Madame Mieux was hard to pin down, and Joey appreciated that. Her name wasn’t her name, her hair wasn’t her hair, her cat was on loan, her house was a rent, the flowers in her little vase would die, not to be replaced, and her knowledge of French was suspicious. The difficulty? she was now defined by these deceptions. Her love of music appeared to be genuine, although Joey gradually realized that all the composers she was possibly pretending to admire were French: Berlioz foremostly, Erik Satie had surprised Joey by turning up, Debussy and Rameau, Gabriel Fauré. Fauré? Then he made a mistake. He was young and new at the game that, on this occasion, was his Hide and her Seek. He made a mistake. He told Madame Mieux that he had begun reading Berlioz whom he understood had quite a reputation as a writer. On the alleged basis of that encouragement, he was invited to Madame Mieux’s house to listen to music. There would be a sofa and sweets, he suspected, but a better Victrola than Mr. Hirk had. She promised him Berlioz — a trombone concerto. What could that be? He made a mistake. He accepted her invitation. And on the appointed night, he went.
Joey rang the bell and was startled to hear her laughter enlarging as she approached the door. She seemed ever so short and was dressed in a fulsome robe. Her head wore mist like a mountain. The smoke smelled sweet. In order to get in — Come in, she’d commanded — he had to squeeze by a deep loopy sleeve and avoid the red end of her cigarette. Smoking was frowned upon at Augsburg. It was spring, so she didn’t have to take his coat. He saw a rose-colored room. There were pillows everywhere. Piles of pillows that glistened or glittered. Little pillows. Large fat smothery pillows. Paunchy pillows. Pillows with hortatory mottoes. Joey swallowed his own laugh — one of apprehension. He thought maybe a nearby pile was heaped upon one of those currently popular beanbag chairs, but it was pillows, all pillows. None of them, as far as he could see, were bed pillows, but they did feel as much at home as they would in a boudoir. There were pillows with tassels; there were scalloped pillows; there were embroidered pillows; there were patchwork pillows. There were round, rectangular, three-pointed, long, flat, cubular pillows. He followed a path to the center of the room and slowly turned to see where he might go next. Make yourself comfy, he couldn’t believe she said. The lid from a large tin lay on the floor in the middle of a barren moment. It bore a drink and received ash as if there would be anything left of Madame Mieux’s roach but the afterglow. Where, Joey wondered. Anywhere, she said, and flung herself down in front of him as far as her brief length would. In a mirror Joey saw her burnt head floating above a sea of cloth.
On the walk where he had fled Joey tried to draw air from the stars, his ribs closing on his lungs like the doors of a cage. He realized already that he was not embarrassed or repulsed, he was terrified, and that terror was not the appropriate response: amusement maybe, disdain perhaps, a sense of superiority or a feeling of pity: any one of these might have saved the situation. Instead, he had humiliated himself, fleeing from Madame Mieux’s pillow party. But it was iniquity’s den. And she was the den’s mother.
11
Mother … (a formal address for a serious subject) … Mother, perhaps my father was a ’fraidycat.
He was brave enough to risk England.
He was just fleeing from the Nazis.
Your father was a good Austrian; he had nothing to fear from the Nazis.
Then he had no reason to skelter away to England.
If you do something without good reason, Joey, does that make you feig?
I guess it’s what you run from without a good reason. My father said he was avoiding evil by shunning the wicked — always a good reason.
No, Joey, sometimes you have to confront crooks with their crookedness.
It didn’t do, did it? to confront Nazis.
Nazis? no … but your father only claimed — aloud and at length — he claimed that the fruit of fascism would poison its tree and that the roots of such a tree would contaminate the earth and that the evilized earth would seep through our boots and travel up our legs and — well — damage our desires, curdle our blood, and beat out our brains, but saying so doesn’t print it in the paper; he just said that: said it — said it — louder didn’t improven the noise — he couldn’t know he was right at least as far as the roots — their poison — went; how could anyone know such a thing, how could anyone even guess? he invented it — the danger like the lightbulb — even if it would become — okay — sort of true eventually on account of Austria’s bad luck in living nearby Germans; he pretended to see dark clouds, and if it rained like he said it would, if it came down as it did sometimes at home in strings, even if the ground drowned, it wouldn’t change the fact that he imagined clouds before there were real ones.
Maybe my father had foresight; didn’t he say so?
Say so—sie sagen—say so — is say so, so? no, Joey, his foresight was a boast like the butt of a nanny.
Mother, maybe getting out of a bad place isn’t such a bad idea and can’t be called cowardly — careful at worst, prudent perhaps.
He didn’t take me out of a bad place, Joey, he took me out of my homeland and lovehouse and marched me off to war; we went where the bombs would be; where we — I include you — would see people burned — skin and bones, worst of all, hair, like celluloid, nails; where only cats had the sense and slither to be safe.
I want to think my father ran away from more than blame, Mother; that he tried to do no harm when harm was a universal habit.
He harmed you, didn’t he? We lived on water for weeks, maybe you were too young to remember — just as well — and slept in the same clothes the livelong day, day in and day out, as if they covered us like bark; and he hurt your sister, holding her so hard when we sat in — what in hebe do they say? — the Tube, adding our stink to the stink of the sewer, to the smell of other smellers; and the bricks shook from the bombs, and the lights dimmed from the bombs, and people screamed or fainted, fearing to die in the middle of their complaints as if their complaints were dinner.
But Father thought, I imagine, that London would be a safe and civilized place, that England would be accommodating and out of the reach of brutes; he couldn’t know that bombs would follow and fall upon you.
Where was his foresight then, Joey, where was all of that moral wisdom he was full of when it was really needed for his family? Didn’t he know — he was just a fiddle-playing fellow — didn’t he know that trouble follows and falls upon Jews, that as soon as he pinned that silly hat to his hair the cooties were collecting? Jews are the wind that lets evil in; Jews have brought damn bad luck from the beginning because they crucified Jesus, not a chance for them after that.
Mother, you and Father weren’t Jews for very long.
Rudi was denounced, that’s why we weren’t Jews for very long.
But he never planned to stay Jewish, to …
He wanted me to wear a wig, to call myself Miriam …
You still do — call yourself Miriam.
The USA, too, they preferred us as Jews; they wanted no Austrians in their country; they processed us the way I box up rubber dishpans.