Two days later, Moshe was fast asleep in a chair next to Chona’s bed when knocking at the door downstairs awakened him. He watched through heavy eyelids as Addie, sleeping in a chair on the other side of the bed, woke up, staggered sleepily to the doorway, and clomped down the stairs to the darkened grocery store below.
Moshe looked at his watch. It was 4:30 a.m. He gazed at his wife. She lay with her eyes closed. He leaned forward and checked her pulse, then placed his hand on her chest. She was, he noted with relief, breathing, still very much alive.
Addie marched back upstairs and stood in the doorway, looking irritated. “There’s a man down there wanting to see you.”
“Tell him to go away.”
“He won’t.”
“Who is it?”
“He’s the feller who bought Mr. Fabicelli’s bakery.”
“He’s a baker?”
“I don’t know what he is.”
“What’s he want?”
“He said something about”—she paused—“giving away hollers.”
“What?”
“Something about helping Miss Chona and hollers.”
“Hollers?”
“I reckon it’s Jewish words, Mr. Moshe.”
“How do you know it’s Jewish words?”
Addie frowned. “I don’t know what it is. I’m guessing. Whyn’t you ask him yourself? He came by yesterday, and the day before that. He came here three times already.”
“Send him away.”
Addie stood in the doorway, wavering, then with decided movement, stepped into the room, pulled her chair close to Chona’s head, and sat hunched over, her forearms resting on her knees, and stared at the floor. She glanced at the sleeping Chona through misty eyes, coughed, then wiped her tearing eyes with the back of her hand.
“I ain’t going back down there.”
Moshe hesitated, confused. Between Addie and Chona, he felt like a Ping-Pong ball. The two women had taken turns babying him over the years. He never had to cook. Nor clean. Nor do any of the chores that he’d had to do as a child back in the old country. But they conspired against him. Chona gave Addie a voice, let her run the store, make decisions, run the place while she read her socialism books and crazy-women nonsense. Now look at this mess! His own help in his own house was telling him to answer his own door in the middle of the night. If Chona left this world, he’d be stuck with Addie nagging him to death. He wanted to stand up and yell, but instead found himself staring at his wife. He leaned over, gently rubbing his wife’s forehead. “Suppose she wakes while I’m downstairs? Or doesn’t wake at all?”
Addie, seated on the other side of the bed, had gathered herself. She reached over and fluffed the edges of Chona’s pillow, then wiped her face gently with a soft cloth. “She wakes every day, Mr. Moshe,” she said. “She wakes like a clock. She’s all right.”
Moshe took one last worried glance at his sleeping wife, then made for the door. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned on the light, walked past the rows of home goods, boxes, and jars of candies in the darkened store. Dawn was coming. As he approached the glass-paned outer door, he could see the sunlight peering over the edge of a small figure whose silhouette was framed in the doorway. He opened the door a crack and found himself peering at a small, stout Jewish man, in his thirties, with sparkling eyes, a thin mustache, and wide corners at his mouth, giving him an impish look. The man looked vaguely familiar. He was also smiling, which made Moshe hate him immediately.
“Good morning,” he said in Yiddish.
“What do you want?” Moshe replied in English. He was in no mood for favors.
“Don’t you remember me?” the man asked. He spoke again in Yiddish, which irritated Moshe even more. It meant he definitely wanted something.
Moshe snapped off a quick response—“Ver fahblondjet! Trog zich op!” (Get lost!)— and pushed the door to close it. But the man jammed a mangled old boot in the doorway, which was struck by the closing door.
“Ow!” he cried. “Could you let my foot out?”
“Will you put your foot in the road if I do?”
“I will.”
Moshe pulled the door slightly ajar to release the foot, but instead of pulling his foot out, the stranger placed his forearm on the door and tried to push it open farther. Moshe, surprised, held it firm, leaning against it. “What are you doing?”
“I just need flour!” he said.
“We’re closed!”
“I need kosher. For challah bread.”
Moshe frowned and sucked his teeth. “Challah,” not “holla.” That’s what Addie heard. He pushed against the door to close it, but the man on the other side of the glass-paneled door held firm. “Is that what you told my maid?” Moshe asked.
The man chuckled. “Another American Jew with a maid. She’s rude,” he said.
“Go to Reading. They got plenty kosher there! And rude maids, too, if you want one,” Moshe said. He pushed against the door, but the man held firm.
“That’s twelve miles away!”
“What am I, a taxi? Get a horse and buggy then!” Moshe pushed against the door harder. To his surprise, the man, whom he could see through the door, was much smaller than he was and yet still firmly held his side quite easily.
I have to eat better and sleep more, Moshe thought. He pushed harder, and to his disbelief, the door remained cracked. The man held it partway open without straining.
“What’s wrong with you?” Moshe snapped. Frustrated, he threw his shoulder into the door. The little man did the same, and the door remained cracked a precious few inches, wide enough for Moshe to see the outline of his adversary’s face, which, much to his consternation, was not straining at all. “What kind of devil are you!” he cried.
“I just need flour! To make challah.”
“Get it someplace else!” Moshe pushed with all his might now. Sweat broke out on his forehead. His teeth clenched tightly, the side of his face pressed against the edge of the door. He glanced at his adversary through the glass panel; his face was just inches away. The small man, still not working hard, held his side. He appeared to be amused. Was he some kind of demon? The angel of death, Moshe thought. Come for my wife! He suddenly felt helpless. He wished Nate were here. Nate was strong enough to slam the door with one arm and push this monkey to the street. Or his cousin Isaac. One glare from Isaac would send this mule fleeing. But he was alone. He almost called out for Addie, then decided against it; he was too embarrassed. Instead, he pushed now with everything he had, every muscle straining. Still, the stranger, who seemed to have the might of three men, held firm.
Moshe felt his strength ebbing. He was exhausted. Between running the theater and all-night vigils at Chona’s side and not eating, he hadn’t much energy anyway. He felt his spirit leaving his body through his feet. Ridiculous, he thought.
“Please go,” he gasped.
“I want to tell you something,” the man said.
“You’re a devil!” Moshe grunted in Yiddish through gritted teeth, then said to himself, Why am I speaking Yiddish? I hate Yiddish.
From the other side of the door, the little man said evenly, “Do not call me a devil. I am a dancer.”
“Dance down the road then, or I’ll yell for the police. You’re breaking into my property!”
“I’m not breaking in.”
“Get away! My wife is sick.”
“That’s why I’m here,” the stranger said. With one great shove, he pushed the door wide, sending Moshe tumbling backward. Moshe landed on his rear end on the cold wooden floor next to the glass-counter butcher case with a heavy thunk that shook the bottles and goods on the shelves.
From the floor, he heard Addie yell from upstairs. “What’s going on down there! Y’all be quiet!”
Moshe looked up, expecting the stranger to stomp into the store, lean over, and clobber him.
Instead, the little man stood in the doorway several feet off, peering down, his hands on his hips, his stout body filling the doorway. A tallit hung out from his waistband. His fedora was worn and his suit was ratty, as if mice had chewed on the edges. His shirt was white, and a clipped string tie hung down to his waist. He puffed his cheeks and looked about the darkened store. “Don’t worry about your freethinking Jewish wife, friend. She won’t swallow her birth certificate anytime soon. Her type of Jew does well in this country. I’ve seen it.”
“May onions grow in your navel, to talk about my wife that way!”
“That’s a Spanish saying, friend. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No. Do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve even been to Spain.”
“Then do me a favor, you nut. Go back there!”
“Not till I get my flour!”
Moshe instinctively fell back to one of the many wily tricks he’d learned as a child in Romania, when the leaders of the traveling Jewish theater troupe of which he was a part would stand at the edge of town, facing hordes of Russian peasants armed with rifles and clubs demanding last-minute payment for some infringement, usually imaginary, on the part of the troupe, for it was always easier to refuse to pay for entertainment already provided, especially since the lovely Jewish maidens whose dancing inspired the peasantry to enjoy the troupe in the first place weren’t putting out. Moreover, since then, Moshe had picked up a few tricks of his own in twelve years of negotiating with hard-boiled band managers at his theater.
Seated on his duff, with one hand leaning on a glass cabinet holding candies, sewing needles, and other store supplies, he looked up and said gently, “I will leave it to you, friend, to decide what is best for you to do; for while you are a stranger to me, it is my duty to welcome you, for I am no stranger to hardship, having come from a land where a horse’s hoof is more valuable than a piece of bread. A horse’s hoof, you see, can help plow a field and feed an entire village. But bread? What does bread do? You eat it and then you must bake another. Myself, I have neither. I am but a poor merchant who sells candy and dry goods. Come in. Take all the flour you want. And I will leave it to you to decide what to pay.”
The stranger chuckled and said in Yiddish, “Be careful, you Romanian rascal.”
“Are you Hungarian?”
“Polish.”
“They’ve got schmeichlers (fast-talkers) in Poland, too.”
“Look who’s talking. The only thing you’d earn in Poland with your fast-talk is an empty feeling.” He glanced around the store. “Poor you are not, friend. The important thing is, I have good news. I come to tell you I found a wife.”
“You found a what?”
“A wife.”
Moshe, seated on the floor, stared up at him, stunned. “Why should I care that you found a wife? I have my own wife to worry about.”
For the first time, the man in the doorway, his face brimming with confidence, seemed to wither. He looked genuinely hurt. “But you said I should get one!”
“What am I, mashed potatoes? What do I care if you have a wife? My own wife is sick at this very moment. Pox on you that you should bother me at this time. Yellow and green, you should become! Take all the flour you want and go flap your tongue someplace else, you dumb Pole! Get away from me!”
“But I did what you said!”
“Peddle your fish elsewhere, sir!”
“You said without a wife, why should I come to a dance. But you did not make me leave. You let me stay. And I danced. That’s why I’m here now. You invited me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You said it. You said wherever I live is home of the greatest dancer in the world.”
“What are you talking about? Get out of my house!”
“You don’t remember the dance?”
“What dance?”
The man drew his head back in disbelief. He spread his hands in disappointment.
“What dance?” he said merrily. “What dance? The only dance. The greatest dance. The greatest dance of family fun and frolic that this country has ever seen. The greatest dance ever!”
Moshe, from his place on the floor, stared at the figure as slices of his memory fluttered back like pages in a book. In the dawn’s early light, as the sun glimmered its first peek over the eastern slopes and shone down on the shacks and shanties of Chicken Hill, inside the very building where, in the warm basement twelve years before, love flew into his heart with the grace of a butterfly, and a beautiful young girl, now his wife, churned yellow into butter, pointing out the magic words of the Torah to him, a book she was forbidden to touch, her hand running across the page, revealing the promise held by words of sanctity, love, and history—the shutters of memory flickered again and he saw amid the crowd outside his theater the impish face, the hat, the tallit, the dimples of a young man standing among Jews of all types; then, as if a distant bell were ringing, like a train whistle in the distance, he heard, in distant memory, the wonderful wailing clarinet of Mickey Katz.
And he remembered in full that wonderful cold December afternoon when freshly married and in the full flush of love, he turned the corner of High Street and looked up to see more Jews in one place in America than he had ever seen in his life, the hordes rising into focus like the great temples of Egypt rising in the sunlight of the Arab dawn, hundreds and hundreds of Jews, assembled in front of his theater, eager to flood the door, to make him rich, to clamber inside so they could howl, yelp, dance, and have a joyful moment like the times of old.
And among them a young Hasid who announced that he would not dance with any woman. Because he was looking for a wife.
Staring at the man, Moshe felt the same lightness he felt when he first turned the corner of High Street and saw all those people; it was as if a great weight had been lifted off his chest and placed on his back where it belonged, seated and solid. Twelve years fell away and he was a young man again, standing in the wings of his theater watching Mickey Katz’s merry band peeling off the wallpaper with sound as hundreds of happy American Jews danced. And among them was the gyrating, twisting body of the crazy Hasidic dancer. The young man who announced he did not want to dance with any woman. The young man who proclaimed he was not looking for a dancer but rather a wife, yet who danced with every woman on the floor. And what a dancer he was.
“I remember you!” Moshe said excitedly. “You were the greatest dancer I ever saw. What’s your name?”
Instead of answering, the young Hasid proudly removed his hat, scratched at his forehead, and gazed down his nose at Moshe, still on the floor next to the butcher’s case. He spoke slowly, as if he were a wise old man: “Our rabbinical sages tell us we have three names: One given by our friends. One given by our family. And one we give ourselves.”
“So I should call you peas, tomatoes, or onions?”
“Malachi,” he said.
He started to say something else, but Moshe, in full flush of memory, was bursting with excitement, for a question had gnawed at him for years and he couldn’t believe his luck. “I saw you the next day!” he said. “After Katz left. Outside the theater. You gave me a bottle of plum brandy. We heard something pop on the Hill. We saw black smoke. You said it was a bad sign.”
“That was a bad time,” Malachi said, stepping into the store and reaching out a hand to help Moshe to his feet. “Those times have ended.”