Since when did you find your father an opener of such doors? That’s all I have to think about. And besides, she’s making fun. What could she want from me? I’m no card player, and money she couldn’t squeeze from me.
Maybe – Isaac laughed – it’s you she wants to squeeze a little.
So that’s what your mother and I slaved for, to bring up our son to be a grobion. That woman – Well, never mind, whatever it is, if that’s what she wants from me, if that’s what her door leads to, it would be a fine way, eh, to agree that her way has been right all along. What right would I have then to hope for a word, a sign? What right would I have to mourn my sons? That you don’t answer eh? No, when it comes to that all is silent.
It remained silent. Abraham was sorry. Come, tease me a little more, he suggested, but he knew that it was no use.
—
“Hi, Grampa!” Moses came running down the street, limping slightly. Abraham’s heart lifted. He bent forward as though to catch the boy, and was a little disappointed when Moishe stopped running just before he reached him. Well, he was a big boy already for such games. Moses scuffed along beside him in the grass at the edge of the walk.
“Your ma not home yet?” Abraham asked.
“No,” said the boy. Covertly, critically he examined his grandfather’s face as they walked along. It wasn’t true. His beard was not funny. What did they know about it? His grandfather was somebody, not just a boozer like Dmitri’s pa.
“You gonna grow a dumb beard like your grandfather when you grow up?” – from Dmitri.
“Ya,” he countered boldly, because they weren’t going to make fun of his grandfather and get away with it. “You better grow one too.”
“Who, me? What for? Think I’m a crazy Jew?”
“Raise fleas,” suggested Donald Gregory.
“No, I’ll grow one because I’m a Jew,” Moses said. “You grow one so you can tell your face from your ass….”
“Why are you limping?” asked Abraham.
“Nothing,” said Moses.
“What do you mean, nothing? Show me,” said Abraham. They stopped outside the gate, and the boy rolled up his pants leg. “Where did you get such a bruise? Did you fall?” The boy shook his head. “You were fighting?”
“No.”
“That hooligan was hitting you again? I’ll go over there and I’ll –”
“No, it’s okay. He’s too dumb. I fixed him.” Moses smiled, remembering his gibe.
“If he picks on you, tell me,” said Abraham anxiously, letting the boy precede him at the gate. “I’ll go over and –”
“Nah.” Moses strolled ahead of him, hands in pockets and with more of a limp. “It’s okay.”
Pride swelled up in Abraham. So grown-up, so self-sufficient! Ordinarily he might not seem like such a wild one, but just touch his honor. With his grandson, as with his sons, that was no light matter.
Moses watched while his grandfather took a key out of his pocket and put it in the lock. It occurred to him that he could do it faster. His grandfather fumbled with the key in the lock, then took it out and examined it in a puzzled way. “Doesn’t fit,” he said, reached down into his pocket again, and finally fished out another key. The boy moved impatiently from one foot to the other. With his key they would have got in long ago.
Abraham swung the door open, and the boy rushed in ahead of him. “Tell me what happened to you today,” Abraham called after him as he followed him into the house. “What did you learn in Chaider? Tell me while I warm up our supper.”
Moses had grabbed a comic book. “About Jacob,” he said absently.
“Who?” said his grandfather.
“Jacob,” he said a little louder.
“Ah! Our Jacob. Did she tell you how he wanted to be eldest, and when he and his brother Esau were in their mother’s stomach and Esau started to be born first, Jacob grabbed his foot and tried to hold him back?”
“No, you told me already. But she told us the whole –”
“And did she tell you how Jacob wrestled with the angel of God for His blessing?” His grandfather went right on, without even hearing him. “He saw God face to face and he wouldn’t let him go until he got His blessing. That is a man.”
“She told us that part,” said Moses more loudly, “and all the rest,” he added.
“Oh,” said Abraham.
Moses was sorry. He didn’t want to hear the story again now, but he was sorry that he had cut the words from his grandfather’s lips so that he now remained silent, nodding his head. Moses pushed away the comic book. He didn’t care that his grandfather liked to repeat a story over and over again and that he was different from other people, or that he wore a beard, either. He didn’t think it was funny. “That Jacob,” said Moses out loud and came close to where his grandfather stood peering into the pot that was warming on the stove. “It sure was a good story.”
Abraham looked down at him a moment, then put his hand on his head. The boy pressed against him. “It’s not just a story. Can you imagine what it would be to see God face to face? And to win His blessing? My blessing I give you with all of my heart. But to win for you His blessing. Ah!”
The boy moved restlessly.
“You haven’t told me what you did today,” said Abraham, fondling his hair. “Start from the beginning. I want to know everything.”
“Oh.” The boy shrugged his shoulders vaguely, and moved out from under his grandfather’s hand, back toward the comic book on the table. “Nothing much.”
—
He wouldn’t tell her what Hymie had said. Little Ruth cared nowadays what he told her. Maybe, maybe she’d care. But if she cared she’d worry too. And she had enough on her mind to think about. Not that she had cared much when he had told her about Chaim’s barrel, about how it had disappeared one day, just like that. Of course she couldn’t understand why it should bother him so. Isaac, maybe, would have understood. He couldn’t even remember how many years the barrel had sat there in the shop, even from before the renovations. Everybody knew it was Chaim’s. Whom did it bother? It wasn’t in anybody’s way. But one morning, just like that, something was missing, the place wasn’t the same. A presence was gone. And Hymie, strutting around with that just-ask-me smirk on his face. Hymie he hadn’t asked. Polsky, yes.
“That barrel? What? I don’t know.” Polsky was very busy all of a sudden. “Ask Hymie. It probably took up space. What was it doing there anyway?”
He hadn’t asked Hymie. He had searched, and when he had found nothing he had brought out a chair from the kitchen, where he ate his lunch, and put it in the place where the barrel had been. In case Chaim should drop in, though he dropped in much less frequently now and stayed at the green synagogue more, there should be somewhere for him to sit. And he had just wished silently in his aggravation that Hymie should say something to him, just even a word about it, and he would then be able to tell him; oh, he would tell him. Avrom was still a man who could fight. He could still show his fist. And he looked Hymie right in the eye when Hymie saw the chair, waiting for him to speak. But Hymie still had a little bit of respect for him, at least when they were face to face, and after a moment of silence he moved sullenly onto his seat behind the cash register. Not that the chair could make up for the barrel. It took up too much room. It could not be more than a gesture. He could not help thinking of how the wheel had turned, of how it was turning now still.
In what had happened this morning, for instance. “Avrom, I want you to meet my draft exemption,” Hymie had announced in that exaggerated voice he used, as though a man were entirely deaf. A fat little girl. “We’re getting married,” Hymie boasted amid a good deal of girlish giggling, “right away.”
Polsky had brought a bottle. The barber had come in. Hymie had filled up their glasses, and Morton’s too. The little girl’s he filled up twice in quick succession, and soon the giggling filled the shop with hard, tiny knots of sound that crowded the air. When she had started to make some remark
, pointing at Abraham’s beard, he had picked up his glass and moved toward the kitchen so as to avoid hearing this child make a fool of herself. It was then that he thought he heard Hymie say something about the highest-paid delivery boy in the city. He had stopped and listened, only to have his ears filled with hoarse laughter and staccato giggles. Was it himself they meant? Who could say that about him? He still did more than his share, and he could tell it right to Hymie’s face!
All right, so he wouldn’t tell Ruth. She would think he was afraid, maybe, for his job. But talk to her he had to. There were things that he had wanted to say now for days, that he had thought about again and again. His own problems he would keep out of it. She had enough to think about.
“I want you to know,” said Abraham a little heavily, for it had taken him moments of struggle to get the words out, and even now he didn’t know whether these were the words that he had wanted to speak, “that I will not stand in your way.”
“What, Pa?” Ruth’s reply was somewhat absent-minded. She sat, figuring, at the kitchen table, going over the initial outlay. She was beginning to be a little frightened about her business plans. Only God knew whether people would want to buy now. Harry assured her that people would buy, that these things would be scarce soon. That was why the wholesalers were beginning to operate on the quota system. He was putting her down for a little more than she would initially be needing, because he could get rid of the stock easily enough, and later on when her business was established she would be glad to get more. There was no real cause to worry. Wasn’t he confident enough to advance her credit on this first big order? He made it sound so easy.
She was not listening. Abraham fought back a twinge of annoyance. It was as though nothing that he could say to her would be of any importance. How she had danced around his every word once; but no, it was no use to think of that. He had no right to reproach now. He would let her know that. At least she should listen to this much. He had waited for this moment all evening, had waited till the boy was safely in bed so they should not be disturbed. He had waited impatiently for the time to come when he would sit facing Ruth, and he would break through the silence or the triviality of the words they generally exchanged and talk at last in a way that had meaning to them both. And he would not bother her with trivial things, with his own aggravations. What he wanted was to talk, really, with understanding, with trust, to be able to feel that each knew what was going on inside the other even if he could not understand what was going on in the rest of the world. He wanted her to know, right from the start, that he would not be a responsibility, he who could still feel the sweep of life surging in him. “I want you to know that I will not stand in your way,” he said again.
Ruth put down her pencil. “What do you mean, Pa?”
What did he mean? “I mean that you are young.” Abraham furrowed his brows together and stared at his hands, which lay on the table. He could almost hear the drilling sound the pains made up and down his arms, through his wrists and down into each separate knuckle. He clenched his fists. “You’re young,” he repeated.
“You’re worried,” Ruth said gently, “that I’m taking on too much. You don’t have to worry, Pa. It’s not so much. It’s a risk, I know; we might fail and then we’ll end up even more in debt. But Harry says –”
“Why is he in such a hurry?”
“I’ve told you, Pa, he wants to get me on his customer list. They’re starting this quota business at the wholesalers’.”
“I don’t know,” said Abraham. “I don’t know, but I won’t argue with you. I won’t stand in your way. I won’t drag you back. What kind of a face would I have if people could say that I tried to rule you? I have no right over you.”
“Who says you try to rule me, Pa? You know I’m always willing to take your advice. But we’ve talked about this before, and you can see for yourself that it’s the only thing I can do if I want to better things for us.”
Abraham nodded. His fists unclenched, and he drummed his fingers absently on the table. How to tell her that he too wanted to better things for them, but that it was no longer just a question of things? Things came and things went, just as a man could feel that his body grew older. But was this all? That was what he wanted to discuss. He did not want a barrier of polite words between them. All evening he had nourished this feeling that he would talk to Ruth and they would no longer be strangers. He would discover in her an ally; he would lose this feeling of uncertainty and irritation when she spoke of the future and made plans. Try as he might to hold it, the future seemed always to be moving away from him; her plans did not really include him. But why should they? It was true what Laiah said, and what even Sonya Plopler had hinted. She was young; she had a future still.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “nevertheless I want you to know that you should not consider yourself tied to me. When you married Isaac you didn’t know that you would end up with an old man to look after. I know I’m an old man. I’m not so blind as to think it’s a good thing for you to be tied to an old father-in-law. It’s not that I feel I am an old man; I feel I could build worlds yet, if I could only make them stand. But that is what shows I am old. A man is young while he thinks he knows. The old” – Abraham waved his hand and could not help the note of bitterness – “can only crouch in their corners and pray.”
Ruth made as if to speak, but he held up his hand and went on. “So I say to myself, Why should I keep her tied to me, invent another duty for her when I know that life will be hard enough? Why should you feel yourself bound? I am not blind. I can see that you pay me a courtesy sometimes, you ask my advice; not maybe because you really want my advice but because you think, you remember, Well, this is Isaac’s father. I must acknowledge that he is still alive.”
Again he held up his hand to silence Ruth. “No, the plans you make are your own plans; they don’t need me. Who knows what plans you would have and what things you would think of – good things, I am not criticizing you – if I were out of the way?” Abraham ceased speaking, turned his hands over, palm upward, and flexed his fingers. Was this what he had wanted to say?
“Why do you talk of being in the way?” Ruth’s voice reached out to him through the yellow silence of the kitchen. “Have I ever said that you were in the way? Pa, you should know by now that when I ask your advice it’s because I want it. If I do things without asking you sometimes it’s because there’s so much in my head to think about. It’s not because I don’t respect your word. Why do you talk of being an old man? I know, I know why you talk this way. I can see that your arms are bothering you. When your arms bother you you get” – Ruth stopped herself just in time from saying “cranky” – “you get depressed. When you’re ready for bed I’ll bring you a hot-water bottle.” Really, it was not fair at a time like this, when she had so much to think about, that he should talk this way. What more did he want from her? Ruth took up her pencil again and began to jot down more calculations on the paper.
Abraham watched her for a few moments. The drilling in his arms seemed to spread into a tingling restlessness in the whole of his body. “I don’t want a hot-water bottle,” he said finally.
It took a few seconds for his words to penetrate to Ruth. “Well” – she could not disguise the slight edge of impatience in her voice – “what do you want, then?”
“I want that when I talk to you, you should listen to me.”
“But I am listening to you. Why are you talking like a child? If you don’t want a hot-water bottle I’ll make you a hot compress. Whatever you want I’ll make for you. What more do you want?”
“Who would have thought once that what I said would be by you childish? There was a time once when you too listened, when my words rang in your ears and brought only sweetness from your lips. Yes, you’ll do what I want, you’ll stuff my mouth just so that I won’t bother you, I won’t be a nuisance. I don’t want your compresses. I don’t want your hot-water bottles.” The peevishness fought inside of him with the bewilder
ed feeling that this was not what he really wanted to say.
“I’m not saying that everything you say is childish. Why do you all of a sudden pick on a thing to make a fuss about, and then nothing I say or do is right? First you keep drumming it in my head that the shop will fail, the shop will fail, as if I haven’t got enough fears of my own, and now –” Something in Ruth told her that she had said enough, that she should not press the matter further. She tried to be soothing. “We’re all unreasonable sometimes. I know I am, and often you’re unreasonable too.” The truth was the truth. “I know that your arms are hurting now; I can tell already. So I want to do what I can to help you, but all of a sudden you’ve got a stubborn idea into your head that you don’t want this and you don’t want that. Well, what more can I say? I can’t suffer your pains for you.”
“Because it’s not my arms, that’s why. What do I care if they ache? It’s bitter enough for me to be alive when they’re dead. When did I say your shop would fail? Why should you suffer my pains? Why should I expect you should suffer my pains? Why should you suffer at all? And your shop won’t fail either. I know you can make your way in the world without me, I know already.”
“What do you mean, you know?” Something had communicated itself to Ruth, a nervousness. What criticism did he imply? Why should she have to stand for hints like this?
“I mean,” he was saying, “what you say, that’s what I mean. You can’t suffer my woes. Why should you suffer me? Why should I always remind you of something that’s dead? Why should you take it as a duty to tie yourself to someone you don’t belong to when you might even want to marry another, make another family. I can see that’s a thought you’ll have in spite of yourself. Well, if it happens I want you just to say so, that’s all. You see, now you’re annoyed at me. We can’t talk for a few minutes without you showing that you’re annoyed. I say to myself, Who is she? What are you to her? Yes, she loved your son, and she was a good wife to him. What more can you expect? With me he was the future. You can still find a new tomorrow. Will you want yesterday dragging at your heels?”
The Sacrifice Page 31