End of the Jews Page 18

From the look on his face, you’d think Nina had asked him to donate a kidney. Marcus brings his napkin to his lips. The gesture buys him only a moment, but it is enough time for Nina to begin to loathe herself, and to start to understand what it means to be the pursuer.

  “I think maybe you ought to get some rest,” he says.

  “After.” Nina rises; this is not a conversation to hold over dirty plates. She arrays herself before him, takes a deep, courage-summoning breath she hopes is invisible, crosses her arms in front of her, and grasps the bottom of her shirt. In one slow, continuous motion, she pulls it up over her head. The bruise-colored garment slinks to the floor, and Nina is standing in her bra.

  “I want to lose my virginity to you.” She slips one strap down off her shoulder as she says it, then reaches slowly for the other. She wonders if he’s hard, and glances deliberately down at his crotch. Yes.

  Nina runs her fingers along the blade of her shoulder—shuddery with nerves, but not so much so that she isn’t savoring this moment. It is nothing short of life-affirming to give in to sexiness, to occupy these tropes she’s always shied away from, to know that she, Nina Pigfoot Jenkins-Hricek, is the woman in this room, the woman showing herself to this handsome man, watching him watch her. The woman sliding off her bra and feeling the caress of the warm air, charged with lust. The woman approaching him now, bold, unmindful of consequence.

  He starts to stand, to meet her, but she straddles his lap before he can, thrusts her breasts into his face. She wants him to kiss them before he kisses her; it will render turning back impossible somehow. He takes one in his mouth, traces a circle around her nipple with his tongue, and Nina sucks in a sharp shock of breath, already learning things about herself, her body’s cravings. She cups his face, lifts it to hers, and kisses him as hard as she knows how, wrapping one arm around his neck and reaching to fumble at his belt buckle with the other.

  Marcus chases down her hand, traps her fingers with his own, pulls back and looks her in the eyes. “Let’s do this right,” he whispers. “There’s no rush. Right?” Nina nods, flushed. He touches her lightly on the back of the neck, bends forward, shuts his eyes. The kiss is elegant and slow this time, under Marcus’s stewardship, barely related to the lip-mashing, tongue-down-the-throat fervor that was Nina’s attempt at communicating passion. She resolves to let herself be taught.

  Forty minutes later, the lesson has ended, and Nina lies beneath cool, fresh white hotel sheets, pressed tightly to Marcus, head resting on his chest, mind racing. Even without a point of reference, Nina cannot help thinking that he is a wonderful lover: gentle in all the right ways and moments, worshipful and tender and yet burning. She runs her hand over the damp curlicues plaiting Marcus’s chest, unable to believe how close she feels to him—her best friend, mentor, and lover—and how unexpectedly…spiritual an experience can be that’s literally the opposite, the quintessence of physicality and instinct and biological imperative. Among the many things she feels right now, most of them warm and languid and expansive—plus a few, such as the fact that Marcus is as married as he’s ever been, or the fact that the moment he stopped acting like a suitor and started acting like a father is the moment she chose to make love to him, that are too fraught to venture anywhere near—is a stunning, abject foolishness for not understanding all this years ago. Marcus tried to tell her, show her, lift the two of them to the next level, and she rejected it, and him, time and again. There’s more to it, obviously; this analysis might not stand up to sober reasoning, but at the moment it feels very real. It feels as if she’s found what she’s been looking for.

  That night, when the second set begins, Nina slips out of Yoshi’s and buys a phone card at the liquor store up the block. She’s dressed for work, for a room insulated by the warmth of two hundred bodies, and she has to walk with her arms crossed over her chest to keep from shivering as she scours the empty blocks for a pay phone. The conversation she’s about to have will be difficult enough without a backdrop of coitally twisted bedclothes.

  Nina punches a long succession of metallic buttons, then checks her watch and adds nine hours. It is 7:30 the next morning in Prague. Her mother will be making breakfast before dashing off to class. Good. Rayna will have work to distract her from thinking about Miklos. As always.

  Three rings, and then “Hello?” A man’s voice, deep and pleasant. Shit. Half her phone card wasted on a wrong number.

  “I’m sorry, I must have misdialed. I’m looking for Rayna Hricek.”

  “Who may I tell her is calling, please?”

  Really, this is fantastic: a man in Rayna’s house at 7:30 in the morning, comfortable enough to answer her phone. Every time Nina calls her mother—and she’s only marginally better about calling than writing—she winds up delivering a pep talk, telling Rayna to get out there and meet someone. Sometimes, Nina manages to do it jokingly, as when Rayna reports on the legions of young American ex-pats now swarming over the city, opening bagel shops and sports bars and deciding with a communal mind that they will descend upon a particular café and render it uninhabitable by locals, and Nina responds that her mother should snatch up a cute one and school him in the arts of European living. Other times, it is in earnest, Rayna sounding close to tears and Nina trying to balance sympathy with relentlessness, build Rayna’s confidence and at the same time take advantage of her mother’s pliability to give a direct order: Next time a man asks you to dinner, Mother, just say yes!

  Nonetheless, hostility is Nina’s gut reaction to this voice. “Her daughter. Who is this?”

  “Nina! It’s me, Vasek. Good to hear your voice, child!”

  “Vasek?” she says like a half-wit, unable to process the notion that her father’s friend, her former boss and booster, is on the other end of the line. “How—What are you doing there? Is everything all right?”

  The silence stretches past the two seconds it takes her words to travel five thousand miles, and answers Nina’s question. She can see him standing in her mother’s bedroom with one hand on his hip, puzzling together a reply, a towel wrapped around his waist and his stout belly falling over it.

  “Your mother and I have…found each other. Perhaps I’d better give the phone to her. One second. A big hug, Nina.”

  “Big hug,” she hears herself repeat. Then Rayna is on the line.

  “Nina! Happy birthday, sweetheart. I would have called, but I didn’t know where to reach you. We drank a toast to you last night, Vasek and I.”

  “You and Vasek, huh? That’s…that’s great, Mom. Quite a surprise.”

  “Isn’t it? I can’t believe it myself,” Rayna says with an uncharacteristic little giggle that crackles over the line. Nina smiles.

  “I did just what you told me to,” her mother goes on. “I said yes to the first man who asked me out to dinner.” In the background, Nina hears a laugh. “And it was Vasek. I only had to sit in his café every day for a week before it occurred to him.

  “I’ve always thought him very handsome, you know,” Rayna says, and Nina realizes she is a tertiary member of this conversation, that Rayna is looking at her lover as she speaks into the phone. “Even when he was aiding and abetting in your delinquency.” Behind Rayna’s voice, another laugh.

  “This must be brand-new. You didn’t say anything in your last letter.”

  “It had barely started when I wrote it. Perhaps a week before. So no, I thought I’d better keep it under my hat. In case he jilted me for some silly young thing. But Nina, I am very happy. He’s going to move in.”

  “That’s wonderful, Mom.”

  “I’m glad you approve. I wasn’t sure you would. I don’t know why. And how about you? Are you having a happy birthday? Tell Devon I love his new album, by the way. Thank him for sending it.”

  “Listen, Mom, I have to tell you something. It’s about Dad.”

  “Hold on.” Her mother asks Vasek to put on water for coffee, slice some bread and cheese. When Rayna returns to the phone, her voice is muted, dark.


  “You’ve seen him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. So? No, forget it, I don’t want to know.” A pause. “Is he all right? What in God’s name is he doing?”

  “He’s okay. He’s a librarian. Super-skinny. I couldn’t really stand to be around him, to be honest. I couldn’t stand how sad he is. Nothing has really worked out for him, Mom. But he’s…okay.”

  She stops, unsure whether to mention Miklos’s girlfriend. Nina is inclined against it, but the portrait of her father’s life will be too bleak without her. “He’s met someone. A Czech woman. She seems to look after him. He was drinking, and she made him stop.”

  “I see.”

  Nina waits, but her mother offers nothing more.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “It was never fair of me to make you promise. I just wanted to protect you, Nina. And now he’s hurt you again.”

  “Not really. I was glad to see him. It’s better than not knowing. And Mom, he didn’t inform on us. There’s no way.”

  “Of course he didn’t. I know that. Of course.”

  “Good.”

  “I realize you didn’t have to tell me that you saw him. Thank you.”

  “You’re handling it better than I expected.”

  “Well, it’s been years and years. At some point, we have to move on, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s not coming back here, is he? He could, I suppose. There’s no more danger. Not here, I mean, but to Prague. If he’s doing so badly, perhaps he should come home. A librarian, you say? He must be miserable. Here, he could at least teach, if he’s still able.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  “Not that I ever want to see him again. He’s still a bastard, even if he’s miserable.”

  “I’m almost out of time, Mom. I’m calling from work.”

  “When will you come and visit, Nina? Soon? The museum is opening in May.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. If I can.”

  “Happy birthday, dear. I’m sending kisses.”

  “Thanks. I love you. Bye.”

  “I love you, too. Be safe. Good-bye.”

  Nina hangs up, recrosses her arms, and walks back toward the club.

  Well, good, she thinks. We’re all moving on.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Amalia leans over her daughter’s crib, slides her arms beneath the sleeping child, and starts to lift her, then changes her mind. Better to let Linda nap until the sounds of typing across the hall abate and the trip is officially under way. She’s bound to wake up the moment they start the car, and at this time of day that means uninterrupted caterwauling for the whole three-hour trip from New Haven to Cambridge—especially since Amalia can’t breast-feed her and drive at the same time, and Tristan, after six years in Connecticut and eight months as a father, can’t yet handle a car or comfort a baby.

  The calming regularity of a noontime nap is the only tenet of her mother’s child-rearing philosophy to which Amalia has adhered. Linda will be raised by her parents, not a procession of nannies hired because their native tongues correspond to the latest culinary trends. Maternal caprice and passing fancy will not determine the course of her education. Unlike Amalia, she will never awaken and find her entire schedule remade: tennis swapped for horseback riding, German supplanted by French, piano lessons replaced by a pair of long-eared rabbits intended to teach her responsibility.

  Tristan’s study door clicks open, and Amalia straightens and turns, one shushing finger to her lips to remind him of the obvious. He nods, crosses the hall in four long strides, peers down his nose into the crib with the air of a patrolling watchman confirming that all’s well. A moment passes, and Tristan extends a hand—haltingly, as if his daughter is an unknown dog equally likely to sniff and wag or growl and lunge. He strokes the baby’s cheek with a finger.

  “Kiss her,” Amalia whispers, smiling.

  Tristan replies with a look that yanks her back ten years, to 1943 and their first months of marriage, when they were still sharing his two-room New York apartment and Tristan was hoarding royalty checks until he felt he had enough money to match her contribution to the purchase of a house, this house: one big enough for both of them to write in. His desk was in the bedroom then, and this is the look Tristan used to turn and give her when she told him, Honey, come to bed. It is simultaneously apologetic and indignant—a forlorn plea for her to understand that he cannot comply although he knows he should, cut with resentment toward her for asking and toward himself for being who he is. It is a mute, searching, almost canine look, lengthy enough for Amalia to realize anew that challenges only strengthen her husband’s rigidity. It was built on them. He knows it, and he’s asking her not to make things worse.

  The look dissolves, so fast Amalia wonders if she imagined it this time. Tristan bends forward and kisses his daughter just below the ear. Sometimes he came to bed, too. Even when he didn’t, it upset him more than it did Amalia; she’d wind up reassuring him that it was all right, that she understood. For longer than it would have taken them to make love in the first place, sometimes. It’s funny now, almost.

  “We should go,” she whispers. “Can you take the suitcase? It’s by the bed.”

  “You packed for me, too?”

  “Of course. Here.” She hands over the diaper bag, lifts Linda onto her shoulder. “I’m hoping she’ll keep sleeping.”

  Miraculously, Linda does. Sporadic, introverted gurgles rise from the backseat as they cut across the maple-shaded neighborhood, but in ten minutes’ time, the baby is dozing soundly and the car is quiet.

  “You had a good morning, didn’t you?” Amalia says, reaching into her purse for a cigarette. The whole atmosphere of the house changes when they’re both writing and writing well—and particularly when one of them is coming out of a bad spell, or beginning a project. Then, it’s practically electric.

  Tristan looks up from the jagged sheaves of paper strewn over his lap, tilted against his chest. He gets carsick when he reads, but he reads anyway.

  “The classroom scene is no longer kicking my ass. I finally got the voice down. I’m taking it from the teacher’s perspective.”

  “Didn’t I suggest that two nights ago at dinner? And you shook your head at me and said, ‘No, no, that’s impossible’?”

  Tristan lays his hand on her thigh. He rubs back and forth, gives her a squeeze, withdraws. “Thank you. I may even be kicking its ass now.”

  “So much violence going on in that study of yours. It’s a wonder it’s not louder.”

  He stares at a smattering of dairy cows, scattered idly over a meadow, with a city kid’s interest. “What’s violent is these talks. You’ll see what I mean. Even Christ was crucified only once.”

  “To name another controversial Jew. So why do them?”

  He shrugs. “They want me to come. They pay me. How can I refuse?”

  “Just say no. We don’t need the money.” Amalia scrutinizes the road, memorizes the next hundred yards, then chances a quick glance at her husband, hoping her declaration has not soured him. Tristan doesn’t like to be reminded of his security. “You’re funny. You won’t take a day off to relax, but you’ll miss two to drive to another state and have the same fight you’ve been having for two years. What do you think will happen if you say no?”

  “They’ll stop calling.”

  “I doubt it. But what if they did?”

  “I don’t know. How would it look if I refused to account for myself?”

  “Busy. Above the fray.”

  “I’d feel like a coward.”

  “Life is not a battle, sweetheart. Not unless you make it one. It’s an adventure.”

  “Tell that to Darwin.”

  Amalia lifts herself off the seat for a better angle and flicks her eyes at Linda in the rearview mirror. She’s beginning to stir. “You’ve already passed your genes down. Darwin’s done with you. Now stop being such a curmu
dgeon. You’re lecturing at Harvard, Tristan. I’ve published books, too. Nobody’s asked me to lecture at Harvard. Where’s the joy?”

  “It’s just Peter showing off. Probably bucking for tenure already.”

  “Tristan.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where’s the joy?”

  Linda screams.

  The lecture hall is cool and dark, like the inside of a cave. Eighty Harvard men and thirty Radcliffe women half-fill the room. “Good turnout for a Tuesday night,” Pendergast assures Tristan. The two of them stand onstage, indulging in various preshow conceits: that the audience does not exist, that their own outsized glad-handing, the thrown-back laughing heads and backslapping, are not demonstrative but pseudoprivate, glimpses at the thrilling lives of whatever the hell they are supposed to be.

  Tristan’s eyes fall to the empty front-row seats, cushioned and burgundy and probably more comfortable than the hard wooden one sitting onstage before a battered table supporting a microphone, a pitcher of water, a glass bearing the school insignia. He’s supposed to sit there during Peter’s introduction, then cross the stage and give his talk from behind a small and equally shopworn podium. The gig is scheduled to begin now, at 7:00, but Pendergast insists that they hold off. Of the thirty-five undergraduates enrolled in his two seminars, he counts only twenty-three present, and refuses to believe the rest of them are not sprinting heroically through Harvard Yard right now, mortified at the myriad personal crises that have delayed them.

  At 7:15, with twenty-five Pendergastians accounted for, Peter kicks things off. Tristan zones out, absents himself in mind and spirit not just from Peter’s opening remarks but also from his own twenty-minute reading. He’d planned to debut a section from his book-in-progress, as a means of engaging himself and culling some reactions, seeing if real people—well, Harvard kids—would laugh in the places they’re supposed to. Somewhere en route, he chickened out, decided the new stuff wasn’t ready and also that as long as he was in for another evening of defending and explaining Manacles—his most recent novel, the saga of a Jewish slave ship’s voyage to America, published in 1951 to a cacophonous, knee-jerk chorus of antipathy and disbelief—then he might as well give them a piece of it.