And those who had been cured by Mrs. Plopler were usually inclined to agree with her. Certainly she never finished her work without leaving dark red and blue welts to prove that something had really been done to draw out the ailment.
It very soon became evident, however, that this time the cups were not enough. Sarah’s ailment grew worse. When the doctor was called in, another ritual took the place of the cups, and Ruth was busy all day boiling pots of water, and Sarah lay all day inhaling the steam.
Gradually it dawned upon Abraham that what he had feared for so long without naming it, lest the naming should bring it closer, hovered dangerously near, and Sarah’s every painful, rasping breath was as a loud acknowledgment of its presence. “A while longer,” he begged in his prayers. He pointed out that Sarah had received so little joy in life. Did she not deserve a few more years at least to see the child grow up, to see whatever it was that He, the Lord – and Abraham did not presume to prognosticate – at least to catch a glimpse of what He had in store for their house? Sometimes, when he prayed, it occurred to him that she would probably be happier where she was going, with her two other sons. But he reminded himself that beyond life there is the mystery that none must seek before his time. It is life’s miracles that the living must find. And he would be filled with a strange bitterness that now his wife, too, would leave him to seek them alone.
—
Isaac, trying not to think of what the doctor had hinted, trudged, as was usual for him on a Wednesday evening, straight from work to the home of a pupil. He paused in his upward climb through the snow and stood waiting for the streetcar to overtake and pass him on its way to the heights. He breathed quickly, holding his gloved hand against his mouth to prevent the sharp air from burning his lungs. His damp breath lay unpleasantly around the side of his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his glove. The moisture formed beads of ice on the wool. He stood and rested until the streetcar was only a tail light wiggling in the distance. Another carfare saved. Isaac hunched back down into the collar of his coat, and, breathing through his clenched teeth, continued his climb.
The wind that blew down from the northeast past Mad Mountain and whipped across his shoulder blades seemed, in its way, to be trying to help him along. Every now and then a strong gust lifted and carried him a few steps upward. But Isaac’s mood was not a grateful one. He would have liked to sit in the streetcar, on the first seat of the bench, closest to the little coal stove that stood behind the conductor. Thinking of it, he could almost feel the pins and needles melting inside of him.
He dwelt on the thought of the streetcar deliberately, conscious that he was doing so in order to prevent himself from thinking of something else. But in spite of himself his mind slipped back to the moment when he had come home the other day and had gone in to see his mother. He had looked at her as she lay frail on the bed, her breath rasping and sawing through her body, as though for the first time in many years. The mother he had looked at yesterday had not been like this. What yesterday was he thinking of?
Nothing, Isaac told himself with a sense of injury, seems to meet a man face to face. Things creep up from behind while you keep your eyes ahead of you, trying to edge your way safely through life. All of a sudden you’re shoved from the last remembered point in time to the present. As though to prove this, he turned quickly and caught the mountain in the act of creeping forward in the dusk. Always there was something that followed, something that waited to fall on a man.
Why not face to face? What if something should come suddenly face to face with him, some demand, some choice that would require from him a pure response, some terrifying decision? And what if something were to occur that would demand from him nothing, only fortitude, only the acceptance of fact? What would he do then? The answer was spontaneous in his mind. Grown man though he was, his first impulse was to turn his back, run. Isaac stopped in his tracks and laughed. The cold air burned his lungs – Serves me right. He breathed again and again through his mouth until his lungs seemed on fire. This was how his mother’s lungs must feel. He closed his mouth abruptly, fighting panic.
But she was alive. He had seen her alive just this morning. She was. Alive. It was absolutely necessary to be convinced of her aliveness. He wasn’t satisfied with just the word. He needed more than the word; he needed the feeling of it. Alive, alive. Alive. The word began to lose itself in its repetition. Again he felt panic. He looked around him for something to grasp at, for something to bring back the meaning of life. He became aware that the frost was nibbling at him, the snow crunched noisily beneath his feet, and the wind breathed lustily across his shoulders. He began to experience such a feeling of aliveness himself that everything about him seemed to come alive.
That was it! To be alive now, really alive, was the secret. For a moment he felt that if a man ever came really alive he could never die. How could death touch the living? Something tried to tell him that this was an odd thought, but it was blithely overruled. Nothing could force its way through the purely sensuous pleasure of his aliveness. It seemed as though he had never been actually aware of every part of himself as he was now. His mother lived, surely. And who could be more alive than his father? – and his wife, and his son, and even the cats. He himself would keep them alive, feed them from his inexhaustible store of life-energy.
Another streetcar was approaching. Isaac paused to listen. If he ran he might still make the streetcar stop. The pins and needles in his toes, alive like the rest of him, urged him onward. He started to run through the snow, freely, like an athlete, the pleasure running through his body as his feet flew of themselves over the white earth. The wind blew him forward, and he flapped his arms as though in flight, as though he were about to take off from the ground. It came fleetingly into his mind that the conductor of the streetcar must think him an odd apparition, but instead of feeling embarrassed he tried to speed even more quickly.
He could hear the streetcar gaining on him. As he ran along the sidewalk parallel to the tracks he turned his head to see the streetcar almost up to him. The mountain, too, seemed to jog along with him. He pushed forward with another burst of speed. For a moment there was a sensation of pure freedom. Then the streetcar roared in his ears. Something tumbled violently inside of him, and he seemed to tumble with it, sideways, collapsing suddenly and staggering to a stop against a tree. For a long moment he struggled to release his breath, which was impaled on a series of sharp, shaftlike pains. A sensation of nausea spread through him, and his chest contracted as though trying to force him to vomit. The sensation of misery, as pure and unadulterated as the unreasoning joy that had seized him a few moments ago, doubled him over. Trembling and sweating all over, he heard, as though remotely, streetcar after streetcar sweeping by him.
For a long time Isaac remained there against the tree, so that in the end he knew that it was too late to visit his pupil. By the time he had started on his way home, placing one foot uncertainly in front of the other, he knew too, without even thinking about it, that his mother was going to die.
—
As though each in his own way had already struggled with Sarah’s death and lost, when the time came Abraham and his son, at least partially forewarned against the inevitable surprise, lent themselves passively to the actions of mourning. Only Moses wandered about, detached, a little frightened what with all the strange things that were happening and everyone’s being so preoccupied, trying to find a place for himself. He had a notion that it actually was his grandmother who lay on the floor, covered over with a heavy dark cloth and surrounded by candles that burned and threw flickering and terrible shadows on the wall. But he could not bring himself to walk right up to the thing and lift up the edge of the cloth. What if it was she?
Some of the women who came, and Mrs. Pyopyo was prominent among them, cried and wailed and made funny gestures. Fascinated, he watched them, and when they noticed that he watched them admiringly they were annoyed and chased him out of the house and into the yard,
where they said he would not be underfoot. But he was not under anybody’s foot anyway.
On the day of the funeral there were even more people in and out of the house. Moses played on the green box that had been put on the front porch. He managed to pry the lid up and, after climbing in, crouched, peering out through a slit in the lid that he could make larger or smaller by pressing back or ducking down his head. When Mrs. Pyopyo came up the steps he popped the lid open and said hello to her. She clapped her hand to her breast and began to scream, so that Moses, frightened, dropped back into the box again and tried to hide. Mrs. Pyopyo ran into the house, and the next thing Moses knew the lid was wrenched open and his father had lifted him out, while Mrs. Pyopyo wrung her hands and continued to wail and make dreadful faces at him behind his father’s back. Moses buried his face in the safety of his father’s shoulder but a moment later raised it cautiously to wiggle his nose experimentally.
His grandmother’s death did not seem to have made much of an impression on the child. Thank goodness, Isaac pointed out, he was too young to understand. Only months later, when the landlord’s shaggy old dog died and Moses found her behind the garage in the lane, he covered her partially with a piece of old cardboard, took his shoes off, and, sitting beside her in the mud, watched the flies buzzing around the still carcass, and so his mother found him, sitting solemnly.
—
“Chaim,” said Abraham to his friend as they sat outside the synagogue on a Friday evening that spring. “I have a thought that keeps coming into my head. I wonder what you, as an educated man, would say about it.”
“You make too much of my education, my friend,” replied Chaim modestly. “Life is the only teacher.”
“Still,” said Abraham, “you cannot deny that, having studied many great thoughts, you have gleaned something more than just an ordinary man like myself, for instance, could do.”
“Well, perhaps.”
“Well, then” – Abraham hesitated – “supposing I were to tell you that I have come to the conclusion that death is not such a sudden thing.” Abraham looked at his friend, but Chaim continued to regard him wordlessly with his face screwed up seriously in his listening attitude.
“I mean that I think that death is a seed that is sown, like life, inside of a person, and comes to fruition from within.” Abraham spoke these words in a stubborn, resolute tone, as though voicing an opinion which he felt sure would be opposed.
“Ah,” said Chaim in a slightly trapped tone. His mind riffled halfheartedly through its file on death, and a few words from the prayer for the dead and other odds and ends on death flitted through his head, but nothing that seemed to bear any direct relation to Abraham’s words. He nodded his head seriously, for Abraham was talking again.
“You may think I am mad, but I could see it growing in her, like a weed, like a fungus.”
“Death?” Chaim asked timidly. He had come to an age when the word was beginning to make him uncomfortable.
“Yes.” Abraham jerked his finger to his eyes. “Here, in her eyes, from behind. We think it’s a sudden thing, and it is, in a way, in its moment of triumph, when it has drawn the last bit of life into itself and flowers into its own world of stillness. And yet, try though he may, a man can’t choke it off. I think that death is sown in all of us when we are conceived, and grows within the womb of life, feeding on it, until one day it bursts out. We say then that life is dead. But really death is born.”
“Well,” said Chaim, somewhat relieved. “Perhaps you are right. But it all seems to come to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Abraham. “When it occurred to me I said to myself, What of my sons, then? I did not see death growing in their faces. Only life and the promise of life bloomed there.”
“That’s right,” Chaim was even more relieved. “How could one account for that?”
“I don’t know. But I say to myself, life and death are opposed to each other. Life is good, isn’t that right? We can feel that, or else why do we strive to stay alive? Why do we weep for our dead ones? So then death must be evil, a kind of evil. Every man carries his own death in him, but in some men death is so strong, so evil, that it must feed itself on the conquest of other lives besides its own. That might explain what happened to my sons.”
“Well, it might,” said Chaim uncomfortably. “But I would not take such thoughts too seriously. You yourself say that you cannot work it out too clearly. And to tell you the truth, I can’t recall having seen it written anywhere.”
“Still,” said Abraham, “if one could only seize it and hold it back and stop it somehow. Or if one could know why, how – It’s foolishness I’m talking, and I know it. A man hates to lose something, just like that, that’s precious to him. He would at least like to think that some gesture is possible to him. But that’s for God Himself, isn’t it, Chaim?”
“We must all die.” Chaim was happy to be able to point this out. It was a concrete fact. “If God will have it so, then we must accept it, although, of course, we are right to put it off as long as possible.”
“You’re right, you’re right. A man can mull it over in his own head until he is entirely lost. Then he must go to someone who can appraise his thoughts with a clear head and a knowledge of the ancient wisdom. It’s up to the One Above, as you say.”
“We all seek the truth,” said Chaim, rather pleased.
—
One hot summer day Polsky brought a bottle of schnapps to the shop to celebrate the fact that he had just bought the whole building. Hymie Polsky, who during the summer holidays was supposed to be helping out in the shop but really spent most of his time in the poolroom across the street, turned up shortly after his father arrived with the liquor. The barber from next door came in to toast his new landlord, but the jeweler who had the other side of the premises didn’t come in. He and Polsky had never been on good terms. This was what, for Polsky, added zest to the celebration. This was putting it over on his enemy. The jeweler was probably sitting there now in his back room, which Polsky knew was an unlicensed pawnshop, waiting for the ax to fall.
He could have him out tomorrow, Polsky reflected as he raised his glass to his lips while the barber made a toast. But let him wait. Polsky could afford to be big about it. Oh, he had plans for that part of the building all right. Only it was too soon. The boy wasn’t old enough yet.
Hymie wanted a drink of schnapps too. Polsky put a bit in the bottom of his glass. “Ahh,” whined Hymie, “not even a taste.”
“Never mind, never mind,” said Polsky. “See if you can get that down.”
Hymie flung back his head as the others had done and gulped his bit down. A sour look spread from his mouth over his whole face. His face worked, trying to adjust itself into an indifferent smile. He held out his glass again. Polsky was rather pleased with him. “Look at the young punk,” he said to the barber. “Thinks he can take it. Shall I give him a real slug and let him get good and sick?”
“Just try,” said Hymie.
Polsky reached forward with the bottle but, on catching Abraham’s glance, instead of filling the glass he put another bit in the bottom.
“Is that all?” whined Hymie. “Huh!” With an elaborately careless gesture he threw his head back and flung the liquor into his mouth. This time it plashed all around the inside of his mouth, giving him the full taste and filling him chokingly full of alcohol fumes. He gasped and coughed, his face suffused with color. Abraham, muttering to himself, rushed over and pounded him on the back. Polsky and the barber laughed uproariously.
“All in one gulp he wants to become a man,” said Polsky.
Hymie, the tears still standing in his eyes, sat down on Chaim Knopp’s little barrel.
Polsky pressed another glass on the barber and refilled his own. Abraham declined another glass. “I’ll bring you some water in a minute, to wash the taste away,” he told Hymie.
“I don’t want any,” said the boy sullenly.
Abraham
went into the back room. Hymie watched his father and the barber resentfully. They were leaning against one of the counters, talking and drinking. Every now and then his father took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating forehead. The barber followed suit. Hymie’s eyes sought the bottle, but his father had put it down behind the counter in case a policeman should happen by and look in at the window. Everybody ignored him now that they thought they had shown him up. The feeling that he had been hard done by rose in Hymie’s breast. He stared at the spot on the counter behind which the bottle stood. A look of sly purpose crept slowly into his eyes. Casting a glance around him, he slipped quickly off the barrel and ducked behind the counter.
A moment later the bell on the butcher shop door tinkled. “Well, look who’s here!” shouted Polsky. Laughing her throaty laugh, Laiah held out her hands and swept forward.
“A million dollars,” said Polsky, setting down his glass and taking her hands. “A million dollars with small change,” he amended as she turned around before them in the manner of a mannequin, her bright cotton print swirling about her legs. “What brings you back here? I thought you’d left us altogether.”
“There’s no place like home,” said Laiah, pursing her full lips and brushing her tinted auburn hair back from her face.
Her figure, Polsky noted through his pleasant, sweaty alcoholic haze, though a good many sizes larger than it had been once – and she had never been exactly a stick – still stacked up like a good evening’s entertainment. “A million dollars,” he said again. The barber nodded his head and continued to nod it, smiling vaguely.
Behind the counter, Abraham wrested the bottle from Hymie’s lax fingers. In his eagerness to drink as much and as quickly as possible, Hymie had slobbered the liquor all over himself. The stench of schnapps and sweat made Abraham hold his breath. Hymie put one finger against his lips and with a somewhat glazed look of pleading uttered, “Psssh.”
The Sacrifice Page 16