Crackpot, page 42
Nor did she maintain a decent silence, always, but sometimes she bawled and sobbed the entire route, and was so clearly moved by this death as to put even the next of kin to shame. Her presence caused a certain amount of irritation and even embarrassment at times. Particularly when the corpse was male, and Hoda happened to let herself slip too fervently into the swing of mourning, people would begin to wonder, and considerate friends of the bereaved, happening to notice her among the mourners, often went to a good deal of trouble to manoeuvre the widow about so that she should not become aware of Hoda’s ambiguous presence. But Hoda’s interest in most of the funerals she attended was not, strictly speaking, a personal one. Sometimes, in the midst of her tears, she would turn to ask an adjacent mourner, “Who was it?” As often as not, if she didn’t happen to know who had died, she even forgot to disturb the purity of her mourning by asking, and weeks later, in her wanderings about the graveyard, might stop to read the little note on a comparatively freshly turned plot and be surprised that someone else she had known or heard of was also gone.
There was really no mystery about her passion for funerals, as she would gladly have explained to people if they had bothered to ask her, instead of making snide remarks. She came to funerals because she was drawn to funerals, had been drawn to them ever since that day when she had followed, with a few remaining comrades, the sparse funeral cortege of Mr. Polonick. Some of the comrades were by this time away in the army, “feeding the cannons,” as Mr. Polonick, bless him, used to say, and some were in detention camps, put away with the rotten Nazis by the dumb government, as they probably would have put Mr. Polonick away too, if he hadn’t been by this time such a sick, guttering firebrand that even the enemies of the working classes knew they couldn’t harm him further. It was a lonely and abstracted group which followed the funeral wagon and stood by the graveside. There was not even a cantor there, since Mr. Polonick had not believed in all that, though Hoda, remembering Uncle’s prosperous funeral (oh, her cousins knew how to treat the old man once he was dead), felt that it might have been nice to hear at least a cantor’s voice bidding Mr. Polonick farewell on such a lovely spring day. As it was, all she heard through the glum silence of the comrades was the muffled slurp of her own sobs, and the low murmur of Daddy’s prayers, which she was sure Mr. Polonick wouldn’t mind, even though he wouldn’t agree with them. She tried not to cry too loudly because Mr. Polonick would have recoiled from a noisy mourning. “Weep for the living,” he would have said rather snappishly, towards the end.
But I want to weep for you, Mr. Polonick. Still, it was hard to do anything right. Even from her grief she was distracted by the sudden whirr of prairie birds shooting upwards beyond the graveyard fence. Mr. Polonick might not have minded that interruption in concentration, old school-teacher that he was, but it was with the idea of perhaps achieving a more perfect moment of grief in this pleasant place that Hoda decided to let the comrades take Daddy home when they left, and stayed on a while in the graveyard by herself. Alone, she wandered from grave to grave, stopping at Mamma’s, stopping at Uncle’s. Standing there, trying to conjure up the dead, she remembered all kinds of things, old sorrows and old grievances, and old pleasures too, strands of her unravelled self inextricably intertwined in the strands of those dead selves, and the way she thought of them now, yearning them back into existence, it hardly seemed as if there was any difference between old pleasure and old sorrow, so perfect were the proportions of grief and pleasure in the embalming fluid of her nostalgia.
Not that she really believed that Mamma, or Uncle for that matter, or anyone else was present any more in the graveyard. She wasn’t foolish enough to think of them as presences and try to take comfort from the thought. No, if anything it was the overwhelming sense of their absence that the sweet-smelling spring morning and the whirr and tree-lee of birds, and the skew stones that pinned down the graves and were themselves being slowly sucked down, and the gentle, vital desolation of the graveyard brought acutely alive for her. It was easy, wandering among the gravestones, to weep, and realizing that here she was licensed to weep aloud, she wept louder, and finding herself alone and free she wailed and let herself go entirely and mourned and keened, and her voice mingled with the spring rustling and returned pleasantly to her ears and she was comforted and found pleasure in her mourning, so much so that when another funeral party arrived and she heard the cantor’s voice echoing with melodious melancholy across the fields, and approaching, heard the harsh, discordant counterpoint of grief, she was moved by a feeling that this at least was something which she understood, and gave way to some generous, companionable impulse of grief and stood and wept with these people too.
Whose business was it? Sometimes people made nasty comments to her that they ought to be ashamed of making, especially at times like these, when to insult a mourner is to insult the dead. Since when did you need an invitation to go to a funeral? Since when was death such an exclusive affair? If, after Mr. Polonick’s passing, she kept on going to funerals it was not the business of the living to complain. What did they know about how she felt? Even Limpy, who kidded her sometimes about what he called her morbid streak, what did he know about how she felt and the things she thought about? When he wanted her all dressed up and playing hotcha momma she was there with bells on for him, wasn’t she? His business didn’t suffer because of what she did in her own time. When it came to what everyone else thought was so important, like having the good taste to be able to get dressed up with such style that she knocked their eyes out, she had proved she could do that all right, hadn’t she, just as long as she had the moolah for some under-the-counter stuff? All right, so let them leave her alone. What could they know about that feeling she had, of fatness growing around her soul, or whatever you called that thing that watched and squirmed and seemed to be gasping for breath inside of her? All right, so maybe it was morbid, for all she knew. She didn’t like being teased about it because she wasn’t sure herself why she went, and sometimes was even a little ashamed because she enjoyed herself when she was there, especially when the other mourners had left and she wandered about alone. Even in the winter, when the snow banked up so high it covered many of the gravestones, and the wind blew straight down from the north pole across the trough in the world in which she stood, and every breath made rime, she stayed on when she could have got lifts home, and afterwards had to tramp, half frozen, to the streetcar stop. Morbid? How could she explain to Limpy that what she sought and sometimes found out there was the feeling of her own aliveness, an in-spite-of-herself, accountable aliveness that the spangled dresses and the black market chocolate bars and the plaudits of her admirers and the knowledge that she was a woman of taste and sophistication and something of a success in the world at last had not, somehow, been able to make her feel.
Anyway, how the hell should she know why she did it? Because she wanted to, that was why, and she often thought how nice it would be to bring food, like sandwiches along sometimes, and find a nice place to sit, and just sit there and look and breathe and smell and eat and eat and eat. The fresh air did that to you. But she didn’t bring food, not because she feared her mourning would be rendered less genuine because she got hungry after awhile and ate, nor because she was particularly worried about what people would say if they knew she brought lunches along to their funerals, but because if she started making picnics of these visits she’d feel badly about not bringing Daddy along, and Daddy was at an age when she didn’t want to remind him too often of the eternal fields, though they had meant so much in his life. So she waited till she got home to eat, and was usually so ravenous by that time that she simply gobbled whatever she could find because she was in a hurry to get off to work.
As for what people thought, let them think. As long as they let her alone what difference did it make to her if they thought she was crazy? What difference did it make even if she was crazy, as she had sometimes thought she must be? Here she was and she was like she was and it was not for them to bear it but for her. Anyway, what did people know? If there was one thing that Hoda had learned it was that if people didn’t want to be pleased you couldn’t please them, no matter how hard you tried, so you might just as well please yourself. Who would have expected some dame to come running up to you when you were standing there quietly, waiting for them to bring the coffin out of the house, and to start yelling at you, “You’re here already? Who invited you? Whenever you die, she’s there! You’re not to come to my funeral, you hear? I forbid you to come to my funeral! Don’t you dare show your face at my grave!”
It was embarrassing to be yelled at that way when you were just standing around quietly and reverently, like everyone else. Hoda’s first impulse was to retort with sass, “All right, you don’t want my company? Tell me when you’re popping off and I won’t come.” But she didn’t, of course, not at a time like this, and not to such a madwoman, rude though she might be. Hoda had respect. So she offered instead, placatingly, out of her embarrassment, “All right. You can come to mine if you like.” You’d think the woman would quiet down at that, but no, instead of being a little ashamed of herself in the face of such good manners, and showing a little respect too, she went on yelling about the way Hoda was smiling at her; what right did she have to smile? and on and on about how she didn’t want a woman like Hoda at her grave.
Hoda did her best, by smiling apologetically and shrugging her shoulders helplessly and rolling her eyes and making doleful little compassionate gestures, to indicate to the other mourners, who were beginning to mutter restively at this breach of the funereal tone, that she couldn’t help it and that the other woman was obviously a little crazed with grief or something, but it was not the time for protestations and remonstrations, and finally, to silence her critic, Hoda allowed herself to be driven off a way, with the result that she didn’t get a lift when the party moved off, and had to follow on foot till she reached a point where she could catch a streetcar.
That was why even if she had known more precisely the kind of thing that people said about her graveyard habits she wouldn’t have given a damn; no, she would have gone on letting people think what they damn well pleased, which they did, of course, just as they had all along, adding to all the other anecdotes and myths and rumours that had from time to time circulated about the fallen woman, the story that she had even been seen emerging from the gentile cemetery which stood adjacent to the Hebrew field, a circumstance which encouraged the suspicion in some that she mourned the goyem too. That shouldn’t surprise anyone; she had never been noted for discrimination in the distribution of her favours before, had she?
By the simple persistence of being, however, Hoda had earned for herself on the whole a large tolerance over the years, and people merely said after awhile, “Oh well, that Hoda,” as if to say, “Oh well, what can you expect?” Every now and then it’s true somebody felt the need to cut her down a little, because she appeared to be getting too much enjoyment out of life or out of death, and it seemed unfair, but usually, when her name was mentioned, it was because a funny or a scandalous story or rumour had come into circulation, which in turn reminded many a solid citizen of other such stories, some personally experienced, and by now invested with that special glamour of distance which makes an acceptable anecdote even of the once inadmissible truths of the past, and reveals the present somehow anaemic by contrast. If you told one story about Hoda someone was bound to try to top it. It was by this time her fate to have been part, even if only fragmentarily, of the past of such a great segment of the community that she was something of a vested memory, as much to those who would not admit to having had any personal contact as to those who boasted innumerable encounters, and every story, new or old, in which she distinguished herself by being somehow still unrepentantly out of pitch with the rest of humanity was as welcome as the fragile daily illusion that nothing is really changing.
But Hoda knew that things did change, that they had changed a good deal for her by the time the war was ended. One of the positive results of her partnership with Limpy was the fact that she no longer had to hustle and take on all comers. She, too, could afford the luxury of choice; in fact she could afford to give the smashed and pulpy old mattress a rest for as long as she liked. For a while, out of patriotism, and in order to show her contempt for the snobbery of rank, she continued to entertain the armed forces, but made a big display of her preference for the enlisted men over their officers. However, partly because she realized, eventually, that both officers and enlisted men were inclined, given the chance, to prefer the two young chippies to her own ampler and more seasoned charms, Hoda, a little ruefully, though not very, withdrew to a small circle of more mature admirers, with one or the other of whom she could now relax without even bothering, sometimes, to charge him for it afterwards.
In some ways the years had been very kind to her. As she explained to those who tried to compliment her, other women got disgustingly fat as they grew older, and never knew how to carry their weight properly, while she who had always been disgustingly fat had learned through the years to wear her weight with distinction. She took a none too secret delight in hearing people say things like, “Why Hoda, you haven’t changed at all! Hoda, how do you do it? You look as young as ever!” But she didn’t fool herself. “Still the same old fat slob!” she would counter, dusting a sequin and shimmying her hips. She knew. By the time the war had ended, in the increasingly solitary leisure of her nights, she had had time to take notice of the working of time in her. Finding herself in the season of the little blue veins she was sometimes afraid, but would not allow herself to remain for long intimidated.
So what? “Big deal, so I ain’t what I used to be, thank God! So what else is new?” Not that she wouldn’t have been equally ready to defend what she used to be, if challenged. Though she still wept, in secret, over the particulars of her life, she scorned to repudiate the configuration of her existence. “All right,” she used to say, “so I’m not the Duchess of Windsor.” She did not begrudge her former rival.” “She’s got good taste in clothes too,” she admitted; “maybe a little on the quiet side, but she doesn’t have so much territory to cover, so she doesn’t have to use her imagination so much.” She nurtured no illusions about the royal couple, and had indeed lost interest in them to the extent that she didn’t even think about her old idol and his wife unless they thrust themselves on her attention by appearing in the newspapers or illustrated magazines. At such times she felt about him very much as she felt about herself when she remembered all that had once seemed possible. And yet perhaps it wasn’t true the way his life looked to her. How could one tell? Perhaps it only appeared as though he wandered now from comfortable nowhere to comfortable nowhere else, in search of comfortable nothing any more. What difference did it make?
“Listen, I’ll tell you,” she used to say, during the latter period of her kibitzarnia days, when Limpy or some of the others got to talking about how they’d like to be in the beds at least, if not in the boots of royalty; “they got their troubles; I got mine. And you know something else? I wouldn’t change places with her if you paid me.” About that she was definite. Oh she wished them no ill, but for all that she had once been infatuated with His Royal Highness, and had followed his progress, and had been frankly disappointed, but didn’t hold it against him; on the contrary, was willing to encourage them and offer them moral support with the best will in the world; still, they shed no light.
“I hope they’re happy,” she always added, punctiliously, after expressing the gravest doubts. She felt her words, however, to be a false piety even as she spoke them, because she didn’t even know what they meant. What was this “happy” anyway? She doubted if she’d know how to recognize it if she ever got an attack of it. And if she did identify it, what then? From what you heard it was so delicate you’d have to spend the rest of your life pampering it. Cough or sneeze or fart the wrong way and you blew it right out the window. “I’ve gone to bed to nurse my happiness.” Sure, since when could someone like Hoda afford to keep that kind of pet in bed with her? At least pleasure paid on the line as it came. What good was happiness to humans anyway, if it couldn’t stand their company for long? Maybe it really was different for royalty, though, with the kind of training they got. They took very small bites and blew very small farts, and when the time came they could beckon happiness before all the world, and dare boast that they could keep it happy forever, too. Well, good luck to them. People like Hoda needed something tougher to help sustain her kind of life. Happiness was for ageing exprinces, and maybe for anyone else who could afford to match the trade-in value of an old empire in so-so condition. She did not dare, she was too superstitious to come outright to the conclusion that she could do without happiness, though she had managed thus far somehow, for fear that its poor relation, the less sensitive and far more familiar, unhappiness would rush in to fill the void that her admission might create. But she did admit to herself that she found the themes both of royalty and of happiness a bore.
For herself, at least she knew when she was well off, and she knew the species of numbness or contentment that comes with knowing yourself to be well off at last. Even her obsessions now had coats of fat on them, so that they no longer screamed raw-edged along her nerves, and though she scanned eagerly the faces of the young men as they returned from the war, and some she questioned with particular warmth, she no longer suffered with the old acuteness the disappointment of her expectations. She even wondered now whether there would be any point in meeting her David again. She would like to know that he had survived the war, if indeed he had fought in it, and if she could help him she would of course like to do that too. But if, as she hoped, he had survived the war and didn’t directly need any help, it might be just as well for him if she were not tempted by any meeting to reach out towards him once more. For with the passage of the years and the blurring of old emotions, prohibitions that had once seemed absolute had lost something of their negative force, and she allowed herself occasionally the self-indulgence of a fantasy in which she revealed the truth to a young man of the world on whom, at twenty-three, it could not possibly have the shattering effect it might have had on him at fifteen. At twenty-three, looking back, he might be able to understand that she had all along been trying to help him. That was why perhaps it would be best if she never had the opportunity to see him again, though she could not quite bring herself to wish it, because it was such an awful thing for a mother to wish about her own son. And yet, if she were never to see her son again she would not be tempted by this need to confess and seek his approval, which in some partly defined way she knew was also the desire to shift something of the burden of knowledge from her own shoulders to his. To wish strongly either way was potentially disturbing, so she allowed herself to drift along without consciously committing herself to any wish at all. She had never been so well off; she was making a nice living; she still had her daddy, thank God, though he was a little uncertain in his memory nowadays, and didn’t even always tell his own stories accurately any more, but they were together, and they were beholden to no one.
