The Complete Stories

by Bernard Malamud

  “Like me. Jewbirds.”

  Cohen tipped back in his chair and guffawed. “That’s a big laugh. I heard of a Jewfish but not a Jewbird.”

  “We’re once removed.” The bird rested on one skinny leg, then on the other. “Please, could you spare maybe a piece of herring with a small crust of bread?”

  Edie got up from the table.

  “What are you doing?” Cohen asked her.

  “I’ll clear the dishes.”

  Cohen turned to the bird. “So what’s your name, if you don’t mind saying?”

  “Call me Schwartz.”

  “He might be an old Jew changed into a bird by somebody,” said Edie, removing a plate.

  “Are you?” asked Harry, lighting a cigar.

  “Who knows?” answered Schwartz. “Does God tell us everything?”

  Maurie got up on his chair. “What kind of herring?” he asked the bird in excitement.

  “Get down, Maurie, or you’ll fall,” ordered Cohen.

  “If you haven’t got matjes, I’ll take schmaltz,” said Schwartz.

  “All we have is marinated, with slices of onion—in a jar,” said Edie.

  “If you’ll open for me the jar I’ll eat marinated. Do you have also, if you don’t mind, a piece of rye bread—the spitz?”

  Edie thought she had.

  “Feed him out on the balcony,” Cohen said. He spoke to the bird.

  “After that take off.”

  Schwartz closed both bird eyes. “I’m tired and it’s a long way.”

  “Which direction are you headed, north or south?”

  Schwartz, barely lifting his wings, shrugged.

  “You don’t know where you’re going?”

  “Where there’s charity I’ll go.”

  “Let him stay, Papa,” said Maurie. “He’s only a bird.”

  “So stay the night,” Cohen said, “but not longer.”

  In the morning Cohen ordered the bird out of the house but Maurie cried, so Schwartz stayed for a while. Maurie was still on vacation from school and his friends were away. He was lonely and Edie enjoyed the fun he had playing with the bird.

  “He’s no trouble at all,” she told Cohen, “and besides his appetite is very small.”

  “What’ll you do when he makes dirty?”

  “He flies across the street in a tree when he makes dirty, and if nobody passes below, who notices?”

  “So all right,” said Cohen, “but I’m dead set against it. I warn you he ain’t gonna stay here long.”

  “What have you got against the poor bird?”

  “Poor bird, my ass. He’s a foxy bastard. He thinks he’s a Jew.”

  “What difference does it make what he thinks?”

  “A Jewbird, what a chutzpah. One false move and he’s out on his drumsticks.”

  At Cohen’s insistence Schwartz lived out on the balcony in a new wooden birdhouse Edie had bought him.

  “With many thanks,” said Schwartz, “though I would rather have a human roof over my head. You know how it is at my age. I like the warm, the windows, the smell of cooking. I would also be glad to see once in a while the Jewish Morning Journal and have now and then a schnapps because it helps my breathing, thanks God. But whatever you give me, you won’t hear complaints.”

  However, when Cohen brought home a bird feeder full of dried corn, Schwartz said, “Impossible.”

  Cohen was annoyed. “What’s the matter, crosseyes, is your life getting too good for you? Are you forgetting what it means to be migratory? I’ll bet a helluva lot of crows you happen to be acquainted with, Jews or otherwise, would give their eyeteeth to eat this corn.”

  Schwartz did not answer. What can you say to a grubber yung?

  “Not for my digestion,” he later explained to Edie. “Cramps. Herring is better even if it makes you thirsty. At least rainwater don’t cost anything.” He laughed sadly in breathy caws.

  And herring, thanks to Edie, who knew where to shop, was what Schwartz got, with an occasional piece of potato pancake, and even a bit of soupmeat when Cohen wasn’t looking.

  When school began in September, before Cohen would once again suggest giving the bird the boot, Edie prevailed on him to wait a little while until Maurie adjusted.

  “To deprive him right now might hurt his schoolwork, and you know what trouble we had last year.”

  “So okay, but sooner or later the bird goes. That I promise you.”

  Schwartz, though nobody had asked him, took on full responsibility for Maurie’s performance in school. In return for favors granted, when he was let in for an hour or two at night, he spent most of his time overseeing the boy’s lessons. He sat on top of the dresser near Maurie’s desk as he laboriously wrote out his homework. Maurie was a restless type and Schwartz gently kept him to his studies. He also listened to him practice his screechy violin, taking a few minutes off now and then to rest his ears in the bathroom. And they afterwards played dominoes. The boy was an indifferent checkers player and it was impossible to teach him chess. When he was sick, Schwartz read him comic books though he personally disliked them. But Maurie’s work improved in school and even his violin teacher admitted his playing was better. Edie gave Schwartz credit for these improvements though the bird poohpoohed them.

  Yet he was proud there was nothing lower than C minuses on Maurie’s report card, and on Edie’s insistence celebrated with a little schnapps.

  “If he keeps up like this,” Cohen said, “I’ll get him in an Ivy League college for sure.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” sighed Edie.

  But Schwartz shook his head. “He’s a good boy—you don’t have to worry. He won’t be a shicker or a wife beater, God forbid, but a scholar he’ll never be, if you know what I mean, although maybe a good mechanic. It’s no disgrace in these times.”

  “If I was you,” Cohen said, angered, “I’d keep my big snoot out of other people’s private business.”

  “Harry, please,” said Edie.

  “My goddamn patience is wearing out. That crosseyes butts into everything.”

  Though he wasn’t exactly a welcome guest in the house, Schwartz gained a few ounces, although he did not improve in appearance. He looked bedraggled as ever, his feathers unkempt, as though he had just flown out of a snowstorm. He spent, he admitted, little time taking care of himself. Too much to think about. “Also outside plumbing,” he told Edie. Still there was more glow to his eyes so that though Cohen went on calling him crosseyes he said it less emphatically.

  Liking his situation, Schwartz tried tactfully to stay out of Cohen’s way, but one night when Edie was at the movies and Maurie was taking a hot shower, the frozen-foods salesman began a quarrel with the bird.

  “For Christ sake, why don’t you wash yourself sometimes? Why must you always stink like a dead fish?”

  “Mr. Cohen, if you’ll pardon me, if somebody eats garlic he will smell from garlic. I eat herring three times a day. Feed me flowers and I will smell like flowers.”

  “Who’s obligated to feed you anything at all? You’re lucky to get herring.”

  “Excuse me, I’m not complaining,” said the bird. “You’re complaining.”

  “What’s more,” said Cohen, “even from out on the balcony I can hear you snoring away like a pig. It keeps me awake nights.”

  “Snoring,” said Schwartz, “isn’t a crime, thanks God.”

  “All in all you are a goddamn pest and freeloader. Next thing you’ll want to sleep in bed next to my wife.”

  “Mr. Cohen,” said Schwartz, “on this rest assured. A bird is a bird.”

  “So you say, but how do I know you’re a bird and not some kind of a goddamn devil?”

  “If I was a devil you would know already. And I don’t mean because your son’s good marks.”

  “Shut up, you bastard bird,” shouted Cohen.

  “Grubber yung,” cawed Schwartz, rising to the tips of his talons, his long wings outstretched.

  Cohen was about to lunge for th
e bird’s scrawny neck but Maurie came out of the bathroom, and for the rest of the evening until Schwartz’s bedtime on the balcony, there was pretend peace.

  But the quarrel had deeply disturbed Schwartz and he slept badly. His snoring woke him, and awake, he was fearful of what would become of him. Wanting to stay out of Cohen’s way, he kept to the birdhouse as much as possible. Cramped by it, he paced back and forth on the balcony ledge, or sat on the birdhouse roof, staring into space. In the evenings, while overseeing Maurie’s lessons, he often fell asleep. Awakening, he nervously hopped around exploring the four corners of the room. He spent much time in Maurie’s closet, and carefully examined his bureau drawers when they were left open. And once when he found a large paper bag on the floor, Schwartz poked his way into it to investigate what the possibilities were. The boy was amused to see the bird in the paper bag.

  “He wants to build a nest,” he said to his mother.

  Edie, sensing Schwartz’s unhappiness, spoke to him quietly.

  “Maybe if you did some of the things my husband wants you, you would get along better with him.”

  “Give me a for instance,” Schwartz said.

  “Like take a bath, for instance.”

  “I’m too old for baths,” said the bird. “My feathers fall out without baths.”

  “He says you have a bad smell.”

  “Everybody smells. Some people smell because of their thoughts or because who they are. My bad smell comes from the food I eat. What does his come from?”

  “I better not ask him or it might make him mad,” said Edie.

  In late November Schwartz froze on the balcony in the fog and cold, and especially on rainy days he woke with stiff joints and could barely move his wings. Already he felt twinges of rheumatism. He would have liked to spend more time in the warm house, particularly when Maurie was in school and Cohen at work. But though Edie was goodhearted and might have sneaked him in in the morning, just to thaw out, he was afraid to ask her. In the meantime Cohen, who had been reading articles about the migration of birds, came out on the balcony one night after work when Edie was in the kitchen preparing pot roast and, peeking into the birdhouse, warned Schwartz to be on his way soon if he knew what was good for him. “Time to hit the flyways.”

  “Mr. Cohen, why do you hate me so much?” asked the bird. “What did I do to you?”

  “Because you’re an A-number-one troublemaker, that’s why. What’s more, whoever heard of a Jewbird? Now scat or it’s open war.”

  But Schwartz stubbornly refused to depart so Cohen embarked on a campaign of harassing him, meanwhile hiding it from Edie and Maurie. Maurie hated violence and Cohen didn’t want to leave a bad impression. He thought maybe if he played dirty tricks on the bird he would fly off without being physically kicked out. The vacation was over, let him make his easy living off the fat of somebody else’s land. Cohen worried about the effect of the bird’s departure on Maurie’s schooling but decided to take the chance, first, because the boy now seemed to have the knack of studying—give the black bird-bastard credit—and second, because Schwartz was driving him bats by being there always, even in his dreams.

  The frozen-foods salesman began his campaign against the bird by mixing watery cat food with the herring slices in Schwartz’s dish. He also blew up and popped numerous paper bags outside the birdhouse as the bird slept, and when he had got Schwartz good and nervous, though not enough to leave, he brought a full-grown cat into the house, supposedly a gift for little Maurie, who had always wanted a pussy. The cat never stopped springing up at Schwartz whenever he saw him, one day managing to claw out several of his tail feathers. And even at lesson time, when the cat was usually excluded from Maurie’s room, though somehow or other he quickly found his way in at the end of the lesson, Schwartz was desperately fearful of his life and flew from pinnacle to pinnacle—light fixture to clothestree to door top—in order to elude the beast’s wet jaws.

  Once when the bird complained to Edie how hazardous his existence was, she said, “Be patient, Mr. Schwartz. When the cat gets to know you better he won’t try to catch you anymore.”

  “When he stops trying we will both be in Paradise,” Schwartz answered. “Do me a favor and get rid of him. He makes my whole life worry. I’m losing feathers like a tree loses leaves.”

  “I’m awfully sorry but Maurie likes the pussy and sleeps with it.”

  What could Schwartz do? He worried but came to no decision, being afraid to leave. So he ate the herring garnished with cat food, tried hard not to hear the paper bags bursting like firecrackers outside the birdhouse at night, and lived terror-stricken, closer to the ceiling than the floor, as the cat, his tail flicking, endlessly watched him.

  Weeks went by. Then on the day after Cohen’s mother had died in her flat in the Bronx, when Maurie came home with a zero on an arithmetic test, Cohen, enraged, waited until Edie had taken the boy to his violin lesson, then openly attacked the bird. He chased him with a broom on the balcony and Schwartz frantically flew back and forth, finally escaping into his birdhouse. Cohen triumphantly reached in and, grabbing both skinny legs, dragged the bird out, cawing loudly, his wings wildly beating. He whirled the bird around and around his head. But Schwartz, as he moved in circles, managed to swoop down and catch Cohen’s nose in his beak, and hung on for dear life. Cohen cried out in great pain, punched at the bird with his fist, and, tugging at its legs with all his might, pulled his nose free. Again he swung the yawking Schwartz around until the bird grew dizzy, then, with a furious heave, flung him into the night. Schwartz sank like a stone into the street. Cohen then tossed the birdhouse and feeder after him, listening at the ledge until they crashed on the sidewalk below. For a full hour, broom in hand, his heart palpitating and nose throbbing with pain, Cohen waited for Schwartz to return, but the brokenhearted bird didn’t.

  That’s the end of that dirty bastard, the salesman thought and went in. Edie and Maurie had come home.

  “Look,” said Cohen, pointing to his bloody nose swollen three times its size, “what that sonofabitchy bird did. It’s a permanent scar.”

  “Where is he now?” Edie asked, frightened.

  “I threw him out and he flew away. Good riddance.”

  Nobody said no, though Edie touched a handkerchief to her eyes and Maurie rapidly tried the nine-times table and found he knew approximately half.

  In the spring when the winter’s snow had melted, the boy, moved by a memory, wandered in the neighborhood, looking for Schwartz. He found a dead black bird in a small lot by the river, his two wings broken, neck twisted, and both bird-eyes plucked clean.

  “Who did it to you, Mr. Schwartz?” Maurie wept.

  “Anti-Semeets,” Edie said later.

  1963

  Black Is My Favorite Color

  Charity Quietness sits in the toilet eating her two hard-boiled eggs while I’m having my ham sandwich and coffee in the kitchen. That’s how it goes, only don’t get the idea of ghettos. If there’s a ghetto I’m the one that’s in it. She’s my cleaning woman from Father Divine and comes in once a week to my small three-room apartment on my day off from the liquor store. “Peace,” she says to me. “Father reached on down and took me right up in Heaven.” She’s a small person with a flat body, frizzy hair, and a quiet face that the light shines out of, and Mama had such eyes before she died. The first time Charity Quietness came in to clean, a little more than a year and a half, I made the mistake to ask her to sit down at the kitchen table with me and eat her lunch. I was still feeling not so hot after Ornita left, but I’m the kind of a man—Nat Lime, forty-four, a bachelor with a daily growing bald spot on the back of my head, and I could lose frankly fifteen pounds—who enjoys company so long as he has it. So she cooked up her two hard-boiled eggs and sat down and took a small bite out of one of them. But after a minute she stopped chewing and she got up and carried the eggs in a cup to the bathroom, and since then she eats there. I said to her more than once, “Okay, Charity Quietness, so have
it your way, eat the eggs in the kitchen by yourself and I’ll eat when you’re done,” but she smiles absentminded, and eats in the toilet. It’s my fate with colored people.

  Although black is still my favorite color you wouldn’t know it from my luck except in short quantities, even though I do all right in the liquor store business in Harlem, on Eighth Avenue between 110th and 111th. I speak with respect. A large part of my life I’ve had dealings with Negro people, most on a business basis but sometimes for friendly reasons with genuine feeling on both sides. I’m drawn to them. At this time of my life I should have one or two good colored friends, but the fault isn’t necessarily mine. If they knew what was in my heart toward them, but how can you tell that to anybody nowadays? I’ve tried more than once but the language of the heart either is a dead language or else nobody understands it the way you speak it. Very few. What I’m saying is, personally for me there’s only one human color and that’s the color of blood. I like a black person if not because he’s black, then because I’m white. It comes to the same thing. If I wasn’t white my first choice would be black. I’m satisfied to be white because I have no other choice. Anyway, I got an eye for color. I appreciate. Who wants everybody to be the same? Maybe it’s like some kind of a talent. Nat Lime might be a liquor dealer in Harlem, but once in the jungle in New Guinea in the Second World War, I got the idea, when I shot at a running Jap and missed him, that I had some kind of a talent, though maybe it’s the kind where you have a good idea now and then, but in the end what do they come to? After all, it’s a strange world.

  Where Charity Quietness eats her eggs makes me think about Buster Wilson when we were both boys in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. There was this long block of run-down dirty frame houses in the middle of a not-so-hot white neighborhood full of pushcarts. The Negro houses looked to me like they had been born and died there, dead not long after the beginning of the world. I lived on the next street. My father was a cutter with arthritis in both hands, big red knuckles and fingers so swollen he didn’t cut, and my mother was the one who went to work. She sold paper bags from a secondhand pushcart on Ellery Street. We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was. This was my first acquaintance with a lot of black people and I used to poke around on their poor block. I think I thought, Brother, if there can be like this, what can’t there be? I mean I caught an early idea what life was about. Anyway, I met Buster Wilson there. He used to play marbles by himself. I sat on the curb across the street, watching him shoot one marble lefty and the other one righty. The hand that won picked up the marbles. It wasn’t so much of a game but he didn’t ask me to come over. My idea was to be friendly, only he never encouraged, he discouraged. Why did I pick him out for a friend? Maybe because I had no others then, we were new in the neighborhood, from Manhattan. Also I liked his type. Buster did everything alone. He was a skinny kid and his brothers’ clothes hung on him like worn-out potato sacks. He was a beanpole boy, about twelve, and I was then ten. His arms and legs were burnt-out matchsticks. He always wore a brown wool sweater, one arm half unraveled, the other went down to the wrist. His long and narrow head had a white part cut straight in the short woolly hair, maybe with a ruler there, by his father, a barber but too drunk to stay a barber. In those days though I had little myself I was old enough to know who was better off, and the whole block of colored houses made me feel bad in the daylight. But I went there as much as I could because the street was full of life. In the night it looked different, it’s hard to tell a cripple in the dark. Sometimes I was afraid to walk by the houses when they were dark and quiet. I was afraid there were people looking at me that I couldn’t see. I liked it better when they had parties at night and everybody had a good time. The musicians played their banjos and saxophones and the houses shook with the music and laughing. The young girls, with their pretty dresses and ribbons in their hair, caught me in my throat when I saw them through the windows.