Try to Remember: Stories from a Life

All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Jack Orbach

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In recounting these chronicles of my life, I have tried to be accurate and fair. Knowing that recollections can be notoriously faulty, that interpretations of events can differ markedly, I have changed most of the names of the innocent to spare them possible pain and embarrassment. Any resemblance between the names found in these pages and those of actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. However, I have retained the identity of immediate family members.

Acknowledgement is made to W. W. Norton & Company for permission to reprint an excerpt from I Could Tell You Stories by Patricia Hampl. Copyright © 1999 by Patricia Hampl.

ISBN: 0-595-13502-1

ISBN: 978-1-4697-8116-7 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Memoirists, unlike fiction writers, do not really want to tell a story. They want to tell it all–the all of personal experience, of consciousness itself. That includes a story, but also the whole expanding universe of sensation and thought that flows beyond the confines of narrative and proves every life to be not only an isolated story line but a bit of the cosmos, spinning and streaming into the great, ungraspable pattern of existence. Memoirists wish to tell their minds, not their story.

Patricia Hampl

from I Could Tell You Stories (1999)

Contents

Prelude

Overture. Family

1 Birth Mother

2 Stepmother

3 Father

Themes. Rites of Passage

4 Early Gropings

5 A Sexual Apprenticeship

6 A Musical Interlude

7 Baron Byng High School

8 My Wife Raquel

9 Memorable Professors

Development. Experimental Psychology

10 Florida and Chimpanzees

11 Sabbatical

12 Personal Research

Intermezzo. Dream

13 The White Elephant

Elegy. Fateful Events

14 Chronicle of a struggle

15 False Restarts

16 Eldest Daughter

Recapitulation and Coda

17 Fulfillment and Reflections

18 Dramatis Personae and Chronology

About the Author

Prelude

Each life is unique. I wrote these stories to share with others the uniqueness of my own life. The son of a Polish Jewish immigrant to Canada, I developed into a scientist with lifelong interests in psychology, music, teaching and writing. These stories recount many fateful events along the way.

I had occasion not long ago to reminisce on the early beginnings of my laboratory research with animals. My cousin Seymour and his wife, Katrine, both established scholars in their own right, attended my seventieth birthday party, arranged as a huge surprise for me by my wife, Hilary, at Wilkinson’s Restaurant on the upper east side of Manhattan.

As a token of his affection, Seymour presented me with an enlarged, framed copy of a photograph that his mother, my Aunt Blanche, had taken of me as a four-year-old standing in front of one of the two huge bronze lions on Fletcher’s Field at the foot of Mount Royal in Montreal (Fig. i). Seymour had done his homework in preparation for the occasion. He pointed out to the assemblage that his cousin, an experimental psychologist by profession, had done considerable research with animals. And presenting the photograph to me, he quipped that his cousin had begun his work with animals very early in life; the photograph was the proof.

I began taking violin lessons in my ninth year, but the high point of my musical training didn’t come until I attended a conservatory of music in Montreal when I was seventeen years old. Unfortunately, when I started to attend the university a year later, my musical education was interrupted. I didn’t get back to music until my children showed me the way, many years later.

Fig. i. Jacob shortly after his mother died, posing before the lion he had tamed.

I began to realize that I had writing skills in high school. When I wrote my thesis for the master’s degree, I was able to test those skills in a research report. My advisor was as pleased with the product as I was. He urged me to get it published. As my scientific career continued to unfold, I discovered that I enjoyed writing very much. And then, when the personal computer appeared on the market, and desk-top publishing became available, I found myself becoming a writing addict.

My love of science, music and authorship finally dovetailed when I published a book on the psychology of music entitled Sound and Music: For the Pleasure of the Brain (1999).

Memoirs can easily become an exercise in self-indulgence. Aware of the tendency of memoirists to get caught in unabashed exhibitionism, I have made a stern effort to keep the tone of my narrative restrained and dispassionate. My object is to share with my readers the important lessons I have learned as my life has unfolded.

As readers of this memoir will gather, my life has been greatly enriched by my children. Mere words cannot express my gratitude to them. And then of course, there is my father, who is not alive to receive my acknowledgement of what he gave me, but whose voice I have heard egging me on from the Beyond: Remember, remember, I dare you, Yankel, I tempt you. And when I heard my son at a recent party sing Try to Remember from The Fantasticks, I finally knew what I must name this book.

The reader should be aware that thoughts and foreign words in the text are italicized.And that the transliterations of the Hebrew letters ‘chaf ’and ‘chet’ to ‘ch’ and ‘qu’ are pronounced as German gutterals. For example, the name ‘Raquel’ is pronounced with the gutteral of the celebrated composer ‘Bach.’ The same applies to my own family name ‘Orbach.’

Kate Levan Gilden helped me organize my thoughts as I wrote this book. I am greatly beholden to her. My good friend Sylvia W. Staub, now living in Tucson, Arizona did a very professional editing job on my manuscript. In the process, she taught me a lot about the craft of narrative writing. I am also beholden to my daughter Karen, for her assistance in copy editing the manuscript. Of course, I remain ultimately responsible for its contents.

My wife, Hilary, became my conscience as I wrote this book. Without her wise counsel and sharp editing, I would never have finished it. She is also my best friend. It is to Hilary that I dedicate these chronicles with love.

Overture. Family

1

Birth Mother

When I woke up that Sunday morning early in March, I sensed that something was wrong. I was accustomed to climb into my parents’ bed to awaken them and to snuggle. But that morning was different. My parents’ bed was empty. Looking out the window, I could see that it was snowing. It was obviously cold and raw outside. I watched uncomprehendingly as people shuffled in and out of the flat, which was on the second floor of a three-story house on Esplanade Avenue, at the foot of Fletcher’s Field on Mount Royal. As with many houses in Montreal, the flights of stairs to the second and third floors were on the outside and unprotected from the snow. They were slippery, and new arrivals, greeted at the top by my father, complained bitterly of the hazards of the climb, even as they fervently shook his hand. Many of the guests embraced him. Even though I was only three years old, I could not help noticing that the mood was somber, and that everyone in the house had removed his or her shoes. This was not surprising, since it was so foul outside. But my father was shoeless too, though he hadn’t yet ventured out. He rarely walked in his socks in the apartment, certainly not to greet guests. I wondered why. Some of the people I recognized were in tears. I had never before witnessed a gathering of this sort in our flat. My mother was nowhere to be seen.

And then I remembered that, earlier that morning, when I woke up and found my parents’ bedroom empty, I was shocked to see my father sitting alone on the sofa in the living room, sobbing. Averting his eyes, my father lifted me on his knee and embraced me. Why are you crying, Daddy? I asked, inspecting my father’s face. Dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, my father reminded me that my mother had been taken to the hospital, seriously ill, just two days ago.

But she’ll get better, won’t she? I mumbled.

Yankel, I don’t know how to tell you this. Bessie died last night, my father said, hardly able to speak through his tears.

But she will get better, won’t she? I too began to cry. What my father revealed sounded serious, but I could not grasp its catastrophic meaning.

From a recess in the room, I watched people sauntering about. I sensed a certain excitement in the apartment as an old man with a long, gray beard, wearing a long black coat, climbed the stairs and entered. My father greeted him, "Rebbe," with a handshake and a bowed head. The Rebbe addressed my Father as Reb Shmuel. I couldn’t understand the words that were being exchanged. But then I heard, "Voo is dein zun, Yankele (Where is your son, Jacob)?" Shyly, I emerged from my corner. The Rebbe picked me up in his arms, kissed me on my forehead and carried me to the back of the flat and into the kitchen. The throng of people followed us, crowding into the limited space. The Rebbe stood me on the kitchen table so that I towered over everyone. He began to chant mournfully, and the throng chimed in at intervals. Then I heard the Rebbe ask me to repeat after him,

"Yisgadal…ve’yiskadash…sh’mey…rabo…" I did what I was told. Everyone joined in when I repeated,

"Yehey sh’mey rabo m’vorach l’olam u’le’olmey olmayoh." I watched and listened as members of the throng sobbed and wailed. What was it all about? And where was my mother?

Slowly the crowd dispersed. After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally alone with my father. We sat down together in the living room. As my father held me on his lap, I asked,

"What did the Rebbe ask me to say?"

"You recited the Kaddish Yosim for your mother."

But where is she? I cried.

Yankel, your mother died, she won’t come back. She has gone to join her Maker.

But who will take care of me? The full import of what had transpired finally began to impress itself on me.

Don’t worry, we will take care of you.

But who will take care of me? I sobbed.

I do not remember attending the burial.

For the next week, there was an unbroken stream of people through the apartment, and organized chanting took place from time to time. I saw that every mirror in the apartment had been draped with a sheet; the effect was spooky. People sat together on low stools or pillows and chatted quietly. My father continued to walk about in his stockinged feet but wore a fedora and his elegant dark jacket all the time. I was surprised that it had a prominent tear through one of its lapels. I remember that everyone treated me very kindly, but that no one said anything of any significance to me. Certainly nothing about my mother. Or about shiva. The mood remained gloomy through the entire week.

As time passed, I began to notice that there was no longer any evidence in the apartment that I ever had a mother. The family picture that had stood on the mantel beside the clock had disappeared, and so had a photograph of my mother from a wall in my bedroom. I did not see a single piece of her apparel anywhere. Years later, when I was rummaging in a dresser drawer, I found the missing picture of my mother carefully tucked away. I barely recognized her. My mother’s name was never mentioned, and it was not until I was 11 that I asked my father what she had died of.My father thought a moment. She died of pneumonia.No other comment was made about the woman who had given birth to me. It was only in school that I was made to remember, because I was treated as an orphan.

*****

It wasn’t very long before my Aunt Blanche arrived from New York. Aunt Blanche was one of Bessie’s three sisters. Childless herself, she came to take care of her yosim (orphan) nephew. She announced that she would stay as long as Sam needed her—that is, until Sam could make some more permanent arrangement for the care of his son. There isn’t much that I remember of those few months of my life. I do recall with some pleasure that Aunt Blanche took me to the French village Verchères in the Eastern Townships for a holiday that summer. Years later, after my father remarried, I was taken periodically to New York to visit her and her husband, Nathan, whom I adored because he would buy me elaborate toys for my birthday—once, I remember, a milk truck with many miniature milk bottles. Blanche and Nathan lived vicariously through me during their childless period. Years later, they had their own son, Seymour, and I remember attending his Bar Mitzvah in New York. At that time, Seymour knew that I was a graduate student at Princeton University and he was awed by the presence at his Bar Mitzvah of his august grown-up cousin from Montreal.

*****

Sam made arrangements to move in with a family that Bessie had known from the Old Country, Favish and Cheyved Mendelovitch and their three sons, Louis, Harry and Benny. Their flat was located on Rachel Street, east of the Main Strasse (as I heard it called as a youngster, actually St. Lawrence Boulevard), directly opposite a very impressive Roman Catholic church. In front of the church, there was a large statue of Christ with arms outstretched invitingly, and I could watch elaborate outdoor ceremonies and impressive religious processions from the living room window.

Favish Mendelovitch was a laundry presser. He was a tall, wiry man, and his most salient feature was his black, bushy mustache. Otherwise, I remember little of him. He may well have resented the intrusion of a strange father and son into his family circle, though he was always kindly and helpful. I invariably addressed his wife, Cheyved, as Mrs. Mendelovitch. She ran the show in the household. I remember her as a housekeeper, not as a mother. Her youngest child, nine-year-old Benny, became my custodian. He was the one responsible for walking me to and from Mount Royal School each weekday morning. I was walked as on a leash, for Benny held on to me by my collar or even by the scruff of my neck.

When I began kindergarten at the age of four, I didn’t know a word of English. Yiddish had always been the language of the household and it continued to be so, although I also heard Russian, Polish, German, French, Hebrew and English on many occasions. I remember being completely at sea when I started going to school. I didn’t understand a word spoken by the teacher or by most of the other children. Luckily, Benny quickly recognized the problem and had a hand in introducing me to a small vocabulary of English words. But for the first semester or so, I lived in a world of my own at school.

As I began attending school, I remember that my father sang to me, as a lullaby, this celebrated Yiddish song from Poland. I guess the lyrics were supposed to prepare me for school:

In the stove a fire burns and the house is warm, and the Rebbe drills small children in the alef-beyz. Look children, remember, dear ones, what you’re learning here, repeat again, and yet again, that kometz-alef sounds ‘oh.’

When you grow older you will understand, how many tears of our people are contained in these letters. When you children grow weary of struggle in the diaspora, you will draw comfort in these letters. Remember them.

In retrospect, it seems strange that my father did nothing to prepare me for a Canadian secular education in English. How could he have been so insensitive to my needs? I can only speculate. I believe that he may have originally intended to send me to the Talmud Torah, an orthodox religious school in Montreal where English was taught as a second language. But he himself was moving farther and farther away from religious life and apparently decided at the last moment that he didn’t want to expose me to what he had come to see as narrow religious instruction.

Friday evenings were very special at the Mendelovitches. The family sat around an elaborate dining table, each of us on a huge upholstered dining chair. The Shabbat spread was lavish. The table was decked out with heavy, ornate silverware. Sabbath candles were lit by Cheyved as she piously chanted the bracha (the blessing). Favish cut the challah as he chanted the motzi, and then distributed chunks of it to every one around around the table. Bialik’s Sabbath Bride was welcomed in unison:

I remember raising my wineglass like everyone else, to have it clinked, and joining the rousing chorus of l’chaim before sipping the vishnik, the homemade sweet cherry wine. I did not quite know what l’chaim meant, but it was certainly fun being treated like an adult. I was also puzzled by the amen at the end of each bracha. It sounded to me like ‘all men,’ and why everyone felt it necessary to say ‘all men’ over and over again was a complete mystery to me.

The meal was a celebration. A sample menu: Gefilte fish, chicken soup with knaidlach (matzo balls), salad with a vinaigrette dressing, roast chicken and potatoes. As the meal came to an end, and the tea and strudel were consumed, one of the older Mendelovitch boys, usually Harry, would begin to chant the birkat hamazon (Hebrew grace chanted at the end of the meal) and everybody would join in:

Blessed art Thou, God, King of the universe who sustains the whole world in His goodness, grace, mercy and compassion, giving bread to all organisms. And through Your great goodness, food has never been wanting for us, nor will it ever be wanting for us. Blessed art Thou who feeds all.

Then Harry would begin to hum a Chassidic nigun:

"Ya ba bay bom bay-ya ba bay bom bay…" It wasn’t long before everyone was singing with gusto, gesturing with their thumbs and swaying at the table, making it a veritable Oneg Shabbat. My father loved to sing and his beautiful light tenor voice would invariably take up the challenge with some Yiddish ditties such as:

Un az der rebbe tanzt, un az der rebbe tanzt, hoollyen alle chassidim…

And when the rabbi dances, all the Chassidim carouse… or,

Un az der rebbe elimelech iz gevorn zeher freylach hot er oisgeton di t’filin un hot ongeton di brilen, un geshikt noch di fidler di tsvey…

And when Rabbi Elimelech became very merry, he removed his phylacteries and put on his spectacles, and he summoned his two fiddlers…

I would join him as well as I could, and we all had a glorious time. The evening ended with a festive chorus of ‘gut shabbes’ greetings, exchanged across the table. We all stood as Favish approached his wife at the other end of the table to express his own ‘gut shabbes’ greeting to her, punctuated with a kiss.

It wasn’t long before I discovered the gramophone in the flat. I quickly learned to scream Fa! when I wanted it played, for it sang the very same nigunim that I so enjoyed Friday evenings around the dining table. Fa! meant something like Turn on the music, for God’s sake! What was the origin of the syllable Fa!? I could not remember. Years later, when I asked my father about the genesis of the syllable, he too could not remember. At the time, though, everyone in the flat knew what Fa! meant when I screamed it.

For me the most interesting of the Mendelovitch boys, and the most enigmatic, was the middle one, Harry. This boy was very artistic. He loved to sing all manner of songs in many languages (I remember, particularly, Give me some men who are stouthearted men… because it was sung with an exaggerated rhythm). I also remember the hilarious Yiddish ditty. It was always followed by a big laugh but, at the time, the hilarity escaped me:

Ich bin gevaldig tsufriden vos mayn mame hot mich gehat

un nisht kayn fremde yidene

I am wildly pleased that my mother gave

birth to me and not some strange Jewish lady

Harry also loved to draw and sculpt. I remember him working on a plaster bas relief, the profile of a beautiful movie actress of the day. I was astounded by the beauty of the work, and I remember Harry inviting me to feel the smoothness of the actress’s bare shoulder. He remained a colorful person all his life. It was not hard to understand why he was his mother’s favorite.

Slowly, in the Mendelovitch household, my thought, Where is my mother? became less insistent, less focussed, and it finally disappeared. My father’s frightening explanation, Your mother died. She won’t come back. She has gone to join her Maker, lost its sting. My question, Who will take care of me? no longer had any meaning. Although Cheyved was always Mrs. Mendelovitch to me, never Mother, I always received the attention that I needed from her. As time passed, I hardly noticed my mother’s absence. I don’t remember that I consciously missed her. But as events unfolded, I had occasion to wonder whether my grief had not gone underground.

After we left the Mendelovitch household, my father made an effort to maintain contact with Cheyved, bringing me periodically to see her. Visiting Cheyved on special occasions became a tradition that I maintained through my young adulthood, to introduce my fiancée to her, to exhibit my newborn son to her, and to celebrate her special birthdays. My father’s early habit gave Cheyved as well as me great pleasure, especially in the inevitable reminiscences.

When I was 14, I overheard talk of Mrs. Mendelovitch falling into a deep depression, which lasted a considerable length of time. Becoming unmanageable, she was incarcerated in the Verdun Mental Hospital for psychiatric treatment. Later, when I was a college student, I learned that the illness was involutional melancholia, and the treatment, electroshock therapy that would likely affect her memory. The family permitted no visitors. She was discharged after a year of treatments, and I was taken to see her at home for a short visit. Instead of the wreck of a woman that I was led to expect, I found the Mrs. Mendelovitch of yore, a bit older to be sure, but as strong and kindly as ever and fully in possession of her faculties. For me, as for everyone else, it was a little miracle.

While she was in the hospital her two younger sons set up a business of their own, an upholstery shop where Harry could exercise his artistic creativity and Benny, his business acumen. Their efforts, however, did not lead to a very thriving business. So when their mother came home from the hospital, Favish already having died, they invited her to join them in their enterprise. To everyone’s astonishment, she virtually took over the business and ran it with great strength and business prowess. In no time, her sons allowed themselves to become her assistants. Her energy level was prodigious. The business became a great success. Who could have predicted that the Mendelovitch upholstery shop would become so spectacularly successful? It was an important lesson for me, by then a psychology student at the university. How human beings could overcome adversity, I marveled. What an interesting subject for study!

The last time I visited with Mrs. Mendelovitch, she was in her late eighties, fending for herself in an apartment that was meant for senior citizens. She was in full charge, cooking for herself (and for her sons on special occasions) and caring for her apartment as though she were still half her age. I stayed for a delicious meal.

It is a tradition among Jews to visit the graves of departed loved ones before the High Holy Days. And so it was in my family. After I turned nine, I remember being taken to the cemetery, where my father would walk among the graves searching for Bessie’s. Once there, my father would have us stand at the foot of the grave, looking toward the gravestone, while an elderly Jew he had found in the cemetery recited the prayer for the dead, called An Amoola in Yiddish. I later learned that this was the El moley rachamim in Hebrew. The mood was somber but tears were not shed, as I recall. Looking back, it seems incongruous to me that I would be taken to the gravesite to remember my mother when all evidence of her existence had been removed from the household after her death. I am sure that it was my stepmother Claire, not my father, who instigated these annual visits.

After I grew up, in contemplating Bessie’s death, I couldn’t help wondering whether the female members of my family were somehow tainted, since her loss was echoed by other losses I had to endure that were equally devastating. The death of my birth mother was to haunt me for the rest of my life.

2

Stepmother

At the Mendelovitches I met a number of their friends and relations from the Old Country. Among them was an elderly couple, the Salinskys. I remember Azia Salinsky very well because I saw him now and then in Sam’s shop, Rotex Printing Co. and Office Supplies, on Prince Arthur Street at the corner of St. Lawrence Boulevard. Azia, an elderly Jew with a long gray beard, would come to the shop to solicit help from Sam with writing and typing letters. Though he could read Yiddish, Azia was completely unschooled and knew hardly a word of English. Known as a multi-linguist, Sam obliged him, and they would sit after the job was done and jabber in Yiddish about politics, domestic and foreign, as well as matters having to do with earning a living.

Though I was too young to be aware of it, Sam was looking to remarry, not least to provide his young son with a mother. Sam did not date in the modern sense. Nor did he consult with a shadchen,or matchmaker. Without any relations in America, he had to depend on friends to introduce him to eligible women. One weekend I was told