Marjorie Morningstar (37 page)

The afternoon was cooler and the shadows were growing long when the dances ended and
she joined her parents to watch the bullfight. Mrs. Morgenstern had kept a vacant
chair for her, fending off the guests ruthlessly. “It’s not fair, you know,” Marjorie
panted, sinking gratefully into the chair despite the glares of guests squatting on
the grass. “I’m just hired help.”

“Let him fire you, that devil,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “For what he pays you, you
can sit in a chair.”

The bullfight began.

The annual South Wind corrida, though colorful in its fashion, bore only a remote
resemblance to the sombre and gallant ritual described in the works of Ernest Hemingway.
First the band lined up at the open end of the ring and marched in, playing the entrance
music raggedly and thinly. Next came a procession of assorted waiters, caddies, and
bell-boys, grinning stupidly in motley bullfighter costumes, which were tight in the
seat, and ran heavily to red cheesecloth and gold spangles. Some of them were mounted
on horses from the camp stables. The horses, too, were decked out in loud-colored
cloth, feathers, and paper streamers. There was scattered applause, together with
some laughter and jeers, as the burlesque parade filed around the ring. “It’s pretty,
though,” Mrs. Morgenstern said, when the marchers halted in a semicircular array facing
the entrance. “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble.”

“Noel’s done it all,” Marjorie said. “He even designed the costumes.”

The music stopped. The giggling and the shouting died away. A cool breeze fluttered
the streamers on the horses. Everybody looked toward the entrance. The band crashed
into the toreador song from
Carmen
; the bullfighters began to sing, in raucous chorus; and from behind the social hall
Samson-Aaron appeared, riding a spindly old white horse.

He was wearing an unbelievably vast pair of lavender tights that extended from his
knees to his armpits; also white silk stockings, purple pumps, a purple silver-trimmed
jacket that barely covered his shoulders, and a tiny flat matador’s hat with two purple
pompons. Fastened to his side on a belt in place of a sword was a gigantic meat cleaver.
As he came trotting into the ring, his great paunch bobbed and flopped in the straining
tights, which threatened to pop like an overblown lavender balloon. He was so broad-bottomed
that he appeared to hang over in lavender bags on either side of his bony mount. He
was grinning his black-gapped grin, bowing this way and that with blubbery precarious
majesty, as he bobbed in the saddle. Marjorie and Mrs. Morgenstern were shrieking
with laughter at the fantastically ridiculous sight from the moment he appeared; and
even the father, after a reluctant grunt or two, threw back his head and laughed as
Marjorie had seldom heard him laugh. The whole lawn echoed with cheers and guffaws.
Samson-Aaron jogged once around the ring, doffing the little hat to the cheers, and
rode out, leaving the crowd still laughing. The musicians marched out behind him and
took their former seats. The bullfighters scattered about the ring, and stood with
their cardboard weapons poised.

A bugle brayed, and the “bull” catapulted snorting into the ring.

It was a remarkably lifelike fake. Puddles Podell was in the front end; the rear was
occupied by a grumpy little stagehand who was jealously proud of this assignment.
In four years the pair had worked up a supple, scary imitation of a bull’s gait and
stance. The head had ghastly staring eyes that could roll and blink. The ragged-toothed
mouth opened and closed on a string, with a monstrous red tongue licking in and out.
After pawing the ground and snorting in mid-ring for a while, the bull let out a fearful
bellow, and came charging down directly at the part of the ring where the Morgensterns
were sitting, its eyes staring, its sharp curved horns poised to gore, its mouth flapping
open as it roared, a terrible red cavern. The bullfighters scattered out of its way,
yelling, and as it bore down on the seats Marjorie was a bit frightened, despite herself.
In front of her some guests ducked, and one fat girl ran squealing from her seat.
Inches from the chairs, the bull stopped short with a sound of screeching brakes.
As the fat girl returned sheepishly to her seat, to the laughter of the crowd, the
tongue poked out of the bull’s mouth and licked her hand; then the bull nosed her
behind, and rolled its eyes, and clicked its rear legs in the air.

Ten minutes of extravagant monkeyshines with the bullfighters followed, at the end
of which several of them lay scattered on the grass, presumably gored to death. The
bull, bristling all over with crepe-paper banderillas, stood in the center of the
ring, panting, its tongue hanging down nearly three feet. The band struck up the toreador
song, and Samson-Aaron came waddling into the ring, sharpening the cleaver on a razor
strop.

The foolishness that ensued was indescribable. Marjorie laughed so hard that at one
point she sank off her chair and sat on the grass with her head in her hands, moaning
and weeping feebly. All the spectators were howling and writhing with laughter. The
Uncle chased the bull; the bull chased the Uncle; they boxed; they butted each other;
the bull got on its knees and begged for mercy; it seized the cleaver in its teeth
and beat the Uncle over the head with it; there were a hundred other crazy antics.
Noel had used all the gags of previous years and had invented some new ones; and Puddles
and the Uncle had worked out a few more. Marjorie had never laughed so loud or so
long in her life. At the finish, as Samson-Aaron with upraised cleaver was about to
despatch the bull, he pronounced over the drooping staring animal the first words
of the Jewish prayer for the dead. The bull raised its head and bellowed the correct
response. The Uncle dropped the cleaver, amazed, and asked the bull in Yiddish where
it came from. In a rapid Yiddish exchange the bull and the toreador discovered they
were both from the same small town near Odessa. Samson-Aaron threw his arms around
the bull and kissed it. The band started up a lively Russian dance. The Uncle began
to bound and twirl, then he squatted and kicked out his legs, his belly shaking fearfully.
The bull stared at him for a moment, then it too squatted and kicked out its four
legs, Russian style. It was at this incredibly ludicrous sight—the gargantuan toreador
in lavender and the bull with the hanging tongue squatting and dancing Russian-fashion,
and shouting “Hey! Hey!”—that Marjorie fell off her chair. Samson-Aaron and the bull
danced out of the ring side by side, and all the guests rose and cheered, and threw
sombreros in the air.

They kept applauding and cheering. They would not be satisfied with bows. Even when
the bull took off its head and Puddles tried to beg off with a grateful speech, wiping
his purple face, they would not listen. The bull had to go back to the middle of the
ring, and Samson-Aaron had to come on again stropping the meat cleaver; and they repeated
the entire act. This time at the end Samson-Aaron did not dance, but sat on the ground,
crossed his arms and kicked his legs as though he were dancing, and then staggered
off with his arm around the bull’s neck, pantomiming exhaustion. The audience laughed
at this variation, but Mrs. Morgenstern all at once grew serious and stood. “What’s
the matter with him? Why’s he doing that?”

“Don’t be silly, Mom,” Marjorie said, “it’s his idea of clowning, that’s all.” But
the mother was already working her way out of the seats.

They found the Uncle behind the social hall, sitting on a folding chair, surrounded
by the cast of the bullfight. Marjorie was terrified for a moment when she saw the
cluster of people around the fat lavender-clad figure, but relief warmed her when
she heard them laughing.

“Hello, Modgerie!” he boomed. His face was pale and the tights were streaked black
with sweat, but his eyes gleamed with triumph and fun. “Vell, you and me, ve go on
the stage and make lots of money, ha? The Uncle is a regular Chollie Choplin! If I
only find it out a few years earlier I vould be a millionaire, not a dishvasher, ha?
Whoosh! Such a vorkout. Good for me, I lose tventy pounds.”

The father said, “You feel all right, Uncle?”

“Vy not? A little exercise hurts a man?”

Puddles, standing in the bull skin with the head under his arm, said, “What’s everybody
worried about him for? What about me? I nearly died inside this damn head.”

“You!” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “You’re a young man.” She tried to get Samson-Aaron
to go back to the kitchen workers’ barracks at once, but he insisted on accompanying
the Morgensterns to their car to see them off. “Vot, I vouldn’t come and say goodbye?
I’m crippled or something?”

As they crossed the crowded lawn, from which the ring of chairs was being removed,
some guests cheered and applauded the Uncle, and he had to take off his matador’s
hat repeatedly. “A dishvasher should be so popular, ha?” he said. “Milton should see
it.” The old man’s face beamed and perspired under the absurd purple pompons. The
usual high color had flowed back into his puffy cheeks, and he hummed an old Yiddish
song as he walked springily along.

The parents’ luggage was already piled in the car in the cinder-strewn parking space
behind the camp office. “Well, I guess it’s goodbye,” the mother said. She tossed
the father’s sombrero into the back seat.

Mr. Morgenstern embraced Marjorie in a quick nervous hug, not looking at her. “Take
good care of my daughter,” he said. He slapped Samson-Aaron on the back and got into
the driver’s seat.

The mother peered at Marjorie, wrinkling up her eyes. “So? Any decision?”

“Mom, I really—I appreciate it, believe me, I do. You may be right. When will you
be home, Wednesday? I’ll call you.”

“Don’t wait till Wednesday. If you make up your mind tonight, tomorrow, whenever it
is, call me at Seth’s camp. I’ll call Papa’s office and they’ll make everything ready
for you.” She gave her the camp telephone number. “Marjorie, do it.”

“Maybe I will. I really may, Mom.”

“Good.” Mrs. Morgenstern turned to the Uncle. Her face clouded. “So, Samson-Aaron?
You want to listen to me? Enough foolishness. Quit this job. Come home. We’ll find
you something better.”

“Vy? I make a dollar, it’s nice, I fish, I see Modgerie—”

“You’re an old man. Why must you keep up the foolish tricks? Look at you, sweating
like a horse, dancing like a crazy man. Look at your hands, all chewed up from broken
dishes.” The Uncle guiltily put his red-notched hands behind him. “What’s going to
be the end, Uncle? Are you going to be Samson-Aaron for always?”

The Uncle smiled. “Who else should I be if not Samson-Aaron? Goodbye, Rose, you’re
good, you’re like a sister.”

The mother expelled a long sigh, puffing out her cheeks. She looked from the girl
to the old man. “I keep trying to fix everything. Why? It’s God’s world.” She kissed
them both. “Take care of yourselves. And… and grow up, both of you.” With a little
laugh and a shrug of her shoulders, she got into the car. It drove off with a rattle
of cinders. Looking after it, Marjorie felt the scarred damp hand of the Uncle softly
clasp hers.

She leaned on the Uncle’s shoulder and kissed his bristly cheek. “Let’s both go and
lie down. I’m dead. You don’t have to wash dishes tonight, do you?”

“Me? I sit at the table vit Mr. Airman for dinner. Big shot.”

“Good. See you later. You go and rest now, the way Mom said.”

“Vot you think,” the Uncle said, “I play a game tennis?” They went separate ways.
She could see him for a while laboring up the hill toward the kitchen barracks, a
monstrous waddling figure in lavender tights and a purple matador’s hat.

Marjorie made for her bungalow, almost staggering under a sudden wave of fatigue,
and fell in a disorderly heap on a bed.

A kiss awakened her—a kiss strongly flavored with rum. It was still daylight. Wally
Wronken was stooped over her, swaying. He wore a yellow polo shirt and gray flannel
trousers; there was no fiesta touch about him except the drink in his hand. “Ah, the
princess wakes,” he said.

“Say, where do you get your nerve?” She made instinctive sleepy gestures at her bodice
and skirt. “You get out of here. You’re not allowed on these grounds. And what do
you mean, kissing me when I’m asleep? I ought to sock you.”

“Why, it’s the classic way of arousing the sleeping beauty,” said Wally. “I’ve broken
the hundred-year spell, princess. The clocks are ticking again in the castle. The
cooks and the grooms are gaping and stretching. The king has resumed counting his
tarnished money, and the spider is finishing the web that has hung incomplete and
dusty for a century—”

“You’re drunk,” Marjorie said, yawning. “And it isn’t even dark. You’re disgusting.”

“Yes, I know, princess. I am disgusting. But I was not always thus.” He spoke with
a slow, slightly thick precision, making elegant gestures with the drink, spilling
it a little. “Now that I have broken your spell, will you break mine? A wicked witch,
princess, has put me into this form of a loathsome bespectacled toad. One kiss from
your virgin lips, and before your eyes I shall spring erect, a tall handsome golden-haired
social director in a black sweater. We shall marry and live happily ever after, on
kisses, hamburgers, and Automat coffee.”

“Don’t be so funny.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, Lord, six-thirty already.”

“You’re wanted in the social hall,” said Wally, “by the great I Am.”

“Noel?”

“Christmas himself. Tell me, would you like me any better if I called myself Ash Wednesday
Wronken?”

“Get out of here. I’ll be down there in a minute. What does he want?”

“Your fair white body. As who does not?”

“Good Lord, how many have you had?”

He drained the glass, tossed it aside, walked stiffly to the door, and turned. “No
lilacs.” He pointed overhead. “Look. No lilacs.”