Crackpot, p.13
Crackpot, page 13
In spite of the Mrs. Shmantzes Hoda didn’t have a bad summer, all in all. It was a busy time. She paraded her baskets up and down the main streets, ever optimistic about making a sale in just another minute, though sometimes days and days went by without one. She became a familiar figure where people congregated to buy and sell, and as such, was at least tolerated by the other regulars, though some found her a nuisance and were irritated by a presence which was more than merely physically obtrusive. For it was not easy for Hoda to endear herself to people, though she tried. There was, perhaps, too much naked hope in her glance. People recoiled, and sought and quickly found, in her looks and manner, justification for their uneasiness. But for Hoda each new human being was an open possibility, and yesterday’s people too, though inexplicably unfriendly, were renewed possibilities today. It was fun stopping people and talking to them, and it was fun having to feel alert and as though she had to have eyes in the back of her head all the time, in order to evade the cops, not that they bothered her all the time. Sometimes, even when she was sure a cop had seen her, he didn’t chase her, if he happened to be a good guy, or in a good mood, or something. She talked to strangers; she got to know the farmers and the peddlers at the market. On busy market days after she’d walked with her daddy to the synagogue for his morning prayers, she went on with her baskets, straight to the market, where the farmers and peddlers sometimes let her help unload, and gave her things for it, slightly off vegetables and fruit that were only partly gone, all of which she put aside, except for what she couldn’t resist nibbling, so that even if she didn’t sell any baskets or bags her day wasn’t wasted. By evening she sometimes had almost a full basket of stuff that would be pretty good once the bad bits were cut away.
Try though she did to earn enough money, when school-time came again Hoda still didn’t have a new tunic, just the old one let out at all its seams as far as it would go, and cleaned and steam pressed as carefully as she could. It took hours, but it still didn’t look anything like a new one. Well, she couldn’t help it. More important needs had swallowed up hers and her daddy’s earnings as they had come in, and wide-mouthed debts stood waiting to snatch anything that happened to be left over. It was partly because of the tunic that Hoda almost didn’t want to go back to school, because it looked so tight and shabby, and everyone else would look so nice the first day, and everything depended on the way you started off, if things were going to be different.
Hoda knew she was going to miss those market days, and the freedom to wander the dusty streets at will, but she was glad to be going back to school. She knew it was important for her to study and find out things, as her daddy kept telling her all the time, and she wanted to get that feeling back of being one of the kids again. But what about Daddy’s baskets? And what about her cleaning work that brought in most of the money they could look forward to? She would just have to skip school occasionally when she had a job to do. She could easily catch up on anything she missed. Daddy wouldn’t like her to miss school, but Hoda was afraid that she might have to go against his wishes for once. That didn’t mean she disagreed with him, not at all. Hadn’t they got through the summer all right, like Daddy said they would? Hadn’t that seemed impossible when Uncle had stamped out the door and tripped down the stairs, and left them to their own devices, expecting them to come begging for him to put them away in institutions because they couldn’t take care of themselves? Hoda had actually gone past those institutions that Uncle had given the money they needed away to, several times during the summer. She had smiled and said hello to some of the old people seated on benches on the verandah of the home. She didn’t grudge them the money. It wasn’t their fault. And she had gone by the gate of the orphanage, too, and tried to see if she could meet any of the kids to ask them what it was like. But the house was way down the drive, and she never saw any kids the times she went. In a way she was glad. Suppose they were mean, and called her “Fatso,” because they didn’t even know that if it weren’t for her and her daddy they wouldn’t have a lot of the good stuff they had? Daddy said the Almighty had used Uncle’s badness as an instrument for the performance of His own goodness, and as a gift, because He had used them as His intermediaries, He would allow them the privilege, if they held out in their decision to defy Uncle, to know themselves secretly among the most philanthropic paupers He had ever created. But it had to be a secret, because it would be a terrible sin to humiliate Uncle Nate in public, and besides, philanthropy should always be a secret, because God knew and nobody else had to; besides in this case it was God’s secret which He had revealed for their pleasure only. That was something Hoda bet that Uncle would never be able to figure out because he didn’t know how God worked the way Daddy did. Too bad. He would sure be sore.
Well, Daddy was right; Hoda knew he was right, and when he was laughing and talking about it she even felt he was right, light and exalted all over. But she wasn’t as good a secret philanthropist as Daddy was because all she wanted to do when she felt that way was fly right out of the house and tell everybody she saw. And then a little while later her feelings would change and she would think, even though she tried not to, that maybe this wasn’t how things felt to other people, though she knew Daddy was right because this was how things had always happened to him. And then she would think, though she hated herself for it, well so what? What does it all mean? He might be right but it isn’t right, the whole thing; it just isn’t right.
But Daddy said they had to wait; they would know in time, just like all the other times. He explained it to her: “Where is the shape of a basket hidden before it is completed? In its maker’s fingers? In his head? In the straw? To know the shape of a basket one must wait till it is completed.” When Daddy explained it that way Hoda could not help but understand. She yearned to explain it to others in her turn, to show how unexpected wonders had already shaped their lives. For that, too, she knew the time would come, must come soon.
Danile was not surprised that the inner pattern of things was revealing itself to him now that he had found his own place again. It was not the first time that the fragments of a disordered world had snapped back into place for him, as at a gesture. Naturally, it was a little more difficult for the child to understand and accept the process whereby they had suddenly become the benefactors of the orphans and the old people in the community, while themselves becoming more impoverished than before. Perhaps it was natural that she should feel a little deprived. Who had encouraged her to expect so much from Uncle in the first place? But in time, Danile knew, she too would see the full beauty of it. Meanwhile it was amazing how much like her mother she could be. As his fingers moved contentedly among the grasses that he had learned, like the wind, to bend and twist and bow to his will, he mused, with pride and tranquil amusement, on the nature of this child of his. How seriously she took their problems, like an adult. How practical she was, like her mother, busying herself with schemes to try to solve them, all by herself, running here and there, taking on hard work, trying to function like a grownup. And yet, how childishly impatient she was when things didn’t turn out immediately as she wished them to be. What a child she was, really, with her hundred and one projects begun around the house, and as quickly forgotten as more chores, more ideas, more projects occurred to her, most of them centred around taking better care of her poor, blind daddy who spent half his days, meanwhile, cleaning up after her. If that woman who had come up to him outside the synagogue had realized how well he knew his own little girl, she would not have worried so. Not that he held it against her in any way; on the contrary, he was grateful. She had warned him with the best of intentions. Funny how people thought that blindness took away more than just the sight of your eyes. So the good women around town felt that he should know that his Hodaleh had been seen in bad company. And they were afraid that such company would turn his little girl wild. Rahel would have laughed. As it was Danile had thanked his informant for her concern, and pointed out with pardonable pride, what a good girl his daughter had so far shown herself to be. Nor had he dismissed the subject from his mind. That very day he had said to Hoda that he hoped she wasn’t getting into bad company when she went out to play on the streets in the evenings. There were many dangers to a young girl who went out by herself: rough types, wildness, behaviour not befitting a Jewish daughter.
Hoda had answered him with typical, cheerful self-confidence. Daddy was not to worry; she wasn’t afraid of any rough types, she knew how to handle them. A lot of them that seemed tough at first weren’t even so bad after all. She would have brought these friends home sometime so daddy could see for himself, only some of them didn’t talk Yiddish. That didn’t mean she was forgetting she was a Jewish girl just because she fooled around with gentiles sometimes. It was like with the basket-making ladies; they were just people, and if you went to school with them or they lived in the neighbourhood you should be friendly.
Danile wished the woman outside the synagogue had heard that reply. Wild! If there were more such children as his around there would be less wildness the whole world over!
With this conclusion Hoda would have agreed, not out of conceit but out of consciousness of the boundless goodwill that was ready to flow in the universe, and of herself as a direct tap to the source, just waiting to be turned on. If people would only realize what she was really like she would somehow be able to become her true self, and all the badness she sometimes felt, inside and out, would wash away. Only they had better hurry up. No matter how hard she tried things just seemed to go along in the same old way. But she felt more impatient about it nowadays. It was not just that she was uncomfortable, wedged between her seat and her desk in school, and sometimes there were titters as she squeezed herself in. Well to hell with them! And it wasn’t because she wanted to show off to and make an impression on anybody, not even big Morgan, the handsome boy with the back name in front, who had failed grade nine for two years in succession, and this year had been assigned temporarily to their class because there was no room in the D class and the principal thought he might benefit from the example of good students who knew how to behave; that’s what Miss Boltholmsup said in the sour little speech she made before they sent Morgan in, when she appealed to them all to help him as much as they could. Poor Morgan! Hoda wouldn’t want such a speech made about her behind her back like that. How awful to come into a new classroom and see all the kids looking at you pityingly, and have the teacher introduce you in a special high voice as if you were a bear she was trapped with and trying to keep happy by feeding it a spoonful of honey in little drips. Hoda didn’t have to show off in front of Morgan, because he talked to her anyway, because he knew her from before, and he liked to talk to her because she wasn’t goody-goody. Hoda knew something none of the others knew about Morgan anyway; he wasn’t really like the way he seemed to be when he came in the first time, red-faced and shuffling his feet, and darting quick looks up from the floor while the teacher talked. Morgan didn’t give a damn what they thought of him; he was going to quit school as soon as he got hold of some dough. He wasn’t going to hang around here for the rest of his life! And Hoda could understand very well how he felt. School had become so boring. It seemed to her that she had somehow got even more separated from the other kids than before, though she tried not to be, and even felt a little afraid of her feeling of separation. And the school work was just things to learn, and her new teacher was no Miss Flake.
Hoda had made a pilgrimage to her old classroom on the first day of school, to see her old class teacher, and Miss Flake had greeted her cheerfully and warmly and wished her the best of luck again, and then got very busy with all kinds of things she had to do, and obviously had no time to discuss the world situation, and then recess was nearly over and Hoda had had to return to her new class anyway.
Hoda’s feeling about her new teacher’s attitude to Morgan came very close to the truth. Had the children had the daring to put their stray intuitions into words they might have realized, as some of them vaguely apprehended at times, that Miss Boltholmsup was afraid of them. Miss Boltholmsup made her living by giving herself up, five days a week, relinquishing all hope, each morning, from the moment she awakened. In numb dread she went through all the habitual preparatory movements which led her halfway across the city and into the large, noisy cage that housed all the noisy little cages in one of which her personal immolation daily awaited. There she remained imprisoned for what to others, somewhere, must be the most joyous hours of dancing daylight, trapped with a suffocating complement of dangerous, unknowable creatures. At a longed for moment every afternoon, she heard the bell which signalled that she was once again briefly to taste the miracle of survival, prologue to tomorrow’s renewal of dread. Like all who live in constant danger, Miss Boltholmsup in her cage was always alert, interpreting signs, picking up motions, working out new tactics, forestalling, soothing, guarding, doubling back, retreating, making plans, keeping them busy, keeping them diverted, above all keeping them under control. She was, in fact, considered by a respectful principal, to be the hardest working teacher in the school. His decision to try to calm down that flaming nuisance of a Morgan boy by putting him in Miss Boltholmsup’s class was by way of a compliment to her. She, if anyone, could handle him. Nor did her protest that the boy would disrupt the work of the good students, which was as close as she dared come to admitting the terror inspired by having this additional penalty added to her cageful, divert the principal from carrying through his malignant compliment. Why her class? Why in particular one of those overgrown louts, physically already a man, who was, in some obscene way which was particularly frightening in the young, not as yet in control of his manhood? For Miss Boltholmsup was plagued, in particular, by the animal natures of her charges. “They mature so much more quickly in that district. It’s where they come from, those backward places,” she confided, occasionally, to one of her few friends. “Really, I sometimes think that’s all there is to them, all they think about.” It was not simple insolence, or even mere physical violence, that Miss Boltholmsup feared most from the inmates of her cage, but rather those profounder wounds with which their awareness of their physical selves so frequently assaulted her moral being. They were more than just wild, dangerous young animals, they were animals who were unclean, and still didn’t know it, but like the gross creatures that they were, licked publicly and unashamedly the honey of their profane spring. The burden of knowledge was hers and hers alone, and it wore her out, wore her out with the strain of seeing and having, perforce, to pay no attention; wore her out with simply the effort she put in daily to avert the undefined disasters with which their presence filled her life.
Though she was usually disappointed, Hoda continued to hope. She daily carried with her to school the expectation that today something nice might happen, something really nice. And one day, as though she had been inspired by a power beyond herself, acting in Hoda’s interest alone, Miss Boltholmsup announced that the time had come for the members of the class to get to know each other better, and she was going to give each one of them the chance to put his best foot forward. During the next few weeks, in Composition and Oral Expression period, everyone was going to get a chance to talk a little about himself, not just general things that people could get to know easily enough, but some special aspect of himself that he considered most interesting, like a hobby or a dream or an event that had most affected him. There would be points for posture and delivery and content and everything, and at the end they would see who got the most points and was the most interesting person in the class.
To show how it should be done and to prove that teachers are good sports and are willing to reveal something of their true selves to their classes, Miss Boltholmsup started things off herself. Standing with ramrod back and operatically clasped hands, she delivered a few roundly enunciated facts and anecdotes about her own hobby, some of which even poked mild fun at herself, delivered them bravely to the rear wall of the classroom. Her hobby was travelling. She began with daring candour, which she knew the class would mistake for humour: “As soon as the school term is ended I run away.” She had prepared her talk very carefully and was, on the whole, gratified by the response of the class. They even laughed in some of the right places, though they also laughed once or twice, disconcertingly, either where they were not intended to, or with too much heartiness, which made her uneasy. Her final statement, for instance, which had been planned as a wistful and rather poetic summing up of her dreams of escape, “Who knows where the last of the Boltholmsups will end up?” was received with a loud and inexplicable guffaw by some of the most dangerous elements of the class. It passed briefly through her mind that of course it was too much to expect that these young people should have any appreciation of the significance of tradition, or of the fading away of a family, since they came from nowhere themselves. But the thought was outweighed by the gratification of experiencing what for her was a rare pedagogical thrill, that of having introduced a project which would keep them busy for several weeks and at the same time enable her to discover useful little things about them which might help her keep them successfully at bay for the rest of the year.
