“That moment I thought of Frankie and what he said. ‘Why don’t you people who do understand explain it to them?’ I asked.
“‘We are only a few and they won’t listen to us,’ was his answer.
“I left Germany the next day without finishing the semester. I had something to tell the folks back home, but they didn’t understand what I was saying. Only a few did—you both, and Ruth, and others that I could count on the fingers of my hands. The rest just didn’t believe—or didn’t care.
“Many were the times when I was tired and discouraged with the progress I had been making with a patient that I felt like saying to him, ‘Oh, the hell with it! Get out of here. I can’t do anything for you,’ and I’d remember what Frankie said and I’d say to myself: ‘It’s not the patient’s fault, it’s mine. I don’t understand, don’t know what’s wrong. And if I don’t know, how can I help?
“I would have another whack at it. Sometimes it would work—maybe more times than less. I know there were some cases I couldn’t do anything for, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. It was because I didn’t understand them, was too stupid to see what was wrong. It was my ignorance that was to blame, not theirs.”
He laughed a little and raised a glass of wine to his lips. “There speaks Martin Cabell, the greatest psychiatrist in the world, explaining his failures in the light of reason. Or maybe it’s because I have a feeling of inferiority myself.”
He took another sip of the wine and looked at them. As he spoke, his face had lost its intensity, had relaxed and grown soft, younger. Suddenly he smiled. It was the same old smile—warm and fresh and young. “Old friends,” he thought contentedly. “The same as before. They haven’t changed. You can still talk and they will listen.” The world seemed right again, and for the first time since he had come back, he felt at home.
Part II
15
During the days that followed at the hospital I learned a great deal about my uncle and his family. He had a job as a salesman for a dress house downtown, and they had been living in New York for the past ten years. They had a fairly comfortable five-room apartment on Washington Heights.
His wife was a quiet, gentle woman whom I worshipped almost on sight. She would never by word or action ever show herself to be thinking unkindly of me. She would come to the hospital every day bearing a little gift of fruit or cookies or a book to while away the time. She would stay as long as she could and then leave. Sometimes she would bring my cousins with her. They were two little girls about eight and ten years old.
At first the girls were prone to regard me with awe and a certain mixture of friendliness and shyness. Later as they became more accustomed to me, they would kiss my cheek as they came in and left.
Morris and Bertha Cain and their children, Ester and Irene, were the first real family I had ever had, and if I felt strange to them or they to me, it was easily understandable. Family relationships that seemed normal to most people were only strangely intricate to me. I could never figure out the problem of who was whose cousin, and second and first cousins had me completely licked. But we got along.
I left the hospital near the end of September and stepped right into a new world. Uncle Morris had a small Buick car and he drove me home. He had called for me alone. Upon arriving in the apartment, I found out they were planning a little party for me. Aunt Bertha had baked a cake, and I met lots of other relatives of ours. When they had all gone I was shown to the room that would be mine. It used to be Irene’s room (she was the older of the two) but she now shared a room with Esther or Essie, as they called the younger. My clothes were already hung in the closet and the place seemed very warm and friendly to me.
I remember Uncle Morris saying: “This is your room, Frankie.” And opening the door, he motioned to me and I crossed the threshold, he and Aunt Bertha following me. The children had already been put to bed. I looked around it. The first thing I noticed was a small framed picture of a young woman on the dresser.
Aunt Bertha saw me looking at it. “That’s your mother, Frankie. It’s the only picture we have of her and I thought you would like to have it.”
I went over to look at it. She was about nineteen when the picture was taken. Her hair was combed down with a bun tied in back as was the fashion in the days when the picture was taken. Her lips were half smiling and a reflection of hidden laughter seemed to dance in her eyes. Her chin was firm, rounded but strong—too strong perhaps for eyes and lips like hers. I looked at it for a few minutes.
Uncle Morris said: “You look very much like her, Frankie. Your eyes are the same color, and the shape of your mouth is so much like hers it almost isn’t a boy’s mouth at all.” He went over to it, picked it up, looked at it, and then put it down. “Would you like to hear about her?” He asked.
I nodded.
“Supposing you undress,” he said, “and we’ll talk while you’re changing.”
Aunt Bertha came into the room and, opening one of the drawers in the dresser, took out a new pair of pajamas and gave them to me. “We thought you could use some new things,” she said and smiled.
“Thank you,” I said, taking them from her, feeling strangely about it. I had yet to learn how to accept a gift. I began to unbutton my shirt.
“You need never feel ashamed of your mother, Frankie,” my uncle began. “She was an unusual girl. You see, a long time ago we all lived in Chicago. That’s where we came from. Your mother was the pride of the family. When she was twenty she had already graduated from college and was going to work. That was about when that picture was taken, a few months after she had graduated. Fran was a high-strung girl, an active one. She used to be a suffragette and always spoke about equal rights. The family took an odd pride in her. At that time women didn’t have the right to vote they have today, and she was always going about and making speeches about it. She was a very good bookkeeper, and once at Marshall Field’s (that’s a big department store in Chicago where she used to work) she was the only one that could find a mistake in the inventory that they used to take every month. About that time I came to New York. A little while after that she fell in love with a man who used to work down there. She wanted to marry him but my mother and father would not consent. You see, he wasn’t Jewish and our family was very strict. To make the story short, she ran away with him. I got a letter from her saying she was going to look me up in New York as soon as she got here. That was the last anyone ever heard from her. We tried to find her but couldn’t. There wasn’t a trace of her anywhere. Shortly after that my mother died and my father came to New York to live with us. He always used to say to me: ‘If we hadn’t been such fools and tried to make Falgele do what we wanted, we all still would be together.’ He died soon after my mother. He was never very happy when she had gone.”
He picked up the picture again and held it in his hand.
“But that was what happened yesterday,” Aunt Bertha said. “Today is what matters most. I feel somehow they all know that you are with us and they are happy—just as happy as we are to have you here. We want you to love us as we love you, Frankie.” She took the picture from my uncle’s hand and put it back on the dresser.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said putting on the bottom part of my pajamas and laying my pants on the chair. I sat down on the edge of the bed, took off my shoes and stockings, and slid between the sheets.
“Good night,” they said. Aunt Bertha bent over me and kissed my cheek.
“Good night,” I said.
They went out the door. Aunt Bertha paused with her hand on the light switch before she turned it out. “Frankie,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am?” I answered.
“Don’t say ‘Yes, ma’am’ to me. Call me Aunt Bertha.” She flicked the light and went out.
“Yes—Aunt Bertha,” I half whispered to myself, putting my hand on my cheek. It was still warm where she kissed me. I fell asleep with the moonlight on my mother’s picture, and it seemed to me in the dark that she was smiling.
16
I awoke early the next morning. The apartment was quiet and everyone seemed to be still asleep. I got out of bed and walked over to the dresser and looked at my watch. It was half past six. I walked over to the window and looked out.
The morning was still grayish; the sun hadn’t come up yet. My room faced a courtyard and around it were two other houses. Through the open windows came an occasional ring of an alarm clock and the smell of early-morning coffee. The sides of the buildings facing the courtyard were painted white to better reflect the light. I turned back from the window and slipped on my underwear and trousers and walked quietly to the bathroom to wash.
When I had finished washing I went back to my room and sat down. I had to get used to this. It was strange not to be sleeping in a room with a bunch of boys in it, and I missed the morning horseplay and jokes. I heard someone walking in the hall outside my door. I walked over and opened it. It was my aunt.
“Good morning, Frankie. You’re up early.” She smiled.
“Yes’m,” I said, “I’m used to it.”
“Did you wash already?” she asked.
“Un-hunh,” I replied, “I’m all dressed.”
“Then would you mind running down to the baker for some rolls?” she asked. “It will save me the trouble.”
“I’ll be glad to, Aunt Bertha,” I answered.
She gave me some change, told me what store she wanted me to go to, and I left the house.
It was near seven and people were beginning to go to work. I picked up the stuff she sent me for, and bought a News on the way back.
Once in the house, I put the stuff on the kitchen table and sat down to read the paper. A few minutes later my aunt came in and put on the coffee. About ten minutes later my uncle came in, sat down at the table and said: “Good morning, Frankie. Did you sleep all right?”
“Fine, Uncle Morris,” I said.
“I see you have the paper,” he said. “Anything new in it?”
“Nothing much,” I answered and held it toward him. “You want to see it?”
“Thanks,” he said and took it from me.
Aunt Bertha came over with the plate of toast and put a glass of orange juice in front of us. Without looking at it, my uncle reached over his paper and picked it up. I drank mine slowly.
Then we had some eggs and then coffee and some pieces of Danish pastry that I had brought up from the store. About the time we finished, the kids came in and sat down.
“Good morning,” they said in unison, and going to each side of their father, they kissed him on the cheek. He gave them each a squeeze and went back to reading his paper and drinking a second cup of coffee. Then they went over to Aunt Bertha and kissed her. She bent to kiss them and whispered something.
They came over to me and kissed me. I laughed. They pulled up chairs to the table and sat down.
Uncle Morris looked at his watch. “Time for me to go,” he said. “Are you going up to school today, Frankie?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “let me know tonight how you make out.” He kissed his wife and went out.
“What school are you going to, Frankie?” asked Essie, the younger.
“George Washington High,” I answered.
“I go to P.S. 181,” she said.
“That’s nice,” I said. We were quiet for awhile. I didn’t know what else we could talk about.
Aunt Bertha gave the kids their breakfast and then sat down. She smiled at me. “Did you like your breakfast?”
“It was swell, Aunt Bertha.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
“I think it’s time you got started,” she said. “You don’t want to be late the first day you go there.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.” I went into my room and put on my tie and jacket—then back into the kitchen. “So long,” I said.
Aunt Bertha got up from the table and walked to the door with me. In the foyer she gave me some money. “This is your allowance for the week,” she said, “for lunches and things. If you need any more, let me know.”
It was three dollars. “No,” I said. “It’s enough. I don’t think I’ll need any more. Thanks.”
“Good luck,” she said, and I closed the door behind me. I felt funny. I didn’t know why. Everything seemed so different. Maybe it was because I didn’t have to attend Mass before I went to school.
George Washington High School was at 191st Street and Audubon Avenue. It stood on the top of a hill overlooking the Heights and across the East River to the Bronx. It was a new red brick building with a dome on it.
I was sent to the superintendent’s office. I gave the clerk my name and waited while she looked up my card. She found it and told me to go to Room 608 when the nine o’clock bell rang.
When the bell rang, the halls were full of kids running back and forth to their rooms. I found the room without too much trouble. I went in and gave my card to the teacher in charge. He directed me to a seat in the back of the room. I looked around me. The class seemed mixed—about twenty colored boys and girls, and twenty white. The boy sitting next to me was colored.
“New here?” he asked with a big smile. “My name’s Sam Cornell.”
“Mine’s Kane,” I said. “Francis Kane.”
Things certainly were different here.
It was at the end of the first week in school that we first got around to talking about religion. I had often wondered why Jews were as they were; now I thought I understood. They didn’t go to church during the week—not even on Saturday, which was their Sunday. I supposed I missed the routine of attending Mass every morning.
It wasn’t that I was particularly religious. Most of the time I went only because I had to, and many were the time I had ducked Mass if I possibly could. But it left a void in the routine I had been used to ever since I was a kid.
I was sitting around the house. I had read all the papers and was getting restless. Uncle Morris was down at the office Saturday mornings squaring up his accounts for the week. Just Aunt Bertha and I were in the house; the kids were out playing. Finally I put the papers down and got up. “Aunt Bertha,” I asked, “is it O.K. for me to run downtown for a while?”
She looked up at me shrewdly. “Sure it is, Frankie—you don’t have to ask.”
I went into the other room to get my coat, and came back into the parlor. She was watching me curiously, sort of embarrassed-like. I could see she was too polite to ask me where I was going, and I didn’t know just what to say to her. I didn’t know whether I could tell her I was going to see Brother Bernhard and maybe afterwards drop into church. But she was smarter than me. As I went near the door, she spoke.
“Will you be gone long, Frankie?” she asked.
I stopped. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I thought I’d kinda look around and see some friends.”
“Oh!” she said. “Your uncle and I had planned for you to go over to the synagogue today with us. I thought you might like to go now if you’ve nothing better you’d rather do.”
I stood there quietly a moment while I turned the idea over in my mind. My aunt was smart all right. Maybe she was even a little bit of a mind reader. Then I answered: “Do you think it would be all right for me to go? I’ve never been to one before.”
She smiled slowly, her voice very soft: “Of course it’s all right. We’d be very happy if you would come.”
“O.K.,” I said, “if you say so.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ll get my coat and go with you.”
As we walked to the synagogue she was very quiet. We came to a gray brick building. “This is the synagogue,” she told me.
I looked at the building. It wasn’t very impressive: just a flat one-story affair, no statues of saints over the door, not even a Jewish star—just a plain building with a plain door. It didn’t look like a holy place where people came to worship. I felt vaguely disappointed.
I was even more disappoi
nted when we went inside. The door was a few steps below street level and you had to walk down to it. Once inside the door we were in a small room that had very plain gray painted walls. I started to take off my hat.
My aunt stopped me. “In synagogue, Frankie, you keep your hat on. You must always cover your head.”
I looked at her for a minute, not understanding. Everything was backwards here.
She led me through the door on the opposite side of the room, and we were in the church. There were a few people in there. This room too was very plain. There were plain mahogany-stained benches on the floor, most of them needing a new coat of paint. The wall too needed a new coat of paint and some plastering because it was badly cracked in some places.
At the far end of the room there was a raised platform with four posters, over which was hung a faded red velvet canopy. Under the canopy there was a sort of a closet; and a man stood in front of the closet. He was reading aloud in Jewish from a scroll that was held in front of him by two other men.
We started down the aisle and entered one of the rows of benches near the front. I started to kneel, but my aunt put her hand under my arm and shook her head slightly. I sat down beside her.
“A Jew,” she whispered, “does not kneel to his God. His humility must be of the spirit, not the body.”
I looked at her, my eyes wide. This wasn’t very much like church at all. You didn’t have to behave very differently here than anywhere else except you had to keep your hat on.
“Where is the rabbi?” I asked her. The only men I saw on the platform were all dressed in plain suits.
“He’s the man reading from the Torah.”
I guessed she meant the man that was reading from the scroll. Maybe I expected someone dressed in elaborate robes; but if I did, I wasn’t to see one.
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 9