She used to read to him from Goethe. He couldn’t understand a word so they got married. When Jack had a hard-on she would vomit. He called her The Stomach. He used to say I’m going home now to The Stomach. I knew plenty. I said what do you say about my foot?
He said he phoned me so I would walk on my rotten foot. Then he grabbed my shoe and went to the window. A guy like him makes life meaningless.
Jack I said it was a shoe. You should throw Goethe out the window. Maybe you’re in the Mongolian mood to throw my other shoe out the window? I slapped it on his bed.
He threw it out the window.
How about this lamp I said.
Out the window.
These blankets you want to keep?
Out the window.
I said this is too big don’t even look at it.
For a Chinese Jew the mattress was no trouble.
A nurse came in when I was pulling Jack’s bed toward the window. She started hitting and scratching me. Jack knocked her down with a punch. I jumped on her face. Jack put his tongue in her wallet, then me, then we pushed the bed out the window.
We were singing ya-ya-ya when nurses and doctors from all over the hospital came in. Why not? How often do schmucks see a friendship?
I walked home without a shoe. Not one shoe. I begged myself to take a taxi. It’s cold. It’s snowing. Take a taxi. But I refused. No taxi. For proof I yelled taxi taxi. It stopped. Drive into a wall I said.
The driver looked at me. I made a Jack face. He picked up a wrench. I could see he was a maniac. I was standing without shoes and a maniac was coming with a wrench. He could hit me in the foot. When he pushed open the door another taxi knocked it off.
It figures I yelled. But he was hitting the other driver with the wrench. In the snow I ran away. You’ll get pneumonia I said.
I said I hope it’s a virus.
Then I saw a phone booth and called Jack’s wife.
She said hello.
I recognized her voice because it was so little and quiet. That’s how she talked. Like a one-year-old.
I said hello Jack’s wife?
She said yeah Jack’s wife.
I said Jack is dead.
She said what who?
I said you’re no good believe me. East Side hospital.
She was screaming with her little voice what who?
I didn’t say anything. I said I’m hanging up. You think my foot isn’t killing me? What do you care?
She screamed wait wait.
I said Jack’s wife?
She screamed yeah yeah Jack’s wife.
I said Jack’s wife from Goethe?
She screamed yeah Jack’s wife.
I said listen. Let another person talk sometimes.
She stopped screaming.
Are you listening I said.
She whispered yes yes.
Gloonk I hung up.
That night Genghis Khan and The Stomach were together. I didn’t say anything. I went home and put my foot in the toilet bowl and flushed the water. Who needs a hospital? Or a small skinny from Budapest? Not for me.A friend calls and I said hello Jack. I also have a toilet bowl. It sucks my foot and soon it feels better. At night I knock over the garbage bag under the sink so in the dark I listen to them eat. The rats are happy. I’m happy. I yell sleep. It comes like a taxicab.
Some Laughed
T. T. MANDELL locked his office door, then read letters from experts advising the press against publishing his book, The Enduring Southey. One letter was insulting, another expressed hatred. All agreed The Enduring Southey—“an examination of the life and writing of Robert Southey”—should not be published. Every letter was exceedingly personal and impeccably anonymous. Mandell, an assistant professor of rhetoric and communication art at Bronx Community State Extension, had hoped to win a permanent position at the college. But no published book, no job. In effect, the experts said T. T. Mandell should be fired. But in every negative lives a positive. Mandell could read the letters; Mandell could revise The Enduring Southey. Where he’d previously said “yes” or “no,” he now said “perhaps yes,” “perhaps no.” Miss Nugent, the department secretary, retyped the manuscript, then mailed it to another press. It was rejected.
T. T Mandell locked his office door, then read the letters. All different, yet one conclusion: The Enduring Southey must not be published. Again there were insults: “To publish this book would represent an attack on the mind.” Mandell wasn’t troubled by insults. His life had been shaped by them. Two criticisms, however, were troubling:
The introductory chapter is full of errors of fact and judgment, and the prose is like that of a foreigner who has no feeling for English and probably not much more for his indigenous bush tongue.
The other:
The introductory chapter, where Mandell says he approaches Southey from the inside, is bad. The rest of the manuscript falls below its level.
Mandell realized, considering these criticisms, “Even experts can’t agree.” More important, a contradiction implied intellectual space. He could perhaps shoot The Enduring Southey through that space into publication. He corrected facts wherever he sensed them. With commas he jerked his style toward elegance. Because an expert had said the introductory chapter was best, Mandell put it last. Miss Nugent retyped, then mailed The Enduring Southey to another press. It was rejected.
T. T. Mandell locked his office door and thought: I went to required schools, received required degrees, made changes required by experts. What then do they want? It struck him: A man can’t be rejected. He can only reject himself. Thus he recovered will and, to the new criticisms, responded with vigorous compliance. He eradicated paragraphs and pages as if they contained nothing. Though he worried about leaving breaks in his argument, time was short. He could not say, when required to state his achievements, that for a long while he had been rewriting a book that he had been rewriting. Anyone could say that. Even a moron. The manuscript — retyped, mailed to a scholarly press called Injured Merit — was returned with a letter from an editor: “Chop Southey in half. Put in pictures.”
T. T. Mandell locked his office door, removed his clothes; silently, he rolled on the floor.
To colleagues he showed the letter — not with pride but by the way, as if unsure of its tone. They said it urged, without committing the editor to a promise of publication, that Mandell rewrite and resubmit. He frowned, puckered, and said, “Hmmm.” His colleagues stared. He himself wondered, fleetingly, if he wasn’t a prick.
Mandell cut The Enduring Southey in half and inserted a photo of the library in the Bronx where he’d done research. Below the photo he wrote, “Thanks.” It occurred to him to insert a photo of himself. That might seem presumptuous, but he remembered scholarly books where the author’s photo appeared — an old book on Southey, for example. In the library he found that book again, but no photo, only a drawing, and not of the author but Southey. Mandell nearly cried. Instead, he laughed and told people. Some laughed.
The Enduring Southey was not resubmitted to Injured Merit. It had become too good. Miss Nugent mailed it to a university press. It was rejected.
T. T. Mandell locked his office door, then telephoned a number he had prepared for this eventuality. A moment later he spoke to a lawyer who specialized in outrage. Mandell told the lawyer what degrees he held and where he had been teaching, as an assistant professor, for several years, while he tried to fulfill the publication requirements of a scholar as well as the general institution of requirements as such. He spoke of his faith in the system. He said he wasn’t a troublemaker or a critic of prevailing values but the author of a proper book rewritten according to the criticism of experts. There had been a time, Mandell said, when he wore sneakers to class, but upon noticing that no other faculty members wore sneakers, he quit doing so. There were other things of this nature, but, Mandell believed, the lawyer had the picture. The lawyer then explained: “Professor, there’s no action in this crap.” Mandell read the letters, revised the manuscript, threw out the photo. Miss Nugent retyped, mailed. The Enduring Southey was rejected.