Evergreen (5 page)

“May I?”

“Of course. Sit.” She moved over, observing him without seeming to. Medium, he was. Medium height and age; medium brown suit, eyes and hair; medium features in a neatly fashioned face.

“I’m Joseph. Joseph Friedman, Solly’s cousin.”

The American, so called because he had been born in New York. The house painter from uptown. And of course Ruth had arranged this. The same as Aunt Rosa! They can’t rest until they’ve got a man for you. He can be ugly, stupid, anything, as long as he’s a man. Not that this one is ugly, but I wanted to read and I’m not thinking about men right now anyway.

“Ruth asked me to come down here to meet you. To tell you the truth, I almost didn’t come. They’ve tried to hitch me up to every girl who ever got off a boat; I was getting tired of it. But I can tell straight away I’m glad I came this time.”

Anna stared at him, weighing his astonishing words. But
there was no conceit in his face, only the direct and simple return of her look.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I knew nothing about it. Ruth shouldn’t have—”

“Please! I know you had nothing to do with it. Shall we take a walk?”

“All right,” she said.

He pulled her arm through his. He had clean hands, clean fingernails, a fresh collar. She respected that, at any rate. It is no easy thing to be clean when you are poor, in spite of what people say.

They began to see each other every Saturday. In the afternoon heat they walked the shady side of the street. They could walk for two or three blocks without speaking. Joseph was a quiet man, Anna saw, except when a mood came on him and then one could hardly stop him. Still, he was interesting, he had a vivid way of describing things.

“Here’s Ludlow Street, there’s the house where I was born. We lived here while my father had the tailor shop. After his sight failed—he couldn’t even see the needle anymore—we moved where we are now, my mother and I. Or where my mother is now, I should say. Two rooms behind the grocery store. What a life! Open six days a week until midnight. Bread, pickles, crackers and soda. My mother made salad in back of the store. Such a little woman, such a patient smile. When I remember being a child, I remember that smile. And what the hell was there to smile about? It didn’t make any sense.”

“Perhaps she was happy about her children, in spite of everything else.”

“Child. Just me. They were both over forty when I was born.”

“And your father? What was he like?”

“My father had high blood pressure. Everything upset him. He was probably already worn out by the time they got to America. But why don’t you stop me? Here I am, chewing your ear off!”

“I like to hear about people. Tell me more.”

“There isn’t any more to tell. You live here. You know what it’s like to live on these streets, just walking around, because there’s no place to be comfortable inside. We were poor, and that’s the whole story.”

“Even poorer than we were in Poland, I should think.”

“Well, I don’t know how poor you were, but I can remember making supper sometimes out of bread and pickles—before we had our own store, that is. Not all the time, of course, but often enough.”

“Still, I think,” Anna said thoughtfully, “it hasn’t hurt you. I think you’re a very optimistic person after all.”

“I am. Because I have faith, you see.”

“Faith in yourself?”

“Yes, that too. But what I meant was faith in God.”

“Are you so religious?”

He nodded seriously. “Yes, yes, I believe. I believe there is a reason for everything that happens, even though we don’t see it. And I believe we must accept everything that happens, whether good or bad, on trust. And that we, we as individuals, must do our best, do what God intended. I don’t give a damn for all the philosophy you hear them spouting in the coffee houses where the loafers sit around and solve the world’s problems. They were all solved years ago on Mt. Sinai. That’s what I believe.”

“Then why is there still so much trouble in the world?”

“Very simple. Because people don’t do what’s right. Very simple. You’re not an atheist, Anna, I hope?”

“Oh, no, of course I’m not! I just don’t know much about religion. I don’t really understand it.”

“Well, naturally, women don’t have to. But I can tell what you are all the same. Honest and kind and good. And very smart. I admire you for educating yourself with all these books.”

“You don’t read, ever?”

“I don’t have time. I’m up before five, and when you’ve been craning your head back on a scaffold with a paintbrush all day you’re too tired at night to improve yourself.
Although, to be truthful, I never was a student. Except in arithmetic. I had a good head for figures. At one time I even thought I might become an accountant.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“I had to go to work,” he said shortly. “Tell you what, there’s a place over on West Broadway that’s pretty good, we could have supper there. Soup, stew and pie for thirteen cents. Not bad, with a schooner of beer thrown in. Will you go with me?”

“Yes, but I don’t drink beer. You can have mine, too.”

Ruth said: “One good thing about this country is you don’t have to have money to get married. It’s not like the other side. Of course, some people still go to marriage brokers, but modern people don’t. You like each other, you get married. You both work.” And when Anna did not answer, she said: “Tell me about you and Joe.”

“Joseph. Nobody ever calls him Joe.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t know. But Joseph seems to fit him. It’s more dignified.”

“All right, then, Joseph. Tell me about you and him.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing!”

“Well, I like him. But there’s no—” Anna looked for a word. “Fire. There’s no fire.”

Ruth threw her hands up. Her eyes and brows moved upward. “So why do you go with him?”

“He’s a friend. It’s lonesome without a friend.”

Ruth looked at her. I might as well have spoken in Chinese, Anna thought.

“You know how many people around here have never even been north of Fourteenth Street?” Joseph had asked Anna.

“I’m one of them.”

“Wait, then, I’m going to show you something.”

The slippery cane seats were cool and the spring breeze
ran along with the trolley car as it gathered speed up Lexington Avenue. The bell clanged with authority. When the car stopped at the corners one could see on the side streets row after row of narrow houses, all brownstone, with high steps and tubbed evergreens at the front doors. Hester Street was a thousand miles away.

“We’ll get out at Murray Hill and go over to Fifth,” Joseph said.

They walked through the quiet streets from sun to shade, from shade to sun. Now and then a carriage passed; the horses had glossy hair and braided tails.

“Going for a ride in Central Park,” Joseph explained. Anna was surprised that he knew so much about this part of the city.

A motorcar stopped in front of one of the houses. The lady in the back seat wore a wide hat tied with a veil. The driver, in uniform and leather boots, walked around and helped her out of the car. She had two small fawn-colored dogs, one under each arm. Then the house door was opened from inside and a young woman came down the steps. Her dress was narrowly striped in blue and white; her little apron was edged with lace and her cap matched it. She took the two dogs and followed the lady up the steps.

“There! What do you think of that?” Joseph asked.

“Oh, it’s nice here!” Anna said. “I never imagined anything like this.”

“This is nothing. Wait till you see Fifth Avenue. That’s something to see!”

The sunshine glowed. The trees in the park across the avenue at Fifty-ninth Street glowed green and gold.

“That’s the Plaza Hotel,” Joseph said. “And on this side, this is the famous Hotel Netherlands.”

A young man wearing a straw hat (“That’s called a ‘boater,’” Joseph said) came out under the awning. The girl with him wore a bunch of violets on her coat, a beautiful coat, pale as the inside of a peach. They crossed the avenue walking swiftly, going somewhere. Anna and Joseph ambled along behind them, going nowhere in particular.
When the policeman’s whistle blew, the traffic started up and they were stopped on the concrete island where General Sherman, larger then life, reined in his horse.

“Some statue, hey?” Joseph said.

Anna read the inscription. “That’s the Union general who burned all the houses when he marched through Georgia during the Civil War.”

Joseph was astonished. “I never heard about him! I know about the Civil War, of course, but how do you know so much?”

“History. I’ve a book of American history,” Anna said with pride.

Joseph shook his head. “You’re something, Anna, you really are.”

Beyond General Sherman stood a great house of red brick and white stone, with iron gates. “The Vanderbilt mansion, that is. Or one of them, I should say.”

“That’s not a hotel?”

“It’s a house. A family lives in there.”

She thought he was joking. “One family? It’s not possible! There must be a hundred rooms.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“But how can they be so rich?”

“This particular family made it in railroads. All up and down this avenue I could show you dozens of houses like this. Fortunes made in oil, steel, copper, and some just from owning land. You know where you live downtown? A lot of those tenements are owned by people who live here. When people like us pay rent it goes to these people here.”

She thought of the crumbling house on Hester Street. “Do you think that’s right?”

“Probably not. Or maybe it is, I don’t know. If they’re smart enough to get it, maybe they’re entitled to it. Anyway, that’s how the world is, and until a better world is made I’ll adapt to this one.”

Anna was silent. And Joseph went on, his voice rising with excitement, “I’m going to live like this someday, Anna. Oh, not in a palace like these, but uptown in one of
those nice places on the side streets. I’m going to do it, mark my words.”

“You are? But how?”

“Work. Buy land. Land is the key to wealth, you know, as long as you own it free and clear. Its value may go down for a time but it always rises again. This country is growing, and if you can hold on to land you’re bound to be rich.”

“How do you get the money to start?”

“Ah, that’s the question! I’m trying to save enough for a small house of flats, but it’s hard.” He said stubbornly, “I’ll do it, though. I’ll live like this one day if I have to break my back.”

The fierceness that she saw in him disturbed Anna. He hadn’t shown it like that before. All of a sudden he seemed too angry and too large, although he was not a large man at all. His voice was too loud. She thought windows would open and people lean out to look, although no one did.

She said quietly, “You think too much about money.”

“You think so? I’ll tell you something, Anna. Without money the world spits on you. You’re nothing. You die like my father in a dirty little shop. Or rot away like Ruth and Solly. You want to rot away like that?”

“No, of course not.” One shuddered to think of it. But still it couldn’t all be as he said. “The great writers, the artists, they had no money. And the world honors them. You make everything too cruel, too ugly.”

Joseph turned her face up to his. His eyes were suddenly soft. “You look about fifteen years old, Anna,” he said gently.

The idea came to her on a stifling night, when the smell of frying hung in the airless rooms. The hair at the back of her neck was wet with sweat; she longed for a bath in cool water. But there was no place, no privacy. Other women walked in while you were meagerly sponging off. Some of these women disgusted her; they weren’t clean. And one poor creature cried and whimpered into her pillow all
night. Ruth’s five-year-old was sick and restless. It was impossible to sleep.

She thought of the maid coming down the steps of the house with the tubbed evergreens. On the ship crossing the Atlantic, some of the peasant girls had talked of the jobs that waited for them in America, jobs in neat, clean houses like the ones uptown. In such a house she would sleep quietly, and have a place to keep a shelf of the books which Miss Thorne had given her, maybe even save money and buy some more for herself at second hand. After all, there would be no rent to pay and no food to buy. One could live decently, one could walk on those fine streets. She lay awake, thinking and thinking, and at last made up her mind.

“Ruth says I’m crazy to go to work as a servant,” she told Joseph, a few days later.

“Why so? It’s honest work. Please yourself, Anna, not other people,” he told her.

This, then, was how they looked inside, these houses behind the long windows where the shades, demurely pulled, were like downcast eyelids in a quiet face. Velvet carpets; your footsteps made no sound. Pictures in gilded frames. Fresh roses, cream and pink, although it was September. And stairs, turning up and up again. Anna followed Mrs. Werner.

“We’re a small family. My daughter is married and living in Cleveland. So there are just Mr. Werner and I and our son, Mr. Paul. This is his room.” She opened a door and Anna saw books on crowded shelves, riding boots in a corner and over the mantel a large blue banner:
For God, for Country and for Yale
.