"You wouldn't stop to visit me in my country, so I came to see you in yours," said Eisen.
In this reproach, a familiar and traditional Jewish opening, there was at least a vestige of normalcy. Not so in the next statement. "I have come to America to make myself a new career." Karyera was the word he employed. Dressed in the cramping narrow gray-denim garments, obviously old stock from the Ivy League period that had been palmed off on him, in magenta, persimmon, and tomato colors (the red Chelsea boots mounting to the ankles), his unbarbered curls fusing head and shoulders and brutally eliminating the neck, he was obviously getting a new image, revising his self-conception. No longer a victim of Hitler and Stalin; deposited starved-to the bones on Israel's sands; lice, lunacy, and fever his only assets; taken from internment in Cyprus; taught a language and a trade. But you could not tell recovery where to stop. He had gone on to become an artist. Rising from negligibility, expendability, something that waited to be slaughtered with a trenching tool (Eisen said he had watched this before escaping from Nazi-occupied territory into the Russian zone--men too insignificant to waste bullets on, having their heads smashed by shovel blows); but rising and rising to heights of world mastery. By the divinity of art. Speaking, inspired, to mankind. Making signs in the universal language of charged pigments. Hurray, Eisen, flying from peak to peak! Though his colors were grayer than slate, blacker than coal, redder than disease, and his life studies were double dead, the bus that brought him in from Kennedy was a limousine; the expressways greeted him like a glorious astronaut, and he faced his Karyera with the moist laughing teeth, in most desperate ecstasy. (To pair with the Russian Karyera, you wanted the Russian Extass!)
He and Wallace were already doing business together. Eisen was designing labels for the trees and the bushes. They showed Sammler sample cards: QUERCUS and ULMUS, in thick blotchy letters of Gothic black. Other labels in the foreign cursive style Eisen had learned in the Gymnasium were neater. Poor Eisen had been a schoolboy when the war broke out and had no higher education. Sammler did his best to say something appropriate and harmless though he was repelled by everything that Eisen set on paper.
"These have got to be modified here and there," said Wallace. "But the idea is surprisingly right. For a greenie, you know."
"You are going into this business, really?"
Wallace said firmly, even with a slight jeer (forming about a dimple) at the old man's doubts, "Definitely, really, Uncle. In fact I'm going to test-fly some planes tomorrow, in Westchester. I'm going back this evening to spend the night at the old place."
"Is your pilot's license still good?"
"Why, of course it's good."
"Well, it must be an agreeable feeling of excitement--a new enterprise, with friends and relatives. What have you got there, Eisen?"
A heavy green baize bag hung from cords wound about Eisen's wrist. "Here? I have brought work of mine in a different medium." Eisen said. He clinked down the weight on the glass tabletop; the baize fell back.
"You've made some paperweights."
"Not paperweights. You could use them for that purpose, Father-in-law, but they are medallions." You couldn't offend Eisen because he took such pleasure in his accomplishments. As if he were inhaling some aromatic rarity, he began to close his eyes and to show those peerless bones, his teeth, and with both hands smoothed back the curls over his ears. "I have invented a new process in the foundry," he said. In technical Russian he began to explain, but Sammler said, "You are losing me, Eisen. I am not familiar with the vocabulary."
The metal was crude-looking, partly bronze but also pale yellow, tinged with sulfides like fool's gold. And Eisen had made the usual Stars of David, branched candelabra, scrolls and rams' horns, or inscriptions flaming away in Hebrew: Nahamu! "Comfort ye!" Or God's command to Joshua: Hazak! With a certain interest Sammler watched these crude, lunky pieces being laid out. After each, a pause, while the face of the connoisseur was intently examined for the beautiful reaction obviously due. These iron pyrites, belonging at the bottom of the Dead Sea.
"And what is this, Eisen, a tank, I take it, a Sherman tank?"
"Metaphor for a tank. Nothing is literal in my work."
"No one simply hallucinates any more," said Mr. Sammler in Polish. The remark was unnoticed.
"Shouldn't these be ground smoother?" said Wallace. "And what is this word?"
"Hazak, hazak," said Sammler. "The order God gave before Jericho, to Joshua. 'Strengthen thyself.'"
"Hazak, v'ematz," said Eisen.
"Yes, well... Why does God speak such a funny language?" said Wallace.
"I brought these medallions to show to Cousin Elya."
"Nonsense," said Sammler. "Elya's sick. He can't handle this rough heavy metal."
"No, no, I'll hold up one piece at a time. I want him to see what I accomplished. Twenty-five years ago I came to the Eretz a broken man. But I wouldn't die. I couldn't shut my eyes--not before I did something like a human being, something important, beautiful."
Sammmler ventured no comment. After all, his heart was not so hard to touch. Moreover, he had been trained in the ancient mode of politeness. Almost as, once, women had been brought up to chastity. Well-schooled in murmuring over the trash Shula found in wastebaskets, he made the necessary sounds and passes of the hand, but then he said again that Elya was very ill. These medallions might tire him.
"I differ," said Eisen. "On the contrary. How can art hurt?" He began to stow the clinking pieces in the baize bag.
Wallace then said to someone behind Sammler, "Yes, he is. " The private nurse had come in.
"Who is?"
"You, Uncle. This Is Mr. Sammler here."
"Is Elya asking for me?"
"You're wanted on the telephone. You are Uncle Sammler?"
"Miss? I am Artur Sammler."
"A Mrs. Arkin. She wants you to call home."
"Oh, Margotte. Did she phone Elya's room? I hope she didn't wake him."
"The call was to the floor, not to the room."
"Thank you. Oh, yes, where is the public phone?"
"Do you need dimes, Uncle?" Sammler picked two warm coins out of Wallace's palm. Wallace had been clutching his money.
Margotte tried extraordinarily hard to speak firmly. "Uncle? Now listen. Where did you leave Dr. Lal's manuscript?"
"I left it on my desk."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I am sure. On my desk."
"Is there no other place you might have put it? I know you aren't absent-minded, but the strain is unusual."
"It isn't on the desk? Is Dr. Lal with you?"
"I sat him down in the living room."
Among the pots of soil. What must this Lal be feeling!
"And does he know it's gone?"
"I couldn't very well lie to him. I had to tell him. He wanted to wait here for you. We raced back from Butler Hall, of course. He was so anxious."
"Now, Margotte, we must keep our heads."
"He is in such distress. Really, Uncle, no one has the right to expose a person to such things."
"My apologies to Dr. Lal. I regret more than I can say... I can imagine how upset he is. But Margotte, only one person in the world could have taken that notebook. You must find out from the elevator man. Has Shula been there?"
"Rodriguez lets her in as one of the family. She is one of the family."
Rodriguez had a giant ring of keys, practically a hoop. He fetched it at need from a nail in the brick wall of the cellar.
"Really, Shula is too stupid. Enough is enough. I've been too easy with her. The embarrassment is terrible. Being the father of the woman-lunatic who ambushes this unhappy Indian. You spoke to Rodriguez?"
"It was Shula."
"Ah"
"Dr. Lal had a report from the detective who visited her today, at noon. I think the man threatened her."
"As I feared."
"He said the manuscript must be back by ten a. m. tomorrow; otherwise he would come with a warrant."