Melov's Legacy

by Sam Ross

  “You see,” said Hershy’s mother. “You see what I mean?”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll start looking for a business.”

  Hershy wished he could do something for him. It was strange that he should feel sorry for an older man, for his father. He could never let him know he felt this way. He wanted to make him feel strong again, very sure. He wished he could understand why his father was afraid of a business.

  “What’s wrong with a business?” he asked his father once.

  His father tried to make him understand. “Nothing,” he said. “But for me, it doesn’t seem right. You see, Hershel, there are three lands of men in this world. The ones who dream but who never realize their dreams, they are the very unhappy ones, the destroyed ones; the ones who dream and who are able to grasp their dreams, they are the successful ones, the dictators of the world; and the ones who think they understand themselves and who try to live inside their understanding, they are the happiest ones. Maybe I am the last kind of a man, if I could only be left alone. Being in business for me would mean giving up the whole of my past, and I don’t know if I have the courage to do it. Perhaps the past is an anchor; it can either drag you down or make you feel secure; it all depends how you look at it.”

  Hershy thought he understood: his father wanted only what he had, he was afraid to reach for more. All right, he defended his father to himself, so his father didn’t have guts; but he didn’t hurt anyone, did he; he wasn’t yellow, was he? But he knew that his father’s anchor was slipping away. For each day he made a pretense of looking through the newspapers for a business and each day he said he was going to look at a business he had seen advertised. But as he was greeted eagerly by Hershy’s mother when he came home, he shook his head hopelessly and said: “There was nothing there.”

  “Why? What was the matter?”

  “Everything. A good business nobody wants to sell, but everybody wants to get rid of a bad one.”

  “They can’t all be bad, can they?”

  “Those that are advertised are.”

  “Look again, David.”

  “All right. But if somebody wants to sell a business there must be something wrong with it.”

  “Look again and see.”

  But Hershy knew that his father was doing nothing, really, but keeping peace in the house, for he had seen him a few times sitting idly in the park. Once Hershy approached him.

  “Hello, Pa.”

  His father looked at him in surprise. “What are you doing here, Hershel?”

  “I was playing ball with some guys.”

  “Oh.”

  “Was you down by the strike today?”

  “Yes.”

  “They still striking?”

  “Yes.”

  “When they going back to work?”

  His father shrugged his shoulders; his hands seemed lifeless.

  “Did you look on a business, too?”

  His father avoided the question. “Let’s take a boat ride,” he said.

  There were a couple of boats on the lagoon for the first time. The snow had melted for good, the winds had died, and, in the longer and warmer days, there was the wonderful surprise of buds and sprouting grass. They rode out on the lagoon silently. First, his father rowed, then Hershy rowed; then they rested and drifted over the calm water, with the landscape seeming to flow about them.

  “We used to have fun in the old days, huh, Pa?”

  His father nodded sadly.

  “Remember, we used to go on a picnic and Ma’d take off her shoes and stockings and she’d run on the grass and scream when it tickled, and we’d go on a boat ride with a mob of people bumping us all the time?”

  “Ay.”

  Silence. Remembering.

  “How is school, Hershel?”

  “All right.”

  Silence. Hershy trying to think of something to say. His father still remembering.

  “In the old country, what was wealth for a Jew? What did houses, money, property mean? It was always something that shriveled your life, something that made you live in fear, for in a moment all of it could have been taken from a Jew. That’s why education, knowledge, was so precious. It was something nobody could take away from you. It was something that could make you feel immortal. I wish I had known that then.”

  “You mean, like that, somebody could take what you had away from you?”

  “Like that, if you were a Jew. Here, it couldn’t happen. But there are a hundred other ways of losing what you have. To spend a lifetime grasping, only to be able to lose it, is senseless. What is it in the end: another possession? But what you have in your head you can never lose. Remember that, and perhaps you’ll do better in school.”

  Silence. His father seemed spent. An oar slipped away from him. He roused himself.

  “Pretty soon it’s going to be Pesach.”

  “Yah.”

  “Pretty soon you’re going to be a man.”

  “Yep, pretty soon.”

  “You’ll have to start going to Hebrew school for your barmitzvah.”

  “Will I have to?”

  “You’ll have to.”

  Silence. Drifting.

  “Pesach used to be a nature festival. It was to observe the beginning of spring.”

  “Yah?”

  “Later it meant the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt.”

  “Oh.”

  “Still, it’s a happy holiday. In the old country it was a big holiday. People went crazy getting ready for it. Happiness came with it. Here, it’s like a trouble, like a business affair, get done with it fast.”

  The sun began to sink over the western slope of Bunker Hill. Hershy looked at the gentle slope sadly. He saw a kid tumble down to the bottom of the hill.

  “We used to play cowboys and Indians there,” he said, pointing to it.

  “Don’t you play there any more?”

  “Sure. But it used to be more fun before.”

  “That’s because you’re getting older.”

  “Yah? Is that why?”

  “Yes. Slowly, with the years, the fun works out of you. Something else takes its place. Something more endurable.”

  His father started to row back to the boathouse, whose shadows were rippled in the purple water. In the wake of the boat, Hershy felt his world lap slowly away, and it made him feel sad, as though a good part of him were washing up against the rushes on the shore. Holding his father’s hand, as they walked home, feeling hard and close to him, he felt like a grown man.

  “I won’t tell Ma I saw you,” he said.

  His father squeezed his hand and smiled at him.

  The next time he saw his father in the park, playing with a blade of grass, he ducked quickly and avoided meeting him. He didn’t want to embarrass him or make him think he was spying. At home, now that he appeared to be looking for a business, his father tried to assume his role as the positive man. He was tired, he complained. He had hunted hard that day. One would think that there’d be hundreds of people jumping at him from every corner to get at his money. But it was hard to find something good.

  “You sure you’re looking?” Hershy’s mother asked.

  “What a question! But I’m beginning to realize that it’s as hard to find a good business as a good job.”

  Hershy’s mother had no way of knowing anything different. She fed him and treated him as the positive man.

  5.

  Uncle Irving came over one night, like the spring, bursting with enthusiasm. There was a high shine in his eyes. Even the dandruff from his scalp had disappeared and there was a luster to his receding hair. Everybody’s troubles would soon be over, he claimed. Nature was changing to celebrate their good fortune. Call him the Messiah, a new day was being born. Because he had come across something on his laundry route that could happen to a man only once in a million years: a real buy, a steal, a giveaway.

  Well, well, what was it? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.

  Everybody knew th
at he wasn’t Ben, the shlimazel. Everybody knew that he had never come begging for a penny. Everybody knew that he had an eye like a hawk and that his word was as good as the ace of spades. Everybody had always said of him: “Irving is a man who never blows hot and cold. Give Irving a chance and he will do wonders.”

  All right, all right, but what was he so excited about?

  Everybody knew that he was a hustler, a man who knew a good thing when he saw it. Well, he had seen it: a beauty, a gem, so cheap that it was a steal. What was it? A laundry. And how much? Fifteen thousand dollars. A diamond of a buy.

  Hershy’s father leaned back in his chair, practically disinterested: who had all that money? But Uncle Irving said: “Listen, listen.” With almost a force, he brought them leaning over the dining-room table, perhaps fascinated by his Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down his scrawny neck, or by the overhead lights that gleamed off his high forehead, or by the shadows of his hawklike nose on his face, or the quiver of his long hands on the table. Whatever it was, he had Hershy’s mother folding her hands tightly and his father listening patiently.

  The plant itself, said Uncle Irving, was worth more than fifteen thousand, much more. He ought to know. Not a dime was being charged for good will. That itself was sometimes worth a fortune. But the man’s health was broken, and, as a result, he had let the business run down, and now was willing to sell at a sacrifice.

  Hershy’s father shook his head. Somehow, he said, every business put up for sale involved a man’s health and was being sacrificed. They ought to face it. These propositions were no good. To succeed where another had failed took a crazy kind of hope and confidence. He would like to see a business where the owner was still in good health with a plant that was running good. But he knew that a solid business was never put up for sale.

  That was true, Uncle Irving admitted. But why should a man let an idiot’s failure govern his future? One man fails, another succeeds. That was human nature. Life, the scientists said, crawled out of the sea: the strong ones adapted themselves to the land, the weak ones died. That was life. In the end, life went on. Thousands of Jews crawled out of their holes in Europe and went to a new land: some of them crawled back into new holes, but others, the ones who counted, adapted themselves to the new land, and they saw the sun, they lived. That was life, too. He had a motto: Never look at a failure, always look at a success. And if one has an opportunity to succeed where another failed, why not, why not?

  Hershy’s mother liked the way Uncle Irving talked. Talk, she said. Talk.

  All right, Uncle Irving was willing to talk. Sense, too. Now he knew that Hershy’s father had ten thousand dollars. Well, he had fifteen hundred dollars saved up. Yesterday, he had gone to a loan association. First, he told them all about the laundry. Then he said: if he got a partner to put up half the money, and if he put up his fifteen hundred dollars, would they loan him six thousand dollars? And they said, yes. All they needed for security was the laundry. Now, if the loan association saw it as a safe risk, that was all he needed to know, that was all the guarantee for success that anybody needed.

  Would they really lend him the money? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.

  Yes, said Uncle Irving. He didn’t come with any idle prattle. He had investigated everything.

  Who had ever known a loan company to throw a dollar away? said Hershy’s mother. For them to give money, the laundry must be as good as gold.

  Absolutely, said Uncle Irving. And what he wanted was simple. He wanted to go into partnership with Hershy’s father. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

  But what, pleaded Hershy’s father, did he know about a laundry?

  What was there to know? Uncle Irving argued. Did one have to be a genius to operate one? Even Hymie, a man who could hardly sign his name, operated one. The operation was so simple even a Chinaman could do it. In the plant he was talking about there were six washing machines and two ringers. One man, in Hymie’s laundry, took care of six machines, and got fifteen dollars a week for it. That was a workingman for you; if he didn’t own the machine, he got nothing for his work. Each machine had four pockets. In one operation, then, with twenty-four pockets, at a minimum of a dollar a bundle, you could make twenty-four dollars. Now, a laundry can handle at least seven loads a day, close to two hundred bundles in the one he was talking about, and with loads like that on Monday and Tuesday, the heaviest days, you could make nearly four hundred dollars to take care of expenses; the loads on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday become sheer profit. The only wages they’d have to spend would be for an engineer to take care of the boilers and the machinery, and a girl to handle the books and the phone calls. Hershy’s father would be on the inside, tending the machines, and he would be the driver on the outside bringing in the business. And he was a master salesman, that Hymie could tell them; once he had brought in so many customers that his route had to be split three ways. How could they fail?

  It sounded good. Everything sounded good in talk. Hershy’s mother could hardly contain herself. She wanted to speculate more on the profits. Uncle Irving made the business look like a gold mine. He had Hershy’s father, with talk about his skilled hands and brain, willing to admit that he could handle the inside of the plant much better than the dumb laborers Uncle Hymie hired at a slave wage. And with both of them looking after the business details, with both of them being able to read and write and talk, what else was there to know, how could they fail?

  The talk went into other aspects.

  Look, said Uncle Irving. Hershy’s father was on strike. Already, he was eating into his savings. How long could money last if he kept that up? And supposing he went back to work soon? What could he look forward to: wages? Was that a life, living off wages? And supposing, after he did go back to work, the season got slack? There’d be a layoff. Other factories would slow down then, too. Where does a man turn then? Back into his savings? A workingman can be rich only if he doesn’t eat. Now, he was still young, he was valuable. But in ten years, when he got to be forty could he keep up with a younger man? And then, who is the first to be laid off in a slack season, the younger or older man? Then what does a man of forty have? His savings, if he’s fortunate? And how long could that last? But in business, a man of forty is just beginning, he is in his prime.

  Hershy’s mother nodded: true, true. Hershy’s father wondered if he hadn’t been happier as a child, an apprentice. Sure, he was a slave then, but he always knew that he’d get food and shelter. Freedom mixed you up. Would he want that kind of life again? No, he was just talking.

  If, continued Uncle Irving, a worker is a greenhorn and a Jew on top of it, he is the first to suffer in bad times. But one thing business does: it puts you on an equal basis with all people who deal with you; in fact, it makes you superior to the people who come to you for service. Are equality and independence bad things to hope for? It’s what people kill themselves for. Why does a Jew always want to open a business, even if it’s a little candy store that enslaves him? Because it gives him independence; he has people come to him; and no matter who it is, if they want something you have, you’re a king, even if you’re a little candy-store owner. After all, why had they come to America? Sure, for equality and independence. Here, there was the promise for a man to build a dynasty. There was the promise for a man to do wonders, not only for himself and his wife, but for his children. And after all, what does a father live for if not for his family? How nice it would be in one’s later years to be able to say: “Here, son, here’s an empire.” How nice it would be in one’s later years to sit back, a gentleman, a man to be remembered, a man who has kept his family together, a man who is deeply respected by his children and his neighbors. Ay, what a successful business can do for a man.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Uncle Irving shook himself.

  “Well,” he said. “What do you say?”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Hershy’s father.

  “Don’t think too long. Somebody else
might grab it from under our nose.”

  “Pesach is almost here. I’ll look the laundry over, and then come to a decision after Pesach.”

  “I warn you, David. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t wait too long.”

  “All right, Irving, all right, but don’t rush me. A business at a sacrifice is never grabbed up in a hurry.”

  After Uncle Irving left, Hershy’s mother couldn’t wait to see Uncle Hymie. He would know. She had to get his opinion immediately. And the following day they went to his house.

  Uncle Hymie listened carefully, his eyes blinking rapidly, as though catching every word and storing it in his mind; then, as from a great height, he said:

  “David, if you were another man, I’d say, yes, go ahead, take a gamble, good luck. But you’re a man who is not suited for business. Business isn’t only dreaming and hoping, like your wife likes to do. It’s hard work.”

  “Am I not used to hard work?”

  “Yes, but this is different. It isn’t like a job, where somebody orders you around all the time. In business, you have to do the ordering. You have to give up your soul for it. You have to make your heart become a rock at times. You have to make decisions that don’t let you sleep at night. To be a success, you have to give up your whole past. You can’t let a thought enter your head or a feeling enter your heart if it hasn’t a dollar sign on it. I know.

  “Besides, I don’t trust Irving. What has he got to lose: fifteen hundred dollars? What will happen if he can’t pay the six thousand dollars to the loan company? You’re a partner. You’ll be responsible for it then. And if you can’t pay, what do you think will happen? The loan company will come in and take over the laundry. Where will your seventy-five hundred dollars be then?”

  “Can they do a thing like that?”

  “What do you think? Irving can talk like a fiend. He can almost make one believe anything.”

  “But he was a good driver, wasn’t he?”