Old Men at Midnight (20 page)

One of the pages disintegrated as he unfolded it. He set out its bits and pieces on the kitchen table:

“ ‘Americans attack between Meuse and Argonne Forest,’ ” he said to his wife and children, feeling a sudden drumming in his chest. Argonne. Ardennes. Memories of his own war.

The kitchen had begun to reek of rot and mold. He scooped up the newspapers and carried them to his study.

In the days that followed, he’d cut out the headlines, had them mounted and framed—four frames in all—and hung them on the wall in his study, which held memorabilia of his life: degrees, awards, accolades, photographs with distinguished colleagues, university presidents, senators, and Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. He had a skilled craftsman
glue the headline fragments to a heavy gray matte cardboard and enclose it all beneath nonglare glass in a black frame, which he hung on the wall over his desk. The framed headlines cast an odd imbalance over the room, as if dwarfing everything else on the walls and even the glass-enclosed floor-to-ceiling bookcases with their rare and precious volumes and folios on war.

“They are quite overpowering,” Evelyn said.

“Part of the history of this house.”

“But that wasn’t our war, darling.”

“Oh, yes, it was. One long war with a brief respite to facilitate recovery from the influenza epidemic and rearming. It was certainly my parents’ war.”

“You never talk about them, but you’ll put their war on your walls.”

“Nothing to talk about, my dear. They lived, they died. Unremarkable people.”

“But they were your mother and father.”

“Recollection very vague now. Retrieve it all if I must one day.”

“How can you be so sure of that, Benjamin?”

All this—returned to memory by a felled tree limb. In their years on this property the woods had been struck by lightning five times, though this sixth time was the closest it had ever come to the house. Astonishing to have so much come hurtling back into memory, as if an electric switch had been turned on: the blasted oak, the awful war, the shattered woods; the history of the house, the resurrected headlines, the Argonne and the Ardennes, his
parents, and—yes!—the trope teacher. A long cord of connection.

He sat behind the steering wheel of his car, staring in shock at the huge tree limb that lay across the driveway and in the same moment seeing I. D. Chandal, coat and hat stained dark with rain, emerge from the woods and come hurrying toward him along the wet rear lawn.

She said, “One of your trees took a direct hit.”

“Which?”

“One of the oaks. It probably saved your house.”

“One of the oaks?” He felt dazed.

“You’ll need a tree person.”

“A what?” What was she saying? She seemed so calm amid this devastation: a shattered tree, splinters everywhere.

“A specialist. To assess the damage.”

“One of the oaks,” he said, looking toward the trees.

“Benjamin, I’d love to stand here and talk to you, but I have to go to the bathroom. Listen, come over later for a cup of coffee, if you’re so inclined.”

He watched her move off behind the rhododendron hedge and head toward the Tudor. He parked the car and walked over to the oak nearest the house.

The tree was nearly one hundred years old. It stood illumined by the sodium floods. There was a faint smell of freshly splintered, charred wood. The limb had been
hurled onto the driveway. And all those shards. Some like spears and swords with their points buried six inches in the earth. He shuddered at the image of a shard embedding itself in human flesh. Deep darkness lay upon the branches facing the woods.

Very still, the woods.

The silence chilled him. He entered the house through the back door.

The nurse sat waiting for him in the kitchen.

“Oh, the storm was something fierce. Mrs. Walter, the Lord bless her, is so brave. The lightning frightened her. Scared me too. Like the Last Judgment, it was. The hand of God. We thought the house was hit, but it was only a tree. I gave her a pill, and she’ll sleep four, maybe five hours.”

“Thank you.”

“You should get a night nurse not only for when you’re away.”

“I can tend to her.”

“For the next time, I mean.”

“I’ll worry about it then.”

“I can recommend someone.”

“If it becomes necessary.”

“I’ll let myself out.”

He ate cold chicken, reading and half-listening to the news on NPR. Merciless bombardment of Sarajevo. Centuries of hatred surfacing. Tenacity of memory. An image came to him and he looked up from the book: I. D. Chandal hurrying across the rear lawn in her raincoat and hat. She’d worn sandals and no socks. An odd woman.

Upstairs, his wife lay sleeping. In his study, he removed from his briefcase books and papers and the manuscript of his memoirs. He sat down at the desk and opened the manuscript and stared at his writing. Lackluster words lay heaped on the pages: dead leaves. Amid the words he saw a man dressed out of fashion, giving off the stench of morgue and carnage; spittled lips and a diabolic grin; a blizzard of ashes and vile coiling hair. He trembled, his heart thundering. A sound from the wall on which hung the framed headlines. The house did that at times: moaned and creaked and sighed. Through the window he saw the Tudor, all its windows lit.

A moment later—it seemed a mere instant—he was standing at the door of the Tudor, ringing the bell.

The door opened. She stood there, small, face white, hair shoulder-length and blond, and smiled openly and warmly.

“Why, Benjamin. How nice.”

“That cup of coffee you so kindly offered.” His voice with a slight quiver in it; hesitant, vulnerable.

“Your wife?”

“She is in a deep sleep.”

“You’re sure?”

“The nurse gave her something.”

“All right, then.” She stepped back, opened the door wide, motioning him in. He stepped inside and heard the door close behind him.

“The kitchen is this way.”

He followed her through an empty center hall with a curving carpeted stairway into a large octagon-shaped room. Walls bare; floors bare; not a chair or a table anywhere. Dull lights from naked oval-shaped bulbs in antique brazen wall sconces. Their feet on creaky oak planks.

“There’s furniture on the way. But I can really make do without much furniture.”

He thought of Evelyn’s exquisite taste in furniture, and remembered the apartment of his childhood: heavy mahogany tables and chairs; horizontal hanging mirrors nearly as long as a wall; floor lamps with tasseled shades; upholstered sofa and easy chairs; blue oilcloth on the floors, white shades on the windows; the chicken, fish, potatoes, and vegetable soup smells in the kitchen. Of all things, why was he remembering the apartment? The dismal light. His father’s penchant for low-wattage bulbs. Save money on electricity and spend it on more important things. Give an extra dollar or two to the teacher. The trope teacher.

They went through a dim hallway lined on one side with floor-to-ceiling dark-wood cabinets and entered the kitchen.

It was a drab space with old cherry-wood cabinets, a sink and refrigerator and stove that seemed of 1950s vintage, and an overhead light fixture that emitted a cheerless yellowish luminescence. A rectangular brown-wood table and four wooden chairs near a window. On the table two stacks of newspapers. In the sink a heap of dirty dishes.
Reddish tiles covered the floor; faded light-green paint on the walls. And the walls bare—not even a calendar.

He noticed immediately the large open writing pad and the black fountain pen on the table near the newspapers and stood watching as she quickly flipped the pad shut, smoothly scooped it up together with the pen, opened a cabinet drawer, slipped the pad and pen inside, and pushed the drawer shut.

“I’ve interrupted your writing.”

“No, no, I hadn’t begun.”

“I’m so sorry. I should have called.”

“No, really, it’s all right. Please excuse the mess. I’m not the tidiest person. One of the things my husband always complained about—the lack of tidiness, I mean. His funeral business he kept very tidy. Well, now, coffee. I have, let’s see, hazelnut, Irish cream, espresso, Swiss mocha. Regular and decaf.”

“Espresso regular, please.”

She busied herself at the sink. “Sit down, Benjamin. Relax. Push the newspapers to one side.”

He sat at the table near a window that offered a view of the oaks and the woods. Looking to the right, he saw the gray fieldstone side of his house and the window of his study. He had left the lights on.

“You want a donut, Benjamin? I love donuts.”

“Thank you.” What am I doing here? Evelyn so sick and me in this woman’s house. Keeps herself neat and trim. No doubt dyes her hair. Good-looking woman. Seems a different person when she writes. Puts on weight somehow:
window-glass distortion? But the gray hair. Didn’t she just say something?

“Please excuse me, my mind was elsewhere.”

“I asked, Benjamin, if you wanted a single or a double espresso. I’m having a double.”

“A double for me too, please.”

“Here we are. Two double espressos and two donuts.”

She set down the tray and sat across from him, gliding lightly onto the chair. Her sudden close presence. Smooth cream-white face; long neck; the clear outline of her breasts beneath the jersey. Hungry, glittering eyes. Moist lips. He felt a momentary dizziness; heart pounding, palms sweating.

The coffee hot, black, bitter; the donut stickysweet.

“Are you all right, Benjamin?”

“A little faint.”

“Can I do anything?”

“A slight vertigo. Comes and goes.”

“You should see a doctor about that.”

“Davita, I see many doctors. I have an illness of the bones, which medications deftly control.”

“And the dizziness?”

“As I said, it comes and goes. Tell me something, Davita. During supper I read an essay on your work by a noted critic who marveled at your memory, which he called, if I remember correctly, ‘the memory of a sealed well, filled with water and leaking nothing.’ A quaint metaphor. How do you do that?”

“I can’t presume to know what he means.”

“I am encountering a great deal of difficulty remembering certain matters.”

“For your scholarly writing?”

“For my memoirs.”

She bit into a donut.

He sipped espresso. His fingers trembling slightly, the beginning of a headache. How strange! Inside the kitchen of I. D. Chandal, drinking espresso, eating donuts. The downed limb of a lightning-struck oak across his driveway. Huge and deadly pieces of wood strewn about his property. His wife in a drugged sleep. Newspapers on the table.

The vertigo again. What year was this? He read:

“You see, I have no idea how to continue. I have a book without a beginning.”

She put down her cup, patted her lips with a napkin. She gazed at him guardedly, seeming to be calculating, measuring.

“Well, Benjamin, I start from the zero point of memory.”

“The zero point?”

“From the very least bit of memory.”

“I’m not sure—”

“From the involuntary memory that comes like a bolt out of the blue. From the memory that is your aura.”

“My what? My aura?”

“Listen to me, Benjamin. When I say the word ‘war,’ what comes immediately into your mind?”

“I don’t—”

“The word ‘war,’ Benjamin.
Immediately!
”

“ ‘Why?’ ”

“Why what?”

“The word ‘why’ comes to mind.”

“And who speaks that word?”

He hesitated.

“
Who
, Benjamin?”

A wildly careering search. “An old teacher.”

“What is he doing and saying, your old teacher?”

“I can’t—”

“
What
, Benjamin?”

Still he hesitated.

“You’ll excuse me, Benjamin, but I see in your face that you have a story to tell. So tell me the story, get down to your zero point of memory. Or call it a night, go back to your wife, and I’ll get on with my work.”

A desperate effort. “Let me try.”

“Good. Another espresso? Another donut?”

Why, I’d hear my classmates ask, did Mr. Isaac Zapiski wear those dark clothes? Fall, winter, spring, and summer: dark double-breasted suit, dark wide-brimmed hat, dark wool coat in cold weather, dark high shoes, dark tie. He wasn’t a rabbi; he wasn’t even a teacher in our school. Their somber garb accorded well with their sober calling: the handing on of an ancient tradition. But, as far as we knew, Mr. Zapiski eked out a living solely from the teaching of trope. Why, then, the dark clothes?

And the same dark clothes at that. Weekdays, holy days, sabbaths, festivals—the same seedy suit, the same shabby coat, the same shabby hat. We were all poor—those were the ghastly years of the Great Depression—but each of our fathers owned at least two suits, two pairs of trousers, two shirts, two ties. And the same pair of high black shoes, scuffed, misshapen, bulging out at the toes and down at the heels—why did Mr. Zapiski own only one set of clothes and shoes?

And why did he walk moving his left foot forward in a shuffle and his right foot trailing? Shuffle and scrape, shuffle and scrape, an awkward drag-footed gait. A small, bumbling, stooped man who wore his hat low over his eyes and his jacket or coat collar up, his neck squeezed into his shoulders, looking to all intents and purposes like a turtle in the act of withdrawing into its shell. He had a habit of shaking his head in a sort of nervous twitch, jerking it from side to side, as if trying to disentangle himself from some web in which he had been caught. He didn’t do that
often, but when you saw it, it was frightening, because the pupils in his eyes would slide up to the top and all you saw was the white, and his lips would become flecked with spittle, and you were sure he was going to faint. But he never did, it only lasted some seconds and it was over, and he seemed never to remember what had happened.