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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Assistant
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“I had a rough life,” he muttered, and lapsed into silence.
Neither of them spoke. Then the grocer, to ease the other's mood, casually inquired, “Where in the neighborhood lives your sister? Maybe I know her.”
Frank answered in a monotone. “I forget the exact address. Near the park somewheres.”
“What is her name?”
“Mrs. Garibaldi.”
“What kind name is this?”
“What do you mean?” Frank stared at him.
“I mean the nationality?”
“Italian. I am of Italian extraction. My name is Frank Alpine—Alpino in Italian.”
The smell of Frank Alpine's cigarette compelled Morris to light his butt. He thought he could control his cough and tried but couldn't. He coughed till he feared his head would pop off. Frank watched with interest. Ida banged on the floor upstairs, and the grocer ashamedly pinched his cigarette and dropped it into the garbage pail.
“She don't like me to smoke,” he explained between coughs. “My lungs ain't so healthy.”
“Who don't?”
“My wife. It's a catarrh some kind. My mother had it all her life and lived till eighty-four. But they took a picture of
my chest last year and found two dried spots. This frightened my wife.”
Frank slowly put out his cigarette. “What I started out to say before about my life,” he said heavily, “is that I have had a funny one, only I don't mean funny. I mean I've been through a lot. I've been close to some wonderful things—jobs, for instance, education, women, but close is as far as I go.” His hands were tightly clasped between his knees. “Don't ask me why, but sooner or later everything I think is worth having gets away from me in some way or other. I work like a mule for what I want, and just when it looks like I am going to get it I make some kind of a stupid move, and everything that is just about nailed down tight blows up in my face.”
“Don't throw away your chance for education,” Morris advised. “It's the best thing for a young man.”
“I could've been a college graduate by now, but when the time came to start going, I missed out because something else turned up that I took instead. With me one wrong thing leads to another and it ends in a trap. I want the moon so all I get is cheese.”
“You are young yet.”
“Twenty-five,” he said bitterly.
“You look older.”
“I feel old—damn old.”
Morris shook his head.
“Sometimes I think your life keeps going the way it starts out on you,” Frank went on. “The week after I was born my mother was dead and buried. I never saw her face, not even a picture. When I was five years old, one day my old man leaves this furnished room where we were staying, to get a pack of butts. He takes off and that was the last I ever saw of him. They traced him years later but by then he was dead. I was raised in an orphans' home and when I was eight they farmed me out to a tough family. I ran away ten times, also from the next people I lived with.
I think about my life a lot. I say to myself, ‘What do you expect to happen after all of that?' Of course, every now and again, you understand, I hit some nice good spots in between, but they are few and far, and usually I end up like I started out, with nothing.”
The grocer was moved. Poor boy.
“I've often tried to change the way things work out for me but I don't know how, even when I think I do. I have it in my heart to do more than I can remember.” He paused, cleared his throat and said, “That makes me sound stupid but it's not as easy as that. What I mean to say is that when I need it most something is missing in me, in me or on account of me. I always have this dream where I want to tell somebody something on the telephone so bad it hurts, but then when I am in the booth, instead of a phone being there, a bunch of bananas is hanging on a hook.”
He gazed at the grocer then at the floor. “All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile—a thing people will say took a little doing, but I don't. I am too restless—six months in any one place is too much for me. Also I grab at everything too quick—too impatient. I don't do what I have to—that's what I mean. The result is I move into a place with nothing, and I move out with nothing. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said Morris.
Frank fell into silence. After a while he said, “I don't understand myself. I don't really know what I'm saying to you or why I am saying it.”
“Rest yourself,” said Morris.
“What kind of a life is that for a man my age?”
He waited for the grocer to reply—to tell him how to live his life, but Morris was thinking, I am sixty and he talks like me.
“Take some more coffee,” he said.
“No, thanks.” Frank lit another cigarette and smoked it to the tip. He seemed eased yet not eased, as though he had
accomplished something (What? wondered the grocer) yet had not. His face was relaxed, almost sleepy, but he cracked the knuckles of both hands and silently sighed.
Why don't he go home? the grocer thought. I am a working man.
“I'm going.” Frank got up but stayed.
“What happened to your head?” he asked again.
Morris felt the bandage. “This Friday before last I had here a holdup.”
“You mean they slugged you?”
The grocer nodded.
“Bastards like that ought to die.” Frank spoke vehemently.
Morris stared at him.
Frank brushed his sleeve. “You people are Jews, aren't you?”
“Yes,” said the grocer, still watching him.
“I always liked Jews.” His eyes were downcast.
Morris did not speak.
“I suppose you have some kids?” Frank asked.
“Me?”
“Excuse me for being curious.”
“A girl.” Morris sighed. “I had once a wonderful boy but he died from an ear sickness that they had in those days.”
“Too bad.” Frank blew his nose.
A gentleman, Morris thought with a watery eye.
“Is the girl the one that was here behind the counter a couple of nights last week?”
“Yes,” the grocer replied, a little uneasily.
“Well, thanks for all the coffee.”
“Let me make you a sandwich. Maybe you'll be hungry later.”
“No thanks.”
The Jew insisted, but Frank felt he had all he wanted from him at the moment.
Left alone, Morris began to worry about his health. He felt dizzy at times, often headachy. Murderers, he thought.
Standing before the cracked and faded mirror at the sink he unwound the bandage from his head. He wanted to leave it off but the scar was still ugly, not nice for the customers, so he tied a fresh bandage around his skull. As he did this he thought of that night with bitterness, recalling the buyer who hadn't come, nor had since then, nor ever would. Since his recovery, Morris had not spoken to Karp. Against words the liquor dealer had other words, but silence silenced him.
Afterward the grocer looked up from his paper and was startled to see somebody out front washing his window with a brush on a stick. He ran out with a roar to drive the intruder away, for there were nervy window cleaners who did the job without asking permission, then held out their palms to collect. But when Morris came out of the store he saw the window washer was Frank Alpine.
“Just to show my thanks and appreciation.” Frank explained he had borrowed the pail from Sam Pearl and the brush and squeegee from the butcher next door.
Ida then entered the store by the inside door, and seeing the window being washed, hurried outside.
“You got rich all of a sudden?” she asked Morris, her face inflamed.
“He does me a favor,” the grocer replied.
“That's right,” said Frank, bearing down on the squeegee.
“Come inside, it's cold.” In the store Ida asked, “Who is this goy?”
“A poor boy, an Italyener he looks for a job. He gives me a help in the morning with the cases milk.”
“If you sold containers like I told you a thousand times, you wouldn't need help.”
“Containers leak. I like bottles.”
“Talk to the wind,” Ida said.
Frank came in blowing his breath on water-reddened fists. “How's it look now, folks, though you can't really tell till I do the inside.”
Ida remarked under her breath, “Pay now for your favor.”
“Fine,” Morris said to Frank. He went to the register and rang up “no sale.”
“No, thanks,” Frank said, holding up his hand. “For services already rendered.”
Ida reddened.
“Another cup coffee?” Morris asked.
“Thanks. Not as of now.”
“Let me make you a sandwich?”
“I just ate.”
He walked out, threw the dirty water into the gutter, returned the pail and brush, then came back to the grocery. He went behind the counter and into the rear, pausing to rap on the doorjamb.
“How do you like the clean window?” he asked Ida.
“Clean is clean.” She was cool.
“I don't want to intrude here but your husband was nice to me, so I just thought maybe I could ask for one more small favor. I am looking for work and I want to try some kind of a grocery job just for size. Maybe I might like it, who knows? It happens I forgot some of the things about cutting and weighing and such, so I am wondering if you would mind me working around here for a couple-three weeks without wages just so I could learn again? It won't cost you a red cent. I know I am a stranger but I am an honest guy. Whoever keeps an eye on me will find that out in no time. That's fair enough, isn't it?”
Ida said, “Mister, isn't here a school.”
“What do you say, pop?” Frank asked Morris.
“Because somebody is a stranger don't mean they ain't honest,” answered the grocer. “This subject don't interest me. Interests me what you can learn here. Only one thing”—he pressed his hand to his chest—“a heartache.”
“You got nothing to lose on my proposition, has he now, Mrs?” Frank said. “I understand he don't feel so hot yet, and if I helped him out a short week or two it would be good for his health, wouldn't it?”
Ida didn't answer.
But Morris said flatly, “No. It's a small, poor store. Three people would be too much.”
Frank flipped an apron off a hook behind the door and before either of them could say a word, removed his hat and dropped the loop over his head. He tied the apron strings around him.
“How's that for fit?”
Ida flushed, and Morris ordered him to take it off and put it back on the hook.
“No bad feelings, I hope,” Frank said on his way out.
 
Helen Bober and Louis Karp walked, no hands touching, in the windy dark on the Coney Island boardwalk.
Louis had, on his way home for supper that evening, stopped her in front of the liquor store, on her way in from work.
“How's about a ride in the Mercury, Helen? I never see you much anymore. Things were better in the bygone days in high school.”
Helen smiled. “Honestly, Louis, that's so far away.” A sense of mourning at once oppressed her, which she fought to a practiced draw.
“Near or far, it's all the same for me.” He was built with broad back and narrow head, and despite prominent eyes was presentable. In high school, before he quit, he had worn his wet hair slicked straight back. One day, after studying a picture of a movie actor in the
Daily News,
he had run a part across his head. This was as much change as she had known in him. If Nat Pearl was ambitious, Louis made a relaxed living letting the fruit of his father's investment fall into his lap.
“Anyway,” he said, “why not a ride for old-times' sake?”
She thought a minute, a gloved finger pressed into her cheek; but it was a fake gesture because she was lonely.
“For old-times' sake, where?”
“Name your scenery—continuous performance.”
“The Island?”
He raised his coat collar. “Brr, it's a cold, windy night You wanna freeze?”
Seeing her hesitation, he said, “But I'll die game. When'll I pick you up?”
“Ring my bell after eight and I'll come down.”
“Check,” Louis said. “Eight bells.”
They walked to Seagate, where the boardwalk ended. She gazed with envy through a wire fence at the large lit houses fronting the ocean. The Island was deserted, except here and there an open hamburger joint or pinball machine concession. Gone from the sky was the umbrella of rosy light that glowed over the place in summertime. A few cold stars gleamed down. In the distance a dark Ferris wheel looked like a stopped clock. They stood at the rail of the boardwalk, watching the black, restless sea.

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