The Assistant

by Bernard Malamud

  He saw only one way of squeezing through the stone knot; start by shoveling out the load he was carrying around in his mind by admitting to Morris that he was one of the guys that had held him up. It was a funny thing about that; he wasn’t really sorry they had stuck up a Jew but he hadn’t expected to be sorry that they had picked on this particular one, Bober; yet now he was. He had not minded, if by mind you meant in expectation, but what he hadn’t minded no longer seemed to matter. The matter was how he now felt, and he now felt bad he had done it. And when Helen was around he felt worse.

  So the confession had to come first—this stuck like a bone through the neck. From the minute he had tailed Ward Minogue into the grocery that night, he had got this sick feeling that he might someday have to vomit up in words, no matter how hard or disgusting it was to do, the thing he was then engaged in doing. He felt he had known this, in some frightful way, a long time before he went into the store, before he had met Minogue, or even come east; that he had really known all his life he would sometime, through throat blistered with shame, his eyes in the dirt, have to tell some poor son of a bitch that he was the one who had hurt or betrayed him. This thought had lived in him with claws; or like a thirst he could never spit out, a repulsive need to get out of his system all that had happened—for whatever had happened had happened wrong; to clean it out of his self and bring in a little peace, a little order; to change the beginning, beginning with the past that always stupendously stank up the now—to change his life before the smell of it suffocated him.

  Yet when the chance came to say it, when he was alone with Morris that November morning in the back of the store, as they were drinking the coffee that the Jew had served him, and the impulse came on him to spill everything now, now, he had strained to heave it up, but it was like tearing up your whole life, with the broken roots and blood; and a fear burned in his gut that once he had got started saying the wrongs he had done he would never leave off until he had turned black; so instead he had told him a few hurried things about how ass-backward his life had gone, which didn’t even begin to say what he wanted. He had worked on Morris’s pity and left halfway satisfied, but not for long, because soon the need to say it returned and he heard himself groaning, but groans weren’t words.

  He argued with himself that he was smart in not revealing to the grocer more than he had. Enough was enough; besides, how much of a confession was the Jew entitled to for the seven and a half bucks he had taken, then put back into his cash register drawer, and for the knock on the head he had got from Ward, whom he himself had come with unwillingly? Maybe willing, but not to do what had finally been done. That deserved some consideration, didn’t it? Furthermore, he had begged the creep not to hurt anybody, and had later turned him down when he cooked up another scheme of stickup against Karp, who they were out to get in the first place. That showed his good intentions for the future, didn’t it? And who was it, after all was said and done, that had waited around shivering in his pants in the dark cold, to pull in Morris’s milk boxes, and had worked his ass to a frazzle twelve hours a day while the Jew lay upstairs resting in his bed? And was even now keeping him from starvation in his little rat hole? All that added up to something too.

  That was how he argued with himself, but it didn’t help for long, and he was soon again fighting out how to jump free of what he had done. He would someday confess it all—he promised himself. If Morris accepted his explanation and solemn apology, it would clear the rocks out of the road for the next move. As for his present stealing from the cash register, he had decided that once he had told the grocer all there was to say about the holdup, he would at the same time start paying back into the drawer, out of his little salary and the few bucks he had put away in the bank, what he had taken, and that would fix that. It wouldn’t necessarily mean that Helen Bober would then and there fall for him—the opposite could happen—but if she did, he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

  He knew by heart what he would say to the grocer once he got to say it. One day while they were talking in the back, he would begin, as he had once done, about how his life was mostly made up of lost chances, some so promising he could still not stand to remember them. Well, after certain bad breaks through various causes, mostly his own mistakes—he was piled high with regrets—after many such failures, though he tried every which way to free himself from them, usually he failed; so after a time he gave up and let himself be a bum. He lived in gutters, cellars if he was lucky, slept in lots, ate what the dogs wouldn’t, or couldn’t, and what he scrounged out of garbage cans. He wore what he found, slept where he flopped and guzzled anything.

  By rights this should have killed him, but he lived on, bearded, smelly, dragging himself through the seasons without a hope to go by. How many months he had existed this way he would never know. Nobody kept the score of it. But one day while he lay in some hole he had crawled into, he had this terrific idea that he was really an important guy, and was torn out of his reverie with the thought that he was living this kind of life only because he hadn’t known he was meant for something a whole lot better—to do something big, different. He had not till that minute understood this. In the past he had usually thought of himself as an average guy, but there in this cellar it came to him he was wrong. That was why his luck had so often curdled, because he had the wrong idea of what he really was and had spent all his energy trying to do the wrong things. Then when he had asked himself what should he be doing, he had another powerful idea, that he was meant for crime. He had at times teased himself with this thought, but now it wouldn’t let go of him. At crime he would change his luck, make adventure, live like a prince. He shivered with pleasure as he conceived robberies, assaults—murders if it had to be—each violent act helping to satisfy a craving that somebody suffer as his own fortune improved. He felt infinitely relieved, believing that if a person figured for himself something big, something different in his life, he had a better chance to get it than some poor jerk who couldn’t think that high up.

  So he gave up his outhouse existence. He began to work again, got himself a room, saved and bought a gun. Then he headed east, where he figured he could live the way he wanted—where there was money, nightclubs, babes. After a week of prowling around in Boston, not sure where he ought to start off, he hopped a freight to Brooklyn and a couple of days after he got there met Ward Minogue. As they were shooting pool one night, Ward cannily detected the gun on him and made him the proposition that they do a holdup together. Frank welcomed the idea of some kind of start but said he wanted to think about it more. He went to Coney Island, and while sitting on the boardwalk, worrying about what he ought to do, got this oppressive feeling he was being watched. When he turned around it was Ward Minogue. Ward sat down and told him that it was a Jew he planned to rob, so Frank agreed to go with him.

  But on the night of the holdup he found himself nervous. In the car Ward sensed it and cursed him. Frank felt he had to stick it out, but the minute they were both in the grocery and tying handkerchiefs around their mouths, the whole idea seemed senseless. He could feel it poop out in his mind. His plans of crime lay down and died. He could hardly breathe in his unhappiness, wanted to rush out into the street and be swallowed up out of existence, but he couldn’t let Ward stay there alone. In the back, nauseated by the sight of the Jew’s bloodied head, he realized he had made the worst mistake yet, the hardest to wipe out. And that ended his short life of violent crime, another pipe dream, and he was trapped tighter in the tangle of his failures. All this he thought he would someday tell Morris. He knew the Jew well enough to feel sure of his mercy.

  Yet there were times when he imagined himself, instead, telling it all to Helen. He wanted to do something that would open her eyes to his true self, but who could be a hero in a grocery store? Telling her would take guts and guts was something. He continued to feel he deserved a better fate, and he would find it if he only once—once—did the right thing—the thing to do at the right time. Maybe if they were ev
er together for any decent amount of time, he would ask her to listen. At first she might be embarrassed, but when he started telling her about his life, he knew she would hear him to the end. After that—who knew? With a dame all you needed was a beginning.

  But when the clerk caught himself coldly and saw the sentimentality of his thinking—he was a sentimental wop at heart—he knew he was having another of his hopped-up dreams. What kind of a chance did he think he would have with her after he had admitted the stickup of her old man? So he figured the best thing was to keep quiet. At the same time a foreboding crept into him that if he said nothing now, he would someday soon have a dirtier past to reveal.

  A few days after Christmas, on the night of a full moon, Frank, dressed in his new clothes, hurried to the library, about a dozen blocks from the grocery. The library was an enlarged store, well lit, with bulging shelves of books that smelled warm on winter nights. In the rear there were a few large reading tables. It was a pleasant place to come to out of the cold. His guess was good, soon Helen arrived. She wore a red woolen scarf on her head, one end thrown over her shoulder. He was at a table reading. She noticed him as she closed the door behind her; he knew it. They had met here, briefly, before. She had wondered what he read at the table, and once in passing, glanced quickly over his shoulder. She had guessed Popular Mechanics, but it was the life of somebody or other. Tonight, as usual, she was aware of his eyes on her as she moved about from shelf to shelf. When, after an hour, she left, he caught a tight hidden glance in his direction. Frank got up and checked out a book. She was halfway down the street before he caught up with her.

  “Big moon.” He reached up to tip his hat and awkwardly discovered he wasn’t wearing any.

  “It feels like snow,” Helen answered.

  He glanced at her to see if she was kidding, then at the sky. It was cloudless, flooded with moonlight.

  “Maybe.” As they approached the street corner, he remarked, “We could take a walk in the park if it’s okay with you.”

  She shivered at the suggestion, yet turned with a nervous laugh at the corner, and walked by his side. She had said almost nothing to him since the night he had called her to answer the empty phone. Who it had been she would never know; the incident still puzzled her.

  Helen felt for him, as they walked, an irritation bordering on something worse. She knew what caused it—her mother, in making every gentile, by definition, dangerous; therefore he and she, together, represented some potential evil. She was also annoyed that his eating eyes were always on her, for he saw, she felt, more than his occasionally trapped gaze revealed. She fought her dislike of him, reasoning it wasn’t his fault if her mother had made him into an enemy; and if he was always looking at her, it meant at least he saw something attractive or why would he look? Considering her lonely life, for that she owed him gratitude.

  The unpleasant feeling passed and she glanced guardedly up at him. He was walking unmarked in moonlight, innocent of her reaction to him. She felt then—this thought had come to her before—that there might be more to him than she had imagined. She felt ashamed she had never thanked him for the help he had given her father.

  In the park the moon was smaller, a wanderer in the white sky. He was talking about winter. “It’s funny you mentioned snow before,” Frank said. “I was reading about the life of St. Francis in the library, and when you mentioned the snow it made me think about this story where he wakes up one winter night, asking himself did he do the right thing to be a monk. My God, he thought, supposing I met some nice young girl and got married to her and by now I had a wife and a family? That made him feel bad so he couldn’t sleep. He got out of his straw bed and went outside of the church or monastery or wherever he was staying. The ground was all covered with snow. Out of it he made this snow woman, and he said, ‘There, that’s my wife.’ Then he made two or three kids out of the snow. After, he kissed them all and went inside and laid down in the straw. He felt a whole lot better and fell asleep.”

  The story surprised and touched her.

  “Did you just read that?”

  “No. I remember it from the time I was a kid. My head is full of those stories, don’t ask me why. A priest used to read them to the orphans in this home I was in, and I guess I never forgot them. They come into my thoughts for no reason at all.”

  He had had a haircut and in his new clothes was hardly recognizable as her father’s baggy-pants assistant who had slept a week in their cellar. Tonight he looked like somebody she had never seen before. His clothes showed taste, and he was, in his way, interesting looking. Without an apron on he seemed younger.

  They passed an empty bench. “What do you say if we sit down?” Frank said.

  “I’d rather walk.”

  “Smoke?”

  “No.”

  He lit a cigarette, then caught up with her.

  “Sure is some night.”

  “I want to say thanks for helping my father,” Helen said, “You’ve been very kind. I should have mentioned it before.”

  “Nobody has to thank me. Your father did me some good favors.” He felt uncomfortable.

  “Anyway, don’t make a career of a grocery,” she said.

  “There’s no future in it.”

  He puffed with a smile on his lips. “Everybody warns me. Don’t worry, my imagination is too big for me to get stuck in a grocery. It’s only temporary work.”

  “It isn’t what you usually do?”

  “No.” He set himself to be honest. “I’m just taking a breather, you could call it. I started out wrong and have to change my direction where I am going. The way it happened I landed up in your father’s store, but I’m only staying there till I figure out what’s my next move.”

  He remembered the confession he had considered making to her, but the time wasn’t ready yet. You could confess as a stranger, and you could confess as a friend.

  “I’ve tried about everything,” he said, “now I got to choose one thing and stick with it. I’m tired of being on the move all the time.”

  “Isn’t it a little late for you to be getting started?”

  “I’m twenty-five. There are plenty of guys who start that late and some I have read about started later. Age don’t mean a thing. It doesn’t make you less than anybody else.”

  “I never said so.” At the next empty bench she paused.

  “We could sit here for a few minutes if you like.”

  “Sure.” Frank wiped the seat with his handkerchief before she sat down. He offered her his cigarettes.

  “I said I don’t smoke.”

  “Sorry, I thought you didn’t want to smoke while you were walking. Some girls don’t like to.” He put his pack away.

  She noticed the book he was carrying. “What are you reading?”

  He showed it to her.

  “The Life of Napoleon”?

  “That’s right.”

  “Why him?”

  “Why not—he was great, wasn’t he?”

  “Others were in better ways.”

  “I’ll read about them too,” Frank said.

  “Do you read a lot?”

  “Sure. I am a curious guy. I like to know why people tick. I like to know the reason they do the things they do, if you know what I mean.”

  She said she did.

  He asked her what book she was reading.

  “The Idiot. Do you know it?”

  “No. What’s it about?”

  “It’s a novel.”

  “I’d rather read the truth,” he said.

  “It is the truth.”

  Helen asked, “Are you a high school graduate?”

  He laughed. “Sure I am. Education is free in this country.”

  She blushed. “It was a silly question.”

  “I didn’t mean any wisecrack,” he said quickly.

  “I didn’t take it as such.”

  “I went to high school in three different states and finally got finished up at night—in a night school.
I planned on going to college but this job came along that I couldn’t turn down, so I changed my mind, but it was a mistake.”

  “I had to help my mother and father out,” Helen said, “so I couldn’t go either. I’ve taken courses in NYU at night—mostly lit courses—and I’ve added up about a year’s credit, but it’s very hard at night. My work doesn’t satisfy me. I would still like to go full time in the day.”

  He flipped his butt away. “I’ve been thinking about starting in college lately, even if I am this age. I know a guy who did it.”

  “Would you go at night?” she asked.

  “Maybe, maybe in the day if I could get the right kind of a job—in an all-night cafeteria or something like that, for instance. This guy I just mentioned did that—assistant manager or something. After five or six years he graduated an engineer. Now he’s making his pile, working all over the country.”

  “It’s hard doing it that way—very hard.”

  “The hours are rough but you get used to it. When you got something good to do, sleep is a waste of time.”

  “It takes years at night.”

  “Time don’t mean anything to me.”

  “It does to me.”

  “The way I figure, anything is possible. I always think about the different kinds of chances I have. This has stuck in my mind—don’t get yourself trapped in one thing, because maybe you can do something else a whole lot better. That’s why I guess I never settled down so far. I’ve been exploring conditions. I still have some very good ambitions which I would like to see come true. The first step to that, I know for sure now, is to get a good education. I didn’t use to think like that, but the more I live the more I do. Now it’s always on my mind.”