She looked old again. “He hasn’t worked for months.”
“I just want to talk to him.”
She let him into a large room which was a kitchen and living room combined, the two halves separated by an undrawn curtain. In the middle of the living room part stood a kerosene heater that stank. This smell mixed with the sour smell of cabbage cooking. The four kids, a boy about twelve and three younger girls, were in the room, drawing on paper, cutting and pasting. They stared at Frank but silently went on with what they were doing. The clerk didn’t feel comfortable. He stood at the window, looking down on the dreary lamplit street. He now figured he would cut the bill in half if the painter would pay up the rest.
The painter’s wife covered the sizzling frying pan with a pot lid and went into the bedroom. She came back and said her husband was sleeping.
“I’ll wait a while,” said Frank.
She went back to her frying. The oldest girl set the table, and they all sat down to eat. He noticed they had left a place for their old man. He would soon have to crawl out of his hole. The mother didn’t sit down. Paying no attention to Frank, she poured skim milk out of a container into the kids’ glasses, then served each one a frankfurter fried in dough. She also gave everybody a forkful of hot sauerkraut.
The kids ate hungrily, not talking. The oldest girl glanced at Frank then stared at her plate when he looked at her.
When the plates were empty she said, “Is there any more, Mama?”
“Go to bed,” said the painter’s wife.
Frank had a bad headache from the stink of the heater.
“I’ll see Carl some other time,” he said. His spit tasted like brass.
“I’m sorry he didn’t wake up.”
He ran back to the store. Under the mattress of his bed he had his last three bucks hidden. He took the bills and ran back to Carl’s house. But on the way he met Ward Minogue. His face was yellow and shrunken, as if he had escaped out of a morgue.
“I been looking for you,” said Ward. He pulled Frank’s revolver out of a paper bag. “How much is this worth to you?”
“Shit.”
“I’m sick,” sobbed Ward.
Frank gave the three bucks to him and later dropped the gun into a sewer.
He read a book about the Jews, a short history. He had many times seen this book on one of the library shelves and had never taken it down, but one day he checked it out to satisfy his curiosity. He read the first part with interest, but after the Crusades and the Inquisition, when the Jews were having it tough, he had to force himself to keep reading. He skimmed the bloody chapters but read slowly the ones about their civilization and accomplishments. He also read about the ghettos, where the half-starved, bearded prisoners spent their lives trying to figure it out why they were the Chosen People. He tried to figure out why but couldn’t. He couldn’t finish the book and brought it back to the library.
Some nights he spied on the Norwegians. He would go around the corner without his apron and stand on the step of Sam Pearl’s hallway, looking across the street at the grocery and fancy delicatessen. The window was loaded with all kinds of shiny cans. Inside, the store was lit as bright as day. The shelves were tightly packed with appetizing goods that made him feel hungry. And there were always customers inside, although his place was generally empty. Sometimes after the partners locked up and went home, Frank crossed to their side of the street and peered through the window into the dark store, as if he might learn from what he saw in it the secret of all good fortune and so change his luck and his life.
One night after he had closed the store, he took a long walk and stepped into the Coffee Pot, an all-night joint he had been in once or twice.
Frank asked the owner if he needed a man for night work.
“I need a counterman for coffee, short orders, and to wash the few dishes,” the owner answered.
“I am your boy,” said Frank.
The work was from ten to six A.M. and paid thirty-five dollars. When he got home in the morning, Frank opened the grocery. At the end of a week’s working, without ringing it up, he put the thirty-five into the cash register. This, and Helen’s wages, kept them from going under.
The clerk slept on the couch in the back of the store during the day. He had rigged up a buzzer that waked him when somebody opened the front door. He did not suffer from lack of sleep.
He lived in his prison in a climate of regret that he had turned a good thing into a bad, and this thought, though ancient, renewed the pain in his heart. His dreams were bad, taking place in the park at night. The garbage smell stank in his nose. He groaned his life away, his mouth crammed with words he couldn’t speak. Mornings, standing at the store window, he watched Helen go off to work. He was there when she came home. She walked, slightly bowlegged, toward the door, her eyes cast down, blind to his presence. A million things to say, some extraordinary, welled up in him, choked his throat; daily they died. He thought endlessly of escape, but that would be what he always did last—beat it. This time he would stay. They would carry him out in a box. When the walls caved in they could dig for him with shovels.
Once he found a two-by-four pine board in the cellar, sawed off a hunk, and with his jackknife began to carve it into something. To his surprise it turned into a bird flying. It was shaped off balance but with a certain beauty. He thought of offering it to Helen but it seemed too rough a thing—the first he had ever made. So he tried his hand at something else. He set out to carve her a flower and it came out a rose starting to bloom. When it was done it was delicate in the way its petals were opening yet firm as a real flower. He thought about painting it red and giving it to her but decided to leave off the paint. He wrapped the wooden flower in store paper, printed Helen’s name on the outside, and a few minutes before she came home from work, taped the package onto the outside of the mailbox in the vestibule. He saw her enter, then heard her go up the stairs. Looking into the vestibule, he saw she had taken his flower.
The wooden flower reminded Helen of her unhappiness. She lived in hatred of herself for having loved the clerk against her better judgment. She had fallen in love, she thought, to escape her predicament. More than ever she felt herself a victim of circumstance—in a bad dream symbolized by the nightmarish store below, and the relentless, scheming presence in it of the clerk, whom she should have shouted out of the house but had selfishly spared.
In the morning, as he aimed a pail of garbage into the can at the curb, Frank saw at the bottom of it his wooden flower.
On the day he had returned from the hospital Morris felt the urge to jump into his pants and run down to the store, but the doctor, after listening to his lungs, then tapping his hairy knuckles across the grocer’s chest, said, “You’re coming along fine, so what’s your big hurry?” To Ida he privately said, “He has to rest, I don’t mean maybe.” Seeing her fright he explained, “Sixty isn’t sixteen.” Morris, after arguing a bit, lay back in bed and after that didn’t care if he ever stepped into the store again. His recovery was slow.
With reservations, spring was on its way. There was at least more light in the day; it burst through the bedroom windows. But a cold wind roared in the streets, giving him goose pimples in bed; and sometimes, after half a day of pure sunshine, the sky darkened and some rags of snow fell. He was filled with melancholy and spent hours dreaming of his boyhood. He remembered the green fields. Where a boy runs he never forgets. His father, his mother, his only sister whom he hadn’t seen in years, gottenyu. The wailing wind cried to him … .
The awning flapping below in the street awoke his dread of the grocery. He had not for a long time asked Ida what went on downstairs but he knew without thinking. He knew in his blood. When he consciously thought of it he remembered that the register rang rarely, so he knew again. He heard heavy silence below. What else can you hear from a graveyard whose noiseless tombstones hold down the sick earth? The smell of death seeped up through the cracks in the floor. He understood why Ida did not dare
go downstairs but sought anything to do here. Who could stay in such a place but a goy whose heart was stone? The fate of his store floated like a black-feathered bird dimly in his mind; but as soon as he began to feel stronger, the thing grew lit eyes, worrying him no end. One morning as he sat up against a pillow, scanning yesterday’s Forward, his thoughts grew so wretched that he broke into sweat and his heart beat erratically. Morris heaved aside his covers, strode crookedly out of bed and began hurriedly to dress.
Ida hastened into the bedroom. “What are you doing, Morris—a sick man?”
“I must go down.”
“Who needs you? There is nothing there. Go rest some more.”
He fought a greedy desire to get back into bed and live there but could not quiet his anxiety.
“I must go.”
She begged him not to but he wouldn’t listen.
“How much he takes in now?” Morris asked as he belted his trousers.
“Nothing. Maybe seventy-five.”
“A week?”
“What else?”
It was terrible but he had feared worse. His head buzzed with schemes for saving the store. Once he was downstairs he felt he could make things better. His fear came from being here, not where he was needed.
“He keeps open all day?”
“From morning till night—why I don’t know.”
“Why he stays here?” he asked with sudden irritation.
“He stays,” she shrugged.
“What do you pay him?”
“Nothing—he says he don’t want.”
“So what he wants—my bitter blood?”
“He says he wants to help you.”
He muttered something to himself. “You watch him sometimes?”
“Why should I watch him?” she said, worried. “He took something from you?”
“I don’t want him here no more. I don’t want him near Helen.”
“Helen don’t talk to him.”
He gazed at Ida. “What happened?”
“Go ask her. What happened with Nat? She’s like you, she don’t tell me anything.”
“He’s got to leave today. I don’t want him here.”
“Morris,” she said hesitantly, “he gave you good help, believe me. Keep him one more week till you feel stronger.”
“No.” He buttoned his sweater and despite her pleading went shakily down the stairs.
Frank heard him coming and grew cold.
The clerk had for weeks feared the time the grocer would leave his bed, although in a curious way he had also looked forward to it. He had spent many fruitless hours trying to construct a story that would make Morris relent and keep him on. He had planned to say, “Didn’t I starve rather than to spend the money from the holdup, so I could put it back in the register—which I did, though I admit I took a couple of rolls and some milk to keep myself alive?” But he had no confidence in that. He could also proclaim his long service to the grocer, his long patient labor in the store; but the fact that he had stolen from him during all this time spoiled his claim. He might mention that he had saved Morris after he had swallowed a bellyful of gas, but it was Nick who had saved him as much as he. The clerk felt he was without any good appeal to the grocer—that he had used up all his credit with him, but then he was struck by a strange and exciting idea, a possible if impossible ace in the hole. He figured that if he finally sincerely revealed his part in the holdup, he might in the telling of it arouse in Morris a true understanding of his nature, and a sympathy for his great struggle to overcome his past. Understanding his clerk’s plight—the meaning of his long service to him—might make the grocer keep him on, so he would again have the chance to square everything with all concerned. As he pondered this idea, Frank realized it was a wild chance that might doom rather than redeem him. Yet he felt he would try it if Morris insisted he had to leave. What could he lose after that? But when the clerk pictured himself saying what he had done and had been forgiven by the grocer, and he tried to imagine the relief he would feel, he couldn’t, because his overdue confession wouldn’t be complete or satisfying so long as he kept hidden what he had done to his daughter. About that he knew he could never open his mouth, so he felt that no matter what he did manage to say there would always be some disgusting thing left unsaid, some further sin to confess, and this he found utterly depressing.
Frank was standing behind the counter near the cash register, paring his fingernails with his knife blade when the grocer, his face pale, the skin of it loose, his neck swimming in his shirt collar, his dark eyes unfriendly, entered the store through the hall door.
The clerk tipped his cap and edged away from the cash register.
“Glad to see you back again, Morris,” he said, regret ting he hadn’t once gone up to see him in all the days the grocer had been upstairs. Morris nodded coldly and went into the rear. Frank followed him in, fell on one knee, and lit the radiator.
“It’s pretty cold here, so I better light this up. I’ve been keeping it shut off to save on the gas bill.”
“Frank,” Morris said firmly, “I thank you that you helped me when I took in my lungs so much gas, also that you kept the store open when I was sick, but now you got to go.”
“Morris,” answered Frank, heavy-hearted, “I swear I never stole another red cent after that last time, and I hope God will strike me dead right here if it isn’t the truth.”
“This ain’t why I want you to go,” Morris answered.
“Then why do you?” asked the clerk, flushing.
“You know,” the grocer said, his eyes downcast.
“Morris,” Frank said, at agonizing last, “I have something important I want to tell you. I tried to tell you before only I couldn’t work my nerve up. Morris, don’t blame me now for what I once did, because I am now a changed man, but I was one of the guys that held you up that night. I swear to God I didn’t want to once I got in here, but I couldn’t get out of it. I tried to tell you about it—that’s why I came back here in the first place, and the first chance I got I put my share of the money back in the register—but I didn’t have the guts to say it. I couldn’t look you in the eye. Even now I feel sick about what I am saying, but I’m telling it to you so you will know how much I suffered on account of what I did, and that I am very sorry you were hurt on your head—even though not by me. The thing you got to understand is I am not the same person I once was. I might look so to you, but if you could see what’s been going on in my heart you would know I have changed. You can trust me now, I swear it, and that’s why I am asking you to let me stay and help you.”
Having said this, the clerk experienced a moment of extraordinary relief—a treeful of birds broke into song; but the song was silenced when Morris, his eyes heavy, said, “This I already know, you don’t tell me nothing new.”
The clerk groaned. “How do you know it?”
“I figured out when I was laying upstairs in bed. I had once a bad dream that you hurt me, then I remembered—”
“But I didn’t hurt you,” the clerk broke in emotionally. “I was the one that gave you the water to drink. Remember?”
“I remember. I remember your hands. I remember your eyes. This day when the detective brought in here the hold-upnik that he didn’t hold me up I saw in your eyes that you did something wrong. Then when I stayed behind the hall door and you stole from me a dollar and put it in your pocket, I thought I saw you before in some place but I didn’t know where. That day you saved me from the gas I almost recognized you; then when I was laying in bed I had nothing to think about, only my worries and how I threw away my life in this store, then I remembered when you first came here, when we sat at this table, you told me you always did the wrong thing in your life; this minute when I remembered this I said to myself, ‘Frank is the one that made on me the holdup.’”
“Morris,” Frank said hoarsely, “I am sorry.”
Morris was too unhappy to speak. Though he pitied the clerk, he did not want a confessed criminal a
round. Even if he had reformed, what good would it do to keep him here—another mouth to feed, another pair of eyes to the death watch?
“Did you tell Helen what I did?” sighed Frank.
“Helen ain’t interested in you.”
“One last chance, Morris,” the clerk pleaded.
“Who was the antisimeet that he hit me on the head?”
“Ward Minogue,” Frank said after a minute. “He’s sick now.”
“Ah,” sighed Morris, “the poor father.”
“We meant to hold Karp up, not you. Please let me stay one more month. I’ll pay for my own food and also my rent.”
“With what will you pay if I don’t pay you—with my debts?”
“I have a little job at night after the store closes. I make a few odd bucks.”
“No,” said the grocer.
“Morris, you need my help here. You don’t know how bad everything is.”
But the grocer had set his heart against his assistant and would not let him stay.
Frank hung up his apron and left the store. Later, he bought a suitcase and packed his few things. When he returned Nick’s radio, he said good-by to Tessie.
“Where are you going now, Frank?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you ever coming back?”
“I don’t know. Say good-by to Nick.”
Before leaving, Frank wrote a note to Helen, once more saying he was sorry for the wrong he had done her. He wrote she was the finest girl he had ever met. He had bitched up his life. Helen wept over the note but had no thought of answering.
Although Morris liked the improvements Frank had made in the store he saw at once that they had not the least effect on business. Business was terrible. And with Frank’s going the income shrank impossibly lower, a loss of ten terrible dollars from the previous week. He thought he had seen the store at its worst but this brought him close to fainting.
“What will we do?” he desperately asked his wife and daughter, huddled in their overcoats one Sunday night in the unheated back of the store.
The Assistant Page 20