“Don’t strike him,” cried the frightened rabbi, who had come out of the synagogue and saw the gabbai with his cane upraised. He urged the congregants to begin prayers at once. To the youth he said, “Please go away from here, we are burdened with enough trouble. It is forbidden for anyone to sell religious articles. Do you want us to be accused of criminal economic activity? Do you want the doors of the shul to be shut forever? So do us and yourself a mitzvah and go away.”
The congregants moved inside. The youth was left standing alone on the steps; but then the gabbai came out of the door, a man with a deformed spine and a wad of cotton stuck in a leaking ear.
“Look here,” he said. “I know you stole it. Still, after all is said and done, a tallith is a tallith and God asks no questions of His worshippers. I offer eight rubles for it, take it or leave it. Talk fast before the services end and the others come out.”
“Make it ten and it’s yours,” said the youth. The gabbai gazed at him shrewdly. “Eight is all I have, but wait here and I’ll borrow two rubles from my brother-in-law.”
The youth waited patiently. Dusk was heavy. In a few minutes a black car drove up, stopped in front of the synagogue, and two policemen got out. The youth realized that the gabbai had informed on him. Not knowing what else to do he hastily draped the prayer shawl over his head and began loudly to pray. He prayed a passionate kaddish. The police hesitated to approach him while he was praying, and they stood at the bottom of the steps waiting for him to be done. The congregants came out and could not believe their ears. No one imagined the youth could pray so fervently. What moved them was the tone, the wail and passion of a man truly praying. Perhaps his father had indeed recently died. All listened attentively, and many wished he would pray forever, for they knew that as soon as he stopped he would be seized and thrown into prison.
It has grown dark. A moon hovers behind murky clouds over the synagogue steeple. The youth’s voice is heard in prayer. The congregants are huddled in the dark street, listening. Both police agents are still there, although they cannot be seen. Neither can the youth. All that can be seen is the white shawl luminously praying.
The last of the stories translated by Irina Filipovna was about a writer of mixed parentage, a Russian father and Jewish mother, who had secretly been writing stories for years. He had from a young age wanted to write but had at first not had the courage—it seemed like such a merciless undertaking—so he had gone into translation instead; and then when he had, one day, started to write seriously and exultantly, after a while he found to his surprise that many of his stories—about half—were of Jews.
For a half-Jew that’s a reasonable proportion, he thought. The others were about Russians who sometimes resembled members of his father’s family. “It’s good to have such different sources for ideas,” he told his wife. “This way I can cover a varied range of experiences in life.”
After several years of work he had submitted a selection of his stories to a trusted friend of university days, Viktor Zverkov, an editor of the Progress Publishing House; and the writer appeared at his office one morning after receiving a hastily scribbled cryptic note from his friend, to discuss his work with him. Zverkov, a troubled man to begin with—he told everyone his wife did not respect him—jumped up from his chair and turned the key in the door, his ear pressed a minute at the crack. He then went quickly to his desk and withdrew the manuscript from a drawer he first had to unlock with a key he kept in his pocket. He was a heavyset man with a flushed complexion, stained teeth, and a hoarse voice; and he handled the writer’s manuscript with unease, as if it might leap up and wound him in the face.
“Please, Tolya,” he whispered breathily, bringing his head close to the writer’s, “you must take these awful stories away at once.”
“What’s the matter with you? Why are you shaking so?” said the writer.
“Don’t pretend to be naive. I am frankly amazed that you are submitting such unorthodox material for publication. My opinion as an editor is that they are of doubtful literary merit—I won’t say devoid of it, Tolya, I have to be honest—but as stories they are a frightful affront to our society. I can’t understand why you should take it on yourself to write about Jews. What do you know about them? Your culture is not the least Jewish, it’s Soviet Russian. The whole business smacks of hypocrisy—of anti-Semitism.”
He got up to shut the window and peered into a closet before sitting down.
“Are you out of your mind, Viktor?” said the writer. “My stories are in no sense anti-Semitic. One would have to read them standing on his head to make that judgment.”
“There can be only one logical interpretation,” the editor argued. “According to my most lenient analysis, which is favorable to you as a person—of let’s call it decent intent—the stories fly in the face of socialist realism and reveal a dangerous inclination—perhaps even a stronger word should be used—to anti-Soviet sentiment. Maybe you’re not entirely aware of this—I know how a story can pull a writer by the nose. As an editor I have to be sensitive to such things. I know, Tolya, from our conversations that you are a sincere believer in socialism; I won’t accuse you of being defamatory to the Soviet system, but others may. In fact, I know they will. If one of the editors of Oktyabr was to read your stories, believe me, your career would explode in a mess. You seem not to have a normal awareness of what self-preservation is, and what’s appallingly worse, you’re not above entangling innocent bystanders in your fate. If these stories were mine, I assure you I would never have brought them to you. I urge you to destroy them at once before they destroy you.”
He drank thirstily from a glass of water on his desk.
“That’s the last thing I would do,” answered the writer in anger. “These stories, if not in tone or subject matter, are written in the spirit of our early Soviet writers—the joyous spirits of the years just after the Revolution.”
“I think you know what happened to many of those ’joyous spirits.’”
The writer for a moment stared at him. “Well, then, what of those stories that are not about the experience of Jews? Some are pieces about homely aspects of Russian life. What I hoped is that you might personally recommend one or two such stories to Novy Mir or Yunost. They are innocuous sketches and well written.”
“Not the one about the two prostitutes,” said the editor. “That contains hidden social criticism, and is adversely naturalistic.”
“A prostitute lives a social life.”
“That may be but I can’t recommend it for publication. I must advise you, Tolya, if you expect to receive further commissions for translations from us, you must immediately rid yourself of this whole manuscript so as to avoid the possibility of serious consequences both to yourself and family, and to the publishing house that has employed you so faithfully and generously in the past.”
“Since you didn’t write the stories yourself, you needn’t be afraid, Viktor Alexandrovich,” the writer said ironically.
“I am not a coward, if that’s what you’re hinting, Anatoly Borisovich, but if a wild locomotive is running loose on the rails, I know which way to jump.”
The writer hastily gathered up his manuscript, stuffed the papers into his leather case, and returned home by bus. His wife was still away at work. He took out the stories and, after reading through one, burned it, page by page, in the kitchen sink.
His nine-year-old son, returning from school, said, “Papa, what are you burning in the sink? That’s no place for a fire.”
“I’m burning my talent,” said the writer. He said, “And my integrity, and my heritage.”
1968
My Son the Murderer
He wakes feeling his father is in the hallway, listening. He listens to him sleep and dream. Listening to him get up and fumble for his pants. He won’t put on his shoes. To him not going to the kitchen to eat. Staring with shut eyes in the mirror. Sitting an hour on the toilet. Flipping the pages of a book he can’t read. To his anguish, l
oneliness. The father stands in the hall. The son hears him listen.
My son the stranger, he won’t tell me anything.
I open the door and see my father in the hall. Why are you standing there, why don’t you go to work?
On account of I took my vacation in the winter instead of the summer like I usually do.
What the hell for if you spend it in this dark smelly hallway, watching my every move? Guessing what you can’t see. Why are you always spying on me?
My father goes to the bedroom and after a while sneaks out in the hallway again, listening.
I hear him sometimes in his room but he don’t talk to me and I don’t know what’s what. It’s a terrible feeling for a father. Maybe someday he will write me a letter, My dear father …
My dear son Harry, open up your door. My son the prisoner.
My wife leaves in the morning to stay with my married daughter, who is expecting her fourth child. The mother cooks and cleans for her and takes care of the three children. My daughter is having a bad pregnancy, with high blood pressure, and lays in bed most of the time. This is what the doctor advised her. My wife is gone all day. She worries something is wrong with Harry. Since he graduated college last summer he is alone, nervous, in his own thoughts. If you talk to him, half the time he yells if he answers you. He reads the papers, smokes, he stays in his room. Or once in a while he goes for a walk in the street.
How was the walk, Harry?
A walk.
My wife advised him to go look for work, and a couple of times he went, but when he got some kind of an offer he didn’t take the job.
It’s not that I don’t want to work. It’s that I feel bad.
So why do you feel bad?
I feel what I feel. I feel what is.
Is it your health, sonny? Maybe you ought to go to a doctor?
I asked you not to call me by that name anymore. It’s not my health. Whatever it is I don’t want to talk about it. The work wasn’t the kind I want.
So take something temporary in the meantime, my wife said to him.
He starts to yell. Everything’s temporary. Why should I add more to what’s temporary? My gut feels temporary. The goddamn world is temporary. On top of that I don’t want temporary work. I want the opposite of temporary, but where is it? Where do you find it?
My father listens in the kitchen.
My temporary son.
She says I’ll feel better if I work. I say I won’t. I’m twenty-two since December, a college graduate, and you know where you can stick that. At night I watch the news programs. I watch the war from day to day. It’s a big burning war on a small screen. It rains bombs and the flames roar higher. Sometimes I lean over and touch the war with the flat of my hand. I wait for my hand to die.
My son with the dead hand.
I expect to be drafted any day but it doesn’t bother me the way it used to. I won’t go. I’ll go to Canada or somewhere I can go.
The way he is frightens my wife and she is glad to go to my daughter’s house early in the morning to take care of the three children. I stay with him in the house but he don’t talk to me.
You ought to call up Harry and talk to him, my wife says to my daughter.
I will sometime but don’t forget there’s nine years’ difference between our ages. I think he thinks of me as another mother around and one is enough. I used to like him when he was a little boy but now it’s hard to deal with a person who won’t reciprocate to you.
She’s got high blood pressure. I think she’s afraid to call.
I took two weeks off from my work. I’m a clerk at the stamp window in the post office. I told the superintendent I wasn’t feeling so good, which is no lie, and he said I should take sick leave. I said I wasn’t that sick, I only needed a little vacation. But I told my friend Moe Berkman I was staying out because Harry has me worried.
I understand what you mean, Leo. I got my own worries and anxieties about my kids. If you got two girls growing up you got hostages to fortune. Still in all we got to live. Why don’t you come to poker on this Friday night? We got a nice game going. Don’t deprive yourself of a good form of relaxation.
I’ll see how I feel by Friday how everything is coming along. I can’t promise you.
Try to come. These things, if you give them time, all will pass away. If it looks better to you, come on over. Even if it don’t look so good, come on over anyway because it might relieve your tension and worry that you’re under. It’s not so good for your heart at your age if you carry that much worry around.
It’s the worst kind of worry. If I worry about myself I know what the worry is. What I mean, there’s no mystery. I can say to myself, Leo you’re a big fool, stop worrying about nothing—over what, a few bucks? Over my health that has always stood up pretty good although I have my ups and downs? Over that I’m now close to sixty and not getting any younger? Everybody that don’t die by age fifty-nine gets to be sixty. You can’t beat time when it runs along with you. But if the worry is about somebody else, that’s the worst kind. That’s the real worry because if he won’t tell you, you can’t get inside of the other person and find out why. You don’t know where’s the switch to turn off. All you do is worry more.
So I wait out in the hall.
Harry, don’t worry so much about the war.
Please don’t tell me what to worry about or what not to worry about.
Harry, your father loves you. When you were a little boy, every night when I came home you used to run to me. I picked you up and lifted you up to the ceiling. You liked to touch it with your small hand.
I don’t want to hear about that anymore. It’s the very thing I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear about when I was a child.
Harry, we live like strangers. All I’m saying is I remember better days. I remember when we weren’t afraid to show we loved each other.
He says nothing.
Let me cook you an egg.
An egg is the last thing in the world I want.
So what do you want?
He put his coat on. He pulled his hat off the clothes tree and went down into the street.
Harry walked along Ocean Parkway in his long overcoat and creased brown hat. His father was following him and it filled him with rage.
He walked at a fast pace up the broad avenue. In the old days there was a bridle path at the side of the walk where the concrete bicycle path is now. And there were fewer trees, their black branches cutting the sunless sky. At the corner of Avenue X, just about where you can smell Coney Island, he crossed the street and began to walk home. He pretended not to see his father cross over, though he was infuriated. The father crossed over and followed his son home. When he got to the house he figured Harry was upstairs already. He was in his room with the door shut. Whatever he did in his room he was already doing.
Leo took out his small key and opened the mailbox. There were three letters. He looked to see if one of them was, by any chance, from his son to him. My dear father, let me explain myself. The reason I act as I do … There was no such letter. One of the letters was from the Post Office Clerks Benevolent Society, which he slipped into his coat pocket. The other two letters were for Harry. One was from the draft board. He brought it up to his son’s room, knocked on the door, and waited.
He waited for a while.
To the boy’s grunt he said, There is a draft-board letter here for you. He turned the knob and entered the room. His son was lying on his bed with his eyes shut.
Leave it on the table.
Do you want me to open it for you, Harry?
No, I don’t want you to open it. Leave it on the table. I know what’s in it.
Did you write them another letter?
That’s my goddamn business.
The father left it on the table.
The other letter to his son he took into the kitchen, shut the door, and boiled up some water in a pot. He thought he would read it quickly and seal it carefully with a little paste
, then go downstairs and put it back in the mailbox. His wife would take it out with her key when she returned from their daughter’s house and bring it up to Harry.
The father read the letter. It was a short letter from a girl. The girl said Harry had borrowed two of her books more than six months ago and since she valued them highly she would like him to send them back to her. Could he do that as soon as possible so that she wouldn’t have to write again?
As Leo was reading the girl’s letter Harry came into the kitchen and when he saw the surprised and guilty look on his father’s face, he tore the letter out of his hands.
I ought to murder you the way you spy on me.
Leo turned away, looking out of the small kitchen window into the dark apartment-house courtyard. His face burned, he felt sick.
Harry read the letter at a glance and tore it up. He then tore up the envelope marked personal.
If you do this again don’t be surprised if I kill you. I’m sick of you spying on me.
Harry, you are talking to your father.
He left the house.
Leo went into his room and looked around. He looked in the dresser drawers and found nothing unusual. On the desk by the window was a paper Harry had written on. It said: Dear Edith, why don’t you go fuck yourself? If you write me another stupid letter I’ll murder you.
The father got his hat and coat and left the house. He ran slowly for a while, running then walking until he saw Harry on the other side of the street. He followed him, half a block behind.
He followed Harry to Coney Island Avenue and was in time to see him board a trolleybus going to the Island. Leo had to wait for the next one. He thought of taking a taxi and following the trolleybus, but no taxi came by. The next bus came fifteen minutes later and he took it all the way to the Island. It was February and Coney Island was wet, cold, and deserted. There were few cars on Surf Avenue and few people on the streets. It felt like snow. Leo walked on the boardwalk amid snow flurries, looking for his son. The gray sunless beaches were empty. The hot-dog stands, shooting galleries, and bathhouses were shuttered up. The gunmetal ocean, moving like melted lead, looked freezing. A wind blew in off the water and worked its way into his clothes so that he shivered as he walked. The wind whitecapped the leaden waves and the slow surf broke on the empty beaches with a quiet roar.
The Complete Stories Page 55