The Archivist (19 page)

I couldn’t keep looking at him. I looked out the window.

See you, I said to them all.

Powell led them off. But in a few minutes it happened, predictably: Len came back to the room, in the company of Powell (and slightly out of breath), holding the duffle bag.

He stepped inside the door.

Here, he said (in a low voice, and pulling from the bag a bundle of newspapers tied in string), I told Matt I forgot to give you some new records. No need for him to know, right?

I nodded.

This guy straight? ( jerking his thumb in Powell’s direction). I nodded again.

Fine, he said. A person should be able to read the news undisturbed. Bye now, you take care.

This would be amusing to tell Clay, but I want the newspapers, so I’ll keep it to myself.

June 1

The paper says they arraigned him at a court in Jaffa.

The charges: crimes against the Jewish people, war crimes against humanity, membership in a criminal organization.

Matthias is right. They’ll get to keep him. The Argentine government will back down, the Israelis will give him a fair trial. The world will get to see how scrupulous the Jews are in matters of law.

I’ve tried to envision this man in his sixties (“slight, balding,” according to the Times) in a cell that is continuously guarded, always lit. But I cannot imagine what kind of thoughts he could be having.

What kind of memories.

He oversaw the whole thing. The Final Solution was his. He managed it, made sure it worked.

Even though they’ve found him, even though they’ve charged him with his crimes, I still can’t believe he exists at this instant. That he has actual thoughts and memories. That he talks and eats and drinks.

The paper says he plans to defend himself by arguing that it wasn’t just him, it was everyone together, it was the Reich.

I speak sometimes to Clay about guilt, but he is less interested in guilt than in anger, which is for him more palpable. (Naturally. I display no guilt in his direction, and like any good narcissist he takes as his first concern the feelings I have toward him.)

He thinks my angst (as he calls it) over what I might’ve done and didn’t do is indicative of a deeper, more important despair. Over who I am. Whose daughter. Whose wife.

I find these questions numbing, I tell him.

Why? he asks. Is it because you feel you must protect yourself against them?

No, I say. It’s because a person never discovers who he is. Only what he might have been and what he failed to do.

You speak too abstractly, he says.

You aren’t really listening, I say, and please don’t protest.

For whatever reason, he does as I ask. I have never experienced an impasse as total as this one with Clay. Yet I go to the sessions with him; they are a familiar exercise, like my daily walks around the grounds, my nightly baths: physical, necessary, purposeless.

June 30

I’ve read my newspapers.

A short review of a recording session in Paris, a tribute to Cannonball Adderly. Don Byas on tenor, Powell on piano. Just the two of them.

It must’ve been astonishing. So much exchanged, so much said. Because such music would speak: for Cannonball, his instrument, his presence, the loss of him and the regaining: the man restored by the playing of the music. You don’t mourn, you play. You answer the death with the music.

Byas and Powell did mostly ballads, the reviewer said. Beautiful ballads:
Moonlight in Vermont, I Remember Clifford, I’ll Be Seeing You
.

I Remember Clifford
. Another tribute, said the review,
in memory of Clifford Brown, brilliant tenor. Dead in a car crash, five years ago this month. So young, so gifted, so much missed.

I remember that death. I remember reading the paper that morning in June, in New York, in the apartment. Matt sitting opposite me at our table; the coffee warm, the air warm, the news a wash of benign events — the world’s untroubled doings; and then a short column about the accident. Not an obituary, just a little record of the facts. Clifford Brown, tenor saxophonist, dead. In the same car as musician Richie Powell, the only brother of pianist Bud Powell. In the same car as Nancy Powell, wife of Richie.

Nancy was driving. They were traveling late, after a gig in Philly. The car skidded off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and rolled down an embankment; there were no survivors.

I remember not telling Matt. He would’ve been upset at my being upset. Powell always scared Matt — right from the beginning, that first breakdown at the end of the war, and then all those stories about Powell drawing huge keyboards on the sanitarium walls.

Powell in France now. Paris, Powell’s safe haven. I’m sure he won’t come back home. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay put.

I can imagine that session with Byas. The room is empty except for the black piano, the amber-gold sax. The two men enter. Powell sits; Byas bows his head to the mouthpiece of his sax, his fingers move into place. And when they begin playing
I Remember Clifford
for Cannonball, Powell is remembering Richie and Nancy, and Byas knows it. And when the second chorus modulates to that elegaic minor, Powell takes it with him — all his loss — and lays it out in a solo whose runs are spare and so articulate that Byas knows exactly what to say in response. And they bring it to a close together,
in memoriam:
love being the only tribute possible.

But afterwards, in his small flat, again alone, Powell wonders:
How long, Jesus how long can I keep it together?

August 19

It’s been hot. I can’t sleep much, or think long thoughts, or write. Only read. I read all the time.

Len and Carol brought me a third batch of papers yesterday.

There’s lots on the Eichmann snatch, Len said. The Argentines backed off. Now it’s up to the Israelis. Eichmann’s going to get his day in court after all.

The stack of Sunday Times, neatly bound in string, in the blue duffle bag at Len’s feet.

After you read those newspapers, said Carol, you’ll know more about the Nazis than you ever wanted to. I promise. The trial hasn’t even started and already the papers are full of the whole thing. The war all over again.

She looked tired; her hair was damp, matted against the sides of her head. Her blouse needed ironing.

The room was airless even with the windows wide open.

Dog days, Carol said (fanning herself with one of my paperback books). Why’s it so beastly here? This place is no better than Manhattan, for Christ’s sake.

I handed them each a glass of water. Carol held hers against her forehead, then drank it. I refilled it. Len lit a cigarette.

There’s no way they won’t sentence Eichmann to death, he said. Not after all the evidence. I mean, you couldn’t imagine such evidence they’re gathering, those Israeli lawyers. You couldn’t dream up such a story.

He was in one of his stews, soaked in a single idea. He finds one mental track and glides along, impossible to derail. Carol rides it out, knowing he’ll get off that track and onto another if she just waits. Carol can wait any amount of time. She expects nothing. But she also knows that Len will never leave her alone for too long: which is all she needs to be sure of.

She hasn’t needed to be sure of me. Neither has Len. It isn’t important to him, counting on me as a daughter. But on some wordless level — on the level of his Jewishness — he’s uncomfortable with my being cut off. For Len those courtroom proceedings in Jerusalem have the force of revealed secrets, and he can’t stand my not hearing them. He wants me to have the news. Like any other Jew.

Carol lay stretched out on my bed, her short thick body immobilized by the heat, her hair unresponsive to persistent fanning.

What do you hear from Matt, she asked.

Not too much, I said. I think he’s fine.

Len handed me a cigarette and lit his own, then mine.

Matt gave me a couple of music history lessons, Carol said. It was a little embarrassing. At least now I know that Beethoven was the deaf one and Schubert was the one who died young — I always used to get them mixed up. But I sell them anyway. Business is booming.

That’s what counts, said Len.

The cigarette tasted strange to me after so many months of not smoking. Strange, good. It absorbed all my interest.

You know, in the trial Eichmann’s going to come across as some kind of cultured guy, Len said. Big on the Old Masters, the German philosophers. I think his lawyers are trying to show that such a smart man couldn’t possibly be a mass murderer.

All of the Nazis did that at Nuremburg, Carol said (slightly roused, the topic luring her despite herself). They all wanted to prove how classy they were. Books, art — as if any of it could make a difference.

It can, I said. It can keep a person that much farther from the truth of what he’s doing.

Well, maybe so, said Carol (her voice again lethargic — she didn’t like this track, didn’t want its difficulties).

Yeah, it’s true, Judy’s right, said Len. I mean, these guys somehow had to rationalize what they were doing. You gas a bunch of Jews and then you read some Nietzsche, and everything’s OK.

Jesus, Lenny, it’s too hot to talk about this kind of thing, said Carol. Let’s drop it. We didn’t come all the way out here to tell Judy such depressing stuff.

Yeah, he said. OK.

(I could see it playing out on his face: the battle to suppress, to minimize. What’s known but ignored takes its revenge. You bring me the Times, Lenny, you don’t want me to be cut off. But we cut ourselves off; and now we pay the price.)

I need some more music, I said. I’ve played all the records you brought me. Dozens of times.

Well, you just happen to be in luck, kiddo, said Len.

He smiled. (How I envy him, the way he hoofs it loose and easy across the stage, blowing those slick uptempo riffs,
grab your coat and get your hat!
)

We happen to have some new records right here, he said. You’re in for a treat.

He dug into the blue bag, handed over the black disks.

Johnny Hedges and his band. Charlie Rouse. Bird, Dizzy. Tommy Flanagan’s trio. Eric Dolphy with Ron Carter, Roy Haynes, Booker Little. Flute, clarinet, alto: all those sounds in one head! Dolphy the reedman, magical Dolphy.

A new Miles Davis LP:
Kind of Blue
.

With Coltrane and Bill Evans, said Carol. More of that new cool they’ve been doing. Miles uses a mute on his horn. Sounds good.

They did some kind of game together on that album, added Len. Improvisation, messing with the tempo. Like blues but not really — hard to describe. Not my favorite. See what you think.

She’ll like it, said Carol.

Has Matt heard it, I asked.

Yeah, said Carol, as a matter of fact he was at the apartment a few days after I bought it, and I played it for him.

What did he say, I asked.

He said you’d like it, said Carol.

He should know, Len said.

What else did he say, I asked.

Oh I don’t know, said Carol. It was too hot, we didn’t talk much.

Yeah, but we did talk about Eichmann, said Len. Matt’s sure they’ll hang him. It’s the Jews’ turn, he said to me.

Yes, I said.

Matt better be right, Len said.

They left a little later. I gave Carol a final glass of water. She looked wrinkled and dehydrated, in spite of her damp blouse. I remembered her looking like that sometimes when I was young, after she’d been through an especially heavy bout of drinking.

Len’s final question as Powell opened the door: What do you do with all the papers once you’ve read them?

I save what I need, I said. The rest I give away.

(To Powell, who takes them and gets rid of them in perfect silence.)

Well, good for you, said Len. Why hang on to what you don’t need?

Amen, said Carol. Bye hon, see you, take care.

Bye, I said, thanks, bye.

October 3

Yesterday, Rosh Hashanah.

Matt showed up.

Shanah tovah, I said.

What’s that, he said.

A good year, I said. I’m wishing you a good year.

Ah, he said. Thanks. I’d forgotten — the holidays.

The Days of Awe, I said.

He paused.

Are you marking them in some way, he asked.

No, I said, but they’re marking me. I become more anxious during these days. If I knew how to atone, I would. Or what to atone for.

I was sitting on the floor, which is increasingly where I choose to sit; for some reason it feels safer, what with my occasional Miltown dizziness. Matt was standing by the window.

Sit, I said to him, it’s hard having you look down on me. He sat near me. He’s always been limber, despite his bad lower back. His frame collapses easily into a cross-legged posture, and when he gets up, the rise of his body is an unfolding rather than a series of movements, without any struggle for balance.

I don’t think atonement is the issue, he said.

You believe in redemption, I said. Right?

Yes, he said.

And judgment?

I suppose, he said.

Can’t have one without the other, can you?

Probably not.

Well, I said, I want to be inscribed in the Book of Life as one of the righteous. But first I must be judged. No — first I must judge myself. And atone.

That’s always the case, said Matt. Not just in these days. But not too harshly, Judith.

I have to write myself in, I said. Into the Book, I mean. It doesn’t just happen. First you have to convince yourself of your own righteousness.

The final call isn’t yours, said Matt, it’s out of your hands, don’t be too harsh —

— I know, I said.

He took my hands in his.

Think about something else, he said. About your poems.

My little atonements, I said.

No, no (his hands tightening on mine), don’t think of them like that. They’re separate.

Nothing’s separate, I said.

OK, he said.

He let go of my hands and stared off, his eyes emptying.

Don’t make it harder than it already is, he said (so softly, I could barely hear him).