“I’m looking for Helen Steinberg," Archie said finally.
“My daughter? This is a time to come calling? You’re too young for her, anyway!” she decided.
“Then you are Mrs. Steinberg?"
“Who else?”
Barbara Frietchie1 , Archie thought to himself, but he didn’t voice the thought aloud.
“So why are you looking so surprised?”
“Steinberg. The name.” Archie was confused. “It sounded Jewish.”
“So?”
“Well, your accent — I mean, you have a Jewish intonation, but—-"
“But?”
“Well, you don’t look Jewish.”
“You don’t look so Jewish yourself!” she told Archie.
“I’m not.”
“So that settles it. Stay away from my daughter.” She started to close the door.
Archie blocked it with his elbow. “You don't understand,” he said.
“I understand you’re covered with garbage in my dumbwaiter in the middle of the night and you’re calling on my daughter and you don’t smell so good either and you’re not even Jewish. You’re a medical student, maybe?”
“No.”
“So go away. Enough bums we got in this family already, and they aren’t Jewish, either.”
“I just want to speak to your daughter a minute.”
Archie had to use all his weight to keep the door propped open against her determined pushing.
“Like this you’re forcing? All right, then. I’ll call my husband. Zeke!” she bellowed. “Zeke! Come quick!”
“So why are you yelling like a yenta?" a male voice answered. “The neighbors should hear you, or what, Charity?”
The voice was followed by the appearance of a man also wearing nightclothes. His balding skull was topped off by an old-fashioned nightcap. At first glance he was the reincarnation of Calvin Coolidge—-the spitting image. With his corncob pipe clutched in one hand, he gave the impression of one of Norman Rockwell’s more comic and more rural Saturday Evening Post covers. One almost expected to see a rooster crowing atop an old red barn in the background.
“A fella here for Helen, a goy,” Charity Steinberg explained. “A shagitz in the dumbwaiter, and he won't go away.”
“What do you talk? You’re still asleep! Why would—”
Zeke Steinberg entered the kitchen and broke off as he did indeed see Archie in the dumbwaiter. “You’re sure he’s not Jewish?” he asked his wife. “He's got the pair curls coming down.” He strokes his cheeks to indicate what he meant.
“That’s from being a beatnik,” Charity Steinberg assured him. “Jewish he’s definitely not.”
“And he won’t go away? So then I’m going for my shotgun!" He started out of the kitchen again.
“Wait a second!” Archie protested. “I don't want any trouble! I want to see your daugh—-”
“What’s the matter, Pa?” A new female voice sounded from outside the kitchen.
“What’s the matter? she asks! The matter is that one of those goys you get yourself mixed up with is sitting in the dumbwaiter and won’t go away. So I’m going for my gun and--”
“What goy? What are you talking about?” The girl entered the kitchen to see for herself.
“Are you Helen Steinberg?” Archie asked desperately.
“Who else?”
Like mother, like daughter, Archie thought to himself. And in looks as well. Helen Steinberg was young, and not ugly, but she had the sparse frame and prim features associated with the Puritan women of Colonial times. About her, as about her parents, there was the aura of people who never sweat. It was impossible to picture any of them biting into a knish, or savoring a blintz.
“So who are you?” she wanted to know now.
“I’m Archimedes Jones, and -”
“I know you? I don’t remember. A B’nai Brith dance maybe? Or that Zionist rally last month?”
“No. We’ve never met. But—”
“Aha! Masher!” Zeke Steinberg had re-entered the kitchen with a double-barrelled shotgun which he proceeded to point at Archie. “So you admit you don’t even know my daughter. And you’re covered with drek, and you don’t smell so good, and you’re not Jewish, and you come busting into my house in the middle of the night, and —“
“Wait!” Archie said desperately. “Just listen! I'm a friend of Professor André Beaumarchais and--”
“Three I’ll give you, and then I shoot. One! Two!--”
“Wait, Pa!" Helen Steinberg interceded. “Did you say you were a friend of Professor Beaumarchais?" she asked Archie.
“That’s right. I just wanted to see if you were a particular girl. But you’re not, and so I guess I'll be toddling along.”
“I shouldn’t shoot him?” Zeke Steinberg wanted to know.
“I don’t know, Pa.” His wife, Charity, was confused.
“Of course not!" Helen told her father. “He’s a friend of Professor André Beaumarchais.” She beamed a smile at Archie. “So what are you sitting outside for? Come in. Come in. Take off your potato peels and make yourself at home.” She held out her hand to help Archie out of the dumbwaiter.
He climbed to the kitchen floor in a shower of debris that sent Mama Steinberg scuttling for a broom and dustpan. “Do you know Professor Beaumarchais well?" he asked Helen.
“I should know him? I never even met the gentleman.”
“Beaumarchais?” Charity Steinberg mused. “That’s a Jewish name? ”
“Then if you don’t know him, how come-—?”
“Not only is he a goy," Zeke Steinberg hissed to his wife and pointed at Archie, “but also he’s deformed.”
“Not really,” Archie tried to explain to Helen. “It’s just that I’ve been cramped up in that dumbwaiter so long I can't straighten up.”
“You think he paints pictures, maybe?” Mama Steinberg responded to her husband.
“No,” Archie said. “And I'm not going to chop off my ear, either.” Slowly and creakingly, he managed to force his frame into an erect position.
“That’s better,” Helen granted. “So tell me, did Professor Beaumarchais send you to see me? Did he give you a message? Come in the living room, you'll sit down and tell me what it is.”
“You think it's safe to leave her alone with him?" Papa Steinberg whispered to his wife as Helen led Archie out of the kitchen.
“Try to watch her every minute, it’ll drive you mesbuginah," his wife sighed. “So come on back to bed, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.”
In the living room Archie was trying to straighten out the clutter in his mind. “Did you say you’d never met Professor Beaumarchais?” he asked Helen Steinberg.
“That’s right.”
“Then how—? I mean, why—-?”
“We’ve corresponded for a number of years. It started when I was a student and first became interested in atomic transmutation. I wrote to him in Paris, asking for a bissel information on his latest experiments. You see, from a scientific journal I’d been reading, I found out he was the foremost expert in the field. He answered, and I answered, and we’ve been corresponding ever since. Also, we sometimes play chess by mail. You play chess?”
“Yeah,” Archie replied. “But I’m probably not in a class with Andre.”
“It doesn’t matter. Chess exercises the muscles of the mind. I’m working out problems every morning as a sort of setting-up exercise for my brain. But it’s better to play. Much better.” As Helen was speaking, she was opening a drawer in a coffee table and removing a chess set. Now she started setting up the pieces.