Being Carlo Levi

From "This is How Carlo Levi Would Say It"

The lily pond:

black as a lagoon,

smooth as an ice rink,

still as blade of glass.

The lily pads:

fat with complacency,

lazy with promise,

inert as a green guru.

One tiny, floating flower:

brilliant like claret,

resilient and lonely,

purple with steadfast.

Excerpt from "Raven Red, " Part One

From "Raven Red"

Passover arrives during the first week of April, and for a few days Lila Mae is temporarily granted a reprieve from twentieth century America.  She's on her way to visit the “downtown” grandparents, Frank’s folks, for an evening of sweet dark wine and family intrigue. Lila and Blood Brother are dressed up “like dolls” by their mother who believes she can show up the more traditional and successful Polish in-laws by using a well honed Hungarian knack for theatrical presentation. It’s a holiday Lila Mae looks forward to for months. Here she stands, all decked out in a new spring coat the color of a pale purple easter egg and quizzically labeled a "topper," a pair of similarly misnomered black patent leather "Mary Janes," and white lacey communion-type anklets with a small ruffle at the top. Selma also has picked out a sky blue Easter bonnet for the costume, redolent of the most shiksa of little American girl outfits, with a wide, navy taffeta bow that ties under the chin; she herself is dressed to kill in a tight suit trimmed with Persian lamb fur, red lipstick, and high heels of the shiniest, smoothest leather and thinnest ankle straps. It is late afternoon before the eve of the first Seder, still a couple of hours before sunset when they leave the house and walk the three long blocks to the train. Lila Mae Kimmelkowsky, at her post near the edge of the Seventh Avenue IRT platform, is leaning over the tracks, peering into the tunnel to catch first light of the chariot that will speed her back to nineteenth century Poland. Her ten tiny fingernails are similarly agleam with Revlon's "Ravin' Red"- which Lila hears as"Raven"- the  matching, vampirish nail polish that Selma keeps in the bathroom cabinet, and to whose miniature bottle Lila is allowed access on special occasions; she has applied the blood red lacquer herself, and being an amateur manicurist, much of the varnish has seeped into the crevices of her cuticles in uneven splotches. But no matter, her hands feel very important, and she is hoping they will be noticed. Excitedly she boards the train and sits at the edge of the seat so that the back of her bare legs won't feel the scratchy, sharp edges of the torn wicker padding. . . . 

Hell's Kitchen

It was all about names. The newly Americanized family, numbering well over forty by the annual head count at seders, settled in and around the west forties and fifties, a few blocks and a galaxy away from the diamond center and theater district in a slightly more “residential” area of Hell’s Kitchen, speedily dropping the "sky" from their last names and going to synagogue with the actors. It was here that father, previously called Zev and then Alter, afterward Albert and finally Al, and five of the six brothers with all their new names and old accents, began to churn up a contracting business named after my grandfather; and then the youngest boy, Shlomo/Sol/Solly, an alum of Stuyvesant and CCNY barely off the boat, some years later finally taking it upon himself to mishandle the accounting and subsequently spend a memorable Passover stint in prison where the  brothers, including possibly Herschel/Gerschel/George and Avram/Abe plus the bro called simply "Eli" dutifully paid visits. The brothers brought Sol/Solly gefilte fish and unleavened bread so he could partake of the festival of freedom- then after his release word had it he landed a cushy job with the city. . . . 

A much beloved, second-from-youngest brother, darling Dave/David/Duvid/Dov/Duvehla, the very opposite in nature to sassy Shloimeleh/Sol/Solly, had passed on before the unfortunate incarceration incident- an incident by the way which easily could have been avoided and erased with a mere fine by Sol/Solly/Shlomo had he not dissed the judge by stating rather pugnaciously that he only took orders from his rabbi. Dave-Duvehla, though one up from Solly-Shlomo was really the In Residence "baby" of the family as everyone more or less adored him, and why not? He was handsome, and sweet, and fun, and nice, and a talented photographer and also a character from West Side Story with his Puerto Rican amour that he hid from the family until after his death; and he also was vulnerable because along with his godlike qualities he possessed the affliction of the great ones as well- epilepsy. And it is that from which he died, leaving this earth in his mother's bathtub when barely turned forty.

Everyone on both sides of the family had several names, be it the crazy Hungarians or the ersatz Poles, and figuring out who was who was akin to fielding a Russian novel during the first hundred pages or so. The paternal grandparents from Poland, Leah and Jacob, alternately Laya and Yacov or Lena and Jake, were in essence Baba and Zada. Their rambling front-to-back apartment of a million little rooms was the setting for periodic ceremonial shouting fests among  half a dozen brothers hurling derisive Yiddish nicknames into the air such as "Shluhmeel" and "Putz" and also "Haim Yankel"- this last term indicating some sort of Village Idiot- along with the masterfully sarcastic "hochem" meaning "wise one." The apartment had twelve foot ceilings and plaster walls providing the acoustics. During these shouting events the sibs nervously, loudly and somewhat obsessively cracked walnuts, pecans and filberts scooped up from generous bowls placed strategically along a huge, mahogany table, then threw the shells every which way and downed tiny shots of straight vodka or small glasses of Slivovitz, the deadly eastern European hootch posing as plum brandy, while their lone baby sister, Faygah/Faygala/Florence, looked on somewhat dolefully. They argued about politics and foreign policy, the economy and Israel- a land where another branch of this Polish Jewish “ex-pat” clan already had settled in a much earlier part of the century. And there's a story here too of course.

My paternal great grandmother as it happened had immigrated to Palestine not long after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 along with her several children, now our long lost tribe of cousins in the land of milk and honey. She lit out for Zion early in the Jazz Age, not that the Charleston would have had any measurable effect on a tiny, miserable Polish village beset by pogroms and located on a river called “Bug” perilously near to the Russian border. Great Grandma Miriam supposedly was the genuine article, a centenarian firecracker to the last. She now lies in what I imagine a restless eternity, in her underground bunker on the Mount of Olives. Picturing her in stillness however is impossible, as the real and fabricated stories of her madcap maneuvers still flow through family gatherings like a bottle of Manischewitz during the reading of the Hagaddah. Even her death was attributed to an impulsive caper: flouting the explicit warnings of her children regarding the fragile state of her health and years, and in her late dotage boldly sneaking out on a damp, cool, moonless night to watch a ship stealthily unloading its cargo of illegal immigrants onto the beaches of Tel Aviv under the cover of darkness- in kick ass defiance of British rule before Israel was officially declared a state- at which time the firecracker purportedly caught a cold and met with her maker, going out with a bang as usual. She forever stands as a catalytic figure in a variegated family mythology in the same way that Israel remains both conflicted and storied. . . . (To read more of this story, email me)