Call It Sleep (64 page)

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“Schreckts ach nisht! Schreckts ach nisht!” The chorus of women in the doorway translated raggedly. “Sis im goor nisht geshehen! S' goor nisht geferlich!”

“Dat's it, you tell her!” The policeman shouldered his way through the door.

The interne had undressed him, pulled the covers down and tucked him in. The smooth sheets felt cool on his throbbing foot.

“Now!” He straightened, turned decisively to David's mother. “You can't help him by crying, lady. If you want to help him go make him some tea. A lot of it.”

“Kein gefahr?” she asked dully, disbelievingly.

“Yes! Yes! That's right!” he answered impatiently. “Kein gefahr! Now make him some tea.”

“Teh, Mrs. Schearl,” a woman in the doorway came forward. “Geh macht eem teh!”

“Teh?”

“Yes! Teh!” the interne repeated. “Quick! Schnell! Yes?”

She turned numbly. The woman offered to help her. They went out.

“Well, how's the kid?” the interne grinned down at him. “Feel good?”

“Y-yeh.”

“That's the boy! You'll be all right in a little while.”

He turned to leave. A fattish, bare-armed woman stood at his shoulder. David recognized her. She lived on the same floor.

“Ducktuh!” she whispered hurriedly. “Yuh shoulda seen vod a fighd dere vus heyuh!” She contracted, rocked. “Oyyoy! Yoy-u-yoy! Him, dat man, his faddeh, he vus hittin' eem! Terrible! A terrhible men! En' dere vus heyuh his cozzins—oder huh cozzins—I don' know! En' dey vus fighdingk. Oy-yoy-yoy! Vid scrimms! Vid holleringk! Pwwweeyoy! En' den dey chessed de boy all oud f'om de house. En den dey chessed de odder two pipples! En' vee vus listeningk, en' dis man vos crying. Ah'm khrezzy! Ah'm khrezzy! I dun know vod I do! I dun' know vod I said! He ses. Ah'm khrezzy! En' he vus cryingk! Oy!”

“Is that so?” the interne said indifferently.

“Id vus terrhible! Terrhible! En' Ducktuh,” she patted his arm. “Maybe you could tell me fah vy my liddle Elix dun eat? I give him eggks vid milk vid kulleh gedillehs. En he don't vonna eat nottingk. Vod sh'd I do?”

“I don't know.” He brushed by her. “You'd better see a doctor.”

“Oy bist du a chuchim!” she spat after him in Yiddish. “Does the breath of your mouth cost you something?”

His mother returned. Her hair was disheveled. Tears still stained her cheek though she had stopped crying. “You'll have some tea in a minute, darling.” A tremulous gasp of after-weeping shook her. “Does your foot hurt very much?”

“N-no,” he lied.

“They told me you were at the car-tracks,” she shuddered. “How did you come there? You might have been— Oh! God forbid! What made you go? What made you do it?”

“I don't—I don't know,” he answered. And the answer was true. He couldn't tell now why he had gone, except that something had forced him, something that was clear then and inevitable, but that every passing minute made more inarticulate. “I don't know, mama.”

She groaned softly, sat down on the bed. The fat woman with the bare arms touched her shoulders and leaned over her.

“Poor Mrs. Schearl!” she said with grating, provocative pity. “Poor Mrs. Schearl! Why ask him? Don't you know? Our bleeding, faithful mother's heart they think nothing of wringing. Nothing! Woe you! Woe me! Before we see them grown, how many tears we shed! Oy-yoy-yoy! Measureless. So our children bring us suffering. So our men. Alas, our bitter lot! No?” Her see-saw sigh heaved gustily, pitched audibly. She folded her hands on her loose flabby belly and rocked sorrowfully.

His mother made no answer, but gazed fixedly into his eyes.

In the kitchen, he could hear the policeman interrogating his father, and his father answering in a dazed, unsteady voice. That sense of triumph that David had felt on first being brought in, welled up within him again as he listened to him falter and knew him shaken.

“Yes. Yes,” he was saying. “My sawn. Mine. Yes. Awld eight. Eight en'—en' vun mawnt'. He vas bawn in—”

“Wait a minute!” The policeman's voice interrupted him. “Say, Doc, befaw yuh go, tell us, did I do it good. You know—dat foist-aid business. Waddayer say? In case dere's a commendation er sompt'n.”

“Sure! Fine! Couldn't have done it better myself.”

“Tanks, Doc. An' say, gimme de medical repawt, will yuh? Shock? Foolin' aroun' wit' de car-tracks wit—Heh! Heh!—merlicious intent.”

“Oh—er—just say, shock … caused by … short circuiting … trolley power—what d'you call it—rail.”

“Yea.”

“Then—electrical burn … on ankle … right foot … second degree. Got it?”

“Secon' degree, yea.”

“Applied artificial respir—”

“Aw Doc, have a heart, will yuh!”

“You want a commendation, don't you?” the interne laughed. “Well anything—first aid. Child revived— I've left a slip for you, Mister. On the table. Carron oil. Smear it around the ankle tonight and tomorrow. The blib ought to be gone in a day or two.”

“Yes.”

“And if he doesn't feel well tomorrow, take him to the Holy Name Hospital—it's on the slip. But he'll be all right. Well, Lieutenant, I'll see you again.”

“Yea. So long, Doc.”

The woman who had gone out with David's mother came in balancing a cup of tea. Silently his mother propped him up on the pillows and began feeding him out of the spoon. The hot, sugared tea quickened his blood. He sighed, feeling vitality return, but only enough to know his body's weariness. There were no more cool places between the sheets for his throbbing foot. The women in the doorway had turned their backs to him and were listening to the policeman who was holding forth in the kitchen.

“An' say,” his reassuring voice boomed out. “I woiked over 'im, Mister, an' no foolin'! Yuh hoid wot de Doc sez, didntcha? If it wuzn' fer me, dat kid wouldn' be hea. Yessir! People don't appreciate a cop aroun dis neighborhood. But w'en dere in dutch— Say, I seen 'em boined, Mister! I'm tellin' yuh. I seen a switchman was so boined—say! He musta fell on de rail. An' nobody knew a t'ing about it. Out dere in de car-barns on a hunner'n fifty-fift' an' Eight' Avenoo. Must a been on dere fer hours. An' de foist t'ing yuh know, his bones was troo de elevated—right down t' de ground—black as zat stove, Mister! Y'had-da gadder 'im up in a sheet. Yessir! So he wuz gettin' off easy, dat kid o' yours. But even so if it hadn'ta been fer me— Say, d'yuh wan' all o' dese people in hea?”

“I—I don'—” His father sounded stunned. “I—I—you—”

“Sure. C'mon goils. De kid's gotta get some quiet now. Waddayuh say? All right, gents.”

“Vee know dem,” voices objected. “Vee liff heyuh.”

“Not hea',” indulgently. “Not all o' yiz. C'mon. Come in later—one at a time—”

There was a general shuffling of feet, murmured protests.

“Er fumfit shoin far a bissel geld,” sneered the woman with the bare arms as she went out. “Gitzeem a krenk!”

“I god Davy's shoes and stockin', Mister,” a boy's voice piped. “He goes to my cheder.”

“Atta boy. Just leave 'em hea. C'mon de rest o' yiz. Dat goes fer you too, Solomon.”

Feet went through the doorway, voices dwindled. The door was shut.

“Well, I got de place quiet for yuh,” said the policeman. “Funny all de trouble dese kids o' ours gives us, huh? You said it. Geeziz I'm a cop an' I can't keep mine in line, bringin' home repawt co'ds dat'd make yer hair toin grey. Well, my beat's aroun' hea' in case yuh wanna see me sometime. Walsh is de name.” He loomed up in the doorway. “How're yuh feelin' now, kid? He'll be all right. Sure. He's full o' de devil a'reddy. I'll fan yuh wit' me stick if I catch yuh foolin' aroun' dem tracks again. See? 'Night.” He flicked an open palm, turned and went out.

He had finished his tea. The sudden, flushing surge of heat that filled the hollows of his tired body drove stipple of perspiration to his brow and lips. His underwear clung to him cutting at the crotch. The trough of the bedding where he lay had become humidly warm and uncomfortable. He wriggled closer to the cooler edge of the bed where his mother was seated and lay back limply.

“More?” She asked putting the cup down on the window sill.

“No, mama.”

“You've had nothing to eat since the morning, beloved. You're hungry, aren't you?”

He shook his head. And to ease the throbbing in his right foot, slid it furtively from under the covers at her back to cool it.

His father stood in the doorway, features dissolved in the dark. Only the glitter in his eyes was sharply visible, fixed on the puffy grey ankle. His mother turned at his tread, spied the swollen foot also. Her sucked breath hissed between pain-puckered lips.

“Poor darling! Poor child!”

His father's hand fell heavily against the door-frame. “He's written down the name of some medicine for us to get,” he said abruptly. “To smear on his foot.”

“Yes?” She half rose. “I'll go get it.”

“Sit there!” His peremptory tone lacked force as though he spoke out of custom, not conviction. “It will be quicker for me to get it. Your neighbors outside won't delay
me
with their tongues.” But instead of going he stood where he was. “He said he'd be better in a day or two.”

She was silent.

“I said he'd be better in a day or two,” he repeated.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

There was a pause. His father cleared his throat. When he spoke his voice had a peculiar harshness as though he were at the same time provoking and steeling himself against a blow.

“It— it's my fault you'd say. Is that it?”

She shook her head wearily. “What use is there to talk about faults, Albert? None foresaw this. No one alone brought it on. And if it's faults we must talk about it's mine as well. I never told you. I let him listen to me months and months ago. I even drove him downstairs to—to—”

“To protect him—from me?”

“Yes.”

His teeth clicked. His chest rose. The expulsion of his breath seemed to rock him slightly. “I'll go get it.” He turned heavily out of the doorway.

David listened to his father's dull, unresilient footfall cross the kitchen floor. The door was opened, closed. A vague, remote pity stirred within his breast like a wreathing, raveling smoke, tenuously dispersed within his being, a kind of torpid heart-break he had felt sometimes in winter awakened deep in the night and hearing that dull tread descend the stairs.

“Perhaps you'll be hungry in a little while,” his mother said persuasively. “After you've rested a bit and we've put the medicine on your foot. And then some milk and a boiled egg. You'd like that?” Her question was sufficiently shored by statement to require no answer. “And then you'll go to sleep and forget it all.” She paused. Her dark, unswerving eyes sought his. “Sleepy, beloved?”

“Yes, Mama.”

He might as well call it sleep. It was only toward sleep that every wink of the eyelids could strike a spark into the cloudy tinder of the dark, kindle out of shadowy corners of the bedroom such myriad and such vivid jets of images—of the glint on tilted beards, of the uneven shine on roller skates, of the dry light on grey stone stoops, of the tapering glitter of rails, of the oily sheen on the night-smooth rivers, of the glow on thin blonde hair, red faces, of the glow on the outstretched, open palms of legions upon legions of hands hurtling toward him. He might as well call it sleep. It was only toward sleep that ears had power to cull again and reassemble the shrill cry, the hoarse voice, the scream of fear, the bells, the thick-breathing, the roar of crowds and all sounds that lay fermenting in the vats of silence and the past. It was only toward sleep one knew himself still lying on the cobbles, felt the cobbles under him, and over him and scudding ever toward him like a black foam, the perpetual blur of shod and running feet, the broken shoes, new shoes, stubby, pointed, caked, polished, buniony, pavement-beveled, lumpish, under skirts, under trousers, shoes, over one and through one, and feel them all and feel, not pain, not terror, but strangest triumph, strangest acquiescence. One might as well call it sleep. He shut his eyes.

Afterword

Between Mother Tongue and Native Language in
Call It Sleep

H
ENRY
R
OTH'S
Call It Sleep
is a multilingual book, although it is accessible to the American reader who knows none of its languages other than English. In order to portray a world that was both multilingual and multicultural, Roth used a variety of narrative strategies, some designed to simulate the experience of his immigrant child protagonist and others designed to translate these experiences for his general American reader.
Call It Sleep
is a classic example of a work in which several cultures interact linguistically, thematically, and symbolically, and it is also an interesting case of ethnic literature, the Jewish-American novel.

Henry Roth offers a classic example as well of the author of a brilliant first novel who keeps the critics speculating as to whether his second work will live up to the first. In his case, the silence that followed that first dazzling performance could be interpreted as a larger cultural phenomenon than a mere individual writer's block. Occasionally what appears to be one artist's dilemma can also be a symptom of a cultural cul-de-sac. Such was the case of Thomas Hardy's last novel,
Jude the Obscure,
which carried the bleakness of the Victorian age and the Victorian novel to its limits, and such was the case of Henry Roth's
Call It Sleep,
which embodies the paralyzing ambivalence of the Jewish immigrant writer in America, although not every writer's response to this conflict has been silence. Throughout Jewish literary history, writers have developed different narrative strategies for representing the multilingual and multicultural world which they inhabited.