Manuscripts
In Black and White
Description
In 2016 I started a novel I had wanted to write for a long time. It was a fictional chronicle blending the history of my family and my wife’s family. When I closed my eyes, I saw two rivers merging into one. I wanted the book to be a compelling and epic novel, a depiction of an entire society, a sweeping tale of the history, love, and survival of these people I cherished. When I finished writing, because of its length, I had to separate the two stories. The first part, based on my family, became The Last Patient, a tribute to my parents and grandparents who are no longer here. The second part became another novel, In Black and White (working title), based on the lives of my wife’s family. While there are a few necessary overlaps between the two works, each is freestanding. In Black and White remains unpublished at the time of this writing.
The novel tells the story of a Jewish woman’s dramatic journey through mid-century Romania. In her teenage years, Tina Friedman, a shy dreamer, joins the underground Romanian Communist Party. During the Second World War, she and her family endure the horrors of deportation to Transnistria. Tina survives, returns home, and becomes a doctor. She falls in love with and marries Iulian, the chief editor of Scânteia, the main Communist newspaper. Iulian is blind. They have a daughter, Lydia. A few years after Iulian’s death by suicide, Tina marries Benjamin, and the family moves to Israel. Although she succeeds professionally, she feels unhappy and lonely. The betrayal of the Communist ideals of her youth and Iulian’s memory weigh on her mind. Her daughter Lydia and her husband move to the US. The book ends with Lydia visiting Tina at her retirement home in Maryland.
Excerpt
Tina examined her face in the small round mirror between the two beds. Her cheeks were flushed and her blue eyes full of doubt and anticipation. “What did you hear?” she asked Flora, who stood behind her.
“He’s a trrue comrrade,” Flora said, rolling her Rs as she often did when she was excited.
Tina would have liked to take the comment at face value, yet she wasn’t sure. “Are you being facetious?” she asked her lifelong friend and former college roommate.
“On the contrary,” Flora said, surprising her. “I’ve been told Comrade Faur is the embodiment of what we admire in a man. He is a communist. Intelligent. He has integrity and is totally dedicated to our movement. He is a poet and, at twenty-five, he’s in charge of a major publication.”
Flora came from a religious family, and as a child she had attended Cheder and studied the Torah. Later, under Tina’s influence, Flora traded Zionism for Communism.
“I hear he has a reputation with women,” Tina said.
“And you’re holding that against him?”
Tina lifted her light-brown curls and pressed them against her hot cheeks. “Look at my face, round as a doll’s.” She rose on her tiptoes. “And I’m short. Why would he like me?” She sought Flora’s eyes in the mirror.
“It’s just a job interview, Tina Friedman. He doesn’t have to fall in love with you,” Flora said. She was five months pregnant, and her belly was showing. Eight weeks earlier, she had married and moved in with her husband.
Tina now shared the room and the rent with another medical student. She had no family in Timișoara, and her income consisted of her scholarship and the little bit she earned working at night as a seamstress. But exams were approaching, and she needed time to study. The redness on her face spread to her neck in response to Flora’s quip. “Of course not,” she said with a sigh, “but I want the job. It’s reliable income, hopefully better than what I get for hemming pants and taking in skirts, and better hours for studying. Plus, I’ve always liked politics and literature.”
“Then you go and impress the hell out of Comrade Faur.
“Is Faur a changed name? I heard he is Jewish.”
“Didn’t communism teach you? It shouldn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t. I was just curious.”
*
“Comrade Faur, Comrade Friedman is here,” the secretary announced and allowed Tina to enter an office with a high ceiling and large windows.
He dominated the room, standing tall behind his desk. His face was relaxed, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He pointed to an armchair, and Tina sat, clasping her brown leather bag against her chest making sure not to wrinkle her blouse. Old trees stood guard outside the windows, filtering the spring light through their leaves.
Tina didn’t realize he was blind until he told her what the job entailed—he needed someone to read to him books, newspaper articles, and reports, for two to three hours a day, ideally a person with a good diction, a soft voice, and a passion for literature. The magazine he was leading, The Fighters of Banat, published poetry, essays, and political articles in support of the new communist regime. The pay was good.
With a smile, he explained that he was irritable and moody and that he expected a lot from people.
Not surprising for a blind man to be irritable, Tina thought, suddenly calm, like a doctor assessing her patient. She assured him she’d be up to the task, and told him she was a medical student, lived with a roommate, and really needed the money. She said she was originally from Câmpulung in Moldova, at the opposite end of the country. Being Jewish, she and her family had been deported to Transnistria during the war for three long, horrible years. “I was seventeen when they took us,” she said and added that her father had died when she was twelve, so her family was her mother, brother, sister, and Babtzia, her grandmother, who did not survive.
She stopped. He encouraged her to continue.
“After the war,” she said, “we returned to Câmpulung and found our house occupied and our valuables stolen. I took a job as an elementary school teacher in the small village of Dorohoi. At night, I studied for my high school equivalency diploma. I was tired, sometimes hungry, and my memories of Transnistria haunted me as nightmares. After I passed my exams, Flora, my childhood friend, convinced me to come with her to Timișoara and apply here at the medical school.”
“You are young. You have strength and determination,” Comrade Faur said, running his fingers through his curly black hair.
“I understand the value of education,” Tina said. She inhaled deeply.
“Then you’d be disappointed in me. My father didn’t think I was college material. He sent me to a trade school, and for a while, I worked as a locksmith.”
“Learning a trade is useful, and it helps us understand the working class and their just struggle. I’ve been working on and off as a seamstress since before the war when they expelled the Jews from high school. As for you, look how much you’ve achieved! A well-known poet, in charge of a major publication.”
“Not so major,” he said with a chuckle. “More like a propaganda tool, financed by the Communist Party.”
“I’ve been a communist for many years,” Tina said. “I don’t know if that matters.”
“Of course it does. I want to work with someone who shares my view of the world, my convictions.”
“Even though I’m studying to be a doctor, I love literature very much,” Tina said.
The more they talked, the more she enjoyed his presence, and she dared think that he, maybe, liked her as well. She asked if she would be taking dictation, and he inserted a sheet of paper into his typewriter and quickly tapped on the keys. Despite his lack of sight, he seemed proficient. He wrote, “I know you’ll do very well. You’re hired.”
Tina folded the sheet of paper and silently placed it in her purse, while her face carried a smile Comrade Faur could not see.
*
“You did not tell me that he was blind,” she told Flora.
“I didn’t know. But I asked around, and the rumor is that he lost his vision when he shot himself out of love for a woman. Her name was Emma. Apparently, they had a relationship during the war. She left him when her husband returned from the front.”
“How romantic.”
“Tragic, not romantic,” Flora said.