The Young Lions

In his day Jacob had also sold cemetery lots, contraceptive devices, real estate, sacramental wine, advertising space, second-hand furniture, bridal clothing, and had even once, improbably, set himself up in a ship chandler's store in Baltimore, Maryland. And at no one of these professions had he ever made a living. And in all of them, with his deft, rolling tongue, his archaic rhetoric, loaded with Biblical quotations, with his intense, handsome face and vital, broad-handed movements, he had always found women who made up for him the difference in what he secured by his own efforts from the economic battlefield around him and what it took to keep him alive. Noah was his only child, and Noah's life had been wandering and disordered. Often he had been deserted, often left for long periods with vague, distant relatives, or, lonely and persecuted, in shabby military schools.

"They are burning my brother Israel in the furnace of the heathen."

Noah sighed and closed the window. Jacob was lying rigid now, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes wide open. Noah put on the single light, which he had shaded with pink paper that was a little singed now in spots and added its small smell to the general sick-room atmosphere when the light was on.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Father?" Noah asked.

"I can see the flames," Jacob said. "I can smell the burning flesh. I can see my brother's bones crumbling in the fire. I deserted him and he is dying tonight among the foreigners."

Noah couldn't help being a

"Flesh," Jacob said, his voice still rolling and deep, even on his last pillow, "flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, you are being punished for the sins of my body and the sins of my soul."

O God, Noah thought, looking down at his father, why must he always speak like a blank-verse shepherd giving dictation to a secretary on a hill in Judea?

"Don't smile." Jacob peered sharply at him, his eyes surprisingly bright and knowing in the dark hollows of his face.

"Don't smile, my son, my brother is burning for you."

"I'm not smiling, Father." Noah touched Jacob's forehead soothingly. The skin was hot and sandy and Noah could feel a small, twitching revulsion in his fingertips.

Jacob's face was contorted in oratorical scorn. "You stand there in your cheap American clothes and you think, 'What has he to do with me? He is a stranger to me. I have never seen him and if he dies, in the furnace in Europe, what of it? People die every minute all over the world.' He is not a stranger to you. He is a Jew and the world is hunting him, and you are a Jew and the world is hunting you."

He closed his eyes in exhaustion and Noah thought, if he only talked in simple, honest language, you would be moved, affected. After all, a father dying, obsessed with the thought of a murdered brother five thousand miles away, a single man at his loneliest moment, feeling the ghost insecure and fleeting in his throat, mourning for the fate of his people all over the world, was a touching and tragic thing. And while it was true that to him, Noah, there was no sense of immediacy or personal tragedy in what was happening in Europe, intellectually and rationally he could feel the sombre weight of it. But long years of his father's rhetoric, his father's stagey gesturing for effect, had robbed Noah of all ability to be moved by him. All he could think of as he stood there looking at the grey face, listening to the heaving breath, was, Good God, the old man is going to keep it up to the end.

"When I left him," his father said, without opening his eyes, "when I left Odessa in 1903, Israel gave me eighteen roubles and he said to me, 'You're no good. Congratulations. Take my advice. Stick to women. America can't be that different from the rest of the world. Women will be idiots there too. They will support you.' We didn't shake hands, and I left. He should have shaken my hand, no matter what, don't you think, Noah?" Suddenly his father's voice was changed. It was small and without timbre and it did not remind Noah of a stage performance.

"Noah…"

"Yes, Father?"

"Don't you think he should have shaken my hand?"

"Yes, Father."

"Noah…"

"Yes, Father…"

"Shake my hand, Noah."

After a moment, Noah leaned over and picked up his father's dry, broad hand. The skin was flaked, and the nails, usually exquisitely cared for, pared and polished, were long and jagged and had crescents of dirt under them. They shook hands. Noah could feel the thin, restless, uneven pressure of the fingers.

"All right, all right…" Jacob said, suddenly peevish, and pulled his hand away, caught in some inexplicable vision of his own. "All right, enough." He sighed, stared up at the ceiling.

"Noah…"

"Yes?"

"Have you a pencil and paper?"

"Yes."

"Write this down…"

Noah went over to the table and sat down. He picked up a pencil and took out a sheet of the flimsy white paper with an engraving of the Sea View Hotel on it, surrounded by sweeping lawns and tall trees, without basis in real life, but convincing and holiday-like on the stationery.

"To Israel Ackerman," Jacob said in a plain, business-like voice, "29 Kloster Strasse, Hamburg, Germany."

"But, Father," Noah began.

"Write it in Hebrew," Jacob said, "if you can't write German. He's not very well educated, but he'll manage to understand."

"Yes, Father." Noah couldn't write Hebrew or German, but he didn't see any sense in telling his father.

"My dear brother… Have you got that?"

"Yes, Father."

"I am ashamed of myself for not having written sooner," Jacob began, "but you can well imagine how busy I've been. Soon after coming to America… Have you got that, Noah?"

"Yes," Noah said, making aimless little scratches on the paper. "I have it."

"Soon after coming to America…" Jacob's voice rolled on, low and full of effort in the damp room, "I went into a large business. I worked hard, although I know you will not believe it, and I was promoted from one important position to another. In eighteen months I became the most valuable member of the firm. I was made a partner and I married the daughter of the owner of the business, a Mr von Kramer, an old American family. I know you will be glad to know that we have a family of five sons and two daughters who are a joy and pride to their parents in our old age, and we have retired to an exclusive suburb of Los Angeles, a large city on the Pacific Ocean where it is su