by Philip Roth
I kneel to open the door to the tall middle drawer. There is a box. A cardboard carton is there. Not nothing. On top of the box is marked “Morty’s Things.” My mother’s writing. On the side, again in her writing, “Morty’s Flag & things.”
“No, you’re right. Nothing here,” and shut the sideboard’s lower door.
“Oh, what a life, what a life,” muttered Fish as he led me back to the living room sofa.
“Yeah, was it good, life? Was it good to live, Fish?”
“Sure. Better than being dead.”
“So people say.”
But what I was thinking really was that it all began with my mother’s coming to watch over my shoulder what I did with Drenka up at the Grotto, that it was her staying to watch, however disgusting it was to her, it was her seeing me through all those ejaculations leading nowhere, that led me to here! The goofiness you must get yourself into to get where you have to go, the extent of the mistakes you are required to make! If they told you beforehand about all the mistakes, you’d say no, I can’t do it, you’ll have to get somebody else, I’m too smart to make all those mistakes. And they would tell you, we have faith, don’t worry, and you would say no, no way, you need a much bigger schmuck than me, but they repeat they have faith that you are the one, that you will evolve into a colossal schmuck more conscientiously than you can possibly begin to imagine, you will make mistakes on a scale you can’t even dream of now—because there is no other way to reach the end.
The coffin came home in a flag. His burned-up body buried first on Leyte, in an Army cemetery in the Philippines. When I was away at sea the coffin came back; they sent it back. My father wrote me, in his immigrant handwriting, that there was a flag on the coffin and after the funeral “the Army guy folded it up for mother in the offishul way.” It’s in that carton in the sideboard. It’s fifteen feet away.
They were back together on the sofa holding hands. And he has no idea who I am. No problem stealing the carton. Just have to find the moment. It’ll be best if Fish doesn’t have to die in the process.
“I think, when I think of dying,” Fish happened to be saying, “I think I wish I was never born. I wish I was never born. That’s right.”
“Why?”
“’Cause death, death is a terrible thing. You know. Death, it’s no good. So I wish I was never born.” Angrily he states this. I want to die because I don’t have to, he doesn’t want to die because he does have to. “That’s my philosophy,” he says.
“But you had a wonderful wife. A beautiful woman.”
“Oh, yeah, that I did.”
“Two good children.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yes.” The anger subsides, but only slowly, by degrees. He’s not to be easily convinced that death can be redeemed by anything.
“You had friends.”
“No. I didn’t have too many friends. I didn’t have time for friends. But my wife, she was a very nice woman. She passed away forty or fifty years ago already. Nice woman. As I say, I met her through my . . . wait a minute . . . her name is Yetta.”
“You met her through Yetta. That’s right. You met her through my mother.”
“Her name was Yetta. Yes. I was introduced to her from the Bronx. I still can remember that. They were walking across the park. I took a walk. And I met them on the way. And they introduced me to her. And that’s the girl I fell in love with.”
“You have a good memory for a man your age.”
“Oh, yeah. Thank God. Yes. What time is it now?”
“Almost one o’clock.”
“Is it? It’s late. It’s time to put up my lamb chop. I make a lamb chop. And I have applesauce for dessert. It’s almost one, you say?”
“Yeah. Just a few minutes to one.”
“Oh, yeah? So I’m gonna put up, I call it my dinner.”
“You cook the lamb chop yourself?”
“Oh, yeah. I put it in the oven. Takes about ten, fifteen minutes and it’s done. Sure. I got Delicious apples. I put in an apple to bake. So that’s my dessert. And then I have an orange. And that’s what I call a good meal.”
“Good. You take good care of yourself. Can you bathe yourself?” Get him in the bath, then walk off with the carton.
“No. I take a shower.”
“And it’s safe for you? You hold on?”
“Yeah. It’s a closed shower, you know, with a curtain. I got a shower there. So that’s where I shower. No problem at all. Once a week, yeah. I take a shower.”
“And nobody ever drives you down to look at the ocean?”
“No. I used to love the ocean. I used to go bathing in the ocean. Many years ago already. I was a pretty good swimmer. I learned in this country.”
“I remember. You were a member of the Polar Bear Club.”
“What?”
“The Polar Bear Club.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Sure. A group of men who went swimming on the beach in the cold weather. They were called the Polar Bear Club. You would go out in the cold water in a bathing suit, go in the water, come right out. In the twenties. In the thirties.”
“The Polar Bear Club, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Yes. I do. I think I do remember that.”
“Did you enjoy that, Fish?”
“The Polar Bear Club? I hated it.”
“Why did you do it then?”
“I swear to God, I don’t remember why I did it.”
“You taught me, Fish. You taught me to swim.”
“I did? I taught Irving. My son was born in Asbury Park. And Lois was born right here, upstairs in this house. In the bedroom. In the bedroom where I sleep now, she was born. Lois. The baby. She passed away.”
In the corner of the living room that is back of Fish’s head, there is an American flag rolled around a short pole. Fresh from reading the words “Morty’s Flag & things,” Sabbath only now sees it for the first time. Is that it? Is there just the carton there empty, in it none of Morty’s things any longer, and the flag from his coffin tacked to this pole? The flag looks as washed out as the beach chair in the yard. If this cleaning lady were interested in cleaning, she would have torn it up for rags long ago.
“How come you have an American flag?” Sabbath asked.
“I got it quite a few years already. I don’t know how I got it, but I got it. Oh, wait a minute. I think it was from the Belmar bank. When I piled up money, they gave me this flag. This American flag. In Belmar I used to be a depositor. Now, good-bye, deposits.”
“Do you want to have your dinner Fish? Do you want to go in and make your lamb chop? I’ll sit right here if you want me to.”
“It’s all right. I got time. It wouldn’t run away.”
Fish’s laughing getting more and more like a laugh.
“And you still have a sense of humor,” said Sabbath.
“Not much.”
So, even if nothing is left in the carton, I will come away having learned two things today: the fear of death is with you forever and a shred of irony lives on and on, even in the simplest Jew.
“Did you ever think that you would live to be a man a hundred years old?”
“No, I really didn’t. I heard about it in the Bible, but I really didn’t. Thank God, I made it. But how long I’m going to last, God knows.”
“How about your dinner, Fish? How about your lamb chop?”
“What is this here? Can you see this?” In his lap again are the two pieces of mail he was fiddling with when I came in. “Will you read it to me? It’s a bill, or what?”
“‘Fischel Shabas, 311 Hammond Avenue.’ Let me open it up. Comes from Dr. Kaplan, the optometrist.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Kaplan, the optometrist. In Neptune. Inside is a card. I’ll read it. ‘Happy Birthday.’”
“Oh!” The recognition pleases him inordinately. “What’s his name here?”
“Dr. Benjamin Kaplan, the optometrist.”
“The optometrist
?”
“Yeah. ‘Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Patient.’”
“Never heard of him.”
“‘Hope your birthdays are as special as you are.’ Did you have a birthday recently?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“When was your birthday?”
“The first of April.”
Right. April Fool’s Day. My mother always thought this appropriate for Fish. Yes, that distaste of hers was for his pecker. Unfathomable otherwise.
“So this is a birthday card.”
“A birthday card? The name is what?”
“Kaplan. A doctor.”
“That’s a doctor I never heard of. Maybe he heard about my birthday. And the other one?”
“Shall I open it up?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”
“From the Guaranty Reserve Life Insurance Company. I don’t think it’s anything.”
“What does he say there?”
“They want to sell you a life insurance policy. It says, ‘Life insurance policy available to ages forty to eighty-five.’”
“You can throw it out.”
“So that’s the only mail there is.”
“The heck with that.”
“No, you don’t need that. You don’t need a life insurance policy.”
“No, no. I got one. I think about five thousand dollars or something. My neighbor, he pays for it all the time. That’s the policy. I never carry big insurance. For who? For what? Five thousand dollars is enough. So he takes care of that. After my death it’ll bury me, and he gets the rest.” He pronounces “death” like “debt.”
“Who knows,” Fish says, “how much longer have I got to live? The time is running out. Sure. How much more can I live after a hundred years? Very little. If I have a year or two I’ll be lucky. If I have an hour or two I’ll be lucky.”
“How about your lamb chop?”
“A guy is supposed to come from the Asbury Park Press to interview me. At noon.”
“Yes?”
“I left the door open. He didn’t show up. I don’t know why.”
“To interview you about being a hundred?”
“Yeah. For my birthday. At noon. Maybe he got cold feet or something. What is your name, Mister?”
“My first name is Morris. Mickey is what they’ve called me since I was a boy.”
“Wait a minute. I knew a Morris. From Belmar. Morris. It’ll come to me.”
“And my last name is Sabbath.”
“Like my cousin.”
“That’s exactly right. On McCabe Avenue.”
“And the other guy, the name is also Morris. Oh, gee. Morris. Huh. It’ll come to me.”
“It’ll come to you after you eat your lamb chop. Come on, Fish,” I said, and here I lifted him onto his feet. “You are going to eat now.”
Sabbath never got to see him make the lamb chop. He would have liked to. He would very much have liked to see the lamb chop itself. It would have been fun, thought the puppeteer, to watch him make the lamb chop and then, when he turned around, take the lamb chop quickly and eat it. But as soon as he got Fish into the kitchen, he excused himself to go upstairs to use the bathroom and returned to the dining room, where he lifted the carton out of the sideboard—it was not empty—and carried it out of the house.
The black woman was still on the top step of the porch, sitting there now and watching the rain come down as she listened to the music on the radio. Awfully happy. Another one on Prozac? Features that could be part Indian. Young. Ron and I were taken by the other sailors to a district on the outskirts of Veracruz. A kind of nightclub that’s half outside, sleazy and shabby, in a honky-tonk district with strings of lights and dozens and dozens of young women and sailors at crude tables. As they made their bargains and finished their drinking, they retired to a low-slung row of houses where there were the rooms. All the girls were a mixture. We’re on the Yucatán peninsula—the Mayan past is not far away. Admixture of races, always mystifying. Takes a person to the depths of living. This girl was a sweetheart with a lovely personality. Very dark. Decent, smiling, engaging, warm in every way. Probably twenty or under. She was lovely, there was no hurry, there was no rush. I remember her using some kind of ointment on me afterward that stung. Maybe this astringent stuff was supposed to forestall any disease. Very nice girl. Just like her.
“How’s the old man?”
“Eatin’ his lamb chop.”
“Yippee,” she cried.
Christ, I’d like to meet her! Don’t stop bangin’. No. Too old. Finished with that. That’s done. That’s out. Good-bye, girlfriends.
“You from Texas? Where’d you get that yippee? Yippee-ki-yo-ki-yay.”
“That’s only when cattle’s involved,” she said, laughing with her mouth open wide. “Whoopee ti-yi-yo, git along, little do-gies!”
“What is a dogie, anyway?”
“A little stunted calf whose mother’s left it. A dogie’s a calf that’s lost its mom.”
“You’re a real cowpuncher. I took you first for an Asbury girl. I like you, ma’am. I hear your spurs ajinglin’. What do they call you?”
“Hopalong Cassidy,” she told him. “What do they call you?”
“Rabbi Israel, the Baal Shem Tov—the Master of God’s Good Name. The boys at the shul here call me Boardwalk.”
“Nice to meet ya.”
“Let me tell you a tale,” he said, brushing his beard with a raised shoulder while, by the side of his car, cradling in his two arms the box of Morty’s things. “Rabbi Mendel once boasted to his teacher Rabbi Elimelekh, that evenings he saw the angel who rolls away the light before the darkness, and mornings the angel who rolls away the darkness before the light. ‘Yes,’ said Rabbi Elimelekh, ‘in my youth I saw that, too. Later on you don’t see those things anymore.’”
“I don’t get Jewish jokes, Mr. Boardwalk.” She was laughing again.
“What kind of jokes do you get?”
But from within the carton, Morty’s American flag—which I know is folded there, at the very bottom, in the official way—tells me, “It’s against some Jewish law,” and so, on into the car he went with the carton, and then he drove it down to the beach, to the boardwalk, which was no longer there. The boardwalk was gone. Good-bye, boardwalk. The ocean had finally carried it away. The Atlantic is a powerful ocean. Death is a terrible thing. That’s a doctor I never heard of. Remarkable. Yes, that’s the word for it. It was all remarkable. Good-bye, remarkable. Egypt and Greece good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!
♦ ♦ ♦
Here’s what Sabbath found in the carton on that rainy, misty afternoon, Morty’s birthday, Wednesday, April 13, 1994, his car, with the out-of-state plates, the only car on Ocean Avenue by the McCabe Avenue beach, parked diagonally, all by itself, looking toward the sloshing-unimpressively-about sea god as it grayly swept southward in the tail end of the storm. There was nothing before in Sabbath’s life like this carton, nothing approached it, even going through all of Nikki’s gypsy clothes after there was no more Nikki. Awful as that closet was, by comparison with this box it was nothing. The pure, monstrous purity of the suffering was new to him, made any and all suffering he’d known previously seem like an imitation of suffering. This was the passionate, the violent stuff, the worst, invented to torment one species alone, the remembering animal, the animal with the long memory. And prompted merely by lifting out of the carton and holding in his hand what Yetta Sabbath had stored there of her older son’s. This was what it felt like to be a venerable boardwalk jerked from its moorings by the Atlantic, a worn, well-made, old-fashioned boardwalk running the length of a small oceanside town, immovably bolted onto creosoted piles as thick around as a strong man’s chest and, when the familiar old waves turn on the coast, jiggled up and out like a child’s loose tooth.
Just things. Just these few things, and for him they were the hurricane of the century.
Morty’s track letter. Dark blue with the black trim. A winged sneaker on the cros
sbar of the A. On the back a tiny tag: “The Standard Pennant Co. Big Run, Pa.” Wore it on the light blue letter sweater: The Asbury Bishops.
Photo. Twin-engine B-25—not the J he went down in but the D he trained in. Morty in undershirt, fatigue pants, dog tags, officer’s cap, parachute straps. His strong arms. A good kid. His crew, five altogether, all of them on the airstrip, mechanics servicing one engine behind them. “Fort Story, Virginia” stamped on back. Looking happy, sweet as hell. The watch. My Benrus. This watch.
Portrait photo taken by La Grotta of Long Branch. A boy in cap and uniform.
Photo. Throwing the discus at the stadium. Getting ready to make his circle, arm back behind him.
Photo. Action shot. The discus released, five feet out in front of him. His mouth open. The dark undershirt with the A emblem, the skimpy blue shorts. Pale color photo. Runny like watercolor. His open mouth. The muscles.
Two little recordings. No memory of these at all. One addressed from him at 324 C.T.D. (Air Crew), State Teachers College, Oswego, New York. “This living record was recorded at a USO Club operated by the YMCA.” His voice is on this record. Addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. S. Sabbath and Mickey.”
A metal backing on the second record. “This ‘letter-on-record’ is one of the many services enjoyed by the men of the armed forces as they use the USO ‘A HOME AWAY FROM HOME.’” VOICE-O-GRAPH. Automatic Voice Recorder. To Mr. and Mrs. S. Sabbath and Mickey. He always included me.
Isosceles triangles of red, white, and blue satin, stitched together to make a yarmulke. White triangle at the front shows a V, below the V dot-dot-dot-dash—the Morse code for V. “God Bless America” beneath that. A patriot’s yarmulke.
A miniature Bible. Jewish Holy Scriptures. Inside, in light-blue ink, “May the Lord bless you and keep you, Arnold R. Fix, Chaplain.” Opening page headed “The White House.” “As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve . . .” Franklin Delano Roosevelt commends “the reading of the Bible” to my brother. The way they got these kids to die. Commends.
