"Uh-uh," she said.
He flung the overcoat back over his hips, his legs sprawling, and said,
"This way?"
"Yes," she said.
Stern said, "Jesus," and ran upstairs to sink in agony upon the bed.
But he felt excited, too.
On the weekend, several days later, as Stern unloaded cans of chow mein
from the supermarket, his wife said, "He has big arms."
"Who?" Stern asked, knowing full well who she meant
"The man," she said. "The man who said that thing."
"Oh," Stern said. "What do arms mean?"
The third and final time was when they sat one day beneath a birch tree
while their son dug a hole in the dirt to China. The kike man drove by
in his car and Stern's wife said, "I hate that man."
"You're silly," Stern said.
* * * * *
The man's house lay at a point equidistant between Stern's and the
estate. Since Stern did not want to pass the man's house on foot
anymore, he took to driving his car back and forth to the estate each
day, leaving it at the estate edge each morning and picking it up at
night. Once he was in his car at night, he had a choice of either
driving directly past the man's house or taking a more roundabout route
that avoided the man's house altogether. Each night, as he boarded the
train, he would begin a struggle within himself as to which road to
take. The roundabout road presented the more attractive view and Stern
told himself there was no earthly reason why he should have to pass up
the nicer scenery along this road. The houses were much handsomer and
made Stern feel he lived in a more expensive neighborhood. Stern would
start off along the finer road, but when he had gone fifty yards, he
would throw his car into reverse, back up, and go down the road that
led past the man's house. It was much shorter this way, of course, and
Stern told himself now that distance should be the only consideration,
that if he took the roundabout road, he was only doing it to avoid
having to look at the man's house and was being a coward, afraid that
the man would pull him out of the car and break his stomach. On the few
occasions when he did follow the roundabout road all the way home, he
would walk past his wife and son and lie in bed, sinking his teeth into
his top lip. On most occasions, however, he drove right past the man's
house, going very slowly to show he knew no fear. His license said,
"Driver must wear glasses," and Stern could not drive well without
them, but when he went past the man's house he slipped them off to
present a picture of strength, squinting for sight so he could stay on
the road. Past the house, he would duck down and slip them on again,
shoulders hunched in such a way that if the man was looking after
Stern, he would not see the glasses.
One night Stern drove by and saw the man's son, who would have been
his own son's friend, digging in the dirt beside the curb. From that
night on, Stern drove very close to the curb, imagining that he would
suddenly speed up, catch the boy on his bumpers, and then go the
remaining mile in seconds, disappearing undetected into his garage.
And then he pictured a car fight in which the man would get Stern's
boy, following him onto the lawn and pinning him against the drainpipe,
while Stern, waiting upstairs, held his hands over his ears, blocking
out the noise. The man would then, somehow, pick off Stern's wife in
her kitchen and then drive upstairs and finish off Stern himself,
cringing in his bedroom. Another night, Stern forced himself to examine
the name on the man's mailbox. _De Luccio_. He looked it up in the
telephone book that night and saw that there were eighteen others in
the town. Even if he were to defeat the man, an army of relatives stood
by to take his place. He wondered who he could pit against them and
came up only with his married sister who lived in narrow circumstances
above a store in San Diego. Once she had helped him in a snowball
fight, and back to back they had done well together, until the action
speeded up and ice balls began to get her in the breasts. "Stop it;
she's a girl," Stern hollered, but a heavy ball split her brow and down
she went, making a yowling, nasal sound. But she'd been game, standing
firmly in the snow, puffing, blowing the hair out of her face, panting
like a puppy. He imagined her now, back to back with him against the
eighteen heavy-armed De Luccios, standing game as a puppy, until they
all began to beat her breasts and easily knock her to the ground. Who
else might have stood off the De Luccios? When alive, perhaps his Uncle
Henny, the shoulder pad tycoon, a man of iron grip who'd been gassed in
WW I. Once he had disarmed an aged knife wielder on a moving city bus.
Uncle Henny would know how to handle the man. Stern could not see a
picture of it in his mind, but he was sure that Uncle Henny would have
been able to use his gassed lungs and steel grip to fend off the De
Luccios.
His own father? There had been another De Luccio long years past, an
orphan boy of supple athlete's body and golden hair who had kept Stern
in terror for several years. The orphan would appear suddenly in an
alley with a great laugh, fling Stern against a wall, lift him high,
and drop him down, steal his jacket in the cold, and run away with
it, come back, and punch Stern's eyes to slits. Stern never told his
parents, afraid the orphan boy would come up to his three rooms, force
his way in, and kill Stern's small father. One day, Stern stood talking
to his father on the street when the orphan boy appeared, running a
comb through his great piles of hair. "Who's that?" asked Stern's small
father. "You know him, don't you?"
"Sort of," said Stern, his heart freezing.
"I think it's Rudy Vallee," said his father.
Others against the De Luccio army? How about his mother-in-law, the
Hungarian woman? Stern's wife told him that once, as a little girl,
she had been abused by a teacher and her Hungarian mother had gone to
school and spat upon the antique teacher's face. Once, in an argument
with his great-eyed wife, they both had sunk low and Stern had said,
"Your mother didn't spit on the teacher. She peed on her." He saw her
now against the De Luccios, slowly moving forward, peeing and spitting
them backward until they turned on her and pummeled her old woman's
stomach.
Stern took note of every detail of the man's house, a new one
registering each night as he drove by. A television aerial. This was
good. It meant the communications industry was getting through to the
man, subtly driving home messages of Brotherhood. But he imagined the
man watching only Westerns, contemptuously flicking off all shows
that spoke of tolerance. Stern saw himself writing and producing a
show about fair play, getting it shown one night on every channel,
and forcing the man to watch it since the networks would be bare of
Westerns.
Empty beer cans in the garbage pail. Excellent. Enough of them, taken
over a period of years, would bloat his belly and deprive his arms of
power. Stern wondered how much beer it would take to run a man down
physically. He felt good on nights when entire cases sat atop the
garbage pail and depressed when only a few scattered cans appeared.
The man's car was of prewar vintage, neatly shined and proudly kept,
and as Stern drove by in his more recent Studebaker he thought to
himself, "Maybe it's an economic thing. He resents my having a newer
car and a bigger house. I'll take him inside and show him my empty
rooms and he'll see how foolish he is, and then we'll be friends."
And other times, Stern was glad he had a newer car. He wanted to say
to the man, "Think kike things and be stupid and you'll always have
an old car. Act enlightened and have a new one." One night he saw the
man's wife walk to the gutter to shake a broom--a stocky, square,
and graceless woman whose hair was without color. Stern imagined the
pair at night, coming together for a graceless, hulking lay, and for
a second he felt tender toward the man. There had to be gentleness in
him. Once he must have had to come to this hulking woman and court her
with kindness and modesty, kike thoughts the furthest thing from his
mind. But, on the following night, Stern took in a sight that made his
throat turn over. As he drove by, the man was looming up in front of
him, standing, hands in pockets, on the lawn and wearing a veteran's
organization jacket. It meant he had come through the worst part of the
Normandy campaign, knew how to hold his breath in foxholes for hours at
a time and then sneak out to slit a throat in silence. He was skilled
as a foot fighter and went always with deadly accuracy to a man's
groin. Stern pictured him at veteran beer parties, drawing laughs with
stories of the kike who'd moved in down the way a mile. He'd probably
had one in his outfit, a thin and scholarly dark fellow who'd slowed
down campaigns. No amount of brotherhood shows would ever make a dent
in his veteran's jacket.
Frightened of the jacket, Stern realized that he had never really
seen the man's face, that he knew only the heaviness of his arms, an
inclination of the head, and a certain wetness at the mouth. A mailbox
lay opposite the man's house, and one night Stern saved a letter
and stopped his car on the corner near the box. His glasses off, he
inflated his chest for an appearance of power, flexed his soft arms,
and trotted to the mailbox, where he slipped in the letter, and then,
facing the man's house now, trotted back to his car. Stern, his glasses
on the seat, could see only that the man was hooked over his car engine
and that, as he trotted back to the car, the man came out of his hook
and inclined his head. But, trotting as he was, Stern could make out no
details of the man's face and remained in ignorance of his features.
Another night the man was nowhere in sight and Stern's eyes fixed
on the license plates of his car, the two first letters registering
"GS." For some reason, Stern, though he looked at the plates for
several nights running, could not commit the numbers to memory. But
he remembered the letters and made up a organization they might have
stood for, Guardian Sons, a group of twenty who sat around on Monday
nights and cackled over kikes. Each time Stern saw a prewar car with
"GS" letters he was certain it was the man, just coming from a meeting,
his glove compartment filled with leaflets. He seemed to see such cars
everywhere. Driving past the man's house, he wondered whether he might
be able to steal back in dead of night and destroy the car, dismantling
the wiring, and then make it back to his own house undetected. Or
could police always pick up evidence of footsteps and tire tracks? And
was the man a light sleeper, nerves sharpened by combat, waiting coiled
and ready to leap forward and slit throats with commando neatness?
On clear weekend days during that summer, Stern was able to look
straight down the street as far as a mile or so and make out the man
playing softball in the road with neighboring boys. On such days, Stern
would go back inside his house, his day ruined. And often, inside the
house, he would think about his Jewishness.
* * * * *
As a boy, Stern had been taken to holiday services, where he stood in
ignorance among bowing, groaning men who wore brilliantly embroidered
shawls. Stern would do some bows and occasionally let fly a complicated
imitative groan, but when he sounded out he was certain one of the old
genuine groaners had spotted him and knew he was issuing a phony. Stern
thought it was marvelous that the old men knew exactly when to bow and
knew the groans and chants and melodies by heart. He wondered if he
would ever get to be one of their number. He went to Hebrew School, but
there seemed to be no time at all devoted to the theatrical bows and
groans, and even with three years of Hebrew School under his belt Stern
still felt a loner among the chanting sufferers at synagogues. After a
while he began to think you could never get to be one of the groaners
through mere attendance at Hebrew School. You probably had to pick it
all up in Europe. At the school, Stern learned to read Hebrew at a
mile-a-minute clip. He was the fastest reader in the class, and when
called upon he would race across the jagged words as though he were
a long-distance track star. The meaning of the words was dealt with
in advanced classes, and since Stern never got to them, he remained
only a swift reader who might have been performing in Swahili or Urdu.
He had two teachers, one a Mr. Lititsky, who concentrated on the
technique of wearing yarmulkes and hit kids with books to keep order
in the class. He had poor control over the classroom and would go from
child to child, slamming an odd one here and there with a textbook and
saying, "Now let's get some order here." By the time he had some, the
half hour was up and there was time only for a fast demonstration of
how to slip on a yarmulke. Outside, some of those slammed with books
would say, "If he does that again, I'm going to hit Lititsky in the
titskys," always sure to draw howls of laughter.
His other teacher was a black-eyed beauty from the Middle East named
Miss Ostrow who told stories of Palestinian oases, referring to
Palestine over and over as "the land of milk and honey," while Stern
listened, unable to see why a land filled with those commodities should
be so desirable. Miss Ostrow was beautiful and wore loosely cut Iraqi
blouses, and Stern loved her, although he preferred to think of her as
American-born and not to dwell on her earlier days in the Palestinian
date groves. She cast him as the wicked Egyptian king, Ahasuerus, in
a Purim play and, until the date of the play, called him "my handsome
Ahasuerus." One day, after school, she caught Stern in a crowd in front
of a drugstore and embarrassed him by standing on tiptoe and waving,
"Ahasuerus."
All Hebrew School led up to the Bar Mitzvah and the singing of the
Haftarah. Stern, who had a good voice, took to trilling occasional
high notes in his practice Haftarah rendition, and the Haftarah coach
would say, "No crooning." On the day of his Bar Mitzvah, Stern sang
it flawlessly and his mother, afterward, said, "You had some voice. I
could have fainted."
"Yes," said the Haftarah coach, "but there was too much crooning."
* * * * *
No great religious traditions were handed down to Stern by his small,
round-shouldered father. He was self-conscious on the subject, and a
favorite joke of his was to create some outrageous supposition, such
as "Do you know why we're not allowed in the Chrysler Building after
eleven at night?" When Stern or his mother would answer "Why?" Stern's
small dad would say slyly, "Because we're Jews," mouthing the final
word with great relish and pronouncing it "chooze." Stern's mother
would then double up with laughter and Stern would join in, too. A bad
punster whose favorite gag word was "homogenize" ("I homogenize saw
you on the street last night"), Stern's small dad had great fun with
such phrases as "orange Jews" and "grapefruit Jews." When Stern would
say, "I heard that, Dad," his father would say, "Yeah, but I'll bet you
never heard prune Jews."
Stern considered Passover the biggest holiday of the year, and on the
first night of the celebration Stern and his parents traditionally
attended a Seder in the back-room apartment of his Aunt Edda's hardware
store, which was closed for the holiday. (After the final prayers, Aunt
Edda switched on the lights of the store and each of the Seder-goers
put in a large order for hardware items, which Aunt Edda furnished them
at cost.) A small, dark-haired woman with tiny feet, Aunt Edda was much
revered by the other members of the family, and Stern's mother often
referred to her as a "saint" and then added, "Even though she's got
more money than God." When Stern walked into Seders, Aunt Edda would
run to him on tiny feet, clasp his arm, and say, "I want to tell you
something," after which she would stare into his eyes, hold his arm
for a long time, and then say, "You're some darling boy." Aside from
arranging the Seder, Aunt Edda's main function was to thrust her tiny
body into the center of the Seder fights that broke out annually. One
of the main antagonists was Stern's Uncle Sweets, who presided over
the ceremonies--a wild-haired man with giant lips who was involved
in clandestine Chicago rackets and once, bound hand and foot, had to
climb out of a lake in southern Illinois to save his life. Stern was
proud of him and referred to him as "my bookie uncle." He took Stern
and his parents to restaurants, always ordering meat pies and picking
up the checks; outside a seafood villa once, a hobo had asked him for
a handout and Uncle Sweets had put a penny in his palm and offered it
to the man. When the hobo went to get it, Uncle Sweets had doubled
up his palm and driven his fist into the man's nose, spreading the
nose across the hobo's face with a sloshing sound Stern never forgot
and leaving the man in the gutter. Stern's father said, "Hmm," and
his mother said, "Oooh, Sweets is some bitch," with an excited look
in her eyes. Uncle Sweets, wrapped sacredly in embroidered shawls,
presided over the entire ceremony with thick lips and heavy lids,
pounding his chest, quaffing wine, and singing long passages with the
sweet full voice and passionate fervor of an old choir boy, as though
this was his one night to atone for all the mysterious goings-on in
Chicago. Challenging him each year and breaking in with his own set
of more militant chants was Stern's Uncle Mackie, squat, powerfully
built, burned black from the sun, a Phoenix rancher who flew in each
year for Seders and to have mysterious medical things done to his
"plumbing." An eccentric man who had once chased Pancho Villa deep
into Mexico at General Pershing's side, Uncle Mackie, when asked about
his health, would bare his perfect, gleaming teeth, double over his
bronzed, military-trim body, and croak, "I feel pretty lousy." Early
in the evening, he would take Stern around the waist, pull him close,
and whisper confidentially, "I just want to find out something. Do
you still make peepee in your pants?" And then he would explode with
laughter, until he checked himself, held his side, and said, "I've got
to do something about the plumbing." He continued the peepee inquiries
long into Stern's teens. When the Seder began, Uncle Sweets would take
long difficult passages to himself, which gave him an opportunity to
hit high notes galore, but soon Uncle Mackie, warming to the Seder,
would break in with great clangor, doing a series of heroic-sounding
but clashing chants that seemed to have been developed outdoors in
Arizona. Before long, Uncle Sweets would stop and say to him, "What the
hell do you know? You shit in your hat in Phoenix." And Uncle Mackie
would fly at him, saying, "I'll kick your two-bit ass through the
window." At this point, Aunt Edda would seize both their wrists, say,
"I want to tell you something," pause for a long time, looking from
one to the other, and then say, "You're both darling boys." The Seder
would then continue uneasily, much tension in Uncle Sweets' choruses,
Uncle Mackie continuing with much vigor but directing his efforts to
another side of the room, as though trying to enlist a faction to his
banner and start a split Seder. Stern wondered who he wanted to win in
a fight, his bookie uncle or the peepee man who'd gone in after Pancho
Villa. At the same point in every Seder, Stern's father would arise to
do a brief prayer, reading in a barely perceptible whisper and in a
strange accent Stern had never heard in Mr. Lititsky's class. He read
uncertainly, flashing his teeth as though charm would compensate for a
poor performance; others at the Seder would root him on, hollering out
key words, while Stern stared at the floor, ashamed of his father's
uncertain whispers and wishing he had a militant chanter for a dad.
Toward the tail end of the Seder, Stern and his cousin Flip would
sneak off to the bedroom, get a dictionary, and look up dirty words,
such as "vulva" and "pudendum." They would then open their flies and
compare pubic hair growths, Flip's always being further along since he
was six months the elder. They would generally emerge in time for Uncle
Gunther's entrance. A onetime Hollywood bit player who had done harem
scenes in silents, Gunther worked a lathe in a ball bearing factory,
drank heavily, and was always striding into speeding cars. Tension
generally built throughout Seders as to whether he'd make it this year;
when he did show, there would be great relief that he hadn't gotten
caught on a fender. Aunt Edda would fix him an abbreviated Seder meal,
and when he had finished it, the others would begin to confer gifts
upon him in deference to his lowly lathe job. Uncle Gunther would wave
them off disdainfully, saying, "What do you think I am," and finally
race out the door and into the street, with the others behind, still
thrusting forth their gifts, a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from Uncle
Sweets, advice on life from Uncle Mackie of the Far West. Stern's small
father would always take off an item of clothing, a vest or belt, and
holler, "What do I need it for, you fool," at the fleeing Gunther, who
would stop after a while, collect the items, and allow himself to be
ushered back to the store, defeated; there, Aunt Edda stood waiting for
him, holding sets of pots and pans and the uneaten Seder food, wrapped
in packages and tied with string. And thus the curtain would come down
on another religious holiday.
* * * * *
The most religious person Stern knew was his grandmother, who opened
the neighborhood synagogue each morning at five-thirty in cold weather
or warm. In arguments with friends as to whose grandmother was more
religious, Stern would weigh in with "Mine _opens_ the damned
synagogue," and he would generally walk off with the honors. A woman
of indeterminate age with long silver hair kept in a bun, she lived
out her last years in a small flat in a house near Stern's apartment
building, which she shared with another grandmother. Since her own
flat faced a back alley and had no front windows, she would come and
spend most of the day in Stern's apartment, where she could sit at
the window, look out, and see light and people. Most of the day she
prayed, bowing and singing softly and wetting the pages of her prayer
book as she slapped them along. She wore coat sweaters and had long
breasts that hung down to her waist; Stern, horrified by them, wondered
nevertheless what old women's breasts were like--yet hoped he'd never
have to look at a set. When she was finished praying, she would look
out the window and spot other grandmothers and laugh at them all for
having crooked feet. Stern's father teased her, and whenever he spotted
another old lady in the street, he would say, "There goes one of her
buddies. Don't worry. She's got a whole mob of them organized." Her
mind slipped and she buried bits of food around Stern's apartment, a
piece of lettuce here, a slice of orange there, under sofa cushions
and behind vases. When Stern's father found one, he would say, "She's
got enough buried to feed an army. Probably got a load of money, too."
Stern was going to high school during this period, and when he got home
each afternoon, she would be waiting with the daily newspapers, asking
Stern to explain the headlines to her since she knew little English.
No matter what they said--"Strike to Tie Up Pier" or "Cold Weather to
Continue"--she would take them to be an accounting of one of Hitler's
misdeeds and would heap curses upon his head. Her eyesight was poor,
and in the evening, when the light faded, it fell upon Stern to take
her home so she would not be hit by cars in crossing the several
streets on the way to the flat. Stern did not care for the job and
would say, "I don't want to be walking with grandmothers." Since her
wind was short, it took an agonizingly long time to get her back each
night. She would grip his arm, they would walk thirty paces or so,
and she would ask him to stop so she could catch her breath. During
the stops, Stern would shuffle his feet and say, "Are you ready?"
Sometimes, with his grandmother on his arm, he would pass friends in
front of a bowling alley and he would say, "This is my grandmother,"
as the friends watched the pair creep by. When Stern came home from
summer camp one year, he said to his mother, "Where's Granma?" And she
said, "She's gone." Stern said, "What do you mean?" And his mother
said, "She's not here any more. She went in my arms when you were
away." People never died in Stern's family. They were either "gone" or
they "went" or they "were taken." Stern said, "I see," and went inside
and cried into a pillow, sorry he had laughed at her Hitler curses and
wishing he could take her to her flat one more time, giving her long
rests on the way. He wondered, too, whether anyone would ever "go"
in his arms and, if they were an old person, what it would be like,
whether their breath would be bad and whether the air would go out of
their long breasts--and then he punched himself in the eyes to rid
himself of such thoughts.
* * * * *
And so Stern loved a bowing grandmother and sat through Seder duels
and could race with furious speed through books of ancient Hebrew;
but there was little God to his religion. When Stern went to college
in Oregon, even the trappings fell away. He told the people he met at
school, "I don't care much about being a Jew. There's only one thing:
each year I like to go and hear the Shofar blown on Rosh Hashanah.
It sort of ties the years together for me." And it was true that
for a while Stern's last concession to his early Jewish days was to
stand outside synagogues each year and listen to the ram's horn. It
was as though listening to the ancient sound would somehow keep him
just the tiniest bit Jewish, in case it turned out someday that a
scorecard really was kept on people. One year he didn't go, however,
and then he rarely went again, even though he kept using that "ties
the years together" line when he met new girls and needed impressive
attitudes. Before Stern met his wife at college and lived with the
old man of dangling pelvic supports, he stayed in a boardinghouse of
Jewish students, where the air was thick with self-consciousness.
One of his two room-mates was a tall graceful redheaded boy with a
monotonous voice that sounded as though he were in a telephone booth.
His personality was limited, and since he seemed to have only one joke
(When someone asked him for a match, he would answer, "Sure, my ass and
your face"), he became known as "Gordon One-Gag."
"I've got lots of jokes," he would protest from inside his booth, to
which Stern or the other room-mate would say, "Nonsense, One-Gag,
you've only got one gag."
Stern's other room-mate was a small, flabby ex-Navy man named Footsy
who had motherly-looking breasts and a large fund of anal jokes
developed on shipboard. There grew up among the three a jargon and
patter, all of which hinged on Jewishness. The motherly Navy man might
suddenly arise during a study period, hold his stomach, and leave the
room. "Where are you going?" the redhead might ask, to which Footsy
would answer, "I can't stand the Jewishness in the room," bringing
forth howls of amusement. Or Stern might make a remark about the
weather, to which the Navy man would say, "How Jewish of you to say
that." If Stern were to utter a pronouncement of any kind, one of
his room-mates would invariably retort: "Said with characteristic
Jewishness." Long imaginary dialogues were carried on between the
redhead and the Navy man in which the redhead was a job applicant and
Footsy was an employment director, reluctant to hire him. Finally,
Footsy, prodded to explain why, would say briskly, "Well, if you must
know, its because of certain minority characteristics we'd rather not
go into," and all in the room would break up laughing. The Navy man
would often do a storm trooper imitation, in which he got to say,
"Line dem opp against the fwall and commence mit the shooting," and
a boy down the hall named Wiegel who had sick feet would come in and
do another German officer, saying, "Brink in the Jewish child. Child,
ve eff had to execute your parents." The redhead would try Mussolini
in his last days, but Footsy, the Navy man, would say, "Stick to your
one gag." Footsy would lie in bed for hours twisting lyrics of popular
songs to get Jews into them: "Beware my foolish heart" became "Beware
my Jewish heart," "Fool that I am" turned into "Jew that I am," and
"I'm glad I met you, wonderful you" emerged "I'm glad you're Jewish,
you wonderful Jew." Stern chipped in with a full lyric that went (to
the tune of "Farmer in the Dell"):
The Jews caused the war.
The Jews caused the war.
We hate the Jews
Because they caused the war.
On occasion, the president of the boardinghouse, a short boy with
quivering old-man jowls, would appear in the room and say, "These
things aren't funny," after which Footsy would poke Stern in the ribs
and whisper, loud enough for all to hear, "He's being _very_ Jewish,"
and the president would stomp off, jowls in a rage.
Although much dating was done by the social club, little attention
was paid to the girls of the single Jewish sorority, who wore the
traditional campus skirts and sweaters but who seemed somehow an
acne-ed, large-shouldered parody of the brisk, blond girls of the
gentile sororities. Only sick-footed Wiegel took out what Footsy
described as "laughing, dark-eyed beauties." When Wiegel announced that
he'd booked another for Saturday night, Footsy would say, "But she's a
pig," to which Wiegel would answer, "Yes, but you've got to date the
pigs to get to the gentile queens."
Before dates, the redhead, all dressed, might stand before Stern and
say, "Check my hair."
"Fine," Stern would say.
"Suit?"
"Excellent."
"Check me for Jewishness."
"Reject," Stern would say, and all would become convulsed. Footsy would
then bare a womanly breast and say, "Here, One-Gag, practice on this
little beauty." After dates, all would compare how they had done, in
crisp, codelike sum-ups.
"Knee and conversation," the redhead might say, and Stern would add
he'd gotten "elbow and upper thigh." Footsy, who took out homelier
girls, would generally have come through with "outside of bra, heavy
breathing, and an ear job." Then Stern and the redhead would get into
their beds, turn out the lights, and listen to Footsy do a high-pitched
imitation of an imaginary date being seduced by any one of the
room-mates. "Oh, Gordon, you're very cute, but I can't possibly do any
screwing. I'll take off my panties, but you've got to promise there'll
be no screwing. You promise?" Footsy's voice was so convincing and the
girl so appealing that Stern and Wiegel (who often came in late at
night for the imitations, rubbing his sick feet) would beg him to do
another, substituting _their_ names.
Going along with the Jewish comedy routines, Stern began to call
Footsy, his motherly, good-natured room-mate, "Little Jew." In the
morning when he woke up, he'd say, "Morning, Little Jew," and after
classes he would ask, "How's Little Jew getting along?" It sounded good
on Stern's tongue, nice and comfortable. He said it in two syllables,
and it came out "Gee-yoo," and when he said it, he would bare his teeth
and get a disgusted look on his face, which he felt would add to the
irony and comic effect of the routine.
It was fun to say, and he began to call Footsy "Little Gee-yoo" at
every possible opportunity, making terrible faces and then poking
Footsy in the ribs with a laugh. It made him feel fine to keep saying
it. One day the three room-mates were on their way to the ice-cream
parlor where gentile girls hung out after class. Each time a group of
girls walked by, Footsy would say to the redhead, "Tell them your one
gag, One-Gag. That'll have them swarming all over us." And Stern would
say to Footsy, "What did the little Gee-yoo think of that group?" At
the ice-cream parlor, Stern held the door for Footsy, saying, "You
first, Little Gee-yoo," and Footsy turned and said, "No more."
"What do you mean, Little Gee-yoo?"
"Don't call me that any more."
"The Little Gee-yoo doesn't like to be called Little Gee-yoo. Little
Gee-yoo. Little Gee-yoo." It felt so good that Stern said it a few more
times.
The three were inside the ice-cream parlor now, and Footsy said, "If
you keep doing that, I have something I'll call you."
"There's nothing, Little Gee-yoo. Nothing at all."
"All right, Nose. What do you think of that? I'll call you Nose.
Hello, Nose. Hello, Nose." With tweed-skirted gentile girls listening,
he began to scream out the name--"Nose, Nose. Hello, Nose. What do
you say, Nose?"--until Stern, thin-faced and large-nosed at the time,
flew out of the door and down the street, the cry following him back
to the boardinghouse. At night the room-mates did not speak until,
finally, Stern said, "OK, I won't call you the name if you don't call
me 'Nose,'" to which Footsy nonchalantly said, "All right." To break
the tension, the redhead said, "Let me tell you my one gag. Does anyone
have a match?" And Footsy said, "Save it." There was a strain between
Stern and Footsy from then on. One day Stern inadvertently called him
"Little Gee-yoo" again and added, "I'm sorry. It slipped out." Instead
of overlooking it graciously, Footsy said, "That's all right, Nose."
"I said I didn't mean it," Stern apologized.
"That's all right," said Footsy. "You're getting one for one."
At the end of the semester, the room-mates decided that they would
separate and Stern went to live with the old man who wore elastic
gadgets on his groin.
* * * * *
In the Air Force, Stern, recently married and swiftly packing on hip
fat, felt isolated, a nonflying officer in a flying service, at a time
when the jets were coming in and there was no escaping them; the air
was full of strange new jet sounds and the ground reverberated with
the throb of them. Somehow Stern connected his nonflying status with
his Jewishness, as though flying were a golden, crew-cut, gentile
thing while Jewishness was a cautious and scholarly quality that crept
into engines and prevented planes from lurching off the ground with
recklessness. In truth, Stern feared the sky, the myriad buttons and
switches on instrument panels. He was afraid of charts with grids
on them, convinced he could never master anything called grids, and
he was in deadly fear of phrases like "ultra high frequency" and
"landing pattern." He had a recurring dream in which he was a fighter
pilot, his plane attended to by a ground mechanic who resented Stern's
profile for spoiling the golden, blue-eyed look of the squadron. Each
day the mechanic would stand by, neutral-faced, arms folded, while
Stern, able to check his plane only peremptorily, took off with heavy
heart, convinced wires had been crossed and would split his aircraft in
mid-flight. Stern, who traveled to distant bases to do administrative
Air Force things, rode once to California as a guest on a general's
luxury B-17, sitting alone in the bombardier's bubble and feeling over
Grand Canyon that he had been put in a special Jewish seat and sealed
off from the camaraderie in the plane's center. After eight hours of
self-control, Stern felt the plane shudder and then hang uncertainly
for a moment as it circled a West Coast Air Force base. He spread a
thin layer of vomit around his bubble and then kneeled inside it as the
plane landed, the pilots and other flying personnel filing by him in
silence. Cowardly Jewish vomit staining a golden aircraft.
Stern lusted after the tiny silver wings that said you were a pilot,
and once, in a Wyoming PX, he ducked his shoulders down and slipped
on a pair, crouching as he did so that no one would see, holding his
breath as though each second might be his last. Then he took them off
and walked quickly out of the PX, feeling as though he'd looked under
a skirt. A great eagle sat atop the cap of every Air Force officer,
flying or nonflying, and there were those in small towns, ignorant
of insignia, who thought each Air Force man was a pilot clearing the
skies of Migs above Korea. One day on Rosh Hashanah, Stern, shipped for
a two-week tour to Illinois, walked into a small-town synagogue, his
khakis starched, his brass agleam, as though he had scored a dozen
flying kills and now sought relaxation. He'd draped a tallith round
his shoulders and stood, stooped with humility, in the last row of the
temple, mouthing the prayer book words with all of his old speed. One
by one, the congregation members, who seemed a race of Jewish midgets,
turned and noticed him, and Stern, aware of their fond glances, sent
forth some low groans and did several dipping knee bows he remembered
from the old days. He did this to cheer them on further and to make it
all the more marvelous that he, a man of the sky, took off precious
flying time to pray in strange synagogues. Within minutes, the rabbi
called him forward and began to heap honors upon his head. Not only
was he allowed to read from the Torah but he got to kiss it, too, and
then to escort it in a march around the synagogue. Ordinarily only
one such honor was dealt out to a congregation member, and then only
upon the occasion of a new grandson birth or wedding anniversary. The
Torah back in its vault, Stern walked humbly to his seat, aware of the
loving glances the tiny Jews kept shooting him. Wasn't it wonderful? A
Jewish boy. A fighter. A man who had shot down planes. Yet when there's
a holiday he puts on a tallith and with such sweetness comes to sit
in synagogues. And did you see him pray? Even in a uniform he reads
so beautifully. Stern loved it, and when they shot him glances, he
responded with religious groans and dipping bows and as much humility
as he could summon. When the Shofar had blown, they clustered around
him, touching him, telling him what a handsome Jewish boy he was,
saying how wonderful it must be to fly. They knew Jewish boys did
accounting for the Army. But Stern was the first they knew who flew in
planes. Dinner invitations were flung at the savior, and Stern, silent
on his nonflying status, his lips sealed on the subject of his new
bride, chose an orthodox watchmaker who did up timepieces for major
league umpires and had a large and bovine unmarried daughter named
Naomi. When Stern had finished dinner, he was left alone with the girl
in a parlor that smelled of aged furniture, unchanged since it had been
brought across from Albania after a pogrom. The light was subdued and
Stern, belly bursting with chopped liver and noodle pudding, swiftly
got her breasts out. They were large and comfortable ones, the nipples
poorly placed, glancing out in opposite directions and giving her a
strange, dizzying look. Stern fell upon them while the girl settled
back in bovine defeat, as though she were able to tell from the sucks,
greedy, anxious and lacking in tenderness, that nothing of a permanent
nature would come of this, just as nothing ever came of her father's
synagogue dinner invitations. She curled a finger through Stern's hair
and seemed to think of the procession of dark-skinned boys who had been
at her chest, wondering when a serious one would appear and want to
wrap them up forever.
Stern stayed at her breasts like a thief, dizzy with adulterous glee.
They were large, his wife's were small, and he stored up each minute as
though it were gold. For hours he stayed upon her, expecting an exotic
perfume he'd dreamed about to cascade from her bosom. The off-balance
arrangement of her nipples prevented him from plunging on further; he
was afraid there would be equal strangeness beneath her skirts. Then,
too, the room smelled old and religious and Stern imagined himself
piercing her and thereby summoning up the wrath of ancient Hebraic
gods, ones who would sleep benignly as long as he stayed above the
waist. She lay beneath him with cowlike patience while the night went
by, and then Stern rose, said, "I have to go back now," and flew out
of the house, reeling with guilt, a day of flying heroism beneath his
belt and four hours of capacious bosom-sucking engraved in his mind
that no one could ever steal.
* * * * *
Stern, a non-flier in a flying service, yearned for Air Force comrades
but had only friends. There were two of them, non-fliers, with
parasitic functions like those of Stern. One was Neidel, the Jewish
captain, a finance officer who made furtive afternoon calls to grain
market brokers, picking up $20,000 in barley one day, dropping it
in wheat the next. A regular officer, Neidel, pockmarked and in his
forties, had never married for fear of having to divert money from
soybean futures. Stern occasionally had lunch with him in Neidel's old
car, telling him of gentile girls from college while Neidel sweated and
wolfed down economy coleslaw sandwiches he had prepared in the bachelor
officer rooms. Stern's other friend was Kekras, a Greek who had failed
in jets. Once lean and blond, he drank heavily now and seemed a parody
of gentile fliers, his hair grown long, his khakis soiled, his face
swelled up with beer. Kekras burped a lot, said next to nothing, but
was a great admirer of strength, and Stern got rises out of him only
with apocryphal anecdotes of Charlie Keller, ancient Yankee outfielder.
"He could carry seven baseballs in one hand," Stern would report, and
Kekras would shake his head and say, "What a monster."
"Some said he could even grab eight of them in his prime."
"Jesus," Kekras would say.
"I once saw him outside of Yankee Stadium," Stern would add. "He had
the bushiest eyebrows I'd ever seen on a man, and you should have seen
his arms. They hung down to the ground like an ape's."
"What a horse," Kekras would say, grinning and shaking his head with
affection. "What an ox." And Stern was thrilled that he was talking
intimately with a gentile man of the air, even though a cast-off,
heavy-lidded one whose senses were too dulled for the new jets.
Stern felt like a thief throughout his Air Force tour, a sponger and
a parasite, a secret vomiter masquerading in suits of Air Force blue
with great heroic eagles perched atop his garrison cap. "I'd feel more
comfortable wearing a different kind of uniform than the fliers,"
he'd tell Kekras, while the Greek burped and wondered whether Dolph
Camilli's wrists were larger round than those of Johnny Mize. Only one
brief moment did Stern feel in the Air Force and not an unwanted guest
in a hostile house, each month taking money that should have gone to
fliers.
* * * * *
On temporary duty in Wyoming one night, Stern had taken a seat at a bar
in the officers' club next to a buxom woman quickly labeled a "hooker"
by the bartender--"one of the worst I've seen in this club." Stern,
who felt he'd married prematurely, now prowled tormentedly after women
on his tours about the globe, keeping mental track of every loveless
caress, every conversation, every female contact, as though only when
he'd grabbed a certain number of breasts, stroked a certain number of
thighs, racked up a magic number of sleepings would he be able to relax
and be married. Bracelets of lines ringed the woman's neck, and she sat
enclosed in a circle of cheap perfume, but the bourbon quickly got to
Stern and turned the perfume into something desirably earthy, the neck
lines into lovely chevrons of sophistication. Stern imagined taking
her to his staff car, stripping off her undoubtedly worn and tragic
underwear, and allowing her to entertain him with slow and worldly acts
of love, and then returning quickly to the bar, possibly with an easily
cleared up disease upon him, but one delicious notch closer to his
magic number of sleepings. Stern sidled close to the woman, an offer of
a drink on his lips, when a romantic voice behind him rang out: "Come,
woman, and drink my wine. I have need of company and you seem much
woman to these eyes." The hooker wheeled on her seat, said, "Scuse me,"
to Stern, and joined the one who had called out--a husky middle-aged
man with much blond hair curled romantically down over his forehead and
with deep lines burned in his face. He was wearing civilian clothes and
talked in a bleary-eyed, outrageously romantic way, rising gallantly
for the hooker and telling her, "Woman, you're a rare one and you've
wisdom in your smile." When the hooker took her seat, the romantic man
shouted to Stern, "Let the Jew join us, too. I'll not close our circle
to the Jew." Stern's face froze at the bar, but he came over and said,
"What do you mean, Jew?" And the man slapped his shoulder and said,
"Let the Jew sit and take wine with us." Stern, oddly at ease, sat down
with the pair, uncomfortable only because the man was talking so loud.
"Your company is good, woman," the romantic man said, leaning back and
drinking deeply. "Big Jew, you warm me with your presence." He called
Stern "Jew" and "Big Jew" each time he spoke to him, and he called the
hooker "woman," endowing her with a universal quality, and Stern felt
a nice feeling of camaraderie sitting and drinking with the pair, the
romantic gentleman who might have been an aging soldier of fortune and
the wise and silent hooker who had been to many places and stayed with
a legion of men. He felt as though he was in a small bar in Macao,
among scarred people with grave crimes in their past, at the world's
end now, saying only bitter, philosophical things and waiting to die.
Ava Gardner a must for the film version. The romantic man, indeed,
_was_ a kind of soldier of fortune, a civilian flying instructor
assigned to the Air Force. He had trained a small group of Israeli
pilots during the Arab-Israeli war, and he had glowing things to say
of Israeli skills. "You Jews fly well, Big Jew," he said to Stern, who
exulted in his words. "You fly a good plane, and my hat is off to the
flying Jew. I'll drink to you, Big Jew. You do well in the sky."
"I don't actually fly myself," Stern said, but the romantic man waved
him off and said, "Big Jew, you fly a deadly plane. Drink deep with me.
The woman drinks well, too."
The romantic gentleman went on extolling the virtues of Jewish pilots,
and each time Stern insisted that he himself was no flier, the man
said, "Let the Jew be silent and drink with me as a man of the sky."
A major Stern knew from the headquarters office came over with his wife
then and stood alongside the table as the gentleman cried out, "The Big
Jew is a modest man. Come, Jew, and tell us of your courage."
"That's disgusting," said the major's wife, and Stern said, "He's not
saying it the way you think." But then, for the sake of the new couple,
he turned to the middle-aged soldier of fortune and said, "Quit that.
Don't keep calling me that." The gentleman said, "I've tasted too much
of wine," got to his feet unsteadily, and walked out of the club, the
hooker supporting his arm. The couple sat beside Stern, but as soon
as the middle-aged gentleman had gone, Stern wanted to call him back.
He wanted to say to the couple, "You're wrong. He wasn't saying 'Jew'
like you think. He was saying _Big Jew_. _Tall_ Jew. He saw me as the
strong and quiet Jew in a brigade of international fighters. I might
have been the Big Swede or the Big Prussian, but I was the Big Jew, the
quiet, silent one with bitter memories and a past of mystery, a man you
could count on to slip silently through enemy lines and slit a throat,
the one with skills at demolition who could blow a bridge a thousand
ways, brilliant at weaponry, a quiet man with strong and magic hands
who could open any safe and fix an exhausted aircraft, fly it, too, if
necessary. Send the Big Jew. He knows how to kill. He'll get through.
He says little, but no one kills a man better, and it is said that when
a woman has been to bed with him she will never be loved better as long
as she lives."
Stern wanted to say these things to the major and his wife, just as
now, ten years later, he wanted to go out of his house and say to the
man who'd kiked his wife and peered between her legs, "You've got me
wrong. I'm no kike. Come and see my empty house. My bank account is
lean. I drive an old car, too, and Cousy thrills me at the backcourt
just as you. No synagogue has seen me in ten years. It's true my hips
are wide, but I have a plan for thinness. I'm no kike."
But Stern said nothing, continuing to drive hunched and tense past the
man's house, until one night he saw a line of giant American flags
flying thrillingly and patriotically from the man's every window. At
that moment a great flower of pain billowed up within Stern's belly,
filling him up gently and then settling like a parachute inside his
ribs. He nursed it within him for several weeks, and then one evening,
warming tea at midnight by the gas-blue light of the ancient kitchen
stove, an electric shaft of pain charged through Stern's middle and
flung him to the floor, his great behind slapping icily against the
kitchen tile. It was as though the kike man's boot had stamped through
Stern's mouth, plunging downward, elevator-swift, to lodge finally in
his bowels, all the fragile and delicate things within him flung aside.
_Part Two_
Stern's doctor sent him first to a man with a forest of golden curls
named Brewer who took pictures of his belly. Brewer had said, "Come
very early; it's the only way I can get a lot of people in," and when
Stern arrived, he filled him first with thick, maltlike substances,
then put him inside an eyelike machine, and, taking his place on the
other side of it, said, "Think of delicious dishes. Your favorites."
Stern was barefooted and wore a thin shift; the light in the streets
had not yet come up and his eyes were crusted with sleep. "I may be
sick," he said. "How can I think of delicious things? All right, eggs."
"Don't fool around," said the man, squinting into the machine. "I've
got to get a lot of people in. Give me your favorite taste temptations;
otherwise the pictures will be grainy."
"I really do like eggs," Stern said. "Late at night, when I've been
out, I'd rather have them than anything."
"Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?" the man screamed, darting
away from the machine. "Do you know how many I have got to get in
today? _You give me your favorites._" He flew at Stern, fat fists
clenched, blond curls shaking, like a giant, enraged baby, and Stern,
frightened, said, "Soufflés, soufflés."
"That ought to do it," said the man, his eye to the machine again. "I'm
not sending out any grainy pictures."
A week after the stomach pictures had been taken, Stern sat alongside
an old woman with giant ankles in the outer office of Fabiola, the
specialist, and it occurred to him that he would hear all the really
bad news in his life in this very office; there would be today's and
then, at some later date, news of lung congestions and then, finally,
right here in this very room with the wallpaper and leather couches
that seemed specially designed for telling people hopeless things, he
would get the final word, the news that would wrap up the ball game
forever. The woman beside him sorrowfully tapped her feet to an obscure
Muzak ballad and, although Stern knew it was cruel, he could not help
passing along his observation.
"This is a room for bad things," he said. "All the bad news in your
life you get right here, right to the very end."
"I can't think now," she said, tapping away. "Not with these feet I
can't."
Stern felt ashamed when he was called ahead of the giant-ankled woman,
but then it occurred to him that perhaps her ankles had always been
that way and were not swollen and enfeebled but sturdy with rocklike
peasant power. Perhaps within her there raged fifty years more of
good health; Stern was being called first because he was much further
downhill, the slimness of his ankles notwithstanding.
Fabiola was a tall, brisk man who wore loose-flowing clothes and lived
in the shadow of an old doctor whose practice he had taken over, the
famed Robert Lualdi, a handsome, Gable-like man who had been personal
physician to Ziegfeld beauties. Somewhat senile and in retirement now,
the elderly Lualdi, nevertheless, would drop in at odd times during
the day, often while examinations were in session, put his feet on
the young doctor's desk, and reminisce about the days when he had a
practice that was "really hotcha." Once, when Fabiola was examining a
young woman's chest, the old man had come into the room, pronounced her
breasts "honeys," and then gone winking out the door. The interruptions
kept the young doctor on edge, and he had developed a brisk style, as
though trying always to wind things up and thereby head off one of the
elder doctor's nostalgic visits. He was holding the pictures of Stern's
stomach up to the light when Stern entered, fingers dug into his great
belly, as though to prevent the parachute within from blossoming out
further. "You've got one in there, all right," said Fabiola. "Beauty.
You ought to see the crater. That's the price we pay for civilization."
"Got what?" Stern asked.
"An ulcer."
"Oh," said Stern. He was sorry he had let the doctor talk first; it
was as though if he had burst in immediately and told Fabiola what
kind of a person he was, how nice and gentle, he might have been able
to convince him that he was mistaken, that Stern was simply not the
kind of fellow to have an ulcer. It was as though the doctor had a
valise full of them, was dealing them out to certain kinds of people,
and would revoke them if presented with sound reasons for doing so.
Political influence might persuade the doctor to take it back, too.
Once, when Stern had been unable to get into college, his uncle had
reached a Marine colonel named Treadwell, who had phoned the college
and smoothed his admission. Stern felt now that if only Treadwell were
to call the doctor, Fabiola would call back the ulcer and give it to
someone more deserving.
"Look, I don't think I want to have one of them," Stern said, getting a
little dizzy, still feeling that it was all a matter of debate and that
he wasn't going to get his point across. "I'm thirty-four." When the
doctor heard his age, he would see immediately that he had the wrong
man and apologize for inconveniencing Stern.
"That's when they start showing up. Look, we don't have to go in there
if that's what you're worried about. We get at them other ways."
"What do you mean, go in there?" said Stern. Going in there was
different from simply operating. He had a vision of entire armadas of
men and equipment trooping into his stomach and staying there a long
time. "You mean there was even a chance you might have had to go in?"
"I don't see any reason to move in," said Fabiola. The old doctor
opened the door then and, with eyes narrowed, said, "I knew I heard
some tootsies in here." He limped in rakishly and took a seat next to
Stern. "Excuse me," he said, "I thought you were a tootsie. My office
was always full of 'em. The real cheese, too."
"I think I may be pretty sick," Stern said, and the old man rose
and said, "Oh, excuse me. I'll be getting along. Well, boys, keep
everything hotcha. Any tootsies, you know who to call.
"Hotcha, hotcha," he said, and winked his way out the door.
"Look," Stern said, leaning forward now. "I really don't want to have
one." He felt suddenly that it was all a giant mistake, that somehow
the doctor had gotten the impression he didn't mind having one, that it
made no difference to Stern one way or the other. This was his last
chance to explain that he really didn't want to have one.
"I don't see what's troubling you," said Fabiola. "You'd think I'd said
heart or something."
"Maybe it's the name," Stern said. "I can't even get myself to say it."
It sounded to Stern like a mean little animal with a hairy face. _See
the coarse-tufted, angry little ulcer, children. You must learn to
avoid him because of his vicious temper. He is not nice like our friend
the squirrel._ And here Stern had one running around inside him....
"I can see all of this if I'd said heart," Fabiola said, beginning to
write. "All right, we'll get right at her. We can do it without moving
in."
"Don't write," said Stern, searching for some last-ditch argument that
would force Fabiola to reconsider. The writing would make it final. If
he could get Fabiola to hold off on that, perhaps a last-minute call
from Colonel Treadwell would clear him.
"I wear these tight pants," Stern said. "Really tight. I think the
homosexuals are influencing all the clothes we wear, and it's silly,
but I wear them anyway. I can hardly breathe, I wear them so tight. Do
you think that might have done it?"
"No," said Fabiola, filling up little pieces of paper with furious
scribbles. "You've definitely got one in there."
Once, on a scholarship exam, Stern had gotten stuck on the very first
question. There were more than four hundred to go, but, instead of
hurrying on to the next, he had continued for some reason to wrestle
with the first, aware that time was flying. Unable to break through
on the answer, he had felt a thickness start up in his throat and
then had pitched forward on the floor, later to be revived in the
girls' bathroom, all chances of passing the exam up in smoke. The
same thickness formed in his throat now and he toppled forward into
Fabiola's carpeting, not quite losing consciousness.
"I didn't say heart," Fabiola said, leaning forward. "I could
understand if I'd said heart."
Helped to his feet, Stern felt better immediately. It was as though
he had finally demonstrated how seriously he was opposed to having an
ulcer.
"I think we ought to bed this one down for a while," the doctor said,
writing again. "I know an inexpensive place. Can you get free?"
"Oh, Jesus, I've really got one then," said Stern, beginning to cry.
"Can't you see that I don't want one? I'm thirty-four." Fabiola stood
up and Stern looked at the doctor's softly rising paunch, encased in
loose-flowing trousers, and wondered how he was able to keep it free
of coarse-tufted, sharp-toothed little ulcers. Fabiola's belly had a
stately, relaxed strength about it, and Stern wanted to hug it and
tell the doctor about the kike man, how bad it was to drive past his
house every night. Then perhaps the doctor would call the man, tell
him the awful thing he'd done and that he'd better not do it any more.
Or else Fabiola would ride out in a car and somehow, with the stately,
dignified strength of his belly, bring the man to his knees.
"It's a little place upstate," said Fabiola, leading Stern to the door.
"The way you hit the floor I think we ought to bed it down awhile.
They'll be ready for you in about three days."
Stern wanted to protest. He wanted to say, "Wait a minute. You don't
understand. I _really_ don't want to have one. I'm not leaving this
room until I don't have one any more." But the situation had become
dreamlike, as though a man was coming for his throat with a razor and
he was unable to cry out. "I just didn't want this," he heard himself
say sweetly.
In the corridor, the old doctor winked at Stern and said, "You boys
have a couple of tootsies in there?"
"I'm awfully sick," Stern said, and went out the door.
* * * * *
Crying in the street, Stern hailed a cab and gave the Negro driver, a
scholarly-looking gentleman, his office address. "I've just been told
I've got something lousy inside me," Stern said, still crying. "Jesus,
how I don't want to have it in there."
"Cut him out," the man said, shaking his head emphatically, as though
he were crying "Amen" at a good sermon. "He an ulcer, cut him out an'
throw him 'pon the floor. He very strong, but you throw Mr. Ulcer 'pon
the floor, you see how he like that. I got an uncle, he cut one out, he
live to be fifty-four."
Stern wanted to tell the man that fifty-four was no target to shoot
for and that there'd be no cutting, either. He wanted to say that he
thought the man's advice was terrible, but he was afraid the Negro,
outwardly scholarly, had once fought as a welterweight and, irked,
might quickly remove his horn-rims, back Stern against a fender, and
cut him to ribbons with lethal combinations. When the cab pulled up,
Stern said, "I might try cutting it out," and tipped the scholarly
Negro handsomely.
* * * * *
At a drugstore counter near his office, Stern took a seat three stools
down from the owner, Doroff the druggist, a loose and boneless man
whose body seemed made of liquid and who appeared to be flowing rather
than leaning against the counter. He was talking to a slender girl with
long, impossibly sensual legs who twisted and untwisted them as Doroff
asked her where she ate certain types of food. "Where do you gopher
Chinese?" Doroff asked, and when she answered, he made a negative,
fishlike face and said, "Uh-uh, the only place to go in this city is a
little spot named Toy's on Fifty-third. Where do you gopher French?"
He kept asking her the restaurant questions, and no matter what her
answer, he would shake his head in fishlike disapproval and tell her
the only good place to "gopher Indian" or to "gopher Italiano." Each
time he filled her in, she would spring back suddenly, as though
kissed, crossing and uncrossing her legs with glee. Stern hated the
fishlike Doroff for always having cute girls on stools beside him,
girls who were much too appealing for the boneless druggist, and it
broke Stern's heart to see this one reacting to him with such delight.
He had fears that one night the two of them would "gopher Spanish" or
"gopher German" together and that before she knew what happened the
boneless Doroff would be floating up against her, getting to enjoy
the length of her twisting legs. He wanted to say to her now, "What's
so great about him knowing restaurants? Is that something to get
excited about? Yours are probably as good as his. You'd never know it
to look at me now, but if I weren't so upset, I could really tell you
worthwhile things. I could tell you of Turgenev."
The man who had come for Stern's order was a paunchy, gray-haired
counterman who had the impression that Stern was in on things, had
inside information on deals and intimate goings-on. He was always
asking Stern questions impossible to answer, such as "So what's going
on?" and "How'd you make it today?" No matter what Stern's answer, he
would wink deeply and shake with laughter. In sober moments, he would
say to Stern, "I'd like to get out of here. You hear of anything doing
around, let me know." He asked Stern now, "So how'd the racket go?"
And when Stern said, "Usual," he let out a hysterical bellow and said,
"You really got something going, don't you?" He asked Stern then, "So
what'll it be?" And Stern, who felt he had a thousand pounds above his
belt, said, "Milk. Warm it. I've got something going on inside me." One
of Fabiola's papers had said to drink milk, and Stern was anxious to
get some down, picturing a warm flood of it streaming past his throat
and pacifying temporarily a hairy, coarse-tufted angry little animal
within him that squawked for nourishment.
"No warm," the man said. "You have to ask the boss."
Doroff had overheard the exchange. He had had fights with Sterns boss,
Belavista, down the street, and now he said, "All right on the warm. Is
that what you get working for Belavista? Ulcers?" Doroff's use of the
plural form brought a flood of tears to Stern's eyes. Ulcers. Fabiola
had spoken of only one, and now he pictured a sea of them fanning
out inside him. The girl giggled and Stern knew that he had lost all
chances to get at her legs. He rose, his body hooked in a curve of
pain, and whispered, "I've only got one," and then flew through the
drugstore muttering, "Where do you gopher this, where do you gopher
that." He wanted to holler out "_Where do you gopher shit?_" but he was
certain Doroff would call out a number, sixty-two, and a drugstore plan
would go into operation in which all eight countermen would loyally
spring over the grill and trap Stern against the paperback books,
hitting him in the stomach a few times and then holding him for a
paid-off patrolman.
* * * * *
Stern, who wrote the editorial material on product labels, traveled
eight floors upward to his office now, where he was greeted by his
secretary, a tall, somber girl with gently rounded but sorrowful
buttocks. She had lost both parents beneath a bus, and although she
served Stern with loyalty, she placed a dark and downbeat cast upon all
events.
"I've got something lousy in me and I've got to go away," Stern said.
"Tell Mr. Belavista I want to see him. I've got to get wound up here so
I can get out."
"What is it?" she asked. "The worst?"
"No, it's not the worst," Stern said. "But it's lousy and I'd rather
not have it in there."
"Things like that take a long time to get cleared up," she said. "All
right, do you want the bad news now?"
"What do you mean, bad news?" Stern asked. "All right, give it to me."
"The mail hasn't come yet and you've got someone who's been waiting on
the phone."
"Is that it?" Stern asked.
"Yes," she said.
"That's not so bad," said Stern. "Why do you have to make everything
sound so terrible?" She walked away and Stern studied her buttocks,
rising easily beneath her black skirt. On any other girl, they would
have been appealing, but he could not detach them from what he knew
about her and they seemed as a consequence downbeat and sorrowful;
touching them would have been reaching into a grave.
Stern picked up the phone and the voice said, "Loudon here. I've got
something you're going to want and I'll only take a second."
"Something lousy happened to me," said Stern, "and I'm not doing any
business. I just want to get wound up here a minute."
"I'll just be a second. Here it is. Hamburg has become the wickedest
city in the world. Each year thousands of tourists troop there to
visit its sin spots and to be fleeced by B-girls who know every trick
of the trade. Strippers along the Reeperbahn go further than in any
city in the world and, if you know the right places to go, _further_.
Outwardly having no bordellos, Hamburg actually has many, and although
its prosperous citizens pretend to have no knowledge of its wickedness,
scratch the surface of any old-time Hamburgite and he'll direct you to
the door of an establishment where flourishes the oldest profession in
the world. That's about it. I go on from there detailing with anecdotes
some of the more sordid practices in this bawdy city, which has
replaced Paris as Europe's mecca of sin. What do you think?"
"What do you mean?" Stern asked.
"That's it. I want to do an article of say six thousand words on it for
you. I can have it ready in two weeks."
"I do labels," Stern said. "For consumer products."
"You don't think you can work it in?" the voice asked.
"I do labels," Stern said. "And I don't feel good."
Stern chewed Fabiola's stomach pills and waited for his only assistant,
Glover, to end his phone conversation. A tall, yellow-haired man who
frowned continually, as though the sun were in his eyes, Glover spent
hours on the phone each day, exchanging anecdotes with an elaborate
network of friends. Glover viewed all people and listened to all
remarks with pursed lips and then assigned them a rating that seemed
to have been arrived at by a Board of Good Taste, staffed by witty,
wafer-thin, impeccably dressed men whose job it was to continually
evaluate behavior. Glover was their branch representative in Stern's
office. When Stern commented on the summer heat, Glover would pause,
purse his lips, and say, "You may not know it, but you've just made
one of the seven best weather remarks of the season." His ratings were
enervating to Stern, as when he prefaced an item of gossip by saying,
"There are only five people in America who would appreciate this story.
You're one of them." Stern wanted to tell him to spend less time on the
phone, but he was afraid Glover, his body trim and supple from ballet
exercises, would first fly at him in an effeminate rage and then pass
along the episode to the Board, which would adjudge Stern "one of the
three crudest men in America."
"I've got to tell you the season's funniest tapered slacks anecdote,"
Glover said, entering Stern's office. "I'm passing this on to only four
friends of mine."
"I'd like to listen, but I can't now," Stern said, certain the Board
would get immediate notification of his conduct. "I've found out I've
got something in me and I've got to go away for a while."
"_Growing_ in you?" Glover asked, slightly amused. Stern was aware that
"one of the three funniest sickness descriptions of the summer" was
taking form.
"No, just in there," Stern said. "I'm not sure what it's doing." Stern
had the feeling that ulcers would be frowned upon by the Board as being
dirty, Jewish, unsophisticated, only for fat people, and he was careful
not to identify his condition. Only dueling scars and broken legs
suffered while skiing would receive high grades.
"Anyway," Stern continued, "I want you to take over and keep the labels
coming." He turned his head away and said, "Long telephone calls aren't
good. You might keep them short."
Glover's face swiftly filled with color. He darted toward Stern's desk
with vicious ballet grace, shrieked, "_I do my work_," and Stern,
frightened, whispered, "Then make long ones," and went past Glover's
coiled body to Belavista's office.
* * * * *
Waiting outside his boss's suite, Stern felt a growing flatness and
wondered suddenly whether Dr. Fabiola wasn't perhaps deceiving him and
planning to "go in" after all. Stern had a memory of a glum morning
long ago when he had worn a starched shirt and been brought in a taxi
at dawn to have his tonsils removed. He had gone along sweetly and had
not cried, feeling that something would come up, the hospital would be
closed, or someone would discover his tonsils were really fine after
all; but when he arrived, serious men had undressed him and brought a
giant cup down over his face while he struggled and clutched at the
air. Stern imagined himself sleeping at Fabiola's rest home and men
stealing into his room at night with the same smothering cup.
Stern looked in now at Belavista, a middle-aged man with giant feet
and large, wood-chopping teeth. He was born in Brazil, and the natural
charcoal of his face was reinforced by frequent visits to Rio de
Janeiro. Belavista had $3,000,000, and it was upsetting to Stern that
there was no way to tell by looking at him that he had that much money.
He might have been a man with $300,000 or even $27,500, and Stern felt
that if you had millions, there ought to be a way for people to tell
this at a glance. A badge you got to wear or a special millionaire's
necktie.
Stern felt that if you had that much money, you ought to fill up every
minute with $3,000,000 things, ones you couldn't do if you didn't
have that much money. During conferences with Belavista, Stern found
it unnerving to think that they were both spending minutes of life
together in exactly the same way, despite the fact that his Latin boss
had spectacular sums of money and Stern had only $800. When Belavista
ordered a rare tropical fruit salad for lunch, it depressed Stern. It
would come from a fine restaurant and the fruit would be of gourmet
succulence, and yet it was within the reach of people who had only $300
in the bank.
Belavista was the only multimillionaire Stern had ever known, and
in his presence Stern trembled with awe and barely heard his words,
studying everything about him instead. He would look at his pants
and think, "Oh, Jesus, inside those pants is a three-million-dollar
behind, and yet the fabric can be only so soft and fine." When
Belavista made a vigorous motion or even walked about the room, it
would occur to Stern that he was risking a heart attack and should, if
possible, always sit in chairs and not move a muscle. And yet Stern had
once seen Belavista race swiftly toward a train and dive between its
doors, prying them open to get aboard. Stern decided that was really
the difference, that was what had made him millions. And if people had
all their money and possessions taken away and everyone had to begin
all over, the men who plunged daringly toward closing train doors would
survive and soon have fortunes again.
Belavista was a gentle man, and Stern often told others, "He's like
a father to me." Childless and divorced, Belavista lavished all his
attentions on two six-year-old Brazilian nieces, listing them both
as corporation directors and sending them expensive gifts. A company
joke was that for a Christmas present he had once given each of them a
division of IBM. Stern pictured a day in which Belavista would put his
arm around him and say that his nieces were foolish, that he had always
wanted a son, and would Stern consider accepting a third of the label
business, leading eventually to complete control? And then Stern, all
considerations of wealth aside, would have a father who leaped bravely
for closing train doors.
He went in to see Belavista now and yearned for the man to put his arms
around him and take him back to his many-roomed house and keep him
there, protecting him from the lake man and eventually calling for his
wife and boy.
"Something's come up," Stern said. "I've got to go away. They found
something inside me and I have to get it taken care of."
"I'm sorry to hear that," the Brazilian said. "What is it?"
"An ulcer," Stern said. "It just showed up in there."
"Does it nag at you around here?" Belavista asked, pointing between his
ribs.
"Yes," Stern said. "That's where it gets you."
"Uh-huh," said Belavista. "I know. I've got it all right." He hollered
out to his secretary, "Make an appointment for me with Dr. Torro."
"I know," said Belavista. "Gets you around the back, too, a little."
"A little," Stern said. "You feel as though a baby with giant inflated
cheeks is in there."
"I know, I know," said the boss. "I've got it. I'm sure I've got the
same thing." He shouted to his secretary, "Make sure it's for today,"
and then said to Stern, "I've got it, all right. I've got the same
thing."
Stern felt a tiny bit of resentment now. It was as though he had
finally come up with something that Belavista, with all his millions,
could not have, and yet here was the man trying to horn in on Stern
and get one too, a finer and richer one. Now Belavista rose and said,
"All right, here's what I'm going to do for you," and Stern felt such
a thrill of excitement that he had to hold on to his boss's desk.
There were those who said that Belavista was a selfish and shrewd man,
but Stern had always told them, "I don't see it. He comes through.
He's always been very nice to me." Stern was certain Belavista had
been waiting for a moment of crisis, a special time to make certain
announcements about Stern's future. And now Stern, near tears, wanted
to hug him in advance and say, "Thank you. Oh, thank you."
"I'm continuing your salary," Belavista said.
"That's wonderful," said Stern. "It will ease my mind." And then he
waited for the list to continue.
"For as long as it takes. I don't care if it's three weeks."
"That's really nice," Stern said. He looked with humility at the floor,
as though he expected nothing more.
"You've been pretty good around here and I want to play fair with you,"
said Belavista. "I've thought it over, and that's the way I'm going
to handle it. I'd like to chat some more, but I've got an appointment
I can't break. So look, take it easy, get your mind off things, and
everything around here will be all right."
"It's amazing the way something like this just happens to you," Stern
said.
"That's right," Belavista said, tapping his foot, and Stern, aware that
he was keeping him from doing million-dollar things, said, "I'll be
rolling along now."
"OK, guy," said Belavista, and Stern left his office, the parachute
blowing up big and painful inside him. Once, when someone at college
had made fun of Stern for being from Brooklyn, Stern, whose father had
made a little extra money at that time, enough to buy a car, had said,
"My father can buy and sell you," to the boy. Now, hating his boss, he
wanted to say to him, "My father can buy and sell you." If Belavista
then pinned him down on the actual worth of his father, Stern would be
vague and say, "He made a lot of money in the shoulder pad business."
It was late in the afternoon when Stern got back to his desk, an
unsettling and nauseating time; each day at this time Stern would have
to face going home and, at the end of his trip, driving past the kike
man's house. He would do things, try to distract himself, talk to
people and force jokes, but no matter what he did, he would eventually
have to leave the safety of his office, where even Glover's pursed lips
and his secretary's downbeat buttocks were comforts, and ride home to
the kike man. Each night he would buy his newspaper at the station,
sit among groups of hearty men, and when one named "Ole Charlie" told
a drainpipe anecdote, Stern would raise his head and guffaw at the
punch line as though he understood, that he was riding home to a faulty
drainpipe too, and that bad drainage was his major concern in life
also. And then Stern would bury his head in his newspaper and turn to
an important section, like maritime shipping, and look very serious,
making an almost physical effort to blend in with the men alongside
him, as though if he looked exactly like them, he would become exactly
like them, speeding home to drainpipes and suburban pleasures. But
then, as his stop grew nearer, a panic would start in his throat. The
maritime section would become a blur and he would think how nice it
would be to go one stop too far on the railroad and get off in a new
place, where he could go to a home fully furnished with Early American
chairs, a wife educated at European schools, neighbors named "Ole
Charlie," and a street devoid of kike men.
At his desk now, Stern thought that perhaps tonight he would send
his wife to tell the kike man to stop everything, to stop tormenting
him, because Stern now had an ulcer. He was not ever to hit Stern
in the stomach and do anything to his family, because you don't do
those things to a man if he's got an ulcer. Not if you wear veteran
jackets and fly flags from every window. You're a man of fair play.
Stern imagined the man hearing the ulcer news and muttering something,
perhaps snickering wetly; but he would never fling Stern's wife down
again and peer between her legs. You don't do that to a man's wife
if he has an ulcer blooming in his belly and you're supposed to be
American and fair. Stern thought how much better it would be if he
had lost a leg or gone blind. Then the man would certainly never
do anything to him again. If he were blind, that would be complete
protection for Stern's wife and child. At a meeting, the man might tell
with a giggle of the blind Jew in the neighborhood, but it would be
hands off Stern's wife and child. Perhaps, though, Stern had it all
wrong. Perhaps the man's commando training would prevail. Never give
up an advantage. If you blind a man; but there is still life inside
him, jump on him and snuff it out. And Stern imagined himself tapping
sightlessly past the man's house, his wife and child flanking him. The
man would spot them, walk slowly forward, then gather some speed, put
Stern out of commission with a judo chop, kick his child in the crotch,
and then get his wife down to stab her sexually, and, worse, get her to
wriggle and whimper with enjoyment beneath her conqueror while Stern
thrashed blindly in the street.
Stern sipped milk now, got his desk in order, and thought of leaving
the container in the center of his desk so that others would find it
the following day and be consumed with heartbreak at the tragic symbol.
At his desk, Glover spoke with pursed lips to the Board, and Stern
imagined suddenly with fright that the moment he left for Fabiola's
rest home, Glover would resign from the Board, renounce all effeminate
mannerisms, marry immediately, and move into a split-level, thereby
becoming attractive to Belavista. When Stern returned, his ulcer
vanquished, Glover would be sitting at Stern's desk.
* * * * *
Stern's one Negro friend, Battleby the artist, came in then with
sketches for Stern's labels and began immediately to fill Stern in on
all his latest activities. A bearded Negro intellectual, he behaved
as though his paintings were the major concern of all Americans and
people walked the streets in a sweat, chafing to get late details on
his career. When someone else in a room was speaking, Battleby felt
threatened and would sweat and fidget, tugging at his collar and
gulping deeply for air until the person stopped; then Battleby would
swallow deeply and say, "They have some pen-and-inks of mine over at
the West Side Gallery, and a Guggenheim director said I'm one of the
eight best young Americans in casein."
Battleby sat down now and said to Stern, "Here are the sketches. I'm
doing something new with ceramics that an art editor has said promises
to be one of the real technical contributions to the art world. You
know my far-out comic strip? Well, the syndicate says if I can sharpen
the punch line just a little, I have a good chance of selling it to
them. The nudes are going quite well. I can sell almost as many as I
like. I may teach a course this summer at Polytech in techniques of the
French moderns."
For a moment Battleby seemed to forget his next achievement, and when
Stern leaned forward to say something, a panic flew into Battleby's
eyes and he began to fidget and sweat and tap his feet until he
remembered and choked out the next line. "Showing. A showing. If I can
come up with twenty-six canvases by September, there's a gallery on
Madison that wants me. They once had an original Braque."
He plunged on in this style, and in a way Stern wanted him to continue
all night, because he knew that when Battleby stopped, he would have
to put on his jacket and go to the train. He wanted, though, to stop
Battleby and talk to him about the kike man, but he was afraid to
cut him off for fear of being thought anti-Negro. Because he was so
embarrassed about his cowardice, he never really talked to anyone
about the man down the street, and Battleby seemed a good person to
talk to. Who could he repeat it to? A bunch of people up in Harlem? As
Battleby went on about his achievements and the people who thought his
work was fine, Stern wondered if he could get Battleby to stop being
an intellectual for a second and tell Stern some special Negro things
about kicking prejudiced people in the guts. He liked his friend's
work, though he thought that Battleby used too many browns, tossing
them in inappropriately for ocean scenes, and that the paintings, if
inhaled, would even smell a little Negro. He had a strong interest in
Battleby's work, and yet another of his reasons for having Battleby
as a friend was that down deep he felt he could count on the Negro to
hide him from the police in a teeming Harlem flat if ever he were to
kill someone. He hoped, too, though he could never suggest this, that
Battleby would one night furnish him with supple-bodied Negro girls of
Olympian sexual skills who would scream with abandon when Stern bit
them gently. And now, as Battleby droned on, he even dared to hope
that when he told Battleby of his predicament, the Negro would fling
off his horn-rims and fill an open-cab truck with twenty bat-carrying
Negro middle-weights, bare to the waist and glistening with perfect
musculature. Then Battleby would drive them at great speed to Stern's
town to do a job on the man down the street, the pack of them entering
the man's house swiftly and letting him have it about the head.
The next time Battleby paused for breath, Stern said, "I don't feel so
good. I've got to go away for a while. Look, we never talk, but I've
got to talk to someone. Something happened to me out where I live. A
guy did this to me because I'm Jewish. You probably run into a lot
of Negro things. We never talked about stuff like this before, but I
thought we could now."
Battleby fidgeted on his chair and gulped for air, blinking at Stern
incredulously, as if to say, "You don't understand. The conversation is
about me. I talk about things that have happened to me, and I don't get
into other things."
Battleby said: "I've got some crucifixion oils I'd love for you to see.
Real giant things with a powerful religious quality. I don't see how I
was able to come up with them."
"No, I mean it," Stern said. "I have to talk to someone. What happened
is that this guy got my wife down and looked inside her legs and she
wasn't wearing anything. This is no fun for me to say, believe me. Then
he said kike at her, and the worst thing is I never did anything about
it. My kid was standing there. I walked over, but I didn't do anything,
and now I'm sick and have to take off for a while. You probably run
into a lot of Negro things like that."
A change seemed to come over Battleby now. It was as though he'd been
hoping Stern would never get into personal affairs, but now that he
had, he wasn't going to let his old friend down. He took off his
glasses, wiped them, and began to gulp and shake his head, as though
what he were about to say was so true and real he could hardly get
it out. Then, in a voice that had all the patience and tolerance of
an entire race of long-suffering Negroes, he said, "You have got to
abstract yourself so that you present a faceless picture to society."
"We all do," said Battleby, shaking his head and replacing his
horn-rims. "Every one of us do."
Stern, puzzled, but afraid that if he asked for elaboration, Battleby
would find him anti-Negro, said, "All right. I'm going to start doing
that thing right away."
"Good," said Battleby, rising to leave. "I'll call you as various
things on me come up." And Stern, heartsick that he had not asked
about the truckload of middle-weights, watched the heavy-necked Negro
intellectual fly down the hall.
Talking to Battleby, Stern had not thought about his stomach, but
now he touched it tentatively and a cloudburst of pain washed upward
from his feet and filled his ribs. It was as though a sleeping ulcer
had been annoyed and now waited within him, angry, red-eyed, and
vengeance-seeking. It did not seem possible that such a large mass of
terribleness could be cleared up without "going in," and Stern was
certain Fabiola was wrong after all. He imagined a scene in which a
thin-lipped gentile surgeon would deftly slice down several layers
inside him and then, after furtively looking about to see that no one
was watching, reach in and pluck out fistfuls of things Stern vitally
needed. The gentile would then sew him up, leaving Stern four more
years of life, in order to avert suspicion.
He finished a container of milk, leaving it slightly crushed and
forlorn in the center of his desk, and then walked slowly to the train
station, stalling, hoping that something would happen, a minor car
accident perhaps, that would eliminate his having to go past the kike
man's house. Girls streamed by in the street with lovely unsettling
bodies, and Stern imagined the eyes of a good one suddenly meeting his
with instant understanding, the two of them going silently to her room
to make love, and Stern, by the sheer violence of his thrust, passing
the ulcer down through his stomach, out along his organ, and into her
belly, where the girl would somehow accept it with more strength than
he had been able to.
On the station platform, Stern stood next to two tall, starched,
elderly men, both of whom looked like entire organizations in
themselves. First one, then the other would make a hearty, obvious
observation about the train system, delivered in a deep, resonant,
corporational voice, and then both would chuckle with warm, folksy
helplessness at the remark. When the train pulled in, leaving the car
door a few feet from where they stood, one said, "Looks like that
engineer went and missed us again," and the other jabbed him in the
ribs and said, "He sure did," and then both laughed with heartiness.
The first one said, "Guess we better get our seats before they're all
gone," and the second said, "Else maybe they'll raise the price now,"
and then both howled and patted each other on the back. They took
seats behind Stern, and one said, "Sure gonna miss these old rides when
I take m'vacation." The other said, "Gonna have yourself a little fun,
are ya'?" He dug the first in the ribs, and then both slapped their
knees. The train was late getting started, and Stern thought he would
join in and try one of their obvious remarks. He wheeled around and
said, "Looks like we'll never get out of here." The pair looked at him
with hostility.
After the train started, the men began to read newspapers, one of them
holding his in such a way that the edge of it cut into Stern's neck,
chafing it as he turned the pages. Stern wanted to turn around and ask
the man to hold it another way, but he was sure the man would rise and
make a speech to the other passengers about Stern, unveiling him as
a Jewish newcomer to the train, editor of sin-town stories. He would
first warm up the audience, getting laughs from some obvious but folksy
remarks, and then deliver his denunciatory speech with confidence and
authority, as though he were speaking to a board. He would then turn
the floor over to Stern, who would begin a sophisticated anecdote, get
confused, and finally slink down wordlessly in his seat, the sin-town
editing charge unrefuted, while other gentiles in their seats applauded
derisively and shouted, "Hear, hear; fine speech." He made irritated
shrugs with his neck, hoping the man would get the idea, but the paper
edge remained against his neck. Stern finally wheeled around, but when
his eyes caught the other man's unblinking gaze, he looked upward, as
though his intention had been to examine the car ceiling.
A conductor around the same age as the two men came and stood next to
them, swaying in the aisle, and one of them said to the other, "He's
sure got the racket, don't he?" The second one howled and said, "Betcha
he's got a little snort in his pocket for you if you ask him," and
then both rocked with laughter as the conductor shook his head in mock
exasperation and said, "You guys are great kidders."
It was stuffy in the train, and Stern could not get his window open.
He opened his belt all the way, as though to give the ulcer more room
and comfort, but it seemed to swell and spread out, as though it would
occupy any amount of space it was given. Stern felt uncomfortable and
remembered suddenly that Fabiola had told him always to be on the
lookout for a black coffee-grounds substance if he should have occasion
to vomit. This thought, combined with the stuffiness and the paper in
his neck, nauseated him; he was hemmed in by a small lady who glittered
blindingly with jeweled ornaments. "I think I've got to get out of here
and vomit," he said to her, getting up and making his way past her
knees. "Why didn't you think of it before?" she said, shifting herself
in annoyance. "You're halfway there." Stern got out into the aisle ant
asked the conductor, "Which way to vomit?" The conductor considered
the question a long time, then shook his head and began to walk to one
end of the car. The two men stuck their heads in their newspapers, as
though Stern had violated his twentieth rule since the trip began and
was past all comment. He followed the conductor to the platform between
cars. The conductor pointed to a corner of the tiny platform and said,
"Vomiting's done in there on newspapers. I'll get passengers out the
other way."
"Can I begin now?" Stern asked, not wishing to violate any vomiting
protocol. Without answering, the conductor walked back into the car.
Stern realized he had no paper and returned to the smoker, where he
asked a man for some. "I'm not feeling so hot," he said, and the man
said, "All righty," and gave him a section he had already looked at.
Stern spread it out in the corner of the between-cars platform and
tried to vomit neatly and with as little fuss as possible. It occurred
to him before he started that perhaps he might vomit forth the ulcer
and then kick it off the platform, rid of it forever, but then he went
ahead, and when he was finished, his stomach remained bloated with
pain. He searched the floor now, looking for coffee grounds, but there
was no trace of any, and in a sense he felt a little disappointed. He
remained on the platform with the newspapers, guarding the area, as
though to prove he didn't want to evade responsibility. He remained
crouched next to the newspaper, and he wondered what happened to people
who died on the between-cars area. Did they have a special procedure
for getting them off the train? Were they taken off on stretchers,
keeping up the ruse that they were still alive, or were they simply
carried off in special body bundles?
When the train stopped, the conductor diverted people in Stern's car to
the other exit and then came back to Stern. "I guess you can go now,"
he said. "Try and do this before starting out or after getting there."
"All right," Stern said, and walked off the train, relieved that he did
not have to go through a special trial for vomiters and that he was
still allowed to use the train.
The sun was going down as Stern got into his car, and he wished now
that there was some way to let the kike man know that this was a day in
which he had just vomited and had gotten official confirmation of his
ulcer and that, just for this one day, it was all to stop. He was to
stop hating Stern and Stern was to be allowed to just put the man out
of his mind. He was to be allowed to ride home just like any other man
coming home to his family.
In a way, though, the ulcer that raged within him and the train
vomiting seemed to release him and give him a tiny flutter of courage.
He drove toward the man's house with the feeling that he had been
given the ulcer and had vomited in humiliation on a train and now
there was little else that could happen to him. Once, when Stern was
young, his mother had bought a corduroy jacket for his birthday and
he had worn it in the street. The orphan boy, who had tormented and
bullied him for months, swept down suddenly and tore the jacket from
Stern's body, slipping into it himself and then dancing around in it
tantalizingly, beyond Stern's reach. A coldness had come over Stern
and he had advanced toward the boy with poise and self-control and
said, "Give me that jacket." The onlookers had said, "Are you crazy?
He'll crack your head." But the orphan boy, startled by Stern's show of
resistance, had taken off the jacket and said, "Here. Can't you take
a joke?" And Stern had put the jacket back on and then slipped into
the old relationship, in which the bigger and stronger boy tormented
and bullied him, knocking him against buildings, blackening his eyes,
picking him up, and slamming him to the ground. Now, as he drove past
the man's house, the feeling of control returned for an instant and he
slowed down. He thought that he would walk into the man's house, take
off his coat, and say, "Just wear this coat. I dare you to wear it. My
mother bought it for me." And then, if the man put on the coat, Stern
would somehow be able to crush him with a blow, battering his head
through his living-room window. But then Stern thought, "What if he
declines to wear the coat, grins wetly, and simply drives his fist into
my ulcer-swollen belly, actually breaking open a hole in it?" And so
Stern drove past the man's house, his hands shaking at the wheel.
Outside his house, with the dark coming on fast, Stern walked across
the lawn, kicking furiously at fallen pears and crying through his
nose. He did this for a long time, and he was not without the thought
that perhaps it would help; he would be heard, someone would be
touched, and when he dried his eyes, there would be no ulcer.
His wife had gone for the day, leaving the child in the care of a
baby-sitter, and when Stern paid her and sent her away, he saw that his
parents had driven out unexpectedly.
* * * * *
Stern's father was a small, meticulously dressed man whose years of
cutting shoulder pads had made him terribly precise about details.
Whenever Stern, as a boy, began the new side of a quarter-pound stick
of butter that had been started on the other side, his father would
slap his hand and say, "That's no way to do it. I can't understand
you." He spent a great deal of time after meals scooping up bread
crumbs with a precise rolling motion of the knife, not stopping until
he had gotten every last crumb. His teeth were his best feature, and
whenever he passed a mirror he would draw back his lips and try several
varieties of smiles, practicing broad ones and quick, spontaneous
grins. He had a special thin, six-note whistle, which Stern as a boy
had always listened for late at night; it meant he was home, and Stern
would watch him from the window, a small man, walking jauntily, on his
way to the three-room apartment to practice a few quick grins before
the mirror and then sit down to eat a meal with factorylike precision.
Stern had not fancied the idea of having a small father, but one day
he had seen this compactly built man point his nose up at a towering
motorman on a crowded subway train and say, "Ah, button up or I'll dump
you on your ass." The nose he had thrust up in the motorman's face
had a jagged scar along its bridge which fascinated Stern. Whenever
his father practiced grins, he would also check the scar, stretching
it for a good look. Stern liked to run his finger along his father's
nose scar, gently, as though it still might hurt. One day his father
told Stern the scar had been given to him by two soccer players in
a strange neighborhood who had suddenly lashed out and knocked him
unconscious. The friends of Stern's father had gone looking for the men
with steel piping but never found them. Stern liked that story and told
it to people all the time, enjoying it when he could say, "My father's
friends went looking for the guys with pipes." Stern wished he had
friends who would do that for him.
When Stern's father had failed to inherit the shoulder pad business
from his brother Henny, he had simply continued on as a shoulder pad
cutter, smiling surreptitiously into mirrors, and seemed not to have
realized that his whole life had gone down the drain. He did describe
his brother Henny's death often, however, acting it out in vigorous
pantomime. "They just found him sitting in a chair," he would tell the
listener, "like this," and then he would let his knees bend a little,
his arms sag at his sides, and pop his eyes, letting his tongue hang
grotesquely from his mouth.
When the business dream had faded, however, Stern's mother had never
recovered. It meant she could never own a home in Saint Petersburg
and decorate it in Chinese modern. She had been a tall, voluptuous
woman with much nerve. When Stern was young, she would just hail cars
on the street instead of cabs, and then she and Stern would jump into
them that way with whoever was driving. In restaurants she would grab
celebrities and hold them by the sleeve, hollering across to the
embarrassed young Stern, "I've got Milton Berle" or "I just grabbed
Bob Eberle." After the business debacle, she aged swiftly and began
to drink. She tried furiously to cling to her youth and did little
dance steps all the time, humming to herself and executing them in
subways, in bars, on the street. When she was with Stern in restaurants
or anywhere in public, she would look at a strange young man and say,
"He's for me" or "I could make him in ten seconds." Stern would answer,
"I don't get any kick out of hearing things like that." The phrase
"make" sickened him. He didn't want to know about his dated mother,
with her slack, antique thighs and dyed hair, doing old-fashioned
things with strange, dull men.
* * * * *
They waited in the house for him on this day, Stern's father in a
slipover sweater, his mother in toreador pants, and they had brought
along Stern's Uncle Babe, a thin man with giant Adam's apple who had
spent much of his life in mental institutions. Married to a concert
violinist and thought to be of modest circumstances, he had attended
a recital one evening and run amok, certain there were poison gases
in the air. When police subdued him, he was found to be carrying
bankbooks showing balances of a million dollars. Stern had childhood
memories of visiting him in frightening institutions, bringing him
boxes of pralines, his favorites, and then seeing Uncle Babe led out in
institution clothes, which were always too large. Stern would sit and
smile at his uncle on a bench, and then, on the way home, his mother
would say, "He has some head. As sick as he is, he can tell you smarter
things than people on the outside."
Now, Stern's mother led forth Uncle Babe and said to Stern, "Look who I
brought out for you. Uncle Babe. You always loved him."
Stern hugged Uncle Babe with great tenderness, as though to make
up for all the wrongs done to him by heartless institutions, and
Stern's mother said, "Get him to tell you about the market. To this
very day, he has some head." Stern sat alongside his Uncle Babe and
the conversation took the usual course. Uncle Babe would make a few
statements about the financial world, too generalized to be put to
any moneymaking use, and then would slide into a monologue about the
difficulty of getting a decent piece of fish, various smells in the
air, and how certain shirt fabrics itched your skin.
"He has some head if you can only keep him on the right track," said
Stern's mother.
After a while, Stern arose and said, "I can't listen to anybody any
more. I've come home today with an ulcer."