Q: A Novel (17 page)

Chapter Sixteen

T
he courtship of Minnie Zuckerman begins in earnest over fondue. I-55’s directive is far less problematic and angst inducing than I-60’s was. I do not interpret I-55 to be saying that I must immediately propose marriage. Rather, I see his visit as encouraging me to take a closer look at someone whom I might otherwise not have noticed. My feeling is that if the relationship is destined to work, insomuch as destiny remains intact as a concept, then it will become obvious after a date or two, and things will evolve organically. The immediate action item is to give Minnie Zuckerman another chance and then ask her out.

So after I-55’s visit, I linger longer at Minnie’s desk. Whereas before I ask only what is being contemplated for lunch and, in the afternoon, what has been ordered, now I get involved in the nitty-gritty. I ask about the quality of the lunch. I inquire about condiments and bread choices and, later in the day, whether it is being digested well. One day she is eating a liverwurst sandwich and we have a long, snappy repartee over whether or not liverwurst contains liver.

“You know, liverwurst contains liver,” I say.

“No, it doesn’t,” she says.

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does.”

Minnie Zuckerman pauses for a moment, reconsiders her position, then says, “No, it doesn’t.”

I go to my office and print out the Wikipedia entry showing, conclusively, that liverwurst generally contains between 10 and 20 percent pork liver.

“My goodness,” she says.

“You really should avoid organ meats,” I say.

“Why?”

“They are very fatty.”

“I only eat liverwurst because it’s cheap.”

“What would you eat if money were no object?”

“I would have fondue.”

“You would have to keep a Bunsen burner and a ceramic pot at your desk.”

“You asked and I answered.”

“Fair enough. Why fondue?”

“It seems like a fun and decadent thing to have for lunch.”

“Seems like,” I say. “You have never had fondue?”

“No,” she says.

“I haven’t either.”

“Really?”

“We should definitely go and try it together sometime.”

“Definitely,” she says.

I don’t know Minnie Zuckerman well, but it is clear to me that she is pleased.

The only fondue place
in the city, or the only one we can find, is in the Port Authority, next to the bowling alley on the second floor of the Eighth Avenue side. On a whim, I suggest we bowl a game first.

“I’m dressed for fondue,” Minnie protests. “I’ll have to wear rented shoes, and I hate rented shoes.”

“Come on,” I insist, “it’ll be fun.”

Minnie acquiesces. We rent the shoes, which are sprayed with disinfectant, pay for the game, and select our balls. We are assigned lane 11, which just so happens to be Minnie’s favorite number. It is all very nice and vaguely romantic.

Minnie bowls a one.

Much of the problem stems from her throwing the ball too slowly. It is difficult to quantify precisely how slow this is, but to offer perspective, the nine-year-old boy on the lane to our left throws a ball at the same time as Minnie, retrieves it from the return, and throws it again before Minnie’s original toss reaches the pins. This is a long time for a ball to remain on the lane without something going wrong. Her first eleven throws totter down the alley, staggering like drunkards, this way and that, and land in the gutter. The second ball of the sixth frame is more promising. It begins on an auspicious trajectory, continues straight as an arrow, and finally, after ninety seconds or so, actually makes contact with the headpin. Unfortunately its momentum expires at the point of impact and the ball rolls backward. The pin wobbles but does not fall. We call the desk. The man who disinfected our shoes emerges from behind the counter and retrieves Minnie’s ball.

After this, Minnie begins to throw the ball more forcefully, cranking it up to two miles per hour or so, but this compromises her accuracy, and she throws seven consecutive gutter balls. Three of these go directly into the channel without touching so much as a single board of wood. Finally, on her last try, Minnie strikes the right balance between power and accuracy and nicks the tenpin with just enough force. It teeters for a moment and then, triumphantly, topples. Bowling a one would disappoint many people, but Minnie’s optimism is indomitable. She jumps up and down in glee and asks when we can go again.

“Soon,” I say.

“You’re quite good,” she says. “One hundred ninety-five is very good. It’s one hundred ninety-five times greater than my score.”

“I bowled on my high school team.”

“I think I’ll get the hang of it next time.”

“It’s not the sort of thing one can pick up in a single try.”

“But I’ll be better for sure.”

“One would expect.”

“That’s all that matters,” she says with a smile.

They have about
four hundred and fifty varieties of cheese in Switzerland, but you wouldn’t know it from the menu at the fondue place. Everything is Gruyère. The fondue Vaudoise is Gruyère. The spicy fondue is Gruyère with crushed tomatoes and wine. The mushroom fondue is Gruyère with mushrooms. To the extent that other cheeses are used, it is generally in combination with Gruyère. The
moitié-moitié
(half and half) is Vacherin with Gruyère. The Neuchâteloise is Emmental with Gruyère. The central Swiss fondue is Emmental and Sbrinz and Gruyère.

I like Gruyère fine, but Minnie Zuckerman is allergic. I become aware of this when I comment on the pervasiveness of Gruyère.

“Wow,” I say. “Everything has Gruyère.”

“That’s a shame,” she says. “I am allergic.”

I am surprised by this because several times I have seen Minnie eating a turkey and cheese sandwich for lunch. I am, furthermore, almost certain that the cheese was Swiss. It seems improbable that one could be allergic to Gruyère but tolerate Swiss cheese, which I am pretty sure is really Emmental. The waiter is even more dubious when Minnie explains her condition and asks whether the restaurant serves anything without Gruyère.

“Everything we have contains cheese,” he says. “It is the essence of cheese fondue.”

“I am not worried about cheese generally, just Gruyère. I am allergic to Gruyère.”

“I doubt that,” says the waiter.

“You don’t believe me?” Minnie is incredulous.

“I doubt that one could have or be aware of so specific an allergy.”

“Nevertheless I am.”

“So you are allergic to Gruyère, but not to Jarlsberg and Gouda.”

“Correct.”

“What did your allergist do, test you for hundreds of different types of cheeses?”

“He is a top allergist and very thorough.”

“I should say.”

“So can you accommodate me?”

“I will have the chef whip up something with Fribourg vacherin. Are you okay with Fribourg vacherin?”

“Yes.”

“I should tell you the fondue contains traces of peanuts,” he says. “Are you allergic to nuts?”

“Only filberts,” she says. “Do you use filberts?”

“I’ll check with the chef, but I expect you are safe.”

Minnie is a doting
conversationalist. She probes me about where I write, and when I write, and how I get my ideas.

“How do you get your ideas?” she asks.

“Here and there,” I say. “I just try to keep my eyes and ears open. I had the idea for my current book last year at Thanksgiving dinner. I met this homeless Kierkegaard expert who had some very interesting ideas about progress and evolution. I had read about Freud and the eels and thought to myself, this is just the thing to tie it all together.”

“Ah,” she says.

Minnie is intimately familiar with my oeuvre, which is to say that in addition to my magnum opus, the novel, she has read my article in the
Critical Journal of Counter-Historical Studies
reexamining the politics of Charles Lindbergh and the plausibility of his becoming a Republican presidential candidate, as examined in
The Plot Against America
. In the obligatory “Suggestions for Further Study” section of the article, I urge that counterhistorians focus greater attention on the potential ramifications of Lindbergh’s affair with the German hat maker Brigitte Hesshaimer, and what might have happened if she and Lindbergh had together ventured into the burgeoning business of manufacturing galoshes. Minnie has read all of this carefully, particularly
Time’s Broken Arrow
, as was obvious at the Manalapan event, and now asks thoughtful, precise questions about the
book.

“What was the specific nature of Zachary Taylor’s relationship with the Germans and what were its potential political implications?”

Minnie is referring to the third section of the book wherein William Henry Harrison, in the last days of the second term of his presidency, sends Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” hero of the Mexican-American War, to Baden to aid the German liberals in the revolution of 1848. The plan is for Taylor to vanquish von Bismarck and von Wrangel as he vanquished Santa Anna at the Battle of Palo Alto and later, conclusively, at the Battle of Buena Vista. Unfortunately, Taylor eats a bad schnitzel at the Heidelberg Wursthaus, develops a severe case of gastroenteritis, and dies three days later, thereby dashing President Harrison’s grand plans. This is a pivotal moment in the book, and it pleases me that Minnie Zuckerman has chosen to focus
on it.

“Are you saying something about fate or the convergence of time?”

“Why do you ask this?”

“Because in real life Taylor ate a snack of milk and cherries and died of gastroenteritis.”

“I’m impressed that you know this.”

“I too am a student of history.”

“Taylor ate the snack at an Independence Day parade. Did you know that some historians suspect the cherries may have been laced with arsenic as part of an assassination plot?”

“That’s fascinating,” Minnie says. She appears to be genuinely riveted. “So are you saying that his death was inevitable?”

Playfully, I say, “It could just be that he has a predisposition to gastroenteritis.”

“It could be, but I don’t think that’s your intended meaning.”

“Ultimately meaning is up to the reader.”

Minnie chews on this and the Fribourg, with which she seems eminently pleased. She offers me a taste and I obligingly dip in a nugget of bread. To my undiscerning palate, it tastes like Gruyère.

For our second
date, we go to Streit’s matzo factory on the Lower East Side. This too evolves from our lunchtime banter. It is Passover and Minnie is eating liverwurst on matzo. Having exhausted the liverwurst issue, we turn to the matzo, but I have little to say and am forced to admit that I have no idea where or how matzo is made. Minnie does, and the next day she arranges for us to join a tour of the factory.

We are escorted by Schmuleh Streit, who explains that he is the great-great-grandnephew of Aron, who founded the place in the 1920s. Schmuleh has
payis
and
tzitzit
and the sensibilities of a borscht belt comedian. We pay five dollars for the tour, after which Schmuleh says, “That will be the last dough that passes hands today.” The other tour guests, a dozen people or so, chuckle as I groan silently.

Some of his material is stolen from Joe Franklin. At the door, he says, “Ladies and gentleman, please prepare yourselves for the unleavened experience of a lifetime.” Everyone chuckles, as I whisper to Minnie indignantly, “He stole that from Joe Franklin.”

“Shhh,” she says. “No one knows who that is.”

At the entrance to the factory, Schmuleh has gone to great pains to simulate a scene from
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
. He escorts us into a room where the walls get progressively narrower. At the far end of the room is a tiny keyboard.

“It’s a musical lock,” he says mischievously, then plays a short melody.

“Rachmaninov?” a man asks his wife.

“No,” she whispers. “Morton Feldman.”

Then the door opens—the small wall is a façade—and the baking floor is revealed. Schmuleh Streit bows his head, inverts his arms, and says invitingly, “Ladies and gentleman, the matzo factory.”

There are no chocolate rivers or Oompa Loompas, just Jews. We visit the matzo-forming machines (which are unsatisfyingly named “matzo-forming machines”) and the ovens and the bins where the shmurah matzo is stored. The shmurah is matzo gold. It is watched from the time the wheat is ground into flour until the moment it is baked in the oven to make sure not a drop of moisture invades the holy bread. Eternal vigilance is expensive, and the shmurah sells for more than twenty dollars per pound. We meet the rabbi on duty.

“Any water get in today, Rabbi?” I ask, but he does not respond; he appears to be asleep.

All in all, the tour is pretty lame.

In the Streit’s café, Minnie and I recapitulate the experience over Kedem wine and matzo meal falafel.

Minnie says, “Watching that rabbi sit in front of that vat of matzo dough was quite disturbing.”

“Why? That’s the way it has been done for centuries.”

“That’s the problem. It’s disconcerting to think that this method always has been and always will be the same.”

“Why does that bother you?”

“It just seems to me that there should be a better way of making it. It’s oppressive to think that the process hasn’t progressed at all in five thousand years and never will.”

I nod. I understand.

The Kedem gets to us, and somehow this segues into a conversation about our personal lives.

“I don’t want to pry,” Minnie says, “but weren’t you engaged to be married?”

“I was. We broke it off six months ago.”

“May I ask what happened?”

I wince. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

“I understand,” she says.

“Weren’t you in a relationship yourself?”

“I was, but I broke it off.”

“When was that?”

“Just the other day,” she says with a smile, “when you asked me out to fondue.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I had the sense that something better might come along. You know how that is?”