Not This August (18 page)

Croley handed him the note and Justin started to leave. Transaction over. End of incident. But amazingly Croley detained him. “Imagine you’re getting around,” the storekeeper said with a wintry little smile.

“Maybe,” Justin said cautiously. So the old skunk was adding up his absence—he had noticed it of course; Croley noticed everything—and the big bills. Justin counted on Croley’s own illegal part in the black-market transaction to keep his mouth shut. Counted too far?

But Croley said: “Anything I can do for you, let me know.”
And shook his hand!

In a daze Justin said, “Christmas Eve,” and gave him a penny. Croley was looking at it in bewilderment as he left.

Justin thought he had Croley figured. The old man was now firmly poised on the fence. Without being committed in any way whatsoever he was now ready to jump to either side. Never underestimate the adaptability of a Croley, Justin told himself.

Gus had loaded his feed on the wagon. It was a pitifully small load, and his horses were gaunt.

“Business proposition, Gus,” Justin called up to him. “Short trip down Cannon Road, light work, big pay.”

“O.K.,” Gus said disconsolately. Justin climbed up and Gus flapped his reins on the horses’ backs. The wagon creaked down Cannon Road toward the gravel pit.

“I should have warned you,” Gus said bitterly. “You’re taking a chance being seen with me. I’m under suspicion as a dangerous conspirator—to be exact, a rootless Zionist cosmopolitan. The MVD came around last week. They searched the house. They took our Menorah, the Sabbath candlestick I haven’t lit since Pop died. And in the attic they found the real evidence. A bunch of mildewed haggadas, Passover prayer-books I haven’t used for twenty years. And Granpa’s Talmud in forty little volumes of Hebrew and Aramaic which I can’t read. That makes me a rootless-internationalist-cosmopolitan-cryptofascist-Zionist conspirator. They warned me to keep my nose clean. I guess they’ll be back one of these days when they haven’t got anything better to do and haul us away.” He lapsed into silence.

“Stop at Mrs. Sprenger’s,” Justin said.

The birdlike old lady read the note in terror, whispered to herself, “I wish I didn’t have to,” and showed them to the cistern in the back yard. The two of them levered its concrete slab cover aside. There was a ladder and the cistern was stacked with provisions.

“Please,” Mrs. Sprenger begged them, “please don’t take more than the note says. He thinks I take the things myself but I wouldn’t do anything like that. Please don’t make a mistake in counting.”

They carried up the food and loaded the wagon, hiding it under the original load of fodder.

“Christmas Eve,” Justin said to Mrs. Sprenger. And gave her a penny.

“Thank you,” she said faintly.

Driving away, Feinblatt asked, “What’s this Christmas-Eve-and-penny routine, Billy?”

“Just a habit I have.”

“You didn’t have it a month ago. Where’ve you been? You look different. You lost some weight, but your whole face looks different.

“I had some teeth pulled.”

“I see; that would do it. Billy, stop me if I’m going off side, but did you have your teeth pulled like, say, the Laceys down at Four Corners?”

“That’s the way.”

They were heading up Oak Hill Road by then and Justin was debating furiously with himself. He had to start somewhere, he had to start with someone. There’d never be a better starting place than strong, steady, bitter Gus Feinblatt. But he didn’t want to; he didn’t dare. He was learning the difference between trusting only yourself and trusting others. It was an agonizing difference.

Stalling deliberately, he asked, “What’ll you have for your share of the loot?”

“I don’t care. Some of the beans and flour, I suppose. We’re sick of potatoes. Lord, what a winter this is going to be! I’m lucky to have Tony and Phony here; they can haul wood so I can spend my time bucking and splitting. I guess we’ll make out if we close off most of the house and if we can get another grate for the stove. The old one’s about burned through. They aren’t supposed to go fifteen years without a replacement.”

“Turn right,” Justin said when they reached the fork that led on the left to his place and on the right to Prospect Hill.

“What for, Billy?”

“There’s something I want to show you. And something I want to ask you. Look, you rootless Zionist, how’d you like to join a real conspiracy?”

The horribly risky job of local recruiting had begun.

NOVEMBER 18…

The farmer lay trembling with cold on the concrete basement floor of the Chiunga Junior High cellar.

“To your feet, please,” the bored lieutenant said. The farmer tried to get up but his knees betrayed him. He collapsed again and whispered from the floor: “I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister. I told you I just got in the habit because everybody was doing it and I didn’t mean anything.”

“To your feet, please,” said the lieutenant. “Now sit on the stool again.” He took a deep breath and roared in the exhausted man’s face: “Do you think I’m a child to be taken in by fairy stories? The prisoner is lying! The prisoner knows very well that the greeting ‘Christmas Eve’ with the passing of a coin is a symbol of defiance!” He turned down the dazzling light that reddened the farmer’s eyes and equally turned down his voice to a murmur. “You see, Mr. Firstman, we know the truth. Why are you keeping us awake with this stubbornness? You could be in bed now if you’d just said an hour ago that it’s merely a token of resistance, a sort of game, merely. What do you say, Mr. Firstman; will you be a sport and let us all get some sleep?”

“All right,” the farmer screamed. “All right, I guess maybe it was. I guess we got a kick out of it, it was like a password, something you Reds didn’t know anything about. Call it anything you want to!”

This took the light down another notch. The lieutenant offered him a cigarette and a light and cooed: “Please, Mr. Firstman, what we want is not the point. We hope you’ll help because whoever planted this dangerous seed wishes you and your friends no good. You’re in trouble now in a way, but it’s not your fault; the blame lies with whoever began this silly business. We only want you to help us find him, and certainly you don’t owe him any friendship the way he’s landed you here.”

Firstman swayed on the stool after two deep drags at his cigarette. “I don’t know who started it,” he said stubbornly. “Like I said, everybody started to say it and pass pennies around but that’s all I—”

The lieutenant plucked the cigarette from his lips and snarled: “There is no need to lie to us, prisoner.” And again the light blazed into his red-rimmed eyes.

Two hours later he signed the confession and tumbled into his cot, snoring.

The lieutenant studied the document with a look of deep disgust; the captain to whom he reported came in and caught him scowling.

“And what’s wrong, Sergei Ivanovitch?”

“Nothing, Pavel Gregorievitch. Also everything. Farmer Firstman had signed an admission of his guilt. In principle, so he should have; his attitude was contumacious and it was clear to me that even if he has not so far engaged in wrecking, he certainly would when the occasion presented itself.”

“What about ‘Christmas Eve,’ Sergei Ivanovitch?” the captain asked, beginning to set up the chessmen for their game.

The lieutenant’s lips went tight. ‘Christmas Eve’ was the captain’s discovery, and on the strength of it the captain hoped to be a major soon. “It seems to mean ‘Pie in the sky,’ Pavel Gregorievitch. If you know the phrase?”

“Approximately the same as
Nietchevo
,” the captain sighed. “I feared as much.” He moved pawn to king four.

Immensely relieved, the lieutenant sat down and played the queen’s pawn gambit. “Administrative disposal?” he asked.

Pawn took pawn. The captain nodded yes.

The lieutenant pursued two trains of thought simultaneously. One concerned the “administrative disposal” of farmer Firstman: it would be his job to administratively dispose of him with a pistol bullet in the back of the neck; he was wondering which pistol to use. His cherished souvenir Colt .45 was far too heavy for the job—the other concerned the margin by which he should lose the chess game to the captain.

The captain said abruptly: “We should sweat a few more of these ‘Christmas Eve’ sayers, Sergei Ivanovitch, but I will understand if results are negative. One cannot be right every time.”

The lieutenant suppressed a smile. The captain felt self-pity, and his course was now clear. It was his duty to be roundly trounced in a dozen moves.

NOVEMBER 20, temperatures seasonably cold with snow flurries over the Northeast and light variable winds.

The proclamation left by the corporal in the jeep said the indigenous population was ordered to discontinue the faddish, slangy salutation “Christmas Eve” forthwith. For the said phrase could be substituted any one of the traditional cultural salutations and farewells in the following list:

Ah, good day sir (or madame)!

How are crops, (first name of person addressed)? And more. Mr. Croley looked it over word by word in his empty store, then slowly tacked it to his bulletin board and waited.

Lank old Mark Tryon came in after a while and asked: “Got any white bread?”

Mr. Croley took a huge loaf of dark rye bread from its screened box in answer to that.

“Cut me off two pounds,” Tryon said. “I s’pose you couldn’t slice it for me?”

Mr. Croley shook his head once and measured carefully to cut off two pounds. Tryon read the placard meanwhile. He turned from it, dead pan, to pick up his chunk of bread and put down his dollar.

“Christmas Eve,” Mr. Croley said, shoving back a penny change at him.

Tryon blinked, said furtively, “Christmas Eve,” glanced at the placard, and scuttled out with the bread under his arm.

Mr. Croley looked after him for a moment and then turned to check through the credit books on the widespread rack. He worked through the As, noting who was over five dollars, who over ten, who over fifteen. Sir or madame! he snorted to himself silently.

NOVEMBER 23.

Stan Potocki and his wife were out in the crisp cold butchering hogs. A huge fire roared and stank, for as they boned the meat they threw bones and gristle onto the blazing chunks. It was a funny way to butcher. Stan sawed and sliced, his wife dragged cuts away to hang in the barn and between times kept herself busy digging in a row of barrels. When she finished, the barrels would be flush with the ground, filled with brine and pork, covered with the winter woodpile.

Mrs. Potocki leaned on her shovel for a moment, stamping her feet in the powdery snow. “Mrs. Winant didn’t say anything when I met her,” she said.

“Henry Winant’s yellow,” Potocki grunted. “Killing ten sheep. ‘Maybe more later, Stan, but I can’t tell him hog cholera got my sheep, ya know.’ ” He was imitating Henry Winant’s nasal twang. “I told him wild dogs could just as easy kill twenty as ten, but he’s yellow. Got to face up to the Agro man anyway, why not do it for twenty sheep?” He added, “Goddamn it,” whetted his butcher knife, and stuck another pig in the throat. Inside he was already rehearsing his story for the Agro man. “Hog cholera, sudden outbreak. Had to slaughter and burn ’em fast, Lieutenant, you being an Agro man know how it is with cholera. Wanna see the bones and ashes? I’ll get a shovel, buried ’em right here.”

“Stan,” his wife said.

He stopped and patiently began to whet his butcher knife.

“Stan, what’s gonna happen on Christmas Eve?”

He said slowly: “I don’t know. I wish to hell I did. Whatever happens, we’ll take it as it comes.”

“I guess,” she said, “hiding the pork’s got something to do with it?”

“I guess,” he said shortly, and laid down his whetstone and tried his butcher knife on his thumb carefully.

NOVEMBER 23.

The old phenomenon of persecution, the one that persecutors never learn, was working itself out again. The Feinblatts were getting ready for dinner. In a bungling way it was as Kosher as they could manage, considering that they had not kept a ritual kitchen since Gus’s father died years before.

Mrs. Feinblatt was worrying over which dish towel was which. Did the red band mean meat dishes and the blue band mean milk dishes, or was it vice versa? She had forgotten; she’d have to write it down somewhere. Kosher was a nuisance, no denying it, but a nuisance with compensations. Nowadays when they had so little they had at least this feeling that they were a link in a chain through fifty centuries…

Gus was finishing a report on a lost heifer. “Condition of fence, time last seen, direction of hoofprints…” It had to be turned in to the Agro man when he made his rounds. He washed his hands and went through the sliding double doors to the dining room. Before sitting down he went to the sideboard where the canister set stood and scooped out half a cup of flour and a small handful of beans. He lifted a loose floor board and dumped them into flat cans waiting there between the joists.

Mrs. Feinblatt complained: “You’re getting awful queer, Gus. Why do you put the stuff away? Why ask for trouble? They shot the Wehrweins for hoarding, didn’t they? And the
heifer
! Maybe you’ll get away with it, but my heart stops every time I think of the man looking in the barn, walking over the barrel—Gus, I was talking to Mrs. Potocki in the store when there wasn’t anybody around and she
knows
about it. Gus, did you tell Stan?”

“I told him, I told him,” he said wearily. “He’s doing the same with his hogs. And if your heart stops, your heart stops. Sit down.”

She sat.

Gus put on a hat and thought. He was vaguely aware from a novel he had read once that the fifty centuries of Jewish sacred literature provided blessings for every occasion—tasting a perfect melon, seeing purple clouds at sunset, hearing that a relative had been ransomed from heathen captivity. Presumably there was one for sitting down to a thin stew of turnips and beef in the first year of a pagan conquest, but he didn’t know it. He sighed and recited the only prayer he did know, the “Hear, O Israel,” and they began to eat.