by Henry Roth
“Yes, I know! I know!” he interrupted harshly. “You’re very delicately made!”
“And I’ll get a better one!” she added vindictively. “I’ll not be content with a cold water flat. I’ll not live on a top-floor that was meant for goyim and paupers! This is a land where a Jew can make his fortune if he’s got it in him—not to sit piously at a horse’s tail all his life!”
“Bertha!” her sister exclaimed. “Bertha! Have you lost your senses! Don’t make this event fatal!”
By some extraordinary act of will, David’s father controlled himself. He spoke through his teeth—“The sooner you’re on the road to your fortune, the better I’ll like it. And don’t think,” he added with biting significance, “that if I don’t go to your wedding I won’t dance!”
Mr. Sternowitz was looking from one to the other with diffident, half-frightened eyes. “Ai, Bertha!” he attempted lightness. “Are you awful! Over—over a bath-tub to get so enraged! Come, what is a bath-tub!”
“A bath-tub is a bath-tub.” She pouted sullenly. “What a bright suitor I’ve got!”
Mr. Sternowitz squirmed, blinked, dared not look at anyone. The hard-won relaxation of a few moments ago was destroyed entirely and everyone was on guard again. Nor was there any hope of the tension ever easing, since dinner was almost over, and there would be nothing more to divert one. David’s mother assayed a few vague remarks. They went unanswered. In the strained silence, Aunt Bertha, who looked close to tears, kept muttering under her breath—“Begrudges me everything.… His spite, his sour silence … God blacken his destiny.” David looked around fearfully, hardly daring to think of what might happen. Finally, Mr. Sternowitz, after several preliminary coughs, thrust out his chin and smiled with forced and wavering heartiness.
“I’ll tell you Bertha,” he said. “Let us go for a walk. After such a fine dinner, nothing could be better, what? And we can step into one or two stores on the way.”
“Anything!” she answered defiantly. “So long as we get away from here!”
Both rose, rather precipitately, and with a toss of her head, Aunt Bertha hurried into the front room to get their coats, leaving Mr. Sternowitz stranded in the kitchen. He looked about as though trapped, mumbled something about the dinner and watched the front-room door anxiously. In a few seconds, Aunt Bertha returned and both got into their coats. As she fitted her wide hat on over her red hair, Aunt Bertha raised her eyes to the overhanging brim and then stared beyond it at the wall—where the new picture hung.
David started. That was it! Now he remembered! The thing he was searching for! That he forgot down stairs! Funny—
She approached, scrutinized it. “Look, Nathan,” she beckoned him, “what fine corn grows in my sister’s garden. I didn’t see it before.” She turned questioningly to David’s mother.
“I was wondering when someone would notice it,” she laughed. “Perhaps in my haste I hung it too high.”
“Quite pretty,” Aunt Bertha looked at herself in her pocket-book mirror. “Are you starting a museum?”
“No. It was just a whim. And I found the ten cents to gratify it. Wasted money, I suppose.” She looked up at the picture.
“Well, we must go,” said Aunt Bertha resolutely. “I’ll be back later, sister.”
Good-nights were exchanged. Aunt Bertha and David’s father, the former fervid, the latter stony, crossed snubbing glances. Invited by David’s mother to pay them many visits, Mr. Sternowitz accepted without too much zest, and after a bare smile from David’s father, crowded out of the door in Aunt Bertha’s lee. Silence followed. His father tilted his chair back against the wall with a violent thump and stared morosely at the ceiling. His mother cleared the dishes carefully, impinging on a look of anxiety, a look of abstraction. David wished they would talk. Silence only made his father more ominous. But the silence continued, and David feeling himself caught as if in talons of stress dared not move—at least not until his father spoke and eased the strain—and for escape meanwhile, could only stare at the new picture his mother had bought.
He began to wonder vaguely why it had followed him all afternoon, why it had tugged at the mind from the ambush of the mind. It was strange. Like someone trailing you behind a wall. And never know what it was until a few minutes ago. Funny. And then find out it isn’t anything—only a picture of long green corn and blue flowers under it. Maybe it was because she had been so happy when she looked for the nail. She laughed when she hung it up. Maybe that was it. He didn’t know why she was laughing. And she had said he had seen it too, real ones, long ago in Europe. But she said he couldn’t remember. So maybe he was trying to remember the real ones instead of the picture ones. But how? If— No. Funny. Getting mixed and mixed and—
His father straightened suddenly, shoes and chair legs rapping the oil cloth smartly. His anger would break now! David stared at him half-welcoming the easing of the strain, half-terrified of the consequences.
“The vulgar jade!” he snapped. “The slut! How could you both have come from one mother! She and her dirty mouth and her bath-tubs and her manners. A million bath-tubs couldn’t clean her. She and her bath-tubs! Who asked her to come here anyway! I’ve controlled myself long enough. I’ll throw her out of this house yet!”
His mother had hung up the dish-rag and had turned slowly as though loath to undertake the task of appeasing him and stood silent, placing no obstacles in the path of his anger.
“Stabbing me in the back about my earnings. Boasting of the fortune she’ll make and the palaces she’ll live in! Making a fool of me before a stranger. As though I loafed, as though I didn’t sweat for my bread as honestly and as much as any man! But I’ll repay her, don’t fret! No one can treat me that way. I’ve a notion to get up this moment and throw all her belongings out into the hall!”
“They’ll be gone soon enough, Albert. Just be patient a little longer.”
“Be patient with that wasp!”
“You see, she was frightened. She thought perhaps you had maimed her chances of marriage.”
“I? I maim her chances? I’d rather maim her! And that filthy, clapping tongue of hers. She never moves it but my flesh begins to crawl—as though she were scattering vermin on me. Maim her chances! I want to get rid of her!”
“She doesn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary either.”
“She’d better not. And him! He’s harmless. I might have pitied him. I might have thought, the poor idiot, he doesn’t know what he’s getting. Perhaps she’s hidden her true self from him. But now I despise him! A weakling! After what he’s seen and heard to want to marry that—that vile mouth! It would shame the water-carrier in a Russian bath! To give his children into the keeping of such a one. He deserves nothing but scorn!”
“Let him look out for that. Surely he’s old enough and has seen enough and experienced enough to know what he wants. Perhaps he can even learn to handle her, one can never tell.”
“Handle her! That button-hole maker. It takes a whip hand! I say he’d best begin digging his grave. But what do I care?” He shook his head savagely as though enraged at himself for showing any concern about Aunt Bertha’s future. “Let her marry anyone, and anyone her. Let her listen to that fool’s drivel about blindness and vinegar all her life. But if she thinks she can make light with me because she has a man with her, she’d better be careful. She’s jesting with the angel of death!”
“Just don’t mind her, Albert! Please! Let her go her own way. She’ll let you go yours. I know! She’ll probably not bring him here any more than she can help. They’re already talking about rings.”
“Well, as long as she stays here, she’d better be careful or I’ll shorten her stay.” He snuffed grimly through his nostrils, stared darkly before him at the opposite wall. His eyes lit on the picture. He frowned. “On what heap did you find that?”
“That?” Her eyes traveled upward. “On a pushcart on Avenue C. I thought I couldn’t make more than a ten-cent mistake, so I bought
it. You don’t like it?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I would if you had gotten it for some other occasion. But now—” He scowled. “Why did you get a picture of corn anyway?”
“Green,” she said mildly. “Austrian lands. What would you have chosen?”
“Something alive.” He reached for the newspaper. “A herd of cattle drinking such as I’ve seen in the stores. Or a prize bull with a shine to his flanks and the black fire in his eyes.”
“That ought not to be difficult. I’m sure I could find you one of those as well.”
“You’d better let me get it,” he said curtly. And flapping the newspaper open, leaned over it. “I’m apt to be a better judge.”
She lifted her brow resignedly and then glanced at David with a faint, significant smile as though letting him share with her the knowledge that his father had been mollified and danger was over. She turned back to the sink.
IX
ON SUNDAY—a bright Sunday just before Election day—David’s father had gotten up from the table after lunch, and with some curt remark about going to listen to a campaign speech, had left. After he was gone however, Aunt Bertha scoffed at his sudden interest in political candidates and resentfully put her finger on what she declared was the real reason for his departure: Nathan (They all called Mr. Sternowitz by his first name now) was coming to call on her later this afternoon, and so David’s father had gone away merely to avoid him. Which act, Aunt Bertha added venomously, was a very gracious one, albeit unwitting, and one for which she was very thankful, since she saw no reason to inflict that man’s rude and surly presence on poor Nathan Sternowitz. Thus instead of insulting her, she concluded with spiteful triumph, David’s father had really done her a good turn—but now that he had done it, she devoutly hoped he would break a leg on the way to wherever he was going. And when David’s mother objected, Aunt Bertha charitably informed her that had her husband not been the sole support of his family, she would have prayed he had broken both legs. There! Wasn’t that solicitude? And then followed her usual, disgusted query of why her sister had married such a lunatic.
David’s mother had just folded the table cloth and now she waved it warningly at Aunt Bertha. “He’ll overhear you some day, sister, and you’ll pay for it dearly.”
“Even with my head!” she retorted defiantly. “Just so he knows what I think of him.”
His mother shook her head impatiently. “He does know! Don’t you think he’s had enough time to find out? And honestly I’m so weary of keeping you two from flying at each other. Albert must go his own way, but you—you might think of me sometimes and not make it so difficult. Let there be peace for a while. You’re going to get married. You won’t be here very much longer. Are you seeking to make your last months here end in a catastrophe?”
“Not for me!” her sister tossed her red head wilfully. “He won’t throw me against the wall again. I’ll gouge his eyes out.”
His mother shrugged. “Why tempt him?”
“Ach, you make me sick—you and your mildness! Put poison in his coffee, that’s what I’d do.”
And David who was staring at her partly in wonder at her rashness, partly in guilty elation, caught his mother’s apprehensive look directed at himself. And his aunt, detecting it also, added vociferously,
“I would! I would poison him! Let him hear me! I’m not afraid.”
“But Bertha! I am afraid! You mustn’t say those things before—ach!” she broke off. “That’s enough Bertha.” And turning to David. “Are you going downstairs, beloved?”
“Right away, Mama,” he answered. But inwardly, he was too fascinated by his aunt’s bold vituperations to want to leave just yet.
Rebuked by his mother, Aunt Bertha shrugged discontentedly, clucked her lips, wagged her head, but the next moment rebounded in her usual mad-cap fashion, and with head tilted upward bayed some Polish phrases at the ceiling. To David’s mystification, the unknown words seemed to sting his mother, for she stiffened and suddenly exclaimed with uncommon sharpness—
“That’s nonsense, Bertha!”
“Are you angry this time?” Her sister shook down several strands of coarse red hair before a provocatively wrinkled nose.
“Yes! I wish you’d stop!”
“Beloved and holy Name, give ear! She really can get angry! But listen to me! I have a right to be angry as well. I’ve been living with you for six months. For six months I’ve told you every thing, and what have you told me? Nothing! I’m no longer a child! I’m not the fourteen year old I was when you were a grown young lady. I’m about to be married. Can’t you trust me? Won’t I understand? Aaaah!” she sighed vehemently. “Would God, those twins had lived instead of died. They’d have been old enough to have seen, to have known. Then I’d have known too—Well?” She demanded challengingly.
“I don’t want to go into it.” His mother was curt. “I’ve told you before. It’s too long ago. It’s too painful. And further I haven’t time.”
“Bah!” she flopped suddenly into a chair. “Now you haven’t time. It’s just as I said. First—” She lapsed suddenly into Polish. “Very well. You might be forgiven. Then—” Again meaning disappeared. “Then—It’s just as I said! Keep it for yourself! I’ll get married without knowing.” And she was silent, staring morosely out of the window.
At the opposite side of the room, his mother was also silent, also before a window, head lifted, gazing meditatively up at the brown, glazed brim of the rooftop and the red brick chimneys overhead. To David, they looked very odd suddenly, each woman back to back, each gazing out of different windows, one down out of the curtained, noisy, street-window, the other up out of the curtainless, quiet one; one seated, fidgeting and ineffectually trying to cross thick knees, the other standing motionless and abstracted. Despite powder his aunt was ruddy in the sunlight, short-necked and squat beside the open sky; in the thin shadow where she stood, his mother was tall, brown-haired and pale against the cramping air-shaft wall.
And what was it about, he wondered. What did those Polish words mean that made his mother straighten out so? Intuition prompted him. He divined vaguely that what he had just heard must be linked to the sparse hints of meaning he had heard before, that had stirred him at first so strangely and afterwards scared him. Now perhaps he might learn what it was about, but if he did, something might change again, be the something else that had been lurking all the time beneath the thing that was. He didn’t want that to happen. Perhaps he had better avoid it, better go down. Now was the time, before anybody spoke. But what? His breath quickened before a danger that was also a fascination. What was it? Why wouldn’t she speak? He would stay here only until—until— No! Better go down—
“Look David!” Without getting up from her chair, Aunt Bertha was craning her neck to stare out into the street. “Come here. Look how they’re hauling that box.”
David drew near the window, looked down. In the dull street below, their shouts muffled by the window, a swarm of boys of various heights and ages now dragged, now tumbled a bulky packing-box along the gutter, and in their eagerness to lend a hand, impeded one another, shoved one another out of the way, shook fists and forgot about it promptly and grappled with the box again.
“What are they yelping about?” his aunt inquired. “Whose wood is it?”
“It’s nobody’s,” he enlightened her. “It’s ‘Lection’ wood.”
“What do you mean ‘Lection’ wood?”
“They’re going to burn it on ‘Lection’ day. They always make a big, big fire on ‘Lection’ day. That’s where Papa went. There’s pictures on the barrels and all the beer saloons.”
His mother turned from the air-shaft window. “I’ve seen it in Brownsville too, in the open lots. Such is the custom here. To make a fire on the day they vote—it falls on Tuesday. Is Nathan a citizen, Bertha?” she asked placatingly.
“Yes, of course!” Aunt Bertha’s tone was still sulky, the movement of her shoulders as she turned brusquely towar
d the window again, still offended. “What else!”
Seeing the queer hopeless lift of his mother’s brow, David again resolved to go down. Whatever it was that caused this tension, and it was the most determined he had ever seen between his aunt and his mother, it was not only baffling but disagreeable. Yes. He would go down.
“Well, why are they dragging it now?” Aunt Bertha turned to him peevishly. “Are they going to burn it for a taste of what’s to come?”
“No. They hide it,” he said self-defensively. “In a cellar. It’s in 732 cellar and 712 cellar near where the rabbi is. But yesterday, big men came and a street cleaning wagon, a brown one, and took it all away.”
“And now they’re getting more! Bah! American idiots! Pull their bowels out for a fire in the street they’ll never make. But when it comes to dragging wood for their mothers, they’re too lame, ha? And you!” she demanded accusingly. “Do you haul wood?”
“N-no,” he lied. It was true though that he hadn’t helped get election wood more than once or twice.
“Hum-m-m!” Aunt Bertha sighed with boredom and glanced at the clock. “An hour and a half before my nosey one comes. I feel lonely.”
“Listen to me, Bertha,” his mother said in a suddenly strained voice as though she had resolved upon a step but prayed it wasn’t necessary. “Do you really want to hear?”
David’s heart tripped with excitement. Better go down, his mind warned almost dizzily. Better go down. But instead, he dropped to his knees and crawled vacantly toward the stove.
As if jabbed with a pin, Aunt Bertha had wheeled around half-leaping from her chair. “Do I want to hear?” she exploded. “A question! After these months of asking? Do I want to hear!” She stopped suddenly. Her look of avid interest gave place to one of apology and self-reproach. “No, no, sister! If it’s difficult for you, then say nothing. Don’t even begin! Really I’m ashamed of myself for plaguing you.”
