The Tenants

by Bernard Malamud

  He had written several drafts of a weird, disturbing story entitled “Goldberg exits Harlem.” A Jew slumlord in a fur-collar coat, come to collect his bloodmoney rents, is attacked in a dark hall by three old men and a Jamaican woman. The Jew struggles and cries out but they stab him until blood spurts from his nose, then drag his fat body down the stairs to the cellar.

  “Let’s cut a piece off of him and taste what it taste like,” says the old man.

  “He tastes Jewtaste, that don’t taste like nothin good,” says the Jamaican woman.

  They remove Goldberg’s stabbed clothes and leave his body in the cellar.

  Then they go to a synagogue late at night, put on yarmulkes and make Yid noises, praying.

  In an alternate ending the synagogue is taken over and turned into a mosque. The blacks dance hasid-ically.

  Willie had written the story at least four times but it hadn’t worked out the way he wanted. After another week he was still trying.

  He then wrote some experimental pages, one entitled “Manifested Destiny.” This went.

  black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, (go to bottom of page)

  black, whit, black, whit, black, whit, black, whit, black (go to bottom of page)

  black, whi, black, whi, black, whi, black, whi, black, (go to bottom of page)

  black, wh, black, wh, black, wh, black, wh, black, wh, (go to bottom of page)

  black, w, black, w, black, w, black, w, black, w, black, (go to bottom of page)

  black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black (make two pages)

  BLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACK BLACKBLACKBLACICBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACK BLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACK BLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACKBLACK (make five pages of this)

  BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS BLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESSBLACKNESS

  (This is the rest of the book).

  There were some short poems related to “Manifested Destiny”:

  White has no glow

  No light for white;

  Black is true glow

  Is lit from in.

  I love you

  Black Woman,

  Touch me

  To Love,

  Make me

  ALL BLACK

  Lesser found three variations of a love poem to Irene. He had no idea whether these or “I love you/ Black Woman” had been written first.

  I.

  Irene

  Lost Queen

  I miss

  To be between

  Your

  Jelly Roll

  5.

  My bitch was born white

  No fault o mine

  I am black night

  No fault o mine

  This chick I used to fuck

  Now I fuck my luck

  No fault o mine

  6.

  Irene

  White Bitch

  You ditch

  Black Knight

  Willie fuck

  His luck

  Howdo

  Sadeye Blues

  Lesser gave up poking around in the can in the snow.

  Here’s this double wedding going on, that’s settled in his mind.

  The old tribal chief, the marriage guardian, holding the dying goat, four quivering legs in two big hands, grunts as he lets the thick blood pour from its cunt-like wound over the threshold of his long hut. That fixes it with the spirits. Blood won’t make it kosher but the white bride, dark, Jewish, beautiful, isn’t really orthodox. Anyway, it’s a broad threshold and a lot of red blood.

  On this cool tropical summer’s morning the white-haired, black-eyed skinny chief, wearing a goatskin cap with an eagle feather on his toothless head, had neatly slit the throat of the noisy he-goat for his son’s daughter—the ill-starred gent who went off to America against the advice of the oracle of the Hills and Caves. He died in his blood, stabbed in chest, stomach and kidney in a Boston crap game.

  “Feh,” says a voice in the rear.

  “Sha,” says his son.

  Both brides had been merrily delivered to the wedding hut by a procession of kinsmen, neighbors, and a few curious strangers. The girls of the clan, oiled and ornamented, had chanted poems along the dusty forest path, to the music of gongs, small drums, and an iron flute played by a cripple, as the sweaty youths, holding long spears, leaped and yelped as they danced, their man-meat swinging like grapes in bunches in their loincloths.

  In the direction of the horned daylight moon a slender river moves to the sea in an arc from the restless ocean. The young men stack their spears against the thatched roofs of the huts surrounding the grassless courtyard. The fowl go crazy in the crowd and peck at people’s feet. An old man kicks at a rooster. A dry inland wind blows in the ripe stench of cow dung.

  “Feh.”

  “Sha.”

  A small brown man with scrofulous face and hands, skin like curdled milk, the chief’s interpreter for the wedding, who had once in the dim past worked as a librarian’s assistant in Whitechapel, says the smell is a good sign. The omen is of plenty.

  “Plenty of what?” Willie asks.

  “The cow which do not eat do not make excretions.”

  Kinsmen and wedding guests crowd into the windowless homestead, hazy with smoke from the grass fire. The notables of the tribe in soft caps and brightly colored robes sit on their carved wooden stools. Some of the elder tribesmen roll out goatskin mats and seat themselves crosslegged, puffing pipes and talking cows. They sneeze on snuff. The older wives, wearing ivory ornaments and beads, give high-pitched directions to the younger women as they prepare the chicken and yams and pour out calabashes of beer. Against the musty sides of the long hut the young men and girls lay laughing plans for later in the grass. It’s a good time for almost all. The visitors from the distant country, relatives and friends of the white bride and bridegroom, of varying moods and dispositions, eye each other and wait.

  The marriage guardian, his indigo toga knotted over his bony left shoulder, sits with the interpreter, their backs to the wall, as the nervous rabbi in grizzled beard and black fedora, stares in amazement at the assemblage. One bridal couple is seated before the toothless chief, the other stands with the rabbi mopping his dry brow with a gnarled handkerchief. Lesser and Mary, wearing less than most, are sitting on a leopard skin. He rubs his arms briskly, gooseflesh despite the fire on the platform that illuminates the long hut. Willie, dressed to kill, sports a black velvet hat and embroidered yellow tunic over his newly washed overalls. Irene, immaculately groomed, her thick black hair drawn in a bun over her left ear, has wound a flowered scarf around her head. She wears long golden earrings and carries a bouquet of white irises and daisies. The rabbi under the silk wedding canopy, held up by split triangular poles of quartered eucalyptus exuding an aromatic sap, is ill at ease but ready for business. He’s a middle-aged Litvak, a stocky man in mud-spotted trousers that drip over dried muddy heels. His smoker’s nails are soiled yellow, his beard is in disorder, his expression dazed. With furrowed brows he reads the marriage contract over and over, then nearsightedly reads it again.

  The chief speaks in a guttural voice to the scum-skinned man at his side and the interpreter’s words rise high-pitched to Lesser and his bride. She seems calm but he sees her hard heartbeat under her breast.

  “He say. ‘When our black daughter marry the white mens we do not rejoice but this is less so bad than if our sons marry so, for then a white woman will turn a man’s face from the village and his kinsmen.’

  “He say. ‘My daughter’s father, my own son, he is among the deads. So he ask me to speak with his voice, and so he give her to this white man to marry her. This be of her wish. The bride price, you bring ten cows, do be
paid and we make acceptance. I have told this to the wedding gods and say to the shades of my ancestors that she be married before the people of the tribe, not with shame or hiding. The cows are not sick, they are fat, you did not cheat us.’”

  The old chief, holding Lesser’s image in both black eyes, nods.

  “‘Our daughter will live with you and cook your food and rake your garden if you plant it for her. And she will born a manchild to carry on your lineages so your name and presence will remain here on this earth after you die. She will please your heart and you must treat her with kindness.’”

  The bridegroom, in a smoked raffia skirt from waist to knees over his jockey shorts, promises he will. He is wearing the string of green and violet beads Mary Kettlesmith once gave him, a blood-red goatskin cap, and now holds upright a tall rusty spear.

  His bride, holding in her hand a purple feather, says she will be kind. Her silken hair is trimmed with small blue flowers and her legs have been rubbed with camwood. A red necklace, hung in three coils, descends between her succulent breasts. Under a short maternity skirt her stomach is in flower.

  “You are married now,” the interpreter says, “yet so by our customs the wedding is not done till when the first child be borned.”

  “It’s a long wedding,” says Lesser.

  “You had your choice,” says Mary.

  Who has choice? What am I doing so far from my book I have to finish? Why am I giving spades to fortune? What you don’t know who will tell you?

  The chief speaks again:

  “‘I am old man of many weathers and you be young. You know more book but I be wiser. I have lived my long life and know what did happen. Well, I have had six wives and twenty-nine childrens. I have oftentimes sat with death and do know the pain of many losses. Listen to my words.’”

  Lesser, afraid not to, listens hard.

  “He say. ‘When the evil spirit try to climb in your eye keep it shut till he fall asleep.’ He say. ‘Do not push your spear in the belly of them which is not your enemy. If somebody do bad it do not die. It live in the hut, the yard, and the village. The ceremony of reconciliation is useless. Men say the words of peace but they do not forgive the other. He say if you be sure to remember his words.’”

  “Tell him I understand.”

  “He say you will understand tomorrow.”

  The old chief’s eyes fasten more tightly on Lesser’s. He listens harder.

  “He say. ‘The darkness is so great it give horns to the dog.’ He say. ‘The mouse which thinks he is the elephant will break his back.’”

  “I get it.”

  “He say tomorrow.”

  “Anyway I’m listening.”

  “He say to you. ‘Eat the fruit where you do find it. The tiger which tear his gut do not digest his food.’ He say to you. ‘Enjoy your life for the shades paddle the years in swift boats, they carry the dark. Pass on my wisdom.’”

  “I will. I’m writing a book.”

  “He say he do not wish his words to be in your book.”

  Lesser stands mute.

  The chief rises. “‘Go well, you and your bride.’”

  Released from his gaze, the bridegroom rises relieved.

  The interpreter yawns.

  The chief drinks from a gourd of palm wine.

  A youth drums a hand drum.

  The writer, enjoying life, shuffles into a barefoot dance with his spear. The tribesmen clap in rhythm. Lesser’s raffia skirt rustles, his ankle bands clink as he thrusts his spear this way and that to drive off any lingering unclean spirits. He grunts as he lunges.

  When the dance is done his poor father, A. Lesser, once a healthy tailor, now skin and bones, an irritable old man in a tubular aluminum wheelchair, says to his sweating son:

  “You should be ashamed to dance like a shvartzer, without any clothes on.”

  “It’s a ceremonial dance, papa.”

  “It’s my own fault because I didn’t give you a Jewish education.”

  The old man weeps.

  The groom speaks to his pregnant bride. “Mary, I’m short of love in my nature, don’t ask me why, but I’ll try to give you your due.”

  “What’s in it for you, Harry?”

  “I guess the kind of person you are. The rest I’ll know later.”

  “Okay now.”

  They kiss.

  “Okay,” says the scrofulous interpreter.

  The rabbi intones a prayer in Hebrew.

  The tribal talk subsides.

  Irene and Willie, under the white silk canopy, sip imported Mogen David from their glass goblet. The bridegroom’s parents, white bones in black graves, can’t make it back to the old country today; but Sam Clemence, a witness from Harlem U.S.A., despite a bad case of the runs and that he suffers intense feelings of personal loss, stands up for his friend Willie.

  Irene’s father, mother, and younger sister, a genuine blonde, are bunched together at the side of the canopy. The father, David B. Belinsky, a man with florid face and uneasy feet, in black homburg and silk suit, striped shirt and big tie, manufactures buttons. He smiles stricken. The tall mother sits home all day; she wears a plain white dress, orthopedic shoes, and a blue cloche hat that hides her eyes. Half her nose is visible. The saddened sister is the wife of a successful insurance broker, home minding the business and three small children.

  Though the old chief’s long hut is not a ship they all look seasick.

  The bridegroom, after twice thoroughly searching his pockets, says he guesses he has forgotten to bring the wedding ring. All stare in astonishment. The father breathes momentarily easily but the rabbi says it is permitted to give the bride a coin instead, so Willie passes her a warm dime out of his pants pocket which Irene holds tightly in her palm during the ceremony.

  The second time round—the first he listened intently to the words, Willie slowly recites after the rabbi, “Hare at mekudeshet li betabaat zu, kedat moshe veyisrael.”

  “What am I saying?” he asks Irene.

  “I told you: ‘Behold thou art betrothed to me with this ring in accordance with the Law of Moses and Israel.’”

  Willie wets his dry lips. “That just for the wedding?”

  “For as long as you like. You said we’d get married if we had the wedding here.”

  He nods and they kiss.

  The guests shout, “Ya.”

  The rabbi recites the seven benedictions.

  Willie, with two bangs of his boot, crushes the wine goblet.

  “Mazel Tov,” says Lesser.

  The musicians pat and thud their drums, lightly, gayly. A bamboo flute sings.

  “Now you are man and wife,” says the rabbi. “I feel like crying, but why should I cry if the Lord says, ‘Rejoice !’

  “Willie and Irene, listen to me. Oh, what a hard thing is marriage in the best of circumstances. On top of this what if one is black and the other white? All I am saying is the world is imperfect. But this is your choice and I wish you health and happiness and the best of circumstances for you and your children. My rabbinical colleagues will criticize me strongly for performing this ceremony, I know this, but I asked myself would God let me do it, so I did it.

  “Willie and Irene, to enjoy the pleasures of the body you don’t need a college education; but to live together in love is not so easy. Besides love that which preserves marriage is that which preserves life; this is mutual trust, insight into each other, generosity, and also character, so that you will do what is not easy to do when you must do it. What else can I tell you, my children? Either you understand or you don’t.

  “I also ask you to remember that a wedding is a covenant. You agree to love each other and sustain your marriage. I wish to remind you of Abraham’s covenant with God, and through him, ours. If we stay covenanted to God it is easier to stay covenanted each to the other.”

  “I will,” says Irene.

  “Ain’t no god been in my house or ever was,” Willie says. “Like what color is he?”

>   “The color of light,” says the rabbi. “Without light who sees color?”

  “Except black.”

  “Someday God will bring together Ishmael and Israel to live as one people. It won’t be the first miracle.”

  Willie laughs, cries, then stands mute.

  “Let’s dance,” says Irene.

  The guests, including the notables, rise, lift their feet, and dance. Some of the youths try to imitate the newly married couples shaking their hips and shoulders but give it up and break into a stomp, shake, and whirl. The women serve a feast of chicken with sesame and tomatoes, roasted yams, and palm wine. Some of the girls, wearing flowers in their hair, dance in a circle. The black youths whoop and shout as they whirl around them.

  Those who feel like crying, cry. A wedding is a wedding.

  Irene asks Lesser, as they dance a last dance together, “How do you account for this, Harry?”

  “It’s something I imagined, like an act of love, the end of my book, if I dared.”

  “You’re not so smart,” says Irene.

  THE END

  Lesser lifted the lid of the garbage can and a hot ordurous blast thickened his nostrils. He stepped back as though struck in the face. “A dead rat,” he muttered, but all he could see was a mass of crumpled blue paper balls—Willie had run out of yellow. Holding his nose he approached the can. Standing away from it, he unfolded and put together several pages from at least three pieces of writing Willie was currently working on:

  In this story, on a hot summer evening as supper smells of cabbage and spare ribs linger in the shimmering air outside the tenements on 141st Street near the river, four black men station themselves on four soft-tar rooftops along the street—two on either side: they stand in an uneven quadrangle. The people on the stoops fold up their chairs and quickly move inside. A blue Chrysler drives up and stops at the curb. The brothers on the roof open fire from four directions at the uniformed black cop getting out of his new car. Two of the bullets strike him in the belly, one near the spine, and one in the right buttock. The cop spins around waving his arms as though trying to swim out of an undertow but is dead as he sits on the bloody sidewalk, staring without sight at a pigeon coop on a deserted rooftop. The story is called “Four Deaths of a Pig.”