Crackpot, p.44
Crackpot, page 44
“That Galitzianer wants to marry me.” She tried it out on Daddy one day, jokingly, just to hear the sound of it.
“When?” said Daddy, so quickly and eagerly that she was taken aback. “Have you decided when?”
“What do you mean, when?” she asked indignantly. “Do you even know who? The one with the Galitzianer accent you were talking to in the delicatessen.” Danile was nodding eagerly to her words. “I didn’t say I was going to marry him. I said he wants me to marry him. You want me to marry a Galitzianer?” She knew she was talking nonsense, talking loosely while she tried to recover from her astonishment that Daddy was so eager to have her marry, that at the first word, without knowing anything about the man he wanted to fix the date already. But she was mistaken, at least in part.
“Of course I know him,” said Danile. “A fine man, an educated person, a man it’s a pleasure to talk to. And what he’s lived through, only our enemies should answer for. What that man has suffered!” Danile sighed heavily. “We should thank God for our rocks, and even our boulders are a blessing compared to the mountains that other men bear.”
“You know him? How come you know him so well? How come you know about his mountains? How come you know what he’s suffered?” She spoke not without a twinge of jealousy intermingled with her surprise. When she asked Lazar about his life during the war, he always put her off. The man wanted to marry her; surely she had a right to know something about him. He needn’t worry about how she’d take it. She knew that over there people had had to do dreadful things in order to survive. “Another time.” He always put her off. “Another time.” All she got was proposals proposals till the very thought of walking home after work made her nervous. But Daddy knew. How come Daddy knew everything? What right did he have to go talking to her father behind her back? And Daddy to go on without even mentioning it, her own father; what right did Daddy have to help a stranger infiltrate her life? “Why didn’t you tell me he talked to you about it?”
“I didn’t want to interfere, Hodaleh,” said Danile gently. “If I said something you might think I was interfering. You know how angry you get sometimes. And you’re right, after all; it is your life. That’s what it means when we say that parents give their children life, isn’t it? We give them life and we lead them a few steps along the way, and then they say to us, ‘It’s mine. You gave it to me. You can’t control it any longer.’ I learned to keep quiet a long time ago.”
“Who said you’d be interfering?” said Hoda. “Since when don’t I let you talk? Since when can’t you tell me what you think? I’m still your daughter. It’s your business too if I get married. You think I’d even think about getting married without talking it over with you? Didn’t we always used to talk about when I would get married, and you would become a grandfather?” How long ago all those innocent plans had died. “Since when am I so hard to talk to? Since when do I get angry? Since when do I say you’re interfering?” It was disturbing. It was all too disturbing. What right did Lazar have to come and stir up their peaceful lives? Danile sat still before the mounting crescendo of her questions, his eyes both vulnerable and impermeable, his face delicately immobile, his expression anxious and distant, the distance and anxiety somehow a function of what she was noticing for the first time, a new, a somehow incredible fragility. Leave him alone, she thought. What was the use of scolding him? All the same, what did he mean by it? How often in her whole life had she even raised her voice to her father? Was there anyone else she’d ever even cared about, so long and so constantly? “I didn’t know I was so hard to get along with,” she said with deliberately melancholy gentleness, knowing that he would have to reassure her, and wanting to be reassured.
“No, I never said hard to get along with,” Danile hastened to respond. “If you were hard to get along with would I lie to him? Would I spend hours telling him just the opposite? What a sunny-natured little girl you were; how you were the smile in my heart, the sight in my eyes all through your childhood. Have I ever complained about you? Not even to myself, much less to anyone else. Remember how you used to trudge about all day to sell the baskets? So if you yelled a little bit sometimes, you think I minded? Didn’t I know how bitter it was for you? I used to suggest, sometimes, that maybe all that company, and staying up so late at night, night after night, and some of them using coarse English words, not that they were bad youngsters, but still as a father I felt that maybe it wasn’t good for you, wasn’t good enough for you, not that I meant anything by it. But you used to yell at me then, Hodaleh, a little bit, sometimes, and go in your room, and I would hear you crying, and I would cry too. What could I do? If I drove them from the house maybe I would drive you with them. What was the use of upsetting you any more? You’d go your own way anyway and be even more unhappy. And what right did I have to complain? You were such a young child to be earning a living already; you didn’t shirk from any kind of work; plucking chickens, climbing walls; if you wanted to enjoy yourself with your friends, how could I interfere? One thing that always used to upset your mother was to see young children staying out late at night without their parents even knowing where they were. So,” Danile sighed, “you may have stayed up late and it may have been a little lively in the house, but at least most of the time you stayed near home. I explained it to him, how it was. He understands how hard things were in those days.”
“What do you mean you explained? What did you have to explain to him? I don’t owe him any explanations!” How uneasy Daddy’s words made her. She was beginning to feel surrounded. Why was it that words never told you exactly what was being said? Why was it that sometimes all of a sudden you didn’t want to know exactly what was being said? Why did your imagination always have to jump to imagine that maybe more was being said than the words were saying? Weren’t the words themselves disturbing enough? It was a long time since Daddy had said things like this to her, if he had ever done so. It was a long time since they had talked this way at all. “I wouldn’t marry you if you paid me!” That’s what she’d snarl at Lazar if she had him here, the meddling mocky. She didn’t remember any of that about having yelled at her father, or about him complaining about her friends and all that. Even if he had complained, she wouldn’t have yelled at him, surely. She knew she’d been a loud-mouthed kid at times, but she didn’t remember ever having yelled at Daddy. All she’d ever really thought about above everything else was how they could manage to stay together and she could manage to take care of him. Didn’t he remember the great feud with Uncle? Maybe she had sometimes had yelling feelings in her voice; Daddy was very quick to catch feelings. It disturbed her to hear him say those things, though, hinting that all had not been the way she remembered, mentioning thoughts she didn’t even know he’d had, implying the possibility of other perceptions, even, for some reason, appearing to be apologetic. Why should he be? Why wouldn’t what you knew hold still? Even if Daddy’s memory was faulty, if that was the way he was going to remember, what did it matter how things really were? And if his memory was not faulty, was hers? She had hardly as yet succeeded in holding her own memories to a formal pattern which would release a minimum of pain; how could she cope with new revelations from Daddy too? The minute you let yourself become too aware of another person’s world you found yourself carrying that too, and if you appeared in that world, foreign to yourself and unattractive, how oppressively all the worlds weighed down on you. Oh what the hell, she’d only been a little kid then. Everybody yelled sometimes. Daddy didn’t hold it against her. “You want me to get married, then?” she challenged.
“I want you to do what you want to do,” said Danile.
“But you like him” she persisted. “Or is it just his story that you like?” She couldn’t resist the little jeering thrust, and despised herself instantly for it.
But Danile seemed unaware of the sneer. “How can you like such a story? Ever since he told me, I’ve closed my eyes on it every night and opened them to it every morning. He has put pictures in my eyes and a stench in my nose, and cries in my ears that I cannot avoid, though I turn my head this way and that all day. Sometimes I have thought that the cruellest thing about being blind, is that you cannot close your eyes to what you see. Like it? If I could learn to bear it! And yet, I remind myself that he was plucked alive from all that dead flesh; out of all that pile of bodies he alone dragged himself free and crawled away from the charred pit. And when I remember the miracles of my own life I think how strange and wonderful it is that he should come to us.” Danile was silent; his face reflected anew the old wonder.
“Pa!” she cried out, confronting him. “You want me to marry him, don’t you?”
“No,” said Danile. “I know some people think I’m a fool, and maybe I am, but I’m not such a fool as to try to tell you whom you should marry.”
“But you want me to.”
“I wasn’t such a bargain either when they brought me to your mother.”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. She laughed and laughed. Danile laughed too.
“Oh Papa!”
But that didn’t mean that she intended to give in and marry the mocky. If they thought so they could forget it. If he wanted to hang around and bring her expensive presents and spend long hours with her dad even when she wasn’t around, all right, she wasn’t going to stop him. It was nice of him to keep her father company. He needn’t think she didn’t appreciate it. She went out of her way to invite him often to eat with them and to cook nice meals for him, just to show him she was grateful, and also because he was all alone in the world. It was only decent. Of course she didn’t mind being courted; hell, what girl would? though he needn’t imagine she hadn’t been courted before. “I’ve been proposed to before,” she made the occasion to let him know. She chose her words carefully. “The last time was not so long ago. I turned him down. Always turn them down when they get too serious.” It was hard to gauge the effect of things like that on Lazar, though. He continued his proprietary hanging around, and naturally, since he was there, she gave him some thought, and since he kept on offering to marry her she gave a lot of thought to that, too, and to the kind of life he promised her. She was no gold-digger, but how could she help thinking about it? There it was, actually being offered to her, a husband, a home, a real life like everybody else had. All she had to do was nod her head and stretch out her hand.
Presto! And it would disappear. Well, no one need think that would surprise her. That hand she had stretched out, it was just getting ready to wave goodbye, that’s all. Bye bye! As far as she was concerned, proposals notwithstanding, he was a free man, and she let him know she knew it. The same went for herself, though a subtle change in attitude toward her had taken place among her old friends and former customers lately. They had begun to act as though they thought she wasn’t a free agent any more. True, she had had to turn them down a few times, because of her promise to Lazar that when he was there he would be the one to take her home. About that she was firm; she was a woman of her word. True also, he was always there. And then one night Limpy himself asked her, early on in the evening. God! She and Limpy hadn’t romped on the mattress since she couldn’t remember when. He swore his old lady was so jealous she weighed him when he left the house, and weighed him again when he came back in, to make sure he hadn’t given any away. Not that he had that much to pass around any more! Only now his old lady was getting checked up in the hospital for a few days, and he figured he might never have the chance again.
Instead of taking him on gladly, as she naturally should have done for old time’s sake, Hoda found herself making excuses, and wishing Lazar were already there to back her up in her explanation that she really did have a prior date. Limpy said he understood, though he didn’t have to make such a big thing of how much he understood. Nor did he have to go and make a public joke of it, teasing her in front of the crowd. “Yeh, what’s this, I notice you gone monogamous lately, Hoda?” She shouldn’t have been, it was nobody’s damn business anyway, but she was a little embarrassed, though she laughed it off. She didn’t go on laughing, though, when hour after hour passed, and that night of all nights, for the first time in ages, her steady didn’t turn up. She went on expecting him and expecting him, and still he didn’t come. She could hardly hear what anybody was saying to her, her ears were straining so hard toward the door, and she kept giving herself excuses to slip outside and look up and down the street. She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t surprised at all. This was it. She’d known it would happen all along. All that proposing. Sure, why not? Proposals are easy. Still, she found excuses to hang around the place when everybody had gone. She polished; she cleaned; she put away; a teapot slipped out of her hand and smashed, so she had to clean up the mess, didn’t she? And once she was down there she might as well sponge out the floor. So what if the baby blue beaded satin dress got stained? It would have to get stained sometime. Nothing lasts forever; why should satin be any luckier?
By the time she let herself out of the kibitzarnia and set off for home she was in the foulest of tempers. Nor did the sight of Lazar, before she’d gone a block, hurrying along under the street lamps, do anything to modify her anger. If anything, the sight of its object fanned her to further fury, a fury the more frustrating because for once she didn’t know how to express it, not until his first words of greeting, that is.
“You’re late!” he made the mistake of calling out cheerfully, as he approached her.
That did it. Did she give it to him! And she couldn’t have cared less if she had wakened the whole neighbourhood. She didn’t give a good goddam who knew how she felt about being stood up and kept waiting and made a fool of in front of her old friends. Let dogs bark and windows go up and people poke their heads out. She would tell them something too if they started up with her, and the birds fussing up there, and the cats flashing their startled green lights as they streaked across the street. Let them all know! He didn’t have to explain! She didn’t want him to explain! Standing her up was proof enough for her what she could expect from a big-talking mocky!
It was when she heard herself calling him a mocky, right out loud that way, that she began to cry. She didn’t have to do that! That was a dirty thing to do! What right did she have to be yelling at him all over the street for anyway? He was here, wasn’t he? She could have told him to go screw himself in a quiet, dignified way, couldn’t she? And what was she crying for? He’d think she gave a damn! “I’m only crying because I called you names,” she blubbered. “I’m sorry.”
He murmured over her soothingly.
“But that’s all I’m sorry about!” she growled. “It’s not nice to call people names, even when they’re sons of bitches.” All of a sudden she was laughing. Then she was sniffing again. “At least you could have phoned to tell me you were going straight to my house. What do you mean keeping my father up so late anyway?” Then she was laughing again. “You’re lucky I didn’t bring Limpy home! He told me today I was going monogamous! You’ll ruin my reputation.” She couldn’t help clowning it up a bit, now that she had had her little yell, and it was all just an accident how it had happened, with him being held up and then thinking it was too late to come to the kibitzarnia and going straight to her house, and then waiting and waiting and expecting her any minute, till long after she was normally through, and coming to see what had happened because he was worried. Worried! It was all very well for him to talk about being worried. Why did he keep on buttering up her father behind her back anyway? Lazar this, and Lazar that, it was all she heard from her old man nowadays, till she was sick of it!
“Why are you always talking to my father about me behind my back anyway?” Though the air had cleared somewhat she was not to be easily mollified.
“Because I want him to know that I think it’s time you gave up the life you’re leading and settled down,” he snapped back now with unexpected asperity.
After a startled moment, she said, “You said that? What did he say?”
“He agreed,” said Lazar quietly.
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing. What else is there to say?”
“Nothing,” she repeated. “Nothing much. The life I’m leading. What do you know about the life I’m leading or the life I’ve led? What does he know, even? It makes me laugh, ‘the life I’m leading!’ Ha ha! Who’s leading whom? A bear on a string, that’s me. Give the string a jerk, smack my arse, I get up on my hind legs and dance a little, this way, that way, and show my big bare belly. And everybody looks and laughs. Only what’s that got to do with being a bear? What do you want to talk about the life I’m leading for when you don’t know a goddam thing about it?”
“I don’t want to know anything about,” said Lazar. “All I ask is that you do what I’m doing, forget the past and begin a new life together.”
“That’s easy to say,” she said bitterly. “Sure, a new life. Who are you to be handing out new lives? You know what happened to the last guy went around offering new lives? They nailed him up!” Hoda laughed sourly. “And no wonder! Running down the local product. I don’t want a new life! Why should I forget the past? I can’t forget the past! I don’t want to forget the past. It’s me. Maybe you can just forget your past and everybody you cared for and cared for you, and how things were and what happened and everything, but I can’t. Maybe it’s rotten and it’s lousy but it’s me, and I didn’t want it should be rotten and lousy; I didn’t want it should be the way it was; I didn’t want it; I didn’t want any of it but it’s mine, and I’ve got to live with it and I’ve got to die with it, and you can’t come along and make nothing of it, and tell me it’s no good and I should forget it and bury it. Maybe I didn’t want it and maybe I hate it but it’s mine, and it’s the only thing I’ve really got, inside of me, that’s mine.” She was weeping again now, quietly and bitterly, squeezing out that hot, scalding thing inside of her.
