading Parisian firm. When the director of that firm insisted that everything be overseen by a French agent fluent in the international language, Dr. Bourlet had recommended not himself, but the marquis. Upon careful examination, Dr. Bourlet was consternated to see that the contracts the marquis arranged ceded to himself the lion’s share of the profits, while binding Dr. Zamenhof to the firm more or less as a slave for the rest of his life. The contracts furthermore gave the marquis the right to approve or disapprove all such books published by Hatchette, while restricting the rights of Esperantists to publish with other firms, thus conferring upon his person all the powers of the Christian savior on Judgment Day: he alone would choose between the saved and the damned.

“No one is suggesting that the marquis will misuse these privileges,” Dr. Bourlet told Dr. Zamenhof with an unhappy smile, “but it certainly gives him an enormous amount of clout over his friends as well as his enemies in the movement.”

“I’m not a legal man,” the Marquis de Beaufront said with a sigh, when Dr. Zamenhof at last broached the subject, “and I can assure you I take no delight in having exposed myself to the animus of so many of our friends. Surely you believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Dr. Zamenhof said.

“The discussions were well beyond my competence. Indeed, it was criminal of Dr. Bourlet to place me in this situation! I had absolutely no idea what that Hatchette fellow was proposing. He spoke in circles, he flattered me. ‘Sign this, sign that,’ he said, shoving the papers in my face. Now I don’t wish to speak ill of anyone, but Bourlet certainly seems to have used me as his straw man.”

“The contracts will have to be redrawn,” Dr. Zamenhof said.

“That goes without saying,” the Marquis de Beaufront agreed. He hugged his thin arms and looked out the window again. “I’m a victim of a terrible misunderstanding.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Zamenhof said.

“It was all an honest mistake.”

“Of course it was,” Dr. Zamenhof said, “and I’ll try to make Dr. Bourlet see it as such.”

I could only sigh. Esperantists battling each other and refusing to speak? It’s not exactly what Dr. Zamenhof had in mind back in 1878, singing songs around a birthday cake. Do human beings really require a universal language in order to misunderstand each other? or to refuse to speak to one another? If samideanoj couldn’t attain a common understanding, what hope was there for the rest of the world? Not much, it seemed.

On the drive back to Paris from Rouen, Dr. Zamenhof and I rode in silence, he no doubt reviewing his conversation with the marquis or perhaps thinking about the world and all its troubles or else making plans for the congress in the days ahead; and though I was happy to have accompanied him on this difficult excursion, I had only one thought in my head and that thought, of course, was: Loë, Loë, Loë.

CHAPTER 9

Finally, on the day we were to depart for Boulogne, fraŭlino Bernfeld and I found ourselves standing near each other on the platform of the train station. With a distracted air, as though she were trying to recall who I was, she explained to me that she’d decided not to ride in third class with the Zamenhofs, but to continue on in first class, blaming a headache.

“Besides they don’t need me looking out after them anymore. They’ve quite arrived, haven’t they? After a week in Paris, they’re as famous as Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves!”

“Fraŭlino Bernfeld,” I began to plead with her.

“Dr. Sammelsohn?” she addressed me in a formal tone, as though we had not spent years courting, but had only recently met. The look of remoteness was so innocently and yet so furiously displayed upon her face that for a moment I found myself believing it as well, or if not believing it then at least behaving as though we were strangers. So although I wanted to say, fraŭlino Bernfeld, my darling, let us tear up our tickets and find a rabbi and persuade him to marry us immediately, all I in fact said was: “Can I help you with your bags or at least summon a porter for you?”

“I can manage quite well on my own, Dr. Sammelsohn, thank you very much,” she said, turning on her heels. “Ĝis la revido!”

ĜIS LA REVIDO?

Were these to be the final words fraŭlino Bernfeld addressed to me, a jocund-sounding lie uttered in the language of universal truth? Ĝis la revido. She had no intention of ever seeing me again. If our paths crossed at the congress, as they were certain to — these were not yet as well attended as they would become in later years — she would no doubt confront me from behind a similarly unbreachable fortress of elegant manners and
amiable words. As I took my small, uncomfortable seat in third class, I did so unresigned to my fate: fraŭlino Bernfeld was no longer, if she had ever been, mine. Everything had come about exactly as her father had predicted. (Or perhaps even mandated.) But it was true: for all my fopperies, I remained a backwards Galitsyaner, unschooled in the gay sciences, a novice in the matters of the heart. Had I learned nothing of women since my father revealed the mysteries of sex to me, without the aid of helpful diagrams, by quoting the Hebrew scriptures? I slumped in my seat, or as much as the cramped space permitted me to, and sighed. No one took notice. Sinjorino Zamenhof was busily teasing a cooing Lidja. Dr. Zamenhof was working away, his briefcase serving again as a makeshift desk. I had to wonder: Was fraŭlino Bernfeld merely elongating the emotional distance between us so that I would be forced to cross it, striding resolutely towards her in order to unelongate it, or did she truly wish never to see me again? I sighed a second time, so lost in my own thoughts that I must have been staring at Dr. Zamenhof for a long minute or two before realizing he was looking back at me.

“Daydreaming,” I explained. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Ne, ne, ne,” he said, chuckling. “I was staring into space as well.”

The train shook us from side to side and for a moment we said nothing further. Though I couldn’t bear to bring it up myself, I wanted nothing more than for Dr. Zamenhof to inquire after the state of fraŭlino Bernfeld and my romance. On the one hand, I’d had enough of older men — my father, fraŭlino Bernfeld’s father, Drs. Freud and Fliess — meddling into my affairs; on the other, I felt so terribly hungry for even a morsel of paternal advice.

Sinjorino Zamenhof took from her large handbag three ham sandwiches wrapped in butcher paper and offered one to her husband and one to me. I shook my head. Though years out of Galicia, I still couldn’t bring myself to eat pig of any kind. (Ita’s fate had convinced me that there was indeed a God in Heaven and that despite Heine’s famous assertion, forgiveness might not be His métier. It was one thing to shake off the yoke of the Commandments, quite another to appear before the Heavenly Courts with spicy kielbasa on your breath.) Dr. Zamenhof, however, accepted the sandwich absentmindedly, chewed a few bites before
wrapping it up carefully and returning it to his wife. She rewrapped it even more carefully before tucking it inside her purse.

I watched Dr. Zamenhof working. He seemed oddly calm for a man who stood on the razor’s edge between success and failure: here, in Boulogne, his life’s work would be validated or found wanting. Or perhaps he merely appeared calm in comparison to me. As our train finally pulled into the little station, my heart began to race. I pressed my head against the window, planning my dash out of the train, so that I did not miss fraŭlino Bernfeld.

Somehow, however, she managed to leave the train, hire a coach, check into her hotel room, and disappear among the townspeople without letting me spy her even once. The deskman had been given strict orders not to reveal the number of her room to anyone who might inquire after it. “Especially,” he added, referring to a note fraŭlino Bernfeld had obviously given him, “ ‘a man of medium build, pince-nez, and a messily out-of-date bouffant,’ a description that, I’m afraid, Monsieur, fits you perfectly,” after saying which, he had the nerve to unfold his palm in search of a gratuity!

WITH LITTLE ELSE
to occupy me, I changed into the white linen suit and the white straw boater fraŭlino Loë had purchased for me, and walked the tiered streets of Boulogne down to the beach. My pant cuffs rolled up, my socks in my pocket, I strolled along the sea, carrying my shoes in my hand.

The sky was a summer blue with a pyramid of clouds stacked far out beyond the seawall.

There was only one thing to do, really, or so I told myself. I must break with fraŭlino Bernfeld immediately and free her of the emotional entanglements remaining between us. As the sea licked my feet, I knew with absolute clarity that this was the manly course to take. I’d wasted too much of her time, drawn too heavily against her emotional reserves with no hope now of ever repaying her. There were two problems, rising like mountains between me and this goal, however. First: in order to carry out my plan, I’d have to communicate it to fraŭlino Bernfeld, an occurrence she seemed too skilled at preventing. Not including our
encounter in the train station, I hadn’t seen her from a distance of under ten meters for the better part of the week! How could I break off relations with her if she refused to acknowledge my person? (By note, I supposed: handwritten, sealed, entrusted to the concierge who would ferry it to her rooms or hold it for her at his station.) Against the horizon of this plan rose the second mountain: the simple fact that breaking off with the fraŭlino was the last thing I wished to achieve by declaring myself in support of such a resolution. Indeed, I only wanted to suggest a parting of the ways in order to have her talk me out of it. Which is why a letter wouldn’t do. In epistolary form, I could be crumpled up, torn to pieces, shredded to bits, passed from hand to hand between scornful girlfriends, or worse, discarded unread. No, my only hope was to stand before her in person and to appeal to as many of her senses as possible, trusting not alone in sight, but also in smell, taste, hearing, and (I trembled to consider it) touch. Then when I offered, like a man, to release her from our unofficial bonds, the intimacy of the moment would call to mind other such moments, and she, in tears, could make a great show of appealing to my sentiments. Once she had fallen to her knees and wetted the hem of my trousers with her tears, I could descend (as would any man not fashioned of stone) from the high rock of my noble intentions, in order to reconsider my resolve and reconcile with the poor creature.