Isaac brought a girl to the dance and introduced her to his parents. He danced all the modern dances with her, but when there was a waltz he surrendered her to his father and took his mother onto the floor. Abraham danced with the long movements of the old-fashioned waltz, and the girl, whose name was Ruth, had a hard time fitting her steps to his. But she learned quickly and was not ungraceful. And she was healthy. When he took her as his partner for a shair, while Isaac stayed out with Sarah, she romped through the long measures and was not nearly so tired as he when they finally collapsed, laughing, onto the chairs at the side of the hall.
Chaim brought his children over at different times during the evening to introduce them to Abraham. They were all polite and spoke pleasantly. Chaim was very happy about the marriage because, to tell the truth, he liked his new son-in-law.
“You see,” said Abraham to his wife, “he is not ashamed to introduce his elevated children to his friend Avrom the butcher. We stand somewhere in this world yet.” He had been very tempted, when Chaim had introduced him to his son-in-law the doctor, to talk to the doctor about medical matters. He had thought that perhaps he might mention to him that he himself had two arms that sometimes he could not think what to do with. True, he rubbed them every night with oil of wintergreen. But what good this did, beyond making the room smell pleasant, he did not know. He would have liked to know, in a friendly way, what the doctors thought of such an ailment as his nowadays. But the doctor did not appear to be a young man who would invite a friendly discussion. After a few polite words he was silent and stood off a way, overlooking the people, with a look on his face as though his mind was elsewhere, as though he really did not think he had an equal among the crowd.
Abraham’s eyes sought Isaac’s figure among the dancers. The boy was enjoying himself. He executed the figures of the modern dance as though he had been born dancing them. An attractive little girl. It was good to see them laughing and dancing. The boy was at home altogether too much with his books, some of which, from the things he had come out with lately, were downright irreligious. This was the first time that he had introduced a girl to his parents. Of course it didn’t mean anything, and he, Avrom, was not going to be an old woman. But from the way she talked she was an educated girl – a native, too. It was not often that the native girls paid much attention to an immigrant boy – as though their parents hadn’t been immigrants themselves. But Isaac didn’t have to be ashamed in any company. He was such a man with this girl. Well, naturally, he was a man already. Look, the way he took her by the arm and led her to the refreshment stand! Sarah was laughing with pleasure. Abraham took her by the arm and led her to the refreshment stand.
“I had a feeling,” Ruth told Isaac, “that I’d like your parents. I always get feelings about things.”
“Really?” asked Isaac. He looked down at her head of short black curls. She really was a remarkable girl.
—
Polsky was not a malicious man, but he was unable to resist telling Abraham that he too had met Chaim Knopp’s son Ralph, the manufacturer, socially. At the home of a friend, he said, they had spent a very pleasant evening, playing cards and having a friendly drink. “He’s certainly a shark at the cards,” Polsky said with honest admiration, “and quite an all-round boy at that.”
Abraham did not have to guess the name of Polsky’s friend. Ever since her husband had been arrested and put away in prison Laiah’s apartment had come to be known as a place of mixed delights. It was a place where men with money could come together, drink and play poker all night, and where a willing hostess and her friends would help them to relax in any other manner that they might desire.
Polsky’s relationship with Laiah had cooled into what was partly a business arrangement. Polsky was not averse to turning an extra dollar, and, with liquor at a premium, he had undertaken to supply her soirées from secret channels of his own.
Laiah’s husband was serving a sentence in the provincial prison. He was a craftsman in a respectable trade, but he had also stood watch, in the middle of the night, for a gang of thieves. When they were discovered, he had signaled the others in time for them to escape, but had himself been caught. In prison he would say nothing, though it was well known that there were certain higher-ups who were interested in the business. People who knew everything – and Mrs. Plopler was one of them – said that it was really a terrible shame. He was a good-natured, harmless young man who had been driven into crime by the ambitions of his wife. Not that he wouldn’t be well paid afterward for keeping his mouth shut. Thieves look after their own. Unless, of course, he was a greater fool than even Mrs. Plopler imagined.
That was as it might be; Abraham did not know the young man. But the shame was for Chaim. So this was his son the manufacturer. It was a thing that might well bow his friend’s head closer to the ground in his old age. Better that his Isaac should never become rich, never become a manufacturer and develop such tastes. A man with a family, too! But there did not seem to be much to fear from Isaac in this direction. It was the ideas he picked up, the books he read. And so stubborn about them! Who was the older, anyway, himself or his son? To call his father old-fashioned because he refused to believe that he was descended from a monkey! Abraham had heard that there were races in the world who worshiped animals. But to have his own son turn into a monkey-worshiper in God’s eyes was too much. And to have his own son tell him, furthermore, that he, Abraham, didn’t understand what he was trying to say, that he was narrow-minded, had been the crowning insult. He had threatened, heaven forbid, to throw Isaac and his atheistical books out of the house together.
He had flown into such a rage – he was ashamed of it now, but a man comes home from a hard day at work to be told over the supper table that his grandfather was a monkey, Laib Moishe, a monkey! How can he help being angry? Poor Sarah had begun to cry because they were arguing so violently. For her sake he had decided to hear the boy out. Calmly and dispassionately he would point out to him all the flaws in his argument. A young man, even if he is a thinker, is entitled to make a few mistakes when he is still young and overenthusiastic.
So he had heard the boy out, and it turned out that the whole thing was not so serious as he had at first made it out to be. Isaac – and this was probably the fault of the books – had not explained it properly. Of course we are all the creatures of God. Now the ape is the creature that, in his outward aspect, most resembles man. It was something that he himself had not thought much about before. But when he came to consider it, it was true. Accordingly, in this sense, he was man’s closest relative – not really his ancestor, but this was, so to speak, an expression. What was there to make a fuss about? He had been happy that he had been able to straighten the whole thing out.
This was the way to deal with him – not with an exhibition of temper, because, after all, he was a man already in his own right, but with patience and the thoughtful consideration of the things he said. He might perhaps let himself be carried away by some ridiculous ideas out of his youthful enthusiasm sometimes, but he was, nevertheless, an equal, and in many ways far more educated than his father.
Avrom had afterward had an interesting conversation with Chaim Knopp on the subject of man’s relationship to animals. And together they had discovered many similarities not only between man and the apes, but between man and many other creatures of God’s world. Truly the world was filled with many wonders. And what a thing was an education that helped you to see these wonders! Sometimes the things that Isaac said made him long to throw himself into the books, to find the things the boy talked about. It was not enough to argue from what he himself as a religious man knew to be true. He wanted to be able to examine for himself these odd facts and theories that Isaac hinted at. How could the boy call him narrow-minded when he would have liked so much to know? “I should have known better,” said Isaac, “than to mention it to him.” He sat with Ruth on her veranda steps and brooded over his latest argument with his father. “The whole world cou
ld be descended from anthropoid apes, but my dad would still come straight from Adam.”
Ruth didn’t answer. She was looking at Mad Mountain. The hill, rising above the houses across the way, had already thrown off its day cloak and was wrapping itself in evening blue. Just such a dress Ruth wanted to sew for herself, that exact color. Contemplating it, she lost track for a moment of what Isaac was saying.
“And he’d be right, too. I suddenly realized, talking to him, how silly I am. What did I want to get out of him? Why do I want to belittle his world? Did I think I could make myself feel more like a man by making my dad feel more like an ape?”
Ruth caught the last part. “You are a man,” she said, dropping her head for a moment on his shoulder and then raising it quickly again, shaking her short dark curls.
“You think so?” Isaac interrupted his train of thought for a moment to smile at her. He slipped his arm around her and pulled her down so that her head fell back on his shoulder. Ruth relaxed contentedly. Then he was off again. “I may think that he’s stubborn and narrow-minded and old-fashioned. I may feel that he’s living in a world that’s not the real world, but I don’t know. Do I really see things he doesn’t see, or does he just see them in a different perspective?”
How long had she known him? She knew to the day. It was almost a year now since they had caught sight of each other at the party, somebody’s birthday party. The thin boy had been standing with his arm around another girl, looking down at her and talking. He had glanced up at her when her escort spoke to him. For a moment he hadn’t closed his mouth from talking. Then with a nervous movement he had jerked his arm away from the other girl. She knew with a feeling that bordered on smugness that he hadn’t put his arm around another girl since.
He was so clever, so sweet, with his funny accent. Even though she’d been born here, she didn’t know as many long words in English as he did. He read so much. He was interested in everything. And yet – He talked about the real world. Did he know about the real world? Here was the real world beside him, and what did he do? He lived in the real world. The real world was something close to him. It was something today and tomorrow; it was now. She knew the real world. She could feel things about it. It had been strange the way she had felt something about that party even before she had gone to it, a way that she hadn’t felt about any other party. And there he’d been. And the way she’d known that she would like his parents and they’d like her, before they’d gone to the wedding a few months ago. She’d just known. It hadn’t stopped her from being nervous about meeting them or anything; she’d just had that feeling over and above her nervousness. And the way he’d talked to her beforehand and explained things about them, it had been enough to make her nervous. Still, she’d known. He was so funny sometimes, with his real world.
“It’s innocence,” Isaac was saying. “It’s just as though a man were to build himself a grass hut at the North Pole and run around without any clothes on. But nothing would happen to that man, because he didn’t know he was at the North Pole. Now if I came up to the North Pole in my polar-bear skins and told him where he was he wouldn’t believe me, and nothing would happen to him. But what if he did believe me? He’d die of the cold. That would be awful. But no one can live naked at the North Pole, even the innocent ones. He’d die anyway, without knowing what he had died of. And, looking at him, even though I was wearing my polar-bear skins, I’d die too, I think.” Isaac was silent, not knowing where he’d led himself.
Innocence, thought Ruth, turning her head slightly and breathing deliberately down his neck. That was just the word for it.
—
In the house everything was disarranged. Isaac had got the sudden impulse that the whole place should be painted. The ceilings, he complained, seemed very low and gray. The house was old, it was true, but give it a bit of paint, new curtains, and a few other touches, and it would acquire an altogether new atmosphere.
Sarah and Abraham exchanged quizzical glances during Isaac’s tirade. They agreed solemnly. A freshly painted ceiling gave a room at least a foot in height. Abraham approached the landlord. The landlord thought it was a good idea but expensive, and, considering the rent they were paying – Well, he didn’t think he could manage it.
This did not stop Isaac. He set to work on the ceilings himself. Abraham painted the woodwork that he didn’t have to strain his arms too much to reach. Together they repainted the kitchen and whitewashed the summer kitchen. Abraham painted the icebox and the old kitchen table. Sarah bought new curtains and a new bath mat. Isaac painted, if not the whole outside of the house, at least the window frames and the little wooden front fence. By the time they were finished the house glowed. Even Isaac was satisfied. Abraham and Sarah sat back and waited.
At his machine in the shop, Isaac tried mentally to evaluate his role in life. It was passed to him from the cutter’s table. He stitched it together rapidly. Speed, that’s what counts in piecework. He was quick. The scraps fed into his machine and came out stitched, formed, ready for the next operation at the next machine. Every piece was a few cents. Zip zip – five cents – zip – seven cents – zip zip zip – another dollar. Another bundle. Was this what he was made for? Why should his father think that he was made for something better? Why did he feel that way sometimes himself? Because he wanted to do something, he didn’t know what, to work at something that would lead him somewhere, to discover, to create – not just pockets and facings day after day. To read, to teach…The boys that he prepared for Bar Mitzvah – there was something in that; to watch their minds work, to discover suddenly something about a boy that would win him over – like fat Shmillig, who had been given up by three malomeds. Accidentally, almost by instinct, Isaac had hit upon a way to handle him.
While his enormous mother listed her complaints about him the child had sat stubbornly looking at the floor, his head resting on his double chin. Then Isaac had taken him into the living room. “Well, Sam, let’s forget what’s past and begin again. There’s a lot to learn.” And that was it, nothing more. From then on the boy had learned, and he was not stupid either. Shmillig. What could lock him more securely in his cage of fat, to be laughed at as though everything about him was funny, than a name like that in a land where it was a meaningless, comical sound? To Isaac the incident had been a revelation. With one word he had given a small human being back his sense of dignity. Now he could not help approaching each new pupil with a curiosity, a delicacy, almost an excitement at what he might discover.
All right, so he would like to teach, but what chance was there? As a full-time private teacher he could never support himself, let alone ever think of raising a family. As a teacher in the Hebrew and Yiddish school – well, he could live, but what chance had he of ever getting a job like that? Not much; they wanted somebody with bells on, somebody who would be recommended by someone noisy, not just a plain immigrant boy who worked in a factory and studied by himself at night.
Would he end up like old Rusen, then, who sat across from him, glued to the machine, his hands trembling when the foreman shouted for more speed and he tried to hurry? He imagined himself an old man, bent over the machine, afraid to steal a moment to pause and crack a joke, resented by the other workers because he sometimes worked through his lunch hour and they thought he was trying to get ahead of them, picked on by the foreman because he was too slow. The foreman had it in for Rusen in particular because, though the boss was always yammering at him for more production, he wouldn’t let him fire the old man. Every time he brought a prospective buyer to the factory the boss pointed out that this was no ordinary sweat shop that worked on the principle of mass production at the price of good workmanship. Here, for example, was Rusen, one of the best old-style craftsmen left in the city, at one of his machines – and not just turning out samples to fool buyers; turning out the actual goods. In his shop it was quality first, speed second. Whenever the boss said that within hearing of some of the boys they gave him the old ha-ha, roaring their m
achines in rhythmic unison. Two years ago, when they had struck for a return from piecework to a regular salary, he had closed down the shop until they had to give in. Quality first, but survival of the fleetest, Isaac had told his father.
He had gone on strike with the rest of them and had stood as a picket outside the shut-down shop. The boss had gone to California on a holiday until the workers came to their senses. The strike had a bad effect on his nerves. And when his nerves were bad he got carbuncles or something. Isaac had greatly admired the way Ned Strom had spoken to the workers, had urged them to hold fast. What would he himself not have given to have had a golden voice, a dauntless courage then? When the workers finally filed back into the shop again Ned had not been with them. He was in jail for uttering threats. He himself had been a coward, Isaac knew, to feel secretly relieved that he hadn’t uttered his threats loudly enough. The thought of his own cowardice filled him even now with shame.
Screaming voices jerked Isaac out of his thoughts. They were fighting over the bundles again. When you finished a bundle you went to the foreman’s table and he gave you another. If he liked you he gave you a bundle that you could make a few more cents on, one that required less complicated stitching, and you rushed with it back to your machine. Two girls had wanted to grab the same bundle, to run back and sew more belts. They were tugging at it and arguing shrilly. Jenny shouted that she had got there first. Bella screamed that Jenny already had three bundles hidden in her machine. Jenny yelled that Bella always got the better bundles because, as everybody knew, she was willing to do any filth with anybody to get them. The foreman shouted at both of them. The girls pulled at the bundle. It came apart, and the pieces scattered all over the floor. Jenny swooped after them. Bella turned and rushed over to Jenny’s machine and from under the box that Jenny kept beside her pulled out two bundles.
The Sacrifice Page 9