by Yoram Kaniuk
In the house of the Shirt King, they consumed with exaggerated ardor the supper that Rachel had cooked. They drank Coca-Cola and sweet wine and the host wasn't compelled to try to talk for them all, nor did he know that his wife's first lover was sitting here. He told Lionel about his war experience. Lionel was silent, looked out the window, and ate slowly. Saul said: I transported machine gun shells for the howitzers. My father fought alongside the Ukrainians and I fought alongside the Austrians, we stood and shot, and then I saw Father, his memory for a blessing, shooting at me and we stopped together. We were in one city and in two different armies, that's how it was to be a Jew back then! Our synagogue was besieged. Always ready, what remained there, what remained? Nothing! But to shoot your father, you didn't have that in this war, Lionel. Lionel didn't answer and looked at Lily. At night she shook in his arms and the shaking went through the wall and touched Samuel. He forgot he was Sam, thought he was Samuel, and started shaking too. Rachel lay with her eyes wide open next to her husband and saw Joseph and didn't know if she yearned for him or if it was once again Rebecca who yearned inside her. The house was surrounded by a fine garden and Lionel explained to Sam that the garden was supposed to be like the garden of the Ford Motor King in his hometown in Connecticut. Samuel saw a moon that looked like a splendid coin and shone like cold metal, the trees moved in the wind, the house was overheated, and Samuel had to open the window and a cold wind penetrated the room. Samuel thought: I'll teach that Shirt King, and when the rage subsided a little, he whispered: Fuck her, Lionel, put your Jewish prick in!
They found a nice apartment on Morton Street in Greenwich Village. When they finished furnishing it, Rachel came to visit them. She looked uneasily at the apartment, which looked more like the apartment of a beggar than the apartment of an heir to a shirt kingdom. There were a few modern lamps and one cabinet that wasn't especially ancient, but the chairs, the easy chairs, the tables, and the cabinets looked strange to her, the paintings were full of some mold that depressed her. She looked painfully at the world she had fled, while Joseph walked around the house looking at her as if she were an old whore selling her wares in a display window.
Her thoughts about Joseph were confused and depressing. She simply didn't know how to think of Joseph, facing his son. Sam left the room, passed by Rachel, who was looking at Lionel. And in the small yard squeezed between gray walls, Lily sat on a wicker chair amid the old wet fallen leaves and thrust a needle into embroidery. Sam looked at the locked windows above the small gardens connected to one another, but no one was seen in the windows.
You're sitting on my mother's dress, said Sam. She raised her face and looked at him. She put down the embroidery and without a word moved aside to the chair. The chair was empty. She looked at the empty chair, shrugged and went inside. Her face remained impassive. She waited until he'd disappeared and continued embroidering.
When he looked at Rachel, her look was dreamy, perplexed, when he felt he disgusted her, he also disgusted himself, went out to the street, walked to Seventh Avenue, and turned north. In a small square, he discovered a luncheonette. Through the window, big empty tables were seen, he went in, ordered a hot dog, slathered a thick layer of mustard on it, ate, drank a cup of coffee, his English was fluent by now, but nobody noticed his accent. Not far from there, he saw a man carrying an aquarium. He followed the man. The man turned into a side street, stopped at a restaurant, and started going down the stairs. The sign on the door said: "The Five Tightrope Dancers." At the entrance, there were no tightrope dancers, but an aquarium. In the aquarium were elusive rare fish. He loved the bold cunning colors. A person in a white coat said to him: Beautiful, eh? Dangerous and very poisonous! Everything beautiful is dangerous, and vice versa! Sam said: A city of philosophers, and continued looking at the fish. In the distance cars were heard honking, a subway train passed and the building shook. He wanted to lead a dog named Ebenezer and take the money out of those people's pockets. Lionel is a lifeline but also an obstacle, he thought. When he went outside, the sky was rounding. Two people in overalls were hanging ornaments over the street. The wind moved the wires where the workers were hanging the ornaments. A woman who passed by said, What a nice Thanksgiving it will be. The cold increased, and the workers finished hanging the ornaments. And then he saw his first funeral in America. The coffin lay in an open car, embellished with wreathes of flowers and behind, in a gigantic black car sat people dressed in black. A mounted policeman passed by him. A dog stood tied to the fish store and barked at the coffin, the workers crossed the street behind the cars, one of them genuflected, the other ate a sandwich of four slices of bread with white saliva dripping from them.
He went back home and when he passed by Rachel, he tried to pretend she didn't exist. He went into his room, locked the door behind him, stood silently shaking, and through the window he saw Lily's back.
Lily got up, her back disappeared from his view, the yard was suddenly full of moss and greenery stuck to the old crusted stones. When they entered the apartment, the landlord said: Sherlock Holmes stayed here for two whole days when he was in New York. He said that with an impenetrable face, and Lionel said: That's nice, did he also sit in the garden? And the landlord said: There he solved the murder, and didn't expatiate on what murder. A woman now stuck her head out one of the windows, gaped open her mouth that swallowed wind, and Sam could see the firm teeth in the distance, he thought about her thighs, about the juncture of her legs with her thigh and felt warmth inside him. He didn't sit down and read the books he should have read, but slipped through the yard and entered the room. The voices of Rachel and Lionel were heard dully from the living room. Lily lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Sam went to her, undid the button of her shirt, grasped her breast and looked into her eyes. Her look was cold and distant. She put her hand on his erection and he squeezed her breast, and said: Tamed eagle! And she was silent, and when her hand touched him he smiled, moved away from her, and she didn't even bother to button her shirt. He went to Lionel's desk and started burrowing among the papers. Lily lay and watched him calmly. The drawer was neat. Sam said: Secret Glory is with his stepmother and I'm with the ad for Ritesma Cigarettes . . . Lipp is lip in English. I'll buy a Mercedes and Maubach and Horick. Whores of public remorse, Lily.
She didn't answer him, shifted the embroidery she had been holding in her other hand, and put it on the cabinet and buttoned her shirt. He took a bundle of papers out of an envelope and glanced at them. What are you looking for? she asked.
I've already found it, he said. Then he wrote something on a scrap of paper, put the papers in the drawer, and said: Tell your man he shouldn't have taken me, I'm not worth his beauty or your beauty. Look, he added, I wandered around with a Jewish dog, I sold condoms and lampshades, I had it good. Sam took his mother's strip of fabric out of his pocket and put the fabric on Lily's face. She didn't budge and didn't move the fabric off her face. He waited, picked up the fabric, looked at it, shrugged and put it back in his pocket. He waited but she didn't say anything. He noticed her tears trying to tear the scrim of her eyes. But she didn't weep, and he said: I saw an American funeral and venomous fish in an aquarium. They've got a hard life here in America, give me money, I've got to go, I'll come back later and don't let them try to be rebuilt with my money. She stretched out her hand mechanically, opened a drawer, took out a bundle of bills and coins and gave it to him. Sam picked up two coins that fell on the ground, and examined the bills in the light of the lamp next to the bed, and said: They must be counterfeit! He counted the money as bank tellers count money. You sit here and sew corpses, he said, you sewed corpses for women mourning in gigantic cars, you really think you can be my mother?
Self-pity doesn't suit you, Sam, said Lily and turned her face away.
That's right, said Sam. What do you know? You're just a filthy Jewess, and he left.
On the way out, he yelled at Rachel: Stay well, Grandma! She tried to see him in the opening of the corridor, but couldn't say
a thing, her mouth was dry, and when he went out she said: You made yourself an apartment of rage, live like artists, stay well. Lionel served his trembling mother coffee as Sam's back was seen on the sidewalk, striding quickly.
The wind blew harder, workers were still hanging ornaments over the windswept street. In twenty-six minutes and thirty-two seconds-on the new watch Lionel bought him-he arrived. At the information window he asked for the bus to Washington Depot. The woman said mechanically in a very clear, hasty, nonhuman voice: Have to go to ... to arrive ... at ... and from there ... from ... to ... and ... the price is ... And she was already talking to somebody else. He went down the escalator to Platform Fourteen. Not many people were in line, and those who were seemed to know one another, even though they practically weren't talking. A little girl with yellow hair asked him if he really was the Brooklyn Bridge. He whispered something to her in Polish, and she apologized and ran to her mother, who was laughing aloud at the comics section she was reading and chewing the end of a pencil that was crumbling between her teeth. Then he got on the bus, waited until the doors were locked, and shut his eyes. Calm enveloped him. He thought, these wouldn't get on the trains, at most they'd work guarding and burying corpses. He issued precise orders of burial and opened his eyes. The tunnel was over and the light was strong for a moment, they rode along a street whose houses seemed to be dying. Then they entered another tunnel, a single policeman stood in an alcove chewing gum. At the end of the tunnel, light was seen at last, then everything was gray, isolated houses and fields. Sam saw cows and a little church and hills. The sun peeped out for a moment between the low rounded clouds. The bus was overheated and Sam opened the window, but people asked him to close it. The little girl was sitting at the back of the bus, her mother was still laughing at the comics she was reading. Sam signaled to them that he was deaf and couldn't hear. They said: Poor thing, but he's got to close the window. A man in a yellow suit and one of Saul Blau's colorful shirts, smelling of cheap perfume, got up and tried to close the window. Sam started struggling with him, the man was surprised and didn't know what to do. The others were silent and indifferent, wrapped themselves in their overcoats and looked as if they were freezing in the strong wind. The man said: Must not be an American, doesn't understand English. He was amazed to hear his own words, something wasn't right. He stood up, his hands intertwined in Sam's, and said: What I meant was that he's deaf in English. Sam kept the window open, but two men coming back from a deer hunt, dressed in gigantic hunting jackets, got up, overcame him, and locked the window. Then they laughed and passed a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag from hand to hand. Sam burst out laughing. A woman sitting in front of him turned to look at him and turned pale. The man next to her was reading a newspaper, and said: They come here like flies, got to know how to behave with those who come, got to show them who's boss here. The woman slapped the man and he yelled: Whore! When she turned her face again, she hadn't yet answered the man's yell and he went back to reading the paper. Her face was full of amazement and then suddenly innocence. Sam smiled until she blushed. He pointed at her breasts and drew enormous circles with his hands. Even though she stopped blushing the man with her was afraid to look. The headlines of the evening paper looked threatening through his eyeglasses.
Isolated farms were now seen, frost stuck to them, the trees were naked, cars were seen driving on paths dwarfed by tall trees. About two hours later, the houses increased, the farms gave way to more elegant houses, and then an industrial area belching smoke and taverns, little signs, blinking at their doors, well-tended gardens attached to one another, another hill and naked treetops, and then the bus stopped. Sam looked at a woman who looked monstrous with her face stuck to the windowpane. She gaped her mouth open and blew on the window, her nose was smashed against it. Even in the strong cold, she looked despondent and forsaken. He waved his hand at her and the bus started moving.
For a long time he walked in the forest in the stinging cold and then in the fields, he saw houses with red roof tiles, haylofts, cowsheds, handsome rustic churches in domesticated groves, in the distance a hill was seen and on it a sweet, gray little town, with a gilded clock on its church steeple and then, when he came to the house, he opened the gate and a gigantic dog assaulted him. Sam climbed up on Ebenezer's tail and pulled hard, went down on all fours, kissed the snout of the dog who gasped heavily, hit him, petted him at the same time, and by the time the little woman hurried to the gate at the sound of the barking, the dog was lying next to Sam and wagging its tail, its mouth drooling and its face thrust in Sam's hand. Facing him was the old house surrounded by a big garden. The windows were shrouded in shades, the entrance was like a Greek temple, the chimneys belched thin smoke scattered in all directions by the wind. The dog didn't move at the sound of its mistress's hasty steps. Sam noticed the woman's antique beauty and looked at her calmly. She asked who he was and what he wanted. He told her that first he had to pee and then he could talk with her. She swallowed wind, her look passed angrily, maybe even more, offensively, over the dog's swooning back, and she said: This is a private house, sir, not a public lavatory. She used the professional terminology, and even that neutral name sounded coarse in her mouth. Her lips clamped righteously.
I come about Melissa, said Sam.
Now, when she looked at him again, she saw him through a thick cloud. He saw the blood drain out of her face. Her anger at the treacherous dog lying next to her young enemy increased, she banged her hand nervously on her thigh, and said: Melissa? Melissa's dead. The fact that Melissa had died so many years ago and suddenly she had to say that, embarrassed her immeasurably. Maybe for the first time in years, Melissa's death was so needless and yet painful. She dropped her eyes and saw the shoes that had walked in the fields and forest and the spots and the flickering of the trampled leaves, and she said pensively: Thirty years ago, and then she was scared and said in a voice almost shrieking at itself: What do you mean about Melissa?
I have to pee, said Sam.
She shrugged and yelled furiously at the dog: Come here, Smoky! The dog straightened up, looked at her, wagged its tail, and Sam hit his thigh and the dog clung to him as if it feared for its life and started shaking. Sam kicked it until it whined. She yelled: Why do you kick him? And Sam bent down and kissed it. She hissed furiously: A dog is supposed to guard the house from strangers! What are you here for?
To pee, said Sam.
Not you, him, she said, and she felt her position in the doorway of her house turn into a farce she didn't want to take part in. Sam said: I'm not a stranger and he understands, and then he noticed her sweet wickedness, an orphaned warmth, some old yearning on her face. Now he didn't know if she was a guard in the camp or the NCOs' housekeeper, so he could smile at her and say: Look lady, he won't bite me, he knows who's the master and who's the bitch, where do you pee in this splendid house?
The gentleman talks funny, said the woman. Her anger was more for the dog than for him. Her mouth gaped a little, she had to pluck up a properly shaped humility. Who are you? she asked again. Why ... But now she also saw him more clearly, and a forgotten memory rose for a moment and extinguished in her, as if a forgotten picture was drawn and she didn't know what the picture was. Now she also looked scared.
Sam said: You've got no choice, don't let me pee in your beautiful yard. They walked inside. A maid in an apron who had just been shedding tears over a bowl of slaughtered onions came running up with her eyes red and dripping. You should have been here before, said the woman in a voice with a threat aimed for later.
I tried, said the maid with extinguished awe.
Trying isn't enough, barked the woman.
Let the dog bark, said Sam, it doesn't suit you, you were born delicate and only later comes life and makes us dogs. Believe me, I'm an expert. When she raised her hand she looked surprised at herself for almost striking him. His charming smile spread over her face. That only increased his dependence on her. Let me pee and then we'll talk about Melissa,
he said. The maid genuflected at the name. He passed through the room, went into the corridor, turned right, and found a toilet.
Afterward, he looked for a towel. The maid who ran after him stood next to the door rubbing her hands on her apron. He went to her and wiped his hands on her apron and went into the living room, whose walls were covered with mounted animal heads. The woman was sitting in a straightbacked chair and looking at him. He felt close to the iron that came from her, all of her solid in a wonderfully shaped posture, he could feel the hatred in her eyes. A pleasant smell of spices crept into the room and was swallowed by a fragrance of roses. The drapery looked more beautiful from this side of the room. The woman could categorize corpses with model precision, he wanted to tell Kramer.
The thoughts were messed up in his mind, his mother acting Ophelia in a room closed with drapes, a smell of spices in a house they lived in for many years.
The dog who was clinging to his leg all the time growled and the mounted animals looked at him with flashing eyes.
Why did you come, she said.
I love her, said Sam. He smiled a smile of condolence and on the piano he could see the faded picture of Melissa in a white dress, a bouquet of flowers in her hand, and behind her a grown-up man holding a cigar in his hand. When she got up the dog growled again.
He knows you?
Dogs know me, said Sam.
But he can't know you, she said and was immediately embarrassed because she knew she had asked the wrong question.
That's love, said Sam. You know how beautiful she was, Melissa?
Her body shook, she dropped her eyes, shook her head and muttered. Why? Why? Why?
Don't know, he said. My name's Sam, I loved her, they took me to the fences. She came to me and said: I'm yours, she didn't even know my name is Sam, I came to ask for her hand and you said she's still dead.