by Howard Fast
‘Oh, no. I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Alone? Max, how could I go in there alone?’
‘You won’t be alone. I mean, I’m not sitting next to you, I’m up on the stage, but nobody’s going to bother you. Maybe you think a music hall is some kind of a sinful, terrible place. It ain’t. Families go there.’
She shook her head.
‘Please. Look, we go on, me and Bert, fifteen or twenty minutes after the show starts. There’s just a long dog act and then we’re on. So all you’d have to spend there is maybe forty-five minutes, and then I change and pick you up, and you said yourself how did I learn to do what I do, when I had no experience or training.’
‘Well …’ She was wavering. ‘You would take me in? I wouldn’t have to go in alone?’
‘Absolutely. And then I come around and you leave with me. I got you an aisle seat in the fourth row, so there’s no problem. And then I got two and a half hours before the next show, so we can have a cup of coffee, and if you want to I’ll bring my partner, Bert, along, and then I take you home.’
She was torn between curiosity and the conventions. Ever since she had left her secure, peaceful home, the little frame house in Flatbush where she had been born and had grown to maturity, convention had been her shield and protector. Her father and mother had come to America from Vienna a few years after the Civil War. They were Jewish, but, as they saw themselves, a very different breed from these Eastern European Jews who were pouring into America by the thousands and had become a seething mass of slum-ghetto humanity in New York City’s Lower East Side. Sally had gone into this ghetto full of trepidation; this was the jungle, but it was also a wonderland and a place where all things were possible; and while the Lower East Side was only miles from Flatbush geographically, culturally it was a world away. In Brooklyn, there was no Washington Square, no Madison Square, the two incredible and marvelous centers of wealth, culture, and excitement that had turned New York into a rival of London.
Convention-bound and insecure Sally might be, but she was no frightened mouse, and when they arrived at the Bijou Theatre, Sally felt a delicious flutter of excitement. There had been boys who came calling to the house in Flatbush, but they were stodgy, stolid creatures, destined for law or medicine or Wall Street in the best German-Jewish tradition. There had been no one like Max, no one with that air of wildness and daring, and since she had been living and teaching in New York, she had had no dates until Max appeared. Though New York City teemed with men, Sally had no idea how to meet them, and most of the other teachers at the school were women. Thus it was very exciting to be here at night, in all the lights and bustle of West Broadway, with painted women – whom she labeled as streetwalkers – and flashily dressed men all about her, and the pushcarts and the hawkers and the three-card-monte operators and the peanut vendors. It was all wonderful and exciting and alive, and to Sally, who had been reading Émile Zola, it appeared to be very much the streets of Paris tansplanted to the New World. And there she was, walking into a music hall with one of the performers, with Max’s strong hand around her arm.
Bert was already in his cop costume and making up his face when Max entered the dressing room and said to him. ‘What the fuck are you up to?’
‘I think I’m coloring my puss. What do you think?’
‘The cop suit.’
‘We’re doing the tramp and cop. There’s a character outside from the Alderman Circuit. If he likes our act, he can give us twelve weeks outside this shithole, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago – Kansas City. You know what we get for three nights in Kansas City? Three hundred dollars for the act. Guttman says fine, we can take the twelve weeks if this guy from Alderman likes us and come back here to work when it’s over. Maybe we don’t come back here. Guttman figures it gives the Bijou class to have an act in Chicago or somewhere, but who knows? Maybe we move up to Madison Square.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’
‘What’s eating you?’ Bert demanded. ‘It’s a good routine. You know that.’
‘I got Sally out in the audience.’
‘Sally?’
‘You know. The teacher.’
‘So what? Educate her.’
‘She’s not a tramp. She’s a lady.’
‘I don’t believe you. I just don’t. Man, you are deluded.’
‘We can do something else.’
‘No! Now look, Maxie, this is our break. Don’t piss all over it. Guttman told this guy from the Alderman Circuit that we’re going to do our three cop and tramp routines. He knows what they’re about, and he’s waiting.’
‘Oh, shit, shit, shit,’ Max moaned.
The man next to Sally Levine kept glancing at her. She decided to ignore him. His knee then moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward her until it touched the crêpe de Chine. She jerked her own knees away, grateful that the aisle was on her left. Her whole body tightened as she watched the trained dogs perform, and when the curtain finally went up on Bellamy and Britsky, she had passed out of her receptive mood and was staring critically and tight-lipped at the stage.
The backdrop was a scene in a park, old and faded with cracks in the paint and some stitched repair work. In front of the back-drop, a park bench, and on the bench a tramp and a blowzy middle-aged woman. They were seated about a foot apart, and between them, on the bench, the woman’s handbag reposed. Sally was hard put at first to recognise Max as the tramp. He had put on a bulbous, clownish red nose, and his face was shadowed with a week’s growth of whiskers. He wore baggy patched pants and an ancient patched jacket, and after the curtain rose, the two of them, the tramp and the woman, sat motionless and silent. This in itself brought a nervous response from the audience, a ripple of applause.
Then the woman picked up her bag, opened it, and near-sightedly peered into it. Then she screamed – a succession of howling, hair-raising screams. The tramp did nothing – no response, no motion. For reasons Sally did not comprehend, the audience burst into laughter, laughter which increased as a policeman came on-stage. So this was Bert Bellamy, about whom she had heard so much! He carried an overlarge nightstick, which he pointed at the blowzy woman, telling her, ‘All right, lady, you can stop screaming now.’
She stopped screaming and pointed wordlessly at the nightstick.
‘It’s me nightstick,’ Bert said. ‘Have ye never seen a nightstick before?’
‘Not that large.’
‘You’re damn right.’ He spoke in a heavy Irish brogue, and by now the audience was convulsed with laughter. ‘Now what the divil were you screeching about?’
‘He stole my money,’ she said, pointing to Max.
‘Me? Me? Me?’ Max cried indignantly.
Bert poked him with the nightstick. ‘Give it back, ye dirty scut, or I’ll turn yer head into a trap drum.’
‘I never took nothing. She’s crazy.’
‘And what’s that bulge in yer pocket?’
‘Bulge?’ Max stood up, staring, puzzled, at the bulge in his pocket.
‘My money!’ the woman cried, and thrust her hand into Max’s pocket. Then she collapsed in a faint.
‘What have ye done to her, ye dirty swine?’ Bert shouted.
‘Me? Nothing.’
‘What’s in your pocket?’
‘Pocket? Who’s got pockets?’ turning out the ragged fringe that was left of each pocket.
The curtain dropped to a roar of applause and laughter, and Sally rose and left the theatre. On the street outside, she hailed a hansom cab, hoping that she had enough money in her purse for the fare. She did, and when she reached Tenth Street and walked up the stoop of the brownstone in which she rented a furnished room, she sighed with relief and said, ‘And that’s the end of Mr Britsky.’
But, of course, it was not. An hour and a half later, Max knocked at her door.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded angrily. She had changed into a long quilted robe, and her rich brown hair, combed out, reached almost to her waist.
From below, her landlady’s voice called out, ‘Is everything all right, Miss Levine?’
‘Yes, Mrs Schwartz.’
‘It’s eleven o’clock. That’s too late for callers. I trust I rented your room to an honest and moral person.’
‘It’s my brother, Mrs Schwartz,’ and then she whispered to Max, ‘Please get out of here before you ruin my reputation entirely.’
‘I would have come before, but I had to do the second show.’
‘Please go.’
‘I want to talk to you,’ Max pleaded. ‘I must talk to you.’
‘No. We have nothing to say to each other.’
‘Let me come inside for five minutes. That’s all I ask, five minutes.’ She appeared to hesitate, and he pressed the point. ‘Only five minutes. Since you’ve decided never to see me again, five minutes can’t be so terrible.’
‘Very well, five minutes.’
She opened the door and then closed it behind him. The room was small but not unpleasant; and to Max it was full of color and invention and unlike any room he had ever stepped into. On the walls were three oversized posters by Parrish and Mucha. The Mucha was of Sarah Bernhardt, while in the gardens on the Parrish posters, people of the art nouveau frolicked improbably in flowing gowns. Yet the posters were bright and charming, as was the pink and yellow bedspread and the rag rug on the floor. Max guessed that these and other pleasant touches did not come with the furnished room but spelled out the taste of Miss Levine, and he entered the room tentatively, more abashed than ever before in her presence.
‘I know I struck out,’ he said. ‘I messed things up, and I guess the one thing in the world I wanted was to make a good impression with you, and don’t think I don’t know how dirty that shtick was, but I swear to God I never intended to play the cop and tramp shtick tonight, but there was a guy in from the Alderman Circuit, which is eleven theatres around the country, and Bert and Guttman, who runs the Bijou, promised him we’d do it and there just wasn’t no way out of it, and all right, if you think I’m a cheap bum, there’s nothing else I can say – what are you laughing at?’
‘That is –’ She choked again with laughter. ‘That is absolutely the longest run-on sentence I ever heard and possibly the least intelligible.’
He stood facing her, silent, his lips clenched.
‘And I’ve hurt you. Oh, Max, how stupid of me. I’m so sorry.’
‘Why don’t you just tell me I’m not good enough for you? Why don’t you tell me I’m a bum and throw me out? You know what my mother says about German Jews? She says they look at us like we’re animals, like we’re not even human.’
‘Max, Max, we’re not German Jews, we’re Austrian.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Poor Max, I’ve hurt you so deeply.’ She went over to him, placed her hands on his cheeks, and kissed him lightly on his lips. ‘Do you forgive me?’
‘Jesus! Wow! You really kissed me.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not going to wash my face. Not for weeks.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Ugh.’
‘You kissed me – yes?’
‘Yes.’ She turned him around and pushed him toward the door. ‘Now go home. I’ll see you Monday if you wish.’
‘I wish, I wish, but we’re booked right out. We got twelve weeks – Buffalo, Chicago, Kansas City, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. But I’ll be back. You bet your sweet patooties I’ll be back.’
[ T H R E E ]
Max had never hit his sister Freida before. He slapped Ruby around when he needed it, and when Ruby cried out in protest against his brother beating up on him, Max countered, ‘And if I don’t teach you the right time, who in hell is going to?’ There was some mutual ground and comprehension there, as there was when he had to slap some sense into Benny, age nine. But Freida wailed, ‘Stop it! Stop it! You got no right to hit me!’ He had laid a stinging slap on each cheek, her face not her ass, and she whimpered, ‘You’re not my father. You got no right.’
‘Right? You tell me my rights? You – you little tramp!’
‘I’m not a tramp. It happened. It just happened.’
‘What in hell do you mean, it just happened?’
‘I didn’t know how to stop. I couldn’t stop.’
‘You couldn’t stop,’ Max whispered hoarsely. ‘You dumb little bitch! You haven’t got the sense of a sow! Almost eighteen years old, and you get yourself knocked up, and then you tell me that you couldn’t help it.’
She threw herself on the bed, sobbing, and Max loomed over her, drove his finger at her, and shouted, if a hoarse whisper can be a shout, ‘You know what you’re going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to marry him.’
Her sobbing ceased. She sat up. ‘What?’
‘You are going to marry him.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Me? Me? Oh, no, baby, crazy is in front of me.’
‘He’s a dumb kid.’
‘Oh? And you?’
‘I’ll die first. I’ll kill myself. I swear –’ Her mood changed; the brief defiance turned into supplication. ‘Maxie, Maxie, please help me, please.’
‘Help you? What’s to help you? You want a dowry? You want me to rob a bank so you and that horse’s ass who knocked you up can start life together?’
‘I’ll kill myself.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Please, please help me.’
Now Max looked at her, and possibly it was the first time in his life that he had really looked at her and actually seen her: the reddened tear-swollen eyes, the pink cheeks, the cupid bow of a mouth, and the large, firm breasts bulging her blouse. She was a woman and lush and desirable, and something out of this discovery reached him and touched him.
‘Don’t tell Mama,’ Freida sobbed.
‘All right.’
‘You’ll help me, Max?’
‘Maybe. I’ll see. But if this ever happens again –’
‘Never, never, never!’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He spun around suddenly, grabbed the door to the hall, and jerked it open. Ruby almost fell into the room, and Max, grabbing him by his shirt collar and twisting savagely, hissed, ‘You little bastard!’
‘I didn’t hear nothing, Max,’ Ruby pleaded. He was fourteen, heavily built, almost as tall as Max.
‘One word about this,’ Max whispered, ‘I’ll make you wish you were never born. You hear me, you little bastard?’
‘I hear you, I hear you. Max, you’re choking me.’
‘I ought to. One word.’
‘I swear to God –’
‘Fuck off and keep your mouth shut!’
He slammed the door again and turned back to Freida, who was staring at him now with the first glimmer of hope in her eyes.
‘Where are you?’ Max asked grimly. ‘What month?’
‘I think – the third.’
‘You don’t know, you dumb little bitch?’
She began to weep again, and Max told her, ‘Stop that. All we need is Mama should come in her and find you crying.’
‘You’ll do something, Max?’
‘I’ll do something.’
‘You’ll help me?’
‘I told you I’d help you.’
He was late already. He looked at his watch. It was a fine, Swiss pocket watch, closed face with the bas-relief of a stag upon its surface, which snapped open at the touch of a hidden spring, the case of fourteen karat gold. He had bought it for twelve dollars from a fence called Louis Harelip, who operated out of a cellar on Pearl Street and who swore it was European merchandise; in other words, stolen in Europe and resold here. True or not, Max was proud of the watch. The hands now informed him that it was 5:45 P.M.
‘Take it easy,’ Max said.
He had to pass through the kitchen to leave, and there his mother sat, weeping at the kitchen table. Sitting at the table with her, totally subdued by Sarah’s weapon of tears, bent over their notebooks and doing their homework, were
Benny, eight, Esther, ten, and Sheila, twelve. They had no defense against their mother’s tears, and Sarah knew quite well that tears were her weapon of the last and increasingly first resort.
‘Mama, what are you crying about?’ Max demanded, losing his determination to stride silently by her and out of the apartment.
‘I should laugh?’ Sarah moaned.
‘I’m not telling you to laugh, but what in hell is there to cry about?’
‘Don’t swear at me with your fine American language. You fight with your sister and hit her, and I shouldn’t cry? What did I raise, animals?’
Without answering, almost yet not entirely immune to his mother’s manipulative sobbing and whimpering, Max started for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out.’
‘Out. Out. I cook for you and you go out, to eat in some filthy restaurant.’
He fled, slamming the door of the apartment behind him, taking the stairs down the darkened tenement stairwell two and three at a time, hurtling out of a prison into the freedom of the street. He rarely questioned his bondage, which society called responsibility and which was rooted in dim and distant tribal and religious persuasions and taboos. His partner, Bert Bellamy, who was white and Protestant and fairly free of such mysterious burdens, had once said to him, ‘I’ll be damned if I know why you put up with that squealing, whining mob. You’re not their father. If I was you, Maxie boy, I’d cut out and say screw the lot of them. Serve them right. Teach them a lesson.’ But that was Bert, to whom the thousand threads of bondage was invisible; yet at a moment like this, he could almost entertain the notion.
His face still bore traces of home when Sally Levine opened the door of her furnished room for him, and she asked him what had happened.
‘Nothing happened.’
‘Oh? You just decided to be miserable tonight?’
‘O.K. So that’s what I decided.’
She bent over the chair he had dropped into and kissed him on his forehead. ‘All right, Maxie,’ she said. ‘If we go on this way, we’ll have a fight, which we don’t want, do we? So we’ll just start all over from the beginning and forget that I ever asked you what was wrong.’
