Davita's Harp (7 page)

My room faced the dunes and the sea. In the mornings, through the narrow line of high uncurtained clerestory windows came the pale brightness of dawn and then the fires of the new sun. What enchantment there was in the light and the warmth and the scent of the sand and the sea! I would listen to the wind in the giant poplars and the young sycamores; to the cries of gulls in the morning stillness; and to the occasional loud, ringing call of a strange bird, a call that sounded like a woman’s voice:
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo.
I remember waking on our first morning in the cottage in that burning summer of 1936, the sense of newness sharp and pure, and hearing that bird’s call, and wondering if it was the bird in Jakob Daw’s story.
Hoo hoo hoo hoo
, the bird called as I lay in bed bathed in the morning sunlight.
Hoo hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha.

Later that morning I went for a walk along the shaded streets of Sea Gate. The air was warm, the sun white in a blue sky. There was little traffic and no concern about unwanted strangers: Sea Gate was fenced and protected. I walked beneath the poplars and sycamores past the empty lots with their dwarf forests of wild grass and low bushes, past the small frame houses built in the twenties and the large, old, wealthy homes with their cupolas and dormer windows and deep wrap-around porches—the homes designed by Stanford White and William Van Allen for the very rich. Sea Gate was a small community, a few hundred homes, a few thousand people, and it contained in the summers I was there—the summers before my father went to Spain and our lives changed—the last remnants of that legendary set of upper-class Protestant pirates, along with the first of the Italians, Greeks, and Jews, as well as atheists, Socialists, Communists, writers, editors, theater people, and their various wives, mistresses, and children.

We were in a small world of sand and sea about ten miles from the heart of Manhattan. A trolley ran through the area to a ferry. The ferry brought you to South Street at the tip of Manhattan. My father would take the trolley and the ferry to the newspaper where he worked. Almost always by the time I woke in the morning he was gone. But he was always back in time for a swim
and supper—unless he needed to go out of the city on a story. He would come home carrying three or four newspapers in addition to the one for which he worked, get into his bathing suit, and head across the beach to the water. He was a fine swimmer and would swim very far out, his arms and shoulders and face flashing in the afternoon sunlight. Sometimes my mother would swim with him and I would watch them moving together smoothly in the sea.

I loved the beach and the surf. In front of our cottage a small stone jetty came off the beach at a sharp angle and, together with the low wooden jetty that ran straight from the beach into the water, helped form along the water’s edge a shallow tidal pool of gentle surf and smooth wet sand. I would wade in the pool, feeling the tugs of the surf; or I would sit for hours, building tall castles in the sand. I spent much of that summer building castles, sometimes with friends, often alone.

Sometimes in the mornings after breakfast or at night while my parents were talking quietly together, I would look at the newspapers my father brought home. At first I did not understand most of what I read. But certain words and phrases became quickly familiar to me that summer: heat, drought, dust bowl, weather bureau alarmed, rain is needed. Repeatedly I saw the names North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Illinois, Virginia. I imagined fields and meadows and hills burning beneath the relentless sun. The same sunlight that I loved to play in here was killing people out west. And the names of all those places were like the names in the stories about westering women told me by Aunt Sarah. How would those women have used their imaginations to save themselves from this cruel sun?

At the end of the first week in July the newspapers said that the temperature in the Midwest had reached 120 degrees. More than one hundred people had died of the heat. My father told us when he returned from the newspaper that day that the heat had begun to move eastward. I sat in my little pool, rebuilding the castle that had been attacked by the night tide and waiting for the heat.

The next day the heat in New York climbed to over 100 degrees.
In the late afternoon I stood on the screened-in porch gazing at the beach and the sea. The air was still and hot. Gulls circled slowly overhead, calling. The surf rolled lazily in and out across the sand. There were many people on the beach and in the water. I heard my father’s voice from somewhere in the cottage: he had just returned from his work in Manhattan. I heard my mother’s voice return his greeting. Then I heard a third voice. I went quickly into the cottage.

“He looks awful,” my father was saying to my mother. “Look at him, Annie. We’ve got to do something about how he looks.”

“You chose such a hot day to return,” my mother said. “Can I get you a cold drink?”

“The heat in Canada was unimaginable,” Jakob Daw said. “To me it seemed the air was burning. Birds would not fly.”

“Uncle Jakob!” I called from the kitchen doorway. They had not seen me standing there.

Jakob Daw turned, his pale face startled. Then he broke into a smile. “Ilana Davita. How good to see you again. Look at your suntan! A Viking with a golden suntan!”

“Here’s something cold for you, Jakob,” my mother said.

Jakob Daw took the glass from my mother. He arched his gaunt body slightly forward from the waist, put the glass to his mouth, and drank thirstily. His Adam’s apple moved up and down on his thin neck. His face was wet with perspiration.

“We have to sit and talk,” my father said. “Tanner wants a report on Canada for Tuesday’s meeting.”

“There is much to talk about. Canada was—interesting.”

“How long will you stay with us, Uncle Jakob?” I asked.

“I do not know.”

“Will you stay a few days?”

“Oh, yes. At least a few days.”

“Can I get you a real drink?” my father asked.

“No, thank you. Another iced tea would be very pleasant, Channah.”

“Would you like to see the sand castle I made?” “I will be happy to see your sand castle, Ilana Davita.” “Let Uncle Jakob sit down and relax now, Ilana,” my mother said.

“Would you tell me another story later?”

He looked at me, a weary smile on his pale face. “Of course I will tell you another story. Of course.”

That night he was up late with my parents. I could hear them talking quietly on the screened-in porch. The air was hot and humid. I lay in my bed, moist with heat, listening to the distant roll of the surf. Insects lurched wildly against the screens of my windows; I thought the heat must be driving them mad. I slept fitfully and had disquieting dreams, though when I woke I could not be certain what they had been about.

Jakob Daw remained inside the cottage all day. From my castle on the beach I saw him talking with my mother on the screened-in porch. My father had gone to work at his regular writing. During lunch, which my mother served us on the porch, Jakob Daw was silent and withdrawn. He ate very little. How pale and weary he looked. My mother moved about quietly. He fell asleep at the table, breathing raspingly, woke with a start, and glanced quickly around, a frightened look in his eyes. My mother put her hand on his shoulder. He slumped in his chair. A few moments later, he went to bed.

Very late that night—the second Saturday night of July—I was awakened by the sounds of a car pulling into the driveway between our cottage and the empty house across from us. I was bathed in sweat and dazed by the heat. I got out of bed and went to the side window. The shade was up, the curtain open. I peered through the window and saw a long dark car near the side door of the wood-and-brick house that adjoined the driveway. As I watched, the car lights and the engine were turned off. Two men, a woman, and a boy about my age came out of the car. The woman held a baby and went directly into the house, followed by the boy.

The two men began to move cartons and boxes from the car
into the house. Lights were being turned on in some of the rooms of the house. By the small light over the side door of the house I saw dimly that one of the men was heavyset and bearded and the other was tall and thin. After a while the tall man climbed back into the car and drove off. The bearded man went into the house.

There was silence. The night pulsed rhythmically with the insect life of the sea’s edge. Then the light on the screened-in porch across the way came on. I heard a door open and close and saw the boy come up to the front of the porch and look through the screen at the dark beach. There was a small high curving sliver of blue-white moon. The deep night was bathed in stars. The boy stood there a long time, gazing out at the darkness. He raised both his arms over his head and moved them back and forth a number of times. It was an odd sort of gesture, a pleading of some kind. He lowered his arms to his sides and stood still a moment longer. Then he turned and went back into the house. The porch light was extinguished. The ocean seemed loud and near in the darkness.

I went back to bed. The heat was stifling. Insects flew against my windows. In from the beach drifted low voices: people lay on the sand near the water, driven from their homes by the heat. I thought I heard a muffled cry, and I trembled.
Nothing!
Was it that word again?
Nothing.
And was that my mother’s voice now, barely audible, soothing?

A long time later I fell into an exhausted sleep.

The sounds of a door opening and closing woke me. It was early morning. From my window I saw the man and the boy who had come during the night leave the house by the side door and walk toward the street. They wore dark trousers, white shirts, and fishermen’s caps. I went back to sleep.

Sunlight woke me. I found my mother in the kitchen. She looked tired. My father and Jakob Daw had gone into Manhattan, she said. What did I want for breakfast?

•  •  •

A letter arrived from Aunt Sarah. The kitchen was too hot and my parents and I were having breakfast on the porch. Jakob Daw was still asleep. My father read the letter aloud. Aunt Sarah was back in Maine, working in a hospital in Bangor. Ethiopia had been very, very bad. She was certain we were aware of what would soon transpire in Spain. How was Ilana Davita? “Be careful of the heat. Drink lots of water and take salt tablets.” Maine was cool in the mornings and evenings and lovely even in these very hot days. If the heat of New York ever became intolerable, my parents should consider packing me off to Maine. She sent her love to all of us and a special kiss to Ilana Davita.

“Your sister keeps herself very busy,” my mother said.

“She’s telling us that she may go to Spain.”

“Yes,” my mother said. “I understood that.”

Jakob Daw came out onto the porch, looking as if he had not slept.

“Good morning,” he said, and coughed briefly. “The heat is terrible.”

“It’s terrible everywhere, Jakob,” my mother said.

“Except in Maine,” my father said.

“Sit down and I’ll get you some breakfast,” my mother said to Jakob Daw. “Did you sleep at all?”

“No. Early in the morning I fell asleep and was awakened by your neighbors. They seem to be very devout people. They go to synagogue every morning.”

“How do you know where they’re going?” my father asked.

“The man carries a prayer shawl.”

“They’re distant relatives of Annie’s,” my father said.

“The boy is my cousin’s son,” my mother said. “The man and his wife are the brother and sister-in-law of my cousin’s wife, who died recently. They are very religious people. The boy is saying Kaddish for his mother.”

“What does Kaddish mean?” I asked.

“A prayer that’s said in synagogue every morning and evening for about a year when someone close to you dies.”

There was a brief pause.

“Did you know they were coming here to the beach?” I asked.

“Of course. I suggested it. The boy is very upset by his mother’s death. His father asked if I would help keep an eye on him. From a distance, of course. What would you like for breakfast, Jakob?”

I looked out our screened-in porch at the empty porch of the adjoining house.

“Michael, are you going to the hunger march?” Jakob Daw asked. “Yes? Then I will come along.”

“We can make the noon train to Philadelphia if we leave here inside half an hour.”

“I will eat quickly,” Jakob Daw said.

“Jakob, you’re exhausted,” my mother said.

“Yes,” Jakob Daw said. “But I will go anyway.”

My mother and I spent most of the day on the beach. We swam together for a long time—my father had taught me to swim—and then I worked on my castle. My mother sat on a chair nearby beneath a beach umbrella, reading. She wore a yellow, wide-brimmed sun hat and a dark blue bathing suit, and she looked trim and full-breasted and lovely. I saw the boy who had moved next to us walking across the beach with the bearded man. They wore white short-sleeved shirts and dark trousers rolled up almost to the knees and were barefooted. I watched them step into the edge of the surf. The boy’s face broke into a smile. The man bent and embraced him. I turned my attention back to my castle.

We ate supper that evening on the porch in air so sultry it seemed weighted. During our meal we saw the boy and the man come off the porch of their house and start quickly along the driveway, talking in a language I could not understand.

I asked my mother what the word religious meant.

She said it came from an old word that meant to bind, to tie. “Religious people feel bound to their ideas,” she said.

I asked her what language the man and the boy had been talking.

“Yiddish,” she said, after a moment.

“Is that the language our neighbors use where we moved in Brooklyn?”

“Yes. I spoke it until I came to America. It was the language of my childhood.” “I never heard you speak it.”

“I used to speak it sometimes where I worked. There’s no need for me to speak it at home.”

Later that evening I saw the man and the boy come back up the driveway. The man went into the house through the side door, and the boy climbed up the short flight of wooden stairs to the screened-in porch. The boy stood on the porch, looking thin and pale, and gazed out at the beach and the sky, his nose and mouth pressed against the screen. He raised his arms again in that strange gesture of supplication—lifting them over his head and waving them back and forth. Then he seemed to sense that someone was watching him, and he looked quickly around and saw me. He lowered his arms.