The Victor
By Rochelle Veprinski
learn more about the author here
translated from the Forverts June 7, 1936, pg 3
Solomon Gorkin drives his car with blind urgency over the broadly paved roads which flow from the Bronx River Parkway to the neighboring towns, which now lie covered May blooming and in bue, cool shade from the nearby mountain
The car which Gorkin drives is already old. It is tied from the outside with suitcases and bundles. Inside, very close to his side, sits his wife, small and quiet, no younger than him. They are both in their fifties. Due to his height and wide structure, her small size seems even smaller. She looks like a small bird and she clings to him and he responds to her with a pressure from his elbow that it is good. Good that she sits there next to him.
The car stands quietly and easily with the old fashioned, rusty eagle on its nose. And here she is at the pen, tall streets that lie clean and drawn against the blue sky. From both sides there are freshly painted farm houses, with their red blooming apple and cherry trees. With their red, wooden stables and neat hedges. From afar, down the mountain, sparked the Hudson, like a long green fish.
The landscape quiets and calms the heart of the small Mrs. Gorkin. But as they draw nearer to the villages, they see more frequently the new, up and coming houses. They are not built from from shingle and wood but from stucco and stone. The ones from stucco have small windows and steep, round balconies in a sort of Spanish style. The stone houses are lined with narrow windows and they look like little churches… City folk came with their architecture and brought their foreign styles.
Every time that the car. Runs by a small house from there, the new type, Mrs. Gorkin feels a pang in her heart and she becomes uneasy and very alert and several times she squirms in her place. Mr. Gorkin is also uneasy by the steering wheel. His eyes narrow and half closed and his thoughts turn to his memories. A feeling of regret holds itself in his heart. Better turn back home than to travel and place himself in the house he built like in a dream three years ago.
The time, when Mr. Gorkin built that small, yellow, stucco house with the round balcony belonged to the first darker, romantic half of his life. It was really at present his “critic” 47 years, when he realized that people have in their hearts a longing and yearning to grasp the lost times so long that until they miss opportunities. And the opportunity happened. Prosperity went home.
Money flowed in his pockets and strengthened his bones. He picked up his graying head to the world and it seemed to him that he heard in his blood the spring noises…
“There are here such clear blue days in fall, that people can make an error and they take it for spring.”…
Mr. Gorkin made the same mistake. It seemed to him that he was young. Young enough for that young woman for whom he had started to build that small house; secretly, anxiously, and with high expectations, as if it were the first spring of his life… But no, Mr. Gorkin did not want to recall this. That chapter of his life was finished, the “romantic” was slowly leaving, and he would forget that as soon as he could; but it stays like a souvenir, a souvenir that can’t be washed away: that small stucco house with the round balcony…
Mr. Gorkin had taken great efforts to sell that house. He wanted to give it away as a dirt-cheap prize… But the times were terrible, so terrible, that nobody bought… That house stood vacant two winters and a summer. The keys to the house never dangled in someone’s pockets other than Mr. Gorkin’s two year old coat. But he didn’t really want to remember them just as one doesn’t want to remember a bad dream… He hadn’t said a word of it to his wife who was a victim about what was taken from his during the small time that he had lost his way…
But now, the small Mrs Gorkin had the small key from her husband’s coat in her pocket in strong silence. For her it was not a secret who the keys belonged to and where the house was. She had merely seen the house one time from a distance. The curiosity had urged her… But she had never been inside. and now, a year and a half since her husband came back to her with such dejection in his eyes, she is sure about him, completely sure. Yet, she often will grasp near the couch where the old coat hangs, she unintentionally quivers – Yes, the keys are here… Her heart hammers up and down, it beats at least down to her ribs… She wants to take the keys and travel there alone. To look inside, to smell inside the house. The remaining bit of jealousy would not leave her alone… She knew that the house there, with everything that is inside and outside, stands the only mute witness from that short, painful time when he, her husband, lived with that other one.. Everything in that house is no doubt exactly as it was… Full with the other one’s smell and the other one’s breath…
The memory used to cause a burning in head. She would have such remorse that she would think about that so often… She would violently cast off the painful memories, and yet, and yet, they would pull her towards the house like something pulls someone to the thing they greatly fear…
How to free herself from the anxious memories and feelings she did not know. She had thought so long about the house, measured in her memory the interior rooms and pantries and walls, until the house was a part of herself.. It cast after her like a great shadow, where she would stand, where she would stand and go. And gradually, slowly, like the sun rises on an overcast day, the idea came to her, that she should occupy the house… Occupy the house for herself like one would occupy a fortress, and become the lady of the house there… And – “Here, look, the house is mine!” It was built for me! And only by mistake, an unhappy illusion did you reign there for a short time. But now I am taking it back. Because my husband built it and everything in it belongs to me!…”
This is how she wanted to present her views to the “other”, at least the other had already forgotten about that short part of her life, and about the yellow stucco house.. Life is far and wide and flows like a river, but for Mrs. Gorkin the “other” was a close enemy from whom she had to protect her partner…
And Mrs. Dora Gorkin took her smart and tactful way to remind her husband of the free and uninhabited house… It helped and gave her courage that her husband’s business was going under and the times were hard for them.
“This summer we won’t even be able to rent a bungalow,” she quietly said, “and why should a house stand empty by us?..”
“How can you say these words so naturally and simply?” – he had wondered, and he opened his eyes wide to her… And truthfully, he saw that the small face of his not young wife, the face with the wide and slender lips, that are now so beloved and dear to him, as such a dear thing that people lose and find again, and the small, smart eyes, that look up at him now with longing, are sincere and earnest, and without any reproach; it might be possible?
And although the idea seemed uncomfortable to him, and although he didn’t want to ever step foot in the house again, but gradually his wife had influenced him… As small as she was, she always was stubborn and there was strength in her desires; as long as she was clear about what she wanted…
And strangely, he saw it simpler, when he saw it with his wife’s great sense…
“Really, why not? The times are hard, the house is unoccupied, especially if you are suggesting it, because this is not your way…”
Only somewhere, he felt he had taken from his wife, taken and carried off with it…
Meanwhile, summer was already around the corner. Mrs. Gorkin saw that her husband had not moved forward with the plan. Perhaps because of the hard times… This shouldn’t be, she thought, she decided and done!
She busied herself packing the things. Sent out the old, heavy pieces of furniture… And frequently a redness like an interior flame would overtake her…
And Mr. Gorkin took a look and saw that it would be futile to stop it and to say no! The thing was done! And it was possibly better to go along with it. She left it to her…
———
And now they are in their car. They are travelling. They are already far along the road. After they traveled over a small hill, from afar, between the trees, is the house…
Mr. Gorkin wanted to stretch out the last bit of the journey. He tarried the walk from his car, he looked at the outside landscape… Something out of a dream it was familiar to him… His hand quivered on the steering wheel. The bottom of the car shook and it stopped. Mrs. Gorkin woke up from her thoughts like from a dream…
For a moment they stayed seated in the car without speaking… He took out a cigarette and lit it, like he wanted to draw courage from it. He kept still.
Mrs. Gorkin was the first to leave the car. Then he followed like a shadow…
Soon he was standing by the door with the key in his quivering finger and his wife by his side. He hadn’t looked at her the whole time, he just looked at the empty air. He had wanted to be strong. They both wanted to be stronger than they were and they and they put looks on their faces as if this were nothing… But Mr. Gorkin felt as this was the hardest moment of his life. It was as if he were giving himself over to his wife with naked, sinful trees…
He opened the door and out sprang the damp aroma that pushed out from inside. He felt the hardness was dragging him in. The bright sun was the first thing that flowed through the darkness of the house. He remained seated weary on the outside railing. His eyes narrowed and fogged over, in his hand a cigarette. But she, Mrs. Gorkin, after the first quiver, after the first fright that was like a chill running down her heart, she felt liberated; a sort of heaviness fell off from her shoulders… She was already eloquent, animated, like she would cheer him up as well. And quickly and lightly like a small bird, she danced around the house. And with her smart chestnut eyes she rummaged through everything and took everything in.
The first thing her eyes took in were trampled and dry flower beds, several bushes around the house torn up and with their roots sticking out… neglected…
The feeling of being the woman of the house suddenly awakened in her! She thought a minute about getting a gardener to put to work. To clean the whole garden! And she already knew what flowers she would plant….
She stood for a moment remembering the names of the flowers she had seen somewhere…
—-
The next morning, they had two brown skinned men working in the house and she danced around small and lightly and authoritatively:
“These pink curtains come down!” she said almost with disgust, and “bring this plush loveseat to the basement together with the rest of the things!” And “do you know of a ‘junkman’ in the area?” she said to the large brown-skinned men raising her head.
“Sure Ma’am!” There velvety bass voices reverberated in the lady-like room.
Mrs. Gorkin ran from room to room, and while running her foot caught woman’s blue shoe. While in corner lay another trinket, one that belonged to a woman’s attire. The blood rushed to her heart like a sharp blade from before, and she ran out yelling in a voice not her own:
“All of this junk! Clean out all of this junk from all the rooms! From all of the corners! Already! This minute!! This minute nothing should remain!!”
Her voice voice travelled frightfully through the empty rooms. The two brown-skinned men looked on and rolled up their eyelids:
“She has seen a ghost?” one of the brown skinned men said quietly to the other.
And now the house was completely clean, it came together like wax under her hand and it was silently done from her shaping and modifications. And gradually it became inside, as well as outside, it looked tidy and smart and neat like Mrs. Gorkin herself.
From the windows there were already hanging clear white curtains with handmade lace from the good, old times. The corners of the room were occupied with old, solid pieces of furniture. Furniture that when you look at it, you can strongly see the years past…
Mr. Gorkin himself walked around a lot slower there, than in his New York home. Something there oppressed him as if there were a constant guilt… Therefore he was so indulgent and only wanted to fulfill his wife’s wishes.
“Dora dear, I am going to run a couple of errands in town. Do you want me to bring you anything? Or do you want to come with me today and we can go to the movies?”
Mrs. Gorkin’s eyes looked on victoriously. This was good! Good to see how the guilt weighed on him… Good to see how it dominated over him… He reminded her now of the man she fell in love with thirty years ago…
Mrs. Gorkin flourished. She was full with energy, like May outside. She busied herself with the house. She threw her urgent glance to every corner, and in every corner, like in a mirror, she saw herself! The house was now hers! Completely hers and it no longer remembered its previous life…
Being the woman of the house, and knowing that every detail there carried the stamp of her hand, from her breath, her heart became lighter. Oh, so much lighter than when she wasn’t there, and the house used to overtake her thoughts… She smoothed out everything here – a napkin on placed the table, a lamp straightened, she remained standing there, in the middle of the organized, spacious room, her hands hands on her chest like a victory over an enemy…
—
Outside, the sun shined goldenly and the few sparse houses were silent; shade from the small trees cast over and silenced every house. Like it would keep every secret for itself…
Mrs. Gorkin, a cheerful woman, in a white apron is outside on the balcony. In her hand she held her sewing. She carefully lay her sewing around herself; she took out from a small brown box a small silver pair of scissors with colorful string, and threaded the needle in the sun, and she sat embroidering curtains for the kitchen without a worry.
Every so often she lifted her small head from the box with the sewing, like a bird lifting its head from taking a drink and absorbing itself in the distant view. Meanwhile, victorious thoughts were shaping in her head:
“It would be good when her acquaintances would incidentally travel by and see her sitting here on the balcony.”
