Drunken Angel (9781936740062) (37 page)

But straight-faced, played out the farce to the end, thanked her, returned home with the useless, unobtainable figures in hand.

That night, at home, I received a fax from the Berlin Jewish Cultural Festival requesting me to perform alongside Allen Ginsberg and asking if I could think of some other California writers to invite; they hoped to assemble a program on California alternative Jewish culture. In return for my reading, as well as the work of recommending other writers, they would pay me a few thousand dollars in addition to the round-trip flight and my stay in a first-class hotel in Charlottenburg, where Ginsberg would also room.

I stared at the fax trembling in my hand, then listed names on a napkin: Kathy Acker, Jerome Rothenberg, Rabbi Michael Lerner. Called Old Ray. Could barely get the words out: “You won't believe this…”

He suggested that when I fax back my acceptance I request that the festival add a Tel Aviv stop on the return leg of my air ticket. I did, and included the names of proposed invitees. They faxed back that adding Tel Aviv was no problem, thanked me, and named the travel agent in Union Square where I could pick up my ticket. I had just received, in a matter of moments, more than enough to visit Isadora.

There are no accidents in God's universe. The invitation, coming when it did, was no coincidence. It was a miracle.

But there was yet the matter of Esther, who would hang up each time I called, after shrieking my ear off. She had even once refused to let my parents see Isadora after they had flown all the way to Israel expressly for that purpose. What would prevent her from doing the same to me?

I called. She answered. I calmly explained about the festival, said I'd stop in Israel for a week to visit Isadora en route home. Wasn't even so surprised when, this time, she agreed. By now, nothing could surprise me. Was doing my Higher Power's bidding. All I had to do was stay sober, show up.

 

I flew to the festival with Kathy Acker, who was a friend. Compact, pretty, pierced and tattooed, with short-cropped bottle-blonde hair, a studded motorcycle jacket painted with roses and skulls, and an assertive voice that brooked no nonsense, she was also one of the sweetest people I'd ever met, but only if she liked you. She liked me and we laughed a lot, reminiscing about the old days at the Nuyorican Poets Café, where we had first met on a second-floor balcony and blown pot smoke into each other's mouths and puppy-kissed. These days, she was exploring the still relatively new social medium of online anonymous sex chat rooms and finding that it showed a whole new side to herself, including the strange realization that though the sex games were pure fantasy, her partners anonymous, still, she had feelings for them and they for “her,” despite neither party having a clue to the other's identity. What, then, is identity, she wondered. What is love?

Our hotel was in Charlottenburg, one of the poshest districts of Berlin. The festival organizers explained that I would perform
solo, but I was also invited, along with Allen Ginsberg, to perform poetry with the Klezmatics on backup. After my set, where I read “Marlboro Man,” “Relationshit,” and other rants, Allen Ginsberg took the stage. Though in frail health, he performed with the power of a dharma lion.

When it was over, a beautiful Nordic couple with white-blond hair and green-blue eyes came up. The man introduced himself as Carl-Johan Vallgren, a Swedish novelist. He said my performance was a revelation, would like to translate my poems into Swedish, write a profile about me for
Bonniers Litterära Magasin
, Sweden's most important periodical of literature. Could we meet the next day? I handed him a sheaf of poems and said: “I'll see you tomorrow.”

That afternoon, Ginsberg, Jerry Rothenberg, and I gave a press conference. Of course, Ginsberg was the main act, the center of attention, as was right. He was the guest of the Berlin Turkish community, which had sponsored his fee to the tune of thousands. In return, Ginsberg would speak out on behalf of the Turkish immigrants who were being incinerated in their homes by mobs of firebombing neo-Nazi skinheads. The government response had amounted to a shrug.

The German press, as well as reporters from France and Italy, listened respectfully to Ginsberg's opening remarks. He deplored Bonn's apathy, called on Kohl to stop the killings of Turks at once. Then he appealed to the film stars of Germany to raise their voices.

“Why film stars?” asked one of the reporters.

“Because if American film stars had raised their voices against Nazism, they would have prevented the Holocaust!”

This I could not countenance.

“Excuse me, Allen,” I spoke up.

“Everyone,” said Ginsberg, “this is Alan Kaufman from San
Francisco, one of the new breed of Spoken Word poets, making a new scene in America. Yes, Alan?”

“With all due respect, Allen—there's no poet I more admire than you—you can't seriously believe that Gary Cooper and Shirley Temple could have stopped Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler!”

“I believe exactly that,” he snapped, face darkening with anger. “The collective force of popular culture could have prevented World War Two.”

Numerous reporters groaned and rolled their eyes or sat with pained, bewildered smiles. Beside me, a beautiful Italian photographer leaned close and squeezed my wrist. “What nonsense! I completely agree with you!”

After much back-and-forth between Ginsberg and the astonished reporters, Ginsberg turned to me and said: “Alan. I apologize for losing my temper. You angered me but that doesn't justify my behavior.”

“No problem, Allen.”

You had to like Ginsberg, no matter how offbeat his perspectives sometimes were. In publicly apologizing to a relative unknown, he showed real class, I thought.

At the festival Kathy Acker spoke to me about her ambivalence toward the whole matter of Jewish identity, the prohibition against tattoos, Orthodox treatment of women, her sense of estrangement from Judaism's institutions. Kathy did not seem to like Berlin that much. It was a harsh winter of searing cold, the city buried under snow and ice. She left the festival site as often as possible. My impression was she couldn't wait to return to San Francisco, where she drove a motorcycle and occupied one of the punkiest Goth apartments I'd ever seen, draped in velvet nineteenth-century Baudelairean decor and hung with original shotgun art by William Burroughs and David Wojnarowicz.

The next day, I breakfasted with Allen Ginsberg and Michael Lerner. I have never been fond of small talk in such encounters, where everyone butters their toast with a sense of momentous occasion. Perhaps this time great things were said, but I don't recall. Was too busy wolfing down my eggs as Lerner spoke at length about his magazine,
Tikkun
, to which he invited both Ginsberg and me to contribute. I do recall that at one point Ginsberg exchanged a fatigued look with me. When I left, Lerner was still talking.

That afternoon, Carl-Johan Vallgren took me for a walk around Berlin. At the site of a former train station that had served as the central round-up point for the deportation of Berlin Jews to the death camps during the Holocaust, we stood in silence. And I listened. Vallgren had mentioned the large number of Jewish children who had gone to their deaths from here. I heard a child crying. A mother pulling a very upset little girl. For an instant could imagine the cries of children as they were pushed or sometimes thrown into overcrowded cattle cars for journeys of two and three days, standing the whole time, unfed, parched with thirst, hurtling toward gas and, as often, incineration while yet alive.

I thought of my mother, who had succeeded in escaping this fate, and of my daughter, Isadora, in Israel.

I looked at Carl. “I hear them.”

“Who do you hear, Alan?” he asked respectfully.

“The dead, Carl. I hear the dead. I've been listening for them my whole life. And sometimes, I hear them everywhere. And I hear them now in this place.”

“I think I understand,” he said.

THE PLANE'S WINGS DIPPED, AND THERE WAS ISRAEL. As always when I see Israel, I felt overtaken by the sad, warm drowsiness of the place, the inexorable link between her harsh brown unforgiving soil and my soul. The knot within, which Jews abroad live unaware of, relaxed. I was home, safe, back among my own.

At the airport passport control, used my Israeli passport to enter. Took a taxi into Tel Aviv and from there a bus to Jerusalem, my old hometown, where I booked myself into a cheap hotel. Called Esther immediately, let her know that I'd arrived. She was cool but cordial. We arranged to meet the next day in Ashdod, where they made their home. She refused to give me an address, asked instead to meet at a café near the town's main post office.

The next morning, wandering too early along Ben Yehuda street in the center of town, hardly able to grasp that I was actually here, I bought a miniature Casio piano keyboard for Isadora. Don't know why. What do you get for a nine-year-old girl? Hadn't thought to ask before leaving, and, on my own, my aching brain scrambled the
task into an anxious muddle. Could hardly believe that I was really about to see my daughter. It had been so long.

What would I say? How to speak to her? Would she forgive me? How would I state my amends? When would the right moment come? Oh, please, YHWH, I prayed, God of my people, help me to make amends to this innocent who has harmed no one but has been hurt by my drinking. Please, I ask that you allow me to be the kind of father that I should have been before.

ASHDOD WAS A POOR IMMIGRANT SEACOAST TOWN, with a more upscale district along the shore. With wide, dusty streets of rows on rows of ugly housing blocks, it was known both for its blue-collar uncouthness and its burgeoning criminal class—a whole stratum of the population engaged in illegal activity, as is common in slums, where hope and money are scarce.

The rendezvous point was a typical cheap kiosk café with a few outdoor tables—a place that sold coffee, tea, ice cream, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. Bought tea and took a seat at an umbrella-shaded table, out of the burning sun.

And then I saw them—Isadora holding the hand of Esther, who was rushing along in a kind of frantic charge. Spotting me, she stopped and stared with wet eyes. I came to my feet, searched my heart for rancor. Despite all that we had gone through, I felt none. But kept close internal watch nonetheless for some resentment that might lurk somewhere, hidden, and lash out, ruin everything. Whether or not she could forgive me, I must completely forgive her
and remain in a state of forgiveness.

But I couldn't bear to look at Isadora, who was the only reason I had come. If not for her, I would simply have sent Esther an amends letter and left it at that. Isadora was the reason I was here.

Isadora did not approach and also did not look my way. And then she looked.

The last time I had seen her, she was a toddler, less than two years old. Now she was nine, a developed little girl with a full head of dirty-blonde ringlets and the most angelic face, with big blue eyes and a lovely mouth and a perfect little nose. And there was something of the tomboy about her. But I couldn't tell what she felt on seeing me. Her true face, the one beneath her face, kept itself secret. I wanted to put my arms around her so tightly and warmly and tell her I love her and promise never to disappear on her ever again. But stood there, restrained, trying to relax. And slowly, reluctantly, Esther and Isadora came up to me and we all stood there transfixed by the sheer awkwardness of the moment.

Esther giggled. Then said, in a voice husky with drama: “Hel-lo.”

“Hi.” I smiled.

“Izzy,” she said. “This is your father. Say hello to him.”

Isadora regarded me. Still couldn't tell what she was thinking. Though she stood in full sight, something, a kind of ambivalence, yet veiled her from me. I realized that it was the presence of Esther.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said, trying to seem controlled, the voice flattened, just a touch, as if reading from a script, her face struggling not to show a feeling.

But I fought back tears to hear her call me “Daddy” and it must have showed. Didn't deserve such a precious gift, though I had yearned to hear those words every day since the time I left, never to return.

“Hello, sweetheart, my daughter,” I said. Her face changed.
There she was. As if we hadn't been apart for a single day: my Izzy! But Esther must have seen it: the illusion of her control slip for a single instant. She tensed. And Izzy vanished again from her own body. And the walls were up once more.

 

We sat and I ordered them whatever they wanted. Esther talked about some career difficulty she had and I did my best to be attentive, but internally my focus was all on Isadora, her every gesture, expression, body posture. In me an unfilled space made sacred for her was desperate for her content, and each time she just breathed, another item was added as I sat there, registering each flicker of her golden eyelids, shift in skin tone, the fall of her hair, trying to discern subtle hints of mood, noting how she gradually relaxed, particularly when the ice cream came, and how she simply stood up, leaned against my leg, placed her hand on my shoulder, and, ignoring Esther, stood there, listening, leaning into me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which it was.