Idiots First Read online

  Etta felt for her handkerchief in her purse and touched her eyes with it.

  “And you?” he asked sympathetically.

  To her surprise she began to tell him her story. Though she had often related it to priests, she never had to anyone else, not even a friend. But she was telling it to a stranger because he seemed to be a man who would understand. And if later she regretted telling him, what difference would it make once he was gone?

  She confessed she had prayed for her husband’s death, and Cesare put down his coffee cup and sat with his butt between his lips, not puffing as she talked.

  Armando, Etta said, had fallen in love with a cousin who had come during the summer from Perugia for a job in Rome. Her father had suggested that she live with them, and Armando and Etta, after talking it over, decided to let her stay for a while. They would save her rent to buy a second-hand television set so they could watch “Lascia o Raddoppia,” the quiz program that everyone in Rome watched on Thursday nights, and that way save themselves the embarrassment of waiting for invitations and having to accept them from neighbors they didn’t like. The cousin came, Laura Ansaldo, a big-boned pretty girl of eighteen with thick brown hair and large eyes. She slept on the sofa in the living room, was easy to get along with, and made herself helpful in the kitchen before and after supper. Etta had liked her until she noticed that Armando had gone mad over the girl. She then tried to get rid of Laura but Armando threatened he would leave if she bothered her. One day Etta had come home from work and found them naked in the marriage bed, engaged in the act. She had screamed and wept. She called Laura a stinking whore and swore she would kill her if she didn’t leave the house that minute. Armando was contrite. He promised he would send the girl back to Perugia, and the next day in the Stazione Termini, had put her on the train. But the separation from her was more than he could bear. He grew nervous and miserable. Armando confessed himself one Saturday night, and for the first time in ten years, took communion, but instead of calming down he desired the girl more strongly. After a week he told Etta that he was going to get his cousin and bring her back to Rome.

  “If you bring that whore here,” Etta shouted, “I’ll pray to Christ that you drop dead before you get back.”

  “In that case,” Armando said, “start praying.”

  When he left the house she fell on her knees and prayed with all her heart for his death.

  That night Armando went with a friend to get Laura. The friend had a truck and was going to Assisi. On the way back he would pick them up in Perugia and drive to Rome. They started out when it was still twilight but it soon grew dark. Armando drove for a while, then felt sleepy and crawled into the back of the truck. The Perugian hills were foggy after a hot September day and the truck hit a rock in the road a hard bump. Armando, in deep sleep, rolled out of the open tailgate of the truck, hitting the road with head and shoulders, then rolling down the hill. He was dead before he stopped rolling. When she heard of this Etta fainted away and it was two days before she could speak. After that she had prayed for her own death and often did.

  Etta turned her back to the other tables, though they were empty, and wept openly and quietly.

  After a while Cesare squashed his butt. “Calma, Signora. If God had wanted your husband to live he would still be living. Prayers have little relevance to the situation. To my way of thinking the whole thing was no more than a coincidence. It’s best not to go too far with religion or it becomes troublesome.”

  “A prayer is a prayer,” she said. “I suffer for mine.”

  Cesare pursed his lips. “But who can judge these things? They’re much more complicated than most of us know. In the case of my wife I didn’t pray for her death but I confess I might have wished it. Am I in a better position than you?”

  “My prayer was a sin. You don’t have that on your mind. It’s worse than what you just might have thought.”

  “That’s only a technical thing, Signora.”

  “If Armando had lived,” she said after a minute, “he would have been twenty-nine next month. I am a year older. But my life is useless now. I wait to join him.”

  He shook his head, seemed moved, and ordered an espresso for her.

  Though Etta had stopped crying, for the first time in months she felt substantially disburdened.

  Cesare put her on the bus; as they were crossing the street he suggested they might meet now and then since they had so much in common.

  “I live like a nun,” she said.

  He lifted his hat. “Coraggio,” and she smiled at him for his kindness.

  When she returned home that night the anguish of life without Armando recommenced. She remembered him as he had been when he was courting her and felt uneasy for having talked about him to Cesare. And she vowed for herself continued prayers, rosaries, her own penitence to win him further indulgences in Purgatory.

  Etta saw Cesare on a Sunday afternoon a week later. He had written her name in his little book and was able to locate her apartment in a house on the via Nomentana through the help of a friend in the electric company.

  When he knocked on her door she was surprised to see him, turned rather pale, though he hung back doubtfully. But she invited him in and he entered apologetically. He said he had found out by accident where she lived and she asked for no details. Cesare had brought a small bunch of violets which she embarrassedly accepted and put in water.

  “You’re looking better, Signora,” he said.

  “My mourning for Armando goes on,” she answered with a sad smile.

  “Moderazione,” he counseled, flicking his meaty ear with his pinky. “You’re still a young woman, and at that not bad looking. You ought to acknowledge it to yourself. There are certain advantages to self belief.”

  Etta made coffee and Cesare insisted on going out for a half dozen pastries.

  He said as they were eating that he was considering emigrating if nothing better turned up soon. After a pause he said he had decided he had given more than his share to the dead. “I’ve been faithful to her memory but I have to think of myself once in a while. There comes a time when one has to return to life. It’s only natural. Where there’s life there’s life.”

  She lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee.

  Cesare set down his cup and got up. He put on his coat and thanked her. As he was buttoning his overcoat he said he would drop by again when he was in the neighborhood. He had a journalist friend who lived close by.

  “Don’t forget I’m still in mourning,” Etta said.

  He looked up at her respectfully. “Who can forget that, Signora? Who would want to so long as you mourn?”

  She then felt uneasy.

  “You know my story.” She spoke as though she were explaining again.

  “I know,” he said, “that we were both betrayed. They died and we suffer. My wife ate flowers and I belch.”

  “They suffer too. If Armando must suffer, I don’t want it to be about me. I want him to feel that I’m still married to him.” Her eyes were wet again.

  “He’s dead, Signora. The marriage is over,” Cesare said. “There’s no marriage without his presence unless you expect the Holy Ghost.” He spoke dryly, adding quietly, “Your needs are different from a dead man’s, you’re a healthy woman. Let’s face the facts.”

  “Not spiritually,” she said quickly.

  “Spiritually and physically, there’s no love in death.” She blushed and spoke in excitement. “There’s love for the dead. Let him feel that I’m paying for my sin at the same time he is for his. To help him into heaven I keep myself pure. Let him feel that.”

  Cesare nodded and left, but Etta, after he had gone, continued to be troubled. She felt uneasy, could not define her mood, and stayed longer than usual at Armando’s grave when she went the next day. She promised herself not to see Cesare again. In the next weeks she became a little miserly.

  The journalist returned one evening almost a month later and Etta stood at the door in a way that indic
ated he would not be asked in. She had seen herself doing this if he appeared. But Cesare, with his hat in his hand, suggested a short stroll. The suggestion seemed so modest that she agreed. They walked down the via Nomentana, Etta wearing her highest heels, Cesare unselfconsciously talking. He wore small patent leather shoes and smoked as they strolled.

  It was already early December, still late autumn rather than winter. A few leaves clung to a few trees and a warmish mist hung in the air. For a while Cesare talked of the political situation but after an espresso in a bar on the via Venti Settembre, as they were walking back he brought up the subject she had hoped to avoid. Cesare seemed suddenly to have lost his calm, unable to restrain what he had been planning to say. His voice was intense, his gestures impatient, his dark eyes restless. Although his outburst frightened her she could do nothing to prevent it.

  “Signora,” he said, “wherever your husband is you’re not helping him by putting this penance on yourself. To help him, the best thing you can do is take up your normal life. Otherwise he will continue to suffer doubly, once for something he was guilty of, and the second time for the unfair burden your denial of life imposes on him.”

  “I am repenting my sins, not punishing him.” She was too disturbed to say more, considered walking home wordless, then slamming the front door in his face; but she heard herself hastily saying, “If we became intimate it would be like adultery. We would both be betraying the dead.”

  “Why is it you see everything in reverse?”

  Cesare had stopped under a tree and almost jumped as he spoke. “They—they betrayed us. If you’ll pardon me, Signora, the truth is my wife was a pig. Your husband was a pig. We mourn because we hate them. Let’s have the dignity to face the facts.”

  “No more,” she moaned, hastily walking on. “Don’t say anything else, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Etta,” said Cesare passionately, walking after her, “this is my last word and then I’ll nail my tongue to my jaw. Just remember this. If Our Lord Himself this minute let Armando rise from the dead to take up his life on earth, tonight—he would be lying in his cousin’s bed.”

  She began to cry, Etta walked on, crying, realizing the truth of his remark. Cesare seemed to have said all he had wanted to, gently held her arm, breathing heavily as he escorted her back to her apartment. At the outer door, as she was trying to think how to get rid of him, how to end this, without waiting a minute he tipped his hat and walked off.

  For more than a week Etta went through many torments. She felt a passionate desire to sleep with Cesare. Overnight her body became a torch. Her dreams were erotic. She saw Armando naked in bed with Laura, and in the same bed she saw herself with Cesare, clasping his small body to hers. But she resisted—prayed, confessed her most lustful thoughts, and stayed for hours at Armando’s grave to calm her mind.

  Cesare knocked at her door one night, and because she was repelled when he suggested the marriage bed, went with him to his rooms. Though she felt guilty afterwards she continued to visit Armando’s grave, though less frequently, and she didn’t tell Cesare that she had been to the cemetery when she went to his flat afterwards. Nor did he ask her, nor talk about his wife or Armando.

  At first her uneasiness was intense. Etta felt as though she had committed adultery against the memory of her husband, but when she told herself over and over—there was no husband, he was dead; there was no husband, she was alone; she began to believe it. There was no husband, there was only his memory. She was not committing adultery. She was a lonely woman and had a lover, a widower, a gentle and affectionate man.

  One night as they were lying in bed she asked Cesare about the possibility of marriage and he said that love was more important. They both knew how marriage destroyed love.

  And when two months later, she found she was pregnant and hurried that morning to Cesare’s rooms to tell him, the journalist, in his pajamas, calmed her. “Let’s not regret human life.”

  “It’s your child,” said Etta.

  “I’ll acknowledge it as mine,” Cesare said, and Etta went home happy.

  The next day, when she returned at her usual hour, after having told Armando at his grave that she was at last going to have a baby, Cesare was gone.

  “Moved,” the landlady said, with a poof of her hand, and she didn’t know where.

  Though Etta’s heart hurt and she deeply mourned the loss of Cesare, try as she would she could not, even with the life in her belly, escape thinking of herself as an adulteress, and she never returned to the cemetery to stand again at Armando’s grave.

  THE JEWBIRD

  The window was open so the skinny bird flew in. Flappity-flap with its frazzled black wings. That’s how it goes. It’s open, you’re in. Closed, you’re out and that’s your fate. The bird wearily flapped through the open kitchen window of Harry Cohen’s top-floor apartment on First Avenue near the lower East River. On a rod on the wall hung an escaped canary cage, its door wide open, but this black-type longbeaked bird—its ruffled head and small dull eyes, crossed a little, making it look like a dissipated crow—landed if not smack on Cohen’s thick lamb chop, at least on the table, close by. The frozen foods salesman was sitting at supper with his wife and young son on a hot August evening a year ago. Cohen, a heavy man with hairy chest and beefy shorts; Edie, in skinny yellow shorts and red halter; and their ten-year-old Morris (after her father)—Maurie, they called him, a nice kid though not overly bright—were all in the city after two weeks out, because Cohen’s mother was dying. They had been enjoying Kingston, New York, but drove back when Mama got sick in her flat in the Bronx.

  “Right on the table,” said Cohen, putting down his beer glass and swatting at the bird. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Harry, take care with your language,” Edie said, looking at Maurie, who watched every move.

  The bird cawed hoarsely and with a flap of its bedraggled wings—feathers tufted this way and that—rose heavily to the top of the open kitchen door, where it perched staring down.

  “Gevalt, a pogrom!”

  “It’s a talking bird,” said Edie in astonishment.

  “In Jewish,” said Maurie.

  “Wise guy,” mutttered Cohen. He gnawed on his chop, then put down the bone. “So if you can talk, say what’s your business. What do you want here?”

  “If you can’t spare a lamb chop,” said the bird, “I’ll settle for a piece of herring with a crust of bread. You can’t live on your nerve forever.”

  “This ain’t a restaurant,” Cohen replied. “All I’m asking is what brings you to this address?”

  “The window was open,” the bird sighed; adding after a moment, “I’m running. I’m flying but I’m also running.”

  “From whom?” asked Edie with interest.

  “Anti-Semeets.”

  “Anti-Semites?” they all said.

  “That’s from who.”

  “What kind of anti-Semites bother a bird?” Edie asked.

  “Any kind,” said the bird, “also including eagles, vultures, and hawks. And once in a while some crows will take your eyes out.”

  “But aren’t you a crow?”

  “Me? I’m a Jewbird.”

  Cohen laughed heartily. “What do you mean by that?”

  The bird began dovening. He prayed without Book or tallith, but with passion. Edie bowed her head though not Cohen. And Maurie rocked back and forth with the prayer, looking up with one wide-open eye.

  When the prayer was done Cohen remarked, “No hat, no phylacteries?”

  “I’m an old radical.”

  “You’re sure you’re not some kind of a ghost or dybbuk?”

  “Not a dybbuk,” answered the bird, “though one of my relatives had such an experience once. It’s all over now, thanks God. They freed her from a former lover, a crazy jealous man. She’s now the mother of two wonderful children.”

  “Birds?” Cohen asked slyly.

  “Why not?”

  “What kind of birds?” />
  “Like me. Jewbirds.”

  Cohen tipped back in his chair and guffawed. “That’s a big laugh. I’ve heard of a Jewfish but not a Jewbird.”

  “We’re once removed.” The bird rested on one skinny leg, then on the other. “Please, could you spare maybe a piece of herring with a small crust of bread?”

  Edie got up from the table.

  “What are you doing?” Cohen asked her.

  “I’ll clear the dishes.”

  Cohen turned to the bird. “So what’s your name, if you don’t mind saying?”

  “Call me Schwartz.”

  “He might be an old Jew changed into a bird by somebody,” said Edie, removing a plate.

  “Are you?” asked Harry, lighting a cigar.

  “Who knows?” answered Schwartz. “Does God tell us everything?”

  Maurie got up on his chair. “What kind of herring?” he asked the bird in excitement.

  “Get down, Maurie, or you’ll fall,” ordered Cohen.

  “If you haven’t got matjes, I’ll take schmaltz,” said Schwartz.

  “All we have is marinated, with slices of onion—in a jar,” said Edie.

  “If you’ll open for me the jar I’ll eat marinated. Do you have also, if you don’t mind, a piece of rye bread—the spitz?”

  Edie thought she had.

  “Feed him out on the balcony,” Cohen said. He spoke to the bird. “After that take off.”

  Schwartz closed both bird eyes. “I’m tired and it’s a long way.”

  “Which direction are you headed, north or south?”

  Schwartz, barely lifting his wings, shrugged.

  “You don’t know where you’re going?”

  “Where there’s charity I’ll go.”

  “Let him stay, papa,” said Maurie. “He’s only a bird.”

  “So stay the night,” Cohen said, “but no longer.”

  In the morning Cohen ordered the bird out of the house but Maurie cried, so Schwartz stayed for a while. Maurie was still on vacation from school and his friends were away. He was lonely and Edie enjoyed the fun he had, playing with the bird.