WALTER

V. Amod Saxena

I first met Walter in early seventies. We both had signed up to play in our annual hospital golf outing and were put together in the same foursome. I had just started playing golf. Walter had been playing golf for some time and was good at it. His older age limited his long shots but in a short game, it was hard to beat him. We soon became friends and would play the game regularly for many years to come.

Once on a Sunday morning in early June, we were playing golf at the West Chicago Golf Course. It had rained the previous night and the course was lush green. It was sunny and crisp with low humidity. The sky was clear blue except for a few low clouds. The swaying of treetops by a gentle breeze made a pleasant soft rustling sound. I took off my cap to let the wind brush my whole face.

We had already played six holes. Walter had beaten me in each one. The next hole was a long par five at more than five hundred yards in length. The white tees were placed on an elevated surface. From here, we could see the long fairway in front. Slightly to the right of the fairway and about one hundred and fifty yards from the tees, was a tall oak tree. The fairway in front of the tree curved slightly to the left and then followed a dogleg sharply to the right around a wide pond. The green was at the far end of the fairway on the right. Most good players would drive the ball over the water or to the right of the fairway and then hit their second shot directly towards the green. A third shot would take the ball on the green or near its edge.

That day, Walter drove the ball to just near-edge of the pond. From there, he went over the pond to reach on the other side of water about one hundred and seventy yards from the hole. He then used his five-iron to send the ball near a pitching distance from the hole. His fourth shot carried him on the green. With two putts, he made a bogey on that hole. For me it was a struggle. I reached the green in six shots leaving me a long putt to make. Luckily, I holed the ball in one putt. That gave me a double bogey, a first for me on this hole.

We both looked at each other with pride. Walter was very happy for me. He gave me a high five and friendly pat on my back.

I really enjoyed playing golf with Walter. He was very encouraging to me even when I played poorly. He made his own game look easy. It was fun to watch him play. He was also a good company. He had excellent general knowledge. That day, for example, he told me that it was a man named Charles Macdonald who brought the game of golf to Chicago in 1892. Macdonald, he said, had gone to Scotland as a student and there he became hooked to the game. After his return from Scotland, he built the first ever golf course in west Chicago in the same year. It was a nine hole course. He said that MacDonald tended to slice the ball; he thus laid his fairways running clockwise. This way, he would mostly stay on the fairways. What a smart man, I thought?

Walter was patient with me. Often, he gave me tips to help my game. I appreciated that. However, he showed no patience for slow players. If he had to wait even for a few minutes on the fairway for the players to finish putting, he would start twirling his clubs with his hands, pace the fairway and repeatedly practice his next shot.

After playing the seventh-hole, we slowly walked to the next hole. It was a par-three at about one hundred and fifty-five yards. In front, the large green was surrounded by water on its right side and on its left were several thick bushes. The green was shaped like a large kidney bean. It sloped slightly toward the water from an undulating smooth surface on the right side. That day, the hole was placed on a flatter and narrower part of the green. In order to get to the hole, one had to drop the ball softly with a backspin on the upper right end of the green. The ball would then slowly roll down to the left ending some where below the hole. One can then putt it uphill either for a birdie or for a par. If the ball dropped at any other place, it would just run down towards the pond passing the hole on its way. Since Walter had the honor, he teed up his ball, looked behind at me with a mischievous smile.

“Watch the ball. I need to get it up on the top of the green on the right.” He said.

He then took his stance and was about to swing at the ball, when suddenly he let out a shriek and fell down backwards with a jerk. I ran towards him, bent down and tried to open his mouth. His jaws were tightly closed. He just gazed at me without saying anything. He was breathing rapidly but normally; that relieved me a little. I pushed his head back and lifted his right forearm trying to feel his pulse. It was rapid but regular. He tightened his face and twisted his head towards his right shoulder. I soon felt another jerk that arched his spine and pushed me away. I looked around and there was no one in sight. The clubhouse was not that far, but far enough that it would take me a while before I got some one’s attention. I shouted for help but there was no one to hear me. Leaving him there by himself while I looked for help was not an option. It seemed to me that he suffered an epileptic attack and needed immediate attention. Just then, I heard sound of a golf cart approaching us from behind. I looked back and saw a ranger in cart speaking on his walky-talky. Soon, an ambulance pulled up next to us and took us to a nearby hospital. Walter was now fully awake and talking normally.

“I am fine. I just need to get my pacemaker taken out of me. I had no idea that he wore a pacemaker. Walter was right; it was his pacemaker was defective. It kept sending erratic signals causing his body to jerk. The cardiologist wanted to replace it with a new one. Walter refused. He told them that after those jolts, he knew how it might feel to a prisoner being put to death on an electric chair. I found out later that he ran very high blood cholesterol and was at a high risk of getting a heart attack. I asked him,

“How do you take care of your cholesterol?”

“I try to eat right, work out daily and hope for the best. I also take statins but they make my body hurt. I is hard to play golf because my muscles hurt. At night, I have hard time to even lift my bed sheet to cover myself.” He replied.

Later, I found out that he led a very careful life. He was a total vegetarian and cooked low fat and salt-free meal for himself. He exercised hard every day on a treadmill and a stationary bicycle at home. I had watched him eat at the hospital. He usually drank red wine, ate salads and boiled vegetables and occasionally fish. I asked him once whether the self-imposed strict discipline bothered him. He said that he had no choice. For him, it was matter of life and death. He wanted to live.

One day he asked me to play tennis with him. I enjoyed tennis so I agreed quickly. We played two full sets of tennis at my club. He was a competitive player losing to me 6-4 and 6-4. He covered the court well and gave me a good work out. Later, when we were sitting in the club lounge enjoying our soft drink, he thanked me for playing with him.

He told me that he had been experiencing a dull ache in his chest for the last few days. He feared angina attacks. I looked at him with anxiety. What if he had a heart attack during the game? Just the thought sent shivers down my spine by just thinking of such a mishap.

“That was a good work out for my heart. I did feel a mild tightness in my chest only once; but it soon disappeared. Now, I feel fine. A good game of tennis is an excellent way to test my heart. I do not like to be on a treadmill for a cardiac stress test. I do not like the wires attached to me during the test while they monitor my heart. On the tennis court, at least one can have fun playing the game”. He said.

I just smiled and kept quiet.

I asked Walter if he would like to have dinner with me at my apartment. I was single and lived alone. I had no special plans that evening and would love to have him to join me in my apartment for a dinner. I could prepare a meal to his liking. He readily agreed but on a condition, that he would do the cooking. He wanted me to go with him to a grocery store that he frequented.

“What do you plan to cook?” I asked considering his diet needs. He told me to wait and see. We got up and left the club so that he could drive to the shop.

He drove a red MG with white canvas top. It had a sleek rectangular front grill of polished chrome. It was bright sunny spring day. The flowerbed by the parking lot of the club was covered with colorful spring flowers. Outside temperature was in fifties. The gentle westerly breeze felt warm and refreshing. Walter wanted to open the rooftop of his car. I thought that it would be breezy with the top down during our drive. I hated to be cold on such a nice spring day. Walter insisted that he open the top. I reluctantly agreed. He had brought this MG from England three years ago. It was a 1968 model MG GT V8 and had over seventy thousand miles on it. He kept it in an indoor garage during the winter. Only a limited number of these cars were built by the company. This car was one of them.

He entered the highway and moved quickly to the left lane. The highway was not crowded. The car picked up the speed and soon its speedometer needle touched seventy. I sat low cramped in a narrow and a hard seat next to Walter. The cold wind blew mercilessly on my face and blowing at my hair hard. My head felt numb with cold wind in spite of bright sunshine. Walter seemed to be enjoying the ride.

Finally, he slowed down and got off the highway. He entered State Street and quickly parked his car in front of a shop on the right side of the street. It was a small store squeezed between a music shop selling second hand records and a tavern. The front door the store was deep red and the window was covered with posters of grocery items on sale. A young woman in her twenties greeted us with a smile. She had large brown eyes with dark long hair tied in a ponytail. She was slim and about five feet and two or three inches tall. She had a sharp pointed nose with prominent nostrils, which tended to move when she talked.

“Hello there! How are you? This is my friend. We just played tennis. ” He greeted the young woman and introduced me to her. She acknowledged me pleasantly and turned her face to Walter.

“What are you doing here? I have not seen you for a while. Are you keeping well? Dad told me that you made two birdies last Sunday.” The young woman said excitedly.

Walter wanted to know if she had swordfish. She said that she only had fresh salmon and red snapper.

“You know we do not sell swordfish here and you should not eat it too. If my mother found out that I sold you sword fish she will be mad with me.” She said seriously. Walter admitted that he was just kidding her.

He finally bought two medium size pieces of red snapper. He gave her an affectionate pat on her shoulder and left the shop. We drove straight to my apartment. During the drive, Walter asked me if I kept vegetables and rice in my apartment. I told him that I had both but the vegetables were in the freezer. He also wanted to know if I had any wine. I told him that I had recently bought half a dozen bottles of Louis Jadot red burgundy from a local liquor store. The shop had a wine tasting event last Saturday. I liked the taste of this wine, so I bought a few bottles. He kept quiet and continued driving. After a few moments, he asked me the vintage of the red burgundy. I had no idea about it. In those days, I knew very little about wines. I considered a wine good if it suited my taste and was affordable.

He explained that two years ago Louis Jadot’s red burgundy was rated excellent. It had a rich body with fruity aroma to it. I was beginning to feel insecure in offering my wine to a man of such great knowledge about them. I wanted him to stop at a wine shop to pick out a wine of his choice. He declined the offer and said,

“All wines taste good if shared with a friend.”

I had a small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a four story large apartment building. I had converted one of the bedrooms into my study. The living and dining areas were combined into an L-shaped space. The kitchen was next to the dining area. It had a cooking range and an oven with an overhead hood to suck out the smoke and cooking smell. Across from the range were a sink, dishwasher and a refrigerator. The kitchen top surface was covered with Formica. The living space was sufficient for my purpose.

Walter opened the refrigerator door and put the fish on its top shelf. I took out a bag of rice from Lazy Susan situated under the counter at one corner. It contained short brown rice. The label on the bag was written in Chinese characters except “Grown in Japan” written in English. Walter told me that it was a kind of sweet Japanese rice. I then opened the freezer compartment and took out a bag of frozen mixture of green beans, small onions, chopped carrots and mushroom. Walter took the bag from me and put it in the sink.

He moved closer to me and put his hands on my shoulder. He wanted to know about the wine. I led him to my study. There, I kept the wine bottles on a rack on its northeast corner. This seemed to be coldest spot in my apartment. He looked at the bottles, pulled one out and began to read the label.

“Where did you get this one?” He asked me. I told him that I picked it up at local grocery store nearby for about few bucks.

“It is a Pinot Noir.” Walter told me about the wine and explained that, the word Pinot Noir came from Pinot Nero, a variety of grape named during Roman times. These grapes are delicate and are hard to turn in wine. I kept quietly listened to him with interest. His knowledge for things I regarded useless amazed me.

“You have an excellent taste for wine.” He said. He probably did not know was that I knew little about wines or winemaking. This was an undeserved complement, I thought. I accepted it anyway.

“Let us celebrate our tennis game.” He said opening the bottle with a corkscrew. He then poured a little wine for himself in a wine glass. He put the open bottle on the table, picked up his wineglass, and held it in his hand while looking out of the large window towards the street. Slowly, he brought the glass close to his nose and took a long deep breath.

“Good wine, soft and delicate bouquet.” He said softly.

“How do you know? You haven’t tasted it yet.” I said.

“You can tell just by its color and the whiff.” He said shaking the wineglass gently in his hand. He then brought the wineglass to his lips and took a sip. He kept it in his mouth for several seconds swishing it around and then finally swallowed it.

“It is a good wine, medium dry, gentle with a delicate flavor. It would go well with the red snapper. I do not pay attention to the old saying that you should drink white wine with fish and red wine with meat. That used to be true when meat was rotten and fish stale. Moreover, the wines were strong, tart then, and tasted like chicken soup. I will leave the bottle open for a while and we will drink it in a few minutes”. He said.

“Growing grapes and making wine is like growing any farm product. No two plants will bear similar tasting fruits. That is why, if a wine tastes good note down the name of that vineyard. For example, the area of Burgundy and Bordeaux in France grows excellent grapes for making wine.” He remarked as he walked towards the kitchen.

I followed him. First, he took a cup of rice from the bag and put it in a deep pan. He then washed it and added cold water to soak the rice. He picked up a heavy cast iron skillet from a cabinet below the range and put it on the top burner. He poured a little oil on the skillet. He chopped garlic in thin pieces while the oil got hot and put the chopped garlic to sauté. In few seconds, the garlic pieces became soft and golden brown. The smell sautéed garlic filled my apartment quickly and me hungry. He cut the top of the vegetable bag with scissors and emptied its contents in a colander nearby. He ran cold water on it for a few seconds and put the thawed veggies on the hot skillet. He then covered the skillet and turned the heat to low, and let it cook until they were done just right.

He turned his attention to the soaking rice. He drained the water and then added a measured amount of fresh water in the pan. He turned the heat up until the water began to boil. He lowered the heat and let it simmer until the rice was done. He then turned the heat off and put the pan with cooked rice on the countertop. He looked at me with satisfaction. Clapping his both hands once he said.

“Now we can have our wine”. He then poured the wine from the open bottle in our glasses. He handed one glass to me.

“Salute! To us!” He said brought his wineglass closer to mine and clinked it once. We sat down on the sofa. I tasted of the wine and it was good. He took small sips of the wine while we talked.

After we had emptied our wineglasses, he got up and went back to the kitchen. I followed him there. He picked up the skillet, wiped it clean with a paper napkin, and put it on a burner and poured a little oil on it. He put the two large pieces of fish on it when the oil became hot. They immediately began to sizzle and splatter. When one side got light brown, he turned the fish over. He then sprinkled crushed black pepper and squeezed limejuice over the fish.

“It is hard to spoil a meal as long as you do not overcook it and put too much salt.” He told me while serving the meal on a plate.

He dug out a portion of the cooked vegetables and laid it nicely on one side of the plate. He scooped rice and put it next to it. He lifted one piece of the fish by a flat spatula and slid it next to the vegetable. Finally he sprinkled Hungarian red peppers on top of the fish to give it a nice deep red color and squeezed fresh limejuice on top of it. The combination of red, brown and green was appetizing. A little wine before increased my hunger even more.

He served the plate to me and prepared another one for himself. After we sat down on a small dinning table, he poured more wine in the two empty glasses. The fish tasted good and the vegetables were just right. The rice had a sweetish taste to it and went extremely well with the red wine.

During our dinner, he told me that he was born in Leipzig, Germany. He was about twenty years older than I was. He looked excellent for his age although seemed to be in late fifties. He was about five and a half feet tall and was trim. His face was round. He looked serious but had a ready smile. His hair had turned completely gray, which he combed tightly, parting it on the right side. His nose was short with a bump about two third ways up from the tip. He mostly dressed well with a double-breasted suit while at the hospital. On the golf course though, he usually wore bright colored shirt and pant. Their color almost never matched. He also wore funky socks with cartoons of different characters or slogans.

Walter’s father was a Jewish trader and his mother a homemaker. In 1938, his family synagogue in Leipzig was burnt down by the Nazis. His father moved the family to Vienna to escape the discrimination. The family stayed in Vienna until early forties when the war broke out. Walter wanted to be a physician but the Vienna Academy of Medicine first refused him an admission because he was of Jewish. The place was full of Nazis.

Once when Walter’s father was coming home from a business trip several young men surrounded him and kept calling him hateful names. He never mentioned these insults to Walter or his wife. Walter said that he was by then old enough to know what was going on. The kids in his school called him names also. Walter said that he was not angry with the kids but was upset with their parents. They were the ones who taught the children to hate. Walter too hid these incidents to his parents. Between the father and the son, a silent understanding grew. They both tried to hide their true feelings from each other and certainly never shared them with Walter’s mother. She stayed mostly at home and did not have the misfortune of facing the taunts of the people who called themselves pure Germans. Finally, he did get admission to the medical academy by the help of one of his father’s influential friends.

The study at the academy was also difficult. During this time, his parents had moved to Switzerland. He recalled that his anatomy class had about a dozen Jewish medical students. The Austrian non-Jewish students would just pick a fight with them on the smallest pretense, beat them up and throw them out on the street. There the Nazi police would be waiting to arrest them for breaking peace. In spite of such harassment, he graduated two years ahead of his classmates and became a physician. He only needed two more years to gain clinical experience as an intern before he could practice medicine. He did not want to stay in Austria and thus he completed his clinical experience in Switzerland.

Walter told me all this that day during our nice dinner. I had only a little idea of what had happened in that part of Europe during the Hitler’s time. Most of my information had come from reading books about the holocaust and from my own family growing up in colonial India. As I grew older, I learnt more about the holocaust in Europe under the Third Reich. Still, my knowledge of the war lacked details. Walter brought that home to me at a personal level. I listened to him quietly. I wanted him to enjoy the evening without an emotional distress.

“That was a good meal, healthy and tasty. I hope you liked my cooking”. He said suddenly trying to change the subject. He probably sensed my discomfort.

“Of course, I did; you can cook for me again.” I said cheerfully. We continued to sip our wine. He seemed relaxed and pleased with himself. He asked me about my plans for the summer. I told him that I wanted to improve my golfing. I played poorly and it frustrated me. My drives were erratic. I lacked confidence. During putting, my body would stiffen; wrists would lock making the stroke jerky. Even the short putts were difficult to hole. Rarely though, I would make a perfect shot and a perfect putt. Thus, I knew that I had the potential of playing better. It was just that I could not put my game together. Walter on the other hand, would tee the ball, take a stance, swing the club smoothly, and just strike it for a straight shot.

He suggested that I play with him on Sundays that summer.

“Why don’t you join Ben ad I then? We start early and get the first tee off time. The ranger knows Ben and I am sure, he would let three of us tee off first thing in the morning.” He proposed to me.

I quickly accepted his offer. Here was a chance for me to improve my game playing with the two. Both played a steady game.

Ben spoke fluent German. He grew up in Philadelphia in a neighborhood where almost everyone spoke German. He was a large man. He was an accountant by profession and had his own office. He was also of same age as Walter. Watching them talk and play together was sometimes a little unnerving. They constantly argued with each other, sometimes on trivial things. They knew the PGA rules by heart and used them against each other quite often.

“Play by the rules or do not play at all”. They would say. Before each round, they would go through a ritual of marking each other’s ball and toss a tee to see who would have the honor on the first tee. Every Sunday they would check their CDGA handicaps stored at the golf club. After a while and playing with them a few times, I got used to their idiosyncrasies.

Both, however, showed immense patience with me on the course. They corrected my posture, straightened my stance and gave me countless tips on how to drive off the tee, use the club on the fairway and also chipping and putting. Soon, I began to enjoy their company and the golf. I became a regular partner in a threesome. My game also improved with time so much so that I too became a regular part of their golf matches and the bets.

One Memorial Day weekend I called Walter to see if he would play golf with me. Ben had gone out of town and thus could not play. The sky was cloudless, the weather warm with calm wind. He readily agreed and got a tee time on Monday morning at ten at the Oak Forest Public Golf Course at 103rd and Central Avenue. The course was new and had just opened. Walter picked me in the morning and we drove in his MG to the course.

The course was in excellent shape with young trees and small bushes. Fairways grass was cut low and the rough had thick tall grass. The courses also had thick bushes scattered all over it. The sand traps were large and deep resembling sheep holes in Scotland. Noticing my anxiety, Walter advised me to relax and stay calm. He suggested that I swing smoothly and to not think too much about making mistakes.

“Letting go is the key to good golf. You tend to get anxious. Just keep your head down and swing smoothly.” I said nothing. I just kept playing. The weather was nice and I soon began to enjoy the morning. I also played better round of golf that day. I was quite pleased with my game that day.

After playing golf, Walter gave me lessons on my short game.

“First, line up correctly; stand with a relaxed body and keep still. Make a short backswing and complete the stroke with a long follow through. Remember the rule of three to one. The follow-through should be three times the length of your backswing during a good putting. It is also true for a chip. Consider the chip as a putt. Your chip should take you within one putt distance from the hole.” He suggested.

We then washed and cleaned ourselves at the clubhouse. He suggested that we go to the Old Barn for an early dinner. This was a family restaurant with a history in Chicago area. It was located in Burbank, on 80^th Street and Parkside Avenue just west of Central Avenue. It took us about thirty minutes drive from the golf course. He parked the car in the parking lot and we got out quickly. Luckily, the restaurant was open on this Memorial Day weekend. Walter opened the door of the main entrance that led us to an alcove. It was not well lighted. In front of us was a small square wooden-frame window. Doors of the window were shut. On the left door, there was a tiny peep window, which could be slide-opened only from inside. Near the right side of the window frame was black buzzer button. Walter pressed the button. Immediately, the peep-door slid opened. A young man looked at us, smiled and opened the main entrance to the restaurant.

Walter led me to a nice cozy room furnished with a sofa and a fireplace. It had teakwood mantle painted deep red. The two narrow sofas facing each other by the fireplace. They were also encased in deep red leather cover. We had hardly sat down when an elderly waiter in uniform asked us to our table. He was probably in his seventies. He was tall and slim. His brown skin was smooth and his demeanor was gentle. His tightly groomed white hair added to his polished personality. Walter told me that the man had been with the place since it first opened in 1921.

I asked Walter how he knew about the restaurant. He said that he had known the place since he arrived in Chicago. The restaurant opened its door by a man named Andy Kluck in 1921. It was in a wooden house just north of 79^th street. In 1932, the restaurant completely burnt down. Kluck then reopened it at this location. During the prohibition, the place made a lot of money serving moonshine. The buzzer was the original one that the owner recovered from the rubble after the fire. He reinstalled it here. In olden days, a customer had to identify himself before being granted an admission. Those without an identity would be refused admission. It also warned customer inside of a police raids, which happened quite often.

During the dinner, Walter spoke of life in general. Out of sudden, he looked at me and asked me why I was not married. The question completely surprised me. We never discussed our personal lives before. I knew that Walter himself lived alone. I never asked him why he was not married, though; he was much older than I was.

I told him that I had not given marriage a serious thought. I enjoyed being single. It gave me the freedom and avoided worries of marital life. I had several married friends and knew by experience that married life was structured and needed a different kind of discipline. I was comfortable with my life and I told him so.

“To be in love even for a brief period is an unforgettable experience”. He said staring at his coffee cup that he held with both his hands.

“I do not understand why you would bring up these personal matters.” I said in a testy tone that even surprised me.

“Real love is deep and it grows on you. The memory of a gentle touch, a sensual effect of a kiss on the lips and of a loving embrace with the one you love stays with you for ever.” He said slowly.

Such conversation from Walter sounded strange to me and affected me deeply. He had never talked to me of such emotional issues as love and marriage. We finished the dinner of barbecued ribs and a bottle of merlot, paid our bills and quietly left the restaurant. He drove me back to my apartment. We were both quiet during the short car ride.

That night, I thought about our conversation at the Barn. Soon, I forgot it and quickly fell to sleep. I was on call for the whole next week including the weekend; thus, I did not see Walter or played golf with him.

On Monday morning following my ‘on call week’, I woke up late, as I probably was exhausted and slept soundly without waking up during the whole night. The previous week had been very busy and tiring. I quickly took my shower and got ready to see my patients in the hospital. I was about to sit down to eat a bowl of cereal when the phone rang. It was about nine o’clock. I picked it up to answer it. It was Ben. He told me that Rose, Walter’s housekeeper found him very ill at his home. She immediately called for an ambulance, which took him to Skokie Valley Hospital. He said that he tried contacting me on my phone several times but no one answered it. He wanted me to come as soon as I could to the emergency room of the hospital. I left for the hospital immediately. It took me about forty-five minutes but seemed longer.

I parked the car, got out quickly and ran towards the entrance to the ER. There, in the waiting room was Ben standing with his head down and his both hands locked behind his back. He looked up and gazed at me blankly.

“Where is Walter?” I asked.

“He is dead. I did not want to give you the news. He was already dead when they brought him here. Sorry!” Ben said in a low voice.

According to Ben, Rose found Walter lying in his bathroom, this morning. She was unsure if he was still alive. She called the ambulance and then called me. The paramedics brought him here. The doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. That is all he knew.

According to Ben, Walter wanted to be cremated. I too remembered an incident in Florida when I was with him for the golf vacation. He had gotten upset after watching a long line of cars following a hearse with a casket inside.

“I am amazed at an industry that has grown up around the dead. They spend an enormous amount of time making us look better in death than in life. It is very morbid and an ugly display of human body. It dishonors the dead. I hope no one does that to me when I am dead.” I clearly remember him saying this to me.

Walter was cremated on Wednesday morning after a short ceremony where only Ben, Rose and I were present. Ben’s wife and daughter came a little later. I immediately recognized Ben’s daughter. She was the woman in the grocery store where Walter had once bought the fish. She looked older now and lost the freshness of a young face. I had never met Rose. I could tell that she was very attached to Walter. No other person was in that room. It was obvious that we were his entire family.

After we had gathered in front of the casket, bearing Walter’s body, a rabbi soon appeared. He said Kaddish on behalf of the dead. I could not follow the words of prayer. After the short ceremony, a man in dark suite appeared. He explained to us that the time has come for the cremation to take place. It all seemed very mechanical. He said that it was the policy of the funeral home to allow only three persons in the crematorium. We looked at each other blankly. Ben asked Rose and me to accompany the casket. We followed the casket pushed by the man in dark suit. He took us by an elevator to the basement. Ben was already there. He came down by the stairs. As soon as we reached a white walled room with bare walls, the man pushed a button that opened a door in front wall. Inside, we could see a long wide space that looked like a large oven. He slowly slid the casket in and quickly closed the door. He then looked at each one of us. Ben knew immediately what needed to be done. He looked at Rose asked her to push a red button on the wall. It would fire the furnace. She refused. Without saying a word, Ben moved forwards and pushed the red button himself. The furnace made a long hissing hesitating sound before becoming quiet. Rose could not hold her tears and began to sob. Ben came closer to her put his arms around her and walked her back to where his wife and daughter were waiting. I turned towards the stairs and left the room without saying anything. I then quickly walked past the women and Ben to my car and drove back to the hospital.

A month later, the hospital arranged a memorial service for Walter in the auditorium. The hospital choir played Bach’s music, which Walter loved so much. I too spoke of his memory but missed him terribly. I called Ben and asked if I could meet him for lunch next Saturday. Ben agreed and asked me to meet him at a restaurant in Lincolnshire downtown.

It was a small restaurant run by a couple and their daughter. Ben was waiting for me outside the restaurant. We walked in together. The woman on the counter greeted Ben with a friendly smile. Ben told me that her husband was the cook and was usually in the kitchen. Their daughter was busy cleaning the tables. It seemed that people were still eating their breakfast and some of them were lingering on with coffee and their newspapers busy reading.

We sat down on a table next to the window. Soon, a young woman came, put two glasses of water, and poured coffee in our cups from a large glass coffee pot. Ben was holding a brown envelop. He placed it on the table.

I came to the point. I told him that Walter’s death had shocked me and I wanted to know more about him.

He showed me a few photographs that he had brought with him. He said that he saved these from his drawers in his bedroom. There was not much furniture or many personal things in Walter’s home. He lived alone. His housekeeper Rose had been with him for many years and was dedicated to him. A black and white photo showed a group of three people, a bearded heavyset man and a short stocky woman with long dress wearing an apron tied to her waist. The boy wore knee length shorts, suspenders, and an open collar shirt. The photo was taken in thirties. This was Walter as a boy with his parents. The color of the photo had begun to fade.

Another photo showed a man in his late teens or early twenties with a woman and a child. He held the child in his arms. The woman was thin and taller than the man was. She wore a bobbed hairstyle. This was Walter’s close friend and the child was her son who was about a year old. There was no date on the picture. In the photo, Walter looked much younger than the woman did. There were several other photographs of his family and friends in Europe. As we talked about Walter, a sketch of Walters’s life became clearer.

Walter had a middle class happy and comfortable life. He attended the local school and at one time attended the famous Music Academy before deciding to become a physician. He was an accomplished violinist and continued to play it until about ten years ago. He told Ben that it interfered with his golf. I did know his love for the music especially of Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Wagner. Both were also born in Leipzig, Walter’s birthplace.

While Walter attended the medical school, his parents moved to Switzerland and then to the Israel. Walter joined the British military and became a paratrooper fighting for the British. It was in this capacity that he went to Poland. War had ended in Poland and now the Russians became the new masters of the country. It was not clear what he did in Poland. However, he did live with a family in the city of Wazi (Lazi) about an hour from Krakow (Cracov) east of the German border. It was a small, mostly an industrial town of a few thousand people. A railroad crossed the city and around the town laid farmland. People owned small family farms or rather small parcels of land. They mostly grew potatoes and beets.

In Wazi, he met the woman shown in the photograph. She was older than he was and had a small child out of wedlock. The family out of fear of the communists wanted to give away the child but the young woman insisted on keeping the baby. Apparently, he was very much in love with the woman and the baby. It is not clear if he ever married her but according to Ben, he never forgot his deep love to that woman. In another photograph, the woman stood in front of a brick house seemed to scratch the ground with a long hoe in her hands. On her right side was a small wheelbarrow. Obviously, she was in her garden and it seems that it was springtime as there was a bush behind her bearing light colored spring flowers. The lone tree at distance looked winter bare.

Walter lived with the woman and her parents in a small house shown in the photo. He was still in the British military and probably worked for the Allies in Poland. The Russians had installed a puppet government. The communists had banned all forms of religious practices. Although, the boy’s mother and family wanted to baptize the child, they were afraid that the secret police would know about it and would harass them. The grandparents took the child and her mother to Gdansk. Walter went with them and one of the priests there secretly baptized the child. Walter told Ben that it was the most important event of his life.

After their return from Gdansk, Walter left for England. Again, Ben did not know the reason. Walter never told Ben more details. He promised the woman and her family that he would soon return and would take them with him. He never returned. He could not. An iron curtain had fallen over the country. Later, he found out that the secret police had discovered about the family’s trip to Gdansk and Walter’s presence. The father lost his job and the house they lived in. The family soon left the town and moved north. Her father joined a few of his friends in a similar situation and started working on a farm owned by one of them. There he organized a resistance group against the government. They farmed their own vegetables and kept pigs for meat. One day they slaughtered a pig for a meal. The pig meat was infected with Trichinosis and the whole family became very ill and died except Walter’s friend, her son and two other women.

None of them was ever found. Walter strongly suspected that the secret police probably came to know about the tragedy on the farm and arrested those who were still alive. It probably sent them to hard labor in Germany. Walter never heard from them again. He immigrated to the United States but not before fighting the Palestine Arabs and Zionists on behalf of the British Mandate in the Middle East. He was sent there just after the hotel bombing by the Zionists.

On arriving in Chicago, he took up an internship in one of north side hospitals. He opened an office in Chicago’s Southside as a family physician. In 1967, he lost his parents in the ill-famous massacre in Golan Heights.

It has been several years since Walter’s death. I am an older man now and play golf regularly. Each time I bend down to put the ball on the tee, I still hear his voice.

“Relax, keep your head down and remember, it is only a game and the balls are cheap.”

May7, 2007, ©copyrights: amod saxena