The People

by Bernard Malamud

  At half past eight, Mr. Davido, who lived on the top floor above the delicatessen, came out of the house to open his barbershop across the street. He was shocked when he saw Wally standing on the corner. How strange it is, he thought, when you see something that looks as if it was always there and everything seems the same once more.

  The barber was a small, dark-skinned man nearing sixty. His fuzzy hair was gray, and he wore old-fashioned pince-nez with a black ribbon attached to them. His arms were short and heavy, and his fingers were stubby, but he maneuvered them well when he was shaving someone or cutting his hair. The customers knew how quickly and surely those short fingers moved when a man was in a hurry to get out of the shop. When there was no hurry, Mr. Davido worked slowly. Sometimes, as he was cutting a man’s hair, the man would happen to look into the mirror and see the barber staring absently out the window, his lips pursed and his eyes filled with quiet sadness. Then, in a minute, he would raise his brows and begin cutting again, his short, stubby fingers snipping quickly to make up for time he had lost.

  “Hey, Wally,” he said, “where you keep yourself? You don’t come aroun for a long time.”

  “I was sick,” Wally said. “I was in a hospital.”

  “Whatsamatter, Wally, you still drinkin poison whiskey?”

  “Nah, I ain’t allowed to drink anymore. I got diabetes. They took a blood test an it showed diabetes.”

  Mr. Davido frowned and shook his head. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  “I had a bad time. I almost got gangrene. When you get that, they amputate your legs oft.”

  “How you get that, Wally?”

  “From my brother Jimmy when he beat me up. My whole legs was swollen. The doctor said it was a miracle I didn’t get gangrene.”

  Wally looked up the avenue as he talked. The barber followed his glance.

  “You better keep away from your brother.”

  “I’m watchin out.”

  “You better leave this neighborhood, Wally. Your brother told you he don’t like you in this neighborhood. There’s a lot of jobs nowadays, Wally. Why don’t you get some kind of a job and get a furnish room to live?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinkin of gettin a job.”

  “Look every day,” said the barber.

  “I’ll look,” said Wally.

  “You better look now. Go to the employment agency.”

  “I’ll go,” said Wally. “First I’m lookin for somebody. There’s a lot of strange faces here. The neighborhood is changed.”

  “That’s right,” said the barber, “a lot of the young single fellows is gone. I can tell in the shop. The married men don’t come in for shaves like the single fellows, only haircuts. They buy electric razors. The single fellows was sports.”

  “I guess everyone is gone or they got married,” said Wally.

  “They went to the war but some never came back, and a lot of them moved away to other places.”

  “Did you ever hear from Vincent?” Wally asked.

  “No.”

  “I just thought I’d ask you.”

  “No,” said the barber. There was silence for a minute; then he said, “Come over later, Wally. I shave you.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  Wally watched Mr. Davido cross the avenue and go past the drugstore and laundry to his barbershop. Before he went in, he took a key from his vest pocket and wound up the barber pole. The red spiral, followed by the white and blue spirals, went round and round.

  A man and a woman walked by, and Wally thought he recognized the man, but whoever he was lowered his eyes and passed by. Wally looked after him contemptuously.

  He became tired of watching the stragglers and drifted over to the newsstand to read the headlines. Mr. Margolies, the owner of the candy store, came out again and picked up the pennies on the stand.

  Wally was sore. “What’s the matter, you think I’m gonna steal your lousy pennies?”

  “Please,” said Mr. Margolies, “to you I don’t have to explain my business.”

  “I’m sorry I ever spent a cent in your joint.”

  Mr. Margolies’s face grew red. “Go way, you troublemaker, you. Go way from here,” he cried, flipping his hand.

  “Aw, screwball.”

  A strong hand grasped Wally’s shoulder and swung him around. For an instant he went blind with fear and his body sagged, but when he saw it was his oldest sister, Agnes, standing there with his mother, he straightened, pretending he hadn’t been afraid.

  “What’d you do now, you drunken slob?” said Agnes in her thick voice.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Mr. Margolies had seen the look on Wally’s face. “He didn’t do anything,” he said. “He was only blocking the stand so the customers couldn’t get near the papers.”

  Then he retreated into the store.

  “You were told to stay out of this neighborhood,” rasped Agnes. She was a tall, redheaded woman, very strongly built. Her shoulders were broad, and her thick breasts hung heavily against her yellow dress.

  “I was just standin here.”

  “Who is that, Agnes?” asked his mother, peering through thick glasses.

  “It’s Wallace,” Agnes said disgustedly.

  “Hello, Ma,” Wally said in a soft voice.

  “Wallace, where have you been?” Mrs. Mullane was a stout woman, big-bellied and stoop-shouldered. Her pink scalp shone through her thin white hair, which she kept up with two amber-colored combs. Her eyes blinked under her thick glasses and she clung tightly to her daughter’s arm for fear she would walk into something she couldn’t see.

  “I was in the hospital, Ma. Jimmy beat me up.”

  “And rightly so, you drunken bum,” said Agnes. “You had your chances. Jimmy used to give you money to go to the agencies for a job, and the minute he had his back turned, you hit the bottle.”

  “It was the Depression. I couldn’t get a job.”

  “You mean nobody would take you after the BMT canned you for spendin the nickel collections on the racehorses.”

  “Aw, shut up.”

  “You’re a disgrace to your mother and your family. The least you could do is to get out of here and stay out. We suffered enough on account of you.”

  Wally changed his tone. “I’m sick. The doctor said I got diabetes.”

  Agnes said nothing.

  “Wallace,” his mother asked, “did you take a shower?”

  “No, Ma.”

  “You ought to take one.”

  “I have no place.”

  Agnes grasped her mother’s arm. “I’m takin your mother to the eye hospital.”

  “Wait awhile, Agnes,” said Mrs. Mullane pettishly. “Wallace, are you wearing a clean shirt?”

  “No, I ain’t, Ma.”

  “Well, you come home for one.”

  “Jimmy’d break his back.”

  “He needs a clean shirt,” insisted Mrs. Mullane.

  “I got one in the laundry,” said Wally.

  “Well, then take it out, Wallace.”

  “I ain’t got the money.”

  “Ma, don’t give any money to him. He’ll only throw it away on drink.”

  “He ought to have a clean shirt.”

  She opened her pocketbook and fumbled in her change purse.

  “A shirt is twenty cents,” said Agnes.

  Mrs. Mullane peered at the coin she held in her hand. “Is this a dime, Agnes?”

  “No, it’s a penny. Let me get it for you.” Agnes took two dimes from the change purse and dropped them into Wally’s outstretched palm.

  “Here, bum.”

  He let it go by. “Do you think I could have a little something to eat with, Ma?”

  “No,” said Agnes. She gripped her mother’s elbow and walked forward.

  “Change your shirt, Wallace,” Mrs. Mullane called to him from the El steps. Wally watched them go upstairs and disappear into the station.

  He felt weak, his legs unstead
y. Thinking it was because his stomach was empty, he decided to get some pretzels and beer with the dimes. Later, he could get some spoiled fruit from the fruit store and would ask Mr. Davido for some bread. Wally walked along under the El to McCafferty’s tavern, near the railroad cut.

  Opening the screen door, he glanced along the bar and was almost paralyzed with fright. His brother Jimmy, in uniform, was standing at the rear of the bar drinking a beer. Wally’s heart banged hard as he stepped back and closed the screen door. It slipped from his hand and slammed shut. The men at the bar looked up, and Jimmy saw Wally through the door.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Wally was already running. He heard the door slam and knew Jimmy was coming after him. Though he strained every muscle in his heavy, jouncing body, he could hear Jimmy’s footsteps coming nearer. Wally sped down the block, across the tracks of the railroad siding, and into the coal yard. He ran past some men loading a coal truck and crossed the cobblestoned yard, with his brother coming after him. Wally’s lungs hurt. He wanted to run inside the coal loft and hide, but he knew he would be cornered there. He looked around wildly, then made for the hill of coal near the fence. He scrambled up. Jimmy came up after him, but Wally kicked down the coal and it hit Jimmy on the face and chest. He slipped and cursed, but gripped his club and came up again. At the top of the coal pile, Wally boosted himself up on the fence and dropped heavily to the other side. As he hit the earth his legs shook, but fear would not let him stop. He ran across a back yard and thumped up the inclined wooden cellar door, jumping clumsily over a picket fence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jimmy hoisting himself over the coal-yard fence. Wally wanted to get into the delicatessen man’s back yard so he could go down to the cellar and come out on the avenue. Mr. Davido would let him hide in the toilet of the barbershop.

  Wally ran across the flower bed in the next back yard and lifted himself over the picket fence. His sweaty palms slipped and he pitched forward, his pants cuff caught on one of the pointed boards. His hands were in the soft earth of an iris bed, and he dangled from the picket fence by one leg. He wriggled his leg and pulled frantically. The cuff tore away and he fell into the flower bed. He pushed himself up, but before he could move, Jimmy had hurdled the fence and tackled him. Wally fell on the ground, the breath knocked out of him. He lay there whimpering.

  “You dirty bastard,” Jimmy said. “I’ll break your goddamn back.”

  He swung his club down on Wally’s legs. Wally shrieked and tried to pull in his legs, but Jimmy held him down and whacked him across the thighs and buttocks. Wally tried to shield his legs with his arms, but Jimmy beat him harder.

  “Oh, please, please, please,” cried Wally, wriggling under his brother’s blows, “please, Jimmy, my legs, my legs. Don’t hit my legs!”

  “You scum.”

  “My legs,” screamed Wally, “my legs, I’ll get gangrene, my legs, my legs!”

  The pain burned through his body. He felt nauseated. “My legs,” he moaned.

  Jimmy let up. He wiped his wet face and said, “I told you to stay the hell outta this neighborhood. If I see you here again, I’ll murder you.”

  Looking up, Wally saw two frightened women gazing at them out of their windows. Jimmy brushed off his uniform and went over to the cellar door. He pulled it open and walked downstairs.

  Wally lay still among the trampled flowers.

  “Why didn’t the policeman arrest him?” asked Mrs. Werner, the delicatessen man’s wife.

  “It’s the policeman’s brother,” explained Mrs. Margolies.

  He lay on his stomach, arms outstretched, and his cheek pressed against the ground. His nose was bleeding, but he was too exhausted to move. The sweat ran down his arms and the back of his coat was stained dark with it. For a long while he had no thoughts; then the nausea subsided a little, and bits of things floated through his mind. He recalled how he used to play in the coal yard with Jimmy when they were kids. He thought of the Fourth Street boys coasting down the snow-covered sides of the railroad cut in the winter. Then he thought of standing in front of the candy store on quiet summer evenings, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, smoking and fooling around with Vincent and the guys, talking about women, good times, and ball players, while they all waited for the late papers to come in. He thought about Vincent, and he remembered the day Vincent went away. It was during the Depression, and the unemployed guys stood on the corner, smoking and chewing gum and making remarks to the girls who passed by. Like Wally, Vincent had quit going to the agencies, and he stayed on the corner with the rest of them, smoking and spitting around. A girl passed by and Vincent said something to her which made the guys laugh. Mr. Davido was looking out the window of the barbershop across the street. He slammed down the scissors and left the customer sitting in the chair. His face was red as he crossed the street. He grabbed Vincent by the arm and struck him hard across the face, shouting, “You bum, why don’t you go look for a job?” Vincent’s face turned gray. He didn’t say anything, but walked away, and they never saw him again. That’s how it was.

  Mrs. Margolies said, “He’s laying there for a long time. Do you think he’s dead?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Werner, “I just saw him move.”

  Wally pushed himself up and stumbled down the stone steps of the cellar. Groping his way along the wall, he came up the stairs in front of the delicatessen. He searched through his pockets for the twenty cents his mother had given him but couldn’t find them. The nausea came back and he wanted a place to sit down and rest. He crossed the street, walking unsteadily toward the barbershop.

  Mr. Davido was standing near the window, sharpening a straight razor on a piece of sandstone. The sight of Wally that morning had brought up old memories, and he was thinking about Vincent. As he rubbed the razor round and round on the lathered sandstone, he glanced up and saw Wally staggering across the street. His pants were torn and covered with dirt, and his face was bloody. Wally opened the screen door, but Mr. Davido said sharply, “Stay outta here now, you’re drunk.”

  “Honest I ain’t,” said Wally. “I didn’t have a drop.”

  “Why you look like that?”

  “Jimmy caught me and almost killed me. My legs must be black and blue.” Wally lowered himself into a chair.

  “I’m sorry, Wally.” Mr. Davido got him some water, and Wally swallowed a little.

  “Come on, Wally, on the chair,” the barber said heartily. “I shave you an you rest an feel cooler.”

  He helped Wally onto the barber’s chair; then he lowered the back and raised the front so that Wally lay stretched out as if he were on a bed. The barber swung a towel around his neck and began to rub a blob of hot lather into his beard. It was a tough beard and hadn’t been shaved for a week. Mr. Davido rubbed the lather in deeply with his gentle, stubby fingers.

  As he was rubbing Wally’s beard, the barber looked at him in the mirror and thought how he had changed. The barber’s eyes grew sad as he recalled how things used to be, and he turned away to look out the window. He thought about his son Vincent. How wonderful it would be if Vincent came home someday, he would put his arms around his boy and kiss him on the cheek …

  Wally was also thinking how it used to be. He remembered how it was when he looked in the mirror before going out on Saturday night. He had a yellow mustache and wore a green hat. He remembered his expensive suits and the white carnation in his buttonhole and a good cigar to smoke.

  He opened his eyes.

  “You know,” he said, “the place is different now.”

  “Yes,” said the barber, looking out the window.

  Wally closed his eyes.

  Mr. Davido looked down at him. Wally was breathing quietly. His lips were pulled together tightly, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. The barber slowly raised the lather until it mixed with the tears.

  1943

  An Apology

  EARLY ONE MORNING, during a wearying hot spell in the city, a police car that happened to be c
ruising along Canal Street drew over to the curb and one of the two policemen in the car leaned out of the window and fingered a come-here to an old man wearing a black derby hat, who carried a large carton on his back, held by clothesline rope to his shoulder, and dragged a smaller carton with his other hand.

  “Hey, Mac.”

  But the peddler, either not hearing or paying no attention, went on. At that, the policeman, the younger of the two, pushed open the door and sprang out. He strode over to the peddler and, shoving the large carton on his back, swung him around as if he were straw. The peddler stared at him in frightened astonishment. He was a gaunt, shriveled man with very large eyes which at the moment gave the effect of turning lights, so that the policeman was a little surprised, though not for long.

  “Are you deaf?” he said.

  The peddler’s lips moved in a way that suggested he might be, but at last he cried out, “Why do you push me?” and again surprised the policeman with the amount of wail that rang in his voice.

  “Why didn’t you stop when I called you?”

  “So who knows you called me? Did you say my name?”

  “What is your name?”

  The peddler clamped his sparse yellow teeth rigidly together.

  “And where’s your license?”

  “What license?—who license?”

  “None of your wisecracks—your license to peddle. We saw you peddle.”

  The peddler did not deny it.

  “What’s in the big box?”

  “Hundred watt.”

  “Hundred what?”

  “Lights.”

  “What’s in the other?”

  “Sixty watt.”

  “Don’t you know it’s against the law to peddle without a license?”

  Without answering, the peddler looked around, but there was no one in sight except the other policeman in the car and his eyes were shut as if he was catching a little lost sleep.