Too Many Men (66 page)

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of living bodies. It was diaphanous. It floated. But it was her. Her mirror image. An imprint of herself, in the air, floating above her.

She used to have this dream as a child. It used to terrify her. She would be floating, facedown, above herself. For hours. However hard she tried she couldn’t get herself back down to the bed again. She always woke from this dream feeling queasy. She had been so relieved when the dream had disappeared. It had seemed to leave her when she was about seventeen or eighteen. An age when she had toughened up. She had dyed her hair jet-black and whitened her face with the palest shade of makeup on the market. She had gone barefoot in the conservative streets of Melbourne, Australia. People had gasped and pointed. She had been a beatnik. On her own. Out of kilter with the culture and the times. Edek used to look at her and cry. Cry at her black-ringed eyes and white lips. “What did happen to my beautiful daughter?” he would say.

Rooshka had maintained a stony silence. She had tolerated the bare feet and the black outfits. Ruth had lost weight, and Rooshka was more pleased about the weight loss than she was distressed at being the mother of a beatnik. Ruth was happy being a beatnik. For the first time she slept through the night, most nights. She didn’t wake when Rooshka screamed in her sleep. She didn’t have to cover her head with her pillow in order to drown out her mother’s shouts. The shouts that were always in Yiddish. Rooshka was shouting to her mother. The mother who went to the right, to the gas, when Rooshka went to the left. Eventually, Ruth got lonely, as a beatnik.

No one would join her in reviving the movement. She let her hair color grow out and threw away the white lipstick.

Ruth rubbed her eyes. They felt raw. As though she had been awake all night. Even as a child she had awakened tired from that dream. The face that floated above her in her childhood dream was always somber. It never smiled or laughed. It just hovered above Ruth. Looking at her. All night.

Suddenly, Ruth felt sick. The face in her childhood dream, the face that used to look down on her for hours, at night, was the face in the photograph. The face of Edek’s sister Fela’s child, Liebala. It was Liebala’s face floating above her. Liebala, who looked so like her. Liebala, who was always serious, always solemn, in Ruth’s dreams.

Ruth remembered clearly the day the dreams began. It had been her

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L I L Y B R E T T

first day in fourth grade. She had been eight years old. The youngest child in grade four. All the other children were nine. Some were ten. She had come home from that first day of the school year exhausted. Some of the boys had been rough with her. It was a working-class area. There were lots of tough kids. Ruth didn’t say anything to Rooshka and Edek. Ruth knew even then that a little roughness in the classroom was not comparable to what they had endured. And Rooshka had been happy that day. Happy and proud that Ruth was eight and in grade four.

Eight. That was the age Liebala must have been, in the photographs, Ruth thought. Liebala’s face had been less composed in the photographs. In the photographs she had looked more active, more eager, more spirited. In the dreams, Liebala’s curls were the only unruly part of her. They sprang out at wayward angles. The rest of Liebala had been still. Still face. Still arms and legs. She had floated quietly. Hovering above Ruth. Hardly moving. In the dreams, Liebala was dressed in layers of a sheer, white, gauze fabric. The fabric floated. Sometimes Ruth could feel the movement of air as the layers of Liebala’s dress shifted and moved in the room. Liebala, in her unclouded, gossamer layers, had looked down at Ruth, night after night.

Ruth sat on the bed in her room at the Hotel Mimoza and felt frightened. How could Liebala have been in her dreams? She had never seen Liebala’s face. She must have been dreaming about herself. She and Liebala were so similar. So alike. Except for one small detail. Ruth had noticed, in the photograph, that Liebala had a mole on her cheek. Her left cheek. Ruth remembered the mole from her dreams. How could she have known about the mole? She had probably created the mole, Ruth thought, in order to distinguish herself from her nocturnal visitor. She felt her own cheekbones.

She didn’t have a mole on her cheek. Just an elevated bump where the fly had bitten her.

She tried to calm down. There was nothing frightening about any of this. It was just a dream. And she must have been dreaming about herself.

She and Liebala were so alike. She must have transposed the expression on Liebala’s face, in the photographs, onto her memories of the face in her dreams. Of course that was it, that was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

She should have a shower, she decided. Hot water and steam often cleared her head after a bad night. A hot shower made her feel internally T O O M A N Y M E N

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cleansed, as though the steam had reached her brain and heart and lungs.

Hot water seemed to wash some of the mess of bad nights away. It seemed to repair and redress the anarchy. To sanctify and purify. Most of the time, after five minutes in a hot shower, Ruth could feel herself returning.

Returning to who she really was.

And who was she, really? she wondered. She was a person in Poland.

Who she was was always a vexing question for her. This morning she needed a clear answer. She was Ruth Rothwax, president, CEO, chairman, owner, and director of Rothwax Correspondence. She could run ten miles, with ease. She could bench-press fifty-five pounds. And she was losing weight. Losing weight was always a cheering thought.

Ruth had always had a troubled relationship with her dreams. She had had nightmares about children and babies for years. Children she kept losing. Babies she couldn’t look after. The dream in which she gave birth to a damaged baby always left her out of kilter for days. Days later she would find herself trying to work out what was wrong with the baby, and where it had gone. It always disappeared by the end of the dream. Merely thinking about that dream gave her the creeps. Why had that dream come into her head? Just when she had established herself, in her head, as a competent businesswoman. A woman who could wear a suit and bench-press and squat, metaphorically, with the best of them. That was who she was! Not some lost, slipped soul. Inhabited by others.

Where had that sentence come from? She was not inhabited by others.

She had managed to separate herself from the mother. From the ghosts of her mother’s past. From all of the dead. She was inhabited by her own thoughts and her own imagination. She was inhabited by her own self. The years when she had believed that she had been in Auschwitz were over. She knew that that was her mother’s experience, not hers. The years of feeling more aligned with the dead than the living were over. She was living. She was definitely living. Living well.

Ruth was tempted to look at the photographs of Liebala and Hanka and Fela and Juliusz. But she decided against it. This was not the morning to look at the past. This was the morning to look to the future. To being back in her own apartment. In New York. The city had never seemed more like a haven. She corrected herself. The city had never seemed like a haven

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L I L Y B R E T T

before. That’s what a comparison with Poland could do, she thought. Make any other place look cozy. Cozy and comforting.

She decided that she would wait to look at the photographs until she was back in New York. She would have them framed, she decided, and hang them on a wall. Maybe she would put them on one of the walls in her bedroom. Or maybe they would look better in the living room. She might have them enlarged, too, she thought. That way she could study everybody’s features and expressions. She felt excited at that prospect.

She thought about the china. All the plates and bowls and cups and saucers. She wanted to touch the china. To run her fingers around the fluted gold rims. To hold the cup handles. To feel the glaze on the plates. It was going to be overwhelming to own the china. To live with it. To look at it, every day. Ruth couldn’t imagine eating from the china. Using it for meals. Her instinct was to preserve it, behind glass, like some museum piece. That was absurd, she thought. She would have to force herself to use it. The cups and saucers and bowls and plates were meant to be used. They had been in constant use, until February 1940. Ruth hoped they hadn’t been used since then. She couldn’t bear the thought of the stained-toothed old man or his bewigged wife using that beautiful china.

She would use the coat, too, she thought. She would have it altered. She would take it to the tailor on Twelfth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. She knew he was very expensive. She hoped that his prices reflected quality in his tailoring. She was looking forward to wearing the coat. She thought she would look good in it. Thinking about the coat and the china had lifted her spirits.

Ruth looked at her watch. It was still early. She thought she could fit in half an hour’s work before she showered. She knew exactly how long it took her to shower. She knew exactly how long it took her to shower without washing her hair, and how long it took her to shower and wash her hair.

She knew exactly how long it took her to shower and dress. She timed everything she did. On the surface, the timing seemed to be aimed at efficiency. But Ruth knew that knowing how long things took was one way of offsetting and avoiding the panic of the unknown. It reassured her to know how long things took. How long it took to walk to the post office or to cook vegetables or eat breakfast or read the paper.

It was an attempt at control, of course. It didn’t take a genius to figure T O O M A N Y M E N

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that out. Ruth had grown up frightened of the random elements that had arrived in Rooshka’s life. Overnight. The errant and erratic events that changed everything. And left Rooshka unnerved, decades later, at anything unexpected or unplanned. A knock at the door or a phone call would cause Rooshka to gasp or tremble.

The world of letters was completely controllable. No one could intrude on a letter. Or disagree. Or do something disagreeable. Today, the quest for control was seen as unhealthy. Ruth had nothing against control. So much of everyone’s life was out of control, anyway. Why shouldn’t you exercise control when you could?

She got out her notebook. She felt like writing by hand. She couldn’t even begin to think about the three hundred and twenty-seven letters John Sharp had ordered. She decided to tackle the thank-you-for-the-introduction-to-the-agent letter.
Dear X
, she wrote. She always addressed her letters to “Dear X.” She had to address them to someone. She couldn’t write any letters without using the word “dear.” Sometimes she began letters with the recipients’ names, but mostly she began with “Dear X.”

She had tried many times to write without addressing them to anyone first. But couldn’t. She couldn’t think of anything to say if she wasn’t saying it to someone in particular. Even if that person was “X.” She looked at the
Dear X
she had written. She added a line.
I want to thank you so much for
your generosity
, she wrote. Ruth thought for a minute or two.
And I want
you to know that I know that the generosity is in the offer, not the outcome.

The introduction, and not what comes of it
. Ruth put her pen down. She couldn’t get involved in this letter. She would have to do it another time.

She had too many things crowding her head.

She felt her bite again. It was still swollen and inflamed. Why had the fly marked her like this? What a stupid question, she thought. The fly hadn’t marked her. It hadn’t marked her out of the crowd. It had just bitten her.

She felt annoyed to have been bitten by a fly, in Auschwitz. Still, to come out of Auschwitz with only a bite was something other inmates would have prayed for. She stopped herself. It was not other inmates. It was just inmates. She was not an inmate. Others, clearly distinct from her, were there. She was not there. She chided herself for this slip. She was born more than a decade after it was all over. All over for those who died. And all over for those who didn’t die. You couldn’t really live, after you had

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L I L Y B R E T T

been in Auschwitz. Even if you appeared to be living, like others around you, you couldn’t live. Parts of you were gone. And would never return. It was hard to live with missing parts.

Ruth showered and dressed. She felt better. More herself. She had chosen a dark, burnished orange dress. She felt like having some color on her.

She had been dressing almost entirely in black since the day she arrived in Poland. She thought that she might surprise Edek and have eggs for breakfast. She went downstairs. She looked for Edek among the guests already eating their breakfast. The room was quite full. She couldn’t see Edek. She found a table near the buffet. She put her room key on the table and walked to the buffet. They had boiled eggs and scrambled eggs and poached eggs today. This was the first time she had seen poached eggs in Poland. She sat down and waited for Edek. He would probably be here soon, she thought. He was usually punctual for breakfast.

She felt hungry. It was one of the few mornings in Poland that she had felt hungry. She was glad she was hungry. Glad to have her appetite back.

She asked the waiter if it was possible to poach her eggs to order rather than take them from the buffet. He said of course. She told him she would wait for her father before placing her order.

Ten minutes later, Edek still hadn’t arrived. Ruth had been trying not to feel anxious. Now she was worried. Edek was never late for meals.

Auschwitz had probably been too much for him, she thought. And then she had dragged him to a synagogue. Suddenly a full-scale panic took hold of her. Her heart started racing. How could she have just sat here and waited? She should have gone to his room to check up on him the minute he was late.

She ran to the elevator. Dear God, she prayed. Please let my father be all right. The prayer shocked her. Who was she turning into? A person who prayed. She got out of the elevator and ran to Edek’s room. She knocked at the door. There was no answer. She felt ill. Dear God, she said, please don’t let my father die. She knocked again. She looked around to see if there was a cleaning lady nearby. They usually had keys to all the rooms. She could feel her nausea rising. She knew the trip to Poland was a mistake. Edek hadn’t wanted to come. And now look at what had happened.