by Philip Roth
“Good night,” Mr. Patimkin said.
I watched him step down off the platform that held the head table, and then start towards the exit. Now the only people in the hall—the shambles of a hall—were myself, Leo, and his wife and child who slept, both of them, with their heads pillowed on a crumpled tablecloth at a table down on the floor before us. Brenda still wasn’t around.
“When you got it,” Leo said, rubbing his fingers together, “you can afford to talk like a big shot. Who needs a guy like me any more. Salesmen, you spit on them. You can go to the supermarket and buy anything. Where my wife shops you can buy sheets and pillowcases. Imagine, a grocery store! Me, I sell to gas stations, factories, small businesses, all up and down the east coast. Sure, you can sell a guy in a gas station a crappy bulb that’ll bum out in a week. For inside the pumps I’m talking, it takes a certain kind of bulb. A utility bulb. All right, so you sell him a crappy bulb, and then a week later he puts in a new one, and while he’s screwing it in he still remembers your name. Not me. I sell a quality bulb. It lasts a month, five weeks, before it even flickers, then it gives you another couple days, dim maybe, but so you shouldn’t go blind. It hangs on, it’s a quality bulb. Before it even bums out you notice it’s getting darker, so you put a new one in. What people don’t like is when one minute it’s sunlight and the next dark. Let it glimmer a few days and they don’t feel so bad. Nobody ever throws out my bulb—they figure they’ll save them, can always use them in a pinch. Sometimes I say to a guy, you ever throw out a bulb you bought from Leo Patimkin? You gotta use psychology. That’s why I’m sending my kid to college. You don’t know a little psychology these days, you’re licked…”
He lifted an arm and pointed out to his wife; then he slumped down in his seat. “Aaach!” he said, and drank off half a glass of champagne. “I’ll tell you, I go as far as New London, Connecticut. That’s as far as I’ll go, and when I come home at night I stop first for a couple drinks. Martinis. Two I have, sometimes three. That seems fair, don’t it? But to her a little sip or a bathtubful, it smells the same. She says it’s bad for the kid if I come home smelling. The kid’s a baby for God’s sake, she thinks that’s the way I’m supposed to smell. A forty-eight-year-old man with a three-year-old kid! She’ll give me a thrombosis that kid. My wife, she wants me to come home early and play with the kid before she goes to bed. Come home, she says, and I’ll make you a drink. Hah! I spend all day sniffing gas, leaning under hoods with grimy poilishehs in New London, trying to force a lousy bulb into a socket—I’ll screw it in myself, I tell them—and she thinks I want to come home and drink a martini from a jelly glass! How long are von going to stay in bars she says Till a Jewish girl is Miss Rheingold!
“Look,” he went on after another drink, “I love my kid like Ben loves his Brenda. It’s not that I don’t want to play with her. But if I play with the kid and then at night get into bed with my wife, then she can’t expect fancy things from me. It’s one or the other. I’m no movie star.”
Leo looked at his empty glass and put it on the table; he tilted the bottle up and drank the champagne like soda water. “How much do you think I make a week?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Take a guess.”
“A hundred dollars.”
“Sure, and tomorrow they’re gonna let the lions out of the cage in Central Park. What do you think I make?”
“I can’t tell.”
“A cabdriver makes more than me. That’s a fact. My wife’s brother is a cabdriver, he lives in Kew Gardens. And he don’t take no crap, no sir, not those cabbies. Last week it was raining one night and I said the hell with it, I’m taking a cab. I’d been all day in Newton, Mass. I don’t usually go so far, but on the train in the morning I said to myself, stay on, go further, it’ll be a change. And I know all the time I’m kidding myself. I wouldn’t even make up the extra fare it cost me. But I stay on. And at night I still had a couple boxes with me, so when the guy pulls up at Grand Central there’s like a genie inside me says get in. I even threw the bulbs in, not even caring if they broke. And this cabbie says, Whatya want to do, buddy, rip the leather? Those are brand new seats I got. No, I said. Jesus Christ, he says, some goddam people. I get in and give him a Queens address which ought to shut him up, but no, all the way up the Drive he was Jesus Christing me. It’s hot in the cab, so I open a window and then he turns around and says, Whatya want to do, give me a cold in the neck? I just got over a goddam cold…” Leo looked at me, bleary-eyed. “This city is crazy! If I had a little money I’d get out of here in a minute. I’d go to California. They don’t need bulbs out there it’s so light. I went to New Guinea during the war from San Francisco. There” he burst, “there is the other good thing that happened to me, that night in San Francisco with this Hannah Schreiber. That’s the both of them, you asked me I’m telling you—the apartment my mother-in-law got us, and this Hannah Schreiber. One night was all. I went to a B’nai Brith dance for servicemen in the basement of some big temple, and I met her. I wasn’t married then, so don’t make faces.”
“I’m not.”
“She had a nice little room by herself. She was going to school to be a teacher. Already I knew something was up because she let me feel inside her slip in the cab. Listen to me, I sound like I’m always in cabs. Maybe two other times in my life. To tell the truth I don’t even enjoy it. All the time I’m riding I’m watching the meter. Even the pleasures I can’t enjoy!”
“What about Hannah Schreiber?”
He smiled, flashing some gold in his mouth. “How do you like that name? She was only a girl, but she had an old lady’s name. In the room she says to me she believes in oral love. I can still hear her: Leo Patimkin, I believe in oral love. I don’t know what the hell she means. I figure she was one of those Christian Scientists or some cult or something. So I said, But what about for soldiers, guys going overseas who may get killed, God forbid.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The smartest guy in the world I wasn’t. But that’s twenty years almost, I was still wet behind the ears. I’ll tell you, every once in a while my wife—you know, she does for me what Hannah Schreiber did. I don’t like to force her, she works hard. That to her is like a cab to me. I wouldn’t force her. I can remember every time, I’ll bet. Once after a Seder, my mother was still living, she should rest in peace. My wife was up to here with Mogen David. In fact, twice after Seders. Aachhh! Everything good in my life I can count on my fingers! God forbid some one should leave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t even have to take off my shoes. I got a whole other hand yet.”
He pointed to the fluorescent bulbs with the nearly empty champagne bottle. “You call that a light? That’s a light to read by? It’s purple, for God’s sake! Half the blind men in the world mined themselves by those damn things. You know who’s behind them? The optometrists! I’ll tell you, if I could get a couple hundred for all my stock and the territory, I’d sell tomorrow. That’s right, Leo A. Patimkin, one semester accounting, City College nights, will sell equipment, territory, good name. I’ll buy two inches in the Times. The territory is from here to everywhere. I go where I want, my own boss, no one tells me what to do. You know the Bible? ‘Let there be light—and there’s Leo Patimkin!’ That’s my trademark, I’ll sell that too. I tell them that slogan, the poilishehs, they think I’m making it up. What good is it to be smart unless you’re in on the ground floor! I got more brains in my pinky than Ben got in his whole head. Why is it he’s on top and I’m on the bottom! Why! Believe me, if you’re born lucky, you’re lucky!” And then he exploded into silence.
I had the feeling that he was going to cry, so I leaned over and whispered to him, “You better go home.” He agreed, but I had to raise him out of his seat and steer him by one arm down to his wife and child. The little girl could not be awakened, and Leo and Bea asked me to watch her while they went out into the lobby to get their coats. When they returned, Leo seemed to have dragged himself back to the level of human communication. He sho
ok my hand with real feeling. I was very touched.
“You’ll go far,” he said to me. “You’re a smart boy, you’ll play it safe. Don’t louse things up.”
“I won’t.”
“Next time we see you it’ll be your wedding,” and he winked at me. Bea stood alongside, muttering goodbye all the while he spoke. He shook my hand again and then picked the child out of her seat, and they turned towards the door. From the back, round-shouldered, burdened, child-carrying, they looked like people fleeing a captured city.
Brenda, I discovered, was asleep on a couch in the lobby. It was almost four o’clock and the two of us and the desk clerk were the only ones in the hotel lobby. At first I did not waken Brenda, for she was pale and wilted and I knew she had been sick. I sat beside her, smoothing her hair back off her ears. How would I ever come to know her, I wondered, for as she slept I felt I knew no more of her than what I could see in a photograph. I stirred her gently and in a half-sleep she walked beside me out to the car.
It was almost dawn when we came out of the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. I switched down to my parking lights, and drove on to the Turnpike, and there out before me I could see the swampy meadows that spread for miles and miles, watery, blotchy, smelly, like an oversight of God. I thought of that other oversight, Leo Patimkin, half-brother to Ben. In a few hours he would be on a train heading north, and as he passed Scarsdale and White Plains, he would belch and taste champagne and let the flavor linger in his mouth. Alongside him on the seat, like another passenger, would be cartons of bulbs. He would get off at New London, or maybe, inspired by the sight of his half-brother, he would stay on again, hoping for some new luck further north. For the world was Leo’s territory, every city, every swamp, every road and highway. He could go on to Newfoundland if he wanted, Hudson Bay, and on up to Thule, and then slide down the other side of the globe and rap on frosted windows on the Russian steppes, if he wanted. But he wouldn’t. Leo was forty-eight years old and he had learned. He pursued discomfort and sorrow, all right, but if you had a heartful by the time you reached New London, what new awfulness could you look forward to in Vladivostok?
The next day the wind was blowing the fall in and the branches of the weeping willow were fingering at the Patimkin front lawn. I drove Brenda to the train at noon, and she left me.
8
Autumn came quickly. It was cold and in Jersey the leavey turned and fell overnight. The following Saturday I took a ride up to see the deer, and did not even get out of the car, for it was too brisk to be standing at the wire fence, and so I watched the animals walk and run in the dimness of the late afternoon, and after a while everything, even the objects of nature the trees, the clouds the grass, the weeds, reminded me of Brenda, and I drove back down to Newark! Already we had sent our first letters and I had called her late one night, but in the mail and on the phone we had some difficulty discovering one another; we had not the style yet. That night I tried her again, and someone on her floor said she was out and would not be in till late.
Upon my return to the library I was questioned by Mr. Scapello about the Gauguin book. The jowly gentleman had sent a nasty letter about my discourtesy, and I was only able to extricate myself by offering a confused story in an indignant tone. In fact, I even managed to turn it around so that Mr. Scapello was apologizing to me as he led me up to my new post, there among the encyclopedias, the bibliographies, the indexes and guides. My bullying surprised me and I wondered if some of it had not been learned from Mr. Patimkin that morning I’d heard him giving Grossman an earful on the phone. Perhaps I was more of a businessman than I thought. Maybe I could learn to become a Patimkin with ease…
Days passed slowly; I never did see the colored kid again, and when, one noon, I looked in the stacks, Gauguin was gone, apparently charged out finally by the jowly man. I wondered what it had been like that day the colored kid had discovered the book was gone. Had he cried? For some reason I imagined that he had blamed it on me, but then I realized that I was confusing the dream I’d had with reality. Chances were he had discovered someone else, Van Gogh, Vermeer … But no, they were not his kind of artists’. What had probably happened was that he’d given up on the library and gone back to playing Willie Mays in the streets. He was better off, I thought. No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head if you can’t afford the fare.
Let’s see, what else did I do? I ate, I slept, I went to the movies, I sent broken-spined books to the bindery—I did everything I’d ever done before, but now each activity was surrounded by a fence, existed alone, and my life consisted of jumping from one fence to the next. There was no flow, for that had been Brenda.
And then Brenda wrote saying that she could be coming in for the Jewish holidays which were only a week away. I was so overjoyed I wanted to call Mr. and Mrs. Patimkin, just to tell them of my pleasure. However, when I got to the phone and had actually dialed the first two letters, I knew that at the other end there would be silence; if there was anything said, it would only be Mrs. Patimkin asking, “What is it you want?” Mr. Patimkin had probably forgotten my name.
That night, after dinner, I gave Aunt Gladys a kiss and told her she shouldn’t work so hard.
“In less than a week it’s Rosh Hashana and he thinks I should take a vacation. Ten people I’m having. What do you think, a chicken cleans itself? Thank God, the holidays come once a year, I’d be an old woman before my time.”
But then it was only nine people Aunt Gladys was having, for only two days after her letter Brenda called.
“Oy, Gut!” Aunt Gladys called. “Long distance!”
“Hello?” I said.
“Hello, sweetie?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What is it?” Aunt Gladys tugged at my shirt. “What is it?”
“It’s for me.”
“Who?” Aunt Gladys said, pointing into the receiver.
“Brenda,” I said.
“Yes?” Brenda said.
“Brenda?” Aunt Gladys said. “What does she call long distance, I almost had a heart attack.”
“Because she’s in Boston,” I said. “Please, Aunt Gladys…”
And Aunt Gladys walked off, mumbling, “These kids…”
“Hello,” I said again into the phone.
“Neil, how are you?”
“I love you.”
“Neil, I have bad news. I can’t come in this week.”
“But, honey, it’s the Jewish holidays.”
“Sweetheart;’ she laughed.
“Can’t you say that, for an excuse?”
“I have a test Saturday, and a paper, and you know if I went home I wouldn’t get anything done…”
“You would.”
“Neil, I just can’t. My mother’d make me go to Temple, and I wouldn’t even have enough time to see you.”
“Oh God, Brenda.”
“Sweetie?”
“Yes?”
“Can’t you come up here?” she asked.
“I’m working.”
“The Jewish holidays,” she said.
“Honey, I can’t. Last year I didn’t take them off, I can’t all—”
“You can say you had a conversion.”
“Besides, my aunt’s having all the family for dinner, and you know what with my parents—”
“Come up, Neil.”
“I can’t just take two days off, Bren. I just got promoted and a raise—”
“The hell with the raise.”
“Baby, it’s my job.”
“Forever?” she said.
“No.”
“Then come. I’ve got a hotel room.”
“For me?”
“For us.”
“Can you do that?”
“No and yes. People do it.”
“Brenda, you tempt me.”
“Be tempted.”
“I could take a train Wednesday right from work.”
“You could stay till Sunday night.”
“Bren, I can
’t. I still have to be back to work on Saturday.”
“Don’t you ever get a day off?” she said.
“Tuesdays,” I said glumly.
“God.”
“And Sunday,” I added.
Brenda said something but I did not hear her, for Aunt Gladys called, “You talk all day long distance?”
“Quiet!” I shouted back to her.
“Neil, will you?”
“Damn it, yes,” I said.
“Are you angry?”
“I don’t think so. I’m going to come up.”
“Till Sunday.”
“We’ll see.”
“Don’t feel upset, Neil. You sound upset. It is the Jewish holidays. I mean you should be off.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m an orthodox Jew, for God’s sake, I ought to take advantage of it.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Is there a train around six?”
“Every hour, I think.”
“Then I’ll be on the one that leaves at six.”
“I’ll be at the station,” she said. “How will I know you?”
“I’ll be disguised as an orthodox Jew.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Good night, love,” I said.
Aunt Gladys cried when I told her I was going away for Rosh Hashana.
“And I was preparing a big meal,” she said.
“You can still prepare it.”
“What will I tell your mother?”
“I’ll tell her, Aunt Gladys. Please. You have no right to get upset…”
“Someday you’ll have a family you’ll know what ifs like.”
“I have a family now.”
“What’s a matter,” she said, blowing her nose, “That girl couldn’t come home to see her family it’s the holidays?”
“She’s in school, she just can’t—”