They pointed out to him, he lived in the caretaker’s cottage for no rent. And paid no property taxes, either.
Not like the rest of us citizens, Jay-cob. We pay taxes.
They laughed. They were genial jovial men. Those others who regarded him like a dog teetering on its hind legs.
Was he doing a satisfactory job as caretaker, well yes-he was doing a satisfactory job. Unskilled labor it was, maintaining the cemetery, except you had to have some skills, in fact. Except you could not belong to any union. Except you would receive no pension, no insurance, like other township employees.
Except you were fearful in the end of seeming to complain. You were fearful of becoming known in Milburn, New York, as Schwart-who-complains.
Schwart-the-Kraut they called him behind his back. He knew.
Schwart-the-Jew.
(For hadn’t Schwart a Jew nose? No one in Milburn had ever seen an actual Jew except now, Life magazine for instance, Collier’s, were reproducing Nazi anti-Semitic cartoons and caricatures side by side with amusing photographs of inept British civilians training for the defense of their homeland.)
Damn he vowed he would show them! Those others who insulted him and his family. Those others whose secret allegiance was with Hitler. He had secrets of his own, saving money for his escape. He had escaped Hitler and he would escape Milburn, New York. So carefully saving his pennies for though Jacob Schwart was not a Jew (he was not a Jew) he possessed the ancient Jewish cunning, to slip through the clutches of the adversary, to prosper, and to take revenge. In time.
12
The day Gus came running home from school snot-nosed and sniveling asking Ma what’s a Jew, what’s a damn Jew, those bastards on the Post Road were teasing him and Hank Diggles threw corncobs at him and everybody was laughing like they hated him, some of them he thought were his friends. And Ma was near to fainting, looking like a drowning woman, tied a scarf over her hair and ran to find Pa in the cemetery, stammering and panting for breath and it was the first time in memory he’d seen her, his wife, this far from the house, outside in the cemetery where he was using a scythe on tall grasses and wild rose infesting a hillside, he was shocked how frightened she appeared, how disheveled, in her shapeless housedress and in fact her stockings were rolled down to her ankles, her legs were glaring-white and covered in fair brown hairs, fattish legs, and her face now was puffy, bloated, where once she’d been a slender pretty girl smiling shyly in adoration of her schoolteacher husband and she’d played Chopin, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, God how he had loved her!-and now this clumsy woman stammering broken English so that he had trouble figuring out what the hell she was saying, he’d thought it might be those damn kids hiding behind the wall and tossing corncobs at the laundry on the line or at her and then he heard, he heard Jew Jew Jew he heard, and took hold of her shoulders and shook her telling her to shut her mouth and get back inside the house; and that evening when he saw Gus, who was ten years old at this time, fifth grade at the Milburn grammar school, Jacob Schwart slapped the boy open-handed across the face saying these words Gus would long recall as would his sister Rebecca standing close by:
“Never say it.”
13
It was one of the astonishing acts of his life in America.
From a tradesman in Milburn, in the cold wet spring of 1940, he bought the radio. He, Jacob Schwart! His impulsiveness frightened him. His absurd trust in a stranger’s integrity. For the radio was secondhand, and came with no guarantee. In this reckless gesture he was violating his principles of healthy distrust of those others he meant to inculcate in his children to protect them from disaster.
“What have I done! What…”
Like a random act of adultery, it had been. Or violence.
He, he!-who was assuredly not a man of violence but a civilized man, in exile now from his true life.
Yet the purchase had been premeditated for weeks. The quickening news in Europe was such, he could not bear to remain in ignorance. Local newspapers were inadequate. Nothing would satisfy him except a radio with which to hear daily, nightly news from as many sources as possible.
In a state of barely controlled agitation he had presented himself to the teller at the First Bank of Chautauqua. Shyly yet decisively he’d pushed his bankbook beneath the wicket. The teller, an individual of no earthly significance except he held Jacob Schwart’s bankbook in his hand, frowned at the inked figures as if poised to glance up sternly at him-this cringing troll-figure in the soiled work clothes and cloth cap, “Jacob Schwart”-and inform him that no such savings account existed, he was totally mistaken. Instead, as if this were an everyday transaction, the teller mechanically counted out bills, not once but twice; and stiff freshly minted bills they were, which pleased Jacob Schwart absurdly. As the teller pushed both money and bankbook back beneath the wicket he seemed almost to wink at his customer. I know what you’re going to do with this money, Jacob Schwart!
For days afterward Jacob would suffer stomach cramps and diarrhea, so stricken with guilt. Or so elated, and so stricken with guilt. A radio! In the caretaker’s hovel! A Motorola, the very best manufacturer of radios in the world. The cabinet was made of wood, the dial warmly glowed as soon as the radio was turned on. It was a miracle how, switching the knob to on, you felt immediately the vibrating life of the marvelous instrument inside the cabinet like a thrumming soul.
Of course, Jacob had bought the radio without telling Anna. He no longer troubled to tell his wife much of what he did. Obscurely, they had become resentful of each other. Their stony silences lasted for hours. A day, a night. Who had wounded whom? When had it begun? Like dumb blind undersea creatures they lived together in their shadowy cave with only a minimal awareness of each other. Jacob learned to make his wishes known by grunting, pointing, grimacing, shrugging, shifting his body abruptly in his chair, glancing toward Anna. She was his wife, his servant. She must obey. He controlled all their finances, all transactions with the outside world were his. Since he’d forbidden the intimidated woman to speak their native language even when they were alone together in their bedroom, even in their bed in the dark, Anna was at a disadvantage, and came to resent having to speak English at any time.
Anna, too, was profoundly shocked by her husband’s impulsive purchase of the radio, which she interpreted as an act not only of uncharacteristic profligacy but also of marital infidelity. He is mad. This is the beginning. When they had so little money, and the children needed clothes, and visits to the dentist. And the price of coal, and the prices of food…Anna was shocked, and frightened, and could not speak of it without stammering.
Jacob interrupted, “The radio is secondhand, Anna. A bargain. And a Motorola.”
He was jeering at her, she knew. For Anna Schwart had no idea what Motorola was, or meant; no more than she could have recited the names of the moons of Jupiter.
That first evening, Jacob was giddy, magnanimous: he invited his family into the parlor to listen to the big box-like object installed beside his chair. Anna stayed away, but the boys and Rebecca were enthralled. But it was an error in judgment, Jacob came to realize, for the news that evening was of an attack in the North Sea, the British destroyer Glowworm sunk by German warships, but survivors of the attack had been rescued from drowning by the crew of one of the German ships…Immediately Jacob changed his mind about his children listening to the radio, and ordered them out of the parlor.