“Gee!”
“Now, listen,” said Mr. Klein severely. “I want you should deliver this to the party that’s on the ticket here. To them and nobody else. Farshtest? It cost more gelt than I make week. So no—” He frowned, cocked his head, and once again shook a cautionary manual circle at Ira. “No mistakes. It says where and who. It’s all right on the ticket here. Merrill. You should go to 27 West 124th Street. You ain’t a kid. Just make sure.”
“And when do I go?”
“When do you go?” Mr. Klein laughed shortly, hopelessly. “I told you. Tonight. This evening. Right now. You’ll get your jecket and your kep, and you’ll go this evening. You got the name and the address. It’s dark already, so make sure you’re in the right place.”
“I know how the numbers go.”
“Sehr gut. And after you deliver it, you go home. Thet’s all. Now get your jecket and kep, and come to the table.”
The gorgeous basket was waiting for Ira on the tabletop and beside it stood Mr. Klein: “It’s all paid for. Just make sure you’re in the right place. Merrill is the name. See the tag? 27 West 124th Street. Near Fifth Avenue—”
“I tell you, I know the place!”
“No becktalks, you hear?”
“All right.”
“And pavollyeh, you know what that is?” he lowered his voice as he nodded his head. “Easy. Don’t squeeze it. Hold it like that. It’s Park and Tilford.”
Ira curved his arm through the high handle and around the basket gingerly.
VI
A car bomb explodes beside a mosque, bringing Shiite reprisal against Israel, and distracting the writer from his narrative. In fact, the Syrians may be behind the provocation. When will the cold-blooded, pitiless slaughter end? Who knows — if in fact it will ever end? Scapegoat of the world, Israel. Equally gruesome, but naturally affecting me less, Vietnam warring against the Khmer Rouge, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq mass-murdering each other’s civilian populations. What does that amount to, as they were wont to say in Maine. The blood-libel still lives in many parts of the world. Dr. Maarouf al Dawalibi, advisor to the king and the Saudi Arabian delegate, said at a conference on religious tolerance held in Geneva last December: “The Talmud states that ‘If a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, then he will be damned for eternity.’”. .
As one broods on this piece of lunacy, there seems to be only one solution: Get rid of religion! If the human race is to be preserved, is to be prevented from annihilating itself, then Marxist-Socialist atheism offers the only salvation, Marxist-Socialist-atheist-cum-coercion. The Jews go, the Mea Shearim kinkies with their foot-long earlocks go, as do the rabid cuckoos of other persuasions, with their purdahs and muezzins. What other way out is there? They’ll be destroying one another with fanatic frenzy till kingdom come. But no, but no, I’m wrong. That’s not the decisive element in the peace-making process. Oh, hell, I’m wildly wrong. What religious difference enters into the warfare between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge, between China and Vietnam, China and Russia, South Korea, North Korea, Iraq, Iran? Damn little, or none. So? Where am I? What is, or what are, the true reasons for strife between nations that generate this slaughter? The same “old” thing: material interests. Economic considerations, strategic advantage, expansion of territory, increased power. . Alas.
My mood is further thickened by a long-distance call last night from Jane in Toronto. Most unsettling, most distressing. This time not about my son Jess and his behavior in the framework of my “theories.” No, my theories are underlined. Jess begins to assume justification: His remark, which she produced, jotted down in red ballpoint on a slip of paper when he temporarily quit the premises, re his no longer being able to cope with her demons, now takes on validity in the light of fresh information. As M said, and that was the least or most favorable thing one could say, that she, Jane, was making no effort to cope. More, much more, could be added, could be brought to bear that would give the picture its grievous, disturbing chiaroscuro: She has been subject to a violent tirade (whose particulars she said were in a letter on the way) by her male roommate, who insulted her, inveighed against her on all sorts of grounds, which she construes as arising from his own frustrated love affair with some infidelitous woman. “Mapped,” as it were, or translated into the temperament of the other individual, his tirade has a disquieting similarity to Jess’s aspersions, figurative attribution of demons. In both cases the accusations seemed to arise from the same cause: Jane’s aberrant state or eccentric behavior. To label her conduct eccentric would put the most charitable construction on her actions: Less charitably, they smack of paranoia.
Secondly, and probably of great import, her doctor has suggested that Jane enter a psychiatric hospital “for a rest, a bed and decent meals.” One can make too much of this, or it may be no less than one makes of it: the girl needs psychiatric help. Her opposition to the doctor’s suggestions, based on two counts, was adamant, almost irrationally inflexible: No, she was not going to leave the place she now lodges in, with her “batty” roommate, from whom it would seem any normal person would flee, no matter where (Is it that her cat keeps her there?). She is also disallowed unemployment support, or a dole, because presumably she is cohabiting with the room-owner, or partner.
The doctor’s suggestion, to return to that, which was also accompanied by the explanation that she could not be admitted to a “normal” or general hospital because her physical condition didn’t warrant ordinary medical care, the doctor’s suggestion may have been a way of buffering the alarm, dissipating the stigma of staying in a mental institution. She resisted the suggestion, because she would then be segregated with mental cases — though I assured her as one who had spent four years as a psychiatric aide that she would be safe enough and need have no fear, less perhaps than sharing living quarters with somebody who raved dementedly at her.
No. She was not to be budged. Not an iota of consideration would she give the idea. Employed in the Augusta State Hospital thirty-five years ago, I invented the mnemonic, CIO, the initials of the words for the signs whose absence indicates psychosis in a patient: Contact. Insight. Orientation. And it begins to appear, say a strong hint anyway, that Jane lacks the second of the three mainstays of normalcy. What a shattering intimation!
VII
Harvey and Ira passed each other on the stairs, as Ira climbed up from cellar to store level. Lavishly electric-lit and yet mellowed by spreading stained-glass lampshades, the store looked rich and reserved. Though it was near closing time, a surprising number of customers still sat on the stools in front of the counters, mostly men. Perhaps they were businessmen picking up some article on the way home. Clerks in tan jackets behind the dark counters respectfully jotted down orders on pads, held up an item for a customer’s approval. How dignified, polite — Ira tried not to stare. Or sniff too overtly. What was that square tin the clerk was displaying? Supreme Olive Oil. And the other clerk — that was Walt — saying, “Capers, yes, sir.” What were those? Mr. Stiles was absent from his central podium. Mr. MacAlaney was the assistant manager, Mr. Klein had told Ira, and was the one who made up the steamer baskets. A bronze-blond, curly-haired man who wore gold-rimmed glasses looked up from his pad on the counter, saw what Ira was carrying, and squinted strictly.