I wasn't asking them to make sacrifices. All I asked for was chicken feed—cigarettes, a meal, old clothes. Wait a minute, I want to modify what I said. There were exceptions. There was one lad I remember, one of my messengers ... this was after I had quit the telegraph company ... when he learned that I was up against it he went and stole for me. He'd bring us a chicken or a few vegetables ... sometimes only a candy bar, if that was all he could lay hands on. There were others too, poor like him, or nuts. They didn't turn their pockets inside out to show me they had nothing. The guys I traveled with had no right to refuse me. None of them had ever starved. We weren't poor white trash. We all came from decent, comfortable homes. No, maybe it's the Jew in you that makes you so kind and thoughtful, pardon the way I put it. When a Jew sees a man in distress, hungry, abused, despised, he sees himself. He identifies immediately with the other fellow. Not us. We haven't tasted enough poverty, misfortune, disgrace, humiliation. We've never been pariahs. We're sitting pretty, we are, lording it over the rest of the world.
Miller, he said, you must have taken a lot of punishment. No matter what I may think of my own people— they've got their faults too, you know—I could never talk about them the way you do about yours. It makes me all the more happy to think you're going to enjoy yourself for a while. It's coming to you. But you've got to bury the past!
I've got to stop feeling sorry for myself, you mean. I threw him a tender smile. You know, Reb, I really don't feel this way all the time. Deep down it still rankles, but on the surface I take people pretty much as they come. What I can't get over, I guess, is that I had to worm it out of them, everything I got. And what did I get? Crumbs. I exaggerate, of course. Not every one turned me down cold. And those who did probably had a right to act as they did. It was like the pitcher you bring once too often to the well. I sure knew how to make a nuisance of myself. And for a man who's willing to eat humble pie I was too arrogant. I had a way of rubbing people the wrong way. Especially when asking for help. You see, I'm one of those fools who think that people, friends anyway, ought to divine the fact that one is in need. When you come across a poor, filthy beggar, does he have to make your heart bleed before you toss him a coin? Not if you're a decent, sensitive being. When you see him with head down, searching the gutter for a discarded butt or a piece of yesterday's sandwich, you lift up his head, you put your arms around him, especially if he's crawling with lice, and you say: ‘What is it, friend? Can I be of any help?’ You don't pass him up with one eye fastened on a bird sitting on a telegraph wire. You don't make him run after you with hands outstretched. That's my point. No wonder so many people refuse a beggar when he accosts them. It's humiliating to be approached that way: it makes you feel guilty. We're all generous, in our own way. But the moment some one begs something of us our hearts close up.
Miller, said Reb, visibly moved by this outburst, you're what I'd call a good Jew.
Another Jesus, eh?
Yeah, why not? Jesus was a good Jew, even though we've had to suffer for two thousand years because of him.
The moral is—don't work too hard at it! Don't try to be too good.
One can never do too much, said Reb heatedly.
Oh yes he can. Do what needs doing, that's good enough.
Isn't it the same thing?
Almost. The point is that God looks after the world. We should look after one another. If the good Lord had seeded help to run this world He would have given us bigger hearts. Hearts, not brains.
Jesus, said Reb, but you do talk like a Jew. You remind me of certain scholars I listened to when I was a kid and they were expounding the law. They could jump from one side of the fence to the other, like goats. When you were cold they blew hot, and vice versa. You never knew where you stood with them. Here's what I mean ... Passionate as they were, they always preached moderation. The prophets were the wild men; they were in a class apart. The holy men didn't rant and rave. They were pure, that's why. And you're pure too. I know you are.
What was there to answer? He was simple, Reb, and in need of a friend. No matter what I said, no matter how I treated him, he acted as if I had enriched him. I was his friend. And he would remain my friend, no matter what.
Walking back to the house I resumed the inner monologue. You see, it's as simple as that, friendship. What's the old adage? To have a friend you must be a friend.
It was hard to see, though, in what way I had been a friend to Reb—or to anybody, for that matter. All I could see was that I was my own best friend—and my own worst enemy.
Pushing the door open, I had to remark to myself—If you know that much, old fella, you know a lot.
I took my accustomed place before the machine. Now, said I to myself, you're back in your own little kingdom. Now you can play God again.
The drollery of addressing myself thus stopped me. God! As if it were only yesterday that I had left off communing with Him, I found myself conversing with Him as of yore. For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son ... And how little we had given in return. What can we offer thee, O Heavenly Father, in return for thy blessings? My heart spoke out, as if, veriest nothing that I was, I had an inkling of the problems which confronted the Creator of the universe. Nor was I ashamed to be thus intimate with my Maker. Was I not part of that immense all which He had made manifest expressly, perhaps, to realize the unlimited bounds of his Being?
It was ages since I had addressed Him in this intimate fashion. What a difference between those prayers wrung out of sheer despair, when I called on Him for mercy—mercy, not grace!—and the easy duos born of humble understanding! Strange, is it, this mention of earthly-heavenly discourse? It would occur most often when my spirits ran high ... when there was little reason, mark this, to show any sign of spirit. Incongruous as it may sound, it was often when the cruel nature of man's fate smote me between the eyes that my spirit soared. When, like a worm eating his way through the slime, there came the thought, crazy perhaps, that the lowest was linked to the highest. Did they not tell us, when we were young, that God noted the sparrow's fall? Even if I never quite believed it, I was nevertheless impressed. (Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh—is there anything too hard for me?) Total awareness! Plausible or implausible, it was a great reach of thought. Sometimes, as a kid, when something truly extraordinary occurred, I would exclaim: Did you see that, God? How wonderful to think that He was there, within calling distance! He was a presence then, not a metaphysical abstraction. His spirit pervaded everything; He was of it all and above it all, at one and the same time. And then—thinking about it I assumed an almost seraphic smile—then would come times when, in order not to go stark, raving mad, one simply had to look upon it (upon the absurd, monstrous nature of things) with the eyes of the Creator, He who is responsible for it all and understands it.
Tapping away—I was on the gallop now—the thought of Creation, of the all-seeing eye, the all-embracing corn-passion, the nearness and farness of God, hung over me like a veil. What a joke to be writing a novel about
