BOOK II


The Picture


I



IN FEBRUARY David's father found the job he wanted --he was to be
a milkman. And in order that he might be nearer the stables, they moved a
few days later to 9th Street and Avenue D on the lower East Side. For David
it was a new and violent world, as different from Brownsville as turmoil
from quiet. Here in 9th Street it wasn't the sun that swamped one as one left
the doorway, it was sound--an avalanche of sound. There were countless
children, there were countless baby carriages, there were countless mothers.
And to the screams, rebukes and bickerings of these, a seemingly endless
file of hucksters joined their bawling cries. On Avenue D horse-cars
clattered and banged. Avenue D was thronged with beer wagons, garbage
carts and coal trucks. There were many automobiles, some blunt and rangy,
some with high straw poops, honking. Beyond Avenue D, at the end of a
stunted, ruined block that began with shacks and smithies and seltzer
bottling works and ended in a junk heap, was the East River on which many
boat horns sounded. On 10th Street, the 8th Street Crosstown car ground its
way toward the switch.

His own home was different too. They lived on the fourth floor now, the
top floor of the house. There was no cellar door, though a door did lead to
the yard. The stairs were of stone and one could hear himself climb. The
toilets were in the hall. Sometimes the people in them rattled newspapers,
sometimes they hummed, sometimes they groaned. That was cheering.

He became very fond of his own floor. There was a frosted skylight
over the roofstair housing that diffused a cloudy yellow glow at morning
and a soft grey haze at afternoon. After one climbed from the tumult of the
street, climbed the lower, shadowier stairs, a little tense, listening to toilets,
entering this light was like reaching a haven. There was a mild, relaxing
hush about it, a luminous silence, static and embalmed. He would have
liked to explore it, or at least to see whether the roof door was locked, but
the thought of that height, that mysterious vacancy and isolation dissuaded
him. There was something else besides. The stairs that led up were not like
the stairs that led down, although both were of stone. Common stairs were
beveled to an edge, hollowed to an aching trough by the tread of many feet,
blackened beyond washing by the ground-in dirt of streets. But these that
led up to the roof still had a pearliness mingled with their grey. Each slab
was still square and clean. No palms of sliding hands had buffed the
wrinkled paint from off their bannisters. No palms had oiled them tusk
smooth and green as an ax-helve. They were inviolable those stairs,
guarding the light and the silence.

There were four rooms in the flat they lived in. There were eight
windows. Some faced 9th Street, some faced Avenue D, and one looked out
upon the dizzying pit of an airshaft. There was no bathtub. The partition
separating the two adjacent washtubs had been knocked down, and they
bathed in that. The bottom felt like sandpaper. One had to be careful not to
draw too much water or one might float.

At home the routine of life had changed. His father no longer left for
work early in the morning to return at night. Instead he left at night, in the
incredible depths of night, and returned early in the morning. During the
first few nights, his father's arising from bed had wakened him also, and he
had lain perfectly quiet, listening to the slow heavy tread in the kitchen that
was followed soon by the alternate sounds of a bare foot and a shod foot,
and then the running water and the scuffing chairs; had lain there listening
till his father had left, and then in drowsy thought had followed him down
the stone stairs, had imagined in snugness the graduate cold, the night wind
on the stoop, the silence, and sunk again through cloudy desolation into
sleep.

Brownsville was fading from his mind, becoming soon a troubled
nebulous land, alien and diverging. He was glad they had moved away...



II



AT THE beginning of April, David began hearing rumors of an aunt,
Bertha, a younger sister of his mother, who was coming to this country.
When at first, his mother had suggested that Bertha be permitted to live
with them awhile, his father refused to hear of it. Had he not thrown himself
at his wife's feet and begged her to permit Luter to live with them? May fire
consume Luter now, but hadn't he? She had refused then; well he would
repay her now. Bertha wouldn't be allowed in the house.

But David's mother persisted. "Where could the poor creature go alone
in a strange land?"

"Poor creature!" His father had scoffed. As far as he was concerned, let
her find a home under earth. He would have nothing to do with her. Did she
think he had forgotten her, that gross, ill-favored wench with her red hair
and green teeth. And heaven preserve him--her mouth!

But she was only a girl then, forward and flighty. She would have
changed by now.

"For the worse!" he had answered. "But I know what you want her here
for. You want her here so you can spend the entire day clacking your tongue
with an endless he-said-and-I-said."

No, there would be very little of that. Bertha was handy with the needle.
She would soon be working and not at home at all. And hadn't he himself
come to this land alone and a stranger? Had he no pity on another in the
same plight? And a woman at that! Could he be so inhuman as to expect her
to turn away someone of her own blood in this wilderness?

At last, he had been won over and finally growled his consent. "Talking
won't help me," he said bitterly, "But don't blame me if anything goes
wrong. Remember!"

It was some time in May that Aunt Bertha arrived, and the first thing
that David thought when he saw her was that his father's sarcastic
description had not been exaggerated. Aunt Bertha was distressingly
homely. She had a mass of rebellious, coarse red hair, that was darker than a
carrot and lighter than a violin. And the color of her teeth, if one had to
decide upon it, was green. She used salt, she said--when she remembered.
The first thing David's mother did was to buy her a tooth brush.
She had no figure and no vanity about her appearance. "Alas!" she said.
"I look like one butter firkin on another." A single crease divided fat fore
arm from pudgy hand. Her legs landed into her shoes without benefit of
ankles. No matter what she wore, no matter how new or clean, she always
managed to look untidy. "Pearl and cloth of gold would stink on me," she
confessed.

Her ruddy skin always looked as if it were about to flake with sunburn.
She perspired more than any woman David had ever seen. Compared to his
mother, whose pale skin always had a glossy look that no heat seemed able
to flush, his aunt's red face was like a steaming cauldron. As the weather
grew warmer, she began using the largest men's handkerchiefs, and at home
she always tied a napkin around her short throat. "The sweat tickles me at
the bend," she explained.

On those infrequent occasions when his mother bought herself a dress,
she sometimes frankly preferred to stand rather than sit down and wrinkle
it. His aunt, on the contrary, made hers look like a limp rag so quickly that
she would take her Sunday afternoon nap in a new dress to get over the
feeling that she had to be solicitous about it.

Apart from their complete difference in appearance, David soon
observed that his mother and Aunt were worlds apart in temperament. His
mother was grave, attentive, mild in her speech: his aunt was merry, tart and
ready-tongued. His mother was infinitely patient, careful about everything
she did; his aunt was rebellious and scatter-brained.

"Sister," she would tease, "do you remember that Salt Sea that grandfather
used to speak of--by Judah or by Jordan, where-ever it was--no storms
and it bore everything? That's how you are. You use all your salt for tears.
Now a wise woman uses some of it for sharpness." Aunt Bertha used all of it.



III



ON a clear Sunday afternoon in July, David and his aunt set out together
toward the Third Avenue Elevated. They were going to the Metropolitan
Museum. Sweat runneled his aunt's cheeks, hung down from her chin, fell
sometimes, spotting the bosom of her green dress. With her handkerchief,
she slapped at the beads viciously as though they were flies and cursed the
heat. When they reached the elevated, David was compelled to ask innumer-
able people what the right train was, and during the whole trip, she sent him
forward to plague the conductor.

At 86th Street, they got off and after further inquiry walked west toward
Fifth Avenue. The further they got from Third Avenue, the more aloof grew
the houses, the more silent the streets. David began to feel uneasy at his
aunt's loud voice and Yiddish speech both of which seemed out of place
here.

"Hmm!" she marveled in resounding accents. "Not a single child on the
street. Children, I see, are not in style in this portion of America." And after
gaping about her. "Bah! It is quiet as a forest here. Who would want to live
in these houses? You see that house?" She pointed at a red brick structure.
"Just such a house did Baron Kobelien have, with just such shades. He was
an old monster, the Baron, may he rot away! His eyes were rheumy, and his
lips munched as though he were chewing a cud. He had a back as crooked
as his soul." And in the role of the Baron, she tottered onto Fifth Avenue.

Before them, stood a stately white-stone edifice set in the midst of the
green park.

"That must be it," she said. "So they described it to me at the shop."
But before they crossed the street, she decided to take her bearings and
cautioned David to remember a certain brown-stone house with gabled
roofs and iron railings before it. Thus assured of a certain return, they
hurried across the avenue and stopped again at the foot of a flight of broad
stairs that led up to a door. A number of people were going in.

"Whom shall we ask to make sure we are right?"

A short distance from the building stood a peanut-vender with his cart
and whistling box. They walked over to him. He was a lean, swarthy fellow
with black mustaches and bright eyes.

"Ask him!" she ordered.

"Is dat a museum?"

"Dotsa duh musee," he flickered his eyebrows at her while he spoke.

"You go inna straight," he pushed out his chest and hips, "you come out all
tire."

David felt his arm clutched; his aunt hurried him away. "Kiss my arse,"
she flung over her shoulder in Yiddish; "What did that black worm say?"

"He said it was a museum."

"Then let's go in. The worst we can get is a kick in the rear."

His aunt's audacity scared him quite a bit, but there was nothing to do
except follow her up the stairs. Ahead of them, a man and woman were on
the point of entering the door. His aunt pressed his arm and whispered
hastily.

"Those two people! They seem knowing. We'll follow them till they
come out again, else we'll surely be lost in this stupendous castle!"

The couple before them passed through a turn-stile. David and his aunt
did likewise. The others turned to the right and entered a room full of
grotesque granite figures seated bolt upright upon granite thrones. They
followed in their wake.

"We must look at things with only one eye," she cautioned him, "the
other must always be on them."

And keeping to this plan, wherever their two unwitting guides strolled,
his aunt and he tagged along behind. Now and then, however, when she was
particularly struck by some piece of sculpture, they allowed their leaders to
draw so far ahead that they almost lost them. This happened once when she
stood gawking at the spectacle of a stone wolf suckling two infants.
"Woe is me!" Her tone was loud enough for the guard to knit his brows
at her. "Who would believe it--a dog with babies! No! It could not have
been!"

David had to pluck her dress several times and remind her that their
companions had disappeared before she could tear herself away.
Again, when they arrived before an enormous marble figure seated on
an equally huge horse, his aunt was so overcome that her tongue hung out
in awe. "This is how they looked in the old days," she breathed reverently.
"Gigantic they were, Moses and Abraham and Jacob, and the others in the
earth's youth. Ai!" Her eyes bulged.

"They're going, Aunt Bertha," he warned. "Hurry, They're going
away!"

"Who? Oh, may they burst! Won't they ever stop a moment! But come!
We must cleave to them like mire on a Pig!"

In this fashion, hours seemed to go by. David was growing weary. Their
quarry had led them past miles and miles of armor, tapestries, coins,
furniture and mummies under glass, and still they showed no sign of
flagging. His aunt's interest in the passing splendors had long since
worn off and she was beginning to curse her guides heartily.

"A plague on you," she muttered every time those walking ahead
stopped to glance into a show case. "Haven't you crammed your eyes full
yet! Enough!" She waved her sopping handkerchief. "May your heart burn
the way my feet are burning!"

At last the man ahead of them stopped to tell one of the uniformed
guards something. Aunt Bertha halted abruptly. "Hoorrah! He's com-
plaining about our following him! God be praised! Let them kick us out
now. That's all I ask!"

But alas, such was not the case; the guards paid no attention to them,
but seemed instead to be giving the others directions of some kind.
"They're leaving now," she said with a great sigh of relief. "I'm sure
he's telling them how to get out. What a fool I was not to have had you
ask him myself. But who would have known! Come, We may as well follow
them out, since we've followed them in."

Instead of leaving, however, the man and woman, after walking a short
distance, separated, one going into one door and one into another.

"Bah!" Her rage knew no bounds. "Why they're only going to pee. Ach!
I follow no longer. Ask that blockhead in uniform, how one escapes
this jungle of stone and fabric."

The guard directed them, but his directions were so involved that in a
short space they were lost again. They had to ask another and still another.
It was only by a long series of inquiries that they finally managed to get out
at all.

"Pheh!" she spat on the stairs as they went down. "May a bolt shatter you
to bits! If I ever walk up these stairs again, I hope I give birth to a pair
of pewter twins!" And she yanked David toward their landmark.

His mother and father were home when they entered. His aunt sprawled
into a chair with a moan of fatigue.

"You look as though you've stumbled into every corner of the world!"

His mother seated him on her knee. "Where have you led the poor child,
Bertha?"

"Led?" she groaned. "Where was I led you mean? We were fastened to a
he and a she-devil with a black power in their legs. And they dragged us
through a wilderness of man's work. A wilderness I tell you! And now I'm
so weary, my breast seems empty of its heart!"

"Why didn't you leave when you had seen enough?"

She laughed weakly. "That place wasn't made for leaving. Ach, green
rump that I am, the dirt of Austria is still under my toe-nails and I plunge
into museums." She buried her nose under her arm-pit. "Phew, I reek!"
As always, when she indulged herself in some coarse expression or
gesture, his father grimaced and tapped his foot.

"It serves you right," he said abruptly.

"Humph!" she tossed her head sarcastically.

"Yes!"

"And why?" Irritation and weariness were getting the better of her.

"A raw jade like yourself ought learn a little more before she butts into
America."

"My cultivated American!" she drawled, drawing down the corners of her
under lip in imitation of the grim curve on the face of her brother-in
law. "How long is it since you shit on the ocean?"

"Chops like those," he glowered wamingly, "deserve to drop off."

"That's what I say, but they're not mine."

The ominous purple vein began to throb on his temple. 'To me you can't
talk that way," his eyelids grew heavy. "Save that fishwives' lip for your
father, the old glutton!" "And you, what have you--"

"Bertha!" his mother broke in wamingly. "Don't!" Aunt Bertha's lips
quivered rebelliously a moment and she reddened as though she had
throttled a powerful impulse to blurt out something.

"Come, you're all worn out," continued his mother gently. "Why don't
you lie down for a little space while I make you some dinner."

"Very well," she answered and flounced out of the room.



IV



"HERE is a man," Aunt Bertha said vehemently to her sister, "who drives
a milk wagon and mingles with pedlars and truckmen, who sits at a horse's
tail all morning long, and yet when I say--what! When I say nothing!
Nothing at all!--he begins to tap his feet or rustle his newspaper as
though an ague were upon him! Did anyone ever hear of the like? He's as
squeamish as a newly-minted nun. One is not even permitted to fart when
he's around!"

"You're making the most of Albert's absence, aren't you?" his mother
asked.

"And why not? I don't have much opportunity to speak my mind when
he's around. And what's more, it won't hurt your son to know what I think
of all fathers. His father he knows. A sour spirit. Gloomy. The world
slapped him on both chins and so everyone he meets must suffer. But my
father, the good Reb Benjamin Krollman, was this way." And she began to
shake and mumble rapidly and look furtively around and draw closer to
herself a figment praying shawl. "His praying was an excuse for his
laziness. As long as he prayed he didn't have to do anything else. Let Genya
or his wife take care of the store, he had to take care of God. A pious Jew
with a beard--who dared ask more of him? Work? God spare him! He played
the lotteries!"

"Why do you say that?" his mother objected. "No one can blame father be-
cause he was pious. Well, he lacked business sense, but he tried to do his
best."

"Tried? Don't defend him. I've just left him and I know. If I remember
grandfather he worked till the cancer stretched him out--after grandmother
died. And he was seventy then. But father--God keep him from cancer--he
was old at forty--Ai! Ail" She switched with characteristic suddenness into
mimicry. "Ail Unhappy! Ai! My back, my bones! Slivers of death have
lodged in me! Ai! There are dots before my eyes! Is that you, Bertha? I
can't see. Ail Groaning about the house as though he already stank for earth
--God forbid! And not a grey hair in his head. But let one of us get in his
road--Ho! Ho! He was suddenly spry as a colt! And could he shower blows?
Tireless! Like a bandmaster's his stick would wave."

His mother sighed and then laughed acknowledging defeat.

"It was mother's fault too," Aunt Bertha added warn-ingly as if giving
her an object lesson. "A wife should have driven a man like that, not
coddled him, not pampered him to ruin. Soft and meek, she was." Aunt
Bertha became soft and meek. "She let herself be trampled on. Nine
children she bore him beside the twins that died between your birth and
mine. She's grey now. You'd weep to see her. Bloodless as a rag in the
weather. You wouldn't know her. Still trailing after him. Still saving him the
dainties--the breast and giblets of the hen, the middle of herrings, the
crispest rolls! Do you remember how he would stretch out over the table,
pawing each roll, pumping it in his glutton's haste to feel how soft it was?
And then hide away the new-baked cake from the rest of us? His nose was
in every pot. But whenever you saw him--" she broke off, stretched out her
hands in a gesture of injured innocence--"What have I eaten today? What?
An age-old crust, a glass of coffee. I tremble with hunger. Bah!"

"I sometimes don't think he could help it. There were so many mouths
to feed. It must have frightened him."

"Well, whose fault was it? Not mother's certainly. Why even when she
was ailing he--" And at this point she did what she often did in her speech
--finish her sentence in Polish, a language David had come to hate because
he couldn't understand it.

'Tell me, would you go back to Austria if you had the money?"

"Never!"

"No?"

"Money I'd send them," Aunt Bertha asserted flatly. "But go home--
never! I'm too glad I escaped. And why should I go home? To quarrel?"

"Not even to see mother?"

"God pity her more than any. But what good would my seeing her do her?
Or me? It would only give me grief. No! Neither her, nor father, nor
Yetta, nor Adolf, nor Herman, nor even Saul, the baby, though God knows
I was fond of him. You see I'm one who doesn't yearn for the home land."

"You haven't been here long enough," said his mother. "One grapples
this land at first closer to one's self than it's worth."

"Closer than it's worth? Why? True I work like a horse and I stink like
one with my own sweat. But there's life here, isn't there? There's a stir here
always. Listen! The street! The cars! High laughter! Ha, good! Veljish was
still as a fart in company. Who could endure it? Trees! Fields! Again trees!
Who can talk to trees? Here at least I can find other pastimes than sliding
down the gable on a roof!"

"I suppose you're right," his mother laughed at her vehemence. "It
appears to me that you'll grow from green to yellow in this land years
before I do. Yes, there are other pastimes here than--" She broke off,
flinched even though she laughed. "That sliver of wood in your flesh! Dear
God you were rash!"

"It was nothing! Nothing!" Aunt Bertha chuckled lightly. "My rump has
forgotten it long ago! But that should prove to you that I'm better off here
than I was there. Anyone is! That quiet was enough to spring the brain!"

His mother shook her head non-committally.

"What? No?" Aunt Bertha mistook her gesture. "Can you say no?" She
began counting on her fingers. "Ha-a-d A-Adolf come here as a boy, would
he have to run away to the lumber camps and gotten a rupture that big? Ha?
A-And Yetta-a. She could have found a better husband than that idiot tailor
she's married to. He finds diamonds in the road, I tell you, and loses them
before he gets home. He sees children falling into the frozen river and not a
child in the village is missing. Awful! Awful! And Herman and that peasant
wench. And the peasant looking for him with an ax. You don't see that in
this land! Fortunate for him anyway that he fled to Strij in time, and
fortunate too that it wasn't Russia. There might have been a pogrom! There
was nothing to do and so they went mad, and because they were mad they
did whatever came into their heads. That's how I was, and if you want to
know, my dear, close-mouthed sister, as quiet and gentle as you were," her
tone became sly-- "there was still, well a rumor of some sort. Someone,
something-er-done. But only a rumor!" she added hastily. "A lie of course!"

His mother turned abruptly toward the window, and her own irrelevant
words crossed her sister's before the other and finished--"Look, Bertha!
That new automobile. What a pretty blue! Wouldn't you like to be rich
enough to own one?"

Aunt Bertha made a face, but came over and looked down. "Yes. What a
grinder it has in front of it. Like a hand-organ, no? Do you remember when
we saw our first one on the new road in Veljish--the black one?" The least
bit of resentment crept into her voice. "You eternal, close-mouth, when will
that secret be weaned?"

Something about their tones and expressions, so curiously guarded in
both stirred David's curiosity. But since their conversation on that score
went no further, he could only wonder in a vague and transient way what
his mother had done, and hope that another time would reveal the meaning.



V



HOSTILITIES between Aunt Bertha and David's father were rapidly reach-
ing the breaking point. David was sure that something would happen soon
if Aunt Bertha did not curb her over-ready tongue. He marveled at her
rashness.

On that Saturday night Aunt Bertha had arrived home bearing a large
cardboard box. She was later tonight than usual and had delayed the supper
almost an hour. The fast had not helped to put David's father in an amiable
frame of mind. He had been grumbling before she came, and now, though
she was washing her face and hands with as great dispatch as possible, he
could not restrain a testy--

"Hurry up. You'll never wash that stench off!"

To which Aunt Bertha made no other reply than to bob her ample butt-
ocks in his general direction. Glaring furiously at her back, he said
nothing, but savagely toyed with the table knife in his hands.
Aunt Bertha at length straightened up, and apparently unconscious of
the rage she had put him in, began drying herself.

"I suppose you've been shopping," said her sister amiably, setting the
food on the table.

"Indeed I have," she seated herself. "I'm coming up in the world."

"What did you buy?"

"Bargains of course!" his father broke in contemptuously. He seemed to
have been waiting for just this opportunity. "The storekeeper who couldn't
lift the head from her shoulders without her knowing it might as well close
up shop!"

"Is that so?" she retorted sarcastically. "Speak for yourself! I
don't spend my life hunting for rusty horseshoes. That gramophone
you bought in the summer-- Ha! Ha! Mute and motionless as the day
before creation." "Hold your tongue!"

"Your noodles and cheese are growing cold," said David's mother.
"Both of you!"

There was a pause while everyone ate. From time to time, Aunt Bertha
cast her eyes happily at the cardboard box resting on the chair.
"Apparel?" asked his mother discreetly.

"What else? Half the country's goods!"

His mother smiled at his aunt's fervor.

"Blessed is this golden land," she let herself be carried away by
enthusiasm. "Such beautiful things to wear!" "Much good that does you,"
said his father over a forkful of noodles.

"Albert!" his wife protested.

Aunt Bertha abruptly stopped eating. "Who was speaking to you? Go
snarl up your own wits! You're one person I don't have to please."

'To please me, the Lord need grant you a new soul." 'To spite you, I'd
stay just as I am!" She tossed her head scornfully, "I'd sooner have a
pig admire me." "No doubt he would."

"Tell me, dear Bertha," said her sister desperately. "What did you buy?"

"Oh, a parcel of rags! With what I earn what else can I buy?" Then
brightening a little. "I'll show them to you."

Casting a hasty glance at her husband, David's mother put up a restrain-
ing hand, but too late. Aunt Bertha had seized a table knife and was
already cutting the strings off the box.

"Are we having dinner or going to a fair?" he asked. "Perhaps a little
later--" suggested his mother.

"Not at all," Aunt Bertha said with vindictive cheerfulness. "Let him
gorge himself if he wants to. My appetite can wait." And she whipped open
the box.

Lifting out first one article of woman's wear and then another--a corset
cover, a petticoat, stockings--she commented blithely on each and quoted
its price. Finally, she brought into view a pair of large white drawers and
turned them over admiringly in her hands. David's father abruptly shoved
his chair around to cut them from his field of vision.

"Aren't they beautiful?" she chattered on. "See the lace at the bottom.
And so cheap. Only twenty cents. I saw such small ones in the store. Some
poor women have no buttocks at all!" Then she giggled, "when I hold them
at a distance upside down this way they look like peaks in Austria."

"Yes, yes," said his mother apprehensively.

"Ha! Ha!" She went on entirely enchanted by the charm of her purchase.
"But what can I do? I am fat below. But isn't it a miracle? Twenty
cents, and I can wear what only a baroness in Austria could wear. And so
convenient and so neatly cut--these buttons here. See how this drops down!
The newest style, he told me. Do you remember the drawers we wore in
Austria--into the stockings? Winter and summer my legs looked like a
gypsy's accordion."

But David's father could restrain himself no longer. "Put those things
away!" he rapped out.

Aunt Bertha drew back startled. Then narrowed her eyes and thrust out
stubborn lips. "Don't shout at me!"

"Put those away!" He banged his fist on the table so that the dishes
danced and the yellow noodles cast their long necks over the rim of the
platters.

"Please, Bertha!" her sister implored, "You know how--"

"Do you side with him too?" She interrupted her. "I'll put them away
when I please! I'm not his slave!"

"Are you going to do what I say?"

Aunt Bertha clapped one hand to her hip. "When I please! It's time
you knew what women wore on their bottoms."

"I'll ask you once more, you vile slut," he shoved his chair back and
rose in slow wrath.

David began to cry.

"Let me go!" Aunt Bertha pushed back her sister who had interposed
herself. "Is he so pious, he can't bear to look at a pair of drawers?
Does he piss water as mortals do, or only the purest of vegetable oil?"

His father advanced on her. "I'm pleading with you as with Death!" He
always said that at moments of intense anger. His voice had taken on that
thin terrific hardness that meant he was about to strike. "Will you put them
away?"

"Make me!" she screamed and waved the drawers like a goad in his
very eyes.

Before she could recoil, his long arm had swept out, and with a bark of
rage, he plucked the drawers from her. A moment later, he had ripped them
in two. "Here, you slut!" he roared. "Here are your peaks!" And he flung
them in her face.

Raging with fury, Aunt Bertha leapt at him with clawing fingers. The
flat thrust of his palm against her bosom sent her reeling to the wall. He
turned on his heel, and his eyeballs glaring in demonic rage, he tore his
hat and coat from a peg near the door and stalked out.

Aunt Bertha dropped into a chair and began weeping loudly and hysteric-
ally. Her sister, her own eyes filling with tears, tried to comfort her.
"Madman! Mad!" came his aunt's stifled words. "Savage beast!" She
picked up the drawers at her feet and wrung them in the frenzy of her
anguish. "My new drawers! What did he have against them? May his head
be cloven as they are! Oh!" The tears streamed down her cheeks. Stray
strands of her red hair parted on her clammy brow and nose.

David's mother stroked her shoulders soothingly. "Hush, dear sister!
Don't weep so, child! You'll break your heart!"

Aunt Bertha only lamented the more, "Why did I ever set foot on this
stinking land? Why did I ever come here? Ten hours a day in a smothering
shop--paper flowers! Rag flowers! Ten long hours, afraid to pee too often
because the foreman might think I was shirking. And now when I've bought
with the sweat of my brow a little of what my heart desires, that butcher
rends it. Ai!"

"I tried to save you, sister. You must know what he's like by now. Listen
to me, I have some money. I'll buy you a new pair."

"Oh! Woe is me!"

"And even the ones you have there may be mended."

"May his heart be broken as mine is, they'll never be mended."

"Look, they're torn exactly at the seam."

"What?" Aunt Bertha opened grief stricken eyes. She stared at the
drawers a moment and then jumped frenzied-ly from her chair. "He threw
them at me too, dashed them in my face. He flung me to the wall! I'm not
going to stay here another minute! I'll not endure it another minute. I'm
going to pack my things! I'm going!" She made for the door.

David's mother hastened after her. "Wait," she pleaded, "where will you
run at this time of night? Please, I beg you!"

"I'll go anywhere! What did I leave Europe for if not to escape that
tyrant of a father. And this is what I came to--a madman! May a trolley-car
crack his bones! Slaughter him, Almighty God!" And she ran weeping
loudly into her bedroom.

David's mother followed her sadly. . . .

Although Aunt Bertha did not move out of their house as she had threat-
ened to do, the next day and the next, there was no exchange of communi-
cation between her and David's father. Dinners at night were eaten in si-
lence, and if either of them required anything of the other, David or his
mother were impressed as intermediaries. However after several nights of
this embarrassing constraint, Aunt Bertha's self-imposed shackles grew too
much for her. Quite suddenly one evening, she broke them.

"Pass me the herring jar," she muttered--this time directly at her
brother-in-law.

His face darkened when she spoke, but sullenly though he did it, he
nevertheless did push the herring jar toward her.

Thus an armistice was signed and relations, if not cordial, were at least
established. And thereafter, as much as it was possible for her, Aunt Bertha
kept her peace.

"He's a mad dog," she told her sister. "He has to run. There's nothing to
do but keep out of his way."

And she did for many months.



VI



"A HEART full of pity!" said Aunt Bertha derisively. "Yes! Yes, indeed!
For plucking a tooth out, he asks only fifty cents. You understand
what that means? What will hurt me most is only fifty cents. After my teeth
are gone, and I look like my grandmother, God rest her where she lies, then
his price stiffens. I can see through these bandits, never fear!"

Aunt Bertha had been indulging herself in enormous quantities of sugary,
vanilla "bum bonnies" as she called them, "pinnit brettlich" and "turra
frurra" ice-cream. Severe toothaches had followed. Aunt Bertha had claim-
ed that during the last few nights she had felt her mouth expand to the
size of half a watermelon. Whether it had actually grown that large, David
didn't know, but looking at her green teeth and red mouth he could see a
certain resemblance. After much urging, her sister had finally succeeded in
getting her to go to the dentist. Tomorrow night he would draw several of
her teeth.

"In Veljish," she continued, "they say that 'kockin' will clear the brow
of pain. But here in America--didn't he call it that? 'Kockin'?--will clear
the mouth of pain."

His father's newspaper rustled warningly.

"Cocaine?" said her sister hastily.

"Oh, is that how you say it?"

'Kockin,' as David had learned long ago, was a Yiddish word meaning
to sit on the toilet.

"And another thing," his aunt indulged in a sly laugh. "I am going to
lose six teeth. And of the six teeth, three he called 'mollehs'. Now isn't
this a miracle? He's going to take away a 'molleh' and then he's going to
make me 'molleh'."

David didn't know what 'molleh' might mean in English. He did know
that 'molleh' in Yiddish had something to do with circumcision. Aunt
Bertha was being reckless to-night. . .

But if his father had suffered because of Aunt Bertha's puns, the next
night it was Aunt Bertha who was suffering. His mother related what had
happened. She had sat down very meekly and very quietly in the dentist's
chair, she had shut her eyes when the needle was put in her mouth, she
had behaved very bravely. But when the first tooth was drawn and Doctor
Goldberg had told her to spit, she had spat--not in the cuspidor beside the
chair, but at Doctor Goldberg.

"Very worthy of praise!" his father snorted. "An example for sages!"

"So!" Aunt Bertha forgot her dolor. "May they pull all your teeth out
soon. We'll see how brave and how clever you are then! At least, it gives
me satisfaction to think I spat at him, not at myself. And you!" she turned
petulantly on her sister. "You're very clever too! You saw I was stunned
with fright! You saw my eyes were shut because my head was whirling so
hard I didn't know where I was. He said open your mouth, I opened it--
wide as a sack! Shut it. I shut it. Spit--! Go look for a spittoon when
you're ready to faint! It serves him right for standing in the way."

His mother's lips trembled in laughter, but she pressed them soberly
together. "I didn't mean to hurt you, sister. I know how much you've
suffered already. I'm sorry! But come! You're three teeth nearer to
those golden kernels you admire so much."

"Nearer?" She touched the bare red gums gingerly. "Emptier you mean.
You're sure he won't plant the new ones in the holes he's made?"

"No! No!" His mother reassured her. "He told you, didn't he? They
hang like a gate."

"Britches, he called them, no?" Aunt Bertha cheered up ruefully.

"Pritchig, he ought to call them, a hearth in other words, there's such
a fire in my mouth. But I will look handsomer soon, won't I?"

"What else!" Her brother-in-law's cheek scrolled into a sour smile. . . .

After Aunt Bertha's gums had healed, she began visiting the dentist's
twice a week, and at first complained bitterly and went there only with
the greatest reluctance. In the space of a fortnight, however, her atti-
tude underwent a remarkable change. She now began to go there eagerly,
expectantly, and to stay sometimes twice as long. There were no longer any
complaints, no longer any detailed descriptions of the various types of pain
different dental instruments could inflict. All that seemed to have been
forgotten. A new excitement had seized her, a guilty excitement that made
her run to a mirror and regard herself closely and then look about to see if
she was being watched. She began to fuss with her hair and blouse, arch her
short neck, smile in a way that would reveal her temporary gold crown,
dowse herself with densely redolent perfume. Something was wrong. At
least twice a week David was excluded from the kitchen while she bathed in
the washtubs. And here it was Autumn. And she bought face powder which
caked and flaked on her cheeks and looked very queer and white flecking
her reddish eyebrows. Something was very wrong. Presently her visits to
the dentist's increased from two to three times a week and shortly to four.

This unwonted frequency, unwonted eagerness and strange behavior in
general had aroused not only the curiosity of David and his mother, but his
father's silent, impassive questioning as well. To his mother's circumspect
inquiries, Aunt Bertha had at first explained that there was much work
being done on her teeth, work of a subtle and occult nature, a delicate
prying and adjusting that could only be felt but hardly demonstrated. Of
course, she confessed with a cryptic giggle, were she to insist, she could
probably get the same amount of work done in two visits as easily as in
four, but she really preferred going there as many times as possible. It was
so pleasant being there now, she explained. There was hardly any pain, or at
least so little it wasn't worth mentioning. One grows accustomed to
sorrows, she elucidated. And beside, the waiting room where all the patients
gathered was so homelike, and the people so fluent in English that it was
both pleasant and instructive to be among them. Also, it was disclosed,
Doctor Goldberg's wife frequently came into the waiting room to chat with
them in really "fency Eng-alish." And what especially put everyone at their
ease was that while Mrs. Goldberg conversed in this very superior English,
she also carried on some homely domestic duty such as chipping noodles or
mixing the batter of a spongecake. Aunt Bertha would show his mother
some day how to make a sponge-cake. And so it was all homely and
refined. And of course, one had to look decent! And she, Mrs. Goldberg,
had introduced Aunt Bertha to a very fine man, albeit a Russian, who was a
children's leggings' cutter and who was having the identical type of work
done to his mouth that was being done to Aunt Bertha's. His name, by the
way, was Nathan Sternowitz, and was he jolly! And so, all over again, it
was all very homelike, very jolly and very refined.

Nothing more was said about the matter for a short time--at least
nothing while David was within earshot. But on Friday night, a few days
later, Aunt Bertha decided to take her sister completely into her confidence.
On that night, the dentist's office was regularly closed and Aunt Bertha
remained at home. She had been silent until David's father had gone to bed,
which was at about eight-thirty, and only began speaking when the regular
hiss of his breathing could be heard behind the bedroom door. Fortunately
for David, it had become his privilege to defer his bed-time till nine o'clock
and even later on Fridays and Saturdays, there being no school the
following mornings. He heard it all. As it chanced, his mother was at that
moment tracing for him the crooked boundary of a pink Austria on the map
of a geography book not yet begun in school. And she had just informed
him laughingly that Veljish was too much of a dot in reality to be seen even
by the combined lights of candle and gas, when Aunt Bertha cleared her
throat suddenly and spoke:

"Well, Genya, your man is asleep."

The cautious, subdued nervousness of her tone made both David and his
mother look up. Aunt Bertha was frowning warily and fingering her gold
crown. His mother glanced first at her and then at the bedroom door.
"So he is. What is it?"

"I'm not going to the dentist's tomorrow," she said bluntly. "I haven't
been going there for weeks--at least not every time I left here. I'm going
'kippin' companyih'!" "Going what?" His mother knit her brow. "What are
you doing?"

"Kippin' companyih! It's time you learned a little more of this tongue. It
means I have a suitor."

"Then blessed is God!" his mother laughed. "Who is he-- But I know!
This Sternowitz!"

"Yes. I've hinted his name to you. But I don't want him to know." She
nodded warningly toward the bedroom. "He'd gloat if it went all to smash.
That's why I've said nothing."

"You're too harsh with him, Bertha," her sister smiled placatingly. "He
doesn't wish you any harm. Really he doesn't. It's his nature. It will be
that way always."

"A bitter nature." Aunt Bertha rejoined spitefully. "And always is the
time one spends under earth. That's where he ought--"

"Ach, Bertha! Hush!"

"Yes, let's not talk too much. He may hear me. And after all he is your
husband. But you won't tell him, will you? Not till all is certain. You
promise? Remember," she pointed her remark. "I've kept your secrets
well."

Her words sent a sudden wave of curiosity through David. Secrets! His
mother's! Looking up, he saw a deep rose in his mother's throat and fainter
petals dappling the waxen sheen of her flat cheek. Their eyes met. She was
silent, touched the water in the candlestick cups that would ultimately
quench the flame.

"Forgive me!" Aunt Bertha said hastily. "Really I didn't mean--I didn't
mean to be so--so thick! May my tongue fall out if I meant to offend you!"
His mother glanced at the bedroom door and then smiled suddenly.

"Don't be embarrassed! I'm not offended."

"Are you sure?" Aunt Bertha asked hesitantly.

"Why, of course!"

"But you grew so red, I thought I had angered you. Or--" Her voice
dropped to a whisper. "Is it Albert?" "No." She answered calmly. "None
of those things. The son was staring in my eyes."

"Oh!" Aunt Bertha was relieved. "I thought that--" and she fixed on
David accusingly. "Are you listening, you rogue?"

"What?" His eyes wandered vacantly from the open book on the table to
Aunt Bertha, and dropped to the book again.

"Ach!" Aunt Bertha brushed away her sister's objections. "He's
dreaming of Veljish, the little oaf."

"I'm not so sure." His mother laughed. "But what were you saying? The
man is what? A leggings' cutter?"

"Yes. A children's leggings' cutter. He has a very good job and he
makes good money. But--" She scratched her head vehemently and left her
sentence hanging in air. "Well, what's troubling you? Is he so homely?
What?" "Ach! Pt! Do you believe in love?"

"I?" His mother smiled. "No."

"No! Tell that to your grandmother there in her grave. You've read
every German Romance in Austria. Do you know?" She looked at her sister
as if a new thought had struck her. "I've never seen you read a book since
I've been here."

"Who has time even to read a paper?"

"They were bad for you." Aunt Bertha continued after a moment of
reflection. "They made you odd and made your thoughts odd. They gave
you strange notions you shouldn't have had."

"So you've told me. And so did father--scores of times."

"Well, it would have been better if you had listened to him. They spoil-
ed you--understand? You weren't--not what shall I say?--good. You
were good enough, the gentlest of us all. But you weren't truly Jewish.
You were strange. You didn't have a Jew's nature."

"And what kind of a nature is that?"

"Ach!" Aunt Bertha said impatiently. "You see? You smile! You're too
calm, too generous. That's wrong! That's bad! Don't be offended with me,
but perhaps you've forgotten what a mopish, calf-eyed creature you were.
You looked so--" Aunt Bertha's jaw dropped. Her red tongue hung out.
And so--" Her eyes climbed up into some cranny under the lids. "Always
a cloudy look! Not a suitor they brought you would you accept. And there
were some among them at whose feet I would have fallen!" She perched her
head back further on her shoulders to stress her own worth and the
consequent immensity of that gesture. "German Romances! They did that!
And then you married Albert--of all the choices to make."

His mother regarded her with a mixture of perplexity and despair.

"What are you talking about? Is it me, yourself or German Romances?"

"Nothing!" Aunt Bertha shrugged her shoulders huffily. "I was talking
about love. Lupka--"

There was that Polish again. David felt a twinge of resentment.

"Oh now, I know," said his mother lightly in Yiddish. "Go on."

"How can I, when you mock everything I say."

"I? How?"

"I know you've been in love, but when I ask you whether you believe
in it, you answer, no."

"Very well, I do. Listening to you convinces me. But what has that to do
with it?"

"You see? Now you do! You're exactly what father said you were! You
were gentle of heart, but only the devil understood you. I'm your sister.
You've never told me about yourself. You don't even care to hear what
vexes me.

"Sh!" his mother raised a warning finger. "Now just what is vexing
you? Tell me."

"First tell me why you married Albert." Her voice suddenly dropped.
"After you knew what he had--what kind of a man he--"

"Ach! Hush!" his mother shook her head impatiently. "Bertha, sister,
you're the silliest woman I've ever known. What is there to tell? I was
the oldest. There were three daughters younger than I--you, Yetta, Sadie--
pushing me toward the canopy. What else could I do?"

'Tell that to your grandmother also." Aunt Bertha continued peevishly.
"Father wouldn't say anything. Mother wouldn't speak. And yet there was
a rumor among us--a saying. But who? Why won't you--"

"Come! No more!" His mother's voice was curt, strangely severe for
her. "Not here!"

David had just enough time to duck his head toward his geography book
before her glance flashed his way. In the pause that followed, he kept his
eyes there, intently, rigidly, turning the book now this way, now that,
feigning the greatest abstraction. Much that he had heard, he hadn't quite
understood, it was all so vague, flurried, mysterious. Aunt Bertha had a
suitor. His name was Nathan something or other. He made leggings. What
was love? But he didn't care about that. He didn't care if Aunt Bertha had a
dozen suitors. What fascinated him, stirred him to the depths, were the two
threads he had unearthed, the two threads he clung to. His father had done
something.

What? No one would say. His mother? Even Aunt Bertha didn't know.
What? What? He was so excited, he didn't dare look up, didn't dare move
his eyes on his tracing finger. He prayed his mother would go on, would
answer, would reveal what Aunt Bertha had been hinting at. But she didn't.
To his great disappointment, she veered suddenly. When she spoke again,
her voice had regained its calm.

"Tell me, sister, why are you so irritable?"

Aunt Bertha twisted stubby fingers together, scratched her head frantic-
ally, sending the hair pins shooting up out of her red hair. "Because
I'm frightened."

"But why? What have you done in God's name?" "Nothing. Do you think
I'm a fool! Let that man dare--! But why is it that since you married,
everyone in our family has married as I would wish my enemies?" "I don't
know." His mother sat back hopelessly. "Are you going to begin that all
over again?"

"Haven't I right to be frightened?" She rubbed her palms against her
thighs, thumbed them to see if they were dry and then dried them on her
disheveled hair. "Who wouldn't be if he felt like a calf being led to the
shambles?"

"Don't be foolish, Bertha."

"There's a curse on this tribe, I tell you. It's a bruised seed."

"Ach!" Impatiently. "Who is he? Tell me about him.' "I'm ashamed
to."

"Shall we stop talking about it then?" His mother's look had an air of
finality about it.

"No." Aunt Bertha frowned sullenly. "Even though you wouldn't tell me
about yourself I'll tell you. Nathan Sternowitz is a--a widower. There
you have it! Now you're satisfied, aren't you?"

"Well, in God's name!" his mother relaxed, relieved. "Is that all? Is that
why you've been plaguing yourself and me? A widower. I thought he was
--I don't know what-- without legs or arms!"

"God forbid!" And then eagerly, "So you don't think it's a shame, a
scandal that I should marry a widower --I'm not really an old maid."

"Nonsense!"

"But he's thirteen years older than I am. Thirty-eight, mind you. And ai!
he has two children already. It is a scandall" she moaned dismally. "It is
a scandal!"

"It's scandalous how silly you are!" her sister laughed shortly. "Do you
love him?"

"Woe is me, no! And he doesn't love me either, so don't ask me."

"Well"

"Oh, we're fond of each other. We laugh a great deal when we're
together. We talk a great deal. But anybody can be fond of anybody who's
fond of--Ai!" she exclaimed desperately. "I'm fond of him! But he doesn't
believe in love! He says that love is a pinch here," she indicated her ample
busts and then her thighs, "and a pinch there and nothing more. And if
that's all it is, then I don't believe in it myself. But I'm not sure."

"It really isn't much more," his mother's upper lips creased into a smile.
"If you want to look at it that way." "But will they laugh at me? The girls
in the shop? Or the folks in Veljish? When they hear I've married a widower
with two daughters? They're half-grown, you know, ten and eleven."

"Veljish is too far away to worry about, sister. And even if it were only
as far away as that Brownsville we lived in, why should you care? And you
of all people worrying about what others think! For shame! I thought you
were bold!"

"But to be a stepmother at twenty-five! Or even at twenty-six! What will
it be like? To take the place of a woman in her grave? Ai!" She gnawed
her thumb. "And they say they always forget and call you sometimes by
their wife's name. Rachel! And she lies in her shroud! It makes me
shudder!"

"So that's what you're really afraid of? You're superstitious! Well, if
that's not the silliest thing I've ever heard!" "I don't know," she answered
spiritlessly. "I hate quiet and I hate death."

"Then don't fear! You probably won't meet either for a long time. I see
you're just a child after all. But listen to me. Women in their shrouds aren't
a bit jealous. It's the dead within yourself who won't sleep. That would be
the least of my troubles. Still, if you can't get over it, if the very thought
makes you so frightened, why do you want to marry him at all?"

Aunt Bertha's customary verve and impudence had vanished, and with it
her boisterous manner that was part of her even when she spoke quietly.
But though her lips drooped and she seemed to address her words to the
floor, dully, falteringly, there was still a remnant of stubborn, blunt de-
fiance in her tone and the way she jerked her head. "I'm not handsome--that
you know--not even with that new powder on my face--or this bit of gold."
She lifted her lip. "Don't cheer me! At me no one ever looks-- not even on
Sunday and you know I've stopped sleeping in my new dresses. Money for
marriage brokers--may they choke--I haven't. So what else? He's the first
one to ask me--well really the first--and he may be all. I don't want to
wear my buttocks to the bone sitting in a shop," her calloused thumb and
forefinger began rubbing together, "and weave paper flowers and rag
flowers all my life." "That's foolish, Bertha," her sister remonstrated
gently. "You speak as though you had not one good quality, as though you
were hopeless. Come, if one has asked, others will."

"The longer I wait, the more money I'll have to save. And out of my
three dollars a week, if I save anything, it will be a long wait."

"No, it won't! Don't worry so much about saving. Just give the men a
chance! You haven't been in the country long enough. Why, Bertha, New
York is full of all kinds of men who would want you!"

"Yes!" was her gloomy answer. "It's also full of all kinds of glib, limber
Jewesses who can play the piano. Go! Go!" she tossed her head petulantly.
"By the time I learn to speak this tongue I'll be what? Thirty! Old and dry!
Others have money, others can dance, can sing with their hands so--Tuh
Tuh-ruh! All I can do is laugh and eat--my only talents! If I don't get a
man now--" She waved her hand as if throwing something away. "Maybe I
won't even be able to do that."

"Ach! You won't lose your gusto so quickly." And after a short pause.
"What is he like?"

She thrust her lips out deprecatingly. "A Jew, like others."

"Yes. Well?"

"In appearance, nothing, short as I am and as homely. He's slender
though, and here and here," she pointed to the peaks of her brows, "his hair
is creeping out. What he has is brown, curly. Two small eyes," she sighed
gustily, "a long nose like a hinge. He's neat. He doesn't smoke-- he's like
Albert!" She snickered significantly. "But he has one habit I'm going to
break him of--he cuts his bread into little boxes when he eats. He takes his
own knife out and cuts it up. Pheh! But he's very pliant and he never grows
angry. He's jolly. He tells long yarns. You see I could rule."

"I see."

"And I'll tell you more!" A swell of eagerness washed away her gloom.
"He's not dull! He has schemes for making money. We could get ahead!
This week he asked me whether I would like to run a candy store if we were
married. He would buy it and I would run it. You know what that means?
He could earn money cutting leggings. I would earn money in the store--"

"And the house?"

"To the devil with it! I hate housekeeping! Anyway, his two wenches are
big enough to take care of that! A candy store! Life would be lusty that
way! Heh! It would be like living at a fair all the time."

"And you could have your candy that way!" his mother laughed slyly.
"You'll like that."

"So I would!" Aunt Bertha continued unaware. "Isn't it queer how it
turns out--from candy to teeth to candy?"

"Yes. And may it all be with good fortune!"

"God willing! Then I can bring him here sometimes to have supper?"

"Why, of course!"

"And you won't say anything to Albert--at least till I tell you, till I'm
sure? An engagement ring soon with God's blessingl"

"No."

"Ai!" Aunt Bertha put her palms together and prayed, "May he forget
Rachel soon, that's my only wish! And if he doesn't," she suddenly screwed
her mouth together shrew-ishly. "I'll take two stones and pound it out of his
head!" "With you for a wife, I think he'll forget her soon enough." His
mother smiled . . .



VII



ABOUT a week had passed. On coming around the corner of Avenue D
that afternoon, David spied his mother walking on the other side of the
street. She was hurrying toward the house and carried several parcels in her
hand. Catching sight of her accidentally this way always gave him an
intense thrill of pleasure. It was as though the street's shifting intricacy had
flowered into the simple steadiness of her presence, as though days not
hours had passed since he had seen her before, because days not hours had
passed since he had last seen her in the street. He bounded across the gutter
and after her.

"Mama!"

She stopped, smiled down at him. "Is it you?"

"Yes." He fell into step beside her. "Where are you going?"

"Home, naturally," she answered. "Are you coming up stairs with me?"

"Yes."

"Carry this then," she handed him a parcel.

Laundry. He knew it by the clean smell and the yellow paper it was
wrapped in. "Did the Chinaman give you those sweet candy-nuts?"

"I didn't think of asking," she answered apologetically. "A pity!"

"Mmm." He said mournfully.

"Next time, I will though."

"What are you carrying there?" he pointed to a small, square
newspaper-wrapped object she held in her hand.

"A surprise."

"For me?" he asked hopefully.

"Well," she hesitated, "for everyone."

"Oh!" he looked at it dubiously. It seemed far too small a package to
surprise everyone.

They had reached the house and went in.

"Can I see?"

"Yes, as soon as we've gotten upstairs."

At their door at last, he waited impatiently for her to find the right key.
They tiptoed in. They never spoke above a whisper in the afternoon when
his father was asleep in the bedroom.

His mother opened the newspaper--a picture.

"Oh!" He felt mildly disappointed.

"It doesn't pass muster?" she laughed.

David examined it more closely. It was a picture of a small patch of ground
full of tall green stalks, at the foot of which, tiny blue flowers grew.

"Yes, I like it," he said uncertainly.

"I bought it on a pushcart," she informed him with one of her curious,
unaccountable sighs. "It reminded me of Austria and my home. Do you
know what that is you're looking at?"

"Flowers?" he guessed, shaking his head at the same time.

"That's corn. That's how it grows. It grows out of the earth, you know,
the sweet corn in the summer--it isn't made by pushcart pedlars."

"What are those blue flowers under it?"

"In July those little flowers come out. They're pretty, aren't they?
You've seen them, yes, you have, fields and fields of them, only you've
forgotten, you were so young." She looked up at the walls. "And where
shall I hang it? I saw a nail, a nail. When I was a little girl," she said
irrelevantly, "a fire broke out in a neighboring house, and my cousin grew
so excited that all he could do was cry-- A ladder, a ladder, a ladder! An
ax, an ax, an ax! Foolish things people say--There! There's one." She
carried a chair carefully to the wall, stood up on it.

David had hardly ever seen his mother so animated, so gay before. He
felt like laughing at her.

She stepped down and gazed up at the picture she had just hung. "It's a
bit lofty even for corn but it will do. It's better than a calendar, anyway."

"What did you get it for?"

She shook her finger at him in playful warning. "We're having company,
don't you know? Bertha's 'kippin-com-panyih-man' is coming. Do I say it
well? She taught me." And after a pause. "Are you eager to see him?"

"Aaa!" He shrugged indifferently.

"Ach! What a bad nephew you are! Not even eager to behold you aunt's
new suitor! He'll be your uncle if she marries him. You'll have an
American uncle then. A yellow one. Did you ever think of that? Of course
not! Ach, you!"

David regarded her silently, wondering why that should excite anyone.
"I really believe," she continued in a scolding, bantering whisper, "that
you think of nothing. Now honest, isn't that so? Aren't you just a pair of
eyes and ears! You see, you hear, you remember, but when will you know?
If you didn't bring home those handsome report cards, I'd say you were a
dunce, my only son."

"I'm going down," he answered steadfastly.

"Oh, you are a dunce!" she laughed ruefully. "Bertha is right! But wait!
You'll have to be back a little earlier, darling. I must wash you and comb
your hair and change your shirt for our visitor's sake."

"Naaa!" He was at the door.

"And no kiss?" She caught him by the shoulders, kissed him. "There!
Savory, thrifty lips! Don't be late!" He went down--wonderingly and just a
little disturbed. He didn't mind being called a dunce. After all, she was only
joking. Hadn't she laughed and kissed him? And beside, if he hadn't shown
any interest in his future uncle, she hadn't shown any in himself. Forgetting
Chinee nuts that way! When they were free too, and she knew how fond of
them he was. He wondered if the Chinaman would give him any if he went
in now and told him that his mother had just gotten some laundry out--
what kind? Shirts. Yes. His father was going to dress up too. Maybe stiff
collars, though the parcel didn't feel that way. Will you give me some nuts,
Mr.--Mr. What? She forgot to ask, my mother forgot! Mr.--Mr. Chinee
Chink! Funny. Walk past anyway and look in. Funny. But--what? What?
He had been wondering about something he told himself. Yes. Something.
But now he couldn't remember. Not chinee-nuts. No. Company was
coming? Maybe, no.

He left the stoop, turned west. The Chinese laundry was near the corner
of Tenth Street and Avenue C. He walked slowly, idly, aware but no longer
overcome or even troubled by the movement of vehicles and people. He
knew his world now. With a kind of meditative assurance, he singled out the
elements of the ever-present din--the far voices, the near, the bells of a junk
wagon, the sing-song cry of the I-Cash-clothes-man, waving his truncheon
newspaper, the sloshing jangle of the keys on the huge ring on the back of
the tinker. There was more blue in the air of afternoons now; the air was
brisker fixing houses in a cold, sunless, brittle light. He looked up. They
were both gone--the two cages on the first floor fire-escape. A parrot and a
canary. Awk! awk! the first cried. Eee--tee--tee--tweet! the other. A
smooth and a rusty pulley. He wondered if they understood each other.
Maybe it was like Yiddish and English, or Yiddish and Polish, the way his
mother and aunt sometimes spoke. Secrets. What? Was wondering. What?
Too cold now. Birds go south, teacher said. But pigeons don't. Sparrows
don't. So how? Funny, birds were. In the park on Avenue C. Eat brown. Shit
green. On the benches is green. On the railings. So how? Don't you? Apples
is red and white. Chicken is white. Bread, watermelon, gum-drops, all
different colors. But--Don't say. Is bad. But everybody says. Is bad though.
. . . And he drifted on toward the corner drug-store, glanced at the red and
green mysterious fluid in the glass vases and turned right.

But was wondering. He sifted the mind's trinkets, searching for one
elusive. Was wondering. Birds? Not birds. Bad words? No. Before that.
When? Aunt Bertha, the new man? No. Can't find. Funny. Maybe his
name? Mr--Mr. What. Yes. Maybe. No--But--Approaching the laundry,
he gazed up at the low sign, the dull black letters against the dull red. C-h
Chuh-Ch-ar-ley. Charley, American name. Just like Charley in school. But
something else maybe, like Yussie is Joey. Gee, forgot. Yussie! L-i-ng.
Ling. Ling-a-ling. Is Jewish. Can't be. Ling. Don't like. How it hangs in the
butcher shop. Mister Ling.

He stopped, looked at the window and as he was about to step closer,
shrill familiar voices hailed him from behind.

"Hey, Davy!"

He turned. They were Izzy and Maxie; both lived in his block and both
were in his class in school.

"W'ea yuh goin'?" Izzy asked.

"No place."

"So w'y wuz yuh lookin' in de Chinkee-chinaman's windeh?"

"'Cause my modder god hea de lundry, bot she didn' ged no nots."

"So yuh wanna esk?" Izzy caught hold of the idea quickly. "Conun on,
we'll all go in."

"Naa, I jos' wannid t'look." David thought rapidly. "Maybe my modder'll
comm hea after, so I'll go in." With one accord, they drew near the
window, peered in under the shade of cupped hands. Within, behind the
high-counter, painted green, the queued and slant-eyed laundry-man blew a
spray of water on a piece of laundry out of a tin atomizer. He seemed too
absorbed in his work to notice them.

"Betcha yuh could ged now!" Izzy urged. "Hey, Maxie, you go in an' say
yuh Davy, like dat. So he'll t'ink yuh Davy, so he'll give. So we'll ged.
Yeh? Den Danvy's mama'll comm so we'll ged again."

"Yaa!" Maxie declined. "Go in yuhself! Dey god long knifes!"

"Like a lady, he looks," said Izzy reflectively. "Wod a big tail he's god
on his head. Led's knock on de windeh. Maybe he'll look op."

"Maybe he'll run afteh yuh too." Maxie objected.

Izzy pressed his nose against the glass. "I knew a Chinky," he declared.
"Wot he didn' hev no hen's. So he wrote wit' de mout' wit' dot stick all
de funny like dat"-- he squirmed and contracted into ideographs--"on de
tickets."

"So how did he irun, wise guy?" Maxie sneered almost wearily. "How
did he hoi' de bigl-irun?"

"He didn' hoi' id. Sommbody else hoided id."

"Yuh see w'ea de Chinee nots is?" Maxie peered obliquely into the
window. "In dot box? Yee! yum! yum! Dey break foist easy. Den dere's
inside soft an' good. Yum! Den dere's inside black wood. So id's hod
an' slippery. So yuh hoi' id in yuh mout', so it gives wawdeh."

"I know sommbody," Izzy contributed, "wod he bruck de hod pod wid a
hemmeh. An' inside wuz annuder liddle suft an' good. An' inside wuz
annuder liddle black one. So he bruck dat. An' inside wuz anudder liddle
suft an' good one an' inside wuz unudder liddle hod one. So--" "So wot?"
Maxie demanded belligerently.

"So he lost id."

"Pfuy!"

They were silent a moment, and then Izzy wistfully. "Bet I could eat a
million!"

"Me too!" Maxie concurred eagerly. "W'en's yuh modder commin'?"

David was startled. He hadn't thought they would take him seriously.
"I don' know," he answered evasively and began backing away from the
window.

"But yuh said she wuz commin'," they insisted, following him.

"Maybe she ain'. I don' know."

"So w'ea yuh goin'?" They turned south toward Ninth, he north toward
Tenth.

"No place." He looked blank.

"Wadda boob!" said Izzy vehemently. "He neveh hengs oud wid nobody."

And'so they parted.



VIII



WHEN he came home, his father had already risen. Naked above the
waist, the upper half of his heavy underwear hanging below his knees, he
stood before the sink, drying the gleaming razor between the pinched ends
of a towel. Under the blue mantle-light, his shaven face was stone-grey,
harsher yet handsomer. The broad spindles and mounds of muscles along
his arm and shoulders knotted powerfully as he moved. The muscles on his
breast and smooth belly were square and flat. A few dark hairs curled over
the white skin of his chest. He was powerful, his father, much more
powerful than he looked fully dressed. It seemed to David, standing there
before the door that he had never seen him before. And he stood there
almost in awe until the single cursory glance his father cast at him, pricked
him into motion and he walked waveringly toward his mother. She smiled.

"And now my second man," she said lightly. "Come! To your labors."
Looking round while he shed his coat and sweater, he saw that the
kitchen was immaculate. The stove had been polished. The linoleum, newly
mopped, glistened warmly. The windows were stainless against the blue
twilight. The table, already set, had been covered with his favorite cloth,
white, with narrow gold lines crossing in broad squares. He unbuttoned his
shirt, removed it, slid out of his underwear just as his father was wrestling
into his, and glancing at his own slender, puny arms, glanced up in time to
see the last flicker of long sinews before the naked arm was sheathed. How
long would it be, he wondered, before those knots appeared above his own
elbow and those tough, taut braids on his own forearm. He wished it were
soon, wished it were today, this minute. Strong, how strong his father was,
stronger than he'd ever be. A twinge of envy and despair ran through him.
He'd never have those tendons, those muscles that even beneath the thick
undershirt, bulged and flattened between shoulder and armpit, No, he'd
never be that strong, and yet he had to be, he had to be. He didn't know
why, but he had to be!

"Good warm water," said his mother filling a basin in the sink. "Now
that we've a fire in the stove."

She pulled up a chair before the sink. David climbed up and began washing.
Behind him, they were silent a few seconds and then he heard above the water
he splashed about his ears, a crackling sound that reminded him of frozen
wash bending. And his father's growl.

"One needs a wedge to get into these sleeves. Do they starch them with
plaster?"

"Apparently! I don't know why they do it." She paused. "But only this
once! And if we suit him, only once more!"

"Hmph!" he grunted while the crackling continued. "Let it come soon!
If she thinks I of all people would throw obstacles in her way, she's out of
her head. I wouldn't wear this plaster shirt if I didn't hope to get rid of
her. You can tell her that for me if that's why she's been so secretive."

"It wasn't because of that, Albert. She wasn't afraid you would
interfere. But after all, these things happen-- well--not very often in a
woman's life, and she wasn't sure. Besides, she was a little frightened--a
widower, a wife in her grave--a little ashamed, you see."

"Pph! I'd call her fortunate if she were his sixth wife! And as far as he's
concerned, a Russian doesn't know better and doesn't deserve better. But
these underhanded wiles--Dentists four nights a week, gold-teeth, powder,
mirrors! That fidgeting! Only God knew what she was up to!"

"They weren't so underhanded, Albert!" While she spoke, she pointed out
to David, who had turned with dripping face, the towel beside the clean
white shirt on the washtub. "Love, marriage, whatever one calls it, does that
to one, makes one uncertain, wary. One wants to appear better than one is."
"It did that to you I suppose."

"Yes." She seemed hesitant. "Of course!"

"Bah!"

"Of course!" she reiterated, and then laughing. "You know how the old
song goes: In this way and that, one beguiles the groom."

"Beguiles!" The lean, grey features sharpened. "Beguiles!" And then
looking away absently, "Much to beguile--a Russian and a widower."

"But Albert!" she smiled slyly. "A Russian-Jew is also a man."

"I grant you."

"And she'll make him a good wife. Bertha is shrewd and what counts more
she isn't shy. Clothes, she has no use for. And with a candy store of
her own," she laughed, "there will be nothing for her to spend money on.
From what she's told me, that's the kind of wife this Nathan wants."

"If she ever owns a candy-store and if she runs it the way she keeps her
room there, then God help her customers. Here when she leaves hair-pins
on the floor as thick as a stubble, all one can do is tread on them; there,
they'll eat them, mark me. They'll be in every tray. And that red fox-tail
she wears in her hair, they'll find it in the ice-cream. Has she ever put
anything back where it belonged? Does she ever do anything with care? And
the meals she'll cook him, Almighty God! With that rash, blind haste of hers,
his stomach will be like mine the years before you came."

"Oh, she'll learn, Albert! She'll learn! She'll have to! I couldn't cook
either before I married! After all we had servants when I was a girl--they
did all the house-keeping, house-cleaning, cooking."

"Bah!" he interrupted her contemptuously. "I don't believe it. She'll
never learn anything! And what does she know about children? Nothing!
What a life they'll lead her! And she them. Two half-grown wenches on her
hands the day she marries! Strangers to her. Hi! What a bedlam! A fate to
befall one's enemies! Well!" He shrugged impatiently. "All I ask is to have
it over with soon!"

David who had gotten on his clean shirt and tie by this time, maneuvered
about to catch his mother's eye. She opened them wide in pleasure.

"Look how he gleams, your son!"

Impassively, his father's eyes rested on him, a moment, and away.

"Why doesn't he comb his hair?"

"I'll do it!" She went quickly to the sink, wet the comb and passed it
caressingly through his hair. "It was browner when you were very young,
my son. My handsome son!" His father reached out for the grey milk-route
book that lay on the ice-box, opened it impassively, let the page ruffle
under his fingers, (David remembered the ink stains once engraved upon
them) and scowled.

"This belongs in my coat." He said abruptly, and was silent.

About half an hour later, Aunt Bertha and the newcomer arrived. Being
present when a stranger was introduced to his father was always an ordeal
for David, and this time it seemed more trying than ever. Aunt Bertha was
flustered and red with embarrassment, which made her speech and her
movements all the more hectic; so that her clipped, flighty, whirlwind of
words and gestures caused his father to grow as stiff and aloof as if he
were carved from stone. When the two men shook hands, his father merely
grunted in reply to the greeting, and never meeting the other's eyes, glared
grimly over his shoulders. Mr. Stemowitz, disconcerted, cast a quick,
bewildered glance at Aunt Bertha who stabbed her brother-in-law first with
a frown of pucker-nosed hate, and then replied with a reassuring, I-told
you-so smile. That dread moment over, at the suggestion of David's mother,
they sat down, and seated, relaxed guardedly.

While conversation, in which David's father took no part, circulated
about the room in short nervous spurts, concerned chiefly with dentists and
with the difference between Aunt Bertha's "absah" and Mr. Stemowitz's
"ulster," David examined the newcomer. He was, as Aunt Bertha had said, a
little man, very long-nosed, blue-eyed, and sallow. A pale, narrow
mustache, the tips of which he kept trying to draw down and bite, followed
the margin of thin lips. His ears were overly large, soft-looking and fuzzy
almost as red plush. In his small mouth as he spoke, gold teeth gleamed,
and his sallow brow that knitted easily into long wrinkles, crept up in quick
perspectives into the brownish kinky hair. Above his mustache, his face
appeared good-natured, meek yet shrewd, below it, despite the small mouth
and receding chin, he gave one the impression of peevish stubbornness.
Altogether he looked rather insignificant and even a little absurd. And
David scrutinizing him felt increasingly disappointed not so much for
himself but for his aunt's sake.

After lauding the dentist--both he and Aunt Bertha had been present the
evening an old woman had come to the office to test out her newly-made
plates, and after eating a pear and a heavily poppy-seeded roll, had gone
away satisfied--Mr. Sternowitz drifted to the leggings business and
prophesied that it would soon disappear under earth. Children were wearing
far less leggings than before. And it was because of the uncertainty of his
future earnings, he informed them hesitantly, that he thought a man's wife
ought to have an independent income--with which Aunt Bertha emphatically
concurred. Uncertain at first, but continually spurred on and encouraged
by Aunt Bertha and David's mother, Mr. Sternowitz gradually lost some of
his apprehension at the other man's chill taciturnity and began to speak
more freely. However, whenever his eyes met David's father's, the ex-
pression on his face tended to freeze into one of ingratiating self-
effacement. David sympathized with him. He guessed that like himself, Mr.
Sternowitz felt the necessity of continually humbling himself before the
relentless, unwinking scrutiny of those eyes, the grey unrelaxing visage.
Everyone had to bow down before his father, except Aunt Bertha, and as
Mr. Sternowitz's humility and self-deprecation increased, she became more
chagrined and defiant.

David's mother had begun serving supper when Mr. Stemowitz, taking a
preliminary nip at his mustache said, "My father was a servant!"
Up till now Aunt Bertha had given vent to her impatience by merely
clicking her tongue against the roof of the mouth. But now apparently
deciding on more strenuous measures, she inquired in a barbed tone, "And
in rainy weather he carried two children on his back to the cheder. Didn't
he, Nathan?"

"Yes." Mr. Sternowitz lifted hurt eyes from his plate. "So he did. I think
I told you."

"Well, do you have to blare it out to everyone the first time you meet
them? Won't it keep? Isn't it dry enough? Why don't you tell us about your
mother's cousin who was a doctor? That's something to brag about!" Above
his mustache, Mr. Sternowitz looked crushed. "I didn't think of it," he said
apologetically. But below it, as if some belated impulse thrust it out, his
small chin worked its way forward. And he looked confidentially at David's
father. "But he was a servant!" he maintained.

"Yes! Tell them everything!" Aunt Bertha tossed her head resentfully.
"And your mother was blind when she bore you and purblind during your
infancy. And she fed you vinegar instead of sugar-water. That's why you're
so homely!"

"One has to speak about something," he maintained persistently.
"Especially if everyone else is quiet."

"Ach! There's a forest of somethings!" Aunt Bertha countered fretfully.
"I suppose when I go to see your relatives, you'll expect me to tell them
in the first gasp that the only suitor I ever had--" Here she began to
gesticulate and grimace violently--"Was a man who s-s-stammered. And
when the marriage-broker said to him, Speak! Ox! What does he say, but,
D-d-did y-your g-g-grand-m-mother l-like ch-ch-ch-cheese. Bah! Well I
won't!" she concluded breathlessly.

"Have mercy, Bertha!" her sister said "What difference will it make
whether he tells it sooner or later. We're bound to know one another."

"Perhaps!" was her significant retort Dejected, Mr. Sternowitz peeped
up furtively from his plate first at David's father, still unsmiling and
aloof, and then at Aunt Bertha, petulant. Then he blinked embarrassedly,
tried to laugh, but without success, and uncertainly, "What did you say?
I mean you --to--to the suitor?"

"I said, you'll have to ask my grandmother." She screwed her lips
together tartly. "She's dead."

"Ai!" Mr. Sternowitz gnawed his mustache and looked around half rueful,
half-pleased. "She's going to lead me a fearful life, no? And even if I
am a father of children, nothing will help me. Now, my first wife was older
than I. But she had no tongue and she submitted. It may be that I'll have
a younger one this time and--"

"And there won't be any third!" Aunt Bertha grinned maliciously.

"No," he acquiesced obediently. And then as if to reassure himself, "We're
not married yet, no?"

"Pooh!"

"What was the matter with your mother?" David's mother asked after a
pause.

Mr. Sternowitz, slice of bread in one hand had begun slowly and
aimlessly to fish in his vest pockets with the other. "No one knew. The
doctors" he shrugged, drew out a pearl-handled pen-knife, "they didn't
know." His eyes met Aunt Bertha's. Her severe scowl swept down from his
face to the knife. With an oddly remote movement, his neck bent stiffly and
he stared at the knife also, turning it round and round as though he had
never seen it before. "Er! They didn't know!" And sighing, "Woe me! A
fearful life!" He dropped the knife back into his pocket and bit off too
large a mouthful so that speech was engulfed in an oozy palatal smacking.
Aunt Bertha suddenly smiled, fondly, benevolently. "Champ it down,
Nathan, my star, then you can tell what happened--or shall I?"
His temples bulging, Mr. Sternowitz chewed faster and shook his head
hurriedly. He meant to speak.

"It was this way," Aunt Bertha ignored him. "He'll make a yarn of it as
long as an ant climbing a mountain. His mother was going blind and so
when the doctors couldn't cure her, his father took her to a rabbi and he
cured her. No, Nathan?"

"Yes." Mr. Sternowitz swallowed glumly.

"Who was the rabbi they took her to?" asked David's mother.

Mr. Sternowitz cheered up. "Not one of those polite, wellbred rabbis, have
no fear. Is it right," he turned to David's father for approval, "that a
rabbi should allow Russian officers to visit his daughters? Or that they
should be 'fency pipple' and not wear white socks and high shoes and trim
their beards and their ringlets. Ha? No!" He seemed to interpret the other
man's steady gaze. "That's what I believe. The more 'fency' they become,
the less of God's power do they have. Reb Leibish, this rabbi, was so pious
that he made his wife turn over the whole day's receipts to charity. He
would keep no money over-night-- not even a kopek. Not Reb Leibish! He
hated the joys of life. He never accepted the Thursday invitation for the
sabbath. He fasted twice a week. That's what I call a rabbi! And when my
father brought her to him, he didn't say, Go home, I'll pray to God for a
remedy. No. He had God by his side. He said to my father, Let her go! Take
your hands away! And then he said, Come here, my daughter! And she said,
Where? I can't see! And he cried out. Look at me! Open your eyes! The
Almighty gives you light! And she opened her eyes and she saw! That's a
rabbi!"

"How well she must have seen," Aunt Bertha patted her mouth vigorously--
the sign of expiation for mockery, "if she gave you vinegar instead of
sugar-water."

"Not all at once," Mr. Sternowitz protested. "But little by little, she saw.
When I left Pskov she could see fairly well, but she squinted and--Look!"
he laughed and pointed at David. "Look how he's staring at me. Isn't that
wonderful?"

David ducked his head in intense embarrassment. It was true. Without
knowing why he had been strangely stirred by Mr. Sternovvitz's short
narrative. He had been staring at him, hoping he would go on. But now he
suddenly felt ashamed, feeling all eyes upon him and especially his
father's. He stared down at his plate.

"Do you want to ask me something?" Mr. Sternowitz inquired indulgently.

"No."

"Sweet Golem with the big eyes!" his aunt teased. "You'll have to get
him a pair of leggins, Nathan. Winter is coming."

"Indeed, yes! I'll steal a pair and finish them at home.

We must get his size. Such a quiet, quiet child!" he nodded approvingly.
"Like--" His glance veered for a moment to David's father and then
retreated hastily to Aunt Bertha again. "Like my daughters," he said
jocularly. "No, Bertha?"

"To the dot!" was her derisive answer. "But they'll mind me, don't
forget that."

"What else!" he grinned. "Just as they mind me? How old is he, did you
say?"

"This one?" His mother patted his head. "Seven and a few months."

"He's well grown, no evil eye!" he dropped his fork and knocked on the
table. "Mine are ten and eleven and they're no taller. Perhaps we'll match
him with one of mine yet."

"Speaking of matches," Aunt Bertha suddenly placed a warning finger
across her lips. "Nothing must be said to the 'dentistka', do you hear,
Nathan? Else she'll sniff around for a marriage-broker's bounty. A turd
I'll give her!"

"Have you reached that stage already?" her sister laughed. "May joy go
with you then."

"I?" Mr. Sternowitz put out his palms. "I haven't reached it. She's
reached it--headlong!"

"Is that so?" Aunt Bertha bridled. "Didn't you tell me last night you
were already looking for a candy-store-- in a good location--at a corner
maybe--and at a reasonable price--and for me! Didn't you? If you think
I'm yanking you too hard toward the canopy, then don't have Rachel's
engagement ring reset. Pooh I can wait!" The scattering motion of her hand
scattered Mr. Sternowitz away. "He's like all men. He thinks first of how
he can use you, then in good time when he's going to marry you. You can't
have the one without the other with me."

"Wait! Wait!" Mr. Sternowitz halted her. "What have I said that you
burn so! I said that we didn't hold the yard-stick at a marriage yet. I meant
we weren't engaged yet, that's all. I was thinking that if I gave you a ring
--" "If you give me the ring!" Aunt Bertha wagged her head mockingly.

"When I give you the ring then! When I give you the ring it will be
better that you take it off before going to the dentist's, you understand?
There won't be any trouble and nobody'll speak through the nose and we'll
save fifty dollars."

"Now you're talking like a sage!" said Aunt Bertha approvingly. "Why
didn't you say that in the first place?" "Well," said Mr. Sternowitz
uncomfortably. "Only give me room to breathe!"

"Have you found a candy-store that suits you?" asked David's mother.

"I mean have you any in mind?"

"No, not yet." Mr. Sternowitz replied. "I really haven't begun to look
for them seriously--naturally. But now I will. I know something about
them. My cousin had one and I spent whole nights there. There's only one
trouble. Most candy-stores have only two rooms in the back. That's all right
for two people. But we--I mean I--have two children. They're with my
sister now. So when I take them to live with me we'll need at least three
rooms." "It's going to be a hard life," David's mother shook her head,
"living in the back of a store that way. The hurry and the noise! Wouldn't
it be better to get rooms somewhere else? In the same house, perhaps?"

"If we live somewhere else," said Mr. Sternowitz, "there go half of the
profits. Why throw away money on rent when you can get it free? A place
to sleep in is all we need--and a place to eat a breakfast and a supper."

"I don't care where we live," said Aunt Bertha, "as long as we make
money. Money, cursed money! What if it is a little uncomfortable. I never
refused pot-roast because it got between my teeth. Now is the time to save.
Later when we've sold the store and made a little money, we'll talk again."

"That's what I think also," Mr. Sternowitz rubbed his hands.

"Well, hurry to the jeweler then!" She rocked back and forth dreamily.
"A little while we'll struggle; we'll pee in the dark. And then we'll
have a home. And when we'll have a home we'll have a decent home. Thick
furniture with red legs such as I see in the store windows. Everything
covered with glass. Handsome chandeliers! A phonograph! We'll work our
way up! 'Stimm hitt' like bosses! What bliss to wake up in the morning
without chilling the marrow! A white sink! A toilet inside! A bath-tub! A
genuine bath-tub for my suffering hide in July! A bathtub! Not that radish
grate there," she pointed to the wash-tubs. "Everytime I take a bath, it
stamps a cluster of cherries on my rump!"

Heavy lidded, David's father frowned, nostrils twitching. David's toes
crawled back and forth upon a small space on the soles of his shoe.
"You hear, Nathan?" As usual, whenever his father's wrath was kindling,
Aunt Bertha never seemed to realize it. And now as before, she launched
out unheeding upon a sea of extravagant vision. And almost intoned.
"We'll have a white bath-tub! Hot water! A white bath-tub! Let it
be the smoothest in the land! Let it be the slipperiest in the land!
Like snot let it be slippery--"

"As you were wont to have in your old home." David's father broke his
silence with deliberate words.

"So we did!" retorted Aunt Bertha, and with all the resentment of one
jarred while drowsy. "Even though it did look like a coffin, it was made of
tin and smoother than that sidewalk there! I thought when I came to this
golden land, there would be something better to bathe in than a box full of
stony burrs that scuff your--"

"Yes, I know! I know!" he interrupted harshly. "You're very delicately
made!"

"And I'll get a better one!" she added vindictively. "I'll not be content
with a cold water flat. I'll not live on a top-floor that was meant for goyim
and paupers! This is a land where a Jew can make his fortune if he's got it
in him--not to sit piously at a horse's tail all his life!" "Bertha!" her
sister exclaimed. "Bertha! Have you lost your senses! Don't make this event
fatal!"

By some extraordinary act of will, David's father controlled himself. He
spoke through his teeth--"The sooner you're on the road to your fortune,
the better I'll like it. And don't think," he added with biting significance,
"that if I don't go to your wedding I won't dance!"

Mr. Sternowitz was looking from one to the other with diffident, half
frightened eyes. "Ai, Bertha!" he attempted lightness. "Are you awful! Over
--over a bath-tub to get so enraged! Come, what is a bath-tub!"

"A bath-tub is a bath-tub." She pouted sullenly. "What a bright suitor
I've got!"

Mr. Sternowitz squirmed, blinked, dared not look at anyone. The hard
won relaxation of a few moments ago was destroyed entirely and everyone
was on guard again.

Nor was there any hope of the tension ever easing, since dinner was
almost over, and there would be nothing more to divert one. David's mother
assayed a few vague remarks. They went unanswered. In the strained si-
lence, Aunt Bertha, who looked close to tears, kept muttering under her
breath--"Begrudges me everything. . . . His spite, his sour silence . . .
God blacken his destiny." David looked around fearfully, hardly daring to think
of what might happen. Finally, Mr. Sternowitz, after several preliminary
coughs, thrust out his chin and smiled with forced and wavering heartiness.

"I'll tell you Bertha," he said. "Let us go for a walk. After such a fine
dinner, nothing could be better, what? And we can step into one or two
stores on the way." "Anything!" she answered defiantly. "So long as we get
away from here!"

Both rose, rather precipitately, and with a toss of her head, Aunt Bertha
hurried into the front room to get their coats, leaving Mr. Sternowitz
stranded in the kitchen. He looked about as though trapped, mumbled
something about the dinner and watched the front-room door anxiously. In a
few seconds, Aunt Bertha returned and both got into their coats. As she
fitted her wide hat on over her red hair, Aunt Bertha raised her eyes to
the overhanging brim and then stared beyond it at the wall-- where the new
picture hung.

David started. That was it! Now he remembered! The thing he was
searching for! That he forgot down stairsl Funny--

She approached, scrutinized it. "Look, Nathan," she beckoned him,
"what fine corn grows in my sister's garden. I didn't see it before." She
turned questioningly to David's mother.

"I was wondering when someone would notice it," she laughed.

"Perhaps in my haste I hung it too high." "Quite pretty," Aunt Bertha
looked at herself in her pocket-book mirror. "Are you starting a museum?"

"No. It was just a whim. And I found the ten cents to gratify it. Wasted
money, I suppose." She looked up at the picture.

"Well, we must go," said Aunt Bertha resolutely. "I'll be back later,
sister."

Good-nights were exchanged. Aunt Bertha and David's father, the former
fervid, the latter stony, crossed snubbing glances. Invited by David's
mother to pay them many visits, Mr. Sternowitz accepted without too much
zest, und after a bare smile from David's father, crowded out of the door in
Aunt Bertha's lee. Silence followed. His father tilted his chair back against
the wall with a violent thump and stared morosely at the ceiling. His mother
cleared the dishes carefully, impinging on a look of anxiety, a look of
abstraction. David wished they would talk. Silence only made his father
more ominous. But the silence continued, and David feeling himself caught
as if in talons of stress dared not move--at least not until his father spoke
and eased the strain--and for escape meanwhile, could only stare at the new
picture his mother had bought.

He began to wonder vaguely why it had followed him all afternoon, why
it had tugged at the mind from the ambush of the mind. It was strange.
Like someone trailing you behind a wall. And never know what it was until
a few minutes ago. Funny. And then find out it isn't anything--only a
picture of long green corn and blue flowers under it. Maybe it was because
she had been so happy when she looked for the nail. She laughed when she
hung it up. Maybe that was it. He didn't know why she was laughing. And
she had said he had seen it too, real ones, long ago in Europe. But she said
he couldn't remember. So maybe he was trying to remember the real ones
instead of the picture ones. But how? If-- No. Funny. Getting mixed and
mixed and--

His father straightened suddenly, shoes and chair legs rapping the oil
cloth smartly. His anger would break now! David stared at him half
welcoming the easing of the strain, half-terrified of the consequences.

"The vulgar jade!" he snapped. "The slut! How could you both have
come from one mother! She and her dirty mouth and her bath-tubs and her
manners. A million bath-tubs couldn't clean her. She and her bath-tubs!
Who asked her to come here anyway! I've controlled myself long enough.
I'll throw her out of this house yet!"

His mother had hung up the dish-rag and had turned slowly as though
loath to undertake the task of appeasing him and stood silent, placing
no obstacles in the path of his anger.

"Stabbing me in the back about my earnings. Boasting of the fortune
she'll make and the palaces she'll live in! Making a fool of me before a
stranger. As though I loafed, as though I didn't sweat for my bread as
honestly and as much as any man! But I'll repay her, don't fret! No one can
treat me that way. I've a notion to get up this moment and throw all her
belongings out into the hall!" "They'll be gone soon enough, Albert. Just
be patient a little longer."

"Be patient with that wasp!"

"You see, she was frightened. She thought perhaps you had maimed her
chances of marriage."

"I? I maim her chances? I'd rather maim her! And that filthy, clapping
tongue of hers. She never moves it but my flesh begins to crawl--as though
she were scattering vermin on me. Maim her chances! I want to get rid of
her!"

"She doesn't want to stay here any longer than necessary either."

"She'd better not. And him! He's harmless. I might have pitied him. I
might have thought, the poor idiot, he doesn't know what he's getting.
Perhaps she's hidden her true self from him. But now I despise him! A
weakling! After what he's seen and heard to want to marry that-- that vile
mouth! It would shame the water-carrier in a Russian bath! To give his
children into the keeping of such a one. He deserves nothing but scorn!"

"Let him look out for that. Surely he's old enough and has seen enough
and experienced enough to know what he wants. Perhaps he can even learn
to handle her, one can never tell."

"Handle her! That button-hole maker. It takes a whip hand! I say he'd
best begin digging his grave. But what do I care?" He shook his head
savagely as though enraged at himself for showing any concern about Aunt
Bertha's future. "Let her marry anyone, and anyone her. Let her listen to
that fool's drivel about blindness and vinegar all her life. But if she thinks
she can make light with me because she has a man with her, she'd better be
careful. She's jesting with the angel of death!"

"Just don't mind her, Albert! Please! Let her go her own way. She'll let
you go yours. I knowl She'll probably not bring him here any more than she
can help. They're already talking about rings."

"Well, as long as she stays here, she'd better be careful or I'll shorten
her stay." He snuffed grimly through his nostrils, stared darkly before him
at the opposite wall. His eyes lit on the picture. He frowned. "On what heap
did you find that?"

"That?" Her eyes traveled upward. "On a pushcart on Avenue C. I thought
I couldn't make more than a ten-cent mistake, so I bought it. You don't
like it?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps I would if you had gotten it for some other
occasion. But now--" He scowled. "Why did you get a picture of corn
anyway?"

"Green," she said mildly. "Austrian lands. What would you have chosen?"

"Something alive." He reached for the newspaper. "A herd of cattle drink-
ing such as I've seen in the stores. Or a prize bull with a shine to his
flanks and the black fire in his eyes."

"That ought not to be difficult. I'm sure I could find you one of those as
well."

"You'd better let me get it," he said curtly. And flapping the newspaper
open, leaned over it. "I'm apt to be a better judge."

She lifted her brow resignedly and then glanced at David with a faint,
significant smile as though letting him share with her the knowledge that
his father had been mollified and danger was over. She turned back to the
sink.



IX



ON SUNDAY--a bright Sunday just before Election day --David's
father had gotten up from the table after lunch, and with some curt remark
about going to listen to a campaign speech, had left. After he was gone
however, Aunt Bertha scoffed at his sudden interest in political candidates
and resentfully put her finger on what she declared was the real reason for
his departure: Nathan (They all called Mr. Sternowitz by his first name
now) was coming to call on her later this afternoon, and so David's father
had gone away merely to avoid him. Which act, Aunt Bertha added
venomously, was a very gracious one, albeit unwitting, and one for which
she was very thankful, since she saw no reason to inflict that man's rude
and surly presence on poor Nathan Sternowitz. Thus instead of insulting
her, she concluded with spiteful triumph, David's father had really done her
a good turn--but now that he had done it, she devoutly hoped he would
break a leg on the way to wherever he was going. And when David's
mother objected, Aunt Bertha charitably informed her that had her husband
not been the sole support of his family, she would have prayed he had
broken both legs. There! Wasn't that solicitude? And then followed her
usual, disgusted query of why her sister had married such a lunatic.
David's mother had just folded the table cloth and now she waved it
warningly at Aunt Bertha. "He'll overhear you some day, sister, and you'll
pay for it dearly."

"Even with my head!" she retorted defiantly. "Just so he knows what I
think of him."

His mother shook her head impatiently. "He does know! Don't you
think he's had enough time to find out? And honestly I'm so weary of
keeping you two from flying at each other. Albert must go his own way, but
you-- you might think of me sometimes and not make it so difficult. Let
there be peace for a while. You're going to get married. You won't be here
very much longer. Are you seeking to make your last months here end in a
catastrophe?"

"Not for me!" her sister tossed her red head wilfully. "He won't throw
me against the wall again. I'll gouge his eyes out."

His mother shrugged. "Why tempt him?"

"Ach, you make me sick--you and your mildness! Put poison in his
coffee, that's what I'd do."

And David who was staring at her partly in wonder at her rashness,
partly in guilty elation, caught his mother's apprehensive look dir-
ected at himself. And his aunt, detecting it also, added vociferously,
"I would! I would poison him! Let him hear me! I'm not afraid."

"But Bertha! I am afraid! You mustn't say those things before--ach!"
she broke off. "That's enough Bertha." And turning to David. "Are you
going downstairs, beIoved?"

"Right away, Mama," he answered. But inwardly, he was too fascinated
by his aunt's bold vituperations to want to leave just yet.

Rebuked by his mother, Aunt Bertha shrugged discontentedly, clucked
her lips, wagged her head, but the next moment rebounded in her usual
mad-cap fashion, and with head tilted upward bayed some Polish phrases at
the ceiling. To David's mystification, the unknown words seemed to sting
his mother, for she stiffened and suddenly exclaimed with uncommon
sharpness--

"That's nonsense, Bertha!"

"Are you angry this time?" Her sister shook down several strands of
coarse red hair before a provocatively wrinkled nose.

"Yes! I wish you'd stop!"

"Beloved and holy Name, give ear! She really can get angry! But listen
to me! I have a right to be angry as well. I've been living with you for six
months. For six months I've told you every thing, and what have you told
me? Nothing! I'm no longer a child! I'm not the fourteen year old I was
when you were a grown young lady. I'm about to be married. Can't you
trust me? Won't I understand? Aaaah!" she sighed vehemently. "Would
God, those twins had lived instead of died. They'd have been old enough to
have seen, to have known. Then I'd have known too--Well?" She demanded
challengingly.

"I don't want to go into it." His mother was curt. "I've told you before.
It's too long ago. It's too painful. And further I haven't time."

"Bah!" she flopped suddenly into a chair. "Now you haven't time. It's
just as I said. First--" She lapsed suddenly into Polish. "Very well. You
might be forgiven. Then--" Again meaning disappeared. "Then--It's just
as I said! Keep it for yourself! I'll get married without knowing." And she
was silent, staring morosely out of the window.

At the opposite side of the room, his mother was also silent, also before
a window, head lifted, gazing meditatively up at the brown, glazed brim of
the rooftop and the red brick chimneys overhead. To David, they looked
very odd suddenly, each woman back to back, each gazing out of different
windows, one down out of the curtained, noisy, street-window, the other up
out of the curtainless, quiet one; one seated, fidgeting and ineffectually
trying to cross thick knees, the other standing motionless and abstracted.
Despite powder his aunt was ruddy in the sunlight, short-necked and squat
beside the open sky; in the thin shadow where she stood, his mother was
tall, brown-haired and pale against the cramping air-shaft walL And what
was it about, he wondered. What did those Polish words mean that made his
mother straighten out so? Intuition prompted him. He divined vaguely that
what he had just heard must be linked to the sparse hints of meaning he had
heard before, that had stirred him at first so strangely and afterwards
scared him. Now perhaps he might learn what it was about, but if he did,
something might change again, be the something else that had been lurking
all the time beneath the thing that was. He didn't want that to happen.
Perhaps he had better avoid it, better go down. Now was the time, before
anybody spoke. But what? His breath quickened before a danger that was
also a fascination. What was it? Why wouldn't she speak? He would stay
here only until--until-- No! Better go down--

"Look David!" Without getting up from her chair, Aunt Bertha was
craning her neck to stare out into the street. "Come here. Look how they're
hauling that box." David drew near the window, looked down. In the dull
street below, their shouts muffled by the window, a swarm of boys of
various heights and ages now dragged, now tumbled a bulky packing-box
along the gutter, and in their eagerness to lend a hand, impeded one another,
shoved one another out of the way, shook fists and forgot about it promptly
and grappled with the box again.

"What are they yelping about?" his aunt inquired. "Whose wood is it?"

"It's nobody's," he enlightened her. "It's 'Lection' wood."

"What do you mean 'Lection' wood?"

"They're going to burn it on 'Lection' day. They always make a big, big
fire on 'Lection' day. That's where Papa went. There's pictures on the
barrels and all the beer saloons."

His mother turned from the air-shaft window. "I've seen it in Browns-
ville too, in the open lots. Such is the custom here. To make a fire
on the day they vote--it falls on Tuesday. Is Nathan a citizen, Bertha?"
she asked placatingly.

"Yes, of course!" Aunt Bertha's tone was still sulky, the movement of
her shoulders as she turned brusquely toward the window again, still
offended. "What else!" Seeing the queer hopeless lift of his mother's brow,
David again resolved to go down. Whatever it was that caused this tension,
and it was the most determined he had ever seen between his aunt and his
mother, it was not only baffling but disagreeable. Yes. He would go down.

"Well, why are they dragging it now?" Aunt Bertha turned to him
peevishly. "Are they going to burn it for a taste of what's to come?"
"No. They hide it," he said self-defensively. "In a cellar. It's in 732
cellar and 712 cellar near where the rabbi is. But yesterday, big men came
and a street cleaning wagon, a brown one, and took it all away."

"And now they're getting more! Bah! American idiots! Pull their bowels
out for a fire in the street they'll never make. But when it comes to
dragging wood for their mothers, they're too lame, ha? And you!" she
demanded accusingly. "Do you haul wood?"

"N-no," he lied. It was true though that he hadn't helped get election
wood more than once or twice.

"Hum-m-m!" Aunt Bertha sighed with boredom and glanced at the
clock. "An hour and a half before my nosey one comes. I feel lonely."

"Listen to me, Bertha," his mother said in a suddenly strained voice as
though she had resolved upon a step but prayed it wasn't necessary. "Do
you really want to hear?"

David's heart tripped with excitement. Better go down, his mind warned
almost dizzily. Better go down. But instead, he dropped to his knees and
crawled vacantly toward the stove.

As if jabbed with a pin, Aunt Bertha had wheeled around half-leaping
from her chair. "Do I want to hear?" she exploded. "A question! After
these months of asking?

Do I want to hear!" She stopped suddenly. Her look of avid interest
gave place to one of apology and self-reproach. "No, no, sister! If it's
difficult for you, then say nothing. Don't even begin! Really I'm ashamed
of myself for plaguing you."

"There's nothing to be ashamed of," his mother's smile was at once
bitter and forgiving. "One has to speak of these things sometimes. I don't
know what possesses me to want to keep them sealed up so tight."

"And as I've said to you a thousand times," Aunt Bertha urged reasonably,
persuasively, bridling her eagerness. "It was all so long ago, itshould
be a jest to you by now. And whatever it is, can it frighten me? I
know you, sister, how good of heart you are. Too great a wrong you
couldn't have done."

"It was great enough. Enough for one life-time." "Yes?" Aunt Bertha
scratched her back against the back of her chair. "Yes?" She settled down
receptively.

"There are only three people who know," she began with an effort.
"Mother, father, myself of course, and-- and another--in part. I shouldn't
want--"

"Oh! No! No! No! Trust me, Genya."

David squirmed, shivered with anticipation, fear.

"You remember," she began and then stopped, her eyes meeting his
from where he gazed up at her. "Let it be so."

The oblique nod of her head seemed to beckon her sister to join her in
the realm of another speech. For when she spoke again her words had fused
into that alien, aggravating tongue that David could never fathom.
Chagrined, he looked at Aunt Bertha. She was leaning forward eagerly the
better to devour all that was said, her mobile features sometimes aping his
mother's, sometimes contradicting. Her eagerness tantalized him, goaded
him into sharper listening. It was no use. He scrutinized his mother. The
color had risen in her throat. Now her eyes stared and were dark and she
spoke rapidly. Now they narrowed and the wide brows knit crookedly. Pain.
What hurt her? Now she sighed and dropped her hand and her face grew
slack and mournful and her slow lids heavy. What? But though he pried
here, there, everywhere among the gutturals and surds striving with all his
power to split the stubborn scales of speech, he could not. The mind could
get no purchase.

Sullen, resentful almost to tears, he rolled over on his back, stared at
the ceiling. He didn't care, that's all. He wouldn't tell her anything
either. There! He was going down, that's what he would do. Never tell her
anything --But--Listen! That was a yiddish word! A whole phrase! "After
the old organist, dead" . . . Another! "Alone in the store" ... A word!
"Handsome" . . . Like mica-glints in the sidewalk, another phrase! "A box
of matches" ... He turned stealthily to watch her.

"And he seized my hand." A whole sentence emerged.

Aunt Bertha, who with hand on cheek had been shaking her head in a
shocked manner, now beat the air angrily with her fists. "Even if he was
educated," she exclaimed heatedly, "and even if he was an organist, he was
a goy! And right then and there you should have sent him looking for his
teeth!"

"Hush!" she said warningly and again blotted out import under a screen
of Polish.

A little ashamed of himself, but secretly gratified nevertheless, David
looked vacantly away. Here at last was something to brood on, perhaps
even to worry a meaning out of, certainly to remember. A goy, Aunt Bertha
had said, an 'orghaneest'. What was an 'orghaneest'? He was educated, that
was clear. And what else, what did he do? He might find out later if he
listened. So he was a goy. A Christian. They didn't sound the same.
Christian. Downstairs, the janitor was a Hungarian. Christian too. Chrize.
Jesus Chrize they said down stairs. Chrize. Christmas. School-parties. Then
long ago, remember? Yussie. See him on the stairs, white-iron arrows
white-iron, Annie, leg. Christmas. Then no school. Gee! Yea! And new
calendars, remember? Lots of pages. Christmas. Jesus Crotz-mich, the
grocery man said and he always laughed. Crotzmich means scratch me.
Jesus scratch me. Funny. And why did Aunt Bertha say hit him? Because he
was a goy? She didn't like goyim. But mama? She did. Wonder? Who was
he?

He turned to regard his mother. When would another phrase break from
that alien thicket? He waited impatiently, mind beating the coverts . . .
Nothing . . . Like a fabric the unknown speech flowed on riftless, opaque,
until--

"Bah!" Aunt Bertha sheared it with contempt. "All these rogues have
tongues on castors!"

"My fault as well!" protested his mother, reverting to Yiddish in
forgetful haste. "Toward May I grew so, I spent the whole day waiting for a
half hour at twilight. How many times a day did I wish it were winter, mid
winter when the moon is yellow before five. Long before sunset, I was
already at the store, and it was all I could do to keep from reminding father
to hurry off to the synagogue."

"Ach! You were mad."

"But that was only a taste. You don't know how mad I was--" Her
voice took on a throbbing richness now that David had never heard in it
before. The very sound seemed to reverberate in his flesh sending pulse
after pulse of a nameless, tingling excitement through his body. "Day grew
worse than darkness. I welcomed the light only when some Polish
townsman died--You recall the priest and the banners and the funeral
procession that went through the town? Ludwig was always in the train,
chanting the services. I could watch him then as he went by, follow with the
others a little ways, stare at him unafraid, Love--"

With the same suddenness as before, meaning scaled the horizon to
another idiom, leaving David stranded on a sounding but empty shore.
Words here and there, phrases shimmering like distant sails tantalized him,
but never drew near.

He writhed inwardly at his own impotence.

It seemed to him, lying there almost paralyzed with the strain, that his
mind would fly apart if he brought no order into this confusion. Each phrase
he heard, each exclamation, each word only made the tension within him
worse. Not knowing became almost unbearable. He felt as if nothing he had
ever known were as important as knowing this. Who was Ludwig? Was that
he, the goy! Why was he at funerals? What did she mean when she let a
word drop about wicker baskets? Attics? Letters? Mere curiosity had pet-
rified into obsession. But still the phrases flickered on as ephemeral and
capricious as before, as thwarting--the abrupt and fragmentary glimpses of
a figure passing behind the brief notches of parapets.

"And the welcome over . . . And mother also downcast . . . But too deep
in joy to notice . . . These things," she tapped her brow, "they wait their
time inside one's head . . . Stone under water till the eddies rest . . . And I
sought him . . . Nowhere . . . And I remembered it . . . one glance would
comfort me . . . The attic stairs ... And on my nails across the loose boards .
.. The wicker basket lay . . . Safe I thought . . . Carefully!" Her clenched
hands went up as though she were lifting a heavy lid. "You know how wicker
creaks--"

Her sudden, involuntary gasp was like a steep, sheer drop in the level
flowing matrix of her speech. Her hand went to her lips. The horror that
came into her face was such that it seemed to David not something thought
or remembered, but something she beheld this moment, something present
in this very room. A shudder ran through him, watching her, "The light
before my eyes grew black! Dear God! There on the very top of the pile of
coats lay the portrait. Gazing up at me, there on top!"

"They knew," Aunt Bertha exclaimed.

"They knew," his mother repeated.

"But how?"

"I found out later. I had forgotten that mother went through the trunk
every summer with camphor."


"While you were away?"

"No. Before. They sent me away because they knew." "Ah!"

"My despair then! My shame! You wouldn't know unless you had felt it.
There are no words. I thought I should faint. I picked up the portrait--
They had read the back no doubt. They knew all. Had I--"

And again his mother's eyes met his and again her speech changed
abruptly. David rose to his feet. He couldn't bear it any longer, this
suspense, this waiting for significance to cut the surface like momentary
fins of sunken shapes. He was going down, that's what he was going to do.
He wouldn't listen a moment longer. And if the time came when he knew
something they didn't know, he'd pay them back in the same coin. He'd
learn to talk the way the girls talked in the street--alligay walligay. Look
at them! They weren't even noticing him they were so engrossed. Even when
he stood up and stared at them, no one paid any attention to him. They
wouldn't even know he had gone into the front room to get his coat. They
wouldn't even know he had gone. No! Then he wouldn't say goodbye.

That's what. He'd just go down without a word.

He went petulantly into the front room and found his coat. But as he put
it on, frustration forced a cunning thought into his brain. He would sit here
and wait. He'd give them their last chance. If they didn't know where he
was, perhaps they'd speak in Yiddish again. With the door open between
them, he could hear in the front room as well as he could in the kitchen. He
sat down stealthily beside the doorway and listened. But even though he
was out of her sight, his mother seemed not to realize it. The significance of
what she said still continued to be fragmentary.

"Must see him . . ." The words and phrases pulsed out as before.
"Comfort . . . On the church step . . . She held both . . . Fluttered her parasol
. . . Ogled him like a lamp . . . Lace, elegant ribbons . . But old, as I say . . .
Gave her no thought . . . Finally . . . And parted . . . Crossed his path ... He
followed . . . Waited among the trees ..."

Trembling with silent fury and despair he was about to give up. She
would never speak. There was no use waiting, no use hiding. He would hear
nothing. But as he pushed himself to his feet, Aunt Bertha's impatient voice
interrupted his mother's--

"Who was this woman? Speak. Do you know? I'm curious."

"She? I was coming to that." This time his mother's words were entirely
in Yiddish and completely intelligible. "When I told him what had happen-
ed, that they knew, that I was willing to follow him to the corners of
the world, he answered--What folly! Don't you ever think beyond the
morrow? How can I marry you? Where will we go? With what? And he was
right. Of course he was right!"

"He may have been right," Aunt Bertha spat out vehemently. "But
cholera choke him anyway!"

He had sat down and now was secretly hugging himself in guilty
elation. They had forgotten about him. They had! He pressed closer
to the wall and prayed his mother would go on speaking in Yiddish. She did.

"Anywhere, I said. I'm ashamed to tell you, Bertha, but it's true. I said
I'd go with him just as he saw me."

"What a fool you were!"

"Yes. That's what he said also. A love affair is one thing, marriage
another. Didn't I understand? I didn't. I'm already engaged, he said."

"She!" Aunt Bertha exclaimed. "That older woman you spoke of?"

"Yes."

"Did you spit in his face?"

"No. I stood like one frozen. You love her, I asked? Bah! he said. Could
I? You saw her! I may as well tell you. She's rich; she has a dowry. Her
brother is a road-engineer, the best-known in Austria. He'll provide the rest.
As for me, I'm poor as the dark. All I could ever hope to be is a threadbare
organist in a village church. And I refuse. Do you understand? Surely you
yourself wouldn't wish that fate on me! But listen, he said and tried to seize
me in his arms. We can go on again. In a little while, after this cursed
marriage is over, we can go on again, just as we are. Be just what we've
always been to each other. No one need know! I pushed him away. Does
this make so much difference to you? he asked. Because I must marry? Will
you now tear out all the love you held for me?

"I don't know why? I can't tell. But suddenly I began to feel like
laughing. It was as though everything inside of me were lifting up with
laughter. By the mad smile on my face, he must have thought I was
yielding, for he seized my arm and said: Look at me Genya! Forgive me!
See how poor I am! I haven't even the clothes decent enough to marry in.
Genya, I'll repay you. Get me the cloth as you love me! Your father's store!
A little while and we'll be together always!

"How shall I put it into words--the fullest cup of death! It seemed to
me that heaven and air were filled with laughter, but strange, black laughter.
God forgive me! And words I heard, gnashing in it like teeth. Strange words
about roses! I came running, I came running with flowers! Like a child!
Good-bye and good-bye! Madness, I tell you Bertha, sheer madness!

"Well, he left me standing there. I came home at last Mother was already
in the doorway, waiting for me. Father wants to see you in the store, she
said.

"I knew why and turned without a word and walked toward the store.
She was behind me; we both went in together; she shut the door. None of
you were there. It was kept secret from you. Father was standing before the
counter. Well, my gentle Genya, he said--you know how bitingly he could
sneer--Is gall a spicy drink? How does it taste? Does one smack the lips
after it? I didn't answer. All I could do was weep. Weep! So! He was like a
mother gone insane. Weep! Ah! He rubbed his paunch as though he were
eating a delicacy. Ah! It does my heart great good! Don't torment me,
father, I said. I've suffered enough! Ha! he said as if he were shocked. Are
you suffering? Miserable, pitiful little child! I kept quiet then and let him
have his way. You call that suffering, he cried, Why? Because he held you
under him like dung in the privy and drops you now? That was father's
way!" A deep sigh interrupted her.

"I know," said Aunt Bertha vindictively. "May his tongue also fall out."

"He kept on. Like screws into my breast his words. Torment more than I
could bear. I tried to run past him to the door. He seized me and slapped
me across both cheeks."

Her voice had become strangely throaty now, dull, labored.

"Then nothing mattered. Suddenly nothing mattered. I can't tell you
how, but all pain seemed to end. I shrank. I felt smaller suddenly than the
meanest creature crawling on earth. Oh, humble, empty! His words fell on
me now as on the empty air. And where will you go? he screamed. Esau's
filth. He has a new one! He has a new one! A rich one! Kicked you out, has
he not? You false slut! And meanwhile mother kept crying out, They'll hear
you outdoors Benjamin, they'll hear you! And he would answer, let them
hear me, shall I not howl with a heart on fire. I'm bursting I tell you! I'm
strangling! And then he plucked off his black skull-cap and threw it in my
face and stamped with his feet like a child in convulsions. Ach! It was
frightful!

"Finally mother began weeping. I beg you, Benjamin, she cried, You will
overtax your strength. You'll have a stroke, Stop! Stop in the name of God!

"And father did stop. Suddenly, he fell into a chair and covered his face
with his hands and began rocking back and forth. Alas! Alas! he moaned.
Somewhere, in some way I have sinned. Somehow, somewhere, Him I have
offended. Him! Else why does He visit me with anguish great as this?--You
know him!"

"I know him!" said Aunt Bertha significantly.

"Now you may see what you have wrought my daughter, said mother,
Was your heart of iron? Had you no pity on a Yiddish heart? No pity on
your father? I wept --What else was there to do. Not only is she herself
ruined, said father, Let her be! Let her die! But me! Me! And my poor,
young daughters and the daughters to come. How shall I marry them? Who
will marry them if this is known? And he was right. You would all of you
have been on his hands forever. Well, he wished himself dead. Hush, said
mother, none will speak; none will ever know. They will! They will, I sayl
Foulness like hers can never be hidden! And who knows, who knows, tomorrow
another goy will find favor in her eyes. She's begun with goyim.

Why should she stop? And he began shouting again. I tell you she'll bring
me a 'Benkart' yet, shame me to the dust. How do you know there isn't one
in that lewd belly already--That's a father for you!" Her words were bitter
as she paused.

--Benkart! (Beside the doorway David fastened on the word) What?
Know it. No, don't. Heard it. In her belly. Listen!

"And you defended him before!" Aunt Bertha reproached her.

"Well, I wasn't entirely innocent."

"Go on!"

"If you drive her away, mother said, all will know it. You've cursed
your other daughters as well. I? I cursed them? She! That shameless one!
And he spat at me. But you must forgive her, mother begged. Never! Never!
She is foul! And so it went on until mother took me by the arm, and said,
she will kneel before you Benjamin, she will weep at your feet, only forgive
her--Shrunk, I say, less than nothing." His mother's voice became
curiously flat and monotonous as though she were enumerating a list of
items all of equal unimportance. "Mother led me over to him. From her
apron pocket, she drew out Ludwig's picture. I must have left it on the bed
when I took it out of the wicker basket. She thrust it between my fingers
and she said, lift your eyes, Benjamin. See, she tears it to bits. She will
never sin again. Only look at her. He lifted his eyes, and I tore it--once and
again and threw myself at his feet and wept on his hand.

"You can't imagine how awful I felt. I can hardly talk about it even yet,
it afflicts me so. But fortunately no shadow ever broke a rock, and one can
ask himself why he lives a thousand times and yet never die."

"Did he finally forgive you?" Aunt Bertha asked.

"Oh, yes! In his fashion. He said, may God forgive you. If you ever
marry a Jew I'll take it as a sign. You see I married one. It was about six
months later I met Albert." "I see," Aunt Bertha said. 'That's how it played
itself out?" And then eagerly. "And him Esau, swine, did he ever come near
you again?"

"No. Of course, I saw him often from afar. And once near--a few days
before they left for Vienna. To get married."

"All the way to Vienna? Hmph! And the town church, may it burn to the
ground, didn't that suit the new aristocrat?"

"No, I don't think that was the reason. Her brother had some business
there, at least so his servants told me who came into the store."

"Did he speak to you?"

"When?"

"You say you saw him near at hand."

"Oh. No, we didn't speak. He didn't see me. I was standing in the road
one afternoon when I saw a yellow cart coming toward me. It had two
yellow wheels--The kind the rich drove in those days. And I knew even
before I could see who was driving, that it was the brother of his betrothed.
He drove in it often to where the men were working on the new road. I hid
in the corn field nearby. It wasn't the brother-in-law this time, but Ludwig
himself and the grand lady beside him. They passed. I felt empty as a bell
till I looked at the blue cornflowers at my feet. They cheered me. That was
the last I saw of him I think."

--Blue corn flowers? Likes them! Corn! That was--I-Inside on the wall! Gee!
Look at it later! Listen! Listen now!

"And such was the ugly plague the new road brought with it." Aunt
Bertha mused sourly. "But taking it all in all, you were fortunate, sister,
fortunate that someone came to take that enemy of Israel away. If not, if,
God forbid, you had married him--Pheh! How frightful! Where would you
have hidden your head when the day came and he called you scabby Jew!
Oy! You were better dead! So you see," she suggested cheerfully, "the road
didn't bring evil after all. But just the same," she concluded with meticulous
piety, "may it be God's will that the maker of the road and his sister and
his brother-in-law meet with years as black and as long as that road! No?"

--Road. Black! Black! Where did I hear it before? Black? Not now.

His mother had paused. Now she clucked her lips in a slight sound of
distaste. "Well, I've told you. And now that I have I don't know whether
I'm glad I did or not." "Pooh!" Aunt Bertha scoffed, belligerently. "Why? I
promised you I wouldn't say anything about it. Besides, whom is there to
tell? The shop-girls in the flower factory? Well, Nathan perhaps. But he
wouldn't--What are you so afraid of?" she interrupted herself. "Would
Albert be jealous if he knew?"

"I don't know. I've never tested him. Besides, he doesn't seem to want
to know these things, and so I'm just a little afraid of your--well--
rashness! But come!" she said abruptly. "Let's talk of the living."

"Yes!" There was alacrity in Aunt Bertha's voice. "My Nathan will be
here soon. Has any of the powder come off my nose?"

His mother laughed. "No. It will take longer than that." "I can always
smear it down from my nose to my cheeks. That's the advantage of having
plenty there. You know, Nathan is very fond of your baking?"

"I'm happy to hear it. We'll get some kupfel out." "Too bad we haven't
any schnapps."

"Schnapps? Why schnapps? A Russian wants tea." "Yes," Aunt Bertha
laughed. "And thank God he's a good pliant man and a Jew. I'll never have
a heartbreak such as yours. But one never knows. And tell me," she
switched in her sudden giddy fashion. "Your husband says I do every-
thing with my left hand now that I have an engagement ring. Is that
true?"

"Oh, no! Not at all!"

David started. They had begun stirring about the kitchen, and here he
was still squatting beside the doorway. They would see him. They would
know he knew. They mustn't. He got softly to his feet, sneaked to the
furthest window and peered out intently. Pretend he had just been looking
out all this time, that he hadn't heard. Yes. But now he knew. What? Had
anything changed? No. Everything was the same. Sure. Didn't have to get
scared. What had happened? She liked somebody. Who? Lud--Ludwig, she
said. A goy. An organeest. Father didn't like him, her father. And his too,
maybe. Didn't want him to know. Gee! He knew more than his father. So
she married a Jew. What did she say before? Benkart, yes, benkart in belly,
her father said. What did that mean? He almost knew. Somebody said--
who? Where? Gee! Stop asking! Look outside before they come in.

Realizing intuitively the necessity of having to explain his presence in
the front room, his eyes swept the outdoors hastily, seeking some object
prodigious enough immediately to distract curiosity from himself the
moment he called his mother's attention to it. Beyond the straggly roof-tops
was the thin band of grey-green river and the smoke stacks on the further
shore. Against the dusty-blue sky above the horizon, the cold, white smoke
of an unseen tugboat frayed out and drifted. No. That wouldn't do. Couldn't
ask anything about those. What then? He pressed his brow against the cold
window pane and peered down into the avenue. Passersby walked more
briskly now that November was here; they leaned a little in the wind, head
sunken in coat-collars, hands in pockets. The breath of horse-car teams and
hurrying pushcart peddlars had become visible. Getting colder . . . Sewers
did that too . . . Saw them when? Could ask why. No. A Negro passed. Was
his? Yes. White too. He could ask that. Why does he breathe white if he's
black? No! Dumb-ox! They'll laugh! But something, something he had to
ask, to pretend to be fascinated by or they'd guess--

Two small boys crossed the car tracks on Avenue D and squatted down on
the curb. One of them had been carrying a round, tawny-colored object that
not until it was set in the gutter against the curb did David recognize it.
It was a headless, stove-in celluloid doll with an egg-shaped bottom, the
kind that when they were pushed, bounced upright again. He had seen them
before in the candy-stores. But what were they going to do? They looked so
engrossed, so expectant. He squinted to see better. Exultantly he told
himself that here was his excuse, here was the fascinating thing that had
kept him there all this time. If only they would hurry up. One of them,
apparently the owner, took something out of his pocket, struck it against the
sidewalk--a match. Cupping it carefully, he touched it to a cracked edge of
the doll--It flared up with a burst of yellow flame. They recoiled. He could
hear their muffled shouts. And then one pointed to the spot where the doll
had been and where now nothing remained except the char against the
curbstone. The other bent down and picked up something. It glittered like a
bit of metal. Both stared at it--and David did too from his height.
Behind him he heard his mother mention his name. He turned to listen.

"I lost him somewhere," she said casually. "Did he go down, Bertha?"

"That's queer," was the reply. "I thought I saw him go into--Why I
think he must have gone down."

"Without a good-bye?" His mother's voice preceded her through the
doorway. "Oh!" She looked at him keenly. "Are you still here? I thought--
What makes you stay in this cold room?"

"In the street," he answered, pointing gravely to the window. "Come
here, mama, I'll show you a trick."

"Oh, then he is here." Aunt Bertha came in also. "He's been something
too quiet eyen for him."

"He's going to show me a 'drick'," his mother laughed. She understood
'drick' to mean kick, which in Yiddish had the same sound.

"A 'drick'," Aunt Bertha asked grinning. "Where? In the pants?"

"You see downstairs?" he continued soberly. "That boy? He has a green
stocking-hat. He burned a doll and he made 'mejick'. And now he's got a
piece of iron. You see it? In his hands? Look!"

"Do you know what the simpleton's jabbering about?" Aunt Bertha
inquired.

"Not yet." Smiling, his mother peered down at the two boys below.
"Yes. I do see a bit of iron. What do you mean 'mejick'?"

"There's a little piece of iron," he explained. "In that kind of doll.
That's what makes it stand up when you push it over. And the doll burned.
And only the iron is left."

"Aha!" Still smiling, she shrugged. "Well, come into the kitchen
anyway. You'll get a chill here. Do you know it's growing cold, Bertha?"
David followed them out of the front-room. Easy, he thought in hazy
satisfaction. Easy fool them. But they didn't fool him. Didn't scare him
either. Didn't change . . . Gee! The picture! Not now, though. Look at it
later, when nobody's here . . . Green and blue it's--Sh!





　　　　　　　BOOK III


The Coal


I



TOWARD the end of February, a few weeks after Aunt Bertha had
married, David's father came home from work a little later than usual.
David was already at home. The morning had been snapping cold, sur-
prising for that time of the year; the afternoon had turned dull and sleety.
With his customary brusqueness, his father flung his dripping, blue
milkman's cap on the washtub and began peeling off his rain-soaked
mackinaw; then the vest beneath and the grey sweater. That sense of drowsy
desolation that David had felt a long time ago when his father's arising had
wakened him, he felt again, watching him, reminded of the bitter cold and
the long darkness. Puffing, his father worked his heavy rubbers loose and
kicked them under a chair. They left a slimy trail on the linoleum. "You're a
little late this afternoon," his wife ventured. "Yes." He dropped wearily into
a chair. 'That nag of mine fell on the way to the stables."

"The poor beastl Was she hurt?"

"No. But I had to unharness her and fetch ashes and then harness her
again. And all the while a crowd of numbskulls gawking. It took time. I
shall curse tomorrow's dawn if it freezes again." He stretched, his jaw
muscles quivering. "It's about time they gave me a sounder animal
anyway."

After a year of working as a milkman, that was the only thing his father
consistently grumbled about--the horse he drove. And David, who saw the
grey angular beast almost every day, had to admit that his father's
complaint was just. Tilly, she was called, and she had one eye the cloudy
color of singed celluloid, or a drop of oil on a sunless puddle. She would
stand patiently, even when children were pulling the hairs out of her tail to
plait rings with. And yet she seemed no weaker and no worse than most of
the horses who passed through Ninth Street. It was just one of his father's
fixations, David had concluded, to want tremendous power in the beast he
handled just as he himself seemed possessed of tremendous power. Though
he pitied poor Tilly immensely, David hoped that for his father's sake, the
milk company would soon replace her with a livelier beast.

"Will you get out that old blanket," his father resumed, "so if it does
freeze tomorrow, I'll have something to wrap my knees in. This sudden
cold seems to crack one's bones open to the marrow."

"Yes, of course," solicitously. "Don't you want to take your shoes off?"

"No."

It was curious to David what a subtle difference there was between his
father's brusqueness as a milkman and his brusqueness as a printer. The
former seemed to be merely the result of weariness on a naturally high
strung temperament; the latter, the result of strain, of inner maladjustment.
His brusqueness now was infinitely less dangerous to those about him.

"This corn-meal is ready," said his mother. "And after that some tea?"
He grunted, threw his arms back over the shoulder of his chair and
watched her ladle out the boiled corn-meal into a bowl.

"Some jam."

"I'm bringing it." She set a jar of home-made strawberry preserves on
the table.

"This is what I ate," he smeared the deep, red jam on the com-meal,
"when I was a boy."

David was waiting to hear his father say just that. He always said it
when he ate corn-meal mush, and that was one of the few facts that David
had ever learnt of his father's boyhood.

"I was thinking," he continued between cooling gusts at the smoking
spoon. "It came to me while I was crossing a roof."

"I wish you didn't have to cross them!"

"Don't fret about what you know nothing of," he waved his hand at her
curtly. "I don't pretend to be a mountain-goat. I merely climb over walls, I
don't leap alleyways. Besides, it isn't the roofs that trouble me, it's who
may be on them. And now that I've told you this for the tenth time, where
was I?" He put down his spoon and looked at her perplexed. "There's
nothing like good, womanly worry to beat the thought out of your head--
Yes! I remember now." He stared at David. "The prayer. I was thinking
should anything happen to me-- Now I don't mean the roofs-- Anything!
It would be a comfort to me to know that whatever else he becomes-- and
God only knows what he may become--at least he shan't be an utter pagan
because I didn't try."

"You mean?"

"I mean I'm little enough a Jew myself. But I want to make sure he'll be-
come at least something of a Jew also. I want you to find a cheder for him
and a rabbi who isn't too exorbitant. I would have entered him long ago if
that red-headed sister of yours hadn't thought it her place to advise me."
David remembered the incident. His father had told her to mind her own
business.

His mother shook her head doubtfully. "A cheder? Couldn't he start a
little later. Children in America often do."

"Do they? I'm not so sure. Anyway, it will keep him busy and out of the
house. And it won't hurt him to learn what it means to be a Jew."

"He really isn't home as often as he used to be." She smiled at David.
"He leaves me quite forlorn. And as for learning what it means to be a Jew,
I think he knows how hard that is already."

His father nodded curtly--in token that his decree had been passed.

"You would do well to seek out a stern one --a rabbi I mean. He needs a
little curbing since I don't do it. It might redeem him. A lout of eight
and all he's ever known is pampering."

David was still only seven. But that foible his father had of increasing
his age to magnify his guilt had long ago become familiar to him. He had
even stopped wondering about it.

"Where's the tea?" he concluded.



II



ONE edge shining in the vanishing sunlight, the little white-washed
house of the cheder lay before them. It was only one story high, the
windows quite close to the ground. Its bulkier neighbors, the tall tenements
that surrounded it, seemed to puff out their littered fire-escapes in scorn.
Smoke curled from a little, black chimney in the middle of its roof, and
overhead myriads of wash-lines criss-crossed intricately, snaring the sky in
a dark net. Most of the lines were bare, but here and there was one sagging
with white and colored wash, from which now and again a flurry of rinsings
splashed into the yard or drummed on the cheder roof.

"I hope," said his mother, as they went down the wooden stairs that led
into the yard, "that you'll prove more gifted in the ancient tongue than I
was. When I went to cheder, my rabbi was always wagging his head at me
and swearing I had a calf's brain." And she laughed. "But I think the reason
I was such a dunce was that I could never wrench my nose far enough away
to escape his breath. Pray this one is not so fond of onions!"

They crossed the short space of the yard and his mother opened the
cheder door. A billow of drowsy air rolled out at them. It seemed dark
inside. On their entrance, the hum of voices ceased.

The rabbi, a man in a skull cap, who had been sitting near the window
beside one of his pupils, looked up when he saw them and rose. Against
the window, he looked short and bulbous, oddly round beneath the square
outline of the skull cap.

"Good day," he ambled toward them. "I'm Reb Yidel Pankower. You
wish--?" He ran large, hairy fingers through a glossy, crinkled beard.
David's mother introduced herself and then went on to explain her
mission.

"And this is he?"

"Yes. The only one I have."

"Only one such pretty star?" He chuckled and reaching out, caught
David's cheek in a tobacco-reeking pinch. David shied slightly.
While his mother and the rabbi were discussing the hours and the price
and the manner of David's tuition, David scanned his future teacher more
closely. He was not at all like the teachers at school, but David had seen
rabbis before and knew he wouldn't be. He appeared old and was certainly
untidy. He wore soft leather shoes like house-slippers, that had no place for
either laces or buttons. His trousers were baggy and stained, a great area of
striped and crumpled shirt intervened between his belt and his bulging vest.
The knot of his tie, which was nearer one ear than the other, hung away
from his soiled collar. What features were visible were large and had an oily
gleam. Beneath his skull cap, his black hair was closely cropped. Though
full of misgivings about his future relations with the rabbi, David felt that
he must accept his fate. Was it not his father's decree that he attend a
cheder?

From the rabbi his eyes wandered about the room. Bare walls, the
brown paint on it full of long wavering cracks. Against one wall, stood a
round-bellied stove whose shape reminded him of his rabbi, except that it
was heated a dull red and his rabbi's apparel was black. Against the other
wall a long line of benches ran to the rabbi's table. Boys of varying ages
were seated upon them, jabbering, disputing, gambling for various things,
scuffling over what looked to David like a few sticks. Seated upon the
bench before the rabbi's table were several others obviously waiting their
turn at the book lying open in front of the rabbi's cushioned chair.
What had been, when he and his mother had entered, a low hum of
voices, had now swollen to a roar. It looked as though half of the boys in
the room had engaged the other half in some verbal or physical conflict.
The rabbi, excusing himself to David's mother, turned toward them, and
with a thunderous rap of his fist against the door, uttered a ferocious,
"Shah!" The noise subsided somewhat. He swept the room with angry,
glittering eyes, then softening into a smile again returned to David's mother.

At last it was arranged and the rabbi wrote down his new pupil's name
and address. David gathered that he was to receive his instruction
somewhere between the hours of three and six, that he was to come to the
cheder shortly after three, and that the fee for his education would be
twenty-five cents a week. Moreover he was to begin that afternoon. This
was something of an unpleasant surprise and at first he protested, but when
his mother urged him and the rabbi assured him that his first lesson would
not take long, he consented, and mournfully received his mother's parting
kiss.

"Sit down over there," said the rabbi curtly as soon as his mother had
left. "And don't forget," he brought a crooked knuckle to his lips. "In a
cheder one must be quiet."

David sat down, and the rabbi walked back to his seat beside the
window. Instead of sitting down however, he reached under his chair, and
bringing out a short-thonged cat-o'-nine tails, struck the table loudly with
the butt-end and pronounced in a menacing voice: "Let there be a hush
among you!" And a scared silence instantly locking all mouths, he seated
himself. He then picked up a little stick lying on the table and pointed to
the book, whereupon a boy sitting next to him began droning out sounds in a
strange and secret tongue.

For awhile, David listened intently to the sound of the words. It was
Hebrew, he knew, the same mysterious language his mother used before the
candles, the same his father used when he read from a book during the
holidays--and that time before drinking wine. Not Yiddish, Hebrew. God's
tongue, the rabbi had said. If you knew it, then you could talk to God. Who
was He? He would learn about Him now--

The boy sitting nearest David, slid along the bench to his side. "Yuh jost
stottin' cheder?"

"Yea."

"Uhh!" he groaned, indicating the rabbi with his eyes. "He's a louser!
He hits!"

David regarded the rabbi with panicky eyes. He had seen boys slapped
by teachers in school for disobedience, although he himself had never been
struck. The thought of being flogged with that vicious scourge he had seen
the rabbi produce sealed his lips. He even refused to answer when next the
boy asked him whether he had any match-pictures to match, and hastily
shook his head. With a shrug, the boy slid back along the bench to the place
he bad come from.

Presently, with the arrival of several late-comers, older boys, tongues
once more began to wag and a hum of voices filled the room. When David
saw that the rabbi brandished his scourge several times without wielding it,
his fear abated somewhat. However, he did not venture to join in the
conversation, but cautiously watched the rabbi.

The boy who had been reading when David had come in had finished,
and his place was taken by a second who seemed less able to maintain the
rapid drone of his predecessor. At first, when he faltered, the rabbi corrected
him by uttering what was apparently the right sound, for the boy always
repeated it. But gradually, as his pupil continued in his error, a harsh note of
warning crept into the rabbi's voice. After awhile he began to yank the boy
by the arm whenever he corrected him, then to slap him smartly on the
thigh, and finally, just before the boy had finished, the rabbi cuffed him
on the ear.

As time went by, David saw this procedure repeated in part or whole in
the case of almost every other boy who read. There were several
exceptions, and these, as far as David could observe, gained their
exemption from punishment because the drone that issued from their lips
was as breathless and uninterrupted as the roll of a drum. He also noticed
that whenever the rabbi administered one of these manual corrections, he
first dropped from his hand the little stick with which he seemed to set the
pace on the page, and an instant later reached out or struck out, as the case
might demand. So that, whenever he dropped the stick, whether to scratch
his beard or adjust his skull-cap or fish out a half-burned cigarette from a
box, the pupil before him invariably jerked up an arm or ducked his head
defensively. The dropping of that little stick, seemed to have become a
warning to his pupils that a blow was on the way.

The light in the windows was waning to a blank pallor.

The room was warm; the stagnant air had lulled even the most restive.
Drowsily, David wondered when his turn would come.

"Aha!" he heard the rabbi sarcastically exclaim. "Is it you, Hershele,
scholar from the land of scholars?"

This was addressed to the boy who had just slid into the vacant place
before the book. David had observed him before, a fat boy with a dull face
and an open mouth. By the cowed, sullen stoop of his shoulders, it was
clear that he was not one in good standing with the rabbi.

"Herry is gonna loin," giggled one of the boys at David's side.

"Perhaps, today, you can glitter a little," suggested the rabbi with a
freezing smile. "Who knows, a puppet may yet be made who can fart.
Come!" He picked up the stick and pointed to the page.

The boy began to read. Though a big boy, as big as any that preceded
him, he read more slowly and faltered more often than any of the others. It
was evident that the rabbi was restraining his impatience, for instead of
actually striking his pupil, he grimaced violently when he corrected him,
groaned frequently, stamped his foot under the table and gnawed his under
lip. The other students had grown quiet and were listening. From their
strained silence--their faces were by now half obscured in shadow--David
was sure they were expecting some catastrophe any instant. The boy
fumbled on. As far as David could tell, he seemed to be making the same
error over and over again, for the rabbi kept repeating the same sound. At
last, the rabbi's patience gave out. He dropped the pointer; the boy ducked,
but not soon enough. The speeding plane of the rabbi's palm rang against
his ear like a clapper on a gong.

"You plaster dunce!" he roared, "when will you learn a byse is a byse
and not a vyse. Head of filth, where are your eyes?" He shook a menacing
hand at the cringing boy and picked up the pointer.

But a few moments later, again the same error and again the same
correction.

"May a demon fly off with your father's father! Won't blows help you?
A byse, Esau, pig! A byse! Remember, a byse, even though you die of
convulsions!"

The boy whimpered and went on. He had not uttered more than a few
sounds, when again he paused on the awful brink, and as if out of sheer
malice, again repeated his error. The last stroke of the bastinado! The effect
on the rabbi was terrific. A frightful bellow clove his beard. In a moment he
had fastened the pincers of his fingers on the cheeks of his howling pupil,
and wrenching the boy's head from side to side roared out.--

"A byse! A bysel A byse! All buttocks have only one eye. A byse! May
your brains boil over! A byse! Creator of earth and firmament, ten thousand
cheders are in this land and me you single out for torment! A byse! Most
abject of God's fools! A byse!"

While he raved and dragged the boy's head from side to side with one
hand, with the other he hammered the pointer with such fury against the
table that David expected at any moment to see the slender stick buried in
the wood. It snapped instead!

"He busted it!" gleefully announced the boy sitting near. "He busted it!"
the suppressed giggle went round. Horrified himself by what he saw, David
wondered what the rest could possibly be so amused about.

"I couldn't see," the boy at the table was blubbering. "I couldn't see!
It's dark in here!"

"May your skull be dark!" the rabbi intoned in short frenzied yelps,
"and your eyes be dark and your fate be of such dearth and darkness that
you will call a poppyseed the sun and a carroway the moon. Get up! Away!
Or I'll empty my bitter heart upon you!"

Tears streaming down his cheeks, and wailing loudly, the boy slid off
the bench and slunk away.

"Stay here till I give you leave to go," the rabbi called after him. "Wipe
your muddy nose. Hurry, I say! If you could read as easily as your eyes can
piss, you were a fine scholar indeed!"

The boy sat down, wiped his nose and eyes with his coat-sleeve and
quieted to a suppressed snuffling.

Glancing at the window, the rabbi fished in his pockets, drew out a
match and lit the low gas jet sticking out from the wall over head. While he
watched the visibility of the open book on the table, he frugally shaved
down the light to a haggard leaf. Then he seated himself again, unlocked a
drawer in the table and drew out a fresh stick which looked exactly like the
one he had just broken. David wondered whether the rabbi whittled a large
supply of sticks for himself, knowing what would happen to them.

"Move back!" He waved the boy away who had reluctantly slipped into
the place just vacated before the table. "David Schearl!" he called out,
tempering the harshness of his voice. "Come here, my gold."

Quailing with fright, David drew near.

"Sit down, my child," he was still breathing hard with exertion. "Don't
be alarmed." He drew out of his pocket a package of cigarette-papers and a
tobacco pouch, carefully rolled cigarette, took a few puffs, then snuffed it
out and put it into an empty cigarette box. David's heart pounded with fear.
"Now then," he turned the leaves of a book beside him to the last page.
"Show me how blessed is your understanding." He drew David's tense
shoulder down toward the table, and picking up the new stick, pointed to a
large hieroglyph at the top of the page. "This is called Komitz. You see?
Komitz. And this is an Aleph. Now, whenever one sees a Komitz under an
Aleph, one says, Aw." His hot tobacco-laden breath swirled about David's
face.

His mother's words about her rabbi flashed through his mind. He thrust
them aside and riveted his gaze to the indicated letter as if he would seal it
on his eyes.

"Say after me," continued the rabbi, "Komitz-Aleph-- Aw!"

David repeated the sounds.

"So!" commanded the rabbi. "Once more! Komitz-Aleph-Aw!"

And after David had repeated it several times. "And this" continued the
rabbi pointing to the next character "is called Bais, and a Komitz under a
Bais--Bawl Say it! Komitz-Bais-Baw!"

"Komitz-Bais--Baw!" said David.

"Well done! Again."

And so the lesson progressed with repetition upon repetition, Whether
out of fear or aptitude, David went through these first steps with hardly a
single error. And when he was dismissed, the rabbi pinched his cheek in
praise and said:

"Go home. You have an iron head!"



III



"ODDS!" said Izzy.

"Evens!" said Solly.

"Skinner!" said Izzy. "Don' hold back yuh fingers till yuh see wad I'm
juttin' oud."

They were gambling for pointers as usual, and David stood by watching
the turns of fortune. In other corners of the yard were others engrossed in
the same game. There were a great many pointers in circulation to-day --
someone had rifled the rabbi's drawer. Nothing else had been taken, neither
his phylacteries, nor his clock, nor his stationery, nothing except his
pointers. He had been furious, but since everyone else had looked blank, he
hadn't been able to convict anyone. Yet here they were, all gambling for
them. David was amused. In fact everything that had to do with pointers
amused him. They were one of the few things that relieved the dullness of
the cheder. He had thought when he first saw them that the rabbi whittled
them out himself, but he soon found out he was wrong: the rabbi broke so
many that that would have taken all day. No, the pointers were just ordinary
lollipop sticks. And even that had been amusing. An incongruous picture
had risen in his mind: He saw his severe, black-bearded rabbi wearing away
an all-day sucker. But his fellow-pupils soon enlightened him. It was they
who brought the rabbi the lollipop sticks. A gift of pointers meant a certain
amount of leniency on the rabbi's part, a certain amount of preference. But
the gift had to be substantial, else the rabbi forgot about it, and since few of
his pupils could afford more than one lollipop a day, they gambled for them.
Izzy's luck to-day was running high. "Yuh god any more?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Solly. "Make or break! Odds!"

"Waid a secon'. I'm all wet." He bent sideways and wrung his knee pants
and coattails. They had been arguing so violently a little while ago
that someone in an adjacent house had thrown a bagful of water into their
midst Izzy had caught the brunt of it.

"Yowooee!" From a distance a long-drawn cat-call. They looked
around. "Who is it?"

"I'll see." Yonk who was standing near the fence shinnied up a wash
pole. "It's Moish," he announced. "He's t'ree fences."

"Only t'ree fences?" Contemptuously they resumed their game.
There was an approaching scuff and clatter. Moish climbed over the
fence. "Any janitors?" he asked.

"No janitors," said Yonk patronizingly and slid down the wash-pole.

"Yuh don' make enough noise, dat's why. Yuh oughta hea' Wildy."

"Who don' make enough noise? I hollered loud like anyt'ing. Who
beats?"

"Who'djuh t'ink? Wildy beats. He god faw fences an' one janitor. Mrs.
Lechtenstein on seven-sixty-eight house. She went smack wit' de broom,
but Wildy ducked." Fence-climbing was one of the ways by which the
rabbi's pupils entered the cheder. The doorway that led into the cheder yard
was too prosaic for most of them; they preferred to carve their own routes.
And the champion of this, as of everything else, was Wildy. Wildy was
nearing his thirteenth birthday and consequently his 'bar mitzvah', which
made him one of the oldest boys in the cheder. He was the idol of everyone
and had even threatened to punch the rabbi in the nose.

"W'ea's Wildy now?" someone asked.

"He's waitin' fuh Shaih an' Toik t' comm down," Yonk looked significant-
ly up at one of the houses. "He's gonna show em dey ain't de highest ones
wad comms into de cheder."

"I god t'ree poinders," said Moish. "Who'll match me?" "I'll play yuh."
Izzy had just cleaned out his opponent. "W'ea didja ged 'em? From de
swipe?"

"Naa. Dey's two goils in my class, an' anudder kid-- a goy. So dey all
bought lollipops, an' de goy too. So I follered dem aroun' an' aroun' an'
den w'en dey finished, dey trowed away de sticks. So I picked 'em up.
Goys Is dumb."

"Lucky guy," they said enviously.

It took more than luck though, as David very well knew. It took a great
deal of patience. He had tried that method of collecting lollipop sticks
himself, but it had proved too tedious. Anyway he didn't really have to do
it. He happened to be bright enough to avoid punishment, and could read
Hebrew as fast as anyone, although he still didn't know what he read.
Translation, which was called Chumish, would come later.

"Yowooee!" The cry came from overhead this time. They looked up.

Shaih and Toik, the two brothers who lived on the third floor back had
climbed out on their fire-escapes. They were the only ones in the cheder
privileged to enter the yard via the fire-escape ladders-- and they made the
most of it. The rest watched enviously. But they had climbed down only a
few steps, when again the cry, and now from a great height--

"Yowooee!"

Everyone gasped. It was Wildy and he was on the roof!

"I tol' yuh I wuz gonna comm down higher den dem!" With a triumphant
shout he mounted the ladder and with many a flourish climbed down.

"Gee, Wildy!" they breathed reverently--all except the two brothers
and they eyed him sullenly.

"We'll tell de janitor on you."

"I'll smack yuh one," he answered easily, and turning to the rest. "Yuh
know wad I c'n do if one o' youz is game. I betcha I c'n go up on de fawt'
flaw an' I betcha I c'n grab hoi' from dat wash-line an' I betcha I c'n hoi' id
till sommbody pulls me across t' de wash-pole an I betcha I c'n comm down!"

"Gee, Wildy!"

"An' somm day I'm gonna stott way over on Avenyuh C an' jump all de
fences in de whole two blocks!"

"Gee!"

"Hey, guys, I'm goin' in." Izzy had won the last of the pointers.
"C'mon, I'm gonna give 'im."

"How many yuh god?" They trooped after him.

"Look!" There was a fat sheaf of them in his hand.

They approached the reading table. The rabbi looked up.

"I've got pointers for you, rabbi," said Izzy in Yiddish.

"Let me see them," was the suspicious answer. "Quite a contribution
you're making."

Izzy was silent.

"Do you know my pointers were stolen yesterday?" "Yes, I know."
"Well, where did you get these?"

"I won them."

"From whom?"

"From everybody."

"Thieves!" he shook his hand at them ominously. "Fortunately for you I
don't recognize any of them."

TWO months had passed since David entered the cheder. Spring had
come and with the milder weather, a sense of wary contentment, a curious
pause in himself as though he were waiting for some sign, some seal that
would forever relieve him of watchfulness and forever insure his wellbeing.
Sometimes he thought he had already beheld the sign--he went to cheder;
he often went to the synagogue on Saturdays; he could utter God's syllables
glibly. But he wasn't quite sure. Perhaps the sign would be revealed when
he finally learned to translate Hebrew. At any rate, ever since he had begun
attending cheder, life had leveled out miraculously, and this he attributed to
his increasing nearness to God. He never thought about his father's job any
longer. There was no more of that old dread of waiting for the cycle to
fulfill itself. There no longer seemed to be any cycle. Nor did his mother
ever appear to worry about his father's job; she too seemed reassured and at
peace. And those curious secrets he had gleaned long ago from his mother's
story seemed submerged within him and were met only at reminiscent
street-comers among houses or in the brain. Everything unpleasant and past
was like that, David decided, lost within one. All one had to do was to
imagine that it wasn't there, just as the cellar in one's house could be
conjured away if there were a bright yard between the hallway and the
cellar-stairs. One needed only a bright yard. At times David almost believed
he had found that brightness.

It was a few days before Passover. The morning had been so gay,
warmer and brighter than any in the sheaf of Easter just past. Noon had
been so full of promise-- a leaf of Summer in the book of Spring. And all
that afternoon he had waited, restless and inattentive, for the three o'clock
gong to release him from school. Instead of blackboards, he had studied the
sharp grids of sunlight that brindled the red wall under the fire-escapes; and
behind his tall geography book, had built a sail of a blotter and pencil to
catch the mild breeze that curled in through the open window. Miss
Steigman had caught him, had tightly puckered her lips (the heavy fuzz
about them always darkened when she did that) and screamed:

"Get out of that seat, you little loafer! This minute! This very minute!
And take that seat near the door and stay there! The audacity!" She always
used that word, and David always wondered what it meant. Then she had
begun to belch, which was what she always did after she had been made
angry.

And even in his new seat, David had been unable to sit still, had
fidgeted and waited, fingered the grain of his desk, stealthily rolled the sole
of his shoe over a round lead pencil, attempted to tie a hair that had fallen
on his book into little knots. He had waited and waited, but now that he was
free, what good was it? The air was darkening, the naked wind was
spinning itself a grey conch of the dust and rubbish scooped from the gutter.
The street-cleaner was pulling on his black rain-coat. The weather had
cheated him, that's all! He couldn't go anywhere now. He'd get wet. He
might as well be the first one in the cheder. Disconsolately, he crossed the
street.

But how did his mother know this morning it was going to rain? She
had gone to the window and looked out, and then she said, the sun is up too
early. Well what if it--Whee!

Before his feet a flat sheet of newspaper, driven by a gust of damp wind,
whipped into the air and dipped and fluttered languidly, melting into sky.
He watched it a moment and then quickened his step. Above store
windows, awnings were heaving and bellying upward, rattling. Yelling, a
boy raced across the gutter, his cap flying before him.

"Wow! Look!" The shout made him turn around.

"Shame! Shame! Everybody knows your name." A chorus of boys and
girls chanted emphatically. "Shame! Shame! Everybody knows your name."
Red and giggling a big girl was thrusting down the billow of her dress.
Above plump, knock-kneed legs, a glimpse of scalloped, white drawers.
The wind relenting, the dress finally sank. David turned round again,
feeling a faint disgust, a wisp of the old horror. With what prompt spasms
the mummified images in the brain started from their niches, aped former
antics and lapsed. It recalled that time, way long ago. Knish and closet.
Puh! And that time when two dogs were stuck together. Puh! Threw water
that man. Shame! Shame!

"Sophe-e!" Above him the cry. "Sophe-e!"

"Ye-es mama-a!" from a girl across the street.

"Comm opstehs! Balt!"

"Awaa!"

"Balt or I'll give you! Nooo!"

With a rebellious shudder, the girl began crossing the street. The
window slammed down.

Pushing a milk-stained, rancid baby carriage before them, squat
buttocks waddled past, one arm from somewhere dragging two reeling
children, each hooked by its hand to the other, each bouncing against the
other and against their mother like tops, flagging and whipped. A boy ran in
front of the carriage. It rammed him.

"Ow! Kencha see wea yuh goin?" He rubbed his ankle.

"Snott nuzz! Oil--bait a frosk, Oil--give!"

"Aaa! Buzjwa!"

A drop of rain spattered on his chin.

--It's gonna--

He flung his strap of books over his shoulder and broke into a quick
trot.

--Before I get all wet.

Ahead of him, flying toward the shore beyond the East River, shaggy
clouds trooped after their van. And across the river the white smoke of
nearer stacks was flattened out and stormy as though the stacks were the
funnels of a flying ship. In the gutter, wagon wheels trailed black ribbons.
Curtains overhead paddled out of open windows. The air had shivered into
a thousand shrill, splintered cries, wedged here and there by the sudden
whoop of a boy or the impatient squawk of a mother. At the doorway to the
cheder corridor, he stopped and cast one lingering glance up and down the
street. The black sidewalks had cleared. Rain shook out wan tresses in the
gathering dark. Against the piebald press of cloud in the craggy furrow of
the west, a lone flag on top of a school-steeple blew out stiff as a key.
In the shelter of a doorway, across the gutter, a cluster of children shout-
ed in monotone up at the sky:

"Rain, rain, go away, come again some oddeh day. Rain, rain, go away,
come again some oddeh day. Rain, rain--"

He'd better go in before the rest of the rabbi's pupils came. They'd get
ahead of him otherwise. He turned and trudged through the dim battered
corridor. The yard was gloomy. Wash-poles creaked and swayed, pulleys
jangled. In a window overhead, a bulky, bare-armed woman shrilled curses
at someone behind her and hastily hauled in the bedding that straddled the
sills like bulging sacks.

"And your guts be plucked!" her words rang out over the yard.

"Couldn't you tell me it was raining?"

He dove through the rain, skidded over the broken flagstones and fell
against the cheder door. As he stumbled in, the rabbi, who was lighting the
gas-jet, looked around.

"A black year befall you!" he growled. "Why don't you come in like a
man?"

Without answering, he sidled meekly over to the bench beside the wall
and sat down. What did he yell at him for? He hadn't meant to burst in that
way. Gee! The growing gas-light revealed another pupil in the room whom
he hadn't noticed before. It was Mendel. His neck swathed in white
bandages, sickly white under the bleary yellow flicker of gas, he sat before
the reading table, head propped by elbows. Mendel was nearing his bar
mitzvah but had never learned to read chumish because he had entered the
cheder at a rather late age. He was lucky, so every one said, because he had
a carbuncle on the back of his neck which prevented him from attending
school. And so all week long, he had arrived first at the cheder. David
wondered if he dared sit down beside him. The rabbi looked angry.
However, he decided to venture it and crawled quietly over the bench
beside Mendel. The pungent reek of medicine pried his nostrils.

--Peeuh! It stinks!

He edged away. Dull-eyed, droopy-lipped, Mendel glanced down at him
and then turned to watch the rabbi. The latter drew a large blue book
from a heap on the shelf and then settled himself on his pillowed chair.
"Strange darkness," he said, squinting at the rain-chipped window. "A
stormy Friday."

David shivered. Beguiled by the mildness of noon, he had left the house
wearing only his thin blue jersey. Now, without a fire in the round-bellied
stove and without other bodies to lend their warmth to the damp room, he
felt cold.

"Now," said the rabbi stroking his beard, "this is the 'Haftorah' to
Jethro--something you will read at your bar mitzvah, if you live that long."
He wet his thumb and forefinger and began pinching the top of each page in
such a way that the whole leaf seemed to wince from his hand and flip over
as if fleeing of its own accord. David noted with surprise that unlike the
rabbi's other books this one had as yet none of its corners lopped off. "It's
the 'Sedrah' for that week," he continued, "and since you don't know any
chumish, I'll tell you what it means after you've read it." He picked up the
pointer, but instead of pointing to the page suddenly lifted his hand.

In spite of himself, Mendel contracted.

"Ach!" came the rabbi's impatient grunt. "Why do you spring like a
goat? Can I hit you?" And with the blunt end of the pointer, he probed his
ear, his swarthy face painfully rippling about his bulbous nose into the
margins of his beard and skull-cap. He scraped the brown clot of wax
against the table leg and pointed to the page. "Begin, Beshnos mos."

"Beshnos mos hamelech Uziyahu vaereh es adonoi," Mendel swung
into the drone.

For want of anything better to do, David looked on, vying silently with
Mendel. But the pace soon proved too fast for him--Mendel's swift sputter
of gibberish tripped his own laggard lipping. He gave up the chase and
gazed vacantly at the rain-chipped window. In a house across the darkened
yard, lights had been lit apd blurry figures moved before them. Rain
strummed on the roof, and once or twice through the steady patter, a
muffled rumble filtered down, as if a heavy object were being dragged
across the floor above.

--Bed on wheels. Upstairs. (His thoughts rambled absently between the
confines of the drone of the voice and the drone of the rain.) Gee how it's
raining. It won't stop. Even if he finishes, I can't go. If he read chumish,
could race him, could beat him I bet. But that's because he has to stop . . .
Why do you have to read chumish? No fun . . . First you read, Adonoi
elahenoo abababa, and then you say, And Moses said you mustn't, and then
you read some more abababa and then you say, mustn't eat in the traife
butcher store. Don't like it any way. Big brown bags hang down from the
hooks. Ham. And all kinds of grey wurst with like marbles in 'em. Peeuh!
And chickens without feathers in boxes, and little bunnies in that store on
First Avenue by the elevated. In a wooden cage with lettuce, and rocks, they
eat too, on those stands. Rocks all colors. They bust 'em open with a knife
and shake out ketchup on the snot inside. Yich! and long, black, skinny
snakes. Peeuh! Goyim eat everything . . .

"Veeshma es kol adonoi omair es mi eshlach." Mendel was reading swiftly
this afternoon. The rabbi turned the page. Overhead that distant rumbling
sound.

--Bed on wheels again . . . But how did Moses know? Who told him?
God told him. Only eat kosher meat, that's how. Mustn't eat meat and then
drink milk. Mama don't care except when Bertha was looking! How she
used to holler on her because she mixed up the meat-knives with the milk
knives. It's a sin. ... So God told him eat in your own meat markets . . .
That time with mama in the chicken market when we went. Where all the
chickens ran around --cuckacucka--when did I say? Cucka. Gee! Funny.
Some place I said. And then the man with a knife went zing! Eee! Blood
and wings. And threw him down. Even kosher meat when you see, you
don't want to eat--

"Enough!" The rabbi tapped his pointer on the table.

Mendel stopped reading and slumped back with a puff of relief.

"Now I'll tell you a little of what you read, then what it means. Listen to
me well that you may remember it. Beshnas mos hamelech." The two nails
of his thumb and forefinger met "In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah
saw God. And God was sitting on his throne, high in heaven and in his
temple--Understand?" He pointed upward.

Mendel nodded, grimacing as he eased the bandage round his neck.
--Gee! And he saw Him. Wonder where? (David, his interest aroused,
was listening intently. This was something new.)

"Now!" resumed the rabbi. "Around Him stood the angels, God's
blessed angels. How beautiful they were you yourself may imagine. And
they cried: Kadosh! Kadosh! Kadosh--Holy! Holy! Holy! And the temple
rang and quivered with the sound of their voices. So!" He paused, peering
into Mendel's face. "Understand?" "Yeh," said Mendel understandingly.
--And angels there were and he saw 'em. Wonder if-- "But when
Isaiah saw the Almighty in His majesty and His terrible light--Woe me! he
cried, What shall I do! I am lost!" The rabbi seized his skull-cap and
crumpled it. "I, common man, have seen the Almighty, I, unclean one have
seen him! Behold, my lips are unclean and I live in a land unclean--for the
Jews at that time were sinful--"

--Clean? Light? Wonder if--? Wish I could ask him why the Jews were
dirty. What did they do? Better not! Get mad. Where? (Furtively, while the
rabbi still spoke David leaned over and stole a glance at the number of the
page.) On sixty-eight. After, maybe, can ask. On page sixty-eight. That blue
book--Gee! it's God.

"But just when Isaiah let out this cry--I am unclean --one of the angels
flew to the altar and with tongs drew out a fiery coal. Understand? With
tongs. And with that coal, down he flew to Isaiah and with that coal touched
his lips--Here!" The rabbi's fingers stabbed the air. "You are clean! And
the instant that coal touched Isaiah's lips, then he heard God's own voice
say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And Isaiah spoke and--"

But a sudden blast of voices out doors interrupted him. Running feet
stamped across the yard. The door burst open. A squabbling tussling band
stormed the doorway, jamming it. Scuffling, laughing boisterously, they
shoved each other in, yanked each other out--

"Leggo!"

"Leggo me!"

"Yuh pushed me in id, yuh lousy stinkuh!"

"Next after Davy," one flew toward the reading table. "Moishe flopped
inna puddle!"

"Hey! Don' led 'im in!"

"Next after Sammy!" Another bolted after the first.

"I come--!"

"Shah!" grated the rabbi. "Be butchered, all of you! You hear me! Not
one be spared!"

The babel sank to an undertone.

"And you there be maimed forever, shut that door." The milling about
the doorway dissolved.

"Quick! May your life be closed with it."

Someone pulled the door after him.

"And now, sweet Sammy," his voice took on a venomous wheedling
tone. "Nex are you? I'll give you nex. In your belly it will nex. Out of
there! Wriggle!"

Sammy hastily scrambled back over the bench.

"And you too," he waved David away. "Go sit down over there." And
when David hung back, "Quick! Or--!" David sprang from the bench.
"And quiet!" he rasped. "As if your tongues had rotted." And when
complete silence had been established. "Now," he said, rising.

"I'll give you something to do-- Yitz-chuck!"

"Waauh! I didn' do nottin'!" Yitzchuck raised a terrified whine.

"Who asked you to speak? Come here!"

"Wadda yuh wan' f'om me?" Yitzchuck prepared to blubber.

"Sit here." He beckoned to the end of the bench which was nearest the
reading table. "And don't speak to me in goyish. Out of there, you! And
you, David, sit where you are-- Simke!"

"Yea."

"Beside him. Srool! Moishe! Avrum! Yankel! Schulim!" He was gathering
all the younger students into a group. "Schmiel! And you Meyer, sit here."
With a warning glance he went over to the closet behind his chair
and drew out a number of small books.

"Aaa! Phuh!" Yitzchuck spat out in a whisper. "De lousy Hagaddah
again!"

They sat silent until the rabbi returned and distributed the books.
Moishe, seated a short distance away from David dropped his, but then
pounced upon it hastily, and for the rabbi's benefit, kissed it and
looked about with an expression of idiotic piety.

"First, louse-heads," began the rabbi when he had done distributing the
books, "the Four Questions of the Pass-over. Read them again and again.
But this time let them flow from your lips like a torrent. And woe to that
plaster dunce who still cannot say them in Yiddish! Blows will he scoop
like sand! And when you have done that, turn the leaves to the 'Chad
Godya'. Read it over. But remember, quiet as death-- Well?" Shmaike had
raised his hand as though he were in school. "What do you want?" "Can't
we hear each other?"

"Mouldered brains! Do you still need to hear each other? Do then. But
take care I don't hear a goyish word out of you." He went back to his chair
and sat down. For a few seconds longer his fierce gaze raked the long
bench, then his eyes dropped momentarily to the book before him. "I was
telling you," he addressed Mendel, "how Isaiah came to see God and what
happened after--" But as if his own words had unleashed theirs, a seething
of whispers began to chafe the room.

"You hea' me say it. You hea' me! Shid on you. C'mon Solly, you hea'
me. Yuh did push! Mendy's god a bendige yet on--"

"Said whom shall I send?" The rabbi's words were baffling on thicken-
ing briers of sound. "Who will go for us?" "Izzy Pissy! Cock-eye
Mulligan! Mah nishtanah hali-law hazeh-- Wanna play me Yonk?"

--Couldn't ask him though (David's eyes merely rested on the page).
Get mad. Maybe later when I have to read. Where was it? Yea. Page sixty
eight. I'll say, on page sixty-eight in that blue book that's new, where
Mendel read, you were saying that man saw God. And a light-- "How
many? I god more den you. Shebchol haleylos onu ochlim-. I had a mockee
on mine head too. Wuz you unner de awningh? Us all wuz. In de rain."

"And tell this people, this fallen people--"

"Yea, and I'll kickyuh innee ass! Odds! Halaylaw hazeh kulo mazo--
So from t'rowin' sand on my head I god a big mockee. I seen a blitz just
w'en I commed in."

--Where did he go to see Him? God? Didn't say. Wonder if the rabbi
knows? Wish I could ask. Page sixty-eight. Way, way, way, maybe. Where?
Gee! Some place, me too . . . When I-- When I--in the street far away . . .
Hello, Mr. Highwood, goodbye Mr. Highwood. Heeel Funny!

"C'mere Joey, here's room. De rebbeh wants--Fences is all slippery.
Now wadda yuh cry?"

"Nor ever be healed, nor even clean."

"A blitz, yuh dopel Hey Solly, he says-- Shebchol haleylos onu ochlim
-- Yea, my fadder'll beat chaw big brudder. Evens!"

--Some place Isaiah saw Him, just like that. I bet! He was sitting on a
chair. So he's got chairs, so he can sit Gee! Sit Shit! Sh! Please God, I
didn't mean it! Please God, somebody else said it! Please--

"So hoddy you say blitz wise guy? Moishee loozed his bean shooduh!
And den after de sand I pud wawduh on duh head, so-- Lousy bestia! Miss
Ryan tooked it!" "How long7 I asked. Lord, how long--"

--And why did the angel do it? Why did he want to burn Isaiah's mouth
with coal? He said, You're clean. But coal makes smoke and ashes. So how
clean? Couldn't he just say, Your mouth is clean? Couldn't he? Why wasn't
it clean, anyway? He didn't wash it, I bet. So that . . .

"A lighten', yuh dope. A blitz! Kent'cha tuck Englitch? Ha! Ha! Sheor
yerokos halaylo hazeh--Dat's two on dotl I wuz shootin chalk wid it.
Somm bean shooduh! My fodder'll give your fodder soch a kick--"
--With a zwank, he said it was. Zwank. Where did I see? Zwank some
place. Mama? No. Like in blacksmith shop by the river. Pincers and
horseshoe. Yes must be. With pincers, zwank means pincers. So why with
pincers? Coal was hot. That's why. But he was a angel. Is angels afraid?
Afraid to get burned? Gee! Must have been hot, real hot. How I jumped
when the rabbi pushed out with his fingers when he said coal. Nearly
thought it was me. Wonder if Isaiah hollered when the coal touched
him.

Maybe angel-coal don't burn live people. Wonder-- "Dere! Chinky shows!
Id's mine! How many fences didja go? I tore it fom a tree in duh pock, mine
bean-shooduh! Tree fences. So a lighten den, wise guy!"

"And the whole land waste and empty."

'Tree is a lie, mine fodder says. Yea? Matbilim afllu pa'am echos
halaylo hazeh--Always wear yuh hat when a lighten' gives--"

--He said dirty words, I bet. Shit, pee, fuckenbestit-- Stop! You're
sayin' it yourself. It's a sin again! That's why he--Gee! I didn't mean it.
But your mouth don't get dirty. I don't feel no dirt. (He rolled his tongue
about) Maybe inside. Way, way in, where you can't taste it. What did Isaiah
say that made his mouth dirty? Real dirty, so he'd know it was? Maybe--
"Shebchol haleylos onu ochlim--. De rain wedded my cockamamy!

Ow! Leggo! Yuh can't cover books wit' newspaper. My teacher don' let. An
aftuh she took mine bean-shooduh, she pinched me by duh teet! Lousey
bestia! Bein yoshvim uvein mesubim. So wad's de nex' woid? Mine hen'ball
wend down duh sewuh! Now, I god six poin-duhs!

--You couldn't do it with a regular coal. You'd burn all up. Even hot tea
if you drink--ooh! But where could you get angel-coal? Mr. Ice-man, give
me a pail of angel-coal. Hee! Hee! In a cellar is coal. But other kind, black
coal, not angel coal. Only God had angel-coal. Where is God's cellar I
wonder? How light it must be there. Wouldn't be scared like I once was in
Brownsville. Remember?

"C'mon chick! Hey Louie! Yuh last! Wed mine feed! Look! Me! Yea!
Hea! Two!"

--Angel-coal. In God's cellar is--

All the belated ones had straggled in. A hail of jabbering now rocked
the cheder.

"And-not-a-tree--" As the rabbi stooped lower and lower, his voice
shot up a steep ladder of menace. "Shall-be-upright in the land!" He
straightened, scaling crescendo with a roar. "Noo!" His final shattering
bellow mowed down the last shrill reeds of voices. "Now it's my turn!"
Smiling fiercely he rose, cat-o-nine in hand, and advanced toward the silent,
cowering row. "Here!" the scourge whistled down, whacked against a thigh.
"Here's for you!" "Wow!"

"And you!"

"Ouch! Waddid I--dor

"And you for your squirming tongue!"

"Leggo! Ooh!"

"And you that your rump is on fire! Now sit still!" "Umph! Owl"

"And you for your grin! And you for your nickering, and you for your
bickering. Catch! Catch! Hold! Dance!" The straps flew, legs plunged.
Shrill squibs of pain popped up and down the bench. No one escaped, not
even David. Wearied at length, and snorting for breath, the rabbi stopped
and glared at them. Suppressed curses, whimpers, sniffles soughed from
one end of the bench to the other.

"Shah!"

Even these died out.

"Now! To your books! Dig your eyes into them. The four Questions.
Noo! Begin! Ma nishtanaw."

"Mah nishtanaw halilaw hazeh," they bellowed, "mikawl halaylos. Sheb
chol halaylos onu ochlim chametz umazoh." "Schulim!" The rabbi's chin
went down, his voice diving past it to an ominous bass. "Dumb are you?"
"Haliylaw hazeh." A new voice vigorously swelled the already lusty
chorus, "kulo mazoh!"

When they had finished the four questions, repeated them and rendered
them thrice into Yiddish--

"Now the chad gadyaw," commanded the rabbi. "And with one voice.
Hurry!"

Hastily, they turned the pages.

"Chad godyaw, chad godyaw," they bayed raggedly, "disabin abaw bis
rai zuzaw, chad godyaw, chad godyaw--"

"Your teeth fall out, Simkeh." snarled the rabbi, grinning venomously,
"what are you laughing at?"

"Nuttin!" protested Simkeh in an abused voice. "I wasn't laughing!" He
was though--some one had been chanting "fot God Yaw" instead of Chad
Godyaw.

"So!" said the rabbi sourly when they had finished. "And now where is
the blessed understanding that remembers yesterday? Who can render this
into Yiddish? Ha? Where?"

A few faltering ones raised their hands.

"But all of it!" he warned. "Not piece-meal, all of it without stuttering.
Or--" He snapped the cat-o-nine. "The noodles!"

Scared, the volunteers lowered their hands.

"What? None? Not a single one." His eyes swept back and forth. "Oh,
you!" With a sarcastic wave of the hand, he flung back the offers of the
older, chumish students.

"It's time you mastered this feat! No one!" He wagged his head at them
bitterly. "May you never know where your teeth are! Hi! Hi! none strives to
be a Jew any more. Woe unto you! Even a goy knows more about his filth
than you know of holiness. Woe! Woe!" He glared at David accusingly.
"You too? Is your head full of turds like the rest of them? Speak!"
"I know it," he confessed, but the same time feigned sullenness lest he
stir the hatred of the others.

"Well! Have you ribs in your tongue? Begin! I'm waiting!"

"One kid, one only kid," cautiously he picked up the thread, "one kid
that my father bought for two zuzim. One kids, one only kid. And a cat
came and ate the kid that my father had bought for two zuzim. One kid, one
only kid. And a dog came and bit the cat that ate the kid that my father
bought for two zuzim. One kid, one only kid." He felt more and more as he
went on as if the others were crouching to pounce upon him should he miss
one rung in the long ladder of guilt and requital. Carefully, he climbed past
the cow and the butcher and the angel of death. "And then the Almighty,
blessed be He-- (Gee! Last. Nobody after. Didn't know before. But
sometime, mama, Gee!) Unbidden, the alien thoughts crowded into the gap.
For an instant he faltered. (No! No! Don't stop!) "Blessed be He," he
repeated hurriedly, "killed the angel of death, who killed the butcher, who
killed the ox, who drank the water, that quenched the fire, that burned the
stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father
bought for two zuzim. One kid, one only kid!" Breathlessly he came to an
end, wondering if the rabbi were angry with him for having halted in the
middle.

But the rabbi was smiling. "So!" he patted his big palms together. 'This
one I call my child. This is memory. This is intellect. You may be a great
rabbi yet--who knows!" He stroked his black beard with a satisfied air and
regarded David a moment, then suddenly he reached his hand into his
pocket and drew out a battered black purse.

A murmur of incredulous astonishment rose from the bench.

Snapping open the pronged, metal catch, the rabbi jingled the coins
inside and pinched out a copper. "Here!

Because you have a true Yiddish head. Take it!"

Automatically, David lifted his hand and closed it round the penny. The
rest gaped silently.

"Now come and read," he was peremptory again. "And the rest of you
dullards, take care! Let me hear you wink and I'll tear you not into shreds,
but into shreds of shreds!"

A little dazed by the windfall, David followed him to the reading bench
and sat down. While the rabbi carefully rolled himself a cigarette, David
gazed out of the window. The rain had stopped, though the yard was still
dark. He could sense a strange quietness holding the outdoors in its grip.
Behind him, the first whisper flickered up somewhere along the bench. The
rabbi lit his cigarette, shut the book from which Mendel had been reading
and pushed it to one side.

--Could ask him now, I bet. He gave me a penny. About Isaiah and the
coal. Where? Yes. Page sixty-eight. I could ask--

Chaa! Wuuh! Thin smoke glanced off the table. The rabbi reached over
for the battered book and picked up the pointer.

"Rabbi?"

"Noo?" He pinched over the leaves.

"When Mendel was reading about that--that man who you said, who
--" He never finished. Twice through the yard, as though a lantern had been
swung back and forth above the roof-tops, violet light rocked the opposite
walls --and darkness for a moment and a clap of thunder and a rumbling
like a barrel rolling down cellar stairs.

"Shma yisroel!" the rabbi ducked his head and clutched David's arm.
"Woe is me!"

"Ow!" David squealed. And the pressure on his arm relaxing, giggled.
Behind him the sharp, excited voices. "Yuh see it! Bang! Bang wot a
bust it gave! I tol' yuh I see a blitz before!"

"Shah!" The rabbi regained his composure. "Lightning before the
Passover! A warm summer." And to David as if remembering, "Why did
you cry out and why did you laugh?"

"You pinched me," he explained cautiously, "and then--"

"Well?'

"And then you bent down--like us when you drop the pointer, and then
I thought--"

"Before God," the rabbi interrupted, "none may stand upright."

--Before God.

"But what did you think?"

"I thought it was a bed before. Upstairs. But it wasn't." "A bed! It
wasn't!" He stared at David. "Don't play the fool with me because I gave
you a penny." He thrust the book before him. "Come then!" he said
brusquely. "It grows late."

--Can't ask now.

"Begin! Shohain ad mawrom--"

"Shohain ad mawrom vekawdosh shmo vakawsuv ronnu zadekim ladonoi."
Thought lapsed into monotone.

After a short reading, the rabbi excused him, and David slid off the
bench and went over to where the rest were sitting to get his strap of
books. Schloime, who held them in his lap, had risen with alacrity as he
approached and proffered them to him.

"Dey wanted t' take dem, but I was holdin' 'em," he informed him.

"Watcha gonna buy?"

"Nuttin."

"Aa!" And eagerly. "I know w'ea dere's orange-balls-- eight fuh a
cent."

"I ain' gonna ged nuttin."

"Yuh stingy louse!"

The others had swarmed about. "I told yuh, yuh wouldn' get nuttin for
holdin' his books. Yaah, yuh see! Aaa, let's see duh penny. We'll go
witchah. Who couldn'a said dat!"

"Shah!"

They scattered back to the bench. David eased his way through the door.



V



THE air had freshened, the dark became lighter. The wind, cooler now,
wrinkled the dark puddles between the flagstones, lifted the wash-lines.
From somewhere, large drops of water still spattered down, though walls
and fences showed broad dry patches. His fingers still closed around the
penny in his pocket, David climbed up the brown, water-stained stairs,
passed through the warm corridor and out into the street. Sidewalks and
gutter were drying to grey again, dark rills thinning under curbs. In the west
clearing toward sunset, clouds were a silver havoc, their light in the rugged
stone frame of the street, sombre and silver.

--Show her the penny when I get upstairs. And shell tell Papa. What
would he say? Bet he wouldn't believe. He'd say I found it. But I could say
it for him--all over again. One kid, one only kid, and then he'd have to--
That candy store.

He stopped, stared thoughtfully at the clutter of toys and tin horns,
masks, soda bottles and cigarette posters.

--No. Have to show her first. See what I got. Then could buy. What?
Candy? No. Like to get those little balls in the hoople-cage. You blow and
catch. Only can't catch so good. When will I catch good? Maybe better wait
till tomorrow when I get another penny. And then--Geel Go to Aunt
Bertha's candy store. When was I? Long time ago, that time with mamal
Too far. And girls, Esther and Polly. Hate them. How they fight, gee! How
they eat soup! Poppa'd murder me if I did. But Uncle Nathan only hollers,
and Aunt Bertha hollers on him. Remember Uncle Nathan and his mama?
Vinegar and light when he told. Light! Gee! And Isaiah and that angel-coal.
On his mouth. But remember. Blue book--so big. On page sixty-eight.
Maybe ask next time. Maybe mama knows. Penny? Where? Oh! Here!
Nearly didn't get it. When that funny jumped into the middle of the chad
godyuh. Wonder what! I was saying. Yes. I was saying--

"Little boy." The words were in Yiddish.

He started and looked up. He had almost run into her--a shriveled old woman
with a face so lined with short, thin wrinkles, they slanted down the sere skin
like a rain. She was stooped. A striped blue and white apron covered the front
of her rusty black satin dress. The whites of her eyes were cloudy as an old
tusk and caught in a net of red veins. Her nostrils were wet. Between her brow
and the white kerchief on her head a stiff brown wig protruded like a ledge.

"Little boy." She repeated in a quavering treble, head rocking infirmly
from side to side. "Are you a Jew?" For a fleeting instant, David wondered
how he could have understood her if he hadn't been a Jew.

"Yes."

"Well, it won't harm you anyway," she mumbled. "You're not old enough to sin.
Come with me and I'll give you a penny."

He stared at her. There was something terrifying and dreamlike about it
all. The gingerbread boys the old witch baked. In two A one.

"You'll light the gas stove for me, yes?"

That's what they did too--only it wasn't gas. Gee! He felt half-impelled
to take to his heels.

"I lit the candles", she explained, "and it's too late now."

"Oh!" He understood now. It was Friday. Still why had she lit them so
early? It wasn't night yet.

"Are you coming?" she asked and turned to go. "I'll give you a penny."

After all, this was his street. There was his house only two houses away.
And he would have another penny. He followed her. She shuffled toward a
nearby house and labored slowly up the stoop. Her panting breath on the
second step turned to groaning on the fifth. Above him the slow, wrinkled,
cracked shoes stopped at the threshold. He drew up beside her.

"We haven't any more steps to climb," she muttered, waiting for her
loud breathing to quiet. "A curse on the black sleep that took me. When I
awoke it was dark, and I, sodden with sleep, lit the candles. Too fuddled to
look at the clock first, too dull to light the gas-stove. Woe me." She
wavered into motion again. A few steps through the hallway and she
stopped before a door, opened it and went in. The kitchen, swept and drear,
glaze worn from the linoleum; four candles glimmering above the heavy,
red-and-white table-cloth. Odor of fish. Stagnancy.

"First pull over a chair," she said, "and light the gas up there. Can you
reach the matches?"

David pulled open the drawer she pointed to and found the box of
matches; then he dragged a chair under the gas lamp and climbed up.

"Do you know how?" she asked.

"Yea." He struck a match, turned on the gas and lit it.

"Good! And now under the pots."

He lit those too.

"Smaller," she said. "Smaller. As small as small is."

When he had done this, she pointed to her purse on the table. "Take it,"
she said and began nodding and nodded as if she couldn't stop, "and take
out a penny."

"I don't want it--" he hung back.

"Go! Go!"

While she watched him, he fished out a penny.

"Now close it." And when he did. "You're a good child," she said.

"May God bless you," and she opened the door.



VI



NO, HE thought as he went out, she wasn't a witch--just a 9th street
old woman, that's all. But even so, an unaccountable sadness thickened the
joy he should have felt at getting another penny. Even if he hadn't been
turned into gingerbread, something had turned the heart heavy. Why? A sin,
maybe? Yes, bet that's why. But too young, she said. No. Bet nobody was
too young. So which is the sin penny? He looked at them. Indian this.
Lincoln this. Lincoln just got. But the cool air of the outdoors as he entered
the street whipped away remorse as it whipped the nostrils clear of kitchen
odors. He turned toward his house and quickened his step. Dusk was
resuming the alley of the east Smokestacks across the dark river had begun
their pilgrimage into night. On the corner of Avenue D, the shadowy
lamplighter with the pale, uplifted face was thrusting his long, glow-tipped
lance into the hazy globe of the street lamp. David stopped a moment to see
whether the gas inside and the mantle would catch. A faint puff and the
globe filled with a yellow bloom. He climbed up the stairs of the stoop,
wondering whether lamp-lighters were ever disturbed by their own
sacrilege or whether they were all goyim. As he mounted the hallway stairs,
the voices of boys drifted down.

"So yuh have tuh."

"Yuh don'!" another answered.

"Id ain' Shabis yet."

"Id is so. Id's dock."

'Id's dock in hea, but id ain' Shabis."

Before the halt-open doorway of a water closet, inside of which a boy
was squatting, stood two of his companions.

"I am gonna tear it" came the rebellious voice inside. "Dere ain' nutt'n
else."

And as David walked by the doorway, he saw the boy who was squatting on
the seat inside tear a long swath out of one of the newspapers that litter-
ed the floor.

"Now yuh god it!" said one of the onlookers vindictively.

"An' ids a double sin too," added the other.

"So w'y is id a double sin?" the squatter's provoked voice demanded.

"Cause it's Shabis." The righteous voice below meted out "An' dat's
one sin. Yuh can't tear on Shabis. An' because id's a Jewish noospaper wid
Jewish on id, dat's two sins. Dere!"

"Yea!" the other chimed in. "You'd a only god one sin if you tord a
Englitch noospaper."

"Well, w'yntcha gimme a Englitch noospaper?" demanded the first
voice disgustedly. "I ain' goin' haffee witchoo no more."

"So don'."

Their bickering voices faded below.

--Looks every place, He. Knew I shouldn't have lit the gas. One penny
is bad. Real bad. But one penny is good. So that makes it even, don't it?
Maybe He won't get mad. Gee, didn't know He was so every place. How
can he look in every dark, if He's light--the rabbi said--and it's real dark.
How can He see in the real dark and we can't see Him. What's real dark?
Real dark. Gee! That time--Annie--closet. Cellar--Luter. Sh! Don't! Gee!
Sin it was. Hurry up! Sin it was! Every place, sin it is. Didn't know. Hurry
up! Coal He touched him. Hurry up!

Eagerly he glanced up at the transom above his door. It was unlit--
stained only by indigo twilight. His heart sank. Then she was out--his
mother was out--and only his father was there, asleep probably. He stopped
irresolutely, hedged in by two fears, the dark and his father. He would have
to wake him if the door was locked, and that--there was peril in that. The
rungs of the shutters of memory snapped open and closed--a fragmentary
fleeting image, but clear. Better run then, wait in the street until she came
home. No. He would try the knob first-- just once. He turned it; the door
opened. That was strange. He tiptoed into a blue room, aware of a blue
washboard on a blue washtub, aware of his father's throaty breathing in the
further bedroom. He sheered away from it--where was she?--and entered
the frontroom. She was sitting beside the window, her dark face in outline
against the frosty blue of the pane. His heart leapt.

"Mama!" he tried to keep his voice down to a whisper, but failed.

"Oh!" she started. "You frightened me!" and then stretched out her
arms.

"I didn't know you were here." He entered the delicious circle of her
embrace.

"My head is like an old bell," she sighed pressing him to her. "Idle and
without hearing, but murmuring sometimes, a little insecure." Then she
laughed and kissed his brow. "Did you get your shoes wet in the rain?"

"No I ran into the cheder just before."

"That sweater is too thin."

He had been holding the Indian penny in one hand to keep it from
jingling against the other. And now he held it up. "Look what I've got."

"My!" she marveled. "How did you come by that?"

"The rabbi gave it to me."

"The rabbi?"

"Yes. I was the only one who knew the chad godyuh from last time."

She laughed and hugged him. "Solomon, Sage!"

He took a deep breath. He had asked her before, but somehow the
thought was too elusive. He needed to be told again.

"Who is God, mama?"

"You keep asking exactly the right person," she smiled. "Doesn't the
rabbi ever tell you?"

"You can't ask him anything."

"Well, why are you so interested?"

"I don't know. I mean you didn't tell me what he looked like."

"That was because I didn't know." She chuckled at his chagrin. "Still
I'll tell you what--"

But breaking her speech, his father's painful, awakening groan reached
them from the bedroom.

"Genya!"

"I'm in here, Albert."

"Hmm!" Always he seemed to need reassurance, always he seemed reassured.
And was silent. David hoped she would hurry on before he came in.

"Yes," she continued. "I'll tell you what a pious old woman in Veljish
told me when I was a little girl. And that's all I know. She said that He was
brighter than the day is brighter than the night. You understand? But she
always used to add if darkest midnight were bright enough to see whether a
black hair were straight or curly. Brighter than day."

Brighter than day. That much seemed definite, seemed to conform with his
own belief, that much he could grasp. It reminded him of the steps of the
chad godyuh. "And He lives in the sky?"

"And in the earth and in the water and in the world."

"But what does He do?"

"He holds us in His hand, they say--us and the world." His father had
come in, hacking, clearing his sleep-clogged breath. He stood darkly in the
doorway. There was room for one more question and that was all. "Could
He break it? Us? The streets? Everything?"

"Of course. He has all power. He can break and rebuild, but He holds."

His father made an impatient sound with his lips. "Why do you sit in
darkness?"

"My washing," she laughed apologetically. "The little curtains for the
Passover. It grew dark as I was about to hang them up. And I thought, well,
Friday, best the neighbors didn't see me or they'll cluck. Do you know your
son won a penny in the cheder?"

"What for? Because he asks such bright questions? Makes and breaks.
A fool in a sand heap." He yawned. His stretching arms pressed against
both sides of the door-frame till it creaked. "We need some light."



VII



IT WAS Monday morning, the morning of the first Pass-over night. One
was lucky in being a Jew to-day. There was no school. David had just come
down the stairs carrying the wooden spoon into which the night before his
father had swept up the last crumbs of leavened bread, swept them up with
a feather and bound them with a rag --chumitz--leavened bread to be
burned in the fire. And now on the top step of the stoop, he paused awhile
and watched the Hungarian janitor polish one of the brass bannisters in
front of the house. It had a corrupt odor, brass, as of something rotting
away, and yet where the sun struck the burnished metal, it splintered into
brilliant yellow light. Decay. Radiance. Funny.

"You no touch!" warned the janitor, scowling while he rubbed the
bannister. "No stayin' here." Then his eyes lighted on the spoon and
feathers in David's hand. "Matziss, huh?" A grin dove up through the
depths of the frown, hovered and plunged down again. "Dun boin frun' dis
house."

David went down the stairs and walked toward the middle of the block.
Someone had kindled a small fire there. Once the spoon had been dropped
into the flames, his duty was done and he could do what he pleased until
cheder time--it would be a little earlier to-day. And then with two cents at
call upstairs--he had reserved the spending of them until after lunch when
he would probably get another penny from his mother--he looked forward
to an exciting afternoon.

Three boys, all bigger than himself guarded the flame, and when he
drew near, "Waddaye wan'?" one of them demanded.

"I wanna t'row my chumitz on hea."

"We'ea's yuh penny?"

"Wa penny?"

"Us boin chumitz for a penny. De t'ree of us is potnes, ain' we Chink?"

"Yeah, dis is our fiuh."

"Aintchuh gonna led me boin mine? I only god one liddle one."

"No!"

"Make yuh own fiuh."

"Gwan if yuh ain' god a penny, we don't wan yuh lousy chumitz--"

A sudden scraping sound followed by a snarl of foreign words, made
them all spin about "Mannagia chi ti battiavo!"

The broad, glitter-edged, half laden shovel of a white-garbed street
cleaner plowed toward them.

In their turn, the lords of the flame became suddenly suppliants. "Hey
mister! Don' push id! Id's a sin. Look out! Dot's chumitz! An id's on duh
sewer too. Wad-duh yuh wan'?" They danced about him. "Id's on duh
sewer! Id don' make de street soft we'en we boin on de sewer."

"Ah kicka duh assuh! Geedah duh!" The implacable shovel bit through
the coals scattering them before it.

"Yuh lousy bestitt!" shrieked the guardians. "Leave our chumitz alone!
We c'n boin id hea--de cop lets us!" "Waid'll I call my fodder!" threatened
the one who had first kept David at bay. "He'll make yuh stop! Hey PopI
Pop! Tateh! Comm oud!"

A man with a short beard and a blood-smeared apron looked out of the
butcher-shop.

"Pop! Look. He's pushin' our chumitz wid all duh shit!" With an
outraged cry, the butcher came running out followed a few seconds
later by his wife, aproned like himself.

"Fav'y you push dis, ha?" The butcher flung an angry hand at the
choked, smouldering embers mixed now with rubbish and manure.

"Wadda you wa-an?" The street cleaner stopped angrily, black brows
leaping together as stiff as carbon rods under the white helmet. "You no
tella me waddaduh push! I cleanuh dis street. Dey no makuh duh fiuh hea!"
His intricate gestures jig-sawed space.

"No? I ken't tell you, ha? Verstinkeneh Goy!" The butcher planted
himself directly before the mound upon the shovel. "Now moof!"

"Sonnomo bitzah you! I fix!" He leaned viciously on the shovel-handle.
The smouldering hummock sprang forward. The butcher leaped heavily
sideways to avoid being mowed down into the variegated debris.
"You vanna push me?" he roared. "I'll zebreak you het."

"Vai a fanculo te!" The sweeper threw down the shovel. "Come on! Jew
bast!"

But before either could strike a blow, the butcher's wife had seized her
husband's arm.

"You ox!" she shrilled in Yiddish. "Do you oppose an Italian? Don't
you know they carry knives--all of them! Quick!" She dragged him back.

"Inside!"

"I don't care," stormed her husband, though he made no effort to break
her hold. "And I? Have I no knives?" "Are you mad?" she shrieked. "Let
Italian cut-throats stab him to death, not you!" And redoubling her efforts,
she hauled him into the store.

Left master of the field, the street cleaner still growling and gnashing
his teeth snatched up the shovel and glaring at the retreating boys hacked
fiercely at the piled heap before him. David, who had been watching from
the curb, decided it would be better to withdraw--especially since he still
had the wooden spoon in his hand.

But what to do with the spoon now? One had to burn it or one would
sin. And one couldn't burn it now because the sweeper was there. One
could wait of course, and then when the sweeper was gone, build a little
fire. But that wasn't altogether pleasing either. He'd have to stay right here
and wait till the man had left. He couldn't go anywhere--not with a big
wooden spoon in your pocket. He'd lose it maybe, and that would be a sin.
And anyway, its mere presence hobbled the free mind. Nor did he like
starting a fire by himself--the policeman might not understand. And the
street cleaner might even come back.

Where could he go? Where find another fire? Another block maybe?
But maybe they wouldn't let him throw it in. They'd want a penny too.
Some crust! Maybe he could sneak up to a fire if he found one, and throw it
in. No, they'd throw it away-- No. But he'd have to bum it or get a sin.
Where go?

He had already been walking aimlessly toward Avenue D, and now at
the corner, he stopped and gazed vacantly about him. Seventh Street . . .
Eighth Street . . . The River . . . The River! There! Nobody was there. He
wanted to go there anyhow. He could make a little fire-- a tiny fire in front
of the junk-yard and watch it. Yes, there! The matches? Yes, he had four.
He'd get there quick and light it, and then sit down on the dock. That was it.

Elated at having found a solution, he crossed Avenue D, passed the
tenements; loitered a moment beside the open door of the smithy. Inside
stood the shadowy and submissive horse, the shadowy smith. Acrid odor of
seared hooves lingered about the place. Now a horse-shoe glowed under the
hammer--ong-jonga-ong-jong-jong-jong--ringing on the anvil as the
pincers turned it.

--Zwank. Zwank. In a cellar is--

He passed the seltzer bottlery--the rattle and gurgle --passed the stable.
Out of the dark manure-smell into the sunlight, the Negro stable-boy came
out on patent leather shoes, holes cut for bunions. He was laughing--
strong teeth and head thrown back--and his laughter, sleeve within larger
sleeve of mirth, opened like a telescope, rich, warm, contagious. David
grinned as he went by. Grey sparrows by puddles, pecked at the yellow oats
among the cobbles, among the cobbles miraculous blades of grass. And
there, just before the shore sank beneath the mossy piles of the dock (these
driven through blackened rocks, past oil-barrels, stove-in, moss-green and
rusty, past scummy wreckage) he squatted down beside a ledge of the open
junk-heap, the salt-stink of ebbtide in his nostrils.

--Right here on the cobbles could. Nobody here, nobody watching. Get
little pieces--there's a big one-- paper. Catch before it flies. It cracks, big
piece. Long tear. Another. That boy in the toilet. Bet he had a sin. This way
tear. Little pieces. He's watchin' I bet. God. Always. Little, little sticks.
Grass over here between. Who puts grass here? Won't burn. And the Italian
got a sin. Like the boy said. But I bet the butcher had a bigger knife.
Cardboard, good too. Wonder can He see I'm being good? It's like a tent.
Now stay on top, chumitz. Now wait.

He fetched out one of his matches, scraped it against a cobble and
shielding its flame touched it to the bits of paper under the kindling. A live,
golden flame awoke; wood and cardboard caught, and in a few minutes the
whole tindery mound was ablaze. Content yet strangely nostalgic, he
crouched down beside the fire and watched the first tiny beads of flame run
up the raveled threads of the rag that bound feather and spoon together. The
blue, merging smoke crossed his nostrils--

--Gee, how feathers stink! No, they don't! It's holy and He's looking.
Feathers don't stink! No!

The cloth burned rapidly; feathers and spoon sank into the shifting
embers, separated; the half-charred crumbs spilled out and were consumed.
--No more chumitz. All burned black. See God, I was good? Now only
white Matzohs are left. Can go. Don't sit on the edge of the dock, mama
says. It frightens her. It don't frighten me. Just once, for a tiny little
while. Was good, wasn't I?

A few steps toward the river, the cobbles gave place to the broad
wooden slabs of the wharf. On one side a paint-blistered boat rotted
vacantly on the water, on the other side an empty scow tugged at its yellow
hawsers and grunted against the dock. On a pier, two blocks away, the black
jaws of a steam-scuttle, yawning, dove into the hold of a coal-barge, and
dripping, swung back to the huge bins. When he had come almost to the
end of the dock, he sat down, and with his feet hanging over the water
leaned against the horned and bulbous stanchion to which boats were
moored. Out here the wind was fresher. The uncommon quiet excited
him. Beneath him and under his palms, the dry, splintering timbers radiated
warmth. And beneath them, secret, unseen, and always faintly sinister, the
tireless lipping of water among the piles. Before him, the river and to the
right, the long, grey bridges spanning it--

--Like that sword with the big middle on Mecca cigarettes.

That clipped the plumes of a long ship steaming beneath it. Gulls,
beaked faces ugly as their flight was graceful, wheeled through the wide air
on sickle wings. A tug on the other side pecked spryly at a stolid barge.
Yoked at length to its sluggish mate, it puffed briskly out into the river,
gathered momentum.

--Makes the fat one make a mustache when he goes.

The sunlit rhythmic spray sprouted up before the blunt bow of the
barge, hung whitely, lapsed.

--Bricks on it. Bet a whole house.

A cloud sheared the sunlight from the wharf; his back felt cooler; the
wind sharpened . . . Smokestacks on the other bank darkened slowly, fluting
filmy distance with iron-grey shadow.

--Like forks they stick up. Like for--Fu-- Sh! Was good today. Look
other place.

His gaze shifted to the left. As the cloud began to pass, a long slim lath
of sunlight burned silver on the water--

--Gee, didn't see before!

Widened to a swath, a lane, widened.

--Like a ship just went.

A plain, flawless, sheer as foil to the serried margins. His eyes dazzled.
--Fire on the water. White.

His lids grew heavy.

--In the water she said. White. Brighter than day. Whiter. And He was.
Minutes passed while he stared. The brilliance was hypnotic. He could
not take his eyes away. His spirit yielded, melted into light. In the molten
sheen memories and objects overlapped. Smokestacks fused to palings
flickering in silence by. Pale laths grew grey, turned dusky, contracted and
in the swimming dimness, he saw sparse teeth that gnawed upon a lip; and
ladders on the ground turned into hasty fingers pressing on a thigh and
again smokestacks. Straight in air they stood a moment, only to fall on
silvered cardboard coruscating brilliance. And he heard the rubbing on a
wash-board and the splashing suds, smelled again the acrid soap and a voice
speaking words that opened like the bands of a burnished silver accordion
--Brighter than day . . . Brighter .. . Sin melted into light . . .

Uh chug chug, ug chug!
--Cucka cucka ... Is a chicken . . .
Uh chug ug ch ch ch--Tew weet!
--No . . . Can't be . . .
Ug chug, ug chug, ug--TEW WEET!

What! He started as if out of a dream. A tremor shook him from head to
foot so violently that his ears whirred and rang. His eyes bulged, staring.
What? Water! Down below! He flung himself back against the mooring post.

Directly in front of him, with only a short space of water intervening, a
black tugboat churned its way. In a doorway amidships, his back to the
bright brass engine, stood a man in his undershirt, bare, outstretched arms
gripping the doorpost on either side. He whistled again, shrill from mobile
lips, grinned, spat, and "Wake up, Kid!" his sudden, amused hail rolled over
the water, " 'fore you throw a belly-w'opper!" Then he poked his dark
blond head inside as though he were speaking to someone behind him.

Terrified, rigid, David watched the tug wallow by. Ages seemed to pass,
but in spite of himself he could not move. Twice he sighed and with such
depth as though he had been weeping for hours. And with the suddenness of
snapping fetters the spell broke, and he stared about him too unsteady to
rise. What was it he had seen? He couldn't tell now. It was as though he had
seen it in another world, a world that once left could not be recalled. All
that he knew about it was that it had been complete and dazzling.



VIII



HE HAD sat there a long time. Steadiness slowly returned to
him. The planks of the dock stiffened and grew firm. He rose.
--Funny little lights all gone. Like when you squeeze too hard on a
toilet. Better go home.

He approached the end of the dock. Voices, as he neared the cobble,
made him look over to the left Three boys, coming from Eighth Street,
climbed nimbly over the snarled chaos of the open junk heap. At the sight
of David, they hallooed, leapt down to level ground and raced toward him.
All wore caps cocked sideways and sweater, red and green, smeared, torn
at the breast and elbows. Two were taller than David, wiry, blue-eyed,
upturned noses freckled. The other, dark-skinned and runty, looked older
than the rest and carried in his hand a sword made of a thin strip of metal
that looked like sheet zinc and a long bolt wired across it near one end. One
glance at their tough, hostile faces, smirched by the grime and rust of the
junk heap and screwed up into malicious watchfulness was enough. David's
eyes darted about for an opening. There was none--except back to the
dock. Trapped, he stood still, his frightened gaze wavering from one
menacing face to another.

"Wadda yiz doin' on 'at dock?" growled the runty one side-mouthed.
The sunlight glanced along the sheet zinc sword as he pointed.

"N--Nottin. I was'n' doin' nott'n. Dey was boats dere." "How old 're
youse?"

"I'm--rm eight already."

"Well, w'y aintchjis in school?"

"Cause id'd, cause--" But something warned him. "Cause I-- cause my
brudder's god measles."

"Dot's a lodda bullshit, Pedey." This from the freckled one. "He's onna
hook."

"Yea. Tell 'at tuh Sweeney."

"We oughta take yiz tuh a cop," added the second freckled one.

"Betcha de cop'll tell yuh," urged David, hoping for no better fate.

"Nah! We know," Pedey scornfully rejected the idea. "Were d'yiz live?"

"Dere." He could see the very windows of his own floor. "Dat house on
nint' stritt. My mudders gonna look oud righd away."

Pedey squinted in the direction David pointed.

"Dat's a sheeney block, Pedey," prompted the second freckled
lieutenant with ominous eagerness.

"Yea. Yer a Jew aintchiz?"

"No I ain'!" he protested hotly. "I ain' nod a Jew!" "Only sheenies live
in dat block!" countered Pedey narrowly.

"I'm a Hungarian. My mudder 'n' fodder's Hungarian. We're de
janitors."

"W'y wuz yuh lookin upstairs?"

"Cause my mudder wuz washin' de floors."

"Talk Hungarian," challenged the first lieutenant. "Sure like dis.
Abashishishabababyo tomama wawa. Like dot."

"Aa, yuh full o' shit!" sneered the second lieutenant angrily. "C'mom,
Pedey, let's give 'im 'is lumps."

"Yea!" the other freckled one urged. "C'mon. He ain' w'ite. Yi! Yi! Yi!"
He wagged his palms under his chin.

"Naa!" Pedey nudged his neighbor sharply. "He's awri'. Led 'im alone."
And to David. "Got any dough? We'll match yiz pennies."

"No, I ain' god nodd'n. Id's all in mine house." He would have been
glad to have the two pennies now if only they would let him go.

"Let's see yer pockets."

"Hea, I'll show yuh," he hastily turned them inside out. "Nod even in
duh watch pocket."

"C'mon, Pedey," urged first lieutenant, advancing. "Lemme go!" David
whimpered, shrinking back.

"Naa! Let 'im alone," ordered Pedey. "He's awright. Let's show 'im de
magic. Waddayah say?"

"Yea! At's right!" The other two seconded him. "C'mon! Yuh wanna
see some magic?"

"No-no. I don' wanna."

"Yuh don'!" Pedey's voice rose fiercely. The others strained at the leash.

"W--wa' kind o' magic?"

"C'mon, we'll show yiz, won' we, Weasel? Over dis way." His sword pointed
across the junk-heap toward Tenth Street. "Where de car tracks is."

"So wod yuh gonna do?" he held back.

"C'mon we'll show yiz." They hemmed him in cutting off retreat. "Ah'
here's my sword--G'wan take it, fore we--" He thrust it into David's
hands. He took it. They moved forward.

At the foot of the junk-heap, the lieutenant named Weasel stopped.
"Waid a minute," he announced, "I godda take a piss."

"Me too," said the others halting as well. They unbuttoned. David edged
away.

"Lager beer," chanted Pedey as he tapped forehead, mouth, chest and
navel, "comes from here--"

"Ye see," Weasel pointed triumphantly at the shrinking David. "I tol'
yuh he ain' w'ite. W'y don'tchiz piss?" "Don' wanna. I peed befaw."

"Aw, hosschit." He lifted one leg.

"Phuweel"

With a howl of glee, the other two pounced on him. "Eli, eli, a bundle of
strawr," they thumped his back. "Farting is against de lawr--"

"Leggo!" Weasel shook them off viciously.

"Well yiz farted--Hey!" Pedey swooped down on David. "Stay here, or
yuh'll get a bust on de bugle! C'mon! An' don't try to duck on us."
With one on either side of him and one behind, David climbed up the
junk heap and threaded his way cautiously over the savage iron morraine.
Only one hope sustained him--that was to find a man on the other side to
run to. Before him the soft, impartial April sunlight spilt over a hill of
shattered stoves, splintered wheels, cracked drain pipes, potsherds, marine
engines split along cruel and jagged edges. Eagerly, he looked beyond--
only the suddenly alien, empty street and the glittering cartracks, branching
off at the end.

"Peugh! Wadda stink!" Pedey spat. "Who opened his hole?"

From somewhere in the filth and ruin, the stench of mouldering flesh
fouled the nostrils. A dead cat.

"C'mon, hurry up!"

As they neared the street, a rusty wire, tough root of a brutal soil,
tripped David who had quickened his pace, and he fell against the sword
bending it.

"He pissed in his w'iskers," guffawed the second lieutenant.

Pedey grinned. Only Weasel kept his features immobile. He seemed to
take pride in never laughing.

"Hoi' it, yuh dumb bassid," he barked, "yuh bent it!" "Waid a secon',"

Pedey warned them when they had reached the edge of the junk-heap.

"Lemme lay putso." He slid down, and after a furtive glance toward Avenue
D, "Come on! Shake! Nobody's aroun'."

They followed him.

"Now we're gonna show yiz de magic."

"WaidTl ye sees it," Weasel chimed in significantly. "Yea, better'n
movin' pitchiz!"

"Wadda yuh wan' I shul do?" Their growing excitement added to his
terror.

"Hurry up an' take dat sword an' go to dem tracks and t'row it in-- See
like dis. In de middle."

"I don't wanna go." He began to weep.

"G'wan yuh blubber-mout'." Weasel's fist tightened. "G'wan!" The
other lieutenant's face screwed up. " 'Fore we kick de piss ouda yiz."

"G'wan, an' we'll letchiz go," promised Pedey. "G'wan! Shake!"

"If I jost pud id in?"

"Yea. Like I showed yuh."

"An' den yuh'll led me go?"

"Sure. G'wan. Id ain' gonna hoitcha. Ye'll see all de movies in de woil!
An' vawderville too! G'wan before a car comes."

"Sure, an' all de angels."

"G'wan!" Their fists were drawn back.

Imploringly, his eyes darted to the west. The people on Avenue D
seemed miles away. The saloon-door in the middle of the block was closed.
East. No none! Not a soul! Beyond the tarry rocks of the river-shore, the
wind had scattered the silver plain into rippling scales. He was trapped.

"G'wan!" Their faces were cruel, their bodies stiff with expectancy.

He turned toward the tracks. The long dark grooves between each pair
looked as harmless as they had always looked. He had stepped over them
hundreds of times without a thought. What was there about them now that
made the others watch him so? Just drop it, they said, and they would let
him go. Just drop it. He edged closer, stood tip-toe on the cobbles. The
point of the sheet-zinc sword wavered before him, clicked on the stone as
he fumbled, then finding the slot at last, rasped part way down the wide
grinning lips like a tongue in an iron mouth. He stepped back. From open
fingers, the blade plunged into darkness.

Power!

Like a paw ripping through all the stable fibres of the earth, power,
gigantic, fetterless, thudded into day! And light, unleashed, terrific light
bellowed out of iron lips. The street quaked and roared, and like a tortured
thing, the sheet zinc sword, leapt writhing, fell back, consumed with
radiance. Blinded, stunned by the brunt of brilliance, David staggered back.
A moment later, he was spurting madly toward Avenue D.



IX



WHEN he looked behind him again, the light was gone, the roaring
stilled. Pedey and his mates had fled. At the crossing, several people had
stopped and were staring toward the river. Eyes shifted to David as he
neared Avenue D, but since no one tried to block his way, he twisted around
the corner and fled toward Ninth Street. His father's milk wagon was
standing beside the curb. His father was home. He might guess that
something had gone wrong. He'd better not go up. He slunk past his house,
cut across the street and broke into a run. At the cheder entrance he turned,
scurried through the sheltering doorway, and came out into the sunlit and
empty yard. The cheder door was closed. He had come far too early.
Trembling in every limb, weak with fright, he looked about for a place to
rest. The wide wooden doors that covered a cellar sloped gently into the
sun. A new, brass padlock gleamed at their seam--too many of the rabbi's
pupils had been banging them on their subterranean way into the cheder
yard. He dragged himself over, dropped down on one of the wooden wings
and shut his eyes. In the red sea of sun-lit eyelids his spirit sickeningly
rolled and dipped. Though the planks were warm and the sun was warm, his
teeth chattered and he shivered as if an icy gale were blowing. With a groan
of anguish, he turned on his side hardly feeling the warm padlock under his
cheek. Deep, shaking sobs caught on the snag of his throat. The hot tears
crowded through his sealed eyelids, trickled unheeded across his cheek and
nostril. He wept silently.

How long he lay there he did not know. But little by little the anguish
lifted, his blood thawed, the sobbing calmed. Empty and nerveless, he
opened his eyes; the rough-walled familiar houses, the leaning fences, the
motley washing, wash-poles, sunlight, the cramped and cluttered patch of
blue above him were good. A mottled, yellow cat crept carefully out upon a
fire-escape, leapt down behind a fence. Realities warm and palpable. From
open windows, the sound of voices, rattling of pots, rush of water in a sink,
laughter shearing away loud snatches of familiar speech. It was good. In the
veering of the light wind, the odors of cooking, strong and savory, hung and
drifted. From somewhere up above a steady chop-chopping began. Meat or
fish or perhaps the bitter herbs of the Passover. The limp, vacant body
expanded, filled with certainties.

Chop. Chop. The sound was secure. His thoughts took the rhythm of the
sound. Something within him chanted. Words flowed out of him of their
own accord. Chop. Chop. Showed him, showed. In the river, showed him,
showed. Chop. Chop. Showed him, showed. If He wants. Showed him,
showed.

--In the dark, chop, chop. In the river, showed him, showed. In the
dark, in the river was there. Came out if He wanted, was there. Stayed in if
He wanted, was there. Came out if He wanted, stayed in if He wanted, came
out if He wanted, was there . . .

--Could break it in his hands if He wanted. Could hold it in His hands
if He wanted. Could break it, could hold it, could break it, could hold it,
could break it, could hold it, was there.

--In the dark, in the hallways, was there. In the dark, in the cellars was
there. Where cellars is locked, where cellars is coal, where cellars is coal, is
--Coal!

--Coal!

He sat bolt upright.

"Rabbi!" his startled cry rang out over the yard. "Rabbi! Is coal under!
White in cellars!" He sprang to his feet in exaltation, stared about him
wildly. On all the multicolored walls that hemmed him in, one single vision
was written. "Is coal under! White!" Dazedly, he lurched toward the door.
"Rabbi!" He rattled it; it held. "Rabbi!" He had to get in. He had to. He
raced around the comer of the cheder. The window! He clawed at it. Loose,
unbolted, it squealed up easily. There was no hesitation. There could be
none. An enormous hand was shoving him forward. He leapt up, abdomen
landing on the sill, teetered half in, half out, sprawled into the cheder,
hands forward.

That closet! Where all of them were! He ran to it. It was just out of
reach. He dragged the rabbi's chair over, stood up, flung open the door. The
blue one! The blue one! Feverishly he pried among them--found it. He
leapt down, already turning the pages. Page sixty-eight it was--twenty-six
--forty--seventy-two-- sixty-nine --sixty-eight! On top! With all your
might! He wriggled over the bench.

"Beshnas mos hamelech Uziyahu vawere es adonoi yoshav al kesai rum
venesaw, vshulav malaiim es hahahol. Serafim omdim memal lo shash
kanowfayim, sash kanow-fayim lawehhad, beshtayim yahase fanav
uvishtayim yahase raglov uvishtayim yofaif."

All his senses dissolved into the sound. The lines, unknown, dimly
surmised, thundered in his heart with limitless meaning, rolled out and
flooded the last shores of his being. Unmoored in space, he saw one
walking on impalpable pavements that rose with the rising trees. Or were
they trees or telegraph-poles, each crossed and leafy, none could say, but
forms stood there with footholds in unmitigated light. And their faces shone
because the light in their midst was luminous laughter. He read on.
The book returned. The table hardened . . . Behind him the sound of a
key probing a keyhole screeked across infinite space. The lock snapped
open--suddenly near at hand. Realization struck like an icy gust. With a
start of dismay, he spun around over the bench, threw himself at the
window. Too late! The rabbi, long black coat and derby, stepped into the
light of the open door. He drew back with a groan of fright, but recognizing
who it was, his eyes opened wrathfully and he came forward, head cocked
sideways.

"How did you get in?" he demanded fiercely, "Ha?" The open window caught
his eye. He stared at it, disbelief wrangling with ire. "You crawled in?"

'The book!" David stammered. "The book! I wanted it."

"You broke into my cheder!" The rabbi seemed not to have heard a
single syllable. "You opened the window? You climbed in? You dared do
this?"

"No! No!"

"Hush!" He paid no heed to his outcry. "I understand." And before
David could budge, the rabbi's heavy hands had fallen on his neck and he
was being dragged toward the cat-o-nine on the floor. "Fearful bastard!" he
roared. "You crawled in to steal my pointers!"

"I didn't! I didn't touch them!"

"You it was took them before!" the rabbi drowned him out. "Sly one!
You! Different I thought you were! Hi! Will you scoop!" He reached down
for the scourge.

"I didn't! I came for the book! The blue book with the coal in it! The
man and the coal!"

His iron grip still unrelenting, the rabbi lowered the cat-o-nine. "The
man! The coal! You try to gull me!" But uncertainty had crept into his
voice. "Stop your screeching!" And haling David after him, he yanked out
the drawer of the reading table in which he kept his pointers. One glance
was enough. Savagely, he thrust it back. "What man? And what coal?"

"Here in the book! The man the angel touched--Mendel read it!
Isaiah!" The name suddenly returned to him. "Isaiah!"

The rabbi glared at the book as if he meant to burn it with his eyes, then
his gaze rose slowly to David's face. In the silence, his clogged, apoplectic
breathing was as loud as snoring. "Tell me, did you climb in only to read
this book." His fingers uncurled from David's shoulder. "Y-es! About th
that Isaiah."

"But what do you want of it?" His open palms barely sustained the
weight of his question. "Can you read a word of chumish?"

"No, but I remembered, and I--I wanted to read it." "Why?" From
under his derby, pushed back by aimless fingers, his black skull-cap peeped
out. "Are you mad or what? Couldn't you wait until I came? I would have
let you read a belly-full."

"I didn't know when you--you were coming."

"But why did you want to read it? And why with such black haste?"

"Because I went and I saw a coal like--like Isaiah." "What kind of a
coal? Where?"

"Where the car-tracks run I saw it. On Tenth Street." "Car tracks? You
saw a coal?" He shut his eyes like one completely befuddled.

"Yes. It gave a big light in the middle, between the crack!"

"A what--! A--! Between a crack? You saw a light between a crack? A
black year befall you!" Suddenly he stopped. His brow darkened. His beard
rose. His head rolled back. "Chah! Chah! Chah! Chah!" Splitting salvoes of
laughter suddenly burst from the cavern behind the whiskers. "Chah! Chah!
Chah! Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah! This must be told." A hasty hand plugged
back his slipping derby. "He saw a light! Oy! Chah! Chah! In the crack!
Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah! I'll split like a herring! Yesterday, he heard a bed in
the thunder! Today he sees a vision in a crack. Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah!"
Minutes seemed to pass before he sobered. "Fool!" he gasped at length.
"Go beat your head on a wall! God's light is not between car-tracks."
Ashamed, yet immensely relieved, David stood mute, eyes staring at the
floor. The rabbi didn't know as he knew what the light was, what it meant,
what it had done to him. But he would reveal no more. It was enough that
the light had saved him from being whipped.

Uttering a short, hopeless snort, the rabbi moved off and hung his coat
and derby on a nail. Returned, he pinched David's ear. "Come and read,
simpleton," he ordered with amused contempt. "And if you ever crawl into
my cheder again when I'm gone, nothing will help you. Not even a light."
David slid over the bench. The rabbi dragged out the tattered book,
picked up his pointer.

"Begin!" he said. "Ma tovu".

"Ma tovu oholeha yaakov meshkanoseha Yisroel." He poured the
sounds out in a breathless, chaotic stream. "Va ani berov hasdeha awvo
baseha eshtahave el hahol kodshehe beyeerosehaw." They were growing
funny! "Adonoi awhavti maon baseha umkom mishcan knovd-haw." It was
hard for him now to keep his face straight "Shalom alachem malachi
homlac him malchai elyon, me melech malchai homlachim hakadosh
boruch hu." Ripples of laughter were trembling in his belly. He read faster
to escape them. "Boachem lesholom malachai ha sholom malachai elyon
me melech molachai haomlachim ha kodash boruch hu." The ripples had
swelled to breakers. Immense hilarity battered against his throat and sides.
Faster!

"Noo!" The rabbi grabbed his arm. "Is the devil after you, or what? You
fly like a felon."

By an enormous effort, David braked his speed. A short, high giggle
pried its way through his lips.

"Fool! What are you laughing at, ha?" But strangely enough, behind his
black beard, a faint smile stretched his lips as well. "Read," he growled,
"before I give you a cuff."

David bent his head down, bit his lips till he thought the teeth would
meet and read on.

The surges of laughter, plunging within him, were so overwhelming he
could feel himself grow faint restraining them. Cold sweat was on his brow.
He felt he would burst soon if he couldn't give outlet to his swollen mirth.
Almost sickened by restraint he finished the page, looked up imploringly.
"Go!" The rabbi pinched his ear.

The relief was so vast it was sobering.

"Play with those tracks again," he shook his spread palm significantly.
"And you'll lack only death among your woes. Your mother ought to--"
But David was already racing laughter to the door. Across the yard he
sprinted, up the stairs, and barely had he reached the hallway when the fit
overtook him. There, leaning against the wall, he screamed till his eyes and
his drawers were wet, screamed till he could no longer stand, but screaming
slumped to the floor and rolled from side to side.

--Geel It's funny! Gee! Ow! It's funny! Ow! Ooh! Ow! I'm peeing! It's
funny! Ow! Funny!

Slowly, by gasps, giggles, chuckles, giggles again, the paroxysm
relented. On buckling knees he pushed himself erect, stood swaying.
Sudden tears, as void of bitterness as of cause, deep as they were random,
runneled his cheeks. Frightened now, he wiped them off hurriedly on his
sleeve, stumbled sniffling out of the corridor, ribs aching at every step.
--Gee, what'd I laugh at? Crying now. Crazy! Wet all down. Ooh!
move it away! Gee, bath too I have to take! She'll see. Pissy-pants. Gee, it
was funny! Ooh! No more! No! No! Forget! Gee! Crazy! Don't know what!
Walk and get dry. G'wan!

He turned west, wandered uncertainly toward Avenue C, straddling the
air in mid-strides from time to time to ease the chafing of his wet drawers
against his thighs. As he walked he gazed about him--avidly--as though
familiar sights would more quickly still the gales within him. The stores he
peered into were closing or preparing to close--even candy stores and they
almost never closed. In the bakery store no bread was to be seen. Instead of
a heap of rolls on the oilcloth covered base behind the window, lay a white
baker's apron, crumpled and discarded. They were scraping the chopping
blocks in the butcher shop, hanging large paper bags from the gleaming
meat hooks in the window. Before the stand of the greengrocer's an old
woman in a blue kerchief picked off the tiers of a pyramid of apples.
Leaning into the mirror, the white-coated barber was shaving himself. The
tinsmith, standing in the doorway was washing his grimy hands with
kerosene. Hurrying faces passed, all curved into the same smiling
absorption, all sharpened toward the same goal. And now by housewives
shrilled, and now by peddlars bellowed, and now muttered by aged Jews
with blunt or cloven beards, out of windows, out of doorways, from
sidewalks, from gutters, up, down and across, the greeting flew--

"A guten yuntif 1"

Deliverance was in the air--The Passover--deliverance from Egypt and
from winter, from bondage and death!

--Still wet! Gee! Better go another block.

He crossed Avenue C and continued westward. Here and there children,
already dressed in their best, were coming out of hallways and stoops.
Gleaming in neat braid, broad ribbon, washed face, pressed Sabbath suits,
they gathered in little groups apart from their ungroomed fellows--or
approached with the new diffidence of cleanliness. At Avenue B, the open
stretch of the park lay before him and beyond in the distance, the city's
towers pried chiseled edges between spume and clarity. He entered, sat
down on a bench; and while he watched the children romp noisily over the
brown and barren ground, mechanically aired his crotch with hand in
pocket. Dry at last, rested somewhat, he rose, retraced his steps.

While seated in the park he had felt nothing but a lethargy, a dull
vacancy, hollow as it was leaden. But now as he walked homeward his
spirit uncurled again, expanded. All laughter had gone from him and all
tears with it, and now only a deep untroubled gentleness was left, a
wordless faith, a fixity, mellow and benign. With every step he took his
body seemed to grow less his own, his limbs so light and rare, his legs
drifted over the pavement with a tranquil, feathery ease. Even the swing of
his arm by his side set up ichorous eddies along his bosom as though a hand
were caressing him. The cool, limber April air was suddenly winy to his
nostrils, teasing the breast into swelling. The sunlight on his face laved his
cheeks with so soft a touch, it lifted the throat into its bounty, lifted
it, and--

E-e-el Twee-twee-twee. Tweet! Tweet! Cheep! Cheepl Eet! R-rawk!
Gee! Whistle. Thought it was that man. In the tugboat. In the shirt.
Whistling. Only birds. Canary. That lady's. Polly too--Polly want a cracker
--is out already. On the fire-escape. Whistle.

Reluctantly, he neared his doorway, climbed the iron stoop, reluctantly,
entered the hallway, sighed.

--Gee! Used to be darker. Funny. Gee! Look! Look! Is a light! In the
corner where baby-carriages--No. Looks like though. On the stairs too.
Ain't really there. Inside my head. Better is inside. Can carry it. Funny!
Ain't so dark anyway. Ain't even scared. Remember how I was? Way long
ago? Scared. Used to run up bing-bang-biff. Hee! Hee! Funny I was. I'm
big now. Can go up alone. Can go up slow, slow, slow as I like. Can even
stand here and don't even care. Even between the windows, even if nobody's
in the toilet, even if nobody's in the whole house. Don't even care.
I'm big now, that's why: Wonder if--Yea, all dry now. Can go in now. New
underwear she'll give me like the other kids already. For Passover . . .
--Funny. Still can see it. There. And over there. And over in the corner
where it's real dark. It sticks inside all the time, gee, can't never be
scared. Never. Never. Never ...

--Fo-o-urth floor. All off! Gee, happy I'm!

He sighed.



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