Rosen was tired and decided to go to bed. Ma nishtana, how is this night different? . . . He wound the alarm clock and set it at five-thirty, earlier than usual. Monday was a difficult day for getting up and ready for work. Soon he fell asleep. He dreamed the Messiah, who looked like his father, had come to him, dressed in a white, wine-stained smock. But the Messiah cannot sit down, because he, Rosen, has neglected to leave a chair vacant, and the Messiah stands and sternly asks, ma nishtana, how is this night different, and Rosen does not know the answer, and Mrs. Shulman, his landlady, who is a big parrot, flaps her wings and denounces him to the Messiah. She cackles and caws: “He likes sitting alone in that room.”
Rosen got to the shop early as usual. Only Mr. Feldman, the boss, is in his office. He looks at bills, he nods and pulls his beard, and he sighs as though saying a prayer. The secretary comes in rushing and slamming the door. She tears off her beret and sits down with a bang to splinter her bony behind. She pulls a comb through her crinkly black hair, punishes her lips with a lipstick, and tugs and tears at her blouse like an angry bird that pulls and tweaks at his feathers. Rosen thinks . . . well, it’s Monday, and remembering his dream of the Messiah, He had better not come on a Monday. . . .
“Bright and early on the job as always, the answer to the boss’ prayer, aren’t we, Mr. Rosen? I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning. How do you do it, Mr. Rosen, tell me? You’re never disappointed or angry. I think you are a wise person, Mr. Rosen, yes I do . . . you never want anything, you’re so self-contained, you know what I mean. I Wish I was like you, sometimes, I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning, Well, it must be the Monday.” The secretary begins to hack at her typewriter and Rosen does not have to think of an answer.
One by one his colleagues arrive with a sullen, aggressive silence for a greeting or a loud “Good morning, had a nice weekend?” as friendly and loving as the crack of a whip. Settling down to his job, Rosen sighs, it’s Monday, He’d better not come on a Monday.
After breakfast Mr. Feldman came into the shop trailing a stranger in work clothes behind him. All but Rosen, who did not like curiosity, stopped working and gaped at the man, like a class of school children at the new boy brought in by the teacher. Mr. Feldman said: “Rosen, this is . . . nu, what’s your name?” He pulled at his beard and stared at the stranger who grinned and said nothing. “This is Krawetz, Mr. Krawetz. I told him to ask you if there was anything he wanted to know.”
Rosen nodded and smiled at Krawetz. Feldman, pulling his beard and muttering, went back to his office.
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The shop settled down to work and quiet again. Someone started to whistle a tune but it fizzled out like a wet sparkler. Rosen looked up and saw Krawetz bent over his work. Krawetz was a cripple. A bony, packed lump stood like a monk’s hood over his bent face. Rosen thought he could see the hump in the face, it had the pallor and the deep lines of etched-in grimacing that cripples’ faces often have.
Rosen looked away guiltily. He did not hate cripples. He liked the neat and tidy, he had a shy unpossessive love for beautiful, fine-structured things, his fingers were always eager to touch gently a smooth, cool surface, but he also liked, with resigned sadness, the bumpy, the mottled, and the ungainly. It takes all kinds to make a world, Rosen thought, and to him this was not a hand-washing platitude, but an article of faith.
They sat, Rosen, Shapira, and the new man, Krawetz, in the shop at lunchtime. Shapira was preaching at Rosen as usual, and Krawetz sat, a little apart, his head on his hand, sideways, and grimaced. Shapira was a born preacher and Rosen was a born victim for preachers. Everybody with a faith or a conviction came to convert him, at least to give him advice. He had Christian Science and anarchism and Yoga expounded to him, he had a greater collection of remedies against headaches and colds and rheumatism than six old women on a bench in the park. They had one look at Rosen and pounced on him, like the peddlers who came to the shop and made a straight line for Rosen, so that he always had soap, pocket combs, and razor blades enough to open a shop with.
“Loneliness, Rosen,” Shapira’s subject today was loneliness, “loneliness, Rosen, is like a cold in the head, you catch it from other people. When you’ve got it, people look at you as if, excuse me, you had soiled your pants. They give one look and they say Gesundheit from the far corner. Who wants to catch a cold? And how do you cure a cold, Rosen? With shots by the doctor? You go to bed, maybe, with a cold compress or you creep around with a hanky to the nose and a head on you like a dog that’s been kicked in the other end, and a look saying, ‘Forgive me very much, please, I could, God forbid, sneeze, and a few drops could land on your face’? Perhaps so you cure a cold? Feh.” Shapira shook off his contempt like dirt and slapped the table. “So what do you do to get rid of a cold? You go out like a mentsch in the street and breathe, ‘Ahhh,’ the fresh air, you go among people and make out nothing’s the matter and God helps and the cold is gone.”
Shapira paused and triumphantly looked at Rosen and Krawetz.
“Tell me, Rosen, who was the girl? She left you, she died maybe?” for Shapira was a student of the soul and the mind. “Rosen, listen to me, you should go out more, go out among people.”
Everybody, it seemed to Rosen, either gave or asked him for advice, or started by asking advice and ended up by giving it. He attracted and absorbed their talk the way water and fire attract and absorb the blind starings of people. He was always referred to when there was a dispute or a row in the shop over money, a missing tool, or nothing at all, and he took pains to come to a fair decision that was disregarded and sometimes resented. Shapira, who was also a popular philosopher, had told him: “Rosen, you are like the sober man that wants to make peace between two shikkers who are having a fight. So he goes between them, they stop fighting, they look at him, they look at each other, and they start beating him up together. And it’s right. It’s right they should beat him up, for why should he interfere, when he doesn’t know what it’s all about, he doesn’t know about drinking, he’s never been drunk even a little, and a fight, a fight, God forbid, ts ts ts, is terrible. But a fight can be a need and a pleasure, better than the movies and no charge.”
Shapira was busy on Krawetz now, but Krawetz sat, a dark pyramid with the pale head at its base and said nothing but looked at Rosen with his oblique grimace as if he had asked him a riddle and was waiting for Rosen to admit he didn’t know the answer. On the spur of the moment Rosen turned to him and asked him to have dinner at his place that evening.
On the way home he bought lox and cold chicken, salami and pickles and cheese and a bottle of sweet wine. The grocer asked him jokingly, if he was having a party, perhaps a mazel tov, congratulations are due? “So why not, it’s never too late, I got an uncle got married, he was sixty-eight.”
Mrs. Shulman was there, waiting for him at the landing, with her welcoming speech, but when she saw the bags and parcels she missed her cue and by the time she had recovered, Rosen was well up the stairs. “You having a guest, Mr. Rosen? You don’t want I should know about her? Mr. Rosen, you hear me?” Rosen opened his door. Mrs. Shulman’s “Talk to the walls,” sounded weak and puzzled.
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Rosen unpacked and began to prepare the dinner. He felt happy and excited. He took out a fresh white cloth from the cupboard and spread it over the table. When he had finished, he looked at the gleaming table and found it looked good, yes, but flowers, there should be some flowers. He took the potted plant from the window and put it on the table, moved it here and there and put it back on the sill. Rosen, you fool, why do you fuss like an old spinster waiting for the marriage broker to bring a prospective husband?
Krawetz came at a quarter past eight, half an hour later than they had agreed. When Rosen heard the bell ring he jumped and hurried down to open the front door. Going up they passed Mrs. Shulman who shot out in her Saturday best with a glittering smile that stiffened and sagged till her mouth fell open.
Krawetz sat down in the armchair, before Rosen could tell him to sit at the other side where he had put the good plates and cutlery.
Krawetz was sullen and angry and Rosen’s attempt at conversation about the weather, the shop, and this and that sagged like Mrs. Shulman’s smile.
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” Rosen said—he had never been a great eater—and pushed the plates with the food nicely arranged on them at his guest. Krawetz nodded and, taking from every dish at once and putting it on his plate in a heap, started to eat. Till then his silence had been an embarrassing burden, now Rosen could not complain of silence. Krawetz ate, smacking his lips, sucking his teeth, and burping with his mouth open. Rosen was angry with himself. Loneliness, who should know better, was a poor teacher of table manners.
“Let’s have a drink, a glass of wine. I’ve had it so long, it should be good.” They drank, L’chaim, your good health. The heavy, sweet wine glowed in Rosen and lit festive candles, the joy and excitement were coming back, L’chaim. Krawetz took the bottle and filled his glass again and leaning his head back on the hump, emptied it in one gulp. He set the glass down with a smack, closed his eyes, and started to sing, beating time on the table. “With a glass of schnapps we drink L’chaim. . . .” But he has a beautiful voice, a pure, beautiful voice, Rosen thought, with surprise and something like pride.
When Krawetz had finished the song he had another glass of wine and seemed a changed man. He talked and sang and talked, till Rosen was dizzy and breathless from listening.
“You know who I am, Rosen, you know? I could be a great cantor, a singer in the movies, a world-famous opera star.” He sang the Toreador song from Carmen, and without pause or transition, changed into a sweet falsetto, a cantorial tune. “You know who I am, Rosen, you know? I could have been rich and world-famous, and why am I Krawetz? You know why? Because he wants it, his majesty, the hump, the man on my back. He wanted I should be a useless cripple and work in the shop with you, Rosen.”
He talked and drank and Rosen listened and was angry with himself when he felt repelled and glad when he was stirred and moved.
The bottle was empty and Rosen wanted to make tea, but Krawetz got up and said he had to go, and hurried Rosen with annoyed impatience when he said he would show him down.
Rosen washed the dishes and cleared up. He lay awake for a long time, thinking about his guest and listening to the woodworm sound of the ticking alarm clock adding up seconds and busily clicking out the balance sheet of his life.
On Wednesday evening Krawetz was back again. Rosen had eaten already but quickly laid the table again with what he had in the house. Krawetz ate and smoked much and said little. Rosen noticed with relief that he was quieter and much more at ease tonight.
“You know, Rosen,” Krawetz grimaced and his eyes glittered like pieces of glass, “you know, I was an only child. I never had a brother, but I always wanted to have one. Rosen, I would have liked to have you as my elder brother.”
Rosen blushed and blinked and swallowed. So he hasn’t the manners of a fine gentleman, so he is a little strange sometimes, what am I so stuck up about? Who am I to be his judge?
Rosen put a record on the gramophone and they sat and listened to the sad joy of some chamber music he loved. A cool gentle wind came through the open window and Rosen was happy and thought, this is what life should be and people, like this music.
They made a date for the coming Friday and Rosen went down with Krawetz. Walking along the deserted street, Krawetz told stories about himself. When Rosen came back Mrs. Shulman was waiting for him.
“So who’s your friend, Mr. Rosen? He’s a relative, maybe, a cousin you haven’t seen for many years, for how many years, Mr. Rosen? . . a cripple, nebbich, on mine enemies . . . a noise you made Monday to wake up the dead, Mr. Rosen. Never mind, a cousin one hasn’t seen for so many years, one should celebrate a little . . . so who is he, your mother’s, a sister’s child?” She was disappointed and disapproving when Rosen told her Krawetz wasn’t his cousin at all but only a man from the shop.
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In the shop Krawetz was aggressively aloof and Rosen worried about the dislike for his friend he felt in his colleagues. He and Krawetz talked little, but on Friday afternoon they exchanged nods and glances and Krawetz said, “Till tonight,” with a conspiratorial look as he left the shop.
He brought half a bottle of schnapps wrapped in newspaper when he came in the evening. His face was tight and stiff with a jeering grimace, his eyes screwed up in wrinkles flickered and burned with cold fire and the hump seemed to have grown. He shoved the carefully prepared dishes aside and put down his bottle with a bang and the old newspaper peeled off and soaked in the food.
“Rosen, you are an old maid, you should wear a bonnet and sew . . . no, you should knit, Rosen, knit me a comforter for the man on my back to keep warm. . . . You hate me, Rosen, no? . . . but you don’t like us, look, look how we dirty your nice, clean place, look,” he screwed up the soggy newspaper and threw it on the floor.
“Krawetz, don’t be a fool, I don’t hate you.”
“So you don’t hate us, Rosen, you like us, you love us perhaps, yes? you love Krawetz and the man on his back, you open your handbag and you count out your small change of charity to the poor cripple, yes, Rosen? You have a heart, a true Jewish heart, as big as my hump, it bleeds a little for us, yes? How many drops, two, three, five?”
Krawetz opened the bottle, poured himself a large drink and downed it in a gulp, with his hand holding the back of his head. He belched and in his pure, beautiful voice sang an obscene song.
“Rosen, you think I need you? I need you like a hole in my head, like the man on my back I need you. Why don’t you drink, Rosen, drink a little, drink.”
Rosen drank not to offend him and spluttered and coughed, and tears streamed down his face.
“You are crying, Rosen, oi, you have a tender heart, such a tender one, you are a good man, a Zaddik, everyone says so, Rosen, they say, he’s a just man, a Zaddik . . . tell me, Zaddik, what is justice, my hump wants to know, what is justice . . . Rosen, my judge, tell us. You know who I am, Rosen?”
Krawetz drank and began to boast of amorous adventures and of his sexual prowess. He told story after story in intimate, anatomical detail and Rosen winced under the whip of obscene words.
“You know who I am, Rosen? You want I should tell you?”
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From that evening on Rosen’s life changed and ceased to be his own, Krawetz came every second evening, sometimes every evening, and sat and ate and cursed and jeered and sang, or he stared in angry silence or talked quietly and appealingly, so that Rosen felt sick with dislike of himself. He began to be afraid to come home, he stayed on in the shop needlessly, he made detours and went for long walks. When he came home, Mrs. Shulman was waiting; “He’s here already, your cripple, your friend, Mr. Rosen, hurry up, your wife with the hump is waiting.”
One Sunday morning Krawetz came early to fetch Rosen for a walk in the nearby park. Krawetz was in a good mood, the sun was shining, the late spring morning was fresh and warm with the promise of a good heat to come, and the people, promenading in the park, smiled and nodded to strangers.
“Rosen, I’m sorry,” Krawetz said, “I make your life miserable, but it’s going to change, you’ll help me Rosen, you are the only friend I have.”
“Krawetz, don’t talk like that, of course we are friends, how many friends do I have?”
Rosen felt happy and put his arm round Krawetz’s shoulders. This is as it should be, the world clean and warm, the people dressed in white or gay colors, being friendly to each other and smiling, and he, walking with a friend who needed him and he was responsible for. He felt boyish and gay and started to sing, and Krawetz, holding his voice down, sang with him in harmony.
The big sunny lawn at the side of the road was fenced in with a low railing and Rosen, who wanted to do something lightheaded and foolish, climbed on the rail and walked on it, putting one foot in front of the other and balancing himself.
“Look, Krawetz, look,” he called, out of breath, and missing his step, he had to jump off. Krawetz stood and laughed: “Rosen, you big fool, how old are you?” But he ran to the railing, and head down, hump sticking up, his arms out and waving, he walked on the railing too. Suddenly he lost his balance, his foot caught, and with a heavy thud he fell to the ground.
Rosen ran up to him, laughing, but Krawetz moaned with pain and cursed and did not get up. “Oi it hurts, Rosen, oi do something, I have broken a bone, it’s your fault, oi, you have made me a cripple!” He shrieked and shouted till a crowd collected around them and somebody said, get a doctor, and Rosen ran to the nearby cafe and phoned for an ambulance.
Krawetz had broken a hipbone, and for six weeks Rosen went to the hospital every day and brought flowers and books and sweets.
“Rosen, you made me do it, Rosen, I’m crippled for life, what am I going to do, Rosen?”
Rosen sat at his bedside as long as they let him, and his heart ached with guilt and tenderness.
“Krawetz, don’t worry, please Krawetz, you will come and live in my place, I will look after you. I have savings, don’t worry, only get well.”
He talked to Mrs. Shulman, who shook her head and waved the Spread fingers of her hands in his face. “What am I, a hospital, a home for cripples, maybe?” But Rosen insisted and begged till she gave in.
“All right, I do it for you, Mr. Rosen, only for you, I give you bed linen and he sleeps on the couch,” and she raised the rent nearly double.
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On the day when Krawetz was to be released from the hospital, Rosen took off from Work, cooked a chicken, put flowers in milk bottles all over the room, and went to fetch Krawetz in a taxi. They came home, Krawetz with the crutches he had been given in the hospital. Mrs. Shulman stood in her doorway, shaking her head in protest, but also with pity.
Rosen excused himself from the shop for a week and looked after Krawetz, who stayed in bed. He cleaned and fetched and cooked meals for Krawetz who complained and cursed and developed sudden appetites like a pregnant woman, which Rosen hurried to satisfy. When Rosen had to go back to work, he got up at five and moving about on tiptoe quietly cooked the meal, made coffee, and put breakfast, the coffee in a thermos, on a tray on the bedside table. He placed cheerful little notes on the tray for Krawetz to see when he woke up. In the shop people shook their heads with concern and asked Rosen if he was sick.
When Krawetz got up from bed and began to move about, life became hell for Rosen.
“Rosen, you’ve made me a cripple, look how I walk, like a child, Rosen, you pity me more, how many drops of blood now, six? Rosen, I want fish tomorrow, bring fish.”
Rosen, who was not too discerning about food, could not stand fish. Krawetz insisted on fish three times a week. His nice clean room became a shambles, with food, clothes, newspapers scattered all over the place. Krawetz cut out pin-up girls from the magazines he made Rosen bring him and tacked them on the Walls and over the two framed prints of bright sunflowers Rosen had bought once. Now heavy, big breasts and coy naked behinds stared at him wherever he looked.
“You like it, Rosen? Now you can see a man lives here. It brightens the room, you like it?”
Krawetz bought records of popular music and played them incessantly, while he Sat in Rosen’s armchair and beat time on the table.
“Rosen, I’ve given away your classical records, they upset me, they make me think of what I could have been, you know what I could have been, Rosen?”
At night in the dark when Rosen, exhausted, lay on the couch and tried to escape into the refuge of sleep, Krawetz called from the bed: “Rosen, listen, you hear, I have told you the story of the maid, how I went to her room through the window? Listen, Rosen. . . .” and he told his stories that to Rosen did not become less upsetting with repetition. “. . . You hear, Rosen, when I left in the morning through the window, she said, ‘Krawetz,’ she said, ‘you are not a man and not even two with the one on your back, you’re a wild bull, that. . . .‘ You hear, Rosen, you are listening?”
Rosen began to take Sleeping pills and moved through the day in a daze.
“What’s the matter, Rosen, you sick?” said Shapira.
“You walk in the shop like a drunk who goes to relieve himself,” and Feldman shook his head and muttered angrily.
Krawetz began to go out and he came to visit the shop on his crutches. He was not aloof, but loud and hearty, he limped from table to table and whispered, but did not come near Rosen.
During the next few days Rosen noticed that his colleagues kept away from him at lunch, when he joined a table, they fell silent or talked of the weather. The grocer stopped making jokes when he wrapped up his purchases and even Mrs. Shulman did not greet him with exhortations to marry a nice young girl.
Rosen was worried and puzzled till one day, when he was alone in the shop with Shapira, he understood. “Rosen,” Shapira said, “Rosen, how could you do such a thing? I, Shapira, read people like books, but you I don’t understand. So you’re better than anybody, you are a Zaddik, one of the just. . . . You go and push down the stairs a helpless cripple, he should break his leg, feh, don’t talk to me, Rosen. I know . . .”
When Rosen came home he saw Krawetz’s crutches leaning against Mrs. Shulman’s door. He knocked and opened the door. They sat on the sofa, a bottle and glasses on the doily-covered table, Krawetz with his arm round Mrs. Shulman, who giggled and slapped at him. When she saw Rosen, she turned and spat on the floor, and Krawetz, his face red, his eyes glittering, called out: “Rosen, you want a drink? Come, I forgive you, drink . . . no? You don’t want a drink? Rosen, go to the room and make dinner, I’ll come in an hour. Rosen, go to the room and hang yourself.”
Rosen dragged himself up, his head bent low under the sharp and cackling laughter.
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He turned the key in the lock behind him. He sat down for a minute, then he got up and looked for the lighter fuel. He knelt down and pulled out the tin box from under the bed, where he kept letters and photos and other personal things. He poured some lighter fuel on the papers in the box and held a match to them. They flared up and burned down quickly. He drew the curtains, then he went to the cupboard and took the heavy cord belt off his dressing gown. He looked around the room and found the light meter high on the wall would serve his purpose. He put a chair under it, spread a newspaper on the chair, and hung the cord over its back. Then he cleaned up the room, took the pin-up girls down from the wall, and sat down in his armchair again. On a clean sheet of paper he wrote: “I, Morris Rosen, of sound mind and body, leave all my belongings to my friend. . . .” He paused and crossed out, “my friend,” and wrote, “to Mr. I. Krawetz. Owing to the circumstances there can be no witnesses to my will, but it should be valid.” He signed it and wrote out a check in favor of I. Krawetz for the considerable amount left in his account and put the sheet and the check in an envelope and sealed it.
Then he leaned back in his armchair and relaxed. His eyes met the stain on the wallpaper that had the shape of a human head. Rosen talked to the wall.
“I can’t go on, I must end my life. I know no other way out. I am tired and want to rest. Living is an unclean thing and an abomination to me, that I have to stop. There is no sense to my life any more.”
“Sense, shmense,” the face on the wall took on the likeness of his father, “and who says you should know the sense of your living?”
“Who else?” Rosen said. “You know it, then, tell me.”
“And what is life, a show, you give back your ticket and you ask for your money, because you don’t like the performance? It is not a pleasure show, it’s a task and a duty.”
“But have I not always done my duty? When you died and I stood by your bed and saw your face lifeless and awful, did I turn away in revulsion? Did I not do my duty? Did I shirk, did I turn away from the ugly and ungainly, did I close my eyes to death and to the bars of my narrow living? Did I close my eyes to make up pleasant dreams and fancies?”
“Fancies, shmencies, Rosen, you’re a fool, you talk like a spoiled child.”
“How else should I talk, I say what I think. And when was I spoiled? Do I ask for too much, tell me, have I not done my duty? I was twelve when you died and I understood and accepted my load like a horse in harness. I went to work, and with my hands I provided for my sisters, I don’t boast, God forbid, I did little, till they got married and left. Now the horse is tired of the cart and the curse and the whip that hits it, it does not know why, and it wants to rest in the stables.”
“Rosen, you fool, it’s a sin to take one’s life.”
“I know it’s a sin, but it’s a greater sin to live and hate life.”
“And why do you hate life, Rosen, why? Because somebody, ts ts ts, God forbid, is hurting your feelings?”
“I don’t hate life, I hate my living.”
“You have found out, Rosen, that there is injustice in the world and darkness and evil, oi my Columbus, and where have you been till now, not dreaming?”
“I have been alone, I have tried not to do evil, and not be a burden to anybody.”
“And that’s all you have done? Tphoo, he’s right, you are an old maid. Rosen, where is your wife and your children, what have you done with what I have given you?”
“I know, I am sorry, I didn’t have time . . . no time to go out with the girls like the others, I had to provide. . . .”
“Excuses you have, thank God, if excuses were bread you would never starve. Rosen, what have you done for the world, for the life that you love so much, oi oi oi, you want to throw it away, what have you done, you have changed it, you have made it a little better?”
“I have tried, what can a man do, alone, but live cleanly and. . . .”
“Enough, Rosen, already enough I tell you . . . you are dripping with self-pity, it is fit for a man like a shtreimel for a chazer, like a fur hat is fit for a sow. . . . Rosen, I tell you, enough, enough nonsense. Get up from the chair, put away that rope and take up your load again. Do the best you can and don’t be afraid like a child of tomorrow, tomorrow it may be better, it may be worse, it’s yours not to throw away or to run away from. Enough!”
Rosen sat for a while and cried. Then he got up and put back the chair and the cord from his dressing gown. When he unlocked the door he heard Krawetz call from below:
Rosen, the dinner is ready? Hurry up, we are hungry, we could eat a horse, me and the man on my back!
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