The Complete Stories (22 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories
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Fanny lay at death’s door. Through shrunken lips she muttered concerning her childhood, the sorrows of the marriage bed, the loss of her children; yet wept to live. Manischevitz tried not to listen, but even without ears he would have heard. It was not a gift. The doctor panted
up the stairs, a broad but bland, unshaven man (it was Sunday), and soon shook his head. A day at most, or two. He left at once to spare himself Manischevitz’s multiplied sorrow; the man who never stopped hurting. He would someday get him into a public home.
Manischevitz visited a synagogue and there spoke to God, but God had absented Himself. The tailor searched his heart and found no hope. When she died, he would live dead. He considered taking his life although he knew he wouldn’t. Yet it was something to consider. Considering, you existed. He railed against God—Can you love a rock, a broom, an emptiness? Baring his chest, he smote the naked bones, cursing himself for having, beyond belief, believed.
Asleep in a chair that afternoon, he dreamed of Levine. He was standing before a faded mirror, preening small decaying opalescent wings. “This means,” mumbled Manischevitz, as he broke out of sleep, “that it is possible he could be an angel.” Begging a neighbor lady to look in on Fanny and occasionally wet her lips with water, he drew on his thin coat, gripped his walking stick, exchanged some pennies for a subway token, and rode to Harlem. He knew this act was the last desperate one of his woe: to go seeking a black magician to restore his wife to invalidism. Yet if there was no choice, he did at least what was chosen.
He hobbled to Bella’s, but the place seemed to have changed hands. It was now, as he breathed, a synagogue in a store. In the front, toward him, were several rows of empty wooden benches. In the rear stood the Ark, its portals of rough wood covered with rainbows of sequins; under it a long table on which lay the sacred scroll unrolled, illuminated by the dim light from a bulb on a chain overhead. Around the table, as if frozen to it and the scroll, which they all touched with their fingers, sat four Negroes wearing skullcaps. Now as they read the Holy Word, Manischevitz could, through the plate-glass window, hear the singsong chant of their voices. One of them was old, with a gray beard. One was bubble-eyed. One was humpbacked. The fourth was a boy, no older than thirteen. Their heads moved in rhythmic swaying. Touched by this sight from his childhood and youth, Manischevitz entered and stood silent in the rear.
“Neshoma,” said bubble eyes, pointing to the word with a stubby finger. “Now what dat mean?”
“That’s the word that means soul,” said the boy. He wore eyeglasses.
“Let’s git on wid de commentary,” said the old man.
“Ain’t necessary,” said the humpback. “Souls is immaterial substance.
That’s all. The soul is derived in that manner. The immateriality is derived from the substance, and they both, causally an otherwise, derived from the soul. There can be no higher.”
“That’s the highest.”
“Over de top.”
“Wait a minute,” said bubble eyes. “I don’t see what is dat immaterial substance. How come de one gits hitched up to de odder?” He addressed the humpback.
“Ask me somethin hard. Because it is substanceless immateriality. It couldn’t be closer together, like all the parts of the body under one skin—closer.”
“Hear now,” said the old man.
“All you done is switched de words.”
“It’s the primum mobile, the substanceless substance from which comes all things that were incepted in the idea—you, me, and everything and -body else.”
“Now how did all dat happen? Make it sound simple.”
“It de speerit,” said the old man. “On de face of de water moved de speerit. An dat was good. It say so in de Book. From de speerit ariz de man.”
“But now listen here. How come it become substance if it all de time a spirit?”
“God alone done dat.”
“Holy! Holy! Praise His Name.”
“But has dis spirit got some kind of a shade or color?” asked bubble eyes, deadpan.
“Man, of course not. A spirit is a spirit.”
“Then how come we is colored?” he said with a triumphant glare.
“Ain’t got nothing to do wid dat.”
“I still like to know.”
“God put the spirit in all things,” answered the boy. “He put it in the green leaves and the yellow flowers. He put it with the gold in the fishes and the blue in the sky. That’s how come it came to us.”
“Amen.”
“Praise Lawd and utter loud His speechless Name.”
“Blow de bugle till it bust the sky.”
They fell silent, intent upon the next word. Manischevitz, with doubt, approached them.
“You’ll excuse me,” he said. “I am looking for Alexander Levine. You know him maybe?”
“That’s the angel,” said the boy.
“Oh,
him
,” snuffed bubble eyes.
“You’ll find him at Bella’s. It’s the establishment right down the street,” the humpback said.
Manischevitz said he was sorry that he could not stay, thanked them, and limped across the street. It was already night. The city was dark and he could barely find his way.
But Bella’s was bursting with jazz and the blues. Through the window Manischevitz recognized the dancing crowd and among them sought Levine. He was sitting loose-lipped at Bella’s side table. They were tippling from an almost empty whiskey fifth. Levine had shed his old clothes, wore a shiny new checkered suit, pearl-gray derby hat, cigar, and big, two-tone, button shoes. To the tailor’s dismay, a drunken look had settled upon his formerly dignified face. He leaned toward Bella, tickled her earlobe with his pinky while whispering words that sent her into gales of raucous laughter. She fondled his knee.
Manischevitz, girding himself, pushed open the door and was not welcomed.
“This place reserved.”
“Beat it, pale puss.”
“Exit, Yankel, Semitic trash.”
But he moved toward the table where Levine sat, the crowd breaking before him as he hobbled forward.
“Mr. Levine,” he spoke in a trembly voice. “Is here Manischevitz.”
Levine glared blearily. “Speak yo piece, son.”
Manischevitz shivered. His back plagued him. Tremors tormented his legs. He looked around, everybody was all ears.
“You’ll excuse me. I would like to talk to you in a private place.”
“Speak, Ah is a private pusson.”
Bella laughed piercingly. “Stop it, boy, you killin me.”
Manischevitz, no end disturbed, considered fleeing, but Levine addressed him:
“Kindly state the pu’pose of yo communication with yo’s truly.”
The tailor wet cracked lips. “You are Jewish. This I am sure.”
Levine rose, nostrils flaring. “Anythin else yo got to say?”
Manischevitz’s tongue lay like a slab of stone.
“Speak now or fo’ever hold off.”
Tears blinded the tailor’s eyes. Was ever man so tried? Should he say he believed a half-drunk Negro was an angel?
The silence slowly petrified.
Manischevitz was recalling scenes of his youth as a wheel in his mind whirred: believe, do not, yes, no, yes, no. The pointer pointed to
yes, to between yes and no, to no, no it was yes. He sighed. It moved but one still had to make a choice.
“I think you are an angel from God.” He said it in a broken voice, thinking, If you said it, it was said. If you believed it, you must say it. If you believed, you believed.
The hush broke. Everybody talked but the music began and they went on dancing. Bella, grown bored, picked up the cards and dealt herself a hand.
Levine burst into tears. “How you have humiliated me.”
Manischevitz apologized.
“Wait’ll I freshen up.” Levine went to the men’s room and returned in his old suit.
No one said goodbye as they left.
They rode to the flat via subway. As they walked up the stairs Manischevitz pointed with his cane at his door.
“That’s all been taken care of,” Levine said. “You go in while I take off.”
Disappointed that it was so soon over, but torn by curiosity, Manischevitz followed the angel up three flights to the roof. When he got there the door was already padlocked.
Luckily he could see through a small broken window. He heard an odd noise, as though of a whirring of wings, and, when he strained for a wider view, could have sworn he saw a dark figure borne aloft on a pair of strong black wings.
A feather drifted down. Manischevitz gasped as it turned white, but it was only snowing.
He rushed downstairs. In the flat Fanny wielded a dust mop under the bed, and then upon the cobwebs on the wall.
“A wonderful thing, Fanny,” Manischevitz said. “Believe me, there are Jews everywhere.”
1955
G
eorge Stoyonovich was a neighborhood boy who had quit high school on an impulse when he was sixteen, run out of patience, and though he was ashamed every time he went looking for a job, when people asked him if he had finished and he had to say no, he never went back to school. This summer was a hard time for jobs and he had none. Having so much time on his hands, George thought of going to summer school, but the kids in his classes would be too young. He also considered registering in a night high school, only he didn’t like the idea of the teachers always telling him what to do. He felt they had not respected him. The result was he stayed off the streets and in his room most of the day. He was close to twenty and had needs with the neighborhood girls, but no money to spend, and he couldn’t get more than an occasional few cents because his father was poor, and his sister, Sophie, who resembled George, a tall bony girl of twenty-three, earned very little and what she had she kept for herself. Their mother was dead, and Sophie had to take care of the house.
Very early in the morning George’s father got up to go to work in a fish market. Sophie left at about eight for her long ride in the subway to a cafeteria in the Bronx. George had his coffee by himself, then hung around in the house. When the house, a five-room railroad flat above a butcher store, got on his nerves he cleaned it up—mopped the floors with a wet mop and put things away. But most of the time he sat in his room. In the afternoons he listened to the ball game.
Otherwise he had a couple of old copies of the
World Almanac
he had bought long ago, and he liked to read in them and also the magazines and newspapers that Sophie brought home, that had been left on the tables in the cafeteria. They were mostly picture magazines about movie stars and sports figures, also usually the
News
and
Mirror
. Sophie herself read whatever fell into her hands, although she sometimes read good books.
She once asked George what he did in his room all day and he said he read a lot too.
“Of what besides what I bring home? Do you ever read any worthwhile books?”
“Some,” George answered, although he really didn’t. He had tried to read a book or two that Sophie had in the house but found he was in no mood for them. Lately he couldn’t stand made-up stories, they got on his nerves. He wished he had some hobby to work at—as a kid he was good in carpentry, but where could he work at it? Sometimes during the day he went for walks, but mostly he did his walking after the hot sun had gone down and it was cooler in the streets.
In the evening after supper George left the house and wandered in the neighborhood. During the sultry days some of the storekeepers and their wives sat in chairs on the thick, broken sidewalks in front of their shops, fanning themselves, and George walked past them and the guys hanging out on the candy store corner. A couple of them he had known his whole life, but nobody recognized each other. He had no place special to go, but generally, saving it till the last, he left the neighborhood and walked for blocks till he came to a darkly lit little park with benches and trees and an iron railing, giving it a feeling of privacy. He sat on a bench here, watching the leafy trees and the flowers blooming on the inside of the railing, thinking of a better life for himself. He thought of the jobs he had had since he had quit school—delivery boy, stock clerk, runner, lately working in a factory—and he was dissatisfied with all of them. He felt he would someday like to have a good job and live in a private house with a porch, on a street with trees. He wanted to have some dough in his pocket to buy things with, and a girl to go with, so as not to be so lonely, especially on Saturday nights. He wanted people to like and respect him. He thought about these things often but mostly when he was alone at night. Around midnight he got up and drifted back to his hot and stony neighborhood.
One time while on his walk George met Mr. Cattanzara coming
home very late from work. He wondered if he was drunk but then could tell he wasn’t. Mr. Cattanzara, a stocky, bald-headed man who worked in a change booth in an IRT station, lived on the next block after George’s, above a shoe repair store. Nights, during the hot weather, he sat on his stoop in an undershirt, reading
The New York Times
in the light of the shoemaker’s window. He read it from the first page to the last, then went up to sleep. And all the time he was reading the paper, his wife, a fat woman with a white face, leaned out of the window, gazing into the street, her thick white arms folded under her loose breast, on the window ledge.
Once in a while Mr. Cattanzara came home drunk, but it was a quiet drunk. He never made any trouble, only walked stiffly up the street and slowly climbed the stairs into the hall. Though drunk, he looked the same as always, except for his tight walk, the quietness, and that his eyes were wet. George liked Mr. Cattanzara because he remembered him giving him nickels to buy lemon ice with when he was a squirt. Mr. Cattanzara was a different type than those in the neighborhood. He asked different questions than the others when he met you, and he seemed to know what went on in all the newspapers. He read them, as his fat sick wife watched from the window.
“What are you doing with yourself this summer, George?” Mr. Cattanzara asked. “I see you walkin around at nights.”
George felt embarrassed. “I like to walk.”
“What are you doin in the day now?”
“Nothing much just right now. I’m waiting for a job.” Since it shamed him to admit he wasn’t working, George said, “I’m staying home—but I’m reading a lot to pick up my education.”
Mr. Cattanzara looked interested. He mopped his hot face with a red handkerchief.
“What are you readin?”
George hesitated, then said, “I got a list of books in the library once, and now I’m gonna read them this summer.” He felt strange and a little unhappy saying this, but he wanted Mr. Cattanzara to respect him.
“How many books are there on it?”
“I never counted them. Maybe around a hundred.”
Mr. Cattanzara whistled through his teeth.
“I figure if I did that,” George went on earnestly, “it would help me in my education. I don’t mean the kind they give you in high school. I want to know different things than they learn there, if you know what I mean.”
The change maker nodded. “Still and all, one hundred books is a pretty big load for one summer.”
“It might take longer.”
“After you’re finished with some, maybe you and I can shoot the breeze about them?” said Mr. Cattanzara.
“When I’m finished,” George answered.
Mr. Cattanzara went home and George continued on his walk. After that, though he had the urge to, George did nothing different from usual. He still took his walks at night, ending up in the little park. But one evening the shoemaker on the next block stopped George to say he was a good boy, and George figured that Mr. Cattanzara had told him all about the books he was reading. From the shoemaker it must have gone down the street, because George saw a couple of people smiling kindly at him, though nobody spoke to him personally. He felt a little better around the neighborhood and liked it more, though not so much he would want to live in it forever. He had never exactly disliked the people in it, yet he had never liked them very much either. It was the fault of the neighborhood. To his surprise, George found out that his father and Sophie knew about his reading too. His father was too shy to say anything about it—he was never much of a talker in his whole life—but Sophie was softer to George, and she showed him in other ways she was proud of him.
As the summer went on George felt in a good mood about things. He cleaned the house every day, as a favor to Sophie, and he enjoyed the ball games more. Sophie gave him a buck a week allowance, and though it still wasn’t enough and he had to use it carefully, it was a helluva lot better than just having two bits now and then. What he bought with the money—cigarettes mostly, an occasional beer or movie ticket—he got a big kick out of. Life wasn’t so bad if you knew how to appreciate it. Occasionally he bought a paperback book from the newsstand, but he never got around to reading it, though he was glad to have a couple of books in his room. But he read thoroughly Sophie’s magazines and newspapers. And at night was the most enjoyable time, because when he passed the storekeepers sitting outside their stores, he could tell they regarded him highly. He walked erect, and though he did not say much to them, or they to him, he could feel approval on all sides. A couple of nights he felt so good that he skipped the park at the end of the evening. He just wandered in the neighborhood, where people had known him from the time he was a kid playing punchball whenever there was a game of it going; he wandered there, then came home and got undressed for bed, feeling fine.
For a few weeks he had talked only once with Mr. Cattanzara, and though the change maker had said nothing more about the books, asked no questions, his silence made George a little uneasy. For a while George didn’t pass in front of Mr. Cattanzara’s house anymore, until one night, forgetting himself, he approached it from a different direction than he usually did when he did. It was already past midnight. The street, except for one or two people, was deserted, and George was surprised when he saw Mr. Cattanzara still reading his newspaper by the light of the street lamp overhead. His impulse was to stop at the stoop and talk to him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, though he felt the words would come when he began to talk; but the more he thought about it, the more the idea scared him, and he decided he’d better not. He even considered beating it home by another street, but he was too near Mr. Cattanzara, and the change maker might see him as he ran, and get annoyed. So George unobtrusively crossed the street, trying to make it seem as if he had to look in a store window on the other side, which he did, and then went on, uncomfortable at what he was doing. He feared Mr. Cattanzara would glance up from his paper and call him a dirty rat for walking on the other side of the street, but all he did was sit there, sweating through his undershirt, his bald head shining in the dim light as he read his
Times
, and upstairs his fat wife leaned out of the window, seeming to read the paper along with him. George thought she would spy him and yell out to Mr. Cattanzara, but she never moved her eyes off her husband.
George made up his mind to stay away from the change maker until he had got some of his softback books read, but when he started them and saw they were mostly story books, he lost his interest and didn’t bother to finish them. He lost his interest in reading other things too. Sophie’s magazines and newspapers went unread. She saw them piling up on a chair in his room and asked why he was no longer looking at them, and George told her it was because of all the other reading he had to do. Sophie said she had guessed that was it. So for most of the day, George had the radio on, turning to music when he was sick of the human voice. He kept the house fairly neat, and Sophie said nothing on the days when he neglected it. She was still kind and gave him his extra buck, though things weren’t so good for him as they had been before.
But they were good enough, considering. Also his night walks invariably picked him up, no matter how bad the day was. Then one night George saw Mr. Cattanzara coming down the street toward him. George was about to turn and run but he recognized from Mr. Cattanzara’s walk that he was drunk, and if so, probably he would not even
bother to notice him. So George kept on walking straight ahead until he came abreast of Mr. Cattanzara, and though he felt wound up enough to pop into the sky, he was not surprised when Mr. Cattanzara passed him without a word, walking slowly, his face and body stiff. George drew a breath in relief at his narrow escape, when he heard his name called, and there stood Mr. Cattanzara at his elbow, smelling like the inside of a beer barrel. His eyes were sad as he gazed at George, and George felt so intensely uncomfortable he was tempted to shove the drunk aside and continue on his walk.
But he couldn’t act that way to him, and besides, Mr. Cattanzara took a nickel out of his pants pocket and handed it to him.
“Go buy yourself a lemon ice, Georgie.”
“It’s not that time anymore, Mr. Cattanzara,” George said, “I am a big guy now.”
“No, you ain’t,” said Mr. Cattanzara, to which George made no reply he could think of.
“How are all your books comin along now?” Mr. Cattanzara asked. Though he tried to stand steady, he swayed a little.
“Fine, I guess,” said George, feeling the red crawling up his face.
“You ain’t sure?” The change maker smiled slyly, a way George had never seen him smile.
“Sure I’m sure. They’re fine.”
Though his head swayed in little arcs, Mr. Cattanzara’s eyes were steady. He had small blue eyes which could hurt if you looked at them too long.
“George,” he said, “name me one book on that list that you read this summer, and I will drink to your health.”
“I don’t want anybody drinking to me.”
“Name me one so I can ask you a question on it. Who can tell, if it’s a good book maybe I might wanna read it myself.”
George knew he looked passable on the outside, but inside he was crumbling apart.
Unable to reply, he shut his eyes, but when—years later—he opened them, he saw that Mr. Cattanzara had, out of pity, gone away, but in his ears he still heard the words he had said when he left: “George, don’t do what I did.”

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