462
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Les wrestle, Amsterdam. See how strong."
"Why don't you get some sleep, Hank. You need it." Herb reached
out a hand toward him, but did not quite touch him. "You're strong,
too.
Everybody's
strong." He turned to me with a look of hostility I
could not fathom. "Jesus, Mr. Amsterdam, he's drunk as hell!"
"Goodboy, Herb. We're pals."
"Sure thing, Hank," Herb answered without conviction.
"Les wrestle, Amsterdam." He grabbed my right arm with one
hand, and crooking the other elbow over and around my neck, tried
to force me to the ground. Even drunk, he was powerful, and I could
feel myself giving at the knees. Without really thinking, I put a shoulder
into his belly and flipped him backwards and to the right, so that he
landed sitting down. I have learned a little judo from the boys at the
school; and though I am not very apt, with someone as slowed-up in
his reactions as Hank, it is easy to look good.
He charged back again, not knowing what had happened, and this
time I tossed him to the left, while he yelled incredulously, "Look, Judy,
he's throwing me. He's beating me! He's beating me!"
It was a cry of pure joy, and suddenly I could stand it no longer.
Our whole cloying, ambiguous relationship disgusted me; and it seemed
to me that I must
really
fight him, show him I could hurt him even on
his own terms-anti-Semite and quasi-cuckold and slobbering lush! I
moved in fast now, grabbing him before he could brace himself, and
heaved him over my shoulder so that he flew through the air halfway
across the room, landing with the limp thud of a drunk. "Wouldn't
believe it," he muttered, his head against the edge of the couch,
"wouldn't-" and he was asleep.
I looked around proudly as if for applause, feeling myself the cham–
pion of my woman, the defender of the Jews! But Judith in the archway
was intent on burping the baby, mumbling as she gently thumped its
back, "He won't remember a thing in the morning!" She apparently
found real comfort
in
the thought, an assurance that in some sense
nothing had happened at all. And when I turned to Herb, I found
him watching me, not only with contempt as before, but with fear–
as if, after all, I were not really a Jew.
"I'm going," he said, deliberately avoiding my eyes. "I'll wait for
you outside, Mr. Amsterdam, with my jaloppy."
I knew that he would not be there, that I would never see him
again, and I wanted to explain to him the nobility of my motives be–
fore he escaped; but all I could manage to say was, "outside," as I
waved him a vague farewell. Somewhere, somehow, I knew, I had done
