“What did you do, Pop?” the man asked.
Surely there was no need to continue the lie that brought him here. “I did nothing,” Max said. Before he could explain the other man burst into laughter so hard he banged his head on the upper bunk. Still laughing he reeled to his feet. There was a pounding on the cell wall and from next door a voice asked, “What’s so funny, Frank?” Frank told him and soon there was laughter up and down the row. A guard came by, running his club along the cell bars so that it made a horrible rattling sound. “What’s going on?” he kept asking, stopping finally outside Max’s cell where Frank told him the joke.
“Nothing?” the guard said. “That old man raped a little girl. Killed her too.”
The laughter ceased, except for the man in the next cell who spoke through his bars. “You? You raped a girl?” He laughed again, but only once.
“It wasn’t a little girl,” Max said to his cellmate. “She was seventeen. And I didn’t—”
“Can it!” Frank said. “I don’t talk to dirty old men.”
Routine sets in quickly in a prison. At first he was glad he hadn’t heard all the rules, it lent some interest to the dull passing of time, but by the third day he knew every rule the guard had tried to tell him. He decided not to shave. All day he felt his beard to see how it was growing. He would grow a long black beard like Grandfather Mordecai’s. He asked Frank about growing a beard, but got no answer.
One night, after the lights were out and before he could get to sleep, he remembered the reporter’s question-what made you decide to give yourself up? He thought he knew then. He had confessed so that Holtz would not become a martyr. He saw now that it was simpler than that. Holtz was evil, but he was innocent. The boy was guilty, but he was not evil. The judge and the lawyer had talked about justice, but justice lay not in the scales, it resided rather in the woman who held them.
The next day he received a letter from Martin saying there wasn’t much chance of an appeal but he could apply for parole in six years. Max wished he would come and visit. Martin was not a very good lawyer, but he cared and Max wanted to talk to someone about justice. He looked at Frank and then wrote a letter to Martin saying he would be glad for some company.
Clara will come, he told himself. Then he remembered that he told Clara not to visit him anymore. She will come anyway, he thought. He would write to her. Perhaps he would explain everything and when he got out, maybe, maybe she would still be waiting. Only he would go crazy if he did not find someone to talk with. Going to the little window he caught a glimpse of the brown hills outside shining in the setting sun. It was autumn. It was always autumn in Marin County, but now it was really autumn and soon it would be Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year. Another season, he thought, another year. He wept for Sarah who was murdered one fine autumn, just before the holidays. He began to shake.
When he woke up the next morning he did not remember where he was. His first reaction was to stand by the cot and wait for the Block Chief to count him. Then he heard Frank still snoring and he was all right. He washed his face over and over with cold water. At breakfast he tried to remember the blessing for bread. Boruch ator adonoi … Boruch ator adonoi … He held his head in his hands and tried to squeeze the words out. Then he took off his glasses and closed his eyes. Boruch ator adonoi.… It was no use. He pushed his meal away and cried.
“Are you all right?” the prisoner across the table asked.
They took Max to the prison hospital where his temperature and blood pressure were recorded and a doctor gave him a sedative that made him drowsy. Before he went under he said to the doctor, “Listen to me. One day in the park you are walking along minding your own business …”
“That’s right,” the doctor said. “You just take it easy now.”
When Max woke up it was night again. A single light burned at the end of the ward where a trusty sat slumped at a desk. Max looked at the next bed. Someone lay wrapped in a blanket. “Help!” he shouted. The trusty came running: People in other beds grumbled, asked what happened. Max pointed to the bed. The trusty looked. “He’s sleeping,” the trusty said. “Everyone is sleeping.”
“Listen,” Max said, but the trusty returned to his desk. Through the bars on the door Max could see a guard come down the hall. He stopped and talked to the trusty and went away.
Hunger gnawed at Max’s stomach but he did not want to bother the trusty again. Lying on his stomach he could see a corner of the sky through the barred window. Suddenly words filled him, but he had to say them to himself: One day in the park you are walking along thinking you are minding your own business when a boy jumps out on the path in front of you and suddenly your life is laid out before you in a series of choices like the path where it branches off and you do not want to choose but you have to because even standing still is a choice. Even if all the choices are bad you still have to choose and there is only one choice you have a right to make, only one life you have a right to sacrifice. Sweat dripped like tears on his face and he sat up and rocked back and forth on the cot. Something inside him was opening up. It exploded silently, like a flower blooming all at once. He could see it when he closed his eyes.
Then he heard a noise, or thought he did. The trusty did not hear it. The sound came from somewhere out in the hall and sounded like music, someone playing a flute perhaps. Max got down from his cot and went cautiously to the barred door of the prison ward. No one else was awake. Even the trusty slept, hunched over at his desk. Max looked out between the bars, down the dimly lighted corridor as far as he could see. There was someone down there, clicking his heels together and moving from side to side. Max’s heart raced in time to the music. Pressing his face into the bars, Max saw Shmuel dancing down the hallway and humming a song from the old country. “Come closer,” Max said. Shmuel came up to the door and Max could smell the rich egg bread on his breath. Shmuel smiled with his yellow teeth and then Max, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks, reached through the bars and pulled Shmuel even closer and kissed him on the lips.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Jerome Richard
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2490-7
The Permanent Press
4170 Noyac Road
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
www.thepermanentpress.com
Distributed by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
The Kiss of the Prison Dancer Page 18
