Disturbances in the Field (40 page)

I’m in the Koreans’ place rather than the Cubans’ grocery not merely because the fruits and vegetables here are better and cheaper, but also because I resolved a while ago no longer to subject myself to the political views of the Cuban store’s Jewish fruit man. The fruit man lost his entire family in a concentration camp in Poland. He barely escaped, clawing his way through the forests of Poland with the Germans at his heels. From his descriptions I envision Poland as a heavily wooded country. As he dropped McIntosh apples into a paper bag, he would tell me of his journey with a numbed but unyielding wrath, in a flat sneering voice that was a personal accusation and a threat. His face would go as gray as his smock. Imagine, forty years later—and here his voice would shrink to a whisper—he has to listen all day long to the anti-Semitic remarks of his Hispanic and black co-workers. They hate him but he pretends not to hear, what does he care? If I chatted with the black and Spanish clerks his eyes would brood over me, mocking and resentful. “So, what do you think about what happened to us now?” was a frequent greeting. “Us” means Israel. A raid on a kibbutz, children killed. Terrible, I groan. “Animals,” he sneers. “Why do you think they call them gorillas?” Yes, terrible. But that would not suffice. No other nation in the world has any moral probity. “We are the best people in the world.” “We” never hurt anyone, just mind our business, unlike local muggers. He waits for me to agree. My response is judged halfhearted; he says I understand nothing, nothing. Ever since the Republicans were turned out of office in 1976, he informs me, the Jews have had nothing but trouble. Is that true? Hastily I would try to recall recent history, but before I can get anywhere: Do I know—he shakes a finger while he weighs my bananas—who would be the best President for Israel? No, who? Nixon. Nixon? Oh, come on, Mr. Zeitlowitz. Sure! What would be so terrible? Doesn’t everyone cheat a little? Ah, they made such a fuss over that business. But when he was President things were good for Israel. But ... but—I try not to splutter—but what about
us?
How about what would be good for
us?
(How about not even arguing with him?) If anything happens to that little country out there, he threatens, shaking the ringer in my face, where would those poor people go? I retreat from the finger. “I don’t want anything to happen to them. Did I say that? I wish them all the best.” “You just don’t have the feeling I do,” he accuses with a weak smile. I can’t deny that. Guilty! I did not claw my way through the forests of Poland. “So!” He spreads out his arms, a paper bag of fruit dangling from each hand. “We disagree! That’s that!” He gives me a sardonic, condescending smile: how stupid she is. Actually I should be flattered: it is the kind of smile reserved for intimates,
landsman,
whose loyalty can be taken for granted. He thinks he sees through me, and perhaps he does. “Okay, then, that’s that.” I too smile familiarly, and reach for the bags of fruit. “But if anything happens to Israel,” he snarls, shoving the bags at me with contempt, “it will be here just like in Nazi Germany.” He nods his head up and down ominously, twice. “You’ll see!”

I would slink away reminding myself that above all I must remember and respect his sufferings and not hold him to account, and therefore when the Koreans’ store opened with its beautifully superior fruits and vegetables and the fruit man’s customers deserted him, I remained. I suppose I wanted to demonstrate something to him, more out of pride, I see now, than humility: did I imagine my loyalty could nullify the Second World War? But the tirades became unbearable. Loudly, he cursed his defecting customers. “They’ll see! They’ll see! It’s garbage they’re buying over there. Horse manure! What do they know from fruit! You think I care? Listen, I been through worse. I been through plenty troubles.” And lowering his voice, he would recount once again clawing his way through the forests of Poland with the Russians at his heels. “The Russians?” “Sure, you think the Russians were any better than the Germans? Ah, a baby—what do you know? They’re all the same, every one of them.”

I raised the dilemma one night at dinner. I told the children about the fruit man’s sad past, the loss of his family, and about the better fruit in the Korean market. The economics of
laissez-faire
was heartless; how far must I compensate? Where should we shop? Althea’s opinion was prompt as usual. “You say the fruit in the Koreans’ place is better and cheaper?” “Yes.” “And besides that, you don’t like him?” “Yes. I mean, no. It’s hard to say, really.” She gave a disdainful shrug. “It seems to me there’s nothing to discuss.” Phil didn’t care where we got our fruit. He wanted to be excused; he had to call someone about the trigonometry homework. As he left he took an apple from the refrigerator. Alan and Vivian agreed that I should keep going to Mr. Zeitlowitz. “His fruit was good enough before, wasn’t it?” said Alan. “So make believe the other place never opened. Then you won’t have a problem.” “And whatever he says,” Vivian added, “you can just smile sweetly and keep your thoughts to yourself.” Ah yes, I knew that strategy from growing up with Evelyn, but I doubted if I could carry it off.

Althea said, “You people amaze me. I mean, we didn’t persecute him. From what I gather, he persecutes you.”

“Yes, I serve a purpose for him. I think in a way he needs me.”

Althea laughed, and then we all laughed.

Victor suggested that we buy some fruit from Mr. Zeitlowitz and some in the Korean store, which surprised me—I had expected him to react as Althea did. But that was impractical and time-consuming, I replied, besides which it was embarrassing to walk into one fruit store carrying a bag from another. That might inflame Mr. Zeitlowitz further. By this time Althea was laughing uncontrollably.

“You don’t need to be a human sacrifice, Lydie,” said Victor. “You go to the Koreans and I’ll go to him, for your conscience. He never bothers me.”

“Yes, and why not? That’s an interesting point. Have you ever thought about that? No, it wouldn’t be the same if you went.”

I took an apple from the refrigerator. It had a large soft brown spot. I examined another. Every apple in the refrigerator had at least one large and spreading soft brown spot. This is truly absurd, I thought. Althea is right.

So I started going to the Korean fruit market, where the air is hushed and smells of crisp wet greens. The proprietors do not burden me with their psychopolitical woes but nod with consummate reticence. Today as always I nod in return at mother, father, and son, and arms laden, limp on towards Woolworth’s. The sober mien of people hunting down the essential trivia is pleasantly contagious, and I too grow intent as I choose: Scotch tape, a note pad, shampoo, a measuring cup. Rounding a bend, I pass a rack of coloring books. It was both for charity and for spite that he bought me one when I was disintegrating in the walk-up flat on East Twenty-first Street, panicked that I had no identity. Now, with my identity so fixed and compulsory, that state seems enviable. On display are
Star Wars
coloring books,
Superman
coloring books,
Sesame Street, Flintstones.
None of those would suit me. Half hidden behind
The Partridge Family
is a
Medieval Times
coloring book: knights on horseback jousting in tournaments; monks and prioresses; cathedrals (the possibilities for stained glass!); lusty peasants gathering at the town well; ladies-in-waiting in luscious low-bosomed gowns. It reminds me of Chaucer. Griselda in all her pomp, before she was stripped down to her smok. I buy it. I buy a box of sixty-four Crayolas and head home, clawing my way through the forests of Broadway, only no one is at my heels. No one will even look at me. They avoid me the way I avoid the fruit man. I may yet come to resemble the fruit man.

Back home I listen to the recording of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with Hephzibah Menuhin playing the piano part. Rosalie wants to do the “Trout” at an important concert at Lincoln Center this fall and I have promised to think it over. Rosalie is excited at the prospect: she has a violist and a bass player lined up, and waits on my decision. I should be playing it rather than listening, but not today. Today I indulge. Let her wait. Hephzibah’s suave playing begins like a controlled ripple. She launches with vigor into her first solo, and I curl up in the soft wing chair and leaf through the pages of my
Medieval Times
coloring book. The ladies-in-waiting, perhaps? When the doorbell rings I hide the book and the unopened box of Crayolas under the cushion. Patricia with the baby carriage. “I wonder, Lydia. ... It’s starting to sort of rain and I’ve got to—”

“Of course, bring him on in.”

“Fifteen minutes is all.”

She races to the elevator to show her good intentions. Bobby sleeps serene on his blue satin pillow; his cheeks are puffed out from sucking; his long brown lashes flutter a jot with each deep breath. Hephzibah eases into a lyrical passage with wit and finesse. She is dead, died some five months ago, early January, at age sixty, and
The New York Times
headed her obituary, “Hephzibah Menuhin, Sister of Violinist.” Once more in my chair, I cannot choose from an embarrassment of riches—the potentially gorgeous dresses of the ladies, or the cathedral at Amiens, which I could do like Monet. Derivative. I hesitate; to color anything would be crossing to a place from which it might be hard to return. And yet it is so seductive, staying in the lines. This time the phone rings.

“Hello. Is this Mrs. Rowe? This is Miss Fosdick, from New York Telephone.” What a musical, ingratiating voice. In those few words she has tripped through almost an octave. She announces that our telephone number is going to be changed. We will be given our new number within the month.

“Hold on a minute, will you?” I turn down the “Trout” at a
crescendo
in the second movement. “Now, what’s this all about?”

Certain of the numbers in this neighborhood must be changed for technical reasons. Miss Fosdick is extremely sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, and will be glad to supply me and my family with fifty postcards for notifying our friends and associates. From the voice I can see Miss Fosdick, ruddy-cheeked, hailing from someplace wholesome like Nebraska, with pert, pointy breasts and short athletic legs; she was lately graduated from the state university with honors and came to the big city to pursue a career. She was picked for Customer Relations because of her faultless diction and the cordial, ingenuous smile in her voice. I, on the other hand, seem all at once to be shouting.

“You can’t do that! That number is mine! You can’t just ... take it away like that! Who do you think you are? You big corporations think you can push people around however you like. Well, I’ve been paying for that number for nine years and I intend to keep it. You can take your new number and you know what you can do with it.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Rowe,” says Miss Fosdick ever so gently. “We’re aware that it will be a disruption, especially for people who’ve had their number for a long time and have paid the bills promptly as you’ve always done. Unfortunately, technical problems require that we—”

“Technical problems! What are technical problems anyway?”

They turn out to be much too boring to listen to. They also sound inexorable. “Fifty postcards!” I interrupt. “How far do you think I can get with fifty postcards!” I don’t really believe this hysterical sound is my own. Some harpy is lodged in my throat. “We would need at least two hundred! I work out of my home. I have students, colleagues. And my husband ...We have a very large family, they all have friends!”

“In that case we’ll be glad to let you have a hundred postcards, Mrs. Rowe. No problem.”

I sink to the floor, exhausted, and say weakly, “But we’re all very attached to that number. After so long it becomes a part ...”

“I understand,” Miss Fosdick says very softly. Like a psychiatric nurse, trained for any eventuality or maniac. “But you’ll get attached to your new one too, I’m sure. You’ll be surprised at how quickly it happens.” We are like adversaries in a Greek tragedy, Miss Fosdick and I, where the hero learns to yield to Necessity—in this case corporate necessity—represented by some mean-spirited goddess.

When I hang up it is perfectly quiet. The record has stopped and Bobby is asleep. Sitting on the floor, still for the first time today, I feel the fact that Victor has gone like an intermittent thorny migraine; it intrudes whenever it can; it may be assuaged, blunted, or ignored, but not expunged. He left Monday morning with a suitcase. He would be staying at his studio for a while, he said, till ... “Till I don’t know, Lyd, till things work themselves out. This is no good for either of us. It makes it more painful. It isn’t livable.” I think he went to the Montessori teacher rather than the studio, though it hardly matters which. I pictured him not on the subway headed for West Houston Street but on the Broadway bus, requesting a transfer for the eastbound crosstown at Sixty-fifth. Or maybe he walked across the park—it was a balmy May day and the suitcase was small. If she gave him a key perhaps he stretched out on the white shag rug in all his glory and waited for her to return from school.

It was not a question of loving or not loving, he said, as if he had passed beyond such banalities. No; to be quite fair to him, he meant his love was not in question. It was irreversible (Heraclitus, I thought: the way up and the way down, reversible, ceaseless). He loved me, except he couldn’t live with me this way. This was late Sunday night, sitting at the kitchen table with only the dim light over the oven lit. It was labor enough to get himself moving every morning; he couldn’t face the way I was taking it besides. Anything else—if I screamed or went wild or didn’t speak at all. But my “sleekness,” he said. We were drinking tea and eating gorp and his mouth was full: Althea’s gorp, heavy on the figs. “Was that slick or sleek?” I asked. “Sleek,” he said carefully. “I can’t even approach.”

We appear unapproachable but we could approach each other easily, he said more than twenty years ago in the bar near the unfinished cathedral. “Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember. It’s my life too, you know. It was true then. It isn’t any more. When you’re young you think those truths are going to last forever.” He really meant it. His voice was even, his eyes steady. Still strong but older: he had lost his look of temperate eagerness.