The Dream (25 page)

As for me, I still continued to cook up fantastic articles – ‘What Men Won’t Do for a Thrill’ – and try to sell them to
Popular Mechanics
and the
American Weekly
, Hearst’s Sunday supplement, where I had some luck from time to time at $10 an article. But what I called my real writing, my short stories about myself, occupied most of my time. The ‘little’ magazines paid no money, but that didn’t matter to me and I was gaining some attention. I received a letter from Clifton Fadiman, the editor of Simon & Schuster, telling me that he’d read one of my hospital stories and liked it, and inviting me to submit a novel if I had one. I didn’t, but I would. Elated,
I
started writing one, but it was like so many others that I wrote afterwards, never published. Nevertheless, there was enough encouragement in that letter to keep me writing chiefly about myself and I have done that ever since.

But on this particular Saturday, in the midst of one story that I was writing about the block of old frame houses where I lived, I was suddenly assailed with such a feeling of gloom that I could not continue. I found myself taking stock of myself. I was twenty-four years old, I had no job and no prospects of getting one, I was still living with my parents, and I was still trying unsuccessfully to become a writer and the best I could do was get published in some insignificant little magazines that only a few people read. Never mind Clifton Fadiman. That was just a fluke.

I got up from the typewriter and knew that I wanted to get out of this dark, dank hole of an apartment and go out somewhere to meet people; talk with them, laugh with them. I thought of a girl. It was a long time since I had been out with one. But it took money to take a girl out. And I wasn’t dressed properly for it anyway, and didn’t feel like changing out of my unpressed, shabby trousers and not too clean shirt, and shaving. Luckily, I had a few coins in my pocket that would be enough for the subway fare to Manhattan and back.

I stepped outside and breathed in the fresh evening air. It was always like coming out of a cave when you left the basement apartment. It was early summer and the air was soft and balmy. People were sitting on the porches or on the steps that led up to the porches. The sky was a pale colour of twilight and it reminded me a bit of those
summer
evenings in England when the sun had set and people sat outside on chairs smoking their pipes or cigarettes.

I saw my father and mother sitting outside on the two kitchen chairs they had brought out, and it occurred to me how unusual this was for my father to be home on a Saturday night and, what’s more, sitting there with my mother, the two of them side by side. Somehow, there was something reassuring in the sight, and I marvelled a bit at the change that had come over my father but wondered how long it would last. We still didn’t talk to one another.

He turned his head aside as I came out. But my mother smiled and I saw a certain curiosity in her eyes, which were lifted up to me. I rarely went out these days and she was probably wondering where I was going. She would not have asked, however, and merely waved. I waved back and knew that her eyes were following me as I walked on. I saw Sidney at the corner with some friends, and he waved too and yelled, ‘Where you going?’

I didn’t answer and simply waved at him. Truth was, I didn’t know where I was going other than Manhattan, but where in Manhattan I hadn’t decided yet. I thought of the Village. It was always lively there, and I might run into some people I knew who lived there. But the Village cost money and I was looking for free. It was for that reason probably that I got off at Union Square, a stop before the Village. It was lively here too, and there were always free lectures at the Labor Temple or Cooper Union, or better yet, the soapbox orators in the square gave talks that you could listen to even if you didn’t agree with what they were saying.

Yes, it was lively all right, with surging crowds along Fourteenth Street, shoppers streaming in and out of Klein’s, the big bargain store, others heading for the theatres, and the chestnut and popcorn vendors trundling their carts among them with savoury smells trailing after them. But most of the noise came from within the square in the centre of which a tall flagpole flying the American flag dominated the scene. Around the flagpole were the orators of all different brands of radical beliefs – the Stalinists, the Trotskyites, the Lovestonites, the Socialists, the Social-Labourites – all mounted on short ladders, haranguing the crowds in fierce, passionate tones. I shuffled from one to the other for about an hour, then grew tired of it and wandered away over towards the benches that were filled with people.

I was hot. I was perspiring and wanted to rest. I found a place at the end of one bench and sat down. No sooner had I done that than I heard the sound of someone singing. Singing? It could hardly be called that. The voice was hoarse and cracked, and I recognised it at once. Unmistakably, this was my grandfather’s voice.

Yes, I saw him in the fading light, making his way along the benches, tapping with a cane, shuffling slowly towards me with his blue glasses shielding his supposed blindness, the tin cup held out towards those seated on the benches, rattling the coins that were in it.

At last he came up to where I was sitting. He recognised me too with a little start, halting and then, with the familiar chuckle, saying, ‘So it’s you, Harry.’

‘Yes, it’s me, Grandpa,’ I said and noted at the same time out of the corners of my eyes people on the bench looking at us. They’d obviously heard me call him
Grandpa.
I couldn’t help feeling a little self-conscious, but I said, ‘Won’t you sit down, Grandpa?’

‘Yes, why not? I could use a little rest.’

They made room for him on the bench, and I was sure they’d all be listening to us with wide-open ears. But I didn’t care any longer. I didn’t even bother to lower my voice. In fact, I was rather glad I’d met him. I had thought of him often since I’d last seen him. That was several years ago, and he looked pretty much the same now as he had then. His beard was scraggly, his face weather-beaten and deeply lined. He wore what I suppose was his beggar’s uniform, shabby clothes, torn shoes, an old felt hat with a ragged brim and, though it was a hot day, a long, much-worn overcoat that came down to his ankles.

‘So, Harry,’ he said, ‘how are you? How is everybody at home? Your father, your mother, your brothers, your sister?’

‘They’re all well,’ I said. ‘About my sister I don’t know. She’s back in Chicago with her husband. We don’t write very much. But the others are all right.’ They weren’t. Both Joe and Saul were having trouble, Joe finding it hard to sell magazine subscriptions these days, and with a baby now, a little girl named Rita, having to borrow money from his wife’s parents to make ends meet, and Saul finding it difficult too to live off the meagre salary the Jewish organisation gave him and with his wife constantly dissatisfied and adding to his misery. As for us, how well could we be? But I didn’t want to go into that with my grandfather. ‘How have you been?’ I asked.

‘I am still alive,’ he said. ‘At my age that is good enough.’

‘Do you hear from Chicago?’ I asked.

‘Chicago?’ He chuckled. ‘Yes, of course I hear, now more than ever that your grandmother is gone. You know about that?’

‘Yes, we heard. I was sorry to hear it.’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I too was sorry. When you have a lot of children with a woman it means there must be some bond between you. I gave her a lot of work to do and I feel guilty about it. The children always depended on her and when they needed something, even after they were married and supposed to be on their own, they went to her. And now that she’s gone they come to me – to the direct source of supply’ – he gave another chuckle – ‘so long as I am not there in person to embarrass them they don’t mind talking to me in their letters. And what do their letters say? One says he needs a set of teeth, another must have a pair of glasses, or they’re short for the rent. One good thing about the Depression, it’s brought families closer together. Even your Aunt Lily has been writing to me. Did you know that her rich husband died too?’

I was shocked. ‘No, they never told us. When did that happen?’

‘Not too long after Grandma died. The poor man. I liked him. He was good to me at the wedding … the wedding that I was not invited to.’ He gave a chuckle that was not amused and looking at him I saw the bitterness in his eyes. He went on, ‘Yes, I liked Phil. He was worse off than any of us, being rich. It’s harder to fall from the top than when you are at the bottom. He lost his business, the Victrollas, the fine office in the Loop. He could not get a job, not even selling Victrollas, his parents wouldn’t help, they had disowned him for
marrying
into the family. You know where he landed? He became a milkman. Yes, he got up at dawn and delivered bottles of milk to houses.

‘But it was too much for him, poor man. One day while he was climbing a flight of steps to deliver some milk he dropped dead from a heart attack. Now your Aunt Lily writes to me. She is crushed by what has happened. She doesn’t know what to do with herself, where to turn, and of course she has no money. Can it be that is why she writes to me now even though before this she never even invited me to her wedding?’ He shook his head back and forth a few times. ‘No, I mustn’t say that. But I have sent her some money and I have told her perhaps she would like to come to New York – and stay with me.’ He chuckled again and this time he was amused.

I didn’t laugh with him. I didn’t say anything for a while. I was dazed by all I had heard. Vaguely, I was aware of the cacophony of sounds and voices around me: one of the speakers hoarsely denouncing capitalism, the worst evil ever inflicted on mankind … the rumble of trucks and distant honking of horns … and the smell of roasted chestnuts and popcorn in my nostrils. I began to think of something else.

‘Have you seen my father?’ I asked.

‘Why should he be any different from all the others?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Oh, he’s become a very dutiful son. Yes, I see him. He comes to my room. Why do you ask?’

‘Do you give him money?’

He shrugged. ‘If I have it I give it to him. Business is not what it used to be. These days I have a lot of competition. Everybody is in the business.’

My suspicion, however, had been confirmed. Now I
was
certain I knew where he got what was supposed to be his pay every Friday and most of it in loose change.

‘I don’t give it to him,’ my grandfather went on. ‘I give it to your mother. Only of course you must not tell her that. I told your father the same thing. She must not know. But it is more than money that I owe her.’

‘Why do you owe her?’ I asked. He had said it before and I had been curious then. But now was a good time to find out.

He patted my knee with his hand. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to know everything. Or perhaps you do. I hear that you are a famous writer and you are having stories published in magazines.’

‘Who told you that?’ I asked.

‘Your father.’

I was a bit surprised. I couldn’t picture him talking about me to someone in the first place, but to be boasting about me and in such terms was a bit hard to believe. ‘He’s exaggerating,’ I said. ‘I’m not a famous writer. I’m just a beginning writer.’

‘But you’re a writer.’

‘I suppose.’ But this was not a subject I cared to pursue. I was thinking of the one he had started before and then seemed deliberately to avoid and change to something else. ‘You were saying before that you owed my mother more than money. What is it you owe her?’

He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘You won’t tell your mother that I told you?’

‘No.’

‘She would not like you to know.’

‘I promise I won’t tell her.’

‘All right, then. You already know about your mother,
how
in Poland her mother died and her father died when she was still a baby, and how nobody wanted to care for her and she was passed from one to another until when she was sixteen she was able to come to England. You know all that.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard about it.’

‘But what you don’t know is about Samuel.’

‘Who?’

‘Samuel – Shmuel, they called him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He was the man who should have been your father.’

I looked at him, puzzled. ‘What are you trying to say, Grandpa?’

‘Samuel was a young man who loved your mother. He too came from Poland. He worked in a hat factory in Manchester and that’s where your mother found work too when she came to England. They fell in love. There was talk of marrying between them. Samuel – Shmuel I’ll call him like everybody did – was a wonderful fellow, a good, kind, honest young man, and handsome looking, a bit of a dandy, he always dressed so well and he had a moustache …’

A thought was coming to me. I remembered a photograph in the assortment of photos my mother always kept in a cardboard box in a cupboard. I used to pore over them from time to time and this one always puzzled me. He was not one of the family, as all the others were, and when I asked my mother who he was she would answer vaguely that he was just an old friend she once knew and then did not seem to want to talk about him. Yes, he was a handsome fellow and he did have a moustache.

‘I think I know who you mean,’ I said. ‘I believe my
mother
had a picture of him.’

My grandfather nodded. ‘Yes, she would. I too have one. He gave one to me. We had become quite good friends while I was doing the roof over in the hat factory. He liked my singing. And we both read the same kind of books – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky of course …’

I was startled and for a moment forgot the subject we had been talking about in this amazing discovery. ‘I didn’t know you read books,’ I said, interrupting.

My grandfather smiled. ‘Why shouldn’t I read books?’ he asked.

I almost blurted out what promptly came to my mind, that he was an old street beggar with whom you could not associate reading books of any kind, much less the great Russian masters. But I stopped myself in time and said instead, ‘I just didn’t know, that’s all. But go on, tell me more about Samuel – or Shmuel.’