I told him nothing was the matter.
“Hey, is it true your father killed more than a hundred Cossacks in the war?” another of the boys said.
I looked at him.
“What’s the matter with you?” I heard Saul’s sudden angry voice.
Behind me there was a sudden increase in the volume of noise as prisoners in a game of ringaleveeo were freed and went racing wildly through the yard.
“Never mind,” someone said.
“Is that Tremont and Webster, opposite the telephone building?” someone else asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s gonna be a church. A Protestant church.”
“My janitor said it was for the Catholics.”
“There’s a sign in front that says ‘Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church.’ Something like that.”
“It’s the Catholics.”
“What’s a sacred heart?”
“I don’t know. I don’t interest myself in such matters.”
I edged away from them and went over to the chain-link fence. The public school play yard was deserted. By putting my face flush up against the fence, I could see the gray stone front of the church and, immediately beyond it, the gray stone school building. The crucifix on the angled tile roof of the church jutted starkly into the gray sky. The church and the school stood directly on the street, without an intervening lawn. I could not see any statues. As I stood there against the chain-link fence, one of the tall front doors of the church opened and a man stepped out and went quickly down the half-dozen front steps and started on up the block. He was coatless and wore a dark suit and hat. Halfway up the block, I saw he was a priest. He had a smooth pink face and pale eyebrows and gray-blond hair. He was of medium height and heavy-shouldered. I stood there watching him go by on the street outside the chain-link fence. The street was deserted. He was walking quickly and seemed to be hugging the fence. He passed within two feet of where I stood inside the fence, and I felt a strange chill of dread seeing him so close to me. He stopped near the mailbox on the corner of Washington Avenue, checked the traffic, crossed the street, and went on along the side street toward the elevated train. A few moments later the whistle blew and the recess was over. The yard began to empty out immediately.
On my way through the metal double door that led into the building from the yard, someone pinched my left buttock very hard. I turned quickly to the left and saw no one near me, then turned to the right and saw Larry Grossman rushing along a few feet ahead of me; then he turned to the right and went into our classroom.
I felt a choking sensation in my throat. I waited in the corridor for a moment. Mrs. Rubinson was calling the class to attention. I slipped inside and took my seat. Larry Grossman was busily turning the pages of his notebook and did not look at me.
I stared across the rows of seats to my left at the reddish brick apartment house that bordered the school yard. Above the apartment house dark gray clouds lay like dirty milk across the sky. Inside the classroom the air was hot and stale. I itched with heat and discomfort. Mrs. Rubinson stood at the blackboard in a long-sleeved, high-necked dark blue dress and pronounced letters and vowels. The class imitated her pronunciation. Again, she wrote letters and vowels on the blackboard and we copied them into our notebooks. Then she called on someone to read. I turned to the last page in the textbook, read it through quickly to myself, and turned back to the page the class was reading. I had read the entire book the day before, soon after I had returned home. It had not taken me too long to do that. I listened to the students read. After a while I closed my eyes and went into the zoo and fed my billy goat. Then I walked about in the meadow and stopped to watch the fish in the pond. They swam slowly and smoothly in the dark water. Then I went to the movie house in the town near our cottage and saw the Charlie Chaplin film about the cleaning man in the bank. I was watching another Charlie Chaplin movie we had seen in the past summer about a floorwalker in a department store when I heard Mrs. Rubinson call on me to read. I opened my eyes, took a quick look at the finger of the boy sitting next to me, turned the page, and read. When the bell rang for lunch and the end of the Hebrew studies segment of the day, Mrs. Rubinson asked me to stay behind for a moment.
The classroom emptied quickly. I stood next to Mrs. Rubinson’s desk. She was gathering up her notebooks and attendance book. The textbook we studied from was open on her desk to the last letter we had learned. She looked tired. Strands of graying hair had come loose from the bun that sat like a cupola on the back of her head.
“Well,” she said, sitting back in her chair and smiling wearily. “What are we going to do with you, David Lurie?”
I stood near her and did not understand what she was saying. She smelled vaguely of sweat. Her eyes were brown and there were tiny wrinkles in their corners. She closed her eyes for a moment and I saw tiny winding rivulets of veins on her eyelids. Then she opened her eyes, turned to the last page of the book, and asked me to read. I read swiftly to the foot of the page. She nodded and shut the book.
“Parents do not do their children a favor when they teach them to read too early,” she said.
I looked at her nervously. “My papa and mama didn’t teach me to read. I teached myself to read.”
“I taught myself to read,” she corrected automatically.
“Yes, Mrs. Rubinson. I taught myself to read.”
A group of students went running through the corridor outside the classroom. The floor trembled.
Mrs. Rubinson shook her head and put the textbook on top of the pile of books and notebooks. She leaned sideways, opened a bottom drawer in her desk, and pulled out a thin book with a pale blue cover. She shut the drawer. “Let’s do each other a favor, David. I’ll give you books to take home and read, and you’ll sit at your desk and not go to sleep. All right?”
“I wasn’t sleeping, Mrs. Rubinson.”
“You won’t sit at your desk with your eyes closed, then. It disturbs me to see one of my students sitting at his desk with his eyes closed.”
“Can I read these books in class, too, Mrs. Rubinson?”
She hesitated. “We’ll see,” she said tiredly. “Read this book at home first and when you’ve finished with it bring it back to me and we’ll sit and discuss it. Now go have your lunch before there’s nothing left for you to eat. If you get any skinnier than you are now you may become a shadow. Go ahead, David.”
I read the book at home that night and brought it up to her at the start of the mid-morning recess the next day. She stared at me. She had long bony fingers and they fluttered for a moment in the air over her attendance book, which lay closed in a corner on top of the desk.
“Sit down, David.”
I sat at the desk directly in front of her.
“Tell me what the book is about, David.”
I told her.
“Read the last page of the book, David.”
I read the last page of the book.
“Did you like the book, David?”
I shrugged.
There was a brief silence. She daubed at her long upper lip with a lace-edged handkerchief. I thought I heard a faint sigh escape from her, but I was not certain. The windows were open. The din of the recess in the school yard came into the classroom like the sounds made by heavy rains and winds when they lashed the forest in back of our cottage.
She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and gave me another book to read. Then she sent me outside to the yard.
During the period after the recess, she asked me to sit with one of the students in the back of the room and help him review his reading. I sat and listened to him read quietly. He wore thick glasses and seemed to have difficulty recognizing the vowel notations. I wondered if he was able to see them. He had irregular teeth and sour breath. We sat together at one of the desks and he droned his way haltingly through the letters.
On the way to the lunchroom later that morning, Larry Grossman shouldered past me in the corridor, hissed into my ear, ??
?Shmucky teacher’s pet,” and sent me heavily into a wall. I dropped my briefcase. The fall jarred it open and my notebooks and pencils spilled out onto the linoleum floor of the corridor. I leaned against the wall, catching my breath and trying to keep my quivering legs straight and firm. Some of my classmates were picking up the notebooks and pencils and putting them back into my briefcase.
“It’s all back inside, Davey,” one of them said, and handed me the briefcase. He spoke in Yiddish.
“That’s a wild animal,” another said, also in Yiddish. “You ought to tell Mrs. Rubinson.”
“How will that help?” the first one said. “He’ll say it was an accident.”
“He’s a wild animal,” the other said. “A dumb wild animal.”
“I heard he has an older sister that’s deaf and dumb,” the first one said.
“We’d better go eat before there’s nothing left,” said the other.
“What do you carry your briefcase to lunch for?” the first one asked me. “We go back to the same room.”
“I like to keep it with me.”
They looked at each other.
We went down together to the lunchroom, washed our hands at one of the sinks outside the doors, said the blessing, and went inside. I found an empty place on a bench and sat down. A woman brought me a bowl of reddish soup in which pale green and dull yellow vegetables floated like dead fish.
“This is the second time you are late for lunch,” the woman said. She was middle-aged and wore an apron. “The way you look, you should be here first not last.”
In the trolley car I said to Saul, “I didn’t see you in the yard at recess.”
“I was inside helping my teacher.” He was quiet for a moment. I stared out the window at the smoke and the traffic and the crowded sidewalks. I could feel him looking at me. “You ought to find your own friends, Davey. It’s not good for you to be with me all the time.”
I did not say anything. But I felt cold. The school had begun to change everything. I did not like the school. It had taken me away from my world and given me nothing in return. It was not even really teaching me anything. The trolley stopped. I looked out the window at a passing horse and wagon. People were pushing through the crowded trolley to get to the doors. We would be getting off at the next stop. The doors closed and the trolley started up again. It made the wide sweeping turn and there was the zoo to our right. It rolled on for a block and came to a stop.
Saul helped me off and walked with me quickly across the boulevard to the sidewalk in front of the church. We crossed the side street.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, went back across the side street and on toward his house.
I stood on the street corner, waiting. Eddie Kulanski had not been on our car. I waited until two more trolleys had stopped and disgorged their passengers. Then I went home.
My father had gone directly from his office to a meeting of the Am Kedoshim Society somewhere downtown. I ate with my mother and brother. How was school? my mother wanted to know. I shrugged. She sighed and moved quietly about the kitchen.
“Davey go to school,” my brother said from his high chair.
I looked at him. He was making white mud pies out of his mashed potatoes, taking little globs and arranging them on the tray of his chair.
“Davey read books,” he said happily, his face beaming.
I said nothing.
“Books books books,” my brother said. “Alex wants books.”
I ignored him. My father had told me they would be moving him into my room soon; he was getting too old to be sleeping in the same room with my parents. I did not understand that; but the look on my father’s face when he had told me made it clear that it was not the kind of decision I should question. I ate quickly and went into my room and read the book my Hebrew teacher had given me. When I was finished with it I closed it and stared out my window at the leaves of the maple. Some of the leaves had begun to turn. A few had fallen. The sky was taking on the slate coloring of the coming night. Why weren’t any of the books she gave me as exciting as the stories Saul used to tell me about Noah and Abraham or the Golem of Prague? I sat at the window, looking down at the street.
My mother came into my room later that evening. I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. She sat down on the edge of my bed and kissed my forehead and cheek. She smelled of the soap she had used to wash the supper dishes.
“I have the feeling,” she said slowly, “that my little David is not very happy.”
I shrugged my shoulders under the blanket and sheet.
“David,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, Mama.”
“Of course nothing is the matter. And the sun will not rise tomorrow. And it will not be Rosh Hashanah in two weeks and Yom Kippur ten days later. You walk around with your nose to the ground like one of the elephants in the zoo.”
I closed my eyes and was quiet.
There was a long silence. A horse and wagon clattered by on the street below. Warm humid air blew in through my open window.
I heard her sigh softly and felt her stir on my bed. “I am sure of one thing,” she said. “I am sure that after one week in school my little David has forgotten the names of the trees he learned in the summer.”
My eyes flew open. “No,” I said, and sat up in the bed.
“No? I do not believe it.”
“Test me, Mama.”
“It’s impossible that my David would remember the trees.”
“Test me, test me!”
“All right, darling. Mama will give you a test. Is this your first test since you began school? A strange test. What tree is shaped like a cone, has branches that go up, and needles that are flat?”
“A fir tree!” I said. “A fir tree, Mama!”
“Not so loudly. You’ll wake your brother and I’ll give you the pleasure of putting him back to sleep. What tree is shaped like a pyramid—you remember I told you about the Children of Israel in Egypt and the pyramids they built?—and has short needles that it loses in the winter?”
“A larch, Mama.”
“Yes. Very good. A larch. And what tree has a short stem and a head that is shaped like an egg?”
“An elm, Mama. An elm tree. The elm where you read books in the summer.”
She gazed at me and was quiet a moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “An elm tree. And what tree has twigs and leaves and branches that droop toward the ground like my David these past few days and makes you think that it is crying?”
“A willow,” I said in a low voice.
“Yes,” she said. “A willow. And why does my David look like a willow? Will he tell me?”
“Mama?”
“Yes, darling.”
“I don’t like school too much.”
She was quiet.
“I don’t learn anything and I don’t have any friends and there is a boy who picks on me.”
She sat very still on my bed, her tired face pale beneath the dark combed-back straight hair.
“And I miss you, Mama. And the trees. And the zoo.”
She stirred. “Trees?” she murmured.
“There are no trees anywhere near the yeshiva, Mama. How can they make streets without trees?”
She was staring at me. I saw her eyes very wide and staring at me. Her frail form stiffened.
“And Saul will be studying for his bar mitzvah and I won’t see the zoo with him anymore.”
She said nothing.
“I don’t like the feeling of missing you and the trees and the zoo, Mama. It’s not a good feeling.”
“No,” I heard her say in a very small voice. Then she said, “But you will have to get used to it, David.”
“I hate it, Mama.”
“Yes. Yes. Hate it. Of course. Hate it. It’s a terrible feeling. But get used to it. You will get used to it soon. Didn’t you get used to it soon? No. Not soon. But you got used to it. Otherwise it would still all be tears and what difference
would it make what shape the trees were?” She broke off suddenly and took a deep tremulous breath. Then she sat very still and was silent.
When her silence had gone on a long time, I said quietly, “Mama?”
She sighed. “Yes, darling. Yes. You’ll get used to it, darling. And you will be a wonderful student and make us proud of you. Won’t you, darling?”
“Yes, Mama,” I heard myself say.
“When I started in the gymnasium in Vienna I was also very lonely. I missed my father and mother. I even missed my brothers and sisters, even though I used to fight with them all the time. They never liked it that I would always be reading. I used to sit under a tree and read. No one thought a girl should read so much. But I missed them when I started the gymnasium. David once told me he also missed—” She stopped, blinked her eyes rapidly, and took another deep quivering breath. Then she sat very quietly on the bed, gazing down at me. “Have I ever told you how much you look like David? Yes, of course I have. It is so hard to hold back the memories, darling. Impossible, sometimes. But we shouldn’t remember too much. That is as bad as not remembering at all. Well,” she said brightly. “Well. You remembered the trees. That was wonderful. And soon you will find a friend and you will begin to learn good things. You taught yourself the alphabets and that’s why you are bored now. Wait a week or two. Be patient. Do you want me to talk to your teacher about the boy who is picking on you?”
“No, Mama.”
“Good. Because I cannot come running to your school for all your problems, darling. You will get used to going to school and it will become a better school soon and your memories of your trees will not make you so sad anymore. Give me a kiss good night and say your Krias Shema quietly and go to sleep. Children who want to have good memories should get plenty of sleep.”
“Mama?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Why is Saul studying three years with Mr. Bader for his bar mitzvah?”
“There is a lot to learn. But ask your father.”
“Three years, Mama?”
“Ask your father, David.”
“I’m sleepy, Mama.”
“Good. It’s about time you were sleepy.”