Comrades
a novel by Earl Coleman

Chapter 7

He was climbing, climbing, but not fast enough. He dared not look below. Inside the way things were he had to climb, and at a steadily increasing pace. His fingers ached from prying at the rock. He could barely lift his leg onto the ledge. His foothold failed and for a moment he held on with fingertips alone but seconds later they had failed him too. As he was falling he woke up

For just an instant he was still locked in the dream. And then he saw his quiver full of arrows and his bow hung on the wall above the shelves he'd made, crammed with his and his father's books, his furniture, a pine chest of drawers, a cot and an end table. It came to him that he was thirteen today. He felt like ten and felt as old as Leonard. His maiden hadn't come to him last night. Had he been climbing to where she was? Had she been waiting for him? Had he lost the way to her?

The January dawn seemed dark. He went to the window and pulled aside the crackled shade. The world seemed hushed and ominous. Something waiting. Something in suspense. What could it be?

On his bureau his Big Ben said 7:04. It was his birthday and a Saturday, but still. There were a thousand things he had to do, to read, to write. He padded to the bathroom quietly so he wouldn't disturb his mother, still snoring gently in the other room. When he'd brushed his teeth he assembled all his papers and brought them to the kitchen where he laid them out on the white tin table

His father would have understood, made sense of it. The world had changed. His father could have told him what to do. There were no answers to his questions in the newspapers he read, not in the Second International, not in the Sunday Worker. Even his Yipsil classes continued as they had: the need for an eight-hour day, the question of Socialist cooperation with the American Federation of Labor. He made himself a bowl of Post Toasties and milk, sliced a banana into it, put two spoons of sugar on the top and ate while he read. Saved time

At nine he heard his mother stirring and called to her, "Mama? Would you like me to run you a bath?

"Happy birthday, my Joel. Yes, if it wouldn't be a trouble. Working already? It's your birthday!

"I'm having some breakfast, mama. I'm OK."

He ran the bath the way she liked it, not too hot. Her face didn't smile now as it had before the stock market crash. When the bath was in he went back to his cereal and his papers.

*

Joel tensed when he heard Leonard ring. He was pleased to put his papers aside but he couldn't look at Leonard any more without remembering Leonard on the verge of tears, Leonard who had brought this renewed heaviness of spirit to his mother. Yes, he made her happy too. A Mystery. He went to answer the door.

"Hello, Leonard," he said in his new low voice.

"Hello, birthday boy." Leonard came into the room, damp from the weather. Joel helped him out of his coat and Leonard hugged him. Then he crossed the room to kiss Rachel, still a disturbing act to Joel.

Rachel poured some coffee from the percolator at her elbow while Leonard applied just a little cream cheese to half a bagel. "You know, Joel," he said, "that according to Jewish custom, today you are a man."

Joel accepted this without acknowledgement. He was a man. He was ready to ride out. Where to?

"Come, Joel. This is a red-letter day. Gloomy isn't allowed today. Growing older is hard -- yes?" Joel nodded. "Your mother and I have thought of a way to give this day special importance, the weight and memory it should have for you, a way to bring pleasure to all of us. It is not a surprise to you, that we love each other, your mother and I?"

Joel sat stunned. His father's face had come to him.

"When people love each other they usually marry."

Joel thought he'd cry.

"Your mother and I have been talking about a suitable time for several months. We decided to wait until today to set a firm date. Until today, Joel, the day you became a man, so you could honor us by -- by giving us your blessing first. You are not religious, Joel, but I'm sure you know how much I care for you, and your mother, of course, how much she loves you. Usually the son comes to the parents. On this day, when you've become a man, we come to you, for your blessing. To tell us it's OK."

The parents, Leonard had said! He wasn't the parent! Tears came to his eyes. His father's face was so vivid he thought for a moment that he was there in the room. Then he remembered his father's letter. "Help your mother." Here he was, thinking only of himself. He looked at his mother, who was smiling anxiously. Joel reached across the table and took Leonard's free hand. "You make my mama happy," he said, not as a question or an order but as a fact.

*

Leonard and he, wrapped bulkily against the weather, went shopping for last-minute decorations for his party. They walked together in the snow, carrying their packages, Joel feeling emotional, teary, not ready and yet impatient! "You know, Joel, this day is a good day for what is called a man-to-man talk. Do you understand what I'm saying, Joel?"

"Yes, Leonard." His heart beat faster instantly. Leonard wasn't his papa, but Leonard was about to share with him what he knew. He listened carefully, cheeks red.

"Is sex altogether a mystery to you? Do you know something . . . nothing?"

Sex! The very word made his heart pound. He said hesitantly, "I think -- something." He stopped and realized his total confusion. Could he confess his Indian maiden, Clara? No. "Not a lot," he said.

"Do you have a question? Maybe more than one question?"

Their breath hung on the icy air; their galoshes made footprints in the snow. Joel paused for an extra moment before he plunged in. "I have a dream almost every night."

"A wet dream?"

"Is that what it's called?"

"Yes." Leonard put his free arm around Joel's shoulders. "Do you masturbate?"

"Yes." He was frightened for a moment that now that his secrets were out his Indian maiden would be taken from him.

"You'll hear a hundred jokes and stories about masturbation, Joel, most of them nonsense. Some say it will make you go blind, you'll get cross-eyed, some even that you'll grow hair in the palm of your hand." He took his arm from Joel's shoulder and shifted his package. "Old wives' tales. Bubermeisers. Perfectly normal. However -- a pinch of salt makes your food delicious. A cupful can kill you. I don't say masturbation can kill you, but I'm sure you understand my point -- do you?" Joel nodded, his head whirling. Every night! Was that OK?

They crossed the street, almost no pedestrians, just a few automobiles. Joel felt he could ask the question he had wanted to ask so often.

"How many times do you have to . . . if a man and a woman . . . " He found he did not know how to ask this question, not the same as discussing surplus value with his Yipsil group.

"I think you are asking me how many times a man and a woman have to make love to conceive a baby. Is that your question?" Joel nodded. "Once."

"Once!?"

"There's no guarantee that just once will make a baby, Joel, but once can make a baby. That's why you want to make sure that a baby is only conceived in love." They walked on and Joel felt Leonard's arm around his shoulders again. He welcomed it and didn't want it at the same time. "Confusing, isn't it? Tell me, you don't have to of course -- have you had sexual intercourse yet?"

Joel was astonished at how calmly Leonard talked of this mystery when his own heart was hammering so, and yet how defeated Leonard had been by the stock market crash. He frowned, concentrating. So much to know! He shook his head no.

"When you're ready -- you know, you want to plan for something so important -- you can come to me if you'd like and we can talk again."

*

When they entered the apartment all the lights were out. The gloom of the day darkened the rooms, which were lit only by the candles around the edge of a cake in the center of the oak table. His mother ran toward him with her arms open. "Happy birthday, my darling Joel." She laughed and cried at the same time.

"But . . . "

"First our own party. Then your friends. I made your favorite. Chocolate. Come, off with the coats." She hung them up. "Sit -- my Joel. Wait. First make a wish. Don't tell! Blow!"

When they were eating the chocolate cake and drinking Doctor Brown's Cream Soda, Rachel said, "Shall I tell you my wish for you, my Joel? You can't tell your wish because then it won't come true, but I can tell my wish."

"Yes mama."

"It's just an eight-year wish, not even a lifetime. Just until you're twenty-one. You should know only peace, Joel, peace." She reached out her hands to take theirs. "My two sweet men."

*

Joel realized from the very moment his schoolmates began to arrive that these were only his schoolmates and had nothing to do with his life. Eric had been right. There was no life outside of politics. How could there be when there was no time and so much to know and do? When he talked to kids at school it was about homework and teachers and tests and other kids. But here, away from school -- what did they have to say to each other? The boys were glued together in the front room talking about Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The girls were chattering and giggling in the dining room. What could he share with them -- Lenin's writings? The history of the Knights of Labor? He wasn't their teacher! He was their classmate! But they seemed so much younger than he.

They were ten girls and nine boys, fat, tall, skinny, pretty, pimply. His life was quite apart from them. The Yipsils hadn't done that to him. It had always been his choice to live his politics or be a kid like the rest.

He played some fox trots for them on the Victrola while his mother and Leonard stayed in the kitchen. He made sure there were pretzels and candies and bottles of soda on the dining table.

No one had the courage to begin dancing, so he asked Mikey to pick a girl but Mikey refused. He himself had just started to learn, dancing with his mother. He chose the prettiest girl in the dining room, an eighth grader, a little taller than he was. She had had her own thirteenth birthday party three months ago. She was blonde and bobbed her hair and had green eyes. "Sophie? Would you care to dance?" He remembered that from a movie.

"I'd love to, Joel."

Joel knew the awkwardness was his, that Sophie could dance well. Joel enjoyed the feeling of it anyway, her breasts pressing against him, her fingers pleasurable to hold. He guided her with his hand against her back, feeling her spine. They were dancing to "Sleepy Time Girl."

"It's always this way," she whispered in his ear.

He realized how quickly he got agitated when a girl whispered to him. His feet tangled and he landed on her foot before he got back in step. "What way?"

"Kids. You know." Her voice was a sigh made to sound as though she was sad and bored. "Getting the boys and girls together. You're different." Her body seemed to lean into him.

When the song ended he tried a dip and almost fell. He asked her, "How do you get them together?"

She stood close to him to whisper. "Well -- first play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey if you have it," he nodded, "and then blind man's buff, and when they aren't so shy, Spin the Bottle." She cupped his ear with her hand. "I'll spin for you," she said.

When it was Sophie's turn she did spin so that the mouth stopped, pointing to Joel, and they went to his room, dim in the early dusk. He brought her close to him and kissed her as he had seen John Gilbert do. Sophie melted to him, fit him, returned his kisses with moist, somewhat open lips. When she had said that she would spin for him, he had had an idea and now he acted it out. He whirled her around, as though they were dancing, so that she faced his window shade, and he pulled her to him so that her back fit into him. He cupped her small breasts which yearned, brassiere and all, into his fingers, and kissed the nape of her neck, her blonde head leaned back against his cheek. "Oh Joel," she sighed arching her back.

The tenderness of her breasts and the immediacy of his erection made him remember Clara and what girls liked. He raised her skirt and placed his hands on her belly but found there was more clothing he had to grapple with before he could make her pulse the way Clara had. To his amazement she whirled around and cried aloud -- "Joel! What kind of girl do you think I am?" And she whacked him across the face.

*

When Joel visited Mikey now it was on the Grand Concourse, where Mikey lived in an eight-room apartment. His mother had a maid and wore a diamond ring on weekdays! Mikey and Joel were still friends even though Joel had almost no time to be social. Today, Joel was just leaving Mikey's seventh-floor apartment where he and Mikey had spent a half hour listening to Amos n' Andy on a giant radio that was housed inside a cabinet. They had sat on plush chairs, thick carpets under their feet, eating roast beef sandwiches on white bread, drinking cold milk, all served to them by a black woman named Mandy. He was on his way to the Yipsil library. So much to know!

It occurred to him in the train that when Leonard and his mother were married they would live in Leonard's house which they'd visited twice. He'd be living like a capitalist! He was a Socialist! He remembered that Leonard had said that he was wiped out and that all over America millions of people were wiped out. Did they all live as well as Leonard, as well as Mikey, in the midst of their disaster?

*

Mr. Tennenbaum, his English and Speech teacher, summoned him to his office, a musty room, stuffed with books, desk untidy.

"Sit down, Joel. Sit." Joel sat. "We had a big debate over who was going to be valedictorian. We discussed three of you, Eugene Kelly, Frank Aiello, and you. All of you good students, all smart. But you -- you're a speaker! I hear you in my class, in the assembly. In high school you must join the debating team. You take lessons?" Joel shook his head. "I recommended you -- you're the best speaker, and since you're all equally good students . . . anyway . . . two of the teachers on our committee objected -- they say you're a radical! That you made radical statements to someone, a student, to them, it doesn't matter. I told them it was impossible. I'm supposed to ask you anyway if it's true."

Joel thought for only a moment. "I belong to the YPSL, Mr. Tennenbaum. Did they mean that?"

Mr. Tennenbaum's pudgy face seemed to harden. He frowned heavily, shaking his head. "The Young People's Socialist League? I guess they did." His mild eyes became angry. "Joel -- this country doesn't treat you well? Our system doesn't work for you?"

Joel didn't respond, his eyes locked to the eyes of Mr. Tennenbaum.

"You're what -- thirteen? Already they've infected you? A shame. I'll have to think some more about my choice."

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

back to top