[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Though she had no evidence, she suspected Helen was interested in the clerk.Something was going on between them.She did not ask her daughter what, because a denial would shame her.And though she had tried she felt she could not really trust Frank.Yes, he had helped the business, but how much would they have to pay for it? Sometimes when she came upon him alone in the store, his expression, she told herself, was sneaky.He sighed often, muttered to himself, and if he saw he was observed, pretended he hadn’t.Whatever he did there was more in it than he was doing.He was like a man with two minds.With one he was here, with the other someplace else.Even while he read he was doing more than reading.And his silence spoke a language she couldn’t understand.Something bothered him and Ida suspected it was her daughter.Only when Helen happened to come into the store or the back while he was there, did he seem to relax, become one person.Ida was troubled, although she could not discover in Helen any response to him.Helen was quiet in his presence, detached, almost cold to the clerk.She gave him for his restless eyes, nothing—her back.Yet for this reason, too, Ida worried.One night, after Helen had left the house, when her mother heard the clerk’s footsteps going down the stairs, she quickly got into a coat, wrapped a shawl around her head and trudged through a sprinkle of snow after him.He walked to the movie house several blocks away, paid his money, and passed in.Ida was almost certain that Helen was inside, waiting for him.She returned home with nails in her heart and found her daughter upstairs, ironing.Another night she followed Helen to the library.Ida waited across the street, shivering for almost an hour in the cold, until Helen emerged, then followed her home.She chided herself for her suspicions but they would not fly from her mind.Once, listening from the back, she heard her daughter and the clerk talking about a book.This annoyed her.And when Helen later happened to mention that Frank had plans to begin college in the autumn, Ida felt he was saying that only to get her interested in him.She spoke to Morris and cautiously asked if he had noticed anything developing between Helen and the clerk.“Don’t be foolish,” the grocer replied.He had thought about the possibility, at times felt concerned, but after pondering how different they were, had put the idea out of his head.“Morris, I am afraid.”“You are afraid of everything, even which it don’t exist.”“Tell him to leave now—business is better.”“So is better,” he muttered, “but who knows how will be next week.We decided he will stay till summer.”“Morris, he will make trouble.”“What kind trouble will he make?”“Wait,” she said, clasping her hands, “a tragedy will happen.”Her remark at first annoyed, then worried him.The next morning the grocer and his clerk were sitting at the table, peeling hot potatoes.The pot had been drained of water and dumped on its side; they sat close to the steaming pile of potatoes, hunched over, ripping off the salt-stained skins with small knives.Frank seemed ill at ease.He hadn’t shaved and had dark blobs under his eyes.Morris wondered if he had been drinking but there was never any smell of liquor about him.They worked without speaking, each lost in his thoughts.After a half-hour, Frank squirming restlessly in his chair, remarked, “Say, Morris, suppose somebody asked you what do the Jews believe in, what would you tell them?”The grocer stopped peeling, unable at once to reply.“What I like to know is what is a Jew anyway?”Because he was ashamed of his meager education Morris was never comfortable with such questions, yet he felt he must answer.“My father used to say to be a Jew all you need is a good heart.”“What do you say?”“The important thing is the Torah.This is the Law—a Jew must believe in the Law.”“Let me ask you this,” Frank went on.“Do you consider yourself a real Jew?”Morris was startled, “What do you mean if I am a real Jew?”“Don’t get sore about this,” Frank said, “But I can give you an argument that you aren’t.First thing, you don’t go to the synagogue—not that I have ever seen.You don’t keep your kitchen kosher and you don’t eat kosher.You don’t even wear one of those little black hats like this tailor I knew in South Chicago.He prayed three times a day.I even hear the Mrs say you kept the store open on Jewish holidays, it makes no difference if she yells her head off.”“Sometimes,” Morris answered, flushing, “to have to eat, you must keep open on holidays.On Yom Kippur I don’t keep open.But I don’t worry about kosher, which is to me old-fashioned.What I worry is to follow the Jewish Law.”“But all those things are the Law, aren’t they? And don’t the Law say you can’t eat any pig, but I have seen you taste ham.”“This is not important to me if I taste pig or if I don’t.To some Jews is this important but not to me.Nobody will tell me that I am not Jewish because I put in my mouth once in a while, when my tongue is dry, a piece ham.But they will tell me, and I will believe them, if I forget the Law.This means to do what is right, to be honest, to be good.This means to other people.Our life is hard enough.Why should we hurt somebody else? For everybody should be the best, not only for you or me.We ain’t animals.This is why we need the Law.This is what a Jew believes.”“I think other religions have those ideas too,” Frank said.“But tell me why it is that the Jews suffer so damn much, Morris? It seems to me that they like to suffer, don’t they?” “Do you like to suffer? They suffer because they are Jews.”“That’s what I mean, they suffer more than they have to.”“If you live, you” suffer.Some people suffer more, but not because they want.But I think if a Jew don’t suffer for the Law, he will suffer for nothing.”“What do you suffer for, Morris?” Frank said.“I suffer for you,” Morris said calmly.Frank laid his knife down on the table.His mouth ached.“What do you mean?”“I mean you suffer for me.”The clerk let it go at that.“If a Jew forgets the Law,” Morris ended, “he is not a good Jew, and not a good man.”Frank picked up his knife and began to tear the skins off the potatoes.The grocer peeled his pile in silence.The clerk asked nothing more.When the potatoes were cooling, Morris, troubled by their talk, asked himself why Frank had brought up this subject.A thought of Helen, for some reason, crossed his mind.“Tell me the truth,” he said, “why did you ask me such questions?”Frank shifted in his chair.He answered slowly, “To be truthful to you, Morris, once I didn’t have much use for the Jews.”Morris looked at him without moving.“But that was long ago,” said Frank, “before I got to know what they were like.I don’t think I understood much about them.”His brow was covered with sweat.“Happens like this many times,” Morris said.But his confession had not made the clerk any happier.One afternoon, shortly after lunch, happening to glance at himself in the mirror, Morris saw how bushy his hair was and how thick the pelt on his neck; he felt ashamed.So he said to Frank he was going across the street to the barber.The clerk, studying the racing page of the Mirror, nodded
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]