The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Everybody: It don't get you nowhere to take nothing from nobody unless you make sure it's for keeps, for good and all, for ever and amen.

  I won't be sorry to see them brickbats hail down on us for a change. Pop bottles too, they can come flying whenever they want to. Hundreds, all to smash, like Birmingham. I'm waiting on 'em to bring out them switchblade knives, like Harlem and Chicago. Watch TV long enough and you'll see it all to happen on Deacon Street in Thermopylae. What's holding it back, that's all?—Because it's in 'em.

  I'm ready myself for that funeral.

  Oh, they may find me. May catch me one day in spite of 'em-selves. (But I grew up in the country.) May try to railroad me into the electric chair, and what that amounts to is something hotter than yesterday and today put together.

  But I advise 'em to go careful. Ain't it about time us taxpayers starts to calling the moves? Starts to telling the teachers and the preachers and the judges of our so-called courts how far they can go?

  Even the President so far, he can't walk in my house without being invited, like he's my daddy, just to say whoa. Not yet!

  Once, I run away from my home. And there was a ad for me, come to be printed in our county weekly. My mother paid for it. It was from her. It says: "SON: You are not being hunted for anything but to find you." That time, I come on back home.

  But people are dead now.

  And it's so hot. Without it even being August yet.

  Anyways, I seen him fall. I was evermore the one.

  So I reach me down my old guitar off the nail in the wall. 'Cause I've got my guitar, what I've held on to from way back when, and I never dropped that, never lost or forgot it, never hocked it but to get it again, never give it away, and I set in my chair, with nobody home but me, and I start to play, and sing a-Down. And sing a-down, down, down, down. Sing a-down, down, down, down. Down.

  ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER (1904-1991)

  Born in Radzymin, Poland, on July 14, 1904, Isaac Bashevis Singer is distinguished from the other writers in this volume by the fact that, through his long and much-acclaimed career, he wrote his novels, short stories, memoirs, and children's books in Yiddish, which was then translated, with his supervision, into English. His logic is utterly appropriate to his work: "I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a ghost story better than a dying language. The deader the language, the more alive the ghost."

  In his early twenties, Isaac Bashevis Singer made the decision to leave rabbinical studies and to become a writer, partly under the influence of his older and successful brother, the novelist Israel Joshua Singer. In 1922 he began his literary career as an editor of a Yiddish literary journal in Poland, and in 1935 he emigrated to the United States, where his brother was already living. Most of his life—familial, social, literary—was spent in the neighborhood of Upper Broadway, New York City, in which many of his short stories are set; but his most memorable work, like the story included here, is illuminated by the willed or unwilled recollection of the Holocaust, that nightmare that continues to haunt those who managed to survive and begin life anew in North America.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer's Collected Stories appeared in 1982; his last novel, Scum, was published in 1991. In all, he wrote over forty books, including Satan in Goray (1955), Gimpel the Fool (1957), Short Friday (1964), Enemies, A Love Story (1972), Passion (1975), Old Love (1979), The Penitent (1983), The Image and Other Stories (1985), and The Death of Methuselah (1988).

  The Lecture

  1

  I was on my way to Montreal to deliver a lecture. It was midwinter and I had been warned that the temperature there was ten degrees lower than in New York. Newspapers reported that trains had been stalled by the snow and fishing villages cut off, so that food and medical supplies had to be dropped to them by plane.

  I prepared for the journey as though it were an expedition to the North Pole. I put on a heavy coat over two sweaters and packed warm underwear and a bottle of cognac in case the train should be halted somewhere in the fields. In my breast pocket I had the manuscript that I intended to read—an optimistic report on the future of the Yiddish language.

  In the beginning, everything went smoothly. As usual, I arrived at the station an hour before train departure and therefore could find no porter. The station teemed with travelers and I watched them, trying to guess who they were, where they were going, and why.

  None of the men was dressed as heavily as I. Some even wore spring coats. The ladies looked bright and elegant in their minks and beavers, nylon stockings and stylish hats. They carried colorful bags and illustrated magazines, smoked cigarettes and chattered and laughed with a carefree air that has never ceased to amaze me. It was as though they knew nothing of the existence of world problems or eternal questions, as though they had never heard of death, sickness, war, poverty, betrayal, or even of such troubles as missing a train, losing a ticket, or being robbed. They flirted like young girls, exhibiting their blood-red nails. The station was chilly that morning, but no one except myself seemed to feel it. I wondered whether these people knew there had been a Hitler. Had they heard of Stalin's murder machine? They probably had, but what does one body care when another is tortured?

  I was itchy from the woolen underwear. Now I began to feel hot. But from time to time a shiver ran through my body. The lecture, in which I predicted a brilliant future for Yiddish, troubled me. What had made me so optimistic all of a sudden? Wasn't Yiddish going under before my very eyes?

  The prompt arrival of American trains and the ease in boarding them have always seemed like miracles to me. I remember journeys in Poland when Jewish passengers were not allowed into the cars and I had to hang on to the handrails. I remember railway strikes when trains were halted midway for many hours and it was impossible in the dense crowd to push through to the washroom.

  But here I was, sitting on a soft seat, right by the window. The car was heated. There were no bundles, no high fur hats, no sheepskin coats, no boxes, and no gendarmes. Nobody was eating bread and lard. Nobody drank vodka from a bottle. Nobody was berating Jews for state treason. In fact, nobody discussed politics at all. As soon as the train started, a huge Negro in a white apron came in and announced lunch. The train was not rattling, it glided smoothly on its rails along the frozen Hudson. Outside, the landscape gleamed with snow and light. Birds that remained here for the winter flew busily over the icy river.

  The farther we went, the wintrier the landscape. The weather seemed to change every few miles. Now we went through dense fog, and now the air cleared and the sun was shining again over silvery distances.

  A heavy snowfall began. It suddenly turned dark. The day was flickering out. The express no longer ran but crept slowly and cautiously, as though feeling its way. The heating system in the train seemed to have broken down. It became chilly and I had to put on my coat. The other passengers pretended for a while that they did not notice anything, as though reluctant to admit too quickly that they were cold. But soon they began to tap their feet, grumble, grin sheepishly, and rummage in their valises for sweaters, scarves, boots, or whatever else they had brought along. Collars were turned up, hands stuffed into sleeves. The makeup on women's faces dried up and began to peel like plaster.

  The American dream gradually dissolves and harsh Polish reality returns. Someone is drinking whiskey from a bottle. Someone is eating bread and sausage to warm his stomach. There is also a rush to the toilets. It is difficult to understand how it happened, but the floor of the car becomes wet and muddy. The windowpanes become crusted with ice and bloom with frost patterns.

  Suddenly the train stops. I look out and see a sparse wood. The trees are thin and bent, and though they are covered with snow, they look bare and charred, as after a fire. The sun has already set, but purple stains still glow in the west. The snow on the ground is no longer white, but violet. Crows walk on it, flap their wings, and I can hear their cawing. The snow falls in gray, heavy lumps, as though the guardians of the Treasury of Snow up above had been
too lazy to flake it more finely. Passengers walk from car to car, leaving the doors open. Conductors and other train employees run past; when they are asked questions, they do not stop, but mumble something rudely.

  We are not far from the Canadian border, and Uncle Sam's domain is virtually at an end. Some passengers begin to take down their luggage; they may have to show it soon to the customs officials. A naturalized American citizen gets out his citizenship papers and studies his own photograph, as if trying to convince himself that the document is not a false one.

  One or two passengers venture to step out of the train, but they sink up to their knees into the snow. It is not long before they clamber back into the car. The twilight lingers for a while, then night falls.

  I see people using the weather as a pretext for striking up acquaintance. Women begin to talk among themselves and there is sudden intimacy. The men have also formed a group. Everyone picks up bits of information. People offer each other advice. But nobody pays any attention to me. I sit alone, a victim of my own isolation, shyness, and alienation from the world. I begin to read a book, and this provokes hostility, for reading a book at such a time seems like a challenge and an insult to the other passengers. I exclude myself from society, and all the faces say to me silently: You don't need us and we don't need you. Never mind, you will still have to turn to us, but we won't have to turn to you. . . .

  I open my large, heavy valise, take out the bottle of cognac, and take a stealthy sip now and then. After that, I lean my face against the cold windowpane and try to look out. But all I see is the reflection of the interior of the car. The world outside seems to have disappeared. The solipsistic philosophy of Bishop Berkeley has won over all the other systems. Nothing remains but to wait patiently until God's idea of a train halted in its tracks by snowdrifts will give way to God's ideas of movement and arrival.

  Alas for my lecture! If I arrive in the middle of the night, there will not even be anyone waiting for me. I shall have to look for a hotel. If only I had a return ticket. However, was Captain Scott, lost in the polar ice fields, in a better position after Amundsen had discovered the South Pole? How much would Captain Scott have given to be able to sit in a brightly lit railway car? No, one must not sin by complaining.

  The cognac had made me warm. Drunken fumes rise from an empty stomach to the brain. I am awake and dozing at the same time. Whole minutes drift away, leaving only a blur. I hear talk, but I don't quite know what it means. I sink into blissful indifference. For my part, the train can stand here for three days and three nights. I have a box of crackers in my valise. I will not die of hunger. Various themes float through my mind. Something within me mutters dreamlike words and phrases.

  The diesel engine must be straining forward. I am aware of dragging, knocking, growling sounds, as of a monstrous ox, a legendary steel bull. Most of the passengers have gone to the bar or the restaurant car, but I am too lazy to get up. I seem to have grown into the seat. A childish obstinacy takes possession of me: I'll show them all that I am not affected by any of this commotion; I am above the trivial happenings of the day.

  Everyone who passes by—from the rear cars to the front, or the other way—glances at me; and it seems to me that each one forms some judgment of his own about the sort of person I am. But does anyone guess that I am a Yiddish writer late for his lecture? This, I am sure, occurs to no one. This is known only to the higher powers.

  I take another sip, and another. I have never understood the passion for drinking, but now I see what power there is in alcohol. This liquid holds within itself the secrets of nirvana. I no longer look at my wristwatch. I no longer worry about a place to sleep. I mock in my mind the lecture I had prepared. What if it is not delivered? People will hear fewer lies! If I could open the window, I would throw the manuscript out into the woods. Let the paper and ink return to the cosmos, where there can be no errors and no lies. Atoms and molecules are guiltless; they are a part of the divine truth. . . .

  2

  The train arrived exactly at half past two. No one was waiting for me. I left the station and was caught in a blast of icy night wind that no coat or sweaters could keep out. All taxis were immediately taken. I returned to the station, prepared to spend the night sitting on a bench.

  Suddenly I noticed a lame woman and a young girl looking at me and pointing with their fingers. I stopped and looked back. The lame woman leaned on two thick, short canes. She was wrinkled, disheveled, like an old woman in Poland, but her black eyes suggested that she was more sick and broken than old. Her clothes also reminded me of Poland. She wore a sort of sleeveless fur jacket. Her shoes had toes and heels I had not seen in years. On her shoulders she wore a fringed woolen shawl, like one of my mother's. The young woman, on the other hand, was stylishly dressed, but also rather slovenly.

  After a moment's hesitation, I approached them.

  The girl said: "Are you Mr. N.?"

  I answered, "Yes, I am."

  The lame woman made a sudden movement, as though to drop her canes and clap her hands. She immediately broke into a wailing cry so familiar to me.

  "Dear Father in heaven!" she sang out. "I was telling my daughter it's he, and she said no. I recognized you! Where were you going with the valise? It's a wonder you came back. I'd never have forgiven myself! Well, Binele, what do you say now? Your mother still has some sense. I am only a woman, but I am a rabbi's daughter, and a scholar has an eye for people. I took one look and I thought to myself-—it's he! But nowadays the eggs are cleverer than the chickens. She says to me: 'No, it can't be.' And in the meantime you disappear. I was already beginning to think, myself: Who knows, one's no more than human, anybody can make a mistake. But when I saw you come back, I knew it was you. My dear man, we've been waiting here since half past seven in the evening. We weren't alone; there was a whole group of teachers, educators, a few writers too. But then it grew later and later and people went home. They have wives, children. Some have to get up in the morning to go to work. But I said to my daughter, 'I won't go. I won't allow my favorite writer, whose every word I treasure as a pearl, to come here and find no one waiting for him. If you want, my child,' I said to her, 'you can go home and go to bed.' What's a night's sleep? When I was young, I used to think that if you missed a night's sleep the world would go under. But Hitler taught us a lesson. He taught us a lesson I won't forget until I lie with shards over my eyes. You look at me and you see an old, sick woman, a cripple, but I did hard labor in Hitler's camps. I dug ditches and loaded railway cars. Was there anything I didn't do? It was there that I caught my rheumatism. At night we slept on plank shelves not fit for dogs, and we were so hungry that—"

  "You'll have enough time to talk later, Momma. It's the middle of the night," her daughter interrupted.

  It was only then that I took a closer look at the daughter. Her figure and general appearance were those of a young girl, but she was obviously in her late twenties, or even early thirties. She was small, narrow, with yellowish hair combed back and tied into a bun. Her face was of a sickly pallor, covered with freckles. She had yellow eyes, a round forehead, a crooked nose, thin lips, and a long chin. Around her neck she wore a mannish scarf. She reminded me of a Hassidic boy.

  The few words she spoke were marked by a provincial Polish accent I had forgotten during my years in America. She made me think of rye bread, caraway seeds, cottage cheese, and the water brought by water carriers from the well in pails slung on a wooden yoke over their shoulders.

  "Thank you, but I have patience to listen," I said.

  "When my mother begins to talk about those years, she can talk for a week and a day—"

  "Hush, hush, your mother isn't as crazy as you think. It's true, our nerves were shattered out there. It is a wonder we are not running around stark mad in the streets. But what about her? As you see her, she too was in Auschwitz waiting for the ovens. I did not even know she was alive. I was sure she was lost, and you can imagine a mother's feelings! I thought she had gone
the way of her three brothers; but after the liberation we found each other. What did they want from us, the beasts? My husband was a holy man, a scribe. My sons worked hard to earn a piece of bread, because inscribing mezuzahs doesn't bring much of an income. My husband, himself, fasted more often than he ate. The glory of God rested on his face. My sons were killed by the murderers—"

  "Momma, will you please stop?"

  "I'll stop, I'll stop. How much longer will I last, anyway? But she is right. First of all, my dear man, we must take care of you. The president gave me the name of a hotel—they made all the reservations for you—but my daughter didn't hear what he said, and I forgot it. This forgetting is my misfortune. I put something down and I don't know where. I keep looking for things, and that's how my whole days go by. So maybe, my dear writer, you'll spend the night with us? We don't have such a fine apartment. It's cold, it's shabby. Still, it's better than no place at all. I'd telephone the president, but I'm afraid to wake him up at night. He has such a temper, may he forgive me; he keeps shouting that we aren't civilized. So I say to him: 'The Germans are civilized, go to them. . . .' '

  "Come with us, the night is three quarters gone, anyway," the daughter said to me. "He should have written it down instead of just saying it; and if he said it, he should have said it to me, not to my mother. She forgets everything. She puts on her glasses and cries, 'Where are my glasses?' Sometimes I have to laugh. Let me have your valise."