The Golden Willow Read online

  Hospital emergency rooms are filled with elderly people brought in bleeding or with fractured bones resulting from their falls. I was lucky. I had several visits to the emergency room of our local hospital, but always with minor cuts and bruises. How long that luck was going to last was questionable. I was badly in need of a caregiver in my home, but I was unable to afford one until my book was sold to foreign publishers. The money came as an advance long before any royalties were paid to me, and nothing could have been more welcome. And with it came Bette.

  I saw her ad in a small newspaper that was thrust into my mailbox once a month. It was in “Situations Wanted” and offered health care services. I answered it immediately, and very soon the woman I had spoken to arrived, and when I saw her for the first time it was with a shock. Her face was swollen and a mass of scars. One of her eyes seemed to be missing. She was about fifty, heavy and dressed in ski pants and a jacket. The one good eye looked back at me defiantly, as if aware of my reaction and daring me to remark on it.

  I got over it in a moment and said, “Come on in and sit down and let's talk.”

  Her first name was Bette and the rest of it was Italian. She told me everything about herself. Several years ago she had been sitting down to breakfast with her husband when they got into an argument over some trivial matter that she didn't want to talk about. It was one of the few times they'd ever argued. Ordinarily, he was a quiet, well-behaved man, a mechanic of some sort. He was her second husband and a good father to the two children, a boy and a girl, she'd had with her first husband, whom she had divorced. But that morning something happened to him and he went wild, and before she knew it he was slashing at her face with a knife.

  He ran off, leaving her unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Eventually, they caught him and put him in prison with a fifteen-year sentence. She herself spent months in the hospital, and it would take months more of plastic surgery for her face to become normal again.

  In the meantime, she had been having difficulty finding work to support her children, both of whom were still in school. She had been a secretary before all this took place, but her disfigurement prevented her from getting a job. She tried everything, even the most menial kind of work that was available, but prospective employers shrank from her appearance. She told me all this quite calmly. There was nothing emotional about her. In fact, she seemed almost amused at her plight. But I couldn't help being touched by it, and somehow I couldn't help feeling that we had something in common. Wasn't age a disfigurement to many people? Age, with its bent figure, wrinkled face, and crippled crawling movements, turned people off. I had seen it in faces that looked at me.

  I was more fortunate than others. I had written a book and gotten it published. But that didn't make any difference to the eyes that looked at me. I was an old man, and I remember how I myself used to feel when I was young and looked at old people. It was in the days when I still lived in England, and there was Old Biddy, as we used to call her and whom we dreaded meeting on our way through Daw Bank, one of the more run-down sections, where the middens were in front of the hovels there and overflowed onto the sidewalk. Old Biddy would come out of one of the hovels looking like a bear that had just been aroused from its winter hibernation, a slightly dazed look on her wrinkled face but the eyes glaring at us fiercely, the voice muttering something indistinct. We believed she was a witch, and we ran from her in terror.

  Any old person could arouse such fear in us, for we believed they were all witches, some with toothless, grinning faces who could easily cast a spell on us. But there was one I recall for whom we felt pity. This was old Bubba Frank, as she was called, bubba meaning “grandmother.” She was bent over almost double—like a hairpin—with what was undoubtedly osteoporosis, still unknown to the medical world. She came often into my mother's faded fruit and vegetable shop to pass the time, to sit with the other women and gossip while they sat around the counter and sipped the glasses of sour milk that my mother made and sold at a farthing a glass. She talked about herself and often wept over the misery of her life. Her care was being divided between two married daughters, the Blanks and the Londons, and the two sisters often quarreled over whose turn it was, neither one wanting her and each accusing the other of cheating on her turn. It was a common sight to see one of the daughters leading the old woman determinedly to the house of the other and then to hear them arguing on the doorstep while the old woman stood helplessly at one side waiting for the outcome of the argument and to know where she would be living for the next month.

  Now I have overcome much of the prejudice directed at older people by writing a book, but I also have detected a note of skepticism in some people's voices, as if they might suspect that a doddering old man like me could well have made it up. I have noticed even slight amusement on others' faces, as if the idea of a ninety-plus-year-old man writing a book was akin to some sort of a circus stunt.

  Nevertheless, I was an author and my book was in the process of being published, regardless of what anyone thought, and even before the publication date came about I was thinking of a second book that I would write, a sequel to the first one. But I pushed that aside for the time being, discouraged by the agent I had acquired in London. When I told him about the second book and had asked if he'd like to see an outline, he'd written back, “No, thanks. Be satisfied with what you've got, and remember, it isn't often that a publisher will take a chance on a first book by an author in his nineties.”

  I thought perhaps he was right; perhaps I was getting a bit too big for my britches. One day I heard the doorbell ring. I went to answer it. A FedEx deliveryman stood there with a large package in his hand. I took it from him, signed a sheet of paper, and took the package in. When I opened it I was staring at my first published book, ten of them neatly packaged. I took one off the top of the pile and held it before me, looking at it the way you would a newborn child—with awe, with joy. The cover, a greenish color, read:

  THE

  INVISIBLE

  WALL

  Harry Bernstein

  There was a picture of a ragged young boy, who might have been me but wasn't, standing in front of a brick wall on a street a bit like mine. Turning to the back of the dust jacket, I saw a picture of my family in England, in front of the house where we had lived. My mother was in the center with me, about two years old, on her lap. To her left was my sister Rose on one side and Lily on the other. In front of them were Saul and Joe, my brothers.

  I opened the back cover. There on the back inside flap was the author—me. It was a snapshot that my son had taken of me when I was visiting his summer home in Cape May.

  I held the book in front of me and gloated. It was similar to the way I'd felt when I sold my first story to The Chicagoan. I was about seventeen, still in high school, and the check they had sent me with the acceptance was for ten dollars. I'd held that check up in front of me then the way I was doing with the book. It would take another eighty years before that same euphoria came back. But this time there would be a whole lot more to add to it.

  Chapter Twenty

  2007

  THE WORLD IN WHICH I WAS LIVING WHEN THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED was vastly different from the one that I had written about. It was, after all, nearly a hundred years later. Advances had been made in every field—science, medicine, industry, transportation. We were enjoying greater material comforts in life, and we were experiencing greater longevity, so people like myself could be in their nineties and still function in as normal a fashion as young people, and even write books. But there were some things that hadn't changed, and one of them was human nature and the wars that it brought on.

  A war was raging now in, of all places, Afghanistan and Iraq, with American troops combined with token British troops fighting there for reasons that were not quite clear. Regardless, the fierce action and the casualties that kept mounting higher each day filled the newspapers and the TV screens, exciting everyone's attention and occupying their minds, so I wondered what chance I
had to distract them from all this with a book about a little cobbled street in the north of England where Jews lived on one side and Christians on the other, and all the things that happened there while I was growing up.

  It looked as if there was little chance of my book getting any attention, and yet it did. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and it got excellent reviews in all the leading papers in both England and the United States. The reception was just as enthusiastic in the various foreign countries where it had also been published—Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy.

  I was elated. I couldn't have been happier, especially when the New York Times published my picture on the front page. It showed me sprawled out in my reclining chair with a wide grin on my face. A New York Times photographer had taken it when he came with a reporter for an interview. It was one of many pictures to be taken and one of many interviews that followed in the weeks after publication. They came from abroad, too, from England, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Italy, the last accompanied by a television crew. My phone rang often, and I gave interviews over the phone as well as at my house. At one time, when I was being interviewed by USA Today, a telephone call came from the London Times. They wanted an interview right then and there, and so I conducted two interviews at one time. And I received calls often from Sarina Evan, my publicist at Random House, asking if I would be available for this or that, perhaps a book signing, or a talk somewhere.

  I gave my time willingly and gladly. This was something I might have dreamed about or fantasized over. It wasn't quite real, but I loved every moment of it. I was never so flattered as when I was asked to give a talk at the 92nd Street Y. I had been there often when I lived in New York to hear some truly great literary figures speak, such as Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and others, and to be asked to speak from the same platform as they had was the height of any ambition I might have had.

  Obviously, there was as much interest in the author as in the book, and that isn't surprising. How often was it that a ninety-six-year-old man made his debut as a writer? I was, to be sure, an oddity, and Sarina made the most of it for Random House, landing me on the CBS Evening News and coming close to getting me on Tonight with Jay Leno.

  I messed that one up myself. I rarely look at TV and had never even heard of this particular show or its star host, so when a woman called asking if I'd be interested in coming out to California and being on the show, I said, “What kind of show is that? And who is Jay Leno?”

  There was a long pause. I imagine there was quite a shock at the other end of the wire, and then her voice came again, saying quietly, “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, of course I am,” I said. “And as far as traveling out to California goes, I'm afraid I can't travel, and if this Jay Leno wants to talk to me, he'll have to come out here.”

  I guess that did it. She promised to call back later and talk further, but I never heard from her again, and the invitation was never repeated.

  Just the same, the book itself did not suffer from lack of attention, and in fact received wide acclaim from reviewers in newspapers all over the United States, England, and the various foreign countries where it was published. The Daily Mail of England said it was “a compelling narrative of childhood survival… the tale has a freshness, a vitality and a relentless energy… extraordinarily powerful … a triumph of the human spirit over multifaceted adversity.”

  What more could any writer ask for? And the New York Times: “A heart-wrenching memoir … brilliantly illuminates a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds.”

  The Guardian called it “an exceptional book.”

  The book did not reach the best-seller list, but it was undoubtedly a literary success, and I had good reason to be proud of it. But occasionally a shadow was cast over all that as I realized that if Ruby had not died I would not have written the book or anything else.

  I thought of that often and it hurt badly, and I tried to talk myself into believing that perhaps I was wrong and I might have written it anyway even if she had lived. Who knows, really, what men and women could be capable of in their nineties, what potential lies there in all of us? There are so few who live to such an age that it will not be possible to know until the limits of longevity are stretched much further than they are today and new medical knowledge enables us to go on even past the nineties and into our hundreds.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  2008

  I LIVE ALONE NOW, BUT I AM NOT REALLY ALONE. MY MIND IS FILLED with the people I have been writing about for almost five years. Now that this, my third book, is completed, I have told the full story of my life from the time I was born, almost, until the time I will have died, again almost. I am now close to one hundred years old, so my guess can't be far off.

  My second book, The Dream, was published a year after The Invisible Wall. This, probably my final book, is called The Golden Willow because that beautiful tree expresses the love that Ruby and I had for each other. As you have seen, it is about the period when both Ruby and I reached our nineties together, and it looks back on the wonderful sixty-seven years of marriage we had. It tells also of how I carried on alone, and what it is like to be in your nineties with all its loneliness and difficulties and physical impairments, but none of this without the hope and surprises that the nonagenarian years can bring—in my case, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to become an author, to write books that have won acclaim in the United States, England, and many other countries.

  I feel a deep satisfaction in having accomplished all of this. It compensates a good deal for the loneliness I have felt, the sense of abandonment that came with being the sole survivor of all the members of my family, of all my friends and relatives, and especially of my wife.

  I have finally experienced that touch of glory that I always yearned for, that perhaps everyone does, and at no time in all these last surprising years of mine, when all I had expected was to live out the last few years of my life comfortably and peacefully, was I so gratified as when I began to receive awards for my books.

  The one that pleased me most was the Christopher Award. It was given to me for the spiritual content of The Invisible Wall.

  I have often been asked during interviews how I compare the world of today to that of the one in which I was born, nearly a hundred years ago. I could not think of a better example of how it has changed than this moment when I received the Christopher Award at a reception in New York.

  The Invisible Wall told of the small, cobbled street on which I was born and lived for twelve years, a street that was divided into two distinct parts by an invisible wall, with Jews living on one side and Christians on the other; rarely was there any crossing from one side to the other, or even any talking between people who lived on different sides. But here I was now, a Jew, receiving a plaque of honor from a Christian, a priest no less, together with a warm handshake, and there was the large audience rising to its feet to give me a standing ovation.

  Yes indeed, there have been many changes.

  Can there be a better example of change in the world than a black man becoming president of the United States, a man who in my world of a hundred years ago would not even have been allowed to vote in certain parts of the country, and would have been subject to all kinds of humiliations and degradations? I tell my interviewers that I have seen a lot of changes for the better take place in the world of today, both materially and spiritually, and I have a great deal of hope that they will continue to do so.

  Our street in Lancashire no longer exists, and that is another big step forward in the new world. Ruby and I went there to see the place in the summer of 1960, and as I've noted, we arrived just in time to see it being torn down to make way for a public housing project that would eliminate such things as walls and bring all people to live together, side by side.

  MOST OF THE TIME, however, when I am lying in bed unable to sleep, I am thinking of Ruby, and the wonderful years we had together. It is now almost seven years since she died,
and despite the fact that my mind has been occupied with my writing, thoughts about her constantly have intruded, and the longing for her is as deep as it ever was. Counselors and authorities on the subject of grief say that time is the best healer, but time has done nothing for me. I do not feel any lessening of the grief now than I felt on that September morning when Ruby died.

  No matter how busy I have been with my writing, she is always there with me still. I have never let go of her. I have her pictures all over the house, so I can see her no matter what room I am in. Her toothbrush is still in the bathroom. Her clothes still hang in the closet. Her shoes are there in the rack on the back of the closet door.

  People tell me I am being foolish. They say I should dispose of these things, give her clothes to some charity organization and let some poor person make use of them, and all that will help me forget what has happened. I realize that is perhaps the rational thing to do, and yet I cannot bring myself to do it. I am afraid that I would lose her altogether, and so I cling to them along with the memories that keep her presence alive.

  Among all the things that go through my mind on those nights when I lie awake are the regrets for things I have said and done that I know now were wrong, and I wish I could correct them. One of the things that bothered me a great deal was the time Ruby and I woke up after the thunderstorm to find our golden willow struck by lightning and lying uprooted on the ground in a shambles of golden leaves and branches.