Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

The year was 5707 by biblical reckoning and 1947 by the Christian calendar. The Purim party would begin after dinner. There would be pastries — hamantaschen: Haman’s hats. Without those pastries the holiday might as well be ignored; without those pastries the megillah — the tale, written on a scroll — might as well be stuffed into a cistern. Tonight’s necessary hamantaschen — they would be a joke. Men who had been chefs Before knew how to bake Sacher tortes, linzer tortes, all kinds of sweets; but where was the sugar, where the nuts? Today, using coarse flour and butter substitute and thin smears of blackberry preserves, they would bake ersatz hamantaschen, one or two per individual. Sonya did not know whether the practical bakers considered babies individuals, though babies certainly counted to the Red Cross and the American command — each infant received its own vitamin-laced chocolate bars and its own Spam and its own cigarettes. Sonya could not procure sufficient tinned milk, however … As for the meal preceding the party, it would consist of the usual dreck: watery spinach soup, potatoes, and black bread. Eisenhower had decreed that the Displaced Persons camps be awarded two thousand calories per Person per day; decent of him, but the general couldn’t keep count of newcomers, they came in so fast.

“In my atelier I served the most distinguished and cosmopolitan women,” Ida mused, her hands at rest on the typewriter keyboard. “I fashioned turbans and cloches and toques.”

“Cartwheels and mantillas,” encouraged Sonya, who had heard this reminiscence before.

“I spoke five languages. I made —”

“Sonya!” came the voice of Roland, Roland Rosenberg, Sonya’s codirector. “Sonya?” and he followed his voice into the office, his eyes flickering over the beauteous Ida and coming to rest on Sonya’s narrow visage. He still had a fat man’s grace, even a fat man’s circumference, though he was losing weight like all the staff. “Sonya, the Chasids in the north building refused to share their megillah. They boycotted the general service.”

“The Enlightenment Society also boycotted,” Ida remarked. “They held a seminar on Spinoza.”

“The blackberry jam — there’s so little of it. Goddamn!” Sonya said. She was subject to sudden ferocity these days. It was the Change, Ida told her knowingly, though Ida herself was only thirty-five.

“Poppy seeds — why couldn’t they send poppy seeds,” said Roland. “I requested poppy seeds.” Consulting a list, he left as unceremoniously as he had entered.

“Roland, it’s all right,” Sonya called after him. “The kindly German farmers — they will certainly butcher some calves for our party.” She was in the doorway now, but he had rounded the corner. “Whipped cream will roll in like surf.” She raised her voice, though he was surely out of earshot. “General Eisenhower — he will personally attend.”

“Sonya,” Ida said in a severe tone. “It is time for your walk.”

ABOUT PURIM LUDWIG HAD DISSEMBLED. Feigning ignorance was always a good idea; know-it-alls, he’d observed, tended to get beaten up or otherwise punished. In fact, he’d already heard the story of Esther, several times. First from the young man in the room next door, the one with the radiant face. Ludwig, recognizing the radiance, predicted that the young man would get caught in the next X-ray roundup. Meanwhile the feverish fellow did a lot of impromptu lecturing, even haranguing. Did he think he was the Messiah? grumbled Uncle Claud. One day last week he’d gathered a bunch of children around him and recited the Purim tale. He made a good thing of it, Ludwig thought from the periphery of the circle; he almost foamed at the mouth when reciting the finale, the hanging of Haman and his ten sons, the slaughter of the three hundred conspirators. Then the story had been taken up in the schoolroom on the second floor of the north building, where grimy windows overlooked in succession the one-storied kitchen and the grubby garden, all root vegetables — well, this was a stony patch, said Uncle Claud, his voice rumbling like a baron’s; we cannot expect the chanterelles we scraped from the rich soil in the south of France. Past the garden a road led between farms to the village of tiled roofs. Beyond the village green hills gently folded. The Judaica teacher, not looking through the window at this familiar view, had begun the Purim story by reading it in Hebrew, which maybe half a dozen kids could understand. He translated into Yiddish and also Russian. His version, a droning bore in all three languages, insisted that the Lord, not Esther, had intervened to save the Jews. The history teacher said that night that there was no justification for this interpretation in Scripture. A day later the philosophy professor referred to the story as a metaphor.

“Metaphor?” Ludwig inquired, and presently learned the meaning of the term. He loved learning. He liked to hang around the office because Roland, without making a big thing of it, let fall so many bits of knowledge, farted them out like a horse. Sonya, too, was interesting to observe, hating to argue but having to argue, hating to persuade but having to persuade. She’d rather be by herself, reading or dreaming, Ludwig could tell; she reminded him of his mother … And Ida with her deep beautiful eyes and her passionate determination to go to Palestine; if only Uncle Claud would fuck her, maybe all three would end up in the Holy Land, well, not so holy, but not a barracks, either. He’d heard that people there lived in tents with camels dozing outside. But Uncle Claud preferred men.

Even without the story, Ludwig would have noticed Purim. The Persons in the camp — those who were not disabled, paralyzed with despair, stuck in the TB hospital, too old, too young, or (by some mistake in assignment) Christian — the Persons were loudly occupied with the holiday. In the barrack rooms, behind the tarps and curtain strips that separated cubicle from cubicle, costumers rustled salvaged fabrics; in stairwells, humorists practiced skits; in the west building, raisins fermented and a still bubbled. In the village, Persons were exchanging cigarettes and candy bars for the local wine. “Sour and thin,” sneered Uncle Claud, who hid among his belongings a bottle of cognac procured God knew how. Uncle Claud smoked most of his cigarette allotment and also Ludwig’s, and so he rarely had anything to barter. The cognac — Ludwig thought of it as a foretaste of the waters of Zion. “Zion has no waters,” Uncle Claud insisted. Every night he gave Ludwig a fiery thimbleful, after their last game.

They owned a board. Sometimes they were able to borrow chessmen, but usually they rented those of a Lithuanian in the next room, the fervent Messiah’s room. The Lithuanian didn’t care for chess but happened to own the set of his brother, now ashes. He wouldn’t lend, wouldn’t sell, would only lease. Claud had to relinquish a cigarette for the nightly pleasure.

But now … Ludwig parted the shredded canvas that was their door, sat down on the lower bunk beside his uncle. “Look!” he said, and shook the box Sonya had given him like a noisemaker.

Claud smiled and coughed. “The Litvak — he can kiss my backside.”

WHEN SONYA LEFT THE OFFICE, Ida resumed typing. She was doing requisitions: for sulfa drugs; for books; for thread; for food, food, food.

Dear Colonel Spaulding,

You are correct that the 2000 calories Per Person Per Day are Supplemented by Red Cross packages and purchases from the village. But the Red Cross packages come unpredictably. Some of our Persons will not eat Spam. And though we must turn a blind eye to the Black Market, it seems unwise to encourage its use. Our severest need now is dried fruit — our store of raisins is completely wiped out — and sanitary napkins.