CHAPTER NINE
Hershy’s mother, with her frustrations growing deeper during this time, turned to Rachel to find release. She suppressed her own envy and watched the excitement filling up Rachel’s life.
“Rachel doesn’t know from nothing,” she said. “Oh, to live, and not know from nothing.”
“I’m floating,” Rachel said. “Floating.”
“Rachel’s in love,” Hershy’s mother announced.
“Love,” said Hershy’s father. “What can a girl of seventeen know about love?”
“More than a woman of twenty-eight,” Hershy’s mother answered. “I assure you. After all, how old was I when I was married?”
“That was different,” his father said. “In the old country people grew up faster. A man was a man when he was thirteen. A girl was a woman before she could look around. People were more responsible there.”
“Is that what love is: responsibility?” his mother asked.
“Why not? Is love more than that? Can it be more?”
“Don’t talk like an idiot.”
Hershy’s comment was: “I’m going out and play on the merry-go-round.”
Love, for him, was mush. It had no body. You could put your heel in it, and when you lifted your foot it made a squishy, sucking sound. Love had no muscle. It made you fall apart.
Love, for his father, was not a dreamy eye, an empty song, a veil of sighs, a melted nerve. Romance was something he didn’t understand; that was for people with leisure; he had never had any time for it. Love was responsibility, a belief in people, loyalty, respect. Love was giving without expecting anything in return. Perhaps there was romance in memory. But love was always reduced to feeding and being fed, to living in a house that was clean and warm and weatherproof, to having children and caring for them, to respecting those who live with you, and to bearing the full responsibility of your life and those you surround it with. Everything else was sham, bubbles in a vault of pins.
But love, for his mother, was something sacred. Like God, it was something you couldn’t describe, it was something you couldn’t name. Like God, she knew what it wasn’t and evoked images of what it was. It wasn’t obedience or duty or bearing children or having worries or being responsible. It had to give one a sense of being transported to a new world, where the heavens lifted and a star was given to you for a jewel, and you had to feel that you were conquering and being conquered all at once. That was love. And for a moment of this she was willing to endure torture the rest of her life. For her, Rachel expressed all this, in the dreamy sway of her head, in the way she seemed to flow through the house, in the songs that vibrated from her.
“Rachel, where were you last night?”
“In a night club.”
“No!”
“Yah.”
“Imagine.”
“Yah, Ma. All the people there, dressed to kill. All the music. All the soft lights. All the fun. Ah, Ma, you should have been there.”
“Ay.”
“I could have danced all night long.”
“Is he a good dancer?”
“I get dizzy, he’s so good.”
“Ay, Rachel, Rachel. I never danced.”
“Everybody knows him. Everybody says hello to him. Even judges, big lawyers, people with diamonds on their fingers. He makes me feel like nothing can ever happen to me. I feel like a baby with him, so safe.”
“A strong man, hah?”
“A power. A real power.”
“Oh, to have a man of strength.”
“But he’s soft, too, Ma. I’m his soft spot.”
“Imagine, strong and soft.”
“He asks me what music I like to hear. ‘Angel music?’ he says. ‘Angel music,’ I say. He tells the orchestra to play. ‘Play for my doll,’ he says. ‘My baby likes angel music,’ he says. ‘Play,’ he says. And they play. For me, they play.”
“And then?”
“And then I come home.”
“Does he try to kiss you?”
“What a question!”
“I only ask, Rachel. But you want to be careful. A kiss can lead to tragedy.”
“Don’t worry. I’m careful.”
“Is he in love with you?”
“I hope so.”
“Are you with him?”
“What a question, Ma!”
“I only ask. What does it feel like?”
“Aw, Ma, the way you talk, like you never been in love. You know: you can’t even breathe.”
“But how does he express his love?”
“In the way he looks, in the way he can hardly talk, in the way he says: ‘Say the word, baby (that’s what he calls me: baby). I’ll make the world shove over. I’ll put rocks on your fingers. I’ll cover you with mink from head to toe. Say the word, baby.’”
“What kind of word do you have to say?”
“It’s just an expression, Ma.”
“So why don’t you marry him?”
“He didn’t ask me yet.”
“Oh.”
“Someday soon, he says, he’s going to get me on the stage. He’s working on a connection.”
“If he wants to marry you, why should he want you on the stage?”
“Because I want it.”
“Where do you think you are now, if not on a stage?”
“You got something there, Ma.”
“So when are we going to meet him?”
“Later, later.”
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid I’ll steal him from you?”
“No, Ma.”
“I’d like to meet him. It’s only right that he should meet your family.”
“Later, Ma. Later.”
She looked at Rachel, nodding slowly, and a great gap seemed to open in her, leaving a bleakness in her glazed eyes. But Hershy’s father reacted differently. “What a fool you are, Sonya,” he said, “throwing yourself into the world of a child. You should be grown up; but, really, you’re like a child.”
For he had met Joey Gans one day when walking down the street with Hershy. Joey was leaning against the building of his restaurant, his face tightening and relaxing as he worked on a pair of springs in his hands.
“There he is,” said Hershy.
“Who?”
“Joey Gans.”
“Hyah, kid,” said Joey. He spit through the side of his mouth, a gesture which Hershy had been practicing, and rumpled Hershy’s hair with his big thick hand.
“Okay,” said Hershy, looking up.
“That’s a kid, kid. And how’s Rae?”
“Okay, too.”
“That the old man?”
“Yah, that’s my pa.”
“How’s the boy, kid?” Joey put the springs in his coat pocket and shook hands with Hershy’s father. Hershy watched his father wince with pain from the pressure. Then, released, Hershy sensed that his father wanted to say something, in the way his throat was strained and in the way he groped for his (Hershy’s) hand as he stared at Joey.
“Want to shoot a game of pool, a bite to eat?” Joey asked.
His father shook his head.
“Any time. It’ll be on the house. It’ll be on Joey Gans.”
His father began to move away.
“See you, Pops,” said Joey.
His father came into the house as though suffering from a blow. He had got it from a golem, a man with no soul, whose head was stuffed with a fist instead of a brain. What could a man like that know about love, about such a sensitive thing? What could Rachel, spawned from his own family, see in a man like that? Could it be that he didn’t know Rachel at all, that he had seen her grow up only to feel that she was a stranger? The thought was shattering. It shook him with great fears for Rachel. He wished he could do something. He wished he could have threatened the man. But as he had stood before him he knew that if he had opened his mouth the man would have pushed his fist into it; he was a frightening man. He wished he could say something to Rachel. If he could only threaten her. But he had nothing to threaten her with. Besides, he was a man who was incapable of doing such a thing. But he didn’t want Hershy’s mother to encourage Rachel any more; he didn’t want her to go into the silly dreams and emotions of a child. Meanwhile, he would talk to Rachel.
Hershy had seldom seen him so disturbed. Even his mother, sensing it, remained silent.
But when his father did talk to Rachel that night he only antagonized her.
“So what do you want me to do?” she said.
“Find someone else, an honest, upright man.”
“You mean a working stiff? You can have them kind a nickel a dozen. Remember, this ain’t the old country. Here, you don’t match people up before you ever see them and then wind up saying until death do us part. Here, a girl’s got a choice.”
“But make a good one, Rachel. This bum is no good. All he’ll ever give you is trouble.”
“That’s for me to decide.”
“Listen to me, Rachel,” he pleaded. “For your own good.”
“For my own good, leave me alone.”
His father, not knowing what else to say, grew tense. “If I could only pound some sense into your head,” he said.
“Don’t try it. Remember, you’re not my real pa.”
Hershy saw his father reel back. His eyes became glazed and he sat down limp. It was a blow, he said after Rachel left, he’d never recover from.
The following day, Hershy’s father didn’t come home for supper. Waiting for him, Hershy had seen the men come home from work and the kids go into their houses to eat. He had seen the day die and the lights on the lampposts go on. The street was quiet and the houses seemed to have retreated in shadows. A terrible fit of loneliness came over him. Then his mother called him.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll eat without Pa.”
Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table in a kimono, her face glowing from a bath. His mother began to serve him and Rachel: a milchidige (dairy) meal; pickled herring, boiled potatoes with sour cream, and spinach borsht.
“Maybe Pa’ll be mad if we eat without him,” Hershy said.
“Eat,” his mother said. “Let him be mad enough to burst when he comes home, but if he can’t come home on time I won’t feed him. I’ll teach him a lesson.”
He turned away from her, hardly able to recognize her, not only because she was getting bigger with the baby but also because she was so stirred up.
“Maybe Pa ain’t home because he’s mad on Rachel,” he said.
“Why should he be mad on me?” Rachel asked.
“You know why. You know plenty why. You made him hurt.”
“Who? Me?”
“Yah. You.”
Rachel looked at his mother.
“Did I, Ma?” she asked. “Did I?”
Hershy’s mother didn’t answer.
“Ah, Pa ain’t the kind of guy to stay mad,” Rachel said. “He’s too sweet a guy.”
“So why’d you make him look like he was punched in the nose?”
“Ah, shut up. I feel bad enough as it is.” Rachel turned to Hershy’s mother. “Pa ain’t mad, is he?”
His mother didn’t answer.
“A girl’s got a life of her own, ain’t she?” said Rachel.
“Eat,” said Hershy’s mother. “The food will get cold.”
Hershy looked down to the food. What was she talking about? The food, except for the boiled potatoes, was served cold.
“What’d I do, stand up for my rights?” said Rachel. “What do I have to do: say excuse me for living? All right, excuse me for living.”
“Maybe,” said Hershy’s mother, placing a glass of milk and a plate of chocolate-covered cookies in front of him, “Papa’s working overtime.”
“Yah,” said Rachel eagerly. “Sometimes a rush job comes in. You have to stay until it’s finished. That’s a job for you.”
“Yes,” said Hershy’s mother. “A man’s time, unless he’s in business, is never his own. A workingman never belongs to his wife or his family, not even to himself: he belongs to a boss, a factory, a piece of machinery, a tool. Remember that, Hershel.”
Hershy nodded. All right, he’d remember. If he had to remember everything he’d have to have a head bigger than the moon.
Rachel pushed away from the table and stood up.
“I have to get a move on,” she said. “I got a date. But when Pa comes home tell him I’m sorry and tell him not to be mad. Okay?”
“Tell him yourself,” said Hershy’s mother.
“Tomorrow, I’ll tell him. Tonight, I’ve got to rush.”
“Can’t you ever stay home?”
“Aw, Ma.”
“Like a wild Indian you live. Night after night, rush, rush, rush, hoolya, hoolya, hoolya. You’ll go crazy living like that.”
“Aw, Ma.”
“But what do you do night after night?”
Rachel didn’t answer.
“Are you careful, at least? Papa’d go crazy if anything’d happen to you. That’s why he worries about you. It’d kill him if anything happened.”
“Yah,” said Hershy, as though for his father, “Whyn’t you stay home sometime?”
“You shut up, Hershy.”
“It’s not your business, Hershel,” his mother said.
“It is, too,” he said. “People talk.”
“Who?” his mother wanted to know.
“People.”
He didn’t know exactly who. The kids shut up when he was around. But he felt that they talked. His father’s fears disturbed him. If Rachel shamed him and his family he’d kill her. But he wanted her to go out with Joey, too. It made him important. It made him feel safe. But his father’s fears mixed him up. He wished everything was easy. He wished everything was like before.
“Let people talk,” said Rachel. “I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Hershy’s mother. “You know too much. These days, a girl knows too much.”
“Aw, relax, Ma. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“That’s the trouble. Now you’re old enough. And with men now it’s tochas aufen tisch, you can’t hide behind long bloomers and a corset made of bone, they don’t stand for monkey business.”
Rachel looked steadily at her. “I thought you were on my side, Ma,” she said.
“I’m on Papa’s side, too. I’m on the side of respect. We have to live with our name.”
“A name, a name. You live and die and who remembers you?”
“But until you die people talk.”
“Talk is cheap. You can buy it for a nickel in any phone booth.”
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. She seemed to fling herself out of the kitchen. She shut the door of her bedroom. When she came out, dressed in a red taffeta gown with a low hipline and a silver spangle shaped like a flower above her plump breast, Hershy watched his mother’s face soften, as though, after relenting, she had moved into Rachel’s position. Looking at her, Rachel’s set face relaxed and her eyes began to sparkle. Women, thought Hershy. Go understand them.
Just then an automobile horn began tooting and the sparkle in Rachel’s eyes seemed to fizz out like a roman candle.
“Be careful, Rachel. Be careful.”
“I will, Ma. I will.”
Rachel rushed out of the house. Hershy and his mother watched from the window as she got into the touring car. After it sped away, his mother said:
“She’ll freeze to death.”
Back in the kitchen, waiting but averting the thought of Hershy’s father not being home, his mother began to question him about Joey Gans. She knew that he owned a restaurant with his brother and that it had a poolroom in the back, where gambling went on, and she warned Hershy that if she ever caught him in there she’d kill him. She knew also that Joey’s father was a melamed, a Hebrew teacher. That was in his favor. He had money, too. That was more in his favor. And he was respected, too. But was it true that the goyim stood in holy terror of him?
“Yah,” said Hershy.
“Like a king? Like a Samson?”
“Yah.”
“Then how could he be bad? He protects people, he doesn’t kill them.”
“Joey ain’t a bad guy. Only Pa’s afraid he is.”
“Papa doesn’t know everything. But if I could only see his face. If I saw him, I’d know. What does he look like?”
“Big. Strong. A giant. He got a fist like a sledgehammer. Muscles like a horse. A face so strong it always needs a shave.”
“You call that a description? What does he really look like?”
“I told you, for Cry Yike.”
“His eyes, for instance. What are they like?”
“I don’t know. Maybe like William S. Hart, the cowboy, or Tom Mix.”
“Like them, God forbid? It isn’t possible. What could Rachel see in a pair of stones like they have? Are you sure Joey hasn’t a pair of eyes like the moving-picture stars, Charles Ray or Wallace Reid?”
“Who? Them sissies?”
“Ach, go out and play and leave me alone. From you I’ll find out nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Okay. So I don’t know. So I’ll go out and play.”
He didn’t have much fun playing. For the first time in his life he became conscious of not being wholly involved in a game. He couldn’t name what was bothering him; it was something; it made him feel very peculiar. Before, when he went into a game reluctantly because of some anger or irritation, the magic of the street, through the guys and the game itself, would lift him up and hurl him right into its spirit, completely absorbed. Now, he couldn’t feel it, he couldn’t get lost. What was happening to him? he wondered.
“Hey, what’s a matter, Hershy?”
“Nothing.”
“Ah, come on, it’s your turn.”
There was a ball. There were two guys. One was the catcher at home plate; the other was supposed to be the third baseman. He was supposed to steal home but they had trapped him, were closing in on him as he shuttled between them, the ball that was to tag him being tossed back and forth, whirling in a yellow orbit of light under the swaying arc of the lamppost, its whacking sound accenting the excited voices surrounding him. For a moment, scuffing and scampering back and forth, his eyes as intense and wary as the hunted, the ball seemed to lift him away from himself and socked him right into the game. Suddenly he felt that he himself had become the ball, being tossed back and forth over a crazy crouched shadow, and he stopped and was tagged out.
“Hey, what’s a matter, Hershy?”
“Nothing.”
“Just when you was ready to slide into home plate, zippo, you stop and get tagged out.”
“I know.”
“Just when you was going to be safe, zingo.”
“Yah,” he said.
He left before the game was finished. His mother was looking at the clock in the kitchen.
“Pa home yet?” he asked.
“No. Where were you?”
“Playing.”
She had the bankbook in her hand and drummed it on the table. “Where could he be?” she asked.
“Maybe working overtime, you said.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Why? You think something happened?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why? What’d I say?”
“Don’t even think it.”
“I didn’t think nothing.”
“Then shut up.”
He shut up. The clock ticked loud. The minute hand hardly moved. The hour hand was still, so still in the ticking sound. His mother had her eyes on the clock, but her eyes looked blurred. She shuddered each time the minute hand jerked a space.
“He never worked so late before,” she said.
Hershy didn’t know what to say. He hardly knew what to think. He had a superstition that if you thought about anything steadily it would become real. He didn’t want what was trying to get into his head to become real.
“Where could he be?” she asked. “What could have happened?”
“Don’t worry, Ma. He’ll be home.”
“Certainly, he’ll be home. Where could he go? But what if something happened?”
“What, Ma?” A hard lump suddenly formed in his throat. “What could happen?”
“Shut up and go to sleep. Take a glass of milk and go to sleep.”
She rose and brought a bottle of milk out of the icebox and poured a glassful. Then she cut a slice of pumpernickel bread.
“Here,” she said.
Hershy dunked the bread in the milk, and, as he ate and swallowed, without being able to wash down the lump in his throat, his mother, as though answering the ticking of the clock, said: “Nothing happened. He’ll be home soon. Nothing happened.” It was exactly what he was saying to himself; it had to become real; he was saying it often enough in his head.
Then, thinking out loud, with woeful creases bunching up her face, she said: “If something happened, what would happen to the money in the bank? It’s in his name. I can’t read or write. To get money from a bank you need a signature. Who could sign? Only David. The bank then will keep the money. I’ll be left penniless. Oh, oh, oh.”
“What are you talking, Ma?”
“I know what I’m talking. Oh, the curse of being ignorant, of being married to a workingman. The curse of being bound to a man and his job. If there is no man for the job, what is there left for the woman, a woman with a child: the street? What can a woman do with no skill, no education: beg, steal?”
“What do you mean, Ma? What’s Pa’s is yours, ain’t it?”
“Who knows? In this crazy world, who knows anything?”
“Let me see.” He took the bankbook from her hand and looked at the small print inside.
“Well, what does it say?”
The print and the words were a blur. He read out loud. Nothing in it made sense to either of them.
“You see?” she said. “The banks, the smart banks, they make it impossible for anybody to understand anything.”
“Yah.”
“They’d like nothing better than to cheat us.”
“Maybe a lawyer can tell us what to do?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe we should see Benny by the grocery. He’s going to be a lawyer. Maybe he’ll know.”
“Shut up.”
He looked at her frantic face in astonishment.
“Nothing happened yet,” she said.
“Who said something did?”
“Shut up and go to sleep before I go crazy.”
He left reluctantly, got undressed slowly, and crept under the covers on the couch. But he couldn’t fall asleep. The clock ticked too loud. His heart beat too hard. The coals in the stove were making too much noise. The wind outside made him shiver.
Nothing happened yet, he told himself.
A man suddenly reared up with a hammer in his hand. It came down with terrific force, but instead of driving the nail into a board it struck the hand that was holding the nail in place. The shocking pain made him gasp for breath. The hand had suddenly become a bloody pulp. He shuddered away from the image.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened.
He heard the whir of an electric saw. A man put a plank of wood to it. The saw bit into the wood, made the sawdust fly, made the wood scream. The saw suddenly loosened from its mooring and whirled right at the man. He closed his eyes tight, trying to blank out the scene, but the saw ripped through the dazzling white dots of tight blackness and cut the man in two.
Nothing, nothing, nothing happened.
He was utterly alone. Rachel was gone, married, living far away. He was utterly alone with his mother. He had to fall asleep. Oh, sleep, because tomorrow he had to go to work. He had come home so tired he couldn’t eat. Oh, sleep, because he needed rest to work. Sleep, sweetheart, sleep, his mother was saying. You are the man now. You have to sleep if you are to earn a living for us. Sleep, babele, sleep, so that I won’t have to go out in the street. No, dearest, you can’t go out and play. You’ll never be able to play again. You will have to make new friends. They will be men. You will have to be a man. No, no more play. You’ll have to sleep to work hard. So sleep, sleep.
A tear dried into a stone. It welled up in him, so big it began to choke. No, Pa, he yelled without sound. Don’t let nothing happen, Pa.
His face was set with sweat and tears when he heard the kitchen door open and shut, and his heart leaped at the sound of his mother yelling and his father trying to quiet her down. He ran to him and wrapped his arms around him and felt the cold outdoors against his clothes and smelled the familiar odor of wood and sweat that was part of him, as his mother called his father every black name he had ever heard.
There had been a union meeting. The men were going out on strike. It was going to be a big strike, a general strike in the trade. It started first in New York. The New York carpenters wanted support. So the Chicago carpenters were going to give them support. And they were going to get what the New York carpenters wanted: a dollar an hour and a shorter work week.
For that, shrieked Hershy’s mother, he had almost made her go out of her mind with worry? What affair was it of his if crazy people wanted to go out and have their heads broken?
His father tried to calm her. It had to be his affair. He’d have to do what the union decided. Imagine, he said. A dollar an hour. That would really be something. No other worker in industry got that much. Not even Henry Ford paid that much. Why, a wage like that, with a shorter work week, would make a man out of a worker. Why, the world would begin to belong to the worker.
His mother laughed at him. A dollar an hour, she sneered. Cold beets, they’d get, a club on the head, a good jail sentence, they’d get. What business did he have anyhow to think of going on strike? Him, a greenhorn, a man the government could send back to Russia on the next boat. Was he crazy or something?
No, he insisted, he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t a greenhorn, either. He was a citizen. He’d like to see the government send him back to Russia.
Oh, she groaned. Suddenly she was blessed with a hero for a husband. Suddenly a Bolshevik was in her house. Suddenly a striker. Over her dead body was he going on strike.
What would she have him do: scab?
He wasn’t going to scab, either.
What was he going to do? Not an honest job was open to him.
She knew what he was going to do. She knew that he had no business allying himself with common workers. Imagine, a man with money, tying himself to a dollar an hour dream. Imagine, a man with money, deciding to go out to get his head broken. Not on her life. No, he was going to find a business and make a man of himself.
His father shrugged his shoulders.
She knew what she was saying. This was an example of a worker’s life. He never knew where he was. If the boss didn’t fire him or lay him off, then the union took him off a job. Like a dog, he was between his mouth and his tail, chasing himself in circles. But a man in business, he knew where he was all the time. He was his own boss. He made the decisions. He had control over his life. He came home on time for supper; he had time for his children and his wife; and he never drove his family out of its mind with worry. One thing she had learned about America: each man had to make his own fortune or else he had no business here. And he, if she had anything to do with it, was going to make his own fortune, he was going to stop thinking about strikes. If he didn’t she’d leave him. She’d take Hershel and leave him.
A strange look came over his father’s face. It reminded Hershy of a kid he once hit. The kid just sat down and looked up at him in amazement. It made him walk away.
The news of the strike caused a flurry of excitement in the neighborhood. Most of the men on the street belonged to unions and, through Hershy’s father, saw their own battles being fought.
Mr. Pryztalski, the Pole upstairs, who had been in the stockyards strike the year before, stopped at the back door on his way home from work each night.
“Well?” he asked. “How goes it?”
“So-so,” said his father.
“Don’t give an inch.” Mr. Pryztalski curled up his beefy fingers and pounded his thick fist against the door. “Be strong like the stockyard workers. If you lose, maybe my bosses will take away everything we won. If you win, we will be stronger. So be strong.”
His father nodded with determination.
“If you give in I’ll chop you up in little pieces. I’ll kick you out of my flat.”
“I won’t give in.”
“That’s good talk. I talk funny for a landlord, huh? But I’m a worker, too. If you win a dollar an hour and a shorter work week, maybe later I’ll get it, too. I’ll live a little. Imagine, a dollar an hour and a forty-four hour week; it’ll be a worker’s world.”
Hershy’s father agreed.
Mr. Pryztalski, who considered himself an authority on strikes, since he had been in one which was won, concluded: “Give them hell.”
Mr. Bromberg, the cigar maker who lived next door, claimed a great stake in the strike. Impressively smoking an expensive cigar he made, which was his only link to wealth, his bronchial cough hacked away at his whole body and his dried tobacco-leaf face seemed to crack apart as he said: “Listen, Melov, my union just gave your union a lot of money. So don’t lose, you hear.”
Mr. Greenberg, the dress cutter who lived in the flat above the Bromberg’s, loosened a piece of phlegm from his throat, then raised his stooped shoulders and pointed a gnarled finger at Mr. Bromberg. “Look who’s talking. And do you think my union, the garment makers, are cheap about a dollar? I’ll have you know the garment makers buy and sell the cigar makers. Without us, no strike can be a success.”
“What’s the difference?” said Hershy’s father. “So long as we win.”
Even Old Doc Yak, a machinist in the nearby railroad yard, who owned a house across the street and who was considered a madman because he worried more about his garden and the fence that surrounded it than a human being, called Hershy over one day and glared at him from his broad face and bushy eyebrows.
“I wasn’t on your fence, Mr. Peterzak. Honest.”
“Who said you was?”
“Then what do you want?”
“How’s your pa?”
“Okay.”
“Here, give him this.”
It was then that Hershy noticed the red flower sticking out of Old Doc Yak’s rough hand; it came out of one of the many pots that lined his windowsill.
“For good luck,” he said.
The sentiment embarrassed Hershy but he felt proud in taking the flower and handing it to his father, who, in turn, and with great dignity, presented it to his mother.
“From an admirer,” said his father.
“Who?”
“From all the neighbors. They think well of us. They respect us.”
“Respect won’t bring a dollar in the house. Remember.”
“No, but it brings a good feeling. It makes you feel you belong.”
Hershy’s mother accepted the flower and put it in a glass of water; no matter what she felt about the strike, she couldn’t help but feel pleased at the gesture and its meaning.
Among the kids, of course, who saw only danger in a strike, Hershy’s father was lifted to a pinnacle: Tough Guy. It was hard to see him in that role, but it was a fact that he went out to the picket line every day to brave the threat of a broken head. He was not a yellow scab like Jo-Jo’s father who had scabbed on a job the year before and as a result couldn’t find anybody to talk to him afterward. His pals made Hershy feel proud of his father, but in school he sat in fear, wondering what might happen and praying that nothing would.
For all that year, in a period called Current Events, teacher had dedicated herself to the duty of educating her pupils to the American way of life. In her missionary zeal, she attacked directly the roots of their lives, since, in her opinion, all of the world’s ills, from bobbed hair to bolshevism, converged in one word: foreignism. Pinched by her rimless pince-nez glasses, her bony corset, the pins in her hair, and the very wrinkles of her flesh, she turned into a battleground, it seemed, upon which raged the forces of destruction that were running riot in the world.
Hershy felt personally indicted. It seemed, when she talked, that her eyes flared out at him and that her bony forefinger pointed right at him: for on his school records it was stated that his mother and father were from Russia, where the winds of death were gathering; even he was born there. It seemed, as she made him squirm and slink in his seat, trying to hide from her steady accusations, that he had turned dark and evil. It was he who wanted to make of America the burning hell that was Europe. It was he, the fomenter of strikes and revolutions and disaster, who was the impure element of America. It was he who was crucifying humanity on a barbed-wire fence and who made mankind stalk the Earth with a gun in its hand. It was he who forced the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to thunder through the sky.
America, which teacher represented, reared up like a wild horse, crashed down upon him, and trampled all over him. And now, with his father on strike, her accusations pierced deeper; his whole being shrunk with fear before them.
In defense, Hershy wondered who she was talking about: the dark, evil bomb-thrower, his father, who turned the other way when he saw a cockroach so that he wouldn’t have to kill it? Mr. Pryztalski, who talked loud and looked big, but who had a childlike belief in Christmas? Mr. Bromberg, the cigar maker, who looked more dead than alive? Mr. Peterzak, who looked fierce, but who spent all his spare time trying to raise flowers? Uncle Ben, the shlimazel? Uncle Irving, who would rather play cards than eat? Uncle Hymie, the big businessman?
Outside, completely rejected, the un-American children talked.
“Ah, teacher. Yap yap yap.”
“Yah.”
“If you want to know, she ain’t even American. Nobody is American. Only the Indians are American, if you want to know.”
“Yah. Mayflower or no Mayflower, she’s a foreigner. So what’s she yapping about?”
“You know what she needs?”
“Yah.”
“One good one. One real good one. That’s what my big bro says. That’s what they all need. By a Russian, too.”
“Wow.”
“She knows what she’s talking about like I know French. Parley-vous, that’s all the French I know.”
Thus they dispensed with teacher, in order not to be whirled completely out of the pattern of their lives.
“Don’t worry about a thing, Hersh.”
“No.”
But Hershy worried. And each day he came home and saw his father alive he’d exhale with relief. Because teacher was not the only one who talked.
There were the restless big guys on the corner who dreamed of getting their hands on a wobbly or a Bolshevik. A newspaper wrote about a striker out West who was taken out of jail and lynched. A story came to him of an I.W.W. who had his testicles crushed, and then, begging to be shot, was thrown out of an automobile. Uncle Hymie came over to warn his father: if he wasn’t careful he might find himself in jail, he might find his money taken away, he might find himself deported to Russia, where he could starve for a piece of bread like the rest of the Bolsheviks there, citizen or no citizen. Uncle Hymie, with his warning, terrified Hershy’s mother.
She cursed the men on the street, with their flowers and their heroic stances, and she cursed the union and the men who worked with his father, and she cursed her own lot. Others could pin their hopes on him, could make him feel like he was doing something important, but in the end it was the woman, who brought the man into the world, who did all the suffering. What would happen to her and Hershel if anything should happen to him? Who was he to suddenly want to turn the world upside down? What if he did win? What would he have: a dollar an hour, a job he couldn’t call his own? What was he striving for anyhow, a piece of dung, when in the shop windows were steaks for the asking? What kind of flaw was there in his character that made him endanger his life for a future that nobody in his right mind wanted? When was he going to stop this nonsense? When was he going to put his time and energy to better use? When was he going to start looking for a business?
Later, he said. Later.
Hershy worried more the night Rachel came home and said: “Pa, don’t go picketing tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“There’s going to be trouble.”
“How?”
“Some scabs are going to try to get into the plant.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Never mind how. I’m telling you.”
“Will your sweetheart be there?”
“Never mind. I warned you. Don’t go.”
Hershy’s mother tried to prevent him from leaving the house the following day, but he left despite her. Hershy sat tense all through school that day. When he got home his father was there. He wasn’t hurt but he looked tired. He looked like something in him had been destroyed. Some gangsters, he said, tried to make trouble, but nobody had got into the plant. The bosses, however, got what they wanted as a result; they got an injunction against picketing; and the union officials had decided to honor the injunction for reasons he didn’t understand. The strike, he felt, was practically broken.
“Good,” said Hershy’s mother. “Good.”
But, though men were free to scab, it did the company no good; for nobody with the necessary skill to make cabinets could be had. The strike settled down to a siege, with the strikers’ only weapons being their patience and their skills.
Hershy’s father continued to go to union headquarters every day, but somehow his heart wasn’t in it any longer, and each day he came home looking depressed. He was not used to being idle; it made him feel lonely and useless. Being with men who quickly became demoralized when not working, as though all their life and vitality were bound up in their hands, began to take its toll. Being around the house more often, with Hershy’s mother nagging him to start looking for a business, began to undermine him.
It was strange for Hershy to find him at home when he left for school in the morning and to see him again when he came home from school. It seemed, in the way his father carried his head and body, that he was waiting endlessly for something to happen, like a sick man impatient to get out of bed to start functioning again. In his waiting, he took to moving the furniture about, building new shelves for the pantry, and a new phonograph for the house. The day he drew some money out of the bank for living expenses he seemed to come home with a hole in him.
“You see,” said Hershy’s mother. “You see what I mean?”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll start looking for a business.”
Hershy wished he could do something for him. It was strange that he should feel sorry for an older man, for his father. He could never let him know he felt this way. He wanted to make him feel strong again, very sure. He wished he could understand why his father was afraid of a business.
“What’s wrong with a business?” he asked his father once.
His father tried to make him understand. “Nothing,” he said. “But for me, it doesn’t seem right. You see, Hershel, there are three lands of men in this world. The ones who dream but who never realize their dreams, they are the very unhappy ones, the destroyed ones; the ones who dream and who are able to grasp their dreams, they are the successful ones, the dictators of the world; and the ones who think they understand themselves and who try to live inside their understanding, they are the happiest ones. Maybe I am the last kind of a man, if I could only be left alone. Being in business for me would mean giving up the whole of my past, and I don’t know if I have the courage to do it. Perhaps the past is an anchor; it can either drag you down or make you feel secure; it all depends how you look at it.”
Hershy thought he understood: his father wanted only what he had, he was afraid to reach for more. All right, he defended his father to himself, so his father didn’t have guts; but he didn’t hurt anyone, did he; he wasn’t yellow, was he? But he knew that his father’s anchor was slipping away. For each day he made a pretense of looking through the newspapers for a business and each day he said he was going to look at a business he had seen advertised. But as he was greeted eagerly by Hershy’s mother when he came home, he shook his head hopelessly and said: “There was nothing there.”
“Why? What was the matter?”
“Everything. A good business nobody wants to sell, but everybody wants to get rid of a bad one.”
“They can’t all be bad, can they?”
“Those that are advertised are.”
“Look again, David.”
“All right. But if somebody wants to sell a business there must be something wrong with it.”
“Look again and see.”
But Hershy knew that his father was doing nothing, really, but keeping peace in the house, for he had seen him a few times sitting idly in the park. Once Hershy approached him.
“Hello, Pa.”
His father looked at him in surprise. “What are you doing here, Hershel?”
“I was playing ball with some guys.”
“Oh.”
“Was you down by the strike today?”
“Yes.”
“They still striking?”
“Yes.”
“When they going back to work?”
His father shrugged his shoulders; his hands seemed lifeless.
“Did you look on a business, too?”
His father avoided the question. “Let’s take a boat ride,” he said.
There were a couple of boats on the lagoon for the first time. The snow had melted for good, the winds had died, and, in the longer and warmer days, there was the wonderful surprise of buds and sprouting grass. They rode out on the lagoon silently. First, his father rowed, then Hershy rowed; then they rested and drifted over the calm water, with the landscape seeming to flow about them.
“We used to have fun in the old days, huh, Pa?”
His father nodded sadly.
“Remember, we used to go on a picnic and Ma’d take off her shoes and stockings and she’d run on the grass and scream when it tickled, and we’d go on a boat ride with a mob of people bumping us all the time?”
“Ay.”
Silence. Remembering.
“How is school, Hershel?”
“All right.”
Silence. Hershy trying to think of something to say. His father still remembering.
“In the old country, what was wealth for a Jew? What did houses, money, property mean? It was always something that shriveled your life, something that made you live in fear, for in a moment all of it could have been taken from a Jew. That’s why education, knowledge, was so precious. It was something nobody could take away from you. It was something that could make you feel immortal. I wish I had known that then.”
“You mean, like that, somebody could take what you had away from you?”
“Like that, if you were a Jew. Here, it couldn’t happen. But there are a hundred other ways of losing what you have. To spend a lifetime grasping, only to be able to lose it, is senseless. What is it in the end: another possession? But what you have in your head you can never lose. Remember that, and perhaps you’ll do better in school.”
Silence. His father seemed spent. An oar slipped away from him. He roused himself.
“Pretty soon it’s going to be Pesach.”
“Yah.”
“Pretty soon you’re going to be a man.”
“Yep, pretty soon.”
“You’ll have to start going to Hebrew school for your barmitzvah.”
“Will I have to?”
“You’ll have to.”
Silence. Drifting.
“Pesach used to be a nature festival. It was to observe the beginning of spring.”
“Yah?”
“Later it meant the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt.”
“Oh.”
“Still, it’s a happy holiday. In the old country it was a big holiday. People went crazy getting ready for it. Happiness came with it. Here, it’s like a trouble, like a business affair, get done with it fast.”
The sun began to sink over the western slope of Bunker Hill. Hershy looked at the gentle slope sadly. He saw a kid tumble down to the bottom of the hill.
“We used to play cowboys and Indians there,” he said, pointing to it.
“Don’t you play there any more?”
“Sure. But it used to be more fun before.”
“That’s because you’re getting older.”
“Yah? Is that why?”
“Yes. Slowly, with the years, the fun works out of you. Something else takes its place. Something more endurable.”
His father started to row back to the boathouse, whose shadows were rippled in the purple water. In the wake of the boat, Hershy felt his world lap slowly away, and it made him feel sad, as though a good part of him were washing up against the rushes on the shore. Holding his father’s hand, as they walked home, feeling hard and close to him, he felt like a grown man.
“I won’t tell Ma I saw you,” he said.
His father squeezed his hand and smiled at him.
The next time he saw his father in the park, playing with a blade of grass, he ducked quickly and avoided meeting him. He didn’t want to embarrass him or make him think he was spying. At home, now that he appeared to be looking for a business, his father tried to assume his role as the positive man. He was tired, he complained. He had hunted hard that day. One would think that there’d be hundreds of people jumping at him from every corner to get at his money. But it was hard to find something good.
“You sure you’re looking?” Hershy’s mother asked.
“What a question! But I’m beginning to realize that it’s as hard to find a good business as a good job.”
Hershy’s mother had no way of knowing anything different. She fed him and treated him as the positive man.
Uncle Irving came over one night, like the spring, bursting with enthusiasm. There was a high shine in his eyes. Even the dandruff from his scalp had disappeared and there was a luster to his receding hair. Everybody’s troubles would soon be over, he claimed. Nature was changing to celebrate their good fortune. Call him the Messiah, a new day was being born. Because he had come across something on his laundry route that could happen to a man only once in a million years: a real buy, a steal, a giveaway.
Well, well, what was it? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.
Everybody knew that he wasn’t Ben, the shlimazel. Everybody knew that he had never come begging for a penny. Everybody knew that he had an eye like a hawk and that his word was as good as the ace of spades. Everybody had always said of him: “Irving is a man who never blows hot and cold. Give Irving a chance and he will do wonders.”
All right, all right, but what was he so excited about?
Everybody knew that he was a hustler, a man who knew a good thing when he saw it. Well, he had seen it: a beauty, a gem, so cheap that it was a steal. What was it? A laundry. And how much? Fifteen thousand dollars. A diamond of a buy.
Hershy’s father leaned back in his chair, practically disinterested: who had all that money? But Uncle Irving said: “Listen, listen.” With almost a force, he brought them leaning over the dining-room table, perhaps fascinated by his Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down his scrawny neck, or by the overhead lights that gleamed off his high forehead, or by the shadows of his hawklike nose on his face, or the quiver of his long hands on the table. Whatever it was, he had Hershy’s mother folding her hands tightly and his father listening patiently.
The plant itself, said Uncle Irving, was worth more than fifteen thousand, much more. He ought to know. Not a dime was being charged for good will. That itself was sometimes worth a fortune. But the man’s health was broken, and, as a result, he had let the business run down, and now was willing to sell at a sacrifice.
Hershy’s father shook his head. Somehow, he said, every business put up for sale involved a man’s health and was being sacrificed. They ought to face it. These propositions were no good. To succeed where another had failed took a crazy kind of hope and confidence. He would like to see a business where the owner was still in good health with a plant that was running good. But he knew that a solid business was never put up for sale.
That was true, Uncle Irving admitted. But why should a man let an idiot’s failure govern his future? One man fails, another succeeds. That was human nature. Life, the scientists said, crawled out of the sea: the strong ones adapted themselves to the land, the weak ones died. That was life. In the end, life went on. Thousands of Jews crawled out of their holes in Europe and went to a new land: some of them crawled back into new holes, but others, the ones who counted, adapted themselves to the new land, and they saw the sun, they lived. That was life, too. He had a motto: Never look at a failure, always look at a success. And if one has an opportunity to succeed where another failed, why not, why not?
Hershy’s mother liked the way Uncle Irving talked. Talk, she said. Talk.
All right, Uncle Irving was willing to talk. Sense, too. Now he knew that Hershy’s father had ten thousand dollars. Well, he had fifteen hundred dollars saved up. Yesterday, he had gone to a loan association. First, he told them all about the laundry. Then he said: if he got a partner to put up half the money, and if he put up his fifteen hundred dollars, would they loan him six thousand dollars? And they said, yes. All they needed for security was the laundry. Now, if the loan association saw it as a safe risk, that was all he needed to know, that was all the guarantee for success that anybody needed.
Would they really lend him the money? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.
Yes, said Uncle Irving. He didn’t come with any idle prattle. He had investigated everything.
Who had ever known a loan company to throw a dollar away? said Hershy’s mother. For them to give money, the laundry must be as good as gold.
Absolutely, said Uncle Irving. And what he wanted was simple. He wanted to go into partnership with Hershy’s father. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.
But what, pleaded Hershy’s father, did he know about a laundry?
What was there to know? Uncle Irving argued. Did one have to be a genius to operate one? Even Hymie, a man who could hardly sign his name, operated one. The operation was so simple even a Chinaman could do it. In the plant he was talking about there were six washing machines and two ringers. One man, in Hymie’s laundry, took care of six machines, and got fifteen dollars a week for it. That was a workingman for you; if he didn’t own the machine, he got nothing for his work. Each machine had four pockets. In one operation, then, with twenty-four pockets, at a minimum of a dollar a bundle, you could make twenty-four dollars. Now, a laundry can handle at least seven loads a day, close to two hundred bundles in the one he was talking about, and with loads like that on Monday and Tuesday, the heaviest days, you could make nearly four hundred dollars to take care of expenses; the loads on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday become sheer profit. The only wages they’d have to spend would be for an engineer to take care of the boilers and the machinery, and a girl to handle the books and the phone calls. Hershy’s father would be on the inside, tending the machines, and he would be the driver on the outside bringing in the business. And he was a master salesman, that Hymie could tell them; once he had brought in so many customers that his route had to be split three ways. How could they fail?
It sounded good. Everything sounded good in talk. Hershy’s mother could hardly contain herself. She wanted to speculate more on the profits. Uncle Irving made the business look like a gold mine. He had Hershy’s father, with talk about his skilled hands and brain, willing to admit that he could handle the inside of the plant much better than the dumb laborers Uncle Hymie hired at a slave wage. And with both of them looking after the business details, with both of them being able to read and write and talk, what else was there to know, how could they fail?
The talk went into other aspects.
Look, said Uncle Irving. Hershy’s father was on strike. Already, he was eating into his savings. How long could money last if he kept that up? And supposing he went back to work soon? What could he look forward to: wages? Was that a life, living off wages? And supposing, after he did go back to work, the season got slack? There’d be a layoff. Other factories would slow down then, too. Where does a man turn then? Back into his savings? A workingman can be rich only if he doesn’t eat. Now, he was still young, he was valuable. But in ten years, when he got to be forty could he keep up with a younger man? And then, who is the first to be laid off in a slack season, the younger or older man? Then what does a man of forty have? His savings, if he’s fortunate? And how long could that last? But in business, a man of forty is just beginning, he is in his prime.
Hershy’s mother nodded: true, true. Hershy’s father wondered if he hadn’t been happier as a child, an apprentice. Sure, he was a slave then, but he always knew that he’d get food and shelter. Freedom mixed you up. Would he want that kind of life again? No, he was just talking.
If, continued Uncle Irving, a worker is a greenhorn and a Jew on top of it, he is the first to suffer in bad times. But one thing business does: it puts you on an equal basis with all people who deal with you; in fact, it makes you superior to the people who come to you for service. Are equality and independence bad things to hope for? It’s what people kill themselves for. Why does a Jew always want to open a business, even if it’s a little candy store that enslaves him? Because it gives him independence; he has people come to him; and no matter who it is, if they want something you have, you’re a king, even if you’re a little candy-store owner. After all, why had they come to America? Sure, for equality and independence. Here, there was the promise for a man to build a dynasty. There was the promise for a man to do wonders, not only for himself and his wife, but for his children. And after all, what does a father live for if not for his family? How nice it would be in one’s later years to be able to say: “Here, son, here’s an empire.” How nice it would be in one’s later years to sit back, a gentleman, a man to be remembered, a man who has kept his family together, a man who is deeply respected by his children and his neighbors. Ay, what a successful business can do for a man.
For a moment there was silence. Then Uncle Irving shook himself.
“Well,” he said. “What do you say?”
“I’ll think about it,” said Hershy’s father.
“Don’t think too long. Somebody else might grab it from under our nose.”
“Pesach is almost here. I’ll look the laundry over, and then come to a decision after Pesach.”
“I warn you, David. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t wait too long.”
“All right, Irving, all right, but don’t rush me. A business at a sacrifice is never grabbed up in a hurry.”
After Uncle Irving left, Hershy’s mother couldn’t wait to see Uncle Hymie. He would know. She had to get his opinion immediately. And the following day they went to his house.
Uncle Hymie listened carefully, his eyes blinking rapidly, as though catching every word and storing it in his mind; then, as from a great height, he said:
“David, if you were another man, I’d say, yes, go ahead, take a gamble, good luck. But you’re a man who is not suited for business. Business isn’t only dreaming and hoping, like your wife likes to do. It’s hard work.”
“Am I not used to hard work?”
“Yes, but this is different. It isn’t like a job, where somebody orders you around all the time. In business, you have to do the ordering. You have to give up your soul for it. You have to make your heart become a rock at times. You have to make decisions that don’t let you sleep at night. To be a success, you have to give up your whole past. You can’t let a thought enter your head or a feeling enter your heart if it hasn’t a dollar sign on it. I know.
“Besides, I don’t trust Irving. What has he got to lose: fifteen hundred dollars? What will happen if he can’t pay the six thousand dollars to the loan company? You’re a partner. You’ll be responsible for it then. And if you can’t pay, what do you think will happen? The loan company will come in and take over the laundry. Where will your seventy-five hundred dollars be then?”
“Can they do a thing like that?”
“What do you think? Irving can talk like a fiend. He can almost make one believe anything.”
“But he was a good driver, wasn’t he?”
“Sure. Once he got so much business I had to split up his route three ways and hire two extra drivers to handle his customers, but that was when the business was young. Now there’s a fierce competition. You have to offer real service. Nothing can go wrong. You have to woo customers. That’s the way it is today. And if you go in business you’ll soon find out. Every other laundry will be ready to cut your throat, remember that. Even I, your friend, your brother-in-law, will have to be ready to do the same. That’s business.”
“Then your advice is no?”
“For somebody else: yes. For you, David, no.”
Hershy’s mother contained herself until she got outside. “He’s jealous,” she said.
“Why’s he jealous?” said Hershy’s father.
“He’s afraid you might become a success, more successful than him.”
“Why?”
“He’s afraid you’ll give him competition. Maybe with you in business he’ll make a dollar less, the greedy swine. He’s afraid to lose Irving, too, his best driver.”
“Maybe you’re right. Who knows what can go on in a man’s head?”
“And the way he talked down to you, I could have torn his eyes out. David, listen to me. You go and look at the laundry. You make up your own mind. What have we got to lose: seventy-five hundred dolars? It looks like a fortune but it can become nothing. But look at what we have to gain: a whole new world. Let’s have courage, David. Let’s have courage.”
The day Hershy’s father looked at the business he came home looking very depressed. The place, he said, looked like a hole. When he saw the man who owned it his heart almost caved. The man was old beyond his years, with a drawn face, a stoop, and a stiff arthritic leg. He was able to understand why the man wanted to make a sacrifice. He wondered, as he talked to the man, if he would soon look like that. He wondered if it would be worthwhile sinking not only his money but also his life into a business like that.
But was the machinery all right? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.
Yes, it looked all right.
Was everything else all right?
Yes, he supposed everything else was all right.
Did it look like it had a chance?
It had what a human being could put into it.
Well, the man was probably old and dead before he started and had let it go to pieces. But he was young and energetic. He could expand it. He could make it so good that later he wouldn’t have to work inside; he’d work in an office, like Hymie.
He would have to think about it.
He suffered, trying to make a decision, for a week. Hershy had the feeling, during the time, that his father was engaged in a great wrestling match and that it was slowly wearing him out. Finally, on the first day of Passover, his father abruptly came to a decision.
On Passover, the first Seder, was always held at Uncle Hymie’s house. The whole family gathered there, not only to celebrate the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, but also to pay homage to him. Each family dreamed of having an opulent Seder at its own house. They said: “Next year, with luck, it will be at my house.” But when the time came, it was held, without question, at Uncle Hymie’s. As a result, mingled with the joyous meaning of the holiday was a sense of defeat.
On that day, Hershy’s mother left the house early in the afternoon to help Aunt Reva. Toward sundown, Hershy and his father got dressed in their new suits, which they hadn’t worn since the homecoming.
“Look, Pa, the suit fits me better. It ain’t a big bag on me now.”
“Yes, Hershele.”
“Boy, but I must of grown.”
“You certainly have.”
Hershy measured himself against his father. He came up to his mouth. He didn’t have to look up very high to meet his eyes. The thought of almost being as big as him was overwhelming.
“Pretty soon I’ll be as big as you, huh, Pa?”
“Bigger.”
“Boy, I hope so.”
“Why are you so eager to be big?”
“I’ll be able to do anything then. I’ll be strong. I’ll know a lot. I’ll be able to help people in trouble. Even you, Pa.”
“Why, do I look like I’m in trouble?”
“No,” he lied. “Only in case.”
“Yes.” His father studied him. “Before you know it, you’ll be a man one day; you’ll look back and wonder what happened to the child. But you’ll have a childhood to remember.”
Yah, he thought. He was sure he’d remember. It was strange: his father seemed to think of his childhood only on a holiday, as though on all other days he was never a kid and never played a game. It was strange also that he had never been able to picture his father as a child. Could he have come into the world as a grown man? Did all Europeans get born old? He wondered if his father had ever had any fun.
They went off to the synagogue. Hershy had his pockets stuffed with nuts and his bull’s-eye knick. His father carried a dark-blue velvet bag under his arm, containing t’fillin, a prayer shawl, and a Hebrew prayer book. When they got there, a change seemed to come over his father: of peace, safety, belonging, as though coming out of his indecisions and fears from a world he was trying to know into a world he did know. Other men from the neighborhood, who usually acted as though there were a threat in every sound and speck on the street, now seemed to be at one with everybody, bearing themselves with strength.
Some of his pals were there, too, their pockets bulging with nuts; they were impatient for the evening services to start so that while their fathers prayed they could play. They paid a reluctant tribute to the holiday and their fathers by going inside the synagogue when the services started. Though many of them could read Hebrew very few understood it; their teachers seldom taught the language, only the symbols of the alphabet for reading. For most of them, without a rabbi to order their whole culture, the synagogue stood for a completely foreign symbol, which they rejected in their efforts to integrate themselves into the broad stream of American life. So, with little or no understanding of the prayers or of the rituals taking place around the Ark and the Torah, they soon became bored with the hurried mumblings and the swaying rhythms of their fathers’ tallith-draped bodies; and one by one they left their fathers’ sides and came outside, yelling, mocking the rocking and chanting figures of their fathers, and then settled down to playing for nuts.
Hershy got into a game of odds-and-evens: first one up, then two up, then five up, and then, frustrated by his inability to guess right the odd or even number of fingers that were flicked out, ten up. Suddenly, all his nuts were gone. And the kid he was playing with, both overwhelmed by his winnings and frightened that Hershy might start a fight to take them away, ran to his father’s side in the synagogue. Hershy tried to borrow some nuts but nobody would loan him any.
“What! And then give you a chance to win with my nuts? You crazy or something?”
“Ah, be a good guy, will you?”
“No.”
He wandered around, watching the games of odds-and-evens, lagging, and baby-in-the-hole. His spirit was broken, not because there was any value attached to the nuts he had lost but because he had been beaten; something in him, for not being a winner and for not being able to play any longer, was destroyed. Finally, to get away from this feeling, he walked across the street into the park.
A new moon was out, a bright white slit in the deepening blue sky. It didn’t look real. Then he saw a star break through. That didn’t look real, either. There was no breeze and the trees stood tall and still, their twigs swollen with buds. It was so quiet that he could hear the chants from the synagogue. He walked away slowly, hard with loneliness.
Presently, across the boulevard, near a group of bushes, he saw a man and woman stretched out on the new grass. He stooped low and ran across the boulevard and crept into the bushes behind them. At the edge he dropped to his belly and peeked out. The girl was lying on her back, staring up at the sky; the guy was on his side, propped up on his elbow, looking down at her. Hershy was sure that he hadn’t been heard and that he couldn’t be seen. He felt that he was as good as a big-game hunter, as good as any Indian with moccasin shoes. He strained his ears, trying to catch their voices.
“What do you say?” the guy said.
“It’s early.”
“Pretty soon it’ll be dark.”
“All night long it’s dark.”
“So?”
“So what’s your hurry?”
“Listen, I been in a hurry ever since I met you, even before. I ain’t made of iron, baby.”
“But you are, you are. That’s what I like about you, the iron in you.”
“Yah?”
The guy dropped off his elbow right down beside her and pulled her to him, and, as they both began to squirm against each other, Hershy yelled inwardly, with a strange sensation in his stomach: “Wow! Wowee!”
They separated, breathing hard.
“Don’t,” said the girl. “What if somebody’s looking? What if somebody comes by?”
“To hell with them. One crack and I’ll kick their teeth in.”
“But we better go.”
“Where?”
“I thought we were going to the Frolics later.”
“That’s later.”
“Well, I still have to get dressed.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Not yet. Please not yet.”
“When?”
“Sometime.”
“Now. Nobody’s at your house. We’ll have a quiet time.”
“No.”
“What’s to worry about? You said your mother’s at your aunt’s, helping with the Seder. Your father’s in schule and he’s going to your aunt’s from there. If I know Seders, they last a century. So what’s to worry about?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s a matter, you ashamed of bringing me in your house?”
The girl stared at the guy and shook her head.
“Parties. All you know is parties. I’m so busy showing you around I forget what I want. Sometimes I like a quiet time. Say the word, baby, I’ll knock over a bank or something, but let’s not go chasing around now.”
There was a long pause. The girl studied the guy. Hershy waited eagerly.
“All right,” she said.
The guy sprang up and lifted the girl to her feet. He kissed her right on the mouth. Then, as they walked away, something dropped in Hershy. The lamplight, when they appeared under it, brought out their features, and, as they stepped into a parked automobile, he knew who they were. That was Joey Gans’s car, and the girl with him was Rachel. The car started up and drove away. They were going to his house. They were going to do it in his house.
“Where were you?” his father asked.
“In the park.”
“Well, let’s hurry.”
Hershy realized, as they began walking, that they weren’t going directly to Uncle Hymie’s house across the park; his father was going home first.
“Ain’t we going to Uncle Hymie’s for the Seder, Pa?”
“Sure, but first we’ll go home. I want to drop off my tallith and prayer book. It’s only two blocks out of the way.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“We’ll go home anyway. Look at you, how dirty you got. Mama’ll get angry if she sees you so dirty. You’ll shame her. Where were you to get so dirty?”
“In the park, I told you, and I ain’t so dirty. Ma’ll be madder if we come late to the Seder.”
“We won’t be late. Hymie’s schule is farther away than ours. Irving and Ben have to come from their schules on the West Side. We won’t be late. But hurry.”
“But I’m hungry, Pa. I got a bellyache, I’m so hungry.”
“All right, we’ll go home and I’ll give you something to eat. At Hymie’s we won’t eat for an age.”
“But I don’t want to go home.”
His father ignored him and continued walking.
He had to keep him from going home. At the corner, he turned off toward the park, looking behind, watching if his father would follow or chase him, but his father walked directly ahead.
“Come on, Pa. Come on to Uncle Hymie’s. Ma’ll kill us if we’re late.”
His father disappeared after crossing the street. He couldn’t go on alone. He ran back to his side, and glared at him, his fists clenched, his breath hard, his body trembling.
Help me, he prayed. Give me a stroke or something. Make me get runned over or something.
He ran out in the street and began kicking a stone slowly. An automobile appeared but he remained in the middle of the street, following the stone. The horn began blowing, but he paid no attention to it.
Run me over, he said inwardly. I dare you. I double dare you.
The automobile stopped and the man yelled at him and his father ran over and kicked the stone away and yanked him off the street.
“You crazy?”
He pulled away from him and kicked a can along the walk. His father rushed up to the can, and in the scuffle for control of it Hershy tripped. His father kicked the can into a passageway, then jerked him to his feet, and, as Hershy glared at him, slapped his face. The slap stunned him. He backed away, rubbing his cheek with his fingers.
“What’s the matter with you anyway?” his father said.
“All right,” he said. “All right.”
All right, he said again in silence. Go ahead. You’ll see. You’ll see what’s the matter.
“Come on now. No more nonsense.”
“All right.”
He stopped still when he saw Joey’s car outside the house. Then he rushed past his father through the passageway that led to the back of the house and up the wooden stairs. The door was open. He ran through the kitchen. Nobody was in the dining room. Nobody was in the front room. Just as he opened the door of Rachel’s bedroom, he heard the front door open.
“What is it, Hershel?” his father yelled. “What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t answer. Rachel, stark naked, had flung herself against the wall, pulling at the blankets desperately to cover herself, her voice breaking from a gasp into a whimper. “No. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.” Joey was sitting up, huge and matted, with a snarl on his face, and the muscular beauty that Hershy had once seen became a blur of flesh and hair and a tight ugly voice.
“Beat it, you guys. Beat it before I kill you.”
Hershy backed up against his father, who was framed in the doorway. A firecracker seemed to have exploded in his father’s face, and from the shocking pain his body tightened and reeled back, and then the life seemed to go out of him as the velvet bag that held his tallith, t’fillin, and prayer book slipped to the floor.
“Come on, Pa.”
He took his father’s hand and together they walked out of the house. Outside, at the foot of the stairs, his father sat down and buried his face in his trembling hands but didn’t cry.
“We got to go, Pa.”
The tears came at the opening of the Seder when Uncle Hymie’s son, with a high silly voice, said: “Papa, why is this night different from all other nights?”
Hershy felt his heart break.
The others, thinking his father was moved emotionally by the service and the opulent table, stared at him a moment, then relaxed as his face gradually settled into a hard cast.
Later, his father approached Uncle Irving.
“I’ve decided, Irving. I’ll buy the laundry with you.”
Uncle Irving slapped his back joyously. He filled everyone’s glass with wine.
“Next year, with luck,” he said, “the Seder will be at my house.”