Clara II

Monday Aug 11

by

It being a hopeless affair
although affection almost gone
I enjoyed this evening spending
2 hours with C. She asked me
to come out just as I thought
for a certain favor when she
made a party recently she forgot
about me

There will be nothing between
us, there being no other I
cannot resist the call [of her] so
it seems my heart is still
there.

—————

Well, well. It seems like an entire subplot has unfolded in Papa’s life without us knowing much about it. We do know “C.” is a woman named Clara — Papa mentioned her once before, on July 14, to note the hopelessness of their relationship — but that’s about all we’ve got. What “certain favor” could he have willingly let her use him for? His wording recalls his description of the “certain undertaking” he failed at back in June, so it must be something he considers embarrassing or inappropriate for even his private diary.

What is so compelling about her that Papa should tolerate her even though she keeps him on the sidelines of her social life? And when did he first succumb to her siren song? Is she an old love from the more distant past, or is she one of the many women he met this year through friends or a marriage broker?

Saturday Aug 16

by


What can I write when
there is nothing of importance
and no inspiration to write.

C. hasn’t changed a bit
I’m satisfied not to have her
she is thoughtless.
does not consider things

————-

Matt’s Notes

Here Papa writes out the sentiment he’s expressed over the page few days by writing only a question mark in his diary entries: “What can I write when there is nothing of importance…?” The day-to-day details of his life, which I and my legions of readers would certainly find interesting, don’t strike him as worth discussion so long as he feels stuck, lonely, with no prospects for immediate or dramatic change.

As I’ve speculated before, though, I think he was, in fact, growing up very quickly right now. The need to reinvent his world was more pressing now that his father, and the familial security and connection to the old country he represented, were gone. In some way I think the recent, deeper quality of Papa’s loneliness may signal a keener, realistic awareness of his circumstances. He doesn’t yet know exactly what he needs to do to change things, but I think he’s starting to understand that he can’t do it by daydreaming alone.

Meanwhile, the saga of “C.,” or Clara, continues, though Papa still hasn’t explained their long history or why its romantic turbulence has suddenly come to a head. My mother has suggested that Clara might be one of the Breindel sisters, the cousins with whom Papa shared a bed when he first arrived in New York (Eva and Sadie were the others). It wouldn’t have been so odd for distant cousins to romance each other in the 1920’s, so maybe that’s what’s going on here. It would certainly explain why Papa seems to know her so well and why he saw no need to introduce their storyline when it suddenly popped up, clearly continued from some earlier point, a few days ago.

————-

Update 8/25

I just realized that Clara might also be “Clara the daughter of Cousin Leizer” who Papa met on January 6th after her arrival from Europe. After describing the evening he spent with her and his other cousins, Papa went back and wrote an extra line about her in his entry: “The above mentioned Clara Leizers arrived from Europe recently.” I didn’t think much of it when I first read it, but maybe that extra little attention to Clara hints at his attraction to her.

Sunday Aug 17

by


I outfitted her to the station
because she forced herself upon
me. I deserted my friends
in order to accommodate her,
what was the reward?

Humiliation

Disappointment

I shall not be fooled
by trickery again.

Owing to a cold I went to
bed early, and had my sisters
visit me for the first time in
a long while.

——————-

Matt’s Notes

By “her,” I assume Papa means Clara, the mysterious woman who has both fascinated and, it seems, tormented Papa since well before he started his 1924 diary. (The story of his disappointing, ongoing relationship with her showed up in full flower a week ago without introduction. He seems intimately familiar with her foibles and behavior, so he surely had a long history with her. She might even be one of the distant cousins he lived with when he first came to America.)

What type of disappointment and humiliation befell Papa when he changed his Sunday plans to see her off on a trip? Did she imply he’d get a kiss? An invitation to join her? A hint of a deeper romance? Or did they have an unspoken understanding in which she fed his appetite for hopes and dreams (remember, until this point Papa’s dreams and romantically unrequited hopes were important food for his poet’s soul, perhaps even more important to him than much of his real life) in exchange for assistance with her luggage and other odd jobs?

Whatever the particulars of their relationship, Papa and Clara manage to at least partly fill each others’ needs through a well-established, pseudo-intimate routine. I imagine Papa has vowed a million times before to “not be fooled by trickery again” in the course of his association with her, but I expect he’ll keep allowing it until he establishes a truer, more productive romance with someone else.

————-

Additional note:

Papa writes “I outfitted her to the station” in the first line of this entry. It’s an odd phrase but the word “outfitted” is quite clear:

I’ve always thought the verb “outfit” referred specifically to the collection or preparation of equipment and clothing, as in “Admiral Peary outfitted himself for his expedition to the North pole.” But, Papa uses it here in a more general way to indicate that he brought Clara’s stuff to a train station and perhaps loaded it onto a train. Was the word used more broadly this way back in the 20’s?

Tuesday Aug 19

by


Got a card from Clara from
Spring Valley. I am indifferent to her.

————–

Matt’s Notes

As we know, the Clara mentioned above is not Papa’s sister Clara, but probably one of the cousins he stayed with when he first came to America in 1913. Clara II, as I shall hereafter refer to her for clarity’s sake, became an object of affection for Papa at some point in the intervening years, but their relationship has gotten stuck, engines revving and wheels spinning fruitlessly, at the relationship of friendship and intimacy.

Papa knows Clara II well and therefore hasn’t formally introduced her to us, but it looks like their orbital behavior is well-established: Clara II leads Papa on in order to get attention or favors from him, and Papa, frustrated, vows to wash his hands of her and resist her “trickery” only to answer when she again comes calling. We can almost see it unfold in his reaction to her postcard, which he writes about in his diary but only in order to deny his excitement over hearing from her. I suppose anyone who has ever been unable to exit a relationship that was clearly going nowhere knows the feeling.

————

Additional Notes

Spring Valley was likely the site of a Jewish summer colony where Clara II went to get away from the city (women generally went to such colonies for extended stays, while the men in their families stayed in the city to work and joined them on weekends). As reader Marisa notes on this site’s “Cry for Help” page:

spring valley, new york is part of suburban rockland county which is 30 minutes northwest of new york city. currently spring valley and its neighboring town monsey are home to one of the country’s largest concentration of orthodox jews. (the rest of rockland county is also densely populated with jews of all denominations)probably in the 1920’s it was more rural and used as a summertime retreat for urban dwellers such as papa and other LES jews. since people began to move out of the city and populate suburbs such as rockland and westchester counties in the 1940’s and 1950’s, people began moving further north for such summertime family retreats. for example the catskill mountain region.

Tuesday Aug 26

by


Clara lived up to her old
traits, After what a strenuous
effort to see her safely off
to the station when she went
to the country & she does not
write me.

Well, she don’t interest me
anyway.

Excused myself on phone before
the unknown girl that on account of
a cold I could not keep appointment

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Boy, Clara II really gets under Papa’s skin. To review, Clara II (so nicknamed to distinguish her from Papa’s sister Clara) is a distant cousin on whom Papa’s had a crush for a while. She likes to have him around to flatter and do favors for her, but she obviously doesn’t plan to get romantically involved with him.

For example, as Papa mentions above, the other day she convinced him to help her to the train station as she left for for a Jewish country retreat in Spring Valley, and afterwards he wrote of the “disappointment” and “humiliation” he felt because she’d manipulated him through “trickery.” He received a card from her a couple of days later but insisted he was “indifferent to her.” And today he continues to protest too much: She’s obviously been on his mind enough for him to write an unprompted diary entry about her letter-writing negligence, but he insists she “don’t interest” him.

I wonder if his uncharacteristic use of improper grammar indicates how distracted and angry Clara II makes him, or if he’s trying out some stern-sounding slang for effect, or if he just made a mistake. I also wonder if he called in sick to his blind date because he was really sick or if his irritation with Clara II — which, again, was strong enough to surface in his diary out of the blue — made him too grouchy to deal with an “unknown girl.”

—————-

Additional Note

I added this as an update to my August 16th post, but I’ll mention it a few more times for those keeping score: Clara II might not be Clara Breindel (on of the cousins Papa temporarily shared a bed with when he first came to America) as I’d originally thought. I think she actually might be “Clara the daughter of Cousin Leizer,” a.k.a. “Clara Leizers,” who Papa met shortly after she came over from the old country back in January. Seven months would certainly have given them enough time to establish their patterns of flirtation and frustration, especially considering how quickly and completely Papa could become absorbed with women he found attractive.

Friday Aug 29

by


Had C. on the phone
promised her to come out
to Spring Valley tomorrow,
as I intended to go for a
rest for the week end, I
shall go there as it is the
nearest place to the city.

I need the rest badly.

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Papa’s Diary Project is, among other things, a way for me to have some sort of grown-up conversation with my grandfather, to look at him not just with a four-year-old’s awe but with an adult’s admiration for his strength and accomplishments. I look at each page, each word he writes, and try to find in his thinking and behavior the seeds of his future, the hidden keys to his character. To me, every choice he makes, every movie he sees, every phrase he composes is a potential lead, a unique clue, a moment filled with intrigue.

Once in a while, though, he acted just like any other young man, and I think this was one of those times.

He told himself he was finished with “C.” a.k.a. Clara II, the distant cousin he was attracted to but who took advantage of his affection, returned his overtures only with unfulfilled promises and arms-length titillation. He had, in recent weeks, forsworn his pursuit of her; he had vowed not be fooled by her “trickery”; he had said “I am indifferent to her” and “she don’t interest me anyway.” Yet when she called, he answered. And not surprisingly, he rationalized: she just so happened to be near the city, he needed the rest anyway, he probably would have gone to Spring Valley even if she hadn’t been there.

I don’t think this needs more interpretation. I suppose you can’t grow up to be wise and wonderful without kidding yourself into making mistakes along the way.

Saturday Aug 30

by


Shapiro called me
up last night and today
we went together to Spring
Valley.

C. helped us to find
quarters, at night visited
the girls camp.

————-

Shapiro is a familiar character in Papa’s diary, a good friend and B’nai Zion brother who turns up a lot at parties and gatherings. I figure he and Papa met for Saturday morning services on the Lower East Side, stopped by their apartments to pick up some things for the weekend, and then took subway to Grand Central and caught the train to Spring Valley.

I have a photo of Coney Island from the 1920’s in which men walk the boardwalk at the height of summer in jackets, ties and hats, and I assume Papa dressed similarly. Did he and Shapiro also dress this way as they went north? Did they share the train with lots of other similarly-dressed Jews, all heading to join their friends at camps or bungalow colonies in the country? Did they fill the air inside the cars with smoke and hopeful chatter about their prospects for the long weekend? And, when they arrived in Spring Valley, did they finally loosen their ties and drape their jackets over their forearms as they dispersed? Did they walk miles to their camps, hop on buses, pile into cars if they were lucky enough to have friends who drove?

It’s been a little harder than I expected to get my questions about Spring Valley camps answered, but they keep piling up. What kind of “quarters” did Clara secure for Papa and Shapiro? A couple of cots in a bungalow shared with a dozen others? A motel room? A canvas tent? When they visited the “girls camp” in the evening, what exactly went on? Did they sit around a campfire and sing socialist songs? Did the trees and the crickets, the smell of smoke in the cool August air remind Papa of the European foothills he left behind, trigger long reminiscences of the old country? Did men and women inch closer, some of them slipping off in pairs, away from the firelight, to provide fuel for the next morning’s gossip?

And what of Papa and Clara II? He had vowed not to pursue her any further, knew she used him for flattery and favors but would likely leave his romantic desires unfulfilled. Yet still, he came to Spring Valley to see her. Perhaps his forgiving nature led him to hope she would not disappoint him, would not be true to form. Perhaps he knew it was foolish to entertain such hopes. Perhaps, to sit and watch her face by firelight, to see her flirt and laugh and tuck her hair behind her ear and know he could never have her gave shape to the feeling of “great longing” he lived with and had written of, a feeling he could not yet imagine a life without, a feeling that somehow fed his romantic soul’s hunger for unfulfilled desire, his poet’s love of pathos.

I do not know exactly what Spring Valley was like, but I do know Papa did not simply sit and sing and clap and laugh along with his friend Shapiro and think of nothing else. For all the synagogues and packed subway cars and noisy trains and cramped country quarters and parties in the woods he saw that day, I know he felt alone.

————-

Update:

Additional Note:

Fred, the CRRO (Chief Railroad Research Officer) for Papa’s Diary Project, tells us how Papa would have gotten to Spring Valley from the City: He would have walked across the Hudson Terminal at Chambers street to the Hudson Tubes, where he would have grabbed the old H&M to Jersey City. From there, he would have taken the Erie Railroad to Spring Valley. His return trip presumably traced the same path in reverse.