The Prince of West End Avenue Page 3

  The brightest of her siblings, Hermione completed grammar school and afterward found employment in the White-chapel Public Library, a social advancement that awed her family. "I loved books," she confessed, "loved the look of them, the feel of them. There was no appeasing an appetite like mine. I swallowed a whole library." Here she made a self-deprecating gesture, as if to suggest that her gluttony for books explained her current rotundity. "My daughter's the writer of the family, but all my life I've tried my hand—secretly, of course." On that occasion we were sitting in the Emma Lazarus library, and so she was whispering. "Perhaps one day, if you'll let me, I'll show you some of my stuff, awful though it is." I was noncommittal.

  She met Milton Perlmutter, her future husband, in 1944. She was then in her early thirties and "something of a wallflower." He was an officer in the judge advocate general's corps, on special mission in England to represent American servicemen accused of paternity by Englishwomen they had (or had

  not) "knocked up." They sat across from one another at a seder table in Hendon; with each of the four glasses of wine he impiously but romantically toasted her. Later he took her home. "He might have been from another planet. I was swept off my feet: lunch at the Savoy, a the dansantzx. the Dorchester, a blissful weekend in Brighton"—she blushed—"flowers, chocolates, nylon stockings, a bottle of slivovitz for Daddy. I was overwhelmed. He showered me with prewar pleasures I had never known. Not in the East End." By the time she disembarked in New York in 1946, a war bride, she was already six months pregnant.

  "But you've told me next to nothing about yourself," she said accurately.

  "My dear lady, there is next to nothing to tell." "I already know something," she said coyly. I must have looked startled. "You're very shy with the ladies. I like that." After the war, Milton Perlmutter prospered, first in practice alone, later in a successful partnership. "Years ago he represented the Emma Lazarus in a million-dollar suit. It made all the papers. One of the doctors was accused of indelicacy with a female resident, and her family held the home responsible. Totally false, of course. The wretched woman broke down and confessed the truth under Milton's cross-examination. Her family had put her up to it. That was when I first heard about the Emma Lazarus. Who'd have thought then that I'd end up here? Well, of course, ours is not any ordinary home, more of a luxury residential hotel. We're not exactly paupers here." I winced at this, but she merely patted me on the hand, as if to help me past a painful bubble of gas. "You think we have class now? You should have seen the Emma Lazarus in those days. Class isn't the word. No need for bulletproof glass then. The riffraff wouldn't have dared poke a nose through the door. Why, the doorman dressed like a five-star general."

  "Your grandfather might not have been comfortable here," I murmured.

  She seemed not to understand. "He died in England, my granny too, may they rest in peace. Frosch versus the Emma Lazarus was Milton's first big case. He sent me to NYU, bless him, with the proceeds. I majored in English and minored in German literature."

  At that time, we were walking on Broadway. She had invited herself along. I had some errands in the neighborhood. She put her hand on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. "I know something else about you."

  "I'm really a very uninteresting person."

  "You're a poet. I remembered just the other day. I knew the. name was familiar. Then it came to me: the stacks at NYU, your book of poems on the shelf."

  "That was another Otto Korner. With an umlaut. An understandable mistake."

  I could see she didn't believe me.

  "I suppose you could call it a comfortable marriage, no strains, none but the usual." Perlmutter had doted on her. "But it wasn't a perfect union." It had taken her eight years of widowhood to pinpoint the fault: "He lacked a spiritual dimension." For all the refinement of his education, he was too worldly, too much the lawyer, impatient of those immaterial truths with which literature deals. "There was no poetry in his soul, only torts and class reunions." But of course there was their daughter, Lucille, to link them in love—Lucille herself a mature woman now and, since her "sticky" divorce, "something of a spearhead in the women's movement," writing, lecturing, traveling all over the country.

  One day I returned to my room for the siesta hour and, to my horror, found her sitting demurely and plumply on my straight-back chair. Her feet, crossed at the ankles, did not quite reach the floor. She was wearing the navy-blue tunic of the

  English schoolgirl over a severe white blouse. Her hair was tied in a velvet ribbon. She was not in the least flustered.

  "Forgive me," she said, "but the door was unlocked. In my view, you don't really know a person until you know the things he surrounds himself with. Don't you agree?" She touched her chin with her finger and smiled, dimpling. "You look so silly with your mouth open. Do sit down."

  This was an insufferable impertinence! "Madam," I said, "I am still in mourning for my wife. Do me the kindness to leave at once."

  Her round face crumpled, like that of a baby with colic. "Oh, oh, oh," she moaned, "how could you, you beast!" And she ran from my room.

  Riverside Drive, Miss Dattner setting a pace irritatingly faster than I found natural or comfortable.

  "Will you look at that!" she said angrily. The lower wall was adorned with graffiti, variously colored, largely illegible. New since my recent illness was an ill-formed swastika in bright yellow. Piles of garbage in bursting black plastic bags left only a narrow path for the pedestrian. I murmured something about this being New York, promising her that soon she, like the rest of us, would no longer notice.

  "No, that," she said, and pointed: " 'Led Zeppelin sucks'! What kind of crap is that?"

  I said I didn't understand why that particular graffito should offend.

  "They're just the best there is, that's all. The greatest. They blow my mind. Shit."

  We walked on, she in moody silence, I in silent perplexity.

  Riverside Drive has fallen on evil times since my arrival in New York, thirty years ago. Neglect, decay, and vandalism have done their work here too. The grand promenade above the park, itself a victim, is covered now with sooty dust, through which desultory weeds have thrust their way, pushing aside the patterned, half-hidden paving stones. In 1978 litter is ubiquitous—paper, broken glass, empty cans, animal feces. ("A dog too has the right to comment on our civilization"— Hamburger.) Graffiti, graffiti everywhere. Few of the benches retain their slats. On one a derelict was stretched out supine, asleep or dead, his round white belly naked to the sun. Children broke branches from a tree. A man urinated against the wall, the sunlight glinting off his forceful stream. Some old people, out like me with their keepers, sat in the shade or tottered along. Still, through the leafy branches of the trees in the park below, one could catch a glimpse of the majestic river and of the Palisades beyond, so beautiful in the hazy distance—

  as beautiful, no doubt, as the river and Manhattan must appear from the other shore. The breeze was gentle, the sun warm. They lightened Miss Dattner's mood and made possible conversation.

  What little I learned of her in this therapy session was not enchanting. In intellect, in culture, in spirit, she is as far removed from Magda Damrosch as it is possible to be. Miss Dattner doesn't read much, hasn't the time, isn't into it, a couple of novels by Vonnegut, a great fat book called Lord of the Rings, she couldn't remember for the moment by whom. (No, nothing to do with Wagner; it was about elves, and like that.) She likes McKuen, he was cool—deep, y'know? Of what might reasonably be called music she knows nothing at all. Of art, of the theater, nothing. For relaxation she likes the movies, especially the creepy ones: she is a "creep freak." Also she is into discos. She shares a "pad" with two other girls over on the East Side, where they frequent Second Avenue bars. And she likes to work out, mostly at the Y but also in bed. (Here she laughed at her own naughtiness and winked.)

  We had arrived by now at the exit from the parkway. The light was against us. Glancing at her watch, Miss Dattner announced
that it was time to turn back. I must not overdo. In any case, I would not wish to be late for lunch, would 1? We began to retrace our steps. I did not protest. The truth is, I was tired, not so much from the exercise as from sheer boredom. How dull she is! As empty-headed, as solipsistic, as unreflective as all her generation, of which she might serve as the signal example. I longed for a nap. For all her resemblance to Magda, I could find in her inanities no clue to that Purpose for which I had supposed us to have been thrown together. I had almost despaired of her, was ready to embrace the heresy of Coincidence, when she spoke those words that confirmed me in my faith. She had been telling me of her family: her father a

  stockbroker in Cleveland, her mother a musicologist in a local institute, its name unfamiliar to me. She despised what she called their "life-style." They despised hers. There were terrible fights at home. At last she left, heading for Europe. There she traveled for a while, sometimes alone, sometimes with "some guy or other" she had met. Illumination came to her in England, a bolt from the blue. She realized there and then that she might use her body and her gymnastic talent for the benefit of mankind. She had a mission. She had "gotten her act together."

  "Either you become a lawyer or a doctor, or like that, or else you just marry some nice Jewish guy who is a lawyer or a doctor. That's what they think." She meant her parents. "Okay, so I didn't get the greatest grades in school. So what do they do? Get this: they start bringing home these guys from the Community Center—you know, at the temple?—on Friday nights, every Friday a new guy. D'you believe this? Weird! I mean, wee-urd! Little Mandy got the hell out of there. Sheesh! Let me tell you something: I'm no dummy, no matter what they think. I've got a head on my shoulders."

  Poor parents! Perhaps they could take comfort in their daughter's Ph.Th.D., to say nothing of her newly minted romantic alliance with Dr. Comyns.

  But that she should have said to me, "I'm no dummy . . . I've got a head on my shoulders"—those were her very words!—that she should have expressed her anger to me, as if I were somehow to blame (as in a sense I am), who after that would not believe in Purpose?

  Yes, yes, I know how innocent of significance those words must seem—perfectly ordinary words, quite unworthy of note. Be patient, please. Soon enough you will understand their relationship to the historical moment I propose to reveal, the nexus in Time of Magda Damrosch and Dada and me.

  Meanwhile, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds.

  The day became gray. I felt an autumnal chill and shivered. Therapist and convalescent returned to the Emma Lazarus.

  She left me in the lobby, where she had found me, casually, almost callously, certainly abruptly. "Okay, you did fine. You're on your own."

  I was. Indeed, I am.

  "Poliakov," said Lipschitz, "that pick's heavy, it weighs you down."

  "I ain't got no pick."

  "You will have." Lipschitz emitted an elaborate sigh. "Meanwhile, make like you do. Go back and try again."

  We did as we were told. This time the Red Dwarf staggered on stage as if bearing the weight of an elephant on his shoulder. He grinned triumphantly at Lipschitz.

  Lipschitz shook his head in disbelief but gave up. "Nut" he said to me.

  I peered down at my Assistant. "Is she to be buried in Christian burial?"

  "Stop! Stop!" screamed La Dawidowicz.

  Lipschitz struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Oy, nobody told him. You've got the old script, Otto. We've made some changes in the scene."

  "What changes?" said Hamburger, coming out of the wings. "Nobody told me about any changes, either. You're improving on Shakespeare now, mastermind?"

  The cabal had been at work again!

  "It was felt," said Lipschitz, licking his lips, "that all these references to 'Christian burial' might offend some people. After all, many members of our audience are orthodox, not to say fanatic. How does it look? So we thought, what difference we get rid of a few words, make substitutions."

  "Well, what is my line now?"

  "Simple. You say, 'Is she to be buried in Mineola?' This same word you substitute in the other places."

  "Wonderful!" said Hamburger. "Brilliant! Mineola, as everyone knows, is just south of Elsinore."

  "That's what you want me to say? 'Is she to be buried in Mineola?' '

  "Perfect. You got it. A little more emphasis on the she, but otherwise, perfect."

  "I won't do it."

  "That's it, don't knuckle under to the fascists." The Red Dwarf executed a defiant little jig.

  Lipschitz dismissed him with a wave of the hand. "Why not?

  "Because I'd be a laughingstock. They'd hoot me from the stage."

  "Mineola is funny?" said La Dawidowicz.

  "Please, Tosca, let me reason with him." Lipschitz turned back to me. "Okay, let's just say for the sake of argument— mind you, I admit nothing—but for the sake of argument, okay? Okay, it's funny. So what? You remember dear Adolphe, may he rest in peace, what he said: Act five'—these are his own words, I quote—Act five opens in the comic mode.' So people laugh. Good, I say. This was Adolphe's conception of the scene. Otto, I beg you, do it for his sake."

  "I also remember what Sinsheimer had to say about the integrity of the text. For him Shakespeare's words were sacred."

  "Touche!"The Red Dwarf produced another jig.

  "Tosca," said Lipschitz, "I think you'd better tell him."

  And then it came out, the whole shameful business. La Dawidowicz's son and daughter-in-law were coming to the play. The son had married a gentile. Hence her palpitations for the past twenty-five years; hence the tears with which she nightly besprinkled her pillow. God had cursed them with barrenness; they, in turn, had cursed her with a Vietnamese grandchild. "It's me they're giving a Christian burial—me, Ophelia. Not on your life. I wouldn't give that shiksa, that Muriel, the satisfaction. Forget it."

  "In Act three we have Claudius on his knees praying," I said. "Perhaps we should equip him with a tallis and tephillin?"

  "Not such a bad idea," said Lipschitz, scratching his chin musingly. "It has possibilities. Of course, Jews don't kneel."

  "You're mad!" said Hamburger.

  "You, Hamburger," said Lipschitz, "have nothing to say."

  "Oh yes I do," said Hamburger. "I have this to say: I quit this farce. As of now." And he stalked out, after managing a very smart turn on the heel for a man of his age.

  "Otto?" Lipschitz's voice was icy.

  "I shall have to think very seriously about this, very seriously indeed." With as much dignity as I could muster, I followed Hamburger offstage.

  cannot know; on this subject the Bard is silent, no doubt sensibly so. Love, I need hardly say, is a notoriously shapeless term, a slippery abstraction. But even if we limit its meaning to a passionate regard for the well-being of another and a warm responsiveness to that other's offered warmth and evident need, a mutual concern and a shared denial of self, then we must admit that Hamlet was an utter failure, a zero, strictly from hunger. For him, Ophelia and Gertrude had no human reality; they did not palpitate with lively blood. They were instead private symbols for all he despised in this world, vessels into which he could pour all his bile, and he lashed them mercilessly with his acidulous tongue. For both of them death was a benediction. Well, of course, I was not quite so bad. I have loved, if only once (and with bathetic stupidity!) in my life. As for my wives, I was always superficially courteous to them, if not always decently kind. Considering the milieu and the time in which I grew up, it could hardly have been otherwise. But eventually you will be able to decide for yourself the exact degree of my responsibility for their deaths.

  YOU MUST BY NOW have noticed my command of the English language, of which I am not unreasonably proud. I use it with a certain flair, I think, a certain panache that is distinctively my own. It is, of course, very un-English "to blow one's own horn," but as a wag once put it, "what else is a horn for?" The first few years after my arrival here I devoted to perfecting what
was already a very sound ability in the tongue, thanks not only to my English governess, Miss Dalrymple, my years at the Gymnasium, where I was actually more solidly schooled in Greek and Latin, and my visits to England between the wars, but also and most especially to my love of English literature, a lifelong passion.

  Certainly I have an ear for nuance that is often lacking

  even in the native speaker. For example, in the English version of my poem that appears in Silver Poets of Germany, 1870-1914, I would have translated the phrase zerschellte Schddel as "shivered skull," not "shattered skull," trying for a play on words in the adjective, having been denied it in the noun. But perhaps the translator, Wilfred Ormsby-Gore, O.B.E., was not sufficiently sensitive to the original play on Schddel, which of course means "skull," but which suggests to the thoughtful the word Schaden ("loss," "hurt," "wound") or even Schade! ("what a pity!") for both of which Schddel seems a diminutive form. In fact, I wrote to the publishers, Leith & Sons, Ltd., about this, only to discover that Ormsby-Gore had died in the London blitz in 1941, that there had not been much demand for his little book despite their faith in its excellence, and that there was no immediate prospect of a second edition. Nevertheless, they were delighted to hear from me and wished to commend to my kind attention Silver Poets of the Australian Outback, which was still in print and enjoyed a lively, if rather selective, interest.

  law himself appeared, burly, well fed, the true image of life, shouldering his way into the compound, sweating like an ox, equipped with documents, passports, visas, and a box of Her-shey's chocolate bars melting in the Mediterranean sun. I must have looked a sight; he had tears in his eyes.

  What a change had overtaken my brother-in-law in the thirteen years since last I saw him! How he had flourished in America! It was hard to believe. He and Lola had left Germany in 1934, shortly after the New Order relieved him of his position at the university. There he had been a specialist in medieval German literature, not in the first rank, perhaps, but able to produce abstruse monographs on minuscule topics as successfully as the best of them. Suddenly he found himself out on the street. A slight figure at that time, diffident, pale, blinking behind round spectacles, afraid of his shadow, he developed a nervous tic that produced every few minutes a dry, disconcerting grin. He could not grasp what had happened to him. It was far easier for him to deal with Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide than with the modern avatars of German culture. He sat all day in his study staring silently at his books. We could do nothing for him. In desperation Lola wrote to his two brothers, Nathan and Edmond, who twenty years before had emigrated to New York. Their response was heartwarming: "Pack him up at once, him and his books, and get out of there, come to America." If an academic post could not be secured for Kurt, a position in the firm—a partnership, even—would be given him.