The Young Lions (7 page)

"Flesh," Jacob said, his voice still rolling and deep, even on his last pillow, "flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, you are being punished for the sins of my body and the sins of my soul."

O God, Noah thought, looking down at his father, why must he always speak like a blank-verse shepherd giving dictation to a secretary on a hill in Judea?

"Don't smile." Jacob peered sharply at him, his eyes surprisingly bright and knowing in the dark hollows of his face.

"Don't smile, my son, my brother is burning for you."

"I'm not smiling, Father." Noah touched Jacob's forehead soothingly. The skin was hot and sandy and Noah could feel a small, twitching revulsion in his fingertips.

Jacob's face was contorted in oratorical scorn. "You stand there in your cheap American clothes and you think, 'What has he to do with me? He is a stranger to me. I have never seen him and if he dies, in the furnace in Europe, what of it? People die every minute all over the world.' He is not a stranger to you. He is a Jew and the world is hunting him, and you are a Jew and the world is hunting you."

He closed his eyes in exhaustion and Noah thought, if he only talked in simple, honest language, you would be moved, affected. After all, a father dying, obsessed with the thought of a murdered brother five thousand miles away, a single man at his loneliest moment, feeling the ghost insecure and fleeting in his throat, mourning for the fate of his people all over the world, was a touching and tragic thing. And while it was true that to him, Noah, there was no sense of immediacy or personal tragedy in what was happening in Europe, intellectually and rationally he could feel the sombre weight of it. But long years of his father's rhetoric, his father's stagey gesturing for effect, had robbed Noah of all ability to be moved by him. All he could think of as he stood there looking at the grey face, listening to the heaving breath, was, Good God, the old man is going to keep it up to the end.

"When I left him," his father said, without opening his eyes, "when I left Odessa in 1903, Israel gave me eighteen roubles and he said to me, 'You're no good. Congratulations. Take my advice. Stick to women. America can't be that different from the rest of the world. Women will be idiots there too. They will support you.' We didn't shake hands, and I left. He should have shaken my hand, no matter what, don't you think, Noah?" Suddenly his father's voice was changed. It was small and without timbre and it did not remind Noah of a stage performance.

"Noah…"

"Yes, Father?"

"Don't you think he should have shaken my hand?"

"Yes, Father."

"Noah…"

"Yes, Father…"

"Shake my hand, Noah."

After a moment, Noah leaned over and picked up his father's dry, broad hand. The skin was flaked, and the nails, usually exquisitely cared for, pared and polished, were long and jagged and had crescents of dirt under them. They shook hands. Noah could feel the thin, restless, uneven pressure of the fingers.

"All right, all right…" Jacob said, suddenly peevish, and pulled his hand away, caught in some inexplicable vision of his own. "All right, enough." He sighed, stared up at the ceiling.

"Noah…"

"Yes?"

"Have you a pencil and paper?"

"Yes."

"Write this down…"

Noah went over to the table and sat down. He picked up a pencil and took out a sheet of the flimsy white paper with an engraving of the Sea View Hotel on it, surrounded by sweeping lawns and tall trees, without basis in real life, but convincing and holiday-like on the stationery.

"To Israel Ackerman," Jacob said in a plain, business-like voice, "29 Kloster Strasse, Hamburg, Germany."

"But, Father," Noah began.

"Write it in Hebrew," Jacob said, "if you can't write German. He's not very well educated, but he'll manage to understand."

"Yes, Father." Noah couldn't write Hebrew or German, but he didn't see any sense in telling his father.

"My dear brother… Have you got that?"

"Yes, Father."

"I am ashamed of myself for not having written sooner," Jacob began, "but you can well imagine how busy I've been. Soon after coming to America… Have you got that, Noah?"

"Yes," Noah said, making aimless little scratches on the paper. "I have it."

"Soon after coming to America…" Jacob's voice rolled on, low and full of effort in the damp room, "I went into a large business. I worked hard, although I know you will not believe it, and I was promoted from one important position to another. In eighteen months I became the most valuable member of the firm. I was made a partner and I married the daughter of the owner of the business, a Mr von Kramer, an old American family. I know you will be glad to know that we have a family of five sons and two daughters who are a joy and pride to their parents in our old age, and we have retired to an exclusive suburb of Los Angeles, a large city on the Pacific Ocean where it is sunny all the time. We have a fourteen-room house and I do not rise till nine-thirty every morning and I go to my club and play golf every afternoon. I know you will be interested in this information at this time…"

Noah felt a clot of emotion jammed in his throat. He had the wild notion that if he opened his mouth he would laugh, and that his father would die on peal after peal of his son's laughter.

"Noah," Jacob asked querulously, "are you writing this down?"

"Yes, Father." Somehow Noah managed to say it.

"It is true," Jacob went on in his calm, dictating voice, "that you are the oldest son and you were constantly giving advice. But now, oldest and youngest do not have the same meaning. I have travelled considerably, and I think maybe you can profit from some advice from me. It is important to remember how to behave as a Jew. There are many people in the world, and they are becoming more numerous, who are full of envy. They look at a Jew and say, 'Look at his table manners,' or 'The diamonds on his wife are really paste,' or 'See how much noise he makes in a theatre,' or 'His scales are crooked. You will not get your money's worth in his shop.' The times are getting more difficult and a Jew must behave as though the life of every other Jew in the world depended on every action of his. So he must eat quietly, using his knife and fork delicately. He must not put diamonds on his wife, especially paste ones. His scales must be the most honest in the city. He must walk in a dignified and self-respecting manner. No," Jacob cried, "cross all that out. It will only make him angry."

He took a deep breath and was silent for a long time. He didn't seem to move on his bed and Noah looked uneasily over at him to make sure he was still alive.

"Dear brother," Jacob said, finally, his voice broken and hoarse, and unrecognizable, "everything I have told you is a lie. I have led a miserable life and I have cheated everyone and I drove my wife to her death and I have only one son and I have no hope for him and I am bankrupt and everything you have told me would happen to me has happened to me…"

His voice stopped. He choked and tried to say something else, and then he died.

Noah touched his father's chest, searching for the beating of his heart. The skin was wrinkled and the bones of his chest were sharp and frail. The stillness under the parched, flaked skin and the naked bone was final.

Noah folded his father's hands on his chest, and closed the staring eyes, because he had seen people doing that in the movies. Jacob's mouth was open, with a realistic, alive expression, as though he were on the verge of speech, but Noah didn't know what to do about that, so he left it alone. As he looked down at his father's dead face, Noah realized that he felt relieved. It was over now. The demanding, imperious voice was quiet. There would be no more gestures.

Noah walked around the room, flatly taking inventory of the things of value in it. There wasn't much. Two shabby, rather flashy double-breasted suits, a leather-bound edition of the King James Bible, a silver frame with a photograph of Noah, aged seven and on a Shetland pony, a small box with a pair of cufflinks and a tiepin, made of nickel and glass, a tattered, red manila envelope with a string tied round it. Noah opened the envelope and took out the papers: twenty shares of stock in a radio-manufacturing corporation that had gone into bankruptcy in 1927.

There was a cardboard box on the bottom of the cupboard. Inside, carefully wrapped in soft flannel, was a large, old-fashioned portrait camera, with a big lens. It was the one thing in the room which looked as though it had been treated with love and consideration, and Noah was grateful that his father had been crafty enough to hide it from his creditors. It might even pay for the funeral. Touching the worn leather and the polished glass of the camera, Noah thought, fleetingly, that it would be good to keep the camera, keep the one well-preserved remnant of his father's life, but he knew it was a luxury he could not afford. He put the camera back in the box, after wrapping it well, and hid the box under a pile of old clothes in the corner of the cupboard.

He went to the door and looked back. In the mean rays of the single lamp, his father looked forlorn and in pain on the bed. Noah turned the light off and went out.

He walked slowly down the street. The air and the slight exercise felt good after the week in the cramped room, and he breathed deeply, feeling his lungs fill, feeling young and healthy, listening to the soft muffled tap of his heels on the glistening sidewalks. The sea air smelt strange and clean in the deserted night, and he walked in the direction of the beach, the tang of salt getting stronger and stronger as he approached the cliff that loomed over the ocean.

Through the murk came the sound of music, echoing and fading, suddenly growing stronger, with tricks of the wind. Noah walked towards it, and as he got to the corner, he saw that the music came from a bar across the street. People were going in and out under a sign that said, NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR THE HOLIDAY BRING THE NEW YEAR IN AT O'DAYS.

The tune changed on the jukebox inside and a woman's low voice sang, "Night and day you are the one, Only you beneath the moon and under the sun," her voice dominating the empty, damp night with powerful, well-modulated passion.

Noah crossed the street, opened the door and went in. Two sailors and a blonde were at the other end of the bar, looking down at a drunk with his head on the mahogany. The bartender glanced up when Noah came in.

"Have you got a telephone?" Noah asked.

"Back there." The bartender motioned towards the rear of the room. Noah started towards the booth.

"Be polite, boys," the blonde was saying to the sailors as Noah passed. "Rub his neck with ice."

She smiled widely at Noah, her face green with the reflection from the jukebox. Noah nodded to her and stepped into the telephone booth. He took out a card that the doctor had given him. On it was the telephone number of a twenty-four-hour-a-day undertaker.

Noah dialled the number. He held the receiver to his ear, listening to the insistent buzzing in the earpiece, thinking of the phone on the dark, shiny desk, under the single shaded light in the mortuary office, ringing the New Year in. He was about to hang up when he heard a voice at the other end of the wire.

"Hello," the voice said, somehow vague and remote. "Grady Mortuary."

"I would like to inquire," Noah said, "about a funeral. My father just died."

"What is the name of the party?"

"What I wanted to know," said Noah, "is the range of prices. I haven't very much money and…"

"I will have to know the name of the party," the voice said, very official.

"Ackerman."

"Waterfield," said the thick voice on the other end. "First name, please…" and then, in a whisper, "Gladys, stop it! Gladys!" Then back into the phone, with the hint of a smothered laugh, "First name, please."

"Ackerman," said Noah. "Ackerman."

"Is that the first name?"

"No," said Noah. "That's the last name. The first name is Jacob."

"I wish," said the voice, with alcoholic dignity, "you would talk more clearly."

"What I want to know," said Noah loudly, "is what you charge for cremation."

"Cremation. Yes," the voice said, "we supply that service to those parties who wish it."

"What is the price?" Noah asked.

"How many coaches?"

"What?"

"How many coaches to the services?" the voice asked, saying "shervishes". "How many guests and relatives will there be?"

"One," said Noah. "There will be one guest and relative."

Night and Day came to an end with a crash and Noah couldn't hear what the man on the other end of the wire said.

"I want it to be as reasonable as possible," Noah said, desperately. "I don't have much money."

"I shee, I shee," the man at the Mortuary said. "One question, if I may. Does the deceased have any insurance?"

"No," said Noah.

"Then it will have to be cash, you understand. In advance, you understand."

"How much?" Noah shouted.

"Do you wish the remains in a plain cardboard box or in a silver-plated urn?"

"A plain cardboard box."

"The cheapest price I can quote you, my dear friend" – the voice on the other end suddenly became large and coherent – "is seventy-six dollars and fifty cents."

"That will be an additional five cents for five minutes," the operator's voice broke in.

"All right." Noah put another nickel into the box and the operator said, "Thank you." Noah said, "All right. Seventy-six dollars and fifty cents." Somehow he would get it together.

"The day after tomorrow. In the afternoon." That would give him time to go downtown on January 2nd and sell the camera and the other things. "The address is the Sea View Hotel. Do you know where that is?"

"Yes," the drunken voice said, "yes, indeedy. The Sea View Hotel. I will send a man around tomorrow and you can sign the contract…"