Stern

by Bruce Jay Friedman

He plunged on in this style, and in a way Stern wanted him to continue all night, because he knew that when Battleby stopped, he would have to put on his jacket and go to the train. He wanted, though, to stop Battleby and talk to him about the kike man, but he was afraid to cut him off for fear of being thought anti-Negro. Because he was so embarrassed about his cowardice, he never really talked to anyone about the man down the street, and Battleby seemed a good person to talk to. Who could he repeat it to? A bunch of people up in Harlem? As Battleby went on about his achievements and the people who thought his work was fine, Stern wondered if he could get Battleby to stop being an intellectual for a second and tell Stern some special Negro things about kicking prejudiced people in the guts. He liked his friend's work, though he thought that Battleby used too many browns, tossing them in inappropriately for ocean scenes, and that the paintings, if inhaled, would even smell a little Negro. He had a strong interest in Battleby's work, and yet another of his reasons for having Battleby as a friend was that down deep he felt he could count on the Negro to hide him from the police in a teeming Harlem flat if ever he were to kill someone. He hoped, too, though he could never suggest this, that Battleby would one night furnish him with supple-bodied Negro girls of Olympian sexual skills who would scream with abandon when Stern bit them gently. And now, as Battleby droned on, he even dared to hope that when he told Battleby of his predicament, the Negro would fling off his horn-rims and fill an open-cab truck with twenty bat-carrying Negro middle-weights, bare to the waist and glistening with perfect musculature. Then Battleby would drive them at great speed to Stern's town to do a job on the man down the street, the pack of them entering the man's house swiftly and letting him have it about the head.

The next time Battleby paused for breath, Stern said, "I don't feel so good. I've got to go away for a while. Look, we never talk, but I've got to talk to someone. Something happened to me out where I live. A guy did this to me because I'm Jewish. You probably run into a lot of Negro things. We never talked about stuff like this before, but I thought we could now."

Battleby fidgeted on his chair and gulped for air, blinking at Stern incredulously, as if to say, "You don't understand. The conversation is about me. I talk about things that have happened to me, and I don't get into other things."

Battleby said: "I've got some crucifixion oils I'd love for you to see. Real giant things with a powerful religious quality. I don't see how I was able to come up with them."

"No, I mean it," Stern said. "I have to talk to someone. What happened is that this guy got my wife down and looked inside her legs and she wasn't wearing anything. This is no fun for me to say, believe me. Then he said kike at her, and the worst thing is I never did anything about it. My kid was standing there. I walked over, but I didn't do anything, and now I'm sick and have to take off for a while. You probably run into a lot of Negro things like that."

A change seemed to come over Battleby now. It was as though he'd been hoping Stern would never get into personal affairs, but now that he had, he wasn't going to let his old friend down. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and began to gulp and shake his head, as though what he were about to say was so true and real he could hardly get it out. Then, in a voice that had all the patience and tolerance of an entire race of long-suffering Negroes, he said, "You have got to abstract yourself so that you present a faceless picture to society."

"We all do," said Battleby, shaking his head and replacing his horn-rims. "Every one of us do."

Stern, puzzled, but afraid that if he asked for elaboration, Battleby would find him anti-Negro, said, "All right. I'm going to start doing that thing right away."

"Good," said Battleby, rising to leave. "I'll call you as various things on me come up." And Stern, heartsick that he had not asked about the truckload of middle-weights, watched the heavy-necked Negro intellectual fly down the hall.

Talking to Battleby, Stern had not thought about his stomach, but now he touched it tentatively and a cloudburst of pain washed upward from his feet and filled his ribs. It was as though a sleeping ulcer had been annoyed and now waited within him, angry, red-eyed, and vengeance-seeking. It did not seem possible that such a large mass of terribleness could be cleared up without "going in," and Stern was certain Fabiola was wrong after all. He imagined a scene in which a thin-lipped gentile surgeon would deftly slice down several layers inside him and then, after furtively looking about to see that no one was watching, reach in and pluck out fistfuls of things Stern vitally needed. The gentile would then sew him up, leaving Stern four more years of life, in order to avert suspicion.