A Book of Great Worth Read online

  “Of course,” my father said. “Understood. How much do you need?”

  Reuben didn’t hesitate. “Fifty dollars is the sum I had in mind. Is it too much? We could manage on forty. Fifty would give me more time to find something. It sounds like a lot, maybe...”

  My father held up his hand. “That’s all right. I can manage fifty. Better that than you should have to borrow somewhere else later, or have to come back to me. I don’t have that much with me, of course.”

  It should be understood that fifty dollars was a fairly large sum of money at the time, what five hundred would be today, or a thousand. But, as it happened, my father was doing well, even though it was only a few months since men in expensive suits had plummeted through the air from tall buildings a short walk from where he now sat. It was an anomaly he would eventually pay for, but, at the depths of the Depression, a few years later, he would be making the princely sum of seventy dollars a week and he earned not far from that now. He lived modestly, in a boarding house, not out of meanness but because of the convenience, and often ate in restaurants, but his tastes were far from expensive. He had no automobile and few women friends, though he had recently made the acquaintance of the woman who would be my mother. What money he did spend was in the cafés and bars of the Lower East Side and along Broadway, at the theatre, which he often frequented, and at the used bookshops along East Broadway and Orchard Street where he would often spend more than he should on a rare edition.

  He gave his newly found cousin ten dollars from his wallet and made a date to meet him the next afternoon, after he could make a withdrawal from his bank. Reuben pocketed the money, thanked my father profusely and excused himself. “My wife will be so happy,” he said in parting. “It will make her happy to know she’s married to a man with generous relatives. Family is worth more than wealth. The Bible got that right.”

  My father lit another cigarette and drank the last of his coffee, now cold. He looked at his watch. Vogel sat down beside him. “Money?” he asked, his eyelid twitching.

  “What else?”

  “From that one, Morgenstern, you won’t get it back.”

  “A regular Sigmund Freud you are, such a judge of character.”

  “Character has nothing to do with it, Morgenstern. Even the Bible says don’t lend money. Or borrow it, either.”

  “Oh ho, Vogel, now you’re an expert on the Bible. Have you ever actually seen a copy? I can lend you a nice edition.”

  “You can laugh, but I don’t like the looks of him. You won’t get it back.”

  “You can be so sure, Vogel?”

  “From that one? Yes. Besides” – Vogel swatted at his cheek – “with money, you never get it back.”

  •••

  During the following weeks, my father had little reason to think of his cousin, as he was finding himself increasingly preoccupied with someone else. Not long before the meeting in the Automat, he had attended a gathering of the cutters’ union at which Marcantonio, the city’s Communist councilman, gave a speech. Afterwards, a klezmer band took the stage, and my father, although he didn’t dance, wouldn’t dance, stayed to have a drink and a bite, to watch the swirling skirts of the girls on the dance floor, before heading to the office to write his story. A man he knew, not that much older than he was, a rabble-rouser in the union named Shally, was there in the company of two attractive young women, and my father approached them with a wink.

  “Shally, you’re more of a man than I am if you can handle two women at one time.”

  Shally was ordinarily a sour man with little good to say on any subject, but tonight, in the glow of Marcantonio’s speech and the growing sentiment for a strike, he seemed almost merry. He had escaped from a prison in Russia, killing a guard, my father had heard, and had been expelled from both Britain and France for his activities, making him no mere trifler.

  “And two more at home, Morgenstern, just as pretty,” Shally said slyly.

  “You mean these are your daughters?” my father said, with genuine surprise. Shally was the most ordinary looking of men, but the girls, my father thought, were lovely, with flashing eyes and long, wavy hair, one of them a redhead, the other a brunette.

  “Sure, they’re my daughters. Who else’s daughters should they be?”

  One of them, the brunette, surprised him further by extending her hand. “I’m Berte,” she said. “This is my sister Mars.”

  My father shook the woman’s hand and exchanged a glance with her that he felt all the way into his shoulder.

  “Here,” Shally said, wrenching his daughter free from my father’s grip, “dance with one of them.” With that, he took her in his arms and went spinning off to the circular rhythm of the clarinet, leaving my father standing dumbstruck with the other young woman, the redhead.

  “I’m sorry, I, I don’t dance,” my father stammered. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “Come on, one dance won’t kill you,” the young woman said. Her mouth was very red and she smiled in a wry, lopsided manner.

  “No, really, I don’t dance,” my father said. “I’d kill you.” He looked over the woman’s shoulder in the direction that Shally and his other daughter had spun. “I’m sorry, what did she say her name was?”

  “Berte,” the sister said, laughing. “She’ll get you to dance.”

  •••

  A few weeks after they met in the Automat, my father had a telephone call from his cousin inviting him to dinner. Reuben and his small family had taken up residence in a furnished apartment in Brooklyn, a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue, an area my father was familiar with because his brother Izzy had his dental supply shop not too far away. On the appointed evening, he left work at a little after four, bought a bottle of good red wine at a liquor store on East Broadway and strolled slowly towards the subway, enjoying the pleasant early spring air, damp with the melting of a late snow. Even on the dirty, slushy streets of the Lower East Side, redolent with the smells of cooking cabbage and beets and fish, and crowded with people hurrying home for supper, the coming of spring could be sensed, and my father had reason to feel pleased with himself. He took a Lexington Avenue subway to Fourteenth Street, where he transferred to the IRT for the trip under the East River into Brooklyn. When he emerged into the air again, it was already dark and the temperature had dropped a few degrees, forcing him to raise the collar of his raincoat.

  Once off Flatbush, the streets, with their trees still bare, were deserted, the buildings narrow, like men standing with their shoulders hunched. He found the address his cousin had provided, a three-story walk-up on Utica Avenue, with no difficulty, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. Reuben opened the door at the first knock, almost as if he had been standing close by, awaiting my father’s arrival.

  “Morgenstern, come in, come in,” he boomed, too heartily, my father thought. “Wine? That’s too kind. Let me take your coat. Come, meet the wife.”

  My father was ushered into the fragrant kitchen and into the presence of a petite, very attractive young woman with blonde hair twisted into a neat bun, and a noticeable bust beneath her modest white shirtwaist and apron. She was standing by the stove, upon which a pot was steaming, a large stirring spoon in her hand. “Morgenstern, my wife, Rachel. Rachel, this is my famous cousin, Harry Morgenstern, our generous benefactor.”

  “Hardly famous,” my father said, surprised to find himself blushing. He offered his hand to the woman, as he had to the dark-haired woman he had met at the dance, but she lowered her eyes shyly and held up the stirring spoon by way of excuse. The aroma of cooking onions brought saliva flooding to his tongue.

  “Famous enough,” Reuben said, “and certainly our benefactor.”

  After the usual pleasantries, the two men retired to the shabby living room, its furniture threadbare and sprung, while the cousin’s wife returned to her cooking. The walls were bare of decoration, there was no telephone and there were no toys or articles of children’s clothing littering the floor. A bottle of
whisky, rye cheaper than my father would ever buy, was produced, and Reuben, who was tieless and in shirtsleeves, poured shots for my father and himself.

  “L’chaim,” he said, raising his glass.

  “L’chaim,” my father repeated, glancing around the dimly lit room.

  Through the meal that followed, served on a cloth-covered table in the warm, humid kitchen, there was no sign of and no mention of the couple’s child. The furrier job that my father had helped his cousin find had not turned out well and he was again unemployed, but the table conversation was light, filled with talk of the looming strike in the garment trade and anecdotes of life in Montreal, which seemed not all that unlike New York. These latter were related by Reuben in English, in an accent my father realized was as much influenced by French as by Yiddish. The wine he’d brought went well with the fatty pot roast with potatoes and onions Rachel had prepared, which she served with a salad of wilted lettuce and onions tossed with sweetened vinegar, and slices of dark bread, still warm from the oven. Rachel contributed little to the conversation, but she followed it closely with an alert pair of eyes that were a startling shade of green, and, as the meal progressed, her shyness seemed to fade, and she favoured my father several times with a bold, direct glance that, had she not been married, and had he not been interested in the woman he’d met at the dance, would have thrilled him.

  “An excellent meal,” my father said, finishing his wine and placing a hand over his glass as Reuben proffered the bottle, a few more mouthfuls remaining in the bottom. “I’m curious, Rachel. How is it that your child is so well behaved? When I visit my brother Izzy, his children are all over me. I haven’t heard a peep from yours all evening. You have a little girl or a little boy?”

  Rachel seemed momentarily confused by my father’s question, her face reddening, and her husband quickly interjected: “Oh, our son is with a neighbour. Just for the evening. Yes, we have a son. He’s our pride, but he’s no better behaved than your brother’s children, of that I can assure you. When we have company, we find it’s better to have the boy elsewhere.”

  There was a look in his cousin’s eye that immediately recalled for my father Vogel’s comment the night they’d met Reuben at the Automat, and for the first time he felt he knew what his friend had meant. He’d already assumed it would be a long time before he saw his fifty dollars again, but that didn’t particularly concern him.

  “I didn’t mean that I minded my nephew and niece,” my father said, turning to his cousin’s wife, who was gathering up plates.

  “No, no, I understand,” Reuben said. “But adult talk is better left to adults, don’t you agree? Perhaps the next time you honour us with your company.”

  Rachel served coffee to the two men, who took their cracked and chipped cups and saucers into the living room. No milk or sugar was offered, and my father, sitting in an uncomfortable easy chair, thought better than to request them. The sounds of Rachel moving about the kitchen, pouring a bucket of water heated on the stove into the sink, scraping dishes, punctuated the silence that fell on the room as they sipped the bitter coffee.

  “We’ll have to do something about finding you another job,” my father said eventually.

  “That’s not necessary, Morgenstern. I have prospects of my own.”

  “As you wish.”

  “If it’s the money I owe you...”

  My father held up a hand. “Believe me, Reuben, that’s the farthest thought from my mind.”

  “Not from mine, I can assure you.”

  The cousin got up and went to the kitchen door, whispering a few words to his wife in what my father took to be French. When he turned back to his guest, he was rolling down his sleeves and buttoning them. “If you’ll excuse me, Morgenstern, I have an appointment right now to speak to a man about a job.”

  My father, taken by surprise, started to rise but his cousin waved him back into his chair. “Don’t go, please. I won’t be long. Finish your coffee, at least. Honour my wife with your company.”

  “If you put it that way, how can I refuse?” my father said, smiling.

  Reuben slipped on his suit jacket, its elbows shiny, took the distinctive overcoat with the red stripe from the same doorless closet my father’s coat and hat had disappeared into, and, without a further word, left the apartment.

  My father, uncertain as to what was expected of him, took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup and saucer down on a rickety coffee table, which was otherwise bare. On an impulse, he rose and strode to the room’s one window, which looked out on the deserted street three floors below, lit by the yellow glow of a street lamp, but, even after several minutes, there was no sign of his cousin emerging from the building. Gradually, he became aware that the sounds from the kitchen had ceased, and that he was not alone in the room.

  He turned, smiling, starting to speak, “Ah, Rachel,” but he was silenced by what he saw. His hostess stood in the kitchen doorway, completely naked, her long blonde hair loosened, her green-eyed gaze directly on him, like a challenge.

  “The bedroom’s through that way,” she said after a moment, nodding her head to the left. “Reuben won’t be back for awhile.”

  My father’s eyes fastened on the woman’s breasts for a moment, then he tore them away. “What, are you crazy?” he demanded.

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “No? What are you then, if not crazy?”

  Rachel gave my father a steady gaze that all but buckled his knees. But neither his will nor his legs faltered.

  “I’ll tell you what I am,” she said. “What I am is ashamed.”

  She turned away quickly, giving my father an unwanted glimpse of a perfectly rounded behind before she disappeared into the kitchen. The door closed and he heard her moving around behind it, heard what he was sure were muffled sobs.

  His impulse was to follow her, to demand an explanation, and, if that was necessary, to comfort her. Instead, he strode to the closet, put on his coat and hat and left the apartment without another word.

  He had no expectations as he clattered down the stairs, but, when he came to the bottom landing, there was the man who claimed to be his cousin, smoking a cigarette and faintly smirking.

  “You’re a crazy man,” my father said.

  “Sure, I’m crazy. Thinking you would loan me more money, that would be crazy.”

  “Another loan?” My father was flabbergasted. “Is that what this is about? Money? You are crazy.”

  “Sure, and you would have given it to me, just like that.”

  “As a matter of fact, I would have,” my father said, although, afterwards, he wasn’t so sure.

  “Just given it to me,” Reuben repeated, this time with considerable bitterness, “without making me beg like you did the last time.”

  My father stared at the man for a moment, at his outstretched palm, then brushed past him, going through a doorway into a narrow outer hall with a filthy tile floor, then through a heavy door and onto a stoop. He stood on the top step for a moment, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness, but he didn’t want to linger, should Reuben follow him. He plunged down the steps and headed towards the subway station. Around him, Brooklyn hunched like an animal, expectant.

  •••

  In the early months of World War II, when The Day was in its year-long strike and my father was working as a silversmith by day, driving cab at night, and he and my mother were afraid of losing the house they’d built in New Jersey, he went to his brother Henry for a loan. Years later, when he talked about this, he would mention that the sum was forty dollars – all he needed to make the difference between what he had and what he needed for that month’s mortgage payment.

  Henry said no, offering money problems of his own as an excuse. This was my uncle Henry, my favourite uncle, whom my father had helped to put through law school, who, when I was older, used to pull pennies out of my ears, always had a joke and would gravely advise children to “follow your nose and you won’t get lost
.” My father found the money elsewhere, and he did the next month and the month after, too, but eventually they did lose the house, and they moved me, still an infant, and my sisters into a converted chicken coop not far away.

  My father continued to be friendly with his brother, so, if he felt any resentment, he didn’t show it. Most likely, any resentment he might have felt would have been directed not at his brother but at himself, not at the one who turned him down but at the one who had asked. Still, it grated him that his own brother had refused him such a small sum. “Forty dollars,” he would say to me, with vehemence. Then, grinding out his cigarette: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

  “Shakespeare,” I would say.

  “The Bible,” he’d reply, smiling. “That was one time the Bible got it right.”

  • • •

  Lettres d’amour

  The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom. – Antoine Bret

  My father, who was a newspaper reporter specializing in labour, was often sent out of town on assignments, usually to cover union conventions. In the first few years of their marriage, well before I was born, these separations, which would take him away for long weekends or even as much as a week, were especially hard on my mother, who had two young children to look after. This was in the Thirties, during the Depression, and the conventions were mostly held in nearby Atlantic City or the Catskills or Poconos. Air travel was not yet popular for most people and the idea of having delegates from the New York and Philadelphia areas travel as far away as Florida was still unknown. “Who even heard of Florida anyway in those days?” my father would later ask. “Just a place for alligators.” But there was one extended trip, to Chicago, that took him away for almost two weeks in the spring of 1935, when my sisters were still quite small and my parents had been married recently enough that the length of the separation, for my mother at least, seemed excruciating.