Past Imperfect by Joshua Cohen

Author:Joshua Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948403368
Publisher: Kasva Press
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-eight

Nothing much got done at the office in the week following the surprise deliverance of Evie’s husband. Evie alternated between frantic rage and inconsolable grief over the resumption of her life as Mrs. Murray Brite. After just a few days, the reality of being with her husband extinguished any illusion that the homecoming could actually work out. Evie spent most of her time at work weeping at her desk or arguing with her sister-in-law on the telephone.

Periodically she’d ask me how she might extricate herself from the crisis. Could she legally lock her husband out of the apartment? What would it take to get his parole revoked? Evie even contemplated the possibility of changing religions so she could pursue a divorce without violating her obligations as a Catholic. Her pathetic desperation put me in a funk of my own.

Evie did manage to complete one task. She got hold of Karen Sontag in New York, who asked Leona Marks about the telephone number she’d given us for her friend in Israel, Leah Bloom. Turned out that either Leona or we had inverted two of the digits. I called Tel Aviv the same day I received the corrected number. This time the call went through.

A lot of good it did. I couldn’t get Leah Bloom to recount her story about spotting Yitzhak Fried on the street. I didn’t find out whether she’d seen him another time or heard anything about him. The dialogue never got that far because the only thing Leah Bloom said during our entire conversation that I understood was “No speak English.” She repeated the phrase several times, but I didn’t decipher it immediately, given her thick accent.

I was reasonably certain Leah Bloom was speaking to me in Yiddish. My familiarity with that language consisted mostly of obscenities and slang, none of which came up in what she was saying. The inability to communicate was almost absolute. I didn’t understand her any more than she understood me.

I did say Leona Marks’s name several times, as well as Yitzhak Fried’s, in hopes that Leah Bloom might put two and two together and figure out why I was calling. But it was a tenuous equation I wanted her to make. She almost certainly didn’t know that someone in the U.S. was trying to verify Fried’s whereabouts, or that Leona had offered up her letter as proof of the matter. Still, assuming she made out my pronunciation of the two names, she might’ve surmised that I wanted to ask about the sighting of Fried she’d described to Leona.

It would’ve been terrific, I supposed, if Leah Bloom guessed my purpose in calling. But she still wouldn’t have known who I was or how to get in touch with me. I’d have to telephone again with a translator on the line. I wanted to tell her I planned to do just that, as quickly as I could arrange it. Obviously, though, if I could have intelligibly delivered that message, the reason for the second call would have disappeared.

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