The Assistant (17 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
“Ward, you don't look to me in any kind of condition to do a stickup. You look more like you need to be in a hospital.”
“All I got is a bad heartburn.”
“You better take care of yourself.”
“You are making me cry.”
“Why don't you start going straight?”
“Why don't you?”
“I am trying to.”
“Your Jew girl must be some inspiration.”
“Don't talk about her, Ward.”
“I tailed you last week when you took her in the park. She's a nice piece. How often do you get it?”
“Get the hell out of here”
Ward got up unsteadily, “Hand over fifty bucks or I will fix you good with your Jew boss and your Jew girl. I will write them a letter who did the stickup last November.”
Frank rose, his face hard. Taking his wallet out of his pocket, he emptied it on he bed. There were eight single dollar bills. “That's all I have got.”
Ward snatched up the money. “I'll be back for more.”
“Ward,” Frank said through tight teeth, “if you drag your ass up here any more to make trouble, or if you ever follow me and my girl again, or tell Morris anything, the first thing I will do is telephone your old man at the police station and tell him under which rock he can find you. He
was in the grocery asking about you today, and if he ever meets up with you, he looks like he will bust your head off.”
was in the grocery asking about you today, and if he ever meets up with you, he looks like he will bust your head off.”
Ward with a moan spat at the clerk and missed, the gob of spit trickling down the wall.
“You stinking kike,” he snarled. Rushing out into the hall, he all but fell down two flights of stairs.
The grocer and Ida ran out to see who was making the racket, but by then Ward was gone.
Frank lay in bed, his eyes closed.
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One dark and windy night when Helen left the house late, Ida followed her through the cold streets and across the plaza into the interior of the deserted park, and saw her meet Frank Alpine. There, in an opening between a semicircle of tall lilac shrubs and a grove of dark maples, were a few benches, dimly lit and private, where they liked to come to be alone. Ida watched them sitting together on one of the benches, kissing. She dragged herself home and went upstairs, half-dead. Morris was asleep and she didn't want to wake him, so she sat in the kitchen, sobbing.
When Helen returned and saw her mother weeping at the kitchen table, she knew Ida knew, and Helen was both moved and frightened.
Out of pity she asked, “Mama, why are you crying?”
Ida at last raised her tear-stained face and said in despair, “Why do I cry? I cry for the world. I cry for my life that it went away wasted. I cry for you.”
“What have I done?”
“You have killed me in my heart.”
“I've done nothing that's wrong, nothing I'm ashamed of.”
“You are not ashamed that you kissed a goy?”
Helen gasped. “Did you follow me, Mama?”
“Yes,” Ida wept.
“How could you?”
“How could you kiss a goy?”
“I'm not ashamed that we kissed.”
She still hoped to avoid an argument. Everything was unsettled, premature..
Ida said, “If you marry such a man your whole life will be poisoned.”
“Mama, you'll have to be satisfied with what I now say. I have no plans to marry anybody.”
“What kind plans you got then with a man that he kisses you alone in a place where nobody can find you in the park?”
“I've been kissed before.”
“But a goy, Helen, an Italyener.”
“A man, a human being like us.”
“A man is not good enough. For a Jewish girl must be a Jew.”
“Mama, it's very late. I don't wish to argue. Let's not wake Papa.”
“Frank is not for you. I don't like him. His eyes don't look at a person when he talks to them.”
“His eyes are sad. He's had a hard life.”
“Let him go and find someplace a shikse that he likes, not a Jewish girl.”
“I have to work in the morning. I'm going to bed.”
Ida quieted down. When Helen was undressing she came into her room. “Helen,” she said, holding back her tears, “the only thing I want for you is the best. Don't make my mistake. Don't make worse and spoil your whole life, with a poor man that he is only a grocery clerk which we don't know about him nothing. Marry somebody who can give you a better life, a nice professional boy with a college education. Don't mix up now with a stranger. Helen, I know what I'm talking. Believe me, I know.” She was crying again.
“I'll try my best,” Helen said.
Ida dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Helen, darling, do me one favor.”
“What is it? I am very tired.”
“Please call up Nat tomorrow. Just to speak to him. Say hello, and if he asks you to go out with him, tell him yes. Give him a chance.”
“I gave him one.”
“Last summer you enjoyed so much with him. You went to the beach, to concerts. What happened?”
“Our tastes are different,” Helen said wearily.
“In the summer you said your tastes were the same.”
“I learned otherwise.”
“He is a Jewish boy, Helen, a college graduate. Give him another chance.”
“All right,” said Helen, “now will you go to sleep?”
“Also don't go no more with Frank. Don't let him kiss you, it's not nice.”
“I can't promise.”
“Please, Helen.”
“I said I'd call Nat. Let that be an end of it now. Good night, Mama.”
“Good night,” Ida said sadly.
Though her mother's suggestion depressed her, Helen called Nat from her office the next day. He was cordial, said he had bought a secondhand car from his future brother-in-law and invited her to go for a drive.
She said she would sometime.
“How about Friday night?” Nat asked.
She was seeing Frank on Friday. “Could you make it Saturday?”
“I happen to have an engagement Saturday, also Thursdayâsomething doing at the law school.”
“Then Friday is all right.” She agreed reluctantly, thinking it would be best to change the date with Frank, to satisfy her mother.
When Morris came up for his nap that afternoon Ida desperately begged him to send Frank away at once.
“Leave me alone on this subject ten minutes.”
“Morris,” she said, “last night I went out when Helen went, and I saw she met Frank in the park, and they kissed each the other.”
Morris frowned. “He kissed her?”
“Yes.”
“She kissed him?”
“I saw with my eyes.”
But the grocer, after thinking about it, said wearily, “So what is a kiss? A kiss is nothing.”
Ida said furiously, “Are you crazy?”
“He will go away soon,” he reminded her. “In the summer.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. “By summer could happen here ten times a tragedy.”
“What kind tragedy you expectingâmurder?”
“Worse,” she cried.
His heart turned cold, he lost his temper. “Leave me alone on this subject, for God's sakes.”
“Wait,” Ida bitterly warned.
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On Thursday of that week Julius Karp left Louis in the liquor store and stepped outside to peek through the grocery window to see if Morris was alone. Karp had not set foot in Morris's store since the night of the holdup, and he uneasily considered the reception he might meet if he were to go in now. Usually, after a time of not speaking to one another, it was Morris Bober, by nature unable to hold a grudge, who gave in and spoke to Karp; but this time he had put out of his mind the possibility of seeking out the liquor dealer and re-establishing their fruitless relationship. While in bed during his last convalescence he had thought much of Karpâan unwilling and distasteful thinkingâand had discovered he disliked him more than he had imagined. He resented him as a crass and stupid person who had fallen through luck into flowing prosperity. His every good fortune spattered others with misfortune, as if there was just so much luck in the world and what Karp left over wasn't fit to eat. Morris was incensed by thoughts of the long years he had toiled without just reward. Though this was not Karp's fault, it
was
that a delicatessen had moved in across the street to make a poor man poorer. Nor could the grocer forgive him the blow he had taken on the head in his place, who could in
health and wealth better afford it. Therefore it gave him a certain satisfaction not to have anything to do with the liquor dealer, though he was every day next door.
was
that a delicatessen had moved in across the street to make a poor man poorer. Nor could the grocer forgive him the blow he had taken on the head in his place, who could in
health and wealth better afford it. Therefore it gave him a certain satisfaction not to have anything to do with the liquor dealer, though he was every day next door.
Karp, on the other hand, had been content to wait for Morris to loosen up first. He pictured the grocer yielding his aloof silence while he enjoyed the signs of its dissolution, meanwhile pitying the poor Jew his hard luck lifeâin capital letters. Some were born that way. Whereas Karp in whatever he touched now coined pure gold, if Morris Bober found a rotten egg in the street, it was already cracked and leaking. Such a one needed someone with experience to advise him when to stay out of the rain. But Morris, whether he knew how Karp felt, or not, remained rigidly uncommunicativeâoffering not so much as a flicker of recognition when on his way to the corner for his daily
Forward
, he passed the liquor dealer standing in front of his store or caught his eye peeking into his front window. As a month passed, now, quickly, almost four, Karp came to the uncomfortable conclusion that although Ida was still friendly to him, he would this time get nothing for free from Morris; he wasn't going to give in. He reacted coldly to this insight, would give back what he gotâso let it be indifference. But indifference was not a commodity he was pleased to exchange. For some reason that was not clear to him Karp liked Morris to like him, and it soon rankled that his down-at-the-heels neighbor continued to remain distant. So he had been hit on the head in a holdup, but was the fault Karp's?
He
had taken careâwhy hadn't Morris, the shlimozel? Why, when he had warned him there were two holdupniks across the street, hadn't he like a sensible person gone first to lock his door, then telephoned the police? Why?âbecause he was inept, unfortunate.
Forward
, he passed the liquor dealer standing in front of his store or caught his eye peeking into his front window. As a month passed, now, quickly, almost four, Karp came to the uncomfortable conclusion that although Ida was still friendly to him, he would this time get nothing for free from Morris; he wasn't going to give in. He reacted coldly to this insight, would give back what he gotâso let it be indifference. But indifference was not a commodity he was pleased to exchange. For some reason that was not clear to him Karp liked Morris to like him, and it soon rankled that his down-at-the-heels neighbor continued to remain distant. So he had been hit on the head in a holdup, but was the fault Karp's?
He
had taken careâwhy hadn't Morris, the shlimozel? Why, when he had warned him there were two holdupniks across the street, hadn't he like a sensible person gone first to lock his door, then telephoned the police? Why?âbecause he was inept, unfortunate.
And because he was, his troubles grew like bananas in bunches. First, in another accident to his hard head, then through employing Frank Alpine. Karp, no fool, knew the makings of a bad situation when he saw it. Frank, whom he had got acquainted with and considered a fly-by-night rolling
stone, would soon make troubleâof that he was certain. Morris's fly-specked, worm-eaten shop did not earn half enough to pay for a full-time helper, and it was idiotic extravagance for the grocer, after he was better, to keep the clerk working for him. Karp soon learned from Louis that his estimate of a bad situation was correct. He found out that Frank every so often invested in a bottle of the best stuff, paying, naturally, cashâbut whose? Furthermore Sam Pearl, another waster, had mentioned that the clerk would now and then paste a two-dollar bill on some nag's useless nose, from which it blew off in the breeze. This done by a man who was no doubt paid in peanuts added up to only one thingâhe stole. Who did he steal from? Naturally from M. Bober, who had anyway nothingâwho else? Rockefeller knew how to take care of his millions, but if Morris earned a dime he lost it before he could put it into his torn pocket. It was the nature of clerks to steal from those they were working for. Karp had, as a young man, privately peculated from his employer, a half-blind shoe wholesaler; and Louis, he knew, snitched from him, but by Louis he was not bothered. He was, after all, a son; he worked in the business and would somedayâit shouldn't be too soonâown it. Also, by strict warnings and occasional surprise inventories he held Louis down to a bare minimumâbeans. A stranger stealing money was another matterâslimy. It gave Karp gooseflesh to think of the Italian working for him.
stone, would soon make troubleâof that he was certain. Morris's fly-specked, worm-eaten shop did not earn half enough to pay for a full-time helper, and it was idiotic extravagance for the grocer, after he was better, to keep the clerk working for him. Karp soon learned from Louis that his estimate of a bad situation was correct. He found out that Frank every so often invested in a bottle of the best stuff, paying, naturally, cashâbut whose? Furthermore Sam Pearl, another waster, had mentioned that the clerk would now and then paste a two-dollar bill on some nag's useless nose, from which it blew off in the breeze. This done by a man who was no doubt paid in peanuts added up to only one thingâhe stole. Who did he steal from? Naturally from M. Bober, who had anyway nothingâwho else? Rockefeller knew how to take care of his millions, but if Morris earned a dime he lost it before he could put it into his torn pocket. It was the nature of clerks to steal from those they were working for. Karp had, as a young man, privately peculated from his employer, a half-blind shoe wholesaler; and Louis, he knew, snitched from him, but by Louis he was not bothered. He was, after all, a son; he worked in the business and would somedayâit shouldn't be too soonâown it. Also, by strict warnings and occasional surprise inventories he held Louis down to a bare minimumâbeans. A stranger stealing money was another matterâslimy. It gave Karp gooseflesh to think of the Italian working for him.
And since misfortune was the grocer's lot, the stranger would shovel on more, not less, for it was always dangerous to have a young goy around where there was a Jewish girl. This worked out by an unchangeable law that Karp would gladly have explained to Morris had they been speaking, and saved him serious trouble. That
this
trouble, too, existed he had confirmed twice in the last week. Once he saw Helen and Frank walking on the Parkway under the trees, and another time while driving home past the local movie house, he had glimpsed them coming out after a show, holding hands. Since then he had often thought about them, indeed
with anxiety, and felt he would in some way like to assist the luckless Bober.
this
trouble, too, existed he had confirmed twice in the last week. Once he saw Helen and Frank walking on the Parkway under the trees, and another time while driving home past the local movie house, he had glimpsed them coming out after a show, holding hands. Since then he had often thought about them, indeed
with anxiety, and felt he would in some way like to assist the luckless Bober.
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