Jesus Ortiz felt a vast shapeless desire, but it was too great and beautiful to attain shape. So he thought about money and the power of business.
Mabel Wheatly writhed fetchingly on the white sheets of the whorehouse as she waited for her third customer of the evening to finish undressing. She murmured lustful catch phrases to him, this fat, balding white man with girlish skin and tiny plump hands. The summer air came hot and smoky in through the cautiously opened window, and the man's hands trembled.
"I'll tell you what I want you to do," he said in a voice savage with shame. "First fie over ... like this. And then keep saying, 'Do it to me, Richy, do it to me,' like that," he said, his shaky hand moist on her bare brown skin.
"Is your name Richy, hon?" she asked with a vampish smile.
"No, no, my name is Don. But you just do what I say and don't ask questions. Do what I say." He fell on her then and began a mad pantomime of mock virility.
"Do it to me, Richy, do it to me, Richy, do it to me..." she intoned in a dead voice, contorting herself according to that particular recipe of passion. But her eyes were up on the ceiling, staring at a desperate dream.
Tessie Rubin didn't open the door to the angry knocking of Goberman. She called from behind the closed door in a loud half-whisper she hoped would carry to Goberman and not to her father lying in his raging sleep in the back bedroom.
"What do you mean coming this time of night?"
"Does it make a difference to the slaves in Yemen, the Israelites in the ghettos of Algiers and Alexandria what time it is? Their blood is on you. You must give me money for the Jewish Appeal or your name will go down with Hitler in Hell," Goberman cried in the same wild half-whisper from the hall.
"I'll give, I'll give, you madman," she said. "Only I don't have, now. Come Monday night, come then, I'll take care of you then."
"I'll come then, I'll come like the Angel of Death to the Egyptians. God help you if you don't..."
"Monday, Monday," she wailed against the door.
"Vat is the pounding? Are they here again?" the old man roared from the bedroom. "Ich shtab svai huntret yourn! I haf died too many times already."
"It's nothing, Poppa, gay shluphin; it is just the man from die electric company," she called in a soothing voice as she leaned against the door. "It will all be taken care of, Sol will take care of it." She covered her face with her hands and pressed as hard as she could.
Goberman's footsteps clacked hollowly over the tile floor of the hall, receded out to the street, and then were gone from her ears but not from her head, never from her head.
Miles away, the Pawnbroker sat up rigidly in his bed to escape the long-drawn and endless moaning of his dreams.
EIGHT
His Sundays were parodies of Sabbaths; hours to be got through without the insulation of work. He swung his feet to the floor of his bedroom and stared at the leafy shape of sunlight over them; it was like morning discovering the marble of a statue. Outside, there were the sounds of the Sunday gardeners and children's voices slamming at the quiet. A lawn mower chugged in the warm air a half-block away, and a few birds twittered weakly, obligated to August. He was in a warm, safe place. Why then did he creak under invisible weights? Why did he feel that phantom growth deep inside?
For a few minutes he studied the motionless curtains tapestried with sunlight. He began to recognize the edge of something soothingly rational.
"A week from Thursday is the twenty-eighth of August," he said aloud. Every year around the anniversary of his family's death he experienced that now vague sense of oppression. It was only natural; in fact in its mildness it was almost unnatural. He did not grieve or mourn them, because he had been cauterized of all abstract things. Reality consisted of the world within one's sight and smell and hearing. He commemorated nothing; it was the secret of his survival. But August was his bad month, the period of his own mistral, a time when he felt healed scars as a veteran might recall his wounds in damp weather. No more than that; August would come and go, and he would continue to exist. Bleakly comforted at having found a name for his ache, he got up and began to dress.
He put on a pair of fawn-colored summer slacks and an olive sport shirt his niece, Joan, had bought him the Christmas before, which made his complexion take on the yellowish translucence of old marble. In the bathroom, he ran the electric razor over the sparse stubble of his beard, his eyes indifferent to the rest of his pallid face. Then he brushed his teeth, which were his own except for two steel ones a little to the side of his mouth. Amazing that he hadn't lost them all. He spread his lips to observe his teeth and then continued the expression in a mirthless smile at that odd persistence; the teeth continued to manufacture calcium, as hair and fingernails continued to grow in the grave.
With his unique spectacles on, Sol went downstairs to where the odor of fresh coffee and rolls and smoked fish filled the rooms pleasantly. Bertha was in the kitchen, the rest of the family reading the different sections of the Times.
"Good morning, Uncle Sol. You slept late," Joan said brightly. In her yellow bathrobe, her skin tanned to a lovely maple, she was a bright spot in the sunny room. "And so formal. I wish you would let me buy you a dressing gown."
"Good morning, Solly," Selig said with conspiratorial heartiness, reminding his brother-in-law of his lingering gratitude with raised eyebrows.
"Good morning," Sol said, walking over to the living-room window to gaze blankly at the shaded street.
Morton glanced up from his perusal of the advertised bosoms in the theater section. For a moment he looked at his uncle. Oddly, he felt himself loosen in the presence of the big, shapeless figure, felt certain cords of anguish go limp and become bearable in his uncle's stillness.
Bertha's voice broke into the rustling quiet of the room.
"Come eat," she called from the kitchen.
They went in and sat around the sumptuous spread of rolls, bagels, cheeses, sturgeon, smoked whitefish and lox, huge tomatoes and chunks of sweet tub butter; and what was real between them was the mutual hunger, the greed that fit up their faces with an ersatz amiability. Bertha poured coffee into each of their cups. Sol's was an oversized novelty inscribed "Grandpa," which Joan had bought the year before on the vacation she and her parents had taken at Sol's expense. It was part of the half-conscious campaign she and her mother waged to make Sol a family "character"; that at least could explain his indefinable personality, could ultimately, they hoped, reduce him to something they could work with and control.
For a while, they talked in little side courses about friends and news events and book reviews. Bertha dug with gleeful savagery at the small failure of one of her friends' children. But when Selig and Joan finished eating and sat back with cigarettes and a second cup of coffee, Joan suddenly noticed her brother's skinny hands.
"Your nails are filthy," she said comfortably, exhaling a twin stream of smoke from her nose. The observation was made without malice, for she was a healthy, unfrustrated girl. "You keep them too long."
Selig cast his face into a father's sternness. "I don't want to see you coming to the table like that," he said.
Morton ate more quickly, as though he expected his plate to be taken away before he was through eating.
"You don't answer people when they talk to you?" his mother said.
"Leave me alone," Morton said, continuing to eat.
Bertha stared at him viciously for a minute, searching for ammunition, feeding her bitter disappointment in him. She had a certain capacity for love, but it was not large. Her life in America had been bright and clean and pretty; she had become accustomed to clean prettiness. She had come to America thirty years before and had gotten the educated, "American-looking" Selig to fall in love with her wholesome good looks. Their first child had been a beautiful credit to her. And then Morton! She might have been able to shape a pitying affection for her son, but from early childhood he had been as sour and unreceptive to her condescending attention as he was now.
&n
bsp; "I found some indecent pictures in your drawer," she said, not adding that she had studied them curiously for almost ten minutes.
"Ah, the solitary vice, very unhealthy," Selig said, belching the essence of smoked fish out with his cigarette smoke. "You're at the age where self-discipline is important, Morton."
"Talk about shame," Morton snarled, "haven't you people got any shame? How can you talk to a person like this? All right, you despise me and I despise you. Yes, let's get it out in the open—despise! Well, okay, I don't need you. I'll become an artist and get out on my own. Then you can all go to hell, for all I care!"
"That language in front of your mother and your sister!" Selig half stood in threat. And this, his namesake, his hope of immortality. He was too lazy about discipline. Well, from now on he would take a hand. For an instant he visualized a tall, broad-shouldered Morton with tanned, smooth skin and bright friendly eyes and himself, Selig, introducing this beautiful son to his principal, telling the man that his son had been offered any number of football scholarships but that Morton preferred a particular nonathletic college whose pre-med courses were said to be the best. Selig stayed, half standing, his eyes glazed and forgetful of the purpose of his posture. Gradually, he sank back into his chair as the daydream faded.
"Morton," Joan said, "we don't hate you. What an unhealthy attitude that is! You have many antagonisms against yourself and you try to put them on us. We just want to help you. Our criticism is meant to be constructive."
"That's what a family is for," Selig said.
"Well I certainly hate to see him get like this," Joan said. Then, with a glance at her uncle, the payer-of-fees, "Maybe some professional help would be in order. Mort, would you consider talking to Sid's friend Doctor Klebish? Just informally; the brightest people do it nowadays."
Morton didn't answer, just kept stubbornly eating.
"Get like this," Bertha cried scornfully, suddenly flooded with bitter recall. "He was always like this. He sucked my milk till there was blood. At three years old he was still crying for the titty."
"Really, Mother!" Joan spoke with delicate distaste. "Now, Mort, you know Mother is just angry—not that I blame her. You get her all upset. Honestly, you don't let anyone relax and be friendly with you. You're so violently antisocial, so..."
"He used to pee in his pants when he was already eleven years old, just to embarrass me," Bertha persisted, half enjoying the dim nausea she felt in this attack on her son. It seemed that if she continued it long enough and intensely enough, she would vomit all the sick anger she felt for him, that she might be soothed and eased and patient enough to love him as she should.
"Nowadays we have guidance people in the schools," Selig said. "Perhaps if the people at the school ... I mean this drawing business is not a solution to all your problems, you know, son. Let's say you are pursuing some modest talent, all well and good, but..."
"You don't know anything about it!" Morton cried hoarsely, his eyes bulging and wild. "You people with your slimy, warped little brains, talking about foreign films and book reviews. What do you know? Beauty, do you really understand about beauty? No, just prettiness, nice clean little things, fashionable, crappy little nothings. And you have the nerve to tell me..."
"Those pictures in your drawer maybe, that's beauty?" Bertha said.
Morton snarled miserably, like a trapped animal.
Sol just sat drinking his coffee and contemplating the cold, living stone in his vitals, in a hurry for the hour to end, for the day, the week, the month to be gone. He forced himself to anticipate the peace that would follow his strange seasonal discomfort. The voices of his relatives snapped in a closing circle around the ugly weakness of their prey, but he heard them only distantly, like the sound of some far-off hunt. He squinted at the chrome sparkle of the stove, which threw needles of light into his eyes. He might even take a little holiday in October, walk in some New England wood and just breathe without regret or poignance the pleasant cold air so free of unnatural smells. He would take some books along and stay at a quiet inn and walk and eat and read and be quite content within the walls of his senses. He sat in an autumnal reverie, his face slack and idiotic, his body collapsed sideways in the chair.
But suddenly the noise intruded. Morton was standing with his hands up to his ears and screaming one steady tantrum note.
"That's just childish, Morton," his sister said. "You refuse to take criticism like an adult."
"He's a baby, a nasty baby," Bertha shrilled.
"Get a grip on yourself, boy," Selig shouted.
"Shut up, all of you!" Sol said in a thunderous voice. "Leave him alone!"
"Now, Solly, you must let us work out our parental problems in our own way," Selig said with polite reproof.
"I said be still, be still!" He towered over them with his anger, and they were reminded that he came out of unknown violences. Selig and Joan sat open-mouthed and intimidated.
But Bertha was made of tougher material.
"You are not yet the dictator around here, Solly," she said. "Maybe you think you can throw up to us the little help you have been willing to give us. But'we didn't vote you the head of the house. After all, we give something in return. We have made a home for you, given you a family. What money could buy that?"
Morton forgot to scream. He lowered his hands from his ears and watched his uncle.
Sol turned to his sister with a cold, glistening stare.
"You will be still now," he said. "No more talk at all until I am out of this room. Silence, Bertha, silence. When I am gone from here, you may continue your cannibalism; I do not take sides or interfere with your miserable pleasure. But hear what I say. I do not need you for a family—that is your myth. If you wish to be able to continue it, be silent!"
Then he turned and went from the room.
Morton followed, a careful distance behind his uncle. Like his father, he was prone to imaginative reconstructions. He looked at Sol's wide, bulky back and had no need to create a new and perfect father; he was willing, in his dream, to settle for that one somber, harsh man, would have taken his chances on all the darknesses in the Pawnbroker that would be forever beyond his knowing. He felt, without evidence, that there were murkinesses those eyes could penetrate and understand.
But Sol was only soliciting silence. He went into the yard with a book of Chekhov's short stories. Settled on the plastic-webbed chair, he began to read. He soaked in a fictitious climate which isolated him from the warm sunlight and the voices of all the neighbors, dulled by the heavy summer foliage. And slowly he worked away from the minor irritant of the recent scene in the house. He read avidly, and although he projected himself to a certain extent to the late nineteenth-century Russian town, he derived pleasure mainly from the lucid familiarity of something he had loved and enjoyed in another time. He appreciated the emotions evoked, but he was not involved emotionally himself because his invulnerability allowed for no exceptions. He was stirred only to a reminiscence of sadness; he was like an archaeologist studying the historic ruins of an interesting civilization. Sometimes he smiled faintly, at other times his eyes narrowed slightly; breezes of life seemed to play over his bland, buried face.
During the morning the members of the family came out into the yard for various reasons; Bertha to dump the garbage, Selig looking for a pair of pruning shears, Joan just wandering aimlessly. Each of them skirted his reposing figure with cautious silence and stayed for the shortest time; they were intimidated by Sol's motionless face, stony in the yellow-green light, and by his eyes, obscured behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
Only Morton stayed for a long time in another chair, a good distance away from his uncle. He read intermittently from Gardner's Art Through the Ages, and every so often swung his eyes furtively from some Byzantine saint or Renaissance madonna to the motionless figure.
After a while, Sol, too, found himself swinging in and out of the balm of his reading, although he did not lift his eyes from the printed pages
. His mind drifted with the apparent abandon of an oarless boat, bumping on this strand and that. His customers ranged through his thoughts, and he examined them harshly, as though he might find the thing responsible for his increasing unease. With his eyes on "A Day in the Country," he checked off Jesus Ortiz and Buck White, Tangee and the blue-eyed Negro. He considered craftily the harsh, sonic whine of Murillio's voice, the sleazy delicacy of George Smith's importuning debate. And he wondered if any or all of them might have anything to do with the way he felt. The buzzing conjecture began to make his nerves tingle, and a slight dizziness came over him.
"But it's just the time of the year ... an old superstition," he said aloud, gesturing, too, as though in answer to an unseen companion.
"What did you say, Uncle Sol?" Morton asked, as alien with his sallow face in that cheery sunlight as his uncle.
"What ... oh, nothing, nothing. I was reading aloud ... it meant nothing," he said softly.
Then he went back to Chekhov with his memory strangled in the grip of his will. And the soft summer sounds fell over him with the sunlight, as unfelt as the lightest rain of pollen.
NINE
They could see the whole thing from where they stood in the camp square. Sol stood with the others in a long, endless line, halted by their guard, as were the several other work groups. Outside the barbed-wire fence, the dogs snarled in a closing ring around Rubin. The black-uniformed men smoked and joked idly in the noon sunshine; even the dogs seemed in no great hurry as they backed the small crouched figure toward the fence.
A week before, they had taken Rubin's cross-eyed son to the "showers." Last night, Rubin had managed to slip out of the camp, God knew how. But the dogs had found him, and the commandant's edifying "example" was imminent. All night they had given Rubin his head, yet all the while they were slyly working him back toward the camp. Now, at high noon, he was right outside the high fence for everyone to learn from; the morbid joke was revealed to Rubin at last.
The Pawnbroker Page 9