Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“I don’t think I understand, dear,” Uncle Bernie’s cello cut off all the uncivilized ruckus. He was given immediate silence to play solo. And I understood why he had such command. It wasn’t merely his power and wealth. He made music while the rest of us made noise. I believed he represented what was wrong with the world but I was enthralled by the graceful sound of his evil. His tone to Julie was gentle; in charge, yet unhurried and tender. “What’s wrong with my enjoying that Rafe won?”

“That’s not what I said!” Julie was exasperated, embarrassed, and defeated. She looked at me for the first time. “I’m sorry …” she stammered to me. “I’m glad you’re so smart and you won.” She looked back at Uncle. I wanted to fling myself at her feet and promise to die for her. “I just meant you shouldn’t talk about him to all of us like that — even if it is all good things. It’s like he’s your pet. And you shouldn’t make him perform for your friends. He shouldn’t have to win some dumb chess game to prove he’s smart.”

“Of course Rafe’s not a pet.” Uncle nodded slowly in my direction with regal grace and smiled broadly. “I’m proud of him. He’s my nephew and when my relations do something I’m proud of, I want to tell the world.” It may have been projection, but I swore I saw Aaron and Helen stiffen. Bernie had said nothing about his children throughout the afternoon games and birthday dinner. In fact, I don’t think he addressed a single comment to them. He uttered a perfunctory thank-you on opening their store-bought gifts whereas he made a fuss about the poem I wrote to him, a quite dishonest — I thought at the time — verse of gratitude for his rescue of me. “You miss the point about the chess game,” my uncle continued his exquisite melody. “Rafe did win. He didn’t have to. But he did. He’s not just smart, he’s got the will to use his brains.”

I felt the heat of their feelings and was warmed. Their love, their envy, their admiration, their pity — especially Julie’s — was palpable, a nourishment.

[Let me be clear: I played my role enthusiastically. I was nine and ought not to be blamed, but I’m sure there are those who will blame me anyway, although they might express their disapproval politely. Not having sympathy for me. Amazement at my behavior. Not understanding how anyone could live that way. Sympathy, empathy, an understanding heart — they are talents, or at least faculties, that have to be developed, and regrettably their training is in short supply. I was not my real self to my mother’s family: I lied implicitly and explicitly to them, although they meant me no real harm. Indeed, by their lights, they offered only kindness and acceptance. If you cannot see this situation as tragic, and instead must find someone to blame, you have several candidates and certainly I should be considered the prime one. But I must risk your intolerance by not understanding the thoroughness of my acceptance of Uncle Bernie’s favoritism or the pleasure I took in triumphing over my cousins. Indeed, I was proud of the cleverness of the false self I created and the lies I told. To conceal this aspect would — as is so often the case in autobiography — sentimentalize my state of mind and eliminate the ambivalence and complexity which makes the human character worth studying in the first place. I needed Uncle’s praise. His admiration was not as satisfying as living with my parents and possessing their love, but it was the best substitute available. I must accept blame for that fault, if you wish to label it as a flaw. I must accept ownership of a need to be the special heir of a powerful male. It is natural and it is also me.]

I lived in terror of losing my new crown as Prince Rafael. I told few outright lies and I told fewer truths. No feeling was revealed or given a voice without first undergoing a meticulous examination by the Stalinist censor and Jewish coach in residence in my head. I was undercover. I still had no Walther PPK, yet I was a master spy stalked by jeopardy. I was a Martian in residence on Earth, wearing a superbly crafted false skin of obedience and innocence to cover the otherworldly horror and beauty of my real self. I had my father’s letter (I changed its hiding place often to avoid discovery) to read in the locked bathroom, or when I was supposed to be sleeping. After finishing a re-reading, I often held my little penis and manfully tried to stroke it to summon a passion as yet unborn. In the morning I had no reluctance donning my disguise. Would these people have loved and admired the real Rafe? No. I was not wrong about this assumption: if discovered, that child would have been cured or destroyed. He had to be kept hidden in his cramped cellar, quaking at the sounds of the policeman’s tread.

I did not step forward and announce to everyone that I still loved my father and mother, that I had worked so hard to win the chess game in order to keep my uncle happy with me, that although I smiled when Bernie said I was going to begin Hebrew school to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah, I didn’t believe in God and certainly not in the notion that I was Jewish, fully Jewish. Instead, I interrupted the scolded silence of the Rabinowitzes — shamed by hearing Bernie say I had the will to use my brains (with its implication that they did not) — and I asked Julie in a solemn voice, “Do you play chess?”

She looked confused.

Danny said, “Girls don’t like to play chess.”

Julie said, “That’s ridiculous. I just don’t know how.”

“I can teach you,” I said, moving toward the hall. “Come with me.”

“Some other time, Rafe. We have to get going,” Uncle Harry said and groaned as he rose from his chair. Inspired, there was a general commotion of goodbyes. They were relieved to go. They worshipped Uncle, but there were no comfortable benches in his temple.

I seized this moment of general noise and movement to slip up to Julie. I got on my toes to bring my mouth near her ear, exposed by the backward sweep of her hairdo. I admired its small perfect form and whispered to it, “I love you.” She turned toward me in surprise, opening her lips. Yet before she could speak, I quickly, more like a stab than a caress, kissed her cheek and hurried away, frightened.

Heart pounding, I hid in the pantry and ignored the faint calls for me to come out to say goodbye. I had allowed Julie (and whoever else might have seen) a peek at my real feelings. I was in a panic, afraid I had lost control. I stayed hidden behind stacked cases of soda, particularly because I could distinguish Julie’s voice above the others, mispronouncing my name as she wished me well.

Eileen had the night off. Once the guests were out the front door, Uncle Bernie — not Aunt Charlotte — called out that it was time for me to go to bed.

I emerged from my hiding place. “You’re putting me to bed?” I asked as I approached Bernie in the kitchen.

“Think I don’t know how? I put your mother and her brothers and sisters to bed a thousand times. Mama and Papa Sam used to work late at the store. At your age I was in charge of getting everybody to eat dinner, clean up, do their homework, and get into bed.”

“Really?” We were walking down the hallway of Papa Sam’s old wing, toward my bedroom.

Bernie laughed, a deep chord of pleasure. “Can’t picture it, huh? You bet I did. Mama and Papa had to work to all hours at night. So I was the Little Father of the family.”

I took his hand, his monkey’s paw, strong, thick and warm, the knuckles decorated by fine black hairs. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” I said and meant it.

We had reached my room. The chess set he had given me was on my bed, the pieces set up to move 14 of José Raul Capablanca’s first win of the World Championship Match against Steinitz. In the box of chess books Uncle had given me there was a collection of Capablanca’s best games. He was a Cuban prodigy, a world-class competitor while a mere child, a champion as a teenager, and one of the greatest players of all time as an adult. I was infatuated with his games, identifying, or wishing to identify, with a Latin genius, and, of course, genuinely moved by Capablanca’s purity and grace as a tactician. He was the Mozart of the game, a beautiful killer. Uncle looked at the pieces, frozen in the combat of giants, as if their presence were an affront. I assumed the mess bothered him. I let go of his hand and said hurriedly, “I’ll clean it up.”