The One-Star Jew: Stories

by Evanier, David

  “The guy is terrified of his wife,” Luther says, smiling. “You know, Bruce, I have a gimlet perception of these things. It’s fascinating to watch the mechanism that’s at work. People simply don’t recognize themselves. It’s a biochemical process.”

  Luther sits in Stephen’s cubicle talking to him. Through the glass he had heard Stephen summarize an article by Daniel Moynihan. “JUSTIFY THAT FOR ME, STEPHEN!” he had shouted through the glass, jumping up and running into the cubicle. “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET AWAY WITH THAT FLIMFLAM WITH ME.”

  Luther sits on the edge of his chair, his thin, taut body squinched up, his sneakers clenched, questioning Stephen in a fury. “Moynihan is a fool! They stopped Kennedy—why can’t they stop him?”

  Stephen patiently explains, summarizes the article. “YOU’RE WAFFLING—”

  Luther has bought a six-pound pillow. It arrives in the office and he shows it to all of us.

  Stephen looks at it and says, “I have a twelve-pound pillow— as big as him.” Stephen points at the tallest and heftiest man in the office.

  Luther zips across the office, shouting at people at random, furiously: “Do you believe him? Do you believe that? He always has to top me! If I’ve read one book, he’s read ten!”

  Stephen, with his patience and understanding, usually wins. But there is one area where Luther has the upper hand.

  Stephen has a penchant for reason, calm, and order. He is put off by scatological talk, raunchy sex, deviate behavior.

  Luther begins. “Did you see The Last Detail, Stephen?”

  “I saw it. I have no interest in that—”

  Luther pounces. This is his best moment. “Are you listening, Bruce? What do you mean, Stephen, it doesn’t interest you?”

  “Sailor talk, salty language, brothels—it doesn’t interest me.”

  “Just because it doesn’t happen to interest you—does that mean it’s not good?”

  “No, I’m just saying there are many other things that interest me more—”

  “We don’t care if it interests you or not, friend; it interests other people. Did it ever occur to you that what you are really saying is that it threatens you?”

  “Possibly; I think not—”

  “BUT HOW CAN YOU SAY IT DOESN’T INTEREST YOU? It’s a fact, a reality.” Luther’s eyes keep darting to me for approval. “You’re a college man, Bruce. I hope you’re listening.”

  XXII

  On New Year’s Eve, Luther prepares to go home alone.

  “Ever thine … forever thine … that keeps running through my mind … where do I remember that from?” Luther muses. “Oh yes, this winter day reminded me … a picture on the piano of herself that my mother inscribed to my father … it was in winter she gave it to him … ‘Ever thine’… we laughed at the Victorian sentimentality.”

  He talks at random. He recalls being eighteen … a friendship with another fellow. On New Year’s Eve they would go from table to table, talking to people. “What courage I had then!”

  He says to me, “You haven’t hit this season yet … I look at the books on my shelves and it makes me sick. I should throw them out. I built the library for my family … but they don’t read. Not one of them is a natural reader. My first greatest pleasure was to read … I should unload. How can I take off to Pago Pago if I feel like it?”

  Luther tucks his scarf in his coat, and takes his umbrella. At my desk on his way out, he suddenly begins reciting:

  When I was one-and-twenty

  I heard a wise man say,

  ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas

  But not your heart away;

  Give pearls away and rubies

  But keep your fancy free.’

  But I was one-and-twenty,

  No use to talk to me …

  He trails off and does not finish. “Good night, Bruce,” he says. “Have a happy.”

  Part Three I

  Ben Knapp, a fund-raiser, dies suddenly, at the bottom of the stairs of the subway station at Times Square. “Imagine, dainty Ben—so clean and proper, to go like that!” Luther comments.

  Pressure at the office is building. It is a busy month. Stephen is running back and forth. By noon his face is chalk white,- then it turns beet red. He is gasping for breath. “He is going to have another heart attack,” I tell my wife.

  Luther is more crotchety every day. The three of us visit a bookstore. All the books are marked one dollar. Luther, on the watch for a bargain, finds a dirty copy that is not marked. He takes the book to the clerk. “How much is this?” The clerk looks it over and says, “It’s not marked, but all the books are one dollar.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you!” Luther shouts. “How much is this book?”

  There is a Chinese fellow in line behind him. He tries to explain to Luther that all the books are the same price. Luther turns and shouts at him: “I’m not talking to you!”

  Standing in line at the bank, Luther’s eye is caught by the sight of a pretty girl. As he waits for his money, he follows the girl with his eyes. As he leaves the bank, he sees that the clerk, “a young flibberty-gibbett,” has given him one hundred dollars less than his check. Luther complains to the head of the bank. At the end of the day his loss is verified, and he receives his money.

  He has written Molly Bethune several times, and after a long silence he receives a letter from her. Shattered, Luther hands me the letter. Addressing Luther as “Sweet Sir,” she says that she cannot write him anymore: “I can only answer the first-time people … Here’s a weird deal: you can write me—and I promise to read your letters—and more than once …”

  He asks me what I think of the letter. I hem and haw—he interrupts me to say, “Let’s be frank. I just didn’t have enough to engage her … I don’t have enough brain for her to pick …”

  Luther’s oldest daughter visits him at the office for the first time in months. All of his daughters live in Manhattan, but he rarely sees them. “How are your sisters?” he asks her.

  It is almost time for Stephen’s vacation. I hope he will make it. Suddenly his mother-in-law dies. The person who takes it the hardest is Stephen’s millionaire brother-in-law, Harry.

  Harry weeps and talks on the phone to Stephen for hours. The tears run down Stephen’s cheeks. Stephen, who was heartsick for years after the death of his own beloved father, identifies with Harry’s feelings about the loss of his mother. Stephen’s wife, Susan, tries to remain strong for Stephen’s sake, but Harry is inconsolable. He calls Stephen at the office during the day; he comes over to Stephen’s house at midnight and weeps. Harry needs a minyan (ten people) for the nightly service of prayer at the synagogue in memory of his mother. When the minyan lacks one, he calls Stephen to drop everything and come across town to the synagogue. Stephen comes.

  “Listen,” Luther says, “the man allows himself to be taken advantage of. That’s the way he is.”

  “He’s sympathetic—” I begin.

  “He’s a marshmallow,” says Luther.

  Two weeks pass. Stephen’s vacation finally arrives. Stephen is happy on the last day of work; just before he leaves he sings a song that he has heard sung by John Jacob Niles—“Matty Groves,” a Tudor folk song. I ask him about it and he tells me all the lyrics, their derivation, and the history of the record.

  He begins to sing it again as he scoots out the door.

  II

  Stephen has a heart attack that night.

  We wait for the news. Within two days we know that Stephen will survive. Luther calls him and wants to know when he will be back at the office, whether he will be out longer than the twoweek vacation. He does not receive a firm answer to his question. Luther keeps asking Stephen to speak louder over the phone.

  Within a week I visit Stephen on a Sunday at the hospital. He is plugged into several machines; a jumping light records his heartbeats. A tube is stuck up his nose and held to his cheeks with adhesive tape.

  Stephen is propped up, trying to make
me feel at ease, trying to do all the talking and to comfort me, but his voice is a whisper. He has already read today’s Times Book Review section ahead of me. He summarizes Irving Howe’s review of a new book by Lucy Dawidowicz: The War Against the Jews 1933-1945, giving me the high points of the review. Then he analyzes Howe’s opinions.

  Stephen’s son, David Ben-Gurion Greenberg, comes in. He is dressed in a dungaree outfit. His hair and beard are in meticulous disarray. David Ben-Gurion is as guarded as Stephen is open, and maybe, I think, he has good reason to be. Stephen’s face glows at the sight of his son; it says, this is everything in the world I need.

  Stephen says in a whisper, gently, “You look like a hobo.”

  David Ben-Gurion winces. “Why are you giving me grief about my appearance?”

  “What?” Stephen says, amazed.

  David Ben-Gurion squirms at having to repeat it, but he does.

  Stephen’s wife, who has been hovering over him, walks us out. “He worries about Luther—that Luther’s whole life is his job, and that without Stephen, Luther would have to retire—he worries about you, Bruce, but you have a life outside JFI—he worries about Bea and Jill—”

  I tell her yes, he must quit, the job is killing him. I see him and I know. I tell Luther the next morning that I have seen Stephen. I say, “He was reading—”

  “Never mind all that. All I want to know is when he’ll be back at his desk.”

  III

  The secretaries want to collect money for a gift for Stephen. Luther forbids them.

  “Forbids?” I say to Jill. “How can he forbid you?”

  “Luther says that it’s too early to get a gift and he won’t allow it. He really just doesn’t want to have to give a dollar—”

  “Well, I insist that you do collect for Stephen.”

  The collection goes on. Luther is on the defensive. “It so happens that the last time Stephen was in the hospital, I asked him if he wanted a present. He said no.”

  But the collection of money goes on. Luther watches ruefully.

  Abe Stern, a staff member, comes over to us and expresses shock at Stephen’s illness. After he leaves, Luther comments, “He’s shocked? What do I care if he’s shocked? These immature fifty-year-olds looking for self-congratulations!”

  IV

  It is uncertain when, and if, Stephen will be able to return to work. After four weeks, Luther is climbing the wall, and so am I. He has to come in early in the morning and leave late. He has to report to the director and do most of Stephen’s chores. He is very tense and snaps at all of us. Without Stephen’s blanket of goodwill to keep things smooth, I find myself more and more impatient with Luther’s irascibility. If my eyes turn while he is talking, he shouts, “BRUCE! BRUCE! You’re not looking at me!” He is visibly hurt that I do not watch the TV programs he is so fond of—Stephen always made the effort of watching them so that Luther could discuss them with him. He begins to talk about a program and checks himself and trails off, muttering, “Oh, you don’t watch TV …”

  I do not accept Luther’s games the way Stephen does.

  Luther says that he saw a TV show about cripples.

  “How was it?” I ask.

  “How was what?” Luther snaps with a straight face. “What are you talking about?”

  Later, trying to keep things going for his sake, I make a comment. “Some people feel squeamish about those programs.”

  “Who does? The people on the program? You, Bruce? People watching the program? Get to the point!”

  I finally burst out: “Who do you think, Luther? You know damn well who I’m talking about.”

  Luther retreats, but he is boiling. The secretaries watch and listen.

  V

  Each day gets worse. Near the end of one afternoon, I see Luther sitting at Stephen’s desk wearing a black skullcap. His head and shoulders are swaying and ducking forward in a parody of Jewish orthodox prayer—“dovenning.” He has a crowd around him laughing. “Maybe this way I’ll get a little respect!” he shouts.

  VI

  Murray Farber has popping, frightened eyes, a freckled face, a look of perpetual pain. He is one of us—a former member of our staff—now working for the national office of JFI on the floor above us. Ever since I came to JFI, we go through the same routine once a week.

  He comes over to me and says: “You know Hy Bookspan?”

  “Yes—”

  “What a hostile guy! His wife too. Such hostile vibrations. Ah, the hell with him.”

  “He never seemed that way to—”

  “I don’t know the man!” shouts Murray, throwing up his hands, stuttering, waving me off, backing up, shaking his head in denial. “I don’t know him at all.” Then he puts his hands in his pockets, approaches me again, and says, “You know Esther Kravitz?”

  “A little.”

  “Such a name dropper. No sense of style, class, intelligence— no d-d-d-dignity. Ah, the hell with her.”

  “Really? I thought—”

  “I don’t know her!” shouts Murray. “I saw her in a crowd! Yeah, don’t know her at all!”

  He is filled with disgust at his present job and associates. He has said to me of Luther: “Poor guy. And so pretentious.” Murray is a veteran of the radical movement and Jewish causes. He is also a former newspaperman, writer, and radio commentator for WEVD. “Sure, I reviewed books and did interviews on WEVD. So did Melvin and other people around here. So what? It all adds up to nothing.”

  When we are walking on the street, Murray suddenly stops me, grabs my arm and shouts, his finger pointing, “There goes Abie the Ape! There he goes. Look over there, Bruce.” Later he tells me that Abie is an old anarchist and that he hasn’t seen him in fifteen years. “Ah, what’s the point …” he trails off.

  VII

  The news comes to us on one of the yellow pieces of paper that daily announce deaths of JFI staff members and their families. Murray Farber’s father has died. The funeral is scheduled for that day.

  “I’m not going,” Luther announces. “We do these things— these so-called good deeds—just to make others think well of us and to make ourselves feel good. Therefore, they aren’t really worth doing. Especially in Murray’s case, since his opinion of me wouldn’t change anyway. I know he doesn’t like me.”

  As the day goes on, only one person on the JFI staff, a secretary, plans to go to the funeral. Usually a dozen or more people will go. But Murray doesn’t carry clout at JFI.

  The tension between Luther and me keeps building. I write a press release that doesn’t follow our usual format. I don’t use any of Luther’s phrases, which invariably describe our guests of honor as “pillars of strength,” “towers of light,” “true champions of Israel,” and “sources of inspiration to many.” Luther grabs my release off the desk and screams, “You could get fired for a release like this! The date and address must be in the first line! I never saw anything like this in my life!”

  “Luther, there’s no need to get upset—”

  “YOU MAKE ME FEEL FREAKISH … WHEN I’M THE ONE WHO’S BEEN FIGHTING FOR INDIVIDUALITY ALL MY LIFE…”

  Later he says, “There are certain things we must do, certain patterns we must follow … this is not a creative writing class, Bruce.”

  Luther hears Bea talking about the restaurant on the corner changing ownership and asks: “Who runs it now?”

  “The waitress is the same,” Bea answers.

  “That has nothing to do with the ethnic cuisine!” Luther screams.

  I feel myself bristling. Luther is talking about the national JFI convention that is coming up.

  “Where is it being held?” I ask, knowing as I say it I have made a mistake.

  “you don’t know? you’ve been here all this time and you don’t know? ”

  “Miami?” I say, but it’s too late.

  “I MEAN DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE WORKING HERE, BRUCE? I THINK IT’S ABOUT TIME THAT YOU WOKE UP TO YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. I KNOW YOU DON’T LIKE TO
HEAR THESE THINGS, BRUCE, THEY IRRITATE YOU, BUT YOU’RE A MEMBER OF A TEAM. YOU MAY NOT LIKE IT, AND I MAY NOT LIKE IT, BUT THAT’S WHAT WE’RE BEING PAID FOR, THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT—”

  “And I think, Luther, that you are a pain in the ass.”

  There is silence. The secretaries have stopped their work. Luther nods his head, “Okay.” He does not look at me for the rest of the day.

  VIII

  “All right, I’ll go to the funeral,” Luther announces.

  Three of us sit in the car with Luther. We travel through the Bronx, through Luther’s old neighborhood. He sees landmarks he remembers—even a “Glick House,” which he jokes “was named for me.”

  We do not talk to each other.

  Four funerals are being held in four chapels at the funeral home. The smoothie at the door makes sure we go into the right room.

  There is Murray, and, near him, his wife. He says to me, “Who was it—which playwright—who said ‘I lived my whole life in fear of death, but when it came, I wasn’t prepared for it.’”

  The rabbi greets Luther and asks him only one question—if Luther knew Ben Elias. Elias, a well-known figure at JFI, had committed suicide fifteen years before. He had been discovered stealing over $100,000 in JFI funds.

  Before Luther can answer, the rabbi holds up his hands. “Don’t tell me anything. I liked the man.”

  I sit beside Murray’s wife, who is much taller and more solid-looking than Murray. She carries a little white paper bag. As the service is announced, she opens the paper bag and takes out little rocks and stones—“from the Jordan, the old city of Jerusalem.” They are for Murray’s father.

  IX

  When we are back in the office, Luther continues to avert his eyes from me.