by Henry Roth
“Go call Esther!” She threw the apron from her at last and stooped down to button her shoes. “Hurry! Hurry! Call her out! Quick! Oh, if I get my hands on him! Oh, God help him. Quick! Oh, if I get him! Quick! Call her! You two mind the store. Call Mrs. Zimmerman if I don’t get back soon! Watch the cash drawers! Hurry, do you hear? He can’t have gone far! I’ll get him! I’ll make a scene in the middle of the street. I’ll drag him back by the hair! Hurry! Watch! The two-faced—” She rushed out of the store.
The other woman looked after her in amazement and then turned to Polly. “What’s the matter with your mother?”
“I don’t know,” was the morose answer. And then she went to the back of the store, threw open the kitchen door and screamed at someone inside.
“C’mon out, Esther! Poppa wen’ away! Momma wen’ away! Comm out! Comm on! Yuh hev t’ watch!”
XIX
AT THE second landing of the unlit hallway, the harsh stench of disinfectants rasped the grain of his nostrils. Behind that doorway where the voices of children filtered through, Mrs. Glantz’s brood had the measles. Upward and beyond it, wearily, wearily. And at the turn of the stairs, the narrow, crusted, wire-embedded window was open. He loitered again, stared down. In the greying yard below, a lean, grey cat leaped at the fence, missed the top and clawed its way up with intent and silent power. And he upward also, wearily.
—Her fault. Hers. Ain’t mine. No it ain’t. It ain’t. Ask anybody. Take a step and ask. Is it mine? Bannister-sticks, is it mine? Mine is … Mine ain’t … Mine is … Mine ain’t. Mine is … Mine ain’t … There! See! Chinky shows! Her fault. She said about him. Didn’t she? She told it to Aunt Bertha. Her fault. If she liked a goy, so I liked. There! She made me. How did I know? It’s all her fault and I’m going to tell too. Blame it on her. Yours Mama! Yours! Go on! Go on! Next! Next floor! Mama! Mama! Owoo!
And leaving the third landing where the stale reek of cabbage and sour cream filled the uncertain light, a low whimper forced its way through his lips and echoed with an alien treble in the hollow silence. And upward, clammy palms clinging to the bannisters and squealing in thin reluctance as they slid. And again the turn of the stairs and the open window framing a soft clarity with the new height. Across the alley, a face between curtains grimaced, tilted back; crooking fingers plucked the collar off.
—Stop hollerin’! Stop! You, inside, stop! Don’t know. They don’t know. Who told them? Tell me, who could’ve? Well, tell me? There! See! Polly didn’t tell—Esther wouldn’t let her. She ran after her. But maybe she didn’t catch. She did! She didn’t. She did! But even if—so what? Aunt Bertha wouldn’t tell. Aunt Bertha likes me. See? Aunt Bertha wouldn’t tell on me for a million, zillion dollars. Don’t she hate Papa? Didn’t she want me ’stead of them? Didn’t she? So she wouldn’t tell. Gee, ooh, God! ’Course she wouldn’t tell. So what? What am I scared of? (He leaned against the bannister in an ecstasy of hope) Nobody knows! Oooh, God, make nobody know! Go on then! Make believe nothing happened. Gee, nothing-but—but him. Rabbi? Aaa, he forgets. Sure he does! All the time. What’s he got to remember for? Go on, gee, God! Go on! But—but where were you? It’s way late. Me? Where was I? Got lost, that’s what. Way in the other side of Avenue A. Why? Thought it was the other side. That’s where I was. Go on! Oooh, God! Wish I broke a leg. Ow! Don’t! Yea! Sh!
The pale blue light of the transom obliquely overhead.
—Nobody—in?
He crept to his doorway, stiff ankle-joints cracking like gun-shots. A blur of voices behind the door.
—Sh! Who? Who’s there?
Pent breath trembling in his bosom, he leaned nearer, leaned nearer and poised for flight.
Someone laughed.
—Who? She? Mama? Yes! Yes!
Again, out of a mumble of voices, again the laugh—strained, nervous, but a laugh. Hope clutched at it.
—She! Laugh is hers! She don’t know! Don’t know nothing! Wouldn’t laugh if she knew. No! No! Don’t know! Can go!
His brain flew open as though a light were swung into it—
—Nobody knows! Can go!
Yet his whole being shied in terror when he reached out his hand for the door knob—
The door that clicked open, clicked shut upon their voices. And—
“David! David, child! Where have you been?”
“Mama! Mama!” But not soon enough could he fling himself into her bosom, not deep enough nest his eyes there before he saw in a blur of vision the bearded figure before the table.
“Mama! Mama! Mama!”
Only the sheltering valley between her breasts muffled his scream of fear to her heart. Convulsive, unerring hands flew up to her neck, sought and clasped the one upright pillar of this ruin.
“Hush! Hush! Hush child! Have no fear!” Her body rocked him.
And at his back, his father’s voice, morose, sardonic, “Yes, hush him! Comfort him! Comfort him!”
“Poor frightened one!” Her words came to him from her bosom and lips. “His heart is beating like a thief’s. Where have you been, life? I’m dead with anxiety! Why didn’t you come home?”
“Lost!” he moaned. “I was lost on Avenue A.”
“Ach!” She clasped him to her again. “Because you told a strange tale?”
“I was just making believe! I was just making believe!”
“Were you?” Behind him his father’s cryptic voice. “Were you indeed!”
He could feel his mother start. The heart beneath his ear begun to pound heavily.
“Hi! Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi!” From another corner of the room, the rabbi’s dolorous groan broke up into a train of sighs. “I see I have wrought badly coming here. No?” He paused, but none answered his question. Instead,
“Stop your whining, you!” his father snapped.
“But what was I to do?” The rabbi launched himself again. His voice, so uncommonly unctuous and placating, sounded strange to David’s ears despite his misery. “Had he been a dullard, a plaster golem, such as only the King of the Universe with his holy and bounteous hand knows how to bestow on me, would I have believed him? Psh! I would have said—Bah! Ox-brained idiot, away with this drool! And then and there would I have fetched him such a cuff on the jowls, his children’s children would have cried aloud! Hear me, friend Schearl, he would have flown from me like a toe-nail from a shear! But no!” His voice heightened, deepened, grew rich with huskiness. “In my cheder he was as a crown in among rubbish, as a seraph among Esau’s goyim! How could I help but believe him? A yarn so incredible had to be true. No? His father a goy, an organ-grinder—an organ player in a church! His mother dead! She met him among the corn—”
“What!” Both voices, but with what different tones!
“I said among the corn. You, Mrs. Schearl, his aunt! What! The like will not be heard again till the Messiah is a bride-groom. Speak! No?”
Again that silence and then as though the silence were creaking with its own strain, the ominous grating sound of a stretched cable, his father’s grinding teeth. Under his ear, the heavy beat of the heart tripped, fluttered, hammered raggedly. The stricken catch of the quick breath in her throat was like the audible sublimate of his own terror.
“But uh—uh—now it’s a jest, no? Uh—ah, what! A jest!” His hurried nails could be heard harrying his beard. “Not-eh-ah-poo! Not a doubt!” Stumbling at first, his speech began to tumble, growing more flustered as it grew heartier. “It’s your child now. No! It’s your child! Always! What’s there to be disturbed about? Ha? A jest! A tale of a—of a hunter and a wild bear! Understand? Something to laugh at! Ha! Ha—hey, scamp, there! You won’t gull me again! What these imps can’t invent! Ha! Ha! A jest, no?”
“Yes! Yes!” Her alarmed voice.
“Hmph!” Savagely from her husband. “You agree readily! Where did he get this story? Let him speak! Where did he? Was it Bertha, that red cow? Who?”
David moaned, grasped his mother closer.
“Let him alone, Albert!”
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“You say so, do you? We’ll find out!”
“But uh—you won’t hold it against me—uh—I mean that I told you. May God requite me if I came here trying to meddle, to stir up rancor. Yes! May I wither where I sit! Hear me! Not a jot did I care to pry! Let the feet grow where they list, I cared not! Not I! But I thought here am I his rabbi, and I thought it’s my duty to tell you—at least that you might know that he knew—and in what way he was made aware.”
“It’s all right!” She unclasped one arm. “I beg you don’t be disturbed.”
“Well then, good! Good! Ha! I must go! The Synagogue! It grows late.” The creak of his chair and scrape of his feet filled the pause as he rose. “Then you’re not angered with me?”
“No! No! Not at all!”
“Good-night then, good-night.” Hastily. “May God bestow you an appetite for supper. I shan’t trouble you again. If you wish I’ll start him on Chumish soon—a rare thing for one who has spent so little time in a cheder. Good-night to you all.”
“Good-night!”
“Hi-yi-yi-yi-yi-! Life is a blind cast. A blind caper in the dark. Good-night! Hi-i! Yi! Yi! Evil day!”
The latch ground. The door opened, creaked, closed on his hi-yi-ing footsteps. And of the silence that followed the beating of her heart condensed the anguish into intervals. And then his father’s voice, vibrant with contempt—
“The old fool! The blind old nag! But this once he wrought better than he knew!”
He felt his mother’s thighs and shoulders stiffen. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” he answered ominously. “No, on second thought I won’t need to tell you at all. It will tell itself. Answer me this: Where was my father when I married you?”
“Do you need ask me? You know that yourself—he was dead.”
“Yes, I know it,” was his significant retort. And his voice tightening suspiciously. “You saw my mother?”
“Of course! What’s come over you, Albert?”
“Of course!” he repeated in slow contempt. “Why do you smirk at me with that blank, befuddled look? I mean did you see her before I brought her to you myself?”
“What is it you want, Albert?”
“An answer without guile,” he snapped. “You know what I’m talking about! I know you too well. Did she come to you alone? In secret? Well? I’m waiting!”
As though her body were compelled to follow the waverings of an immense irresolution, she swayed back and forth, and David with her. And at last quietly: “If you must know—she did.”
“Ha!” The table slid suddenly along the floor. “I knew it! Oh, I know her nature! And she told you, didn’t she? And she warned you! Of me! Of what I had done?”
“There was nothing said of that—!”
“Nothing? Nothing of what? How can you be so simple?”
“Nothing!” she repeated desperately. “Stop tormenting me, Albert!”
“You wouldn’t have said nothing.” He pursued her relentlessly. “You would have asked me, what? What I had done? She told you!”
His mother was silent.
“She told you! Is your tongue trapped in silence? Speak!”
“Ach—!” and stopped. Only David heard the wild beating of her heart. “Not now! Not with him here!”
“Now!” he snarled.
“She did.” Her voice was wrung from her. “And she told me I ought not to marry you. But what difference—”
“She did! And the rest? The others? Who else!”
“Why are you so eager to hear?”
“Who else?”
“Father and mother. Bertha.” Her voice had become labored. “The others know. I never told you because I—”
“They knew!” he interrupted her with bitter triumph. “They knew all the time! Then why did they let you marry me? Why did you marry me?”
“Why? Because no one believed her. Who could?”
“Oh!” sarcastically. “Is that it? That was quickly thought of! It was easy to shut your minds. But she swore it was true, didn’t she? She must have, hating me afterwards as she did. Didn’t she tell you that my father and I had quarreled that morning, that he struck me, and I vowed I would repay him? There was a peasant watching us from afar. Didn’t she tell you that? He said I could have prevented it. I could have seized the stick when the bull wrenched it from my father’s hand. When he lay on the ground in the pen. But I never lifted a finger! I let him be gored! Didn’t she tell you that?”
“Yes! But, Albert, Albert! She was like a woman gone mad! I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now! Let’s stop now, please! Can’t we talk about it later?”
“Now that it’s all become clear to me you want to stop, is that it?”
“And why is it suddenly so clear?” her tone held a sharp insistence. “What is so clear to you? What are you trying to prove?”
“You ask me?” ominously. “You dare ask me?”
“I do! What do you mean?”
“Oh, the gall of your kind! How long do you think you’ll hide it! Will I be lulled and gulled forever? Must I tell you? Must I blurt it out! My sin balances another? Is that enough for you?”
“Albert!” her stunned outcry.
“Don’t call to me!” he snarled. “I’ll say it again—they had to get rid of you!”
“Albert!”
“Albert!” He spat back at her. “Whose is he? The one you’re holding in your arms! Ha? How should he be named?”
“You’re mad! Dear God! What’s happened to you?”
“Mad, eh? Mad then, but not a cheat! Come! What are you waiting for? Unmask yourself! I’ve been unmasked to you for years. All these years you said nothing. You pretended to know nothing. Why? You knew why! I would have asked you what I’ve just asked you now! I would have said why did they let you marry me. There must have been something wrong. I would have known! I would have told you. But now, speak! Speak out with a great voice! Why fear? You know who I am! That red cow betrayed you, didn’t she? I’ll settle with her too. But don’t think there was no stir in this silence. All these years my blood told me! Whispered to me whenever I looked at him, nudged me, told me he wasn’t mine! From the very moment I saw him in your arms out of the ship, I guessed. I guessed!”
“And you believe a child’s fantasy?” She spoke with a fixed flat voice of one staggered by the incredible. “The babbling? The wandering of a child?”
“No! No!” he bit back with a fierce sarcasm. “Not a bit of it. Not a word. How could I? It’s muddled of course. But did you want a commentary. Let him speak again. It might be clearer.”
“I’ve thought you strange, Albert, and even mad, but that was pride and that made you pitiful. But now I see you’re quite, quite mad! Albert!” She suddenly cried out as if her cry would waken him. “Albert! Do you know what you’re saying!”
“A comedienne to the end.” He paused, drew in the sharp breath of one marveling—“Hmph! How you sustain it! Not a tremor! Not a sign of betrayal! But answer me this!” His voice thinned to a probe. “Here! Here’s a chance to show me my madness. Where is his birth certificate? Ha? Where is it? Why have they never sent it?”
“That? Was it because of that one single thing your blood warned you so much? Why, dear God, they wrote you—my own father did. They had looked for it everywhere and never found it—lost! The confusion of departure! What other reason could there be?”
“Yes! Yes! What else could it be? But we—we know why it stayed lost, don’t we? It was better unfound! After all, was I there to see him born? Was I even there to see you bearing him? No! I was in America—on their money, notice! The ticket they bought me. Why were they so eager to get rid of me? Why such haste, and I not married more than a month?”
“Why? Can’t you see for yourself? There were nine in my family. Servants, others, outsiders began to know. They had hoped I would follow you soon. There was no money at home. The store was failing. The sons weren’t grown yet. Yo
u couldn’t send for me—”
“Oh, stop! Stop! I know all that! Who is it they began to know of—you or me?”
“Do you still persist? Of you, of course! Your mother went around telling everyone.”
“And they were ashamed, eh? I see! But now I’ll tell you my version. Here I am in America sweating for your passport, starving myself. You see? Thousands of miles away. Alone. Never writing to anyone only to you. Now! He’s born a month or two too soon to be mine—perhaps more. You wait that time. That month or two, and then, why then exactly on the head of the hour you write me—I have a son! A joy! Fortune! I have a son. Ha! But when you came across, the doctors were too knowing. Fool your husband, they said. You were frightened. Seventeen months were too few for one so grown. Twenty-one then! Twenty-one they might believe, and twenty-one of course I thought he was. There you are! Wasn’t that it? I haven’t forgotten. My memory’s good. An organist, eh? A goy, God help you! Ah! It’s clear! But my blood! My blood I say warned me!”
“You’re mad! There’s no other word!”
“So? But good enough for your kind. That’s what they reasoned back home—the old, praying glutton and his wife—Did you know an organist? Well, why don’t you answer?”
“I—oh, Albert, let me alone!” She moved David about frantically under her arms. “Let me alone in God’s name! You’ve heaped enough shame on me for nothing. It’s more than I can bear. You’re distraught! Let’s not talk about it anymore! Later! Tomorrow! I’ve suffered twice for this now.”
“Twice! Ha!” He laughed. “You’ve a gift for blurting things out! Then you knew an organist?”
“You claim I did!” Her voice went suddenly stony.
“Did you? Say it.”
“I did then. But that was—”
“You did! You did!” His words rang out again. “It fits! It matches! Why look! Look up there! Look! The green corn—taller than a man! It struck your fancy, didn’t it? Why, of course it would! The dense corn high above your heads, eh? The summer trysts! But I—I married in November! Ha! Ha!—Sh! Don’t speak! Not a word! You’ll be ludicrous, you’re so confounded!”
“And you believe? And you believe? This that you’re saying! Can you believe it?”
