The Assistant by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page A

Morris like someone who had to retch—no matter where; but after a brutal interval his eyes grew dull. He sighed heavily and gulped down the last of his coffee. After, he brought up a belch. This for a moment satisfied him.
    Whatever he wants to say, Morris thought, let him say
it to somebody else. I am only a grocer. He shifted in his chair, fearing to catch some illness.
    Again the tall man leaned forward, drew a breath and once more was at the point of speaking, but now a shudder passed through him, followed by a fit of shivering.
    The grocer hastened to the stove and poured out a cup of steaming coffee. Frank swallowed it in two terrible gulps. He soon stopped shaking, but looked defeated, humiliated, like somebody, the grocer felt, who had lost out on something he had wanted badly.
    â€œYou caught a cold?” he asked sympathetically.
    The stranger nodded, scratched up a match on the sole of his cracked shoe, lit a cigarette and sat there, listless.
    â€œI had a rough life,” he muttered, and lapsed into silence.
    Neither of them spoke. Then the grocer, to ease the other’s mood, casually inquired, “Where in the neighborhood lives your sister? Maybe I know her.”
    Frank answered in a monotone. “I forget the exact address. Near the park somewheres.”
    â€œWhat is her name?”
    â€œMrs. Garibaldi.”
    â€œWhat kind name is this?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Frank stared at him.
    â€œI mean the nationality?”
    â€œItalian. I am of Italian extraction. My name is Frank Alpine—Alpino in Italian.”
    The smell of Frank Alpine’s cigarette compelled Morris to light his butt. He thought he could control his cough and tried but couldn’t. He coughed till he feared his head would pop off. Frank watched with interest. Ida banged on the floor upstairs, and the grocer ashamedly pinched his cigarette and dropped it into the garbage pail.
    â€œShe don’t like me to smoke,” he explained between coughs. “My lungs ain’t so healthy.”
    â€œWho don’t?”
    â€œMy wife. It’s a catarrh some kind. My mother had it all her life and lived till eighty-four. But they took a picture of
my chest last year and found two dried spots. This frightened my wife.”
    Frank slowly put out his cigarette. “What I started out to say before about my life,” he said heavily, “is that I have had a funny one, only I don’t mean funny. I mean I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been close to some wonderful things—jobs, for instance, education, women, but close is as far as I go.” His hands were tightly clasped between his knees. “Don’t ask me why, but sooner or later everything I think is worth having gets away from me in some way or other. I work like a mule for what I want, and just when it looks like I am going to get it I make some kind of a stupid move, and everything that is just about nailed down tight blows up in my face.”
    â€œDon’t throw away your chance for education,” Morris advised. “It’s the best thing for a young man.”
    â€œI could’ve been a college graduate by now, but when the time came to start going, I missed out because something else turned up that I took instead. With me one wrong thing leads to another and it ends in a trap. I want the moon so all I get is cheese.”
    â€œYou are young yet.”
    â€œTwenty-five,” he said bitterly.
    â€œYou look older.”
    â€œI feel old—damn old.”
    Morris shook his head.
    â€œSometimes I think your life keeps going the way it starts out on you,” Frank went on. “The week after I was born my mother was dead and buried. I never saw her face, not even a picture. When I was five years old, one day my old man leaves this furnished room where we were staying, to get a pack of butts. He takes off and that was the last I ever saw of him. They traced him years later but by then