When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  Then his friend Artie—this was when they were in high school—somehow acquired a used camera. He loved photographing Harold’s father, who had sad eyes and a wide, bare forehead. Artie showed up at their apartment on weekends, slouching in doorways and declining Harold’s mother’s offers of seltzer or a sandwich, until he had the nerve to ask Mr. Abramovitz to move closer to the window. Harold’s father was unself-conscious, and posed without altering his expression, as patient as if all the history of Eastern Europe resided in his body.

  After high school, Artie took business classes at night and worked in a camera store, getting in trouble for telling customers more than they wanted to know. Harold studied English literature at City College’s main branch, uptown. English turned out to consist of what he’d imagined philosophy to be. He made only a little money, delivering parcels for a drugstore, but his parents believed their only child would distinguish himself. Reading Wordsworth’s Michael, about a shepherd whose son runs off to the wicked city and never returns to help his father finish the sheepfold they had been wholesomely building together, Harold felt guilty, but by this time he’d learned to enjoy feeling guilty, and he envied the great Catholic saints their excruciating and yet welcome sense of sin.

  The Depression began during Harold’s junior year in college. Artie lost his job and began taking pictures of labor union meetings and political rallies, occasionally selling photographs to a newspaper. One or another of his brothers always had a job, so his family had food. The first time Harold went with Artie to a political rally he was doing his friend a favor by keeping him company, but he got interested. The rhetoric made sense. It had the right mixture of the abstract and the specific for Harold’s taste. He liked hearing that all who labored were equal, were comrades. It was what he had tried and failed to believe before, but put this way, it was easy to take into his head and expound sincerely. He was not being asked simply to feel bad that he didn’t work with his hands and didn’t want to. He could look forward to a future in which those who did that labor were not deprived of their dignity or of just compensation.

  Artie stumbled from the back door to the outhouse by means of the light from the cabin. On his way back, he heard something familiar: that car again. At least this time he wasn’t naked.

  —Hungry? Myra said as she came in. The scarf was gone and her hair tumbled about her face. Thirsty? She was smiling, but she looked worn out, exasperated.

  Harold had stood to meet them. We thought you weren’t coming.

  —Don’t tell me you ate! Myra said. Never mind. You’re eating again.

  —Fine, Harold said. We didn’t have much of a dinner. I’m Harold Abramovitz.

  Virginia smiled blandly. Maybe, Artie decided, coming up next to Harold, she was slow. What took you so long? he said. Where were you?

  —He wants to know where we were, Virginia said to Myra, shrugging in Artie’s direction.

  —So I hear, Myra said. We had to go all the way to Lake George.

  —You know your way around, Harold said. Artie had no idea how far away Lake George was. Far. Harold, who seemed to have changed his mind about the desirability of visitors, made gestures suggesting hospitality.

  —I guess you could say that, Virginia said. I guess you could say we know our way around, right, My? Then she laughed. The truth is, we got lost.

  Ignoring her, Myra unpacked a paper bag: four steaks, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of bourbon. You provide the vegetable, she said. If you want a vegetable. And where’s the fire? You should have had a fire ready.

  —She’s cranky when she’s hungry, Virginia said. Then she added, Well, that sounds nice, which made Artie realize he had begun to whistle, which meant he was feeling unsure of himself. Beethoven. Harold and Myra got the fire going again. Myra yanked open a drawer, took out a knife, and began trimming the steaks.

  —You knew where the knife was, Harold said.

  —I remembered, said Myra. She didn’t just glance at him over her shoulder. She turned so that their shoulders were facing, as if she were playing tennis with him.

  —It’s true you’ve been here before.

  —I told your suspicious pal. Gus is my daddy.

  —Gus never mentioned you, Harold said, and Myra looked at him sharply.

  Virginia giggled again. Her sugar daddy, more like, she said.

  Harold looked from one to the other of them, startled. He looked at Artie, as if to explain the quick look. I’ve met his wife. I’ve seen his kids.

  Artie couldn’t help it. Isn’t monogamy a bourgeois capitalist idea it’s high time we threw out? he said, with more nastiness in his voice than he had expected. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, isn’t that how you fellas put it? Break up some marriages too.

  Harold was silent, eyeing the steaks, which Myra now laid across the grate, her back to Artie. Then he said in a low voice, Gus isn’t in the party.

  —I didn’t say he was, Artie continued, the roughness and loudness of his voice still surprising him. I’m talking about your principles, your goddamn principles and your goddamn . . . He stopped. The assistant principles joke was not funny enough to repeat.

  Myra scurried around, elaborately hearing nothing, and found jelly glasses into which she put generous servings of bourbon and water. They ate the steaks rare. Those frankfurters certainly hadn’t been enough. Before the food was quite gone, Harold stood. We’re giving you girls the bunk beds, he said.

  Artie was partly relieved, partly annoyed. He’d have tried a little something with Virginia, he now decided, if he’d had the chance. Just enough friendliness to make it possible to share a bunk, end to end. But now the girls brought in a couple of bags and shrieked their way to the outhouse, then waved goodnight and went into the bedroom.

  Harold gave Artie the sofa, insisting he didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. He’d found some blankets. The sofa was bad enough. In his clothes, his pants unbuttoned for comfort, Artie lay down and closed his eyes. His shoulder was cramped. He sensed Harold’s wakefulness on the floor below him. At last he began to sing.

  One-four-nine is the school for me,

  Drives away all adversity.

  Steady and true, we’ll be to you,

  Loyal all to one-four-nine rah! rah! rah!

  Harold listened silently. As kids, they’d both gone to P.S. 149 in East New York, but as Harold often pointed out, they weren’t kids anymore. Eventually his deeper voice joined Artie’s.

  Raise on high the red and white.

  Cheer it with all your might.

  Good old one-four-nine.

  Hurrah for one-four-nine rah rah rah!

  They fell silent, Harold before the last syllables. Some time later—knowing they were both still awake—Artie thought again of his limerick.

  At a mountain lake, as day was dimming,

  Two bare-assed Jews thought they’d go swimming.

  Then they pissed in the lake

  A colossal mistake

  For a shark came and gave them a trimming.

  —A new low, even for you, Harold said.

  On a chilly March afternoon in 1930, when they were nineteen, Harold had skipped a class he considered pointless—the professor’s ideas about poetry were jejune—to go with Artie to Union Square, so Artie could photograph a Communist rally on unemployment. Artie liked photographing excited, angry people, and he told himself that one of these days he’d produce a photograph of an important event so impressive that a newspaper would not only buy it but put him on staff. At the rally, the crowd was larger than they’d seen before. Artie and Harold leaned on a tree, not far from the speakers but off to the side. More people arrived, and now they were in the middle of the crowd.

  —Would you look at those cops? Artie said. Jesus Christ. He took off his glasses and replaced them, then slapped his head—a habit. He had lank black hair that looked untidy the week after a haircut. Then Artie began slapping his own leg rhythmically, and Harold knew something was going to happen. The s
peakers began urging the assemblage to march on City Hall and demand to see Mayor Walker. Whistling, Artie went to photograph the nervous cops who massed near the front of the crowd, and Harold watched him make his way through the throng and slip sideways up to them, crouch to get the angle he wanted, and shoot. Nobody seemed to notice. Since their childhood, Artie had known how to deny his presence with his slouch and shrug, his skinniness, the flat hair on his narrow skull, as if he was invisible or the color of leaves and shadows. Harold knew that he himself gave just the opposite impression. Strangers in the street sometimes seemed confused, as if they thought he was approaching them specifically. In school, teachers called on him when he hadn’t raised his hand, or they looked at him expectantly. Question, Mr. Abramovitz? a professor might say, though Harold was just listening.

  Artie returned. He said, They’ve got people from City Hall up there, maybe the chief of police. He moved away again, into the crowd. Harold watched three women near him cheering lustily, then laughing as if they were pleased simply to be making this noise. The next time he saw Artie, he was photographing three men who looked confused, maybe arguing about whether to stay or leave. Artie seemed interested in the trees near these men, maybe the look of the ridged bark with these gesturing arms and open mouths superimposed on it.

  The mood of the crowd changed. The leaders asked everyone to march to City Hall, and there were cheers. Harold was afraid, but he wanted to march. He was tired of being an observer. There was sudden movement, shouting: the police were charging, and some of the crowd surged against them, while others tried to run away. All at once it was impossible to go in any direction, and Harold saw a man knocked down by a policeman’s baton. Others tried to help him or keep from stepping on him, and batons hit them. Harold, shocked, found himself walking toward the police, inserting himself between people as if he had business in that direction. Right in front of him, a cop kicked a young woman in a long dark coat. She seemed stunned. Given no time for thought or fear, Harold reached his arms and big hands toward the woman, seized her by the shoulder, unceremoniously pulled her to his chest, then pushed her behind him as the cop charged.

  To his own astonishment, Harold waved his arms in the air, his hands gyrating of their own accord, and he began to scream and shriek, high-pitched oohs and ays he had never heard himself emit before. The policeman swatted at his hands with his stick, and Harold felt a strange pain outline his right hand and arm. Behind him, the woman cursed the cop. Putting one hand on Harold’s arm for support, she hiked up her skirt and kicked the policeman. She kicked again and he staggered backward. Harold pushed her ahead of him into a space in the crowd. Soon they were crying and shuffling, holding hands. The part of the crowd they were in was not trying to make its way south toward City Hall but east along Fifteenth Street. He and the woman came to a street in which the crowd was sparse enough that they could set their own pace. Her hat was gone and her hair blew over her face. His overcoat was open and torn, and his face was covered with mucus. He was crying. He touched his cheek and felt blood. They stopped, became self-conscious, looked at each other, and stopped holding hands.

  The woman said, How old are you? At the time it seemed like a natural question.

  —Nineteen, said Harold. How old are you?

  —Twenty-seven, said the woman. Are you from the Bronx?

  —Brooklyn. Now they were turning aside to part, but Harold didn’t want to. He was sick with fear for Artie but curious about this woman who had touched him so intimately. Wait, he said. My name is Harold Abramovitz.

  —Belle Kantor. Do you have paper? I’ll give you the address where we meet. He had a squashed notebook in his pocket, a pen.

  Coffee, in the morning, made Virginia talk. Harold had found an iron frying pan and was frying eggs they’d bought in Albany. Virginia was from Schenectady and so was Myra, but Myra had gone to college—Vassar, that fancy girls’ school—and Virginia had not. You boys been to college? she asked. Sometimes Artie couldn’t stop himself with the rhymes and songs. This time he chanted something he’d heard around the campus at City.

  Jacob, Yitzhak, Abraham and Sam!

  We’re the boys that eat no ham!

  Where we come from . . . don’t remember.

  New York City College. Yay!

  —Oh, stop it, said Harold. He was dressed, but his curly hair was tousled, making him look like a big baby. He was grumpy.

  Virginia considered. You mean you don’t remember the words or you don’t remember where you come from?

  —I don’t remember the words, Artie said. He couldn’t help laughing.

  —And you eat wieners, which is the same as ham. She had twisted her hair up.

  —Not necessarily, Harold said.

  Myra was walking behind Artie toward the old couch, where he sat back, his legs stuck out into the room. He had his shoes on but hadn’t tied the laces because he planned to change his socks as soon as he had some privacy. Artie rarely drank coffee, but he’d taken some just to warm up, and he was trying to look as if he liked it. Myra said sarcastically, Not necessarily! She touched Artie’s shoulder and gave him the sort of half smile people give when they’ve already agreed together to make fun of a third person. She was smoking a cigarette. Since he and Myra had not had an agreement to make fun of Harold, tacit or otherwise, Artie was surprised. Flattered, maybe. Myra was pretty, with her dark red hair. Her smile scared him, but her breasts were perky. It would be too much to touch her ass, though that came to mind—it was small but well shaped. He lifted his coffee mug in her direction, with what he hoped was a slightly conspiratorial smile.

  —So that means you’re Jewish? Virginia said, hunched at the table over her coffee. You’re both Jewish?

  —You don’t like Jews? said Artie.

  —Leave her alone, Myra said.

  —I was just curious, Virginia said.

  —Can’t be too careful, Artie said. That’s how they feel in Germany. Nothing against Jews, just keep an eye on them.

  —It’s not funny, Artie, Harold said.

  —I’m not against Jews, said Virginia.

  Harold said, Did you know Jewish doctors in Germany had to turn in their licenses?

  Virginia said, I don’t pay much attention to the news.

  —Oh, my God, Artie said. For Christ’s sake.

  —Would you stop it? Myra said. Leave her alone. Something seemed to travel through her, starting with the hair or the nose, which was prominent though not Jewish-looking, and out her long fingers. I think I’ll take a walk, she said. And in moments, she was gone.

  Artie was curious. What did she mean? he asked Virginia. Leave you alone? There’s something wrong with you?

  —Maybe she thinks there is, Virginia said. She went into the bedroom and emerged in a white bathing suit, then added her heavy brown sweater. She had on shoes but no socks. She went outside, and Artie saw her go down to the lake, where there was a patch of sun.

  —So how would the wise Communist Party direct us to spend our morning? he said to Harold, who was busying himself with the tin mugs and unmatched plates. Shall we organize the local bears?

  —Very funny.

  —What’s Myra mad about? Artie said. He was looking around for trouble to make—he knew it. He felt a certain malaise. He was cold; he didn’t want to flirt with the girls, though he wouldn’t have minded if they flirted with him; he didn’t want to go into the water; and at the moment he couldn’t remember why this week in the woods had seemed like a good idea. When Artie felt that way, he started up with somebody; he always had, stirring up quarrels among his brothers—he had four—as a child. Trouble was a good way of staying interested and awake. But this time, before he could get seriously interested in annoying Harold, he remembered something: the dilapidated, oarless rowboat he’d seen the day before. He went for his camera. The sound of a tree branch scraping the roof had interrupted his thoughts and changed his mood. Hell, they were in the woods! He should take pictures.

  —I hat
e to see . . . He hustled to the shore—avoiding Virginia, who sat on the ground, her knees drawn up—and photographed the rowboat, the shadow of the boat on the shore, the shadow of the seat on the bottom of the boat, the weeds beyond the boat. He was trying out a lens he’d bought just before losing his job. When he had money, he spent it on his camera. Better a camera than a woman. After he took pictures, he circled the outside of the cabin and saw no oars. He put his camera into its case and slung the case across his chest. Then he took the thickest, largest stick he could find and (again avoiding Virginia) climbed into the boat, whistling, untied it, and pushed off. He saw Myra return from the driveway and go into the cabin. Whistling and poking at the bottom of the lake with his stick, soon he was afloat.

  Harold had been born in summer, only a few months after his parents arrived in New York, and as an infant he slept in a wooden box his mother had used to bring clothing and blankets on the long journey across the ocean. Every morning she put the box near the window so the baby could strengthen in sunshine. Harold remembered, with nostalgia so keen the memory came to him as a taste, cool and milky—vanilla—the pleasure of lying on his back, his limbs at rest, comfortable in every part of his body, watching something flash and flash again in the sunlight outside the window. When he’d told his mother this memory, at ten, she said it was not possible. Harold had grown quickly, and at six months he’d outgrown the box. Besides, by then it was winter, and the window was drafty. A baby could not remember what happened before he was six months old, Harold’s mother said. She could not read or write, but she remembered everything anyone had ever told her, and spoke, her blue eyes bulging like her son’s, with the certainty and clarity people would later notice in Harold. They would assume he’d picked up the tone at City College, but he had begun talking that way when he spoke only Yiddish, having conversations with his mother. He was content not to argue with her on the topic of early memory. Harold—called Hesh until he started school and the teacher chose Harold—knew what he knew. The memory—it made his salivary glands tingle—and the loss of that exquisite comfort as he grew older, informed whatever Harold would eventually do. It didn’t make sense for Harold to join the Communist Party: he was elegiac, not radical, but Harold loved fairness as others loved risk or drama, and it was only fair to join with those who stood with the oppressed, whether their reasoning was crude or not. Harold Abramovitz had sought the risk of becoming a Communist, though he looked down slightly on his comrades and they knew it. Brenda Saltzman, many years later, would comment that Harold Abrams—by then he’d have changed his name—had joined the Communist Party as an actor might try out for the role of the tragic hero. That morning at the house in the Adirondacks, long before Brenda’s birth, Harold wanted Myra and Virginia to leave so he could talk Artie into understanding why he’d done it. Artie was hard to convince, and Harold—since third grade—had never been able to give up the challenge of convincing Artie. He wanted nothing but to renew the argument.