The Gravedigger’S Daughter (58 page)
Read The Gravedigger’S Daughter Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Rain was pelting against the windows. In the morning again there would be fog. The nighttime city was beautiful to Hazel but not very real. At this height of twenty floors, nothing seemed very real. In the near distance there was a tall narrow building that might have been a tower. A red light blurred by rain rotated at its pinnacle.
“The eye of God.”
It was a curious thing to say. The words seemed to have spoken themselves.
She wouldn’t take time to dress, she was in too great a hurry. Her trench coat would do. It was a stylish olive-green coat with a flared skirt and a sash-belt to be tied at the waist. The coat was still damp from that evening’s rain. Yet she would wear it like a robe over the nightgown. And shoes: she could not leave the room barefoot.
Looking for her flat-heeled shoes she found a single shiny black dress shoe of Gallagher’s lying on the carpet where he’d kicked it. She picked it up and placed it in a closet beside its mate.
They had returned to the hotel suite to celebrate, together. Gallagher had called room service to order champagne. On the marble-topped coffee table was a silver tray and on the tray a spillage of wrappers, bottles, glasses. Remains of Brie cheese, rye crackers, kiwi fruit and luscious black Concord grape seeds. And almonds, Brazil nuts. After the emotional strain of that evening’s program Gallagher had been famished but too excited to sit still, he’d paced about the parlor as he ate, and talked.
He had not expected Zack to play so well, perhaps. He, too, had expected some sort of catastrophe.
In May, the elder Gallaghers had had a medical scare. Gallagher’s gastric pains continued, something cloudy had showed up on an X-ray but was not malignant. An ulcerous condition, treatable. They’d decided not to tell Zack, this would be their secret.
Zack had gone off with friends from the Conservatory and other young musicians they’d met in San Francisco. After his controversial performance Zack would be something of a hero, among pianists of his own generation at least.
Hazel would not approach the door to Zack’s adjoining room. She would not turn the knob, gently: she knew it would be locked.
Yet surely the girl would not be in that room with Zack. In that bed. In such proximity to the Gallaghers. She had a room elsewhere in the hotel and she’d come alone to San Francisco and if she and Zack were alone together in any bed, exhausted now in the aftermath of lovemaking, they would be in her room. Probably.
She would not think of it. She was no one’s daughter now, and she would be no one’s mother. All that was over.
She would say, You can live your own life now. Your life is your own, to live.
She’d brought with her, to San Francisco, the most recent of Thaddeus’s letters. Love letters they were, of increasing passion, or dementia. Opening the stiff, much-folded sheet of stationery, to read by lamplight as her husband slept oblivious in the adjoining room. The letter was clumsily typed as if in lunges, in the dark; or by one whose eyesight is dimming.
Dearest Hazel Jones,
You wld tickel an old mans vanity if youd replied to my appeals but I see now, you are Hazel Jones and
a good wife
and you are a
worthy Mother
to your son. So you wld not reply, I rever you for it. I think that I will not write to you agin this side the grave. You & the boy will recieve a consumat Reward for your fathfulness & goodness. Your shallow husband the Mouth of Liberal Consience does not have a clue! He is a fool unworthy of you & the boy, that is our secret Hazel Jones isnt it. In my will you will all see. The scales will fall from the eyes of some. God bless you Hazel Jones & the boy whose music of beauttu is to outlive us all.
Hazel smiled, and folded up the letter again, and put it away in her handbag. A voice echoed faintly as if in rain beating against the windowpanes
You
�
you are born here
.
They will not hurt you
.
Pushed her arms into the sleeves of the still damp trench coat, and tied the belt tight around her waist. No need to glance at herself in the mirror: she knew her hair was disheveled, the pupils of her eyes dilated. Her skin smarted with a kind of erotic heat. She was excited, jubilant. She would take money with her, several twenties from her purse. She would take several items from the mini bar: miniature bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka. She would take the playing cards, dropping them loose in a pocket of her coat. And she must not forget the key to room 2006.
She stepped into the empty corridor. Shut the door behind her waiting for the lock to click into place.
The corridor leading to the elevators was longer than she recalled. Underfoot were thick crimson carpets and on the walls beige silk wallpaper in an Oriental design. At the elevators she punched down. Swiftly she would descend from 20 to G. Smiling to recall how in the past elevators had moved much more slowly. You had plenty of time to think, descending in one of those.
At this hour the hotel appeared deserted. Floor G was very quiet. The piped-in Muzak of daytime, a chirping of manic sparrows Gallagher called it, had been silenced. Though she had never been in this hotel before Hazel moved unerringly past windowless doors marked employees only and private: no admittance. At the end of a long corridor smelling of food was kitchen: employees only. And room service: employees only. Twenty-four-hour room service was a feature of the San Francisco Pacific Hotel. Hazel heard voices on the other side of the door, a sound of dishes being stacked. Radio music with a Latino beat. She pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
How the eyes snatched at her, in astonishment! Yet she was smiling.
There were kitchen workers in soiled white uniforms, and a man in a dark, neatly pressed uniform who had just returned to the kitchen pushing a cart loaded to capacity with trays of dirtied plates, glasses and bottles. The kitchen lights were very bright, the air much warmer than the corridor had been. Amid the strong kitchen odors of grease and cleanser was a sharp garbagey odor. And a beery odor as well, for some of the kitchen workers were drinking beer. Even as the alarmed-looking man in the dark uniform began to speak, “Ma’am, excuse me but�” Hazel was saying quickly, “Excuse me, I’m hungry. I can pay you. I have my own drinks but I don’t want to drink alone. I didn’t want to order room service, it takes too long.” She laughed, they would see that she was in a festive mood and would not send her away.
Hazel would not afterward recall the sequence of events. She would not recall how many men there were for at least two continued working, at sinks; another came in later by a rear door, yawning and stretching. Several befriended her, cleared a place for her at their table setting aside tabloid papers, a crossword puzzle book, emptied Coke, 7-Up, beer cans. They were grateful for the miniature bottles she’d brought from the room. They would not accept her offer of $20 bills. They were: César, a youngish Hispanic with pitted skin and liquidy eyes; Marvell, a black man with skin the color of eggplant and a fleshy, tender face; Drake, a Caucasian of about forty, with an oddly flat face like a species of fish and glinting wire-rimmed glasses that gave him the look of an accountant, you would not take for a nighttime cook. And there was McIntyre, suspicious of Hazel initially but by quick degrees her friend, in his fifties, the man in the hotel uniform who made room service deliveries on call through the night. They were so curious of Hazel! She would tell them only her first name which was a name strange to them: “Haz-el” pronounced as if it were an exotic foreign word. They asked where she was from and she told them. They asked was she married, was her husband sleeping up in their room, what if he woke and saw that she was gone?
“He won’t wake. When he wakes, I will be there. It’s just I can’t seem to sleep now. This time of night…They say that people check into hotels who are planning to commit suicide. Why is that? Is it easier, somehow? I used to work in a hotel. When I was a girl. I was a chambermaid. This was back east, in upstate New York. It was not so large and luxurious a hotel as this. I was happy then. I liked the other hotel workers, I liked the kitchen staff. Except…”
The men listened avidly. Their eyes were fixed upon her. The Latino music continued. Hazel saw that the kitchen was vast, larger than any kitchen she had ever seen. The farther walls were obscured in shadow. Numerous stoves and all the stoves were mammoth: a dozen gas burners on each. There were large refrigerators built into a wall. Freezers, dishwashers. The space was divided into work areas of which only one was currently lighted and populated. The linoleum floor shone wetly, recently mopped. Plates were removed from carts and garbage scraped into plastic bags, the bags were tightly tied and placed inside large aluminum cans. The mood of the kitchen workers was heightened, jocular. Hazel might wonder if her presence had something to do with it. She’d taken the playing cards out of her pocket and stacked and shuffled them. Did they know gin rummy? Would they like to play gin rummy? Yes, yes! Very good. Gin rummy. Hazel shuffled the cards. Her fingers were slender and deft and the nails had been lacquered deep crimson. Skillfully Hazel dealt the cards to the men and to herself. The men laughed, their mood was exuberant. Now they knew Hazel was one of them, they could relax. They played gin rummy laughing together like old friends. They were drinking chilled Coors beer, and they were drinking from the miniature bottles Hazel had brought them. They were eating potato chips, salted nuts. Brazil nuts like those Gallagher had devoured up in the room. A phone rang, a hotel guest calling room service. McIntyre would have to put on his jacket, and make the delivery. He went away, and within a few minutes returned. Hazel saw that he was relieved she hadn’t left yet.
Cards were tossed onto the table, the set was over. Who had won? Had Hazel won? The men didn’t want her to leave, it was only 3:35
A
.
M
. and they were on room-service duty until 6
A
.
M
. Hazel stacked the cards together and shuffled and cut and shuffled again and began to deal. The front of her trench coat had loosened, the men could see the tops of her breasts pale and loose in the silky champagne-colored nightgown. She knew that her hair was disheveled, her mouth was a cloudy smear of old lipstick. Even one of her fingernails was chipped. Her body exuded an odor of old, stale panic. Yet she supposed she was an attractive woman, her new friends would not judge her harshly. “D’you know ‘gypsy gin rummy’? If I can remember, I’ll teach you.”
Lake Worth, Florida
September 14, 1998
Dear Professor Morgenstern,
How badly I wish that I could address you as “Freyda”! But I don’t have the right to such familiarity. I have just read your memoir. I have reason to believe that we are cousins. My maiden name is “Schwart” (not my father’s actual name, I think it was changed at Ellis Island in 1936) but my mother’s maiden name was “Morgenstern” and all her family was from Kaufbeuren as yours were. We were to meet in 1941 when we were small children, you and your parents and sister and brother were coming to live with my parents, my two brothers and me in Milburn, New York. But the boat that was carrying you and other refugees, the
Marea
, was turned back by U.S. Immigration at New York Harbor.
(In your memoir you speak so briefly of this. You seem to recall a name other than
Marea
. But I am sure that
Marea
was the name for it seemed so beautiful to me like music. You were so young of course. So much would happen afterward, you would not remember this. By my calculation you were 6, and I was 5.)
All these years I had not known that you were living! I had not known that there were survivors in your family. It was told to us by my father that there were not. I am so happy for you and your success. To think that you were living in the U.S. since 1956 is a shock to me. That you were a college student in New York City while I was living (my first marriage, not a happy one) in upstate New York! Forgive me, I did not know of your previous books, though I would be intrigued by “biological anthropology,” I think! (I have nothing of your academic education, I’m so ashamed. Not only not college but I did not graduate from high school.)
Well, I am writing in the hope that we might meet. Oh very soon, Frey-da! Before it’s too late.
I am no longer your 5-year-old cousin dreaming of a new “sister” (as my mother promised) who would sleep with me in my bed and be with me always.
Your “lost” cousin
Lake Worth, Florida
September 15, 1998
Dear Professor Morgenstern,
I wrote to you just the other day, now I see to my embarrassment that I may have sent the letter to a wrong address. If you are “on sabbatical leave” from the University of Chicago as it says on the dust jacket of your memoir. I will try again with this, care of your publisher.
I will enclose the same letter. Though I feel it is not adequate, to express what is in my heart.
Your “lost” cousin
P.S. Of course I will come to you, wherever & whenever you wish, Freyda!
Lake Worth, Florida
October 2, 1998
Dear Professor Morgenstern,
I wrote to you last month but I’m afraid that my letters were mis-addressed. I will enclose these letters here, now that I know you are at the “Institute for Advanced Research” at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
Its possible that you have read my letters and were offended by them. I know, I am not a very good writer. I should not have said what I did about the Atlantic crossing in 1941, as if you would not know these facts for yourself. I did not mean to correct you, Professor Morgen-stern, regarding the name of the very boat you and your family were on in that nightmare time!
In an interview with you reprinted in the Miami newspaper I was embarrassed to read that you have received so much mail from “relatives” since the memoir. I smiled to read where you said, “Where were all these relatives in America when they were needed?”
Truly we were here, Freyda! In Milburn, New York, on the Erie Canal.
Your cousin
Palo Alto CA
1 November 1998
Dear Rebecca Schward,
Thank you for your letter and for your response to my memoir. I have been deeply moved by the numerous letters I’ve received since the publication of
Back From the Dead
:
A Girlhood
both in the United States and abroad and truly wish that I had time to reply to each of these individually and at length.
Sincerely,
Freyda Morgenstern
Julius K. Tracey ’48 Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Lake Worth, Florida
November 5, 1998
Dear Professor Morgenstern,
I’m very relieved now, I have the correct address! I hope that you will read this letter. I think you must have a secretary who opens your mail and sends back replies. I know, you are amused (annoyed?) by so many now claiming to be relatives of “Freyda Morgenstern.” Especially since your television interviews. But I feel very strongly, I am your true cousin. For I was the (only) daughter of Anna Morgenstern. I believe that Anna Morgenstern was the (only) sister of your mother Dora a younger sister. For many weeks my mother spoke of her sister Dora coming to live with us, your father and your Elzbieta who was older than you by 3 or 4 years and your brother Joel who was also older than you, not by so much. We had photographs of you, I remember so clearly how your hair was so neatly plaited and how pretty you were, a “frowning girl” my mother said of you, like me. We did look alike then, Freyda, though you were much prettier of course. Elzbieta was blond with a plump face. Joel was looking happy in the photograph, a sweet-seeming boy of maybe 8. To read that your sister and brother died in such a terrible way in “Theresienstadt” was so sad. My mother never recovered from the shock of that time, I think. She was so hoping to see her sister again. When the
Marea
was turned back in the harbor, she gave up hope. My father did not allow her to speak German, only English, but she could not speak English well, if anyone came to the house she would hide. She did not speak much afterward to any of us and was often sick. She died in May 1949.
Reading this letter I see that I am giving a wrong emphasis, really! I never think of these long-ago things.
It was seeing your picture in the newspaper, Freyda! My husband was reading the
New York Times
& called me to him saying wasn’t it strange, here was a woman looking enough like his wife to be a sister, though in fact you & I do not look so much alike, in my opinion, not any longer, but it was a shock to see your face which is very like my mother’s face as I remember it.
And then your name
Freyda Morgenstern
.
At once I went out & purchased
Back From the Dead
:
A Girlhood
. I have not read any Holocaust memoirs out of a dread of what I would learn. Your memoir I read sitting in the car in the parking lot of the bookstore not knowing the time, how late it was until my eyes could not see the pages. I thought “It’s Freyda! It’s her! My sister I was promised.” Now I am sixty-two years old, and so lonely in this place of retired wealthy people who look at me & think that I am one of them.
I am not one to cry. But I wept on many pages of your memoir though I know (from your interviews) you wish not to hear such reports from readers & have only contempt for “cheap American pity.” I know, I would feel the same way. You are right to feel that way. In Milburn I resented the people who felt sorry for me as the “gravedigger’s daughter” (my father’s employment) more than the others who did not give a damn if the Schwarts lived or died.
I am enclosing my picture taken when I was a girl of sixteen. It is all I have of those years. (I look very different now, I’m afraid!) How badly I wish I could send you a picture of my mother Anna Morgenstern but all were destroyed in 1949.
Your cousin,
Palo Alto CA
16 November 1998
Dear Rebecca Schwart,
Sorry not to have replied earlier. I think yes it is quite possible that we are “cousins” but at such a remove it’s really an abstraction, isn’t it?
I am not traveling much this year trying to complete a new book before my sabbatical ends. I am giving fewer “talks” and my book tour is over, thank God. (The venture into memoir was my first and will be my last effort at non-academic writing. It was far too easy, like opening a vein.) So I don’t quite see how it would be feasible for us to meet at the present time.
Thank you for sending your photograph. I am returning it.
Sincerely,
Lake Worth, Florida
November 20, 1998
Dear Freyda,
Yes, I am sure we are “cousins”! Though like you I don’t know what “cousins” can mean.
I have no living relatives, I believe. My parents have been dead since 1949 & I know nothing of my brothers I have not glimpsed in many years.
I think you despise me as your “American cousin.” I wish you could forgive me for that. I am not sure how “American” I am though I was not born in Kaufbeuren as you were but in New York harbor in May 1936. (The exact day is lost. There was no birth certificate or it was lost.) I mean, I was born on the refugee boat! In a place of terrible filth I was told.
It was a different time then, 1936. The war had not begun & people of our kind were allowed to “emigrate” if they had money.
My brothers Herschel & Augustus were born in Kaufbeuren & of course both our parents. My father called himself “Jacob Schwart” in this country. (This is a name I have never spoken to anyone who knows me now. Not to my husband of course.) I knew little of my father except he had been a printer in the old world (as he called it with scorn) and at one time a math teacher in a boys’ school. Until the Nazis forbade such people to teach. My mother Anna Morgenstern was married very young. She played piano, as a girl. We would listen to music on the radio sometime if Pa was not home. (The radio was Pa’s.)
Forgive me, I know you are not interested in any of this. In your memoir you spoke of your mother as a record-keeper for the Nazis, one of those Jewish “administrators” helping in the transport of Jews. You are not sentimental about family. There is something so craven to it isn’t there. I respect the wishes of one who wrote
Back From the Dead
which is so critical of your relatives & Jews & Jewish history & beliefs as of post-war “amnesia.” I would not wish to dissuard you of such a true feeling, Freyda!
I have no true feelings myself, I mean that others can know.
Pa said you were all gone. Like cattle sent back to Hitler, Pa said. I remember his voice lifting NINE HUNDRED REFUGEES, I am sick still hearing that voice.
Pa said for me to stop thinking about my cousins! They were not coming. They were
gone
.
Many pages of your memoir I have memorized, Freyda. And your letters to me. In your words, I can hear your voice. I love this voice so like my own. My secret voice I mean, that no one knows.
I will fly to California, Freyda. Will you give me permission? “Only say the word & my soul shall be healed.”
Your cousin,
