Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth

  She shrugged, not at him, but at herself. “This is the way of the years, my son. Each new one shows you both hands this way—” She held out her two closed hands before her. “Here, choose!” And opening them. “And they’re both empty. We do what we can. But the bitter thing is to strive—and save none but yourself.” She rose, went to the stove, lifted the lid and peered down into the glow that stained the wide brow, the flat cheek. “Eat we must though.”

  “I’m going, mama.” He had heard the door slam upstairs.

  “You won’t be late for supper, beloved?” She replaced the eclipsing lid, half-turned, “Will you?”

  “No, mama.” He went out. His whole being felt crushed, worn out, defeated.

  Yussie came tripping down out of the upper shadow, and seeing him below, rattled the dim, slender corset-stays.

  “Hey, yuh see watta a bow’n’arrer I’ll hev? I got cawd in mine pocket too, so I’ll tie id.” He joined David at the landing, took his arm. “C’mon! So I’ll show yuh how I’ll tie id over hea an’ over hea in de middle. Den I’ll tie id over hea.”

  Descending, they neared the cellar door at which when he glanced, David felt a wave not so much of fear as of anger run through him—as though he defied it, as though he had slammed the door within him and locked it.

  “An’ we’ll go maybe by de bobber shop, becuz by de bobber shop now is lighd. He a’ways lighds foist. So we c’n see how t’ do it. Yuh commin?”

  “Yeh.”

  They came out into the frosty blue of early dusk, turned toward the stores, some of which were lit; there were several children before the tailor shop and the barber’s. They trudged toward it, Yussie flexing the sheaf of corset stays.

  “Didja ask yuh modder fuh a nickel fuh de Xmas poddy in school?”

  “No. I fuhgod.”

  “My ticher calls id Xmas, bod de kids call id Chrizmas. I’ds a goyish holiday anyways. Wunst I hanged up a stockin’ in Brooklyn. Bod mine fodder pud in a eggshells wid terlit paper an’ a piece f’om an ol’ kendle. So he leffed w’en he seen me. Id ain’ no Sendy Klaws, didja know?”

  “Yeh.”

  “How does a prindin’ press look wot hoitshuh fodder?”

  “Id’s like a big mechine.”

  “Id don’ go boof?”

  “No. Id makes like dat calenduh I woz saving.”

  “Oh…”

  They neared the group. Annie was still among them. David no longer cared.

  “Hey!” Yussie seized his arm eagerly. “Dey’s Jujjy de one wod fell w’en yuh pushed him. Yuh wan’ me t’ make yuh glad on him?”

  “Yeh.”

  “So tell him f’om de p’lice station. He’ll be glad! Tell me too! So yeh?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Hey Jujjy!” Yussie hailed them. “Hea’s Davy! He wandsuh be glad on yuh. He’s gonna tell yuh aboud de p’lice station! Aintcha, Davy?”

  “Yeh.”

  BOOK II

  The Picture

  I

  IN FEBRUARY David’s father found the job he wanted—he was to be a milkman. And in order that he might be nearer the stables, they moved a few days later to 9th Street and Avenue D on the lower East Side. For David it was a new and violent world, as different from Brownsville as turmoil from quiet. Here in 9th Street it wasn’t the sun that swamped one as one left the doorway, it was sound—an avalanche of sound. There were countless children, there were countless baby carriages, there were countless mothers. And to the screams, rebukes and bickerings of these, a seemingly endless file of hucksters joined their bawling cries. On Avenue D horse-cars clattered and banged. Avenue D was thronged with beer wagons, garbage carts and coal trucks. There were many automobiles, some blunt and rangy, some with high straw poops, honking. Beyond Avenue D, at the end of a stunted, ruined block that began with shacks and smithies and seltzer bottling works and ended in a junk heap, was the East River on which many boat horns sounded. On 10th Street, the 8th Street Crosstown car ground its way toward the switch.

  His own home was different too. They lived on the fourth floor now, the top floor of the house. There was no cellar door, though a door did lead to the yard. The stairs were of stone and one could hear himself climb. The toilets were in the hall. Sometimes the people in them rattled newspapers, sometimes they hummed, sometimes they groaned. That was cheering.

  He became very fond of his own floor. There was a frosted skylight over the roofstair housing that diffused a cloudy yellow glow at morning and a soft grey haze at afternoon. After one climbed from the tumult of the street, climbed the lower, shadowier stairs, a little tense, listening to toilets, entering this light was like reaching a haven. There was a mild, relaxing hush about it, a luminous silence, static and embalmed. He would have liked to explore it, or at least to see whether the roof door was locked, but the thought of that height, that mysterious vacancy and isolation dissuaded him. There was something else besides. The stairs that led up were not like the stairs that led down, although both were of stone. Common stairs were beveled to an edge, hollowed to an aching trough by the tread of many feet, blackened beyond washing by the ground-in dirt of streets. But these that led up to the roof still had a pearliness mingled with their grey. Each slab was still square and clean. No palms of sliding hands had buffed the wrinkled paint from off their bannisters. No palms had oiled them tusk-smooth and green as an ax-helve. They were inviolable those stairs, guarding the light and the silence.

  There were four rooms in the flat they lived in. There were eight windows. Some faced 9th Street, some faced Avenue D, and one looked out upon the dizzying pit of an airshaft. There was no bathtub. The partition separating the two adjacent washtubs had been knocked down, and they bathed in that. The bottom felt like sandpaper. One had to be careful not to draw too much water or one might float.

  At home the routine of life had changed. His father no longer left for work early in the morning to return at night. Instead he left at night, in the incredible depths of night, and returned early in the morning. During the first few nights, his father’s arising from bed had wakened him also, and he had lain perfectly quiet, listening to the slow heavy tread in the kitchen that was followed soon by the alternate sounds of a bare foot and a shod foot, and then the running water and the scuffing chairs; had lain there listening till his father had left, and then in drowsy thought had followed him down the stone stairs, had imagined in snugness the graduate cold, the night wind on the stoop, the silence, and sunk again through cloudy desolation into sleep.

  Brownsville was fading from his mind, becoming soon a troubled nebulous land, alien and diverging. He was glad they had moved away …

  II

  AT THE beginning of April, David began hearing rumors of an aunt, Bertha, a younger sister of his mother, who was coming to this country. When at first, his mother had suggested that Bertha be permitted to live with them awhile, his father refused to hear of it. Had he not thrown himself at his wife’s feet and begged her to permit Luter to live with them? May fire consume Luter now, but hadn’t he? She had refused then; well he would repay her now. Bertha wouldn’t be allowed in the house.

  But David’s mother persisted. “Where could the poor creature go alone in a strange land?”

  “Poor creature!” His father had scoffed. As far as he was concerned, let her find a home under earth. He would have nothing to do with her. Did she think he had forgotten her, that gross, ill-favored wench with her red hair and green teeth. And heaven preserve him—her mouth!

  But she was only a girl then, forward and flighty. She would have changed by now.

  “For the worse!” he had answered. “But I know what you want her here for. You want her here so you can spend the entire day clacking your tongue with an endless he-said-and-I-said.”

  No, there would be very little of that. Bertha was handy with the needle. She would soon be working and not at home at all. And hadn’t he himself come to this land alone and a stranger? Had he no pity on another in the same plight? And a wom
an at that! Could he be so inhuman as to expect her to turn away someone of her own blood in this wilderness?

  At last, he had been won over and finally growled his consent. “Talking won’t help me,” he said bitterly, “But don’t blame me if anything goes wrong. Remember!”

  It was some time in May that Aunt Bertha arrived, and the first thing that David thought when he saw her was that his father’s sarcastic description had not been exaggerated. Aunt Bertha was distressingly homely. She had a mass of rebellious, coarse red hair, that was darker than a carrot and lighter than a violin. And the color of her teeth, if one had to decide upon it, was green. She used salt, she said—when she remembered. The first thing David’s mother did was to buy her a tooth brush.

  She had no figure and no vanity about her appearance. “Alas!” she said. “I look like one butter firkin on another.”

  A single crease divided fat fore-arm from pudgy hand. Her legs landed into her shoes without benefit of ankles. No matter what she wore, no matter how new or clean, she always managed to look untidy. “Pearl and cloth of gold would stink on me,” she confessed.

  Her ruddy skin always looked as if it were about to flake with sunburn. She perspired more than any woman David had ever seen. Compared to his mother, whose pale skin always had a glossy look that no heat seemed able to flush, his aunt’s red face was like a steaming cauldron. As the weather grew warmer, she began using the largest men’s handkerchiefs, and at home she always tied a napkin around her short throat. “The sweat tickles me at the bend,” she explained.

  On those infrequent occasions when his mother bought herself a dress, she sometimes frankly preferred to stand rather than sit down and wrinkle it. His aunt, on the contrary, made hers look like a limp rag so quickly that she would take her Sunday afternoon nap in a new dress to get over the feeling that she had to be solicitous about it.

  Apart from their complete difference in appearance, David soon observed that his mother and Aunt were worlds apart in temperament. His mother was grave, attentive, mild in her speech: his aunt was merry, tart and ready-tongued. His mother was infinitely patient, careful about everything she did; his aunt was rebellious and scatter-brained.

  “Sister,” she would tease, “do you remember that Salt Sea that grandfather used to speak of—by Judah or by Jordan, where-ever it was—no storms and it bore everything? That’s how you are. You use all your salt for tears. Now a wise woman uses some of it for sharpness.” Aunt Bertha used all of it.

  III

  ON a clear Sunday afternoon in July, David and his aunt set out together toward the Third Avenue Elevated. They were going to the Metropolitan Museum. Sweat runneled his aunt’s cheeks, hung down from her chin, fell sometimes, spotting the bosom of her green dress. With her handkerchief, she slapped at the beads viciously as though they were flies and cursed the heat. When they reached the elevated, David was compelled to ask innumerable people what the right train was, and during the whole trip, she sent him forward to plague the conductor.

  At 86th Street, they got off and after further inquiry walked west toward Fifth Avenue. The further they got from Third Avenue, the more aloof grew the houses, the more silent the streets. David began to feel uneasy at his aunt’s loud voice and Yiddish speech both of which seemed out of place here.

  “Hmm!” she marveled in resounding accents. “Not a single child on the street. Children, I see, are not in style in this portion of America.” And after gaping about her. “Bah! It is quiet as a forest here. Who would want to live in these houses? You see that house?” She pointed at a red brick structure. “Just such a house did Baron Kobelien have, with just such shades. He was an old monster, the Baron, may he rot away! His eyes were rheumy, and his lips munched as though he were chewing a cud. He had a back as crooked as his soul.” And in the role of the Baron, she tottered onto Fifth Avenue.

  Before them, stood a stately white-stone edifice set in the midst of the green park.

  “That must be it,” she said. “So they described it to me at the shop.”

  But before they crossed the street, she decided to take her bearings and cautioned David to remember a certain brown-stone house with gabled roofs and iron railings before it. Thus assured of a certain return, they hurried across the avenue and stopped again at the foot of a flight of broad stairs that led up to a door. A number of people were going in.

  “Whom shall we ask to make sure we are right?”

  A short distance from the building stood a peanut-vender with his cart and whistling box. They walked over to him. He was a lean, swarthy fellow with black mustaches and bright eyes.

  “Ask him!” she ordered.

  “Is dat a museum?”

  “Dotsa duh musee,” he flickered his eyebrows at her while he spoke. “You go inna straight,” he pushed out his chest and hips, “you come out all tire.”

  David felt his arm clutched; his aunt hurried him away.

  “Kiss my arse,” she flung over her shoulder in Yiddish; “What did that black worm say?”

  “He said it was a museum.”

  “Then let’s go in. The worst we can get is a kick in the rear.”

  His aunt’s audacity scared him quite a bit, but there was nothing to do except follow her up the stairs. Ahead of them, a man and woman were on the point of entering the door. His aunt pressed his arm and whispered hastily.

  “Those two people! They seem knowing. We’ll follow them till they come out again, else we’ll surely be lost in this stupendous castle!”

  The couple before them passed through a turn-stile. David and his aunt did likewise. The others turned to the right and entered a room full of grotesque granite figures seated bolt upright upon granite thrones. They followed in their wake.

  “We must look at things with only one eye,” she cautioned him, “the other must always be on them.”

  And keeping to this plan, wherever their two unwitting guides strolled, his aunt and he tagged along behind. Now and then, however, when she was particularly struck by some piece of sculpture, they allowed their leaders to draw so far ahead that they almost lost them. This happened once when she stood gawking at the spectacle of a stone wolf suckling two infants.

  “Woe is me!” Her tone was loud enough for the guard to knit his brows at her. “Who would believe it—a dog with babies! No! It could not have been!”

  David had to pluck her dress several times and remind her that their companions had disappeared before she could tear herself away.

  Again, when they arrived before an enormous marble figure seated on an equally huge horse, his aunt was so overcome that her tongue hung out in awe. “This is how they looked in the old days,” she breathed reverently. “Gigantic they were, Moses and Abraham and Jacob, and the others in the earth’s youth. Ai!” Her eyes bulged.

  “They’re going, Aunt Bertha,” he warned. “Hurry, They’re going away!”

  “Who? Oh, may they burst! Won’t they ever stop a moment! But come! We must cleave to them like mire on a pig!”

  In this fashion, hours seemed to go by. David was growing weary. Their quarry had led them past miles and miles of armor, tapestries, coins, furniture and mummies under glass, and still they showed no sign of flagging. His aunt’s interest in the passing splendors had long since worn off and she was beginning to curse her guides heartily.

  “A plague on you,” she muttered every time those walking ahead stopped to glance into a show case. “Haven’t you crammed your eyes full yet! Enough!” She waved her sopping handkerchief. “May your heart burn the way my feet are burning!”

  At last the man ahead of them stopped to tell one of the uniformed guards something. Aunt Bertha halted abruptly. “Hoorrah! He’s complaining about our following him! God be praised! Let them kick us out now. That’s all I ask!”

  But alas, such was not the case; the guards paid no attention to them, but seemed instead to be giving the others directions of some kind.

  “They’re leaving now,” she said with a great s
igh of relief. “I’m sure he’s telling them how to get out. What a fool I was not to have had you ask him myself. But who would have known! Come, we may as well follow them out, since we’ve followed them in.”

  Instead of leaving, however, the man and woman, after walking a short distance, separated, one going into one door and one into another.

  “Bah!” Her rage knew no bounds. “Why they’re only going to pee. Ach! I follow no longer. Ask that blockhead in uniform, how one escapes this jungle of stone and fabric.”

  The guard directed them, but his directions were so involved that in a short space they were lost again. They had to ask another and still another. It was only by a long series of inquiries that they finally managed to get out at all.

  “Pheh!” she spat on the stairs as they went down. “May a bolt shatter you to bits! If I ever walk up these stairs again, I hope I give birth to a pair of pewter twins!” And she yanked David toward their landmark.

  * * *

  His mother and father were home when they entered. His aunt sprawled into a chair with a moan of fatigue.

  “You look as though you’ve stumbled into every corner of the world!” His mother seated him on her knee. “Where have you led the poor child, Bertha?”

  “Led?” she groaned. “Where was I led you mean? We were fastened to a he and a she-devil with a black power in their legs. And they dragged us through a wilderness of man’s work. A wilderness I tell you! And now I’m so weary, my breast seems empty of its heart!”

  “Why didn’t you leave when you had seen enough?”

  She laughed weakly. “That place wasn’t made for leaving. Ach, green rump that I am, the dirt of Austria is still under my toe-nails and I plunge into museums.” She buried her nose under her arm-pit. “Phew, I reek!”

  As always, when she indulged herself in some coarse expression or gesture, his father grimaced and tapped his foot.

  “It serves you right,” he said abruptly.

  “Humph!” she tossed her head sarcastically.

  “Yes!”

  “And why?” Irritation and weariness were getting the better of her.