Crackpot, page 16
“Please!”
She summoned up all her strength, holding him off.
“Please!”
“Then say ‘I love you!’” cried Hoda. “Say ‘I love you!’”
“I love you I love you I love you!” gasped Morgan.
And he meant it! He really meant it! She knew he meant it! She could feel he meant it, tearing through her, repeating and repeating and repeating “I love you! I love you!” till suddenly, those great hearty gusts of something like laughter burst from her, unexpectedly, shooting out from somewhere way down there in the very centre of her.
Morgan was kind of mad about her making so much noise like that, and got himself buttoned up fast, because he was afraid maybe the janitor was still around and if he heard might come after them from inside the school. Hoda was surprised and a little disappointed that Morgan was afraid of a little noise, after all the trouble he’d gone to, gambling for her and wanting her so much and how good it felt and everything. He hardly even wanted to wait for her when she was straightening her clothes up and down again. He didn’t even act as though he remembered he’d said “I love you” when he said “so-long” to her on the corner where she turned off to go home.
Hoda felt let down, and she felt uncomfortable walking and unclean. But she didn’t start really feeling awful till she came into the house and Daddy said “Hello Hodaleh!” to her in his cheerful, happy-to-have-her-home voice. Then she began to wonder what had been happening to her and what she had done. And she almost couldn’t remember, except that she felt awful, and there were reasons why she felt awful, and she didn’t even know how far it was her own fault. She hardly noticed what she said to Daddy. She only knew she had to get away from him and from talking, and somehow she did get into her room and into her bed at last.
And then all the events of the day began to swarm over her like ugly, crawly things, in little bits and pieces of memory and sounds of voices and fragments of feeling, and she couldn’t shake herself free of them, till at last, to try to make herself feel less awful she tried to think of the nicer things about what had happened tonight, about how they had diced for her and she was more important than the money to them, and it was a little bit like in stories, and how Morgan had really said “I love you,” more than once. It was hard to conjure up again how good she had felt because now she was all sore down there. She was so sore she was almost afraid the good feelings had got rubbed away forever. Then there was the money Morgan had given her; that was another good thing. She and Daddy could use that all right. But had she done it? Had she really done it? What was it she had done? Is that what it was? Would people be able to tell? Was this all the difference between before and after? Well so what! Big deal! To hell with Miss Bottoms-up, who probably didn’t even know what it was like in spite of her name! Who would want to shoot crap for her anyway? To hell with any of them who didn’t like her. To hell with Morgan, even, if he didn’t like it just because she made a little noise when she couldn’t even help it because he was making her feel so good. If she felt like it she’d go on doing it, and if she didn’t feel like it she’d quit. Nobody was going to tell her what to do. If she wanted to she’d even fuck them all! Only Daddy wouldn’t like it. And Mamma. Hoda knew that Mamma wouldn’t have liked it at all. The very thought of Mamma knowing it made her feel just sick and awful. Well, what did she have to go and die for, and leave her that way, with Daddy to look after and everything. Did Hoda tell her to go and die? Why should she expect Hoda to do everything just as she would have liked it now, without her even being around? What did she know about Hoda being picked on by the teacher and made fun of and everything dirtied up? Why did she have to go and die anyway? Other kids’ mothers hardly ever died. Was it Hoda’s fault she had to die? I’m sorry, Mamma, I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. Really I’m sorry. Hoda wept. Honest, Mamma, I’m sorry. And she was, too. They could just go on playing crap and begging her. Next time she wouldn’t do it, not for anything. She would never do it again.
FIVE
Well, anyway, she didn’t do it very often, at least not at first, and at first only with Morgan, because he was the one she’d already done it with and if she did it with him again it was less like doing a new bad thing and more like just doing an old bad thing over again. And was it really so bad? Once a thing was done it was done and maybe sometimes you just felt like doing it some more. At first she had to quit hanging around with the other guys after school, because she said she’d only do it with Morgan when he won, and not with any of the others. So they said all right then, if she wasn’t going to be a sport she could scram. And she had to scram, only when Morgo won he came and whistled in the yard and when she came out he got her to sneak round in the back and go in the shed with him. He didn’t care that she hadn’t cleaned up the shed yet. But afterwards he kept arguing with her and trying to persuade her to do it with the other guys too, because she was being a poor sport, and they were even sore at him the way it had worked out, when he took their dough and left them with their hardons, and they didn’t have a chance to really be winners when they did win.
Morgan wasn’t supposed to feel that way if he really loved her like her one-and-only that he was supposed to be after he said “I love you,” and for a little while she grieved over this failure in him. But she really didn’t love him all the time either, like she had loved Stanley, for instance, last year, and like she would love the Prince of Wales forever, when he came. If he came she wouldn’t ever do it with Morgan any more either, would she? So what difference did it make if it was Morgan or one of the other guys who loved her in the meantime? Morgan said that the other guys, even when they lost at crap, still had some money left over, usually, and they’d pay her too. Each one of them would put something extra in the kitty if she’d let them all do it to her, and she’d get a lot more out of it.
If she let them all do it, one after the other, would that make love stay longer? Was she being mean not to give it a chance? She knew how it felt to want something and not get it, and she blamed other people when they were mean to her. If she wasn’t going to be nice when her turn came, how could she blame other people when they were mean? Somebody had to start off being nice, at least a little. And those guys weren’t even asking for something for nothing, like some boys did. They were sports and she should be too. Maybe this was only in-the-meantime-love, while you waited for the real forever-love to come along, but Hoda liked it; she really liked love, now that she had found out exactly where it lived and how it worked. Love lived where it couldn’t help itself, had to say yes, couldn’t resist and had to give in, couldn’t think, couldn’t hide, couldn’t pretend, like Morgan couldn’t when she had made him admit it. Love lived where it had to be, where it made you have to be, even if you didn’t want to, like Morgan didn’t, afterwards. It might not stay but it always came back, like Morgan came. No matter what they said Hoda had found out where love lived, and once you knew how it worked, knew exactly when was the time you could trust it, where the place you could enjoy it, that was when you could begin to have fun, and why shouldn’t you have some fun while you waited for your forever-one to come along? Hoda knew she would recognize her forever-one, all right. She’d know him right away. She wouldn’t even want him to pay her, or if she wasn’t sure at first she’d give him his money back as soon as she was sure, anyway. And he’d say, “Keep it! There’s more where it came from!” And when she found him he wouldn’t mind it that she’d looked somewhere else first, and tested other love so she could tell that his was best. He was maybe making some mistakes while looking for her, too, like that guy with the glass slipper and all those dumb sisters pretending it was a good fit. He’d know who was the right fit all right! And he’d understand how she needed the money, at least until Daddy’s business got better.
That love thing that she got into when she was with Morgan and the other guys, that was what it would be like all the time with her real guy. It was kind of like a foretaste and a reminder so she wouldn’t lose heart and would go on searching. These and other things Hoda figured, at different times, while she tried it with the different guys, sometimes separately, and then when they finally talked her into it, when she let them shag her one after the other. You really felt sore afterwards, the first few times, especially if there were more than five of them one after the other, and some more than once, but it was fun to be popular, and the money was worth it.
One thing Hoda knew; that money wasn’t going to be wasted on any new tunic. Nuts to all that. Not that she ever actually thought of quitting school. They couldn’t make her quit! She just gradually stopped going, sort of, not altogether at first, and not right away, either, because she didn’t want them all to think it was because of what Miss Boltholmsup had said about her speech. They didn’t have to think she cared that much or feel sorry for her either. After a while she just got sick and tired of bringing notes to explain her absences. It was not trouble getting Daddy to sign, but why should she have to bother making up excuses to that old bag anyway? She wasn’t learning anything there. If she kept on going she knew that one day she was going to tell old Arsendup off like she’d never been told off before. If they wanted her to come to school they could damn well come and get her. Only they’d better not try. They didn’t have any right to send a truant officer to upset her daddy after the way they acted. If she came home and found one waiting for her she’d tell him off too. Just let him try to send her to the orphanage. Just let him try! But for some reason the truant officer never came, and Hoda figured all right, if they didn’t want her she didn’t need them either. But she never quit. She would go back if and when she felt like it. Right now all she wanted to do was stay away, and she didn’t have to explain to anybody either; she just felt like it, that’s why. She didn’t have to go to school to learn things. She could teach herself, in her own way.
The trouble was how to explain it so Daddy would not become alarmed. Once, when Daddy asked her how she was getting on in school, she just couldn’t help it, she didn’t intend to but she just found herself cutting loose at him about how she hated it and how her teacher didn’t know anything and she knew five times as much as old Bottoms-up, even with her hands tied and lying on her back too. She didn’t know why she said that and afterwards she was afraid that he might think it was a funny thing for her to say, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice what she’d said about lying on her back because he was so upset that she was hating school so much. He was so worried he even suggested that maybe he should go down to the school himself and talk to somebody, like Mamma had done once or twice. Hoda knew that it was not beyond her father, if it was a question of her welfare, to go tapping his way to the school to find out for himself why it was that the teacher had set herself against his little girl, and the thought of that humiliation she simply could not bear. He would hardly be able to talk to them in their language, and they would be exasperated and roll eyes at each other and throw up their hands and laugh, and say no wonder this and that about Daddy and about Hoda, and think they understood everything there was to understand just because they couldn’t understand anything at all. No, her daddy was not going to learn his first lesson in that school, not if she could help it, particularly since she hadn’t been there herself lately, and her name might even be struck off the roll by now. Once, she had heard from Morgan that Bottoms-up had asked about her, and she told Morgan to say next time she asked that Hoda was doing jobs and was too busy with more important things to waste time in school, though if teacher needed her help she’d drop in sometime to give her a hand. And Morgan went and actually said it, and the whole class laughed, and he got lines to write out because of it: “I must not be a smart-alec,” five hundred times, but it was worth it, and it was, too, because he got Hoda without having to win her at crap that evening.
Danile was able to figure out what was bothering Hoda without having to go to see her teachers about it. Unwittingly, the child had revealed it herself in her complaint that she wasn’t learning anything in school this year, because she was so far ahead of class and teacher. He could understand how frustrating it was to her to be so far ahead of the class, and of the teacher too; every time she mentioned the teacher it was with such exasperation. How could they allow such a totally ignorant woman to teach in a school? Danile also realized why Hoda was gobbling up the English books so quickly this year, and getting ahead of everybody else. It was because they hadn’t been able to afford the Yiddish school in the evenings, though their friend Mr. Polonick the best teacher in the school, had come and offered to get her in at a very nominal rate, because, as he had timidly explained, she was quite a clever girl (as who could fail to notice? a real teacher certainly didn’t!) and it would be far better for her to spend some of the evening hours in class, that she might otherwise waste in hanging about the streets. But though Hoda was very shy and respectful, and hardly spoke at all when Mr. Polonick was there, after he left she said no and emphatically no again, when Danile urged her to accept the offer. Daddy himself knew very well, she argued, that they had no money, and with winter coming on they had enough to think about without having to worry about school fees as well. And even if, as Mr. Polonick had suggested, in the case of absolute necessity, the school might waive the fees altogether for the time being, Mamma had never liked charity and Hoda didn’t either, particularly since it wasn’t, in Mr. Polonick’s own words, an ‘absolute necessity’ for Hoda to attend the school. She could really go on learning Jewish things by herself. Didn’t she learn things from the Yiddish papers that the shahmus of the synagogue saved for her to read to Daddy? With Daddy’s help, and the help of the One Above, she didn’t really need the parochial school. Hoda was a little uneasy about the way she had thrown God in, just to weight her argument. Not for the first time lately, she hated herself, too, for being glad, for an instant, that her father was blind. Well, even though she had said it that way on purpose, it wasn’t entirely a lie. She was perfectly willing to learn whatever God wanted to teach her, as long as it left her evenings free. It was for Daddy’s good as well as her own. Could Mr. Polonick make it as worthwhile for her to come to the parochial school as the boys did sometimes for her to stay away?
Danile was amused. It was right, he supposed, after all, that the young should be able to out-argue their elders, if there was to be any progress in the world. Common sense she certainly had, his little one, far beyond her years. And full of her mother’s pride she was, too. If only his business would improve more quickly, so these sacrifices shouldn’t be necessary. Any increase in sales that had taken place lately had been solely due to Hoda’s efforts. She had even taken to peddling her wares in the evenings, and on the pretense that she was meeting her friends, had gone out again and again and returned triumphantly to count her profits into her daddy’s hand.
“More money? Where did you get it?”
“I earned it.”
“Hodaleh, you don’t have to go out with the baskets so late. Like you say yourself, why shouldn’t you spend a little time enjoying yourself with your friends in the evenings? The baskets will get sold. The One Above will take care of us.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy. I enjoy myself.”
For all her clever argumentation that she thought he couldn’t see through, that was probably the real reason why she didn’t want to go back to Yiddish school. She had found that the evening was a good time to sell her baskets. Perhaps people, relaxed at the end of the day, contented after their evening meal, found it easier to appreciate a fine piece of workmanship, and had more time, too, to appreciate the intelligent, appealing little girl who couldn’t fail to convince them to buy.
Danile suspected why, except for Hoda’s special efforts, his basket business was moving so slowly. The trouble with his business was, oddly enough, in the baskets themselves. What happens when a man does his work too lovingly, too well? The workman could, under certain conditions, quite conceivably starve to death,–if it were not for the watchful eye of the One Above, that is. Take his own baskets, for instance. He knew, it was not immodesty on his part, that they were handsome. He also made sure that they were strong, not flimsy. They wouldn’t easily fly apart. Therefore, a customer who had one of his bags or baskets was not likely to come back for another to replace it, for a long time. So fine craftsmanship can defeat itself as a means to making a living? A nice thought. Should a man then make worse baskets in order to make a better living? Not only the product but the man is reduced thereby. Does it then take a worse man to be a better provider? Ha ha! Around and around one could follow the thought, and Danile had propounded it to his friends at the synagogue, as a problem worthy of attention. They had debated it, off and on, for weeks, and every now and then someone brought it up again for examination anew. Ideas buried for a while in the mind sometimes reveal unexpected facets when examined afresh. He listened to cleverer and wiser men than he argue the question many ways, but inside of him Danile always knew how mortifying it would be to have his customers come back too soon.
Of course, Hoda’s sensible solution was to go ever further afield in seeking new customers. But it was wrong that the child should take on herself all the responsibility of selling his wares. They had already discussed the question of sharing that burden, and Hoda had convinced him that if he wanted to go out and peddle sometimes too, he had better wait till spring, because winter was coming soon and winter was no time for him to go wandering about distant, unfamiliar streets. And besides, what if someone came to the house to buy while they were both out? She told people, wherever she went, where they lived, and a lot of people had promised to drop by if they needed anything in straw. And if they came by once and found no one home they might not feel like coming back again, and they might lose a sale, whereas if it were spring or summer people didn’t mind coming back again. The child thought of everything. No wonder she was dissatisfied at school, if, as she complained, they really treated students like herself as though they were mindless creatures to whom fragments of knowledge were to be doled out in small doses. Naturally, because she was denying herself the Yiddish classes, and Danile did not fool himself that he could take their place, though he prayed fervently that God would find some substitute, her hungry mind was devouring twice as avidly what they set before her at the English school. With such an appetite for learning, who can sit still for hours and days before an empty plate?
She summoned up all her strength, holding him off.
“Please!”
“Then say ‘I love you!’” cried Hoda. “Say ‘I love you!’”
“I love you I love you I love you!” gasped Morgan.
And he meant it! He really meant it! She knew he meant it! She could feel he meant it, tearing through her, repeating and repeating and repeating “I love you! I love you!” till suddenly, those great hearty gusts of something like laughter burst from her, unexpectedly, shooting out from somewhere way down there in the very centre of her.
Morgan was kind of mad about her making so much noise like that, and got himself buttoned up fast, because he was afraid maybe the janitor was still around and if he heard might come after them from inside the school. Hoda was surprised and a little disappointed that Morgan was afraid of a little noise, after all the trouble he’d gone to, gambling for her and wanting her so much and how good it felt and everything. He hardly even wanted to wait for her when she was straightening her clothes up and down again. He didn’t even act as though he remembered he’d said “I love you” when he said “so-long” to her on the corner where she turned off to go home.
Hoda felt let down, and she felt uncomfortable walking and unclean. But she didn’t start really feeling awful till she came into the house and Daddy said “Hello Hodaleh!” to her in his cheerful, happy-to-have-her-home voice. Then she began to wonder what had been happening to her and what she had done. And she almost couldn’t remember, except that she felt awful, and there were reasons why she felt awful, and she didn’t even know how far it was her own fault. She hardly noticed what she said to Daddy. She only knew she had to get away from him and from talking, and somehow she did get into her room and into her bed at last.
And then all the events of the day began to swarm over her like ugly, crawly things, in little bits and pieces of memory and sounds of voices and fragments of feeling, and she couldn’t shake herself free of them, till at last, to try to make herself feel less awful she tried to think of the nicer things about what had happened tonight, about how they had diced for her and she was more important than the money to them, and it was a little bit like in stories, and how Morgan had really said “I love you,” more than once. It was hard to conjure up again how good she had felt because now she was all sore down there. She was so sore she was almost afraid the good feelings had got rubbed away forever. Then there was the money Morgan had given her; that was another good thing. She and Daddy could use that all right. But had she done it? Had she really done it? What was it she had done? Is that what it was? Would people be able to tell? Was this all the difference between before and after? Well so what! Big deal! To hell with Miss Bottoms-up, who probably didn’t even know what it was like in spite of her name! Who would want to shoot crap for her anyway? To hell with any of them who didn’t like her. To hell with Morgan, even, if he didn’t like it just because she made a little noise when she couldn’t even help it because he was making her feel so good. If she felt like it she’d go on doing it, and if she didn’t feel like it she’d quit. Nobody was going to tell her what to do. If she wanted to she’d even fuck them all! Only Daddy wouldn’t like it. And Mamma. Hoda knew that Mamma wouldn’t have liked it at all. The very thought of Mamma knowing it made her feel just sick and awful. Well, what did she have to go and die for, and leave her that way, with Daddy to look after and everything. Did Hoda tell her to go and die? Why should she expect Hoda to do everything just as she would have liked it now, without her even being around? What did she know about Hoda being picked on by the teacher and made fun of and everything dirtied up? Why did she have to go and die anyway? Other kids’ mothers hardly ever died. Was it Hoda’s fault she had to die? I’m sorry, Mamma, I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. Really I’m sorry. Hoda wept. Honest, Mamma, I’m sorry. And she was, too. They could just go on playing crap and begging her. Next time she wouldn’t do it, not for anything. She would never do it again.
FIVE
Well, anyway, she didn’t do it very often, at least not at first, and at first only with Morgan, because he was the one she’d already done it with and if she did it with him again it was less like doing a new bad thing and more like just doing an old bad thing over again. And was it really so bad? Once a thing was done it was done and maybe sometimes you just felt like doing it some more. At first she had to quit hanging around with the other guys after school, because she said she’d only do it with Morgan when he won, and not with any of the others. So they said all right then, if she wasn’t going to be a sport she could scram. And she had to scram, only when Morgo won he came and whistled in the yard and when she came out he got her to sneak round in the back and go in the shed with him. He didn’t care that she hadn’t cleaned up the shed yet. But afterwards he kept arguing with her and trying to persuade her to do it with the other guys too, because she was being a poor sport, and they were even sore at him the way it had worked out, when he took their dough and left them with their hardons, and they didn’t have a chance to really be winners when they did win.
Morgan wasn’t supposed to feel that way if he really loved her like her one-and-only that he was supposed to be after he said “I love you,” and for a little while she grieved over this failure in him. But she really didn’t love him all the time either, like she had loved Stanley, for instance, last year, and like she would love the Prince of Wales forever, when he came. If he came she wouldn’t ever do it with Morgan any more either, would she? So what difference did it make if it was Morgan or one of the other guys who loved her in the meantime? Morgan said that the other guys, even when they lost at crap, still had some money left over, usually, and they’d pay her too. Each one of them would put something extra in the kitty if she’d let them all do it to her, and she’d get a lot more out of it.
If she let them all do it, one after the other, would that make love stay longer? Was she being mean not to give it a chance? She knew how it felt to want something and not get it, and she blamed other people when they were mean to her. If she wasn’t going to be nice when her turn came, how could she blame other people when they were mean? Somebody had to start off being nice, at least a little. And those guys weren’t even asking for something for nothing, like some boys did. They were sports and she should be too. Maybe this was only in-the-meantime-love, while you waited for the real forever-love to come along, but Hoda liked it; she really liked love, now that she had found out exactly where it lived and how it worked. Love lived where it couldn’t help itself, had to say yes, couldn’t resist and had to give in, couldn’t think, couldn’t hide, couldn’t pretend, like Morgan couldn’t when she had made him admit it. Love lived where it had to be, where it made you have to be, even if you didn’t want to, like Morgan didn’t, afterwards. It might not stay but it always came back, like Morgan came. No matter what they said Hoda had found out where love lived, and once you knew how it worked, knew exactly when was the time you could trust it, where the place you could enjoy it, that was when you could begin to have fun, and why shouldn’t you have some fun while you waited for your forever-one to come along? Hoda knew she would recognize her forever-one, all right. She’d know him right away. She wouldn’t even want him to pay her, or if she wasn’t sure at first she’d give him his money back as soon as she was sure, anyway. And he’d say, “Keep it! There’s more where it came from!” And when she found him he wouldn’t mind it that she’d looked somewhere else first, and tested other love so she could tell that his was best. He was maybe making some mistakes while looking for her, too, like that guy with the glass slipper and all those dumb sisters pretending it was a good fit. He’d know who was the right fit all right! And he’d understand how she needed the money, at least until Daddy’s business got better.
That love thing that she got into when she was with Morgan and the other guys, that was what it would be like all the time with her real guy. It was kind of like a foretaste and a reminder so she wouldn’t lose heart and would go on searching. These and other things Hoda figured, at different times, while she tried it with the different guys, sometimes separately, and then when they finally talked her into it, when she let them shag her one after the other. You really felt sore afterwards, the first few times, especially if there were more than five of them one after the other, and some more than once, but it was fun to be popular, and the money was worth it.
One thing Hoda knew; that money wasn’t going to be wasted on any new tunic. Nuts to all that. Not that she ever actually thought of quitting school. They couldn’t make her quit! She just gradually stopped going, sort of, not altogether at first, and not right away, either, because she didn’t want them all to think it was because of what Miss Boltholmsup had said about her speech. They didn’t have to think she cared that much or feel sorry for her either. After a while she just got sick and tired of bringing notes to explain her absences. It was not trouble getting Daddy to sign, but why should she have to bother making up excuses to that old bag anyway? She wasn’t learning anything there. If she kept on going she knew that one day she was going to tell old Arsendup off like she’d never been told off before. If they wanted her to come to school they could damn well come and get her. Only they’d better not try. They didn’t have any right to send a truant officer to upset her daddy after the way they acted. If she came home and found one waiting for her she’d tell him off too. Just let him try to send her to the orphanage. Just let him try! But for some reason the truant officer never came, and Hoda figured all right, if they didn’t want her she didn’t need them either. But she never quit. She would go back if and when she felt like it. Right now all she wanted to do was stay away, and she didn’t have to explain to anybody either; she just felt like it, that’s why. She didn’t have to go to school to learn things. She could teach herself, in her own way.
The trouble was how to explain it so Daddy would not become alarmed. Once, when Daddy asked her how she was getting on in school, she just couldn’t help it, she didn’t intend to but she just found herself cutting loose at him about how she hated it and how her teacher didn’t know anything and she knew five times as much as old Bottoms-up, even with her hands tied and lying on her back too. She didn’t know why she said that and afterwards she was afraid that he might think it was a funny thing for her to say, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice what she’d said about lying on her back because he was so upset that she was hating school so much. He was so worried he even suggested that maybe he should go down to the school himself and talk to somebody, like Mamma had done once or twice. Hoda knew that it was not beyond her father, if it was a question of her welfare, to go tapping his way to the school to find out for himself why it was that the teacher had set herself against his little girl, and the thought of that humiliation she simply could not bear. He would hardly be able to talk to them in their language, and they would be exasperated and roll eyes at each other and throw up their hands and laugh, and say no wonder this and that about Daddy and about Hoda, and think they understood everything there was to understand just because they couldn’t understand anything at all. No, her daddy was not going to learn his first lesson in that school, not if she could help it, particularly since she hadn’t been there herself lately, and her name might even be struck off the roll by now. Once, she had heard from Morgan that Bottoms-up had asked about her, and she told Morgan to say next time she asked that Hoda was doing jobs and was too busy with more important things to waste time in school, though if teacher needed her help she’d drop in sometime to give her a hand. And Morgan went and actually said it, and the whole class laughed, and he got lines to write out because of it: “I must not be a smart-alec,” five hundred times, but it was worth it, and it was, too, because he got Hoda without having to win her at crap that evening.
Danile was able to figure out what was bothering Hoda without having to go to see her teachers about it. Unwittingly, the child had revealed it herself in her complaint that she wasn’t learning anything in school this year, because she was so far ahead of class and teacher. He could understand how frustrating it was to her to be so far ahead of the class, and of the teacher too; every time she mentioned the teacher it was with such exasperation. How could they allow such a totally ignorant woman to teach in a school? Danile also realized why Hoda was gobbling up the English books so quickly this year, and getting ahead of everybody else. It was because they hadn’t been able to afford the Yiddish school in the evenings, though their friend Mr. Polonick the best teacher in the school, had come and offered to get her in at a very nominal rate, because, as he had timidly explained, she was quite a clever girl (as who could fail to notice? a real teacher certainly didn’t!) and it would be far better for her to spend some of the evening hours in class, that she might otherwise waste in hanging about the streets. But though Hoda was very shy and respectful, and hardly spoke at all when Mr. Polonick was there, after he left she said no and emphatically no again, when Danile urged her to accept the offer. Daddy himself knew very well, she argued, that they had no money, and with winter coming on they had enough to think about without having to worry about school fees as well. And even if, as Mr. Polonick had suggested, in the case of absolute necessity, the school might waive the fees altogether for the time being, Mamma had never liked charity and Hoda didn’t either, particularly since it wasn’t, in Mr. Polonick’s own words, an ‘absolute necessity’ for Hoda to attend the school. She could really go on learning Jewish things by herself. Didn’t she learn things from the Yiddish papers that the shahmus of the synagogue saved for her to read to Daddy? With Daddy’s help, and the help of the One Above, she didn’t really need the parochial school. Hoda was a little uneasy about the way she had thrown God in, just to weight her argument. Not for the first time lately, she hated herself, too, for being glad, for an instant, that her father was blind. Well, even though she had said it that way on purpose, it wasn’t entirely a lie. She was perfectly willing to learn whatever God wanted to teach her, as long as it left her evenings free. It was for Daddy’s good as well as her own. Could Mr. Polonick make it as worthwhile for her to come to the parochial school as the boys did sometimes for her to stay away?
Danile was amused. It was right, he supposed, after all, that the young should be able to out-argue their elders, if there was to be any progress in the world. Common sense she certainly had, his little one, far beyond her years. And full of her mother’s pride she was, too. If only his business would improve more quickly, so these sacrifices shouldn’t be necessary. Any increase in sales that had taken place lately had been solely due to Hoda’s efforts. She had even taken to peddling her wares in the evenings, and on the pretense that she was meeting her friends, had gone out again and again and returned triumphantly to count her profits into her daddy’s hand.
“More money? Where did you get it?”
“I earned it.”
“Hodaleh, you don’t have to go out with the baskets so late. Like you say yourself, why shouldn’t you spend a little time enjoying yourself with your friends in the evenings? The baskets will get sold. The One Above will take care of us.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy. I enjoy myself.”
For all her clever argumentation that she thought he couldn’t see through, that was probably the real reason why she didn’t want to go back to Yiddish school. She had found that the evening was a good time to sell her baskets. Perhaps people, relaxed at the end of the day, contented after their evening meal, found it easier to appreciate a fine piece of workmanship, and had more time, too, to appreciate the intelligent, appealing little girl who couldn’t fail to convince them to buy.
Danile suspected why, except for Hoda’s special efforts, his basket business was moving so slowly. The trouble with his business was, oddly enough, in the baskets themselves. What happens when a man does his work too lovingly, too well? The workman could, under certain conditions, quite conceivably starve to death,–if it were not for the watchful eye of the One Above, that is. Take his own baskets, for instance. He knew, it was not immodesty on his part, that they were handsome. He also made sure that they were strong, not flimsy. They wouldn’t easily fly apart. Therefore, a customer who had one of his bags or baskets was not likely to come back for another to replace it, for a long time. So fine craftsmanship can defeat itself as a means to making a living? A nice thought. Should a man then make worse baskets in order to make a better living? Not only the product but the man is reduced thereby. Does it then take a worse man to be a better provider? Ha ha! Around and around one could follow the thought, and Danile had propounded it to his friends at the synagogue, as a problem worthy of attention. They had debated it, off and on, for weeks, and every now and then someone brought it up again for examination anew. Ideas buried for a while in the mind sometimes reveal unexpected facets when examined afresh. He listened to cleverer and wiser men than he argue the question many ways, but inside of him Danile always knew how mortifying it would be to have his customers come back too soon.
Of course, Hoda’s sensible solution was to go ever further afield in seeking new customers. But it was wrong that the child should take on herself all the responsibility of selling his wares. They had already discussed the question of sharing that burden, and Hoda had convinced him that if he wanted to go out and peddle sometimes too, he had better wait till spring, because winter was coming soon and winter was no time for him to go wandering about distant, unfamiliar streets. And besides, what if someone came to the house to buy while they were both out? She told people, wherever she went, where they lived, and a lot of people had promised to drop by if they needed anything in straw. And if they came by once and found no one home they might not feel like coming back again, and they might lose a sale, whereas if it were spring or summer people didn’t mind coming back again. The child thought of everything. No wonder she was dissatisfied at school, if, as she complained, they really treated students like herself as though they were mindless creatures to whom fragments of knowledge were to be doled out in small doses. Naturally, because she was denying herself the Yiddish classes, and Danile did not fool himself that he could take their place, though he prayed fervently that God would find some substitute, her hungry mind was devouring twice as avidly what they set before her at the English school. With such an appetite for learning, who can sit still for hours and days before an empty plate?
