Call It Sleep (28 page)

“If you give me the ring!” Aunt Bertha wagged her head mockingly.

“When I give you the ring then! When I give you the ring it will be better that you take it off before going to the dentist's, you understand? There won't be any trouble and nobody'll speak through the nose and we'll save fifty dollars.”

“Now you're talking like a sage!” said Aunt Bertha approvingly. “Why didn't you say that in the first place?”

“Well,” said Mr. Sternowitz uncomfortably. “Only give me room to breathe!”

“Have you found a candy-store that suits you?” asked David's mother. “I mean have you any in mind?”

“No, not yet.” Mr. Sternowitz replied. “I really haven't begun to look for them seriously—naturally. But now I will. I know something about them. My cousin had one and I spent whole nights there. There's only one trouble. Most candy-stores have only two rooms in the back. That's all right for two people. But we—I mean I—have two children. They're with my sister now. So when I take them to live with me we'll need at least three rooms.”

“It's going to be a hard life,” David's mother shook her head, “living in the back of a store that way. The hurry and the noise! Wouldn't it be better to get rooms somewhere else? In the same house, perhaps?”

“If we live somewhere else,” said Mr. Sternowitz, “there go half of the profits. Why throw away money on rent when you can get it free? A place to sleep in is all we need—and a place to eat a breakfast and a supper.”

“I don't care where we live,” said Aunt Bertha, “as long as we make money. Money, cursed money! What if it is a little uncomfortable. I never refused pot-roast because it got between my teeth. Now is the time to save. Later when we've sold the store and made a little money, we'll talk again.”

“That's what I think also,” Mr. Sternowitz rubbed his hands.

“Well, hurry to the jeweler then!” She rocked back and forth dreamily. “A little while we'll struggle; we'll pee in the dark. And then we'll have a home. And when we'll have a home we'll have a decent home. Thick furniture with red legs such as I see in the store windows. Everything covered with glass. Handsome chandeliers! A phonograph! We'll work our way up! ‘Stimm hitt' like bosses! What bliss to wake up in the morning without chilling the marrow! A white sink! A toilet inside! A bath-tub! A genuine bath-tub for my suffering hide in July! A bathtub! Not that radish grate there,” she pointed to the washtubs. “Everytime I take a bath, it stamps a cluster of cherries on my rump!”

Heavy lidded, David's father frowned, nostrils twitching. David's toes crawled back and forth upon a small space on the soles of his shoe.

“You hear, Nathan?” As usual, whenever his father's wrath was kindling, Aunt Bertha never seemed to realize it. And now as before, she launched out unheeding upon a sea of extravagant vision. And almost intoned. “We'll have a white bath-tub! Hot water! A white bath-tub! Let it be the smoothest in the land! Let it be the slipperiest in the land! Like snot let it be slippery—”

“As you were wont to have in your old home.” David's father broke his silence with deliberate words.

“So we did!” retorted Aunt Bertha, and with all the resentment of one jarred while drowsy. “Even though it did look like a coffin, it was made of tin and smoother than
that
sidewalk there! I thought when I came to this golden land, there would be something better to bathe in than a box full of stony burrs that scuff your—”

“Yes, I know! I know!” he interrupted harshly. “You're very delicately made!”

“And I'll get a better one!” she added vindictively. “I'll not be content with a cold water flat. I'll not live on a top-floor that was meant for goyim and paupers! This is a land where a Jew can make his fortune if he's got it in him—not to sit piously at a horse's tail all his life!”

“Bertha!” her sister exclaimed. “Bertha! Have you lost your senses! Don't make this event fatal!”

By some extraordinary act of will, David's father controlled himself. He spoke through his teeth—“The sooner you're on the road to your fortune, the better I'll like it. And don't think,” he added with biting significance, “that if I don't go to your wedding I won't dance!”

Mr. Sternowitz was looking from one to the other with diffident, half-frightened eyes. “Ai, Bertha!” he attempted lightness. “Are you awful! Over—over a bath-tub to get so enraged! Come, what is a bath-tub!”

“A bath-tub is a bath-tub.” She pouted sullenly. “What a bright suitor I've got!”

Mr. Sternowitz squirmed, blinked, dared not look at anyone. The hard-won relaxation of a few moments ago was destroyed entirely and everyone was on guard again. Nor was there any hope of the tension ever easing, since dinner was almost over, and there would be nothing more to divert one. David's mother assayed a few vague remarks. They went unanswered. In the strained silence, Aunt Bertha, who looked close to tears, kept muttering under her breath—“Begrudges me everything.… His spite, his sour silence … God blacken his destiny.” David looked around fearfully, hardly daring to think of what might happen. Finally, Mr. Sternowitz, after several preliminary coughs, thrust out his chin and smiled with forced and wavering heartiness.

“I'll tell you Bertha,” he said. “Let us go for a walk. After such a fine dinner, nothing could be better, what? And we can step into one or two stores on the way.”

“Anything!” she answered defiantly. “So long as we get away from here!”

Both rose, rather precipitately, and with a toss of her head, Aunt Bertha hurried into the front room to get their coats, leaving Mr. Sternowitz stranded in the kitchen. He looked about as though trapped, mumbled something about the dinner and watched the front-room door anxiously. In a few seconds, Aunt Bertha returned and both got into their coats. As she fitted her wide hat on over her red hair, Aunt Bertha raised her eyes to the overhanging brim and then stared beyond it at the wall—where the new picture hung.

David started.
That was it!
Now he remembered! The thing he was searching for! That he forgot down stairs! Funny—

She approached, scrutinized it. “Look, Nathan,” she beckoned him, “what fine corn grows in my sister's garden. I didn't see it before.” She turned questioningly to David's mother.

“I was wondering when someone would notice it,” she laughed. “Perhaps in my haste I hung it too high.”

“Quite pretty,” Aunt Bertha looked at herself in her pocket-book mirror. “Are you starting a museum?”

“No. It was just a whim. And I found the ten cents to gratify it. Wasted money, I suppose.” She looked up at the picture.

“Well, we must go,” said Aunt Bertha resolutely. “I'll be back later, sister.”

Good-nights were exchanged. Aunt Bertha and David's father, the former fervid, the latter stony, crossed snubbing glances. Invited by David's mother to pay them many visits, Mr. Sternowitz accepted without too much zest, and after a bare smile from David's father, crowded out of the door in Aunt Bertha's lee. Silence followed. His father tilted his chair back against the wall with a violent thump and stared morosely at the ceiling. His mother cleared the dishes carefully, impinging on a look of anxiety, a look of abstraction. David wished they would talk. Silence only made his father more ominous. But the silence continued, and David feeling himself caught as if in talons of stress dared not move—at least not until his father spoke and eased the strain—and for escape meanwhile, could only stare at the new picture his mother had bought.

He began to wonder vaguely why it had followed him all afternoon, why it had tugged at the mind from the ambush of the mind. It was strange. Like someone trailing you behind a wall. And never know what it was until a few minutes ago. Funny. And then find out it isn't anything—only a picture of long green corn and blue flowers under it. Maybe it was because she had been so happy when she looked for the nail. She laughed when she hung it up. Maybe that was it. He didn't know why she was laughing. And she had said he had seen it too, real ones, long ago in Europe. But she said he couldn't remember. So maybe he was trying to remember the real ones instead of the picture ones. But how? If— No. Funny. Getting mixed and mixed and—

His father straightened suddenly, shoes and chair legs rapping the oil cloth smartly. His anger would break now! David stared at him half-welcoming the easing of the strain, half-terrified of the consequences.

“The vulgar jade!” he snapped. “The slut! How could you both have come from one mother! She and her dirty mouth and her bath-tubs and her manners. A million bath-tubs couldn't clean her. She and her bath-tubs! Who asked her to come here anyway! I've controlled myself long enough. I'll throw her out of this house yet!”

His mother had hung up the dish-rag and had turned slowly as though loath to undertake the task of appeasing him and stood silent, placing no obstacles in the path of his anger.

“Stabbing me in the back about my earnings. Boasting of the fortune she'll make and the palaces she'll live in! Making a fool of me before a stranger. As though I loafed, as though I didn't sweat for my bread as honestly and as much as any man! But I'll repay her, don't fret! No one can treat me that way. I've a notion to get up this moment and throw all her belongings out into the hall!”

“They'll be gone soon enough, Albert. Just be patient a little longer.”

“Be patient with that wasp!”

“You see, she was frightened. She thought perhaps you had maimed her chances of marriage.”

“I? I maim her chances? I'd rather maim her! And that filthy, clapping tongue of hers. She never moves it but my flesh begins to crawl—as though she were scattering vermin on me. Maim her chances! I want to get rid of her!”

“She doesn't want to stay here any longer than necessary either.”

“She'd better not. And him! He's harmless. I might have pitied him. I might have thought, the poor idiot, he doesn't know what he's getting. Perhaps she's hidden her true self from him. But now I despise him! A weakling! After what he's seen and heard to want to marry that—that vile mouth! It would shame the water-carrier in a Russian bath! To give his children into the keeping of such a one. He deserves nothing but scorn!”

“Let him look out for that. Surely he's old enough and has seen enough and experienced enough to know what he wants. Perhaps he can even learn to handle her, one can never tell.”

“Handle her! That button-hole maker. It takes a whip hand! I say he'd best begin digging his grave. But what do I care?” He shook his head savagely as though enraged at himself for showing any concern about Aunt Bertha's future. “Let her marry anyone, and anyone her. Let her listen to that fool's drivel about blindness and vinegar all her life. But if she thinks she can make light with me because she has a man with her, she'd better be careful. She's jesting with the angel of death!”

“Just don't mind her, Albert! Please! Let her go her own way. She'll let you go yours. I know! She'll probably not bring him here any more than she can help. They're already talking about rings.”

“Well, as long as she stays here, she'd better be careful or I'll shorten her stay.” He snuffed grimly through his nostrils, stared darkly before him at the opposite wall. His eyes lit on the picture. He frowned. “On what heap did you find that?”

“That?” Her eyes traveled upward. “On a pushcart on Avenue C. I thought I couldn't make more than a ten-cent mistake, so I bought it. You don't like it?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I would if you had gotten it for some other occasion. But now—” He scowled. “Why did you get a picture of corn anyway?”

“Green,” she said mildly. “Austrian lands. What would you have chosen?”

“Something alive.” He reached for the newspaper. “A herd of cattle drinking such as I've seen in the stores. Or a prize bull with a shine to his flanks and the black fire in his eyes.”

“That ought not to be difficult. I'm sure I could find you one of those as well.”

“You'd better let me get it,” he said curtly. And flapping the newspaper open, leaned over it. “I'm apt to be a better judge.”

She lifted her brow resignedly and then glanced at David with a faint, significant smile as though letting him share with her the knowledge that his father had been mollified and danger was over. She turned back to the sink.

IX

ON SUNDAY—a bright Sunday just before Election day—David's father had gotten up from the table after lunch, and with some curt remark about going to listen to a campaign speech, had left. After he was gone however, Aunt Bertha scoffed at his sudden interest in political candidates and resentfully put her finger on what she declared was the real reason for his departure: Nathan (They all called Mr. Sternowitz by his first name now) was coming to call on her later this afternoon, and so David's father had gone away merely to avoid him. Which act, Aunt Bertha added venomously, was a very gracious one, albeit unwitting, and one for which she was very thankful, since she saw no reason to inflict that man's rude and surly presence on poor Nathan Sternowitz. Thus instead of insulting her, she concluded with spiteful triumph, David's father had really done her a good turn—but now that he had done it, she devoutly hoped he would break a leg on the way to wherever he was going. And when David's mother objected, Aunt Bertha charitably informed her that had her husband not been the sole support of his family, she would have prayed he had broken both legs. There! Wasn't that solicitude? And then followed her usual, disgusted query of why her sister had married such a lunatic.

David's mother had just folded the table cloth and now she waved it warningly at Aunt Bertha. “He'll overhear you some day, sister, and you'll pay for it dearly.”