The Assistant (21 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Assistant
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Under the shower she soaped herself heavily, crying as she washed. At seven, before her mother awakened, she dressed and left the house, too sickened to eat. She would gladly have forgotten her life, in sleep, but dared not stay home, dared not be questioned. When she returned from her half-day
of work, if he was still there, she would order him to leave or would scream him out of the house.
 
Coming home from the garage, Nick smelled gas in the hall. He inspected the radiators in his flat, saw they were both lit, then knocked on Frank's door.
After a minute the door opened a crack.
“Do you smell anything?” Nick said, staring at the eye in the crack.
“Mind your goddamned business.”
“Are you nuts? I smell gas in the house, it's dangerous.”
“Gas?” Frank flung open the door. He was in pajamas, haggard.
“What's the matter, you sick?”
“Where do you smell the gas?”
“Don't tell me you can't smell it.”
“I got a bad cold,” Frank said hoarsely.
“Maybe it's comin' from the cellar,” said Nick.
They ran down a flight and then the odor hit Frank, an acrid stench thick enough to wade through.
“It's coming from this floor,” Nick said.
Frank pounded on the door. “Helen, there's gas here, let me in. Helen,” he cried.
“Shove it,” said Nick.
Frank pushed his shoulder against the door. It was unlocked and he fell in. Nick quickly opened the kitchen window while Frank, in his bare feet, roamed through the house. Helen was not there but he found Morris in bed.
The clerk, coughing, dragged the grocer out of bed and carrying him to the living room, laid him on the floor. Nick closed the stopcock of the bedroom radiator and threw open every window. Frank got down on his knees, bent over Morris, clamped his hands to his sides and pumped.
Tessie ran in in fright, and Nick shouted to her to call Ida.
Ida came stumbling up the stairs, moaning, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”
Seeing Morris lying on the floor, his underwear soaked, his face the color of a cooked beet, flecks of foam in the corners of his mouth, she let out a piercing shriek.
Helen, coming dully into the hall, heard her mother's cry. She smelled the gas and ran in terror up the stairs, expecting death.
When she saw Frank in his pajamas bent over her father's back, her throat thickened in disgust. She screamed in fear and hatred.
Frank couldn't look at her, frightened to.
“His eyes just moved,” Nick said.
Morris awoke with a massive ache in his chest. His head felt like corroded metal, his mouth horribly dry, his stomach crawling with pain. He was ashamed to find himself stretched out in his long underwear on the floor.
“Morris,” cried Ida.
Frank got up, embarrassed at his bare feet and pajamas.
“Papa, Papa.” Helen was on her knees.
“Why did you do it for?” Ida yelled in the grocer's ear.
“What happened?” he gasped.
“Why did you do it for?” she wept.
“Are you crazy?” he muttered. “I forgot to light the gas. A mistake.”
Helen broke into sobbing, her lips twisted. Frank had to turn his head.
“The only thing that saved him was he got some air,” Nick said. “You're lucky this flat ain't windproof, Morris.”
Tessie shivered. “It's cold. Cover him, he's sweating.”
“Put him in bed,” Ida said.
Frank and Nick lifted the grocer and carried him in to his bed. Ida and Helen covered him with blankets and quilt.
“Thanks,” Morris said to them. He stared at Frank. Frank looked at the floor.
“Shut the windows,” Tessie said. “The smell is gone.”
“Wait a little longer,” said Frank. He glanced at Helen but her back was to him. She was still crying.
“Why did he do it?” Ida moaned.
Morris gazed long at her, then shut his eyes.
“Leave him rest,” Nick advised.
“Don't light any matches for another hour,' Frank told Ida.
Tessie closed all but one window and they left. Ida and Helen remained with Morris in the bedroom.
Frank lingered in Helen's room but nothing welcomed him there.
Later he dressed and went down to the store. Business was brisk. Ida came down, and though he begged her not to, shut the store.
That afternoon Morris developed a fever and the doctor said he had to go to the hospital. An ambulance came and took the grocer away, his wife and daughter riding with him.
From his window upstairs, Frank watched them go.
 
Sunday morning the store was still shut tight. Though he feared to, Frank considered knocking on Ida's door and asking for the key. But Helen might open the door, and since he would not know what to say to her over the doorsill, he went instead down the cellar, and mounting the dumb-waiter, wriggled through the little window in the air shaft, into the store toilet. Once in the back, the clerk shaved and had his coffee. He thought he would stay in the store till somebody told him to scram; and even if they did, he would try in some way to stay longer. That was his only hope left, if there was any. Turning the front door lock, he carried in the milk and rolls and was ready for business. The register was empty, so he borrowed five dollars in change from Sam Pearl, saying he would pay it back from what he took in. Sam wanted to know how Morris was and Frank said he didn't know.
Shortly after half past eight, the clerk was standing at the front window when Ida and her daughter left the house. Helen looked like last year's flower. Observing her, he felt a pang of loss, shame, regret. He felt an unbearable deprivation —that yesterday he had almost had some wonderful thing but
today it was gone, all but the misery of remembering it was. Whenever he thought of what he had almost had it made him frantic. He felt like rushing outside, drawing her into a doorway, and declaring the stupendous value of his love for her. But he did nothing. He didn't exactly hide but he didn't show himself, and they soon went away to the subway.
Later he thought he would also go and see Morris in the hospital, as soon as he knew which one he was in—after they got home; but they didn't return till midnight. The store was closed and he saw them from his room, two dark figures getting out of a cab. Monday, the day the Norwegians opened their store, Ida came down at seven A.M. to paste a piece of paper on the door saying Morris Bober was sick and the grocery would be closed till Tuesday or Wednesday. To her amazement, Frank Alpine was standing, in his apron, behind the counter. She entered in anger.
Frank was miserably nervous that Morris or Helen, either or both, had told her all the wrong he had done them, because if they had, he was finished.
“How did you get in here?” Ida asked wrathfully.
He said through the air shaft window. “Thinking of your trouble, I didn't want to bother you about the key, Mrs.”
She vigorously forbade him ever to come in that way again. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes weary, mouth bitter, but he could tell that for some miraculous reason she didn't know what he had done.
Frank pulled a handful of dollar bills out of his pants pocket and a little bag of change, laying it all on the counter. “I took in forty-one bucks yesterday.”
“You were here yesterday?”
“I got in how I explained you. There was a nice rush around four till about six. We are all out of potato salad.”
Her eyes grew tears. He asked how Morris felt.
She touched her wet lids with a handkerchief. “Morris has pneumonia.”
“Ah, too bad. Give him my sorrow if you can. How's he coming along out of it?”
“He's a very sick man, he has weak lungs.”
“I think I'll go to see him in the hospital.”
“Not now,” Ida said.
“When he's better. How long do you think he'll be there?”
“I don't know. The doctor will telephone today.”
“Look, Mrs,” Frank said. “Why don't you stop worrying about the store while Morris is sick and let me take care of it? You know I make no demands.”
“My husband told you to go out from the store.”
He furtively studied her face but there was no sign of accusation.
“I won't stay very long,” he answered. “You don't have to worry about that. I'll stay here till Morris gets better. You'll need every cent for the hospital bills. I don't ask a thing for myself.”
“Did Morris tell you why you must leave?”
His heart galloped. Did she or didn't she know? If yes, he would say it was a mistake—deny he had touched a red cent in the register. Wasn't the proof of that in the pile of dough that lay right in front of her eyes on the counter? But he answered, “Sure, he didn't want me to hang around Helen any more.”
“Yes, she is a Jewish girl. You should look for somebody else. But he also found out that Schmitz was sick since December and kept closed his store in the mornings, also earlier in the night. This was what improved our income, not you.”
She then told Frank that the German had sold out and two Norwegians were opening up today.
Frank flushed. “I knew that Schmitz was sick and kept his store closed sometimes, but that isn't what made your business get better. What did that was how hard I worked building up the trade. And I bet I can keep this place in the same shape it is, even with two Norwegians around the corner or three Greeks. What's more, I bet I can raise the take-in higher.”
Though she was half-inclined to believe him, she couldn't
“Wait, you'll see how smart you are.”
“Then let me have a chance to show you. Don't pay me anything, the room and meals are enough.”
“What,” she asked in desperation, “do you want from us?”
“Just to help out. I have my debt to Morris.”
“You have no debt. He has a debt to you that you saved him from the gas.”
“Nick smelled it first. Anyway I feel I have a debt to him for all the things he has done for me. That's my nature, when I'm thankful, I'm thankful.”
“Please don't bother Helen. She is not for you.”
“I won't.”
She let him stay. If you were so poor where was your choice?
 
Taast and Pederson opened up with a horseshoe of spring flowers in their window. Their pink handbills brought them steady business and Frank had plenty of time on his hands. During the day only a few of the regulars came into the grocery. At night, after the Norwegians had closed, the grocery had a spurt of activity, but when Frank pulled the strings of the window lights around eleven, he had only fifteen dollars in the register. He didn't worry too much. Monday was a slow day anyway, and besides, people were entitled to grab off a few specials while they could get them. He figured nobody could tell what difference the Norwegians would make to the business until a couple of weeks had gone by, when the neighborhood was used to them and things settled back to normal. Nobody was going to give specials away that cheap every day. A store wasn't a charity, and when they stopped giving something for nothing, he would match them in service and also prices and get his customers back.
Tuesday was slow, also as usual. Wednesday picked up a little, but Thursday was slow again. Friday was better. Saturday was the best day of the week, although not so good as Saturdays lately. At the end of the week the grocery was
close to a hundred short of its recent weekly average. Expecting something like this, Frank had closed up for a half hour on Thursday and taken the trolley to the bank. He withdrew twenty-five dollars from his savings account and put the money into the register, five on Thursday, ten on Friday and ten on Saturday, so that when Ida wrote the figures down in her book each night she wouldn't feel too bad. Seventy-five less for the week wasn't as bad as a hundred.
 
 
Morris, better after ten days in the hospital, was brought home in a cab by Ida and Helen and laid to bed to convalesce. Frank, gripping his courage, thought of going up to see him and this time starting out right, right off. He thought of bringing him some fresh baked goods to eat, maybe a piece of cheese cake that he knew the grocer liked, or some apple strudel; but the clerk was afraid it was still too soon and Morris might ask him where he had got the money to buy the cake. He might yell, “You thief, you, the only reason you stay here still is because I am sick upstairs.” Yet if Morris felt this way he would already have told Ida what Frank had done. The clerk now was sure he hadn't mentioned it, because she wouldn't have waited this long to pitch him out on his ear. He thought a lot about the way Morris kept things to himself. It was a way a person had if he figured he could be wrong about how he sized up a situation. It could be that he might take a different view of Frank in time. The clerk tried to invent reasons why it might be worth the grocer's while, after he got on his feet again, to keep him on in the grocery. Frank felt he would promise anything to stay there. “Don't worry that I ever will steal from you or anybody else any more, Morris. If I do, I hope I drop dead on the spot.” He hoped that this promise, and the favor he was doing him by keeping the store open, would convince Morris of his sincerity. Yet he thought he would wait a while longer before going up to see him.

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