Crackpot, p.24
Crackpot, page 24
Hymie looked a little embarrassed too, and said “That’s okay,” in a chastened way. Afterwards he wished he’d had the wit to say, “That’s okay, I don’t mind, if you don’t,” because he wanted to try it when a girl was that way sometime, but catching him off guard, like that, for godsake, she had made him feel like she was his big sister or something.
See, Hymie was really all right. They were really all right guys. The main thing was that they should never suspect, that no one should ever suspect. She must never, never do anything to enable people to make the connection. Nothing should ever be allowed to slip out; she must never even walk past the orphanage again, in case someone, who maybe hadn’t been sleeping well that night, had happened to be looking out the window, and now was just waiting to see her and recognize her and yell out, if she came by again. Well she wouldn’t. It was all over with, her part of it, just as if it had never happened. Really, you could almost say it never had. An accident can happen to anybody, but it can be all right again. Even if you get hurt, it can heal up and leave no sign that it ever was. The baby was going to be taken care of, and it was even pretty lucky in a way; it had started right off being famous. Limpy said people were even calling it “the little prince,” and were kind of proud of it. Well, they should be. If they only knew who he really was, and understood who they were, she and Daddy, well…maybe they would some day.
Someday maybe, when things had got better, and she was married, and rich, she would drive in at those orphanage gates in a big, black limousine, with a chauffeur, and the kids would line the hedges and stand looking at her. And she would get out of the car, with the chauffeur holding the door open, and somebody would come running out of the orphanage door, rubbing his hands and bowing, the same somebody maybe who took so long to open the door that night, but who hurried now, all right. She would climb the porch steps slowly, with dignified wavings up and down of the big ostrich feather in her hat, and everyone would breathe deeply her perfume and stand there holding their breaths and waiting for her to speak. And very quietly and politely she would say, “I’ve come for my baby.”
It was simple and beautifully said, and everyone was deeply touched, particularly Hoda. The furor that followed her announcement she rather hurried over, because she really couldn’t imagine the thing as anything but that tiny, gukky little red object that she had washed and wrapped, and when she tried to blow him up to a young boy in her mind it didn’t work, with his frog’s legs and his scrunched-up face. At most, she managed, with difficulty, to labour into being a very misty, fuzzy picture of a boy of indeterminate age, suspiciously like an old picture she had once seen of the young prince. But in truth she couldn’t really be bothered with that kind of soupy stuff anymore, about princes and all that. It was just something she’d thought of putting in the note to make sure they took good care of the baby, since she couldn’t make them do it by telling them directly that it was entitled to Uncle’s big donation. And she could not either, somehow, right now put much heart into the fantasy of when she would be rich and would come to the orphanage to claim her own, and how it would be a great honour for them. It was a too far away thing, a duty she had still to come to, that had still to ripen for a long, long time before it would take-on the taste of pleasure.
She was subject, particularly at first, to sudden, devastating fits of comprehension of what had happened to her, storms of feeling which she could not contain, and which she allowed herself the small luxury of releasing in showers and squalls for Daddy to mop up with comforting words and tender attentions. But Daddy’s tenderness and love, though willingly enough accepted, were proferred in innocence, and Hoda at one and the same time felt both guilt at her own unworthiness and, what increased the guilt, something which was close to contempt for his inviolate ignorance. When Daddy said to her, “Hodaleh, Hodaleh, surely it can’t be that bad, to drown the whole world like in the time of Noah’s Ark again?” she thought to herself, “That’s what you think. A lot you know,” and was guilty. Nevertheless she let him cuddle her and took comfort in it.
One thing Hoda knew she had to do. She had to make sure it didn’t happen again. Between Seraphina and the public library, she soon found enough information to restore some of her old confidence, though much of what she learned was a great surprise, and for days, whenever she thought of it, she would exclaim inwardly, ‘So that’s how it works! Well how was I to know?’ From some of the books she pored through, she learned enough, even, to enable her to quickly gain the ascendancy over Seraphina in point of knowledge, for Seraphina’s was a crudely functional, though essentially accurate, grasp of the facts of life. Seraphina followed Hoda’s learned explanations with gratifying, high-pitched, nasal exclamations of “Nyyyo! You donnn’t say!” as Hoda’s words negotiated, unimpeded, the sparsely populated world between her ears. But from Seraphina she did learn a maxim, which she henceforth adopted, and insisted that the guys act accordingly. “I’ll play,” she told them, “if you’ll play safe.” And she got Hymie to pick up a whole bunch of safes for her at the drugstore, and she checked each one for leaks, and when someone didn’t come prepared, she sold him one, at a moderate profit, and she and Hymie even talked of finding out where they could get them wholesale and going into business. Hymie had all kinds of good ideas like that. He wasn’t going to be a poor bum all his life. “Sure,” Hoda liked to rib him, “you’re going to be a rich bum.” But he could take a joke, and maybe he was a slob but he wasn’t such a stupid slob.
“Yeh,” Hymie said, kidding her back; “there’re only two kinds of bum to be, a rich bum and a fat juicy bum.”
That Hymie, he wasn’t going to stand still and let himself get kicked around in this life, not if he could help it. And neither was Hoda, “that’s for sure” she vowed. She was her own recovered self again, and more, yes, Hoda knew she was a great deal more, though the cocoon that she had outgrown was not made up of many layers of fat, as she had once dreamed. She had not emerged a butterfly; well, she had not started out as a worm, either. Butterflies are lovely, but who knows what they feel like inside? Maybe it’s better to see one than be one. Could a butterfly know what Hoda knew? Maybe it wouldn’t want to, either, but Hoda couldn’t help feeling, not glad that it had happened, no, never that, but glad that she knew, somehow, almost glad, anyway. Daddy always said it was good to know things, but did Daddy mean it was good to know the things you want to know? No, that was a mean thought against Daddy. Didn’t he know more than enough about what he would never have chosen to know, how to be blind and at the mercy of all? But did he find it good to know that, too? It didn’t make Hoda feel better to know what she knew; it made her feel awful when she let herself think of it, but at the same time she felt as though there was somehow more of her, on the inside, and that she was a different shape in her head from what she had been before. And now that she knew a thing or two she figured she could get along all right, and she addressed herself with determination to blocking whatever other nasty kicks should come flying her and her daddy’s way, yes, and making welcome whatever nice surprises came along too.
Hoda went back to her two full-time occupations, blocking life’s kicks and trying to catch a glimpse of life’s butterflies. As time passed and public interest in the unresolved mystery of the foundling waned, and the public tongue sought fresher delicacies with which to titivate the public palate, Hoda began, more and more, to achieve her wished-for day-by-day forgetfulness, until finally she had no longer to consciously prevent herself from thinking of it all the time. The times grew fewer and eventually very far between, when something, she didn’t know what, triggered off a thought of that nightmare night, and with it came a rushing flood of feeling that she could not control nor escape, and she felt awful, just awful, and wanted to die. But she was learning to make very little noise when she was in pain. She went on living.
And so did Pipick, whose life she had innocently set in motion. Though his origins had aroused so much speculation, the baby himself, since he could not answer the questions he raised, was not the subject of as much concrete as theoretical interest. Most people were content to have paused before the orphanage gates and to have caught sight of the wickerwork carriage being wheeled, at an erratic pace, around the orphanage grounds, by, of all people, the wife of the Director of the Home. Normally, it would have been only the fitting thing for no one less than the wife of the Director to take personal charge of a foundling of this degree of notoriety. But how could this woman he trusted with a baby? Not that anyone had anything against her, poor unfortunate, but see, even from this far away you could tell she was jerking the carriage around like a mad woman. She would crash it into a tree! Someone should speak to him!
But in spite of the fact that there was not a man among his board members who did not consider himself capable of wiping the floor with Samuel Limprig, B.A. (U.S.A.) Director; speak to him about his wife was something that even the toughest among them, and among them were some of the toughest men in the community, had never yet been able to bring themselves to do, nor would they, even though more than once during this busy time, board members had paused on the steps of the institution and watched, frowningly, the jerky progress, not so much of the carriage, as of the spastic limbs of the director’s lady, as she moved slowly and with an intense caution that was completely belied by the anarchic twitchings of her body. The board met with unaccustomed, and Limprig felt, though he knew better than to point it out, unnecessary, frequency during that first period of excitement. Every time one of these imperious men, or his imperious wife, had a new idea about the baby, he demanded a meeting to discuss it. They were activists, his board members. They did not believe in simply standing by and holding some prince’s baby and looking foolish. So they called meetings and called each other foolish instead. There was simply too much excitement about and they were too closely involved, to want to sit at home.
Of all the boards of charitable institutions in the community, at this point, the Orphanage Board, though most of its members sat on other boards as well, felt itself to be the strongest and the most successful, as the campaign which had led to the purchase of the children’s home itself gave evidence. Of its members, each one was proud of its strength and felt himself to be a potent contributory muscle. Each separate member knew exactly how the institution should be run. Limprig B.A. or no B.A., and each was capable of shouting down not only Limprig, but the entire rest of the board, on any point about which he felt called upon to express himself with feeling. Each man understood this about the others, which made for a kind of wary mutual respect. Limprig himself had quickly learned, in matters of policy, not to take any sharply defined stand with his Board, for fear of bringing down a categorical and arbitrary opposition from some totally unexpected source, for his board members sometimes played policy, not in any subtle, diplomatic, effeminate manner, but as some who indulge in beer parlor sports like Indian wrestling, for no other reason than to satisfy a kind of aggressive high spirits, and because there happens to be room on the table for two elbows. He knew also that his board members, once they had exercised the right to the occasional ukase, were usually content to go home and let him get on with his job. It was a task for which he was well equipped, both as to the running of the institution and the placating of his employers, with whom he was never too assured, to whom he never stated his logical conclusions, though he might lead them on to stumble over his conclusions by themselves, as it were, and be properly impressed by their acuity when they did. No wonder his board was inclined to congratulate itself on its choice of Limprig for Director. Oh, he had his shortcomings, and his wife might be reckoned among them, but the board members could not blame themselves here. They had known nothing about her; how could they? Do you ask a man you’re interviewing, “Is your wife sound of mind and limb?” Whose business was it to ask such a thing? And she had certainly not, since they had come here, caused any difficulty. On the whole, she tended, rather, to keep herself out of sight! Not until the arrival of the foundling, in fact, had she given any cause for what might remotely be called complaint. Never mind Limprig’s wife. She simply existed. Never mind also how he had put his credentials up on a brass plate outside his office door, like a doctor; some thought it gave tone to the place, while other plain people felt it was a bit too much in the ostentatious American style; never mind, though some did wonder whose money paid for that plate. A man who didn’t make any more than the salary they were paying him, oh he didn’t starve, mind you; it was not by any means a small salary, though it was only a salary, for all his American education, was entitled to his little brass plate. It was the paradox of the learned, as so often noted by men who live in the world of affairs. They study, they study, and what do they learn from it? Enough to get a salary determined by men in the real world, and a little brass plate to soothe their vanity.
This touch of contempt they felt, enabled his board members to allow themselves to respect and even, in some areas, to defer, though only half aware of it themselves, to their Director, without feeling any threat to their own preeminence. And they had the satisfaction of knowing that in bringing someone in from the outside who was less green, less freshly from the old country than even they themselves, who had fairly recently ripened to the desirable and negotiable shade of gold to which all aspire and few attain, they had not only impressed the town with the importance of the job to be done, but they had imported a worthy addition to the community, for Limprig, though brought up and educated in America, was not one of the alienated. His Yiddish and Hebrew background was sound, and he could as well bandy words, when necessary, with the Bundists and the Zionists as with the Orthodox and the gentile city fathers, with whom his job also brought him occasionally into contact.
Perhaps it was his very lack of airs, other than the original assertion of the brass plate, which enabled Limprig to succeed, fairly quickly, in reconciling those few members of the intelligentsia, who felt that the directorship might just as well have gone to someone local, who was familiar with and loyal to the community. It was noted that he elbowed no one, and seemed to prefer, except for the occasional cultural exercises in which he was asked to take part, to lead a very quiet life within the walls of the institution. In public, he seldom appeared with his wife, though she sat and watched when the orphanage children gave a concert or had a party or showed how well they could conduct a service on the High Holidays. On the occasions when they did appear together he was observed to be meticulously devoted.
Poor man. There had been considerable gossip and speculation about the Limprigs, on their arrival in the city a few years before. The case of the foundling provided a new reason to open old doors and try to peer into what must be the dark areas of these private lives. Why had he married her, a man of such intelligence, such education? He had been heard to say once, apropos of something or other, half apologetically, “My wife has been ill.” When had she become ill, and how? What had caused her movements to become so crippled it hurt you to see her? Many explanations had appeared, as from nowhere: that she had fallen down a flight of stairs, and he had come home from work and found her there, that she had had a small something amiss in her somewhere, and he had allowed the doctors to butcher her up, that this had happened when she was pregnant and he had allowed the doctors to use some new fangled method which had crippled her and lost the child, that it was hereditary and she had married him anyway, without telling him, that it had simply happened, and he was so devoted to her because it had been a love match. According to the mood of the teller, and the need variously to assign praise or blame, to one or the other, or to feel a little tug at the heart-strings, the various theories had somehow evolved. Who knows? And how come, when you think of it, a B.A. (U.S.A.!) should choose to come up here and work for a parochial institution where he had to bury himself in snowdrifts for seven months a year, when he could get just as good a job in a climate where humans live, not fools like us? Go ask him. Somebody had, as a matter of fact, asked him why he had chosen to work up here, in what to a metropolitan American like him must be the rear view of nowhere. Limprig had answered him, apparently a straightforward, satisfying answer, though not a particularly memorable one, since the man who had taken it on himself to ask, upon being asked, in turn, afterwards, what account Limprig had given of himself, couldn’t honestly remember anything but the most general reasons, like for instance that he liked Canada and enjoyed the climate. It was the kind of answer that you only got suspicious of afterwards. Liked the climate! You could have made that one up yourself!
The fact that the director’s wife was the only one seen outside of the building with the baby, helped to preserve its privacy at least, since many who would otherwise not have hesitated to walk over and peer into the carriage, for the satisfaction of taking note of certain resemblances, kept their distance, out of a revulsion for the person of Mrs. Limprig which bordered on fear, the irrational fear of her bizarre movements and the oddness of her stance, even in repose, which, try though they might to assure themselves she probably couldn’t help, they nevertheless suspected must, in some profound, unacknowledged way, be her own fault.
In the first week or so, several romantically inspired citizens did step forward and offer to take charge of the upbringing of the foundling. But there was a good deal of yes and no-ing over these proposed festerings out, and some questioning of motives, and even some examination of these proposals in terms of moral trust; the responsibility having been placed in collective hands, perhaps the community should continue to direct the child’s upbringing, for which, in the future, some recognition would surely come to the Institution. Perhaps even a certain possessiveness played a part in the hesitation of the board, which, with Uncle Nate recently elected and cautiously learning the ropes among them, voted to a man to give the situation more time to clarify itself. The one woman who presented herself with an offer to care for the child, for no other reason than that she had plenty of milk and plenty of children and one more wouldn’t hurt, poor little creature of disgrace, was held to be unsuitable because, besides being poor, she did not show an adequate appreciation of the possible complexities of the situation. Limprig, who was among those who did not readily credit the theory of royal origins, and saw in the note the signs of acute distress of a woman probably temporarily unbalanced by fear and shame, was inclined to favour the candidacy of the somewhat simple minded mother, and diffidently put forward some small arguments in her favour. He was eloquently silenced by the gruff, heartfelt outburst of the town’s leading garment maker, a man with three successful sweatshops to his credit. “Limprig, you’re talking from your B.A., not your heart.”
