Israel (2 page)

Three short paces and he was at the airshaft window. On the sill was the jar of water filled at the kitchen sink the night before. He poured the lukewarm water into a tin basin and washed. Next he turned his attention to his one luxury, an expensive ivory-handled straight razor. He honed the gleaming blade and then carefully shaved. It was a bold thing to do, shaving. The sight of his smooth cheeks often provoked disapproving glares in the neighborhood. God's displeasure hung heavy on Abe's shoulders.

But this was not the old country, he reminded himself. He was in America and he would be clean-shaven like an American.

He dressed quickly in his baggy blue suit, stained white shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie. He smoothed down his thinning thatch of dark brown hair as best he could, dumped the basin of water out the window, extinguished the candle and left his room.

The Montgomery Street tenement was like all the others Abe had boarded in on the Lower East Side. There were four flats to a floor, with one hall toilet.

Abe's room opened onto the kitchen. Here illumination was provided by the ever-flickering gas mantle. There was a gas stove, cupboards for groceries and blue-curtained closets where clothing and the two sets of dishes and cookware were stored.

In addition to a table and chairs the kitchen had two tiers of bunkbeds for the children. Between the rusty sink and the stove was wedged a couch where Joseph and Sadie slept. More beds occupied the front parlor of the flat for Sadie's parents and her younger sister, an eighteen-year-old named Leah.

Area rugs covered the worn floorboards of the kitchen, which had tattered pink floral wallpaper. A yellow plucked chicken hung from a washboard across the sink, heavily salted to leach out the blood, which steadily dripped into the drain.

The kitchen was quiet except for the baby at the foot of the couch. The other children were still sleeping, oblivious to the noise. The curtain was still across the threshold that separated the parlor from the kitchen. Joseph sat at the kitchen table spooning oatmeal into his mouth between sips of tea. There was a place setting laid for Abe. His two dollars a week bought breakfast each morning and dinner with the family at night.

Sadie, stirring the pot of oatmeal on the stove, glared at Abe's clean-shaven features. She was a heavy-set sallow woman and a fiercely pious Jew. She took it as a personal affront that Abe defied the Book of Leviticus' ban against shaving. Late at night, when they thought Abe was asleep, Sadie and Joseph discussed their boarder's many shortcomings, or rather Sadie discussed and her husband listened.

Joseph was as big and strong as an ox and just as patient with his wife's constant nagging. Now his strong white teeth were startling against his glossy black beard as he grinned good morning to Abe, who seated himself at the table. Joseph's work clothes were stained with old blood. He worked, to Sadie's everlasting mortification, in a nonkosher slaughterhouse on the West Side, by the part of the Hudson known as the North River.

“It's Friday,” Sadie announced in Yiddish. “Tonight starts Sabbath.” She put a bowl of oatmeal before Abe and
drew him a mug of tea from the steaming samovar on one corner of the stove. “Don't forget, if you want to eat, be home before sundown.”

“He's not a goy that he has to be told it's the Sabbath,” Joseph muttered.

“He should also know not to shave,” Sadie replied.

“He wants to be a sport, let him.”

“Let him . . .” Sadie echoed with infinite sadness. She went to the sink. There she took up a cleaver and began to hack away at the chicken with silent, furious eloquence.

Abe said nothing, but ate as quickly as he could. They were talking about him as if he were a child, but he could do little about it. He had to answer to these two the way they had to answer to their landlord.

Joseph stood up, ready to leave for work, but Sadie reminded him that he had to take the
tsholnt
. Down he sat as she took vegetables from the cupboard and set to work assembling the stew pot for her husband to carry to the nearby bakery. Many families would take similar pots so they could slowly cook in the baker's ovens for twenty-four hours. Tomorrow afternoon Joseph would bring it home for the Sabbath meal.

Abe took a deep breath to steel himself for a storm. “I must work tomorrow,” he said.

“Shit,” Joseph grumbled in his deep voice. Curse words made up the whole of his English vocabulary. The Kraviches had been in America twice as long as Abe, but the study of English—like so many things—was “not for them.” Abe, on the other hand, had early on begun to frequent the university settlement on the corner of Eldridge and Rivington.

“In my house I don't need a boarder who doesn't go to shul, who shaves, who like a Polack desecrates the Sabbath.” Sadie chopped at thin air with her cleaver. “Joseph, tell him this can't go on.”

One of the children, disturbed his mother's fury, turned in his sleep. He was the oldest boy, who slept in the top bunk; it creaked and swayed with his movement like a willow in the wind. Sadie steadied the top-heavy tier, affectionately brushing back the comma of hair that had fallen across her slumbering child's forehead.

“If you won't throw this desecrator out for me, do it for your son,” she demanded. “He'll be influenced by Abe's behavior—wait and see.”

Abe felt sick to his stomach. The other day Joseph and his eldest son had quarreled over the boy's having skipped his Hebrew lessons in favor of playing stickball. It was not surprising. The street was filling up with immigrants of many backgrounds, and the children not having enough of their own kind to make friends with, freely mixed together, much to the displeasure of everyone's parents. This had nothing to do with Abe, but he knew that he would suffer if Sadie succeeded in convincing her husband that his son was under a bad influence from him.

Sadie, eyes gleaming with triumph, strutted from the kitchen into the parlor, where her parents and younger sister still snoozed.

“She's a
balebossteh
, eh?” Joseph chuckled shyly. His thick, callused thumbs drummed the tabletop.

Abe anxiously waited for his sentence to be passed.
Balebossteh
was literally “praiseworthy wife,” but it implied bossiness. Abe had a sinking feeling he would be packing his cardboard suitcase by nightfall.

Joseph took papers and tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette. Sadie disapproved of smoking, but concerning some things Joseph put his foot down. Accordingly, Sadie restricted herself to silently pursing her lips in displeasure whenever he lit up.

Time passed as Joseph smoked. Occasionally he would tap the ash into the palm of his hand and then rub it onto the brown-stained green knees of his work pants. Finally he took
on a look of decision. “I don't need such aggravation in my home.” He puffed on his cigarette.

Abe did not know how to respond. “More money?” He cringed at the thought of paying more, but rooms were hard to come by. “If a little more money might make amends—”

Joseph shook his head. “You desecrate the Sabbath.”

“I've got to work tomorrow,” Abe insisted. “The factory uses goyim as well as Jews. The Polacks and the Italians don't mind working a Saturday—or a Sunday, for that matter. If I refuse, I'd lose the work.”

“What's better, to lose a shift or to lose the room?”

“Don't do this to me,” Abe implored, furious at the begging note he heard in his voice. That I should have to crawl on my knees to this blood-smeared dolt, he thought, but still he was careful to keep his tone and manner meek. “Three months I've lived here, Joseph. You already know why I work a double shift.” He smiled encouragingly.

“To save money for a business of your own.” Joseph nodded impatiently. “Ambition is an admirable thing, but why does it have to destroy the peace in my home?”

Abe tried to reply, but Joseph held up his hand to silence him. “Listen to me a moment, if you please. Your story I know by heart.” He looked disgusted. “I also happen to know that you are no closer to your dream than you were when you landed two years ago.”

“I've saved money,” Abe replied, sullen.

“Yes, you have, but meanwhile the real estate has grown dearer and you've grown older. When you landed you were thirty-two. Now you're thirty-four.”

“So?” Abe demanded.

“So when are you going to take for yourself a wife? When do the children come?” He waited, smoking his cigarette.

Abe's eyes were downcast. “After.”

“After what?” Joseph scowled. “Your funeral maybe.”
He paused and his voice softened. “Listen to me. I'm talking to you like a friend. That sweatshop you slave in from dawn until dusk seven days a week manufactures suit coats; it manufactures pants and vests. Millionaires it doesn't manufacture.”

“Others have done it—”

“In Russia you were a cobbler. You could take a nice job as a cobbler here,” Joseph argued. “Then you could get married, have children, be a mensch.”

“Joseph, please,” Abe groaned.

Joseph glanced toward the curtain that separated the kitchen from the parlor. Behind it his wife was undoubtedly eavesdropping. “You make it so hard for yourself, Abe. If you make trouble with Sadie, I've got to throw you out, right? Every night she complains to me the same thing. You come home, you eat, you go into your room and you read your newspapers until you go to sleep. You never offer to watch the baby for her and you never so much as look at her sister Leah.” He offered Abe a conspiratorial wink. “Leah is fond of you. Sadie told me so. Ask her to marry you. She'll accept, of that I can assure you.”

“No doubt,” Abe murmured.

“What?” Joseph sharply demanded.

“Oh, be reasonable,” Abe complained. “If I married now, I'd have to support a family. It would be good-bye to my store.” He leapt to his feet and dashed into his room for his overcoat. “I'm late for work. We'll talk more about this tonight,” he called over his shoulder, heading for the door and beginning to think that he might make good his escape.

“Joseph?” Sadie stormed into the kitchen. Her voice was high and shrill. “Joseph!”

“Enough!” Joseph glowered at her. “Abe, tonight you will pack your bags and look for another room.”

Abe slumped against the doorjamb. “Please,” he whispered.
“Today I work a full day. Where can I find a room on Sabbath eve?”

“All of a sudden he's pious,” Sadie sneered.

“Enough, I said.” Joseph turned back to his boarder. “All right, you can stay until tomorrow night.”

Abe nodded. “Thank you.”

“That'll make a full week. I'll owe you no refund.”

“Agreed.”

“And what about the Sabbath?” Sadie asked pointedly.

“His last day here let him do what he wants.”

“That's just dandy.” Sadie frowned. “I see now that my wishes count for nothing.”

“Tomorrow we will rent to a nice single young man, the sort who can appreciate the bride a girl like Leah would be.”

“Talk a little louder, why don't you,” Sadie reproached him. “Let the poor girl hear and be humiliated.” But the anger had left Sadie. The deal had been struck.

She started as Abe let the apartment door slam shut behind him. “Good riddance,” she muttered, returning to her cooking.

Abe stomped down the tenement's ill-lit, narrow stairs. He was ashamed and angry. The shame came from the way he'd allowed himself to beg; the rage sprang from the way he had been refused.

Be a cobbler, Joseph told him, a shoemaker—as if he'd journeyed to America and started a new life merely to ply the trade forced upon his family by the Russian nobleman who owned their village in the Ukraine. A sign of defeat it would be to go back to a cobbler's bench here in America. A cobbler could never be rich. A shoemaker could hand nothing to his son but his hammer and nails.

Despair threatened to engulf him as he stepped out onto the littered stoop and the cold predawn air bit into him. It would help if he could say the room was a sty fit only for pigs. But he knew the room was a prize, a
blessing, even with Sadie's mouth. He'd be lucky if he was able to find something half as nice.

He buttoned his coat and turned up his collar against the cold. Abe's breath hung in front of his face, a cloud of white vapor like the puffs of steam that rose from his pressing machine at the factory loft on Allen Street.

The overcoat was too large. It flapped about his gaunt frame like a bathrobe. As he walked he pulled down his cuffs and shoved his hands into his coat pockets to hold it close to his body and keep the wind from whistling up his baggy sleeves.

He headed toward East Broadway, giving wide berth to the towering stands of garbage lining both sides of Montgomery Street. Now and then a rat, made bold by the darkness, streaked across his path.

The cold numbed his ears as he crossed Henry Street. He'd given up wearing hats. Going hatless, like shaving, was a gesture to honor his adopted country. Although Abe would be loath to admit it, he was trying to mold himself into the image of the wealthy Jewish philanthropists he'd learned about at the settlement house: Warburg, Schiff, Lewisjohn and the fabulous Straus brothers, benefactors of the Educational Alliance, sponsors of the milk stations where hungry children and expectant mothers could find nourishment—and most important to Abe, owners of magnificent stores: R.H. Macy on Fourteenth Street near Sixth Avenue and Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn.

“I should have mentioned the Straus brothers to Joseph,” Abe muttered to himself. “Not that he wouldn't have laughed in my face.” He savagely booted a tin can out of his path.

These great men were all German Jews,
Yekkes
to the Russian immigrants, who considered them as strange as the colored Jews who were said to live in the Orient. The Russians envied the Yekkes for their wealth and distrusted them for their Americanized ways. Abe himself often felt
uneasy about how much like the Goyim the Yekkes seemed to act.