“Ohh,” Norman said.
•
“You don’t understand, you little jerk, you just don’t understand about me and Quixote and Verlaine and Taras Bulba and . . .” Wade Johnson squinted suddenly. “Why, Norman, you little clod, you’ve gone and grown a face.” He sat swaying drunkenly on the couch while Wade Junior dropped ice cubes into his glass with a beatific smile.
“I thought you were going to sneak off owing me money,” Norman said with a grin. “And here you are paying me off just like a civilized human being.”
“That’s because Wade Junior and I want to go out of this mare’s nest unsoiled by curses. Wade Junior and I are heading west in the morning, and do you know what we’re going to do?”
Norman shook his head.
“Wade Junior and I are going to get up at five o’clock and we’re going to get dressed and go out into the street and we’re going to stand there mocking every son of a bitch who has to go to work or to school, aren’t we, Wade Junior?”
Wade Junior smiled angelically and nodded.
“And do you know why? Because Wade Junior and I have decided that we are human beings and we have to be free.”
“Ohh,” Norman said.
•
“Why am I smiling?” Leni Cass said. “Well, maybe because I’ve gotten me a new beau.”
“You seem to have great expectations.”
“I feel good right now. I’m paying you what I owe you and I’m loved once more.”
“How do you know your beau loves you, I mean in such a short time?”
“It doesn’t matter whether he does or not, as long as I think he does,” she said, pitying his ignorance with her huge, lovely eyes.
“Ohh,” Norman said.
•
“My sister din want me to come this week, said she was having company, said I’d be in the way,” Louie said in a dull, dry voice, staring without seeing. “Said I embarrass her with my talking when she’s got company. Hah, she’s a fine one. Tells me the kids learn not good talk from me. I never never said a bad word in front of them kids, never. People think they’re so smart; they like to mock, you know. Who she think she is, Queen frun England or suttin? She’s afraid sometimes because from the couple times I was in a sanatorium with nerves. What’s she got to be afraid? I never did nothing to anyone else them times—just to my own self.”
The television picture seemed pale, and Norman wondered whether a new picture tube would help the gnome.
“Say, I meant to ask,” Norman said, “did you ever see that movie you were talking about?”
“No, no I never,” Louie said, his face brightening. “I think I’ll go this weekend. I’m glad I thought of it. Maybe Manucci wants to see it again. Yeah, yeah, that’ll work good. Then next weekend I’ll go by my sister’s—she said she’s going out then.”
“You have a lousy life, Louie,” Norman said.
“No, no, its gonna work out swell. This week I’ll go to that picture and next week I’ll go out by my sister.” He was animated now and went over to his stove and began to fuss with some pots.
“You never had a woman, you’ll never have children, you’ll never have money, you’ll never have respect,” Norman intoned in wonder.
“You know what kind of house she got, my sister?” Louie said, his back to Norman as he stirred something, his ears brushing his narrow, hunched shoulders.
“No,” Norman said dazedly, “no, I don’t.”
“Colonial split,” Louie said proudly.
“Ohh,” Norman replied.
•
After he got Bodien to fix the Beelers’ toilet, Norman stayed behind, and when the old man began snoring in the other room, Sheryl took him on a more adventurous tour of love-making. He was a quivering, brainless mass when he looked down and saw Sheryl’s smile harden. She darted her eyes sideways without losing the smile. First Norman realized the snoring had stopped. Gradually he worked his eyes toward the bedroom doorway. He saw the slippered feet, the baggy trousers, the small paunch. An icy sensation came over him, and he longed to wake up. Sheryl’s legs were around his back, his buttocks were bare, the room was odorous. Like a firing-squad victim, he brought his eyes up to the silver face of Beeler.
“Baby Doll,” Beeler said, “you seen my pills, the ones for the arteries?”
“In the medicine chest, Pa,” Sheryl said, squeezing Norman in her powerful scissors grip.
“Thanks, Doll Baby,” Beeler said tenderly, gazing right into Norman’s eyes. “Don’t stay up late.”
“Good night, Daddy,” Sheryl said.
“Driven snow,” Beeler said directly to Norman, his weird blue eyes coated with reverence.
“Ohhh-hh,” Norman said with great wonder.
•
“I’ve converted,” Ilse said viciously. “What do you say to that?”
“From what to what?” Norman asked, beyond sense.
“I’ve become a Jew,” she said.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I couldn’t stand all of them staring at me like that. Because I had nightmares.”
“Why did you have nightmares?” he asked reasonably.
“Because I worked in a concentration camp and I did horrid things to them.” She looked like a witch, her eyes blood red, her mouth pale as soap.
“Does it make you feel better?”
“I hate them, I hate them,” she snarled.
“Who?”
“The Jews,” she said, beginning to weep. “The goddamned Jews.”
“Ohh,” Norman said.
•
“On the train tonight, Moonbloom, I figured it out,” Sugarman said from where he lay on the bed, his face like a fat saint’s. “There is a Trinity of survival, and it consists of Courage, Dream, and Love.”
“Well, you’re a poet,” Norman said, neither admitting nor denying, but only smiling at the familiarity of the candy vendor’s voice, which now seemed to have accompanied him all his life.
“I’m not just being lyric,” Sugarman said, raising his coarse red face from his pillow to stare chidingly at the agent.
“Of course not, you have proof.” Norman smiled but said it without insolence; he was worn down too fine for such a petty attitude.
Sugarman remained on his elbows a little longer, looking at Norman with astounded eyes. “What’s happened to you? You look terrible. You look like I should look with my spirit. I have a slender, wan, ascetic spirit, and my outer man deceives the onlooker. I should look like you look,” he said indignantly.
“But you were saying . . .”
“No, not exactly proof,” Sugarman went on, lying down again and staring at the ceiling. “But examples, examples I have in abundance. Remember, I am sensitized by the peculiar setting of my work. I see people in transit. I see them sleeping, I see them doing nothing, I see them, as it were, between living, and so I know. I saw tonight, two Chasidim making love to their books and wrapped in their ridiculous clothes, carrying their own stupid lunches with them—like men in space suits. And I saw a young Negro showgirl going to Bridgeport to sing in a crappy little club up there and wearing a certain smile that was left on from when her brother brought her sandwiches to take along and who also was a clown and made faces at her from the platform; in other words, her brother gave her food and laughter to carry her through a rough, long evening. And it sustained her through the drunken advances of two silly white boys, and probably through the whole of that night, no matter what she was forced to do. And then I saw a man who had had his jaw removed and carried a crutch, and on top of which he was a Negro; this man continued, through the whole run to Boston, to tolerate breathing—my guess is that he is still tolerating it and will continue to until some outside force, less tolerant than he, stops it. Then I think of Karloff, that old beast, I think of Del Rio, and Paxton, and Louie, and my evidence is in, my theorem is proved: Courage, Love, Illusion (or dream, if you will)—he who possesses all three, or two, or at least one o
f these things wins whatever there is to win; those who lack all three are the failures. So now I know, and I wonder about me. . . .”
His words reverberated through Norman and beyond, out to the whole of the city, and beyond, out to the whole of the earth, and beyond. Norman shielded his soul from the immensity of it, and in so doing saw with fluttering heart that there was only one chore left to do—he still had to repair Basellecci’s wall.
“Ohh,” he said.
24
“TOMORROW MORNING I’M coming down there,” Irwin said into his ear, a tiny yet powerful voice that threatened change. “We’ll wrap up this whole fiasco then, Norman. I have nothing further to say.”
Norman, however, was filled with the more imminent excitement and was able to shut out apprehension. “Yes, okay, Irwin,” he answered impatiently. “We’ll talk then.” And he took just long enough to hang up for Irwin to hang up too and give him back the dial tone. Then he dialed Gaylord.
“Hello, Gaylord?”
“Nosir, this Harner.”
“Put your father on.”
“Uh . . . he not here? I mean, he not here.”
“Put him on whether he’s there or not!” Norman roared.
There was the usual studied pause, and then Gaylord puffed ostentatiously into the phone.
“Yeah . . . who’s there?”
“Moonbloom.”
“Oh gee, I . . . just this . . . minute . . .”
“Never mind, just listen to me. Tonight . . .”
“Oh no, nosirree, nothing doing. This been going on for months now, and I had it. No, negative, nyet, nein, and unh-unh.”
“Gaylord, listen to me . . .”
“Nothing to listen to. You want me to work tonight and I’m not gonna, that’s that.”
“Just this, Gaylord, only this.”
“Moonbloom, you’re a sly guy, you know? You been saying that to me for months. What I been getting out of it? Nothing but tired blood. My back, which always was chronic, is now practically broke. I fall asleep on my elevator job, take people right past their floors. I been too tired to eat, too tired to enjoy my marriage bed, too tired to take Harner here on the educational excursions I used to. Go ahead, even ask the child hisself. Tell Mr. Moonbloom when the last time I taken you to the Planetarium.”
There was the sound of a throat being cleared and then Harner’s voice intoned, “Long time.”
“For months and months I been painting and plastering and fixing like a slave. I sit back today and wonder what possess me to go along all this time like I don’t have a brain in my head. I think I been hypnotized or something. You, you quiet little, meek guys—hard to recognize. Man on his guard when he see a fast-talking smoothy, but not with one like you. None of them other agents, with all their yelling and bossing, got a thing out of me. Oh, you cool, Moonbloom, but I had it. I draw the line, right here, straight as a arrow. You can fire me or whatever. This isn’t the last time—the last time was the last time.” Now his panting was legitimate and had a fury even he couldn’t have simulated. “Them’s my final words.”
“Gaylord . . .”
“Nope!” It was like a plug popped into a drain.
“Bodien said that he would help if you did. It all depends on you.”
“Nope.”
It was such a stubborn, cruel sound. Suddenly Norman felt the ironic despair of a shipwrecked man who feels his little boat going under just as he spots land. All the strange, long months took on the quality of a disastrously frivolous binge; he had taken his meager store of energy and security and bet it on a hallucinatory dark horse, and now he would not only lose, but also never even get a chance to see the weird beast. Frustration and grief enlarged his heart and made it pound like an imprisoned hawk. He felt rage and misery and an unbearable desire to laugh himself to death. He was sweating and chilly when he spoke again in a low, intense voice.
“Don’t say a word until I’m finished,” he said almost sternly, keeping his eyes fixed on the lettering on the window. (The n had now receded from r and was merely a ragged i—Moonblooi?) “Tomorrow morning Irwin Moonbloom, my brother and employer, is coming down here. He can want only one thing. I am delinquent in the rents, I have improved the houses so that they will be assessed for more than they’re worth. He will officially fire me—no question about it. You’ll be rid of me once and for all.”
Something in his voice kept Gaylord quiet, and only the faintest whisper of his breath indicated he was still on the other end of the line.
“I was a very sensible and efficient person, all my life. I never did anything unreasonable. I never was unduly involved with even the most sensible people I knew. I never would have done all these things, never. It’s possible that I’ve become unhinged, deranged. It’s very possible. But the way I am now, my former life seems to be the crazy one. That’s how far gone I am. It’s all those people, Gaylord, all those people. For the first time, people entered me. I don’t know what I mean, so don’t ask me. Some of them are disgusting, some are pathetic. Most of them I don’t even like, I can’t stand them. But they entered me, and I don’t know how to get them out. It has nothing to do with reason. There’s no earthly reason why I decided I had to paint all their rooms and fix all their stoves and sinks. But once I started, there was sure no way to stop. I mean, once you’re falling you don’t change direction. There is only one job left to do. Maybe because it’s the last it seems like the most important. I’ve got to fix Basellecci’s wall. I don’t think it will do him the least bit of good; I think he’s got cancer. I don’t think I did any of the others any good either. But I’ve got to finish and see what it has all done for me. That’s all. I’ll try to do it myself, but it will be awfully hard, probably impossible. I need Bodien and I need you. After this job I’ll be gone. I’ll even send you money from wherever I go—but of course there’s no reason for you to believe that I will. Please, Gaylord?”
There was a long silence. It stretched thinner and thinner, and finally broke.
“You’re real cool, you know? You’re real, real cool,” Gaylord said viciously.
“Gaylord?” he wailed.
“This is the absolutely, impervious last last time—on my mother’s spirit in Heaven.”
“Ohh Gaylord, Gaylord . . .”
“Never mind, never mind,” Gaylord snarled. “I see you there after supper, and then no more!”
“Gayyylord,” he sighed in gratitude and amazement.
25
AT TWO THIRTY in the afternoon he went to his apartment to eat and rest a little for the night’s work. He force-fed himself with oatmeal and steak, almost gagged on a pint of milk, and then lay down on his bed to watch a stormy patch of sky through the window. The roiling, subtle violence of the gray-on-gray heavens made him feel that he was moving along on a flood-tossed piece of flotsam. His windows shook. The outlines of the buildings became suddenly soft; large wet flakes of snow kissed the glass and died. The contours of roof and ventilator and chimney grew dimmer as the snow increased; by contrast, everything within the room became much sharper and more vivid. The forgotten picture of his grandparents caught his eye, his old brush set stood out like museum pieces, and the photograph of himself in knickers impressed him with a vivid sense of pity. He grieved painlessly for a vanished life and wondered what had come to replace it.
“So late in the season,” he said aloud in gentle admonishment to the dense world of snow outside. And then he slept.
When he woke it was dark, and he had no idea of where he was in time or space. First the old anticipation of pain came over him. But it had no power to orient him now, for the pain had arrived some time ago. He drew upon early memories as a man will grope for a rope ladder, but found the rungs of that ladder to be made of spider web, or of something too soft with age to bear his weight. And when he might have fallen back into sleep or some more irrevocable void, he suddenly recalled moments of his more recent history and found this ladder to be strong and real and capable of l
ifting him.
Minna and Eva joined in a line of vision that was drawn through Lester’s head. Arnold and Betty Jacoby were set like lustrous stones in the dim apartment, their odd, apprehensive love almost pungent. Katz’s face, with its little electric arcs of agonized smile. Kram, frozen in the cleanliness with his warped body. Louie’s wheeling, falling eyes. The golden, drowsy Bobby, like a pearl in the muck of his parents’ presence. Karloff, horrible, iridescent, and huge in his futile battle with death. The Spragues groping brainlessly yet surely toward life. Beeler’s monstrous fiction, which made his face like those on ancient coins. The crazy, tormented Chinese who kept prodding his dead parents for information about who he was. Ilse, the female Barabbas. J. T., the fallen warrior. Wade, the poet out of his time. Del Rio warring against a filth of soul. Sugarman, the melancholy minstrel. Leni seeking love under the stones of humiliation. Marvin Schoenbrun trying to armor himself with grace. Paxton, with a woman’s lust but a man’s desire. Basellecci . . .
“My God,” he cried, sitting up and groping for the light. “What time . . .” He rushed into the other room and looked at the clock; it was six thirty, and Gaylord and Bodien were to meet him on Mott Street at seven. He threw on his clothes and ran out without locking his door, buttoning as he went. He bruised his thigh on a rail post, banged his fingers on a corner of wall; these wounds only made him smile. Didn’t he have worse ones on his brow and mouth and inside?
But when he stepped outside he was dismayed. The great lumped shapes of abandoned cars and buses were like the crude huts of a lost civilization. The old buildings looked blacker than ever in their outlines of snow. Now the wind had stopped, and the snow fell silently, ceaselessly, and with such density that it seemed the earth rose up into it.
“Hah,” he cried; the sound was stifled. “Ahaha.” He was astounded at the muffled quality of it. “Ararara . . .” It was flattened against his stinging face. “Rannana,” he called. Then he waited. “Aardvark!” Like a canny madman, he searched the dissolving street. “Norman Moonbloom!” Nothing changed. Now he could make out a seething whisper all around him, a hissing in the cold dim air. His feet grew cold, and he looked down to see the snow three quarters up to his knees. He began to plod toward the subway, bent forward against nothing palpable.
The Tenants of Moonbloom Page 21