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

quite thin. What flesh remained had wasted further in these troublesome months, and his hair was white now so that, as he stood before them, expostulating, exhorting, he was in appearance like an old hermit, if not a saint, and the workers showed respect and keen interest as he spoke.
    It was a homily about his long-dead dear father, when they were all children living in a rutted village of small huts, a gaunt family of ten—nine boys and an undersized girl. Oh, they were marvelously poor: on occasion he had chewed bark and even grass, bloating his belly, and often the boys bit one another, including the sister, upon the arms and neck in rage at their hunger.
    â€œSo my poor father, who had a long beard down to here”—he stooped, reaching his hand to his knee and at once tears sprang up in Josip’s eyes—“my father said, ‘Children, we are poor people and strangers wherever we go, let us at least live in peace, or if not—’”
    But the clothier was not able to finish because the presser, plumped on the backless chair, where he read his letters, swaying a little had begun to whimper and then bawl, and the tailor, who was making odd clicking noises in his throat, had to turn away.
    â€œPromise,” Marcus begged, “that you won’t fight any more.”
    Josip wept his promise, and Emilio, with wet eyes, gravely nodded.
    This, the clothier exulted, was fellowship, and with a blessing on both their heads, departed, but even before he was altogether gone, the air behind him was greased with their fury.

    Twenty-four hours later he fenced them in. A carpenter came and built a thick partition, halving the presser’s and tailor’s work space, and for once there was astonished quiet between them. They were, in fact, absolutely silent for a full week. Marcus, had he had the energy, would have jumped in joy and kicked his heels together. He noticed, of course, that the presser occasionally stopped pressing and came befuddled to the new door to see if the tailor was still there, and though the tailor did the same, it went no further than that. Thereafter Emilio Vizo no longer whispered to himself and Josip Bruzak touched no beer; and when the emaciated letters arrived from the other side, he took them home to read by the dirty window of his dark room; when night came, though there was electricity, he preferred to read by candlelight.
    One Monday morning he opened his table drawer to get at his garlic salami and found it had been roughly broken in two. With his pointed knife raised, he rushed at the tailor, who, at that very moment, because someone had battered his black hat, was coming at him with his burning iron. He caught the presser along the calf of the arm and opened a smelly purple wound, just as Josip stuck him in the groin, and the knife hung there for a minute.
    Roaring, wailing, the clothier ran in, and, despite their wounds, sent them packing. When he had left, they locked themselves together and choked necks.
    Marcus rushed in again, shouting, “No, no, please, please,” flailing his withered arms, nauseated, enervated (all he could hear in the uproar was the thundering clock), and his heart, like a fragile pitcher, toppled from the shelf
and bump bumped down the stairs, cracking at the bottom, the shards flying everywhere.
    Although the old Jew’s eyes were glazed as he crumpled, the assassins could plainly read in them, What did I tell you? You see?

A CHOICE OF PROFESSION
    Cronin, after discovering that his wife, Marge, had been two-timing him with a friend, suffered months of crisis. He had loved Marge and jealousy lingered unbearably. He lived through an anguish of degrading emotions, and a few months after his divorce, left a well-paying job in Chicago to take up teaching. He had always wanted to teach. Cronin taught composition and survey of literature in a small college town in Northern California, and after an initially exhilarating period,