The Dream

by Harry Bernstein

  ‘I just hope’, she said to me once, ‘that your grandfather lives long enough for me to be able to pay him back.’

  It was still there on her mind, that consuming desire to give my grandfather the money back that he had spent on our tickets to America. She told me she would never rest until that debt was paid off, despite what I had told her, and often repeated, my grandfather had said to me, that she owed him nothing, that he in fact owed her.

  Then one time, one pay day, when I got up in the late morning and gave her the money that I always gave her and offered to go with her to the bank after I’d had my breakfast, she seemed embarrassed and said, ‘I don’t have to go to the bank.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘I took the money out of the bank,’ she confessed and went on to explain. One day recently, on her way to do her shopping, walking to a distant street market in one of the poorer neighbourhoods, she had come across a man giving a speech from a small stepladder to a crowd of people gathered around him.

  His voice was hoarse from speaking, but it was powerful enough to hold their attention and what he was saying gripped them all with fear. Her, too. She listened with a rapidly beating heart. The man was telling them that the present days of so-called prosperity would soon be over. So-called because the wealth was an illusion. It belonged to those who already had money. They simply had more wealth. But for the poor nothing had changed. The poor remained poor. Soon, however, there would be drastic changes brought on, not by revolution, but by capitalism itself.

  ‘Capitalism’, said this man, ‘is like some strange beast that devours itself. This so-called wealth of today, which exists mostly on paper and is paper, will disappear overnight as if it had been a mirage. Folks, you will see an America that you have never seen before in all its history. There will be few jobs. Factories, shops, businesses of all kinds will close. Even banks will be closed and the precious money you have saved will be gone with them. People will be hungry. You will see long lines of people waiting for someone to give them bread …’

  On and on he went, painting such a dark picture that the listeners shrank with fear and my mother was one of them. But she had her wits about her. She turned away before he had gone much further and ran to the bank. She withdrew all her money and carried it home, clutching the purse in which it was contained. Then she hid the money under the mattress of her bed.

  I listened to her story, appalled. ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘you shouldn’t pay any attention to those street corner speakers. They don’t know what they’re talking about. The country’s never been in such good shape as it is now, so how can everything break down like that man said? He’s crazy. The banks will never go broke. Let’s go there and put your money back into it.’

  But she was still under the hypnotic spell of the speaker. She couldn’t, she said. She was afraid. And what was wrong with keeping it under the mattress? I shrugged. I gave in to her. Perhaps she was right. There was nothing wrong with it and if it made her feel better then fine, let it be that way.

  We had no more arguments about the matter, and maybe I was amused more than anything else when I gave her the money each week and saw her go into the bedroom and stuff the dollar or two in with the little bundle under the mattress.

  Meanwhile, the good times in the country continued without a sign of any collapse, and if the mail coming into the post office, much of it business mail, was any sign of it, times couldn’t have been better – and safer – than now, because the mail seemed to be getting heavier and heavier. And this worked to the advantage of Dave and myself, for help was needed more than ever and when we applied for extensions on our scheme tests they gave them to us readily. Joe and Shorty had already taken theirs and had passed with flying colours, and both seemed more at ease and in jollier moods than they had been before. So were others. Now, having passed their scheme tests they were in line for becoming permanent staff instead of substitutes, with regular hours and weekly pay with vacations.

  But for Dave and me the shadow of uncertainty still hung over us. We didn’t care. I was eighteen. Dave was nineteen. We were cocky about the future, about ourselves, and contemptuous of a job that we felt was beneath us and of the people around us who would be sorting mail for the rest of their humdrum lives.

  The weather was growing warmer, and the steam heat in the mailing room was becoming superfluous and made us sweat, and the smell of the sweat was everywhere. Dave and I broke away from the place as soon as the call was sounded for the lunch break and, instead of eating down in the basement cafeteria with what we called the herd, we walked some distance to a chain cafeteria – Pixley and Ehlers – famous for their bowl of soup that was a meal in itself. It was good, though, to get out into the fresh air, to breathe it in, and to be away from the noise and stuffiness and the sweat smells of the post office. And from the grind especially.

  Dave and I walked rapidly and laughed and joked and talked. As the warmer weather came on, Dave had dispensed with his racoon coat and was wearing a slicker, a bright yellow raincoat with pictures of half-naked women painted all over it, popular outerwear for college students in those days. I wished I had one too, but I was not a college student yet and besides I would not have spent the money. I was saving my money, hoarding every cent I could. I had a bank account and I took pleasure in increasing it every week.

  I was careful to keep any knowledge of it from my father. It was the same with the little hoard my mother had hidden under the mattress. If he had known of their existence he would have stopped giving my mother any money at all. As it was, he gave her a bare minimum, aware that I was working and providing her with the bulk of the household expenses. Whatever he kept of his pay he spent on his drinking and gambling. It was much like the old days. He ate his dinner and left, and his leaving was much the same as it had been before: in such a hurry that he had not fully put his coat on and one sleeve dangled behind as he groped for it while striding to the door. Then the door banged shut. He was gone for the night. Where to? There were no pubs. There was no Jewish Gentlemen’s Club where he could play cards and drink. But he had found new haunts on the west side. We had learned that from Uncle Saul, who was about the only one of the brothers on speaking terms with him. He had quarrelled with the others, but he had soon made friends elsewhere. There was a Romanian restaurant that he frequented most often where they served liquor in cups and – Uncle Saul told me this privately when my mother was not with us, and he told it with a little wicked grin on his face – they also served women upon request.

  I did not want to hear any more, and I felt sick and more than ever wished I could get my mother to leave him.

  Certainly then, I made doubly sure that he would not know of my bank account and I kept the bank book with me wherever I went, and from time to time I had my mother look under the mattress to make certain her money was still there. But I made one mistake. Uncle Saul was my mentor, my adviser. I trusted him and confided in him. He gave me a lot of advice on how to apply for college and what course to take. He knew all about such matters and he thought I should become a lawyer. He himself was going to become one as soon as he found the time. But he was very busy with other things. In the meantime, he wanted me to start studying law as soon as I entered college in the autumn. It was good to be able to talk to someone like that, to have someone interested in you. He took the place of a father, so I confided everything to him, how I was saving my money carefully, the bank book I always kept with me, my mother’s money under the mattress. And he patted me on the shoulder and said I was wise for my age and I’d make a damn good lawyer.

  My father usually came home from work about the same time I was getting ready to leave for my shift at the post office. We never spoke to one another, nor even glanced at one another. But this time he did glance at me. He did more than that. He halted right in front of me and held out a hand. ‘Let me have your bank book,’ he said.

  I could not believe what I was hearing. I stared at him. Nor coul
d my mother. She too was staring.

  ‘Why are you asking him for that?’ she said.

  ‘You keep out of this,’ he answered roughly. He kept his eyes on me. He was drunk. I knew that. I could smell the liquor on him. This was something unusual. He had never before stopped off after work for a drink. He did all his drinking at night after dinner.

  The anger was building up inside me. I kept it in check. ‘Why should I give you my bank book?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I’m your father, and you’re under twenty-one and you do what I tell you.’

  ‘You’re no father,’ I said. ‘You’re just a dirty rotten bum.’

  Then he swung with his fist. I stepped back in time and put up my own fists. I heard my mother shout at me. Out of the corner of one eye I saw Sidney shrinking back into a corner, frightened. He was about eight years old, still just a child.

  I thought, this is no place for this to happen, with my mother here and Sidney. But I had very little time to think. He was advancing on me with a murderous look on his face and I had to defend myself. I clenched my fists and moved a little, like a boxer.

  He swung again and missed. No question, he was quite drunk. But this time I did not move back. I had to defend myself or I was going to get hurt. I swung my own fist and caught him a blow on the mouth. It was a good one, too. I saw the incredulous look on his face. This was the last thing in the world he would have expected, for one of his children, who lived in mortal fear of him, to strike back at him, to dare.

  I did not give him time to reflect on it. With that single punch, all the rage, all the hatred that had been pent up in me for years broke loose and I gave vent to a torrent of blows on his face one after the other, sending blood streaming from his nose, his lips, blackening his eyes. I hit blindly and I could not stop even though I heard my mother screaming at me to do so, and I could also hear Sidney’s whimpering. My father staggered backwards and made no further attempt to strike at me, but suddenly broke away and ran, shouting at the top of his voice for the whole house, the whole street to hear, ‘Look what he’s done to me! Look, look, my own son! He’s tried to kill me. Call the police! I want the police!’

  He ran down the stairs and out into the street yelling it, and the entire street came alive and people rushed to the scene, and heads popped out of windows, and our Polish landlord came rushing into our house wanting to know what was going on, and the police came, and I thought for a while they were going to arrest me.

  They didn’t. I was lucky. They were sympathetic. My father was drunk. That was enough for them. Drunk and disorderly. One of them said, ‘I had a father like that. I know what it’s like.’

  They decided to take him off, to the hospital first to get his wounds tended. I’d done quite a job on him, they said with some satisfaction. He’d have to be cleaned up and then they’d take him to jail to dry out and answer my charges.

  But there weren’t going to be any charges. I had decided that even before they left. I knew what had to be done and I said so to my mother, who was not yet fully recovered from the shock of what had happened. I said, ‘Ma, we’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to leave him and now’s the time to do it.’

  She looked at me bewildered. ‘But how,’ she asked, ‘how can we go off just like that? Where would we go to?’

  ‘We’ll go to New York,’ I said. ‘Joe’s there and he’ll help us find a place to live, and you’ll never have to see him again.’

  ‘But what about your job?’ she said.

  ‘Never mind my job. I’ll get another in New York.’

  ‘But what about college?’

  ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘I’ll put it off a bit longer. I can always go to college. There’s other more important things to do right now. We’ve got to get away from him. He’ll be back in a day or two and it’ll start all over again. I can’t stand any more of it. You can’t either. We’ve got to get away from him and now’s our chance. He won’t know where we’ve gone. We’ll not tell any of the relatives. We’ll just go and disappear.’

  I saw her still hesitating and a thought came to me suddenly. If Uncle Saul had told him about my bank account, then he could also have told him about Ma’s money under the mattress. ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘is your money still under the mattress?’

  ‘Yes, why do you ask?’

  ‘When’s the last time you looked?’

  ‘Two days ago, when I was changing the bed sheets.’

  ‘Go and look again.’ The more I thought of it the more likely it seemed. His coming home drunk right from work meant he’d had money to stop off somewhere. I started towards the bedroom myself. My mother ran ahead of me. I came in to see her lifting up the end of the mattress at the head and to hear her despairing cry: ‘It’s gone! It’s gone!’

  Yes, it was gone and my hunch had been right. There was no question but that he’d taken it and in me there was bitterness at Uncle Saul’s betrayal. I told her all about my confiding in Uncle Saul and fury came on her face along with the despair. Now there was no longer any hesitation about leaving. ‘All right, we’ll go,’ she said. ‘If he can do this to me then I can leave him.’

  We packed that evening and Sidney helped us willingly. I don’t think he felt as strongly about my father as I did, but I know that Ma meant everything to him as she did to me, and leaving suddenly like this to go to New York was fun in addition to everything else. He got his own things together and we got ours. We were only able to take relatively few of our possessions, leaving much behind that we would have liked to take but couldn’t.

  We filled two suitcases that I carried, and I think my mother took the brass candlesticks that she had smuggled out of Poland, wrapped in newspaper and stuffed in a shopping bag along with a few other household treasures. I noticed that as we were leaving and about to close the door behind us for the last time she paused and gave a look backwards at the living room, the parlour, the big ugly piano that she thought was so beautiful, the couch and matching chairs that were paid off, the carpet, at the dream that had almost come true. At how close she had been to achieving it and now was forced to leave it all behind.

  I could feel the sadness inside her, and the regret, and the uncertainty that lay ahead. Well, I felt some of it myself, but mingled with that was a sense of relief and almost joy at the prospect of living without my father and all the misery that he had caused us.

  We went down the steps and out into the street. It was dark and not many people were about. I was glad of that. I didn’t want anyone to see us or to know where we were going.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WE WENT TO New York by bus. It was the cheapest way to go and the buses ran often. In fact, there was one about to leave when we reached the bus station, and we rushed to buy our tickets and check our luggage. There were ample seats in the bus and we were able to get two, one behind the other. I sat in the one with my mother because I wanted to talk to her and Sidney had a seat alone behind us.

  I knew how my mother was feeling and I wanted to comfort and reassure her. As soon as the bus started off I put my arm round her and said, ‘Ma, everything is going to be all right. I’ve got money in the bank and I’ll send for it as soon as we reach New York, and in the meantime I’ve got a few dollars in my pocket that’ll tide us over, and Joe will be there to help us. As soon as we reach a stop I’ll send him a telegram to meet us in New York.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a few dollars in my pocketbook too. The only thing that worries me is your job. You’ll lose that and it was such a good job. And you were able to save money for college.’

  ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t such a good job’, and I told her of all the things I had been keeping from her, the dullness, and the monotony, and having to stand on my feet for hours at a time, and the scheme I had to learn. ‘I’m not sorry I lost it, Ma,’ I added. ‘I don’t think I could have stood it much longer anyway. And I think they would have fired me before I quit.’

  She listened and sighed. �
��And I was always thinking it was such a good job and you liked it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the important thing. I’ll get another job in New York. There are plenty of jobs. And eventually I’ll be able to go to college, too. The important thing is we’ve got rid of him. It’s something you should have done a long time ago.’

  ‘I know,’ she said slowly, brooding a little, ‘I thought of doing it so many times, but I couldn’t. You know why.’

  ‘Yes, I know why. We talked about that before. That’s all past history. You don’t have to worry about taking care of your children any more. It’s time your children took care of you.’

  ‘There’s only you,’ she said.

  ‘And Sidney.’

  ‘He’s only eight.’

  I gave a glance behind. Sidney was absorbed in a puzzle I had bought for him some time ago and that he had chosen to take along as one of his most treasured objects. ‘He’ll grow up,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know. But in the meantime there’s just you.’ She seemed still to be brooding and thinking of something that troubled her.

  ‘What’s wrong with just me?’ I asked.

  ‘You might meet some girl and you’ll want to get married and have a family of your own.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ma,’ I protested. ‘That’s a long way off – if it ever happens. You’re not worried about that, are you?’