He had already heard, as it happened, that Laiah was looking for a smaller apartment. But if there had been anything about the police mentioned in her conversation with Polsky he had not noticed it. Of course he had not paid much attention. A few words here and there, when they raised their voices, had forced themselves into his consciousness – something about how hard it was to keep up a large apartment nowadays, and how the depression had hit many of Polsky’s and Laiah’s mutual friends badly. Then, after more conversation that he had ignored, had come Polsky’s voice raised in a joke. Laiah’s business would never be that bad, he assured her. After all – Polsky chuckled in that way that he had when he was expanding on a joke – she could always peddle it on the streets. But Laiah, who did not like to be spoken to in this way, especially in front of people like Abraham, answered Polsky sharply and called him a grobion.
Then Laiah had strolled over to where Abraham was busy cleaning the slicer. Very politely she had asked him whether perhaps he knew of a small flat for her. Abraham was embarrassed for this woman who was so vulnerable to a public insult from such as Polsky. He answered her with equal politeness. A woman like this could find herself very lonely someday. What stake had she in the future? And the future was creeping up on her. He could see that she was maybe in her forties already. Yet she still made those unseasonable movements that reminded him, in a way, of the tentative wag of their landlord’s shaggy puppy when he tried to make friends with Knobble and Pompishke. On a little dog it was an attractive thing, but she was a grown-up human being. She could not waggle her hips forever in the face of time.
When Mrs. Plopler had finished temporarily with Laiah she went on to tell them who had died lately, who had lately been operated on, and who had been visited by other misfortunes. Not until she had oiled her tongue with these drops did she go on to the question that she had uppermost in her mind at the moment.
Raising her nose from her cup of tea – “Where’s Isaac?” she asked with a little laugh.
“He’s gone out somewhere,” said Sarah.
“You don’t know where?”
Abraham shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t ask him where he goes.”
“I hear he’s got a steady girl friend already,” said Mrs. Plopler.
“Steady,” said Sarah with a touch of pride. “She’s been coming into the house for more than a year.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Plopler. “You mean it’s still the same one?”
“Isaac’s past the age already where he wants to run around from one girl to another.” Abraham leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Ruth’s like our own child.”
“Oh, he’s changed, then,” murmured Mrs. Plopler, looking with an air of distaste into her empty cup. Sarah rose to fill it. “So he’s really settling down?”
“He was never such a wild boy that he needs so much settling down,” said Sarah.
“When he wants to settle down he’ll settle down,” Abraham pointed out.
“And you, you’re really pleased with your little daughter-in-law?” Mrs. Plopler pursued in a mock teasing vein.
“She’s not my daughter-in-law yet,” said Abraham, dipping his square of sugar into his tea before he bit on it, then taking a sip, “but if she were my daughter-in-law I would be pleased with her.”
“It’s funny how the boys choose girls nowadays,” Mrs. Plopler said and cracked the lump of dry sugar between her teeth. “Sometimes I think they go to too many parties and get their heads turned so they hardly know what they’re choosing.”
“My son” – Abraham’s voice was firm with only a slight edge – “knows what he’s choosing.”
“Yes,” added Sarah with unusual asperity, “he’s met enough ninnies to be able to stay clear of them.”
“Well, Isaac was always a sensible boy.” Mrs. Plopler’s concession had a deceptive air of defeat about it. “You know, as a matter of fact I think I know who his girl friend is.”
“You may have seen her here at the house,” said Sarah.
If you didn’t know all about her by now, Abraham refrained from adding, I would worry about your health.
“Yes, I’ve seen the girl herself, but I mean I know the family – what there is of it. Poor thing.”
“Poor?” Abraham didn’t like the word.
“Well, an orphan, you know.” Mrs. Plopler nibbled happily at a piece of Sarah’s cheesecake.
“It’s a pity” – Abraham’s voice took on its rhetorical timbre – “that her parents aren’t alive, it’s true. They would have rejoiced to see what a fine girl she’s become, what a fine boy she’s chosen. They are probably even now rejoicing somewhere. But poor she is not. We are all of us orphans sooner or later. Your poorness is a thing of the spirit. Ruth is a brave girl.”
Abraham would not accept that anything that was attached to him could be called poor, not by an outsider. It was an expression of defeat, a calling for pity. He might himself, in talking to Sarah, refer to Ruth as a poor child, for it was obvious from the way the girl had attached herself to them that she had never had a real home before. They knew from what Isaac said that when she was still a child herself she had already had to help raise her sister’s children. And from what Isaac said about her brother-in-law, he had never allowed the girl to feel that she was more than an encumbrance. Still, that was different. That was between themselves, not for Mrs. Plopler, who was only too happy to cry over you.
“You’re right.” Mrs. Plopler allowed her teacup to be refilled and appeared amiably to change her tactics. “She must be a brave girl, after all the misfortune she’s had to live through, even before she was born. Of course you probably know the story already.”
“We know what there is to know.” Abraham could tell that Mrs. Plopler wanted to say something; there was something to dredge up from the past. And it would come out. Neither the irritation in his tone nor Sarah’s apparent attempt to drown her by giving her too many cups of tea would stop her.
“It was such a shame that her father should die before she was born.” Mrs. Plopler sighed. “At least if he had lived her mother wouldn’t have had to face the world alone. To tell you the truth, I didn’t remember about it. But the other day I was talking to a friend of mine who was their neighbor at the time. I happened to mention your Ruth, so she reminded me. We were just green at the time ourselves.” Mrs. Plopler cracked another lump of sugar between her teeth and took a few sips of tea through the piece that she still held in her mouth. Neither Abraham nor Sarah said anything. With Mrs. Plopler one could only wait. Abraham smoothed his beard under his lip and squinted up at the yellow light bulb.
“She was already in her fifties when he died,” said Mrs. Plopler and paused. “Ruth’s mother, I mean.” She paused again, nibbling at another piece of cheesecake.
“And then soon after he died people saw that she was pregnant.” Mrs. Plopler took another bite. “At her age.
“Such an embarrassment for the grown children. She had one married son, I think, and a daughter, the one that brought the girl up. She was already engaged, I believe, at that time. Sure, she has a girl of fifteen or sixteen herself now.
“Of course people laughed. At their age – romancing on his deathbed!” Mrs. Plopler pushed the rest of the sugar into her mouth and looked fastidiously at her fingertips. “As for me, I tell my husband, ‘Enough of this foolishness,’ if you’ll excuse the expression. We’re not children any more. And anyway, maybe if he’d saved his energy instead of making like a hero when he was a sick man he might have lived longer. Having a child at her age shortened her life too. The remaining few years she had she was sick most of the time.” Mrs. Plopler drained the last of her cup of tea, chewing up a few tea leaves that were left on her lips. “When I think of how ashamed my girls would be if I did anything like that I could die straight away. And then what did she accomplish? She left a small child to be a burden on her daughter.”
Abraham was silent. What would happen if he leaned through the round yellow haze the
light bulb had left in his eyes and seized the pernicious witch by the nose? It was an old theory of Isaac’s that if they held her nose still she would not be able to talk. His fingers itched.
Sarah, who had begun to pack Isaac’s lunch for tomorrow, turned to Mrs. Plopler. “It was a sad thing that she had to kill herself to bring Ruth into the world. But we will always bless her.”
The very sweetness of his wife dissolved Abraham’s anger. He laughed suddenly. “Do you suppose they made fun of Sarah too when she had Isaac at a hundred years? You remember that story? Her husband’s name was Abraham. We call him the father of Jews. That’s a fine story. Can you imagine what a joy it would be to have a child when you are a hundred years old? Now I would gladly use up my last bit of energy to achieve such a thing. There was no shame to it then. None of us would be here now if it were not for the late flowering of a certain Sarah.” Abraham got up and put his arm around his wife. “What’s your name, little one – not Sarah? And mine’s Abraham! What a coincidence! So, we may yet have an extraordinary event at a hundred years, eh?” He winked at Mrs. Plopler. “And we will certainly have a distinguished daughter-in-law.” Abraham kissed his wife noisily on the forehead. “You see,” he said to Mrs. Plopler, “we are not just anybody. Let the world laugh at such things. It shows how small people have grown. We will have strange events to distinguish our lives.”
The tea was beginning to weigh uncomfortably in Mrs. Plopler. She excused herself. Funny people, these. Such odd views on things. Well, people make their own beds. The thought of beds made her wonder. When she returned, Abraham still had his arm around his wife. At their age! That’s the way it was. So so so.
Abraham interrupted her musings by offering to walk her part way home. “Come,” he said gallantly, “we will walk in the snow, and the moon will shine down and show us that we are young yet, for our hundred years. The moon is the sun of the young-old ones. Let the young have the sun to illuminate them. We will have the moon to transform us.”
Well! thought Mrs. Plopler and hurriedly thrust her feet into her galoshes. “Well,” she said to Abraham with a little laugh, “you must have been quite a young man once.”
Abraham didn’t answer but smiled down at his wife. Sarah smiled back and then turned again to the sandwiches. When they had left, the tired, slightly vacant look settled gradually over her face again.
—
A crisis had come into the life of Chaim Knopp. This was not, he assured Abraham, the only crisis that had ever come into his life. But this one was certainly attended by more misfortunes than any before. And it was not, as others had been, the kind of crisis that he could pass through simply by shutting his eyes tight and praying. His wife was not at his elbow this time to guide him while he had his eyes shut. His wife – ah, the greatest of the misfortunes.
What can you do with a wife who will take care of everyone in the world but herself? This society, that society, she was always up and running to help. But her own stomach trouble she had no time for. So comes the time when he, Chaim, gets up in the morning, and there’s his wife, groaning in the bed beside him.
“What’s the matter, Bassieh?”
“Oi oi oi!”
“Bassieh, something hurts?”
“Oiyoiyoiyoi!”
He, Chaim, runs to and fro, wringing his hands and suffering. Still Bassieh writhes on the bed and says, “Oiyoiyoi.”
“God, what shall I do?” Chaim pleads out loud.
“Fool,” God answers in Bassieh’s voice from the bed, “get a doctor!”
Praise God! He, Chaim, runs out, and a neighbor calls a doctor. The doctor comes, an ambulance comes, and Bassieh is rushed off to the hospital. In the ambulance all Bassieh can say is “Oiyoiyoi.”
And Chaim, sitting beside her, can only wring his hands and tear his beard. “Oi Bassieh, oi Bassieh, oi Bassieh!”
In the hospital right away they open her up. Who knows what they found there? You know how the doctors are, secretive. Even his son-in-law George, the doctor, will only polish up some long words for him.
“George, tell me, what does it mean?”
“It’s all right. She’s recovering nicely from the operation. We don’t think she’ll need another. Of course she’ll have to be careful.”
“But what was it? Why did they have to use the knife?”
“You don’t have to worry, Father. A little something inside. Just take good care of her. See that she gets checked up regularly. We’ll keep her in the hospital awhile until she gets her strength up. She has to be kept quiet.”
“A little something. That’s all he tells me. But I’m not an entire fool in my old age. So I understand she had a growth. You grow older, little things start to go wrong. As long as she’ll be all right.” Chaim shrugged his shoulders. “Keeping her quiet in the hospital is a problem, though. My wife was always a nervous type. They give her a nice room, semi-private; so she doesn’t like her neighbor. The room is filled with flowers; but one society didn’t send flowers till almost a week after the operation, so my Bassieh was so aggravated she almost had a relapse.”
These, however, were minor complaints. More important: an operation, a semi-private room, the doctors – all of these cost money. Where would the money come from, now that business was so bad? Who could afford to buy chickens nowadays? They talked about crashes, about depressions. All it boiled down to was that people couldn’t afford to buy chickens any more. And if hardly anybody bought chickens, hardly anybody could bring them to Chaim to slaughter. But this was his livelihood. He had a sick wife to take care of. They and their depressions!
It was plain that here was a time when Chaim’s children could help out their father if they wanted to. Well, if they wanted to help he couldn’t stop them. But ask them? Not he. Abraham could understand this. It is a different thing when children do not offer to help and when they refuse to help. If he asked them they would have the opportunity to refuse, and a refusal, no matter what the excuse, is still a refusal. Whereas if he did not ask them and they did not offer – well, perhaps there were good reasons. As Chaim himself said, they had their problems too. His youngest daughter was married to a working man. They had a baby to look after and were having a hard enough time as it was. They were even thinking of trying to move down to America to see if things weren’t easier there. As for the son-in-law who was a doctor, he had helped out at the hospital. Chaim had seen for himself how he’d had long conferences with the other doctors and how he had put his mother-in-law into semi-private, regardless of expense, because it was better for her to be there. Beyond that, he had three children of his own to feed. Chaim didn’t like to ask any more help from him. The daughter who was married to a rich man’s son lived in another city. And from what he had heard, business wasn’t going so well for this son-in-law. Nevertheless his daughter had left her family and come east to see her mother. It was an expensive trip. What more could he ask of her? And from Ralph, especially now, he wouldn’t ask a thing.
This, too, Abraham could understand very well. Once, when he could keep it to himself no longer, Chaim had told him that Ralph had left his wife. For the last three months he had been living in one of the big hotels. His wife remained alone, with their little girl, in their home.
“A home like a palace.” Chaim’s eyes shut and his chin raised, pointing his beard directly in front of him, as he visualized it. “The goyim didn’t want, but my Ralph said, ‘Let them try and stop me,’ and he moved into the heights anyway. I asked him, ‘Why do you want to go where they don’t want you?’ And he said, ‘Because I’m a man, Father, and I can walk where any man walks on this earth.’ That shows that he’s not all what – what people say. But it is not only money that buys a man the right to say that he is a man. He must be a man in other ways. A little girl like an angel, pretty, sweet; a wife like other wives, a good housekeeper, a good mother – and where is he? What good does his money do him? The whole world has to know about his quarrels.”
Certainly i
f Ralph could afford to live in a big hotel he could afford to help out his parents. But for weeks now he hadn’t even been by their place to see how they were. Chaim had tried to get in touch with him to tell him that his mother was ill. He had found out from Ralph’s wife that he was still living away from home. She was not a bad daughter-in-law. She had come right away to the hospital. Then Chaim had tried to phone Ralph at the hotel. But he was so nervous with that instrument. And he couldn’t understand the man at the hotel who had answered, and the man couldn’t understand him, so that the man had finally hung up, and Chaim had found his shouts answered by nothing but click-click-click. He had flung down the receiver. Let the other children tell Ralph. He was certainly not going to go to any big hotel to seek out his son.
That was why Chaim had to engage himself finally to one of the local packing plants, where they also slaughtered a certain number of beasts for kosher consumption. Twice a week he went down to the abattoir. The things he had to tell Abraham about that abattoir! Poor Chaim, who was anyway so sensitive to smells. There were not only the smells; there was the big hammer that they brought down on the heads of the non-kosher cows to stun them before they were killed; there were the pools of blood and the entrails; and there were the rebellious beasts who just didn’t want to climb forward to die, who had to be coaxed and pushed and shoved. Chickens Chaim was so used to that they no longer made any impression on him, hardly. He just tried to kill them before they could squawk, although he had often wondered whether it wouldn’t be more humane at least to let them have one last good squawk before he shut them up forever. But the abattoir…
About the abattoir and its horrors people knew nothing, the people who came into the clean butcher shop with the sawdust-strewn floor. Even to Abraham himself these cuts of meat were thoroughly dead and didn’t matter any more. The abattoir was out of sight. It was part of the dark underside of life. Abraham knew something of this side. He too had once stood on the brink of life. He had created death. A whole world heaves over and dies in a moment like that. He himself could never have been a shoichet, bringing the knife down again and again, rejecting life after life. Of course you had to be educated to do a job like that. The education must make a difference in your attitude. Luckily Chaim was educated to his task. Still, it was not nice work for him. He was getting to be an elderly man.
The Sacrifice Page 11