Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth

  —He said dirty words, I bet. Shit, pee, fuckenbestit—Stop! You’re sayin’ it yourself. It’s a sin again! That’s why he—Gee! I didn’t mean it. But your mouth don’t get dirty. I don’t feel no dirt. (He rolled his tongue about) Maybe inside. Way, way in, where you can’t taste it. What did Isaiah say that made his mouth dirty? Real dirty, so he’d know it was? Maybe—

  “Shebchol haleylos onu ochlim—. De rain wedded my cockamamy! Ow! Leggo! Yuh can’t cover books wit’ newspaper. My teacher don’ let. An aftuh she took mine bean-shooduh, she pinched me by duh teet! Lousey bestia! Bein yoshvim uvein mesubim. So wad’s de nex’ woid? Mine hen’ball wend down duh sewuh! Now, I god six poinduhs!

  —You couldn’t do it with a regular coal. You’d burn all up. Even hot tea if you drink—ooh! But where could you get angel-coal? Mr. Ice-man, give me a pail of angel-coal. Hee! Hee! In a cellar is coal. But other kind, black coal, not angel coal. Only God had angel-coal. Where is God’s cellar I wonder? How light it must be there. Wouldn’t be scared like I once was in Brownsville. Remember?

  “C’mon chick! Hey Louie! Yuh last! Wed mine feed! Look! Me! Yea! Hea! Two!”

  —Angel-coal. In God’s cellar is—

  All the belated ones had straggled in. A hail of jabbering now rocked the cheder.

  “And-not-a-tree—” As the rabbi stooped lower and lower, his voice shot up a steep ladder of menace. “Shall-be-upright in the land!” He straightened, scaling crescendo with a roar. “Noo!” His final shattering bellow mowed down the last shrill reeds of voices. “Now it’s my turn!” Smiling fiercely he rose, cat-o-nine in hand, and advanced toward the silent, cowering row. “Here!” the scourge whistled down, whacked against a thigh. “Here’s for you!”

  “Wow!”

  “And you!”

  “Ouch! Waddid I—do?”

  “And you for your squirming tongue!”

  “Leggo! Ooh!”

  “And you that your rump is on fire! Now sit still!”

  “Umph! Ow!”

  “And you for your grin! And you for your nickering, and you for your bickering. Catch! Catch! Hold! Dance!”

  The straps flew, legs plunged. Shrill squibs of pain popped up and down the bench. No one escaped, not even David. Wearied at length, and snorting for breath, the rabbi stopped and glared at them. Suppressed curses, whimpers, sniffles soughed from one end of the bench to the other.

  “Shah!”

  Even these died out.

  “Now! To your books! Dig your eyes into them. The four Questions. Noo! Begin! Ma nishtanaw.”

  “Mah nishtanaw halilaw hazeh,” they bellowed, “mikawl halaylos. Sheb chol halaylos onu ochlim chametz umazoh.”

  “Schulim!” The rabbi’s chin went down, his voice diving past it to an ominous bass. “Dumb are you?”

  “Haliylaw hazeh.” A new voice vigorously swelled the already lusty chorus, “kulo mazoh!”

  When they had finished the four questions, repeated them and rendered them thrice into Yiddish—

  “Now the chad gadyaw,” commanded the rabbi. “And with one voice. Hurry!”

  Hastily, they turned the pages.

  “Chad godyaw, chad godyaw,” they bayed raggedly, “disabin abaw bis rai zuzaw, chad godyaw, chad godyaw—”

  “Your teeth fall out, Simkeh.” snarled the rabbi, grinning venomously, “what are you laughing at?”

  “Nuttin!” protested Simkeh in an abused voice. “I wasn’t laughing!” He was though—some one had been chanting “fot God Yaw” instead of Chad-Godyaw.

  “So!” said the rabbi sourly when they had finished. “And now where is the blessed understanding that remembers yesterday? Who can render this into Yiddish? Ha? Where?”

  A few faltering ones raised their hands.

  “But all of it!” he warned. “Not piece-meal, all of it without stuttering. Or—” He snapped the cat-o-nine. “The noodles!”

  Scared, the volunteers lowered their hands.

  “What? None? Not a single one.” His eyes swept back and forth. “Oh, you!” With a sarcastic wave of the hand, he flung back the offers of the older, chumish students. “It’s time you mastered this feat! No one!” He wagged his head at them bitterly. “May you never know where your teeth are! Hi! Hi! none strives to be a Jew any more. Woe unto you! Even a goy knows more about his filth than you know of holiness. Woe! Woe!” He glared at David accusingly. “You too? Is your head full of turds like the rest of them? Speak!”

  “I know it,” he confessed, but the same time feigned sullenness lest he stir the hatred of the others.

  “Well! Have you ribs in your tongue? Begin! I’m waiting!”

  “One kid, one only kid,” cautiously he picked up the thread, “one kid that my father bought for two zuzim. One kids, one only kid. And a cat came and ate the kid that my father had bought for two zuzim. One kid, one only kid. And a dog came and bit the cat that ate the kid that my father bought for two zuzim. One kid, one only kid.” He felt more and more as he went on as if the others were crouching to pounce upon him should he miss one rung in the long ladder of guilt and requital. Carefully, he climbed past the cow and the butcher and the angel of death. “And then the Almighty, blessed be He—(Gee! Last. Nobody after. Didn’t know before. But sometime, mama, Gee!) Unbidden, the alien thoughts crowded into the gap. For an instant he faltered. (No! No! Don’t stop!) “Blessed be He,” he repeated hurriedly, “killed the angel of death, who killed the butcher, who killed the ox, who drank the water, that quenched the fire, that burned the stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father bought for two zuzim. One kid, one only kid!” Breathlessly he came to an end, wondering if the rabbi were angry with him for having halted in the middle.

  But the rabbi was smiling. “So!” he patted his big palms together. “This one I call my child. This is memory. This is intellect. You may be a great rabbi yet—who knows!” He stroked his black beard with a satisfied air and regarded David a moment, then suddenly he reached his hand into his pocket and drew out a battered black purse.

  A murmur of incredulous astonishment rose from the bench.

  Snapping open the pronged, metal catch, the rabbi jingled the coins inside and pinched out a copper. “Here! Because you have a true Yiddish head. Take it!”

  Automatically, David lifted his hand and closed it round the penny. The rest gaped silently.

  “Now come and read,” he was peremptory again. “And the rest of you dullards, take care! Let me hear you wink and I’ll tear you not into shreds, but into shreds of shreds!”

  A little dazed by the windfall, David followed him to the reading bench and sat down. While the rabbi carefully rolled himself a cigarette, David gazed out of the window. The rain had stopped, though the yard was still dark. He could sense a strange quietness holding the outdoors in its grip. Behind him, the first whisper flickered up somewhere along the bench. The rabbi lit his cigarette, shut the book from which Mendel had been reading and pushed it to one side.

  —Could ask him now, I bet. He gave me a penny. About Isaiah and the coal. Where? Yes. Page sixty-eight. I could ask—

  Chaa! Wuuh! Thin smoke glanced off the table. The rabbi reached over for the battered book and picked up the pointer.

  “Rabbi?”

  “Noo?” He pinched over the leaves.

  “When Mendel was reading about that—that man who you said, who—” He never finished. Twice through the yard, as though a lantern had been swung back and forth above the roof-tops, violet light rocked the opposite walls—and darkness for a moment and a clap of thunder and a rumbling like a barrel rolling down cellar stairs.

  “Shma yisroel!” the rabbi ducked his head and clutched David’s arm. “Woe is me!”

  “Ow!” David squealed. And the pressure on his arm relaxing, giggled.

  Behind him the sharp, excited voices. “Yuh see it! Bang! Bang wot a bust it gave! I tol’ yuh I see a blitz before!”

  “Shah!” The rabbi regained his composure. “Lightning
before the Passover! A warm summer.” And to David as if remembering, “Why did you cry out and why did you laugh?”

  “You pinched me,” he explained cautiously, “and then—”

  “Well?”

  “And then you bent down—like us when you drop the pointer, and then I thought—”

  “Before God,” the rabbi interrupted, “none may stand upright.”

  —Before God.

  “But what did you think?”

  “I thought it was a bed before. Upstairs. But it wasn’t.”

  “A bed! It wasn’t!” He stared at David. “Don’t play the fool with me because I gave you a penny.” He thrust the book before him. “Come then!” he said brusquely. “It grows late.”

  —Can’t ask now.

  “Begin! Shohain ad mawrom—”

  “Shohain ad mawrom vekawdosh shmo vakawsuv ronnu zadekim ladonoi.” Thought lapsed into monotone.

  After a short reading, the rabbi excused him, and David slid off the bench and went over to where the rest were sitting to get his strap of books. Schloime, who held them in his lap, had risen with alacrity as he approached and proffered them to him.

  “Dey wanted t’ take dem, but I was holdin’ ’em,” he informed him. “Watcha gonna buy?”

  “Nuttin.”

  “Aa!” And eagerly. “I know w’ea dere’s orange-balls—eight fuh a cent.”

  “I ain’ gonna ged nuttin.”

  “Yuh stingy louse!”

  The others had swarmed about. “I told yuh, yuh wouldn’ get nuttin for holdin’ his books. Yaah, yuh see! Aaa, let’s see duh penny. We’ll go witchah. Who couldn’a said dat!”

  “Shah!”

  They scattered back to the bench. David eased his way through the door.

  V

  THE air had freshened, the dark became lighter. The wind, cooler now, wrinkled the dark puddles between the flagstones, lifted the wash-lines. From somewhere, large drops of water still spattered down, though walls and fences showed broad dry patches. His fingers still closed around the penny in his pocket, David climbed up the brown, water-stained stairs, passed through the warm corridor and out into the street. Sidewalks and gutter were drying to grey again, dark rills thinning under curbs. In the west clearing toward sunset, clouds were a silver havoc, their light in the rugged stone frame of the street, sombre and silver.

  —Show her the penny when I get upstairs. And she’ll tell Papa. What would he say? Bet he wouldn’t believe. He’d say I found it. But I could say it for him—all over again. One kid, one only kid, and then he’d have to—That candy store.

  He stopped, stared thoughtfully at the clutter of toys and tin horns, masks, soda bottles and cigarette posters.

  —No. Have to show her first. See what I got. Then could buy. What? Candy? No. Like to get those little balls in the hoople-cage. You blow and catch. Only can’t catch so good. When will I catch good? Maybe better wait till tomorrow when I get another penny. And then—Gee! Go to Aunt Bertha’s candy store. When was I? Long time ago, that time with mama! Too far. And girls, Esther and Polly. Hate them. How they fight, gee! How they eat soup! Poppa’d murder me if I did. But Uncle Nathan only hollers, and Aunt Bertha hollers on him. Remember Uncle Nathan and his mama? Vinegar and light when he told. Light! Gee! And Isaiah and that angel-coal. On his mouth. But remember. Blue book—so big. On page sixty-eight. Maybe ask next time. Maybe mama knows. Penny? Where? Oh! Here! Nearly didn’t get it. When that funny jumped into the middle of the chad godyuh. Wonder what! I was saying. Yes. I was saying—

  “Little boy.” The words were in Yiddish.

  He started and looked up. He had almost run into her—a shriveled old woman with a face so lined with short, thin wrinkles, they slanted down the sere skin like a rain. She was stooped. A striped blue and white apron covered the front of her rusty black satin dress. The whites of her eyes were cloudy as an old tusk and caught in a net of red veins. Her nostrils were wet. Between her brow and the white kerchief on her head a stiff brown wig protruded like a ledge.

  “Little boy.” She repeated in a quavering treble, head rocking infirmly from side to side. “Are you a Jew?”

  For a fleeting instant, David wondered how he could have understood her if he hadn’t been a Jew.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it won’t harm you anyway,” she mumbled. “You’re not old enough to sin. Come with me and I’ll give you a penny.”

  He stared at her. There was something terrifying and dreamlike about it all. The gingerbread boys the old witch baked. In two A one.

  “You’ll light the gas stove for me, yes?”

  That’s what they did too—only it wasn’t gas. Gee! He felt half-impelled to take to his heels.

  “I lit the candles”, she explained, “and it’s too late now.”

  “Oh!” He understood now. It was Friday. Still why had she lit them so early? It wasn’t night yet.

  “Are you coming?” she asked and turned to go. “I’ll give you a penny.”

  After all, this was his street. There was his house only two houses away. And he would have another penny. He followed her. She shuffled toward a nearby house and labored slowly up the stoop. Her panting breath on the second step turned to groaning on the fifth. Above him the slow, wrinkled, cracked shoes stopped at the threshold. He drew up beside her.

  “We haven’t any more steps to climb,” she muttered, waiting for her loud breathing to quiet. “A curse on the black sleep that took me. When I awoke it was dark, and I, sodden with sleep, lit the candles. Too fuddled to look at the clock first, too dull to light the gas-stove. Woe me.” She wavered into motion again. A few steps through the hallway and she stopped before a door, opened it and went in. The kitchen, swept and drear, glaze worn from the linoleum; four candles glimmering above the heavy, red-and-white table-cloth. Odor of fish. Stagnancy.

  “First pull over a chair,” she said, “and light the gas up there. Can you reach the matches?”

  David pulled open the drawer she pointed to and found the box of matches; then he dragged a chair under the gas lamp and climbed up.

  “Do you know how?” she asked.

  “Yea.” He struck a match, turned on the gas and lit it.

  “Good! And now under the pots.”

  He lit those too.

  “Smaller,” she said. “Smaller. As small as small is.”

  When he had done this, she pointed to her purse on the table. “Take it,” she said and began nodding and nodded as if she couldn’t stop, “and take out a penny.”

  “I don’t want it—” he hung back.

  “Go! Go!”

  While she watched him, he fished out a penny.

  “Now close it.” And when he did. “You’re a good child,” she said. “May God bless you,” and she opened the door.

  VI

  NO, HE thought as he went out, she wasn’t a witch—just a 9th street old woman, that’s all. But even so, an unaccountable sadness thickened the joy he should have felt at getting another penny. Even if he hadn’t been turned into gingerbread, something had turned the heart heavy. Why? A sin, maybe? Yes, bet that’s why. But too young, she said. No. Bet nobody was too young. So which is the sin penny? He looked at them. Indian this. Lincoln this. Lincoln just got. But the cool air of the outdoors as he entered the street whipped away remorse as it whipped the nostrils clear of kitchen odors. He turned toward his house and quickened his step. Dusk was resuming the alley of the east. Smokestacks across the dark river had begun their pilgrimage into night. On the corner of Avenue D, the shadowy lamplighter with the pale, uplifted face was thrusting his long, glow-tipped lance into the hazy globe of the street lamp. David stopped a moment to see whether the gas inside and the mantle would catch. A faint puff and the globe filled with a yellow bloom. He climbed up the stairs of the stoop, wondering whether lamp-lighters were ever disturbed by their own sacrilege or whether they were all goyim. As he mounted the hallway stairs, the voices of boys drifted down.

  “So
yuh have tuh.”

  “Yuh don’!” another answered.

  “Id ain’ Shabis yet.”

  “Id is so. Id’s dock.”

  ‘Id’s dock in hea, but id ain’ Shabis.”

  Before the halt-open doorway of a water closet, inside of which a boy was squatting, stood two of his companions.

  “I am gonna tear it,” came the rebellious voice inside. “Dere ain’ nutt’n else.”

  And as David walked by the doorway, he saw the boy who was squatting on the seat inside tear a long swath out of one of the newspapers that littered the floor.

  “Now yuh god it!” said one of the onlookers vindictively.

  “An’ ids a double sin too,” added the other.

  “So w’y is id a double sin?” the squatter’s provoked voice demanded.

  “Cause it’s Shabis.” The righteous voice below meted out. “An’ dat’s one sin. Yuh can’t tear on Shabis. An’ because id’s a Jewish noospaper wid Jewish on id, dat’s two sins. Dere!”

  “Yea!” the other chimed in. “You’d a only god one sin if you tord a Englitch noospaper.”

  “Well, w’yntcha gimme a Englitch noospaper?” demanded the first voice disgustedly. “I ain’ goin’ haffee witchoo no more.”

  “So don’.”

  Their bickering voices faded below.

  —Looks every place, He. Knew I shouldn’t have lit the gas. One penny is bad. Real bad. But one penny is good. So that makes it even, don’t it? Maybe He won’t get mad. Gee, didn’t know He was so every place. How can he look in every dark, if He’s light—the rabbi said—and it’s real dark. How can He see in the real dark and we can’t see Him. What’s real dark? Real dark. Gee! That time—Annie—closet. Cellar—Luter. Sh! Don’t! Gee! Sin it was. Hurry up! Sin it was! Every place, sin it is. Didn’t know. Hurry up! Coal He touched him. Hurry up!

  Eagerly he glanced up at the transom above his door. It was unlit—stained only by indigo twilight. His heart sank. Then she was out—his mother was out—and only his father was there, asleep probably. He stopped irresolutely, hedged in by two fears, the dark and his father. He would have to wake him if the door was locked, and that—there was peril in that. The rungs of the shutters of memory snapped open and closed—a fragmentary fleeting image, but clear. Better run then, wait in the street until she came home. No. He would try the knob first—just once. He turned it; the door opened. That was strange. He tiptoed into a blue room, aware of a blue washboard on a blue washtub, aware of his father’s throaty breathing in the further bedroom. He sheered away from it—where was she?—and entered the front-room. She was sitting beside the window, her dark face in outline against the frosty blue of the pane. His heart leapt.