Stuck for time being in the Miami Maimonides General Hospital waiting room, pondering when Nurse Maryann would return from her lunch break so he could start his biweekly blood transfusion, Herman Bear had nothing to pass the time other than to peruse his own thoughts. While the young folks nearby stared and tapped into their handheld phone-device-things, glimmering with glee at each electronic pig toppled by kamikaze angry birds, Herman, with no such device, tapped deeper into the recesses of memory. And, as the digital wall clock silently ticked away the minutes, the borrowed ballpoint pens scribbled all-too-depressing health histories, Herman, staring all these things, could see, stashed away in previously inaccessible consciousness – the way the red moon shone brightly from the back window of a bus ride through the Ukranian wheat plains, the bright eyes of Emmanuelle, a French student, in proper beret and striped blouse, studying Marxist theory in Baku in the summer of 1950, and then, in the glint of the glaring florescent lights above, Herman squinted and could see the sparkling surface of Lake Baikal, where he worked as a lifeguard in the everlong summer of 1946. With the Great Patriotic war just over, Herman, himself a bright-eyed sixteen year old, spared the ravages of military service by his young age, was the fastest swimmer in Irkutsk, where his parents had settled after being freed from camp in Siberia, after the war had ended. At the lake, Herman guarded over cautious swimmers, taking their first tentative postwar dips into holiday leisure, wondering alike if the sunlight above would persist, this time, or whether the dark clouds of war would shadow his country, yet again. In particular, Herman recalled, the threat of nuclear annihilation by the capitalist armies of the United States loomed heavily in the papers of Pravda, and as such, in the minds of the more war-weary adults. But the children, aware as they were only of sunshine, fresh air and water, had all the time in the world to run and play in the slowly lapping surf of the deepest lake in the world, and Herman, perched above it all in his lifeguard’s chair, watchful and yet thoughtful, had time to let his mind wander. In those long and lonesome hours in the lifeguard’s chair, Herman would make up songs whose lyrics, once improvised, were lost forever, and in the passing moments, recite Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquys, in his ever improving English, recitations performed with confidence, but, as Herman would remember in his later years, with a naïve innocence of the madness and power of love. And so, standing up from his chair, with an arm to the sky, he would yell, in those moments when the beach was completely empty, Berowne’s monologue from Love’s Labors Lost, which he had been practicing to audition for the lead in that summer’s play at the theatre, and which only half-understood:
“And I, forsooth, in love!
I, that have been love’s whip;
A very beadle to a humorous sigh;
A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o’er the boy;
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!
Herman paused here a moment, when he thought he heard the sound of someone coming, and continued, progressively louder:
This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting ‘paritors:—O my little heart:—
When suddenly, from below his high chair, came the sound of applause. There, clapping and shouting up to him, “Bravo!” with a laugh and sly smile, was a girl, maybe fifteen herself, in a long white tunic, with shiny blue eyes and braided black hair in pigtails. Stunned, he stammered a, “uh.. ah.. thanks,” and climbed down to say hello.
“You’re quite the actor,” she said.
“I was.. rehearsing,” Herman stammered.
“You sounded so serious,” She replied. “What does that all mean, anyway?”
“It’s Shakespeare. I’m auditioning later this week for the summer play. I’m Herman,” Herman said, adding, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Anna. I came to Lake Baikal with my dad, who’s a driver for some Party Secretary in the Leningrad Oblast, and who, feeling ill, needed some fresh air and sunshine. I was just up at the great hall, where these boring Party bigwigs were praising the new five-year plan, or whatever. I was bored so I snuck out to see the beach, and, well, found you.” And here, Anna smiled in a way that would cause Herman’s heart to wince, all those years later, in that hospital waiting room in Florida.
“What was that?” Asked Nurse Maryann. [The eight-hour transfusion had begun] “Your heartrate just soared. Do you feel any pain?”
“No,” Herman replied. “No, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I said yes,” Herman said, somewhat annoyed.
“Okay,” Maryann replied, “but I’ll keep monitoring you during the process, in case anything goes wrong.”
“Yeah, ok,” Herman mumbled.
“Do you want the TV on?” Maryann asked. “I could put on that Fox News you love so well.”
“No,” Herman said, “leave it off, for now.”
“Okay Mr. Bear, whatever you say.” And with that, Maryann continued the transfusion, and directed her attention back to In Style magazine.
Herman, staring out at the vast expanse of the Florida horizon, sighed for a moment, and continued his reluctant daydream.
He recalled, Anna looked radiant in the sunlight. They chatted by the lifeguard’s chair for a while, about books he was reading, books which she had just read, and hated. When two small kids ran to play in the beach, Herman wished they would go away, so he could continue to talk to Anna. And, as if on cue, thunder clapped, it began to rain, the kids ran back to their cabin, Herman put up the “Beach Closed” sign, grabbed Anna’s hand, and the two of them ran off for the shelter of the boathouse nearby. In the musky room, amidst the hulls of stacked sculls and sailboats, Herman would later recall, rays of sun found their way through cracks in the wooden roof, past illuminated specs of dancing dust, lighting the water on Anna’s cheeks, and causing her blue eyes to glow.
“So, what do you do, back in Leningrad?” Herman asked.
“Well, I’m in school now,” Anna replied. “I go to the Leningrad Naval Academy. I’m learning how to be a boatcaptain.”
“Really?” Herman said, with genuine admiration. “Well, we are surrounded by boats, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to sail, do you think you could teach me?”
Anna paused at the suggestion. “How would we get the boat out of dock? It’s locked in by chain.”
“It is,” Herman said, “But I know where the key is.”
“Well then,” Anna said with a smile. “Well, ok. I, your professor, must teach you how to sail then. It is duty to a fellow Comrade!”
And with that, while the rain poured down from the summer Siberian sky, Herman and Anna, singing in jest “The Internationale,” stole a sailboat and ventured out into the distance of Lake Baikal. Soaked by the rain, Anna showed Herman how to tie the right knots, and set the sail, which they raised with a coordinated heave. As the white sail caught the wind, the boat tilted, and Herman almost fell over, but caught himself, and shared a laugh with Anna, who had taken the rudder, and steered out into the lake. Soon, the rain had stopped, and the sun began to dry their clothes. In the ensuing stillness, Herman could hear his heart beating, as Anna took his hand, and placed it near hers, on the rudder, saying, “Now- steer easy, like this.” Nervous, Herman placed his hand on Anna’s instead, and they moved the boat together, alone in the middle of the lake, on a bright summer day.
The rest of the summer would pass in long, languid days like that first one, catching shade together in the boathouse, sneaking into and out of each other’s cabin, quietly so as not to wake their siblings, and out into the fields behind the communal farms, where they could picnic with fresh grapes and wine stolen from inattentive vintners, and drunk in the daylight, nap together, hidden from the world by the tall grasses, seen only by the passing, circling birds above.
There was one day out in the field, Herman remembered, that was like all the others, except, he could tell, ever so slightly, the chill of an approaching September air passed over their bare arms. “Do you want some more wine?” Herman asked, as he reached for the bottle, and his hand knocked over his glass, spilling the red wine onto her white blanket. “Ah, sorry!” Herman said, trying to mop up the wine with a napkin. “Sorry.”
“Herman,” Anna said, looking away.
“What is it dear?” Herman asked.
“Do you love me?” she said, still looking away.
“I do. I do love you,” Herman replied, without pausing.
And here, Anna paused, and said, “I love you too,” and paused again. Herman’s wide smile slowly receded when another cool wind graced his cheek, and Anna said,
“I’m leaving tonight to return to Leningrad.”
“Leningrad? I thought you were going to come with me back to Baku. We.. we could get married,” Herman stammered.
“Herman..” Anna sighed.
“They have a Naval Academy in Baku. We talked about this. I could work for the oil company. My dad knows someone in the Party,” Herman said, desperately. “And – if we try, there’s even a chance,” and here Herman’s voice dropped to a fast-paced whisper, “If I can make enough money, we can make contact with some people I know back in Baku, who can smuggle us across the checkpoints from East to West Berlin. Once we’re in the American sector, we can get sponsorship to come to America from my uncle in Brooklyn. It’s expensive, but, it can be done! But we’d have to hurry, because sooner or later they’re going to put up a wall in Berlin and … ”
“Herman,” Anna said again, forcefully.
“I love you, Anna, so much.” Herman said.
“I have to go back to school. I can’t go with you to Baku.” Anna said.
“I will wait for you.” Herman cried.
“Four years,” Anna said. “If we don’t meet again in four years, then, you are free to marry someone else. If you love me, you won’t wait any more than that.”
“I love you,” said Herman.
And with that, Anna stood up, and ran off into the tall grass, and disappeared.
Back in Baku, Herman slowly put bribery money away so he and Anna could make it to West Berlin. He wrote her, and she wrote back. He wrote her again, and she didn’t. He wrote again, and again, and again there was silence. One year had passed without word from Anna, and then a second, and a third. After four years, Herman had a fling with a French girl studying abroad in Baku for the summer, and when she left to go back to Paris, he accompanied her on the train ride as her imitation husband, all the way to the Russian border, where, under darkness of night, Herman hitched a ride through Poland, slept in a farmhouse to avoid the border patrol in Berlin, where he met up with his preordained contact, handed over all of his cash, and hid in the false bed of an American army truck, that brought him to the American sector. By the time he made it to Brooklyn to live with his Americanized uncle, five years had passed since that summer by Lake Baikal, and Herman, working as a taxicab driver on the lonely nightshift, had all the time in the world to ponder the vagaries of his fate. One night, Herman picked up in his cab a girl who wanted to go to Orchard Beach. Along the way, they talked about he used to be a lifeguard. She said her name was Stacey, and was a seamstress in the Garment district, but needed some sunlight, and so called in sick. When Herman got to Orchard beach, Stacey confessed she didn’t have the fare to pay him. Herman parked the car, and said, it didn’t matter, he’d like to go to the beach with her. She agreed, and they continued a conversation they held, that lasted through their marriage, and only ended when the ravages of Alzheimer’s tore apart Stacey’s memories, leaving only a friendly, loving but scared shell behind.
And Herman, still staring out the window in Miami Maimonides, sighed privately, as his blood was replaced, and thought of the photograph whose meaning he never fully explained to his children, of Anna on a sailboat smiling in the sun, her hair wet with recent rain, laughing, holding onto the rudder, ever so confidently, on the surface of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world.
![Even on nice days, Willy “Red” Johnson would rest in the park, with nowhere to go, now that he was clean.
Credit:http://evgrieve.com/2012/03/ev-grieve-etc-mourning-edition_14.html
[Photo by Bobby Williams. Spotted on Cooper Square.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0vwlavyrb1qiqm75o1_400.jpg)
![Stuck for time being in the Miami Maimonides General Hospital waiting room, pondering when Nurse Maryann would return from her lunch break so he could start his biweekly blood transfusion, Herman Bear had nothing to pass the time other than to peruse his own thoughts. While the young folks nearby stared and tapped into their handheld phone-device-things, glimmering with glee at each electronic pig toppled by kamikaze angry birds, Herman, with no such device, tapped deeper into the recesses of memory. And, as the digital wall clock silently ticked away the minutes, the borrowed ballpoint pens scribbled all-too-depressing health histories, Herman, staring all these things, could see, stashed away in previously inaccessible consciousness – the way the red moon shone brightly from the back window of a bus ride through the Ukranian wheat plains, the bright eyes of Emmanuelle, a French student, in proper beret and striped blouse, studying Marxist theory in Baku in the summer of 1950, and then, in the glint of the glaring florescent lights above, Herman squinted and could see the sparkling surface of Lake Baikal, where he worked as a lifeguard in the everlong summer of 1946. With the Great Patriotic war just over, Herman, himself a bright-eyed sixteen year old, spared the ravages of military service by his young age, was the fastest swimmer in Irkutsk, where his parents had settled after being freed from camp in Siberia, after the war had ended. At the lake, Herman guarded over cautious swimmers, taking their first tentative postwar dips into holiday leisure, wondering alike if the sunlight above would persist, this time, or whether the dark clouds of war would shadow his country, yet again. In particular, Herman recalled, the threat of nuclear annihilation by the capitalist armies of the United States loomed heavily in the papers of Pravda, and as such, in the minds of the more war-weary adults. But the children, aware as they were only of sunshine, fresh air and water, had all the time in the world to run and play in the slowly lapping surf of the deepest lake in the world, and Herman, perched above it all in his lifeguard’s chair, watchful and yet thoughtful, had time to let his mind wander. In those long and lonesome hours in the lifeguard’s chair, Herman would make up songs whose lyrics, once improvised, were lost forever, and in the passing moments, recite Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquys, in his ever improving English, recitations performed with confidence, but, as Herman would remember in his later years, with a naïve innocence of the madness and power of love. And so, standing up from his chair, with an arm to the sky, he would yell, in those moments when the beach was completely empty, Berowne’s monologue from Love’s Labors Lost, which he had been practicing to audition for the lead in that summer’s play at the theatre, and which only half-understood:
“And I, forsooth, in love!
I, that have been love’s whip;
A very beadle to a humorous sigh;
A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o’er the boy;
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!
Herman paused here a moment, when he thought he heard the sound of someone coming, and continued, progressively louder:
This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting ‘paritors:—O my little heart:—
When suddenly, from below his high chair, came the sound of applause. There, clapping and shouting up to him, “Bravo!” with a laugh and sly smile, was a girl, maybe fifteen herself, in a long white tunic, with shiny blue eyes and braided black hair in pigtails. Stunned, he stammered a, “uh.. ah.. thanks,” and climbed down to say hello.
“You’re quite the actor,” she said.
“I was.. rehearsing,” Herman stammered.
“You sounded so serious,” She replied. “What does that all mean, anyway?”
“It’s Shakespeare. I’m auditioning later this week for the summer play. I’m Herman,” Herman said, adding, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Anna. I came to Lake Baikal with my dad, who’s a driver for some Party Secretary in the Leningrad Oblast, and who, feeling ill, needed some fresh air and sunshine. I was just up at the great hall, where these boring Party bigwigs were praising the new five-year plan, or whatever. I was bored so I snuck out to see the beach, and, well, found you.” And here, Anna smiled in a way that would cause Herman’s heart to wince, all those years later, in that hospital waiting room in Florida.
“What was that?” Asked Nurse Maryann. [The eight-hour transfusion had begun] “Your heartrate just soared. Do you feel any pain?”
“No,” Herman replied. “No, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I said yes,” Herman said, somewhat annoyed.
“Okay,” Maryann replied, “but I’ll keep monitoring you during the process, in case anything goes wrong.”
“Yeah, ok,” Herman mumbled.
“Do you want the TV on?” Maryann asked. “I could put on that Fox News you love so well.”
“No,” Herman said, “leave it off, for now.”
“Okay Mr. Bear, whatever you say.” And with that, Maryann continued the transfusion, and directed her attention back to In Style magazine.
Herman, staring out at the vast expanse of the Florida horizon, sighed for a moment, and continued his reluctant daydream.
He recalled, Anna looked radiant in the sunlight. They chatted by the lifeguard’s chair for a while, about books he was reading, books which she had just read, and hated. When two small kids ran to play in the beach, Herman wished they would go away, so he could continue to talk to Anna. And, as if on cue, thunder clapped, it began to rain, the kids ran back to their cabin, Herman put up the “Beach Closed” sign, grabbed Anna’s hand, and the two of them ran off for the shelter of the boathouse nearby. In the musky room, amidst the hulls of stacked sculls and sailboats, Herman would later recall, rays of sun found their way through cracks in the wooden roof, past illuminated specs of dancing dust, lighting the water on Anna’s cheeks, and causing her blue eyes to glow.
“So, what do you do, back in Leningrad?” Herman asked.
“Well, I’m in school now,” Anna replied. “I go to the Leningrad Naval Academy. I’m learning how to be a boatcaptain.”
“Really?” Herman said, with genuine admiration. “Well, we are surrounded by boats, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to sail, do you think you could teach me?”
Anna paused at the suggestion. “How would we get the boat out of dock? It’s locked in by chain.”
“It is,” Herman said, “But I know where the key is.”
“Well then,” Anna said with a smile. “Well, ok. I, your professor, must teach you how to sail then. It is duty to a fellow Comrade!”
And with that, while the rain poured down from the summer Siberian sky, Herman and Anna, singing in jest “The Internationale,” stole a sailboat and ventured out into the distance of Lake Baikal. Soaked by the rain, Anna showed Herman how to tie the right knots, and set the sail, which they raised with a coordinated heave. As the white sail caught the wind, the boat tilted, and Herman almost fell over, but caught himself, and shared a laugh with Anna, who had taken the rudder, and steered out into the lake. Soon, the rain had stopped, and the sun began to dry their clothes. In the ensuing stillness, Herman could hear his heart beating, as Anna took his hand, and placed it near hers, on the rudder, saying, “Now- steer easy, like this.” Nervous, Herman placed his hand on Anna’s instead, and they moved the boat together, alone in the middle of the lake, on a bright summer day.
The rest of the summer would pass in long, languid days like that first one, catching shade together in the boathouse, sneaking into and out of each other’s cabin, quietly so as not to wake their siblings, and out into the fields behind the communal farms, where they could picnic with fresh grapes and wine stolen from inattentive vintners, and drunk in the daylight, nap together, hidden from the world by the tall grasses, seen only by the passing, circling birds above.
There was one day out in the field, Herman remembered, that was like all the others, except, he could tell, ever so slightly, the chill of an approaching September air passed over their bare arms. “Do you want some more wine?” Herman asked, as he reached for the bottle, and his hand knocked over his glass, spilling the red wine onto her white blanket. “Ah, sorry!” Herman said, trying to mop up the wine with a napkin. “Sorry.”
“Herman,” Anna said, looking away.
“What is it dear?” Herman asked.
“Do you love me?” she said, still looking away.
“I do. I do love you,” Herman replied, without pausing.
And here, Anna paused, and said, “I love you too,” and paused again. Herman’s wide smile slowly receded when another cool wind graced his cheek, and Anna said,
“I’m leaving tonight to return to Leningrad.”
“Leningrad? I thought you were going to come with me back to Baku. We.. we could get married,” Herman stammered.
“Herman..” Anna sighed.
“They have a Naval Academy in Baku. We talked about this. I could work for the oil company. My dad knows someone in the Party,” Herman said, desperately. “And – if we try, there’s even a chance,” and here Herman’s voice dropped to a fast-paced whisper, “If I can make enough money, we can make contact with some people I know back in Baku, who can smuggle us across the checkpoints from East to West Berlin. Once we’re in the American sector, we can get sponsorship to come to America from my uncle in Brooklyn. It’s expensive, but, it can be done! But we’d have to hurry, because sooner or later they’re going to put up a wall in Berlin and … ”
“Herman,” Anna said again, forcefully.
“I love you, Anna, so much.” Herman said.
“I have to go back to school. I can’t go with you to Baku.” Anna said.
“I will wait for you.” Herman cried.
“Four years,” Anna said. “If we don’t meet again in four years, then, you are free to marry someone else. If you love me, you won’t wait any more than that.”
“I love you,” said Herman.
And with that, Anna stood up, and ran off into the tall grass, and disappeared.
Back in Baku, Herman slowly put bribery money away so he and Anna could make it to West Berlin. He wrote her, and she wrote back. He wrote her again, and she didn’t. He wrote again, and again, and again there was silence. One year had passed without word from Anna, and then a second, and a third. After four years, Herman had a fling with a French girl studying abroad in Baku for the summer, and when she left to go back to Paris, he accompanied her on the train ride as her imitation husband, all the way to the Russian border, where, under darkness of night, Herman hitched a ride through Poland, slept in a farmhouse to avoid the border patrol in Berlin, where he met up with his preordained contact, handed over all of his cash, and hid in the false bed of an American army truck, that brought him to the American sector. By the time he made it to Brooklyn to live with his Americanized uncle, five years had passed since that summer by Lake Baikal, and Herman, working as a taxicab driver on the lonely nightshift, had all the time in the world to ponder the vagaries of his fate. One night, Herman picked up in his cab a girl who wanted to go to Orchard Beach. Along the way, they talked about he used to be a lifeguard. She said her name was Stacey, and was a seamstress in the Garment district, but needed some sunlight, and so called in sick. When Herman got to Orchard beach, Stacey confessed she didn’t have the fare to pay him. Herman parked the car, and said, it didn’t matter, he’d like to go to the beach with her. She agreed, and they continued a conversation they held, that lasted through their marriage, and only ended when the ravages of Alzheimer’s tore apart Stacey’s memories, leaving only a friendly, loving but scared shell behind.
And Herman, still staring out the window in Miami Maimonides, sighed privately, as his blood was replaced, and thought of the photograph whose meaning he never fully explained to his children, of Anna on a sailboat smiling in the sun, her hair wet with recent rain, laughing, holding onto the rudder, ever so confidently, on the surface of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvpvoyvQyj1qiqm75o1_1280.jpg)
