The Prince of West End Avenue Read online

  "I'm finished with old women," Lipschitz said.

  Hamburger winced.

  " That one. can suck a man dry. I had to insist, she wants to see me, she's got to bring with her a chaperone. Otherwise, give her five minutes, she'd be here in bed with me. A nympho, take my word for it."

  Hamburger was anxious to change the subject ("Is there anything you need, something I can pick up from the library, a book, magazines?"), but Lipschitz was not yet finished.

  "My own mother ran off with a presser from Bayonne. She was sixty-three, can you believe it? They used to call her the Belle of Pitkin Avenue. You can imagine why, so you know I'm not bragging. How d'you think it feels to have for a father a schlemiel? The life she'd led him, I told him he was better off without her. I myself was a laughingstock. 'What can she find in Bayonne,' he said, 'she couldn't find better on Pitkin?' This he said over and over again to whoever would listen to him. He never got over it, the old shmuck, may he rest in peace. So when I tell you, watch out for old women, I know what I'm talking."

  "There've been rumors, Nahum, about your accident," said Hamburger.

  "What rumors?" He looked at us sharply.

  "Some people say you were pushed," I said.

  "What people?"

  "No one in particular. It's in the air. You know how it is around here. Did someone push you?"

  "Maybe yes, maybe no. My lips are sealed. The truth's in here." He tapped his skull. "But this much I'll tell you, between me, you, and the lamppost. Not a word outside this room. This morning the Kommandant came to see me, and with him Rifkind, the shyster: How'm I feeling? I'm looking good. They taking care of me? He tells me he flew in from Jerusalem as soon as he heard the news. For Nahum Lipschitz, nothing but the best. He wanted personally to oversee my treatment.

  "Meanwhile, I notice Rifkind taking some papers out of his briefcase. A formality, nothing to worry. All I had to do was

  sign a couple forms. The Kommandant was already unscrewing his fountain pen. Rifkind points with his finger, here and here. A detail, nothing: only I should sign I don't hold the Kommandant and the Emma Lazarus responsible for what happened." Lipschitz gave a dry chuckle. "Was I born yesterday? First, I told him, get rid of Rifkind, then we can talk. I had him by the balls, and he knew it. So the shyster puts back his papers in the briefcase and goes, a cholera should only catch him. A long story short, what it boils down to is this: on my part, I say nothing more about the accident; on his part, when Tuvye Bialkin dies, I have inside track to the penthouse. No papers, no signatures: a gentlemen's agreement."

  Tuvye Bialkin is our second-oldest resident, a native of Odessa who made a fortune in Canada during Prohibition. The penthouse rooms are the plums of the Emma Lazarus, spacious, magnificent views of the Hudson, kitchenettes en suite.

  "Is Tuvye ill?" Hamburger asked.

  "He should only live to be a hundred and twenty," said Lipschitz piously, "but the Kommandant estimates about a week. Pleurisy, with complications." He licked his lips. "So everyone comes out a winner. You, Korner, you get to be Hamlet. Also the director."

  "That isn't decided yet," I said.

  "Yes, I've already given instructions. The Kommandant knows, also Tosca. But watch out, could be the production's jinxed. First Sinsheimer, then me."

  Jinxed? I almost laughed out loud. What could a Lipschitz know about Purpose? "You'll be up and around yourself in no time," I said.

  "Don't worry, it's yours in any case. You can do it, Korner. A piece of cake." And here he quoted the words that Hamlet, stoic in the face of death, utters to Horatio a little before his fatal duel: "The readiness is all."

  Meanwhile, Lipschitz still held center stage. "To tell you

  the truth, I did think for a while of reworking the play, making a few changes—Elsinore a veterans' hospital near Washington, for example. Then Hamlet could be a young lieutenant in a wheelchair, a World War Two hero, the Battle of the Bulge. And he'd have to find out who murdered his father, General Hamlet, also wounded, also a hero, but years before, maybe in Flanders, and also hospitalized. Ophelia could be a nurse; Claudius, chief medical officer at the hospital, the general's brother, now married to Gertrude, the murdered man's wife, and so on. Not bad, right? It has possibilities. Even burying Ophelia in Arlington: naturally the authorities would complain, and 'but that great command o'ersways the order, she should in ground unsanctified been lodg'd.' But the fact is, I've lost interest. And that you. can blame on Tosca Dawidowicz." He licked his lips. "A Lilith, a succuba."

  Fortunately, at that moment Dr. Comyns came in with Mandy Dattner. "Sorry to break things up, gentlemen, but before we tuck him in for the night, Miss Dattner wants to check the patient's muscle tone." He winked and showed his teeth. "I'm just here to protect her in case it's too good."

  She smiled and raised her left brow. The effect is still devastating, still disorienting. Time and place instantly dissolved. I was thrust back sixty years to Zurich and stood trembling once more beneath Magda's scornful glance. Only Mandy's alarmed cry ("Mr. Korner, you okay?") returned me to the Emma Lazarus. She lurks within me yet, my Magda, like a bacillus in the bloodstream.

  But Lipschitz merely closed his eyes and started picking at his coverlet. "Green fields," he said.

  SlNSHEIMER's Hamlet, I am convinced, should form the basis of my own production. This is not simply a matter of piety. Sinsheimer knew what he was doing. The original text will be

  restored; no more nonsense about Ophelia's burial in Mineola. If Tosca Dawidowicz is unwilling, even in dramatic representation, to be given a Christian burial, then she is free to leave the play. On this point I am adamant, no matter that I sometimes think I see in her the potential for dramatic excellence. There will in any case be a few cast changes. Hamburger is a natural for Horatio, the friend who remains loyal through all tribulations. And Wittkower's suggestion about musical accompaniment is still worth considering. But naturally I wish to put my personal stamp on Hamlet, and in this regard, my experience in different roles can be put to use. I have come to understand, for example, the Ghost's function as a foil for Claudius: "Look here upon this picture, and on this, the counterfeit presentment of two brothers." And I am prepared to give appropriate prominence to the Gravemaker, the philosophical significance of whose part I have unearthed, so to speak. But what of Hamlet himself, who challenges us to pluck out the heart of his mystery? No, I have not abandoned my belief that the Gravemaker does precisely that. But what he and the Prince learn of one another is known only to them. "This is I, Hamlet the Dane"—but what is this "I"? The enigma remains.

  For me, it is a great temptation to conclude that there is no mystery at the heart. Hamlet shows us only a shell, an opaque and dazzling surface. What if within there is a void, a nothing? How hard Hamlet works to mask his inner being! But how can we recognize that inner being if we are denied an outward sign? Why should we not conclude, shown nothing within, that there is nothing there? Still, I recall an image I have already used of myself: a cave in which a bat with a broken wing flaps uselessly about. To succumb to such a reading of the Prince is to remold him, flatteringly—too flatteringly—into oneself, the very reverse of the actor's art.

  Inspiration often comes to us from unexpected sources. The important thing is to be ever on the alert. Thus Lipschitz's

  gratuitous insulting of his parents has shown me the way. Here it is: King Hamlet was a cuckold!

  "So what?" you will say. "That's a given. Everyone knows it." Yes, but it is a given that is largely overlooked in the pursuit of flashier game. The talk is all of Hamlet as Oedipus, of Hamlet vis-a-vis his mother. Thank Freud for that, of course. But what may we confidently assume Hamlet to have wanted of his mother? He had only a perfectly natural filial desire that she be chaste. We are presumptuous to assume anything more. All else is buried deep within his subconscious—the subconscious, let us not forget, of a dramatic construct. We cannot put the Prince on the couch at Berggasse 19; speculation about his Oedipal yearnings
must remain futile, if not misleading. But a Hamlet sickened and, worse yet, embarrassed by his father's cuckoldry, him we can know something about.

  It is the Ghost himself who first tells Hamlet (and us) about "that incestuous, that adulterate beast," his brother Claudius. Incest, yes; about this ugly and unsavory truth Hamlet already knows: in Shakespeare's day the marriage of a widow to her brother-in-law was incest enough. But now adultery as well! There must have been hanky-panky before his father's death! Things were not already bad enough? How this appalling news must devastate Hamlet! The need to avenge his father's murder, the honorable duty that he willingly, even eagerly accepts, must be undermined—how could it not be?—by the dolefully droll fact of his father's cuckoldry. What an exquisitely painful embarrassment! His father's virility called into question, and by his father himself. Like Lipschitz, Hamlet might well ask, "How d'you think it feels to have for a father a schlemiel?"

  The Ghost, too, shows signs of embarrassment. No sooner does he raise the matter of Gertrude's infidelity than he drops it again, redirecting his son's attention to the incestuous marriage. The old king may wear horns, but he sees no need to draw the world's attention to them. He no more wants to punish Ger-

  trude than the elder Lipschitz wanted to punish the Belle of Pitkin Avenue.

  Hamlet himself praises his father as a gentle god, kind and loving—in short, anything but as a sexual being. Contrast this with his view of Claudius, whom he sees as a satyr, a kind of Freddy Blum, ugly, hairy, lustful. But Hamlet is not surprised that woman in her weakness should prefer the giant, untiring phallus to the impotent slumber of the marriage bed. "Alas, poor ghost," says Hamlet—not exactly the encomium a father wants from his son.

  Who would have thought that Lipschitz, in his gross impropriety, should inadvertently give me the key with which I shall unlock the play?

  I was living la vie de boheme, which could only appeal to Magda, the winning of whose heart was still my quest.

  One day not long after my removal to AJtneukirchengasse, Magda appeared at my door. She had never before visited my rooms, either here or earlier, in Oberstolzecke. You can imagine my excitement. She had a request, she said, one she could ask only of someone dear to her, someone she could trust absolutely. She had immediately thought of me.

  Anything, anything. She had only to ask.

  It seemed that she had some papers, family documents, matters of land transfer, estate taxes, that must be conveyed to relatives in Sweden. It was impossible in wartime to trust to the post. Would I be willing to take them for her?

  "But Magda, surely you realize that the very war which makes the post unreliable also makes travel by private persons doubtful, difficult, even dangerous. I might be interned; I might never return."

  "So that's how it is! My hero, the man who hints that he is in the Kaisers service! Well, junger Mann, if you are afraid, there's nothing more to be said."

  "I fear nothing. But surely you see ..."

  She pouted, on her an entrancing expression. " 'Yes, but,' always the but." She dropped onto my bed, crossed her legs, and spread her skirt. "Your famous love of me is circumscribed by a but."

  "Nothing circumscribes my love for you. If I must go to Sweden to prove it, to Sweden I will go."

  How my words made her smile, how she laughed! "Come, Schatzly come to me." She opened her arms, and I sank into them. Our lips met in a prolonged, an exquisite, kiss. She let me explore her tongue with mine, an achingly erotic joy. Soon I sought to initiate those specialized mysteries through which Herr Ephraim's Minnie had been my guide. But Magda stayed my importunate hand, whispering in my

  ear, nipping gently the lobe, "Not now, Schdtzk my impatient hero, not now."

  "Then when?"

  "Soon. Later, this is not the time, Ah, how I want you! But first I must go to get the documents. So we must wait a little longer. For me, too, that's not easy. Ah, no, no." She squirmed from beneath me, got up from the bed, straightened her clothes. "But don't look so sad, poor sweetheart!" She would come again that night and give me the papers; we would dine together, and then . . .

  She was to be mine at last! How bittersweet the agony of our parting! How fervent our kisses, how fervid our words of love! I burned with anticipation.

  In fact, she didn't return. Instead, she disappeared from Zurich. Had she gone to Sweden herself? I was mad with worry, with disappointment, with longing, soon with rage. I pestered the woman who rented a room next to Magda's, above von Laban's dance school. "No, I haven't seen her. Why should I lie? But you know she often goes off like this. Be patient, she'll be back." All that was true enough. I resumed my vigils at the Cabaret Voltaire, haunted the other cafes favored by the Gang of Nihilists, paced the street in front of von Laban's. Ten days passed, fifteen, and then I heard that she was back. A light had been seen in Magda's room.

  Breathless, heart thumping, I knocked on Magda's door. After a moment it opened a little. "Who is it? Oh, it's you. Go away, this isn't a good time." She was a mess. In the dim light at the top of the stairs I could see her forehead beaded with sweat, her cosmetics smeared on her face. A garish kimono was carelessly wrapped around her body.

  "I must talk to you."

  "Not now. Tomorrow."

  She tried to close the door, but I thrust it open and pushed

  past her into the room. "How could you go off like that, without a word, and after what happened between us?"

  "And what happened between you?" Sitting up stark naked on the disorderly bed, a cigarette held fastidiously between his thumb and second finger, its smoke curling up around his damnably handsome face, was Egon Selinger. He was utterly at ease, viewing with enjoyment the rubble that was left of my world.

  "You'd better go," said Magda.

  "Nonsense, Magda," said Selinger, patting the bed beside him. "Let him join us. It could be interesting."

  deliberately toward a vacant chair, one located, ironically, just beneath an early Selinger, an eviscerated purple cat on a green-splotched chrome-yellow background. "Wherever the director sits," announced Hamburger, acting in a kind of choral capacity, "that's the director's chair." The tension, at any rate, was eased.

  Our newest resident, it turned out, was a certain Ger-hardt Kunstler. He had arrived only this afternoon and was still finding his way around. (The ladies in the troupe were glancing at him speculatively.) He had dropped in, he explained, merely to get a sense of our activities, to meet a few new people, to see what sort of nonsense ("no offense intended") we were up to. We should just carry on and pay no attention to him. What he hoped to do was arrange a poker game, but that could wait.

  I called the meeting to order, said a few flattering words about "our little family of thespians," explained that in my view a director should not be confused with a dictator, and then announced the cast changes: Hamburger would play Horatio, Pincus PfafFenheim the Ghost, Salo Wittkower Polo-nius; the Red Dwarf would be promoted to First Gravedigger, and Freddy Blum had agreed to accept the role of Claudius. This last caused some grumbling (Blum, as we know, has his enemies), particularly from Salo Wittkower, who had survived two directors as the villainous king. Still, Wittkower was somewhat mollified when I told him that the use of musical motifs was still under consideration, and, in the event we determined to use them, "Pomp and Circumstance" would be equally appropriate for Polonius and would remain his. Then I turned to my conception of the play, which, I said, differed from Adolphe Sinsheimer's in only a few respects. La Da-widowicz, I could see, was becoming edgy, but she remained silent.

  "I want to tilt the emphasis to bring out the important

  theme of adultery," I began, and as simply as I could, I presented my arguments.

  There was, I am happy to say, general assent, even admiration. For example, Lottie Grabscheidt said, "Wow!"

  "That has real possibilities," said Wittkower generously.

  "There are no possibilities," said Kunstler suddenly.

  Obviously this fellow is a troublema
ker. Watch out, Korner.

  "Tell me, Mr. Kunstler," I said. "Is there some contribution that you might be able to make to our little production? We're always happy to welcome new talent."

  "Funny you should ask." He had not noticed my sarcasm. "Years and years ago I worked the color wheel in summer rep. Boulder, to be exact; that's in Colorado. Three shows I've got to this day word-for-word." He counted them off on his fingers: "Hamlet, Lizzie Borden, and Rose Marie. 'Give me some men who are stout-hearted men.' That's how it went. 'Shoulder to shoulder and bolder and bolder': they loved that bit in Colorado. Well, I was young. I needed money for paints, for a hot dog, for beer. I hadn't had yet my big break, the mural in the mezzanine of the Exchange, downtown Topeka, Fluctuations, 1951. Could be you've seen it. The rest, as they say, is history. But acting, no, that's not my line. If you want, I could paint some scenery for you. Just give me the word."

  "We already have beautiful scenery," said Minnie Helfin-stein, at the moment a Lady-in-Waiting but in the event that Tosca Dawidowicz walks out, a shoo-in for Ophelia. "You should see the set for scene one, Mr. Kunstler. A person could count every brick on the battlements."

  "Representational? That went out with the dinosaurs!" Kunstler laughed so hard he began to cough. "Cigars," he explained. "Don't worry, I can paint over it. What I see is a

  black background interrupted by a few asymmetrical shapes in muted colors."

  "The scenery is not on this evening's agenda," I said. "We can take that up at another time."

  "Mr. Director! Yoo-hoo, Mr. Director!" It was Tosca Da-widowicz, of course, making a great business of gaining my attention, waving her arms aloft in great sweeps, her fatty tissue jiggling. "I have a question, Mr. Director: what you going to do about (yecch!) Christian burial?" Her voice, I need hardly say, dripped acid.

  The moment had arrived, as we had all known it would. Only Kunstler looked puzzled; the rest craned eagerly forward. There was utter silence.