Davita's Harp (11 page)

“One day a small black bird flew over the village. He circled the village twice, searching carefully, for he was on a quest. He had reason to believe that the eternal inner music of the world was the cause not of joy, as nearly all believed, but of great harm. For by
comforting the pangs that often come in the wake of harm, the music dulled the conscience of man, eased the commission of evil. So this little bird believed, this bird with the shiny black body and the tiny red dot under each of his eyes. If he could find the source of the music he might discover a way of bringing it to an end and thereby awaken the world to the horror of truth and the need to live by its demands.

“On that day, as the bird circled the village the second time, he saw the girl. It seemed to him that she gave off a light visible even in the brightness of day. He circled again, watching as the girl sold her packets of fragrance, watching the trail of light she left behind: the very air through which she passed seemed to brighten by her presence. And the music seemed especially strong in the landscape around the village. He followed the girl to her cottage, and there the music was stronger than he had ever heard it before. Could this girl and her cottage be the source of the world’s eternal music? The bird alighted on the roof of the cottage, prepared to wait and see.

“Many days passed. Each morning the girl picked and ground her flowers. Each afternoon she sold her packets in the nearby village. But as the days went by, the bird began to notice that she went to the village later and later each day. He noticed a weariness coming upon her shoulders, a slowness in the way she picked and ground the flowers, a reluctance to walk the path to the village, a heaviness in her legs as she moved about the slope, a growing darkness in the sockets of her eyes. And one day she rose and came out of the cottage and did not pick any flowers. Instead, she went down to the edge of the river and gazed into its clear, gray-blue, silently rushing water. She turned and with dark and solemn eyes stared up the slope at her cottage. Then she turned again and looked deeply into the water. And once again she turned and looked yearningly toward the cottage. She seemed to be measuring the steepness of the slope. Then the bird heard her murmur sadly, wearily, ‘I cannot endure the slope.’

“She thrust her hand into the water.

“The surface of the water congealed, turned brown and bracken. An odor rose from it, a foul and stinking putrescence. The girl turned and walked slowly up the slope and along the path through the meadow and the street through the village and was never seen again.

“The little bird understood that this lovely girl was not the source of the world’s eternal music and flew off to continue his search.”

Jakob Daw stopped and looked up from the papers in his hands.

“That is my story. Thank you.”

I saw the tremor in his hands as he folded the papers and stuffed them back into the inside pocket of his jacket. In the large room was a silence so palpable it had the density of stone. I glanced around. People were staring at him in utter bewilderment. Mrs. Greenwood sat in a front row chair with her lips fixed in a tiny frozen smile.

Jakob Daw went slowly to his chair and sat down. His face was white. He was removing his spectacles when my father and others began to applaud. My mother sat white-faced and motionless. The applause died away.

Mrs. Greenwood rose and stood before the group, looking very old and full of authority. She began to talk about the need to help the government of Spain. She said that in the coming months more and more meetings of this kind would take place all over the country. “If Spain falls to the Fascists,” she said, “Hitler and the others will soon attempt further conquests and our very civilization will be threatened. We are at a crossroads and we need your help.”

Behind me a man stood and began to talk about Franco. He said he was giving money to stop the Fascists in Spain now and to keep them from infesting America. A woman rose and spoke about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. They had used poison gas, she said. And terrible explosives. Against tribesmen on horses.

Teresa slid down off her chair and went from the room. She
went quickly into the entrance hall and up the staircase. I watched her legs climbing the staircase—the rest of her cut off by the top of the living room doorway; spindly legs in knee-length white socks and shiny black shoes.

I listened to another brief talk and the announcements of contributions. Jakob Daw was sitting with his eyes closed. From time to time a tremor ran across his face. My father was slumped back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, his long legs stretched out before him. My mother sat very still, staring straight ahead, her face flushed.

I whispered to my mother that I needed to go to the bathroom and slipped quietly from my chair and went upstairs.

I went from room to room and could not find Teresa. There was no one in the hall bathroom. I started back toward the staircase. Passing the open door of a bedroom into which I had looked before, I heard a low, keening sound. I stopped and listened. It was coming from behind the open door. I stepped inside and peered behind the door and saw her sitting on the floor against the wall near the corner of the room, her arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, her eyes closed. She was rocking slowly back and forth, hugging herself tightly. A low, soft, tremulous wail came from her lips and filled the dimness of the large bedroom like an icy mist.

I was frightened and didn’t know what to say. She seemed unaware of my presence. I called her name.

Her eyes flew open. She stiffened and immediately ceased her rocking.

“Can I get you something? Are you all right?”

She sat there, staring at me.

I put a hand on her arm. Her skin felt hot and moist. She was trembling.

“No touch me!” She pulled her arm away. Her eyes were wide and wild-looking. She pushed herself back against the wall.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said. “I’m sorry if you thought I would hurt you.”

“No pity me!” she said in a high, thin voice. “What?”

“Puta Americana!” she said, her eyes raging. “Hija de puta! Santa María, ayúdame!”

I backed out of the room and went down the stairs. I was cold and could hear clearly the pounding of my heart.

The meeting had ended. People were standing about. I moved slowly through the living room, listening to the talk. Some were beginning to leave.

“Ilana, my dear!” Mrs. Greenwood called. “Your mother is looking for you.”

I thanked her. “Is Teresa sick?” I asked.

“Sick? Why?”

I told her what I had seen upstairs. “Thank you, llana. I will tend to her.”

“Hello, my love,” I heard my father call. He came up to me. “Where have you been? Your Uncle Jakob is tired and wants to leave.”

People stood all around us. I listened to them talking. We were near the door.

“So good of you to have come,” Mrs. Greenwood said. “A most successful evening. You must come over again soon, Mr. Daw, and explain your little story to me. Thank you so much.”

Jakob Daw nodded and bowed slightly, his face ashen. I had never seen him so tired.

I took my mother’s hand. Her skin was hot.

We came out onto the street. A moist warm wind blew in from the sea and stirred the leaves of the poplars. There was no traffic. We walked four abreast in the street beneath the embowering trees. The street lamps threw queer shadows onto the asphalt.

“I’m very tired, Michael,” my mother said.

“It’s just another couple of blocks,” said my father.

“What does raped mean?” I asked.

I saw them look at me.

“I heard a man say Teresa was raped.”

They did not respond. We walked along beneath the trees. “Mama?”

“It means to hurt someone very, very badly,” my mother said in a voice I could barely hear.

“Is it an old word?”

“One of the oldest,” said my father.

“She was so scared,” I said. “She made strange sounds.”

We walked on awhile longer together in silence.

“I’m terribly tired, Michael,” my mother said.

“Almost home, Annie,” said my father. “One more block.”

“Ilana Davita,” Jakob Daw said abruptly. “Did you like my story?”

“I think I did, Uncle Jakob. But why did the girl go away from her cottage and the village?”

“Indeed, why?”

“I liked the part about grinding the flowers and then selling them in the village.”

“Yes?”

“But I didn’t understand the part about the slope.” “A slope is the most difficult of things to understand, Ilana Davita.”

We continued along together on the dark, humid street. My mother held tightly to my father’s arm. We walked in and out of the shadows of trees and I could not clearly see her face.

“We raised a lot of money tonight,” my father said.

There was no response. Approaching the cottage, we heard the sounds of voices singing. We went up the path to the back door of the cottage. The singing was coming from the narrow driveway.

My mother stopped at the door and listened. Then she opened the door and we went inside.

I came out onto the screened-in porch and listened to the wind and the surf. I looked at the porch of the house across the driveway and saw four people seated around a table: David Dinn, his aunt and uncle, and a man I did not recognize at first. He wore a
dark suit, a white shirt and dark tie, was clean-shaven, and had thick dark hair and chiseled features. David Dinn’s uncle too had on a dark suit and tie. His aunt wore a white dress with a high lace collar and long sleeves; a kerchief covered her hair. They sat around the table singing a slow and mournful-sounding tune. David Dinn, wearing a short white-sleeved shirt open at the throat, sat with his eyes closed, swaying slightly back and forth in his chair. He had a high, thin voice. I could hear him clearly above the deeper voices of the men and the soft, subdued voice of his aunt.

My parents and Jakob Daw came out onto the porch. I asked my mother what the people on the other porch were singing.

“Zemiros,” she said. “They sing special songs with their Shabbos meals.”

“Isn’t that Ezra?” asked my father, peering through the screen. “Yes.”

“Is he up here for the weekend?” “Yes.”

“How is the boy?”

“Not good.”

They were speaking quietly so as not to disturb the singing. The tune came to an end and another followed. Moths fluttered against the screens. The dunes and the beach were dark and murmurous with the sounds of the wind and the sea.

“I used to sing like that,” my mother said.

“That’s a nice picture, Annie,” said my father. “You and your father singing together like that and swaying.”

“Not my father. My grandfather. Shall we go inside?”

As we came into the cottage the music of the door harp mingled softly with the singing from the next house.

My mother asked me to put myself to sleep. The three of them sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and talking. I went over to the small bookcase in the living room where my parents kept the books they brought with them for the summer and took down my mother’s dictionary. I went through it carefully, as she had
taught me earlier that year when we had searched for the meaning of the word utopia. I found the word I had heard the man use about the girl called Teresa. I read carefully and did not understand and looked up some more words. It took a while before I was able to form some image in my mind of what I thought the word meant. All the time I was going through the dictionary I heard the loud voice of my father and the weary voices of my mother and Jakob Daw.

I closed the dictionary and went into my room and lay on my bed. I did not really understand the word but I knew it was something terrible and I wondered how your imagination helped you if you were hurt that way. After a while I got off the bed, undressed, and went to the bathroom. My parents were still in the kitchen with Jakob Daw. I heard the words Spain and correspondent a number of times, and the most dread word of all: war. I washed, brushed my teeth, and went back to my room. In my bed I lay thinking of Teresa and listening to the singing from the nearby porch.

The next morning my father and Jakob Daw took the ferry to Manhattan. Later I walked with my mother to Coney Island. The air was hot and the beach was jammed. We sauntered along the crowded boardwalk, took some of the rides, had taffy and cold drinks. I rode on the carousel with my mother, both of us moving up and down on our horses. I thought of the picture of the horses in my parents’ bedroom. We ate hot dogs and in the early afternoon saw Charlie Chaplin in
Modern Times.
The movie theater was crowded. I saw Charlie Chaplin caught in the gears of the giant factory machine. “That’s how bosses treat their workers,” my mother said to me when we came back out into the eye-stinging afternoon sunlight. “Like pieces of machinery, not like human beings.”

We walked together in the sunlight and tumult of the hot afternoon.

Later we returned to Sea Gate and swam together and I came
out of the water and worked on my castle. I looked up and there was David Dinn a few feet away, dressed in dark trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt, watching me.

“Hello,” I called to him. “Come on over.”

He came hesitantly, glancing over his shoulder, his bare feet looking white and bony on the moist sand.

“I heard you singing last night. I liked the melodies.”

His face looked blotched. Skin was peeling from his nose.

“Did you go to your synagogue this morning?”

“Yes.”

“I was asleep. Don’t you want to go in for a swim? There are long bathing suits you can put on if you don’t want to look too naked.”

He stared at me.

“I’ll take you in if you’re afraid. I’m a good swimmer. My father taught me to swim.”

“I can’t swim today. It’s Shabbos. A Jew doesn’t swim on Shabbos. It’s a holy day.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.”

“A Jew shouldn’t build castles out of sand on Shabbos, either.”

I looked at my castle, tall and golden in the afternoon sunlight. “I’m not a religious Jew.”

“Shabbos is for all Jews,” he said.