Read Online Idiots First by Bernard Malamud - Free Book Online Page A

the ledge, till one slipped in slime and pulled the other with him. Reaching forth four hands, they clutched nothing in stiffened fingers, as Marcus, the watcher, shrieked without sound at their evanescence.
    He sat dizzily until these thoughts had left him.
    When he was again himself, remembrance made it a kind of dream. He denied any untoward incident had happened; yet knowing it had, called it a triviality—hadn’t he, in the factory he had worked in on coming to America, often seen such fights among the men?—trivial things they all forgot, no matter how momentarily fierce.
    However, on the very next day and thereafter daily
without skipping a day, the two in the back broke out of their silent hatred into thunderous quarreling that did damage to the business; in ugly voices they called each other dirty names, embarrassing the clothier so that he threw the measuring tape he wore like a garment on his shoulders, once around the neck. Customer and clothier glanced nervously at each other, and Marcus quickly ran through the measurements; the customer, who as a rule liked to linger in talk of his new clothes, left hurriedly after paying cash, to escape the drone of disgusting names hurled about in the back yet clearly heard in front so that no one had privacy.
    Not only would they curse and heap destruction on each other but they muttered in their respective tongues other dreadful things. The clothier understood Josip shouting he would tear off someone’s genitals and rub the bloody mess in salt; so he guessed Emilio was shrieking the same things, and was saddened and maddened at once.
    He went many times to the rear, pleading with them, and they listened to his every word with interest and tolerance, because the clothier, besides being a kind man—this showed in his eyes—was also eloquent, which they both enjoyed. Yet, whatever his words, they did no good, for the minute he had finished and turned his back on them they began again. Embittered, Marcus withdrew into the store and sat nursing his misery under the yellow-faced clock clicking away yellow minutes, till it was time to stop—it was amazing they got anything done and their work was prodigious—and go home.
    His urge was to bounce them out on their behinds but he couldn’t conceive where to find two others who were such
skilled and, in essence, proficient workers, without having to pay a fortune in gold. Therefore, with reform uppermost in his mind, he caught Emilio one noon as he was leaving for lunch, whispered him into a corner and said, “Listen, Emilio, you’re the smart one, tell me why do you fight? Why do you hate him and why does he hate you and why do you use such bad words?”
    Though he enjoyed the whispering and was soft in the clothier’s palms, the tailor, who liked these little attentions, lowered his eyes and blushed darkly but either would not or could not reply.
    So Marcus sat under the clock all afternoon with his fingers in his ears. And he caught the presser on his way out that evening and said to him, “Please, Josip, tell me what he did to you? Josip, why do you fight, you have a sick wife and boy?” But Josip, who also felt an affection for the clothier—he was, despite Polish, no anti-Semite—merely caught him in his hammy arms, and though he had to clutch at his trousers which were falling and impeding his movements, hugged Marcus into a ponderous polka, then with a cackle, pushed him aside, and in his beer jag, danced away.
    When they began the same dirty hullabaloo the next morning and drove a customer out at once, the clothier stormed into the rear and they turned from their cursing—both fatigued and green-gray to the gills—and listened to Marcus begging, shaming, weeping, but especially paid heed when he, who found screeching unsuited to him, dropped it and gave advice and little preachments in a low becoming tone. He was a tall man, and because of his
illness,