Uly Oppenheim, Ph.D., actually looked like the photograph on the back of Our Bodies, Not Our Souls. He was a darkly arrogant man with Byronic hair, beak nose. Tough wrestler’s stance at the podium like a young Norman Mailer. This was Jewish macho: aggressive, assaulting intelligence.
As he stepped down from the stage of the Post-Graduate Center, he was met by a crush of admirers, colleagues, and Shoah professionals.
"Of course, I’m saying Jews are meshuggeh," he declared. "Consider our collective trauma over the millennia, ending in the ultimate paranoid fantasy. . ."
I had strutted my smart stuff toward the stage, hoping the professor might notice a young woman in a short leather skirt, clingy red sweater. The effect was intellectual, I imagined. Ayn Rand, nee Alice Rosenbaum. A Jewess greenhorn like me, born in Russia.
Not that I wanted to sleep with Uly Oppenheim. I wasn’t a groupie. But without piquing sexual interest, he would never talk to me. I was twenty-seven years old and how else was I ever going to learn anything. Professor Oppenheim could teach me volumes.
An older woman with dyed red hair and dangling Mexican turquoise earrings whispered something in his ear, which made him laugh. For several minutes, they exchanged gossip about The Holocaust as Metaphor seminar in Frankfurt.
I walked over to a nearby table and picked up his book. The cover, lipstick red, displayed a black garter with a swastika. Leafing through the pages of Our Bodies, Not Our Souls, I discovered that each chapter began with a different name. "Gertrud F." "Eva Z." "Alicia W." All were women. All had spent time in Nazi brothels.
"Would you like me to sign it?" he asked.
"You must be kidding!" I faced him. "This is pornography. Interviewing women Holocaust survivors --" I put the book down angrily.
"The war was pornography," he answered. "I’m just a historian."
"But why tell this story?" I insisted. "It’s awful."
"Are you a therapist?" he asked.
"Me?" I gasped. "Do I look like one?"
At that moment, he appraised me. Like a chicken in plastic wrap. Shaking his head, he said, "No. It’s just that’s who comes to my lectures. And the survivors, of course. Why’d you come?"
"I’m a writer," I declared. "Like you."
"What are you working on?"
"I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t mean to sound mysterious," I said. "It’s just that every time you open the oven, it gets -"
"Let’s go outside," he said, taking my arm firmly. "I just have to find my briefcase."
I felt the prick of eyes upon us. The red-haired woman whispered something to a brunette in a tight French braid. Both were dressed in black like Greek widows. Their eyes followed us as we walked out together.
He could have any woman in that room, but he had selected me. It was a warm March evening.
"Let me understand this," he said. "You make up stories about movie stars?" We walked up Sixth Avenue.
"That’s what fan magazines are about," I explained. "You take the biggest stars. Actually they’re not all stars. Like Jackie and Ari Onassis. But Liz Taylor always sells. And Elvis. "
He appeared confused.
"My latest masterpiece is ‘Elvis’ Secret Words from the Grave. In the June issue of Movie Star.’"
"How do you write these?" he asked.
"I read Earl Wilson, Liz Smith, Marilyn Beck," I answered matter-of-factly. "Like right now I have to write a piece: ‘Cher’s secret hours in the dark with Robert Redford.’"
"But isn’t she still with Sonny?"
"You see." I grinned. "Everyone’s contemptuous, but even you know about the stars. Anyway, I’ll describe Cher’s deep inner thoughts and feelings as she watched Redford’s newest film."
"Do you have fantasies about the stars?"
I looked at him. "Of course not. But I have to pay my bills." We stood in front of my brownstone building on West 73rd Street. "I guess you could call me a literary slut." I shrugged.
"Where’d you get that mouth?"
"This is where I get off." I took out my keys.
"Would you have a beer upstairs?" he asked.
I studied Uly for a moment. Suppose he was a multiple murderer. But he taught at the Post-Graduate Center.
The Holocaust Studies professor followed me up the four flights to my studio. Thankfully, I had folded up the bed that morning, and covered it with an Indian spread.
"You can sit anywhere," I said, walking into the closet-sized kitchen.
Uly Oppenheim remained standing, rifling through my bookshelves. He pulled out Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, turning the pages as if searching for something. He began to read aloud.
"No human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis, and that fundamental values, even if they are not positive, can be deduced from this particular world. The Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social experiment."
"Is that supposed to be justification for your book?" I asked, carrying out two St. Pauli Girls, which I carefully placed on my desk, a wooden door set on two file cabinets.
"Aren’t you being a little moralistic?"
"The Holocaust is very personal to me."
"Probably to the six million too, not to mention, the survivors. To Kraut beer," he toasted me.
"No!" I said, shaking my head as I read the bottle label. "I always assumed this was from Minnesota."
"Hey, I’d drive a Mercedes, if I could afford one. What I’ve got is an old Germy Bug."
I sat down in a wooden chair across from him.
Though older, maybe fifty, he was attractive. I liked his long thick hair with its unruly strands of gray. Eyebrows climbing up his forehead made him look feral, and several hairs brushed the corners of his eyes, which were darkly opaque. But what attracted me was his mind.
"So you were born in Germany?" he asked.
"Yes, a cozy little displaced persons camp near Munich."
"When did you come to the States?" Uly crossed his legs.
That’s when I noticed the boots. Tall, black boots that went up his legs, reaching his knees. I found myself staring at them.
"I was, uh, one and a half years old."
"So young." He smiled indulgently at me. "Have you ever been back?"
"No thanks," I said. "That's about the last place I'd ever want to go." Staring at his boots, I thought: I have a Nazi in my house.
"It’s fascinating, actually. Seeing the place where it all happened."
"I think I'll pass."
"The Poles have turned Auschwitz into a museum. Looks like an Ivy League college. And would you believe they charge fifteen dollars? I refused to pay. Told them my relatives got in for free." He smirked at his own cleverness.
"I don’t joke about concentration camps," I said, looking down at his boots again.
"Hey, it’s just a fucking factory," he said. "Birkenau is where the actual extermination took place. Did you know it’s not even on any of the maps. It’s not part of the tourist program. You have to hike across a bridge with no signs. Enormous, too. I climbed one of the watchtowers, looking out in every direction. But there was nothing. No evidence. Just row after row of these horse sheds used as sleeping barracks."
"I don’t think I have to hear anymore."
He didn’t hear me, enthralled with his own story. "It was just these empty fields. It was spring and there were red poppies everywhere -- like drops of blood. Nothing like the movies. Then I went back to Auschwitz and stayed at a little hotel that was cheap and clean."
As he took a sip of his beer, I asked, "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you should know," he answered. "Birkenau has this monument made of stones dedicated to all Nazi victims, including the Jews." He emphasized the word. "But especially, the poor, unfortunate Poles. I tore a page from my notebook and scribbled: 'Look, you fuckers, here I am. I made it. And I'm going to have lots of goddamn Jewish babies.'"
Jewish babies.
"Then I scrolled the paper and stuck it between the stones," he continued.
"Isn’t that what Jews do at the Wailing Wall? Leave slips of paper with their prayers."
"You got it."
I stood up. "I haven’t any desire to go to Auschwitz."
"We go through our lives thinking of it as a bogeyman. Poland is just a place now --"
"Not for me. It’s too real for me. And now it’s commercial too. All these Jews going on Heritage Tours to Poland." I shook my head.
"No business like Shoah business," he observed.
"I’m in it too," I told him. "Not by choice. But I can’t seem to stop collecting."
I walked over to my black file cabinet. "You see these," I said, pulling out a precariously balanced stack of manila folders. "I have lots more in storage in the basement. My own Holocaust archives."
I opened the top folder, flipping through clipped newspaper articles. "A review of the latest maudlin Holocaust play, From the Smoking Ashes in Greenwich Village," I explained. "An article about an old Nazi living in Queens. Another one in Toronto. A psychological study of the second generation sponsored by the National Jewish Mental Health Service."
I picked up the study, beginning to read. "The children of survivors show symptoms that would be expected if they actually lived through the Holocaust. They present a picture of impaired object relations, low self-esteem, narcissistic vulnerability…"
"Good, you're working with it," he said, pushing a hair from my face. "That's what we have to do. The only way we can master our demons."
I shook my head. "I wish I could burn the files."
"Do you know what the word Holocaust means?"
I shook my head. He could teach me.
"Derives from the Greek holokaustos, third century, meaning burnt sacrifice dedicated to God. Holos means whole, kaustos to burn. Like caustic."
"Burn, baby, burn."
"Burnt whole," he said. "The problem is the word makes it sound like a mystical fire. A sacrifice, instead of the systematic, technocratic murder -"
"I call it the Big H,"
"I prefer Shoah."
"Enough." I drew my hands to my ears. "I really can’t listen to this."
"I understand." His Jewish eyes stared into mine.
"Do you?"
"Tell me," he urged.
"My mother's family stayed together in the Czestochowa ghetto for most of the war. On Rosh Hashonah, they were lined up for Selection. Her mother had tied a white scarf around her head, insisting she wear it. My mother was sent to the death line with her family. Suddenly, a Polish soldier ran along the line, calling, ‘Where's the girl with the white scarf?’ My mother was dragged to the other line and her life was saved."
"She was lucky."
"But was it the white scarf that saved her life?" I asked him. "My mother thought so. I figured the soldier thought she was a fine piece of ass. Too cute to gas."
He took my hands in his. "They all have their stories. But their suffering isn't ours. We didn't go through it. As I’ve written, the second generation has no real experiential content. Just fantasies, overactive, morbid imaginations--"
"What's your connection?" I broke in, demanding his CV. "Where were you born?"
"Poland. Actually the town of Osweicim."
"Auschwitz!" I exclaimed. "What happened to your family?"
"Who knows? Gone up in smoke, I suppose." He shrugged. "I was hidden during the war. Given to a Catholic family. Raised Catholic. God, I loved baby Jesus. Then I was told I had living family. My mother had survived Bergen-Belsen. She and my stepfather were in someplace called Chicago."
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen."
"Is Uly a Hebrew name?"
He laughed. "Ulysses," he said. "Uncircumcised child of anger. My Jewish family wanted nothing to do with Jewish identity."
"And now you teach Holocaust studies," I said, shaking my head. "Why are we talking about this?" I straightened up, stretching my arms.
"Maybe we have to," he said.
"There must be other things to talk about," I insisted.
While the tension between us grew, we studied each other curiously. Offspring of the century’s horror show. Freaks of history. Is that what we had in common?
"We’re meshuggeh people," I quoted him.
"But passionate," he added, putting his arms around my waist. "Do your parents receive wiedergutmacht?" He drew me near.
"German reparations payments?"
He nodded. "Survivor gelt."
"Survivor guilt," I said. "Of course."
"This one is for us." He kissed me on the lips suddenly. I pulled back for a moment, probing his eyes, so dark, unknowable.
"I find myself very attracted to you," he said softly. "Even if you are a refugee."
"And what are you?" I asked. "Son of the D.A.R."
"I want you, Zoe."
"Whoa! Hold on a minute." I pulled back, looking at him. "You work kind of fast, don’t you?"
"You want me too, you sexy Polish Jewess." He pulled me to him, grabbing a hunk of my hair. "You with your beautiful Zivia Lubetkin hair."
"Who's that?"
"She fought the hell out of the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. Killed, naturally." He kissed me lightly on the mouth. "I've only seen pictures of her, but she had your wild hair." He kissed me again. "Zosha --"
"Zoe," I corrected him.
"You're Zosha," he said, gently combing my hair with his fingers.
Being so close to him, I heard his breathing. Short, quickening. I could feel his body quiver.
"That's what my mother calls me," I muttered.
"If you tell me you love someone and he loves you, I'll leave you alone, Zosha."
"We just met tonight. You don't know --"
"We've known each other a long time," he whispered in my ear.
"I don't believe that."
He kissed me gently.
"Do you have someone --?" I began as he kissed my neck. I put my arms around his waist. For several moments, we moved very slowly to an ancient song.
The telephone rang, startling both of us. I reached out. "Don’t pick it up," he pleaded. Second ring. Third. Fourth.
"I have to!" I cried, freeing myself from his hold.
"Oh, hi." I groaned softly. "Yes, I’m right here. I can’t talk right now. It’s not a good time, Mom. Because I’m not alone. Yes, someone’s here. You don’t know the person. Yes, it’s a man. No. I won’t tell you his name." I rolled my eyes at Uly. "Mom! I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Please. Okay, I promise. I’m hanging up. Yes, Mom. I’ll double-lock the door after he leaves."
I hung up the receiver, sighing deeply as I sat down on the couch. "Speaking of -" I shook my head.
"Aren’t you a little old to have your mother calling at this hour?" he asked.
"She doesn’t think so. What can I say? She worries about me because I live alone."
"All survivors are over-protective," he said. "Where were we?" He approached me.
"The D.A.R."
"And I was trying to seduce you." He ran his fingers under my sweater.
I pulled away from him. "Can’t we just talk?"
"Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for hours?" He looked down at his watch. "It’s eleven o’clock."
"Is there a time limit?"
"I should probably go," he said, turning impatient. "It’s getting late."
"No, don’t, Uly," I said. "Not yet. I’ll be right back."
In the confessional of the bathroom mirror, I studied my face. What the hell was I doing? Did I really want to sleep with him tonight? I had told myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore.
The Liz Taylor eyes were mussed with black makeup, my lipstick clownish. Sure, I felt drawn to him. He was an attractive man. Still. I splashed water over my face and hands. The Holocaust professor waited for me.
When I returned, Uly reclined on the couch. He had taken off his black boots, which stood up straight, invisible legs inside of them.
As I sat down on the couch, I couldn’t take my eyes off his boots. I imagined an SS officer inside of them, wearing a long coat, a swastika armband on his sleeve. Uly pulled me to him, starting to kiss me again.
I drew away from him. "Why do you wear those boots?"
He looked perplexed. "You don’t like them?"
"They’re Nazi boots."
"Zoe," he said softly, trying to placate me. "I bought them at Florsheim’s on Broadway. A store owned by Jews," he added in his defense. "On sale."
I picked them up. Heavy. The black leather hard. I dropped the boots behind the arm of the couch, out of sight.
"Why don’t we take off our clothes," he suggested. "Be naked together. Mano a mano."
"I have a little bit of grass," I offered, stalling for time.
"Oh." His eyes twinkled. "Let’s stoke it up."
I went into one of my file cabinets, pulling out a plastic baggie. "Can you roll?" I asked.
"Can I roll? You bet I can." He threw himself into his task. Starting with an extra large Bamboo rolling paper, he rolled it into a perfect cylinder.
"Voila! Now we just need a flame."
"Right here." I pulled a lighter from the baggie.
We sat comfortably next to each other on the couch. He placed the joint in my mouth, held it while I inhaled, then I put it in his mouth. Back and forth.
"Mmmm…" He lay his head back on the couch. "I don’t know about you, but I got buzzed."
I took another puff. "Me too."
"Com’ere." He pulled me to him.
"Do you want to hear some music? I’ve got this great reissue of Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of -‘"
He stood up, loosening his tie, gray silk with a red stripe down its center. "Let’s just lie together. Nothing will happen you don’t want to happen. I promise, Zosha."
"I’m not ready." I paused. "I feel too ambivalent."
"This is ridiculous," he said angrily. He pulled his tie off, rolling it up like a snake in his hand. "It’s time for me to split." He reached over the bolster for his boots.
"No!" I implored. "Couldn’t you just stay for a few more minutes? Tell me to take my clothes off - again," I whispered.
"Take my clothes off," Uly ordered.
I moved over to his lap, opening the buttons of his shirt. He placed my hand so I could feel his hardness, straining against the fabric of his pants.
At that moment, I felt my power. I could do what I wanted with him. It was a delicious thought: how much he needed me. I could withdraw my hand. I could tell him to go to hell. I could, but I didn’t. He could kill me. I placed myself squarely on top of him, grinding into his hardness.
"Zosha," he sighed.
That was the clincher. I relaxed into his arms, letting him take off my sweater. "Let's get rid of these too." My leather skirt. He nearly ripped my lace panties.
"Uly -"
"No talk," he said, reaching over to pick up his tie from the floor. He slipped it around my neck.
We began to kiss again. Light, flirty kisses. Tongues teasing. Probing. Retreating.
Slowly, serpentine, he draped his tie over the back of my neck, swirling it like a sash. Then he ran it down my back, over my bare buttocks. Starting over again, my neck, my back, beginning to run his tie between my legs, then withdrawing.
"Does it excite you?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered, trying to grab the tie with my thighs, holding it there. He pulled it. I started to grind as he lashed the tie between my thighs.
"I love the way you move your ass," he muttered.
Grabbing the ends, he began to whip the tie over me. Back and forth. Sawing me in half like a magician. Oh, the sensation of the rope.
"You don’t like that much, do you?"
"Don’t stop."
He was the master. Ubermeister. Superman. So powerful. It was 1942. I was a prisoner. Jew. Whore. The ends swished against my thighs. I clasped the tie between my legs. He pulled it tighter, caressing me softly. I pressed his hands hard against my breasts.
"Is that what you want?"
"Tak," I answered him in Polish. Yes.
He turned me over, the tie wrapped between my legs.
"Don't stop," I repeated breathlessly.
He had selected me from the others. If I made him love me, he'd take me through the war. I would survive. He could give me Jewish babies.
Uly ran his tongue back and forth. Now his fingers reached inside to zero in on my hardness. I pressed against his finger, tongue, mashing against him as I started to come.
He climbed behind me. "I've got something for you, my little refugee," he whispered. "This comes all the way from Osweicim."
He entered me slowly. His body tensed as he started his pounding, which was hard and fast, pounding against me.
Afterwards, as he slept next to me, I watched him. My rescuer! He had known me as an outsider could never know me. Once he opened his eyes, still asleep. My blood brother. I dozed for several hours, his leg flanked over mine.
It was a familiar dream. The locks were forced, the door to my apartment opening slowly. I could see the silhouette of a man, stalking across the studio. As he approached my bed, I could see a knife in his hand. I was about to scream. That’s when I woke up. The bed was empty next to me.
"Uly," I called in the dark.
"I'm right here."
My eyes adjusted, seeing his figure bent over.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I've got to go."
I switched on the reading light, glancing at the clock. Two-thirty. "Why are you leaving?"
He reached to pick up his tie. My tie. I longed to keep it as a memento.
"I've got to go." He coiled the tie, dropping it into his jacket pocket.
"Why?" I sat up.
"Because I have to get up early tomorrow. Actually, in a few hours."
"There's an alarm." I climbed out of bed. "Don’t go yet."
He sat down on the bed, pulling on his boot. "Zoe, did you see my other boot?"
"I don't get it." I sat down next to him, pulling a t-shirt over my nakedness. "Why do you have to leave? It's not as if you live with someone."
He nodded ruefully. "I thought you knew." He bent over to reach his other boot under the bed. He looked up at me. "Everyone knows it. I did think you were aware of Maria--"
"Maria?"
"She converted, and is actually more religious than me," he said. "She lights candles on Friday night."
"Does your girlfriend know about -- this?"
"No, of course not." He looked grimly at me. "I'm sorry, Zoe. I thought you knew. She's my wife."
"Why don't you wear a fucking ring!"
"We don't have that kind of marriage," he began.
That’s when I looked down at the despised black boots. How could I have given myself to this Nazi, this married Nazi Jew! I kicked one of the boots with my bare foot, bruising my big toe.
"Zoe, you're a terrific woman," he continued. "You're young, so you don't know that yet."
"I get it," I said, waking from my dream. "I’m the Jewish girl you screw after your Holocaust lecture."
"Look, I told you, I’m attracted to you."
"Yes, I know. My Zivia Lubetkin hair. "
"And you’re attracted to me." He reached out to hold me.
"Uh uh." I pulled away from him.
"Grow up, Zoe," he said, then added, "Does it really matter? I have a long marriage. We’re more roommates than anything. We have no children. Actually, it’s quite sad."
I was taken aback for a moment. What about the Jewish babies?
"Look, I'm not the prick you think I am. Have you read my book?"
I shook my head.
He picked up his briefcase, snapped it open, pulling out Our Bodies, Not Our Souls.
He handed me his book, then took it back. "Wait, I want to write something." Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he bent down, his thick hair falling over his forehead. He looked up at me momentarily, pushed the hair from his face, then began to write. "Here."
I turned to the title page. "Welcome to the club. Uly Oppenheim."
"You’re a smart kid, Zosha." He patted me on the ass. "You know those files of yours. Use them." He raised his hairy brows. "Write what you know."
I met his stare. "What makes you think I haven’t?"
