Siege 13 (2 page)

Görbe laughed. It was like listening to a shout at the end of a long drainpipe. “Defaulting to the wife and kids, huh?” he said. “Listen, I hate the centre too. The programming . . . well, it's like being inside a mind the size of a walnut. And the women they have working the bar—it would kill them to smile. I never go there anymore.”

“Uh . . .” I said.

“You're petty and embittered, kid,” he shouted into the phone. “Running on despair. Narcissistic. Vindictive. I love it! Listen, you like Jew food?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Your wife and kids, they're coming too, right?” He chuckled. “Before I help a writer I need to see what his home life is like.”

It was a strange request, but it didn't take me long during that dinner at Carnegie's to see that he loved kids,
my kids
, and had a way of hitting all the right spots with Marcy's sense of humour—she was always amused by men who magnified their idiosyncrasies to comic levels—and before I knew it, before I'd even decided if I wanted to be friends with Görbe, she'd invited him to our place for dinner the next weekend. After that, with how much the kids loved him, and his attention to Marcy, we began seeing him regularly.

 

All of Görbe's books feature the same three protagonists: a six-year-old boy named Fritz, a girl the same age named Susanna, and a kindly court jester who's all of four years
old, but whose illogical brain is perfect for figuring out the dream world and so is the wisest of them all. In the early books, the stories are about Fritz and Susanna falling asleep at night only to end up in the same dream. They spend the rest of the adventure trying to escape (with the jester's help of course). As the books go on and the children's home lives are revealed—dire poverty, Fritz's absent mother and sullen father, Susanna's illness (what in the early twentieth century was called “neurasthenia”), the cruelty of school—Fritz and Susanna decide they don't want to wake up, they want to stay asleep, and the later stories are haunted by the fear that what separates dream from reality is as thin as tissue, and once it's torn they'll never again find their way back to the jester and the endless continents of sleep. The latest book ends with the two children coming upon a strange machine that will keep them there forever—if only they can figure out how to use it.

That's the eleventh book in the series. It was published last year after we returned to Kitchener. I remember sitting with Benjamin in Words Worth Books on a snowy January day going through the illustrations and story and coming to the end, where Benjamin lingered, tracing his finger along the illustration of the dream machine, and finally said, “It was different when he read it to us.” I looked at him, wondering what he was talking about, because all I remembered of Görbe's voice was the volume and rancid tobacco on his breath. It was Benjamin who reminded me that when Görbe read to him—as opposed to when Görbe spoke to
me
—his tone became quiet, it had a breathlessness to it, as if he too had no idea how the story would end and was as eager as any
kid to find out. “You're right,” I said, remembering those early nights in our apartment, “he did read that way,” my children tucked under each of his beefy arms.

When he was done reading to them Görbe would grumble and rub his eyes like someone forced out of bed too early, which was funny because he was never available before one o'clock, and I always guessed (wrongly as it turned out) that mornings were when he did his writing and drawing. Then he'd bite his cigar and look at me and ask if I was up for a “girlie drink,” which was the term he used for the awful cocktails he ordered. I think he discovered most of them in antique bartending manuals—like many children's authors he was drawn to things discarded or forgotten—concoctions such as Sherry Cobbler, Pisco Punch, New Orleans Zazerac. The bartenders looked at him as if he was totally insane.

Once we were in the bar—any bar, though mostly we hung out at a tiny place in the East Village called Lotus—anything could happen. Görbe's mouth was too big. He purposefully said things to outrage people, and most of the customers in the bars knew him on sight. He was a good fighter with fists as well as words—there was a lot of weight behind each punch, he was slow on his feet but able to withstand punishment, and only needed to connect once to knock you down. “You're right,” he said to me once. “New York
is
a deserted city.” He looked at the bartender. “You're a writer so you've probably seen it in the
Times
—that trembling subtext—where the critics complain that writers have failed to properly commemorate the
tragic
”—he winked at me—“event of six years ago.” He called to the bartender for another Philadelphia Fish-House Punch, then continued: “What they're
really bothered by is that it didn't have the effect they
wanted
it to have. Except for a few months of public tears and outrage and the constant refrain by writers trying to prove 9/11 was of enormous significance, the only difference
I
see is that people around here go shopping even more than they did before.” He raised his voice and looked around the room. “It was significant to the friends and relatives of the deceased, of course, and to everyone else for a little while—a shock to the privileged and entitled who thought such a thing could never happen to them.” He looked back at me. “But go out on the street now,” he said. “Do you see any effect,
really
, out there? It passed right through them as if they were intangible.” He sipped his drink. “Once in a while someone tries to write something profound about it, and they always fail, and the critics are always angry that they didn't do it justice. And all I can think is: Oh, New York, get over yourself!” He adopted a stage whisper: “What they can't face, none of them, is its insignificance. People died in an act of war. Wow! How unusual!” He said the last three words so loud I jumped off my seat. “It's terrible—” he pretended to wipe away tears “—now, can you please give me directions to the Louis Vuitton store?” Görbe snorted, staring back at the bartender. “It passed through them like they were ghosts,” he said. “As it should have.” He nodded. “
As it should have
.”

Görbe grunted and shifted on his stool and for a second I thought I saw something there, a break in the front he was putting on. “Listen, I lived through events a million times worse in Hungary—the war, the siege—like a lot of people. It wasn't one day, it was six years, and, believe me, it didn't
lead to any great spiritual awakening!” He waved his hands in the air. “It happened. It was bad. And afterwards? Well, it will happen again. And in between you forget. You go back to your entertainments and schemes and obsessions and carry on. And that,” he said, “is
all
there is to say about it.”

Görbe rose drunkenly from his stool and bowed this way and that to the regulars, who didn't know whether to applaud or tear him apart.

 

His reputation for outrage extended even to the world of children's literature, which is no easy thing. When Görbe gave readings it wasn't rare to see a crowd of a hundred or more in attendance, and not the usual moms and dads and kids and teachers, but people you'd never have expected—Brooklyn hipsters, businessmen in blue suits, specialty booksellers with stacks of first editions Görbe would sign and they'd sell at inflated prices (they all had to put a wad of bills on his outstretched palm before he signed anything), and even some skeletal blondes cradling tiny dogs that trembled so bad they looked as if they were going to disintegrate. Each one was crazy about Görbe, many knew him personally, and when they lined up to have books signed he made sure to say something memorable to every one, statements so outrageous I was sure someone would burst into tears, either that or assault him. Instead they only laughed or turned to friends and said, “See! What did I tell you?” and Görbe nodded almost imperceptibly, made a flourish with his pen, and handed back the book. It seemed to me, looking at the lineup, that they loved him, and it was only later, near the end of the
night, after I realized I hadn't seen one person open a book, or overheard a single comment about the writing, that I realized what was beneath it all: a fascination that was all about Görbe's appearance and character. It was him they were there for. The signings were one of those New York events you went to to prove your coolness. Worst of all, I sensed Görbe not only knew this but encouraged it, as if he spent as much time rehearsing the crazy diatribes and remarks—like some kind of comedy routine—as he did writing the books. This, too, was part of the process.

During his career Görbe had sold millions of books, gone on innumerable book tours, and the few times he invited me to his apartment in Queens I peeked at some of the royalty cheques on his desk, amazed to think he made that much and still lived in such a hole. There were only two places in the apartment that made it look as if he hadn't given up on life: the draughtsman's table where he did his work, spotlessly clean, the various tools neatly organized; and the mantelpiece where photographs of his wife, Zella, sat carefully arranged so each image could be seen in its frame. I looked at the pictures, then around the house again to see if I'd missed anything—an article of clothing, a pair of shoes—that might suggest a woman was also living there. But I saw nothing.

Görbe came into the room carrying two huge snifters filled with Crimean Cup à la Marmora, his belly brushing the doorframe as he squeezed through with a scraping of shirt buttons. “What're you looking at?” He stopped when I pointed to the pictures of his wife. “Zella,” Görbe said, adding nothing more, just standing there, drinks in hand. I asked
where she was. “Zella is away,” came his quiet response. “In a better place.” This seemed to break him out of his trance and he handed me a drink and changed the subject.

 

Whenever Görbe spoke about his work there was a complete absence of the technical or practical aspects of publishing. Just as when he read to my sons, he spoke as if he was a privileged reader rather than the author. He was never sure, he said, where the story was going even as his writing and drawing proceeded, always one step ahead of his conscious intentions. This was the real Görbe, I always thought, not the clown at the bar and readings, but the guy who, when he talked of his work, seemed eased of all the flesh he carried, his need to filter the world through a cigar, his overindulgence with booze and food. The real Görbe grew excited talking of clouds hollowed out by sparrows, of fire escapes woven out of iron roses growing miles into the air, of bricks made of compacted song turned into choruses conducted with wrecking balls. I'd seen him like that with my kids, and guessed that when he went on tours to the tiny libraries of Idaho and Arkansas and Nebraska he was like that too—naive, filled with wonder, released from the persona he climbed into, like some fat suit, every morning in Queens.

“You like my kids, huh?” I asked one night as we stood on the balcony of the apartment I'd been renting, subsidized by NYU, on the fourteenth floor with a view of the Empire State Building and its coloured lights. But Görbe just sucked his cigar and looked at me as if the question was a trap he wasn't going to walk into. I scratched the back of my head. “Well, you see, it's just that I was . . . Well, it's weird that
you'd be so friendly to me just because fifty years ago you dated my aunt. A celebrity like you.”

Görbe looked at me then as if he wanted to throw me over the balcony. “The reason I'm so friendly,” he growled, “is because you're such an asshole.”

I looked at him and tried to laugh.

“You're bumping your head on the glass ceiling of your mediocrity. And you're wide awake to it—why your agent doesn't return your emails; why the writers at NYU show no interest in you; why New York leaves you cold. Most people can look away from that, dream up excuses—‘Oh, my agent is just busy'; ‘Oh, the writers at NYU are all self-important dickheads'; ‘Oh, New York is so superficial'—but not you, right? You know better than anyone you're not going to make it, and you can't hide it from yourself.”

I think I spluttered. I had no idea how to respond. And then, in a moment I'll never forget, Görbe reached for my hand. It was the weirdest gesture. I tried to pull back from it, but the touch was so lonely, so childlike, it seemed more for his sake than mine, and when I gave in to it Görbe seemed to shrink, to fall into himself, clinging to me in the Manhattan night with the cavernous streets below, snow drifting past. For some reason I felt the need to say something reassuring to Görbe, to whisper him an apology for the world—“Everything will be fine, you'll see”—when in fact it should have been him apologizing to me.

 

It was partly because of that conversation, but mainly because of my curiosity about Zella, that the next morning I went into the archives at NYU—combing through old copies
of the
Times
,
Observer
, and even the
Post
—to piece together Görbe's story. My aunt said he'd been a prominent children's author during the communist era, as far as prominence went in those days, and he'd certainly had no trouble, as far as she or any of their mutual acquaintances could say, with the Soviet authority. “In fact,” she admitted, “he helped me out with his connections when I needed it.” As for his books, she said they “were like a utopia.” The children in them wanted to stay inside a dream, to realize a better world, and the communists liked that. “The kids were the proletariat,” she wrote, “at least according to the communist reviewers.” The waking world was the world as it is; and dream was the world as it could be. It was a pretty simple-minded interpretation, like most of them, but it saved Görbe. In other words, he had a good life under the Party—made enough money, had a nice apartment, ate and drank well. So nobody was really sure why he left. “As for his wife,” my aunt's letter said, “I met her only once. She was just like Görbe except worse—dreamy, childish, never comfortable among adults. In fact, what seemed good in him seemed somehow bad in her. But maybe I was just jealous.”