Posted on January 30, 2008 by Steve Pollak
Ehud Havazelet’s “Bearing the Body” is one of the most depressing, emotionally laden books I’ve ever read.
And I mean that in a good way.
Havazelet is a rare novelist. He can write about depression without sounding tired. He can write about sex without sensationalizing. He can write about the Holocaust without sounding maudlin. And, he can depict the wallowing life of a drug addict without being melodramatic.
He plumbs the depths of these darkest aspects of living and then pulls the reader out again. Yes, it’s an exhausting novel. But, at the end, it’s as refreshing as having a major breakthrough on the couch of your therapist’s office.
This is Havazelet’s first novel. A professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon, he’s written two previous short story collections, “Like Never Before” and “What Is It Then Between Us?”
At the center of “Bearing the Body” is the 1995 murder of Daniel Mirsky, a 43-year-old man whose life once held immense promise. He was the pride of his family when he went to Columbia University in the early 1970s. Daniel was a leader in the student protest movement and in the radical political groups on campus. But, circumstances pushed his life in another direction. In particular, Daniel would struggle with feelings of guilt over the part he played in setting up a narcotics sting that led to the arrest of a college friend. He found solace in hard drugs, moved out west to San Francisco and spent most of his days in pursuit of heroin. Havazelet tells us little about how he died, except to say that someone shot him in a neighborhood where Daniel should’ve known better than to venture into waving a .22-caliber pistol.
His father, Sol Mirsky, is a stoical Holocaust survivor. He came to New York after the war and bought a shoe factory. He found success but he also found himself at odds with the labor organizers who constantly agitated for better pay and work conditions for the employees. Sol came to think of his employees as ungrateful — especially the ones who had worked for him for several decades. His scorn reached its height when Daniel and his other son, Nathan, turned up at the factory just as the employees staged a walk out. The two boys had a newspaper photographer take their picture at the event in a bid to demonstrate their support for the employees striking against their father.
By the time Daniel died, Sol has been already been burdened by the death of his wife, Freda, a few years earlier. And, for far longer than that, he’s been carrying around the concentration camp death of his older brother, Chaim.
His brother wanted to take revenge against some of the guards for the deaths of his mother and sister. But, other inmates feared the SS reprisal should Sol’s brother succeed in his plan. The inmates killed Chaim one night after he tried to take a pistol from its hiding place in the barracks. Sol, not yet 16, remained his bunk while his brother died.
Afterward, Sol hoped to die in the camp. But, “God would not permit it, and after a while Sol stopped praying and, emptied of everything else, knew his fate. To live, despite his wishes, despite everything he desired. To take memory in the body and carry it, forever.”
This would be his biggest burden for the next 50 years.
Sol’s younger son, Nathan, never found a purpose in life. While growing up in New York, he idolized and secretly resented big brother Daniel. When he finished college, Nathan spent several years traveling around the Southwest and eventually went to medical school, where he was the oldest in his class by far. At the time of the novel he’s 39 and he leaves a residency program without notice. Similarly, he abruptly walks out of a relationship with a woman who, for years, had been more than patient with him and his unpredictable, alcoholic, moody, adulterous ways.
Daniel’s girlfriend, Abby, also figures prominently in the book. Like Daniel, she struggles daily with drug addiction and alcohol abuse. But, she also has to care for her son, Benjamin, who somehow manages to get by despite his mother’s inability to take him to school on time or keep any semblance of a normal schedule. He’s a curious boy who takes an intense interest in everything around him and he’s got an active imagination. He and Daniel used to dream about the house they’d move to one day, laughing and joking about all the crazy things their new home would have to have.
Benjamin, however, also displayed signs of neglect and problems with violent behavior. He killed one of his dogs when Daniel died. And, he hurts himself whenever he gets upset.
The double entendre of the book’s title works on several levels. It speaks of the need to open oneself to others instead of holding pain inside. It also speaks to the burden carried by those who refuse to let go, who refuse to release their guilt. Those who, like Sol, “take memory in the body and carry it, forever.”
Towards the end of the book, there’s a scene from the past in which Sol recalls telling Freda about the walk out at the factory and about her sons being photographed. Here’s how Havazelet describes her reaction:
“Her unruly, reluctant mind finally locked into focus and she could see it, the factory with its greenish-brown walls, the high windows that seemed too dirty to admit either air or light, the chanting mob, men Sol though of as friends, the shoes in their pile, discarded, trash. And her boys, Daniel like an Indian with black hair and beads and leather hat, his constant grin hiding from everyone else, maybe, but not Freda, his deeper uncertainty. And Nathan, to whom his brother was a deity, a household god to worship and emulate and defend and secretly resent. Her boys. Nathan. Daniel. Didn’t they know anything? Didn’t they understand the only sins you will never be forgiven are the ones you commit against yourself?”
It’s around this time that the book approaches its exhausting apex. We still have the climax to get through as Sol lumbers around the streets of San Francisco with Daniel’s ashes in a box, Ben runs away from home, Abby overdoses and Nathan frantically pursues his father. But, Havazelet at least lets us know with Freda’s line that there’s going to be a way out: there is a light and, most importantly, there is in fact an abundance of forgiveness in the world. She believed — and she was probably the only one to think this — that Sol ultimately would forgive his sons.
It may be a challenge to forgive what seems unforgivable. But, as the action in this novel demonstrates, it’s also the only way to relieve the body’s burdens.
“Bearing the Body” is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (296 pages).