The Kiss of the Prison Dancer Read online

  “Watch out!” Clara shouted. Max maneuvered the boat around in time to avoid grounding on the island.

  Later, standing in front of Clara’s house, the late afternoon wind embracing them and dark clouds sailing the sky, she asked him in to dinner. “I should ask you out to dinner,” Max said gallantly. “Another time,” Clara said. In front of her door she said, “I only have liver,” and Max said, “I love liver.”

  Arnold was on the couch reading when they came in. He kissed his mother and shook hands with Max. When Clara went to the kitchen to start dinner, Max, who could think of nothing to say to the intense adolescent across the room said, “Go ahead and read. Don’t let me interrupt.” Watching him bent over his book, Max wondered if Arnold went out with girls. “What are you reading?” he asked. The boy looked up. “I’m studying French,” he said. “For college.”

  “If you were studying German I might be able to help. Why are you taking French?”

  “We had to take either French or German so I took French because I don’t like Germany.”

  Max laughed and Arnold immediately turned back to his book. “I’m sorry,” Max said. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  The boy kept reading, whispering his French pronunciations.

  “I mean it,” Max said. “I was laughing at myself. We used to do the same thing.”

  Arnold looked up. “What same thing?”

  “Not speak German because we hated the people who spoke it. Even my wife used to say to me, ‘Speak Yiddish,’ and we all went around pretending we didn’t understand German when it was really Germans we didn’t understand.”

  Arnold stared at Max. “Who wants to understand them?”

  “Everyone should,” Max said, speaking quickly now to keep up with his ideas. “If you understand them then you can’t hate them.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Arnold said, closing his book and standing up. “I want to hate them. Should we love them for what they did?”

  Max could feel the door of his mind opening again, his thoughts sailing in the fresh breeze of argument. “Because I understand someone doesn’t mean I have to love him. I can dislike him, I can even find him obnoxious. And I can certainly disagree with him. In fact, how can I disagree with someone I do not understand?”

  “So then what do you do?”

  “If I consider his ideas wrong then I can argue. If I think he is dangerous then I can even fight him. But if I hate him, then I can’t win.”

  Arnold threw his arms in the air and slapped them against his side. “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Because if I hate him I will not be content to beat him, I will want to destroy him. And if I succeed I will have committed a wrong as great or greater than any I could possibly oppose.”

  It was like the old days in the cafés. While Arnold thought about what Max said, Max remembered what it was like in the time when he was going to be a professor and he sat with his friends in the coffee houses and beer gardens arguing morality and politics, in the time when they were all going to be professors.

  Arnold looked at him narrowly. “Did you understand the Germans?”

  “No, I didn’t. I only hated them and so I could not fight them. Knowing I could not destroy them, I pretended it was not my struggle, until in the end they almost destroyed me.”

  Arnold looked at his feet. After a minute he sat down and opened his book. “I’ll probably have to take German in college anyway.”

  Max had been out to Berkeley a few times and walked around the campus. Yes, he thought, I will go back to the university. He wanted to ask Arnold about college, but the boy was studying again and Max did not want to interrupt. He looked around the room. How long does it take to cook liver, he wondered, but just then Clara called them in and there was vegetable soup too. It was thick and fragrant. “You made this just now?” Max asked.

  “It’s from a can, but I fixed it up a little,” Clara said, urging everyone to eat.

  Max had the feeling that Arnold was watching him out of the corner of his eye. He wondered what sort of impression he had made on him. “French he studies,” Max said.

  “What’s wrong with French?” Clara asked.

  “You can’t read Schiller in French.”

  Arnold and his mother stared at each other while Max went on eating. “That’s good,” Max said, wiping the last drop of soup from his mouth. Perhaps, he thought, Arnold will say something about their conversation himself. But Arnold said nothing for the rest of the meal and afterwards he excused himself and went into his room to read.

  “I wonder what your son thinks of me,” Max said while he and Clara did the dishes.

  “He’s a little jealous,” Clara said. “Maybe a little afraid too. He was very close to his father.”

  “So were you,” Max said. He was immediately sorry he said it, but Clara did not let him apologize.

  “How did your husband die, if I may ask?”

  “A heart attack. Out there on the stairs. He wasn’t sick a day and then just like that he was gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my business.”

  “No, I’m glad you asked.” Clara handed Max the last wet dish. When it was dry she went into the living room. Max followed. He knew she was going to say something that was difficult for her to say and he considered leaving and sparing her the embarrassment, but she began before he could say anything.

  “You know,” she said, “after you left the other night I was thinking what Jack, my husband, would think if I went out with another man. I wondered if it was like cheating on him. You understand. But Jack, may he rest in peace, was never a selfish man. He was always sorry we only had one child because he loved children and he used to say, ‘You can’t get too much of a good thing.’ No, the man I loved wouldn’t want me to be alone and unhappy, I’m convinced. I’m just telling so you’ll understand, but if you don’t want to come any more, then it will be my turn to understand. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Max was glad he stayed. He went over to her chair and took her hands in his. “Clara,” he said. And then all he could think of to say was, “Will you have dinner with me next week?”

  “That would be very nice,” she said. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

  They talked until it was dark and then Clara said she was tired. Max said he would go. “Friday night?” he said. She said that would be fine. “Perhaps we can go to the movies too,” he said.

  At a knock on the bedroom door, Arnold came out to say goodnight. Max held out his hand, but the boy only nodded and went back to his room so Max took Clara’s hand instead and held it all the way to the door.

  When he got home, Max saw the button lying on the sheet of stationery on the table and he sat down to write to the police. The words would still not come to him and instead of writing he tried to imagine what it would be like when the police received his anonymous letter. He saw policemen stopping boys on the street, Harold’s picture in the post office. Suddenly he slapped himself on the head. Dummkopf! You’re the only witness. How can you be anonymous? Of course, he thought, getting up and pacing about the room, what’s the use of turning the boy in if I’m not willing to testify. And if I’m willing to testify what’s the point of writing anonymous letters?

  He seized the button and wrenched open the window and stood there, his arm raised like an athlete’s, bending to it, urging his arm forward. But the button weighed a hundred pounds in his hand and his arm would not go forward. Finally, he put it back in the drawer with his socks. He wished he had never seen Golden Gate Park, but he remembered the afternoon there with Clara and his eyes filled with tears.

  15

  If he were going to turn the boy in, it were best done quickly, Max decided. The telephone seemed the proper instrument. He could call the police and tell them what he knew and then if they wanted him to come down, he would already have committed himself. But each time he approached a telephone he saw the boy down
on his knees or felt still his thin hands clasping his arm and heard his unripe voice crying, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, until it was Friday and Holtz was back in the paper. A jury had been impaneled; his trial was about to begin. Reading the story, it occurred to Max that if Holtz were found innocent, there would be no need to turn the boy in. And having waited this long, it was certainly worth waiting another week. That decision made, Max turned to the entertainment section. The Actors’ Workshop was doing Coriolanus and Max immediately called to make reservations. When he lived downtown he went to the theater two or three times, but he could never imagine himself seeing a play or a movie without Sarah next to him in the dark. Finally he stopped going, afraid he would grab the hand of the stranger next to him. Besides, he told himself, a play without someone to discuss it with afterwards was like a dinner without a dessert. There was no answer at the box office and hanging up the phone, Max wondered if Clara liked Shakespeare. Of course she does, he told himself.

  He made the reservations during his lunch hour and then he spent the rest of the afternoon watching the clock. A few minutes before five he straightened his tie and brushed the lapels of his blue suit. “A girlfriend?” Shmuel asked, sniffing the air. Max pretended he didn’t hear.

  He took her to a French restaurant he had heard Dr. Resnick talk about. “It’s too fancy,” Clara said as Max urged her in, wishing he had taken her instead to the Jewish restaurant he was more familiar with, or the Russian restaurant out on Geary. Clara surrendered her coat to the girl in the checkroom and then they followed the headwaiter to a booth where they sank into plush leather seats and found themselves squinting through candlelight at long, unwieldy menus while another waiter appeared like a private secretary, pad and pencil poised as if for dictation.

  “We should have brought Arnold to read the menu,” Clara said, whispering so the waiter would not write it down.

  “Arnold?” And then Max remembered that Arnold was studying French and he laughed softly. He described as many of the dishes as he could, remembering that the last time he had been in a French restaurant it was with Sarah in Berlin and the restaurant was owned by a German who had been captured at Verdun. Clara said she would like coq au vin and Max chose the Saumon aux Herbes en Papiotte. When the waiter asked what they would like to drink, Max ordered champagne, but Clara refused and they settled for a Burgundy suggested by the waiter.

  They waited quietly for the food to come. Finally, Clara said, “I forgot to tell you, they called me for an interview at the public library. I applied months ago.”

  The waiter put the soup before them.

  “Wonderful,” Max said.

  “The soup or the library?”

  “Both. When is the interview?”

  “Monday.”

  They talked about the library until the wine steward came and poured some wine into Max’s glass and waited for him to taste it. Max took a sip. “Good,” he said. “Good.” The steward filled both their glasses.

  “A toast,” Max suggested, holding up his glass.

  Clara touched her glass to his and looked around. “What shall we toast?”

  “To-” What he wanted to say would not come out.

  “To Shakespeare,” he said instead.

  After the waiter brought the entree Max said, “You know, Clara, I’ve been thinking about your father.”

  “My father?” Clara said, holding a forkful of green beans half way to her mouth.

  “About him going to college when he was seventy-two. I was thinking maybe I could go back and finish.”

  “That’s wonderful, Max.” She put her fork down and leaned closer to him.

  “Of course, I might have to start all over. I don’t know. But I was wondering if it’s too late for me to become a teacher.”

  “It isn’t, Max. I know it isn’t.”

  “You really think so? I’m going to look into it. Maybe I can start with a night course.”

  “You’re wonderful, Max.”

  He bowed his head a little and then resumed eating. After a moment, he could hear Clara eating again too.

  “Not bad,” Max said later, as the busboy cleared the dishes away.

  “Not bad?” Clara gasped. “To make chicken like that you have to be a genius.”

  “Then you’re a genius,” Max said. Even by candlelight he could see that she was blushing.

  People were leaving on every side and the busboys worked faster, but the waiter did not come with their dessert. Max finished the wine and glanced at his watch. “Look what time it is. We’ll be late for the play.”

  “We could skip the dessert,” Clara suggested, but just then the waiter appeared wheeling the pastry cart and they decided to stay. Max ate an éclair in three bites and Clara nibbled steadily at a petit four until it was gone and soon they had a taxi and were in the theater, but the play had started.

  “The poor people of Rome are rebelling because they are hungry,” Max explained. “Coriolanus, who is a famous soldier, comes along and tells them they don’t deserve food because they are not brave.”

  All around Max people turned and shushed him with fingers to lips. “Quiet please,” one man said loudly.

  Max nodded to everyone. A moment later he turned to Clara again. “I forgot to tell you. He’s not called Coriolanus yet. That comes later,” and he joined everyone else in a chorus of “shh!” as if the audience had sprung a leak. He giggled softly when Clara looked at him, but he did not speak again during the play.

  When he said goodbye that night she looked up at him and he kissed her. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. It was not a question and she did not answer.

  All day Saturday, he thought of Sarah. He woke up certain she was lying next to him and even when he tried to think about Clara, to recall her laugh, the touch of her hand and lips, it was Sarah’s face that conjured in his mind. That evening, on his way to Clara’s house, he remembered how he had courted Sarah. She was seventeen when he met her and her parents were very strict. For almost a year they would not let her go out with Max unless one of them went along so they spent many nights in her room whispering so that her parents would not overhear until one of them, usually her father, would knock on the door and ask what was going on in there. Sometimes, because there was a play or a movie they wanted to see, they consented to go with Sarah’s mother, but they had a trick: they would go late when three seats together were hard to find and they usually managed to end up sitting together with Sarah’s mother a row or two behind where, between films, she would lean over and whisper loudly, “Is everything all right?” Only Sunday afternoons were they allowed to go out alone, her parents evidently believing that you cannot make love on Sunday afternoon, but they were wrong. One Sunday a friend loaned them his apartment. It was the first time for each of them. The friend was not Jewish. Max met him at the university where Max was in his first year. He often wondered what happened to him. His name was Ernst and he smoked an imported brand of sweet smelling cigarettes and burned incense in his room. Max could always recall the smell of the incense. He smelled it later that night when he made love to Clara.

  It was Clara who first mentioned marriage. Max came over Sunday morning with bagels and lox he had gone all the way downtown to get and after Arnold left to go hiking on Mt. Tamalpais with a club he belonged to, Clara said, “It would be terrible for a person never to know love.”

  “Yes,” Max agreed.

  “Or marriage,” Clara added.

  “Yes,” he said, and then he changed the subject because he knew he was not through thinking about Sarah. They spent the day in the park and then for dinner Clara made chicken liver and potato kugel. “You ought to open a restaurant,” Max said. “You would make a fortune.” Later, they stood by the bedroom door, but they did not go in. Arnold came home tracking mud in the house and asking his mother if she would run the bath for him. Max talked to him about hiking until his bath was ready and then he kissed Clara goodnight and went home to reminisce abo
ut his life with Sarah.

  She was eighteen and they were allowed at last to go out by themselves. They planned to marry as soon as Max graduated and started teaching, but a law was passed excluding all but a few Jews from the universities. For a while, Max was allowed to stay because his father had been in the army during the First World War. They gave him a special student card with a yellow stripe. Even after Sarah tore it up he kept attending, saying things would get better. When they discovered him without his card and expelled him from the university he said things were bound to change. He got a job writing advertising copy for an uncle who owned a department store. Sarah wanted to leave the country, but he pleaded with her to stay and marry him, and she did. Her parents were orthodox and they insisted on an orthodox wedding, including the traditional mikvah. For days they argued about whether to tell her favorite aunt that she was not a virgin. Sarah wanted to tell her, but Max said no. Sarah finally agreed, but Max was sure the old aunt winked at him after the ceremony. For months afterward he was afraid to speak to her.