CHAPTER TWO
Waiting on the wooden stairs of his front porch, wishing that he could slide down the black iron rails on the sides, Hershy scanned the street, ready to rush up to his father at the first glimpse of him. Suddenly a fear came over him that he might not recognize his father. The picture he held of him in his mind was vague, the edges blurring as he tried to make it sharper. A shadowy figure of his father rose in its stead and began to accuse him of not being a good son. He felt himself shrinking backward, yelling inwardly: I know you good, Pa. I know you real good.
He knew, for instance, that his father’s name had not always been David Melov. In the old country it had been David Melovitz. But when he began living in Chicago the mailman would never call his name when he brought the mail.
“It’s a hard name to pronounce,” the mailman complained. “All you itzes and ovitches and skis. When I come home, not only do I have to put my feet in a hot liniment bath but I also have to spend all my money on candy drops to take out the cramps in my tongue. Do me a favor, then, and change your name.”
His father wouldn’t listen.
“Don’t do me a favor, then,” the mailman said. “Instead, let me give you a piece of advice. You’re a greenhorn, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” his father said.
“You want to get along in this country, don’t you?”
“Certainly.”
“You don’t want any trouble, do you?”
“God forbid.”
“Then cut out the itz and be an American.”
His father wouldn’t budge.
“Look,” the mailman said. “If you didn’t mind having a piece of your rosebud cut off, why should you mind knocking off a little itz?”
His father didn’t know what the mailman was talking about; he knew only that he was fighting hard to keep his name. But how hard can a man fight? He was so worried about his wife, pregnant with Hershy in Russia, that to get mail from her promptly he had to change his name to Melov. After that, he felt like a real American. The mailman gave him immediate service, yelled his name all over the building, made him known, and became a friend. It was his first introduction, his father explained, to a great American phenomenon: the tendency of people in America to equalize themselves and to lose their identity.
That happened before Hershy was born.
But as he grew up, always gathering information and learning secrets, trying to solve the mystery of himself and the world about him, he found out that older people lived in and talked about mostly two things: the past and tomorrow. Talking about the past made them feel stronger in the present and gave them the hope for tomorrow. The hope, in their relating the sharp contrasts of two worlds, seemed to rest finally in him, for they always said: “It’s your America, Hershy.”
His father, he learned, had never known a childhood as it is experienced in America. He was the eldest son of a sofer, a pious man who writes out the Scrolls of the Torah and who also copies mezuzahs and other Hebrew religious writings. He was expected, then, to follow his father’s footsteps, and, in preparation, had spent his whole childhood in a schule, stooped over the long tables, reading by the flickering lights of candles, rocking with prayer and study: play was a thing which only the rich and the idiots and the mujiks could enjoy. But David did not want to be a sofer. It had bent and gnarled his father and had made a stranger of him. For his father, gone sometimes for months in his travels through the province of Kiev to do his work, was seldom home. Even David, his own son, hardly recognized him when he did come home. And his mother, left dumb and slightly deaf from an attack of scarlet fever, suffered her loneliness in silence. In her muted way, she made her son understand that she, too, did not want him to become a sofer, but that, being a woman, she could do nothing against the dominating will of a father.
David wanted to be a carpenter, instead, like his mother’s father. As a small child, before his grandfather died, he was fascinated by the patterns in the grains of wood, the shavings curling out of a plane, the sawdust spraying from the bite of a saw, and the power of the hammer. The rhythmical sounds and movements pleased him, too. But the touch of smooth surfaces against his fingers and the magic of seeing things put together made him jump with joy. Later, he liked the smell of the forests outside his village and was overwhelmed by the thought of felling a tree and shaping it to any form he desired.
The decision of what he was to do with the rest of his life rested finally in himself. For, just before his barmitzvah, the day a Jewish boy becomes a man, his father left in the snowdrift dead of winter on a trip through the province, promising that he’d be back for his son’s barmitzvah, but he never returned. His father, who always insisted upon being thoroughly clean before he would begin work on the Scrolls of the Torah, had come to a village where the whole water supply had frozen. He had no alternative but to go to a nearby river, chop a hole in the ice, and bathe himself. Soon afterward, he fell ill with pneumonia and died dreadfully, away from home, with his pus-filled lungs choking him to death.
Alone, then, David became a man on his thirteenth birthday, a man who suddenly was able to shape his own destiny, with his childhood left behind in the old yellow pages of a prayer book. Immediately afterward he went to Kiev to become apprenticed to a master carpenter, armed with the proper papers of permission to live in the big city; for in those days a Jew was not considered a citizen, and God help you if you were caught without a yellow pass.
At the time, he was a slender, bony, hollow-faced boy weighing eighty pounds. He thought of himself as a man, for officially he was one, but the terror he felt when he first saw Kiev could only have gripped a child. Houses seemed to lie on top of one another. Houses, drawn by horses over shiny rails, with jabbering people tangled in them, clanged through the streets. Countless spires, with ugly jagged fingers, pointed accusingly at the charred heavens. Bulbous domes, like the diseased noses of drunkards, sniffed the sky. He could hardly breathe from the smoke that pocked the city and from the suffocated-looking people that wormed about him. He shrank against the buildings as he walked, trembling within an utterly strange and hostile world.
Finally he found refuge in the master carpenter’s house and vowed that he’d never wander from it. Even after the older apprentices laughed at his fears, he seldom wandered from the immediate neighborhood. The one time he did, aside from visits home, he was attacked by a gang of older boys who, when they found out that he was a Jew, beat him so violently that he could barely crawl home. Besides, there was no time or energy to wander far. He had to get up at dawn to mourn for his father, then work until the sun went down. At night he slept in an attic with nine other apprentices, which wasn’t much different than at home where everyone slept and lived in the same room. All in all, he had traded one room for a more crowded room, a dark smelly schule for a darker smellier hole.
Gradually, after the year of mourning for his father was over, it became harder and harder to go through the morning and evening ritual of prayer. Hard work and piety somehow did not go together. Time was too precious and the body was overwhelming in its demands. In this frame of mind he began to heed a new kind of philosophy that was being expounded by Jewish trade union leaders and socialists. They said: “Destroy the delusion of the Messiah.” That was like saying: “Destroy Judaism.” They said further: “What is the Messiah? It is nothing more than man’s dream of a better life. But why hope for a better life after death? Is it wrong to hope now? Why not hope today for tomorrow? Let man himself become his own Messiah. In man alone rests the fulfillment of tomorrow’s dreams.” Slowly, he began to drift away from the rigid training of his earlier life.
But before his apprenticeship was over, he became fervent again in his religious observances. During a pogrom that occurred in his home village, his mother, his older sister, and her husband were killed. His younger brother Yussel was away at the time, learning to become a tailor. And Rachel, his sister’s little child, was left unharmed; she had been in the outhouse during the massacre, paralyzed by the terrifying screams.
Soon afterward, Yussel, on his way back to Kiev from the village, met a drunken Russian officer on the road. The Russian officer, who had been left behind with a peasant girl after a night of drinking and gambling, was lost, and he commanded Yussel to take him home. But on the way the officer passed out, and Yussel robbed him of his winnings and ran off to America.
This left David completely alone, cut off from the world, except for his niece Rachel, who was taken in by a cousin in a nearby village until he could support her. He mourned a year for his dead ones, rocking with prayer and beating his breast. Slowly, the guilt he had felt in having turned away from God began to dissolve. And presently, purged of neglect and sin through prayer and the sweat of his daily labor, he was able to sleep through a whole night without waking up in a cold fright from a horrible dream.
Then he met Sonya. He was visiting his niece Rachel at his cousin’s house in the village of Narodich when he saw her. Afterward, in remembering, it seemed to him that at one moment he had been living a deep, internal life, and at the next moment he had been suddenly sprung from a dark prison to face a warm, glittering world.
Back in Kiev one night, in the attic with his friend Hyman Bronstein, who had begun his apprenticeship with him, he said: “Hyman, are you awake?”
“No, but I can hear you.”
“I met a girl, Hyman.”
“Where?”
“In Narodich.”
“So?”
“I’m going to marry her.”
“Are her parents rich?”
“No.”
“Don’t be a fool, David. Remember, we promised each other we’d go to America.”
“She’ll go with me.”
“How do you know she’ll have you?”
“She has to have me. For once, something good has to happen to me.”
“But who is she? Who are her parents?”
“Her father is a poor baker.”
“Then you won’t get a dowry.”
“That’s not important.”
“Oh, you fool. Remember, you are the son of Hershel Melovitz. It’s almost like being the son of a rabbi. You can have anybody you desire. You can get a large dowry, enough to make you a master carpenter, enough to get you to America, enough to let you live like a king for the rest of your life. Don’t be a fool, David. Don’t throw yourself away on a piece of flesh.”
“That’s the way it is, Hyman.”
“And to tell me this you woke me up?”
“She’s a picture of a woman.”
“Let her be a picture, but a gold frame around it wouldn’t hurt, either. Go to sleep, you idiot, and dream of another picture.”
But he couldn’t go to sleep at once. He was too full of the beauty of Sonya’s face, of her strong arms and back as she carried water from the river, of the shape of her bare feet and solid ankles as she stepped over the earth, of the sound of a comb choking through her thick black hair, of her young bubbling laughter, of the smell of fresh bread, deep and warm and earthy, about her. The image of her grew fuller and fuller, and one day he wrote to his cousin asking her to make a match. He also wrote to his younger brother Yussel in America, taking it for granted that he was rich, asking him to send the fare to Chicago for him and his future wife.
At the time (Hershy heard this from his mother in conversations with her sisters or Rachel, which always left him bleak and frightened), Sonya had plenty of suitors, one in particular who later came to Chicago to make a fortune. And he (David), though he was nineteen and thought of himself as a full-grown man, had no conception of his appearance to others. Actually, he looked like a slightly overgrown, deprived child, with protruding ears and hollow cheeks and cavelike eyes; he had no teeth, either, since he had had them pulled out in order to evade being drafted into the army.
But Sonya had no choice. She was a poor girl, one of four sisters, two of whom had already married plain, common men, one a harness-maker and the other a tailor, and she had a younger sister who couldn’t get married until Sonya did. For a girl to have a choice she needed wealth, her family had to make rich offers, as though the man were a God. Whatever she dreamed she would have to forget; her other suitors were nothing, nobodies, no matter how good they looked. She was fortunate that a man like David was eager for her. He was a good man. He came from a fine family. He was highly educated. Why, he was even able to interpret the Talmud. He was a man, coming from the family of a sofer, who could ask for blood if he insisted. And apparently he loved her, for no man in his right mind, who could marry into a fortune, would marry a girl whose parents had no dowry to offer. Besides, she would do what her parents told her. She would marry David. She would be happy with him and would give him children. Love was for the idle and rich. Love was a dream. A woman was life. And a poor woman had to face life, that’s all.
Still, she tried to postpone the marriage. When he came back to Narodich a few months later, she thought she had been given a weapon for delaying it, for he was all set, immediately after marrying her, to go to America. He was disappointed, he explained, that there wasn’t another steamship ticket for her; but his brother Yussel had written that he could only afford one ticket; however, in a short time, both of them would have enough money to send not only for her but also for little Rachel.
She wouldn’t hear of it. He had no right to marry her before he left, she argued. What if something should happen to him on the way? What if, after he got to America, he forgot her? No, he had no right to laugh. That had happened before to countless girls. She had to think of herself. What was he thinking of, to marry her and then leave her, perhaps with child? Wouldn’t it be better if he went to America and then, if he sent for her, get married there? (Her plan was to get him to bring her to America; but once there, free of her parents, she would go to work and marry a man of her own choosing.) That seemed just and right to her. So wouldn’t he please tell her parents of the new plan, since only he could postpone the wedding? But he wouldn’t listen. He only knew that without her he could go nowhere, he could do nothing, and that knowing she was his he could go and then place the world at her feet. And, not being able to dissuade him, with her parents insisting, she gave in finally. Then, in the month she became pregnant, he left for America, to face with great hope a fearsome new world and to lay at her feet the world he had promised her.
And she was left alone to face the maddening sights and sounds of young people in love, the anxious men who still wanted her, and the bleakness of an empty bed. There she was left, growing bigger every day with the child that was in her, with a nameless fear flooding her whole being. When a dog howled at night or when an owl hooted in the trees, she almost died of fright over their omens of death. When her loins ached, she was happy, for she was told that she was carrying a boy. When her belly pained, she cried; it was the sign of a girl. But finally, through joy and fears, signs and omens, a boy one day and a girl the next, the child wouldn’t stand for any nonsense; he came out yelling as if the whole world belonged to him. And his yells, it seemed, brought passage for them and Rachel to America.
The crossing was a nightmare. But when she arrived and saw the spacious three-room flat, with windows, and three soft chairs, and a carpet, and two separate beds with soft mattresses, and the magic of gaslight, she forgave him (David) all the suffering he had caused her. He was a rich man, she thought, at least a baron. She wept with joy, and through her tears she fell in love with him.
But, as her values changed, she found that she was really married to an ordinary workingman, a nobody in a world of struggle to become a somebody. Still, life was better, even when jobs were scarce or poorly paid. And in their common problems, her first burst of love settling into a sense of loyalty and duty, they grew closer and closer together.
Then came the war. Hershy was seven years old. His father, upon learning of Russia’s conflict with Germany, clasped his hands tightly and said: “Thank God.” His mother gasped and wrung her hands; she had two brothers in the Russian army. And Hershy said: “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing,” his father answered. But he lifted him to his chest and held him close. Hershy knew that something was wrong, but he also felt that nothing could harm him. “Thank God we’re safe in America,” his father said.
War, for his father, was nothing more than a battle for dirt. The soldiers will fight, he said, and the czars, the kaisers, the kings, and the generals will be called heroes. The poor people will gain nothing but suffering and sorrow; the only earth they could possibly win was the plot of earth all people are destined for after they die. The rich had worlds to win. And the Jews, for certain, had nothing to gain. Thank God, he said, America was a country that was free of the iron fist. Thank God, the children could play at war without meaning it.
But gradually the war came closer and closer, and then, in 1917, three things happened which Hershy could never forget.
His father came home early one day, dressed in his best clothes and carrying a brick of ice cream.
“Look at me,” he said. “Just look at me.”
“All right, I’m looking at you,” said Hershy’s mother. “What is there to see?”
“Do I look the same?”
“Why should you look different?”
“Because I feel big. So big, I can’t express it. You’re now looking at a new man, a real American, a genuine Yankee. You’re not looking at just plain David Melov now. You’re looking at Citizen David Melov.”
His mother, in trying to hide her deep emotion, said: “So what am I to see, stars on your hat, red-white-and-blue stripes on your suit, a goat’s beard on your chin?”
“Ay, Sonya, you should have seen me sign my name. Others sprawled their names all over the paper. Me, I fitted my name right on the line, so delicate, so refined; it was a pleasure to look at it; even the judge was delighted. And you should have seen how I got on with the judge. You’d have been proud of me. The judge said: Who was the first president of the United States? I said: George Washington. The judge said: Who is the president of the United States today? I said: Woodrow Wilson. The judge said: What does the United States mean to you? I said: The United States is a free country. The judge said: Would you fight for the United States to keep it free, even lay down your life for it? I couldn’t answer for a minute. But the judge helped me out when he said: If you lived in Russia now would you fight for her? And I said: No. Then he asked: Why? So I said: Because it is not my country, I couldn’t fight for a pogrom-maker. Then, when the judge asked me again if I’d fight for the United States, I said: Yes. And he said: All right, you’ll make a good citizen. And he said further: Sign here.”
“So, to be a citizen, you have to fight then?”
“No, it’s just talk. We’re not even at war yet. But here, at least, I’ll have something to fight for, if I have to, even if it’s for a piece of paper that makes me a citizen. In Russia, though, a Jew is not even a citizen and he is forced to fight.”
“Who would take you to fight anyhow?”
“Don’t belittle me. I’m an important man now.”
“Maybe you are. Maybe now you’ll be a somebody.”
“Why, am I not a somebody already?”
“No, I mean a real somebody.”
His father swore in Russian. “Are you never satisfied?” he said.
“Yes, I’m very satisfied now. I’m proud of you. I only want to be prouder.” She kissed him.
But Hershy was truly satisfied. “Then you’re a real American, huh, Pa?” he said.
“Yes, Hershel. You have a father now that you should never be ashamed of. You have a father now that you can be proud of.”
That evening, Hershy swelled with greater pride; his mother had planned for this day, knowing that her David would not fail her when it came to something that required learning, and had invited their relatives over to celebrate.
Uncle Yussel was away in California, and Rachel was out dancing. But Uncle Hymie, the rich one, without whom no gathering was official, drove over in his new Studebaker touring car. Uncle Hymie was his father’s best friend from Kiev. He was also married to Sonya’s younger sister: he had fallen in love with’ her when he went to Narodich to attend David’s wedding; and later, after being presented a ticket to America by David as a dowry, married her.
As usual, he honked his horn a good minute before coming up. And, as usual, Hershy ran down the stairs to greet him and Aunt Reva, and had to go through a boring ritual before he could get into the car.
First, he had to ask where his cousins, Manny and Shirley, were. They were at home with the maid. Then he had to say, Aleichem Sholom, peace be with you, after Uncle Hymie said, Sholom Aleichem. Then his Aunt Reva would stop fixing her furs, which his mother always touched with trembling, envious hands, and would place her diamond-fingered hand on his head as though crowning him for having done something admirable. And his uncle, wreathed in smiles, would look down at him from his height of black, wiry hair and crunched, blinking eyes.
“Noo, Hershel, where are you running?”
“To the car, to the car.”
“And where are you going?”
“Around the world, all around the world.”
“And what will you be around the world?”
“An explorer, a discoverer.”
“No more moving-and-express man?”
“Sure.”
“No more Samson?”
“I’ll be Samson, too.”
“And a racer, too?”
“Sure. Can I go drive now, can I, can I?”
“But where did you get this new craze, an explorer?”
“Columbus was an explorer.”
“Oh, then that’s a good thing. So go ahead, Hershel, and be a Columbus, but find gold, too. When you get older you’ll learn that gold can never hurt you.”
Then Hershy ran off and leaped into the leather front seat of the touring car, without opening the door, just like Douglas Fairbanks, and began going rrrrrrrrrrr all over the world a million miles an hour. His trip was interrupted twice. Uncle Ben, the fruit peddler, who was married to his mother’s oldest sister, came by with his wife, but Hershy was too busy killing off a pack of whooping Indians to pay them much attention. Then Uncle Irving, the card player, woman-chaser, and former tailor, who now worked for Uncle Hymie as a laundry driver and who was married to his mother’s next oldest sister, caught his eye; but Hershy was too busy machine-gunning an army of Huns from his roaring airplane to say hello. Then, just as he was about to win by a mile the daredevil speed championship, his mother called and made him come into the house. And there, around the kitchen table, watching them hold lumps of sugar between their teeth as they sipped tea out of glasses, and as they smacked their lips with praise while they ate the strudel and taigloch his mother had prepared, he flowed into the hero his father had become.
Now, his father could become a man of property.
Maybe, Hershy thought, his father could get a car, now that he was a citizen.
Now, his father could be anything he wanted, could do everything he desired; he was a man with rights.
Maybe, Hershy thought, his father would buy him everything he wanted. Maybe he would buy his mother a fur coat and diamonds, then she’d never be jealous of her younger sister, and she’d never scare him with the stories of all the wealthy suitors she could have married. Maybe everybody’d be satisfied.
His mother, glowing with pride, visioning a new world, laid a tombstone on the past. And the others began to erect a monument to the future.
Now, with citizen’s papers, David Melov had the right to become an American goniff, a thief with honor. Now, initiated in the uses of the toilet, the faucet, the brick house with more than one room, he could delve into the greater magic of America. With the courage he had shown in leaving behind pogroms and a piece of dried-up black bread, in being able to tear up his roots to replant himself in richer earth, he could now go on to bigger and better things. Nobody could rightfully call him a greenhorn any longer. He could be like the children and shout: It’s a free country. Yes, now, as with the children, it was his America.
His father admitted it was a wonderful life.
Uncle Hymie wanted everybody to observe who was talking. The citizen. The silent one, the man of few words, from whom you could seldom get a peep. Suddenly, because he is now a citizen, he thinks he has a right to talk. All right, Uncle Hymie shushed everybody, it is free-speech time. Talk.
But his father didn’t talk. Instead, everyone laughed. And Hershy, bursting with pride, jumped on his father’s lap, and yelled: “Hot dog, Pa!”
Hershy felt even more secure as an American when, soon after the United States entered the war, his Uncle Yussel became a soldier. Hershy hadn’t seen him in a long time, not since he had gone to California, where they made moving pictures. In fact, Hershy hardly knew him, for he was always traveling. It seemed to him that Uncle Yussel traveled purposely so that he could bring back to him a million stories of the splendor and excitement of new worlds, then just as he was about finished telling his stories he would be off again. But actually, Uncle Yussel was never able to get used to the freedom of movement he had in America. Here, he said, a man could move constantly, there was always a job for him, he could go anywhere, and he had to keep testing the truth of this. Besides, he was a restless man; it was easier to move than to try to calm himself.
“You ought to get married and settle down,” Hershy’s mother once said.
“How can I?” he answered. “The only woman I could be happy with is already married.”
“And who is that?”
“You.”
His mother poked him with her elbow. A pleased smile lighted up her face. And she said playfully: “Go flirt with someone else, Yussel. Why, there are so many beautiful women in America.”
“But none as beautiful as you.”
“Liar. But you’re a sweet liar, Yussel.”
“Besides, American women are too greedy.”
“Get a greenhorn, then, right off the ship.”
“They spoil too quickly.”
“Then what will you do? A man can’t stay single all his life. He needs children to bear his name.”
“Someday I’ll go back to Russia and find a nice, respectful, obedient, beautiful Jewish girl, and bring her back as my wife.”
“You’ve been saying that for years.”
“Or I’ll wait for Rachel to get older and marry her.”
“Don’t ever say that, Yussel, not even in jest.”
For that was the secret of his restlessness; he was in love with Rachel. It was first discovered when Uncle Yussel came back from one of his trips and found Rachel suddenly grown into a woman. He flung her away when she rushed up to him and wanted to be fondled, he refused to be too close to her, but he could hardly stop staring at her.
“What’s the matter?” Rachel asked one day.
“Nothing,” Uncle Yussel said, his face agitated. “Nothing.”
“Don’t you love me any more?”
“Sure. Sure.”
“Then why don’t you hold me and kiss me and tell me some stories?”
“No. I’m too busy, too busy.”
Hershy heard him say to his mother: “She was just a baby when I left. Now look at her. Look at her.”
And Hershy once caught his mother discussing it with his father.
“It’s horrible,” his mother said, “a man should feel like that about his niece, his own flesh and blood.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” his father said. “Yussel has a natural love for Rachel, the love of an uncle who has worried about her since infancy.”
“You’re blind, David.”
“You’re the one who’s blind. In every tender look you see a love affair. Can’t people love without desire?”
“Oh, are you blind, David! And oh, how Yussel must suffer.”
It was hard for Hershy to relate Uncle Yussel’s suffering to anything specific, especially to this vague thing called love, for Uncle Yussel seemed to be a happy, joyous, exciting man, always ready with a tender pinch of one’s cheek, always ready with a smile or joke that brought laughter, always going away and coming back with strange, fantastic stories of faraway places that kept everybody awake night after night long after bedtime. He liked the stronger attachment Uncle Yussel had for him since Rachel grew up, but the notion that it was horrible for people of the same family to be in love confused him.
“So,” he said to his mother one day, “what if Uncle Yussel is in love with Rachel?”
“Who told you?”
“I know.”
She stared at him in amazement. “How could you know?” she asked.
“I know. So what if he is?”
“It’s a sin, it’s against the law.”
“Why?”
“Their children can be born crazy, deformed, God knows what.”
“What if there are no children?”
“Without children, there is no love.”
She couldn’t explain it further. She walked away from him, leaving him more confused, and she muttered: “Go talk to a child. But how could he know? There must be a devil in him.” Then he heard her sigh: “Oh, how Yussel’s soul must ache.”
For what? Hershy wondered. He knew what his soul ached for: a football, a baseball uniform, a cowboy suit, an electric train, to be a great pitcher or halfback. What could older men ache for? They seemed to have everything: strength, big muscles, fearlessness, money, freedom of movement, powers of speech. Even Rachel had big aches. It seemed that one day she was a part of his world, and the next day she had moved into another. Everybody began to look differently at her. It seemed as if one day she had been playing with dolls, and the next day she had filled out and thrown them away; and, as her flesh began to hide her bones, as she became curvier and bigger, she suddenly got a big ache and drifted far away from his world. Why, he wondered, did all older people groan with aches? When did you suddenly start hurting, without falling down or being hit or getting sick?
When Uncle Yussel left for California, Hershy’s mother said: “Come back with an actress, Yussel.”
“Maybe I will,” said Uncle Yussel.
“And bring me back a horse, like Tom Mix’s Tony,” said Hershy.
“All right,” said Uncle Yussel.
“Do me a favor,” said Hershy’s mother. “Look around and find an actress and bring her home.”
But Uncle Yussel brought back only himself. The day he came back, Hershy was playing on the street with some kids when they saw a man in uniform walking toward them. He was the first soldier they had seen and they stopped playing to admire him. Then one of the kids yelled: “Hey, that’s your uncle, Hershy.”
He tripped as he rushed to him, but he felt no pain from the fall, only his throat hurt. His uncle smiled, caught him in his arms, lifted him up, and sat him on his shoulder.
“Yo, man, look at that soldier.”
“Look at that Hershy. That lucky Hershy.”
“That your uncle, Hershy? Your uncle, for real?”
But Hershy couldn’t answer. There was a big, hard pain in his throat.
In the house, however, everybody acted differently. Rachel flung her arms about Uncle Yussel and kissed him, then she backed away to admire him.
“You’re so handsome, Uncle, so, so handsome.” She threw her arms around him again and began to cry.
Hershy’s mother and father looked stunned at first. Then tears began to seep out of his mother’s eyes, and his father felt the sleeve of the uniform as though he were appraising the material.
“Now I’m a regular Yankee,” Uncle Yussel exploded.
“You’re the most beautiful Yank in the world,” Rachel said.
“The hat, Uncle Yussel, let me wear the hat,” Hershy shouted.
Uncle Yussel whirled the boy-scout-looking field hat to Hershy. At the sight of the hat covering Hershy’s whole face, everybody smiled, timidly at first, and then laughed; the tension was gone.
“How?” Hershy’s father managed to say. “Why?”
“I was on my way home,” Uncle Yussel said. “Suddenly, that ugly Yankee with the goat’s beard pointed his finger at me and said: I want you. So go carry on a fight with that rawboned Yankee.”
“Yussel, Yussel,” Hershy’s mother sighed. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“Nothing,” Uncle Yussel said. “Ever since I’ve been in this land I’ve wanted to go to Europe. Now I can go free, at the government’s expense. Maybe I’ll find a wife there.”
Hershy’s father shook his head sadly. Uncle Yussel slapped his back.
“It’s a lively world, David,” he said. “Things happening all the time. Things always changing. Yesterday a tailor; today a soldier; tomorrow, maybe, a general. Who can predict the future?”
His eyes began to wander. When he looked at Rachel he shook his head and suddenly seemed to remember something. “Fool,” he called himself. “How could I have forgotten to bring something? Come, Hershel, take a walk with me.”
Hershy walked down the street with him, swollen with pride. He gripped his hand hard as the people stared at them. His voice was tight when he spoke.
“When you going away to fight, Uncle Yussel?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Wow!”
“Early in the morning.”
“Wow! Pa going with you?”
“No. One soldier in the family is enough.”
“Will you bring me back a German helmet?”
“Certainly.”
“And a gun?”
“A great big one.”
“A gas mask, too?”
“Of course.”
“How about a medal, a pile of medals?”
“If I become a hero.”
“Gee, Uncle Yussel. Gee.”
“What’s to cry about?”
He couldn’t help it.
“Take me with, Uncle Yussel. I’ll be your mascot. I’ll load your rifle and bring you water when you’re thirsty and I’ll never get in your way and I’ll go to sleep early and I’ll eat a lot and everything.”
“Don’t cry, baby. Don’t.”
They stopped in front of a sporting goods store.
“What would you like, Hershel?”
He swallowed hard and said: “A bat.”
“That’s all?”
“A glove, too.”
Then, with bat and glove in hand, choked with gratitude and pride, he went into a jewelry shop with his uncle and watched him buy a lavalier for Rachel, a cameo ring for his mother, and an Elgin watch for his father.
That night, when everyone was asleep, Hershy woke up and stared at his uncle a long time as he slept on the front-room couch. He tried on his coat, which hung to the floor; he put on his hat and practiced saluting. Then he kissed him softly and went back to sleep. When he woke up, Uncle Yussel was gone.
Soon afterward, Hershy’s father left also, to help build barracks at southern army camps. The war, then, seemed to have caught up his whole family, except himself and his mother. Uncle Yussel was overseas. His father was working for the army. Even Rachel was helping out: going to dances at canteens to help make the lonely boys from faraway places a little happier, she said, with his mother warning her: “But don’t make them too happy, Rachel. Remember, a woman has only one precious thing to give a man. Taking care of a house, cooking, bringing up children, all that comes later. But a man will die if he gets a piece of damaged goods. So remember, Rachel, don’t make them too happy.”
But Hershy felt that he was out of everything. It seemed to him that he was among a gang of guys who were choosing up sides, and he was praying and begging to be picked, but nobody even looked at him, and finally everybody moved away and began to play, and he was left alone. He felt even worse when the airplane became firmly established as an instrument of war. Oh, if he was only old enough. Oh, would he fly, like an eagle. Oh, would he be a pilot. Why did it take so long to be old enough? Why did it take so long to grow up and be big enough? Why couldn’t a guy jump into the world, bang, and be a big fighting man who could do anything?
“Thank God you aren’t grown up,” his mother said. “You have plenty of time to do the things you have to. There will be many things for you to do, don’t worry, when you do grow up, and I hope it won’t be fighting. Before you know it, you’ll be grown up, you’ll be a man, and then you’ll be wishing you’re a child again. You will see.”
But Hershy couldn’t see. How could anybody wish he was a little kid?
His mother, for whom worrying was not only an occupation but also a luxury, seemed to exhaust herself with all her worries. She fretted about his father and Uncle Yussel, about her two brothers in the Russian army and her parents in Russia, from whom she hadn’t heard since the war began. She even worried about Rachel.
“Rachel, why don’t you stay home sometime?” she nagged.
“What will I do home?”
“Keep me company a little.”
“Aw, Ma.” (She always called her aunt and uncle ma and pa.)
“But what do you do night after night?”
“I told you. A million times I told you.”
“You’re selfish.”
“Why am I selfish? All day long I work, I’m a dog. At night I want to breathe. I go to my dancing class and I feel like a fairy tale. Or I go to a dance and meet a boy. I feel important. Everybody wants to dance with me. Everybody is nice. They make me feel like I got a big place in the world. I learn all men aren’t bosses, pushing you around. I learn men got hearts, too. They want to do things for you, turn worlds upside down. You feel like a queen. All I want is a little fun, a little pleasure. Is that selfish?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, Ma.”
“Do I have fun? What pleasure do I have?”
“But you’ve got everything.”
“Yes, I have everything, including a cold bed and a crazy pain in my belly. Go, go dance, but be careful.”
Her worries, it seemed, shifted to him. It got so that he could hardly do anything. If he was a minute late to a meal or bedtime or anything, thunder from her face crashed down on him. She kissed him more often, stared at him longer, held him tighter when she hugged him, wanted him with her even when he was in the way; sometimes he didn’t know what was coming over her and what she wanted from him. It made him wish with all his might that his father was home; then she wouldn’t make him stay in the house so much, it would be easier to get out at night, and he could stay up later. He also wished his father was home because he would get into fewer fights, or he would feel stronger when he did get into them; and he wouldn’t always be hearing: “Remember, Papa said you should be a good boy.” It felt funny to be aware of his father about the streets and in the house, even though he was nowhere to be seen. Sometimes it seemed to him that his father was never coming back, and it frightened him.
The only time he felt good about his father not being home was at night, especially if he was afraid, when his mother would let him sleep with her. That was better than sleeping alone on the daybed in the dining room, where it was cold and ghosty. In bed with her it was always warm, he was always protected, he was afraid of nothing, he never got bad dreams, and he didn’t even mind it when she sometimes put her arms around him in her sleep. That was the only time he didn’t mind being a little boy, and he didn’t care what the old people from the old country said about it being a sin to sleep with his mother. He was always sure to go to sleep on his father’s side of the bed when a landsman was visiting at night, especially the one who had been a suitor of his mother’s in the old country and who was now a successful customer peddler and who was still, according to his mother, in love with her. Hershy hated him, the way he looked with his tobacco-stained mustache, hairy nose, and fierce eyes, so unlike the clean face of his father; he hated the way the landsman would sit heavily and sigh and transport his mother back to Russia, to mysterious days he knew nothing about; he hated the way they sometimes spoke in Russian so that he wouldn’t know what they were saying; and he hated the way his mother looked, so warm, glowing, and excited at times. And always, when he was told to go to sleep, he backed away, glaring, to her bed. Once she asked him why he did that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid.”
“Why, suddenly, are you afraid?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he heard the man say: “I thought he was a big boy.”
“On the streets he’s a giant, a hero,” his mother explained. “But at night, in the house, he shrivels into a baby.”
“Shame on him. When I was his age I wandered over the countryside; I was getting ready to start working for a living.”
“In America they’re different. Men are babies, and babies are frightened mice.”
“You spoil him, Sonya.”
But he wasn’t spoiled, he told himself. He’d grow up someday. He’d show them who was spoiled. He never fell asleep until the man left, his body tight, his heart hammering, especially when they spoke in whispers or when they were silent.
But his father made himself felt often enough to prevent anything from happening. He seemed to come home in person, announced by a shrill, marble-like whistle, which the mailman blew before delivering his letters.
At first, the letters came with a laborious, sprawling handwriting on the envelope, but inside was a strange, tiny, compact handwriting in Yiddish, which neither he nor his mother could read. Then they’d walk across the park to visit Uncle Hymie and Aunt Reva to get the letter read. Afterwards, he’d play outside with his cousin Manny, or they’d go for a ride in his uncle’s car, or he’d watch his aunt make his mother gasp with envy in showing off a new dress, a new jewel, a new piece of furniture.
“Live, sister, live,” his mother would say.
And on the way home, she’d say: “Papa slaves for a piece of bread. And my sister lives like a baroness. Oh, how people with a dollar can live.”
“But we ain’t poor, are we, Ma?”
“No, we’re not poor. We eat well, we have a flat and a stove to heat it, and we sleep well. But other people live.”
“How come Pa ain’t rich like Uncle Hymie?”
“How come?”
“But maybe Pa’ll come home with a lot of money. Then you’ll have things like Aunt Reva, and Pa’ll have a car, and I’ll have a million things like that punk Manny.”
“Maybe, maybe. But maybe is such a long time. Anyhow, Papa doesn’t have ulcers, nobody hates him, he has no sins on his head.”
“Is that what’s the matter with Uncle Hymie? Is that why he wants to bring a rabbi from Russia over here after the war?”
“Shah, it has nothing to do with you.”
“Okay, I was just talking.”
But usually, after a reading, they talked about his father. And afterward, until the next letter came, his mother would take the blue-lined paper with the peculiar script on it from the cut-glass bowl in the china closet and stare at it, then mutter the phrases she remembered from Uncle Hymie’s reading.
In one letter, his father wrote part of it in Russian, which he couldn’t understand but which embarrassed his mother. She smiled awkwardly through Uncle Hymie’s reading and the loud laughter, sly talk, and knowing elbow-pokes that followed. And when they got home, she said: “Hershel, from now on you write the letters to Papa, and you tell him to write us in English. Everybody doesn’t have to know everything.”
“Why, what’d Pa write, you know, where it was in Russian?”
Her cheeks turned red and she said: “You’re too young to know.”
What could his father have written? he wondered. But he never found out, for his father, apparently, never repeated the secret after he began to write in English. The letters were brief and simple, sprawled over three and four pages, which was done purposely, his father explained, so that Hershy would find them easier to read. And he wrote back what his mother told him, but he always added his own postscript: “I am a good boy, Pa. Ma told me to tell you.” Once he added: “Ma told me to tell you she wants you should say to her again what you once said to her in Russian on a letter.” But his father ignored the postscript.
Sometimes he protested and wanted Rachel to answer his father’s letters, but she was too busy.
“That’s all I got to do, write letters,” she said.
Actually, Rachel couldn’t write much better than himself. She was nine years old before his parents learned that she had to go to school and how to go about getting her into one. In classes with children three and four years younger than herself, she suffered horribly through five years of school, flunking twice, before she quit. Hershy’s father had to lie about her age, saying she was sixteen, when the truant officer came to the house. But since there was no record of her birth and since she did look mature, she was allowed to leave school and go to work. Hershy’s father hoped his dead sister would forgive him. God knew he had tried his best. Besides, she seemed better equipped to become a dancer. Her soul yearned so hard to become one, especially after the first excitement of going to work in a dress factory wore off. Besides, women didn’t need too much education to fulfill their role in life. Also, he argued, a woman didn’t necessarily have to know the sum of two and two, or who discovered what, in order to be a good wife and mother, which, despite her dancing, he knew she was going to be.
So Hershy, during his father’s absence, was the official letter-writer and reader of the family, the bridge between his father and mother. Once, however, a letter wasn’t received in over two weeks. His mother sat up late worrying. When it was time for the postman to arrive, she trembled for the sound of his whistle. And every day she made him read the last letter over and over, trying to interpret some sign from it to relieve her fears, until they both knew it by heart. Then a letter finally came, and some of the writing was blurred:
“Yussel is dead. He was killed in France. The Germans killed him. All week I sat shiva (in mourning). Bitter tears are in my heart. They run down my face. Now all I have is you, dear Sonya. My dearest son, Hershel. My precious Rachel. You are my life now. Do not let anything happen to you. Be a good boy, Hershel. Be a good girl, Rachel. Take care of them, Sonya. Take care of yourself. My whole heart loves you.”
His mother burst into tears. She drew the shades and told him to run out and buy a glassful of tallow with a wick in it. She lit it when he came back. And then she took off her shoes and stockings and sat down on the floor and began to rock back and forth. His legs began to tremble; then he, too, began to cry, and he sat down beside his mother.
“Me, too, Ma? Should I do it, too?”
“No, dearest, you don’t have to.”
“Why don’t I have to, if you have to?”
“I don’t have to, either. I don’t know what else to do. I just don’t know what else to do.”
She flung her arms around him and drew him onto her lap and rocked him back and forth, and he felt her hot tears drop on his face.
Soon afterward, all the whistles and horns in the world began to blow. People went crazy. The war was over. And then his father wrote that he was coming home.