Sabbath’s Theater (54 page)

To get over to that sideboard. But by now Fish has put his hands on my thighs, they are resting on me while we talk, and not even Machiavelli could have got up at that moment, even if he knew,
as I did
, that inside that sideboard was everything he had come looking for. I knew this. Something is there that is not my mother’s ghost: she’s down in the grave with her ghost. Something is here as important and as palpable as the sun that turns Fish brown. Yet I couldn’t move. This must be the veneration that the Chinese have for the old.

“You fall asleep out there?”

“Where?”

“In the sunshine.”

“No. I don’t sleep. I just look. I close my eyes and I look. Yeah. I can’t sleep there. I told you before. I’m a very poor sleeper. I go upstairs in the evening, about four or five o’clock. I go to bed. So I rest in the bed, but I don’t sleep. A very poor sleeper.”

“Do you remember when you first came down the shore by yourself?”

“When I came to the shore? What do you mean, from Russia?”

“No. After New York. After you left the Bronx. After you left your mother and father.”

“Oh. Yeah. I came down here. You’re from the Bronx?”

“No. My mother was. Before she married.”

“Yes? Well, I just got married and I came down here. Yeah. I married a very fine woman.”

“How many children did you have?”

“Two. A boy and a girl. My son, the one who died not long ago. An accountant. A good job. With a retail concern. And Lois. You know Lois?”

“Yes, I know Lois.”

“A lovely child.”

“That she is. It’s very nice to see you, Fish.” Taking his hands in mine. About time.

“Thank you. It’s a pleasure seeing you, I’m sure.”

“You know who I am, Fish? I’m Morris. I’m Mickey. I’m Yetta’s son. My brother was Morty. I remember you so well, on the street with the truck, all the ladies coming out of the houses—”

“To the truck.”

He’s with me, he’s back there—and squeezing my hands with a strength greater even than what I have left in my own! “To the truck,” I said.

“To buy. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Yes. That’s the word for it. It was all remarkable.”

“Remarkable.”

“All those years ago. Everyone alive. So can I look around your house at the photographs?” There were photographs arranged along the top of the sideboard. No frames. Just propped up against the wall.

“You want to take a picture of it?”

I
did
want to take a picture of the sideboard. How did he know? “No, I just want to look at the photographs.”

I lifted his hands from my lap. But when I got up, he got up
and followed me into the dining room, walked very well, right at my heels, followed me to the sideboard like Willie Pep chasing some little
pisher
around the ring.

“Can you see the pictures?” he asked.

“Fish,” I said, “this is you—with the truck!” There was the truck, with the baskets lined up along the slanting sides and Fish on the street next to the truck, standing at military attention.

“I think so,” he said. “I can’t see. It looks like me,” he said when I held it up directly in front of his glasses. “Yes. That’s my daughter there, Lois.”

Lois had lost her looks later in life. She too.

“And who is this man?”

“That’s my son, Irving. And who is this?” he asked me, picking up a photograph that was lying flat on the sideboard. They were old, faded photographs, water-stained around the edges and some sticky to the touch. “That’s me,” he asked, “or what?”

“I don’t know. Who is this? This woman. Beautiful woman. Dark hair.”

“Maybe it’s my wife.”

Yes. The potato then probably no more than a bud. I can’t remember any of those women approaching the beauty of this one. And she’s the one who died.

“And is this you? With a girlfriend?”

“Yeah. My girlfriend. I had her then. She passed away already.”

“You outlive everybody, even your girlfriends.”

“Yeah. I had a few girlfriends. I had a few, in my younger years, after my wife passed away. Yeah.”

“Did you enjoy that?”

The words have no meaning for him at first. In this question he seems to have met his match. We wait, my crippled hands on my mother’s sideboard, which is thick with grease and dirt. The tablecloth on the dining room table bears every stain imaginable. Nothing else here is quite so fetid and foul. And I’ll bet it’s one of the cloths we never got to use ourselves.

“I asked if you enjoyed the girls.”

“Well, yes,” he suddenly replied. “Yes. It was all right. I tried a few.”

“But not recently.”

“What reason?”

“Not
recently
.”

“What do you mean what reason?”

“Not
lately
.”

“Lately? No, too old for that. Finished with that.” He waves a hand almost angrily. “That’s
done
. That’s
out
. Good-bye, girlfriends!”

“Any more photos? You have a lot of nice old photographs. Maybe there are more inside.”

“Here? Inside here? Nothing.”

“You never know.”

The top drawer, where once one would have found a bag of tefillin, a tallis, a sex manual, the tablecloths, reveals itself, when opened, to be indeed empty. Her whole life was devoted to keeping things in drawers. Things to call ours. Debby’s drawers, too, things to call hers. Michelle’s drawers. All the existence, born and unborn, possible and impossible, in drawers. But empty drawers looked at long enough can probably drive you mad.

I kneel to open the door to the tall middle drawer. There is a box. A cardboard carton is there.
Not
nothing. On top of the box is marked “Morty’s Things.” My mother’s writing. On the side, again in her writing, “Morty’s Flag & things.”

“No, you’re right. Nothing here,” and shut the sideboard’s lower door.

“Oh, what a life, what a life,” muttered Fish as he led me back to the living room sofa.

“Yeah, was it good, life? Was it good to live, Fish?”

“Sure. Better than being dead.”

“So people say.”

But what I was thinking really was that it all began with my mother’s coming to watch over my shoulder what I did with Drenka up at the Grotto, that it was her staying to watch, however disgusting it was to her, it was her seeing me through all
those ejaculations leading nowhere, that led me to here! The goofiness you must get yourself into to get where you have to go, the extent of the mistakes you are required to make! If they told you beforehand about all the mistakes, you’d say no, I can’t do it, you’ll have to get somebody else, I’m too smart to make all those mistakes. And they would tell you, we have faith, don’t worry, and you would say no, no way, you need a much bigger schmuck than me, but they repeat they have faith that you are the one, that you will evolve into a colossal schmuck more conscientiously than you can possibly begin to imagine, you will make mistakes on a scale you can’t even dream of now—
because there is no other way to reach the end
.

The coffin came home in a flag. His burned-up body buried first on Leyte, in an Army cemetery in the Philippines. When I was away at sea the coffin came back; they sent it back. My father wrote me, in his immigrant handwriting, that there was a flag on the coffin and after the funeral “the Army guy folded it up for mother in the offishul way.” It’s in that carton in the sideboard. It’s fifteen feet away.

They were back together on the sofa holding hands. And he has no idea who I am. No problem stealing the carton. Just have to find the moment. It’ll be best if Fish doesn’t have to die in the process.

“I think, when I think of dying,” Fish happened to be saying, “I think I wish I was never born. I wish I was never born. That’s right.”

“Why?”

“’Cause death, death is a terrible thing. You know. Death, it’s no good. So I wish I was never born.” Angrily he states this.
I
want to die because I don’t have to,
he
doesn’t want to die because he does have to. “That’s my philosophy,” he says.

“But you had a wonderful wife. A beautiful woman.”

“Oh, yeah, that I did.”

“Two good children.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yes.” The anger subsides, but only slowly, by degrees. He’s not to be easily convinced that death can be redeemed by anything.

“You had friends.”

“No. I didn’t have too many friends. I didn’t have time for friends. But my wife, she was a very nice woman. She passed away forty or fifty years ago already. Nice woman. As I say, I met her through my . . . wait a minute . . . her name is Yetta.”

“You met her through Yetta. That’s right. You met her through my mother.”

“Her name was Yetta. Yes. I was introduced to her from the Bronx. I still can remember that. They were walking across the park. I took a walk. And I met them on the way. And they introduced me to her. And that’s the girl I fell in love with.”

“You have a good memory for a man your age.”

“Oh, yeah. Thank God. Yes. What time is it now?”

“Almost one o’clock.”

“Is it? It’s late. It’s time to put up my lamb chop. I make a lamb chop. And I have applesauce for dessert. It’s almost one, you say?”

“Yeah. Just a few minutes to one.”

“Oh, yeah? So I’m gonna put up, I call it my dinner.”

“You cook the lamb chop yourself?”

“Oh, yeah. I put it in the oven. Takes about ten, fifteen minutes and it’s done. Sure. I got Delicious apples. I put in an apple to bake. So that’s my dessert. And then I have an orange. And that’s what I call a good meal.”

“Good. You take good care of yourself. Can you bathe yourself?” Get him in the bath, then walk off with the carton.

“No. I take a shower.”

“And it’s safe for you? You hold on?”

“Yeah. It’s a closed shower, you know, with a curtain. I got a shower there. So that’s where I shower. No problem at all. Once a week, yeah. I take a shower.”

“And nobody ever drives you down to look at the ocean?”

“No. I used to love the ocean. I used to go bathing in the ocean. Many years ago already. I was a pretty good swimmer. I learned in this country.”

“I remember. You were a member of the Polar Bear Club.”

“What?”

“The Polar Bear Club.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Sure. A group of men who went swimming on the beach in the cold weather. They were called the Polar Bear Club. You would go out in the cold water in a bathing suit, go in the water, come right out. In the twenties. In the thirties.”

“The Polar Bear Club, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Yes. I do. I think I do remember that.”

“Did you enjoy that, Fish?”

“The Polar Bear Club? I hated it.”

“Why did you do it then?”

“I swear to God, I don’t remember why I did it.”

“You taught me, Fish. You taught me to swim.”

“I did? I taught Irving. My son was born in Asbury Park. And Lois was born right here, upstairs in this house. In the bedroom. In the bedroom where I sleep now, she was born. Lois. The baby. She passed away.”

In the corner of the living room that is back of Fish’s head, there is an American flag rolled around a short pole. Fresh from reading the words “Morty’s Flag & things,” Sabbath only now sees it for the first time. Is that it? Is there just the carton there empty, in it none of Morty’s things any longer, and the flag from his coffin tacked to this pole? The flag looks as washed out as the beach chair in the yard. If this cleaning lady were interested in cleaning, she would have torn it up for rags long ago.

“How come you have an American flag?” Sabbath asked.

“I got it quite a few years already. I don’t know how I got it, but I got it. Oh, wait a minute. I think it was from the Belmar bank. When I piled up money, they gave me this flag. This American flag. In Belmar I used to be a depositor. Now, good-bye, deposits.”

“Do you want to have your dinner Fish? Do you want to go in and make your lamb chop? I’ll sit right here if you want me to.”

“It’s all right. I got time. It wouldn’t run away.”

Fish’s laughing getting more and more like a laugh.

“And you still have a sense of humor,” said Sabbath.

“Not much.”

So, even if nothing is left in the carton, I will come away having learned two things today: the fear of death is with you forever and a shred of irony lives on and on, even in the simplest Jew.

“Did you ever think that you would live to be a man a hundred years old?”

“No, I really didn’t. I heard about it in the Bible, but I really didn’t. Thank God, I made it. But how long I’m going to last, God knows.”

“How about your dinner, Fish? How about your lamb chop?”

“What is this here? Can you see this?” In his lap again are the two pieces of mail he was fiddling with when I came in. “Will you read it to me? It’s a bill, or what?”

“‘Fischel Shabas, 311 Hammond Avenue.’ Let me open it up. Comes from Dr. Kaplan, the optometrist.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Kaplan, the optometrist. In Neptune. Inside is a card. I’ll read it. ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“Oh!” The recognition pleases him inordinately. “What’s his name here?”

“Dr. Benjamin Kaplan, the optometrist.”

“The optometrist?”

“Yeah. ‘Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Patient.’”

“Never heard of him.”

“‘Hope your birthdays are as special as you are.’ Did you have a birthday recently?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“When was your birthday?”

“The first of April.”

Right. April Fool’s Day. My mother always thought this appropriate for Fish. Yes, that distaste of hers was for his pecker. Unfathomable otherwise.

“So this is a birthday card.”

“A birthday card? The name is what?”

“Kaplan. A doctor.”

“That’s a doctor I never heard of. Maybe he heard about my birthday. And the other one?”

“Shall I open it up?”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”

“From the Guaranty Reserve Life Insurance Company. I don’t think it’s anything.”

“What does he say there?”

“They want to sell you a life insurance policy. It says, ‘Life insurance policy available to ages forty to eighty-five.’”

“You can throw it out.”