Stern

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  And so Stern loved a bowing grandmother and sat through Seder duels and could race with furious speed through books of ancient Hebrew; but there was little God to his religion. When Stern went to college in Oregon, even the trappings fell away. He told the people he met at school, “I don't care much about being a Jew. There's only one thing; each year I like to go and hear the Shofar blown on Rosh Hashanah. It sort of ties the years together for me.” And it was true that for a while Stern's last concession to his early Jewish days was to stand outside synagogues each year and listen to the ram's horn. It was as though listening to the ancient sound would somehow keep him just the tiniest bit Jewish, in case it turned out someday that a scorecard really was kept on people. One year he didn't go, however, and then he rarely went again, even though he kept using that “ties the years together” line when he met new girls and needed impressive attitudes. Before Stern met his wife at college and lived with the old man of dangling pelvic supports, he stayed in a boardinghouse of Jewish students, where the air was thick with self-consciousness. One of his two room-mates was a tall graceful redheaded boy with a monotonous voice that sounded as though he were in a telephone booth. His personality was limited, and since he seemed to have only one joke (When someone asked him for a match, he would answer, “Sure, my ass and your face”), he became known as “Gordon One-Gag.”

  “I've got lots of jokes,” he would protest from inside his booth, to which Stern or the other room-mate would say, “Nonsense, One-Gag, you've only got one gag.”

  Stern's other room-mate was a small, flabby ex-Navy man named Footsy who had motherly-looking breasts and a large fund of anal jokes developed on shipboard. There grew up among the three a jargon and patter, all of which hinged on Jewishness. The motherly Navy man might suddenly arise during a study period, hold his stomach, and leave the room. “Where are you going?” the redhead might ask, to which Footsy would answer, “I can't stand the Jewishness in the room,” bringing forth howls of amusement. Or Stern might make a remark about the weather, to which the Navy man would say, “How Jewish of you to say that.” If Stern were to utter a pronouncement of any kind, one of his room-mates would invariably retort: “Said with characteristic Jewishness.” Long imaginary dialogues were carried on between the redhead and the Navy man in which the redhead was a job applicant and Footsy was an employment director, reluctant to hire him. Finally, Footsy, prodded to explain why, would say briskly, “Well, if you must know, it's because of certain minority characteristics we'd rather not go into,” and all in the room would break up laughing. The Navy man would often do a storm trooper imitation, in which he got to say, “Line dem opp against the fwall and commence mit the shooting,” and a boy down the hall named Wiegel who had sick feet would come in and do another German officer, saying, “Brink in the Jewish child. Child, ve eff had to execute your parents.” The redhead would try Mussolini in his last days, but Footsy, the Navy man, would say, “Stick to your one gag.” Footsy would lie in bed for hours twisting lyrics of popular songs to get Jews into them: “Beware my foolish heart” became “Beware my Jewish heart,” “Fool that I am” turned into “Jew that I am,” and “I'm glad I met you, wonderful you” emerged “I'm glad you're Jewish, you wonderful Jew.” Stern chipped in with a full lyric that went (to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell”):

  The Jews caused the war.

  The Jews caused the war.

  We hate the Jews

  Because they caused the war.

  On occasion, the president of the boardinghouse, a short boy with quivering old-man jowls, would appear in the room and say, “These things aren't funny,” after which Footsy would poke Stern in the ribs and whisper, loud enough for all to hear, “He's being very Jewish,” and the president would stomp off, jowls in a rage.

  Although much dating was done by the social club, little attention was paid to the girls of the single Jewish sorority, who wore the traditional campus skirts and sweaters but who seemed somehow an acne-ed, large-shouldered parody of the brisk, blond girls of the gentile sororities. Only sick-footed Wiegel took out what Footsy described as “laughing, dark-eyed beauties.” When Wiegel announced that he'd booked another for Saturday night, Footsy would say, “But she's a pig,” to which Wiegel would answer, “Yes, but you've got to date the pigs to get to the gentile queens.”

  Before dates, the redhead, all dressed, might stand before Stern and say, “Check my hair.”

  “Fine,” Stern would say.

  “Suit?”

  “Excellent.”

  “Check me for Jewishness.”

  “Reject,” Stern would say, and all would become convulsed. Footsy would then bare a womanly breast and say, “Here, One-Gag, practice on this little beauty.” After dates, all would compare how they had done, in crisp, codelike sum-ups.

  “Knee and conversation,” the redhead might say, and Stern would add he'd gotten “elbow and upper thigh.” Footsy, who took out homelier girls, would generally have come through with “outside of bra, heavy breathing, and an ear job.” Then Stern and the redhead would get into their beds, turn out the lights, and listen to Footsy do a high-pitched imitation of an imaginary date being seduced by any one of the room-mates. “Oh, Gordon, you're very cute, but I can't possibly do any screwing. I'll take off my panties, but you've got to promise there'll be no screwing. You promise?” Footsy's voice was so convincing and the girl so appealing that Stern and Wiegel (who often came in late at night for the imitations, rubbing his sick feet) would beg him to do another, substituting their names.

  Going along with the Jewish comedy routines, Stern began to call Footsy, his motherly, good-natured roommate, “Little Jew.” In the morning when he woke up, he'd say, “Morning, Little Jew.” and after classes he would ask, “How's Little Jew getting along?” It sounded good on Stern's tongue, nice and comfortable. He said it in two syllables, and it came out “Gee-yoo,” and when he said it, he would bare his teeth and get a disgusted look on his face, which he felt would add to the irony and comic effect of the routine.

  It was fun to say, and he began to call Footsy “Little Gee-yoo” at every possible opportunity, making terrible faces and then poking Footsy in the ribs with a laugh. It made him feel fine to keep saying it. One day the three room-mates were on their way to the ice-cream parlor where gentile girls hung out after class. Each time a group of girls walked by, Footsy would say to the redhead, “Tell them your one gag, One-Gag. That'll have them swarming all over us.” And Stern would say to Footsy, “What did the little Gee-yoo think of that group?” At the ice-cream parlor, Stern held the door for Footsy, saying, “You first, Little Gee-yoo,” and Footsy turned and said, “No more.”

  “What do you mean, Little Gee-yoo?”

  “Don't call me that any more.”

  “The Little Gee-yoo doesn't like to be called Little Gee-yoo. Little Gee-yoo. Little Gee-yoo.” It felt so good that Stern said it a few more times.

  The three were inside the ice-cream parlor now, and Footsy said, “If you keep doing that, I have something I'll call you.”

  “There's nothing, Little Gee-yoo. Nothing at all.”

  “All right, Nose. What do you think of that? I'll call you Nose. Hello, Nose. Hello, Nose.” With tweed-skirted gentile girls listening, he began to scream out the name—“Nose, Nose. Hello, Nose. What do you say, Nose?”—until Stern, thin-faced and large-nosed at the time, flew out of the door and down the street, the cry following him back to the boardinghouse. At night the room-mates did not speak until, finally, Stern said, “OK, I won't call you the name if you don't call me ‘Nose,”' to which Footsy nonchalantly said, “All right.” To break the tension, the redhead said, “Let me tell you my one gag. Does anyone have a match?” And Footsy said, “Save it.” There was a strain between Stern and Footsy from then on. One day Stern inadvertently called him “Little Gee-yoo” again and added, “I'm sorry. It slipped out.” Instead of overlooking it graciously, Footsy said, “That's all right, Nose.”

  “I said
I didn't mean it,” Stern apologized.

  “That's all right,” said Footsy. “You're getting one for one.”

  At the end of the semester, the room-mates decided that they would separate and Stern went to live with the old man who wore elastic gadgets on his groin.

  In the Air Force, Stern, recently married and swiftly packing on hip fat, felt isolated, a nonflying officer in a flying service, at a time when the jets were coming in and there was no escaping them; the air was full of strange new jet sounds and the ground reverberated with the throb of them. Somehow Stern connected his nonflying status with his Jewishness, as though flying were a golden, crew-cut, gentile thing while Jewishness was a cautious and scholarly quality that crept into engines and prevented planes from lurching off the ground with recklessness. In truth, Stern feared the sky, the myriad buttons and switches on instrument panels. He was afraid of charts with grids on them, convinced he could never master anything called grids, and he was in deadly fear of phrases like “ultra high frequency” and “landing pattern.” He had a recurring dream in which he was a fighter pilot, his plane attended to by a ground mechanic who resented Stern's profile for spoiling the golden, blue-eyed look of the squadron. Each day the mechanic would stand by, neutral-faced, arms folded, while Stern, able to check his plane only peremptorily, took off with heavy heart, convinced wires had been crossed and would split his aircraft in mid-flight. Stern, who traveled to distant bases to do administrative Air Force things, rode once to California as a guest on a general's luxury B-17, sitting alone in the bombardier's bubble and feeling over Grand Canyon that he had been put in a special Jewish seat and sealed off from the camaraderie in the plane's center. After eight hours of self-control, Stern felt the plane shudder and then hang uncertainly for a moment as it circled a West Coast Air Force base. He spread a thin layer of vomit around his bubble and then kneeled inside it as the plane landed, the pilots and other flying personnel filing by him in silence. Cowardly Jewish vomit staining a golden aircraft.

  Stern lusted after the tiny silver wings that said you were a pilot, and once, in a Wyoming PX, he ducked his shoulders down and slipped on a pair, crouching as he did so that no one would see, holding his breath as though each second might be his last. Then he took them off and walked quickly out of the PX, feeling as though he'd looked under a skirt. A great eagle sat atop the cap of every Air Force officer, flying or nonflying, and there were those in small towns, ignorant of insignia, who thought each Air Force man was a pilot clearing the skies of Migs above Korea. One day on Rosh Hashanah, Stern, shipped for a two-week tour to Illinois, walked into a small-town synagogue, his khakis starched, his brass agleam, as though he had scored a dozen flying kills and now sought relaxation. He'd draped a tallith round his shoulders and stood, stooped with humility, in the last row of the temple, mouthing the prayer book words with all of his old speed. One by one, the congregation members, who seemed a race of Jewish midgets, turned and noticed him, and Stern, aware of their fond glances, sent forth some low groans and did several dipping knee bows he remembered from the old days. He did this to cheer them on further and to make it all the more marvelous that he, a man of the sky, took off precious flying time to pray in strange synagogues. Within minutes, the rabbi called him forward and began to heap honors upon his head. Not only was he allowed to read from the Torah but he got to kiss it, too, and then to escort it in a march around the synagogue. Ordinarily only one such honor was dealt out to a congregation member, and then only upon the occasion of a new grandson birth or wedding anniversary. The Torah back in its vault, Stern walked humbly to his seat, aware of the loving glances the tiny Jews kept shooting him. Wasn't it wonderful? A Jewish boy. A fighter. A man who had shot down planes. Yet when there's a holiday he puts on a tallith and with such sweetness comes to sit in synagogues. And did you see him pray? Even in a uniform he reads so beautifully. Stern loved it, and when they shot him glances, he responded with religious groans and dipping bows and as much humility as he could summon. When the Shofar had blown, they clustered around him, touching him, telling him what a handsome Jewish boy he was, saying how wonderful it must be to fly. They knew Jewish boys did accounting for the Army. But Stern was the first they knew who flew in planes. Dinner invitations were flung at the savior, and Stern, silent on his nonflying status, his lips sealed on the subject of his new bride, chose an orthodox watchmaker who did up timepieces for major league umpires and had a large and bovine unmarried daughter named Naomi. When Stern had finished dinner, he was left alone with the girl in a parlor that smelled of aged furniture, unchanged since it had been brought across from Albania after a pogrom. The light was subdued and Stern, belly bursting with chopped liver and noodle pudding, swiftly got her breasts out. They were large and comfortable ones, the nipples poorly placed, glancing out in opposite directions and giving her a strange, dizzying look. Stern fell upon them while the girl settled back in bovine defeat, as though she were able to tell from the sucks, greedy, anxious and lacking in tenderness, that nothing of a permanent nature would come of this, just as nothing ever came of her father's synagogue dinner invitations. She curled a finger through Stern's hair and seemed to think of the procession of dark-skinned boys who had been at her chest, wondering when a serious one would appear and want to wrap them up forever.

  Stern stayed at her breasts like a thief, dizzy with adulterous glee. They were large, his wife's were small, and he stored up each minute as though it were gold. For hours he stayed upon her, expecting an exotic perfume he'd dreamed about to cascade from her bosom. The off-balance arrangement of her nipples prevented him from plunging on further; he was afraid there would be equal strangeness beneath her skirts. Then, too, the room smelled old and religious and Stern imagined himself piercing her and thereby summoning up the wrath of ancient Hebraic gods, ones who would sleep benignly as long as he stayed above the waist. She lay beneath him with cowlike patience while the night went by, and then Stern rose, said, “I have to go back now,” and flew out of the house, reeling with guilt, a day of flying heroism beneath his belt and four hours of capacious bosom-sucking engraved in his mind that no one could ever steal.

  Stern, a non-flier in a flying service, yearned for Air Force comrades but had only friends. There were two of them, non-fliers, with parasitic functions like those of Stern. One was Neidel, the Jewish captain, a finance officer who made furtive afternoon calls to grain market brokers, picking up $20,000 in barley one day, dropping it in wheat the next. A regular officer, Neidel, pockmarked and in his forties, had never married for fear of having to divert money from soybean futures. Stern occasionally had lunch with him in Neidel's old car, telling him of gentile girls from college while Neidel sweated and wolfed down economy coleslaw sandwiches he had prepared in the bachelor officer rooms. Stern's other friend was Kekras, a Greek who had failed in jets. Once lean and blond, he drank heavily now and seemed a parody of gentile fliers, his hair grown long, his khakis soiled, his face swelled up with beer. Kekras burped a lot, said next to nothing, but was a great admirer of strength, and Stern got rises out of him only with apocryphal anecdotes of Charlie Keller, ancient Yankee outfielder. “He could carry seven baseballs in one hand,” Stern would report, and Kekras would shake his head and say, “What a monster.”

  “Some said he could even grab eight of them in his prime.”

  “Jesus,” Kekras would say.

  “I once saw him outside of Yankee Stadium,” Stern would add. “He had the bushiest eyebrows I'd ever seen on a man, and you should have seen his arms. They hung down to the ground like an ape's.”

  “What a horse,” Kekras would say, grinning and shaking his head with affection. “What an ox.” And Stern was thrilled that he was talking intimately with a gentile man of the air, even though a cast-off, heavy-lidded one whose senses were too dulled for the new jets.

  Stern felt like a thief throughout his Air Force tour, a sponger and a parasite, a secret vomiter masquerading in suits of Air Force blue with great hero
ic eagles perched atop his garrison cap. “I'd feel more comfortable wearing a different kind of uniform than the fliers,” he'd tell Kekras, while the Greek burped and wondered whether Dolph Camilli's wrists were larger round than those of Johnny Mize. Only one brief moment did Stern feel in the Air Force and not an unwanted guest in a hostile house, each month taking money that should have gone to fliers.

  On temporary duty in Wyoming one night, Stern had taken a seat at a bar in the officers' club next to a buxom woman quickly labeled a “hooker” by the bartender—“one of the worst I've seen in this club.” Stern, who felt he'd married prematurely, now prowled tormentedly after women on his tours about the globe, keeping mental track of every loveless caress, every conversation, every female contact, as though only when he'd grabbed a certain number of breasts, stroked a certain number of thighs, racked up a magic number of sleepings would he be able to relax and be married. Bracelets of lines ringed the woman's neck, and she sat enclosed in a circle of cheap perfume, but the bourbon quickly got to Stern and turned the perfume into something desirably earthy, the neck lines into lovely chevrons of sophistication. Stern imagined taking her to his staff car, stripping off her undoubtedly worn and tragic underwear, and allowing her to entertain him with slow and worldly acts of love, and then returning quickly to the bar, possibly with an easily cleared up disease upon him, but one delicious notch closer to his magic number of sleepings. Stern sidled close to the woman, an offer of a drink on his lips, when a romantic voice behind him rang out: “Come, woman, and drink my wine. I have need of company and you seem much woman to these eyes.” The hooker wheeled on her seat, said, “Scuse me,” to Stern, and joined the one who had called out—a husky middle-aged man with much blond hair curled romantically down over his forehead and with deep lines burned in his face. He was wearing civilian clothes and talked in a bleary-eyed, outrageously romantic way, rising gallantly for the hooker and telling her, “Woman, you're a rare one and you've wisdom in your smile.” When the hooker took her seat, the romantic man shouted to Stern, “Let the Jew join us, too. I'll not close our circle to the Jew.” Stern's face froze at the bar, but he came over and said, “What do you mean, Jew?” And the man slapped his shoulder and said, “Let the Jew sit and take wine with us.” Stern, oddly at ease, sat down with the pair, uncomfortable only because the man was talking so loud. “Your company is good, woman,” the romantic man said, leaning back and drinking deeply. “Big Jew, you warm me with your presence.” He called Stern “Jew” and “Big Jew” each time he spoke to him, and he called the hooker “woman,” endowing her with a universal quality, and Stern felt a nice feeling of camaraderie sitting and drinking with the pair, the romantic gentleman who might have been an aging soldier of fortune and the wise and silent hooker who had been to many places and stayed with a legion of men. He felt as though he was in a small bar in Macao, among scarred people with grave crimes in their past, at the world's end now, saying only bitter, philosophical things and waiting to die. Ava Gardner a must for the film version. The romantic man, indeed, was a kind of soldier of fortune, a civilian flying instructor assigned to the Air Force. He had trained a small group of Israeli pilots during the Arab-Israeli war, and he had glowing things to say of Israeli skills. “You Jews fly well, Big Jew,” he said to Stern, who exulted in his words. “You fly a good plane, and my hat is off to the flying Jew. I'll drink to you, Big Jew. You do well in the sky.”