To America and Back Read online

The next coming months passed over Nahumik with less solitude than before. At the secondary school he had still difficulties in speaking English. However, his good nature and nice looking face had helped him: Some girls-classmates inclined to chatting with him, and he had felt that even with his plenty of errors he should ‘try and try till you won’t fail’. He based that on a short story he had heard once from his Mom, who was buying “stories’ booklets”, among them a story by the Canadian Stephen Leackok about that subject…

  Nahumik’s writing skill was not as well as his speaking. In both, of course, he had had full mistakes. Despite his private teachers and his willingness to improve, his mind refused to accept the English strict instructions about Present Perfect Tense, for example. His teacher in the first high school class, Augusta Rank, had been desperate about that, and told him: “Do what you want, O’key. Today a guy can become a well known news reporter, even without talking or writing. And even if you remian just a newspaperman, you can have a good editor who will proofread your mistakes. So, Nahumik had decided of even not trying to use the Present Perfect. He was convinced that he would be understood always by the ‘simple past tense’. He said that the ‘remote past before the past’ was acceptable for him – but the ‘present activity that the past has an impact on it, or a present that is something stretching from the past up to this point- is everything; it causes an ambiguity - so I’ll deny it at all!’

  It is understandable that Nahumik received again and again quite bad marks in English. But did not complain. He was more worried because of his renewed weakness in math: When he was fifteen, they got in class a new teacher for Algebra. That young man did not sympathize Nahumik, simply because of his weakness in figures and calculations. He had struggled quite adequately with geometry, and got a good grade; but in arithmetics he was an absolute failure: He was not wise enough to solve questions about ‘two drivers travelling one toward the other’ …Or about ‘two irrigating pipes that are pumping water from a cubic pool of 500X5X500 inches, each in a diameter of 10 inches: How long would it take them to empty that pool, if their pumping capacity is 30 cubic meters per hours?’- and so on.. You know that kind of damned questions. The Math young teacher approached Nahumik one day with a smile.

  Suddenly his fingers uprooted a couple of hairs from the teenager’s growing sparse chin beard. Nahumik shouted ‘Ayyyay’, and his schoolmates laughed. A Jewish girl named Hana told him in the intermission: “I knew that your turn would come.” She looked straight in Nahumik’s eyes, and then dared to tell him, that ‘despite your milky beard – you are a very nice guy’, and by that she had won his heart. She became his first girl friend… Then she revealed to Nahumik, that the math teacher had been known to do the same ‘beard uproot’ to teenagers in all the classes, in which he was teaching. How did she know that? Her sister’s boyfriend had saod that…

  Hana loved kissing, and demanded from the guy to shave daily. At the beginning Nahumik would shave with an electric Remington machine. But shortly afterward – he was under the pressure of Hana to shave with Gillet razor blade. It smoothes his skin, to become like a girl’s or a baby’s… But that feeling would hold only in the evening. In the morning Nahumik would feel the beard’s hair becoming tougher and harder. Using a razor twice a day would be mad, he thought. ‘So don’t kiss anybody in class hours, and keep it as is.’

  Nahumik’s first girl friend, Hana – had parted from him after finding that he was liked by too many girls. A better looking girl than Hana seemed to him to be less dominant than her – so he soon became her boyfriend. In those days – girls in LA had already understood, that just a kissing and caressing and not having full sex- is not a problem, if the relatively fresh couple agrees to separate in peace, without screams.

  What was the reason that Nahumik had begun to fascinate the high school’s girls?

  Firstly, he had an athletic figure and muscled arms. His father in law bought him two ‘Weighing Bars’ of these days – for fitness training, and he used them. He even thanked Solomon, who had been very happy to know that he would not be absolutely excommunicated by Nahumik. . . A second reason for Nahumik’s success with girls, was his being quite a foreigner. By his way of talking – you could hear a Non American. He was having some German-like dialect- and many pronounciation errors, while talking even about simple matters..

  So, Nahumik was going out with girlfriends or girls for one-time go-out , for ‘kissing and softening’. Some of the girls talked with each other about him. It came about, that almost all had become to know that he was a problematic guy. He would tell girls – as well as boys – that he won’t stay long in LA or wherever in the U.S.A ! He is despising the Films’city and the movies!!

  What Naumik would tell almost every girl about any film they were watching together – was almost the same: “The chracters are just exhibiting an imaginary, un-realistic kind of living. As for myself, I would like to have a real experience in life, connected with contributing to society, even suffering some inconvenience by that. Don’t call me a Copmmunist or socialist or Schovinist- due to my opinions, (which might have been dangerous at these days of McCarthy). I really don’t expect America to change. No, I define myself as a liberal, a free man, intensly aspiring to re-reach my old homeland. Yes, it is surely waiting for young people like me. What a question is that: Why? – Because Israel is having millions of problems: Its defence manpower is small, its society is composed of people who arrived from hundred countries; and its food and monies are rare, as most of its people have no profession except the Jewish classical trade of Buy And Sell something. But we can’t live only on commerce. Yes, there is the agriculture there. My Mom had been working with hens- when we’re living there. But such a branch would not be sufficient to feed millions, as the land is dry and lacking irrigation. No water, which is vital to the land like an air to the living creatures.”

  Nahumik was seen by some yougsters as a little cukoo, but others were feeling sympathy to him. His parents, of course – were opposing his old ideas regarding his native home. He was lucky that no girl told them exactly what dreams she had heard from him recently: So, sometime he thought that he could illusion his Mom and Solomon that he would ‘normalize’,

  But he continued to be too sincere with girls. However- some of them, who had been friendly with him at the beginning of their relationship, were soon becoming afraid. They stopped relationship and he had understood why, but did not change his talking about his dreams...

  It is worth mentioning, that there was one girl, who had been so fascinated by- and passionate about- Nahumik, that she demanded to make sex with him “down to the end”.(that was the slang of those days for a real fuck). She was experienced in any kind of sex, so she told him. She boasted in her daring adventures with grown up fellows, in contrast to other indulged fearfull class-girls. ‘Yes, I am a complete woman’- she declared, ‘and not only fee sex do I seach in life, but a complete freedom of human being. I have learned from my Pa what communism is, and had read chapters written by Marx and Lenin, can you understand? Yes- I’m a burning communit, and I don’t mind what narrow minded people would think about me.’

  At that time of mid fifties(1954-5) the Korean war was close to end, and Nahumik, that was already reading newspapers- tried to argue with her about politic: “Who is to be blamed about that Korean war? Not the communistic North forces? They are the agressors, it’s clear like the sun.”

  “You are wrong,” she said enthusiastically, “The fact is, that the communists’ arguments are always right and proved – so our truth will prevail at last, even if it’ll take some time. Communism is always the right side in whatever war is led against it…You delude yourself, Humik, in your essential outlook about life. Sweety, you don’t understand that Capitalism does not solve the private problems of a human being- but the opposite? Capitalism cannot enable each person to enrich his knowledge and develop his personality to a muximum… In such a rotten regime, like in the U.S. – any
debate about an equal opportunity to each of us- is a humbug, vanity, empty bottle…”

  Nahumik lied only a week with Gloria, that was her name- for ‘the sake of momentary sex and for accumulated experience.’ Really, his gentleness and could not permit him, so he said, to continue full sexual rlationship, from thinking that the episode would hurt her - if they dicontact and go each to his or her way. Yes, his sincerity and his internal rectitude, (his integrity- maybe that is the word that mature people would define that), forbid him to delude her, “and that would overcome my aspiration and attraction to have an orgastic bliss.”

  Gloria said that she very much appreciated his last words, which show his feeling of care and understanding of another human being’s fate’ and in that he becomes closer to her systematic thinking, that there is a collective responsibility to our deeds and steps… But shwe as an individual- does not care if he leaves. He has to understand, that she does not respect nor believe in any Capitalist ‘Burjuee’ institute, and of course not the official marrige institute, that enslaves a couple, and so on. She will have – as now as well as in the future, with whoever she would like, O’Key? And of course she would not lie with some guy, whom she will not want or who will be disgusting in her eyes. And such are most of the males in this ugly world. These words have to be said regarding every woman, don’t they?

  She thought that those last sentences would relent Nahumik, but he said he must avoid what he expects that would hurt her. Whatever she would say, he knows that when they will depart, it would make some hollow black wound in her feelins. What does she say about such an eloquence: “A hollow black wound”?

  “I have never seen,” she said with rolling eyes, “a sincere and honest and queer creature like you, Humik. But maybe you’re a real homo. Yes!” – and she went away.

  However – something from his meetings with that teenager girl Gloria- had remained in Nahumik’s memory. She called him Humik and he liked that nickname. So, since then – all had become to know his nickname: That girl was older than the others, and had been much appreciated for her boldness and sharp mind and tough tongue. So, she persuaded her classmates to accept this nickname. She had three months period of relationship with Nahumik, and. all were sure she had lied with him a lot. It was a lie, but her pride could not prosper without that…

  Another of Humik’s girlfriends at that time was a believer in scientific books.

  “And they say,” she said, “that there are other worlds, in which life exists. If so, why do we have to worry about this ugly world’s creatures? God should care, not us.”

  “You are right,” said the young guy, “I studied with a Rabbi, who once citated a Book called ‘Breishith Rabah’: ‘God has created worlds and desroyed them’. Why? We don’t know. Like science also does not know many things. The universe is a mystery, and life – which is only a part of it, is a riddle. And for me- Nahumik- or Humik, life also means: returning to my homeland. I was forced to come here, though my parents would tell you otherwise. Recently I’ve decided to cheat them regarding that. I’ll lie as well to all my friends, except you: From now on – I’m going to tell everybody, that I won’t stay for long in U.S.

  Yes, I would even study here in some university, or better go to work in the film Industry… ”

  “Is it so emotionally difficult – to forget your native land, and all your past?” asked the teenage girl, “I think you have just to be busy in studies and work and…in lovemaking. So you’ll overcome that obssesion, of being attracted by a far away country. When you’ll see its people, I’m sure you’ll be disillusioned.”

  ‘Maybe she was right,’ – thought Nahumik. That occurred after they had decided to separate from her.

  CHAPTER 3