by Sam Ross
“Sure. Once he got so much business I had to split up his route three ways and hire two extra drivers to handle his customers, but that was when the business was young. Now there’s a fierce competition. You have to offer real service. Nothing can go wrong. You have to woo customers. That’s the way it is today. And if you go in business you’ll soon find out. Every other laundry will be ready to cut your throat, remember that. Even I, your friend, your brother-in-law, will have to be ready to do the same. That’s business.”
“Then your advice is no?”
“For somebody else: yes. For you, David, no.”
Hershy’s mother contained herself until she got outside. “He’s jealous,” she said.
“Why’s he jealous?” said Hershy’s father.
“He’s afraid you might become a success, more successful than him.”
“Why?”
“He’s afraid you’ll give him competition. Maybe with you in business he’ll make a dollar less, the greedy swine. He’s afraid to lose Irving, too, his best driver.”
“Maybe you’re right. Who knows what can go on in a man’s head?”
“And the way he talked down to you, I could have torn his eyes out. David, listen to me. You go and look at the laundry. You make up your own mind. What have we got to lose: seventy-five hundred dolars? It looks like a fortune but it can become nothing. But look at what we have to gain: a whole new world. Let’s have courage, David. Let’s have courage.”
The day Hershy’s father looked at the business he came home looking very depressed. The place, he said, looked like a hole. When he saw the man who owned it his heart almost caved. The man was old beyond his years, with a drawn face, a stoop, and a stiff arthritic leg. He was able to understand why the man wanted to make a sacrifice. He wondered, as he talked to the man, if he would soon look like that. He wondered if it would be worthwhile sinking not only his money but also his life into a business like that.
But was the machinery all right? Hershy’s mother wanted to know.
Yes, it looked all right.
Was everything else all right?
Yes, he supposed everything else was all right.
Did it look like it had a chance?
It had what a human being could put into it.
Well, the man was probably old and dead before he started and had let it go to pieces. But he was young and energetic. He could expand it. He could make it so good that later he wouldn’t have to work inside; he’d work in an office, like Hymie.
He would have to think about it.
He suffered, trying to make a decision, for a week. Hershy had the feeling, during the time, that his father was engaged in a great wrestling match and that it was slowly wearing him out. Finally, on the first day of Passover, his father abruptly came to a decision.
6.
On Passover, the first Seder, was always held at Uncle Hymie’s house. The whole family gathered there, not only to celebrate the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, but also to pay homage to him. Each family dreamed of having an opulent Seder at its own house. They said: “Next year, with luck, it will be at my house.” But when the time came, it was held, without question, at Uncle Hymie’s. As a result, mingled with the joyous meaning of the holiday was a sense of defeat.
On that day, Hershy’s mother left the house early in the afternoon to help Aunt Reva. Toward sundown, Hershy and his father got dressed in their new suits, which they hadn’t worn since the homecoming.
“Look, Pa, the suit fits me better. It ain’t a big bag on me now.”
“Yes, Hershele.”
“Boy, but I must of grown.”
“You certainly have.”
Hershy measured himself against his father. He came up to his mouth. He didn’t have to look up very high to meet his eyes. The thought of almost being as big as him was overwhelming.
“Pretty soon I’ll be as big as you, huh, Pa?”
“Bigger.”
“Boy, I hope so.”
“Why are you so eager to be big?”
“I’ll be able to do anything then. I’ll be strong. I’ll know a lot. I’ll be able to help people in trouble. Even you, Pa.”
“Why, do I look like I’m in trouble?”
“No,” he lied. “Only in case.”
“Yes.” His father studied him. “Before you know it, you’ll be a man one day; you’ll look back and wonder what happened to the child. But you’ll have a childhood to remember.”
Yah, he thought. He was sure he’d remember. It was strange: his father seemed to think of his childhood only on a holiday, as though on all other days he was never a kid and never played a game. It was strange also that he had never been able to picture his father as a child. Could he have come into the world as a grown man? Did all Europeans get born old? He wondered if his father had ever had any fun.
They went off to the synagogue. Hershy had his pockets stuffed with nuts and his bull’s-eye knick. His father carried a dark-blue velvet bag under his arm, containing t’fillin, a prayer shawl, and a Hebrew prayer book. When they got there, a change seemed to come over his father: of peace, safety, belonging, as though coming out of his indecisions and fears from a world he was trying to know into a world he did know. Other men from the neighborhood, who usually acted as though there were a threat in every sound and speck on the street, now seemed to be at one with everybody, bearing themselves with strength.
Some of his pals were there, too, their pockets bulging with nuts; they were impatient for the evening services to start so that while their fathers prayed they could play. They paid a reluctant tribute to the holiday and their fathers by going inside the synagogue when the services started. Though many of them could read Hebrew very few understood it; their teachers seldom taught the language, only the symbols of the alphabet for reading. For most of them, without a rabbi to order their whole culture, the synagogue stood for a completely foreign symbol, which they rejected in their efforts to integrate themselves into the broad stream of American life. So, with little or no understanding of the prayers or of the rituals taking place around the Ark and the Torah, they soon became bored with the hurried mumblings and the swaying rhythms of their fathers’ tallith-draped bodies; and one by one they left their fathers’ sides and came outside, yelling, mocking the rocking and chanting figures of their fathers, and then settled down to playing for nuts.
Hershy got into a game of odds-and-evens: first one up, then two up, then five up, and then, frustrated by his inability to guess right the odd or even number of fingers that were flicked out, ten up. Suddenly, all his nuts were gone. And the kid he was playing with, both overwhelmed by his winnings and frightened that Hershy might start a fight to take them away, ran to his father’s side in the synagogue. Hershy tried to borrow some nuts but nobody would loan him any.
“What! And then give you a chance to win with my nuts? You crazy or something?”
“Ah, be a good guy, will you?”
“No.”
He wandered around, watching the games of odds-and-evens, lagging, and baby-in-the-hole. His spirit was broken, not because there was any value attached to the nuts he had lost but because he had been beaten; something in him, for not being a winner and for not being able to play any longer, was destroyed. Finally, to get away from this feeling, he walked across the street into the park.
A new moon was out, a bright white slit in the deepening blue sky. It didn’t look real. Then he saw a star break through. That didn’t look real, either. There was no breeze and the trees stood tall and still, their twigs swollen with buds. It was so quiet that he could hear the chants from the synagogue. He walked away slowly, hard with loneliness.
Presently, across the boulevard, near a group of bushes, he saw a man and woman stretched out on the new grass. He stooped low and ran across the boulevard and crept into the bushes behind them. At the edge he dropped to his belly and peeked out. The girl was lying on her back, staring up at the sky; the guy was on his side, propped up on his elbow,
looking down at her. Hershy was sure that he hadn’t been heard and that he couldn’t be seen. He felt that he was as good as a big-game hunter, as good as any Indian with moccasin shoes. He strained his ears, trying to catch their voices.
“What do you say?” the guy said.
“It’s early.”
“Pretty soon it’ll be dark.”
“All night long it’s dark.”
“So?”
“So what’s your hurry?”
“Listen, I been in a hurry ever since I met you, even before. I ain’t made of iron, baby.”
“But you are, you are. That’s what I like about you, the iron in you.”
“Yah?”
The guy dropped off his elbow right down beside her and pulled her to him, and, as they both began to squirm against each other, Hershy yelled inwardly, with a strange sensation in his stomach: “Wow! Wowee!”
They separated, breathing hard.
“Don’t,” said the girl. “What if somebody’s looking? What if somebody comes by?”
“To hell with them. One crack and I’ll kick their teeth in.”
“But we better go.”
“Where?”
“I thought we were going to the Frolics later.”
“That’s later.”
“Well, I still have to get dressed.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Not yet. Please not yet.”
“When?”
“Sometime.”
“Now. Nobody’s at your house. We’ll have a quiet time.”
“No.”
“What’s to worry about? You said your mother’s at your aunt’s, helping with the Seder. Your father’s in schule and he’s going to your aunt’s from there. If I know Seders, they last a century. So what’s to worry about?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s a matter, you ashamed of bringing me in your house?”
The girl stared at the guy and shook her head.
“Parties. All you know is parties. I’m so busy showing you around I forget what I want. Sometimes I like a quiet time. Say the word, baby, I’ll knock over a bank or something, but let’s not go chasing around now.”
There was a long pause. The girl studied the guy. Hershy waited eagerly.
“All right,” she said.
The guy sprang up and lifted the girl to her feet. He kissed her right on the mouth. Then, as they walked away, something dropped in Hershy. The lamplight, when they appeared under it, brought out their features, and, as they stepped into a parked automobile, he knew who they were. That was Joey Gans’s car, and the girl with him was Rachel. The car started up and drove away. They were going to his house. They were going to do it in his house.
7.
“Where were you?” his father asked.
“In the park.”
“Well, let’s hurry.”
Hershy realized, as they began walking, that they weren’t going directly to Uncle Hymie’s house across the park; his father was going home first.
“Ain’t we going to Uncle Hymie’s for the Seder, Pa?”
“Sure, but first we’ll go home. I want to drop off my tallith and prayer book. It’s only two blocks out of the way.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“We’ll go home anyway. Look at you, how dirty you got. Mama’ll get angry if she sees you so dirty. You’ll shame her. Where were you to get so dirty?”
“In the park, I told you, and I ain’t so dirty. Ma’ll be madder if we come late to the Seder.”
“We won’t be late. Hymie’s schule is farther away than ours. Irving and Ben have to come from their schules on the West Side. We won’t be late. But hurry.”
“But I’m hungry, Pa. I got a bellyache, I’m so hungry.”
“All right, we’ll go home and I’ll give you something to eat. At Hymie’s we won’t eat for an age.”
“But I don’t want to go home.”
His father ignored him and continued walking.
He had to keep him from going home. At the corner, he turned off toward the park, looking behind, watching if his father would follow or chase him, but his father walked directly ahead.
“Come on, Pa. Come on to Uncle Hymie’s. Ma’ll kill us if we’re late.”
His father disappeared after crossing the street. He couldn’t go on alone. He ran back to his side, and glared at him, his fists clenched, his breath hard, his body trembling.
Help me, he prayed. Give me a stroke or something. Make me get runned over or something.
He ran out in the street and began kicking a stone slowly. An automobile appeared but he remained in the middle of the street, following the stone. The horn began blowing, but he paid no attention to it.
Run me over, he said inwardly. I dare you. I double dare you.
The automobile stopped and the man yelled at him and his father ran over and kicked the stone away and yanked him off the street.
“You crazy?”
He pulled away from him and kicked a can along the walk. His father rushed up to the can, and in the scuffle for control of it Hershy tripped. His father kicked the can into a passageway, then jerked him to his feet, and, as Hershy glared at him, slapped his face. The slap stunned him. He backed away, rubbing his cheek with his fingers.
“What’s the matter with you anyway?” his father said.
“All right,” he said. “All right.”
All right, he said again in silence. Go ahead. You’ll see. You’ll see what’s the matter.
“Come on now. No more nonsense.”
“All right.”
He stopped still when he saw Joey’s car outside the house. Then he rushed past his father through the passageway that led to the back of the house and up the wooden stairs. The door was open. He ran through the kitchen. Nobody was in the dining room. Nobody was in the front room. Just as he opened the door of Rachel’s bedroom, he heard the front door open.
“What is it, Hershel?” his father yelled. “What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t answer. Rachel, stark naked, had flung herself against the wall, pulling at the blankets desperately to cover herself, her voice breaking from a gasp into a whimper. “No. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.” Joey was sitting up, huge and matted, with a snarl on his face, and the muscular beauty that Hershy had once seen became a blur of flesh and hair and a tight ugly voice.
“Beat it, you guys. Beat it before I kill you.”
Hershy backed up against his father, who was framed in the doorway. A firecracker seemed to have exploded in his father’s face, and from the shocking pain his body tightened and reeled back, and then the life seemed to go out of him as the velvet bag that held his tallith, t’fillin, and prayer book slipped to the floor.
“Come on, Pa.”
He took his father’s hand and together they walked out of the house. Outside, at the foot of the stairs, his father sat down and buried his face in his trembling hands but didn’t cry.
“We got to go, Pa.”
The tears came at the opening of the Seder when Uncle Hymie’s son, with a high silly voice, said: “Papa, why is this night different from all other nights?”
Hershy felt his heart break.
The others, thinking his father was moved emotionally by the service and the opulent table, stared at him a moment, then relaxed as his face gradually settled into a hard cast.
Later, his father approached Uncle Irving.
“I’ve decided, Irving. I’ll buy the laundry with you.”
Uncle Irving slapped his back joyously. He filled everyone’s glass with wine.
“Next year, with luck,” he said, “the Seder will be at my house.”
BOOK THREE
THE MACHINE
CHAPTER TEN
1.
The incident came at a time of crucial change in Hershy’s life, when the child was beginning to mingle with the adolescent that had taken root in him; it left him floundering, wishing to rush back over his early years into a corner of
safety. But there was no escape, for the kids on the street were a part of his change.
Overnight, it seemed, the sight of a girl stirred something strange in them, as if they had seen a bud pop out on a tree or a worm crawl out of a cocoon or a butterfly flutter out of a caterpillar. Something seemed to reach inside them, shaking them violently, and suddenly a huge blob broke up into a hundred fragments and distinct forms began to take shape and they began to parade before the girls with a peculiar self-consciousness growing over them. Where before they were like shadow-boxers, involved wholly within themselves, now they felt that they were in a ring, surrounded by a whole new audience; now they found themselves reaching out, seeking a new kind of cheer and adulation; now, coming out of themselves, they found that they had to pause a moment to catch up with their new sensations of being, and they felt a need to talk about it. Society was taking its toll, especially at twilight, after a long day at school and at play. They’d sit or lie down on the slanting roof of a stable or garage, with the sky above and the alley below.
Hey, what makes the sky change all the time?
Look at all the colors, guys. Look at all the goddam colors.
The stars, guys. They’re popping, guys.
How come the moon don’t come up the same time every night?
All the things a guy don’t know. All the things.
(A cat screeched, breaking their flight through the mysteries of interstellar space, flinging them hard against the one thing they tried to avoid but which was uppermost in their minds.)
I hear it hurts when a cat does it.
Yow, it must hurt.
How about when a man does it?
I don’t know. Sometimes I hear funny noises from upstairs. Crazy laughing, screaming, moaning.
From next door I heard it. Holy mackerel, like a horse running.
You ever see it?
Once. A girl in the playground was riding on a swing. Yoppo, the wind picked up her dress. Yowie, the free show.
What’d it look like? What’d it look like?
You know.
Yah?
Holy mackerel.
Once I was in the yard. I looked up. Right on top of me, right on the second-floor porch, there was old lady Cohen. She didn’t have no bloomers on.