Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

Sometimes merely the image of my poor mother and me, alone in our terrors, shuddering side by side with the train’s movement, believing the worst was over while really the damage had just begun, brings heartache and sorrow. When I shed tears for my mother (and I do) I cry for her because of those apparently quiet months of the summer and fall of 1960. Although it may seem she could have been saved later on, that was the Ruth I wish I could have had as a patient. Though they were dull and uninteresting days to a casual observer, that was when her accident became an illness.

My lay readers are probably more interested in why my raped and beaten mother traveled alone with her terrorized child to New York. Why she did and why she was allowed to. My father’s stated reasons have already been given. Jacinta and Pepín were too timid to travel to New York under normal circumstances. I know they believed we would be safer in New York; I suspect they were also overwhelmed by a reaction to the events of that night which was informed by 19th century attitudes toward sexuality and moral strength. I sensed their disapproval of Francisco and their embarrassment about Ruth.

My mother’s desire to flee the scene of the disaster was natural and typical of brutalized women of that time. The assault was shameful to her. I know she never told any member of her family about the rape. She told her sister Sadie a sanitized version of the attack after we were back in Washington Heights. And she requested that Sadie keep even that bowdlerized account to herself.

We returned to 585 West 174th Street for the rest of the summer. Of my four friends, three were away. That left Joseph Stein, who, at eight years of age, well before the groundbreaking work which earned him worldwide fame, was an intellectual. He looked the part. Indeed, with his thick black-framed glasses and pants belted above the navel, Joseph seemed much more like a brilliant scientist than when he made his important discoveries. There were no pleated tailored pants; his cuffs hovered above the ankles, showing a pale skin, until black socks appeared below and completed his retired old man’s look. Joseph was careful not to reveal much about his past to the press and I am sorry to expose him in a way he would not like, but again, as will become clear, to explain the terrible events of this narrative requires the exposure of many secrets. (Besides, secrets are a psychiatrist’s deadly enemy.) Joseph was the only child of a couple who had survived the Holocaust. I should say he was the only living child. His mother’s firstborn died en route to Buchenwald, as did the father, her first husband. Another baby, the result of a rape by a German guard, also died there. Mr. Stein’s parents, his wife, and two little girls were killed by the Nazis. At the time, neither Joseph nor I were aware that his parents had previous loves and families. As a child, Joseph only knew that his mother and father met in a repatriation camp run by the Allies, emigrated to Washington Heights (as did many other survivors) and created Joseph.

They lived in our building, two floors below us. Mr. Stein worked in the diamond district as an assistant to a wealthy merchant. Mrs. Stein stayed home and took care of Joseph. Her surveillance of him was the closest of any mother in the neighborhood, and in Washington Heights, she had a lot of competition. But she was the clear winner. Joseph was not allowed to play at the apartments of his friends because of his wide range of allergies. If you had no pet, he was allergic to your rug. (Mrs. Stein’s carpeting had been especially treated by a mysterious process.) If — as was the case with us — you had no pet or rug, then he had to be in an air-conditioned room because of his asthma. (Joseph had never had an attack of asthma; Mrs. Stein claimed that their pediatrician declared Joseph’s lungs to be susceptible to developing the syndrome.) Requiring air-conditioning excluded our apartment, but I know from Joseph that those who did have air-conditioning and met the other conditions (no rug, no pet) were found wanting for some other reason. Joseph told me that on one occasion Mrs. Stein was confronted by a mother who appeared in person to guarantee she had no pet or rug, that all her rooms were air-conditioned, swore she was prepared to serve Kosher food (although Mrs. Stein didn’t keep a Kosher home), and had removed all the pillows from her son’s room because Mrs. Stein was on record that their down filling would cause Joseph to choke to death. Despite these assurances, Mrs. Stein refused to release her son on the basis that the accommodating mother’s perfume — Mrs. Stein sniffed it out on the spot — was considerably more dangerous to her son’s respiratory system than an apartment overrun with dogs and cats. The truth, it became obvious to the least observant person and the most naive child, was that Joseph had to stay home, always within his mother’s immediate physical realm.

This cost him a lot of friends. Not only did you have to play at his apartment, but you had to stay inside. Joseph was not allowed to go out unless the weather was perfect. The temperature had to be above seventy and yet below eighty. The sky could not have a single cloud or a hazy look; only the kind of clear blue that one sees on postcards from the Caribbean. Such a day is quite rare in any locale. Besides, many of the other mothers — including fellow Holocaust victims — felt that such a crazy woman could not help but raise a strange child, a child who would not be a good influence on their, if less delicate, no less precious progeny.

They were right. Joseph was a strange child. He was also a sweet and lonely soul. For the remainder of that sad summer, my mother, who had once allowed me free rein to play in Fort Washington Park, or on the sidewalk in front of our building, didn’t want me wandering outside unescorted. Anyway, with my arm in a cast, I couldn’t have played most outdoor games. Sending me two flights down to Joseph’s air-conditioned cage, something she used to discourage, had become attractive.

Each day, I arrived so early Mrs. Stein would offer breakfast. I always refused. Her bland lunches were enough of a discouragement. Thanking her, I walked on the plastic runner that guided you from room to room, careful not to step off onto the deep green carpet, and proceeded through their petrified forest of a living room into Joseph’s cooled cell. I would hurry through the spooky living room; Mrs. Stein kept the drapes drawn day and night and protected the furniture with fitted plastic covers. At least Joseph’s room was well-lit by a standing lamp, a desk lamp, and a red tensor lamp next to his bed. Those lights had to be on all the time since the windows had blackout shades and Venetian blinds. There was more of the deep green rug, although here we were allowed to walk on it — not with shoes but our stocking feet. Everything was kept clean and neat. No object lacked its special place. A hardware chest, consisting of small drawers, was converted to a multi-level garage for his Matchbox cars. There were several boxes to organize different shapes of his wooden blocks, and coffee cans separated the colors of his Legos. In his clothes closet, an arrangement of shelves on the inner door provided room for Monopoly, Risk, and other board games, including, of course, Joseph’s impressive chess set. Not the plastic pieces and flimsy folded board that belonged to most kids. Joseph owned an expensive Staunton design: classic black and white weighted wood and a thick maple board.

Usually the chessmen were set up, waiting for my arrival in the morning. A folding table and chairs for playing board games (this seemed to me the most remarkable of his room’s organizations) was under the standing lamp. So that we could continue our competitions while eating, his mother would bring into his room a metal tray with adjustable legs and there serve us our late morning snack of fruit, our lunch and our afternoon milk and Oreos. “Want to play?” Joseph would say instead of a greeting, and incline his head seductively at the chess pieces.