The Carpetbaggers

2

The cowbells suspended across the wagon behind him clanged lazily as the weary horse inched along through the pushcarts that lined both sides of Rivington Street. The oppressive summer heat beat down on his head. He let the reins lay idle in his fingers. There wasn't much you could do to guide the horse. It would pick its own way through the crowded street, moving automatically each time a space opened up.

"Aiyee caash clothes!" His father's singsong call penetrated the sounds of the market street, lifting its message high to the windows of the tenements, naked, blind eyes staring out unseeing into the hungry world.

"Aiyee caash clothes!"

He looked down from the wagon to where his father was striding along the crowded sidewalk, his beard waving wildly as his eyes searched the windows for signs of business. There was a certain dignity about the old man – the broad-brimmed black beaver hat that had come from the old country; the long black coat that flapped around his ankles; the shirt with its heavily starched but slightly wilted wing collar; and the tie with the big knot resting just below his prominent Adam's apple. The face was pale and cool, not even a faint sign of perspiration dampened the brow, while David's was dripping with sweat. It seemed almost as if the heavy black clothing provided insulation against the heat.

"Hey, Mister Junkman!"

His father moved out into the gutter to get a better look. But it was David who saw her first – an old woman waving from the fifth-floor window. "It's Mrs. Saperstein, Pop."

"You think I can't see?" his father asked, grumbling. "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Saperstein!"

"Is that you, Mr. Woolf?" the woman called down.

"Yes," the old man shouted. "What you got?"

"Come up, I’ll show to you."

"I don't want winter clothes," the old man shouted. "Who's to buy?"

"Who said about winter clothes? Come up, you'll see!"

"Tie the horse over there," his father said, pointing to an open space between two pushcarts. "Then come to carry down the stuff."

David nodded as his father crossed the street and disappeared into the entrance of a house. He nudged the horse over and tied it to a fire hydrant. Then he slipped a feed bag over its weary muzzle and started after his father.

He felt his way up through the dark, unlit hallway and staircase and stopped outside the door. He knocked. The door opened immediately. Mrs. Saperstein stood there, her long gray hair folded in coils on top of her head. "Come in, come in."

David came into the kitchen and saw his father sitting at the table. In front of him was a plate filled with cookies. "A gluz tay, David?" the old woman asked, going to the stove.

"No, thanks, Mrs. Saperstein," he answered politely.

She took a small red can from the shelf over the stove, then carefully measured two teaspoonfuls of tea into the boiling water. The tea leaves immediately burst open and spun around madly on the surface. When she finally poured the tea into a glass through a strainer and set it in front of his father, it was almost as black as coffee.

His father picked up a lump of sugar from the bowl and placed it between his lips, then sipped the tea. After he swallowed the first scalding mouthful, he opened his mouth and said, "Ah!"

"Good, isn't it?" Mrs. Saperstein was smiling. "That's real tea. Swee-Touch-Nee. Like in the old country. Not like the chazerai they try to sell you here."

His father nodded and lifted the glass again. When he put it back on the table, it was empty and the polite formalities were over. Now it was time to attend to business. "Nu, Mrs. Saperstein?"

But Mrs. Saperstein wasn't quite ready to talk business yet. She looked over at David. "Such a nice boy, your David," she said conversationally. "He reminds me of my Howard at his age." She picked up the plate of cookies and held it toward him. "Take one," she urged. "I baked myself."

David took a cooky and put it in his mouth. It was hard and dry and crumbled into little pieces. "Take another," she urged. "You look thin, you should eat."

David shook his head.

"Mrs. Saperstein," his father said. "I’m a busy man, it's late. You got something for me?"

The old woman nodded. "Kim shayn."

They followed her through the narrow railroad flat. Inside one room, on the bed, were a number of men's suits, some dresses, shirts, one overcoat and, in paper bags, several pairs of shoes.

David's father walked over and picked up some of the clothing. "Winter clothing," he said accusingly. "For this I came up four flights of stairs?"

"Like new, Mr. Woolf," the old woman said. "My son Howard and his wife. Only one season. They were going to give to the Salvation Army but I made them send to me."

David's father didn't answer. He was sorting out the clothing rapidly.

"My son Howard lives in the Bronx," she said proudly. "In a new house on Grand Concourse. A doctor."

"Two dollars for the ganse gesheft," his father announced.

"Mr. Woolf," she exclaimed. "At least twenty dollars this is worth."

He shrugged. "The only reason I’m buying is to give to HIAS. Better the Salvation Army don't get."

David listened to their bargaining with only half a mind. HIAS was the abbreviation that stood for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His father's statement didn't impress him one bit. He knew the clothing would never find its way there. Instead, after it was carefully brushed and cleaned by his mother, it would turn up in the windows of the secondhand clothing stores along the lower Bowery and East Broadway.

"Ten dollars," Mrs. Saperstein was saying. The pretense was gone now; she was bargaining in earnest. "Less I wouldn't take. Otherwise, it wouldn't pay my son Howard to bring it down. It costs him gas from the Bronx."

"Five dollars. Not one penny more."

"Six," the old woman said, looking at him shrewdly. "At least, the gasoline money he should get."

"The subways are still running," David's father said. "I should pay because your son is a big shot with an automobile?"

"Five fifty," the old woman said.

David's father looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders and reached under his long black coat. He took out a purse, tied to his belt by a long black shoestring, and opened it. "Five fifty," he sighed. "But as heaven is watching, I'm losing money."

He gestured to David and began counting the money out into the old woman's hand. David rolled all the clothing into the overcoat and tied it by the sleeves. He hefted the clothing onto his shoulder and started down the stairs. He tossed the bundle of clothing up into the cart and moved around to the front of the wagon. He lifted the feed bag from the horse, and untying the reins from the hydrant, climbed on the wagon.

"Hey, Davy!"

He looked down at the sidewalk. A tall boy stood there looking up at him and smiling. "I been lookin' for yuh all day."

"We been in Brooklyn," David answered. "My father will be here in a minute."

"I’ll make it quick, then. Shocky'll cut yuh in for ten bucks if yuh bring the horse an' wagon tonight. We got to move a load uptown."

"But it's Friday night."

"That's why. The streets down here will be empty. There won't be nobody to wonder what we're doin' out at night. An' the cops won't bother us when they see the junky's license on the wagon."

"I'll try," David said. "What time, Needlenose?"

"Nine o'clock back of Shocky's garage. Here comes your ol' man. See yuh later."

"Who were you talking to?" his father asked.

"One of the fellers, Pop."

"Isidore Schwartz?"

"Yeah, it was Needlenose."

"Keep away from him, David," his father said harshly. "Him we don't need. A bum. A nogoodnik. Like all those other bums that hang around Shocky's garage. They steal everything they can get their hands on."

David nodded.

Take the horse to the stable. I’m going to the shul. Tell Mama by seven o'clock she should have supper ready."

Esther Woolf stood in front of the Shabbas nacht lichten, the prayer shawl covering her head. The candles flickered into yellow flame as she held the long wooden match to them. Carefully she blew out the match and put it down in a plate on the small buffet table. She waited until the flame ripened into a bright white glow, then began to pray.

First, she prayed for her son, her shaine Duvidele, who came so late in life, almost when she and her husband, Chaim, had given up hope of being blessed. Then she prayed that Jehovah would give her husband, Chaim, a greater will to succeed, at the same time begging the Lord's forgiveness because it was the Lord's work at the shul that kept her husband from his own. Then, as always, she took upon herself the sin for having turned Chaim away from his chosen work.

He had been a Talmudical student when they'd first met in the old country. She remembered him as he was then, young and thin and pale, with the first soft curl of his dark beard shining with a red-gold glint. His eyes had been dark and luminous as he sat at the table in her father's house, dipping the small piece of cake into the wine, more than holding his own with the old rabbi and the elders.

But when they'd been married, Chaim had gone to work in her father's business. Then the pogroms began and the faces of Jews became thin and haunted. They left their homes only under the cover of night, hurrying about like little animals of the forest. Or they sat huddled in the cellars of their houses, the doors and windows barred and locked, like chickens trying to hide to the pen when they sense the approach of the shochet.

Until that night when she could stand it no longer. She rose screaming from the pallet at her husband's side, the letter from her brother Bernard, in America, still fresh in her mind. "Are we to live like rabbits in a trap, waiting for the Cossacks to come?" she cried. "Is it into this dark world that my husband expects I should bring forth a child? Even Jehovah could not plant his seed in a cellar."

"Hush!" Chaim's voice was a harsh whisper. "The name of the Lord shall not be taken in vain. Pray that He does not turn His face from us."

She laughed bitterly. "Already He has forsaken us. He, too, is fleeing before the Cossacks."

"Quiet, woman!" Chaim's voice was an outraged roar.

She looked at the other pallets in the damp cellar. In the dim light, she could barely see the pale, frightened faces of her parents. Just then there was a thunder of horse's hoofs outside the house and the sound of a gun butt against the locked door.

Quickly, her father was on his feet. "Quick, kinder," he whispered. "The storm cellar door at the back of the house. Through the fields, they won't see you leaving that way."

Chaim reached for Esther's hand and pulled her to the storm door. Suddenly, he stopped, aware that her parents were not following them. "Come," he whispered. "Hurry! There is no time."

Her father stood quietly in the dark, his arm around his wife's shoulder. "We are not going," he said. "Better someone be here for them to find or they will begin searching the fields."

The din over their heads grew louder as the gun butts began to break through the door. Chaim walked back to her father. "Then we all stay and face them," he said calmly, picking a heavy stave up from the floor. "They will learn a Jew does not die so easily."

"Go," her father said quietly. "We gave our daughter in marriage. It is her safety that should be your first concern, not ours. Your bravery is nothing but stupidity. How else have Jews survived these thousand years except by running?"

"But- " Chaim protested.

"Go," the old man hissed. "Go quickly. We are old, our lives are finished. You are young, your children should have their chance."

A few months later, they were in America. But it was to be almost twenty years before the Lord God Jehovah relented and let her have a child.

Last, she prayed for her brother Bernard, who was a macher now and had a business in a faraway place called California, where it was summer all year round. She prayed that he was safe and well and that he wasn't troubled by the Indians, like she saw in the movies when she used the pass he'd sent her.

Her prayers finished, she went back into the kitchen. The soup was bubbling on the stove, its rich, heavy chicken aroma almost visible in the air. She picked up a spoon and bent over the pot. Carefully she skimmed the heavy fat globules from the surface and put them in a jar. Later, when the fat was cold and had congealed, it could be spread on bread or mixed with chopped dry meats to give them flavor. While she was bent like this over the stove, she heard the front door open.

From the footsteps, she knew who it was. "That you, Duvidele?"

"Yes, Mama."

Her task finished, she put down the spoon and turned around slowly. As always, her heart leaped with pride as she saw her son, so straight and tall, standing there.

"Papa went to shul," David said. "He'll be home at seven o'clock."

She smiled at him. "Good," she said. "So wash your hands and clean up. Supper is ready."