Rafael Yglesias: Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“A test of what?” my mother asked. She snapped the final t, whipping the sound scornfully. I cringed because of a fight my mother had had earlier in the day with her oldest sister, Sadie. Aunt Sadie had picked us up at the Great Neck train station to drive us to Uncle’s estate. Conversation had been pleasant until we pulled into the driveway, and then she said to my mother, “Don’t make trouble today with your brother.”

My mother laughed. “Its a non-aggression pact. If he doesn’t fire I won’t shoot back.”

Aunt Sadie warned her again, repeating in different words that Ruth shouldn’t fight with Uncle Bernie. “Even if he does shoot first,” Sadie added.

My mother lost her temper. I was startled. I had seen her angry with my father, but that was only once or twice, and never with anyone else. Her thin face and smooth white skin were quite different in color and shape from her dark brother’s oval head. Enraged, her high cheekbones lifted, pulling back her lips to expose her small bright teeth, and her green eyes narrowed. She might have been a big cat in a furious fight for her life. She bobbed her chin at Sadie and said, “Don’t tell me how to behave! I’m not a child! I’m not on this planet at Bernie’s sufferance! I’m not living off him like the rest of you! You’re terrified I’m going to blow up the Bernard Rabinowitz gravy train — well, don’t worry, it won’t be me who cuts his throat. It’ll be the working class. It’ll be people like those workers down South. Those poor people he brags he brought to their knees.”

“Shut up already,” Sadie said, both scared of the cat’s angry motions and also conscious of my presence. She indicated me with a nod to my mother.

“I’ll never forget him gloating about how his paid thugs drove a truck over one of the strikers!”

“All right, I’m sorry I said anything!” Sadie opened her door and fled. My mother panted, angled at Sadie’s vacated seat as if her prey were still there. From my back-seat view, I saw a single green eye in profile. That eye seemed to find me, with the spooky myopic stare of a bird. “Come on, let’s go in,” she said to me. She added, without irony, “We’ll have fun.”

What I got from all that was that my uncle was a powerful man, a dangerous man, an important man. If he had devised a test for me, then I wanted to pass it: to avenge my earlier defeats at tennis and football, to win my cousin’s love, to please my mother, to represent my alien father well, and also, finally, to hold the gaze of my terrible and handsome uncle.

“A test of their character,” Uncle Bernie said to my mother. He continued quickly to us children, “I’ve hidden the Afikomen somewhere in this house.” His fingers continued to play a silent tune on the white cloth.

“You haven’t left the table,” Cousin Daniel said. “You still have the Afikomen.”

As Leader, at the beginning of the service, Uncle Bernie had broken off the Afikomen from a plate of matzos on display at the table. He wrapped it in a thick napkin with a shiny white satin border and put it in his lap. As he did, I overheard my cousin Daniel whisper to his older brother, “I’m gonna watch him this time.” I didn’t know what Daniel meant. At eight I didn’t remember the previous year’s Seder. He meant that he would keep an eye on Uncle, waiting to see where he slipped away to hide the Afikomen. Bernie hadn’t left the table during the Seder and therefore, Daniel had reasoned, he must still have it in his lap.

Bernie’s mouth widened into his beneficent smile. “You mean this.” He lifted the napkin from his lap. “Very clever, Daniel.”

“Yes!” Daniel got to his feet. “I win!”

“Not so fast,” Bernie said and raised his hand like a traffic cop. There was something comic, not mean, about Uncle’s expression and tone. Most of the adults chuckled and commented on Bernie’s wisdom and Daniel’s greed. Uncle ignored his grown-up audience and continued to address us children. “This year we’ll do it differently. This is only the symbolic Afikomen. I hid the real one—”

“Call it what it is,” my mother interrupted. “A door prize.”

She was shushed by the grown-ups. The children, including me, ignored her. But my uncle didn’t. He flicked a glance in her direction and the emotion in his eyes amazed me. It was contempt and hatred. But only a flash. Immediately, his eyes were friendly again and he continued in his smooth deep voice, a resonant cello, “I hid the real one while you were playing outside. The child who finds that Afikomen will find it not only because of his intelligence and his perseverance but because of the strength of his character.”

My mother made a rude sound with her lips. Daniel got out of his chair to leave the table. His father restrained him; Uncle Bernie hadn’t signaled us to begin our search.

Bernie ignored my mother’s contemptuous noise. Instead, he smiled generously at Daniel. “You stand like greyhounds in the slips,” his cello vibrated. “Straining upon the start.” Bernie raised his right hand, decorated with tufts above the knuckles. “The game’s afoot,” he said and waved his arm like a racing flag.

Daniel and the others bolted. I made my move as well, running behind Uncle’s chair and passing four or five other adult relatives, until I was caught up short. A hand had taken hold of my left arm. The sudden yank caused me to stumble. I fell against the chair of the person who had stopped me. It was my mother.

“You stay here,” she said and she sounded angry. I assumed she was angry at me. “You’re not playing this stupid game.”

“Mom,” I complained and tried to wriggle out of her grasp. My struggle for freedom proved how much I wanted to win that contest. I was not a bold child. In fact I suffered from acute shyness, especially in front of adults, and although these grown-ups were my people, some were totally unknown to me, thanks to my mother’s role as the family black sheep. I was shy and I was not defiant of my parents. Normally, if my mother grabbed me in public and forbade me from something in an angry tone I would obey her injunction silently, if unhappily. Indeed, my attempt to get away so surprised her that I easily freed my wrist from her loose grip. For a moment we exchanged a look of mutual shock at my action — and then I ran.

Uncle’s formal dining room had a wall of glass, allowing a panoramic view of his unblemished lawn sloping to the water — the pool and tennis court were placed discreetly on the ground’s perimeter. I ran from there into a huge living room, itself the length of most people’s homes. It too had a view of Long Island Sound; only here it was provided by four windows with small panes of leaded glass, a kind of latticework that distorted the manicured lawn and tranquil water into a moody Impressionist painting. Two cousins were in there, one on his knees checking the wall cabinets, another on his belly peering under the sofas and love seats.

My mother pursued me. She caught me as I reached the large central hall, painted a light yellow color, and dominated by a sweeping dark mahogany staircase. My cousins’ feet thudded and trampled on the second floor; occasionally they raced across the landing in their movement from one bedroom to another. They were having their chance at glory while I was under arrest. This time Ruth’s grip on my arm was tight and painful. She was incensed. Today, I suspect she was more humiliated that I had defied her in front of her siblings than infuriated by my contrariness. At the time I was baffled by her. “Don’t ever run from me like that again!” she shouted. Her words hurt, too. The violence of her tone hurt. “You’re not going to play this ridiculous game! You’re not a performing monkey!”