But something finally cleared in the Rat’s mind when she was reunited with her beloved cousin Herbert and his grandchildren. Dumped unceremoniously on the floor of a large, vacant, echoing space, the New York Public Library, Anna came to. Suddenly, she snapped out of the obsession — that obsession for sexual experience, for union with evil, that had managed to cloud all subsequent suffering. That obsession that had silenced her during her flight through Europe, the long wait in detention camps for passage to the United States. The long, silent wait, while she kept herself sealed in her own thoughts.
The Rat was freed from all this, and although she remembered dimly, as if at a distance, all her losses, once carried home in Herbert’s arms, she returned to herself, as if all were washed away.
The Rat was once again the earnest young girl she had been, arguing seriously with her cousin about the meaning of life. She and Herbert looked at each other as if no time had passed. They did not see the age upon their faces, only the simple joy of being.
Watching Maria and Philip, the Rat knew happiness. She dreamed, and her dreams were gentle ones, not the hot, tortured sexual ones that had carried through the long years of a heavy life.
In this stuffy room, rejoined with the little family, Anna knew once more a simple purity of being. She was content to sit by the window, hearing the sounds of New York rising up, and watching the faint rays of sunlight cross the room. Everything here made Anna happy; she was a simple Rat after all.
Anna watched the little girl in bed beside her, her breath rising and falling as she slept peacefully. Her hair caught the light. Anna drew the bedclothes about them both more snugly. She had entered another time of her life, the easiest time.
Anna adjusted her small aching body. She knew there were modern ways of getting rid of marks. She had heard already that doctors were voluntarily removing tattoos — one did not need to be marked forever. In conversation, Herbert had told her that Felix, their friend from the old days, was one such doctor. Compassionate, humane, Felix treated only the escapees from Europe. The Rat remembered him from the old days, their fierce intellectual discussions. Yes, she would offer to go with Maria to her next appointment with the old doctor, and there she would ask him to help her. Almost regretfully, the Rat stroked her own marred thighs. It would not do to go to her Maker with the mark of evil on her. She knew her time was coming; she was already preparing for it.
Chapter 15 DEAD A LONG TIME
Maria did not know then that she would not be dead a long time. In 1945, when the war ended, she would be ten. Inexplicably, her visits to Uncle Felix stopped before then.
But until that time, each week on Saturday afternoons, Maria was taken to his office, where Uncle Felix would give her “vitamins.” Often before the visits, Maria lay on her cot in the family room, stiffly, passively, refusing to respond to her mother’s pleas. “Maria, put on your coat. It is time to leave now.” Then, more forcefully: “Come, Maria, you must.” Maria tried hard to make herself even more dead; with a little effort, she could almost tune out her mother’s existence.
But inevitably, she didn’t know how, these refusals would end. Larger than death, her young and beautiful mother would win. For her mother was helpless and angry. And it was somehow Maria’s fault.
Years later, Maria was to read about Gandhi and the principle of passive resistance. She had almost invented it, she felt. With just a little more time, she might have perfected it. She read of swamis lying on beds of nails and not feeling anything. She read of people staring at the sun. Maria practiced all this, or the equivalent.
At night, she stared into the darkness of the room and pretended not to hear little Philip when he cried. She found she could tune out the grown-ups when they talked to her. Later, in school, she practiced not moving at all, although sometimes she would blink when her name was called.
Maria practiced being clean. She practiced being good. She was a top student. She practiced being invisible. “How good she is,” the adults marveled. “Maria is always so polite.” Maria liked this; it gave her more time to be herself beneath the facade. But there was no self. Maria practiced and practiced being dead. It would become a useful skill.
Maria felt most herself, that is to say, most dead, when lying on Uncle Felix’s examining table, her hand forcibly pressed to Uncle Felix’s “broken leg.” She let herself float out of her body, up near the walls among the photographs of the angel children. Had they, too, been in this room? She wondered, regarding their grave little faces. They all seemed so clean, so purified. Maria knew that she would join them someday; Uncle Felix was making her ready for that other life. She longed to wear white.
Somewhere in the room, far away, Maria listened to the sounds of water running. Felix washed his hands. Maria lay before him, naked, meek, and sacrificial. She thought of heaven.
Maria encountered another little girl waiting in the entry, a child also accompanied by a nervous, fussing mother. Maria did not want to think about this too much. The two girls would, in passing, lower their eyes in shame and confusion, avoiding each other’s too-careful scrutiny. Did they share the same experience with Uncle Felix? Did the other girl need “vitamins” also? Maria wondered, turning her head in sudden, sharp, unbearable pain.
After her sessions with Uncle Felix, Maria sat outside the door on the little sofa and waited for her mother. Did her mother need “vitamins,” too? Maria heard, through the door, her mother’s hypocritical laugh, and a growl that seemed to come from Uncle Felix. She buried her head in Schatzie’s neck. Sometimes, as the door closed, she saw, in her mind’s eye, her mother’s beautiful slip, her blouse, flung over the top edge of the yellow Chinese screen.
When she was older, her mother stopped going with her to Uncle Felix’s. But this was after Maria’s father, David, had returned to the family. “You’re old enough to go there by yourself,” Maria’s mother said.
Maria was too thin, with deep bluish circles under her eyes, and an anxious expression, which she tried to tame into impassive calmness. She didn’t protest too much, had long since given up protesting. The dead feel nothing, after all, so what did it matter? Meekly, she went.
Felix’s room was always warm, and with a certain voluptuous dread, Maria partook of his rituals. His “broken leg,” her “badness,” all these she accepted. After Felix was finished, he stroked her forehead, her hair. She was his “good girl” then. She felt loved and soothed. Maria imagined that at those times she heard the angels singing. Yet, immediately after, Felix dismissed her with a brusque dislike. She could see she wasn’t good enough yet; and each time, between the visits, Maria was a “bad girl” again.
Maria wanted to stop eating. She wanted to stop going to the bathroom. She ate less and less, and although the family did not have much food, she gave half her share to little Philip. Maria’s mother, noticing this, began to scold the girl. “Can’t you see how hard I work for our food? Be grateful, you ungrateful child!” Maria held the tears back from her eyes and stared at her mother while at the same time trying to make her vanish.
“You must eat.” Irritated, Ilse steeled herself angrily for this new development in their lives. “The child does not eat.” Maria’s mother expostulated to Felix during one of their visits the following month. With frustration, she regarded her wan girl.