Portnoy's Complaint (24 page)

A memorable weekend in my lifetime, equivalent in human history, I would say, to mankind’s passage through the entire Stone Age. Every time Mr. Campbell called his wife “Mary,” my body temperature shot into the hundreds. There I was, eating off dishes that had been touched by the hands of a woman named
Mary
. (Is there a clue here as to why I so resisted calling The Monkey by her name, except to chastise her? No?) Please, I pray on the train heading west, let there be no pictures of Jesus Christ in the Campbell house. Let me get through this weekend without having to see his pathetic
punim
—or deal with anyone wearing a cross! When the aunts and uncles come for the Thanksgiving dinner, please, let there be no anti-Semite among them! Because if someone starts in with “the pushy Jews,” or says “kike” or “jewed him down”—Well, I’ll jew them down all right, I’ll jew their fucking teeth down their throat! No, no violence (as if I even had it in me), let
them
be violent, that’s
their
way. No, I’ll rise from my seat—and (
vuh den?
) make a speech! I will shame and humiliate them in their bigoted hearts! Quote the Declaration of Independence over their candied yams! Who the fuck are they, I’ll ask, to think they own Thanksgiving!

Then at the railroad station her father says, “How do you do, young man?” and I of course answer, “Thank you.” Why is
he
acting so nice? Because he has been forewarned (which I don’t know whether to take as an insult or a blessing), or because he doesn’t know yet? Shall I say it then, before we even get into the car? Yes, I must! I can’t go on living a lie! “Well, it sure is nice being here in Davenport, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, what with my being Jewish and all.” Not quite ringing enough perhaps. “Well, as a friend of Kay’s, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and a Jew, I do want to thank you for inviting me—” Stop pussyfooting! What then? Talk Yiddish?
How?
I’ve got twenty-five words to my name—half of them dirty, and the rest mispronounced! Shit, just shut up and get in the car. “Thank you, thank you,” I say, picking up my own bag, and we all head for the station wagon.

Kay and I climb into the back seat,
with the dog
. Kay’s dog! To whom she talks as though he’s human! Wow, she really
is
a
goy
. What a stupid thing, to talk to a dog—except Kay isn’t stupid! In fact, I think she’s smarter really than I am. And yet talks to a dog? “As far as dogs are concerned, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, we Jews by and large—” Oh, forget it. Not necessary. You are ignoring anyway (or trying awfully hard to) that eloquent appendage called your nose. Not to mention the Afro-Jewish hairpiece. Of course they know. Sorry, but there’s no escaping destiny,
bubi
, a man’s cartilage is his fate.
But I don’t want to escape!
Well, that’s nice too—because you can’t.
Oh, but yes I can—if I should want to!
But you said you don’t want to.
But if I did!

As soon as I enter the house I begin (on the sly, and somewhat to my own surprise) to sniff: what will the odor be like? Mashed potatoes? An old lady’s dress? Fresh cement? I sniff and I sniff, trying to catch the scent. There! is
that
it, is that Christianity I smell, or just the dog? Everything I see, taste, touch, I think, “
Goyish!
” My first morning I squeeze half an inch of Pepsodent down the drain rather than put my brush where Kay’s mother or father may have touched the bristles with which they cleanse their own
goyische
molars. True! The soap on the sink is bubbly with foam from somebody’s hands. Whose?
Mary’s?
Should I just take hold of it and begin to wash, or should I maybe run a little water over it first, just to be safe. But safe from
what?
Schmuck, maybe you want to get a piece of soap to wash the soap with! I tiptoe to the toilet, I peer over into the bowl: “Well, there it is, boy, a real
goyische
toilet bowl. The genuine article. Where your girl friend’s father drops his gentile turds. What do you think, huh? Pretty impressive.” Obsessed? Spellbound!

Next I have to decide whether or not to line the seat. It isn’t a matter of hygiene, I’m sure the place is clean, spotless in its own particular antiseptic
goy
way: the question is, what if it’s warm yet from a Campbell behind—from her mother!
Mary!
Mother also of Jesus Christ! If only for the sake of my family, maybe I should put a little paper around the rim; it doesn’t cost anything, and who will ever know?

I
will!
I
will! So down I go—and it
is
warm! Yi, seventeen years old and I am rubbing asses with the enemy! How far I have traveled since September!
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion!
And yea is right! On the can I am besieged by doubt and regret, I am suddenly languishing with all my heart for home … When my father drives out to buy “real apple cider” at the roadside farmer’s market off in Union, I won’t be with him! And how can Hannah and Morty go to the Weequahic-Hillside game Thanksgiving morning without me along to make them laugh? Jesus, I hope we win (which is to say, lose by less than 21 points). Beat Hillside, you bastards! Double U, Double E, Q U A, H I C! Bernie, Sidney, Leon, “Ushie,” come on, backfield, FIGHT!

Come on—hold that line, make that point, kick ‘em in the
kishkas
, go team go!

See, I’m missing my chance to be clever and quick-witted in the stands! To show off my sarcastic and mocking tongue! And after the game, missing the historical Thanksgiving meal prepared by my mother, that freckled and red-headed descendant of Polish Jews! Oh, how the blood will flow out of their faces, what a deathly silence will prevail, when she holds up the huge drumstick, and cries, “Here! For guess who!” and Guess-who is found to be AWOL! Why have I deserted my family? Maybe around the table we don’t look like a painting by Norman Rockwell, but we have a good time, too, don’t you worry! We don’t go back to the Plymouth Rock, no Indian ever brought maize to any member of our family as far as we know—but just smell that stuffing! And look, cylinders of cranberry sauce at
either
end of the table! And the turkey’s name, “Tom”! Why then can’t I believe I am eating my dinner in America, that America is where
I
am, instead of some other place to which I will one day travel, as my father and I must travel every November out to that hayseed and his wife in Union, New Jersey (the
two
of them in overalls), for real Thanksgiving apple cider.

“I’m going to Iowa,” I tell them from the phone booth on my floor. “To
where?
” “To Davenport, Iowa.” “On your first college vacation?!” “—I know, but it’s a great opportunity, and I can’t turn it down—” “
Opportunity?
To do
what?
” “Yes, to spend Thanksgiving with this boy named Bill Campbell’s family—”
“Who?
” “Campbell. Like the soup. He lives in my dorm—” But they are expecting me.

Everybody is expecting me. Morty has the tickets to the game. What am I talking
opportunity?
“And who is this boy all of a sudden, Campbell?” “My friend! Bill!” “But,” says my father, “the
cider
.” Oh my God, it’s happened, what I swore I wouldn’t permit!—I am in tears, and “cider” is the little word that does it. The man is a natural—he could go on Groucho Marx and win a fortune guessing the secret-woid. He guesses mine, every single time! And wins my jackpot of contrition! “I can’t back out, I’m sorry, I’ve accepted—we’re
going!
” “Going? And how, Alex—I don’t understand this plan at all,” interrupts my mother—
“how
are you going, if I may be so bold, and
where?
and in a convertible too,
that too
—” “NO!” “And if the highways are icy, Alex—” “We’re going, Mother,
in a Sherman tank!
Okay?
Okay?
” “Alex,” she says sternly, “I hear it in your voice, I know you’re not telling me the whole truth, you’re going to hitchhike in a convertible or some other crazy thing—two months away from home, seventeen years old, and he’s going wild!”

Sixteen years ago I made that phone call. A little more than half the age I am now. November 1950—here, it’s tattooed on my wrist, the date of my Emancipation Proclamation. Children unborn when I first telephoned my parents to say I wasn’t coming home from college are just entering college, I suppose—only I’m still telephoning my parents to say I’m not coming home! Fighting off my family, still! What use to skip those two grades in grammar school and get such a jump on everybody else, when the result is to wind up so far behind? My early promise is legend: starring in all those grade-school plays! taking on at the age of twelve the entire DAR! Why then do I live by myself and have no children of my own? It’s no
non sequitur
, that question! Professionally I’m going somewhere, granted, but
privately
—what have I got to show for myself? Children should be playing on this earth who look like me!
Why not?
Why should every
shtunk
with a picture window and a carport have offspring, and not me? It don’t make sense! Think of it, half the race is over, and I still stand here at the starting line—me, the first one out of his swaddling clothes and into his track suit! a hundred and fifty-eight points of I.Q., and still arguing with the authorities about the rules and regulations! disputing the course to be run! calling into question the legitimacy of the track commission! Yes, “crab” is correct, Mother! “Sourball” is perfect, right on The Nose’s nose! “Mr. Conniption-Fit”—
c’est moi!

Another of these words I went through childhood thinking of as “Jewish.” Conniption. “Go ahead, have a conniption-fit,” my mother would advise. “See if it changes anything, my brilliant son.” And how I tried! How I used to hurl myself against the walls of her kitchen! Mr. Hot-Under-The Collar! Mr. Hit-The-Ceiling! Mr. Fly-Off-The-Handle! The names I earn for myself! God forbid somebody should look at you cockeyed, Alex, their life isn’t worth two cents! Mr. Always-Right-And-Never-Wrong! Grumpy From The Seven Dwarfs Is Visiting Us, Daddy. Ah, Hannah, Your Brother Surly Has Honored Us With His Presence This Evening, It’s A Pleasure To Have You, Surly. “Hi Ho Silver,” she sighs, as I rush into my bedroom to sink my fangs into the bedspread, “The Temper Tantrum Kid Rides Again.”

Near the end of our junior year Kay missed a period, and so we began, and with a certain eager delight—and wholly without panic, interestingly—to make plans to be married. We would offer ourselves as resident baby-sitters to a young faculty couple who were fond of us; in return they would give us their roomy attic to live in, and a shelf to use in their refrigerator. We would wear old clothes and eat spaghetti. Kay would write poetry about having a baby, and, she said, type term papers for extra money. We had our scholarships, what more did we need? (besides a mattress, some bricks and boards for bookshelves, Kay’s Dylan Thomas record, and in time, a crib). We thought of ourselves as adventurers.

I said, “And you’ll convert, right?”

I intended the question to be received as ironic, or thought I had. But Kay took it seriously. Not solemnly, mind you, just seriously.

Kay Campbell, Davenport, Iowa: “Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Great girl! Marvelous, ingenuous, candid girl! Content, you see, as she was! What one
dies
for in a woman—I now realize!
Why would I want to do a thing like that?
And nothing blunt or defensive or arch or superior in her tone. Just common sense, plainly spoken.

Only it put our Portnoy into a rage, incensed The Temper Tantrum Kid. What do you mean
why
would you want to do a thing like that? Why do you think, you simpleton-
goy!
Go talk to your dog, ask
him
. Ask Spot what
he
thinks, that four-legged genius. “Want Kay-Kay to be a Jew, Spottie—huh, big fella, huh?” Just what the fuck makes you so self-satisfied, anyway? That you carry on conversations with dogs? that you know an elm when you see one? that your father drives a station wagon made out of wood? What’s your hotsy-totsy accomplishment in life, baby, that Doris Day snout?

I was, fortunately, so astonished by my indignation that I couldn’t begin to voice it. How could I be feeling a wound in a place where I was not even vulnerable? What did Kay and I care less about than one, money, and two, religion? Our favorite philosopher was Bertrand Russell Our religion was Dylan Thomas’ religion, Truth and Joy! Our children would be atheists. I had only been making a joke!

Nonetheless, it would seem that I never forgave her: in the weeks following our false alarm, she came to seem to me boringly predictable in conversation, and about as desirable as blubber in bed. And it surprised me that she should take it so badly when I finally had to tell her that I didn’t seem to care for her any more. I was very honest, you see, as Bertrand Russell said I should be. “I just don’t want to see you any more, Kay. I can’t hide my feelings, I’m sorry.” She wept pitifully: she carried around the campus terrible little pouches underneath her bloodshot blue eyes, she didn’t show up for meals, she missed classes … And I was astonished. Because all along I’d thought it was I who had loved her, not she who had loved me. What a surprise to discover just the opposite to have been the case.

Ah, twenty and spurning one’s mistress—that first unsullied thrill of sadism with a woman! And the dream of the women to come. I returned to New Jersey that June, buoyant with my own “strength,” wondering how I could ever have been so captivated by someone so ordinary and so fat.

Another gentile heart broken by me belonged to The Pilgrim, Sarah Abbott Maulsby—New Canaan, Foxcroft, and Vassar (where she had as companion, stabled in Poughkeepsie, that other flaxen beauty, her palomino). A tall, gentle, decorous twenty-two-year-old, fresh from college, and working as a receptionist in the office of the Senator from Connecticut when we two met and coupled in the fall of 1959.