The Assistant

by Bernard Malamud

  And because he was, his troubles grew like bananas in bunches. First, in another accident to his hard head, then through employing Frank Alpine. Karp, no fool, knew the makings of a bad situation when he saw it. Frank, whom he had got acquainted with and considered a fly-by-night rolling stone, would soon make trouble—of that he was certain. Morris’s fly-specked, worm-eaten shop did not earn half enough to pay for a full-time helper, and it was idiotic extravagance for the grocer, after he was better, to keep the clerk working for him. Karp soon learned from Louis that his estimate of a bad situation was correct. He found out that Frank every so often invested in a bottle of the best stuff, paying, naturally, cash—but whose? Furthermore Sam Pearl, another waster, had mentioned that the clerk would now and then paste a two-dollar bill on some nag’s useless nose, from which it blew off in the breeze. This done by a man who was no doubt paid in peanuts added up to only one thing—he stole. Who did he steal from? Naturally from M. Bober, who had anyway nothing—who else? Rockefeller knew how to take care of his millions, but if Morris earned a dime he lost it before he could put it into his torn pocket. It was the nature of clerks to steal from those they were working for. Karp had, as a young man, privately peculated from his employer, a half-blind shoe wholesaler; and Louis, he knew, snitched from him, but by Louis he was not bothered. He was, after all, a son; he worked in the business and would someday—it shouldn’t be too soon—own it. Also, by strict warnings and occasional surprise inventories he held Louis down to a bare minimum—beans. A stranger stealing money was another matter—slimy. It gave Karp gooseflesh to think of the Italian working for him.

  And since misfortune was the grocer’s lot, the stranger would shovel on more, not less, for it was always dangerous to have a young goy around where there was a Jewish girl. This worked out by an unchangeable law that Karp would gladly have explained to Morris had they been speaking, and saved him serious trouble. That this trouble, too, existed he had confirmed twice in the last week. Once he saw Helen and Frank walking on the Parkway under the trees, and another time while driving home past the local movie house, he had glimpsed them coming out after a show, holding hands. Since then he had often thought about them, indeed with anxiety, and felt he would in some way like to assist the luckless Bober.

  Without doubt Morris kept Frank on to make his life easier, and probably, being Bober, he had no idea what was happening behind his back. Well, Julius Karp would warn him of his daughter’s danger. Tactfully he would explain him what was what. After, he would put in a plug for Louis, who, Karp was aware, had long liked Helen but was not sure enough of himself to be successful with her. Swat Louis down and he retreated to tenderize his fingernails with his teeth. In some things he needed a push. Karp felt he could ease his son’s way to Helen by making Morris a proposition he had had in the back of his head for almost a year. He would describe Louis’ prospects after marriage in terms of cold cash and other advantages, and suggest that Morris speak to Helen on the subject of going with him seriously. If they went together a couple of months—Louis would give her an extravagant good time—and the combination worked out, it would benefit not only the daughter, but the grocer as well, for then Karp would take over Morris’s sad gesheft and renovate and enlarge it into a self-service market with the latest fixtures and goods. His tenant around the corner he would eliminate when his lease expired—a sacrifice, but worthwhile. After that, with himself as the silent partner giving practical advice, it would take a marvelous catastrophe to keep the grocer from earning a decent living in his old age.

  Karp foresaw that the main problem of this matter would be Helen, whom he knew as a strictly independent yet not unworthy girl, even if she had pretensions to marriage with a professional—although she had got no place with Nat Pearl. To be successful, Nat needed what Louis Karp would have plenty of, not a poor girl. So he had acted in his best interests in gently shooing Helen away when her thoughts got too warm—a fact Karp had picked up from Sam Pearl. Louis, on the other hand, could afford a girl like Helen, and Helen, independent and intelligent, would be good for Louis. The liquor store owner decided that when the opportunity came he would talk turkey to her like a Dutch uncle. He would patiently explain that her only future with Frank would be as an outcast, poorer even than her father and sharing his foolish fate; whereas with Louis she could have what she wanted and more—leave it to her father-in-law. Karp felt that once Frank had gone she would listen to reason and appreciate the good life he was offering her. Twenty-three or -four was a dangerous age for a single girl. At that age she would not get younger; at that age even a goy looked good.

  Having observed that Frank had gone into Sam Pearl’s place, and that Morris was for the moment alone in the back of his store, Karp coughed clear his throat and stepped inside the grocery. When Morris, emerging from the rear, saw who it after all was, he experienced a moment of vindictive triumph, but this was followed by annoyance that the pest was once more present, and at the same time by an uncomfortable remembrance that Karp never entered unaccompanied by bad news. Therefore he stayed silent, waiting for the liquor dealer, in prosperous sport jacket and gabardine slacks which could not camouflage his protrusive belly nor subtract from the foolishness of his face, to speak; but for once Karp’s active tongue lay flat on its back as, embarrassed in recalling the results of his very last visit here, he stared at the visible scar on Morris’s head.

  In pity for him, the grocer spoke, his tone friendlier than he would have guessed. “So how are you, Karp?”

  “Thanks. What have I got to complain?” Beaming, he thrust a pudgy hand across the counter and Morris found himself unwillingly weighing the heavy diamond ring that pressed his fingers.

  Since it did not seem sensible to Karp, one minute after their reconciliation, to blurt out news of a calamity concerning Morris’s daughter, he fiddled around for words to say and came up with, “How’s business?”

  Morris had hoped he would ask. “Fine, and every day gets better.”

  Karp contracted his brows; yet it occurred to him that Morris’s business might have improved more than he had guessed, when peering at odd moments through the grocery window, he had discovered a customer or two instead of the usual dense emptiness. Now on the inside after several months, he noticed the store seemed better taken care of, the shelves solidly packed with stock. But if business was better he at once knew why.

  Yet he casually asked, “How is this possible? You are maybe advertising in the paper?”

  Morris smiled at the sad joke. Where there was no wit money couldn’t buy it. “By word of mouth,” he remarked, “is the best advertising.”

  “This is according to what the mouth says.”

  “It says,” Morris answered without shame, “that I got a fine clerk who has pepped me up the business. Instead going down in the winter, every day goes up.”

  “Your clerk did this?” Karp said, thoughtfully scratching under one buttock.

  “The customers like him. A goy brings in goyim.”

  “New customers?”

  “New, old.”

  “Something else helps you also?”

  “Also helps a little the new apartment house that it opened in December.”

  “Hmm,” said Karp, “nothing more?”

  Morris shrugged. “I don’t think so. I hear your Schmitz don’t feel so good and he don’t give service like he used to give. Came back a few customers from him, but the most important help to me is Frank.”

  Karp was astonished. Could it be that the man didn’t know what had happened practically under his nose? He then and there saw a God-given opportunity to boot the clerk out of the place forever. “That wasn’t Frank Alpine who improved you your business,” he said decisively. “That was something else.”

  Morris smiled slightly. As usual the sage knew every reason for every happening.

  But Karp persisted. “How long does he work here?”

  “You know when he came—in November.”

  “And
right away the business started to pick up?”

  “Little by little.”

  “This happened,” Karp announced with excitement, “not because this goy came here. What did he know about the grocery business? Nothing. Your store improved because my tenant Schmitz got sick and had to close his store part of the day. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I heard he was sick,” Morris answered, his throat tightening, “but the drivers said his old father came to give him a help.”

  “That’s right,” Karp said, “but in the middle December he went every morning to the hospital for treatments. First the father stayed in the store, then he got too tired so Schmitz didn’t open till maybe nine, ten o‘clock, instead of seven. And instead of closing ten o’clock at night, he closed eight. This went on like this till last month, then he couldn’t open till eleven o’clock in the morning, and so he lost half a day’s business. He tried to sell the store but nobody would buy then. Yesterday he closed up altogether. Didn’t somebody mention that to you?”

  “One of the customers said,” Morris answered, distressed, “but I thought it was temporary.”

  “He’s very sick,” said Karp solemnly. “He won’t open again.”

  My God, thought Morris. For months he had watched the store when it was empty and while it was being altered, but never since its opening had he gone past Sam Pearl’s corner to look at it. He hadn’t the heart to. But why had no one told him that the place had been closing part of the day for more than two months—Ida, Helen? Probably they had gone past it without noticing the door was sometimes closed. In their minds, as in his, it was always open for his business.

  “I don’t say,” Karp was saying, “that your clerk didn’t help your income, but the real reason things got better is when Schmitz couldn’t stay open, some of his customers came here. Naturally, Frank wouldn’t tell you that.”

  Filled with foreboding, Morris reflected on what the liquor dealer had said. “What happened to Schmitz?”

  “He has a bad blood disease and lays now in the hospital.”

  “Poor man,” the grocer sighed. Hope wrestled shame as he asked, “Will he give the store in auction?”

  Karp was devastating. “What do you mean give in auction? It’s a good store. He sold it Wednesday to two up-to-date Norwegian partners and they will open next week a modern fancy grocery and delicatessen. You will see where your business will go.”

  Morris, with clouded eyes, died slowly.

  Karp, to his horror, realized he had shot at the clerk and wounded the grocer. He remarked hastily, “What could I do? I couldn’t tell him to go in auction if he had a chance to sell.”

  The grocer wasn’t listening. He was thinking of Frank with a violent sense of outrage, of having been deceived.

  “Listen, Morris,” Karp said quickly, “I got a proposition for you about your gesheft. Throw out first on his ass this Italyener that he fooled you, then tell Helen that my Louis—”

  But when the ghost behind the counter cursed him in a strange tongue for the tidings he had brought, Karp backed out of the store and was swallowed in his own.

  After a perilous night at the hands of ancient enemies, Morris escaped from his bed and appeared in the store at five A.M. There he faced the burdensome day alone. The grocer had struggled all night with Karp’s terrible news—had tossed around like a red coal why nobody had told him before how sick the German was—maybe one of the salesmen, or Breitbart, or a customer. Probably no one had thought it too important, seeing that Schmitz’s store was until yesterday open daily. Sure he was sick, but somebody had already mentioned that, and why should they tell him again if they figured that people got sick but then they got better? Hadn’t he himself been sick, but who had talked of it in the neighborhood? Probably nobody. People had their own worries to worry about. As for the news that Schmitz had sold his store, the grocer felt that here he had nothing to complain of—he had been informed at once, like a rock dropped on his skull.

  As for what he would do with Frank, after long pondering the situation, thinking how the clerk had acted concerning their increase in business—as if he alone had created their better times—Morris at length decided that Frank had not—as he had assumed when Karp told him the news—tried to trick him into believing that he was responsible for the store’s change for the better. The grocer supposed that the clerk, like himself, was probably ignorant of the true reason for their change of luck. Maybe he shouldn’t have been, since he at least got out during the day, visited other places on the block, heard news, gossip—maybe he should have known, but Morris felt he didn’t, possibly because he wanted to believe he was their benefactor. Maybe that was why he had been too blind to see what he should have seen, too deaf to have heard what he had heard. It was possible.

  After his first confusion and fright, Morris had decided he must sell the store-he had by eight o’clock already told a couple of drivers to pass the word around—but he must under no circumstances part with Frank and must keep him here to do all he could to prevent the Norwegian partners, after they had reopened the store, from quickly calling back the customers of Schmitz who were with him now. He couldn’t believe that Frank hadn’t helped. It had not been proved in the Supreme Court that the German’s sickness was the only source of their recent good fortune. Karp said so but since when did Karp speak the word of God? Of course Frank had helped the business—only not so much as they had thought. Ida was not so wrong about that. But maybe Frank could hold onto a few people; the grocer doubted he himself could. He hadn’t the energy, the nerve to be alone in the store during another time of change for the worse. The years had eaten away his strength.

  When Frank came down he at once noticed that the grocer was not himself, but the clerk was too concerned with his own problems to ask Morris what ailed him. Often since the time Helen had been in his room he had recalled her remark that he must discipline himself and wondered why he had been so moved by the word, why it should now bang around in his head like a stick against a drum. With the idea of self-control came the feeling of the beauty of it—the beauty of a person being able to do things the way he wanted to, to do good if he wanted; and this feeling was followed by regret—of the slow dribbling away, starting long ago, of his character, without him lifting a finger to stop it. But today, as he scraped at his hard beard with a safety razor, he made up his mind to return, bit by bit until all paid up, the hundred and forty-odd bucks he had filched from Morris in the months he had worked for him, the figure of which he had kept for this very purpose written on a card hidden in his shoe.

  To clean up the slate in a single swipe, he thought again of telling Morris about his part in the holdup. A week ago he was on the point of getting it past his teeth, had even spoken aloud the grocer’s name, but when Morris looked up Frank felt it was useless and said never mind. He was born he thought, with a worrisome conscience that had never done him too much good, although at times he had liked having the acid weight of it in him because it had made him feel he was at least that different from other people. It made him want to set himself straight so he could build his love for Helen right, so it would stay right.

  But when he pictured himself confessing, the Jew listen ing with a fat ear, he still could not stand the thought of it Why should he make more trouble for himself than he could now handle, and end by defeating his purpose to fix things up and have a better life? The past was the past and the hell with it. He had unwillingly taken part in a holdup, but he was, like Morris, more of a victim of Ward Minogue. If alone, he wouldn’t have done it. That didn’t excuse him that he did, but it at least showed his true feelings. So what was there to confess if the whole thing had been sort of an accident? Let bygones be gone. He had no control over the past—could only shine it up here and there and shut up as to the rest. From now on he would keep his mind on tomorrow, and tomorrow take up the kind of life that he saw he valued more than how he had been living. He would change and live in a worthwhile way.

  Im
patient to begin, he waited to empty the contents of his wallet into the cash drawer. He thought he could try it when Morris was napping; but then for some cockeyed reason, although there was nothing for her to do in the store today, Ida came down and sat in the back with him. She was heavy-faced, dispirited; she sighed often but said nothing, although she acted as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. He knew why, Helen had told him, and he felt uncomfortable, as if he were wearing wet clothes she wouldn’t let him take off; but the best thing was to keep his trap shut and let Helen handle her end of it.

  Ida wouldn’t leave, so he couldn’t put the dough back although his itch to do so had grown into impatience. Whenever somebody went into the store Ida insisted on waiting on them, but this last time after she came back she said to Frank, stretched out on the couch with a butt in his mouth, that she wasn’t feeling so well and was going up.