“I want to, Sarah,” I said fiercely. “Listen to me. Do you have any idea where I can find him?”
“He said something about going out to Brooklyn,” she answered. “He said that Sam would probably show up at your new house tonight.”
I sagged limply in the booth. That meant he was probably waiting for Sam near my house, and when we came back from the hospital he would be ready for him. I stared stupidly at the telephone. There was only one thing I could do now. That was to get home before anyone else.
“Okay, Sarah,” I said slowly, putting the receiver back on the hook. I left the booth and went back into the waiting-room.
I walked up to Sam and tried to keep my voice as casual as I could. “Can I borrow your car for a few minutes, Sam?” I asked, “I promised Nellie I’d bring a few tilings from the house for her, an’ my car is still at the airport.”
“I’ll drive yuh over, kid,” he offered.
“No, no,” I said quickly. “You’re still weak from the blood transfusion. Rest here a little while. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
His hand came out of his pocket with a car key. He held it toward me, smiling. “Okay, Champ.”
I looked suddenly into his eyes. He hadn’t called me that in years. I could see the warmth of his smile reach them.
“Everything okay, Champ?” he asked. Only the two of us knew what his words meant. There was a world of meaning in them.
I took his hand. “Everything’s okay,” I answered. His grip tightened on mine and I looked down at our hands. They were clasped together. Funny the way our hands were alike—the same shape, the same kind of fingers. I looked up into his face. His eyes were warm toward me and I loved him. He was everything I ever wanted to be. That had always been the way it was. In everything I did I tried to make myself into him. I smiled slowly as I began to understand. “Thanks, Sam,” I said. “Thanks for everything.” I took the car key from his fingers and started for the door.
My father stopped me. “Drive carefully, Danny,” he admonished me. “We don’t want anything should happen to you now.”
“Nothing will happen, Papa,” I answered. “And if it does, there’ll be no regrets. I’ve had about everything there is to be had in life. I’ll have no complaints, no kicks coming.”
Papa nodded. “Good you should feel like that, Danny,” he said solemnly. “But be careful just the same.”
The powerful motor beneath the hood of the canary-coloured convertible hummed as I headed the car toward home. I was glad I had Sam’s car. It would make it that much easier for me to find Maxie, because Maxie would be looking for the car. I wasn’t worried about him. I would find a way to square him off.
I sped down Linden Boulevard to Kings Highway, then left to Clarendon. At Clarendon I made a right turn and headed toward my street. I glanced in my mirror. A car behind me was blinking its lights. It wanted to pass me. I laughed to myself and pressed my foot down on the accelerator. I was in a hurry too.
The big car responded quickly to my foot and we hurtled through the night. I looked in the mirror again. The other car was creeping up on me. Then I got the idea: Maxie must have tailed Sam out to the hospital.
Slowly the other car crept up alongside me. I glanced out my window. I had been right. Spit’s face was staring at me from the other car. Frantically I waved my hand at him.
Then I saw the chopper resting on the window in Spit’s hand. He was raising it slowly.
“Spit!” I yelled at him. “It’s me! Danny! The whole thing’s off!”
The chopper was still coming up. I yelled at him again: “Spit, yuh crazy bastard! It’s me, Danny!”
I saw him hesitate a second. His head turned toward the back seat of his car and I saw his lips move. I stole a quick look back there, but all I could see was the faint glowing of a cigar. Then he turned back to me and the chopper kept coming up. I remembered Maxie’s words: “There’s no backin’ out now….” It was Maxie in the back seat.
Desperately I stepped on the gas as the chopper began to blaze. I felt a sudden pain tearing me away from the wheel. Desperately I fought the wheel, twisting it in my desire to hold on to it.
For a brief second I was blinded; then my vision cleared. The car was rocking crazily on the road in the night. I looked across at Spit. He was grinning at me. I was seized by a terrible anger. A hatred for him and all I had been spilled over into my throat, warm and hot and sticky like blood. He was raising the chopper again.
I looked past his car to the corner. It was my corner, my street. I could see my house standing there, with a light in the window we had forgotten to turn off when we left. I would be safe if I could get home. I would always be safe there. I knew that.
With all my strength I twisted the wheel toward my street. Maxie’s car was in the way, but I twisted the wheel just the same. I could see Spit’s white face contorted in fright. Sparks blazed from the chopper, but I didn’t feel anything. He’d have to get out of my way or I’d run right through him. I could feel the wheels lock, but I didn’t care. I was going home.
There was a blaze of light and I could feel the car soaring into the air. I drew a deep breath, bracing myself for the crash, but it never came.
Instead I was a kid on a van moving into a new neighbourhood. I could hear the gravel crunching under the wheels. It was daylight, bright daylight, and I couldn’t understand it.
Something had gone wrong. Time had run off its track. My mind wrestled with the thought. It couldn’t be true. Things like this just didn’t happen. I was back at the beginnings of memory.
Then it was gone and I felt the steering wheel shatter. One moment I was looking stupidly at my hands holding on to the remnants of a wheel that was no longer a wheel, and the next moment I was flying crazily into a leering darkness.
Somewhere deep in the silent dark, someone was calling my name. It echoed hollowly, metallically, in my mind, the syllables rolling toward me like the waves in the sea.
“Dan—ny Fish—er. Dan—ny Fish—er.” Over and over again I could hear the voice calling me. Somehow I knew I mustn’t listen to its siren song. I mustn’t listen to its sound. I mustn’t even hear it in my mind. Desperately I fought against it. I pushed hard and closed my mind to its echo. A sudden pain rushed through me and I tensed in the excruciating agony.
The pain grew stronger and stronger, and yet it was not a physical thing that I was feeling. It was a vague disembodied pain that floated through me like the air I used to breathe.
The air I used to breathe. Used to breathe. Why did I think that? The pain filtered into me again and permeated my consciousness, and my question was forgotten. I could hear my voice screaming in the distance. Its shout of agony was ringing in my ears. Slowly I slipped back towards the darkness again.
“Dan—ny Fish—er, Dan—ny Fish—er.” I could hear the strangely soothing voice again. It was soft and gentle and held within it the promise of rest and peace and relief from agony, and yet I fought against it, with strength I had never used against anything before. Again the voice faded from my mind and the pain returned.
How sweet the taste of pain when all else is gone from your body! How you cling longingly to the agony that binds you to the earth! You breathe the pain as if it were the sweetest air, you drink the pain with all the thirsty fibres of your being. You long for the pain that lets you live.
It was roaring sweet and agonizingly pungent inside me. The pain I loved and held so close to me. I could hear my distant voice screaming in protest against it and I was happy in the feeling. Anxiously I reached for it with my hands, but could not hold it, for once again it slipped from me and I was plunging into the quiet, restful dark.
The voice was very close to me now. I could feel it in my mind as once before I had felt the pain in my body. “Why do you fight me, Danny Fisher?” it asked reproachfully. “I only come to give you rest.”
“I don’t want to rest!” I shouted against it. “I want to live!”
“But to
live is to suffer, Danny Fisher.” The voice was deep and warm and rich and comforting. “Surely you must know that by now.”
“Then let me suffer,” I screamed. “I want to live. There are so many things I have to do!”
“What is there for you to do?” the voice asked quietly. “Remember what you said a few short minutes ago? The words you spoke to your father: ‘There’ll be no regrets. I’ve had about everything there is to be had in life. I’ll have no complaints, no kicks coming.’”
“But a man says many things he doesn’t mean,” I cried desperately. “I’ve got to live. Nellie said she couldn’t go on without me. My son needs me.”
The voice was wise and tolerant as time. It echoed hollowly through my mind. “You don’t really believe that, Danny Fisher, do you?” it asked quietly. “For surely you must know that life does not cease to exist in others for any man.”
“Then I want to live for myself,” I wept. “To feel the firm soft earth beneath my feet, to taste the sweetness in my wife’s body, to take pleasure in the growing of my son.”
“But if you live, Danny Fisher,” the voice said inexorably, “you will do none of these things. The body you once inhabited is smashed beyond repair. You will not see, you will not feel, you will not taste. You will be but a shell that remains a living organism, a constant burden and agony to those you love.”
“But I want to live!” I screamed, fighting against the voice with all my might. Slowly I could feel die pain returning to my being.
I welcomed it as a woman would welcome a long-absent lover. I embraced it and let it enter me. I could feel the sweetly welcome agony flowing through as the blood would flow. Then suddenly there was a moment of pure clean light and I could see again.
I was looking at myself, torn and twisted and shapeless. Hands were reaching toward me, but they stopped, frozen in horror, at the sight of me. This was my body and this was the way people would look at me forevermore.
I could feel the sorrowing tears mingling with the agony that was in me. Was there nothing left of me that might bring joy to someone’s heart? I looked closely down at myself. My face was clean. It was calm and still. There was even the remnant of a smile upon my lips. I looked closer.
My eyelids were closed, but I could see behind them. The hollow sockets stared vacantly at me. I turned in horror from myself. The tears were running through my mind, washing away all the strange new hurt.
The pain began to slip from me again as the light grew dim and the dark returned. The voice was once more at the gateway to my mind.
“Now, Danny Fisher,” it said sympathetically, “will you let me help you?”
I pushed the tears from my mind. All my life had been a matter of bargain. Now there was time for just one more. “Yes,” I whispered, “I will let you help—if only you can make my body whole that my loved ones do not turn from me in horror.”
“I can do that,” the voice replied quietly.
Somehow I knew that it would be done and there had been no need for me to ask. “Then help me, please,” I begged, “and I will be content.”
There was a sudden loving warmth around me. “Rest, then, Danny Fisher,” the voice said softly. “Give yourself up to the quiet, peaceful dark and do not be afraid. It’s just like going to sleep.” I reached out confidently toward the dark. It was a friendly, loving kind of dark and in it I found the warmth and love of all I ever knew. It rolled around me in gentle swirling clouds. The memory of pain was dim and far distant now, and soon even the memory had gone. Now I knew why I had never known peace before.
I was content.
A Stone for Danny Fisher
YOU place the stone quickly on the monument and stand there gravely, your eyes wide. Within you there is a small but creeping doubt. Your father.
I have no shape, no rounded image, in your memory. I am nothing but a word, a picture on the mantelpiece, a sound on other people’s lips. For you have never seen me and I have seen you but once.
Then how can I reach you, my son, how can I make you hear me when even my voice is an unfamiliar echo in your ears? I weep, my son, I weep for all the life I gave you that I will not share. The joys, the sorrows, I will not know with you as my father has known them with me.
For though I gave you life, you have given me even more. In that short moment that we shared together, I learned many things. I learned again to love my father, to understand his feelings, his happiness, his inadequacies. For all the things I meant to him, in one short moment, you meant to me.
I never held you in my arms and pressed you close to my heart and yet I feel these things. When you are hurt, I feel your pain: when you sorrow, I share your tears, and when you laugh there is a joy in me. All the things you are were once part of me—your blood, your bones, your flesh.
You are part of the dream I was that still remains. You are the proof that once I moved and walked the earth. You are my legacy to the world, the most precious that I could bestow. All the values are as naught when compared with you.
In your time there will be many wonders. The distant corners of the earth will be a moment’s journey: the deepest ocean, the highest mountain, perhaps even the stars themselves will be within the reach of your fingers. And yet all these miracles will be as nothing when compared with the miracle of you.
For you are the miracle of my continuing flesh. You are the link that joins me with tomorrow, the link in the chain that spreads from time beginning to time never ending.
And still, there is a strangeness in it all. For you, who stem from the roaring passions of my blood and strength and join me with tomorrow, know nothing of me.
We shared but a moment together, the moment of your awakening, and thus you know me not. “What are you like, my father?” you ask in the silence of your heart. Close your eyes, my son, and I will try to tell you.
You are still. Your eyes are closed, and you are listening. The sound of my voice is the sound of a stranger in your eyes, and yet, deep within you, you know who I am.
The lines of my face will never be distinct in your memory, yet you will remember. For some day, in some time, you will speak about me. And in your voice will be a sorrow that we have never known each other. And in that sorrow there will also be a contentment. A contentment that will come from the knowledge that all the things you are stem from me. The things that you will give to your son began with me, and what my father passed on to me, and his father behind him.
Listen to me, my son, and know your father.
Though the memory of man is a temporary thing because his life is but a fleeting moment, there is a quality of immortality in him that is as permanent as the stars.
For I am you and you are me, and the man that began with Adam will live forever on this earth. As I once lived.
Once I breathed the air you breathe and felt the soft give of earth beneath my feet. Once your passions raced in my veins and your sorrows wept through my eyes.
For once I was a man beside you.
I, too, had a charge account at Macy’s: a bankbook at the Dime Savings: there are papers lying in some hidden vault with my signature scrawled upon them in now browning and ageing ink: a social-security number buried in the mass of statistics in a Government file with these strange numerical markings upon it; 052–09–8424.
These things I once had, my son. And for this and for many reasons other than this, my name will not be forgotten. For in these mere written records alone there is evidence of my immortality.
I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast.
For I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams and ordinary fears.
I, too, dreamed of wealth and riches, health and strength. I, too, feared hunger and poverty, war and weakness.
I was the neighbour who lived in the next house. The man standing in the subway on his way to work: who held a match to his cigar
ette: who walked with his dog.
I was the soldier shaking with fear: the man berating the umpire at the ball game: the citizen in the privacy of the voting booth, happily electing the worthless candidate.
I was the man who lived a thousand times and died a thousand times in all man’s six thousand years of record. I was the man who sailed with Noah in his ark, who was the multitude that crossed the sea that Moses held apart, who hung from the cross next to Christ.
I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, legends are never remembered.
But I am the man who will live forever in the thousands of years yet to come. For I am the man who will reap the few benefits and pay for the many errors that are created by the great.
And the great are but my servants, for my numbers are legion.
The great lie lonely in their graves beneath their mighty monuments because they are not remembered for themselves but for what they made. But for me, all who weep for their loved also weep for me. And every time someone mourns, he also mourns for me.
You open your eyes in slow wonder and gaze upon the six stones lying on my grave. Now you know, my son. This was your father. Your mother’s arms enfold you, but still you stare at the stones. Your fingers point to the words written behind them on the monument. Her lips move gently as she reads them to you.
Listen carefully to them, my son. Are they not true?
To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.
About the Author
Few novelists know the seamy side of New York life as well as Harold Robbins—the terror in the streets, the ways to make shady money by playing along with gamblers and mobsters, the unbridled lusts and passions of slum life.
A Stone for Danny Fisher is the story of a young man who did not start at the bottom. For Danny Fisher was born into a family of modest means and respectability, but was gradually driven downward into the world of crime, racketeering, and poverty.
A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) Page 39