PROLOGUE



(I pray thee ask no questions this is that Golden Land)

THE small white steamer, Peter Stuyvesant., that delivered the
immigrants from the stench and throb of the steerage to the stench and the
throb of New York tenements, rolled slightly on the water beside the stone
quay in the lee of the weathered barracks and new brick buildings of Ellis
Island. Her skipper was waiting for the last of the officials, laborers and
guards to embark upon her before he cast off and started for Manhattan.
Since this was Saturday afternoon and this the last trip she would make for
the week-end, those left behind might have to stay over till Monday. Her
whistle bellowed its hoarse warning. A few figures in overalls sauntered
from the high doors of the immigration quarters and down the grey
pavement that led to the dock.

It was May of the year 1907, the year that was destined to bring the
greatest number of immigrants to the shores of the United States. All that
day, as on all the days since spring began, her decks had been thronged by
hundreds upon hundreds of foreigners, natives from almost every land in
the world, the jowled close-cropped Teuton, the full-bearded Russian, the
scraggly-whiskered Jew, and among them Slovack peasants with docile
faces, smooth-cheeked and swarthy Armenians, pimply Greeks, Danes with
wrinkled eyelids. All day her decks had been colorful, a matrix of the vivid
costumes of other lands, the speckled green-and-yellow aprons, the
flowered kerchief, embroidered homespun, the silver-braided sheepskin
vest, the gaudy scarfs, yellow boots, fur caps, caftans, dull gabardines. All
day the guttural, the high-pitched voices, the astonished cries, the gasps of
wonder, reiterations of gladness had risen from her decks in a motley billow
of sound. But now her decks were empty, quiet, spreading out under the
sunlight almost as if the warm boards were relaxing from the strain and the
pressure of the myriads of feet. All those steerage passengers of the ships
that had docked that day who were permitted to enter had already entered--
except two, a woman and a young child she carried in her arms. They had
just come aboard escorted by a man.

About the appearance of these late corners there was very little that was
unusual. The man had evidently spent some time in America and was now
bringing his wife and child over from the other side. It might have been
thought that he had spent most of his time in lower New York, for he paid
only the scantest attention to the Statue of Liberty or to the city rising from
the water or to the bridges spanning the East River--or perhaps he was
merely too agitated to waste much time on these wonders. His clothes were
the ordinary clothes the ordinary New Yorker wore in that period--sober
and dull. A black derby accentuated the sharpness and sedentary pallor of
his face; a jacket, loose on his tall spare frame, buttoned up in a V close to
the throat; and above the V a tightly-knotted black tie was mounted in the
groove of a high starched collar. As for his wife, one guessed that she was a
European more by the timid wondering look in her eyes as she gazed from
her husband to the harbor, than by her clothes. For her clothes were
American--a black skirt, a white shirt-waist and a black jacket. Obviously
her husband had either taken the precaution of sending them to her while
she was still in Europe or had brought them with him to Ellis Island where
she had slipped them on before she left.

Only the small child in her arms wore a distinctly foreign costume, an
impression one got chiefly from the odd, outlandish, blue straw hat on his
head with its polka-dot ribbons of the same color dangling over each
shoulder.

Except for this hat, had the three newcorners been in a crowd, no one
probably, could have singled out the woman and child as newly arrived
immigrants. They carried no sheets tied up in huge bundles, no bulky
wicker baskets, no prized feather beds, no boxes of delicacies, sausages,
virgin-olive oils, rare cheeses; the large black satchel beside them was their
only luggage. But despite this, despite their even less than commonplace
appearance, the two overalled men, sprawled out and smoking cigarettes in
the stern, eyed them curiously. And the old peddler woman, sitting with
basket of oranges on knee, continually squinted her weak eyes in their
direction.

The truth was there was something quite untypical about their behavior.
The old peddler woman on the bench and the overalled men in the stern had
seen enough husbands meeting their wives and children after a long absence
to know how such people ought to behave. The most volatile races, such as
the Italians, often danced for joy, whirled each other around, pirouetted in
an ecstasy: Swedes sometimes just looked at each other, breathing through
open mouths like a panting dog; Jews wept, jabbered, almost put each oth-
er's eyes out with the recklessness of their darting gestures; Poles roared
and gripped each other at arm's length as though they meant to tear a
handful of flesh; and after one pecking kiss, the English might be seen
gravitating toward, but never achieving an embrace. But these two stood
silent, apart; the man staring with aloof, offended eyes grimly down at the
water-- or if he turned his face toward his wife at all, it was only to glare
in harsh contempt at the blue straw hat worn by the child in her arms, and
then his hostile eyes would sweep about the deck to see if anyone else were
observing them. And his wife beside him regarding him uneasily, appealing-
ly. And the child against her breast looking from one to the other with
watchful, frightened eyes. Altogether it was a very curious meeting.
They had been standing in this strange and silent manner for several
minutes, when the woman, as if driven by the strain into action, tried to
smile, and touching her husband's arm said timidly, "And this is the Golden
Land." She spoke in Yiddish.

The man grunted, but made no answer.

She took a breath as if taking courage, and tremulously, "I'm sorry,
Albert, I was so stupid." She paused waiting for some flicker of unbending,
some word, which never came. "But you look so lean, Albert, so haggard.
And your mustache--you've shaved."

His brusque glance stabbed and withdrew. "Even so."

"You must have suffered in this land." She continued gentle despite his
rebuke. "You never wrote me. You're thin. Ach! Then here in the new land
is the same old poverty. You've gone without food. I can see it. You've
changed."

"Well that don't matter," he snapped, ignoring her sympathy. "It's no
excuse for your not recognizing me. Who else would call for you? Do you
know anyone else in this land?"

"No," placatingly. "But I was so frightened, Albert. Listen to me. I was
so bewildered, and that long waiting there in that vast room since morning.
Oh, that horrible waiting! I saw them all go, one after the other. The
shoemaker and his wife. The coppersmith and his children from Strij. All
those on the Kaiserin Viktoria. But I--I remained. To-morrow will be
Sunday. They told me no one could come to fetch me. What if they sent me
back? I was frantic!"

"Are you blaming me?" His voice was dangerous.

"No! No! Of course not Albert! I was just explaining." "Well then let
me explain," he said curtly. "I did what I could. I took the day off from
the shop. I called that cursed Hamburg-American Line four times. And each
time they told me you weren't on board."

"They didn't have any more third-class passage, so I had to take the
steerage--"

"Yes, now I know. That's all very well. That couldn't be helped. I came
here anyway. The last boat. And what do you do? You refused to recognize
me. You don't know me." He dropped his elbows down on the rail, averted
his angry face. "That's the greeting I get."

"I'm sorry, Albert," she stroked his arm humbly. "I'm sorry."

"And as if those blue-coated mongrels in there weren't mocking me
enough, you give them that brat's right age. Didn't I write you to say
seventeen months because it would save the half fare! Didn't you hear me
inside when I told them?"

"How could I, Albert?" she protested. "How could I? You were on the
other side of that--that cage."

"Well why didn't you say seventeen months anyway? Look!" he pointed
to several blue-coated officials who came hurrying out of a doorway out of
the immigration quarters. "There they are." An ominous pride dragged
at his voice. "If he's among them, that one who questioned me so much, I
could speak to him if he came up here." "Don't bother with him, Albert,"
she exclaimed uneasily. "Please, Albert! What have you against him? He
couldn't help it. It's his work."

"Is it?" His eyes followed with unswerving deliberation the blue-coats
as they neared the boat. "Well he didn't have to do it so well."
"And after all, I did lie to him, Albert," she said hurriedly trying to
distract him.

"The truth is you didn't," he snapped, turning his anger against her.
"You made your first lie plain by telling the truth afterward. And made a
laughing-stock of me!"

"I didn't know what to do." She picked despairingly at the wire grill
beneath the rail. "In Hamburg the doctor laughed at me when I said
seventeen months. He's so big. He was big when he was born." She smiled,
the worried look on her face vanishing momentarily as she stroked her son's
cheek. "Won't you speak to your father, David, beloved?"

The child merely ducked his head behind his mother. His father stared at
him, shifted his gaze and glared down at the officials, and then, as though
perplexity had crossed his mind he frowned absently. "How old did he say
he was?"

"The doctor? Over two years--and as I say he laughed."

"Well what did he enter?"

"Seventeen months--I told you."

"Then why didn't you tell them seventeen--" He broke off, shrugged
violently. "Baahl You need more strength in this land." He paused, eyed her
intently and then frowned suddenly. "Did you bring his birth certificate?"
"Why--" She seemed confused. "It may be in the trunk'--there on the ship.
I don't know. Perhaps I left it behind." Her hand wandered uncertainly to
her lips. "I don't know. Is it important? I never thought of it. But surely
father could send it. We need only write." "Hmm! Well, put him down." His
head jerked brusquely toward the child. "You don't need to carry him all the
way. He's big enough to stand on his own feet."

She hesitated, and then reluctantly set the child down on the deck.
Scared, unsteady, the little one edged over to the side opposite his father,
and hidden by his mother, clung to her skirt.

"Well, it's all over now." She attempted to be cheerful. "It's all behind
us now, isn't it, Albert? Whatever mistakes I made don't really matter any
more. Do they?"

"A fine taste of what lies before me!" He turned his back on her and
leaned morosely against the rail. "A fine taste!"

They were silent. On the dock below, the brown hawsers had been
slipped over the mooring posts, and the men on the lower deck now
dragged them dripping from the water. Bells clanged. The ship throbbed.
Startled by the hoarse bellow of her whistle, the gulls wheeling before her
prow rose with slight creaking cry from the green water, and as she churned
away from the stone quay skimmed across her path on indolent, scimitar
wing. Behind the ship the white wake that stretched to Ellis Island grew
longer, raveling wanly into melon-green. On one side curved the low drab
Jersey coast-line, the spars and masts on the waterfront fringing the sky; on
the other side was Brooklyn, flat, water-towered; the horns of the harbor.
And before them, rising on her high pedestal from the scaling swarmy
brilliance of sunlit water to the west, Liberty. The spinning disk of the late
afternoon sun slanted behind her, and to those on board who gazed, her
features were charred with shadow, her depths exhausted, her masses ironed
to one single plane. Against the luminous sky the rays of her halo were
spikes of darkness roweling the air; shadow flattened the torch she bore to a
black cross against flawless light--the blackened hilt of a broken sword.
Liberty. The child and his mother stared again at the massive figure in
wonder.

The ship curved around in a long arc toward Manhattan, her bow
sweeping past Brooklyn and the bridges whose cables and pillars
superimposed by distance, spanned the East River in diaphanous and rigid
waves. The western wind that raked the harbor into brilliant clods blew
fresh and clear--a salt tang in the lull of its veerings. It whipped the polka
dot ribbons on the child's hat straight out behind him. They caught his
father's eye.

"Where did you find that crown?"

Startled by his sudden question his wife looked down.

"That? That was Maria's parting gift. The old nurse. She bought it
herself and then sewed the ribbons on. You don't think it's pretty?"

"Pretty? Do you still ask?" His lean jaws hardly moved as he spoke.
"Can't you see that those idiots lying back there are watching us already?
They're mocking us! What will the others do on the train? He looks like a
clown in it. He's the cause of all this trouble anyway!"

The harsh voice, the wrathful glare, the hand flung toward the child
frightened him. Without knowing the cause, he knew that the stranger's
anger was directed at himself. He burst into tears and pressed closer to his
mother.

"Quiet!" the voice above him snapped.

Cowering, the child wept all the louder.

"Hush, darling!" His mother's protecting hands settled on his shoulders.

"Just when we're about to land!" her husband said furiously "He begins
this! This howling! And now we'll have it all the way home, I suppose!
Quiet! You hear?" "It's you who are frightening him, Albert!" she protested.

"Am I? Well, let him be quiet. And take that straw gear off his head."

"But Albert, it's cool here."

"Will you take that off when I--" A snarl choked whatever else he
would have uttered. While his wife looked on aghast, his long fingers
scooped the hat from the child's head. The next instant it was sailing over
the ship's side to the green waters below. The overalled men in the stern
grinned at each other. The old orange-peddler shook her head and clucked.
"Alberti" his wife caught her breath. "How could you?" "I could!" he
rapped out. "You should have left it behind!" His teeth clicked, and he
glared about the deck.

She. lifted the sobbing child to her breast, pressed him against her. With
a vacant stunned expression, her gaze wandered from the grim smouldering
face of her husband to the stern of the ship. In the silvery-green wake that
curved trumpet-wise through the water, the blue hat still bobbed and rolled,
ribbon stretched out on the waves. Tears sprang to her eyes. She brushed
them away quickly, shook her head as if shaking off the memory, and
looked toward the bow. Before her the grimy cupolas and towering square
walls of the city loomed up. Above the jagged roof tops, the white smoke,
whitened and suffused by the slanting sun, faded into the slots and wedges
of the sky. She pressed her brow against her child's, hushed him with
whispers. This was that vast incredible land, the land of freedom, of
immense opportunity, that Golden Land. Again she tried to smile.

"Albert," she said timidly, "Albert."

"Hm?"

"Gehen vir voinen du? In New York?"

"Nein. Bronzeville. Ich hud dir schoin geschriben."

She nodded uncertainly, sighed . . .

Screws threshing, backing water, the Peter Stuyvesant neared her dock
--drifting slowly and with canceled momentum as if reluctant.




　　　　　　　BOOK I


The Cellar


I


STANDING before the kitchen sink and regarding the bright brass
faucets that gleamed so far away, each with a bead of water at its nose,
slowly swelling, falling, David again became aware that this world had
been created without thought of him. He was thirsty, but the iron hip of the
sink rested on legs tall almost as his own body, and by no stretch of arm, no
leap, could he ever reach the distant tap. Where did the water come from
that lurked so secretly in the curve of the brass? Where did it go, gurgling in
the drain? What a strange world must be hidden behind the walls of a
house! But he was thirsty.

"Mama!" he called, his voice rising above the hiss of sweeping in the
frontroom. "Mama, I want a drink."

The unseen broom stopped to listen. "I'll be there in a moment," his
mother answered. A chair squealed on its castors; a window chuckled
down; his mother's approaching tread.

Standing in the doorway on the top step (two steps led up into the
frontroom) his mother smilingly surveyed him. She looked as tall as a
tower. The old grey dress she wore rose straight from strong bare ankle to
waist, curved round the deep bosom and over the wide shoulders, and set
her full throat in a frame of frayed lace. Her smooth, sloping face was
flushed now with her work, but faintly so, diffused, the color of a hand
beneath wax. She had mild, full lips, brown hair. A vague, fugitive darkness
blurred the hollow above her cheekbone, giving to her face and to her large
brown eyes, set in their white ovals, a reserved and almost mournful air.

"I want a drink, mama," he repeated.

"I know," she answered, coming down the stairs. "I heard you." And
casting a quick, sidelong glance at him, she went over to the sink and turned
the tap. The water spouted noisily down. She stood there a moment, smiling
obscurely, one finger parting the turbulent jet, waiting for the water to cool.
Then filling a glass, she handed it down to him.

"When am I going to be big enough?" he asked resentfully as he took
the glass in both hands.

"There will come a time," she answered, smiling. She rarely smiled
broadly; instead the thin furrow along her upper lip would deepen. "Have
little fear."

With eyes still fixed on his mother, he drank the water in breathless,
uneven gulps, then returned the glass to her, surprised to see its contents
scarcely diminished.

"Why can't I talk with my mouth in the water?"

"No one would hear you. Have you had your fill?"

He nodded, murmuring contentedly.

"And is that all?" she asked. Her voice held a faint challenge.

"Yes," he said hesitantly, meanwhile scanning her face for some clue.

"I thought so," she drew her head back in droll disappointment.

"What?"

"It is summer," she pointed to the window, "the weather grows warm.
Whom will you refresh with the icy lips the water lent you?"

"Oh!" he lifted his smiling face.

"You remember nothing," she reproached him, and with a throaty
chuckle, lifted him in her arms.

Sinking his fingers in her hair, David kissed her brow. The faint familiar
warmth and odor of her skin and hair.

"There!" she laughed, mizzling his cheek, "but you've waited too long;
the sweet chill has dulled. Lips for me," she reminded him, "must always be
cool as the water that wet them." She put him down.

"Sometime I'm going to eat some ice," he said waming-ly, "then you'll
like it."

She laughed. And then soberly, "Aren't you ever going down into the
street? The morning grows old."

"Aaa!"

"You'd better go. Just for a little while. I'm going to sweep here, you
know."

"I want my calendar first," he pouted, invoking his privilege against the
evil hour.

"Get it then. But you've got to go down afterwards." He dragged a chair
over beneath the calendar on the wall, clambered up, plucked off the
outworn leaf, and fingered the remaining ones to see how far off the next
red day was. Red days were Sundays, days his father was home. It always
gave David a little qualm of dread to watch them draw near.

"Now you have your leaf," his mother reminded him. "Come." She
stretched out her arms.

He held back. "Show me where my birthday is."

"Woe is me!" She exclaimed with an impatient chuckle; "I've shown it
to you every day for weeks now."

"Show me again."

She rumpled the pad, lifted a thin plaque of leaves. "July—" she mur-
mured, "July 12th . . . There!" She found it. "July 12th, 1911. You'll be
six then."

David regarded the strange figures gravely. "Lots of pages still," he
informed her.

"Yes."

"And a black day too."

"On the calendar," she laughed, "only on the calendar. Now do come
down!"

Grasping her arm, he jumped down from the chair. "I must hide it now."
He explained.

"So you must. I see I'll never finish my work today." Too absorbed in
his own affairs to pay much heed to hers, he went over to the pantry beneath
the cupboard, opened the door and drew out a shoe-box, his treasure chest.

"See how many I've got already?" he pointed proudly to the fat sheaf of
rumpled leaves inside the box.

"Wonderful!" She glanced at the box in perfunctory admiration. "You
peel off the year as one might a cabbage. Are you ready for your journey?"

"Yes." He put away the box without a trace of alacrity. "Where is your
sailor blouse?" she murmured looking about. "With the white strings in it?
What have I—?" She found it. "There is still a little wind."

David held up his arms for her to slip the blouse over his head.
"Now, my own," she said, kissing his reemerging face. "Go down and
play." She led him toward the door and opened it. "Not too far. And
remember if I don't call you, wait until the whistle blows."

He went out into the hallway. Behind him, like an eyelid shutting, the
soft closing of the door winked out the light. He assayed the stairs, lapsing
below him into darkness, and grasping one by one each slender upright to
the banister, went down. David never found himself alone on these stairs,
but he wished there were no carpet covering them. How could you hear the
sound of your own feet in the dark if a carpet muffled every step you took?
And if you couldn't hear the sound of your own feet and couldn't see
anything either, how could you be sure you were actually there and not
dreaming? A few steps from the bottom landing, he paused and stared
rigidly at the cellar door. It bulged with darkness. Would it hold? ... It held!
He jumped from the last steps and raced through the narrow hallway to the
light of the street. Flying through the doorway was like butting a wave. A
dazzling breaker of sunlight burst over his head, swamped him in reeling
blur of brilliance, and then receded ... A row of frame houses half in thin
shade, a pitted gutter, a yawning ashcan, flotsam on the shore, his street.
Blinking and almost shaken, he waited on the low stoop a moment, until
his whirling vision steadied. Then for the first time, he noticed that seated
on the curbstone near the house was a boy, whom an instant later, he
recognized. It was Yussie who had just moved into David's house and who
lived on the floor above. Yussie had a very red, fat face. His big sister
walked with a limp and wore strange iron slats on one of her legs. What
was he doing, David wondered, what did he have in his hands? Stepping
down from the stoop, he drew near, and totally disregarded, stood beside
him.

Yussie had stripped off the outer shell of an alarm-clock. Exposed, the
brassy, geometric vitals ticked when prodded, whirred and jingled
falteringly.

"It still c'n go," Yussie gravely enlightened him. David sat down.
Fascinated, he stared at the shining cogs that moved without moving their
hearts of light. "So wot makes id?" he asked. In the street David spoke
English. "Kentcha see? Id's coz id's a machine."

"Oh!"

"It wakes op mine fodder in de mawning.''

"It wakes op mine fodder too."

"It tells yuh w'en yuh sh'd eat an' w'en yuh have tuh go tuh sleep. It
shows yuh w'en, but I tooked it off."

"I god a calenduh opstai's." David informed him.

"Puh! Who ain' god a calenduh?"

"I save mine. I godda big book outa dem, wit num-buhs on id."

"Who can't do dat?"

"But mine fodder made it," David drove home the one unique point
about it all.

"Wot's your fodder?"

"Mine fodder is a printer."

"Mine fodder woiks inna joolery shop. In Brooklyn. Didja ever live in
Brooklyn?"

"No." David shook his head.

"We usetuh—right near my fodder's joolery shop on Rainey Avenyuh.
W'ea does your fodder woik?"

David tried to think. "I don't know." He finally confessed, hoping that
Yussie would not pursue the subject further.

He didn't. Instead "I don' like Brownsville," he said. "I like Brooklyn
bedder."

David felt relieved.

"We usetuh find cigahs innuh gudduh," Yussie continued. "An we
usetuh t'row 'em on de ladies, and we usetuh run. Who you like bedder,
ladies or gents?"

"Ladies."

"I like mine fodder bedder," said Yussie. "My mudder always holluhs
on me." He pried a nail between two wheels. A bright yellow gear suddenly
snapped off and fell to the gutter at his feet. He picked it up, blew the dust
off, and rose. "Yuh want?"

"Yea," David reached for it.

Yussie was about to drop it into his outstretched palm, but on second
thought, drew back. "No. Id's liddle like a penny. Maybe I c'n pud id inna
slod machine 'n' gid gum. Hea, yuh c'n take dis one." He fished a larger
gear out of his pocket, gave it to David. "Id's a quarter. Yuh wanna come?"
David hesitated. "I godduh waid hea till duh wissle blows."

"W'a wissle?"

"By de fectory. All togedder."

"So?"

"So den I c'n go opstai's."

"So w'y?"

"Cuz dey blow on twelve a'clock an' den dey blow on five a'clock. Den
I c'n go op."

Yussie eyed him curiously. "I'm gonna gid gum," he said, shrugging off
his perplexity. "In duh slod machine." And he ambled off in the direction of
the candy store on the corner.

Holding the little wheel in his hand, David wondered again why it was
that every boy on the street knew where his father worked except himself.
His father had so many jobs. No sooner did you learn where he was
working than he was working somewhere else. And why was he always
saying, "They look at me crookedly, with mockery in their eyes! How much
can a man endure? May the fire of God consume them!" A terrifying
picture rose in David's mind—the memory of how once at the supper table
his mother had dared to say that perhaps the men weren't really looking at
him crookedly, perhaps he was only imagining it. His father had snarled
then. And with one sudden sweep of his arm had sent food and dishes
crashing to the floor. And other pictures came in its train, pictures of the
door being kicked open and his father coming in looking pale and savage
and sitting down like old men sit down, one trembling hand behind him
groping for the chair. He wouldn't speak. His jaws, and even his joints,
seemed to have become fused together by a withering rage. David often
dreamed of his father's footsteps booming on the stairs, of the glistening
doorknob turning, and of himself clutching at knives he couldn't lift from
the table.

Brooding, engrossed in his thoughts, engrossed in the rhythmic, accurate
teeth of the yellow cog in his hand, the thin bright circles whirling rest-
lessly without motion, David was unaware that a little group of girls had
gathered in the gutter some distance away. But when they began to sing, he
started and looked up. Their faces were sober, their hands locked in one
another; circling slowly in a ring they chanted in a plaintive nasal chorus:

　　　　　"Waltuh, Waltuh, Wiuhlflowuh,
　　　　　Growin' up so high;
　　　　　So we are all young ladies,
　　　　　An' we are ready to die."

Again and again, they repeated their burden. Their words obscure at
first, emerged at last, gathered meaning. The song troubled David strangely.
Walter Wildflower was a little boy. David knew him. He lived in Europe,
far away, where David's mother said he was born. He had seen him standing
on a hill, far away. Filled with a warm, nostalgic mournfulness, he shut his
eyes. Fragments of forgotten rivers floated under the lids, dusty roads,
fathomless curve of trees, a branch in a window under flawless light A
world somewhere, somewhere else.

　　　　　"Waltuh, Waltuh, Wiuhlflowuh,
　　　　　Growin' up so high,"

His body relaxed, yielding to the rhythm of the song and to the golden
June sunlight. He seemed to rise and fall on waves somewhere without him.
Within him a voice spoke with no words but with the shift of slow flame.

　　　　　"So we are all young ladies,
　　　　　An' we are ready to die."

From the limp, uncurling fingers, the cog rolled to the ground, rang like
a coin, fell over on its side. The sudden sound moored him again, fixed him
to the quiet, suburban street, the curbstone. The inarticulate flame that
had pulsed within him, wavered and went out He sighed, bent over and picked
up the wheel.

When would the whistle blow he wondered. It took long to-day....



II



AS FAR back as he could remember, this was the first time that he had
ever gone anywhere alone with his father, and already he felt desolated,
stirred with dismal forebodings, longing desperately for his mother. His
father was so silent and so remote that he felt as though he were alone even
at his side. What if his father should abandon him, leave him in some lonely
street. The thought sent shudders of horror through his body. No! No! He
couldn't do that!

At last they reached the trolley lines.- The sight of people cheered him
again, dispelling his fear for a while. They boarded a car, rode what seemed
to him a long time and then got off in a crowded street under an elevated.
Nervously gripping David's arm, his father guided him across the street.
They stopped before the stretched iron wicket of a closed theatre. Colored
billboards on either side of them, the odor of stale perfume behind. People
hurrying, trains roaring. David gazed about him frightened. To the right of
the theatre, in the window of an ice cream parlor, gaudy, colored popcorn
danced and drifted, blown by a fan. He looked up apprehensively at his
father. He was pale, grim. The fine veins in his nose stood out like a pink
cobweb.

"Do you see that door?" He shook him into attention. "In the grey
house. See? That man just came out of there."

"Yes, Papa."

"Now you go in there and go up the stairs and you'll see another door.
Go right in. And to the first man you see inside, say this: I'm Albert
Schearl's son. He wants you to give me the clothes in his locker and the
money that's coming to him. Do you understand? When they've given it to
you bring it down here. I'll be waiting for you. Now what will you say?" he
demanded abruptly.

David began to repeat his instructions in Yiddish.

"Say it in English, you fool!"

He rendered them in English. And when he had satisfied his father that
he knew them, he was sent in.

"And don't tell them I'm out here," he was warned as he left.

"Remember you came alone!"

Full of misgivings, unnerved at the ordeal of facing strangers alone,
strangers of whom his own father seemed apprehensive, he entered the
hallway, climbed the stairs. One flight up, he pushed open the door and
entered a small room, an office. From somewhere back of this office,
machinery clanked and rattled. A bald-headed man smoking a cigar looked
up as he came in.

"Well, my boy," he asked smiling, "what do you want?" For a moment
all of his instructions flew out of his head. "My--my fodder sent me hea."
He faltered.

"Your father? Who's he?"

"I--I'm Albert Schearl's son," he blurted out. "He sent me I shuh ged
his clo's f om de locker an' his money you owing him."

"Oh, you're Albert Schearl‘s son," said the man, his expression
changing. "And he wants his money, eh?" He nodded with the short
vibrating motion of a bell. "You've got some father, my boy. You can tell
him that for me. I didn't get a chance. He's crazy. Anybody who-- What
does he do at home?"

David shook his head guiltily, "Nuttin."

"No?" he chuckled. "Nothin', hey? Well--" he broke off and went over
to a small arched window in the rear. "Joe!" he called. "Oh Joe! Come here
a minute, will you?" In a few seconds a grey-haired man in overalls came
in. "Call me, Mr. Lobe?"

"Yea, will you get Schearl's things out of his locker and wrap 'em up for
me. His kid's here."

The other man's face broke into a wide, brown-toothed grin. "Is zat his
kid?" As if to keep from laughing his tongue worried the quid of tobacco in
his cheek.

"Yea."

"He don' look crazy." He burst into a laugh.

"No." Mr. Lobe subdued him with a wave of the hand. "He's a nice kid."

"Your pop man near brained me wid a hammer," said the man addressing
David. "Don' know wot happened, nobody said nuttin." He grinned. "Never
saw such a guy, Mr. Lobe. Holy Jesus, he looked like he wuz boinin' up.
Didja see de rail he twisted wid his hands? Maybe I oughta to give it to 'im
fer a souvenir?"

Mr. Lobe grinned. "Let the kid alone," he said quietly. "Get his stuff."

"O.K." Still chuckling, the grey-haired man went out. "Sit down, my
boy," said Mr. Lobe, pointing to a seat. "We'll have your father's things
here in a few minutes." David sat down. In a few minutes, a girl, bearing a
paper in her hand, came into the office.

"Say, Marge," said Mr. Lobe, "find out what Schearl gets, will you."

"Yes, Mr. Lobe." She regarded David, "What's that, his boy?"

"Mmm."

"Looks like him, don't he?"

"Maybe."

"I'd have him arrested," said the girl opening up a large-ledger.

"What good would that do?"

"I don't know, it might put some sense into his head." Mr. Lobe
shrugged. "I'm only too glad he didn't kill anybody."

"He ought to be in a padded cell," said the girl scribbling something on
a paper.

Mr. Lobe made no response.

"He gets six sixty-two." She put down her pencil. "Shall I get it?"

"Mmm."

The girl went over to a large black safe in a corner, drew out a box, and
when she had counted out some money, put it into a small envelope and
gave it to Mr. Lobe.

"Come here," he said to David. "What's your name?" "David."

"David and Goliath," he smiled. "Well, David, have you got a good
deep pocket? Let's see." He picked up the tails of David's jacket. "There,
that's the one I want." And fingering the small watch-pocket at the waist.
"We'll put it in there." He folded the envelope and wedged it in. "Now
don't take it out. Don't tell anybody you've got it till you get home,
understand? The idea, sending a kid his age on an errand like this."
David, staring ahead of him, under Mr. Lobe's arm, was aware of two
faces, peering in at the little window in the back. The eyes of both were
fastened on him, regarding him with a curious and amused scrutiny of men
beholding for the first time some astonishing freak. They both grinned
when the girl, happening to turn in their direction, saw them; one of the
men winked and cranked his temple with his hand. As Mr. Lobe turned,
both disappeared. A moment later, the grey-haired man returned with a
paper-wrapped bundle.

"Here's all I c'n find, Mr. Lobe. His towel, and his shoit an' a jacket."

"All right, Joe," Mr. Lobe took the package from him and turned to
David. "Here you are, my boy. Put it under your arm and don't lose it."
He tucked it under David's arm. "Not heavy, is it? No? That's good." He
opened the door to let David pass. "Good bye." A dry smile whisked over
his features. "Pretty tough for you." Grasping the bundle firmly under his
arm, David went slowly down the stairs. So that was how his father quit a
place! He held a hammer in hand, he would have killed somebody. David
could almost see him, the hammer raised over his head, his face contorted
in terrific wrath, the rest cringing away. He shuddered at the image in his
mind, stopped motionless on the stair, terrified at having to confront the
reality. But he must go down; he must meet him; it would be worse for him
if he remained on the stair any longer. He didn't want to go, but he had to.
If only the stairs were twice as high.

He hurried down, came out into the street. His father, his back pressed
close to the iron wicket, was waiting for him, and when he saw him come
out, motioned to him to hurry and began walking away. David ran after
him, caught up to him finally, and his father, without slackening his pace,
relieved him of the bundle.

"They took long enough," he said, casting a malevolent glance over his
shoulder. It was evident from his face that he had worked himself into a
rage during the interval that David had left him. "They gave you the
money?" "Yes, Papa."

"How much?"

"Six--six dollars, the girl--"

"Did they say anything to you?" His teeth clenched grimly, "About
me?"

"No, Papa," he answered hurriedly. "Nothing, Papa. They just gave me
the--the money and I went down."

"Where is it?"

"Over here," he pointed to the pocket.

"Well, give it to me!"

With difficulty, David uprooted the envelope from his pocket. His father
snatched it from him, counted the money.

"And so they said nothing, eh?" He seemed to demand a final confirmation.
"None of the men spoke to you, did they? Only that baldheaded pig with the
glasses?" He was watching him narrowly.

"No, Papa. Only that man. He just gave me the money." He knew that
while his father's eyes rested on him he must look frank, he must look
wide-eyed, simple.

"Very well!" His lips stretched for a brief instant in fleeting satisfaction.
"Good!"

They stopped at the corner and waited for the trolley...

David never said anything to anyone of what he had discovered, not
even to his mother--it was all too terrifying, too unreal to share with
someone else. He brooded about it till it entered his sleep, till he no longer
could tell where his father was flesh and where dream. Who would believe
him if he said, I saw my father lift a hammer; he was standing on a high
roof of darkness, and below him were faces uplifted, so many, they
stretched like white cobbles to the end of the world; who would believe
him? He dared not.



III



THE table had been set with the best dishes. There was a chicken
roasting in the oven. His mother was pouring the last of the Passover's
lustrous red wine from the wicker-covered bottle into the fat flagon. She
had been quiet till now, but as she set the bottle down in the center of the
table, she turned to David who was watching her. "I feel something I don't
know what," she said. "Troubled." She looked at the floor a moment,
gazing mournfully at nothing; then turned up her palm as if asking herself,
"why," and sighing let her hands fall again, as if unanswered. "Perhaps it is
because I think my work is fated to be lost."

David wondered a moment why she had said that, and then he remembered.
That man was coming, that man whose name had been on his father's lips
for the last week--ever since he had gotten his new job. That man was a
foreman. His father said that they came from the same region in far-off
Austria. How strange it was that they should come from far away and find
each other in the same shop, and find each other living in the same
neighborhood in Brownsville. His father had said that he had found a true
friend now, but his mother had sighed. And now she sighed again and said
that her work was fated to be lost. David hoped that she would be wrong.
He wanted to be like the other boys in the street. He wanted to be able to
say where his father worked.

Soon he heard his father's voice on the stairs. His mother rose, looked
about her hastily to see whether all was prepared and then went to the door
and opened it. The two men came in, his father first and the other man after
him.

"Well, here we are," said his father with nervous heartiness. "This is my
wife. This is Joe Luter, my countryman. And that over there," he pointed to
David, "is what will pray for me after my death. Make yourself at home."

"A fine home you have here," said the other smiling at David's mother.
"Very, very fine," he beamed.

"It's livable," answered David's mother.

"A fine boy too." He eyed David approvingly.

"Well!" said his father abruptly, "Let's have some dinner soon, eh?"

While his father was urging Luter to drink some wine, David examined
the newcorner. In height he was not as tall as his father, but was much
broader, fleshier, and unlike his father had a fair paunch. His face
was somehow difficult to get accustomed to. It was not because it was
particularly ugly or because it was scarred, but because one felt one's own
features trying to imitate it while one looked at it. His mouth so very short
and the bow of his lips so very thick and arched that David actually felt
himself waiting for it to relax. And the way his nostrils swelled up and out
almost fatigued one and one hoped the deep dimples in his cheek would
soon fill out. His speech was very slow and level, his whole attitude tolerant
and attentive, and because of this and because of the permanent wreathing
of his features, he gave one the impression of great affability and good
nature. In fact, as it soon turned out, he was not only affable, but very
appreciative and very polite and commended in very warm tones the wine
and the cake that was served with it, the neatness of the house as compared
to his landlady's and finally congratulated David's father on having so
excellent a wife.

When supper was served, he refused to begin eating until David's
mother had sat down--which embarrassed her since she always served the
others first--and then during the meal was very considerate of everyone,
passing meat and bread and salt before it was asked for. When he spoke, he
included everyone in the conversation, sometimes by asking questions,
sometimes by fixing his eyes upon one. All of which disconcerted David
not a little. Accustomed as he was to almost silent meals, to being either
ignored or taken for granted, he resented this forcing of self-awareness
upon him, this intruding of questions like a false weave into the fabric and
pattern of his thought. But chiefly he found himself resenting Mr. Luter's
eyes. They seemed to be independent of his speech, far outstripping it in
fact; for instead of glancing at one, they fixed one and then held on until the
voice .caught up. It became a kind of uneasy game with David, a kind of
secret tag, to beat Luter's gaze before it caught him, to look down at the
tablecloth or at his mother the very moment he felt these eyes veering
toward him.

Conversation touched on many subjects, drifting from the problems of
the printing trade and the possibilities of a union among the printers to
the problems and possibilities (and blessings, said Luter with a smile) of
marriage. And then from this land to the old land and back again to this.
And whether David's mother kept a kosher house--at which she smiled--
and whether David's father still had time to don phylacteries in the morning
and what synagogue he attended--at which his father snorted, amused.
Most of what they said interested David only vaguely. What did fascinate
him, however, was the curious effect that Luter had on his father. For once
that brusque, cold manner of his had thawed a little. A faint though guarded
deference mitigated somewhat the irrevocable quality with which his voice
always bound his words. He would ask at the end of a statement he had just
made, "Don't you think so?" Sometimes he would begin by saying, "It
seems to me." It was strange. It disturbed David. He didn't know whether to
be grateful to Luter for softening the harsh, inflexible edge of his father's
temperament, or to be uneasy. Somehow it was a little unreal to see his
father expand this way, uncoil warily like a tense spring slowly released.
And urged on by only a sympathetic look from Luter, to hear him speak of
his youth, he, who was so taciturn and thin-lipped, whom David never
could think of as having a youth, speaking of his youth, of the black and
white bulls he had tended for his father (and try to hide a frown at the word,
father, he, who never hid displeasure), how they had fed them mash from
his father's yeast mill, how he had won a prize with them from the hand of
Franz Josef, the King. Why did Luter need to look that way to make his
father speak? Why did Luter only need to say, "I don't like the earth. It's for
peasants," to make his father laugh, to make his father answer, "I think I
do. I think when you come out of a house and step on the bare earth among
the fields you're the same man you were when you were inside the house.
But when you step out on pavements, you're someone else. You can feel
your face change. Hasn't that happened to you?" And all that Luter needed
to say was, "Yes. You're right, Albert," and his father would take a deep
breath of satisfaction. It was strange. Why had no one else ever succeeded
in doing that? Why not his mother? Why not himself? No one except Luter.
His questions went unanswered. He only knew that when supper was
over he wanted very much to like Luter. He wanted to like any man who
praised his mother and guided his father into untrodden paths of amiability.
He wanted to like him, but he couldn't. But that would pass, he assured
himself. As soon as Luter came again he would like him. Yes, the very next
time. He was sure of it. He wanted to. As soon as he got used to his eyes.
Yes.

A little while after dinner, Luter got up to go. His father protested that
he had just come, that he ought to stay at least another hour.

"I also have to work in the morning," Luter reminded him. "Otherwise I
would stay. It's heaven compared to my landlady's." And then he turned to
David's mother, and in his slow way, smiling, extended his hand. "I want to
thank you a thousand times, Mrs. Schearl, I haven't had so good a dinner or
so much to eat since my last uncle was married."

She reddened as she shook hands with him and laughed. "You've praised
everything but the water you drank."

"Yes." He laughed also. "And the salt. But I was afraid you wouldn't
believe me if I said their flavor surpassed all others."

And after exchanging "Good-nights" and patting David's head (which
David wasn't quite reconciled to) he left.

"Ha!" his father exclaimed exultantly after he had gone. "I told you this
cursed wandering from job to job would end. I'm working for Dolman's
Press to stay. Now time may bring something--who knows. There are two
other foremen there. I'm as good a pressman as any of them. I know more
about that iron juggler than they do. Who knows? Who knows? A little
money. In time I might even suggest to him that we try-- Well! In time! In
time!"

"He looks like a very decent man," said his mother.

"Wait till you really know him!"

And from Luter's departure to his bedtime, David never remembered
spending so serene an hour in his father's presence. . . .

"NOT a single one?" Luter was asking with some surprise. "Not in the
old land either?"

The old land. David's thoughts turned outward. Anything about the old
land was always worth listening to.

"Not one," his mother answered. "Nothing ever came to my hamlet
except the snow and the rain. Not that I minded. Except once--yes. A man
with a gramophone --the kind you listened to with ear pieces. It cost a
penny to listen to it, and it wasn't even worth that. I never heard anything
labor so and squawk. But the peasants were awed. They swore there was a
devil in the box." Luter laughed. "And that's all you had seen before you
came here to this turmoil?"

"I've seen little enough of it! I know that I myself live on one hundred
and twenty-six Boddeh Stritt--"

"Bahday Street!" Her husband corrected her. "I've told you scores of
times."

"Boddeh Stritt," she resumed apologetically. He shrugged. "It's such a
strange name--bath street in German. But here I am. I know there is a
church on a certain street to my left, the vegetable market is to my right,
behind me are the railroad tracks and the broken rocks, and before me, a
few blocks away is a certain store window that has a kind of white-wash on
it--and faces in the white-wash, the kind children draw. Within this pale is
my America, and if I ventured further I should be lost. In fact," she laughed,
"were they even to wash that window, I might never find my way home
again."

His father made an impatient gesture. "Speaking of Yiddish plays," he
said, "I did see one. It was when I stayed with my father in Lemberg, the
days of the great fair. They called it the Revenge of Samson. I can see him
yet, blind, but shaggy again, waiting his time against the pagans. It moved
me greatly."

"For my part," said Luter, "I go to the theatre to laugh. Shall I go there
and be tormented when life itself is a plague? No, give me rather a mad
jester or the antics of a spry wench."

"I don't care for that." His father was brief.

"Well, I'm not mad about it either, you understand, but I was just saying
sometimes when one is gloomy it does the heart good. Don't you think
great laughter heals the soul, Mrs. Schearl?"

"I suppose so."

"There, you see! But listen, I have an idea. You know that the People's
Theatre always gives Dolman the job of printing its placards. Well, it has a
stage that is never empty of tears--at least one good death rattle is heard
every night And if you like that sort of play, why I can talk to the agent or
whatever he's called and squeeze a whole month's pass out of him. You
know they change every week."

"I don't know whether I want to." His father frowned dubiously.

"Why, certainly! It won't be any trouble at all. And it won't cost you a
cent. I'll get a pass for two, you watch me. I wish I had known this before."

"Don't trouble about me," said his mother. "Many thanks, but I couldn't
possibly go away and leave David here alone."

"Oh, that can be solved!" he assured her. "That's the least of your
worries. But first let me get the pass." Luter left early that evening, before
David was put to bed. And when he was gone, his father turned to his
mother and said, "Well, did I make a mistake when I said this man was my
friend? Did I? Here is one who knows how to express friendship, here as
well as in the shop. Tell me, do I know a decent man when I see him?"

"You do," was the mild answer.

"And you with your fear of taking strangers into the house!" he
continued scornfully. "Could you ever have a better boarder than he?"

"It isn't that. I'm glad to serve him dinners regularly. But I do know that
most often it's better for friends to be a little apart than always together."

"Nonsense!" He retorted. "It's your silly pride."

---------------------------------------------------------

TRINKETS held in the mortar of desire, the fancy a trowel, the whim
the builder. A wall, a tower, stout, secure, incredible, immuring the spirit
from a flight of arrows, the mind, experience, shearing the flow of time as a
rock shears water. The minutes skirted by, unknown.

His mother and father had left for the theatre, and he was alone with
Luter. He would not see his mother again until morning, and morning, with
his mother gone, had become remote and tentative. The tears had started to
his eyes when she left, and Luter had said "Come child, do you begrudge
your mother the little pleasure she may get to-night?" David had stared
sullenly at the floor, aware that a great resentment against Luter was
gathering within him. Had not Luter been the agent of his mother's going?
And now how dared he reprove him for weeping when she was gone! How
did he know what it felt like to be left alone? It wasn't his mother.

"Now you look just like your father." Luter had laughed. "He has just
such lips when he frowns."

There had been something in his voice that had had a peculiar sting to
it. Hurt, David had turned away and gotten out his box in the pantry in
which he saved both the calendar leaves he collected and whatever striking
odds and ends he found in the street. His mother called them his gems and
often asked him why he liked things that were worn and old. It would have
been hard to tell her. But there was something about the way in which the
link of a chain was worn or the thread on a bolt or a castor-wheel that gave
him a vague feeling of pain when he ran his fingers over them. They were
like worn shoe-soles or very thin dimes. You never saw them wear, you
only knew they were worn, obscurely aching.

He fingered one of his newly-found acquisitions. It was one of those
perforated metal corks that the barber used to squirt perfumed water on
one's head. One could blow through it, peep through it, it could be strung
on a thread. He dropped it back into the box and picked up instead the
stretched helix of a small window-shade spring. If one had these on one's
feet instead of shoes, one might bound instead of walk. High as the roof; far
away at once. Like Puss in Boots. But if the mouse changed back into an
ogre inside the puss--just before he died--I'm a mouse--an ogre!-- Then
poor Puss would have swelled and swelled and--

Luter sighed. Startled, David looked up. I'm a mouse --I'm an ogre!
The thought lingered. He eyed Luter furtively. Unaware that he was being
watched, Luter had put down his paper and was staring ahead of him.
Something curious had happened to his expression. The usually upturned,
affable lines of his face either curved the other way now, downward, or
where not curved were sharp, wedge-shaped at the eyes and mouth. And the
eyes themselves, which were always so round and soft, had narrowed now,
so narrow, the eyeballs looked charred, remote. His upper teeth gnawed the
skin of his lips, drawing his face into a brooding frown. It worried David. A
faint thrill of disquiet ran through him. He suddenly felt an intense desire to
have someone else present in his house. It didn't have to be his mother.
Anybody would do--Yussie from upstairs. Even his father.

Luter rose. David hastily dropped his gaze. Deliberate, brown-clad legs
approached (what?) passed by him (he relaxed) stopped before the wall
(peered over his shoulder) the calendar. Luter thumbed the leaves (black,
black, black, red, black, black) held up a thin sheaf, and with puckered lips,
stared at the date as though something far more intricate and absorbing than
the mere figures were depicted there. Then he lowered the upturned leaves
slowly, cautiously (Why? Why so carefully? They had only one place they
could fall to) and rubbed his hands.

On his way back to the chair, he glanced down at the empty shoe-box
between David's knees, emptied of everything except its calendar-leaves.

"Well!" His voice seemed amused, yet not entirely so, as if crossed by a
slight start of surprise. "What are those? Do you get them from there?"

"Yes." David looked up uneasily. "I save them." "Yesterday's days?
What do you want with them? To scribble on?"

"No. Just save."

"Chm!" His laughing snort sounded unpleasant to David. "If I had so
few days as you have I wouldn't bother about them. And when you're as
old as I am--" he stopped, indulged in a short chuckle that pecked like a
tiny hammer-- "you'll know that the only thing that matters are the days
ahead."

David tried not to look resentful for fear Luter would accuse him again
of looking like his father. He wished he would go away. But instead Luter
nodded, and smiling to himself, glanced at the clock.

"It's time for you to go to bed now. It's long after eight."

He poured the various trinkets back into the box, went over to the
pantry and stowed them away in the corner. "Do you know how to undress
yourself?"

"Yes."

"You'd better go in and ‘pee' first," he advised, smiling. "How does
your mother say it?"

"She says numbuh one."

Luter chuckled. "Then she's learned a little English." After he had gone
to the bathroom, David went into his bedroom, and undressed and got into
his night-gown. Luter looked in. "All right?" he asked'.

"Yes," he answered climbing into bed.

Luter shut the door.

Darkness was different without his mother near. Peo-pie were different
too.



VI



IN THE bedroom where she had gone to tuck away the tablecloth,
David heard the closet drawer chuckle softly close. And then, "Alas!" came
his mother's voice. "He has forgotten it." She reappeared, in her extended
hand a parcel. "The present he was going to give them. He goes empty
handed now." She set it down on a chair. "I must remember to give it to him
to-morrow, or perhaps he'll remember and return."

That Luter might come back disturbed David, he pushed the thought
away. He had been looking forward to this evening when he would have her
to himself until bedtime. It was the second theatre night. His father had
gone alone.

She lifted the kettle of water from the stove, bore it to the sink and
poured the steaming water into the basin.

She turned to look at him. "The way you watch me," she said with a
laugh, "makes me feel as if I were performing black magic. It is only dishes
I'm washing." And after a pause. "Would you like another little brother?"
she asked slyly, "or a little sister."

"No," he answered soberly.

"It would be better for you, if you had," she teased. "It would give you
something else to look at beside your mother."

"I don't want to look at anything else."

"Your mother had eight brothers and sisters," she reminded him. "One
of them may come here some day, one of my sisters, your Aunt Bertha--
would you like that?"

"I don't know."

"You'd like her," she assured him. "She's very funny. She has red hair
and a sharp tongue. And there's no one she can't mimic. She's not so very
fat, yet in the summertime, the sweat pours down her in torrents. I don't
know why that is. I have seen men sweat like that, but never a woman."

"I get all wet under here in the summer." He pointed to his arm pits.

"Yes," said his mother with peculiar emphasis, "she did too. They told
her once--but you never saw a bear?"

"In a book. There were three bears."

"Yes, you told me about them. Well, in Europe the gypsies--gypsies are
men and women, dark people. They roam all over the world."

"Why?"

"It pleases them."

"You asked me about a bear."

"Yes. Sometimes these gypsies take a bear along with them wherever
they go."

"Do they eat porridge?" He had said the last word in English.

"What's porridge?"

"My teacher said it was oatmeal and farina, you give it to me in the
morning."

"Yes, yes. You told me. But I'm not sure. I know they like apples. Still
if your teacher--"

"And what did the bear do?"

"The bear danced. The gypsies sang and shook the tambourine and the
bear danced."

David hugged himself with delight. "Who made him?" "The gypsies.
They earned their money that way. When the bear was tired, people threw
pennies in their tambourine-- Now! I was telling you about your aunt.
Someone told her that if she crept up behind the bear and rubbed her hands
on his fur, she would stop sweating under her palms. And so one day while
the bear was dancing--"

She stopped speaking. David had heard it too: a step outside the door. A
moment later someone knocked. A voice.

"It is only I--Luter."

With an exclamation of surprise, she opened the door. Luter came in.
"I went away without my head," he said apologetically. "I've forgotten
my gift."

"It's a pity you had to take all that trouble again," she said sympathetically.
"You left it in the bedroom." She picked up the parcel from the chair.

"Yes, I know," he answered, resting it on the table. He looked at his
watch. "I'm afraid it's too late for me to go now. I couldn't get there before
nine and then how long can one stay, an hour."

David was secretly annoyed to see him sit down. Luter opened his coat
and with an expression of anxious indecision on his face regarded David's
mother. His eyes had a brilliance and restlessness greater than usual. David
was again aware of the difficult curves of the man's face. "Take your coat
off," she suggested. "It's warm here." "If you don't mind," he slipped it
from his shoulders, "Now that I have nowhere to go."

"Won't they be disappointed when they see you're not coming?"

"No, they'll know that the black hour hasn't seized me." He laughed.
"Please go on with your work, don't let me interfere."

"I was merely washing some dishes," she said. "I've finished now, ex-
cept for these pots." She picked up the red and white can of powder in the
corner of the small shelf above the sink, shook some of it into a pot, and
rubbed the inside vigorously with a dish rag, stooping over with the effort.
David, who was leaning from the side of his chair could see Luter and
his mother at the same time. Absorbed in watching his mother, he would
have paid little attention to Luter, but the sudden oblique shifting of Luter's
eyes toward himself drew his own gaze toward them. Luter, his eyes
narrowed by a fixed yawn, was staring at his mother, at her hips. For the
first time, David was aware of how her flesh, confined by the skirt, formed
separate molds against it. He felt suddenly bewildered, struggling with
something in his mind that would not become a thought.

"You women," said Luter sympathetically, "especially when you marry
must work like slaves."

"It isn't quite so bad as all that. Despite the ancient proverb."

"No," said Luter meditatively, "anything may be lived. But to labor
without thanks that's bitter."

"True. And to labor even with thanks, what comes of it?"

"Well," he uncrossed his legs, "nothing comes of anything, not even
millionaires, but esteem gives the trumpeter breath--esteem and gifts
naturally."

"Then I have my esteem," she laughed, straightening up and turning
around as Luter arranged his mouth more firmly. "I have esteem that
grows." She regarded David with an amused smile.

"Yes," said Luter with a sigh, "but everyone can have that kind of esteem.
Still, it's good to have children." And then earnestly, "Do you know I
have never seen a child cling so to his mother."

David found himself resenting Luter's comment.

"Yes, I'm sure you're right," she agreed.

"I think so," he said warmly. "Why, my cousin's children--the very
relative I was going to visit to-night--they are home only when they sleep
and eat. At night after dinner, they are up in some neighbor's house," he
lifted his hand to emphasize the point, "playing with other children the
whole evening."

"There are other children in the house," answered his mother. "But he
seems to make friends with none. It has only been once or twice," she
turned to David, "that you have been in Yussie's house or he here, has it
not?"

David nodded uneasily.

"He's a strange child!" said Luter with conviction.

His mother laughed condoningly.

"Though very intelligent," he assured her.

There was a pause while she emptied the dishpan into the sink; the grey
water muttered down the drain.

"He looks very much like you," said Luter with the hesitance of careful
appraisal. "He has the same brown eyes you have, very fine eyes, and the
same white skin. Where did you get that white German skin?" he asked
David playfully.

"I don't know." The man's intimacy embarrassed him. He wished Luter
would go away.

"And both of you have very small hands. Has he not small hands for a
child his size? Like those of a prince's. Perhaps he will be a doctor Some
day."

"If he has more than hands."

"Yes," Luter agreed, "still I don't think he'll need labor for his bread
like his father, or even like myself."

"I hope not, but only God knows."

"Isn't it strange," he said suddenly, "how Albert has seized hold of the
theatre? Like a drunkard his dram. Who would have believed it?"

"It means a great deal to him. I could hear him beside me gnashing his
teeth at a certain character." Luter laughed. "Albert is a good man, even
though the other workers think him odd. It is I who keep the peace, you
know." He laughed again.

"Yes, I do know, and I'm grateful to you for it."

"Oh it's nothing. A word here, a word there smooths everything. Truth
is, I might not have been so ready to protect him, if I hadn't known you,
that is, if I hadn't come here and been one of you. But now I take up his
interest as though he were my own brother. It is not always easy with so
strange a man."

"You're very kind."

"Not at all," said Luter. "You have repaid me. Both of you."

Picking up several dry utensils she crossed the kitchen to the pantry.
There she pulled open the door, bent over and hung them on the nails
inside. Luter's head tilted, his gaze flitting to her bosom. He cleared his
throat with a pecking sound.

"But say what you will, Albert is--what shall I say, a nervous man--till
you know him, of course. But I can see why you've never gone out with
him anywhere," he ended sympathetically. "You're a proud woman with a
great deal of feeling, no?"

"No more than anyone else. What has that to do with it?"

"I'll tell you. You see, Albert, well--" he smiled and scratched his neck,
puzzled. "Even in the street, he behaves so strangely. You know better than
I do. He seems to look for jeers in the faces of passersby. And when you go
with him--I go with him every night--it's as though he finds some kind of
pleasure walking behind a cripple or a drunkard or any kind of freakish
person--I don't know what! One would think it made him feel safer. He
wants people on the street to look at someone else. Anyone else, instead of
himself. Even a water wagon or street gamblers give him this odd
satisfaction. But why do I talk this way when I like him so much." He
paused and laughed quietly.

David's mother looked at the dish towel, but made no answer.

"Yes," he chuckled, hurriedly. "I like especially the way he never speaks
of Tysmenicz without leading in the cattle he once tended."

"Well, there weren't many things he loved more in the old land."

"But to love cattle so," Luter smiled. "All I thought of when I saw a
cow was that it gave milk. Now when I think of Europe, and of my hamlet,
the first thought that comes to me, just as his first thought is a cow or a
prize bull, my first thought is of the peasant women. You understand?"

"Naturally, each has his memories." Having placed the last dishes in the
closet, she drew a chair beside David's and sat down. On one side of the
table sat Luter, on the other David and his mother.

"Exactly," said Luter, "Each one remembers what appealed to him, and
I remember the peasant wenches. Weren't they a striking lot, in their tight
checked vests and their dozen petticoats?" He shook his head regretfully.
"One never sees the like here. It's a scanty soil from what one sees of it in
Brooklyn and its women are spare. But in Sorvik they grew like oaks. They
had blonde hair, their eyes blazed. And when they smiled with their white
teeth and blue eyes, who could resist them? It was enough to set your blood
on fire. The men never dazzled you that way?" he asked after a pause. "No,
I never paid much attention to them."

"Well, you wouldn't--you were a good Jewish daughter. Besides, the
men were a worthless lot, vacant lumps with great shoulders and a nose on
them like a split pea. Their women were wasted on them. You know," his
voice was very earnest, "the only woman I know who reminds me of those
girls, is you."

She reddened, threw back her head and laughed, "Me? I'm only a good
Jewish daughter."

"I am not accusing you of anything else, but never since I have been in
America have I seen a woman that so reminded me of them. Their lips were
so full, so ripe, as if to be kissed."

She smiled curiously with one cheek. "God knows, there must be enough
Austrian peasants even in this land. If Jews were let in, surely no
one would bar the Slovaks." Luter looked down at the ring he was twisting
around his finger. "Yes, I suppose so. I have seen a few of them, but none I
cared much about."

"You better look about a little more then."

Luter's face grew strangely sober, the lines about his nostrils deepened.
Without lifting his head, his eyes slanted up at David's mother. "Perhaps I
can stop looking."

She laughed outright. "Don't be foolish, Mr. Luter!" "Mr. Luter!" He
looked annoyed for a moment, then shrugged and smiled. "Now that you
know me so well, why use the formal still?"

"Apparently I don't know you so well."

"It takes a little time," he admitted. His gaze roved about the room and
came to rest on David. "Perhaps you would like some refreshments?"

"No, but if you do, I can make some tea."

"No, thanks," he said solicitously, "don't take the trouble. But I know
what you would like--a little ice cream." "Please don't bother."

"Why, it's no trouble. The young one there will go down for us." He
drew out a coin. "Here, you know where the candy store is. Go get some
tutti frutti and chocolate. You like it don't you?"

With troubled eyes David looked first at Luter, then at the coin. Beneath
the table a hand gently pressed his thigh. His mother! What did she want?

"I don't like it," he faltered. "I don't like ice cream." The fingers of the
same hand tapped his knees ever so lightly. He had said the right thing.

"No? Tutti frutti ice cream? Candy then, you like that?" "No."

"I think it's a little too late for him to have either," said his mother.

"Well, I guess we won't buy any then, since he's going to bed soon."
Luter looked at his watch. "This is just the time I put him to bed last time,
wasn't it, my David7" "Yes," he hesitated fearful of blundering.

"I suppose he's sleepy now," Luter suggested encouragingly.

"He doesn't look sleepy," his mother, smoothed the hair back from his
brow. "His eyes are still wide and bright."

"I'm not sleepy." That, at least, was true. He had never been so
strangely stirred, never had he felt so near an abyss.

"We'll let you stay up awhile then."

There was a short space of silence. Luter frowned, emitted a faint
smacking sound from the side of his mouth. "You don't seem to have any
of the usual womanly instincts."

"Don't I? It seems to me that I keep pretty closely to the well-trodden
path."

"Curiosity, for instance."

"I had already lost that even before my marriage." "You only imagine it.
But don't misunderstand me, I merely meant curiosity about the package I
left behind. It must be clear to you that I didn't get what's in it for my
relatives' sake."

"Well, you'd better give it to them now."

"Not so soon." And when she didn't answer, he shrugged, arose from the
chair and got into his coat. "Hate me for it if I say it again, but you're
a comely woman. This time though I won't forget my package." He reached
for the door-knob, turned. "But I may still come for dinner tomorrow?"
She laughed. "If you still haven't tired of my cooking."

"Not yet." And chuckling. "Good-night. Good-night, little one. It must
be a joy to have such a son." He went out.

With a wry smile on her lips, she listened to the sound of his retreating
steps. Then her brow puckered in disdain. "All are called men!" She sat for
a moment gazing before her with troubled eyes. Presently her brow cleared;
she tilted her head and peered into David's eyes. "Are you worried about
anything? Your look is so intent."

"I don't like him," he confessed.

"Well, he's gone now," she said reassuringly. Let's forget about him. We
won't even tell father he came, will we?"

"No."

"Let's go to bed then, it grows late."




ANOTHER week had passed. The two men had just gone off together.
With something of an annoyed laugh, his mother went to the door and stood
fingering the catch of the lock. Finally she lifted it. The hidden tongue
sprang into its groove.

"Oh, what nonsense!" She unlocked it again, looked up at the light and
then at the windows.

David felt himself growing Uneasy. Why did Thursdays have to roll
around so soon? He was beginning to hate them as much as he did Sundays.

"Why must they make proof of everything before they're satisfied?"

Her lips formed and unformed a frown. "Well, there's nothing to do but go.
I'll wash those dishes later." She opened the door and turned out the light.
Bewildered, David followed her into the cold, gas-lit hallway.

"We're going upstairs to Mrs. Mink." She cast a hurried look over the
bannister. "You can play with your friend Yussie."

David wondered why she needed to bring that up. He hadn't said
anything about wanting to play with Yussie. In fact, he didn't even feel
like it. Why didn't she just say she was running away, instead of making him
feel guilty. He knew whom she was looking for when she looked over the
bannister.

His mother knocked at the door. It was opened. Mrs. Mink stood on the
threshold. At the sight of his mother, she beamed with pleasure.

"Hollo, Mrs. Schearl! Hollo! Hollo! Comm een!" She scratched her
lustreless, black hair excitedly.

"I hope you don't find my coming here untimely," his mother smiled
apologetically.

"No, as I live!" Mrs. Mink lapsed into Yiddish. "You're wholly welcome!
A guest—the rarest I have!" She dragged a chair forward. "Do sit down."

Mrs. Mink was a flat-breasted woman with a sallow skin and small
features. She had narrow shoulders and meager arms, and David always
wondered when he saw her how the thin skin on her throat managed to hold
back the heavy, bulging veins.

"I thought I would never have the pleasure of seeing you in my house,"
she continued. "It was only the other day that I was telling our landlady—
Look, Mrs. Schearl and I are neighbors, but we know nothing of each other.
I dare not ask her up into my house. I'm afraid to. She looks so proud."

"I, proud?"

"Yes, not proud, noble! You always walk with your head in the air—so!
And even when you go to market, you dress like a lady. I've watched you
often from the window, and I've said to my man— Come here! Look, that's
her! Do you see how tall she is! He is not home now, my picture of a
spouse, he works late in the jewelry store. I know he will regret missing
you."

David found himself quickly tiring of Mrs. Mink's rapid stream of
words, and looking about saw that Annie was observing him. Yussie was
nowhere to be seen. He tugged his mother's hand, and when she bent over,
asked for him.

"Yussie?" Mrs. Mink interrupted herself long enough to say. "He's
asleep."

"Don't wake him," said his mother.

"That's all right. I've got to send him to the delicatessen for some bread
soon. Yussele!" she called.

His only answer was a resentful yawn.

"He's coming soon," she said reassuringly.

In a few minutes, Yussie came out. One of his stockings had fallen, and
he trod on it, shuffling sleepily. He blinked, eyed David's mother
suspiciously a moment, and then sidled over to David, "W'y's yuh mudder
hea?"

"She jost came."

"W'y'd she comm?"

"I donno."

At this point Annie hobbled over. "Pull yuh stockin' op, yuh slob!"
Obediently Yussie hoisted up his stocking. David could not help
noticing how stiff and bare the white stocking hung behind the brace on
Annie's own leg.

"So yuh gonna stay by us?" asked Yussie eagerly.

"Yea."

"H'ray! C'mon inna fron'room." He grabbed David's arm. "I godda—"
But David had stopped. "I'm goin' inna fron' room, mama."

Turning from the chattering Mrs. Mink, David's mother smiled at him
in slight distress and nodded.

"Waid'll I show yuh wod we god," Yussie dragged him into the
frontroom.

While Yussie babbled on excitedly, David stared about him. He had
never been in Yussie's front room before; Annie had barred the way as if
it were inviolable ground. Now he saw a room which was illuminated by a
gas lamp overhead and crowded with dark and portly furniture. In the
middle of the floor stood a round glass-topped table and about it chairs of
the same dark stain. A china closet hugged one wall, a bureau another, a
dressing table a third, cabinets clogged the corners. All were bulky, all
rested on the same kind of scrolled and finical paw. On the wall space
above the furniture hung two pairs of yellowed portraits, two busts of
wrinkled women with unnatural masses of black hair, and two busts of old
men who wore ringlets under their skull caps and beards on their chins.
With an expression of bleak hostility in their flat faces, they looked down at
David. Barring the way to the window squatted a swollen purple plush
chair, embroidered with agitated parrots of various hues. A large vapid doll
with gold curls and a violet dress sat on the glass top of a cabinet. After his
own roomy frontroom with its few sticks of furniture, David not only felt
bewildered, he felt oddly warm.

"It's inna closet in my modder's bedroom." Yussie continued. "Jost
wait, I'll show yuh."

He disappeared into the darkness of the adjoining bedroom. David heard
him open a door, rummage about for a minute. When he returned, he bore in
his hand a curious steel cage.

"Yuh know wat dis's fuh?" he held it up to David's eyes.

David examined it more closely, "No. Wot d'yuh do wit' it?"

"It c'n catch rats, dot's wot yuh do wit' it. See dis little door? De rat
gizz in like dot." He opened a thin metal door at the front of the cage. "Foist
yuh put sompin ove' hea, and on 'iz liddle hook. An' nen nuh rat gizzin.
Dey uz zuh big rat inna house, yuh could hear him at night, so my fodder
bought dis, an' my mudder put in schmaltz fom de meat, and nuh rat comes
in, an' inna mawningk, I look unner by de woshtob, an'ooh—he wuz dere,
runnin' dis way like dot." Yussie waved the cage about excitedly, "An I
calls my fodder an' he gets op f'om de bed an' he fills op de woshtob and
eeh! duh rat giz all aroun' in it, in nuh watuh giz all aroun'. An' nen he
stops. An nen my fodder takes it out and he put it in nuh bag and trew it out
f'om de winner. Boof! he fell inna guttah. Ooh wotta rat he wuz. My
mudder wuz runnin' aroun', an aroun' an after, my fodder kept on spittin' in
nuh sink. Kcha!"

David backed away in disgust.

"See, I tol' yuh I had sumtin tuh show yuh. See, like dot it closes." He
snapped the little, metal door. "We didn't hea' it, cause ev'ybody wuz
sleepin'. Rats on'y come out innuh da'k, w'en yuh can't see 'em, and yuh
know w'ea dey comin' fom, dey comin' fom de cellah. Dot's w'ea dey live
innuh cellah—all rats."

The cellar! That explained it. That moment of fear when he turned the
bottom landing before he went out into the street. He would be doubly
terrified now.

"Wotta yuh doin?" They started at the intruding voice. It was Annie
coming in. Her face was writhed back in disgust.

"Eee! Yuh stoopid lummox! Put it away. I'll call mama!"

"Aaa, lemme alone."

"Yuh gonna put it away?" she squealed.

"Aa, shit on you," muttered Yussie sullenly. "Can't do nuttin'."

Nevertheless, he carried the cage back to the bedroom.

"W'y d'yuh let 'im show it tuh yuh fuh?" she demanded angrily of
David. "Such a dope!"

"I didn' know wot it wuz," he stammered.

"Yuh didn' know wot it wuz? Yurra lummox too!" "Now g'wan."
Yussie returned from the bedroom. "Leave us alone."

"I will not," she snapped. "Dis is my frontroom." "He don' wanna play
witchoo. He's my frien!"

"So who wants him!"

"So don' butt in."

"Pooh!" She plumped herself in a chair. The steel brace clicked
disagreeably against the wood.

David wished she could wear long pants like a man. "Comm on ove' by
de winder," Yussie guided him through a defile in the furniture. "We mus'
be a fireman. We c'n put out de fire inna house." He indicated the bureau.

"Yuh wanna?"

"Awrigh'."

"An' we c'n slide down duh pipe an' we c'n have a fiuh-ingine, an' nen
I'll be duh drivuh. Yuh wanna?" "Yea."

"Den let's make fiuh hats. Waid, I'll get some paper inna kitchen." He
ran off.

Annie slid off the chair and came over. "Wot class yuh in?"

"1A."

"I'm in 4A," she said loftily. "I skipped a'reddy. An' now I'm duh
sma'test one in my class."

David was impressed.

"My teacher's name is Miss McCardy. She's duh bes' teacher inna
whole school. She gave me A. A. A."

By this time Yussie had returned bearing several sheets of newspaper.
"Wotta ya gonna do?" she demanded.

"Wotta you care!" he defied her. "We' gonna be fiuh-men."

"Yuh can't!"

"No?" Yussie inquired angrily, "Why can' we?" "Cause yuh can't, dat's
w'y! Cause yu'll scratch op all de foinichuh."

"We won' scratch nuttin'!" stormed Yussie whirling the newspaper
about in frustration. "We gonna play." "Yuh can't!"

"We will!"

"I'll give yuh in a minute," she advanced threateningly.

"Aa! Wodda yuh wan' us tuh play?"

"Yuh c'n play lottos."

"I don' wanna play lottos," he whined.

"Den play school den."

"I don' wanna play school."

"Den don' play nuttin!" she said with finality.

A large bubble of saliva swelled from Yussie's lips as he squeezed his
face down to blubber. "I'll tell mama on you!"

"Tell! She'll give yuh a smack!" She whirled threateningly on David.
"Wadda you wanna play?"

"I don' know," he drew back.

"Doncha know no games?" she fumed.

"I—I know tag an' I know, I know hide an' gussee'." Yussie revived.
"Let's play hide an' gussee'."

"No!"

"You too!" he coaxed desperately. "C'mon, you too." Annie thought it
over.

"C'mon I'll be it!" And immediately, he leaned his face against the edge
of a bureau and began counting. "G'wan hide!" he broke off.

"Wait!" shrilled Annie, hopping off. "Count twenny." David scurried
behind the arm chair.

He was found last and accordingly was "it" next. In a little while the
game grew very exciting. Since David was somewhat unfamiliar with the
arrangement of the house, it chanced that several times he hid with Yussie
when Annie was it and with Annie when Yussie was it. They had crouched
together in barricaded corners and behind the bedroom door.

However, just as the game was reaching its greatest pitch, Mrs. Mink's
voice suddenly called out from the kitchen.

"Yussele! Yussele, my treasure, come here!"

"Aa!" from somewhere came Yussie's exasperated bleat. David, who
was "it" at the time, stopped counting and turned around.

"Yussie!" Mrs. Mink cried again, but this time shriller. "Can't do
nuttin'," complained Yussie, crawling out from under the bureau.
"Waddayuh want?" he bellowed.

"Come here. I want you to go down stairs for a minute."

Annie, evidently aware that the game was over for the time being, came
out of the adjoining bedroom. "He has to go down?"

"Yea," diffidently. "Fuh bread."

"Den we can't play."

"No. I'm gonna go back tuh my modder."

"Stay hea," she commanded, "We gonna play. Waid'll Yussie comes
back."

The voices from the kitchen indicated that Yussie had been persuaded.
He reappeared, dressed in coat and hat. "I'm goin' down," he announced,
and went out again. An uncomfortable pause ensued.

"We can't play till he comes back," David reminded her.

"Yes, we can."

"Wot?"

"Wotcha want."

"I don't know wot."

"Yuh know wot."

"Wot?"

"Yuh know," she said mysteriously.

That was the game then. David congratulated himself on having
discovered its rules so quickly.

"Yea, I know," he answered in the same tone of mystery.

"Yea?" she peered at him eagerly.

"Yea!" he peered at her in the same way.

"Yuh wanna?"

"Yea!"

"Yuh wanna den?"

"Yea, I wanna." It was the easiest game he had ever played. Annie was
not so frightening after all.

"W'ea?"

"W'ea?" he repeated.

"In the bedroom," she whispered.

But she was really going!

"C'mon," she motioned, tittering.

He followed. This was puzzling.

She shut the door: he stood bewildered in the gloom. "C'mon," she took
his hand. "I'll show yuh."

He could hear her groping in the dark. The sound of an unseen door
opening. The closet door.

"In hea," she whispered.

What was she going to do? His heart began to race. She drew him in, shut
the door. Darkness, immense and stale, the reek of moth balls threading
it.

Her breathing in the narrow space was loud as a gust, swooping down
and down again. His heart throbbed in his ears. She moved toward him,
nudged him gently with the iron slat of her brace. He was frightened.
Before the pressure of her body, he retreated slightly. Something rolled
beneath his feet. What? He knew instantly, and recoiled in disgust-—the
trap!

"Sh!" she warned. "Take me- aroun'." She groped for his hands.

He put his arms about her.

"Now let's kiss."

His lips touched hers, a muddy spot in vast darkness. "How d'you play
bad?" she asked.

"Bad? I don' know," he quavered.

"Yuh wan' me to show how I?"

He was silent, terrified.

"Yuh must ask me," she said. "G'wan ask me."

"Wot?"

"Yuh must say, Yuh wanna play bad? Say it!"

He trembled. "Yuh wanna play bad?

"Now, you said it," she whispered. "Don* forget, you said it."

By the emphasis of her words, David knew he had crossed some awful
threshold.

"Will yuh tell?"

"No," he answered weakly. The guilt was his.

"Yuh swear?"

"I swear."

"Yuh know w'ea babies comm from?"

"N-no."

"From de knish."-Knish?

"Between de legs. Who puts id in is de poppa. De poppa's god de
petzel. Yaw de poppa." She giggled stealthily and took his hand. He could
feel her guiding it under her dress, then through a pocket-like flap. Her skin
under his palm. Revolted, he drew back.

"Yuh must!" she insisted, tugging his hand. "Yuh ast me!"

"No!"

"Put yuh han' in my knish," she coaxed. "Jus' once." "No!"

"I'll hoi' yuh petzel." She reached down.

"No!" His flesh was crawling.

"Den take me 'round again."

"No! No! Lemme oud!" he pushed her away.

"Waid. Yussie'll t'ink we're hidin'."

"No! I don' wanna!" He had raised his voice to a shout. "So go!" she
gave him an angry push.

But David had already opened the door and was out. She grabbed him
as he crossed the bedroom. "If you tell!" she whispered venomously. "W'ea
yuh goin'?"

"I'm goin tuh my mamma!"

"Stay hea! I'll kill yuh, yuh go inside!" She shook him. He wanted to
cry.

"An' don' cry," she warned fiercely, and then strove desperately to
engage him, "Stay hea an' I'll tell yuh a story. I'll let yuh play fiuhman.
Yuh c'n have a hat. Yuh c'n climb on de foinichuh. Stay heal"

He stood still, watching her rigidly, half hypnotized by her fierce,
frightened eyes. The outer door was opened. Yussie's voice in the kitchen.
A moment later, he came in, breathlessly stripping off his coat.

"I god a penny," he crowed.

"Yuh c'n play fiuhman, if yuh wan'," she said severely. "No foolin'?
Yeh? H'ray! C'mon, Davy!"

But David held back. "I don' wanna play."

"C'mon," Yussie grabbed a sheet of newspaper and thrust it into his
hands. "We mus' make a hat."

"G'wan make a hat," commanded Annie.

Cowed and almost sniffling, David began folding the paper into a hat.
He played listlessly, one eye always on Annie who watched his every
move. Yussie was disgusted with him. "David!" his mother's voice calling
hinj.

Deliverance at last! With a cry of relief, he tore off the fireman's hat,
ran down the frontroom stairs into the kitchen. His mother was standing;
she seemed about to leave. He pressed close to her side.

"We must go now," she said smiling down at him. "Say good night to
your friends."

"Good night," he mumbled.

"Please don't hurry off," said Mrs. Mink. "It's been such a pleasure to
have you here."

"I really must go. It's past his bed time."

David was in the van stealthily tugging his mother toward the door.

"This hour I have been in heaven," said Mrs. Mink. "You must come
often! I am never busy."

"Many thanks."

They hurried down the drafty stairs.

"I heard you playing in the frontroom," she said. "You must have
enjoyed your visit."

She unlocked the door, lit the gas lamp.

"Dear God! The room has grown cold." And picking up the poker, she
crouched before the stove, shook down the dull embers behind the grate.

"I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. At least one of us has skimmed a little
pleasure out of this evening! What folly! And that Mrs. Mink. If I had
known she talked so much, drays could not have dragged me up there!" She
lifted the coal scuttle, shook some coal vehemently into the stove. "Her
tongue spun like a bobbin on a sewing machine—and she sewed nothing.
It's unbelievable! I began to see motes before my eyes." She shook her head
impatiently and put down the coal scuttle. "My son, do you know your
mother's a fool? But you're tired, aren't you? Let me put you to bed."
Kneeling down before him, she began unbuttoning his shoes. When she had
pulled his stockings off, she lifted his legs, examined them a moment, then
kissed each one. "Praise God, your body is sound! How I pity that poor
child upstairs!"

But she didn't know as he knew how the whole world could break into a
thousand little pieces, all buzzing, all whining, and no one hearing them and
no one seeing them except himself.



VIII



WHEN David awoke the next morning, it seemed to him that he had
been lying in bed a long while with eyes open but without knowing who or
where he was. Memory had never been so tardy in returning. He could
almost feel his brain fill up like a bottle under a slow tap. Reluctant
antennae groped feebly into the past. Where? What? One by one the
shuttles stirred, awoke, knit morning to night, night to evening. Annie!
Oh! Desperately he shook his head, but could not shake the memory out.
The window. . . . Snow still falling through the dull light of the alley,
banked whitely against the sill, encroaching on the pane. David stared a
while at the sinking patterns of the flakes. They fell with slow simplicity
if you watched them, swiftly and devious if you looked beyond. Their
monotonous descent gave him an odd feeling of being lifted higher and
higher; he went floating until he was giddy. He shut his eyes. From the
street somewhere, came the frosty ring of a shovel scraping the stony
sidewalk, a remote and drowsy sound.

All this stir when the world seemed trying to sleep, saddened him. Why
did anyone have to clear away the snow; why did anyone disturb it? He
would rather the snow were on the ground all year. The thin sound of the
shovel gave him a feeling of sluggish resentment. He drew his legs up and
bent his head toward his knees. Warm bed-clothes, the odor of sleep.
He would have dozed again, but the door opened. His mother came in
and sat down at the edge of the bed.

"Asleep?" she asked, then bent down and kissed him. "It's time to get
up for school." And sighing, she threw back the bed-clothes, and pivoted
him to a sitting posture on the bed. He whimpered drowsily, then rose,
shivering when his feet touched the cold floor and followed her.
The kitchen was warm. She slipped his night gown from over his head
and helped him dress. When he was washed and combed, he sat down to
breakfast. He ate listlessly and without relish.

"You don't seem to be very hungry?" she inquired. "You've hardly
touched the oatmeal. Would you like more milk?"

"No. I'm not hungry."

"An egg?"

He shook his head.

"I shouldn't have kept you up so late. You look weary. Do you
remember the strange dream you had last night?"

"Yes."

"How did such a strange dream come to you?" she mused. "A woman
with a child who turned loathsome, a crowd of people following a black
bird. I don't understand it. But my, how you screamed!"

Why did she have to remind him of it again. The vigil afterwards
waiting for sleep. Annie!

"Why did you kick the table so?"

"I don't know."

"Is it a growing pain?" she laughed. "But they say those happen only in
sleep. Are you awake?" She looked at the clock. "Just a little more milk?"

"No."

"You'll have more at lunch then," she warned. "But it's time now you
were going." She fetched his leggings and kneeling down buttoned them on.
"Shall I go with you?"

"I can go by myself."

"Perhaps you ought to wait for Yussie or his sister." The very thought
made him shudder inwardly. He knew he would run from them if he met
them. He shook his head.

"Will you go right into the school and not stay too long in the snow?"

"Yes." He let down the furry ear-laps of his cap as he put it on. His
books were on the wash-tub.

"Good-bye, then," she stooped to kiss him. "Such an indifferent kiss! I
don't think you love me this morning." But David offered no other. He took
one step through the door, started with fear, remembering. He turned.

"Mama, will you leave the door open till--till I'm gone-- till you hear
me down-stairs?"

"Child! What's wrong with you? Very well, I will. Does that dream still
hover in your mind?"

"Yes," he felt relieved that she had given him an excuse.

"You had better go now. I'll wait in the door-way."

Feeling ashamed of himself and yet not a little supported by her presence
in the doorway, David hurried out. At the bottom of the stairs the cellar
door was still shut. He eyed it with horror, his heart quickening in his
bosom.

"Mama?" he called.

"Yes."

He sprang from the steps, three at a time, more than he had ever tried
before, stumbled to his knees, dropping his strap of books, but the next
moment shot to his feet again, and sped like a hunted thing to the pale light
of the doorway.

The silent white street waited for him, snow-drifts where the curb was.
Footfalls silent. Before the houses, the newly swept areas of the sidewalks,
black, were greying again. Flakes cold on cheek, quickening. Narrow-eyed,
he peered up. Black overhead the flakes were, black till they sank below a
housetop. Then suddenly white. Why? A flake settled on his eye-lash; he
blinked, tearing with the wet chill, lowered his head. Snow trodden down
by passing feet into crude, slippery scales. The railings before basements
gliding back beside him, white pipes of snow upon them. He scooped one
up as he went. Icy, setting the blood tingling, it gathered before the plow of
his palm. He pressed it into a ball, threw it from one hand to the other until
he dropped it.

He turned the first corner at the end of the street, turned the second.
Would it be there again? He quickened his pace. It was still hanging there
beside the doorway. This was the third day he had seen it, and each time he
had forgotten to ask what it meant. What could it mean? The green leaves
were half concealed in snow; even the purple ribbon was covered. The poor
white flowers looked frozen. He stared at them thoughtfully and passed on.
He turned the last corner. Voices of children. School a little ways off, on
the other side of the street.

If he saw Annie there, what would he do? Look away. Walk by--
Must cross. Before him at the corner, children were crossing a beaten
path in the snow. Beside him, the untrodden white of the gutter. He stopped.
Here was a place to cross. Not a single footprint, only a wagon rut. Better
not. The ridge of snow near the curb was almost as tall as himself. But none
had crossed before. It would be his own, all his own path. Yes. He took a
running jump, only partly cleared the first ridge, landed in snow almost as
high as his knees. Behind him several voices called out, jeering, but he
plunged forward, plunged forward to the lower level. Shouldn;t have done
it! He would be all covered with it now, wet. But how miraculously clean it
was, all about him, whiter than anything he knew, whiter than anything,
whiter. The second ridge was packed harder than the first; he climbed up,
almost sank, jumped for safety to the other side, hastily brushed himself off.
Sidewalk snow, riddled with salt, tramped down by the feet of children,
reddened with ashes, growing dirtier as it neared the school.

At the sound of laughter, he looked up. In front of him, straddled two
boys, vying with each other, each squirting urine as far ahead as he could.
The water sank in a ragged channel, steaming in the snow, yellowing at the
margins.

Sidewalk snow never stayed white. The school door. He entered.
Walk by if he saw her, hurry by. . . .



IX



THE three o'clock bell sounded at last. Dismissed, he hurried through
the milling crowd of noisy children. He had seen neither Yussie nor Annie,
and now, as at lunch time, he darted ahead of the other children for fear of
being overtaken by either.

It had stopped snowing, and although clouds still dulled the light, the air
was warmer than it had been in the morning. Beside the curb, snow-forts
squatted, half built during the lunch recess, waiting completion. A long slid
ing-pond stretched like a black ribbon in the gutter. Where the snow had
been swept from the sidewalks, treacherous grey patches of ice tenaciously
clung.

He went as swiftly as he could, picking his way. From time to time, he
glanced hastily over his shoulder. No, they weren't there. He had
outstripped them. He turned a corner, stopped in midstride, staring at the
strange sight before him; cautiously he drew near.

A line of black carriages listed away from the snow-banked curb. He
had seen such carriages before. But what was that in front of the house,
that curious one, square and black with windows in its sides? Black
plumes on the horses. Why those small groups of people beside the doorway
whispering so quietly and craning their necks to look inside the hallway?
Above the street, in all the nearby houses, windows were open, men and
women were leaning out. In one of these a woman gesticulated to some one
behind her. A man came forward, furtively grinning, patted her jutting hips
and wedged into the space beside her. What were they all staring at? What
was coming out of that house? Suddenly he remembered. The flowers had
been there! Yes he knew the doorway. White, flattened pillars. Flowers!
What? He looked about for someone to ask, but he could see no one his
own age. Near one of the carriages, stood a small group of men, all dressed
alike in long black coats and tall hats. The drivers. They alone seemed
unperturbed, yet even they spoke quietly. Perhaps he could hear what they
said. He sidled over, straining his ears.

"An' wattayuh t'ink he had de crust to tell me?" A man with a raw,
weathered face was speaking, smoke from his cigarette unwreathing his
words. "He siz, wadjuh stop fer? Now wouldn't dat give yuh de shits?"
He stared at the others for affirmation. They nodded agreement with
their eyes.

Vindicated, the man continued, but more slowly and with greater
emphasis. "His pole smacks into my hack, and he squawks wadjuh stop fer?
I coulda spit in his mug, de donkey!"

"At's twiset now, ain' it?" asked another.

"Twiset, my pudd'n," retorted the first in wrathful contempt. "It's de
toid time. Wuzn't Jeff de foist one he rammed, an' wuzn't Toiner de secon'?
An' yestiddy me!"

"Hey!" Another man nudged his neighbor abruptly. "Dere goes de row
boat!"

Hastily throwing their cigarettes away, they scattered, and each one
swung himself up to his box on the carriage.

More confused now than before, David drew near the doorway. A man
in a tall black hat had just come out and was standing on the step looking
solicitously into the hallway. A hush fell on the crowd; they huddled
together as if for protection. Terror seemed to emanate from the hallway. At
a sign from the man in the tall hat, the doors in back of the strange carriage
were thrown open. Inside the gloomy interior metal glimmered, tasseled
curtains shut out the light. Suddenly out of the hallway a scraping sound
and slow shuffling of feet. A soft moan came from the crowd.

"He's coming!" someone whispered, craning her neck.

A sense of desolation. A fear.

Two men came out, laboring under the front-end of a huge black box,
then two more at the other end. Redfaced, they trod carefully down the
steps, advanced toward the carriage, rested one end of the box on the
carriage floor.

That was--! Yes! That was! He suddenly understood. Mama said--

Inside! Yes! Man! Inside! His flesh went cold with terror.

"Easy," cautioned the man in the black hat.

They shoved the box in, lunging after it. It squealed softly, sliding in
without effort as if on ways or wheels. The man who had opened the doors,
shot a large silvered pin into a hole behind the box, then in one skilful
motion shut the doors. At a nod from the man in the black hat, the carriage
rolled on a little distance, then stopped. Another carriage drew up before the
house.

Supported by a man on either side of her, a woman in black, all bowed
and veiled, came sobbing out of the house. The crowd murmured, a woman
whimpered. David had never seen a handkerchief with a black border. Hers
seemed white as snow.

Voices of children. He looked around.

Annie and Yussie were there, staring at the woman as she entered the
carriage. He shuddered, contracting, crept behind the crowd and broke into
a run.

At the doorway of his house he stopped, peered in, stepped back. What
was he going to do now? At lunch time, as he neared the house, he had seen
Mrs. Nerrick, the landlady, climb up the stoop. By running frantically, he
had caught up to her, had raced past the cellar, before she shut her door.
But now there was no one in sight. At any moment Annie and Yussie might
come round the corner. He must--before they saw--but the darkness, the
door, the darkness. The man in the box in the carriage. Alone. He must.
Make a noise. Noise ... He advanced. What? Noise. Any.

"Aaaaah! Ooooh!" he quavered, "My country 'tis of dee!" He began
running. The cellar door. Louder. "Sweet land of liberty," he shrilled, and
whirled toward the stairs. "Of dee I sing." His voice rose in a shriek. His
feet pounded on the stair. At his back, the monstrous horde of fear. "Land
where our fodders died!" The landing; he dove for the door, flinging
himself upon it--Threw it open, slammed it shut, and stood there panting in
terror.

His mother was standing, staring at him in wide-eyed amazement. "Was
that you?"

Close to tears, he lowered his head.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," he whimpered.

She laughed hopelessly and sat down. "Come here, you strange child.
Come here. You're white!"

David went over and sank against her breast.

"You're trembling," she stroked his hair.

"I'm afraid," he murmured against her throat.

"Still afraid?" she said soothingly. "Still the dream pursuing you?"

"Yes," a dry sob shook him. "And something else."

"What else?" She pressed him toward her with an encircling arm. In the
other hand, she took both of his. "What?" she murmured. Her lips' soft
pressure against his temples seemed to sink inward, downward, radiating a
calm and a sweetness that only his body could grasp. "What else?"

"I saw a--a man who was in a box. You told me once."

"What? Oh!" her puzzled face cleared. "A funeral. God grant us life.
Where was it?"

"Around the corner."

"And that frightened you?"

"Yes. And the hall was dark."

"I understand."

"Will you wait in the hall if I call you next time?" "Yes. I'll wait as
often as you like."

David heaved a quivering sigh of relief and kissed her cheek in
gratitude.

"If I didn't," she laughed, "Mrs. Nerrick, the landlady, would dispossess
us. I never heard such a thunder of feet!" When she had unbuttoned his
leggings she rose and set him in a chair. "Sit there, darling. It's Friday, I
have so much to do."

For a while, David sat still and watched her, feeling his heart grow quiet
again, then turned and looked out of the window. A fine rain had begun to
fall, serrying the windows with aimless ranks. In the yard the snow under
the rain was beginning to turn from white to grey. Blue smoke beat down,
strove upward, was gone. Now and then, the old house creaked when the
wind elbowed in and out the alley. Borne through mist and rain from some
remote river, a boat horn boomed, set up strange reverberations in the heart.


Friday. Rain. The end of school. He could stay home now, stay home
and do nothing, stay near his mother the whole afternoon. He turned from
the window and regarded her. She was seated before the table paring beets.
The first cut into a beet was like lifting a lid from a tiny stove. Sudden
purple under the peel; her hands were stained with it. Above her blue and
white checkered apron her face bent down, intent upon her work, her lips
pressed gravely together. He loved her. He was happy again.

His eyes roamed about the kitchen: the confusion of Friday afternoons.
Pots on the stove, parings in the sink, flour smeared on the rolling pin,
the board. The air was warm, twined with many odors. His mother rose,
washed the beets, drained them, set them aside.

"There!" she said. "I can begin cleaning again."

She cleared the table, washed what dishes were soiled, emptied out the
peelings that cluttered the sink into the garbage can. Then she got down on
all fours and began to mop the floor. With knees drawn up, David watched
her wipe the linoleum beneath his chair. The shadow between her breasts,
how deep! How far it--No! No! Luter! When he looked! That night! Mustn't!
Mustn't! Look away! Quick! Look at--look at the linoleum there, how it
glistened under a thin film of water.

"Now you'll have to sit there till it dries," she cautioned him,
straightening up and brushing back the few wisps of hair that had fallen
over her cheek. "It will only be a few minutes." She stooped, walked
backward to the steps, trailing the mop over her footprints, then went into
the frontroom.

Left alone, he became despondent again. His thoughts returned to Luter.
He would come again this evening. Why? Why didn't he go away. Would
they have to run away every Thursday? Go to Yussie's house? Would he
have to play with Annie again? He didn't want to. He never wanted to see
her again. And he would have to. The way he did this afternoon beside the
carriages. The black carriage with the window. Scared. The long box.
Scared. The cellar. No! No!

"Mama!" he called out.

"What is it, my son?"

"Are you going to--to sleep inside?"

"Oh, no. Of course not! I'm just straightening my hair a little."

"Are you coming in here soon?"

"Why yes. Is there anything you want?"

"Yes."

"In just a moment."

He waited impatiently for her to appear. In a little while she came out.
She had changed her dress and combed her hair. She spread a frayed clean
towel out on the parlor steps and sat down.

"I can't come over unless I have to," she smiled. "You're on an island.
What is it you want?"

"I forgot," he said lamely.

"Oh, you're a goose!"

"It has to dry," he explained. "And I have to watch it."

"And so I do too, is that it? My, what a tyrant you'll make when you're
married!"

David really didn't care what she thought of him just as long as she sat
there. Besides, he did have something to ask her, only he couldn't make up
his mind to venture it. It might be too unpleasant. Still no matter what her
answer would be, no matter what he found out, he was always safe near her.

"Mama, did you ever see anyone dead?"

"You're very cheerful to-day!"

"Then tell me." Now that he had launched himself on this perilous sea,
he was resolved to cross it. "Tell me," he insisted.

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "The twins who died when I was a little
girl I don't remember. My grandmother though, she was the first I really
saw and remember. I was sixteen then."

"Why did she die?"

"I don't know. No one seemed to know."

"Then why did she die?"

"What a dogged questioner you are! I'm sure she had a reason. But do
you want to know what I think?" "Yes!" eagerly.

His mother took a deep breath, lifted a finger to arouse an already
fervent attention. "She was very small, my grandmother, very frail and
delicate. The light came through her hands like the light through a fan.
What has that to do with it? Nothing. But while my grandfather was very
pious, she only pretended to be--just as I pretend, may God forgive us both.
Now long ago, she had a little garden before her house. It was full of sweet
flowers in the summertime, and she tended it all by herself. My grandfather,
stately Jew, could never understand why she should spend a whole spring
morning watering the flowers and plucking off the dead leaves, and
snipping here and patting there, when she had so many servants to do it for
her. You would hardly believe how cheap servants were in those days--my
grandfather had five of them. Yes, he would fret when he saw her working
in the garden and say it was almost irreligious for a Jewess of her rank--
she was rich then remember--the forests hadn't been cut"--

"What forests?"

"I've told you about them--the great forests and the lumber camps. We
were rich while the forests were there. But after they were cut and the
lumber camps moved away, we grew poor. Do you understand? And so my
grandfather would fret when he saw her go dirtying her hands in the soil
like any peasant's wife. But my grandmother would only smile at him--I
can still see her bent over and smiling up at him--and say that since she had
no beautiful beard like his to stroke, what harm could there be in getting a
little dirt on her hands. My grandfather had a beard that turned white early;
he was very proud of it. And once she told him that she was sure the good
Lord would not be angry at her if she did steal a little from Esau's heritage
--the earth and the fields are Esau's heritage--since Esau himself, she said,
was stealing from Isaac on every side--she meant all the new stores that
were being opened by the other gentiles in our town. What could my grand-
father do? He would laugh and call her a serpent. Now wait! Waitl I'm coming
to it." She smiled at his impatience.

"As she grew older, she grew very strange. Shall I tell you what she
used do? When autumn came and everything had died--"

"Died? Everything?" David interrupted her.

"Not everything, little goose. The flowers. When they died she didn't
want to leave the house. Wasn't that strange? She stayed for days and days
in her large living room--it had crystal chandeliers. You wouldn't believe
how quietly she would sit--not seeing the servants, hardly hearing what
was said--and her hands folded in her lap --So. Nor could my grandfather,
though he begged her to come out, ever make her. He even went to ask a
great Rabbi about it--it was no use. Not till the first snow fall, did she
willingly leave the house again."

"Why?"

"Here is the answer. See if you can find it. When I came to visit her
once on a day in late autumn, I found her sitting very quietly, as usual, in
her large arm-chair. But when I was about to take my coat off, she said,
keep it on, Genya, darling, there is mine on the chair in the corner. Will you
get it for me, child?

"Well, I stood still staring at her in surprise. Her coat? I thought. Was
she really of her own accord going out and in Autumn? And then for the
first time I noticed that she was dressed in her prettiest Sabbath clothes--a
dark, shimmering satin--very costly. I can see her yet. And on her head--
she had never let them cut her hair-- she had set a broad round comb with
rows of pearls in it --the first present my grandfather had ever given her. It
was like a pale crown. And so I fetched her coat and helped her put it on.
Where are you going, grandmother? I asked. I was puzzled. In the garden,
she said, in the garden. Well, an old woman must have her way, and into the
garden we went. The day was very grey and full of winds, whirling, strong
winds that could hold the trees down like a hand. Even us it almost blew
about and it was cold. And I said to her, Grandmother, isn't it too cold out
here? Isn't the wind too strong? No, her coat was warm, so she said. And
then she said a very strange thing. Do you remember Petrush Kolonov? I
wasn't sure. A goy, she said, a clod. He worked for your grandfather many
years. He had a neck like a tree once, but he grew old and crooked at last.
And when he grew so old he couldn't lift a faggot, he would sit on a stone
and look at the mountains. This was my grandmother talking, you understand?"

David couldn't quite follow these threads within threads, but nodded.

"Why did he sit?" he asked, afraid that she might stop talking.

She laughed lightly. "That same question has been asked by three
generations. You. Myself. My grandmother. He had been a good drudge this
Petrush, a good ox. And when my grandmother asked him, Petrush, why do
you sit like a keg and stare at the mountains, his only answer was, my teeth
are all gone. And that's the story my grandmother told me while we walked.
You look puzzled," she laughed again.

He was indeed, but she didn't explain.

"And so we walked and the leaves were blowing. Shew-w-w! How they
lifted, and one blew against her coat, and while the wind held it there, you
know, like a finger, she lifted it off and crumbled it. And then she said
suddenly, come let us turn back. And just as we were about to go in she
sighed so that she shivered-- deep--the way one sighs just before sleep--
and she dropped the bits of leaves she was holding and she said, it is wrong
being the way I am. Even a leaf grows dull and old together! Together! You
understand? Oh, she was wise! And we went inside."

His mother stopped, touched the floor to see if it was dry. Then she rose
and went to the stove to push the seething beet soup from where it had been
over the heat of the coals to the cooler end of the stove.

"And now the floor is dry," she smiled, "I'm liberated." But David felt
cheated, even resentful. "You--you haven't told me anything!" he
protested. "You haven't even told me what happened?"

"Haven't I?" She laughed. "There's hardly anything more to tell. She
died the winter of that same year, before the snow fell." She stared at the
rain beating against the window. Her face sobered. The last wink of her
eyelids before she spoke was the slowest. "She looked so frail in death, in
her shroud--how shall I tell you, my son? Like early winter snow. And I
thought to myself even then, let me look deeply into her face for surely she
will melt before my eyes." She smiled again. "Have I told you enough now?"

He nodded. Without knowing why, her last words stirred him. What he
had failed to grasp as thought, her last gesture, the last supple huskiness of
her voice conveyed. Was it in his heart this dreamlike fugitive sadness
dwelled, or did it steep the feathery air of the kitchen? He could not tell. But
if only the air were always this way, and he always here alone with his
mother. He was near her now. He was part of her. The rain outside the
window set continual seals upon their isolation, upon their intimacy, their
identity. When she lifted the stove lid, the rosy glow that stained her wide
brow warmed his own body as well. He was near her. He was part of her.
Oh, it was good being here. He watched her every movement hungrily.
She threw a new white table cloth over the table. It hovered like a cloud
in air and settled slowly. Then she took down from the shelf three brass
candlesticks and placed them in the center of whiteness, then planted
candles into each brass cup.

"Mama."

"Yes?"

"What do they do when they die?"

"What?" she repeated. "They are cold; they are still. They shut their
eyes in sleep eternal years."

Eternal years. The words echoed in his mind. Raptly, he turned them
over and over as though they had a lustre and shape of their own. Eternal
years.

His mother set the table. Knives ringing faintly, forks, spoons, side by
side. The salt shaker, secret little vessel of dull silver, the pepper, greyish
brown eye in the shallow glass, the enameled sugar bowl, headless shoulders of
silver tongs leaning above the rim.

"Mama, what are eternal years?"

His mother sighed somewhat desperately, lifted her eyes a moment then
dropped them to the table, her gaze wandered thoughtfully over the dishes
and silverware. Then her eyes brightened. Reaching toward the sugar bowl
she lifted out the tongs, carefully pinched a cube of sugar, and held it up
before his eyes.

"This is how wide my brain can stretch," she said banteringly. "You
see? No wider. Would you ask me to pick up a frozen sea with these
narrow things? Not even the ice-man could do it." She dropped the tongs
back into the bowl. "The sea to this--"

"But--" David interrupted, horrified and bewildered. "But when do
they wake up, mama?"

She opened her two palms in a gesture of emptiness. "There is nothing
left to waken."

"But sometime, mama," he urged.

She shook her head.

"But sometime."

"Not here, if anywhere. They say there is a heaven and in heaven they
waken. But I myself do not believe it. May God forgive me for telling you
this. But it's all I know. I know only that they are buried in the dark
earth and their names last a few more lifetimes on their gravestones."
The dark. In the dark earth. Eternal years. It was a terrible revelation.
He stared at her fixedly. Picking up a cloth that lay on the washtub, she
went to the oven, flipped the door open, drew out a pan. The warmth and
odor of new bread entered his being as through a rigid haze of vision. She
spread out a napkin near the candlesticks, lifted the bread out of the pan
and placed it on the square of linen.

"I still have the candles to light," she murmured sitting down, "and my
work is done. I don't know why they made Friday so difficult a day for
women."

--Dark. In the grave. Eternal years . . .

Rain in brief gusts seething at the window . . . The clock ticked too
briskly. No, never. It wasn't sometime . .. In the dark.

Slowly the last belated light raveled into dusk. Across the short space of
the kitchen, his mother's face trembled as if under sea, grew blurred.
Flecks, intricate as foam, swirled in the churning dark--

--Like popcorn blowing in that big window in that big candystore.
Blowing and settling. That day. Long ago.

His gaze followed the aimless flux of light that whirled and flickered in
the room, troubling the outline of door and table.

--Snow it was, grey snow. Tiny bits of paper, floating from the window,
that day. Confetti, a boy said. Confetti, he said. They threw it down on those
two who were going to be married. The man in the tall, black shiny hat,
hurrying. The lady in white laughing, leaning against him, dodging the
confetti, winking it out of her eyes. Carriages waiting. Confetti on the step,
on the horses. Funny. Then they got inside, both laughing. Confetti. Carriages.

--Carriages!

--The same!

--This afternoon! When the box came out! Carriages.

--Same!

--Carriages--!

"Dear God!" exclaimed his mother. "You startled me! What makes you
leap that way in your chair? This is the second time today!"

"They were the same," he said in a voice of awe. It was solved now. He
saw it clearly. Everything belonged to the same dark. Confetti and coffins.

"What were the same?"

"The carriages!"

"Oh, child!" she cried with amused desperation. "God alone knows
what you're dreaming about now!" She rose from her chair, went over to
the wall where the matchbox hung, "I had better light these candles before
you see an angel."

The match rasped on the sandpaper, flared up, making David aware of
how dark it had become.

One by one she lit the candles. The flame crept tipsily up the wick,
steadied, mellowed the steadfast brass below, glowed on each knot of the
crisp golden braid of the bread on the napkin. Twilight vanished, the kit-
chen gleamed. Day that had begun in labor and disquiet, blossomed now in
candlelight and sabbath.

With a little, deprecating laugh, his mother stood before the candles, and
bowing her head before them, murmured through the hands she spread before
her face the ancient prayer for the Sabbath . ..

The hushed hour, the hour of tawny beatitude . . .



X



HIS mother rose, lit the gas lamp. Sudden, blue light condensed the
candle flames to irrelevant kernels of yellow. He eyed them sadly, wishing
that she hadn't lit the lamp.

"They will be coming soon," she said.

They! He started in dismay. They were coming! Luter. His father. They!
Oh! The lull of peace was over. He could feel dread rising within him like a
cloud--as though his mother's words had been a stone flung on dusty
ground. The hush and the joy were leaving him! Why did Luter have to
come? David would be ashamed to look at him, could not look at him. Even
thinking of Luter made him feel as he felt that day in school when the boy
in the next seat picked his nose and rolled the snot between his fingers, then
peered round with a vacant grin and wiped it off under the seat. It made his
toes curl in disgust. He shouldn't have seen him, shouldn't have known.
"Is Mr. Luter going to come here too?"

"Of course." She turned to look at him. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I just thought--I--I thought maybe he didn't like the
way you cooked."

"The way I--? Oh! I see!" She reddened faintly. "I didn't know you
could remember so well." She looked about as though she had forgotten
something and then went up the stairs into the frontroom.

He stared out of the window into the dark. Rain still beat down. They
must be hurrying toward him now in the rain, hurrying because it was
raining. If only he could get away before they came, hide till Luter was
gone, never come back till Luter had gone away forever. How could he go?
He caught his breath. If he ran away now before his mother came back--
stole out through the door silently. Like that! Opened the door, crept down
the stairs. The cellar! Run by and run away, leaving upstairs an empty
kitchen. She would look about, under the table, in the hall; she would call--
David! David! Where are you? David! He'd be gone--

In the frontroom, the sound of a window opening, shutting again. His
mother came in, bearing a grey covered pot between her hands. Rain drops
on its sides, water in the hollow of the lid.

"A fearful night." She emptied the overflowing lid into the sink. "The
fish is frozen."

Too late now.

He must stay here now, till the end, till Luter had come and gone. But
perhaps his mother was wrong and perhaps Luter wouldn't come, if only he
never came again. Why should he come here again? He was here yesterday
and there was nobody home. Don't come here, his mind whispered to itself
again and again. Please, Mr. Luter, don't come here! Don't come here any
more.

The minutes passed, and just at that moment when it seemed to David
that he had forgotten about Luter, the familiar tread of feet scraped through
the hallway below. Voices on the stair! Luter had come. With one look at his
mother's pursed, attentive face, he sidled toward the frontroom, sneaked up
the stairs and into the dark. He stood at the window, listening to the sounds
behind him. The door was opened. He heard their greetings, Luter's voice
and slow speech. They must be taking their coats off now. If only they
would forget about him. If only it were possible. But--

"Where's the prayer?" he heard his father ask.

A pause and his mother's voice. "He's in the frontroom I think. David!"

"Yes, mama." A wave of anger and frustration shook him.

"He's there."

Satisfied that he was there, they seemed to forget him for a little while,
but again his father and this time with the dangerous accent of annoyance.
"Well, why doesn't he come in? David!"

There could be no more delay. He must go in. Eyes fixed before his feet,
he came out of the frontroom, shuffled to his seat and sat down, conscious
all the time that the others were gazing at him curiously.

"What's the matter with him?" asked his father sharply. "I don't quite
know. Perhaps his stomach. He has eaten very little today."

"Well, he'll eat now," said his father warningly. "You feed him too
many trifles."

"A doubtful stomach is a sad thing," said Luter condoningly, and David
hated him for his sympathy.

"Ach," exclaimed his father, "it isn't his stomach, Joe, it's his palate--
jaded with delicacies."

His mother set the soup before him. "This will taste good," she coaxed.
He dared not refuse, though the very thought of eating sickened him.
Steeling himself against the first mouthful, he dipped the spoon into the
shimmering red liquid, lifted it to his lips. Instead of reaching his mouth,
the spoon reached only his chin, struck against the hollow under his lower
lip, scalded it, fell from his nerveless fingers into the plate. A red fountain
splashed out in all directions, staining his blouse, staining the white table
cloth. With a feeling of terror David watched the crimson splotches on the
cloth widen till they met each other.

His father lowered his spoon angrily into his plate. "Lame as a Turk!"
he snapped, rapping the table with his knuckles. "Will you lift your head, or
do you want that in the plate too?"

He raised frightened eyes. Luter glanced at him side-wise, sucking his
teeth in wary disapproval.

"It's nothing!" exclaimed his mother comfortingly. "That's what table
cloths were made for."

‘To splash soup on, eh?" retorted her husband sarcastically. "And that's
what shirts were made for too! Very fine. Why not the whole plate while
he's at it." Luter chuckled.

Without answering, his mother reached over and stroked his brow with
her palm. "Go on and eat, child." "What are you doing now," demanded his
father, "sounding his brow for fever? Child! There's absolutely nothing
wrong with the brat, except your pampering him!" He shook his finger at
David ominously. "Now you swill your soup like a man, or I'll ladle you
out something else instead."

David whimpered, eyed his plate in cowed rebellion. "Take heed!"

"Perhaps he had better not eat," interposed his mother. "Don't inter-
fere." And to David, "Are you going to eat?" Trembling, and almost on
the verge of nausea, David picked up the spoon and forcing himself, ate.
The sickening spasm passed.

Impatiently, his father turned to Luter. "What were you saying, Joe?"

"I was saying," said Luter in his slow voice, "that you would have to
lock up the place after you left--only one door, you see. The rest I will
close before I go." He reached into his coat pocket and drawing out a ring
of keys, detached one. "This one closes it. And I'll tell you," he handed the
key to David's father. "I'm putting it down as four hours. The whole job
won't take you more than two--three at most."

"I see."

"You won't get the extra this week though. The bookkeeper--"

"Next week then."

Luter cleared his throat. "You're having one diner less tomorrow
evening," he said to David's mother.

"Yes?" she asked in constrained surprise, and turning to David's father,

"Will you be so late, Albert?"

"Not I."

"No, not Albert," chuckled Luter, "I."

David's heart leaped in secret joy.

"Then I shan't prepare dinner for you tomorrow night?" "No, I have
something to do tomorrow night," he said vaguely. "Sunday perhaps. No,
I'll tell you. If I'm not here by seven o'clock Sunday, don't keep the
dinner waiting for me."

"Very well."

"I'll pay for the week in full anyhow."

"If you're not coming--" she objected.

"Oh, that doesn't matter," said Luter, "that's settled." He nodded and
picked up his spoon.

During the rest of the meal, David ate cautiously peering up furtively
from time to time to see whether anything he did was displeasing his father.
At Luter, he never ventured a glance for fear the very sight of the man
would confuse him into further blunders. By the time his mother set the
dessert before him, he was already casting about for some way to retreat,
some place where he could hide and yet be thought present, or at least, be
accounted for. He might feign drowsiness and his mother would put him to
bed, but he could not do that now. It was too early. What would he do till
then? Where could he escape for a little while? The rooms of the house
passed before his mind. The frontroom? His father would say, "What is he
doing in there in the dark?" The bedroom? No. His father would say the
same thing. Where? The bathroom. Yes! He would sit on the toilet seat.
Stay there till he heard some one call, then come out.

He had eaten the last prune, and was just about to slip from his chair
when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Luter's hand move toward his
vest-pocket and draw out his watch.

"I must go!" He smacked his lips.

He was going! David could have danced for joy. It was too good to be
true!

"So soon?" asked his mother.

To David's surprise, his father laughed, and a moment later Luter joined
him as if they shared some secret joke.

"I'm somewhat late as it is." Luter pushed his chair back and rose. "But
first I must pay you."

David stared at his plate, listening. He could think of only one thing--
Luter was going, would be gone in another minute. He glanced up. His
father had just gone into the bedroom and in the moment of his absence
Luter darted quick eyes at his mother. David shivered with revulsion and
hastily looked down. Taking the coat which David's father had just brought
out, Luter got into it, and David with all the forces of his mind, tried to
hasten the feet that were moving toward the door.

"Well," Luter finally said, "a good week to you all. May the prayer," his
hat pointed at David, "recover soon."

"Thank you," said his mother. "Good week."

"Lift your head," snapped his father. David hastily looked up.

"Goodnight, Joe, I'll see you to-morrow. Good luck." Both men laughed.

"Good night." Luter went out.

With a quiet sigh of relief David uncurled from the tense, inner crouch
his body seemed to have assumed, and looking about saw his father gazing
at the door. His face had relaxed into a bare smile.

"He's looking for trouble," he said dryly.

"What do you mean?"

His father uttered an amused snort. "Didn't you notice how peculiarly
he behaved tonight?"

"I did--" she hesitated, watching his face inquiringly-- "at least--
Why?"

He turned to her; her eyes swerved back to the dishes. "Didn't you
notice how embarrassed he was?"

"No. Well. Perhaps."

"Then you don't notice very much," he chuckled shortly. "He's off to a
marriage-broker."

"Oh!" Her brow cleared.

"Yes. It's a secret. You understand? You know nothing about it."

"I understand," she smiled faintly.

"He's free as air, and he's looking for a stone around his neck."

"Perhaps he does need a wife," she reminded him. "I mean I have often
heard him say he wanted a home and children."

"Ach, children! Fresh grief! It isn't children he's looking for, it's a little
money. He wants to open a shop of his own. At least that's what he says."

"I thought you said he was looking for troubles?" she laughed.

"Certainly! He's hurrying things too much. If he waited a few more
years he'd have enough money of his own to set up a shop--without a wife.
Wait! I said to him.

Wait! No, he said. I need a thousand. I want a big place four or five
presses. But he'll find out what a Yiddish thousand is. If it melts no further
than five hundred the morning after he ducked under the canopy, let none
call him unfortunate." He belched quietly, the adam's apple on his neck
jogging, and then looked around with knit brows as though seeking
something.

"I heard him ask you to close up the shop," she inquired.

"Yes, he's giving me a little overtime. I won't be home till four or five
--perhaps later. Bah!" he burst out impatiently, "The man makes eighteen
dollars a week-six more than I do--and he itches to pawn himself to a
wife." He paused, looked about again--"Where's The Tageblatt?"

His wife looked up startled. "The Tageblatt", she repeated in dismay,
"Oh, where are my wits, I've forgotten to buy it. The rain! I put it off."

He scowled.

Noisily setting the dishes down in the sink, she wiped her hands on a
towel. "I'll be only a minute."

"Where are you going?"

"My shawl."

"What's the matter with him, hasn't he feet?"

"But I can do it so much more quickly."

"That's the whole trouble with you," he said curtly. "You do everything
for him. Let him go down."

"But it's wet out, Albert."

His face darkened, "Let him go down," he repeated. "Is it any wonder
he won't eat. He moulders in the house all day! Get your coat on." His head
jerked sharply. "Shudder when I speak to you."

David sprang from his seat, gazed apprehensively at his mother.

"Oh," she protested, "why do you--"

"Be still! Well?"

"Very well," she said, annoyed yet resigned, "I'll get him his coat."

She brought his coat out of the bedroom and helped him into it, his
father meanwhile standing above them and muttering, as he always did, that
he was big enough to fetch and get into his clothes by himself. Uneasily he
tried to take his rubbers from her, but she insisted on helping him.

"It's two cents," she gave him a dime. "Here is ten. Ask for The
Tageblatt and wait till they give you change."

"Eight cents change," his father admonished. "And don't forget The
Tageblatt."

As David went out, his mother trailed behind him into the hall.

"Are you going down with him too?" his father inquired.

But without making a reply, she leaned over David and whispered.

"Hurry down! I'll wait!" And aloud as if giving him the last instruction.

"The candy store on the corner."

David went down as quickly as he could. The cellar door was brown in
the gaslight. The raw night air met him at the end of the doorway. He went
out. Rain, seen only where it blurred the distant lamps, still fell, seeking
his face and the nape of his neck with icy fingers. The candy store window
glimmered near the corner. His breath an evanescent plume, he hurried
toward it, splashing in hidden puddles, his toes curling down against the
rising chill. The streets were frightening, seen in loneliness this way, rain
swept, dark and deserted.

He didn't like his father. He never would like him. He hated him.

The candy store at last. He opened the door, hearing overhead the
familiar tinny jangle of the bell. Gnawing a frayed chicken bone the half
grown son of the storekeeper came out of the back.

"Waddayuh want?"

"De Tageblatt."

The boy lifted a newspaper out of a small pile on the counter, handed it
to David, who having taken it, turned to go.

"Where's your money?" demanded the boy impatiently.

"Oh, hea." David reached up and handed over the dime that he had been
clutching in his hand all this time.

Clamping the bone between his teeth the boy made change and returned
it, greasy fingers greasing the coins.

He went out, hurried toward the house. Walking was too slow; his
mother would be waiting. He began to run. He had only taken a few strides
forward when his foot suddenly landed on something that was not
pavement. The sound of hollow iron warned him too late-- A coal-chute
cover. He slipped. With a gasp, he teetered in air, striving, clawing for a
moment at a void, and then pitched forward, sprawling in the icy slush.
Money and newspaper flew from his bands and now lay scattered in the
dark. Frightened, knees and stockings soaked, he pushed himself to his
feet, and began wildly looking about for what he had dropped.

He found the newspaper--sopping. Then a penny. More, there was more.
He peered frantically in the dark. Another penny. Two cents now. But
he had eight before. He plunged his hand here, there into the numbing
snow, felt along the rough pavement, retraced, groped. Further ahead! Back!
Nothing. Beside the curb maybe! Nothing. He would never find it. Never!
He burst into tears, ran toward the house, careless now whether he fell or
not. It would be better for him if he fell now, if he were hurt. Sobbing,
he entered the hallway. He heard a door open upstairs, and his mother's
voice at the top of the stairs.

"Child, I'm here."

He climbed up.

"What is it? What is it? Why, you're soaked through!" She led him in.

"I lost the money." He wailed. "I only have two-- two cents."

His father was staring at him angrily, "You've lost it, have you? I had a
feeling you would. Paid yourself for your errand, have you?"

"I fell in the snow," he sobbed.

"It's all right," said his mother gently, taking the newspaper and the
money away from him. "It's all right."

"Al1 right? Will everything he does be all right always? How long will
you tell him that?" His father snatched the paper from her. "Why, it's
wringing wet. A handy young man, my son!"

His mother took his coat off. "Come sit near the stove."

"Indulge him! Indulge him!" her husband muttered wrathfully and flung
himself into a chair. "Look at that paper!" He slapped it open on the table.
"My way would be a few sound cuffs."

"He couldn't help it," she interposed placatingly. "It's very slippery and
he fell."

"Bah! He couldn't help it! That's all I ever hear from you! He has a
downright gift for stumbling into every black moment of the year. At night
he breaks one's sleep with a squalling about dreams. A little while ago he
flings his spoon into his soup. Now--six cents thrown away." He slapped
his hand on the paper. ‘Two cents ruined. Who can read it! Beware!" he
shook a menacing finger at David who cowered against his mother's side.
‘There's a good beating in store for you! I warn you! It's been gathering
for years."

"Albert," said his wife reddening, "you are a man without a heart."

"I?" His father drew back, his nostrils curving out in anger. "A plague
on you both--I have no heart? And have you any understanding, any
knowledge of how to bring up a child?" He thrust his jaw forward.
A moment of silence followed and then "I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't
mean it. I meant only--these things happen sometimes--I'm sorry!"

"Oh, you're sorry," he said bitterly. "I have no heart! Woe me, to labor
as I labor, for food for the two of you and for a roof over your heads. To
labor and to work overtime! In vain! I have no heart! As if I gorged myself
upon my earnings, as if I drank them, wallowed in the streets. Have you
ever gone without anything? Tell me!"

"No! No!"

"Well?"

"I meant only that you didn't see the child all day as I did--naturally
you don't know when anything is wrong with him."

"I see enough of him when I see him. And I know better than you what
medicine he needs most."

His mother was silent.

"You'll be saying he needs a doctor next."

"Perhaps he--"

But someone was knocking at the door. She stopped speaking, went
over and opened it--Yussie came in; he held a wooden clothes-hanger in
his hand.

"My mother wants you to go upstairs," he said in Yiddish.

David's mother shook her head impatiently.

"Have you taken to gadding about?" asked her husband disgustedly.

"Only a few days ago, you had no neighbors at all."

"I've only been there once," she said apologetically. And to Yussie,
"Tell your mother I can't come up just now."

"She's waiting for you," he answered without stirring. "She's got a new
dress to show you."

"Not now."

"I ain' goin' op," Yussie switched into English as if to avoid any further
discussion. "I'm gonna stay hea." And apparently satisfied that his mission
had been performed, he approached the uneasy David who was still seated
beside the stove. "See wot I got--a bow 'n' arrer." He brandished the
clothes hanger.

"I'll have to go for just a minute," she said hesitantly. "This child--
she'll be wondering--"

"Go! Go!" said her husband sullenly. "Am I stopping you?" He picked
up the newspaper, plucked a match from the match-box and then stalked up
into the frontroom and slammed the door behind him. David heard him
fling himself down upon the couch.

"I'll be back in a minute," said his mother wearily, and casting a hopeless
glance after her husband, went out.

"Aintcha gonna play?" asked Yussie after a pause.

"I don' wanna," he answered morosely.

"W'yncha wanna?"

"Cause I don' wanna." He eyed the clothes hanger with disgust. It had
been upstairs in a closet; it was tainted.

"Aaa, c'mon!" And when David refused to be persuaded, "Den I'm
gonna shootchuh!" he threatened. "Yuh wanna see me?" He lifted the
clothes hanger, pulled back an imaginary string. "Bing! I'm an Innian.
If you don' have a bow 'n' arrer, I c'n kill yuh. Bang!" Another shaft
flew.

"Right innee eye. Wyntcha wanna play?"

"I don' wanna."

"Wyntcha get a bow 'n' arrer?"

"Lemme alone!"

"I'm gonna shootchuh again den," he dropped to the floor. "Bing! Dot
one went right inside. Yuh dead!" "Go 'way!"

"I don' wanna go 'way," he had become cross. "I'm gonna shootcha all
I wan'. Yuh a cowid."

David was silent. He was beginning to tremble.

"I c'n even hitcha wit my hatchet," continued Yussie. "Yuh a cowid."

He crawled up defiantly. "Wanna see me hitcha wit my hatchet?" He had
grasped the clothes hanger at one end, "Yuh dare me?"

"Get otta here!" hissed David frantically. "Go in yuh own house!"

"I don' wanna," said Yussie truculently. "I c'n fight-choo. Wanna see
me?" He drew back his arm, "Bing!" The point of the clothes hanger struck
David in the knee, sending a flash of pain through his whole leg. He cried
out. The next moment, he had kicked at Yussie's face with all the force in
his leg.

Yussie fell forward on his hands. He opened his mouth, but uttered no
sound. Instead his eyes bulged as if he were strangling, and to David's
horror the blood began to trickle from under his pinched white nostrils. For
moments that seemed years of agony the blood slowly branched above his
lip. He stood that way tranced and rigid. Suddenly he sucked in his breath,
the sound was flat, sudden, like the sound of a stone falling into water. With
terrified care, he reached up his hand to touch the scarlet bead hanging from
his lips, and when he beheld the red smear on his finger tips, his face
knitted with fright, and he threw back his head, and uttered the most
piercing scream that David had ever heard. So piercing was it that David
could feel his own throat contract as though the scream were splitting from
his own body and he were trying to stifle it. With the awful realization that
his father was in the next room, he sprang to his feet.

"Here, Yussie," he cried frenziedly, trying to force the clothes hanger
into his hands. "Here, hit me Yussie. G'wan hit me Yussie!" And striking
himself a sharp blow on the brow, "Look, Yussie, you hoited me. Ow!"
But to no avail. Once more Yussie screamed. And now David knew he
was lost.

"Mama!" he moaned in terror. "Mama!" And turned toward the frontroom
door as if toward doom.

It opened. His father glared at them in angry surprise.

Then his features grew taut when his eyes fixed on Yussie. His nostrils
broadened and grew pale.

"What have you done?" His voice was deliberate and incredulous.

"I--I--" David stammered, shrunken with fear.

"He kicked me right in duh nose!" Yussie howled.

Never taking his blazing eyes from David, his father came down the
parlor stairs. "What?" he ground, towering above him. "Speak!" Slowly his
arm swung toward the sobbing Yussie; it was like a dial measuring his
gathering wrath. "Tell me did you do this?" With every word he uttered his
lips became thinner and more rigid. His face to David seemed slowly to
recede, but recede without diminishing, growing more livid with distance, a
white flame bodiless. In the molten features, only the vein upon his brow
was clear, pulsing like a dark levin.

Who could bear the white heat of those features? Terror numbed his
throat. He gagged. His head waited for his eyes to lower, his eyes for
his head. He quivered, and in quivering wrenched free of that awful gaze.

"Answer me!"

Answer me, his words rang out. Answer me, but they meant, Despair!
Who could answer his father? In that dread summons the judgement was
already sealed. Like a cornered thing, he shrank within himself, deadened
his mind because the body would not deaden and waited. Nothing existed
any longer except his father's right hand --the hand that hung down into
the electric circle of his vision. Terrific clarity was given him. Terrific
leisure. Transfixed, timeless, he studied the curling fingers that twitched
spasmodically, studied the printer's ink ingrained upon the finger tips,
pondered, as if all there were in the world, the nail of the smallest finger,
nipped by a press, that climbed in a jagged little stair to the hangnail.
Terrific absorption.

The hammer in that hand when he stood! The hammer!

Suddenly he cringed. His eyelids blotted out the light like a shutter. The
open hand struck him full against the cheek and temple, splintering the
brain into fragments of light Spheres, mercuric, splattered, condensed and
roared. He fell to the floor. The next moment his father had snatched up the
clothes hanger, and in that awful pause before it descended upon his
shoulders, he saw with that accelerated vision of agony, how mute and open
mouthed Yussie stood now, with what useless silence.

"You won't answer!" The voice that snarled was the voice of the clothes
hanger biting like flame into his flesh. "A curse on your vicious heart! Wild
beast! Here, then! Here! Here! Now I'll tame you! I've a free hand now! I
warned you! I warned you! Would you heed!" The chopping strokes of the
clothes hanger flayed his wrists, his hands, his back, his breast. There
was always a place for it to land no matter where he ducked or writhed or
groveled. He screamed, screamed, and still the blows fell.

"Please papa! Please! No more! No morel Darling papa! Darling papa!"

He knew that in another moment he would thrust his head beneath that rain
of blows. Anguish! Anguish! He must escape!

"Now bawl!" the voice raged. "Now scream! But I pleaded with you!
Pleaded as I would with death! You were stubborn were you! Silent were
you! Secret--"

The door was thrown open. With a wild cry, his mother rushed in, flung
herself between them.

"Mama!" he screamed, clutching at her dress. "Mama!" "Oh, God!" she
cried in terror and swooped him into her arms. "Stop! Stop! Albert! What
have you done to him!"

"Let him go!" he snarled. "Let him go I tell you!" "Mama!" David
clung to her frenziedly. "Don't let him! Don't let him!"

"With that!" she screamed hoarsely, trying to snatch the clothes hanger
from him. "With that to strike a child. Woe to you! Heart of stone! how
could you!"

"I haven't struck him before!" The voice was strangled. "What I did he
deserved! You've been protecting him from me long enough! It's been
coming to him for a long time!"

"Your only son!" she wailed, pressing David convulsively to her. "Your
only son!"

"Don't tell me that! I don't want to hear it! He's no son of mine! Would
he were dead at my feet!"

"Oh, David, David beloved!" In her anguish over her child, she seemed
to forget everyone else, even her husband. "What has he done to you! Hush!
Hush!" She brushed his tears away with frantic hand, sat down and rocked
him back and forth. "Hush, my beloved! My beautiful! Oh, look at his
hand!"

"I'm harboring a fiend!" the implacable voice raged. "A butcher! And
you're protecting him! Those hands of his will beat me yet! I know! My
blood warns me of this son! This son! Look at this child! Look what he's
done! He'll shed human blood like water!"

"You're stark, raving mad!" She turned upon him angrily. "The butcher
is yourself! I'll tell you that to your face! Where he's in danger I won't
yield, do you understand? With everything else have your way, but not with
him!"

"Hanh! you have your reasons! But I'll beat him while I can."

"You won't touch him!"

"No? We'll see about that!"

"You won't touch him, do you hear?" Her voice had become as quiet and
as menacing as a trigger that, locked and at rest, held back by a hair
incredible will, incredible passion. "Never!"

"You tell me that?" His voice seemed amazed. "Do you know to whom
you speak?"

"It doesn't matter! And now leave us!"

"I?" Again that immense surprise. As though one had dared to question
a volcanic and incalculable force, and by questioning made it question
itself. "To me? You speak to me?"

"To you. Indeed to you. Go out. Or I shall go."

"You?"

"Yes, both of us."

With terrified, tear-blurred eyes, David watched his father's body shake
as if some awful strife were going on within him, saw his head lunge
forward, his mouth open to speak, once, again, then grow pale and twitch,
and finally he turned without a word and stumbled up the parlor steps.
His mother sat for a moment without moving, then quivered and burst
into tears, but brushed them off.

Yussie was still standing there, mute and frightened, his blood smeared
over his chin.

"Sit there a moment." She rose and set David on a chair. "Come here
you poor child," she said to Yussie. "He kicked me righd on de nose!"
"Hush!" She led Yussie to the sink, and wiped his face with the end of a
wet towel. "There, now you feel better." And wetting the towel again, came
over to David and set him on her lap.

"He hit me first."

"Now hush! We won't say anything more about it." She patted the lacerated
wrist with the cold towel. "Oh! my child!" she moaned biting her lips.

"I wanna go opstai's," blubbered Yussie. "I'm gonna tell my modder on
you." He snatched up the clothes hanger from the floor. "Waid'll I tell
my modder on you, yuh gonna gid it!" He flung the door open and ran out
bawling.

His mother, sighing painfully, shut the door after him, and began
undoing David's shirt. There were angry red marks on his breast and
shoulders. She touched them. He whimpered with pain.

"Hush!" she murmured again and again. "I know. I know, beloved."

She undressed him, fetched his nightgown and slipped it over him. The
cold air on bis bruises had stiffened his shoulders and hands. He moved
stiffly, whimpering.

"It really hurts now, doesn't it?" she asked.

"Yes." He felt himself wanting to sniffle.

"Poor darling, let me put you to bed." She set him on his feet.

"I have to go now. Numbuh one."

"Yes."

She led him into the bathroom, lifted the toilet-seat. Urination was
painful, affording relief only as a mournful sigh affords relief. His whole
body shuddered as his bladder relaxed. A new sense of shyness invaded
him; he crept furtively around to stand with his back to her, contracted
when she pulled the chain above his head. He went out into the bright
kitchen again, into the dark bedroom, and got into bed. There was a
lingering, weary sadness in the first chill of the covers.

"And now sleep," she urged, bending down and kissing him. "And a
better day."

"Stay here."

"Yes. Of course." She sat down and gave him her hand.

He curled his fingers around her thumb and lay staring up at her, his
eyes drawing her features out of deep shadow. From time to time a sudden
gasp would shake him, as though the waves of grief and pain had run his
being's length and were returning now from some remote shore.



XI



DECEMBER sunlight, porous and cloudy, molten on upper window panes.
Though it was still early in the afternoon, the tide of cold shade had
risen high on wooden houses and brick. Grey clots of snow still clung under
the lee of the battered curb. The air was cold yet windless. Winter. To the
left of the doorway a sewer steamed.

Noises to the right. He peered out. Before the tailor shop near the
corner, a cluster of boys had gathered. Did he dare go over? What if Yussie
were among them? He tried to find him. No, he wasn't there. Then he could
go over for a little while. He'd come back before Yussie came. Yes.
He drew near, warily. That was Sidney, Yonk. He knew them. The others?
They lived around the corner maybe.

Sidney was in front; the rest followed him. David stood watching them.
"Wanna play?" Sidney asked.

"Yea."

"So git back of de line. Foller de leader. Boom! Booml Boom!" He set
the pace.

David fell into step behind the last boy. They marched cross the street in
single file and stopped before a tall hydrant

"Jump on Johnny Pump!" commanded Sidney leaping up on the two
stumpy arms of the fire-plug. "One two t'ree! Yee!" He jumped off.
In their turn, the rest leaped up, and then ran after him, shouting. Sidney
zig-zagged back and forth across the street, lurching against ash-cans,
leaping up and down stoops, stepping only on lines in the pavement, and
obeying every stray whim that drifted through his head. David liked the
game.

Arrived at the barber-pole, Sidney waited for his breathless cohorts to
draw up.

"Follow de blue one," he ordered, and beginning at the bottom of the
blue spiral, wound around and round the pole until he stood tiptoe and the
band he traced was beyond his reach. When the others had accomplished
this feat, he crouched down, crept under the corbel of the barber-shop
window, and when he reached the end, poked his head into the doorway and
chanted in a croaking voice: "Chickee de cop, behin, de rock. De monkey's
in de ba'ba shop!" And he fled.

The rest squealed the words as he had done, but with increasing haste
and diminishing lustiness and sped after him. By the time David's turn had
come, the barber was already at the threshold fuming with irritation. David
mutely skirted the doorway and scurried on.

"He didn' say it!" they jeered.

"Sca'cat w'yntcha say it?" Sidney rebuked him.

"I couldn't," he grinned apologetically. "He wuz stan-nin' dere
awreddy."

"Foller de leader nex' time!" Sidney warned him.

Chagrined, David resolved to do better, and thereafter followed faithful-
ly all his leader's antics, not even balking at running up and down the
wooden stairs that led into the ice-man's cellar.

The game had reached a high peak of excitement. The boy immediately
preceding David had just rolled over the lower of two railings before the
tailor's shop, and now it was David's turn. He grasped the bar, leaned
against it, as the rest had done, and began a slow and cautious spin about
it. In that strange moment of chaos when house-top and sky hung upside down
and the others seemed standing on their heads in air, the inverted face of
a man passed through and revolved with the revolving space. A glimpse of
black pits, his nostrils, fat cheeks under the rim of his derby, all moving
below legs. "Funny," he thought as the soles of his feet landed on the
pavement again. "Upside down like that. Funny."

He glanced casually after the retreating figure.

Right side up now like everybody else. But--Wide shoulders, grey coat.
That derby. That was--he struggled against the ineluctable recognition. No!
No! Not him! But he walked like . . . His hands in his pockets. It was! It
was!--

"Hey, c'mon!" Sidney called out impatiently.

But never budging, David stared straight forward. Now the man turned
to cross the street, his face in profile.

It was! It was Luter! He was going to his house.

"Waddayuh lookin' at?" Sidney was provoked. "Doncha wanna play?"

David wrenched himself from his trace. "Yea! Yea! Sure I wanna play."

He ran into his place in the rank, but a moment later forgot where he
was and gazed toward his house in terror. Luter had reached the doorway
now, was going in, was gone.

That game now. Oh! That game now! No! No! Foller de leader! Play!

"Hurry up!" said Sidney, "It's your chanst."

David looked at him blankly. "W'a wuz yuh doin', I didn' see."

"Aaa!" Disgustedly. "Jump down 'em two steps."

David climbed up, jumped down, landed with a jarring thud, and
followed after.

He knew it! He knew it! That's why he had come. That game! He was
going to make her play now. Like Annie. In the closet!...

"Hey, you ain' gonna play, dat's all!"

David started guiltily to see the rest waiting for him again.

"Don' led 'im play, Sid." They turned on him.

"He ain' even follerin'."

"Yuh big dope, yuh can' even do nuttin'."

"Gid odda hea."

A sudden shout and then the patter of running feet distracted them. They
looked to see who it was.

"Hey give us a game!"

It was Yussie, heading toward them. At the sight of him, David began
edging away, but Yussie had already spied him.

"Yee!" he squealed delightedly, "Wadda lickin' you god!"

"Who god?" Sidney asked.

"He god!" He pointed to David. "Hey, Sidney, you shoulda see! Bing!
his fodder wend. Bang! An' he laid down, an' he wen' Yow!"

The others began to laugh.

"Ow!" Yussie capered about for their further benefit. "Please, papa,
lemme go! Ooh lemme go! Bangl Annudder smack he gabe 'im. Right inne
ass!"

"Wad 'e hitcha fuh?" They circled about him.

"He hid 'im becuz he kicked me righd inna nose," crowed Yussie.
"Right over hea, an' made blood."

"Yuh led 'im gid away wid it?"

"I ain' gonna," growled Yussie waiting for further encouragement.
"Gib'm a fighd, Yussie!" They raised an eager cry. "G'wan Yussie,
bust'm one!"

"Righd inna puss!"

At the sight of David backing away, Yussie doubled his fists and
screwed up his face pugnaciously. "C'mon, I'll fightcha."

"G'wan, yuh big cowid!" they taunted.

"I don' wanna fighd," he whimpered, looking about for a way of retreat.
There was none. They had completely encircled him.

"Don' led 'im ged away, Yussie! Give 'im two, four, sue, nine!"

Egged on, Yussie began hammering his shoulders. ‘Two, four, six, nine,
I c'n beatchoo any old time!"

His fists struck the separate cores of yesterday's bruises. The places
where the clothes-hanger had landed rayed out in pain. Tears sprang to his
eyes. He cowered.

"He's cryin'!" they jeered.

"Look ad 'im cryin'."

"Waaa!"

"Cry baby, cry baby suck yer mudder's tiddy!" one of them began. "Cry
baby, cry baby, suck yer mudder's tiddy." The rest took up the burden.
The tears streaming down his face, David groped his way blindly through
them. They opened a gap to let him pass and then followed him still
chanting.

"Cry baby, cry baby, suck yer mudder's tiddy!"

He began running. With a loud whoop of glee, they pursued. In a moment,
someone had clutched his coat-belt and was yanking him to a halt.

The pack closed in. "Ho, hussy!" they hooted, prancing about him. "Ho
op!"

And suddenly a blind, shattering fury convulsed him. Why were they
chasing him? Why? When he couldn't turn anywhere--not even upstairs to
his mother. He wouldn't let them! He hated them! He bared his teeth and
screamed, tore lose from the boy who was dragging at his belt and lunged at
him. Every quivering cell was martialed in that thrust Before his savage
impact, the other reeled back, tripped over his own feet and fell, arching to
the ground. His head struck first, a muffled distant jar like a blast deep
underground. His arms flopped down beside him, his eyes snapped shut, he
lay motionless. With a grunt of terror, the rest stared down at him, their
faces blank, their eyes bulging. David gasped with horror and fled toward
his house.

At his doorway, he threw a last agonized glance over his shoulders.
Attracted by the cries of the children, the tailor had come running out of
his shop and was now bending over the boy. The rest were dancing up and
down and yelling:

"Dere he is! In dat house! He done it!"

The tailor waved his fist threatening. "Bestit!" he shouted. "I'll give
you! Vait! A polizman I'll get!" David flew into the hallway. A policeman!
He grew faint with terror. What had he done! What had he done! A
policeman was coming. Hide! Hide! Upstairs. No! No! He was there. That
game. He would tell. Where? Any place. He dove behind the bannister and
under the stairs. No! They would look for him there. He darted out. Where?
Up. No! Trapped, frenzied, he stared wildly about him . . . The door. . . .
No! No! Not there! No! . . . Must . . . No! No! . . . Policeman . . . Run out . .
. No, they'd catch . . . Thought, fear and flight, rebellion and submission,
alternated through his head in sharp, feverish pulses. Must! Must! Must!
His mind screamed down opposition, and he sprang to the cellar door and
pulled it open--Darkness like a cataract, inexhaustible, monstrous.
"Mama!" he moaned, peering down, "Mama!"

He dipped his foot into night, feeling for the stair, found it, pulled the
door shut behind him. Another step. He clung to the wall. A third. The
unseen strands of a spider's web yielded against his lip. He recoiled in
loathing, spat out the withered taste. No further. No! No further. He was
trembling so, he could barely stand. Another step and he would fall.
Weakly, he sat down.

Darkness all about him now, entire and fathomless night. No single ray
threaded it, no flake of light drifted through. From the impenetrable depths
below, the dull marshy stench of surreptitious decay uncurled against his
nostrils. There was no silence here, but if he dared to listen, he could hear
tappings and creakings, patterings and whispers, all furtive, all malign. It
was horrible, the dark. The rats lived there, the hordes of nightmare, the
wobbly faces, the crawling and misshapen things.



XII



HE GRITTED his teeth with the strain. Minutes had passed while he
willed in a rigid pounding trance--willed that Luter would come down,
willed that Luter would leave his mother. But on the stairs outside the cellar
door all was still as before. Not a voice, not a footstep could he conjure out
of the silence. Exhausted, he slumped back against the edge of the stair. But
his ears had sharpened. He could hear sounds that he couldn't hear before.
But not above him now--below him. Against his will he sifted the nether
dark. It was moving--moving everywhere on a thousand feet. The stealthy
horrible dark was climbing the cellar stairs, climbing toward him. He could
feel its ghastly emanation wreathing about him in ragged tentacles. Nearer.
The foul warmth of its breath. Nearer. The bloated grisly faces. His jaws
began to chatter. Icy horror swept up and down his spine like a finger
scratching a comb. His flesh flowed with terror.

--Run! Run!

He clawed his way up the gritty stairs, fumbled screaming for the
doorknob. He found it, burst out with a sob of deliverance and flung himself
at the light of the doorway.

--Out! Out! Before any body comes.

Down the stoop and running.

--No! That way, school! That house! Other way!

At the corner, he swerved toward the right toward less familiar streets.
--Light! Light in the streets! Could see now. Could look . . . Man there .
. . No policeman . . . No one chasing . . . Could walk now.

The keen, cold-scented air revived him, filtered through his coat,
quickening the flesh beneath. The swift and brittle light on corners and
upper stories comforted him. Things were again steadfast and plain. With
each quick breath he took, a hoop of terror snapped from his chest He
stopped running, dropped into a panting walk.

--Could stay here now . . . No one chasing . . . Could stay, could go ...
Next block, what?

He turned a corner and entered a street much like his own--brick
houses and wooden houses--but no stores.

--Want different one . . . Could go next. . . .

At the next corner he stopped with a cry of delight and gazed about him.
Telegraph poles! Why hadn't he come here before? On each side of the
street, they stretched away, the wires on their crosses swinging into the sky.
The street was wide, divided by a seamed and frozen mudgutter. At one
end, the houses thinned out, faltering into open fields. The weathered poles
crowded up the hill of distance into a sheen of frayed cloud. He laughed,
filling his eyes with dappled reach, his lungs with heady openness.

--They go way and away . . . Way, way, way. . . . Could follow.

He patted the stout wooden pillar near his hand, examined the knots,
darker than the grey, thrust at its patient bulk and laughed again.

--Next one. . . . Race him! . . . Hello Mr. High Wood. . . . Good-bye,
Mr. High Wood. I can go faster. . . . Hello, Second Mr. High Wood. . . .
Good-bye Second Mr. High Wood . . . Can beat you . . .

They dropped behind him. Three. . . . Four. . . . Five . . . Six. . . . drew
near, floated by in silence like tall masts. Seven. . . . Eight. . . . Nine . . .
Ten. . . . He stopped counting them. And with them, dwindling in the past,
all he feared, all he loathed and fled from: Luter, Annie, the cellar, the boy
on the ground. He remembered them still, yes, but they were tiny now, little
pictures in his head that no longer writhed into his thoughts and stung him,
but stood remote and harmless--something heard about someone else. He
felt as if they would vanish from his mind altogether, could he only reach
the top of that hill up which all the poles were striding. He hurried on,
skipping sometimes out of sheer deliverance, sometimes waving at a
laggard pole, gurgling to himself, giggling at himself, absurdly weary.

And now the houses straggled, giving way to long stretches of empty
lots. On either side of the street, splotches of yeasty snow still plastered the
matted fields. On ledges above the rocks, the black talons of crooked trees
clawed at the slippery ground. At the doorway of a chicken coop, behind a
weathered, ramshackle house, a rooster clucked and gawked and strutted in.
The level sidewalks had ended long ago; the grey slabs underfoot were
cracked and rugged, and even these were petering out. A sharp wind was
rising across the open lots, catching up cloaks of dust, golden in the slanting
sun. It was growing colder and lonelier, the wintry bleakness of the hour
before sunset, the earth contracting, waiting for night--

--Time to look back.

--No.

--Time to look back.

--Only to the end of that hill. There where the clouds fell.

--Time to look back.

He glanced over his shoulder and suddenly halted in surprise. Behind
him as well as before, the tall spars were climbing into the sky.
--Funny. Both ways.

He turned about, gazing now behind him, now before.

--Like it was a swing. Didn't know.

His mood was buckling.

--Same. Didn't know.

His legs were growing tired.

--It's far away on the other side.

Between coat-pocket and sleeve one wrist was cold, the other was
throbbing.

--And it's far away on the other side.

The tubers of pain under the skin of his shoulders were groping into
consciousness now.

--And it's just the same.

Slowly, he began retracing his steps.

--Can go back.

Despite growing weariness, he quickened his pace.

They were all gone now, Luter was gone; they had finished that game.
He and his mother. Could go back now. And the policeman was gone,
couldn't find him. Could go back. And his mother would be there, yes,
waiting for him. Didn't hate her now. Where were you? she would ask. No
place. You frightened me; I couldn't find you. Wouldn't say. Why don't you
tell me where you were? Because. Why? Because--But must get back
before his father came. Better hurry.

Houses were gathering together again.

And I looked out of the window, and I called, David, David, and I couldn't
find you. Wouldn't tell her. Maybe she even went down stairs into the
street. But if the policeman told her. She wouldn't tell his father. No.
When he got into his street, he'd call her. She'd look out of the window.
What? Wait in the hall, I'm coming upstairs. She'd wait and he'd run past
the cellar. Hate itl Wish there were houses without cellars.

The sky was narrowing; houses had closed their ranks. Overhead, a
small flock of sparrows, beading the wires between two telegraph poles,
tweaked the single dry string of their voices. On the railing of a porch, a
grey cat stopped licking a paw and studied them gravely, then eyed David
as he passed.

Milk-supper, maybe, when he came upstairs. Sour cream, yum! Break
pieces of bread into it. Sour cream with farmer-cheese. Mmm! Sour cream
with eggs. Sour cream with what else? Borscht . . . Strawberries. . . .
Radishes . . . Bananas . . . Borscht, strawberries, radishes, bananas. Borscht,
strawberries, apples and strudel. No. They didn't eat with sour cream. Sour.
Cream. Sour. Cream. Like it, like it, like it. I--like--it. I like cake but I
don't like herring. I like cake, but I don't like what? I like cake, but I don't
like, like, like, herring. I don't don't--How far was it still?

The sidewalks were level again.

Luter liked herring, don't like Luter. Luter likes herring, don't like
Luter. Luter likes--would he be there to-night? He said maybe. Maybe he
wasn't coming. Wish he never comes. Never comes, never comes. Wishee,
wishee, never comes, all on a Monday morning--How far was it still?
Eagerly, he scanned the streets ahead of him. Which one was it. Which?
Which one was--Long street. Long street, lot of wooden houses. On this
side. Yes. Go through the other side. Then other corner . . . Right away,
right away. Be home right away . . . This one? . . . Didn't look like . . . Next
one bet . . . Giddyap, giddyap, giddyap. . . . One little house . . . two little
house . . . three little house . . . Corner coming, corner coming, corner--
Here?

--Here? This one? Yes. Looked different. No. Same one. Wooden
houses. Yes.

He turned the corner, hastened toward the opposite one.

--Same one. But looked a little teenchy weenchy bit different. Same
one though.

But at the end of the block, uncertainty would not be dispelled. Though
he conned every house on either side of the crossing, no single landmark
stirred his memory. They were all alike--wooden houses and narrow
sidewalks to his right and left. A shiver of dismay ran through him.
--Thought this--? No. Maybe went two. Then, when he ran. Wasn't
looking and went two. Next one. That would be it. Find it now. Mama is
waiting. Next one. Quick. And then turn. That was. He'd see. Has to be.
He broke into a tired jog.

--Yes, the next one. That big yellow house on the corner. He'd see it.
He'd see it. Yea! How he'd holler when he saw it. There it is! There's my
street! But if-- if it wasn't there. Must be! Must be!

He ran faster, sensing beside him the soft pad of easy-loping fear. That
next corner would be haven or bay, and as he neared it, he burst into the
anguished spring of a flagging quarry--

--Where? Where was it?

His eyes, veering in every direction, implored the stubborn street for an
answer it would not yield. And suddenly terror pounced.

"Mama!" The desolate wail split from his lips. "Mama!"

The aloof houses rebuffed his woe. "Mama!" his voice trailed off in
anguished abandonment. And as if they had been waiting for a signal, the
streets through his tear-blurred sight began stealthily to wheel. He could
feel them turning under his feet, though never a house changed place--
backward to forward, side to side--a sly, inexorable carousel.

"Mama! Mama!" he whimpered, running blindly through a street now
bleak and vast as nightmare.

A man turned the corner ahead of him and walked briskly away on click-
ing heels. For a tense, delirious instant, he seemed no other than his
own father; he was as tall. But then the film snapped open. It was someone
else. His coat was greyer, he swung his arms and he walked erect. His father
always hunched forward, arms bound to his side.

But with the last of his waning strength, he spurted after him. Maybe he
would know. Maybe he could tell him.

"Mister!" he gasped for breath, "Mister!"

The man slackened his pace and glanced over his shoulder. At the sight
of the pursuing David, he stopped and turned about in quizzical surprise.
Under a long, heavy nose, he bad a pointed mustache, the waxed blonde of
horn.

"What's the matter, sonny," he asked in loud good humor. "What're you
up to?"

"I'm losted." David sobbed.

"Oh!" He chuckled sympathetically. "Losted, eh? And where do you
live?"

"On a hunnder 'n' twenny six Boddeh Stritt," he answered tremulously.

"Where?" he bent his ear down, puzzled. "What Street?"

"On Boddeh Stritt."

"Bodder Street?" He screwed a tip of his mustache to a tighter pitch and
regarded David with an oblique, critical eye. "Bodder Street. Can't say that
I've ever-- Oh! Heh! Hehl" He exploded good-natured again. "You mean
Potter Street. Heh! Heh! Bodder Street!"

"Boddeh Stritt," David reiterated weakly.

"Yea!" he said decisively. "Now listen to me." He took David's
shoulder. "See that street there?" He pointed to the way David had come.
"That one. Now see the street after it--a little further away? That's two.
Now you go one street, two streets, but--" and his finger threatened--
"don't stop there. Go another one. See? Another one."

David nodded dubiously.

"Yea!" he said reassuringly. "And as soon as you're there, ask anybody
where one twenty six is. They'll tell you. All right?" he asked heartily,
giving David a slight nudge in the desired direction.

Not too reassured but braced with a little more hope than before, David
set out, urging rebellious legs into a plodding trot. He was a big man, that
man, he must know. Maybe it was Poddeh Street, like he said. Didn't sound
the same, but maybe it was. Everybody said it different anyhow. His mother
said Boddeh Stritt, like that. But she couldn't talk English. So his father
told her Boddeh Street, like that. And now the man said Poddeh Street Puh.
Puh. Poddeh. Buh. Buh. Boddeh. Corner is coming . . . One corner. Gutter is
coming . . . One gutter.

Next and next, he said. Ooh, if he could only see that yellow house on
the corner! Ooh, how he'd run! There was a dog in it with long white hair
and he ran after a rubber ball. Here, Jack! Here, Jack! GrrriTh! In his
mouth. Everybody knew him. Everybody knew Boddeh Stritt. There was a
grocery store in it and a candy store in it and a barber shop. The barber had
a big mustache like that man's, only black. And a big awning on the store.
He wasn't Jewish. In the window, he had another barber, only he wasn't real
and he had a bottle in his hand and his other fingers were like that--round.
And he looked at you with the bottle in his hand wherever you went. Walk
this way, that way, and he watched--Corner already. Gutter already.
Next and ask. Next and ask. Ooh, if he saw it. Ooh!

"Ooh, mama!" he prayed aloud. "I'm ascared to look, ooh mama, make
it on de nex' one!"

But look he did. The moment he had reached it-- up and down, as far as
the eye could see: Again a street as alien as any he had ever passed, and like
the others, with squat, monotonous flanks receding into vacancy, slack with
risen shadow. He didn't cry out; he didn't sob. A moment longer he stared.
All hope collapsed within him, fell, jarring in his heart. With stiff,
tranced body, he groped blindly toward the vague outline of a railing before
a basement, and leaning his brow against the cold iron wept in anguish too
great to bear. Only the sharp rush of his breath sheared the silence.
Minutes passed. He felt he would soon lose his grip of the iron uprights.
At length, he heard behind him slow footsteps that drawing near, scuffed
shortly to a halt. What good was looking up? What good was doing
anything? He was locked in nightmare, and no one would ever wake him
again.

"Here! Here!" A woman's crisp, almost piqued voice sounded above
him, followed the next moment by prim tap on the shoulder. "Young man!"
David paid no heed.

"Do you hear me?" the voice gathered severity. "What is it?" And now
the hand began forcing him away from the railing.

He turned about, head rolling in misery.

"Gracious me!" She raised a fending hand. "Whatever in the world has
happened?"

Quivering, he looked at her, unable to answer. She was old, dwarfish,
yet curiously compact. She wore green. A dark green hat skimmed high
over a crest of white hair. From her hand hung a small black shopping bag,
only vaguely bulging.

"Gracious!" she repeated, startled into scolding, "Won't you answer?"

"I--I'm losted," he sobbed, finding his breath at last "Aaa! I'm losted."

"There! There! There! You poor thing!" and with a quick bird-like tug
at a pince-nez hanging from a little reel under her coat, she fixed him in
magnified grey eyes. "Tt! Tt! Tt! Don't you know where you live?"

"Yea, I know," he wept.

"Well, tell me."

"A hunner 'n' twenny six Boddeh Stritt."

"Potter Street? Why you silly child, this is Potter Street. Now, stop your
crying!" A little grey finger went up.

"Id ain'd!" he moaned.

"What isn't?" The eyes behind the lenses contracted authoritatively.
"Id ain'd Boddeh Stritt!" He wept doggedly.

"Please don't rub your eyes that way! Do you mean this isn't Potter
Street?"

"Id ain'd Boddeh Stritt!"

"Bodder! Bodder! Are you sure?"

"Yeah!" his voice trailed off.

"Bodder, Bother, Botter, try and think!"

"It's Boddeh Stritt!"

"And this isn't it?" she asked hopefully.

"Naaaah!"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall we do?"

"Waa!" he wailed, "W'eas mine mama! I wan* mine mama!"

"Now you must stop crying," she scolded again. "You simply must!
Where's your handkerchief?"

"Waaa!"

"Oh, dear! How trying you are!" she exclaimed and then as if struck
with a new thought, "Wait!" She brightened and began hastily rummaging
in her little black bag. "I have something for you!" She brought out a large,
yellow banana. "Here!" And when he refused. "Now take it!" She thrust it
into his fingers. "You like bananas, don't you?"

"Aaal I wan' my mama!"

'Til have to take you to--" she broke off. "I'm going to take you to your
mother."

"You ain'd," he wailed. "You ain'd!"

"Yes, I am," she said with a positive nod. "This very moment."

He stared at her incredulously.

"We're going now. Hold your banana tightly!"



XIII



"AND so you live by dis way and dat way and straight from the
school?" Mimicking him, the policeman's hand glided about.

The old woman had tricked him. She had led him to a police-station and
left him. He had tried to run, but they had caught him. And now he stood
weeping before a bare-headed policeman with a gold badge. A helmeted
one stood behind him.

"And Boddeh Street is the name and you can't spell it?"

"N-no!"

"Mmm! Boddeh? Body Street, eh? Better look at the map." He pushed
himself back from the railing. "Know it?" he inquired of the helmeted one.
"Body Street-- sounds like the morgue."

"Near the school on Winston Place? Boddeh? Pother? Say, I know where he
lives! Barhdee Street! Sure, Barhdee! That's near Parker and Orio!
--Alex's beat. Ain't that it?" "Y-yes." Hope stirred faintly. The other names
sounded familiar. "Boddeh Stritt."

"Barhdee Street!" The helmeted one barked good-naturedly. "Be-gob,
he'll be havin' me talk like a Jew. Sure!"

"Well!" The bareheaded one sighed. "You were just kiddin' us, weren't
ye? But look, we ain't mad. We'll get your mama in a jiffy." He nodded
to the helmeted one. "See if he wants to do number one or somethin'? The
mess that--last--one made--" His voice trailed off as he moved to the
telephone.

"Yep!" The helmeted one patted David on the shoulder. "We could use a
matron." And heartily. "C'mon, me boy, yer all roit." And led him under a
low archway, past a flight of stairs and into a bleak, bare, high-ceilinged
room. Chairs lined the walls. Bars ribbed the tall windows. They stopped
before a white door, went into a tiled-floor toilet that reeked with nostril
searing cleanliness. Beside the doorless alcoves, stretched a drab grey slab,
corrugated by a dark trickle of water that splashed into the trough below.

"Step up close an' do yer dooty, sonny me boy." He propelled the reluctant
David toward the urinal. "C'mon, now. It's recess time. Sure, I've a lad of
me own in school." He turned on the faucet in the wash bowl. "And ye do it
with yer mittens on! Say, yer all roit! That's the way! Git a good one out
o' ye. What would yer mama be sayin, if she found ye were after wetthin
yer drawz? This is a divil of a joint, she'd say. What kind of cops are
yiz at all? Sure!" He shut off the faucet. "No more'n three shakes, mind
ye!"

And David was led out again into the bleak room.

"Any seat in the house, me lad--the winder there-- tha-a-ts it. Yer a
quiet kid. And we'll page ye the minute yer mother comes. Ther-r-r!" He
turned and went out.

Drearily, David gazed about him. The loneliness of the huge room,
made ten-fold lonelier by the bare, steep walls, the long rows of vacant
chairs sunken in shadow, the barred windows barring in vacancy, oppressed
him with a despair so heavy, so final, it numbed him like a drug or a
drowsiness. His listless eyes turned toward the window, looked out. Back
yards . . . grey scabs of ice . . . on the dead grass . . . ended in a wall
of low frame houses, all built of clapboards, all painted a mud-brown, all
sawing the sky with a rip-tooth slant of gabled roofs. Shades were half
drawn. From all their chimneys smoke unwreathed into the wintry blue.
Time was despair, despair beyond tears. ... He understood it now,
understood it all, irrevocably, indelibly. Desolation had fused into a
touchstone, a crystalline, bitter, burred reagent that would never be blunted,
never dissolved. Trust nothing. Trust nothing. Trust nothing. Wherever you
look, never believe. Whatever anything was or did or said, it pretended.
Never believe. If you played hide'n'-go-seek, it wasn't hide'n'-go-seek, it
was something else, something sinister. If you played follow the leader, the
world turned upside down and an evil face passed through it. Don't play;
never believe. The man who had directed him; the old woman who had left
him here; the policeman; all had tricked him. They would never call his
mother, never. He knew. They would keep him there. That rat cellar
underneath. That rat cellar! That boy he had pushed was still. Coffin-box
still. They knew it. And they knew about Annie. They made believe they
didn't, but they knew. Never believe. Never play. Never believe. Not
anything. Everything shifted. Everything changed. Even words. Words, you
said. Wanna, you said. I wanna. Yea. I wanna. What? You know what. They
were something else, something horrible! Trust nothing. Even sidewalks,
even streets, houses, you looked at them. You knew where you were and
they turned. You watched them and they turned. That way. Slow, cunning.
Trust noth--

On the stairs outside, heavy feet tramped down, accompanied by a
rhythmic clacking as if some hollow metal were bouncing against the
uprights under the bannister rail--

"C'mon, Steve!" A loud voice dwindled into the room beyond. "Kick in
fer a change!''

And a blurred reply met blurred rejoinders and laughter. Then the
stalwart rap of dense heels approached. The helmeted one switched on the
lights, revealing another beside him, a man in plain clothes, thick-set,
lipless and impassive, who swung in his hand a large tin dinner-pail. The
new-corner turned quizzically to the helmeted one. "He did?"

"He did so."

"Well!" ominously.

"A banana that size! And if I hadn't winked me oiyes quicker than a
flash, he'd have poked it in like a spoon into a stew!"

"A cop-fighter, hunh?"

"And a bad one, I'm tellin' ye! Me peepers are still watherin'! And he's
afther kickin' me in the brisket till I'm blue as me own coat!"

"Hmm! Maybe we better not git 'im any o' dat chawklit cake."

"Well, now!" The helmeted one levered up his helmet to scratch his
smoky red hair. "What d' ye think? He's been a good boy, since."

"Iz zat so?"

"Mmm! Quiet as a mouse!"

"Well, 'at makes it different. D'ye like chawklit cake? Wat's 'is name?"

"David. David--er-- David himself."

"D'ye like chawklit cake, I ast ye?"

"N-no," fearfully.

"W-a-a-t?" He growled, his eyes narrowing incredulously. "Yuh--
don'--like chawklit--cake? Owoo! We gotta keep ye hea den! Dere's no
two ways about it!" He uttered a series of terrifying hissing noises
by pinching his air-puffed nostrils.

David cringed.

"He don' like chawk--"

"Whisht!" The helmeted one kicked the other's heel. "Sure he does! It's
nothin' but a bit o' shoiness that's kaipin' him from--"

"I wan' my mama!" David had begun to whimper. "I wan' my mama! Mama!"

"Arrh!" The helmeted one exploded. "Now look what yev started, ye divil
of a flat-foot! Torturin' 'im for nothin' at all. Froitinin' him out of his
wits the way he'll never know his own mother when he see's 'er!"

"Who me?" Faint amusement puffed his lip out. "W'y I hardly looked at
'im cock-eyed. Wat're yuh talkin' about!" "It's yer ugly mug that does it!
Go on with ye! None o' yer guff!" He pushed the other man out of the
room. "Don't mind him me lad! He's nothin but a harmless bull bellowin' t'
hear himself bellow! God mend 'im! We'll get ye yer mother an' yer
chawklit cake too! Never fear! Now you be quiet like a good lad!" He
grinned, followed the other man out.

"Mama!" He moaned. "Mama! Mama!"

It was true! All that he feared was true. They would keep him there--
Keep him there always! They would never call his mother! And now that he
knew, it was too late. He had learned never to trust too late. He lowered
his head and sobbed.

We-e-e-e-e-e!

From somewhere a whistle began blowing--a remote, thin blast that
suddenly opened into a swooping screech and as suddenly died away.
Whistles? He raised his head. Factory whistles! The others? None! Too
far! So far she was. So far away! --But she heard them--she heard the
other whistles that he couldn't hear. The whistles he heard in the summer
time. She heard them now. Maybe she looked out of the window--now--
this moment! Looked down into the street, up and down the street,
searched, called. There he was-- outside--on the curb. Be two Davids, be
two! One here, one outside on the curb. Now watch! Wait till she looks out!
Now watch! See? There she is behind the curtain. Yes, that thick lace
curtain--only in the winter it was there. Now she parts them--two hands
like that--stoops. See? Her face close to the pane. Cold. And, wrrrr! Up!
Bet a shawl is on her. David! David! Come up! Why do you wait? Because!
Why? She would have forgotten. That-- that door, mama. Oh, she'd laugh.
Silly one! Come up! I'll wait! And then he'd stand on the stoop. One-two
three. Till she crossed the frontroom. One. Two. Three and the kitchen. And
then go in. Mama? Yes, I'm here, she'd call down, Yes, come on! Run past
the door. Bing! No. Not run if she's there. Be there too quick. One step and
one step. Two steps and two steps. Three steps and--

"Hurhmm!"

Chuckling the helmeted one butted through the mist of dreaming. "Is it
the mounted pollies y'are with that leg up?"

David gaped at him without answering. About him vision tumbled into
chaos.

"Or a fly-cop on his wheel?" He continued, manipulating imaginary
handle-bars. "What were ye chasin'? One o' thim noo Stootzes? But look
what oiv got fer ye." He uncurled beefy red paws--a square of brown
chocolate cake in one and a red apple in the other. "How does that suit ye?"
He began crying again.

"Hey--! Arrrh, yer a quair one! Here I've gone an' got ye chawklit cake
--in a beer saloon of all the damn places--an' gotten ye apples, and there
y'are cryin' all over the precinct! What's the matter?"

"W-w-w'istles!" he wailed. "W-wistles!"

"Whistles?

"Yeaa-a-aow!"

"Is it a whistle yer after?" He made a motion toward his pocket.

"N-n-o-o-o! B-blowin'!"

"Me?"

"No-o-o! My--my mama! Ow!"

"Orrch! Fergit it. Here's a foin bit o' cake fer ye. C'mon! Take it! And
the apple. That's the way! Forst ye eat one and then the other! Anhann!
And I'll git ye a sup o' wawther and ye'll be as snug as--No!" He bawled.
David had dropped both the cake and the apple. A voice! A voice he
never hoped to hear again. A voice! He stared at the doorway rigid with
hope.

"Now look what yev--" He stopped, turned round.

A light tread hurried toward them. Out of the slow blur of a myriad
meaningless faces, one condensed into all meaning.

"David! David!"-

"Mama!" He screamed leaping toward her. "Mama! Mama! Mama!"

She caught him up in her arms, moaning, pressed his cheek against her
cold one. "David, beloved! David!" "Mama! Mama!" The screaming of her
name was itself sheer, stark ecstasy, but all bliss was outplumbed in
the clasping of her neck.

"Well yer safe now be the looks of it," came the voice at his back.
Still pressing him to her, she carried him into the outer room where the
bareheaded one leaned against the rail watching them.

"Hmm, I see he knows his mama."

"T-tanks so--so viel!" she stammered.

"Oh, that's all right, lady. Glad to have a visitor once in a while. It's
pretty quiet here."

"And lady," the helmeted one came up, "I'm thinkin' ye'd best put a tag
on him, fer he sure had us up a tree with his Pother an' Body an' Powther!
Now ye spell it bee--ay--"

"T'anks so viel!" she repeated.

"Oh!" He smiled crookedly, nodded. "Yer acquainted with it."

The other man rested the corner of a grin on his finger nail.

"Now oi'll tell ye an odd thing, Lieutenant," said the helmeted one.
"He's after plaguin' me about a whistle. Now it's an odd thing I tell ye--
would make a man be thinkin'. He said to me, he said. I'm after hearin' me
own mother's whistle. Now would ye believe it? And she still a good ways
off!"

"Did he?" The bareheaded man snorted with amusement. "The only whistle
I heard was the four-ten over at Chandler crossing, and that was about--"

"Er--" his mother began timidly. "Herr--Mister. Ve-- er--ve go?"

"Oh certainly, lady! Just walk right out any time." He opened his arms
in a flowing gesture. "He's all yours." "T-tanks." She said gratefully and
turned to go. "Hey, hold on a minute!" TTie helmeted one pursued them.
"Would ye be leavin' us without yer cake?" He pried it into David's hand.
"And yer apple? No? Too much? Well, I'll kaip it fer ye till ye drop around
again. Good-bye! And don't ye go runnin' after telegraph poles!"



XIV



THE doorway out! Freedom! The cold air of the street. The sky tightening
with dusk. And she, carrying him, her face close to his! Things he never
hoped to see again, bliss he never hoped to feel! Deliverance too enormous
even to grasp!

"How did you--?" She stopped. "Do you want me to carry you, darling?"

"No, I can walk, Mama! I can walk, Mama! Mama! Mama!" The magic in the
word seemed inexhaustible, gave him new strength. He laughed at the
sheer joy of the sound.

She set him down. And hand in hand they walked as rapidly as his pace
permitted.

"We're not very far," she informed him, "though far enough for a weary
child. Now tell me, how did you ever stray into that place? How did you get
there?"

"Somebody was chasing me, Mama, and I ran and I ran and I ran."

Claws of sudden fear grazed him. "Is he still?" "Still? Who? Who was
chasing you?"

"Yussie. And--and the other boys. They called me crybaby--crybaby
because--Papa--hit--hit me. Yussie--he told."

"He didn't tell me that."

"Is he--is he still, Mama?"

"What do you mean?"

"I only--only pushed because he was running after me. Mama, I didn't
want to make him still."

"Oh! That boy? There's nothing wrong with him." "No?" He bounded
before her electrified with relief. "No? I didn't? Mama-a-a!"

"Did you think you hurt him, you silly one?"

"I didn't! I didn't! I didn't!" he cheered, "Oooh, I didn't do anything!"

"No. Except to frighten me to death! But why didn't you run upstairs if
they were chasing you? Hymie said you ran inside. Where did you go?"

"Is this where we live?" They had turned a corner and he scanned the
darkening street. "Doesn't look like--?" "No. Several blocks yet. Are you
tired?"

"No mama!"

"We must hurry then or Albert will be there before us. He won't know
what's happened to us when he comes into an empty house."

"Who told you?"

"What?"

"Where I was."

"A policeman."

"Were you scared?"

"I was frantic!"

"Because the policeman?"

"No, because of you, silly child! I had just rushed weeping into the
street when I met him."

"A real policeman? For me? Did he tell you how-- how to come?"

"He wrote it down for me. And people on the way directed me. He has
it, that master in there."

"Oh."

"Yes! Now you tell me! First where did you go? Did you hide
somewhere and run out again? What kept you from coming up?"

"I--I went--down--I went down in the cellar." Buoyancy seeped out of
him. His voice ended dully.

"The cellar?" She stopped in mid-stride to look down at him. "Of all the
strange places! Why did you go there?" "I don't know--I don't know. I
wanted to--to hide from the--the policeman. Mama!" He suddenly
whimpered in terror. "Mama!"

"What? What is it, sweet." She gripped his hand. "Do you feel ill?"

"N-no." He was wrestling feebly with himself. "N-no." "Frightened
again? That cellar? I can't understand why you'd want to go down--Oh,
but let's wait! Later, darling? You'll tell me?" They walked rapidly awhile
in silence. "Are you warm?"

"Yes."

"What did you do there? In that--in that--Ach! I can't say it! With the
police?"

"They made me sit down. And first--first they took me to the toilet.
And then the big policeman gave me the apple. And then the cake."

'That's a handsome cake!" She smiled down at him. "An American one.
I couldn't bake it myself. Do you know where you are now?"

He looked around at the twilit street "We went a lot of blocks," he said
tentatively.

"Yes. But that street, that next one?"

He shook his head. In the thickening gloom, the street ahead looked as
alien as any he had passed.

"That's Boddeh Street," she informed him. "Your school is that way,
further off. But it's too dark to see. Now two--three blocks that way--"
She pointed to the left-- "is where we live."

"That way, Mama?" He stared incredulously. "This way!" He pointed to
the right. "This way is my school." "That's why you were lost! It's the other
way." "O-o-h!" A new wonder dragged him to a halt. "It--it's turning,
Mama! It's turning round--back."

"What?" Her tone was amused. "The street?"

"Yes! They stopped! Just now! The school--The school is over there
now!"

"So it is. The streets turn, but you--not you! Little God!" Chuckling,
she stooped, kissed him. "We must hurry, though! I left no word and it's
dark. If he gets there before we do, he'll--" She broke off nervously.
"Come!" They crossed the street, turned their backs against the twilight and
hurried into darkness. Lamps were already lit, street lamps, windows. They
had met almost no one during their entire journey, and now against the
wintry vacancy and the dark, David listened with immense gratitude to the
click of his mother's heels that measured the quicker shuffle-tripping of his
own. Suppose he were alone? Heard only his own slight footsteps wrenched
from the grip of quiet? Suppose his father--? No! He shivered, added the
middle finger of his mother's hand to the two he already held.

They neared the open lot. He knew where he was now, certain of every
step. There was a wind that prowled over that area of rock and dead grass,
that would spring at them when they passed it. And the wind did. He
squinted into it. Beyond the patch of rock and dead grass, a bright rind of
moon barely cleared the roof tops. He watched it till the next house
overtook it and then looked away. A vague apprehension came over him.
An hour ago, had he been by some miracle transplanted to this spot, he
would have rushed home screaming for joy. But now, each familiar house
that he passed--here was the one with the leaning palings; this was yellow
long-boards in daylight and had a railed-in porch, this was brick and had an
odd veined transom over the door--each was nearer home. And home--His
fears reared up again. And suddenly he wished himself--but with his
mother beside him --twice as far away as when they had left the police
station.

"After next block, Mama?" He knew perfectly well how far his own
house lay.

"Yes." She was staring ahead eagerly.

"You know where the next street is, Mama?" He motioned to the side.
"Over this way?"

"Yes."

"I saw the--that box and those carriages."

"Did you?"

"Yes. Are they going to--to move out now--You think?"

"I don't know, darling. Perhaps they own the house. Why do you ask?"

He was silent a moment and then, "Is Papa home?"

"I hope not."

"You--you--are you going to say--tell him?"

"What? Where you've been? Why of course!"

"Aaaaa!" His head dropped resentfully.

"What's the matter?" She tugged his arm gently. "Don't you want me
to?"

"I-- I thought you wouldn't tell if--if we came home first--just
before."

"Why no, I was worried about Albert, that's all. Are you afraid about
having him know?"

"I-- I was in a- a p'lice station--that's why."

"Well, what if you were? You've done nothing. Oh, you silly child!
Being lost is no crime. Though I could blame others if I chose!"
There was a tight sound of restrained anger in her voice though David
knew it was not directed against him.

"You won't let him h-hit me?"

"Ttl Darling, I'll never let him strike you again--neither he nor anyone
if I can help it. There, are you satisfied? Now don't be afraid any longer!"
David walked in silence awhile, mind reassured, heart not yet free from
doubt.

"Mr. Luter-- Mr. Luter isn't going to come?" 'To-night? No." Her pace
slackened slightly. "What makes you think of that?"

"Will he come here, Mama? Come here anymore?" "Why --Well-- I
don't--" From confusion her voice condensed into suddenness. "Why do
you ask?"

"I--I don't like him. That's why."

"Oh, is that it?" She was silent a moment. And though they had entered
their own block, her pace instead of quickening, slackened even more.
When she spoke again, her voice was strangely cautious. "Did--did anyone
else frighten you, beloved? Anyone else beside those bad boys?"

"N-no." He felt his mind sharpen now, watchful. "No. Nobody else."

"You're sure? You--you saw nobody? Nothing that would frighten
you?"

"I--I only saw the boys. And Yussie told them, and then they all began
to--to chase me."

"Of course. I'm glad there was nothing else. God knows that was
enough!"

Her pace quickened again. Without eagerness, David singled out his
own house among the dark ones. It struck him as odd that he should only
have noticed now and at night that his house had a flat and not a gabled
roof. They lived under the roof then, Yussie and Annie. Suppose Annie had
looked out of the window when he made his mother look out in the police
station. Suppose she was there now watching him! He shuddered, looked
away.

"In our block, the first stores, Mama--the first stores begin."

"Yes . . . And tell me, will I still have to stand in the hallway when you
go down? Or have you seen how little there is to fear in cellars?"

"No!" Fear lunged within him. "No, Mama! You'll have to wait--
always!"

"How desperate you sound!"

"And I'm not going to play with--with anybody! Any more!"

"You're not?"

"No! Never!"

He could feel his lips pouting despite himself, stretching out as if to
loosen the tears. Another moment and he would have wept, but the hallway
door was before him now, and now his mother pressed it open. Imperious
terror dispersed his tears. He entered--thrust of warmth of the gaslit
hallway, stagnant air suffused with the dusty, torpid odor of carpets. The
cellar door was brown--closed again. For an instant he wondered whether
he or another had shut it, but could not recall. Fear printed on his back and
breast the cold, metallic squares of a wiry net. He shrank against his mother,
clung to her till they mounted the carpeted stairs. She seemed not to have
noticed.

"If he's in," she murmured aloud, "he'll be distraught! After what I said
to him last night! Huny! He'll think I've-- But why not?" She appeared
suddenly to remember. "Why won't you play?"

"I don't--" He faltered dully, evasively. "I don't want to." It no longer
mattered.

She hurried up the stairs, tarried a moment at the landing till he reached
her and then tried the door. Unlocked, it yielded--gave upon darkness.
Alarm tightened her features. She entered.

"Albert!"

There was no answer . . . Only the soft shifting of embers in the stove.
For a weird, spinning instant, David, lingering on the threshold, visualized
his father gone, miraculously, forever gone.

"Albert!" She was groping toward the wall where the match-safe hung.

"Albert!"

"Unh!" His startled groan came from the bedroom. "You? Genya!" For
once his voice was stripped of harshness, stripped of pride, power, was
nothing but a cry such as David might have uttered, alone in the dark,
despairing. "Genya!"

"Oh! Thank God, you're here!"

"Yes . . ." And the harshness returned and the inflexible pride, and the
voice was again his father's, awakened, surly. "Hmph! Where else would I
be?"

She had struck a match and now she lit the mantle-light

"I tried so hard to get back before you arrived! Were you worried?"

"I?" Deliberate, again, sardonic. "No . . . And so you decided to return
did you? Even the fixed word wavers, eh? In the cold? In the empty streets
at ni--"

"Return? Albert, what are you saying! I never went!" She hurried up the
front room stairs. "Shut the door, David, darling! Take off your coat! Sit
down!" She went inside. "I feared you'd think--!" And her voice was
suddenly lowered.

David shed his coat, found a chair and listened morosely to the sounds
in the bed-room. From the drift of the occasional words, snatches of
phrases, exclamations that rose like crests above their low tones, he knew
their conversation was not only about him, but about the night before. His
mother was explaining, he guessed, where she had been, why she had gone.
Of Luter, he could hear no mention made. He divined that no mention
would be made. Finally, his father exclaimed in an impatient voice: "Well,
you've said enough! I take your word for it! That son of yours has to be
watched day and night!" "But it wasn't his fault, Albert!"

"Mine then? Is that what you mean. Are you hinting that I'm to blame?"

"No! No! No! It's the fault of no one! You're right, there's no more to
say! Are you hungry?"

"Naturally."

"I've made that veal the way you like it. And those shredded carrots. Do
you want them to-night?"

"Hmm."

David could hear her moving toward the frontroom, open the window.

A few seconds later, she appeared, carrying two covered pots.

'To bed early to-night." She came down, smiling solicitously. "To forget
early."

Silently, on stockinged feet, his father loomed into the threshold. His
vest was unbuttoned, the neck-band of his shirt open on the pit of the
strong, corded neck. Gripping the doorpost with lank, ink-spotted fingers,
he blinked at the light, and then regarded David gloomily.

"And so you're acquainted with the police now?" David dropped his
gaze. He hadn't seen his father since last night when he was beaten. The
face was still the face of a foe.

"Yes!" His mother laughed, looking round from the stove. "But in
friendship only! Wait till I show you the cake they gave him. It's in my
pocket-book."

"They gave him cake, eh?"

To David there was something peculiarly significant in the way his
father uttered the words.

"Yes," she continued cheerfully. "And how they must have laughed at
my English!"

"How did you ever let him get so far? You're always watching after him.

"I don't know. He was gone before I thought to look." "Hmm!" He
glanced at David, reached for the newspaper on the table, became
engrossed.

His mother lifted a bunch of carrots from a bag, dropped them into a
dishpan and while she pared them, eyed David, fondly.

He was silent, met her gaze a moment and then vacantly tightened the
table cloth against the table's edge.

--Don't believe Don't believe. Don't believe, Never!



XV



ON SUNDAY, David stayed in bed the whole morning, and then, dressed,
spent the rest of the day in-doors. He had sneezed several times last
night and again this morning, and what with his back aching--which David
was sure ached for other reasons--his mother maintained that he might
have caught a cold as a result of wandering through the streets. His father
scoffed at the idea, but refrained from interfering. Although it meant having
to be near his father all day, David was grateful not to have to face Yussie or
Annie or the boy he pushed or anyone in fact. He clung to his mother or
retreated to his bedroom, avoided the room his father was in, and in general,
made himself as inconspicuous as possible. Toward evening, however, the
dark forced him into the kitchen together with his father. Whereupon he
fetched out his box of trinkets, found a coner least in the way, and sitting
down on the linoleum floor, began constructing with the odds and ends that
filled the box a zig-zag and precarious tower which his father's or mother's
tread invariably sent toppling down.

During the late afternoon and even until supper-time, his father had
several times confidently remarked that Luter would come to his senses,
forego this folly of hunting for a wife and eventually appear at the table in
time for the meal . . . However, though they waited almost an hour past
the usual time, he never came. It was only when David's mother began to
complain mildly that half her cooking was over-done and the other half
cold, that he gave up waiting, and shrugging his shoulders in brusque
irritation, permitted her to serve the meal.

"In Tysmenicz," he scowled sourly as he settled into a chair, "the
peasant who tended my--" (There was always that hitch in his speech
before the word) "my father's cattle used to say that a man had to be born
a fool to be one. My friend Luter should come on his second childhood
early in years--God's given him a new soul." He pulled the plate toward
him with abrupt impatience. "All I hope is he doesn't blame my married
happiness for his marriage!" He uttered the last words with a peculiar
challenging emphasis.

David who was watching his mother as she stood above her husband
serving him, saw her bosom swell up slowly as though responding to
minute increments of pain, and then without response, exhale tautly her
muted breath and look off blankly and resigned. David himself knew only
one thing--that the relief Luter's absence afforded him was as sharp and
fervent as a prayer, and that every wordless nerve begged never to see the
man again.

At bed-time, his mind seemed strangely calm, reposed without being
resolved, inert after long discord. Beneath the film of apathy, the events of
yesterday ruffled the surface only rarely, like the tardy infrequent wreckage
of a ship long sunken. They would never be answered these questions of
why his mother had let Luter do what Annie had tried to do; why she hadn't
run away the second time as she had the first; why she hadn't told his
father; or had she; or didn't he care. Nor would there ever be the
equilibrium again between his knowing what she had done and her
unawareness that he knew; her unawareness of what he had done with
Annie, of why he had run away; his father's unawareness of every thing.
They would never be solved, never be answered. No one would say
anything, no one dared, no one could. Just don't believe, don't believe,
never. But when would that queer weight, that odd something lodged in his
bosom, that was so spiny, ramified, reminding, when would that vanish?
Tomorrow, maybe? Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. Monday. The cold of the day before had either been
imaginary or been thrown off. David was sent to school. Once out of the
house, he walked guardedly, even taking a new route to avoid meeting
Annie or Yussie. In the morning, he succeeded and again at noon, but when
school was out for the day, they ran into him as he came out into the open
of the crossing. David, himself, shrank away when they hailed him, but they
on the other hand seemed to have forgotten all hostilities. Instead they were
merely curious.

"W*od id 'ey do t'yuh in de polliss station?" Yussie engaged his arm to
keep him in step with the slower limping Annie.

"Nutt'n'!" He shook him off sullenly. "Lemme go!"

"Hey, yuh mad?" Yussie looked surprised.

"Yea, I'm mad! I'll never get glad!"

"He's mad, Annie!"

"Nisht gefiddled!" she said spitefully. "Pooh! Who wants yuh!"

"Cry baby!" said Yussie disdainfully.

But David was already hurrying off.

At home, he could not help but observe in his mother's actions a
concealed nervousness, an irresolution as if under the strain of waiting.
Unlike the fluent, methodical way in which she habitually moved about the
kitchen, her manner now was disjointed, uncertain. In the midst of doing
something or of saying something, she would suddenly utter a curious,
suppressed exclamation like a sudden groan of dismay, or lift her hand
in an obscure and hopeless gesture, or open her eyes as though staring at
perplexity and brush back her hair. Everything she did seemed insecure
and unfinished. She went from the sink to the window and left the water
running and then remembering it was an odd overhastiness, turned, missed
the handkerchief she was pegging to the clothesline and let it fall into the
yard. A few minutes later, separating the yolks from the whites of the eggs
to make the thick yellow pancakes that were to go with the soup, she cut the
film of the yolk with eggshell, lost it in the whites. She stamped her foot,
chirped with annoyance and brushed back her hair.

"I'm like my father," she exclaimed suddenly. "Vexation makes my
scalp itch! Today you can learn what kind of a woman not to marry."
Several times during the afternoon, David had been on the point of
asking her whether Luter were coming for supper. But something always
checked him and he never formed the question.

To avoid the strange emotion, that his mother's behavior aroused in
him, he would have gone downstairs again, even at the risk of encountering
Annie or Yussie, but there again, he divined how impatient she would be if
he asked her to wait in the hallway. She had seemed cross when he called to
her frantically after his meeting with them at three. As she offered no
objections he remained indoors and occupied himself in a score of ways--
now frightening himself by making faces at the pier glass, now staring out
of the window, now fingering the haze of breath upon it, now crawling
under beds, now scribbling. He spent an hour tying himself to the bed post
with a bit of washline and attempting to escape, and another constructing
strange devices with his trinkets. He tried to play the four-handed game of
manipulating patterns out of a double string with two hands and the leg of a
chair. It was difficult, the old patterns slipped before they were clinched,
ended in a snarl. The mind too was tangled, apprehensive, pent-up.

Meanwhile he had observed that his mother's nervousness was increasing.
She seemed neither able to divert her mind nor complete any task other
than was absolutely necessary. She had begun to sew the new linen she
had bought to make pillow-cases with and had ended by ripping out the
thread and throwing the cloth back into the drawer with a harassed cry.
"God knows why I can't make these stitches any shorter! Six to a yard
almost! They'd have parted with a shroud's wear!" And then later, gave up
the attempt to thread a cupful of large red beads and dropped them into the
cup again and shut her eyes. The newspaper received only a worried glance
and was folded up again and dropped in her lap. After which, she sat for
such a long time staring at him, that David's uneasiness grew intolerable.
His eyes fluttered hurriedly about the room, searching for something that
might distract the fixity of that stare. And grazing the coal sack beside the
stove, the seams of the ceiling, the passover dishes on top of the china
closet, sink legs, garbage pail, doorhinges, chandelier, lighted on the mantle
burning with its soft, bluish flame.

"Mama!" He made no attempt to conceal the anxiety in his voice.
Her lids flickered. She who was always near him in spirit, now seemed
hardly aware. "What?"

"Why does that light--that light in the mantle stay inside? In the
mantle?"

She looked up, combed her upper lip with her teeth a moment. "That's
because there are great brains in the world."

"But it breaks all up," he urged her attention closer. "All up if you--if
you even just blow."

"Yes."

"It doesn't burn even when you light it?"

"No." The dull remote tone never left her voice--as if speech were
mechanical, forced.

"Why?" He demanded desperately. "Why doesn't it?" "Doesn't what? I
don't know." She rose, shivered suddenly. "As though it pierced the
marrow! Is it cold in here? Or where I sit? Chill?" And stared at the stove,
then followed her gaze after a long pause as if her very thought were
delayed, and picked up the poker.

"I don't feel cold." David reminded her sullenly.

But she hadn't heard him. Instead her eyes had swerved from his face to
the wall and she stood as if listening beyond him, as if she had heard a
sound in the hallway outside. No one. She shook her head. And still with
the poker in one hand, lifted the other to adjust the gas-cock under the
mantle-light--

"Ach!" Exasperatedly she flung her hand down to her side. "Where are
my senses? What am I doing?" She crouched down before the stove, buried
the poker into the ashes with a provoked stab. "Have you ever seen your
mother so mixed? So lost? God have mercy, my wits are milling! Ach! I go
here and I'm there! I go there and I'm here. And of a sudden I'm nowhere."
She lifted the stove lid, threw a shovelful of coal into the red pit. "David
darling, you were saying--?" Her voice had become solicitous, penitent.
She smiled. "You were saying what? Light? Why what?"

Heartened by her new interest, he began again eagerly. "What makes it
burn?"

"The gas? Gas of course."

"Why?"

"One lights it--with a match. And then--Er. And then--" As abruptly
as her mood had changed a moment ago, it reverted again. That odd look of
strain spindled the corners of her eyes, her face resumed that hunted, alert
look. "And then one turns--the--the--". She broke off. "Only a moment,
darling! I'm going into the front room." That was the end! He wasn't going
to talk to her any more! He wasn't going to ask her anything. No, even if
she talked to him, he wouldn't answer. Sullenly, he slumped down into his
chair and sullenly watched her hurry up the steps into darkness . . . heard
the window slide open, softly, cautiously . . . and then close again . . .
She came down.

"Not even the cold air can rouse me." Her fingers drummed nervously
on the ridge of a chair. "Nothing does any good. My head is--Oh, I'm
sorry, David, beloved! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to run off in the middle
of answering you." She came over, bent down and kissed him. "Do you
forgive me?"

Unappeased, he regarded her in steady silence. "Offended? I shan't do it
again! I promise!" Where the broad waxen plane of her cheeks curved into
the chin, small dents of contrition appeared--the very furthest away a smile
could get from the distracted brown eyes, the creased brow. She shook
herself. "Er . . . Burns, you said. Burns! Everything burnns! Yes! Or almost.
Kerosene, coal, wood, candles, paper, almost everything. And so gas--at
least I think so. Er . . . And so gas, you see?

They keep it in great vats, you know. Some tall--like the ash-cans out
in the street, some short, like drums, only bigger. I don't understand
them."

"But mama!" He wasn't going to permit her to pause; she would fade
back into her old mood if he did. "Mama! Water doesn't bum when you
throw a match in a puddle." "Puttie?" she repeated. "What is puttie? Your
Yiddish is more than one-half English now. I'm being left behind." "Puddle.
It's water--in the street--when it rains sometimes."

"Oh! Water. No, tears sometimes--No! You're right. Water doesn't
burn."

"Is there always a--something burning--when it's light --like that!"

"Yes I think so. When I was a girl, the goyim built an "altar" near a town
some distance from Veljish because two peasants saw a light among the
trees--yet nothing burning."

"What's a--what you said? Altar?" It was his turn to be puzzled.
"Means old man?"

"No!" She laughed shortly. "An altar is a broad stone --about so high."
Her downtumed palms impatiently leveled the air at bosom's height. "They
have a flat top. So. And because the ground was holy, they fenced it in."

"Because why? They saw a light and--and nothing burned? So that was
holy?"

"Yes. So it pleased them to say. I suppose that was because Moses too
saw a tree on fire that didn't burn. And there the gound was also holy."

"Oh."

"Yes. And when you begin going to cheder you'll know more about these
things than I do." She stopped pacing, moved abruptly toward the china-
closet. "I think I'll set the table--do something."

"Was it holy?" He drew her on.

"What? The light the peasants saw? Ach, nonsense! My father said that
the truth was an old Jewess had been walking along the road through the
woods. Where she was coming from I don't know--"

She paused again. Three plates had been taken from the china closet and
set on the table. The fourth, still in her hand, kept fluttering back and forth
as though it were impossible for her to decide whether to set it on the table
or to replace it on the stack she had taken it from. Finally, with a throaty
exclamation, she set it on the table--before the chair On which Luter
usually sat.

"Yes! Sol Oh!" Her head went back as if returning thought were an
impact. "Yes. Coming home, she was. Without doubt. And on the way, dusk
overtook her. Yes. It was Friday. Now it chanced that she had candles with
her--or so my father said, though he never said why. Perhaps she foresaw
that she would be delayed. There's no telling what women will do when
they're pious." Her lips pressed together and she reddened ever so faintly
setting the clinking silverware beside Luter's plate. "She foresaw. Let us
say, she foresaw. And with night coming on, she stopped beside the road
and lit the candles and prayed over them as you've seen me pray. And
having prayed, went on, leaving them lit--a Jew may not tamper with the
candles once they're burning and the prayer said. Then these peasants came
along at night. And devout as she or more perhaps--" With a slight,
spattering sound from the end of her lip, one cheek eddied in; she set the
cup and saucer above Luter's plate. "And perhaps drunk or surely dull
witted, saw the light in the woods-- so my father said--and ran back and
roused the village. They saw it and saw it vanish, and approaching, found
nothing, heard nothing, only the sound of the woods. What more could they
want? Priests came and high priests and consecrated the place." Her eyes,
momentarily meditative, kindled again, whisked to the door. She was
listening again.

"Didn't the candles leave another candle?" David strove to force her
attention back again. "Like our candles? It's water and candles."

She shrugged impatiently. "Who bothered to look? The ground was
holy; people soon remembered having seen angels; and there's an end. And
why hunt for candle-drip-pings. The altar did the village a mass of good."

"How?"

"People, benighted ones, they came from all over Austria. They brought
thsir sick, their maimed. They asked aid, they prayed for the dead and for
better fortune. And they still do. And--" She paused, almost losing the
thread, but regained it with a jolt. "While they were there, they had to eat,
they had to buy things, they had to sleep somewhere. Fear not, those little
candles kindled the day for the storekeepers in Lagronow. You see?"

"Yes, mama."

"So much did they benefit Lagronow that Jews, merchants, in other villages
also left a burning candle here or there. It never succeeded again."

"But that wasn't a real one," he reminded her. "That wasn't a real light.
And--and without burning. But Moses, he--"

"Sh!" Sudden and sharp her warning.

David listened: The quick creak of the outer doorway. The slow and
heavy footfall, carpet-muffled. That was his father's way, a thrust of
impatience followed by deliberation.

His mother, looking very pale, had opened the door a crack and stood
there with one ear pressed against it. No sound of voices drifted up, no
interweaving of a second footfall. She drew back, staring, shut the door
carefully, sighed, but whether out of relief or apprehension, there was
no telling, then stood attentive, waiting for him to enter.

In a few seconds, he did, and David knew by the very way the door swung
open that his father was irritated. He came in--alone. The muscles under
the dark jaws were bumpy, distinct, like cords twisted about and bulging.
His eyes held a steady glower.

"Albert." She smiled.

He made no answer, but breathing gustily, stripped off his coat--the
jacket beneath always peeled with it--and removed his hat and handed
them to her.

"I hope you haven't prepared too much supper," he began brusquely as
he whipped his tie and collar off. "He wouldn't come. Do you hear?" She
had gone into David's bedroom to hang up his coat.

"Yes." Her voice preceded her. "I can use what's left over. There's no
loss--especially in the winter--nothing spoils."

"Hm!" He turned his back to her, rolled up his sleeves and bent over the
sink. "And don't prepare anything extra for him to-morrow. He's not
coming then either." The squeezed soap slipped clacking into the sink. His
teeth ground as he picked it up.

"No?" Her eyes, resting on his bent back opened in a worried flicker;
her face sagged. But the next moment her voice was as barely surprised
as a voice dared be and yet be non-committal. "What's the matter?"

"Would I had known as little of him as I know his reasons!" He slapped
his dripping palms angrily against his lean neck. "He wouldn't say
anything! He wouldn't even ride home with me--had to go somewhere--
some lame excuse! And that marriage-broker affair! Not a word! As though
it had never been! As though he had never spoken about it! He took the
keys from me in the morning, checked my overtime, and that was all!" He
shut the water off with a wrathful jerk, snatched the towel. "God knows
what he's found or done or achieved! It's too much for me! But why, tell
me?" The towel paused in its swirling. "Do you think that if he found a
woman who thought he was agreeable and had--she, I mean--a great deal
of money, do you think that that might have given him a wry neck?" A
faint, troubled groan ushered in her answer. "I don't know, Albert."
"Now be honest!" He suddenly swung the towel into a ball, glared and
thrust his lips out. "Answer me with a brunt!"

"What is it, Albert?" She lifted startled, fending hands. "What is it?"
Seeing her alarm, David squirmed back into his chair and watched them
apprehensively under the rims of lowered eyes.

"I--" his father broke off, bit his lip. "Was anything said by--by me?
Did I seem to be mocking him--when was it?--Friday night? When I told
you he was going to a marriage broker?"

"Why, no, Albert!" Her body seemed to slacken. "No! Not at all! You
said nothing that would offend any one! I thought he was amused!"

"You're sure? You're sure he didn't leave so early because I--because
of some jest I made?"

"No. You said nothing out of the way."

"Unh! I thought I hadn't! Well, what fiend is it that eggs him on then?
He was like a man with a secret grudge. He wouldn't speak! He wouldn't
look at me straight. A man I've known for months! A man who's been here
night after night!" He pulled a chair toward him, slumped into it. "At noon
today, he ate his lunch with that Paul Zeeman. He knows I hate the man. He
did that to hurt me. I know!"

"But--don't--don't let that upset you, Albert. I mean, don't take offense
at that! It's--why--" She laughed nervously--"It's too much like a school-
girl's device--this-- this eating with another."

"Is it?" he asked sarcastically. "Much you know about it! You haven't
seen him all day. It wasn't only that! There were other things! I tell you
there's something seething in that skull of his! A hatred, for some mad
reasonl A vengeance biding its time! Do you know?" He suddenly drew
back, looked up at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. "You don't seem
dismayed--you don't seem downcast enough!"

"Why, Albert!" She flinched before his harsh scrutiny. "I am dismayed!
I am downcast. But what can I do? My only hope is that this--this hostility
--or what one may call it--is--is only temporary! What can it be? For a
time perhaps! Something worrying him that he won't disclose! Why, it may
be all over by to-morrow!"

"Yes. It may indeed! Something may! But my belief is that no man would
become a stranger to me overnight unless he thought I had wronged him.
Isn't that so? And he--he's worse than a stranger--he's a foe! Avoiding
me as if the sight of my face were a stab! Looking past me darkly!
a! It's more than something transient! It's--what's the matter?"

She was pale. With the glass pitcher in one hand, she strained vainly
with the other to open the tap of the faucet. "I can't open it, Albert! You
must have shut it too tightly when you washed. I want some water for the
table."

"Are you weak suddenly?" He rose, strode sourly to the sink, twisted
the tap open. "And as for him--" he stared ominously at the gushing water
--"if he doesn't change, he'd better be careful! He'll find that I can change
even more!"

There was a pause, a gathering of strain. Silently his mother set the
pitcher on the table, went to the stove and began ladling out the steaming
yellow pea-soup into the bowls. Stray drops that fell from the brown
pancakes as she transferred them from the pot to the dishes hissed over the
stove lids. The odor was savory.

But David, glancing hurriedly at his father's gloomy face, resolved to
eat more carefully than he had ever eaten in his life. So far these sombre
eyes had scarcely rested on him; now he felt himself trying to contract
within himself to vanish from their ken. And failing, concentrated on the
frosted moisture of the glass pitcher and how each drop awaited ripeness
before it slid.

His father reached for the bread--it seemed to ease the strain. Relieved,
David glanced up. His mother came near, her face strangely sorrowful and
brooding, incongruous somehow, dissociated completely from her task of
carrying a platter of soup. She set it down before his father, and
straightening, touched his shoulder timidly. "Alberti"

"Hm?" He stopped chewing, twirled the spoon he had just picked up.
"Perhaps I should ask you this after supper when your mind is easier,
but--"

"What?"

"You--you won't do anything rash? Please! I beg you!" 'I'll know what to
do when the hour falls," he answered darkly. "Don't let that trouble you."
In spite of himself, David started. Against a sudden screen of darkness
he had seen a dark roof, a hammer brandished over pale and staring
cobbles.

"Pouh!" his father snorted, lowering his spoon. "Salt? Don't you use
that any more?"

"Not salted? I'm sorry Albert! Everything I've done today has gone
awry--even the soup!" She laughed desperately. "I'm a good cook!"

"What should trouble you so much?" His sharp gaze rested on David.
"Has he been lost again or up to some new madness?"

"No! No! Not him--! Begin eating, child! Not him! I don't know!
Nothing I did today had my eyes and my wits in the doing. Every hour
brought some fresh confusion. It was one of those fateful days that make
people superstitious. There's a handkerchief in the yard this very moment.
Who knows what made me drop it!"

His father shrugged. "At least you were alone. There was no one
watching you! No one prodding you with his eyes into blunders."

"You mean--him again?"

"Yes! Him! Twice I didn't feed the sheet into the press just so. They
wrinkled, crushed! The underpad was inked! I was ten minutes each time
cleaning them! I tell you he gloated! I saw him!" He stopped eating,
hammered the spoon on the table. "There's evil brewing inside him! He's
waiting, waiting for something! I could feel his eyes on my back all day,
but never there when I turned to face him! It took my mind off my work! I
fed the press as though I were lame! I couldn't have done worse the first
day I began! Now too soon! Now too late! Now just missing! And then the
mussed paper caught in the roller --in the gummy ink. I had to take the
whole thing apart! And every minute the feeling that he was watching me.
Ha!" He breathed harshly. His lips writhed back and his words battered
against the barred teeth. "It's more than I can bear! It's more than I'll
stand! If he's waiting for something, he'll get it!"

"Albert!" She had stopped eating as well and was gazing at him panic
stricken. "Don't--!" Her unsteady fingers closed her lips.

"I tell you he'll hear from me! I'm no lamb!"

"If--if it's that bad, Albert. If it doesn't change, and he's--he's that way
--why don't you l-leave! There are other places!"

"Leave?" He repeated ominously. "Leave! So. But the first man I've ever
trusted in this cursed land to treat me like a foe. The worst of all I
Leave!" He stared at his plate bitterly, shook his head. "You're a strange
one yourself. You've trembled every time I had a new job-- trembled for
me to keep it. I could read it in your face-- you pressed me to be patient.
And now you urge me to leave. Well, we'll see! We'll see! But when I leave
he'll know it, never fear! And do me a favor. Take those plates away." He
nodded toward Luter's place. "It's as though someone were dead."




XVI




TUESDAY afternoon, his mother's drawn, distracted face was too much
for him to bear. Without asking her to wait in the hallway, he had fled into
the street, and without calling to her, had come up again, alone. Neither
Annie, who never hobbled past without sticking out her awl-like tongue,
nor Yussie's reiterated, "Cry-baby," nor the cellar-door at the end of the
vacant hallway were half as painful to endure as the stiff anguish in his
mother's face or the numb silence of the hours of waiting for his father.
Again and again, he could almost have wished that by some miracle Luter
would return, would be there beside his father when the door was opened.
But his mother set only three places around the table. There would be no
miracle then. She knew. Luter would never return!

And when his father came home, he came in alone again. The sight of
him this evening was terrifying. Never, not even the night he had beaten
David, did he radiate, so fell, so electric a fury. It was as though his whole
body were smouldering, a stark, throbbing, curdling emanation flowed from
him, a* dark, corrosive haze that was all the more fearful because David
sensed how thin an aura it was of the terrific volcano clamped within. He
refused to speak. He scarcely touched his food. His eyelids, normally
narrow, seemed to have stretched beyond human roundness, revealing the
whole globe of the eye in which the black pupils almost engulfed the
brown. He looked at no one. His mad, burnished gaze roved constantly
above their heads along the walls as if he were tracing and retracing the line
of the moulding beneath the ceiling. Between the hollow of mouth and chin,
his twitching lips threw a continual flicker of shadow. There was a place
above the stiff sickle nostrils that looked dented--so pinched and white
they were. Only once did he break his silence and then only for a brief time
in a voice as harsh and labored as a croak.

"Flour? Why? Two sacks of flour? Two? Under the shelf? Under the
Passover dishes?"

She stared at him mutely, too bewildered, too panic-stricken to answer.

"Hanh? Are they going to wall you in? Or is the long lean year
crouching?"

Her whole body before she answered quivered forward as though
shaking off layers and layers of some muffling, suffocating fabric.
"Flour!" Her voice under the strain was high-pitched and hysteric. "A
sale at the grocer's. Nev-Neven's Street! There in that market!" She
trembled again, swallowed, striving desperately to calm herself. "I thought
since we used so much, it would be wise to--oh!" She sprang to her feet in
horror. "You mean why did I leave them under the Passover dishes! I'll take
them away! This moment!"

"No! No! Leave them! Leave them! Leave them!" (David thought the
fierce crescendo of his voice would never end) "Sit down. The mice won't
get them!"

She sat down stunned. "I'll get them later," she said dully. "I shouldn't
have left them there. I can no longer think." And taking a deep breath. "One
is tempted to buy more than one needs these days, things are so cheap. Is
there anything you'd like me to get you? Smoked salmon? Sour cream,
thick almost as butter. They say they mix flour into it! Black olives?"

"My head is splitting." His eyes were roving along the walls again.
"Don't say more than you can help."

"Can't I do something for you? A cold compress?" "No."

She shut her eyes, rocked slightly and said no more. David would have
whimpered, but dared not. The intolerable minutes unreeled from an
endless spool of nightmare. . ..

By Wednesday afternoon, another and even more disturbing change had
come over his mother. Yesterday afternoon and the day before, she had been
impatient with him, unresponsive to his questions, distracted, disjointed in
her answers. Now she listened to him with a fixity that made him
increasingly uneasy. Wherever he walked about the kitchen, wherever he
stood or sat, her eyes followed him, and there was something so fervent, so
focused in her gaze that he found his own eyes not daring to meet hers. She
did not chide him to-day for dawdling over his after-school bread and
butter, or postponing the moment of having to go down. On the contrary,
everything was reversed. This afternoon it was he who ate rapidly in order
to be ready to go down sooner, and it was his mother who sought to delay
him. "And what else?" She would ask. The moment he had completed
narrating some incident in school. "And what else happened? What did you
see then?" And always her tone had the same rapt, insistent note, and she
hung on his every word with such a feverish hungered gaze that several
times a curious shudder ran through him, a chill, as if the floor for a
second had opened beneath him and he were plunging down a void.

"But on your way home," she urged. "You haven't told me. Was there
nothing new?"

"No-o." He hesitated, his eyes wandering about the kitchen avoiding
that over-bright, clinging gaze. When would she be satisfied, he wondered,
when would she let him go? Uneasily he rummaged among his memories,
found the only thing he knew he hadn't told her yet. "There was a man
yesterday." He began. "On the street that's the other side of school." He
paused, hoping against hope her interest had flagged.

"Yes! Yes!" Her voice was like a prod. "Yes!"

"And the man, he was making a sidewalk. Like that." He palmed the green
sheet of oil cloth on the table. "With an iron with a handle. A new
sidewalk."

"They're building up Brownsville!" She smiled at him with frightening
intentness. "And? You unwilling, silent, beloved one! And?"

"And when the man wasn't looking . . . and the sidewalk was green--
it's green when it's new."

"I have seen that also."

"And a boy came and the man wasn't looking--he was pushing the iron
here. And the boy stepped on it-- like that." He slipped down from the
chair, toed the linoleum, "And made a hole with his shoe. Like that--" Her
face had sagged strangely, lips parting before a slow emission of breath.
The taut, pale planes of her cheeks seemed to have slipped the chin-bone,
overlapped it. Under the raised brows the intent brown eyes were focused
on a distance so vast it returned upon her. In dismay, David stopped
speaking and blinking with dismay watched her.

"I heard youl I heard you!" She shook her head breathlessly. "Yes! Yes!
I heard you!" Through long corridors of brooding her gaze skimmed toward
him again. "Yes!"

"Why did you look th-that way?" He wavered between alarm and
curiosity.

"Nothing! Nothing at all! I did that too when I was a girl, stepping on a
road, new-made. But mine was black! Nothing! Nothing at all! And then
what? What did the man do!"

"The man," he continued uneasily, "the man didn't see. And yesterday
he did it . . . When I went to school after lunch yesterday. And now there
aren't any more boards on it. And it's hard like other sidewalks. Nearly
white they powder it. And--and you can jump on it. Like that. And you
can't do anything. But he made that hole. And there's a hole now. You can
even see that little red iron on his shoe--in front. It made a hole too! And
there's a piece of cigarette in it already."

"Naturally!"

"Why does it get so you can't make a hole any more-- even with an
umbrella. A broken one I saw. Only sparks when you hit it." He ducked
under the hungering, round eyes. "You talk now."

"No, you!"

"Aaaaa!"

"Won't you?" she coaxed.

"I'm all finished now--with my bread," he reminded her crossly.

"Do you want some more? Some milk?" The eager intensity with which
her words followed one another seemed to squeeze letters out of syllables.
He shook his head, eyed her obliquely.

"You can stay with me for a while, beloved." She opened her arms for
him to come to her. "You don't have to go down."

He drooped, pouted, but finally trudged over to her and settled on her
knee. All this time he had wanted very much to go down, to escape, but
he had again caught a sound of pleading in her voice, an expectancy.

"I--I'll stay here."

"Oh, you do want to go down!" She unlocked her arms. "Yes you do!
I've been keeping you. Come! I'll get your coat!"


"No! No! I don't! No, mama! I just--I just wanted to look out of the
window. That's what I wanted."

"Is that all? Are you sure?"

"Yes. Only open. It has to be open." Some condition was necessary to
justify his hesitance. "Will you open it?"

"Of course!" She suddenly pressed him to her fervently, rocked him
against her breast. "What would I do without my son in bitter hours? My
son! But, darling, the window with the fire-escape before it. Not the other.
Good? Sweet fragment! I'll get a pillow for you to lean on. Do you want to
go now?"

"Yes." He squirmed free.

"First your sweater then. It's cold out."

She fetched it And when he had pulled it on, both went up to the front
room where she opened the window before the little fire-escape, pulled the
heavy white curtains aside, cleared the sill of pots and milk bottles and
placed a pillow on it.

"And this you'll want to kneel on." She drew a chair up. "It can't
damage it any and you can look out much better. Your mittens?"

"No. I'm not cold."

She leaned over his shoulder, sniffed the air. "It drills the nostrils. Do
you see how blue it's gotten over there, over those brown houses. How
early! In the summer this would be late and Albert soon--" She stopped.
The fingers on his shoulders twitched. "Ach! I threw a stone upon my own
heart then!" With a slack and suddenly aimless hand she fondled his ears
and the nape of his neck. "One cannot hide himself long from his fear." She
groaned softly and began drumming on the window pane just as she had
drummed on the table yesterday and the day before. "Will you knit another
dream for me if I come up later? No?" She patted his head and walked
slowly from the front room.

Moodily, he leaned further out to stare down the street.

On the right there were children near the stores at the end of the block,
girls skipping rope. Annie was turning. He could see the brace. When he
squinted tightly he thought he could make out Yussie standing beside the
boy on a tricycle, but wasn't quite sure if that really was Yussie. Then he
could have gone down and stayed near the house without being molested. It
would have been better than just being half in the street and half out. He
wondered why it was that one could be half in the street and half out and
yet never be able to picture the street and the inside of the house together.
He could picture the street and the yellow wall of his house, but not the
inside. Once he had seen men tearing down the wall of an old wooden
house. You could see the inside from the street--the wall paper and the
chandelier, the black thickness between floors, windows, open doors. It
was strange. Everything looked shrunken. Everything looked frightened.

There was a shout down the street. The boy on the tricycle had begun
pedaling followed by the other who alternately propelled or jumped on the
axle between the rear wheels. It was Yussie. They swerved, jounced off the
curb onto the gutter, circled careening, zigzagged tip-sily and bucked the
curb again. With a feeling of jealousy he strained his ears to catch what
Yussie was shouting between shrieks of laughter. He wouldn't give Yussie a
ride if he had a wheel. Never. He wouldn't even stay in this block. No, he'd
go far away. Where, far? He'd get lost again. The thought sent a shiver
through him. Not this time though. His mother would write the address
down for him and he'd carry it with him always, in his pocket. They
wouldn't fool him again. He'd ride away. Maybe after those telegraph
poles, if you went way, way on, there was a place like a picture in the candy
store. That lady who stood on a big box of cigarettes and wore a
handkerchief under her eyes and funny fat pants without a dress and carried
a round sword. A place where those houses were that she lived in, that all
ended in sharp points. He had seen a man in a hat once like that, with a
sharp point. He had a mustache and was in the Jewish paper his mother
bought. The Tageblatt! When he went that night and--No! Lost the money
--No! No! And--and! No! . . . Houses, he was saying. Points. Points they
had, yes, not corners on top like those across the street. Yellow and old
wood corner. Brown and green corner. And the grey one with the little
window in it that looked like the roof was going to be a star--went down
and then didn't go so down. Why?

He couldn't answer it, and stared again at the two on the tricycle. Yussie
had gotten off, and the owner, his feet removed from the whirling
pedals was letting the other push him as fast as he could. The peaks
of their caps were turned backwards. Tooting breathlessly they
bounced swiftly over the pitted gutter toward David's house. They were
racing. He could tell by their caps. And as they drew near, the driver's
shrill, spurring, "We're beatin'! We're beatin'! Horry op!" sent the blood
tingling through his own veins. They were almost in front of the house now.
In another moment, they would pass beneath his window--when suddenly
with a sharp scrape of sliding shoes, Yussie braked the flying wheels to a
stop and gaped over the other's shoulder. Wonderingly, David turned his
head to the left to follow his gaze.

Only a few yards off, a tall, lean stranger approached, stooping slightly
and bearing close to his dark coat, a white parcel, high, as though he meant
to proffer it to the two boys before him. An instant David stared, and
suddenly in the space of one stride, it was neither stranger nor parcel he
saw, but his own father, and the right hand against his coat was hanging
from a sling and swathed in bandages. He screamed.

"Papa! Papa!"

The slow head lifted, grim jaws, beaked nose and steady-glaring
eyeballs. The two boys astride and beside the wheel sidled out of his way.
David flung himself back from the window, fled screaming into the kitchen.
His mother was already on the stair, frightened--

"David! What is it!"

"Papa's coming! His hand! His hand! It's all in"-- He circled his own.
"All in white! He's coming!"

"Dear God! Hurt! He's hurt?" She shook him. The starting brown eyes
seemed to waken the pallor of her skin, the clutching hand among her hair
its bronze. "Albert!" She flew to the door. "Albert!" Her voice in the
hallway was hoarse. "Albert! Albert!"

To David, crouched back against the frontroom stairs, his father's harsh,
suppressed words snapped through the open doorway.

"Hush! Hush, I say! An end to your wailing! Get back!"

"Blood! Blood!"

Moaning, clawing at her cheek, his mother came in-- backwards held at
arm's-thrust by his father. His face was grey, so grey the bluish stubble
on his hard and bulging jaws stood out in separate dots. On the thick white
bandage around his hand, a red spot glowered where the thumb should be.

"Yes! Blood!" He rapped out, slamming the door. "Have you never seen
it? First that idiot barks from the window at my approach! Now you!
Lament! Lament! Bring all your neighbors in here cackling!"

"Oh, Albert! Albert!" She swayed back and forth. "What is it? What's
happened?" The tears braided on her cheek-bones.

"You always were a fool!" he growled. "You see me alive! Will you
stop it!"

'Tell me! Tell me!" Her voice dwindled with anguish. "Tell me--! What
have you--done?? I--alas! before I--" "Done? Me?"

"What! Tell me!" She was breathing thickly "Hurry!" "You're not far
from wrong!" he snarled. "You've almost guessed it! Yes! I would have
done, but that cursed press ground me first! Anh! That press saved him!
He doesn't know it! I would have--What!"

With a whispered groan her head sank. She stumbled toward a chair,dropped
into it, slumped, her limp arms hanging beside her. At the sight of her
awful pallor David burst into tears.

"Bah!" his father scoffed angrily. "In God's name I thought you had
more wisdom." He strode to the sink, filled up a glass of water, pried it
between her lips. The water runneled her chin, spattered on her dress. "And
you're the one to faint!" he snorted bitterly.

"I'm all right!" she said weakly, lifting her head. "I'm all right, Albert.
But--but you didn't strike him!"

"No!" savagely. "I told you I didn't! He escaped. Are you more worried
about him than about me? Is that it?" "No! No!"

"Then what are you fainting for? It's only my thumb. The jaws of the press!
I wasn't quick enough! It jammed, that's all. You didn't take on this way
when I caught the nail of that finger, did you?"

She hissed, wincing.

"I've still got it with me--my thumb--if that's what's troubling you. If
you hadn't deafened me with your clamor I could have told you sooner!
Now help me off with my coat--or are you still too weak?"

She rose unsteadily, took hold of his coat-collar.

"Curse him!" he muttered squirming free slowly. "The treacherous dog!
God's flame make a candle of him! You don't have any more privileges
than any one else! That's what he said to me before this--Unh!" He
groaned between his teeth as the sleeve slid over his injured hand. "I
shouldn't have let--the jacket--go with it."

"Is it so bad, Albert!" She put out her hand. "I didn't mean to--"

"Stop coming at me that way, will you! I don't need support!"

He stared at the bandage which now that his coat was off seemed to
David's tear-blurred eyes to have swollen to twice its bulk.

"He didn't have to cover the fingers too, the fool!" He dropped into a
chair, masked his eyes with his bony hand. It was heavily ink-blacked,
unwashed. "Doctors! They'd rather use the whole ribbon than bother
cutting it. And why not? They won't have to carry it around." His head
dropped back.

"Can I give you anything? Coffee? We still have some wine left."

"No," wearily. "I'll be drowsy soon without wine. I'll sleep well." He
hooked the heel of his dull black shoe on the lowest rung of the chair,
grunted as he stooped down.

"Let me!" She started forward.

He waved her back. "One hand is enough!" And pulling the buttons
open. "The angel of Fate strikes always on the side you never guard. I
thought that before that dog saw the last of me, I'd make him writhe. And I
would have!" His teeth grated. "There was enough venom in me to finish a
score of Luters. But they led me out like a sheep." He kicked his shoe off,
watched it roll over on its side, dully. "But you can't think too much when
you're feeding a press. You can't dwell too much on the one you hate.
That's the foreman's privilege. His hands are free!"

He shook his foot loose from the other shoe. "Anh! But he was pale when
they led me into the bosses' office. He must have seen what was in my eyes.
He must have known who was to blame. And I had one good hand left. Or maybe
it was the blood he couldn't bear. I left it on their carpets."

She had been watching him rigidly. And when he stopped speaking a
tremor ran through her. "Did--did the doctor say anything? Will it heal
soon?"

He shrugged. "It won't have anything else to do. I can't use it for weeks
--at least, that's what he said. It's well munched."

She groaned.

"They spoke of paying me something for the time I was out. Of their
own free will they offered it. I don't know why. But much they'll give me.
Tomorrow I see them again and the doct--tomorrow!" He caught his breath
loudly. "Tomorrow is Thursday!"

His lips swelled out in hatred, his eyes burned savagely. Both David and
his mother stared at him in fascinated terror.

"Curse him and his gifts!" he suddenly snarled. "May he-burn with them!
God bray him into bits!"

His right elbow moved downward, but the sling checked his hand. With
writhing lips, he reached his left hand behind his back, fumbled in the
right rear pocket and drew out his black leather pocket-book.

"Curse him!"

He drew out a small slip of white paper, the theatre-pass, crumpled it
in grinding fingers to a crackling wad and threw it down on the table.
"Nothing fulfills itself with me! It's all doomed! But what made him
give me this? And what made him change? If I only knew! If I only knew!"
His left hand drummed on the table.

There was a horrible silence while they stared at the wad of paper on the
table. Then his father slipped the bandaged hand free from the sling and
began slowly stretching it back and forth to flex the cramped and clicking
elbow. His face wore an expression of grim aloofness as though it were not
his own hand he was experimenting with but someone else's. On his mother's
features horror and pity were written. David gazed from one to the other
and finally like theirs his eyes came to rest on the hand that had just
settled softly on the table, glimmering and peninsular on the green oilcloth.

Minutes seemed to pass in a dull dragging vacancy in which no word was
spoken. David looked up. His mother's face was unchanged as though that
anguished look were caught in stone. But his father's face had become
flushed, relaxed; the deep breath hissed softly at his nostrils. His eyelids
had begun to linger at their shutting, opening not in one but in two stages.
He spoke. Faint ratchets of effort against drowsiness and fatigue ticked and
caught in his voice, thickening it. And as though to himself--

"I'll never go back to work there again. I'll never go back to printing at
all. I'm through. Whatever work I do hereafter, it's going to be out doors--
alone if I can. But out doors always . . . I'll not let myself be hemmed in by
ink and iron any more. I don't want any foremen for my friends. I don't
want anybody. I--I have no fortune with men."

He sighed harshly, rose and yawned as if he were groaning. The bandaged
hand stretched ceilingward, and when he brought it down into the sling
again, one eye shut in pain--

"It's as though it were hollow." He turned toward the front room, eyed
David a moment and went up.

"I'll get you a quilt," she trailed him.

He made no answer and both climbed up the front room stairs.

Sitting in numb silence beside the window, David stared after them,
watched them disappear, listened. The bed creaked. In a few moments, he
heard his mother's quick tread and then the slither of something dragged
from the couch--the quilt. And then the bedroom was closed and he heard
only the ticking of the clock. The strange start of dread he had felt when
his father's eyes had rested on him still lingered with him. He had seen it
before--that look, that flicker of veiled suspicion more frightening than
wrath--had seen it almost always the day his father had thrown up a job.
Why? What had he done? He didn't know. He didn't even want to know. It
frightened him too much. Everything he knew frightened him. Why did he
have to be here when his father came home? Why had his mother kept
him?

Why did he have to know? You had to know everything and suddenly what
you knew became something else. You forgot why, but it was something
else just the same. Scaring you--

There was a noise in the hallway--the door below. Hurrying feet mounted
the stairs, climbed; but as they passed his floor, stopped, descended,
approached his door uncertainly. He slid from his chair, listened, opened
the door a crack. It was Yussie. His cap, still turned backward, gave
his red face an even pudgier look.

"Hey, Davy!" he whispered hesitantly, spying through the partly open
door.

"Waddayuh wan'?" Somehow he felt less grieved at Yussie now, even
relieved at seeing him. It suddenly occurred to him that it was not Yussie
but his sister he disliked so much. Still he wasn't going to appear too
friendly. "Wadjuh comm hea fuh?" he inquired morosely.

"Yuh mad on me yed, Davy?" He looked at him with innocent resignation.

"I don' know," he muttered tentatively. "Yea."

"So I'll take beck de cry-baby," he offered placatingly. "I'll never call
yuh again, I shuh live so! It wuz all Ennie's fault--she made me."

"You don' like her?" suspiciously.

"No! I'm mad on her! She's a lousy mut!"

"So comm in."

Yussie sidled in eagerly, looked around. "Aw!" His lips fell in
disappointment. "He ain' hea! Did he go 'way aw-reddy?"

"My fodder yuh wan'?" He suddenly saw through Yus-sie's ruse. "So
dat's w'y yuh comm hea? Don' make no noise! He's sleepin'."

"Oh!" And then inquisitively. "Wadda big bendige he had on. I seen it.
So wad'd he get id fuh?"

"He god hoided in a printin' press. Dot's w'y. His fingeh. So dey put id
on."

"Yeh? I t'ought maybe--I know sommbody wod he hoided his hand on
de Futt f'om Jillai--wid a fiyuh crecker. He had id in his house so he
lighded id. Den he wanned t' t'row id oud f om de windeh. So de windeh
woz cluz. So he didn' know w'ea he sh't'row id. So bang--!" "Sh!"

They turned. She had tip-toed so quietly from his father's bedroom that
neither of them had heard her.

While they watched her silently, she shut the front room door, came
down the steps with a slow uncertainty.

"Don't be offended with me, Yussele." In the blank immobility of her
face, a bare mechanical smile stirred her lips. "Go on. Speak further if you
like."

"Yea." Impatiently Yussie summarized his narrative, nor bothered to
switch tongue. "I wuz tellin' him about a fiyuh crecker wod a boy wuz
holdin' an' id wen' bang! So aftuh id w'en bang, id hoided him de hand so
he had t' pud a bendige on like Misteh Schoil."

The name seemed to waken her momentarily. She shook her head wearily.

"An' aftuh, so his ear woz makin' Kling! Kling! Kling! Jos' like dat!
Kling! Kling! Kling! Cauze de fiyuh crecker wen' bang by his ears! Den he
wannid me I sh' hea' by him de ears, bod I couldn' hea' nottin'. Bot he said
id woz! So I--" He stopped, regarded her in perplexity, and then uneasily to
David. "Don' she wan' I sh* talk t' huh in Engklish?"

"I don' know." He answered sullenly. His mother's fixed, unseeing stare,
her trembling lips, trembling as if to an inner speech, was anguish
enough for him to bear without the added humiliation of having Yussie
notice it. "Yuh goin'?" he invited.

"Yeh, opstehs! Yuh wonna comm?"

"No!" Inflexibly.

"Bod I'm on'y gonna ged my noo bow'n' arrer." He urged. "Den I'm
commin' donn. My modder t'rew huh cussit away, so dere's big, long w'ite
iyons in id. So I wen' 'an pulled 'em oud. An' I'm gonna tie 'em all
t'gedder. An' oool is id gonna be strong! Way strong! Yuh wanna waid fuh
me till I comm down? I'll call yuh."

He hesitated, looked up at his mother. Her breast was heaving slowly,
deeply, making a slight moaning creak in her throat. Her eyes, unwinking,
round and liquid, swam in the lustre of unshed tears. For a shattering instant
a throng of impulses, diverse, fierce, maddening, hurtled against the very
core of his being. He wanted to shrink away, to run, to hide, anywhere,
under the table, in a corner, in his bedroom, to burst into tears, to scream at
her. So many they paralyzed him. He stood quivering, gaping at her, waiting
for her to weep. Then suddenly he remembered! Yussie was looking at herl
He would know!

He would see! He mustn't! He whirled on him. "You go op, Yussie!
G'wan! Horry op! I'll waid f'yuh in mine house. Den you come down and
den I'll go! Horry op!" "Yuh wan' me t'call ye?" Yussie cast a confused
glance over his shoulder at David's mother.

"Yeh! Yeh! So go!" His shame at the other's knowing was agonizing.
"G'wan!" He opened the door.

His mother sniffed sharply. "Are you driving him out, child?" The flat
twang of tears thickened her voice. "You mustn't do that!"

"No! No!" David reverted desperately to Yiddish. "He's going by
himself! I'm not pushing him!"

"Yeh! I'm goin'!" Yussie seconded him hastily. "I'll call yuh." He went
out.

"What made you part so abruptly?" She sniffed again, pressed her eyelids
down, followed the dark margins with thumb and forefinger, and regarded
her humid fingertips.

David hung his head, not daring to look at her for fear of weeping.

"He's coming down to call me. And then we're both going into the street."

"Oh, are you friends again?" She lifted weary tear-stained eyes to the
window. "It's growing dark. You won't stay out too long, will you? Nor go
too far?"

"No." It was becoming difficult for him to talk against the choking in
his throat. "I'll get my coat."

He retreated suddenly into his bedroom. In the brief solitude of finding
his coat, his whole body began to quiver. But he tensed it, jammed his lips
together to keep them still. The spasm passed. He dragged his hat and coat
from the bed and returned.

"I must light the gas," she said without stirring. "Do you want to come
here and sit beside me?"

"No! I--I have to put my coat on." He struggled into it. He mustn't, he
mustn't go near her.

She shrugged, not at him, but at herself. "This is the way of the years,
my son. Each new one shows you both hands this way--" She held out her
two closed hands before her. "Here, choose!" And opening them. "And
they're both empty. We do what we can. But the bitter thing is to strive--
and save none but yourself." She rose, went to the stove, lifted the lid and
peered down into the glow that stained the wide brow, the flat cheek. "Eat
we must though."

"I'm going, mama." He had heard the door slam upstairs.

"You won't be late for supper, beloved?" She replaced the eclipsing lid,
half-tumed, "Will you?"

"No, mama." He went out. His whole being felt crushed, worn out, defeated.

Yussie came tripping down out of the upper shadow, and seeing him
below, rattled the dim, slender corset-stays.

"Hey, yuh see watta a bow'n'arrer I'll hev? I got cawd in mine pocket
too, so I'll tie id." He joined David at the landing, took his arm. "C'mon! So
I'll show yuh how I'll tie id over hea an' over hea in de middle. Den I'll tie
id over hea."

Descending, they neared the cellar door at which when he glanced,
David felt a wave not so much of fear as of anger run through him--as
though he defied it, as though he had slammed the door within him and
locked it.

"An' we'll go maybe by de bobber shop, becuz by de bobber shop now
is lighd. He a'ways lighds foist. So we c'n see how t' do it. Yuh commin?"

"Yeh."

They came out into the frosty blue of early dusk, turned toward the
stores, some of which were lit; there were several children before the tailor
shop and the barber's. They trudged toward it, Yussie flexing the sheaf of
corset stays.

"Didja ask yuh modder fuh a nickel fuh de Xmas poddy in school?"

"No. I fuhgod."

"My ticher calls id Xmas, bod de kids call id Chrizmas. I'ds a goyish
holiday anyways. Wunst I hanged up a stockin' in Brooklyn. Bod mine
fodder pud in a eggshells wid terlit paper an' a piece f om an ol' kendle.
So he leffed w'en he seen me. Id ain' no Sendy Klaws, didja know?" "Yeh."

"How does a prindin' press look wot hoitshuh fodder?" "Id's like a big
mechine."

"Id don' go boof?"

"No. Id makes like dat calenduh I woz saving."

"Oh . . ."

They neared the group. Annie was still among them. David no longer
cared.

"Hey!" Yussie seized his arm eagerly. "Dey's Jujjy de one wod fell w'en
yuh pushed him. Yuh wan' me t* make yuh glad on him?"

"Yeh."

"So tell him fom de p'lice station. He'll be glad! Tell me too! So yeh?"
"Yeh."

"Hey Jujjy!" Yussie hailed them. "Hea's Davy! He wandsuh be glad on
yuh. He's gonna tell yuh aboud de p'lice station! Aintcha, Davy?"

"Yeh."



(Continue to Book II)

(1934)

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