Nathan’s mother had been Rose Margolis. She was brought together with Solomon Dreyfoos by a marriage broker in Boston when she was twenty-four and Solomon was forty-three. The match was made in Boston but little Nathan considered that it might have been made in Heaven. Never did he hear his parents exchange a word of doubt, rivalry or recrimination. They must have been solid in devotion from the day of their wedding. Rose was big-boned, homely, and had grown very fat by the time she was in her middle thirties; Sol Dreyfoos appeared to become more spare and stooped, if more energetic, each year of his life. He was nervous but dependable—a haggard black-eyed man with a little string of whiskers which looked false.
Nathan was an only child, but he wished that he had brothers and sisters by the dozen; it would have been such fun when they traveled, which was aggressively, constantly. Solomon’s business took him to England and France, back across the Atlantic to Boston, Philadelphia, New York again; perhaps back across the Atlantic to France again; by boat to Spain; thence by boat to Genoa or Naples; back to Boston in the autumn once more. We, said Solomon, are the Wandering Jews. He said it often, he said it to Nathan when Nate was three, and Sol was holding him up at the rail of a fast mail ship, listening to fog horns announcing that Liverpool was near and the fast mail would become slow mail if the fog didn’t lift.
...Went springing up those stairs, his brooding eyes alight, his wide loose-lipped mouth at a grin. His mother pushed down her specs and beamed at him, her plump hands came away from the frame whereon she was effecting seriously a collection of marble columns, bedizened ponies, incredibly lean and pink greyhounds, and a peasant population provided with baskets of fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she worked for a week on one figure, sometimes for a fortnight on another; when she was in a mood to work on flowers she could not work on knights and ladies. Therefore the assemblage of figures seemed suffering from ulceration at various colorful points, some looked like lepers, some were skeletal; but Rose could see far beyond this incompleteness, she could see the thing of beauty which would emerge.
What are you going to do with it, Rose? And what shall you do with it in the end, Madame? Is this destined for a museum, Señora? Oh, no, and her smooth contented laugh rippled, the sound which to Nathan was the most comforting music in the world (when he needed to be comforted, which was seldom: the world was so kind to him, so violent and mean to many other boys he saw). Oh, no. I just thought maybe it would make A Nice Present To Give Someone. She always said that, whether she worked at lace or embroidery: A Nice Present To Give Someone. Rose loved to give things away—personal things, toiled over. At this rate it would be a long while before her latest needlepoint became A Nice Present; she had begun it in Holland early in 1854, and here it was July, 1856. Of course she worked on other things from time to time, and she had written a sonata in between, to say nothing of seven poems entitled respectively, Humility, The Happy Lambs, I Tread the Path, To My Kitten, Trust, On A Sleeping Baby, The Bobbins. Five of these had been accepted by editors and published, and now reposed in the album for which Rose had worked covers decorated with silver wire stitching, and which bore the imposing title, The Works Of Mrs. R. M. Dreyfoos.
Sol Dreyfoos thought the album a magnificent thing, and was eternally fetching it out to show to callers. Each poem or musical achievement of his wife’s filled him with admiration. Always he said that he did not think he understood it completely (an old purchasing agent like himself—nothing but figures in his head—nothing but francs and dollar-signs and pounds sterling!) but that it was very beautiful. Secretly he was alarmed to see how little his wife’s creations brought when they were sold; Sol wondered how composers and poets got along; he had heard that they didn’t, that many of them starved.
...Mother, Mother!
Hm. You are smiling so hard I know you have great news.
Mother, he’s going to permit me—
Now, I am glad! That is his business, Nathan; it is a father’s business, not the business of a mother, to decide such things. But for your sake I am so glad he decided that you are to go. Nathan, come and look. I have finished my bananas.
Yes—they’re wonderful. They’re like gold—
Bananas, real bananas, are like gold—
Mother, I’ve been considering. I think I’ll buy Tomás from the gardener.
Buy Tomás? I thought you planned to borrow a mule if—
But, you see, then I should feel that Tomás was mine. He’s a splendid donkey, young enough not to tire, but splendidly disciplined. Nor does he bite or kick. Olmedo loads him with rock, halfway up to the old Gibralfaro, and brings him down with it—two great panniers, heavy as can be. Back and forth, all the day through, up and down. And still Tomás is ready for more. I’ve ridden him at sunset after he’d toiled like a slave, and he was fairly ready to canter—
Hm. That will take your savings.
But it would be such a lark, ma chère maman, to know that he was mine. I should feel like an emperor—like one of your people stepped from that needlepoint frame. Hills, valleys, vistas, las montañas, las colinas—all mine, all mine, spread before my gaze as if I were king of the entire landscape—
Ah, young ambition! Nate, you should not wish to be a king.
Of course not. I don’t wish to be one truly. But—you know the feeling I mean—
Ja, ja, ja, the feeling of possession. It brings security, and that is what we seek. But what would you do with Tomás after you’re coming back from your jaunt in the mountains? Where would you stable him? We have no room in our stable.
Tomás isn’t very large and he’s very good tempered. I should think that Carlos might make room for him somewhere.
But Carlos says that horses do not like to be stabled with mulos. And who would feed and water poor Tomás? You should have to pay one of the servants; and you know how your father bids you not to be extravagant because you are a rich man’s son.
Well, es verdad. I suppose you’re right, Mother, as usual. Very well. I’ll rent Tomás from the gardener!
That is my wise son. When shall you depart on your adventure?
Oh, not until Monday. Hang it all—I promised the monks I’d bring my fiddle and play for those old blind people on Sunday. They said it would be a joy to them.
Nathan, you play very well. I wish your dear grandfather had lived longer so that you might have heard him play—
I did hear him, when I was a little tad. Twice, in Boston.
But then you were too young to appreciate. I had hoped so that you would take up the violin in the way he did. But that means work, work, work, practice, practice, practice, the livelong day.
Ha. Precious chance I’ve had for that, living here and there as we do—
But, Nathan, you don’t truly like to practice.
I know it, hang it all. But I don’t play too badly as it is. And at least Mr. Halliburton says I’ve done well with my studies. He must have praised me to Father, or I’d never be permitted to go.
Nathan, he did praise you to your father; I heard him do so. And I think that Mr. Halliburton is the very best tutor we have found for you, ever. Should you like to invite him to go back to America in the fall, with us, after we leave England?
Oh, Madre! He’s a hundred times pleasanter than that old Revere, and a thousand times more intelligent than Cuff was. That would be simply ripping!
Very well, I myself shall speak to your father about it. We will see. It will be expensive—the passage—but— Nathan, one thing. When you ride to the mountains, you must forget who you are. You must be dressed very simply—almost like—
I know—like a peasant—in rough clothes!
You speak almost perfect Andaluz, or so I hear the servants say. So I am not worried about— And you are tall and strong, you can run foot-races, you are a fine fencer. So I shall not worry about— But, my son, there are bandits in those mountains. Many.
But I’ll travel like a poor chap, I’ll put up only at the cheaper inns.
Well, God go with thee.
She looked at him after he had kissed her and was gone prancing away to dicker with the gardener— She looked at him as he left the room, and before she adjusted her specs again— She looked at him lovingly and thought, Life has been and is being too easy for my son. But what can one do? Should I want him to starve as I starved when I was a little girl, when my own father could not get work in the cafés? Should I want him to tramp the roads with a peddler’s pack on his back, as dear Solomon did when he was of the same age? But Nathan does not seem cut out for a merchant. He does not seem cut out for anything except to be a dear sweet son! And he is kind of heart. Thank God!
Nathan’s impulse was to buy beautiful accoutrements for Tomás; indeed this was nominated in his agreement with Olmedo. Reluctantly he decided that new harness must wait until his return: the crimson-and-purple halter, the embroidered bands of heavy stitched fabric to bind Tomás’s chunky body, to pass below his efficient fly-batting tail— These might attract envy and cupidity along the road, they would most certainly attract attention. Accordingly the boy set forth with a newly curried Tomás but with the old patched stained furniture. One basket carried the few necessaries which Nathan allowed himself in the way of clothing and toilet articles, another held bread, cheese and wine against emergencies. He was armed with a damascene clasp-knife from Toledo and a rusty double-barreled pistol bought in Sheffield when he was twelve; his father warned him to keep this armament out of sight. He had also his long-saved hoard of money concealed in an old innocent-looking loaf of bread, together with a bottle of saleratus to be used in case of snakebite, and a volume of Lord Byron. The entire household gathered in the courtyard to wish Nathan godspeed and to criticize his appearance . . . his legs were so long that they nearly touched the ground. Solomon Dreyfoos said that if Tomás grew weary Nathan must pick the donkey up and carry him. Olmedo the gardener embraced first Tomás, then Nathan, then Tomás again; this would be the first time Olmedo and Tomás had ever been separated since Tomás was a colt and was first acquired. Olmedo’s dark tinny cheek quivered at thought of it, and the tears ran and split amid his wrinkles. He always called Nathan Hombre!—which pleased Nathan exceedingly. The camereras waved their aprons, and mule and rider picked their way through the gate out into busy Málaga with its towering carts and moving black boulders of oxen. In this way Nathan rode into one of the most rewarding experiences of his young life, and he had been trained and had been shown the way to find a reward in almost any experience.
...Soldier, is the sun staring meanly? Does it burn your eyeballs and crack your lips? Retreat into the cave.
The steps had been formed as early as the Fourth Century A.D., or so an earnest and archeologically-inclined old priest believed . . . Nathan Dreyfoos and the priest crawled there together, Nathan going first across the slanted fissured crumbling stair, the priest following with cassock belted up, his bony legs arching down, his sandals seeking a safe hold on the surface. Down through fig boughs and blackberry vines, down through shadows where fat grass-green lizards held up their gargoyle heads in alarm and then scooted away. Down to the altars thirty meters below. Roofs of both chapels had fallen in—an earthquake was believed to have shaken the huge squared blocks apart, some hundreds of years since—and thin silky moss waved like miniature fields of wheat on the rich slimed slabs. No other people, no spectators, no ghosts . . . the priest knelt before the damp seeping altar with its defaced fresco depicting San Jorge above; he prayed briefly. Nathan Dreyfoos stood with straw hat in his hand, watching, listening to the flutter of birds in fig branches far overhead, the increasing flutter of speedy little bats in stalagmited caverns beyond San Jorge’s ruined altar. Sun was low behind the mountains, soon it would be evening, Nathan’s watch said that it was almost seven o’clock . . . but coolness coming from these fissures was never implacable, never born of decay. Something lived deep in the blackness, and that thing which lived was not a Fright, it was gentle and dignified, golden as a candle flame.
My son, you do not pray.
Often I pray, but I do not kneel here. I am a Jew.
But many Catholics in Spain are Jews, or were Jews. Why, what of the Jewish bishop of Burgos? What of the great artist Gil de Siloé—?
I know.
Some of our best Catholics are—
I know.
In your house, do your father and mother keep the Jewish holidays, the dietary laws of the Jews?
My father says that we are all children of the world at large, thank God—not children of a given Church or creed. He does not keep the prescribed laws, but he respects those who do. He respects all men who adhere to that in which they believe.
Then there was nothing in your training to prevent your kneeling with me here and now, young man!
Nathan said after some thought, My body remained standing but my soul knelt.
They crept back up the steps, stung by blackberry barbs.
I appreciate your guiding me to the cave, Señor Cure, said Nathan. Will you accept this small offering for the poor of your parish?
The mountains tawny as lions, their hide like the hide of elephants, their shape like a herd of oxen asleep, and blue light coming up behind them as if a great cool lamp were sending it . . . Tomás brayed in greeting at seeing his friend reappear. This time he brayed exactly fifteen times; Nathan counted—aww, eeeh, aww—fifteen times, and the most that Tomás had ever brayed was seventeen.
Can I reach the next village before dark?
No, no, no, my son, you’ll be an hour short; and it is death to wander in the blackness of these mountains when you do not know the path. I have a bed to spare, but it is now given over to a Carthusian who broke his leg while crossing the hills, and some shepherds found him and brought him to me. Juan Solivellas takes travelers into his house. Go past the church ramp, then turn right at the first street beyond. His house is on the seventh step below; go with care on that old Moorish ramp: the cobble stones are in bad condition, the sewer is broken in. A red gate leads to his courtyard; and you’ll see the stable beyond the well, and the house itself is on the left. You may smell the olive oil before you get there, the women may be cooking churos.
...In Andersonville there were no churos, no paste squeezed in long tubular sections, swirling in steaming oil, stirred round and round into concentric patterns with a hot smooth stick, giggled at by naughty boys who made the obvious jokes about their appearance . . . lifted from olives’ fat at last, to drain and dry. O joy and warmth and crispness—joy of fat and brownness, joy of taste, taste, taste as your teeth went through and your tongue played and your soul sprang out to thank the beaming cooks.
The life of Nathan Dreyfoos had been rich as olive oil, rich as golden circlets manufactured therein. It grieved him that other men might not possess the variation of a past to comfort them. He felt that (except in cases of the very young) it was the people of enforced limitation who went down quickest. Had Evatt known nothing except a brindled cow, a milking stool, a street with elms? These were not to be had in Andersonville. They were not to be had in the army either; but it was one thing to live as a human, to march and contend as a human with other proud humans beside you; and it was another thing to be a black starved worm among black starved worms. Had Percival known nothing except a lexicon and a row of students? Had Hank known nothing except receding water and the clams he dug upon the flats? . . . Ah, the prisoners bent, they faded, they crawled—ah, they ceased their crawling, began to caterwaul; soon came the cessation of their cry. Even in the oven of this August, Nathan felt himself invulnerable. He could not be drained, cooked, panicked. Always there bloomed stanch memory of various beauties. Far away, but beauties still. The fence was fifteen feet high, the imagined mountains taller.
XL
Eric Torrosian said, My mind’s made up.
His friend Malachi Plover said, I wouldn’t try it.
But I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to try it.
Hell of a way to flank out. I couldn’t never do it. I’d get a gripe in my insides and just whoop them up.
Eric Torrosian had worked with his father up and down the city of New York, carrying bundles of rugs and trying to sell them from house to house. His mother, who was a German, insisted that he should attend school instead; and she and her Armenian husband engaged in conflicts over the matter and supported a grinding persistent feud between them. Sometimes the mother triumphed: Eric was sent to sit behind a desk at Mr. Gottfried Ringel’s day school where the rooms were always too cold in winter and too hot in summer, and where the washroom smelled like poison. For such instruction as was awarded her son, Mrs. Torrosian had to pay two dollars per month. The father beat the air with his hands and wailed that the price was exorbitant. But Anna wanted her son to be a lawyer and this was the first step.
Eric didn’t get to take more than the first step. His father managed to remove him from school periodically on various pretexts, and finally had sufficient excuse for a permanent cessation of Eric’s school days. Henry Torrosian slipped on a flight of icy steps and rolled all the way to the bottom, not well cushioned by his pack of rugs. After that he was unable to carry bundles, and Eric had to go along as pack-horse, else there would have been nothing for them to eat. Eric pleaded with his father to get a pushcart, but the old man demanded, How would I get a pushcart up and down stairs?
You could leave the cart, and carry up one rug at a time to customers.
And have my stock stolen? You are a devil.
No, Father. You could get a little boy. You could give him a dime to watch the cart and keep thieves away.
Andersonville Page 59
