He let the paper flutter away and entered the empty park.
The trees were still and the leaves hung in odd, suspended attitudes. The sunlight was a dead weight upon him and gave no warmth.
He was running, but his feet kicked up no dust and a tuft of grass on which he placed his weight did not bend.
And there on a bench was an old man; the only man in the desolate park. He wore a dark felt hat, with a visor shading his eyes. From underneath it, tufts of gray hair protruded. His grizzled beard reached the uppermost button of his rough jacket. His old trousers were patched, and a strip of burlap was wrapped about each worn and shapeless shoe.
Marten stopped. It was difficult to breathe. He could only say one word and he used it to ask his question: “Levkovich?”
He stood there, while the old man rose slowly to his feet; brown old eyes peering close.
“Marten,” he sighed. “Samuel Marten. You have come.” The words sounded with an effect of double exposure, for under the English, Marten heard the faint sigh of a foreign tongue. Under the “Samuel” was the unheard shadow of a “Schmu-el.”
The old man’s rough, veined hands reached out, then withdrew as though he were afraid to touch. “I have been looking but there are so many people in this wilderness of a city-that-is-to-come. So many Martins and Martines and Mortons and Mertons. I stopped at last when I found greenery, but for a moment only—I would not commit the sin of losing faith. And then you came.”
“It is I,” said Marten, and knew it was. “And you are Phinehas Levkovich. Why are we here?”
“I am Phinehas ben Jehudah, assigned the name Levkovich by the ukase of the Tsar that ordered family names for all. And we are here,” the old man said, softly, “because I prayed. When I was already old, Leah, my only daughter, the child of my old age, left for America with her husband, left the knouts of the old for the hope of the new. And my sons died, and Sarah, the wife of my bosom, was long dead and I was alone. And the time came when I, too, must die. But I had not seen Leah since her leaving for the far country and word had come but rarely. My soul yearned that I might see sons born unto her, sons of my seed, sons in whom my soul might yet live and not die.”
His voice was steady and the soundless shadow of sound beneath his words was the stately roll of an ancient language.
“And I was answered and two hours were given me that I might see the first son of my line to be born in a new land and in a new time. My daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s son, have I found you, then, amidst the splendor of this city?”
“But why the search? Why not have brought us together at once?”
“Because there is pleasure in the hope of the seeking, my son,” said the old man, radiantly, “and in the delight of the finding. I was given two hours in which I might seek, two hours in which I might find… and behold, thou art here, and I have found that which I had not looked to see in life.” His voice was old, caressing. “Is it well with thee, my son?”
“It is well, my father, now that I have found thee,” said Marten, and dropped to his knees. “Give me thy blessing, my father, that it may be well with me all the days of my life, and with the maid whom I am to take to wife and the little ones yet to be born of my seed and thine.”
He felt the old hand resting lightly on his head and there was only the soundless whisper.
Marten rose.
The old man’s eyes gazed into his yearningly. Were they losing focus?
“I go to my fathers now in peace, my son,” said the old man, and Marten was alone in the empty park.
There was an instant of renewing motion, of the sun taking up its interrupted task, of the wind reviving, and even with that first instant of sensation, all slipped back—
At ten of noon, Sam Marten hitched his way out of the taxicab, and found himself groping uselessly for his wallet while traffic inched on.
A red truck slowed, then moved on. A white script on its side announced: F. Lewkowitz and Sons, Wholesale Clothiers.
Marten didn’t see it.
CAROL CARR
Look, You Think You’ve Got Troubles
The delights of humor rest on fear and foible. Its best materials are insecurity, discomfort, frustration, hypocrisy, and nostalgia; its favorite tools are satire, ironic self-mockery, and exaggeration. It is both a foil and a shield, an effective armor against a hostile society.
Quite a bit of contemporary American humor takes its cues from Jewish culture, and Jewish humor—that particular blend of language, style, caricature, and profound alienation—becomes an important societal mirror. Spoken with the tongue of the outsider—the anti-hero—it has the sophistication of the urban middle class and the grit and pith of the ghetto. And it’s taken to heart. As Albert Goldman says, “Jewishness itself has become a metaphor for modern life. The individual Jew—the alien in search of identity—has become a symbolic protagonist.”
Jewish humor—a term, like science fiction, that is too broad and elusive to pin down—might best be defined by example. Take a nice Jewish couple with a nice Jewish daughter who marries a Martian. He’s the ultimate goy, or is he? If love can conquer all, what then happens to tradition and law and culture and despondent parents? Let them be conquered while the reader settles into rocket ships and belly laughs. But watch out for that mythical assimilated Jew peeking around the corner. He’s grinning slyly and baring his chest.
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, in the old days we would have sat shivah for the whole week. My so-called daughter gets married, my own flesh and blood, and not only he doesn’t look Jewish, he’s not even human.
“Papa,” she says to me, two seconds after I refuse to speak to her again in my entire life, “if you know him you’ll love him, I promise.” So what can I answer—the truth, like I always tell her: “If I know him I’ll vomit, that’s how he affects me. I can help it? He makes me want to throw up on him.”
With silk gloves you have to handle the girl, just like her mother. I tell her what I feel, from the heart, and right away her face collapses into a hundred cracks and water from the Atlantic Ocean makes a soggy mess out of her paper sheath. And that’s how I remember her after six months—standing in front of me, sopping wet from the tears and making me feel like a monster—me—when all the time it’s her you-should-excuse-the-expression husband who’s the monster.
After she’s gone to live with him (New Horizon Village, Crag City, Mars), I try to tell myself it’s not me who has to—how can I put it?—deal with him intimately; if she can stand it, why should I complain? It’s not like I need somebody to carry on the business; my business is to enjoy myself in my retirement. But who can enjoy? Sadie doesn’t leave me alone for a minute. She calls me a criminal, a worthless no-good with gallstones for a heart.
“Hector, where’s your brains?” she says, having finally given up on my emotions. I can’t answer her. I just lost my daughter, I should worry about my brains too? I’m silent as the grave. I can’t eat a thing. I’m empty—drained. It’s as though I’m waiting for something to happen but I don’t know what. I sit in a chair that folds me up like a bee in a flower and rocks me to sleep with electronic rhythms when I feel like sleeping, but who can sleep? I look at my wife and I see Lady Macbeth. Once I caught her whistling as she pushed the button for her bath. I fixed her with a look like an icicle tipped with arsenic.