It was a cold winter day. I had spent the whole day with my partners on Long Island, where we were building. I phoned Celia to tell her that I wouldn’t be home that night. She asked me the name of my hotel and I told her that I didn’t know it yet since we had to go to a few other places and I wasn’t sure where I’d be sleeping. Our telephone conversations, as our other talks generally, were curt. Actually, I had arranged with Liza to have supper at her house and spend the night with her. Liza prided herself on being a good cook. She said to me more than once that the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I’m not much of an eater, but she cooked the kinds of dishes I remembered from home and I often complimented her on them.
I finished my work as quickly as possible, and exactly at six I knocked on her door. I was afraid that I’d find her daughter and her lover there, but thank God they were out of town. That evening Liza’s apartment seemed more attractive and comfortable than usual. It was freezing cold outside but inside it was nice and warm. She had lots of time, and she polished and cleaned the furniture, the rugs, and the silver so that every corner of the apartment sparkled. The smell of my favorite dishes drifted in from the kitchen. Liza and I had cocktails, then sat down to eat. Between one course and the next, she bewailed her fate. She was alone. Her daughter was giving her trouble, pressing her for money, because her lover had forgotten to be careful and had impregnated her. Micki needed an abortion and this cost no less than seven hundred dollars for a good doctor who wouldn’t endanger her life. The lover didn’t have a penny and Micki had come whining to her mother. These words repelled me so that the food stuck in my gullet. I was supposed to pay for the abandon of some wild youth with the eyes and face of a killer. I said that if Micki was ripe enough to live with a man, she should have enough sense to be careful. Liza began to weep bitter tears. What could she do? That was the younger generation. If she said a wrong word to Micki, the girl promptly threatened to kill herself, or convert, or do whatever came to her mind.
Liza cried and cried until I couldn’t stand it and I promised to give her the seven hundred dollars. This besides the other moneys that she wheedled out of me under various pretexts.
This ruined not only our supper but our sex as well. When a man gets angry and feels exploited and humiliated, he loses his passion. I tried to restore my potency with whiskey, but it didn’t help. I lay impotent next to Liza, feeling as if old age had settled upon me. She tried to arouse me with good words, with false words, with sharp words, and even with smut, but nothing helped. Finally she accused me of not loving her. I wanted to ask, “Why should I love you? What is there about you to love? Love must go with respect, but how can I respect a woman who milks me of money, not only for herself, but for two young and healthy brutes, neither of whom intend to do some decent work?” I thought of my parents, of my grandparents, and I felt as if I had betrayed them and the whole of Jewish history. I remembered what I had heard and read about our martyrs in Poland; how Jews had donned prayer shawls and phylacteries and gone off to the cemeteries to die martyrs’ deaths. I was descended from such Jews, I had been taught their Torah, but what had I traded it all for?
I fell asleep, but instead of bringing me comfort, sleep only intensified my pain. I dreamed that I was in a cellar with my parents and other Jews hiding from the Nazis. Shooting, wild screams could be heard outside. Suddenly someone lit a match and in the flash of light I saw that I was dressed as a Nazi in a brown uniform and a swastika. A fear came over me. How could this be? And what would the Jews say if someone lit another match and they saw who was among them? In the dream I felt that my Nazi uniform was the result of my way of life. More than anything I feared the disgrace that I would cause my parents. I awoke from the nightmare exhausted.
Suddenly there was a loud, insistent ring at the front door. Liza had dozed off, too, but she awoke with a start. “Who can that be?” she asked. “I won’t open.” But the ringing grew ever more insistent. Liza slipped on a robe and went to the door. As I lay there, I heard muttering and angry whispers. I realized at once that it was Micki. The mother and daughter began arguing, and soon the whispers became shouts. It didn’t take long before I heard screams and the sound of blows. Micki was beating her mother. I threw on a robe and ran to separate them. I came in to see Micki holding her mother’s hair and dealing her blow after blow.
Liza was screaming, “Whore! Bitch! Tramp!”
And Micki responded with, “And what are you? I know all your tricks. You change men like gloves. It was you who made me what I am. You have two lovers now!” Micki hit her so hard I was afraid that she’d kill her.
“Liar! Thief! Prostitute! Out of my house!” Liza screamed in a wild voice.
“Yes, you have two lovers and you suck money from them both!”
And Micki told all the details of her mother’s conduct, naming names. Liza fell on the floor and began to gasp spasmodically.
The daughter cried, “That’s the last time I’ll ever look at you, you old strumpet!”
I began to dress quickly. I wanted to vomit. I was afraid that the fight between mother and daughter would end in murder. I recalled what I had learned as a boy: if you broke one of the Ten Commandments, you would break them all. I dressed hurriedly.
Liza lay on the floor like a bundle of rags. Suddenly she leaped up and began to shriek, “She’s a liar! A liar! Don’t go! Where are you going? Oh, I’ll kill her! …”
She ran into the kitchen and came back with a knife. Her eyes were wild, her face drained, her mouth twisted. The daughter tried to take the knife away from her. I managed to reach the door and raced down the stairs because the elevator wasn’t fast enough. I ran down so many stairs that it seemed as if the house had a hundred floors. When I tried to exit from the staircase into the lobby, it turned out that the door was locked. My heart was pounding and I was dizzy. I went down into the cellar, where the oil tanks and the gas meters were located, and a drunken man began to shout at me and wave his fists. I managed somehow to explain my predicament and gave him a dollar. He led me to the lobby, and from there I went out into the street and looked for a cab. The frost cut like a knife, and the wind tore at my hat and slapped my face. I felt frozen, and there wasn’t a taxi in sight. All of a sudden one appeared, and I started to wave my arms. I was half frozen and my spiritual bitterness forced a physical bitterness up from my stomach into my mouth. I again felt like throwing up and I had to make a superhuman effort not to befoul the cab. As usual when in trouble, I forgot my heresy and begged God to spare me this humiliation, too. I could have told the driver to stop and gotten out to vomit, but he looked like an angry man. He didn’t say a word to me, only grunted to himself. His face reflected the rage of those who stay up nights. Somehow I managed to control myself. When we reached my house I handed the driver a ten-dollar bill. He made a gesture to give me change, but I couldn’t wait any longer and I motioned him to go. All the time I was sitting in the cab, I was afraid that he might rob me or even kill me. He looked to me like a criminal.
As soon as the cab had gone, I stooped over a pile of snow and vomited up all the good food and drinks that Liza had served me. I soiled my coat. My whole being was one skein of bitterness, sourness, and shame over my own degradation. There was supposed to be a doorman in the lobby, but I knew very well where he was—down in the basement playing cards with the cop whose duty it was to patrol the street and protect the inhabitants. You couldn’t say a word about this because, for all the fine talk about democracy, law, and freedom, the world always did and still does follow the principle of might makes right. Now that Jews mimic Gentiles, they follow the same principle. Even in those days someone was being killed in New York every other day and the police never found the perpetrator. If he was found, the lawyers promptly bailed him out and the court later freed him for lack of evidence. If a witness did show up, he had to be kept in confinement to protect him from the criminals. In America, as in Sodom, the perpetrator went free and the witness rotted in jail. And all this was done in the name of liberalism. The whole worldly justice protects the criminal and leaves the actual or potential victim at his mercy. Everyone knows this, but try talking about it and you’re called the worst names. In my own business you had to constantly hand out bribes to inspectors, police, all kinds of officials. The mayor knew this. It was, as they say, an open secret. Today’s Jew is no better than the Gentile. He often exploits this situation for his own ends and for profits. Many lawyers teach the criminals how to circumvent the law, to make a mockery of it, and I myself was part of this system.