even care if you eat or not, do you? You’re just trying to get under my skin, aren’t you?”
“I want corn flakes,” he said definitely and happily.
“I could kill that man,” she told her plate. “Just kill him.” Then, abruptly, she asked, “Where’s your glasses? No, not there, in the other pocket. Okay, put them on. Now take a good long look at that porridge.”
The old man peered down intently into his bowl.
“That’s fine. Take it easy, it’s not a goddamn wishing-well. You see them little brown specks?”
He nodded.
“That’s what this whole fight’s about? Something as tiny as that? You know what this is. It’s flax. And flax keeps you regular. So eat it.”
“I’m not eating it. What do I want with flax?” he asked quizzically.
“Sure you’re crazy,” she said. “Crazy like a fox.”
“I want some coffee.”
Mrs. Hax slammed down her fork and knife, snatched up his cup, and marched to the kitchen counter. While she poured the coffee, Bethge’s hand crept across the table and stole several strips of bacon from her plate. He crammed these clumsily into his mouth, leaving a grease shine on his chin.
Mrs. Hax set his cup down in front of him. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t spill.”
Bethge giggled. In a glance, Mrs. Hax took in his grease-daubed chin and her plate. “Well, well, look at the cat who swallowed the canary. Grinning from ear-lobe to ear-lobe with a pound of feathers bristling from his trap.”
“So?” he said defiantly.
“You think I enjoy the idea of you pawing through my food?” Mrs. Hax carried her plate to the garbage and scraped it with a flourish. “Given all your dirty little habits, who’s to know where your hands have been?” she asked, smiling wickedly. “But go ahead and laugh. Because he who laughs last, laughs best. Chew this around for a bit and see how she tastes. You’re not getting one single, solitary cigarette today, my friend.”
Startled, he demanded his cigarettes.
“We’re singing a different tune now, aren’t we?” She paused, “N-O spells no. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“You give them. They’re mine.”
“Not since you set the chesterfield on fire. Not since then. Your son told me I was to give them out one at a time so’s I could watch you and avoid ‘regrettable accidents.’ Thank God, there’s some sense in the family. How he came by it I’m sure I don’t know.”
The old man hoisted himself out of his chair. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, I want my cigarettes – and I want them now.”
Mrs. Hax crossed her arms and set her jaw. “No.”
“You’re fired!” he shouted, “Get out!” He flapped his arms awkwardly in an attempt to startle her into motion.
“Oho!” she said, rubbing her large red hands together in delight, “fired am I? On whose say-so? Them that hires is them that fires. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And you don’t do neither. Not a bit. Your son hired me, and your son pays me. I don’t budge a step unless I get the word straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Get out!”
“Save your breath.”
He is beaten and he knows it. This large, stubborn woman cannot, will not, be moved.
“I want to talk to my son.”
“If you got information you feel your son should have, write him a letter.”
He knows this would never do. He would forget, she would steal the letter, conveniently forget to mail it. Justice demands immediate action. The iron is hot and fit for striking. He feels the ground beneath his feet is treacherous; he cannot become confused, or be led astray. One thing at a time. He must talk to his son.
“Get him on the telephone.”
“Your son, if you remember,” Mrs. Hax says, “got a little upset about all those long-distance phone calls – collect. And his words to me were, ‘Mrs. Hax, I think it best if my father phone only on important matters, at your discretion.’ At my discretion, mind you. And my discretion informs me that this isn’t one of those times. I’ve got a responsibility to my employer.”
“I’ll phone him myself.”
“That I’ve got to see.”
“I will.”
“Yes, like the last time. Half the time you can’t remember the city John lives in, let alone his street. The last time you tried to phone him you got the operator so balled up you would have been talking to a Chinaman in Shanghai if I hadn’t stepped in and saved your bacon.”
“I’ll phone. I can do it.”
“Sure you will. Where does John live?”
“I know.”
“Uh-huh, then tell me. Where does he live?”
“I know.”
“Jesus, he could be living in the basement and you wouldn’t realize it.”
This makes him cry. He realizes she is right. But minutes ago he had known where his son lived. How could he have forgotten? In the sudden twistings and turnings of the conversation he has lost his way, and now he hears himself making a wretched, disgusting noise; but he cannot stop.
Mrs. Hax feels she has gone too far. She goes over to him and puts an arm around his shoulders. “Now see what’s happened. You went and got yourself all upset over a silly old bowl of porridge. Doctor says you have to watch that with your blood pressure. It’s no laughing matter.” She boosts him out of his chair. “I think you better lie down on the chesterfield for a bit.”
Mrs. Hax led him into the living-room and made him comfortable on the chesterfield. She wondered how an old bugger like him could make so much water: if he wasn’t peeing, he was crying.
“You want a Kleenex?” she asked.
He shook his head and, ashamed, covered his face with his forearm.
“No harm in crying,” she said bleakly. “We all do some time.”
“Leave me be.”
“I suppose it’s best,” she sighed. “I’ll be in the kitchen clearing up if you need me.”
Dieter lay on the chesterfield trying to stifle his tears. It was not an easy job because even the sound of Mrs. Hax unconcernedly clacking the breakfast dishes reminded him of her monstrous carelessness with everything. His plates, his feelings. He filled with anger at the notion that he would never be nimble enough to evade her commands, or even her wishes. That he cannot outwit her or even flee her.
The living-room gradually darkens as the low, scudding rain clouds blot out the sun. He wishes it were a fine sunny day. The kind of day which tricks you into believing you are young and carefree as you once were. Like in Rumania before his family emigrated. Market days almost always felt that way. People bathed in sun and noise, their wits honed to a fine edge for trading and bartering. Every kind of people. The Jews with their curling side- locks, the timid Italian tenant farmers, the Rumanians, and people like himself, German colonists. Even a gypsy or two. Then you had a sense of life, of living. Every good thing the earth offers or man’s hand fashions could be found there. Gaily painted wagons, piles of potatoes with the wet clay still clinging to them; chickens, ducks and geese; tethered pigs tugging their back legs and squealing; horses with hooves as black and shining as basalt, and eyes as large and liquid-purple as plums.
Nothing but a sheet of sky above and good smells below: pickled herring and leather, paprika and the faint scent of little, hard, sweet apples.
Innocence. Innocence. But then again, on the other hand – yes, well, sometimes cruelty too. Right in the market.
A stranger arrived with a dancing bear once. Yes, the other bear, the one he had forgotten. He led him by a ring through the nose. When a crowd gathered, the man unsnapped the chain from the bear’s nose and began to play a violin. It was a sad, languorous tune. For a moment, the bear tossed his head from side to side and snuffled in the dirt. This, for him, was a kind of freedom.
But the man spoke to him sharply. The bear lifted his head and then mournfully raised himself up on to his hind
