Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth

  For awhile, David listened intently to the sound of the words. It was Hebrew, he knew, the same mysterious language his mother used before the candles, the same his father used when he read from a book during the holidays—and that time before drinking wine. Not Yiddish, Hebrew. God’s tongue, the rabbi had said. If you knew it, then you could talk to God. Who was He? He would learn about Him now—

  The boy sitting nearest David, slid along the bench to his side. “Yuh jost stottin’ cheder?”

  “Yea.”

  “Uhh!” he groaned, indicating the rabbi with his eyes. “He’s a louser! He hits!”

  David regarded the rabbi with panicky eyes. He had seen boys slapped by teachers in school for disobedience, although he himself had never been struck. The thought of being flogged with that vicious scourge he had seen the rabbi produce sealed his lips. He even refused to answer when next the boy asked him whether he had any match-pictures to match, and hastily shook his head. With a shrug, the boy slid back along the bench to the place he had come from.

  Presently, with the arrival of several late-comers, older boys, tongues once more began to wag and a hum of voices filled the room. When David saw that the rabbi brandished his scourge several times without wielding it, his fear abated somewhat. However, he did not venture to join in the conversation, but cautiously watched the rabbi.

  The boy who had been reading when David had come in had finished, and his place was taken by a second who seemed less able to maintain the rapid drone of his predecessor. At first, when he faltered, the rabbi corrected him by uttering what was apparently the right sound, for the boy always repeated it. But gradually, as his pupil continued in his error, a harsh note of warning crept into the rabbi’s voice. After awhile he began to yank the boy by the arm whenever he corrected him, then to slap him smartly on the thigh, and finally, just before the boy had finished, the rabbi cuffed him on the ear.

  As time went by, David saw this procedure repeated in part or whole in the case of almost every other boy who read. There were several exceptions, and these, as far as David could observe, gained their exemption from punishment because the drone that issued from their lips was as breathless and uninterrupted as the roll of a drum. He also noticed that whenever the rabbi administered one of these manual corrections, he first dropped from his hand the little stick with which he seemed to set the pace on the page, and an instant later reached out or struck out, as the case might demand. So that, whenever he dropped the stick, whether to scratch his beard or adjust his skull-cap or fish out a half-burned cigarette from a box, the pupil before him invariably jerked up an arm or ducked his head defensively. The dropping of that little stick, seemed to have become a warning to his pupils that a blow was on the way.

  The light in the windows was waning to a blank pallor. The room was warm; the stagnant air had lulled even the most restive. Drowsily, David wondered when his turn would come.

  “Aha!” he heard the rabbi sarcastically exclaim. “Is it you, Hershele, scholar from the land of scholars?”

  This was addressed to the boy who had just slid into the vacant place before the book. David had observed him before, a fat boy with a dull face and an open mouth. By the cowed, sullen stoop of his shoulders, it was clear that he was not one in good standing with the rabbi.

  “Herry is gonna loin,” giggled one of the boys at David’s side.

  “Perhaps, today, you can glitter a little,” suggested the rabbi with a freezing smile. “Who knows, a puppet may yet be made who can fart. Come!” He picked up the stick and pointed to the page.

  The boy began to read. Though a big boy, as big as any that preceded him, he read more slowly and faltered more often than any of the others. It was evident that the rabbi was restraining his impatience, for instead of actually striking his pupil, he grimaced violently when he corrected him, groaned frequently, stamped his foot under the table and gnawed his under-lip. The other students had grown quiet and were listening. From their strained silence—their faces were by now half obscured in shadow—David was sure they were expecting some catastrophe any instant. The boy fumbled on. As far as David could tell, he seemed to be making the same error over and over again, for the rabbi kept repeating the same sound. At last, the rabbi’s patience gave out. He dropped the pointer; the boy ducked, but not soon enough. The speeding plane of the rabbi’s palm rang against his ear like a clapper on a gong.

  “You plaster dunce!” he roared, “when will you learn a byse is a byse and not a vyse. Head of filth, where are your eyes?” He shook a menacing hand at the cringing boy and picked up the pointer.

  But a few moments later, again the same error and again the same correction.

  “May a demon fly off with your father’s father! Won’t blows help you? A byse, Esau, pig! A byse! Remember, a byse, even though you die of convulsions!”

  The boy whimpered and went on. He had not uttered more than a few sounds, when again he paused on the awful brink, and as if out of sheer malice, again repeated his error. The last stroke of the bastinado! The effect on the rabbi was terrific. A frightful bellow clove his beard. In a moment he had fastened the pincers of his fingers on the cheeks of his howling pupil, and wrenching the boy’s head from side to side roared out.—

  “A byse! A byse! A byse! All buttocks have only one eye. A byse! May your brains boil over! A byse! Creator of earth and firmament, ten thousand cheders are in this land and me you single out for torment! A byse! Most abject of God’s fools! A byse!”

  While he raved and dragged the boy’s head from side to side with one hand, with the other he hammered the pointer with such fury against the table that David expected at any moment to see the slender stick buried in the wood. It snapped instead!

  “He busted it!” gleefully announced the boy sitting near.

  “He busted it!” the suppressed giggle went round. Horrified himself by what he saw, David wondered what the rest could possibly be so amused about.

  “I couldn’t see,” the boy at the table was blubbering. “I couldn’t see! It’s dark in here!”

  “May your skull be dark!” the rabbi intoned in short frenzied yelps, “and your eyes be dark and your fate be of such dearth and darkness that you will call a poppy-seed the sun and a carroway the moon. Get up! Away! Or I’ll empty my bitter heart upon you!”

  Tears streaming down his cheeks, and wailing loudly, the boy slid off the bench and slunk away.

  “Stay here till I give you leave to go,” the rabbi called after him. “Wipe your muddy nose. Hurry, I say! If you could read as easily as your eyes can piss, you were a fine scholar indeed!”

  The boy sat down, wiped his nose and eyes with his coat-sleeve and quieted to a suppressed snuffling.

  Glancing at the window, the rabbi fished in his pockets, drew out a match and lit the low gas jet sticking out from the wall over head. While he watched the visibility of the open book on the table, he frugally shaved down the light to a haggard leaf. Then he seated himself again, unlocked a drawer in the table and drew out a fresh stick which looked exactly like the one he had just broken. David wondered whether the rabbi whittled a large supply of sticks for himself, knowing what would happen to them.

  “Move back!” He waved the boy away who had reluctantly slipped into the place just vacated before the table. “David Schearl!” he called out, tempering the harshness of his voice. “Come here, my gold.”

  Quailing with fright, David drew near.

  “Sit down, my child,” he was still breathing hard with exertion. “Don’t be alarmed.” He drew out of his pocket a package of cigarette-papers and a tobacco pouch, carefully rolled cigarette, took a few puffs, then snuffed it out and put it into an empty cigarette box. David’s heart pounded with fear. “Now then,” he turned the leaves of a book beside him to the last page. “Show me how blessed is your understanding.” He drew David’s tense shoulder down toward the table, and picking up the new stick, pointed to a large hieroglyph at the top of the page. “This is called Komitz.
You see? Komitz. And this is an Aleph. Now, whenever one sees a Komitz under an Aleph, one says, Aw.” His hot tobacco-laden breath swirled about David’s face.

  His mother’s words about her rabbi flashed through his mind. He thrust them aside and riveted his gaze to the indicated letter as if he would seal it on his eyes.

  “Say after me,” continued the rabbi, “Komitz-Aleph—Aw!”

  David repeated the sounds.

  “So!” commanded the rabbi. “Once more! Komitz-Aleph-Aw!”

  And after David had repeated it several times. “And this” continued the rabbi pointing to the next character “is called Bais, and a Komitz under a Bais—Baw! Say it! Komitz-Bais-Baw!”

  “Komitz-Bais—Baw!” said David.

  “Well done! Again.”

  And so the lesson progressed with repetition upon repetition. Whether out of fear or aptitude, David went through these first steps with hardly a single error. And when he was dismissed, the rabbi pinched his cheek in praise and said:

  “Go home. You have an iron head!”

  III

  “ODDS!” said Izzy.

  “Evens!” said Solly.

  “Skinner!” said Izzy. “Don’ hold back yuh fingers till yuh see wad I’m juttin’ oud.”

  They were gambling for pointers as usual, and David stood by watching the turns of fortune. In other corners of the yard were others engrossed in the same game. There were a great many pointers in circulation to-day—someone had rifled the rabbi’s drawer. Nothing else had been taken, neither his phylacteries, nor his clock, nor his stationery, nothing except his pointers. He had been furious, but since everyone else had looked blank, he hadn’t been able to convict anyone. Yet here they were, all gambling for them. David was amused. In fact everything that had to do with pointers amused him. They were one of the few things that relieved the dullness of the cheder. He had thought when he first saw them that the rabbi whittled them out himself, but he soon found out he was wrong: the rabbi broke so many that that would have taken all day. No, the pointers were just ordinary lollipop sticks. And even that had been amusing. An incongruous picture had risen in his mind: He saw his severe, black-bearded rabbi wearing away an all-day sucker. But his fellow-pupils soon enlightened him. It was they who brought the rabbi the lollipop sticks. A gift of pointers meant a certain amount of leniency on the rabbi’s part, a certain amount of preference. But the gift had to be substantial, else the rabbi forgot about it, and since few of his pupils could afford more than one lollipop a day, they gambled for them. Izzy’s luck to-day was running high.

  “Yuh god any more?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Solly. “Make or break! Odds!”

  “Waid a secon’. I’m all wet.” He bent sideways and wrung his knee-pants and coattails. They had been arguing so violently a little while ago that someone in an adjacent house had thrown a bagful of water into their midst. Izzy had caught the brunt of it.

  “Yowooee!” From a distance a long-drawn cat-call.

  They looked around. “Who is it?”

  “I’ll see.” Yonk who was standing near the fence shinnied up a wash-pole. “It’s Moish,” he announced. “He’s t’ree fences.”

  “Only t’ree fences?” Contemptuously they resumed their game.

  There was an approaching scuff and clatter. Moish climbed over the fence. “Any janitors?” he asked.

  “No janitors,” said Yonk patronizingly and slid down the wash-pole. “Yuh don’ make enough noise, dat’s why. Yuh oughta hea’ Wildy.”

  “Who don’ make enough noise? I hollered loud like anyt’ing. Who beats?”

  “Who’djuh t’ink? Wildy beats. He god faw fences an’ one janitor. Mrs. Lechtenstein on seven-sixty-eight house. She went smack wit’ de broom, but Wildy ducked.”

  Fence-climbing was one of the ways by which the rabbi’s pupils entered the cheder. The doorway that led into the cheder yard was too prosaic for most of them; they preferred to carve their own routes. And the champion of this, as of everything else, was Wildy. Wildy was nearing his thirteenth birthday and consequently his ‘bar mitzvah’, which made him one of the oldest boys in the cheder. He was the idol of everyone and had even threatened to punch the rabbi in the nose.

  “W’ea’s Wildy now?” someone asked.

  “He’s waitin’ fuh Shaih an’ Toik t’ comm down,” Yonk looked significantly up at one of the houses. “He’s gonna show em dey ain’t de highest ones wad comms into de cheder.”

  “I god t’ree poinders,” said Moish. “Who’ll match me?”

  “I’ll play yuh.” Izzy had just cleaned out his opponent. “W’ea didja ged ’em? From de swipe?”

  “Naa. Dey’s two goils in my class, an’ anudder kid—a goy. So dey all bought lollipops, an’ de goy too. So I follered dem aroun’ an’ aroun’ an’ den w’en dey finished, dey trowed away de sticks. So I picked ’em up. Goys is dumb.”

  “Lucky guy,” they said enviously.

  It took more than luck though, as David very well knew. It took a great deal of patience. He had tried that method of collecting lollipop sticks himself, but it had proved too tedious. Anyway he didn’t really have to do it. He happened to be bright enough to avoid punishment, and could read Hebrew as fast as anyone, although he still didn’t know what he read. Translation, which was called Chumish, would come later.

  “Yowooee!” The cry came from overhead this time. They looked up. Shaih and Toik, the two brothers who lived on the third floor back had climbed out on their fire-escapes. They were the only ones in the cheder privileged to enter the yard via the fire-escape ladders—and they made the most of it. The rest watched enviously. But they had climbed down only a few steps, when again the cry, and now from a great height—

  “Yowooee!”

  Everyone gasped. It was Wildy and he was on the roof!

  “I tol’ yuh I wuz gonna comm down higher den dem!” With a triumphant shout he mounted the ladder and with many a flourish climbed down.

  “Gee, Wildy!” they breathed reverently—all except the two brothers and they eyed him sullenly.

  “We’ll tell de janitor on you.”

  “I’ll smack yuh one,” he answered easily, and turning to the rest. “Yuh know wad I c’n do if one o’ youz is game. I betcha I c’n go up on de fawt’ flaw an’ I betcha I c’n grab hol’ from dat wash-line an’ I betcha I c’n hol’ id till sommbody pulls me across t’ de wash-pole an I betcha I c’n comm down!”

  “Gee, Wildy!”

  “An’ somm day I’m gonna stott way over on Avenyuh C an’ jump all de fences in de whole two blocks!”

  “Gee!”

  “Hey, guys, I’m goin’ in.” Izzy had won the last of the pointers. “C’mon, I’m gonna give ’im.”

  “How many yuh god?” They trooped after him.

  “Look!” There was a fat sheaf of them in his hand.

  They approached the reading table. The rabbi looked up.

  “I’ve got pointers for you, rabbi,” said Izzy in Yiddish.

  “Let me see them,” was the suspicious answer. “Quite a contribution you’re making.”

  Izzy was silent.

  “Do you know my pointers were stolen yesterday?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, where did you get these?”

  “I won them.”

  “From whom?”

  “From everybody.”

  “Thieves!” he shook his hand at them ominously. “Fortunately for you I don’t recognize any of them.”

  IV

  TWO months had passed since David entered the cheder. Spring had come and with the milder weather, a sense of wary contentment, a curious pause in himself as though he were waiting for some sign, some seal that would forever relieve him of watchfulness and forever insure his wellbeing. Sometimes he thought he had already beheld the sign—he went to cheder; he often went to the synagogue on Saturdays; he could utter God’s syllables glibly. But he wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps the sign would be revealed when he
finally learned to translate Hebrew. At any rate, ever since he had begun attending cheder, life had leveled out miraculously, and this he attributed to his increasing nearness to God. He never thought about his father’s job any longer. There was no more of that old dread of waiting for the cycle to fulfill itself. There no longer seemed to be any cycle. Nor did his mother ever appear to worry about his father’s job; she too seemed reassured and at peace. And those curious secrets he had gleaned long ago from his mother’s story seemed submerged within him and were met only at reminiscent street-corners among houses or in the brain. Everything unpleasant and past was like that, David decided, lost within one. All one had to do was to imagine that it wasn’t there, just as the cellar in one’s house could be conjured away if there were a bright yard between the hallway and the cellar-stairs. One needed only a bright yard. At times David almost believed he had found that brightness.

  It was a few days before Passover. The morning had been so gay, warmer and brighter than any in the sheaf of Easter just past. Noon had been so full of promise—a leaf of Summer in the book of Spring. And all that afternoon he had waited, restless and inattentive, for the three o’clock gong to release him from school. Instead of blackboards, he had studied the sharp grids of sunlight that brindled the red wall under the fire-escapes; and behind his tall geography book, had built a sail of a blotter and pencil to catch the mild breeze that curled in through the open window. Miss Steigman had caught him, had tightly puckered her lips (the heavy fuzz about them always darkened when she did that) and screamed:

  “Get out of that seat, you little loafer! This minute! This very minute! And take that seat near the door and stay there! The audacity!” She always used that word, and David always wondered what it meant. Then she had begun to belch, which was what she always did after she had been made angry.