His parents? generation died in Bergen-Belsen or
Dachau. They died in Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen and
Munich and Berlin. His generation died of myocardial
infarction or lung cancer or on New Year?s Eve in
Saugatuck and Valentine?s Day in Nashville, skidding;
they died behind the wheels of Corvairs, Rivieras,
Datsuns, convertibles, jeeps. They died by their own
hands. They placed their heads in ovens or jumped at
onrushing subways or from the Golden Gate Bridge.
They died by misadventure with the toaster; they crashed
in airplanes and buses and Boston Whalers at the jetty
at low tide. They used cyanide carelessly, attempting to
fumigate bees. They misused the shotgun or leaf mulcher
or linseed oil or heroin or ladder or the station wagon
on ice.

Meyer Rosen joined the party in his mind. He ap-
proved of the champagne. Hasenclever opened the
champagne, not popping the cork but releasing it. Then

he poured. ?Go with God,? said Rosen. ?Didn?t I tell you
to travel? You need a dictionary, though. 
Sz'e, Mein err; wie kommt Man zum Post?? ?Excuse me,
sir, where is the post Ginger was doing the
rhumba, or perhaps the tango; he could not be certain.
She was going to Brazil, she said, or maybe Argentina;
she practiced in the hall.

Their mother brought a dish of mussels with a separate
bowl for broth. The broth had parsley ?oating in it, and
a ?eck of parsley appeared on her thumbnail. He re-
membered how she diced the scallions and the garlic
and the parsley, the feel of her cutting board afterward
sluiced down with lemon, the buttery brine in their
cups. He could taste and see and feel and smell and
even hear them; they were a tactile presence, a part of
him inalienably, the marrow of his bone and pith of his
eyebrow and muscle and ligature and teeth. El

RECOLLECTION

Wherein Is Related My Encounter
With a Swabian Windmill

 

Joseph Edelman

fter what happened I began to ask

myself: ?How could an inanimate
object be spiteful and malicious? How
was that possible? A person, yes, but
a physical object? Something made of
sheet metal and steel??

But that was literally what I was up
against. Here was I, a veritable Don
Quixote taking my stance in a con?ict
with lifeless matter. I became so pos-
sessed with anger that no soft answer
could turn away my wrath. I can iden-
tify the source of the provocative events
that put me on the ?ring line, as it
were: Tyrone Carlton Gainsburgh! That
was the name on the card he handed
me when he moved into the French
Provincial house next door. He was
about ?fty, of undistinguished physi-
ognomy, an engineer or, as he more

 

forepl: Edelman, lawyer (retired), has
bad articles, short stories, and poetry
appearing in various periodicals.

108 TIKKUN VOLmissile expert.?
He was also, despite the quaintness of
his moniker, a Jew.

Our contacts, in the main, took
place across a high fence separating
our respective gardens. Saturdays and
Sundays he devoted to his begonias.
He was a nut about begonias. One
?ne day he gave me the bene?t of his
pragmatic philosophy.

?You?re retired, I heard, and you?re
not yet ?fty. That?s wrong! A man
should do constructive work.?

?Like missiles?? I muttered under
my breath.

?Yes, indeed, a man must work,? he
went on. ?And what?s more, everything
about him must re?ect his character:
his home, his garden, his car.?

I began to shrink at the mention of
the last object. He was striking home.

see you drive a Chevy. That?s no
car for a man like you.?

?What kind of car should a man

like me drive?? I asked meekly.

Mercedes, of course!?

?But it?s German.?

?Don?t be absurd. One mustn?t carry
prejudices forever.?

?Unto the tenth generation,? I mur-
mured, remembering the biblical im-
precations.

?What did you say??

I shook my head, staring at him
open-mouthed.

?We must forget the past. I married
a German woman. Didn?t Israel accept
almost a billion in reparations? What
about Werner von Braun? Look what
he?s done for our country.?

His logic was irrefutable. My preju-
dices vanished into the stratosphere;
my resistance broke. That was the
beginning of my encounter with that
legendary windmill from Stuttgart, my
precious Mercedes.

In a matter of weeks my wife and I
?ew to that staid and sober city. Soon

I found myself in a luxurious bucket
seat of soft leather behind the wheel
of that engineering miracle my neighbor
had lauded to the automotive skies.
?Remember it?s the car of cars. Trouble-
free! Like ?oating on air! And people
will judge you accordingly. . . 

Ah, how well I remember Gains-
burgh?s memorable words. My wife,
usually too voluble, now sat beside me
eloquent in taciturnity. The car seemed
to have an immediate effect upon her
mood. Chevy, Cadillac, Mercedes?it
was all the same to her. She was always
awkward in arithmetic, could not add
to a thousand, and people, with or
without money, were all the same to
her, except that those with money, she
said, always wanted more.

It was quite another matter for me, I
must confess. I beamed as I drove off.

?Not bad,? I said, nudging my wife.
I threw out my chest and smiled. ?What
a far way we?ve come from the West
Side of Chicago.?

Suddenly it happened, twenty min-
utes from our starting line. The back
door sprung open, and the car veered
off the road. My dispatch case contain-
ing all my documents and ?les ?ew
out, bouncing and banging along the
Swabian highway. I could feel my hair
turning gray as I caught sight of my
personal papers ?ying in the Swabian
wind. Across my wife?s bemused face an
I-told-you-so smile ?itted momentarily.

hat was the ?rst of a series of in-

cidents, but only a dress rehearsal
of what came tumbling after. We drove
on to Munich, then Dachau. Incident
number two took place at Dachau. I
turned the ignition key. Motor?Dead!
I was at it half an hour outside the
burning memories of that hellish con-
centration camp. On, off, with periods
of rest between; for you mustn?t ?ood
the delicate carburetor, so I was told.
Finally, we telephoned a Mercedes
service station. The mechanic turned
the key. The motor purred at once.

Right then I knew I was dealing with
something more than sheet metal and
steel. A premonition! I saw the spec-
ters, the whole bloody lot. The Nurem-
berg defendants? ghosts of Goebbels,
Goering, Streicher, Hitler. But it wasn?t
until the next incident that I virtually
felt a ?fth column inside that exquisite
leather and wood-paneled interior.

We visited friends in Mougins in
sunny Provence. They greeted us
warmly, but reserved their more san-
guine greetings for the car, actually
caressing the semiprecious hood.

?My, it?s a beauty!? they exclaimed.

I parked the beauty a slight rise
above their villa, taking precautions to
put a rock in front of each rear wheel
and giving an extra pull at the emer-
gency. I wasn?t taking any chances.
Naturally!

An hour later we heard cries on
the terrace. As though I didn?t ex-
pect another misfortune. It was a
neighbor, a ?lm producer. ?Monsieur!
Monsieur!? he shouted as though the
glowing world of Provence had come
to an end. We ran like mad. But there
was nothing to see. The beauty was
gone. It had simply slid down the hill
and turned over on its side.

The rest of this miserable tale even
now, some ten years later, makes me
writhe in anger. In Spain, going up
the spiral of Montserrat, a minor land-
slide punctured the roof of the car.
In Norway, a Firm, overloaded with
aquavit, hundred proof, ripped off a
front fender coming around a blind
curve near Trondheim.

By the time we returned to Califor-
nia, the feeling was mutual. I had no
affection for the beautiful beast and
vice versa. The ?rst night back, outside
the Beverly Hills Hotel where I had
stopped at a red light, comic actor, Joey
Fay crashed into the back of my cursed
Mercedes and tore off the bumper
and taillights. Several days after it
came out of the repair shop, spanking
new once again, sprayed and waxed,

we drove to Shelter Island, San Diego.
A pretty young woman gave a repeat
performance of Joey Fay,? in exactly
the same vulnerable backside. She
apologized profusely Her spiked heel
had slipped off the brake. Two weeks
later in Santa Barbara, a police lieu-
tenant crashed into the rear of the car.
Giving me a sheepish look, he said
his brakes gave way, and he felt like
penalizing himself with a book full of
tickets.

Finally, I came to a decision. ?I?ll
get rid of this monster,? I said to my
wife. She smiled her best Mona Lisa
smile. ?Perhaps I should drive. It might
not feel the same about me.?

?Oh, yeah!?

She took over. Her very ?rst stance
behind that Swabian monster was disas-
trous. I gave directions as she backed
out of our very ample garage. But the
wheels pulled and jerked, and I could
see some devilish creature propelling
our destiny. Result: the whole right
side, which hitherto had been the sole
survivor of every previous casualty,
was now scraped and mangled. It was
the biggest repair bill yet. Two weeks
later my wife broke down and wept.
The reason: at the Safeway super-
market in Carmel Valley, a child dashed
a loaded shopping cart against the
starboard side of the car?yes, the
very same side?just as we were ap-
proaching from the opposite ?ank.

?That?s the end!? I said. hate this
monster!? Thereupon, with the full
force of my new western boots I

delivered a violent kick at the scratched

and dented door and almost broke my
big toe in the process. Then in a basso
crescendo I snarled: ?Hitler!?

Only one enduring aberration has
remained from this whole gruesome
experience: Tyrone Carlton Gains-
burgh! Whenever I drive down to
Southern California?which I do about
every three months?J go to great pains
to avoid the street where he lives with
his prize begonias. El

A SWABIAN WINDMILL 109