by Sam Ross
They came in the back way. His mother was in the kitchen with an apron over her long, black, lace-collared dress, stirring a pot of chicken soup with a wooden spoon, the steam clouding her face and the smell warm and deep. His mother gasped and rushed to the sink and began to wash her hands and yelled at Hershy, calling him a little devil for not warning her and frightening her to death. Then, fumbling with her apron, wiping her hands and trying to get it off, she began to yell at his father: what took him so long, did he have no regard for her, did he purposely want to shrivel her heart with worry? But his father paid no attention to her. He laid his tool chest on a chair and smothered her with kisses. In his embrace, she began to cry and beat his back weakly with her fist. She tore herself away and locked herself in the bathroom when Rachel came into the kitchen.
His father couldn’t get over the way Rachel looked, after they kissed. She posed for him in her white ruffled blouse and long black skirt, turning about slowly, letting his father admire her gleaming blond hair, the fullness of her bust, her narrow waistline, her curvy hips.
“Okay?” she said.
“Okay,” his father said. “But maybe you ought to eat a little more, put on a little more weight.”
“No, Pa. This is the American style. Only in Europe do the men like them zoftig, plump.”
“Anyhow,” his father said, “you have grown into a regular doll. A regular Mary Pickford.”
“You should be talking. Look how dolled up you are. New suit, new coat, new shoes, new hat.”
“Yah, Pa, look at you.” Hershy stepped to his side and clung to his arm.
His mother walked in then.
“Where did he learn to dress like that?” she said, her face still red from crying.
“People learn,” his father said.
“You must have met a shiksa, a gentile girl. She taught you.”
His father smiled, pleased.
“Was she beautiful?” his mother asked.
“Like an old mattress.”
“But good to lie on, hah, David?”
“Sonya, Hershy’s here.”
Everybody glanced at him.
“A man away from home,” his mother said. “Who knows what might happen to a man away from home?”
“A woman’s imagination,” his father said, nodding his head. “Can you stop a bird in flight without shooting it down?”
“But doesn’t he look wonderful?” Rachel interrupted.
“He looks terrible,” his mother said. “Look how sunken his cheeks are. New clothes or no new clothes, he can’t hide from me how terrible he looks. I’ll bet they never fed you, David.”
“Oh, they fed me,” his father said.
“What? Pig?”
His father shrugged with his eyebrows.
“You see,” his mother said. “A man goes away a good Jew. He comes home a goy.”
“You mean you ate pig?” said Hershy, horrified, his mind filled with the sight of the dead pigs, with their glassy eyes and greasy bodies and sneering snouts, that hung outside the gentile butcher shop on the corner.
“No, Hershel,” his father said. “Mama’s only making fun.”
His mother assured him with her reddish eyes that she was.
“But tonight you’re going to be fattened like a pig,” his mother said. “Like a king you’ll eat. Gefüllte fish, chicken soup with mondelach, and a tender chicken that will melt in your mouth. So hurry. Go wash up and get ready to be fattened.”
Hershy followed his father into the bathroom, where he took off his jacket and shirt, and saw how dark his face and forearms had become from working outdoors; his skin, away from his straight black hair and tanned face, was creamy white. He couldn’t get his eyes off the hard, yellow-stained hands and the muscles that rippled up and down as his father washed.
“Did you wash yet?” his father asked, after drying himself.
“Yah, after school.”
“Wash again.”
“But I’m clean, Pa.”
“Before eating you have to wash.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t I tell you once?”
“What?”
“That a demon strangles little children who eat food touched by unwashed hands?”
“But while you was away I didn’t wash all the time and nothing happened.”
“That’s because my soul was here all the time, watching over you and protecting you.”
“Yah, Pa? Was it?”
“Yes, my whole soul was here all the time.”
Yah, Hershy thought as he washed and dried himself. Maybe that was why he wasn’t killed that time last summer when he was run over by a horse and wagon. He had been playing ball on the street. Every time a horse and wagon came by and stopped the game, he threw the bat under the wheels of the wagon. But that time he didn’t see the horse and wagon coming from the other direction. And when he jumped away after throwing the bat under the wheels he heard a scream and a yell, then he was knocked down and the horse stepped on him and the wagon rolled over him and then he jumped up and ran until his chest almost burst. Afterward, he laid down and touched himself all over. Nothing was broken. Nothing hurt. He couldn’t get over it. He looked up at the sky and said: “Thanks, God. I’ll do you a favor sometime, too.” But now he knew what had saved him. It had been his father watching over him, his soul protecting him all the time. Gee.
2.
After supper, there was a delight in hearing his father groan from eating too much and in watching him pat his belly and smack his lips. Then he moved away from the table, picked up his suitcase, and asked them to follow him into the front room. Once past the narrow passage that led into the dining room and parlor, his father slowed down. Through his eyes, Hershy seemed to be viewing the house as though he had never seen it before. There was the stained-glass chandelier above the white-clothed round dining-room table, which was never used except for company. Off the oak, stained-glass china closet, which was empty but for a cut-glass bowl, was the daybed on which Hershy slept, and above that were three curtained windows. The walls seemed cut in half, with wood paneling on the bottom and embossed tin, painted brown, on top. The bulging stove, glowing through the charred isinglass, with its nickel highly polished, stood in a corner. His father touched the smooth surface of the wooden columns that separated the dining room from the parlor and studied the workmanship that had gone into the latticed woodwork above. Then he shifted his eyes to the starched white curtains in the front room, to the mahogany rocking chair with the leather seat that was nicked from Hershy’s riding on it, to the overstuffed velours couch and the imitation oriental rug.
“What happened to the big rubber plant?” his father asked.
“Hershy, the devil, tried to milk rubber from it,” his mother said. “Rubber bands he needed.”
“I saw in a book how they do it, Pa,” Hershy tried to explain. “But that was no rubber plant. Not even a little piece of juice did it have.”
His father didn’t seem to care. He laid the suitcase on the arms of the rocking chair and opened it. On top was a Spanish shawl. His mother gasped and, when it was handed to her, draped it over her shoulders.
“It’s not for your back, Sonya,” his father said. “It’s to make the dining-room table fancy.”
Then he brought out two packages which he handed to Rachel and Hershy’s mother. They ripped the paper and opened the boxes and drew out two pairs of pink silk stockings. His mother looked bewildered, letting them dangle from her fingertips. But Rachel crushed them to her heart.
“Papa,” she gasped, kissing him. “Oh, Daddy.”
“What did you bring me?” his mother wanted to know. “What will I do with these?”
“Wear them,” his father said.
“Where?” his mother asked. “To the fancy balls you always take me to? How could you waste your money on such foolish things, David?”
“Show them to your rich sister. She will appreciate them. They are the latest style.”
The whole shape of her leg showed through. Hershy had never seen legs like that before. He turned away, embarrassed, afraid of what they meant: she looked just like the hot girls he had seen in the movies and on the stage, which the guys called whooores.
“Where did you learn all this fanciness, David; all this about the latest style?” his mother demanded.
“Your husband’s got taste, no?”
“In your mouth only. But where did you learn about silk stockings, about such whorish delights?”
“When men are away and alone, Sonya, they do three things. They drink at night, or they go to the women with drink, or, if they have wives and children, they stay home and dream about them. But if you don’t drink and you don’t go to strange women and you have all night to dream, there is one thing that makes the dream better. You walk on the streets and look in store windows. You learn about the wonderful things people can buy and wear. Sometimes, with other men, I went into the stores. There, they told me you would fall in love with silk stockings.”
“I’ll save them for Hershel’s graduation.”
But Hershy knew that his mother was delighted with them. Her hands kept smoothing the stockings and her eyes closed as she ran them over her face. And Rachel, with her skirt held by one hand above her knees, her head tilted, her eyes glazed, was humming a waltz and dancing.
“And now, Hershel, let’s see what we have for you?” his father said.
He dug into the suitcase and searched for almost a year, it seemed, before he brought out a ball made of rubber bands.
“Gee, Pa.”
Then he handed him a large ball of tinfoil.
“From chewing gum and cigarette packs,” his father said. “Like a garbage collector I was, picking up what was thrown away.”
“Aw, Pa, wait’ll the guys see this. Will they go nuts!”
Then he piled into Hershy’s hands the colored union buttons he had saved, of his own and of the men who had discarded them.
“What a stack! I’ll be the richest lagger in the world. One of these, Pa, is worth ten corks. Nobody’ll beat me, I’ll have so many.”
“Wait, wait.” His father walked to his tool chest in the kitchen and come back with a German officer’s helmet.
“Aw, Jesus, Pa. With a spear on top, too. A general’s helmet, I’ll bet.”
“That’s a present from Uncle Yussel.”
A heavy silence came over them.
“He captured it, and a soldier who was his friend brought it to me,” his father added. His mother looked puzzled, and was about to ask a question, but his father stopped her by shaking his finger. “You see, Uncle Yussel was a real hero.”
“Yah, Pa,” Hershy said huskily. “Aw, wait’ll I tell the guys and they see this. A general’s helmet, with a spear.”
“You know,” his father said, his voice trembling, “loneliness makes a man think and dream and spend money. And the trouble with thinking and dreaming is that it costs money. But now I’m finished. This is the last of my thoughts.”
He drew a locomotive out of the suitcase, wound it up, put it on the floor, and away it ran, with Hershy rushing after it. The train banged into the wall and fell on its side. Hershy grabbed it, wound it up again, and saw it ride away unhurt. He lay on the floor, watching it, too overwhelmed to get up, and slowly he began to cry. These were the first real presents he had ever had. The sense of his father seemed to throb right through him. He was home at last.
CHAPTER FOUR
1.
He was the richest guy in the world. As rich as Rockefeller. Richer. At least he had a stomach, he had health. What good was all the money in the world if you didn’t have them?
When the guys saw his possessions, their eyes popped and their mouths opened. There were all those many-colored union buttons which they could lag for and possibly win from Hershy. There was the largest ball of tin foil they had ever seen, which he might put up for a bet in a game of cards or in a game of follow-the-leader. There was the rubber-band ball, the highest bouncing ball in the world, which was common property, so long as he was in the game with it. But the locomotive, through which they roared over the continent as they followed it up and down the street, was a prize possession which only the favored could wind up and engineer. As for the German officer’s helmet, well, through his uncle he automatically became a monumental hero, was lifted higher even than Sergeant York.
“I’ll trade you. My knife for it.”
“No trades.”
“My boxing gloves, too.”
“No trades.”
“What more do you want?”
“Not even a million dollars. What do you think, my uncle captured a German general in the war for nothing? Do you think he captured a whole German army for nothing, too? And do you think he got killed for nothing?”
“Then let’s try it on.”
Hands trembled to the touch of it. Faces changed under the legendary weight of it.
“Aw, Hershy.”
“You lucky lucky lucky, you.”
He was King of the Street.
2.
His father was also a king.
Mr. Pryztalski, the landlord, came down with a bottle of whiskey, his eyes bloodshot, his mustache bristling, standing as big as a giant, with the smell of the stockyards, where he was a butcher, stronger than the whiskey.
“Drink,” he commanded. “A man is home.”
But his father was not overpowered by Mr. Pryztalski’s size or voice. He took a drink with him and seemed to rise as high as Mr. Pryztalski in the breath-taking gulp. Then Mr. Pryztalski studied the cleanliness of the house and said: “A Jew, in his own house, is a king.” He then grabbed the bottle and went upstairs. His loud voice came back.
“The Jew comes home a king. He doesn’t even own the house he lives in. He is not even a landlord. But in his own house he is a king.”
Mrs. Pryztalski whimpered, her voice became shrill, then died; and in its stead came the thud of her body falling to the floor.
“He loves her,” said Hershy’s mother. “But what a way to express one’s love, the crazy Polacks.”
Suddenly, a wild kind of laughter came from Mrs. Pryztalski, as if she were being tickled.
“Oy, does he love her,” said Hershy’s mother, and punctuated the comment with: “Wild animals.”
For a while it was quiet upstairs, then Mr. Pryztalski roared: “The king is home.” He laughed, with his wife’s shrill laughter rising above it.
Hershy turned away from the peculiar glances of his father and mother.
“Later,” his mother said.
His father shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling, as though he were saying: certainly, later; what am I, an uncontrolled beast like a drunken goy?
Hershy tried hard to divert his thoughts.
3.
On Sunday, the relatives were coming over. Hershy’s mother washed the floors, swept the carpet, rearranged and polished the furniture, baked and cooked. She was making a palace out of the house, she explained, because the king was home. A father in his home, she said, was a king. If he was the eldest son of a Jewish family he was most certainly a king, no matter how poor the home was.
“Then will I be a king?” Hershy asked.
“Of course you will.”
“Am I a king now? I’m the eldest son.”
“You’re a prince now. Later, you’ll be an emperor.”
“Wow.”
“Now go throw the garbage in the alley, my little prince.”
In the evening, the relatives gathered to pay homage to his father. They sat around the dining-room table under the light of the stained-glass chandelier. Aunt Reva had a sparkling diamond on one of her pudgy fingers and a fur scarf round her neck. Uncle Hymie had a pinkish glow on his face, like he had just taken a bath; his
eyes blinked constantly under the lights; he smashed out one cigarette after another after taking two or three puffs. Uncle Ben, the fruit peddler, took the butts and smoked them down; one thing about the rich, he said, they always leave you something, even if it’s only the remains of a cigarette; his face seemed broken up by the weather, poverty, and a tobacco-stained mustache. His wife, Bronya, and Aunt Mascha sighed and squirmed in their stiff corsets and black dresses. The lights glanced off Uncle Irving’s high forehead; he smoked the butts of Uncle Hymie’s cigarettes, too, and kept pulling at the lobes of his ears and his hawklike nose. But all of them paid their full attention to Hershy’s father, seemed to sit almost at his feet, as though he were holding court.
Where had he (Hershy’s father) been?
All over.
No!
Yes.
But where?
Maryland. Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.! Did he see the president?
No. The president was a busy man. What did they think, the president was a czar, with nothing to do but ride around and let people grovel on the ground before him? No, the president was always busy in the White House.
He saw the White House then?
What a question? How could a man go to Washington and not see the White House? Of course he saw the White House. A picture of a house.
Was the house really white?
Certainly it was. A white castle.
No!
Yes.
Imagine. Like going to St. Petersburg. Could anybody picture David Melov, an ordinary Jewish worker, going to St. Petersburg and visiting the czar’s palace? But here, a pair of Jewish eyes looks upon the most important house in the land and nobody breaks his head for it. Ay, you live and learn. What else did he see?
He saw his congressman.
No!
Yes.
But how?