After Gus had fed himself on my food and left, I went back in and found Golda sitting on my cot, dazed, a bit desolate, but not unhappy. She was dressed but not tucked in, and held in her hands, which were shaking slightly, what I thought at first was a handkerchief, but what I then recognized as her underpants. She looked soft, fat, somnolent, but, as always after one of these episodes, years younger than her age. “Well, Meyer?” she whispered. “Am I crazy? Did you see?”
“I saw, Golda. It’s like you said. The whole thing. It’s very strange… every time, just like that?”
She smiled wearily, stood and pulled her underwear on. “Sometimes he doesn’t call me Golda,” she said sadly, gazing off through the walls of my studio. She smoothed her skirt down, tucked her blouse in; it was the kind of costume little girls wore to the country on weekend outings, though it was still winter in Chicago.
But then a few days later she staggered into my studio all bruised up, her eyes blackened, a tooth missing in front and her jaw swollen. As soon as she saw me, she started to cry. I scrambled down the ladder. I thought she might have been hit by a car.
“It was Dick,” she wailed stiffly through her swollen jaw. “He hit me…!”
“My God, Golda!”
She fell forward on my shoulder and I started to embrace her, but she winced and pulled back: “Oh! I hurt all over!” she bawled.
I led her gently to the back, turned on the hot plate to heat up coffee. “How… how did it happen, Golda?” I asked. I was very upset and nearly tipped over the coffeepot, while setting it on the burner.
“He tried to kill me! He stole my purse!”
“Why? Why did he do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happened!” she sobbed. “Oh, God help me, Meyer, I think he’s ruptured something inside me!”
“But did you say something? Did you do anything to make him—?”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked up at me. There was such a depth of sadness in her eyes, such a terrible mix of despair and longing, that I thought I was going to cry myself to see them. I’d put a box of cookies on the table, and absently she picked one up and bit into it — she gave a little yelp of pain and clutched her mouth as though trying to keep the teeth that remained from falling out. “All I did,” she mumbled through her fingers, “was ask him why it was always the same.”
“And just for that he—?”
“I went to see him at the theater. He starts up when he sees me, just like always. I stop him. I says, ‘Tell me what you really think of me, Dick. I’m not a child,’ I says, ‘you don’t have to lie to me, I’m nearly twenty-nine’—forgive me, Meyer, I just couldn’t…”
“But you think that’s why he hit you? Just because you lied about your age—?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. All I’m sure is the minute I said ‘twenty-nine,’ something very peculiar come over him. Suddenly, he stops staring at me like he’s Valentino and starts looking more like Wolfman — Meyer, I can’t tell you, it was awful! Geferlech! He ducks his head between his shoulders and he squats down like he’s got cramps or something, holding himself up with one hand, but balling the other one up like he’s gonna hit somebody.…”
“Oh no!” I remembered that night I’d met him, the whirr-click! as I’d switched cues on him; we’d tested him a few times since and it was always the same. “So that’s what…!”
“Yes, he’s snarling and grunting and showing his teeth like some kinda mad dog or something, quivering all over. I was scared. He rears his tokus up. I says, ‘Wait a minute, Dick, we can talk about this—’ And—plats! — he hits me! He just bucks forward, smacks into my belly and klops me clean through a wall in the set, off the stage, and into the orchestra!”
“My God, Golda!”
“My purse flies outa my hands. He grabs it in midair, hides it in his elbow, hunches his head down and shlepps it right outa the theater! Oh, Meyer! I just wanna die!”
I looked into her eyes. The flesh around them was puffy and discolored, but that would go away. She’s seen a lot, I thought. Maybe almost enough. “Golda, would you model for me?”
She pulled back in surprise, as though to ask: You, too, Meyer? I realized it wasn’t the right time to have asked her. “Meyer, you know I can’t… I don’t do that sort of thing…”
“No, I mean just your eyes, I want to try to do your eyes.”
She stared at me a moment, her face still taut and damp with tears. Then she relaxed, took a sip of the coffee, wincing a bit, and smiled gently with cracked, swollen lips. “You’re a funny boy, Meyer,” she said.
On my way to Polly’s Fishmarket on North Avenue, I pass a movie theater with a poster advertising a Coming Attraction: The Last Train from Madrid, starring Dorothy Lamour. “A hair-raising experience,” it says. “The first motion picture based on the Spanish War… Takes no sides.” Instant entertainment from the world’s atrocities, “WAR IS SWELL… when a hero can succeed in winning the love of a lady like Dorothy Lamour, says Gilbert Roland.” So much for heroism, for the struggle against oppression and injustice, laying down one’s life for his fellow men. Of course, not so instant: given the lag time in motion-picture production, “quick-thinking, fast-acting Paramount Pictures” must have started shooting before Franco did. And as for entertainment, who am I to cast stones? My Jarama flowers, fallen warriors, poised athletes, even my Gorky mask: how much is really a gift to the world, how much a premeditated theft of its substance?
“Hey, whadda udder fella look like, Mayor?” Polly asks with an appreciative whistle.
“I hit a door, Polly.”
“Sure, sure, lucky da door don’ shoot you! I hope she wort’ it! Hey, you should see da mullets, Mayor, you wooden believe!”
“Not today, Polly. Just a bit of mackerel, please. And a couple fishheads for my cat, if you have any.”
“Sure, I got fishhead,” he says, dipping into the sink. He slaps one on the drainboard, flops a red mullet out between us. “Jus’ looka dat, Mayor! Ain’ he gorgiss?”
“It looks delicious, Polly. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorra Friday, wop fishday, all gone. Nowza time, Mayor! Firs’ udda munt’, you got money inna pocket! Enjoy!”
The fishhead has somehow slithered back into the sink. “Well, okay. But a smaller one.” He doesn’t hear my qualification, starts wrapping up the mullet he’s shown me. “For you, chip,” he assures me. Oh well. For the Baron’s sake, I rationalize, reaching for the bill crumpled up under the railroad spikes in my pocket. Polly dips for another generous handful of heads and other slippery debris. Jesse won’t mind. We’ll share it with Harry and Ilya if they come along. My friends often let me do their fish-buying for them so I can establish credit for the Baron. For all of us actually: the Baron’s often had to share his windfalls with the rest of us during hard times in the form of stew or, when Golda lends a hand, fishcakes.