Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales

by Budd Schulberg

  The picture was all Irma, all the Irmas that make one life, all the lives that make one Irma. The picture danced with yellow and green, the colors flirting together, jumping together like kittens. Irma was dead and Nathan was soggy with sorrow, and the picture was gay, a leaping peasant mazurka. And Nathan thought this is strange, Irma dead so soon, and her picture happy and yellow like the one on the mountainside. And Nathan thought, I am a fine lover, nauseous with grief and painting her joyous as the morning I met her.

  And the more Nathan wondered about this, the blacker grew the picture, like rain clouds sweeping over a perfect sky, until finally only specks of yellow and green peeked out through the murky black. And this was true. Nathan knew it was finally true. Here was the blackness, the fight, the unfamiliar forms of hate, and through the murk shone the bright moments, moving like colored searchlights in a fog. They shone through, lighting Nathan’s face, then piercing him like an X ray, exposing the truth that flowed in him, bits of happiness flowing in this black river, salvaged from the wreck of life. He knew in that moment why men struggle, what light colors really meant, why Irma had died. It was all so clear at this moment, why the Jews wander like tumbleweed, how he must fight, whom he must help. Irma had made it clear.

  Nathan shoved the easel away and wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead. The sewing machine wheezed on monotonously. He mopped his face again with his handkerchief. Sweat flooded his eyeballs and moved like tiny glaciers down his nose and across his cheek.

  He rose and went out without a word. Uncle Max never looked up. The sewing machine hummed.

  Nathan strolled over to the market. The street was a human stew, pushcarts, garbage, screeching, haunted faces, selling, selling. It was all one face, all one smell. The stink of the street and the anxious breath sickened Nathan to the realization that this was modern Jewry, pushed down into this alley, not a unified, fighting force but a giant severed in a million pieces, with each part beating at the other with its bloody stump.

  Then someone threw a tomato. It flooded his philosophizing and his unsuspecting head in a mess of ripened pulp. Before he could recover he was surrounded by a ring of white faces, bulging with hunger and hate.

  “Nazi, Nazi!” they screamed.

  Nathan laughed. This was a new joke. These city Jews had little bodies, swarthy complexions, pale faces. Nathan was tall, tanned and blond. He knew the same suffering: taunted, hunted, hated. He had come to market to be with them, to smile with them, to move with this crowd. Irma had died for this, believing this to be right. He wiped the tomato pulp away with the edge of his sleeve. This is the Jew today. A ripe tomato thrown in a friendly face.

  Slowly he walked back to Max’s room. Max was still sewing. Nathan looked at his picture. So that was knowing Irma! Look back. How could anyone know Irma? I love one village. She loves the world. I love one human being. She loves a billion. Irma was a shadow. A shadow of the future. A shadow behind a bad portrait. Think back. Did you see Irma? Did you feel her? Did you ever understand?

  Save humanity! Two billion people, two billion pulses beating at different rates. Save the Jews! Sixteen million people. Sixteen million different people. Black and blond, rich and poor, atheist and orthodox.

  No, Irma had not made it clear after all. Irma had only died. Unity is a mirage. The fight is Don Quixote’s. I, Nathan Solomon, must walk alone.

  “So you go, Nathan? Home to the village, yes?”

  “No, Uncle, thank you. You have been good.”

  “But where do you go, Nathan?”

  “With the tumbleweed, Uncle Max.”

  The door closed. The rounded shoulders shrugged. The sewing began again.

  Nathan sat on the hard board seat of a third-class carriage rolling into Germany. Next to him sat two well-fed American boys who were roughing it. Across the way was a beefy German woman with a sad-eyed little boy whose nose seemed to run a steady stream into his mouth.

  When they reached Berlin, Nathan waited in the station for the train to Paris. The station swarmed with brown-shirts, posters and swastikas. It was a bristling, foreign world he was glimpsing, and he felt alternately a giant and a pygmy. He sat down on the bench, drew his head in and waited. There was no curiosity, no struggle. There was only Christ, making his way through a German railway station, the holes in his feet trailing blood.

  It was different in Paris.

  Nathan drifted to the Latin Quarter. The third day, he was earning his board, sketching in the restaurants. Tourists brought their faces down, and the restaurants filled them and Nathan sketched them, and everybody seemed well satisfied.

  Nathan had never met anyone as satisfied as Jacques.

  “So we paint, and we eat enough to fight and tomorrow, tomorrow comes the revolution,” said Jacques. Jacques was slightly drunk. Jacques was a painter, surrealist, and a revolutionary, Leninist. He could slap you on the back, like Gauguin, he could drink like Gauguin, he could live like Gauguin. He could do everything but paint like Gauguin. After all the customers had left, Nathan and Jacques sat drinking absinthe with the oval-bodied, square-headed little proprietor.

  “Meet Nathan—he has escaped a pogrom,” Jacques shouted. He was extremely proud of his new friend, seeing in him a political martyr. “In the People’s Front,” yelled Jacques to an imaginary audience, “nobody crawls. The workingman gets up on his legs and walks. The Jew gets off his belly. In the People’s Front we are all brothers.”

  The little proprietor yawned. Several loitering waiters held up their fists. Nathan and Jacques left the restaurant arm in arm.

  Jacques lived in one room above a bakery shop, a one-room suite, Jacques called it.

  “Here in the corner is my art gallery, there is my library, over beyond the bookcase is my bedroom, and way across on the other side is the most important room of the whole suite, the meeting room.”

  And Jacques would laugh so loud Nathan would fear the floor would crack and the bakery downstairs would be added to his friend’s imposing list of rooms.

  They talked and drank red wine, Nathan all warm with the Jewish excitement of being accepted, Jacques never knowing his surprise, a philosopher, a lover of men. Jacques told him of the revolution, of mobs walking like men, running the Fascists into the trees like monkeys chattering.

  Soon Mr. Tandry, the baker, entered and settled his plump little body into the only soft chair.

  “Comrade Tandry,” said Jacques in a booming voice, “meet Comrade Solomon. Two heroes. Tandry the petit bourgeois who will gamble his bakery on the working class. And Solomon, child of the universe, a Christ of the People’s Front.”

  The two men looked at each other embarrassed and pleased.

  That Jacques, he is a fool, their eyes said; that Jacques, he has a tongue like a flag, but it waves the right color. They smiled, and Nathan was a long way from Warsaw, a long way from rows of pushcarts and lonely Jews.

  The door opened again, and a young couple came in. The boy’s face was dirty, but there was something about the rakish angle of his hat and the laugh in his eyes that seemed to bring elegance to the room. The girl was exciting. She came in shouting hello, and shook hands all around, a strong grip, a strong grip for a shapely young girl with eyes like black lights.

  “Make room for the proletariat,” Jacques called. “Maude and Louis, this is Nathan, our new comrade.”

  Nathan laughed, taking their hands, then he suddenly grew quiet, realizing how long it had been since he had laughed.

  “Come, Nathan, we are all friends, why so quiet?” Jacques called, and Nathan started to laugh again, louder and louder, upsetting his wine glass, until finally M. Tandry began clumping him firmly on the back. He coughed then, and washed his cough down with more wine, hiccuping contentedly to himself.

  In a few moments three more entered. Nathan found himself looking up into their faces gladly, eager to meet them, new friends, wishing Irma could see him, thinking he would paint this room, with the smoke hanging over it, a fine happy re
d, and through the red the yellow laughter of Jacques, and the flaming black hair of Maude. Red friendship filtering like smoke through the room.

  When a bald, broad-shouldered man with a briefcase entered, even Jacques became quiet. This was Paul, Jacques explained to Nathan, a Communist leader here to tell them of their tasks in the mass meeting tomorrow. Paul smiled at them methodically, took several papers from his briefcase, and explained in a low, patient voice what each one of them must do when they met at the Arc de Triomphe.

  “There will be one hundred thousand people marching. The Fascists will try to disrupt, to provoke violence. It is up to the Communists to maintain discipline, to explain to the people that their strength lies in peace, unity.”

  There was not a sound in the room but the quiet buzz of instructions. Nathan leaned forward, magnetized by Paul’s quiet force, his lack of heroics. He leaned forward, feeling himself part of the group, part of one hundred thousand, spellbound, knowing again that Irma had made it clear, the part he must play, the price, the goal.

  The next day belonged to Nathan. For the first time in his life, he saw men march for life instead of death. Before had been the pogroms and the soldiers. Before, ten men on a street corner meant trouble, rocks through Jewish windows. Safety was in the hills, going your own way, painting your own pictures. Today Nathan did not merely see one hundred thousand Frenchmen, shouting for freedom, cheering a Jew because he was one of them, marching for millions, down from the cross to lead democracy; today he was one hundred thousand, faces smiling, frenzy of friendship, one great heart beating, the People’s Front, the People, yes, marching down the Champs Elysées. He found his answer in the quick smiles of strangers, the borrowed cigarette, the ready handshake, the contagious spread of song, the single laughter of many throats.

  When it was finally over, the line broke, filtering into the sidewalk cafes. Jacques ordered a cheap white wine, and Nathan gaily poured the cold liquid down his burning throat.

  “Well, Nathan, now you are a Frenchman, one of us. Let’s drink on that.”

  Nathan drank, one of us, held the first gulp in his mouth a moment, then let it trickle down. He was clinging to the toast.

  Then he sat quietly looking out at the holiday crowd.

  “Come, Nathan, you old owl! Have another! What were you thinking?”

  “At home if a Jew drank on the street like this, they would say he was a flaunter, a show-off,” Nathan said.

  “You could never show off drinking the way you do,” said Jacques critically. “Nathan, I take back what I said about you being a Frenchman. You still drink like a Pole.”

  “I can never be a Pole again,” said Nathan seriously. “Today I am a Frenchman. You don’t know what it is, to suddenly stand for something.”

  “Nathan Solomon, ex-child of the universe, more recently of the Front Populaire,” Jacques toasted.

  “I am going to become a citizen!” Nathan said excitedly. “A citizen, Jacques! Belonging to France.”

  “Finish that wine, Citizen Solomon,” Jacques ordered. “This is a great honor for France. We will have to celebrate with a party for you in the suite tonight.”

  Next morning Nathan was at the office of the Alien Department at half past eight in the morning. At nine, it was unlocked by an officious little man with dirty spats. At nine-five, the little man took notice of Nathan, and explained that Monsieur l’Inspecteur had not yet arrived. At nine-thirty, Monsieur l’Inspecteur arrived, reading a newspaper as he walked.

  “I want to take out my citizenship papers,” Nathan told him breathlessly.

  The inspector nodded. He did not throw his arms around him like Jacques, and propose a toast. He did not seem to realize that this was new life. Nathan reborn, a friend of the State. And for Nathan, flushed with new faith, it was impossible to realize that his political baptism was just so much red tape to the inspector, just so much work to be done before going home to his wife’s good cooking.

  “Don’t you understand?” Nathan asked again. “I have decided to become a citizen. I want to take out papers.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the inspector. “Let me see your credentials.”

  “Here is my passport,” Nathan said busily, fishing out a greasy, torn document. “This is my birth certificate.”

  “And your five-year residence card?” asked the inspector, without looking up.

  “Five-year what?” asked Nathan.

  “Residence card, residence card,” said the inspector grouchily. “Proof that you have been a resident of France for the last five years.”

  Nathan felt small and Jewish and more natural. Behind him were Jacques and the Arc de Triomphe and the People. Ahead was silence, the lack of Irma, no paintings, no roots, no love. If Nathan had been a big man he would have gone out of there laughing, thinking this inspector is a good Christian who goes to church every Sunday and I am just a poor son of a bitch who happens to be like Christ, only I slap paint at a canvas instead of talk. But not being a big man like Christ, Michelangelo or Lenin, Nathan hung his head on his chest, like a pigeon with a broken neck, and he walked out of the office with funny jerky steps like a circus clown on stilts.

  He walked through the bakery shop and M. Tandry said, “Come here, Nathan, and try this new pastry, still hot,” but Nathan shook his head, the broken neck wobbling, and went up to the suite.

  He told Jacques and Jacques was silent at first, and then smiled, saying five years in the suite goes by like this, and he drained his wine glass to illustrate.

  “Five years is too long for me,” Nathan told him.

  “But where else can you go, Nathan?”

  “Somewhere. Somewhere I can belong.”

  “But Nathan, you belong here with us now.”

  As Nathan watched his friend, it seemed to come to him, a new urge, where he must go, what he must do.

  “I belong to Palestine,” he said. “I am a lonely Jew. I want to belong. I want to feel enough a part of a country to paint it, as I tried to paint Poland and always failed.”

  “Why not Birobidjan?” Jacques suggested. “The Soviet Palestine, out of reach of Zionist hypocrisy.”

  “I must go to Palestine,” Nathan said.

  When he saw he had lost, Jacques threw himself into this as he did everything else. Jacques was a philosopher. That is, he could take corners on two wheels without turning over. When he saw he had lost, he wiped the wine from his mouth and said, “I will raise the money.”

  That night his suite was jammed with every comrade he knew.

  “We all love France,” Jacques began. “That is why we’re willing to fight and die to put Hitler and the Fascists to rout.”

  It was so simple. Only a philosopher would dare to say such things. The applause was deafening. There was red smoke. But no laughter. And Nathan was outside all the smoke. He was a Jew, above the smoke, and somewhere beyond that smoke lay Palestine.

  “Nathan Solomon is a martyr to progress,” Jacques went on. “The Fascists ran him out of Poland. The French want to keep him in the waiting room for five years. He belongs where he can feel most at home. For Nathan it is Palestine. And I’ve called you here to help him go.”

  Jacques passed through the room collecting franc notes, and centimes until his big hands were full. Then he came over to Nathan, stuffed them in his pocket, poured him more red wine and bellowed a great toast.

  “For people to hold up their heads.”

  Then the people laughed and cheered, and Nathan drank quietly, the pigeon-neck snapped, the Jew alone again.

  Three days later the Front Populaire lost one of its members, Nathan Solomon. In his pocket was a ticket to Palestine via a small Italian steamer. In his pocket a few extra francs Jacques had given him. In his pocket a passport to Palestine, open sesame, Nathan’s heart stamped neatly on a greasy page.

  He boarded the Venus de Milo just before dawn, clomping across the dock slowly, while Jacques danced around him, a trifle drunk, a man to spit in the eye of Pan, an ar
tist, a philosopher. Over Nathan’s shoulder his easel was silhouetted against the gray light streaming through the clouds, like a constructivist stage set.

  Twice the ship’s whistle belched like a drunk turning over in his sleep. All aboard! The men embraced, knights of the all and the one, the joy and the pain of it, the Front Populaire and the Jew.

  Nathan reached his bunk and looked around him in the dim light. He was trapped in a narrow stateroom where eight bunks were piled on each other like open coffins. He looked into the bunk of the one above him, where a man with long handlebar moustaches slept loudly and peacefully. The blanket was tucked neatly under the moustaches, and every now and then as it crept over them, they would twitch and struggle for air again like smothered cats. Across from him sat an enormous Negro. He was undressing, grunting as he took off his heavy shoes. All his consciousness was concentrated on this act, and he neither spoke nor looked at Nathan. Slowly Nathan undressed and crawled under damp sheets, pulling them over his head as he used to as a child in Minsk, this moment King of his Universe, the next moment so much dust twirling down into a deep black bin, smaller, smaller, until he finally fell asleep.

  Breakfast was served for the twenty-seven third-class passengers at one long table. Opposite Nathan was another Jew, who sat down to it as if it were a banquet table. Mr. Brownstein from Brooklyn and next to him Sadie Brownstein, his wife, such a fine mother, and Julian their twelve-year-old, epis, and Annie, two and a half. Mr. Brownstein ate busily and rather loudly, only pausing occasionally to admonish his wife for his children’s eating habits.

  After breakfast, Brownstein and his Sadie whispered openly, their big eyes describing arcs around Nathan like watchtowers at sea. Finally Mr. Brownstein smiled and said, “Ein Jude, eh?”