The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow (22 page)

“Candied poison.”

“An open ditch. A sewer. A born whore!”

The woman Isaac eventually married was pleasant, mild, round, respectable, the daughter of a Jewish farmer.

Aunt Rose said, “Ignorant. A common man.”

“He’s honest, a hard worker on the land,” said Isaac. “He recites the Psalms even when he’s driving. He keeps them under his wagon seat.”

“I don’t believe it. A son of Ham like that. A cattle dealer. He stinks of manure.” And she said to the bride in Yiddish, “Be so good as to wash thy father before bringing him to the synagogue. Get a bucket of scalding water, and 20 Mule Team Borax and ammonia, and a horse brush. The filth is ingrained. Be sure to scrub his hands.”

The rigid madness of the Orthodox. Their haughty, spinning, crazy spirit. Tina did not bring her young man from New York to be examined by Aunt Rose. Anyway, he was neither young, nor handsome, nor rich. Aunt Rose said he was a minor hoodlum, a slugger. She had gone to Coney Island to inspect
his
_ family—a father who sold pretzels and chestnuts from a cart, a mother who cooked for banquets. And the groom himself—so thick, so bald, so grim, she said, his hands so common and his back and chest like fur, a fell. He was a beast, she told young Sammy Braun. Braun was a student then at Rensselaer Polytechnic and came to see his aunt in her old kitchen—the great black-and-nickel stove that stood there, the round table on its oak pedestal, the dark-blue-and-white check of the oilcloth, a still life of peaches and cherries salvaged from the secondhand shop. And Aunt Rose, more feminine with her corset off and a gaudy wrapper over her thick Victorian undervests, camisoles, bloomers. Her stockings were gartered below the knee and the wide upper portions, fashioned for thighs, drooped down, flimsy, nearly to her slippers.

Tina was then handsome, if not pretty. In high school she took off eighty pounds. Then she went to New York City without getting her diploma. What did
she
_ care for such things! said Rose. And how did she get to Coney Island by herself? Because she was perverse. Her instinct was for freaks. And there she met this beast. This hired killer, this second Lepke of Murder, Inc. Upstate, the old woman read the melodramas of the Yiddish press, which she embroidered with her own ideas of wickedness.

But when Tina brought her husband to Schenectady, installing him in her father’s secondhand shop, he turned out to be a big innocent man. If he had ever had guile, he lost it with his hair. His baldness was total, like a purge. He had a sentimental, dependent look. Tina protected him. Here Dr. Braun had sexual thoughts, about himself as a child and about her childish bridegroom. And scowling, smoldering Tina, her angry tenderness in the Adirondacks, and how she was beneath, how hard she breathed in the attic, and the violent strength and obstinacy of her crinkled, sooty hair.

Nobody could sway Tina. That, thought Braun, was probably the secret of it. She had consulted her own will, kept her own counsel for so long, that she could accept no other guidance. Anyone who listened to others seemed to her weak.

When Aunt Rose lay dead, Tina took from her hand the ring Isaac had given her many years ago. Braun did not remember the entire history of that ring, only that Isaac had loaned money to an immigrant who disappeared, leaving this jewel, which was assumed to be worthless but turned out to be valuable. Braun could not recall whether it was ruby or emerald; nor the setting. But it was the one feminine adornment Aunt Rose wore. And it was supposed to go to Isaac’s wife, Sylvia, who wanted it badly. Tina took it from the corpse and put it on her own finger.

“Tina, give that ring to me. Give it here,” said Isaac.

“No. It was hers. Now it’s mine.”

“It was not Mama’s. You know that. Give it back.”

She outfaced him over the body of Aunt Rose. She knew he would not quarrel at the deathbed. Sylvia was enraged. She did what she could. That is, she whispered,
“Make
_ her!” But it was no use. He knew he could not recover it. Besides, there were too many other property disputes. His rents were deposited in Aunt Rose’s savings account.

But only Isaac became a millionaire. The others simply hoarded, old-immigrant style. He never sat waiting for his legacy. By the time Aunt Rose died, Isaac was already worth a great deal of money. He had put up an ugly apartment building in Albany. To him, an achievement. He was out with his men at dawn. Having prayed aloud while his wife, in curlers, pretty but puffy with sleepiness, sleepy but obedient, was in the kitchen fixing breakfast. Isaac’s Orthodoxy only increased with his wealth. He soon became an old-fashioned Jewish paterfamilias. With his family he spoke a Yiddish unusually thick in old Slavic and Hebrew expressions. Instead of “important people, leading citizens,” he said
“Anshe ha-ir,” Men
_ of the City. He, too, kept the Psalms near. As active, worldly Jews for centuries had done. One copy lay in the glove compartment of his Cadillac. To which his great gloomy sister referred with a twist of the face—she had become obese again, wider and taller, since those Adirondack days. She said, “He reads the Tehillim aloud in his air-conditioned Caddy when there’s a long freight train at the crossing. That crook! He’d pick God’s pocket!”

One could not help thinking what fertility of metaphor there was in all of these Brauns. Dr. Braun himself was no exception. And what the explanation might be, despite twenty-five years of specialization in the chemistry of heredity, he couldn’t say. How a protein molecule originating in an invisible ferment might carry such propensities of ingenuity, and creative malice and negative power, be capable of printing a talent or a vice upon a billion hearts. No wonder Isaac Braun cried out to his God when he sat sealed in his great black car and the freights rumbled in the polluted shimmering of this once-beautiful valley
Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.
_

“But what do you think?” said Tina. “Does he remember his brothers when there is a deal going? Does he give his only sister a chance to come in?”

Not that there was any great need. Cousin Mutt, after he was wounded at Iwo Jima, returned to the appliance business. Cousin Aaron was a CPA. Tina’s husband, bald Fenster, branched into housewares in his secondhand shop. Tina was back ofthat, of course. No one was poor. What irritated Tina was that Isaac would not carry the family into realestate deals, where the tax advantages were greatest. The big depreciation allowances, which she understood as legally sanctioned graft. She had her money in savings accounts at a disgraceful two and a half percent, taxed at the full rate. She did not trust the stock market.

Isaac had tried, in fact, to include the Brauns when he built the shopping center at Robbstown. At a risky moment, they abandoned him. A desperate moment, when the law had to be broken. At a family meeting, each of the Brauns had agreed to put up twenty-five thousand dollars, the entire amount to be given under the table to Ilkington. Old Ilkington headed the board of directors of the Robbstown Country Club. Surrounded by factories, the club was moving farther into the country. Isaac had learned this from the old caddie master when he gave him a lift, one morning of fog. Mutt Braun had caddied at Robbstown in the early twenties, had carried Ilkington’s clubs. Isaac knew Ilkington, too, and had a private talk with him. The old goy, now seventy, retiring to the British West Indies, had said to Isaac, “Off the record. One hundred thousand. And I don’t want to bother about Internal Revenue.” He was a long, austere man with a marbled face. Cornell 1910 or so. Cold but plain. And, in Isaac’s opinion, fair.

Developed as a shopping center, properly planned, the Robbstown golf course was worth half a million apiece to the Brauns. The city in the postwar boom was spreading fast. Isaac had a friend on the zoning board who would clear everything for five grand. As for the contracting, he offered to do it all on his own. Tina insisted that a separate corporation be formed by the Brauns to make sure the building profits were shared equally. To this Isaac agreed. As head of the family, he took the burden upon himself. He would have to organize it all. Only Aaron the CPA could help him, setting up the books. The meeting, in Aaron’s office, lasted from noon to three P. M. All the difficult problems were examined. Four players, specialists in the harsh music of money, studying a score. In the end, they agreed to perform.

But when the time came, ten A. M. on a Friday, Aaron balked. He would not do it. And Tina and Mutt also reneged. Isaac told Dr. Braun the story. As arranged, he came to Aaron’s office carrying the twenty-five thousand dollars for Ilkington in an old briefcase. Aaron, now forty, smooth, shrewd, and dark, had the habit of writing tiny neat numbers on his memo pad as he spoke to you. Dark fingers quickly consulting the latest tax publications. He dropped his voice very low to the secretary on the intercom. He wore white-on-white shirts and silk-brocade ties, signed “Countess Mara.” Of them all, he looked most like Uncle Braun. But without the beard, without the kingly pariah derby, without the gold thread in his brown eye. In many externals, thought scientific Braun, Aaron and Uncle Braun were drawn from the same genetic pool. Chemically, he was the younger brother of his father. The differences within were due possibly to heredity. Or perhaps to the influence of business America.

“Well?” said Isaac, standing in the carpeted office. The grandiose desk was superbly clean.

“How do you know Ilkington can be trusted?”

“I think he can.”

“You
_ think. He could take the money and say he never heard of you in all his life.”

“Yes, he might. But we talked that over. We have to gamble.”

Probably on his instructions, Aaron’s secretary buzzed him. He bent over the instrument and out of the corner of his mouth he spoke to her very deliberately and low.

“Well, Aaron,” said Isaac. “You want me to guarantee your investment? Well? Speak up.”

Aaron had long ago subdued his thin tones and spoke in the gruff style of a man always sure of himself. But the sharp breaks, mastered twenty-five years ago, were still there. He stood up with both fists on the glass of his desk, trying to control his voice.

He said through clenched teeth, “I haven’t slept!”

“Where is rhe money?”

“I don’r have rhar kind of cash.”

“No?”

“You know damn well. I’m licensed. I’m a certified accounrant. I’m in no position…”

“And what about Tina—Mutr?”

“I don’r know anyrhing abour rhem.”

“Talked rhem our of ir, didn’r you? I have ro meer Ilkingron ar noon. Sharp. Why didn’r you tell me sooner?”

Aaron said norhing.

Isaac dialed Tina’s number and 1er rhe phone ring. Certain rhar she was rhere, giganrically listening to rhe steely, beady drilling of rhe Telephone. He 1er ir ring, he said, abour five minures. He made no effort ro call Murr. Murr would do as Tina did.

“I have an hour ro raise rhis dough.”

“In my bracker,” Aaron said, “rhe rwenty-five would cosr me more rhan fifty.”

“You could have told me this yesterday. Knowing whar ir means ro me.”

“You’ll rurn over a hundred rhousand ro a man you don’t know? Wirhour a receipr? Blind? Don’r do ir.”

Bur Isaac had decided. In our generarion, Dr. Braun rhoughr, a sort of playboy capiralisr has emerged. He gaily rakes a flier in rebuilr office machinery for Brazil, morels in Easr Africa, high-fidelity componenrs in Thailand. A hundred rhousand means little. He jets down with a chick to see the scene. The governor of a province is wairing in his Thunderbird ro rake rhe guesrs on jungle expressways builr by graft and peons ro a surf-and-champagne weekend where rhe executive, yourhful ar fifty, closes rhe deal. Bur Cousin Isaac had pur his srake rogerher penny by penny, old sryle, srarring wirh rags and borrles as a boy; rhen fire-salvaged goods; rhen used cars; rhen learning rhe building rrades. Earrh moving, foundations, concrete, sewage, wiring, roofing, hearing systems. He gor his money rhe hard way. And now he wenr ro rhe bank and borrowed sevenry-five rhousand dollars, ar full inreresr. Wirhour security, he gave ir ro Ilkingron in Ilkingron’s parlor. Furnished in old goy rasre and disseminating an old goy odor of riresome, silly, respecrable rhings. Of which Ilkingron was clearly so proud. The applewood, rhe cherry, rhe wing rabies and cabiners, rhe upholstery wirh a flavor of dry paste, rhe pork-pale colors of genriliry. Ilkingron did nor rouch Isaac’s briefcase. He did nor inrend, evidenrly, ro counr rhe bills, or even ro look. He offered Isaac a martini. Isaac, nor a drinker, drank rhe clear gin. Ar noon. Like somerhing distilled in outer space. Having no color. He sar rhere srurdily bur felr losr—losr ro his people, his family, losr ro God, losr in rhe void of America. Ilkingron drank a shaker of cockrails, genrlemanly, srony, like a high slab of somerhing genetically human, bur wirh few human rrairs familiar ro Isaac. Ar rhe door he did nor say he would keep his word. He simply shook hands wirh Isaac, saw him ro rhe car. Isaac drove home and sar in rhe den of his bungalow. Two whole days. Then on Monday, Ilkingron phoned ro say rhar rhe Robbsrown direcrors had decided ro accepr his offer for rhe property. A pause. Then Ilkingron added rhar no written insrrumenr could replace rrusr and decency between genrlemen.

Isaac rook possession of rhe counrry club and filled ir wirh a shopping cenrer. All such places are ugly. Dr. Braun could nor say why rhis one srruck him as especially brural in its ugliness. Perhaps because he remembered rhe Robbsrown Club. Resrricred, of course. Bur Jews could look ar ir from rhe road. And rhe elms had been lovely—a cenrury or older. The lighr, delicate. And rhe Coolidge-era sedans rurning in, wirh small curtains ar rhe rear window, and holders for artificial flowers. Hudsons, Auburns, Bearcars. Only machinery. Norhing ro feel nosralgic abour.

Still, Braun was srarrled ro see whar Isaac had done. Perhaps in an unconscious asserrion of rriumph—in rhe vividness of victory. The green acres reserved, ir was rrue, for mild idleness, for hirring a little ball with a stick, were now paralyzed by parking for five hundred cars. Supermarker, pizza joinr, chop suey, Laundromar, Robert Hall clorhes, a dime store.