Comrades
a novel by Earl Coleman

Chapter 2

Since Sam's death there had been the two of them, Joel and she, in a flimsy held-together craft, a dugout canoe caught in thundering water, a deluge of tearful and confused days, months, merged into a raging flood of time that had no minute hand nor sunrise. Her mother and father, brother Isaac, Sam's parents, had they spoken? How often? Of what? She thought of the letters she addressed for a penny each, buttons she sewed, hat trimmings, hems. The howling in her ears had finally stopped at some forgotten hour and left her with her silence, her terrible loneliness and her fear. The money from Sam's insurance was still safe with Isaac. She struggled not to touch it, repugnant, like using dirt from the grave to make mortar for a house. Money, they never had.

The days kept spilling in the gutter like a dirty rain. Mottel visited them, mostly to take Joel out. He no longer limped. She was poor company. There was nothing to say to her mother and father, nothing, not about the raid, not about money, surely not about Sam, nothing. They didn't see one another often, her brother Isaac rarely. Grandpa Shlomo and Grandma Levy. Joel liked seeing them. She made do. She did her best. The neighborhood got worse. With Prohibition, there was daily violence that hadn't been there when she was a girl. She wished she could protect Joel better, from the streets, from the world. She felt it crowding in. He was growing. He needed and she couldn't provide.

As she pushed through the revolving doors, she was finally reconciled with herself. The vestibule of the Woolworth Building looked like a church with its high, vaulted ceilings. The statue of Mister F.W. Woolworth in a niche had a nickel in his fingers as though ready to make a gift of it to a collection plate or to demonstrate like a magician the power of what could be done with a coin.

She had always felt that so long as she knew Sam's money was safe, intact, that Sam was still trying to provide for them. But she could not, could not earn enough, no matter how much she tried, and she had decided to withdraw just a little of the money to ease their lives, just a small something. Isaac might counsel against it, after all Isaac had held the money for three years now, but she was quite determined. Joel had outgrown everything and needed a suit and new shoes and she couldn't buy them. She had held off coming here for as long as she could.

It reassured her to see Isaac's name hand-painted in black letters in the lower left corner of the glass door, Isaac Lieberman, Esq. (she had never visited his office before). Izzy, her brother, from the Lower East Side, in the tallest building in the city, a skyscraper.

The receptionist showed Rachel to Isaac's cubicle, a tiny room with a single window, the desk taking up three-quarters of the space, the top piled with papers in neat stacks; more papers in boxes, on the radiator, even on the chair in the corner. They were high, so high up here on the twentieth floor. Even though the day was gray and cold Rachel felt somehow that the building poked into Heaven, above the streets and the struggle. She could see the river. They embraced and kissed on the cheek, she a little taller than he. She sat in the one free chair after he helped her off with her coat and she removed her hat and gloves. He had a picture of Rose on his desk in a silver frame.

"So, how are you Rachel -- you and Joel?" He looked more than ever like a gnome with his glasses twinkling, his small fingers touching each other under his beardless chin. "After your call I made myself available."
"How should we be? We're fine. We're OK. And you and Rose?"

"I can't complain except for all this work. Business, business. We haven't seen you Rachel in -- much too long. You can't sit shiva forever Rachel. We're your family. So -- you're still . . . ?"

"It's hard, Isaac. I hear and read about the prosperity, but not for me. I sell magazine subscriptions from door to door, I told you last time. I don't know how I do it -- I was always the shy one -- but I manage. Hah, I manage. I barely manage." She felt a surge of shame in this office in the Woolworth Building. She should be doing better.

"Rachel! If you needed something, some few dollars, you could always come to us. You know that," he said earnestly, almost reproachfully.

"Yes, Izzy. I thank you. I don't like to do that -- you know how I am. But it did seem to me that I have been foolish about Sam's thousand dollars, just laying there doing nothing while we can't get by, and we try so hard. So I decided I would take a hundred dollars from it," she hesitated, "maybe only fifty, and we'll leave the rest as our nest egg."
He swung around then on his swivel chair, his short legs just meeting the floor. He peered out the window over his glasses as though looking vainly for the absent sun, and Rachel knew and knew she had known. "Oy, Racheleh, Rachel. I have some bad news." He stopped, pursed his lips, his dainty fingers outstretched on the desk, and continued. "I thought that might be why you were coming. I'd have told you before but I knew how burdened you were and I didn't want to add to it. It was probably wrong not to tell you.

"A thousand dollars Sam left? A thousand dollars for a young widow and a child? Just not enough. Practically improvident. I know you gave it to me for safekeeping. But a thousand dollars? So I speculated on some stocks to make a something from a nothing. I should have asked -- I know. But I was trying to do good for you, my sister. I'm sad to say -- the money's gone."
Then she knew that she had foreseen this when they never discussed the money at his table, eating, when she took the subway down this morning, when she had come into the building through the revolving doors, when she had sat down in this office. She had known it -- and yet the shock took her breath. "It's gone? It's all gone? A thousand dollars? What could happen to a thousand dollars?" She felt pressed, as though she were being crushed.

"Rachel, I'm truly sorry, but it's gone. When you speculate you hope to hit it big. I could have put it in the bank but it was nothing money. I gambled to make something of the little Sam left. I lost. I'm sorry." He had wheeled back around but he was looking at his doorway, not at her. "Do you need?" He reached toward his pocket. She shook her head. She couldn't see his eyes because the light was glinting off his glasses. "I am sorry." She bent her head to fill it, to clear it, she didn't know which. A thousand dollars? "It's all gone?" She looked distractedly out the window so high above the noise of the street. "It's all gone? It's all gone, Isaac? What my Sam drank poison to give to us? It's gone?" She rose, put on her hat and coat and gloves and left the office and the building, dazed, breasting the wind and took the Bronx train. She had five leads to follow up.

*

The wind was a douche that rammed its ice cold bony finger into her bowels and infused every vein. Her thin cloth glove had ripped along the right thumb seam so that the nickel for the turnstile felt warm to her finger, coming out of her purse, and then frozen just as she dropped it into the slot. The cold numbed her concentration and froze shut her ability to remember what Isaac had said, the words themselves. She felt as though if she remembered them the words might be crowbars to pry open her understanding. She strained against the wind, mounting the stairs and came out on the wooden platform, Jerome Avenue, cobalt sign, lead sky without sun, clouds of debris, paper, cardboard flying by her, empty station. Rachel sat tentatively but was afraid she'd freeze to the iron bench through her thin cloth coat and she moved toward the farthest end of the platform which was sheltered. Her first call hadn't been home. The second had slammed the door in her face.

It came to her that she was penniless. She leaned against the end railing and was staggered for a moment by the wind, misjudging her footing. Her eyes closed against the blast as her hand braced itself on the rough wood. For an elastic moment she surrendered her body, her spirit, her mind, emptying herself, spilling herself out so that she would be nothing, like Sam's money, willing herself dead. Then she thought of Joel and her eyes opened. The train loomed, whooshing the frigid air about her. She boarded it and sat shivering on the wicker seat, apart from the few passengers, weeping uncontrollably.

*

Her third call was on a Doctor Gitomer. The man answering the doorbell wore a white medical jacket. He confused her momentarily. The way he held himself, so like Sam. "Yes?"

She began to speak but her voice came out weak and wavering because of the start he had given her, the cold, her despondency. She stopped in the middle of the second sentence and simply stood there on the stoop looking up at him mutely, unable to go on.

He shook his head frowning and held out his hand. "Come in," he said gently, and led her into a small waiting room. "My nurse isn't here. I'm about to see my last patient. I'll be free shortly." He left through a connecting door.

The waiting room was warm, quite empty, lit softly by two multicolored lamps, the blinds down. Rachel took off her coat and hat and sat on a nubbly cloth sofa, facing the entrance doorway. She picked at the split seam of her glove. She fell asleep.
His gentle shaking of her shoulder brought her eyes open. "Oh," she said. "I'm sorry." She felt herself blushing, suddenly quite warm.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" he asked.

She stared into his brown eyes and felt a great weariness. She wanted to say, "Help me. I'm bone tired and frightened. What shall I do?" She said, "Yes please, thank you," and he left the room again. She took off her gloves.
Her feet hurt from all the walking she had done, her fingers could still feel the bite of the chill outside even though she was no longer cold, her misery an ocean in which she swam even as this room was a toasty sandbar where she felt at rest. The nightmare of her visit to Isaac's office remained. She saw his small hands on the desk and the winking of his eyeglasses. The doctor returned with a tray and some tea in a pot, sugar and two cups and saucers. "I'm Doctor Leonard Gitomer," he said.
She looked at her referral card, which she had placed beside her on the couch. "Yes," she said, trying hard to control her voice, "and you used to subscribe to the Hebrew American. I'm calling on you to see if you would consider resubscribing -- or taking any other magazine?" Try as she might she could not steady herself.

"One teaspoon or two?"

"Just one, thank you." Her nose was running and she didn't want to wipe it on her sleeve and didn't want to reach into her worn purse.

They sipped their tea. He smiled at her. "I hope you won't mind if I say something personal. You look like a wounded sparrow." He sipped again, looking at her quizzically. "A week of bed rest is what you need. Are you good at this, selling subscriptions?"

She stared into her cup in dismay and confusion, rattled by the moistness at her nose, distraught. "Not very."

"Is there something else you can do -- more secure?"

"I've tried other things. I have. I really have."

"And?"

She answered straightforwardly, capitulating totally to her emptiness, looking right at him, at the interested smile on his face, his curly hair, "I'm desperate." She had never said that before, not even to herself, had never used that word, perhaps had never felt that word so long as she believed Sam's insurance money was there. Now that the word was out, floating in the air between them, she might have unbosomed herself completely but for the lethargy that accompanied her absolute defeat. The words hung there.

"How much is a subscription?"

"Five dollars. For twelve issues."

"I'll take one. What do I have to do?"

She burst into tears on the spot, still holding her teacup, but the sorrow fed upon itself and soon she put the cup down and held her hands before her face, weeping into her palms. Her fingers were red from the cold, adorned only by her plain gold wedding band.

He offered his handkerchief. "Crying is good," he said.

She tried to speak several times but couldn't control herself. Her sounds had no words. Each time it seemed the tears had stopped she broke down again.

At last she was able to sob, "I'm sorry. I have no right."

"It's OK," he said. "No one's waiting. Make believe you're my patient and the cure is crying." She promptly began again.
He sat quietly in a side chair, his face lit by the smile crease on the left side. He seemed in repose, his dark eyes regarding her helpfully as she sniffled. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked, and when she shook her head he lit a pipe which he took from his white jacket.

"You're married?" he asked.

"Widowed," she answered, just able to shape the word.

"I'm sorry," he paused. "Long?"

"Three years and a few months."

He nodded and they were quiet. She knew she had two more calls to make but she couldn't bring herself to move, to pick up her teacup, to speak. Her eyes still streamed.

"There are no prescriptions for it," he said, "or I would write one for myself. My wife died in childbirth last year. She and the baby. A baby girl."

"Oh . . . " she said, but he raised his hand and shook his head, puffing at his pipe. They were silent for a time.

"Are you OK now?" he asked. "Do you need more time? You've other calls?"

She nodded.

"Is there a form to fill out for the subscription? Should I give you a check?"

She nodded again and took a subscription blank from her purse. She entered the information, using the table to write on, filled in her name as the subscription agent and gave him a copy as his receipt. He wrote the check with a gold-nibbed black Parker fountain pen. "Good luck," he said, and helped her into her coat.

"I will not forget this afternoon," she said, at the door, hating to leave.

"Nor will I," he answered. He held her hands and then opened the door to the icy gray afternoon, dusk just pressing down.

*

On Saturdays Joel and Mikey went to the Tremont for the two o'clock show. Their morning was spent earning the dime for the movie and the candy (which they shared because they liked both licorice and nonpareils, but not a whole bagful of just one). Mikey had mysterious errands which he ran for his father, who, in pants and undershirt, suspenders dragging, unshaven, might still be eating his breakfast of bialys and cream cheese and carp. "Here, Moishe," he'd say, wiping the cream cheese from his fingers onto his pants before pulling a sealed envelope out of his back pocket and putting it in Mikey's hand. "Bring this to the same place as last week and give it only to Mister Feldman. No one else, you hear? Mister Feldman. Keep it in your pocket, put, put in your pocket until you recognize Mister Feldman, the same man as last Saturday. You understand me good?" and he'd raise his huge right hand as if to wallop him, but he didn't do that very often. "He's going to give you something back, like last week, you hear me? If he don't you ask for it. Understand?"

"What?"

"What what?"

"What should I ask for?

"What are you. a schmuck? So just say, 'I gotta bring back something to my father' -- OK? He'll give you an envelope. You'll put it in your pocket. You'll come right home. You understand me good?" His father's stomach pushed out the pants so that the top button had to be kept open. The suspenders were green and hung down to his knees.

"Yep."

"What kind of way is that to a father? What kind of respect? Yep! You say 'yessir,' you show respect. Where you learn your manners? In the zoo?"

Ida would bellow from the bedroom -- "Moe, don't hit him Moe."

"So, who's hitting him?" he'd bellow back. "If he's fresh with me of course I'll hit him. OK Moishe. Go do it." And he'd pat him on the backside, more like a thwack because he was so strong.

Mikey would tell Joel about these Saturday trips, sometimes even during the show while the people around them shushed. Mikey walked clear to Jerome Avenue and would take an elevator to the fifth floor of a building and would rap on a metal door three times. It was a code. There were always lots of men and women in the apartment. Once he saw a woman naked on the bed, he whispered, naked on top of the blanket, not even a sheet on her, naked.

When he got back he gave his father the envelope and got a dime.

Joel would help his mother for his ten cents. He'd go to the corner store (never to the A&P across the street, where, his mother said, they hated Jews. He tried to imagine what it meant for everyone in the store to hate Jews. He walked by a different A&P on the way to school and would hurry past, wondering if they hated Jews in this A&P too, and would try to imagine how many A&P stores there were, all hating Jews). In Mr. Finkelstein's corner store there was a barrel filled with dark green pickles and another barrel with hundreds of herrings with dead eyes layered in a thick brown sauce. Behind the counter there were slabs of cheeses, white, ivory, gold, a tub of pale yellow butter with a huge wood scoop sticking out, a dented tin can of milk with a metal dipper hung on the lip. He'd buy everything on the list his mother gave him, come back home and put all the things away and take out the furniture polish and the rags he always used. Then he rubbed down all the furniture in the house.

His last task, (before he had his sandwich and milk for lunch), was to wash the windows, but only the inside, standing on a chair to reach the top. His mother was very brave and, with the window open, would sit on the sill facing in, three floors up, with her hair tied in a cloth and her sweater on, and he'd hold her feet and she'd pull the window down so that it pinned her securely and then she would wash the outside of the window with him holding her feet until she came safely inside. After his lunch his mother would kiss him, make sure he looked good, sometimes recomb his curly hair, and give him a dime.

This cold Saturday with their two sacks of candy Joel and Mikey got to the Tremont early and had the chance to pick the seats they liked best, in the back of the auditorium. The piano was up front, and Joel's heart always beat faster when the scene and the piano music changed at the same moment, almost like magic.

The auditorium was warm because it was quite full of people. Half of them were kids, mostly boys who shouted to one another and threw spitballs while the ushers walked up and down the aisles keeping order. Ladies kept their tall hats on in spite of the signs. The smell was crackerjacks, chocolate, garlic, sweat.

The feature was about people moving West in a wagon train and Joel was drawn into the story immediately when the scene shifted to an Indian lookout on top of a hill watching the advancing column of prairie wagons and racing back to his village where he told his story to the Indian chief. The chief, in dramatic war paint, held a powwow with his braves. He wore a headdress of feathers that trailed down his back and a band of cloth that girded his magnificent right arm muscle. Joel felt tears form in his eyes.

How the chief moved! His horse, pure white, which he mounted with a leap, pawed the air, eager to help defend their land. The braves formed into groups and rode off to the very top of a hill, each group with a commander who held a flag fluttering on a spear, the chief, by himself, as lookout, on the highest spot.

The leaders of the wagon train stopped on the plain where they were! They held their hands to their eyes to block out the sun, searching for the danger they sensed, but could see nothing, so well hidden were the Indians. The leaders called for two riders who went galloping off. Then they formed a circle with the wagons and placed the women and children in the most protected places. The men crouched behind the wagonwheels with their rifles at the ready, squinting down the barrels. The music rose.
Up on the hill a decision waited to be made! The chief raised his spear to his warriors in signal, his flag beckoning, and down the mountainside they came, half-naked, unafraid, painted for battle, dashing over the prairie toward the circle of invaders. A burning arrow hit a canvas wagon and flames shot up! The music thundered. White men hiding behind horses and wagons shot Indians racing at them over the open plains, refitting arrows as they rode. An Indian went down, dead! The chief was everywhere, a wind, a flag, a leader for his People.

Then hundreds of horseback uniformed soldiers appeared, one blowing a bugle, the commander pointing with his sword and puffs of gunsmoke rose everywhere as Indians circled and fell and the cavalry rode onto the field shooting pistols at close range. But Joel's crying eyes were on the chief, wheeling fast as lightning, unflinching, careless of personal danger, watchful of his men, his very bravery defying the soldiers' fire. And then he was shot, shot in the arm that was about to loose an arrow, so that he dropped both the bow and the arrow in the dirt, and then he was shot again in the shoulder and then shot off his horse, fallen on the ground where he tried to rise, struggled to his knees and was hurled backward by a final shot to the heart so that he lay sprawled, face up, staring blindly at the sun, his white horse nudging his body with its nose, urging him to rise and fight again.

While the audience roared and applauded Joel slumped in his hard, wooden seat, crying, the tears spilling down, and continued to weep as the soldiers regrouped the settlers, set their wagons upright again and led them forward into the hostile land. Mikey said "Aw c'mon," embarrassed by Joel's tears, but Joel couldn't stop, and felt -- anger! We had only bows and arrows and they had guns! They were stealing our land and we were using our bodies to stop them.

When they came out of the dark of the theatre Joel's eyes were still wet from crying but he felt the lump of anger in the pit of his stomach; it clogged his chest and throat. They were applauding! All those people were applauding. Even Mikey, Joel realized, would have applauded but didn't because he was Joel's friend. Mikey punched Joel's arm playfully now, and Joel punched back. Their candy was eaten.

*

As they rounded a corner some blocks from the theatre they collided with a group of four kids shooting checkers on the sidewalk. One of the checkers skittered into the gutter. Mikey and Joel stopped and the other four drew together, all of them about the same age. The redhead had a cigarette drooping from his lower lip and squinted to keep the smoke out of his eyes. He took a step toward them and the other three fanned out blocking the sidewalk. He stuck his hands on his hips. His voice was nasal and thin, "What do you kikes think you're doin' kickin' my checker?" Joel could see they were being surrounded.

These were the "riff-raff" his mother always told him to keep away from but there was no escaping fighting with them. There never was. Instead of being frightened, he felt ready to ride across the sidewalk to avenge the Chief and his father. He confronted the kid, four inches taller than he, so that they weren't a hairsbreadth apart. The redhead's cigarette on a level with his eyes made them tear. The three others were circling behind them, Mikey a few paces back of him. The kid seemed able to talk while the cigarette moved up and down. One tooth hung over his lower lip. "You kikes know how to fight?" he sneered.

Joel hit him as hard as he could and found himself falling on top of him, feeling a sting as he hit the cigarette, seeing blood, flailing with both fists, felt punches, hands, hit other faces, saw Mikey fighting two kids at once, swinging wildly, kicking. Then a police whistle sounded and the four raced off. A policeman hurried up.

"And what have we here?"

"Nothing, officer," Joel said, panting. "Some kids picked a fight with us and ran away." He looked around for Mikey. He was glad the policeman had come, glad the fight was over, felt exhilarated. The policeman, young and red-faced from the cold, looked the two of them over slowly, twirling his nightstick. Joel remembered that Mottel, who no longer limped when he took him to meetings and on walks, had his kneecap hurt with a nightstick like the one being twirled right now. He looked at the cop levelly. "We're OK now, thank you."

"You're OK, are you? And did youze chase them off all by yourself me boyo?"

"No sir. I think it was your whistle."

The policeman nodded approvingly. "Well, you be good fellas now and run along home and clean up." He remained on the corner, swinging his club as Joel and Mikey walked on. It wasn't until they got to the next block that they stopped to see how they were, to look at each other, lick their wounds. Joel had a bruised cheek, the front of his jacket was ripped and his sleeve was torn. Mikey was bleeding where his knee had been scraped on the sidewalk.

"Jeez," Mikey gasped, still out of breath, "there were four of them."

Joel felt wild, even happy. "The odds were against us," he said, remembering his father using that phrase. His cheek hurt badly and so did his ribs.

"My father will be mad at me. He'll say it was my fault."

"But it wasn't. I'll tell him if you want me to."
Mikey lived in the basement of a tenement only a few houses away from Joel. When they got there Mikey's mother, very large in her housedress, was stirring soup in a huge black pot. Mikey's father was sleeping on the couch with an open sports newspaper over his face.

"Look at you," Ida screamed, "the two of you. What have you been doing with yourselves?"

Mikey's father awakened and swung his legs off the couch, shirtless, eyes still puffed with sleep, the newspaper sliding onto the floor. "Can't a guy take a rest in this dump? What you making so much noise Moishe?"

Joel said, "We were attacked."

"Attacked?" Ida said, her tone lower. "Attacked by who?"

"Some kids on Southern Boulevard."

"So you don't know where the goyim hangs out? I've told you a million times," she said addressing the soup.

"Commere," Moe said, rubbing his face with his huge hands.

Both boys went to the low couch with the stuffing trailing from the bottom onto the floor.

"How many kids?" He was judging the extent of their damage, the way they stood.

"Four," Mikey said, and would have continued but seemed afraid.

"How old were they?"

"About our age, Mister Toledo, maybe older," Joel answered, taking a step forward.

"Tough?" he asked challengingly.

"I think so, sir," Joel answered.

"You win?" He peered at their bruised faces.

"We didn't lose," Joel said.

Mikey's father began to laugh and couldn't stop, thwacking his leg. "We didn't lose." He choked on it. "We didn't lose." He roared, walking, sitting, rising again, laughing, coughing with his laughter. "We didn't lose." He sat back down on the couch. "Commere kid," he said to Joel. Joel stood before him. "How'd you like to do something for me? It's worth four bits if you do it right."

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