A Curable Romantic (45 page)

Her question caught me off-guard. “Why wouldn’t you believe it?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“To say the very least.”

“No, and neither were you!” She crossed her arms angrily. Looking away from me, she recrossed her arms and sneered, as though she sensed she were being made the butt of some unfortunate joke.

“Ita, surely you must know by now that I’m sincere in my affections.”

“Right, right, right.” She laughed an ugly little laugh. “If it weren’t for Eckstein, do you really think you’d even be here?”

“If it weren’t for Eckstein?”

“‘If it weren’t for Eckstein?’” she mimicked me, lowering her voice and parodying mine.

“What does Fräulein Eckstein have to do with any of this?”

“You know you only want to save her!”

“But I don’t!” I cried. “I mean, certainly, I did. At first. No, you’re right. At first, it was true. I was appalled at her situation. But now …”

“But now?” Ita hugged her knees to her chest and planted her chin on top of them.

“But now — oh, it’s so difficult to say this, really. But now I don’t care a
fig
about Emma Eckstein!” The truth of this sentiment was terrifying to speak aloud, and I retreated from it immediately. “No, of course, I do. I do
care
about her. Of course, I care. Who wouldn’t? Don’t misunderstand
me. I think it’s terrible what’s happened to her, unfortunate in the extreme — ”

“Yes, it’s unfortunate.” Ita sneered again. “It’s unfortunate that I’m so very evil!”

“But even under these circumstances, Ita” — I sighed — “I don’t want to lose you.”

She closed her eyes and cocked her ear towards me. “You don’t?” she said in the voice of a little girl. “Really?”

I grasped her hand and kissed it. “Ita, listen to me. I’ve hungered for you — if Dr. Freud’s psychoanalytic techniques have any scientific validity, and I believe they do — for well over three thousand years! And now I’m simply fed up with waiting.”

“You are?”

“Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“And you love me?”

“I do.”

She leaned back against the pillows of her bed. She laughed, showing all of Fräulein Eckstein’s pretty white teeth. “You love me?”

“I do, Ita. Really.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

She kissed me. But then her face darkened, and her hands began to tremble. I doubted at first what I was seeing, but it appeared that tears had moistened her eyes. She bowed her head and brought her two hands, flat against each other, to her face, pursing her lips against her two index fingers. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked at me before her expression crumbled into a ruin of despair.

“Yankl,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I want to be worthy of your love.”

“Worthy?”

“No, I want to be worthy of you.”

“But you are worthy, Ita!”

“No, I’m not. Just look at me! Look at me, Yankl,” she said with real disgust. “I can’t stay here.”

I attempted to kiss her again. “But of course you can,” I said, cupping her breast in my hand.

“No, don’t. Don’t!” She pushed me away. “It’s too … vulgar!” She frowned.

“Vulgar?”

“Our meeting like this! Oh, Yankl.” She stroked my face, drawing me near. She kissed me again, her tears spilling onto my cheeks. “But you’re so sweet. No, you’re so good, my darling, you’re so very good and so very sweet.”

“But I’m not, Ita. I’m not good, nor am I sweet, but I love you, and I want to make love to you right now.” I could think of no other words with which to press my case.

“Hold me, Yankl. Hold me in your arms.”

I embraced her more completely.

“Yankl?”

“Yes, my darling?”

She took a moment and exhaled a deep breath. “I have to leave you now.”

“No. Certainly not.”

“No, I think I have to leave you.”

“Ita! Please!”

She brought her fingers to my lips, as though to silence me, and I kissed them, and she kissed my lips through them.

“I’ll be so lonely without you,” I said.

“Then promise me you’ll wait for me,” she said.

“But you’re not going anywhere.”

“Promise me, Yankl!”

“Of course I promise,” I said.

“Swear to it!”

“Very well. I swear.”

“Swear on all that is holy that you’ll wait for me to be reborn; swear, Yankl.”

“Of course, I swear that I’ll wait for you to be reborn, my darling.”

“On God’s holy name and on His holy Torah.”

“I swear!”

“Good,” she said. “Now I can go. But how?”

“Go? Ita, no. You mustn’t! You can’t! Not yet.”

“Through her ear?”

“Through her ear? No, we’ll discuss all this later, darling, after we’ve made love.”

“Through her skin, Yankl, bursting through? No, that’s no good. Through one of her toes?”

“Let’s just put this off for an hour, shall we?”

“I can’t, Yankl. You have to understand. It’s not honorable. It wouldn’t be honorable or fair to the Fräulein. It’s not right, and it’s certainly not worthy of your love. Of
our
love! Now that we’ve found each other again! Please, Yankl. Help me return to God.”

There seemed to be no dissuading her. Any idiot could see that, and as I sheltered her in my arms, I could feel her hold over Fräulein Eckstein weakening, her grip on the Fräulein giving way, surrendering, the way an orange peel, sliced into, begins to release the meat of its fruit.

“But how shall I do it, husband?”

“Let me think,” I said, and I thought back to that odd night all those many years ago when the rebbe had called me into his chambers with my friend Shaya and told us of the exorcism he’d performed hundreds of years before as an Italian rabbi in Padua. Through what avenue had he commanded the darkened spirit of Bernardo Messina to depart from that poor Jewish maid? Was it the ear? Or did that result in hearing problems for the girl? Was it through the skin? Certainly not. The wound would have been too great, too punitive, too dangerous. I remembered something Dr. Freud had said about Josephus, a Rabbi Eleazar, and a magical ring. Was it through the nose? Did he pull the spirit out through the nose? Something about the nose seemed to ring a bell.

“You’re certain?” Ita said, looking nervously into my eyes.

I shrugged. “That’s what I seem to recall.”

Her trembling had grown unusually fierce and the entire bed — indeed, the entire room — seemed to be shaking.

“Yankl, my husband,” she said.

I held her as tightly as I could. “My darling?”

“Kiss me one last time in this world, but do so quickly.” Mustering all her strength, she attempted with only limited success to quiet her tremors, and I kissed her as passionately as her trembling permitted me to do. “Darling, don’t leave me until I’m completely gone.”

“I shan’t,” I promised.

“Although you’d better stand away.”

Reluctant to abandon her, I nevertheless placed myself against the nearest wall. She lay back in the bed, rigidly at first, but relaxing by degrees. Fräulein Eckstein’s body began convulsing, opening and closing like a pocketknife. These muscular contractions were so fierce that at times she appeared to be hovering in the air, twisting this way and that, shaking and shouting like an epileptic during a seizure, calling out so frightfully, it’s a wonder she didn’t succeed in summoning the entire nursing staff to her room. I recoiled to see her hammering her head against the pillows, beating with her fists against her thighs, screeching horrible garbled sounds, screaming like someone whose tongue had been anaesthetized. Now she seemed to be choking, strangling, her eyes wide in horror; now laughing, as though tickled to the point of nausea. She tried to sit up, a rasping noise coming from deep within her throat. Her arms flailing, she fell back into the sweat-stained sheets. She jerked her lower body up and down. At this point, my vision darkened, I must have been losing consciousness, and I saw, or imagined I saw, a cloud or a gaseous fume forming above her bed. Ring-shaped, the color of a bloody sunset, it seemed to be swirling around her bed, and for a moment I imagined I saw
and
faces inside it. Fräulein Eckstein struggled in an agony beneath it, until with a propulsive burst, something unseeable exploded through her left nostril with a small starburst of blood.

“Yankl, my husband, my lover!” Ita called to me, though no longer from inside Fräulein Eckstein’s body. I looked about me and saw nothing other than the Fräulein lying lifeless and bloody atop her blankets and her sheets. Ita’s voice came from inside the rose-colored fumes. “Farewell for now, my darling!” she cried, her voice ringing with a tone of happiness. I was chilled to hear the sharp sound of glass breaking, and a tiny,
round opening appeared in the hospital window as though someone had shot a bullet through its pane. The bloody plume was sucked, as though by a vacuum, from the space above me through this hole, and I nearly fainted to hear
and
voices calling out.

“A noble heart,”
said.

“Yes,”
said, “and he has already received his reward.”