Call It Sleep

by Henry Roth

  “Well, Reb Schulim!” The rabbi’s swarthy brow canted in triumph. “One glance was all he needed, and that was months and months ago! This!” His blunt finger drummed on David’s brow. “This has an iron wit! No?” His black beard seemed to shake out sparks of satisfaction.

  Reb Schulim tapped his cane against the bench. “A cherished seedling of Judah. Indeed!”

  “Now all of it!” The rabbi settled down to business. “Begin once more.”

  “Beshnas mos hamelech Uzuyahu vaereh es adonoi yoshaiv al kesai rom venesaw veshulav melayim es hahayhel Serafim omdim memal lo.” Not as a drone this time, like syllables pulled from a drab and tedious reel, but again as it was at first, a chant, a hymn, as though a soaring presence behind the words pulsed and stressed a meaning. A cadence like a flock of pigeons, vast, heaven-filling, swept and wheeled, glittered, darkened, kindled again, like wind over prairies. “Shaish kenawfayim shash kenawfayim leahod. Beshtyim yehase fanav uveshtayim.” The words, forms of immense grandeur behind a cloudy screen, overwhelmed him—“Yehase raglov uveshtayim yeofaif—”

  “As though, he knew what he read,” Reb Schulim’s husky speech. “That young voice pipes to my heart!”

  “If I weren’t sure—indeed, if I didn’t know him, I’d think he understood!”

  David had paused. The rabbi sat back, hands locked on his belly.

  “Vekaraw se el se vamar—”

  The head of the cane clicked against the table; a shadow glided over the page. Leaning forward with outstretched arm, Reb Schulim patted David’s cheek with chill fingers.

  “Blessed is your mother, my son!”

  (-Mother!) “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh adonoi tsevawos.” The words blurred. A howl of terror beat down all majesty. (-Mother!) “Mlo hol haeretz h-vo-do—” He stumbled. (-Mother!)

  “What is it?” The rabbi’s fingers unbraided upon his paunch and stretched out as if to seize.

  “Va-va- yaw-yaw noo-noo-” (-Mother!) Without answering, he suddenly burst into tears.

  “Hold! What is it?” His hasty hand clicked David’s chin up. “What makes you weep?”

  Reb Schulim’s large compassionate eyes were also on him: “Reb Yidel, I tell you he does understand.”

  David sobbed brokenly.

  “Come, answer!” Perplexity made the rabbi urgent. “One word only!”

  “My-my mother!” he wept.

  “Your mother—well?” Sudden alarm quickened his speech. “What of her? Speak! What’s happened!”

  “She—she’s!—”

  “Yes! Well!”

  He did not know what it was that compelled him to say it, but it was compulsion greater than he could withstand. “She’s dead!” He burst into a loud wail.

  “Dead? Dead? When? What are you saying!”

  “Yes! Ooh!”

  “Shah! Wait!” The rabbi stemmed his own confusion. “I saw her here. Why! Only—! What—! When did she die, I ask you?”

  “Long ago! Long ago!” His head rocked in the abandon of his misery.

  “Hanh? Long? Speak again!”

  “Long ago!”

  “But how could that be? How? I’ve seen her. She brought you here! She paid me! Tell me, what is long ago?”

  “That—that’s my aunt!”

  “Your—!” The breath jarred audibly against his throat. “But—but you called her mother! I heard you! She told me she was.”

  “She just says she is! Owooh! Just says! Just says! To everyone! Wants me to call her too—” A gust of grief blew his voice from him.

  “Aha!” In suspicious sarcasm. “What kind of a yarn are you telling? How do you know? Who told you?”

  “My aunt—my aunt told me!”

  “Which aunt? How many are there?”

  “Yesterday!” He wept. “No. Not—not yesterday. When you wanted to—to hit me. Then. That—that day, when I c-couldn’t read. She owns a candy st-store. She told me.”

  “On that day—Monday?”

  “Y-yes!”

  “And she told you? The other one?”

  “Yes! Owooh! She owns a c-candy-store.”

  “Ai, evil!”

  “Foolish woman!” Reb Schulim chided sadly. “To reveal this to a child.”

  “Pheh, foolish!” The rabbi spat disgustedly. “Sweet sister, the hussy! What business of hers was it? Squirming tongue! The gallows is due her! No?”

  Reb Schulim sighed, shook David gently: “Come, my child! Dry your tears! If it was long ago—then long ago already was too late for your weeping. Come! She no longer has ears where she lies there. God commanded it.”

  “Well, where’s your nose-rag?” The rabbi patted irritably among David’s pockets. “The gallows! Here!” He drew it out. “Blow!” And as he pinched David’s nose clean. “You don’t remember her then, do you? When did she die?”

  “No! I don’t—I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

  His brow knit in fresh perplexity. “Well, why aren’t you with your father? Where’s he?”

  “I—I don’t know!”

  “Hmpph! Did she say anything about him?”

  “She s-said he was a- a-”

  “What?”

  “I forgot! I forgot how to say it.” He wept.

  “Then think! Think. What was he, a tailor, a butcher, a peddler, what?”

  “No. He was— He was— He played—”

  “Played? A musician? Played what?”

  “A— A— Like a piano. A—A organ!” He blurted out.

  “An organ? An organ! Reb Schulim, do you see land?”

  “I think I see what is seen first, Reb Yidel. The spire.”

  “Mmm! Why aren’t you with him?” His voice was cautious.

  “Because—because he’s in Eu—Europe.”

  “And?”

  “And he plays in—in a— She says he plays in a ch-church. A church!”

  “Woe me!” He slumped back against his chair. “I foresaw it! You hear, Reb Schulim? When he said an organ-player, I—I knew! Oh!” his face lighted up. “Is that what you meant when you said spire—a church?”

  “Only that.”

  “Ha, Reb Schulim, would God I had your wisdom! And what do you think now?”

  Reb Schulim gravely flattened his grey beard against his coat. “There’s truth in an old jest.”

  “That a bastard is wise?”

  Reb Schulim hawked, hawked again more violently, spat under the table. For a second or two, the only sound in the room was the smeary scrape of his foot on the floor. “Let us hope they saw to it he was made a Jew.”

  “I’ll do more than hope.” With a righteous scowl, the rabbi scratched the blunt end of the pointer among the sparse hairs of his underlip. “I’ll do more!” He regarded David fixedly. “Er—David, mine, tell me this one thing more. Did she, that everlasting slut, that candy store muckraker, your aunt, did she tell you where—in what land your mother met the-er-the organ-player?”

  “She-she—yes— She said.”

  “Where?”

  “In where there was— there was c-corn.”

  “Where?” His brows drew together in ragged ridges.

  “Where corn was grow-growing. She said. Where corn was. They went there. She told me like—like that they went.”

  “Oy!” The rabbi sounded as though he were strangling. “Enough! Enough! Thank God you’re here, Reb Schulim! Else who would have believed me! Ai! Yi! Yi! Yi! Can you picture so foul, so degraded a she who would tell this to a child so young!”

  “A vile, unbridled tongue!”

  “Ach! Pheh!” the rabbi spat over the edge of the table. “The gallows I say! A black, uncanny death! But you—” he turned abruptly to David. “Go now! Weep no more! And hear me: Say nothing—nothing to anyone! Understand? Not a word.”

  “Yes.” He hung his head in misery.

  “Go!” Hasty fingers fluttered before him. David slid from the bench, turned, feeling their eyes pursuing him, and stumbled toward the door.

  The yard. They w
ere still lolling against the cheder wall.

  “Hooray! Hully Muzzis!” Izzy’s aggrieved voice greeted him. “He’s oud a’ready! Hooray!”

  David hurried toward the wooden stairs.

  “Hey, look, Iz, he’s cryin’!”

  “An’ jos’ my nex’ too!”

  “Waddee hitchuh fuh? Hey!”

  “Hey watsa madder!”

  The corridor muffled their cries. He fled through to the street. One wild glance at his house and he scurried west. A strange chaotic sensation was taking hold of him—a tumultuous, giddy freedom, a cruel caprice that made him want to caper, to skip, to claw at his hands, to pinch himself until he screamed. A secret wanton laughter kept arising to his lips, but never issued, gurgled in his throat instead with a gurgle of pain. He wanted to smirk at the people whom he neared, wanted to jeer, bray, whistle, double-thumb his nose—but dared not until they had passed. He rattled the loose spheres on the stanchions of stoops, struck the tassels of the awnings, set the chains before the cellars swinging, kicked the ash-cans.

  “Fugimbestit! Fugimbestit!” The pressure of his frenzy, too great to be contained seethed from his lips. “You! You! Watchuh lookin’! Yoop! Don’ step on de black line! Bing! Don’ step on de black line. Ain’t I ain’t! Ain’t I! Pooh fuh you too ’lilulibuh! Don’ step on de black line! I’m sommbody else. I’m somebody else—else—ELSE! Dot’s who I am. Hoo! Hoo! Johnny Cake! Blt! Dat’s fuh you! Blyoh! Stinker! Look out fuh de fox. Fox; fix fux, look out! Don’ step on de black line. Yoop! Take a skip! In de box! Yoop! Yoop! Two yoops! Yoop! Hi! Hop, skip an’ a yoop! Hi! Funny! Ow! Owoo!”

  At Avenue C, he ran blindly north.

  “Yoop! All busted lines. Here all busted. Watch oud! Watch oud! Hey, busted sidewalk, lousy, busted sidewalk, w’y yuh busted? Makes double jumps! Triple jumps! Fawple jumps. Fipple jumps. Yoop! Yoop! Triple! Fipple! Fipple! Kipple! Is a cake! Johnny cake! Why yuh busted? Touch a crack, touch a cella’, touch a cella’, touch a devil. He, black buggerunner! Busts it! Hee, yee! Va y’hee! V y’hee, wee, wee. Wee. Wee. Pee, pee! Pee, pee, tee tee! Yoop! sh! So watchuh lookin’? Make me step on it. Don’ count, devil, ’cause— Pee, pee, dere! Blya! Pee, pee, yea, gotta. Sommtime gotta. Gonna now! Naa! Yea! Gonna now. Take id oud! See! Look! Look! All de goils. Sh! Shattop! Wot I care. See! Hea id comes. Double dare yuh stop me. Double—”

  He stepped to the curb.

  “Izz wit! Zzz! Lager beeuh comms f’om—He said, Goy, sonn’va bitch! Goy sonn’vabitch! Leo sonn’vabitch! He said! Zzz! Ha! Piss higher! Look o’ my bow! Who cares! Ooh bedder! One bott’n, two bott’n! C’n jump now! Higher. Yoop! Yoop! Hi—”

  Tenth Street. The car-tracks. To the east the panel of the river, shore and hazy sky.

  “It follows! Run to elebent’. Run, run, Johnny cake! Yoop! Look o’ me ev’ybody! Watch me! No, no! Not me! Him! Him—me! Me—Him. Watchuh lookin’? Fuhgimbestit, it’s him! He fooled him! Ol’ smoke-mout’-stink! He fooled him, ol’ geezer. Wuz’n me. Him! He did it! I ain’t! I ain’ even! So tell. Can’t tell on me. I ain’. So tell! Tell her! Tell Tanta Berta! Tell my modder! I ain’! Yoop! Look o’ me-no-him-go! Look o’ him! Him! Him! Weewuth! Weeewuth! Ain’ even tiad! Ain’ even me! Elebent, a’reddy! Follers me it, water. Follers no me-him! Watchuh foller’n fuh? Lousy, bestitt, copycat river! Skidoo! Mind yuh own lousy biz! Beat it den, beat it, lousy! Beat, Beat it! Beat it! Yoop, Yowooh!”

  He ran screaming northward.…

  XVI

  THREADING his way among the hordes of children, hurdles of baby carriages, darting tricycles and skate-wheel skooters that cluttered the sidewalks of Avenue B, the squat, untidy Jew waddled northward on weak and flabby hams. He stooped slightly as he walked. Seen from the front, a glossy black beard hung suspended from a brown straw hat; the arms that were locked behind his buttocks furled both sides of his dull alpaca coat revealing a greasy insufficient vest that lapsed before reaching his belt; upon the spotted broad expanse of vest a broad watchchain stretched across the wide paunch, barely spanning the gap from pocket to pocket; between the vest and the belt, soiled, wrinkled shirt tails cropped out in a foliated ledge of linen. Seen from the side, baggy pants of indeterminate somberness swept upward and outward in a soft curve, bracket-wise to the overhanging shirt. Slant sun-light on his rear, alternate upon the worn-smooth, almost-lacquered cheeks and cylinders of his pants teetered with his teetering limbs and ricocheted. And he walked northward threading his way.

  Arrived at the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue B, he stopped to let an automobile pass, and made good the few seconds he whiled away by drawing out his watch. Under the pressure of thick and oily thumb, the case snapped open like a gold, obedient bivalve. He glanced at the face. Ten minutes to six. Hi! (He sighed mentally) Over an hour before sunset. There was time. There was time. None would gather in the synagogue before seven. There was time to spare. And he squeezed the gold lips clicking over the glint of white. But as he brought the watch near his vest pocket, his head snapped back, jarring his brown straw hat over his eye-brows and he sneezed. Shaken fingers missed the slit in the cloth. The time-piece bounced off his paunch and swung out on its gold chain like a pendulum. He cursed in Yiddish, clutched at it, hauled it in and thrust it rudely back into its place. And then retreating a step from the curb, bowed himself, and pinching his nostrils trumpeted their contents into the gutter. The mucus spattered into the dust like livid fleurs-delis. He reached for his grey handkerchief, buttoned his coat, (it was cool for July) and stepped forward again.

  Yi! Yi! Yi! He mused bitterly as his rambling fingers investigated the dryness of his beard. Nothing had gone right with him this day. Nothing. Uufortunate Jew! Was he not an unfortunate Jew? Dear God! Dear God! To sneeze when he holds a watch in his hand. Hi! Hi! Hi! True, it was chained to his person. But what if it was? Does the heart know that? The foolish heart! How it leaps with fright like a colt! And then finds out. A curse on it! On what, the heart? No, not the heart, the watch! No, not the watch either. Hi! Hi! Hi! He was getting stupid with his years. Not the watch, the event. A curse on the event! By all means! Hi-i! An evil day! And this morning when he crossed the gutter, engrossed in bad news (truly, the cause of it all, he reassured himself) engrossed him! Where was his brain that moment? Engrossed, he had caught his walking stick in the eye of a sewer-cover. May it be ground to a powder! Caught and broken it above the ferrule. And a dollar and thirty cents he had paid for it not so long ago, a dollar and thirty cents. From Labele Rifka’s, his cousin, and would it not be meet in the eyes of the Almighty that death befell Labele for selling him a broom-straw for a dollar and thirty cents? For that price, God would surely nod in assent. Broken it above the ferrule. And the brats had stood about him and laughed.…

  A curse on them! He glared about him at the children and half grown boys and girls who crowded the stoops and overflowed into the sidewalks and gutter. The devil take them! What was going to become of Yiddish youth? What would become of this new breed? These Americans? This sidewalk-and-gutter generation? He knew them all and they were all alike—brazen, selfish, unbridled. Where was piety and observance? Where was learning, veneration of parents, deference to the old? In the earth! Deep in the earth! On ball playing their minds dwelt, on skates, on kites, on marbles, on gambling for the cardboard pictures, and the older ones, on dancing, and the ferocious jangle of horns and strings and jigging with their feet. And God? Forgotten, forgotten wholly. Ask one who Mendel Beiliss is? Ask one, did he shed goyish blood for the Passover? Would they know? Could they answer? Vagabonds! Snipes! Jiggers with their feet! Corrupt generation! Schmielike, his own grandchild, lifting a nickel from his purse. (Ah, but he fetched him a few sterling whacks when he caught him. A few, but good ones.) And his wooden pointers stolen from his cheder. And those brats in the street laughing when he broke his walking stick. An ageing man and they had jeered at him. And that lout especially, may he break his bones before the rest; asking him if he had lost a ball, in the foul water below. He, a rabbi
, an ageing man. Hi! Hi! May a tumor in his belly and a tumor in his head grow to be as big as that ball. Mocking an ageing man. Yiddish youth! Turdworth. Exactly so was his own boyhood in Vilna, in Russ-Poland. Ex-a-actly so-o! Others went sliding on sleds. Not he. Others slid on the ice with the goyim. Not he. They stuck pins into each other in the cheder. Not he. Hi! He had scarcely ever laughed even in his youth. Pogroms. Poverty. What was there to laugh at? Reb R’fuhl was his rabbi then. That was a rabbi! No random cuff did you get from him when he was vexed. No mild pinch on the jowl. Ha, no! When he was angered, he flogged, and when he flogged he took their pants down and spread the flap of their drawers—and all so slowly and with what sweet words. Hi! Ha! Ha! That was a sight to behold! They remembered it those young ones. Not the watery discipline that he enforced. That’s what was ruining this generation, watery discipline. Hi! And he, himself a rabbi now, he had held the culprit’s legs while the straps sank into the white buttocks. There was a kind of pleasure then in hearing another howl, in watching another beaten, seeing the naked flesh squirm and writhe and the crack of the buttocks tighten under the biting thongs. A kind of pleasure, but it had passed now, dulled with over-use he supposed. Hi! Hi!…

  An evil day.…

  And at noon, he had quarreled with Ruchel, his daughter, over the chicanery of her husband, Avrum, the butcher. Cold-storage liver he was selling and palming it off for fresh. A snide generation. Why should the children be better than their fathers? No sanctity anywhere, no faith. It’s kosher, she said. Ruchel his daughter, his thorn. It tastes just as good. In food there should be some trust, he had answered. If you were selling walking sticks sell the flawed, the warped, the brittle. Say nothing, tell nothing. But what enters the mouth, there you must betray no trust. If you’re selling “treifes” say it is “treife” and men will hold you a man. If you’re selling cold-storage for fresh—But it’s kosher, she had said. Of course it’s kosher, he had answered. Liver is kosher till it rots. It needs no washing before the third day. No salting. Even a goy knows that. Hi! Hi! My daughter, my daughter! It’s good. It tastes good you say. There was a Jew traveling toward Odessa and he ate in an inn without knowing what he ate. Good beef he called it. Savory gravy. And they told him—what? They told him it was horsemeat. And hi-hi-hi my daughter—it tastes good. And how far is the step from cold storage meat to meat not kosher and how far is the step from meat not kosher to pig’s flesh? Hi! Hi! Hi! My daughter! You’ll drive me into the deep earth with a weight of shame. May your head drop off from your shoulders, and your husband’s head beside it. My daughter …