The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  "What are you saying? I can carry it myself, it isn't heavy."

  "You are not used to carrying things, but I have learned out there to carry heavy loads. If you would see the rocks I used to lift, you wouldn't believe your eyes. I don't even believe it myself anymore. Sometimes it seems to me it was all an evil dream. ..."

  "Heaven forbid, you will not carry my valise. That's all I need. ..."

  "He is a gentleman, he is a fine and gentle man. I knew it at once as soon as I read him for the first time," the mother said. "You wouldn't believe me, but we read your stories even in the camps. After the war, they began to send us books, and I came across one of your stories. I don't remember what it was called, but I read it and a darkness lifted off my heart. 'Binele,' I said— she was already with me then—'I've found a treasure.' Those were my words. ..."

  "Thank you, thank you very much. "

  "Don't thank me, don't thank me. It's we who have to thank you. All the troubles come from people being deaf and blind. They don't see the next man and so they torture him. We are wandering among blind evildoers. . . . Binele, don't let this dear man carry the valise. ..."

  "Yes, please give it to me!"

  I had to plead with Binele to let me carry it. She almost tried to pull it out of my hands.

  We went outside and a taxi drove up. It was not easy to get the mother into it. I still cannot understand how she had managed to come to the station. I had to lift her up and put her in. In the process, she dropped one of her canes, and Binele and I had to look for it in the snow. The driver had already begun to grumble and scold in his Canadian French. Afterward, the car began to pitch and roll over dimly lit streets covered with snow and overgrown with mountains of ice. The tires had chains on them, but the taxi skidded backward several times.

  We finally drove into a street that was reminiscent of a small town in Poland: murky, narrow, with wooden houses. The sick woman hastily opened her purse, but I paid before she had time to take out her money. Both women chided me, and the driver demanded that we get out as quickly as possible. I virtually had to carry the crippled woman out of the taxi. Again, we had to look for her cane in the deep snow. Afterward, her daughter and I half led, half dragged her up a flight of steps. They opened the door and I was suddenly enveloped in odors I had long forgotten: moldy potatoes, rotting onions, chicory, and something else I could not even name. In some mysterious way the mother and daughter had managed to bring with them the whole atmosphere of wretched poverty from their old home in Poland.

  They lit a kerosene lamp and I saw an apartment with tattered wallpaper, a rough wooden floor, and spider webs in every corner. The kerosene stove was out and the rooms were drafty. On a bench stood cracked pots, chipped plates, cups without handles. I even caught sight of a besom on a pile of sweepings. No stage director, I thought, could have done a better job of reproducing such a scene of old-country misery.

  Binele began to apologize. "What a mess, no? We were in such a hurry to get to the station, we didn't even have time to wash the dishes. And what's the good of washing or cleaning here, anyway? It's an old, run-down shanty. The landlady knows only one thing: to come for the rent every month. If you're late one day, she's ready to cut your throat. Still, after everything we went through over there, this is a palace. ..."

  And Binele laughed, exposing a mouthful of widely spaced teeth with gold fillings that must have been made when she was still across the ocean.

  3

  They made my bed on a folding cot in a tiny room with barred windows. Binele covered me with two blankets and spread my coat on top of them. But it was still as cold as outside. I lay under all the coverings and could not warm up.

  Suddenly I remembered my manuscript. Where was the manuscript of my lecture? I had had it in the breast pocket of my coat. Afraid to sit up, lest the cot should collapse, I tried to find it. But the manuscript was not there. I looked in my jacket, which hung on a chair nearby, but it was not there either. I was certain that I had not put it into the valise, for I had opened the valise only to get the cognac. I had intended to open it for the customs officers, but they had only waved me on, to indicate it was not necessary.

  It was clear to me that I had lost the manuscript. But how? The mother and daughter had told me that the lecture was postponed to the next day, but what would I read? There was only one hope: perhaps it had dropped on the floor when Binele was covering me with the coat. I felt the floor, trying not to make a sound, but the cot creaked at the slightest movement. It even seemed to me that it began to creak in advance, when I only thought of moving. Inanimate things are not really inanimate. . . .

  The mother and daughter were evidently not asleep. I heard a whispering, a mumbling from the next room. They were arguing about something quietly, but about what?

  The loss of the manuscript, I thought, was a Freudian accident. I was not pleased with the essay from the very first. The tone I took in it was too grandiloquent. Still, what was I to talk about that evening? I might get confused from the very first sentences, like that speaker who had started his lecture with, "Peretz was a peculiar man," and could not utter another word.

  If only I could sleep! I had not slept the previous night either. When I have to make a public appearance, I don't sleep for nights. The loss of the manuscript was a real catastrophe! I tried to close my eyes, but they kept opening by themselves. Something bit me; but as soon as I wanted to scratch, the cot shook and screamed like a sick man in pain.

  I lay there, silent, stiff, wide-awake. A mouse scratched somewhere in a hole, and then I heard a sound, as of some beast with saw and fangs trying to saw through the floorboards. A mouse could not have raised such noise. It was some monster trying to cut down the foundations of the building. . . .

  "Well, this adventure will be the end of me!" I said to myself. "I won't come out of here alive."

  I lay benumbed, without stirring a limb. My nose was stuffed and I was breathing the icy air of the room through my mouth. My throat felt constricted. I had to cough, but I did not want to disturb the mother and daughter. A cough might also bring down the ramshackle cot. . . . Well, let me imagine that I had remained under Hitler in wartime. Let me get some taste of that, too. . . .

  I imagined myself somewhere in Treblinka or Maidanek. I had done hard labor all day long. Now I was lying on a plank shelf. Tomorrow there would probably be a "selection," and since I was no longer well, I would be sent to the ovens. ... I mentally began to say goodbye to the few people close to me. I must have dozed off, for I was awakened by loud cries. Binele was shouting: "Momma! Momma! Momma! . . ." The door flew open and Binele called me: "Help me! Mother is dead!"

  I wanted to jump off the cot but it collapsed under me, and instead of jumping, I had to raise myself. I cried: "What happened?"

  Binele screamed: "She is cold! Where are the matches? Call a doctor! Call a doctor! Put on the light! Oh, Momma! . . . Momma! Momma!"

  I never carry matches with me, since I do not smoke. I went in my pajamas to the bedroom. In the dark I collided with Binele. I asked her: "How can I call a doctor?"

  She did not answer, but opened the door into the hallway and shouted, "Help, people, help! My mother is dead!" She cried with all her strength, as women cry in the Jewish small towns in Poland, but nobody responded. I tried to look for matches, knowing in advance that I would not find them in this strange house. Binele returned and we collided again in the dark. She clung to me with unexpected force and wailed: "Help! Help! I have nobody else in the world! She was all I had!"

  And she broke into a wild lament, leaving me stunned and speechless.

  "Find a match! Light the lamp!" I finally cried out, although I knew that my words were wasted.

  "Call a doctor! Call a doctor!" she screamed, undoubtedly realizing herself the senselessness of her demand.

  She half led, half pulled me to the bed where her mother lay. I put out my hand and touched her body. I began to look for her hand, found it, and tried to feel her
pulse, but there was no pulse. The hand hung heavy and limp. It was cold as only a dead thing is cold. Binele seemed to understand what I was doing and kept silent for a while.

  "Well, well? She's dead? . . . She's dead! . . . She had a sick heart! . . . Help me! Help me!"

  "What can I do? I can't see anything!" I said to her, and my words seemed to have double meaning.

  "Help me! . . . Help me! . . . Momma!"

  "Are there no neighbors in the house?" I asked.

  "There is a drunkard over us. ..."

  "Perhaps we can get matches from him?"

  Binele did not answer. I suddenly became aware of how cold I felt. I had to put something on or I would catch pneumonia. I shivered and my teeth chattered. I started out for the room where I had slept but found myself in the kitchen. I returned and nearly threw Binele over. She was, herself, half naked. Unwittingly I touched her breast.

  "Put something on!" I told her. "You'll catch a cold!"

  "I do not want to live! I do not want to live! . . . She had no right to go to the station! ... I begged her, but she is so stubborn. . . . She had nothing to eat. She would not even take a glass of tea. . . . What shall I do now? Where shall I go? Oh, Momma, Momma!"

  Then, suddenly, it was quiet. Binele must have gone upstairs to knock on the drunkard's door. I remained alone with a corpse in the dark. A long-forgotten terror possessed me. I had the eerie feeling that the dead woman was trying to approach me, to seize me with her cold hands, to clutch at me and drag me off to where she was now. After all, I was responsible for her death. The strain of coming out to meet me had killed her. I started toward the outside door, as though ready to run out into the street. I stumbled on a chair and struck my knee. Bony fingers stretched after me. Strange beings screamed at me silently. There was a ringing in my ears and saliva filled my mouth as though I were about to faint.

  Strangely, instead of coming to the outside door, I found myself back in my room. My feet stumbled on the flattened cot. I bent down to pick up my overcoat and put it on. It was only then that I realized how cold I was and how cold it was in that house. The coat was like an ice bag against my body. I trembled as with ague. My teeth clicked, my legs shook. I was ready to fight off the dead woman, to wrestle with her in mortal combat. I felt my heart hammering frighteningly loud and fast. No heart could long endure such violent knocking. I thought that Binele would find two corpses when she returned, instead of one.

  I heard talk and steps and saw a light. Binele had brought down the upstairs neighbor. She had a man's coat over her shoulders. The neighbor carried a burning candle. He was a huge man, dark, with thick black hair and a long nose. He was barefoot and wore a bathrobe over his pajamas. What struck me most in my panic was the enormous size of his feet. He went to the bed with his candle and shadows danced after him and wavered across the dim ceiling.

  One glance at the woman told me that she was dead. Her face had altered completely. Her mouth had become strangely thin and sunken; it was no longer a mouth, but a hole. The face was yellow, rigid, and claylike. Only the gray hair looked alive. The neighbor muttered something in French. He bent over the woman and felt her forehead. He uttered a single word and Binele began to scream and wail again. He tried to speak to her, to tell her something else, but she evidently did not understand his language. He shrugged his shoulders, gave me the candle, and started back. My hand trembled so uncontrollably that the small flame tossed in all directions and almost went out. I let some tallow drip on the wardrobe and set the candle in it.

  Binele began to tear her hair and let out such a wild lament that I cried angrily at her: "Stop screaming!"

  She gave me a sidelong glance, full of hate and astonishment, and answered quietly and sensibly: "She was all I had in the world. ..."

  "I know, I understand. . . . But screaming won't help."

  My words appeared to have restored her to her senses. She stood silently by the bed, looking down at her mother. I stood on the opposite side. I clearly remembered that the woman had had a short nose; now it had grown long and hooked, as though death had made manifest a hereditary trait that had been hidden during her lifetime. Her forehead and eyebrows had acquired a new and masculine quality. Binele's sorrow seemed for a while to have given way to stupor. She stared, wide-eyed, as if she did not recognize her own mother.

  I glanced at the window. How long could a night last, even a winter night? Would the sun never rise? Could this be the moment of that cosmic catastrophe that David Hume had envisaged as a theoretical possibility? But the panes were just beginning to turn gray.

  I went to the window and wiped the misty pane. The night outside was already intermingled with blurs of daylight. The contours of the street were becoming faintly visible; piles of snow, small houses, roofs. A street lamp glimmered in the distance, but it cast no light. I raised my eyes to the sky. One half was still full of stars; the other was already flushed with morning. For a few seconds I seemed to have forgotten all that had happened and gave myself up entirely to the birth of the new day. I saw the stars go out one by one. Streaks of red and rose and yellow stretched across the sky, as in a child's painting.

  "What shall I do now? What shall I do now?" Binele began to cry again. "Whom shall I call? Where shall I go? Call a doctor! Call a doctor!" And she broke into sobs.

  I turned to her. "What can a doctor do now?"

  "But someone should be called."

  "You have no relatives?"

  "None. I've no one in the world."

  "What about the members of your lecture club?"

  "They don't live in this neighborhood. ..."

  I went to my room and began to dress. My clothes were icy. My suit, which had been pressed before my journey, was crumpled. My shoes looked like misshapen clodhoppers. I caught sight of my face in a mirror, and it shocked me. It was hollow, dirty, paper-gray, covered with stubble. Outside, the snow began to fall again.

  "What can I do for you?" I asked Binele. "I'm a stranger here. I don't know where to go."

  "Woe is me! What am I doing to you? You are the victim of our misfortune. I shall go out and telephone the police, but I cannot leave my mother alone."

  "I'll stay here."

  "You will? She loved you. She never stopped talking about you. ... All day yesterday. ..."

  I sat down on a chair and kept my eyes away from the dead woman. Binele dressed herself. Ordinarily I would be afraid to remain alone with a corpse. But I was half frozen, half asleep. I was exhausted after the miserable night. A deep despair came over me. It was a long, long time since I had seen such wretchedness and so much tragedy. My years in America seemed to have been swept away by that one night and I was taken back, as though by magic, to my worst days in Poland, to the bitterest crisis of my life. I heard the outside door close. Binele was gone. I could no longer remain sitting in the room with the dead woman. I ran out to the kitchen. I opened the door leading to the stairs. I stood by the open door as though ready to escape as soon as the corpse began to do those tricks that I had dreaded since childhood. . . . I said to myself that it was foolish to be afraid of this gentle woman, this cripple who had loved me while alive and who surely did not hate me now, if the dead felt anything. But all the boyhood fears were back upon me. My ribs felt chilled, as if some icy fingers moved over them. My heart thumped and fluttered like the spring in a broken clock. . . . Everything within me was strained. The slightest rustle and I would have dashed down the stairs in terror. The door to the street downstairs had glass panes, but they were half frosted over, half misty. A pale glow filtered through them as at dusk. An icy cold came from below. Suddenly I heard steps. The corpse? I wanted to run, but I realized that the steps came from the upper floor. I saw someone coming down. It was the upstairs neighbor on his way to work, a huge man in rubber boots and a coat with a kind of cowl, a metal lunch box in his hands. He glanced at me curiously and began to speak to me in Canadian French. It was good to be with another human being for a moment. I nodded, gestured
with my hands, and answered him in English. He tried again and again to say something in his unfamiliar language, as though he believed that if I listened more carefully I would finally understand him. In the end he mumbled something and threw up his arms. He went out and slammed the door. Now I was all alone in the whole house.

  What if Binele should not return? I began to toy with the fantasy that she might run away. Perhaps I'd be suspected of murder?

  Everything was possible in this world. I stood with my eyes fixed on the outside door. I wanted only one thing now—to return as quickly as possible to New York. My home, my job seemed totally remote and insubstantial, like memories of a previous incarnation. Who knows? Perhaps my whole life in New York had been no more than a hallucination? I began to search in my breast pocket. . . . Did I lose my citizenship papers, together with the text of my lecture? I felt a stiff paper. Thank God, the citizenship papers are here. I could have lost them, too. This document was now testimony that my years in America had not been an invention.

  Here is my photograph. And my signature. Here is the government stamp. True, these were also inanimate, without life, but they symbolized order, a sense of belonging, law. I stood in the doorway and for the first time really read the paper that made me a citizen of the United States. I became so absorbed that I had almost forgotten the dead woman. Then the outside door opened and I saw Binele, covered with snow. She wore the same shawl that her mother had worn yesterday.

  "I cannot find a telephone!"

  She broke out crying. I went down to meet her, slipping the citizenship papers back into my pocket. Life had returned. The long nightmare was over. I put my arms around Binele and she did not try to break away. I became wet from the melting snow. We stood there midway up the stairs and rocked back and forth— a lost Yiddish writer, and a victim of Hitler and of my ill-starred lecture. I saw a number tattooed above her wrist and heard myself saying: "Binele, I won't abandon you. I swear by the soul of your mother. ..."