But the one thing he wanted to emphasize above all else was that no matter how profitable the business might have been, the business of raising, processing, custom-dressing, and marketing waterfowl, there was nothing unscrupulous about his custom dressing; it was just in the nature of things. How many hand-fed, plump, choice, and most attractive and easily marketable ducks and geese were brought to him by their owners, who had bought them from him as ducklings or goslings, and now pleaded with him that he swap their birds for any birds of his own, usually nothing near so well-fed and select as theirs, the reason being that neither the owner nor his family could bring themselves to eat their pets. Oh, dear, departed days not so dear, just departed. And besides that, there was no one else in the entire state of Maine who did custom dressing of ducks and geese, because no one else had on hand the hundred or so pounds of wax in which to dip the birds after most of the feathers had been removed, thus producing a clean, shiny skin. Waterfowl hunters by the dozen brought him their game birds — in fact, people came from as far away as the neighboring state of New Hampshire to have him dress their ducks and geese. It was amazing the lengths to which people would go to avoid plucking a duck or goose.
So it was very profitable — or should have been, if he had charged enough, and he didn’t. Mom had been right after all. But no matter how potentially profitable it all was or would have been, the point to make was that he couldn’t take it seriously. There was the rub, the disability: once he had known that unique, unutterable afflatus of creativity, he could never take any other occupation seriously again. He could never quite sever from that pristine rapture again, divorce himself from it though he tried — and thought he had succeeded in doing. That was the whole thing in a nutshell — or an eggshell. The writing of the one novel had gone so deep, he would be forever after haunted by the experience. Some metaphoric vein of precious ore he had struck within the psyche — and he could never ignore, never forget it, do what he might. He had been a precision metal grinder and a gauge maker in toolrooms and machine shops for five years before he raised ducks and geese, and he had been a busy shop steward and active union man all that time, and still the pressure of narrative dialogue and situation and denouement, half-formed shapes of stories and novels, kept intruding into his mind. Some vein of a rare lode of perception he had been fortunate enough to strike within the spirit, a lode he had exposed, kept radiating beyond his control. Thanks to his wife, thanks to longevity, in large part due to her intelligent care, despite infirmities, he could once again prospect within his soul for what seemed to him its luminous treasure. Considering his age, the opportunity extended him couldn’t possibly last much longer, but long or short, he had known a moment of grace. He was happy to share it with others, even as he was honored in the privilege his readers accorded him of making it possible for him to share his happiness with them.
VIII
It would seem that Ira’s paternal grandfather, devout Jew with earlocks, and in the portrait hanging in the Stigman front room only a little less Gothic than his wife, had relented in his attitude toward Pop, after Ira was born. Mom affirmed that the old man had become very fond of Ira, dandled him on his knee. “And the night before we left for America, he leaned on his stick and watched you dance: you danced so prettily, the tears came to his eyes, the eyes of Saul, distillery foreman of Tysmenicz.” He had relented so far as to put a stake in, to “bankroll” Pop so he could set himself up as a horse trader. Pop, in addition to loving the fiddle, loved horses; he loved horses the way young people of a later generation loved automobiles. However, love was not enough when it came to trading horses: he was outwitted time and again, and in short order he went bankrupt.
“So what was there to do?” Pop asked rhetorically. “To wander about in idleness, and depend on my father again? Nisht b’mutchkeh. I borrowed the money from my father, and I came to America once more.”
“You did? You were already a citizen.”
“Of course. They put me in jail when I came back to Austria, because I didn’t answer the call to serve in the army.” Pop chuckled. “For a few days only, before they let me go. There were other prisoners in the same cell. And one fellow could fart whenever he wanted to. Hup hup! Another one.” Pop laughed heartily. “‘Stefyan, fart for us’: Hup. Hup. A report. He married a girl in Czechoslovakia, and when he picked up his bride to carry her through the door, the way the goyim do, he ripped out a fart you could hear all over Prague.”
“That is funny.” Ira grinned appreciatively.
“When it comes to that he’s adept,” Mom agreed, derogatively. “He can always spin you a funny tale.”
“Here she comes,” Pop derided.
Mom seemed ever impelled to blight budding amiability between father and son. “You know that means I was a citizen born abroad. Like an ambassador’s son. Isn’t that true?”
“In those days, what else?”
“And you weren’t really a citizen yourself. Boyoboy, nothing has ever gone regularly with me,” Ira reflected.
“Now you’re worrying? You voted already.”
“I know. It’s just that, technically, I’m not supposed to be here.”
“And if it weren’t for Saul, the superintendent, you wouldn’t be here,” said Mom.
“You mean that he loaned Pop the money to come over again?”
“Loaned? He gave. You didn’t borrow the money,” Mom addressed Pop.
“She knows I borrowed the money.”
“Mom, will you let him tell his story!” Ira chided.
“His father gave him the money.”
“In her addled brain, my father gave me the money.”
“Then when did you repay him? Did you have money to repay him?”
“Afterward. He wrote me that he forgave me the debt.”
“When?”
“When I was already in America. Before I brought you and Ira over. To use the money I owed him to bring you here.”
Mom grimaced — in hopeless disbelief so intense it was indistinguishable from an affront.
“As if I weren’t there.” She turned to Ira. “I see the old man standing before me as if it were yesterday. ‘Chaim,’ he said, ‘the first time you stole a way to America. This time, go like a man. I don’t want you to disgrace yourself. You have a wife and child. Here’s the passage money to America. Go with my blessings.’”
“Away, madwoman!”
“What the hell’s the difference, Mom?” Ira burst out.
“The truth is nothing to you? That’s how I brought you up?” By his silence, she knew she had her son at a disadvantage. “Do you want me to teach you how to catch a liar?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Ask him to repeat his story a week from now. Two weeks from now.”