The first time Saul hurts someone, his daughter is two years old. Saul and Joey spend the evening in the back room of a bar near the Red Hook Houses. Joey has not told Saul why they are going, but has given him a length of iron pipe to lay against his thigh. I don’t want to hurt anyone, Saul says. I never want to hurt anyone, Joey replies. The room is thick with cigar smoke and the smell of pomade, and a woman with cherries for lips brings Saul glass after glass of whiskey, which he tries to drink slowly or not at all but which, more often than not, he finds himself bringing to his lips to satisfy his restless need to do something, his worry that everyone in the room can hear the pounding of his heart, the clanking of the pipe he has concealed against his bones.
Saul doesn’t know who started the fight, only that suddenly Joey has drawn himself up to his full height in unmistakable rage, and that one of the other men in the room has drawn a knife. It blinks and shines in the lamplight. You don’t have to do this, says Joey. As a warning. You’ve gotta be reasonable, then, says the other man. And then Joey says, Saul. And the situation comes into unmistakable focus for Saul, who understands he is to draw the iron pipe from his pant leg and tap it lightly on the ground. Almost casually. We can’t afford this, says the man. Whiskey swirls in Saul’s brain and he is consumed by the echo of the pipe against the floor, by the oceanic sway of his own eyes and body as he struggles to stay on his feet. It’s tough out there, agrees Joey. It’s why when we don’t get paid on time, we can’t take any shit. Joey looks at Saul. The man across from them takes the opportunity to lunge forward, knife outstretched, eyes rolling in fear.
And easily, simply, as though he had always known how the evening would go, Saul raises the iron pipe up above his head and brings it crashing down against the other man’s skull.
The man is knocked back against the wall, blood streaming from his nose and a gash across his cheek.
You brought this on yourself, says Joey. And then, let’s go.
And Saul walks out behind Joey into the night, and eases into the waiting car, and watches the old gas streetlights flicker as they drive back to Joey’s, and then to Paolo and Antonia’s, where Julia and Robbie are sleeping with slack faces and long, heavy limbs, and where Sofia has gone to spend the evening. He says good night to Antonia, picks up Julia and kisses her head. She snuggles back into sleep against his chest. He carries her home, three blocks that feel longer in the icy fall air. Sofia shuts the door to Julia’s bedroom after Saul eases her under her blankets, and they retreat into their own room.
As Saul feels himself drift away from the events of his evening, Sofia asks, “What were you doing tonight?”
Saul turns toward her. Sofia has propped herself up on one elbow and her hair hangs down over her chest toward her pillow. Her face glows in the lamplight. “Working,” he says. He is confused; Sofia doesn’t usually ask questions about his work, and he doesn’t know how to answer. He doesn’t want to answer.
Sofia is impatient. “I know,” she says. “But working, where? Who with? What were you doing?”
“Just some—some routine stuff,” says Saul. “With Joey.” And now his heart is racing, because it’s as if Sofia knows that tonight was different, that tonight Saul crossed a line he cannot get back over. This is more an intellectual realization than anything else, because there is a blank space in his body where there should be regret, fear, empathy. Saul wants to go to sleep. He wants to dive into the place where Sofia’s hair falls down over her collarbones, to fill his hands with her breasts and his chest with her breath until there is nothing left of himself.
“Fine,” says Sofia. But she turns off the light and turns away from him, and Saul is left to stare at the ceiling.
It would be easy to tell himself that he was torn up over his actions: that the man he attacked, huddled on the floor, holding his face with shaking fingers, would haunt Saul’s dreams. Or that to do his job, Saul has developed a finely tuned emotional system for separating his home life and his work life. Or that he was damaged in some fundamental way, and his violence was a reflection of the trauma of Germany, the helplessness of losing his religion and his culture.
It is harder to know what Saul is learning: that maybe violence just isn’t as hard as it’s made out to be. Maybe there is something human about it. Maybe it is easy.
* * *
—
Sofia hears Saul’s breath stretch out as he slips into sleep. But Sofia lies awake, her eyes dry and the sheets heating up beneath her as she tosses and turns. She is not sure why she asked Saul about his work; she knows Family work is never discussed; she has always known this. She knows that her job as the wife of a Family man should be to provide a safe space, an alternative to the vague but perilous danger of leaving a man to his own thoughts. This is not the way, she tells herself, to get what you want.