The Kiss of the Prison Dancer Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “You keep shaking your head like you got fleas or something.”

  Max did not answer.

  That afternoon, when he was leaving work, a woman was arguing with the receptionist. “Try an employment agency,” the receptionist said, and the woman in exasperated tones said, “I’ve been to twenty employment agencies already. That’s why I came here.” Max said goodbye to the receptionist and went out, but before he was halfway down the block he heard a voice cry “Mister! Wait, Mister.” He turned and saw the woman hurrying after him. Although there was no possibility of rain, she was waving an umbrella as she ran.

  Max waited nervously. When she caught up to him she had to catch her breath before she could speak. “You work there?” she said, pointing back at the agency with her umbrella. Max said he did. “Maybe you can help me.” A bird’s nest of gray hair crowned her head and in the tense features of her face a pair of soft blue eyes looked up and pleaded with him.

  “What is the trouble?” Max asked.

  “I need a job.” She brought the point of the umbrella down on the sidewalk.

  “But we’re not an employment agency,” Max said quickly before she could say anything else. “We help with family problems.”

  “This is a family problem,” she said, brushing back a stray wisp of hair. “That’s what I tried to explain to the receptionist. My husband died two years ago. I should have looked for work then but I didn’t and now the insurance money is running out. My boy wants to go to college, but either he has to go to work or I have to, so I’m looking for a job so my son can get an education. Isn’t that a family problem?”

  Leaning on the umbrella and gesturing with one hand, she looked so reasonable that Max did not know how to answer her. For a moment he considered going back to the office to tell Dr. Resnick about her case, but he finally admitted to her that he was only a clerk. “I just file papers. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

  She said, “Oh,” and they both stood facing each other for a moment, Max shuffling his feet and the woman touching her hair. Then Max turned and walked toward the bus stop. He heard footsteps behind him, but he did not look back until he got to the corner. She smiled and with her hand indicated that this was her bus stop too. She lived just a few blocks away from Max and on the bus she turned to him and said, “You’re from Austria?” Max shook his head. “That’s what I thought,” she said, sighing deeply and folding her hands in her lap.

  “I’m from Germany,” Max said. “From Berlin.”

  She looked out the window. “I knew. I could tell.”

  Max was bewildered; he felt he had to explain further so he said, “I didn’t get out until after the war.”

  She touched his arm. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  When they got off the bus Max started to say goodbye, but she pointed out the direction in which she lived and Max walked along beside her, wondering if he should offer to carry her umbrella.

  “What kind of work were you looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything. I worked once in a library and before that in a nursery school, but that was a long time ago. I can’t type, which is the only kind of work anyone seems to want. I’ve even been to the restaurants to find work as a cook. I’m a pretty good cook.” They were passing a fast food restaurant and she made a face to show that in there they did not know anything about cooking.

  When they got to her house, a five-story apartment house that leaned on the shoulders of the houses on either side, Max slowed down. She pointed towards one of the upper floors. “That’s where I live come to see me some time. Don’t be bashful, Mister”

  “Friedman,” Max said. “Max Friedman.”

  “Clara Axelrod here.” She turned and was gone before Max could say goodbye.

  Walking back along Geary Boulevard, Max thought, It’s too bad a woman like that has to go out and find a job at her age. He passed the fast food restaurant. He had eaten there several times and had meant to tell her they made good hamburgers. Max crossed the street. “What is the trouble?” he said aloud, testing his accent. He wondered how she knew where he was from.

  Summer was almost over now. When he was young, Max liked autumn best of all. He would take long walks in the country and when he was very young and not allowed to walk by himself down country roads, he would walk around his own block. When the leaves were raked in big piles like red and yellow stars fallen to Earth he and his friends would jump and play in them until someone came to chase them away, cursing them for having scattered the leaves. One autumn Max collected as many different colors of leaves as he could find. But the seasons did not change in San Francisco and Shmuel’s return from his vacation was the surest sign Max had that summer was coming to an end. Downtown there were not as many tourists and the pace of things seemed somehow a bit quicker and soon it would rain. Max walked along the wide street, kicking aside pieces of paper and wondering what happened to his leaf collection. He could not remember throwing it away, but he supposed it could not have survived the war.

  11

  Max tore August off the calendar and stared at the empty succession of days ahead. For an innocent man in prison in the Hall of Justice, time was running out and Max held the key or, rather, the button. He didn’t laugh at his joke; he only wondered if Holtz too stared at the calendar. The noise of a car horn took his mind off Holtz and drew him to the window where he saw a couple he recognized as friends of the Thompsons getting out of a car. Mr. Thompson, wearing only a bathing suit, bounced out to meet them and Max heard Mrs. Thompson calling him back in while the couple laughed and waved their hands. Then they were all in the house and Max heard the laughter continue downstairs. He pulled down the shade, but it popped back up. He pulled it down again and the bright shards of sunlight melted and turned the room to shadow. Fragments of laughter drifted up through the stairwell. If they were not gone before he had to leave for work, he swore he would look for another place to live.

  “Mr. Friedman, are you there?” Mrs. Thompson called up the stairs.

  Max, sitting on the edge of the bed and waiting to go to work, stirred and rested his chin on his fist.

  “Can I come up, Mr. Friedman?”

  Hearing her steps on the staircase, Max went to the door and asked her what she wanted.

  “I just wanted to tell you we are going to Stinson Beach for a few days. We won’t be back until late Friday.” She wore a large straw bonnet and a pink sunsuit. Behind her, Mr. Thompson appeared. He was just putting on a sportshirt that was patterned with rainbows, each one ending in a pot of gold. “How do you like it?” he called to Max. His wife pushed him back towards the living room, saying, “Put your pants on and let’s go.” He managed to wink at Max before he was out of sight.

  Max went back to sit on the bed and wait. Presently he heard four voices shout, “Goodbye Mr. Friedman!” He waited a few minutes more and then hurried for the bus.

  When Dr. Resnick stepped into the office Max remembered to tell him about Clara Axelrod. He took the psychiatrist out to the reception room so Shmuel would not hear, but the receptionist had already told the story and after a few words Dr. Resnick said, “I’m sorry. You know we can’t find jobs for people. Do you know this woman?”

  “Oh, no,” Max said. “She stopped me on the street yesterday and I told her the same thing.” He went back to his folders telling himself that he hadn’t promised her anything, but feeling that he had failed.

  That night he sat in his room watching it grow dark. Without the occasional footsteps of the Thompsons and the muffled sound of the television as if a drama were taking place in his closet, the house seemed lonely. The voices of his mind began a conversation. The first one said: It’s too bad Dr. Resnick didn’t have any suggestions about where that woman could find a job, you could go visit her. And the second voice replied: It wouldn’t hurt to take a walk.

  Max walked down Geary Boulevard until he reached the corner where Clara Axelrod lived; there he
hesitated, then walked another block. What are you going to do, the first voice said, knock on her door and tell her the agency doesn’t find jobs for people? He turned around and walked back, pausing to look down the stone gray void of her street and then hurried home.

  The night was dark and soft as a black cat and for a long time Max sat by the open window and watched the stars edge their, way across the sky. He remembered how one night he and Sarah sat on a bench deep in the Tiergarten and counted the stars. She found more than he did. They kissed and talked until the moon had gone from one horizon to the other and then they returned home, Max watching as Sarah sneaked quietly into her house and then going home as dawn began to swallow the sky. Now Sarah was up there among the stars.

  He remembered that he was alone in the house and he went downstairs where there was room to pace around. It was strange to find the house so dark and quiet: In the living room he thought he could feel the china animals watching him, resenting his presence. As if to defy them, he turned on the television set and sat down in Mrs. Thompson’s chair. The news was on and he intended to go to bed as soon as it was over, but the chair was so comfortable that he stayed to watch the beginning of the movie that followed and then he fell asleep. When he awoke only a spot of light like a roving eye came from the television set along with a humming sound. Max turned off the set and dragged himself upstairs.

  In the morning, when the alarm went off, he opened his eyes but did not dare move his head for the pain that pressed with the force of a steamroller against his forehead. Wisps of gray fog floated into the room and he lay in bed and cursed himself for forgetting to close the window. Each breath was a separate effort, like drawing water from a well; he hoarded air in his lungs like a miser, saving it up until he could turn off the alarm and get up to shut the window. Fog billowed like dragon’s breath in the street. He made a cup of coffee and took two aspirin with it and then he got dressed and went to work, every movement of his head producing a whip of pain.

  He sat at his desk and held his head. It felt as if it were turning to stone. Shmuel watched. “Your sinuses?” he asked. Max started to nod, but the headache held him back. Shmuel brought the mail over and then stood at Max’s desk until Max asked him what he wanted.

  “Try bending way over with your head between your knees,” Shmuel advised.

  “That’s for hiccups.”

  “For hiccups?” Shmuel looked puzzled. “You’re sure?”

  “Go away,” Max said. “Leave me alone already.” That’s the kind of help I get, he thought, but a little later, when Shmuel left the room to deliver the mail, Max tried bending over as far as he could. It didn’t help.

  By the afternoon the pain was not as bad; it had become a fist, flexing and unflexing, but he could bear it. Still, a headache had never lasted so long. It was still there when he went home. Lunch had made him nauseous and he was trying to decide what to have for dinner when he found among the bills and magazines that had come for the Thompsons a letter for himself. It was not from his cousin in Los Angeles and it did not appear to be an advertisement. He tore it open.

  Sept. 1

  Dear Mr. Friedman:

  I am leaving home. By the time you read this I will be far away and not even my parents will know where I have gone. I am sorry for what I did and I know I should give myself up like you said only I am afraid to. Besides, I have thought about it a long time and I hope they do not execute the man they have accused of my crime, but if they do then it is him or me and I feel that I have more to live for. At least I am not a nazi. I will get a new start in life where I am going and maybe some day I can make up for what I did. I could not make up for it if I was dead or in prison. Thank you for not turning me in. I will always be grateful.

  Very truly yours,

  Harold Kirby

  “But Holtz didn’t do it!” Max shouted at the letter. The pain flowered suddenly, filling his head, and Max sat down and cried, but as he sat wiping tears from his cheeks, something in him wished the boy good luck. It occurred to him then that somewhere in the city the boy’s parents were wondering where their son had gone. They will call the police! At least Max knew why the boy ran away; his parents would not even know that, and Max felt sorry for them. He felt like a sort of secret godfather until, like an accusing finger, it came to him that he had driven the boy to run away. “Aach!” Max stared at his hands. The blood was draining away from his fingers. He clenched his hands and the nails dug into his palms like clenching barbed wire. “But what could I have done?” He read the letter over and then he tore it into little pieces and flushed it down the toilet, thinking: So it will have to be the Nazi. The fist flexed in his head and he wished there were someone to talk to.

  He was somewhat calmer as he walked along Geary Boulevard on his way to Clara Axelrod’s house, thinking, Why not? She said herself don’t be bashful. First he walked very quickly and then he slowed down to catch his breath. When he stood outside her apartment the pain in his head had reduced itself to a dull throb. Then he wondered if he should really be there, but his finger seemed to decide for him and he watched it ring the bell. At first there was no answer and he was about to leave when he heard Clara call “Who’s there?”

  Max took a deep breath. “Max Friedman. I don’t know if you remember.”

  He heard her coming to the door, then going away from it, and then back again. The door opened. Clara was in a housecoat. “Come in,” she said, her hands darting to her hair and her face like worried birds. “I look terrible. I wasn’t expecting.”

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “What are you saying? Come in.” She took his arm and pulled him into the apartment, but then she ran into the bedroom. “Give me just a minute,” she said. “Sit down. I’m glad you came.”

  Max sat down on the edge of the sofa. I shouldn’t have come, he thought. I should at least have called. He took a chocolate from the box on the coffee table and ate it quickly, wondering if he should have brought a box of candy, but deciding, as he popped one more into his mouth, that it would not have looked right.

  Clara was out of the room so long that Max began to worry. He was just about to knock on the bedroom door when she came out wearing a dress and smelling vaguely sweet. Max stepped back. “You look beautiful,” he said. Clara waved her hand. She indicated the easy chair for Max and she sat on a straight back chair, her hands folded in her lap. For Max communication seemed to have gone to his hands; they fluttered and gestured, but he could not speak. Finally, he jumped up. “I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry.”

  “Bothered?” Clara was up too. “I asked you to come.”

  Max sat down again. “I was in the neighborhood.” Of course you were in the neighborhood. You live three blocks away. “I wanted someone to talk to.”

  “Good. I was just in the mood for listening.”

  Just then the door opened and a tall boy with dark hair and black-rimmed glasses came in. Max had forgotten she had a son and he cursed himself again for coming. The boy did not see Max at first. He went to his mother and said hello and kissed her on her forehead. Max looked at the boy. In profile his face was very angular. A high sloping forehead rode over a ridge to his eyes and his nose seemed to have a joint in it. Even his chin looked like it came to a point, though Max saw on him the full lips of his mother. In fact, except that he must be a foot taller than Clara and thinner of course, he looked very much like her. “What’s for supper?” he asked.

  Clara stood up and turned him around to face Max. “I want you to meet Mister Friedman. He works at that Agency.”

  “Hello,” the boy said, looking around to see if anyone else was there.

  “This is my boy, Arnold.”

  Max said hello. He would have said more, but Clara was pushing Arnold into the bedroom and Max was left alone again. Clara stuck her head out for a moment to say, “Excuse us.”

  Not only did I barge in, Max thought, but I came right at dinner time. When they came back in the roo
m, Max got up to leave, but before he could say anything the boy went past him, paused at the door to say, “Nice to have met you,” and was out of the apartment.

  “That was a short visit,” Max said.

  Clara laughed. “He just remembered he was supposed to eat at a friend’s house. Now what am I going to do with the blintzes?”

  “Blintzes?”

  “I suppose you’ve eaten already?”

  “To tell you the truth I forgot to eat dinner tonight.”

  “Well, it’s a lucky thing you came,” she said, “or I would have had to eat alone. You can’t keep a teenager in the house.”

  By the time he had finished eating, Max agreed it was lucky he had come. He hadn’t had blintzes like that since he was a child. Sarah always burned them, or made them too greasy, until she gave up making them altogether. Only his mother made blintzes like this, he told Clara. She clasped her hands and thanked him. “Thank me?” he said. “Thank you, Mrs. Axelrod.” She asked him to call her Clara.

  Later, after Max insisted on helping her with the dishes, they sat in the living room and talked.

  “It’s all true what we heard about the concentration camps?”

  Max nodded.

  “Don’t tell me the details,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t tell such things to a woman like you.” And while she shook her head and sighed he quickly asked her where she was from.

  “I was born in New York.” She described Washington Heights when she was a girl and then the years she had spent in The Bronx before she married and moved to San Francisco. She loved San Francisco, the beautiful hills, the climate that was always autumn, the different colors of the city. “Only now there’s no one to talk to.”

  “How about Arnold?”

  “Did you ever try to talk to a teenager?”

  Max thought of Harold, but he shook his head. “No, I guess I haven’t,” he said. Then, when silence threatened, he asked her if she liked the fog.

  “Yes, I even like the fog,” she said. It reminded her of the women in Baltimore she heard about who came out every Saturday morning to clean the steps.