“Another pious Jew,” Pop commented.
“Well, that’s his nature.” Mom welcomed Pop’s participation in spite of acrimony. “As you’re not, he is. Why else would Zaida stay at Mamie’s if Jonas weren’t observant?”
“Shoyn tsat tse zahn a mensh.” Screwing up his face to the utmost, and snuffling as he spoke, Pop caricatured his long-nosed brother-in-law. “Telling me it was time I behaved like a man. I behaved like a man. That runt. I spat in his face.”
Mom sat perfectly still a moment, and then, animating herself, squealed into her glass.
“She has to kiss the glass every time,” Pop disparaged. “Can’t you drink a glass of chai without a fife?”
“Well, then I won’t,” Mom conciliated. “I ought to learn to drink tea from a saucer.”
“I didn’t know Mamie was like that,” Ira said, to lead away from the volatile.
“Uh!” Pop voiced his contempt. “A lot you know.”
“What’s there to say?” Mom shielded her son. “Minnie isn’t Mamie’s child. It’s a boon to Minnie as it is. She doesn’t have to fly like mad from one subway to another. Well, what were we saying?” She took a cautious sip of tea. “I have such an ugly quirk: I suck the glass,” she apologized. “We were saying — yes — Minnie? No. Ah, yes. To my mind every Jew owes Schwartzbart a debt of gratitude for ridding the world of that monster.”
“Well, you already said that.” Ira stared at Mom askance. “You said enough about it.”
She laughed — culpably, nodded her broad countenance in almost abject willingness to preserve harmony. “What else were we talking about?”
“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh—yenta,” Pop accused, then turned to Ira for confirmation. “She’s tangled in this Schwartzbart as if he were an angel, a messiah.”
“Still, he risked his life for Jews. Another Petlyura will know what awaits him, no? Dead he is, as Ira says, and may he rot too where he lies. But if there came another brute like him, he might think twice before he commits such atrocities against Jews. Is it true or not?”
“A khlyup is a khlyup.” Pop’s rimless eyeglasses reflected the candlelight. “If you think that a Roosky goy will ever be dissuaded by this example, then you’re deceiving yourself. Read and read — to what avail?”
“But they were khlyups who gave Czar Kolki, that foe of Israel, his just deserts. Every Jew rejoiced.”
“Why? Because there were Jews among them,” Pop countered. “A Trotsky, a Zinoviev, a Kamenev. I don’t even know the names. Jews ran out of the yeshivas to join the Bolsheviks. But now, see for yourself: Trotsky flees. They need him no longer. It won’t be the same with the others? Wait, just wait, Leah.”
“Now the prophet speaks!” Mom shrugged her shoulders. “But meanwhile they let a Jew live in Russia,” said Mom.
“Meanwhile,” Pop echoed in rebuttal. “Every letter from a Russian Jew to America begs for help: send a few rubles in God’s name. We perish from hunger here. Russian Jews write the roman for you and Mrs. Shapiro for a few pennies, just to buy bread.”
“Then what do you say is best — for the poor man?”
“Americhka,” said Pop. “For the poor or the rich. The goy still despises us, but he lets us make a living. He doesn’t know about pogroms. A Jonas, like my brother-in-law, a mouse, can be a partner in a restaurant, can work his way up in the world. As my brother Gabe in St. Louis says, one need only work hard and vote Republican, and everyone can prosper here.”
“I didn’t know elephants were kosher,” Ira bantered.
Mom laughed.
“Epikouros,” said Pop. “Scoffer.”
“Why? I just wanted to know.”
“Yeh, why? On the Epikouros and on the Zionisten may the same blighted year befall both.”
Ira was well aware of Pop’s dislike of atheism, especially Ira’s but he couldn’t recall Pop’s expressing an opinion on Zionism, and such a vehement opinion at that. Ira really felt no interest in Zionism whatever; he felt condescending, actually. Just the least curiosity as to why Pop was so exercised on the subject. He debated with himself whether to challenge Pop in order to find out why he had suddenly taken such a strong stand, then decided not to: for the sake of keeping the Sabbath tranquil.
“This.” Pop tapped the lower corner of the newspaper. And to Mom again: “Would you read this, you would read something of importance.”
“I read it,” said Mom. “That they’re trying to redeem Israel.”
“That’s what you think, these idiots, with Rothschild urging them on. These are our idiots. Not Russian Jews who think they’ll transform the mujik into a noble creature: he’ll abide Jews. But Jews of all lands befuddled into returning to Israel, into redeeming Israel, the Land of Israel. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”
“So what is so wrong with Jews building a homeland there?”
“Because without a Messiah, there can be no return of Jews from the dispersion into the Land of Israel. Every rabbi has taught us that. Every Jew knows it. They know it as well as anyone. Still they persist. What they’re doing is a disgrace before God and man. A dire fate awaits them, that’s a for-sure.” Pop said the last words in English.
Ira stood up. So that was it? Lacking one Messiah. Cause for animus and all this diatribe. Ira smirked to himself. Not that he was any more concerned than before. Ludicrous though Pop’s insistence on the need for the Messiah’s advent to redeem Israel was. That notion of the Messiah — Ira walked over to the china closet under which he had placed his notebook with his blue-bound Collected Poems of John Milton on top — that notion of the Messiah was like the notion of infinity, the equivalent of never. “When the messiah comes,” Ira smirked to himself again. Mom or Pop or any of the mishpokha would say, when the Messiah comes, then this or that or the other obligation or event would be fulfilled or take place — meaning one whose chances were nil. Would it be called a euphemism for never? Or a circumlocution for never.
Anyway, it looked as if the Friday night would come to a peaceful end. The candles were about to go out, guttering in molten wax. Mom seemed to have forgotten her two dollars, or at least gotten over her animosity at having been stalled off. Pop was safely engrossed in his Der Tag. All was well with the world — at one flight up in the front of 108 East 119th Street. And Minnie would be home soon. All safe and serene. Watchman, what of the night? Fine, except himself.
What did Milton say? Ira sat down. License they mean when they cry Liberty. He turned pages. He’d have to skim, try to read a little faster, maybe skip a little. He preferred not to; he worshiped Milton. That in itself was guarantee of his doing better than his usual dismal level of work in the course. Maybe a B, glory be. He reached the page he had been reading, as Pop slid the back pages of the newspaper to Mom. Homeland in Zion, cloudland in Zion — he deliberately kept his eyes from focusing on the page, so he could pursue the fitful notion in his mind. Jesus, these Jews. .
But it was strange. The minute he thought about Jews, and realized he was one of them, more or less caught up in the same fate with them, more or less, even though he wanted no part of them, the entire conception dissipated, became a nebula. Who were they, what were they? He couldn’t seem to think any further: the thought dissolved, connectives and all. God, here he was again, in the same old predicament. He had no being; the person in his head had no foundation, no perch, no purchase. Same old thing: the rubbled guy — there was no such word: the crumbled guy. Burned, seared, that was it, branded, cauterized — oh, hell. He could say it a hundred, well, a dozen different ways. It always came down to the same thing — and down was right. Here was Minnie coming home any minute now. He didn’t have a single solitary chance, either with her or, under the circumstances, with anything. Where Izzy Winchel of Polo Ground days didn’t hesitate to contrive any scheme, utter the most barefaced lie, in order to cheat a sports fan out of a little money, as though all compunction were vitiated in the pursuit of the dollar — at the same time as Izzy showed not the least interest in sex, so Ira, overly conscious Ira, seemed to himself almost the reverse. Marked, branded. That was how he thought of himself.