The Archivist (23 page)

We never would’ve known, I said. A trial wouldn’t have explained anything. It would’ve been just like with Eichmann — for show.

Len’s gaze: angry, incredulous.

What’re you talking about, Judy? Didn’t you read the fucking newspapers I gave you? Didn’t you read how the whole world watched that trial, the whole world heard the evidence against Eichmann? Listen to me! Everyone knows now, everyone knows what happened to us.

Us:
the impossible word sliding like a razor into me.

I picked up the matches. Len’s gaze traveled to the little box in my hands.

Nothing happened to us, I said. We weren’t killed. We didn’t notice the missing, we never spoke about them. It was as if they’d never existed. Nothing happened to us.

I lit a match and lay it on the papers. The flame lapped at the top sheet. There was a small noise like an intake of air; then the flame pulsed and the fire took, its small orange tongues chattering.

It was Carol who put out the flames. She emptied her glass of water on them expertly, without fear or hesitation. Then she walked out, closing the door carefully behind her.

An inky smell of burnt newsprint.

You know you won’t see her again, Len said. That’s it. Just so you’re clear on that.

I know, I said.

He lit a cigarette, held another to its tip, inhaled until it caught, and handed it to me. I saw his large hand trembling. He moved to the window.

You can’t stop people from doing what they’re going to do, he said. You can’t protect them. If they’ve got their eyes open, they protect themselves. Otherwise there’s nothing you can do.

Something unfamiliar in his voice. Not just the words but the pitch, pace, tone.

Are you talking about Lottie and Sam, I said.

He said nothing.

They didn’t die on lower Broadway, did they?

No.

Or in a car.

No.

Or even in New York.

I waited. Len put out his cigarette, moved from the window to the bed, and sat down. It struck me that what was unfamiliar to me was the sound, in his voice, of the truth.

They died in southern Russia, he said. Byelorussia, actually. In 1918. They’d gone over there with several other Americans. To be part of the Revolution. They were socialists; this was what they were supposed to do with their lives.

You were six months old when they left New York. I told them they were crazy, but they both insisted on going. For them it wasn’t a matter of choice. It was duty. Sam was a printer — you know that already, I’ve told you that before. They were going to help the Reds set up a printing press in some godforsaken village. And they were going to raise you somehow. In the middle of a fucking civil war, they were going to raise their kid.

He paused, shook his head. After all these years it’s still unbelievable to me that they ever went there, he said. With a fucking infant.

Anyway. In the summer after they arrived, a troop of anti-Bolshevists came through the village. They were looking for Jews because Jews were the ones who’d started all the trouble — you know, the ones who were going to ruin Russia. The soldiers destroyed the press. Burned it to the ground. Then they shot Lottie and Sam. Along with several other Jews.

One of the other Americans managed to leave. He took you with him. He had our name and address scribbled on a piece of paper when he showed up at our door. I think this was about a month after Lottie and Sam were killed. He looked like a real bum. But as soon as he opened his mouth, before he’d said two words, I knew what he’d come to tell us. I asked him how he got you and himself out of Russia alive, but he wouldn’t say. I’ve never met anyone so exhausted as this guy was. He told us what had happened to Lottie and Sam, and then he went out the door, and in an hour he came back and handed you over. Then he left. That was that. We never saw him again.

Len stood before me, as if to confront me with his physical self, the reality of his presence in my life, but did not let our eyes meet.

Carol and I talked it over before telling you about the car crash, he said. We decided it would be easier to keep it simple. It’d already been hard enough.

He moved toward the door, then stopped and turned again.

You see, something did happen to us, he said. Problem is, there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. That’s the bottom line. Don’t fight what you can’t beat.

In the doorway, Powell.

One of Len’s blue-veined hands raised in unsteady farewell; then gone.

Powell advancing on the stack of burnt papers, a question in his eyes.

An accident, I said. Let’s keep it between you and me.

July 6

At night, dreams: Len at my window, talking; Carol curled up like a fetus on my bed, talking; Clay in the chair opposite me, talking.

Matt, in the doorway, silent.

In the apartment on Grove Street, a little girl who is me and not me. Broadway, Byelorussia. Balanowka, Bar, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald.

In the Times:
pianist Bud Powell will be returning to New York from France in August. Friends at Jimmy Ryan’s club report that after an extended stay abroad, Powell is ready to come home.

If you know what’s good for you, Powell, stay where you are. Don’t fight what you can’t beat.

July 29

Hayden, my particular Hell. Each night a warm bath, my own Lethe.

August 15

Powell no longer escorts me to my room. They must have found out about the newspapers.

What have they done with him —

October 10

Yom Kippur.

Hadesh yameinu ke-kedem:
Make our days new as of old. Open for us the gates of repentance.

The scapegoat Azazel, bearing the sins of all Jews, was thrown off the precipice on the Day of Atonement. Forgive us, said the High Priest as he tossed Azazel over the edge. Forgive our iniquities, our transgressions. If we must be exiled, may we be exiled to a place of Torah.

Some Kabbalists said Azazel was a fallen angel. Others said Azazel was the first Satan.

All that Azazel knew, however, was that he was pitched off the peak, and every bone in his body broke before he reached the bottom.

November 18

I am sleeping two, maybe three hours a night.

I no longer talk to Clay.

It is only a matter of time before they authorize shock treatment.

December 2

Matt, directly in front of me.

You don’t look well, he said. You need to sleep more, Judith. The doctors say you have to get more sleep. You’re making yourself ill.

LeRoi Jones:

(What we had

I cannot even say. Something

like loathing

covers your words.

Where’s Bud Powell, I said. Just tell me where he is.

I have no idea, Judith.

But he was supposed to come to New York.

He did. Len and Carol heard him play in August.

And since then?

Since then he seems to have disappeared.

What are you telling me, disappeared?

I’m telling you all I know about Bud Powell. That he came back to New York, and now he’s gone again. He hasn’t played anywhere in the city since September.

But where would he go?

I have no idea. Try not to think about him, Judith. It won’t help you to think about him.

He’s been murdered, I said. Like Lottie and Sam.

What are you talking about?

The Jew you call Christ, I said. The one you say redeemed you. They murdered him. Not because he was the son of God but because he was gathering the pieces of light. Retrieving them.

It happened for a reason, Matt said. That death wasn’t meaningless. It was a gift of grace. It’s always in front of us.

You shimmer like words

I barely hear. Your face

twisted into words. “Love, Oh,

Love me.”

Us, I said, there’s no us.

Directly in front of me, the one I call husband: turning away as a stranger does, back to his life’s recesses, those places I have not been and never will be invited.

A silhouette in my doorway. The sure slope of his shoulders, the taut lean torso. I’ve wanted only this man. This one who stands here inert, overcome by fear of me.

Only this man who will not look at what I’ve looked at, and take me hold me tell me
yes I see it, yes, but we do still have each other.

The world terrifies, but it’s me he fears.

You need to leave, I said. To leave me.

His is the only silence that has ever spoken to me. I hear it saying everything. All jumbled like the Torah — a welter of words spilling forth from Matt’s silence like those first bursts of light, blinding and unbearable.

More than anything else, I hear his silence speak of his unendingly powerless love for me.

I nod, he nods. Our eyes meet for one literal and true and necessary instant.

He’s seen me now, and he won’t try to stop me.

1965

January 1

My books and poems are for my husband, Matthias Lane.

My records are for my uncle and aunt, Len and Carol Rubin.

This journal is for Dr. Harold Clay, on the understanding that it is to be burned after he has read it.

LeRoi Jones:

I cannot lie

and say I think of you.

& now

I am sleeping

& you will not be able

to wake me.

Three

T
HE LIBRARY GUARDIANS PROJECT
was under way by the end of June. Edith saw to the details. Irritated though she was by the whole thing, she was unable to suppress her usual conscientiousness. “It’s all yours now,” she said, dropping into a chair in my office one warm afternoon. She twirled a noisy key ring around her index finger. “The three students have been through a library orientation, and I’ve drafted their assignments for the six weeks they’ll spend in the Mason Room. Matt, I hope you understand — the Board insisted I get this thing up and running. Darnton’s already publicizing the Guardians Project as the library’s newest triumph. Jesus! You’d think he’s got absolutely nothing to do with his time.”

“He may not,” I said. “But we do. Look, this thing’s just a dressed-up volunteer project. Let the Board milk it — who knows, maybe we’ll actually get some new donations because of it. But just leave the three musketeers to me. All right?”

Edith smirked. “I like that,” she said. “The three musketeers.” She looked somewhat less tense, though she was still jiggling her keys.

“Well?” I allowed a little impatience into my voice, to spur her.

“OK,” she said quickly, closing her fingers around the key ring. “Here’s the scoop. They’ve each got their work cut out. I tried to create assignments that would require the least amount of supervision.”

“Excellent. Who’s doing what?”

“George is the historian. He’ll look at a selection of the Roosevelt papers and do a very general article on them for the alumni quarterly. Just pick a decent sampling for him to read, and send him off to some corner. He’s very serious and dull — you won’t hear squeak from him all summer.

“Now, Yasuo — the Japanese computer scientist — he’s another story. He wants to get his hands on the Harlem Renaissance photos. He’s one of those foreigners who’s fascinated by black American history. I told him he has to swear to wash his hands before he enters this archive. I made him a gift of some of that special soap you use. He looked at me like he thought I was joking. These computer types amaze me! They treat a diskette like it’s made of gold, but they’d sit a cup of coffee on a rare book without a second thought. Five minutes after meeting me, Yasuo was proposing that we use some new scanner thing to convert the photographic images to digitals or pixels or whatnot. My eyes just glazed over. I told him all we want is a decently written description of the collection for the annual report. He looked extremely disappointed.”

“What about the third student? Roberta Spire?”

“Ah, yes.” Edith stood and walked over to the sideboard. She poured us both some coffee and leaned against the wall, cradling her mug in her hands.

“I decided to capitalize on Roberta’s desire to see the Hale letters. Oh, don’t get me wrong — you look alarmed! It was the envelopes she asked me about, and that’s what she’ll see. Here’s my idea. When you catalogued the letters, you organized them by year, remember? So we know the date on which each letter was written, right? But what we don’t have is a listing of when and where each one was mailed.”

She walked back to her chair and sat down.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve worked a lot with biographers, and this is the kind of thing they love — little details about the habits of a correspondent. Does he mail his letters immediately after writing them, or does he mull over them for a while and then send them? Biographers go nuts over those types of questions.”

“It all sounds rather — what’s the word? — niggling,” I said.

“But we’re not biographers! The thing is, we want to keep Roberta very busy for six weeks of this summer. So busy she won’t bother you or anyone else. Right?”

I smiled. “That’s thoughtful of you,” I said. “Though I’m not worried about her getting in my way.”

“No,” Edith said, “I wouldn’t think you are. You’re exceptionally well defended.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked, laughing.

“As a professional, I mean,” she said. “You don’t take any crap from anyone.”

“Except you,” I said. “But have no fear. Your orders will be carried out.”

“Good,” she said, standing. She held her keys and mug in one hand; with the other, she pointed in the general direction of the Board’s administrative offices. “Let’s hope they go on vacation soon. I just want to be left alone to do what I do.”

I raised my own mug as if to make a toast.

“I feel,” I said, “exactly the same way.”

A
S IT HAPPENED
, I didn’t see Roberta Spire for several more weeks. At the time of my meeting with Edith, I had a chest cold. A few days later, it flared into pneumonia. I seldom get sick, and the whole thing took me by surprise. The university’s doctor ordered me home to bed after prescribing several medicines that I didn’t take. Like my mother, I’ve never trusted doctors.