| There is never any work for him to do and indeed he is too old for it, too bewilderedThe old man has never been able to understand AmericaIt is too large, too fast, the ordered suppressed castes of centuries wither here; people are always in fluxHis neighbors become wealthier, move away from the East Side to Brooklyn, to the Bronx, to the upper West Side; some of them lose their little businesses, drift farther down the street to another hovel, or migrate to the countryHe has been a peddler himself; in the spring before the first World War, he has carried his goods on his back, tramped the dirt roads through small New Jersey towns, selling scissors and thread and needlesBut he has never understood it and now in his sixties he is prematurely senile, an old man cheap mulberry handbags relegated to the back of a tiny candy store, drifting in Talmudic halls of thought(If a man hath a worm on his brain, it may be removed by laying a cabbage leaf near the orifice onto which the worm will crawl
His grandson, Joey, now seven, comes home from school weeping, a bruise on his faceMa, they beat me up, they beat me up, they called me sheenie
Who did, who was it?
It was the Italian kids, a whole gang, they beat me up
The sounds move in the old man's mind, alter his thought streamAn undependable people; in the Inquisition they let the Jews in at Genoa, but at Naples
He shrugs, watches the mother wash the blood away, fit a patch of adhesive to the cut
The old man laughs to himself, the delicate filtered laughter of a pessimist who is reassured that omega de ville watches things have turned out badlyNu, this America is not so differentThe old man sees the goy faces staring at the victims
Joey, he calls in a harsh cracked voice
What is it, zaydee?
The goyim, what did they call you?
Sheenie
The grandfather shrugs againFor a moment an ancient buried anger moves himHe stares at the unformed features of the boy, the bright blond hairIn America even the Juden look like goyimThe old man rouses himself to speech, talks in YiddishThey beat you because you're a Jew, he saysDo you know what a Jew is?
Yes
The grandfather feels a spasm of warmth for his grandchildHe is an old man and he will die soon, and the child is too young to understand himThere is so much wisdom he could give
It's a difficult question, the meaning of a JewIt's not chanel jewelry a race, he says, it's not even a religion any more, maybe it will never be a nationDimly, he knows he has lost the child already, but he continues talking, musing aloud
What is it, then? Yehudah Halevy said Israel is the heart of all nationsWhat attacks the body attacks the heartAnd the heart is also the conscience, which suffers for the sins of the nationsHe shrugs once more, does not differentiate between saying aloud what he thinks or merely moving his lipsIt's an interesting problem, but personally I think a Jew is a Jew because he suffers
Why?
So we will deserve the Messiah? The old man no longer knowsIt makes us better and worse than the goyim, he thinks
But the child must always be given an answerHe rouses himself, concentrates and says without chanel jewelry certainty, It is so we will lastHe speaks again, wholly lucid for a momentWe are a harried people, beset by oppressorsWe must always journey from disaster to disaster, and it makes us stronger and weaker than other men, makes us love and hate the other Juden more than other menWe have suffered so much that we know how to endureWe will always endure
The boy understands almost nothing of this, but he has heard the words and they engrave a memory which perhaps he will exhume laterHe looks at his grandfather, at the wrinkled corded hands and the anger, the febrile intelligence, in his pale old-man's eyesIt is the only word Joey Goldstein absorbsAlready he has forgotten most of the shame and fear of his beatingHe fingers the plaster on his temple, wonders if he can go out to gucci tote |
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