Sophie's Choice - William Styron [25]
So it was Nathan Landau, the first name on my list, who I realized was the master of this setup; then who was his partner in all that din, sin and confusion? “And the gal?” I inquired. “Miss Grossman?”
“No. Grossman’s a pig. It’s the Polish broad, Sophie. Sophie Z., I call her. Her last name, it’s impossible to pronounce. But she’s some dish, that Sophie.”
I was aware once more of the silence of the house, the eerie impression I was to get from time to time that summer of a dwelling far removed from the city streets, of a place remote, isolated, almost bucolic. Children called from the park across the way and I heard a single car pass by slowly, its sound unhurried, inoffensive. I simply could not believe I was living in Brooklyn. “Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Well, let me tell you something,” said Morris. “Except maybe for Nathan, nobody in this joint has enough money to really do anything. Like go to New York and dance at the Rainbow Room or anything fancy like that. But on Saturday afternoon they all clear out of here. They all go somewhere. For instance, the Grossman pig—boy, is she some fuckin’ yenta—Grossman goes to visit her mother out in Islip. Ditto Astrid. That’s Astrid Weinstein, lives right there across the hall from you. She’s a nurse at Kings County Hospital like Grossman, only she’s no pig. A nice kid, but I would say not exactly a knockout. Plain. A dog, really. But not a pig.”
My heart sank. “And she goes to see her mother, too?” I said with scant interest.
“Yeah, she goes to see her mother, only in New York. I can somehow tell you’re not Jewish, so let me tell you something about Jewish people. They very often have to go see their mothers. It’s a trait.”
“I see,” I said. “And the others? Where have they gone?”
“Muskatblit—you’ll see him, he’s big and fat and a rabbinical student—Moishe goes to see his mother and his father, somewhere in Jersey. Only he can’t travel on the Sabbath, so he leaves here Friday night. He’s a big movie fiend, so Sunday he spends all day in New York goin’ to four or five movies. Then he gets back here late Sunday night half blind from goin’ to all those movies.”
“And, ah—Sophie and Nathan? Where do they go? And what do they do, by the way, aside from—” I was on the verge of an obvious jest but held my tongue, a point lost in any case, since Morris, so garrulous, so fluently and freely informative, had anticipated what I had been wondering and was rapidly filling me in.
“Nathan’s got an education, he’s a biologist. He works in a laboratory near Borough Hall where they make medicine and drugs and things like that. Sophie Z., I don’t know what she does exactly. I heard she’s some kind of receptionist for a Polish doctor who’s got a whole lot of Polish clients. Naturally, she speaks Polish like a native. Anyway, Nathan and Sophie are beach nuts. When the weather’s good, like now, they go to Coney Island—sometimes Jones Beach. Then they come back here.” He paused and made what seemed to approximate a leer. “They come back here and hump and fight. Boy, do they fight! Then they go out to dinner. They’re very big on good eating. That Nathan, he makes good money, but he’s a weird one, all right. Weird. Real weird. Like, I think he needs psychiatric consultation.”
A phone rang, and Morris let it ring. It was a pay phone attached to the wall, and its ring seemed exceptionally loud, until I realized that it must have been adjusted in such a way as to be heard all over the house. “I don’t answer it when nobody’s here,” Morris said. “I can’t stand that miserable fuckin’ phone, all those messages. ‘Is Lillian there? This is her mother. Tell her she forgot the precious gift her Uncle Bennie brought her.’ Yatata yatata. The pig. Or, ‘This is the father of Moishe Muskatblit. He’s not in? Tell him his cousin Max got run down by a truck in Hackensack.’ Yatata yatata all day long. I can’t stand that telephone.”
I told Morris that I would see him again, and after a few more pleasantries,