The Kiss of the Prison Dancer

by Jerome Richard

  “It gives me headaches,” Max said. He told her about the headache he had all day. It had gone away for a while, but talking about it brought it back and he could feel it lurking behind his eyes. “But there’s no fog now,” she told him. Max glanced at the window. It had turned gray with evening, but there was no fog. “Just a little in the morning is enough to give me a headache all day long.”

  “You poor man,” Clara said. “My late husband used to get headaches like that too. He liked me to rub his forehead.” And before Max knew what she was doing, she was sitting on the arm of his chair rubbing her cool fingers over his forehead. He wanted to look around, to go home, but she was right. The headache retreated before her fingers. When he glanced at the window again, it was black with night. What am I doing? he asked himself. I just came to talk. He jumped up and put on the light. “Someone might get the wrong idea,” he explained, pointing to the black window.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Clara said.

  Max paced the living room. He remembered that he had come to ask her about the boy and the Nazi, but that seemed far away now; besides, he didn’t want to appear involved. Still, he wondered what she thought about it and when she came in with the coffee he said, “You remember that man they arrested for the murder in Golden Gate Park?”

  Clara thought a minute. “No,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

  Max described some of the details to her. “They arrested this Holtz. They say he’s a Nazi.”

  “Oh, yes. I read about it.”

  “What do you think about it?” Max asked, sipping the coffee and watching her over the rim of the cup.

  “What do I think? He rapes and murders a young girl and on top of that he’s a Nazi? Let them hang him.”

  “Gas,” Max said.

  “What?”

  “Gas. They don’t hang in California. They use gas.”

  “So let them use gas.”

  “But suppose he didn’t do it?”

  Clara sipped her coffee. “Why do you ask? You know him?”

  “No,” Max said. “I was just wondering. Should we kill him just because he’s a Nazi?” “Didn’t they kill Jews just because they were Jews?”

  Max shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore; he was afraid he already said too much. He finished his coffee and said he would go.

  “Come again,” Clara said. “Please.”

  “I will. I promise.” He took her hand and almost kissed it.

  Walking home he thought: So the boy and Clara both agree, Holtz should be punished for what he might do. If only he could believe that, everything would be so much easier. He told himself that Holtz would not mind seeing Jews killed. But that’s just it, he thought. If Holtz has to be punished, let him be punished for what he does, not for what he might do. Otherwise, how are we better than the Nazis? He thought it over several times while sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for the milk to warm up. Why me, he thought. Why do I have to be caught in the middle? But at least Clara’s fingers had taken his headache away.

  12

  The man sitting next to Max on the bus asked him to be quiet. “I didn’t say anything,” Max said. “You were humming,” the man said. “Was I?” Max asked. He listened back over the last few minutes and realized that he had been humming. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he did not start humming again until he arrived at the office.

  Shmuel was not there. Max hummed a while and then sat down and began to tap his fingers on the desk. Soon he stopped humming and just tapped his fingers. He was about to ask Dr. Resnick what happened to Shmuel when the psychiatrist came in.

  “Shmuel just called. He’s taking the morning off to attend a funeral. Would you mind opening the mail today?”

  “A funeral?” Max asked. “Who died?”

  “He didn’t say.” Dr. Resnick’s brow wrinkled and stretched again. “It was probably a friend. I don’t think he had any close relatives left.”

  The psychiatrist turned to go, but Max asked, “Why didn’t he say something yesterday?”

  “He said he forgot. That’s why I don’t imagine it was anyone too close to him.”

  Dr. Resnick left and Max went over to Shmuel’s desk to open the mail. How could he forget a funeral? Max wondered. He bit his lip as the memory of Grandfather Mordecai’s funeral rushed in upon him. He remembered staring at the plain pine coffin, trying to picture his Grandfather resting in there. Afterwards, some boys were waiting outside the funeral home and they laughed and pointed when the coffin was brought out. One of Max’s uncles chased them away, but they came back even before everyone was in the cars. And at home the house was very quiet. Though many people came to console the family, they all spoke in whispers. Max’s father had torn the lapel of his suit and he sat on a wooden orange crate and said prayers most of the day, but Max could hear his parents in the next room at night and the first night after the funeral he heard his mother say, “I bet I know who did it. I’m going to tell the police,” and his father answered: “Don’t make trouble. We got enough.” And his aunts and uncles came and they said, “We told him not to wear that ridiculous outfit.” And except on the holidays the aroma of the sweet wine was gone from the house.

  When Shmuel came back to work in the afternoon, Max told him he was sorry about the death.

  “A cousin,” Shmuel said. “A nice fellow.” He shook his head and sighed. “I guess it comes to us all.”

  Later, Max looked up from his work and watched Shmuel. Bent over his desk, Shmuel might have been a rabbi, but his thin hands leafed through envelopes rather than Bible pages and where there should have been a skull cap there were only black hairs darting out in all directions as if waiting for a signal to depart. Something about Shmuel bent over his desk reminded Max of Grandfather Mordecai as he used to study his books in the evening. Of course Mordecai was almost twice Shmuel’s size and was really nothing like him; still Max wondered if Shmuel’s house smelled of sweet wine and egg bread.

  It was time for Shmuel’s break. Usually, Max would keep working. Shmuel would pour himself some tea from a thermos and then read the newspaper and sip tea with loud sucking noises while Max concentrated on the letters and applications before him, cursing unmannered Polacks beneath his breath. Once Max had asked him if he couldn’t make less noise when he drank and Shmuel had said yes, but he went right on making noise. Then, when Shmuel went back to work Max would take his break, eating a candy bar he bought at lunch and sometimes reading a magazine in the reception room or walking around the block if the weather were nice. But today when Shmuel poured his tea, Max stopped working too. He walked over to Shmuel’s desk and put his hand on the newspaper before Shmuel could pick it up.

  “Tell me, Shmuel,” Max said. “Why do you call yourself Shmuel?”

  Shmuel’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Max’s hand on the newspaper and he scratched his head. Finally he shrugged his shoulders like one who knows he is about to give the wrong answer to a riddle and said: “Because that’s my name.”

  “But you’re in America now,” Max said. “You could call yourself Samuel.”

  “I could call myself George Washington, but my name is Shmuel.”

  Max stared at him a moment. He leaned over the desk and sniffed but smelled only lemon tea and the lunchtime odor of herring. “Never mind,” Max said. Shmuel tugged at the newspaper and Max took his hand away.

  Outside, the day was gray without fog and Max, standing in the doorway of the agency, could not decide whether or not to take a walk. He watched the children playing tag in the street. Next door a woman sat on the steps of her house and rocked a baby in her arms, vainly trying to quiet the children without waking her own child. Max grabbed a boy as he ran by. “Not so much noise,” he said, pointing to the baby next door, but the boy squirmed out of Max’s grasp and ran shouting across the street. Max opened his hands and let them drop to show the woman that he could not quiet them either. She nodded and went in the house. Max walked a few steps. George Wash
ington! He laughed at the notion. That Shmuel! Then he wondered again what Shmuel would have done had he been in the Park that night. He couldn’t tell him about the boy, but he had an idea and he went inside and stood before Shmuel’s desk and cleared his throat until Shmuel looked up.

  “Tell me, Shmuel,” Max said as they peered at each other over the newspaper, “suppose you saw Doctor Resnick commit a crime and the police arrested for it a real no good, a Nazi. Would you tell the police it was Doctor Resnick that did it?”

  “Resnick? The psychiatrist?” Shmuel asked, putting the paper down and inclining his head towards the consultation room.

  “Yes. Would you report him? I mean, if it were a real crime. Say a murder.”

  “Resnick a murderer?”

  “Yes,” Max said loudly. “Just suppose.”

  “What is it with all the riddles today?” Shmuel asked, taking a noisy sip of tea but keeping his steady eyes on Max.

  Max threw up his hands and walked all the way around the room. When he got back to Shmuel’s desk he leaned over it. He could feel the warmth rise from the tea. “The other day you came to my house to tell me I didn’t talk to you. Now I talk to you, you don’t want to talk.”

  “Two weeks,” Shmuel said, “not the other day. And who said I didn’t want to talk? I just asked why all the riddles.”

  “You don’t have to answer.”

  “I’m thinking.” Shmuel sucked in some more tea and scratched his head. His eyes seemed to leave the room and he screwed up his face and sat silent. Max waited. Finally, Shmuel said: “If you like apples and you don’t like oranges, which would you rather have, a juicy orange or an apple with a worm in it?”

  “What?”

  “Which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of grapes?”

  “You’re some help,” Max said, going back to his own desk.

  “What do you mean?” Shmuel called after him. “Did Resnick really do something?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So then who needs help?”

  “Never mind,” Max said. It was what he could expect from Shmuel. He went back to work, knowing Shmuel was still looking at him as if he were crazy. For the rest of the afternoon he avoided Shmuel’s eyes, but that evening, as he sliced onions for his dinner, it occurred to him that Shmuel was right. It was the balance that was the problem; if he could change that he would know what to do. If the boy, for example, were a habitual criminal, or if Holtz were, say, a Jew. He laughed at the idea and shoveled the onions into the pan of hot oil, but while he prepared the peas he thought, Why couldn’t Holtz be a Jew? What? Holtz? A Nazi you’re going to make a Jew? He dropped the liver in the pan and watched it jump and splutter. Still, he could be a Nazi and not an anti-Semite. Even in the camps there was more than one guard who had said “I have nothing against the Jews personally.” If he could really convert Holtz, that would be something. But, ah, the idea was ridiculous. He warmed up some peas. I really must be going crazy, he thought. He set the table and soon burned his tongue on a fried onion.

  Lying in bed that night he thought, It’s not too late to turn the boy in. Max propped himself up on his elbow to look at the bureau where the button lay. If he could be sure the police would never find him, he would bring it to the station right now.

  He dreamt of Holtz in his khaki uniform with a yellow Star of David sewn over the breast pocket and when he woke up a voice from some dark corner of his mind whispered, Why not? There’s nothing to lose by trying, against a chorus that shouted Ridiculous! Fantastic!

  At work he found himself thinking: sure, you just walk up to him in his cell and say, Holtz, you Nazi, how would you like to become Jewish? That was another problem. Memories of his last attempt to see Holtz suddenly kindled in him as he saw himself surrounded by marble walls. He shut out the picture, but after work curiosity drove him to the Hall of Justice.

  Some people were picketing. They were young mostly and they wore black armbands and carried signs protesting capital punishment. One of the signs listed the people who awaited execution on San Quentin’s Death Row: six men and one woman. One of the men was named Heinz and when Max looked at the sign he thought it said Holtz and his heart tripped. Frantically, he looked up at the barred windows on the top floor, but he could see nothing behind the bars and he started to race into the lobby when he glanced again at the sign and then again, swallowing the information: Heinz, not Holtz.

  He wanted to go into the building anyway and ask again if he could see Holtz, though he knew it was no use. He wanted to go up to the blind newsstand man and ask him something to see if he remembered him. Standing on the sidewalk, facing the gray slab building, a line of pickets on one side of him and lawyers and visitors hurrying by him on the other side, Max felt foolish for coming. He turned to go just as one of the pickets asked him to sign a petition. “No, no,” Max said, frightened and jumping out of the picket’s reach. Another picket, a young woman this time with long red hair, offered him a leaflet. Max retreated another step. She held it out to him and Max took it and quickly put it in his pocket. Just then an older woman attacked the pickets. She brandished a wide brim hat and swatted at the pickets with it. “Trouble makers!” she shouted. “You want to let murderers roam the streets?” She knocked the leaflets from the young woman’s hands; when they slid to the ground she kicked them back and forth along the street. One of the pickets stepped up to her, but she swatted him before he could speak. A crowd gathered now, men with briefcases and women with children. Most of them laughed. The old woman’s white hair slipped from its pins and curls unraveled as she charged the picket line again. “Go home where you belong!”

  A man pushed his way through the crowd and led the woman away. She menaced the pickets with her hat as he pulled at her arm. When they were gone, the pickets began picking up the leaflets. “Hold this, please,” a young man said, thrusting a sign at Max and bending down to help pick up the leaflets. Max looked at the sign in his hands. It said: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS LEGAL MURDER. He looked at the people around him. The crowd was beginning to disperse, but one or two stopped to read his sign. Max’s eyes waxed like two moons. He had never held a picket sign before.

  13

  Max woke up early with the sound of marching storm-boots echoing out of a dream, realized it was Saturday, and went back to sleep. An hour later he whispered Clara’s name and woke up embracing the sunlight on his bed. He decided to call her. When he saw what time it was, he decided to call right away. He put on a bathrobe and went downstairs wondering what had made him sleep so late.

  The Thompsons let him use the hall telephone. He had his own phone when he lived downtown but the only calls he ever got were from salesmen and solicitors so he gave it up. Perhaps she will invite me for dinner, he thought, as he balanced the telephone book on his knee. “Awson, Axedikian, Axel, Axelrod!” he muttered. He looked for a pencil and saw Mrs. Thompson coming out of the kitchen. She saw him at the same time and they both gasped. Max dropped the phone book, clutched his bathrobe around him and retreated up the stairs out of sight.

  “Mr. Friedman, was that you?” Mrs. Thompson asked timidly.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said. “I thought you were in Stinson Beach.”

  “We came back last night. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “I’ll get dressed,” Max said.

  “You can use the phone. I’m in the kitchen.”

  He would have to go out to call. “I was just looking something up, thank you,” he said, hurrying to his room. If Mr. Thompson heard him talking to a woman, he would never hear the end of it.

  At the drugstore he bought a newspaper to see if there was a movie or a concert he could ask her to, but sitting in the phone booth and looking through the entertainment section of the paper, he saw something that made him forget all about calling Clara.

  Everyone Invited

  Rally

  Entertainment Dancing

  Benefit

  Mort Holtz Defense Committee


  Wagner Hall

  Tonight Saturday 8pm

  The ad was set in the corner of the page, beneath the ads for concerts and lectures. It seemed personal somehow, a message directed at Max Friedman, as if it should have been in the personals section. He wondered why he had not heard of the Mort Holtz Defense Committee before. At least someone is trying to help him, he thought. Someone was waiting to use the phone. Max left the booth. His stomach reminded him that he had not had breakfast so he tore the ad out of the paper, carefully folded it and put it in his wallet, and took a seat at the drug store’s lunch counter.

  That evening he took a bus to Wagner Hall. He held the ad in his hand but he did not look at it; instead, his eyes swallowed the rows of slatted houses in this area of the city where he had never been before. It was a dark, deserted, ghost town of a neighborhood and Max wondered if it were wise to come. When he got off the bus he could smell the Bay. He was all alone and he watched the bus diminish in the street and blink out like a candle.

  Wagner Hall was over a grocery in a street of gray houses and unlit stores. It was a few minutes after eight when Max got there. An old couple hurried down the street and up the stairs, the man waving to Max as they went by. After their footsteps stopped resounding on the wooden stairs, there was nothing to hear. Max bent low and looked up the stairwell. At the top he could see a square of light and a man’s legs. There was a sudden mass scraping of chairs and the sound of people getting to their feet as a piano started playing “The Star Spangled Banner” and everyone sang. Max took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. The man at the head of the stairs was tall with a crew cut and a narrow face. In one hand he held an overseas cap and with the other he motioned Max to wait and be still. Max stood on the top step. The man wore the khaki uniform with the swastika armband. Max looked at the man’s feet. At least he wasn’t wearing boots.

  When the singing stopped the man at the door motioned Max to come in. Max mounted the top step and the man held a cigar box in front of him with a sign on it that said: Donation $5. Max fumbled in his wallet and produced a five dollar bill which he dropped in the box.