The Best Revenge

by Sol Stein

  I could take care of myself. I closed my eyes.

  “I have to steer the raft away from the giant rocks, can you see them? Don’t open your eyes!”

  For his sake I saw them with my eyes closed. Usually men took me to a museum or a concert.

  “The sun,” he said, “is turning red because its skin is on fire. It begins to sink behind the cliffs.”

  I could feel his weight getting up from the couch.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” he warned.

  I could tell he had turned off one of the lights. “We must reach the shore before it gets dark,” he said. “You’ll have to paddle just as I am. Are you paddling, Zipporah?”

  What should I say to this man? “Yes, I’m paddling.”

  “With all your strength?”

  “With all my strength.” Crazy?

  “Oh my God,” he said, “the sun is gone. We must reach the shore!”

  I felt a moment’s alarm. He had turned off the last light. I could feel his weight on the couch beside me again. I opened my eyes. The room was in darkness.

  “We made it,” he said. “You’re a good paddler.”

  I said, “Don’t tell me you’ve been to the Grand Canyon.”

  “Never,” Louie said, “but it was as good as the movies, wasn’t it?”

  This unschooled young man, I had to admit, had managed at the beginning of our first date to get us sitting in the dark on a couch. And that wasn’t everything.

  “Would you mind if I kissed your ankle?” he asked.

  “My ankle?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” I said.

  “I didn’t say I’d do that, I just wanted to know if you’d mind. Would you?”

  “I don’t think you should be kissing my ankle,” I said.

  “On moral grounds or sanitary grounds?”

  “My ankle is as clean as the rest of me,” I said quickly.

  “Would you mind if I kissed your back just below the left shoulder blade?”

  “Through the dress?” Crazy, yes?

  “Please answer my question, and then I will answer any questions of yours. Would you mind if I kissed your back just below the right shoulder blade?”

  “I thought you said left?”

  “First the right, then the left,” he said. “I don’t want to be unfair to either side. You are very beautiful, Zipporah.”

  “Thank you, but why are you talking about my ankle and my shoulder blades?”

  “You would prefer that I talked about your breasts or hips?”

  I had a strange feeling from this Louie. He hadn’t once touched me, yet I couldn’t deny a breath of arousal. “Can we turn the light on?” I asked.

  “The sun’s gone down.”

  And so we sat in the dark for two hours, talking about life in the old country, and he told me about Schmerl. I mentioned the trouble of getting to Loyola by streetcar and learned he owned a new automobile, he must be on the verge of being rich, and I thought maybe he’d been trying to save money by not taking me to the movies. It turned out he’d read Gorky in Russian and Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga in English, and Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish for the third time, all this year.

  “I eat books,” he said, “like a camel drinks water. I store them in my hump for the time when I might be poor again.”

  “You can always go to the library,” I said.

  “Not the same. I write in the margins. Besides, if I like a book, I want to see it occasionally on a shelf, to be reminded.”

  “Did you find out about the Grand Canyon from one of your books?”

  “No, from a movie,” he said, laughing, and my apartment sharers came home and found us sitting in the dark talking and they never believed that we hadn’t touched each other that night. You see, my roommates were nice, ordinary people to whom you could not explain that the Colorado River could happen in someone’s head or that you could fall in love with a man who was five feet two, and who, despite grave faults I was yet to learn about, became a human being so extraordinary that at his death the funeral chapel was filled to overflowing with men and women, Gentiles, Jews, and all of them could have been said to admire and respect his brains and hands and imagination more than anyone else they had ever called friend. What was his magic? Can I, who am supposed to be educated, explain why I married him instead of the professor?

  The professor was a fine-looking man of normal height. Louie was four inches shorter than I was. It took me years to get used to walking in the street with a man who had to look slightly up to smile at me. But that smile was something. I spent much of our married life trying to fight off the other women who wanted to share Louie. He threw sparks of energy—they said he had wit, charisma—that when he talked to you, not just me, but them, and everybody, you felt refreshed, like after love.

  And a talker? To our friends, to our children, our children’s friends, businesspeople, the plumber, customers, the Manuccis. You could put Louie in front of the League of Nations to talk on any subject that came into his head and you’d think I married the most talented mensch who’d ever charmed his way illegally from Russia to America. Who do you think I was, a little girl who couldn’t see anything but the golden tongue? I always wondered how Louie knew to make such expert love to a woman if he’d never been a woman himself. In bed afterwards, I was ready to believe God-knows-what to keep that man coming to my bed instead of somebody else’s.

  Louie

  Zipporah used to say that my sense of humor was my number one troublemaker. I tell you, if it hadn’t been for my sense of humor, I’d never even have met Zipporah. The biggest opportunity of my life came in 1914 when I was yanked by my ears into Czar Nicholas’s army, which, as you know, consisted mainly of peasants. They had to have a piece of hay tied to their left foot and a piece of straw to the right foot so they could learn to march to the commands of “Hayfoot, strawfoot.”

  At the end of my second week of training, while forty of the czar’s subjects were flat on their pupiks on the firing range learning to hit a target, the peasant on my left, confused by the instructions, asked me which target he was supposed to shoot at. “Thirty-five,” I whispered in his ear. The man nodded gratefully. You see, I thought, a zhid can sometimes be useful. It turned out that the man lying on my right was also mixed-up and asked me what number target he was supposed to be shooting at. “Thirty-five,” I whispered.

  “Shut up!” yelled the sergeant, who then distributed five bullets to each man.

  According to the sergeant, as I squeezed off each of my shots I was supposed to be thinking of the enemy. What enemy? My enemies were all around me in the same uniform I had on!

  Though each of us had only five bullets, when the shooting was over, thirteen holes were found in my target, number thirty-five. Targets thirty-four and thirty-six were untouched. The sergeant, after a question here and a question there, figured out what had happened. In front of all the peasants, he yelled at me like a Cossack, giving the fellows to the right and left of me permission, once they got a hold of me in the barracks, to make the little zhid pay for his prank in a way he would never forget.

  Naturally, as the end of the day came closer, I was terrified. Some of these peasants had experience tormenting Jews. I could see them whispering to each other, glancing at me, planning, rubbing their hands together. Think, I told myself, or you are not long for this world. That gave me an idea.

  We shlepped back to the wooden building that served as our home. The others, of course, headed first for the latrine at one end of the building because they were as obedient to their bladders as to the sergeant. I ran inside, rolled my few things into a blanket, and took off like a bandit, my bladder full to bursting. I didn’t stop to pee until a sufficient number of viorsts separated me from the camp. As you can see, the czar’s army lacked a piece of equipment as essential to any human environment as air, a sense of humor. In an army run by someone like myself, my target with too many holes
would have been accepted as a sign of leadership and I would have been immediately promoted to noncommissioned officer! In fact, in my fantasies of the time, if I and not Rasputin had been the czar’s adviser, the Romanovs would still be ruling Russia and all the problems that beset the world, from Siberian camps to threats of world annihilation, might not have occurred, all for want of advice from a little Jew with a sense of humor.

  And so, unrecognized by Mother Russia, I found myself doing what refugees the world over have done before and since. I voted with my feet, which, though aching, took me by slow and difficult steps through Poland, Germany, and France, and finally to a coffin-size place in steerage on a boat whose destination was Canada.

  Coming to America was like going to a movie somebody said was really good. You’re not sure what to expect, and not knowing sprinkles pepper on the excitement. Everywhere you went you met young people who lived in different cities than their fathers lived in, and had better jobs. They seemed to have the kind of spirit that drives the engine of a man the way gasoline drives a Studebaker. Do you realize how wonderful it felt to be twenty-two years old and in the promised land?

  I made contact with my brother Mendel, and through him my other relatives and landsmen. I even got a little used to my new fake name of Riller. God would have to figure out all over again who I was.

  I decided it was time to do what I had always wanted to do. I went to see a music teacher, a man of seventy named Meyerson, who spoke to me with the authority of a rabbi.

  “You have a charming personality, young man, but I won’t give you violin lessons on credit. You are too old. By the time you can really play, you’ll be thirty, ancient, and who will feed you in the meantime? And who says that you’ll be able to achieve what you want even then? For every fiddler who makes it to the concert hall, three hundred play in small bands for bar mitzvahs.”

  Twenty-two is too old to study music? The man must be cracked!

  “Please,” I said, pleading.

  “No,” he answered.

  “You ought to go back to the old country,” I shouted at him. “You have no hope!”

  Meyerson showed me the door, so I had to find another door, this one up three flights in a tenement, led by a young lady I had made happy on Saturday night. From inside the apartment we could hear the sound of scales being played on a piano. She rang the bell. It was answered by a man so tall he had to stoop to see us clearly. Quickly the young lady said, “Mr. Banderoff, this is Louis Riller, who wants to learn the violin.”

  “I don’t teach violin anymore,” Mr. Banderoff said. “Only piano has a future. And you should never interrupt me in the middle of a lesson,” he concluded, starting to close the door.

  “I’ll pay for the lessons,” I said loudly so that he’d hear me before the door closed. “I’ll pay real good.”

  Mr. Banderoff, whom God had made a head taller than me, stared down. “I am an artist,” he said. “My opinions are not for sale. The violin is finished. Piano is the thing. You should have started when you were eight years old.”

  “I just came here,” I pleaded. “When I was eight I had to work as a carpenter in the old country.”

  “Then work as a carpenter here,” Banderoff said with finality.

  As we were going slowly down the tenement steps, the young lady squeezed my hand.

  “It’s no use,” I said.

  “Kiss me,” she said, meaning to cheer me up, “no one is looking.”

  “This hallway smells of pee,” I said. What I really meant was my mouth had the taste of gall.

  Though I didn’t come here to be an American Schmerl, I had to do something, so I went to see a retired master carpenter named Irving Teitelbaum and told him my story, maybe dressing it up here and there. Teitelbaum, a nice man who had pictures of his grandchildren all over his living room, said, “In America chairs are made in factories. Fine chairs are made by cabinetmakers. These are high artisans who need ten years’ apprenticeship and need to love wood as if it were a woman. Besides, you’re too old to start now. Don’t you need to make a living?”

  Frankly, in a way I was relieved to find my pursuit of carpentry discouraged because I knew I did not love wood as if it were a woman.

  A wise man on the boat had said to me: The way to be happy is to be in the company of happy people; the way to get rich is to be with people who are already rich. Wanting to be both, it suddenly came to me that only the rich decorated themselves like gypsies, only their bracelets were of gold and platinum, studded with rubies and sapphires, and the rings on their fingers held real diamonds for all the world to envy.

  I, who had learned that the electricity for getting ahead went through what the Americans called “contacts,” got in touch with a diamond dealer I had befriended named Max Regenwitz, who liked the way I told stories of the old country. Max knew a jeweler named Zalatnick, who didn’t keep a store but made the jewelry himself, with apprentices he trained. And so I got dressed up in clothes I borrowed from Hillel, another friend who was as short as I was, and presented myself in front of the security window inside the door of J. ZALATNICK, FINE JEWELRY MANUFACTURING, TRADE ONLY, on the eighth floor of a high office building in downtown Detroit.

  The receptionist-secretary behind the security window was a homely woman of thirty or so. When she looked up, I smiled at her as if she were a great beauty I was seeing for the first time. She blushed and said, “Yes?” her voice cracking slightly.

  “I am always glad to hear yes,” I said to her, leaning my elbows on the sill. “It is such a sweet sound compared to no.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so. I am here to see Mr. Zalatnick.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I think Mr. Zalatnick will see me.”

  “I see you,” a gruff face suddenly said from behind the security window. The hand belonging to the face was resting protectively on the shoulder of the young woman. “What do you want?”

  “Our mutual friend Max Regenwitz suggested that we should meet.”

  “Max? Why didn’t he phone? Come in, come in.” Zalatnick pushed a buzzer somewhere and the door next to the security window unlatched. I went through, carefully closing the door behind me, and followed Zalatnick’s chubby waddle into a tiny office in the back. Glancing into the main room, I saw the backs of ten or twelve men huddled over workbenches, loupes in their eyes, working on small objects clasped in vises.

  “Where do you know Max from?” Zalatnick asked.

  “From Zhitomir,” I said.

  “You speak pretty good English for a greenhorn,” Zalatnick said. “You here for a job?”

  I held my hands out, palms down, in front of Zalatnick.

  “What’s that?” said Zalatnick, puzzled.

  “Max said you needed workers with steady hands.”

  “I don’t have time to teach greenhorns anymore. I need people with experience.”

  “How does a fellow get experience unless someone brilliant teaches him?”

  “Flattery don’t work with me,” Zalatnick said.

  I looked straight into Zalatnick’s conscience. “I wasn’t referring to you, Mr. Zalatnick. I was talking about someone with foresight.”

  Zalatnick stared back at me, but I wouldn’t drop my gaze. Finally, Zalatnick looked away.

  I said, “I’d like to try your penny test.”

  “Oh ho,” Zalatnick said, “Max told you. All right, I guess you win, come inside.”

  Zalatnick led me into the shop not as if I was a fellow looking for a job but as if I was a friend of a friend. I was sure the men in the shop could smell the difference.

  Zalatnick perched himself on one of the high stools, gestured for me to take the adjoining empty one. I noticed some of the men glancing over in my direction. One of them had a snicker on his face.

  “The routine,” Zalatnick said, “is this. You take this saw, it’s very delicate, and you cut Lincoln’s head out of a penny. If you break the saw blade, fi
nished. If Lincoln’s head has an extra bump when it’s out, flunk. If a piece of Lincoln gets left behind in the penny, good-bye. I have to warn you, nine out of ten can’t do it.”

  “How do you get the saw blade through the penny to start cutting?” I asked.

  “I’ll drill a hole for you over here,” Zalatnick said, heading for the small drill press.

  “Please,” I said. “My penny.” I handed a brand new copper coin to Zalatnick. “I’d like to practice once on my own penny.”

  Zalatnick looked at me. I guess it was the first time a greenhorn had suggested practicing on his own coin.

  “Be my guest,” Zalatnick said. “Ruin yours instead of mine.” He drilled a hole in my penny right near Lincoln’s nose. He loosened the saw blade, put it through the hole, then retightened the blade.

  I went to work, carefully trying to carve out Lincoln’s face and my future.

  After ten minutes, Zalatnick came back from his workbench to see how I was making out. “Ready for the test?” he asked me.

  “A second,” I said, deep in concentration. A moment later the Lincoln head fell out of the penny.

  “Practice over?” Zalatnick asked, a penny in his hand. Then he noticed the Lincoln head on the bench. He picked it up and examined it under an eye loupe. A moment later he picked up the frame of the penny’s remains and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve never done this before?”

  “Never,” I said.

  The men were now staring at me openly.

  “Pay attention to your work,” bellowed Zalatnick, then gestured for me to follow him into the privacy of his office.

  “You’ve got a lot of confidence,” Zalatnick said. “And a steady hand.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my right hand in my pocket feeling the brand new cut-out penny and Lincoln head Max had provided me with to substitute for the other one if the work hadn’t gone right. Truthfully I was very glad I didn’t have to use my backup penny. Now I could keep it as a souvenir of a crime I didn’t commit.

  “I’ll teach you twenty minutes each morning if you come in twenty minutes to eight, before the men. You get carfare and lunch money. When you produce stuff I can sell, you’ll get a dollar an hour to start. That’s a lot of money.”