The Complete Stories (16 page)
Read The Complete Stories Online
Authors: Bernard Malamud
The detective laid the picture back in the drawer. He fished out another.
“Here’s a boy aged about six or seven. He was brutally stabbed to death in an empty lot on South Eighth. Did you ever see him before?”
He thrust the picture close to Farr’s face.
When Farr looked into the boy’s innocent eyes he burst into tears.
Wolff put the picture away. He pulled on the dead cigar, then examined it and threw it away.
“Come on,” he said, tiredly rising.
The cellar was full of violent presences. Farr went fearfully down the steps.
Wolff flashed his light on the crisscrossed pipes overhead. “Which one?”
Farr pointed.
The detective brushed aside some cobwebs and felt along the pipe with his fingers. He found the loose asbestos and from the wool inside plucked forth the sash weight.
Farr audibly sucked in his breath.
In the yellow glow of the hall lamp upstairs the detective took the sash weight out of the bag and examined it. Farr shut his eyes.
“What floor do you live on?”
“Fourth.”
Wolff looked up uneasily. They trudged up the stairs, Farr leading.
“Not so fast,” said Wolff.
Farr slowed down. As they passed the third-floor window he looked out to sea, but all was dark. On the next floor he stopped before a warped door with a top panel of frosted glass.
“Inhere,” Farr said at last.
“Have you got the key?”
Farr turned the knob and the door fell open, bumping loudly against the wall. The corridor to the kitchen was black. The detective’s light pierced it, lighting up a wooden table and two wooden chairs.
“Go on in.”
“I’m afraid,” whispered Farr.
“Go on, I said.”
He stepped reluctantly forward.
“Where is he?” said the detective.
“In the bedroom.” He spoke hoarsely.
“Show me.”
Farr led him through a small windowless room containing a cot and some books and magazines on the floor. Wolff’s light shone on him.
“In there.” Farr pointed to the door.
“Open it.”
“No”
“Open, I said.”
“For godsake, don’t make me.”
“Open.”
Farr thought quickly: in the dark there he would upset the detective and make a hasty escape into the street.
“For the last time, I said open.”
Farr pushed the door and it squeaked open on its hinges. The long,
narrow bedroom was heavy with darkness. Wolff’s light hit the metal headboard of an old double bed, sunken in the middle.
narrow bedroom was heavy with darkness. Wolff’s light hit the metal headboard of an old double bed, sunken in the middle.
A groan rose from the bed. Farr groaned too, his hair on end.
“Murder,” said the groan, “terrible, terrible.”
A white bloodless face rose into the light, old and staring.
“Who’s there?” cried Wolff.
“Oh, my dreams, my dreams,” wept the old man, “I dreamed I was bein murdered.”
Flinging aside the worn quilt, he slid out of bed and hopped in bare feet on the cold floor, skinny in his long underwear. He groped toward them.
Farr whispered wild things to himself.
The detective found the light chain and pulled it.
The old man saw the stranger in the room. “And who are you, might I ask?”
“Theodore Wolff, detective from the Sixty-second Precinct.” He flashed his shield.
Herman Farr blinked in surprise and shame. He hastily got into the pants that had been draped across a chair and, stepping into misshapen slippers, raised suspenders over his shoulders.
“I must’ve overslept my nap. I usually have supper cookin at six and we eat half past six, him and I.” He suddenly asked, “What are you doin here if you’re a detective?”
“I came here with your son.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong?” asked the old man, frightened.
“I don’t know. That’s what I came to find out.”
“Come into the kitchen,” said Herman Farr. “The light’s better.”
They went into the kitchen. Herman Farr got a third chair from the bedroom and they sat around the wooden table, Farr waxen and fatigued, his father gaunt and bony-faced, with loose skin sprouting gray stubble, and on the long side of the table, the heavyset Wolff, wearing his black hat.
“Where are my glasses?” complained Herman Farr. He got up and found them on a shelf above the gas stove. The lenses were thick and magnified his watery eyes.
“Until now I couldn’t tell the nature of your face,” he said to the detective.
Wolff grunted.
“Now what’s the trouble here?” said Herman Farr, staring at his son.
Farr sneered at him.
The detective removed the sash weight from the paper bag and laid it on the table. Farr gazed at it as if it were a snake uncoiling.
“Ever see this before?”
Herman Farr stared stupidly at the sash weight, one hand clawing the back of the other.
“Where’d you get it?” he cried in a quavering voice.
“Answer my question first.”
“Yes. It belongs to me, though I wish to Christ I had never seen it.”
“It’s yours?” said Wolff.
“That’s right. I had it hid in my trunk.”
“What’s this stain on it here?”
Farr gazed in fascination where the detective pointed.
Herman Farr said he didn’t know.
“It’s a bloodstain,” Wolff said.
“Ah, so it is,” sighed Herman Farr, his mouth trembling. “I’ll tell you the truth. My wife—may God rest her soul—once tried to hit me with it.”
Farr laughed out loud.
“Is this your blood?” asked Wolff.
“No, by the livin mercy. It’s hers.”
They were all astonished.
“Are you telling the truth?” said Wolff sternly.
“I’d give my soul if I only wasn’t.”
“Did you hit her with it?”
Herman Farr lifted his glasses and with a clotted yellow handkerchief wiped the tears from his flowing eyes.
“A sin is never lost. Once, in a drunken fit, enraged as I was by my long-lastin poverty, I swung it at her and opened a wound on her head. The blood is hers. I could never blame her for wantin to kill me with it. She tried it one night when I was at my supper, but the thing fell out of her hand and smashed the plate. I nearly jumped out of my shoes. Seein it fall I realized the extent of my wickedness and kept the sash weight hid away at the bottom of my trunk as a memory of my sins.”
Wolff scratched a match under the table, paused, and shook it out. Farr smoked the last cigarette in his crushed pack. The old man wept into his dirty handkerchief.
“I have deserved a violent endin of my life if anybody ever did. In my younger days I was a beast—cruel, and a weaklin. I treated them both very badly.” He nodded to Farr. “As he more than once said it, I killed her a little every day. Many times—may the livin God keep torturin
me for it—I beat her black and blue, once bloodyin her nose on a frosty morning when she complained of the cold, and another time pushin her down a flight of stairs. As for him, I more than once skinned his back with my belt buckle.”
me for it—I beat her black and blue, once bloodyin her nose on a frosty morning when she complained of the cold, and another time pushin her down a flight of stairs. As for him, I more than once skinned his back with my belt buckle.”
Farr crushed his cigarette and snapped it into the sink.
Wolff then lit a cigar and puffed slowly.
The old man wept openly. “This young man is the livin witness of my terrible deeds, but he don’t know half the depths of my sufferin since that poor soul left this world, or the terrible nature of my nightly dreams.”
“When did she die?” the detective asked.
“Sixteen years ago, and he has never forgiven me, carryin his hatred like a fire in his heart, although she, good soul, forgave me in his presence at the time of her last illness. ‘Herman,’ she said, ‘I’m goin to a place where I would be ill at ease if I didn’t forgive you,’ and with that she went to her peace. But my son has hated me throughout the years, and I can’t look at him without seein it in his eyes. ‘Tis true, he has sometimes been kind to a helpless old man, and when my arthritis was so bad that I couldn’t move, he more than once brought a plate of soup to my bed and fed me with a spoon, but in the depths of his soul my change has made no difference to him and he hates me now as he did then, though I’ve repented on sore knees a thousand times. I have often said to him,
4
What’s done is done, and judge me for what I have since become’—for he is an intelligent man and reads books you and I never heard of—but on this thing he won’t yield or be reasoned with.”
4
What’s done is done, and judge me for what I have since become’—for he is an intelligent man and reads books you and I never heard of—but on this thing he won’t yield or be reasoned with.”
“Did he ever try to hurt you?”
“No more than to nag or snarl at me. No, for all he does nowadays is to sit alone in his room and read and reflect, although his learnin doesn’t in the least unbend his mind to me. Of course I don’t approve him givin up his job, because with these puffed and crippled hands I am lucky when I can work half time, but there are all sorts in the world and some have greater need for reflection than others. He has been inclined in that direction since he was a lad, although I did not notice his quiet and solitary ways until after he had returned from the army.”
“What did he do then?” said Wolff.
“He worked for a year at his old job, then gave it up and became a hospital orderly. But he couldn’t stand it long and he quit and stayed home.”
Farr looked out the dark fire-escape window and saw himself walking along the dreary edge of a desolate beach, the wind wailing at his feet, driftwood taking on frightening shapes, and his footsteps fading
behind, to appear on the ground before him as he walked along the vast, silent shore …
behind, to appear on the ground before him as he walked along the vast, silent shore …
Wolff rubbed the cigar out against the sole of his shoe. “You want to know why I’m here?” he said to Herman Farr.
“Yes.”
“He came to the station house around suppertime and made a statement that he had murdered you with this sash weight.”
The old man groaned. “Not that I don’t deserve the fate.”
“He thought he actually did it,” Wolff said.
“It’s his overactive imagination on account of not gettin any exercise to speak of. I’ve told him that many times but he don’t listen to what I say. I can’t describe to you the things he talks about in his sleep. Many a night they keep me awake.”
“Do you see this sash weight?” Wolff asked Farr.
“I do,” he said, with eyes shut.
“Do you still maintain that you hit or attempted to hit your father with it?”
Farr stared rigidly at the wall. He thought, If I answer I’ll go crazy.
I mustn’t. I mustn’t
I mustn’t. I mustn’t
“He thinks he did,” Wolff said. “You can see he’s insane.”
Herman Farr cried out as though he had been stabbed in the throat.
Farr shouted, “What about that boy I killed? You showed me his picture.”
“That boy was my son,” Wolff said. “He died ten years ago of terrible sickness.”
Farr rose and thrust forth his wrists.
The detective shook his head. “No cuffs. We’ll just call the ambulance.”
Farr wildly swung his fist, catching the detective on the jaw. Wolff’s chair toppled and he fell heavily to the floor. Amid the confusion and shouting by Herman Farr that he was the one who deserved hanging, Farr fled down the ill-lighted stairs with murder in his heart. In the street he flung his coins into the sky.
1952-53
A
fter a supper of fried kidneys and brains—he was thoroughly sick of every kind of meat—Herm quickly cleared the table and piled the dirty dishes in with the oily pans in the metal sink. He planned to leave like the wind, but in the thinking of it hesitated just long enough for his father to get his tongue free.
fter a supper of fried kidneys and brains—he was thoroughly sick of every kind of meat—Herm quickly cleared the table and piled the dirty dishes in with the oily pans in the metal sink. He planned to leave like the wind, but in the thinking of it hesitated just long enough for his father to get his tongue free.
“Herm,” said the butcher in a tired but angry voice as he stroked the fat-to-bursting beef-livered cat that looked like him, “you better think of getting them fancy pants off and giving me a hand. I never heard of a boy of sixteen years wearing riding pants for all day when he should be thinking to start some steady work.”
He was sitting, with the cat on his knees, in a rocker in the harshly lit kitchen behind the butcher shop where they always ate since the death of the butcher’s wife. He had on—it never seemed otherwise—his white store jacket with the bloody sleeves, and apron, also blood-smeared and tight around his bulging belly, and the stupid yellow pancake of a straw hat that he wore in storm, sleet, or dead of winter. His mustache was gray, his lips thin, and his eyes, once blue as ice, were dark with fatigue.
“Not in a butcher store, Pa,” Herm answered.
“What’s the matter with one?” said the butcher, sitting up and looking around with exaggerated movements of the head.
Herm turned away. “Blood,” he said sideways, “and chicken feathers.”
The butcher slumped back in the chair.
“The Lord made certain creatures designed for man to satisfy his craving for food. Meat and fowl are full of proteins and vitamins. Somebody has to carve the animal and trim the meat clear of bone and gristle. There’s no shame attached to such work. I did it my whole life long and never stole a cent from no one.”
Herm considered whether there was a concealed stab in his words but he could find none. He had not stolen anything since he was thirteen and the butcher was never one to carry a long grudge.
“Meat might be good, but I don’t have to like it.”
“What do you like, Herm?”
Herm thought of his riding pants and the leather boots he was saving for. He knew, though, what his father meant—that he never stuck to a job. After he quit school he had a paper route, but the pay was chicken feed, so he left that and did lawn-mowing and cellar-cleaning, but that was not steady enough, so he quit that too, but not before he had enough to buy a pair of riding pants.
Since he could think of nothing to say, he tried to walk out, but his father called him back.
“Herm, I’m a mighty tired man since your momma died. I don’t get near enough rest and I need it. I can’t afford to pay a butcher’s clerk because my take is not good. As a matter of fact it’s bad. I’m every day losing customers for the reason that I can’t give them the service they’re entitled to. I know you’re favorable to delivering orders but I need more of your help. You didn’t like high school and asked me to sign you out. I did that, but you haven’t been doing anything worthwhile for the past two months, so I decided I could use you in here. What do you say?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Yes or no, damn it.”
“Then no, damn it,” Herm said, his face flaring. “I hate butcher stores. I hate guts and chicken feathers, and I want to live my own kind of life and not yours.”
And though the butcher called and called, he ran out of the store.
That night, while Herm was asleep, the butcher took his riding pants and locked them in the closet of his bedroom, but Herm guessed where they were and the next day went to the hardware store down the block, bought a skeleton key for a dime, and sneaked his riding pants out of his father’s closet.
When Herm had just learned to ride he liked to go often, though he didn’t always enjoy it. In the beginning he was too conscious of the horse’s body, the massive frame he had to straddle, each independent rippling muscle, and the danger that he might have his head kicked in if he fell under the thundering hooves. And the worst of it was that sometimes while riding he was conscious of the interior layout of the horse, where the different cuts of round, rump, and flank were, as if the horse were stripped and labeled on a chart, posted, as a steer was, on the wall in the back of the store. He kept thinking of this the night he was out on Girlie, the roan they told him he wasn’t ready for, and she had got the reins from him and turned and ran the way she wanted, shaking him away when he tried to hold her back, till she came to the stable with him on her like a sack of beans and everybody laughing. After that he had made up his mind to quit horses, and did, but one spring night he went back and took out Girlie, who, though lively, was docile to his touch and went with him everywhere and did everything he wanted; and the next morning he took his last twenty-five dollars out of the savings account and bought the riding pants, and that same night dreamed he was on a horse that dissolved under him as he rode but there he was with his riding pants on galloping away on thin air.
Herm woke to hear the sound of a cleaver on the wooden block down in the store. As it was still night he jumped out of bed frightened and searched for his riding pants. They were not in the bottom drawer where he had hidden them under a pile of his mother’s clothes, so he ran to his father’s closet and saw it was open and the butcher not in bed. In his pajamas Herm raced downstairs and tried to get into the butcher shop, but he was locked out and stood by the door crying as his father chopped the tightly rolled pants as if they were a bologna, with the slices falling off at each sock of the cleaver onto the floor, where the cat sniffed the uncurled remains.
He woke with the moon on his bed, rose and went on bare toes into his father’s room, which looked so different now that it was no longer his mother’s, and tried to find the butcher’s trousers. They were hanging on a chair but without the store keys in the pockets, or the billfold, he realized blushing. Some loose change clinked and the butcher stirred in the creaking bed. Herm stood desperately still but, when his father had quieted, hung the pants and tiptoed back to his room. He
pushed up the window softly, deciding he would slide down the telephone wires to the back yard and get in that way. Once within the store he would find a knife, catch the cat, and dismember it, leaving the pieces for his father to find in the morning; but not his son.
pushed up the window softly, deciding he would slide down the telephone wires to the back yard and get in that way. Once within the store he would find a knife, catch the cat, and dismember it, leaving the pieces for his father to find in the morning; but not his son.
Testing the waterspout, he found it too shaky, but the wires held his weight, so he slid slowly down to the ground. Then he climbed up the sill and tried to push on the window. The butcher had latched it, not knowing Herm had loosened the screws of the latch; it gave and he was able to climb in. As his foot touched the floor, he thought he heard something scamper away but wasn’t sure. Afraid to pull the light on because the Holmes police usually passed along the block this time of night, he said softly in the dark, “Here, kitty, here, kitty kitty,” and felt around on the pile of burlap bags, but the cat was not where she usually slept.
He felt his way into the store and looked in the windows and they too were empty except for the pulpy blood droppings from the chickens that had hung on the hooks. He tried the paper-bag slots behind the counter and the cat was not there either, so he called again, “Here, kitty kitty kitty,” but could not find it. Then he noticed the icebox door had been left ajar, which surprised him, because the butcher always yelled whenever anyone kept it open too long. He went in thinking of course the damn cat was there, poking its greedy head into the bowl of slightly sour chicken livers the butcher conveniently kept on the bottom shelf.
“Here, kitty,” he whispered as he stepped into the box, and was completely unprepared when the door slammed shut behind him. He thought at first, so what, it could be opened from the inside, but then it flashed on him that the butcher had vaguely mentioned he was having trouble with the door handle and the locksmith was taking it away till tomorrow. He thought then, Oh, my God, I’m trapped here and will freeze to death, and his skull all but cracked with terror. Fumbling his way to the door, he worked frantically on the lock with his numbed fingers, wishing he had at least switched on the light from outside where the switch was, and he could feel the hole where the handle had been but was unable to get his comb or house key in to turn it. He thought if he had a screwdriver that might do it, or he could unscrew the metal plate and pick the lock apart, and for a second his heart leaped in expectation that he had taken a knife with him, but he hadn’t.
Holding his head back to escape the impaling hooks, he reached his hand along the shelves on the side of the icebox and then the top shelf, cautiously feeling if the butcher had maybe left some tool around. His hand moved forward and stopped; it took him a minute to comprehend
it was not going farther, because his fingers had entered a moist bony cavern; he felt suddenly shocked, as if he were touching the inside of an electric socket, but the hole was in a pig’s head where an eye had been. Stepping back, he tripped over something he thought was the cat, but when he touched it, it was a bag of damp squirmy guts. As he flung it away he lost his balance and his face brushed against the clammy open side of a bleeding lamb. He sat down in the sawdust on the floor and bit his knuckles.
it was not going farther, because his fingers had entered a moist bony cavern; he felt suddenly shocked, as if he were touching the inside of an electric socket, but the hole was in a pig’s head where an eye had been. Stepping back, he tripped over something he thought was the cat, but when he touched it, it was a bag of damp squirmy guts. As he flung it away he lost his balance and his face brushed against the clammy open side of a bleeding lamb. He sat down in the sawdust on the floor and bit his knuckles.
After a time, his fright prevented any further disgust. He tried to reason out what to do, but there was nothing he could think of, so he tried to think what time it was and could he live till his father came down to open the store. He had heard of people staying alive by beating their arms together and walking back and forth till help came, but when he tried that it tired him more, so that he began to feel very sleepy, and though he knew he oughtn’t, he sat down again. He might have cried, but the tears were frozen in, and he began to wonder from afar if there was some quicker way to die. By now the icebox had filled with white mist, and from the distance, through the haze, a winged black horse moved toward him. This is it, he thought, and got up to mount it, but his foot slipped from the stirrup and he fell forward, his head bonging against the door, which opened, and he fell out on the floor.
He woke in the morning with a cutting headache and would have stayed in bed but was too hungry, so he dressed and went downstairs. He had six dollars in his pocket, all he owned in the world; he intended to have breakfast and after that pretend to go for a newspaper and never come back again.
The butcher was sitting in the rocker, sleepily stroking the cat. Neither he nor Herm spoke. There were some slices of uncooked bacon on a plate on the table and two eggs in a cardboard carton, but he could not look at them. He poured himself a cup of black coffee and drank it with an unbuttered roll.
A customer came into the store and the butcher rose with a sigh to serve her. The cat jumped off his lap and followed him. They looked like brothers. Herm turned away. This was the last he would see of either of them.
He heard a woman’s resounding voice ordering some porterhouse steak and a chunk of calf’s liver, nice and juicy for the dogs, and recognized her as Mrs. Gibbs, the doctor’s wife, whom all the storekeepers
treated like the Empress of Japan, all but kissing her rear end, especially his father, and this was what he wanted his own son to do. Then he heard the butcher go into the icebox and he shivered. The butcher came out and hacked at something with the cleaver and Herm shivered again. Finally the lady, who had talked loud and steadily, the butcher always assenting, was served. The door closed behind her corpulent bulk and the store was quiet. The butcher returned and sat in his chair, fanning his red face with his straw hat, his bald head glistening with sweat. It took him a half hour to recover every time he waited on her.
treated like the Empress of Japan, all but kissing her rear end, especially his father, and this was what he wanted his own son to do. Then he heard the butcher go into the icebox and he shivered. The butcher came out and hacked at something with the cleaver and Herm shivered again. Finally the lady, who had talked loud and steadily, the butcher always assenting, was served. The door closed behind her corpulent bulk and the store was quiet. The butcher returned and sat in his chair, fanning his red face with his straw hat, his bald head glistening with sweat. It took him a half hour to recover every time he waited on her.
When the door opened again a few minutes later, it almost seemed as if he would not be able to get up, but Mrs. Gibbs’s bellow brought him immediately to his feet. “Coming,” he called with a sudden frog in his throat and hurried inside. Then Herm heard her yelling about something, but her voice was so powerful the sound blurred. He got up and stood at the door.
It was her, all right, a tub of a woman with a large hat, a meaty face, and a thick rump covered in mink.
“You stupid dope,” she shouted at the butcher, “you don’t even know how to wrap a package. You let the liver blood run all over my fur. My coat is ruined.”
The anguished butcher attempted to apologize, but her voice beat him down. He tried to apologize with his hands and his rolling eyes and with his yellow straw hat, but she would have none of it. When he went forth with a clean rag and tried to wipe the mink, she drove him back with an angry yelp. The door shut with a bang. On the counter stood her dripping bag. Herm could see his father had tried to save paper.
He went back to the table. About a half hour later the butcher came in. His face was deathly white and he looked like a white scarecrow with a yellow straw hat. He sat in the rocker without rocking. The cat tried to jump into his lap but he wouldn’t let it and sat there looking into the back yard and far away.
Herm too was looking into the back yard. He was thinking of all the places he could go where there were horses. He wanted to be where there were many and he could ride them all.
But then he got up and reached for the blood-smeared apron hanging on a hook. He looped the loop over his head and tied the strings around him. They covered where the riding pants had been, but he felt as though he still had them on.
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