Free A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes Page A

the novelist and poet.”
    My father knew both men – one a teacher of music at a Hebrew school, the other a stagehand at the Yiddish Art Theatre across the street – and the conversation was good, the evening warm. He lingered, although it was late. Shmelke and he rode home together on the subway.
    “Come in, have a drink,” Shmelke begged. “I’ve got something to show you.”
    My father’s curiosity was stronger than his tiredness and he followed the bobbing head with its ballast ears into the cluttered room, rich with the smell of socks. On the rumpled bed, there was a peaked white cap like those he had seen the black nursemaids in the park wearing. Shmelke snatched it up and twirled it on a finger, grinning darkly.
    There was a bottle of cheap rye on the dresser and my father poured two glasses.
    “You should see her, Morgenstern,” Shmelke said. “An angel, a dark angel, like devil’s food cake, like an animal of the night.”
    My father was moved by the intensity and clarity of Shmelke’s description. He swallowed his drink and took out a cigarette.
    “You’ve had this woman here? In your room?”
    “Right here,” Shmelke grinned, patting the twisted bedclothes. “Why not?” He tossed the cap carelessly onto the bed, shrugging his shoulders. “What do I care what people think?”
    “Very commendable, my friend, but does that include our landlady?”
    The rubbery lips smacked at the rim of his glass. “Depression, depression, Morgenstern, is the soul of valour.” He winked.
    “And the girl? She’s nice?”
    Shmelke laughed, a cackling that reminded my fa ther of the chickens that used to share the kitchen of his mother’s farmhouse in the winter, years before, when he’d been a boy in Galicia. “Nice, what’s nice? To the Café Royale, I don’t intend to bring her. Here , she’s nice.” He pointed to the bed.
    “Is it wise, though, one of those girls?” my father asked cautiously.
    “Morgenstern, of you I’m shameless.” Shmelke fixed him with a stern gaze, the rims of his elephant ears reddening slightly. “A man like you, a spigot.”
    •••
    During that first year of his return to the city, when my father was firmly establishing himself as a newspaperman, and some time before he would meet my mother, he had love affairs of his own, great friendships, nights of talk and whisky and coffee that lasted till dawn, though his lack of formal schooling always made him feel a little inadequate in intellectual circles. He be lieved in free love, or thought he did, until my mother came into his life and he changed his mind on that subject quickly and entirely. He was active in the Jewish Writ ers Guild, which got its start at the same time as the Newspaper Guild but soon outstripped its English language rival. He got a raise. And one night, in late summer, he was witness to a murder and wrote a story that made an impression on his editors.
    My father had an interest in labour, but there al ready was a labour editor on the paper, a stern old man who had been a scholar and teacher in the old country and who wrote with the grace of an albatross. When this man, Jaffe, was busy, my father was often pressed into service to help him if there was a conflict, and on an evening in September he went to cover a meeting of a group of garment cutters who were organizing themselves.
    The meeting was in a small kosher restaurant on Seventeenth Street, between Third and Fourth Av enues. It had been warm when my father left Harlem that af ternoon and he had not worn a coat, but as darkness fell it turned cold and a stiff wind was sending newspapers skittering along the empty street as he walked towards the restaurant, the collar of his suit jacket turned up against his neck. A man in a lumberjack’s plaid shirt stood lounging against the plate glass of the restaurant, a toothpick in his mouth.
    “Morgenstern,” the man said.
    “Schechter, hello, you look like you’re ready for heavy