Rufi Thorpe - Dear Fang, with Love

“You sounded so excited on the phone, I thought it would be something big,” she explained.

“It is big,” I said.

“I guess,” she said, “but what are you even going to say to this guy? I mean, you don’t live here. It’s not like you’ll become friends or something.”

“I know,” I said. I couldn’t explain how excited I was. It made me feel boyish and embarrassed. On some level I had always longed for brothers, for male cousins, for uncles, for a father, though this longing remained inchoate because it seemed a betrayal of my mother. She was always so quick to avow she needed no one but me, that other people were useless to her, aliens. I knew that Justine’s Herkus wouldn’t suddenly be my buddy, but the fact that we were blood related must mean something.

“Papa,” Vera said, “Judith and I don’t want to go to the afternoon thing, either.”

“What? What’s the afternoon thing?”

“The Holocaust Museum,” Vera said.

“I am very sorry,” Judith said, holding up her tiny pink hands, which reminded me of mouse paws, the fingers splayed as though to hold off my objections, “but I do not think I can handle it. And I have learned at this age to respect my own fragility. I am an old woman. I have lived in Israel. I have been to my share of Holocaust museums, and I do not need to go to this one.”

“Of course,” I said. Judith’s decisions were her own and needed no justifying, let alone to me, and after the way Vera broke down over the Great Synagogue yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea for her to stay away as well. And yet, the idea of going to the Holocaust Museum alone was like volunteering to spend the afternoon being sad. And I didn’t want to be sad. I was already feeling anxious from my hangover, overstimulated and disoriented by the night with Susan, the fight with Vera, and now the sudden news of Herkus.

“What are you going to do instead?” I asked, hoping I could tag along.

“Go shopping!” Vera cried, practically yipping with glee.

“I want to get something for my daughter,” Judith explained. “Maybe some amber jewelry. Something.”

“I’m going to take her to the store that has the nice amber stuff,” Vera said.

“Which one?” I asked. I hadn’t been aware that Vera had already zeroed in on the best place, but it had been in my mind to sneak off at some point and buy her a piece of amber jewelry. Amber was a big deal here. The Baltic Sea spat up some of the best amber in the world. It would be a memento of the trip, but I also wanted it to be some kind of emotional gesture.

“It’s right there on Gedimino prospektas. On the right before the chocolate shop,” she said. I could barely bring up the map of the town in my mind and remember where Gedimino prospektas was. I had no idea what chocolate shop she was referring to, but I committed the description to memory, hoping I would be able to find it later.

“Well, have fun, girls,” I said. “Shall we meet for dinner, or just meet at the reading?”

“If you’re around when we get back, let’s have dinner,” Vera said, “but if we miss you, then we can always catch up at the reading.”

“Deal,” I said.

Judith headed downstairs to get ready, and Vera busied herself with her makeup. Even watching her apply mascara made my eyes water. I remembered vividly the fuss and fury regarding the planning out and orchestration of Vera’s bat mitzvah, maybe because it had been the year I seriously reentered her life. Most of the fuss had to do with dresses and caterers and decorations. Kat had been so focused on it. She had wanted that bat mitzvah for Vera so badly, though I had never entirely understood why.

My most vivid memory of the day of the bat mitzvah was watching Katya apply Vera’s mascara beforehand. I was sure the entire time that Kat was going to blind the girl. What recklessness mascara was! What madness!

“You’re making my eyes water,” I said to Vera, as she stroked layer after layer of black paint on her eyelashes.

Her mouth was held open with concentration, so her response was weirdly distorted: “You big pussy,” she said.

—

We discussed the Holocaust with Darius almost every single day. Every part of the city told a part of the story. So I already knew the facts.

When the Germans had occupied Vilnius, one of the first things they had done was hire native Lithuanians to act as their police force. These “police” trolled the streets with trucks, picking up Jewish men and telling them they were being taken to a work camp. Then they would take them to Ponary, an area near Vilnius, where there was a large pit from an unfinished construction project. The men were put in a fenced enclosure. Ten at a time, they were taken to the pit, lined up, and shot in the back so that they would fall in. From the group in the fenced enclosure, another ten would be chosen, lined up, shot, and so on. In the beginning, they were shooting only sixty or eighty men a day, but by the end of summer they were lining up women and children, managing to kill sometimes seven or eight hundred in a single day.

Darius never became emotional as he told us these things, though he waited patiently when people in our group, especially the women, would break down crying. But I did not get the feeling that Darius didn’t care. Every statistic, every date, every fact he had gathered was his way of caring. He was a man lit with the fire of remembrance. What a relief it must be to be a man like Darius, I thought. He was probably perfectly in control of the ship of himself, steering through choppy waters, his eye trained on a horizon I had never been able to see.

As I set out that afternoon to meet up with Darius and the group, I already knew that I did not want to go to the Holocaust Museum and that, in fact, I was not going to go though I did not yet know how I would achieve this. I wandered the old medieval streets, a maze through mismatched buildings in pastel colors, affording sudden views of church spires and at other times dead-ending in private courtyards. I got lost, and I enjoyed it. I even hoped I would get so lost that I would be too late and miss the group, but I was not.

As I crossed the street to the lecture hall, I saw that Darius and the group were already outside, standing on the sidewalk, dappled in sun and shade. Susan was there. I felt a surge of luck then, as though the universe were abetting all my most secret desires, providing cousins and walks alone through a sunny city and afternoons with beautiful and fascinating women. It was the kind of feeling that would cause a gambler to bet everything on red. There was no reason not to, no Vera watching, no propriety to maintain, and so I walked up to Susan, leaned over, and whispered into her hair, “Escape with me. I don’t want to visit the Holocaust.”

Date: 7/16/2014 9:12 PM

From: Vera.Abramov@gmail.com

To: FangBoy76@hotmail.com

Subject: The Shoah and your pretty idiot

Dear Fang,

I got into a horrible fight with Judith after we waited around forever at this stupid poetry reading and now I don’t know what to do. I am literally so frantic about it and I can’t seem to calm down. You should have seen the way she looked at me. Like I was such a disappointment. Like she was disgusted with me. She had thought I was something, a person, maybe silly and young, maybe even annoying, but someone worth spending time with. She was mentoring me! She was letting me ask all sorts of questions and she was patient with me the way a mother cat is patient with kittens and now I have fucked it all up, I have fucked up everything and she sees me for what I am. Which is…a ruined thing. A piece of garbage. Something that could have been nice, but has been perverted, distorted, and is beyond saving.