Goodbye, Columbus (33 page)

The phone.

“Eli, Shirley.”

“I saw him, Shirley,” and he hung up.

He sat frozen for a long time. The sun moved around the windows. The coffee steam smelled up the house. The phone began to ring, stopped, began again. The mailman came, the cleaner, the bakery man, the gardener, the ice cream man, the League of Women Voters lady. A Negro woman spreading some strange gospel calling for the revision of the Food and Drug Act knocked at the front, rapped the windows, and finally scraped a half-dozen pamphlets under the back door. But Eli only sat, without underwear, in last night’s suit. He answered no one.

Given his condition, it was strange that the trip and crash at the back door reached his inner ear. But in an instant he seemed to melt down into the crevices of the chair, then to splash up and out to where the clatter had been. At the door he waited. It was silent, but for a fluttering of damp little leaves on the trees. When he finally opened the door, there was no one there. He’d expected to see green, green, green, big as the doorway, topped by his hat, waiting for him with those eyes. But there was no one out there, except for the Bonwit’s box which lay bulging at his feet. No string tied it and the top rode high on the bottom.

The coward! He couldn’t do it! He couldn’t!

The very glee of that idea pumped fuel to his legs. He tore out across his back lawn, past his new spray of forsythia, to catch a glimpse of the bearded one fleeing naked through yards, over hedges and fences, to the safety of his hermitage. In the distance a pile of pink and white stones—which Harriet Knudson had painted the previous day—tricked him. “Run,” he shouted to the rocks, “Run, you…” but he caught his error before anyone else did, and though he peered and craned there was no hint anywhere of a man about his own size, with white, white, terribly white skin (how white must be the skin of his body!) in cowardly retreat. He came slowly, curiously, back to the door. And while the trees shimmered in the light wind, he removed the top from the box. The shock at first was the shock of having daylight turned off all at once. Inside the box was an eclipse. But black soon sorted from black, and shortly there was the glassy black of lining, the coarse black of trousers, the dead black of fraying threads, and in the center the mountain of black: the hat. He picked the box from the doorstep and carried it inside. For the first time in his life he
smelted
the color of blackness: a little stale, a little sour, a little old, but nothing that could overwhelm you. Still, he held the package at arm’s length and deposited it on the dining room table.

Twenty rooms on a hill and they store their old clothes with me! What am I supposed to do with them? Give them to charity? That’s where they came from. He picked up the hat by the edges and looked inside. The crown was smooth as an egg, the brim practically threadbare. There is nothing else to do with a hat in one’s hands but put it on, so Eli dropped the thing on his head. He opened the door to the hall closet and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. The hat gave him bags under the eyes. Or perhaps he had not slept well. He pushed the brim lower till a shadow touched his lips. Now the bags under his eyes had inflated to become his face. Before the mirror he unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his trousers, and then, shedding his clothes, he studied what he was. mat a silly disappointment to see yourself naked in a hat. Especially in that hat. He sighed, but could not rid himself of the great weakness that suddenly set on his muscles and joints, beneath the terrible weight of the stranger’s strange hat.

He returned to the dining room table and emptied the box of its contents: jacket, trousers, and vest (
it
smelled deeper than blackness). And under it all, sticking between the shoes that looked chopped and bitten, came the first gleam of white. A little fringed serape, a gray piece of semi-underwear, was crumpled at the bottom, its thready border twisted into itself. Eli removed it and let it hang free. What is it? For warmth? To wear beneath underwear in the event of a chest cold? He held it to his nose but it did not smell from Vick’s or mustard plaster. It was something special, some Jewish thing. Special food, special language, special prayers, why not special BVD’s? So fearful was he that he would be tempted back into wearing his traditional clothes—reasoned Eli—that he had carried and buried in Woodenton everything, including the special underwear. For that was how Eli now understood the box of clothes. The greenie was saying, Here, I give up. I refuse even to be tempted. We surrender. And that was how Eli continued to understand it until he found he’d slipped the white fringy surrender flag over his hat and felt it clinging to his chest. And now, looking at himself in the mirror, he was momentarily uncertain as to who was tempting who into what. Why
did
the greenie leave his clothes? Was it even the greenie? Then who was it? And why? But, Eli, for Christ’s sake, in an age of science things don’t happen like that. Even the goddam pigs take drugs…

Regardless of who was the source of the temptation, what was its end, not to mention its beginning, Eli, some moments later, stood draped in black, with a little white underneath, before the full-length mirror. He had to pull down on the trousers so they would not show the hollow of his ankle. The greenie, didn’t he wear socks? Or had he forgotten them? The mystery was solved when Eli mustered enough courage to investigate the trouser pockets. He had expected some damp awful thing to happen to his fingers should he slip them down and out of sight—but when at last he jammed bravely down he came up with a khaki army sock in each hand. As he slipped them over his toes, he invented a genesis: a G.I.’s present in 1945. Plus everything else lost between 1938 and 1945, he had also lost his socks. Not that he had lost the socks, but that he’d had to stoop to accepting these, made Eli almost cry. To calm himself he walked out the back door and stood looking at his lawn.

On the Knudson back lawn, Harriet Knudson was giving her stones a second coat of pink. She looked up just as Eli stepped out. Eli shot back in again and pressed himself against the back door. When he peeked between the curtain all he saw were paint bucket, brush, and rocks scattered on the Knudsons’ pink-spattered grass. The phone rang. Who was it—Harriet Knudson? Eli, there’s a Jew at your door.
That’s me.
Nonsense, Eli, I saw him with my own eyes.
That’s me, I saw you too, painting your rocks pink
. Eli, you’re having a nervous breakdown again. Jimmy, Eli’s having a nervous breakdown again. Eli, this is Jimmy, hear you’re having a little breakdown, anything I can do, boy? Eli, this is Ted, Shirley says you need help. Eli, this is Artie, you need help. Eli, Harry, you need help you need help … The phone rattled its last and died.

“God helps them who help themselves,” intoned Eli, and once again he stepped out the door. This time he walked to the center of his lawn and in full sight of the trees, the grass, the birds, and the sun, revealed that it was he, Eli, in the costume. But nature had nothing to say to him, and so stealthily he made his way to the hedge separating his property from the field beyond and he cut his way through, losing his hat twice in the underbrush. Then, clamping the hat to his head, he began to run, the threaded tassels jumping across his heart. He ran through the weeds and wild flowers, until on the old road that skirted the town he slowed up. He was walking when he approached the Gulf station from the back. He supported himself on a huge tireless truck rim, and among tubes, rusted engines, dozens of topless oil cans, he rested. With a kind of brainless cunning, he readied himself for the last mile of his journey.

“How are you, Pop?” It was the garage attendant, rubing his greasy hands on his overalls, and hunting among the cans.

Eli’s stomach lurched and he pulled the big black coat round his neck.

“Nice day,” the attendant said and started around to the front.

“Sholom,” Eli whispered and zoomed off towards the hill.

The sun was directly overhead when Eli reached the top. He had come by way of the woods, where it was cooler, but still he was perspiring beneath his new suit. The hat had no sweatband and the cloth clutched his head. The children were playing. The children were always playing, as if it was that alone that Tzuref had to teach them. In their shorts, they revealed such thin legs that beneath one could see the joints swiveling as they ran. Eli waited for them to disappear around a comer before he came into the open. But something would not let him wait—his green suit. It was on the porch, wrapped around the bearded fellow, who was painting the base of a pillar. His arm went up and down, up and down, and the pillar glowed like white fire. The very sight of him popped Eli out of the woods onto the lawn. He did not turn back, though his insides did. He walked up the lawn, but the children played on; tipping the black hat, he mumbled, “Shhh … shhhh,” and they hardly seemed to notice.

At last he smelled paint.

He waited for the man to turn to him. He only painted. Eli felt suddenly that if he could pull the black hat down over his eyes, over his chest and belly and legs, if he could shut out all light, then a moment later he would be home in bed. But the hat wouldn’t go past his forehead. He couldn’t kid himself—he was there. No one he could think of had forced him to do this.

The greenie’s arm flailed up and down on the pillar. Eli breathed loudly, cleared his throat, but the greenie wouldn’t make life easier for him. At last, Eli had to say “Hello.”

The arm swished up and down; it stopped—two fingers went out after a brash hair stuck to the pillar.

“Good day,” Eli said.

The hair came away; the swishing resumed.

“Sholom,” Eli whispered and the fellow turned.

The recognition took some time. He looked at what Eli wore. Up close, Eli looked at what he wore. And then Eli had the strange notion that he was two people. Or that he was one person wearing two suits. The greenie looked to be suffering from a similar confusion. They stared long at one another. Eli’s heart shivered, and his brain was momentarily in such a mixed-up condition that his hands went out to button down the collar of his shirt that somebody else was wearing. What a mess! The greenie flung his arms over his face.

“What’s the matter…” Eli said. The fellow had picked up his bucket and brush and was running away. Eli ran after him.

“I wasn’t going to hit…” Eli called. “Stop…” Eli caught up and grabbed his sleeve. Once again, the greenie’s hands flew up to his face. This time, in the violence, white paint spattered both of them.

“I only want to…” But in that outfit Eli didn’t really know what he wanted. “To talk…” he said finally. “For you to look at me. Please, just
look
at me…”

The hands stayed put, as paint rolled off the brash onto the cuff of Eli’s green suit.

“Please … please,” Eli said, but he did not know what to do. “Say something, speak
English,
” he pleaded.

The fellow pulled back against the wall, back, back, as though some arm would finally reach out and yank him to safety. He refused to uncover his face.

“Look,” Eli said, pointing to himself. “It’s your suit. I’ll take care of it.”

No answer—only a little shaking under the hands, which led Eli to speak as gently as he knew how.

“We’ll … we’ll moth-proof it. There’s a button missing”—Eli pointed—”I’ll have it fixed. I’ll have a zipper put in … Please, please—just look at me…” He was talking to himself, and yet how could he stop? Nothing he said made any sense—that alone made his heart swell. Yet somehow babbling on, he might babble something that would make things easier between them. “Look…” He reached inside his shirt to pull the frills of underwear into the light. “I’m wearing the special underwear, even … Please,” he said, “
please, please, please
” he sang, as as if it were some sacred word. “Oh,
please
…”

Nothing twitched under the tweed suit—and if the eyes watered, or twinkled, or hated, he couldn’t tell. It was driving him crazy. He had dressed like a fool, and for what? For this? He reached up and yanked the hands away.

“There!” he said—and in that first instant all he saw of the greenie’s face were two white droplets stuck to each cheek.

“Tell me—” Eli clutched his hands down to his sides—”Tell me, what can I do for you, I’ll do it…”

Stiffly, the greenie stood there, sporting his two white tears.

“Whatever I can do … Look, look, what I’ve done
already.”
He grabbed his black hat and shook it in the man’s face.

And in exchange, the greenie gave him an answer. He raised one hand to his chest, and then jammed it, finger first, towards the horizon. And with what a pained look! As though the air were full of razors! Eli followed the finger and saw beyond the knuckle, out past the nail, Woodenton.

“What do you want?” Eli said. “I’ll bring it!”

Suddenly the greenie made a run for it. But then he stopped, wheeled, and jabbed that finger at the air again. It pointed the same way. Then he was gone.

And then, all alone, Eli had the revelation. He did not question his understanding, the substance or the source. But with a strange, dreamy elation, he started away.

On Coach House Road, they were double-parked. The Mayor’s wife pushed a grocery cart full of dog food from Stop N’ Shop to her station wagon. The President of the Lions Club, a napkin around his neck, was jamming pennies into the meter in front of the Bit-in-Teeth Restaurant. Ted Heller caught the sun as it glazed off the new Byzantine mosaic entrance to his shoe shop. In pinkened jeans, Mrs. Jimmy Knudson was leaving Halloway’s Hardware, a paint bucket in each hand. Roger’s Beauty Shoppe had its doors open—women’s heads in silver bullets far as the eye could see. Over by the barbershop the pole spun, and Artie Berg’s youngest sat on a red horse, having his hair cut; his mother flipped through
Look
, smiling: the greenie had changed his clothes.