The Complete Stories (60 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories
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On my way to the airport, alone in a taxi—no Intourist girl accompanied
me—I felt, on and off, nauseated. If it’s not the sausage and yogurt it must just be ordinary fear. Still, if Levitansky has the courage to send these stories out, the least I can do is give him a hand. When one thinks of it it’s little enough he does for human freedom during the course of his life. At the airport if I can dig up a Bromo or its Russian equivalent I know I’ll feel better.
The driver was observing me in the mirror, a stern man with the head of a scholar, impassively smoking.
“Le jour fait beau,” I said.
He pointed with an upraised finger to a sign in English at one side of the road to the airport:
“Long live peace in the world!”
“Peace with freedom.” I smiled at the thought of somebody, not Howard Harvitz, painting that in red on the Soviet sign.
We drove on, I foreseeing my exit from the Soviet Union. I had made discreet inquiries from time to time and an Intourist girl in Leningrad had told me I had first to show my papers at the passport-control desk, turn in all my rubles—a serious offense to walk off with any—and then check luggage; no inspection, she swore. And that was that. Unless, of course, the official at the passport desk found my name on a list and said I had to go to the customs office for a package. In that case—if nobody said so I wouldn’t remind him—I would go get my books. I figured I wouldn’t open the package, just tear off a bit of the wrapping, if they were wrapped, as though to make sure they were the books I expected, and then saunter away with the package under my arm.
I had heard that a KGB man was stationed at the ramp as one boarded a plane. He asked for your passport, checked the picture, threw you a stare through dark lenses, and, if there was no serious lack of resemblance, tore out your expired visa, pocketed it, and let you embark.
In ten minutes you were aloft, seat belts fastened in three languages, watching the plane banking west. Maybe if I looked hard I might see in the distance Feliks Levitansky on the roof waving his red-white-and-blue socks on a bamboo pole. Then the plane leveled off, and we were above the clouds, flying westward. And that’s what I would be doing for five or six hours unless the pilot received radio instructions to turn back; or maybe land in Czechoslovakia or East Germany, where two big-hatted detectives boarded the plane. By an act of imagination and will I made it some other passenger they were arresting. I got the plane into the air again and we flew on without incident until we touched down in free London.
As the taxi approached the Moscow airport, fingering my ticket and gripping my suitcase handle, I wished for courage equal to Levitansky’s when they discovered he was the author of a book of stories I had managed to get published, and his trial and suffering began.
 
 
Levitansky’s first story, translated by his wife, Irina Filipovna, was about an old man, a widower of seventy-eight, who hoped to have matzos for Passover.
Last year he had got his quota. They had been baked in the State bakery and sold in the State stores; but this year the State bakeries were not permitted to bake them. The officials said the machines had broken down but who believed them?
The old man went to the rabbi, an older man with a tormented beard, and asked him where he could get matzos. He feared that he mightn’t have them this year.
“So do I,” confessed the old rabbi. He said he had been told to tell his congregants to buy flour and bake them at home. The State stores would sell them the flour.
“What good is that for me?” asked the widower. He reminded the rabbi that he had no home to speak of, a single small room with a one-burner electric stove. His wife had died two years ago. His only living child, a married daughter, was with her husband in Birobijan. His other relatives—the few who were left after the German invasion—two female cousins his age—lived in Odessa; and he himself, even if he could find an oven, did not know how to bake matzos. And if he couldn’t what should he do?
The rabbi then promised he would try to get the widower a kilo or two of matzos, and the old man, rejoicing, blessed him.
He waited anxiously a month but the rabbi never mentioned the matzos. Maybe he had forgotten. After all he was an old man burdened with worries, and the widower did not want to press him. However, Passover was coming on wings, so he must do something. A week before the Holy Days he hurried to the rabbi’s flat and spoke to him there.
“Rabbi,” he begged, “you promised me a kilo or two of matzos. What happened to them?”
“I know I promised,” said the rabbi, “but I’m no longer sure to whom. It’s easy to promise.” He dabbed at his face with a damp handkerchief. “I was warned I could be arrested on charges of profiteering in the production and sale of matzos. I was told it could happen even if I were to give them away for nothing. It’s a new crime they’ve invented. Still, take them anyway. If they arrest me, I’m an old man, and how
long can an old man live in Lubyanka? Not so long, thanks God. Here, I’ll give you a small pack but you must tell no one where you got the matzos.”
“May the Lord eternally bless you, rabbi. As for dying in prison, rather let it happen to our enemies.”
The rabbi went to his closet and got out a small pack of matzos, already wrapped and tied with knotted twine. When the widower offered in a whisper to pay him, at least the cost of the flour, the rabbi wouldn’t hear of it. “God provides,” he said, “although at times with difficulty.” He said there was hardly enough for all who wanted matzos, so he must take what he got and be thankful.
“I will eat less,” said the old man. “I will count mouthfuls. I will save the last matzo to look at and kiss if there isn’t enough to last me. He will understand.”
Overjoyed to have even a few matzos, he rode home on the trolley car and there met another Jew, a man with a withered hand. They conversed in Yiddish in low tones. The stranger had glanced at the almost square package, then at the widower, and had hoarsely whispered, “Matzos?” The widower, tears starting in his eyes, nodded. “With God’s grace.” “Where did you get them?” “God provides.” “So if He provides let Him provide me,” the stranger brooded. “I’m not so lucky. I was hoping for a package from relatives in Cleveland, America. They wrote they would send me a large pack of the finest matzos, but when I inquire of the authorities they say no matzos have arrived. You know when they will get here?” he muttered. “After Passover by a month or two, and what good will they be then?”
The widower nodded sadly. The stranger wiped his eyes with his good hand and after a short while left the trolley amid a number of people getting off. He had not bothered to say goodbye, and neither had the widower, not to remind him of his own good fortune. But when the time came for the old man to leave the trolley he glanced down between his feet where he had placed the package of matzos, and nothing was there. His feet were there. The old man felt harrowed, as though someone had ripped a large nail up his spine. He searched frantically throughout that car, going a long way past his stop, querying every passenger, the woman conductor, the motorman, but they all swore they had not seen his matzos.
Then it occurred to him that the stranger with the withered hand had stolen them.
The widower in his misery asked himself, Would a Jew have robbed another of his precious matzos? It didn’t seem possible, but it was.
As for me I haven’t even a matzo to look at now. If I could steal any, whether from Jew or Russian, I would steal them. He thought he would steal them even from the old rabbi.
The widower went home without his matzos and had none for Passover.
 
 
The story called “Tallith” concerned a youth of seventeen, beardless but for some stray hairs on his chin, who had come from Kirov to the steps of the synagogue on Arkhipova Street in Moscow. He had brought with him a capacious prayer shawl, a white garment of luminous beauty, which he offered for sale to a cluster of Jews of various sorts and sizes—curious, apprehensive, greedy at the sight of the shawl—for fifteen rubles. Most of them avoided the youth, particularly the older Jews, despite the fact that some of the more devout among them were worried about their prayer shawls, eroded on their shoulders after years of daily use, which they could not replace. “It’s the informers among us who have put him up to this,” they whispered among themselves, “so they will have someone to inform on.”
Still, in spite of the warnings of their elders, several of the younger men examined the tallith and admired it. “Where did you get such a fine prayer shawl?” the youth was asked. “It was my father’s who recently died,” he said. “It was given to him by a rich Jew he had once befriended.” “Then why don’t you keep it for yourself, you’re a Jew, aren’t you?” “Yes,” said the youth, not the least embarrassed, “but I am going to Bratsk as a komsomol volunteer and I need a few rubles to get married. Besides I’m a confirmed atheist.”
One young man with fat unshaven cheeks, who admired the deeply white shawl, its white glowing in whiteness, with its long silk fringes, whispered to the youth he might consider buying it for five rubles. But he was overheard by the gabbai, the lay leader of the congregation, who raised his cane and shouted at the whisperer, “Hooligan, if you buy that shawl, beware it doesn’t become your shroud.” The Jew with the unshaven cheeks retreated.
“Don’t strike him,” cried the frightened rabbi, who had come out of the synagogue and saw the gabbai with his cane upraised. He urged the congregants to begin prayers at once. To the youth he said, “Please go away from here, we are burdened with enough trouble. It is forbidden for anyone to sell religious articles. Do you want us to be accused of criminal economic activity? Do you want the doors of the shul to be shut forever? So do us and yourself a mitzvah and go away.”
The congregants moved inside. The youth was left standing alone
on the steps; but then the gabbai came out of the door, a man with a deformed spine and a wad of cotton stuck in a leaking ear.
“Look here,” he said. “I know you stole it. Still, after all is said and done, a tallith is a tallith and God asks no questions of His worshippers. I offer eight rubles for it, take it or leave it. Talk fast before the services end and the others come out.”
“Make it ten and it’s yours,” said the youth. The gabbai gazed at him shrewdly. “Eight is all I have, but wait here and I’ll borrow two rubles from my brother-in-law.”
The youth waited patiently. Dusk was heavy. In a few minutes a black car drove up, stopped in front of the synagogue, and two policemen got out. The youth realized that the gabbai had informed on him. Not knowing what else to do he hastily draped the prayer shawl over his head and began loudly to pray. He prayed a passionate kaddish. The police hesitated to approach him while he was praying, and they stood at the bottom of the steps waiting for him to be done. The congregants came out and could not believe their ears. No one imagined the youth could pray so fervently. What moved them was the tone, the wail and passion of a man truly praying. Perhaps his father had indeed recently died. All listened attentively, and many wished he would pray forever, for they knew that as soon as he stopped he would be seized and thrown into prison.
It has grown dark. A moon hovers behind murky clouds over the synagogue steeple. The youth’s voice is heard in prayer. The congregants are huddled in the dark street, listening. Both police agents are still there, although they cannot be seen. Neither can the youth. All that can be seen is the white shawl luminously praying.
 
 
The last of the stories translated by Irina Filipovna was about a writer of mixed parentage, a Russian father and Jewish mother, who had secretly been writing stories for years. He had from a young age wanted to write but had at first not had the courage—it seemed like such a merciless undertaking—so he had gone into translation instead; and then when he had, one day, started to write seriously and exultantly, after a while he found to his surprise that many of his stories—about half—were of Jews.
For a half-Jew that’s a reasonable proportion, he thought. The others were about Russians who sometimes resembled members of his father’s family. “It’s good to have such different sources for ideas,” he told his wife. “This way I can cover a varied range of experiences in life.”
After several years of work he had submitted a selection of his stories to a trusted friend of university days, Viktor Zverkov, an editor of the Progress Publishing House; and the writer appeared at his office one morning after receiving a hastily scribbled cryptic note from his friend, to discuss his work with him. Zverkov, a troubled man to begin with—he told everyone his wife did not respect him—jumped up from his chair and turned the key in the door, his ear pressed a minute at the crack. He then went quickly to his desk and withdrew the manuscript from a drawer he first had to unlock with a key he kept in his pocket. He was a heavyset man with a flushed complexion, stained teeth, and a hoarse voice; and he handled the writer’s manuscript with unease, as if it might leap up and wound him in the face.
“Please, Tolya,” he whispered breathily, bringing his head close to the writer’s, “you must take these awful stories away at once.”
“What’s the matter with you? Why are you shaking so?” said the writer.

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