Universe 15

by Terry Carr

  “Wesley—”

  “Wes—”

  “Wassyli—”

  “Was—”

  “I can take Spies and Niggers.” Bang! Bang! “I cannot take—Zunks!” Bang! Abruptly, he sat down, and held his head.

  In Fred’s mind: Question: So what’s a Zunk? Answer: A deprecated Huzzuk.

  Wes began again. “They can talk Latin. We can hardly grunt. They recite poems. We can barely tell a dirty joke. They have violinists. We are lucky if we got fiddlers. Why did God punish us poor Slovo slobs by putting us in the same country with them, over there in Europe? Why are we still respectful to them, over here in America? Why? Somebody please tell me. Why?”

  A sister, or maybe a sister-in-law, said, somewhat slowly, “Well… they are better educated—”

  This set Wes off again. “In their dialect, they had books, magazines, newspapers. All we had was the catechism and the missal, in ours. They—”

  “We had a newspaper. Didn’t Papa’s brother used to send it to us… sometimes? We—”

  Wesley brushed the invisible ethnic newspaper aside. “The Patriótsk? The Patriótsk. Came out once a month. One sheet of paper, printed on four pages. What was in it? The new laws, the price of pigs, some obituaries, no births, and the Saints’ Days in both Church calendars: that’s all Finish. The Patriótsk!” Evidently the invisible newspaper had climbed on the table again, for Wesley swept it off again, and then he trampled on it. Heavily.

  “Hey, look at the time. I got to be going. I sure want to thank you for that delicious—”

  “We are giving you some to take with you, home,” said an aunt. Or was it a niece?

  “Oh, I—”

  “It’s the custom. And you liked.”

  “Oh, sure. But my new apartment isn’t ready yet, and my aunt is strictly kosher.” They didn’t say anything ecumenical, neither did they tell him that the Law of Moses was dead and reprobate; they began to put fruit into a paper bag. A large paper bag.

  But Wes, taking head from hand, was not finished yet. “Why? Why? Will someone tell me why?”

  Someone, surely a sister, too straight-faced to be serious, said, “They are so beautiful; they ride red horses.” Wes almost screamed. When had she ever seen a Huzzuk on a horse? When had she ever seen a red horse? Nick’s wife told Silberman that it was a saying. A proverb.

  “Anyway, you know, some people say it wasn’t the horse that was red, but, uh, the things on the horse? What the horse, like, wore?” Nick, who had been reading the funny papers with a very unfunny expression, now fired up. Who gave a damn? he demanded. Quit talking about all them old European things, he demanded. Fred announced his thanks for the fruit. Wes asked Nick if he wasn’t interested in his rich Old World heritage; Nick, upon whom subtlety was wasted, shouted that no, he wasn’t; Wes ceased being subtle and shouted back; Fred Silberman said that he really had to be going. And started out.

  Someone came out into the hall and walked along with him: old Mrs. Brakk… being very polite, he thought. A dim light was on in her room. She stopped. He paused to say good night. The look she now gave him, had she been forty years younger, would have been an invitation which he knew could not be what she now meant; what was it she now meant?

  “You want to come in,” she said. “You want to see how it works.” She moved inside the room. Silberman followed, beginning to breathe heavily, beginning to feel the earlier excitement. He had forgotten! How could he have forgotten?

  “First you put on the black piece, up on here.” The book-sized slab slid into its place on the rack. The infant sighed in sleep. “Yes, my rope of pearls,” she said softly. “Next, you put on the sorcepan with the water in it. Now, I make just a bowl of tea, for me. And so… next… you put in the blue piece,” about the size of a magazine, “down… there. See? This is what we call the Slovo stove. And so now it gets warm…”

  What had the old Huzzuks, those quasi-countrymen of the old Slovos, what had they meant, “Is it even warm yet?” Silberman forgot the question as he watched the vapors rise, felt the air warm, above; felt the unwarmed space between the two “pieces,” the thicker fragment of black stone (if it was stone) and the thin fragment of pale blue; saw, astonishingly soon, the size of crabs’ eyes, the tiny bubbles form; and, finally, the rolling boil. He was still dazed when she made the tea; he hadn’t remembered setting down the bag of fruit, but now he picked it up, set a soft thank-you and good-night, left the house.

  He could hear them still shouting in the kitchen.

  “That’s nice,” said Tanta Pesha when he gave her the fruit.

  “Tanta, what is it with the Huzzuks and the Slovos?”

  Out came the bananas. “The Huzzuks?” She washed the bananas, dried them with a paper towel, dropped it in the garbage. “The Huzzuks. They are all right.” Out came the oranges.

  “Well, what about the Slovos?”

  She washed the oranges. “The Slovos?” She dried the oranges with a paper towel, dropped it in the garbage. “The Slovos? They are very clean. You could eat off their floors. On Saturday night they get drunk,” and he waited for more, but no more came: Tanta Pesha was washing the apples. This done, she was overcome by a scruple. “Used to,” she said. “Now? I don’t know. Since I moved away.” How long had she and Uncle Jake lived near the Huzzuks’ and Slovos’ neighborhood? She began to dry the apples with a paper towel. How long? Forty years, she said.

  “Forty years? Forty-two? Let be: forty.”

  Had she ever heard of the Slovo stove? No… she never had.

  “Well. Why don’t—how come they don’t like each other?”

  Tanta Pesha looked at him a moment. “They don’t?” she said. She dropped the paper towel in the garbage. Then she put the fruit into a very large bowl and, standing back, looked at it. “That’s nice,” she said.

  The next morning, early, Silberman drove down to the City and made arrangements to be moved, and drove back to “the Ferry.” He went to take a look at his apartment-to-be: lo! the painters were actually painting in it. Mrs. Keeley stopped sweeping, to assure him that everything would be ready in a day or two. “Well, a cup la days,” she amended. “You won’t be sorry; this is always been a very nice block, more’n I can say for some parts a town, the Element that’s moving in nowadays. I give you a very nice icebox, Mr. Silberman.”

  “Say, thanks, Mrs. Keeley; I really appreciate that. Say, Mrs. Keeley, what’s the difference between the Huzzuks and the Slovos?”

  Mrs. Keeley shrugged and pursed her lips. “Well, they mostly don’t live right around here. Mostly they live down around, oh, Tompkins… Gerry… De Witt… Mostly around there.” She adjusted her hairnet.

  “But—is there a difference between them? I mean, there’s got to be; some are called Huzzuks and some are called Slovos. So there must be a—”

  Mrs. Keeley said, well, frankly, she never took no interest in the matter. “Monsignor, up at St. Carol’s, that big church on the hill, he used ta be a Hozzok, rest his soul. What they tell me. Now, your Bosnians, as they call ’um, they mostly live around on Greenville Street, Ashby, St. Lo. The Lemkos, whatever the hell they are, excuse my French, you find them mostly in them liddle streets along by the Creek… Ivy, Sumac, Willow, Lily, Rose. Well… use to. Nowadays… nowadays people are moving around, moving around,” she said, rather fretfully, “and I wish they would-int. I wish people they would stay put. So, as t’them people that you ast me about, Hozzoks and Slobos, mostly you find them down around on Tompkins… Gerry… De Witt… them streets there. What time is it? Is my program coming on?” She went into her apartment and closed the door behind her. A second later he heard a radio increased in volume. He wandered out into the street.

  The streets.

  The streets had certainly been wide enough when Uncle Jake’s had not been almost the only horse-and-wagon plying for trade along them. But that had been a long time ago. The streets had been full of children then, oh what a merry cheerful sight: you think so? To Fred Silbe
rman as a small child this had been Indian Country, full of hostiles. Oh well. Then, during the Depression, there had been a considerable depopulation. Stores had emptied, and stayed empty, and one of the public schools, “Number Seven,” had even closed. However. In the year or two before the War several empty factories had been reopened as Defense Plants, and many new faces had appeared on the streets. Southern Blacks. Island Tans. Mountain Whites. Then Fred had gone off into the Army, and… really… had only now come back. Coming back out of his reverie, he found himself in a time warp.

  Gone were the four-story tenements, block after block of them; he was in a neighborhood of wooden houses, old wooden houses, old wooden fences, old wooden trees. Right across the street was a store building, a sagging rectangle of boards. Seemingly just as he remembered it, even to the raised letters on the glass storefront: sal da t a. Untouched by any recent paint was a sign, Mat Grahdy, Meats, Groceries. He went in, knowing that a bell would tinkle, so of course one did.

  The showcase on one side was large enough to show lots and lots of meats; what it showed now were some scrawny pieces of pig, a hunk of headcheese, a hunk of Swiss cheese, a tray of lilac-colored sausages, and (in a puddle of congealing blood) half of a head of something, cut longitudinally and looking incredibly anatomical. The store seemed vast, and was vastly empty; the smell proclaimed that Coolidge was President; the floor was splintery and clean. Looking up from something on the counter, Mr. Grahdy gazed with absolute amazement. Was he merely amazed that Fred Silberman was coming into his store?—that someone who looked like Fred Silberman was coming into his store?—or, simply, that someone, anyone, was coming into his store?

  Then he smiled. Dipped his head to one side. They shook hands. Fred asked for some small item. Grahdy shrugged one shoulder. Fred asked for a different small item. Another shrug. Fred tried to think of some other small item, opened his mouth to name something, said, “Uh—” and named nothing. Grahdy laughed, finger-brushed his long moustaches: Right! Left!

  “Rice?” he asked. “Sugar? Potatoes?” It was Silberman’s turn to laugh. The elder man joined in. A cut of headcheese was his next suggestion; “and a cut of Swiss? a sliced roll? I give mustard for nothing.” Somehow they wound up sharing the sandwich. Fred, observing an opened book on a newspaper there atop the counter, asked Mr. Grahdy What was he reading?

  The book was turned around. But it was Greek to Fred. “Schiller,” said the grocer, turning pages. “Heine. You can read in the original?” He widened his eyes at Fred’s headshake. “What great pleasure you are missing. So. But… Lermontov? Pushkin? What? ‘Nope’?” A look of mild surprise. And mild reproof. A sigh. “So. No wonder you have Slovo friends!” The front of his very clean, very threadbare apron moved in merriment.

  This was it. The opening. “Mr. Grahdy—” Mr. Grahdy bowed slightly. His horse, his carriage, were at Fred Silberman’s disposal. “Mr. Grahdy… what is it with you… with you people… your people… and the Slovo people? Could you tell me that? I would like to know. I would really like to know. ”

  Mr. Grahdy stroked his smile, mustachios, Vandyke, and all. He looked (Silberman suddenly thought), he would have looked, much like the Kaiser… if the Kaiser had ever looked much like having a sense of humor. “Well, I shall tell you. In our old kingdom there back in Europe. In one province lived mainly Huzzuk only. In one province lived mainly Slovo only. In our own province lived we both. How shall I explain? To say that the Slovo were our serfs? Not exact. To say they were our tenants, our servants? Mm… but… well… Our thralls? You see. The kings, they were of foreign origin, a dynasty. We were their feudalists. We Huzzuk. And the Slovo, the Slovo, they were our feudalists!” His smile indicated not so much satisfaction with the subordinate position of the Slovo as satisfaction with his explanation. And, as Silberman stood leaning against the counter digesting this, the old grocer added to it.

  The Slovo were not, hm, bad people. They were simple. Very simple people. Had come into Europe long ago following behind the Magyar and the Avar. Had been granted permission to settle down in “empty land” belonging to the Huzzuk. Had become Christianized. Civilized. Gave up their old language. Adopted the language of the Huzzuk. Which they spoke badly. Very badly.—Here, with many chuckles, Grahdy gave examples of the comical Slovo dialect, of which exemplar Fred of course understood nothing whatsoever.

  He did take advantage of the old man’s laughing himself into a coughing fit and then into smiling silence. “What about their stove, Mr. Grahdy? What’s with the Slovo stove? What is it, what is it, how does it work?” And here Mr. Grahdy threw back his head and laughed and laughed and coughed and coughed and laughed and coughed and laughed.

  It took quite a while for him to recover. And after he had been slapped on the back and had sipped a glass of water and sucked a Life Saver and assured Fred (with many mimes and gestures) that he was now all right, Grahdy spoke in a weakened voice, incomprehensibly; then, rather more clearly, though very husky: “Did it get warm yet?” he asked.

  Silberman jumped away from the counter. “But what do you mean by that? You said it last night and so did Mr. What’s-His-Name with the thick white hair and you both laughed and laughed then—”

  “The woman in the story. The Slovo woman in the story. The famous story anecdote. You know.”

  But finally Fred got his point across that no, he did not know. Grahdy was amused at this. At this, next, Grahdy was incredulous. And finally, persuaded that indeed, famous or never so famous, the story anecdote was absolutely unknown to F. Silberman—“Your great-grandfather did not ever told you? No? No?”-—Grahdy was absolutely delighted. God knows when he had last had an absolutely fresh audience…

  A Slovo woman had newly emigrated to the United States. Came to stay with relatives. By and by someone asked that a pot of water be put on for tea. “I will do it,” said the greenhorn woman. Did she know how to do it? Of course, of course! What did they think? Of course she knew how! “Shouldn’t someone go and show her?” Nonsense; not necessary! Off she went, from the front room into the kitchen to put the water on for the tea. So they talked and they waited and they waited and they waited, and still no call from the kitchen. Had she gone out the back door? So someone went in to see. They found her standing by the stove and looking at it. (Grahdy indicated her perplexed look.) “Was the water hot yet.” Here Grahdy indicated that the great punch line was coming; here Grahdy put hands on hips and an expression of annoyance and bewilderment on face.

  “ ‘Was the water hot yet?’ ”

  “ ‘Hot? Hot? It didn’t even get warm!’ ”

  Neither did Silberman. What the hell. But the story anecdote was not over. The punch line was followed by an explanation, (a) The Slovo greenhorn woman knew nothing about a gas range, (b) The Slovo greenhorn woman assumed that the gas range was, simply, a Slovo stove, American style, (c) So she, seeing that the grate—which to her was, of course, “the black part”—seeing this already in place, she put water in the pot and set it on top. (d) Leaning against the gas stove there happened to be the grease tray, usually placed of course underneath the burners to catch spatters and drips; it had just been cleaned, was why it was where it was. It was enameled, and a pale blue, (e) So, assuming that this was “the blue part,” she had slid it into place, underneath the burners, (f) Had not turned on the gas, (g) had not struck a match, (h) had just waited for this American gas stove to behave like a Slovo stove—

  —and here came the question and answer together again, as inexorable as Greek tragedy and by now almost as familiar as Weber and Fields or Abbott and Costello:

  “ ‘Was the water hot yet?’ ”

  “ ‘Hot? Hot? It didn’t even get warm!’ ”

  This was, evidently, and by now Fred had had lots of evidence, the hottest item there had ever been in Huzzuk humor in the history of the world: Joe Miller, Baron Munchausen, Charlie Chaplin, step way back. Get ready for something really funny: the anecdote story of the greenhorn who thought that by sliding
the grease tray underneath the gas burners, and by doing nothing else, she could produce heat!

  Hot- cha!

  Yocketty-bop-cha!

  Why this venerable race joke, certainly worth a chuckle when fresh and crisp, still guffawed its way down the corridors of time, required more consideration than Fred was then prepared to give. But it was a lot, lot easier to understand why the Slovos, who had been listening to it for… how long? forty years? eighty years?… were beginning to get kind of restless. And—

  “And how does it work, Mr. Grahdy? I mean… scientifically?”

  The one-shoulder shrug. “Who knows, my dear young gentleman? Consider the electrical properties of the amber, a great curiosity in the former age; but today, merely we flick a switch.”

  The local public library was not changed much since Andrew Carnegie had helped endow it; there was nothing in the catalogue under either Huzzuk, Slovo, or Stove which provided even faint enlightenment. The encyclopedia ran to information about the former dynasty and its innumerable dull rulers; also The Huzzukya areas have become moderately industrialized and The interests of the Slovoya areas remain largely agrarian and Exports include duck down, hog bristles, coarse grades of goat hair and wool. Goody.

  In the Reference Room the little librarian with the big eyeglasses listened to his request; said, in her old-time professionally hush-hush voice, “I think there is a pamphlet”… and there certainly was a pamphlet; it was bound in, and bound in tightly, with a bunch of other pamphlets on a bunch of other subjects. The nameless author-publisher (“Published by the Author”) had disguised the fact of not having much to say by saying it in rather large type. Leaning on the volume with both hands to keep it open, Silberman learned that “the Slovoi themselves no longer admit to know just where was or even approximately their ancestral ‘Old Home’ or ‘Old Place’ near ‘The Big Water.’ The latter has been suggested for Caspian Sea or Aral Sea, even fantastically has been suggested ‘Lake Baikal.’ In Parlour’s Ferry are found Huzzuki in many Middle Class professional commercial role and has been correctly suggested Slovoi fulfill labor tasks with commendable toil and honesty.” There was nothing about stoves, and Fred felt that unless he wanted eventually to sell photographs of his wrists to Charles Atlas, he might as well let go of the bound volume of pamphlets; he did, and it closed like a bear trap.