A Bad Man (5 page)

All at once Feldman missed his home. He remembered the wine-dark carpets and thought of the master bedroom with its silken bed. He remembered the mahogany apparatus on which he hung his clothes when he took them off, the built-in trays for cuff links, studs. He sighed for the master toilet, the glassed shower, the cunning lights. He thought of the long curves of pale blue sofas, of Thermopane picture windows wide as walls, of the clean white margins of his Ping-pong table, its crisp green net. He thought of his color television set, his air conditioning, his stereo, of the clipped turf that was his lawn. He wept for lost comfort and missed his wife.

Oh, Lilly, Lilly, Lilly. He wondered if he would ever see her again. Oh, Lilly, he thought, almost praying, I swear, never again will I betray you. He tried to remember her face, and got a sudden fix on a beautiful girl. It was Barbara, in his wife’s car pool. He strained and brought up Marlene. He saw Joyce in Curtains, Olive in Cosmetics, Harriet in Ladies’ Leather. He saw his models, his buyers, one or two of the high school girls who worked part-time in Sporting Goods because he liked to watch them stretch the bows. He saw Miss Lane. But where was Lilly? All right, he thought fiercely—
Lilly. Come on. Come on, Lilly!
Lilly was tough, but maybe piece by piece he could do it.

Her glasses came to him first—gold-rimmed. Then he could see doctors’ bills, organs she’d had removed, surgical bandages, the cream-color crisscross of hernia tape. Now he had her—the wide lap, the thick thighs she couldn’t remember to close, the monstrous tits. It was Lilly! It was Lilly, goddamnit!
But where was Miss Lane?

5

F
or the first twelve years they fled the minion. They hid from it in Maine, in Vermont, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Indiana. Once his father had seen a film of ranchers in Montana, but they never got that far. At last they came to southern Illinois’ Little Egypt.

His father rebuilt his peddler’s wagon for a fifth time, nailing the old lumber with the old nails. “Test it, test it,” his father said, and Feldman climbed inside, stretching out on his back in the gentile sun, the goyish heat. His father stepped inside the long handles. “Old clothes,” he called, “rags, first-born Jews.” A woman stood on her porch and stared at them. “Go inside, lady,” Feldman’s father said, “it’s only a rehearsal. Out, kid.”

Feldman sprang from the wagon. “What a leap, what a jump,” his father said. “Soon
I
ride in the wagon, you get a good offer and you sell me.” He stooped and picked up the paintbrush and threw it to his son. “Paint for the hicks a sign. In English make a legend: ISIDORE FELDMAN AND SON.” His father watched him make the letters. “It’s very strange,” he said, “I have forgotten how to write English. But I can still read it, so no tricks.” When Feldman had finished, his father took the brush saying, “And now I will do the same in Hebrew on the other side. For the Talmudic scholars of southern Illinois.” His son climbed into the wagon and lay back against the planks with their faded, flaking legends, the thick Hebrew letters like the tips of ancient, heavy keys. “This afternoon it dries, and tomorrow it is opening day in America.”

His father was insane. For five years Feldman had been old enough to recognize this; for three years he had been old enough to toy with the idea of escaping; for two weeks he had been brave enough to try. But he had hesitated, and for a week he had realized with despair that he loved his father.

They had rented a house. It was like all the houses they had ever lived in. “Look at it,” his father said, climbing up on the porch. “White frame.” He touched the wood. “Steps. A railing. A swing. Here, when you’re old enough, you’ll court Americans in that swing. And
screen
doors. Look, look, Leo, at the
screen
doors. A far cry from the East Side. No screen doors on the East Side. Smell the flowers. I wish I knew their names. Get the American girls in the swing to tell you their names. That way, if they die, we will know what seeds to ask for. Good. Then it’s settled.”

While the paint was drying they walked in the town. His father showed him the feed store, the courthouse, the tavern. They went inside and Feldman’s father drank a beer and spoke with the bartender. “Neighbor,” his father said, “a Jew is a luxury that God affords Himself. He is not serious when He makes a Jew. He is only playing. Look, you got a wife?”

“Sure,” the man said uneasily.

“Tell her today you met Feldman and Son.” He leaned across the bar and winked. “If a Jew wants to get ahead,” he whispered, “he must get ahead of the other Jews. He must go where there are no Jews. A Jew is a novelty.” He turned to his son. “Tell the neighbor our word,” he said.

“Please, Papa,” Feldman said, embarrassed.

“In the first place, papa me no papas, pop me no pops. This is America. Dad me a dad. Father me a father. Now—the word.”

“Diaspora,” Feldman said.

“Louder, please.”

“Diaspora,” he said again.

“Diaspora, delicious.”

The bartender stared at them.

“Explain. Tell the fellow.”

“It means dispersion,” Feldman said.

“It
says
dispersion, and it
means
dispersion,” his father said. “I tell you, ours is a destiny of emergency. How do you like that? You see me sitting here fulfilling God’s will. I bring God’s will to the Midwest. I don’t lift a finger. I have dispersed. Soon the kid is older,
he
disperses. Scatter, He said.” He looked around the tavern significantly, and going to the front window, made an oval in the Venetian blinds for his face and peered out. “To the ends of the earth. Yes, Lord.” He rushed back to the bar. “Who owns the big store here?” he asked suddenly.

“That would be Peterson,” the bartender said.

“Peterson, perfect.”

The bartender started to move away, but Feldman’s father reached across the bar and held his elbow. “The jewelry store? Quickly.”

“Mr. Stitt.”

“Stitt, stupendous.”

“Come, Father,” Feldman said.

“There’s no
shul
, no Jew?” his father said.

“I don’t know none, mister.”

“Know none, nice.” He stood up. At the door he turned to all of them in the tavern. Huge men in faded overalls looked down at him from enormous stools. “Farmers, townsmen—
friends
: I am your new neighbor, Isidore Feldman, the peddler. In the last phase of the Diaspora. I have come to the end of the trail in your cornfields. I can go no further. Here I hope to do business when the pushcart dries. I have scouted the community and can see that there is a crying need for a ragman. The old-clothes industry is not so hot here either. Never mind, we will grow together. Tell the wife. Meanwhile, look for me in the street!”

Going home, his father, elated, taught him the calls as they walked along. “Not ‘rags,’ not ‘
old clothes
.’ What are you, an announcer on the radio? You’re in a street! Say ’regs, all cloze.’ Shout it. Sing it. I want to hear steerage, Ellis Island in that throat. I’ll give you the pitch. Ready, begin:
Rugs, oil cloths!
Wait, stop the music.
Greenhorn
, you’re supposed to be a greenhorn! What, you never saw the Statue of Liberty through the fringes of a prayer shawl?”

He hadn’t and neither had his father.

“All right, from the top.
Rocks, ill clots
. Better, beautiful, very nice, you have a flair.”

“
Rex, wild clits
,” Feldman sang out. A hick stared at him from behind a lawn mower. He could smell preserves in the air.

“Terrific,” Feldman’s father shouted, “‘wild clits’ is very good. We’ll make our way. I
feel
it.
I
know it’s a depression, once I built a railroad, made it run.
I
know this is Illinois, America.
I
know the rubble is not the destruction of the second temple, but just today’s ashes. Never
mind!
We are traveling Jews in the latest phase of the new Diaspora. We will be terrific.”

He stopped and pulled his son close to him. “Listen, if anything happens you’ll need wisdom. I can’t help you. Father’s a fathead. Dad’s a dope. But in lieu of wisdom—
cunning
. These are bad times—bad,
dreckish
, phooey! But bad times make a bullish market for cunning. I’m no Red. From me you don’t hear ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ From me you hear ‘from them to me.’ I know the world. I
know
it. I fight it one day at a time. This is your father speaking. This is advice.

“
Rogues, wooled clouds
,” he roared down the American street.

So they sold and sold. “It’s the big sellout,” his father said. “What did you sell today?” he would ask people he met in the street. “Trade, traffic, barter, exchange, deal, peddle, purvey,” he called ecstatically to the house fronts.

They’d go into Woolworth’s—Woolworth’s was one of his father’s chief suppliers; “My wholesaler,” he’d say—and his father would gasp at the abundances there, the tiers of goods, the full shelves, the boxes on high platforms lining the walls. “Commodities,” he’d sigh. “Things. Thing City.” Staring like a stricken poet at an ideal beauty. “Some operation you’ve got here,” he said to the girl who sold the clusters of chocolate peanuts. He stared passionately at the penny weighing machine, the Foot-Eze machine. “Nothing for something,” he groaned jealously.

He turned to his son. “The beggars. Ah, the beggars and cripples. The men who sit armless and stumpless on a spread-out sheet of newspaper with the pencils in their caps. They have it made.
They
do. Take the nickel and keep the pencil! Delicious, delightful! The freaks stashed in cages, getting
gelt
for a gape. My son, my son, forgive me your health, your arms and your legs, your size and strong breathing, your unblemished skin. I chain you forever to invoice and lading, to rate of exchange, to wholesale, to cost.” He’d wink. “Sell seconds,” he’d say, “irregulars. Sell damaged and smoke-stained and fire-torn things. Sell the marred and impaired, the defective and soiled. Sell remnants, remainders, the used and the odd lot. Sell broken sets. That’s where the money is.”

He would pick up a pair of ladies’ panties from the lingerie counter. “Look, look at the craftsmanship,” he’d say distastefully, plunging his big hand inside and splaying his fingers in the silky seat, “the crotchmanship.” He’d snap the elastic. “No sag, no give,” he’d say to the startled salesgirl. “Give me give, the second-rate. Schlock, give me. They’re doing some wonderful things in Japan.

“
Because
,” he’d say, explaining, “where’s the contest in sound merchandise? You sell a sound piece of merchandise, what’s the big deal? Demand has nothing to do with good business, not
good
business. Need, who needs it? In England—come closer, miss, you’ll enjoy this—they have a slang term for selling. ‘Flogging,’ they call it. Flogging, fantastic. But that’s it, that’s it exactly. Beating, whipping. Every sale a scourge. Sell me envelopes.”

“That’s the stationery counter. Aisle four.”

“You hear, Leo? A
stationary
counter. Wonderful, wonderful. Not like with us with the wheels on the wagon, the rolling Diaspora. What a thing it is to be a gentile! A goy, gorgeous!”

He leaned across the counter and took the girl’s hands in his own. He moved with her like this to the break in the counter and pulled her toward him gently. They were like sedate figures in an old dance.

“It’s not my department,” the girl objected.

“You drive a hard bargain,” his father said. “It’s a pleasure to do business with you.”

“No, really—listen—”

“Envelopes, forty. One pack, wide white. Here’s the quarter. It’s a flog. Now, please, beat me a box pencils.”

Then, incredibly, he would sell the envelopes. One at a time. He would go into the office of the farm agent. “Have you written Mother this week?” he might ask, and sell him an envelope for two cents.

“What have you got for us today, Isidore?” an old man would call from the bench at the courthouse. His father sold him an envelope.

He lived by sufferance, his son saw. His father saw too. “They owe me,” he explained. “Fuck them.”

Little children suffered him. He would stride up to them in their games in the schoolyard. Perhaps he would intercept the ball, running after it clumsily, knees high, awry, hugging it ineptly. Holding it high. “Want to buy a ball?” he shouted. The children laughed. “What did
you
sell today?” Leering awfully, asking Helen, a girl in his son’s class, eleven and breasted, eleven and haired. The children roared and touched each other.

“What have you got for us today, Isidore?” a child yelled. It was what the old men called.

He tossed the ball aside, pushing it as a girl would, and reached into his pocket. “
White
,” he whispered, pulling a crayon from the pocket, holding it out to them, a waxy wand. “White!”

“I’ll tell you about white. White,” he’d say, his loose, enormous lids heavy, slack wrappings for his eyes, “is the first thing. White is light, great God’s let was, void’s null. You can’t go wrong with white. You wouldn’t be sorry you took white. Ask your teacher, you don’t believe me. It reflects to the eye all the colors in the solar spectrum. How do you like that? This is the
solar
spectrum I’m talking about, not your small-time local stuff. You take the white—the blue, yellow, red and green go with it. Some white! A nickel for the rainbow, I’m closing it out.”

“What could you do with it?” a boy asked.

“Color an elephant and sell it,” his father said. “Put up a flag. Tell a lie. Ah, kid, you know too much. You’ve seen the truth. It’s the color of excuse and burden. I’ve got a nerve. You’re too young. Why should I saddle you with white? But have you got a big brother maybe? Nah, nah, it’s a grownup’s color. Buy better brown. Go green, green’s grand. You want green? Here—” He stuck his hand into his pocket and without looking pulled out a green crayon. The boy gasped and moved back. “No? Still thinking about the white? Naughty kid, you grow up too fast today. White-hot for white, are you? All right, you win, I
said
white for sale and I
meant
white for sale. White sale here.
All right, who wants it?
”