The Book of Knowledge

by Doris Grumbach

  For two days in late July it rained constantly, a slanting, gentle summer rain that kept the children indoors. On the second afternoon they met in the Schwartzes’ parlor. Mrs. Schwartz had set up a card table and then retired next door to visit Rose Hellman.

  The children played Slapjack and I Doubt You and then Hearts until they were all tired out by the fierce competition and the accusations of cheating that the losers threw at the winners.

  Lionel put the cards back in their box. They all sat, their hands idle on the table, wondering what to do next. Suddenly Lionel said into the air, to no one in particular:

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  Kate was too startled to answer. She had never heard the question raised before and assumed all such belief was universal. Caleb considered a reply. Roslyn said, with firm conviction:

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lionel asked. ‘Didn’t He make us?’

  ‘Make us?’ Roslyn repeated, her voice filled with scorn for the very words. ‘How would anyone need to make us when we were made by our fathers and mothers?’

  Lionel: ‘Well, how did they do that?’

  Roslyn (scornfully): ‘Oh, you know.’

  Lionel: ‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

  Roslyn: ‘Your father pushes his cock into the hole in your mother’s bottom …’

  Lionel (agitated): ‘His … cock?’

  Roslyn (impatiently): ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lion. Don’t you know anything? His … his penis. Your pee-er.’

  Lionel (defensively): ‘I know what a penis is. I didn’t know it was called a … a cock.’

  Roslyn: ‘Yes. At least I heard a boy I know call it that. He even showed me his.’

  Kate and Caleb sat silently during this interchange, looking from one speaker to the other as though they were watching a play.

  Roslyn turned to Caleb. ‘You know what a cock is, don’t you?’

  Caleb had never heard the term before. He said: ‘Of course.’

  Kate, equally ignorant, giggled. She decided to make a joke to hide her embarrassment.

  ‘I think it’s also a rooster. Like in the nursery rhyme with it: “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”’

  Everyone laughed. Lionel picked up the box of cards.

  ‘Let’s play another game of Hearts. I’ll be Roslyn’s partner.’

  Kate and Caleb nodded, looked at each other, and smiled.

  Some afternoons were cloudy, so there was no impetus to go to the beach. On one of these cloudy days, Caleb and Kate went around the block to the Hellmans’ backyard, where, it being Saturday, Roslyn’s father was outside, setting up a new croquet set he had brought from the City. The four children stood on the back steps watching him make his disjointed, ungainly way around the course, setting up the wickets. Roslyn whispered to the Flowers children that, as a boy, Max Hellman had lost his leg in a street accident. He had been hanging on to the grille at the back of a trolley car, stealing a ride, when he lost his grip and fell under the metal wheels of another trolley traveling behind. She told them that her father now wore a carved wooden leg which she very much admired.

  ‘It straps onto his stump,’ she said, and smiled, as though she thought this singular equipment raised him far above other fathers with the ordinary supply of two legs and feet.

  ‘What’s a stump?’ asked Kate.

  ‘The piece of his leg that’s left. He doesn’t even have a knee.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kate. She shuddered and looked down at her small, pink joint.

  ‘But I think the wooden leg was cut off too short. That’s why he limps like that.’

  Roslyn seemed to be warming to her subject, but Caleb and Kate wanted to hear no more and went down the steps to inspect the nine shining new wickets Mr. Hellman had erected. The wooden stakes had bright red stripes, with none of the flaking paint of the Flowerses’ old set. The wickets were set far apart, the distances prescribed for the adult game.

  Lion came across the lawn carrying the remains of a piece of divinity fudge, which he put into his mouth when he arrived at the first stake.

  Roslyn said: ‘I call the Talkies to order. First, we’ll play singles.’

  Kate and Lion stood together, eyeing the course. They could see that it was going to be very hard, and after their first strokes, it was clear that it was far more than they could manage. Their weak, choppy strokes brought their balls barely halfway to the next wicket. Roslyn decreed that they should play first, pretending it was a kindness to the younger players, but they soon understood the true reason: their balls were open targets for Roslyn and Caleb to foot them viciously toward some distant corner of the lawn. Roslyn’s shots were bold, covering the distance but sometimes going far afield of the wicket for which she was aiming. Caleb had a smooth, fierce drive which came very close to his wicket. He won the first round easily.

  Then Roslyn announced that they would team up, she of course with Caleb. He was secretly pleased with this suggestion, because, like Roslyn, he loved to win. But his concern for Kate and her inaccurate shots moved him to pity. So he ignored Roslyn’s order and invited Kate to be his partner. She gave him her most delighted smile. Roslyn gritted her teeth at him.

  Lion was glad to be Roslyn’s partner, but unhappy at being assigned the black mallet, a color he hated. Roslyn preempted the blue, the color that always, by rule, led off. By this choice she knew she would make up for her partner’s predictably limp shots.

  The children used the vocabulary of the game professionally, having been instructed by Mr. Hellman. He was the resident expert on all games, despite his handicap. Kate and Lion loved to call out ‘You’re dead on my ball!’ and ‘I’m alive on yours!’

  Lion was usually termed an Aunt Emma, the game’s mysterious nomenclature for coward. Roslyn relished this designation of his timorous approach to his strokes and used it often. Kate liked to say she was cleaning herself when she finally drove her ball through the right wicket. Caleb’s favorite was tice shot, a term he used to invite his opponents to aim at his ball, with the fervent hope they would miss and thus make them more available to his next, lethal shot.

  The skill of the two younger players never matched their aptitude for the jargon. But they both enjoyed their alliances to the persons they most admired in the world. To be rescued from almost inevitable disgrace by Caleb’s confident strokes was, for Kate, like feeling his hands under her as he pulled her from the surf. She thought of him as her savior in everything, forgetting Roslyn’s hard hands tugging on her hair at the same time.

  After the accident at the beach, croquet was the one activity that held the four children together during the long succession of late afternoons. They kept a running score that did not count for much, for victory seesawed between the two teams. Pulling their inept partners along after them, skillful Caleb and determined Roslyn felt they were playing alone against each other, in hand-to-hand combat. They were handicapped but not halted by their weak partners as they proceeded to ‘peg out,’ the term they had been taught for victory.

  Roslyn dubbed the series of games the Talkies Tournament and announced it would be held annually in the summer.

  In the dusk, hand in hand, Kate and Caleb walked home. Kate was full of compliments for Caleb’s accomplished playing; he was sympathetic to her valiant failure.

  ‘You helped me a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Not so much. You were just positioned right.’

  On the Mothers Oats telephone, Roslyn berated Lion for what she considered to be his willful awkwardness. Lion did not respond. He wished Roslyn liked him better.

  Then he thought better of his silence and shouted into the cardboard receiver:

  ‘You might have won, without me.’

  ‘Right. But don’t worry. I’ll win tomorrow. I’ll kill them.’

  She spoke loudly, not trusting to the wire to convey her determination. On their veranda the Hellmans smiled at their daughter’s resolution. Max Hellman sat back in his wicker rocker, his left leg thru
st out before him.

  ‘She’s a go-getter, that one,’ he said.

  ‘I guess so,’ Rose Hellman said. ‘She sure likes to win.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that. I like to win too.’

  ‘But you’re grown up, and in the market. She’s a child, a girl. Where will she use all that fierceness?’

  ‘Maybe where I do. On the Street.’

  ‘Are there any women brokers?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Not yet. But who knows, there may be soon. Women can now vote and go to college. And look at the Yeomanettes in the Navy during the war.’

  ‘Well, I can see Roslyn as a sailor, all right. But she’s too impatient to be a broker. Too … too cocksure, I mean to say’

  Max thought about this for a moment. Then he laughed and said:

  ‘Well, no one is more cocksure than Lester Schwartz, God knows. And he’s sure a success.’

  ‘And so are you a success, for that matter,’ said Rose. ‘But you’re gentler, thank God.’

  Max rubbed his aching stump, and then took his wife’s hand.

  ‘That was a nice thing for you to say.’

  Rose: ‘Sometimes I worry about her. There’s nothing feminine about her. Sometimes I think she should have been a boy. Then she could grow up to be a man like Lester.’

  Max laughed. ‘Do you suppose Lionel should have been our daughter and Roslyn the Schwartzes’ son?’

  ‘No, of course not. But still … heredity ought to count for something. There’s no sign of either of us in Roslyn.’

  ‘Not true. She’s hard to manage. You always say I am.’

  Enjoying the evening breeze and their uninterrupted time together, they stroked each other’s hand. In silence they searched the surrounding darkness for one admirable characteristic of Roslyn’s for which they might claim responsibility. Across the way, Lionel’s voice had finally given out. It was quiet for a moment. They heard the children say good night to one another. An ocean breeze moved along Linden Street, bringing the odor of honeysuckle to the veranda. The little Amazon’s parents pushed their chairs close together and held hands in the consoling stillness.

  One Sunday afternoon, the last contest of wooden balls struck through wickets and against staunch posts ended badly. The Hellmans had gone across their lawn to play whist with the Schwartzes. Caleb roved widely, trying to prevent Roslyn from following him through the final wicket. The younger children, already out of contention, stood behind home stake to watch the victor’s advance.

  Caleb’s second stroke was a fierce chop. His red ball flew up and struck Lionel hard on the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.

  Kate’s screams brought the four parents to the croquet field. Caleb sat on the grass patting Lionel’s cheeks. Beside him, Roslyn clumsily wiped a small stream of blood from her partner’s broken scalp with her handkerchief, spreading it so that it colored the blond hair on the side of his head. The boy was limp, and very pale.

  ‘Oh, my God, he’s dead,’ Sadie cried. She threw herself on the grass to look at her son.

  Lionel responded to the sound of his mother’s voice by moving his head slightly.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Caleb said, almost in tears, ‘Just knocked out. He’s better now.’

  ‘He did it, not me,’ Roslyn shouted. ‘The red ball hit him. Mine’s blue. Lionel’s is black. It was Caleb’s red ball.’

  Caleb’s face was scarlet. ‘I didn’t mean it. My foot slipped when I was going through to the stake. I hit the ball wrong. It was a mistake.’ He stood up and tried to hide his tears with his hand.

  The Schwartzes paid no attention to the accusations and defenses. Lester picked Lionel up and said to Max Hellman:

  ‘Start our car. We’ll take him to the hospital in Cedarhurst.’

  Sadie turned white. Nothing about the accident had affected her as keenly as the word hospital. In her childhood, both her parents had died in agony in St. Vincent’s Hospital, the victims of a tenement fire. To her, all such places were charnel houses and entry into them put the seal of mortality on anyone unlucky enough to be taken there.

  ‘Oh no,’ she moaned.

  Lionel’s vision cleared. He focused on his mother’s face, saw her distress, and heard the note of terror in her voice. He smiled at her.

  ‘I’m okay, Mama.’

  Concerned that Sadie might collapse, Rose took her arm.

  ‘Come on to the car, Sadie. He’s not badly hurt. The doctor will just check him for concussion.’

  Confusion followed Sadie’s swoon at the sound of another dire word. Roslyn helped her mother with Mrs. Schwartz, thinking how delicate the whole Schwartz family was, especially Lion, what a baby he was, really, almost like Kate. They were the ones who always got hurt, whatever it was they all played.

  ‘There goes the Talkies Tournament,’ she whispered glumly to Caleb, who stood beside her, his arm around his sister. The three watched as Lester carried Lionel across the driveway and Rose fanned Sadie, who regained consciousness almost as quickly as she had lost it.

  Rose and Caleb helped Sadie to her feet. They all went in the direction of the Schwartzes’ car, Sadie leaning heavily on Rose’s arm. Max stood at the rear, holding open the door.

  As for Kate: the spectacle of blood on her friend’s white face, a pallid mother lying on the grass, colored balls and silver wickets knocked every which way on the usually orderly course, frightened her. She was unused to the mixture of adults and children, two naturally disjoined orders of persons hitherto kept happily separate in her mind. She tugged at Caleb’s arm.

  ‘I think we should go home. Moth will be wondering where we are. It’s getting dark.’

  Caleb agreed.

  They reported to Emma that Lion was all right now but had been, as Kate told her, foolishly, ‘almost dead.’ Emma blanched, her arm around Kate. She pulled her close, recalling the the seaside incident.

  ‘No more croquet,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a dangerous game for children.’

  ‘He was okay when we left,’ Caleb said.

  ‘But you said they were taking him to the hospital.’

  ‘For checking,’ Caleb said in his most adult voice. ‘Only for checking. He was awake before they got to the car.’

  ‘Thank the Lord.’

  Emma gathered Caleb to her with her free arm. Positioned in this way, an onlooker might have regarded the family as models for a portrait of devotion. It would have been an accurate view of the reality. The children believed in the universality of their family life. All children, they thought, lived with a comfortably distant but devoted mother. All children loved one another. They never questioned that maternity, beyond any doubt, granted to every child the same affection and exclusive tenderness manifested to them by their mother.

  But Emma’s motherhood was complex, far more than her children knew. She was proud of their beauty, thinking of herself as the sole source of it and ignoring the existence of Edmund. She saw herself in them, and, as she grew older, she saw her young, pure self as she remembered it in their double image. Her children became the objects, the unaware recipients, of her quiescent sexual passion. Her ardent heart, her unused body, yearned for occasions of physical pleasure. Finding none, she spent her fire on love for her children. They were her possessions, her occasions for fantasy, her touchstones that she was alive.

  And Caleb: he had no idea that his love for his sister, who looked and felt so much like him, was a form of amour propre. He considered it the usual and natural affection for a sibling. To explore her body was to search himself, to learn, through his intimate investigations, some of the pleasurable secrets of his own anatomy.

  And Kate: denied by her happy childhood any self-knowledge whatsoever (for children are most apt to discover their inner selves in moments of misery), she unhesitatingly offered her loving little heart to her adored brother, her revered mother, her unknown, sainted father.

  After croquet was proscribed, the Flowers children, with little regret, return
ed to their cocoon of exclusivity. Their pretenses grew in variety and daring, extending to other times in the day, while their mother was shopping or visiting the lending library. So engrossed did they now become in their dramatic fictions that they found it difficult to suspend them, as of course they knew they must, during meals with Moth and their occasional trips to the beach with Roslyn and Lion.

  In mid-August, long after Emma had returned the book, Caleb finally gave up trying to use the children in A High Wind in Jamaica as roles for their game. The book was difficult for him to understand. It struck him as unbelievable that the children, captured by pirates, came to such curious ends. The oldest boy, John, whose part he had intended to take, died very early by breaking his neck in a fall, and nobody, except his mother at the end, ever thought about him again. He just disappeared from his younger sister Emily’s mind. Emily too was strange, lying as she did to everyone, and murdering the Dutch captain without a thought or any backward glance of conscience. To him, both roles reeked of the kind of unacceptable reality his romantic soul denied. He was glad to return the book to the library. It represented his only imaginative failure in that happy summer.

  After his rejection of this subject matter, Caleb went up into the attic for his annual survey of the vast, dusty area before his mother began her fall cleaning and the storage of their summer clothes. As he always did, he reviewed the contents of his father’s trunk. He inspected the now outmoded City suits, the almost new straw hat, the high, brown derby with a stiff brim, the yellowing flannel trousers, the ties wrapped in celluloid, and three pairs of pearl-gray gloves that matched the elegant spats, all encased in clear, cracking tissue paper. Everything seemed to be arranged in this careful way, protected against dust and decay, as though awaiting the owner’s eventual return.

  Near the trunk, wrapped in what Moth called a garment bag, was his father’s black winter overcoat, with its sumptuous velvet collar. Caleb pictured himself as having attained the age and size of Edmund Flowers and being dressed in this fine haberdashery. He was planning to grow very quickly into the entire outfit so he could wear it proudly into the street. To practice, he put on the coat, the derby, a pair of gloves. Thus clad, he felt he had become his father. He was preparing to call on Emma McDermott during the early days of their courtship.