The Collected Stories (8 page)

“No, listen, Freddy, you don't take yourself seriously, and that's the reason you can't take anything else—a job, or a—a relationship—seriously … Freddy, you don't listen. You'll laugh, but you're very barbaric. You live at your nerve ends. If you're near a radio, you listen to music; if you're near an open icebox, you stuff yourself; if a girl is within ten feet of you, you have her stripped and on the spit.”

“Now, Dotty, don't be so graphic,” I said. “Every man is his own rotisserie.”

What a nice girl! Say something vulgar and she'd suddenly be all over me, blushing bitterly, glad that the East River separated her from her mother. Poor girl, she was avid.

And she was giving. By Sunday night I had ended half a dozen conversations and nipped their moral judgments at the homiletic root. By Sunday night I had said I love you Dotty, twice. By Monday morning I realized the extent of my commitment and I don't mind saying it prevented my going to a job I had swung on Friday.

My impression of women is that they mean well but are driven to an obsessive end by greedy tradition. When Dot found out that I'd decided against that job (what job? a job, that's all) she took action. She returned my copy of
Nineteen Eighty-four
and said in a note that I could keep the six wineglasses her mother had lent me.

Well, I did miss her; you don't meet such wide-open kindness every day. She was no fool either. I'd say peasant wisdom is what she had. Not too much education. Her hair was long and dark. I had always seen it in neat little coiffures or reparably disarrayed, until that weekend.

It was staggering.

I missed her. And then I didn't have too much luck after that. Very little money to spend, and girls are primordial with intuition. There was one nice little married girl whose husband was puttering around in another postal zone, but her heart wasn't in it. I got some windy copy to do through my brother-in-law, a clean-cut croupier who is always crackling bank notes at family parties. Things picked up.

Out of my gasbag profits one weekend I was propelled into the Craggy-moor, a high-pressure resort, a star-studded haven with eleven hundred acres of golf course. When I returned, exhausted but modest, there she was, right in my parlor-floor front. With a few gasping, kind words and a modern gimmick, she hoped to breathe eternity into a mortal matter, love.

“Ah, Dotty,” I said, holding out my accepting arms. “I'm always glad to see you.”

Of course she explained. “I didn't come for that really, Freddy. I came to talk to you. We have a terrific chance to make some real money, if you'll only be serious a half hour. You're so clever, and you ought to direct yourself to something. God, you could live in the country. I mean, even if you kept living alone, you could have a decent place on a decent street instead of this dump.”

I kissed the tip of her nose. “If you want to be very serious, Dot, let's get out and walk. Come on, get your coat on and tell me all about how to make money.”

She did. We walked out to the park and scattered autumn leaves for an hour. “Now don't laugh, Freddy,” she told me. “There's a Yiddish paper called
Morgenlicht.
It's running a contest: Jews in the News. Every day they put in a picture and two descriptions. You have to say who the three people are, add one more fact about them, and then send it in by midnight that night. It runs three months at least.”

“A hundred Jews in the news?” I said. “What a tolerant country! So, Dot, what do you get for this useful information?”

“First prize, five thousand dollars and a trip to Israel. Also on return two days each in the three largest European capitals in the Free West.”

“Very nice,” I said. “What's the idea, though? To uncover the ones that've been passing?”

“Freddy, why do you look at everything inside out? They're just proud of themselves, and they want to make Jews everywhere proud of their contribution to this country. Aren't you proud?”

“Woe to the crown of pride!”

“I don't care what you think. The point is, we know somebody who knows somebody on the paper—he writes a special article once a week—we don't know him really, but our family name is familiar to him. So we have a very good chance if we really do it. Look how smart you are, Freddy. I can't do it myself, Freddy, you have to help me. It's a thing I made up my mind to do anyway. If Dotty Wasserman really makes up her mind, it's practically done.”

I hadn't noticed this obstinacy in her character before. I had none in my own. Every weekday night after work she leaned thoughtfully on my desk, wearing for warmth a Harris-tweed jacket that ruined the nap of my arm. Somewhere out of doors a strand of copper in constant agitation carried information from her mother's Brooklyn phone to her ear.

Peering over her shoulder, I would sometimes discover a three-quarter view of a newsworthy Jew or a full view of a half Jew. The fraction did not interfere with the rules. They were glad to extract him and be proud.

The longer we worked the prouder Dotty became. Her face flushed, she'd raise her head from the hieroglyphics and read her own translation: “A gray-headed gentleman very much respected; an intimate of Cabinet members; a true friend to a couple of Presidents; often seen in the park, sitting on a bench.”

“Bernard Baruch!” I snapped.

And then a hard one: “Has contributed to the easiness of interstate commerce; his creation is worth millions and was completed last year. Still he has time for Deborah, Susan, Judith, and Nancy, his four daughters.”

For this I smoked and guzzled a hot eggnog Dot had whipped up to give me strength and girth. I stared at the stove, the ceiling, my irritable shutters—then I said calmly: “Chaim Pazzi—he's a bridge architect.” I never forget a name, no matter what typeface it appears in.

“Imagine it, Freddy. I didn't even know there was a Jew who had such accomplishment in that field.”

Actually, it sometimes took as much as an hour to attach a real name to a list of exaggerated attributes. When it took that long I couldn't help muttering, “Well, we've uncovered another one. Put him on the list for Van 2.”

Dotty'd say sadly, “I have to believe you're joking.”

Well, why do you think she liked me? All you little psychoanalyzed people, now say it at once, in a chorus: “Because she is a masochist and you are a sadist.”

No. I was very good to her. And to all the love she gave me, I responded. And I kept all our appointments and called her on Fridays to remind her about Saturday, and when I had money I brought her flowers and once earrings and once a black brassière I saw advertised in the paper with some cleverly stitched windows for ventilation. I still have it. She never dared take it home.

But I will not be eaten by any woman.

My poor old mother died with a sizable chunk of me stuck in her gullet. I was in the army at the time, but I understand her last words were: “Introduce Freddy to Eleanor Farbstein.” Consider the nerve of that woman. Including me in a codicil. She left my sister to that ad man and culinary expert with a crew cut. She left my father to the commiseration of aunts, while me, her prize possession and the best piece of meat in the freezer of her heart, she left to Ellen Farbstein.

As a matter of fact, Dotty said it herself. “I never went with a fellow who paid as much attention as you, Freddy. You're always there. I know if I'm lonesome or depressed all I have to do is call you and you'll meet me downtown and drop whatever you're doing. Don't think I don't appreciate it.”

The established truth is, I wasn't doing much. My brother-in-law could have kept me in clover, but he pretended I was a specialist in certain ornate copy infrequently called for by his concern. Therefore I was able to give my wit, energy, and attention to Jews in the News—
Morgenlicht
, the Morning Paper That Comes Out the Night Before.

And so we reached the end. Dot really believed we'd win. I was almost persuaded. Drinking hot chocolate and screwdrivers, we fantasied six weeks away.

We won.

I received a 9 a.m. phone call one mid-week morning. “Rise and shine, Frederick P. Sims. We did it. You see, whatever you really try to do, you can do.”

She quit work at noon and met me for lunch at an outdoor café in the Village, full of smiles and corrupt with pride. We ate very well and I had to hear the following information—part of it I'd suspected.

It was all in her name. Of course her mother had to get some. She had helped with the translation because Dotty had very little Yiddish actually (not to mention her worry about the security of her old age); and it was necessary, they had decided in midnight conference, to send some money to their old aunt Lise, who had gotten out of Europe only ninety minutes before it was sealed forever and was now in Toronto among strangers, having lost most of her mind.

The trip abroad to Israel and three other European capitals was for two (2). They had to be married. If our papers could not include one that proved our conjunction by law, she would sail alone. Before I could make my accumulating statement, she shrieked oh! her mother was waiting in front of Lord and Taylor's. And she was off.

I smoked my miserable encrusted pipe and considered my position.

Meanwhile in another part of the city, wheels were moving, presses humming, and the next day the facts were composed from right to left across the masthead of
Morgenlicht
:

Neatly boxed below, a picture of Dot and me eating lunch recalled a bright flash that had illuminated the rice pudding the day before, as I sat drenched in the fizzle of my modest hopes.

I sent Dotty a postcard. It said: “No can do.”

The final arrangements were complicated due to the reluctance of the Israeli government to permit egress to dollar bills which were making the grandest tour of all. Once inside that province of cosmopolitans, the dollar was expected to resign its hedonistic role as an American toy and begin the presbyterian life of a tool.

Within two weeks letters came from abroad bearing this information and containing photographs of Dotty smiling at a kibbutz, leaning sympathetically on a wailing wall, unctuous in an orange grove.

I decided to take a permanent job for a couple of months in an agency, attaching the following copy to photographs of upright men!

I was neat and brown-eyed, innocent and alert, offended by the chicanery of my fellows, powered by decency, going straight up.

The lean-shanked girls had been brought to New York by tractor and they were going straight up too, through the purgatory of man's avarice to Whore's Heaven, the Palace of Possessions.

While I labored at my dreams, Dotty spent some money to see the leaning tower of Pisa and ride in a gondola. She decided to stay in London at least two weeks because she felt at home there. And so all this profit was at last being left in the hands of foreigners who would invest it to their own advantage.

One misty day the boom of foghorns rolling round Manhattan Island reminded me of a cablegram I had determined to ignore,
ARRIVING QUEEN ELIZABETH WEDNESDAY
4
P.M.
I ignored it successfully all day and was casual with a couple of cool blondes. And went home and was lonely. I was lonely all evening. I tried writing a letter to an athletic girl I'd met in a ski lodge a few weeks before … I thought of calling some friends, but the pure unmentionable fact is that women isolate you. There was no one to call.

I went out for an evening paper. Read it. Listened to the radio. Went out for a morning paper. Had a beer. Read the paper and waited for the calculation of morning.

I never went to work the next day or the day after. No word came from Dot. She must have been crawling with guilt. Poor girl …

I finally wrote her a letter. It was very strong.

Two weeks later I received a one-hundred-dollar bill.

A week after that at my door I found a carefully packed leather portfolio, hand-sewn in Italy, and a projector with a box of slides showing interesting views of Europe and North Africa.