Not Me Read online

  We emerged into a large, bright room with Ping-Pong tables and shuffleboard on one side, and a visiting area and card tables on the other. There were some chess boards set up, too, but no one was playing.

  My father was on the couch, waving at me. He had a big happy smile on his face.

  “Michael!” he called, “Michael!”

  “He seems so alert,” I said to Nurse Clara.

  “Oh,” she said, “he’s always this way when he’s had visitors.”

  His hair was combed. His goatee was brushed. He was holding a cigar.

  “Who came to see him?” I demanded.

  Nurse Clara waved amiably at my dad. She obviously thought he was cute. “I don’t know,” she said. “The usual.”

  “The usual? Who are these people?”

  “You were asleep,” she said. “They didn’t want to wake you.”

  “But who are they?”

  “How would I know?” she said. “Ask your father.”

  Her answers glowed with reasonableness. And then she heard herself being paged, patted me on the shoulder, and walked away.

  I came up to my father. I had to admit he looked terrific. Not only were his teeth in, but no food particles adhered to his goatee, he had dressed in real clothes, and he was reading the Miami Herald. I couldn’t help feeling terrifically happy just then, as if nothing we had been going through mattered one bit. He looked great. He looked strong. Is this how he looked to Moskovitz? A name, by the way, I tried to blot from my mind. Of all the things I had read in those journals, this making love under the orange trees was perhaps the most troubling.

  “Hey, Mikey!” he said.

  “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

  “Fucking Republicans!” he said. “The rich get richer! Disgusting.” He jabbed at the article he had been reading with his well-trimmed index finger.

  “Yeah, well, you donated to the Republicans, too,” I reminded him.

  “Republican Jews,” he corrected me.

  I could never follow the logic of that, but now was not the time to try. Dad was back!

  “Nurse Clara tells me you had visitors,” I said.

  “Oh yes!” he said. “And I got my nails done.”

  He held out his hand, showing his neatly cut and polished nails. He had always liked to have his nails done—beautifully rounded, glazed in clear polish. Mark of a gentleman, he always said.

  “You got a visit from a manicurist?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “Just friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “What difference does it make? Friends!”

  I looked at him. He was beaming. He had color in his cheeks. His eyes were twinkling. He chomped down on his cigar.

  Everything, everything was on my mind. The journals. The invisible friends. The whole history of our lives. But what could I do?

  “It’s such a beautiful day,” I said. “Would you like to go for a walk when it cools down?”

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  “In the meantime,” I went on, “I could drive you to the mall.”

  “Oh,” he said, “that would be excellent. I could pick up a few things.”

  What he would need to pick up, only God knew. But I was so delighted with his sudden good health I didn’t care. And in a few minutes we were stuffed in the Caddy on our way to Boynton Beach Mall.

  South Florida is Mall Country. Huge ships of commerce floating on landfill, shimmering turquoise and coral like the insides of swimming pools, and equally inviting. Everyone goes to the mall. The only other option in Palm Beach is Worth Avenue, which is way too expensive for anyone on a fixed income, although I knew my parents used to go there, stroll down the avenue and gaze at the windows of Cartier and Chopard, or feel the fine leather at Myers Luggage, or admire the hats at Peter Beaton. My mother would make Dad try on stuff, but he’d never buy anything, though I know for sure he bought her something once at Georgio’s of Palm Beach—a cashmere sweater that she cherished as much as any piece of jewelry she owned. But mostly they went to the mall. And they didn’t feel one bit denied, either. The mall was like a treasure chest for them, a huge, walk-in closet of endless possibility. And they’d always run into friends there, too. Frequently the women would do the actual shopping, while the men would perambulate the long arcades, smoking cigars (before that was outlawed) and arguing condo politics, or divvying up responsibilities for whatever fund-raising drive was on that month. Other times they’d all go walking together, men and women, no one buying much of anything, just passing the time pleasantly, enjoying the air-conditioning.

  But in the car I was trying to put together my picture of the Nazi from Bergen-Belsen with the cigar-smoking landsman strolling the mall and waxing poetic about his last trip to Israel. I found myself gripping the steering wheel, because otherwise I thought I might scream. I glanced down. My knuckles were white.

  “You got a match, maybe?” he asked as we made our way down Congress Avenue.

  I looked over at him. The last thing he needed was to smoke. But I said, “Use the lighter. I think it still works.”

  “Of course it works, it’s a Cadillac!”

  He winked and pushed the lighter in. In a moment he was happily sucking smoke into his lungs, filling the car with its masculine perfume. I admit I liked the smell. How could I not? Every room in our house in New Jersey had been filled with it. Our cars were like traveling ashtrays. His clothes, his skin, his hair, all reeked of cigar.

  “Want one?” he said, pulling a dark stogie from his shirt pocket.

  I don’t know why, but I accepted it, tore the cellophane with my teeth and bit off the tip. He held the red-hot lighter towards me. I was amazed at how steady his hand was, not to mention the look in his eye. Was I dreaming? Had I flown back in time and found him young again?

  I pressed the end of the cigar onto the hot coils and puffed.

  “Turn it,” he instructed me.

  I did as he told me, lighting it evenly.

  “I don’t know, Mikey,” he said after a minute. “I really want to go home.”

  “I know you do,” I said.

  “I don’t want to die there.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We turned into the parking lot, and I drove around looking for a handicapped spot. As usual they were mostly taken, but finally I found one. I helped him out of the car, and then watched as he stood there in the burning sun, staring at the huge pastel edifice as if it were Mount Rushmore.

  “Been a while since you’ve been out,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “When you’re my age,” he replied, flicking his cigar, “it really doesn’t matter where you are.”

  We were passing The Sock Shop when I tossed this one off: “So, you were in Palestine after the war, right?”

  He didn’t answer me right away, and then he said, “Let’s go to the cigar store. It’s down here somewhere.”

  “In ’47 or ’48. Before the State.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “You were there, right?”

  He saw the Mr. Humidor up ahead, and quickened his pace. We were now speeding along just above a crawl.

  “That wasn’t me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re mistaken,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”

  “But I was reading that you were in Palestine.”

  “No,” he said, entering the store, “I wasn’t. That was someone else.”

  I watched him descend upon the rows of cigars like Attila at the gates of Chalon, but unlike Attila, Dad emerged victorious, cradling an armful of dark brown smokes. He would probably die before he could consume even half of them. He laid them on the counter like an offering to the gods.

  “Do you have money?” he said to me.

  I gave the man my Visa card. I asked my father if he really needed so many cigars.

  “When again am I going to come here?” he said.

  “What are you talking about. We c
an come here whenever.”

  “Mikey!” He smiled, grabbing a bunch of my cheek between his fingers. “Don’t kid a kidder.”

  I still had his journal in my jacket pocket. I could have, I should have, taken it out then and confronted him. But the salesman gave me the credit card slip to sign, and I let the moment pass. Anyway I was in a state of shock. The bill came to two hundred and twenty-two dollars and sixty-seven cents.

  CHAPTER 9

  He seemed so happy, sitting there with his bag of cigars. He had told me a couple of times on the drive back that he wanted to go home, so I made the turn onto Lake Worth Avenue and headed over to The Ponds at Lakeshore. It was on the way to the nursing home anyway. I wanted to surprise him. We rounded the golf course and pulled up to Building 3. I angled the Caddy into his assigned spot.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

  I opened his door, helped him out. He stood there, looking around, taking it all in.

  I guided him along the pavement to the entryway, and then helped him into the elevator. It wheezed up the side of the building and deposited us on the third floor, where we made our way along the ramp toward his apartment.

  I knew, of course, that when we went in he’d see all the journals spread out on the floor—and then he’d have to come clean. We’d have to have that conversation. My heart was pounding, but I said nothing, and just watched him shuffle down the gangway.

  Finally we stood at the door. The little buzzer with the number 304 imprinted under it. The little ceramic plaque with the name Rosenheim surrounded by pink roses. On the door frame to the right, the mezuzah, fashioned of green glass (in Israel, of course), waiting to be kissed.

  I gave him the keys.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  He looked at me, suspicion entering his eyes like a dark green light. Suddenly he dropped the keys as if they were befouling his hands.

  “Where are we?” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “But we are home,” I told him.

  “I want to go home!” he cried. “I want to go home! I want to go home!”

  I picked up the keys and put them in my pocket.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go home.”

  Later, when he was asleep back at the nursing home, I took out the journal and, feeling more miserable than ever, forced myself to read.

  From this point on Rosenheim avoided Moskovitz.

  He avoided the scent of her breath. He avoided the sound of her husky laughter. He avoided the sight of her ringlets leaping from the pins that held her hair during work hours. He avoided her shadow at sunset. He avoided the memory of her breast in his hand. He avoided the taste of her collarbone.

  When he sensed her presence, which was almost always, he walked the other way.

  But he always ran into her. Everywhere he was, she was.

  In the first days after the orchard, she was not careful at all, always wanting to walk with him, rub against him, talk to him about anything, chatter of love. She was completely without guile or shame.

  At first, Heshel Rosenheim merely stiffened when she slipped her hand into his. But then began the cross words, the pursed lips, the icy looks. Crestfallen, she moved away. She could have written it off as a bad mood, but when it happened over and over, and then over again, she obviously got the message. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her always staring at him—from across the room, or as he passed her in the milking station, or looking up at him as he sat in the watchtower smoking his cigarettes. He never looked back at her. And each time, the bright hope and anticipation that lit her face faded into confusion and shame.

  More and more he wanted to escape.

  He even thought of turning himself in. In some ways, it would be better than this. At least then he would know who he was.

  Still, at night, he would awake sweating, knowing he had been dreaming of her. It was the sex, he told himself.

  He decided to make contact with some local Arabs, but it was difficult. Hostilities were already breaking out—riots in Jerusalem and attacks in the North. Yet in those days many of the Jews and Arabs were still friends. He could wander off the kibbutz one afternoon and find himself in the little Arab village just to the southeast; he might be invited by the headman to have tea or coffee; he might accept, sit down upon the carpet, and offer in return some sort of aid to them. Money perhaps. Cigarettes. And then he might say he felt as strongly as they did that this land was theirs, not the Jews’. Why should the Arabs have to pay for what happened in Europe? In fact, he would say, he wanted to travel east, to Transjordan, to offer his services to the Arab Legion, and then he would tell them: I am not even a Jew. Yes! he would say to their startled ears, I am a German. A soldier. Your natural ally. Your friend. My knowledge of soldiering can help your cause. Perhaps we might work together…perhaps you might know someone who knows someone…to spirit me out of the country before any of the Jews even notice I’m gone?

  It did not seem a likely plan.

  Still, on a cool November evening he put on his flannel jacket and went out for a walk. The kibbutz was on high alert, and guards were walking the perimeters, their rifles at ready. A Bren gun had been set in the watchtower, on a slight rise, looking down upon the plains of Ashdod. He passed a sentry and waved. It was that Dutch Jew who had somehow survived Mauthausen. Amos, he called himself. Who knows what his real name was. Hans? Cornelius? Nys? He was not much with a gun, Heshel knew, and like all the Dutch, rather flat-footed in his conversation.

  “You making a walk?” the Dutchman said. His Hebrew was not very good either.

  “Yes, just down towards the village.”

  “Oh!” he said. “Not such good idea.”

  “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine,” replied Heshel Rosenheim. “They’re friendly there. Remember how we helped them during the harvest? Nothing to worry about.”

  He knew Amos could barely understand him anyway, so he chatted on, speaking quickly and colloquially, and when the look in the Dutchman’s eye seemed thoroughly befuddled, Heshel cried “Shalom!” and walked down onto the road toward Al Qalil. The sky was clouding over, and he could feel the first bluster of a cold front swinging in from the sea. A wind from Europe, perhaps bringing a storm. He was thinking, what wind brought me here? How could he ever get back? Maybe he should just give himself up, after all. He had heard that German prisoners of war in Egypt were already being released, and were joining the Egyptian army as mercenaries. But he reminded himself he was not an ordinary soldier. He was a war criminal. Not that he had ever actually done anything. What was he, after all, but a bookkeeper? Just like on the kibbutz. He had merely kept things in order. Which is not actually an action. He merely entered items into a book of accounts. That’s all.

  The clouds, white against the black sky, floated in front of the moon. Same as God! he said to himself. He was thinking of the Jewish New Year and their Day of Atonement. He’s just a bookkeeper too! Even though Naor was not a religious kibbutz, they still celebrated the High Holidays, all gathering in the main hall, mouthing their absurd prayers—On Rosh Hashanah it is written, they sang, on Yom Kippur it is sealed! The Book of Life. That’s what they call it. God opens His book of life and death, and in you go, for good or ill. What else is that, but bookkeeping? And no matter what happens, does anyone blame God? Forty million die, and here they are, still praying!

  He could see the lights of the village just down the hill. He was walking now on the dirt path that cut through the mostly open terrain—some sandy desert with patches of scrub, with few outcroppings of rock or trees, but as the road descended toward Al Qalil, a ridge jutted out of the sands to his right, where frequently on clear nights he would come to study the stars.

  He began to practice what he would say when he got to the village. He knew many of the men there by sight, but not by name. He had been there only a few times, and only rarely did the Arabs come up to Naor. It was a firm rule that only kibbutz members did kibbutz work. No hired hands. Y
et there were some on the kibbutz who went down often, who had close, even tender relations with them, and he had tried very casually to glean as much as he could from them—who got along well with the Jews, who resented them, who wanted to live in peace, who did not. He knew he had to be clever in what he said, and to whom. His worst fear was that they would betray him to the Jews.

  As he descended past the ridge, the smell of hearth fires came up to greet him, and the sound of goat bells. It was peaceful and charming, and he had to say there was an irresistible quality to the landscape. Still, he would be glad when he was done with it. He could see a few people moving about in their stone houses, and the first notes of Egyptian music from someone’s radio began to reach his ears. He had some packages of American cigarettes with him which he had managed to get recently on a trip up to Tel Aviv, and he touched his breast pocket to make sure they were secure.

  It was at just that moment that he thought he saw a flash, and felt something smash against him with such crushing force it thrust him down into the sand like a rag doll. Instantly he heard a loud, terrifying noise. He tried to get away but he was unable to move. It was if a boulder had landed on his chest. He was starting to go black when he realized that shooting was going on all around him.

  The attack on Naor was repelled very quickly. It was just a little foray of Arab irregulars, bent on terror. The elders of the little Arab town were horrified and organized a peace mission to the kibbutz. They brought gifts of cheese and milk.

  Heshel Rosenheim was the first and only casualty from either side. He received the contingent of elders in his bed in the kibbutz infirmary. He thanked them. They assured him of their desire to live side by side with their Jewish brothers. When they left, he turned over in bed and found himself weeping.

  Later he drank the milk and ate the cheese. Everyone came to visit him, except Moskovitz. He grew depressed. He seemed to be languishing.

  And it was from his hospital bed, some days later, that he heard all the singing and dancing out on the lawn. The U.N. had voted for partition. The dream of two thousand years had come to pass. Soon there would be a Jewish state.