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PIN SKER /THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH-AMERICAN NOVEL
19
Solomon’s relationships with his ex-wife Inge (a German Jew
whose “G erm an” simultaneously oppresses and attracts him),
his mistress Kristen (daugh te r o f an SS officer who atones her
assorted guilts on Solomon’s aging body), o r his sister Malka.
Solomon’s life is an ex tended exercise is “recovery,” bu t one
that knows full well tha t “it is not possible to fully recover what
was lost” (Badanes, 80).
The restored collections help give us a certain picture; our
scholarships aids us to understand this picture, and serves as a
guide. But only the memory holds actual bits and pieces of what
is gone (Badanes, 80).
POWER OF MEMORY
And there in lies the rub , fo r memories have a nasty habit
o f being highly selective; moreover, Solomon goes on to argue
that the very act o f selectivity sentences “some images o f the
past to the perpetual half-life o f sentimentality and official ver
sions, and doom the remaining (and I have learned the more
vital) images to immediate oblivion — almost” (Badanes, 80).
The rem a rk is especially intriguing, given the fact that Badanes
wrote, and conducted and wrote on-screen interviews, for
Image
Before My Eyes
(1981), a highly regarded documentary about
Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust.
Once again, metaphysical laws governing unity and dissolu
tion assert themselves. Solomon’s professional colleagues fierce
ly (and endlessly) deba te abou t the precise cha rac te r o f
Tlomackie Street in 1931 o r about what store replaced what
o ther store on Wiwulski Street in 1927. Like the American Hol
ocaust professors who pester him with larger, bu t equally m ean
ingless questions about the Holocaust’s “meaning,” they imagine
tha t o rd e r can be imposed on chaos, that scholarship can p ro
vide (impose?) a significant pa ttern on a universe tu rn ed upside
down. By contrast, Solomon makes his raids on the oblivion
o f the past in an effo rt to rescue a “single image.”
[His sister] Malkele’s patent leather shoe poised to press down
the pedal on the piano. Or the simplest of forgotten sounds:
my father clearing his throat in the morning while it is still dark
outside. Or a particular odor: the aroma of a chicken roasting
in my mother’s kitchen in the spring of 1923, while the baby