The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 12

  By then we were across West Washington Avenue, and Tim was convinced that Uncle Jim's Pizza, your pizza place, Uncle Jim, was a FIB establishment, and so we kicked in your windows and threw FIB license plates through the broken glass. I took an immense amount of joy in doing so.

  Then we heard cop sirens and spread out and ran, losing each other. Hannah and I met up again in back of a nearby apartment building. We made out, then walked to Hannah's apartment four blocks away and stumbled up the stairs. We took off each other's clothes, stifling laughter, and fell onto her futon, but then Hannah began to cough and needed a drink of water, and she turned on the lights and I saw that her futon cover was the same India print futon cover I'd purchased with my pregnant girlfriend Mary two months before.

  And as Hannah walked out of the room, naked, I remembered Mary and my baby and the money at the redneck house spent on tequila and Mary and my baby and Bill Clinton and the wetlands and FIB plates flying through the air . . . and my Mary . . . and my Mary . . . and I fell onto the floor trying to get my pants on, crying about all the poor babies, me as a baby, me without my father, and my poor baby, and all that broken glass and your face, Uncle Jim, your sad face, and my Mary, my Mary.

  “What are you doing, man?” Hannah asked, standing in the doorway, so skinny and naked, two glasses of water in her hands, as I pulled on my clothes.

  “I don't know . . . I don't know . . .” And I left.

  And I ran all the way home, so afraid Mary would be gone, at the hospital, having our baby alone. But she was there, asleep on our futon, and I fell onto her sobbing.

  As I said, I'm in Paris, Uncle Jim. I hung around the Sorbonne yesterday. Walked, sat at a café. The students don't look like Wisconsinites or FIBs or rednecks, but I'm sure they're capable of the crimes I committed. They want to be somebody. They want to be loved and respected. They want to feel right. They'd smash your windows. They'd dress like soldiers and shoot us all, if given the right context. They'd do it to feel good and right. To be a part of the team. They're just like you and me, Uncle Jim.

  I don't want to be like them or me or you. I will be done and I want you to know how sorry I am that I did what I did. I am so sorry.

  T. Rimberg

  Journal Entry,

  September 27, 2 a.m., under a bridge next to the Seine

  * * *

  Just woke up. Just dreamed this:

  You are walking with kids on either side. Charlie is on the right, Kara and Sylvie on the left. We're in a hall in a large basement, low lights, bare bulbs and the earth is shaking around us. We're moving fast. The heat is rising in your face. We turn left at a T in the hall and down another. Machine-gun fire sounds, sporadic—like they're aiming and firing, not spraying—from upstairs. The kids are breathing so hard, louder than our footsteps. Shh, you say. But Kara is gulping air. She is going to cry. She says, Daddy. We go through a door into a dark room. You feel the walls around the door for a light switch. Can't find a switch. You reach into the air, grasping for a pull cord. Your kids are whimpering. You find a cord, machine-gun fire closer, maybe in the stairwell you just passed. You pull the cord. Light explodes. And Dad is smiling in the middle of the room. Corpses in striped camp uniforms are piled all around him, with eyeglasses, gold teeth, suitcases. Dad is not dead. He shakes his head, raises his eyebrows, extends his arms, says, “It is too late. Lights out.” And then blackness.

  That's it. You are not going to have another dream.

  Journal Entry,

  September 27, under a bridge next to the Seine

  * * *

  Fully clothed. Pockets stuffed with broken concrete. I'm in. Blow out air. Say goodbye. Goodbye. And sink. Down. Down. Surrounded by dark cold, cold and green, cold and blue, and bubbling up. Up? Big lights. Streetlights. Air and light and bridge. Blow out again. Go limp, go still. Goodbye Charlie. Goodbye Mary. Goodbye. Sink through green to blue. Let go. And darkness. And bubbles. And up. Blue. Green. Up. Bubbling up. Exploding light and bubbling up. The bridge. The city. The surface. Then suck. Breathe water in. Drink water. Drink dirty water. Drink it. And down. Cough. Coughing water out. Lights everywhere, big bubbles of light on top of the water and the current should be carrying you away. It's not.

  On the bank. Angry. Hit head on wall. Awake.

  In. Bleed from head. Shark bait. Blow out. Blow air. Suck water. Fill lungs. Sink. Light light light, bubbles, back up. No sharks to take you. On the bank. Throw up this water, sick water, Paris water. Vomit hard. Back in. Sink. Sink. Sink. Swallow. Eyes burning, acid water. Sink. Can't sink. Please please. No. Back up. Vomit. Bleed. In. No! No! No!

  People shout from the bridge. You run away across Paris.

  Day Eight:

  Transcript 3

  * * *

  I wrote that an hour after my last attempt, sitting on the curb right before I barged back into the hotel to Kaatje and Cranberry, who had called to report me as a missing person.

  Yes. Before this drowning farce I was thinking very clearly. I wasn't having romantic thoughts or heroic thoughts . . . I was killing myself rationally.

  I couldn't stay under. I don't know. I just remember being pushed up every time. Maybe it was the bubbles?

  When I got out of the river the final time, people were shouting at me from the bridge, wanting to help me—it was morning rush hour by then, so there were lots of people—and I shouted back at them, I screamed at them. I must have looked crazy. Then a policeman showed up on the bridge, and I grabbed my backpack and ran away.

  I kept running through crowds and traffic . . . I was electrified, like shock treatment? Actually, I have no idea what that feels like.

  I blame the Seine for my lungs now. I still can't stop coughing. I haven't recovered. Disgusting water. You can't imagine what I saw in that water.

  No, the river couldn't kill me. I really tried.

  It would've been a more definitive attempt if I'd jumped off the Eiffel Tower or off the top of Notre Dame. If I bounced, we'd know a little more, wouldn't we?

  An hour after I got back to the hotel we were on a train north.

  Why? Antwerp, Barry. Antwerp is north.

  Journal Entry,

  September 27, on damn train

  * * *

  Fell asleep for five damn minutes. But still in those five minutes you're right up there in the apartment with Dad and with little spooky dream sister, watching troops march. Dad turns and smiles. He says, “You do what you do to survive. Are you sorry to survive? Not a choice! The only option. Correct? Am I correct? And if you only have one choice, how can you feel sorry to make it?”

  Shut up, Dad. Shut up! Shut up!

  Day Nine:

  Transcript 1

  * * *

  I slept hard last night. I didn't cough at all. Relieved to get past Paris, I guess.

  Kaatje dropped us off in Antwerp on her way to Amsterdam. She had to go back to quit her job. She was back with us in Antwerp within a day.

  I told her to do whatever felt right. When she said she was going to quit, I offered her up a high-five and said something like, “Slap me some skin, sister.”

  She did sort of high-five me. The Dutch aren't great at high-fives.

  Not exuberant, no. Not drowning made me . . . maybe I was kind of exuberant? Energetic. But different than before . . . not like the zippy dipshit philosophical loser in Amsterdam.

  Not concerned with the abstract, with ideas or whatever. I was driven to find out what the hell was going on. I wanted to understand what actually happened to Dad and to me, so I was focused.

  We hit Belgium on the train, and I was like a dog, nose pressed against glass . . . I knew that flat countryside. From Julia

  Hilfgott, sort of, when I'd traveled with her . . . but that wasn't it. I just know the Belgian countryside. My father lived in it.

  When we got to Antwerp, I ran out of the train and ran straight from the train station all the way into the middle of the old city, where the cathedral is.

  No map. I'
d been there with Julia Hilfgott. Maybe that's why I knew where to run. It could also be that I was running directly away from a convoy of Nazi trucks that I saw parked at the station when I left the train. The Nazis were frightening to me, so I ran and was lucky enough to run into a pretty part of town. That's possible, too.

  Yes. Broad daylight, 2004. I saw a convoy of Nazi trucks parked at the train station.

  Yes, Barry, I would call that a vision. Or perhaps a hallucination.

  It wasn't that far a run. Cranberry had it worse. I had run off the train with only my backpack. He had to roll both our suitcases and keep up with my running, while shouting at me, which couldn't have been easy.

  I got us a hotel near the cathedral. From there I walked around for several days, searching, peering into the eyes of the enemy. Nazis everywhere, like from my dreams, except I was awake.

  Letter 36

  October 3, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Professor Lewis,

  Waffles, Professor! Do you know there are waffles in Belgium? It's true. Belgian waffles. Do you remember when you taught my Survey of Ethnography class and talked about the phallic-driven rituals of the Balinese cockfight? That left a lasting impression on me. Preening, fluffing, all that cock violence. Your class made me so curious and made me feel so human, and you, Professor, turned me on to learning (although I've done nothing with my life until now).

  I'm engaged in an investigation, Professor. My father is hidden from me! The nature of reality, the truth, it is all hidden. I hope you remember me. T. Rimberg? Scholar of human behavior and history?

  I am sitting on a square in downtown Antwerp, Belgium. I've been coming back here again and again in the several days and nights I've been in town in order to observe and take notes. Have you been to Antwerp? I believe your area of expertise was Micronesia. Micro means tiny.

  Antwerp (Antwerpen in Flemish) means “hand-throwing,” literally “hand-throwing.” I read that on a brochure about the city I found sitting on a table in this waffle restaurant. No, not hand-throwing as in throwing a pot with one's hands on a potter's wheel. Oh no! There's no making in this story. This throwing is about destruction.

  Antwerpen. Hand-throwing.

  Folklorically speaking, a young boy hero killed a bad giant a long time ago, cut off his hands, and threw them in the river right where modern Antwerp is. Thus the name Antwerp. Hand-throwing. This is meaningful to me. I threw myself in a river last week. In Paris. If this city were named for my throwing incident, it would be called “Rimbergwerpen” or “T.werpen.” Funny, but true. As a scholar, I take knowledge gained and apply it to new situations to see how it fits. It fits good, Professor. I like “Rimbergwerpen” (literally Rimberg-throwing).

  Check this out: I rose up from the river into which I threw myself. I know. But believe it. (Rimbergopklimmen—literally “Rimberg rising”—if I understood what the waffle waitress told me when I asked.)

  Waffles.

  So I'm sitting in the square, and there is an enormous, delicate cathedral nearby, hovering above everything—I am looking at its clock tower now. Yes, I remember it from when I was here in college (crazy trip). But it is bigger than I remember, which is amazing. Everything else I remember from when I was a youngster is diminished in size from memory. All my memories of big yards and big houses and big adults . . . when I see them again they are small and unimpressive. (I'd likely think you tiny if I saw you now.) But this cathedral is enormous.

  Do you know what else is enormous in Antwerpen? Waffles!

  They are much bigger than Eggo waffles. Me and my brother David (bastard) ate those sometimes when we were kids.

  My dad hit David because of a waffle. One morning David and I were joke-fighting over an Eggo waffle (not real fighting, which was normally the case). A waffle popped out of the toaster, and we both grabbed for it, and we shouted back and forth, just like on the TV ad, “Leggo my Eggo!” My mom sort of laughed, rolled her eyes, and kept scurrying around the kitchen, putting our school lunches together. And the radio was on, local news, cattle prices. And it was warm and good in that kitchen. And me and David got louder and louder, shouting, actually having a good time with one another.

  And then my father stormed in, grabbed the Eggo out of our hands, tore it, and threw it in the garbage. He spat, “Fighting over cardboard shit.” He slapped David on the ear, and he would've hit me, but Mom grabbed his arm. Father shoved her away and left the house.

  Now I know why, Professor. The waffles in Belgium are magnificent. These waffles are worth fighting for. These waffles are the real thing. My dad must've eaten this kind of waffle growing up. Of course he was upset with us.

  In order to understand human behavior, one must understand root causes, eh, Professor? Had I known about these Belgian waffles, I would've known a thing or two about my old dad.

  Speaking of Dad, I'm quite sure I see Nazis walking around here. Not neo-Nazis, Professor. Old-fashioned, straight-out-ofthe-movies-Nazis. It's confounding. This is my life's work, I think. This is what I'm here to do.

  You've been a real inspiration to me.

  Thank you,

  T. Rimberg

  Letter 37

  October 3, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Aunt Jemima,

  I'm sorry to say that you've been replaced in my heart by fresh fruit. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away. I only say this because I know from listening to NPR one morning a few years ago that you are named after one of the biblical Job's daughters. Poor, poor misused Aunt Jemima.

  Job was Jewish.

  I am real and I see Nazis and I'm in a city that was decimated by Nazis and my dad was born here and he was a Jew. That's bad. So don't complain! You're a racist trademark with a hanky on your head. Still I always loved you and your friend Mrs. Butterworth even though you are not real.

  Don't complain to me! Especially now that I know a waffle should be covered in fresh fruit and whipped cream, not fake maple butter syrup, which I loved to pour on my Eggo waffles as a small child. I remember staring at your face on the syrup bottle, you smiling at me, while my brother screamed and cried and my mother screamed and cried and my dad slammed the door and left the house.

  Sweet liquid and bad memories, Aunt Jemima, daughter of Job. I am in Antwerp, and we shall receive the good hand of the lord (and cut it off and throw it in the river?) and we shall receive evil, Aunty.

  Thank you for being a friend.

  T. Rimberg

  Letter 38

  October 4, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Professor Lewis, teacher of the phallic Balinese Cockfight,

  More investigatory notes:

  Antwerp is filled to the gills with Jews. I didn't remember this from being here with Julia Hilfgott. These Jews are present-day Jews, too, not just Jews from wartime who I dream when I'm awake. The city is filled with actual Jews. The only Jews I remember from my time here with Julia Hilfgott were her family members, who paid no attention to me, who made me feel not at home, which fueled my pain and anguish over leaving Molly Fitzpatrick in Dublin, which caused me to look at the ground and not at the beautifully Semitic Julia Hilfgott, even when Julia pleaded with me to be with her, because, she knew it, we belonged together. Oh, did Julia get upset!

  Everybody's always so upset with me, Professor Lewis. Should probably take a hint, huh? I'm an upsetting person.

  Other than the shit that was an inch from my own nose when I was here, I don't remember much of Antwerp.

  Now I see everything.

  I am an examiner, an investigator. I am tracking down my father, Professor, tracking, although that's a ludicrous inclination. I have every evidence he is dead. Still, here I am. I should be dead, too, but I'm not, I don't think, so that's something.

  Professor, this morning, after several days of wandering and eating, I told the concierge at the hotel that I was looking to see Jewish stuff. I bet that's part of your investigatory process. Ask a local for info, someone in the know
?

  The concierge said, “The Shtetl? Diamond district? It is all very close.”

  “Shtetl?”

  “Yes, Shtetl. I don't call it Shtetl. American tourists often, though. Shtetl because so many look in this neighborhood as if they are from a different century, in Poland maybe?”

  “You mean all those Jews in hats aren't ghosts?” I shouted.

  The concierge looked at me and didn't crack a smile. She looked mad, maybe, or concerned or annoyed, but she gave me a map. The one direction I haven't walked in this city leads directly to the Shtetl! The fact is every time I've started walking in that direction, I've seen Jews in hats whom I thought were ghosts and I've gotten terrified and run home. But they're alive!