Short Stories: Five Decades (7 page)

“I’m going to the houses where I have the second mortgages,” Mrs. Shapiro said. “Nice houses, they are … like this. With rugs and curtains and steam heat and something cooking on the stove that you can smell inside. I have the second mortgage on houses like that, and I don’t have enough to eat …” Her tears soaked through the rag of a handkerchief. “Please,” she cried, “please … give me something. I don’t want the eight hundred dollars, but something. It’s my money … I have nobody. I have rheumatism and there’s no heat in my room and there’re holes in my shoes. I walk on my bare feet … Please … please …”

We tried to stop her but she kept on, crying, “Please … please … just a little bit. A hundred dollars. Fifty. My money …”

“All right, Mrs. Shapiro,” my father said. “Come back next Sunday. I’ll have it for you then …”

The tears stopped. “Oh, God bless you,” Mrs. Shapiro said. Before we knew what she was about she flung herself across the room and was on her hands and knees in front of my father and was kissing his hand wildly. “God bless you, God bless you,” she cried over and over again. My father sat through it nervously, trying to pick her up with his free hand, looking pleadingly at my mother.

Finally my mother could bear it no longer. “Mrs. Shapiro,” she said, breaking in over the “God bless you”s, “listen to me! Stop that! Please stop it! We can’t give you anything! Next Sunday or any Sunday! We haven’t got a cent.”

Mrs. Shapiro dropped my father’s hand. She stayed on her knees in front of him, though, looking strange there in the middle of our living room. “But Mr. Ross said …”

“Mr. Ross is talking nonsense!” my mother said. “We have no money and we’re not going to have any! We expect to be thrown out of this house any day now! We can’t give you a penny, Mrs. Shapiro.”

“But next Sunday …” Mrs. Shapiro tried to make my mother understand that she didn’t expect it now, not for another week …

“We won’t have any more next Sunday than we have today. And we have eighty-five cents in the house right now, Mrs. Shapiro!” My mother stood up, went over to Mrs. Shapiro, where she was kneeling on the floor. Before my mother could touch her, Mrs. Shapiro keeled over onto the floor, hitting it heavily, like a packed handbag that’s been dropped.

It took us ten minutes to pull her out of her faint. My mother gave her tea, which she drank silently. She didn’t seem to recognize us as she drank her tea and made ready to go off. She told us that this was the fifth time in two months that she had fainted like that. She seemed ashamed of herself, somehow. My mother gave her the address of a doctor who would wait for his money and Mrs. Shapiro went out, her fat, shabby stockings shaking as she went down the steps. My mother and I watched her as she shambled down the street and disappeared around the corner, but my father went into the kitchen and the New York
Times
.

She was back the next Sunday and two Sundays after that, ringing the bell, but we didn’t open the door. She rang for almost a half-hour each time, but we all sat quietly in the kitchen, waiting for her to go away.

Sailor off the Bremen

T
hey sat in the small white kitchen, Ernest and Charley and Preminger and Dr. Stryker, all bunched around the porcelain-topped table, so that the kitchen seemed to be overflowing with men. Sally stood at the stove turning griddle-cakes over thoughtfully, listening intently to what Preminger was saying.

“So,” Preminger said, carefully working his knife and fork, “everything was excellent. The comrades arrived, dressed like ladies and gentlemen at the opera, in evening gowns and what do you call them?”

“Tuxedoes,” Charley said. “Black ties.”

“Tuxedoes,” Preminger nodded, speaking with his precise educated German accent. “Very handsome people, mixing with all the other handsome people who came to say good-bye to their friends on the boat; everybody very gay, everybody with a little whisky on the breath; nobody would suspect they were Party members, they were so clean and upper class.” He laughed lightly at his own joke. He looked like a young boy from a nice Middle Western college, with crew-cut hair and a straight nose and blue eyes and an easy laugh. His laugh was a little high and short, and he talked fast, as though he wanted to get a great many words out to beat a certain deadline, but otherwise, being a Communist in Germany and a deck officer on the
Bremen
hadn’t made any obvious changes in him. “It is a wonderful thing,” he said, “how many pretty girls there are in the Party in the United States. Wonderful!”

They all laughed, even Ernest, who put his hand up to cover the empty spaces in the front row of his teeth every time he smiled. His hand covered his mouth and the fingers cupped around the neat black patch over his eye, and he smiled secretly and swiftly behind that concealment, getting his merriment over with swiftly, so he could take his hand down and compose his face into its usual unmoved, distant expression, cultivated from the time he got out of the hospital. Sally watched him from the stove, knowing each step: the grudging smile, the hand, the consciousness and memory of deformity, the wrench to composure, the lie of peace when he took his hand down.

She shook her head, dumped three brown cakes onto a plate.

“Here,” she said, putting them before Preminger. “Better than Childs restaurant.”

“Wonderful,” Preminger said, dousing them with syrup. “Each time I come to America I feast on these. There is nothing like it in the whole continent of Europe.”

“All right,” Charley said, leaning out across the kitchen table, practically covering it, because he was so big, “finish the story.”

“So I gave the signal,” Preminger said, waving his fork. “When everything was nice and ready, everybody having a good time, stewards running this way, that way, with champagne, a nice little signal and we had a very nice little demonstration. Nice signs, good loud yelling, the Nazi flag cut down, one, two, three, from the pole. The girls standing together singing like angels, everybody running there from all parts of the ship, everybody getting the idea very, very clear—a very nice little demonstration.” He smeared butter methodically on the top cake. “So then, the rough business. Expected. Naturally. After all, we all know it is no cocktail party for Lady Astor.” He pursed his lips and squinted at his plate, looking like a small boy making believe he’s the head of a family. “A little pushing, expected, maybe a little crack over the head here and there, expected. Justice comes with a headache these days, we all know that. But my people, the Germans. You must always expect the worst from them. They organize like lightning. Method. How to treat a riot on a ship. Every steward, every oiler, every sailor, was there in a minute and a half. Two men would hold a comrade, the other would beat him. Nothing left to accident.”

“The hell with it,” Ernest said. “What’s the sense in going through the whole thing again? It’s all over.”

“Shut up,” Charley said.

“Two stewards got hold of Ernest,” Preminger said softly. “And another one did the beating. Stewards are worse than sailors. All day long they take orders, they hate the world. Ernest was unlucky. All the others did their jobs, but they were human beings. The steward is a member of the Nazi party. He is an Austrian; he is not a normal man.”

“Sally,” Ernest said, “give Mr. Preminger some more milk.”

“He kept hitting Ernest,” Preminger tapped absently on the porcelain top with his fork, “and he kept laughing and laughing.”

“You know who he is?” Charley asked. “You’re sure you know who he is?”

“I know who he is. He is twenty-five years old, very dark and good-looking, and he sleeps with at least two ladies a voyage.” Preminger slopped his milk around in the bottom of his glass. “His name is Lueger. He spies on the crew for the Nazis. He has sent two men already to concentration camps. He is a very serious character. He knew what he was doing,” Preminger said clearly, “when he kept hitting Ernest in the eye. I tried to get to him, but I was in the middle of a thousand people, screaming and running. If something happens to that Lueger that will be a very good thing.”

“Have a cigar,” Ernest said, pulling two out of his pocket.

“Something will happen to him,” Charley said, taking a deep breath, and leaning back from the table. “Something will damn sure happen to him.”

“You’re a dumb kid,” Ernest said, in the weary tone he used now in all serious discussions. “What do you prove if you beat up one stupid sailor?”

“I don’t prove anything,” Charley said. “I don’t prove a goddamn thing. I am just going to have a good time with the boy that knocked my brother’s eye out. That’s all.”

“It is not a personal thing,” Ernest said, in the tired voice. “It is the movement of Fascism. You don’t stop Fascism with a personal crusade against one German. If I thought it would do some good, I’d say, sure, go ahead …”

“My brother, the Communist,” Charley said bitterly. “He goes out and he gets ruined and still he talks dialectics. The Red Saint with the long view. The long view gives me a pain in the ass. I am taking a very short view of Mr. Lueger. I am going to kick the living guts out of his belly. Preminger, what do you say?”

“Speaking as a Party member,” Preminger said, “I approve of your brother’s attitude, Charley.”

“Nuts,” Charley said.

“Speaking as a man, Charley,” Preminger went on, “please put Lueger on his back for at least six months. Where is that cigar, Ernest?”

Dr. Stryker spoke up in his dry, polite, dentist’s voice. “As you know,” he said, “I am not the type for violence.” Dr. Stryker weighed a hundred and thirty-three pounds and it was almost possible to see through his wrists, he was so frail. “But as Ernest’s friends, I think there would be a definite satisfaction for all of us, including Ernest, if this Lueger was taken care of. You may count on me for anything within my powers.” He was very scared, Dr. Stryker, and his voice was even drier than usual, but he spoke up after reasoning the whole thing out slowly and carefully, disregarding the fear, the worry, the possible great damage. “That is my opinion,” he said.

“Sally,” Ernest said, “talk to these damn fools.”

“I think,” Sally said slowly, looking steadily at her husband’s face, always stiffly composed now, like a corpse’s face, “I think they know what they’re talking about.”

Ernest shrugged. “Emotionalism. A large useless gesture. You’re all tainted by Charley’s philosophy. He’s a football player. He has a football player’s philosophy. Somebody knocks you down, you knock him down, everything is fine.”

“I want a glass of milk, too,” Charley said. “Please, Sally.”

“Whom’re you playing this week?” Ernest said.

“Georgetown.”

“Won’t that be enough violence for one week?” Ernest asked.

“Nope,” Charley said. “I’ll take care of Georgetown first, then Lueger.”

“Anything I can do,” Dr. Stryker said. “Remember, anything I can do. I am at your service.”

“The coach’ll be sore,” Ernest said, “if you get banged up, Charley.”

“The hell with the coach. Please shut up, Ernest. I have got my stomachful of Communist tactics. No more. Get this in your head, Ernest.” Charley stood up and banged the table. “I am disregarding the class struggle, I am disregarding the education of the proletariat, I am disregarding the fact that you are a good Communist. I am acting strictly in the capacity of your brother. If you’d had any brains you would have stayed away from that lousy boat. You’re a painter, an artist, you make water colors, what the hell is it your business if lunatics’re running Germany? But all right. You’ve got no brains. You go and get your eye beat out. O.K. Now I step in. Purely personal. None of your business. Shut your trap. I will fix everything to my own satisfaction. Please go and lie down in the bedroom. We have arrangements to make here.”

Ernest stood up, hiding his mouth, which was twitching, and walked into the bedroom and closed the door and lay down on the bed, in the dark, with his eye open.

The next day, an hour before sailing time, Charley and Dr. Stryker and Sally went down to the
Bremen
, and boarded the ship on different gangplanks. They stood separately on the A Deck, up forward, waiting for Preminger. Preminger came, very boyish and crisp in his blue uniform, looked coldly past them, touched a steward on the arm, a dark, good-looking young steward, said something to him, and went aft. Charley and Dr. Stryker examined the steward closely, so that two weeks later, on a dark street, there would be no mistake, and left, leaving Sally there, smiling at Lueger.

“Yes,” Sally said two weeks later, “it is very clear. I’ll have dinner with him, and I’ll go to a movie with him, and I’ll get him to take at least two drinks, and I’ll tell him I live on West Twelfth Street, near West Street. There is a whole block of apartment houses there, and I’ll get him down to West Twelfth Street between a quarter to one and one in the morning, and you’ll be waiting there, you and Stryker, under the Ninth Avenue L, and you’ll say, ‘Pardon me, can you direct me to Sheridan Square?’ and I’ll start running.”

“That’s right,” Charley said, “that’s fine.” He blew reflectively on his huge hands, knotted and cleat-marked from last Saturday’s game. “That is the whole story for Mr. Lueger. You’ll go through with it now?” he asked. “You’re sure you can manage it?”