Solomon Gursky Was Here Read Online Free PDF Page A

be called upon to deliver a socialist critique of The Count of Monte Cristo or Treasure Island, or whatever it was he had read that week, or to recite a poem of his own, its debt to Tristan Tzara duly noted.
    Pens need ink,
    Leaky boats sink.
    Moses clung to his father, constantly searching for new ways to earn his love. L.B., he noticed, often delayed his morning departure to the dreaded parochial school, blowing on his pince-nez, wiping the lenses with his handkerchief, as he stood by the front window waiting for the postman to pass. If there was no mail L.B. grunted, something in him welcoming the injustice of it, and hurried into his coat.
    â€œMaybe tomorrow,” his wife would say.
    â€œMaybe, maybe.” Then he would peer into his lunch bag, saying, “You know, Bessie, I’m getting tired of chopped egg. Tuna. Sardines. It’s coming out of my ears.”
    Or another day, the postman passing by their flat again, she would say, “It’s a good sign. They must be considering it very, very carefully.”
    One ten-below-zero morning, hoping to shave ten minutes off his father’s anxiety time, Moses quit the flat early and lay in wait for the postman at the corner.
    â€œAny mail for my father, sir?”
    A large brown envelope. Moses, exhilarated, raced all the way home, waving the envelope at his father who stood watch by the window. “Mail for you!” he cried. “Mail for you!”
    L.B., his eyes bulging with rage, snatched the envelope from him, glanced at it, and ripped it apart, scattering the pieces on the floor. “Don’t you ever meddle in my affairs again, you little fool,” he shouted, fleeing the flat.
    â€œWhat did I do, Maw?”
    But she was already on her hands and knees, gathering the pieces together. He kept carbons, Bessie knew that, but these, Gottenyu, were the originals.
    L.B. went to Moses that evening, removing his pince-nez and rubbing his nose, a bad sign. “I don’t know what got into me this morning,” he said, and he leaned over and allowed Moses to kiss his cheek. Then L.B. declined supper, retired to his bedroom, and pulled the blinds.
    A baffled Moses appealed to his mother. “That envelope was addressed to him in his own handwriting. I don’t get it.”
    â€œSh, Moishe, L.B. is trying to sleep.”
    It would begin with a slight tic of discomfort in the back of his neck, a little nausea, and within an hour it would swell into a hectic pulse, blood pounding through every vein in his head. A towel filled with chopped ice clamped to his forehead, L.B. would lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, moaning. One day a floodtide of blood, surging into my head, seeking passage, will blow off the top. I will die drenched in fountains of my own blood . Then, on the third day, bloated, his bowels plugged, he would shuffle to the toilet and sit there for an hour, maybe more. Afterward he would stagger back into bed, fall into a deep sleep and wake whole, even chirpy, the next morning, demanding his favourite breakfast: scrambled eggs with lox, potatoes fried with onions, bagels lathered with cream cheese.
    Moses adored accompanying L.B. on his rounds. After sufficient funds had been raised by the group, he went with him to Schneiderman’s Spartacus Press on St. Paul Street, present at the creation. Sorting out pages of L.B.’s first collection of poems. Pages of The Burning Bush as they peeled hot off a flat-bed press thatusually—much to Nachum Schneiderman’s embarrassment— churned out nothing more socially significant than letterheads, business cards, wedding invitations, and advertising circulars. Commercial chazerai . Schneiderman treating Moses to a Gurd’s ginger ale and a May West, saying, “When he wins the Nobel Prize I’ll say I knew him when …”
    Mrs. Schneiderman arriving with a thermos of coffee and her own apple strudel covered with a linen napkin, saying,