The Pawnbroker. Edward Lewis Wallant
with a delightfully Midwestern accent; so American!
But her faint smile slipped away when she turned back to her son. Morton ate with his thin face close to his plate, shoveling in the food with quick darts of his fork like a Chinese plying chopsticks. His dark, unattractive face resembled those of the young ghetto scholars she remembered from her childhood, morose, intense, despising appearance. It depressed her just to look at him, made her feel a melancholy guilt which invariably turned to anger. He was not there enjoying the family meal, but, like his uncle, only hurrying toward his own solitude.
Sol ate slowly and deliberately. Eating was something he had to do, and the tastes made no difference to him. Despite Bertha’s cajoling promise about the brisket, he ate only the vegetables, as always. He never ate meat, because it sickened him; it just never seemed important to remind his sister of that distaste.
“. . . and Sid is taking me to that new Japanese film, Daddy.”
Joan liked the aspect of the typically American family, which Bertha tried to develop, in spite of the intellectual pretensions that sometimes obligated her to scorn Americanism. Somewhat more generous and good-natured than her mother, she was even able to include her Uncle Sol in that rosy-tinted picture. She referred to Sol as being an old-fashioned bachelor, a very learned European ex-professor, and intimated to outsiders that his taciturnity was only a guise for a shyly affectionate nature.
“The thing is,” Selig said, “Hollywood is just interested in making money.” His fresh, youthful face was good-natured but not very mobile or expressive, as though too much animation might belie his alleged delicacy. Now he sighed in wan regret. “No, to Hollywood, culture is just a dirty word. Callow, that’s the word for American culture. They have so much to learn from the Europeans.”
“That’s what Sid was saying, Dad, exactly that. He said that we live in a cultural vacuum here.”
“Hey, that’s good—cultural vacuum. Perfect. He sounds like a bright young man, your Sid.” He smiled affectionately at his daughter and patted her arm.
“He is a nice boy,” Bertha interrupted. “But is he serious? I mean I don’t want you to get too . . . intimate,” she said, casting her eyes down in an attitude of daintiness. She knew what she meant, too, how hot in the pants you could get at that age—how well she remembered! She glanced at Selig with a little throb of reminiscence. But then, when she looked at Sol next to him, she felt an inward shudder of disgust like the hidden, other side of her feelings about her husband, and for a moment she imagined her brother naked and wondered how a woman ever could have loved him. “I mean,” she went on, “it can be a problem with young people. You get all emotional like, you know. Maybe you lose your head a little. . . .”
“Oh, Mother, you sound so old-fashioned,” Joan said.
“She’s right, Bertha,” Selig said with a little chuckle. “You don’t understand youth today. They’re sensible enough but they have different standards.”
The voices filled the room, rang on the cut-glass bowl of salad, the sideboard of good mahogany, with its bronze mortar and pestle, its framed picture of the long-forgotten Nazermans, father and mother of Sol and Bertha. Morton kept his eyes on the food like some searcher for gold, and Sol chewed slowly beside him, his eyes flat behind the black-rimmed steel-sided glasses.
Selig and Joan went back to talking about movies, and Selig observed that another trouble with Hollywood was that they were unwilling to face life. Suddenly noticing his silent brother-in-law, Selig smiled sympathetically and decided to include him in the conversation.
“Does that make sense to you, Solly, that the Europeans are more willing to face life?”
“Oh yes, they are willing to face life,” Sol answered, without intonation, as he went on eating, chewing and swallowing, eating with his numbed taste in the midst of all the meaningless talk.
Selig shrugged at Joan and Bertha. “What could you do?” his face said. Friendliness rolled off that man like water off porcelain.
Joan indicated with a wink that she would give it a try. This was almost a regular after-dinner game with them, trying to “draw Sol out,” and they considered it a sort of amusing demonstration of their own good will and charity.
“Uncle Sol, I’m going to buy you a decent pair of glasses whether you like it or not. Maybe tortoise shell, those heavy, movie-producer kind.”
“Thank you, but my own will do very well,” Sol answered without looking up.
“Don’t you want to look interesting, maybe like a man of destiny?” Joan said.
He just glanced at her with cold disdain.
“And Ivy League clothes? You have a big frame, you’d look just fabulous, Uncle Sol.”
“Sure, Ivy League,” Sol said with a thin smile. “Many of my customers wear the little caps with the buckle in the back.” And he went on eating, wiping out the remains in his plate with a piece of bread, in a stilted imitation of un satisfied hunger.
His retort had the power to cast a pall on their game; none of them liked to be reminded of where their money came from.
“Those Shwartsas,” Bertha said in disgust. She always avoided telling people about her brother’s business, feeling they would visualize some crafty old, hand-rubbing Yid with a big nose.
“Mother,” Joan admonished.
“Please, Bertha,” Selig said in pedagogical reproof. “You know I don’t like to hear you refer to Negroes like that.”
“Oh yes, I forgot,” Bertha apologized. “Negroes, I mean.” They were so intelligent and so liberal, her husband and her daughter. It seemed to be the style to be liberal nowadays. She really ought to keep up with things. Sometimes she felt like such a dope.
Suddenly her eye fell on her son, still eating silently and voraciously. She turned a half-guilty cruelty toward him, as though, with some compulsive pecking-order instinct, she knew he was the only victim for her there.
“And you, the big picture drawer, my artiste. You have nothing to say for yourself?” She waited a moment, watching how he ignored her, ignored all of them, his skinny, misanthropic face scowling at the food. Sometimes she felt she hated him; he embarrassed her deeply. “Couldn’t be that we don’t interest you?” There was no response from her son. “Look at you! Like an animal wolfing the food, scowling. I know why you got those pimples, that bad skin. It’s your nature—you poison yourself.”
“She’s right, son,” Selig said. “Maybe Mother is a little harsh on you, but the truth is that you just let yourself go. That attitude isn’t going to make you an artist. A man needs some self-discipline no matter what his calling is.”
“They’re right, Mort,” Joan said, as though she regretted the necessity of agreeing.
“Sometimes I’m ashamed for the neighbors,” Bertha said. “My own son walking around, acting and looking like a bum.”
Suddenly Morton jerked his head up and glared savagely around at them, as though just finding himself surrounded by enemies.
“Why the hell don’t you all leave me alone?” he snarled, his sallow face desperate and defiant.
“Now, Morton!” Selig sat erect in spite of his delicate back. “That will be just about enough.”
“Ah, there’s a runt in every litter,” Bertha said. “I don’t know what I did to deserve . . .”
“Don’t blame yourself, Mom,” Joan said. “He’s a neurotic. I honestly think it would be a good idea for him to pay a visit to an analyst.”
Morton pushed away from the table and stood up, a rigid, aged-looking youth with brooding, dark-circled eyes. As a child he had had tantrums and used to spit at them. He had no friends and stayed away from girls because he felt that if they ever insulted him he might be tempted to kill them. Several