CHAPTER SIX
When his father first came home, Hershy used to wait for him near the newsstand at the end of the carline to meet him as he came from work. He always pretended that he was there by accident.
“Were you waiting for me?” his father would ask.
“No,” Hershy would say. “I was just coming from a kid’s house.” Or, he’d make up another excuse.
“Oh,” his father would say. He’d pat Hershy’s head and then they’d walk home together, usually in silence, with Hershy carrying his father’s lunch pail.
Soon, however, his father’s being home was no longer a novelty and Hershy stopped waiting for him at the car stop. His father assumed his traditional role of The Man, who left in the morning, did his work, which was taken for granted and seldom discussed, and came back at night. Nevertheless, the whole order of the household was geared around his coming home each evening, and suppertime was Papa’s time, during which the day was summed up, judged, and put aside for the next day. Being a man who seldom gave himself over to comparisons and who was free of pretension and envy, he was never harsh in his judgments. His dreams were small and easily satisfied, anchored by his skill as a cabinet maker, his love for his family, the weekly wage that provided for them, and a belief that what he had was sufficient. And if the end of the day yielded a hot meal, a warm stove, some bits of gossip, a few complaints, and a luxurious groan in a soft bed, then he was satisfied. What more could a man want?
Only on Sunday was the routine different. Then it was strange to be able to see him any time one wanted. But sensing this, and since he was restless unless his hand were busy, he usually spent his mornings in the basement building things for the house or for a neighbor. Then he could come up for dinner, as though he’d been away from the house that day.
The role of Hershy’s mother was to order the house around The Man, despite the fact that The Man made no demands and that she complained bitterly of how boring and tiring her routine was: in the foraging for food and bargains, cooking, cleaning, washing, making the beds, doing the dishes. A man was an emperor, a woman his slave, but that was the order of things, and she found escape finally from the small circumference of her world through the movies, the stories read to her at night, through prying into Rachel’s affairs, and dreams.
“Oy, if we had money,” she’d say.
“Yes?” his father’d prompt her. “If you had money?”
“Oy,” she’d sigh.
“Oy,” his father’d mimic her, and then say: “Is your sister Reva happier with money? Does she find life more exciting?”
“I’m not Reva,” she’d say. “I’d know what to do.”
“What would you do?” his father’d urge her.
“Don’t worry,” she’d assure him. “I’d know.”
“What would you do?” his father’d say. “Become a society lady, a card player, a gossip?”
“Don’t worry,” she’d interrupt. “With money one can do anything.”
“Foolish woman,” his father’d conclude. “A man works. A woman dreams. But that’s life.”
“Is that so?”
Life in the household was reduced to the pattern Hershy had always known, and from which, without his knowing it, he took strength.
Presently, a number of things happened in such rapid succession that to Hershy it seemed as though he were a runaway kite, soaring in a great blue sky.
There was the rediscovery of Rachel. Ever since she had grown up he had been indifferent to her. She came and went, a secret behind a closed door. Suddenly, she left the door ajar. And he saw a circus queen. And, in transferring his affection to her, he began to wait for her near the newsstand at the end of the carline to meet her accidentally as she came from work.
“Cookie,” she’d say. “You were waiting for me.”
“No,” he’d say. “I just seen you when I was coming from a kid’s house, so I waited a second.”
“Sweet cookie.”
Sometimes she stooped over and kissed him, and the nice smell of her powder and the nice touch of her soft lips made his heart run wild.
One day he discovered that he wasn’t the only one who waited for her to get off the streetcar. He began to notice that Joey Gans had taken to standing outside his restaurant, where in the back room pool, dice, card games, and betting on the horses went on. Every time Rachel lifted her skirt to her knee to keep from tripping as she stepped down to the street from the car, Joey crushed a pair of springs he held in his hands and whistled.
“Plenty hot gams,” Joey remarked aloud to himself.
A strange quivery sensation came over Hershy.
“Plenty knockers, too,” Joey added.
Though Rachel hurried across the street it seemed that she was pinned to Joey’s eyes and changed into another kind of being.
“She could make a cowboy out of me,” Joey concluded.
And when Joey went back into the restaurant, only then did Hershy feel released, as though he had been rooted to Joey, and then he was free to run across the street and catch up with Rachel. Studying her as they walked together, he remembered the clean firm length of her legs and the arch of her back and her spangled breasts when she had danced almost naked in the house. He rediscovered her again in a way that was altogether different than ever before. It sent a kind of fear and a kind of excitement through him. But then her attraction for Joey took on a different meaning for him. It brought him close to Joey. It gave him a big tight feeling being that close to him. And he almost died one day when Joey approached him.
“Hey, kid, you know the broad?”
A lump formed in his throat.
“I seen her kiss you. Who is she, your sister?”
“Yah,” he managed to say.
“Put in a word for me. Tell her who I am.”
“Okay.”
“Tell her I like her style.”
“Okay.”
“Tell her to come on over. Tell her Joey Gans wants to meet her.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Melov. Hershy Melov.”
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Rachel. I mean, Rae.”
“Okay. Now tell her like I told you. I’ll learn you how to fight then. I’ll put you in my gang when you grow up. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Hershy rushed to Rachel when she got off the streetcar. There was a guy, he blurted, nuts about her. The greatest guy in the world. He liked her style. He wanted her to come on over and meet him. Boy, if he was only her sweetheart. Boy, if she married him, Joey’d be like his big brother. Boy, to have a big brother like that.
“What, are you crazy or something?” she said, and hurried home, with Hershy chasing after her.
The following evening, Joey approached him again.
“Well, kid, what’s the good word?”
Hershy shrugged his shoulders.
“Did you tell her?”
“Sure.”
“And?”
“Ah, you know how sisters are, Joey.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You know.”
“Did you tell her like I told you, about she’s got style?”
“Yah.”
“Tell her again.”
But that evening, when Rachel stepped down from the car, she got off with more care. She glanced their way at the sound of Joey’s whistle and noticed that he was a powerful-looking man, with a tight coat over his big chest and broad shoulders. He had a broken nose, which made his eyes look small, wide apart, and crushed, and his hard face looked like it needed a shave. She carried herself differently as she crossed the street, tall and haughty, with a studied sway in the movement of her body. The chase was on. And when Hershy ran to her, she said: “I don’t want you to meet me any more.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t want you to, that’s all.”
His eyes took on a bewildered look. He felt as though he were suddenly cut adrift, both from her and from Joey. There was no pleading or arguing with her. She wouldn’t listen. There was no threatening her, either. He wished he had something on her. If only he knew some secret about her, then he could have her in his power. How could a little guy get somebody in his power?
“All right for you, Rae.”
“So all right for me.”
“If you don’t let me wait for you I’ll tell everybody your name is Rachel, not Rae.”
“So my name is Rachel.”
“Yah? I’ll tell everybody. I’ll tell Joey, too.”
“Tell everybody. Tell Joey, too. I give a bibble.”
“Yah? I’ll tell everybody you’re a greenhorn.”
A shadow flickered over her face. He got ready to pounce on her: greenhorn, greenhorn. But she raised her head and said: “Tell everybody.”
“Yah?” He had no threat. He added futilely: “All right for you. Someday you’re going to ask me for a favor, someday you’re going to want me to do something for you. But you know what you’ll get? Bawbkes, you’ll get.”
But nobody was going to stop him from waiting for her. Nobody was going to keep him away from his pal Joey. She didn’t own the street or the corner where the car stopped. It was a free street. He could do anything he wanted on it. But the following day he waited for her alone.
See what she had done? She had chased Joey away. He wasn’t coming out any more. Now Joey’d never let him join his gang. Now he could never tell the guys he and Joey were pals. A black lump lay heavy in his chest. So what if she knew Joey? Would it hurt her? She had to know some guy. Why couldn’t it be a guy like Joey? Why couldn’t it be Joey? He hated her with all his might. He was through with her. Was Joey through with her, too? Give her another chance, Joey. Don’t be mad on her. Come on out and give her another chance. When she gets off the car, I’ll run after her and grab her and bring her to you and you’ll meet and it’ll be like you’re my big brother. Ah, Joey, come on out and give her another chance.
He stared anxiously through the restaurant window for Joey. A man sat at the counter drinking coffee. Through the door that led into the back room he could see a few men playing pool and some men were at a table playing cards. But he couldn’t see Joey. He was in front of the glass door, peering through it, when he heard an auto skid to a screeching stop. He turned about and his mouth hung open as two huge men with beefy faces got out with a little redheaded guy. The little guy was Red Doyle, whom Hershy recognized from a picture he had seen in the papers as the Father Protector of the Racketeers: he looked like a rabbit, with pink eyes and a pocked, hard-lined, reddish face, crammed between two bulls. They pushed Hershy out of the way when they got to the door.
Hershy watched them sit down at the counter near the cash register. They began to talk to Joey’s brother, Louie. The man drinking coffee got up and went into the back room. Then Joey came out and stood near the door, his eyes dead, his body big and tight, while Louie talked with his hands. Then Louie took some money out of the cash register and gave it to Red Doyle. Everybody smiled except Joey. Everybody was pals. Nothing was going to happen. Then Hershy’s heart leaped. As the men got up to leave, one of Red Doyle’s boys stepped on Joey’s foot and pushed him aside. Joey grabbed the guy’s coat, pushed him through the swinging glass door, and hit him. The guy fell to the sidewalk, right at Hershy’s feet, with a broken jaw, and Hershy stared down at his glazed eyes and the raw mouth that was twisted out of shape. At the same time, he saw the flash of a gun. He fell against the wall of the building and shut his eyes and tensed himself for the sound of the shot. Instead, he heard a tight, level voice.
“It’s okay, Jerry. Put it away.”
“Okay.”
Hershy opened his eyes to find Red Doyle talking.
“Hey, Joey, you got no respect?”
There was a wild gleam in Joey’s eyes, like when he looked at Rachel.
“Nobody pushes me around,” Joey said, his voice high and hoarse; it didn’t seem to belong to his body; the pitch of it made Hershy shiver.
“You ready to push up daisies for that?”
“Nobody’s pushing daisies.”
Red Doyle looked down at his bodyguard.
“Jerry,” he called his other bodyguard. “Put him in the back seat.”
The other bodyguard dragged the beefy man with the broken jaw into the car.
“Well,” Red Doyle said. “I need another boy now.”
Suddenly, like a deep sigh, everybody relaxed. Hershy felt a dry thump when he swallowed.
“You know,” Red Doyle said. “I like you, Joey. You don’t say much, but you talk a mile a minute when you move. You got style. You got the kind of style I like. Let me feel the arm.”
Red Doyle felt Joey’s shoulder and bicep and pursed his lips.
“You push plenty of muscle, Joey.”
“I do okay with it,” Joey admitted.
“I could use you, Joey. A brain needs plenty of muscle around it. Maybe I could use Louie, too, with that angle he’s got on prohibition.”
Louie found his tongue. “Yah, Red. The way I look at it, a law ain’t going to stop a man from drinking. A man, he puts in a hard day’s work, he needs a place to relax, a place to get away from his ball and chain, his kids, his troubles; he needs a drink, a man does. And who are we to say no to a man? Like I said before, Red, live and let live, that’s my motto.”
“See me tomorrow,” Red said. “We’ll talk about it. Bring Joey.”
Hershy tried hard to remember every word, every action. He never wanted to forget this scene. He wanted to report it as accurately as possible. This had the movies beat a mile. He watched Red Doyle drive off, then Louie slapped Joey’s back and said: “We’re in, kid.” Just like that. That was exactly how he was going to end the story when he told it to the guys: “We’re in, kid.”
But he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what happened afterward. He’d have to remember it for himself, a delicate secret, as a private victory. For afterward, Joey didn’t go back into the restaurant with Louie. He began to wait for Rachel.
This time he didn’t whistle when she got off the streetcar. She fluffed her hair and glanced his way and lingered a second before crossing the street. Joey crushed the springs that he had been working on in his hands and stepped over to her. She glanced at him and turned her head away, then hurried along with Joey chasing after her.
“Where’s the fire?”
She didn’t answer, just jerked her head and shoulders, as though a fly had disturbed her.
“Where you going?”
“Home.”
“Okay, I’ll take you home.”
“Thanks. I can find my way.”
“I said I’ll take you home.”
“You get away from me. I’ll call the cop on the corner.”
He seemed to suddenly loosen up in his tight coat. He put the handsprings in his pockets, and, as he laughed, he placed one of his big hands on her shoulder and turned her to face the cop on the corner.
“Call him,” he said.
“Don’t. Get your dirty hands off of me.”
“Call the cop. Go ahead, call the cop.”
She hesitated.
“What’s a cop?” he said. “A tin button you can smash like that.” He tore a button off his coat and crushed it to bits on the ground with his heel. He tore another button off his coat and put it in his pocket and jingled the money there. “I got him in my pocket, see. Loose change.”
“So you got him in your pocket.”
“But you, I got you here.” He pointed to his head. “It’s got me walking in circles. And I got you here.” He punched his heart. “Big as a basketball.”
He put his arm through hers. And, in the powerful bulk of his muscle moving like a life force against her as they walked, she felt her throat grow hot and dry, kindled by fear and fascination.
Hershy, in seeing them finally together, leaped high in the air and wrapped his arms about himself.
Afterward, through Rachel, as she was seen again and again with Joey, Hershy became the link between his pals and the bold, powerful, heroic lives of Joey and his gang. His favor was always sought. No game was played unless he led it. No stunt was done until he could view it and approve it. And whenever a kid got in trouble, or was hit, or was threatened with a fight, he’d say: “I’ll tell Hershy on you.”
Perhaps for the first time in the lives of his pals they wished they had a big sister. Those who did have a big sister sometimes stopped Joey on the street.
“Hey, Joey. I got a big sister. A beaut.” Then they’d roll their eyes and describe her curves with their hands. “Want to meet her?”
Joey’d pretend to slug them with the back of his hand “Go on, beat it, punk.”
Hershy, the kids said secretly, must have put a hex on Joey. They said, when Hershy wasn’t around, that Rachel must be a whore. Sure, they argued. She was a dancer, wasn’t she? All dancers were whores. Sure, once Cyclops had seen her practicing in Hershy’s house. Man, did she have legs, like a whore. And tits, with beads on them, like a whore. She was bow-legged, too. And that wasn’t from riding horses. Then, whop, he had seen her jump way up in the air, and she came down, kerflop, in a full split, right on it, whoppo, right on it. A contortionist, she was, too. And everybody knew what a contortionist was. Nobody had to tell them. And was she zoftig. With beads on them, yah.
No wonder, then. Hershy could have her for a sister, then.
But still they approached Joey: “I got a sister, Joey. An acrobat. Zoftig, too. Want to meet her?”
All this bewildered Joey. What the hell was happening to these kids? he wondered.
But still they paid tribute to Hershy. After all, you couldn’t afford to let a guy like Hershy get mad on you now. He might tell Joey. It wouldn’t be healthy. Besides, Joey might become Hershy’s big brother for real. That lucky Hershy. It called for tribute.
Though Hershy was overjoyed at the prospect of having a big brother like Joey Gans, he didn’t quite know how to feel about the prospect of having a baby brother or sister. For one was surely on the way, and it was hard to admit the truth of it to himself, especially since nothing definite had been announced.
His father suddenly began to sit prouder at the supper table. He ate heartier, had a stronger light in his eye, seemed to swell as he flexed his muscles, and was more tender to Hershy’s mother than Hershy had ever known. His mother seemed to grow softer and fleshier. Something happened to her posture; she seemed to stand taller, with her chin tilted up and her shoulders arched back. Something happened to her eyes; they seemed to glow inward, as though they were searching for something within herself, and, as though finding something pleasant, they became soft and warm.
Men felt his father’s arms and slapped his back and poked him slyly, and looked with wonder at his mother. Women admired his father, made his eyes shine, gave him a kind of glowing manhood, and groaned and sighed and looked pleased with his mother. Everybody was a part of what was going on with his mother except himself: the child, until his time came, was cast out of the universal social experience of conception and impending birth, and it confused Hershy.
There were peculiar allusions to the food they were eating. What kind of spice had his mother discovered suddenly, after all these barren years, that radiated the pure, necessary heat to thicken the blood and make it pound with a life force? It was a wonder that Rachel hadn’t been affected, and if they weren’t careful Hershel might become a man before his time. Perhaps his mother had changed icemen lately, or surely milkmen, or the coalman for certain. Or perhaps his father, in his travels down South, had done some strange things to change his luck. Or perhaps it was her powerful prayers over the Friday night candles, combined with the wonders of her baked choles, whose braids were the finest anybody had ever seen.
Hershy knew about the braids. He had heard Aunt Bronya, his mother’s oldest sister, talk about them once. In olden days, before Moses and before there was One God, women offered their hair to the goddess of fertility. Later the Jewish women adopted the pagan custom, but instead of hair the braids on the Sabbath bread were offered. Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, Aunt Bronya said, but who could it hurt? He remembered then how his mother, just before putting the chole into the oven, pinched off a piece of dough from the braid and threw it quickly into the oven and muttered something mysterious. And he remembered recently the charred crusts of dough that came out of the oven when he watched her clean it. Sometimes he dreamed afterward that her long black hair caught fire and she went up in a screaming flame and then drifted down through a cloud of smoke all charred and as big as two people, and the dream woke him up choking and trembling.
In a few months, however, the cruel truth struck him on the street.
“Hey, Hershy. Your ma’s getting fat.”
“So what? When you get older you get fatter.”
“She ain’t getting fatter from getting older.”
“Then what’s she getting fatter from, wise guy?”
“You know.”
“You sonofabitch. She’s getting fatter because my pa’s home.”
“Sure she is. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Because we’re eating more to get him fatter, see. My ma eats a lot, that’s all, to show my pa how good she cooks, see.”
“Yah, yah.”
“My pa didn’t eat good for over a year, that’s why. So to make him eat like a horse she’s eating like a horse.”
“Yah, yah.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t believe me.”
“Okay, okay.”
A shocking image, gained from the dark alleys and the basements and the streets, over which he had reveled and laughed in other cases, formed in his mind. He tried to hide from it. In doing so, he felt himself cringing from his mother and father, Rachel and Joey, and his pals. They changed suddenly, seemed to rise as enemies. He dreaded being with his pals for fear of their talking about it. He tried to avoid thinking about his mother and father, and Joey and Rachel, for fear of the grotesque things they did in his mind. Nobody, somehow, knew what was happening to him. And, helpless before the fact, he brooded.
“Why don’t you go out and play?” his mother wanted to know one Friday.
“I don’t want to.”
“Why, is somebody after you?”
“No.”
“You sick?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, see.”
“Go turn a somersault, then. Let what’s bothering you fall out.”
The kitchen smelt of the boiling chicken and the gefüllte fish that was cooling off and the baked chole that rested on a clean dish towel. As the light dimmed, his mother lit the white candles, which rested in brass holders. Then, with her hands almost touching the flames, she made strange symbols while muttering a prayer over them. Her bulkier back and broader hips were facing him, and the flickering candles gave her shadow a grotesque look on the wall and ceiling. He began to mimic her mumbling and from the shadow of his hands he made an eagle fly on the wall; but to his mother it looked like a bat. She stopped her prayers suddenly and looked at the flickering wings in terror, then gasped as she saw the bat quickly jab its beak into the shadow of her throat. She reeled back and then saw that it was he who had made the shadowed bat. She rushed over and slapped his face and swore at him.
“Ah, what’d I do?” he yelled. “What’d I do?”
She paid no attention to him and went back to her prayers. He formed a hopping rabbit on the wall from the shadow of his hands. His mother saw it just as it took a bite out of the shadow of her nose. She stumbled back, cursing him, but he rushed past her and dived under the bed in Rachel’s room and crawled into a corner. He lay there awhile, the dark like a hand pressing him against the wall and crushing out all thought. When he thought it safe, he came back into the kitchen.
“Dybbuk, you.”
She was sitting at the table, huge in the dim light, and he glared at her.
“What kind of a devil are you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why do you twist your face like that? What are you mad about?”
“For nothing, see.”
“I’ll give you, for nothing.”
“Yah?”
“I’ll hit you so hard you’ll turn over three times if you’re not careful.”
“Yah?”
“Yah.”
“Why, what’d I do?”
“You almost frightened me to death, you black cholera, you.”
“What’d I do? I only made some magic on the wall, that’s all. For that you got to hit me?”
“It’s a sin to do it when I’m praying over the candles. Do you want something bad should happen to us?”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll give you an I don’t care.”
“Why do you have to bench licht?”
“Because I have to.”
“You didn’t always.”
“I have to now.”
“Why?”
“So you won’t get sick, so Papa will be in good health and keep working, so nothing will happen to Rachel, so I might be strong enough to care for all of you.”
“It ain’t not why.”
“All right, you tell me why.”
“You do it to make you fat.”
“Who told you?”
“You eat like a horse, too, to get fat.”
She stared at him with her mouth fumbling for something to say. “What do they tell you on the streets?” she said finally.
“Nothing.”
“Snots, and already they know the secret of life.”
“Why’d you do it, Ma?” He felt his throat get fuzzy.
“What?” Her eyes opened wide, horrified.
“Get fatter.”
“It’s nature.”
“Can’t you get skinny again?”
“No.”
“All the guys on the street, they know.”
“Let them know. I don’t know what they say on the street, but let them know I’m proud. Let them know Papa’s proud. Let them know I am carrying a gift from God. Let them know you’re proud, too, Hershele.” She leaned toward him. “Maybe you’ll have a brother. A little brother, who will grow up and play with you and be your best friend. A little brother, who will be to you what Uncle Yussel was to Papa. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a brother like Uncle Yussel?”
“Yes,” he had to admit. “But what if it’s a girl?”
“Then she’ll be like Rachel, the blood of your blood, who will be like your own life. I don’t know what they tell you on the streets, but remember this: life comes from God, and no matter how life comes into this world it has to be good because God made it. Remember that.”
The talking subdued his tension. She reached for him, and, in finding himself being drawn to her, he felt his whole being flood over with a need for her. It was nature, he told himself. It came from God. It couldn’t be dirty. It came like a present. It came from magic, like he could suddenly form an eagle or a rabbit, from out of nothing.
In a few days, he accepted the fact and then ignored it. The coming of the baby was something ordered. It might just as well have been ordered at the Boston Store.
In the midst of all this, the spirit of Uncle Yussel appeared on a Saturday morning, heralded by a shrill whistle and hidden in a thick official-looking envelope. Hershy rushed to the front door, with his mother behind him, and the mailman handed her a piece of paper and a pencil.
“Sign here,” said the mailman, pointing to an x.…
Hershy watched his mother stare blankly at the small print.
“Here, where the x is. Sign.”
“What does he want from me?” she asked Hershy in Yiddish.
“He wants you to sign the paper,” Hershy said.
“Why?”
Hershy turned to the mailman and said: “My ma wants to know why she got to sign.”
“Tell her it’s a registered letter. Say it’s an important letter, see. If it’s an important letter you’ve got to sign that paper so the other party knows it was delivered to the right party.”
Hershy translated but she couldn’t understand why this letter was so different from all others. A letter was a letter, she wanted him to tell the mailman. All of them were important. What was so special about this one?
The mailman knew that all letters were important, but this one was very special, it cost extra money to get it delivered, and for the extra money the other party wanted to get a signature.
The talk and the insistence upon a signature got her suspicious and frightened. With all that importance attached to that letter there could only be one meaning: bad news, perhaps tragic. Was the mailman sure the letter was for them? Yes, the mailman was sure. Perhaps he had made a mistake. No, he hadn’t made a mistake. He was sure the letter was for them. Was she going to sign or was he going to take the letter back to the post office?
“He wants you to sign, Ma,” said Hershy.
“Tell her there’s nothing to be scared of,” the mailman said to Hershy. “Tell her the post office is like the United States government. Tell her the government don’t pull no phony tricks. Tell her it’s safe to sign. Tell her, for Christ’s sake, to sign.”
Hershy translated. She nodded her head, punctuating: “Yah, yah, yah, yah.” She understood, but she wanted him to tell the mailman that it was Saturday, it was a holy day, and that she couldn’t write on a Saturday, it would be a sin to do it.
“It’s Saturday,” Hershy said to the mailman. “My ma can’t write on Saturday. It’s a Jewish rule, see.”
“Holy Jesus,” said the mailman.
“A rule’s a rule,” Hershy said appeasingly.
‘Then you sign. Just write your father’s name, David Melov, and take the goddam letter from me, will you?”
“The man,” said Hershy to his mother, “wants me to sign for Pa.”
She thought about it a moment.
“All right,” she said. “If you sign, nothing bad can happen then. If it’s a trick they can’t hold us responsible. We’ll prove an infant signed it. Go ahead, sign, Hershele.”
“But, Ma,” he said. “Won’t I get a sin if I write on Saturday?”
“Don’t worry about it, Hershele. Until your thirteenth birthday you’re forgiven everything. God keeps you pure. It’s after barmitzvah that you have to be careful and thoughtful. Sign.”
“Well—” the mailman said.
“I’m signing,” Hershy said. “My ma said it’s all right.”
“Thank Christ,” the mailman said.
Back in the house, suspicion and fear filled his mother. A letter was an uncommon event in her life. Who would want to write to them? Why was it so necessary that the letter be delivered in person by the mailman, that it require a signature? From whom could it be and from where did it come? Since the war and the revolution in Russia she had never heard from her family. Nobody knew if her parents and brothers were alive or dead. But the letter couldn’t be from Russia. There was print in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, looking very austere and formidable, and there was type from a machine in the center. Letters from Russia came with small, curlicued, timid handwriting on the envelope.
“It isn’t from Russia,” she announced.
“No, Ma. It’s American writing, from a machine.”
“So where is it from? Who could want to write to us?”
“In the circle here it’s printed Washington.”
“Where the president lives?”
“Yah.”
“But Papa says the president is in Europe making peace.”
“This ain’t from the president, Ma. What do you think, he’s got nothing to do but write letters to us?”
“Who knows what a politician can have in his crazy mind? Papa says the president wants to talk to the people in person to make a good peace so it will last forever.”
“It ain’t from the president, Ma.”
“Don’t shout at me. Then maybe it’s from the congressman Papa saw there, the one who shook his hand and gave him a cigar.”
“It ain’t from nobody. On the top here it says in-sur-ance company.”
“Insurance company? But Papa just paid his insurance, the bloodsuckers.”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe they want more money. Maybe Pa didn’t pay them right.”
“Oy, the bloodsuckers. But maybe it’s a nice letter telling Papa what a good, fine, honest, dependable man he is, always paying on time to the penny.”
“How about we open it and see?”
“But it must be bad news. Otherwise, why should they want us to sign the paper? Good news you receive with no trouble. But bad news—they make the heart fall out of you before you get it, and then, when you do get it, you haven’t the heart left to grieve over it. Noo, open it already.”
Hershy tore the envelope and studied the contents.
“Noo, what is it? What does it say?”
“Wait a minute, will you?”
“Lamebrain, don’t they teach you anything at school?”
“The print’s too small.”
“All of a sudden the print’s too small. Print is print. How can it be too small?”
“There’s big words, too. I never seen so many big words.”
“Dummy, you. What’s a big word? If you can read you can read, that’s all. On the street you know everything. But when it comes to something important in the house your brain turns to stone.”
“Give me a chance, will you? What do you think, I’m in high school already?”
“All right, I’ll give you a chance.… So read. Read.”
“Like here, it says, benny … benny … benny …”
“From somebody named Benny? Who do we know called Benny?”
“It’s a word, Ma, not a name. After it comes fish. Benny … fish …”
“Benny the Fishman, hah?”
“It’s a word, I’m telling you, not a name, not nobody. Then it says, yary. Benny … fish … yary.”
“What kind of word is that? What does it mean?”
“See, I told you. That word’s too big even for a giant. You got to be a doctor or a professor to know it.”
“So what will we do?”
“Wait’ll Pa comes home.”
“No. If it’s bad news we should know first so we can help Papa. Read some more. Try, Hershele. Try.”
“For Cry Yike, all right.”
After puzzling over the letter at great length, he said, “It’s about Uncle Yussel.”
“Yussel,” she gasped. “What did he do? What do they want from his poor soul?”
“It says he’s diseased.”
“Diseased! Gottenyu! He’s dead, may his soul rest in peace.”
“That’s what it says. And it says Pa is the benny … fish … yary.”
“What can they want of our poor lives?”
“We got to fill out forms, too.”
“Forms? What is that?”
“I don’t know. Form, I thought, is what a baseball player or fancy diver has got.”
“Oh, dummy, dummy, dummy.”
“It says something about a check, too.”
“What is that?”
“That’s what Uncle Hymie talks about all the time. You know, he says, in this country a businessman never pays with money, he pays with a piece of paper from a bank that he has to put his name on. You buy this paper from a bank with money, he says. That’s a check.”
“So now I know everything. Give me the letter. I’ll go to the groceryman. Maybe he’ll tell me. Or maybe his son, who is studying to be a lawyer, will be home, and he’ll tell me.”
Hershy tried to duck when she came back, but he wasn’t prepared for it, so he couldn’t escape. She grabbed his head and pulled his hair and kissed him hard on the lips. Only when she began to cry did she release him. She stumbled into a chair and covered her face with her hands.
“What’s the matter, Ma? Was it bad news? Was it, huh?”
“No, sweetheart. No, dearest.”
“So what’s to cry about?”
“Everything. Everything.”
He stepped toward her, his throat hard. She clutched him and he felt her tremble in the embrace. And then, through her choking gasps, he heard her say:
“We’re rich, dearest. We’re the richest people in the world.”
They were going to collect ten thousand dollars from the government insurance Uncle Yussel had carried as a soldier.
What could one do with all that money?
It was bewildering. It was staggering. It was like climbing a steep mountain. For a lifetime all you can see are the lofty peaks above, disaster below, a small crevice here and a jagged rock there to gain a foothold. Finally you reach the top and look around. There is a new world to behold. You don’t know what to make of it. It takes your breath away.
What does one do with all that money?
There were a hundred things they had yearned for and needed, practical things and luxurious things; but suddenly, as though an avalanche had struck them, they were buried under the weight of the money and couldn’t name a thing they wanted. And when they did finally express their desires they sounded utterly fantastic. It was an art, they concluded, to know what to do with money.
Of course, they could buy a house and never have to pay rent again. But to buy a house only for themselves would be selfish and Hershy’s father couldn’t see himself buying a large house because he couldn’t see himself in the role of a landlord. They could buy an automobile, but for a person who did not need it in business that was a luxury which only the absolute rich could contemplate. They could buy diamond rings, too, and a houseful of new furniture, and closets full of clothes, and fur coats, but who would see them: the moths, the dark corners of a drawer, the envious eyes of their relatives and friends? If they were going to waste money to make a finger glitter or to enrich their backs, they might just as well buy Hershy the speedboat and racehorse he wanted.
All right, Rachel could have a few dresses and a fur-trimmed coat, and Hershy’s mother could have a new tapes-tried chair instead of the leather rocking chair, and Hershy’s father hoped that nobody would mind if he got some new tools, and Hershy could have a pair of cowboy shoes. But they’d still have thousands and thousands of dollars. What could they do to secure their whole future?
Well, they could go in business. What kind? There were so many, too many to enumerate. It would require some heavy thinking. Ay, what to do with money, said Hershy’s father, was an art that took a lifetime to learn.
So what were they going to do?
Ah. Hershy’s father had it. The true meaning of their good fortune had finally worked through his stupid head. Last week he had had a dream about Yussel, but not knowing the meaning of it then he had said nothing. They were in Russia, little boys, and Yussel had earned some money for helping a mujik. Afterward, Yussel gave him three kopecks, three cents, and said: “What will you do with this, David?” And he said: “I don’t know. Buy something sweet, maybe.” “No,” said Yussel. “Don’t waste the money. I did not kill myself for you to waste it. Guard it well. Save it for a time when you will need it. Use it wisely. Money, if it can’t do good, is bad. So use it wisely.”
Yussel, he concluded, had risen from the dead to counsel him. And this was his interpretation: Yussel meant the money to be for everybody. He loved Rachel. He wanted her to marry well. He (David) would make sure of it. He would lay aside two thousand dollars for her dowry. Maybe Rachel might meet a struggling student who would soon become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. The man will want to open an office, he will need a start. Rachel, with this two thousand dollars, will be able to help him. She will marry fine. All right, two thousand dollars to Rachel.
Yussel loved Hershel, too. He wanted Hershel to grow up into a man of great resources, a man with a mind, so that he would never know a lonely moment, a man who would be able to pick up a book with his hands and be able to hold it, a man who would be useful and do good. In short, Yussel wanted Hershel to go to college someday. So, for Hershel’s future education there must be put aside another two thousand dollars.
Now, Yussel couldn’t have known about the new child to come. But had he known he would have wanted the child born in a hospital with a doctor and a nurse in attendance. For the mother, then, two hundred dollars would be laid aside for her care and delivery. And for the new child, another two thousand dollars, to be used for education, if it’s a boy, or a dowry, if it’s a girl.
And what about him (David) and his wife? Well, there were thirty-eight hundred dollars left. But they’d never touch it for themselves. No, they’d use it to help the children along, for he was a man, with strong hands and a skill and simple tastes, and so long as there were jobs and he was able to work they would need no more than his weekly wages to get along. So, thirty-eight hundred dollars would be put aside for any emergency; it could last a lifetime.
“And that,” said Hershy’s father proudly, “is what you do with money. You see, it wasn’t hard to get rid of it at all.”