Call It Sleep

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, surprising 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 beast! 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 cornmeal 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 corn-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 become 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 had 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 byse! 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 poppy-seed 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 — Baw! 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 significantly 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 hol’ from dat wash-line an’ I betcha I c’n hol’ 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.”

IV

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-corners 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! Oll — balt a frosk, Oll — 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 shouted 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 and 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— Yitzchuck!”

“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 Passover. 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 thickening briers of sound. “Who will go for us?”

“Izzy Pissy! Cock-eye Mulligan! Mah nishtanah halilaw 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. Heee! 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 dope! 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 long? 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 dot! 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 f’om a tree in duh pock, mine bean-shooduh! T’ree fences. So a lighten den, wise guy!”

“And the whole land waste and empty.”

“T’ree is a lie, mine fodder says. Yea? Matbilim afilu 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 poinduhs!

— 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 — do?”

“And you for your squirming tongue!”

“Leggo! Ooh!”

“And you that your rump is on fire! Now sit still!”

“Umph! Ow!”

“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 she’ll 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 — Gee! Go to Aunt Bertha’s candy store. When was I? Long time ago, that time with mama! 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 littered 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 front-room. 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 Passover 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. Wadduh 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 Pop! 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 burn 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 — I’m 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. “W’ere 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 aín’ w’ite. W’y don’tchiz piss?”

“Don’ wanna. I peed befaw.”

“Aw, hosschit.” He lifted one leg.

“Phuwee!”

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.

“Hol’ 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.”

“Waid’ll 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 corner 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 kanowfayim 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 knovdhaw.” 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.

— Gee! 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!”

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-e! Twee-twee-twee. Tweet! Tweet! Cheep! Cheep! 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.