It was in Toronto in 1977, seven years after I had last seen him, that I learned of my father's murder. When the phone rang I half expected to hear Aunt Rina's voice, inviting me to the Passover Seder. Instead I heard the line crackle and a faint voice said, "Starkman? David Starkman?"
In an instant I knew. "Ken?" I croaked in Hebrew-- yes.
"This is Ya'akov Gelber. I am an attorney in Tel Aviv--"
"My father." I said.
"I am afraid so."
Perspiration broke out on my chin as Mr. Gelber said without preliminaries that my father had died. "You of course have my most profound sympathies," he said in Hebrew, "but there are some-- urgent matters to discuss, else I would not call you on the holiday."
It was only April but the Toronto weather was freakishly hot and my cheap one-room apartment on Spadina Avenue was baking in the heat. My sole white shirt, which I had put on for an evening out with Jenny, was soaking with sweat, as Jenny kept massaging my neck, the back of my head, the veins at my temples. I again had a migraine after last night’s black dreams. It often hit me when evening fell and so we rarely went out. I had hoped tonight would be better; but it wasn’t. Why Jenny was willing to put up with it I didn’t know. As her fingers kept battling the pain, I dabbed at my face with a dish towel and tried to concentrate on Mr. Gelber's voice, which was explaining in my ear how someone had broken into my father’s shoe store the previous night while he was taking inventory, and following the robbery (an unsuccessful attempt, really, since nothing of value was taken), my father was stabbed in the heart with one of his own knives—the one used for cutting soles. “It was probably an Arab robber,” Mr. Gelber said, his voice neutral, “because the body was also mutilated. He never had a chance to use the telephone-- you of course knew he had a telephone in his store."
"No.” I didn’t.
Mr. Gelber began to explain at length how my mother, three years ago-- a mere month before her death -- had made my father install a telephone in the store. "Six months it took her to get to the right people, to speed up installation-- six months! Here he was, Isser Starkman, the hero of the Castel, the slayer of Abu Jalood, alone in the store-- without a telephone, and his heart not strong-- and nobody cares! Can you imagine? Finally Gershonovitz himself intervened. Gershonovitz! It's a shame, a bloody shame, that she had to go to this big shot for such a thing. Two hours she had to wait in his office! Two hours! Abase herself before that scum, may she rest in peace! And she and your father not even living together anymore." Mr. Gelber paused. "But I am sure you know all that."
I didn't. "Inventory." I repeated. A tickling started in my nose and the room rotated in a semi circle around me.
Jenny whispered fiercely that I should lie down and rest, not talk on the phone, but I waved her away and tried to concentrate on Mr. Gelber’s voice which, calmer by now, was speaking with legalistic precision about the funeral, the Kaddish prayer, the reading of the will, and some obscure points regarding National Insurance and a Pension from Germany for loss of schooling. "And there are a few other matters which we have to discuss. Really small, minor matters."
"What matters?"
"Tz,” Mr. Gelber clicked his tongue. “Not over an open phone line."
This was a military expression I hadn't heard for more than ten years.
"Mutilated how?" The tickling in my nose had descended into my throat and I found it difficult to pronounce the Hebrew words.
"Mutilated, nu,” Mr. Gelber snapped. "Like what the Arabs did in '36, in '48, nu. What they did to Rubin, and to all the others."
"To Paltiel? What they did to Paltiel Rubin? In Yaffo?"
"Yes, yes!" Mr. Gelber shouted. "Yes."
He went on, about my uncle Mordechai, or perhaps the police, but the line burst into a fury of crackles and hisses like a tank-radio when a jet swoops low overhead and I couldn't make out a word. I dabbed at my chin, at my throat. The towel was soaking wet.
"So you will come to the funeral?" Mr. Gelber asked. "It must be before Saturday, you understand."
I said I understood and that I of course will come to the funeral. "Tonight. I will leave tonight."
"Call me the moment you land."
I wrote down Mr. Gelber's home phone, repeating his words in halting Hebrew.
Mr. Gelber sensed my unease with the language and switched to English. "The will, it must be filed before the end of the week. This is most important."
Yes, I said numbly in English. I understood. I’ll leave tonight
He spoke further about arrangements for paying the burial society (my uncle Mordechai, the other surviving relative, had said he would pay the two thousand Shekel for the burial and I could pay him half later), where we would sit Shiv'a (probably at my uncle Mordechai's home in Tveriah), and a few other matters which by now have completely escaped my memory. All I remember is rummaging in my pocket for a handkerchief to wipe my face, my cheeks, my eyes. My migraine had coalesced into an almost surreal pain, midway between my skull and nose.
Jenny’s hands stopped in mid movement. "Leave for where?"
I hung up. "My father is dead," I said. Then I sat down and loosened my tie. We were supposed to go to a film festival after supper, before my migraine hit. "I have to go to Israel, to the funeral."
“Oh, I’m so—“ Jenny began, then her face lost all color. “Don’t – don’t let them grab you for the army,” she stammered. “Tell them you no longer live there—“
"I’m leaving tonight," I repeated, "if I can get a seat. It's a thirteen hour flight."
There was a long pause
I said, “I have to.” I massaged my temples, shutting my eyes tight.
Jenny said in a quavering voice. "You want to— make love first, before you go? To relieve the migraine?” It often did, though I didn’t like what it made me feel afterwards, towards Jenny; the dangerous gratitude.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face. When I came out I called Auntie Rina. She wasn't really my aunt, only a cousin of my father; Yitz'chak Kramer, her husband, was another cousin, once removed. I called them Uncle and Aunt because in Canada they were the only family I had.
I told Auntie Rina that my father had just died.
"Who killed him?" she said straight off. "The Arab?" Then she began to sob. Behind her I could hear Uncle Yitz'chak muttering.
"He was stabbed by a burglar," I said. "Right in the store. He was working late."
"He was too young," said Auntie Rina, "for a Starkman. Only seventy one.
His friend, this Paltiel, he could have been what, now? Sixty eight? Oh, God in heaven! Isser!"
Auntie Rina's crying turned into a choking sound.
"What Arab?" I asked.
Uncle Yitz'chak's voice came on the phone. "It's a terrible thing, what just happened, I heard on the other line. I am telling you! Terrible! Did they catch him?"
"I don't know. It was a burglary." I wiped my eyes. I didn't feel anything inside but oily tears kept streaming down my cheeks.
Behind me Jenny had begun to massage my back with her soft, warm hands.
Uncle Yitz'chak said, "You going for the funeral?"
"Yes, maybe tonight."
He said, "You need money? You got money for the ticket?"
"Yes, I think so." I would have to borrow it from Jenny, who had just gotten her paycheck the week before.
There was silence on the line. Then Uncle Yitz'chak said in a low voice, "You leave her behind, you hear? The Shiksa. Don't you cause your father more grief."
What grief? My father was dead.
"Listen to me," said Uncle Yitz'chak. "Listen--"
"No. It's okay, I am going alone."
Uncle Yitz'chak said, "Don't be mad at me, Duvid'l, but sometimes you gotta say something, so --"
"Sure," I said. Jenny had meanwhile begun to massage my shoulder blades. I tried to squirm away, but my body seemed to have developed self-will, as it always had, near her.
Aunt Rina came on the line, her voice breaking. "Give everybody our regards. And tell your uncle Mordechai we are sorry to hear the terrible news. You want to come here maybe for supper before you go?" I had forgotten this was the night of the second Seder. Aunt Rina didn't say whether I could bring Jenny. The last time I had brought her along it was not a success.
"No," I said. "Thank you. I’m flying tonight, I'll eat on the plane. I'll call you when I return."
After I hung up I saw that Jenny had begun to peel off her skirt. "Come," she whispered, "one last time before you go...so you remember...”
“Don’t worry,” I snapped. “I’ll be back in a week.”
I had met Jenny Sowa at a reading at the Harbourfront Authors Festival. She was a thin blonde with dark luminous eyes who had just won the Governor General's prize for a book describing in percussive rhymes the travails of runaway girls in a massage parlor on Yonge Street where she had conducted clandestine research. I had come to hear an old Hebrew poet passing through Toronto read his work in English translation. But that reading was cancelled (the man passed away the night before), and so I stayed to hear whomever was next. It was Jenny. The hall filled with overly made-up young girls who cheered every stanza, but there were also some sullen men in tight pants, probably the parlor owners. Two marched up to the podium and began to berate her, snarling in her face. One raised his hand as if to slap her and it was then I heard her voice, clear and vibrant as in the reading, saying that they’d better be careful, because her boyfriend was watching.
“A whore like you -- boyfriend?” one man snarled. “Where?”
To my astonishment she pointed to me. I had no idea why she chose me; or perhaps I had begun to rise already.
I stood up fully, half in surprise, half not. “Yes,” I said.
And that’s how we met
She was a Polish Canadian Shiksa and my Aunt Rina was aghast when she heard from a friend about us living together.
"Once or twice, nu," she said, rolling her fingers in anguish. "But to live together? Like husband and wife?"
"So?" I said.
"Your grandfather would roll in his grave," she wept. "And a Polack, too!"
What did being Polish have to do with it? "Let him roll! I love her."
I was amazed to hear myself, speaking of love, just like that.
"You know what the Polacks did to your grandfather?" Uncle Yitz'chak asked. "How they helped Hitler? I can give you books, so you can see for yourself. With pictures."
"She was born here," I shouted. "Right here in Canada. In Ottawa."
"A Polack is a Polack," Uncle Yitz'chak said. "Let me tell you--"
But I didn't let him finish. I told him she was talented, and good, that she loved me, and I loved her too-- most of which was true. I also said that if they wanted to see me again, I didn't want to hear one word-- not a single word, against the woman I loved.
What else could I say? That love was the last thing I wanted? That in the place I had run away from, love had to be paid for with killings?
I said a few other things I’ve forgotten by now. Somehow we reconciled; then we had tea, with almond cookies. They rarely mentioned her again.
Jenny was in the literary activism business. She appeared on Cable TV on the community channel, debating Canadian Unity. She led a didactic-poetry workshop in the George Brown Community College. Every now and then she published a book of rhythmic poems which she then read out loud in the University, or at the Harborfront festival, before a crowd of fans who seemed to know her from her days of research.
I don't know why I went to these things. I myself never wrote anything. That is, every now and then I scribbled something very late at night, but in the morning I tore it into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet: detailed nightmares of takedowns I had done-- in some the dead now evaded me; in others they didn’t. I had plenty of these dreams after I had left Israel, almost every night. I didn't want to write them down, but when my defenses were weak, I couldn't resist. After a while it turned into a real problem, because I often had to scribble for more than two hours to get the thing completely out, so I was always late for work and couldn’t keep a job. Finally Uncle Yitz'chak took me in, in his small bakery on College Street. I helped unload the sacks of flour, load the unbaked loaves into the roaring oven, then pull the steaming bread out and range it on the floury shelves. I didn't mind the heat. This was the best part: afterwards I slept like a corpse myself and hardly dreamt at all. But Uncle Yitz’chak couldn’t pay me much, so after seven years in Canada I still had no money. I was really lucky I found Jenny. She had a job; she loved me. She tolerated my migraines, she even helped me fight my compulsion.
The first time she found my scribblings she flew into a crying fit. "This is garbage! Pure garbage! Dead Arabs and killings and nightmares and shit!"
"I know," I said weakly. "That's why I ..."
But before I finished she had begun to tear the pages up. "Don't waste your health on this crap. Take it from me. I am in the business. I know."
I knew that, too; but I couldn't help it. It just kept coming out. Sometimes I wrote ten, twelve pages at night, and then I hid them, in my half-sleep. You would think that in such a tiny apartment there would be no more hiding places; but in the morning, my head splitting, I sometimes wasted a whole hour trying to find that one last page.
Why I did it I don't know. It was one of those crazy compulsions, like biting on your nails, or scraping the paint off the wall and eating it. But Jenny was really good about it. Together we hunted-- on all fours, sometimes. When we found the last rogue page under the entrance mat, inside the lamp shade, wherever, she would take my head between her hands and tell me not to worry. One day I'll forget all about the horrible place I had come from. "I can't wait," she told me.
I couldn’t either; but now, this.
While Jenny took her turn in the bathroom I called El Al, put my name on the standby list (all flights were full), dressed (my frayed jeans for the plane and a sweater, in case it got cold: after seven years in Canada I still had not gotten used to the cold weather), threw some underwear and my shaving kit into my old army backpack, and left Jenny crying at the door, her hair framed by milky light.
I was in luck: a seat was available. I boarded the plane, sank into a place by the window, and promptly fell asleep.
I have no recollection of the first part of the flight, except for a thick residue of black dreams-- the kind I used to have every night until Jenny’s ministrations kept them at half-bay; but now they were back in force. I woke up ten hours later, gasping for air, and dimly saw a trio of black-coated Jews praying at the bulkhead, swaying with their eyes closed; then I fell back into a profound slumber. But as my eyes began to close I suddenly had the strangest sensation-- I could smell my father's sweat as if he was sitting beside me, the sour smell of a cobbler, mixed with acetone glue and dyed calf-leather. I turned violently in my seat and buried my face in the cushion, and the sensation passed; then, just before I slid back into a black sleep, for no reason at all I remembered I had forgotten to ask Mr. Gelber if the robber had already been caught.
