388
PARTISAN REVIEW
Politics worn like eye shadow. Sometimes, he can understand why
his father turned from them in disgust. But he tells himself that these
are the people he should be writing about. Wars so ancient and dead
that in another decade it will take a budding Schliermann to find
their Helen . Ritualized beliefs thrust against other ritualized beliefs.
In
the elevator, the old anarchist who knew Trotsky stands in one
corner, an almost-as-old party stalwart huddled against the yellow
metal wall of the other corner. They do not speak to each other. A
habitual sneer solidifies the thin face of the party stalwart - a face ,
Michael decides , frightened first by God's exit from Vilna and then
by truth dropping like honey from the lips of those who modestly
assured him they were his equals, not his betters . Equals armed with
the proper methodology . The proper methodology was always im–
portant. Souls pierced by words, like St. Sebastian pierced by
arrows . Faces caged by imminent deaths. Only death will break the
rigor of belief. Even in elevators, truth engulfs them . Standing be–
tween these two old men for whom words are youth , he waits for a
cry from their past. Hears nothing except their heavy breathing.
Wanting discipline, he will listen to that, too . Wanting belief, he will
be as patient with them as a mother is with a sickly child. Dying
bodies, living words . He finds that attractive . A belief that withers ,
leaving nothing but the words in which it has been clothed , like the
memory of snow in some distant countryside.
The party stalwart barely acknowledges his greeting when he
enters the elevator. He remembers how, when he was ajunior at Co–
lumbia, the party stalwart once cornered him in front of the mail–
boxes. The middle of winter and the old man wearing a yellow sport
shirt open at the neck, plebian chic demanding recognition . Why the
party stalwart sought him out he would never know . "So how can the
Soviet Union be anti-Semitic?" he suddenly asks Michael. "In the
Soviet Union, anti-Semitism is a crime. Listen to me . I've read the
Soviet Constitution." And then angrily walks away, justified before
God and man.
Why hadn't he laughed then? Because he couldn't. Just as he
couldn't laugh now. His glance simply shifts from one of the old men
to the other. They stand, mute in the corners of the elevator, mur–
dering each other in their minds. Hidden passages leading them
back to days when the world was young and possibilities abounded.
Garment workers , furriers, butchers from Warsaw, painters from
Odessa - each seeking an alley through memory , time leading them
like birds in flight. As he steps ofT the elevator, his mind blesses them
