Lots of bitter facts, too horrible for contemporaries to contemplate. We can't actually bring ourselves to acknowledge them. Our souls aren't strong enough to bear that. And yet one can't give oneself a pass. A man like Rakhmiel would feel obligated to face up to the fact that this viciousness was universal. He believed that everybody had his share of it. You could find these murderous impulses in any person of mature years. In certain cases, like Rakhmiel's own, you could identify them in your physical structure as equivalents not necessarily of war but of widespread Russian, German, French, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Balkan shameful enormities.
Well, there was the Germanic side of him. Then there was the Brit component. Rakhmiel, whose name translates as "Save me, God" or "Be merciful, God, unto me," had also modeled himself on English dons and in time became a don himself. He had been in England during the war. He was blitzed in London, where he was gathering and interpreting intelligence. Then he taught at the Lon don School of Economics. Later he was an Oxford professor and divided his time between England and the U. S. He was the author of many learned books. He wrote daily, copiously, endlessly, and without hesitation, in his green ink. "The Intellectuals" were his principal subject, and in style he was Johnsonian. Sometimes he would remind you of Edmund Burke, but mostly it was Samuel Johnson whose tone you heard. I see nothing wrong with this. The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.
The arts of disguise are so well developed that you are sure to undercount the number of bastards you have known. Not even a genius like Rakhmiel was able to conceal the storminess or, if you prefer, the wickedness of his nature. He had ideas of decency which went back to the novels of Dickens, but he had wicked REMs-I borrow the term from the sleep specialists-wide-awake rapid eye movements. He looked like an irritable and highly volatile English clubman, very red in the face. In America, where people are not familiar with such types, his idiosyncrasies were bound to be misunderstood. People saw a dumpy, slightly paunchy but strong, short man in very old tweeds. To be ill-dressed is a donnish tradition going back to the Middle Ages, and at Oxford and Cambridge you still saw the holes in academic gowns patched with Scotch tape. There was a noticeable sourness coming from Rakhmiel Kogon's clothing. He looked like a tyrant, with the tyranny baked into his face. This was not well dissembled with meekness and Christian forbearance, or with civility. He wore a fedora when he went out and carried a heavy stick-"to hit the peasants with," he used to joke. And it was a joke, because his strong subject was civility. With civility he had opened up a new vein and everybody in the university world was mining it.
Rakhmiel was anything but simpleminded. My belief is that on the side he grew a little herb garden of good, generous feelings. He hoped, especially when he was wooing a new friend, that he could pass for a very decent man. He was also very learned. When you first came into his apartment your respect for him grew. On his shelves there were full sets of Max Weber and all the Gumplowitches and Ratzenhofers. He owned the collected works of Henry James and of Dickens and the histories of Gibbon's Rome and Hume's England as well as encyclopedias of religion and masses of sociology books. Useful for propping up windows when the sash cord broke, I used to say. There was also the green ink. No other color was used. The green was his exclusive trademark.
Ravelstein shouted with laughter when we came to this. He said, "That's how I want to be treated, too. That's it. I want you to show me as you see me, without softeners or sweeteners."
Ravelstein, after he had read my sketch of Kogon, said that should have commented on his sex life-a major omission, he believed. He told me authoritatively, "You've missed it-Kogon is attracted to men." When I asked for some proof of this he said that So-and-so, a graduate student, swore up and down that one night when they had drunk too much, Rakhmiel tried to kiss him. It was hard to think of Kogon as a kisser and I said that never in a thousand years could I picture Rakhmiel forcing his way on someone. "Then you've been brainwashed," said Ravelstein. Nothing in this line was too improbable for him, but I failed in every attempt to visualize Rakhmiel kissing anyone. I couldn't even picture him kissing his old mother. He would shout at her without mercy and then he would say, "She's deaf…." But I don't believe she was at all deaf, his bewildered mama.
Back from the hospital, Ravelstein was doing reasonably well. Of course he couldn't beat his infection but he said, "I'm in no hurry to die." His social life flourished. In his best days he flew like a hawk, as he himself said. "But now I flutter like those wild turkeys on your place in New Hampshire."
He could walk well enough, though his sense of balance was off.
He could also dress and feed himself, shave, brush his teeth (he wore an upper plate), tie his shoes, and run the steam-fizzing espresso machine-too big for the grooved enamel of the kitchen sink. His hands shook hardest when there was an extra-delicate operation to perform, like finding an eyehole with the tip of the shoelace. He was barely strong enough to wear his general-staff fur-lined suede coat that dragged on the ground when I helped him put it on. He could no longer reset his watch and had to ask Nikki or me to do it.
He was, however, still giving parties on nights when his team the Bulls were on TV. And now and then he took his student favorites to a dinner party at Acropolis on Halsted Street. The waiters there gave him power handshakes and called out, "Hey, lookit, the Professor!" They urged him to drink olive oil neat, by the glass. "Too late to save your hair, Prof, but still the best medicine."
We went also to a dining club downtown: Les Atouts-the Trump Cards. There Abe had a longtime gentlemanly connection with M. Kurbanski-accent on the ban. M. Kurbanski, the Serbian owner-manager, went abroad several times a year. He was preparing to retire to a villa on the Dalmatian coast.
He had a fine full front-head and belly matching a very impressive wide, short-nosed, breath-held pale face. His hair was combed straight back. He wore a cutaway coat. Altogether he gave Ravelstein the pleasure of feeling that he was dealing with a civilized man.
Ravelstein would say to me, "What's your take on Kurbanski?"
"Well, he's a Franco-Serbian gentleman who offers local people membership in his dining club east of Michigan Boulevard."
"What kind of war record has he got?"
"He says he fought the Germans. He belonged to the Maquis."
"They'd all tell you that. But I don't think he was a Communist," said Ravelstein. "To hear them describe it, they were all freedom fighters on the mountaintops. What's your bottom-dollar hunch about Kurbanski?"
"If he were up against it he could put a bullet through his head," I said. "That's more like it. I agree with you. But under it all he's a superior mвitre d'," said Ravelstein. "Who's going to dispute him if he claims he was a guerrilla in his glory days and fought the Germans?"
"That's why he wears such a sad and distant look. So what's left?" Ravelstein said. "The Jewish question."
"Not to be a Jew was very desirable in those times, a big asset. One never knows. But the big thing with Kurbanski is being French."