1084
PARTISAN REVIEW
scalded my eyes. And these specs," she tapped the case, "cost ten
dollars the frames and fifteen the glasses."
Never but at such times, by necessity, was my father mentioned. I
claimed to remember him; Simon denied that I did and Simon was
right. I liked to imagine it.
"He wore a uniform," I said. "Sure I remember. He was a
soldier."
"Like hell he was, you don't know anything about it."
"Maybe a sailor."
"Like hell. He drove a truck for Toll Brothers laundry on
Marshfield, that's what he did.
I
said he used to wear a uniform.
Monkey sees, monkey does; monkey hears, monkey says." Monkey
was the basis of much thought with us. On the sideboard, on the
Turkestan runner, eyes, ears and mouth covered, we had see-no-evil,
hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil, a lower trinity of the house. The ad–
vantage of lesser gods is that you can take their name any way you
like. "Silence in the court-house, monkey wants to speak, speak
monkey, speak." "The monkey and the bamboo were playing in the
grass.... " Still the monkeys could be potent and awesome, besides,
and deep social critics when the old woman, like a great Lama-for
she
is
Eastern to me, in the end, as old Tolstoi
is
for many people a god
of the pagan Russia, sitting in a painted chair under the summer
apple-tree-would point to the squatting brown three whose mouths
and nostrils were drawn in sharp blood red, and, with profound wit,
her unkindness finally touching greatness, say, "Nobody asks you to
love the whole world, only to be
ehrlich.
Don't have a loud mouth.
The more you love people, the more they'll mix you up. A child
loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love. And that's respect,
the middle monkey." It never occurred to us that she sinned mis–
chievously herself against that convulsed speak-no-evil who hugged
his
lips with his hands; no criticism of her came near us at any time,
much less when the resonance of a great principle filled the whole
kitchen.
She used to read us lessons off poor Georgie's head. He used to
kiss the dog-this bickering handmaiden of the old lady. At one time.
Now a dozy, long-sighing crank and proper object of respect for her
years of right-minded but not exactly lovable busyness. But Georgie
loved her. And Grandma, whom he would kiss on the sleeve, on the
