Crackpot, page 23
Don’t think. Go now.
Hoda slipped out the back door. She kept, as far as she could, to lanes and shadows, trying to tread noiselessly, like a courier de bois in the history books. The air was cool, the stars dimmer, more distant than they had been when she was dragging herself out with the mattress an aeon ago. Dawn hurried behind them, she knew, and hurried herself, fearful of discovery by light, but even while she hurried, she was dreamily aware that it was curiously real, the night she moved through, a meticulously authenticated dream, correct to the last detail in its self-deception, as though she was the only part of it that knew it wasn’t real, or maybe she was the only part that wasn’t real herself.
She climbed the steps and put the thing down on the porch of the old house, where anyone opening the door could not fail to see it. Then she grabbed the big, heavy knocker, and slammed it, again, again, again and it went “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” on the door, crashing so loud she was suddenly pinpointed in the centre of all the noise in the universe, for everyone to see. She ran, thudded off the porch, scuttled, crouching, down the drive, and dived in behind some lilac bushes. She waited. No one came. She waited. Still no one came. A spasm of rage swept through Hoda. Who did they think they were? What did they get money for? It was all their fault! Why couldn’t they answer the door? It could catch a cold out there, or a dog might get it. What were they supposed to be here for anyway? She couldn’t wait all night. Soon Daddy would wake up and it would be their fault if he found out she was gone and she couldn’t tell him why. Hoda felt like going back up there on that porch and banging and banging and banging until they had to come and when they came she wouldn’t run away either; she’d stand there and give them a piece of her mind. She could almost hear herself yelling and yelling and yelling and yelling and if she started now she’d never be able to stop yelling again! And it would serve them right! Somebody had to let them know they weren’t fit to take care of children.
Luckily for them, they opened the door at last, and Hoda saw a figure looking about, from around the edge of the door, and then the door swung wider, and the figure dropped down on its knee. She didn’t stay to see any more, but slipped from bush to bush, the short distance to a break in the hedge near the gate, and sped a journey homeward which she could never afterwards even remember. Nor could she remember anything about getting undressed again, except that she strained and struggled to get her bedroom window open as far as she could, because the room still had that strong, iron smell. But as she began to fall asleep she realized that if Daddy noticed the smell he would probably think it was her woman’s baby-making readiness thing, come on, and that would explain her stomach ache too, and for fear of embarrassing her he wouldn’t even mention it, but be very gentle with her, like he always was, and everything would be the same as usual. Indeed, as she rustled about on the pallet, trying to get her sore insides more comfortable, her relief was so great despite her physical discomfort, she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember why everything shouldn’t be the same as usual on the morrow.
And Daddy was indeed very gentle with her during those few days when she hardly moved from the bed. She kept him close by her, and at first could hardly bear to have him leave her sight. For Danile it was like a touching return of the baby she had been. At first, worried, he wanted to call in a doctor, but she absolutely refused to hear of it, and when she insisted she knew what was the matter with her and it wasn’t anything serious and she couldn’t tell him but Mamma would have understood, and she just felt like resting, that’s all, like Mamma used to say she should, Danile caught on, and sighed, as he often had when his wife was alive, over the problems of women and the mysteries of nature. It was curious that she was most like the child she had been once, now that she was most acutely in the grip of her womanhood. She listened now, as she had as a child, when he described to her again the special circumstances of their existence, and once or twice, he even detected, from the sound of her breathing, that she was weeping as he told her of their fate. Warm-hearted little girl. “Not to weep, child, we’re in God’s hands.”
She wanted stories and still more stories. “No, not that one, Daddy, you’ve told me that one. Don’t you know any others? Is there anything you haven’t told me? Didn’t anything happen when you went to the grocery? Tell me something new.”
Her pettishness didn’t disturb him; it was the peevishness of a sick child whose very boredom shows she is on the mend. So she was pampering herself, just a little, and demanding that he pamper her a little too. Why not? She was much better, he could tell. She even let him out of her sight long enough for him to run down to complete his minyan now. A couple of times they had had to get someone else to make up the tenth man at his synagogue, after they had sent someone to call him and Hoda had begged him to stay with her instead.
At first Hoda had simply wanted Daddy, wanted him to be there, blotting out everything that had happened with his presence. Then she had hoped, briefly, that by keeping him near her she might be able to prevent him from hearing about it. When she had awakened finally the evening after that dreadful night, after sleeping through the whole day, she hadn’t been able to remember anything at all for a little while, and couldn’t even remember what night it was, and then when she remembered she doubted whether it had really happened, and then when she felt her crudely stuffed pallet rustling beneath her she thought that anyway it was over with, and she could forget all about it. But her breasts and her insides and her tiredness wouldn’t let her forget it, not entirely, and a little, nagging curiosity, not to know much, but just enough to put a period to her sentence, began to plague her. Did it still live? Was it blind? Had anybody guessed? Or had she dreamed it all and somehow exchanged the pallet for her mattress in her sleep? She had no stomach to sneak out to the shed at night and see. She was particularly nervous of the dark now, not afraid, just nervous, that’s all, just because she was just nervous now anyhow. It would pass once she knew. She questioned Daddy closely, insistently, when he had been out for a moment, on a brief errand to the grocery. But Daddy had no news to tell her, so she had to let him go finally, and told him that she felt fine again now, and he needn’t miss prayers at the synagogue any more. And to prove it she got up and got dressed and tried to prevent her steps from dragging as she fussed about the kitchen. If anything of importance had happened in the community the old men would not fail to know about it, and discuss it so Daddy would hear, and Hoda found some satisfaction in assuring herself that provided it had really happened, it was not the kind of occurrence that would easily be glossed over at large.
She was more right than she knew. What had not occurred to Hoda was that her father might have heard of the foundling that had been dumped on the porch of the Jewish Orphanage, even while he shopped for those few items at the grocery, and refrained from mentioning it to her out of a certain delicacy, which inclined him to protect his daughter from the sordid implications of the tale. No doubt she would hear about it in time, from her friends, and they would discuss it in the frank way of young people these days, and put their own constructions on it, for young people too must cope with real things as real things happen in this world. But it was not the kind of thing for a father to gossip about with his young daughter, particularly at such a sensitive age, and when she was under the weather, too. At the synagogue, however, Danile listened as avidly, and speculated as ardently as anyone else. Few who ventured out to breathe the public air that week failed to hear of the extraordinary case. The whole town was buzzing with it; at least the Jewish community perforce assumed that the rest of the city was buzzing too. It had been written up in both the English and the Yiddish newspapers, naturally in considerable detail, in the latter, and there was even a blurred, undistinguishable photograph of the rag-wrapped baby printed. The newspapers mentioned the note, too, which had been found among the rags, but did not print its contents, though the English papers were explicit in stating that the printed note gave no clue to the identity of the mother. A rumour circulated, and gained wide credence among Jews, that the Yiddish Press had been asked to suppress the contents of the note, by unspecified authorities vaguely described as “those above,” with the result that, though never printed, and actually seen by very few, the words of the note were soon on every Jewish tongue. The possible implications of the curious screed excited much speculation, and continued to be discussed for weeks and even years after. No one who was old enough to take note of those rumours, in fact, has ever forgotten them, even to this day. And some, because of the added authority that time and faith add to speculation, and the further reduction of the possibility of checking primary sources that is assured by the passage of time, still hold, though vague as to all but the most rudimentary details, that the whole thing was not a rumour but a proven fact, and that the baby had even subsequently received a pension.
In her note, Hoda had pieced together, out of the confused shards of dream and desire and the longings of her shattered childhood, the following: TAKE GOOD CARE, A PRINCE IN DISGUISE CAN MAKE A PIECE OF PRINCE, TO SAVE THE JEWS. HE’S PAID FOR.
What could be more clear? Almost anything. Perhaps that was why the popular mind scorned the veils in which the subtleties of meaning were shrouded and comprehended directly the central core of the message, that somewhere, in secret, a Jewish woman had given birth to a son of a prince of the blood. Hadn’t he been driven through the streets in his chariot, like princes of old, looking benignly from left to right, and raising every now and then an aristocratic finger? Who knows what might have caught his eye, as eyes of old have been caught, as King David’s eye had been caught of yore? No wonder “they” wanted the note suppressed!
“Ha ha!” cried the old men, alert to insult. “They don’t like it. They think we’re not good enough for them!”
“Ha ha!” cried the old women, alert too. “But for him we are good enough!”
In vain doubting voices rose up, voices of those who considered it unlikely, and perhaps even undesirable, voices of those who pointed out that it was highly improbable, and probably impossible, scientifically speaking, and that, in fact, the note did not make much sense. These dissenters were swept aside by the enthusiasts, heady with royal dreams. Ardent men challenged doubters with the irrefutable fact that the Prince’s visit was already legendary among gentiles all the way across the country. Our girls are less beautiful?
“Can you prove to me there’s no baby and no note? All right then, I’ll make it easier. Prove to me the note means something else! Aha! I got you, eh? How can you say to me impossible? He lifts a finger, so. A lackey comes running. ‘I want this one, I want that one.’ Hey presto! What do we see? A beautiful Jewish girl appears. They’ve done it before. They do it all the time! What do we know about royalty?”
“The swine!” some cried. And, “She shouldn’t have gone. Her forebears would have rather thrown themselves into the fire.”
And others, “Well, what’s to be done? Perhaps it was meant we should have a prince.”
Women seized on the event as an object lesson for their sons. “You don’t appreciate our own girls; you run after theirs; but see, the stranger prince has taste!”
And idealists hoped for an enormous breakthrough in civil rights. Some even predicted that the numerous clauses, restricting Jewish admission to the medical college, would be the next to go.
The general stir had begun to abate by the time Hoda got to hear the story. She was already up and about the house, more to show Daddy she was well than because she felt she would ever want to rise and face people again. Some of the boys came over to pay her a simple social call, and remained to play cards on the kitchen table. Finding she hadn’t even heard, they renewed their own interest in the telling, and Hoda listened, fascinated, to what the world had to say.
At first she could hardly believe that anyone could credit such stories, stories from which she had been entirely left out. She had difficulty, at one point, in controlling herself and preventing her tongue from suggesting tartly that rather than look for a rich American babe from Minneapolis or some place like that, who had sneaked the baby back over the border because she wanted the child to be a Canadian citizen so it would be eligible to take over the throne in time, they might think of a local girl, someone here in this very town, and maybe she didn’t have to be rich, even, for a prince to fancy her. It was all so strange, especially when she thought that it was their own pieces they were talking about, and that, though she couldn’t be absolutely one hundred percent sure that one of those unknowns hadn’t been the prince in disguise, since she couldn’t absolutely vouch for everyone she’d been with, his contribution, even if it was a royal one, could not have been very large. She wondered if it would give the boys any satisfaction to know that they were maybe all mixed up with royal blood in the foundling. They’d probably much rather knock up a princess for themselves.
Limpy Letz expanded Hymie’s theory. “Sure, it could have happened out East somewhere, or even out West, though most likely you’re right, and she came up across the border. They won’t be able to trace it so easily. Why do you think it was wrapped in rags? The oldest trick in the world, to throw people off the scent. You can’t trace rags so easily. How much do you want to bet they’ll be getting some anonymous donations from out of town?”
Hoda had not imagined that she might ever want to bless Uncle Nate again, but she wanted to bless him now for making his donation in advance. Gradually, she allowed herself to join in the arguments and speculations, at first so as to avoid attracting attention by unwonted silence. But as the oddity of her position struck her, she began to enjoy herself, and found herself inventing more and more spectacular versions of what might have happened. It was almost as though another person came alive in her, who urged her on to grow more and more enthusiastic, become more and more daringly inventive in her hypotheses, suggest outrageous versions and defend them passionately, and be quick to point out the flaws in rival theories, until she almost began to believe in the reality of what she was suggesting, though the boys kept saying, “We’re serious, Hoda, stop kidding around.”
“Well, I don’t see why not. Why couldn’t she have come down from up North as easily as from East and West and South. You’re prejudiced against our Eskimo Jews and our Indian Jews. She probably came down the river in her kayak in the dead of night, and had it right there in the boat in her big fur pants, by the light of the silvery moon.”
Involuntarily, Hoda shuddered, and glanced round fearfully, but no one was looking at her oddly. Kidding around, that’s what she was doing. She was joking about it, as though she were really having fun. How could she be? It was only another kind of pretence; she couldn’t really be enjoying herself; she must be acting, like in the stories, while inside her heart was breaking; it must be, even though half the time she didn’t know how she felt, or if she had any feelings at all. She just knew that there were some things she had to do, and one of them was to out-talk any possibility of suspicion, and maybe that was why she was kidding around, because it diverted suspicion if she didn’t seem to have anything serious on her mind. And if she made up all kinds of other things that probably could not have happened, what had really happened began to feel somehow as unlikely as any of them. Maybe they wouldn’t even believe her if she came out with it and said, ‘It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine!’ Forget it. Don’t try it.
She wished they would stop talking about it. She wanted to stop thinking about it, to forget the bare and lonely secret that was waiting to spring out. If they kept talking something would happen, a sign would appear on her, she wouldn’t be able to help it, and they’d all know. They’d look at her and understand. That’s it! They’d see she was thinner, and they’d realize why. She slumped against the table and at the same time tried to blow out her stomach from within. But she hadn’t got much thinner. And anyway, they never really looked at her that closely. She was fat, and fat was fat and people figured what’s a thimbleful one way or another. It was true; the realization was like another giving way of something inside of her, the sinking feeling when props shift and life sags into another position and you see things in a way you’d never looked at them before, and you can’t stand them anymore; yes, it was true. They never really looked at her. She wasn’t real life to them, most of the time. What did they care about her, really? Like even now, when they knew she hadn’t been feeling so hot, they were putting out feelers, hinting around, letting her know that they had the dough if she had the go. That’s all they came for, and then they went away again to live their real lives somewhere else.
Look at them sitting there, talking, arguing, making themselves at home, and none of them knew how she felt. Inwardly, she raged at them. Who did they think they were? Who did they think she was? She’d like to tell them something, all right. But what? What was she hating them for? She was never dumb enough to think that one of them might be the one, though maybe she had hoped a little sometimes, at least that one of them might really like her, even in secret, the other way too. She was always watching for signs, and responded hopefully when she thought she’d seen one, but nothing ever came of it. So what? They were mostly no-goods anyway, even though they were nice enough guys. And if she had the go she’d take their dough, why not? She would, just as soon as she found out what had gone wrong, and was feeling a little better down there. Hymie was hinting again, not pushing, just feeling around with his hand under the table. It just didn’t seem worthwhile to show her anger, or even to feel it much anymore.
“Sorry, Hi,” she said, trying to sound lazy and casual, “it’s my time of month. Next week.” There. She’d mentioned it straight out to a guy, in front of three of them, in spite of what Mamma had said. She felt badly, as if she’d given away a secret, and a little embarrassed, because it was so personal and important, but she had to do it. Mamma didn’t understand. She had to. She’d done it on purpose. It was her alibi, in case anyone wondered why she’d been in bed. It had just happened to be a bad month.
