Later that afternoon the apartment filled with my father’s friends. They came with their wives and children. The adults sat in the living room and I brought the very little children, nine of them, into my bedroom. I told them stories about Noah and the animals in the ark; about Og clinging to the roof of the ark and promising to serve Noah for saving his life; about Abraham and the idols. They sat on the bed and on the floor, listening attentively. I wondered if I should tell them the story about the Golem of Prague but I thought it might frighten them to hear it and in the end I did not tell it.
When my throat began to hurt with all the storytelling, I took out some of my simple games and let them play by themselves. Then I came out of my bedroom and stood in the small corridor near the doorway to the living room. I poked my head out from behind the portiere and had a clear view of the room. It made no difference that my head could be easily seen by everyone in the room; it was as if I were not there.
The room was jammed with people, men and women my parents’ age. My aunt and uncle were there, as were Saul and some of his friends. I could barely see the rug and the parquet floor for the people. Chairs had been brought in from the kitchen and the dining room. A dozen conversations were going on simultaneously, most of them in Yiddish, some in accented English. Occasionally I heard what sounded like a Polish word. The conversations were animated, loud, people speaking at the tops of their voices. Words were accompanied by lively gesticulations. The windows were open but the room was very hot. The men sat in their jackets and collars and ties; all had on skullcaps. The women sat in their summer dresses and wide-brimmed flowery hats. In the easy chair to the left of the sofa sat my father; that was my father’s chair; no one else ever sat in it, just as no one else sat in his dining room and kitchen chairs. He wore his dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. To his right sat the man who had arrived this past week from Poland; next to him sat a thin, dark-haired, nervous woman who kept glancing around with a look of fatigue and disbelief in her eyes. The two of them were seated on the large sofa with my aunt and uncle. My mother sat in the easy chair across from my father. On the coffee table and the end tables were bowls of fruit and nuts and candies and cakes. The sounds of nutcrackers punctuated the loud conversations. Through it all my father sat in his chair, his gray eyes occasionally moving across the faces of the people in the room. The scar on his cheek was a dull thick whitish furrow in the afternoon stubble that covered his face. Sometimes he would abruptly join a conversation in this or that section of the room, speaking from his chair in his loud voice to agree or disagree with a point that had just been made. From time to time the newcomer would lean forward and say something to my father, and my father would nod and smile and pat his arm. Once a man came over and whispered into my father’s ear, and my father rose and went with him into another room. A few minutes later they returned and my father resumed his seat. He ate an apple; he cracked open and consumed a walnut; he regarded for a long moment the woman sitting next to the newcomer, then he leaned over and spoke softly to the newcomer and once again patted his arm. The newcomer smiled, gave my father a look of gratitude. I stood there, listening and watching. You never saw anything like it, I heard someone say. Wall Street goes up and up without end. In Warsaw we could already hear the Bolshevik artillery, I heard someone say. Max was clever, I heard someone say. He pivoted at the marsh and hit the flank and that was the beginning of the end for those Cossack bastards. It’s a golden land if you have brains and luck, I heard someone say. General Electric, someone said. I prefer radio, someone else said. They wanted to water their horses in the Dnieper, those crazy Poles, someone said. So the Bolsheviks kicked their behinds back to Warsaw. Without Pilsudski the Muscovites would be in Warsaw today, someone said. Pilsudski had help, someone said. Don’t forget Weygand and the French officers. What heat, someone said. When did we ever have such heat in Lemberg? What doctor do you use? someone said. No, besides Weidman; for the eyes, I mean. Were you with Max when we trapped those Cossacks? someone said. Sure, you were there. I remember. You brought up the mules with the ammunition. Did you ever see such a look of surprise on a Cossack’s stinking face before? Clever, that Max, someone said. Very clever. There were more than a hundred of those bastards. We counted the bodies. A small payment for what they did in Lemberg. These apples are delicious, someone said. Ruth, where do you buy your apples? How long can it continue to go up? someone said. Forever, someone said. Why not? It’s America.
I moved back from the doorway and returned to my room. I lay down on my bed and watched the little children play.
Later, I walked with Saul to the zoo. A few minutes before sunset he brought me back to the corner of my street. “Have a good trip tomorrow, Saul.” He and his parents were leaving early tomorrow morning for their place in the mountains. They had a cottage near ours, and they sometimes went on summer vacation earlier than we did.
He gave me a hug. I felt his long thin arms embrace me. “Take care of yourself, Davey. Don’t get sick.”
“I’ll miss you, Saul.”
“It’ll only be one or two weeks. That’s nothing, Davey. I’ll see you in one or two weeks. Maybe your father will let you go horseback riding.”
I watched him walk away along the side street toward the boulevard, thin and gangly and walking quickly so he could make it to the synagogue in time to pray the Afternoon Service before the setting of the sun. After a moment I turned and walked home.
The door to the right of the stairway opened silently as I passed it. Mrs. Horowitz stepped out. She glanced around the entrance hall. Then she put cold bony fingers on my arm and leaned toward me.
“Be careful, David,” she said in a whisper. “I heard them talking. The two creatures.”
I stared at her and felt the sudden loud beating of my heart.
“They want to hurt you. But we are not without defenses. There are things that can be done. Spittle is a possibility. But we must find a man who is fasting. Also your name can be changed. That deceives them sometimes.”
Her breath was foul. I wanted to get away from her. She clutched my arm.
“I will help you,” she breathed. “But watch yourself.”
Within the shadows inside her apartment something huge and dark moved suddenly and I saw it was her dog. He moved toward the door and stood behind her, peering up at me, breathing heavily in the heat.
“Good Shabbos, David,” she said. “Do not worry. They are powerful, but we will defeat them. Isn’t this heat terrible? If it is this hot on the thirteenth, we will have hot weather all of Tammuz, Av, Elul, and Tishri. Yes. That’s the truth. Good Shabbos.” She squeezed my arm, stepped back, and silently closed the door.
I ran upstairs.
Later, I listened to my father chant the Havdalah Service. The candle trembled in my hand. The huge flame danced and gyrated and curled upward toward the kitchen ceiling. “The Lord of hosts is with us,” my father chanted in his loud voice. “The God of Jacob is our refuge. The Jews had light and joy and gladness and honor. So may it be with us.” My brother stood alongside my mother, staring at the flame of the candle. I looked through the flame at my father’s face. He concluded the service and gave me and then my brother to drink from the cup of wine. He poured what was left of the wine into a dish and doused the flame in it. Acrid smoke filled the air.
“A good week,” my father said in a loud voice.
“A good week,” my mother said. She kissed my brother. I felt her dry lips on my forehead. “A good week, my son,” she said. Then, her lips still upon my forehead, she murmured almost inaudibly, “Armimas, rmimas, mimas, imas, mas, as.”
“I have to see Meyer yet tonight,” my father said. “I need a glass of coffee, Ruth.”
“I wish we could leave with them tomorrow,” my mother said.
“Go alone with the children.”
“No.”
“I have two more jobs to find. For Sender’s brother and brother-in-law. It will take a few days. A week.”
&nb
sp; My mother said nothing.
“They depend on me,” my father said.
Still my mother said nothing.
“They are like little sheep,” my father said. “Didn’t you see them?”
My mother sighed.
“It is my responsibility to do it,” my father said. “A man cannot ignore the job given him by his life. I am not to blame if goyim kill Jews. I can only be blamed if I do not do my best to help my friends who have been hurt. God in heaven, Ruth, I really need a glass of coffee.”
I lay awake a long time in my bed that night, staring through the darkness at my crippled tricycle. I thought of Eddie Kulanski and his cousin and the statue in front of the Catholic church. I wondered what the Golem of Prague might have done to Eddie Kulanski’s cousin.
He brushed by me the following Monday morning as I sat on the chair near my brother’s carriage, and whispered an obscenity. Then he went over and stood leaning against the tree watching Eddie Kulanski and Tony Savanola playing a game of marbles near the stoop. He did not play with his knife; he merely leaned against the tree. From time to time he would look at me. Then he would look back at the marbles game.
I closed my eyes and sat very still, feeling the warm morning sun on my face. On my lap were the comics from Sunday’s newspapers which the janitor of our building had picked out of the trash cans for me.
“Here you are, sonny,” he had said when I had gone down to the basement earlier that morning. “We got them all.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ryan.”
“You wouldn’t be thinking of an accident with that new dog now, would you?” he asked, and a cornflower-blue eye winked in his pink face.
“Oh, no.”
“That dog’s a real pain in the ass, sonny. Okay. You got any hard words, you come and ask me. Hot as hell today, ain’t it.”
I thanked him again.
“Pain in the ass dog,” he had muttered. “Where does the old witch find them?”
The comics lay on my lap. I was using them to teach myself to read English. They lay unread. I did not want to have to look at Eddie Kulanski’s cousin. I sat with my eyes closed and my face to the sun. After a while I opened my eyes and raised the comics so that they blocked my view of Eddie Kulanski’s cousin. I saw him slide out from behind the newspaper to my left and lean against the apartment house near Mrs. Savanola’s window. He stood there, leaning against the house and watching me.
I put the comics on my lap and closed my eyes. A moment later I opened my eyes and saw him standing near me, peering into my brother’s carriage. He moved smoothly away and went over to the tree. I felt my legs trembling.
After lunch I walked to Mr. Steinberg’s candy store to buy a shoe leather. Outside I stood at the newsstand for a while, looking at words in the Yiddish and English newspapers and sucking at the pressed apricot candy. Then I moved away from the newsstand toward my house. Something very hard struck my left shoulder, spun me completely around, and sent me to the pavement. I threw out my hands to shield my fall and felt the skin of my palms scrape against the ground.
“Jesus Christ!” I heard Eddie Kulanski’s cousin say in a very loud voice, loud enough for him to be heard by Mr. Steinberg and the old man on the chair and the nearby children. “I’m really sorry, kid. I didn’t see you. I was just running up the block here. It was an accident.”
He even helped me to my feet, his pointed features piously solicitous and concerned.
“You okay?” he said. His pale gray eyes regarded me.
There was a small cut in my left palm. My right palm and both knees were scraped. My apricot candy lay on the sidewalk.
“Sorry, kid,” Eddie Kulanski’s cousin said. “Really sorry. You want me to buy you another shoe leather?” His cold eyes clearly warned against my taking his offer seriously.
I shook my head. He turned and ran lightly up the block and stopped beneath the maple in front of the house.
I went upstairs. My mother washed the scrapes and bandaged the cut.
“On purpose?” she said. “How do you know it was on purpose?”
“He’s bothering me, Mama. I think it was on purpose.”
“I’ll talk to your father.”
“I’ll have a talk with the Kulanski boy’s father,” my father said when he came home that evening. He left the apartment I went into my room and lay down on my bed. The tricycle was gone; my father had taken it to be repaired. It was very hot inside my room. The air seemed fetid, as if Mrs. Horowitz’s odor had somehow risen to our apartment. I was afraid my father and Mr. Kulanski would fight. I heard the front door open. I came quickly into the kitchen.
“The boy denies everything,” my father said. “Are you sure, David?”
“Mrs. Horowitz said she heard them talking and thinking of ways to bother me.”
“Mrs. Horowitz! Don’t bring me evidence from that lump of cow! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? It would have saved me a trip upstairs.”
The next morning Eddie Kulanski came over to me. “You have an accident yesterday?” His gray eyes were cold.
I said nothing.
“Too bad,” he said. He brushed pale blond hair from his eyes. A little smile formed on his lips. “My father says accidents happen all the time.”
He walked on up the block, imitating the light bouncy step of his cousin, and disappeared around the corner.
I sat on my chair near my brother’s carriage. Tony Savanola came outside and offered to play a game of marbles with me. I shook my head. He shrugged and went off to join a group of children down the street.
Joey Younger ran by, ignored me, and went into the house.
I closed my eyes and peered into the white-gold world the sun made upon my eyelids. The air was hot.
That afternoon I walked along the side street to the boulevard, asked a middle-aged woman to help me across to the other side, and entered the zoo. I fed my billy goat and caressed his moist nose and silky head. I came home and went upstairs and played alone in my room. Then I went downstairs and sat next to my brother’s carriage.
“Zhid,” Eddie Kulanski said quietly, coming up to me. “Zhid.”
I did not understand what he was saying. I closed my eyes to shut him out. When I opened my eyes I saw his cousin standing near the tree, watching me. I kept my eyes open until my mother came down to bring my brother upstairs.
“You see, Mama?” I said, and nodded my head at Eddie Kulanski’s cousin.
She gazed at him. “I’ll tell your father.”
“He stands there and looks?” my father said later that day. “That is all? You want me to tell him he cannot stand in the street?”
“He’s bothering me.”
“How is he bothering you?”
“He keeps staring at me. Sometimes he tosses the pocketknife at the tree.”
“There is no law against carrying a pocketknife.”
“He scares me, Papa.”
“Yes,” he said. “I see that. So tell yourself not to be scared. Let him stand there and waste his time, the idiot What does it matter to you?”
The next morning Eddie Kulanski’s cousin began tossing a Spalding ball against the wall of the house. In one of his throws the hard pink ball narrowly missed my head. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “An accident.” He went on tossing the ball. I got up, moved my chair and my brother’s carriage a few feet away from him, and sat down. He moved over toward me and continued tossing the ball.
“Get away,” I said.
“Shit on you, kid,” he said in a quiet voice. “You stupid kike.”
“I’ll call my mother.”
“Go ahead, kid.” He eyed the carriage. “Go ahead.”
I got up and moved the carriage beneath our front windows and called up to my mother. Tony Savanola and Eddie Kulanski had stopped their bottle-cap game and were looking at me. My mother came to the window. I turned my head in time to see Eddie Kulanski’s cousin round the corner near Mr. Steinberg’s candy store and disappear.
He
was back after lunch, leaning against the tree, waiting, the little smile on his lips. I went on up the block and along the side street. A man helped me across the boulevard. I entered the zoo. I fed my little billy goat. I walked along the meadow, past the pond, and into the wood. The air was cool and shadowy. I sat on the fallen tree that lay across the path near which my brother had seen the dead bird on the Sunday of the picnic. There was a humming in the air: the pulsing of insect life, the soft whispers of the trees. I sat on the trunk with my eyes closed and listened to the wood and sensed within myself a strange, quivering sensation. I wondered if that was what you felt when you experienced the feeling called hate.
The heat was stifling. On the sidewalk later that morning I played a marbles game with some boys my age who lived in the house near Mr. Steinberg’s store. Eddie Kulanski’s cousin edged over to the game and kept looking at me. Later, I sat in the chair near my brother’s carriage and saw him near the tree. I closed my eyes and prayed he would disappear. I opened my eyes and he was still there leaning against the tree, that little smile on his lips, looking at me out of his half-closed eyes.
Mrs. Horowitz came out of her apartment as I entered the hall. Her dog walked behind her, panting in the heat. She opened the front door and he slipped outside. Then she peered at me.
“You will have no more trouble from them,” she said. “I have found it. Erase them from your mind.”
I was tired and wanted to go upstairs.
“Perhaps one day you will come into my house and let me give you a glass of milk and a cookie,” she said. “I have good cookies. A recipe from my mother. Sugar cookies. Do you think you would like that?”
I nodded vaguely.
“No one comes into my house,” she said. “Do you know what it’s like when no one comes into your house? It’s like living with the Angel of Death. My son loves more the goyim than he does his own mother. You will come in one day, yes? For milk and cookies.”
I nodded again.
“And do not worry yourself anymore about those two. I have taken care of the matter.”