End Zone

26

In the darkness I listened to Bloomberg tapping the wall next to his bed. I turned the other way, toward my own wall, and tried to fall asleep. I reviewed the entire day. I reviewed the week just past. I tried to remember the precise meaning of a certain phrase: interval recognition bombing. Nothing helped. I remained wide awake. Seven feet away the tapping continued, the thin steady click of fingernails, of penitentiary teaspoons. In time he switched to knuckles.

"Anatole."

"What is it?"

"This isn't Devil's Island. If you want to communicate with the people next door, you're free to walk right in."

"What do you mean?"

"You were tapping," I said.

"Was I tapping? Was I hitting the wall? I'm sorry, Gary. I didn't know."

"It's all right."

"Was I keeping you awake? I'm really sorry. I didn't know I was doing it."

"It's all right, Anatole. Really. I just thought I'd mention it. In fact, if you want to keep tapping, if it helps you fall asleep or even if it just reduces tension, go right ahead. It doesn't bother me all that much."

"What was I tapping with?" he said.

"Your hand."

"What part?"

"I think it was fingernails first, then knuckles."

"That reverses the pattern," he said. "I used to tap all the time when I was a child. But I always started out with knuckles. This reverses the pattern."

Although it was too dark to see anything, I rolled over in order to be facing him while we spoke.

"Why did you tap as a child, Anatole?"

"Children do that sort of thing. Probe everywhere for magic. There was always the chance somebody might answer."

"Did anybody ever answer?"

"There was a warehouse on the other side of the wall. Nobody ever answered. But one night, as I was just getting into bed, I heard a sound from the wall. I started tapping. I tapped for at least half an hour. I tried to improvise codes. I tried to convey urgency by using both hands to tap. There was no reply. It was probably a rat."

"Did this have some kind of effect on you, do you think?"

"It had no effect at all. What kind of effect would it have? It had a ridiculous effect. I was tapping at rats. That's the only effect."

"But why were you tapping so urgently, do you think?"

"I wanted to be sure the sound knew I was there. I didn't know what kind of hearing the sound possessed. It occurred to me that the sound might possess a very primitive hearing apparatus. I wanted to impress on it the fact that there was somebody on the other side of the wall. The sound might have been anything. I felt this was not the time to be subtle. I wanted to be sure the sound heard me."

"Why were you tapping a few minutes ago?" I said. "Had you heard a sound?"

"I didn't know I was tapping. I have only your word for it. I guess it was some kind of locomotor memory retrogression. As you know, I also wet the bed."

"But not nearly as much as you used to."

"Just as much but not as often," he said. "The improvement, obviously, is due to my recent efforts to forge a new consciousness."

"Right," I said. "A sort of new man kind of thing. The new man. The nonethnic superrational man. That kind of thing, right?"

"That's about right, Gary."

"Your phrasing gets more precise every day. I've been noticing that."

"I try to speak in complete sentences at least ninetyfive percent of the time. Subject, predicate, object. It's a way of escaping the smelly undisciplined past with ah¹ its ridiculous customs and all its craziness-centuries of middle European anxiety and guilt. I want to think clearly. I train myself toward that end with every living fiber of my being."

"Anatole, forgive me but that seems a little bit simplistic. Speak straight and you'll think straight."

"There's a relatedness. Take my word."

"Where did you grow up?" I said. "I've always been reluctant to ask."

"I don't want to discuss that. It no longer has any relevance. It's excess baggage. I'm getting rid of it. Go to sleep now, Gary, and try not to snore."

"Do you plan eventually to change your name?"

"There's no need for that. I've already reached the point where my name connotes nothing more to me than the designation EKseventeen might connote. I don't feel I have to live up to my name, to defend it, to like it, to spell it. I used to think of Anatole Bloomberg as the essence of European Jewry. I used to think I had to live up to my name. I thought I had to become Anatole Bloomberg, an importerexporter from Rotterdam with a hook nose and flat feet, or an Antwerp diamond merchant wearing a skullcap, or a hunchbacked Talmudic scholar in a woolly black coat and shoes without shoelaces. Those are just three of the autobiographical projections I had to contend with. It was my name that caused the trouble, the Europeness of my name. Its Europicity. And there was another thing. Some names possess a smell. I didn't like the way my name smelled. It was like a hallway in a tenement where a lot of Bulgarians live. But that's all over now. Now I'm free. I'm EKseventeen."

"It's a fabulous name," I said. "I mean the original one. I'm glad you're keeping it."

"It's a means of identification. It has no significance beyond that."

"Good night, Anatole."

"When I arrived here last year," he said, "I was still in a state of confusion and inner panic. But the remoteness helped me. The desert was an ideal place in which to begin the process of unjewing. I spoke aloud to myself in the desert, straightening out my grammar, getting rid of the old slang and the old speech rhythms. I walked in straight lines. I tried to line myself up parallel to the horizon and then walk in a perfectly straight line. I tried to become singleminded and straightforward, to keep my mind set on one thought or problem until I was finished with it. It was hot and lonely. I wore a lot of clothing to keep the sun from burning me and causing my skin to peel. Sometimes I read aloud from a children's reader. I wanted to start all over with simple declarative sentences. Subject, predicate, object. Dick opened the door. Jane fed the dog. It helped me immensely. I began to think more clearly, to concentrate, to leave behind the old words and aromas and guilts. Then I was called to the telephone. My mother had been shot to death by a lunatic. It all came back, who I was, what I was, where the past crossed over into the present and from being to being. Another innocent victim. I didn't go home to look at her small dead body. That would have been too much of a bringing back. I was sure I would never recover from the unspeakable heartbreak and Jewishness of her funeral. So I didn't go home.

Instead I went into the desert with a paintbrush and a can of black paint. Among all those flat stones I found a single round one. I painted it black. It's my mother's burial marker."