A Curable Romantic (81 page)

“Don’t worry, Dr. Sammelsohn,” Wanda said, pressing her hand onto the top of mine.

“Kaĉjo,” I corrected her.

“I’ll be happy to adopt you.” She said this in what I hoped was at least a mildly flirtatious way, and once again, the table erupted in laughter.

“Would you like that?” Zofia asked Ludovic. “Would you like an elder brother?”

“No!” the boy screamed at his aunt. To his mother, he said, “No, Panjo! Only me!” He began to cry in earnest, his face as red as a beet, his lungs thundering like a bull-roarer.

“Aw, now, now, Lutek, no, no,” his aunt Lidja cautioned him, tutting her tongue.

“It was just a joke,” his father explained, helpless to placate the boy. “No one’s adopting Onklo Kaĉjo.” He pulled an apologetic face at me. “Isn’t that right, Onklo?”

DESPITE THE WEEKLY
meetings of the Warsaw Esperanto Society, held in their parlor; despite Poland’s new postwar independence; despite the Jewishness of the Zamenhofs themselves, the Zamenhof household was a Russian household, and it wasn’t long before I’d become one of those
characters one finds in a Russian play. You know what I mean: a friend, though not a dear friend, living for ancient and unexplained reasons on the family estate.

None of the women paid any attention to me. Lidja, under the spell of Bahá’íism, spent her days learning the sacred Bahá’í texts and petitioning the Holy Guardian Shoghi Effendi for permission to travel to the holy city of Haifa; Doktorino Zofia was busy with her house calls and her hospital rounds; Wanda was a happily married woman devoted, through her own work as an oculist, to that of her husband. Even the maid demonstrated no true interest in my person. Though at the age of thirteen, I was a boy a jilted girl might throw herself into the river over, the only member of the Zamenhof household who seemed to identify me as a sexual threat was its three-year-old son.

Nevertheless, I delighted in the warm atmosphere of their home, and my visits, which lasted longer than I intended, began occurring more frequently than necessary. Sometimes I spent half the year in the little room Zofia had set aside for me, reading my books and pining away for Wanda. I was here, I told myself, to help Dr. Adamo run his father’s old consultancy, and not to steal his wife, and yet, each time I visited, Wanda seemed only more beautiful to me. I denied my feelings as much as I could, and certainly I acted upon none of them. I held her yarn when she knitted, I lit her cigarettes, I brought her cups of tea, aware that to press my suit further was to risk my place inside their little family. Still, especially in the early years, when she still possessed the weighted breasts of a new mother, it was all I could do, as we listened in the parlor to Dr. Adamo playing cello in an amateur quartet, not to stare at her bosom and imagine myself falling asleep there, my head in the soft cleft between them.

I WAS IN
Warsaw when Dr. Zamenhof’s monument was unveiled. His grave had been marked until then by the humblest of markers, and among Klara’s final wishes had been the hope that samideanoj the world over might raise the funds for an appropriately magnificent tomb. The work had been fraught with difficulties. The sculptor, a local madman named Lubelski, had insisted upon Aberdeen marble — “Ah, the grey of
Aberdeen, Dr. Sammelsohn,” he told me after I’d volunteered to take over the project on behalf of the Zamenhofs, “is a grey of which Warsaw, which knows much of grey, knows nothing!” — and as a consequence, the work had taken ages. When the stone finally crossed the North and the Baltic seas, and I traveled to Danzig to meet Pan Lubelski and to claim it, I was mortified, as was he, to see that certain typographical errors had crept into the inscription. As though Idist pranksters had sabotaged it, the inscription contained circumflex accents where none was needed.

Clutching at his heart, Pan Lubelski nearly rent his garment at the sight of these diacritical marrings. “Miecystam Lubelski shall never permit his name to remain on such a monstrosity!” he told me, referring to himself, as was his habit, in the third person. Instead, he browbeat me into purchasing a new ticket for him to Aberdeen, and he boarded the ship and disappeared with the stone. I was afraid I’d see neither of them again, but shortly before the ninth anniversary of Dr. Zamenhof’s death, the one turned up with the other in tow. Klara, however, had not lived to see the day. She lay buried beside her husband, a circumstance that made the occasion even more bittersweet.

According to the newspapers, nearly five hundred people attended the ceremony. I don’t know how they calculate such things, but I can attest to the fact that the crowd was enormous. A crisp stand of Esperanto flags snapped in the breezes above the monument, which Pan Lubelski had draped with a heavy black cloth. The greenery surrounding the Zamenhofs’ graves had been landscaped into the shape of a five-pointed star. An honor guard of students, bearing more flags, stood at attention, and next to them were representatives from the Jewish community and the Esperanto Society and various other organizations. Reporters and photographers jostled with government officials for a place near the front. I stood as close to Wanda as decency permitted. My lovesickness was then at its most feverish. Her somber clothing and her pale complexion gave her a soulful look, and I found myself imagining her, standing years and years hence in a similar attitude at my grave, mourning the love neither of us had had the courage to declare.

At eleven o’clock precisely, Professor Odo Bujwid, an ancient friend of Dr. Zamenhof’s, cut the ribbon, and with a magician-like flourish, Pan
Lubelski ripped the black cloth away. The monument was unveiled: a tower of granite blocks upon which sat a beribboned globe. A small, sad cheer went up. The choir, cued by its director, sang “L’Espero.” Various speeches were made. Dr. Adamo, representing the family, placed a white wreath at the foot of the tomb, and other wreaths soon followed.

At one point, my attention was arrested by a sight I hadn’t thought to anticipate. A couple I couldn’t quite identify stood on the far side of the Zamenhofs’ grave. The woman, her hands in a fur muff, seemed distraught; the gentleman, in a bowler hat, less so. Indeed, he looked rather bored. Once he even dropped his head back and yawned before opening his watch and glancing at the sky, checking his timepiece against the position of the sun. It was only when the woman caught my glance and looked at me directly that I realized — with an alarmed constriction of the heart — that it was Loë and the most recent of her many husbands.

SHE’D HAD SEVERAL
between our marriage and the present moment, and I was pleased to see that she came to the reception, following the ceremony, without him. She stood across the Zamenhofs’ parlor with a drink in her hand, leaning her head against the wall, dressed from head to toe in black, the corona of her golden hair shot through with handsome ribbons of grey. I couldn’t help staring at her, though she refused to return my glance or acknowledge me in any way.

As those of us gathered around the piano finished singing “L’Espero” and the poet Leo Belmont began sharing his memories of the Majstro, Loë allowed me to look at her for the first time without turning away. She nodded her head almost imperceptibly towards a door before departing the room. An electric jangle shivered my spine. I tamped my cigar out and searched for a place to leave my glass. Though I nearly knocked over an end table, righting the vase before it fell, no one seemed to notice as I crossed the parlor — Wanda was busy greeting late-arriving well-wishers — and slipped out of the room.

There was no one in the hallway by the time I’d entered it, and I walked its lengths wondering if I hadn’t imagined the entire thing. The day, the monument, Pan Lubelski’s arrogance, the crowd of samideanoj, the Majstro’s absence and Klara’s had had an oppressive effect on me. In
my current mental state, it would have been easy to imagine all sorts of things. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen a Minotaur in the middle of the parlor, sharing its memories of the day the Majstro had liberated it from its labyrinth.

But no, finally, a door cracked open, and through it, I heard a suddenly too-familiar voice whispering: “Ho, Kaĉjo! In here, darling. I’m in here.”

THE ROOM WAS
the laundry room. Clean-smelling sheets had been hung up to dry, and the afternoon sun, blazing through the windows, projected violent rose and blue rectangles on their snowy-white surfaces. Folded and stacked in wicker baskets were our sleeping garments. Loë stood before the heater, fretting her fingers together and apart. The years had been extraordinarily kind to her, I must say. She seemed a richer version of herself, older, yes, but even more striking, the small amount of extra weight making her hips and bust beneath her clothing appear as though they’d ripened. She met my eye, and I was overcome by a sense of lust-inflected remorse, if such a sentiment exists.

“Oh, now I’ve forgotten what it was I wanted to tell you.” She lifted her hands in a gesture that wasn’t quite a shrug, and for a small time, neither of us said anything at all.

Finally, I said, “Well …”

And she said, “Yes?”

But then I shook my head as though I too had forgotten what I’d wanted to say.

“The monument was quite …”

“Oh, that Lubelski …” I laughed ruefully.

“No, no, you did a wonderful …”

“What a madman to work with, really.”

She lowered her head and laughed through her nose.

“And was that your … ?”

“Husband?” She supplied the word I couldn’t bring myself to pronounce.

“Ah. So he
is
your… ?”

“Husband. Oh, yes. Oskar,” she said, and she laughed, as though at
something ludicrous. She bit her underlip. Her tooth left a small indentation in its skin. “But I suppose there are other, more pleasant topics to discuss.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“And have you … ?” she said, peeking up at me from beneath her brow. I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t understand her. “Married?” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “No. Well.”

“Remarried, I should have said.” She shrugged prettily. “Married again, I meant.”

“No. There’s been … no one, really.” I shrugged as well.

“No one? Really?”

“They’re all … married, I suppose. Including — ”

“Don’t say it, Kaĉjo.”

“ — you.” I refused to be censored.

“Ho!” she said.

“Well. Just look at you.”

“Enough!”

“You’re just so beautiful.”

Too late to stop me from pronouncing the word, she covered my mouth with her hand. And then, of course, I kissed her, or rather she kissed me, or rather I’m not certain who kissed whom. Perhaps we’d kissed each other. Certainly, I’d started by kissing her hand, which she’d placed against my mouth, but instantly, her arms were around my neck, mine were around her back, and we were grappling, as though we couldn’t quite bring ourselves near enough to each other. Her face flushed against mine, and I could feel its heat. The tears on my cheek — hers? mine? I couldn’t be certain — were hot.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said. Breaking away from me, she dried her cheeks with the heel of her hand, and the little muscle between her eyebrows tightened. Straightening her clothes, she looked as if she were about to call a policeman. She took a step away from me. “You’re not preying on these people, are you, Kaĉjo?”

“On the Zamenhofs, you mean?”

“Because they’re still very much in grief, you know.”

“How dare you suggest such a thing!”

“Are you out of money?”

“Am I what? Loë!”

“Because Father gave you a very generous settlement, I understand.”

“Yes, he did. You needn’t remind me of that. I’m well aware of it, thank you!”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Can’t a friend simply visit his friends?”

“Of course, he may. However, you’ve all but moved in!”

“Moved in? No, Loë! I’m simply here to help with the monument. Why? Has someone complained?”

“No, but they should have, the way you look at her!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Are you?”

“She’s a happily married woman, Loë!”

“Just tell me the truth!”

“And a mother besides!”

“Stop lying to me! Just tell me: are you in love with her, Kaĉjo?”

“I’m not, but if I were, why would you even care?”

“Ha! So you are, then!”

“Am I? I suppose I am. Or maybe not! I don’t know. Should I be?” I pushed my hand through my hair. “I don’t think I am. Although I might be.”

Loë drew in a breath. Then, as though they were hammers beating anvils, she hurled her fists against the lapels of my jacket. “God damn you! God damn you! God damn you!”

I captured her wrists and, though we tussled, she was unable to free herself. Our wrestling was sufficiently violent, however, that her hair clasp opened and a wing of her hair came undone. Manacling her wrists, I forced her against the wall and pressed my body against hers. I kissed her and, as she kissed me back, I felt all the sorrows of our long separation dropping away. All I wanted was to erase the years and to awaken beside her in the bed we’d shared on Papagenogasse. However, when I
released her hands and folded her into my arms and kissed her again, I felt the dull thwack of her elbows against my chest.

“How dare you!” She slapped me half a dozen times in the face. “I’m a married woman! Wanda is a married woman! What
is
wrong with you?” She repinioned her hair and straightened her waistcoat. “Must you make everyone’s life a misery?”

CHAPTER 3

Despite Loë’s admonition, I lingered in Warsaw, and so I wasn’t in Vienna when the chancellor of Germany arrived, having sent his armies in before him. Nor did I witness the citizens of my country gathering en masse in the Heldenplatz to welcome him in as their liberator. And from what were they being liberated, one might ask? Why, from me, I suppose. I took it personally, in any case. It was hard not to when, as a consequence, my citizenship was revoked and my passport nullified. Listening to Herr Hitler’s speeches over the wireless or struggling through as much of
Mein Kampf
as I could, I’d noticed a curious thing: the chancellor spoke of us in the singular. It was always der Jude! der Jude! der Jude! who troubled him. And so, although grammatically at least, only one of us seemed to be bothering him, I wasn’t convinced I wasn’t that one. And if I were dieser Jude! who so perturbed the chancellor of Germany, why didn’t I run farther from him, one might also ask? After all, I was an old hand at being driven from my home. However, I no longer possessed a usable passport, and I very much doubted I’d have been given a certificate to emigrate; the Zionists distributed these mainly to their friends. Also, having driven me from Vienna, I told myself the Germans would never follow me to Warsaw, but of course, there, I was wrong.