Holy Lands Read online

  I never went back to Boston University. I enrolled at NYU. Andrew brought me my bag the following week and came to see me regularly. I was like a woman trapped in a whorehouse. Utterly defeated. Unable to leave New York, trapped in that guilt. I started a new thesis, “The Chaos Theory and Monotheistic Religions.”

  Whenever I pulled away and then returned to him, Professor Andrew Black thought he was getting me back with his charm; but it was the towers that kept falling in my heart.

  Annabelle

  From Rabbi Moshe Cattan to Harry Rosenmerck

  Nazareth, April 20, 2009

  Dear Mr. Rosenmerck,

  Come and see me for several reasons. First, your livestock is in danger. I am very involved in the social, religious, and political life of Nazareth. Believe me, you’re upsetting people. Also, I do have occasion to talk about things other than religion. Movies, for example. And cooking! (What a pleasure to appear on the menu of a restaurant with a cynical owner! My lawyer will take care of that.) I am a real gourmet and inherited numerous Tunisian recipes from my mother. Are you familiar with this cuisine? Made with olive oil, I’ll give you, but unequaled. Come for Passover and eat a bkeila! And let us end these tense exchanges. I am curious to see your face, Mr. Rosenmerck; but if you insist, I am capable of filling an entire notebook with insults in multiple languages.

  Sincerely, of course,

  The Rabbi of Nazareth

  Moshe Cattan

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: April 21, 2009

  Subject: From your mother

  Dear Annabelle,

  Your brother told me about your relationship being over. I knew long distance wouldn’t work. I won’t say I told you so because you already know that.

  It’s for the best. You two never had a future.

  When are you going to start working? You’ll be fulfilled and you’ll meet a man who deserves you.

  You’re not just going to collect master’s degrees and MBAs! In the meantime, your breasts will fall and your belly will get soft! You’re so beautiful. That would be such a shame.

  I’ll stop being a nagging mother now, but I want so much for you to be happy. I suppose that’s an idle dream.

  Everything plays out in childhood. You’re looking for your father because he left us for the first two years of your life. Some wounds never heal—they’re the ones that kill us. We stubbornly allow ourselves to be stabbed again and again in the same place. Once we localize the wound that will never scar over, we spend our lives reopening it. But sometimes, a twist of fate transforms everything. Or you meet a man whose neurosis covers up your wound and it works.

  That’s how it worked for a long time between your father and me. Me, a girl from Lille raised by nuns—I found a foolproof way to drive my parents nuts. Then, they stopped being anti-Semitic and started liking your father, and I stopped.

  I don’t know what to tell you, my little Annabelle. Go see your father; he always knew how to comfort you better than I did.

  Mom

  From David Rosenmerck to Annabelle Rosenmerck

  New York, April 25, 2009

  Annabelle,

  On September 11th, when the first tower fell, I was listening to the radio in a taxi on the way to a meeting with a movie producer who wanted me to adapt Who Am I? into a movie. They still thought it was an accident when I walked into his office. I called you right away and there was that stupid song from the musical on your answering machine.

  “Did you see it?” I asked, and waited for you to answer. I said, “Annabelle,” and your name echoed in your empty room. I continued my interview like a robot. The television was on behind the producer and I saw the second plane fly into the tower. I was trying to explain to this fat, bald guy that something was happening behind him that warranted our stopping all discussion, but he said, “We’ll deal with that afterward.”

  He wanted to talk about himself. He had a cigarette that he sucked on between snippets of meaningless dialogue. So I left. Without explaining. Without answering. The guy insulted me when I got to the end of the hall. I went right to Mom’s. Dad was already there, as if together they could be stronger in order to protect you.

  The three of us stayed together until eleven o’clock that night, waiting for a sign from you. Mom was trying to find out where that famous conference could be happening. She’s the one who paid for your ticket from Boston to New York. Your roommate at BU was positive: you had left for New York the night before.

  And I thought that, if you died, Dad would certainly forgive me and there’d be something simpler in my life.

  And yet, Annabelle, you know how much I love you. But I couldn’t unthink that thought, which came from a part of myself that I hate.

  You see, we all have our dark sides. We’re working it out in these letters and we’ll get rid of them.

  David

  From Harry Rosenmerck to Rabbi Moshe Cattan

  Nazareth, April 26, 2009

  Dear Mister Rabbi,

  I went into the center of Nazareth yesterday to meet my old friend Hassan and we stayed to smoke some shisha.

  Otherwise, I think I’d have come to see you so we could have a laugh and taste your “bkeila” made with olive oil! What is it, anyway? I don’t even know how to pronounce it.

  Since I’m not coming to you, I’ll make you laugh by correspondence and I’ll be none the wiser. If you laugh in an empty forest, does it make a sound?

  Have you seen that new travel agency run by one of your sinister colleagues? It’s called “Memorial Tours.”

  These tours aren’t concerts with Chabads dressed up like the Beatles or Michael Jackson—they’re organized trips to the high temples of suffering that are Poland, Germany, Austria, and the former Czechoslovakia. There is a 3-day, Auschwitz-Birkenau/Theresienstadt itinerary by bus. Or a more luxurious itinerary that lets you take the time to cry, with outings to four concentration camps in three days, then a discovery weekend in Prague with visits to the old synagogue and Kafka’s house. The kosher meals are included.

  Woody Allen could just set up his camera in front of the place and start rolling.

  The worst is that this guy is totally oblivious to the vulgarity of his agency. He even pushed one of these Prozac trips on a couple of guilt-ridden goys—or goys made to feel guilty for the occasion—right in front of me. I can just see the sun hats he could offer with his vacation packages:

  “I’ve been to Auschwitz.”

  Auschtrip

  Summer concentration camp

  Shoadventures

  Or, more intellectual, Birkenolodge

  Frankly, Mr. Rabbi, instead of spending your days trying to make me feel guilty over a few strips of bacon, you should put an end to these antics.

  Plus, after consulting with my lawyer—Mr. Buchman—I can confirm that Nazareth is a city apart. The law of 1962 forbidding pig breeding in Israel and authorizing their slaughter is not valid in certain Arab villages, which are mentioned in the law, due to their denser Christian populations—like Kfar-Yasif, Ibillin, Galilee, and … Nazareth.

  So your threats only interest me as a basis for correspondence to which I’ve grown attached; you can’t do anything to my little pink animals.

  You’ll most likely receive this letter on the morning of Shabbat and so I wish you a peaceful one.

  Your friend,

  Harry Rosenmerck

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: April 27, 2009

  Subject: From your daughter

  Dear Mom,

  I’ve been in therapy for seven years, thank you. You’ve told me many times how my father’s departure and subsequent return traumatized me.

  I’m astonished that you didn’t remind me for the hundredth time about the Freudian episode when I shit in my shoes to celebrate our reunion.

  And, of course, what a caricature: I slept with a
n “old” professor the same age as Dad.

  What really bothers you is that, like a lot of “stupid tarts” my age, I’ve come to hunt in your territory, to eat from your plate. So you think, “Serves her right” if he patches things up with his wife in rollers and you never, never think I might be grieving.

  Yes, stop analyzing everything. I’m grieving.

  I don’t give a shit about which neuroses made you love Dad and then stop. I’d like to feel love when you talk to me, but it’s pointless.

  Annabelle

  From Harry Rosenmerck to Annabelle Rosenmerck

  Nazareth, April 26, 2009

  My dearest daughter,

  Thank you for the little piece of childhood that you sent me. Take pictures, don’t stop. Sometimes we see things more clearly when we’re not in front of them. And that camera that seems so cold is bringing you closer to life.

  How I envy you the winter that’s hanging on. Here, there’s no fresh air.

  And yet it’ll snow in Israel in a few months and the sun will be over Paris in a week.

  The same is true of heartbreak. And that’s what makes it sad, more so than the end of love—that it passes. That everything goes away. That everything escapes.

  If I had a telephone, we’d never say anything to each other. Nothing important.

  I don’t have any pink paste like the heartache doctor, but there’s a little piglet I’m bottle-feeding that would make you feel better. I can’t offer you waffles either, but there’s a bomboloni seller around the corner—you know, those big Tunisian doughnuts they fry in boiling oil and then dust with sugar.

  Come to me. We’ll sing in the car. I’ve lost an octave, but I still have rhythm. I’ll introduce you to my friends: Marc, an enlightened English Christian, Josef, a rabbi who wants to play rock, and Hassan, the richest of us all, gardener to the Nazareth bourgeoisie and a Muslim who smokes weed.

  You see, all of our dinners start like a joke and we just wait for the punch line.

  See you very soon, my little girl,

  Your dad

  p.s. Stop picking the same kind of man. Learn to love the ones that love you. Get married, have kids, and get fat like everybody else.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: April 27, 2009

  Subject: Sorry

  My beloved daughter,

  Forgive me, it was clumsy of me to ask you to stop studying so you could fall in love. When you were a little girl, I always put your intelligence ahead of your heart, and now I think that might have been a mistake. I’ve always had the impression that we speak different languages. Come home so I can take you in my arms—that would be simpler.

  And no, absolutely not, I don’t go after men in their sixties anymore. I’m focusing all my efforts on rich ones in their eighties with heart conditions so it’ll be brief but intense—and I’ll inherit!

  When I hit the jackpot, you should come to NYC and we’ll waste an entire morning shopping before going to eat at Katz’s. You love those giant pastrami sandwiches and all the photos of Woody Allen (or is it Mel Brooks …?).

  Mom

  From Harry Rosenmerck to Rabbi Moshe Cattan

  Nazareth, April 30, 2009

  Dear Mr. Rabbi,

  I got your letter forbidding me from making any jokes about the Shoah.

  My parents were at Birkenau. That’s where I was conceived.

  I never asked how.

  I’m living proof that we make love with bones more than flesh.

  My mother survived. I was the only thing she had left of my father. She left with a tiny bulge in her belly and I held on tightly to her insides. I was born in Paris three months after the liberation. My mother started a new life with a baby and a sense of humor. Back then, she wrote comedies that actors read on the radio. She would have found the idea of me raising pigs in Nazareth hysterical! The laughter would have killed her if cancer hadn’t already done the job three years ago. I took her body to Herzliya Cemetery and stayed with her.

  I’ll tell you what I think. I think that Israel was created because of, or thanks to, that horror we now call the Shoah. So that there could be a place, just one, where no one would tell Jews they didn’t belong. So we wouldn’t die by the thousands because we have a particular name or are missing a piece of foreskin. I think that if you allow jokes about it, then the Shoah will gradually slip away into the pain of history. And when this atrocity is part of history, then you won’t be able to tolerate certain actions taken in the name of Israel. No more walls. No more meaning to the Jewish State. No more pigs on stilts? No more Palestinians humiliated at the border. No more deprivation for our neighbors while our youth gorge themselves. No more rifles in the backs of the majority. No more religions on our passports. No more reasons for our children to risk their lives because they have the misfortune of getting on the wrong bus to go to school in the wrong country. No more justification for the absurdity of our lives and our situation. I’m telling you, Mr. Rabbi, if we’d only make a few jokes about the Shoah, nobody would wait for Godot anymore. Would that be so bad? I don’t know. It has to happen. Does keeping the memory fresh prevent history from repeating itself? Surely not. Memories are meant to be forgotten. History is meant to be repeated. That of Jews, of women, of Arabs, of people who suffer, of Little Red Riding Hood. And the grandmother always, always has sharp teeth.

  Dr. Harry Rosenmerck

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: May 1, 2009

  Subject: Your son is rich!

  Mom,

  I know you mean well by sending me these little cash transfers for every Jewish holiday. But a wire transfer for Passover? First of all, it was last month!

  Go see a shrink! You don’t need to pay to prove to me that you’re Jewish. Even if Dad’s family always considered you a convert, I’ve always considered you my mother.

  Religion doesn’t mean much to me. Of course, it’s the cradle of civilization and it has a certain place in my writing. The Jewish religion brings out the best and worst of humanity. And I don’t feel Jewish; I am Jewish, you see? The two things are very different.

  I’m pale, I wear glasses, I’m homosexual, I’m small, and I’m Jewish. I endure. I’m doing something with it. The beatings I took at school, more for being Jewish than small and cross-eyed, I now transform into words. To try to understand. Judaism is an exclusive club. A non-proselytizing religion. Now there’s a concept. “We’re not going to spend insane amounts of money to evangelize, send boats, and kill recalcitrant natives—no, let’s be elitist!”

  Membership card: no foreskin. Must have a Jewish mother, terrible taste in food, etc.

  And we’re shocked that those on the outside question the actions of this very private club, reputed for its sense of humor and money (what an incredible marketing coup—ninety percent are deprived of both), and cannot understand why, on top of that, they shouldn’t hate us.

  To sum it up, Mother, don’t bother paying your membership dues for Passover. I’m not the treasurer. And I earn an indecent amount of money on the pretext that I put words into an amusing order. Give double to Annabelle, buy yourself some dresses, or get your breasts redone.

  Love,

  David

  p.s. I can’t have dinner with you Tuesday. I’m going to the home of a publisher whose highly perceptive wife is taken with me.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: May 2, 2009

  Subject: Departure …

  My dear David,

  I’m writing to you from the airport in Paris. I’m really sorry but my research is taking me to Montana, so I’ll have to miss your play … once again …

  When are you coming to visit me in Paris?

  I miss you and want to see your fiancé. I’ve only met him once. I was drunk (or was he?). And anyway that didn’t count; I thought it
was just a one-night stand …

  It makes me sick to know I can’t be there tomorrow. Really …

  Love,

  Your sister

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: May 2, 2009

  Subject: Pure of heart

  Young lady,

  I could get angry and hope for your plane to be hijacked by an alter-globalist armed with a biodegradable knife and the intention to crash it into a field of transgenic corn.

  You’re all terrible liars …

  Even in writing.

  See you tomorrow in New York,

  David

  From Annabelle Rosenmerck to Harry Rosenmerck

  New York, May 3, 2009

  Dear Dad,

  I’m at the café across the street from The Flea. I took a plane this morning. David doesn’t know … well, I’m not sure … I think he might have found me out. We’ll see! I’m waiting for David’s play to open and I’m three hours early. It’s being put on in the same theatre where he started. At his request! What a snob, right? Now that he’s filling theatres that seat a thousand, he’s going back to limited seating. I guess he’s trying to find that high he got from Who Am I? The reality is that he’s still brilliant, but a lot less so since he’s said that he is. As if that millstone hanging around his neck containing his secret also enclosed painful treasures of inspiration. I think that was the last time we were together as a family. There was Granny’s funeral, too, but even if we all four went, we weren’t together at that point. I get the impression Mom gets a certain pleasure out of tension. She likes stories, problems, having the right to criticize. And then she’ll manage to be the only girl in her son’s life … By the way, from listening to her, you’d think I wasn’t her type. Never enough makeup. Unkempt fingernails. “Poorly groomed,” that’s her famous expression. “Annabelle, you are poorly groomed …” Or she’ll moan, “It’s such a shame …” Anyway, she’s split us into two couples—she and David being one, and the two of us the other, the sort of embarrassing couple that she has to see from time to time. I saw my shrink before getting on the plane, so you’re getting my forty minutes of rumination … for free! In any case, I’m here because I don’t want her to get away with it, and because I miss my brother.