The Sacrifice

by Adele Wiseman

  If there was a moment, a moment of absolute truth when I was driven into the fire, as my father claims, should not this feeling have remained with me, a new purity, a change in me? It seems to me that only others have the enjoyment of it, the false lift. What really happened is that I provided a momentary jolt for the imaginations of a handful of people. For a moment I stimulated them beyond themselves. Fine, but what about me? Why didn’t I die then, before I had time to wake again, to be afraid, to realize that I don’t want to die? That was not for me. I must be given the chance to regret, to wish that it had never been, and to lie here waiting…

  “Ruth, Ruth!” His sudden, urgent call brought them all in one bunch, hurtling together through the curtain.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you so excited?” Isaac demanded. “Did you think I was dying?” Instantly he regretted his words. “Don’t look like that; I was only joking,” he pleaded with his father’s stricken face.

  “Who talks of dying?” whispered Abraham finally.

  So he too is afraid. “I do.” Isaac could not control the instant of perversity, though he tried to say it jokingly. “Does it surprise you that I want to live?”

  “Surprise me?” Abraham’s voice was uncertain. “You’re still joking?”

  “Of course.” Isaac felt his face flush up again, felt the moisture at the corner of his left eye. “Why should the mention of death startle you so? We should all be familiar with the idea. You see it doesn’t bother me.” But the look in his father’s eyes was acting on him, unnerving him. “I’m sorry, Pa, forget I said anything. You know the crazy things that come into your head sometimes. I called you because I was lonely in here. I wanted you to come and sit with me. Jump on the bed, Moishe. Tell me how was Chaider. Sit down on this side, Ruth. Pa, pull up the chair closer. You see what an ill-natured, selfish invalid you have here?”

  Isaac’s arm sought the body of his son. With the other arm he pulled Ruth down beside him on the bed. There was a river of warmth creeping down his left eye, and he was blinking down another pool that had gathered in the hollow between his nose and his right eye. He held the child’s arm gently, squeezing it slightly. Ruth’s body lay warm and pulsating beside him. He absorbed the contact, the vitality. He felt a desperate need to touch, to feel the reassurance of physical contact.

  “Pa,” he said, reaching up his hand blindly, not wanting to turn around for fear of disturbing the precarious balance of moisture in his eyes. “When I was small I used to touch your beard. I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like.” The curly, wiry soft hair came in contact with his hand, tingled between his fingers. He ran his hand down both prongs of his father’s well-kept beard and then slipped his fingers upward till they touched the softness of the cheek above.

  “Well, what’s everybody so quiet for?” With a movement of his hand he smeared the tears from his eyes. He knew that in the crook of his arm Ruth, her face hidden, was weeping. He desperately wanted them to talk, to drown the voice of contempt within himself – Scared them, didn’t you? “Tell me something,” he pleaded with his father.

  “When you were a little boy you used to say that,” said Abraham slowly.

  “So I haven’t changed much,” said Isaac. “What happened at work today? It’s so annoying to have to lie here. It puts you into such a black mood you don’t know what you’re saying. Did you see Chaim Knopp?”

  “I almost forgot.” Abraham remembered his news. “I have news for you that will make you forget your black moods.” Abraham was gradually beginning to recover his normal tone and manner, but his eyes still searched his son’s face in a disturbed way as he spoke. “Chaim Knopp’s son is going to keep a place open for you in the new Chaider they’re building in the heights. Chaim says it’ll be a while yet before it’s built and ready – you know them and their politics – so that you will have plenty of time to get better if you’ll stop worrying your head about nonsense.”

  Isaac laughed at the commanding tone. “That’s fine. All I have to do now is to get well, eh?” It had such a simple, straightforward sound to it.

  “That’s right.” Abraham went on to describe the sort of school it was likely to be. He pointed out that Isaac could take the child up with him and he went on to describe all the other aspects of the job that he and Chaim had discussed. There were great future possibilities in it. They would be able to move into a house closer to the heights – not that they had any ambitions to wag their tails after the rich, but at least into a better district so that the child could have nice friends. Isaac would at last have the chance to teach, to study and develop his ideas. And he would have an audience who would listen. After all, people knew who he was. In describing it, Abraham grew heated and persuasive. Wasn’t this more in the line of things as they should be?

  Isaac, still writhing inwardly with self-contempt, began to wonder if, at least to some extent, it might not possibly be so. He was still alive, and while he remained alive there was still the future. Granted he might never be a completely healthy man again, still it was quite possible that he would recover to the point where he could take on these duties. He felt a certain buoyancy, a certain optimism beginning to grow in him, magically remodeling his perspective. Life was a reality too. His arm tightened around Ruth, who had wiped her eyes and was now merely resting against him, listening to Abraham.

  “It was nice of Chaim to talk to his son about me,” said Isaac. “Thank him for me, will you?”

  “You will thank him yourself. But in the meantime I have already thanked him for all of us,” said Abraham.

  “You know, I should have started saving Torahs a lot earlier in life,” said Isaac, letting himself be carried along. “I’d be a successful man by now. What do you say?”

  “So it was you who saved the Torah, was it?” Abraham recognized the playfulness and all too gladly joined in. “I thought it was some other fellow who valued God’s Word.”

  Something in Isaac would not let him leave well enough alone. “Talk about valuing God’s Word, here’s a little problem of values for you. According to our friend Mrs. Plopler, that Torah that I brought out was the one that our first millionaire here in the city, our big what’s-his-name, donated as his conscience money. You know who I mean, that mortgageer, that real-estatenik who first elbowed his way onto the heights; that champion of ethnic rights, except where they concerned the real-estate developments that he was promoting.”

  “So what are you trying to tell me?” Abraham looked at his son with an expression on his face that showed that this was not an argument that was worthy of him. “It wasn’t Schwarzgeist you saved, it was the Torah. What does it matter who donated it?”

  “Yes, but when they build the new synagogue this Torah will have the place of honor. People will say, ‘There is the Torah that was miraculously saved’ – because of course to everyone but me it was a miracle and not an accident. And they will examine it and want to know its history. And someone will say, ‘Yes, it was donated by one of the first Jews of the city, Schwarzgeist.’ And someone else will say, ‘Schwarzgeist – aha, he must have been a fine man if God saw fit that his Torah should be saved.’ And so the name of your son will go down on a scroll of honor beside the name of this other sterling citizen, and both these names will be preserved in the annals of time. Old men will bless us.” Isaac’s voice was mock-lyrical, faintly sardonic.

  “Pooh-pooh!” Abraham interrupted at last. “What nonsense you’re talking.” But his voice betrayed his concern.

  Isaac was silent a moment. “It may very well happen,” he said slowly, “but I wonder if it really matters? Few things really matter in the way we think they do. There is always another way of seeing them. I even think now that if things could happen over again I would not change them.” Knowing that he could not communicate all of it in words, Isaac tried by holding his father’s eyes to make him understand. “And if we can’t seem to see the same thing in the same way at different times, how can we tell what is the true way of se
eing it? So we will not worry about Schwarzgeist.”

  “I have never worried about Schwarzgeist,” Abraham said positively, yet smiled at the same time in a way that struck Isaac as being so naïvely delighted that it pierced through him. “Do you know what?” continued Abraham after a moment’s pause. “I can hardly wait for you to get better. It seems to me that you give in too easily when you are sick.”

  There was a sort of harmony between them for the rest of the evening. The child told how his day had been spent, and after supper he played the violin for them while Ruth lay beside Isaac and he hugged her shamelessly. When the child had finished practicing, Abraham told the story of Iloig the giant king who had sent his spies to find out exactly how much room Moses and the approaching Israelite people took up and then lifted up a mountain big enough to crush them all. But by the time the Israelites had come close enough he had grown so tired with carrying his mountain that it rested around his forehead, and a giant tooth had grown from his jaw to help hold it up. And Moses, who was himself a very tall man, as can be judged by the fact that his ax was four ells long, approached Iloig and jumped up and swung with all his might, and the ax was to Iloig as a fly tickling his shin. But by now Iloig was so tired and his tooth was so deeply embedded in the mountain that he could no longer lift it off. So gradually Iloig disappeared beneath his mountain, and Moses and his people passed onward.

  Still they bothered him, Isaac’s words. What did he mean by this talk of dying? Later, when both Isaac and the child were asleep, Abraham spoke to Ruth. “Is there something you’re not telling me about Isaac? I see how you and the doctor always whisper quiet-quiet. And Isaac acts and sometimes talks so – What did he mean when he talked of dying?”

  “There’s nothing we’re keeping from you, Pa,” said Ruth tiredly. “The doctor’s told you the same thing. He’s sick. His heart is hanging on a thread. They don’t know so much about the heart but they know he’s sick,” she repeated, “sick.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Abraham. “He’s sick,” he repeated after her automatically. Somehow he’d got used to these words so that there was something almost undisturbing about them. “He’s very sick.” But this he’d known all along. He stood there, looking down at Ruth, noticing automatically that a few gray hairs were sprinkled among her disheveled black curls. “But it’s nothing, he’s young yet,” he said half aloud, almost argumentatively. “He’s much too young.” He looked to Ruth for confirmation, bending forward a little. But she remained seated, her forehead downbent, resting on the palm of her hand.

  Abraham felt suddenly very tired, as though he could scarcely stand on his feet. “It’s late,” he murmured apologetically at Ruth’s bent head. “I’m so tired.” He moved, feeling as though he were already asleep, in the direction of his bedroom. “I’m so tired,” he repeated to himself mumblingly. With difficulty he groped his way through the living room, where the child slept, and down the hall to his own bedroom. It was almost too much effort to fumble out of his clothes. “I’m tired,” he told himself plaintively and dropped suddenly into a deep, terrifying well of sleep.

  —

  Chaim was the only one he could talk to, and he didn’t come that day until very late in the afternoon. When Chaim did come finally, he was surprised that yesterday Abraham had been so full of optimism and plans for the future and now his manner was distracted, his words sometimes confused, sometimes almost wild-sounding. Personally Chaim didn’t like it, this rushing of the imagination toward possible foes. What good did it do a man to stand there at bay, surrounded by thoughts that could not possibly help anyone? He, Chaim, even in his worst moments, had always shut his eyes and prayed. Something, through God’s help, had always come along, one way or another.

  “Ever since it happened” – Abraham, his hands gripping the counter, leaned forward toward him – “there have been two voices in me. One of them sings all day. Every other moment it reminds itself of what he did, of how he ran forward. When people stop me to ask about him it takes the words of praise from their mouths and weaves them into a song. The newspapers – you read them with me yourself, Chaim. Remember how Mrs. Plopler told – oh, I have heard it from at least a dozen people that she went about telling them how she took us in first when we were homeless immigrants. Of course she didn’t mention that it wasn’t charity, that we paid for that room of hers that no one else would rent. And she tells people that Isaac was crazy about her daughters and would have married one of them had he not been afraid of hurting the other. I can tell you for a fact that she winds it all out of her imagination. Isaac was afraid of her girls, if such a man can be afraid of anything.

  “Take even the child’s friends. That Dmitri that hits him all the time asked him if they were going to cut off Isaac’s arms because of the burns. He came crying home. Children with their imaginations.

  “But all the time while one voice rejoices the other one is whispering. What is wrong, then? Why is he still in bed? Why did he have an attack yesterday? The things he talked of made the whispering grow to a thundering in my head. When I looked into his eyes, and after, when I spoke to Ruth – I don’t know what it was, I can scarcely remember now, except that when I woke up this morning I knew that somehow something was trying to turn the one glorious moment of my life into ashes. Chaim,” said Abraham, leaning far over the counter in his urgency, “my son is the heart in me; he is my arms. He must get well, isn’t that so? What will happen to us? Didn’t he save the Torah?”

  “Of course,” said Chaim a little awkwardly, a little frightened by it all. “He is a hero. But we cannot do anything – that is, God will help us. Don’t worry. He saved the Torah,” Chaim finished lamely.

  Hymie Polsky had heard Abraham’s voice raised as he stood kibitzing behind his father in the back room. Chewing gum with noisy, circular movements of his jaws, he moved into the delicatessen and around to the cash register in time to hear Abraham repeating for the millionth time that his son had saved the Torah.

  So he got his balls singed, thought Hymie impatiently, just to save a piece of paper telling him to save them for his wife. That was a good one for the boys. It occurred to Hymie that he could add a few original thoughts to this discussion of the saving of the Torah.

  “You know what?” he said out loud to the two of them. “I was just figuring it out the other day, when my dad lent you that money.” It was rather clever, his idea. “I just want to prove something to you.” He lifted his buttock over the stool and searched about for a pencil and a piece of paper in the drawer by the cash register. “How long is it since Isaac saved the Torah? About a year now, I should say, last Octo– September, toward the end of September. All right.” Hymie leaned forward over the table, pencil in hand, his pants straining over his heavy buttocks. Chaim looked questioningly at Abraham, who glared at Hymie in angry shame that he had mentioned the loan.

  “Let’s say” – Hymie looked at them over his shoulder – “thirteen months at fifteen, at most twenty dollars a week for wages, maybe even less, probably. Twenty times four times thirteen.” Hymie figured noisily. “Well, we can take a rough guess. Now what about doctor bills and hospital bills? At least half as much again, if not more. Now, how much would a new Torah cost, eh?” Hymie looked around him triumphantly. “Don’t you see? If he hadn’t saved the Torah, by now he’d have enough money to donate a new Torah and some to spare, and you wouldn’t have had to borrow any money, and he wouldn’t be lying around in bed either, probably. That’s pretty funny.”

  Chaim cast a frightened glance at Abraham, whose eyes were fixed on Hymie, his face curiously gray. “Everything you think you can count on your fingers,” Chaim began angrily.

  “Look.” Hymie was looking at Abraham, realizing that something was wrong. “Look, I’m not saying that it isn’t a brave thing, what he did. All I said was – Well, look, figure it out for yourself.”

  Hymie didn’t have time to say any more. The telephone rang beside him, and he picked it up gratefully and turn
ed away.

  “What?” Hymie’s voice rang out heavily in the silence. “Who? Oh, okay.” He turned around, a slightly puzzled look beginning to gather about his eyes. “It’s for you,” he said to Abraham, and his voice faltered. “They want you to come home right away.”

  —

  Abraham turned the corner. Sunset was ingathering the daylight and softening the colors of things. In the west the colors had their last fling of red and purple across the sky. The little knot of people that was gathered in front of the house was all black in the early evening contrast. Abraham moved toward them, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. A head was raised in his direction, and there was a sudden silence in the group. Now Abraham’s feet seemed to take a long time to reach the ground. Instead of air he walked through some heavily resistant material to which the ground was not very firmly anchored.

  This was something that he had lived through before; the red and purple clouds, the dark figures waiting for him, had waited for a long time. It was as though he were walking into a picture that had hung on his own wall all his life, waiting for him. He passed through the still-standing, faceless figures.

  Through the open door of the living room he saw the child sitting quietly at the kitchen table with his back bent like a little old man. Someone stood beside him. Behind Abraham, Chaim Knopp joined the group of silent figures.

  Abraham raised his eyes, avoiding the bed, to the figure in the chair. Had Ruth been able to help him, she would have rushed forward. But she was still filled with the fear and the shock of it, of coming in and finding him so, just so, irrevocably. Now in the old man’s eyes she read, almost like an accusation, the fact that she was still alive. Abraham moved toward the bed where Isaac lay.

  THIRTEEN

  From the living-room floor, where she and Abraham sat on pieces of sacking, Ruth heard her sister talking to Mrs. Knopp and Mrs. Plopler. “Poor child” – her sister’s voice was placid, pitying – “never had any luck.”