16
Feld sat down to recover his breath. The assistant was resting on his bed with his heavy back to the wall. His shirt and trousers were clean, and his stubby fingers, away from the shoemaker’s bench, were strangely pallid. His face was thin and pale, as if he had been shut in this room since the day he had bolted from the store.
“So when you will come back to work?” Feld asked him.
To his surprise, Sobel burst out, “Never.”
Jumping up, he strode over to the window that looked out upon the miserable street. “Why should I come back?” he cried.
“I will raise your wages.”
“Who cares for your wages!”
The shoemaker, knowing he didn’t care, was at a loss what else to say.
“What do you want from me, Sobel?”
“Nothing.”
“I always treated you like you was my son.”
17
Sobel vehemently denied it. “So why you look for strange boys in the street they should go out with Miriam? Why you don’t think of me?”
The shoemaker’s hands and feet turned freezing cold. His voice became so hoarse he couldn’t speak. At last he cleared his throat and croaked, “So what has my daughter got to do with a shoemaker thirty-five years old who works for me?”
“Why do you think I worked so long for you?” Sobel cried out. “For the stingy wages I sacrificed five years of my life so you could have to eat and drink and where to sleep?”
“Then for what?” shouted the shoemaker.
“For Miriam,” he blurted—“for her.”
The shoemaker, after a time, managed to say, “I pay wages in cash, Sobel,” and lapsed into silence. Though he was seething with excitement, his mind was coldly clear, and he had to admit to himself he had sensed all along that Sobel felt this way. He had never so much as thought it consciously, but he had felt it and was afraid.
18
“Miriam knows?” he muttered hoarsely.
“She knows.”
“You told her?”
“No.”
“Then how does she know?”
“How does she know?” Sobel said. “Because she knows. She knows who I am and what is in my heart.”
Feld had a sudden insight. In some devious way, with his books and commentary, Sobel had given Miriam to understand that he loved her. The shoemaker felt a terrible anger at him for his deceit.
“Sobel, you are crazy,” he said bitterly. “She will never marry a man so old and ugly like you.”
Sobel turned black with rage. He cursed the shoemaker, but then, though he trembled to hold it in, his eyes filled with tears and he broke into deep sobs. With his back to Feld, he stood at the window, fists clenched, and his shoulders shook with his choked sobbing.
19
Watching him, the shoemaker’s anger diminished. His teeth were on edge with pity for the man, and his eyes grew moist. How strange and sad that a refugee, a grown man, bald and old with his miseries, who had by the skin of his teeth escaped Hitler’s
incinerators, should fall in love, when he had got to America, with a girl less than half his age. Day after day, for five years he had sat at his bench, cutting and hammering away, waiting for the girl to become a woman, unable to ease his heart with speech, knowing no protest but desperation.
“Ugly I didn’t mean,” he said half aloud.
Then he realized that what he had called ugly was not Sobel but Miriam’s life if she married him. He felt for his daughter a strange and gripping sorrow, as if she were already Sobel’s bride, the wife, after all, of a shoemaker, and had in her life no more than her mother had had. And all his dreams for her—why he had slaved and destroyed his heart with anxiety and labor—all these dreams of a better life were dead.
20
The room was quiet. Sobel was standing by the window reading, and it was curious that when he read, he looked young.
“She is only nineteen,” Feld said brokenly. “This is too young yet to get married. Don’t ask her for two years more, till she is twenty-one; then you can talk to her.”
Sobel didn’t answer. Feld rose and left. He went slowly down the stairs, but once outside, though it was an icy night and the crisp falling snow whitened the street, he walked with a stronger stride.
But the next morning, when the shoemaker arrived, heavy-hearted, to open the store, he saw he needn’t have come, for his assistant was already seated at the last, pounding leather for his love.
Making Meanings
The First Seven Years
First Thoughts
1. Do you think Sobel will eventually marry Miriam? Why, or why not? Would Sobel identify with the speaker of the poem on page 128 of your textbook? Why, or why not?
Shaping Interpretations
2. At what point in the story did you realize that Sobel is in love with Miriam? What clues in the text do you think foreshadow Sobel’s secret?
3. How would you describe Miriam’s character, in view of what she says and does? Did any of Miriam’s actions surprise you? Talk about your response to Miriam.
4. Use a circle diagram like the one at the right to compare and contrast the characters of Max and Sobel. List each man’s individual qualities. In the shaded area, list the qualities they share. Which man do you think would make Miriam happier, and why? (On the other hand, do you feel that neither is a good match for Miriam?)
5. This story is about parental as well as romantic love. What do you think of the way Feld shows his love for his daughter? Despite the differences in culture, do you think Feld resembles the mother in “Two Kinds”? Why?
6. Suppose you were directing this story for a TV production. Whom would you focus on as the protagonist, and why? Who would be his or her antagonist ? How would the production differ depending on who the protagonist was?
Connecting with the Text
7. How do you feel about arranged dates and about arranged marriages such as the one Feld wanted for his daughter? (Did this story affect the views you expressed in your Quickwrite notes?)
Extending the Text
8. This story is set in a specific culture that may be very different from yours. What can you learn about that culture from the text? Could these events take place in any other culture, including your own? Talk about your thoughts on this issue of culture and its influence on our lives.
9. Read the Biblical account of Jacob and Rachel (see Connections). What parallels and what important differences do you see between the Biblical story and Malamud’s? Do you think the kind of love shown by Jacob and Sobel is believable? Why, or why not?