I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories

by Norman Levine

  I saw a wooden radio on the side table in the sitting room. A battered thing. I had to put twenty-five cents in the back. That, according to a metal sign, gave me two hours’ playing time. But that was only a formality. For the back was all exposed, and the twenty-five cents kept falling out for me to put through again.

  Listening to the radio—I could only get the local station—the town sounded a noisy, busy place, full of people buying and selling and with things going on. But when I walked out, the first thing I noticed was the silence. The frozen, shabby side streets. Hardly anything moving. It wasn’t like what the radio made out at all. There was a feeling of apathy. The place seemed stunned by the snow piled everywhere.

  I quickly established a routine. After breakfast I went out and walked. And came back, made some coffee, and wrote down whatever things I happened to notice.

  This morning it was the way trees creak in the cold. I had walked by a large elm when I heard it. I thought it was the crunching sound my shoes made on the hard-packed snow. So I stopped. There was no wind, the branches were not moving, yet the tree was creaking.

  In the late afternoon, I made another expedition outside. Just before it got dark, I found a small square. It began to snow. The few trees on the perimeter were black. The few bundled-up people walking slowly through the snow were black. And from behind curtained windows a bit of light, a bit of orange. There was no sound. Just the snow falling. I expected horses and sleighs to appear, and felt the isolation.

  That evening I had company. A mouse. I saw it just before it saw me. I tried to hit it with a newspaper, but I missed. And as it ran it slipped and slithered on the linoleum. I was laughing. It ran behind the radiator. I looked and saw it between the radiator grooves, where the dust had gathered. It had made a nest out of bits of fluff. I left food out for it. And in the evenings it would come out and run around the perimeter of the sitting room, then go back behind the radiator.

  Birds woke me in the morning. It seemed odd to see so much snow and ice and hear birds singing. I opened the wooden slot in the outside window and threw out some bread. Though I could hear the birds, I couldn’t see them. Then they came—sparrows. They seemed to fly into their shadows as they landed on the snow. Then three pigeons. I went and got some more bread.

  On the fourth day I met my neighbour across the hall. He rented the two rooms opposite. He wore a red lumberjack shirt and black lumberjack boots with the laces going high up. He was medium height, in his forties, with pleasant features. And he had short, red hair.

  “Hi,” he said. And asked me what I was doing.

  “Writing a book,” I said.

  “Are you really writing a book?”

  “Yes.”

  “That must be very nice,” he said, and invited me into his flat. It was the same as mine, except he didn’t have a sitting room. The same second-hand furniture, the used electric stove, the large fridge, the wooden radio.

  I asked him what he did.

  “I work in a small factory. Just my brother and me. We make canoes. Do you like cheese?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He opened his fridge. It was filled with large hunks of an orange cheese.

  “I get it sent from Toronto. Here, have some.”

  I met the new occupants of the three rooms behind me next morning. I was going to the toilet. (There was one toilet, with bath, for all of us on the first floor. It was in the hall at the top of the stairs.) I opened the door and saw a woman sitting on the toilet, smoking a cigarette. She wasn’t young. Her legs were close together. She said, “Oh.” I said sorry and closed the door quickly. “I’m sorry,” I said again, this time louder, as I walked away.

  A couple of days later she knocked on my door and said she was Mrs. Labelle and she was Jewish. She heard from Savage that I had a Jewish name. Was I Jewish? I said I was. She invited me back to meet her husband.

  The people who rented these rooms usually didn’t stay very long, so there was no pride in trying to do anything to change them. But Mrs. Labelle had her room spotless. She had put up bright yellow curtains to hide the shabby window blinds. She had plastic flowers in a bowl on the table. And everything looked neat, and washed, even though the furniture was the same as I had.

  Her husband, Hubert, was much younger. He looked very dapper. Tall, dark hair brushed back, neatly dressed in a dark suit and tie and a clean white shirt. He had a tripod in his hand and said he was going out to work.

  “Savage told us you were a writer. I have started to write my life story—What the photographer saw—I tell all. You wouldn’t believe the things that have happened to me.”

  His wife said that the mayor was trying to get them out of town. “He told the police that we need a licence. It’s because he owns the only photograph store here. He’s afraid of the competition. We’re not doing anything illegal. I knock on people’s doors and ask them if they want their picture taken at home. He’s very good,” she said,” especially with children.”

  After that Mrs. Labelle came to the door every day. She knew all the other occupants. And would tell me little things about them. “He’s a very hard worker,” she said about the man who made canoes. “He doesn’t drink at all.” Then she told me about the cleaning woman, Mabel. “She only gets fifteen dollars a week. Her husband’s an alcoholic. She’s got a sixteen-year-old daughter—she’s pregnant. I’m going to see her this afternoon and see if I can help. Be careful of Savage. He looks quiet, but I saw him using a blackjack on a drunk from the beer parlour who tried to get into the hotel at night. He threw him out in the snow. Dragged him by the feet. And Mrs. Savage helped.” She complained of the noise at night. “There’s three young waitresses. Just above me. They have boys at all hours. I don’t blame them. But I can’t sleep. I can’t wash my face. It’s nerves,” she said.

  Then I began to hear Mr. Labelle shouting at her. “God damn you. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.” It went on past midnight.

  Next day, at noon, she knocked on the door. She was smiling.

  “I found a place where you can get Jewish food.”

  “Where?”

  “Morris Bischofswerder. He’s a furrier. Up on the main street.”

  I went to the furrier. He had some skins hanging on the walls. And others were piled in a heap on the floor.

  “Do you sell food?” I said.

  “What kind of food?”

  “Jewish food.”

  He looked me over.

  He was below middle height, stocky, with a protruding belly. A dark moustache, almost bald, but dark hair on the sides. He was neatly dressed in a brown suit with a gold watch chain in his vest pocket. He was quite a handsome man, full lips and dark eyes. And from those eyes I had a feeling that he had a sense of fun.

  “Where are you from?” he asked. “The west?”

  “No, from England.”

  “All right, come.”

  He led me through a doorway into the back and from there into his kitchen. And immediately there was a familiar food smell, something that belonged to my childhood. A lot of dried mushrooms, on a string, like a necklace, hung on several nails. He showed me two whole salamis and some loose hot dogs.

  “I can let you have a couple pounds of salami and some hot dogs until the next delivery. I have it flown in once a month from Montreal.” He smiled. “I also like this food. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Adanac .”

  His wife came in. She was the same size as Mr. Bischofswerder but thinner, with grey hair, a longish thin nose, deep-set, very dark eyes—the hollows were in permanent shadow—and prominent top teeth.

  “He’s from England,” he told her.

  “I come from Canada,” I said quickly. “But I live in England. The place I live in England doesn’t have snow in winter. So I’ve come back for a while.”

  “You came all the way from Englan
d for the snow?”

  “Yes.”

  They both looked puzzled.

  “I like winters with snow,” I said.

  “What have you got in England?”

  “Where I live—rain.”

  “Have you got a family?” Mr. Bischofswerder said, changing the subject. “Is your mother and father alive?”

  “My mother and father lived in Ottawa, but they moved to California eight years ago.”

  “I bet they don’t miss Canadian winters,” Mrs. Bischofswerder said.

  “We have a married daughter in Montreal and five grandchildren,” he said proudly, “four boys and one girl.”

  “Sit down,” Mrs. Bischofswerder said. “I was just going to make some tea.”

  And she brought in a chocolate cake, some pastry that had poppy seeds on top, and some light egg cookies.

  “It’s very good, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I haven’t had food like this since I was a boy,” I said.

  “Why are you so thin?” she said. “Eat. Eat.” And pushed more cookies in my direction.

  “I wonder if you would come to shul next Friday,” Mr. Bischofswerder said.

  My immediate reaction was to say no. For I hadn’t been in a synagogue for over twenty years. But sitting in this warm kitchen with the snow outside, eating the food, Mrs. Bischofswerder making a fuss, it brought back memories of my childhood. And people I once knew.

  “I’ll come,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said. “If you come here around four o’clock, we’ll go together. It gets dark quickly.”

  That night the Labelles quarrelled until after two. Next day, at noon, Mrs. Labelle knocked on the door. “He didn’t turn up. This woman was holding her children all dressed up. I told her to send them to school.”

  “Is this the first time?”

  “No. It’s only got bad now. He’s an alcoholic.”

  She began to weep. I asked her inside. She was neatly dressed in dark slacks and a small fur jacket. “My sisters won’t have me. They say I’ve sown my wild oats.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thanks. We had a house in Toronto. I have in storage lots of furniture—a fur coat—real shoes—not shoes like this. And where would you see a woman of my age going around knocking on doors? I’m sure I’m going to be killed. He calls me a witch. I found a piece of paper with a phone number. And a name—Hattie. I called up and said to leave my husband alone. I found another piece of paper. It said Shirley. They’re all over him. He’s a good-looking guy. And when he’s working—these women are alone with him. You know—”

  That afternoon, while I was writing, the phone went. It was Mrs. Labelle.

  “I’m in someone’s house waiting for him to come and take the picture. Can you see if he’s in? He hasn’t turned up.”

  I knocked on their door. Mr. Labelle was sitting on the settee with a middle-aged man in a tartan shirt, and they were both drinking beer out of small bottles.

  I said she was on the phone.

  “Say you haven’t seen me,” he said.

  “Yes,” the other man said. “Say you haven’t seen him.”

  But Labelle came after me and stood by the open door. “Why don’t you just say hello?” I said.

  He went in and I could hear him saying, “I’m not drunk. I’m coming over.” He hung up and closed the door.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Man to man. I’ll be forty-one next month. And she’s fifty-eight. We’ve been married fifteen years. I didn’t know how old she was when we married. Then she was seven months in a mental home. I used to see her every day. At two. I had to get my job all changed around. But I’ll tell you what. I knocked up a woman two years ago. And she heard about it. The child died. She can’t have children. She won’t give me some rein. I’ve had her for fifteen years. Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t leave her. You may hear us at night. I shout. I’m French Canadian. But I’ll look after her.”

  He went back and got his camera and tripod. And he and the other man went down the stairs.

  Ten minutes later she rang up again.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  That evening around nine, there was a gentle knock at the door. It was Mrs. Labelle, in a red dressing gown. “He’s asleep,” she said. “Thank you very much. He hasn’t eaten anything. I make special things. But he won’t eat.”

  It was quiet until eleven that night. I could hear them talking. Then he began to raise his voice. “Shut up. God damn it. Leave me alone. You should have married a Jewish businessman. You would have been happy.”

  On Friday afternoon I put on a clean white shirt and tie and a suit and went to call on Mr. Bischofswerder. He was dressed, neatly, in a dark winter coat and a fur hat. We walked about four blocks. Then he led me into what I thought was a private house but turned out to be the synagogue. It was very small. Around twenty-four feet square and twenty feet high. But though it was small, it was exact in the way the synagogues were that I remembered. There was a wooden ark between a pair of tall windows in the east wall. A few steps, with wooden rails, led to the ark. The Ten Commandments, in Hebrew, were above it. A low gallery extended around the two sides. In the centre of the ceiling hung a candelabra with lights over the reading desk. There were wooden bench seats. Mr. Bischofswerder raised one, took out a prayer book, and gave the prayer book to me.

  “Shall we start?” he said.

  “Aren’t we going to wait for the others?”

  “There are no others,” he said.

  And he began to say the prayers to himself. Now and then he would run the words out aloud so I could hear, in a kind of singsong that I remembered my father doing. I followed with my eyes the words. And now and then I would say something so he would hear.

  I had long forgotten the service, the order of the service. So I followed him. I got up when he did. I took the three steps backwards when he did. But most of the time we were both silent. Just reading the prayers.

  Then it was over. And he said, “Good Shabbos.”

  “Good Shabbos,” I said.

  On the way back, through the snow-covered streets, it was freezing. Mr. Bischofswerder was full of enthusiasm.

  “Do you realize,” he said, “this is the first time I’ve had someone in the shul with me at Friday night for over three years?”

  For the next seven Friday nights and Saturday mornings I went with Mr. Bischofswerder to the synagogue. We said our prayers in silence.

  Then I went back with him to his warm house. And to the enormous Sabbath meal that Mrs. Bischofswerder had cooked of gefilte fish with chrane, chicken soup with mandlen, chicken with tzimmes, compote, tea with cookies. And we talked. They wanted to know about England. I told them about the English climate, about English money, English society, about London, Fleet Street, the parks, the pubs. How I lived by the sea and a beautiful bay but hardly any trees.

  And he told me how the trappers brought him skins that he sent on to Montreal. That he was getting a bit old for it now. “Thank God I can still make a living.” He told me of the small Jewish community that was once here. “In 1920, when we came, there were ten families. By the end of the last war it was down to three. No new recruits came to take the place of those who died or moved away. When we go,” said Mr. Bischofswerder, “all that will be left will be a small cemetery.”

  “Have some more cookies,” his wife said, pushing a plateful towards me. “You have hardly touched them. You won’t get fat. They’re light. They’re called nothings.”

  Mrs. Labelle knocked on my door. She looked excited. “I’m selling tickets,” she said. “The town’s running a sweepstake—when will the frozen river start to move? Everyone’s talking about it. I’ve already sold three books. Will you have one? You can win five hundred dollars.”

 
“How much are they?”

  “Fifty cents.”

  “I’ll have one,” I said.

  “Next time you go to the supermarket,” she said, “you’ll see a clock in the window. There’s a wire from the clock to the ice in the river. As soon as the ice starts to move—the clock stops. And the nearest ticket wins.”

  She gave me my ticket.

  “Good luck,” she said. And kissed me lightly on a cheek.

  She looked, I thought, the happiest I had seen her. My ticket said: March 26th, 08:16:03.

  That night I noticed the mouse had gone. No sign of it anywhere. It was raining. The streets were slushy and slippery. But later that night the water froze. And next morning when the sun came out it was slush again. The snow had started to shrink on the roofs; underneath the edges I could see water moving. I walked down to the river. It was still frozen, but I saw patches of blue where before it was all white. Crows were flapping over the ice with bits of straw in their beaks. The top crust of the river had buckled in places. And large pieces creaked as they rubbed against each other. Things were beginning to break up. It did feel like something was coming to an end here.

  Next day, just before noon, Mrs. Labelle came to the door. She looked worried. “Savage told us we have to leave. I went to see him with our week’s rent in advance. But he said he didn’t want it. He said we were making too much noise at night. The waitresses make noise, but he doesn’t mind them. I don’t know where we’ll go. We’ve been in Sudbury, in Timmins, in North Bay—”

  “It’s OK,” Mr. Labelle said, coming to the door. “We’ll be all right,” he said to her gently. And started to walk her back towards their door. Then he called out to me, “If we don’t see you, fellah, good luck.”

  “Same to you,” I said.

  “But where will we go, Hubert?” Mrs. Labelle said, looking up to his face.

  “There’s lot of places,” he answered. “Now we got some packing to do.”

  After the Labelles had gone, it was very quiet. I had got the reminders I wanted of a Canadian winter. I had filled up three notebooks. It was time that I left. I went down to the office and told this to Mr. Savage. He suggested that I stay until the ice started to move.