Davita's Harp (26 page)

The boy at the lectern completed the service and moved to the podium to chant the Torah portion. He had a high sweet voice. The room was hushed as he read. All around me women sat beaming. He faltered once, was quietly corrected by one of the men who stood near him at the podium, and went on. Soon after he was done with the reading, the Torah scroll was lifted and wrapped and given to a boy about my age to hold; he sat on a chair, clutching the scroll tightly. The bar mitzvah commenced chanting aloud from a book. Candies were thrown when he was done. An elderly man in a long graying beard rose to continue the service. The Torah was returned to the ark. Someone gave a brief talk. All rose as the elderly man resumed the service.

I was very tired. My heart beat fiercely; I thought the woman sitting next to me would hear it pounding. I held the prayerbook tightly; I could read the alphabet. Many words were familiar to me now; I could speak them, though I understood almost nothing of what I was saying. It seemed strange to be deriving comfort from unclear words; I couldn’t understand that.

We rose for the long silent prayer. I stood thinking of my father
and the nun whose life he had tried to save. Then I thought of Wesley Everest and the events in Centralia—and I began to understand how it might be possible for a life to be changed in a moment by a single startling event.

I must have dozed. I sensed a silence about me and opened my eyes. Peering through the opening in the curtain, I saw David and his father rising to their feet. And then I was on my feet too, listening to the voices on the other side of the curtain and reciting faintly with the men the words of the Kaddish, which I found, to my astonishment, that I knew by heart. There was a surge of whispering, a soft surflike rush of sound from the women around me. Someone said, “What is she doing?” Another said something in Yiddish. I stood, quietly reciting the words. There has to be more for you, Papa, than just one memorial service. Can one recite the Kaddish for a father who wasn’t a Jew? I didn’t care. I went on. The Kaddish ended. I sat down and closed my eyes, feeling upon my face the hot stares of all those nearby.

The service went on. Then, moments later, I heard again the words of the Kaddish, and I rose and began to recite them too, louder this time, and I thought I heard one or two of the women answer, “Amen.”

Outside on the sidewalk after the service David came over to me and said, “Good Shabbos, Ilana.”

I returned his greeting.

He fidgeted uncomfortably. “Ilana,” he said. “Listen.” I looked at him.

“Girls don’t recite Kaddish. Women aren’t—” “Does it make any difference that my father wasn’t Jewish?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. I’ll have to ask my Talmud teacher. But that’s not what I’m—”

“I’m very tired, David. I have to go home now.”

I left him there staring at me as I turned and walked off.

I had no sensation of walking. The warm May sunlight seemed a perverse and malevolent counterpoint to my feelings and filled
me with despair. I shivered with cold. The streets of the neighborhood were gray and unfamiliar. I walked as in a stupor, turning fearful corners like some blind and unthinking creature, coming upon my own street, filled now with playing children and old women on their stoops and young mothers with baby carriages and men washing their cars and others returning from the synagogues of the neighborhood. Out of habit I walked carefully beneath the trees, avoiding the cracks and roots in the sidewalk; out of habit I waved at neighbors and responded to their greetings; out of habit I raised my eyes to my window in the castlelike turret that formed the side of the house. And there in the window next to mine, the bay window of our living room, I saw my mother’s face and, beside her, a pale visage that seemed an apparition. I stopped and stared and felt the surge of blood in my ears. I flew up the stone stoop and the inside stairway and through the apartment door, which my mother had opened for me. Behind me I heard distinctly the singing of the door harp as I flung myself into the gaunt arms of Jakob Daw. And I buried my head in his chest, saw out of the sides of my eyes the face of my mother, her wet eyes, her trembling lips, and felt suddenly the rush of all the weeks of grief and the ocean of pain pouring forth. And I wept like the child I was.

That same day a letter from Aunt Sarah addressed to my mother arrived in the mail. Aunt Sarah was somewhere near Madrid. I asked Uncle Jakob if he had seen Aunt Sarah in Spain and he said no, he hadn’t, because she worked in a battlefield hospital and cared for the severely wounded. The three of us sat around the kitchen table as my mother read the letter aloud.

“Dearest Anne. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

“I loved my brother. I find that I cannot believe he is dead. Unlike my parents, I did not think that politics should sunder a family. That belief is reinforced every day in this dark and tragic land. The hatred here of man toward man is boundless and unfathomable, the slaughter is unimaginable. We are a vile and cursed species and were it not for the grace of God all life would be a hopeless travail. I know such faith is for you a chimera, an illusion cast upon us by those in power so as to make existence bearable and their power impregnable. But, my dear Anne, isn’t what you call an illusion simply someone else’s dream with which you disagree? And what of your workers’ revolution, your classless society, your dream of an early end to social strife, economic scarcity, individual degradation and misery? If faith in God is merely an illusion, then why not faith in man too? Anne, are your dreams too not an illusion? It seems to me that those who do not care
what means are used to achieve their ends, indeed who justify all in the name of an end, need illusions far more than those others who see in mankind suffering and sin and the radiant power of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Forgive me, Anne. I did not mean to burden you with a homily in this time of grief but to say that though I despised my brother’s political ideas, I loved him as a person; and I prayed that such love would be a possibility for us all. I prayed that with patience and compassion I would win him back to the true path, or, at the very least, learn to understand something of his path and thus not sever myself from him, from my only brother. ‘Him that is weak in the faith, receive ye.’ I did not lose him, and so at least to that extent my prayers were answered. But how naive I was to believe in the power of patience and love in all mankind! How foolish! The rivers of blood that now soak the soil of Spain are a testament to the unredemptive savagery of mankind. ‘A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.’ How we love our killing time! We appear to need it. I do not know why. I realize now that events do occur to some of us that set us upon our life’s path. I do not know exactly what it was that happened to Michael in Centralia and that changed him so. He never told me. I wish he had.

“Dear Anne, let us not sever the feelings between us because my brother is no longer alive. We are linked together by memories and by the lovely life that is Ilana Davita. It is my intent to return home this summer, a respite from the carnage that is Spain. The truth is that the Republican cause is lost, the Rebels triumph. Shall we somehow see one another? Yours in affection. Sarah.”

My mother stopped reading and sat very still, gazing down at the letter.

“She is at least correct about the outcome of the war,” Jakob Daw said, and coughed briefly.

There was another sheet of paper in the envelope: a letter to me. I took it from my mother and read it quickly to myself. Then I read it aloud.

“Dearest Davita. This is your Aunt Sarah writing. How I loved your father and how I shall miss him! What shall I say to you? Your father was a soldier; his weapons were words. He would have wanted you to have courage and to be strong. I shall be at the farmhouse this summer. Is the lovely picture of the horses on the beach still hanging on the wall? Perhaps Jesus will be good to us and enable us to be together for a while—your mother, you, and I. How I wish we two could pray together again as we once did, on our knees before Jesus Christ! I wish you strength, Davita. Remember your father’s kindness and laughter and, more important, his love for your mother and you. I send you my love. I pray for you and your mother constantly. Aunt Sarah.”

There was another silence. Jakob Daw put his delicately boned hand to his mouth and coughed.

My mother asked, “What did Aunt Sarah mean about your praying together on your knees?”

I told her about that and saw her exchange looks with Jakob Daw.

“It’s late,” my mother said. “I think we should eat lunch. Ilana, will you help me?”

“Uncle Jakob, where will you be living?”

“I do not know as yet.” His voice was hoarse, raspy. He was thinner now than he had been before. There were blotchy bluish-black circles around his heavy-lidded dark eyes. His straight dark hair was combed back flat. All his features—the arching eyebrows and sharp-edged nose and concave cheeks and slightly pointed jaw—had become harshly angular and somewhat exaggerated in a face that was now nearly skeletal-looking. Yet I felt strength in him, felt a quality of being I did not understand, a strong and nearly overpowering sense of his presence as he sat there next to me at the kitchen table.

“You could live in the room next to me where Aunt Sarah stayed,” I said eagerly.

Jakob Daw smiled. “We will see,” he said.

“Help me set the table, Ilana. We’ll talk later about where your Uncle Jakob will stay.”

“Will you tell me more stories about the bird?”

“I shall first have to think if there is anything more to tell.”

“You’re putting the knives on the wrong side of the plate, Ilana,” my mother said.

“Let me help you,” Jakob Daw said. “We will have lunch and then I will lie down. I am very tired. It is a big ocean and it seems to get bigger each time I cross it.” He coughed again, his thin shoulders shaking, his face as white as the paper on which Aunt Sarah had written her letters.

He slept the entire afternoon, woke briefly for a light supper, and slept again. My mother had to be out somewhere that evening and I wandered about the apartment, stopping from time to time at the window in my parents’ bedroom and gazing out at the slowly darkening sky. I saw Ruthie standing in the backyard near the flowers her father had planted. I thought about the sunsets over Sea Gate and imagined the cottage and the dunes and the long gentle glide of the beach toward the surf and the castles I had built in the wet sands of the tidal pool. I stopped by the partly open door to Jakob Daw’s room and peered inside. The light was dim. How thin he was, how frail-looking! The tiny quivering movements of his nostrils, the delicate rise of his thin upper lip, the full and feminine lower lip, the boniness and chalky whiteness of his face—a sticklike figure in baggy pants and rumpled shirt, lying still and softly breathing. He seemed the most fragile person I had ever known.

I came into my room and sat at my desk awhile, reading another of the books Ruthie’s father had asked her to bring up to me. The doorbell rang. I went to open the door. The harp sang clearly in the silent apartment.

It was David and his father.

“Hello, Ilana,” Mr. Dinn said solemnly, looking tall and austere. “How are you?” He said something that sounded like “Goot voch.” David, not looking directly at me, said hello in a shy voice and repeated what his father had said.

I stood in the doorway, looking at them. They were dressed in their Shabbos clothes—dark suits, dark ties, dark hats.

“We came straight from shul,” Mr. Dinn said. “Is your mother home?”

I told him my mother was at some kind of meeting. “Did Mr. Daw arrive safely?” “Yes. He’s asleep.”

“Good. I won’t bother him. Please tell your mother—” Jakob Daw came out of his room. His hair was disheveled and his eyes blinked repeatedly. He looked gaunt, untidy.

“The doorbell woke me,” he said in his hoarse, phlegmy voice.

He seemed a bit dazed. “Who is it, Ilana? Hello? Is it someone for me?”

“It’s Mr. Dinn and his son, David.”

“Dinn?” Jakob Daw said. He appeared to collect himself quickly and advanced into the hallway toward the door. “Come in, come in. Channah went to a meeting and will be back soon. I thank you for all you did. Please come in.”

Mr. Dinn shook Jakob Daw’s hand and I saw on his long narrow face a hint of deference and awe. “A pleasure to meet you,” he murmured. “An honor. I apologize for waking you.”

“No, no, I slept too much today. Ilana, can we make a glass of tea for Mr. Dinn? Or, better, perhaps a cold drink. Yes? Good.”

They came into the apartment. Jakob Daw and Mr. Dinn started along the hallway to the kitchen. I closed the door. David turned, attracted by the play of sounds on the harp as the balls struck the taut wires.

“What’s that?”

“A door harp.”

“I never saw anything like that.” “It belonged to my father.” “It’s pretty. I like the music.” “Do you want to see my room?”

The question flustered him. Behind me I heard a key go into the lock and the door opened.

My mother stood in the doorway. The harp sang. She saw David and looked astonished.

“Well,” she said, coming inside and closing the door. “David. Hello.”

I heard Jakob Daw call from the kitchen. “Channah? Dinn is here. We are in the kitchen.”

“Can I bring David into my room?” I asked my mother.

“Of course,” my mother said, removing her beret.

“Maybe another time,” David said, looking uncomfortable, his eyes darting about.

“Oh, please, David.”

“Go ahead,” my mother said, and went quickly up the hallway and into the kitchen.

David followed me to my room and stood in the doorway, looking at my chair and desk and bed and bookcase.

“You’re very neat,” he said.

“Come inside,” I said. “Why are you standing in the doorway?”

He took small halting steps into the room and slipped into the chair at the desk. He was still wearing his dark hat. I sat on the edge of my bed, keeping my legs together and tugging my dress down over my knees. I saw him look down at the Hebrew book on my desk.