Melov's Legacy Read online

  Melov’s Legacy

  Sam Ross

  New York

  BOOK ONE

  HOMECOMING

  CHAPTER ONE

  1.

  Hershy was the first to know that his father was coming home from the war. The letter, dated November 15, 1918, had come in the afternoon mail. His mother, who had never learned to read, hunched tensely over the round kitchen table as he studied the sprawling script and read aloud. When he finished, he looked up and saw tears in her eyes.

  “What’s to cry about, Ma?” Tears always bewildered Hershy. They came to him only when he was hurt or raging mad. But grownups—you could never tell about them; they cried when they were happy, too.

  She answered him by spattering his face with kisses and tears.

  “Holy Cry, Ma.”

  But she didn’t give herself over to weeping for long. She had to get ready for Papa. Suddenly Time, which had seemed endless, became a raging flood, a fierce hurricane, a runaway train, charging down upon the Melov household. Time, suddenly, gave her a most peculiar feeling in the belly. It wouldn’t let her eat, and it broke up her sleep, and it made her eyes look like two bright lamps. Time became an overwhelming demon as the floors were scrubbed, the furniture washed and polished, the bedding aired, the clothes put in order. She even bought Hershy a new suit; but in this instance, where money and foresight were involved, time was plentiful, you couldn’t be too careful.

  “But, Ma,” he said, when she seemed to be considering carefully the last of two dozen suits he had tried on, “ain’t it too big?”

  “What’s big about it?”

  “Look.”

  The jacket hung loose from his slender shoulders, with the sleeves reaching his dirt-caked knuckles; the baggy pants billowed over his knees and were slipping off his waist. He groaned as she slashed tightly the belt of his pants and then of his jacket. Appraising him, as he stood strapped by the belts, she said: It’s all right, Hershel, you’ll grow into it.”

  “But, Ma, it hurts my belly. I can hardly breathe.”

  “Never mind, it hurts. Remember, you’re a growing boy. I can’t buy you a new suit every Monday and Thursday.”

  “But like a clown I’ll look. Pa’ll laugh on me.”

  “Clown, shmown. By next Pesach, for the spring holiday, it will fit you like a glove. You’ll grow into it.”

  That’s the way it always was: you’ll grow into it. He never got anything to fit him right away, not even shoes. How long was it going to take her to admit he was grown up, to buy him clothes that would fit him now, not three years from now?

  His mother also found time to make him polish his scuffed shoes every day, so that they might look like they hadn’t just been dragged out of a garbage can, but getting a shine on them was impossible.

  “Well, the feet are not so important,” she decided. “Nobody should look on the ground anyhow. But at least we can make your head shine.”

  So she bought a jar of Vaseline and began to train his hair. But when his pillowslip became greasy and his fingermarks began to show on everything he touched, she decided against continuing the practice.

  On the day, finally, of his father’s homecoming, Hershy didn’t want to go to school, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. “Gottenyu” she said, “my little God.” Time, the beast, was already on her back, preventing her from doing the million things she had to do; she was not going to be burdened with him around the house, too; he was going to go to school, that’s all, and that was final; and he was going to get all dressed up, in case Papa should come home while he was still in school, because today he had to look like a gem, like the great big diamond of his father’s heart. And she warned him solemnly that she would break every bone in his body if he was not a good boy on this day.

  He protested, though, when she tried to make him wear a pair of white stockings, left over from his cousin Rachel’s childhood. What did she want, all the guys to call him sissy? Did she want he should come home with black eyes?

  No, she only wanted him to look like a prince. She only knew that white was the color for the rich, the great, the respected.

  In the old country, yah, but how many times did he have to tell her this wasn’t the old country? How many times did he have to tell her that he didn’t live in a palace or a schule, but in the United States, on a street in the Northwest Side of Chicago called Thomas Street, where the only kind of stars you saw came from fists, how many times?

  All right, she’d let him wear black stockings.

  She then almost strangled him with an old necktie of his father’s, which was so long that he felt it below his groin after tucking it into his pants. But what was she going to do with his hair, his wild Indian hair? Beads of sweat burst out on her forehead as she struggled with it. At last, with the help of the Vaseline and after breaking half the teeth of the fine-toothed comb, she managed to get what resembled a part.

  Finally, his neck craning from the wrinkled collar and tightly knotted tie, his belly cramped by the belts of his baggy pants and loose jacket, his mother beamed at his shiny face, his sticky blond hair, his blue eyes, his small bony nose, his fair skin, his protruding ears, his bulging lips, and proclaimed him a beauty, a picture of a boy.

  “My beauty, my gem, my handsome Cossack,” she said, as though chewing him up through the expressions. “Papa will never recognize you. You’ve grown so big since he went away. Papa will eat himself alive at the sight of you. Now go to school before I eat you up.”

  But before he left, her face changed, became stern, “Remember,” she warned him, “I’ll break every bone in your body if you’re not a good boy today, if you come home dirty.”

  Then he left, watching over himself and his new clothes as though he were carrying eggs, the terrible responsibility of keeping himself clean and good for a whole day being almost unbearable, making him wish, almost, that his father was not coming home. Outside, he remembered, luckily, to kiss the mezuzah on the front door entrance: that might help him out; anyway, it was supposed to keep all evil away. On the way, the spirit of his father suddenly appeared to aid him further, for in him stirred a powerful incantation his father had taught him long ago.

  One evening, he remembered, while alone on the street, a shadow had begun to flutter about him. The thing paralyzed him, but just as it reached to swallow him up he screamed and ran into the house. His father lifted him to his chest and held him close until his wild heart was calmed, and when he found out what had happened his father wrinkled his brow and then decided to let him share the knowledge of a great magic secret, which had been handed down by the old sages of Israel.

  “From now on,” his father said, “when you’re alone and frightened, all you have to do is say: ‘Shabriri …’”

  “Shabriri,” Hershy repeated.

  “Briri.”

  “Briri.”

  “Riri.”

  “Riri.”

  “Iri.”

  “Iri.”

  “Ri.”

  “Ri.”

  “Repeat it.”

  Heshy repeated the chant and then said: “So what happens when I say that?”

  “If you say that, and while you’re saying it, anything that frightens you will begin to shrink, until, as it hears its name grow smaller and smaller, it becomes nothing, vanishes, pouf, like smoke. See?”

  It was a powerful piece of magic, for since then, whenever he was alone and frightened, nothing had ever happened to him after he spoke these strange words.

  Now, to fortify himself further, he said aloud: “Shabriri … briri … riri … iri … RI.”

  Now, he said it.

  Now nothing could happen to him.

  And, strangely enough, nothing did. He was teased and taunted, certainly, but not
enough to get fighting mad; he was too well protected. He didn’t even mind it when the guys went to the park to play football after school. And, when he got home, even his mother was surprised.

  He had come quietly up the back stairs and stood for a moment looking through the kitchen windows. His mother sat stiffly at the kitchen table in her best black dress with the white lace collar, staring at the nickel-plated alarm clock that stood on top of the stove. Her hair, dipped along her forehead and braided in a thick biscuit in back, was still wet from a recent bath and had a patent-leather luster; and her face, with its strong nose, gleaming cheekbones, full lips, and deeply set eyes, seemed set in a frame of lace. The room was immaculate, with the bleached oak floor still damp from scrubbing; there was a wet sheen on the sink, the polished coal stove, and the oilcloth on the table.

  “Man,” he said, startling her as he walked in. “Man alive, is it clean.”

  She studied him carefully, and then said: “You’re a good boy, Hershel. An angel.”

  “Because I didn’t get dirty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Papa helped me.”

  She became excited. How? Had he seen Papa? Where was he?

  “It was Papa’s magic helped me. I gave everybody the Shabriri. See?”

  She relaxed, sighing from the depths of her swollen corseted bosom, and smiled. He liked the way her eyes gleamed and the way her face grew round and soft when she smiled.

  “You look pretty, Ma.”

  She kissed his hair and stroked it with her hand. “I wish Papa was here already,” she said.

  “Me too. He’ll see me in my brand-new clothes and then I’ll be able to get in my old clothes and go out and play.”

  “Play here.”

  He looked around, wondering what to do. He couldn’t go into the front room and ride the rocking chair; his mother wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t play with her; she was too old. Maybe he could practice up on his catching. He took a sponge ball out of a drawer in the pantry, where he kept his belongings, and began to bounce it off the wall.

  “Hershel.”

  “What?”

  “I just cleaned the house.”

  “So?”

  “So stop it.”

  “So what’ll I do?”

  “Something else.”

  He put the ball away and saw his marbles in the drawer. He took a few out, placed them on the floor, then got on his hands and knees and, with his bull’s-eye knick, tried to hit them.

  “Hershel.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look what you’re doing with your new suit.

  “But the floor’s clean, Ma.”

  “You’ll wear the pants out.”

  “Crying out loud, Ma, what’ll I do?”

  He picked up the marbles and reluctantly shot them into his drawer. He studied the pop-bottle corks and some of his father’s old union buttons, then drew out a stack of limp cards with pictures of baseball players. He propped them up one by one on the windowsill and tried to imitate the batting, pitching, and catching forms of the great ballplayers.

  “Hershel, can’t you sit still for a minute?”

  “Aw, Ma, I got to do something.”

  “Then read me a story.”

  “Ah, all right.”

  “What will you read?” she asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know. What? History, Geography, Good Health?”

  “Good Health.”

  He brought out the Good Health book, opened it on the table, and began riffling the pages. Hey, there was a lulu, one he hadn’t read aloud yet. All about the Black Hole of Calcutta. He began reading laboriously, but his mother followed closely, nodding her head, gasping, folding and unfolding her hands, stirring in her chair. When he finished, she said: “Is that true, Hershel?”

  “Sure, Ma. It’s in the book. It got to be true.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “So from now on, Ma, we got to have the windows open at night, even in the winter.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What do you mean, we’ll see? What do you want us to do, die some night from the bad air? You want us to keep on breathing poison all the time?”

  “It’ll cost too much to heat the house.”

  “It’ll cost more if we get flu or something.”

  “Robbers could get in through an open window.”

  “Robbers! What could they steal?”

  “Shut up.”

  He knew that she hated to be reminded that there was nothing of great value in the house. But he insisted: “How about it, Ma?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He knew that from now on there’d be open windows in the house. She believed in the Good Health book. So did he, but he wouldn’t always admit it, especially when the book prescribed things that hurt, like iodine.

  “Now what, Ma?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were misty and there was a distant look in them. “All I’ve missed,” she said, shaking her head. “Like a pig I was brought up. I have to come to a child to learn, to a child that I should be teaching.”

  “That’s all right, Ma.” But he liked the sense of power he got from teaching her; he liked her dependence on him for certain information which only his father could give before he went away. Maybe his mother was right; there was something holy about the written word. “You want me to read something else?”

  “No, sweetheart.”

  “So what’ll we do?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Can I go in the front room and ride on the rocker?”

  “No, you’ll get it dirty. I didn’t clean all day for nothing.”

  “Then how about letting me play shooters or with the rubber ball?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me go out;” He saw her hesitate. “Aw, Ma, I got to do something. I won’t do nothing outside, I promise. I’ll just wait for Pa. Maybe he won’t be able to find the house. So I’ll see him and show him where it is. Yah, Ma, that’s a good idea.”

  “But you won’t get dirty?”

  “I promise.”

  “Remember, Hershel, if you do.”

  “I’ll just wait for Pa.”

  Released, at last, he banged the kitchen door shut and jumped down the rutted back stairs three at a time.

  Outside, a few girls were playing jacks on a porch, and below them a girl was skipping rope, but he couldn’t play with them. Some little kids were shooting marbles on the earth between the sidewalk and the curb. When he tried to butt into their game to show them how to really play, they began to yell and swear at him. A few big guys, standing outside their basement social and athletic club, chased him away when he tried to listen in on their conversation. He wished his own pals were on the street instead of in the park playing football. They were a fine bunch of guys, he told himself, leaving him alone. He’d get even with them someday.

  “What do you say, Pa?” he said aloud. “Come on home already.”

  He picked up a chicken-coop stick and ran it over the separated slats of a wooden fence. Suddenly, in hearing the clunking sound, a kind of music seemed to thrum out of the fence, and he became a part of the street’s rhythm. He kicked a can and caught a cymbal tone from the asphalt pavement as the can clanked along. He jumped high in the air: a brittle twig snapped as he flicked it, he crunched over some dried leaves that fell, and he felt that he himself had set the rustling tree above in motion. A horse and wagon clattered by, and then Tony the bananaman filled the street with his lusty voice. Windows screeched along their rusty lines, and women poked their heads out to call Tony or to listen. Their calls were like a shrieking chorus behind Tony’s big, buoyant voice. Hershy thought: someday he’d get a big belly like Tony, tie a red-and-black handkerchief around his neck, and become a singer: O solo mio, O solo you-O. Even his own mother leaned out of the window and shook her head while listening.

  “No bananas today?” Tony sang to his mother.

  “No bananas today,” his mother sang
back, followed by pleased laughter.

  “Oh, that Tony,” Mrs. White shrilled. “He should of been in the opera.”

  The voices died down, seemed to flutter through the passageways, from where the wash could be seen on the clothesline, and in their stead came a whipping breeze that filled up a sleeve, a shirt, a bedsheet, a towel, a stocking, a pair of bloomers.

  Hershy then gazed longingly at the fences framed about the lawns. He wanted to jump on them and walk on them, but resisted the temptation; he might fall off and get dirty. Anyhow, he was the world’s champion fence-walker, so he didn’t need too much practice any more. But someday he was going to get a wire or a strong rope and string it across his back yard and practice for the circus. Hershy the Great. There’d be a big spotlight on him, like the way he had seen it as a little kid the time his father had taken him to the circus; he’d be a million miles above the people, touching the sky, and they’d look to him like pebbles with open mouths. Hershy the Great. Then he’d get off the street and live in a palace like a king with his mother and father and Rachel. King Saul. King David. King Solomon. And King Hershy. Hershy the King. But the crown of the king became heavy on his head. It meant leaving the street and the guys. He didn’t want to do that. Not after all the fights he had had. Not after getting to know it so well.

  He knew the street when it had ice on it and when the asphalt got sticky from the heat; he had jumped, walked, hopscotched, slid, coasted, fallen, and played over every inch of it. He knew the curbs from sitting on them and leaping from them, from using them as bases on the corner when playing kick-the-can baseball, and from the angry, cracking, popping sounds they made when he and his gang roasted potatoes in a bonfire. He knew the sewers, especially how to stuff the drains with leaves on a rainy day so that he could go wading and sail paper boats; he knew the sewers, too, from being lowered into them, with a big guy holding his ankles, to fish for the grimy balls that fell in. He knew every back yard, passageway, basement, and back porch from playing hide, redlight, and run-sheep-run. He knew the garbage-heaped alleys from rat-hunting expeditions. And he knew the magic of the night, under the yellow arcs of the lampposts. Gee, how he knew this street—better than any he had ever lived on. Simply because he had lived on it longer.