Call It Sleep (55 page)

An evil day.…

And at noon, he had quarreled with Ruchel, his daughter, over the chicanery of her husband, Avrum, the butcher. Cold-storage liver he was selling and palming it off for fresh. A snide generation. Why should the children be better than their fathers? No sanctity anywhere, no faith. It's kosher, she said. Ruchel his daughter, his thorn. It tastes just as good. In food there should be some trust, he had answered. If you were selling walking sticks sell the flawed, the warped, the brittle. Say nothing, tell nothing. But what enters the mouth, there you must betray no trust. If you're selling “treifes” say it is “treife” and men will hold you a man. If you're selling cold-storage for fresh—But it's kosher, she had said. Of course it's kosher, he had answered. Liver is kosher till it rots. It needs no washing before the third day. No salting. Even a goy knows that. Hi! Hi! My daughter, my daughter! It's good. It tastes good you say. There was a Jew traveling toward Odessa and he ate in an inn without knowing what he ate. Good beef he called it. Savory gravy. And they told him—what? They told him it was horsemeat. And hi-hi-hi my daughter—it tastes good. And how far is the step from cold storage meat to meat not kosher and how far is the step from meat not kosher to pig's flesh? Hi! Hi! Hi! My daughter! You'll drive me into the deep earth with a weight of shame. May your head drop off from your shoulders, and your husband's head beside it. My daughter …

Hi … An evil day.…

And in the afternoon, Reb Schulim had come to his cheder, Reb Schulim, his townsman, to review learning. And had reviewed not learning but a long procession of numbskulls, stutterers, louts half blind with too much loitering in cellars. A black fate had let the best ones read first, and the best had scattered before Reb Schulim came and only the dullards were left to shame him. A good rabbi, Reb Yidel, he must have thought—Hmmmm-m-m! h-m-m—h-m-m-m! A good rabbi! Not one has he taught to utter three words one upon the other without fumbling. Not one could speak the tongue without a snffle or a snort—except this child, David, this bastard, God have pity on him, a goy's spawn, a church organist's. Hi! Hi! And it is strange that true Yiddish children of pious parents should prove such God-forsaken dolts and this one—only half-a-jew—perhaps not (I could have found out then and there, but—) circumcised—an iron wit. God's ways. Hidden. A pitiful story and a triple curse befall the aunt, sister, slut, who revealed it. I say the gallows, Haman's gibbet, high …

Hm-m-m-m! Evil day!…

Then why do you go? Reb Yidel, why do you go? Would it not be better on a day like this not to be the bearer of evil tidings? Accursed, calamitous day! Would it not to be safer to turn and stride back toward the synagogue. They may not understand. Should they accuse you of breeding hatred, call you augur-nosed, are you prepared? Should they mock at you and scorn you and say, Reb Yidel, your nose is in every wind like the spokes of a wheel, have you a remedy? Have you an answer? None. But I am an upright man, and someone must tell them. Shall the child know and they not know he knows. Is he truly a Jew, this David? Shall the foul sister go un-spared? Someone must warn them, advise. And I vowed. I vowed. Hi! Hi! Hi! Alas! Foreboding!…

Grimacing so violently his black beard twitched in several places simultaneously, twitched and caught the sunlight in a skein of drawn pitch, pin-point glints and iridescence, the dumpy, ageing Jew stopped at the corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street, looked west into the sun when he meant to go east, and opened the trigger-taut button on his dull alpaca coat. Relieved from strain, the cloth crumpled against his arms in flutings. The curtains drawn, the grease spots on his vest glistened in vitreous tableau. Beaked thumb and forefinger pecked among his pockets, drew out a torn bit of paper, unfolded it.

“Seven-forty-nine,” he muttered after scanning the Hebrew characters. “Fourth floor. Perhaps this corner of Avenue D. Perhaps the other. Pray God I put it down correctly.”

He replaced the scrap of paper, turned and strode east through the familiar street. Abreast of his cheder doorway, he felt the old bleak stir of recognition, glanced into the hallway and crossed the street. Head cocked, he scanned the house numbers increasing one after the other.

“Seven-forty-nine.” His lips formed the words silently. “Fourth floor.” He added mentally. And taking a deep, sighing breath against the stairs he had to climb, climbed the stoop, entered the hallway and mounted the shadowy stairs.

Winded, stertorous, perturbed, he reached the top and brightest landing, and with heaving paunch, eyed the Mizzuzahs, some still bright, some painted over, above the several doors. And knocked at the nearest one.

“Who is it?” The sharp female voice behind the panels inquired in Yiddish.

“Does the Mrs. Schearl live here?” He asked, knowing somehow that she didn't.

“No.” A heavy busted, bar-armed woman opened the door. “She lives there. That door in the front. That door.”

His eyes swept from the coarse-grained red skin of her throat to the door her finger pointed at. He nodded, not surprised that she kept her own door opened, watching him inquisitively. And knocked again.

“Oh! David! David! Is it you?” A voice of immense eagerness called out to him. “Is it closed? I've been waiting—”

“This is I—Reb Yidel Pankower,” he said as the door opened.

XVII

WISH I had a potsee, a potsee. Could go slower. Go slower. Look around. See if to see. Look around. An exhaustion beyond anything he had ever felt; a weariness the vastest rest could never match. He was so tired his very thought seemed a function of his breathing, as though the mind were so spent it needed the impulse of breath to clear the word away, else it echoed in stagnance. He dragged tottering rebellious legs toward the car tracks of Tenth.

—Take longer if I had a potsee. Longer, lots longer. And kick it here, so it goes there. And there, and there, and kick it there, so it goes here. And here and follow it. And follow it where it went. And if it went away, go away. Go with it. And if it comes back, come back. Ow! Mama! Mama! Tired all out! Ow! Mama! Should have gone away. Anyway. Away. Forty-one Street, said. Big house. Forty-one street River was. And Thirty Street River was. And was and it followed. And train and it followed. And he said it goes. Goes where? Br-Bronx, Bronx Park, he said. Is animals, he said with the package. Lots and trees. Lots. Then it comes back. Five cents. Have to come back always. Go home. Never get lost no more. No more. Know number. Never. Slow. Go slower. Cartracks. Ow! Too near! Too near already. Ow! Ow!

With all the horror of one tottering over an abyss, he stared at the cobbles, the gleaming tracks.

—Stay here! Go back! Stay here! Ow! What'll I do? Where'll I go? Mama! Mama! Stay here till fifty wagons; take a step. Fifty autos; take a step. Fifty—Tired! Tired all out. Can't wait! Can't wait no more. Don't let him hit me, Mama, I'm crossing! I'm crossing, Mama! Ow! Getting near! Getting near! Where's a potsee? A potsee. Garbage cans look. Ain't out yet. Flies he found. Cellar. Them! Ow! A potsee! A potsee! Something. Find! Find!

Nerveless fingers fumbled numbly in his pockets.

—Pencil. No good. Break off gold and rubber. Step on—No good! No good! What? Cord when I thought kite. What'd I go up for? Why! Why! Canary! Ow! Lousy! Lousy son-of-a-! Back pocket … Them! It's them! No good shitten them! Kick! Throw away! Tear! Shitten, goy-beads! Tear! Kick for a potsee! Gwan! They'll see, but they'll see! Don't care! Ow! Getting near! Getting near! My lamppost, Ninth! Oh, Mama, Mama, don't let him hit me! I'm going round! I'm going round! Oooh, look every place! Look every place!

Only his own face met him, a pale oval, and dark, fear-struck, staring eyes, that slid low along the windows of stores, snapped from glass to glass, mingled with the enemas, ointment-jars, green globes of the drug-store—snapped off—mingled with the baby clothes, button-heaps, underwear of the drygoods store—snapped off—with the cans of paint, steel tools, frying pans, clothes-lines of the hardware store—snapped off. A variegated pallor, but pallor always, a motley fear, but fear. Or he was not.

—On the windows how I go. Can see and ain't. Can see and ain't. And when I ain't, where? In between them if I stopped, where? Ain't nobody. No place. Stand here then. BE nobody. Always. Nobody'd see. Nobody'd know. Always. Always No. Carry—yes—carry a looking glass. Teenchy weenchy one, like in pocket-book, Mama's. Yea. Yea. Yea. Stay by house. Be nobody. Can't see. Wait for her. Be nobody and she comes down. Take it! Take looking-glass out, Look! Mama! Mama! Here I am! Mama, I was hiding! Here I am! But if Papa came. Zip, take away! Ain't! Ain't no place! Ow! Crazy! Near! I'm near! Ow!

His eyes glazing with panic, he crept toward his house, and as he went, grasped at every rail and post within reach—not to steady himself, though he was faint, but to retard. And always he went forward, as though an ineluctable power tore him from the moorings he clutched.

A boy stood leaning against the brass bannister on the top step of the stoop. He held in his hands the torn tissue of a burst red balloon which he sucked and twisted into tiny crimson bubbles. As David, fainting with terror, dragged himself up the stone stairs, the other nipped at a moist, new-made sphere. It popped. He grinned blithely.

“Yuh see how I ead 'em? One bite!”

David stopped, stared at him unseeingly. In the trance that locked his mind only one sensation guttered with a bare significance. The chill of the tarnished railing under his palm, the chill and the memory of its lustre and the flat taint of its corruption.

“Now, I'll make a real big one!” said the boy. “Watch me!” The stretched red rubber hollowed into a small antre in his mouth, was engulfed, twisted, revealed. “See dot! In one bite!”

Pop!

Despair.…

XVIII

“FAH a penny, ices, Mrs! Fah a penny, ices! Fah a penny, ices, Mrs!”

The grimy six-year-old who had just come in, rapped on the marble counter with his copper.

“Fah a penny, ices, Mrs!”

But neither the slight, long-nosed owner of the store, gnawing bitterly at his sallow mustache, nor his slovenly, red-haired wife glaring at him, nor their pimpled, frightened daughter in the rear moved to do his bidding.

“Fah a penny, ices, Mrs! Hey!”

Another six-year-old came into the store.

“Yuh gonna gimme a suck, Mutkeh?”

“Dey dowanna gib
me
even!” Mutkeh turned to his friend with an injured look.

“Let's go t' Solly's. Yea?”

“Noo!” muttered the owner in Yiddish. “Are you going to give it to him or will you let him clamor there all evening?”

“Boils and pepper, that's what I'll give him!” she crossed her arms defiantly. (The six-year-olds looked hurt.) “Can't
you
do it? Are you dead?”

“I won't!” His small peevish jaw shot as far forward as its teeth would allow. “Let the whole store be burnt to the ground! I won't!”

“Then be burned with it!” She spat at him. “I need you and your penny business! A candy-store he saddled me with—good husband! Polly, go give it to him.”

Sullenly, red underlip curled out like a scarlet snail-shell, Polly left off pinching the sides of her dress and came out into the front. There she lifted the rusty lid of the can floating in the half-melted ice of the tub, ladled out the pale-yellow, smoking, crystalline mush into a paper cup and handed it to the boy. The two children went out. And as the girl retreated to the rear of the store, her mother nodded at her vindictively—

“And you had to tell him, ha? Foul-piss-in-bed! After I warned you not to!”

“You ain' my moddeh,” Polly mumbled in English.

“I'll give you something in a minute,” her stepmother unlocked her arms, “You think you're safe because your father's here?”

“Leave her alone!” her husband interfered resentfully, “Do you think she's wrong maybe? Had it been your own flesh and blood, you would have been there in a wink, no? You'd have watched. You wouldn't have sat in front on your fat hole, while that Esau scum handled my poor daughter—”

“Be a scape-goat for dogs!” her voice rose in a browbeating stormy scream. “And for rats! And for snakes! Can I watch everything? The store! The customers! The salesmen! The kitchen! And your stinking daughters as well! Isn't it enough you've given me a candy-store to age me, and with a candy-store loaded my belly with one of yours—Here!” She lifted the chocolate-stained, mounded apron as though she meant to throw it at him. “And besides all this, you ask me to watch those filthy hussies! If they don't even listen to me, how can I watch them? Aren't they old enough? Don't they know enough? And that one in the kitchen where she pretends to weep—a wench of twelve! Let her choke there! And you—you don't deserve to have the earth cover you! Telling me to watch them! And if you want to know something else, you'll make no more fuss about it, but you'll go into the kitchen and eat your supper!” Gasping breathlessly, she stopped.

“Yes?” Though he groped for words, it wasn't fury that halted his speech, but a kind of invincible stubbornness that kept laboriously intrenching itself deeper and deeper. “Supper—me—you ask—me—to eat? Your zest—and may your zest—for life—be as little all your life—as I—as mine is for food! Supper—after what's happened! Woe to you! But this once—I—You won't straddle me like a—a good horse! No! This—you—this once you won't ride—”

“Kiss my arse!” She broke in on him again. “Riding you! I'm not ridden, ha? Oh what a fool you are—choking over it! As if it's never happened before that two brats should be playing like animals. Is she maimed! Has he snatched it from her—the prize? Won't it heal before she's married?”

“How do you know? Do you know how big he was? What has he wrought? Did you even look to see?”