The Complete Stories (40 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories
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FEUER [
pushing them back
]: Please don’t tell me about manners. About manners I knew before you were born.
LEON: Mr. Feuer, if you want to insult me, there are better ways.
FEUER: Why should I insult you?
LEON: Please don’t think I am a dope. It’s as plain as anyone’s nose that you don’t like me, though I wish I knew why.
FEUER: I’ll tell you why if you’ll kindly tell me what you are living for. What is your philosophy of life?
LEON: I live because I’m alive.
FEUER: Good, but what do you want from your life? That’s also important.
LEON [
beginning to show irritation
]: That’s my business. Listen, Mr. Feuer, don’t think I am so dense that I don’t understand the reasons for this inquisition you gave me. You pretend you are cordial but it’s for the purpose of needling me. I’m not so dense that I don’t know what you’re insinuating—that I’m not interested in the right things and also that I’m money-conscious. But that’s all a camouflage. You have some pretty strong prejudices and that’s why you’re annoyed that Adele is going to marry me.
FEUER: That’s a father’s privilege.
LEON: I guess you have no respect for your daughter’s judgment.
FEUER: I have plenty of respect, but she isn’t your type. I don’t say you’re a bad person, but you aren’t the right man for her.
LEON: Who’s the right man?
FEUER: More an artistic type. Like her own nature.
LEON: That’s just what I figured you would say, and if you’ll excuse me, it’s a batty point of view. A man is a man, not a profession. I’ve worked darn hard all my life for everything I have. I got myself a decent education which I paid for myself, even if it isn’t a B.A. education. No matter what you think, if you look around, the world doesn’t run on art. What it runs on I’m not going to argue with you but I’ll say this: At the least you ought to respect me if for no other reason than because your daughter does. Just because I’m no long-hair writer doesn’t make me unworthy of her, or for that matter, it doesn’t make Adele unworthy of me. [
Rising
] Someday I hope you’ll wake up to the facts of life.
[FLORENCE FEUER
appears on the stairs and momentarily pauses when she hears voices
.] People aren’t the same as their businesses. I am not what I sell. And even if I happened to sell irradiated toilet seats, I still wouldn’t worship them. I would use them for the purpose that they are intended.
[FLORENCE
enters the apartment.
]
FEUER: Whatever you sell or don’t sell, if Adele marries somebody she don’t love, she’ll regret it.
FLORENCE [
gasping
]
:
Feuer—for God’s sake! Leon, don’t believe him—
LEON [
to
FLORENCE]: Hello, Mrs. Feuer. When Adele comes home, tell her I’ll be back to take her out to dinner.
[
He leaves with dignity.
FLORENCE
sits down in the chair
LEON
has just occupied and slowly removes her shoes. For a minute she sits there not saying a word.
FEUER
is silent, too
,
then goes to the sink and pours himself a long glass of water. He stands there drinking thirstily
.]
FLORENCE [
with weary bitterness
]: What’s the matter, Feuer, aren’t you satisfied with all your miseries? What do you want from this poor girl’s life? Do you hate her?
FEUER [
coolly
]: I’m doing her a favor.
FLORENCE: To ruin her life?
FEUER: To save it. This boy means well but he’s a first-class mediocrity. I’m convinced for sure now.
FLORENCE
[wearily patient
]: Are you blind? Take your eyes in your hand and look again. How can you stay in the same room with Leon and not see what a fine person he is? The trouble is you’re jealous.
FEUER: If I wasn’t jealous of Maurice Schwartz why should I be jealous of Leon Singer?
FLORENCE: Why did you insult him for nothing?
FEUER: Who insulted him?
FLORENCE: You did. Why did he leave with his face so red? FEUER: What am I, a diagnostician? All I asked him was a few honest questions. It’s a father’s privilege.
FLORENCE: I can imagine what you asked him.
FEUER: I asked him what he lived for. I asked him what’s his philosophy, if any. I have a right to know.
FLORENCE: Why don’t you ask yourself and leave him alone?
FEUER: I didn’t ask him anything I don’t ask myself.
FLORENCE: Please leave him alone. Adele picked him, not you. She’s marrying him, not you. Leave them alone before you start a calamity.
FEUER: My opinion is she don’t love him.
FLORENCE: Are you crazy? Who told you such a thing?
FEUER: She’s not in love, she thinks she is.
FLORENCE: What are you now, a fortune-teller?-Miss Lonelyhearts? Have you loved so well that you know all about it?
FEUER: How well I loved
I
know. I also know her and I know she doesn’t really love him.
FLORENCE: And I know you encouraged this boy upstairs to come here on his night off. Don’t think I don’t know you asked her to go out with him.
FEUER: She didn’t go because he didn’t ask. But yesterday he called her to go for a walk tonight, and she said yes.
FLORENCE [
rising
]: Oh, my God. [
She cracks her knuckles on her breasts.
] Does Leon know?
FEUER: Who cares if he knows?
FLORENCE [
angrily
]: Feuer, if you break up this engagement I will leave you. Cook your own vegetables.
[FEUER
glares at her.
]
FLORENCE: You ought to be ashamed to do this to her. What can she get from a poor writer without a steady job—even without a college education that you talk so much about—who writes all day without success?
FEUER: First you learn your art, then you have success. Someday he’ll be a first-class writer.
FLORENCE: How do you know?
FEUER: He read me a story—it was brilliant.
FLORENCE: One story don’t mean a thing.
FEUER: One is all I need.
FLORENCE [
intensely
]: What can a starving writer give her? A decent home? Can he afford to have children? Will he consider her first when she needs him, or his egotism? I want her to have a future, not a cold-water flat with a poor man.
FEUER: Maybe he won’t be rich but he’ll have a rich life. With him she could have a real excitement in her life—not a middle-class existence where the real pleasure is to go shopping for something you don’t need. Don’t underestimate Ben Glickman. I talked to him many times and I know his nature. This is a passionate man—how many are left in the world? He doesn’t tell me what he has suffered but I can see in his eyes. He knows what life means and he knows what’s real. He’ll be good for Adele. He will understand her and love her like she needs to be loved.
FLORENCE: To me he looks sick, like a starved animal. And what are you talking about love when she doesn’t even know him? What kind of foolishness is this? It’s because you see yourself in him, that’s who you see. You see another egoist.
FEUER: Who can talk to you? You’re full of foolish anxieties you want to give me.
FLORENCE: Who else can I give them to?
FEUER: This isn’t talk, it’s confusion.
FLORENCE: You confuse her. Soon she won’t know what she’s doing. You confused me too.
FEUER: You confused yourself.
FLORENCE
[angrily]:
Egoist! Egoist! You don’t deserve to have such a son-in-law.
FEUER [
sarcastic
]: Did I deserve to have such a wife?
FLORENCE
[rising]:
Never, you never deserved me.
[She picks up her shoes, drops them into the living-room closet, and steps into slippers. Returning to the kitchen she opens the refrigerator door, takes out a few things, and begins wordlessly to prepare supper. FEUER is thumbing through a magazine she had brought home. After a minute
FLORENCE
goes to the hall door and quietly shut
s
it.
]
FEUER [
without
turning his
head]:
Don’t close the door, it’s too hot.
FLORENCE [
quietly
]
:
I want to talk to you one minute—private.
FEUER: Talk. But keep the door open. I’m suffocating.
FLORENCE: Please, Feuer, stop exaggerating. Stop performing. You won’t die. All I want to do is talk to you without the neighbors’ ears in our door.
FEUER [
shouting
]
:
Leave the door open, I told you.
FLORENCE [
opening it
]
:
You make me sick!
FEUER [
rising
to the
occasion
]: You made me sick!
FLORENCE [
though not wanting to, losing her temper
]: Blame yourself. You were sick to begin with from the day I met you. You spoiled my life.
FEUER: You spoiled it yourself.
FLORENCE [
vehemently
]: No, you spoiled it. You don’t know where to stop. Every time you stab yourself you stab me twice. I used to be a nice person but you spoiled my nature. You’re impossible to live with and impossible to talk to. You don’t even converse anymore. When you open your mouth, right away you’re yelling—it’s always an argument.
FEUER: Who else is yelling if I may ask you?
FLORENCE: You spoiled my character.
FEUER: I didn’t interfere with existing conditions.
FLORENCE [
on the verge of tears
]: You did, you did!
FEUER: If you believe this, you’re lying to yourself.
FLORENCE: You’re the one who lied. You lied about the choristers you couldn’t stay away from them, even with a wife and child. I gave you my love but you couldn’t say no to the chorus girls. If one of them looked at you you turned into a rooster. You had no will.
FEUER: I have a
magnificent
will.
FLORENCE: If her garter was loose you took off her stocking. If she took it off herself you helped her to take off the other.
FEUER [
bitterly
]: And which two-bit actors took off your stockings? And how many times in your married life?
FLORENCE: You started the whole dirty business.
You
started it. I never wanted that kind of a life, it wasn’t my nature.
FEUER: It went on for years.
FLORENCE: You left me three times, once two whole years. Also many times you were on the road for months when I couldn’t go. I was human. I made mistakes.
FEUER: You could’ve thought of your child instead of sending her from one place to another, in the hands of strangers who made her sick.
FLORENCE: Feuer, for God’s sake, I can’t stand any more. Why didn’t you take care of her? Because you weren’t there. Because you were busy in bed with somebody else.
FEUER [
brazing
]: You son of a bitch!
[FLORENCE
stares at him, then seems to crumple and slowly lowers herself into a chair. She puts her hands on the table, palms up, and, lowering her head, sobs into them. She sobs with her whole body, a wailing weeping.
FEUER
goes to the door and quietly shuts it. He attempts to approach her but can’t. He goes to the sink for another glass of water but pours it out without drinking, staring vaguely out the window. Wandering to the mirror, he stands there looking at himself, not enjoying what he sees. Gradually
FLORENCE
stops
crying,
raises her head, and sits quietly at the table, one hand shading her eyes. After a while she blows her nose, and wipes her eyes with a handkerchief.
FEUER,
after glaring at his image, in weariness lies down on the daybed.
]
FLORENCE
[very quietly]:
What’s that smell?
FEUER
[wearily]:
Gas
.
FLORENCE: What kind of gas?
FEUER: Human gas. Whatever you smell you want immediate identification.
FLORENCE [
after a while
]: Don’t you feel well?
FEUER: Perfect.
FLORENCE [
still quietly
]: Did you take your pills today?
FEUER: I took. [
He jumps up from the bed and speaks suddenly, vehemently.]
Florence, I’m sorry. In my heart I love you. My tongue is filthy but not my heart.
FLORENCE [
after a pause
]: How can you love a son of a bitch?
FEUER: Don’t poison me with my words. I have enough poison in me already. I say what I don’t mean.

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