by Sam Ross
Hershy saw that though his mother nodded she wasn’t convinced. Uncle Irving smiled and patted her knee.
“Don’t worry about Ben,” he said. “I know your heart is bleeding for him. He had no right to ask you for all that money. He had no right to torture you. He should go to work.”
Hershy was glad when Uncle Irving’s kids, Louie and Charley, came home from the movie. He went outside with them and played run-sheep-run with a gang of other guys.
After the game, since his mother hadn’t called him yet, he went over to one of the lampposts with Louie and Charley to watch the crap game.
“Jiggers,” said Louie. “There’s Itzik.”
Itzik was Uncle Ben’s oldest son, who was a couple years older than Hershy. He had a soft down of hair on his face and pimples were beginning to break out. He had lost a dime in the game. He was broke but still he watched the game anxiously.
“So what?” said Hershy.
“He’ll cockalize you.”
“Yah, for what?”
Itzik saw him. “What are you doing around here, punk?”
“Nothing. My ma’s by Aunt Mascha.”
“Beat it, you cheap sonofabitch.”
“I won’t.”
“Then give me a nickel.”
“I ain’t got it.”
“Yah? You and your cheap kike of an old man.”
Itzik hit him and knocked him down. Hershy got up and rushed at him. Itzik hit him again and knocked him down. Hershy got up, bursting with rage, but Louie and Charley and a few other kids held him back. They dragged him away from the crap game. When his mother saw him she yelled: “I told you not to go outside.”
He didn’t answer her.
“Why’d he hit you?”
“You know why.”
“I’ll kill him, that bum.”
On the way to the streetcar they approached the crap game. Hershy’s mother walked over to Itzik and slapped him full across the face. Itzik felt his cheek in amazement, then laughter broke out from under the lamppost, and, as Hershy and his mother hurried away, Itzik broke out into a volley of curses. But Hershy didn’t feel any better over his mother striking Itzik. He still wished he was poor again.
4.
It was important, of course, also to get Uncle Hymie’s reactions, solace, and advice. Uncle Hymie rose to the occasion.
“To a bank you should have told him to go, that shlimazel,” he said.
Hershy’s father had dealt with Uncle Ben exactly right. After all, he (Uncle Hymie) was a man who dealt with banks. He dealt with a loan association and countless insurance companies and manufacturers of all sorts; he had a hundred people working for him; in short, he was a man who ought to know about such matters. Even the way he lived was proof that he ought to know. Look at the way he dressed. A sport, everybody called him. Look at the way his wife dressed. A society lady, everybody called her. And the children, Manny and Shirley; did one have to ask about them? Off the fat of the land they lived. And look at the house he lived in. It was his own. But would he have risen to where he was today if he had let himself cry over every shlimiel and shlimazel who had come to him with a greedy hand and a tale of woe? “You bet your life, no,” he said.
Uncle Hymie paced the floor. A discussion of finance always brought him to his feet and made him move; it charged his wiry body and reddened his blunt face and intensified the nervous blink of his eyes.
“Hymie,” Aunt Reva said. “You’ll wear out the rug.”
“Shut up. A man is talking.”
“Don’t aggravate yourself, please, Hymie. You’ll go to sleep with a bellyache tonight. The doctor said you have to be careful with the ulcer.”
“Shut up already.”
Aunt Reva retreated to a corner of the couch. Uncle Hymie breathed deeply, unfettered at last, and continued.
When he needed money, where did he go: to David, Ben, Irving? He went to a bank. (Of course, he didn’t say that his partner, whom he was planning to get rid of now, had a capital investment in the laundry and that he was able to borrow money on the strength of it; that was ancient history.) And he had to pay back every penny with a heavy six per-cent interest right on time.
What was money: something you found on the streets, something you tore up into confietti to make hula-hula on a holiday? People sailed around the world and discovered new lands in search for it; that was how America was born. People lived like beasts and suffered untold hardships to dig it out of the earth, so that they could become free men and do anything they wanted. People even killed for money, even themselves. It was a curse, sure. It was evil, too. It could even make a slave of you, all right. But a man without money was always a slave. With it, he had a chance for freedom.
But there was a secret to money. The secret gave it life: power. Without knowledge of the secret, money was useless. What was the secret? Very simple. Something the banks, the merchants, the manufacturers, and the landowners had learned long ago. The secret was so simple that he was afraid everybody was going to laugh. Here is what it was: money had to be used; its only value was in making more money; like a magnet, it had to draw everything to itself or it was nothing. The secret was that simple.
“You hear, David?” said Hershy’s mother.
“I hear.”
“Listen to a man who knows.”
Uncle Hymie smiled, pleased. Aunt Reva, looking worried, was about to open her mouth. Uncle Hymie knifed her with his eyes and said: “Shut up.”
Uncle Hymie was really wound up. He continued. “Can a hungry man go to a bank and say: ‘Lend me a dollar so that I might fill up my belly?’ The bank says: ‘What is your security?’ And if the man says: ‘Me; if my belly is filled, I’ll be able to work, and then I’ll be able to pay you back …’ do you think the bank is interested in the man’s belly? No. Because what’s a belly? The man might go and poison himself with food, who knows? So where will the bank get its dollar back with six cents interest, from the stones in the pauper’s grave? But if you ask a bank for money to build a factory or a building, or if you need a loan to buy machinery, then, if the bank knows that if you can’t pay up it will profit more by your misfortune, then you’re a good man, you’re a gem, you’re a regular allrightnik. Bellies, nobody is interested in. But a building, a business, securities, a piece of machinery, everybody is interested in. That’s the world. A piece of iron is more important than a man. Go change it.”
“All right, my allrightnik,” said Aunt Reva. “Stop talking before you wear out both your belly and the rug.”
On the way home, Hershy’s father said: “It’s a funny thing about a man in business—he thinks he knows everything.”
“Doesn’t he?” said Hershy’s mother.
“I don’t know. Sometimes when I look at him now I can hardly recognize him. He used to be a socialist. Now look at him. The sweat has dried out of him and he appears like the iron that has become more important to him than a man. Money, he says, gives you freedom. But I see him as a man who is in a deep dungeon, chained to a dollar.”
“I should only be chained like he is.”
“What do you think, Hershel?” his father asked.
“I think Uncle Hymie stinks,” said Hershy. “He never lets me drive his car. He only lets me sit in it and turn the wheel. He’s full of hot air.”
5.
The conversation didn’t end there. It continued after Hershy got into bed. Their talk came to him from the kitchen. He listened intently, afraid to fall asleep. He was afraid that if he fell asleep he’d wake up in a strange world where everything had changed. Even now, nothing seemed the same any more. He lay hard against the bed. And yet, though he felt the whole surface of his body against the mattress, he felt himself dangling.
Uncle Hymie was right, his mother said. Money had to be used. Money could make you free. It could release you from the drudgery of the kitchen; it could free you from being a slave to a landlord and a boss and a piece of bread; it could open up your life and fling you
into a world you never dreamed of; it could make a waltz of life. She’d be the happiest person in the world if she knew that she wouldn’t be on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors a few days after the baby was born, if she was sure that she was going to have some help, if she knew that she was living in a larger flat with steam or furnace heat, if she knew that she wouldn’t have to kill herself hunting and fighting for bargains. What was a person without money? He was a nothing. In the old country, if a man could read or write and had a trade, he was respected, he was an important man of the community, he was a somebody. Here, you could be a philosopher, but if you didn’t have money you were a nobody.
“Talk, talk, talk,” Hershy muttered.
Here, said his father, a woman got into a man’s pants and never left him alone. What was it with the air here that made a woman go crazy with the desire to become a man?
Here, said his mother, a woman got into a man’s pants to put a fire in him. Here, a whole new world had opened. A woman grasped the importance. A man, however, could continue to stumble blindly from his job to his bed.
Oh, what happened to a man here! said his father. He is pecked, pecked, pecked. Instead of being stronger with the security of money he had grown weaker, he was slowly being undermined. He had become like a wounded chicken.…
Hershy shut his eyes tight against the image that flashed through his mind. It was of himself, on his hands and knees, looking through a basement window, watching the shochet slaughter chickens. Zip, the throat was cut. Splash, the blood shot out. Whop, the chicken was flung away, regurgitating as it ran about, growing weaker and weaker and finally dropping in a pool of blood. Next. The shochet’s razor flashed. Blood spurted out of the chicken’s throat. Suddenly, the cackling and the flapping of wings became furious: a chicken tore free from its coop, pounced on the wounded chicken, immediately pecked it to death. The sight, when one of the wounded chicken’s eyes was punctured, made him turn away with nausea.
“Leave him alone,” he yelled inwardly. “Leave him alone.”
The image remained as the talk went on.
There, his father said, a woman had her place. She wore a skirt. A man raised his hand and there was silence. A man beat the woman and she whimpered with pleasure. Here, a man became nothing. A woman tried to take away the very thing that made a man a man. What was she trying to do to him?
She only wanted to make him a greater man; a man of importance; a man, who, with a glance, would command respect; a man who would give his children every chance to grow into powerful figures in the land.
So what did she want of him?
A man, she continued, who did not make a place in the world for his children would never be remembered.
All right, what did she want of him?
She wanted him to use the money.
He had already spent it.
How? In small dreams, in a future that belonged to nobody and that would amount to nothing?
He thought he had spent it wisely, unselfishly.
He had spent nothing, she said. He had only talked. There was no future in holding money in a bank. If he lost his job or got sick the money would be gone before they could look around.
What was the matter with her? his father wanted to know. Didn’t she sleep well at night any more?
No. She could feel the baby stirring in her. Feel, she said. Feel the baby in her belly.
A little life, he commented.
It will want a big life.
Everybody wants. Doesn’t anybody ever want to give?
Not in this world.
Yes, he admitted sadly.
“Aw, go to sleep already,” Hershy said, not loud enough to be heard. But his mother was far from getting ready for bed.
They had to start thinking about using the money, she said. God had taken away a life and had given them a gift. If life and death had meaning, if there was an order to God’s world, then it was up to them to find it. The meaning she had discovered was that God had taken away a life in order to make room for a new life. God, in his kindness, to make up for David’s grief, had made his seeds potent after all these years and had given her body the strength to make them grow. A new life was coming, growing bigger and bigger every day, making more and more demands. Soon it would burst into the world to make more demands, and she wanted to be able to give it more than a breast full of milk and a kind pat on the head. Not only that, God had suddenly given them the means to make a new life for everybody. It was up to them to fulfill God’s graciousness.
What else had she discovered in her sleepless nights?
How, she countered, does a man make a new life if suddenly he finds money in his hands?
He doesn’t spend it, that’s certain.
No, she agreed. He uses it. He uses it to make more money. He buys his freedom with it. He creates a bigger and richer world for himself and his family. He goes into business.
What kind of business?
Any kind, so long as it was good.
What was good?
A cabinet-making factory. After all, he was a cabinet-maker, wasn’t he?
He wanted her to talk sense. A business like that took heavy heavy thousands.
What about being a contractor? He was a carpenter. He was a builder. What more did it take to be a contractor?
Oh, but he wished she’d talk sense. What was he, a millionaire?
All right, a dry goods store. Did one have to know much to own a dry goods store? Goods was goods. Everybody knew about goods.
No, he knew nothing about goods.
Did he know anything?
Yes. He knew that he was getting sleepy.
“Yah,” Hershy said silently. “Go on to sleep already. Leave him alone already, will you, Ma? Will you leave him alone?”
Look, his mother said. What about a delicatessen store? What did one have to know to handle that?
Nothing, his father admitted. But he would not be chained day and night to a sawdust floor, with his children living out of a pop bottle.
A laundry.
No, he knew nothing about that.
Hershy saw his father become smaller and smaller, his mother larger and larger, himself crushed between them.
But look at Hymie, she said. He was an ignoramus. Like David, at one time he knew about nothing but a saw and a piece of wood. But when he lost a job in his trade he looked about him and said: No, if a man spends his life learning a trade only to find that he can’t work steady at it, then it wasn’t for him. It took a man to make a decision like that. So what did he do? He took a job as a laundry driver. He saw it was a new business. It was growing. It was being a maid for people who couldn’t afford to hire a human being to slave for them but who could afford a dollar for a bundle of wash. He saw all that. And then when the opportunity came he bought into a laundry and became a success. Did that take a great wisdom, a great brain?
No, his father admitted.
Did Hymie have more brains than he?
No.
Why, what he had in his little finger, Hymie could never hope to have in his whole head. So what did it take? Only a little courage. Only a little.
But Hymie didn’t have a heart.
She was convinced that even a man with a heart could become a success.
But what if he went into a business with a heart and then had it cut out of him? How would people be able to bear him? How would he be able to bear himself?
That was not a thing he had to concern himself with. His job was to look to the future. His job was to change his world.
But what if he should fail?
Why should he fail? Why should he even think of it?
But people had failed. People do fail.
Oh, his mother groaned. Why hadn’t she married a man with the heart of a lion.
Oh, his father answered, what a burden he was carrying. A beast was on his back.
Hershy felt the beast pounce on his father. It was a life and death struggle. He tried to help, but the beast
flung him away. He had to stand on the side and watch. Kill him, Pa. Oh, kill him, Pa.
“Yussele, Yussele,” he heard his father say. “Help me.”
CHAPTER NINE
1.
Hershy’s mother, with her frustrations growing deeper during this time, turned to Rachel to find release. She suppressed her own envy and watched the excitement filling up Rachel’s life.
“Rachel doesn’t know from nothing,” she said. “Oh, to live, and not know from nothing.”
“I’m floating,” Rachel said. “Floating.”
“Rachel’s in love,” Hershy’s mother announced.
“Love,” said Hershy’s father. “What can a girl of seventeen know about love?”
“More than a woman of twenty-eight,” Hershy’s mother answered. “I assure you. After all, how old was I when I was married?”
“That was different,” his father said. “In the old country people grew up faster. A man was a man when he was thirteen. A girl was a woman before she could look around. People were more responsible there.”
“Is that what love is: responsibility?” his mother asked.
“Why not? Is love more than that? Can it be more?”
“Don’t talk like an idiot.”
Hershy’s comment was: “I’m going out and play on the merry-go-round.”
Love, for him, was mush. It had no body. You could put your heel in it, and when you lifted your foot it made a squishy, sucking sound. Love had no muscle. It made you fall apart.
Love, for his father, was not a dreamy eye, an empty song, a veil of sighs, a melted nerve. Romance was something he didn’t understand; that was for people with leisure; he had never had any time for it. Love was responsibility, a belief in people, loyalty, respect. Love was giving without expecting anything in return. Perhaps there was romance in memory. But love was always reduced to feeding and being fed, to living in a house that was clean and warm and weatherproof, to having children and caring for them, to respecting those who live with you, and to bearing the full responsibility of your life and those you surround it with. Everything else was sham, bubbles in a vault of pins.