Call It Sleep (56 page)

“Look? Yes!” she suddenly snorted mockingly. “I looked! Her drawers were dirty—as they always are! Why don't you go inside and look at her yourself!”

“Go break a blood vessel!” he muttered.

“Brats at play and he's worrying! About what, God knows—the future, marriage, suitors. They'll explore her before they'll marry her, is that it? Oh, idiot! Do you want a suitor for her? Blow your nose—she'll have a tall one!”

His small frame stiffened. Blood flared in his sallow face.

“That's how your mother answered your father, ha? Over your sister, Genya, ha? And exactly the same way—a goy! It's a family trait by now! To you it's nothing!” The spurt of anger that had driven his words failed him suddenly. He retreated.

“Burn like a candle!” She advanced upon him furiously. “Will you vomit up past shame! A secret I told you, you dare mock me with? I'll give you something to make your world keel over!”

His back against the glass doors of the toy closet, he had lifted his arms defensively. “Go away! Let me alone! If you'll swill refreshments at my funeral, I'll swill them at yours!”

“Be slaughtered by a chinaman!” She turned her back on him contemptuously. “Manikin! I don't hear you any more! Go talk to my buttocks!”

“All right! All right!” He swayed impotently. “Let it be as you say. My just one! My righteous! Let it be as you say. But him, that little rogue with the big eyes, he goes scot-free, ha? That's dealing justly, ha? A nephew is dearer to you than the daughters I brought you. But remember there's a God in heaven—He'll judge you for this!”

“Did I say he ought to go unpunished?” She wheeled around again. “Did I? I told you I'd tell Genya in the morning. With the first light of day I'll tell her. What more do you want? Would you like Albert to know? Would nothing else suit you but that? How many times have I told you what a maniac he is? Haven't you even seen it for yourself? He'd tear that child limb from limb! Is that what you want? Well you won't get it! And now go inside and eat! Go inside as I tell you and stop hammering the samovar—daughter! daughter! Or God help me you'll have pangs and hemorrhoids for an appetizer!”

Completely cowed and yet too stubborn to move, he stood there muttering while she glared at him. “Genya.… Good! Good! She with her light hand and soft voice. Yeh! Yeh!” He nodded bitterly. “She'll never lift either against him. She'll talk to him, that's what she'll do—fondle him. And with that he'll be punished—words. With words after what he's done to my Esther. All right! All right! If that's the kind of treatment I get—good … Good! Good! But I'm not satisfied—know that! I'm not satisfied.”

“Will you go in?”

He turned to go. But as he turned, a woman entered the store.

“Hello, Mrs. Sternowitz!”

“Hello!”

“And Mr. Sternowitz! I didn't see you. How fares it?”

“Fair.”

“Only fair? Tt! Tt! Well, give me for two cents hairpins. You sell three packages for two cents, no?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Sternowitz turned and waddled heavily toward the rear of the store; Polly, her mouth still hanging, stepped sullenly to one side. As she fumbled among the boxes stacked on the shelves, fumbled and sighed laboriously, and muttered about the dark, her husband watched her, flexing and unflexing nervous hands. Suddenly he clenched his fist, and while his wife's back was still turned to him, sidled toward the front of the store, brushed by the puzzled woman at the counter and slunk out. Polly gaped after him. Her step-mother, all unaware, lifted haphazardly now one lid of a box, now another. The customer laughed.

“What's the matter with your husband?” she asked.

“Ach!” Mrs. Sternowitz threw casually over her shoulder. “God alone knows what's ailing him. His nose has fallen to the ground and he won't pick it up.”

“That's the way with men,” the woman chuckled. “You'll be lying in soon, no?”

“Too soon. Oh! Here it is! A new box?” She dragged it out. “These have something between their legs, these hairpins, cha! cha! Another new variety.” She broke off abruptly, her questioning glance flicking from daughter to customer. “Where is he? Nathan!”

“That's why I asked you.” The woman still smiled. “It looked to me as though he fled.”

“Fled?” She stood stock-still. “Where?”

“There. Toward Alden Avenue I think. What is it?”

But Mrs. Sternowitz had already flung back the counter lid, and with a frightened yet furious expression was hurrying toward the door. She ran out on the sidewalk, stared eastward frantically, ran a few steps, came rushing back.

“I don't see him! I don't see him!” she spluttered, pinching frantically at her neck and dragging at the flesh. “He's tricked me! He's off—to Genya's!” She turned furiously on her daughter. “Why didn't you tell me he was sneaking off, you little snake!” She lifted her hand to strike, but thought better of it. “Ai!” She threw the box of hairpins down on the counter, and began fumbling desperately with her apron strings. And while the other woman stared at her in alarm, shouted garbled, flurried injunctions at Polly.

“Go call Esther!” She threw the apron from her at last and stooped down to button her shoes. “Hurry! Hurry! Call her out! Quick! Oh, if I get my hands on him! Oh, God help him. Quick! Oh, if I get him! Quick! Call her! You two mind the store. Call Mrs. Zimmerman if I don't get back soon! Watch the cash drawers! Hurry, do you hear? He can't have gone far! I'll get him! I'll make a scene in the middle of the street. I'll drag him back by the hair! Hurry! Watch! The two-faced—” She rushed out of the store.

The other woman looked after her in amazement and then turned to Polly. “What's the matter with your mother?”

“I don't know,” was the morose answer. And then she went to the back of the store, threw open the kitchen door and screamed at someone inside.

“C'mon out, Esther! Poppa wen' away! Momma wen' away! Comm out! Comm on! Yuh hev t' watch!”

XIX

AT THE second landing of the unlit hallway, the harsh stench of disinfectants rasped the grain of his nostrils. Behind that doorway where the voices of children filtered through, Mrs. Glantz's brood had the measles. Upward and beyond it, wearily, wearily. And at the turn of the stairs, the narrow, crusted, wire-embedded window was open. He loitered again, stared down. In the greying yard below, a lean, grey cat leaped at the fence, missed the top and clawed its way up with intent and silent power. And he upward also, wearily.

—Her fault. Hers. Ain't mine. No it ain't. It ain't. Ask anybody. Take a step and ask. Is it mine? Bannister-sticks, is it mine? Mine is … Mine ain't … Mine is … Mine ain't. Mine is … Mine ain't … There! See! Chinky shows! Her fault. She said about him. Didn't she? She told it to Aunt Bertha. Her fault. If she liked a goy, so I liked. There! She made me. How did I know? It's all her fault and I'm going to tell too. Blame it on her. Yours Mama! Yours! Go on! Go on! Next! Next floor! Mama! Mama! Owoo!

And leaving the third landing where the stale reek of cabbage and sour cream filled the uncertain light, a low whimper forced its way through his lips and echoed with an alien treble in the hollow silence. And upward, clammy palms clinging to the bannisters and squealing in thin reluctance as they slid. And again the turn of the stairs and the open window framing a soft clarity with the new height. Across the alley, a face between curtains grimaced, tilted back; crooking fingers plucked the collar off.

—Stop hollerin'! Stop! You, inside, stop! Don't know. They don't know. Who told them? Tell me, who could've? Well, tell me? There! See! Polly didn't tell—Esther wouldn't let her. She ran after her. But maybe she didn't catch. She did! She didn't. She did! But even if—so what? Aunt Bertha wouldn't tell. Aunt Bertha likes me. See? Aunt Bertha wouldn't tell on me for a million, zillion dollars. Don't she hate Papa? Didn't she want me 'stead of them? Didn't she? So she wouldn't tell. Gee, ooh, God! 'Course she wouldn't tell. So what? What am I scared of? (He leaned against the bannister in an ecstasy of hope) Nobody knows! Oooh, God, make nobody know! Go on then! Make believe nothing happened. Gee, nothing-but—but him. Rabbi? Aaa, he forgets. Sure he does! All the time. What's he got to remember for? Go on, gee, God! Go on! But—but where were you? It's way late. Me? Where was I? Got lost, that's what. Way in the other side of Avenue A. Why? Thought it was the other side. That's where I was. Go on! Oooh, God! Wish I broke a leg. Ow! Don't! Yea! Sh!

The pale blue light of the transom obliquely overhead.

—Nobody—in?

He crept to his doorway, stiff ankle-joints cracking like gun-shots. A blur of voices behind the door.

—Sh! Who? Who's there?

Pent breath trembling in his bosom, he leaned nearer, leaned nearer and poised for flight.

Someone laughed.

—Who? She? Mama? Yes!
Yes!

Again, out of a mumble of voices, again the laugh—strained, nervous, but a laugh. Hope clutched at it.

—She! Laugh is hers! She don't know! Don't know nothing! Wouldn't laugh if she knew. No! No! Don't know! Can go!

His brain flew open as though a light were swung into it—

—Nobody knows! Can go!

Yet his whole being shied in terror when he reached out his hand for the door knob—

The door that clicked open, clicked shut upon their voices. And—

“David! David, child! Where have you been?”

“Mama! Mama!” But not soon enough could he fling himself into her bosom, not deep enough nest his eyes there before he saw in a blur of vision the bearded figure before the table.

“Mama! Mama! Mama!”

Only the sheltering valley between her breasts muffled his scream of fear to her heart. Convulsive, unerring hands flew up to her neck, sought and clasped the one upright pillar of this ruin.

“Hush! Hush! Hush child! Have no fear!” Her body rocked him.

And at his back, his father's voice, morose, sardonic, “Yes, hush him! Comfort him! Comfort him!”

“Poor frightened one!” Her words came to him from her bosom and lips. “His heart is beating like a thief's. Where have you been, life? I'm dead with anxiety! Why didn't you come home?”

“Lost!” he moaned. “I was lost on Avenue A.”

“Ach!” She clasped him to her again. “Because you told a strange tale?”

“I was just making believe! I was just making believe!”

“Were you?” Behind him his father's cryptic voice. “Were you indeed!”

He could feel his mother start. The heart beneath his ear begun to pound heavily.

“Hi! Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi!” From another corner of the room, the rabbi's dolorous groan broke up into a train of sighs. “I see I have wrought badly coming here. No?” He paused, but none answered his question. Instead,

“Stop your whining, you!” his father snapped.

“But what was I to do?” The rabbi launched himself again. His voice, so uncommonly unctuous and placating, sounded strange to David's ears despite his misery. “Had he been a dullard, a plaster golem, such as only the King of the Universe with his holy and bounteous hand knows how to bestow on me, would I have believed him? Psh! I would have said—Bah! Ox-brained idiot, away with this drool! And then and there would I have fetched him such a cuff on the jowls, his children's children would have cried aloud! Hear me, friend Schearl, he would have flown from me like a toe-nail from a shear! But no!” His voice heightened, deepened, grew rich with huskiness. “In my cheder he was as a crown in among rubbish, as a seraph among Esau's goyim! How could I help but believe him? A yarn so incredible had to be true. No? His father a goy, an organ-grinder—an organ player in a church! His mother dead! She met him among the corn—”

“What!” Both voices, but with what different tones!

“I said among the corn. You, Mrs. Schearl, his aunt! What! The like will not be heard again till the Messiah is a bride-groom. Speak! No?”

Again that silence and then as though the silence were creaking with its own strain, the ominous grating sound of a stretched cable, his father's grinding teeth. Under his ear, the heavy beat of the heart tripped, fluttered, hammered raggedly. The stricken catch of the quick breath in her throat was like the audible sublimate of his own terror.

“But uh—uh—now it's a jest, no? Uh—ah, what! A jest!” His hurried nails could be heard harrying his beard. “Not-eh-ah-poo! Not a doubt!” Stumbling at first, his speech began to tumble, growing more flustered as it grew heartier. “It's your child now. No! It's your child! Always! What's there to be disturbed about? Ha? A jest! A tale of a—of a hunter and a wild bear! Understand? Something to laugh at! Ha! Ha—hey, scamp, there! You won't gull me again! What these imps can't invent! Ha! Ha! A jest, no?”

“Yes! Yes!” Her alarmed voice.

“Hmph!” Savagely from her husband. “You agree readily! Where did he get this story? Let him speak! Where did he? Was it Bertha, that red cow? Who?”

David moaned, grasped his mother closer.

“Let him alone, Albert!”

“You say so, do you? We'll find out!”

“But uh—you won't hold it against me—uh—I mean that I told you. May God requite me if I came here trying to meddle, to stir up rancor. Yes! May I wither where I sit! Hear me! Not a jot did I care to pry! Let the feet grow where they list, I cared not! Not I! But I thought here am I his rabbi, and I thought it's my duty to tell you—at least that you might know that he knew—and in what way he was made aware.”

“It's all right!” She unclasped one arm. “I beg you don't be disturbed.”

“Well then, good! Good! Ha! I must go! The Synagogue! It grows late.” The creak of his chair and scrape of his feet filled the pause as he rose. “Then you're not angered with me?”