The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (38 page)

Anyway, the blue pills are the
ones I take when I’m feeling nervous or depressed, which is most of the time,
actually. I tell the doctors this, and they try to put me on other medications,
more long term, they call it, but a week goes by and I’m feeling like taking a
steak knife to my wrists, so I throw away the new ones and go back to the ones
that at least keep me operating on, as Samuel used to say, all six cylinders.

And sometimes, if I’ve taken
just a little bit more than I’m supposed to—not much, only a few more
milligrams, nothing, an extra pill or more, who would begrudge it?—then, if I
squint my eyes a little and let the living room furniture blur a bit, then
sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can see Jakie. Not very clear, I admit, and usually
only a little, but it’s him. It’s him.

And I miss him so much. Our
time together was short, so short, but it was like a lifetime together. It
should have been a lifetime together.

Usually he’s sitting in the big
stuffed chair where Samuel used to sit, with his long legs stretched out in
front, and a book or a newspaper in his large hands. I love it when I can see
Jakie. I could just sit and look at him forever. He’s tall, and thin, and his
hair is still thick and brown. And his eyes—oy, his eyes. Those eyes are what I
used to dream about after he left—large and dark and ironic. Like my father’s.
Which is why I first trusted him, that day when he and the other Americans came
walking into the camp.

But enough of me.

He doesn’t always read, Jakie.
Sometimes he leans his chin on his hand and stares off to the side, his head
nodding slightly, up and down. He’s listening to music, I think, maybe one of
the Italian operas he was so fond of. Once, one of the girls found an old
scratched recording of Rigoletto in a bombed-out house somewhere, and I traded
her a full meal for it and gave it to Jakie, and he found an old wind-up
victrola and brought it to his quarters. As soon as the music started,
E
Donna Mobile
, all the other soldiers started snorting through their noses
like horses, as though Jakie listening to opera was the funniest thing they’d
seen.

But I saw how the record helped
him go away from the war, and I knew that this was the mark of a truly
civilized man. I know—I grew up in a beautiful, rich home outside of Berlin,
and we attended concerts, and went on holiday in Switzerland. When we went to
the theatre, men and women in lovely clothing would nod respectfully at my
parents and my uncle and smile at me, and I would feel so special. Jakie may
have been born in America, but he too was special.

I don’t think he sees me,
Jakie, when he sits in Samuel’s chair. If I thought that, I’d die. Me with my
bloated body and thin hair and God! I used to be so beautiful.

Even right after the camp, when
I looked like a scarecrow, my hair still short and dry and no meat on my bones,
Jakie used to tease me and tell me that I looked like Veronica Lake. And I’d
laugh at him and say no, I’m too skinny. And finally he came to the barracks
one day, where we were waiting to find out what would happen and where we
should go, and he told me to get two girl friends, we were “going out on the
town.”

And he got me a beautiful
dress, and a nice pair of shoes—I never asked where he got them. And, would you
believe it, lipstick—and three of us girls got together, and brushed our hair
until it hurt, and scrubbed, and colored our lips and a little on our cheeks.
We went to a local cafe where Jakie and two other boys whose names I don’t
remember, we sat and the Americans gave the proprietor, a German pig who stared
at us as though he wondered why we weren’t still in the camp where we belonged,
they gave him money and told him they wanted wine and sausages, and we all
drank, and ate, and tried to understand each other, and one of the Americans
said something that made Jakie slap him on the head, and they all laughed, and
when I asked Jakie in Yiddish what the boy said, he wouldn’t say.

I was alone, and my family was
dead, and we were diseased Jewish whores from the camps, but we ate, and drank,
and pretended we were regular girls out on dates with three boys who would try
to steal a kiss and then deliver us back to our parents. Oh, god. I was so
happy that evening.

And when I went back with
Jakie, and kissed him, and wanted to give him of my own free will what I had
been forced to give up for the last three years, he kissed me gently as if I
was a bride, and told me that we had the rest of our lives and that I deserved
more than a forest behind the barracks.

I let him take me back. The two
other girls told me I was an idiot. And they were right.

Because in the morning, Jakie
and the lovely boy soldiers were gone. And although he had promised to write, I
never heard from him again. (Years later, Samuel said he could probably find my
soldier—I had told him some of it, but not all—but I told him no. It was too
late. I was married, and older, and didn’t want to know.)

Eventually, I found a job as a
secretary to one of the Red Cross officials. And one day Samuel walked in,
quiet and clean and polite, in a beautiful suit that made him look like a
banker or a movie star, although he wasn’t really tall enough. I thought then,
what was a Jew doing in a suit like that, with so much meat on him? I thought,
a collaborator, a bastard who sold Jewish lives in trade for his own. Later, I
found out he had escaped and worked for the OSS, the American spies. And what
did he do during the war? He never told me.

But he looked so like the boys
I used to see at the skiing lodges where we spent our school holidays that my
breath caught in my throat. And it was the same for Samuel—he told me later
that when he first saw me, for one moment he was walking into the office of his
father’s
shul
where, he said, his friend’s pretty sister used to help
with the paperwork. So we found each other in a mist of dreams of the dead.

That is why I don’t like
admitting that it is Jakie I see, and not Samuel. After all, Samuel was my dear
husband for nearly fifty years, and it was his chair, and he was the one who
took care of me and tried to help me. When we were living in Berlin, and when I
found out I was pregnant and told Samuel that I would kill the baby and myself
before I would let it be born in that damned country, didn’t he tell his bosses
that he had to leave Europe, and bring me to America? And when one day I
started crying and couldn’t stop, didn’t he take me to that doctor who gave me
those pills and said they’d help me? And if they didn’t help me the way he’d
planned, if I needed to take more of them over the years, was it his fault? He
meant it for the best.

And now Samuel is dead. My poor
Benjamin, the only child we had, our hope for the future, is dead. And Jakie,
if he is still alive, is probably married to some smart American woman with
smart American children. And he is probably fat, and balding, and has forgotten
all about me.

But I don’t care.

I can still see my Jakie in my
living room, thin and dark and laughing like when he took me to dinner. But he
is still misty, still like a dream. So I limp to the bathroom, and find my
pills, all the different colors and shapes, and take them back to the living
room with a glass of water. I take two more pills and wait for a few minutes,
and then I squint my eyes and concentrate like I used to concentrate over my
French lessons as a girl. And suddenly, I don’t have to pretend any more—Jackie
is here, sharp and clear and looking at me with that saucy American grin on his
face. I take two more pills and stand, and so does he, and I take his hand and
lead him back to the cafe.

And we are sitting at the table
again, and I can hear the chatter of the other two couples. My stomach is full,
and I am wearing a nice dress and real shoes, and I take Jakie’s hand, and he
takes one of the wine bottles off the table, and we stand and walk into the
forest while his friends laugh and cheer and call out things in English that
would probably have made my mother faint. But I don’t care—when we are far
enough away, I kiss Jakie hard on the lips. He tells me that we have the rest
of our lives, but I know better this time. I will have this moment, this lovely
moment.

After, Jakie strokes my hair,
and touches my lips, and says he loves me, and will find out how he can get
permission to marry me and take me to America. But now, he says, he’s hungry,
and he goes off to find some food, and I sit in the pine needles and straighten
my clothes, and take out the comb he gave me to fix my hair. There is still
some wine in the bottle, and I raise it to the strange God who killed so many
but let me live, and drink it down.

And then, out of the corner of
my eye, I see an old woman who is standing a little ways off. She is a terrible
old woman; her hair is white and thinning, her figure is thick and flabby
underneath the cotton dress; she wears slippers on her nasty bare feet and only
a single gold ring on her wrinkled hands. She smiles at me. “Now you are
happy,” she says.

Happy? Stupid old woman—how can
I be happy? I am thin and used up. My family is dead, my childhood is gone, and
I have spent three years screwing Nazi soldiers so that I can live.

The old
woman starts to cry. “I thought this was the right time,” she sobs, and I can’t
stand it, so I stand and walk into the forest. It is an old, beautiful forest,
full of moss and thick trees. They remind me of the tall firs near our home,
and the hours I spent as a girl playing there, and dreaming about my future. In
the woods next to my uncle’s house. Before.

My uncle’s large home with the
red shutters and large wooden door, and the fat cat who would not stay in the
house no matter how often we tried to shut her in, and Peter the butler who
frightened me because he was so tall and stern, but who would let me sit in the
kitchen and watch the servants prepare dinner. This morning my father and my
uncle were quieter than usual after the meal, and I knew it was because of the
letter my uncle had received that morning, and that it had something to do with
the political situation. They talked together until my mother came over, and
touched my father on the shoulder. He smiled at her, and then we played cards
because it was raining outside.

The rain stops, and although my
mother tells me to put on my galoshes, it’s still wet outside, I run outside
and stand in the grass. It is lovely; in the sunlight, the wet grass is as
bright a green as I have ever seen in my life.

There is a noise, and I look
down the wide drive, and there are men in uniforms approaching, the sun
bouncing off their belt buckles and buttons. I’m wearing my favorite dress, the
one that my uncle just bought me for my thirteenth birthday party, and I’m so
glad that I’m wearing it now because there is a handsome soldier behind the
four men who is dressed differently than the others. His uniform is dirty and
creased and he needs a shave, but he has lovely brown hair and nice eyes.

The adults have come out too,
despite the wet. My mother says my name, low and with a tremor in her voice
that is so strange I turn and look at her. Her face has gone still and she is
standing so stiffly that for a moment she doesn’t look like my mother. She is
motioning me to come back to the house in quick, angry, waves of her hand, as though
she is afraid somebody will see her.

My father and my uncle are
closer, though. They have walked down the wide front drive, and have now
stopped, waiting. My father stands a little behind my uncle, his pipe in his
mouth. His hands are clasped behind his back. My uncle, shorter and stouter, is
shaking his head just a little, the way he does when I come to him with some
complaint about my mother, his hands pushed deep into his pockets.

Just beyond them is a strange
woman standing on the grass, wearing a flowered dress that is a too big on her.
She is very thin and has funny short hair and she is smiling at me. Nobody else
seems to notice her—maybe because they are all looking at the soldiers.

“Now you are happy,” she says,
and that sounds strange at first. But then I realize that the sun is shining,
and I am with my family, and looking forward to my birthday, and only worried
about my algebra homework and whether I’ll ever grow breasts.

“She can’t be happy. Jakie
isn’t here,” and it isn’t the young woman talking, but an old woman who looks a
bit like the beggar in town who sells eggs by the road. She is very ugly, but
then she smiles at me too, so to be polite I smile back.

My mother calls my name louder
but instead I run to my uncle and take him by the arm. Before I can ask, he
says quietly, not looking at me, “Darling, go to your mama. Now, please.”

The child pauses, not knowing
what to do. She looks back at the soldiers and squints at something—and there,
down the driveway, as insubstantial as hope, is a tall young man with dark hair
and eyes, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. “Jakie!” we scream. “Save me!” But
he is not alone—he is holding the hand of a stranger, a woman with knowing
American eyes, and he is not looking at us.

We two, the camp whore and the
crazy old woman, remember running to our mother’s side, watching as the world
suddenly changed, but we know that this time she will not go. We watch as the
young girl in her first grownup dress stands and holds her uncle’s arm, her
hands only trembling a little. She is young enough to be brave; to believe, to
the bottom of her soul, that nothing really bad can happen.