Andy

Does it matter that when he was nine years old he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary? He, a little Presbyterian boy, the son of a preacher, for whom the Virgin Mary was Catholic folly. Does it matter that she held a sign for him to read with the name of a city that he had never heard of in a country that was nothing but the land of myths and dreams? Does it matter that thirty years later he came to live in that very city? Does it matter that this is true?

And what of his life now that he wishes to dissipate into the balmy blue air of islands, the warm heaving breath of Hawaii last of all caressing his soft skin? Which of his stories count? Which of his stories will bind him to us?

Is it the box story that defines him? Which sums up his life? Yes, Andy, tell us the box story again. One more time. Angie hasn’t heard the box story. Is it too late for the box story?

But first a little more chardonnay. No, not too much. He’s watching his weight. Still fit. He could pass for twenty years younger. He could pass for sixty-five. Well, yes just a bite of cheesecake. Just a taste. No. no. no. That’s too much. Yes, just like that.

And the story begins. Do the lights dim? We are in Denmark. It’s 1940. And the sky must be gray, must hang low with dark clouds. Two young men work at the Hungarian consulate. They gorge themselves on caviar and pate and fresh fruit and cases of champagne. They are having the time of their lives. (Perhaps they are in love. This is the part of the story that isn’t told to us, this group of us now eating cheesecake.) But someone working for the Danes has heard a rumor that he shares with them. He warns the young men. Nazis are coming. They are in terrible danger. But he knows someone who can help them escape. Someone they must trust absolutely. They must act on faith alone. They must act alone. The other young man from the consulate is never seen again.

After midnight, Andy waits in the empty streets of Copenhagen. A man in a fedora, (in real life, not Humphrey Bogart) materializes under a streetlight. He lights a cigarette and begins to walk slowly away. Andy follows him for several blocks, his footsteps echoing on rainwashed sidewalks. The man stops and stubs out his cigarette, grinding it into the gutter. Another man appears with a cigarette. Andy follows him. No one speaks. He follows stranger after stranger, the red glow of their cigarettes guiding him through narrow alleyways down to the harbor.

He is led into a warehouse - full of shadows scattered by a waning moon. Stacks of packing crates line the walls. One of the packing crates stands open - square, not coffin shaped. He stands before the box. An arm emerges from the shadows and motions for him to get in the box. He does. He crouches down, his head between his knees. And the lid is nailed shut, the nails pounded down, blow after blow. And that’s it. He’s left there.

His muscles cramps, and then become numb. Claustrophobia rushes through and then out through the wooden slats. He’s still there in the box in the warehouse by the harbor. It must be sunrise - there is the rush and purpose of salt air and steel ships as light slips in through the slats. Engine noises. Men shouting. His box is lifted by a forklift and carried somewhere, carried to a pier, carried to the side of a ship. He’s lifted again, he swings in the morning air and is lowered into the darkness of the ship’s hold.

Men are yelling at each other, yelling about the urgency of leaving, of setting off across the Oresund before the storm hits. His box is turned upside down. The weight of his body presses agains the back of his head. He will die like this. There is more shouting and the box is flipped over again. Vibrations and the heaving power of a steel ship setting sail through northern waters.

It is not a long journey. Just across to Sweden. The box is unloaded and left on a dock. Seagulls shriek. One sits on his box, a white feathered belly through the slats. He waits. Rain drips through the box. He twists his head so a drop can land on his tongue. And then another and another. It’s dark again. Has it been a day? Two? He is still nailed shut in the box.

Through the slats he can see that his is not the only crate on the docks. There are dozens of them, lined up in the early morning light. So close, next to his ear, just inches away, someone screams. Someone screams for help. Someone screams to be let out. And then voices from all the crates join in, coyotes howling, howling.

And help comes. And Andy spends five very pleasant years in Stockholm where he is able to add Swedish to his growing repertoire of languages.

No coffee, thank you. Perhaps a little tea? Herbal? Just a taste more cheesecake, I’ll take a little of Emily’s, she doesn’t mind sharing.

Is it in Sweden that he becomes a Quaker? Or is it later in America? He studies at Swarthmore earning numerous advanced degrees. In mid-life, he takes a job at a university in the southwest corner of this country in a city he first learned of when he was nine.

Maybe the chicken story. Perhaps that’s too silly. The parallels too obvious. Nonetheless.

Missing his boyhood home on an estate outside of Budapest, he buys half a dozen chickens to raise in the luxuriant tropical foliage of his small backyard. Of course the neighbors complain. My help is enlisted. We are going to smuggle the chickens on to the campus where Andy worked all those decades as senior librarian. The chickens will be happy. There is green grass for them and there are squat palm trees where they can roost and students will pet them.

Andy meets me after sunset - he’s wearing a black turtleneck and a black cap. He worries about my light colored clothing. I pull on one of his black sweatshirts. He cradles each chicken in his arms briefly - petting their soft backs, not minding their crazed dinosaur eyes and alien feet. I hold the paper bags open while he sticks the chickens in - one per bag. Then I staple the bags shut.

We each carry three bags. The familiar grounds of the university seem odd on a deserted night - no concerts or plays or games. Our footsteps echo across the quad. We’ve almost made it to the grass and trees. A cars pulls up behind us. It’s campus security. Someone shines a spotlight on us. Walk quickly, Andy says. Don’t look back. We keep walking. My heart is pounding. Andy is silent and serious and purposeful.

I realize I am carrying three restless hens stapled into paper grocery bags onto a college campus at night. There are no nazis, but the spotlight still shines. We keep walking.

Then the light shifts away. The car drives on. We are safe. The chickens are released. And caught early the next morning by Mexican gardners grateful for the unexpected bounty.

Maybe it’s Andy poking me in the ribs telling me to sit up straight, what bad posture. Maybe it’s Andy playing with my hair whispering I am like a grandmother to you - like my two-year old son all these years since who, though not related to him, has the same round head and pale eyes, who plays with my hair and whispers, yes, you love me.

Which collection of stories can tell a life? The first shy young nephew brought over from Hungary? So sweet and polite always arriving at our house with cake and flowers, who wanted to be a cowboy in Marlboro Country. The same nephew who pretended to be enrolled in medical school, but wasn’t, who joined the green berets and then the CIA and flew planes for the Russians. Or all the other nephews Andy brought over, houses bought for them, jobs found. The endless Hungarians. Did you know that George Washington was Hungarian.

Which details add up? The gorgeous room added on to the house to accommodate the man who left his wife and four children for him? The endless stories at dinner parties with candlelight and goulash. Stories of Sanskrit poems finding their way into Hungarian and Magyars and Mongols and the whole sweep of central Asia washing aross the brittle history of Europe.

…which accounts for the perfect flawless skin. Beauty secrets shared by the Gabor sisters. One must scald one’s face first thing in the morning. Hold a burning washcloth to the face for as long as one can stand it. Too late for my mother, but for me, still in my teens then, there was still hope. But without the Mongol blood, there is no guarantee.

Perhaps it’s Andy gently telling me, a pink diaper baby, that the communists destroyed his home. And that he will never speak Russian again. It’s after midnight, the candles have burned down, the tea is cold in our cups, and he tells me, a child with no religion, that Jesus was the first to see that we all in our grubbing, stumbling ordinariness are worthy of grace.

Life gets in the way. I see him once a year maybe. Or hear his soft voie on the answering machine. He spends more and more time in the condo he shares with the first nephew in Waikiki. The first nephew has never seen the condo, but he bought it for his uncle to use, so that his uncle could take the air.

The stories have more or less stopped. Conversations are kept to the health of friends - Fidelia’s dementia, (the afternoon just the three of us had turtle soup at a cabin in the mountains,) Stan’s triple bypass. His own health such good fortune. Yes, he is going to move from the city he first learned of as a boy.

And finally following the sun heading west across the sky, he sits on the cramped balcony of his condominium on an island in the Pacific, watching in silence the play of air and water and the slanting rays of pure light.