“Yes, yes,” Chaim agreed. When you look at it that way – A sweet Jew, this Abraham. Chaim nodded his head vigorously. He comes straight to the point, the important thing.
Hymie scrutinized Chaim Knopp carefully, pulling back the curtain to the back room, in which he had reseated himself, in such a way as to prevent Chaim from noticing that he was being watched. It’s about time, he told himself. He tried to find in Chaim the censor from the adult world who had once frightened him so. Instead here was this bent old man, who sat like a gnome in his sabbath best on the herring barrel. The place was full of old men, and Hymie was a child no longer.
Hymie dropped the curtain and thought about it. The place needed new blood. New blood – Hymie liked that term. He saw himself with the visionary eye of the inveterate reader of comic books. He would enter the business. He would make money. He would come into his own.
—
When Abraham came home that evening he was full of Chaim’s retirement. The child met him at the corner, for Moishe knew on which days his father had lessons to give, so that on those days his grandfather came home from work before him. On the days when his father came home earlier the child waited on the other corner, the one closer to the synagogue. Abraham pretended to race him home through the snow. Every mock running step that Abraham took reminded him that he was no longer young, and the thought of this pleased him because it reminded him of how his son would someday say to him that it was time he should retire. He would devote his time to study. All day he would sit with Chaim in the synagogue, and they would discuss the ancient wisdom, and he would watch his sons and his grandsons grow. The child was waiting for him at the gate, laughing at the way he ran.
Once they were inside the house and had removed their outdoor things – “Well, have you been a good boy?” Without waiting for an answer, Abraham hoisted Moishe onto his knee. “Let’s sing a little.”
It was a song that Moses had learned before he could properly lisp the words.
“ ‘What will we eat when the Messiah comes’ – sing! – ‘at the celebration?’ ”
“ ‘Leviathan and Shorabor we will eat.’ ” Moses opened his arms wide to indicate the size of the fish and the ox. His mouth stretched round, open and tight at the corners. “ ‘Leviathan and Shorabor we will eat.’ ” Moses rolled his eyes and rubbed his belly – “Ay ay” – as they sang in chorus.
“ ‘What will we drink when the Messiah comes, at the celebration?’ ”
“ ‘Wine from the holy vines!’ ” Moses made his hands into a goblet and gulped from them greedily.
“ ‘Leviathan and Shorabor we will eat, wine from the holy vines we will drink, at the celebration.’ ”
“ ‘Who will teach us Torah when the Messiah comes, at the celebration?’ ” sang Abraham.
“ ‘Moses the Rabbi will teach us Torah!’ ”
“That’s right.” Abraham laughed. “Not wild!” he cautioned, for Ruth sometimes complained that he made the child wild when they romped together. Moses nodded and remembered for one chorus.
“ ‘Who will teach us dancing when the Messiah comes?’ ” Abraham waved his hands in imitation of a harem dancer.
Moses followed suit. “ ‘Miriam the Prophetess will teach us to dance!’ ”
“ ‘Who will teach us to play, then, at the celebration?’ ”
Abraham pretended to strum some musical instrument.
Moses strummed the air vigorously. “ ‘David the King will teach us to play.’ ” Moses rushed ahead of his grandfather. “ ‘Who will teach us wisdom at the celebration?’ ” he shouted.
“Who then?” Abraham winked, trying to hold him still on his knee.
“ ‘Solomon the King will teach us wisdom’ ” – Moses laughed – “ ‘at the celebration.’ ”
“ ‘Leviathan and Shorabor we will eat,’ ” they bellowed together, “ ‘wine from the holy vines we will drink’ ” – Moses cupped his hands and made gulping sounds – “ ‘Moses the Rabbi will teach us Torah’ ” – the two of them frowned and looked studious – “ ‘Miriam the Prophetess will teach us dancing, David the King will teach us to play, Solomon the King will teach us wisdom’ ” – they nodded wisely at each other – “ ‘at the celebration!’ ”
For a second there was silence, and grandfather and grandson looked about them mysteriously. “ ‘And who,’ ” Abraham half whispered, half sang, holding up one finger in the air, “ ‘will bless us when the Messiah comes, at the celebration?’ ”
Moses held up a finger too. “ ‘The Holy God will bless us, at the celebration!’ ”
Together they went down the list, making the appropriate gestures as they sang, with Moses trying to get slightly ahead of his grandfather all the time, so that Abraham was forced to race too. By the time they sang out simultaneously, “ ‘The Holy God will bless us!’ ” Moses’ voice, together with the voice of his grandfather, produced a great thundering.
“Enough!” His mother ran in from the kitchen, clutching her ears. “Enough enough! Heroes both of you, my cake just collapsed in fear of you.”
“Of course it’s enough,” Abraham pointed out, still gasping a little. “What more could your cake want than the blessing of the Holy God?” They both laughed at Grandfather’s wit.
“Enough,” Moses repeated, and they doubled up with laughter again. They followed Ruth into the kitchen and demanded of her whether the Shorabor and the Leviathan were not yet ready for two hungry Jews. Ruth began to bewail the fact that she had now not only one child but two to put up with, and as soon as Isaac came home she would probably have three. They danced around the kitchen and mimicked her, wailing, “Oiyoiyoi,” until Ruth broke down and laughed with them.
When Isaac came home and they sat down around the supper table Abraham broke the news to them of Chaim’s retirement. In highly dramatic terms he described how Chaim’s children had come to him and had said that he had worked hard enough. It was time for him to rest.
“Would you like to retire already, Pa?” Isaac asked, laughing a little, for there was to him a tinge of unreality about the very question. At the same time a feeling very like fear tugged at his heart. Someday it would happen, of course; it was only right that it should. Strong though his father was, someday the reins would fall to him. Isaac could not visualize it except in terms of a multiplication of the fatigue that he felt now after his double labors.
Abraham was laughing. “Retire? Now? Do you understand what you’re talking about? I knew if I mentioned it you’d right away tell me to retire too. I know you already. You’d offer me the money you haven’t got in your pocket, just to show me that you want to give me everything. In the first place I’m not quite as old as Chaim yet. A few more years, let’s say, and in that time a lot can happen. In the second place all the money that both of us bring in is just enough for us to live on, and maybe hope a little for the child. In the third place –” Abraham was warming to his topic, and when he warmed to his topic his voice grew loud and rhetorical.
“In the third place,” Isaac interrupted, “you don’t have a house to draw rent from, and your children have empty pockets from which to draw your allowance.”
“Oiyoiyoi,” sang Abraham. “Oiyoiyoi,” sang Moses. “Oiyoiyoi,” they all wailed together.
“But aside from that,” said Isaac, “it’s a sssp-l-en-did idea!”
“Sssp-l-en-did!” they agreed.
“And besides,” Abraham continued when they had stopped laughing, “what would Polsky do without me? Can you imagine, he has asked me to keep an eye on the cash register when his own son’s around. His own son. I can just imagine what will happen when he takes the boy into the business. I will have to watch the father for the son and the son for the father, and the business for both of them when they’re busy watching each other.”
And yet, though they had turned the whole topic into a joke, it did not remain so in Isaac’
s mind. It knotted itself in with the other problems that made his brain feel like a lumpy mattress at night and would not let him sleep until his mind was tired and bruised. This at least he should be able to offer someday, of all the things that had been expected of him. But then the child must have an education too. And what of more children? They had determined, Ruth and he, that they would have only as many children as they could afford to bring up and educate properly. It had seemed a logical idea, had given them a feeling of control over things. They had not thought that this might, when it came down to it, mean only one child. Why, in terms of such thinking, even that child might seem at times like an extravagance. The more he thought of it, the more of an affront the idea seemed – one child. Living in pinches and snippets. But did he dare to take the responsibility of more? His father had hinted frequently of late that it was time a child arrived to take the name of Sarah. It was true. But then his father should retire, too, someday. What was all their logic and their control and their planning but an enforced yielding to a necessity that would not give quarter but would keep pressing in and in? Isaac tried to imagine the time when his own son – sons – would say to him too that it was time he should retire. What would he be like then? He could not visualize it, though old age was so often in his mind.
It’s because I don’t feel well that I get depressed. It’s when I’m tired. For a long time Isaac had known that he was not a well man. No doctor had ever completely explained to him the nature of his ailment. His father was inclined to the opinion that it was beyond the understanding of mere doctors. It had to do with the heart; that much he knew. And except for the times when he was taken with what he called an attack, he did not think of it particularly. It was another scar, concrete, physical, that the past had left him, another weakness to become aware of when strength was needed.
But his son would be strong and whole, without fear, without blemish. That was why he had felt so bitterly disappointed when Ruth, in her anxiety to check up over every little thing that she suspected, took the child to an eye doctor, who said that he would need glasses.
“Doctor says it’s nothing serious. He won’t have to wear them always,” she had explained. “I had a feeling it would be something.”
“Glasses at his age. I don’t like it.”
“It’s all right,” Abraham had insisted. “He’ll shine, in spite of them, right through them he’ll shine.”
“We don’t have to get them right away. We can wait a little,” Ruth had suggested.
“He’s just a baby yet. Why should he need glasses?” Even now, as he fell asleep, thinking about it, he was conscious of a terrible personal affront.
“Isaac, Isaac!” He was jerked suddenly out of his dream.
“Wha – what?” his voice croaked, apart from himself. The dream stayed with him an instant longer so that he could remember vaguely. And then he was left with only the physical sensations, painful fatigue, the feeling of having run a long way, the difficulty in drawing his breath. Gradually he realized that it was his wife’s hand that gripped him by the arm, her dark, familiar eyes that he made out dimly above him.
Her voice, as from a distance, seemed to fight its way through to him, frightened, slightly shrill in the darkness. “Isaac, what’s the matter? You were breathing funny!”
There was a pushing still inside of him, and his limbs quivered slightly as though after a great strain. “I was dreaming.”
“How do you feel?” – her voice, still anxious, from beside him.
“Tired. Oi, what a dream.”
“Can you remember this time? What do you dream?”
He tried to recapture the peculiar, wild intensity of the dream. “I don’t know. I’m stretching, pushing. Something’s pushing me. I don’t even want to remember.”
“If you remember it, maybe it won’t come again. Try.”
“It’ll come.”
“It’s when you’re tired. You work too hard.”
“I can see my face. Somehow I’m naked. The tendons in my neck are bulging. My veins are ready to burst. But where am I? What am I doing?”
“You must see a doctor – No, don’t argue. A specialist.”
“So you see doctors about dreams now too? You’re right. I’ve read about it, but maybe I should wait till I have a dream that’s worth more money. Those dream doctors are expensive.”
“Don’t laugh. Look at you. I can feel your heart pounding even now. You’re sweating. It’s not just the dream.”
“Maybe.” Isaac’s voice was beginning to recede. “Let’s sleep.”
“But will you go to a specialist?” She leaned over him.
Isaac could feel his body relaxing, lifting, drifting away. He was so achingly tired. From a distance his voice murmured something unintelligible.
Ruth turned over, and then over again, and listened for the sound of his breathing.
—
Late in the spring the jeweler’s lease ran out, and Polsky began to make preparations for the renovation of the business. A trail of contractors made their way through the building, and Polsky explained, described, listened to suggestions, and haggled. Every day Abraham came home with new items concerning the future of the butcher shop. One evening he explained, “The butcher shop itself will have very little done to it. Only he’s going to have the floor fixed up so that we won’t need to use any more sawdust, and they’ll take the stove out and put a furnace in the cellar. They’re going to knock out the wall between the butcher shop and the jeweler’s old place, and from the jeweler’s half they’re going to make a delicatessen with booths. Polsky says this was Hymie’s idea.”
“Congratulations,” said Isaac. “If Hymie has had an idea then it is time he was taken into the business.”
On another day Abraham brought home more news. “Do you know what else we’re going to have? He’s enlarging the jeweler’s back room. He’ll knock out the wall between and just leave a small kitchen behind the butcher shop, and we’re going to have a kibitzarnia too.”
“A kibitzarnia,” said Ruth. “He’s ambitious, that Polsky.”
“All day and all night they’ll play cards. He’ll charge them rent from every pot. Sandwiches they’ll eat from the delicatessen. If I know Polsky there’ll even be a drink to be found.”
“What about dancing girls?” said Isaac. “You wouldn’t think that place could hold so many businesses.”
“The kibitzarnia will be a private affair,” Abraham explained. “He is calling it a club, and only members of the club can come into the back room. Hymie’s friends will give their business to the delicatessen.”
At last the carpenters came and the work began. Business in the butcher shop continued as usual while the walls were being knocked away and the changes being made. Chaim Knopp, who found that time dragged for him now that he was a retired man, although he would not yet admit it, came every day to watch the work. As he explained to Abraham he could not wear his good clothes now that the shop was in such a mess, so he arrived and wandered about in his old working clothes, offering suggestions to the carpenters or sitting and discussing the progress of the work with Abraham. Gradually the place was being transformed; its old contours were torn away, and a new shape began to emerge.
Isaac, who dropped in one evening with the child after work to see how things were going, remarked on it. “It’s strange how the old shop is gone now. The new place isn’t even finished yet, and it’s hard to remember how the other looked. And it existed for so long.”
“It’s true.” Abraham looked about him. “It’s not like it was. But then the future always brings something new.” Abraham ruminated this thought cheerfully.
“And there’s always something gone that was,” said Isaac. Since his mother’s death Isaac had thought a good deal about this. It seemed to him that, between that mysterious point in time when he had last really seen his mother and the time when he had suddenly discovered that she was dying, a whole period had been lost to him, a long stretch
of time in which his relationship to her had been dimmed by his inattention. He did not want to lose another lifetime so. He determined that he would pay attention, watch, catch every fleeting moment. It was a hard task he set himself, for although it seemed to him that he was so much more alive now that he had forced himself into an increased awareness, the very acts of living became more fatiguing, more difficult, more crowded. The more he grew, the denser grew the life about him that drew his attention, so that at times he had simply to force his mind to stop for a little while its incessant grinding.
The alteration of the butcher shop took time. It was already early summer, and the painters were still there, putting the final touches on the place. Polsky was busy running around and arranging things, so that the work in the shop was left to Abraham, who came home more than usually tired in the evenings.
One Saturday, after they had eaten lunch, Abraham and Isaac took the child to the park. Abraham lay down with a paper over his face and immediately went to sleep. Isaac lay on the grass with his son. He stretched out his hand. “Hold my hand, we’ll go for a ride. Look at that cloud – that one over there, the puffy one. Keep your eyes on it.”
The child, stretched out in the same attitude as his father, one hand firmly clenched in the larger one, squinted up at the sky. The cloud was round and puffy and soft.
“Can you see it move?” His father’s voice was soft too, and a little excited.
“Wait,” said Moses, concentrating. “I’m not sure. Yes, it’s going. It’s moving!”
“Well, listen,” said Isaac quickly. “It’s not really the cloud that’s moving. It’s us.”
“Us?” Moses could see clearly that it was the cloud that moved, sailing trimly, fatly across the sky. “Us?” He tried to conceive it.
“Yes.” Isaac was laughing a little. “Can’t you feel it? Lie very still, and you can feel the whole earth moving. See the trees moving away from that cloud?”
The tops of the trees in the distance did actually seem to be moving away from the cloud. He clutched his father’s hand more tightly. “Yes, yes, we’re moving,” he shouted excitedly.
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