Days of Awe, page 3
He doesn’t answer.
* * *
—
Her third visit is different; there is something on the sofa—like a doily, or a napkin covering the little pillow. Is the hair still beneath it? Is it being hidden, kept safe? She lies back and says nothing. She looks at the room, the light through the windows, a lamp, part of a painting, an extra chair, and a table with a plant. She is thinking of her mother moving furniture, of her grandmother trapped in the roses. She stares at the plant—a beautiful white-and-purple orchid—and wonders, did the doctor buy it or receive it as a gift?
“Is it real?” she asks.
“Does it look real?” the doctor answers.
When the session is over, she sits up. The room spins, a kaleidoscope, blurring. She falls back on the sofa.
“Your time is up for today,” the doctor says. But she cannot get up. The doctor seems flummoxed—this has not happened before. He goes to his desk, rummages through the drawer, and finds a tin of hard candy. He offers her one; it is red and the shape of a rose. She sucks the candy and the succor works wonders. She dreams she is walking on water and it is raining rose petals.
Days of Awe
He is the War Correspondent, she is the Transgressive Novelist. They have been flown in for the summit on Genocide(S). She spots him at the airport baggage claim and nods in the direction of a student holding up a legal pad with his name written on it in heavy black marker—misspelled.
“Want to share my ride?” he asks.
Caught off guard, she shakes her head no.
She doesn’t want anyone picking her up, doesn’t want the obligation to entertain the young student/fan/retired teacher/part-time real-estate broker for the forty-five minutes it takes to get where they’re going.
Every time she says yes to these things—conferences, readings, guest lectures—it’s because she hasn’t learned to say no. And she has the misguided fantasy that time away from home will allow her to think, to get something done. She has brought work with her: the short story she can’t crack, the novel she’s supposed to finish, the friend’s book that needs a blurb, last Sunday’s newspaper. . . .
“Nice to see you,” the man at the car-rental place says, even though they’ve never met. He gives her the keys to a car with New Hampshire plates, LIVE FREE OR DIE. She drives north toward the small college town where experts in torture politics and murder, along with neuroscientists, academics, survivors, and a few “special guests,” will convene in what’s become an ongoing attempt to make sense of it all, as though such a thing were possible.
It is September, and despite her having been out of school for decades, the academic calendar still exerts its pull; she’s filled with the desire for new beginnings. It is the season of bounty; the apple trees are heavy with fruit, the wild grass along the highway is high. Wind sweeps through the trees. Everything breathes deeply, nature’s end-of-summer sigh. In a couple of hours, a late-afternoon thunderstorm will sweep through, rinsing the air clean.
* * *
—
The town has climbed out of a depression by branding itself “America’s Hometown.” Flags fly from the lampposts. Signs announce the autumn harvest celebration, a film festival, and a chamber-music series at the Presbyterian church.
She parks behind the conference center and slips in through the employee entrance and down the long hall to a door marked THIS WAY TO LOBBY.
On the wall is a full-length mirror with a handwritten message on the glass: “Check your smile and ask yourself, Am I ready to serve?”
* * *
—
The War Correspondent comes through the hotel’s front door at the same time as she slides in through the unmarked door by the registration desk.
“Funny seeing you here,” he says.
“Is it?”
He stands at the reception desk. The thick curls that he long ago kept short are receding; in compensation they’re longer and more unruly.
He makes her uncomfortable, uncharacteristically shy.
She wonders how he looks so good. She glances down. Her linen blouse is heavily wrinkled, while his shirt is barely creased.
The receptionist hands him an important-looking envelope from FedEx.
She’s given a heavily taped brown box and a copy of the conference schedule.
“What did you get?” she asks as he’s opening the FedEx.
“Galleys of a magazine piece,” he says. “You?”
She shakes the box. “Cracker Jacks?”
He laughs. She glances down at the schedule. “We’re back-to-back at the opening ceremonies.”
“What time is the first event?”
“Twelve-thirty.” She thinks of these things as marathons; pacing is everything. “You’ve got an hour.”
“I was hoping to take a shower,” he says.
“Your room’s not quite ready,” the receptionist tells him.
“Did you fly in from a war zone?” she asks.
“Washington,” he says. “There was a Press Club dinner last night, and I was in Geneva the day before, and before that the war.”
“Quite a slide from there to here,” she says.
“Not really,” he says. “No matter how nice the china, it’s still a rubber chicken.”
The receptionist clicks the keys until she locates a room that’s ready. “I found you a lovely room. You’ll be very happy.” She hands him the key card. “You’re both on the executive floor.”
“Dibs on the cheese cubes,” he says.
She knew him long ago before either of them had become anyone. They were part of a group, fresh out of college, working in publishing, that met regularly at a bar. He was deeply serious, a permanently furrowed brow, and he was married—that was the funny thing, and they all talked about it behind his back. Who was married at twenty-three? No one ever saw the wife—that’s what they called her, the wife. Even now she doesn’t know the woman’s name.
* * *
—
An older man approaches the War Correspondent. “Very big fan,” the man says, resting his hand on the Correspondent’s shoulder. “I have a story for you about a trip my wife and I went on.” He pauses, clears his throat. “We were in Germany and decided to visit the camps. When we got to our hotel, I asked, ‘How do we get there?’ They tell us take a train and then a bus, and when you arrive, there will be someone there to lead you. We go, it’s terrifying; all I can think of as the train goes clackety-clack is that these are the same rails that took my family away. We get to the camp, there’s a café and a bookstore selling postcards—we don’t know what to think. And when we get back to the hotel, the young German girl at the front desk looks at us with a big smile and says, ‘Did you enjoy your visit to Dachau?’ Do we laugh or cry?” The man pauses. “So what do you think?”
The War Correspondent nods. “It’s hard to know, isn’t it?”
“We did both,” the man says. “We laughed, we cried, and we’re never going back.”
The Correspondent catches her eye and smiles. There are delightful creases by his eyes that weren’t there years ago.
She’s annoyed. Why is his smile so quick, so perfect?
As she moves toward the elevator, a conference volunteer catches her arm. “Don’t forget your welcome bag.” The volunteer hands her a canvas tote, laden with genocide swag.
* * *
—
She goes straight to her room, puts the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and locks it. What is his room like? Is it the same size, one window overlooking the parking lot? Or is it bigger? Is it a suite with an ocean view? They’re hundreds of miles from the sea. Is there a hierarchy to Genocide(S) housing?
“Do you ever go off duty?” she hears her therapist’s voice asking.
Not really.
* * *
—
She unpacks the welcome bag: a coffee mug from the local college, a notepad and pen from a famous card company—“When You Can’t Find Words, Let Us Speak for You”—and a huge bar of chocolate from a pharmaceutical company that makes a popular antidepressant. The wrapper reads “Sometimes Getting Happy Should Be Simple.”
She thinks of her therapist. She has the opposite of transference—she never wishes the therapist were her mother or her lover. She thinks of the therapist and is relieved not to be married or related to her. A decision as small as trying to decide where to go for dinner or what to eat would take hours of negotiation and processing. Eventually she would cave in and do whatever she had to to make it stop. She secretly thinks the therapist is a passive-aggressive bully and perhaps should have been a lawyer.
“You wrote an exceptionally strong book illustrating the multigenerational effects of Holocaust trauma. You knew there would be questions.” She hears the therapist’s voice loud and clear in her head.
“It’s a novel. I made it up.”
“You created the characters, but the emotional truths are very real. There are different kinds of knowing.”
Silence.
“You spent years inhabiting the experience on every level—remember when you starved yourself? When you drank tainted water? When you didn’t bathe for thirty days?”
“Yes, but I was not in the Holocaust. I am an impostor—the critics made that quite clear.”
The therapist clucks and shakes her head.
The Novelist wonders, aren’t therapists trained not to cluck?
“Critics aren’t the same as readers, and your readers felt you gave language and illumination to a very difficult aspect of their experience. And you won an international award.” The therapist pauses. “I find it interesting that you have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Undermine yourself.”
“Because I’m better at it than anyone?” She glances up, smiling.
The therapist has the sad face on.
“At least I’m honest,” she says.
Still the sad face.
“Really?” she asks.
“Really,” the therapist says.
* * *
—
She said yes to the Genocide(S) conference after having made a pact with herself to say no to everything, a move toward getting back to work on a new book. She’d spent the better part of a year on book tour, traveling the world giving readings, doing interviews, answering questions that felt like interrogations. It was as if the journalists thought that by asking often enough and in enough languages, eventually something would fall out, some admission, some other story—but in fact there was nothing more. She’d put it all in the book.
In the hotel-room mirror, she takes a look at herself. “Check your smile and ask yourself, Am I ready to serve?”
She blushes. She was thinking about him—the War Correspondent.
Her phone rings.
“Are you there yet?” Lisa asks. “I wanted to make sure you arrived safely.”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Did you get the box?”
“I think so,” she says.
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Well, go ahead.”
She doesn’t open the box, just the note on top: Sorry we fought. Here’s making it up to you. . . .
“But we didn’t fight,” she says.
“I know, but we usually do, and I had to order it ten days in advance,” Lisa says.
“You could have tried a little harder,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Lisa says. “I planned the whole thing weeks ago.”
“I mean you could have at least picked the fight if you knew you’d already sent a makeup gift,” she says.
“I don’t get you,” Lisa says. “I really don’t.”
“I’m joking. You’re taking it way too literally.”
“Now you’re criticizing me?”
“Never mind,” she says. “Thank you. You know I love chocolate.”
“Indeed I do,” Lisa says, not realizing that she hasn’t even opened the box.
She knows Lisa well enough to know exactly what’s in the box. Instead she opens the chocolate bar sponsored by the antidepressant manufacturer and takes a big bite. The thick sound of chocolate being chewed fills air.
“That’s more like it,” Lisa says.
“I have to go,” she says. “I’m just getting to the check-in desk.” She looks at herself in the mirror; can Lisa tell when she’s lying?
“What is going on with you?” Lisa says. “I can’t read you.”
“Ignore me,” she says. “I’m lost in thought.”
“I’ll find you later,” Lisa says, hanging up.
* * *
—
The welcome lunch is served: cold salads like the sisterhood lunch after a bar mitzvah, a trio of scoops, egg salad, tuna salad, potato salad, a roll and butter, coffee or tea.
She is seated at the head table among the academics with university appointments in the fields of trauma and tragedy. The War Correspondent is two seats down.
The man she wants to meet, Otto Hauser, the ephemerologist, is missing. His seat is empty. His plate is marked “vegan.”
“Has anyone seen Otto Hauser?” she asks repeatedly. She has been obsessed with Otto Hauser for years, having read the only two interviews he’s ever given and seen a glimpse of him in a documentary. She heard later that he asked to have himself taken out of the picture.
Finally someone tells her that Otto has been delayed; there was a fire in his warehouse near Munich.
The conference leader, himself the victim of a violent attack that left him with only half a tongue, calls the room to order. It is difficult to understand what he’s saying. She finds herself looking for clues from the deaf interpreter on the far side of the stage.
* * *
—
“This year’s program, From Genocide(S) to Generosity: Toward a New Understanding, brings together diverse communities, including but not limited to Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, the Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, the Holocaust of World War II, the history of colonial genocides, and the early response to the AIDS epidemic. And this weekend we ask the important question: Why? Why do Genocide(S) continue to happen?”
He goes on to thank their sponsors, an airline, two global search engines, an insurance firm, the already mentioned antidepressant manufacturer, and a family-owned ice cream company.
Before turning the microphone over to a fellow board member, he says, “The cash bar in the Broadway Suite will be open until midnight and serving complimentary fresh juices donated by Be My Squeeze, and this year we have a spiritual recharge room for meditation or prayer with the bonus of a free chair massage brought to us by Watch Your Back.”
* * *
—
Following the conference leader’s welcome, the chair of the local English department does the honors, introducing her. The chair’s words are passionate and strange, a simultaneous celebration and denigration of her, both personally and professionally. All in the same breath, the chair mentions the author’s being known for her lusciously thick dark hair, that she won France’s Nyssen Prize for International Literature, and what a shock it was to her that the book had sold so many copies.
The War Correspondent leans across and whispers loudly over heads, “I think she wants to fuck you.”
“I feel like she just did,” she whispers back before standing and taking the microphone briefly. “Thank you, Professor,” she says, intentionally calling the woman “Professor” rather than “Chair.” “You clearly know more about me than I know about myself.”
There is laughter in the house.
The War Correspondent is introduced by the college’s football coach. “When Dirt and Blood Mix is Eric Bitterberg’s very personal story of being on the front lines with his best friend from high school, a U.S. Army sergeant.”
