Son of a Smaller Hero

  When he had got home his mother had said: “Where have you been so late?”

  “Walking.”

  “Where, walking?”

  “I dunno.”

  She had looked at him, surprised, and he had been swiftly overcome by a deep and unyielding sadness.

  “It was beautiful, Maw. Honest.”

  That night, after he left Miriam, Noah had been filled with something of that old awe, a touch of that first-discovered beauty, and he had walked along happily – dead sure that life was a perfect thing – for several hours. Then, suddenly, it was morning. The lowering sky was chill and without promise or much light. Over towards the left of the Sun Life Building a dripping cloud was stained bright yellow. That would be the sun, he thought. Christmas decorations were going up over Eaton’s. When My Baby Smiles at Me was playing at the Princess Theatre, across the street. He crossed. He looked at an enticing cardboard figure of Doris Day. Somebody had shoved thumbtacks into where her nipples ought to have been and Noah reached up and pulled them out. Dour people, standing at the corner and waiting for streetcars, watched him critically. Noah grinned at them. I’m never going to die, he thought. Dying would be stupid.

  When Noah got back to the apartment Miriam and Theo were still eating breakfast. She did not give him any sign, but Theo asked him to sit down. “How’s your girlfriend?” he asked knowingly.

  “Fine.”

  “You look all in, boy.” Theo stubbed his cigarette and got up and put on his coat. Noah avoided Miriam’s eyes. “We’re not prudes, Noah. No need to rent a room. Bring her around here for the night if you want.”

  He looked away when they kissed.

  After Theo had gone Miriam looked at him sorrowfully and then slipped into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Noah waited. He waited fifteen minutes, and then he knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. He knocked again.

  “All right. You might as well come in.”

  She was seated before the bureau combing out her black hair. She could watch him in the mirror, but he couldn’t see her face. The bed was unmade, and he noticed their pyjamas tangled up together on the sheets. There were no chairs. He didn’t want to sit on their bed, so he stood. “Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked.

  Her pyjamas were pink, and his were grey with red stripes.

  “Aren’t we speaking?” he asked.

  “I think you’d better move, Noah.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  Watching him in the mirror she thought, Go. Go, she thought. Please go. Go now.

  “I’m beat. I’ll go back to Mrs. Mahoney’s. She’ll have a room for me.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll get my things tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He hesitated. Then he flushed, and walked up nearer to her. “You know when to stop, eh? That’s a damn good thing.”

  “Please, let’s not have a scene. Please. If you were older you would under …”

  “You mean we could part friends. That kind of crap, eh?”

  “Theo and I are going to have a …”

  “Listen,” he said, twisting her around. “You look at me when you talk to me, understand? I’m no animal.”

  “I can’t give this up, Noah. Not even for you. You don’t know what my life has been like, you … I want security, that’s all.”

  “All right.”

  The door slammed.

  She walked over to the window and watched him walk away. She picked up an ashtray and smashed it on the floor. I hope you have an accident, she thought. I really do.

  VI

  Mrs. Mahoney had been glad to have him back. But Bertha, she said, had returned to her mother in Sherbrooke, and Joey had disappeared. Noah knocked off his shoes and undid his collar and lay back on his bed. I knew that she wasn’t real from the first, he thought. He recalled all the ordinary, clean-washed things that he had eaten in their apartment and suddenly, sleepily, he longed for properly spiced food. Christ, if I were back on City Hall Street I could tell Hoppie and Gas some real stories. And Theo, the bastard, always trying to get me to talk about my family when people are around. I’m colourful, he thinks. Hell.

  He fell asleep.

  He slept soundly and without dreams through the rest of the day and the night that followed.

  Finally, a knocking came to him faintly.…

  Noah stumbled out of bed and noticed, half-consciously, that it was morning. He was surprised, for he had thought that he had only been sleeping for an hour or so. He walked over to the sink and splashed cold water on his face and wrists. The door opened.

  “May I come in?”

  Miriam was wearing her brown tweed coat. A green silk scarf accentuated the vulnerability of her throat. Her hair was brushed back hard and held tight by a gold clasp, but there was something of the child in her sorrowful brown eyes. She smiled boldly but without conviction.

  “Sure. Of course you can.”

  She flung her coat down on the bed like a rebuke. She was wearing a green woollen dress. He felt a fluttering in his stomach again and he brushed back his hair nervously.

  “I won’t have you talking to me the way you did yesterday.”

  “Is that what you came to tell me?” he asked.

  “I think you’re a son-of-a-bitch. You’re young and you don’t know what you’re doing. I think Theo is a much nicer guy than you are. Understand?”

  He moved towards her compulsively and took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly first and then with passion. He felt her quiver and yield against him. He undid the clasp and dug his hand into her hair and pressed her scalp, saying poignant things softly, and feeling her lips like a burn on his neck. He kissed her eyes and her nose and her throat and then slowly, together, they stumbled back on the bed.

  Afterwards they touched each other tenderly and without caution.

  “I love you when you’re angry,” he said. “I love you, anyway. But I love you best when you’re angry.”

  “Noah, I’m not fooling. I – I thought a lot before I came here.”

  “I guess you did,” he said.

  “It wasn’t very good without you around.”

  “You’re really beautiful. Christ, I didn’t know you were beautiful. I mean you look kind of severe when you’re dressed. I trust you better this way.”

  “I like the feeling of your voice. I like your hands, too.”

  Noah laughed, and stared at his hands. “If I were Jelly-Roll Morton,” he said, “I would look at my hands all the time. I would walk down the street and look at them and put them in my pockets and pull them out and look at them and laugh like hell.”

  “Jelly-Roll is dead.”

  “Yes. So’s L. Trotsky and Mr. Vivaldi,” he said. “So that makes us both greater than them. Really, it does.”

  “Oh, Noah. Christ, Noah.”

  Miriam wanted to tell him about other men – about how long she had waited for loving and how frightened she was now that she had it. She waited to say something that would bind him to her irrevocably. But each time she tried, a lump formed in her throat and all she could do was to touch him and smile weakly. She wanted to tell him about her father. Chuck. She was afraid and she wanted time to stop – to stop right then.

  “You think being alive is fine, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, I do. I think being in bed with you is fine, too. Finer than anything I have ever known.”

  “I haven’t got your capacity for happiness. I won’t mind dying at all. Being out of it, I mean.”

  “That’s just so much crap,” he said.

  She giggled. “That’s just so much crap,” she said.

  He touched her hair with his hand. He felt relieved for he did not know much about love-making and he had been worried that he would do the wrong thing, that she would burst out laughing because he was such an inept lover. He was intoxicated. Full. He kissed her again and laughed. “God, it must be real crazy to be a woman. Do you look at yoursel
f all day long?”

  “Don’t be silly!”

  “If I were beautiful like you I’d walk around naked always. I’d lead parades and dare people not to –”

  “Are you happy?”

  “I’m better than happy. You?”

  She was sobbing. Suddenly, just like that. Her swift changes of mood baffled him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

  “Nothing. Nothing, you fool. Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She laughed and wept, and laughed some more. “I’ve waited so long, Noah, I’m so afraid.”

  Noah woke first.

  She was sleeping with her head resting on her arm. He got up without disturbing her and pulled down the shade a bit to keep the afternoon sun out of her eyes. He sat down and watched her. He wanted to shout. Her beauty hurt him, and he could not understand why.

  Noah hurried downstairs and bought smoked meat sandwiches and salad and four bottles of beer. When he got back she was sitting up in bed and smoking. He grinned foolishly. “Food,” he said.

  After they had eaten she turned to him and said: “What are we going to do, Noah?”

  “I’ll get a job. Then we’ll get an apartment of our own.”

  “You make it sound so easy. What kind of job?”

  “Wal, I could go out West and get work poking cattle, or whatever it is they do. Or I could stay East and sell filthy sonnets and gold-mine stocks, corner Peel and St. Catherine. Or I could become a rabbi. You’d have to shave your head and wear a wig. Would that be okay?”

  “Will you please try to be serious?”

  “Worried about Theo?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t love him. I don’t even think he loves you. He’s got no rights, Miriam.” He began to make excited circles with his hands. “Some foolish minister read a few foolish words over you.”

  “We’ve been married five years.”

  “All right. What do you suggest?”

  “First of all I suggest that you don’t shout. Second of all – you can’t keep these things a secret. People will talk.”

  “A guy like Theo marries so that he can have someone to blame his failures on. I don’t understand. What if they do talk?”

  “I don’t want to be talked about. Not again. I’ll have to do it my own way, Noah. I’ll tell him. But give me a couple of weeks.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile you come back. I’ll need you.”

  “I go back into that apartment and you’ve got all your memories and all your habits together. Like you said, you’ve been married five years.”

  “Please, lover, let’s leave it for now. Today has been so good. I’ve never had such a day.”

  Noah stood by the window sipping beer and watching the sky turn pale and then dark. Stars twinkled, first weakly and then with more assurance. Cars zoomed away into the night anonymously. Suddenly he felt her arms go around him and her head resting on his back. He did not feel any tensions in his body the way he had earlier in the afternoon. He embraced her tenderly.

  “Why did you marry Theo? Did you love him?”

  “No. I liked him. I still do. I wanted to be respectable, I guess. I was lonely.” She laughed her throaty laugh, but it sounded sad and forced to him. “I’m ten years older than you. Did you know that?”

  “My left leg is longer than my right. If I were a pinball machine ‘tilt’ would be lit in red on my forehead.”

  She laughed more gladly, and he grinned.

  “Can you stay the night?” he asked.

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then I’m not coming back with you. Not tonight.”

  She kissed him. “Why don’t you ever visit your parents?”

  “It’s too painful all around. But I will – soon.” He turned away from her. “The guys I used to go around with as a kid talk about irrigation problems in Israel now and make ideal son-in-laws.”

  “And you, my love?”

  “Christ. I used to march down St. Catherine Street with placards. Sing songs. Wave flags. But I’ve stopped reading comic books and going to Roy Rogers movies and …”

  “I would have liked to have seen you in one of those parades. I would have laughed.”

  He reached out for her and kissed her urgently. “Hey, just between the two of us, did the earth move?”

  She giggled. “Noah.” She held on tight to him. “Noah. Oh, Noah.”

  VII

  One evening a couple of weeks earlier Mr. Adler dropped into Panofsky’s for a lemon tea on his way home from the synagogue. Mr. Adler passed by Panofsky’s every evening, but previous to that visit he had not been inside the store for fifteen years. When Panofsky had seen him come in he had got up and sat down beside Mr. Adler.

  “How is it by you, Melech?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  “You should drop in more often.”

  So Melech Adler began to drink lemon tea at Panofsky’s every evening.

  When Panofsky had gone into business for himself in 1919 he had named his store The People’s Tobacco & Soda, but the people had thwarted him. His store became known as “Panofskys.” The back room, which he had fixed up as a chess club, was used for pinochle and gin rummy games. Panofsky had two boys, Aaron and Karl. If not for Karl the business would have failed many years ago. Karl had invented the 49-cent luncheonette and the Panofsky Special, which was the favourite meat sandwich of the ghetto. He had also brought in the pinball machines and got the boys interested by paying off five dollars to the high score of the week.

  Panofsky was a shaggy-faced man with big pleading eyes who liked to sit outside his store on Yom Kippur eating ham sandwiches and smoking his pipe because he wanted the others, like Melech Adler, to know that religion was bad and that Samuel Panofsky had figured things out for himself and was not afraid of God or anything. When Aaron had been away fighting in Spain he had hung a sign over the cash:

  O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom has been hunted round the globe.…

  The sign, like Spain, had been smudged by the years. Other signs, like the one which said OPEN UP A SECOND FRONT, had faded.

  Aaron had been Panofsky’s favourite boy. But for several years now they had been avoiding each other, like lovers after the affair has ended. Karl wanted to sell the Herald in the store but Panofsky said he wouldn’t have a lying, capitalist paper on the premises. Karl said: “A guy buys the Herald for Palmer and the sports. He buys the Herald so he sits down and has a coffee. Does he have a coffee only? No. He has a sandwich with. Maybe cigs, too. If he can’t get the Herald here he goes to Levy’s. There he has his Herald and his coffee and his sandwich and his cigs.”

  But Panofsky was adamant. No Herald.

  They both suffered. But there was a fundamental disagreement between Melech Adler and Samuel Panofsky.

  “Don’t talk stories, Sam. Comes the New Year a Jew, even the cackers, puts on a hat and goes into the synagogue to pray. What, tell me, do Yoshke’s children do on New Year’s? Drunk they get – like pigs. You listen, Sam. A Jew dies so all his sons pray. What happens when one of theirs dies? The family is happy yet because now they got de chance to sleep with the widow. So. So they got the nerve to call us dirty Jews. Why? We’re too smart for them, that’s why.”

  “Look. Once and for all a Jew is no smarter and no dumber than a Goy. All right. We’re persecuted. Why? Because it is the interest of the capitalists to divide the workers. And who, tell me, fights the anti-Semites? Only the communists. Adam and Eve you believe in? You just tell me how the Jews crossed de Red Sea.…”

  “What are talking? You never heard de word Siberia? They got fridges? Fords? A Cossack is a Cossack. You mean to tell me there are no pogroms?”

  “Who? All I ask. Who? Who was the other woman? Eve died and –”

  “Who, who, who. What is written is writ
ten. We are de Chosen People. We …”

  “Chosen. You tell me what for we were chosen? Soap? Furnaces?”

  That evening, Thursday, Melech Adler left Panofsky’s at eight o’clock. He noticed Shloime and two other boys standing in a doorway across the street. But at the time he didn’t think anything of it.

  That evening, Thursday, Shloime Adler, Mort Sacks, and Lou Weinstein loitered in a doorway across the street from Panofsky’s. When Shloime saw his father come out of the store he turned the other way quickly. The Hook was parked around the corner.

  Miriam and Noah had had a difficult week. She had not spoken to Theo yet. But that evening, Thursday, Theo had gone out to an evening lecture and the two of them had decided to go out for a drive in Theo’s car. Noah had driven down to the ghetto and wandered in and out of the familiar streets between Park Avenue and St. Lawrence Boulevard.

  “That was my old parochial school we just passed.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Wait. That’s Panofsky’s!”

  “What …”

  Noah parked the car and leaped out without a word. The store window had been smashed. A police siren wailed from away off. He pushed through the crowd and into the store. Panofsky sat on the floor, his head propped up against the wall. His grey hair was damp with blood. Cigarette cartons, books, were strewn on the floor. Noah knelt down beside Panofsky. The old man, groaning, opened his eyes and stared dimly at Noah. “Noah. Noah, you’re a good boy. I …”

  Hoppie Drazen tapped Noah on the shoulder. He looked at Miriam and then back at Noah and grinned. “Don’t worry. The doc’s on the way.”

  “Noah … Noah … I saw … I … Your poor grandfather.”

  Hoppie walked away towards a corner of the store and motioned to Noah.

  “Miriam. You hold him, eh? Watch his head.” Noah turned to Panofsky. “You’ll be all right, Mr. Panofsky. The doctor’s on his way.”