The Listener (6 page)

Mr. Summers started forward in the chair, his face fierce, yet wounded and bewildered.

“When I asked Henry to come in with me he was making twenty-five dollars a week. He never did have any sense of direction. But we were old friends. He was like a child. ‘Be a partner with me,’ I said, ‘and we’ll do big things together’. He was doubtful. ‘We’ll have the whole world,’ I said. ‘I’m counting on you, Henry, to help me establish something’. I must have reached him finally, for he looked at me trustfully. ‘You mean that you want me?’ he said. ‘More than anything else,’ I told him. ‘Come with me’.

“He did. And then he betrayed me. The details don’t matter. Now I have less than five thousand dollars in the bank. I have no company — my company. All my friends have deserted me. I’m all alone. Betrayed. By Henry, whom I trusted, on whom I built. Do you know what I heard recently? He was in one of those clubs I formerly belonged to but which I can’t afford now. Someone said to him, ‘What’s become of Clive Summers, your partner? He was your partner, wasn’t he?’

“And he said, ‘Clive Summers? Clive Summers? Oh, Clive Summers. I don’t know’. And then he walked away. That’s what someone told me. He didn’t even know me, after all these years, and after what I’d done for him! He actually implied he hadn’t even known me!” Mr. Summers again beat the arms of his chair with his fists. “He hadn’t even known me, the man he betrayed!”

He stood up and shouted: “Do you think they believed him? No! One of my old friends — he doesn’t know me now — said, ‘Why, you and Clive were in partnership for years! Wherever I saw you, I saw him’. And he denied it. We weren’t friends; it was just a loose business association. Only an association, in passing. Who did he think he was deceiving? Henry Fellowes. Why, I loved him as if he’d been my brother; we couldn’t have been closer.” He said in a lower voice, almost whispering, “We couldn’t have been closer.”

Mr. Summers walked almost within touching distance of the immovable curtains. “But what do you know about betrayal?” he challenged. “Oh, in an academic sense, no doubt. As one of the facets of the human personality. But did anyone betray you? Do you think it was just the money he defrauded me of? No. It was his denial of me, his desertion. That was the worst, the most terrible thing. He’d not even known me!”

The curtains did not stir. The room seemed to smile deeply in its whiteness. Mr. Summers cried, “What do you know? About betrayal? Who ever betrayed you, you, smug behind that curtain?”

He plunged his finger on the button, and the curtains whirled aside in the overwhelming light. Mr. Summers stepped back, staring, and then he bent, as if broken. He could not look away from what he saw.

After a long time he said, “Yes. Yes, of course. You know all about betrayal. Who, more than you, should know? Forgive me.”

His legs felt boneless and weak, and he fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Another long time passed. He could feel the light all about him. Then he spoke again, whisperingly, and with pauses.

“I’m sorry for Henry. You see, I can ruin him now. I have the facts. At first I was too sick and stunned. Now I have the facts and the lawyers. I can have him prosecuted, thrown into jail, for fraud and misappropriation of funds, and a dozen other things. But I am not going to do it.

“He has another wife, and I’ve heard she is worse than all the others, and he’s desperate, even with the money he took from me by fraud and manipulation. He’s almost out of his mind. Perhaps he’s remorseful. After all, he is as old as I am. A man doesn’t get younger. He must be lonely. He must be as lonely as Celia and George.

“Whatever Henry did, he must live with it. At least I’m clean of anything like that.” Mr. Summers took his hands from his eyes. “Are you still listening?” he asked humbly. “But you always listen, don’t you? Aren’t you ever tired?

“ ‘As lonely as Celia and George’. That’s a strange thing to think of, isn’t it? I am beginning to remember Celia before we built that house. She used to laugh and sing in our little flat. She would agree with me that it would be wonderful to have that big house — someday. Do you know? I don’t think she cared; she was just kind, and she went into the dream with me because she thought that was what I wanted too. Perhaps I did, when I was younger. And then I had it.

But I didn’t see Celia any longer. I didn’t even miss her. Until everything I had was gone. I didn’t notice my son, with his governess and his tutor, and then his boarding schools, and then his university. I was proud of his reports, yes. But I never really saw him. I buried my one talent in the ground. I wonder if it is still there.”

He dropped his hands. “There wasn’t any time, no. Not for worthless things. There never was.”

He stood up resolutely, like a young man. He laughed a little. “George has some radical idea about the conversion of energy through manipulation of metals. But you know more about these things than we do, don’t you? He’s tried to interest me. He’s looking for a partner. I am going to be that partner with my five thousand dollars. I’m going to work in a shop again with a young man, and he’s my son and he’ll never betray me. Never. My son. My son will never betray me.

“I must go home now and tell Celia. I’ve just had the most peculiar idea. I think when I tell Celia she’ll get out of bed and she won’t be sick any longer. I often wonder at the patience of good women. And your mother? Was she patient too? Yes, yes. She must be the most patient of all. Please give her my love.”

Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?

Luke 2:49

“So, you listen, huh?” said Barney Lefkowitz heavily. “A doctor. One of them psychiatrists. So, what’s there to listen to? Me, I’ve been listening for forty years. I’ve got this butcher shop, kosher. ‘Barney for Beef’. That’s what it says over my door, just like your ad. Listen, I can pay. I don’t take anything from nobody, free. Worked all my life, even in Russia. Ever been to Russia? Communism. That’s what they call it. This schnook, Khrushchev. He’s just one of the old czars. Czar Alexander, Czar Nikita. What’s the difference? Different names, same people. That’s what I try to tell my customers. But no. They read the newspapers. Me, I don’t have time.”

He was a short stout man with a round bald head, a big red face, and large, intense blue eyes. “Yeh. I’ve been listening. To my customers. Neighborhood store. Once I hear this opera about a feller called Figaro. Figaro this, Figaro that, Figaro, Figaro! That’s me. I hear all their troubles, mostly the women. Have they got troubles! Who hasn’t? The ones don’t have troubles you can count on the fingers of one hand. But nobody’s got troubles like me.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I got real troubles. Only thing that’s good about it, my wife’s dead. If she was here, it’d be worse. I’d have her to worry about too. You see, it’s our boy, Morris.”

He shifted weightily in the chair. Again he wiped his forehead, as if he were weeping at every pore.

“Every Yiddisher mother wants her boy to be a doctor or a lawyer. A dentist, maybe. But a doctor’s the best. We saw them in the old country, in their carriages, with horses, and coats with fur collars, and fur gloves. A doctor. He’s like a rabbi, see? One’s for the soul, the other’s for the body. Don’t know which one gets hurt more easy. (You a psychiatrist, huh, like a lot of bright Jewish boys?) Well, that’s new. Morris, he’s just a specialist. Cancer. All those big machines, like a factory. Thirty-five years old. Never got married. Too busy taking care of everybody else.”

He sighed and looked about the white and shining room. “Kind of like a temple,” he said. He glanced down at the hat on his plump knee. “Well, I hear you can come in here and you listen. All the time in the world.

“Bertha and me, we work so Morris can go to this doctor college. Bertha works by the store too. Every cent in the bank, for Morris and the college. A nice boy, Morris. A good boy. Even in school the teachers say he’s a good boy. A fine scholar. Not like me. Never a word that ain’t good. No screaming, like other kids. And even when he’s little, he comes in here for the meat and takes it to the customers. Polite like a king, and some of those women — — !

“I should complain! If it wasn’t for the women, Morris wouldn’t have gone to the college. They ask every year, ‘How is the bank account for Morris?’ No, we don’t complain. Times are bad, we give credit. When times get better, they pay. That’s poor people. There’s this big fancy store on Shelton Street where the rich ladies go. They pay when they think of it, and they don’t think often. Money don’t mean anything to them.

“Maybe you got all the time there is. I don’t. I got to be back for the phone. Well, it was three days before Morris graduated, with that funny hat they put on. And Bertha’s shopping for a new dress, and this kid is driving and he runs her down, and that’s all. She says to me in the hospital, ‘Never mind, Barney. You go to the graduation like I was there. And maybe I will be too’. So, after the funeral — maybe you don’t know about this, but I’m Orthodox. We bury the dead before sunset. Morris is eight hundred miles away, and he can’t get a plane for two days. The holidays. Easter. Well. What does it matter? Bertha wasn’t there anyway. What an angel. So, we do it the way she wanted; she had a right to say, didn’t she? And I was there, and after the graduation Morris breaks down in my arms, and then we go to the temple and he says kaddish.

“Morris, he wants to be a cancer specialist. Eight more years. I work, and he works, and it’s eight years. Then I say, ‘What about a nice girl, Morris?’ And he only smiles.

He has work to do. He don’t have an office; he goes in one of them big hospitals. Intern. Another two years. Then he’s on the staff, with a nice salary.

“You should see my boy, Morris. Dedicated, like they say. Eyes like a prophet. ‘We’ll have a break-through, Papa,’ he says, all excited. ‘Then we’ll know what causes it and how to cure it. You should see the kids who come to this hospital, Papa. People think cancer’s just for old people, but do you know something? More kids die of cancer before they are fifteen than of all the other diseases put together! We need more money. There’s this cyclotron, and the isotopes. We’ll have a break-through’.

“You’d think he was doing it all by himself. He never stops working. His salary gets bigger. He gives most of it to the cancer funds. I wouldn’t take a cent, though he offers. What do I have now but Morris? And I keep hoping he’ll find a nice girl and there’ll be kids. A man needs a grandson. I keep hinting. And he just smiles and talks cyclotron and the need for money. Hospitals always need money. Why, Morris says, what people spend on popcorn every year would build big cancer hospitals! Popcorn! That’s a funny thing. Death — and popcorn. When you think of it, it seems like it was always that way, don’t it?”

He cocked his head. He thought that he had heard a murmuring, sad assent. “You say something?” he said politely.

He waited. His hands were wet, and his face, and he scrubbed them with his handkerchief.

“I don’t know why I’m wasting your time, Doctor. You hear these things every day. It’s an old story. It don’t get any better, though, does it?

“And now Morris is thirty-five. When he comes home for the holidays a year ago I notice he looks sick, but he’s smiling. Sick and thin. Like he has consumption. I get scared. They don’t feed him right in the hospital. ‘No, Papa,’ he says, I’m perfectly all right’. And he talks cancer some more. You’d think there wasn’t anything else in the world. But I think about Morris. And so I get this young fellow to be by the store and I go to Morris’ hospital. I know the old doctor there, chief of staff. I say to him, ‘My boy’s sick. Tell me. Don’t keep me in suspense’.

“The doctor’s an old friend. Loves Morris like a son. And so he tells me.”

The room was silent. Then suddenly it was broken by faint cries and the sound of weeping. They went on for a long time.

“It’s what they call occupational hazard,” stammered Barney. “Excuse me. A grown man shouldn’t cry like a baby. But Morris has got cancer; in the brain. They can’t do nothing about it. All those cyclotrons and X-rays. Maybe Morris got careless. Nobody knows. The cancer’s slow-growing, they tell me. Maybe a few months more, maybe another year. They pat me on the back, and the old doctor breaks down, and I got to comfort him! Funny, eh, and Morris is my boy!

“Morris? He’s still alive. I go to see him last week, and I says to him, ‘Morris, come home. You look like a skeleton. Come home with Papa, Morris’. And he says, ‘Papa, don’t you know I must be about God’s business?’ That’s what he says. And what can I say?

“I can’t sleep. The telephone’s by my bed. I look at it in the store. Any day. Any minute. They don’t know. And Morris is working in the hospital, like he’s in good health. ‘God’s business!’ Any minute. He’ll work till he dies. Saving people. With all that pain! And knowing he’s going to die. Any minute.”

Barney folded his arms on his knees and bent his head upon them and moaned over and over. The light increased about him. He looked up, dazed.

Then he got to his feet. “Anyway, I feel better, just telling you, you a doctor, too. I’ve got to go back. Maybe there’s a telephone call. Who knows? I tell you, it’s like something bleeding away inside, waiting. Only a father can understand. You a father? Only a father, watching his son suffer, waiting for him to die. Because he lived for other people and not himself. You know something? I can’t go to the temple now. I’m scared I’ll start screaming.”

Barney hesitated. He looked shyly at the curtains. And then at the button. Then slowly he approached the curtains and pushed the button.

The curtains flowed aside instantly, and Barney stepped back, trembling. He stood and looked, with the tears on his cheeks.

He said very gently, “Yes, I guess your father knew what it was like. Just like me. Yes, I guess so. So, I guess I’m not alone, after all.”

He gravely put on his hat. “I see, Landsman, that they put another kind of yarmilke on you, didn’t they? They always do. They always do.”

He went to the door, turned and looked at who stood in the light. “I guess, maybe, I’ll go to see my rabbi. The store can wait. Even the telephone. God and me, we’ve got ‘business’ too.”