Closing Time (16 page)

"What was it all about?"

"Just practicing my German."

In Fort Dix with Claire, I wasn't practicing. I was mad in a second when I saw them snicker and say something about her, and I was ready to wade right in, madder than I'd ever been in combat, as I moved straight toward them. My voice was low and very calm, and that vein in my neck and jaw was already ticking, like the clock of a time bomb just dying to explode.

"
Achtung
," I said in a soft and slow voice, drawing the word out to make it last as long as I could, until I came to a stop where they were standing on the grass with their shovels near a dirt walkway they were making.

The two of them looked at each other with a hardly hidden smile they must have thought I wouldn't mind.

"
Achtung,"
I said again, with a little more bite on the second part, as though carrying on a polite conversation with someone hard of hearing in the parlor of Claire's mother in her upstate home in New York. I put my face right into theirs, only inches away. My lips were drawn wide, as they would be if I was going to laugh, but I wasn't even smiling, and I don't think they got that yet. "
Achtung, aufpassen
," I said for emphasis.

They turned sober when I didn't shout it. They began to see I wasn't kidding. And then they straightened up from their comfortable slouching and began to look a little bit lost, like they couldn't make me out. I didn't know till later that I was clenching my fists, didn't know until I saw blood on my hands from where my nails were digging in.

Now they weren't so sure anymore, and I was. The war in Europe was over, but they were still prisoners of war, and they were here, not there. It was summer and they were healthy and bare-chested and bronzed from the sun, like I used to be on the beach at Coney Island before the war. They looked strong, muscular, not like the hundreds and hundreds more I'd seen taken prisoner overseas. These had been in first, and they had grown healthy as prisoners and strong on American food, while I was away with trench foot from wet socks and shoes, and was covered with bugs I'd never seen before, lice. They were early captures, I guessed, the big bully-boy crack troops from the beginning of the war, that whole generation who by now had been captured, killed, or wounded, and they looked too good and too well-off for my taste, but there were the rules of the Geneva Convention for prisoners, and here they were. The two I faced were older and bigger than me, but I did not doubt I could take them apart if it came to that, weak as I was from the operations and thin from the war, and maybe I was wrong. I wasn't fed as good as they were when I was a prisoner.

"
Wie gehts
?" I said casually, looking at each in turn in a way that let them know I wasn't being as sociable as I sounded. By now my German was pretty good. "
Was ist Dein Name
?"

One was Gustav, one was Otto. I remember the names.

"
Wo kommst Du her?
"

One was from Munich. I'd never heard of the other place. I was speaking with authority, and I could see they were anxious. They didn't outrank me. None could be officers if they'd been put to work, not even noncommissioned, not unless they had lied, as I had done, just to get out of the last prison camp and go somewhere to work. "
Warum lachst Du wenn Du siehst Lady hier
? You too." I pointed at the other one. "Why were you laughing just now when you looked at the lady here, and what did you say to him about her that made him laugh some more?"

I forgot to say that in German and spoke in English. They knew what I was talking about, all right, but were not too sure of the words. I didn't mind. This was a hard one to put into another language, but I knew they would get it if I put my mind to it.

"
Warum hast Du gelacht wenn Du siehst mein
girlfriend here?"

Now we all knew they understood, because they did not want to answer. The guard with the gun did not understand what was going on or know what to do about it. He looked more scared of me than of them. I knew that I wasn't even allowed to talk to them. Claire would have wanted me to stop. I wasn't going to. Nothing could have made me. A young officer with campaign ribbons who'd come up quickly halted when he saw my face.

"Better keep back," I heard Claire warn him.

I had campaign ribbons on too, including a Bronze Star I'd won in France for knocking out a Tiger tank with a guy named David Craig. I think that officer was reading my mind and was smart enough to keep out of my way. I seemed official and talked tough as hell. My German threw all of them off, and I made sure to speak it loudly.

"
Antworte!
" I said. "
Du verstehst was ich sage
?"

"Ich verstehe nicht."

"Wir haben nicht gelacht."

"Keiner hat gelacht."

"Otto, you are a liar," I told him in German. "You do understand and you did laugh. "
Gustav, sag mir, Gustav, was Du sagen"
-I pointed to Claire-"
�ber meine Frau hier? Beide lachen, was ist so komisch?
" We weren't married yet, but I didn't mind throwing in that she was my wife, just to tighten the screws a little more. "She is my wife," I repeated, in English, for the officer to hear. "What nasty thing did you say about her?"

"Ich babe nichts gesagt. Keiner hat gelacht."

"
Sag mir!
" I commanded.

"Ich babe es vergessen. Ich weiss nicht."

"
Gustav, Du bist auch ein L�gner, und Du wirst gehen zu H�lle f�r Deine L�ge
. To hell you will both go for your lie and for your dirty words about this young lady, if I have to put you there myself. Now.
Schaufeln hinlegen
!"

I pointed. They laid down their shovels tamely and waited. I waited too.

"
Schaufeln aufheben!
" I said, with no smile.

They looked about miserably. They picked up the shovels and stdod without knowing what to do with them. j

"
Dein Name ist Gustav
?" I said after another half a minute. "
Dein Name ist Otto? Jawohl? Du bist von München? Und Du bist von… Acb wo!
" I didn't really care where the hell he was from. "
Mein Name ist Rabinowitz
. Lewis Rabinowitz.
Icb bin Lewis Rabinowitz
, from Coney Island, on West Twenty-fifth Street, between Railroad Avenue and Mermaid Avenue,
bei Karussell
, the merry-go-round on the boardwalk." I could feel the pulses in my thumbs beating too when I took out my dog tags to make them look at that letter
J
, to make extra sure that they knew what I was saying when I told them next in Yiddish: "
Und ich bin ein Yid
." And then in German: "
Ich bin Jude, judisch. Verstehst Du jetzt
?" They weren't so bronze anymore, and didn't look so powerful. I felt peaceful as can be, and never more sure of myself as LR, Louie Rabinowitz from Coney Island. There was no more need to fight with them. I spoke with my hateful smile that Claire says looks worse than a skeleton's and like a deadly grimace. "
Jetzt… noch einmal
." They put down the shovels when I told them to and picked them back up as though I had trained them perfectly. I indicated Claire. "
Hast Du schlecht gesagt wie als er hat gesagt wie Du gesehen Dame hier
?"

"Nein, mein Herr."

"Hast Du mitgelacht als er hat gesagt schlecht?"

"Nein, mein Herr."

"You are lying again, both of you, and it's lucky that you are because I might break both your backs if you told me you did laugh at her or said something bad.
Geh zur Arbeit
." I turned away from them with disgust. "Corporal, they're yours again. Thanks for the chance."

"Lew, that wasn't nice," Claire said first.

Then the officer spoke. "Sergeant, you're not allowed that. You're not allowed to talk to them that way."

I saluted respectfully. "I know the rules of the Geneva Convention, Captain. I was a prisoner of war there, sir."

"What was it all about?"

"They looked at my fianc�e, sir, and said something dirty. I'm only just back. I'm not right in the head yet."

"Lew, you're
not
right in the head." Claire started in the minute we were alone. "Suppose they didn't do what you told them to?"

"Calm down, little girl. They did do what I told them. They had to."

"Why? Suppose the guard made you stop? Or that officer?"

"They couldn't."

"How did you know?"

"Just understand."

"Why couldn't they?"

"I tell you and you must believe me. Certain things happen the way I say they will. Don't ask me why. To me it's simple. They insulted you, and they insulted me by doing that, and I had to let them know they couldn't do that. They're not allowed to do that." We were already engaged. "You're my fianc�e,
nest-ce pas
? My
Frdulein
. I would get mad at anyone who looked at you and made a smutty remark, and so would my father and my brothers, if they saw any other guy ever snicker at you like that, or at one of my sisters. Enough chitchat, my dear. Let's go back to the hospital now. Let's go say good-bye to Herman the German."

"Lew, it's enough with Herman already. I'll wait downstairs and have a soda if you feel you have to go through that with him again. I don't find it funny."

"You still won't believe it, baby, but I don't find it funny either. That's not why I do it to him."

The problem with Claire then, as Sammy and Winkler saw and let me know, was that she did have big tits. And the trouble with me was that I got jealous fast and felt ready to just about kill any other guy who noticed them, Sammy and Winkler too.

So four of us went down to enlist that day and all four of us came back. But Irving Kaiser from the apartment house next door was killed by artillery fire in Italy and I never saw him again, and Sonny Ball was killed the same way there too. Freddy Rosenbaum lost a leg, and Manny Schwartz still walks around with hooks on an artificial hand and is not so good-humored about it anymore, and Solly Moss was shot in the head and hasn't been able to hear or see too clearly since, and as Sammy mentioned once when looking back, that seems to have been a lot of casualties for just a couple of blocks in a pretty small section of a pretty small neighborhood, so a lot of others everywhere must have been killed or wounded also. I thought so too. But the day the four of us went off we didn't think there'd really be danger or casualties.

We were going to war and we didn't know what it was.

Most of us married young. And none of us knew from divorce then. That was for the Gentiles, for the rich people we used to read about in the newspapers who went to Reno, Nevada, for six weeks because it was easier there. And for someone like Sammy's Glenda and her roving first husband who liked to play around a lot and just didn't seem to give a shit who knew it. Now even one of my own daughters has got her divorce. When I first heard about that marriage breaking up I wanted to set right out after my ex-son-in-law and work out the property settlement with my bare hands. Claire shut me up and took me back to the Caribbean to cool off instead. Sammy Singer was the only one I know of who waited, and then he married his
shiksa
with three children and the light-brown hair that was almost blonde. But Sammy Singer was always a little bit different, short and different, quiet, thinking a lot. He was strange and went to college. I was smart enough and also had the GI Bill of Rights to pay for it, but was already married, and I had better things to do than go to school some more, and I was in a bigger hurry to get somewhere. That's another reason I never liked John Kennedy or anyone around him when he jumped into the limelight and began to act like an actor having too good a time. I could recognize a man in a hurry. I blinked once when he was shot, said too bad, and went back to work the same day, and got ready to begin disliking Lyndon Johnson, when I wanted to take the time. I don't like bullshitters and people who talk a lot, and that's what Presidents do. I hardly read newspapers anymore. Even back then I couldn't figure out why a guy with brains like Sammy Singer would want to go to college just to study things like English literature, which he could read in his spare time.

When I was thirteen and ready for high school, I got into Brooklyn Technical High School, which was not so easy to do back then, and did well in things like math, mechanical drawing, and some of the science courses, as I did not doubt I would. And then I forgot just about everything but the arithmetic when I got out and went to work for my father in the junkshop with my brother and one of my brothers-in-law, who lived with my oldest sister in the basement flat of the four-family brick house with a porch the family already owned. I used the arithmetic most in pinochle, I guess, in the bidding and playing, where I could pretty much hold my own in the boardwalk and beach games with almost the best of the old-world Jews from Russia and Hungary and Poland and Romania, who talked and talked and talked even while they played, about cards and the Jewish newspapers, and about Hitler, whom I hated early, as early as they did, and Stalin, Trotsky, Mussolini, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom they liked, so I liked him too. In Coney Island I'll bet there was never a single Jewish voter for any Republican except maybe my brother-in-law Phil, who was always against everything everyone else around him was for, and still is.

My father did not think much of my genius at cards. When I asked him what else I should do with my time when we weren't working, he didn't know. When he didn't know something, he didn't want to talk about it. In the army there was no real pinochle, so I made my money at blackjack, poker, and craps. I almost always won because I always knew I would. If I didn't feel I would win I hardly ever played. When I lost, it wasn't much. I could tell in a minute if there were players at work who were just as good as I was and on a streak, and I knew enough to wait. Now I use my math to calculate discounts, costs, tax breaks, and profit margins, and I can do my figuring without even feeling I'm thinking, like my bookkeeper or counter girls could with their computers, and just about as fast. I'm not always right, but I'm almost never wrong. With the idea for metered home heating oil for builders and developers, even after I found the meter that would do it, I never felt sure. With metered oil there'd be no need for a fuel tank for each house in a development, and the company that owned the meter would sell the oil there. But I had the feeling I'd have trouble getting the people at the big oil companies to take me seriously, and I did and they wouldn't. When we met I was not myself. I wore a suit with a vest and had a different personality, because I had the feeling they would not like mine. They didn't care much for the one I used either. I was out of my league and knew it the minute I tried to step into theirs. There were limits, and I had guessed from the start that the sky was not one of mine.