While he was in Russia, he could not deviate from Orthodoxy in the slightest, for he would have offended his father, and this he could not do. Once he was in the United States, however, that was it. He lived a secular life.
I was brought up myself without any religious training to speak of (just one short period for a specialized reason), and I was spared the great need of breaking with an Orthodox past and, after having done so, of playing the hypocrite for the benefit of pious parents, as so many of my generation had to. I was simply a freethinker from the start, a kind of second-generation atheist, and in that respect my life has always been a liberated one. I have been grateful for that always.
3
The worst aspect of the candy store was that, in some respects, it made me an orphan. A candy store is open every day of the week. The hours are just as long on Sundays and on ordinary holidays as at any other time.
As long as we lived in a Jewish neighborhood, we could (indeed, we had to) close the store during the first two days of Passover, during the two days of Rosh Hashonah (New Year), and during the one day of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Naturally, we closed at sunset on the holiday's eve and opened at sunset on the day of its end.
Those rare closings were exciting times, for the mere fact that the store was shut gave everything a kind of incredible holiday atmosphere.
We would all eat at the same table at the same time, which was in itself a sort of monstrous departure from the usual. At Passover there would be the thrill of eating matzo, which was rather tasteless by itself but terrific with anything else. With chicken fat it was divine.
My father was quite capable of leading the formal Passover meal (the Seder), and I recall the one time he did it—in 1928, I believe— talking endlessly in Hebrew, spilling ten drops of wine, one for each of the plagues of Egypt, filling the wineglass for the prophet Elijah, and leaving the door open for him. (I watched carefully, but he was as invisible as Santa Claus.) I myself had to recite the Four Questions in Hebrew, with my mother prompting me.
What I liked then (and like now, when on occasion I attend a diluted American version of a Seder as an adult) is the food. There is chicken and beef and chopped liver and hard-boiled egg, and horseradish, and soup, and, most of all, sweet port wine.
There was no drinking in my parents' house ever. Drinking was always considered a peculiarly Gentile disease, and an upright Jew merely took a few sips now and then on ritual occasions. Sweet port wine on Passover was one of those occasions. My father filled his glass full on the occasion of that one Seder, but gave me only a quarter-filled glass and let me dip my sponge cake in it. (My mother made the best sponge cake ever invented.)
Childish habits persist. To this day I do not drink. I love sweet wines, such as port, cherry heering, even cream sherry and some kinds of brandy and liqueurs and will occasionally have a little if it is available at a host's table. On a very few occasions, each special and to be detailed in this book, I have even overindulged, but in general I am extremely abstemious, and I can honestly say that never, not even once in my life, have I ever bought a drink.
Still, the Jewish holidays were very rare occasions, and because of the store, my father was no longer home on evenings and on Sundays. It meant that never again, after I was six, could I be with him on a Sunday morning, while he told me stories. It meant I could never have dinner with him. I always ate with my mother and sister and we had to finish quickly, so that my father could take his turn and so that he could linger.
I retained the habit of eating quickly and with concentration for the rest of my life. I almost never talk while eating and I almost never pause, with the result that the food disappears almost magically. This is the height of bad manners, I am well aware, but I can't help it. I can force myself to delay by keeping a conscious eye on what I am doing, but as soon as I forget, things go back to normal and the food vanishes.
Generally, I read during meals. My father was not there. My mother was busy cooking and serving (she ate on the fly). So I wasn't reproved for what is another example of bad manners. Indeed, since it was a sign of studiousness, I think my parents rather approved than otherwise, and that habit also lingers to this day.
All in all, my family was never together, and I never interacted with any of them except in the context of the candy store. It was in that respect that I was orphaned in a functional sense.
In another sense, matters were quite the reverse. My parents were always home; I always knew where they were, so that I was too densely sheltered.
Then again, we could have no social life. We could neither visit nor be visited except on rare occasions, so that I interacted with almost no one but my immediate family. That, too, twisted and distorted my life and my personality in ways that must be all too apparent even now.
Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plot-tings among my friends to protect me against my own lack of sophistication. I don't mind. I suspect that I am never quite as unsophisticated as they think I am, but I don't mind.
4
But let me not overdraw. I had some life outside the family and the candy store.
For one thing, there was a movie house, the Sutter Theater, immediately across the street from the store. Every Saturday afternoon, my mother got rid of me for three hours by giving me a dime and watching me narrowly while I crossed the street, to make sure I wasn't run over and squashed flat without her being aware of it at once.
Usually she sent me over as soon as the doors opened, which could be up to half an hour before the festivities started. It was always a children's matinee, which meant that the place was full of kids from five to fifteen, all squealing and shouting and running around. Looking back at it, it seems to me that the place must also have been filled with the stench inseparable from imperfectly washed humanity.
All is a matter of custom, however, and my ears and nose were blissfully unaware of anything unusual.
Eventually, the projectionist would arrive and walk up into the booth at the back of the movie, and the childish din, loud enough be-
fore, split the walls now. And then, eventually, the light would go out and there would flash on the screen something like The Claw of the Panther— Episode 6: "Attack of the Cat Men," and sheer pandemonium would drown out the credits (assuming anyone dared take credit for what followed).
Of all things the movie house supplied us with, the favorite with us were the serials (which we called "episodes," because that was the word we saw). These included incredible adventures, frequent fist fights, a masked villain whom we knew would eventually be unmasked as one of the ordinary characters of the charade, and an impossible cliff-hanging ending each week to be resolved at the start of the episode to be shown the next week.
Usually, the ending was a complete cheat. One episode would end with an explosion that clearly killed the hero. The next episode would begin with the same explosion except that the hero was clearly well away from it. But we didn't care.
In addition, there would be, for the same dime, a short comedy, a cartoon, coming attractions, newsreels, and two features. The whole thing was silent, for I began going to the movies just before talking pictures were coming in—and this was great because you could make all the noise you wanted without interfering with any understanding of the picture. There were numerous subtitles, which everybody read aloud in complete lack of synchronization.
The whole thing was sheer hell, but only in retrospect. It seemed like heaven then.
5
The candy store had delectable offerings of its own. For one thing there was the candy itself, of which there seemed to be endless quantities—but concerning which the law was instantly laid down. Candy could not be eaten—repeat—could not be eaten—without permission.
We quickly found out that permission was very rarely given. Before a meal, we couldn't have i
t because it would spoil our appetite. After a meal, we couldn't have it because, having eaten so much, it was disgustingly greedy to want more. 2
I had better luck with sodas, for some reason. Every once in a while, my mother would make a chocolate soda for me. The soda fountain in the store could make cherry sodas, vanilla sodas, strawberry
2 And yet I distinctly remember envying the boy whose father owned a bakery until he told me he envied me. Only then did I realize his chance at cake was about what mine was at candy.
sodas, pineapple sodas, and so on, and there were bottled sodas, too. And if you added a dollop of ice cream, you had an ice cream soda. For a penny or two, if you were a pauper or a masochist, you could have a small or a large plain seltzer. What I wanted, however, was a chocolate soda, undiluted with ice cream.
You could never get that anywhere but in a candy store because chocolate sodas were never bottled. Now that there are no candy stores to speak of, and no soda fountains, there are no longer any chocolate sodas of the kind I remember.
I have a theory that chocolate sodas are called "egg creams" by some people. At least some people assume that since I was brought up in a candy store in the old days I must be an expert on egg creams, and when I tell them I never heard of an egg cream, they doubt my sanity. Therefore, when I found a place recently that said it supplied egg creams, I ordered one, and found that it tasted like an inferior chocolate soda to me.
Even better than a chocolate soda, however, was a "malted." This was milk and ice cream and malt and syrup (chocolate syrup by my preference) all whipped up into a thick, bubbly consistency in an electric mixing machine. It was then poured into a large glass, with half remaining in the mixer for addition afterward, and you could watch the bubbles very slowly and viscidly breaking at the top.
On the peak of Mount Olympus, the gods and goddesses drank nectar—which I always visualized as a pale imitation of my mother's malteds. Fortunately, since my mother was convinced that malteds were a very healthful drink, I got at least one a day.
Then, of course, the candy store had magazines. Most of them meant nothing to me, but on a string in the window, my father had small paperbacks on incredibly cheap paper that detailed the adventures of Nick Carter, Frank Merriwell, and Dick Merriwell. It was the last decade of the dime novels, which were being killed by the category pulps that were taking over.
I wanted to read those adventures and my father carefully explained to me why I could not.
"Junk!" he said to me. "Junk! It is not fit to read. The only people who read magazines like that are bums"
Bums representing those who were the dregs of society, apprentice gangsters, I realized that I wasn't going to have much chance. I said, "You sell them to other boys."
"I have to make a living. If their fathers don't stop them, I can't stop them."
"You read them, Pappa."
"I have to learn English. You leam it in school, but I don't go to school. I have to learn it from these books."
He had me at every turn, but I kept hankering after them, and my father felt that temptation would overcome me if he didn't find a substitute for me. Consequently, before I was seven years old, he managed somehow to get a library card for me—at the Watkins Avenue Branch (I think), wherever that was.
From then on, I could go to the library, a constant activity of mine for many years, since it was the only way I could get books. Buying books was unheard of.
My father and mother, knowing nothing of English-language books, could in no way guide me in my selections, but they felt I could not go wrong, since they were certain that the libraries contained only wholesome books and nutritious literature.
Left to myself, I read voraciously and undiscriminatingly. I was allowed to pick out two books each time I went, only one of which could be fiction. My parents had to take me, and as I finished the books quickly, they had to take me often.
With the candy store in operation, it became increasingly difficult to take me, but my needs were so great that eventually, out of desperation, they simply gave me two nickels and trusted me to go to the library by bus, there and back, alone. It was my first brush with independence.
The candy store had a public coin telephone. Since it could perfectly well be used by us for our own social needs (except that we had none), or for someone to call us (but who would?), it could be considered our own phone, the first we ever had. I remember that first phone number. It was GLenmore-8999.
The chief use of that phone was to serve the neighborhood. In those days few people in our neighborhood had private phones. Therefore, they came into our store to make a call and that was good, because perhaps they would stop to buy something once they were inside. Besides, the phone company paid us a small rental for the use of the place.
Second, if our phone rang and someone in the neighborhood was needed, my father would run to wherever his apartment was and call him: "Telephone at the candy store for so-and-so." Then whoever it was would run to answer.
There was no charge for this. It was a courtesy for customers, which meant that people had to stay customers to get the courtesy. If the call was for someone we didn't know, or someone who hadn't been in lately and had fallen from grace, the answer was, "Sorry, I'm alone in the store and there's no one to send."
One other item of importance in the candy store was tobacco. As I look back on it, it seems to me that I might very well have found myself smoking in my teen-age years since cigarettes were always available.
My father, however, set his face against smoking as fervently as against candy-eating—for me, that is.
He himself was at one time in his life a heavy smoker—so my brother says, and he claims he was assured of this by my mother. For myself, I cannot for the life of me remember my father with a cigarette in his mouth. If indeed he smoked, the thought of it is so distressing that I have blocked it out of my mind utterly.
I went through the second grade without trouble. In fact, it became my custom at the start of each term, throughout my grade-school years, to read quickly all the books given us on the first day. I managed to complete them in two or three days. In the case of the arithmetic books, I would work out enough of the problems to make sure I got the point.
Then, for the rest of the term, I did not have to "study." I would do my homework as soon as I got back from school, and just as quickly as I could, and then I was through. My test marks were always very good, except that whenever I got a 95, my father would put on his sorrowful I-must-explain-this-to-you-for-your-own-good expression and tell me, "If a person can only get 65 and he gets 65 . . ." and all the rest of it.
My father never seemed aware that something he was telling me might be something he had already told me before. He would tell me the same story or read me the same lesson any number of times and I would listen patiently. When I grew older and less reverent, I would sometimes recite the stories along with him, but I never noticed that this in the least discommoded him. He would keep right on going.
Occasional 95s in tests did not prevent me from bringing back steady A's in schoolwork on the monthly report cards, which one of my parents had to sign as an indication they had seen it. Those A's were not the whole story, though.
Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. No, I wasn't destructive, or disobedient, or difficult in any way. The point was that since I understood what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, and very often I already understood before she could say it, I found time hanging heavy on my hands, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor.
That was my great crime. I talked in school.
Schoolchildren were supposed to be absolutely silent except when called on. They were not only supposed to be absolutely silent, they were supposed to sit bolt upright with their hands clasped on their desk.
Most of the children talked and tittered, or made faces in order to induce someone else to titter—but my particular talent was that of getting caught at i
t. I would be ordered to stand up and I would be lectured in public and, in general, made to feel very bad. It never cured me of my reprehensible evil, but it made me feel bad.
My first report card from 1B2, I remember, gave me an A in schoolwork and a B-f- in deportment.
My poor mother didn't know what "deportment" was, and neither did I. Nor was she aware of what a B-f- signified, except that it wasn't an A. She came to school late that afternoon, therefore, in order to find out what it was all about. She had the report card and talked to the teacher (what an agony of embarrassment that was for me!). She was told (I overheard) by the teacher, who tried to put it in terms my mother's imperfect command of English would make comprehensible, that I "talked a little bit too much."
My mother then signed the report card without a word, went out of the school, and waited there till the day was over. (This was before the candy store had been bought.) I came out and she walked me home in absolute silence while I desperately made comments on the weather. Then when we got home, she removed my pants, and she proceeded to spank me into one big bruise.
That didn't cure me either, and before long she gave up on me. She just made sure that the schoolwork came back with A's and let the deportment take care of itself.
Of course, the teachers couldn't do anything with me, either. Although I continued to whisper and titter, thus proving myself to be a creature of incredible wickedness and of Satanic evil, I was still the smartest pupil in the class and so I had to be accepted. Some of my teachers must even have had a suspicion I might conceivably amount to something and they therefore hesitated to take extreme measures such as poisoning my milk and cookies.
7
I couldn't very well be that smart without knowing I was that smart. I had begun to suspect that I was not as other children were even before I went to school. Once I was in school, there was no way in which I could avoid the knowledge.
In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 Page 9