The Assistant

by Bernard Malamud

  “Just to show my thanks and appreciation.” Frank explained he had borrowed the pail from Sam Pearl and the brush and squeegee from the butcher next door.

  Ida then entered the store by the inside door, and seeing the window being washed, hurried outside.

  “You got rich all of a sudden?” she asked Morris, her face inflamed.

  “He does me a favor,” the grocer replied.

  “That’s right,” said Frank, bearing down on the squeegee.

  “Come inside, it’s cold.” In the store Ida asked, “Who is this goy?”

  “A poor boy, an Italyener he looks for a job. He gives me a help in the morning with the cases milk.”

  “If you sold containers like I told you a thousand times, you wouldn’t need help.”

  “Containers leak. I like bottles.”

  “Talk to the wind,” Ida said.

  Frank came in blowing his breath on water-reddened fists. “How’s it look now, folks, though you can’t really tell till I do the inside.”

  Ida remarked under her breath, “Pay now for your favor.”

  “Fine,” Morris said to Frank. He went to the register and rang up “no sale.”

  “No, thanks,” Frank said, holding up his hand. “For services already rendered.”

  Ida reddened.

  “Another cup coffee?” Morris asked.

  “Thanks. Not as of now.”

  “Let me make you a sandwich?”

  “I just ate.”

  He walked out, threw the dirty water into the gutter, returned the pail and brush, then came back to the grocery. He went behind the counter and into the rear, pausing to rap on the doorjamb.

  “How do you like the clean window?” he asked Ida.

  “Clean is clean.” She was cool.

  “I don’t want to intrude here but your husband was nice to me, so I just thought maybe I could ask for one more small favor. I am looking for work and I want to try some kind of a grocery job just for size. Maybe I might like it, who knows? It happens I forgot some of the things about cutting and weighing and such, so I am wondering if you would mind me working around here for a couple-three weeks without wages just so I could learn again? It won’t cost you a red cent. I know I am a stranger but I am an honest guy. Whoever keeps an eye on me will find that out in no time. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

  Ida said, “Mister, isn’t here a school.”

  “What do you say, pop?” Frank asked Morris.

  “Because somebody is a stranger don’t mean they ain’t honest,” answered the grocer. “This subject don’t interest me. Interests me what you can learn here. Only one thing”—he pressed his hand to his chest—“a heartache.”

  “You got nothing to lose on my proposition, has he now, Mrs?” Frank said. “I understand he don’t feel so hot yet, and if I helped him out a short week or two it would be good for his health, wouldn’t it?”

  Ida didn’t answer.

  But Morris said flatly, “No. It’s a small, poor store. Three people would be too much.”

  Frank flipped an apron off a hook behind the door and before either of them could say a word, removed his hat and dropped the loop over his head. He tied the apron strings around him.

  “How’s that for fit?”

  Ida flushed, and Morris ordered him to take it off and put it back on the hook.

  “No bad feelings, I hope,” Frank said on his way out.

  Helen Bober and Louis Karp walked, no hands touching, in the windy dark on the Coney Island boardwalk.

  Louis had, on his way home for supper that evening, stopped her in front of the liquor store, on her way in from work.

  “How’s about a ride in the Mercury, Helen? I never see you much anymore. Things were better in the bygone days in high school.”

  Helen smiled. “Honestly, Louis, that’s so far away.” A sense of mourning at once oppressed her, which she fought to a practiced draw.

  “Near or far, it’s all the same for me.” He was built with broad back and narrow head, and despite prominent eyes was presentable. In high school, before he quit, he had worn his wet hair slicked straight back. One day, after studying a picture of a movie actor in the Daily News, he had run a part across his head. This was as much change as she had known in him. If Nat Pearl was ambitious, Louis made a relaxed living letting the fruit of his father’s investment fall into his lap.

  “Anyway,” he said, “why not a ride for old-times’ sake?”

  She thought a minute, a gloved finger pressed into her cheek; but it was a fake gesture because she was lonely.

  “For old-times’ sake, where?”

  “Name your scenery—continuous performance.”

  “The Island?”

  He raised his coat collar. “Brr, it’s a cold, windy night You wanna freeze?”

  Seeing her hesitation, he said, “But I’ll die game. When’ll I pick you up?”

  “Ring my bell after eight and I’ll come down.”

  “Check,” Louis said. “Eight bells.”

  They walked to Seagate, where the boardwalk ended. She gazed with envy through a wire fence at the large lit houses fronting the ocean. The Island was deserted, except here and there an open hamburger joint or pinball machine concession. Gone from the sky was the umbrella of rosy light that glowed over the place in summertime. A few cold stars gleamed down. In the distance a dark Ferris wheel looked like a stopped clock. They stood at the rail of the boardwalk, watching the black, restless sea.

  All during their walk she had been thinking about her life, the difference between her aloneness now and the fun when she was young and spending every day of summer in a lively crowd of kids on the beach. But as her high school friends had got married, she had one by one given them up; and as others of them graduated from college, envious, ashamed of how little she was accomplishing, she stopped seeing them too. At first it hurt to drop people but after a time it became a not too difficult habit. Now she saw almost no one, occasionally Betty Pearl, who understood, but not enough to make much difference.

  Louis, his face reddened by the wind, sensed her mood.

  “What’s got in you, Helen?” he said, putting his arm around her.

  “I can’t really explain it. All night I’ve been thinking of the swell times we had on this beach when we were kids. And do you remember the parties? I suppose I’m blue that I’m no longer seventeen.”

  “What’s so wrong about twenty-three?”

  “It’s old, Louis. Our lives change so quickly. You know what youth means?”

  “Sure I know. You don’t catch me giving away nothing for nothing. I got my youth yet.”

  “When a person is young he’s privileged,” Helen said, “with all kinds of possibilities. Wonderful things might happen, and when you get up in the morning you feel they will. That’s what youth means, and that’s what I’ve lost. Nowadays I feel that every day is like the day before, and what’s worse, like the day after.”

  “So now you’re a grandmother?”

  “The world has shrunk for me.”

  “What do you wanna be—Miss Rheingold?”

  “I want a larger and better life. I want the return of my possibilities.”

  “Such as which ones?”

  She clutched the rail, cold through her gloves. “Education,” she said, “prospects. Things I’ve wanted but never had.”

  “Also a man?”

  “Also a man.”

  His arm tightened around her waist. “Talk is too cold, baby, how’s about a kiss?”

  She brushed his cold lips, then averted her head. He did not press her.

  “Louis,” she said, watching a far-off light on the water, “what do you want out of your life?”

  He kept his arm around her. “The same thing I got—plus.”

  “Plus what?”

  “Plus more, so my wife and family can have also.”

  “What if she wanted something different than you do?”

  “Whatever she wanted I wo
uld gladly give her.”

  “But what if she wanted to make herself a better person, have bigger ideas, live a more worthwhile life? We die so quickly, so helplessly. Life has to have some meaning.”

  “I ain’t gonna stop anybody from being better,” Louis said, “That’s up to them.”

  “I suppose,” she said.

  “Say, baby, let’s drop this deep philosophy and go trap a hamburger. My stomach complains.”

  “Just a little longer. It’s been ages since I came here this late in the year.”

  He pumped his arms. “Jesus, this wind, it flies up my pants. At least gimme another kiss.” He unbuttoned his overcoat.

  She let him kiss her. He felt her breast. Helen stepped back out of his embrace. “Don’t, Louis.”

  “Why not?” He stood there awkwardly, annoyed.

  “It gives me no pleasure.”

  “I suppose I’m the first guy that ever gave it a nip?”

  “Are you collecting statistics?”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m sorry. You know I ain’t a bad guy, Helen.”

  “I know you’re not, but please don’t do what I don’t like.”

  “There was a time you treated me a whole lot better.”

  “That was the past, we were kids.”

  It’s funny, she remembered, how necking made glorious dreams.

  “We were older than that, up till the time Nat Pearl started in college, then you got interested in him. I suppose you got him in mind for the future?”

  “If I do, I don’t know it.”

  “But he’s the one you want, ain’t he? I like to know what that stuck up has got beside a college education? I work for my living.”

  “No, I don’t want him, Louis.” But she thought, Suppose Nat said I love you? For magic words a girl might do magic tricks.

  “So if that’s so, what’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing. We’re friends.”

  “Friends I got all I need.”

  “What do you need, Louis?”

  “Cut out the wisecracks, Helen. Would it interest you that I would honestly like to marry you?” He paled at his nerve.

  She was surprised, touched.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Thank you ain’t good enough. Give me yes or no.”

  “No, Louis.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He gazed blankly at the ocean.

  “I never guessed you were at all remotely interested. You go with girls who are so different from me.”

  “Please, when I go with them you can’t see my thoughts.”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “I can give you a whole lot better than you got.”

  “I know you can, but I want a different life from mine now, or yours. I don’t want a storekeeper for a husband.”

  “Wines and liquors ain’t exactly pisher groceries.”

  “I know.”

  “It ain’t because your old man don’t like mine?”

  “No.”

  She listened to the wind-driven, sobbing surf. Louis said, “Let’s go get the hamburgers.”

  “Gladly.” She took his arm but could tell from the stiff way he walked that he was hurt.

  As they drove home on the Parkway, Louis said, “If you can’t have everything you want, at least take something. Don’t be so goddam proud.”

  Touche. “What shall I take, Louis?”

  He paused. “Take less.”

  “Less I’ll never take.”

  “People got to compromise.”

  “I won’t with my ideals.”

  “So what’ll you be then, a dried-up prune of an old maid? What’s the percentage of that?”

  “None.”

  “So what’ll you do?”

  “I’ll wait. I’ll dream. Something will happen.

  “Nuts,” he said.

  He let her off in front of the grocery.

  “Thanks for everything.”

  “You’ll make me laugh.” Louis drove off.

  The store was closed, upstairs dark. She pictured her father asleep after his long day, dreaming of Ephraim. What am I saving myself for? she asked herself. What unhappy Bober fate?

  It snowed lightly the next day—too early in the year, complained Ida, and when the snow had melted it snowed again. The grocer remarked, as he was dressing in the dark, that he would shovel after he had opened the store. He enjoyed shoveling snow. It reminded him that he had practically lived in it in his boyhood; but Ida forbade him to exert himself because he still complained of dizziness. Later, when he tried to lug the milk cases through the snow, he found it all but impossible. And there was no Frank Alpine to help him, for he had disappeared after washing the window.

  Ida came down shortly after her husband, in a heavy cloth coat, a woolen scarf pinned around her head and wearing galoshes. She shoveled a path through the snow and together they pulled in the milk. Only then did Morris notice that a quart bottle was missing from one of the cases.

  “Who took it?” Ida cried.

  “How do I know?”

  “Did you count yet the rolls?”

  “No.”

  “I told you always to count right away.”

  “The baker will steal from me? I know him twenty years.”

  “Count what everybody delivers, I told you a thousand times.”

  He dumped the rolls out of the basket and counted them. Three were missing and he had sold only one to the Poilisheh. To appease Ida he said they were all there.

  The next morning another quart of milk and two rolls were gone. He was worried but didn’t tell Ida the truth when she asked him if anything else was missing. He often hid unpleasant news from her because she made it worse. He mentioned the missing bottle to the milkman, who answered, “Morris, I swear I left every bottle in that case. Am I responsible for this lousy neighborhood?”

  He promised to cart the milk cases into the vestibule for a few days. Maybe whoever was stealing the bottles would be afraid to go in there. Morris considered asking the milk company for a storage box. Years ago he had had one at the curb, a large wooden box in which the milk was padlocked; but he had given it up after developing a hernia lifting the heavy cases out, so he decided against a box.

  On the third day, when a quart of milk and two rolls had again been taken, the grocer, much disturbed, considered calling the police. It wasn’t the first time he had lost milk and rolls in this neighborhood. That had happened more than once—usually some poor person stealing a breakfast. For this reason Morris preferred not to call the police but to get rid of the thief by himself. To do it, he would usually wake up very early and wait at his bedroom window in the dark. Then when the man—sometimes it was a woman—showed up and was helping himself to the milk, Morris would quickly raise the window and shout down, “Get outa here, you thief you.” The thief, startled—sometimes it was a customer who could afford to buy the milk he was stealing—would drop the bottle and run. Usually he never appeared again—a lost customer cut another way—and the next goniff was somebody else.

  So this morning Morris arose at four-thirty, a little before the milk was delivered, and sat in the cold in his long underwear, to wait. The street was heavy with darkness as he peered down. Soon the milk truck came, and the milkman, his breath foggy, lugged the two cases of milk into the vestibule. Then the street was silent again, the night dark, the snow white. One or two people trudged by. An hour later, Witzig, the baker, delivered the rolls, but no one else stopped at the door. Just before six Morris dressed hastily and went downstairs. A bottle of milk was gone, and when he counted the rolls, so were two of them.

  He still kept the truth from Ida. The next night she awoke and found him at the window in the dark.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting up in bed.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “So don’t sit in your underwear in the cold. Come back to bed.”

  He did as she said. Later, the milk and rolls were missing.
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br />   In the store he asked the Poilisheh whether she had seen anyone sneak into the vestibule and steal a quart of milk. She stared at him with small eyes, grabbed the sliced roll and slammed the door.

  Morris had a theory that the thief lived on the block. Nick Fuso wouldn’t do such a thing; if he did Morris would have heard him going down the stairs, then coming up again. The thief was somebody from outside. He sneaked along the street close to the houses, where Morris couldn’t see him because of the cornice that hung over the store; then he softly opened the hall door, took the milk, two rolls from the bag, and stole away, hugging the house fronts.

  The grocer suspected Mike Papadopolous, the Greek boy who lived on the floor above Karp’s store. He had served a reformatory sentence at eighteen. A year later he had in the dead of night climbed down the fire escape overhanging Karp’s back yard, boosted himself up on the fence and forced a window into the grocery. There he stole three cartons of cigarettes, and a roll of dimes that Morris had left in the cash register. In the morning, as the grocer was opening the store, Mike’s mother, a thin, old-looking woman, returned the cigarettes and dimes to him. She had caught her son coming in with them and had walloped his head with a shoe. She clawed his face, making him confess what he had done. Returning the cigarettes and dimes, she had begged Morris not to have the boy arrested and he had assured her he wouldn’t do such a thing.

  On this day that he had guessed it might be Mike taking the milk and rolls, shortly after eight A.M., Morris went up the stairs and knocked reluctantly on Mrs. Papadopolous’ door.

  “Excuse me that I bother you,” he said, and told her what had been happening to his milk and rolls.

  “Mike work all nights in restaurants,” she said. “No come home till nine o’clock in mornings. Sleep all days.” Her eyes smoldered. The grocer left.

  Now he was greatly troubled. Should he tell Ida and let her call the police? They were bothering him at least once a week with questions about the holdup but had produced nobody. Still, maybe it would be best to call them, for this stealing had gone on for almost a week. Who could afford it? Yet he waited, and that night as he was leaving the store by the side door, which he always padlocked after shutting the front door from inside, he flicked on the cellar light and as he peered down the stairs, his nightly habit, his heart tightened with foreboding that somebody was down there. Morris unlocked the lock, went back into the store and got a hatchet. Forcing his courage, he slowly descended the wooden steps. The cellar was empty. He searched in the dusty storage bins, poked around all over, but there was no sign of anybody.