his offer had indeed struck a nerve. He told Shmerl that frankly nobody was much interested in the old back number anyway and it was a fact that the ice would soon deliquesce, leaving him with nothing but a moldy Hebrew cadaver on his hands. The truth was, he continued, increasingly exercised, that the thing wasn’t really worth the trouble of its upkeep; the museum was doing just fine with its live curiosities. Then having reached the height of his dudgeon, he relaxed his features, allowing the monocle to drop out of his eye and dangle medallionlike from its cord.
“You want him?” he said at last to his petitioner, “he’s yours.”
ON THE TROLLEY ride over to Norfolk Street she introduced herself, holding forth a pudgy palm: “Mrs. Esther Weintraub, widow,” as if being relict were her occupation, “but please you can call me Esther.” Then shouting over the lurching horsecar and its yammering passengers, she qualified her title: She was a grass widow, actually, her husband among the multitude of the missing whose photos were posted daily in the gallery of farshvoondn menschen in the Forward. She’d been in court as her landlord’s witness in a suit against a defaulting tenant and had stuck around to watch the nogoodniks receive their due, when she’d taken pity on the bewildered immigrant. “To my own big heart I am a slave,” she declared, squeezing an ample breast. She was a dressmaker by trade but admitted to an arrangement with her landlord, Mr. Opatashu, a fine gentleman and scholar who like herself was a native of Velsh. In his magnanimity he’d allowed her to remain in her apartment free of charge in exchange for her services as “janitress.” She gave the word a certain dashing cadence, then immediately assured Max he shouldn’t get ideas; there was nothing improper about their relationship. She chattered on, a bit hysterically, Max thought, about what a useless lump of suet was her husband and how well rid of him she was; in fact, she was doing fine on her own, a sheynem dank, and therefore in a position to lend assistance to a newcomer such as… What was his name again? “Oh yeah, Max; don’t worry, Max, I will waive for you your first month the rent till you make a salary,” grazing his cheek with her fingertips. “Connections I got with a certain garment manufacturer. What you mean, you got no skills? Everybody gets off the boat is lickety-spit a Columbus tailor…”
They arrived at her second-floor walkup, where the broad-beamed widow bustled about rattling coals in the grate and removing baggy undergarments from a line strung across the kitchen, while Max sat in a slump at the deal table. She continued nattering about how she’d yet to take in a boarder herself, but surely Mr. Opatashu would not begrudge her the extra income. Still, she paused to speculate while primping her wig, there was the landlord’s potential jealousy to consider… Weary as he was, Max was alert enough to feel squeamish at finding himself in the woman’s charge; this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. But the apartment was warm and he was glad to be out of jail and off the street, doubly grateful for the stuffed chicken neck and lokshen noodles that Mrs. Weintraub (he couldn’t bring himself to call her Esther) served him with his tea. She also boiled a cauldron of water on her cookstove, fogging the windows, tooting her horn all the while about what a resourceful lady she was. “Agunah they would call me in the Old Country, but here the husband leaves, you are free to find another, no?” Max didn’t think so but held his peace, realizing it wasn’t necessary for him to speak at all. The widow poured the steaming pot into a large tin washtub, then carried a basin out to a common spigot in the stairwell, returning to mingle the cold water with the hot, testing it with her fingers as she might have done for a child. When she was satisfied that the temperature was tepid enough, she told Max to go ahead and wash himself; afterward, while she laundered his own (pinching her nostrils theatrically to indicate them), he could change into some of her husband’s old clothes. Then she retired to the bedroom to give him his privacy, humming a music-hall air as she departed.
Looking warily over his shoulder, Max shucked his filthy garments, then couldn’t help remarking the satin-smooth contours of