by Sam Ross
He couldn’t believe it himself. But a man who worked with him said they ought to go see their congressmen. Like that, you can go in and see him? Sure, his friend said, like that. Impossible, he didn’t believe it. All right, his friend said, he’d show him. After all, what was a congressman? A gross politician. A man with a face like a beet, with a cigar stuck in it. A man with strong knuckles who made a career out of shaking hands all day long. And, believe it or not, his friend was right. The congressman was in his office. And when he heard that David Melov and Walter McCoy were there to see him, the congressman came out and shook hands and asked if he could do anything for them, but they said, no, they just wanted to say hello. And the congressman said he was glad to see them, and if there was anything he could do for his voters all they had to do was ask. He shook their hands again and said they should make themselves at home in Washington and gave them a cigar apiece.
How do you like that? America, I love you, hah, David?
Maybe David, now that he was on such intimate terms with a congressman, could ask a favor from him for a friend or a relative.
Maybe.
Imagine, a poor Jew doing a thing like that in Russia. Only in America could a thing like that happen. Only in America is a man a man. They should all be killed, those tyrants in Russia, by the Bolsheviks. It would serve them right, the pogromniks.
Noo, where else had David been?
Georgia, Alabama, Texas, in the South, where the niggers live.
No!
Yes.
How can one keep up with David? He lived quiet as a cat, shah-shtill, never moved from here to there for so many years. All of a sudden, wheeeeeet, he has become a world traveler.
A man works up in the world.
And how was it there where the niggers live?
Terrible.
How, terrible?
As terrible as in the old country. Like pigs they live. Like mujiks.
White people, too?
White people, too.
How do you like that? Can it be that in this country a person can live like a Russian peasant? It’s hard to believe.
Believe it. He had seen with his own eyes. But even worse. He had even seen a pogrom there.
Gottenyu! who, what, how?
A nigger was killed. With his own eyes he had seen it.
Not a Jew?
No, a nigger.
Thank God.
It was terrible, like it was happening to him.
But that was life. In Russia, Jews. In America, Jews, Catholics, niggers—the Ku-Kluxers. What was life? Blood, blood. Broken hearts and fear, mixed up with the brief moments of laughter. A baby is happy, he knows of nothing. He grows into a child learning to hide his pain. He becomes a person finally, dulled by his pain so that he can endure the broken hearts, the blood, the fears about him. Was this what people came into the world to endure? Was this the destiny of man?
Look at Yussel, may his soul rest in peace. Poor Yussel. A man who believed in living and in letting other people live. A man who never harmed anybody. A man who might have been a joy to a woman’s heart and a child’s life. Died all alone, a stranger in a strange land, with a bullet in his belly. For what?
A few tears, settling into sighs. The spirit of the occasion lost. The faces growing heavy with thought. The question too big to answer, for it involved settling in their minds where they belonged, what their role was in a world that had existed for millions of years and which would exist after they were gone, what place they had in a world that was not designed for them. If only they could stop the gigantic movement of the world for a moment, grasp it and then mold it for a second of its life to the time of their lives!
“Ay, how weak is man.” Hershy’s father quoted from a Rosh Hashana prayer. “He comes from the dust and returns to the dust; must toil for his sustenance; then passes away like withered grass, a vanishing shadow, a fleeting dream.”
Hershy nudged them out of their saddened mood. He wanted them to get out of themselves and to come back to his father, the king, and himself, the prince.
“And where else was you, Pa?”
The shock of his child’s voice brought laughter. It brought tea and cakes. It brought everybody’s attention to himself and back to his father.
“Go on, Pa, tell them where you was.”
4.
The following morning, while Hershy was getting dressed for school, his father announced that it was Labor Day. Hershy had to laugh. According to his father, he remembered, every Monday, after a restful Sunday, was Labor Day. The familiar expression made him feel good, assured him that his father was really home to stay; the homecoming was over. His mother accented the feeling, making his inward laughter warm and bubbly.
“What kind of Labor Day is it?” she wanted to know. “You don’t even have a job.”
“That’s right,” his father said. “But today I’m going to get a job. You’re not looking at an idler, you know.”
“And if you were idle another day or two, would that hurt? Would it hurt anyone if you slept later, rested more, got a little fatter? The way you look, David, people will think I’m a terrible cook, that I’m a terrible wife.”
“Never mind what people think. It’s my nature that I can’t put on a pound of flesh. So, for that must I be punished with idleness: to sit around, stare at the four walls, gossip? No. A man who eats bread without replenishing it is a man who commits a crime.”
“The way you talk, like we haven’t a penny. Remember, you’ve been working steady a long time.”
“But remember also the days I was forced to remain idle because there was no work, when we had to go without supper so that we could rise without debt. A workingman should work when there is a job. Work keeps a man honest and healthy.”
“Talk to you and talk to the wall, it’s the same thing.”
“Then talk to the manufacturers, the butchers, the grocery-men. Have a picnic with them, but not with my money. The streets are lined with gold, so they think.”
“Go talk to a piece of iron.”
“Besides,” his father continued—once he was on a line of thought he never stopped until he completed it—“if I stay away from work too long my hands will get soft. I need hard hands and an iron back for my work. Besides, I have to pay on my insurance and we should start thinking of saving money to send Hershel to college.”
“Who is arguing?”
Hershy walked into the kitchen from the dining room and stopped the playful argument.
“Hurry up, Hershel,” she said. “Eat.”
His father sat down with him at the table and they both concentrated on him. Eating, when food was plentiful, was the most important thing in the world. His mother served him a bowl of oatmeal drenched in milk and sugar. From a pan she poured a little coffee into a glass and then filled it with hot milk. As he ate a piece of pumpernickel bread and butter and picked out the coffee grounds with a spoon, he decided to make an announcement, too.
“I ain’t going to go to college.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” his mother said. “But now finish your coffee and go to school.”
“Okay, but when I finish school I ain’t going to go to college.”
“What are you going to do instead?” his father asked.
“I’m going to be an explorer.”
“You have to go to college to be an explorer,” his father stated.
“Columbus didn’t go to college.”
“There were no colleges in the days of Columbus. Today, to be anything or anybody you have to go to college.”
“Then I won’t be an explorer. I’ll go in a circus.”
“And what will you do there, tame lions?”
“Maybe. But maybe I’ll walk on a rope with an umbrella. Like this, Pa.” He got up and pretended he was on a tightrope, balancing himself as he swayed from side to side. “See, Pa, I’m way up in the air, a thousand feet. Yay, everybody’s hollering. Everybody’s clapping like anything. Hershy t
he Great, they’re looking on, the world’s champion tightrope walker.”
His father shook his head as he watched. “In this country everybody wants to be a world’s champion,” he said. “Do they want to be a world’s champion doctor or lawyer or philosopher? No. Only football players and baseball players and clowns and gangsters.”
“But if you’re a world’s champion, Pa, you can make a lot of money; you get famous; everybody wants to know you; everybody wants to play with you; you’re never left out of anything.”
“It’s a lively world in this America,” his father continued, as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “Everybody wants to be the biggest, the best, the strongest, the mightiest. It’s a free country, everybody says. So what does a child want most out of all his freedom? A thick head, a steel muscle. Out of all the things to choose from, he chooses to become what nobody who grows up wants to be: a shnook. Go figure it out, but the world is full of them. So believe me, Hershel, if you don’t go to college, if you don’t learn to become a champion of the heart and the mind, that’s what you’ll become: a world’s champion shnook.”
“Yah, Pa? But Ty Cobb never went to college and he’s no shnook.”
“Who is Ty Cobb?”
“The best ballplayer in the world.”
“See, Sonya?” his father turned to his mother. “See what I mean?”
“He’ll grow over it, David,” his mother said. “With them, every Monday and Thursday their heroes change.”
“But why don’t they make heroes out of Abraham Lincoln or Spinoza?”
“Do I know?”
Hershy interrupted: “But you never went to college, Pa. And you’re no shnook, are you?”
His mother laughed and said proudly, affectionately: “You see, David, he has the cunning brain of a sage from Israel.”
But his father went on: “Me? Don’t look to me for an example. I’d have given my right arm to have gone to college. But in the old country it was impossible. One never even thought of it. A man had no chance there. A Jewish man certainly didn’t have a chance. Nobody was concerned there if you could read or write. Nobody cared even if you were alive or dead. It was better that you were kept ignorant. Then you could ask no questions, you could not complain, it was easier to use one like a beast, and from this the czar and the rich felt safer and got richer.”
Hershy wasn’t convinced. “But Uncle Hymie never went to college, either. He can hardly read and write. And look at all the money he got; an auto, too.”
“Hershel,” his father said, “you’ll learn later there are other things beside money. Uncle Hymie, you might learn, is a slave to his money and a bunch of machines. That’s like living with your body cut in two.”
“Better to be a slave to a bunch of machines and money,” his mother said, “than a slave to a job and a weekly pay envelope.”
“Nobody knows that better than me,” his father said. “But I want more for Hershel. I want him to be of some use to this world, aside from having money. I want him to be a happy man. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he was a doctor or a lawyer, if he could keep busy without using his hands? Me, without my hands, what am I? A cripple. But a man with a brain is never a cripple; he can be useful and live forever.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, instead of the little things I make and instead of a boss telling him what to do, Hershel learned how to build bridges, big buildings, even whole cities? An engineer, an architect, that is something to consider. Imagine, the son of David Melov, a builder. On the bridge or building will be the name, Hershel Melov: architect, engineer. His name on something permanent, to stand for all time. Yes, for him, it is early in the morning and the sun has just begun to shine.”
Hershy didn’t know what to answer. It seemed, as his father spoke, that he had never really gone away, but had stepped out for a minute in the middle of a conversation and had just come back to resume it. It felt good, knowing he hadn’t changed, watching his mother’s rapt attention. It was like before, with himself wrapped up not only in his mother’s dreams but now again in his father’s.
“Noo,” his father broke the silence. “Enough dreaming. It’s settled. You, Hershel, will build the bridges. And I will get to work and build a cabinet that people will forget and abuse the month after they buy it.”
“You hear, Hershel?” said his mother. “You hear Papa?”
“Yah, Ma.”
“Remember, Hershel,” said his father, “a world’s champion can only give a temporary pleasure, but a man who serves humanity does not die tomorrow; he lives forever in his work. Remember, too, a champion of the heart and the mind is an explorer, but a great one. He’s always discovering things.”
“He is, Pa?”
“Yes. But today, to become any kind of an explorer, you have to go to college.”
But Hershy wasn’t fully convinced. Jess Willard, he thought, was the champion of the heart, too. He had the biggest, toughest, fightingest heart in the world. Ty Cobb had a brain like lightning, otherwise he could never figure out just when to steal a base or work a hit into a triple play. All right, say he couldn’t be like them. Maybe he’d be a shrimp when he’d grow up. Then everybody’d pick on him, murder him, too. But at least if he could be like Merlin the Magician, then he’d be afraid of nothing. Not a thing could happen to him, if he only knew the right hocus-pocus. At least if he was like Merlin, then he could stop worrying about growing up big with steel muscles and he could be what his father wanted him to be.
5.
Teacher added to his confusion that day. She read from the American Weekly about a man called Steinmetz. This hunchbacked, gnarled little man, though a midget in size, had a brain so big that in it was contained the whole universe. Gray matter was what this man had, mountains of it, with millions of fissures flowing with knowledge. He was a wizard, this man; he was Jewish, too. Both descriptions got Hershy hunched over his desk; his mouth gaped and his whole being filled with awe before what the man had done: for Steinmetz had not only captured a bolt of lightning but had also harnessed Niagara Falls.
“Man,” he said hoarsely.
Even Jess Willard, teacher said, with all his might, couldn’t do a thing like that. This man, teacher said, was a great man. With these two deeds, without moving a muscle, he had turned the whole world upside down, he had shaped the world to the power of his brain, he had moved mankind two steps closer to greater perfection. “These deeds,” teacher said, “are not as dead as last year’s batting averages or the five-yard gains that some fullback made, nor will this man’s brains go slack and fat as Jess Willard’s muscles soon will; what this man has done will live forever.”
That was funny, Hershy thought, teacher talking almost like his father. She suddenly seemed less fearsome, less strange. Instead of a shriveled, forbidding woman, whose voice had always seemed like the sharp whack of a ruler striking the table and whose fierce eyes had always seemed to pinch everybody like the glasses that pinched her hooked nose, she now looked like a tired old lady. She seemed to have moved off her strange all-American street onto his own street. In a sense, his father seemed to have performed a feat of magic, to have brought their worlds closer together.
But, teacher concluded, a strong body makes a strong mind. Then she told the story of Theodore Roosevelt: a weak, puny lad, who exercised constantly to build up his frail body so that he could house the mighty, energetic mind that he was to develop, and who became the robust rough-rider and explorer as well as one of the great presidents and thinkers of the nation.
Later, when he got home, he found his father sharpening his tools. His father had got his old job back in the cabinet factory he had worked in before he left the city. Hershy told him about Steinmetz. His father patted his head.
“That’s a man, Hershel. A great Jew.”
“Teacher called him a wizard.”
“A great wizard, with a brain sharper than this chisel.”
“Can he make magic, too, Pa?”
“Can he ma
ke magic! What greater magic can you think of than to see a man take hold of a wild piece of nature and then twist it and turn it and bend it to his will.”
“You think he’s greater than Merlin?”
“Who is he?”
“The magician. He made magic for King Arthur.”
“Steinmetz is greater. He’s as great as the rabbi who made the golem.”
Hershy knew the story of the golem: how this monster was created from clay to protect the Jews from a horrible pogrom and how, after he had done his duty and saved the Jews, he was made to crumble into dust.
“That great, huh, Pa?”
“That great. But remember, Steinmetz had to go to college first. Now will you go?”
“Maybe. But first I’ll be like Teddy Roosevelt. I’ll make my muscles big, I’ll learn how to wrestle and ride horses, and I’ll get real strong. Then I’ll learn the magic.”
“All right, Hershel.” His father looked proudly at him. “Be like Teddy Roosevelt, then.”
6.
Hershy couldn’t explain it, but there was sufficient reason for his making a god of the Muscle; for it ordered and controlled his world just as God or the Dollar had power over the grown-up world. Not having the Muscle, he idolized and worshipped it in order to gain it; he needed it not only for his games, not only to feel that he belonged, not only that he himself might be worshipped, but also for survival. And the following day his own confusion (however small it was) and the conflict between the mind and the muscle came to an abrupt end.
Polack Kowalski, who lived on the other side of Augusta Street, where all the Polacks lived, sat next to him in the back of the room near the windows. He was always goofing around: shooting bent pins with rubber bands, flicking inky wads of paper across the room, stretching his legs and yawning while stepping on somebody’s feet. Sometimes he’d unbutton his pants and say: “Hey, give me jiggers,” and in the midst of doing wild crazy things to himself, a stiff smile would come on his face, his eyes would become glazed and rigid, and then he’d say in complete surprise: “Hey, look, look on a man.” And because he was bigger and older than the other kids everybody was afraid of him.