The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page A

them ceilingward and began to speak deliberately in fluent Yiddish.
    “Hear me earnestly, great and good God. Hear the story of the afflictions of a second Job. Hear how the years have poured misery upon me, so that in my age, when most men are gathering their harvest of sweet flowers, I cull nothing but weeds.
    “I have a daughter, O God, upon whom I have lavished my deepest affection, whom I have given every opportunity for growth and education, who has become so mad in her desire for carnal satisfaction that she is ready to bestow herself upon a man unworthy to touch the hem of her garment, to a common, ordinary, wordless, plum-ber, who has neither ideals nor—”
    “Poppa,” screamed Sophie, “Poppa, stop it!”
    Rosenfeld stopped and a look of unutterable woe appeared on his face. He lowered his arms and turned his head toward Ephraim, his nostrils raised in scorn.
    “Plum-ber,” he said bitterly.
    Ephraim looked at him with hatred. He tried to move, but couldn’t.
    “You cheap actor,” he cried suddenly, with venomous fury. “You can go straight to hell!” He strode over to the door, tore it open, and banged it so furiously that the room seemed to shake.
    By degrees Rosenfeld lowered his head. His shoulders hunched in disappointment, and he saw himself, with his graying hair, a tragic figure.
Again he raised his head slowly and looked in Sophie’s direction. She was already setting up the screens. Rosenfeld moved toward the table in the alcove and glanced down at the vegetables on the plate. They bored him. He went over to the gas range, carefully lit the flame under the broiler, and pulled down the door to see whether the hamburger was cooking. It was. He closed the door, lowered the flame a bit, and said quietly:
    “Tonight I will eat chopmeat.”
    1943

The Place Is Different Now
    L ate one warm night in July, a week after they had let Wally Mullane out of the hospital on Welfare Island, he was back in his old neighborhood, searching for a place to sleep. He tried the stores on the avenue first, but they were closed, even the candy store on the corner. The hall doors were all shut, and the cellars padlocked. He peered into the barbershop window and cursed his luck for getting there so late, because Mr. Davido would have let him sleep on one of the barber chairs.
    He walked for a block along the avenue, past the stores, and turned in on Third Street, where the rows of frame houses began. In the middle of the block, he crossed the street and slipped into an alley between two old-fashioned frame houses. He tried the garage doors, but they were locked too. As he came out of the alley, he spotted a white-topped prowl car with shaded lights moving slowly down the street, close to the curb, under the trees. Ducking back into the alley, he hid behind a tree in the back yard and waited there nervously for the police car to go by. If the car stopped, he would run. He would climb the fences and come out in his mother’s yard on Fourth Street, but he didn’t like the idea. The lights moved by. In five minutes Wally sneaked out of the alley and walked quickly up the street. He wanted to try the cellars of the private houses but was afraid to because someone might wake and take him for a burglar. They would call the police, and it would be just his luck if his brother Jimmy was driving one of the radio cars.
    All night long Wally hunted through the neighborhood, up Fourth, then Fifth Street, then along the parkway, all the way from the cemetery to the railroad cut, which was a block from the avenue and ran parallel to it. He thought of sleeping in the BMT elevated station but didn’t have a nickel, so that was out. The coal yard near the railroad cut was out too, because they kept a watchman there. At five o’clock, tired from wandering, he turned into Fourth Street again and stood under a tree, across the street from his mother’s house. He wanted to go into the cellar and sleep there, but he thought of Jimmy