Portnoy's Complaint (7 page)

Only what about the hatred we lavished upon them?

And what about Heshie and Alice? What did
that
mean?

When all else failed. Rabbi Warshaw was asked to join with the family one Sunday afternoon, to
 
urge our Heshie not to take his young life and turn it over to his own worst enemy. I watched from behind a shade in the living room, as the rabbi strode impressively up the front stoop in his big black coat. He had given Heshie his bar mitzvah lessons, and I trembled to think that one day he would give me mine. He remained in consultation with the defiant boy and the blighted family for over an hour. Over an hour of his time, they all said later, as though that alone should have changed Heshie's mind. But no sooner did the rabbi depart than the flakes of plaster began falling once again from the ceiling overhead. A door flew open-and I ran for the back of the house, to crouch down behind the shade in my parents' bedroom. There was Heshie into the yard, pulling at his own black hair. Then came bald Uncle Hymie, one fist shaking violently in the air-like Lenin he looked! And then the mob of aunts and uncles and elder cousins, swarming between the two so as to keep them from grinding one another into a little heap of Jewish dust.

One Saturday early in May, after competing all day in a statewide track meet in New Brunswick, Heshie got back to the high school around dusk, and went immediately across to the local hangout to telephone Alice and tell her that he had placed third in the state in the javelin throw. She told him that she could never see him again as long as he lived, and hung up.

At home Uncle Hymie was ready and waiting: what he had done, he said, Heshie had forced him to do; what his father had had to do that day, Harold had brought down himself upon his own stubborn, stupid head. It was as though a blockbuster had finally fallen upon Newark, so terrifying was the sound that broke on the stairway: Hesh came charging out of his parents' apartment, down the stairs, past our door, and into the cellar, and one long
boom
rolled after him. We saw later that he had ripped the cellar door from its topmost hinge with the force of a shoulder that surely seemed from that piece of evidence to be
at
least
the third most powerful shoulder in the state. Beneath our floorboards the breaking of glass began almost immediately, as he buried bottle after bottle of Squeeze from one dark end of the whitewashed cellar to the other.

When my uncle appeared at the top of the cellar steps, Heshie raised a bottle over his head and threatened to throw it in his father's face if he advanced so much as a step down the stairway. Uncle Hymie ignored the warning and started after him. Heshie now began to race in and out between the furnaces, to circle and circle the washing machines-still wielding the bottle of Squeeze. But my uncle stalked him into a corner, wrestled him to the floor, and held him there until Heshie had screamed his last obscenity-held him there (so Portnoy legend has it)
fifteen
minutes,
until the tears of surrender at last appeared on his Heshie's long dark Hollywood lashes. We are not a family that takes defection lightly.

That morning Uncle Hymie had telephoned Alice Dembosky (in the basement flat of an apartment building on Goldsmith Avenue, where her father was the janitor) and told her that he wanted to meet her by the lake in Weequahic Park at noon; it was a very urgent matter involving Harold's health-he could not talk at length on the phone, as even Mrs. Portnoy didn't know all the facts.
 
At the park, he drew the skinny blonde wearing the babushka into the front seat of the car, and with the windows rolled up, told her that his son had an incurable blood disease, a disease about which the poor boy himself did not even know. That was his story, bad blood, make of it what you will . . . It was the doctor's orders that he should not marry anyone, ever. How much longer Harold had to live no one really knew, but as far as Mr. Portnoy was concerned, he did not want to inflict the suffering that was to come, upon an innocent young person like herself. To soften the blow he wanted to offer the girl a gift, a little something that she could use however she wished, maybe even to help her find somebody new. He drew from his pocket an envelope containing five twenty-dollar bills. And dumb, frightened Alice Dembosky took it. Thus proving something that everybody but Heshie (and I) had surmised about the Polack from the beginning: that her plan was to take Heshie for all his father's money, and then ruin his life.

When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, At least he didn't leave you with a
shikse
wife. At least he didn't leave you with
goyische
children.

End of Heshie and his story.

Even if I consider myself too much of a big shot to set foot inside a synagogue for fifteen minutes-which is all he is asking-at least I should have respect enough to change into decent clothes for the day and not make a mockery of myself, my family, and my religion.

I'm sorry, I mumble, my back (as is usual) all I will offer him to look at while I speak, but just because it's your religion doesn't mean it's mine.

What did you say? Turn around, mister, I want the courtesy of a reply from your mouth.

I don't have a religion, I say, and obligingly turn in his direction, about a fraction of a degree.

You don't, eh?

“I can’t.”

And why not? You're something special? Look at me! You're somebody too special?

I don't believe in God.

Get out of those dungarees, Alex, and put on some decent clothes.

They're not dungarees, they're Levis.

It's Rosh Hashanah, Alex, and to me you're wearing overalls! Get in there and put a tie on and a jacket on and a pair of trousers and a clean shirt, and come out looking like a human being. And shoes, Mister, hard shoes.

My shirt
is
clean-

Oh, you're riding for a fall, Mr. Big. You're fourteen years old, and believe me, you don't know everything there is to know. Get out of those moccasins! What the hell are you supposed to be, some kind of Indian?

Look, I don't believe in God and I don't believe in the Jewish religion-or in any religion. They're all lies.

Oh, they are, are they?

I'm not going to act like these holidays mean anything when they don't! And that's all I'm saying!

Maybe they don't mean anything because you don't know anything about them, Mr. Big Shot. What do you know about the history of Rosh Hashanah? One fact? Two facts maybe? What do you know about the history the Jewish people, that you have the right to call their religion, that's been good enough for people a lot smarter than you and a lot older than you for two thousand years -that you can call all that suffering and heartache a lie!

There is no such thing as God, and there never was, and I'm sorry, but in my vocabulary that's a lie.

Then who created the world, Alex? he asks contemptuously. It just happened, I suppose, according to you.

Alex, says my sister, all Daddy means is even if you don't want to go with him, if you would just change your clothes-

But for what? I scream. For something that never existed? Why don't you tell me to go outside and change my clothes for some alley cat or some tree-
because
at least
they
exist!

But you haven't answered me, Mr. Educated Wise Guy,”' my father says. Don't try to change the issue. Who created the world and the people in it? Nobody?

Right! Nobody!

Oh, sure, says my father. That's brilliant. I'm glad I didn't get to high school if that's how brilliant it makes you.

Alex, my sister says, and softly-as is her way-softly, because she is already broken a little bit too- maybe if you just put on a pair of shoes-

But you're as bad as he is, Hannah! If there's no God, what do shoes have to do with it!

One day a year you ask him to do something for you, and he's too big for it. And that's the whole story, Hannah, of your brother, of his respect and love . . .

Daddy, he's a good boy. He does respect you, he does love you-

And what about the Jewish people? He is shouting now and waving his arms, hoping that this will prevent him from breaking into tears-because the word love has only to be whispered in our house for all eyes immediately to begin to overflow. Does he respect them? Just as much as he respects me, just about as much . . . Suddenly he is sizzling-he turns on me with another new and brilliant thought. Tell me something, do you know Talmud, my educated son? Do you know history? One-two-three you were bar mitzvah, and that for you was the end of your religious education. Do you know men study their whole lives in the Jewish religion, and when they die they still haven't finished? Tell me, now that you are all finished at fourteen being a Tew, do you know a single thing about the wonderful history and heritage of the saga of your people

But there are already tears on his cheeks, and more are on the way from his eyes.
A's
in school, he says, but in life he's as ignorant as the day he was born.

Well, it looks as though the time has come at last-so I say it. It's something I've known for a little while now.

You're the ignorant one! You!

A
lex!” cries my sister, grabbing for my hand, as though fearful I may actually raise it against him.

But
he
is!
With
all
that
stupid
saga
shit!

Quiet! Still! Enough! cries Hannah. Go to your room-

-While my father carries himself to the kitchen table, his head sunk forward and his body doubled over, as though he has just taken a hand grenade in his stomach. Which he has. Which I know. You can wear rags for all I care, you can dress like a peddler, you can shame and embarrass me all you want, curse me, Alexander, defy me, hit me, hate me-

The way it usually works, my mother cries in the kitchen, my father cries in the living room-hiding his eyes behind the
Newark
News-
Hannah cries in the bathroom, and I cry on the run between our house and the pinball machine at the corner. But on this particular Rosh Hashanah everything is disarranged, and why my father is crying in the kitchen instead of my mother-why he sobs without protection of the newspaper, and with such pitiful fury-is because my mother is in a hospital bed recovering from surgery: this indeed accounts for his excrutiating loneliness on this Rosh Hashanah, and his particular need of my affection and obedience. But at this moment in the history of our family, if he needs it, you can safely bet money that he is not going to get it from me. Because my need is not to give it to him! Oh, yes, we'll turn the tables on him, all right, won't we, Alex you little prick! Yes, Alex the little prick finds that his father's ordinary day-to-day vulnerability is somewhat aggravated by the fact that the man's wife (or so they tell me) has very nearly
 
expired, and so Alex the little prick takes the opportunity to drive the dagger of his resentment just a few inches deeper into what is already a bleeding heart. Alexander the Great!

No! There's more here than just adolescent resentment and Oedipal rage-there's my integrity! I will not do what Heshie did! For I go through childhood
convinced
that had he only wanted to, my powerful cousin Heshie, the third best javelin thrower in all New Jersey ( an honor, I would think, rich in symbolism for this growing boy, with visions of jockstraps dancing in his head), could easily have flipped my fifty-year-old uncle over onto his back, and pinned him to the cellar floor. So then (I conclude) he must have lost on purpose. But why? For he knew-
I
surely knew it, even as a child-that his father had done something dishonorable. Was he then
afraid
to win? But why, when his own father had acted so vilely, and in Heshie's behalf! Was it cowardice? fear?-or perhaps was it Heshie's wisdom? Whenever the story is told of what my uncle was forced to do to make my dead cousin see the light, or whenever I have cause to reflect upon the event myself, I sense some enigma at its center, a profound moral truth, which if only I could grasp, might save me and my own father from some ultimate, but unimaginable, confrontation.
Why
did
Heshie
capitulate?
 
And
should
I?
But how can I, and still remain true to myself Oh, but why don't I just try! Give it a little try, you little prick! So
don’t
be so true to yourself for half an hour!

Yes, I must give in, I
must,
particularly as I know all my father has been through, what minute by minute
 
misery there has been for him during these tens of thousands of minutes it has taken the doctors to determine, first, that there was something growing in my mother's uterus, and second, whether the growth they finally located was malignant . . . whether what she had was . . . oh, that word we cannot even speak in one another's presence! the word we cannot even spell out in all its horrible entirety! the word we allude to only by the euphemistic abbreviation that she herself supplied us with before entering the hospital for her tests: C-A. And
genug!
The
n,
the
c,
the
e,
the r, we don't need to hear to frighten us to Kingdom Come! How brave she is, all our relatives agree, just to utter those two letters! And aren't there enough whole words as it is to whisper at each other behind closed doors? There are! There are! Ugly and cold little words reeking of the ether and alcohol of hospital corridors, words with all the appeal of sterilized surgical instruments, words like
smear
and
biopsy
. . . And then there are the words that furtively, at home alone, I used to look up in the dictionary just to
see
them there in print, the hard evidence of that most remote of all realities, words like
 
and
vagina
and
cervix
, words whose definitions will never again serve me as a source of illicit pleasure . . . And then there is that word we wait and wait and wait to hear, the word whose utterance will restore to our family what now seems to have been the most wonderful and satisfying of lives, that word that sounds to my ear like Hebrew, like
b'nai
or
boruch
-benign!
Benign
! Boruch atoh Adonai
, let it be benign
! Blessed art thou O Lord Our God,
let it be benign
! Hear O Israel, and shine down thy countenance, and the Lord is One, and honor thy father, and honor thy mother, and I will I will I promise I will-
only let it be benign
!