by Philip Roth
“Sir, Grossbart is strange—” Barrett greeted that with a mockingly indulgent smile. I altered my approach. “Captain, he’s a very orthodox Jew, and so he’s only allowed to eat certain foods.”
“He throws up, the congressman said. Every time he eats something, his mother says, he throws up!”
“He’s accustomed to observing the dietary laws, Captain.”
“So why’s his old lady have to call the White House?”
“Jewish parents, sir—they’re apt to be more protective than you expect. I mean, Jews have a very close family life. A boy goes away from home, sometimes the mother is liable to get very upset. Probably the boy mentioned something in a letter, and his mother misinterpreted.”
“I’d like to punch him one right in the mouth,” the Captain said. “There’s a war on, and he wants a silver platter!”
“I don’t think the boy’s to blame, sir. I’m sure we can straighten it out by just asking him. Jewish parents worry—”
“All parents worry, for Christ’s sake. But they don’t get on their high horse and start pulling strings—”
I interrupted, my voice higher, tighter than before. “The home life, Captain, is very important—but you’re right, it may sometimes get out of hand. It’s a very wonderful thing, Captain, but because it’s so close, this kind of thing…”
He didn’t listen any longer to my attempt to present both myself and Lightfoot Harry with an explanation for the letter. He turned back to the phone. “Sir?” he said. “Sir—Marx, here, tells me Jews have a tendency to be pushy. He says he thinks we can settle it right here in the company…. Yes, sir…. I will call back, sir, soon as I can.” He hung up. “Where are the men, Sergeant?”
“On the range.”
With a whack on the top of his helmet, he crushed it down over his eyes again, and charged out of his chair. “We’re going for a ride,” he said.
The Captain drove, and I sat beside him. It was a hot spring day, and under my newly starched fatigues I felt as though my armpits were melting down onto my sides and chest. The roads were dry, and by the time we reached the firing range, my teeth felt gritty with dust, though my mouth had been shut the whole trip. The Captain slammed the brakes on and told me to get the hell out and find Grossbart.
I found him on his belly, firing wildly at the five-hundred-feet target. Waiting their turns behind him were Halpern and Fishbein. Fishbein, wearing a pair of steel-rimmed G.I. glasses I hadn’t seen on him before, had the appearance of an old peddler who would gladly have sold you his rifle and the cartridges that were slung all over him. I stood back by the ammo boxes, waiting for Grossbart to finish spraying the distant targets. Fishbein straggled back to stand near me.
“Hello, Sergeant Marx,” he said.
“How are you?” I mumbled.
“Fine, thank you. Sheldon’s really a good shot.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I’m not so good, but I think I’m getting the hang of it now. Sergeant, I don’t mean to, you know, ask what I shouldn’t—” The boy stopped. He was trying to speak intimately, but the noise of the shooting forced him to shout at me.
“What is it?” I asked. Down the range, I saw Captain Barrett standing up in the jeep, scanning the line for me and Grossbart.
“My parents keep asking and asking where we’re going,” Fishbein said. “Everybody says the Pacific. I don’t care, but my parents—If I could relieve their minds, I think I could concentrate more on my shooting.”
“I don’t know where, Fishbein. Try to concentrate anyway.”
“Sheldon says you might be able to find out.”
“I don’t know a thing, Fishbein. You just take it easy, and don’t let Sheldon—”
“I’m taking it easy, Sergeant. It’s at home—”
Grossbart had finished on the line, and was dusting his fatigues with one hand. I called to him. “Grossbart, the Captain wants to see you.”
He came toward us. His eyes blazed and twinkled. “Hi!”
“Don’t point that rifle!” I said.
“I wouldn’t shoot you, Sarge.” He gave me a smile as wide as a pumpkin, and turned the barrel aside.
“Damn you, Grossbart, this is no joke! Follow me.”
I walked ahead of him, and had the awful suspicion that, behind me, Grossbart was marching, his rifle on his shoulder, as though he were a one-man detachment. At the jeep, he gave the Captain a rifle salute. “Private Sheldon Grossbart, sir.”
“At ease, Grossman.” The Captain sat down, slid over into the empty seat, and, crooking a finger, invited Grossbart closer.
“Bart, sir. Sheldon Grossbart. It’s a common error.” Grossbart nodded at me; I understood, he indicated. I looked away just as the mess truck pulled up to the range, disgorging a half-dozen KP.s with rolled-up sleeves. The mess sergeant screamed at them while they set up the chowline equipment.
“Grossbart, your mama wrote some congressman that we don’t feed you right. Do you know that?” the Captain said.
“It was my father, sir. He wrote to Representative Franconi that my religion forbids me to eat certain foods.”
“What religion is that, Grossbart?”
“Jewish.”
“‘Jewish, sir; ” I said to Grossbart.
“Excuse me, sir. Jewish, sir.”
“What have you been living on?” the Captain asked. “You’ve been in the Army a month already. You don’t look to me like you’re falling to pieces.”
“I eat because I have to, sir. But Sergeant Marx will testify to the fact that I don’t eat one mouthful more than I need to in order to survive.”
“Is that so, Marx?” Barrett asked.
“I’ve never seen Grossbart eat, sir,” I said.
“But you heard the rabbi,” Grossbart said. “He told us what to do, and I listened.”
The Captain looked at me. “Well, Marx?”
“I still don’t know what he eats and doesn’t eat, sir.”
Grossbart raised his arms to plead with me, and it looked for a moment as though he were going to hand me his weapon to hold. “But, Sergeant—”
“Look, Grossbart, just answer the Captain’s questions,” I said sharply.
Barrett smiled at me, and I resented it. “All right, Grossbart,” he said. “What is it you want? The little piece of paper? You want out?”
“No, sir. Only to be allowed to live as a Jew. And for the others, too.”
“What others?”
“Fishbein, sir, and Halpern.”
“They don’t like the way we serve, either?”
“Halpern throws up, sir. I’ve seen it.”
“I thought you throw up.”
“Just once, sir. I didn’t know the sausage was sausage.”
“We’ll give menus, Grossbart. We’ll show training films about the food, so you can identify when we’re trying to poison you.”
Grossbart did not answer. The men had been organized into two long chow lines. At the tail end of one, I spotted Fishbein—or, rather, his glasses spotted me. They winked sunlight back at me. Halpern stood next to him, patting the inside of his collar with a khaki handkerchief. They moved with the line as it began to edge up toward the food. The mess sergeant was still screaming at the K.P.s. For a moment, I was actually terrified by the thought that somehow the mess sergeant was going to become involved in Grossbart’s problem.
“Marx,” the Captain said, “you’re a Jewish fella—am I right?”
I played straight man. “Yes, sir.”
“How long you been in the Army? Tell this boy.”
“Three years and two months.”
“A year in combat, Grossbart. Twelve goddam months in combat all through Europe. I admire this man.” The Captain snapped a wrist against my chest. “Do you hear him peeping about the food? Do you? I want an answer, Grossbart. Yes or no.”
“No, sir.”
“And why not? He’s a Jewish fella.”
“Some things are more importa
nt to some Jews than other things to other Jews.”
Barrett blew up. “Look, Grossbart. Marx, here, is a good man—a goddam hero. When you were in high school, Sergeant Marx was killing Germans. Who does more for the jews—you, by throwing up over a lousy piece of sausage, a piece of first-cut meat, or Marx, by killing those Nazi bastards? If I was a Jew, Grossbart, I’d kiss this man’s feet. He’s a goddam hero, and he eats what we give him. Why do you have to cause trouble is what I want to know! What is it you’re buckin’ for—a discharge?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m talking to a wall! Sergeant, get him out of my way.” Barrett swung himself back into the driver’s seat. “I’m going to see the chaplain.” The engine roared, the jeep spun around in a whirl of dust, and the Captain was headed back to camp.
For a moment, Grossbart and I stood side by side, watching the jeep. Then he looked at me and said, “I don’t want to start trouble. That’s the first thing they toss up to us.”
When he spoke, I saw that his teeth were white and straight, and the sight of them suddenly made me understand that Grossbart actually did have parents—that once upon a time someone had taken little Sheldon to the dentist. He was their son. Despite all the talk about his parents, it was hard to believe in Grossbart as a child, an heir—as related by blood to anyone, mother, father, or, above all, to me. This realization led me to another.
“What does your father do, Grossbart?” I asked as we started to walk back toward the chow line.
“He’s a tailor.”
“An American?”
“Now, yes. A son in the Army,” he said, jokingly.
“And your mother?” I asked.
He winked. “A ballabusta. She practically sleeps with a dustcloth in her hand.”
“She’s also an immigrant?”
“All she talks is Yiddish, still.”
“And your father, too?”
“A little English. ‘Clean,’ ‘Press,’ ‘Take the pants in.’ That’s the extent of it. But they’re good to me.”
“Then, Grossbart—” I reached out and stopped him. He turned toward me, and when our eyes met, his seemed to jump back, to shiver in their sockets. “Grossbart—you were the one who wrote that letter, weren’t you?”
It took only a second or two for his eyes to flash happy again. “Yes.” He walked on, and I kept pace. “It’s what my father would have written if he had known how. It was his name, though. He signed it. He even mailed it. I sent it home. For the New York postmark.”
I was astonished, and he saw it. With complete seriousness, he thrust his right arm in front of me. “Blood is blood, Sergeant,” he said, pinching the blue vein in his wrist.
“What the hell are you trying to do, Grossbart?” I asked. “I’ve seen you eat. Do you know that? I told the Captain I don’t know what you eat, but I’ve seen you eat like a hound at chow.”
“We work hard, Sergeant. We’re in training. For a furnace to work, you’ve got to feed it coal.”
“Why did you say in the letter that you threw up all the time?”
“I was really talking about Mickey there. I was talking for him. He would never write, Sergeant, though I pleaded with him. He’ll waste away to nothing if I don’t help. Sergeant, I used my name—my father’s name—but it’s Mickey, and Fishbein, too, I’m watching out for.”
“You’re a regular Messiah, aren’t you?”
We were at the chow line now.
“That’s a good one, Sergeant,” he said, smiling. “But who knows? Who can tell? Maybe you’re the Messiah—a little bit. What Mickey says is the Messiah is a collective idea. He went to Yeshiva, Mickey, for a while. He says together we’re the Messiah. Me a little bit, you a little bit. You should hear that kid talk, Sergeant, when he gets going.”
“Me a little bit, you a little bit,” I said. “You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you, Grossbart? That would make everything so clean for you.”
“It doesn’t seem too bad a thing to believe, Sergeant. It only means we should all give a little, is all.”
I walked off to eat my rations with the other noncoms.
Two days later, a letter addressed to Captain Barrett passed over my desk. It had come through the chain of command—from the office of Congressman Franconi, where it had been received, to General Lyman, to Colonel Sousa, to Major Lamont, now to Captain Barrett. I read it over twice. It was dated May 14, the day Barrett had spoken with Grossbart on the rifle range.
Dear Congressman:
First let me thank you for your interest in behalf of my son, Private Sheldon Grossbart. Fortunately, I was able to speak with Sheldon on the phone the other night, and I think I’ve been able to solve our problem. He is, as I mentioned in my last letter, a very religious boy, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I could persuade him that the religious thing to do—what God Himself would want Sheldon to do—would be to suffer the pangs of religious remorse for the good of his country and all mankind. It took some doing, Congressman, but finally he saw the light. In fact, what he said (and I wrote down the words on a scratch pad so as never to forget), what he said was “I guess you’re right, Dad. So many millions of my fellow-Jews gave up their lives to the enemy, the least I can do is live for a while minus a bit of my heritage so as to help end this struggle and regain for all the children of God dignity and humanity.” That, Congressman, would make any father proud.
By the way, Sheldon wanted me to know—and to pass on to you—the name of a soldier who helped him reach this decision: SERGEANT NATHAN MARX. Sergeant Marx is a combat veteran who is Sheldon’s first sergeant. This man has helped Sheldon over some of the first hurdles he’s had to face in the Army, and is in part responsible for Sheldon’s changing his mind about the dietary laws. I know Sheldon would appreciate any recognition Marx could receive.
Thank you and good luck. I look forward to seeing your name on the next election ballot.
Respectfully,
Samuel E. Grossbart
Attached to the Grossbart communique was another, addressed to General Marshall Lyman, the post commander, and signed by Representative Charles E. Franconi, of the House of Representatives. The communique informed General Lyman that Sergeant Nathan Marx was a credit to the U.S. Army and the Jewish people.
What was Grossbart’s motive in recanting? Did he feel he’d gone too far? Was the letter a strategic retreat—a crafty attempt to strengthen what he considered our alliance? Or had he actually changed his mind, via an imaginary dialogue between Grossbart pere and Grossbart fils? I was puzzled, but only for a few days—that is, only until I realized that, whatever his reasons, he had actually decided to disappear from my life; he was going to allow himself to become just another trainee. I saw him at inspection, but he never winked; at chow formations, but he never flashed me a sign. On Sundays, with the other trainees, he would sit around watching the noncoms’ Softball team, for which I pitched, but not once did he speak an unnecessary word to me. Fishbein and Halpern retreated, too—at Grossbart’s command, I was sure. Apparently he had seen that wisdom lay in turning back before he plunged over into the ugliness of privilege undeserved. Our separation allowed me to forgive him our past encounters, and, finally, to admire him for his good sense.
Meanwhile, free of Grossbart, I grew used to my job and my administrative tasks. I stepped on a scale one day, and discovered I had truly become a noncombatant; I had gained seven pounds. I found patience to get past the first three pages of a book. I thought about the future more and more, and wrote letters to girls I’d known before the war. I even got a few answers. I sent away to Columbia for a Law School catalogue. I continued to follow the war in the Pacific, but it was not my war. I thought I could see the end, and sometimes, at night, I dreamed that I was walking on the streets of Manhattan—Broadway, Third Avenue, 116th Street, where I had lived the three years I attended Columbia. I curled myself around these dreams and I began to be happy.
And then, one Sunday, when everybody
was away and I was alone in the orderly room reading a month-old copy of the Sporting News, Grossbart reappeared.
“You a baseball fan, Sergeant?”
I looked up. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Grossbart said. “They’re making a soldier out of me.”
“How are Fishbein and Halpern?”
“Coming along,” he said. “We’ve got no training this afternoon. They’re at the movies.”
“How come you’re not with them?”
“I wanted to come over and say hello.”
He smiled—a shy, regular-guy smile, as though he and I well knew that our friendship drew its sustenance from unexpected visits, remembered birthdays, and borrowed lawnmowers. At first it offended me, and then the feeling was swallowed by the general uneasiness I felt at the thought that everyone on the post was locked away in a dark movie theater and I was here alone with Grossbart. I folded up my paper.
“Sergeant,” he said, “I’d like to ask a favor. It is a favor, and I’m making no bones about it.”
He stopped, allowing me to refuse him a hearing—which, of course, forced me into a courtesy I did not intend. “Go ahead.”
“Well, actually it’s two favors.”
I said nothing.
“The first one’s about these rumors. Everybody says we’re going to the Pacific.”
“As I told your friend Fishbein, I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll just have to wait to find out. Like everybody else.”
“You think there’s a chance of any of us going East?”
“Germany?” I said. “Maybe.”
“I meant New York.”
“I don’t think so, Grossbart. Offhand.”
“Thanks for the information, Sergeant,” he said.
“It’s not information, Grossbart. Just what I surmise.”
“It certainly would be good to be near home. My parents—you know.” He took a step toward the door and then turned back. “Oh, the other thing. May I ask the other?”