The New Black Mask (No 8)

’Ead All About It Sol Newman

Sol Newman has published stories and poetry in such American and English publications as Esquire, Midstream, Canadian Forum, Wascana, Fiddlehead, and Ambit. His play Picasso’s Mind Was a Junkyard was recently showcased at the Quartz Theatre in Ashland, Oregon.

Mr. Newman comments on “ ’Ead All About It”: “Arnold Rothstein and the Black Sox of 1919 have long been messing around in my mind. Then one wintry day in Charlotte, North Carolina, the line ‘Finkie could fix anything: ballgames, prizefights, horse races, even tennis blurted out of my mouth to my son and his family and shortly thereafter ‘ ’Ead All About It!’ just typed itself down in, say, two hours.”

In 1917 on East Broadway the smart money said, “Never mind the army, if the President just send Finkie, in five the kaiser takes a dive.” Because Finkie could fix anything: ballgames, prizefights, horse races, tennis even.

When before the war with the kaiser he is growing up, Finkie, in ribbed stockings from start to finish and redamed and patched-up pants nobbled just below the knee, losing himself in a clutch of white bewhiskered elders sawing the air in vehement disputation, filched supper from the vegetable and fruit stands and peddler carts, movie and cigarette money from the newstands; then, like Atalanta her golden apples, the elders one by one he dropped in the path of pursuers. For such a goniff the High Holy days were especially rewarding: with everyone in the Synagogue he had time to pick and choose; being everyone’s Shabbas candlelighter he would know where the valuables were.

If nervous old ladies spat when he passed, so ishka-bibble; if no madel would look at him twice, so couldn’t he lay out like for the undertaker their Charlie Ray, Wallie Reid movie heroes one after the other with the left hook had everyone calling him the new Abe Attell who was the featherweight champ? Already he had offers. A second Benny Leonard for sure, said people knew what they were talking about; but why should such a brainy kid such as himself get knocked punchy like sooner or later happens to the best when just sitting on his toches he would make so fast that he couldn’t keep track?

To the day she died Mrs. Finkelstein complaining Finkie in such a hurry that he sucked every drop of milk out before even one of her always so painful teats she could shake loose. Finkie dropping first, Mrs. Finkelstein claimed, meant not a drop of blood left for poor Julius. Out from her belly how could God in heaven have ripped out such a Cossack?

When not spitting blood, the father of Finkie and Julius sat like the gravestone he soon would be under reading his Yiddish newspaper. In season ten hours seven days a week in the cloak factory, any wonder he was not one for idle chatter? “America the Promised Land!” he said each time Mrs. Finkelstein smacked and whipped Finkie and for what? That he should like his father before him kiss the boss’s potz for a job in his consumption factory? Finkie’s in a hurry? So hurrah for Finkie, for anybody smart and strong enough to spring himself from this clapped-up consumptive garbage and dreck from the windows plopping on the stinking boulevard was Jewry’s Main Street, off which in alleys and hallways right under the snot-dripping noses of the pious elders if by thirteen years old your daughter don’t get the syph and knocked up in the bargain it was because she was cross-eyed.

That this did not happen to Julius’s Rosala could only mean that Yahveh watched out. To save her for himself like Jove-Jupiter-Zeus? Always her head in the air when home from school she danced and that she never once into the house brings on her shoes the dog dreck from the street doesn’t prove who was watching out? How dreamily she listens to Julius spell out how joyous their life when he is the doctor and she his good wife-nurse, dear God should only speed the day. All his life, Julius promised his Rosala, never to look at another madel as upon her he looks; and who could blame him when like his Rosala, if you could believe all the grandmothers from East Broadway to Delancey Street, they looked each one of them when back in the old country they ate only borscht and peaches and sour cream?

While on her feet ten hours waiting on Woolworth’s customers, besides of her joyous life with Julius when at last he hangs out the shingle, what does his Rosala dream? When too foul the weather for Central Park or Coney Island or even walking, you went on Sunday afternoons to the nickleodeon, during the week after supper to the library, didn’t Mama, Papa complain she was reading herself blind, so what doctor, lawyer would look at her then? Doctors or lawyers being what good girls on East Broadway aspired to; or rather their mothers for them: catch a doctor quick before the nurses turn his head, Mama admonished Rosala from the first time she opened her big blue eyes; if not then a lawyer who could afford an apartment without bedbugs, cockroaches on Seventh Avenue where already lives Benny Leonard the great prizefighter. Rebecca of Ivanhoe’s Sunnybrook Farm she was; Mary Pickford, Julius being Mary’s brother Jack until the last reel when Julius it turns out is not so they could marry; poor Julius who legs tucked under him in a tailor shop sews, all night goes to school and around the clock studies, a textbook under his arm even Sundays in Central Park or at Coney Island with his Rosala-Rebecca from Ivanhoe’s Sunnybrook Farm.

Even upstairs in their dismal two rooms on Hester Street Rosala’s mother and father had to watch their step because always underfoot a young reb or a widowed butcher or a college boy from uptown begging they should please make him already their son-in-law; and God knows day and night they urged now this suitor now that one on Rosala who hands clasped over ears, eyes flashing, rebuked them for their disloyalty to her Julius. Did she mean to wait forever? her father asked. “Look in the mirror, already the bloom is departing.” Papa despaired. Flesh and blood she wasn’t. He and Mama! Before fifteen! They had to marry! Even a reb was not good enough for this nose-in-the-air tochter who waits all her life for a doctor who all his life don’t make what the butcher came last night takes in in one day.

How on East Broadway two innocents like Rosala and Julius could walk and talk the clock around and no dreck adhere? wondered Rosala’s mother — not a sign from heaven? What an idle thought from a woman who when she was Rosala’s age — no before thirteen yet, dear God, how she danced and kissed and pinched and hugged in the corners, barns, on the stairs, in the fields, so all the time black-and-blue from foot to head “from being so nearsighted bumping into everything,” she swears to her father who smacked her and cracked her and what good did it do?

The day Rosala said, “Enough already!” Julius asked should he take her temperature? Rectal? From medical school Julius was graduated but, as the head nurse was so kind to point out to the new student nurse, intern he now has to and, being so keen with the knife, why shouldn’t he be a surgeon? If instantly Rosala doesn’t marry her doctor, then the other interns, doctors, horny patients wouldn’t stop feeling, pinching, even then. But if the sweet child that Rosala was wanted it, not only would the head nurse safeguard her from the vultures here, but likewise keep from sneaking inside her the dybbuk, even Lilith always so creepy-crawling into children like Rosala. Being there was something so creepy-crawly about the head nurse, Rosala said the head nurse was too kind but she wouldn’t take advantage. By living on eight bananas for a nickel and yesterday’s bread Rosala had saved up enough to quit Woolworth’s.

“Listen to me, foolish child,” said the head nurse, “you don’t find your Julius and marry him this very day some rich bitch just loves surgeons grabs him right out from on top of you. I seen it happen every time.”

“My Julius would never!” Big and round as honeydew melons were Rosala’s blue eyes. Yet could you argue with the voice of experience?

“Right this minute?” asked Julius inside whom never once raised lust its head yet, never once does he dream of possessing his Rosala who never once did he touch yet where good boys never; even when he examines ladies, young women, he could be a horse doctor for all the emotion he is feeling. For him it was enough just being with his Rosala, smelling her, making her laugh and laughing along, watching her listen, react to the jumble of words spouting from him like she turns on the hydrant on the street corner just by her presence, holding hands in the movies, laying on the beach alongside, in Central Park.

“The head nurse told me.”

“The head nurse?”

“Would I insist if not?”

Julius was dumbfounded. It would never have occurred to him that the head nurse knew they were alive; no more than Rosala would he contradict so august a personage. “We need two witnesses. Mama wouldn’t hear of us getting married at City Hall. We would have to wait for Aunt Celia who still waits in Minsk to save up the steerage money.”

“Perhaps your brother, Finkie, might lend us two of his friends if he could not come himself?”

“What an inspired thought!” Then Julius wasn’t so sure. “You wouldn’t mind gamblers, even worse, being God only knows what Finkie is running by this time.”

“What difference does that make? Do you want to get married or don’t you? There’s the Broadway streetcar, run, will you, dear? If he can’t come maybe who works for him.”

Finkie was fascinated. Last time he seen the kids Julius was still in short pants and Rosala’s braids she could wipe her asshole with.

“You really gonna marry... himmmm?”

Rosala’s yes was so hard to hear that Julius was upset. Finkie standing next to his big desk in his expensive suit was indeed something for Rosala to look at. It struck Julius that facing him now was not the same girl always her nose in a book when she was not riveted by him; something happened, if only he could put his finger on what. Rosala, who before being touched and pinched right and left in the hospital, other than Julius didn’t know another boy existed; not even in the subway where reading her book not even a fire would she have noticed, looked out the window, anyplace where wasn’t Julius, Finkie. She realized she was red all over: of the sweat between her breasts and thighs did she ever take any notice before? Loyalty! she thought, clutching it to her breast as she would have her sanity. Kipling’s Kim would never go back on his word, would he? Movies unreeled before her eyes: heroes shot because they would never give in, divulge the code, turn their coats; plays at the Yiddish Theatre on Second Avenue, everybody sticking together, defying the Cossacks no matter what.

Rosala’s flushed face and throat, sweat, smell excited Finkie almost more than persuading Shoeless Joe Jackson to take third strikes, great shineball pitcher Eddie Cicotte to lay it in there so baby fat that Finkie hisself with only one hand could knock it out of Comiskey Park. Listen, he said, trying unsuccessfully to unscrew his eyes from Rosala’s heaving teats. Couldn’t dopey Julius see she wants him, Finkie, bad as Finkie her, so why don’t the shmo blow?

“Sure, kids, Becky my secretary and her boyfriend glad to witness. At the same time you could do me a favor too.” From Finkie’s back pocket came a roll of bills could have choked five of Julius’s throats. “For waiting for you so long, Julius, shouldn’t your poor Rosala be rewarded with something better than a doctor on even Delancey Street? You do me this favor and you could open up on West End Avenue. To start you off right how does a honeymoon in Chi’ and Cincy strike you?”

“Who do you want us to shoot?”

“Ha ha, a sensayuma your right away quick husband has, Rosala.” Finkie spun about to open the wall safe over which hung a framed photograph of Jack Dempsey shaking Finkie’s hand. “Deliver these nice fat envelopes where I tell you, Julius, and I’ll give you five Cs, each game you could shoot the works. For now, Rosala, you take charge the envelopes, for arithmetic from working in Woolworth’s you got such a good head Mama tells me.” Down her teats should he put them? “Rosala!” The hand she tentatively put out he clasped with both of his, having first dropped the envelopes on the desk behind him. “Sweeter than Blanche Sweet you are, baby. Really, I ain’t kidding. Such a lucky dog, Julius, who could have figured?” Finkie stroked Rosala’s arm. Outside being Indian summer, today she could still wear a summer dress. “You seen a picture Mary Picklefeet loves a shlepper but the duke—”

“Droit de Seigneur!” burst from Rosala who likewise was reading Sir Walter Scott. Her tongue she should rip from her throat, at the very least bite off. God she begged to strike her dead like in the play The Dybbuk, could even her mother imagine how inside everything tummeling? Even Julius could realize that she was out of her mind; that much she saw out of the corner of her eye.

“Toit duh see her?” That was another good one, laughed Finkie. “Listen careful now, Julius. To City Hall where who don’t I know, I myself personally takes you down. After the cherrymoney, ha ha, we put you on the Century with the envelopes you will deliver in Chi’ and when the Series all done, Rosala — why do you look so worried, Julius? If she seen with you or wisewersa then you might just as well blab here and save me carfare. You ain’t got a worry in the world, on my word of honor. Every night Rosala telephones you at a special number so you should know each day who to bet on at what odds, you capish, Julius?”

Julius capished so good that if he don’t keep both hands pressed over his chest his heart would jump right out the open window down to where the kids ask the cops could they turn on the hydrant. Julius knew what he must do, what he must say, but for a while his Adam’s apple was an adagio dancer, his tongue cleaved, his jaw clamped and all he had in his legs were cramps. Happening to look at Rosala, how she scrutinized him, like under the microscope, spun him to the desk which he banged with his fist, even managed to gasp where Finkie could shove his filthy lucre; that when Papa dies of the consumption such a good son Finkie proved buying for Mama the newsstand from whose receipts she must buy sweaters enough not to freeze in winters worse than Moscow’s.

Finkie lighting up a Havana cigar at Rosala gazed through the flame of his five-dollar lighter. “What about you, baby? For you also out the shiny office on West End Avenue? You like so much changing the crappy diapers on East Broadway?”

“Come, Rosala.”

Julius pulled but he could not move her. Paralyzed by that snake was she? “Finkie was no good from the first day he was born; Papa he drove into an early grave. We don’t need his dirty money. What’s the matter with you today, Rosala? Don’t you hear me? This is your Julius talking to you.”

She heard him all right and if only God would wipe out what happens at the hospital, if only she never leaves Woolworth’s, if only they never come here; if only if only if only. Loyalty! now there was a word to press between her breasts where in the movies always the heroine hiding the secret letter she must deliver from her sweetheart to the king without the jealous cardinal suspecting. Loyalty! You make your bed you better sleep in it. But when she turned to follow Julius out Finkie’s laughter might have frozen the blood of the dybbuk himself.

“Do you suppose you could walk out just like that to tell the whole goddamn whirl that Finkie fixes the Whirl Series? I tell you because who else in the whole whirl could I trust?”

Julius, who had damaged his fist banging on the desk, suffered even more grievously wrestling with the knob of the door to the outer office. “We don’t know nothing from baseball. What kind of gibberish is that?”

Finkie walked out from behind his desk in his twenty-five-dollar nonsqueak oxford shoes with elevated heels and put his arm around Rosala who in her mind entertained hot thoughts about Julius who looked back at her like already she was working in the kind of flat on East Broadway that more and more Mama predicting Rosala sure to wind up, so sick was Mama of the Rosala-Julius engagement.

“You! You take your lousy hands off her. How dare you touch her?” Julius meant to stamp his feet, clinch his eyes, clench fists all at one and the same time but only succeeded in crying because in shoes cost two dollars second-hand and so long ago how could you even on such an expensive carpet stamp? If bunions and corns is all your feet are made of? In spite of which he circled Finkie, his fists up before his face. “You know so much about the Middle Ages? Did you ever hear of single combat? So one-on-one I challenge you, with fists, not guns or swords. If I lick you Rosala and I walk out, OK?”

“Oh, Julius!” marveled Rosala, for surely God must protect him. Just to be on the safe side she put her hands over her eyes not to see with just one hand Finkie squash brave Julius. No, Sir Walter Scott never let might decide; always things were otherwise with Quentin Durward.

Thus had Julius retrieved the shining armor that in her eyes he had heretofore worn; then was once more stripped of it when he screamed he had a bellyache and ran around the room, his face so contorted that Finkie tossed him the key to the hall toilet and pressed the door release on the leg of his desk, Julius bolting out like one of Finkie’s sure things at Belmont.

“We didn’t want your fy-nancy dropping dead right on my good carpet, did we, baby? Should I really fight him, whatdya think, baby?”

What did she think? How could she know when all that was in her stupid head were sparks from the trains falling down from the Third Avenue Elevated by the Bowery, fire horses breathing out like poor Julius’s mother Moscow winter clouds; ambulances screaming, clanging? “Never once in my life I have before such a headache,” she said, by which time Julius was back with two policemen who Finkie, pulling up his trousers not to spoil the crease and to show off his clock socks when, after sitting down, he put his feet up on the desk, laughed he knew better than the back of his favorite whore’s toches.

“What cooks, Murph? How goes it, Isaac? To what do I owe the honor? Christmas ain’t for three months yet, so early you got cause to worry? Does Finkie ever forget?”

“Dis guy swears he your kid brother, Finkie.” Murphy licked his lips. A beat cop should push a man aroun’ got so much influence?

“Duh pisher cryin’, Fix! Fix! cock ’n bull story, am I right, Finkie?” Isaac regarded Julius like he was something shouldn’t stick to your shoes, especially you buy your own uniform.

“He told us! He told us!” Julius danced here, there, everywhere, as though he were all the snakes of the fakirs in all of Bombay’s bazaars. “Five hundred dollars he was giving us to bet with; fat envelopes I should deliver. You tell them, Rosala.”

“ ’at’s right, Rosala, go ahead tell them,” Finkie laughed. “Tell them how Finkie got so soft in the head he uses skirts, collich kids to fix duh whole Whirl Series, can you imagine, Murph? Isaac?”

A whole Whirl Series! No, Murphy making the sign of the cross couldn’t imagine. A Whirl Series! Ain’t nothin’ sacred? gasped Isaac, making wheels at his temple. “Meshugeh, tsedrait, your kid brother, Finkie?”

“How could you, Julius?” Rosala demanded. “Your very own brother! Oh, Julius, how could you!”

Isaac nodded. “Rat on your own flesh and blood, imagine!”

“Flesh and blood,” echoed Murphy. “No Irishman’d do such a stinking thing.”

“How could I? You ask how could I?” Julius demanded of Rosala, his screech that of a turkey has its head on the block. “Rosala, you’re ripping from me the heart. You want I should drop dead at your feet?”

Rosala felt for Julius. That she could not lift a finger to help him, no more than she could for herself, did not mean that her heart had turned to stone. But to rat on your own brother!

Julius flinched. Did Rosala turn away to hide her loathing? He couldn’t breathe, he could only gasp; his eyes so awash with despair that he was all but legally blind; like the wings of a hen about her brood in a storm his pitiful shoulders enfolding even more pitiful chest, he tripped over his own feet crossing the threshold.

“All right, guys. I’m sorry about me kid brother’s imagination. I am always telling him he should write stories, you remember, Rosala? No? You was too young, maybe.”

They never believed for a second, Isaac swore. They shut him up right away, Murphy added. “By my mother’s sou), may she rest in peace, ’at’s the God’s honest truth, Finkie. Would we kid you?”

Confident that they wouldn’t, Finkie, passing out cigars and walking them to the door, said, sure, sure, see you guys, and shut the door behind them.

“Do me a favor, Rosala, just sit down, ha, baby? By the soul of Murph’s old lady, ha ha, I ain’t ever gonna rape you, baby. ’Atsa good girl. Now what we have to talk over is you should go to business school, learn shorthand, typewriter. Because you’re so good with arithmetic we better keep you in the fambly; and like Mama always saying, ’bout time I should marry and settle down. What are you jumping for? Am I going to eat you? I know, I know, if I’m the last guy on earth yuh wouldn’t marry me? ’at’s a beaut too,” Finkie laughed.

If he was the last man on earth, just what Rosala would have said as she left, only something, someone holding her tongue, making her so weak that she cannot even lift herself out of the chair. Oh, dear God, she wept, for surely the dybbuk, the creepy-crawly thing is inside her.

Saying soothing things, Finkie lifted, earned her to the couch in the now deserted outer office where, being so experienced and really understanding in such situations, was making love to her when Julius crept back inside the room as shoeless as Joe Jackson so he shouldn’t squeak. Scalpel ready, his face whiter than Moscow’s January snow, he slashed at Finkie’s jugular vein.

“Jesus!” said Finkie, rolling off of Rosala and squirting blood everywhere. “Just like Cain and Abel, now who would have thought?”

Rosala had only time to wonder if in time to save her honor her knight had arrived before the bloody scalpel just below the sternum slid in and up between her teats. Gasping for breath, her eyes as round as honeydew melons, Lilith! poor tsedraite Rosala cried out. Lilith! who sucks out from the soul what she shouldn’t, how otherwise explain Julius’s bloody monstrous face as he extracts the blood-soaked instrument and plunges it into his heart?

“Julius?” Mrs. Finkelstein said when Isaac the policeman told her how many more sweaters she could buy now that Finkie was dead. “He never had it in him.

“ ’ead all about itl ’et yuh Journal, Whirl, Tele...”