The Collected Stories (18 page)

Mr. Teitelbaum didn't have too much to say himself, and this made him feel united with Eddie. He came every Sunday and sat with him in silence on a bench in the garden behind A Home; in bad weather they met in the parlor, a jolly rectangle scattered with small hooked rugs. They sat for one hour opposite one another in comfortable chairs, peaceful people, then Eddie opened his eyes wide and Jim Sunn said, “O.K. Let's go, buddy. Shut-eye don't hurt the kings of the jungle. Bears hibernate.” Mr. Teitelbaum stood on his tiptoes and enfolded Eddie in his arms. “Sonny, don't worry so much,” he said, then went home.

This situation prevailed for two years. One cold winter day Mr. Teitelbaum had the flu and couldn't visit. “Where the hell's my father?” Eddie growled.

That was the opener. After that Eddie said other things. Before the week had ended. Eddie said. “I'm sick of peppers, Jim. They give me gas.”

A week later he said. “What's the news? Long Island sink yet?”

Dr. Tully had never anticipated Eddie's return. (“Once they go up this road, they're gone,” he had confided to the newspapermen.) He invited a consultant from a competing but friendly establishment. He was at last able to give Eddie a Rorschach, which restored his confidence in his original pessimism.

“Let him have more responsibility,” the consultant suggested, which they did at once, allowing him because of his background to visit the A Home for Boys' Zoo. He was permitted to fondle a rabbit and tease two box turtles. There was a fawn, caged and sick. Also a swinging monkey, but Eddie didn't bat an eyelash. That night he vomited. “What's with the peppers, Jimmy? Can't that dope cook? Only with peppers?”

Dr. Tully explained that Eddie was now a helper. As soon as there was a vacancy, he would be given sole responsibility for one animal. “Thank God,” Mr. Teitelbaum said. “A dumb animal is a good friend.”

At last a boy was cured, sent home to his mother; a vacancy existed. Dr. Tully considered this a fortunate vacancy, for the cured boy had been in charge of the most popular snake in the zoo. The popularity of the snake had made the boy very popular. The popularity of the boy had increased his self-confidence; he had become vice-president of the Boys' Assembly; he had acquired friends and sycophants, he had become happy, cured, and had been returned to society.

On the very first day Eddie proved his mettle. He cleaned the cage with his right hand, holding the snake way out with his left. He had many admirers immediately.

“When you go home, could I have the job?” asked a very pleasant small boy who was only mildly retarded, but some father was willing to lay out a fortune because he was ashamed. “I'm not going anywhere, sonny,” said Eddie. “I like it here.”

On certain afternoons, shortly after milk and cookies, Eddie had to bring a little white mouse to his snake. He slipped the mouse into the cage, and that is why this snake was so popular: the snake did not eat the mouse immediately. At four o'clock the boys began to gather. They watched the mouse cowering in the corner. They watched the lazy snake wait for his hungry feelings to tickle him all along his curly interior. Every now and then he hiked his spine and raised his head, and the boys breathed hard. Sometime between four-thirty and six o'clock he would begin to slither aimlessly around the cage. The boys laid small bets on the time, winning and losing chunks of chocolate cake or a handful of raisins. Suddenly, but without fuss (and one had to be really watching), the snake stretched his long body, opened his big mouth, and gulped the little live mouse, who always went down squeaking.

Eddie could not disapprove, because this was truly the nature of the snake. But he pulled his cap down over his eyes and turned away.

Jimmy Sunn told him at supper one night, “Guess what I heard. I heard you're acquiring back your identity. Not bad.”

“My identity?” asked Eddie.

A week later Eddie handed in a letter of resignation. He sent a copy to his father. The letter said: “Thank you, Dr. Tully. I know who I am. I am no mouse killer. I am Eddie Teitelbaum, the Father of the Stink Bomb, and I am known for my Dedication to Cause and my Fearlessness in the Face of Effect. Do not bother me anymore. I have nothing to say. Sincerely.”

Dr. Tully wrote a report in which he pointed with pride to his consistent pessimism in the case of Eddie Teitelbaum. This was considered remarkable, in the face of so much hope, and it was remembered by his peers.

While Eddie was making the decision to go out of his mind as soon as possible, other decisions were being made elsewhere. Mr. Teitelbaum, for instance, decided to die of grief and old age—which frequently overlap—and that was the final decision for all Teitelbaums. Shmul sat down to think and was disowned by his father.

Arnold ran away to East Twenty-ninth Street, where he built up a lovely bordello of naked oils at considerable effort and expense.

But Carl, the son of Clop, had tasted with Eddie's tongue. He went to school and stayed for years in order to become an atomic physicist for the navy. Nowadays on the 8:07 Carl sails out into the hophead currents of our time, fights the undertow with little beep-beep signals. He has retained his cheerful disposition and for this service to the world has just received a wife who was washed out of the Rockettes for being too beautiful.

The War Attenuator has been bottled weak under pressure. It is sometimes called Teitelbaum's Mixture, and its ingredients have been translated into Spanish on the label. It is one of the greatest bug killers of all time. Unfortunately it is sometimes hard on philodendrons and old family rubber plants.

Mrs. Goredinsky still prefers to have her kitchen protected by the Segregator. An old-fashioned lady, she drops in bulk to her knees to scrub the floor. She cannot help seeing the cockroach caught and broiled in his own juice by the busy A.C. She flicks the cockroach off the wall. She smiles and praises Eddie.

The day I knocked, all the slats were flat. “Where are you, Lionel?” I shouted. “In the do-funny?”

“For goodness' sake, be quiet,” he said, unlatching the back door. “I'm the other side of the coin.”

I nicked him with my forefinger. “You don't ring right, Charley. You're counterfeit.”

“Come on in and settle,” he said. “Keep your hat on. The coat rack's out of order.”

I had visited before. The seats were washable plaid plastic—easy to care for—and underfoot was the usual door-to-door fuzz. In graceful disarray philodendrons rose and fell from the back window ledge.

“How in the world can you see to drive, Marlon?”

“Well, baby, I don't drive it much,” he said. “It isn't safe.”

He offered me an apple from the glove compartment.

“Nature's toothbrush,” I said dreamily. “How've you been, Eddie?”

He sighed. “Things never looked better.”

He hopped out the front door and crawled in the rear. He was not a seat climber. “Truthfully, I would have phoned you no later than tonight,” he said. He snapped the blinds horizontal, and from the east the morning glared at our pale faces. He took a paper and pencil out of a small mahogany file cabinet built along the rear of the front seat. “Let's get down to brass tacks,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

“What does anyone want to do?”

“Let me ask the questions,” he said. “What do
you
want to do?”

“Oh … something worthwhile,” I said. “Well, make a contribution … you know what I mean … help out somehow … do good.”

“Please!” he said bitterly. “Don't waste my time. Every sonofabitch wants to do good.”

“Why, that's nice,” I said. “What a wonderful social trend. In these terrible times it's marvelous news.”

“It's marvelous news …” he squeaked in a high girl-voice. “Don't be an idiot. All of time is terrible. You should have lived in a little farming village during the Hundred Years' War. Anyway, do you realize you're paying me by the hour? Let's get started. What can you
do
?”

I was surprised to hear that I was paying him by the hour. Still, for all I know, despite their appearance, these times may not be terrible at all.

“I can type. I went to business school for three months and I can type.”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I've gotten jobs for virgins. I could place a pediatrician in the Geriatric Clinic.”

“If you're so great, Bubbles, how come you don't even have a home?”

“I've only just found myself,” he said, turning inward. On the outside he was a mirror image of a face with a dead center. His eyes were blue. The pupils were dark and immovable. He never saw anything out of the corner of his eye but swiveled his whole head to stare at it. His hair was blond, darkening in a terrible rush before the gray could become general. All his sex characteristics were secondary, which did not prevent him from asking me after our first day's work, “Give me a bunny hug, baby?” I didn't mind at all and did, goosing him gently. It seemed to me he'd like that a lot. I am not considered wild, but I am kind.

I scraped a ham sandwich out of my dungarees and offered him half. “
Gasoline
is what I need,” he said peevishly. “I was going to call for a man who invited me to La Vie for a business deal.”

Just then the phone rang. He lunged over the front seat for it. “What good luck, Edsel,” he chortled. “You got me just as I was pulling up to a meter. Hold it a moment while I disengage.” He made grunting noises as though great effort were involved because of tonnage, then resumed his conversation. “Yes? About tonight? I'm not sure I can make it … I've got to be out all day …”

I waved a one-dollar bill across the windshield mirror. “Ah … make it quarter to ten, so I have time to eat … No, that's not necessary … No … Well, if you insist, at least allow me to call for you. I'll stop by at eight-thirty … Great … It'll be marvelous to talk with you again.
Arrivederci.
”

“Here,” I said, “is a dollar. Petrol.”

“I appreciate it,” he said.

The Edsel he met at eight-thirty, honking his horn before a canopied doorman, was Jonathan Stubblefield, but don't try to reach him because he's unlisted. His eyes were pale as the moon. They drove here and yon, hip-flasked, unwatered and unsodaed, uniced and defrosted, looped in one another's consonants. Lack of communication made them appear to be lovers.

“Do you have a friend?” asked Jonathan Stubblefield. “Yes, a girl,” said my pal, his nose always to the grindstone. Jonathan Stubblefield misunderstood. “Hotcha!” he replied. “I have a friend myself, but the goddamn family— What do you think of the family?” he asked, trying to make sense of his entire life.

“The Family of Man? Oh, I believe in it. But look here, Edsel … this girl I'm talking about is not a sexual partner. She's a business associate. Lively, alert, young, charming, clever, enthusiastic. How can you use her?”

“Oh boy,” said Jonathan Stubblefield, stupefied. “Upside down, cross-country, her choice. Any way she says.”

“You still misunderstand me. It's her business affairs I'm in charge of.”

“Oh,” said Jonathan Stubblefield. “Oh,” he said, “in that case send me a résumé,” and passed out.

“But you didn't tell him anything about me,” I complained the following afternoon.

“Why should I? He didn't tell me anything about himself. Do you think his real name is Stubblefield? What's the matter with you? Don't put yourself on a platter. What are you—a roast duck, everything removable with a lousy piece of flatware? Be secret. Turn over on your side. Let them guess if you're stuffed. That's how I got where I am.”